Flies Inside The Sun is the out-rock / free-jazz trio comprised of New Zealand stalwarts Kim Pieters, Peter Stapleton, and Brian Crook. Collectively, they've worked in a number of projects that have varied from the angry-pop of Scorched Earth Policy to the Kranky label approved drone-rock of Dadamah to the angular improvisations of Rain. By and large, each of the bands carries over a signature lugubriousness which certainly migrates into the Flies Inside The Sun. Imagine Movietone or Crescent turning even further to the tropes of jazz, than you come close to the sounds of Flies Inside The Sun.
Flittermice Of Eld are another band that, if were we not actually listening to it right now and holding the disc in our hands, we would be tempted to think that this was just made up -- one of those 'amazing' ideas you have that is just too nuts to actually bring to fruition. It's too perfect. One of those records, that were someone to ask, we would have to say epitomizes the perfect AQ record. Killer band name, amazingly bizarre concept, fucked up sound. Hard to believe it wasn't just some fever dream. But nope, here it is. Flittermice Of Eld, according to the band, "both a musical tribute to and critique of black metal." Sonically this is not at all black metal, but it is infused with the spirit of black metal. There are no riffs or vocals, no pounding drums, instead it's a strange concoction of noise and texture, drone and ambience, but with all the basic pitches for the guitar and bass parts generated from a few specific collections of notes from the Darkthrone song "As Flittermice as Satan's Spys" from their classic Transilvanian Hunger album. Whatthefuck? So basically we have this bizarre ambient dronoise record based on a handful of notes from a Darkthrone song?! Fuck yeah!
The first few minutes are a dense clattery improvised skree, clanging and grinding and super chaotic, but this gives way to a dark, slow shifting reverberant drone, that pulses and throbs beneath a smattering of high end twinkles and streaks of glistening feedback. The final 'movement' is a wild atonal no-wave tangle of angular guitar riffing and stumbling bass, an abstract progscape of buzz and twang, a sort of damaged shredfest, loosed from its metal moorings.
Darkthrone would be proud.
Packaged in a hand screened fold over card stock cover, with handwritten liner notes on the back cover. ULTRA LIMITED OBVIOUSLY!
From the same label that brought us The Lamp Of The Universe, James Blackshaw, Robert Horton and Rameses III comes the equally amazing Unda from The Floating World, the work of a Canadian flautist named Amanda Votta, who uses her affected and electronically altered flute to conjure music drawn from some mysterious lost religious rite. An ethereal folk music of the ages. One can imagine wandering through the hillsides in some far off country, and being lured by the haunting melodies drifting like tendrils of smoke, only to find the ruins of a church, where the music can somehow still be heard. It's that heavy and emotional and timeless. Every melody is wreathed in lush reverb and diffuse sonic overtones, drifting and floating, barely there but at once heavy with the weight of a million souls, soaring effortlessly over a strange backdrop of barely audible rumbles and shimmers. Some of the tracks are a little bit droney giving those tracks the feel of some sort of raga, but the sound of the flute and the arrangements are too delicate and airy, and at the end of each phrase it feels like the wind carries it heavenward where it is lost in the clouds before the next phrase begins. Absolutely lovely.
Packaged in a hand glued digipak.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
Three instruments/instrumentalists undertake this blending of a band that is Flossin. Zach Hill (Hella) on drums, Miguel Depedro (aka Kid 606) on laptop and SF guitarist/multi-media explorer Christopher Willits join forces to create a noisy, free-form album, Lead Singer. The result is a dense sonic wash of varying forms, through which percussive patterns emerge and fall away. The album's live and alive sounding. Not so much a formal excercise in pattern and composition, Lead Singer is much more akin to an improv gig set up in their practice space recorded for all to enjoy.
Flower Man is the work of Chris Bush from the Kentucky based electron revivalist ensemble Caboladies. While we've failed to hear any of his work from that outfit, the constant comparisons to Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never was more than enough to pique our interest. As Flower Man, Bush doesn't stray too far from what we would assume Caboladies to sound like, squiggling and squirming around his analogue synths and some pretty murky tape production that triangulates his sound somewhere between Grouper, a really druggy Bruce Haack, and a happy-go-lucky Omit. With its clunky Ikue Mori-styled drum-kit leaden dance around the rhythm, the opening track laces itself around two harmonized '80s / sci-fi melodies that fragment into squelchy percolations and lazer beam vibrations. The next batch of tracks could easily originate in any number of BBC Radiophonic projects with playful yet somewhat detached bleepity-blooping interwoven with some of those spooky synth sounds that Richard D. James mustered on his really early Aphex Twin tracks from Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1. Bush slows everything down to a turgid crawl of introspection through a lonesome, moping piece of bedroom electronics on the suitably titled track "Swirling" coming across as Delia Derbyshire on Quaaludes; and then makes a quick turnabout with some spasmodic electroid flashes which dissipate into nothingness as if sucked in various directions into outer space.
It makes perfect sense that Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) would release this on his newly launched CD-R imprint Upstairs. Limited to 75 copies, and already sold out at the label!
We were all ready to hate this, not cuz we don't dig the players, we love Michael Flower (Vibracathedral, Sunroof!) and Chris Corsano is a ruling drummer, it's just that for some reason we thought this was gonna be some of that new fangled indie free jazz, which always leaves us a bit cold. Not sure why, maybe it was the 'duo' thing. But then it's on VHF, home to much of our favorite dronemusic and outrock, and the instrumentation definitely looked like anything but free jazz: Japan banjo, tanpura, organ, melodica, cello and drums. So we figured, okay, what the heck, let's give it a try, and BAM, this totally knocked out socks off and our teeth in, at once exactly what we had hoped for, but something we never would have imagined, some impossible hybrid of frenetic chaotic drumming, and strange super distorted looped melodic mantras, like some impossible sonic hybrid of Mick Barr and Dan Higgs, or Orthrelm covering Zomes, tripped out and psychedelic, wild as fuck, but weirdly hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
The opener is a mad blowout of wild melodies super distorted and all tangled up, like some strange sped up bagpipe, wound around Corsano's non stop drum workout, the banjo here ends up sounding like the guitars on Amps For Christ records, unfurling intense abstract runs of notes and fragmented melodies, sometimes locking into little trills, other times getting all wavery and woozy, the drums somehow remaining totally free but staying locked in with Flower's wild psych freakouts. It's so inherently chaotic and raw and primal and by all rights should be difficult to listen, but after a few minutes, we find ourselves totally lost, and we never want it to end.
The follow up is more of a percussive free jam, reminding us of groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros and No Neck and Sunburned Hand, very free, but with the metallic shimmer spreading out over the warm low end whirs and the abstract gamelan like melodies. "The Drifter's Miracles" is the most obviously VHF of the batch, a long languorous slow burning ur-drone, all bowed stings and wheezing organ, very raga like, overtones shifting and beating against one another, bits or percussion clink and clank beneath the gloriously heaving sea of rich lustrous tones, this definitely could be a whole record, as it is, it's easily the most 'listenable' of the bunch.
"The Beginning Of The End" sounds like a field recording of some ritualistic musical performance, the sound muted and lo-fi, a sort of crazed dance, the drums a wild tribal patter, sometimes splatter, Flower again offering up dense tangles and billowing squiggles, there is definitely a free jazz element, but the duo manage to take the loose free drumming, and the manic looped sounding melodies and create a sort of abstract ultra free ur-drone, it's quite magical actually, the parts are so frenetic and tense and relentless, that it seems impossible that combining them would create something soothing and spiritual, but that's precisely what it does.
The closer, the nearly 18 minute "The Main Ingredient" is like a more jubilant, ebullient version of the record opener, the drums muter and minimal, still skittery and feral, but Flower's banjo weaving magical crystalline shapes in the air, melodies, notes, tones, harmonies, overtones, all shimmering and hovering and looping and stuttering and glistening, total Amps For Christ / Higgs / Orthrelm sun baked lysergic spiritual ur-drone free jazz out rock blowout. So completely heavy, and epic, and dreamlike, and tripped out, and intense and so so beautiful.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
How can you resist a record with a sticker on the front proclaiming it to be "California doom folk"? Well, we sure as heck can't. And what if that sticker was pasted over a huge floating white-bearded head floating in the clouds like some spirit of Yahowha back from the dead to haunt our musical dreams. Well, you'd have us again. So we were pretty much sold before we got the disc to the player. But in all fairness, we should also mention that not only is Flying Canyon the project of one half of Golden Hotel, who we raved about on a past list, but that half also happens to be AQ regular Cayce Lindner, who you can see on the AQ customers page, and who haunts the hallowed halls of AQ on an almost daily basis.
But the fact that Cayce is a friend of ours isn't the reason we were so enamored of Golden Hotel, or the reason this slab of California doom folk has been kicking our asses. Nope. It's because Cayce has a way with a guitar and a killer knack for abstract free folk songsmithery. It helps too that in Flying Canyon he's teamed up with members of The Skygreen Leopards and Kelly Stoltz's band. Where Golden Hotel was dark and lugubrious, dreamy and droney, Flying Canyon is much more druggy and desert-y, twangy and sun baked, laid back and lysergic.
From the opening track, "In The Reflection", a dead ringer for Terry Reid's "Seed Of Memory", you're already wandering in a dreamlike daze, across some dusty windblown musical world, a wounded wasteland, that while inhospitable and rife with death and misery, is still strangely warm and safe, you find yourself clearing away some dust and rubble, dead leaves and brittle branches, laying back, eyes closed, the sun turning the inside of your eyelids a blood red, and letting the sun burn you away, bleaching your bones, as you become part of the landscape, your dust part of the swirling storm, the sound, a disembodied floating free folk, perfectly captured by the Flying Canyon.
The label website describes Flying Canyon as the Eagles on Robitussen, but it's a little closer to Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young on horse tranquilizers. A super lo-fi arid expanse of murky late afternoon haze and stoned fuzzy fug. The strainer on the snare drum rattles and drifts like the warning of a snake coiled up in the hot summer sun. The bass is thick like melted tar, a fuzzy fat rumble, warm warbly melodies wrapped around a soft focus folk drift, in the distance, fluttering flutes and warm swells of shimmering organ, like a musical mirage. All left all to hover in a lush field of room sound and drifting fuzz, above which float Lindner's ghostly vocals, an about-to-crack Neil Young warble, emotional and rich and honest, so much so that Lindner even manages to sing the words "rock and roll" in a song, without it sounding wrong. Instead, you can imagine that this is some sort of rock and roll. A rock and roll that was left in the sun too long, allowed to melt and change shape, a dusty, almost forgotten relic, that still retains some mysterious inner glow, a beauty that transcends the ravages of time. Go ahead. Sit back. Rest those weary bones, close those tired eyes. This is just about the perfect place for waitin' around to die...
As the Luttenbachers fly on and on into the void, they just get more and more metal, don't they? Now a Bay Area based trio (including one of the Mikes from Burmese on bass), they offer up their thirteenth album! This latest episode of Flying Luttenbacher insanity features nine tracks of feedback-filled, drum-blasting, chaotically complexified, metallic skree that can't be topped by almost anyone in the known universe -- heck parts of this even remind us a bit of Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, which is a comparison we don't make too often. The Void is an all-instrumental tour-de-force that believe it or not could be the missing link between black metal and no-wave, surely band leader Weasel Walter's life's work. Track after track, each cut here builds and builds without much in the way of release, racheting tension to head-bursting levels. Judging from comments in the liner notes, perhaps this is Weasel's howling response to the Republican take-over of the United States. In any event, it's a serious dose of heavy, frenzied, jazz-damaged, post-rock, post-metal, mathy mayhem!
P.A. Blues is a super limited cd-r that's been out for a while, but we haven't been able to get enough to list until now. A selection of unreleased live material hand picked and edited by FSA's Dave Pearce. Blissed out and dense, thick washes of guitar ambience and slowly shifting, dark and droning swoosh and shimmer. The focus of this disc is the lengthy title track, a massive collage of live recordings chopped and edited into a single huge swelling throbbing movement. As with most things Flying Saucer attack, this is epic and gorgeous spaced out, dreamy and mesmerizing drone rock of the highest order!
One of the most limited and sought after documents in the FSA catalog has finally got a cassette reissue from local tape archival label Sanity Muffin. Here is what we said about the original cd-r release back in 2004:
P.A. Blues is a selection of unreleased live material from 1994-1997 hand picked and edited by FSA's Dave Pearce and featuring Rachel Brook from Movietone and Matt Elliott from Third Eye Foundation. Blissed out and dense, thick washes of guitar ambience and slowly shifting, dark and droning swoosh and shimmer. The focus of this disc is the lengthy side-long title track, a massive collage of live recordings chopped and edited into a single huge swelling throbbing movement. The B-side features other live recordings including a sprawling mumbling lo-fi cover of Fairport Convention's "She Moves Through The Fair". As with most things Flying Saucer attack, this is epic and gorgeous spaced out, dreamy and mesmerizing drone rock of the highest order!
Limited to 100 copies, this one will go fast!
Another batch of super limited and beautifully packaged cd-r's from Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. The finest in underground free noise / drone, culled mostly from New Zealand but all around the world as well. For those of you new to the CpsiP label, imagine classic Siltbreeze (Dead C, etc.) mixed with Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Blithe Sons etc.), dark and deep listening that sometimes verges on all out noise, but more often than not remains subtle experiments in avant drone and abstract sound. And when we say limited we mean LIMITED. Thes babies come in pressings of 30-80, out of which we get a whopping 10 copies!!
Flying Sweety Dog is a London based noise duo, of Danish / Japanese origin, and are a bit of a tough proposition to figure out. Twenty seven tracks, titled either "Cinema", "Inside" or "Outside". On a couple tracks they mix things up with tracks titled "Anders Outside, Take Inside" and "Take Outside, Anders Inside". Not that the song titles tell you anything about the sounds contained within. They do at least give you an idea that you're dealing with something well outside the realm of the ordinary. All the tracks are relatively short, super spare and minimal with ambient clatter, occasional sort-of rhythms, far away whistles, squeaks of ear piercing feedback, and what sounds like the duo hard at work assembling or dismantling various broken musical instruments. Weird.
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume one go a little like this:
Track 1: Three and a half minutes of solo electric blues guitar, thankfully stripped of that awful standard blues chord progression.
Track 2: a short two and a half minute blast of nasal auctioneer style vocals, over a primitive country electric guitar riff.
Track 3: A massive twelve minutes of retarded toe tapping, to a hillbilly pizzicato on the fiddle that develops into increasingly manic sawing on just three notes.
Track 4: A gorgeous chunk of primitve, droney minimal blues, with humming vocals clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes.
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume two go a little like this:
Track 1: Five minutes of minimal amplified fiddle with lots of echo/delay, like music for some sort of space rodeo.
Track 2: 13 minutes of what sounds like a similar version of the first track, although this time without the echo/delay and a little more sawing on the higher notes of the fiddle.
Track 3: very traditional sounding blues progression on the fiddle, but stretched out a little. Definitely the easiest listening on either disc.
Track 4: Ten minutes long. Revisits the melodies of track two, but the sawing is more feverish and the sound is more thick and much less minimal. Eventually mutates into a super saturated, head nodding, blissed out transcendental hoedown!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally available on vinyl, both volumes of Flynt's Back Porch Hillbilly Blues, on a deluxe double lp. And very limited!
Even packaged to look strikingly similar to an old Folkways LP release, this pair of Flynt releases on Locust sure do fit the "Hillbilly Blues" label more than any other release we've heard yet from him. And what's more, they're fucking great! No, you won't find any pseudo-ragas on either of these discs. This is wild and relentless, drone-y and hypnotic, sonically overwhelming neverending foot stomping, finger picked blues work outs. But as one might expect the workouts are static, shifting minutely and almost imperceptably if at all. Like a redneck hillbilly Terry Riley or La Monte Young.
The tracks on volume one go a little like this:
Track 1: Three and a half minutes of solo electric blues guitar, thankfully stripped of that awful standard blues chord progression.
Track 2: a short two and a half minute blast of nasal auctioneer style vocals, over a primitive country electric guitar riff.
Track 3: A massive twelve minutes of retarded toe tapping, to a hillbilly pizzicato on the fiddle that develops into increasingly manic sawing on just three notes.
And the tracks on volume two go a little like this:
Track 1: Five minutes of minimal amplified fiddle with lots of echo/delay, like music for some sort of space rodeo.
Track 2: 13 minutes of what sounds like a similar version of the first track, although this time without the echo/delay and a little more sawing on the higher notes of the fiddle.
Track 3: very traditional sounding blues progression on the fiddle, but stretched out a little. Definitely the easiest listening on either disc.
Track 4: Ten minutes long. Revisits the melodies of track two, but the sawing is more feverish and the sound is more thick and much less minimal. Eventually mutates into a super saturated, head nodding, blissed out transcendental hoedown!
Track 4: A gorgeous chunk of primitive, droney minimal blues, with humming vocals clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes.
Another gorgeous document of keening high end drone exploration from this central figure in the sixties Fluxus scene. The focus (as always) is on Flynt's electric fiddle, that squeals and scrapes and glides effortlessly between notes and deep into
After hearing the excellent "hillbilly drone improv" found on the recent double cd archival release "You Are My Ever Lovin'/Celestial Power" by this obscure but fascinating Fluxus artist, we were excited to see this additional archival release (of
Aquarius' favorite fluxus hillbilly intellectual returns with yet another collection avant-folk. We say 'returns' and yet, with the exception of one from 1976/2001, these tracks come from 1971 and 1978. Much of the goods here are similar to his last two releases on Locust ("Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Vols. 1 & 2"). For instance track one, "Violin Strobe", begins with slowly pulsing notes scratched out on violin which, through some tape device, begin to accumulate a hypnotizing tapestry under Flynt's playing. Hillbilly tape music indeed! Track two, "Guitar Rebop", is a duet for demented tremolo laden swamp guitar and sitar-like drone. Not all Flynt's tracks here are of the hillbilly variety though. For instance, two "Leather High" compositions in A and E (recorded in 1978 appropriately enough) sound like an erstwhile disco guitarist recovering from trauma. In both, a boogying disco rhythm guitar rapidly decays into a series of reverberant swells of guitar through a volume pedal. It's these two tracks, along with the 15 minute ending track "S&M Delerium" -- a continuation of "Leather High in E" -- which make up the bulk of the play time on this disc. It's too bad as, while they're fine tracks in moderation, it would be nicer if the earlier tracks like "Violin Strobe" (which lasts a mere 5 minutes) could be left to degenerate for another 10. Or 20!
MPEG Download: "Violin Strobe" [/audio/hflyntviolinstrobe.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Violin Strobe" [/audio/hflyntviolinstrobe.m3u]
Purified By Fire is much like a sequel to the much loved Flynt album C-Tune. Like that album, Purified By Fire features Cathrine Christer Hennix on tamboura and Henry Flynt on amplified fiddle. Over the steady metallic drone of Hennix's tamboura Flynt weaves together Hindustani and Appalachian modes in a 40 minute improvisation. At the risk of over using a tired homily these really are two great tastes that taste great together. Bringing together the modal droniness of Appalachian folk music and classical Indian music in a completely unpretentious and, dare I say, punk rock way is totally welcome here at Aquarius.
Fluxus mainstay and relative unknown until this recent spate of reissues, Flynt has dabbled in the supreme drone. explored hillbilly country and now on this reissue explores the 'raga' and traditional Indian music, but with his own bizarre twist. The opening track is a mutated version of the traditional Marines Hymn sung in a made up 'Hindustani' style, accompanied on simple acoustic guitar strums, creating a static almost drone. Tracks 2 through 5, titled Central Park Transverse Vocal #1-#4, are short sharp bursts (between 00:15 and 1:30) of wild howling and bizarre vocalising. The title track, Raga Electric, is a faux Hindustani raga, with droning un-tuned guitars and wild howling, supposedly recorded only hours after seeing Pandit Pran Nath perform. It actually sounds pretty great until the vocals, which become grating almost immediatly. But it's still quite fascinating. The final track is Flynt playing the alto sax, an instrument he had never played, and never played again after this recording. Wild skronking and high pitched shrieks and whistles. Thirteen minutes of skreeeeeeeeeeee that definitely tests the endurance of your eardrums.
Henry Flynt's "Spindizzy" is the second volume in his series of "New American Ethnic Music," following the incredible document "You Are My Everlovin' / Celestial Power", an earlier assortment of country-fried, Fluxus inspired minimalism. Flynt had been an
First in this label's "New American Ethnic Music" series. "Avant-garde hillbilly and blues music" by violinist (and Fluxus conceptual artist) Henry Flynt.
Each disc documents a live improv session, the first from 1981 and the second from 1980, and both are quite lovely indeed. I guess it's "hillbilly" 'cause he's playing a fiddle, and there's echoes of Appalachian trad music amidst the drone.
For one concert/disc he's joined by a tambura player, and on the other by a guitarist (both strangely uncredited). Definitely in a Tony Conrad / fake Indian raga mode, and good at it. Fans of the aforementioned, as well as those into (Flynt associate) LaMonte Young, Ashtray Navigations and even the Dirty Three (it's actually VERY Dirty Three sounding at moments, with Flynt's melancholy, almost psychedelic violin being the dominant voice). More specifically, these are (we're told) "extended extemporizations on extended alpha-state ascension through excessive application of overtone-series note relationships/harmonics over a single chord/form". Check out www.henryflynt.org for more info on the man's art and writing (there's some strange essays to be found there). A very cool archival release, can't wait to hear more in the series.
Out of all the various iterations of Henry Flynt's huge and wildly varied recorded output, we weren't sure what to expect with this release, the previously unreleased 1975 recording of Flynt's avant-punk hillbilly boogie outfit Nova'Billy. Wildly ecstatic and rhythmic, full of left-field honky-tonk idioms but never wonky, Nova'Billy is probably one of Flynt's most joyously rocking outings that we've heard. Different than the Velvet's-by-way-of-the-Fugs recordings of his early band incarnation, The Insurrections, Nova' Billy is tighter and much better produced. Flynt's singing is minimal but well-used and less grating than we've heard on other recordings. His vocal delivery on "I Was A Creep" is more like the Rev. Fred Lane than the Jandek-style realms it can sometimes enter on releases like Raga Electric. A fine reissue and one that should live towards the top of Flynt's surprisingly massive discography!
Available on lp (but very limited!!)
Wow. It's strange, after never having ever heard of this guy before like, 2 years ago, now I've practically got a whole shelf full of Henry Flynt cds -- all terrific stuff recorded at least two decades back, but only recently seeing the light of day. And they keep coming. This new one dates from way back in 1966, and is billed as a youthful Flynt's NYC art-punk garage rock band. That made us a little apprehensive (we've never really been Fugs fans, and that's what we thought it might sound like), but actually this turned out to be totally amazing! Most of the other Flynt recordings that have come out feature his violin playing, in a kind of '60s minimalism meets Appalachian folk style. But with The Insurrections (with Walter de Maria on drums, later famous for his Lightning Field scupture in the New Mexican desert) Flynt plays guitar instead of fiddle. It's weird country bluesy drone protest rock as only an academic hillbilly Fluxus artist could conceive. The Velvets meet a jug band at an acid test? Not quite, but close. No mere historical document, this is revelatory stuff, not sounding thirty years old but timeless instead. And the recording quality of this rehearsal tape is more than adequate. Somewhere betwixt hoedown and raga, these nine tracks represent a divergent strain of beat music not commonly associated with 1966 (though, that was the year of Black Monk Time, which this doesn't sound like, though you can imagine Flynt woulda liked that Monks LP, and for sure he shared their opinion of Uncle Sam). Again, a dusty tape from the vaults that puts today's crop of avant-blues-improv shitkickers to shame, whoever they are. Recommended.
Wow. It's strange, after never having ever heard of this guy before like, 2 years ago, now I've practically got a whole shelf full of Henry Flynt cds -- all terrific stuff recorded at least two decades back, but only recently seeing the light of day. And they keep coming. This new one dates from way back in 1966, and is billed as a youthful Flynt's NYC art-punk garage rock band. That made us a little apprehensive (we've never really been Fugs fans, and that's what we thought it might sound like), but actually this turned out to be totally amazing! Most of the other Flynt recordings that have come out feature his violin playing, in a kind of '60s minimalism meets Appalachian folk style. But with The Insurrections (with Walter de Maria on drums, later famous for his Lightning Field scupture in the New Mexican desert) Flynt plays guitar instead of fiddle. It's weird country bluesy drone protest rock as only an academic hillbilly Fluxus artist could conceive. The Velvets meet a jug band at an acid test? Not quite, but close. No mere historical document, this is revelatory stuff, not sounding thirty years old but timeless instead. And the recording quality of this rehearsal tape is more than adequate. Somewhere betwixt hoedown and raga, these nine tracks represent a divergent strain of beat music not commonly associated with 1966 (though, that was the year of Black Monk Time, which this doesn't sound like, though you can imagine Flynt woulda liked that Monks LP, and for sure he shared their opinion of Uncle Sam). Again, a dusty tape from the vaults that puts today's crop of avant-blues-improv shitkickers to shame, whoever they are. Recommended.
NOTE: This is temporarily out of stock, but DEFINITELY DO GO AHEAD AND ORDER IT if you want one, as we will for sure be getting more around the third week of November, but we're only getting a limited amount!
Oooooh, we got all in a tizzy when we saw this. As it seems did every one else. We're told The Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! The first 'pressing' sold out in no time, and when we heard there was a second pressing, we got as many as we could so we could actually list it and give all of our like minded customers a chance to snatch up one of these amazing little machines before they were gone. Basically, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. The ultimate record nerd, collector geek, outsider music fetish object. SO COOL. We all bought one (except Allan, but he won't be able to resist much longer!) and it seems like these will not last long at all. FM3 is Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, and they are just the first group in what is meant to be a new series of different artists composing music specifically for these tiny handheld soundboxes. Each Buddha Machine comes with two batteries, and comes sealed in a very generic looking box that doesn't even begin to hint at the joyous drones contained inside! Each Buddha Machine comes in a different color, purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow. Since the boxes are sealed, the color you get will be completely random.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
These showed up on Friday last week and we were so excited we made a whole "in-between" list out of 'em! If you didn't happen to see that, well, we got more in this week and here's that 'first impressions' review again (yeah, we sold out so fast last weekend that none of us here have even gotten a chance to pick one up yet!):
Hey, it's like Christmas in March! The new Buddha Machines are here! We wanted to let you all know, since it's been three long years since the last one - and ten years, believe it or not, since the FM3's original Buddha Machine appeared. Hence, the release of Buddha Machine 5 marks "a decade of drone." If you're not familiar with the Buddha Machine, well... we're very surprised. We've sold SO many of Buddha Machine I, II, III and IV.
But in case you haven't seen one yet, it's basically a small, handheld device - a "battery powered sound box" or, as some would have it, "pocket sound system" - that plays a discrete set of loops of ambient music. Kind of a Zen alternative to the iPod, in a way. Ever since the FM3 created their first iteration of the Buddha Machine, they've been extremely popular, with artists remixing the loops, museum shows, copy-cat sound boxes, and whatnot. Brian Eno was a famous early adopter. You could take a look at our earlier Buddha Machine reviews if you wanna get more info on what they're all about.
So, fans have been hankering for a new Buddha Machine, we were hoping it would be here for Xmas last year (they're the best stocking stuffers for music/sound geeks), but better late than never. We'll let you know the basics about it now - but really you know you want one (or more) already, right?
Buddha Machine 5 contains nine blissful, beautiful new loops by the Beijing-based experimental duo FM3 (Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian), featuring, among other things, "deep, orchestral drones, a Steinway grand piano, and the ambient washes of a vintage monosynth". It's got the usual volume and pitch controls, and a line out so you could plug it into a stereo or whatever, although of course it's self contained with it's own little speaker. In a departure from the many neon hues of the Buddha Machine 4, there are two colors available for the Buddha Machine 5, a Black one (this one) and a White one, each with "a special five-layer silicon coating", providing "a warm and fuzzy handfeel", which sounds kind of kinky. We'll be trying it out tonight.
And oh yeah, requires two AA batteries (not included).
These showed up on Friday last week and we were so excited we made a whole "in-between" list out of 'em! If you didn't happen to see that, well, we got more in this week and here's that 'first impressions' review again (yeah, we sold out so fast last weekend that none of us here have even gotten a chance to pick one up yet!):
Hey, it's like Christmas in March! The new Buddha Machines are here! We wanted to let you all know, since it's been three long years since the last one - and ten years, believe it or not, since the FM3's original Buddha Machine appeared. Hence, the release of Buddha Machine 5 marks "a decade of drone." If you're not familiar with the Buddha Machine, well... we're very surprised. We've sold SO many of Buddha Machine I, II, III and IV.
But in case you haven't seen one yet, it's basically a small, handheld device - a "battery powered sound box" or, as some would have it, "pocket sound system" - that plays a discrete set of loops of ambient music. Kind of a Zen alternative to the iPod, in a way. Ever since the FM3 created their first iteration of the Buddha Machine, they've been extremely popular, with artists remixing the loops, museum shows, copy-cat sound boxes, and whatnot. Brian Eno was a famous early adopter. You could take a look at our earlier Buddha Machine reviews if you wanna get more info on what they're all about.
So, fans have been hankering for a new Buddha Machine, we were hoping it would be here for Xmas last year (they're the best stocking stuffers for music/sound geeks), but better late than never. We'll let you know the basics about it now - but really you know you want one (or more) already, right?
Buddha Machine 5 contains nine blissful, beautiful new loops by the Beijing-based experimental duo FM3 (Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian), featuring, among other things, "deep, orchestral drones, a Steinway grand piano, and the ambient washes of a vintage monosynth". It's got the usual volume and pitch controls, and a line out so you could plug it into a stereo or whatever, although of course it's self contained with it's own little speaker. In a departure from the many neon hues of the Buddha Machine 4, there are two colors available for the Buddha Machine 5, a Black one and a White one (this one), each with "a special five-layer silicon coating", providing "a warm and fuzzy handfeel", which sounds kind of kinky. We'll be trying it out tonight.
And oh yeah, requires two AA batteries (not included).
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!!
By now most folks have probably heard of the Buddha Machine. A little device, about the size of a deck of cards, with a speaker, and a switch, a volume control, and inside, recordings of various ambient loops recorded by the group FM3. Since 2005, when the first Buddha Machine came out, we've sold hundreds and hundreds. In fact we're guessing most people reading this right now already owns at least one. The group must have sold tens of thousands. Which makes perfect sense, it's absolutely the perfect music geek gift, a strange little sonic object, that you can just listen to, or like lots of folks have done, use the sounds inside to make your own music, layering multiple Buddha Machines, jamming along, the options are endless. There have been two generations of Buddha Machines, the second introducing more loops and pitch control. Well, now, just in the nick of time, a week before Christmas, your music nerd stocking stuffer quandaries have been solved! A brand new Buddha Machine. Generation 3, now called Chan Fang ("Zen Room"), and with new sounds AND a new look.
First up, the new sounds, 4 extended loops, no more drones and tones, but instead, unadorned classical loops, all the loops performed on the Qin, a seven string Chinese zither, the sounds rich and deep and sonorous, lots of overtones and subtle sonic shadings, timeless and classic, yet mysterious as well, beautiful and haunting. In fact, it almost sounds like some sort of minimal avant guitar piece, Loren Mazzacane Connors, David Daniell, Roy Montgomery, Steven R. Smith, super spare, the melodies, lazy and measured, spidery tendrils of sound that seem to fade into the ether, notes drifting, and then fading, soft little melodic flurries, dreamily dark and contemplative, equal parts tradition Eastern and experimental Western, quite soothing and hypnotic. And, as with the Buddha Machine II, it features a pitch-shift wheel, so you can make those loops sound stranger if you want.
And of course there's a new look, all of the Buddha Machines are now see-thru, so you can see all the electronics and speakers and little doodads inside, while you're blissing out to the tranquil sounds. They come in 5 different colors, all of 'em see-thru, tinted black, red, green, blue, or clear. The box also comes housed in a printed/textured see-thru slipcase, with the credits on the back, and cool super subtle filigree over the whole thing. This close to the holidays, it might be good when ordering, to let us know if you have an alternate color, cuz we're bound to run out, and if we are able to restock, it won't be until a day or two before Christmas, which will definitely be too late for mailorder customers, and might be too late for locals too.
Needless to say, like all the Buddha Machines that came before, this little thing is amazing, looking, and sounding, and odds are you'll find it hard to keep from buying more than one, and buying one for everyone you know!!! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
It's possible that many of you may not know of FM3, but have been in love with one of thier pieces of work as Beijing's FM3 was responsible for the heavily applauded Buddha Machine, a self-contained device that played nine-loops of jubilant and meditative drones. The Buddha Machine is not the only thing that FM3 has been up to, as its members Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian have also been producing a similarly sublime form of abstract electronica. In 2004, FM3 took their Buddha Box loops and a couple of computers filled with samples distilled from traditional Chinese instruments on a six month tour of Europe and North America. During that tour, they recorded this session for VPRO Radio in the Netherlands which in turn has just been released on Staaplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series. The crystalline loops from their Buddha Machines make themselves known almost immediately with FM3 working these sounds into Feldman like clusters of tones and drones fluttering against passages of calm inactivity. This is a lovely record, proving that FM3 are not only exceptional conceptual art-fabricators but pretty darn good composers too!
Another fantastic Miasmah release, this one from FNS, aka Fredrik Ness Sandoval, who besides playing in a whole bunch of Norwegian bands we've never heard of, has collaborated with members of Acid Mothers Temple, 1/3 Octave Band, the Cranes, Zeni Geva, and Marble Sheep, but here on his solo debut, Sandoval crafts a gorgeous expanse of minimal psychedelic folk, that reminds us both of local dronefolk duo Barn Owl, but also space kraut astral travelers Expo 70.
Imagine folk music transformed into druggy drifty dreamy space ragas, and you'll be getting close, acoustic guitars unfurl gorgeous trancelike stretches of almost Appalachia like strum, while all around, effects swirl, other guitars are layered and woven into the original guitar, creating fantastical stretches of psychedelic drift, of abstract dronekraut minimalism, all infused with a subtle pathos, even the sunshiniest of the tracks here, brood with a somber undercurrent. The record opener sets the stage perfectly, an acoustic guitars strums a melancholy chord progression, while another guitar churns and chugs, a rhythmic counterpoint to the woozy drift of the acoustic, this undulating space raga is laced with tinkling chimes, swooping backwards effects, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly shimmer, and allowed to loop and repeat and mesmerize, growing subtly more intense and loud, but never fully letting loose, instead, eventually shedding all the extra guitars and strange production, leaving just the warm strummed acoustic, and little streaks of backwards swoop. We say it a lot, but Sandoval could have stretched that out to 40 or 50 minutes and we'd STILL be raving about it. And that applies to all the tracks here.
"Sappelur" is a smoldering blackened dirge, roiling clouds of processed buzz, muted feedback, lots of layered tones and lush chordal blur, a lovely blown out psychedelic haze that just throbs and pulses and drifts, right into "Wooden Leg", which returns to the folk of the album opener, but unlike that track, the progression here is much more subtle, it's nearly 2 or 3 minutes before a strange drone begins to surface, along with gorgeous angelic female vocals, soon male vocals join in as well, not singing so much as sort of crooning along, the result is a darker, more menacing take on classic seventies British acid folk.
"I Think She's Asleep" is more abstract, a gorgeous shimmery dreamscape, all layered tones, and pulled apart melodies, haunting and otherwordly, hushed and lovely, very reminiscent of folks like Machinefabriek and Jasper TX. "Dream" is surprisingly less dreamy, sounding instead like some strange sonic ritual, spidery guitars wrapped around twisted damaged electronics, while the vocals transform the sound into something almost liturgical, lots of reverb and echo, as if it were being performed in some massive black cathedral, the effects swirling and swooping, and pushing the sound into the realms of spacekrautdrone for sure.
Finally, the record closes with the epic 12 minute "Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet", which again begins as a slowly unfurling lush sprawl of melancholy Appalachia, all minor key and mournful, while just below the surface, some thick blackened buzzing is birthed, and as the track progresses, it grows more and more caustic, roiling and churning, eventually nearly swallowing the Appalachia whole, transforming the sound into some washed out doomgaze, all woozy and swirly, the low end swells laced with tangled psychedelic melodies, before dropping out completely, leaving just a soft focus cloud of distant reverbed shimmer, a distant cosmic vibration, that seems to gradually fade, like the stars disappearing behind the clouds.
Dark and dreamy and druggy and so so gorgeous... For fans of Expo 70, Svarte Greiner, Barn Owl, Jacaszek, Nadja, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, Fear Falls Burning and other purveyors of doomfolk, krautdrone, spacefolk and all sorts of abstract minimal guitarscapery...
This is the first issue of FO A RM, a magazine dedicated to "resonances among diverse mediums," essentially meaning sound art and its conceptual neighbors. The first issue presents writings on the subject of 'utility' from a range of approaches, from anthropology, experimental poetry, sound theory, and cultural reportage as well as several cross-genre works. FO A RM no. 1 includes new writing by sound-artist and researcher Giancarlo Toniutti, essays by composer Matthew Marble, works by noisician GX Jupitter-Larsen and sound-artist Seth Nehil. In addition, an original ode by prolific master Robert Kelly, instructional poems by mARK oWEns, and investigational works by Alicia Cohen, Holley Blackwell and Ashley Edwards, among others.
We got a big ol' batch of tapes from the Land Of Decay label, run by none other than Andre Foisy, one half (or maybe now it's one third) of aQ beloved doomdronedirge outfit Locrian, the tapes include new jams from ITHI, Number None, Wraiths (all reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and this, the latest solo release from the man himself. And while we were all prepared to say something about how this doesn't veer very far from the sound of Locrian, all it took was about ten seconds to realize it really does. Sure it's still droney and broody and dark and mysterious, but instead of the bleak minimalism and heaving low end thrum of Locrian, Foisy has conjured up two gorgeously heady slabs of folky looped string raga, mandolins and violins unfurl woozy layered loops, constantly shifting, hazy and fuzzy, definitely sounding like snippets of some lost Comus song blurred into a roiling bit of dense folk swirl, while the whole thing is wreathed in a thick churning fog of guitar buzz and rumble, a blackened halo of feedback and thrum, gorgeous stuff for sure.
The second track offers up another variation, a mesmerizing skeletal guitar loop, which is soon joined by droned out violins, sounding a bit like Tony Conrad, all underpinned by deep rumbling guitar swells, streaks of controlled feedback, the sound growing more and more dense, and dreamily blown out, clouds of FX drift in, some tabla like rhythms, the song exploding in slo-mo into a sort of Skullflower/Sunroof! style bliss out, but with a strange sense of raga folk at its core.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
We've yet to get our hands on any releases by the black ambient band Hunok to list and review, but ever since we heard them on a split with AQ faves, Hungarian black metal outfit Marblebog, we have been on a quest! And while this is not in fact Hunok, it is a band featuring folks from Hunok, and the sound is a similarly creepy and haunting ambient weirdness. Foldalatti Ulatulat are from Hungary and have a very distinct and unique take on ambient music. Beginning with some strange disembodied vocals and radio static, the band soon settles into some seriously scary soundtrack music, sounding a bit like an extra creepy, slowed down Peter And The Wolf at times, playful a little, but very ominous, tons of space, low end drones and rumbles, beneath dark swells and strange minor key melodies, mysterious pulses and thick waves of crumbling whir. Very cinematic, like the part in the horror movie when you first enter the abandoned house, and you're slowly creeping up the stairs, the shadows flickering making you think someone is watching... It's all very intense and dramatic and pretty fucking great. Now we just have to track down some Hunok for the store...
