[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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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. Heimir Bjorgulffson is the ringleader of the Icelandic powerbook trio Stilluppsteypa and presents his second solo project on the Mille Plateaux experimental subsidiary Ritornell. "Discreet Journey Digitalis" finds Bjorgulffson pushing further into the quote unquote Lowercase territory mapped by Bernhard Gunter and Steve Roden (in particular Gunter's ultra quiet "Details Agrandis") with miniscule digital events scattered through prolonged silences, muffled drones, and sparse field recordings. Headphones required.

Heimir Bjorgulfsson is one of the members of the Icelandic experimental electronic trio Stilluppsteypa, and presents "Machine Natura" as a part of Staalplaat's "machine series" for microscopic glitch music -- pretty much Staalplaat's answer to Ritornell.

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Having recently left the obscurant electronica ensemble Stillupsteypa, Icelandic transplant Heimir Bjorgulfsson has wasted no time in starting up some new projects. This collaboration with Swedish installation artist Jonas Ohlsson was commissioned by Extrapool - an arts residency program which, in conjunction with Staalplaat, gives two likeminded artists unlimited access to a really nice recording studio for a week and publishes the results as a limited edition CD. While Bjorgulfsson's work is certainly a known quantity through his numerous solo projects and the AQ-endorsed Stilluppsteypa albums, Ohlsson has primarily been active in the Northern European gallery scene, executing willfully sloppy installations of consumerist excess, punk-as-fuck attitudes, and that post-ironic sentiment that's so fashionable in San Francisco galleries these days. That said, Ohlsson's resume cites some training in electro-acoustic compositions and he also seems to have a taste for Acid House. In their condensed studio session, Bjorgulffsson and Ohlsson have produced a surprisingly diverse album, splattering through fractured techno beats, at times strangulated into Matmos-esque noise-funk and others into the classic Sahko sound with frigid shards of electricity cascading down upon taut rhythms. Most everything in the Brombron series has been quite good, and "Unspoken Word Tour" is no exception.

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The powerbook has pretty much replaced the razor tape splice as the primary instrument for musique concrete, and Heimir Bjorgulfsson's laptop has been a extra busy machine in expediting this transference from old to new. Outside his work in AQ-faves Stilluppsteypa, Heimir has produced his first solo recording, this cute 3". An alien array of mutable clicks and pops corrode a digital arena where the high frequency damage of Ryoji Ikeda meets the hypnotic malevolence of John Duncan. Very good!

The conscious decision to use only the human voice in musical compositions is nothing new -- the unadulterated vocals of a cappella soul groups and barber shop quartets immediately spring to mind -- however, few mainstream artists have brought this approach to today's popular music (okay, we remember Bobby McFerrin). The choice to use only one 'instrument' initially seems to be potentially limiting, but of course Bjork's not limited at all. Her voice on its own has an arguably unsurpassed power and expressiveness. Now, add to that a number of other artists of her meticulous choosing (Mike Patton, Robert Wyatt...), and she can't be stopped. Granted Bjork also has the luxury of state of the art recording technology at her beck and call to mutate and accommodate any sound (directly from a human source or otherwise) into something altogether unrecognizably different (and decidedly non-human sounding) for her sonic pallette. Indeed, many of Medulla's tracks are stunning examples of a near-magical fusion of human vocal ability, composition and studio wizardry. You won't encounter much in the way of her deliriously wonderful pop songs here (not unexpectedly, this is something that seems to have already put off a few Bjork fan AQ customers upon their initial listens, but we'd recommend giving the album a little more time, and you might discover it sinking its non-pop hooks into you), instead you'll find what is perhaps her most challenging, otherworldly, abstract work to date. There's two versions of this available, digipack vs. regular jewel case. The high price digipak version differs from the normal jewel case version ONLY in that it is a digipak (duh) but also contains a small poster. Worth two extra bucks? You decide. Also realise that if you're the poster hanging type, all of the liner notes in this version are on the back of the poster, so you'll have to get a real good look at 'em before this goes up in your locker! So basically, we'd recommend opting for the regular jewel case edition...

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Finally we're starting to be able to get records by Nordvargr on a regular basis. Many of us here have been totally obsessed with Nordvargr for ages but it's been so tough to get his records in with any regularity and never enough to list. For those unfamiliar, Mr. Nordvagr was a member of seminal black metal ambient drone outfit MZ412, and later went on to form the miltaristic drone folk ensembles Toroidh and Folkstorm, as well as releasing stuff under his given name. The Dead Never Sleep is Nordvargr's newest release and definitely harkens back to his days in MZ412. This is one of the darkest, bleakest most abject drone records ever. Super minimal and pitch black. A million shades of black and grey, all slowly and barely shifting. Vast expanses of slow motion reverberations and distant rumbles, the sounds of hearts beating and gongs shimmering and winds whipping and waves crashing but all heard through the tiny end of a mile long, black hole telescope. Planets imploding struggling to be heard through the deadness of space. A barely there smear of subsonic thrum, gorgeously serene, like a peaceful boat trip, drifting lazily down a river of black pitch, through the blackened caverns of the underworld. Definitely one of the most evocative, and brilliantly bleak collections of drone musick in recent memory!

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The newest release on AQ pal Uirajara's stellar Essence label, home to the awesome dark ambience of Wolfskin, the splattery noise onslaught of Merzbow's Sha Mo 3000, and soon to release the Brazilian version of Boris's most recent Mabuta No Ura, with completely different artwork and extra music, comes the latest in a recent spate of releases from Scandanavian dark ambient technician Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, who also records as Folkstorm, Toroidh and began his journey down the darkened path with his black ambient outfit MZ412. This newest release is as dark and bleak and sonically terrifying as they come, which is quite odd considering Vitagen is dedicated to his daughter Indra (the dedication reads: Dedicated to Indra, the light which guides me through the darkness), the cover features all antique photos of little girls, and the super limited deluxe version (now out of print, so don't ask) even came with a handmade porcelain doll. But there is nothing loving or childlike here, unless of course it's meant to be the musical probing of the darkest recess of a child's mind, all monsters and nightmares, things that go bump in the night, shadows outside the window, demons waiting in the closet, all brought to life by disembodied rumbles, slow building industrial swells of shivering blackness, ominous smears of demonic minimalism, and occasional cracks and crashes, like brief bursts of lightning illuminating the terrors hidden in the night, just for a moment, but that moment is enough to fill your soul with dread as you are plunged back into utter darkness. And while the sound of Vitagen is definitely brutal and barren and hauntingly grim, it's also quite beautiful, and even soothing at times, with small stretches of tranquil ambience scattered here and there, melodies slowed down and pulled apart into dark shapes that sort of drift and hover, a nice balance between the hellishly malevolent and the soothingly serene. Beautifully packaged in a six panel, embossed cardboard sleeve.

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Black ambient terrorists MZ412 were and are the definition of "true Swedish black industrial" and were one of the first bands to successfully bridge the gap between dark ambience and black metal. The two main members never abandoned their vision, but instead, put MZ412 on hiatus while the two pursued and explored different sounds and sonic worlds. Nordvargr most prolifically in Toroidh, Folkstorm and under his own name, while Drakh began the Beyond Sensory Experience project. Recently the two reunited and released a brand new MZ412 record (to be reviewed here soon) and recorded a brand new Nordvargr / Drakh album (coming soon on Andee's tUMULt label). Somehow they also found time to collaborate with Japanese writer and sonic assassin Kenji Siratori (who also collaborates with Pendro elsewhere on this list) on Hypergenome666, a massive multiple disc, art book project that is breathtaking, not just visually (with incredible artwork and design courtesy of Paul McCarrol) but sonically as well, featuring some of the most caustic, heavy and frighteningly menacing black ambience and dark drones we've ever heard. Two discs, one features Nordvargr, the other Drakh and his Beyond Sensory Experience, each pitted against Siratori, whose main weapon is the word, both written and chopped and sliced and diced into strange verbal soundscapes. The Nordvargr disc just might be the darkest heaviest thing we've ever heard from him. Creepy and cavernous, huge ominous swells and crumbling industrial crunch drift amidst disembodied monstrous growls and keening distant melodies. Black clouds hover above, spewing forth grinding bursts of electrical discharge, interrupted occasionally by strange dreamlike interludes, epic and majestic horns, processed vocals, looped and chopped, treated and affected, crumbling crunchy rhythms, thick swaths of blown out distortion and expansive smears of whirring ambient buzz and thick streaks of minor key color. This is one of the scariest sounding discs ever. So deep and dense, so many layers, so much going on, it's the sound of being lost in the underworld, wandering alone forever. It's strangely beautiful too. The BSE disc finds Drakh also teamed up with (or against, hard to say) Siratori and that disc is nearly as sinister and bleak as Nordvargr's. A bit more rhythmic, with the voices and vocals pushed more to the fore, the rhythms a lurching framework for the various low end streaks, swirling and shimmering. The voices are transformed into alien black shapes and back again. Dense and thick, a crumbling world of delicate drones and thick slabs of grinding distortion. More blissed out and ambient, dreamy and soft focus, but no less threatening or evil sounding. The discs are similar enough that they could be collaborative, some lost MZ412 disc, or a new Nordvargr / Drakh, but different enough that they stand on their own, offering light where the other offers dark, or more accurately, offering more dark... The text and song titles and lyrics are all the work of Siratori and are dense and confusional, equal parts stream of consciousness, cyber punk and whatthefuck, "amorphous anthropoid, sympathy cell waves, acidhumanix, biocapturism..." it goes on and on, some impossible otherworld of reanimated corpses and time travel and cellular warfare and who knows what else. Dizzying and overwhelming and totally fascinating. The artwork somehow reflects that, at once modern and futuristic, classic and strangely surreal, naked figures, deformed babies, all sorts of religious iconography, corpses, genitals, industrial machinery, skulls, blood, welts, tentacles and tendrils... All housed in an oversized fold over slipcover, inside a folder with the discs mounted inside, full color postcards, and a perfect bound book of Siratori's bizarre text. While they last, we have the super limited version (only 300 copies!!) which includes two extra 3" discs. The first is Kenji Siratori - Sound Monologue : Hypergenome666, which features Siratori's spoken word, processed and tangled up into strange electronic soundscapes, skipping loops, and dense reverb drenched rhythms, all circling the haunting and mysterious words, grinding and blown out, super distorted and crumbling into strange shards of sound. The other is BSE vs. Nordvargr + Kenj Siratori - Tragedy Cell, featuring all three, collaborating, or battling, a glacial, frostbitten black wasteland, vocals swirl and are swallowed up, huge slabs of distorted low end blacken the sky, disembodied rhythms hover amidst whorls of whirring buzz, everything bathed in crackle and hum... So absolutely stunning in every way.

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From the twisted mastermind behind outsider weirdo black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement, comes this debut from the oddly monickered T. Bjorklund Quartet, a CoD offshoot of sorts, oddly named for several reasons, one, it's not a quartet as far as we know, and T. Bjorklund is not his name, but by now we should have come to expect that sort of whatthefuckness from Mr. CoD, which bleeds right over into the music here, which is a sort of abstract free jazz, black noise weirdness, imagine wild squalls of lo-fi super distorted shredding, like a more damaged Mick Barr, that matched by some wildly abstract 'free' drumming way off in the distance, not to mention some blown out, croaked alien vokills, everything wrapped in an insane amount of tape hiss, as if it were recorded on a 1950's dictaphone, the end result being like a Faxed Head jazz record, or some abstract black metal record melting down and going totally haywire. But for all the damaged shred and abstract fuckery, the sounds do become strangely hypnotic, murky and muddy and blurred. There seems to be some bass going on too, that surfaces part way through, but the weird thing is, it doesn't sound played, it almost sounds like another record is playing with just bass on it, and that's where it's coming from. The sound does swing wildly all over the place, from weird electrified ambience to full bore noise, to what sounds -almost- like black metal, our favorite bit maybe being near the end, where that strange bassline, thrums beneath a field of high end sine wave skree, while the vocals howl maniacally, the bass getting louder and louder, as if someone was jamming in another room, and just opened the door. Some seriously weird shit for sure. But if you've dug all the other Cloak records, or alternately are a jazzhead who somehow made it through this whole review, than check this out, we love it, but it's definitely on the 'difficult' side. Packaged in a hand pasted digipak style sleeve, LIMITED TO 20 COPIES, we have 15 of those, all hand numbered, with a hand written 'free jazz' insert.

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add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html It was only a matter of time. There's been rap metal, and there's been funk metal, but as far as we know, nobody has combined black metal and dub, at least in a way that was at all palatable (we're definitely not counting the Bill Laswell produced Cradle Of Filth remix record or that abominable Tolkien-dub Prince Far Isengard record from a few years back). But now we've got the brilliantly monickered Black Ark Oaken Saw, a grim troupe of ganja smoking, washboard stroking, corpse painted Dandys in tight trousers. Huge swaths of murky buzzsaw guitars, howled demonic David Lee Roth-like vocals, wrapped in loads of reverb and delay, but instead of blast beats, or precise triggered drums, the dark abyss is framed by spare super blissed out, dubbed out echoplexed dub rhythms, snares crack and then repeat endlessly into the blackened void, while shrieks are snipped mid phrase and then recycled into haunting otherworldy echoes of blackened dub. Weird weird weird, it seems like this sort of thing wouldn't work at all, but surprisingly it's an absolutely perfect fit. Imagine Emperor with Sly and Robbie occupying the rhythm section or Lee Perry fronting Lugubrum. And we can't forget the un-named frontman who indeed plays the amplified washboard, but it too is run through a bank of effects and emerges a totally dubbed out barely recognizable version of itself. Hopefully, Hydra Head's interest in the fringes of black metal will continue to unearth more unholy treasures like the mighty Black Ark Oaken Saw!

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Finally a release format massive enough to (only barely) capture the epic mammoth low slung downtuned brutal black beauty of Campbell Kneale's one man drone metal sludge combo Black Boned Angel. THREE full length cd-r's, that's over three hours of planet flattening slow motion guitar crumble and distorted doom crawl. A collage of sorts weaving together audience bootleg recordings recorded all over Europe as well as demos and studio rehearsals. All held over the fire and melted down into a thick viscous fluid, that is poured into both your ears until the inside of your head melts and all you can hear is black. Also included is the long out of print and never even seen by us until now "Heavens Blaze Forth the Death Of Princes" 2005 European tour cd. What are you waiting for? This is IT. What we've been begging for. Hours and hours of soul destroying heaviness, bleak minimal soundscapes of roiling downtuned guitars and 16rpm riffage, like Steve Reich playing the SUNNO))) songbook. Churning and lurching and grinding and flattening all drone rockers in its path, the Black Boned Angel has descended from the heavens amidst showers of blood and black storm clouds to pass judgment, to beat us over the head with an angelic army of guitars, to bury us in a deep pit beneath a mountain of damaged amplifiers, to damn our souls to eternal torment. AND WE LOVE IT! Packaged in the immediately recognizable CPsiP wallpaper packaging, with three printed inserts. ULTRA LIMITED!!! We only got 50 copies, and will probably not be able to get more, so don't snooze...

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We talk about stuff being heavy all the time. Stuff being crushing. Pummeling. Sludgy. We describe slow heavy music with words like tarpit, and lumbering, and plodding. Deep. Cavernous. Subterranean. We try desperately to evoke the sort of abject brutality that this music makes us feel, lets us hear. But the truth is, while all of those words do describe Black Boned Angel, they barely manage to capture just how slow and low, heavy and completely skullcrushing this new record is. In huge letters, printed on the inside of the sleeve, are the words "Transcendence Can Only Be Reached At Maximum Volume" and truer words were never spoken. Black Boned Angel is the darkside of Mr. Campbell Kneale, better know for his long running blissdrone outfit Birchville Cat Motel. A fascination with metal, and a desire to reach the depths of utter heaviness, led Campbell from the droning path of BCM and into a world of black terror and skull peeling ferocity, a harrowing path of ear shredding, heart stopping, brain melting brutality. And it seems he has acclimated quite well thank you. Bliss And Void Inseparable is the third installment in Kneale's insidious plan to create a record so massive, that it collapses all of time and space, sucking the entire solar system into an alternate universe the size of a pea. And he's almost succeeded. We will perpetually live in fear knowing that the next BBA record could be the one that destroys the world as we know it. For now, we will luxuriate in the massive soul shearing metallic doooooom that is BAVI. The record begins with massive plods, each one the footfall of a beast so large we can barely comprehend its mass, instead, when it steps down, shockwaves roll out in all directions, like a sonic boom caused by a million downtuned guitars, leaving an fifty foot deep impression in the earth, the compacted ground littered with skeletons and corpses, the dirt wet with blood. Over this occasional black hole plod is laid a white hot streak of upper echelon feedback, an endless stretch of high end reverberation. It's like some sort of Moss / Whitehouse mashup. But even then, the guitars grow, feeding off the darkness, the feedback fades and the strange plodding coheres into some sort of prehistoric riff, a groove so slow and low that it's like a black glacier sliding in slow motion across the desiccated earth. But BBA's hellish pit is not with out hope, not without light, or melody, chanting vocals hover right below the surface, barely audible under a gauzy veil of guitar crumble and amp rooooaaaarrr. At about the halfway point, ghostly piano is introduced, offering up minor key, slightly atonal melodies, adding color to BBA's black world. But also adding a creepy ominous edge. Like the soundtrack to thee sort of horror movie that leaves half the audience frightened to death. This funeral plod continues on until very near the end, where the low end drops out, leaving nothing but a snarled tangled web of feedback, a shimmering lattice of high end, which eventually fades into nothingness. It's a bit hard to absorb, best to just lay back and let this snarling black beast have its way with you. You might survive, halo tarnished and soul a bit blackened, and if for some reason you don't this angel will carry you lovingly down into the depths. SO 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. We've never seen Black Boned Angel Perform live, but judging from the photo on the insert of this disc, the band might owe SUNNO))) some royalties, as the image features one of the Black Boned Angels (yep, now there are three) in a monk like robe, wielding an axe, but also poised to strike a drum! But fuck it, robes were a part of rituals long before SUNNO))), and BBA have their own ritualistic thing going on. Especially considering someone is simultaneously playing guitar AND drums. The trio of BBA, now featuring not only main man Campbell Kneale on guitar, drums and tapes, and James Kirk on guitar and "amprifier worshippo" (?), but also now Jules Desmond on bass guitar, offer up the first recorded evidence we've heard of the three piece BBA on this here super limited TOUR ONLY cd-r, we got all the copies the band had left after their Australian tour, so once these are gone, that's it. One single track, 34 minutes, beginning with nine minutes of washed out staticky buzz. For a minute there (actually for 9 minutes) we thought this might be it. One long buzz. Which would be fine, we love that stuff, but right around the 10 minute mark, the band kick into a slow motion doomy plod, the guitars thick and viscous, the drums a simple occasional plod (dude is also playing guitar!), the trio lurch and lumber, a woozy, spaced out tar pit dirge, the guitars throbbing and crumbling, eventually, blurring into a nearly static whirl of low end sound, an industrial soundscape of muted clatter and textured buzz, smeared into a slowly decaying outro. Again, this is CRAZY LIMITED, pretty sure it's OUT OF PRINT, and thus these are most likely, the last copies ever...

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Okay. We screwed up. It happens. What can we say? Sometimes we're easily confused. We get SO many records every week to listen to and review, hundreds in fact. But also, people don't always make it any easier. We recently got two discs in the mail, both with remarkably similar packaging, one WAS actually a reissue, of Matthew Bower's Mirag disc, a new version of a long out of print cd-r, the other, we now discover, is NOT in fact a reissue, but a brand new record, with -almost- the exact same title as the cd-r we wrongly assumed this was a reissue of. Arghhh. So anyway, enough of the scrambling to cover our screw-up-prone asses and on to this maginificent slab of murky malevolence. BBA fans know what they're in for, a serious blackened pummeling, huge roiling washes of downtuned black tar riffing, swirled and smeared into epic waves of darkdarkdark ambience. Bookended on both sides by some Birchville style shimmery dronescaping, but those merely serve to ease you in, and ease you out, of this bottomless black pool of corrosive suffocating heaviness. Only twenty minutes long, but we're not entirely sure we could handle much more, even though we do pretty much wish this record would go on forever. Nothing but punishing blackness as far as the eye can sea. Nothing but rumbling crunch as far as the ear can hear. A never ending metallic drift into a swirling black hole of gloriously brutal doomdronedeathdirgesludge. Packaged in swank silver ink on black sleeves!

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The return of Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) shadowy cloaked, blackened dirge-drone-sort-of-metal alter ego Black Boned Angel. The latest in Celebrate Psi Phenomenon's Battlecruiser series of ambient experimentalists gone metal. This twenty minute chunk of grim sludge is a little teaser for a forthcoming double cd! Not quite as overtly metal as the recently reviewed Supereclipse cd, Eternal Love starts off much more sonically aligned with Kneale's more ambient exploits with BCM. Things start to go south (as in south of Heaven) a few minutes in with the introduction of creepy crawly gothy bass lines, drifting through the abyss, bass riffs begin but are abandoned part way through only to resurface moments later, like the skeleton of Joy Division, reanimated and lurching drunkenly through the scorched and barren underworld. Eventually this haunting bass line slips off the edge and into a suffocating blackened swirl of downtuned ultra distorted bass, grinding slow motion metal guitar, and plodding industrial percussion, a head crushing plod offering some sort of rhythmic guidance through Eternal Love's hellish tar pit trawl. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!

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This�beloved blackened behemoth from New Zealand, AQ fave Black Boned Angel, aka Campbell Kneale, takes his first shot at spreading the disease via vinyl, with this two on one lp reissue of several long out of print cd-r's. Pressed on thick vinyl, and in a super striking silver-on-black sleeve, Eternal Love and Eternal Hunger are available once again, but only for a limited time! Eternal Love is not�quite as overtly metal as BBA's Supereclipse cd, and thus starts off much more sonically aligned with Kneale's more ambient exploits with BCM. Things start to go south (as in South Of Heaven) a few minutes in with the introduction of creepy crawly gothy bass lines, drifting through the abyss, bass riffs begin but are abandoned part way through only to resurface moments later, like the skeleton of Joy Division, reanimated and lurching drunkenly through the scorched and barren underworld. Eventually this haunting bass line slips off the edge and into a suffocating blackened swirl of downtuned ultra distorted bass, grinding slow motion metal guitar, and plodding industrial percussion, a head crushing plod offering some sort of rhythmic guidance through Eternal Love's hellish tar pit trawl.� On the flipside, Eternal Hunger�is�a serious blackened pummeling, huge roiling washes of downtuned black tar riffing, swirled and smeared into epic waves of darkdarkdark ambience. Bookended on both sides by some Birchville style shimmery dronescaping, but those merely serve to ease you in, and ease you out, of this bottomless black pool of corrosive suffocating heaviness. Twenty minutes long, a single side long track, nothing but punishing blackness as far as the eye can sea. Nothing but rumbling crunch as far as the ear can hear. A never ending metallic drift into a swirling black hole of gloriously brutal doomdronedeathdirgesludge.

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A while back we got a handful of limited 3" cd-r releases on a label called Battle Cruiser, which just so happened to be a side label of Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, run by the very prolific and very loved around these parts Campbell Kneale. They were super limited, only 30-80 copies of each and we only got 10. The best of the bunch was a little black gem by the name of Black Boned Angel. BBA was Kneale's foray onto massive, pummelling metallic sludge and man was it good. Shame we only ever had ten copies. Well, thanks to our pal Dave at 20 Buck Spin, we all get another chance to pick this up. And the ten of you who got the first version will probably also want to get this because: A. It's not a cd-r, it's a real cd. B. There's a twenty minute bonus track! Fuck yeah! But what does it sound like? Black Boned Angel is a crushing salvo of sub-bass, low end, Earth / Sunn 0))) / Skullflower / Corrupted deathdirgedrone, but filtered through Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel high end ambient, shimmering skree, free noise sensibilities. Guitar tuned so low, the strings droop all the way off the fretboard, amps with the treble controls removed to make room for even more bass knobs, amps dipped in hot tar and pointed at the center of the earth, waves of low end rumble slowly rolling and decimating everything in its path. Hollowed out skulls, pounded mercilessly, beating out a primitive barely-there rhythm from the black abyss. Mysterious incantations, hardly audible from beneath the massive slab of sonic sludge, seem to invoke the very same bass-heavy demons threatening to smother and bury them with this very recording. Totally essential.

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Is it really the end for Black Boned Angel, the aQ beloved guitar/drum doomdronedirge duo? It sadly seems to be, as The End is apparently not just the title for this elaborately presented three part song suite, but does in fact supposedly represent the final musical missive from Campbell Kneale and James Kirk, aka BBA. And not a bad way to go. A three song epic, the shortest 16 minutes, the longest more than 24, and right away, the duo launch into it, with a sick, metallic howl, a crushing doom-ed lumber, all demonic vokills, and crumbling super distorted riffage, all wrapped around simple monstrous drum plod, and while that sort of intro usually signals some straight up droned out black doom sludge, quickly the sound reveals a surprising amount of melody and texture, the creep and crawl, and abject ultra doom miserablism, tempered by an inner light, and some super crazy catchy guitarwork, that gives the sound an epic, majestic, chiming dreaminess, and when the rhythm kicks in proper, it's a strange sort of wistful doom-sludge slowcore; but just as quickly as the sound coalesces, it seems to decay right before our ears and shift back into amorphous black buzz. And the song seems to push and pull between these two sides, the loping mournful melancholia, and the howling black hole heaviness, eventually, reaching a gorgeous sort of equilibrium, which is weirdly coupled with some seriously warped guitar, a sky full of tangled distorted melodic moan, not buzz, but a sort of haunting keening, unlike almost any other guitar sound we've hear, its ultimate effect giving the sound a seriously woozy, psychedelic vibe, although the last few minutes finds the drums ditched and the two guitars wound tight into a thick cloud of billowing guitarnoise and grinding black crunch. The second movement begins like some demonic Arvo Part piece, all layered choral vocals and ominous drones, heady and haunting, it's not until nearly 5 minutes in, that the doom drops, and when it does, it's a tarpit chug, but again, it's laced with some unlikely beauty, at first sounding like a more blown out Blackwolfgoat, but soon, it turns into something utterly lovely and almost dreamy, of course still doused in crumbling black buzz, but beneath all the distortion and doomic swirl, is something lilting and melancholic, strip away all the heaviness, and we'd be talking total heartbreak ballad, but when fused to the groups monstrous lumber, it somehow only becomes that much more intense and darkly emotional, there's a definite Nadja vibe, but this is way dreamier and way more overtly melodic than ANYthing we've heard from them, it's like some crazy catchy song fragmented, looped and slowed down and stretched out into a gorgeous blackdoom dreampop dirge, eventually blissing out into a droned out drift of soft crumble, swirling effects, and delicate piano. Finally, BBA finish things off (and by things, we mean the record AND the band), with another epic majestic dirgescape, this one too laced with melody, and unlikely texture, soaring and weirdly poppy, the melodic component here a strange wavery vocal like melody, that sounds somewhere between a warped theremin, and a vibrato heavy opera singer, that quavering 'voice' woven into the groups melancholy plod, and like the track before, the drums drop out, and most of the buzz, leaving a gorgeous haze of crumbling distortion, blurred riffage, and that ghostly melody, a haunting threnody, and a darly dream epitaph for one of our favorite bands. Who will be greatly missed. Super elaborate packaging, all assembled and numbered by hand, an origami style inner jacket, with a full colored oversized insert, several envelopes/sleeves, all housed in a thick 7" sized vellum outer sleeve, through which the silver printed inner sleeve can be viewed. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

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We always sort of assumed Black Boned Angel, the alter ego of Birchville Cat Motel's Campbell Kneale, was just that, an alter ego, a one man exploration of things dark and drone-y and heavy, the sort of stuff that was maybe TOO day for his day gig in BCM. But here, on the latest BBA, Kneale has teamed up with fellow Kiwi noisemaker (and longtime aQ customer) James Kirk for something just a little bit different. One single hour long song, that begins with all manner of barely there ambience, distant resonant rumbles, keening high end, fluttering chimes, super super minimal, tons of space. Eventually, the guitar comes in, but not crashing or exploding, instead, it comes in strumming dolefully, unfurling deep sorrowful chords, that are allowed to ring out, building a spaced out minor key melody that drifts in a melancholy haze. The sound is really quite pretty, some sort of post rock, minimal slowcore, think Dirty 3, or Low, but even slower and more abstract. And this goes on for nearly 30 minutes, lulling the listener into a soporific daze. But c'mon, this is BLACK BONED ANGEL, at about the halfway mark, the hammer falls, and the duo unleash a torrent of digitally processed distortion that buzzes and rumbles, all draped over a throbbing industrial crunch, until what sound like real drums join the fray, splattering out a spider web of disjointed beats beneath the nearly static undulating layer of undulating grinding buzz. When the buzz does shift, the chord change feels massive, the melody locking in tight, before slipping back into a metal-Niblock blur. Eventually, the song ramps down, the guitars fade away leaving high end traces of what came before, keening streaks in the sky, shimmering lowend shadows underpinning coruscating arcs of distorted skree, eventually smoothing out into a soft, warm whirring blur that drifts off until the end. Gorgeously packaged in a black on black digipak. Another winner from Kneale and his (for now) partner Kirk!

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Latest slab of sprawling outsider minimal ambient sludge doom drone from this (now) duo, fronted by none other than Campbell Kneale, he of Birchville Cat Motel and Our Love Will Destroy The World, but as most of you probably already know, BBA is a whole 'nother beast. A snarling, slow motion, glacial, tarpit, black crawling beast, a sparse, yet still dense assemblage of massive riffing, the riffs themselves doused in crumbling distortion and left to just decay before our ears, only to have another crunching chord wash over us, not so much riffs as long arrangements of massive notes and chords, a forward momentum of nearly nil, these guys create some serious ultra doom, that rivals groups like Moss for sheer sonic weight. The Witch Must Be Killed is a two sided two parter, the first side begins with a long stretch of near silence, hushed ambient drift, before the band really kick in with a Neurosis-at-16rpm dirge, and calling it a dirge is being generous, it's so slow, it's almost like a soundscape assembled from bits of riff, and occasional crashing drum pound, but the result is intoxicating, gorgeously hazy and blown out and weirdly epic, especially with the addition of a whole other layer of sound, what could be distant waiting vox, or another high end guitar, or some sort of noisemaker, but what that extra layer does is add some serious pathos, tension, what would otherwise be a metallic creep, becomes something totally emotional and intense, like a metal Godspeed crossed with an even more minimal Corrupted, but WAY spaced out, cosmic and otherworldly, more in line with something like Jesu or Nadja, but way heavier, and WAY more metal. Repetitive, hypnotic, mesmerizing, nearly endless, a sprawling primordial metallic ooze, that envelops and consumes, sucking the listener into a black vortex of minimal metallic sound, the song itself developing slowly, nearly imperceptibly, for it is an actual sound, not just a hodge podge of sounds, a song that fills up nearly two sides, until about halfway through side two, when the band slip into their own sort of Filsofem, a blurred wash of buzz and rumble, of swirling hiss, of smeared effects and black ambience, laced with a haunting melody, played over and over, way off in the distance, partially obscured by the murk, while beneath it strange voices surface and swirl, the guitars smolder and burn, totally gorgeous and weirdly dreamy and otherworldy, as the record dissolves into an extended outro as bleary eared and buzzy as the best Birchville jam, just rendered via big amps and loud blackened guitars. Awesome. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

Birchville Cat Motel may be dead, only to be replaced by the quite similar sounding, but much more massive and electronic flecked Our Love Will Destroy The World. But thankfully, Black Boned Angel, the other long running musical project of Campbell Kneale, lives on, with not one, but TWO new releases this list. The other, a second collaboration with like-minded musical heavies Nadja, and this, the latest full length after last year's devastating The Endless Coming Into Life. Verdun, named for the legendary battle presumably, is almost like an Endless Coming part two, dialing back the sheer heaviness and exploring space and dynamics, but in the process, somehow sounding so much heavier. Three long songs, all tracked as a single 52 minute epic, takes ages to get going, which is just fine, in doom as in life, it's not about the destination it's about the journey, and BBA's journey is a death march through burning fields and soot filled skies, but that's a few minutes away. A slow slow slow build, all barely there ambience, before some massive drums kick in, and then it's JUST drums, pounding away, in a spaced out vacuum, spare but punishing, and then THE RIFF, a massive one, the sort of riff, that once written, becomes a part of the writer, and soon after the listener. Sleep has a few, Sabbath has lots, now BBA has one, a slow, slithery crawl, a handful of notes spread way out into a dark descending minor key melody, the drums, just there to drive it home, as this is the sort of riff that needs nothing else, the sort of riff any metalhead could listen to looped over and over and over forever. About 12 minutes in, the tone changes, some high end shimmer sneaks in, sheets of feedback, the riff is pulled apart, various notes left to ring out, the drums a little more active, before everything drops out completely, leaving just a distant keening riff, left to moan and groan, to ring out, mournful and so so doomy, at about the half hour mark, the main riff returns, but this time it's been transformed into something strangely melodic, almost like power metal played at 16rpm, epic, but still so slooooooow, building ever building, eventually crumbling into a swirling bit of noise and crumbled buzz, and a gorgeous classical chorus, a choir of voices just below the churning distorted surface, totally epic and weirdly haunting, the sounds of warfare, guns and planes and explosions, surfacing from below the sprawling low end rumble, eventually taking over completely, the last few minutes a harrowing collage of death and destruction, of bombs and the cries of the dying. Definitely a different beast than many of the older BBA records, which blended the kitchen sink drones of Birchville Cat Motel with a sort of abstract black doom element, Verdun is more of a proper metal record, although to be sure 'proper metal record' is really relative, since as metal as this is, it's also just as much an experimental doomdronedirge record, regardless, it is maybe the most fully realized Black Boned Angel record yet, not sure if it's THAT RIFF, or because Kneale just keeps getting better and better, or because it's a concept record, so it's essentially a suite of interconnected songs. It's actually probably a little of all three, although as you might have guessed, we're definitely leaning toward THAT RIFF.

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Another matchup that had to happen eventually, it was only a matter of time. Campbell Kneale's Black Boned Angel, and Aidan Baker's Nadja. Two modern groups redefining doom metal. Filtering doom through their own dronedirge aesthetics, each with a distinctly unique take on doom, BBA's more of a glacial noise drenched dirge, Nadja's more of a blissed out metalgaze. The two together though churn out what can only be described as epic grandiose doom pop. Or something like that. Soaring vocals, over thick churning crumbling distortion. It almost sounds like a sludge metal Queen, or a bit like recent Record Of The Week honorees Torche, or even Harvey Milk at their most dramatic and over the top. The main riff is a slowed down classic rocker, turned sludgey and lugubrious but not losing any of its might or majesty. Guitars screech and soar and grind all around it, what sounds like a piano plinks along with the vocals, a sunshiney melody, but it's the vocals, that turn this into glorious sludgepop, a minor key lament, delivered in a plaintive wail, way down in the mix as well, but loud enough to totally carry the song, that main melody lodged in your head, forever! Not really sure what else to say. If the math of Nadja + Black Boned Angel = Harvey Milk + Torche + Queen x loads of blown out distortion and sun baked buzz doesn't add up for you, you just might be reading the wrong list� This is an ep teaser for the forthcoming full length from the same team on 20 Buck Spin, but fear not, this song, all 21+ minutes of it, is available only on this disc!!

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Most female fronted, angry rock bands probably get tired of getting tagged Riot Grrl, especially since for all intents and purposes, Riot Grrl ceased to be relevant years ago, maybe even ceased to exist entirely. BUT, if anyone was hoping to spawn a revival, Black Bug would be the band to make it happen. The A side of this 7", "I Don't Like You" is a mother fucking ANTHEM. The main riff totally distorted and so in-the-red it threatens to just fall to pieces, but then the chorus kicks in, and another guitar, EVEN MORE distorted and heavy and high in the mix, lurches into action, and lays waste to EVERYTHING. The drums are a mere pitter pat when faced with such blown out riffage, but it doesn't even matter. The vocals, though, seal the deal, distorted, wrapped in effects, howled with haughty pissed intensity, as loud and corrosive as the guitars it snarls around. And the hook, shit, if you gussied it up and got rid of some of the guitars and re-recorded it in a real studio we're talking something like the Breeders' "Cannonball", but instead, as is, it's a fierce fucked up, filthy fucking ANTHEM! Like the Raveonettes if they were 13 years old, obsessed with Turbonegro, and SO pissed at their shit for brains boyfriend. Or maybe Daisy Chainsaw, but with a singer who is less waifish and sexy, and more bad ass and scary as shit. Reminds us a bit of Monarch punk rock alter ego Rainbow Of Death. The flipside is not quite the ANTHEM as the A side, but it still slays, processed synthy buzz, tons of effects, this one more groovy and almost dance-y, in a sort of robotic way, more sassy pissed girl vocals. It's not hard to imagine Black Bug waiting outside some dance club and then kicking the living shit out of Uffie. Hellz Yeah!! Cool thick black and blue sleeve, pressed on coke bottle clear vinyl.

This is the first we've heard from Swedish new wave garage rock,synth punk trio Black Bug since their mind blowing full length on tUMULt from a while back. Which itself was a furious collection of, as we described it then: "equal parts cold wave gloom, riot grrl yowl, in-the-red punk rock, and ultra raw blown out garage pop - from howling pounding furious crunch, to warped woozy synthy drone, to dour pulsing minimal cold wave, to super anthemic almost emo garage rock, and every variation in between. The recording raw and lo-fi, the drums, the synths, the bass, the vocals, in various stages of blown out distorted crumble, the drums clipped and weirdly processed, pushed as loud as they can go, the synth too, fuzzy, buzzy, wreathed in a sort of decaying haze, the vocals wild and unhinged and super emotional, sometimes a playful yelp, sometimes a cold croon, other times a full on hysterical shriek." Indeed. And even then we were wondering why the hell BB weren't HUGE. And this brand new three song 7" has us again wondering how long it's gonna take before the rest of the world finally catch on. Cuz this stuff is so good, heavy, fuzzy, poppy, groovy, synthy, noisy and catchy like crazy. The sound on this new 7" finds the band dialing back a bit on the blown out crunch, but only a bit, the opener sounds like some seventies cop show theme fused to the chase scene music from a long lost futuristic thriller, a sort of pulsing kraut synth crunch, the bass thick and fuzzy, the vocals a softly distorted howl over the top, all wreathed in surprisingly swoonsome melodies, the result weirdly dramatic and cinematic. The second track is more like old school BB, and definitely sounds like an outtake from the full length, skittery machine like rhythms, lo-fi synth buzz and echoey vox, a definite Riot Grrl / DHR / synthwave hybrid, a retro futuristic chunk of garage-y synthpunk laced with creepy Gobliny melodies, and infused with hooks galore. The B side / title track is a killer, all dirgey and ominous, another sprawl of futuristic sinister synthwave, and another jam that could be some sort of soundtrack, only this time it's some seventies zombie sci-fi thriller, the creeping, moody cinematic synths all tangled up into impossibly poppy hooks, the sort of hooks that you'll find yourself humming days later, the track continues to shift back and forth from hooky synthy fuzz pop to creepy seventies psychedelic soundtracky synth buzz and back again. SO GREAT!!

Lo previously brought us the most excellent, very much of the retro moment Black Devil Disco Club disc entitled 28 After, which was (supposedly) an archival document of the late '70s Parisian answer to Italo-Disco and Giorgio Moroder. We say supposedly 'cause the whole BDDC thing is intentionally shrouded in mystery, and it's been postulated that the contents of that disc are probably partly old and partly new. It's conclusively the case, though, that the man behind BDDC, one Bernard Fevre, WAS indeed active making music in the '70s. And now under the BDDC name, Lo has re-released Fevre's 1975 "library music" album, The Strange World Of Bernard Fevre. Sort of, that is. Being BDDC, things aren't that straightforward. First off, note that this cd is titled The Strange NEW World of Bernard Fevre, and features obviously all-new cover art. Furthermore, some research reveals that 7 of the 14 tracks on here appeared on the authentic, original LP, but 7 didn't... likewise, an equal number of tracks from the 1975 record don't show up on this disc (we're disappointed not to get to hear the likes of "Hell Ride" ferinstance). But not THAT disappointed, since what we have here, whenever and wherever it's from, is pretty neat!! Super groovy and super moody, these rhythmic instrumentals are laced with sinister synth, driven by tick-tock drum machines and thick bass lines. Eerie Goblin-y atmospheres meet the icy electro robotics of Kraftwerk. Or imagine John Carpenter gone disco. With plenty of entrancing, elegant melody to make this a good at home in the evening listen. Regardless of whether all these tracks were composed/recorded at the same time (the ones not from the original Strange World Of Bernard Fevre could be outtakes from that LP, or other unreleased material from the era, OR they could have been produced on vintage analog equipment just yesterday, we don't know, and for that matter we're not really sure if everything has been remixed or rerecorded recently), they certainly all SOUND like they all belong together. Anyone into minimal wave, or Italo-disco, or that "So Young But So Cold" comp of French synthwerks circa '77-'82, that sort of thing, should find themselves getting all tingly over this. Furthermore, if the slinky tempos were sped up just a bit, and you did some choppy edits and/or dropped in some glitchery, you'd practically have skweee!

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Following up their recent Miles Of Smiles ep, here's a full-length of organic, electro-acoustic glitch and wild rhythmic overload from this hard-to-pin-down, arty outfit. Always one step ahead of our expectations, I guess...whatever they are. This features eight sometimes melodic, mostly fucked-up tracks electronic and somehow seemingly "ethnic" experimentation, one of them recorded live on their tour with Animal Collective. True, some of these tracks just sound like one sound effect after another, but the best ones on here are somehow really songs, though full of tape warped textures, hen-coop hullabaloo, and noisy beats. Lots of sounds falling past yr ears on here!

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Despite being on DFA, this sounds rather more like an Anomalous release. This two-track cd ep from Brooklyn's always-interesting, ever-exploratory, formerly-punk outfit Black Dice is a pleasant blend of electronic drones and samples and ethnic/krautrock flavoring. The thirteen minutes of the first, title track are heavily based on processed field recordings -- nighttime cricket noises, a purring feline, Thuja-ish stick crackling and other indistinct sources -- a mix that's then interrupted (or augmented) by what sounds like a some sort of blurrily recorded jamboree maybe from Africa or Southeast Asia. Following that, the fourteen minute track two, "Trip Dude Delay", dabbles in simple melody, effects and drifting vocals and sounds a bit more like a 'band' than the soundscape sampling of track one. Very mellow, very nice, even when they get louder and noisier halfway through (when their Boredoms Super Ae stylings are made evident).

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So, can you really call a song "Pinball Wizard", if it's not actually "Pinball Wizard"??? We guess you can, if you're Black Dice. They don't give a damn. Or maybe it IS a version of "Pinball Wizard", but so fucked up Black Dice style as to be unrecognizable. Whatever it is, it's the opening track on this new platter from Brooklyn weirdos Black Dice, the entire nine tracks of which represent another damaged dose of what we've previously referred to as their usual "sampled and collagey, beat driven electro-noise" shenanigans. Piled with broken beats, looped noises, distorted vocal blurts, farting synths, etc., their lysergic grooves sound kinda like a really woozy drugged out Pop Will Eat Itself making an album for the Boredoms' Super Roots series or something. All kinds of chaotic craziness, but weirdly catchy though!

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Black Forest / Black Sea are one of those folky, psychedelic, improvisational bands who are probably *always* playing, in their home, with their friends, always just making music. If you looked in right now, you'd probably find their cello sawing away, with their guitar singing an improvised lullaby in a foreign tongue, omnichord and electronic junk sometimes flickering on in the background, as the band (there's two of 'em, plus likeminded souls drawn into their orbit) whiles away a summer night on the front porch or in the basement. Somesuch scenario seems likely anyway. And once in a while, recordings of bits and pieces of their musical life wind up on cd. Radiant Symmetry is their third, documenting some improv sessions and shows that have happened with the BF/BS duo not at home but on tour, traipsing the globe from the British Isles to Spain to Finland. Thereby insuring that friends like Daniel Padden and Alex Neilson and Markus Maki and Jan Anderzen, among others, make an appearance on this disc.

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It seems the Last Visible Dog label can do no wrong of late, now bringing us this wonderful album of mellow, melancholy music full of folkish, creaky ambience from Black Forest/Black Sea. It's tailor-made for the Terrastock Nation, if you know what we mean. If you read Broken Face 'zine, or scarf up Jewelled Antler cdrs, or dig what the Wire calls "The New Weird America", or liked their track on the "Invisible Pyramid" compilation, well then this disc of psych-folk action ought to suit you like that shaggy beard suits Kawabata Makoto. Black Forest/Black Sea are the Providence, RI duo of Jeffery Alexander and Miriam Goldberg (is one the forest and one the sea? dunno). Jeffery plays guitar and Miriam plays cello, primarily, but there's more than just guitar and cello in the mix. We know a couple of their friends help out at times with some shortwave, sax, and general knob-twiddling. But these songs mostly start with melodic guitar picking, oftimes unaccompanied, that may then be joined by doleful cello drone, wavering electronic organ, or perhaps some slow, steady percussion rhythm -- even, on one track, primitive electronic beats from a Casio or something -- always stirring echoes of old world folk and underground '70s kraut jamming. Much of this is instrumental, with what vocals there are -- it must be Miriam singing -- being quite haunting, sometimes simply lurking in the background, wordlessly, melding with the glitchy reel-to-reel tape noises and other non-instrumental, extra-musical textural effects this band employs that add depth and mystery to their simple but effective songs. From spacious droning, possibly improvised passages to downright tuneful 'folky' hooks, this works and works well. We can't see how any of AQ's psych/folk fan customers would want to pass this up. Recommended.

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Record number two from this Seattle one man band, whose first release, a cd-r called Spectral Disorder on the Debacle label, was a huge hit around here. Spectral Disorder was a super psychedelic sprawl of blown out percussion, gristled rhythms, and swirling shimmering synths. There were definite moments of darkness, but it was definitely more prismatic and dreamily hazy. We made comparisons to Tim Hecker, lots of the record had the same sort of ethereal washed out pixelated quality. But this new one starts out way differently, a churning, grinding, gnarled industrial groove, that seems to meld the witchy avant beatscaping of modern outfits like Demdike Stare, with the more abject, greyed out rhythms of early eighties industrial outfits like Esplendor Geometrico and Le Syndicat. But listen close and you'll hear some playful blooping electro bass buried beneath the roiling rhythms, which gives the song a weird woozy twist. After a brief bit of kosmische, new age-y flutter, the record shifts gears, and slips back into a sound more in keeping with that first record. Ghostlike swaths of ethereal chordal thrum, drifting over a haze the evokes some sort of sun dappled pastoral landscape, the beats here, skeletal and spare, wrapped around looped melodies that sound like harps, underpinned by cricket like chirps, the vibe almost Boards Of Canada like, warm and lush and lovely, but still a little bit twisted. The rest of the record sort of splits the difference, flitting from chaotic blurred swaths of manic layered loops and cascading beats, bursts of tangled melodies and soft noise swirls, all churning hypnotically, to ultra minimal dronescapes, the sound like bleating horns, or weirdly processed synths, long tones that pulse and pulsate and undulate, unfurling all manner of overtones and sonic colorations, and finally to the dark, haunting techno closer, that takes that sound we've been digging so much lately, Silent Servant, Prurient, Shed and the like, and adds some twists, plenty of stutters and hiccups, disrupting what could otherwise be some serious driving, shadowy techno, and lacing it with all sorts of textures, and dynamics, caustic and crunchy one second, woozy, and muted and pulsing the next, finally finishing off in a flurry of sine wave swirl and skipping-cd skitter. Awesome! Includes a download code too!!

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Latest super limited cd-r release from the Debacle label, who in the past have supplied us with amazing jams from Cough Cool, Crystal Hell Pool, Expo 70, Kevin Gan Yuen & Demian Johnston, Megabats, The Slaves and more! That list of bands should definitely give you a rough idea of what to expect from Seattle one man band Black Hat whose Spectral Disorder is a gloriously psychedelic beatscape, all droned out tones and distorted percussion, the opener, unleashes an avalanche of tribal drumming, over a woozy drone, that gradually splinters into something much more gristly and staticky, the rhythm seeming to fade into the background, the drone driving the show, woozy, and constantly shifting in pitch, eventually, growing even noisier, the song transformed into a beat heavy chunk of avant industrial beat and buzz. The second track is a bit more blissed out, softly swirling synths, wreathed in clouds of hum and hiss, laced with tinkling chimes and thick, fuzzed out Tim Hecker like atmospheres, the sound growing more and more sinister, darkening into a weirdly pulsing sprawl of minimal beatscapery, all muted tones and softly stuttering rhythms, which leads directly into "Callas", which also begins as a swirling psychedelic synth drift, and dispenses with the beats completely, unfurling a tangled web of super distorted thrum and softly pulsating overtones. The title track is a glitched out barrage of sliced and diced beats and melodies, various sounds fragmented and layered, another murky blurry industrial soundscape, that sounds like it could have come of some old early Techno Animal record, or could even be the backing track to some obscure rapper on DHR, either way, it's good stuff, a warped production, that manages to be noisy, chaotic, but also weirdly groovy. which leads to the closer, a gorgeously dense sprawl of gristly ambience, driven by a slow metronomic pulse, and laced with shared of melody, the pulse, and those shards, soon coalesce into a groovy, lurching groove, a head nodding, stuttery lope, wreathed in sonic chaos and a bit of noisiness, that again sounds like the perfect backing track for someone like Sensational to rap over. Particular dig the lush, massive low end swell climax, and the resulting slow skitter fade out. Killer stuff. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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MPEG stream: Callas

First full-length lp from Nelson Bean, aka Black Hat, whose previous two releases blew our collective minds, and this new one is somehow even better. Bean traffics in a sort of psychedelic, dark cosmic electronica, that in the past, has touched on aQ faves like Demdike Stare, Tim Hecker, Techno Animal, DHR, even weirdo industrial like Esplendor Geometrico. On this new one, it seems that all of those influences/references have been distilled into something much more pure and organic sounding. Three sprawling tracks, the first, a hauntological skitterscape, that fuses slow-beat lope to heaving swells of pixelated crunch, a little bit witch house, a little bit IDM, but blurred and blackened, transformed into something more sinister, and more abstract, the opening 9+ minute track in constant flux, so much so, that it's nearly impossible to review without explicitly describing each iteration, and yet, over the course of the song, Bean manages to keep some sort of sonic narrative, the song not at all fragmented, and not sounding like a bunch of random ideas mashed together, instead, the sound blossoms and unwinds, from hazy, washed out skitter, to dense gristly thrum, rife with rib cage rattling bass pulsations, to claustrophobic minimal electro that sounds like it was plucked from some obscure cassette release on Hospital, to blown out industrial techno crunch, and that's just the first track. The second half of the A side is much more abstract, with gorgeous swirls of chordal thrum, drifting and shimmering, a sort of sinister new age, dense and cosmic, lush and layered, a sprawling landscape of overlapping tones, and buried melodies, the sounds unwinding in slow-motion, hazy, and washed out, bleary and blackened, but smeared into strangely prismatic streaks of sound, hauntingly hypnotic. The whole of the B side is taken up by the nearly 18 minute "Memory Triptych", and might be Bean's finest moment, an epic sprawl of hushed skitter, of murky loops, of keening, melancholic melody, all woven into something at once bleak and mysterious, but also warm and lovely, the sounds warbly and woozy, the beats more like constellations of crackle and pop, wound around soft swirls of static soaked shimmer, and strange alien pulsations, at one point, a melody surfaces, that sounds almost like humming/crooning, that 'vocal' is accompanied by a sonic shift, where the sounds begin to fracture, and become more agitated and aggressive, the vibe much more industrial, but fused to a sort of wistful pop ambience, a dizzying dream-drone dirge, driven by a strange rhythmic tangle buried beneath the surface, the sound gnarled and roiling, before about halfway through, like a storm breaking, the sounds shift dramatically, and become downright lovely, laced with what sounds like faux birdsong, the sounds suddenly warm and lush, softly soaring, all the grinding industrialism, now pushed into the background, smeared into a dense, churning backdrop, that adds a soft bit of shadow, to the otherwise, glimmering, gristly, glitchy dreaminess... Super swank packaging, heavy full color jacket, with printed insert, and download code!

MPEG stream: Imaginary Friends
MPEG stream: Memory Triptych

It's been a while since we've heard from the OTHER half of defunct noise duo the Skaters, after a slew of releases from James Ferraro comes this latest blast of rhythmic cosmic bliss from Ferraro's former partner, Spencer Clark in his latest guise as the Black Joker. Originally released as a super limited (80 copies!) cassette in Europe, this hazy gem is now available on vinyl, and still super limited... Whereas Ferraro channels his eighties afterschool special cop show theme synthscapes through a bank of effects and a warm whirl of hiss and fuzz, Clark is more about the rhythm, two sidelong jams, each wrapped around a motorik groove, sounding like it was cobbled together from a junkyard gamelan, an amplified thumb piano (a la Konono No.1) and some bongos, locked into an endless loop, the rhythm is sent loping into swirling clouds of wheezing tones and tangled melodies, a soundscape of constantly shifting, spinning, twisting, contorting and expanding sounds, effects galore, sputtering synths, crumbling layers, all wreathed in soft noise, a blown out space psych ur-drone krautrock from another dimension. Hazy, glistening, sun baked and lysergic, mesmerizing and hypnotic, and so so good.

Harsh and brutal analog electronic noise from Texas. And I do mean harsh and brutal. Think Merzbow, Masonna, that sort of thing. A thick 20 minute slab of NOISENOISENOISE. This is only for the strong. And we only have a few of these left as it was a limited run of 50, so first come first served!

RealAudio clip: Visitation And No Will

This experimental supergroup, comprised of Tom Greenwood of Jackie O Motherfucker, the Opalia brothers from My Cat Is An Alien and frequent MCIAA collaborator, Ramona Ponzini, recorded these 4 untitled long-form improvisations live during a two month 2005 European tour. Sounding at times like early Ash Ra Tempel or Cosmic Jokers, the acid-y and druggily unhinged early krautrock influence is more apparent in this live setting than on previous studio-recorded outings from either camp, showcasing an immediate onstage chemistry that is refreshingly engaging!

MPEG stream: Untitled 1
MPEG stream: Untitled 3

Our good pal Cayce, who sadly passed away back in 2007, was as obsessive about freaky and fucked up music as we are, and was the first to bring this record to our attention, which we might have otherwise ignored on account of the somewhat dodgy sounding band name they possess. Black Mayonnaise? Eww. But Black Mayonnaise are definitely AQ-material, Cayce was right. Self-described (it says it right on the back cover) as "Warped Lunar Sludge-core", this band is akin to a lo-fi melding of SUNNO))) and Godflesh. It is sludgy and doomy, but not so much heavy or riffy, more just ominous and creepy and droney and dubby and distorted... Imagine plodding, repetitive, hypnotic, echoey drum machine hits mixed with mellow Merzbow-ian drone, whilst gargling, not-even-vocals bubble up from a tarpit of rumbling bass, amidst sundry sci-fi synth noises and the distant wails of whales and wookies. And there's a 'cover' song on here too, "Graveyard" by the Butthole Surfers, a choice that speaks volumes. Listening to this disc is like stumbling through a miasma AND slowly sinking into a mire. We love it! Chances are there's only one guy behind Black Mayonnaise, and he recorded this in his bedroom -- but it sounds more like it was recorded in a moist, dark cave...perhaps the cavernous stomach of some extraterrestrial monster. Gastro-intestinal, interstellar doom, anyone? If that sounds good to you like it does to us, then this is quite recommended.

MPEG stream: Narcotic Fog
MPEG stream: Floating Body II

Ahhhh, how we love Black Mayonnaise. Not the foodstuff. Although to be fair, we've never really tried it. No we're talking about the weird blackened musical one man band who years ago graced us with the mindblowing and soul melting Ttssattsr album, and who has now returned with a brand new disc of self described "Warped Lunar Sludge-core", and if anything it's even noisier, heavier and more freaked out and fucked up. Ttssattsr, as best as we could describe it, sounded like some fractured blend of Godflesh and SUNNO))), and while that element is still present, things seem to have gotten a lot more abstract, with many tracks eschewing rhythms altogether, or burying them under an avalanche of grinding throbbing churning blackened buzz. The first track is one long static drone, thick and tangled layers of blurred out buzz all tangled up into one huge ropy mass, above it float monstrous froglike croaks, impossible low end gurgles, while beneath a skittery rhythm lurks, barely audible, more like a thready pulse, all dubbed out, a rickety rhythmic skeleton supporting the blackened hide of the Black Mayonnaise beast. While heavy and intense, it's also weirdly dreamy and blissed out, a sort of soft doom-drone. But the next track takes care of that, the drums finally kick in, the croaking frog still belching out noxious clouds of vocals, the guitars and drums locked into a doom plod, everything wreathed in space-y FX, like a slow motion doom metal Hawkwind. Track three is super reminiscent of the first BM record, a very Godflesh sounding dirge, the industrial drumming, the thick riffing, but all melty and murky with those awesome croaked grunted rumbles over the top. Probably the biggest surprise is the Flaming Lips cover, that sounds nothing like the Lips AT ALL, instead, it's a caustic slab of furious fuzzed out distorted in-the-red buzz and relentless blast beats, as close to blacknoise as BM gets, there are all sorts of groaning creaking sounds, as well as squiggly streaks of hiss, but they are practically swallowed whole. There's also a Flipper cover, which seems and sounds much more Black Mayonnaise appropriate, a murky lurching trudge through a world of sonic black tar. Everything black and dripping, but shot through with lazer blast FX, and those creepy vocals again. The thirteen minute closer is totally out of left field, a garbled synthscape, very abstract and freaky, plenty of whirring buzz, and bleeps and bloops, slippery squiggles, like intercepted alien radio broadcasts, a sputtering, squelchy glitchy not-quite ambience that does manage to actually get pretty hypnotic. Gorgeously packaged in a silkscreened black-on-black cardstock sleeve, while inside there's a black-on-metallic-silver printed insert, BUT be warned, it is in fact a cd-r, not an actual cd, but really it hardly matters, you'll forget about everything but what the hell is happening to your ears, and our brain, and your soul the second you press play.

MPEG stream: Low Twelve
MPEG stream: Threshold
MPEG stream: Pilot

After the tease that was the Record Store Day 7", it's finally here, a brand new full length from Black Moth Super Rainbow, who continue to create rainbow wrapped, keyboard drenched, big drummed, new wave-d outsider bliss pop. We can't seem to get enough. The record opens with the track from that Record Store Day single, the excellently titled "Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise", all druggy and swirly and sun dappled and psychedelic. There are strings and warm whirring synths, and breathless dreamy vox, and lilting melodies, not super freaked out or spastic, although there are bits of swooping electronics and streaks of glitch and hiss, but for the most part this is just some awesomely new wave flecked jangly futuristic psych pop. Which pretty much describes this whole record. For some reason we thought maybe it would be super heavy or totally twisted, but if anything, the songs are more fully realized, the sound still lush and slightly cracked, but all of BMSR's drugged out psych tendencies are harnassed into proper songs, that wouldn't sound at all out of place in a mix between the Flaming Lips and M83. The drums hold it all together, big and booming, processed sometimes, but usually loud, if not, theyr sublte and skittery, and there are synths EVERYWHERE, soaring and buzzing and whirring and shimmering, the guitars are minimal, more for a bit of filigree here and there, except when a bit of crunh or chug is required. And the vocals, all dreamy and heavily effected, whether it's vocoder or autotuning, they're perfectly matched to the glimmering kaliedoscope of sound that is constantly swirling and changing shape and color. The majority of the record is surprsingly laid back, blissed out and sun dappled, a lot of it sounds almost folky, a little new age-y for sure, we also hear bits of old school pop groups like the Free Design, the Cowsills, even a bit of Stereolab here and there, there are lots of fluttery flute, acoustic guitar, lilting melodies, soft drifty twang, but all tangled up with some of the more buzzy new waveiness, and everything shot through with just the right amount of space aged, futuristic polish. So good. The perfect late afternoon, cloudy day, mix tape, dreamy drifty, future chill out disc for sure. While they last, we have the super limited version, that comes in a zippered fur pouch!!

MPEG stream: Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise
MPEG stream: Dark Bubbles
MPEG stream: Twin Of Myself
MPEG stream: Gold Splatter

As much as we love the manic bass and drum craziness of Lightning Bolt, for whatever reason, we had never reviewed any records by Black Pus, Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale's solo project. It's not that we didn't like it, it was just that to our ears it sounded a lot like Lightning Bolt, and maybe, like a slightly sloppier, noisier version, missing the other Brian in Lightning Bolt's insanely dexterous bass playing. But ultimately, the formula was the same, Chippendale bashing away an insane rhythm, accompanied by all manner of home brewed noise and his microphone-mask distorto-vox. And while this new one is essentially the same, it's also maybe our favorite one yet, and the closest we think Chippendale has come to capturing the manic energy and weirdly warped songcraft of Black Pus on record. Imagine a more melodic, slightly slower, less crazed and chaotic Lightning Bolt, and you might be getting close, although to be fair, it's really not all that less manic or even that much slower, but what it is, is Chippendale making a glorious rhythmic racket, and somehow making that racket into sort-of-songs. The opener could actually be a Lightning Bolt song, but with the bass replaced by thick swaths of low end buzz, synths maybe? or some sort of noise generator (or heck, it could still be bass), but instead of insane melodies, it's just a heaving wall of sound, churning and roiling, while Chippendale continues to bash away on the drums, an insane flurry of wild, octopoidal chaos, his vocals a weird Jello Biafra like croon, wreathed in distortion and buried in the mix. There's an actual chorus of sorts, that some noiseniks could get stuck in their head, and stick around for the insane effects flecked glitched out drum solo finale. Phew. Totally exhausting to listen to, still mind boggling how someone can play this. But really, it's the second track, "Fly On The Wall", that's gonna win you over, a dense, roiling slab of post punk via Lightning Bolt's noise rock crush, deep dramatic vox, a throbbing pulsing chordal bass throb, the vibe is reminiscent of recent aQ Record Of The Weekers Pinkish Black, a sort of gothic metallic crush, but here it's droned out and trancey, gothic and post punky, but all driven by an insane relentless drum churn, and the amazing vocals. We're reminded of Lubricated Goat or some other Aussie post punk combo, but rendered as something more primal and frenzied. We've listened to this song about a hundred times, there's even a cool psychedelic melodic noise freakout midway through, draped over that blown out bass throb, so good. And while nothing else quite reaches the same sonic heights, most of the record comes darn close. "1000 Years" unfurls a rock drum rhythm, or about as close as Chippendale comes, then in swoops the bass, distorted and blown out, a belching low end beast, while over the top, Chippendale tries on a different voice, this one high and reedy and keening, the song laced with damaged electronics and all sorts of fractured effects, Chippendale processing the drums, the bass and his vocals, the result dizzying, exhausting and seriously psychedelic. And so it goes, like the LB mothership, each Black Pus is essentially one or two parts, driven by some seriously insane relentless drum damage, the bass or synth or whatever that is laying down thick swaths of buzz and howl, and over the top, the vocals soar, spit through a distorted megaphone, or mouth-held-mic, distorted and blown out and a bit garbled. In some songs those elements coalesce into surprisingly catchy ditties, in others, they remain a wild exercise in noise rock endurance, often landing somewhere right between the two. The results are extremely satisfying, occasionally headbangable, once in a while sing-along-able too, but always a furious, blown out barrage of wild rhythmic sound that is some of the coolest stuff we've heard from Brian Chippendale, and should hold everybody over until the next Lightning Bolt record, or at least until there's another new collection of Black Pus jams! And while they last, which won't be long, both the lp and the cd versions come with a super limited Brian Chippendale 11"x11" comic/print. And be warned, if you're a cd person, you'll have to upgrade shipping to lp price, unless you want us to fold up the print (which you don't!).

MPEG stream: Fly On The Wall
MPEG stream: 1000 Years
MPEG stream: Marauder
MPEG stream: Hear No Evil

We've been super obsessed with this killer slab of grim, blackened, nocturnal, techno minimalism, a dread fueled sprawl of bleak electronica and droned out sci-fi industrialism that's even more remarkable as it's the first Black Rain release in 18 years!! Black Rain mastermind Stuart Argabright is hardly a household name, yet the man has an impressive catalog of high-caliber recordings along an axis of futurist / cyberpunk / darkly post-punk electronica dating back to the late '70s. His first fruits were in the form of the Factory sponsored Ike Yard, whose gloomy electro-dirges followed in the wake of the No New York contingent, followed by some far more club-oriented projects including the one-hit wonder Dominatrix and the eccentric Death Comet Crew (working with the pioneer of Afro-futurism, Rammellzee). Black Rain was the band that Argabright began with fellow DCC-member Shinichi Shimokawa in 1992 or thereabouts, and was originally commissioned to draft the score for a film version of Johnny Mnemonic. Despite his long-standing friendship with Phillip K. Dick, the Black Rain tracks were scrapped in favor of a high-budget Hollywood score after Keanu Reeves was pegged for the lead. After Blackest Ever Black pressed up a short-program lp 2010 of that soundtrack work from the early '90s (all of which had appeared on the Fifth Colvmn cd entitled 1.0), Argabright returned to the Black Rain moniker, possibly with Shimokawa at his right hand again. Dark Pool continues the thread of tense cyborg-electronica crafted through those nixed Johnny Mnemonic soundtracks. The introductory track features a spoken word preface from Sean Young (best known as the android Rachel from Blade Runner) amongst a flurry of electrically screeching birds, extending the P.K. Dick allusions. Dystopian electronic shadows and hauntological drones brace much of Dark Pool, with Black Rain snapping into rhythmic passages of taut pneumatic samples and polished-machine drum programming. "Xibalba Road Metamorph" is a track that Dominick Fernow could only dream of producing as Prurient or Vatican Shadow, hammering its electro-static pulses with iron-fisted brutality and cold-blooded precision. The aptly named "Data River" spills out clinical beeps and drill-hammer rhythms on par with the sterility of Mika Vainio's Metri or any of the Raster Noton folk, with toxic drones of any villainous techno track lurking in the distance. Black Rain does pull the rug out from under us on the final track which rockets forward with a modern-day Moroder-esque tension, all dynamic arpeggiation and teeth-gritting electronic suspense only to abruptly cut the power, marking the end of the album. If we were to apply the cinematic, gothic / sci-fi allusion that this albums begs for, then this coda marks the unexpected termination of the android protagonist. Achtung! Bang! Click. End.

MPEG stream: Burst
MPEG stream: Xibalba Road Metamorph
MPEG stream: Night In New Chiang Saen
MPEG stream: Who Will Save The Tiger?

We first heard from Salt Lake City black ambient technicians Black Seas Of Infinity on�The Trinity Of Non Being, a killer three way split with�Kaniba and Ugegi Aoiveae A Aer, released on Autumn Wind, the same label that brought us multiple releases from AQ faves Vomit Orchestra. All three bands' contributions were amazing, bleak and barren, dark and drone-y, since then we'd been on the lookout for any other releases by all three.�Amrita - The Quintessence is the latest full length from one man band Black Seas Of Infinity, and the brief glimpses we got of his dark universe on that split are allowed to sprawl here, to spread way out, an inky black cloud of roiling industrial whir and crumbling abstract drones wrapping everything within earshot in dense swaths of sonic shadow.� Every track here is a dark missive from some lost world, a barren soundscape of deep resonant swells, of epic cinematic ambience and strange percussive glitch and rumble. Like the best ambient music, the sounds here are not sonic or simple, instead, constantly shifting and�changing shape, tonal color, rhythms surface like flotsam on some mysterious sea of sound, disembodied voices drift like ghosts, melodies are broken into fragments, the bits and pieces tossed into the abyss and carried like dead leaves on some vile black wind, crumbling shards of buzzing synth intertwine with strange found sounds and bits of simple percussion, massive billowing sonic ripples spread slowly out, shimmering in greys and blacks... Think Wolf Eyes, Nordvargr, Vomit Orchestra, Lustmord, Anenzephalia, Wolfskin, MZ412, Hlidolf, Ruhr Hunter and the like... another ultra intense trawl through the mysterious blackened underworld, lurking beneath, around and behind all things pretty and happy...

MPEG stream: Devourment
MPEG stream: AIShtLa

From the same label that brought us the amazing Vomit Orchestra discs comes this killer 3 way split, an exploration of black ambient, dark ritual, ambient drone music.... Up first is Black Seas Of Infinity from Salt Lake City. Having started life as a black metal band, they now find themselves, exploring a much more minimal dark ambient world of haunting melodies, mysterious vocals and muted industrial percussion. The first track is based around a mesmerizing melodic fragment, a bit of minor key melody that is looped hypnotically over a strange rhythm that sounds like someone trudging through snow or old brittle branches, while over the top, a slowed down, slightly distorted voice intones a strange litany, making the whole thing sound like some sort of liturgical rite. The next track is a dense martial soundscape of grinding industrial drones and distant distorted drumming, a simple militaristic march, like Wiseblood meets Death In June, before eventually transforming into a roiling wave of low end rumble and whir. BSOI's final track is a 12 minute epic, a series of haunting low end sonic occurrences, situated around a strange rhythm that sounds almost like the wheeze and clatter of an iron lung, the sounds around it constantly crumbling like the tape had decayed, very textural and creepy, like a more industrial Jeck or Tim Hecker almost... Next up Is Kaniba, who offer up their own creeping crawling blackness. A rumbling soundworld of thumps and bumps, distorted and wrapped in dense sheets of black buzz, there are rhythms, but they don't drive the music, instead they are small creatures that scurry amidst it's black folds. The second of the two tracks is much more spacious and possibly much more harrowing. What begins almost serenely quickly becomes a monstrous moaning living black shadow of sound. Listening is almost like cowering amidst the ruins as some unseeable shape soars above, it's shadow cloaking you in darkness every time it passes. A symphony of low end, almost sounding like an orchestra slooooooowed waaaaaaay dooooown, its epic fanfare twisted into a shapeless squirming blackened thing. Finally, the strangely named Ugegi Aoiveae A Ser wrap things up with a 16 minute drone coda. Much more minimal than the other contributors, but just as bleak and oppressive. A ringing harmonic shimmer slowly slips further and further into darkness, the high end peeling off like flayed skin, revealing a murky cloudy expanse of dark sound underneath. A slow moving swell, a static, barely shifting wall of sound, layers upon layer, like some hellish Phill Niblock composition. Ultra spare and quite intense. Plenty here for the drone obsessed, lovers of weird music, and all the black souls in need of dark musical mystery...

MPEG stream: To Receive The Perplexity Of The Soul Of Liberation
MPEG stream: When The Hurricane Comes
MPEG stream: Alignment In Opposition II

Achtung! UK's Black Sheep are another wonderfully indulgent Julian Cope related heavy psych rawk unit (a la Brain Donor), not to be confused with the '90s hiphop group. If you're a regular at JC's Head Heritage website (you should be) you know all about the man's expert obsession with underground '70s freakrock, The Stooges, Faust, Hawkwind, all that good stuff. That's the idea here, two sprawling discs, Black Sheep jamming away giving musical expression to such political / subversive / revolutionary / radical chic topics as "Underground Resistance" and "Che". It all begins (of course) with disc one, track one, "Ernesto": urgent strum, field recordings of rain and thunder, it's like an Amon Duul acoustic ritual mashed up with the intro to Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath". The track reaches a screaming peak, then settles back to a simple throb... The throbbing continues on the more drum based "Protest-Underground", a tribal chant of that channels Ya Ho Wha and Edgar Broughton. The disc's third and final track starts off as a sparse voice/acoustic guitar ditty before pounding tom-tom drums join in to accentuate the song's apocalyptic character. Disc two boasts another three, long tracks, again full of chanting and strumming and drumming and gobs of droning spacey synth FX... There's some quite nice mellow parts mixed in, and it all really does sound like something recorded no later than 1976. Probably coulda/shoulda highlighted this, but we do have to admit that unless you're totally hooked on Cope's Kool Aid, you might find, ferinstance, that someone chanting the phrase "underground resistance" over and over again (signifying what exactly?) IS sorta dumb... though that doesn't stop us from digging it. The title (also one of the songs) "Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse" is also a mite too clever, meaning dumb as well. Sounds like something Acid Mothers Temple would come up with, but of course we like them too, and if you also like Acid Mothers Temple, chances are you'll enjoy Black Sheep, their music and mindset are fairly well aligned.

MPEG stream: Ernesto
MPEG stream: Protest-Underground
MPEG stream: Leila Khaled

What the heck's up with Glasgow these days? Until recently, Glasgow was all sunshiney jangle pop and brooding epic post rock. Or so it seemed. Maybe we haven't been paying attention. Maybe it's been a while since we took a good hard look at the seedy underbelly of Glasgow's music scene, but something sinister is definitely going on over there, cuz all sorts of filthy, brutal, heavy, sick sounds are oozing across the sea and into our cowering frightened ears. Next list we'll probably be listing a record by another Glaswegian crew called De Salvo, who are scary as shit, and here we've got the latest from Black Sun. Black Sun is a bit of a name over there, but they're a new name to us, although it only took a few minutes of this filth for us to realize folks over here, especially the ones into massive dronedirgedeathcrush and slow motion ultra doooooom will likely be freaking out big time. Three tracks, all 'versions' of the same song, the first, 19+ minutes taking up the whole of side one, is all lurching downtuned lumber, squealing harmonics, all locked into step with the pounding drums, the vocals tortured and anguished and WAY up in the mix, the sound somewhere between Khanate, Eyehategod, and Neurosis. About halfway through the sound simmers down a bit, a low slung softly churning bass rumble, clean minor key guitar lines all spidery and skeletal, warm whirring keyboards, that eventually slip into a groove that sounds uncannily like a slowed down Three Mile Pilot. Clean crooned vocals, laid over the woozy rhythm, before exploding back into stuttering metallic stop start lurch, gradually growing more and more noisy and unhinged. The flip side takes the same track and jacks up the industrial vibe, way more low end crunch, a bit murkier and muddier, the vocals buried in the mix, little streaks of feedback peeking out from behind thick caustic slabs of rhythmic pound. Very reminiscent of Godflesh or Pitchshifter, relentless and machinelike, but wreathed in swirls of strange keyboards, and mysterious effects and all manner of fucked up guitar filigree. In some ways superior to the A side, at least to these ears. And finally, the second half of the B-side offers up the 'dub' version, which takes the more industrial version of "Paralyser" even further, the rhythm stripped down, the guitars processed and clipped, the vocals twisted and doused in effects, the arrangement all spaced out, the drums pounding one second, careening from speaker to speaker the next, the whole track actually is panned pretty hard, making headphones essential for experiencing the full dizzy drift. Definitely left us wanting more... Essential listening for the usual suspects. If your favorite sounds are most often described with the adjectives doomy, crumbling, blackened, pummeling, crushing, heavy, crusty, metallic, slow motion, glacial, filthy, then my friends, you should prepare to kneel in supplication, and stare directly into the Black Sun... LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a very Godflesh looking sleeve, with a heavy cardstock insert, liner notes on one side and strange bloody symbols on the other.

MPEG stream: Paralyser (Prison Of The Cross)
MPEG stream: Paralyser (Dub Mix)