[ aquarius records — Experimental ]

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Showing results 4501 through 4550 of 9280.

Another winner from AQ fave Phil Niblock's always eclectic and engaging IX label. While sometimes stuff on IX tends a little too much toward the academic (and maybe this one is no different), the music on 'Ten Thousand Shades Of Blue' sounds much more

RealAudio clip: Bronze Cloud Disk

Originally going by the ill chosen moniker, Bananas, this solo ambient project from 3 Leafs' Josh Pollock (aka DJ Female Convict Scorpion) was wisely rechristened The Lake Millions, a name much more in keeping with the sound, a sound that actually surprised us. Pollock's 'ambient' record is not so much ambient, as it is a sort of serene, tranquil, dreamlike psychedelia, we were expecting a simple minimal landscape of drones and tones, but instead, the sound here is luish and lovely, spare aching guitar melodies, wreathed in reverb, soft tangles gradually unfurling, blossoming lazily, sun dapped and soft focus. The slide guitar adds a subtle twang to the proceedings. Imagine Barn Owl, if instead of trafficking in dark brooding droned out doom folk, they set up in a meadow, under the late afternoon sun, gorgeous blue sky overhead, soft billowy white clouds drifting by, the grass waving softly in the warm breeze. The vibe is definitely back porch-y and dreamlike. Some tracks sound like a lost, more blissed out strain of classic Americana, others drift drowsily through a hazy, old timey, faded memory, reverb drenched shimmer. And here and there tucked away amidst all this sunshiney dreamfolk drift, there are some subtle haunting minor key melodies, the cinematic vibe that runs throughout, growing shadowy and a bit sinister, it's mostly a subtle melodic shift here and there, but then check out the title track, which closes things with an epic sprawl of brooding abstract drift, somehow weaving the warm melodious vibe of the previous tracks into something distinctly darker, but with a warm glow that seems to infuse the sound, however dark, with a lush glowing loveliness, the song unfolding as a tense sonic sprawl, that over the course of its 13 minutes, finds sonic shadows gradually being overtaken by the light. Gorgeous!

MPEG stream: The Ocean Of Notions
MPEG stream: The Twilight Strip
MPEG stream: Sea Of Stories

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SORRY. Finally, we've managed to restock Alan Lamb's Night Passage, one of the most evocative and sonically engaging dronescaping records that has ever passed through these doors. This Australian composer's sole source material is the sound of wind blowing against telephone wires. In recording the raw material, Lamb simply attaches contact microphones to telephone poles, sits back, and lets the weather blow through the wires how it sees fit. The resultant drones are sublimely rich in their metallic timbres and amazingly complex reverberations, that is not all that far off from Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures. I (Jim) actually had a very hard time believing that they were what Lamb said they were: unprocessed wire music. That is until one cold, blustery summer afternoon on the craggy coastline near Point Reyes north of San Francisco, I heard those exact same sounds from the wind raking across the telephone wires that extended out to a distant lighthouse. These sounds were eeriely beautiful, yet unsettling as they vibrated the air with such ubiquity that their origin was impossible to pinpoint. For Night Passage, Lamb's recordings originate with the Faraway Wind Organ, a half mile of abandoned telegraph wires in the outback of Western Australia. Unfortunately, this network of wires has collapsed due to lightning and termites, making Lamb's recordings a very rare documentation of an amazing naturally occuring sonic phenomenon. Also included with this double disc package is the Demixed album, in which Thomas Koner, Lustmord, Ryoji Ikeda, and Bernhard Gunter were given Lamb's raw recordings to treat and compose with. Where Lamb's compositional sensibility privledges the intrinsic qualities of his recordings with just crossfades and equilization, these four blurred the source material that reflected their own signature sounds. Koner leans to expansive gaping drones; Lustmord collapses everything within a bleak catacomb of oppressive ambience; Ikeda ruptures the sound into a subtle piece of minimalism; and Gunter stretches the boundaries of perception. This is one of the best all around remix albums, completing what is otherwise an already impeccable document.

MPEG stream: Night Passage
MPEG stream: Kyros (demixed by Thomas Koner)
MPEG stream: Fragmented (demixed by Lustmord)

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SORRY. Alan Lamb is a biologist who entered the realm of music after discovering the complex choral harmonics of the telephone wires that span his native Australia. Lamb's allegiance to both biology and the spectral sounds of the frequencies of a long thin wire reacting to natural events isn't that odd as Lamb himself explains, "that these principles (in wire frequencies) have much in common conceptually with those underlying the generation of coherent patterns in biological systems... and it is probably not too far fetched to suggest that wire music is an aural embodiment of some of the most fundamental dynamic laws of the universe." "Primal Image / Beauty" is the culmination of 7 years of field recordings, during which Lamb discovered the best meterological situations for certain timbres, the best wires that emanated these harmonics, and good microphones to capture the sounds (for this phenomenon is externally ampified by the wires under the right circumstances). Even in listening to the incredible textural dronework from Organum or Xenakis, it is pretty awe-inspiring that this is simply the sound of the wind resonating a wire. For those who live around the Bay Area, this phenomenon can be heard on occasion at Point Reyes, especially when the wind is coming straight down the coast from the north and strikes the wires which run east-west along the barren peninsula.

RealAudio clip: Beauty

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This is a gorgeous and confusional archival release from Graham Lambkin, leader of weirdo outsider 'rock' combo Shadow Ring, this recording, from 2004, features just voice, tapes and piano, and is a curious landscape of spoken word, distant swirls of tape hiss, and haunting funereal piano, not to mention all manner of creaks and buzzes, cobbled together from what sounds like some strange spoken word diary, recorded on a hand held tape player, various fragments strung together, peppered with the 'kthunk' of the buttons on the tape player being depressed, the track shifting haphazardly from some strange description of random goings on, weird bits of random tape sounds, pulsing non-rhythms, static and rumbles, quacking ducks, bits of orchestra, snippets from programs, other voices, always returning to that creepy echo drenched piano, while Lambkin/Shadow Ring newbies might be a bit put off by the sounds here, fans of either or both will definitely feel right at home, a strangely intimate glimpse inside strange and twisted musical mind, one that unfurls soundscapes like this as an entreaty to the brave to wander in and get lost. Very cool, and very bizarre. But that's really only half of Millows, the other is a strange, dizzying photographic project, that according to the liner notes, is a "series of 450 photographic combinations documenting a solitary drunken non-event", which in reality appears to be a series of combined photos / photo collages, of Lambkin in what appears to be a festive mood, laughing, and smiling, drinking, and conversing, but knowing that said photos were culled from a solitary event, makes the project a bit creepy, and the way the photos have been manipulated, often multiple faces layered into one, colors bleeding, strange projections, textures and overexposures, some like ordinary snapshots, others like wild impressionistic splashes of colors and shapes, and all presented one after the other, nine to a page, almost make it seem like someone took a short bit of filmstrip and laid it out one frame at a time, offering a visual analogue to the strange sounds on the accompanying cd. All presented in a super striking full color hard cover book, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, with the cd affixed to the inside back cover.

MPEG stream: Millows

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Another backroom discovery, this time, a super limited (only 100 copies, and now almost for sure out of print) cd-r from New Zealand space raga outfit Lamp Of The Universe. Each one of these packaged in a gorgeous swirled hand painted sleeve, with a printed insert. Two long songs, and this is LOTU at their most drone out, way more raga than space rock, longform drones, extended tones, shimmering buzz stretched out into minutes long melodies, bits of percussive shimmer surface here and there, but for the most part this is all about the mighty DRONE. The opening track introduces some high end snake charmer style horns, and some buried hand drums, but those really only add to the undulating layered drone. The second, slightly shorter track (22 minutes) is a slowly shifting thick tangle of layered tones, wound into one huge slithering reverberating drone, deep and resonant, thick and dark and shimmery, plenty of buzz and fuzz and whir, intoxicatingly mesmeric, a drone so dense and intense it nearly sucks the air out of the room when it finally ends. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each hand numbered, we have the last copies ever, so please don't be disappointed if these disappear quick...

MPEG stream: Levitation Orchestra

We discovered Lamp Of The Universe, aka New Zealander Craig Williamson, via his recent cd-r on Barl Fire, a gorgeously blissed out drone rock space raga that we just couldn't get enough of. And you all apparently agreed as those puppies flew out of here (don't order them now though! they are gone). So we got in touch with Williamson and managed to get a few more of his releases. A couple cds which we'll review in upcoming lists, but we figure we should list this lp first as we only got a handful and it's super limited. More of that warm Eastern raga tinged space rock, dreamy and drifting and drowsy. Sitar strings buzz and vibrate, tablas sputter rhythmically beneath layers of swooshing fuzz, vocals are soft and lilitng, drifting lazily above the dizzying psych swirl, each track a slow growing soundscape that starts as a drone, becomes a sort of droney raga, and in some cases morphs into a propulsive Krautrocky /post rock groove. Sounds a bit like an Eastern Spacemen 3 most of the time, guitars are druggy and psychedelic, rhythms are simple but hypnotic, making each track, even the 'rockers', totally meditative and mesmerizing. Packaged in hand made sleeves, with a metallic silkscreened image on cardstock affixed to the front. Limited to 320 copies, each one hand numbered.

Finally managed to get enough copies of this 2001 release from New Zealand space raga rockers Lamp Of The Universe to list it. And just in time too as folks have been freaking out over this group, mainly the work of New Zealander Craig Williamson. A gorgeously laid back blissed out sonic exploration of Eastern melody, buzzing ur-drone and psychedelic space rock. Dense tangles of steel strings, both acoustic guitar and sitar, whir and shimmer, spread out into sun baked expanses of transcendental mesmer. Each track a swoonsome raga, this disc more than any of the other Lamp releases, is heavy on the vocals, with Williamson's voice a monotone chant like invocation, adding another layer to the already dense sonic swirl. Drums shuffle and skitter, wah wah guitar swoops in and out, leads twist and turn and get all tangled up in thick clouds of druggy atmosphere, everything wrapped in billowy outer space FX. The final track, a sixteen minute slow burn called "Dream Sequence" sounds just like that. Eyes closed, drifting off on a lighter than air whorl of disembodied psych guitar, intricate little tangles of melodies, simple muted drumming, all smeared into a long streak of slow shifting colors, stretching from here into infinity.... Druggy and dreamlike and so nice...

MPEG stream: Freedom To Godliness
MPEG stream: Resonance

What we innitially took to be a fantastic drone record, is indeed that, but actually becomes something entirely different about halfway through. Lamp Of The Universe is the work of New Zealander Craig Williamson, and is indeed a truly gorgeous drone bliss outift. Extended wide open expanses of buzzing sitars, swooning sythns, simple layered drones, minimal tabla rhythms, very soothing and raga like, slowly swirling soundscapes, dreamily druggy and sleepily spaced out. So lovely. And trust us, that would definitely be enough to get us to set the cd player on repeat and just drift off, but the last 25 minutes, while still being blissful and serene, introduce drums, which changes the whole vibe. Those last three tracks are dark and meandering, a lazily propulsive post rock / krautrock hybrid, druggy and spacey and jammy, with affected guitar noodling over simple shuffling drumming and groovy minimal basslines. Pink Floyd, Band Of Gypsies, Hawkwind, a very very very mellow Acid Mothers Temple, eventually winding down and returning for a brief buzzy free drone coda. Packaged in beautiful hand glued digipaks. VERY LIMITED. Once we run out, we're not sure we'll be able to get more.

MPEG stream: Heru Pt. 1
MPEG stream: Heru Pt. 2

With everyone around here going gaga for records from New Zealand space raga outfit Lamp Of The Universe, we have been trying to track down some of their older, more difficult to get titles. We managed to get a whole bunch of Echo In Light (reviewed elsewhere on this list) but could only get 5 copies of The Cosmic Union, direct from the band, which means when these 5 are gone this is REALLY gone for good. All the elements are here, thick swaths of sitar buzz, steel string guitars, simple percussion, swirls of spacey FX, blissed out hypnotic repetition, chant like vocals, all wrapped up into slow burning, psychedelic space rock majesty. Druggy and divine! Only 5 copies so prepare to be disappointed. Or just order Echo In Light when we run out of this one...

MPEG stream: Born In The Rays Of The Third Eye
MPEG stream: Lotus Of A Thousand Petals

Recorded during the same sessions that yielded Landing's Sphere album from 2004, Gravitational IV is a much more tripped out and experimental beast. OK, maybe not -much- more, as Landing are generally pretty trippy and far out, but this disc still manages to take it to a whole 'nother level. And we love it! Dubby grooves, reverb drenched ethereal female vocals, slippery underwater bass lines, blissed out deconstructed krautrocky jams, thick coruscating sheets of psychedelic guitar flare, full on space rock blow outs, gentle lilting otherworldly dreamfolk, the parts are all over the sonic map, but somehow they all sound so totally perfect together. It's almost like someone took all the leftover bits from the Sphere sessions, dumped them in a huge pot, added tons of reverb and delay, and then set it on the stove to shimmer, but forgot all about it until hours, maybe days later, only to realize the concoction had become something else entirely, a mind bending druggy swirl of abstract psychedelia and experimental free fuzz ambience. The kitchen filled with thick clouds of fuzzy gauzy guitars, the floor sticky with gooey puddles of acid drenched trippiness. Equal parts Mazzy Star, M83, My Bloody Valentine, but all stripped down and then built back up with layer after layer of guitars and effects and strange studio fuckery. A gloriously blissed out psych rock head trip! Quite possibly our favorite Landing record yet! Super limited, LP only. LIMITED TO 450 COPIES. Packaged in an ultra thick gatefold sleeve with super striking psychedelic artwork. Pressed on massively thick 180 gram vinyl, each copy stickered and numbered.

It's been ages since we've heard from psychedelic space drifters Landing, and we DEFINITELY don't remember them sounding like this. The swirling spaciness is still present, as is the group's dreamlike electronic psychedelia, but here, it's delivered in a much different form, one that's more sort of new wave electro synth pop! Yup, sequencers, drum machines, ethereal female vox, The first track might have you thinking you're listening to some new record on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones, which if you're a fan of either, snag this right now. Crystalline guitars wound around loping rhythmic skitter, and low slung bass thrum, chiming and dreamy, the song more than just retro leaning electro-pop, at one point the guitars and vocals drop out, revealing the tripped out psychedelic electronic experimentation that lurks below/within, which the band has deftly crafted into something incredibly poppy and blissed out, equal parts 4AD, M83, and the new wave of, er, new wave. In fact the whole A side is made up of this sort of swirling prismatic kraut-pop, looped and mesmeric, trance-y and super hypnotic, the sounds pulsing and shimmering, loads of echo and reverb, the last track on the A side is all cool loping downer electro pop, crooned male vox, over a driving, but still laid back, twinkling harmonics, reverby jangle, a total throwback, but with a modern, more experimental sheen. It's on the B-side that we get a little taste of the Landing of old, a sprawling epic that sounds like it could/should have been on Kranky, all blurred drifts and murky melodies, bass thrum and synthy swirl, but some of the group's new elements are still present, a fractured, minimal glitchy rhythm, some of the sounds blown out, and glowing with a muted intensity, before being smeared into the softly undulating backdrop, over this slo-mo groove, drifts flurries of tangled synth, mysterious percussive fragments. About halfway through, the song seems to blossom into some swirling electronic dream pop, the female vocals rejoining, before as quickly as the sound changes, it changes once again, and spends the rest of the side's 8 minutes gradually unwinding and unfurling, a heady dreampop psych-drift headtrip that definitely proves that the whipper snappers these days, trafficking in similar sounds, have NOTHING on their sonic elders. Dreamy, droney, poppy, psychedelic, electronic perfection! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Includes a download coupon as well.

MPEG stream: Wave Lair
MPEG stream: Patterns
MPEG stream: Resonance

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

SORRY. When one of our friends told us about this little cd containing an experimental piece using the sounds of a Zamboni, we got very very excited. A Zamboni! (That's that unusual machine that resurfaces the ice in hockey rinks.) Upon hearing it, we were even more thrilled, 'cause it's an amazing 20 minute drone work! And practically everyone who works here has bought one by now... This cute 3" cd, released through Metamkine's esteemed 'Cinema Pour L'Oreille' series of electro-acoustics and musique concrete, contains one track, "Mantra", which opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. While it would be nice to believe that these movements coincide with a Zamboni circling a really nice binaural microphone, it's more likely that Laporte exercised his artistic license with a judicious use of crossfading and stereo panning upon his field recordings. As the disc draws near its end, it sounds as if a screw or bolt is loosened by the vibrations and two pieces of metal begin a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda. Back to the Zamboni issue: we'd been told by 'reliable' informants (Loren Chasse who heard about it from Ferarra Pan who heard it on Scot Jenerik's radio show) that the source material for Jean-Francois Laporte's "Mantra" was a Zamboni. As the liner-notes (all in French mind you) indicate that Laporte incorporated the sound of an air compressor from an ice-skating rink, it didn't rule out the possibility that indeed that air compressor could belong to a Zamboni, but it didn't actually say anything about Zambonis. (Are they even called Zambonis in France, anyway?) As you can tell, we Aquarians like the Zamboni and would really like to believe that the Zamboni was responsible for this album. Thus, we contacted the label, who merely sent us an English translation of the original liner notes, which again stated the source material to be an air compressor. Thus, we are left to ponder the quandary: is it or is it not a Zamboni? Putting this grand existential question aside and the true origin of the source material out of sight for the moment, what's true is that Laporte has indeed sculpted one of the most compelling drone compositions that we've encountered in quite some time. For loyal readers of these lists, that's no idle comment as artists like Oragnum, Jonathan Coleclough, Mirror, John Duncan, and Francisco Lopez still rank highly for us in the pantheon of dronescapers. Not only as working model but also as a something of belief system, Jean-Francoise Laporte applies the ideals of the mantra to the urban landscape. To him, the hypnotic audio elements of refrigerators, motorcycle engines, and in this case the Zamboni / air compressor rise above their mundane properties to become something that can be meditated upon and hold transcendent properties. A very, very nice recording, Zamboni or not. Even if you don't normally buy all the weird, droney experimental stuff we recommend, you might want to take a chance and try this out. After all, it's only 20 minutes out of your day and eight bucks. And, maybe it's a Zamboni!

RealAudio clip: Mantra (Excerpt 1)
RealAudio clip: Mantra (Excerpt 2)
RealAudio clip: Mantra (Excerpt 3)

Those artists, musicians, misanthropes, and just plain weirdos who not only exist musically on the fringes but have planted their entire existence on the edge have long been the greatest inspirations of Aquarius Records. For proof, you could scroll through oddball recordings that have earned the honor of Aquarius Record Of The Week. There was the Finnish sound artist Terje Isungset who crafted not just one album, but two from untreated percussive instruments entirely made of ice. Hans Edler thrilled us with his 1970s transformation from teen idol into short-circuited electronic composer. The protracted ululations of the profoundly cracked Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant were as transcendent as anything that Lamonte Young had to offer, yet also had that creepy cult of personality vibe to boot. And who could forget Kathy McGinty? But one of the earliest recordings that truly made our collective jaw drop was the 3" cd from French-Canadian composer Jean-Francois Laporte called Mantra. Here was a mighty fine 20 minute composition of delicious vibrations, rattles, mechanical hum, and industrial drones that came with a particularly alluring back story: the source material to Mantra was a Zamboni -- the unusual machine only found at hockey rinks responsible for resurfacing its ice. The one catch to Laporte's Zamboni sourced masterpiece was that we could never verify that a Zamboni was the actual source material. We heard from 'reliable sources' that Mantra is the sound of a Zamboni; and we wanted so desperately to believe that this was the case, just because the Zamboni is such an amazing and eccentric beast of industrial engineering. Before this turns into a dialectic on epistemology, we here at Aquarius discovered that we had been duped by a couple of mischievous DJs on KPFA without the knowledge or consent of Jean-Francois Laporte. It turns out that Laporte used nothing but a common air-compressor in composing Mantra. This factual unveiling should not in any way take away from the splendor of that piece. Here's what we had to say about Mantra many moons ago: "Mantra opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. After a marvelous set of transitions between drones, there is the rattling sound as if a screw or bolt had been loosened by the vibrations, with two pieces of metal beginning a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda." That 3" cd came out almost a decade ago, became a classic, and went out of print. Thankfully, 23five Incorporated has rescued Mantra from the dustbin by issuing the first major compendium of Laporte's work in the form of Soundmatters. While we've already sung the praises of Mantra, the remainder of Soundmatters is well worth investigating on its own. The opening track "Electro-Prana" is a pristine set of field recordings of a wind that ripped through Montreal, when the city was silenced by a winter time blackout. It's a pure, chilling sound of whistling wind overtaking the urban landscape. The next piece is the only digitally rendered composition on Soundmatters, yet Laporte brings his intuitive expressionism to a series of spiraling drones that easily rival those of your favorite minimalist (e.g. Niblock, Chalk, Hafler Trio, Xenakis, etc.). For those of you who have had the pleasure of experiencing Laporte's live concerts, the third piece will certainly be familiar. He's built an instrument with a series of car horns and elongated trumpet bells attached to an air compressor with each of the valves controlled by foot pedals. This instrument can generate infinitely sustainable, blaring drones from each of the horns; and Laporte craftily layers these sounds for incredible, dynamic results. Well, for this recording, Laporte lugged this instrument into the hull of a giant cargo ship and recorded this composition using the massive reverb of that space and the results are simply jaw-dropping. Imagine the most Nordic bellow from a Wagner symphony stretched out into its melancholic, raw sound and allowed to decay in space and time. Wow! Following this is the aforementioned Mantra; and then Soundmatters' final piece which explores a quiet, yet thoroughly rich harmonic tapestry produced by a quartet of saxophones that could be Laporte's imagined summit between Evan Parker and Morton Feldman with rasping breaths of sound breaking across a silent event horizon with the ghostly energy of subatomic particles flickering and dissolving in a cloud chamber before amassing into a delirious swarm of Tony Conrad-esque acoustic dissonance. It's all utterly magnificent and one of finest collections of 'serious' composition that we've come across.

MPEG stream: Electro-Prana
MPEG stream: Boule qui roule...
MPEG stream: Danse le ventre du dragon
MPEG stream: Mantra

Before the Libretto is like some sort of neo-futuristic pseudo-Pagan ritual in which these four women from four countries (Elaine Radigue (France), Kaffe Matthews (UK), Ryoko Kuwajima (Japan), and AGF (Germany) hold hands (or connect laptops) and invoke the forces of nature....but instead of the earth and wind and sea answering the call, a bunch of little aliens show up and start dancing a jig. No one knows what the hell is going on, but it's pretty awesome all the same. Part operatic play, part experimental poetry, glistening, organic, feminine, and weird. Ryoko Kuwajima sounds a bit like Tujiko Noriko....wafting in and out with spoken bits and scraps of private song. Whenever it strikes her fancy, while the others weave a playful prickly and peculiar musical bed for all of the strange vocalisations. Very hard to describe what's going on, totally alien sounding but at the same time, so inviting you just want to touch and fold and feel and try to figure out what the heck is going on. The sounds are gentle, but not soft, crunchy, but not hard, like diving into a swiming pool full of autumn leaves, then running through the forest naked. The separate parts sound a little like puzzle pieces forced into the wrong places, a curious hodgepodge of ill fitting pieces, but together thay have some strange poetry, it's what makes this all sound so charming. The parts and pieces and sonic fragments don't mesh, but somehow....that's what makes it work. The cover is quite striking as well, a creepy fleshy tongue flower that inspires lot of "hmms" and "eeews" from customers when it's in the 'Now Playing' slot on our counter. Highly recommended, a curious and curiously appealing record.

MPEG stream: My Within
MPEG stream: Disaster
MPEG stream: Funeral

Larsen is an enigmatic post-rock ensemble who have been responsible for some interesting conceptual projects all of which have been immaculately executed. For their highly acclaimed album Rever, the ensemble hired Michael Gira (Swans, Angels of Light) as the producer, but never allowed him to actually see the band as they played behind a curtain. Larsen followed this album with a breathtaking record reconstructing the melodic phrasing of Autechre through their own repetitive patterns for guitar, bass, vibraphone, accordion, and drums. Seies doesn't enjoy any of the conceptual agendas of the previous record; or rather if there are any concepts to the record, Larsen has shrouded them from their audience. The hymnal post-rock hypnosis from the previous records is certainly present, conjuring a spaghetti western swagger heard in the more bad-ass Morricone soundtracks. In these looping dirges, Larsen also call to mind the desolate soundtracks composed by Calla and some of the late period work of Swans; this is especially true for the tracks in which former Swans singer Jarboe appears! There's guest appearances a plenty on Seies as Current 93's cellist Julia Kent appears on some early tracks, and the dark ambient overlord Lustmord conjures his own black clouds on some of the later cuts.

MPEG stream: The Snow
MPEG stream: Mother
MPEG stream: Marzia

There's actually a third entity who makes an appearance on this collaborative record, certainly at the behest of Steven Stapleton. That would be Eberhard Kranemann (aka Fritz Muller) who had been an early member of both Neu! and Kraftwerk way back when, but had taken much more of a damaged freeform experimental approach during the next three decades. Nurse With Wound is represented by the longstanding coupling of Stapleton and Colin Potter, spinning a psychotropic cloud of disfigured tones and mangled rhythms. Larsen is the Italian occultish-leaning post-rock outfit with quite an interesting history behind them of Autechre covers and an odd and hardly believable story of once working with Michael Gira. That said, it's hard to really qualify this as a collaborative album, since the tracks at the front-end of the record really sound like Nurse With Wound and those in the latter half like Larsen. The album opens with a Kranemann penned song of guitar scribbling very much on par with the NWW classic Chance Meeting On An Operating Table with an almost 23 Skidoo / Hula groove of electronic-bhangra with all of the distant screams and weirdo sounds you would expect from a wacked NWW tune. A more introspective, but kaleidoscopically dark ambient track follows. Again, this is a signature NWW production, harkening to A Sadness Of Things or Thunder Perfect Mind. As the tables turn towards Larsen's end of the spectrum, elliptical basslines, melodic bells, and propulsive drums move to the foreground, proceeding toward their trademarked layered builds and soaring crescendos.

MPEG stream: Tickety-Boo
MPEG stream: Driftin' By
MPEG stream: Call Me. Tell Me

This sort of rarefied minimalism is not entirely expected from the likes of Monorail Trespassing, although the Larval Hairs project does live up to the high caliber releases which the label has been steadily releasing. Ades Flashback is a double cassette intended to be played at the same time on separate systems. While similarly minded excursions have been demonstrated throughout the sound-art world with multi-channel transmissions, there's something wholly unpretentious about Larval Hairs' production. Little more than two boom boxes are required, although we'd suggest taking those two boom boxes to one of those huge resonant concrete bunkers in the Headlands and seeing how everything bounces. Side A aggregates sinewaves, small swells from rapidly splashing saw-tooth waves, a soft extension of pink noise, and other synthesized oscillations that suggests the longform feedback works of Jason Kahn or a rougher version of Eliane Radigue's early minimalism. The corresponding Side C (which we're assuming is what's to go with Side A, although you could probably switch it all around and it would still sound really cool), contains similarly-minded elements tuned to slight different pitches. Side B broadcasts another series of synthesized tones which hit some skull-drilling harmonic convergences through ever slight oscillations and phase shifts. Side D takes a grittier approach to the synth pulse drone with grinding saw-tooth patterns situated just below the surface of rumbling vibrational tones. Both tapes are 45 minutes in length and are housed in a really nice double tape case, something we've not seen in ages. Limited to 100 copies and certainly recommended.

Pierpaolo Zoppo was one of the legends of Italian noise and power electronics, exploring the transgressive themes of death, disease, power, sexual extremes, etc. through the shock-inducing moniker Mauthausen Orchestra. Much of the work was released on cassette in Italy through Aquilifer Sodality from 1982-1986 after which time he went into hibernation for a decade or so. In the pre-internet means of physical mail communications, Zoppo also had strong connections to Broken Flag which released the Mauthausen Orchestra album Conflict in 1983 and advanced his work through various compilations here and there. Over the years, Zoppo shied away from collaborations, with Lasik Surgery being one of the few that he entertained before he died in 2012 from an undisclosed illness. Gianluca Favaron was his partner in Lasik Surgery - a strangely non-descriptive / demonstrative title from an artist whose boorish M.O. titles included Necrofellatio, Murderfuck, and Anal Perversions, leaving little to the imagination as to the brutality of noise found within. That said, Lasik Surgery is restrained by comparison to M.O. with the only full-throttled assault of noise coming at the very end of the album as a bloodyminded vulcanization of viscous distortion. Throughout the rest of the album, Zoppo and Favaron favor throbbing electrical systems held in check through a clinical detachment and cold-core cyclonic network of interconnected loops, drones, and medically induced pulses. While we did mention this album was (relatively) restrained, that's not to say that Lasik Surgery eschews the dark, the dank, and the grim. Hardly! Recommended for fans of the more aggressive forms of dark ambient (e.g. Theologian, Inade, Lustmord, etc.).

MPEG stream: As One Entity 1
MPEG stream: Silence
MPEG stream: As One Entity 3

Drone-obsessive experiments from new music composers John Latartara and Khristain Weeks use repeating sonic figures from Tibetal bowls, string quartet, flute, and tape manipulation of differing lengths to create cyclical repetitions.

So our beloved Finnish singer, Lau Nau (also of Kiila, Paivansade, the Anaksimandros, Avarus, Maailma, and the trio Hertta Lussu Assa - basically most of Finland's underground foresty free folk scene), has moved far away from the drone prevalent on her previous releases, and drifted off into a more spare psych-folk scape. These songs really breathe. Lau's cool and airy vocals fall gently on the mostly piano, jouhikko (a traditional Finnish lyre), and drum arrangements like snow - all the while singing about darkness and death like she's Emily Dickinson. Of particular note is "Run, My Horsey, Run", which has a Gypsy folk influence. Lau's known for her eccentric and vast instrumentation, and this release is no disappointment in that regard. "Conqueror's Song" includes Lau's own beat-boxing (yeah, you read that right), and "Paperthin" credits someone on "seagulls". We're not sure how you play a seagull, but we enjoyed their appearance on this wistful, gloomy, and very pretty release!

MPEG stream: Valloittajan Laulu (Conqueror's Song)
MPEG stream: Juokse Sina Humma (Run, My Horsey, Run)
MPEG stream: Kuoleman Tappajan Kuolema

Slow, low, creeped out ambient experimental Teutonic jazz-noir dronescapes, with brush-stroked drums, sparse, placid piano and deep, deep bass� huh, hmm, remind you of anything? Bohren And Der Club Of Gore, perhaps?? For sure, this is for fans of Bohren And Der Club Of Gore!! Laube are another band, also German, trafficking in a similar, slow-moving style of darkness and drone, equally (or even more) ominous, sinister, and spare. If they hadn't ever heard Bohren before, it's a crazy coincidence. In any case, it's really great stuff, if you're into the Bohren brand of totally atmospheric, downbeat, jazz-tinged "heaviness". Three-piece Laube take that sound to, perhaps, a further extreme, even more stripped down, nodded off, and glacially paced - and, we don't think they never bring in any saxophone, as Bohren are sometimes wont to do, so the sax-adverse might prefer Laube for that reason alone! The last track on disc one breaks the Bohren mold with some scattershot percussion and buried, distorted vocals (or voices, anyway); and there are some other differences to be found as well of course, but overall the inky black moodiness and less-is-more "doom jazz" aesthetic is very, very Bohren-esque. (Oh, and if YOU haven't heard Bohren, well, needless to say we recommend 'em.) FYI, this double cd on Small Doses brings together Laube's two previously cassette-only releases, Ausmerzen and Schwach Gerkerbt, limited editions that came out on Justin "Expo 70" Wright's Sonic Mediations label, circa 2009 and 2013, respectively.

MPEG stream: III
MPEG stream: Tapestry Red Sunfire Metallic

Cold wave / new wave / electro pop reissue label Medical Records seem to traffic in the extremely obscure, and it doesn't get more obscure than Laugh Clown Laugh, a UK duo who only ever released a single track! But that track, "Feel So Young", is a killer, a fantastic slab of super catchy synthpop, all skittery programmed rhythms, squelchy synths, lilting melodies, and dreamily crooned vox, the sound very reminiscent of early Depeche Mode and Human League, and that song opens up the proceedings here, and the record finishes with a dub version of the same song, which makes it even cooler. But in between, are 10 songs, previously unreleased, and never heard before now, all restored from the original master tapes, that had been in storage for nearly thirty years! And some of those songs are nearly as good as "Feel So Young", the dirgey, brooding "This Side Of Heaven" is maybe the darkest jam here, and is the sort of track some modern band could and should cover, the strangely titled "Track 14" is a killer chunk of instrumental synth wave, playful and weirdly psychedelic, while "Give It Back" almost sounds like a synthpop Devo, all herky jerky and new wave-y. "Aquarium" almost sounds like John Carpenter of Goblin gone new wave, and "One In The Bush" sounds like Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" played by Perrey And Kingsley, and in between, are plenty of electro pop and synth pop gems. Like all Medical Records releases, this is SUPER LIMITED, and fantastically packaged, a heavy full color sleeve, with a printed full color insert with liner notes, photos and lyrics, the vinyl heavy on 180 gram, and transparent orange!

MPEG stream: Feel So Young
MPEG stream: This Side Of Heaven
MPEG stream: Track 14
MPEG stream: Aquarium

MPEG stream: That Train Has Already Left The Station
MPEG stream: Wall Climbing Spirit

Everybody except a tiny handful of folks missed out on that Josh Lay cd-r on the last list, sold out in a flash, but for those of you who missed out, here's a brand new 7" from Mr. Lay, drummer for aQ faves Cadaver In Drag. But of course the sound here is a bit different than the cd-r. The first side begins with a noisy drone, but soft noise, an undulating layer of deep gurgly rumble and highend whir that gradually grows thicker and more ominous, until it explodes into a blast of chaotic blackness, a weird abstract black ambience with howled demonic vokills, a bit like a black metal track with the guitars and drums removed, haunting and evil and black, but more a sort of blackdrone. The flipside is all drone however, never exploding into any sort of evil blackness, instead opting to lurk in shades of grey, slithering and shimmering and whirring. Super fancy trifold gold ink on thick black cardstock sleeve, and LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!

This just might be our favorite new 'noise' record. The key to that statement being those little marks around the word noise. This is most definitely noisy. But it's not pure noise. It's textural. It's droney. Somehow it's weirdly melodic too. Hard to explain, it's a big ol' massive slab of grinding guitar drone, laced with shards of static, and streaks of high end skree, the low end undulates and pulses, creating a distinct, but super subtle melody, a dense rumbling support for all the high end weirdness happening o'er the top.� Josh Lay for those who may not know, is in fact the drummer for fucked up avant noise doom combo Cadaver In Drag, and this here is what happens when you let THAT kind of drummer make his own record. Not sure what he's using, guitar, synth, 4-track, shortwave radio, effects. We like to think the cover of the cd is an actual photo of the recording taking place, a beat up old console turntable, two old blown speakers, a cow skull, a half drunk bottle of booze, and an upside down cross. Cuz, c'mon, put al that stuff together, it would have to sound a little something like this, At least we'd hope so.� Two tracks, the first, the title track is the above mentioned 'noise', a gloriously heavy blown out crumbling damaged stretch of coruscating sound, weird that something so obviously harsh could be so listenable, but it really is. At one point some creepy horn comes in, maybe it's a synth, but it sounds like a horn, it blats for a second, then just lays down and forms another layer of buzz, tones warble and wail, almost like some radio shack built siren, and gets all tangled up in that thick viscous buzz. We literally can't stop listening to it. So much so, that it's only right now, that we actually made it to the second track, which is kick ass also, but much more subdued, a weird stuttery loop, locked into an endless rhythm, while beneath, the same deep ominous low end from the opening track buzzed and reverberates, as the track progresses, more and more sounds enter the mix, a microscopic symphony of beeps and buzzes, squeaks and squiggles, all just adding to the general dreamy noise drenched din. AWESOME! And unfortunately LIMITED TO ONLY 80 COPIES! And we got all they had left so act fast...

MPEG stream: Poison Drinker

It all started with Poison Drinker, Josh Lay's last full length, a noise record that managed to be both noisy and melodic, harsh and pummeling, but also weirdly listenable, and kinda pretty. We're pretty particular when it comes to noise records, so for that record to kick our asses so hard, something special was definitely going on, which was confirmed with the super limited Worm Terrain cassette. Now we've got Lay's first proper cd full length, and while definitely still noisy, it's even more removed from traditional 'noise music'. Sure there are several serious bursts of harsh grinding NOISE, but here, those parts almost sound more black metal, with distorted hellish vox, over swirling sheets of sound. But those moments are actually few and far between. The first half of the title track is all synthy and sci-fi, droney and abstract, a looped electronic soundscape that eventually does splinter into some blackened noise, but the second track pulls the sound back from the edge, weird angular riffs buried beneath a sea of glitches and trills, that riff is the anchor of the song, chugging away relentlessly beneath a endlessly churning and ever shifting field of glitched out hiss, and some more of those sinister vokills. But as the record progresses, it gets less and less noisy, and more and more abstract and a tiny bit prettier. Track three is a high end sprawl of looped glistening skree and throbbing rhythmic bass pulses, minimal vokillizing, a swirling sea of streaked trebly blur, and then the final track, which is perhaps still technically noisy, but that noise is blunted, muted, dulled, like some churning blackened sonic sea, a throbbing industrial dronescape, a little Wolf Eyes, but way less abject, and weirdly a little bit warmer sounding, still ominous and buzzy, but again, strangely soothing and almost serene.

MPEG stream: Behind The Mask
MPEG stream: Human Skin

We all went pretty nuts for Josh Lay's Poison Drinker, a glorious slab of decaying black noise, but not like SKKKKKRGGHHH noise, no this was something much more nuanced, still harsh and grim, but layered and tripped out and psychedelic and damaged and demented and buzzy and droney, THAT kind of noise. A follow up 7" offered more of the same, but with some added blackness, even some fucked up evil vokill action. Besides creating all this sonic sickery, he also plays drums for the mighty Cadaver In Drag. Needless to say, we figured we oughta track down anything we could get our hands on by this guy. There's a new full length cd coming soon, but until then, we have this limited cassette to tide us over. Well at least a few of us. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, they're almost gone, we got the last little handful, so if you want one of these, gotta be quick. And believe us, you DO want one of these. Thick, grinding, crumbling dronescapes, textured and layered, thick and constantly changing shape and sound and timbre, buried melodies, throbbing muted rhythms, the various strands occasionally coalescing into something almost metallic, sometimes splintering into jagged shards of pulsing low end buzz. Streaks of skree stretch across the sky, a delicate sonic latticework in the background, while up front, an oozing, whirring black cloud of muted crunch, and smeared chaotic shimmer are fused into a heaving expanse of suffocating doomdrone sickness. Warm and woozy and noisy and intense and epic, and like everything else we've heard from Lay, fucking awesome. Again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have maybe 8 left. Blue tapes, full color J-cards, each one hand numbered.

Lazyboy is the work of MX-80's Bruce Anderson and Dale Sophiea, with the former providing spidery guitar melodies and cascades of sinewy drone and the latter a vertiginous wash of cloak-n-dagger electronics. The two have also worked in a live soundtrack project called Grale, which is closer to MX-80 as a reference informing where these two are coming from. Sophiea's sound design meanders from an industrial dub introduction that recalls some of the earlier engineering that Kevin Martin did as Techno Animal, Ice, and God, with all of those digital effect-laden abstractions of samples and guitars smeared into slithering tones and drones cast amidst thunderously plodding electronic rhythms. As these heavier electronic beats subside, the two slide into the dreamtime space neighboring O Yuki Conjugate's ritualized ambience of temple bells and clattering wooden rhythms. Toward the end of the 20 minute piece, Anderson's shimmering guitars pulls back the curtains on Sophiea's production prowess with shifting beds of grumbling distortion grounding his radioluminescent melodies. Limited and numbered to 70 copies!

MPEG stream: Unasked (excerpt)

The Electronic Music Foundation presents this historic collection of recordings by the late Hugh Le Caine, a Canadian mid-century pioneer in inventing instruments for electronic music, some inventions in which necessity might not have had a hand. There's 38 tracks, divided into three sections: Compositions, Humorous Sketches (only four of those, don't worry), and Demonstrations. The Compositions include his musique concrete classic "Dripsody: An Etude for Variable Speed Recorder" and "A Noisesome Pestilence" among others, some prime proto-electronica, for fans of Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott's "Manhattan Research" era, and the whole "Switched On Bach" thing. The Demonstration portion has the somewhat nasal voice of Le Caine carefully explaning his "Electronic Sackbut" and "Touch Sensitive Organ", as well as the "Artificial Larynx", etc. followed by demonstrations of each. Weird and wonderful. For fans of quirky musical eccentricity with an historical bent. The booklet has bilingual, detailed info on each track.

RealAudio clip: Music For Expo
RealAudio clip: Artficial Larynx, driven by Sackbut

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

SORRY.

Unintended for a proper release, this rare gem of the LAFMS has been unearthed and given the Cortical treatment. The brainchild of a then fifteen year old Rick Potts, this 1973 recording is the precursor to Le Forte Four's debut 'Bikini Tennis Shoes' LP, when "Boris the Spider" is a screwball "reworking" of The Who's song of the same name, along with amateur plundering of the Potts' collection of Frank Zappa and Disney records. Also includes a split 7": Slimy Adenoid and the Pablums (featuring Joe and Tom Potts as well as Dennis Duck) do a song about the Residents, cleverly titled "The Residents" backed with Joe Potts' "Mother/Daughter". Limited edition of 700 copies.

The Third release from Montreal's synth-wizard Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, returns to Root Strata where we were first introduced with the Motion Glares cassette. Extreme Events has evolved from the flow-motion kosmiche of his last release Fictions and is much more dynamic, restless and ultimately alien. While we have connected Le Revelateur sonically with contemporaries like Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds and Steve Hauschildt in the past, this album takes us to a slightly different place. There is still an underlying flow of spacious energy, but it's overlaid with some fluorescent woven sonic textures and rhythms blunted with abraded digital decay and glitchery. The constant push-pull between space and movement give the album an organic intensity that sonically pokes and implores our eardrums rather than cradles and envelops, forcing us to actively engage rather than passively listen. The range of synthetic sounds and textures is jaw-dropping and though it doesn't seem that Tellier-Craig is deliberately trying to make difficult music, we can't really say this music is necessarily pretty either. But it has a searing burning beauty that like a sun-made diamond, is at once magnificent and soul-destroying.

MPEG stream: Stream Terminal
MPEG stream: Fiber Miles Away
MPEG stream: Afterimage Selves

Release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as many of us were concerned, to steal the show. This new album plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the A side, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the track, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda. The B side starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof! like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl. Released on the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt.

MPEG stream: Receiving Mirages
MPEG stream: Age Maze

A new batch of tapes from the always awesome Root Strata label, this one from Canadian space-drone-synth sculptor Roger Teller-Craig, aka Le Revelateur, whose sound is a gorgeous wash of kosmische haze, all gently lapping new age synths, softly propulsive space kraut rhythms, lush and layered and so hypnotic. The vibe sun dappled and shimmery, total dream drift sonic bliss. Fans of Expo 70, Pulse Emitter, and other retro krautsynth combos will flip. The tape begins with a sprawling motorik opener, clouds of arpeggiated melodies, soft focus flurries of reverbed synth swirl, all over a looped hypnodrone kraut groove, a bit like Neu! but WAY more blissed out and ethereal, which drifts right into the much more dramatic second track, again anchored by a sci-fi synth pulse, but laced with streaks of subtly ominous melody, and thick squalls of buzz and washed out skree, very haunting and cinematic. The second side begins with something much more hushed and ephemeral, softly smoldering loooooong tones, laced with chiming harmonics, and strangely processed melodic fragments and the occasional bit of rhythmic skitter, a gorgeous druggy drift, which all slowly builds, a sound like the sun emerging from behind the clouds, everything begins to sparkle and glisten and reflect, all bathed in a fuzzed out prismatic bleary eared softly psychedelic glow. The record closes with another stretch of cinematic synthy mystery, almost orchestral, lush and majestic, like the soundtrack to some slow drift through another galaxy, everything wreathed in alien starlight, a blurred expanse of cosmic sonic energy. Incredible. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, housed in super nice, thick offset printed covers.

MPEG stream: Arco Naturale

Now a visually-augmented dvd-r release, this music was originally released on vinyl via the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt (whose solo Kranky debut we reviewed here recently). Fictions is release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as far as many of us were concerned, to steal the show. And those who did see the show, also got to witness the accompanying visuals, a gorgeous collection of films created by Teller-Craig's partner Sabrina Ratte, whose fantastical prismatic impressionism is the perfect visual accompaniment for Teller-Craig's futuristic kosmische. synthscapery. Let's revisit the music first, as the music here is the same as on the lp: The three tracks on Fictions plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the first track, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the mix, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda. The second track starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof!-like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl. And Ratte's visuals, as mentioned above, could almost be described in the same way, the images and colors and moving shapes, are almost musical, flickering and slowly shifting, with rainbow solar flares, and vintage video game grids, mysterious shapes and flashing colors, it's like equal parts video game and fever dream, some of it looks like a James Ferraro album cover come to life, bold and bright colors and shapes, all retro VHS / late night cable psychedelia, a head spinning, mind melting feast for the (third?) eyes. Gorgeous, sonically AND visually. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, comes in a slim dvd style case, with full color art inside and out, as well as a printed clear plastic insert.

MPEG stream: Receiving Mirages
MPEG stream: Age Maze

Holy Fuck! Six cassettes of Le Syndicat? Fuck! FUCK!! FUCK!!!! This is a serious head-cleaner of brutalist / bruitist / rhythmicist / industrial noise, collecting some of the best work from this seminal French outfit and recreating the original artwork of the old tapes within a super swank hand-stenciled box. Le Syndicat followed in the wake of what Throbbing Gristle had done in England, in creating a unique visual iconography to complement the churning mechanoid bursts of noise within. It seems that the divisions of labor was split between two of the principles in Le Syndicat with Ruelgo taking up the sound design and Zorin handling the graphic output. While Zorin eventually departed from Le Syndicat's sound constructions, he continued to offer his visual skills which have long placed him as a more transgressively themed Neville Brody with both adhering to a futurist / postmodern take on art deco. The rhythm and noise for Le Syndicat evolved through process mingling tape-loops, overblown drum machine programming, shortwave radio experiments, short-circuited consumer electronics, and eventually rudimentary sampler technology. Through these simple means, Le Syndicat's industrial orchestrations lead them to a sound that blurred the lines between the feral power of Whitehouse, the bombast of Laibach, and the grim rhythmic component of MB's early catalog. The six cassettes housed within this collection include Phase Segments/Boucles (1982), Tot Mortar (1983), Audiostatik Repress (1983), Vagynaestetatis (1985), Staying Alive (1985), and L'Arme De Force (1986). All of these cassettes were originally released through Le Syndicat's eponymous in house label, with the exception of Staying Alive which Masami Akita released through his ZSF Produkt. The aforementioned Maurizio Bianchi reference is most apt on the first cassette of this set - Phase Segments / Boucles with the skeletal rhythms and gain-saturated noise oscillation paralleling those early Sacher Pelz tapes by Bianchi. While these experiments are both intriguing and of archival importance as some of the first published works, Le Syndicat fully hits the mark from Tot Mortar onward with an integrated noise/rhythm/scream/shortwave/orgasm/tapemachination excess that come to define the quintessential Le Syndicat sound. All of the cassettes were remastered, bringing out even more clarity to the grime, distortion, and exhaustive noise. It is limited to 250 copies, but don't expect these to be around for long! FUCKING AWESOME!!!

MPEG stream: Torsion
MPEG stream: Vagynaestetatis
MPEG stream: Staying Alive
MPEG stream: Extrarotation