[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 2401 through 2450 of 9280.

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

SORRY. First of all, be warned, these took nearly six months to show up from Sweden; and we will most likely not be restocking these when we sell out of this batch, or if we do, it could very well take ANOTHER six months. But back in the late summer of 2011, we caught wind of what seemed like a really fascinating piece of damaged, witchy pop narcotic from the Swedish sisters Nadine and Tanya Byrne (aka Ectoplasm Girls). Shortly, there after, The Wire raved about the album; and then we simply waited for the box to show... Fortunately for a lucky few of you, that box did indeed finally arrive! The Byrne sisters could very well be ghosts from the mid-80s cassette culture of DIY electronics, industrial antipathy, and corrosive psychedelia. As half-formed / half-forgotten songs of deconstructed piano, looped abstractions, and bad vibes, the Ectoplasm Girls arrangements aren't too dissimilar from those that Zola Jesus primitively sketched on her earliest recordings. Like Zola Jesus, voice is also key to the hauntological pop that the Ectoplasm Girls create, although they take it in an entirely different direction. At times, they adopt a baby-faced atonal lunacy with shrill lullabies above their murky tunes, abstracted rhythms, and macabre electronics; and at others, they utter mantras in dull monotone as if these strangely seductive passages were culled from their own exorcisms. "Sexodrome" takes all the right cues from Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, with vocal fragments orbiting a skeletal rhythmic plod that's all gotta reference Cronenberg in some way shape or form. It's too creepy not to! A blast of hurricane noise launches "If Your Mother Asks" which surges forward through driving techno stomp akin to TG's ceaseless march "Discipline" and complementary slashes of noise and vocal gaspings. If we thought we could get more, we might expound more on the subject of the Ectoplasm Girls; but as it stands, we've got less than a dozen. So, delay now and perhaps delay forever.

We were first introduced to the mysterious Estonian outfit Edasi by aQ pal, weirdo black metal / noisescaper Cloak Of Displacement. And he did not steer us wrong. Edasi's, goofily titled Freddy Krueger Death Chant was a pretty incredible collection of distorted ambient ritualism. The sort of stuff that appealed to metalheads as much as dronelords. This week we got two new releases from Edasi, both STUPIDLY limited. A cassette, of which we got EIGHT copies, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this here cd-r, limited to just THIRTY copies, of which we got 20, and then that's it. And we would recommend grabbing both of these, or at the very least this one, a gorgeous assemblage of super distorted blown out ambience, mournful melodies drifting beneath thick crumbling sheets of superdistorted crunch, it's noisemusic, but here it's surprisingly listenable, a melancholy lament wreathed in squelch and static, the opening track sounds almost like a lo-fi take on that sort of gauzy Hecker / Jeck washed out minimalism. The sprawling second track is more percussive, and even more lo-fi, the tape hiss in some places as loud as the music itself. A swirling field of buzz and clatter of muted chordal pulses and decayed melodies, a strange bit of rhythmic blur, noisy and a bit blackened, it sounds at times like it might launch into some actual black metal, but instead, much of the noise abates, leaving a strange stumbly rhythm and layers of Eastern sitar like buzz, before collapsing into a final cloud of mysterious percussive detritus and warm whirling static. The next track fuses a sort of primitive electronica to a woozy warbly bassline, and some spidery guitar melodies, which makes it sound almost like some twisted take on James Ferraro or Ariel Pink, a loping pop rock, wreathed in careening percussive effects, undulating sheets of pink noise, and all manner of crunch and buzz and hiss, but like the other tracks, it too seems to devolve as it goes, eventually the drums transformed into wildly sputtering machinebeats, wrestling with atonal synth buzz creating a dizzying synthscape gone haywire. The record closes with a brief bit of distorted drone, a warm liquid low end drifting darkly though caustic clouds of staticky hiss and brittle buzz. LIMITED TO 30 COPIES! Each one hand numbered. Once these are gone, they are gone for good...

MPEG stream: Solemn Ritual Dance
MPEG stream: Earth, Wind And Fire Dance

Along with a new Cloak Of Displacement cd-r, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, the maniac behind CoD has also dug up this weird bit of looped, hypnotic psychedelic blackness, all the way from Estonia! Edasi weaves a high concept, 74 minute sprawl of haunting, noise drenched drift. The label describes it as sounding like a bar fight between Silvester Anfang and Havohej, and we have to say that's not really all that far off. In the beginning, it does sound like some ritualistic bit of forest folk ambience, distorted steel string buzz, muted electronics, simple percussion, processed demonic vox, it's tripped out and tweaked, the blackness more implied, the whole thing rife with a seriously ominous vibe, but musically, this could just as likely be some strange lo-fi free noise collective from Finland, or some bedroom doom folk one man band from the midwest. It's a smoldering, creeping expanse of skittery ambience, of chiming melodies, streaks of feedback, the whole thing tethered to a strange propulsive glitch and crunch, managing to be weirdly tranced out and tranquil, yet, fucked up and seriously demented at the same time. Way too far removed from 'proper' black metal to appeal to the typical metalheads, but fans of Cloak Of Displacement, as well as the weirder fringes of black metal, a la Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine, Stalaggh, and the like, as well as anyone into warped outsider sounds, will definitely dig this a LOT. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, comes with a printed insert detailing the genesis of this particular chunk of sonic weirdness, as well as a miniature reproduction of the bizarre painting that spawned these sound.

MPEG stream: Freddy Krueger Death Chant

We first heard from Estonian ritualistic black metal soundscapers Edasi, from our pal, the weirdo behind black metal outfit Cloak Of Displacement. Edasi's Freddy Krueger Death Chant was a big hit around here, so we were psyched to get TWO new releases from this mysterious outfit: a cd-r, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this, a super limited tape. And we mean crazy limited, as in TEN copies. Total. We got EIGHT of those, odds are these will be gone in a flash, so we won't get into too much detail. Needless to say, if you loved Freddy Krueger Death Chant, you're probably gonna dig this too. Another mysterious sonic ritual, that is less black metal and more abstract forest folk or Wolf Eyes like industrial ambience, a lo-fi sprawl of super distorted sound, streaks of feedback, echo drenched percussion, blurred vocals, all wreathed in murk and mire, swirling effects, thick slabs of buzzing rumbling low end, abstract rhythms, everything smeared into haunting dubbed out blackened ambience, that manages to be fierce and freaky, but also strangely blissed out and listenable. Like a pipe fight in a huge cistern recorded on a tape player with dying batteries, a sort of ephemeral industrial doom drift. Great stuff. And again... LIMITED TO TEN COPIES. THAT'S IT!! Each one in a hand painted black stickered cassette case, sealed in a stickered plastic bag, the tapes themselves hand painted and hand numbered.

Eddie The Rat is a 12 piece art-rock / choral ensemble from San Francisco, arriving at a sloppy psychedelic ceremonial music and with plenty of post-industrial / Burning Man / San Francisco 'Fringe' overtones and purposefully oblique verbal conundrums and

RealAudio clip: Waiting For (Ain't Never Gonna Get) Enlightenment...

Woah, kinda blown away by this, a super nice surprise since we didn't have any expectations... or ex-plekzationz! Had never heard of Bristol's Nick Edwards before, nor his cassette-prolific alter ego Ekoplekz, nor his Gutterbreakz blog for that matter either. We just knew this was a new album from some bespectacled fella on Editions Mego, who (as we could see from the photo on the inner gatefold sleeve) employs a tabletop tangle of effect boxes and other electronic devices to make his music. Like all eMego stuff, seemed worth checking out, and it sure was. A quick and too easy description of this might be lo-fi analog electronic synth experimentation with a heavy dose of dub... or even "Merzbow doing dub", though it's not nearly as noisy as that might suggest. But it IS quite abstract and soundscapey. These are noises, not noise. And the dub here is that rare kind we've hardly ever encountered, that's dub but definitely NOT reggae. (In contrast to, say, that rad Seekersinternational record we listed last time, a great modern day dub album whose reggae roots are quite clear... or even aQ faves Peaking Lights). Edwards loves his King Tubby, for sure, and kosmiche krautrock and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and techno too... But we can't label his music as being like any of those things exactly, even though that's all in here. Nor is it the clinical, minimal-techno sort of dub (we also like), a la Pole or Vladislav Delay. This is even less reggae than that, and way more 'natural'. It's cosmic-y without being too referential to anything, very loose and flowing and free. The rhythms, which grow organically out of the interaction of effects, are varied and not 'grided' like so much other electronic music. Each and every moment fills our ears with the sort of echoing dubby soundz we love to hear, in constant flux. But, for something that's changing so much, it still has a 'groove' to it, if not necessarily always a 'beat'... in other words, it's strangely hypnotic, its odd percolations fitting into a larger wash of sound that seems to extend out to infinity, swirling and shwooshing and reverberating into new shapes and patterns. The album is divided into four parts of roughly equally length, the whole thing about an hour-long trip. Although recorded at four separate sessions, these 'decompositions' and 'spontaneous combustions' are woven into one extended piece, calmly chugging and looping, softly exploding with distortion over and over and over...The final track might be our favorite, with its slowly creeping-up-on you vibe. All are great, though. Look, we LOVE the echo echo echo of dub, and have admitted previously that several of us here wouldn't be into reggae at all if it weren't for the dub variety. So the idea of dub WITHOUT the reggae is interesting and appealing and that's what Mr. Nick Edwards has accomplished here, the echoing of the electronics on this album like a field recording of a mad scientist's laboratory, done dub style. This is maybe, maybe what Sun Araw would/could sound like if he'd ditched his trip to Jamaica for an extended stay in Mego's Austrian studios instead... Yup, for something we had no prior expectations about, it didn't take long before we were hooked!

MPEG stream: Part 1: Chance Meets Causality Uptown
MPEG stream: Part 3: Inside The Analog Continuum
MPEG stream: Part 4: A Pedant's Progress

We won't go into too much detail on this one as it was limited to 72 copies of which we got about a third of the pressing. Egghatcher is the work of Bay Area free folk avant noisemaker Robert Horton, and features some of the most sublime drones we've heard created from some of the least likely sources. A helicopter flying overhead, crystal glasses, old 78's, all smeared and smoothed into soft slippery slivers of sound. So lovely. A few tracks are not as dronelike, one features vocals, chopped and reassembled into a skittery soundscapes, with occasional blasts of corrosive squeal, while another is constructed from and played on a homemade 4 string guitar constructed from wood found on the street. All quite gorgeous as we've come to expect from Horton. Again, LIMITED TO 72 COPIES, we have the last 20 or so. Comes packaged in a plastic sleeve with an insert, held together by a twig, and with a VERY strong smelling leaf inside, so each disc smells like flowers or potpourri!

MPEG stream: That Helicopter Day
MPEG stream: Glass Quartet

Don't be fooled by the title. That's these two French experimentalists' tongue-in-cheek joke about the roots of their highly abstract, tape-manipulated guitar music/noise. Being the first installment of the A Brut Secret label's new "Blue Series", this is an electro-acoustic improv take on the blues, umm supposedly. But we seriously doubt that Martin Scorcese would recognize the sporadic silence, distortion, drone, clicks, and mosquito buzz found here as "The Blues"! Sounds more like Kevin Drumm than Blind Willie Johnson, that's for sure. So if my name's not Martin Scorcese, will I like this? Maybe, if glitched-out drone (some of it gorgeous) and grating noise are your cup of moonshine, 'cause you've got to imbibe a lot of that to convince yerself that you're also hearing fragmented, buried 'wooden guitar' Delta blues licks. What exactly is going on here? Well the liner notes are in French. But we think the deal is that Fabrice Eglin (whom we last heard guesting on Kan Mikami's Bachi by the way) improvises on electric and acoustic guitars while partner Jermome Noetinger processes his playing via contact mics, a Walkman, and an old Revox tape machine. So the electronic effects here seem appropriately dusty and old-timey. But this should definitely get filed closer to avant-guitarists like Drumm, Tetuzi Akiyama, Keith Rowe and Annette Krebs in your cd collection, rather than with yr Yazoo comps!

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Back in stock, back in print. One of our favorite No Neck Blues Band side projects, Egypt Is The Magick Number features Adam Mortimer and Dave Shuford both from NNBB but in a more tranced-out continuation of the way way out psyche improv damage of their No Neck mothership. Massive doses of delay, slow floating sheets of white hot psych guitar, shuffling minimal percussion, all dosed with acid, rolled in a hemp and lit afire. The first track is a 30 minute mother, easy to imagine two guys locked in a dark room with a hookah, a broken guitar with one string and a suitacse full of delay pedals. Super tripped out, wide eyed outer space drug drones. The other three tracks are similarly high flying, low crawling excursions into weird acoustic guitar-strum jams, the clattering of pots, and meandering twangy vocals. It's equal parts Sun City Girls, Jandek, and Yahowah. Which obviously means fucking great!

MPEG stream: Immortal Seeed Reignbeau
MPEG stream: Rangoon Filly Stutter

What the fuck? We shouldn't be the only people baffled by this record; and A Life Without Fear was probably engineered with that confusion in mind. A few years back, Ekkehard Ehlers was the darling of the Max / MSP faction of electronic artists, recontextualizing any number of artists into a delirious pixel-pointed fizz of digitized sound fragments, following in the foot steps of Christian Fennesz and Stefan Mathieu. As great as Ehlers recontextualizations of Cornelius Cardew, John Cassavettes, and Albert Ayler were, this micro-genre of soundsculpting seemed a bit faddish and a slave to technology. Needless to say, Mathieu has shifted his focus to more organic materials and instrumentation, and Ehlers has followed suit by dropping his Max / MSP patches in favor a gritty blues minimalism. With the press release making comparisons to Jim O'Rourke's emulation of John Fahey, Ehlers' recapitulation of turn of the 20th century blues has a studied hollowness about it. While sonically, these rough-hewn guitar chords and back-porch stomps have all of the trappings of any old archival recording (i.e. scratchy sound, tinny production, etc), they nevertheless lack any real soul (unlike O'Rourke's jubliant finger-picking and carnavelesque arrangements on Bad Timing.) There's also an ill-conceived bout of West-African / Congolese thumb-piano playing to futher complicate the matters at hand. The avant-garde meets the assimilatory attributes of imperialism? A curious application of 'authentic' patinas? A miscalculated attempt of cross-cultural communication? How about a faux-Jandek outsider thing? Who knows? Again we return to the ultimate question about this record: what the fuck?

MPEG stream: Ain't No Grave
MPEG stream: Maria & Martha

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

SORRY. Using samples from Arnold Sch�nberg and Charles Ives, among others, Ekkehard Ehler cyclically forms and dissolves structures creating swiveling metallic soundscapes and surging orchestral mayhem. Really beautiful.

You suckers without turntables get yet another temporary reprieve, as Ekkehard Ehlers' five lovely mini-albums, previously released only on vinyl, are here compiled onto one handy cd. And lovely is most certainly an understatement. This is some of the most gorgeous, sublime and moving electronic/glitch/sample based music we have ever heard. Sounds are completely recontextualised into cloudy, indistinct but somehow emotionally and sonically spot-on homages to some of Ehlers' influences. Falling somewhere between Stephen Mathieu and Oval, Ehlers adds remarkable depth and emotion to what is quite often a cold and clinical artform. Tracks one and two are the "Plays Cornelius Cardew" lp and are lovely layered soundscapes as only Ehlers can conjure. Sampled sounds are seamlessly woven into dense, textural tone poems again highly reminiscent of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas. The second (track three and four) in the "Plays" series is a 'tribute' to the German beat poet Hubert Fichte. Where those previous tracks are dominated by ephemeral drone work with refined patinas of digital corrosion, this piece curiously sounds like Pole doing free jazz, with erratic squiggles of granular synthesized saxophone and really lazy strums from a guitar seeping up from an electronically sculpted metallic haze. Even those slowly developed basslines that Pole plops into his neo-dub show up in "Plays Hubert Fichte" although Ehlers disregards Pole's structuralism in favor of an amorphous improvisation of deep hovering movements. "Plays John Cassavetes" (tracks five and six) is part three in Ehler's series of 'tributes' and for these pieces he seamlessly weaves orchestral samples into beautiful landscapes of sonic reverberations. Very reminiscent of Wolfgang Voigt's work as Gas, or those brief, subtle moments of bliss found on My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" record. Tracks seven and eight find Ehlers sampling fragments of Albert Ayler. However, as with most of these pieces, it is debatable as to how much Ayler is actually present on this recording, musically. Consisting entirely of digitally altered cello recordings, these two sidelong pieces gently swell, teeter and expand, forming beautiful, haunting drones that lie beneath digital snippets of arrhythmic ephemera. Somehow, Ehlers manages to restructure a mundane cello recording into a wonderfully reticular songpoem. The final two tracks are from the 'Plays Robert Johnson' 7" which we were never able to get enough of to list. Two short tracks: the first is an abstractly plucked, slow-motion, Reynols-on-cough-syrup style tarpit blues jam, while the final track is all throbbing four-on-the-floor Kompakt style minimal/heroin house. Trust us, we plow through a lot of pretentious electronic crap that takes itself too seriously -- and while the conceit of the five Ehler tributes might suggest that he could fall into this trap -- he does not. Ehlers delivers, and you'll love this. We all do.

RealAudio clip: Plays Cornelius Cardew
RealAudio clip: Plays Hubert Fichte
RealAudio clip: Plays John Cassavetes
RealAudio clip: Plays Albert Ayler
RealAudio clip: Plays Robert Johnson

The second solo recording from the former Autopoeses member, in which Ehlers samples fragments of Albert Ayler. However, it is debatable as to how much Ayler is actually present on this recording, musically. Consisting entirely of digitally altered cello recordings, these two sidelong pieces gently swell, teeter and expand, forming beautiful, haunting drones that lie beneath digital

Yet another volume in the slew of vinyl only releases by German electronic artist Ekkehard Ehlers (Autopoieses, Auch) in tribute to various artists musical and otherwise. "Plays Cornelius Cardew" is two brief sides of lovely layered soundscapes as only Ehlers can conjure. Sampled sounds are seamlessly woven into dense, textural tone poems highly reminiscent of Wolfgang Voigt, most

Supposedly, this is Ekkehard Ehlers' finale in the "Plays" series of tributes / homages, a disparate grouping of artists which has previously included Albert Ayler, Cornelius Cardew, and John Cassavettes, and rounds out with the German beat poet Hubert Fichte. Where those previous releases had been dominated by ephemeral drone work with refinied patinas of digital corrosion, this album

"Plays John Cassavetes" is part two in Ehler's trilogy of mini-albums, whose concept is based on metacomplex emotion in the context of digital art. In the first volume, "Plays Albert Ayler", Ehlers composed one long piece for solo cello, which he then cut up and reassembled into two new compositions. Where the use of digital processes were once more prominent and noticeable,

An effusive title that roughly translates as "Politics Do Not Need An Enemy" and a cover photogragh of an individual wearing a t-shirt with a pre-9/11 image of the World Trade Center introduce this recording from German electronic music composer Ekkehard Ehlers. It's hard not to immediately qualify the music within as holding some sort of political agenda or at least some wry commentary about politics, culture, art, or whatever, simply because he's already loaded the metaphoric gun with rather powerful signifiers. For better or for worse, those political references remain an external device and Ehlers' music pursues a path entirely different. Best known for the outstanding "Plays" series of homages to Cornelius Cardew, John Cassavettes, Albert Ayler, etc. and for his equally solid "Heroin" collaboration with Stefan Mathieu, Ehlers had developed a myopic fuzziness of digital pixelations from various samples, found sounds, and acoustic instrumentations. While the laptop is still the center of the Ehlers' world, the ephemeral drones which previously amassed from dense layerings of tiny sounds have subsided within "Politik Braucht Keinen Feind." Considering that the aesthetic flourishing of digital synthesis through programs like Max/ MSP and Supercollider has over-saturated the market, Ehlers' decision is certainly a good one. Here, he has culled strident samples from cello and bass clarinet performances and manipulated them into looped details. In turn, he has exaggerated many of those textures, such as through his increase of the bass frequencies from the bass clarinet into psychoacoustically potent tones and through his emphasis of the micro-abrasions between the bow and the cello's strings. These little events and gestures flutter into atonal orchestrations and psychically tense atmospheres which come across as something of a hybrid of Tony Conrad and Pierre Henry. Beautiful but uneasy listening.

MPEG stream: Maander III
MPEG stream: Blind IV

Record number two (but the first one we've listed) from East Coast avant black/doom terrorists Ehnahre, featuring members of Kayo Dot and Biolich, whose sound is definitely on the confusional side of heavy, sounding more like a mash up of doom metal and free jazz than anything more traditionally metal. Six, mostly looooong songs, that flit from skittery churning crunch to blurred black blast and back again, mixing in strings and horns, a swirling, dizzyingly complex exploration of abstract heaviness, that will probably be frustrating for those after something 'brootal', but for the adventurous listeners out there, who like their metal to confound and confuse, then Ehnahre should definitely hit the spot. Just take opener "The Clatterbones", beginning with a splatter of manic free jazz drum splutter, underneath some atonal sprawling downtuned riffage, and some sick demonik vokills, lots of space, seriously 'free' and loose and abstract, horns belch and bleat way down in the mix, it's not until about 2 minutes in that everything seems to coalesce, and suddenly, it's a murky muddy blurred bit of avant death metal, churning and roiling, the drums wildly manic, the riffing gnarled and twisted, the arrangements super convoluted, horns skronking in the distance, the sound blurring into black metal buzz, before splintering back into abstract black noise free metal chaos. And so it goes, a sound that is seemingly impossible to pin down from one minute to the next, slipping from chugging ultra doom, to mathy noise rock, to blissed out field recording laced psychedelic ambience, to glitched out dronescape, to haunting abstract drone metal, to freaked out art metal weirdness, to deconstructed death metal chug, to harrowing black ambient dirge metal, those various descriptors constantly shifting and bleeding into one another, the whole record a massively confusional, geniusly complex, fucked up epic chunk of avant heaviness. Wow.

MPEG stream: The Clatterbones
MPEG stream: Foehn (Lullaby)

Brandon Labelle and Ken Ehlich offer a number of open-ended questions in forming the thesis for their book Surface Tension, which is centered on the nature of site-specificity and the conceptual ramifications of such cultural productions. As the ideas behind this book can get pretty heady, we'll just quote liberally from Labelle's and Erhlich's shorthand description found on the book: "This anthology explores site-specific practice and its legacy through critical and creative essays by leading theorists, architects, and artists from around the globe, including an insightful interview with Gordon Matta-Clark from 1976, an essay by Juli Carson on the linger controversy of Richard Serra's 'Tilted Arc,' and Kathy Battista's uncovering of London's women artists groups in the 1970s. These are complemented by historical and contemporary documentation of [sound] projects, including a rarely heard audio work by Bruce Nauman from 1969." The list of writers included in the book is an impressive selection from academia as well as the art world with contributions from Lucy Lippard, Kim Abeles, Carol Brown, CopenhagenOffice, Octavio Camargo, Jeremiah Day, Dispute Resolution Services, Jennifer Gabrys, Jen Hofer, Melissa Dyne, Colette Meacher, and many more. The accompanying CD is also packed with an allstar cast: Yoko Ono, Paul Panhuysen, Atau Tanaka, Stuart Dempster, Terry Fox, Bruce Nauman, undo, Alison Knowles, and more.

Even though this band is from San Jose, we had to go all the way to Sweden to discover them, not literally of course, but Swedish label Pillowscars were kind enough to turn us on to these guys (this guy actually), and their warm blissy home brewed 4-track dreampop. Guitars are strummed, harmonics chime, cymbals sizzle, the sound is surprisingly lush, but then again, this record had been in the works on and off for years, amazing what you can do with a 4-track given enough time, the vocals are weary and laid back, plaintive and emotional, gently wrapped up in the swaying jangle and loping tempo, the bass buzzes and growls, the melodies are lilting, pretty, dreamy, total bliss pop for sure, think Animal Collective, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sparklehorse, you know what we're talking about. The weirdest part is that the man behind Eiafuawn, was a member of legendary hardcore/screamo titans Mohinder! Who knew? Incredible packaging, thick 180 gram vinyl, and some super striking, gorgeous weird cover art! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

Eclectic German musician Eichstaedt's many projects range from jazz keyboard grooves to free improv to Mr. Bunglized rock to bleepy electronica. The latter is what is evident on this limited-edition cd-recordable, as Bjoern experiments with washes of wheezing electronics, droning blippage, and what sound like dissonant guitar meanderings over the three lengthy tracks here. Similar in spirit to the output of the Corpus Hermeticum label, perhaps, especially the work of Kjetil Brandsdal. Very nice (hey if it wasn't we wouldn't have gotten him to send us these from Europe). He says he's already at work on his next project, apparently some sort of cold and grim solo black metal band! Can't wait to hear it.

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

SORRY. Volume 1 in 7" series of duos featuring German experimental/improv musician (and Italian suspense film fan) Eichstaedt. Side one, "House Of Horror" features Bjoern on keys and samples and Thomas Maos on guitar, creating an appropriately spooky soundscape to go along with the title. Side two, "Samuel Chillian vs. Batman (And His Mad Dogs From Transsylvania)" continues the fun with conspirator Leoon Gruenbaum.

From our eclectic, experimental German musician pal Bjoern, a new cd-r that kinda sounds like what the title suggests it might. Comes in cool perforated packaging. Limited to 50 numbered copies.

Ding, ding! (x4) Something ring a bell? That's cuz Eight Bells is the new group formed from the ashes of veteran spacerockers Subarachnoid Space, whose last album before they disbanded in 2010 was titled, Eight Bells. Since we liked that record a lot, we're happy to report that Subarachnoid Space guitarist Melynda Jackson has teamed with erstwhile Subarachnoid Space drummer Chris Van Huffel, plus bassist Haley Westeiner, to take up where Subarachnoid Space left off, this trio continuing Subarachnoid Space's latter-day trajectory into heavier and heavier territories, to the point that it makes sense that this would be recorded by Billy Anderson, and come out on Seventh Rule. And woah this is good, damn good. Mostly instrumental (even when there is singing, it's often kinda used as another instrument), and definitely progressive, with sinuous song structures and intricate epic arrangements, they play a kind of mathy, moody spacerock that at times even ventures into black metal territory - Cascadian black metal we guess, to be precise, since that's where they're based, up in the Pacific Northwest. Seriously, if you didn't know the context, there's stretches where you'd think it was a BM record for sure. And as space rock or post rock, it's definitely rockin'. Think Kinksi meets Wolves In The Throne Room... A good example of Eight Bells' dynamic, apocalyptic mathrock is how the urgent angular quickstep of track two, "Fate And Technology" takes a sudden shift into slower, quieter, more placid territory adorned by dreamy, gentle female singing, but then builds up again to sheer, near black metal blasting complete with harsh, throatripped vokills. Those vokills and vocals are both handled by Haley, but the title track does bring in guest vocalist Kris Force of Amber Asylum to add her haunting pipes to the mix, for some extra atmosphere, that track reminding us, with its scrambling riffery, of Stinking Lizveta, at first anyway, then getting seriously epic in a postrock way, 12+ minutes full of drama and majesty (and intense chops!), climaxing with thunderous drum pound and wordless high end operatic vocalizations from Force. Here and elsewhere there's droning synths, echoing effects, and a thick, muscular bass presence, part of what makes Eight Bells so heavy and propulsive. For fans of Subarachnoid Space (of course) and Liturgy and maybe the likes of Worm Ouroboros too. Recommended!!

MPEG stream: Tributaries
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A vinyl reissue of one of the best Einsturzende Neubauten recordings! Halber Mensch ('half man' in German) originally came out in 1985, at the height of the apex of punk self-immolation, pure German expressionism, and industrial theatricality. The infernal vocal chorale of the title track is about as intense as a vocal piece could ever be, without resorting to pure guttural howling. Here is it a searing repetition of an atonal plainsong, buttressed by the always unique snarl of frontman Blixa Bargeld. The repurposed metals from junkyards and constructions site which have become synonymous with Neubauten immediately appear afterwards on their anthemic single "Yu-Gung (Fuetter Mein Ego)," whose insistent rhythm works almost Gamelan-like as the principal melody to this amazing tune. It should also be pointed out that Pussy Galore, who were already heavily indebted to EN, covered this on their Sugar Shit Sharp ep! later As a grand climax to the album, Neubauten again returns to hellish imagery through the symphony of bowed metals on "Der Tod Ist Ein Dandy," where these cacophonic scrapes amass into a dramatic arc of acoustic noise that easily parallels those same constructions that David Jackman built through Organum. This is one of those seminal records that should always be in print, and one of those records that you should already have. But if not, you shouldn't pass this up!

Do you like early Einsturzende Neubauten (Kollaps, Strategies Against Architecture)? Yeah? Great; then you don't want to miss Kalte Sterne, the new collection of Einsturzende Neubauten's early 7"s, surrounded by many previously unreleased recordings. Most of these were impossible to find the first time around, and represent the beginning of the brilliant German group's (literally) metallic, Dadaist anti-music. Thirteen tracks of scraping atonal genius by the group arguably most responsible for connecting the ideas of 20th century avant-garde composers and '-isms' with the underground art-rock audience. Kalte Sterne reveals a dub sense not readily apparent on the first full length albums, as well as surprisingly well formed looks at their trademark post-Faust, homemade musique concrete. Early Einsturzende Neubauten is iconclastic, ubiquitous and absolutely unique. If you've ever wished for more early-style Einsturzende Neubauten, before they mellowed considerably and became more like 'regular music', here it is. Kalte Sterne is 'noise' in the truest and best sense, for every adventurous ear.

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It appears that as Einsturzende Neubauten near a quarter century of existence, they've set aside their cognac glasses and smoking jackets for the time being -- a good thing! Of course, that's not to say that they've returned to their early 80's groundbreaking visceral fury (see: Drawing Of Patient O.T. and Halber Mensch). No, sadly this is not the case. Like its predecessor, 2000's Silence Is Sexy, Perpetuum Mobile's focus is on subdued refinement and somber reflection with often quite beautiful percussive results. There is an overriding sense of heavy fatigue and mournfulness that resonates throughout the album, however, a particular low point of this despairing tone is Blixa Bargeld's tedious, uninspired chant in the fourth track "Selbstportrait Mit Kater" of "Life on other planets is difficult... so difficult". Had to hit the 'skip' button after his first few rounds.

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The differences between the Einsturzende Neubauten of the '80s and the Einsturzende Neubauten of the '90s are like night and day. The band's early days were spent mucking around junkyards and cold warehouses which proved to be the perfect setting for their spectacular investigations into 'the abject' through the physical abrasion of metal percussion, discordant guitars, and the pained yelp of Blixa Bargeld. These were the days of their best material, as found on such masterpieces of industrialized angst as Drawings of OT and Halber Menche. Much had been made about the fall of the Berlin Wall and Neubauten's aesthetic shift. Political allusions aside, it's quite clear that the Neubauten that produced Tabula Rasa had undergone a profound shift from their early days of blood, grit, and steel. Donning the finest Italian suits and moving with a theatrical swagger, Neubauten merely threatens to physically confront you with rhythmic intensity or the powers of horror. They've actually managed to stretch out their fading career with this strategy. If only we could all be that lucky. When they do launch into a big jackhammer rhythm as found on Tabula Rasa's "Headcleaner," their creaking joints and tired sinews don't really have it in them anymore. This reissue features a bonus disc with all of the material from the Interim and Malediction singles which came out around the same time as Tabula Rasa.

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A brilliant reissue from the seminal German industrial ensemble Einsturzende Neubauten. This album represented the first full realization of the Neubauten project, with F.M. Einheit and Marc Chung (both hailing from the underappreciated post-punk ensemble Abwarts) joining the trio of Blixa Bargeld, Alexander Hacke, and N.U. Unruh. The O.T. from the title of this record references Oswald Tschirtner, a resident of psychiatric hospital for artists, where the patient created these compulsive drawings out of the unkempt visions in his head. Such is the way the Neubauten seeks to employ sound on this record: cracked, naive, and dangerous. Found objects, stolen radio transmissions, repurposed machinery, and lots of metal bashing appear in this album, inspired as much by musique concrete juxtaposition as by punk fury. The desolate drone-centric piece "Armenia" and the propulsive "Vandium I-Ching" represent two of the extremes found on this ever-impressive album.

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Rich has the pleasure been, of late, to sit down with a new issuance from the stellar Digitalis Limited label. Sean Mccann's wobbly wonder "Flutter Oasis," and the last gem from the ever-unfolding Natural Snow Building's saga have had our ears smiling. And not least of all because they are cassettes. It seems re-aquaintance with any medium is accompanied by a degree of intentionality that peaks you to the details of the experience. And particularly in this case, the warmth of the cassette has been on display, with each of these releases huddling up close to the glowing embers of their mic settings slingshotting into the red. The effect can be quite comforting, as though panned to the far reaches are the sounds and feelings of a few angels blowing on a contact mic. We think it might be worth mentioning too, that the scientific name digitalis means "finger-like," and refers to the ease with which a flower of digitalis purpurea can be fitted over a human fingertip. If the music were fingers, and the flowers your ears, you'd be starting to get the picture. And so, with all that said, it was with obvious excitement that we received a new installment from Digitalis. And from a store favorite and friend no less, Evan of Barn Owl! Elsewhere on this list you'll find their new full length lp on the awesome Not Not Fun label from LA. Buried Light is a decidedly more droney affair than the last two Barn Owl full lengths, but still very much in keeping with their broader vocabulary. The opening track is like listening to the oscillating resonance frequencies of a massive bell breathing. And in time, its host emerges, an ambiguous and ghostly voice, weaving and wandering on broad syllables through the dense murk. On other tracks, this dynamic is extended to the accompaniment of some Tacoma-like guitar picking, giving the tape a faint western vibe. In fact there are parts of the tape that could be comfortably inserted into one of the more recent Earth records or even Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. In all cases the pace and depths of the tone relationships are entirely transporting. Evan excels in evoking the texture, pace, and scale of the elements, without attaching the songs to anything too specific. In this manner we are free to imagine them as the soundtracks to a kind of collapsed landscape where the wind of water blows ripples across a lake of sand. What is miraculous about Evan, and Barn Owl, at their most abstract and disintegrated, is the profound ambiguity of their temper. They live at the 360th degree, when you've wandered all the way to end of the light, and things start getting dark. What's more engrossing, perhaps, is you may not even remember if you started out towards the dark or the light in the first place. It's the liminal plane on which we witness the gathering of a cadre of genres; folk, metal, and drone, and watch them sculpt with the naked vibrational core of sound. It's purity, and spiritually relative qualities, align it with the antecedents of some new age music, but rather than easy listening, we might beg you to follow us out onto the thin branch of a pun and call it hard blisstening. It's what it is. We've only got fifteen of these, so act fast. After that they are gone FOREVER!

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Local horns-and-electronics duo Kyle Bruckman (oboe, English horn, analog electronics) and Ernst Karel (trumpet, analog electronics) team up with Italian experimental guitarist/electronic musician Giuseppe Ielasi for a disc of outer space, and�inner space mystery. Recorded live on tour in 2005, these five long tracks sound exactly how we might imagine a trip to the stars in some strange old rocket ship would sound. Lots of bizarre electronic chatter but also haunting beeps, bloops, rumbles and drones. And of course, what trip to the stars to explore alien civilizations would be complete without some super subtle and strangely cinematic mood music.� Not sure if that whole space mission vibe was the intention or not (probably not) but the effect is strangely compelling, and a gorgeous lowercase listen.� Haunting quavering tones drift and shimmer, like some signal being broadcast from the deepest reaches of space... engulfed here and there by�long drawn out almost Nitsch-ian horns, moaning and bleating, everywhere,�strange little glitches and buzz and flit.� Dissonant swells, ebb and flow, over a strangely lush framework of pulsing�electronics, all wrapped in swaths of white noise, rough and strangely percussive swirls of crumbing dark ambience. As the record progresses, these 'ship sounds' are joined by�Goblin-esque drones, tense cinematic streaks of electronics,�distant beeps, rumbles and resonant reverberations,�fog horn rumbles, creepy whines and whirs, sounding like strange machinery or ancient distress calls, before the record unwinds into�weird stretches of ambient flutter, alien animal sounds, crackles and chitter, whisper and swirl, like wandering through some weird new world...

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Another batch of tapes from Root Strata, this one from someone named Ekin Fil, who hails from Istanbul, and creates dark, lush landscapes of sound. Lo-fi and super intimate, the songs and sounds are super varied, from woozy looped synths to hazy, clattery, smeary shoegaze, like some hybrid of Grouper and Sunroof!, from dark strummy reverb soaked dreamfolk to hazy, washed out minimal abstract pop, from deep blurred ambient shimmer to haunting folky otherworldly drift. The sounds all seem to blur and bleed and ooze into each other, the guitars liquid, the reverb and delay transforming everything into a gauzy indistinct smear of sound, all held together by the hushed echo drenched vocals, spectral and ethereal, laced over the warm swirling murk underneath. A foresty folk, slightly gothic, a little shoegazey, shades of Zola Jesus and Grouper, of groups like Zomes and the Slaves, a haunting ephemeral ritualistic minimalism, that manages to be lush and expansive, but simultaneously, dark and intimate. So totally lovely. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!

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We were introduced to the work of Ekin Fil via a super limited cassette released on Root Strata a couple years back. Now, Students Of Decay have released the first proper album from EF, and it's a jawdroppingly gorgeous piece of slumbering drone-pop. Ekin Fil is the solo work of Turkish songstress Ekin Uzeltuzenci, who quietly waltzes behind reverberant blurs and nocturnal driftscapes. There are songs that slip in and out of existence amidst the foggy production surrounding her voice and acoustic guitar; and if you maybe think this sounds an awful lot like the work of Liz Harris, you wouldn't be that far off. Uzeltuzenci has described her work is a means of escape from the mania of her native Istanbul; and it's not just a therapeutic salve of cathartic torpor for her, she invites the audience to follow along in these dreamy, droney pieces. Like that cassette on Root Strata, this eponymous lp is quite an enchanting journey. She hypnotically strums her way through dour avant-folk songs whose melodies are entirely enshrouded in gauzy shadows, ghostly ectoplasm, and cavernous echo. No sharp edges whatsoever, but some of her songs can delve much further into the spooky than Grouper ever has. For example, there's the rocket-engine roar which girds her gasping track "Sea Holly" and the chords of "On Vanity" recall the desolate, acoustic balladeering that Bauhaus would sprinkle throughout their glam-goth bombast. Certainly for fans of Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier, The Slaves, Vestals, and of course Grouper! Yup, download card included.

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Danish noise-rocker Nicolas Kauffmann spits out a Dead C-ish free rock pummel. Guitars squeal and howl and roar into a dreamy din of chordal dissonance. Feathery, frothy soundscapes of drone-flecked brutality. The epic thirty minute final track is a slow

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There are a few people who always seem to be in the right place at the right time, in spite of themselves. Judging from the liner-notes to this anthology of his early works, Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh led one of those lives. His first public "Crossing Into The Electric Magnetic" is a documentation of the work that El-Dabh composed during his stay at the Center, and certainly has the grizzled electronic crackle and pointilist composition techniques indicative of coming from that institution. Occasionally, El-Dabh incorporates poems sung in the Arabic tradition along with the musique concrete and electronics. Really Cool.

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More twisted collaged schizophrenic cabaret French pop folk weirdness from mysterious troubadour Laurent Gerard aka El-G! Where El-G's last record was a dizzying shimmery Gainsbourg meets Animal Collective song suite, that slipped from delicate hushed French pop, to more abstract free rock weirdness to epic dense dronemusic, Capitaine Present 5 is something way more out there. On the surface, it almost sounds like one of those Sublime Frequencies collections, that just features snippets collected from the radio, short snippets, mysterious disembodied voices, a glorious barrage of constantly shifting sounds and textures, but as the record progresses, it becomes easier and easier to become lost in El-G's sound, tolling bells, thrummed bass, maniacal spoken word, bursts of noise, and tangled fractured melody, wheezing organ, delicate acoustic guitar strum, the vocals dramatic and passionate, the single song (?) that takes up the record's one playable side, shifting constantly from total chaos, to fluttery folk, to dreamy avant pop, to mysterious foreign radio play, to Residents-like art rock, to warm orchestral shimmer, to sultry smoldering torch song, to total what the fuck mashup and every possible permutation in between. It's definitely chaotic, and a bit out there, a total head phone trip for sure, but the chaos is infused with plenty of jangle, subtle hooks, some pretty vocals, and irresistible melodies, even some cinematic strings, which makes Capitaine Present 5 a fantastic, and fantastically confounding listen.

We didn't know a whole lot about El-G, aka French pop weirdo Laurent Gerard, other than he was supposed to be sort of like a twisted modern day Serge Gainsbourg, and hearing this now, that's really not that far off the mark, he even has a female foil to further cement the Gainsbourg comparison. Mix in some Animal Collective weirdness, some Kemialliset foresty folk, and you'd be getting close. French ballady folk is definitely the core of Gerard's sound, but the tracks here vary wildly, compiled as they are from a handful of super limited previous releases. But a quick sampling reveals laid back French pop, breezy and dreamy, brushed snares, subtle electronics drifting over finger picked guitars, fractured blues drenched in wheezing organ and random percussion, peppered with deep bassy throbs and grunted garbled vocals, Abstract fractured folk, soft female vocals over shimmery organs, rubbery basslines and howled male background vox, the final track of the A side builds from a folky whisper to a soaring layered drone, all buzzing tones and warbly organ, strangled guitar leads and lurching low end melodies. The rest of the record hovers close-ish to French folk and pop, but tweaks them just enough to keep it interesting, at one point converting the main riff from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" into a backdrop for some ethereal crooning. Cool stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as the softer side of freak folk and the weirder side of French pop.

Newest project from Punk Planet editor and all around nice guy Joel Schalit. While I completely wrote off his former project, The Christal Methodists (and for good reason, boring Christian bashing, Negativland-ish political punk/techno whatever) this is

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Wow, when John Zorn turns 50 he really makes a big deal about it. Umpteen concerts and commorative compact disc releases. Oh well, you're only 50 once (if you're lucky enough to make it that far). And I guess Zorn doesn't want anyone to think he's gonna be slowing down with age. So here's another one of Zorn's birthday presents to us. Seven tracks performed live at NYC's Tonic by Electric Masada -- an electric (natch) octet edition of Zorn's famed 'Jewish jazz' outfit, fully amped up with Marc Ribot's guitar, Ikue Mori's laptop electronics, Trevor Dunn's bass, Jamie Saft's keyboards, both Joey Baron and Kenny Wollesen's drums *and* Cyro Baptista's percussion. Plus of course the birthday boy himself on sax. Sounds like they'd be capable of making a lot of noise? Damn right. The obi suggests this possesses the energy of Zorn's Naked City and the mayhem of one of his Cobra projects, unleashed on the Masada songbook...and the obi could be right. Although this has its moments of delicate beauty, it's the hard rock shocks this delievers that might make it a must buy for old Zorn fans who'd like to hear a (50 year) old Zorn & co. kick some ass...

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Hard for us to describe, but easy for us to enjoy... Elegi's Sistereis is an extremely moody, haunting soundscape, dismal and a-frighted, constructed around sparse, sad piano musings set amidst eerie ambient hiss and hum. What sound like close-mic'd "field recordings" of random background creakings, crackle and clatter, which are perhaps the nervous rustlings of the pianist himself, are layered with melancholic drones. Meanwhile, the aforementioned piano carries on, so slowly, and so lovely. The whole effect is like listening in to the near-silent, wordless "internal monologue" of the piano player, suffering quietly some mental/emotional distress. This Norwegian project reminds us in a way of the British band Reigns, in that you get a sense of hearing an audio document of events that are otherwise hidden from view, and perhaps should remain hidden. Elegi also brings to mind the similar "acoustic doom" sounds on the Type label, like Svarte Greiner and Xela, of which of course we're fans. This is actually released on the Svarte Greiner guy's own label, Miasmah. The cd booklet is mysteriously evocative, with grey-toned Victorian photo collages depicting something of a dreary nautical theme, and text telling of a burial at sea... which all begins to make sense when you lean that the man behind Elegi, Tommy Jansen, supposedly has as a hobby (vocation?) diving down to explore wrecked ships in the watery depths! Depths which he evokes effectively on this disc...

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There must be something about the wondrous landscapes of Norway that seems to breed some of the most epic, gorgeously somber music around. Frigid cold and towering crags rising from the Arctic water, it's no wonder Tommy Jansen, the composer behind Elegi, is a living example of this Norwegian vision that never fails to blow us away. Varde, the title of Elegi's second album in a trilogy from the excellent Miasmah label, translates to cairn, a pile of stones usually left to mark a pathway. Which is totally appropriate considering Varde was written as an instrumental narrative retelling the adventures and hardships of the first polar explorations. With electronics, piano, quiet percussion, various field recordings and lush violin, Jansen lures the listener into a world not unlike the experience of those brave explorers: icy bleakness, uncertainty and impending doom. Shimmering drones grow and subside, slow trudging footsteps in the distance, cascading swirls of snow are lifted and thrown about by the wind. Jensen is a master at crafting an incredibly vivid atmosphere, evoking frozen memories of the desolate north, gorgeous and inspirational. Combining modern composition, ambient drones, and his love for Victorian storytelling, Jensen offers up his most accomplished and touching masterpiece, a seriously beautiful and haunting experience. Kinda like if Andrew Chalk, Goldmund and Stars of the Lid met up in the Arctic to write an epic score for the apocalypse. Super dark dreamy goodness here, we couldn't be more impressed. Already we've played this a bunch in the store, and really can't get enough of it. Varde is just one of those records where you hear something new every time you listen to it, subtle textures and details that surface from the constantly shifting background. Highly recommended for fans of washed out midnight ambience, similar to the dreamier stuff the Type label has been releasing lately, beautiful melodies laced with a sinister darkness that lurks just below the surface. Oh and, uh, just in case you couldn't tell already, we REALLY dig this album!!! Highly recommended, especially for fans of any of the other recent killer releases on the Misamah label!!

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Elegy was a one off project comprised of Alan Sparhawk of Low, Jessica Bailiff, Brian John Mitchell, Mark gartman, Jesse Beacom, Ryley Fogg, and Michael Anderson who had all come together for a 25 hour continuous drone composition that was a tribute of a mutual friend who had been murdered. Given that this performance occured in late September 2001, the proximity to 9/11 only heightened the sense of mourning and loss already loaded into the performance. "Radio Broadcasts" however does not feature any of that 25 hour piece, rather this is a condensation of that music recorded for a local radio station in Duluth, Minnesota. Unfortunately quick at 28 minutes, this indie-rock chamber ensemble for electric and acoustic guitars, cello, electronics, percussion, keyboards, hurdy gurdy, and dulcimer unfurls a gorgeous piece of eternal music on par with the organic dronescaping of Stars Of The Lid. A touchingly beautiful tribute.

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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.

After about ten years of existence, and a bunch of limited vinyl-only documents, including a fairly recent LP with Nana April Jun, also on Touch, the mysterious dronological entity Eleh releases their first ever compact disc. Eleh's aesthetic of low frequency, (often) low volume drones fits in well on the Touch label. On Location Momentum, there's an hour of Eleh's vibrations, five tracks, all but one quite lengthy, some barely audible. At low volumes, Eleh's "minimalist noise" will slowly, almost imperceptibly insinuate itself into your consciousness, it becomes part of the surrounding sonic environment, instead of something you're specifically listening to. Track one, "Heleneleh", is a subtle, slowly evolving, stretched-out presence, less heard than felt. A hum, a throb, a wavering drone. It's meditative, like a subliminally sensed Buddha machine loop, under a microscope... But turn up the volume, and it becomes physical, starts squeezing your head just a little bit. Near the end of this 20+ minute track, before it fades, Eleh decides to start modulating the pitch up and down, getting jiggy with it Eleh style, or maybe just saying, something's happening, almost done, waving goodbye. But really it's only the beginning. The next track, the shortest one here, does a backwards-sounding whip-whip-whip for about two and half minutes. It becomes lulling quite quickly, and you might wish it was still doing its slowly stuttering thing when track 3, "Circle One: Summer Transcience" starts up, utilizing a temporarily annoying high pitched test-tone sound, but that's soon joined by deeper pulsations, and begins to get interesting. This one's for the Ryoji Ikeda fans out there! A subtle bassy thump-thump-thump picks up the pace, your heartbeat perhaps quickening along with it, the test tone become more of a buzz, some white noise wind sound also enters the mix in the background, and with such simple elements Eleh creates a compelling 13 minute, 33 second composition, for those willing to take the time to absorb it. Actually, a lot of this disc reminds us of Ikeda, also Alva Noto most definitely, and Mika Vainio and the like. The disc continues on with two more tracks of similar length, but their own identities, some elements louder and more overt than what's come before, some more "clicky" in Geiger counter fashion, yet again, there's a spooky, "is that sound coming from my stereo or outside or somewhere upstairs or inside my brain???" aspect to these. As with so many Touch releases, recommended!

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