[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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

Showing results 3601 through 3650 of 9280.

One-sided, silkscreened, with download numbered limited to 300 copies.

Brand new release from local soundscaper / noisemaker Holly Herndon, a tape designed specifically for where most tapes get listened too. Yep, the car! This recent resurgence in tape releases has had most of us scrambling to find tape players, going to the Goodwill looking for tapedecks, buying Walkman's (Walkmen?) at Radio Shack, but one place tapes still seem to be ubiquitous, is of course in CARS. Not new cars, it's all cd players now, soon to be MP3 player docks exclusively we imagine, or who knows, maybe you'll be able to sync up your car stereo to your iTunes, but for now, those of you with a tape player in your car, or anyone with a tape player period, should check out Herndon's Car, which was created with the automobile driver, weird sound enthusiast in mind, starting with experiments using sine wave sweeps of popular car models, not to mention random samplings of FM radio (do we hear "Owner Of A Lonely Heart"?). Thick swaths of pulsing sound, streaks of static, layered low end swells, the sound of engine rumbles merged with crackling white noise creating hazy fields of static, which occasionally give way to some flipping through the dial, only to slip right back into heaving sheets of soft focus hiss and whir, throbbing and pulsing subtly within clouds of crunchy static, slipping into softly roiling sprawls of low end hum, which in turn pulse rhythmically, the sounds hypnotic and minimal, like some fractured automobile sourced heroin house. Electric windows are rolled down, their sounds processed and looped into weridly mesmerizing mechanical dronescapes, sounding not unlike The User's ink jet printer symphonies. Killer stuff, and on headphones it sounds amazing, we can only imagine how it sounds cranked in the car. LIMITD TO 102 COPIES!!

It's finally here!! Holly Herndon's mini-opus Movement is a striking electronica debut that addresses the intimate relationship that entwined humanity with technology. Conceptually, this San Francisco electonic music alchemist has honed her craft through her studies in the masters program at Mills College and through her current PhD work at Stanford; but she's also got a handful of years absorbing minimalist techno from Berlin's finest dancefloors. The album pretty much splits the difference between the humanist splendor of Kraftwerk's Man-Machine and the technological horror of any given Cronenberg / Ballard amalgam of science fiction. She's quick to assert that none of her sounds are dystopian, even as the human voice is strangled and hacked apart into bite-sized components which she shuffles in and out of slippery, shifting digital sequences. The slow crawl of "Terminal" opens the album with clinical pulses pitched to half-speed and pricked with sharp lazer emanations of probing sound. "Fade" harkens back to her Berlin club days with a tautly engineered burst of angular techno with Herndon's voice reversed and modulated into anthemic chords smacked between Chris & Cosey and The Knife. This is an awesomely fluid track but is somewhat at odds with the uncomfortable cybernetic gaspings of "Breathe" that follow. It's clear that Herndon intends for the album to offer release through the rhythmic aspects of "Fade" and the title track later on in the album, and build in tension through the polymorphous digital abstractions that dot the rest of the album. Movement makes for a bold album that's certainly for fans of Matmos and AGF.

MPEG stream: Fade
MPEG stream: Breathe
MPEG stream: Dilato

This is the first time we've reviewed anything by this strange Swiss group, active since the nineties, who use self built machines and old analog junk to create a disturbingly genius hybrid of power electronics, old school industrial music, avant turntablism, and abstract whatthefuck sound art. We got these from another aQ fave, and previous Record Of The Weeker, FRKSE, which makes sense, since like FRKSE, and Strotter Inst. among others, Herpes O Deluxe employs tape loops and broken/modified turntables as primitive rhythm machines, giving their sound a haunting, home brewed, robotic vibe, which Herpes O Deluxe then transforms via vocals and other sonic alchemy into something even stranger and creepier. The A side begins with fields of industrial clatter, and blurts of Psycho like strings, churning mechanical rhythms, and howled distorted vox, all over a backdrop of hazy melodic shimmer, and softly pulsing spaciness. The sound slipping from hushed rhythmic mesmer to full of face melting power electronics and back again, like an even more unhinged Wolf Eyes, but even then, the sound somehow remains listenable, and mesmerizing, that rhythmic backdrop churning beneath fragmented synth stabs and processed heavy breathing, and finally a super creepy chorale. The B side is no less far out, beginning with a bed of gristled buzz, over which sampled vocals drift, some sort of argument, a man and a women, not in English, all of which is partially obscured by a buzzing pulsing super minimal rhythm, and peppered with sine wave bleeps. The low level background hum builds and builds, finally transforming into a seriously hefty drone, layer upon layer of buzz and rumble, an oozy black sonic creep, the female arguer, now solo, and now wailing and screeching, beneath a roiling black buzz wreathed in swirling clouds of strange squiggly static, eventually settling into a final stretch of blackdrone softnoise mesmer. Super striking John Baizley / Pushead style cover art, and a cool, multi panel sleeve.

***Finnish Supergroup Alert! *** Lau Nau, Islaja, and Kuupuu all together in one band - it's like the dreamiest aQ daydream come true! All three of these ladies have been responsible for some of the most mystical and beautiful recordings of the last few years, all of which have become permanent favorites with everyone here. Lau Nau, and Islaja's recent recordings have shown them moving toward a more direct approach in their songwriting, but this project really lets all of these ladies dig deep into their textured, experimental roots. It's a bit like listening to a seance happening miles away. Distant and subtle rumblings, murmurs, and gently conjured spells. One of those records that you can't identify what instruments/electronics are being used, with many of the sound sources seeming to be drawn from nature. They use their voices as another haunting instrument that glides in and out of these four long tracks. It has us thinking of the Jeweled Antler crew performing an Arvo Part piece, or Grouper and Hala Strana collaborating on the soundtrack to a pagan solstice ceremony. Completely breathtaking!

MPEG stream: El�m�nnesteiden Sekoittuminen / Cocktail Of Life Fluids
MPEG stream: Mehukkaat Luut / Juicy Bones
MPEG stream: Uhrileipapoyta Katoaa / The Shewbread Vanishes

For those list subscribers who picked up Scharpling & Wurster's hilarious "Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin" cd of WFMU talk radio pranks from a few lists back, the high point was definitely when the 'music snob' condescendingly announced to the host that he had been listening to nothing but Air Mixes - compositions so pure as to have done away with all extraneous elements, like instruments, music, and sound, leaving behind recordings of pure silence. Felix Hess's "Air Pressure Fluctuations" may seem like one of those obnoxious Air Mixes, but rest assured it isn't. Although the recordings do consist of nothing but air. Read on. For this document, Hess has recorded the fluctuations of air currents (which do generate sound, but in the inaudible infrasound end of the sonic spectrum) at 360 times the original speed, thus bringing these sounds up to audible levels. The gray wash of sound which comes from this process immediately sounds like a quiet spring rain, but Hess in his well written, but brief liner notes explains that these tiny sounds are the cumulative sound of a door being opened and closed throughout the day. A deep droning hum that occasionally comes to the ground is the amplification of standing waves from the distant Atlantic ocean, and the increased density of these sounds every 4 minutes is attributed to an urban population waking up and starting its day. Yup, this is an Air Mix, but it's a damn good one, if sadly a mere 20 minutes long.

RealAudio clip: Air Pressure Fluctuations

Another missive from the wilds of foresty Finland, this time two of our favorites team up, we think, for maybe the first time ever. Jan Anderzen, he of Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Islaja, Tomutonttu and Anaksimandros (phew!), and Hirvonen, he of the mighty and mysterious Uton (who have a new lp reviewed elsewhere on this list) together, as Hevoset. Between the two of them, these guys have probably released 50 or 60 records all told. maybe even more, and they definitely have similar methodologies, but each has their own distinct take on music making, mixing folk and free noise and ambience and drone, so it makes sense that the two would be drawn to each other, and the results are quite fantastic, infusing elements of both artists' various groups into something new, yet oddly familiar. The vibe here is definitely more drone-heavy, the tracks all seem rooted around various long tones, lots of layers, plenty of looped repetition. The opener begins with a scalding burst of grinding buzz and squealing feedback, what sounds like processed throat singing and strange keening high end tones, before slipping effortlessly into a murky lullaby, all muted plunks and shimmery whir, before wheezing high end melodies surface from below. The next track again roots itself in the drone, but this time, it's more washed out and dreamy, organs wheeze and whir, the melodies looping and overlapping, while over the top, a guitar feeds back and grinds out a strange burnished melody. A few tracks eschew the drone all together, instead, offering up strange tribal rituals, simple percussion, mewling wordless vocals, haunting abstract guitar groan and skree, others are super minimal stretches of shimmering tones, and woozy plucked strings, spread out into drifting amorphous soundscapes, while others sound like symphonies of scratched records, blurred and smeared into something much less distinct, but even those tracks take those disparate sounds and ground them in a loose drone framework, creating a surprisingly varied, but quite cohesive, and imminently mesmerizing collection of abstract drone divinity. LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!!!

Most folks are probably more familiar with Mathew Kvohst McNerney as a member of avant post black metallers Code, or Dodheimsgard offshoot DHG, but in Hexvessel, MKMcN explores a different sonic path altogether, a sort of ritualist psychedelic folk, that has more in common with groups like Woven Hand and Comus and other modern freak folkers than any of the bands in his more metal pedigree. The coolest part about Hexvessel is McNerney's distinctive vocals. For us, the best part of Code were McNerney's clean vocals, especially set amidst churning black buzz, or Interpol like metallized gloom, so to hear those same vocals draped over sun dappled acoustic guitars and fluttering flutes, is pretty spectacular, and reveals that in many ways, his talents were wasted screeching and shrieking over black buzz. The tracks are dark and haunting, minimal and dreamily druggy, hazy and washed out, warm and woozy and psychedelic, conjuring that seventies acid folk vibe, buzzing metallic drones swirling around lush finger picked steel string Appalachia, the vocals crooned one second ominously whispered the next, the core sound of the group augmented by a fantastic array of musical instruments including mandolin, banjo, bandoneon, upright bass, gongs, harmonium, dulcimer, zither, psaltery, bells and more, the songs alternately ominous and sinister, hushed and dreamlike, sometimes set amidst the sound of a summer glade, all bird calls and whispering wind, other times wreathed in strange occultic ambience, the lyrics mysterious and cryptic, the delivery, passionate and urgent, a gorgeously timeless collection of old timey ballads, haunting laments, foresty folk dirges, and various other permutations of Hexvessel's mystical dark folke. Most definitely for fans of all strains of folk: psychedelic, apocalyptic, doom, freak and otherwise, as well as fellow folk brethren like Woven Hand, Comus, Sixteen Horsepower, Burial Hex, Espers, Six Organs Of Admittance, Timesbold, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, etc. Super striking packaging, all metallic gold ink on full color matte finish, inside an equally striking booklet filled with haunting images, lyrics, liner notes and original artwork by Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre.

MPEG stream: Invocaction Summoning
MPEG stream: Heart Of The Mind World
MPEG stream: Scarlet Cassocks
MPEG stream: The Death Knell Tolls

For past releases from this UK noise rock combo, we've employed descriptors like: head caving, throbbing, distorted, bad trip psychedelia, fuzz-distorted metallic, rhythmic heaviness, sheer nihilistic sludge, bludgeoning... you get the point, these guys are sonic crushers of the highest order. Or maybe WERE. Cuz this new lp displays a whole 'nother side to Hey Colossus, one that falls much closer to the psychedelic space rock side of the sonic spectrum. The record opens with a super psychedelic groove, sorta space-kraut, chordal synth swirls wrapped in clouds of shimmer FX and laced with streaks of feedback, total hypno rock bliss out, that is until the vocals come in. Growly and demonic and raspy and intense, removed from HC's normally noisier sound, those voKILLS take on a much more sinister vibe, and make for a weird combo, mad man ranting over otherwise tranced out psychedelic mesmer, but it works. And those clouds of effects bleed right into the next track, all tribal drumming and spidery guitar melodies, and yup, those crazed vocals, the whole thing building to something much more noisy and rocking, but only briefly, before slipping back into a sort of proggy space kraut psychedelia. Minus those vocals (heck, even with 'em!), the sound falls somewhere closer to outfits like White hills, Mugstar and Carlton Melton, which is not a bad thing at al, just maybe a bit surprising. The B side though is a bit sludgier and heavier, with thick, almost metallic riffing, but still, kinda space-y and proggy, those swirling FX from the A side still all over the places, the B side remaining pretty dark and heavy, at least until the weird, almost croony, countryish outro, which adds dusky twang, to the broody space-y drift, and of course those vox! Cool weird stuff. Hey Colossus fans will probably still dig, but so might space/psych rock fans this time around.

When we originally got into UK heavies Hey Colossus some years ago, they were the epitome of brutal, noise rock extremity. Heavy, head caving stuff. But they also always had a psychedelic, krautrock-y side to 'em too (making for the 'Fudge Tunnel meets Can' comparison we cited in an earlier review). Lately, they've definitely been experimenting even more, not getting away from the heaviness, but emphasizing their psychedelic side, with their last album (on MIE) veering towards full on Carlton Melton/White Hills style space rock. This new album for Rocket Recordings finds Hey Colossus really opening things up, being different. Eclectic influences are GO!, starting off with a celestially spacey shoegaze blissout called "Hold On". After that, you'd think track two, "Sisters And Brothers" would be a crusher, suddenly bringing down the monolithic destructo heaviness, but instead it's a loose-limbed groove, spacey and fuzzy and quasi-funky, and 'groove' is something that's definitely, and very effectively, to the fore on this album. Track three, "Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!", is equally rhythmic, a bit heavier though, like some sort of slammin', swampy Circle-meets-Swans or Harvey Milk-meets-Endless Boogie party proposition. And it don't stop, not on next cut "Wired Brainless" that keeps us thinking No Wave sludge spaciousness. That's what's going on, on this album, a good use of space, the truly heavy bits strung out, stretched out, spaced out, for maximum less-is-more power. Or something. We like it. Then there's the title track, with drawled deep vocals and a wide open Western twilight vibe, accompanied by some big ol' crushing chords, indeed, for a Lee Hazlewood fronting Earth sort of sound, that soon morphs into a stoned motorik Wooden Shjips style jammathon!! Killer. And there's still another three tracks to go, including the nearly 10-minute, dubby "Lagos Atom", all of 'em full of beats and drones and noise and distortion, always getting that groove happenin'. So, definitely recommended, let's just mention a few more bands we wanted to reference earlier but didn't work in here yet: Lumerians, Television, Gun Club, early Pharaoh Overlord, the entire Cardinal Fuzz roster... Heck we're pretty sure if your ears have perked up at any of this review, you're gonna like In Black And Gold - which, by the way, sports some handsome black and metallic gold artwork/packaging.

MPEG stream: Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!
MPEG stream: Black And Gold
MPEG stream: Eat It

Latest batch of noise rock pummel from these UK crushers, although the first few minutes had us thinking we might have stuck the wrong disc in the player, a cool droned out slithery expanse of dense layered shimmer, of mysterious ritualistic buzz, tribal percussion, disembodied vocals, all hazy and druggy and mesmerizing, but fear not, apparently that was just the intro, as track two comes stumbling in like some downtuned AmRep avalanche, all Melvins-y stomp and swagger, with knuckle dragging drum pound, bellowed processed vox, all beneath squalls of feedback and grinding FX, and let's not forget the guitars, there are after all THREE guitar players (four if you count the bass guitar, and we DO), a thick wall of crumbling blackened slo-mo tarpit riffage, churning and roiling, some sort of sonic mad scientist channeling the Butthole Surfers and Shit And Shine, and sort of like in the movie The Fly the two are fused in some horrible laboratory mishap, but in this case, the result is fantastic, a gloriously sludgy dirgey pound, heady and hypnotic, a looped sounding chunk of metallic mesmer, which is pretty much what these guys specialize in. The rest of the record offers up variations of that theme, "The Drang" slows things down to a swampy crawl, letting synths shimmer and feedback squall beneath a sea of swirling buzz and bellowing howls, while the title track blurs everything into a stretched out sprawl of FX drenched space rock bliss out, that gradually becomes more and more metallic, more and more pounding and propulsive as the track progresses, the last half sounding a bit like the Melvins covering Hawkwind, which is no way a bad thing at all. "Almeria, Spain" is an epic bit of post-sludge, sounding all majestic and mighty, a bit like Harvey Milk at their most melodic and bombastic, while "Warmer The Belter" gets all sensitive, acoustic guitars, some shuffling drums, dreamy melodies, and the vocals a deep dreamy croon, the whole thing underpinned by a symphony of demonic sounding effects and sinister drones, which finally gives way to the final jam, "I Am Bunga Bunga", which far from the crushing closer we were expecting pairs weird garbled vox with shimmery shuffling almost krautrock sounding thrum, which really only briefly explodes, offering up a final glimpse of these guys' crush and pummel proclivities, before slipping right back into a final minute or two of swirling effects wreathed ambience. As always incredible stuff, and a pretty awesome document of how these guys drag their noise rock kicking and not always screaming, far beyond the boundaries that define most of their similarly sonically inclined brethren...

MPEG stream: Teased From The Nest
MPEG stream: The Drang
MPEG stream: I Am Bunga Bunga

Latest Teutonic slab of colossal crunch from these slow motion UK sludge lords, and since we've last heard them, they have appended their already odd monicker with the even more confusional "And The Van Halen Time Capsule". But don't expect any drastic changes, or anything remotely Van Halen like, right out of the gate these guys throw down hard, demonstrating again, that even though they still tend to slip beneath most folks' radar, they might be one of the best slow and low heavy bands happening these days. A boiling cauldron of sonic black tar is upended and so begins the first track, as the black sludge oooooozes from the speakers, glacial riffage, weird looped samples, crushing 16rpm black hole drum plod, all sorts of gnarled glitchy distortion and buzz, which gives way to something weirdly dramatic, vocals clean and crooned one second, processed and garbled the next, while the music gets downright pretty, before spiraling into jagged shards of hiss and howl, the rest of the band stumbling back to a funereal crawl, and that's just the first song. The rest of the record is a dizzying assault of midtempo noiserock pound, drugged out abstract ambience, downtuned throbbing sludge, twisted crusty dooooom, and heavy heavy drones, but it's not just the sounds, it's what these guys do with them. The riffs don't just buzz, they drip and ooze and creep, the vocals are inhuman and alien, totally disturbing, the guitars chug and churn and rumble, the songs veer from total ultra dooooom to twisted post rock lumber, to abstract hypnorock stutter, to weird epic almost chamber sounding sludge, taking something filthy and foul and making it majestic. Not sure why these guys are not HUGE, but anyone into Harvey Milk, and other practitioners of slow low crush and dense doomic dronemusic, should definitely be freaking out over these guys, and this record.

The problem with a split lp featuring two bands who are somewhat unfamiliar, when there is no specific info on the record labels or cut into the grooves on the vinyl, is deciding which band is which, going on number of track (here both bands have three), instrumentation (HGP list no instruments, Zond have a guy credited with skateboard, which seemed like it would be a dead giveaway but sadly we could hear no skateboard), but then, usually we decide fuck it. It doesn't really matter until you decide you need more by either / both bands, which unfortunately (or fortunately!) you probably will after listening to this twisted slab of sonic weirdness. We'll tackle the B side cuz that's what we threw on first, and we'll assume that this is actually Zond, who we have never heard before, but are digging BIG TIME. Super distorted and blown out, sludgey dirgey noise rock, howled vocals barely audible over the din of downtuned riffage and in-the-red psychrock squalls, the drums a buried muffled pound, the whole thing a churning, grinding, gloriously filthy trudge. Maybe imagine a more Dead C-ish Brainbombs and you'd be close. That is until the extended final track, the eschews all the damaged outrock that came before, and offers up a stretched out expanse of buzzing shimmering ambient drone, not really tranquil, still a bit noisy, a little off kilter, the sounds bathed in distortion, wrapped in feedback, but stretched out into a weirdly hypnotic noisescape. So working under the assumption, that the B side is Zond, then the A side must be Hi-God People, who we have heard once before on a split with none other than the Dead C, but the sound here is dramatically different, which is probably what threw us off in the first place. The first and longest track, is a sort of fractured free folk, detuned acoustic guitar twang, sitar like buzz, crooned atonal vocals, wreathed in shimmery effects, swirling clouds of wah wah guitar, strange bleepy bloopy ambience, it almost sounds like some sixties hippy jam, but completely fried and fractured. A more spaced out, free folk, No Neck, or maybe a Sunburned Hand / Avarus musical summit. Until the track slips into something a little different, unleashing more of a krautrock vibe, a subtle pulsing propulsive jam, underneath all of the twisted twang and abstract strum. The second track is much more abstract, a tripped out buzzy dronescape with random clattery percussion, wheezing organs, swooping melodies, fluttery woodwinds, all very creepy and somewhat cinematic, finally finishing off with the brief closer, a gorgeous, hazy, druggy buzz drenched psych jam, that begs for a whole 'nother side for it to drift and unwind. Good stuff, from both bands, whichever is which. Super limited of course, and housed in super swank hand screened sleeves!

"Una Voz", written by Spanish conceptual artist Juan Hidalgo, read by Javier Martinez Cuadrado and recorded by Walter Marchetti (who also added some extra sounds by opening the windows during the reading during an evening in Madrid on September 1967). As Juan Hidalgo wrote for the liner notes: "I spent about 10 years reading, hearing and meditating, outside, around and inside Zen

Amazing, and ultra limited, made to order, hand carved lathe cut from our favorite modern day musical shaman Dan Higgs, he of Lungfish and assorted amazing solo recordings. Two tracks, each exclusive to this disc, an ultra thick black lathe cut, with printed / hand written labels, and housed in a thick, old school green paper sleeve stamped with the label info and the tracks hand written on the sleeve. So gorgeous. And the music is appropriately gorgeous as well. The A side is a long droney chunk of twisted Eastern raga tinged neo-Appalachia as only Higgs can do it. Tangled melodies, gnarled arrangements, droney and buzzy, haunting and minor key, the track always shifting from dreamy finger picked bliss to pulsing blown out raga to spaced out psychedelia, all on an acoustic guitar. So good. The flipside is a "Recitation" by Mr. Higgs, and is a total mind blower. Obviously recorded on a handheld microcassette recorder, complete with the 'thunk' of the stop and record buttons, as well as lots of sibilance and background hiss. But the voice is immediately recognizable, and the words... confusingly brilliant, surreal, so evocative and vivid, sometimes beautiful and tender, sometimes horrific, and other times completely baffling, somehow as dreamy and easy to listen to as the guitar on the other side. But to understand it all, that's another story. Too much for mere mortals we're afraid, but so goddamn fascinating. These are custom made to order, and are thus SUPER EXPENSIVE and SUPER LIMITED. We got a handful, we probably can get more when we run out, but it might take a while, so if you miss this first batch, be prepared to be patient...

Daniel Higgs, of Lungfish and the Pupils, is one of the very few contemporary artists who we would absolutely consider a sort of modern day shaman. A musical alchemist, an artistic cypher, an abstract philosopher, a strangely charismatic, yet disarmingly humble master of any artistic endeavor he puts his mind to. A legendary (but now retired) tattoo artist, an incredible painter, whose paintings are at once hallucinatory and gorgeous (one painting adorns the cover of Leviathan's Tentacles Of Whorror record) and of course an incredible musician, whose sonic experiments range from the mesmeric riffrock of his band Lungfish, to an entire record of solo Jew's harp. But in addition to being an incredible lyricist, an amazing vocalist, and a master of the Jew's harp, Higgs is also a seriously mean guitar player, with a style and sound as familiar as it is totally alien. A gorgeous buzzing steel string drift through the cosmos. Lengthy droning ragas, that drift hypnotically from deconstructed Appalachia to John Cale like slow-shifting skree (joined on those tracks by violin), to moody melancholy crawls, to thick serpentine swirls of snake charmer melody and reverberating steel string shimmer. Raw and lo-fi for sure, but so darkly emotional, and dreamily hypnotic. We've been listening to this non stop since we got it and it continues to unfold more and more on each listen, we're thinking seriously about grabbing a boombox, taking a ton of peyote, blasting this tape and laying in the thick grass, sprawled naked on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, beneath a sparkling moonlit sky. In other words, WAY RECOMMENDED! SUPER LIMITED of course. In spiffy, ultra cryptic packaging.

Modern day shaman Daniel Higgs returns with a two disc collection of songs and poems recorded (mostly) in LA last year with production wizard David Andrew Sitek of TV On The Radio. Higgs has been blowing minds here in the Bay Area since his temporary relocation to Oakland, and we were even fortunate enough to have him grace us with a wonderful in store performance not too long ago. The material on Say God perfectly captures what a Daniel Higgs performance is, with minimal but highly effective musical accompaniment to go along with Higgs' unique brand of poetry delivered in his amazing, rich voice, an instrument unto itself. Some people may be confused by the direction Higgs has followed in recent years, after all, this might initially seem to be the farthest thing from Lungfish's dense psychedelic songcraft. But throughout his musical journey, Higgs has maintained a completely singular creative approach, and his solo work reflects this as much as anything he's ever done. The interesting thing is how his albums blur the lines between what Daniel Higgs is: musician, artist, poet, singer, soundmaker, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, etc. The end results are pretty much unlike anything else, and it's not surprising how many people are moved by this stuff, especially after seeing the man perform. Disc 1 opens with current best song title of all time, "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind," which actually was recorded at a live performance in Germany, with Higgs announcing, "Holy Bible time" to what we can imagine was a stunned crowd. His vocals are accompanied by simple drone and a slight shaker rhythm. His voice carries the melody to new heights as he assures listeners that he intends to appeal to their (and our) standards of songcraft. Not surprisingly, he succeeds. "Song For Azariah" features a mournful folky Appalachian melody played on a banjo that also hints at some eastern influences. The lucky few who were able to snap up Higgs' super limited Hymnprovisations banjo freakout lp can certainly attest his ability on the instrument, and this only reaffirms that. "Say God" features some awesome trademark melodies from Higgs Lungfish/Pupils cohort and underrated guitar hero Asa Osborne, who some of you might also know from his Zomes project. Listening to this, you will wonder when and where this stuff is coming from. It possesses a strange timeless appeal, even though it may not be for everyone. Either way, it's something totally unique, and Osborne's guitar sweeps majestically beneath Higgs' vocals with some amazing results before ending with "A Message From The Beautiful", another piece with just harmonium and voice. The second disc begins with "Root & Bough", with Higgs sounding a bit like a manlier Devendra Banhart (or maybe it should be Banhart we are comparing to Higgs?) as he recites a lengthy poem with a simple shruti box accompaniment. One of the best things about Higgs as a performer is his spontaneity, and these recordings represent the actual moment, with Higgs even coughing here and there to clear his throat. The power of his voice defines the song, and while definitely droney at times, unlike super blown out electric guitar drones, things here are much more intimate as Higgs weaves out his own mythology which will certainly keep you wondering for a while. At around the 6 minute mark, things take a dramatic shift as a heavy synth drone sweeps in, sounding like what you might expect from Expo '70 or Emeralds. Little whispy melodies begin to flutter about for a few minutes before returning to the drone that characterized the song earlier. About 12 minutes in (uh, did we mention that these are some long songs?), Higgs begins repeating the word "Sing" in a rhythmic pace. Make no mistake, this takes some patience to listen to, but the results are well worth the wait. It's not like you would expect little 3 minute pop songs with this guy, and you have to pay attention to even begin to understand what's going on in his world. However, the next song, "Jewel Of The East" is actually quite brief, a nice folky number performed on what might be a pump organ, it sounds like something you might find on the Wicker Man soundtrack. The song is repetitive and performed with the same loop like attention of Lungfish and Pupils. "Tumble Down" features Higgs' voice with no instrumentation save the sounds of crickets chirping outside. His natural vibrato is in good form as he goes from singing to speaking, all the while keeping things nice and tuneful. "Christ Among Us" finds Higgs breaking out his banjo again, always a joy to listen to. He also tells us, "This song possesses portal power", and one can tell he means it, as this is some transcendental stuff for sure. We may be going out on a limb here, but some of us feel this is Higgs' strongest solo endeavor as of yet and a great place to start for the uninitiated. Say God is weird, mystical, and beyond comprehension (in a good way of course), but Higgs is the kind of artist with rabidly devoted fans who will no doubt agree with this album's absolute majesty.

MPEG stream: Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind
MPEG stream: Root & Bough
MPEG stream: Jewel Of The East
RealAudio clip: Say God

Latest collection of mysterious musical missives from this modern day musical shaman, Daniel Higgs, he of the late great Lungfish, who transformed that band's penchant for looped cyclical noise rock, into his own brand of haunting hymn-like spiritual ragas. The main instrument here is banjo, but not played like any banjo you've ever heard, plucked and strummed, Higgs coaxing from the instrument a gorgeous array of sounds both melodic and textural, the buzzing notes layered and woven into a droned out buzz, a gorgeously hypnotic Eastern tinged mesmer, laced with mysterious spoken word segments, strange vocalizations. All super low fidelity, the sound constantly shifting, the ker-chunk of the button on the tape machine as much a part of the sound as the jagged primitive edits, and the dreamily lovely melodies, the sound is intimate and urgent, hypnotic and dreamy, there's even some primitive drum machines, which transform the sound, however briefly, into a strange sort of lo-fi krautrock, reminiscent of German Oak's bunker explorations, but way more abstract and psychedelic. We could go on and on, but by now, most readers of the aQ list are well familiar with Higgs, and won't need much coaxing to grab one of these, especially considering it's LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, which means once these are gone, it's not entirely clear if we'll be able to get more...

It's practically been raining super limited Daniel Higgs releases around here lately, first there were two different cassettes over the last few weeks, and now this live cd-r, recorded in Greece back in 2011, and released in an edition of 200 copies. And as always it's impossible to predict what exactly we're in for with a new Higgs record. Could be banjo, could be jaw harp, could be a strange spoken word sermon, could be some strange mix of all three. But for this particular performance, it's shruti box and vocals, a 34 minute excerpt from a sprawling two hour performance, the shruti box wheezing, unfurling a lush chordal whir, soon Higgs invites the audience to lay down, he introduces himself, and then proceeds to weave a magical sonic spell, his vocals soaring dramatically, chanting one second a wild trilling almost operatic howl the next, all over that droned out shimmery backdrop. The sound so mesmerizing and hypnotic, trancelike and very much like a psychedelic sonic sermon. As we've mentioned in the past, it's not hard to imagine Higgs as some sort of mysterious cult leader, and these recordings some strange series of rituals where the knowledge of the ancients is passed down to willing supplicants. So moving, emotional, and passionate, and yet another mysterious missive from our favorite modern day sonic shaman. Obviously, way recommended, but get one quick, cuz it's LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered. We got about 25 and most likely will not be able to get more. Housed in nice thick textured paper sleeves, with super striking Higgs-as-skull artwork.

MPEG stream: 08.11.2009 (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: 08.11.2009 (excerpt 2)

The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel�Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length�Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor.� Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy.� His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself.� Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient� drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike. It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit... As if that weren't enough, the cd version comes with a full color hardcover book of Higgs' paintings and 'poetry', a series of cryptic acrostics to be more accurate. The�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot series of paintings are all, like most of Higgs' work, strange and wondrous, here the focus is on enigmatic amorphous shapes, vividly colored, with all manner of textures and designs, stripes, polka dots, some of the shapes look like whales or fish, others like mushrooms, eyeballs, amoebas, shapeless heads, each filled with symbols, colors and patterns. The accompanying acrostics are cryptic and it's difficult to determine if they are related to the paintings they are beside, MUSIC, BIRDS, MIND, EDEN, PEACE, EMBRYO, BELOVED, COITUS... all offering up mysterious pearls of wisdom like "Always braid your silver serpents" or "Existence manifests between ravenous yellow orbs".� The perfect visual accompaniment to Higgs' raw and primitive musical rituals...

MPEG stream: Luminous Carcass Ornament
MPEG stream: Cocoon On The Cross
MPEG stream: Spectral Hues

Record number two from this mysterious drone-kraut styled duo. Their last disc was a huge hit around here, so we were pretty thrilled to get our hands on this one, a logical sonic extension of the first, delving deeper into some murky tripped out twilit soundworld. The disc opens with shimmering clouds of gongs and cymbals, whirring and sizzling, suspended over a deep distant rumble, a delicate intro to a record at once hypnotic and lovely, dark and dense. The record is arranged into three epic tracks, interspersed with short sonic interludes, ranging from field recordings of crickets, looped chants (Elizabeth Clare Prophet if we're not mistaken), spirituals and mysterious liturgical songs, whirring drones, and backwards percussion, but it's the long tracks where the duo get to spread out, let their dense soundscapes sprawl. The three long tracks sounds like movements of a greater whole, clocking in at 15 minutes, 11 minutes and nearly 17 minutes respectively, each rife with creepy delayed vocals, churning guitars and smeared chords, roiling muddy whirls, which often dissipate leaving streaks of fragmented melody and haunting slowed down voices. Buried amidst the drones and whirs, are lullaby-like melodies, skittery percussion, streaks of grinding distortion, hidden voices, more field recordings, thick swaths of cavernous rumbles, little bits of electronic glitch and lots and lots of low end buzz. Packaged in a fancy navy blue fold over sleeve, screenprinted in white ink, with a photocopied insert with liner notes and song credits. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.

MPEG stream: Mektoub
MPEG stream: Dispatch 23 From He Kali Yuga

It's been a while since we've heard from psych-kraut-drone duo High Mountain Tempel, but Gnosis quickly reminds us why we missed these guys. Tempel-ers Keith Boyd and Eric Nielsen unfurl a softly billowing psych folk raga, that's all softly swirling steel string strum, circular melodic shimmer, crooned, almost chant like vocals, the disc also featuring a bunch of guests, including some Acid Mothers Temple folks, as well as Charles Curtis and Isis Aquarian (!). Unlike the more purely ritualistic minimalism of the other records, the opening track here sound more like some Appalachian psych-folk, blurred into something a bit more abstract. But the group quickly returns to that ritualism, conjuring up strange fields of softly shimmering dronemusic, subtle bits of percussion, chiming harmonics, whispered incantations, those two sides of HMT's sound constantly in flux, delicate piano draped over processed whispered vocals, transformed into clouds of grey hissing sibilance, sounds pitched down to create ominous bellows, that become dubbed out drones, sampled voices also doused in FX drift over the top, churning industrial noise gives way to almost Native American sounding minimalism, fluttering flutes, shakers and bells, distant field recordings, swirling backwards melodies, swooshing ambience, and muted droning FX, occasionally blossoming into a sort of collaged soft noise-psych, and just as often expanding into a sort of free-rock campfire forest-folk. The long tracks laced with bits of psychedelic freakout, shards of feedback, buried voices, and constantly shifting layers and textures, all blurred into a heady, heavenly psych-drone ritual, that is mesmerizing and dreamily hypnotic. It's a cd-r, but comes housed in a nice full color digipak, and yeah, probably pretty limited too...

MPEG stream: Processional (An Invocation To Thee Angelic Sister)
MPEG stream: The Wormwood Parchments (Navigating By Cameron's Star)
MPEG stream: Vu Lan Ghost (A Solemn Sharing)

This is our first exposure to the High Mountain Tempel duo, and everything, from the design, to the name, to the sound, is very ritualistic indeed, like the sounds of some dark ceremony performed in some ancient temple atop, well, some high mountain. Strange and haunting monk-like chants recur throughout the record, usually, wrapped in deep resonant drones, moaning foghorn like rumbles everything drenched in reverb and delay, like hearing everything through the sacrificial smoke of the most recent sacrifice. Elsewhere bird calls mirror disembodied guitar melodies, the various sound fragments allowed to drift and then settle on the ground, the proceedings all wrapped in a thick murky ambience, as if suddenly the treble knob was turned all the way down and the bass knob all the way up, the melodies muted and muddy, like some dark slow moving stream, flowing gently beneath a black sky, and trees alive with small and mysterious creatures. In fact this whole record is rife with the sounds (manufactured or sampled, not always easy to tell) of various beasts and fowl, a very 'lost in the jungle' vibe permeating the proceedings. The last chunk of the record is a gloriously glistening, lugubrious crawl, thick swells of sparkling sound wrapped around twisted low end shapes, all drifting lazily into some mysterious dark wood... Packaged in a swank black fold over sleeve, screenprinted in gold metallic ink, with a photocopied insert with liner notes and song credits.

MPEG stream: Tempel Walk
MPEG stream: Harkonen Veda
MPEG stream: drugsmeditationhypnosis

Part three in the ongoing series of limited cd-r explorations from mysterious drone combo High Mountain Tempel, and like the two before it, the band continue to delve into some murky sonic underworld, again presenting loooong songs, each separated by brief sonic interludes, this disc seems feature more actual vocals, the opening track features a processed voice, that sounds a bit like throat singing, or a Speak And Spell, intoning some arcane message, interwoven with long drawn out tones, and a thick ropy buzz, super dark and intense and atmospheric. Elsewhere sampled voices surface, there are bits of chanting here and there, all peppered throughout the disc. But even with the extra voices, the focus here is still on dark, lugubrious, extended dronescapes. The sound of High Mountain Tempel is probably closest to Expo '70, as their various permutations of dronemusic seem to have a definite krautrock vibe, that gives the sound a sort of spaced out quality, and a subtle propulsion, but unlike Expo '70, HMT seem to have a distinct Eastern influence, much of the music is meditative and subtly dramatic, a bit soundtracky, and some of it sounds like it could be Japanese. Especially the way field recordings are incorporated into the sounds. Giving everything a definite texture, some of it sounding like it was perhaps recorded live in some hilltop temple. Which we would imagine is the idea. Not sure what else to say actually. This is indeed fantastic, brooding and malefic, but also shimmery and dreamy, sonically it has much in common with the first two installments, so definitely check out those reviews to read more about their 'sound'. Needless to say, fans of the drone and folks into the current crop of cd-r soundscapers will for sure dig this, but like the other HTM discs, this is more than simple drone music, this is ritualistic alchemical soundwork, one can almost imagine stumbling across a group of cloaked figures huddled around a fire in a forest clearing, tossing various powders into the flames, causing the fire to change color and cast beastlike shadows on the branches above, and this is the sound filtering through the forest like a black moonlit fog... SUPER LIMITED of course, packaged beautifully in a foldover silkscreened sleeve, gold metallic on red on the outside, black on red on the inside.

MPEG stream: Humming In The Night's Skull

French one man psychedelic loopscaper High Wolf finds his way onto our pal JW's Holy Mountain label, and offers up another mesmerizing collection of collaged soundscapes and rhythmic mesmer, but unlike on past records where the High Wolf sound was dense, and noisy, a little chaotic, a Birchville Cat Motel like slow build to a dense layered soft cacophony, the sounds here are much more blissed out and dubby, very rhythmic with a bit of an Eastern vibe, the opening track especially sounds like a more lysergic Muslimgauze, with some sitar like buzz and tribal hand drums woven into the song's blurred soft swells and spidery melodies, it's easily the dreamiest thing we've heard from HW, and we definitely wish it had gone one way longer. The second track offers up more of the same, with a bit more effects, muted percussion, some warm fuzzed out shimmer, all in a haze of washed out effects, until the low end swoops in, thick and dense, synthy and warbly, a strange fuzzy pulse laid over that initial rhythm, a dark raga like kosmische sound that drifts and shimmers hypnotically until the song finally winds down. Track three, "Raagini" begins all raga buzz, layered high end tones, but quickly blossoms into a sound more like the High Wolf of old, a gauzy expanse of mesmerizing buzz, but here the drones are laid over a strange sonar like pulse, which gives the otherwise nearly static buzz an otherworldly propulsion. "Kenya Sunset" is another one that starts off all Muslimgauze-y, looped and darkly rhythmic, ominous and cinematic, the surrounding sounds in constant motion, totally tranced out, the sort of thing we could listen to forever, but instead of going on forever, the song erupts into a wild psychedelic squall, that wraps itself around that pulsing rhythm, and rides it for the length of the track. And then finally, the nearly 14 minute "Haiti" smooths the looped rhythms into something much more abstract and droney, some spaced out psychedelic drift, that builds slowly into a warm washed out celestial swirl, all bleary and blurry and dreamy, but still shot through with some smoldering psychedelic guitar, the perfect closer to one of our favorite High Wolf records yet. Includes a download coupon as well!

MPEG stream: Fuji Descent
MPEG stream: The Dawn Of Man

Latest from this French psychedelic loopscaper, hot on the heels of his Ascension lp, which we loved (and still have a few copies of, just ask!). Like Ascension, Incapulco finds Mr. Wolf, assembling sprawling landscapes of layered loops, of swirling psychedelic atmospheres, mesmerizing, hypnotic, repetitive, cyclical, total tranced out zoner bliss. Wah guitars are wreathed in effects and wrapped around stuttering percussions and whorls of tinkling melody, wild tangles of African rhythms wound tight over soft moody swells and shoegazey shimmer, hushed hazy atmospheric drift shot through with tendrils of glitched out electronics, a sort of industrial flecked new age dronescape, fracture eighties pop, lopped and looped into a Ferraro-esque bit of lysergic Tropicalia, soft swirls of prismatic analog synth give way to woozy Casiocore lounge drift, pulsing motorik churn underpinning flecks of psychedelic wah and heaving crumbling thrum. Another fantastic collection of consciousness altering sonic shimmer and bongsmoke fueled ur-drone dream loop mesmer, for anyone into Skaters, James Ferraro, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Avarus, Natural Snow Buildings, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Starving Weirdos, etc...

MPEG stream: Do You Have A Moustache?
MPEG stream: Bizarre Moonlight

Been meaning to get to this one for a while... and then we reviewed it and our supplier was out of stock... but now they've got 'em again and here you go: Japanese guitarist Hisato Higuchi's previous disc on the Family Vineyard label, Dialogue, was all about the almost motionless, mysterious spare strum, a lonely n' lovely abstract guitar meditation. This newer disc starts off that way, with the quietly beautiful "A Hundred Signs Of Light"... but then, when track two, "Grow", kicks in, Higuchi's guitar playing suddenly, surprisingly takes a thrilling turn into amped up electric skree territory. It still sounds lonely and lovely - just WAY more loud and distorted. "Blood And Leaves" follows in the same vein. But then "Melody In The Mud" takes us back to the hushed, minimal moodiness of the first track... though 'tis only a brief (1:39) interlude before the next track, "Electric Guitar Light", erupts in full speaker shredding glory. It's a bit like Loren Connors sharing an album with Keiji Haino (hmmm, actually, those two have done that, but it's been a while and we can't say for sure that's what this sounds like...). This album continues like this, Higuchi's somnolent, near-ambient songs (with some breathy, barely-there vocals), abutting others that aren't nearly so mellow... one of those is album-ender "Cry Baby Flowers", which sounds something like Eddie Hazel's "Maggot Brain" with a Merzbow makeover. Actually these crinkly-cranked distorted guitar solos -are- still sorta mellow, or at least mesmeric, but only if you're used to enjoying noisier stuff. Certainly they share the same slo-mo suggestions of melody and melancholia with the quieter pieces on here... Definitely for fans of Neil Youngish fuzz freakout feedback side of Nagisa Ni Te, or Hjiokaidan noise guitar maven Jojo Hiroshige's more "musical" solo efforts. We really, really like it.

MPEG stream: A Hundred Signs Of Light
MPEG stream: Grow
MPEG stream: Blood And Leaves

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY. This is the second bit of gorgeous ambient folk drone we've heard from Higuma, the duo of Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and his musical partner Lisa McGee, after a criminally limited cd-r on Root Strata, sadly this lp is nearly as limited, only 250 copies total, already sold out and out of print, except maybe for the 25 copies we have right now, which as you know means, be quick or be dead (dead as in, no Higuma for you, you won't actually die, maybe). The sounds is much like you might expect from the Barn Owl / Elm / Caminiti and now Higuma axis, looooong tracks of dark windswept shimmer, dense brooding drones and epic abstract folk flecked drift. Clouds of processed guitar swirl ghostlike above buried rhythms, chant like vox, skeletal melodies, the sounds sprawl and smolder, occasionally building to drugged out Spacemen 3-like soft cacophonies, but just as often melting into something more delicate and space-y with spidery psychedelic guitars blurred into distant swells, gongs and chimes, adding mysterious textures and overtones to the already gloriously murky and moody proceedings. The whole record is a delicate assemblage of whir and buzz and rumble, the sounds intertwined, smeared, layered into spectral space drone, but always remaining earthy and organic, not OF the stars, but earthbound and staring up INTO the stars, the sound of deep black night, dusted with starlight, all held at bay by the flicker and crackle of Higuma's slow burning dreamlike blurscapes. So gorgeous. Cool handscreened sleeves, original art by Caminiti, and again, 250 copies, out of print, and unavailable once these final copies are gone...

Wholly enveloping, river soaked, fog piercing drone. Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and a previously unknown-to-us artist named Lisa McGee collaborate to bring forth cathartic ruminations in the form of ghostly guitar, softly sparring vocals, various percussive devices and an unnamable, innumerable catalog of various other instruments. The collaboration was a live improvisational affair, which the liner notes claim was recorded "in the valley." The appropriately and cleverly named album, Haze Valley, name checks one of our own neighborhoods here in San Francisco, Hayes Valley. Anyone who checked out and enjoyed any of the releases by Cloaks, White Rainbow (particularly the more sedate side), Barn Owl (obviously), or La Monte Young will be pleased with what they'll find here. Make no mistake about it, this is definitive dronemusic. While it is beautiful and has some structured elements, this is for the true trippers. Those looking for hummable hooks and such may find more satisfaction looking elsewhere, but for an immersive, spiritual headphones experience, this is your destination. It is also worth noting that the cover art was made by Evan, and its burgeoning crystal pyramid couldn't be more lovely or more perfectly suited to the sounds found herein. Drone freaks beware, this could easily take over your stereo. LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!! These are the only ones we'll ever have...

MPEG stream: Crimson Cloud Ascension
MPEG stream: Winter Bloom

Pacific Fog Dreams is the latest missive of abstract droned out psychedelia from Higuma, the duo of Evan Caminiti (of Barn Owl) and Lisa McGee, a logical extension of Caminiti's twang drone doom folk soundscaping in Barn Owl, Higuma finds Caminiti and McGee crafting epic, roiling expanses of smoldering slow burn shimmer and hushed apocalyptic minimalism, heaving sheets of distorted sound swirl like black clouds in a grey sky, lit from within by a distant sun, that glow a constant source of deep divine melody, each track an ancient ritual depicted in sound, a journey from some deep lost other world to some future unknowable self, the various instruments woven into undulating sonic tapestries, McGee's reverbed disembodied voice a glowing thread running throughout, the sound shifting from shoegazey to hazy, warm and whispery to dark and droney, occasionally erupting into gouts of grinding super distorted psychedelic effulgence, the vocals following right along soaring into the stratosphere, a keening high end melody held aloft by the burnished blackened guitar thrum. Elsewhere, the guitars hover and drift, a swirling hum, a spectral presence, the various melodies blurred and smeared into the background, becoming a strange prismatic ever shifting landscape of chordal fragments, each like the ghost of some lost song, soon to be swallowed up by a wave of crumbling corrosive buzz, a strangely melodious bit of SUNNO))) blasted crush, the edges smoothed, the grit worn away, leaving a thick undulating swell of bleary, blissed out shimmer, laced with tendrils of steel string buzz, and wreathed in garlands of whir and blur and rumble. The final movement begins as steel grey streaks of chordal corrosion peel away, leaving nothing but swirling shadows and barely there billows of echo drenched drone, before blossoming into a strum laden slow build, a sea of sympathetic vibrations and lush overtones, keening high end shimmers off in the distance, and a dense melodic center, pulsing, the melody threatening to break free, but held in check by swaths of whirling buzz, the various sounds slowly loosing their bonds, and becoming one, the colors running together, creating a dark black buzz, that trails off into the night sky. So gorgeous. Beautiful packaging too, and of course, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Pacific Temple
MPEG stream: Burning Colors
MPEG stream: The Veiled Lamp

Japanese noise aficionados, this highlight's for you... nope it's not another Merzbow album, but something quite a bit less common: new Hijokaidan! The facts in the case of this newest Hijokaidan noise atrocity as are follows: three tracks, approximately 25-27 minutes each, all recorded live at the 2006 All Ears Festival in Oslo, Norway. Actually only the first track is Hijokaidan proper, the other two being variant line-ups featuring a guest Norwegian musician dueting with one or the other of the two core Hijokaidan members. Track one, "No Oslo No Harm", is classic Hijokaidan howl, from the duo of Jojo (guitar) and Junko (voice). An ear melting white noise screech n' screamathon, natch. Track two, "Book Of Changes", featuring Jojo teamed up with another guitarist, the Norwegian Per Gisle Galaen, is just a bit more, er, "musical" and dynamic, with even some moments of relative peace and calm amidst this psychedelic (a la Keiji Haino) storm of droning, exploding, feedbacking "out" guitar destruction... while Jojo is a master of the art, Per Gisle Galaen more than holds his own. With all its vacuum cleaner violence and low end clangor and buried hints of fragile melody, we'd pick this as our fave selection on this heavy duty disc. Third up is "Le Rayon Verte", a track performed by the duo of vocalist Junko and one Sten Ove Toft on electronics. The electronics are a grinding, crumpled distortion pile-up, the vocals an endless squeaky wheel shriek. It's harrowing to say the least, like hearing the sounds emanating from a torture chamber/wind tunnel combination! This is one of the first three releases we've had on the new Pica Disk label run by Norwegian noise dude Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkammer, Jazkamer, etc.) along with the new disc from New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel also highlighted this list, and another Japanese noise entry from Hijokaidan compatriots the Incapacitants. Clearly Pica Disk means business!

MPEG stream: No Oslo No Harm
MPEG stream: Book Of Changes

MPEG stream: Omega Continuum
MPEG stream: Post Oblivion Fields

***Expo '70 alert*** ***Expo '70 alert*** ***Expo '70 alert*** That's right, we're sounding that alert 'cause you might not know these names... suffice to say though that Justin Wright is better known (to AQ customers) as the guy behind Expo '70, whose new full-length cd Black Ohms happens to be our Record Of The Week this list. And Matt Hill is his touring partner, whom you've seen together with Wright if you caught 'em recently in SF at the Hemlock with Wooden Shjips, or elsewhere on tour. Also, their pal Duane Pitre is another guitar-wielding dronester with tendencies in line with the cosmic Expo '70 aesthetic. The prolific Expo '70 being an outfit we've continually championed as they constantly amaze us with their sooooo gorgeous, '70s krautrock inspired, spaced out instrumental drone musick. There's four tracks here on this solid black cd-r. The seventeen minute long track one, finds Wright, Hill and Pitre playing together, droning out mightily, live at someplace called The Pistol Social Club. The credits have 'em all playing guitar, all responsible for "textures, drones", with Pitre also on "prepared percussion, disjointed lines" and Wright handling "melodic lines" as well. It starts as a hushed ambient soundscape, at once spacious and intimate, hesitantly melodic and repetitiously trancelike; raw, rough edges softened by gentle whirr, their guitars' volume gradually increasing, eventually building into a quite dense, distorted finale. Then there's one track apiece from Hill, Pitre, and Wright. Hill's seven minute contribution is all acoustic guitar and field recordings, sparse pickings and pluckings, sounding like a broken music box, crank turned at half-speed, backwards, amidst nighttime insect buzz. Unidentifiable crackle, rustle, and hiss infuse the plinking proceedings, which could be a mellowed out Derek Bailey with Jewelled Antler production. Pitre's piece, "Motorized Music for Electric Guitar (live)" is what that says: a live performance, at a church in Brooklyn, with Pitre applying a "handheld high-speed rotary tool" to the strings of his electric guitar. The result is a twelve minute Niblockian drone divine, slow-building and shimmery. Wonderful. And then Wright bats cleanup, ending the disc with a live improv guitar piece featuring the use of two amps, and, we're told, a squeaky chair. It's ten and a half minutes of dreamy, subtle cosmic throb and drift, with sci-fi electronic FX whispering from outer space to swirl around this piece's glowing meditative center. So nice. For Expo '70 fans and anyone into the guitar-drone-zone, this here's a varied four-part treat indeed!

MPEG stream: Live At The Pistol Social Club April 29th, 2007
MPEG stream: Motorized Music For Electric Guitar (live)

Who could possibly be a match for Mick Barr's (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilm) insane avant sci-fi guitar shredding? We would have thought no one... But it makes sense, that the only true match for Barr's fretboard wiggery would be Zach Hill, a sort of Yngwie Malmsteen of the drum kit. A spastic octopoidal drum freak, who can cram a million more beats into a song than the busiest drummer you can think of. Not sure why no one thought of getting these guys together sooner. Their first meeting took place on last year's Shred Earthship, and now we have ZH/MB Volume 2. And the results, much like on Shred Earthship are just what you would have expected. A mind blowing, ear shredding, speaker melting squiggle and noodle shredfest. Dense squalls of wildly dueling drum splatter and guitar freakout. Often note for note. Is it free jazz? Is it avant metal? Is it outrageous instrumental wankery? Well yeah, it sort of is, ALL of those. Ultra complex, incredibly convoluted, might be a stretch to call these songs, instead they seem to be exercises in instrumental dexterity, each one an over the top psychedelic metal freakout that has the listener panting and about to pass out after only thirty seconds, lord knows how these guys can keep it up for a whole record. The opener is the jazziest, due in no small part to some surprisingly melodic sax, but after that, it's one on one, drums vs. guitar, each wrapped around the other in some sort of insane ultimate fighting chokehold, a non stop barrage of notes and beats... imagine that someone had been collecting every note ever played, and every drum beat, and just piling them up in a huge dumpster, they're tiny, they don't take up that much room, but a trillion, or a million billion trillion, have that dumpster just about full. Now imagine being strapped down to a huge slab of black concrete, with strange metallic implements holding your ears wide open, then imagine that entire dumpster being upended and all of those notes and beats showering down on you like some sort of musical avalanche or metallic hailstorm. Sound good? Well then, my friend, this is indeed the record for you... Packaged in killer white cloud on bright yellow sleeves, most are on black vinyl, a few are on yellow, so you might just get lucky. But don't ask, we said: YOU. MIGHT. GET. LUCKY. Limited to 303 copies!!! We got a handful, and will NOT be able to get more.

Like Robert Fripp and Manuel Gottsching, the UK's Steve Hillage is a stellar guitarist who came out of the prog era (Arzachel, Khan, Gong) to mine his own unique cosmic territory that could be the blueprint for latter day ambient techno. His amazing guitar work on Gong's Radio Invisible trilogy, especially the epically spacious "You", was just the first stepping stone toward this 1979 avant-new age masterpiece, Rainbow Dome Musick, originally recorded for an on-site installation at an actual Rainbow Dome in London. While it must have been -really- an experience inside the Dome, it's even now a fantastic listen at home on headphones. Two 20-minute, side-long tracks built from the sequenced filtering of guitars, piano, synths and bells, that organically glide from phased rhythmic passages to expansive cloud-like washes of sound.�It's definitely much more ambient than Hillage's other albums up to that point, but as blissed out and new agey as it is, with the sounds of gurgling water (starting side one) and shimmering drones, you won't forget he's a killer electric guitarist either. Obviously,�a heavy influence on The Orb, who later collaborated with Hillage, after they met in an club where to Hillage's surprise, Alex Patterson of the Orb was spinning Rainbow Dome Musick in the chill-out lounge, so the story goes! Another essential entry of cosmic proto-new age sounds for fans of Fripp and Eno, Cluster, Ariel Kalma, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Eberhard Schoener and Ashra. We recently got into this album, ordered it for the store on cd, and heartily recommend it - though it seems to sell itself anyway when people see the cover, something about that hypnotic vibrating rainbow dome image...

MPEG stream: Four Ever Rainbow
MPEG stream: Garden of Paradise

You don't even have to hear this to know this is another perfect Aquarius disc: A work for magnetic fields, weather satellites, custom built antennae and force fields. Whoo yeah! Force fields! Lucky for us, it sounds as good as we hoped it would. Very reminiscent of Stephen P. McGreevy's Auroral Chorus II: The Music of the Magnetosphere and Electric Enigma discs of VLF recordings of the Aurora Borealis and other atomospheric electronic phenomena. But Hinterding's recordings are even better, which is saying a lot, considering how much we LOVED those McGreevy discs! The elements are quite similar: staticky buzz, squeaks and whistles, rumbling whirs, clicking and chirping, buzzing hiss and warbly white noise, but on Spectral, those sounds drift and shift, causing all sorts of rhythmic variations and almost-melodies to emerge. There are moments where throbbing pulses and random clicks coalesce into minutely propulsive little micro-rhythms, that chug along until they slowly disipate into the ether. Also the overall sound is thicker, with a solid, warm, whirring drone, underpinning all of the various sonic activities, making this a little less harsh and a lot more dreamy and way more substantial. There's still lots of upper register skree, but it's nestled in a churning roiling bed of fuzzy, humming whir. Beautiful stuff. Proving once again, that no matter how hard we try to make strange and original music, nature was there first, doing it better.

MPEG stream: Spectral 1
MPEG stream: Spectral 2

"Im Schatten Der Mohre", originally released in 1987 on Dom Records, was the fourth album from the collected bent minds of Christoph Heeman, Achim P. Li Khan and Andreas Martin. Long deleted, unavailable for years, and thus highly sought after, this

RealAudio clip: Im Schatten Der Mohre 1
RealAudio clip: Im Schatten Der Mohre 2

"Kuttel Im Frost" -- the third album for the German avant-collage-rock ensemble Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa -- situates itself between with the idiosyncratic experiments of Nurse With Wound (admittedly HNAS' biggest influence) and the art-damaged strategies from Die Todliche Doris. Essentially HNAS was the duo of Achim P. Li Khan and Christoph Heemann working with a number of likeminded audio oddballs. As heard on their other records, this album features sprawlingly sparse improvisations for noddling guitars, piano, harmonica, bass rumble, and tons of oscillating, spiralling, and otherwise lysergic studio effects, recalling the early Nurse With Wound album "Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella." Yet scattered throughout this album, HNAS places seasick ditties that point to their "Im Schatten Der Mohre" record, as Heemann and Khan set up off-kilter loops (or possibly misaligned vinyl spinning on a turntable) and then awkwardly attempt to play around those loops with standard rock instrumenation. Quite odd indeed.

RealAudio clip: Widerlicher Mitttelpunkt Der Abendgesellschaft
RealAudio clip: Mutter, Von Kunst Versteh' Ich Einen Dreck
RealAudio clip: Man Warf 2 Stunden Mobel Aus Dem Fenster

Possibly the rarest of all of the HNAS recordings to be re-issued by Achim P. Li Khan's Dom Recordings (much to the disapproval of fellow HNAS collaborator Christoph Heemann), "The Book Of Dingenskirchen" was originally pressed in an edition of a whopping 90 copies (20 black, 70 clear). It's unclear what the vinyl featured in terms of artwork, but Khan has 'restored' the original artwork for this CD reissue, since that tiny vinyl pressing couldn't justify the high costs of a full-color sleeve. It has to be stated that I've always felt HNAS has never risen above their desire to be the German equivalent of Nurse With Wound. This should only be taken as a minor criticism, as NWW is admittedly a synthesis of uncompromisingly vangarde artists as Pierre Henry, Robert Ashley, Sun Ra, and everybody else from the "Nurse With Wound list." Yet HNAS is less about the Dadaist recombinations of previous ideas into newly authored sounds, and more about recreating the idiosyncratic elements that run through Stapleton's recordings. "The Book Of Dingenskirchen" follows many of the ideas that Stapleton put forward on the first NWW record, "Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella" with indifferent guitar noodlings and piano tinklings amidst a variable density of collaged splatter for filtered voices, crashing metallic objects, and loads of studio effects. As with all of these reissues, "The Book of Dingenskirchen" fills up the full 70+ CD with bonus tracks, out-takes, live cuts, etc.

RealAudio clip: Ich Hatte Im Falschen Moment Die Schnauze Voll
RealAudio clip: Gurka

HNAS's fourth album "Im Schatten Der Mohre" has often been cited as the best work from these '80s German eccentrics, following a longstanding opinion from HNAS's Christoph Heemann supporting such a statement. Yet the sporadic resurgence of HNAS recordings may challenge Heemann's claims, as evinced by this authorized cassette release of Melchior on RRRecords. Melchior is in our opinion, in fact, the best of the HNAS recordings; and was the 2nd official album for Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa (translated as Moose Without A Sofa), originally released back in 1986 through Steven Stapleton's United Dairies. The presence of Stapleton and his wife Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd) certainly slants Melchior into the paratactic Dada and post-Faust idiosyncrasy of mid-'80s Nurse With Wound (especially Sylvie and Babs). Just as NWW has always been the studio-driven vehicle for Stapleton's absurd audio experiments, HNAS - in 1986 the duo of Achim P. Li Khan and Heemann - used the studio as an alchemical means to recontextualize Krautrock's experimentalism, cheeseball disco, Teutonic chants, and Eastern European prog rock, into an aesthetic collision, that always teetered between working brilliantly and collapsing into a mess of delay ridden effects. When Stapleton's freak-out guitar and Rogerson's eerily disembodied / disaffected voice appear, HNAS gets noticeably better in their monochord guitar blurts, plodding percussion, bleeding 23 Skidoo horns, and unnerving atmospheres. That said, we'll admit our bias in favor of NWW over HNAS. Regardless, Melchior should be required 'out-there' listening!

MPEG stream: Im Sommer Gibt's Nix Zu Essen
MPEG stream: Mastvieh Ohne Socken
MPEG stream: Tonnenschwer Im Abendkleid
MPEG stream: Speck Des Jahres

This is the CD reissue of the first HNAS album, "Abwassermusik" which was a collaboration with the equally obtuse Mieses Gegonge - a German outfit that produced a few compilation tracks and cassettes in the mid-'80s and not much else. Of all of recordings that have recently been re-released, "Abwassermusik" is the most primitive album for HNAS both in terms of production techniques and sound quality. Furthermore, it's the album that least sounds like Nurse With Wound - the most common comparison for the group. Here, HNAS and Mieses Gegonge bury almost every sound - low end drones, vocal mumblings, two note rock plod, Keith Rowe guitar plucks, indeterminant radio samples, violin squiggles, and various non-specific clatters - within a thick field of tape delay and echo effects. Sometimes it works quite well when both groups allow the sounds space to breathe amidst the cascading delay patterns; other times, it becomes a sloppy heap of cross-phasing, tremolo pulsations. As there are three bonus tracks on this disc attributed to Mieses Gegonge which prominently feature those delay tricks, it's possible to that Mieses Gegone is responsible for the folly of the delay.

RealAudio clip: Sumpfkuh
RealAudio clip: Guenters Rache
RealAudio clip: Gem Himmel

Twelve compositions by local boy Steev Hise, ten of which were realized at Cal Arts when he was in graduate school there. Very competent plunderphonica ranging in style from droning soundscapes to a delightfully underwater-esque Ferrante & Teicher cutup to Tape Beatles-styled digital outbursts. Comes handsomely packaged in a glycene parchment envelope with printed cardstock liner notes. From the label that brought us "Deconstructing Beck" and "Extracted Celluloid".