[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Seems like no matter what, there's always some obscure gem left out there to be dug up and reissued, you've never heard it all. Here's the latest example, a reissue of a 1976 album with a promising title and equally alluring cover art. Electronic Mind Waves by Italy's mysterious Elektrikus (aka one Andrea Centazzo) is indeed pretty awesome, as a lone offering naturally touching on both the traditions of Italian prog and Germanic "kosmische" electronics, especially heavily influenced it would seem by the latter. While over the years Centazzo has apparently made other albums, of improvised avant-garde jazz, collaborating with the likes of Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, and ROVA, under his one-off Elektrikus guise (as might be expected) he concentrated on synthesizer-based keyboard music, creating hypnotic (and sometimes haunting) electro-acoustic soundscapes of abstract droning synths and sequencer patterns, also employing tinkling bells, tape effects, and on one track, upright bass. There's eight tracks here, 38 minutes of his shimmering, ringing, burbling sounds that wouldn't sound out of place on the score to some strange sci-fi flick. Fans of Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze should definitely check this out... For an Italian comparison, maybe some Franco Battiato? It also reminds us of a variety of more current underground acts, at moments like Vibracathedra Orchestra, or Kemialliset Ystavat, or something on Spectrum Spools, perhaps! Kinda disappointed that this turned out to be a cd-r, though. We thought it was a real cd at first, it's in a jewel case and totally pro-printed with color artwork and all. Not sure why they didn't make it a real cd (and it's NOT a bootleg, Ictus is Centazzo's own label, started in the '70s and reactivated recently). Oh well, still neat to have!

MPEG stream: Frequencer Departure - Flying At Daybreak
MPEG stream: First Wave
MPEG stream: Power Hallucination

One of a whole mess of new releases from UK tape label the Tapeworm (we'll get to the others on the next couple lists), Circling Above is the latest from a longtime aQ faves, Elektro Guzzi, who are in fact a live techno band, as in they're a proper actual band, not a DJ or some studio whiz, a real band with real instruments, drums bass and guitar, who make a super tranced out techno music, without loops or drum machines or computers, it's actually a live group of real humans playing real instruments, and making music that sounds like it would be right at home on Kompakt or Raster-Noton. Beyond the concept, which is amazing, the music is pretty fantastic as well, a mesmerizing mix of woozy cyclical melodies and muted pulsing rhythms, total late night bliss out techno, that sounds digital but is purely analog, apparently even the label didn't believe this stuff was actually being played until they watched a live rehearsal video. No loops, no overdubs, but somehow, it still sounds loopy and dubby, hypnotic and heady, all the sounds wreathed in an organic crackle, the sound raw and organic, but somehow sculpted into something that sounds impossible electronic. We love these guys, and these three tracks are just more of what we love. Everyone who Elektro Guzzi's Live P.A. record, are gonna want this too. And if you've yet to hear these guys, check it out, you won't be sorry. And like all Tapeworm tapes, extremely limited!

Chet Scott might not be a household name, but for all you dark ambient / drone / found sound freaks out there it probably will be soon. Not only does he run the Glass Throat label, which is responsible for releasing lots of gorgeously dark and drone-y records, including both records by the post-Noisegate outfit Beneath The Lake (whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this list), but he also performs as Ruhr Hunter, whose last record of desolate post industrial drones and ambient soundscapes we absolutely loved. With the Elemental Chrysalis, Scott, is joined by James Woodhead, and together, the two explore a curious world of dense drones, forest mythology, elemental symbolism and folky flutter. Like the best of Ruhr Hunter Lustmordian rumble mixed with sun dappled and summery forest folk, lilting melodies, gently strummed guitars, simple pointilist piano, throat-singing style vocals, pastoral soundscapes of fingerpicked guitar, spare tribal rhythms and swoonsome bowed strings, all above a shimmery backdrop of warm reverberating chordal whir, all constructed from acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, cello, organ, thunder sheet, theremin, bowed sitar, Egyptian hand drums, environmental samples, Brazilian surdo drum, bodhran. electric bass, energy chimes (!), wooden flutes, black cat ocarina (!!), harmonica, mountain dulcimer, voice and hermit thrush sample (!!!). Completely and beautifully tranquil and mesemerizing.

MPEG stream: Mourning Dew Of The Fallen Leaf
MPEG stream: Oceans Wreathed In Flame

Finally, the return of the Elemental Chrysalis, the duo of Chett Scott (aka Ruhr Hunter, he also runs Glass Throat Recordings) and James Woodhead, who were responsible for The Calocybe Collection, one of our favorite discs of 2005. A sprawling woodlandscape of dark ominous dronemusick and fluttery forest folk. It's been 3 years but once you hear The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion, you'll understand what took so long. A gorgeously packaged double disc set, looooooong tracks, four songs on each disc, the shortest clocking in at 7:32, the longest at 26:55. Gone is much of the drone, leaving their sound much more folky, the focus on the strings, plucked and strummed, buzzing and humming, the sound a mysterious mystical crawl, foresty, funereal, dark and dolorous and dreamlike. The first nearly 15 minutes of the opening track consist of the same acoustic melody, repeated over and over, like some magical mantra, and it works somehow, the repetition trancelike, the subtle variations, propelling the track forward. Eventually, the track spreads out, the vocals ghostly moans, the strums become more abstract, the sound underpinned by haunting shimmers and whirs. While these guys do get lumped in with the free folk or freak folk of forest folk movements, on The Dark Path, they are definitely something more akin to classic seventies folk. It could be some lost disc from a mysterious UK hippy commune in 1971. Opening for Comus and The Incredible String Band. This is some serious Wickerman shit. But without all the silliness or overt weirdness. The Elemental Chrysalis have created timeless folkmusic. A sort of foresty country music. Bits of twang definitely inform the band's dark wistful threnodies. The pace is lugubrious, the sound is sprawling and soporific, the voices drawled to the extent that they often sound like just another instrument. And the instrument list again is extensive and massive, a handful we'd never even heard of, but the band don't do the usual, everything and the kitchen sink, instead, they are employed subtly and judiciously, so much that you could be forgive for believing it to be just voice and guitar and a bit extra ambience. There are a few moments, especially on the second disc, where the band stretch out and craft some serious sonic soundscapes, but even then, they tend to drift above that same gorgeous forest floor folk flutter. A gorgeously languorous countrified folk flecked slowcore, that will no doubt appeal to all the various folks mentioned above, but should also appeal to fans of later Earth, and anyone into dark beauty and haunting musical mystery. Fantastic packaging, an oversized thick cardstock 6 panel fold over sleeve, green and black, stunning cover art, linernotes and credits, the cds mounted on nubs on two of the panels...

MPEG stream: In Through A Desert Door Of A Wooded Heart
MPEG stream: Procession Of Burning Flowers
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We've mentioned it before, but we love it when people we know make amazing records, and we're then available to share them with all of you. Such is the case with this, the oddly monikered Elfmilk, the project of aQ customer/pal Eddie, who hails from Mexico, and who is solely responsible for the gorgeous sounds to be found on Extragalactic Distance, a collection of abstract ambience, deep drones, and experimental rhythmic minimalism. Beginning with the brief minute long intro "Spiral", a smoldering bit of crumbling distorted piano, and shimmering overtone rich drift, Elfmilk reveals itself as something more raw and immediate than much of the ambient/drone/electronic music we hear. It's super well crafted, and lush and lovely, but it's still raw, and rough around the edges, which makes the sounds more warm, the vibe more human and organic, instead of sounds, these feel like songs, long tones shimmer and undulate, melodies seem to slowly evaporate into a haze of high end whir, scattered throughout are fragmented rhythms, dubby and abstract, disembodied pulses and ghostly beats, a sort of electrokrautrock that seems to be gradually coming apart, like some old space station left in orbit, the various pieces drifting off into the ether, some into the heart of the sun, some into the cold black void, here liquid squelches demarcate loose swirling melodic tangles, and thick swells of feedback wreathed buzz, acoustic guitars let loose spare notes, that flutter like leaves falling from trees, or mysterious detritus floating through space. In a few places, the sounds go haywire, explosive bursts of almost jungle like rhythms, or exploding firecrackers woven into frantic beats, but even then the sounds surrounding these blasts are warm and whirling and sweetly soothing, while elsewhere, the sounds slip into dubby Portishead like low slung downtempo grooves, culminating in the 14+ minute epic "Obsidian", a constantly shifting soundscape that plays out like a soundtrack to some mysterious art film, swirling electronics, lush textures, fractured effects, pulsing synths, the sound seeming to shift ever minute or two, finishing off with a stretch of grinding downtuned lo-fi dirgery, which leads directly into the closing number, a fantastically blissed out sprawl of super distorted melodies, all hazy and spacey and dreamlike, but wrapped in crunchy buzz and hissy static, which eventually slips away, leaving lush lustrous sonic swells, lovely hushed computer vox and what sounds like field recording, all woven into a softly undulating bit of dreamlike drift. Fantastic stuff. Highly recommended.

MPEG stream: Degenerate Dwarf (Mix C)
MPEG stream: Rave Tonight Near Alfa Centauri!!!
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MPEG stream: Type Ia Supernova

One of two new Tapeworm cassettes on this week's list, the other being the truly strange Autodigest recording of 40 years of bootleg recordings, and then there's this, the latest from Swedish artist Leif Elggren, who has consistently delighted and baffled us with recordings that ranged from totally confusional high concept ultra minimalism, to gorgeous dark dronemuic, to full on NOISE, not to mention lots of writings and art projects, the most infamous being the creation of the 'imaginary' country, he dubbed the Kingdoms Of Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV), a country which just so happens to have Elggren as its king! All Animals Are Saints is a collection of live recordings, the first of which is called "The Life Of The Plants" which features Elggren discussing experiments that found scientists placing electrodes and various recording devices on plants to record their electrical fields, resulting in, a series of strange glitched out minimal soundscapes, which pepper Elggren's talk. A staticky sound field of muted grinding rumbles, stuttery clicks and scrapes, fluttery bits of low end, a distinct drone component, lots of hiss and shimmer, and subtly swooping effects and glitches. As Elggren's story about the experiments continue, the scientists introduce stress into the plants' lives resulting in sounds that are much more abrasive, more rhythmic, a dense cloud of skittery streaks of high end and crackling sheets of skree. Hard to say if we're meant to believe the veracity of Elggren's storytelling, there are plenty of sound artists who have explored the electrical output of plants, or if it's just another high concept art piece, either way it's quite entertaining, and the sounds are definitely fantastic. The piece on the B-side is called "Swedenborg's Organ", and again begins as a talk, about a man called Swedenborg, from the 1700's, a musician, a writer, Elggren 'plays' a recording of someone playing Swedenborg's organ, the sound of creaking floorboards, squeaks and moans, thumps and rumbles, precedes a truly haunting, seriously fucked up stretch of slowly unfurling, totally abstract, sort-of-organ music, it's hard to describe, notes moan and wheeze, partial melodies crumble in slow motion, a stumbling, lurching, slow motion, minor key lament, very reminiscent of the recordings of Gurdjieff, but with the addition of those never ending creaks and groans, it's very much like a busted organ being played on a rickety old pirate ship, and sounds very much like something Nurse With Wound could have conjured up! Like all Tapeworm stuff, extremely limited, this one TO JUST 250 COPIES!!!

In playing with ideas of royality and rewriting the fundamental laws of creation with his ongoing series of conceptualizations, sound installations, actions, and photographs, Swedish artist Leif Elggren posits epistemological inquiries about how the utterances of power (essentially just a signifier) are communicated and valued. Such inquiries come in the form of absurd hypothetical situations which Elggren realizes with an aesthetic language that alternates between that of a royal edict and that of the village idiot. Elggren's most notable experiment has been the ongoing fictional country he founded with C.M. von Hausswolff called The Kingdoms of Elgaland / Vargaland, which operates in between country borders, in digital space, in dreams, etc. "Extraction" is a bit more of a convoluted proposition for Elggren, and is one that cannot be taken at face value. Elggren states that "this basic sound material was recorded in my biological mother's uterus with my not yet developed teeth used as a fundamental and simple recording device a few days before my birth. This sound material was kept recorded and hidden until recently inside one of my wisdom teeth, but has now been brought to daylight and exposure... For best results: load this CD in your CD player, confirm that sound is coming out through the speakers, and then just leave the room. When you come back everything will be totally changed." No, the sound is not the sound of his mother's uterus; it appears more like the unfolding of a complex series of overlapping electrical fields, whose disturbances, flanges, and gradual fluctuations coalesce into a potentially dangerous sea of electricity. "Extraction" remains a very stoic construction of a very pure sound, but will it change everything in Aquarius records if I were to leave this on and step outside the shop for an hour? What would change? To what degree would things change? How? I would say that those questions become the crux of Elggren's oeuvre, with all of the obtuse soundsculptures and royal trinkets built from tin cans being merely the residues of thought.

RealAudio clip: Extraction (excerpt 1)
RealAudio clip: Extraction (excerpt 2)

It's a great to see that Ash International re-issued the "Ung" album from the Swedish conceptual art trio of Leif Elggren (co-founder of the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland with CM von Hausswolff), Per Jonsson, and Kent Tankred. Originally "Ung" was released on vinyl by the oddball label Radium 226.5 -- which released scuzz rock from Union Carbide Productions and the Black Snakes, as well as expressive drone work from Phauss and Zbigniew Karkowski (sounds like Andee's tUMULt Laboratories, eh?). Featuring amplified ovens which oozed with spilt porridge, 27 girls dressed in white, and sledge hammers, "Ung" is an evocative acoustic drone record brigding the more conceptual tone float of Stockhausen's "Microphonie" and the visceral metallic screech of Organum. Very good.

Swedish conceptualists Leif Elggren and Thomas Liljenberg have published "Experiments With Dreams," a book which collects a number of outlandish letters to politicians, film stars, and business leaders, positing absurdist questions and claiming that the "Two Thin Eating One Fat" appears to be a much more personal documentation of Elggren's and Liljenberg's dream communication, as they have recorded themselves quietly mumbling meandering narratives which are marked by strange political rhetoric and the repeated phrase "let me in." Thick metallic drones, distant pounding drums, and rhythmic exercises with a piezo buzzer accompany and at times interrupt the ongoing spoken murmur. While all of these recordings found on "Two Thin Eating One Fat" were originally produced for various collaborative installations and performances, there is remarkable consistency to this collection which articulates the absurdist intellect behind this artistic pairing.

RealAudio clip: The Animanist
RealAudio clip: Lebed Rules

San Francisco's The Mallard called it quits recently; they being something of a weirdo outlier of drone-rock + fuzz-pop on the beloved Castle Face label. That said, they were long one of our personal favorites on Castle Face, given their charmingly stoned take on The Pin Group or Bailter Space, or hell even Stereolab for that matter. Thankfully, this was not the end of the creative spirit for those who left the band. The Mallard's frontwoman Greer McGettrick has re-christened herself Eline Cout, delivering her first set of recordings in a micro-edition slab of vinyl on Pretty Penny Records. While there are hints of The Mallard's lo-fi dreamy droniness are found throughout the Eline Cout tracks, this is starkly mechanical album of analog synth crunch, noise-pulse rhythms, and murky industrial strategies circa 1982. McGettrick quips on the back of the record that this is "to be listened to loudly in one room, while working on a monotonous task in another." Thirteen untitled tracks of quasi-instrumental tracks for chiming monotone guitars, bass-throb, primitive synths, and drums with strange / strangled tape-splice interjections of stolen voices, found sounds, and other utterances that may be confused as lyrics. While there is a certain adherence to structure, McGettrick is stripping away all of the melody from what she brought to The Mallard, engaged in a similar punk deconstructionist adventure that Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert began in their Dome recordings. Match that with the squalid noise-junk dourness of Maria Zerfall (seriously, look her up!) and the tumbled-rock percussion of Mars, and there's something close to Eline Cout. Super limited pressing of 100 copies with each album sporting a unique woodcut print of a 10x10 inch square grid, with one square taken away during each pass through the printing press, amounting to different grid configuration cover art for each piece of vinyl. And, each record includes the wooden square removed for the printing of that particular cover, in a little baggie. We've only got a handful of these! A very cool record all around!

MPEG stream: Track 1
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In the early days of 1980, Severed Heads was a proper group, with principle engineer Tom Ellard accompanied at various times by Richard Fielding and Garry Bradbury. So when Ellard sporadically recorded his own solo work during this time period, he released it under his own name. By 1983 or so, Severed Heads was wholly under his control. That said, the Tom Ellard solo works do not fall far from the creative / aesthetic tree of Severed Heads - agitprop electronics, tape-loop errata, skewed post-punk detours, and the occasionally beautiful electro-pop melody tossed in for good measure. Eighties Cheesecake was a cassette of Ellard's that came right on the heels of a short-lived publishing venture called Dogfood Production System, which kicked out four lps from the eccentric community of bleak Aussie post-punk in 1981 but was unable to pay back the $5000 loan, thus forcing him to discontinue that venture. So, he (and Severed Heads) went back to dubbing cassettes through his cottage industry Terse Tapes. Jump forward some 30 years, and an older, more cynical Ellard discovered somebody selling the Eighties Cheesecake cassette online "for a stupid amount of money." His immediate reaction was to crank out an unlimited cdr edition of the cassette. Part out of the desire to confuse / frustrate the populace, part out of necessity to trim down the amount of material to fit onto vinyl, Ellard's recapitulation of Eighties Cheesecake contains only some of the material from that aforementioned cassette, with ancillary tracks from another cassette entitled Snappy Carrion, and previously abandoned tracks that got surgically stitched back together. No matter how you slice it, the Dark Entries release of Eighties Cheesecake is a corker or an album. These are punchy, taut electro-tracks with scabs of culture jamming samples, cheeky attitudes, and hyperbolic anxiety. Some of the tracks found on this version were later included in the Vinyl On Demand boxset of early Severed Heads experiments; though what Dark Entries released is entirely of the industrial pop vernacular. It's notable that Ellard dots the album with the iconic TB303, the bass-sequencer that was a failure for Roland for its intended use but later became the signature instrument for acid house and Detroit techno. For all of the acclaim that was put on the instrument throughout the years, Ellard seeths that "it was the worst piece of shit" in the liner notes. Piss and vinegar aside, Eighties Cheesecake makes for an exquisite revisitation!

MPEG stream: Anthem 82
MPEG stream: Mount
MPEG stream: Our Work

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

SORRY. Seems foolish to write that much about this even though it's AWESOME. It's limited to only 90 copies, it's already out of print, so all you need to know is it's Jon from Barn Owl solo, guitars, Fender Rhodes, harmonica, trumpet, harmonium and flute, all woven into a beautifully creepy expanse of slow burning twang flecked drone. Not all that far removed from more modern Earth, but much murkier and way more ominous. Elm manages to be sweetly sinister, darkly brooding, and HEAVY without being heavy. It's all about the drone, and Elm manage to explore all sorts of dronemusick here, from soaring high end ragas, to glistening glimmering sun dappled shimmer, to crumbling downtuned buzz to spare spidery drift. This stuff is awesome. And beautiful. Seems like such a shame to make it so limited. So for now, at least a handful of you will get lucky enough to snag one of these. If you want to be one of those lucky ones, best act fast.... Gorgeous packaging, cool skeleton forest drawing, the cd and sleeve, in a silver paper outer pouch, each one hand stamped with Elm written beneath the stamp in cursive. So nice!

MPEG stream: Dawn Unveils The Golden Thread
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Brand new disc of narcotic psychedelic somnambulant guitar drift from Elm, aka Jon Porras, one half of similarly sonically inclined duo Barn Owl, and also one of your faithful aQuarians. Whereas past missives from Elm were brooding and minimal, they crept and crawled and oozed and sprawled, Nemcatacoa immediately sounds more epic, more song based instead of sound based, channeling both the slow burn guitar drone of groups like SUNNO))) and Vulture Club and Fear Falls Burning, as well as the epic post rock build of groups like Godspeed. The sound is much closer to live Barn Owl, humid and hazy and HEAVY, distortion wreathing all of the melodies, there's even some drums, buried way down in the mix, offering up a skeletal framework for Porras' blackened guitarscapes. It's not all heavy and dense though, some of the tracks are breathlessly lovely, spacious and spare, the notes drifting weightlessly, strung together by hazy contrails of reverb and soft focus feedback, hushed and reverent and meditative. But often those quiet moments splinter into heaving swells of crumbling distortion, or arcing streaks of burnished black melody. The sound is humid and heady, a constantly shifting dronescape, that goes from barely there folk flutter to blurred buzz drenched haze and back again. So awesome. Definitely has us excited for the forthcoming Barn Owl lp as well... As always, SUPER LIMITED, packaged in a cool arigato style screen printed cardstock sleeve, with wolves and trees and an animal skull, all printed in metallic silver ink. Nice!

MPEG stream: Nemcatacoa
MPEG stream: In The Shadow Of Red Rock
MPEG stream: Silver Dust In Moonlight

Second solo record from our very own Jon Porras, half of dronefolk duo Barn Owl, after his first disc on Digitalis, Bxogonoas, sold out in a matter of days. This one is crazy limited too, so if you want one, better be quick. Woven Into Light is more of the glorious same, a druggy, bleary eyed hybrid of slow shimmery free folk and deep minimal dronemusick, taking later period Earth somewhere much dreamier and darker. Muted twang and deep smoldering shimmer, all stretched out in diaphanous sheets across heavy clouded moonlit skies. Spidery tendrils of skeletal guitar spread out like branches on leafless trees, but rather than sounding wintry, Porras wreathes his guitars in soft billows of warm whir, gauzy and lightly blurred, where other bands might turn these downtuned tones into something doomy, Porras lets them drift wraithlike, the sound windswept and barren, the sound of flickering lights above the never ending expanse of desert. Occasionally, the guitars wind into thick sinewy streaks of coruscating buzz, spitting sparks but still wreathed in a halo or reverb and delay, soft whispery strum transformed into squalls of muted psychguitar and slow shifting almost symphonic buzz. The sound touches on some familiar territory, Sunroof!, Fear Falls Burning, Earth, Nadja, Birchville Cat Motel, and the like, there's some hints of Morricone, Scenic, but Elm most definitely occupies it's own magical mysterious sonic space. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. and if past releases are any indication, these will sell out quick, and there's a good chance this might be the last copies we ever see...

MPEG stream: Rising Smoke Woods
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Live performances by Andrew Chalk are incredibly rare. The man just doesn't seem to like to travel; but earlier in 2011, Chalk ventured to Paris for a collaborative concert with Timo Van Luijk, a likeminded Belgian composer crafting similarly spectral drones and impressionist soundscapes. While we were not so lucky to have been in Paris for that show, the collaboration between the two must have been fruitful, as they recorded this set of lilting instrumentals, hushed psychedelic ragas, and softened minimalism under the moniker Elodie. Echos Pastoraux seems to lean more towards Chalk's sound, especially after his recent push towards quietly rendered improvisations blossoming from his signature dronemuzik on Ghost Of Nakhodka and Violin By Night. Gentle plucks on a koto or an acoustic guitar meander through field recordings of birds and rain, giving way to more harmonic pieces of interwoven melody that sounds like french horn (or maybe an oboe, or maybe an analogue synth, or maybe a harmonium, or maybe some combination) whose overtones shimmer and flutter into quietly hypnotic clouds of soft buzz and thrum. Any number of these tracks could have been extracted from a private ritual performed by Chalk and Van Luijk; and while such could be said for any of the Jewelled Antler releases or any of the ancillary projects of Kemialliset Ystavat, Elodie's quiet drones, acoustic impression, smoke, shadow, and maudlin atmospheres are hardly anywhere near the 'freak folk' camp. This is much closer to what Akio Suzuki has done, although there are plenty of flourishes in the production that gives evidence of the hands of Andrew Chalk being at work. As a result, it's still spellbinding, like pretty much everything that Chalk has ever touched. Just 400 copies!

La Lumiere Parfumee marks the second collaboration between longtime aQ favorite Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik as Elodie. Chalk's vocabulary of the evocative, arcane, and hypnotic drone has seduced many over the years; but recently Chalk has been pulling back the shroud of mystery that envelops much of his long-form pieces of impeccable minimalism (e.g. Sumac, East Of The Sun, Vega, etc.), revealing the instrumental backbone to his drone-supreme. While not a drone album in the slightest, La Lumiere Parfumee is covered with Chalk's fingerprints, as noted through the album's refined sense of reductionism and that achingly poetic melancholy which drips from every sustained note and hushed passage. Van Lujik and Chalk work with a wide assortment of instruments, although on any given track, there's only three or four quietly orbiting each other. Through the sparse, non-linear interplay of guitar, bass, gongs, flutes, clarinet, percussion, and electronics, Van Lujik and Chalk utter amorphous structures that occasionally flicker with the ghost of a muffled Movietone number or something from Circle's Miljard, both of which would have already been sun bleached and stoned to the point of radical abstraction. We're probably more smitten by the piano and electronic excursions, which lean towards a Satie-inspired ambience over the loping impressionism through bass and guitar, but all of this is played with a spellbinding sadness, accompanied by small tactile events that sound like hapless shuffling through fallen leaves or the rustling of century old newspapers. Very handsomely packaged in/with Andrew Chalk's always impressive, hand-fabricated artwork.

MPEG stream: Mirage
MPEG stream: La Voix Du Lac

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

SORRY. SORRY. With the datapanic in year zero amounting to next to nothing (just a lot of government money spent), the countdown series by Raster / Noton to the year 2000 may seem a little anticlimatic... especially since the last disc arrived in the middle of January 2000. Fortunately, the musical content of the finale completes the brilliant and nearly perfect series on a rather bleak note. Coil's contribution to the countdown series is recorded under their Elph moniker, whose 1994 release "Worship The Glitch" was the metaphoric precursor to this series as well as such digital fuckery by Oval, Pan Sonic, Ryoji Ikeda, etc... Coil's menace, which was oddly lacking on the "Musick To Listen To In The Dark", returns as creepy lunar drones shift into an oppressive digital dirge and followed by a recombination of contemporary digital skitter with 1960's concrete / academic bleeping.

It's been three years since we last heard from Matthew Cooper, aka Eluvium, and that record, Similes, found Cooper mixing it up a bit, adding vocals, and transforming his Eno like shimmery drift into something more songlike, reminding us at the time of Black Heart Procession. But here on full length number seven, Cooper returns to the sound of his earlier records, like 2007's Copia, creating a lush, hushed landscape of cinematic ambience, minimal and melancholy, long sweeping expanses of synth shimmer floating ghostlike beneath stately piano chords, all wreathed in a wistful haze, but tempering this wistful drift with some seriously dark brood. The opener tugs at the heartstrings, and once again has us wondering why Cooper isn't in Hollywood scoring blockbusters, but then the tone shifts a bit, the follow up track adding some shadow, some sonic pathos, haunting, near symphonic swells, washed out and ethereal, as lovely as the opener, but slightly downcast, which leads directly into the brief dark sprawl of "By The Rails" which finds Cooper giving Stars Of The Lid a run for their money, unfurling a seriously dark bit of droned out thrum, rife with minor key melodies, and churning low end textures, all smeared into a blur of shadowy shimmer, and overlaid with soft sheets of static and distant keening melodies, fantastically murky and moving, an anomaly in Cooper's oeuvre maybe, but it had us hankering for more, and embracing the sonic shadows when they do surface. The rest of the first disc unwinds dreamily, long swaths of soft noise drift dissipates into a gorgeous stretch of solo piano, which gives way to another dreamlike expanse of crystalline piano, this time wreathed in muted rumbles, and slow shifting textures, again, super cinematic and moving. Finally the final track on the first disc adds some rhythmic static and some softly corrosive crunch to the proceedings, the whole thing building to an almost Godspeed-like coda. Disc two begins with a surprisingly noisy bit of ambience, delicate pointillist piano floats weightless in clouds of thick crumbling buzz, cascading sheets of distortion smoothed out into soft swirls of blurred blackened shimmer, the end result a dreamily noisy bit of dreamy drift. That noisiness seems to have bled into the rest of the record, at least a few tracks, with Cooper's usual haunting hush, augmented by thick sheets of shoegazey thrum, but still peppered with passages of delicate solo piano, or whisper like moody minimalism, the record closing with a brief bit of gristled soft noise, and then a sprawling stretch of stately dreaminess, warm fluid piano drifts atop long shimmering tones, and vocals surface for the first time, transforming the warm, wistful ambience, into a haunting dream-drone lullaby. Gorgeous.

MPEG stream: Don't Get Any Closer
MPEG stream: Warm
MPEG stream: Rain Gently
MPEG stream: Happiness

So in the latest issue of the Wire, David Keenan was on to something with his cultural study of what he's calling 'hypnogogic pop' to define connections between the likes of Emeralds, The Skaters, Ariel Pink, Zola Jesus, Pocahaunted, and others. He argues that these bands draw from a fictional reading of the late '70s and early '80s, that extracts an aura of that time period without a direct revisionism of any particular style. It would be a stretch to qualify Emaciator as 'pop' but certainly on this brilliant cassette self-released on Monorail Trespassing, Emaciator does fit within the hypnogogic definition of a half-awake / half-dreaming and half-remembering / half-forgetting sensibility. The psychic birthing place for this album would have been sometime in the late '70s and would stand as Jon Borges fictional historicism of what braintuning cassettes should have sounded like instead of insipid new age wishy-washy-ness. Sure, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and Harmonia had generated a like-minded ambience through mellotron and guitar; and minimalists like Roland Kayn, Yoshi Wada, and LaMonte Young deconstructed composition into an unrepentant drone; but the psychedelia of the former rarely melded with the rigor of the latter. And here is where Emaciator fills in the historical gap, producing these two linear shots of deep cosmic dronemusik. The first side gradually builds out of analogue synthesis with swelling pulses of low end frequencies bristling against a meandering melody which hovers like a mirage in the distance. The second side is even more meditative, with a steady arc of sound which emerges like an arctic sunrise in wintertime, peeking over the blackened horizon only to sink back as a sunset. Emaciator's work seems to be smoothing out more and more, leaving an increasing gap between this work and the noise alter-ego Pedestrian Deposit. Both are great projects and should be checked out! Appease is a limited edition 22 minute cassette in an edition of 125 copies. These will not last.

Defeat is set of recordings that date back to 2007, around the same time as the seminal Emaciator record Reflection which was transitioning from the blistered noise aggression of his earliest days to the more glacial drifts of his recent output. Jon Borges (the man behind Emaciator, Pedestrian Deposit, and the Monorail Trespassing empire) alluded to this as something like trance-goth noise; and that's pretty accurate. An overblown slab of MB / Broken Flag-ish hiss and distortion acts as the groundwork to the first side of this cassette, with a minor-key two-note melody from an equally overblown synth lilts beneath the surface of noise as if it were the sad remains of a small plant getting fried by the urban desert sun. The flip side retains the same hostile noise underbelly with an insistent squarewave arpeggiation that mechanically scrapes into the surface of that noise. Borges intertwines this throbbing noise with another round of downer melodies - rudimentary yes, but effectively cold bedroom noise hypnosis for sure. Defeat is a 35 minute program altogether and stands as another impressive outing for Emaciator. Oh yeah, it's limited to 125 copies.

Emaciator is the work of LA floorcore miserablist Jon Borges, who previously spat out gnarled cassettes galore as Pedestrian Deposit and Monorail Trespassing; and as Emaciator he's got a couple releases on Students Of Decay and Not Not Fun. But damn, this is the one for sure as Borges channels the psychic wasteland of Southern California through these four sides of vinyl for dour drones laced with ghostly melodies and grimly rendered distortion. The first side could be the logical extension of the shortened program that Emeralds gave us on Solar Bridge with an earthmoving hum emanating throughout the track amidst the linear movement of radioscopic static and a mournful loop of descending melodies. Throughout the track, these elements intertwine, build, fade, collapse, resurface, and self-immolate all at once. Quite stunning. Side B radiates with a fluorescent glow of simmering white noise softened just enough to take the edge off while uneasy rippled of low end frequencies push to the surface. The third side gets far more toxic in the blistering analog synth tones pushed through distortion boxes, but Borges still manages to push forward one of his urgent yet depressive phasing tones through the heavy wall of static. Very much on par with the classic Broken Flag sound. The fourth is a reprise of the first side (get it, the title is Reflection), with that looping melody at first appearing like a Basinski piece of hypnogogia, but gradually Borges suffocates that loop through at atomizing cascade of distortion. One of the most exhilarating if tragic pieces of noise+drone we've heard in quite a long time. Limited to a mere 300 copies!

The weird thing about this wonderfully weird collaboration, between NYC's premier avant free folk tribalists and legendary German progrock/krautrock combo Embryo, is that it doesn't sound all that different from what we might have expected a new NNCK record to sound like. Not sure what that says, either the two groups were absolutely perfectly in sync, or NNCK are masterful channellers of classic Krautrock jams, or NNCK stole everything they know from Embryo and their sonic brethren, or Embryo are the true masters, aligning themselves with the manic primal tribal sound of NNCK's percussive rituals. Hardly mattters, whichever way you slice it, this record is stunning. Dense and lush, and packed solid with strange and wonderfuls sounds, tribal rhythms, chimes, woodblocks, drum kit, hand drums, hand claps, all sorts of buzzing strings, what sounds like sitars and harpsichords and autoharps, woodwinds, flutes and recorders, and vocals, an impossible array of chanting and moaning, gargling, mumbling, humming, whistling and singing in tongues. Dreamy super melodic grooves give way to full on Wicker Man pagan insanity which further gives way to some clattery free jazz minimalism but always returning to that transcendental tribalism we just can't get enough of. If Embryo add anything to the mix, it's a warmth and melodicism that sometimes seems to be missing from a a lot of the more abstract NNNCK jams. Folks who dug NNCK's recent Qvaris will most certainly find this to their liking as it sounds like a much more dense, much more melodic, much more vibrant exploration and expansion of the songs on that record. And we LOVED that record, so that should tell you something! The more we listen to these songs, the more we think it might not be such a bad idea for this NNCK / Embryo hybrid to just BE the new NNCK, those No Neck guys ought to just ask those Embryo guys to join the band, what the hell, the more the merrier, and judging from this one time jam, the thought of these guys moving forward aas a single unit, and actively exploring the realms of inner and outer musical space, is almost too much for us to handle.

MPEG stream: Wieder Das Erste Mal
MPEG stream: After Marja's Cats

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

SORRY. Not that many of these on stock, we're afraid to say... and we will not be able to get any more of these once they're gone! The label tried to press a decent sized run of 300 copies, but less than half of those made their way into circulation for reasons that seemed to be lost in translation. This strange bit of record-release self-immolation is almost fitting for this strange piece of outsider audio collage. Embudagonn 108 is the work of the hermetic Wataru Kasahara, who smashes field recordings and subconsciously selected radio transitions together into a quivering mass of phased patterns that latch onto the antiquated, syrupy sentiment of forgotten big band arrangements and jitterbug jazz that Leyland Kirby might submerge within his hauntological ambience. But Kasahara punctures the mood with the deadpan delivery of newscasters, hurricane force drones, and unsettled screams. With everything roughly cut and spliced to and from cassettes, there's plenty of hiss to go around; but the effect is hardly the dreamtime din of a Phillip Jeck recording. It's much closer to the Dada discombobulation of Walter Ruttmann's 1930 radiophonic classic "Weekend." Kasahara describes the album thusly, "those tracks have flowed into and merged with the shit-cawing crimson shitbirds that circle endlessly around the mountain of shit on my skull peak." He's bundled the whole thing with a hand fabricated book with pornographic collages, scrawled drawings, and wood block prints. A disturbingly, visionary piece of work!

We reviewed an amazing album on the Dead-Cert label (the boutique subsidiary label of Finders Keepers and Demdike Stare) a while back by musical couple Kat Epple and Bob Stohl called Sanctu Spiritus, a proto-new age document of early recordings utilizing synthesizers and flute with tape-loops to be used in planetariums and space documentaries. That release is now sadly out of print, but that was just the beginning. Between 1978 and 1982, the couple would later form the group Emerald Web, a mixture of space and fantasy music with proggy new age leanings and release 5 recordings (1 lp and 4 cassettes) on their own imprint label Stargate from which the tracks here are compiled by the fine freaks at Finders Keepers/B-Music. Hailing from Florida, the duo recorded their music at night utilizing the studio they used for their day jobs as synth-programmers, music consultants for computer technology labs and TV and film soundtrack work. Named after a laser show formation and combining elements of dungeons and dragons fantasy and cosmic ambience, the group released their vinyl debut, Dragon Wings And Wizard Tales in 1979, a heady post-prog synth epic of tripped out soundscapes and ethereal female vocals that was recently featured on the Record Store Day compilation Monster Skies. The subsequent tape releases were less proggy and more spacey, filled with field recordings, dueling flutes, and ambient electronics that have more of a minimal composition focus than your typical new age music does. The couple would go on to record music for Carl Sagan's Cosmos series and hopefully that will get released soon as well. So great! There is an import lp version of this, but it's been very hard for us to track down, so for now we only have the cd.

MPEG stream: Flight of The Raven
MPEG stream: Nightsong
MPEG stream: Ars Nova
MPEG stream: Photonos

Remixed by Daphni (aka Dan Snaith -- better known as Caribou)

Nearly every week, there seems to be another crop of Emeralds related works. The format does not matter to the band - cassette, vinyl, cd, and hell, we bet they'd release an 8-track if they could - and the three Emerald dudes are not averse to venturing into side projects and other collaborations. Hence, the growth of the band between what could be qualified as their major productions has been huge. On the 2008 release of Solar Bridge, Emeralds slumped upon synths and guitar pedals in the construction of two mighty fine arcs of cosmic zone-out. Through the next couple of larger releases (What Happened and their self-titled album), Emeralds honed their craft of interlocking arpeggiations from the multiple analogue synths matched with motorik guitar excursions. They alluded to forgotten futures that were forecast by the likes of Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, Heldon, and Omit. With all of Emeralds' explorations and variations on these specific themes, it was inevitable that the band would only be improving, and that certainly shows on the 2010 release of Does It Look Like I'm Here. The biggest change that you'll notice between this album and everything that came before is the crystallization of the Emeralds sound into brief 4 to 5 minute chunks. It's hard to call these pieces 'pop songs,' but Emeralds are working with a greater economy than ever before. So much of what they had done seems to be the result of hanging out, turning on the tape machine, and seeing what happens... with amazing results. But, the shorter program speaks of the band working out particular compositions and tightening up the dynamics between the instruments. Don't worry, there will inevitably be another awesome Outer Space cassette or a Mark McGuire cd-r of the long-sprawling zoner-jams in the very near future! (In fact, likely on this very same list!) Warm bubbling synths and kaleidoscopic guitar chiming melts into a bittersweet mid-tempo number with a thread of end-of-summer melancholy running counter to all of the glistening synth tones on the album opener "Candy Shoppe." The track "Double Helix" is aptly named for its tight spiralling of bright percolations and overlapping sequences. "Genetic" embraces a baroque almost harpsichord set of synth tones, with soaring-into-the-heavens ambience, and an elegant display of glowing guitar workouts. Lovely, lovely stuff.

MPEG stream: Candy Shoppe
MPEG stream: Genetic
MPEG stream: Does It Look Like I'm Here?

Mark McGuire, John Elliott, and Steve Hauschildt - the talented trio of synthesizerists and guitarscapers collectively known as Emeralds - have taken a break from their own personal, prolific release schedules and other music-related activities like running labels and such, to enter Tangerine Sound Studios in Akron, Ohio and come up with this, their umpteenth (we have no idea really, what with all the limited cassettes and cd-r's as well as cds and lps!) album together, following 2010's Does It Look Like I'm Here? The instrumental shimmer of Just To Feel Anything carries on from that prior release, Emeralds' mix of motorik beats, majestic ambience, and "glowing guitar workouts" again being expressed in shorter form, more "song-like" compositions. After an opening track, "Before Your Eyes", which begins as a barely audible bliss-scape of subdued synth before building up into militant beats and soaring melodies, this new Emeralds opus keeps the old school drum machine beats going on the bright and energetic "Adrenochrome", which goes from kinda dancey to guitar-oriented by the end of its own epic trajectory. Emeralds are annexing some Zombi/Moore/Majeure territory there, or sounding like something by Trans Am. A sudden shift of mood brings us to "Through & Through", a pensive & romantic sounding piece for guitar� But the very next track, "Everything Is Inverted", gets us back to the late-night-driving, early '80s krautronica soundz that make us think Zombi (and Michael Rother). Gorgeous future-retro grooves. Then, "The Loser Keeps America Down" (which would be the start of side two, on the vinyl version of this that we expect will be out in the next few weeks) sees Emeralds embrace their not forgotten, more experimental side, its textural distorted crackle not unlike a burning fire of electronic origin. Following that, eerie Goblin-like tones open up the album's title track, which blossoms into probably our favorite cut here, encompassing all the attractive features of the current Emeralds program. 'Tis shimmering, burbling, propulsive, and ultimately emotionally stirring. The album then comes to a close, bookended by another beautiful bliss-out piece. Nice!

MPEG stream: Adrenochrome
MPEG stream: Everything Is Inverted
MPEG stream: Just To Feel Anything

For some mistaken reason, we thought this was gonna be really noisy. Maybe 'cause it's on Hanson (home to such earhole excruciators as Wolf Eyes, Metalux, Smegma, and Hair Police just to name a few of the noisniks on the label). But we were wrong wrong wrong. Instead, this is totally calm and lovely electronic space music in the 'kosmiche' vein of '70s and '80s Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and Ashra and the like. It won't harsh your mellow at all, quite the opposite! This is bliss-out droney stuff produced by a Midwestern trio using the equation: analog synthesizers x 2 + (electric guitar + effects). Something like that. Earlier in their career (this is the cd debut after lots of limited cassette and cd-r action) they used to use only TV sets as sound sources! Glad they gave that up, as Solar Bridge wouldn't be nearly so soothing if there were, like, breaks for commercials. You'd have to Tivo it. Seriously, though, this is a droning delight. There's just two tracks here, but they are 'side-long' ones. The 12:34 "Magic" and the 14:14 "The Quaking Mess". It's almost New Age-y (as so much indie, experimental music is turning out to be, when you think about it) but not too too New Age-y. Though nicely mesmeric, it also has a quietly creepy edge to it, and a real grinding, full physicality at higher volumes. Emeralds create waves and layers of subtle, gently pulsating electronic gurble, but not in an overly wispy way. For instance, feedback whispers and glimmers through the cracks in the drone at the start of "The Quaking Mess", which then builds into more of a dense, fuzzy drone-sheen. The kind that radiates light, and that you want to wrap around yourself and your ears like a blanket. Definitely one of our faves from Hanson thus far, noisy or not!

MPEG stream: Magic
MPEG stream: The Quaking Mess

In their brief career beginning in 2006, the Ohio based trio Emeralds has associated themselves with the grit and rust-stained noise that has erupted in the mid-western underground, often sharing the stage with Aaron Dilloway, C Spencer Yeh, and Hive Mind. Their two major releases have come by way of Dilloway's Hanson Records and No Fun Productions, which typically rank as releasing some of the most aggressive and brutal pieces of noise of the contemporary era. While live performances have reportedly embraced the noise community's full-force fury of maximum volume, Emeralds instead favors a sound that harkens back to the era of Cluster, Manuel Gottsching, Fripp & Eno, and Klaus Schulze. Last year's Solar Bridge was a spectacular lazer blast of cosmic droning and inner-space meditation; but with that album clocking in less than 30 minutes, we were left wanting more. Fortunately, more is what Emeralds bring on What Happened. Collected from their seemingly non-stop sessions of improvisations for guitar, Moog, and Korg plus ample effects boxes, these 5 tracks spiral and snake around the same deep-space psychedelia found on Solar Bridge, pushing their sound beyond the two extended crescendos which populated that album. Monochord guitars pulse hypnotically against the overlapping tapestries of the sawtooth hum and modulating tones from the analogue synths. Throughout What Happened, Emeralds shift in mood from alien percolations of '60s sci-fi sound design to graceful swells of tonefloat majesty to purely physical vibrations which rip through the nervous system and strike numbly at the bone. There is beauty to be found here, but also a sublime unease that haunts these recordings. Yup, this one comes highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Up In The Air
MPEG stream: Living Room
MPEG stream: Disappearing Ink

Drifting backwards in time from the post-noise excursions into placid meditations for guitar and synth, Emeralds have become one of the favorites here at Aquarius; and for very good reason, everything they touch seems to turn to gold. Solar Bridge was a such a tease of an introduction for us, and probably was the same for many out there entering into the swirling concoctions of electronic drone; but it has been the two albums What Happened and Allegory of Allergies that really laid the foundation for their impending greatness. Not only do they have a strong grasp on the minimalist theatrics of the drone, but also Emeralds enjoys a selective memory of what made progressive electronics and progressive rock in the late '70s and early '80s great. The pastoral colorfields of Cluster, the alienated ethos of Heldon, and the insistent arpeggiations of Achim Reichel and Ash Ra Tempel all figure heavily into Emeralds sound. This vinyl-only, eponymous record seems to percolate and bubble with electronics, at times veering into the same Omni Magazine territory that Oneothrix Point Never has been mustering for the past year. It may not be a surprise that OPN and Emerald's guitarist Mark McGuire have collaborated in a project called Skyramps, which is as good as you might imagine. The three tracks on the first side wrangle squiggling rhythms, bleepity squelches, and bending sustained tones generated by Emeralds' two synth jockeys John Elliott and Steve Hauschildt, while McGuire dishes out his best Manuel Gottsching impression. The second side is one of the epochal, long form constructs that slows everything on the first side down to an elegant pace with watery field recordings laced throughout. Pretty fucking awesome. And no doubt somewhat limited...

We've wanted to list so many releases by mysterious super limited cd-r label Mystery Sea. In the past, they've released cd-r's from all sorts of AQ faves, like Aidan Baker, Ultrasound, Moljebka Pvlse, Troum, mnortham, Paul Bradley and even Coelacanth (our own Jim and his partner Loren Chasse). But as each disc is strictly limited to 100 copies, and each one meticulously designed and hand assembled, we were never able to get enough, and often we were unable to get any at all. Until now. We've finally managed to get enough to list of the latest Mystery Sea release, a gorgeous slab of minimal crawl by the group Emerge, who we first heard on a Drone Records 7" a while back. Which comes as no surprise, as Mystery Sea obviously takes its inspiration from the Drone label, but instead of vinyl, it's cd-r's. The label describes its music as "night-ocean drones" and Emerge's Immersion fits perfectly alongside previous subaquatic slabs of moody meandering abstraction. Every track is a dark dolorous deep listening experience, wide open stretches of murky moonlit shimmer, warm rippling rumbles, muted melodic mumbles, all swirling and whirling in soporific swells, barely visible somnambulant patterns, peppered with abstract rhythms, textural crackle and subtle sonic grit, distant pulses, smeary sonar ping and miles-below-the-surface throb. Some of the most gorgeous drone music we've heard. A dreamlike drift along the ocean floor, an abstract ambience floating weightlessly from your speakers. Normally we would balk at $17.98 for a cd-r, but wait until you see how gorgeous these are, the artwork is all the image of an oceanic panorama, with the colors tweaked and twisted into some sort of abstract water colored seascape, the booklet, only half as wide as a normal cd booklet, allows half of the disc face to be visible as well. So striking. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each is numbered on the tray card. Once these are gone, they are gone for good.

MPEG stream: Immersion 1
MPEG stream: Immersion 2

A paranoiac aesthetic runs through the work of Emerge, a new dark ambient project from Germany discovered by Drone Records. Emerge's short psychodrama appears to be set within a bunker being heavily bombarded during a late-night bombing campaign. Distant shockwaves resonate through concrete walls, mechanical giants rumble overhead, megaphone voices bark orders many miles away, and an uneasy atmosphere settles upon the grim proceedings in that tightly enclosed space. Limited to 300 copies with each cover burned with cigarettes and the vinyl pressed on flamboyant yellow and black vinyl. Very limited so act fast.

This is an unexpected direction for Rhode Island cd-r label Last Visible Dog. Some sort of 20th century / chamber / avant / classical. Abstract, shimmering strings, soaring but leaving lots of space. With occasional bursts of percussive clatter that sounds like someone jumping in a giant pile of bubblewrap! Lots of pizzicato plucking and Bjork-ish howling, stuttered, non-sensical vocalisations, wild bowing/sawing on the strings, and percussive tapping/slapping on the instrument bodies. Wild and weird and truly out there.

RealAudio clip: E Motion

Ostensibly a black metal record, A Sword Of Death For The Prince seems more like sort of an abstract experimental industrial dark ambient record. Or something. Actually, to be totally honest, we're not sure what the hell it is. We are sure of one thing though, this is quite possibly the weirdest fucking record we've ever heard. Reverby riffs, not distorted at all, sort of clangy and chime-y, are struck violently and sent into space to hang there in wide open expanses of haunting creaks and drones, everything heavily delayed, so each riff sort of reverberates into the ether, echoing endlessly, with creepy almost spoken vocals also drenched in delay. It's like someone took a pop record, took out ALL the song structures and all the melodies, ran the whole thing through a bank of effects peddles and then had King Tubby make a dub version of the whole thing. Like songs by Wolf Eyes or the Dead C being reinterpreted by Benighted Leams. Riffs and notes are spit out seemingly haphazardly, as they careen back and forth, echoing and colliding with vocals and all the notes that follow. This is one of those records, that is either so completely high concept that no matter how hard we try, we will not be able to wrap our puny minds around it, or it's just some kid fucking around with a 4 Track and his first delay pedal. Either way, we LOVE it. So completely damaged and far out and WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD.

MPEG stream: Herald The Dawn With Your Offerings
MPEG stream: Utlag, Avenger, Spiritual Scourge Of Deformity

We go on and on at length about all the fucked up and damaged, weird as fuck black metal bands we love so much, but we don't really mention Emit usually, which, as we listen to this final Emit release seems just plain wrong. Might be due to the dearth of recordings, only 3 proper releases, one a split, now mostly unavailable, this latest is another collection, gathering up all manner of unreleased tracks as well as a handful from various demos. And holy shit is this stuff amazing. We absolutely loved A Sword Of Death For The Prince, but Abortions makes that one seem downright tame in comparison. This is a tough one to describe, but we'll do our best. Emit exist somewhere between raw black metal buzz, and creepy black ambience, but their take on both is absolutely tweaked and damaged and pretty insane. The opener here is a thick wall of buzzing guitars, layers of feedback, and what could be analog synths, some serious drone, but all draped over a VERY un-metal rhythm, a weird jaunty shuffle, all offbeat high-hat, like a calypso or something, the beat changing tempo wildly and randomly throughout, speeding WAY up, then right back down again, while the track continues to undulate and buzz fiercely. Right after that the sound shifts to something much more abstract, a dark and brooding drift, laced with strange ambient sounds, warbly low end melodies, bits of crackle and hiss, only to immediately transform into a blast of caustic noise, before slipping back into minimal drone, and finally a haunting reverb drenched spoken word invocation. And we're only 4 tracks in. The rest of the record is equally and gloriously schizophrenic, some highlights: super spare drums over a thick whirring organ drone, and what sounds like a super high pitched harmonica melody, super angular and slightly off key black metal buzz, with an organ or a synth, making the whole thing sound super sinister like a busted metal music box and the drums still doing some sort of UN-metal beat, a totally bizarre, processed buzzscape, all stuttery and staticky, like a skipping cd, but shaped into something weirdly metal and very twisted, swirling thick clouds of black drone and chanted vocals, lots of quite beautiful dark ambience, all very creepy and haunting and ethereal, finally finishing off with the 13 minute epic "Visions Of Timeless Nought", a super obtuse sort of black metal jam, more of those fractured fucked up drums, vocals wrapped in reverb and careening wildly all over the place, guitars that moan and groan and squeal, everything weirdly dubbed out, the drums bouncing wildly, the high-hat loud and sizzling all over the place, the entire song sounding like it's being reflected in a funhouse mirror, warped and warbly and woozy, just listening makes your head spin, which is pretty fantastic actually. The band has recently ceased to be, reinventing itself as Hammemit, with a new sound and new direction, so for those of you who have yet to discover the warped joys of Emit, and have been hankering for some new blackened weirdness, freaky and fucked up, druggy and confusional and so so so strange, this is probably your last chance...

MPEG stream: Behind These Eyes
MPEG stream: An Empty Room & A Mysterious Sermon
MPEG stream: Visions Of Timeless Nought

The return of one of our favorite mysterious black hordes, Emit, although not technically a return as the band is defunct and have already re-emerged as the similarly named Hammemit, instead, this is the second posthumous collection from these bizarre black alchemists, gathering up two old recordings, The Dark Bleeding ep from 2003 and the The Dark Gods demo from 2004. The cool thing about Emit was they were never really black metal, but their sound was blacker than many of their buzzier / blastier compatriots. They trafficked in a raw sort of primitive free black noise, more like Abruptum really, with clouds of noxious distorted guitars, howling anguished processed vocals, and often no drums to speak of at all. The Dark Bleeding is the group at their rawest. Distorted tangles of free form guitar, drenched in reverb, vocals grunting and growling, some actual riffage for sure, but buried beneath dense slabs of crumbling distortion, and heaving low end rumble, the final of the four tracks features some awesomely distorted church organ, resulting in a super creepy, ultra noisy chunk of circusy black drone-noise. The Dark Gods is a bit more song oriented, but only a bit, still plenty abstract, spaced out swells, melodic and downright pretty, give way to creeping black riffage, and warped and warbly low end, sick vocals, garbled and processed, drums show up, but instead of blasting or pounding, they are totally abstract, another element to drift and meander and get all tangled up in the ever swirling morass of blackened sound. Near the end, the drums do make their presence more known, giving the sound a distinctly doomy vibe, but still totally unhinged and chaotic and fractured and gloriously fucked up. Like WOLD meets Abruptum meets Circle Of Ouroborus, noisy, heavy, abstract, weirdly pretty, totally and completely damaged, and thus WAY recommended.

MPEG stream: The Pain Of Bleeding
MPEG stream: Death Before Death
MPEG stream: Distant Dragon
MPEG stream: Watching From The Hills

We're big fans of J.D. Emmanuel who has been self-releasing his own private press new age music since the early eighties. His 1982 masterpiece Wizards may be our favorite release of his, at turns evoking a Tangerine Dream like synthscapery with soft-focus kraut-rock propulsions. But this newly reissued 1981 release is in our opinion just as good, even if it is more gentle and new-agey, but still quite mysterious and meditative. Evoking ideas of past-life journeys, Emmanuel employs multi-tracked organ and synthesizers with occasional acoustic guitar and windchimes in compositions that remind us of works by Terry Riley and Peter Hammill but filtered through a mesmerizing pastoral sensibility. Wonderfully kaleidoscopic and vibrant, like sunlight piercing through a dark cathedral-like chamber, this will appeal to fans of atypical new age music like Ariel Kalma, Iasos, and Jordan De La Sierra. Download card included.

MPEG stream: Earth Dance
MPEG stream: In Movement on the Rings of Saturn
MPEG stream: Sunrise on a Tibetan Hillside

Back in 2007, when J.D. Emmanuel was reintroduced to the world via Lieven Martens (aka Dolphins Into The Future) through Martens repress of Emmanuel's 1982 masterpiece Wizards, it completely revived his career, and we've seen many archival releases of Emmanuel's organic new-age synthscapery reissued since. Soon after in 2011, he was touring Europe with Martens and Paul Labreque and finding large new audiences embracing his fluid performances, Emmanuel decked out in a cowboy hat and Hawaiian shirt complete with psychedelic visuals behind him. We even managed to see him live at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival that same year performing on a bill with Kevin Drumm and Gregg Kowalsky (what a night!). This new double lp on the Aguirre label documents his live set from that tour with long form excursions that have great sci-fi titles like "Adrift in The Gamma Quadrant" and "Ghost Emanations From Seti Alpha 6", but also new age references like "At-One-Ment" and "Path Inward" that reveal Emmanuel's lifelong dedication to meditation, healing and cosmic harmony. Emmanuel's sound is rarely dark, but it's otherworldly in a way that avoids coming off as fluff. We can follow his mind-journeys through music anywhere he wants to take us. Recommended!

J.D. Emmanuel's beautiful 1982 new age release, Wizards, was a unanimous aQ favorite when it was reissued first by Lieven Martens of Dolphins Into The Future back in 2007, and again by Important Records in 2011. Subsequent reissues of the Texan synth wizard's other releases have been equally praised. We managed to catch him live a year ago when he played in SF's Electronic Music Festival, and it was mind-blowing, especially with the psychedelic visuals behind him. We never managed to get the Aguirre label release of Trans Formations I: Ancient Minimal Meditations, but we jumped at the chance to get the follow-up, Into Separate Realities reissued by Deep Distance, an imprint of UK label The Great Pop Supplement. This set, recorded by Emmanuel on the road while travelling for a job in the nineties, is a bit different than the meditative works we have heard before. Recorded using a Yamaha QY-10 synth module/sequencer or Korg X5DR synth module and a Novation MM10 keyboard into a Windows laptop, this album employs more rhythmic and percussive elements. Like Oneohtrix Point Never or Umberto (both of which we're pretty sure Emmanuel has been a major influence on), there is more of a driving vibe to Emmanuel's compositions here that still harness the feeling of cosmic expansiveness, but with a more forward-leaning momentum. Limited to 500 copies, we got about a dozen and that's it. Take flight!

New age gets a bad rap. And rightfully so in many cases, but it's not fair to paint it with such a broad brush, there have been plenty of artists who have dabbled in new age, explored meditative musics, and made some amazing sounds. When it's done right, it can be dark and lovely, deeply spiritual, soothing and hypnotic, complex and intense, without being cheesy. All of the modern DIY drone music should be evidence enough, what is all of that if not a contemporary extension of new age music... dreamy, contemplative, mesmerizing, minimal.... Here we have a lost legendary 'new age' synth classic from 1982, from J.D. Emmanuel, while unknown to us, according to some friends of AQ and some customers definitely had a certain hipster cache, tracks and whole records being outsider music holy grails... With song titles like "Attaining Peace" and "Prayer" and "Focusing Within", Wizards - Music Of Other Memories, is a five part meditation realized in extended synthesizer soundscapes, gorgeous, languorous, all soft focus melodies, soaring and shimmery, stretched out into blurry streaks of sound, peppered with the muted bloop bloop melodies, nestled deep down in the shimmery softness. Some of the tracks are more active, one almost proggy and spaced out, another sounding a bit like a more dreamy Kraftwerk, all propulsive synthesized krautrock. Absolutely recommended for fans of Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, IASOS, Terry Riley, Steve Reich as well as the softer side of all the modern cd-r dronemusic we all love so much...

Empty Mirror is New Zealanders Ben Spiers and Karl Willis, utilising a strange array of soundmaking devices including acoustic guitar, violin, baby monitor, radio, reed organ, turntables, saucepan lids, dictaphone and more. In 'Extricate' (tracks 1-6) a

RealAudio clip: Attraction

Yet another great tape from the Los Angeles imprint Monorail Trespassing; and as with many of the MT releases of late, the noise has been reduced in favor of narcotizing tone-float. Emuul is the nom de plume of Seattle's Kyle Iman, operating in the friendlier confines of ambient composition which enjoys the company of Celer, Stars of the Lid, and of course the man Brian Eno. On The Origins Of Motion sets forth a series of warm, enveloping driftscapes upon which slight melodic phrases, night-time / deep-thought droning, and shoegazingly distorted guitars demarcate the ambient soundscapes. Pure lulling music is to be found within this fine 28 minute cassette, which is the first that we've encountered from Emuul, even though he's released some cassettes via Digitalis, Stunned, and Blackest Rainbow. Limited to 100 copies.

A stellar follow-up to 2010's The Absent Coast on Root Strata, Already Gone from this local San Francisco drone duo, Maxwell Croy and James Devane, aka EN, finds theses two with an even more focused and nuanced dynamic sensibility. Of course that sensibility centers around Croy's classically trained koto playing, which plays a large part in EN's overall sound, but here that element is really given ample room to stretch out and breathe. Instead of being merely one component in a layering process of cascading shifting dronescapes, the high relief sound of the texture of strings, the slow growing lyrical motifs and the solemn resonant pauses between phrases set up the pieces as they bloom into delicate shimmers and then oceanic swells of drifting unsettled moods. Pushing the momentum along on the first track, "Lodi" is the loping bass pulse of Trevor Montgomery (The Drift, Date Palms, Tarantel), that has us surfing waves of sound before settling into a swirling miasma of crystalline tones and airy phases. Taking us to the final track, "Elysia", the longest track at 20 minutes is set up by a long introduction of gorgeous and breathtakingly spacious koto playing that like falling leaves in gusts of winds unfurl into bellows of sky high cloud drones, gathering and darkening in fields of rich pulsating grey thunderous tones and then watercolor washes of blissful ambiance, the storm cleared and fading away, set to awaken in some far-off place. Beautiful!

MPEG stream: Lodi
MPEG stream: The Sea Saw Swell
MPEG stream: Elysia

The Absent Coast is the debut recording from the duo En, made up of James Devane and Maxwell Croy (one half of the duo that runs the Root Strata label), and is a gorgeous collection of melancholy, otherworldly dronemusic, a varied selection of miniature epics, each an evocative and emotional travelogue in sound, utilizing organs, melodica, piano, guitar, vocals, koto and various other instruments and devices, the duo weave lush expanses of layered, organic sonic energy, warm buzzing tones stretched into sheer blissy shimmer and lush chordal swells blurred into gauzy slow motion melodies become an ever shifting soundtrack to a series of fading memories, brief flickering filmstrips in sound, the indistinct images allowing the listener short glimpses of stories untold, decisions unmade, lives yet to be lived. The opener is a rich crumbling landscape of layered shimmer, crackling with electrical energy, an energy which gradually dissipates, eventually leaving a smooth glassy stretch of gently pulsing thrum, eventually fading out completely, the resulting vacuum filled with a miniature symphony of scraped steel strings, their overtones ringing out in the ether, leaving shadowy melodic traces, those strangely melodic metal scrapings overflowing into yet another sprawl of lush layered longform dronemusic, a sea of softly undulating buzz, a mesmerizing field of sympathetic steel, which then itself blossoms into yet another bit of drone, this one a sun dappled bit of ethereal ambience, peppered with deep distorted notes, and flitting electrical fields, all wrapped in a woozy cocoon of burnished blur. And so The Absent Coast unfolds, waves of hissy white noise wash over plaintive piano like some late afternoon sonic sea, glistening fields of celestial glimmer shed notes like falling stars, the result a prismatic cascade of unfulfilled wishes rendered in sound, deep drifts of muted melody are stretched and pulled apart, letting the light from within infuse the sounds all around them, ghostlike drones change color before our very ears, like the leaves turning, Jeckian dirges crawl glacially through moonlight, spitting sparks that smolder in blues and greens, leaving the glow of gradually dying embers, a delicate piano's notes send sonic ripples into the ether, the melodies overlapping and intertwining creating subtle ever shifting patterns that gradually flicker and fade, and finally, hushed sonic shadows give way to a soft sun dappled blush, which in turn becomes a slowly intensifying radiance, a sky full of luminous flares, a visual symphony of sound, lush and rich and almost orchestral, only to finally dissolve, the colors fading to brown, then black, the sound following suit. So so nice. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: A Dying Sun / Return to Holyoke
MPEG stream: Mother Of Thousands
MPEG stream: The Absent Coast