[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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

Showing results 2251 through 2300 of 9280.

The Cortical Foundation continues in its excavation of the screwball antics of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, which took anti-rock, noise, and free jazz to new room clearing limits. The Doo-Dooettes were lead by Dream Syndicate drummer Dennis Duck, and offered a free jazz soundtrack in "Think Space" to film on the Viking Space Probe in 1975, sounding very much like the No Neck

Doralice is a local chamber music duo specializing in instrumental acoustic music, their sound touching on Americana, gypsy folk, Flamenco and tangos, inspired by film and world music, the interesting thing being that the two members of Doralice, hail from another band recently featured on the aQ list, Ventid, whom we described as sounding like classic nineties math/post rock a la Rodan, Shellac, June Of 44, A Minor Forest, Rumah Sakit. One half of Doralice also plays in the Pickpocket Ensemble, which makes Doralice not seem like such an unlikely musical vehicle, treading some of the same sonic ground, but definitely doing their own thing, utilizing guitar, violin, banjo and toy piano, and joined by a handful of guests, creating the sort of sounds that fans of Tin Hat Trio, Calexico, Ennio Morricone, Nino Tora, Astor Piazolla, Rachel's and similar outfits will no doubt dig. Quite lovely!

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From the man who runs the amazing God Is Myth label, responsible for recent AQ faves like Godheadscope, Caina and Procer Veneficus, and who used to record as Uvall, comes the new 'group' Dormant, which takes the more traditional black metal sound of Uvall and abandons it almost entirely, focusing more on mood and melancholia, texture and timbre, songs as much as sonics, a sort of orchestral dark doom pop sound, run through with streaks of buzzing blackness, and plenty of dark dark ambience. With some help from folks like Caina and Celestiial, Dormant weaves an unlikely blackened sonic brew, gloomy and dark, but strangely pretty and poppy, epic and almost orchestral at points, there are brief moments of grim buzz and blasting black fury, but they are relatively few and far between, instead most of the record drifts delicately, mournful strummed steel string guitars, moaning drones off in the distance, deep baritone, near spoken vocals. Sounding very much like Swans or Angels of Light. Even the heavier songs spend much of their time moping mournfully, shimmery clean guitar twang, reverbed soft focus riffage, sometimes eventually transforming into midtempo black metal, but still suffused with that distinctly pop element, occasionally even turning pitchblack and offering up some buzzing riffs and harsh vocals, but only briefly, usually slipping back into a lilting dreamy dark folk, or a strange loping industrial dirge, or a haunting expanse of barely there drone. Definitely for the super adventurous blackmetalheads out there, or for darkfolk freaks who don't mind bits of buzz and blast peppering their spacey jangle, moody gothic miserablism and abstract late night drift. The first 200 copies of this cd come housed in a hand screened digipak with an insert and a sticker. We have about a dozen of those. Once we run out, we'll have copies from the rest of the pressing, a version that comes in a DVD case instead.

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Chicago experimentalist Kevin Drumm and German trumpet player Axel Dorner team up for a series of slow, skittery electronic interludes ala Gunter Muller (with Jim O'Rourke at the controls for one session).

Another odd Ormolycka tape here, one of the more mysterious in their current crazy batch of releases. This band we know is from Japan, and that's about it. Could be new, or from the '80s or '90s, we don't know. Ok, wait, we think we found a Japanese-language Tumblr page for them. Hmm, looks like they're a currently active band, from the photos we saw consisting of young dudes with colorful hair, wearing baseball caps, who like to jump up and down and drop their pants. Maybe sorta Boredoms-y. And listening to the tape, what do we hear? Chaotic, trash-can-clattering industrial-noise-punk jams and lo-fi confusional sound collage. With gobs of distortion, violently shouted chanting, random voices, and an overall very agitated vibe, like the perpetrators were into breaking things and trying to arouse their audience to do the same. Some fairly WTF? shit, noisy and nifty and all over the place. One song will sound sorta like skanking ska, the next a parody (?) of cheesy synth-pop. At one point, they do a completely over-the-top, distortodelic destruction of "Tequila"! Weird that Ormolycka provides NO info about them (or any other release, really) on their website, how do they expect to sell their tapes? Oh, maybe 'cause every Ormolyka tape so far has been great, maybe that's it. This one too!

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The Double Leopards have become more and more prolific of late, amazingly so considering there was a time where all we could track down by these cats was a cd-r and maybe an lp. An alluring mystery for sure. The mystery is not gone though, not nearly, in fact if anything it's just being deepened by the recent spate of new recordings, each a blurry buzzy smear of abstract sound, all lovingly swaddled in that Double Leopards haze and grit. A Hole Is True, is three lengthy tracks, totaling about 40 minutes, rough, raw, fuzzy, almost industrial soundscapes, buzzing guitars, grinding distortion, throbbing feedback, all stretched into pulsing, squirming, slow shifting drones. A seemingly endless haze, dense and swirly, tangly and prickly, thick and viscous. Definitely falls square within the sonic world of Skullflower, Total, and of course the Hototogisu (Leopards' member Marcia Bassett's other band, a duo with Skullflower's Matthew Bower)!

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Massive double lp opus from this mysterious drone rock ensemble. Maybe drone rock is a bit misleading as there is very little rock to be found. So let's just say drone, shall we? After numerous cd-r's and limited lps the Double Leopards return with this gorgeous and expansive low end exploration. Rumbles and hums, shimmers and thrums, this is as perfect a piece of meditative, mesmeric drone as you're ever going to find. Like all great drone records, Halve Maen is a dense, thick nebula made up of layers and layers of sound slowly shifting and unravelling, revealing new sonic details on each listen. Murky wisps of rhythm, shimmering piano, distant chimes, warm reeds, and fuzzy static all surface occasionally. As the record progresses, the minimal spaciness intensifies, gets darker and gets louder, as the misty spectral instrumentation gathers steam and takes form, with propulsive rhythms and ghostly vocals emerging from the haze. So nice. Limited to 1000 copies. On nice thick vinyl in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve.

Over the past couple of years, the Double Leopards have emerged as one of the premier psychedelic drone ensembles alongside such pre-cognitive / cosmic communicators as the Vibracathedral Orchestra and Skullflower (whose Matthew Bower records with Double Leopards' Marcia Bassett as the Hototogisu); yet they've only released a couple of records that never seem to stay around long enough for us to write all that much about them. Out Of One, Through One, And To One is their latest opus of murky atmospheres channelled through the aftermath of a potent drug coctail prescribed for a blood chilling, delusional numbness. The Double Leopards excel in their eternal-music mantras spiralling out of densely layered buzzsaw dronings, continuously bowed strings, corroded amplifier distortion, the perpetual odor of spilt bongs, and an ocean of fluttering delay patterns. These medicated abstractions in deep heavy monotone equal those found on their universally acclaimed debut album Halve Maen. Considering this is limited to a 1000 copies, Out Of One is not expected to be around for terribly wrong. As former AQ owner Windy was wont to say, buy now or cry later.

Yet another blast of thick and furry drones from the awfully prolific of late Double Leopards. Two half hour tracks, recorded live. The first, in L.A. is a massive and dense buzz, like a flurry of tiny lawn mowers and leaf blowers, all tuned to the same chord, emitting a reverberating thrum, like a million bombinating insects or the sound of crashing planes, slowed down and stretched out into a dreamy blur. Or imagine your head covered in bees, then dunk your head in a tar pit and let it dry and crack in the sun. Nice. The second track, recorded live on KDVS in Davis, is a bit more spacious, at least in the beginning, but it soon erupts into another huge multi layered drone, an insectoid hum, magnified a thousandfold and broadcast through a thicket of dense trees, leaves rustling as the sound waves shake everything in their path, until the sound fades and drifts and smooths into a tranquil hum, and eventually what sounds like rain, and then what sounds like bees, and then finally a slowly fading buzz like a distant airplane. Powerful and lovely.

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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. Won't go into too much detail since by the time you read this these will be pretty much gone, sadly. SUPER LIMITED to 350 copies, picture disc artwork by Graham Lambkin from the Shadow Ring. Two massive sides of groaning, creeping ambience and muted industrial soundscapes of rumble and drone. Quite beautiful actually. Sounds a bit like you might imagine Wolf Eyes would sound if when they first woke up in the morning (or middle of the night), a little groggy and hung over, and just rolled over, plugged in, turned on, and let loose a thick washed out, lazy, fuzzy, gritty dronescape.

A glorious, massive, free noise love-in / freak out / jam session, the 5th in a series. This volume, an ultra deluxe super limited double lp, features three of the scene's biggest movers and shakers, The Double Leopards, Sunroof! and Mouthus. Each band gets a side of vinyl and delivers just what you might expect and exactly what you want. Sunroof! offer up two tracks, each a towering wall of guitar drones, dense and blossoming with blinding light, guest guitarists include Marcia Bassett (which makes that track pretty much a Hototogisu track) and Mick Flower of the Vibracathedral Orchestra on a track called "Cortez The Killer" and no we can't tell if it's actually a Neil Young cover or not. Mouthus spend their side making lots and lots of noise, grinding industrial soundscapes of electronics and tortured guitars, the hardest of the bunch for sure. And the Double Leopards invoke mysterious gods and ancient civilizations with their murky abstract drone derived ambience, channelling Taj Mahal Travellers, Angus Maclise and Henry Flynt through their transcendental blown out otherworldly glow. But wait, that's only 3 sides, what the heck is up with side 4? Glad you asked. Side 4 features all three outfits, seven musicians, jamming together, a gloriously confusional cacophony, equal parts soft droning flutter and furious free form freakout. Awesome! The only way out of this record... is through it... Packaged in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve!

By the standards set by 2008 trends in experimental and avant-garde music, Roger Doyle's The Ninth Set is profoundly uncool. There's nothing to connect this electro-acoustic body of work to the drone-metal hybrids or to the forest dwelling psychedelic splatter of Finnish weirdness or even to the long-form trance induction from the high minimalists. Nope, this is a composition of dramatic plasticity, sculpted with the isolationist bunker mentality embraced by Pierre Schaeffer or Michel Chion. Perhaps that's the reason Doyle's work strikes a chord with us right now, precisely because it's so antithetical to the current streams of the avant garde (or at least the streams that pass through Aquarius). Doyle is a composer who has enjoyed a considerable amount of notoriety from both the establishment as well as from the underground elite. He's been granted a number of high profile awards from academic types, but at the same time, he also released an album under the moniker Operating Theatre that United Dairies released back in 1981. So it doesn't come as a surprise that high praise has been granted to Doyle from all over the map; but even so, this is actually our first encounter with the man's work. At the moment, we can't say how it compares to that United Dairies record or to Oizzo No (which many have claimed to be a masterpiece, despite it's terrible title). Through the five lengthy pieces of The Ninth Set, Roger Doyle cycles through rumbling episodes of recontextualized tumult and industrial heft, with every sound recorded and presented with impeccable digital clarity. At times, his work mangles Ligetti-esque vocal chorale through timestretching DSP tricks and thick digitally swabbed crescendos of grey noise; at others plucked cords, wires, and strings congregate into an unsettled mass with opaque rumblings and seasick swells. Throughout each movement, there's plenty of pregnant interludes of relative quiet with punctations of rapidly approaching noise that halt at its peak with a razor cut to silence. Uncool, it may be; but The Ninth Set is a brilliant record.

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Another bafflingly brilliant batch of tapes from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and while we often find ourselves at a bit of a loss to describe whatever sonic oddity they've unearthed or discovered or dug up or conjured from the ether, not sure we've ever encountered one like this before. With very little info to go on, what we can surmise from the description we read, is that this might be some sort of home-recorded ritual, perpetrated by a teenager (Andrew Lagowski?), with his parents in the other room, taking leave from whatever rock band he was playing in at the time, to create, well, THIS, a strange bit of sinister collaged ambience, wild squiggles of feedback, what sounds like running water, manipulated tapes, stumbling percussion, what almost sounds like field recordings, owl calls or something like owl calls, detuned guitar melodies, shards and fragments of sound, all blurred and smeared and tangled into a sci-fi lo-fi soundscape, jumbled, textural and weirdly rhythmic, a definite kitchen sink approach, or maybe toolshed approach would be more accurate, a strange selection of noise making devices including various effects and fuzzboxes, a reel to reel tape player not to mention a drill and a space (perhaps wielded by the artist's brother), and while there is a sense of randomness and chaos, much of this is quite listenable, and for sure is beholden to (whether intentional or not) Nurse With Wound, Hafler Trio, and other unconventional sonic experimentalists. Two distinctly different mixes/versions, edited and reworked earlier this year. Pretty excellent stuff. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! With cover art by Savage Pencil.

This is a pretty self-explanatory record from Manchester's village idiots better known as V/VM. It's totally beside the point if Dr. Fred is V/VM's doctor as this sounds just like the last bunch of V/VM records, with a warbled ring modulator affecting the

Awesome noisy drum-machine, shredding-guitar, gurgling/howling-vocal spazz rock. Or something like that. Having done time on Finland's mighty Bad Vugum label along with AQ faves Circle, Dr. Gunni is a far more demented affair. Lo-fi Stooge-y ditties

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Another limited Awesome Vistas release this week along with The Jackie-O Motherfucker lp (reviewed elsewhere on this list) is this debut full length from the strangely monikered Dragging an Ox Through Water. Dragging An Ox Through Water is the solo project of Portland multi-instrumentalist Brian Mumford who conjures up a warped Americana of old-timey sounding ballads filtered through damaged electronics, field recordings and off-kilter use of horns, guitars, banjos and kazoos. Imagine the early pop-country side of Arthur Russell covering Neutral Milk Hotel's In an Aeroplane Over the Sea with just a broken guitar, a dented tuba, a child's steel drum and a busted radio shack electronics kit, and you come close to the feel of this oddly beautiful record. Oh yeah, it's limited!!!! Cool hand screened covers too!

All you cd-r labels out there could learn a thing or two from Dragon, aka Dick Bladwin of Landing and Surface Of Eceyon. The first release on his Mystical Beast label, is packaged in a gorgeous hand sewn, embroidered pouch, a glorious multi-hued dragon spewing fire over the Dragon logo which is bisected by a broad sword, all on a black velvet background. Wow. According to Mr. Baldwin these each take THREE HOURS to make, which is probably why he only made 100 and why we could only get a handful of those. The music inside perfectly compliments the fantastical packaging, lilting hippy folk, with warbly reverbed vocals, over foresty fingerpicking and occasional indie jangle. Tales of dragons (duh), castles, burned villages and the like, punctuated by occasional squalls of fuzzed out psych guitars! So cool. Fans of Incredible String Band, Palace, Devandra, and of course dragons should definitely pick this up.

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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. Japanese avant-garde singer Tenko & her superstar backing band (Otomo Yoshihide, turntables; Kato Hideki, bass; etc.) return with a new recording on John Zorn's Avant label.

We may have unfairly pegged local guitarist Matt Baldwin. His records are big time faves around here, gorgeous mesmerizing guitarscapes, from raga infused psychedelic folk to Fripp / Rother style cosmic guitar explorations, we sell them like crazy, and they get played all the time in the store as well, so when it cam time to review a recent release on Baldwin's Psychic Arts label, we were all prepared for some blissed out guitarscapery, but instead, we got Cryptic Cross, a twisted lo-fi weirdo metal band from the East Bay, whose sound was murky and buzzy and psychedelic and sort of insane, and really about as far as you can get from Baldwin's solo records. So we were determined not to make the same mistake with this most recent Psychic Arts release, from the strangely named Dragontime, another group from Oakland, the cd featuring some cool psychedelic Rainbow Brite style paste on cover art, that definitely points to something a bit on the weird side. And it's that artwork that maybe gives the biggest clue to what's going on here, cuz it's as far removed from the warped metal of Cryptic Cross as it is from Matt Baldwin's records. The opening track is all pulsing rhythms and synth swirls, kind of new agey, a little bit like video game music, a bit of swirly kosmische shimmer, quite cool actually, but definitely not what we were expecting, a sort of prismatic glistening rainbowscape. The second tracks adds ethereal female vox, and it's transformed into a soundtrack to some low budget fantasy film, a little 4AD, a little swoonsome shoegaze dreampop. After that the record continues to mutate and shift, from fuzzy, warbly organ minimalism, to an almost jazzy sounding lo-fi synth heavy tropical ballad, and from strange alien Asian video game folk music, all processed vox and dreamy melodies, to a murky, softly buzz shimmerscape, and from skeletal sun dappled folk pop, to droned out ominous cinematic synthscapery. Definitely far out, and seriously super cool too, a little like a female Fastest, conjuring up her own sort of 8-bit shoegaze soundworld, that we can't seem to stop listening to... LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered!

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A brand new full length from black ambient soundscaper, Drakh, the last prolific former member of black ambient terrorists MZ412 (his more prolific partner being Nordvargr!), and it's on one of our favorite labels too, Brazil's Essence Music, who in the past have brought us incredible releases from Acid Mothers Temple, Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, Boris, Merzbow and Rapoon. But this is not the regular release, we are honored to be the only place in the world, other than the label itself to be selling the super limited, deluxe, handmade boxset version, limited to just 99 copies, completely sold out, except for a handful saved just for us, and for you. These are pricey, but they are incredible, gorgeously and lovingly assembled, with TONS of extra stuff, and there are only about 10 copies left, so get one before they're gone. More on the record proper in a second, but figured we'd best explain what all comes in the box, in fact first there's the box itself, a completely handmade and hand assembled collage-painting-relief book-like boxset housing a long accordion folding insert with 11 attached landscape postcards - based on the album's theme and artwork - displaying stunning abstract watercolor paintings. Just like the box itself, each one of the pieces is uniquely and individually hand painted (no screens) by artist Iremir Oscar. In addition to the custom 6-panel digisleeve packaging, featuring stunning and desolate photography by Seldon Hunt, also included is a mini cd-r with four album remixes by some of Drakh's partners in sonic crime - Nordvargr, K. Meizter, Des Esseintes and Cordell Klier! WOW. Like we said, there are only about 10 of these left, we are taking PRE-ORDERS for these, they are NOT in stock, once we know how many we need, we'll order them from Brazil and should have them within a week to 10 days. So if you order this with other stuff, your order will ship minus the Drakh box, which will ship by itself, or if you are a regular mailorder customer, probably in your next order, but you will be charged for it NOW, but if you want one, definitely don't dawdle. The latest blackened drone missive from Drakh, as mentioned above formerly of MZ412, and most notable to aQ-ers, one half of the Nordvargr / Drakh duo, whose last record was released on Andee's tUMULt label. Bethlehem is a sonic travelogue, it's unclear if the sounds themselves are culled from the actual locations, or if these sounds are merely inspired by various places Drakh visited over the last few years, but the theme is reflected in a surprisingly varied sonic palette, which is not at all the grim bleak blackness of his past outings. Bethlehem begins as a dark dreamy swirl, laced with strange industrial rhythms, it's almost like the darkest creepiest dubstep ever, laced with voices, slow creeping swells, the dark skitter gives way to something much more ominous, a crumbling distorted dronescape, laced with strange snippets of spoken word, a creaking mysterious melody, and lots of crumbling hiss and crackle, before drifting into a sort of extra abrasive stretch of pop ambience, the core sound a hushed melodic drift, but wrapped in a sparking staticky gauzy, simultaneously dreamlike and strangely abrasive. Which sort of describes the whole record, deep heaving soft focus swells pulse and throb beneath a patina of buzz and whir, strange electronic percolations skitter atop a sea of electronic glitchery and blackened rumbles, like a malfunctioning Portishead, hushed warm washes of chordal hum slowly splinter into what sounds like Philip Jeck spinning old dusty field recordings, buzzing black noise is muted and smeared into bleary grey blurs, that seem to melt into warbly melodies, and slowly decaying looped crawls, crumbling industrial beatscapes lurch and lumber, a strange mechanized sonic beast, loping through a gorgeously hypnotic rhythmscape, so epic and evocative and mesmerizing, the whole record the perfect hybrid of blackened ambience, blissed out drift, and that sort of gauzy looped Jeckian soundscapery. Fantastic! We WILL have the standard version, keep your eyes peeled for it on a future list, or ask us to reserve you one, but those of you who want the DOUBLE DISC HANDMADE DELUXE BOXSET, now's the time...

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The third installment, and the first full length recording, in a newly launched series of recordings from Dylan Carlson, he of the mighty Earth, once dirge-y sludgelords, now twangflecked dronefolk drifters, here performing as Drcarlsonalbion. Originally envisioned as a solo project, now expanded to a trio, which finds Carlson and Co. indulging their love/obsession with British music and occultic folklore, in the form of a sound not really that far removed from modern Earth in fact, the tracks here unfurling in hazy swaths of gauzy, dreamlike ambience, spidery guitar melodies, loose shimmery chords, spread out over a lush expanses of long layered tones, and blurred field recordings, sans vocals it sounds like a drumless Earth, it's easy to imagine these tracks tethered to a simple, spare, skeletal beat, but freed from any sort of rhythm, the sounds here billow and buzz, thick blackened clouds of rumbling, crumbling distortion, wash over delicate, crystalline arrangements of measured melancholy, over which vocalist Teresa Colamonaco delivers her haunting recitations, at least on the first track. But those spoken word vocals appear mostly on the first track, she's got a lovely powerful croon as well, and most of the tracks are either instrumental, or strident folk songs featuring Colamonaco's voice prominently, especially on tracks like "Reynardine", which pairs reverby chords with keening distant feedback, and heaving chordal swells, or the brief but swaggery "Wicked Annabella". All the tracks here but one are actually covers, or at least reintepretations of standards and old favorites, all culminating in a killer version of PJ Harvey's "Last Living Rose", which somehow manages to capture the feral energy of the original, while still managing to make it fit into Drcarlsonalbion's more tranquil and darkly psychedelic songsuite. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES (of both the cd and lp versions), both come in the immediately recognizable white on brown Latitudes sleeves, and include a full color printed insert, both with green metallic foil printing, the cd in the usual origami style packaging, the lp sleeve elaborately die cut, the vinyl pressed on green wax.

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We almost weren't able to review this one at all, as the first pressing sold out in a heartbeat in the UK. Thankfully the lovely folks at The Tapeworm label, made a whole second special pressing just for all of us over on this side of the Atlantic, a special "obsidian mirror" edition, in which the cover and the tape are white on black, instead of the more recognizable black on white of most Tapeworm releases. But what's all the hubbub about then? Well, in case you hadn't figured it out, Drcarlsonalbion is in fact Dylan Carlson, he of twang flecked desert drifters and former sludgelords Earth, who on this, his first proper solo release, explores his occult interests in capturing the sounds on the A side at the Waterloo station and along the Thames river, both apparently sites "of personal occult experience", the sounds themselves though are lovely, a gorgeous gristly drone, blurred sheets of static, and deep moaning tones, softly undulating, sort of like a crackling electrical field slowed waaaaay down. Carlson's added some guitars and vocals, but blended those seamlessly into the smeared ambience. The vibe is very Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, hazy and gauzy, washed out and dreamy, darkly meditative and hauntingly abstract, really in fact quite beautiful. The flipside is guitar, vocals and mellotron, the lyrics according to the liner notes, are Enochian versions of those found on the A side! Those vocals are delivered like some strange sermon, the words nearly lost in the gorgeous swirling maelstrom of distorted guitars and swirling feedback, it's like some ancient ritual, some Druidic rite performed on some ancient stone plinth, on a windswept mountain top, one that just so happened to feature mounds of amplifiers and rows of distortion pedals. Meditative and psychedelic, blackened and blissed out. Sort of like old earth blurred into something more like Sunroof!, with Carlson the mysterious wild eyed shaman, his cloaked visage nearly obscure in the cloud of buzz and thrum and whir and howl. Awesome. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! These are the last and only ones we'll be able to get. Cover art by Savage Pencil.

Debut from this mysterious doom drone industrial noise outfit, one of FIVE new releases on Waves Of Decay (along with Wicked King Wicker, Demonologists, Skin Graft, and Robe.), and the sound of Dreaded fits pretty perfectly with those others, as well as outfits like Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wolf Eyes, Colossloth, SUNNO))), Khanate, R.Y.N., Amort and other practitioners of the slow/low/grim black arts. A slow build of creeping crumbling ambience opens things up, thick swirls of sludgey black drift, a caustic cloud of black ambience, shot through with slivers of buried feedback, truncated melodies, the sound slipping into hypnotic swells, threatening to explode but instead locked into a haunting, mesmerizing creep. Elsewhere electronics buzz and rumble, the sound minimal, but ominous and ever darkening, subtly cinematic, peppered with bits of industrial crunch, clipped bits of downtuned riffage, sent careening into the ether, strange tangles of tape decay stutter and corrosive low end crumble, the whole thing a sprawling, gut wrenching, soul stirring expanse of bleak, black dronedoom minimalism, blending the hushed minimal drift of all those Drone Records singles, with something far more abject and hateful. Killer stuff for sure. Absolutely recommended for any one into ANY of the above mentioned bands. Super nice packaging, silver ink on black card stock, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, of which we have but a handful...

Another super limited cd-r release of underground noisiness, this time from Dreams, a Skaters side project. We only managed to get a handful of these, so act fast, they'll be gone in no time. Those of you familiar with the Skaters, already know they are masters of the free floating murk, a clattery chaos harnessed into dense smears of sound. A while back we reviewed a 7" by the Pan Dolphinic Dawn which definitely hints at what you can expect from Dreams, mostly because it's the same person, James Ferraro, one half of the Skaters, and Dreams is another example of the leaf not falling very far from the tree (and again begs the question, why make a solo record that sounds exactly like your band), but that's definitely okay, since we love basking in the murky muted shade of the Skaters' sound. If anything, Dreams is a bit murkier, less active, more of a drifting murmur. There's definitely lots going on sonically, but Ferraro renders all that action in subtle shades of grey and greyer, melodies, and voices, and riffs and whatever might be part of the overall sound, enter a whole new world once they're captured by Ferraro's four track. It's a bit like sitting at the foot of an empty well, watching storm clouds drift back and forth way above, constantly altering the ambient light, dusky, to dark, to darker, to pitch black and back again. Creepy and haunting and ominous but also strangely beautiful. SUPER LIMITED. WE ONLY GOT A HANDFUL OF THESE, AND AS ALWAYS WE'RE NOT SURE IF WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE.

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Two tracks from New York Minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt, both sonically owe quite a debt to fellow New Yorkers Rhys Chatham and Glen Branca. The first track, Point Source, features Dreyblatt on "excited bass", Jim O'Rourke on drums (!), David Grubbs and Kevin Drumm on guitars and Maureen Loughnare on violin. A gorgeously hypnotic and metronomic post rock / downtown improv workout. Shades of Faust, Can and even Stereolab. Nice. Recorded live at Chicago's legendary Lounge Ax. The second track, Lapse, is performed by the Berlin version of Dreyblatt's Orchestra Of Excited Strings, performing on custom made instruments in unique tunings. The result is a playful, gypsy-ish romp, atonal and angular, with Eastern sounding melodies and shuffling active percussion. On clear vinyl, with antique cloud/weather charts printed in glow-in-the-dark ink.

Musicians are an odd bunch. We used to joke that whenever you'd get a bunch of musicians together, if they ever went into some cool house, or a store, or a basement, or a bus, or a water tower, or an attic, or a yard, or a barn or really any sort of space, someone would always point out that said space "would be a great place to have shows". Similarly, as musicians discovered the musicality in everyday objects and everyday sounds, it seemed that everything and anything could be recorded and made into 'music'. Field recordings were no longer just the jurisdiction of naturalists and scientists. And it wasn't just the sound of frogs, or insects, suddenly it was melting ice, the beep of a respirator, the sound of drag racing, a zamboni, literally anything. It got to the point where we would hear something, and our first thought would immediately be "wow, if this was a record, we could totally sell a bunch of these". Back to the odd musicians... composer Arnold Dreyblatt was faced with a serious illness, and went through a series of MRI scans, which stands for magnetic resonance imaging. You know, one of those big machines that a person is loaded into as a huge magnet swings around the body taking pictures, you've definitely seen people getting MRI's on House or Scrubs or St Elsewhere or about a million other hospital shows, and if you've ever had one, you realize it's pretty loud, a thick machinelike buzz. But if you're a musician, odd by nature, then you also think to yourself, as we most likely would, "wow, this machine makes an amazing sound, I need to record it". Which is precisely what Dreyblatt did, but this is not a straight recording, nope. Instead, he made multiple recordings of the machine, at different settings, thus creating different sounds, different tones, and then organized the recordings by pitch and rhythm and various other elements, and created a composition from these MRI recordings, and then used said composition as the sound component for an installation, which took place in a huge, resonant space, which is where this recording was captured. And it's definitely a gorgeous set of sounds, warm metallic whirrings, pulsing rhythmically, the multiple recordings deftly layered creating fantastic overtones and subtle sonic shifts, from whirring minimal thrum, to dense swirling high end harmonies, the sound is actually remarkably psychedelic, and a little bit spacey, it's not hard to imagine something similar being created by some dude and his suitcase full of ring modulators and effects, but this, this is way more unique, the mechanical source occasionally revealing itself, but quickly disappearing into another layered pulsing cloud of machinedrone dreaminess, or throbbing metallic shimmer, the whole thing so lush and dense and fantastically mesmerizing.

MPEG stream: Turntable History (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Turntable History (excerpt 2)

Yet another amazing archival release from Medical Records, this one from short lived electro pop / new wave combo Drinking Electricity, who existed for just a couple years at the beginning of the eighties, only releasing a single album and a handful of singles, all of which are collected here. And while the sound is fantastically of its time, it's also so prescient in its foreshadowing of a sound that would resurface in recent years, so much so, that it would be easy to believe this stuff was some new band, mining music's rich minimal wave past. Taut rhythms, angular guitars, sci-fi synths, the sexy but cold and clinical vocals of Anne-Marie Heighway, chugging guitars, spidery melodies, alien effects... Check out "Breakout", which any current retro-wave band would kill for, sinewy and robotic, but laced with strange spacey swirls and some seriously kick ass post punk guitar crunch. Or the group's 'hit' "Discord Dance" with its propulsive rhythm, strange dueling boy/girl vocals, squelchy synths, strangely catchy, but again cold and robotic, minus the strange sing songy vocal refrain. Crazy catchy for sure, think a more stripped down cybernetic / post punk take on Berlin, or Haysi Fantaysee, definitely shades of Gang Of Four, Fad Gadget too, not to mention all the bands trying for something similar now. Hell, Crystal Castles even covered a Drinking Electricity song! But the songs and sound here are pretty unique, even the most spare skittery sprawl of minimal wave is infused with some serious post punk crunch and vice versa. The record is brimming with spiraling guitars, percolating electronics, lazer gun squiggles, faux horn blurts, playful melodies, quirky vox, hooks galore, some tracks super poppy, others totally tripped out and druggily out there, both of those sides meshing in most cases to create the strange post punk electro pop that DE specialize in, and few since have been able to pull off. Fantastically packaged, in a super heavy full color gatefold sleeve, with a full color printed insert, loads of rare photos and liner notes, pressed on super thick colored 180 gram vinyl (one record red, the other yellow), and LIMITED TO 650 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

MPEG stream: Breakout
MPEG stream: Discord Dance
MPEG stream: Random Particles
MPEG stream: Shaking Dub

Another list, another batch of mysterious cassette sounds from Root Strata, check out the Father tape elsewhere on this week's list, which arrived alongside this, a clinically titled new release from a group/person called Driphouse, who like Father, we know next to nothing about, other than Root 91 is created from piano, harpsichord and synths, all woven into strangely cosmic sonic experiments, that range from swirling, electronic synthdrones that sounds almost like some crazy soundtrack to an alternate universe's planetarium show, to bizarre robotic electro, cobbled together from short bursts of static, bits of glitch and squelch, all wrapped around plink plonk piano melodies. There's also bleepy Radiophonic Workshop style analog electronic bloopscapes, minimal cinematic synthwave rife with shades of John Carpenter, but deconstructed into something much more abstract, super intense blasts of fuzzy shoegaze new age shimmer, this too peppered with starburst effects and sci-fi squiggles, haunting almost soundtracky sprawls of glitchy synth drones and processed minor key melodies, and some seriously creepy sing songy electro wrapped harpsichord, draped over softly swirling string like shimmer, and sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the unsung Halloween III. Cool, strange stuff for sure. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Housed in a super striking, embossed/debossed J-card, the cassette also strikingly printed white on white.

MPEG stream: Slow Sum Part One
MPEG stream: Chompers World
MPEG stream: In Peru

Working in a record store I've learned that records released with merely someone's given name attached -- unless they're very famous -- often tend not to receive as much attention as something released under a more fanciful, made up "group" moniker. Maybe it's that a plain ol' person's name just doesn't fire the imagination. It seems wise that Jeff Mangum was Neutral Milk Hotel, that Chan Marshall calls herself Cat Power, that Campbell Kneale makes music as Birchville Cat Motel (and Black Boned Angel, etc.), and that Tara Burke is Fursaxa, amongst many other examples -- though we're not sure how Malefic recording as Xasthur, where you've got two made up names, fits into this. So, to anyone contemplating a solo project, we'd suggest making up a "band" name for it... Which is our way of saying, don't ignore this cd, just 'cause it's being presented under the name of Toby Driver. He's actually the main guy from the avant-metal outfit Kayo Dot, whose debut album on John Zorn's Tzadik label has been quite a favorite 'round these parts since it was released in 2003. Heavy and weird and droney and strangely poppy too, all sorts of things we like. In the L..L..Library Loft is a solo project from Toby, with some help from his friends -- there's eight other musicians credited, a remarkable number of 'em playing the lowly tuning fork, along with other things! Another unusual instrument credit is "remote snare drum". Plus there's a more conventional array of instruments like guitar, bass, piano, violin, cello, drums, trumpet, trombone, etc. That should give you the idea that this shares with Kayo Dot an interesting style of proggy chamber rock experimentation -- indeed, the four, fairly lengthy tracks here are kinda like Kayo Dot with most of the metal removed. Though, the rumbling waves of percussion, guitar distortion, and buried screams on the track "Kandu Vs. Corky (Horrorca)" still hint at Neurosis. But there's also many non-metallic elements here as well -- fragile singing and dark, quietly moody ambience. Definitely a disc worth exploring, especially if you're already a fan of Kayo Dot (or Kayo Dot's earlier formation as Maudlin Of The Well). And look out for Kayo Dot's new album, just released on Crucial Blast, to be reviewed here next time, hopefully!

MPEG stream: Kandu Vs. Corky (Horrorca)
MPEG stream: Eptaceros

Another blast of un-blackness from the E.E.E. camp, the home to some of the most amazing un-black metal we've ever heard. What the heck is unblack metal you ask? In a nutshell, well, it's Christian black metal. And any avid readers of the AQ list will remember us raving about pretty much everything we've heard: Light Shall Previal, Agathothodion, Glaciial and this here band, Drommer. Unlike the buzzing black hordes these guys call labelmates, Drommer is A. not buzzy, and B. not religious. So what we have is some serious secular black ambience. Or maybe still un-black ambience. Drommer unfurl two epic slabs of spaced out shimmer. The first is a gorgeously layered drone, lots of high end draped over deep resonant whirs, the sounds beating against each other like all the best minimal drone music, creating all manner of subtle tonal variations and gorgeous abstract overtones. Sixteen minutes, simple tones stretched all the way out, all the action and the color and the musical movement comes from the interaction between the various tones, subtle, but utterly hypnotic. The second track, is more in the dark ambient vein, a nearly 30 minute trawl through some haunting mysterious landscapes. There's some definite Lustmord action going on, which is always a good thing, but where Lustmord is abject and utterly desolate, Drommer lace their dour drones with shimmers of glistening melody and stray beams of sunlight. But even with these brief glimpses of blue sky, for the most part, it's a gorgeous black cloud of sound, chimes are muted and spread into dreamy blurs and laid over a sluggishly flowing stream of mumbled murk and dark dolorous glimmer. As with all E.E.E. stuff, this is ultra limited, usually only 50 copies, so once these are gone, that may very well be it.

MPEG stream: Den Lovet Fremtidig Aeons Av Evig Sporsmal
MPEG stream: For Evig Er Enna Mournful For Det Noensinne Begynt

More from the unblack camp!! E.E.E. Recordings, the Christian black metal label that brought us some of the best (un)black metal of the last few years, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, Agathothodion, strike again, but this time displaying a whole new side and sound. This latest release is from a band called Drommer, who the label describe as "non-religious dark ambient", and their debut Channeling Natural Forces is a "soundtrack to nature", and indeed, there is plenty of rain, thunder and found sounds, all woven into thick, reverby soundscapes, slow burning, glimmering murky crawls, stretched out melodies, some huge grinding almost industrial drones, crumbling distortion, soaring keyboards, very dramatic and super epic, but fuzzy and buzzy and lo-fi at the same time. Makes it sound very intimate and organic. The opening track sets the tone, a slowly growing ambience bathed in strange digital distortion and reverb, making what might otherwise be simply a dreamy drone, more a bizarre textured buzzy pulse, a haunting swell, that is constantly shifting and shimmering, the various overtones creating minimal murky rhythms amidst the static buzz. These effects surface throughout the record, giving those tracks a very alien vibe, but managing to remain true to their purpose, reflecting the sounds around us, and creating dramatic sounds to accompany natural events. Most of the tracks sound like the music we hear in our heads when the sun finally breaks through the clouds after weeks of rain and black skies. Not happy so much as glowing and subtly effulgent. Other tracks let nature do the talking offering a simple minimal counterpoint to the sound of the surf, or dripping water, deep dramatic rumbles, raga like buzz, way in the background, while nature performs her particular brand of music making over the top. A few of the tracks get downright heavy, one when Drommers drones are all tangled up in the sounds of a torrential downpour, which ends up sounding like a natural Sunn 0))), the other, where the tones become sharp and intense, a buzzing high end skree wrapped in hiss and static that eventually crackles and flares wildly before blinking out. Pretty amazing. Definitely a unique angle on ambient music and a cool way of incorporating field recordings, almost like a black metal Jewelled Antler!!! As with everything E.E.E., way recommended. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Winds Of The Mountain Deep
MPEG stream: Returning To Liquid Form

MPEG stream: Organ I
MPEG stream: Organ II
MPEG stream: Organ III

MPEG stream: Para Puri
MPEG stream: Fields

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

SORRY. Richard Harrison (who spends the majority of his time as the drummer for the Spaceheads) went to drone hill (its actual name!) to collect field recordings of the telephone wires that converge there. Hints of Alan Lamb's wind organs can be heard in these drones, as well as a variety of clangs, haunting moans, thunderous rumbles, and microscopic chatter. An exceptional record that succeeds not only in concept but also in execution. It goes without saying that, we all dig this!

Had this come out some 20 years ago, the Dropp Ensemble would have only been able to pull this off by the slow process of tape exchanges through the post, in other word: mail art. But through FTP and hefty upload sites, the principle authors / engineers for the Dropp Ensemble can be a bit more nimble and not have to wait for the mailman to deliver that tape from halfway 'round the world. Those two farflung protagonists in the project are Salvatore Dellaria and Adam Sonderberg. The former, we're not all that familiar with his work although he's stated that he's retired from the realm of sound art; and the latter has produced a handful of exceptional tactile-minded drone records under his own name and in the ensemble Haptic. The two had managed to rope together a world class collection of experimental musicians: avant-percussionist Jon Muller, former Anomalous Records bossman Eric Lanzillotta, feedback drone specialist Jason Kahn, the concrete / field recordist Olivia Block, one-time Andrew Chalk collaborator Brendan Walls, prepared guitarist Thomas Korber, and seven others. For such a huge cast of characters, each with their own particular take on the drone, the composition, the noise, the sound, whatever, Dellaria and Sonderberg had proven to be deft not only in coalescing all of these sounds into an exceptional composition but also coaxing sympathetic sounds from all of the contributors. Heavy subharmonic plods and scraping gestures open the album gradually harmonizing into a thrumming arc of sustained rumblings that bellow with the toxicity and pressurization of deep sea vents, accentuated by an agitated motorik clicktrack. Glistening tones emerge out of controlled feedback, and softened textures undulate in what sound like sand pushed around a surface to allude to wind, tidal flow, or any number of hypnotizing forms of white noise. Muted drones from what we're guessing is Olivia Block's trumpet elegantly wrap around some of the found object manipulation to offer somber melodic interludes to these already impressive compositions. If this seems not all dissimilar to the non-Jewelled Antler work of Loren Chasse or field recording manipulation of Tarab and Eric La Casa, those are pretty apt references. And considering how much we love all of those artists, Safety certainly gets a thumbs up here at Aquarius.

MPEG stream: Everywhere Present And Nowhere Visible
MPEG stream: The Vernacular Rooms

A mysterious new release from Goat Eater Recordings, who in the past have brought us exclusively recordings from ambient drone technicians Hoor-Paar-Kraat. But this one comes from one man band Drowning The Virgin Silence. Like all the Goat Eater stuff we've seen, this too is presented in a beautifully hand crafted artful sleeve, and the music inside is not all that far removed from the sounds of Hoor-Paar-Kraat, but where HPK is dark and desolate, heavy and often on the verge of being abrasive, the music of DTVS is much more soft and shimmery, the opening track almost sounds like it could have come straight off a Pop Ambient collection. Looped murky melodies, set adrift on a rippling sea of whir and rumble, drowsy and hypnotic.� None of the rest of the record is nearly so poppy or melodic, but it is all super engaging and mysterious, each song, a strange and haunting assemblage of voices and unnamable instruments, snippets of sound, looped samples and all sorts of subtle effects. "Hummingbird" is a disembodied conversation all tangled up in dark swirls of echoey sound, the 10+ minute "Untitled" is a long stretch of mumbled ambience, dotted with cricket like skitter and haunting melodic shadows. "A Pair Of Scales Stripped Bare, Even" is a dense blur of industrial sound, high end scrape and skree blended into a churning low end undercurrent, static but somehow with a bit of forward momentum at the same time. The record finishes with the epic "Phaedra", a gorgeous smear of chordal whir and shimmery drone, all washed out and indistinct, melodies buried beneath the murky surface, all occasionally coalescing into soft swells and long stretches of blurred fuzz. So nice.� Packaged in a beautiful hand screened cardstock sleeve, super minimal and striking.� LIMITED TO ONLY 70 COPIES! Each one hand numbered of course...

MPEG stream: Thread
MPEG stream: Untitled

Earlier this past year we reviewed (and Record Of The Week'd) a crushing slab of druggy psychedelic space doom sludge called Ghost In The Fire, from a band with the VERY unlikely moniker Drug Honkey. Initially we sorta assumed they must be a joke band, but there was nothing funny about the head spinning din these guys whipped up on that record. And as much as we loved Ghost In The Fire, for us it all started with this disc, Death Dub, which we had hoped would be some sort of impossible dub / death metal hybrid, and while it wasn't quite that, it was still seriously warped and fucked up, like a sludgier more metallic Butthole Surfers, sort of. Dirgey, and noisy, and crusty, sludgey and actually in fact, kinda dubbed out. We managed to get a handful of these finally (as well as DH's Hail Satan cd-r, if you want one of those too, just ask!), and now everyone can revel in Drug Honkey's glorious sonic filth, a constantly shifting metallic sound world, that's all churning riffage one second ("The Devil Lasts Forever"), tripped out dubby doom the next ("Death Threats"). The Butthole Surfers comparison is pretty apt, these guys just unfurl these sprawling epics, low slung bass throb, tribal caveman drumming, weird FX heavy vox, bellowed demonic howls that can easily transform into hysterical shrieks, everything wrapped in sheets of crumbling distortion, clouds of swirling effects, total tripped out heaviness, that as the title promises does get dubby, check out the vox on "Death Threats", throat shredding vokills disappear in a field of echo and delay, and go spinning into the blackness, while underneath the band continue to pound out a spacey psychedelic dirge. Or there's "Communion", the vocals sick and hellish, but seemingly being real time processed, so each bellow, launches little flurries of sped up shrieks or garbled grunts, all tether to the bands lumbering, monstrous, downtuned crush. The sound constantly gets super psychedelic, and sort of krautrocky and motorik, spacey and heavily tripped out, like some weird mutated hybrid of the Psychic Paramount, Terminal Cheesecake and Painkiller, some tracks almost sound like hip hop, albeit some sick, distortion drenched industrial strain (Techno Animal, Ice, God, etc.). In fact the Pathological Records vibe looms large over pretty much all of Death Dub, the whole record an electronic flecked, FX heavy, metallic mindfuck of the highest order. Which obviously means ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!!

MPEG stream: My Sins
MPEG stream: Death Threats
MPEG stream: Communion

We first discovered the awesomely named Drug Honkey a few years back, via their 2008 record Death Dub. And at the time, before having actually heard it, or then, we figured it was probably too much to hope for, that a band called Drug Honkey would actually be good, and not some dumb bad band inside joke, and that a record by said band, called Death Dub, would and/or could actually deliver on the promise of a title like that. Dubbed out death metal? Metallic dub? Some sort of blackened dubbed out weirdness? Well, happy to say we needn't have doubted, these Chicago experimental drug doom space psych heavies did not disappoint, that record a churning morass of noise drenched, dubbed out blackened heaviness, equal parts droned out, pounding almost-industrial crush, woozy, sludge-y slo-mo creep, and crumbling distorto-dub noise rock weirdness. Imagine the Butthole Surfers via Godflesh via the Scientist via Eyehategod. Noisy, druggy, damaged, super intense, and blown out, and heavily psychedelic, the vocals only adding to the WTF level, a super harsh demonic bellow one second, a weird high pitched yelp the next, the vocals bleeding into the sounds around them, and all of those sounds then doused in FX and super processed, into some seriously heady heaviness. We were never able to get enough copies to review/list, so when we discovered there was a new Drug Honkey, full length number four if you're keeping track, we knew we had to get copies, and had a feeling it was probably gonna have to be Record Of The Week. And once again, Drug Honkey do not disappoint, if anything, Ghost In The Fire is like Death Dub part two, but if anything, everything we loved about Death Dub has been cranked up even more this time around, it's heavier, slower, dubbier, more tripped out, the production is MASSIVE, the sound filthy and crumbling and blown out, the band unfurling a loping, lumbering super psychedelic sludge-dub that once again sounds a bit like the Buttholes jamming with Godflesh, which is in fact a very very good thing. Opening with a blast of detuned guitar churn, a pounding motorik rhythm, chiming distorted guitar melodies, looped and lurching, super tranced out and hypnotic, the vocals a bellowy demonic belch, that gets doused in FX and like much of the surrounding sounds, sometimes slows down to a grunting gurgle, other times splinters into weird swirling shards of sound, the music too, subtly dubbed out, but for the most part, roiling and churning relentlessly, the sort of super heavy psych-sludge trance-out, that could easily have stretched out for another 45 minutes and made for a super sweet single track drone-sludge epic. But these guys have more sonic filth up their sleeves. The title track even slower, and dubbier, the guitars tarpit thick, the riffing spread out over a plodding death march rhythm, the vocals a throat shredding howl, and again, accompanied by various other processed voices, slowed down, sped up, doused in distortion, pitch shifted, like some sort of drugged out demonic choir, all over swirls of gristly effects, and crumbling distorted effects, and all driven by the group's impossibly dense chugging doom-sludge dirge, slipping from driving almost headbangable 16rpm demonic deathdub groove, to fractured, fucked up, psychedelic black-noise drift, but more often than not fusing the two into some seriously unholy union. Some tracks are way more 'dubby' than others, like "Weight Of The World" which creeps and slithers, the guitars pushed into the background, laying down a softly undulating backdrop of droning rumble, over which a monstrous rhythm, pounds away in slow motion, beneath streaks of soaring fragmented high end melody, and some seriously fucked up and freaky vocals, lots of space and drift, swooping backwards effects, super psychedelic, totally hypnotic and tranced out, about as dubby as these guys get, but then there's tracks like "Dead Days ("Heroin III"), where the core sound is a super downtuned ultradoom sludge, the dubbiness seeping through in the form of the Gibby Haynes like vocals, and the atmospheric swirls, at one point slowing down to a near static drift, the only thing keeping it heavy, a super blown out distorted bass riff, over which all this other tripped out shit swirls and shimmers, and when the weird guitar that sounds like a proggy synth (or maybe a sitar?) pops up, total genius WTF trip out, the song drifting even further into tripped out zoner-psych territory. They even do a Scorn cover, which makes sonic sense for sure, Drug Honkey transforming the dark electronic skitter of the original into what sounds like a spaced out psychedelic sludge metal Necks, super drone out and loop-y, a little bit jazzy, but still heavy as fuck, before finishing off with a final fierce blast of dubbed out, super aggro, speaker shredding, doom-dub psych-sludge dirgery that KILLS. Holy shit. Imagine UK psych-drone space drifters Bong jamming with Godflesh, a dizzying concoction of super tripped out heaviness, ultra abstract sludge and blackened psychedelic dub that anyone into weird heaviness / heavy weirdness will lose their shit over! WAY WAY WAY recommended!

Chicago experimentalist Kevin Drumm (and on a few tracks Jim O'Rourke) document feedback generating organs, bass rumblings, hi-end squealing, and metallic droning all set within orderly patterns. On O'Rourke's Moikai label.

In recent years, Chicago's Kevin Drumm has unleashed an impressive cacophony through a handful of recordings of gnarled distortion and tempestuous noise. Having collaborated with the black-clad noisemonger Prurient and the power electronic technician Lasse Marhaug, having released an album for Hanson Records, and having composed a kick-ass disc called Sheer Hellish Miasma should be enough to let you know what the man is capable of. But listen closely to each of those albums, you'll find hints of glinted melody and a subtle beauty just below the surface of the chainsaw buzz. Here on Imperial Distortion, Drumm focuses entirely upon the contemplative and introspective gestures in the form of the huge longform drones similarly embraced by Eliane Radigue, Andrew Chalk, BJ Nilsen, etc. Gone are the attack, the aggression, and the noise; but the dark, the doom, and the hellishness are what remains in these icy drones. His strategy is pure hypnosis through slippery layers of elongated electronic drones and bell-tone like resonance. On first listening to disc one, the subterranean gong clatter soaked in reverberation could easily tear themselves apart into digital chaos, but Drumm molds the gritty klank into an ominous dronedirge. This softening of potentially destructive sounds becomes Drumm's modus operandi throughout the first disc, with each modulation toward excess pregnant with malcontent energy reigned in for a severely dark moodscaping. On disc two, Drumm sets up soft transmissions from controlled feedback undulate with a slow moving rhythmic pulse, which gradually doubles upon itself into a topographical drone with the all of the same-but-different patterns of wind swept sand. Here, Drumm most recalls the unnerving minimalism through refined feedback manipulation that Nurse With Wound concocted on Soliloquy For Lilith. By the end of the record, the shadow and disease which could be read into some of the tracks on the first disc dissolve into a shimmering ambience that's just damn pretty. Let it be known, Imperial Distortion will be one of the best drone records of 2008.

MPEG stream: Guillain-Barre
MPEG stream: More Blood And Guts
MPEG stream: Snow (Part Two)

The 2008 opus Imperial Distortion took a lot of people by surprise, as that album signaled an abrupt shift in Kevin Drumm's aesthetic trajectory. For many years, Drumm had been embracing a full tilt noise agenda on such self-evident albums as Sheer Hellish Miasma; but with Imperial Distortion, he steered into the cold waters of an impeccable, glacial doom-ambient sound. That album was much more in line with the disgorged ambience, bleak isolationism, and perfected minimalism of Eliane Radigue, Thomas Koner, and Andrew Chalk. Imperial Horizon is the suitable follow-up to that earlier album, and it clearly shows that Drumm's success on Distortion was no fluke. While coming from the same train of thought, Imperial Horizon isn't a mere redux of Imperial Distortion. Drumm opens the album with a brighter, silvery set of sinewaves, looped feedback, or maybe just a refined set of synth patches. Gradually, the layers of sound separate to allow for a subtle two note melody to push out of the background. Deeper subterranean tones eventually overtake those silvery tones at the beginning, with another complementary pairing of harmonic notes an octave or so lower than before. This compositional rotation of drone, revelation of melody, and collapse into drone continues over very long stretches, several times throughout the duration of the piece. In the brighter tones on Imperial Horizon, this album sparkles and shines like the glistens of frost and ice from a wintery sun, as opposed to the nuclear fall-out deposits from Imperial Distortion's far bleaker aspirations. Nevertheless, Imperial Horizon is a stunning piece of dronescaping. For those of you out there who embrace Drumm's screaming noise recordings too, don't despair. He's still working quite diligently in this vein as well. Check out the electro-terminus cacophony of his recent album Impish Tyrant!

MPEG stream: Just Lay Down And Forget It

Holy shit! Drumm's back with the noise! The last two releases we had from Chicago's Kevin Drumm had shifted focus toward an introspectively bleak set of drone recordings on Imperial Distortion and Imperial Horizon; but with this redux of a 2004 cassette, the full-blown excess of noise abrasion returns. Yeah, those watershed noise albums, Sheer Hellish Miasma and Land Of Lurches, are the clear comparisons in Drumm's noise assaults. The album has a pedal driven quality that seeks a constant series of explosions, not in the continuous jet engine roar that you would get from a Zbigniew Karkowski construct or even the psychedelic excess of Merzbow; no, this is constantly pounding against the ear with short, sharp blasts that never let up, nor do they leave any breathing room whatsoever. Whew!

MPEG stream: Impish Tyrant 1
MPEG stream: Impish Tyrant 2

The Hanson label (home to Wolf Eyes) brings us some heavy duty electronic noise hijinks from Chicago guitar experimentalist Kevin Drumm. Basically, if you just can't wait (five minutes) for the next Merzbow release, you'll be more than satisfied with this one from Drumm. He's really left behind the abstract avant-improv silences of his earlier recordings for the sheer hellish miasma of grinding drone chaos (as typified by his Mego album from last year entitled "Sheer Hellish Miasma"). That's what you get here, the sort of electronic music that non-fans will deride as 'vacuum cleaner' or 'lawnmower' or 'low-flying plane crashing into my house' music while those of us into this stuff say 'heck yeah!'. The first of the this disc's three tracks moves in sixteen minutes from pleasantly distorted drone-destruction (your stereo speakers or headphones will sound like they are continuously blowing up) into more chaotic, violent territory that's harder to zone out to, before Kevin steamrollers everything heard previously with some REALLY hardcore noise. After than, the screaming clanking howling mayhem of the six-and-a-half minute second track is practically dancefloor material. Actually this one's got industrial sounds of a nightmare factory thing going on that's almost silly. Next up is the 13+ minute third and final track, which just happens to be our favorite here, a slowly swirling, swooping symphony of insectoid drone sound. Dense, yet smooth, and like all the cuts on "Land of Lurches", definitely dangerous at high volumes (though not so much as track 1 or 2). A good one for fans of Koji Asano's drones. All in all, noisebuffs will find this Kevin Drumm album a bit like Merzbow's "Hard Lovin' Man" intercut with slices of Masonna. Heavy drone noise meets maniac freak noise. MPEG Download: "track 3" [/audio/drummlurches3.mp3]

MPEG stream: track 3

A miasma is defined as a heavy, vaporous emanation or atmosphere, also used to describe a corrupting influence (thank you, dictionary dot com!). So obviously, Chicagoan Kevin Drumm has been hanging around miscreants Peter Rehberg and Masami Akita and has decided to drop a nasty, pungent aural fart on all of us. Normally, guitarist Drumm crafts near inaudible soundscapes which leave much to be imagined. But "Sheer Hellish Miasma", his first recording for the stalwart experimental electronic jetset label Mego, is just FUCKING LOUD!!!! As to be expected from Mego, there's an abundance of clicks and whirrs, digital chirps and skitters, but I repeat, it is FUCKING LOUD!!!! (!) This'll probably be up for Prix Ars Electronica against Whitehouse. Or not. Who knows what those Ars Electronica people are thinking? The closing "Cloudy", in contrast, builds a simplistic, yet wonderful shimmering drone that ends the disc quite gorgeously. Well done. A necessity for all you pure noise freaks out there. Epic and apocalyptic, much like the work of Zbigniew Karkowski, Boyd Rice as NON, the overdriven sonic capacities of Whitehouse or the more hellish punishments of Merzbow (it's a bit like "Hard Lovin' Man" in its trance-inducing aspects).

RealAudio clip: Inferno
RealAudio clip: Pavement

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

SORRY.