Concept Bureau is the name of this Bay Area project who generate a plethora of sounds using a machine they call The Identity Encoder. According to the liner notes the mysterious mechanism "translates personal facts and preferences into sound". These particular recordings were done just down the street from us at Artists' Television Access (ATA for short, it's a cool center for d.i.y. underground media works). The fourteen tracks of the fourteen participants range from soothing womb-y pulses and blips to a cavalcade of wind-up and squeak toys run amok. If you didn't know the story behind this release you could easily believe that these are some home recordings made by an old BBC Radiophonic engineer.
Limited to 50, packaged in hand-numbered, hand-sewn cardboard sleeves.
Gorgeous new full length from Gordon Ashworth (aka little brother of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's Owen Ashworth), and like the previous Concern album, Truth And Distance (reissued on vinyl and reviewed elsewhere on this week's list!), Caesarian is another meticulously crafted series of looped and processed soundscapes, equal parts Philip Jeck, Tim Hecker and William Basinski, full of lush drones, crumbling decaying tapes, and hazy atmospherics, all assembled from a surprising array of acoustic instruments: piano, clarinet, banjo, sruti box, acoustic guitar, augmented with processed tapes and various reverbs, resulting in a sound that's both human and alien, organic and processed, beautiful and mysterious.
"Discrete Memorial" might be one of our favorite tracks yet from Ashworth, a strange loopscape of melancholy piano, mournful horns, all captured on a crumbling bit of tape, repeated into a mesmerizing refrain, but the various elements stuttering and glitching out, like some beautiful bit of sad pop, recorded on an old damaged tape, and played back on a malfunctioning tape player, gorgeously hypnotic, but similar to Basinski's recordings, much of the sound is derived from what surrounds the music, strange drop outs, bits of hiss, subtle squelches here and there, the tones and notes changing speed and pitch, it's all woven deftly into a warped and warbly, beautifully imperfect bit of looped droning melodic drift. The cool thing though is that by the end of the track, the sound has shed all of the imperfections, having grown gradually more lush and less lo-fi as the song progressed, eventually ending up a gorgeously swirling Lubomyr Melnyk like flurry of rich harmonics and warm melodies.
The rest of the record is equally moving, and sonically breathtaking, from the warm whirling swells and metallic buzz of "Mending", to the fractured murky folk drift and eventual psychedelic drone effulgence of "From Warmth And From Violence", to the glitchy almost Oval sounding shimmer of "Leaving Gold", and finally, the sprawling 34 minute "Immersed In Envy, Porous With Forgetfulness", which manages to somehow bring all of those various sounds together, insectoid buzz, hazy abstracted minimal shimmer, mysterious field recordings, washed out whirring organs, sunshiney dronepop drift, blurred hiss drenched ambience, all woven into a lovely, slow shifting expanse of lush minimal beauty.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
The final release from Concern, aka Gordon Ashworth (brother of Owen, he the man behind Casiotone For The Painfully Alone), which uses as its main sound source a folk instrument called the box harp, or lap harp, and the record opens with a gorgeous Reichian figure played on the harp, which becomes the foundation of the whole record, an homage of sorts to the African kora and the a a similar stringed instrument from Madagascar. The creation of the record is almost as compelling as the sounds themselves, with Ashworth using super primitive looping techniques involving cassettes and speakers and microphones and delays, but even more exciting, using cavernous parking garages and a sort of crude echo/delay, like a modern day Taj Mahal Travellers. The results speak for themselves though.
Beginning with that rapid fire figure of notes played on the box harp, buzzing and percussive and darkly melodic, all over wheezing barely there chords, those opening harp notes soon disappear beneath a warm wash of lush layered shimmer, which we gradually realize is simply the same sounds, slowed down and blurred a bit, transforming them into something droney and dreamy, but the sound is constantly shifting, the opening flurry of notes surfacing now and again in different forms, all building to a lush dense dreamily blown out coda, all the while, the sounds constantly couched in a background of ambient sounds and field recordings, the crackle of fire, voices, footsteps, the clatter of dishes, the clinking of glasses, it all definitely adds a strange dimension to an already mysterious landscape of sound.
The B side continues right where the first side left off, the buzzing box harp notes now hazy and washed out and wreathed in a prismatic glimmer, lush, but super active, a roiling melodic swirl just under the surface, the sound mesmerizing and ever shifting, building gradually to a soft cacophony, before closing with a gorgeous sprawl of softly warbly mesmer, sounding like Philip Jeck spinning old recordings of box harps, everything dreamy and crackly and softly fading to black.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! In a super striking jacket, with teal foil metallic printing on black matte jackets.
This awesome 2009 cd release, now available on vinyl!! Here's what we said about it before:
One of several new releases on the always kick ass Digitalis label, this one from a one man band called Concern, that one man being Gordon Ashworth, little brother of Owen Ashworth of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, as well as a member of the late great Peyote Calamity, a weird heavy outfit, who sadly never released a proper record, but neither of those bands necessarily hint at the sounds to be found here. Utilizing a vast collection of instruments and noise making devices, zither, lap harp, mbira, banjo, piano, clarinet, trombone, accordion, acoustic guitar and alto horn, Ashworth blurs all those various instruments into long streaks of hazy drone-y dreaminess. Three tracks, all long, all gorgeously lush and textured, strangely melodic and propulsive for a sound that tends toward a more static drift.
Opener "Truth And Distance" bristles with energy, a glowing warm shimmer, the edges growing ever sharper as the songs sprawls outward, from a hushed whisper to a mighty heart of the sun ur-drone, the sound raw and organic, the core a deep unwavering drone, but the sound is like a stream, carrying all manner of glitch and hum, stray bits of disembodied guitar, melodic fragments, eventually transforming into a strange abstract Appalachia, a soft swirling tangle of upper register buzz and and skittery processed tones, definitely some of the most divine drones we've heard.
The first track is well over half the total length of the record, but the second two tracks, while shorter, are just as beautiful and epic. "Young Birth" builds from hushed whir to almost symphonic sounding majesty, a warped otherworldly new age, all tranquil and blissed out, the various tones overlapping and intertwining before fading out in a soft flurry of crackle and hum. While the final track, "Heartsink", begins all raw and fuzzy and almost heavy with a Tim Hecker sort of vibe, only to shift gears, and allow the sound of the various instruments to become distinct and identifiable. Which in no way means the sound is any less dreamlike, soft shimmers of heavily reverbed piano drift weightlessly in an expanse of soft muted melodies, the overtones creating distant drone-y swells, the result a lovely abstract sort of classical chamber dronemusic, so so so nice.
Essential listening for the drone inclined, and any one into Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, Fennesz, Belong and the like might just have a new favorite record.
One of several new releases on the always kick ass Digitalis label, this one from a one man band called Concern, that one man being Gordon Ashworth, little brother of Owen Ashworth of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, as well as a member of the late great Peyote Calamity, a weird heavy outfit, who sadly never released a proper record, but neither of those bands necessarily hint at the sounds to be found here. Utilizing a vast collection of instruments and noise making devices, zither, lap harp, mbira, banjo, piano, clarinet, trombone, accordion, acoustic guitar and alto horn, Ashworth blurs all those various instruments into long streaks of hazy drone-y dreaminess. Three tracks, all long, all gorgeously lush and textured, strangely melodic and propulsive for a sound that tends toward a more static drift.
Opener "Truth And Distance" bristles with energy, a glowing warm shimmer, the edges growing ever sharper as the songs sprawls outward, from a hushed whisper to a mighty heart of the sun ur-drone, the sound raw and organic, the core a deep unwavering drone, but the sound is like a stream, carrying all manner of glitch and hum, stray bits of disembodied guitar, melodic fragments, eventually transforming into a strange abstract Appalachia, a soft swirling tangle of upper register buzz and and skittery processed tones, definitely some of the most divine drones we've heard.
The first track is well over half the total length of the record, but the second two tracks, while shorter, are just as beautiful and epic. "Young Birth" builds from hushed whir to almost symphonic sounding majesty, a warped otherworldly new age, all tranquil and blissed out, the various tones overlapping and intertwining before fading out in a soft flurry of crackle and hum. While the final track, "Heartsink", begins all raw and fuzzy and almost heavy with a Tim Hecker sort of vibe, only to shift gears, and allow the sound of the various instruments to become distinct and identifiable. Which in no way means the sound is any less dreamlike, soft shimmers of heavily reverbed piano drift weightlessly in an expanse of soft muted melodies, the overtones creating distant drone-y swells, the result a lovely abstract sort of classical chamber dronemusic, so so so nice.
Essential listening for the drone inclined, and any one into Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, Fennesz, Belong and the like might just have a new favorite record.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Definitely walking a raucous and veering path to your ear... it's The Concretes. Decidedly Swedish and experimental. Okay, allow me to elaborate: quirky, strolling pop that takes many stylistic turns. Perhaps this is due to the fact that this group sometimes swells to include up to 18 members, with Horns, organ bits, sing song-y melodies. The vocals bring to mind those of Smack Dab (if you're unfamiliar with them, they were an odd little pop band with a precariously fragile female vocalist that released two albums on Homestead Records in the early '90s.) Fans of Stereo-Total should certainly check this out.
The Conet Project, originally released in 1997, has attained near mythical status around here. Many folks associate The Conet Project inextricably with our store itself. Which makes sense. We championed the Conet Project relentlessly, everyone here is obsessed, most of us owning multiple copies, some of us incorporating sounds from The Conet Project into our own music, and The Conet Project still ranks as probably THEE best selling release ever at aQuarius. Even more remarkable for the fact that it's not really music at all, at least not in the typical sense, and it is and always has been pretty expensive, as a deluxe 4-cd set initially, and import to boot. In fact until it went out of print for the last time a few years back, we had sold close to one thousand copies, and that's just in our little store. We even used to have a big chart on the wall, where we kept track of the sales, and for a while, we were even taking Polaroids of people who bought the Conet Project to display in the store, a snapshot of them holding what we can only imagine would become their new favorite record (buyer #382: Mike Patton!). Which all leads to the question some of you may have, what the heck is The Conet Project, and why are we (and many of you) so obsessed with it? And so thrilled that it's finally available again?! Yes, available again and obviously a big time Record Of The Week.
Basically, the Conet Project is a now FIVE-cd compilation (more details on the new 2013 edition's additional fifth disc is down below, near the end of this long review!) of recordings of mysterious shortwave radio broadcasts, known as "numbers stations". These numbers stations are generally believed to be encrypted spy transmissions, but no concrete evidence has ever surfaced proving that supposition. However, no credible *alternate* explanation has ever been demonstrated, either. For years (ever since the start of the Cold War), amateur radio enthusiasts have come across these sinister signals, and they continue to this day, broadcast in many languages all over the world (the theory is that some are CIA, some are KBG, some are Mossad, etc).
In general, the transmissions consist of a deadpan voice (sometimes an old man, sometimes a young woman, etc.) reading a seemingly random, meaningless series of numbers over and over. Sometimes the broadcasts are preceded by a musical cue (the "Swedish Rhapsody" music box one being a favorite of ours), and sometimes the numbers are not conveyed by voice but by even more cryptic electronics (as with "The Buzzer", and other noisy, abstract stuff found mainly on disc four).
Needless to say, hearing those amazing and baffling sounds collected on these cds is an unnerving experience. Not only does knowledge of the supposed purpose of these transmissions imbue them with a disturbing quality, but the repetition of the numbers combined with the background of shortwave radio static makes for a aurally hypnotic experience. If merely regarded as a piece of experimental ambient sound sculpture, The Conet Project would be a brilliant and affecting piece of work, yet with the added context of international intelligence and conspiracy theory, it becomes even more intriguing and creepy. Lots of information is included that provides a great deal of description of, and speculation about, The Conet Project. Which is possibly the most incredible, and weirdest, item of sound art/documentation that we've EVER had here at aQuarius. Mesmerizing, fascinating, unique, massive, scary, but sometimes even soothing. 100 percent recommended to the adventurous listener ('cause it's not for everyone!). And once you have it you'll understand why it had to be so many cds - being overwhelming is part of the obsessive allure of this Project. And it's not just us, The Conet Project has popped up in lots of unlikely places, most notably it was sampled on Wilco's breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, the title of which in fact comes from The Conet Project itself. Wilco were also famously sued by Irdial, the label who released it, and they lost! Some sounds from the Conet Project also popped up in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky, and over the years, we've heard it in various films and on various records, it shouldn't be surprising that so many weird music obsessives love The Conet Project.
Really, as we said, if there's one recording that seems to be most identified with aQuarius recOrds, or that at least we mention most often when trying to explain to people what it is that we're all about here, it's most definitely The Conet Project, and yeah, over the years there have been plenty of others, including Sounds of North American Frogs, Os Mutantes, Burzum's "Filosofem", Comus' "First Utterance", Boris, Circle, Philip Jeck, Village of Savoonga, and loads more since, many other records near and dear to our hearts (for instance, hearing the first Neutral Milk Hotel album always makes us nostalgic for the old 24th street store). But for some reason it's The Conet Project that really seems to sum it all up. It's all the things we really love: completely ridiculous (4, no, now 5 cds!), completely fucked (secret government spy transmissions), droning, weird. It's just so interesting and evocative on so many levels, both musical and totally non-musical, as a listening experience and also as a geopolitical cold war and beyond artifact. Definitely an all time perpetual aQ fave: Allan's got the whole thing on his iPod, so does Andee, he also owns multiple copies of the set, many of which found their way into his old band A Minor Forest's live performances, Jim has steadfastly maintained that this is the greatest record of all time, and who are we to argue? If it's not obvious, we all are a little bit obsessed.
And what this is all leading up to is that YES, finally after literally YEARS of being out of print and unavailable, The Conet Project, has been reissued AGAIN, but this time, with a WHOLE EXTRA DISC, with its own jewel case and booklet!! That's right, the new Conet Project is FIVE discs, not four, and if you're big Conet nerds like most of us, you might just have to buy a second (or even third!) copy. The new disc is not just another numbers station disc though, instead it's a collection of "noise stations", which essentially sound just like the numbers stations MINUS the numbers. So it's a series of gorgeous buzzes and strange hissing fields of blurred melody, lots of crunch and crackle, buried rhythms, whistling tones, strange textures, in fact, much of it is downright musical, so much so that we were musing, hmm, what if this new disc is in fact a hoax, a series of number/noise station like soundscapes created by some electronic musicians like Hrvatski? Naw... But there was in fact talk of a Conet remix project for years now, so it's not that far fetched, and in a way, if it WAS a hoax, it would be even cooler. But as far as we can tell, and according to our resident numbers stations / shortwave expert Jim, these are in fact that kind of weird alien sounds you can hear, tuned in to these mysterious stations. As much as we love the other four discs of The Conet Project, this new one is pretty exciting, and we have to say, definitely makes a case for buying it AGAIN! But for all the rest of you who have yet to discover the bizarre sonic mysteries of the Conet Project, there is no higher recommendation we can give, an all time unanimous aQ fave, our best selling record EVER. Sonically, and conceptually mind blowing. We never made it Record Of The Week before for some reason, but in our hearts, it has always been, and always will be, a perpetual aQ Record Of The Week!!! FOREVER.
BTW, this counts as a "box set" for shipping, it won't fit in the USPS flat rate box we use, so it'll have to go media mail or UPS if you're mailordering it domestically.
- MPEG stream: Swedish Rhapsody
- MPEG stream: 5 Dashes
- MPEG stream: Iran/Iraq Jamming Efficacy Testing
- MPEG stream: Magnetic Fields
- MPEG stream: Tyrolean Music Station
- MPEG stream: The Buzzer
- MPEG stream: "Data Bursts, 5.201kHz (USB And AM)
- MPEG stream: "Exotic Cipher, 6.215kHz/AM October 5th, 2008 19:27 GMT
- MPEG stream: "Descending Jammer, 7.969kHz/USB
- MPEG stream: "Drone, 17.964kHz
- MPEG stream: "Oscillating, 5.178kHz, March 12th, 1997
- MPEG stream: "348|10|13|36|19|21, 11.573kHz, 19:17 GMT
Not a new release, but we managed to get a few in stock for the moment, so we thought we'd list this. We got turned on to the Confusional Quartet (great name!) a while back because of a review our friend Tim Ellison wrote in his great 'zine Modern Rock
There are musicians who are incredibly technical and ultra proficient on their chosen instrument. Then there are others who don't have that kind of technical talent but who more than make up for it with a never ending reserve of raw emotion and deep personal expression. But rare is the performer who has both. Loren (sometimes Mazzacane) Connors is one of that rare breed. This 3-disc collection gathering bits and pieces from almost 30 years of recordings is an amazing testament to the ghostly, captivating sounds Connors has conjured up with his guitar. Unlike most guitar players Connors knows how to coax an impossibly wide range of sounds from an instrument that is usually approached from a much more singular point of view. Whether it's lurking feedback, washing in and out of his smoke filled strumming, or his more direct stripped down and totally pretty pick and strum, Connors is always challenging himself, never resting or relying on one specific sound or style. If somehow Connors is missing from your cd/record collection, and if you found yourself entranced by Earth's last outing Hex..., and perhaps you love the sounds of Tom Carter, the instrumental outings of Tom Verlaine, then for sure NEED to get some Loren Connors running through your veins and filling up your ears. Because of his prolific nature (Wow, has he ever released a ton of records and collaborated with a who's-who of underground luminaries!) this is one of those instance where a retrospective makes a lot of sense and is perfect for those of you who never knew exactly which records to start with. Now you have your answer. This one. One moment sounding like crazy psychedelic Japanese guitar jams, the next creating goose bumps with his chilling and subtle delivery, the next creating a creepy web of sound with distant off key vocals that rival Jandek in their mysterious and riveting nature, and the next laying down the ghostly sounds for a soundtrack to a film we wish would exist. Such a great journey, wandering through this moonlit collection of songs.
Second in the Table Of The Elements' label series of limited, one sided clear vinyl 12"s, this time from ultra prolific guitarist Loren (formerly Mazzacane) Connors. Sublime and mesmerising, Connors' guitar is a dark cloud of distant chiming chords, shimmering reverb, and warm rich sonic swirl. Minimal but somehow completely epic, a dark cinematic dream/drone-scape. So good. Striking woodcut image silkscreened in silver ink on the clear vinyl in a clear sleeve. VERY LIMITED. So don't dawdle.
Every year on Record Store Day, there's inevitably a record from psychedelic space rockers Bardo Pond, and every year, it's SO limited, we barely get any, and thus there are a lot of disappointed BP fans. This year was more of the same, the number of Bardo Pond records once again fell woefully short of the demand (it didn't help that of the 30 we ordered, we got ONE). But this year at least, Bardo headz can console themselves with this sweet set of jams, a split that features on one side, Vapour Theories, aka the Gibbons brothers, they of the aforementioned 'Pond, and on the flipside, iconic guitarists Loren (sometimes 'Maazacane') Connors.
The Vapour Theories side, is a gorgeously druggy sprawl of smoldering psych, a bed of crystalline acoustic guitars, bristles quietly beneath thick, softly undulating sheets of blissful buzz, laced with blistering arcs of psych guitar swirl, and keening, aching, melodies, the whole thing gorgeously laid back, and washed out, a woozily wasted psychedelic dream jam that should most definitely hit the spot for fans of the Bardo Pond mothership.
The Loren Connors side manages to be both noisier, and more abstract, the sound much more raw and lo-fi, softly billowing clouds of static give way, to tangled little tendrils, buzzing melodies drifting through fields of hum and thrum, lots of space, a much darker, introspective psych, everything murky, and blurry, smeared chordal washes blossom into strange soft noise flurries, and just as quickly fade back into tranquil swirls and shimmers, and often into near silence, Connors' delicate guitarscapes hushed and haunting and ethereal, in fact much of the side requires headphones, or an extremely quiet listening environment, to truly apprecciate Connors' sweetly sublime, guitar psych ultraminimalism.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!! Pressed on random colored vinyl.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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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.
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Absolutely gorgeous guitar instrumentals from a true American genius, Loren Mazzacane Connors, who has been recording since the early 1970s. While other records of his have featured impassioned howls, this French import album's pure emotion is rendered oh so quietly in 26 short jewel-like pieces, a song suite that, as the liner notes tell, chronicle the artist's slow realization of his inability to capture the essence of another person through his music. (The cycle of songs begins with day and ends at a hopeful dawn, so perhaps all is not lost.) This is utterly deep introspection told in aching, weeping guitar lines, melodic and simple, without any sort of effects or distortion. For those of you coming at this from a "rock" angle, imagine the incredibly emotive guitarwork of Mick Turner (Dirty Three) stripped down to its bare essence. Yeah, it's that good. So highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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17 tracks by cult "Venusian blues" guitarist L.M. Connors, of unaccompanied acoustic improv recorded for Daggett Records back circa '79-'80, and long out of print. Much of that material was collected for last year's limited-edition 4 cd boxset which is also now totally out of print! So, to appease fans who missed that (or the curious who weren't sure if they needed 4 cds) here's a "best-of-the-box" collection selected by Connors himself. Remastered by Jim O'Rourke.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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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.
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An impressive line-up accompanies this 'duet' between Alan Licht and Loren Mazzacane Connors with production by Jim O'Rourke and contributions from Darin Gray (ex-Dazzling Killmen), Rob Mazurak (Isotope 217), Ken Vandermark, amongst others. Slow lugubrious guitar solos with minimal jazz structures.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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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.
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This is a 4-cd box set with 96-page booklet and enhanced cd-rom featuring interviews, performance footage, and video scores. Includes the amazing, previously lp-only Four Violins recording from 1964 (whereas the other discs are recent compostions/recordings, featuring Jim O'Rourke on electric violin amongst other players).
(from the liner notes:)
"'History is like music - completely in the present.' In 1962 Tony Conrad's amplified strings introduced the sustained drone of just-intonation into what became known as 'minimal' music. Utilizing long durations and precise pitch, he and his collaborators forged an aggressively mesmerizing 'Dream Music' - denying the activity of composition, elaborating shared ideas of performance, and articulating the Big Bang of 'minimialism.' However, the many rehearsal and performance recordings from this period were repressed, and remain inaccessibly buried to this day.
In 1987 Conrad set out on a ten-year return expedition to the site of these entombed fragments; from them he reconstructed and regenerated the epic EARLY MINIMALISM. Reaching back through time, Tony Conrad weaves a mobile narrative over and under minimalism: making music out of history, and history out of music."
It's 1969 and Tony Conrad finds himself fascinated and obsessed with the sounds of sine wave oscillators. One of the godfathers of minimalism nearside LaMonte Young, Conrad was always on the more harsh side of things then other Minimalist disciples like Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Fantastic Glissando is a series of electronic compositions that Conrad created with sine wave oscillators that he then processed through a pump counter with head gap delay. The result is an aggressive textured drone that sounds like something traveling near the speed of light. This cd reissue includes a bonus 10-minute track that was not included in the LP version. The first time we heard this in the store, it was pouring outside and by the time it ended the sun was shining...San Francisco natural occurence? Or the work of Conrad's intense hand in the sky? We're still not sure.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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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.
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Certainly an odd pairing for a split release, with '60s minimalist Tony Conrad on one side, and the surrealist Edward Ka-Spel on the other. This is a release that will certainly not win over any fans from the grumpy minimalist school into liking Ka-Spel or his outfit the Legendary Pink Dots... but will certainly make LPD collectors very happy. Ka-Spel percolates a variety of somewhat silly synthetic sounds that could have been informed by Terry Riley's "In C" but conform more to Ka-Spel's fragmented lullaby approach, with all of the pseudo-goth references one would expect from a Ka-Spel / LPD release. On the flip, playing with Alexandria Gelencser on cello, Conrad sets down layers of extended intonations of abrasive violin drones. Numbered and limited to 500 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Excellent reissue! Out of print since its release in 1972 when it went almost completely unnoticed, this album is finally available in special 30th anniversary boxed double disc format! A shorter version of it was available briefly in 1993 but this features a whole other disc of extra material.
It wasn't until after playing and performing for over ten years that the now-legendary experimental violinist Tony Conrad finally put his music down on wax. This was after his tenure as an integral member of the Theater of Eternal Music's Dream Syndicate with Lamonte Young, Marian Zazeela, John Cale, and Angus MacLise (NB: the latter two being founding members of the Velvet Underground, which got its band name from a paperback Conrad found lying in the street.) The Dream Syndicate's raison d'etre was exploring the sonic depth, meaning and sound of the almighty DRONE. A chance meeting with producer Uwe Nettelbeck resulted in an intense three-day recording session at Faust's secluded farm slash studio and it was here that Conrad finally got to breathe life into his own take on the drone. The Faust fellows supply a warm, insistent drum beat and a just as unstoppable bass throb. Both the bass *and the drum* are 'tuned' to specific notes over which Conrad lays his droning violin. And that's it. For half an hour. So great! Not boring at all -- your ears quickly become attuned to the waverings, harmonies, and other minute changes amongst the three elements. Fans of Neu, Can, Kraftwerk, and of course Faust NEED this. As does anyone into hypnotic droning rock ala AQ faves Circle, Highly recommended, definitely seminal album by one of the pioneers of drone.
The legendary Tony Conrad teams up with some noisy young bucks for an hour of full on, high heaven, upper stratosphere, black cloud, acid rain melting everything in sight into silvery puddles, full bore skree. Recorded live in Buffalo in April 2005, there is nothing subtle about this 60 minute blast. The core is Conrad's near static lazer cannon blast of white hot, high end, which gets gloriously torn to shreds and allowed to crumble into crackling pieces, dropping huge flaming shards of shrieking grind and throbbing crunch on a defenseless audience. There are moments of near ambience too, nothing but spaced out fuzz, and little bits of clatter and scrape, but before too long, another salvo is launched and everything peels away in thick strips of charred flesh, revealing a glowing super nova of sound inside. This is another one of those records, that given a casual listen, is pretty rough, a bit of serious ear torching noise. But strap yourself in, and make it through the first brutal blast, and you'll feel your ears blossoming like flowers in the Springtime, opening up and letting all sorts of sonic subtleties in. Then it's a near transcendental, blissed out ur-drone, albeit, one that is heavily spiked with fiery fragments of ultra distorted shimmer and shriek, and thick slabs of skull rattling rumble. The musical equivalent of listening to a star implode, or better yet an entire galaxy collapsing. Intense!
Philip Best (Whitehouse, Ramleh, Skullflower) along with legendary noisemaker/producer Russell Haswell and the previously unknown to us Sarah Froelich, an American artist deliver this modern slab of abject, power electronics synth-noise. We originally figured this for an archival reissue, some lost gem from the Shock Records / Broken Flag axis, but it is in fact a brand new record, although sonically, it's not that far removed from CE's early releases, still obviously beholden to that whole Shock / Broken Flag sound/scene. The whole program is only about 20 minutes long, a double lp mastered specifically for vinyl, and to spin at 45rpm, the cd separately mastered for digital, but that's more than enough, CE's nihilistic onslaught directly descended from Bet's tenure in Whitehouse, feral and frenzied, caustic and confrontational. The music itself almost lovely at times, minimal synthscapes, blurts of gristly squelch, spread out into weirdly dynamic pulses, not so lovely at others, lurching from undulating walls of grumblingly distorted synth, to minimal cold wave electronica, to full on grinding, speaker shredding synthnoise. All of which is essentially just a backdrop for Best's venomous vocalizations, some seriously vitriolic spoken word, that again, fans of Whitehouse will definitely dig, on the more minimal tracks, Best's vocals are WAY up in the mix, and are harrowing and sort of terrifying, but as the record progresses, those vocals are subsumed into the chaotic, feedback drenched electronic squalls, and while we might not say it becomes more 'listenable', it does transform into something more musical, Best's voice, just another part of CE's harsh, electronic industrial puzzle.
Pressed on heavy 180 gram black vinyl. Housed in a glossy gatefold sleeve. First 500 copies include a cd version of the record, differently mastered than the vinyl.
Hiroshi Hashimoto has been active as Contagious Orgasm since 1986, haunting his native Japan with a Gothic application of disjointed samples, anachronistic collages, and early-Coil industrialisms.
"The Flow of Sound Without Parameter" is supposedly treatments of field recordings from a small town in Germany, but have been joined by so many horror film samples and shards of electro-shock rhythms, that the sound is more like a bombastic fusion of Pan Sonic and Foetus than an Eric La Casa album of delicately processed environmental sounds.
Finally, after listing Continuum Volume TWO, way back in August of 2007, we've managed to get our hands on some copies of the elusive Volume 1 (newly repressed by Soleilmoon). The various volumes constitute the ongoing collaboration between Dirk Serries, of Fear Falls Burning, and Steven Wilson, of Bass Communion. A perfect low end dronescape match for sure, but whereas the second volume explored sounds at the heavier end of the spectrum, skirting the sound world of folks like SUNNO))), the music here is much more ethereal and ephemeral. Glistening and glimmering more than creeping and crawling. Still suitably dark and mysterious and in some places a bit heavy, but much more aligned with the sort of ambient cd-r folks we tend to dig, who craft long slow moving expanses of hushed whir and swirling blurred drift.�
Three loooooong tracks. The first features extended tones, soft shimmery high end streaks, wreathed in what sound like chimes, the tinkle of guitar strings plucked above the neck, a �sparkling constellation of starry sparkle, spread out into a gauzy layer over lonely piano plinks, and a deep, fuzzy soft focus thrum. The second is a bit more gritty. A swirling cloud of hiss and hum surrounds the dreamy melodic drift beneath. The sounds building to an almost industrial din (but even then still soft and fuzzy) before slipping back into a murky, whispered outro. The final track, another 20 minute epic, is the darkest of the bunch, a dark fog of crumbling rumble slithers above a landscape of hushed murmur, and buried melodies, a murky burbling sonic cauldron, lit by a black sun and cloaked in shadow, eventually blossoming into something else entirely, a soaring melody, wreathed in a cloud of glitch and buzz, hauntingly majestic, a sun dappled coda to an otherwise fairly dark sonic journey, but wait, the sun is soon snuffed out, the darkness returns, as the record closes with several minutes of abject industrial buzz, a creeping shadowy black drone winding it's way slowly into the blackened depths.�
Gorgeous packaging, much like the second volume. Housed in an oversized full color dvd style digipak, with 4 full color post card inserts.�
We know what you're probably thinking: "Continuum 2? What the heck happened to Continuum 1?" Well, we're right there with you, number one seemed to have slipped right past us at some point, but fear not, we're doing some digging to see if we can't track some down for the store. In the meantime, rest assure, much like Die Hard 2, or Halloween 2 or any other famous part 2's, you don't really need to have experienced part one to appreciate the second part. But all of this talk about parts, why the hell should you care? What the heck is Continuum anyway?
Well, Continuum is the darkdronedriftdoom collaboration between Dirk Serries, aka Fear Falls Burning, and Steven Wilson, Opeth producer and leader of Porcupine Tree. Whereas their first collaboration was a much more tranquil affair, match up number two augments the duo's drifting dronescapes, with massive doom metal guitars, crumbling and downtuned, sprawled riffs spread out over epic soundscapes, imagine a DJ spinning Earth 2 on one deck and Oval on the other. A glistening glimmering sonic undercurrent, beneath a plodding rumbling behemoth.
The opener, "Construct IV", is nearly 23 minutes of the above, a massive riff, a gorgeous shimmering backdrop of distant whir and warm swell, peppered with little sparkling bits of FX and fragments of melody, that riff, endless and HEAVY, plodding and sort of melting into the sounds around it. Nirvana for the doomdrone obsessives.
"Construct V" is a bit more subtle, with nearly two thirds of its seventeen minutes, taken up by gorgeous black ambience, metallic shimmer, and muted melodies, whispered voices and distant effects, before the guitar takes over, after slowly building for almost the length of the track, less a riff as a huge glacial chunk of distorted sound, the voices growing to an urgent hiss, the track transformed into something sounding like some sort of ambient black metal, or some grim blasting buzz, with the drums removed and then slowed down to a barely moving crawl.
The final track, "Construct VI", is the dreamiest of the bunch, a loping sort of doomic post rock, a simple beat, the guitars strangely alien, drifting off in the distance, everything decayed and wrapped in distortion and delay, reverb and sonic grit, the melodies minor key and melancholy, it almost sounds what might be lurking under an Angelic Process track, once all that blown out distortion was removed, a murky muddy, Hawkwind outro as played by Low, run through Acid Mothers Temple's effects rack. Until the very end, where the track is engulfed by a wall of speaker shredding distortion, a dense cloud of damaged FX and thick squalls of crumbling sound, before drifting off into a swirling space-y fade out...
LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES. Gorgeously packaged in a full color oversized A5 book-style packaging with three full color postcards.
Those of you who managed to catch Andee and Allan guest DJing on Brian Turner's show On WFMU a few months back got an earful of all the craziest metal they could muster (if you didn't hear it, go to WFMU.org and you can listen to the whole thing!) in a desperate attempt to stump Brian the musical genius. Of course we cheated and played a bunch of unreleased demos!! One of which was some amazingly damaged keyboard heavy black-drone metal from Circumscriber. No idea when that record will finally see the light of day, but we just discovered that Benighted Leams label mates Contra Ignem Fatuum is in fact a group comprised of members of Circumscriber. Which makes perfect sense as CIF traffic in the same ultra repetitive black drone metal that so blew us away. We weren't sure what to expect as the majority of Detritus is ambient. No drums, no guitars, just dreamy streaks of smeary sound, delicate ghostlike melodies, warm synthesizers, chanting monklike vocals, majestic melodic swells, distant martial percussion, a bit like In The Nursery or Dead Can Dance or a lot like the recently listed Dark Ages disc. The second of the three tracks is the little black secret here, bookended on both sides by ethereal ambience, the 14 minute long title track is a brutal and mega-catchy, completely hypntoic, endlessly repeating KILLER riff, a swarm-of-locusts kind riff, buzzing and twisting, pounding and pulsing repeating over and over, a bit like a black metal Circle or more heavy metal Pharoah Overlord or even a way heavier Gore. The track builds and builds until the drums burst into a blazing fast blast beat and utter chaos is unleashed, the whole track becoming a swirl of demonic vocals, shrieking, swarming guitars, warm washes of keyboard and spastic lighting fast drumming, as everything becomes less and less distinct and more a black flurry of sound. Wow. When the riff kicks in, you'd have to be totally ROCK-less to not leap out of your chait and start banging your head and whipping your hair around like a windmill. It's like that Khold riff, the sort of riff bands kill for. So fucking great. So enjoy this while you can and steel yourself for the eventual arrival of Circumscriber.
Active for most of the nineties, this experimental/ambient/industrial outfit called it quits back in 2000, only to regroup and reform in 2012, and essentially take up right where they left of. While we weren't all that familiar with the group's earlier material, this new incarnation still sounds very beholden to the nineties, creating sprawling landscapes of haunting ambience, twisted, paranoiac, sample heavy landscapes of keening tones and deep rumbling drones, mysterious horn blurts, orchestral stabs, blasts of percussive chaos, deep foghorn like moans, and some seriously intense vocals, delivered as a sort of screed, deeply and ominously intoned, all over a sprawl of softly undulating shimmer, of high end glitchiness, of distant chants and chorales. The sound shifts continuously, from glimmering psychedelia, to softly roiling synth heavy churn, to squelchy cinematic synthscapes, all peppered with industrial clatter and groaning metallic thrum, that voice resurfacing throughout, as if this was a soundtrack to some harrowing ritual.
But then on tracks like "Tripoli Calling", the group take fragments of female vocals, shards of percussion, and slow swirls of deep blackened buzz, and weave them into something that sounds more like Muslimgauze, martial snares underpin, clouds of cymbal shimmer, and lush soft focus swells of chordal shimmer, quite tranquil and dreamy, but almost as if it's just setting you up for the next track, which is all corrosive drones and distant sirens, soft noise melded into a heaving wall of dense, tense sound, only to dramatically shift gears, acoustic guitar strum, chanted crooned vox, and political samples, which sans those samples would sound like some sort of droned out acid folk, but instead, is a weirdly chaotic bit of post industrial sonic rhetoric.
The second to last track lays out some grim black buzz, and laces it with some long stretches of blues guitar flecked low end pulsations, haunting and strange, a disembodied sort of industrial noise blues, or something, seems like a weird mix, but it's cool, and definitely works. There's also some strange gristly static, and what sounds like heavy breathing sculpted into spidery tendrils, all of which leads to the epic closer, that creepy voice back again, this time over a hazy drift of slow-mo synths, and disembodied melodies, rusty and groaning in the background, the whole thing looped and hypnotic, the track unwinding as a slow shifting collage, noisy and staticky one second, dreamy and lilting the next, that voice drifting to the surface throughout, before a tangle of overlapping voices returns us to that Jeck like opening loopscape, which becomes a creepy, woozy, dirgey stretch of down tempo wooziness.
While they last, we have the limited deluxe version, which comes in a fancy oversized full color slipcase which houses a slide out panel that holds both the cd and a booklet.
Control Unit are the Italian duo of Sylvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia, the latter having done all sorts of scattered psychedelic projects including a prolonged stint in La Otracina. But in teaming up with the uncompromising Sylvia Kastel for Control Unit, his expository tendencies are tempered in the heavy sourness of Control Unit's grim electronics. In A Frame is their second lp and perfects the bad-drug cocktail of early '80s Italian industrialisms and the narcotic / narcoleptic vibes of Factrix and Mars which they first began to manufacture a couple years back. Kastel and Morgia employ monotone guitars, beatboxes, and cheap synthesizers cast through ghostly delay patterns and a zombified / exhumed production grit that alternates between abstracted decompositions of Hansen records styled electrical damage and tracks which could almost be considered songs with their step sequenced skeletal rhythms haunted by Kastel's vocalizations. These more structured elements seems to corrode from within, as the geiger-counter rhythms and ticking pulsations misfire and palpitate amidst the crosshatching loops and erratically fired patterns. Even with all of the cold/minimal/wave revivalism going on, Control Unit are dialed into a very specific historical reference of most death-obsessed electronica circa 1982. Creepy, horrifying, chaotic dirges for the industrially minded. Limited to just 275 copies!
Another back room discovery, buried in a dusty corner, obscured by shadows, a box of discs from some mysterious artist called Converstations With The Light, on a Swedish label called Ominous Recordings. Throwing it on, everything made sense, the sound dark and dusty, obscured and shadowy, and yeah, definitely ominous, the only thing that didn't seem to fit was the name, cuz this is about as far from the light as you can get, a grim pitch blackness that oozes malevolence, a haunting, creepy expanse of industrial landscapes and blackdrones, of blurred noise and strange surreal sonic drifts. We eventually discovered that Conversations About The Light is in fact an American soundscaper/noisescaper named Robert Hunter Osgood, and as the title might suggest, A Retrospective is in fact a collection of various tracks, some from splits and demos, some unreleased. And while it may be a compilation, it was, and is our first exposure to Osgood and his Conversations About The Light, and all it took was the opening 15 minute epic, "Death Tree", and we were sold. A haunting cinematic slow build creep, soft shimmers of high end drifting over an abject expanse of muted thrum, and hushed rumbles, it's not really until about halfway through that the sounds actually coalesce into something melodic, the billowing background transformed into a lovely blurred bit of soft focus dreamdrone hum, and then out of nowhere, thick heaving shards of buzzing low end crunch surface and crumble malevolently above the tranquil soundscape below. The sound soon stabilizes, and becomes a buzzing smear of metallic streaks and ghostly overtones, before blossoming into an ominous, industrial dirge, wreathed in static and pulsing squelches, before finishing off with a face melting squall of grinding blown out white noise how. Shit, if this was a single song 15 minute disc, it would still be well worth the price of admission, essential listening for fans of Locrian, Wolf Eyes, Wraiths, Gog, NRIII, Servile Sect, and other practitioners of the sonic black arts, but there's nearly a whole 'nother hour, the sound remaining rooted in industrial / noise / black drone territory, but explores every little twisted corner of said territory, thick rumbling stretches of blown out grey noise, darkly undulating sprawls of hushed minimalism, drearily melodic atmospheres and creeping doomic dirges, chugging almost blackened metallic crush, gorgeous folk flecked black ambience, full on speaker shredding Merzbowic chaos, grim soundtracky soundscapes, field recorded noise experiments, keening raga-like soft-noise drifts and pretty much every strange blackened stop in between.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, long sold out and out of print. We have about a dozen or so and they are absolutely the last copies we'll see!
We love the harmonica, especially when it's used in super creative ways, processed perhaps, or spread out over some Morricone-ish post rock, it is definitely evocative, and has an incredibly unique and distinctive sound, which definitely comes to the fore when the harmonica is rescued from the blues rock ghetto it usually finds itself trapped in.
A couple past harmonica favorites: a tape by Usputuspud, a gorgeous dronescape of processed harmonica, and the sweeping deserty post rock of Souvenir's Young America, wherein the harmonica was used to add a layer of mournful mystery, and now we have this cd from NY soundmaker Joshua Convey, who utilizes harmonica, guitar and electronics, to create deep listening drones, and mesmerizing soundscapes of repetitive texture.
The opener is a brief shimmer of high end, the harmonica smeared into soft billowy streaks, the electronics burbling percussively beneath, like a much more tranquil and washed out Sunroof! The second track finds Convey dipping his toes into Fennesz territory, a strange murky rhythm, supports a skittery stuttery high end guitar, that is looped and layered, the notes glimmering and overlapping, creating strange landscapes of pixilated upper register metallic shimmer, harmonics drift dreamily, punctuated by smears of grinding glitchy buzz. The third is a brief clattery soundscape that sounds like a contact mic dropped into a malfunctioning music box, all truncated twang, and strange metallic plunks, fractured melodies, and strange mechanical textures. Which brings us finally to the final track, a nearly 15 minute expanse of overdriven guitars, the notes transformed into buzzing shards, the tones chime like but wreathed in pulsing electronics and grinding distortion, until the distortion dissipates, leaving a slowly unfurling tangle of steel strings and soft focus harmonics, transforming into a low end rumble and drift, until the final couple minutes when the guitars become blown out once again, creating a gorgeous squall of overlapping and almost psychedelic buzz, before slowly sinking into the murk. Quite challenging, pretty far out, but definitely haunting and strangely lovely. Fans of fucked up dronemusick, harmonicas, and gnarled guitars will definitely dig.
Gorgeous diecut packaging with super striking photos by Max Aguilera-Hellweg.
We're always on the lookout for new music metal magazines, cuz as much as we love Decibel and Terrorizer, it's the cool DIY mags that really cover the stuff we love, in a way that seems totally genuine, driven purely by a love of the music, whether it's the now defunct Oaken Throne, or Salt (not strictly metal), or Asgard Root, we can't get enough. Which is why we were so thrilled to discover the curiously named Convivial Hermit, while at the same time confused as to how we missed the first 4 issues of this incredible magazine. Based in Warmonster, Pennsylvania (!!!), TCH covers a wide array of dark and heavy underground music, black metal, doom, psychedelic folk, industrial, and pretty much everything in between, as well as artists and filmmakers and whatever the hell else they feel like. This is issue five, and it's a doozy, featuring legendary slowcore doomlords Skepticism, Chinese neo-folk outfit Baishui, USBM horde Nechochwen, Korean metallers Sad Legend, Norwegian metal outfit Wallachia, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles' film Mr. Arkadin, mysterious Russian black metallers Walknut, black metallers Algaion, symphonic neo-folk group Rome, longtime aQ fave Steven R. Smith, Russian doom metal label Solitude Productions, Lovecraftian metal weirdos Fungoid Stream, funeral doom outfit Helllight, an essay on the dying art of compilations and reviews of some of the editor's faves, French Illustrator Chris Moyen, death metallers Affliction Gate, Spanish black metallers Beelzeb, German black metal horde Drengskapur, Italian black metal unknowns Adversam, an essay on hermits (!), acid folk legends and ALL time aQ faves Comus, Czech black metal weirdos Master's Hammer, French black metallers Aorlhac, legendary dark ambient soundscaper Raison D'Etre, Chinese label Pest Productions (whose releases we have featured on the aQ list recently!), an thoughtful essay on record stores and the future of recorded media (for which this 'zine would get our recommendation alone, read this!), and then of course, TONS of reviews, records, magazines, shows.
The magazine is massive, beautifully laid out, fun to read, packed with old faves and new discoveries, just might be out 'new' favorite metal mag!
Another haunting, meditative, dark sonic gem from local label Time Released Sound, this one a collaboration of sorts, two different groups, each taking every other track, and somehow, creating a surprisingly cohesive proper album. In fact, even though the title alludes to this being multiple groups, we sort of just assumed it was simply a strange band name, and this was all the work of a single entity. Thematically linked to the book Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, the tracks here are moody and minimal, mostly piano, but the pianos are wreathed in effects and textures, augmented by chiming melodies, and all sorts of layered ambience. There are definite differences between the two artists/sounds, with the Con_Cetta tracks, much more produced, lush and lovely, while the MonoLogue songs are murkier and gristlier, lots of hiss and static, gristle and grime. Field recordings surface throughout, and not sure if it's just us, but the last few TRS releases have been considerably darker, and Orlando is no different, with much of the record wreathed in shadow, brooding and ominous, cinematic mini-epics, that ooze dark emotion, and sinister sonic pathos. That's not to say the sounds here aren't lovely, they are indeed QUITE, but it's most definitely the sort of loveliness that disguises something darker just below the surface. And for all the differences, Con_Cetta are perfectly capable of getting grimy and murky, check out "Woe And Lamentation", which almost sounds like the two groups switched song order, and probably speaks to why both work so well together.
Fantastic stuff as always. Fans of TRS releases will of course find this essential, but for folks who have yet to delve into the mysterious musical world of Time Released Sound, and dig all things dark and mysterious, broody and moody, ambient and darkly dreamy, this could very well be the one that convinces you that you just might need to do some catching up. Fans of The Caretaker, Tim Hecker, and other practitioners of the hauntological glitch-drift arts, check it out!
As always, there are two versions, the deluxe version is totally over the top, extravagantly packaged, and LIMITED TO JUST 65 COPIES, already sold out from the label, we have THREE and that's it. It comes in a square box, covered, collaged and stamped, each with an attached antique enamel pocket watch face. Inside the box, a deconstructed / cut-up copy of the Woolf novel, a bird like nest of confetti like fragments, along with vintage paper ephemera, lace, leaves and other random bits and bobs, the cd is attached to a hub on the inside of the boxes lid, which is also printed, as is the underside of the box. Phew! The standard version is nice too, limited to 200 copies, and housed in a heavy, full color digipak.
Another haunting, meditative, dark sonic gem from local label Time Released Sound, this one a collaboration of sorts, two different groups, each taking every other track, and somehow, creating a surprisingly cohesive proper album. In fact, even though the title alludes to this being multiple groups, we sort of just assumed it was simply a strange band name, and this was all the work of a single entity. Thematically linked to the book Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, the tracks here are moody and minimal, mostly piano, but the pianos are wreathed in effects and textures, augmented by chiming melodies, and all sorts of layered ambience. There are definite differences between the two artists/sounds, with the Con_Cetta tracks, much more produced, lush and lovely, while the MonoLogue songs are murkier and gristlier, lots of hiss and static, gristle and grime. Field recordings surface throughout, and not sure if it's just us, but the last few TRS releases have been considerably darker, and Orlando is no different, with much of the record wreathed in shadow, brooding and ominous, cinematic mini-epics, that ooze dark emotion, and sinister sonic pathos. That's not to say the sounds here aren't lovely, they are indeed QUITE, but it's most definitely the sort of loveliness that disguises something darker just below the surface. And for all the differences, Con_Cetta are perfectly capable of getting grimy and murky, check out "Woe And Lamentation", which almost sounds like the two groups switched song order, and probably speaks to why both work so well together.
Fantastic stuff as always. Fans of TRS releases will of course find this essential, but for folks who have yet to delve into the mysterious musical world of Time Released Sound, and dig all things dark and mysterious, broody and moody, ambient and darkly dreamy, this could very well be the one that convinces you that you just might need to do some catching up. Fans of The Caretaker, Tim Hecker, and other practitioners of the hauntological glitch-drift arts, check it out!
As always, there are two versions, the deluxe version is totally over the top, extravagantly packaged, and LIMITED TO JUST 65 COPIES, already sold out from the label, we have THREE and that's it. It comes in a square box, covered, collaged and stamped, each with an attached antique enamel pocket watch face. Inside the box, a deconstructed / cut-up copy of the Woolf novel, a bird like nest of confetti like fragments, along with vintage paper ephemera, lace, leaves and other random bits and bobs, the cd is attached to a hub on the inside of the boxes lid, which is also printed, as is the underside of the box. Phew! The standard version is nice too, limited to 200 copies, and housed in a heavy, full color digipak.
While we've loved pretty much everything we've heard from Mira Cook so far, on this new album, Eat The Cake, she's moven to a whole new sonic level. Movement being the key, as this is the most rhythmic, pulsating, and infectious collection of songs she's created yet.
Cook seems to have found a way to bring into her music, the physical movement she excels at as a professional dancer who travels the world. Cook is equally skilled in ballet as she is modern and African dance, which again is reflected on Eat The Cake, as she takes delicate and precise steps occasionally erupting into something much more visceral and emotive. Cook's voice is more assured than ever and these songs feel much less like sketches and more like fully realized sonic statements.
Organic and odd instrumentation meet electronics, and it becomes difficult to tell which is which. The sounds on Eat The Cake combines the instrumental delicacy and wonder of Colleen and shakes them up, down and all around, adding splashes of vibrant color and passionate energy. Some songs bring to mind a magical meeting of the minds between Broadcast and Lali Puna, while some moments sound like a dizzying mix of a Gamelan orchestra and Molly Nilsson, twirling together in musical ecstasy. Evocative and alluring, purposeful and playful and so highly recommended!
When we first heard the name Cookie Brooklyn, thoughts of pop-funk immediately sprung to mind, but the ten tracks on this 3" cd-r reveal something completely not that! Ah, but we would've known that if we'd just looked at the name of the label who released this! Yup, although the release came to us via the New Zealand label Oak Park (home to dark, spacy, country rockers Marineville), it's actually on Anthony Milton's label Pseudo Arcana.
Seemingly inspired by Keiji Haino (the acoustic Black Blues album for instance) and/or Jandek, these 1997-2001 home recordings drift more into the realm of experimental folk. Deconstructed melodic elements, spartan instrumentation (often just effected electric guitar and voice), fleeting clouds of buzzing dissonance, generous application of reverb, and some very detached and stream-of-consciousness-y murmurred and muttered vocals.
No idea who this Cool Person is; but he / she / it / them hail from Gainsville, Florida and landed this outsider chunk of electronica on Hooker Vision. At its most sensible, the Cool Person ethos follows more of a rhythmless, atonal, and organic sounds similar to Matmos and Mouse On Mars, all done on a very lo-fi scale, with squelching tones and ring-modulated arpeggiations sent along divergent paths; but at other times, echoplex delay patterns crosshatch into swarms of gritty feedback or swarming Reichian drones that cut against abstracted polygons of golden tones with hints of those Frankenstein tape constructions from any given Joseph Hammer project circa 1983. A strange one, but a very intriguing tape from this anonymous project. Released in a tiny batch of just 50 copies, all of which are sold out at the source, so these are the last few copies...
Easily one of the most freaked out and fantastical outsider free jazz records EVER. And yeah, that sounds like hyperbole, but wait until you get a load of this. Start with the cover, an image of Coomans, a Belgian jazzman of some sort, with some crazy goggles on and some sort of mask strapped to his face, attached to a machine on his belt, an aerosol device he used to treat his asthma, which he SINGS THROUGH. He also sings through a harmonica, attaches vacuum cleaners to saxophones, or just mics em up to create clouds of strange hum and buzz, or submerges horns and plays underwater, in a half filled bathtub in his basement. Sound weird? It is. But it's also amazing.
The opening track is the one where he sings through his weird aerosol asthma device, the result is otherworldly, like processed Tuvan throat singing, hypnotic and alien, warm and whirry and a little monk-like, we sort of wish he made a whole aerosol/asthma record!
But then we wouldn't have heard the next track, an extended anti-jam, more space than sound, with strange bleats and burbling, the aforementioned submerged saxophones, underwater moaning, bursts of watery sploosh as the sounds break the surface, but plenty of strange vocalizing, also underwater we would assume, metallic and reverby, distant conversations, foot steps, like some freaky field recordings of some basement free jazz ritual, which it essentially is.
The flipside begins as a melancholy, long toned almost funereal dirge, warm and washed out and melodic, before slipping into something WAY more frantic, a wild bit of rapid fire phrasing, chaotic, notes tumbling over other notes, relentless and intense, but somehow still weirdly pretty, until finally the sax is joined by a hissing whirring drone, which we can only assume is the vacuum cleaner. After that there's a short voice / harmonica jam that goes from warm swirls of chordal wheeze, to mysterious harmonically enhanced vocalizing, until finally, the record finishes with a totally damaged, and mostly unrecognizable sax / piano / vacuum cleaner / tape recorder cover of "Louie Louie". A stumbling, gloriously WTF mess until the piano and female vocals finally start to sound like the original, other than the fact that the vocals and piano are matched beat for beat by bursts of glitched out, and we assume either tape recorder or vacuum cleaner derived, static crunch. Holy shit. Weirdest free jazz record ever? Most definitely a contender.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
Earlier in 2011, we were introduced to the heavy-drift shoegaze of The Slaves through their impeccable Ocean On Ocean album. While we eagerly await the follow-up to that album, we were stoked to discover that The Slaves' Birch Cooper has been up to quite a lot on his own beyond the tapestries of drug-drone synth and blisswave noise of The Slaves. He's collaborated with Heavy Winged / Operative drummer Jed Binderman in The Greys, worked within the metaphysical collective known as the Oregon Painting Society, and tinkered with homebuilt electronics that are just as much sculptural as they are functional. Weird Lesson bears the first fruits of Cooper's explorations with those aforementioned synths, and it's pretty damn amazing although quite a detour from The Slaves. Here, Cooper embraces his inner Conrad Schnitzler (RIP) through these semi-improvised constructions of highly stratified electric squiggle, zonked noise, and disjointed sawtooth tones with plenty of patch-bay cuts and scattershot trajectories for all of Cooper's sounds. "Physical Dream" entertains a lovely Tim Hecker like cascade of spectral, semi-melodic wash behind all of those polyphonic electronics; and here, Cooper comes closest to what he had been presenting in The Slaves. Limited to 100 copies, with just a handful of those here in our shop.
Also back in stock...
Yet another release from our pal Jason's amazing and weird as fuck Ormolycka tape label (along with two others on this week's list), this one weird for an entirely different reason. Sort of.
Where most of the Ormolycka tapes hover WAY out on the periphery of popular culture, as in seriously underground, bizarre, challenging, confusional, noisy, chaotic, each with a hefty helping of WTF going on, well, for fans of the label, this might end up being the most WTF of all.
Cooper was maybe best known as the singer for the Passionistas, but since that band hung it up, he has struck out on his own, we reviewed his debut 7" a while back, and the jams here are not that far removed, sunshiney, sugary electro /techno pop, cheesy house music grooves, drum machine driven new wave, synthy, swirly, fey sung / spoken slightly auto-tuned vocals over thumping beats and dreamy melodies, gay club jam meets '80s new wave, fun and funky and a little bit fluffy, like the dance/love scene or montage from an old VHS eighties romantic comedy. Ormolycka definitely has a soft spot for summer grooves, radio/MTV pop, Hot/Wild FM style megajams and the like, and this definitely pushes some of those same buttons.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
No doubt about it, Eric Copeland is a bona fide weirdo! In the best of ways, as his manic and often hyper musical stylings have reached near brilliance with his band Black Dice and on his great mind-melting solo outing from a couple years back. In fact we think we kind of prefer what Copeland does on his own these days more than the recent Black Dice outings, there's just something a bit more inventive, immediate and deliciously confusing and mind bending about his solo stuff. Alien In A Garbage Dump is a pretty appropriate title considering the warped way Copeland's musical mind seems to work. Utilizing busted, broken and discarded equipment, the sort of stuff most people would throw out, Copeland sees the opportunity to explore other dimensions, reachable only by using damaged electronics, old tapes, and warped loops that feel like they've been melted, messed with and burned beyond recognition.
Using repetition often to the point of exhaustion, some songs definitely a test of endurance, yet the rewards that come from sticking it out are totally worth it! We can hear the influence of monumental 20th Century experimental compositions like Terry Riley's "You're No Good" and Steve Reich's "Come Out" and "It's Going To Rain". Yet you can also tell that underneath the extreme left field sonic fuckery in which Copeland roams he also loves dizzying rhythms and pulsating waves of sound. It's kind of like Daft Punk records playing underneath an Astral Social Club freakout. There is also a really cool Seefeel influence that he of course takes and tweaks to create a totally different atmosphere. One of those records that you can't really just hear a bit or piece of to appreciate but instead it does really work best when you can blast it loudly and let it unfold with all its twists and turns from beginning to end. With plenty of turbulence, chaos, and moments of pure ecstatic joy, this is one fucked up musical journey worth jumping on board for!
Similar to the way Copeland's friend Panda Bear released his own little masterpiece earlier this year while taking a break from his main act the Animal Collective, Eric Copeland has made an equally amazing solo record of his own, which just so happens to come to us on the eve of his main act, Black Dice, releasing a new album.
Hermaphrodite finds Copeland displaying major cinematic flair. There is an intensity and density to the sounds on Hermaphrodite that make the listener feel like they've been whisked away, similar to the way the masters of the silver screen are able to transport audiences. Not many people can sculpt sound the way Copeland does, always in control of the way the sounds shifts and change shape, never feeling stiff or too smart for its own good. What makes Hermaphrodite such a special record is how physical the music seems. Like the strange songcraft he's developed in Black Dice, Copeland has become so adept at taking sounds to mysterious places and transforming them into rich visceral experiences, as intriguing to the mind as they are to the body. Hermaphrodite sounds like creatures from another planet were given some run down analog equipment, a broken old video game arcade machine, a glimpse into Gamelan music and assigned to score a lost film made by Michelangelo Antonioni and Alejandro Jodorowsky. One of those records that truly takes you on a wild ride you never want to get off. We're more than intrigued with this Hermaphrodite, we think we might be falling in love!
