How long would last if your roommate screamed his dreams out loud every night? Would you have the foresight to capture these disturbances on tape? Lucky for us back in the 1960's Dion McGregor's roommate stuck it out long enough to provide us with this aural document of one man's nocturnal pain and pleasure. Dion's dreams range from queeny dress up parties to drooling descriptions of large breasted women and cunnilingus contests. Equally disturbing as it is riveting.
Everybody's favorite sleeptalker is back and we're really fucking excited! Dreams Again, the previous release on Tzadik, is one of our most loved and consistently selling "spoken word" CDs, and with reason. Most of us who talk in our sleep tend to say maybe a couple words or phrases at best, often mumbled so quietly that it's hard to even catch the words they're saying -- if you even happen to be awake and close enough to hear it. Well imagine someone that regularly, throughout his entire life, recited entire dreams in a clear voice. And imagine every one of those dreams being the most ridiculous and surreal dreams imaginable. That's Dion McGregor. The story goes that in 1961 Dion McGregor -- a born again freeloader, chronic couch-surfer and quasi-successful song writer -- was discovered to be a verbose sleeptalker by the friend whose house he was currently crashing at. The friend, a director of porn films, attempted to jot down the dreams, but McGregor's speech was just too fast. With some mild coercion (free rent must have been involved) a mutual friend and song writer, Michael Barr, agreed to allow McGregor to sleep at his apartment in return for being allowed to record his dreams. Barr set up a microphone at the head of Dion's bed and for seven years recorded everything he could. Apparently Dion's vocalizations tended to begin just before waking in the morning, so there was a bit of predictability they could count on. Playing the tapes to the right people at the right time eventually resulted in an LP released on Decca in 1964 entitled the Dream World of Dion McGregor (and in 1999 Tzadik released a cd of additional material also recorded by Barr). While there must be enough tapes of McGregor's ramblings to cover several more volumes (Barr claims to have recorded upwards of 500 dreams), we'll have to settle for these 80 more minutes for the time being. Listening to these bizarre tales it's hard to believe that these are coming from a man who's genuinely asleep. The way McGregor recites them sounds almost conversational, describing the events he's undergoing. At the same time Mcgregor is both the director of his dreams: telling us to all get ready for the scavenger hunt (reciting off a myriad of strange objects that must be located), but also a participant: confessing to us that he'll never be able to locate said objects in such short time. And, it must be added, he almost invariably ends each transmission with horrified screaming. No matter how mild or whimsical a dream may be when it starts, it always seems to end in either tragedy or just plain shrieking madness. But the theory that McGregor made up and performed these monologues, fully conscious, is even harder to imagine. He would have had to have been quite a writer and a performer to achieve such results, and to allow it to remain archived in obscuity for eternity. No matter, even if these were faked they still add up to an impressive collection of the most fucked up, hilarious and down right amazing monologues this side of Kenneth Patchen. An absolute must for all lovers of the more disturbing aspects of the human psyche!
As of the end of 2013, the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art has temporarily closed its physical doors at its Third Street location, with plans to expand outward and upward from that structural footprint. Collin McKelvey and John Davis are two Bay Area media artists who happen to work at SFMOMA; and the two embarked on their Episteme project to document the ephemera and non-Art objects that would have typically gone unnoticed by the visitors and even the staff. A book was published for a short-lived exhibition of the visual documentation of said ephemera. Included with that book was a 7" of processed field recordings of the more banal, behind-the-scenes sounds at SFMOMA. The book seems to be sold out, but we did get a hold of some of these 7" singles of which we think there were about 100 copies in total. Each artist offers their own interpretation with McKelvey taking an abstract, phonographer approach with various shuffles, creaking wheels, HVAC purrs, and forgotten institutional clatter. Davis' track takes an opposite approach, recontextualizing various snippets of field recordings into motorik rhythms and radiophonic swarms with a nice Schnitzler / Moebius vibe.
"The first thing is that time travel has been going on forever." The second thing is that, at Aquarius, this cd-r has been causing a bit of consternation as no one seems to know why they should be the one assigned to write about "the meaning of life". Yeah, real funny. What we DO know, according to what is written on the back cover, is that the recording captured here comes from a cassette mysteriously labeled "The Meaning of Life" which was found lying on a roadside and eventually passed along to the producer of this disc. The recording is of a very agitated man apparently talking on the phone. Whether he's actually talking on the phone is anyone's guess. He repeatedly gets so angry with whoever is on the other end that he works himself into a frenzy screaming "Shut UP!!!" repeatedly, his voice breaking up from his strained frustration. What is clear about this man is that he's not playing with a full deck of cards. None the less, the monologue is at once disturbing and entertaining. To top it off the recording is made not using an answering machine or anything else which might actually pick up whoever would be on the other end of the conversation, but with a microphone placed in the room with the caller. The added benefit from this method is that we're treated to the rumbling ambiance of a thunder storm. The equipment used is not the best, so at times it's hard to tell whether that is indeed a thunderstorm in the background or someone banging on a giant dumpster. Whatever the sound is, it gets so loud at times that it drowns out the man's ranting. So what is he talking about? Well, that's a fair question. However, it's hard enough to follow a spoken word disc in the store as it is, dealing with all of our daily tasks, but when the monologue is that of a raving lunatic, it's even more challenging. There are time traveling Android/Angels, including a Christ Android that will descend to the earth from the 12th planet. Plus there's also a great deal here about mind control, Stalin, and Donna Summer (ie: the devil). Our narrator, who has a superior knowledge of physics, puts it best perhaps when he tells his silent friend that he knows so much shit that if he "were to say it all at once to anybody they'd go fucking stark raving crazy at light speed." One theory is that the person on the other end of the line is actually the narrator himself in the past. The disc ends, oddly enough, with some random music snatches attributed to Donna Summer and then some short audio samples from the rant tagged on at the very end so that -- I suppose -- you can pull off your own Kathy McGinty or Arnold Schwarzenegger style prank calls.
"If I say the wrong thing over the phone I get a horrible Huey attack"
MPEG Download: "CPU's of the 25th Century" [/audio/meaningofcpus25th.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "CPU's of the 25th Century" [/audio/meaningofcpus25th.m3u]
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From the liner notes: "Ten and a half years ago, a few men in Oulu (Finland) were bothered by a thought: what would it be like to assemble a maximal number of men into a regular formation and dress them in dark suits, black rubber ties (made of used inner tubes), white shirts, and make them furiously shout some patriotic texts sacred to Finns. The men didn't have any further starting point: neither musical frustrations, a political programme, an aesthetic trend, nor opinions concerning postmodenism in arctic areas. But already the first choir rehersal proved that a shouting men's choir would have expressive power in all these senses."
Allow me to reiterate, 80 Finnish men in black suits and rubber ties barking rhythmic reinterpretations of patriotic Finnish songs (they also shout the 'Star Spangled Banner'!!!). One of AQ's favorite documents of the absurd.
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Quite simply one of the most fucked things that has passed through the doors of AQ! A choir of 40 men who do not sing, rather they shout various Finnish anthems, children's ditties, and patriotic songs. As you can accertain, these renditions are completely devoid of melody but have an outstanding sensibility when it comes to re-interpreting the rhythmic elements of the original songs. The CD features all of the tracks from their Finnish major label single of variations on the national anthems from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, U.S.A., and Germany (which is down right awesome). Gratefully both formats clock in well under 15 minutes, any more would be sadistic.
A few years back, Kiyoshi Mizutani ventured into the Tanzawa mountain range located to the southwest of Tokyo in order to document the sounds of that very isolated region. In the liner notes to this album, Mizutani explains that this region enjoys a complex history with centuries worth of military endeavors and legends including one tragedy which Mizutani alludes to about "the losing army's princess." Needless to say, the mountains may have been of strategic importance to any number of rival factions; but by now, their remoteness and desolation harbors only a small population. He focuses his attention upon three aspects of those mountains: the natural (which is the dominant voice of the Tanzawan environment), the ceremonial folklore of the people, and the residual noise of the man-made. Mizutani's love of bird sounds was evident on one of his early sound works simply entitled Bird Songs; and the spirited chatter of many a bird dots Mizutani's field recordings. Crickets, cicadas, and plenty of insect choruses also feature into Scenery Of The Border, as does a broad range of watery recordings from quiet drips from a misty rain to the immersive white noise of waterfalls. The few recordings that feature a human presence are of restrained Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies, which Mizutani mentions have rarely been heard outside of that region. It's these ritualistic stompings and hushed bits of chanting that stand amongst the highlights of this incredible field recording document.
During the '80s, Kyoshi Mizutani was a member of Merzbow with Masami Akita - the man who's name is often synonymous with Merzbow, in spite of the many individuals who have helped with his ongoing Merzbow project. For this album, Mizutani presents six different and mostly untreated field recordings with tenuous connections to bird songs. The first track features the most overt manipulation
Aeolian harps are relatively simple devices made from of a couple planks of wood and a taut wire, which are placed in relation to a wind source to transform the speed, force, and directionality of the air itself into an extended drone. David Kenny's Aeolian
All right! It's about time this legendary slice of South American psych got a not-inordinately-expensive cd reissue we could stock. We've been into this band/album ever since a REALLY expensive but beautiful (and now long-gone) vinyl reissue came out on Shadoks some years ago. Now World In Sound makes it available on cd in a fancy thick triple-fold sleeve that preserves the great psychedelic gatefold art from the original LP -- art that Acid Mothers Temple would die for! There's a 14-page booklet with notes and photos as well. This is definitely one for all you '70s heavy psych freaks! Super fuzz wah guitar and organ jamming stoner psych-prog from Brazil, circa 1970. Nine tracks packed with sinewy jams, trippy fx, weighty grooves... definitely appealing to the same head-space as contemporaries like Iron Butterfly, Dug Dug's, Captain Beyond, Speed Glue & Shinki, Hendrix, Flower Travellin' Band, etc. And we're pretty certain that current South American stoner rock faves Los Natas must be into this album too... Also, you may in fact have heard one track from this before, on the ever-recommended Love, Peace & Poetry: Latin American Psychedelic Music comp also on Shadoks, but that track only hints at how cool this album is. (They also have a track on the LP&P Brazilian volume too.)
Here's a quote from one of the band members, the organist, that ought to give some flavor of what they were all about: "The music of Modulo 1000 had its own appeal to an audience that wanted a heavy, raw, experimental, psychedelic sound. Our kind of music did not make it to the radio stations. It was too wild. The distribution of the record was done in a very limited way. The record label directors, which probably didn't understand or even didn't like our music, did zero promotion for the LP." Thus, one darn heavy, weird, and utterly rare record!
This reish also includes seven bonus tracks (from where/when is left unexplained) some of which are freaky enough to fit with the actual record itelf, but just aren't as heavy -- more Latin groovy.
Two conceptually minded pieces of electro-acoustic minimalism found here on the first vinyl release from Winds Measure Recordings, known for some seriously exquisite letter pressed artwork and an aesthetic of austere sound experimentation. That austerity bridges the work of British composer Will Montgomery and the Australian sound artist Robert Curgenven, as does a shared use of controlled feedback (or at least the use of pure tones which flutter eerily in that fine style). Montgomery's piece is sourced entirely from the Heygate Estates, which was a huge public housing project located in London and sported a rather grim facade of neo-brutalist architecture which fell into disrepair by the turn of the millennium. Demolition of the site began in 2011, but has been stalled because of numerous environmental hazards which emerged through the process, notably the high concentration of asbestos. Montgomery wandered the Heygate Estates with a VLF recorder, contact microphones, and a wiretapping mic, collecting the corroded, ephemeral sounds of that space, layering the disembodied hiss, crackling static, and eerie hum into a beguiling collage akin to the work of Tarab, Loren Chasse, and Murmer. Curgenven's piece hails from a very cool sound art project that the Australian began during a European residency, in which he had Dubplates & Mastering (THEE place to get anything weird cut onto wax!) cut a handful of dubplates of a subtle feedback piece, but at an incredibly low level. In playing the dubplate back, one has to really crank the volume thus creating the opportunity for feedback to occur in playback between the stylus and the speaker. The surface noise that one would expect from such a strategy is present, but it's not overwhelming given how good D+M are at cutting their wax. In this composition sourced from that sound making system, Curvengen transmits sinewy feedback tones and deep electrical thrum amidst a dispersion of the cyclical hushed crackle from the vinyl's surface noise. Winds Measures normally releases cds and occasionally some tapes; but the label was very wise to release Curgenven's brilliantly realized concept on vinyl, finding an excellent complement in Will Montgomery. Limited to just 250 copies! Download card? No.
Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) is a sound artist whose primary tools are field recordings and found objects activated within acoustically interesting spaces. While most of his impressive back catalogue of recordings finds him manipulating and treating those sounds into expressive drones and subtly dynamic collages, this double disc set is far more spacious and open-ended, given a slight shift in methodology. He explains in the liner notes that "the framework compositions are a series of experiments with untreated field recordings, exploring notions of musicality within the structures of found sound. The compositions were created with differing sets of self-imposed rules." Two of the four compositions deal specifically with voice, with "Framework 3" settling into a rather lovely passage of wordless vocal harmonics improvised in an open terrace by noted Estonian folk singers Mari Kalkun and Piibe Kolka. This track begins with a reprise of some of the sounds that McGinley used on his 2012 album What Are The Roots That Clutch, as heard in the dense burbling of water insects, building up through brightly resonant objects that shimmer with the minimalist fervor of an Angus MacLise composition. "Framework 2" is the other piece dealing with voice, with the grunts and wheezes of somebody snoring very loudly at the end of this 30 minute piece, which is mostly comprised of frigid wind-blown recordings and scabrous snippets of activity more on par with G*Park's ice-born recordings. "Framework 4" alternates between interior and exterior sounds emphasizing the psychological impacts of the incessant buzz of late-summer cicadas and the flourescent-tube hum of institutional space. Beautiful wanderings of sound that always have the potential to surprise, frighten, and delight.
Oh boy! A DVD filmed at San Francisco's famed Musee Mechanique, that fantastic collection of turn of the century penny arcade machines!! Cool. We figure that many of our customers who've bought the cds of music from the Musee that we sell (three volumes so far, you'll find 'em elsewhere on our site) haven't actually had the chance to visit the place themselves, so this is perfect. And if you HAVE been to the Musee -- especially the old Cliff House location -- you'll want this for the memories. And it'll make you want to head on down there soon enough again to visit in person, so it's double the nostagia trip (for the early 1900's, and for the last time you were there).
For those who haven't even heard of the place, basically the Musee Mechanique, now located on Pier 45 down at Fisherman's Wharf, is filled with coin-operated mechanical amusements ranging from music boxes and player-piano type contraptions (several with an orchestra's worth of sounds) to various games of skill and chance to quaint "peep shows" to fortune tellers to animated dioramas (what are called "working models") to Musee mascot Laughing Sal... all are to be found on this DVD, filmed in action, as collector/curator Edward Zelinsky takes viewers on a guided tour of the Musee's many attractions, even stopping to try his hand at the "Love Tester". Sometimes he talks about when/where/how he ended up acquiring the machine he's showing off, but just as often he just drops the quarter in and gives a "hey, wow, gee whiz" reaction just like a kid.
The documentary has its cheesy (but charming) moments -- someone gets carried away with video effects a few times, for instance -- but we're mighty pleased with it overall. It's very cool to get a glimpse at the inner workings of both the Musee and its machines. Maybe our favorite thing about this DVD is the way the camera really gets up close and personal with the "working models", taking the viewer into the scene (fire house, farm, graveyard, and our favorite, the opium den!!) in a way that you can't really experience even in person. Especially with that creepy opium den diorama, we were reminded of a Brothers Quay film or Tool video...
Ed Zelinsky passed away in 2004 (his tour was filmed when the Musee was still at the Cliff house) but his collection is in the capable hands of his son Daniel, who had been running the Musee and fixing the machines for many years already, and appears in several of the "extras" included. Total running time 68:45.
Long, long ago we stocked an LP of recordings from San Francisco's own Cliff House-based Musee Mechanique. Sadly this album went out of print a few years back, leaving many sad customers who'd found out about it too late. Well weep no longer, as AQ now has an all new disc (the first of several, we're told) of recordings made of the machines at the museum.
The Musee Mechanique, for those who've never been, is a hands-on museum of early penny arcade machines (some over a century old) kept in their original working order for the public's enjoyment by the determined work of curator Edward Galland Zelinsky. Every time we have visitors from out of town, we take' em here. Stereoscopic peep shows, moralising fortune tellers, old baseball game machines, nickelodeons, prisoner art made out of toothpicks, music boxes, player pianos, "test your strength" challenges, animated dioramas, and more are constantly kept in tune -- it's both historic and entertaining. (Including everyone's favorite -- Laughing Sal, a larger than life size doll who just laughs and laughs and laughs. Wonderful.) The 27 tracks found here are all new recordings of the various machines (mostly player pianos playing assorted rags), captured after museum hours, so it's free of unwanted tourist chatter (although they nicely left the sounds of the coins falling into the slot as lead ins to each track.)
The Musee Mecanique at San Francisco's historic Cliff House is one of our favorite things in the whole city. We *always* take visitors from out of town there, and they always love it. The Musee is a collection of antique coin-operated arcade machines, lovingly restored and cared for, including animated dioramas ("The Opium Den" is a favorite), crank-operated racing games, mechanical strength-testing devices, boxing and baseball games, fortune tellers, and many automated musical instruments (player pianos, music boxes, and the like), which fill the place with great old ragtime tunes. They've been recording the machines (complete with the sound of coins dropping in to start 'em) and have plans to release a whole series of cds documenting this delightful old-timey music. Volume One came out last year (and we sold quite a few), and now we've got Volume Two! Yay! These 27 tracks are similar to the stuff on the first volume, perhaps "more bouncy" though. And the famous Laughing Sal (the giant, manaically whooping automaton who dominates the entrance to the Musee) makes another appearance, closing out the disc with one of her always-disturbing outbursts of hilarity... A nice way to keep some of the spirit of the Musee Mecanique in your home, and to help support their preservation endeavors!
Everyone here at Aquarius was SO happy and relieved when the Musee Mechanique -- that wonderful place full of antique penny-aracade machines that's one of our favorite San Francisco cultural/fun spots -- found a new home at Fisherman's Wharf. Previously it had been a highlight to a trip out to the historic Cliff House next door to the ruined Sutro Baths up above Ocean Beach, but the Park Service decided the Cliff House needed a renovation and gave the Musee an eviction notice. Thankfully, rather than close up, they managed to make a move down to the Wharf, which while not as picturesque a location, still seems to have worked out well for 'em. You'll now find the Musee at pier 45, shed A, right alongside the Jeremiah O'Brien and that WWII submarine. Not only did the Musee find a new home, but now they've released a third volume of recordings documenting the player-piano-roll operated mechanical musical contraptions you'll find there. Vols. 1 and 2 were hits here at AQ and with good reason. Vol. 3 picks up where they left off, featuring more of the music made by their collection of lovingly preserved orchestras-in-a-box from decades and decades ago. For the first time ever, the machine pictured on the cover, the huge and impressive "Englehardth", finally appears in all its sonic glory on disc, as they finally got it fully restored into working order.
As with the other volumes, these are excellent recordings and each track starts with the coin drop, a nice touch. Musically, you can expect lotsa charming old timey tunes with titles like "Maurice's Irresistable Tango", "Grandpa's Spells", "There's A Shanti In Old Shantitown" and "My Song Of The Nile". Some you'll recognize, some won't be so familiar. All are quite quaint to modern ears, yet lively and spirited. There's 27 musical tracks here, from jaunty foot tappers to romantic melodies -- and then as always, the Musee's mascot, Laughing Sal, wraps things up with her disturbingly forced, truly hysterical laughter. Next best thing to actually visiting the Musee Mechanique, which we highly recommend.
Four songs from My Morning Jacket and an almost ten minute long track by Songs: Ohia. The former includes a kinda dorky, messing-with-the-speed-control track called "The Year In Review" as well as a couple of numbers that fans of Sparklehorse might take a shine to - most notably the beautiful weeper "Come Closer". And as for Songs: Ohia's lengthy "Translation", it's completely on par with their recent efforts... that is, a brittle, lonely dolefulness that mainman Jason Molina has refined over his prolific career.
We've long been proponents of the idea, that any sound man can make, using technology and engineering and electronics, nature can make too. And it will be just as mysterious and interesting. Made even more so, that those sounds occur, well, naturally. And in most cases, especially in electronic music, many of the sounds we discover and create using synthesizers, mimic sounds already produced in nature.
Countless field recordings have proven this, and this latest disc - a recording of the ice on a lake in France, slowly melting - does so once again!
By now, regular readers of the list, have been exposed to plenty of unique field recordings, drag races, life support machines, frogs, applause, monkeys, cowbells, barking dogs, rutting deer and of course the sound of water and ice. Ice and water seem to be particularly interesting sonically, as they always seem to be in motion, whether at the microscopic level melting and cracking, or on a more physical level, the sound of rushing rivers, pouring rain.
The sounds here, like many of the other field recordings we are so fond of, sound NOTHING like what you would imagine ice would sound like. Apparently, the layer of ice on the lake, acts like the head of a drum, transmitting the various cracks and crackles and vibrations across the expansive sheet of ice, producing strange tones, some very electronic sounding, all of them mysterious.
This record was woven together the sounds of the ice covered lake on a single day. Hours of recordings edited into one hour, but no other work has been done on these sounds, this is the actual sound of the ice. It begins with the sound of birds, the ice producing tiny little streaks of sound, that do sound like synthesizers, strange space-y FX, suspended in an expanse of murky murmur. The intensity and the frequency of those space-y streaks increases as the day warms up and the ice begins to fracture and melt, the barrage of bleeps and bloops begin to sound like a Star Wars laser battle, and sound like it couldn't possibly be the sound of ice. Eventually, the laser like streaks get deeper, and more resonant, as if someone was adding reverb or delay, until it's just a cloud of fuzzy bleeps and warbly tweets, underpinned by the actual staticky crackle of the ice cracking.
It's hard to explain much better than that, try listening to the sound samples, you will be amazed. It truly is a rare glimpse of some impossible and mysterious soundworld. A peek into how nature works, or at the very least, a chance to overhear the magic of nature, the sounds the exist in the wild, even if most of the time we're unable to hear them. Magical.
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If you have even a tiny inkling of who or what Nardwuar The Human Serviette is, you know this is a big fucking deal! For years and years, the contents of his monumental interview archive vaults have only been accessible in bits and pieces on his home-compiled VHS tapes, on his weekly college radio show in Vancouver and on brief Much Music appearances in Canada, but now finally you can take a heaping double platter home with you!!! Are you prepared? For five and a half hours worth? Well, if you're unsure as to whether you have the endurance for it, we strongly recommend that you brace/pace yourself, and don't be dissuaded. Stock up on snacks, take the phone off the hook, you'll be okay. Hell, you don't have to watch it all in one sitting, but once you get started it might be hard to stop.
Many less observant, less hardy folks might dismiss the tartan capped, high-pitched Nardwuar The Human Serviette as simply a hyperactive irritant with a microphone -- lumping him in with seemingly similar in-your-face tightly-wound personalities such as fellow Canuck Tom Green, but first (and second) impressions can be deceiving. While we have to admit many of his disarming, oft-infuriating, absurd tactics do closely resemble those of more self-aggrandizing gonzo interviewers, there's definitely something else going on with this infamous irrepressible staunch Canadian. Let's take for example his unbelievably obsessive researching skills. For each and every potential interview subject, he consistently bloodhounds out the obscurest, mundanest, yet oddly fascinating facts that effectively stop the interviewee in his/her tracks. Y'know, those little skeletons in the closet that they themselves don't even remember, and that via Nardwuar have come back to haunt them much to their glee or chagrin.
In the early days, he started out by primarily digging into the nooks and crannies of the indie music scene doing interviews for his radio show. As his own notoriety grew so did his scope, broadening to encompass the whole show biz industry. Along the way he's also delved deeper and deeper into other media related areas and points of interest (politics, self-help, tele-evangelism to name a few).
The list of people to whom he's somehow gained access is in itself nothing short of mind-blowing (over 60 interviews are featured on this dvd set and that's a mere drop in this Serviette's bucket) -- Mikhail Gorbachev, Dan Quayle, Gene Simmons, Pam Grier, Marilyn Manson, Destiny's Child, Gwar, Kelly Osborne, Slayer, Ian MacKaye, Vanilla Ice, Franz Ferdinand, Wesley Willis, David Cross, Busta Rhymes, Michael Moore, Cradle Of Filth, Blur, Henry Rollins, Thor, Ernest Angley.... And that's not even counting his multiple interview encounters with Snoop Dogg, Courtney Love and Jello Biafra over the past decade.
Clearly people love him, hate him and love to hate him, but when he suffered a brain hemmorhage a few years back, it was nothing but an outpouring of love and admiration that came his way from all walks of life. While hospitalized he received an avalanche of gifts and well-wishes (including a painting by and from David Lee Roth!), and even had to have his own bedside payphone to take all the calls that came flooding in. But now fortunately he is back on his feet wreaking havoc with this, his most comprehensive crowning glory to date. Granted it's not for everyone, but those who rise to the challenge will be duly rewarded with a thorough schooling of headscratching useful and useless facts, figures and trivia, will be thoroughly entertained along the way, and will find themselves responding with a resounding "Doot Doo!"
Also included: lots of sights and sounds of Nardwuar's bands (The Evaporators and Thee Goblins), an eye-straining 16 page boooklet, and yes of course, audio commentary!
Time to give your eyes, ears and funny bone a workout! To prepare yourself we suggest you drop and give us twenty! Heh heh... here's the prequel to Nardwuar The Human Serviette's 2006 double dvd interview extravaganza Doot Doola Doot Doo... Doot Doo! (please see our review of that release if you need a Nardwuar tutorial). What d'ya know, it's another double dvd interview extravaganza! How does he do it?! The superhuman Canadian Nardwuar packs every nook and cranny of these dvds with wild'n'woolly entertainment. Totalling a whopping five and a half hours in running time, Welcome To My Castle! contains his two cable TV specials that he produced back in the '90s, and a plethora of interviews with such varied celebrities as Bob "Gilligan" Denver, The Monkees' Mickey Dolenz, Tommy Chong, Ron Jeremy, Timothy Leary, Cynthia Plaster Caster, Jello Biafra, Flea, Courtney Love, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Anthony Robbins, Tom Vu, former U.S. President Gerald Ford, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and many many more! Some are total gutbusters, some are jawdroppers, some are a bit tense, and some are sublime.
Plus you also get a bunch of new vids by his band Thee Evaporators (be sure to check out their latest full length Gassy Jack And Other Tales which we've also reviewed on this here list!). Pssst, the dvds' menus and chapter titles were all hand-lettered by our own Cup!
Finally! This out of print, vinyl only aQ fave gets re-issued on cd!
On a brief break from bursting ear drums and shredding synthesizers and destroying clubs in Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway spent a brief period living in Nepal with his wife. While she studied, Dilloway wandered the streets, where he encountered the Nath family, Titu, Kala, Sukha and Ram Chendra, three generations, all street performers, hustlers, and SNAKE CHARMERS. Well, Dilloway quickly befriended the family, hung out, drank, smoked and most importantly recorded their amazing talents. Haunting and dizzying Eastern melodies, performed on traditional bamboo reed instruments called pungis and accompanied by a stringed percussion instrument called a premtal. So lovely, swaying and swooning, droney and buzzy, all hovering above a fluctuating framework of tribal percussion and shuffling, rattling rhythms. At times playful and bouncy (supposedly that's some Bollywood music) but more often mesmerizing and hypnotic, a wavering warbling drone. You can't really hear the swaying cobras, but if you listen really close you can hear folks walking past, talking, cars, all adding to the feeling that you are right there, in an alley in Nepal, seated before huge hooded snakes, being lulled into a trance by the endlessly droning Eastern buzz.
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On a brief break from bursting ear drums and shredding synthesizers and destroying clubs in Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway spent a brief period living in Nepal with his wife. While she studied, Dilloway wandered the streets, where he encountered the Nath family, Titu, Kala, Sukha and Ram Chendra, three generations, all street performers, hustlers, and SNAKE CHARMERS. Well, Dilloway quickly befriended the family, hung out, drank, smoked and most importantly recorded their amazing talents. Haunting and dizzying Eastern melodies, performed on traditional bamboo reed instruments called pungis and accompanied by a stringed percussion instrument called a premtal. So lovely, swaying and swooning, droney and buzzy, all hovering above a fluctuating framework of tribal pecussion and shuffling, rattling rhythms. At times playful and bouncy (supposedly that's some Bollywood music) but more often mesmerizing and hypnotic, a wavering warbling drone. You can't really hear the swaying cobras, but if you listen really close you can hear folks walking past, talking, cars, all adding to the feeling that you are right there, in an alley in Nepal, seated before huge hooded snakes, being lulled into a trance by the endlessly droning Eastern buzz. Comes in a super snazzy three color silkscreened sleeve. Vinyl only, and limited!!
Way back in the 20th century, 1991 to be precise, media pranksters Negativland got themselves into a legal tussle with Island Records when they naively released a single on SST that covered U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and revealed Casey Kasem to be a foulmouthed ogre, all on the same track! Both SST and Negativland were subsequently sued into submission. Copies of the original U2 cd can still be had for anywhere from $75 to $100 US for the disc and bootlegged copies have been floating around ever since the track was pulled. Rather than go further into that whole can of carnuba wax I'll just refer those who are unfamiliar with this mother of all fair use lawsuits to Negativland's thorough and entertaining book "Fair Use: The Story Of The Letter U And The Numeral 2", a 288 page document of the entire court case and Negativland's subsequent legal troubles with Greg Ginn and SST. Well now, here we are in a new millennium, on the ten year anniversary of the lawsuit where Seeland has already tested the legal waters with their re-issue of John Oswald's magnum opus "Plunderphonics" and so far the sharks aren't biting. Sensing that maybe the industry's lawyers have lost their taste for such passe copyright issues in favor of the much tastier Napster and the whole peer-to-peer fiasco, the label "Seelard" (hmmm...) has stepped in to see the return of this classic piece of copyright infringement. As a bonus to this risque reissue Seelard has included 9 extra tracks relating to the original single such as an excerpt from an Over The Edge (Negativland's Don Joyce's weekly radio show on KPFA) show from 1989 where the germination of the single began. One track is an edited version of the "Radio Edit" so that you *can* now safely play it on the radio -- all the nasty words have been covered up with a cornucopia of sound effects. The seven remaining tracks on this disc were taken from live performances by Negativland in 1990 (Knitting Factory, NYC) and 1993 (Great American Music Hall, SF) and cover Casey's "Long Distance Dedication" on up to material that wound up on the cd that accompanied Negativland's book (see above). There's an abundance of good material added to the fated single in these live performances including numerous tapes referring to "U2" that Don Joyce had picked up in the interim, plus some more serious audio forays detailing Francis Gary Powers' fateful flight over the USSR in a Lockheed U-2 spy plane. Diddley Shit!
Volume 6 in Negativland's Over The Edge series (so named for the weekly radio show produced by Negativland on KPFA). This volume is dedicated to David Wills -- aka The Weatherman -- and his obsession with field recording, most notably his fixation with recording his family. Don Joyce and David produced several shows on Over The Edge dedicated to David and his tapes and then distilled it down to these two discs. Beginning with a recording of David with his first tape recorder as a young wippersnapper and continuing with all the various tapes he made through his youth, adolescence, and on into adulthood. One of the principle subjects of David's recordings are Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with his family. In David's house, where he lived with his parents up until they passed away, he had both his room and the kitchen wired for sound so that he could play tapes of his mom and grandmother talking while making thanksgiving dinner as they made thanksgiving dinner a year later, or two years, or five... etc. The two then remark on the previous years as David continues to record them and talk back to them. The result is a really bizarre, non-linear ongoing conversation. Interspersed throughout these two discs of David's audio history are sections where listeners to the show call up and query Mr Wills for help with their cable TV repair, radio and electronics problems, ask questions about home cleaning and participate in the "Fake Bacon & Electronic Music" hotline.
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Armed with a DAT and sights on a Masters in Ethnomusicology Loren Nerell had every intention of documenting temple ceremonial music, but found himself captivated by the daily ambient / environmental sounds of bamboo forests, bus depots, and muslim calls to worship. All are collected here as well as sounds of a Gamelan maker's showroom, frogs, excerpts of wayang kulit (Javanese shadow puppet plays), plus everyone's favorite, the lovable Kecak monkey chant of Bali and much more. Excellent.
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One of the most anticipated releases this year, Joanna Newsom's second full length Ys (fyi: apparently pronounced 'ease', not 'wise') probably needs no introduction. Before we all drown in the river of salivation, perhaps we should just ring the supper bell and holler, "Come 'n' get it!"
Have you been hearing the rather loud murmurs about how Joanna Newsom is telling all that -- contrary to all of the press portraits of her resembling an Appalachian woodland waif -- she is not simply a folk songstress? Us too, and well, on an initial couple of listens to Ys, it does seem to be true. Yes, she has reinvented herself, somewhat aggressively distancing herself from the young indie folk scene that she helped spawn. It appears all that lingers from The Milk-Eyed Mender is her trusty harp, though even it claims less of the spotlight. Ys most definitely shows much artistic growth and aspiration with a far broader creative scope and production sense. Really, if there's any question that Newsom (and her label Drag City) are goin' for the serious artiste cred, you need look no further than the big gun support and chaperoning courtesy of top shelf luminaries Van Dyke Parks, Steve Albini and Jim O'Rourke. Not unexpectedly, THEY do amazing work on this album. It's stunningly beautiful. With a supporting cast like that, Newsom was clearly afforded full freedom to focus on realizing her vision. But what is that vision? We're not being completely facetious when we suggest two words -- Kate Bush. Heck, she's certainly already captivated the imagination of a similarly obsessive adoring fanbase as Ms Bush's, and maybe just as many naysayers. The mere mention of either artist's name triggers immediate passionate love/hate reactions. Her overall presentation seems so directly inspired by the venerable artist's own eccentric dramatics that you'd almost expect her to break out into "Babooshka" at any moment! Speaking of which with regards to the vocal department, the Kate and Joanna fans around here have likened her pixie-esque singing on this album to Kate Bush as a child minstrel (mind you, the non-Kate and Joanna fans might rephrase that less kindly as Kate Bush as a squeeze toy). Regardless, this is quite the ambitious work. In each of the five lengthy tracks (the longest is 16 minutes!), she unveils her lyrics in theatrical, highly literary fashion. It's still the storybook stuff of romantic fairy tales and whimsical fables, but it's set far less in nature than the rural hued Milk Eyed Mender. It evokes fantastic jewel-toned interiors, stages, salons, tea rooms. At once, dainty and sumptuous. The album defies expectations in wonderful, enchanting ways.
Let's Play is the first recording by a drummer / vocalist / noisemaker from the Northwest named Cameron Michael Nichols-Rage, on which he collaborates with Alvarius B, Stuart Dahlquist (Asva, Burning Witch), Masami Kawaguchi (LSD-March), Irr. App. (Ext.), Mason Jones (Numinous Eye), Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins), John Olsen (Wolf Eyes), Andrew Liles, At Jennie Richie, and a bunch more notable noise folks. Sounds pretty much MADE for aQ. Even moreso when you discover that Cameron is in fact, a 20 month old little boy, who just happens to be the spawn of 1/2 of blacknoize duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer!
The proud papa captured Cameron's wild free jazz drumming, and adorable vocal mewlings and yelps (like a toddler Keiji Haino?) and let the above horde of noiseniks jam along with young Cameron, and the results are pretty spectacular and ALL over the map. Lots of the stuff here has a sort of free jazz / avant rock vibe, Cameron's wild skittery loose drumming 'style' perfectly suited for that sort of thing, but then out of nowhere, the sound will coalesce into a weird churning almost industrial sounding post punk, like on the opening track, Cameron and crew locked into an angular, noise-punk groove. Elsewhere, Appalachian guitars (Cameron's?) are wound around boom-crash drum splatter, and accompanied by Cameron's free form vocal stylings. Some tracks sound like some alien avant-prog, all woozy and warped. others are surprisingly lovely, chiming gamelan like tones drifting above a bed of restless skitter, and still others are dense sprawls of warped detuned blues-murk. The most intense track is probably the Andrew Liles collaboration, that pairs Cameron's drums with moody, haunting piano, bizarre samples, and super distorted agonized screams. Harrowing stuff. But surrounding that blast of sonic intensity, are deep surrealistic dronescapes woven from Cameron's chopped and processed drumming, buzzing kosmische psychedelia, replete with soaring sitar-buzz guitars and crooned vox, and dreamy, organ drenched drifts, again, anchored by Cameron's abstract drum skitter.
There's lots more as well, all stripes of free-noise, and dark drone, and black ambience and twisted post industrial weirdness, it's all pretty great too. And really, had we not mentioned it, you'd probably never guess that this was (mostly) the work of a 20 month old little boy!!! So obviously WAY recommended!
It could be a coin toss as to who's our favorite recording artist on Touch. Christian Fennesz, Phillip Jeck, and Chris Watson are all impeccable musicians working for the legendary label; but BJ Nilsen is the one artist who may be lurking beneath the radar a bit and has NEVER failed to deliver a great record. His work has always been focused on the drone, beginning back in his earlier sample heavy orchestrations as Morthound through Cold Meat Industries and onto his recordings as Hazard through the Touch imprint Ash International. Throughout his career, he's often tapped into the psychic and physical cold of his native Swedish landscape. That was definitely the case for his North album as Hazard and the three alcoholically bent records made in collaboration with Stilluppsteypa for Helen Scarsdale; and it's certainly true for The Invisible City.
A shimmering glow from an aggregate of rasping frequencies opens the album, sounding almost like a chorus of poorly grounded street lights offering their sustained, post-Ligeti plainsong to vacant streets on some cold wintery morning in Oslo. After some exploratory field recordings of bees and sympathetic atmospherics, Nilsen snaps into a frozen blur of softened distortion (e.g. Machinefabriek, Fennesz, and Lawrence English) laced with half-melodic phrases and shortwave transmissions echoing like distant ghosts on "Virtual Resistance." It's a signature move for Nilsen, and it's one that he's masterfully executed. Another great Nilsen strategy: his phased loops with theatrically brooding ambience and tactile field recordings, reappears on that same track which morphs into a shadowy post-apocalyptic smear somewhere between Deathprod and Barn Owl. Digital errata suspended in darkened rooms, barren windswept tones, and haunted field recordings dominate The Invisible City, which stands as another monumental achievement for BJ Nilsen.
Imagine the Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor. Or rather, playing at the same time in adjoining practice rooms -- out in the forest. The ancient forests of the Ukraine, to be precise. That's where Nokturnal Mortum hail from. This is their third album. You may remember the big fuss we made over the amazing Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc last year? Well, Mr. Varggoth is the main guy in this band Nokturnal Mortum. With "NeChrist", he and his comrades have created a unique sound, one that combines a raw, roaring black metal attack with the pipes and fiddles and "yee-haws" of folk/country music, Ukrainian style. And, to make us AQ-ers enjoy this EVEN MORE, all of a sudden all the music will stop and the middle part of a track will be occupied by the croaking of frogs! And you know we like frogs and the noises they make. Similarily, the final song on the disc is preceded by 78 short (3 sec.) tracks of twittering birdsounds and forest ambience. Therefore, if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode, you get lots of cut-up bird calls mixed with the occasional actual fantastic Nokturnal Mortum song! The unanimous AQ black metal pick of this lunar month!! Brilliant. Yee-haw! (Recommended.)
This little 3" cd, a wonderfully crackling, hissing soundscape simply documenting the sound of ice melting, makes for a neat companion to another recent 3" cd we recommended, Jean-Francois Laporte's "Mantra" (a 20-minute drone piece derived from the sound of ice cooling and/or Zamboni machinery at a skating rink, you'll recall). To examine, in microscopic detail, rather the reverse of that process, recordist Collin Olan (sorry, we don't know much about him other than that he's someone with an idea and a couple of microphones) froze his waterproofed contact mics in a 10" x 10" block of ice, and submerged it in water, allowing us to listen in as the ice block slowly thaws and melts for over 17 minutes. This unprocessed recording turns out to be quite active and varied, full of sizzling, fat-frying kinds of sounds (to our ears, not unlike the atmospheric VLF radiation recordings of Stephen McGreevy) punctuated by some quite loud popping noises, ending with a stretch of near silence when the ice is, presumably, almost entirely melted away. That Olan utilized two microphones adds a lot of sonic interest to the proceedings, with different goings-on in each stereo speaker. Turn it up, and the 10" x 10" block becomes an immense glacier or berg that the listener is entombed within -- imagine yourself an unlucky prehistoric Ice Man frozen for millenia until freed and revived by modern science, like in that Timothy Hutton movie from the '80s! Certainly a sucessful experiment (we've known others with the same idea who've tried this, only to ruin their mics to little result), and quite a "carbonated" -sounding treat for the ear, especially for fans of the recordings of John Duncan, Loren Chasse, Marc Behrens, Stephen McGreevy -- and also of course for all our customers who we know are already into ice-themed 3" cds!
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Glenn Donaldson (of Thuja, Blithe Sons, Skygreen Leopards, The Birdtree, The Ivytree, etc.) brings us yet another cd-r of his wondrous folk-improv-field-recording, this time, the instruments were dragged to Stonestown Galleria, where the band set up in the bar of popular Italian eatery. So along with gently plucked guitars, and plaintive warbling vocals, and simple childlike percussion, you can also hear the sounds of tinkling glasses, families dining, cell phones ringing and all sorts of other sonic urban detritus. The highlight is probably the 30 minute final track "All You Can Eat Breadsticks", a slowly shifting soundscape of mastication, clinking silverware and piping hot loaves!
Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum travelled to Bulgaria in August of 2001 and came back with this aural document of the Koprivshtitsa Festival. Impossibly high female voices arch over droning pipes and strings, at times in a chorus like chattering,
We get a lot of weird black metal here, that is after all some of our favorite stuff, but this may just be the first disc we've gotten from an anarcho vegan pagan black metal band! We've gotten a few cd-r's from this Kentucky based one man black metal band over the last little while but have been waiting patiently for a proper full length, that we could get enough of to list, and this, Collapse, is it.
And it was well worth the wait, a crushing, expansive, super varied chunk of crusty outsider black metal. Rife with news samples, killer mathy and not typically black metal drumming, spidery guitars wrapped around the usual buzz drenched riffage, the sound not just grim and buzzy, but epic and majestic and melodic. The first song is nearly 16 minutes long, and shifts through more parts and moods than most black metal full lengths. The opening 5 minutes is all intro, or seems it, a lilting minor key drift in the beginning, a pounding blackened buzz later, all underpinning depressive newscasts, before the song really explodes, literally almost, as the blasting and buzzing and pounding is interspersed with recordings of gunshots and explosions, perfectly tangled up with the music so it's difficult to tell what's drumming, and what are reports from tanks and guns, pretty effective, and noisy and chaotic, the song shifts gears a few more times, from doomy plod, to furious blast, to stripped down bluegrass, pretty sure that's a banjo, maybe even some slide guitar, but weirdly haunting and twangy, and somehow it doesn't sound out of place at all.
The second track is another 15 minute epic, which begins as many metal tracks do with the sound or thunder and rainfall, before more acoustic guitar joins in, still more slide, very twangy as well, then the drums come in, and some chimes or bells, a strange combination, loping and folky and darkly mysterious, it's not until nearly halfway in before the track explodes in another frenzy of black buzz, croaked vox, frenzied riffage, blasting drums, building to a super noisy coda, before an outro made up entirely of insect buzz.
After another 10 minute blowout, equal parts menacing majestic pagan blackness and abstract drifting folkiness, comes the strangely melodic final track, all hand drums, bongos maybe, almost jaunty guitar melodies, hushed whispered vocals, minimal, but strangely distorted drums, all wound around a stomping murky insistent doomfolk outro.
Needless to say, way recommend, an exciting new variant of the ever evolving sound of black metal, one we definitely never expected, but are digging big time.
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Field recordings of hallucinogenic plants. Really, that's quite literally what this is. And though it wouldn't be the type of thing I'd expect hallucinogenic plants to sound like, or what I would choose to listen to while imbibing hallucinogens, it's a great recording. Prime uses the minute voltages of bioelectrical impulses from Cannabis Sativa (pot), Amanita Muscaria (shrooms) and Lophophora Williamsii (peyote) to control battery powered oscillators and then mixes them with the ambient sounds in their locations. The results sound much like a cross between Noto, Stephen McGreevy and Chris Watson. Oddly enough, the sounds of hallucinigenic plants are also quite similar to those of Douglas Quin's Weddell Seals (also on this list) and the two recordings make a fine companion set. And as always, if you have the Sound Of North American Frogs cd, or the Conet Project, then this is for you.
Finally managed to get more copies of this perennial AQ favorite, but unfortunately, the only distributor we've ever been able to get them from recently went out of business so we may not be able to get them again. So don't miss out! Here's our review from way back:
If you liked "Sounds of North American Frogs" or "Insect Noise In Stored Foodstuffs", or Chris Watson's exotic animal recordings, here's another discovery we recently made in the AQ-beloved field-recordings genre.
In a blind test, it would be impossible to tell these Antarctic animal sounds from the most cutting edge experimental electronica that we sell at Aquarius! And according to the liner notes, the recordings found on this disk received no processing aside from being recorded using a "multi-headed array of hydrophones [underwater microphones]" and then mixed down (for great stereo sound). But some of the recordings, most notably the underwater recordings of Weddell seals, really seem like they could be the first installment of some new modern minimal electronic series, as they would fit in nicely next to the likes of Noto and Pan sonic. The underwater seals track features sweeping squeals like a whale song being sped up and slowed down and mixed with Stephen McGreevy's recordings of electro-magnetic atmospheric phenomena. It's as if the seals are secret knob-twiddlers in an electronic music studio. In other words, you could have a field day getting your "clicks & cuts" lovin' friends to guess who this "new avant-electronica artist" is! Also included on this cd are several recordings from the surface of the Antarctic continent as well: seal mothers and pups, Emperor & Adele penguins, a six minute track of a shattering & creaking glacier, and the brief but beautiful "Wind Harps From The Taylor Valley". This disc became a "AQ-fave recommendation" practically the minute we first heard it!! Maybe we're jaded, and have to listen to penguins frolicking to get our musical kicks, but it just seems so amazing. Wait until you hear it! Incredible and so essential.
Another amazing audio document from Douglas Quin, who brought us the bizarre and captivating 'Antarctica' (remember, the record that sounded like electronica, but was all actually produced by seals!). While this isn't quite so unique, it's still a pretty
This was probably one of the last things we thought we would ever see - a Douglas Quin recording on vinyl! Back in 1998, Quin released one of our all-time favorite field recordings, a cd entitled Antarctica. You guessed it, that now-out-of-print disc featured recordings from various ecosystems around the South Pole and its outlying oceans. Typically armed with his hydrophones planted beneath the surface of the water, Quin picked up all of the clanks and creaks of ice floes, as well as the amazing sounds from Weddell seals whose glissando calls have all of the signatures of early electronic music. Since then, Quin has made numerous trips to both polar regions, including a prolonged stint alongside Werner Hertzog when he collected field recordings of those seals for use on Hertzog's Encounters At The End Of The World.
Fathom is a continuation of Quin's ongoing recordings from Antarctica, with some complementary recordings from the Arctic region as well. Because of those Weddell seals, the Antarctic side of this piece of vinyl is the better of the two. The intertwining chorales of zipping tones from the pinnipeds swimming amidst various chunks of ice are totally engrossing. Quin also manages to capture what sounds like a melting wall of ice, while it drops chunks of ice into the ocean below. Unfortunately, Quin doesn't tell us exactly what we are listening to, and given the unfamiliarity of many of these sounds, conjecture and imagination will serve the listener well. The Arctic side seems to be all ice recordings, although some of those squeaks and squiggles could be from fur seals, squealing beneath the surface of the water.
Absolutely gorgeous packaging with a two-pass letterpress job with one pass with inked plates and another pass providing a tactile emboss to the paper. Very highly recommended.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
