THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Totally moving, ominous and breathtaking sounds from this San Francisco artist who uses his voice, guitars, delay, and feedback to create wonderfully mysterious, haunting and beautiful music. Imagine a stripped down version of Earth joining forces with a Grouper, all dazed and dreamy and stately, and you start to get an idea of the soundworld Manning is exploring here. And it's not just a simple take on any one genre, not straight drone, or noise, or pop, or post-rock or goth, or doom, yet it combines elements of all of those to create something unlike most of the sounds being created by the new wave of underground bedroom lo-fi music makers.
Here's A Breaking Sound also has this awesome vibe and atmosphere that sounds a little like some of our favorite Swans records playing at a WAY slower speed or perhaps bands like Low and Codeine swathed in gobs of fuzz and distortion. We also can't help but hear bits of Hala Strana, Christina Carter's Bastard Wing project, and Tom Carter music stripped down bare bones, fused with elements or a much more primitive Loren Mazzacane Conners. There is this sprawling loner country vibe that runs through the record in such an amazing way. Like Flying Saucer Attack wandering all alone through the desert and setting up one amp in the middle of nowhere to play these mesmerizing songs to the earth and sky and spirits.
There is also a warmth and sense of song that is so much missing in many similar minded projects. What makes Here's A Breaking Sound really stand out is that you really do feel an emotional response to the songs. They don't hit you over the head or try to impress you with their extremity, but instead they understand the power of starkness and subtlety, a potent musical mood that brings evokes such darkly rustic daydreams. Highly recommended!
Oh, and each cover is hand drawn and we're not sure how many of these he made so better to act fast on this one.
San Francisco-based artist and sound-scapist, Marc Manning delivers a new tape of beautiful feedback-drenched gloom rock dirges. Using what sounds like processed keyboards and guitars, the 5 pieces here range in duration from just under a minute to the side-long blackened interplanetary transmission, "Jupiter". And it covers just as much sonic terrain from weary sonambulent passages to narcoleptic synth-rock with buried vocals to galactic wails of noisy buzzing distortion. Heavy on the shoegaze vibe, but resulting in something much doomier, the pieces on this new tape also carry a quality of bleak prettiness, in that given the right volume we can be lulled to a lucid dreaming state of restless bliss through its dark majestic sojourn of sound. Limited to 50 copies, each one a red tape in a soft plastic case with a pasted unique handdrawn cover.
A brand new 7" single from the infamous Charles Manson, to commemorate his 77th birthday on 11/11/11, recorded surreptitiously in his prison cell, on a smuggled in hand held recorder... a fascinating document, musical and otherwise of a man many consider a madman, but who some others consider wrongly imprisoned. Musically, Manson has a long history, most famously as a friend of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and of course many have postulated that it was his frustration with his musical career that may have initiated the events that led to his incarceration.
This single is two sides of urgent, rambling, ramshackle folk, not that far removed from his other recordings, but it's definitely a glimpse into the soul of a man who has spent most of his life in prison. There aren't so many proper 'songs' here, it's more a flowing, sort of freeform folk ramble, with Manson, rambling sung spoken lyrics one second, crooning the next, slipping into crazed rants or maniacal laughter, using different voices, speaking in tongues, but for all the bits of weirdness, there's some seriously good stuff here, the opening of the B side features some super pretty guitar, and Manson's voice when it comes in, while rough and ragged, is still emotional and powerful. The majority of the record is stripped down, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, and Manson just wandering vocally, it's pretty compelling for sure, and anyone who has the other Manson records is gonna want this too.
It comes gorgeously packaged in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve, inside a printed two side page of liner notes, one side, a defense of Manson, the other a wild ramble signed Horse Fly, who we presume is Manson himself.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!
We reviewed the Charles Manson Sings disc on ESP a while back, and everyone kinda freaked out. We couldn't keep 'em in stock. Cuz beyond being a psycho, and a cult leader, and the mastermind behind a handful of gruesome killings, he was also some sort of musical visionary, a damaged folk troubador, obsessed with music, and with becoming an actual musician like his pals in the Beach Boys, his songs were dark and brooding, but strangely beautiful, haunting, intimate and personal. He had a really unique voice to, throaty and velvety smooth, like a raspier Nick Drake.�
This set of songs was recorded after just getting out of a prison stretch in the '60s, almost a year before he recorded his first and only proper album, and another year before the Tate / Labianca murders that would seal his place in history forever.�
The sound is rough and raw and lo-fi, but only adds to the strange power of these songs and performances. We described the recordings on Sings as "reverb drenched beatniky psychedelic freekfolk" and while there is some of that here, the sound here is much more stripped down and traditional sounding. Barebones and simple, it's all about Manson's voice and the guitar, and both sound divine. Moody and melancholy, slightly hippy, dark and thoughtful and really intense and pretty. Sure serial killer obsessives will be all over this, especially because most of the tracks have Manson going off on weird little rants after or before each song, stories, jokes, philosophies, usually delivered with a self conscious giggle, snippets of conversation with the guy recording these sessions or whoever else happens to be in the room. There's even a three minute interview included. It's definitely a bit creepy, especially knowing how everything would end up.�
But the music, taken on its own, is still super powerful, some gorgeously raw chunks of raw acoustic folk. Fans of classic stuff like Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt, Bill Fay, as well as folks into Banhart, Vetiver, Espers, Fursaxa, Wooden Wand and any of the more song oriented modern freakfolks will definitely dig this like crazy, and probably oughta pick up the ESP disc as well...
We love getting to hear new sounds when they seem to appear from out of nowhere. Such is the case with this, the debut release from Mantle Sound Core, the project of continental drifter Mark Shvartsman, a onetime SF resident now making his home in Santa Cruz when he's not trekking across the states with, quite literally, an ARSENAL or machines. Having recently witnessed Mantle Sound Core in action in one of the most unlikely of venues - a mansion in San Francisco's uber elegant Twin Peaks neighborhood with an unbelievable window view of the the city at night - we can safely say we have NEVER seen anything like it before. Watching Shvartsman and his setup - numerous synths, drum machines galore, multiple mixers, maybe about 30 cassette players, and a killer lightshow - brought to mind many of electronic music's great visionaries, including everyone from Klaus Schulze to Aphex Twin to Boards of Canada. At the same time, MSC will no doubt appeal to fans of recent electro maestros like Umberto, Zombi, Etienne Jaumet, and stuff making the rounds on Honest Jon's. Unlike many of these artists, however, MSC doesn't exist within any sort of network that will lead to instant recognition from a certain fanbase. Instead, Shvartsman appears to be on an entirely different path altogether. He even went as far as to make a film in Death Valley with a handful of collaborators, which he then created a live soundtrack for. With this in mind, one can easily detect the cinematic nature of the music. The recordings here are a compilation of live performance from MSC's West Coast Spring tour and previous ambient studio recordings. The colossal journey that is this tape begins with a vaguely Italian horror styled intro with creeping industrial ambience lurking above majestic synth swells. Throughout there are strong melodies that help to set this apart from being an exercise in mere droniness. At times the feeling is somewhat ominous, but always wondrous and beautiful. Buried rhythms churn below the synthed out glory, with distant vocals occasionally coming in to add yet another dimension. There are also some extended workouts of Jeck-ian ambience that are dreamy and a perfect comedown for the more harrowing moments. Elsewhere krauty percolations keep things moving forward before hushed atmospheres take things into the sunset. Wow.
As is often the case, these tapes are limited - as in, like, 25 copies, so act now before it's too late. We feel this is just the beginning for Shvartsman and his wholly unique vision, and we can't wait to see what the future holds.
We're really so excited to finally welcome local label Time Released Sound to the aQuarius family. We've yet to list anything, in part because their releases are so limited, but also, because they sell out so quickly. Every single release, every single copy is an incredible work of art. Each one hand crafted, individually assembled, numbered and hand stamped, letter pressed and printed, the packaging thematically linked to the sound within, with photographs, or old records, strange little knick knacks, clock hands, piano keys, they're really incredible, an absolute labor of love, with most of the limited versions taking hours to assemble, and the fact that Time Released Sound is just one man, makes it all the more impressive. So from here on out, we'll get a limited number of each release, they're quite limited already usually around 70-100 copies. And odds are we won't be able to get more than 10-15, but trust us, they're worth it, sonically beautifully, and visually stunning. There will be regular non-art editions of some of the releases, much less limited, and thus less expensive, but if you're after one of the limited editions, you'll want to act fast.
The art edition of this one sold out to quick for us to get copies, but it's the first Time Released Sound release to get an actual proper cd release, which is a good thing too, cuz this stuff is way to gorgeous to be only heard by a handful of folks. A hazy droney drift, equal parts haunting ambience, mysterious field recordings, and abstract synth shimmer, these soundscapes are lush smoldering expanses of hypnotic sound, dreamily layered loops, judiciously applied effects, all woven into totally mesmerizing drones and sweetly melodic cinematic miniatures, from the soundtracky synth shimmer of "Below Sea Level" to the hazy, ethereal ambience of "Floating Sculptures", Maps And Diagrams, creates an otherworld of sound, a world of water, dominated by the sea, the sounds of water seep into many of the tracks here, a distant drizzle, the sound of a far away shore, but the music itself is evocative and lovely, simple melodies draped over lush landscapes, as much about texture and tone, mood and meaning as notes and chords, these blurred abstract drifts seem to hover ghostlike, before taking shape, only to fade into the ether once again. Dreamy and darkly divine, WAY recommended for all the aQ-ers into lush, mysterious ambience, and dreamily melodic dronemusic, fans of Jasper TX, Machinefabriek and other crafters of soundworlds hushed and haunting.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
Of all the releases on local label Time Released Sound, Get Lost by Maps And Diagrams, holds a special place in our hearts, as it was the first TRS release we were able to get enough of to actually review. And besides that, it was a gorgeous collection of hazy droney drift, the perfect first release, deftly delivering a sound that would essentially define the label's sonic mission statement, pastoral, dreamlike, woozy and washed out, electronic flecked folkiness and moody droney ambience. So here we are two years later, and Time Released Sound delivers their second Maps And Diagrams record, In Circles, which delves into similar sonic terrain, another sprawling bit of gauze-y dreaminess, soft focus clouds of swirling synths and whirring organs, blurred melodies, and smeared streaks of abstract shimmer, all sculpted into heady, heavenly swaths of ethereal pop ambience, glistening, crystalline shimmer, all infused with a lush, organic vibe. Some of the tracks here are all chiming guitars, gristled electronics and mysterious field recordings, others glistening swirls of slow shifting chordal shimmer, and still others are woozy loopscapes wreathed in a fuzzy patina of Caretaker like faded thrum. At least one track features vocals, and is thus transformed into a haunting drone-folk ballad, underpinned by a softly roiling bed of swoonsome strings and record crackle static. But really, every song here is mysteriously and heart wrenchingly fantastic!
The packaging, as always, is top notch, the standard version housed in a digipack and limited to 200 copies, while the deluxe version, limited to just 70 copies, is packaged in a hand altered black digipack, which is collaged, punched, and most strikingly, inlaid inside and our with ornate silkscreened Spanish real cork wallpaper. There's a printed and hand punched insert, everything inside a hand stamped, hand punched, inked and diagrammed translucent envelope, and each one also includes a 75 year old page of hand drawn diagrams and text. Wow!
Of all the releases on local label Time Released Sound, Get Lost by Maps And Diagrams, holds a special place in our hearts, as it was the first TRS release we were able to get enough of to actually review. And besides that, it was a gorgeous collection of hazy droney drift, the perfect first release, deftly delivering a sound that would essentially define the label's sonic mission statement, pastoral, dreamlike, woozy and washed out, electronic flecked folkiness and moody droney ambience. So here we are two years later, and Time Released Sound delivers their second Maps And Diagrams record, In Circles, which delves into similar sonic terrain, another sprawling bit of gauze-y dreaminess, soft focus clouds of swirling synths and whirring organs, blurred melodies, and smeared streaks of abstract shimmer, all sculpted into heady, heavenly swaths of ethereal pop ambience, glistening, crystalline shimmer, all infused with a lush, organic vibe. Some of the tracks here are all chiming guitars, gristled electronics and mysterious field recordings, others glistening swirls of slow shifting chordal shimmer, and still others are woozy loopscapes wreathed in a fuzzy patina of Caretaker like faded thrum. At least one track features vocals, and is thus transformed into a haunting drone-folk ballad, underpinned by a softly roiling bed of swoonsome strings and record crackle static. But really, every song here is mysteriously and heart wrenchingly fantastic!
The packaging, as always, is top notch, the standard version housed in a digipack and limited to 200 copies, while the deluxe version, limited to just 70 copies, is packaged in a hand altered black digipack, which is collaged, punched, and most strikingly, inlaid inside and our with ornate silkscreened Spanish real cork wallpaper. There's a printed and hand punched insert, everything inside a hand stamped, hand punched, inked and diagrammed translucent envelope, and each one also includes a 75 year old page of hand drawn diagrams and text. Wow!
One of two new tapes on this week's list from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one might be the heaviest / noisiest thing we've heard on that imprint yet, a live freeform freakout from Norwegian free-noise duo Maranata, a sax/guitar/electronics combo here joined by a couple extra hands, belonging to the drummer from Japan's Nisennenmondai, so you're in for a dense barrage of free jazz / free noise chaos. Sounding like vintage Japanese psych, fused to Zorn's double quartet Spy Vs. Spy, or Borbetomagus jamming with Lightning Bolt, this is furious droned out heaviness, wild tangles of guitar, crazed chaotic drums, and the sax, which sounds less like a sax, and more like a burst of sci-fi laser blurts, the sound grinding, and blown out, the group slipping easily from loose improv, to frenzied blasting, to creeping, almost doomlike plod, this is heady, wild, psychedelic stuff. Borderline white noise at times, but displaying loads of texture and nuance, this is some intense freaked out shit! Extreme free music obsessives will dig big time. And folks thinking about dipping their toes into the world of free jazz/rock weirdness/wildness, this would definitely not be a bad place to start. Exhausting and exhilarating.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A single, one hour and twelve minute track by Portuguese composer David Maranha, performed live in New York in 1998. Using only a grand piano, four electric motors and a violin bow, Maranha "excites" the strings from within the piano to produce a beautiful, continuous drone that subtly shifts in emphasized overtones. The motors -- small, garden variety, electric motors -- are placed on the ends of microphone stands with what appear to be small brushes affixed to their business ends and set over the strings. Maranha adjusts the dynamics and pitches by the amount of pressure the motors apply to the strings and slowly moving the locations of the motors to the strings. On top of this Maranha adds various bowing techniques to augment the overall color. All in all this is an excellent cd, reminiscent of Coleclough & Chalk's "Sumac" or the works of Troum and other dronologists. Highly recommended.
First we've heard from these drifting ambient drone dudes from Ohio, but we're definitely digging it. Ultra minimal swells of sound. Dark and shimmery, distant melodic fragments glistening, everything a lugubrious creep. Haunting and mysterious, but soft focus and delicate. There's a definitely Stars Of The Lid vibe, the sort of endless expanses of rolling oceanic swells, as well as a bit of Growing at their most blissed out and dreamlike.�
The sound of Maravich is an active ambience, with reverbed guitars shimmering over metallic buzz, throbbing and pulsing, smeared with bits of delay, creating subtle rhythms, and constantly shifting textures. If they had a drummer, you could almost imagine some of these tracks, turning into lopingly propulsive post rock grooves, but instead, they remain in the realm of drift and shimmer, the two guitars reflecting off the other, creating lush harmonies and plenty of ethereal Fripp and Eno like interplay. So nice.�
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
Marax, named for an asthma medication, is the long running experimental electronic project of one Eric Crowe. For Crucial Blast, Crowe decided to do an expansive project focused on death and dying. 12 cd-rs released monthly for a year. LIMITED TO ONLY 25 COPIES each and hand numbered. This is volume one in the series and is very dark and grim. A gritty, noisy and completely intense drone record. One of the best we've heard in a while actually. Very reminscent of Organum, Lustmord and that sort of thing. Funereal washes of chest-rattling low end and ear-scraping grit and dreamy (as in bad dreams) walls of monstrous thrum. Really great. And I'm sure if you want, we can get Adam at Crucial Blast to hook you up with all 12. But let us know quick.
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
This is volume two in Marax's 'For The Love Of Death' series of super limited cd-r's (LIMITED TO 25) thematically focused on death and dying. Where the first volume was slow brning drones ala Lustmord or Organum, volume two takes that drone and adds even more grit and static, with the resulting sound, much more akin to turnatablist Philip Jeck. But where Jeck's gritty soundscapes are dreamy and pastoral, Marax uses the antiquated sound to invoke memories of the long dead and times best forgotten. A dark and doomy trip down memory lane. Kind of like an Organum wax cylinder played on a decrepit old gramaphone with occasional anguished howls in the distance. Melodies surface but soon deteriorate into a wash of grit and grime. When the vocals come in it sort of sounds like Burzum played at 15 r.p.m. transmitted through tin can and twines. So fucked up and creepy and great. And as I said before, I'm sure if you want, we can get Adam at Crucial Blast to hook you up with all 12. But let us know quick.
As we mentioned on the last list, our friend Adam runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, and has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
This is volume THREE in Marax's 'For The Love Of Death' series of super limited cd-r's (LIMITED TO 25) thematically focused on death and dying. Where the first volume was slow burning drones ala Lustmord or Organum, and the second volume was griity and granular like a Philip Jeck record, Voulme three pulls it back a little toward a much more ambient excursion. Distant rumbles like passing traffic heard from underwater, with barely audible digital skitter and analog hiss, and occasional far-away feedback. Super minimal, but quite nice. This one would definitely appeal to fans of Bernhard Gunter and John Hudak.
As we mentioned before, I'm sure we can get Adam at Crucial Blast to hook you up with all 12. But let us know quick.
As we mentioned on the last list, our friend Adam runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, and has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
This is volume FOUR in Marax's 'For The Love Of Death' series of super limited cd-r's (LIMITED TO 25) thematically focused on death and dying. Volume four is quite similar to volume three, with distant rumbles and faraway shimmers, gently panning from speaker to speaker, a hypnotic slow motion pulse, that is joined for the last ten minutes by what sounds like a train crossing signal way off in the distance. Another hyper minimal and very appealing installment in this awesome series (all this one clocks in at a quite short 16 minutes, good thing it's only 5.98).
As we mentioned before, I'm sure we can get Adam at Crucial Blast to hook you up with all 12. But let us know quick.
While he's best known for the pandrogynous polymorph work as Rene Hell, Jeff Witscher released a handful of super private edition cassettes of ambient orchestrations for synths and pedals under the moniker Marble Sky sometime in the aughts. The Marble Sky recordings harken to a specific time of 'post-noise' when Emeralds in particular had emerged out of the Midwestern noise community with their youthful reclamation of kraut electronics and guitars circa 1974. Similar hints of a blustery discontent drift through Witscher's Marble Sky recordings, with the harmonic surges of synth melodies drifting through impressionist scores that rippled with oceanic currents of tempered white noise and tape-mediated meditations of forgotten memories and illusory dreams. Works by the likes of Marble Sky, Taiga Remains, and even Jon Borges' late-period Emaciator embraced ambient symphonic grandiosity in alluding simultaneously to the innerspace vistas from stoner staring contests at passing clouds and the mile-high vantage points of hugely dramatic historical paintings. It's no big leap to make the connections from the introspective reductionism of Stars Of The Lid or even some of Tim Hecker's more docile recordings through the recordings of Marble Sky to arrive at the revisionist infatuation with the crystal-powered navel-gazing of new age recordings.
This eponymous collection from the pastorally-droned imprint Students Of Decay takes all of the Marble Sky material that Witscher released on his own Callow God label, which mostly held to the morally bankrupt ethos of brutalist power electronics with the very obvious exception of the Marble Sky recordings. Fragile. Sonorous. Lovely.
Recorded in New Orleans in 2005, the week the Hurricane hit, this is an intense and super moving field recording from musician, composer and sound artist Matt Marble. Plenty of street sounds, musicians, bicycle bells, voices over loud speakers, whipping wind, foot steps, drums, rushing water, a 21 minute wander through the streets on NOLA, finishing with a strange coda of long high end drones laid over the rumble of cars and the whir of the storm. Very haunting and emotional.
The other two shorter tracks, feature an interview with a Gulf Coast family, radio playing in the background, and various family drama playing out, and a street singer doing an Otis Redding classic and engaging his captive audience.
It's all beautifully recorded, and not only sonically appealing, but a riveting brief glimpse into lives touched by tragedy.
Packaged in cool hand assembled sleeves, hand stamped, with a photocopied insert, and a phot pasted to the front. Originally limited to 90 copies, this is obviously WAY sold out, and these are thus the last copies ever...
Yet another new release from one of our new favorite cd-r labels, Portland's Onomato, run by the guys in Ghosting!
Matt Marble is a composer, a researcher, a student of Speech And Hearing Science, and he's also the co-editor for sound art magazine FO A RM. He spends much of his time composing for large ensembles and "non-musicians". Chiasmata, like many of his works, was created using processed field recordings and hand built instruments.
The first track begins with 5 minutes of upper register shimmer, like rainfall transformed into bells, a ringing chiming high end drone, that gradually dissipates into an ultra minimal low end drift, before breaking down even further, into a barely audible, seemingly unaltered field recording, insects, leaves, wind. The second track, part two, begins where the first track ended, a microscopic world of insectoid scrape and skitter, distant chimes, all manner of found sound. Eventually, a subtle drone begins to materialize, a barely their uneven buzzing, soon some sort of looped vocal moan appears, and suddenly for the last few minutes, the sound builds to its most active, a warm thick drone, wrapped around a dense clatter of rattle and chime before just as abruptly, it disappears. Nice!
Packaged in hand printed covers with a full color photo affixed to each, photocopied insert and all housed in a heavy vinyl sleeve.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES, WE GOT ABOUT 20. ONCE THEY'RE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.
Finally available again, the gorgeous all ambient second album from Hungary's Marblebog, who on other records (which we gushed about on past aQ lists) combined bits of ambient drone with their mournful black buzz, but for Wind Of Moors, they jettisoned all traces of metal completely, and in their place, crafted a gorgeous slow moving world of drifting melancholy ambience. Very krautrocky, and quite reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh and the like, the opening track is soft and sun dappled, gentle muted bongos, beneath a constant low level raga like buzz, soft synth swells, shimmering streaks of ethereal whir, a gorgeous laid back sprawl of nearly new age mesmer.
The next track is even lighter and dreamier, chords smeared into shadows as they drift by, chords suspended in soft swirls of sound, the notes, floating weightless, a breathless whisper of a song.
The third track has a bit of muted propulsion, a gentle heartbeat like pulse, beneath some thick, but still soft, buzz, a gorgeous minor key melody played out in high end tones, draped over the droning blurred raga below, so completely entrancing and hypnotic. Slightly ominous, dark clouds drifting across a steel blue sky, but still, the vibe is more like a forest just before the storm, hauntingly calm but still slightly uneasy.
The final track is the darkest of the bunch, a creeping sonic fog, layered melodies, gauzy and shimmering, slowly drifting, casting dark shadows, filling the speakers with dead leaves and cold rain. A chilling, but mysteriously lovely bit of dreamlike sound.
Throughout their 25 year career, Voice Crack (the Swiss duo of Andi Guhl and Norbert Moslang) have sought out fellow improvisers and electronic experimentalists to collaborate with, including 16-17, Jim O'Rourke, Erik M, and Otomo Yohsihide. During this time,
Perhaps as an homage to the Metamkine 3" series Cinema Pour L'Oreille of brief musique concrete programs, Mixer (run by one of the former employees of Staalplaat) has released this 3"CD from French composer Lionel Marchetti who has worked extensively at both INA-GRM and at the CFMI in Lyon. The Pierre Henry influence upon Marchetti is quite clear on the first half of the record, as Marchetti splatters the stereo field with an arsenal of chopped up tape noises, mangled effects, and blurted instruments. It's almost comical at first with the sounds emerging as scatological excess and slapstick behavior; but about halfway into the piece, Marchetti shifts gears with a gorgeous display of sweeping sinetones frozen behind a number of reverb units. When the plastic squiggles and whirring spirals of tape machinations reappear, their nature is brazenly hostile. A short 20 minute jaunt, but one that displays Marchetti's immaculate craftsmanship of immense details.
Electro-Acoustic composer Lionel Marchetti has built quite a considerable discography, consisting mostly of collaborations with the likes of Jerome Noettinger (who runs Metamkine) and Voice Crack. "Portrait d'un Glacier" -- one of the handful of his solo
Recorded at the age of 22 back in 1989 (but just recently released), "Sirrus" stands as one of the earliest documentations from French musique concrete composer Lionel Marchetti. This is a trilogy based upon abstract interpretations of natural phenomenon
We have a customer in Japan who HATES Keiji Haino, and delights in sending us emails detailing just how much he loathes the man and his music. Andee of course delights in torturing Allan, an admitted Keiji mega-fan, with these very same missives. Having spied Haino shopping in a record store, our customer remarked "Even the way he looks at cds sucks", and once he emailed that he could make a Keiji Haino record simply by sticking an electric guitar and an amp in the trunk of his car and driving around on bumpy Japanese roads. Which brings us to Guitar Drag, the soundtrack to a video installation in which Christian Marclay, took an electric guitar, plugged it in, tied it to the back of a truck, and drove around dragging the guitar behind him and recording the results. Visually it's pretty amazing. And a clever statement on music and art, as are all of Marclay's pieces. But the sound yields something surprisingly listenable. Super lo-fi, a swirling, clanging crash and crunch of hum and twang and rumble and roar, a noisy mess, perhaps, but surprisingly dynamic, with random melodies and some remarkable sounds surfacing from the murky stringed chaos. Actually, one was to listen to this not knowing it was some art prank, one would most certainly be forgiven for thinking this was in fact some totally abstract free rock psychedelic freakout, the Dead C, or some mysterious Matthew Bower project, or even -that- above mentioned nonexistent Haino guitar-in-the-trunk record we wish would come out. Not sure what it says about those bands when dragging a guitar behind your car produces the same sound, but who cares?! Art nerds already need this, but now all you free noise psychedelic freaks can feel all 'arty' when you throw this on right between Fushitsusha's Live 2 and the Dead C's Trapdoor Fucking Exit!
Cool sleeve image, a video still of the dragged guitar, and pressed on super swank cloudy clear vinyl.
Two living legends of avant-garde turntable manipulation join forces for this duo recording. Downtown NYC fixture Marclay, a true pioneer in using the turntable as an instrument, abusing it and the LPs themselves in ways that even the craziest hiphop DJs wouldn't imagine. Japan's Otomo Yoshihide, whose seminal Ground Zero band set the turntable loose in a free jazz improv context. Ask Zorn, ask Sonic Youth, ask DJ Spooky: they'll all tell you these guys are the masters. Anyway, chances are you already know all that and more...here these two have created a tapestry of scratching, snatches of music and noise: sometimes the musical sounds the needle is pulling from the vinyl and sometimes the non-musical sounds the vinyl is making on the needle. It's not a DJ Shadow style sample-soundtrack, but rather a beautifully rhythmic new-music, abstract and intriguing. It makes sense that this would be released on Asphodel, home to both recordings by hip hop turntablists The X-Ecutioners and 20th century avantgarde electronic composer Xenakis...
Fuck shit up, man. Yeah, fuck it up real good! Two Sonic Youth guitarists and their pal, NYC turntable artist Christian Marclay team up for this live performance from the Victoriaville "Jazz" Festival. While it's not, as the title suggests, a purely aggro-punk noisathon, the lengthy improvisation documented here does do some destruction to highbrow art pretense.
Back in 2006, Lasse Marhaug released an album with Joachim Nordwall from the Skull Defekts and Johannes Helden called When The Ice Is Leaving, Scandinavia Is Burning. With a title like that, the album should have been all fire and brimstone of Nordic noise: abusive, throttling, and demonic. It was not. Instead, that was the album you would expect from an album called The Quiet North; and The Quiet North is certainly not quiet. Pure brutalist noise is what Marhaug has in store for us. This wall of obsessive, oppressive distortion comes by way of guitar, various effects pedals, and various pieces of metal to tremendous effect. This is not a subtle record, the various squalls from the guitar strings being grabbed with bloody fingers and scraped with those pieces of metal have the crazed wall-of-sound frenzy you could hear in any number of Matthew Bower productions setting upon a rumbled low-to-mid range distortion that comes across like a two ton pile of gravel being slowly dumped upon the roof of a tin shed. The album begins with a bang and does not let up until its abrupt conclusion some 30 minutes later. Exhilarating to say the least.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Limited to 500 copies. We still have a few though, 'cause for some reason, we never listed it back in 2007 when it came out.
"These recordings were regally made during the inauguration of The Embassy of The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland in Mexico City on August 30, 2002 in the presence of the KREV Ambassador Magal� Arriola and invited guests at Colima 244, Colonia Roma, Mexico City."
Here's the second release from Andrew Chalk's Marsfield project, even though these recordings date back to 2002 well before the 2010 release of The Towering Sky. At that time, Chalk was still engaged with the sublime Mirror collaboration with Christoph Heemann, producing a vast collection of impressionist drones that certainly set a gold standard for anyone looking to dive into the dronemuzik category. Enter Brendan Walls, an Australian ambient practitioner who also moonlights in the slugfuck-noise outfit the Menstruation Sisters (although there's nothing of the Sisters' scattered noise that enters any of the Marsfield recordings). Walls had released a few albums through Heemann's labels of vaporized hum and oceanic tonefloat, including a 2004 collaboration with Mr. Chalk on Three Poplars. Whatever the relationship of the collaboration between Chalk and Walls might have been, Three Sunsets Over Marsfield has the fingerprints of Andrew Chalk all over it: smeared texture into elongated drone and shimmering resonant tones coalescing into thrumming hypnosis. What is unique to Three Sunsets in relation to the Chalk catalogue, is that there is a peculiar backstory about a retired British soldier who had been able to receive and amplify radio transmissions through a metal plate in his skull. It's easy to imagine that Chalk and Walls set out to create a sublime piece of music, best suited for playback within the skull of an old soldier, sick of listening into whatever the BBC might be broadcasting. Chalk and Walls compact and compress numerous layers of psychedelically-bent guitar drones into a gorgeous, mid-frequency stream of flutter, shimmer, and mirage, not unlike what Chalk would later reprise on Shadows From The Album Skies. To say that this album is mesmerizing is undoubtedly an understatement!
Andrew Chalk vinyl is a rare commodity indeed, and Three Sunsets Over Marsfield is no exception, being printed in an edition of 300 copies in an extraordinary package of embossed metallic paper with an obi sporting the title in Japanese.
Marsfield is a project featuring the premier UK drone artist Andrew Chalk along side Vikki Jackman, Robin Barnes, and Brendan Walls. This collective recorded The Towering Sky back in 2005, only to see if released some five years later. Given the gap in recording to release, we have to wonder what else Mr. Chalk has buried in the vaults of his Faraway Press that one day might see the light of day.
The recordings reflect the strategies of David Jackman, who had employed the talents of a much younger Andrew Chalk many many moons ago in his Organum ensemble. The Marsfield participants have all gathered various pieces of resonant metal (maybe a large piece of sheet metal, maybe a long stringed instrument, probably a gong or two, and definitely a singing bowl or four) and extracted sustained textures, prolonged scrapes, deep bellowings, and elegantly warbled tones in a large reverberant room. With all of the room noise with its spectral echoing, damp reflections, and incidental ambience, the Marsfield sessions sound as if they could have been recorded in some abandoned factory somewhere in the Northeast of England. The first Isolde record that Chalk and Barnes had constructed a few years back is not all that dissimilar to The Towering Sky, with the first half of this record appearing as shape-shiting ghosts of corroded, droning haze, and shifting into the latter half of the record pocked with distant plucks and small hand bells that dissolve into field recordings of English rain showers. As with all of the Faraway Press titles, this is beautifully packaged; and as with all Andrew Chalk releases, this is very highly recommended.
Latest from Minneapolis one man raw black metal horde Marsh, who we last heard from on a split with black metal weirdos Lonesummer. Here, Marsh is teamed up with a group called Thorazine Gaze, who we had never heard before but who are pretty amazing, starting things out with a plodding bit of freaked out, depressive, super creepy plodding black metal, the guitars raw and echoe-y, the recording super lo-fi, the vocals super distorted and insanely inhuman sounding, also wrapped in delay and reverb, the result is a dark droning, blackened trudge, with a gloriously melancholy main riff. The next track picks up the pace a little, but the sound remains, grim and miserable, yet still strangely minor key and melodic, the music almost pretty, but the vocals, so intense and tortured and so processed and distorted they end up sounding like dense squalls of white noise, drifting over the pounding D-beat flecked grimnity underneath. The record tends toward the midtempo, but those fucked up vocals push this more toward the realms of groups like Bone Awl or Akitsa, which is absolutely a good thing.
Marsh starts of his side with a stretch of creepy, soundtracky black ambience, laced with strange industrial creaks and whirs, looped melody, a haunting tense slow build, swirling FX, downtuned distorted crumble, echo drenched melodies, before finally exploding into song, but instead of the frenzied black blast we were expecting, it's some creepy depressive gothy doom pop, deep dramatic vocals, clean guitars, low slung Joy Division basslines, all wrapped in a gauzy lo-fi swirl, the rhythms programmed and machinelike, the track laced with occasional shrieked vokills, but for the most part it's weirdly dark and melodic, before finally stumbling into something way more black and harsh, stumbling drums, strange atonal guitars, harsh vox, twisted melodies, everything woozy and off kilter, abstract and gnarled. Finally finishing off with a bit of pounding post rock / black metal, that manages to buzz and brood, the sound blown out, but definitely still warm and melodic. Good stuff for sure. Wondering when some label's gonna finally step up and release a Marsh full length. Until then, better act fast. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!! We have about 10, not sure we can get more...
One of four new tapes on the Tapeworm label, a UK cassette only label that traffics in modern minimalism and all manner of outsider musical ephemera, shrouding many of their releases in mystery, leaving it up to the listener to divine the providence of these strange and wonderful releases. Not entirely sure who Philip Marshall is, although from the credits we're going to assume it's actually not a person, and instead the name of a group, made up of various composers, musicians and field recordists. Composed and performed by English pianist / composer Andrew Poppy, Casse-tete is a gorgeous elegiac bit of solo piano, brooding, and haunting, lush and melodious, but the main piano part is surrounded by various bits of audio detritus and random field recordings, from static and crunch, hiss and clatter, to snippets of conversation, the grinding metal on metal of what sounds like a commuter train, the background sounds occasionally overtaking the piano sounds themselves, a few minutes in, after what sounds like someone removing a tape from a player, we're treated to accordion and crowd sounds and what could be a buys street in Italy, the sounds getting ever more chaotic and noisy, reverbed and echo drenched, finally super distorted in a final squall of Merzbowian crunch, slipping into a strange bout of pulsating organs sliced and diced and all tangled up with more strange sonic snippets and fragments of what sounds like liturgical chorales.
The B side seems to be an extrapolation of that twisted collaged Italian street field recording, thick billows of accordion buzz, the rhythmic crunch of foot steps, church organs, lots of hiss and crunch and buzz, drone and dark, fragmented and fractured, a swirling, whirling droned out soft noise field recording flecked dronescape. Cool.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.
While there are some fantastic labels crate digging for those awesomely obscure synth-wave / post-punk reissues, there's something to be said for Wierd Records in championing some of the best current practitioners of retrogarde cold-wave. It seems that at every step of Wierd's brief history, there has also been the sounds of Sean McBride, whether that be from his work in the exceptional Xeno & Oaklander or the sporadic tracks released with Three To Forgotten or his solo work as Martial Canterel. These dark-eyed synth-pop projects all share a lot of similarities in their modern romantic poetry working through the urgent marches of interwoven arpeggiation, flanging tone, spectral synth flourishes, and propulsive drum machines; and McBride's vocals carry an affected delivery with British inflections. McBride is quick to point toward his impressive collection of vintage synths and sequencers, speaking of the craftsmanship required to master these instruments. There is self-awareness of the irony in such a statement, given that so many of the great electronic bands had been accused of being less than human through their use of electronics, and McBride wholeheartedly embraces his role as a fetishist and an archivist, presenting all of his arrangements with a flawless reclamation of a forgotten future. As such, all of McBride's productions look toward the classic early new wave works of Human League, OMD, and Depeche Mode, with You Today nestling very comfortably amongst all of those references of old.
With all the limited 3" cd-r releases and full lengths, it's amazing Machinefabriek, aka�Rutger Zuydervelt could find time to collaborate, but boy are we glad he did. Two pieces, each a collaboration with American multi instrumentalist Aaron Martin, who recorded a series of cello pieces, which�Zuydervelt proceeded to chop up, process, reassemble and twist into gorgeous haunting new shapes.�
The first track, "Cello Recycling", finds�Zuydervelt taking the various cello pieces and stretching them out, layering them, smearing them, blurring them, creating a warm, thick, humid slow burning landscape of droning sound. It begins as a minimal crawl, but as the track progresses, the sound takes on an epic quality, with submerged melodies coming to the surface, strange bits of rhythms and melodic fragments, creating a glacial wall of cinematic ambience, dark minor key swells, that undulate and pulse, always building and building, into a thick wash of metallic overtones, and crumbling distorted low end eventually becoming so buzzy and intense, it begins to sound like a much more mellow minimal SUNNO))), before quickly slipping back into more tranquil Stars Of The Lid like territory.
The second track, "Cello Drowning", takes the already manipulated piece, the epic Godspeed-filtered-through-doomdrone-low-end of�"Cello Recycling", and literally drowns it in more sound, layers of noise and texture, thick swaths of FX, the sound of (appropriately) running water or rain, the rumbling low end reverberating and shimmering, but instead of making it louder and heavier, more noisy and brutal, it actually gets even more subdued, more washed out and indistinct, A very Tim Hecker-ish blurry smear of sound. Soft focus, gentle, tranquil and dreamy, until at the very end, the original sounds of the cello can just be barely glimpsed through the druggy sonic haze, unfurling into a slowly fading, sweetly melancholy coda.
As always, absolutely lovely.�
Not sure how we first heard Ian Martin, a Dutch visual and recording artist, but we do remember it only took about two minutes of one track, and we were totally hooked. With a super minimal set up, never more than two synths, and absolutely no drum machines, Martin manages to create strange overlapping patterns and haunting synthscapes that manage to be ultra minimal, and that are driven by subtle rhythms created from the synths alone. The track that did it for us is the opener here, "Moving Activity", which unfurls long slow chordal swells, lush and haunting, over a murky looped percolation, that makes it sound like some sort of Philip Jeck installation, the feel of a skipping record driving the track, all gauzy and hazy and wreathed in a patina of barely there tape hiss. It's totally mesmerizing and utterly hypnotic, a gorgeous chunk of minimal mesmer that ends way to soon after only about 8 minutes.
It's almost as easy to get lost in the rest of the record "Drups" lays down a dense layered sprawl of atonal drones, over which Martin sends a series of bleeps and bloops pinging back and forth, giving it the vibe of some sort of early electronic space music, raw and primitive. "Voice Of Space" is a bit more crunchy and caustic, the percussion made up of little bits of squelch and static, over a strangely hypnotic loopscape that is both mesmerizing and tense, very cinematic too.
"Stream" probably ranks as a close second to the opener, another Jeck like loopscape, this one flecked with what sounds almost like a Morricone style twang, the rhythm a murky softly crunchy bit of churn, gorgeously hypnotic and hauntingly cinematic, another one we could listen to all day. "Wires" is a lot like "Drups", much busier, and another song that seems to approximate some lost primitive space music, a field of bleeps and bloops, strange tinkling melodies, all over a field of buzz and shimmer, and driven by a muted thump, very playful, almost reminding us of Raymond Scott at times. And finally, the title track, which unfurls a lush metallic buzzscape, that sounds almost like it was woven together from the sounds of grandfather clocks, chiming and tolling tones, all drifting above a strangely clattery abstract rhythm, the sounds crystalline and glistening, a gorgeously mesmerizing sprawl of glimmering synth drift mesmer that's the perfect way soundtrack to drifting off, disappearing into the heavens, are body and soul becoming one with the stars. Fantastic.
We have no idea who Robert Martin is, or if he's played in other bands, or even where he's from. What we do know, is that Long Goodbye is a haunting mysterious collection of fractured outsider folk, that manages to be simultaneously lovely and fragile, twisted and fractured.
From the outset, it's easy to tell this is no ordinary neofolk or new weird America. It is weird however. And at least in some basic way folk music. Over a bed of muted soft strum, hovers a tortured dramatic croon, a sort of plaintive mewling, in some primitive slow motion battle with gnarled little chunks of electric guitar, a stumbling atonal tangle, that we've heard compared to Derek Bailey, although this is much less scrabbly and percussive, and way more melodic, but still similarly 'naive' sounding. Balancing the innocent tortured vocals perfectly. The voices are multitracked, and seem to slip in and our of tune with each other, which only gives the sound that much more of a demented edge.
Some of the tracks are way more lo-fi and washed out, and it's then that we hear Alastair Galbraith, but some tracks, are almost straight, the vocals pitched down and slightly less dramatic, the lyrics still twisted, and the guitar still erupting in little slow motion squalls. It's quite lovely, but very very strange. Imagine maybe a folkier Frog Eyes via the Sun City Girls. Or maybe a murkier muddier Antony And The Johnsons, but with stumbling guitar instead of dramatic piano.
Lovely and eerie, mysterious and unique, fans of fractured folk and loner bedroom pop will definitely find Martin's beautifully damaged sounds difficult to resist.
jeremiah
Koji Marutani, who also runs the Digital Narcis label, sets down meditative layers of field recordings and sound fragments, in an attempt to calmly mirror the randomness of memory. Satie like piano improvisations (though he's too cool to mention it's played on a Klavierchord), plunderphonic styled cut-ups of TV commericials and banal pop, and cold fusion pulses are intersperced with the fluid ambient passages.
Chances are, you probably haven't heard of the UK's Marzuraan. But if Earth, SUNNO))), Khanate, Boris, Corrupted, Eyehategod and others of that ilk mean anything to you, then you will probably want to add Marzuraan to that illustrious list of low-end, slowed-down, heavy-as-hell heroes. This is the band's debut cd from last year, that we recently tracked down in enough quanity (we hope) to list. Marzuraan wear their influences on their sleeve -- quite literally, in fact, as this disc comes in a nice cardstock package that folds out into a cross, designed by none other than Stephen O'Malley of SUNNO))) and Khanate. And the band's name is derived, we're pretty sure, from song by James Plotkin of Khanate's old band, OLD. So, no surprise then (only expectant satisfaction) that this starts off (and continues) in doomy dirge mode, heavy and sludgey, definitely very Earth-like, but live-recorded at high volume for maximum murk and grit and distortion. The proceedings are mostly instrumental, although what sounds like the snarl of feeding zombies breaks out at least once, to terrifying effect. Could almost be a battle between the vocalists for Caninus and Hatebeak!
Mainly, though, these folks are all about crushing you with their droning ambient metal riffs, as helped along by the sparse plod of the drums, and the constant presence of feedback, feedback that reaches a pinnacle on the third track "Martian Dub". By the end of the disc, though, Marzuuran have also gotten into some really nice lo-fi, distorted post-rock psychedelia, that then freaks out into an improv frenzy at the finish... Five tracks, one full hour. The raw production really works for this (they're not quite the Doktor Kettu of doom-drone, but close). We'll certainly be on the lookout for a limited edition (of course! argh!) double LP from these guys which we're told is upcoming.
The return of UK sludgelords Marzuraan, squaring off against the simply monickered Sink.
Those of you unfamiliar with the dark black sludge of Marzuraan would do well to become acquainted, especially if you have a taste for things like Moss, Bunkur, Boris, SUNNO))), Monument of Urns, Monarch and the like. This is maybe the best Marzuraan track yet. Speeding up their tarpit sludge just a smidge so they end up sounding here like Dutch hypnometallers Gore at 16 rpm. Fucking awesome. A whole record of this would instantly become our most listened to disc of the year, mark our words. The flipside is taken up by the noxious black noise of Sink, a swirling, sludgy wall of hissing fuzzed out blackened ultra noise, harsh and horrific, a good foil to the slow motion sludge drenched groove of the Marzuraan track.
Limited to 333 copies, half on clear vinyl (we got all clear vinyl!) comes with a big fold out poster, and packaged in a thick cardstock, striking two color screened sleeve!
Second release from Video Horror Show, a new label releasing, as the name implies, VHS tapes, featuring original music, accompanied by tripped out visuals. The logical extension of the renewed interest in audio cassette tapes we presume, yet somehow even more retro, we can hardly wait for someone to start releasing tapes on betamax! Or microcassette! Even better, how about a laserdisc label?! Anyway, like the first installment (now out of print), a buzzing black metal sprawl from the awesomely monickered Suffer The Shards Of The Lost Culture Of Silence, The Five Wounds is another twisted sonic excursion, still plenty 'black', but instead of metal, this comes via witch house weirdos Mascara (spelled of course with the A's replaced by triangles, and the word separated by a little black pyramid, a spelling that for whatever reason comes out all gobbedlygook on our website), an epic 15 minute electro-goth synthdrone creepscape, all fuzzy distorted keyboards, moaning chanted vocals, lurching lumbering skeletal rhythms, everything hazy and blurry and gauzy and washed out, the sort of music you can imagine hearing in some dark smoke filled club in a David Lynch movie, so much smoke and dry ice, that it's nothing but shadows and strange amorphous shapes, and the sounds are muffled and mutated and refracted by the thick atmosphere, the voices slowed down to a crawl, the beat hypnotic and unrelenting, the synths buzzing and brittle, the vibe tranced out and deliriously druggy.
The accompanying video most definitely suits the sound, super trippy and lysergic with loads of lo-fi effects, grainy film stock, double exposures, burnt out images, swirling landscapes, slow motion sort-of-3D, strange shapes and figures, warped clips from horror movies, eye popping colors, ever shifting kaleidoscopic tableaus of murder and mayhem and terror, forests, and altars, and basements, and dark hallways and lonely roads. They don't call it Video Horror Show for nothing. Needless to say, both sonically and visually, totally far out and mesmerizing, and pretty fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in a white clamshell old school video tape case, with two color hand screened inserts, recorded onto a blue videotape, and comes with a download code (just for the music) as well!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Japan's hopping noise honcho. Continues the "Good Alchemy" series of outrageous aural assaults.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More of the crazy, dynamic noise Masonna is known for, this time available on a relatively inexpensive American disc.
A truely extraordinary second release from the improv power trio Gary Smith, Gary Jeff, and Lou Ciccotelli (God, Spleen, etc.) on guitar, bass, electronics, and percussion.
