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Daniel K. Raeburn constructs each issue of The Imp in the style of its profiled comics author. Thus far there are issues devoted to Dan Clowes (Eightball), Chris Ware (Acme novelty Library), and now Jack Chick. Haw haw haw! The Jack Chick issue looks just like a slightly larger version of the Chick tracts, those little pro-Jesus comic books you see everywhere. At over four hundred million of them sold to date, they're worth examining... As The Imp points out on page 1: "People who dismiss hate literature offhand are going to miss the point of this tribute to Chick, which is that hate literature reveals not only its own corruption but the sick society that hatched it. ... Like the Protestant zealots who colonized and raped this country, Chick tracts and the violence in them are as American as apple pie." Comes with a 30-page dictionary of the world according to Chick, and an account of an intense 'interview' with the reclusive author. Super cool.
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By constructing The Imp in the style of each profiled comics author, Daniel K. Raeburn's publication pays tribute in the most loving fashion. For example, the Chris Ware issue is called The Smartest Cartoonist on Earth, a variation on Ware's own Acme Novelty Library, the main story of which chronicles the weird inner life of Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth. (We always try to carry issues of Acme Novelty Library, so ask if you're interested -- they're amazing.) Fully in keeping with Ware's oldfashioned style, The Imp #3 is a fold out 20 page newspaper printed on sturdy, cream colored paper. Features extremely lengthy interview with Ware, lots and lots of drawings and comics, much analysis of Acme's content and themes, and a full color insert with comics ABOUT Ware by such fans as Archer Prewitt, Terry Laban, and Jessica Abel. Such a beautiful object!
The entity that released the phenomenal and weighty 10-cd wooden box set known as "Improvised Music From Japan" (box, label, website) is now also a magazine. Printed in both English and Japanese, this squarebound, digest-sized debut issue runs to about 132 pages (with the Japanese text occupying the second half, or first if you read it back-to-front Japanese style). And, it comes with a cd compilation bound inside the front (or back) cover. Reviews, interviews and essays by and about the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Seiichi Yamamoto, Ami Yoshida, Uchihashi Kzuhisa, Phew, Aki Onda, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Utah Kawasaki, and many others make for fasinating reading if you're the sort of avant-garde music fan at all curious about the underground Japanese improvising scene. There's a review of, and translated excerpts from, a book called "The History Of Japanese Free Jazz" which us English-only types will find to be extremely tantalizing. Perhaps a full English translation of the book could be future project for the industrious Improvised Music From Japan folks? Info about such artists as Masayuki Takanyangi, the Taj Mahal Travellers, and Kaoru Abe is certainly hard to come by in the West, so it would be nice...
Meanwhile, on the compact disc, there's works by Toshimaru Nakamura, Haco, Yoshio Machida, Masahiko Okura and others. Creaking door ambience, silence, acoustic guitars, shortwave static crackle, field recordings, laptop computers, trombone drone... it's a really nice disc, proof of why this scene deserves such a journal.
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Oh Lordy, it's here. Weren't you just asking us about when the next issue of Improvised Music From Japan was going to arrive? All 200 pages (half in English, half in Japanese) of it, plus two compliation cds. Do any of these names interest or excite you: Kazue Sawai, Aki Onda, Kazuo Imai, Tetuzi Akiyama, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Sachiko M, Taku Sugimoto, Haco? Then this is for you, and you probably *were* asking us about it... All those folks and more appear in these pages, along with a bunch of tantalizing reviews. And there's a special section from Otomo Yoshihide all about making connections with the Korean free jazz scene, in which he interviews saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan. So, if Japanese free jazz / 'onkyo' / improv electronics etc. is your thing, here you go, plenty of good readin'. Not to mention listenin', as the two discs are crammed with all sorts of interesting and diverse performances from many of the artists mentioned above. We were particularily chuffed to check out the "improvised extreme optical core unit" Optrum who provide five noisy tracks on disc two.
The wait is over -- now that it's 2006, the 2005 edition of Improvised Music From Japan is here! It's an indispensable journal to those of you, like us, who are confirmed musical Japanophiles and/or into the extremes of improvised sound activity. This time around, IMJ consists of a beautifully designed 128 page digest-sized book accompanied by two cds tucked under its front and back covers. The print portion of this is devoted entirely to write-ups about new albums from 2004 and 2005, over 350 of them (of which 21 are Merzbow releases!). Some are full articles all about a particular artist, others are briefer descriptions or impressions of the music, sometimes written by the artist in question (so we won't call these "reviews" in the consumer-guide sense, though this could be used that way). As always, the text is presented in both Japanese and English, along with thumbnail album cover pics. Besides all the Merzbow, there's plenty of names you might know here, and plenty more you probably don't. And you also find some non-Japanese artists in here as well (David Grubbs, Bastard Noise, Carl Stone, etc.) included because they've been released on a Japanese label or have collaborated with Japanese musicians.
Perusing this, you're gonna start making a list of releases you hadn't heard of before to try and hunt down -- we certainly did. One revelation was that Omoide Hatoba released a new album in 2004, we hadn't known that!! Gosh. Gotta get a hold of that somehow.
Meanwhile, the cds, like the magazine, feature both relatively well-known improvisers and (to us) newcomers. Among the 21 tracks spread across these two cds, you'll find pieces by familiar names like Toshiya Tsunoda, Merzbow and Kiyoshi Mizutani. But also you'll be introduced to the likes of VOIMA, sim and Tetsuya Umeda (whose track "Error Piano", featuring Yasuhisa Mizutani improvising on the piano whilst Umeda "loiters" nearby, with a portable radio, is indicative in its peculiarity and spontaneity of the variety of music to be heard on these discs and read about in the pages of the magazine). Out-jazz, mimimal electronics, brutal noise, all of the above and everything in between, that's the IMJ aesthetic”a good match for many curious AQ customers wethinks.
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Second issue (sort of, they call it "Extra") of this print and audio journal devoted to the underground Japanese electro-acoustic improvisation scene. Definitely THE place to go to get enlightened about what's happening on that front. In both English and Japanese, this thick 128 page magazine features interviews with Ami Yoshida, Shoji Hano, and numerous others we're less familiar with, quite a few of 'em from a young generation of musicians here dubbed "Improv's New Waves". There's also a ton of reviews of intriguing cd releases that you'll probably only find out about here (and never see in a shop outside of Japan), and of course there's the magazine's audio portion: this time around, two discs full of cuts by artists from that "New Waves" scene, everything from jazz trumpet to turntables to death metal drums n' laptop. There's couple bonus cuts as well, including one from, um, old wave improvisor Shoji Hano.
Finally got a new batch of these amazing books, tailor made for us music geeks. Super in depth examinations of some of our favorite records! The cool thing is that they're not just the same old rehashed stories about the bands or artists, and who they slept with and where they grew up (although we like those too!), instead they're about the creation of those specific albums. The writers go really deep into every facet of the creation. The writing is often quite dense and so informative. Like a Mojo article expanded a hundred fold! We wanted to give each one an in depth review, but they are all so good and they keep coming fast and furious so we figured we oughta just list em. Basically, if you love the record, you're definitely gonna want the book! Also got the Joe Pernice Meat Is Murder book back in stock as well as Andrew Hulktrans's book about Love's masterpiece Forever Changes. And if you're anything like the music geeks here, you're gonna want all of em! Future volumes include My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Radiohead's OK Computer, Jethro Tull's Aqualung.
The aftermath of an earthquake in the near future. Mission District residents as viewed by an eighteenth-century journalist. An ill female bank robber. Even mutant cowboys and vampires! Local San Francisco literary journal, Instant City is back with its 8th installment of unusual literary explorations of our fair city. The brainchild of cultural producer, Gravity Goldberg (who also organizes events for LitQuake and the Contemporary Jewish Museum) and started at Adobe Books with designer Mitch Manitou, each volume features great local writers and artists. Including a painting by our own Scott Hewicker, this issue features stories by Alvin Orloff, William Poor, Sean Taylor, David Corbett, Loren Rhodes, Alia Volz, Richard Jay Goldstein, Atom Wong, Trent Tano, India Mandelkern and Alia Volz.
We're not sure how many aQ customers out there are Spanish speakers, but this magazine was just too good to pass up. Hopefully, there ARE a few folks out there who do indeed speak and read Spanish, and who will be super psyched to discover this amazing music magazine, while the rest of us can lament the fact that there's not an English version. That said, however, some adventurous non-Spanish speaking music lovers out there might just want to pick this up anyway. Oversized, glossy full color cover, and packed with articles about, interviews with and photos of Animal Collective, Vashti Bunyan, Low, Matt Elliott, Carla Bozulich, Grizzly Bear, Pere Ubu, SUNNO))), Jens Lekman, Battles, Scott Walker and more. 120 pages, tons of record reviews, illustrations by Jennifer Heremma and Ariel Pink / Jason Yates as well as 2 free cd-r compilations, one from Constellation Records, featuring tracks by Hrsta, Hangedup, Les Fly Pan Am, Black Ox Orkestar, A Silver Mt. Zion and what appears to be a live 17 minute exclusive track from Godspeed You Black Emperor, and the other from Finland's Lal Lal Lal label (run by one of the members of Avarus), featuring tracks by Maniacs Dream, Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat, Fricara Pacchu, The Anaksimandros, Keijo and a whole bunch of Finnish acts we've never even heard of!
One of San Francisco's more popular artists in the Mission School scene along with Barry McGee and Chris Johanson is Jason Jagel, whose colorful sprawling paintings of disassociative word fragments and energetic stream-of-conscious drawings of copulation and urban detritus get a full monograph treatment here, a big beautiful oversized tome that perfectly suits Jagel's eye popping work. Having done many record covers for Madlib in his many sonic guises and collaborations such as Madvillian, MF Doom, and The Beat Konducta, this handsome, beautifully reproduced full color collection comes with an exclusive Madlib 10", featuring as of now, all unreleased tracks. The thing is HUGE, and heavy, so if you order just this, it'll have to ship at the three item rate, but it's worth it, this is the kind of book you can totally get lost in, and the record is pretty bad ass to boot!
Jim Jocoy's unnarrated book of photos, never published before this year, is an amazing collection of images captured in and during San Francisco and LA's fertile punk scene of '78-'80. Taken spontaneously at clubs, the images show youths dressed to the nines in all the leopard print, skinny jeans, and eyeliner you can handle. Aquarius is super proud to be hosting Jocoy's first San Francisco event celebrating the publication of his photos. Meanwhile, enjoy his book. Here's what others have said:
"Buildings crumble; social signifiers fissure and evaporate. This much is forever; art students simultaneously discovering perceived oppression and thrift-store shoppong. Maybe that's why We're Desperate packs such timeless reverb. As a student living in San Francisco in the late '70s, Jocoy reported from the front line of the burgeoning punk scene by training his eye on the fans. Using a camera purchased at a garage sale, Jocoy photographed scenesters posed against club walls, capturing their ripped nylons, pegged jeans, leather jackets, and vinyl anything. Bookended by an introduction by Marc Jacobs, who has repeatedly referenced the era's Converse-and-logo-tee aesthetic, and a tender elegy by Exene Cervenka, of L.A. punk band X fame. These are DIY Star Search episodes played to one hand clapping, lasting shots from a short runway." ÏV Magazine
"...the longer you look...the more you begin to see what it took to remake yourself as a freak, as a social idiot, as someone you weren't meant to be.... soon enough, you're seeing real people everywhere." ÏGreil Marcus' Real Life Rock Top 10, Salon.com
What fits within a 4.25" x 7" x .25" space perfectly? SF artist Chris Johanson's glossy pink covered paperback book. It's positively bursting at the seams with his creations - many from his gallery installations. Pages of drawings and text printed on pink blue and yellow paper are interspersed with oddly sized foldouts and full color photos. His rough often blurrily inked depictions and commentary on local street life reveal a sea of often disembodied faces - homeless, business men, clowns - and a clutter of speech bubbles. Recent exhibits all over the place. Here's your chance to see what the hubub is all about.
We're always on the lookout for new weird music magazines, and we're fairly sure this might be our new favorite. To begin with, it's put out by one of the guys in weirdo black metal outfit Circle Of Ouroborus. Plus just have a gander at the contents, loads of AQ faves and a few bands we have yet to hear, but definitely sound promising. Blissy black metallers Amesoeurs and Amesoeurs offshoot Alcest, Finland's Ride For Revenge, Japanese metallic black ritualists Arkha Sva, Swedish suicidal black doomsters Hypothermia, Irish black metal cult Primordial, German black metal warriors Secrets Of The Moon, pagan folk legends Current 93, Australian one man metal horde Grippiud and Italian blackdeath warkult Blasphemophagher. As if that weren't enough, a bunch of record reviews, tons of cool photos, and every page is decorated in the margins with that cool pencil art that adorns all the Circle Of Ouroborus discs. Awesome!
Latest issue of this kick ass metal mag from long time aQ favorites, black metal geniuses (maniacs?) Circle Of Ouroborus, who, when not crafting twisted damaged folk flecked stumbling blackened buzz, put together a seriously excellent 'zine, covering a super varied selection of very AQ worthy outfits.
Number 5 features NY based primitive black metallers Ash Pool, Japanese doomsters Coffins, Danish doom combo Sol, legendary Norwegian black metallers Trelldom, German blackened death metallers Drowned, death metal legends Incantation, stoner doom trio Ramesses. And even some new-to-us stuff: Australian black thrashers Denouncement Pyre, and four super obscure black death doom bands with only demos to their names: Arvet from Finland, Ignivomous from Australia, Exorcism (we're not sure where they're from) and another Finnish band Profetus.
In addition to all that stuff, there's a bunch of reviews, as well as a killer primer on Finnish black metal, and each page has a cool hand drawn border with demons and flames and upside down crosses, skeletons, and in addition to all the various band photos, there are tons of creepy hand drawn illustrations.
Most of you probably won't be familiar with the name Stephen Kasner, but most readers of the AQ list, and therefore very likely owners of many weird and obscure and heavy records, will most definitely recognize his work. A well respected visual artist, Kasner is probably best known, at least to us, as the man responsible for lots of iconic album cover art, having created covers for Sunn 0))), Khylist, Integrity, Ruhr Hunter, Himsa, Trephine, Rotting Christ, and tons more.
His art is amazing. Very striking and quite haunting. Bleak, austere, dark, and nightmarish. Mysterious figures, faces and shapes, animals and figures, signs and symbols, all suspended in fields of washed out browns and greys, blacks and off whites, strangely lit, weirdly textured, each image looking like some old parchment, recovered from the ruins of an ancient temple, the images at once hellish and horrific, lovely and utterly entrancing. Layered and textured, incredibly detailed, but subtly so, you can gaze into Kasner's paintings and feel like you're falling in, or being dragged in.
Record cover fetishists will definitely dig, but art freeks into photographers like Joel Peter Witkin, Max Aguilera-Hellweg, and visual artists like Francis Bacon Odd Nerdrum, H.R. Geiger and AQ customer Justin Bartlett (who's done many of your favorite heavy records as well).
It's a gorgeous cloth covered hardback book, 10.5"x10.5", 160 pgs, beautifully laid out, includes text from Dwid of Integrity, Seldon Hunt and more...
ps: Coming soon: a new series of releases on Utech, all with original Kasner artwork and featuring such aQ faves as Skullflower, Aluk Todolo, Vulture Club and more. Can't wait!
Gregg Turkington (voice of Neil Hamburger / Faxed Head participant) and local S.F. luminary Brandan Kearney have put together an entire book of -- as the title implies -- record reviews contrived as anagrams of the artist name and album title... Almost. See, at times the authors chose to bend the rules a bit by adding a word or two so as to have more letter material to work with. For instance, with the album "Face Value" by Phil Collins, they use "Genesis drummer Phil Collins' solo hit: Face Value" to come up with "So, this foul gremlin evildoer cheapens all music". Cheating? dunno. But I suppose it's funnier than anything you could come up with by being restricted to the album title and artist name (the best I could come up with sitting here is "full lice alive on chaps"), but that's the fun of anagrams isn't it? You have your predetermined restrictions and then do your best to come up with something using them, and most of the time you end up with something non-sensical. Before I poo poo this any further, to their credit, the pair have come up with a shit load of excellent anagrams -- sometimes sick, often hilarious -- within the expected restrictions. For instance, The Cranberries' "Bury The Hatchet: The Complete Sessions" becomes "Boy's reluctant speech: 'betcha Irish semen rots her teeth!" and Sleater Kinney "All Hands On The Bad One" becomes "Halt! Not heroines! Sneaky. Leaden. Bland." Seventy pages of such anagrams will be sure to keep you laughing for weeks as you sit on the toilet. And no one is spared the hatchet, not even Neil Hamburger or Faxed Head.
This isn't your typical zine. Works Cited isn't pages photocopied and stapled together, rather, each hand drawn and unique manilla envelope contains the hilarious contents of the filing cabinet of the fictional Wright Preparatory Academy. Each copy includes: a C grade essay detailing the difference between "true" and "false" metal, intercepted notes, journal entries, and lots more, mostly illustrated documents within which Kessler and Huelsing have woven a story line that deftly reveals the complexities and confusion of adolescence. When reading Works Cited, you feel almost like you could be reading the contents of your own school's filing cabinet. Thus, the authors have created a universal platitude which brings forth the resounding adult-to-youth promise: "You will look back and laugh." If you are lucky enough to snatch one of the limited-to-365 copies, we think you will laugh along...knowingly.
A plaintive minor key melody runs throughout the 16 minute soundtrack to Nufonia Must Fall, a comic book written by Kid Koala. Emphasis on the "book", cos this is over 300 pages long! The story, written and drawn by the Kid, tells a love story between a lonely office girl and a robot. It's poignant and sorta sweetly heartbreaking, in the same way that the music is simple and unhurried. Don't expect a full on hip hop crazy quilt of sounds like Koala's past projects, though. This is much simpler sonically. A collector's item.
MPEG Download: "excerpt" [/audio/kidknufonia6.mp3]
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Wow, hard to believe that King Cat Comics is sixty seven issues old! The gent behind the endearingly Spartan King Cat line drawings and introspective stories is Mr. John Porcellino. Up until very recently he was based here in SF, but a couple of months ago he moved inland to the higher lands of Denver, CO. This here issue features a lot of Bay Area specific content including John P's top forty list for winter/summer 2006. It'll be interesting to see if the change in altitude will have any influence on his comics. S'pose we'll just have to wait 'til the next issue! Until then let's dig into #67!
Comic artist/writer John Porcellino might be based in the distant high altitudes of Colorado, but that doesn't keep him from sending us his latest issue of King-Cat Comics. Glad that he's keeping us in the King-Cat loop! We always look forward to a new issue filled with his low-key, quietly witty and endearing tales drawn out in simple black fine line ink. His writing always rings true with an uncommon sincerity and sensitivity. This issue comes with a much heavier heart than usual. Themes of loss are throughout -- the passings of a close friend and his beloved cat, as well as the loss of oneself. Also included are Porcellino's top forty list for October 2006 through September 2007 and a section titled Nature Notes (his observations on birds, bugs, weeds, other wildlife, etc).
A new issue of John Porcellino's comic always brightens our day! What's not to love? Wistful musings and gently witty ponderings and simple thin-line drawings of people, places and things. Hurrah for King-Cat!
John Porcellino's King-Cat comic book series reaches its seventieth issue, and not only that, it also marks King-Cat's twentieth anniversary! Wow! We're always delighted to see what curious observations and funny encounters have flown out of John Porcellino's skinny tipped drawing pens since the previous issue. He seldom disappoints. His very minimal sketches of himself, his friends, neighbors and strangers suggest a child-like vision, but the stories and anecdotes offer a far more world-weary outlook.
The King-Cat Comic series keeps chuggin' along... now on issue #71! John Porcellino's drawing style has remained steadfastly consistent. It might be defined by stark fine lines, but it still conveys a comforting warmth and sensitivity. In fact, the images - black ink on white paper figures which verge on the cute - regularly have us itchin' to turn the zine into a King-Cat coloring book! And the text follows suit with casual humble observations and low-key day-to-day commentaries. Always a welcome and welcoming read!
Holy shit! SIX POUNDS OF METAL. There are certain things, that as metalheads, one feels might just be utterly essential, something every self respecting metaller NEEDS to own, and this friends is one of those things, the long in the works hardcover book compendium of every single issue of long running (25 years!) Norwegian metal magazine Slayer. You might remember not long ago we reviewed the ultra deluxe hardcover version of the final issue of Slayer Magazine, which went out of print in a flash, that's included here too, but more on that in a second.
Bazillion Points, who also released the equally amazing and almost overwhelming Touch And Go zine compendium, not to mention Hellbent For Cooking,The Heavy Metal Cookbook, Tom Gabriel Fischer's Only Death Is Real Hellhammer / Celtic Frost book, and Daniel Ekeroth's Swedish Death Metal book, phew, has really outdone themselves with this Metalion book. It really does weigh SIX POUNDS, and is gorgeous, super striking front and back cover, printed in foil stamped red metallics. Inside you'll find EVERY PAGE of every single one of the zine's twenty issues, but that's not all, it's also, as the title suggests, a diary/memoir of sorts, kept by Slayer Mag mastermind Jon Kristiansen, all about the magazines, the story behind each issue, as well as his life in metal. It also includes the pre-Slayer zine Live Wire, of course tons of rare photos, and like that out of print Slayer Magazine issue XX. While the outside is super swank, the inside is total classic cut and paste old school zine style, lots of drawings and cartoons, different typefaces, photos, no efforts made to smooth the edges, to hide the bits of tape or the staples that might have show up in the photocopies, total DIY, kvlt metal zine, just fancied up and presented in book style. And over the course of 20 issues and 25 years, the magazine featured pretty much every metal (and metal beloved) band that mattered: Watain, Morbid, Whiplash, Bathory, Sadus, Kreator, Master's Hammer, Sadistik Exekution, Funeral Mist, Nifelheim, Destroyer 666, SUNNO))), Grotesque, Savage Thrust, Medieval, Invidious Deathrash, Obscurity, Nocturnal Graves, Pagan Altar, Strid, Mayhem, Emperor, Slayer, Nihilist, Celtic Frost, Cathedral, Entombed, Morbid, Napalm Death, Metallica, Opeth, Cradle of Filth,�Sadus, Satyricon, Enslaved, Pentagram, Jarboe, Immortal, Possessed, Overkill, Ulver, Dark Angel and more more more.
Also included are multiple forwards from publisher Ian Christie, SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Fenriz of Darkthrone, Tomas Lindberg from Grotesque, Chris Reifert from Death/Autopsy, and Erik Danielsson from Watain.
We've barely cracked the book and we're already totally captivated and will no doubt get sucked further in. Kristiansen is a great writer, his interviews are funny and cool, the bands really open up, and it's really interesting to read interviews with all these bands from the last two decades, and Kirstiansen's life story is pretty amazing, he's self deprecating, includes lots of embarrassing photos of himself as a child and a teen and at every stage of his metal evolution, and the way he tells his story is a pretty great read on its own, and the magazines are way more enjoyable now, with Kristiansen offering context and history and all the drama and various tales behind the assembly of each issue. Needless to say, this is metalhead nirvana, and even if you never read it, it'll look amazing on your coffee table, but odds are you won't be able to resist, and like us you'll get sucked in, and lost in 25 years of METAL.
Be warned, mailorder folks, this book is MASSIVE, and HEAVY, and we don't mean heavy like metal, we mean heavy like SIX POUNDS, so this book will be shipped by weight, not by the usual per-item flat rate price, but it's SO worth it...
How rad is this? One of our favorite Record Store Day items this year was not a record, but a book! A hefty, 508-page tome that thoroughly chronicles the history and obsessions of one of the largely misunderstood and under-appreciated niches of recorded music, the "vanity record" - also known as "private press recordings". Enjoy The Experience, edited by noted collector Johan Kugelberg, delves deep into the uniquely 20th century phenomena of the custom-made record and the little-known artists who made them, as well as the collectors and reissue labels that have obsessed over them and ultimately prevented them from fading into obscurity. A lot of our faves are here, including many we have reviewed over the years like The Shaggs, Michael Farneti, Gary Wilson, Jr. and His Soulettes, Bob Chance, Luie Luie, and Hans Edler, many with extensive back stories about their creation. But there is sooooo much more. Including Christian family recordings, ventriloquists, creepy loner folkies, restaurant /resort entertainers, over-the-top lounge singers and just outright bizarre musical artists who just wouldn't have been able to release a record any other way. There are pages and pages of beautiful color reproductions of the cover art to these home made records, some even hand drawn, in all of their earnest naive glory. There's even a chapter on Century Records, one of the most well-established custom record manufacturers, who provided stock album covers for individual artists - and it's funny to see how many different albums utilized the exact SAME cover (including the one seen on the front of this book!). Enjoy The Experience is a joy to behold and will renew your faith in the self-released record.
Comes with a download card for a 20 song playlist including a song from a hopefully up and coming aQ Record of the Week, when it gets reissued - try and guess which one! While supplies last, this special RSD edition also comes with a clear vinyl 45 reissue of a recording by the Century Records marketing department, on how to customize and create your own record. So Awesome!!
We listed the documentary about the notorious late '80s Valencia Street rock bar, The Chatterbox, a few lists back. Now we have copies of the official book written by vintage Aquarius Records employee, Alfie Kulzick!
SF music scene vets will no doubt fondly recall the days of the Chameleon Lounge bar which was located on Valencia Street a few blocks away from aQ. It was a beer-soaked and black velvet painting festooned underground rock haven through most of the '90s. These days that spot is now occupied by a considerably less gritty and tattered bar called Amnesia. However, you'll score super duper old school cred points if you can remember the venue that predated the Chameleon... The Chatterbox!... even more so if you have some first hand memories of your own! And if you do happen to have some of your own then you're probably in this book, aren't you?
Most of us here at aQ were either still underage back then and/or hadn't made our way to the Bay Area yet. So unfortunately we weren't privy to the club's glory years circa 1986-1990, but we all can now catch a time machine-esque sneak peek via this book. It's packed with plenty of live rawk photos, punk fliers and vivid anecdotes with the likes of Hewhocannotbenamed, Boom (of Boom & The Legion Of Doom), Buck Naked, Ginger Coyote, Blag Dahlia, Gary X Indiana, SF Dogs, Sister Double Happiness, among many many others. Plus amazing photos and stories of touring bands such as the Dwarves, The Mentors, and Nirvana. We spotted friends like Chewy and John from Hammers Of Misfortune in there too (back then, in the band Osgood Slaughter). It makes for a wildly colorful patchwork of recollections (er, though the pics themselves are all black and white)! And it gives equal love to the music acts, the staff and the patrons, conveying the beloved neighborhood bar's strong sense of community, and offering a vivid raw glimpse of the late '80s SF music scene.
The book's layout and content really captures the feel of a well-worn zine from back in the day. Y'know, cut'n'pasted together with love and very rough around the edges, almost like it was assembled in the wee hours at the Kinko's on Market Street (back when it was open 24 hours).
Fuck Yeah!
"Writing Aloud" is the second massive publication from experimental musician Brandon LaBelle's Errant Bodies Press, and is a collection of writings about the semiotic slippages between sound and language. His introduction states: "in speaking about
This is a gorgeous and confusional archival release from Graham Lambkin, leader of weirdo outsider 'rock' combo Shadow Ring, this recording, from 2004, features just voice, tapes and piano, and is a curious landscape of spoken word, distant swirls of tape hiss, and haunting funereal piano, not to mention all manner of creaks and buzzes, cobbled together from what sounds like some strange spoken word diary, recorded on a hand held tape player, various fragments strung together, peppered with the 'kthunk' of the buttons on the tape player being depressed, the track shifting haphazardly from some strange description of random goings on, weird bits of random tape sounds, pulsing non-rhythms, static and rumbles, quacking ducks, bits of orchestra, snippets from programs, other voices, always returning to that creepy echo drenched piano, while Lambkin/Shadow Ring newbies might be a bit put off by the sounds here, fans of either or both will definitely feel right at home, a strangely intimate glimpse inside strange and twisted musical mind, one that unfurls soundscapes like this as an entreaty to the brave to wander in and get lost. Very cool, and very bizarre.
But that's really only half of Millows, the other is a strange, dizzying photographic project, that according to the liner notes, is a "series of 450 photographic combinations documenting a solitary drunken non-event", which in reality appears to be a series of combined photos / photo collages, of Lambkin in what appears to be a festive mood, laughing, and smiling, drinking, and conversing, but knowing that said photos were culled from a solitary event, makes the project a bit creepy, and the way the photos have been manipulated, often multiple faces layered into one, colors bleeding, strange projections, textures and overexposures, some like ordinary snapshots, others like wild impressionistic splashes of colors and shapes, and all presented one after the other, nine to a page, almost make it seem like someone took a short bit of filmstrip and laid it out one frame at a time, offering a visual analogue to the strange sounds on the accompanying cd.
All presented in a super striking full color hard cover book, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, with the cd affixed to the inside back cover.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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"Now the paragraph on the back of the promotional copy of Secret Name that I've got would have us believe that '...it is best to describe Low's approach as essentialism -- allowing each musical gesture to make maximum impact.' For me, 'it is best' to light oneself on fire if the alternative involves having to read this sort of thing about a band as fine as Low." That's right, folks, issue #4 of Last Plane to Jakarta is hot off the presses and we've got the "North American exclusive", as John Darnielle likes to tell us. Mountain Goats is Darnielle's musical outlet, and Last Plane to Jakarta is his forum for writing about other peoples music. Here he ruminates on Low (by way of Gary Numan and Lou Reed), Grim Reaper, Amorphis, Pantychrist (Justin Bond, Bob Ostertag and Otomo Yoshihide), and Suede. While AQ certainly champions an eclectic body of music, Last Plane's table of contents contains such a motley selection of why-the-heck-is-he-writing-about-THAT-record records that it's a bit disconcerting -- UNTIL you read the witty, passionate essays. It doesn't really matter whether you like the records he champions or not because just reading about them is a true pleasure. Highly recommended!
Newest issue of John Darnielle's impossibly well-written music zine. It's quite fitting that all the essays are actually in the form of correspondence ("Letter to the Publicist at Touch and Go", "73 postcards to Prominent Surrealists, Most of Them Dead", etc), since Darnielle's writing style is so fucking personable, personal and appealing. Musical topics covered -- everything from
AQ is the only North American retail outlet for Last Plane to Jakarta. There's a website now, too, at http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com. All writing on the website is exclusive to it (the zine and website do not overlap) and new stuff appears every week. For those who can't get enough of Darnielle's writing, some reviews penned by Allan can also be found at the brand new website NeuMu (http://neumu.net), a smart new music website started by Michael Goldberg of Addicted to Noise fame. The reviews section is called 44.1mhz and some of his topics are Low/Dirty 3, Destroyer, Roto, The Band, Steven R. Smith, and Susperia. Enjoy! ----* ----* tUMULt New Release : ----*
Alan Licht, current avant guitarist and solo artist as well as member of Blue Humans and the now defunct indie rock combo Love Child, here writes a slim volume of thoughts on music in the '80s up to now. He also writes a lot about New York (snooze), but
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The humorful fourth issue of the New York based mag The Lowbrow Reader features an article written by Neil Michael Hagerty titled My TV Don't Work No More: A Tribute To 'Wings'... yes, the tv show not the band! Another highlight is an interview with journalist Margeaux Watson about her experiences interviewing Ol' Dirty Bastard. There's also writings about Larry David and Jackie Mason, a handful of haiku and assorted comics and illustrations packed into the 32 pages. Neat!
It's been a bit of a wait since the last issue of this New York comedy themed mag was published back in the fall of 2004, but the slightly more biting Issue 5 was well worth the wait! Neil Michael Hagerty reappears with his tribute to Don Knotts. There's a comicstrip about a visit by Jack White to the editor's apartment for a Time Out New York interview, as well as a couple of articles unfurling the pros and cons of Chevy Chase. A wry, entertaining read.
Well, although the date on the latest issue of The Lowbrow Reader says "summer" and it's barely spring, we can appreciate LBR's eagerness for the warmth of the sun. Heck, we were just as eager to receive this long awaited comedy-centric mag! New Yorkers Jay Ruttenberg and Neil Hagerty (yes, that Neil Hagerty!) are the driving forces behind this 36-page witzine. Included are editorials on Gene Wilder and overlooked comedies, as well as a survey asking celebrity folks (Patton Oswalt, Randy Newman, and John Waters among them) the question: "What Should We Do With America's CEOs? As always, cleanly laid out and well illustrated so that your chuckles, laffs and guffaws can be let loose unencumbered.
Finally a new issue of this dandy New York zine! Neil Michael Hagerty (y'know, of Royal Trux, Howling Hex, etc.) is still the "writer at large" for this wry, wit filled tome, and this time he's joined in Lowbrow Reader land by David and Shelley Berman (aka Silver Jews) among a dozen or so other contributors. This issue features editorials on comedians Don Rickles and John Mulaney, articles about novelist Gilbert Rogin, overlooked comedy flicks circa 1968 through 1983. Always a good, entertaining read and re-read! 32 pages.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
During these chilly months we seek any and every way to warm up. While it isn't quite as effective as an electric blanket or a roaring fireplace, a hearty belly laugh does help a bit! Enter the latest issue of The Lowbrow Reader zine from NYC, once again featuring contributions from the likes of Royal Trux's Neil Michael Hagerty, Silver Jews' David Berman, and Duplex Planet's David Greenberger. Topics covered within: Adam Sandler's movie 'Billy Madison', clowns, the elderly, and some music. That said, the absolute highlight of the zine though is a brief interview with Muhammad Ali. Yeah, holy shit!
Oh, and by the way, if you've missed previous issues, we do still have a couple of Issue #7, but we've just heard that Drag City will be publishing a Lowbrow Reader anthology in the near future. We'll keep you posted!
Our favorite 'zine devoted entirely to comedy (theory & practice) is back! The big feature this issue is an appreciation of none other than Gilbert Gottfried ("New York Punk"), and Gilbert himself contributes two pages of cartoon artwork. There's also an interesting historical piece about Funnyman, a failed 1940's comic book hero created by Superman's Siegel & Shuster. And much more, including fun bits penned by the likes of Rick Moranis. If you like to laugh, or think about laughter, and the people who make us laugh, this is the 'zine for you!
Third in Thrill Jockey's limited edition cd/book releases, following the Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot from aQ fave Daniel Higgs of Lungfish. Whereas Higgs' was a regular sized full color book, this one, from Rob Lowe, aka Lichens, and artist Rose Lazar is pocket sized, a little perfect bound book, one side is illustrations by Lowe, flip it over, and the other side features illustrations by Lazar.
Both Lowe and Lazar share a very similar style, unclear if that's always the case, or if they chose to emulate a certain style just for this release, but it's quite striking, tribal andelaborate, crystals and raindrops, clouds and rainbows, lots of stippling and tiny lines, geometric shapes, disembodied hands, mysterious text, toadstools. Lazar's half is much more childlike and innocent, while Lowe's is a bit more detailed, with lots of tiny lines and miniature shapes, more sort of spiritual, while Lazar's is more playful.
The accompanying cd is a single 15 minute piece, split into movements, of original music from Lowe, who normally performs under the name Lichens, typically using only his voice and a handful of effects, creating ghostly shimmery soundscapes. But here, Lowe is using all manner of soundmakers, certainly keyboards or synths of some kind, the result is an airy, glistening, sparkly modern new age. Little flurries of synth notes are looped over and over into a very krautrock like mantra, in the second movements, those flurries are smoothed out into something much more tranquil, a whirring backdrop for a super minimal raga, bits of subtle buzz, and strange bits of percussion, all very woozy and dreamy and Eastern sounding, the final movement melds the two, bits of buzz and whir are sent hurling into the void, through clouds of glimmery spaced out effects, blissy and softly tripped out, perfectly complementing both artist's drawings in the book. Metaphysical, abstract, dreamlike and mysterious.
While they last we have the ultra limited version, which feature the cover on both sides hand painted by each artist, and come housed in a screen printed cloth bag. Once these are gone, you'll get the normal version, which is slightly cheaper.
We don't sell a lot of comic books here, although maybe we should as a bunch of us are way into comics. Goon, Hellboy, B.P.R.D., The Walking Dead, Preacher, Y, Exterminators, we're almost as nerdy about comics as we are about music. And once in a while a comic comes along, that just hits the spot. Not about a superhero, not a super extended narrative, not violent or bloody, just goofy, funny, fun and bizarre. And since we figured that some of the music nerds who read our list also dig comics, so well, what the heck...
The comic in question is the cutely titled Wuvable Oaf. The story of a huge hairy bear man, who spends a good amount of his time naked, or at least shirtless. And is constantly surrounded by his pals, and lots and lots of kitties. There's plenty of goofy dancing, man love, saucy almost sex, penis shaped birthday cakes, high fashion, reality TV, feline birthing, and an art�punk band called Ejaculoid. You don't need to be into big hairy dudes to dig the comic, but you should at least be into kitties, and into some super awesomely detailed artwork. The hair factor alone is amazing, it must have taken months to illustrate Oaf, let alone his equally hirsute pals. The comic is not heavy on story, the vignettes are brief and fleeting and funny, but it's all about the art. Intricate and complex, incredible detail, the panel that shows a Victorian with the Twin Peaks antenna tower in the background is perfect right down to the defaced poster on the building next door. And did we mention the HAIR! So much hair, torsos, arms, faces, shaved and on the floor, it's everywhere!�
Anyway, check it out, locals will probably recognize some of the characters as they are modeled after real folks, one in particular is a long time aQ pal and sometime list contributor. They have amazing shirts too, which you might see AQ staffers sporting once in a while. You can read and see more here:�http://www.wuvableoaf.com/
Oaf, his pals and his kitties get a big wuvable thumbs up fom aQ!
The return of Wuvable Oaf!!! If you remember a few months back when we listed the first issue of the Oaf (#0 for those keeping track), we gushed over the goofy funny story, the incredibly detailed art, the many many kitties, and did we mention the hair? ALL that hair!!
The first issue, if you don't remember, contained plenty of goofy dancing, man love, saucy almost sex, penis shaped birthday cakes, high fashion, reality TV, feline birthing, and an art punk band called Ejaculoid. The life and times of a big bearlike creature called Wuvable Oaf, and his friends, and his cats, and his dolls stuffed with his own body hair. Now seems like a good time to revisit the hair. The art is so intricate and detailed, all the characters so hirsute that it really must take as much time to draw the hair as it does the rest of the comic. But it's worth it, so over the top, and so completely and awesomely ridiculous.
So this issue gives us a glimpse into the creation of Oaf's stuffed little creatures as well as his ability to regenerate body hair just by 'forcing it', various 'worst' dates throughout the years, 1986, 1992, the origin of the Oaf, from his birth (his actual birth, euuw) to his misfit early years and eventual adoption, a visit to the gym, another feline misadventure, as well as a run in with punk rock band Ejaculoid, culminating in a visit to AQUARium records!! Hmmm. And that guy behind the counter, looks suspiciously like, OK, heck, it is! It's our own ANDEE, in all his Oaf drawn glory, surly and standoffish (not at all like the real Andee btw), giving Ejaculoid the cold shoulder, spouting his timeless catchphrase "I hate your band". Beside the thrill of being drawn into the Oaf universe, the record store is another example of artist Ed Luce's incredible eye for detail, the various records behind the counter, the posters on the wall, the band t-shirts, it's pretty amazing.
We're dying to see what happens as Oaf pursues his Ejaculoid lead singer crush, and of course we can never get enough kitties, drawn or otherwise, there are big plans in the works for Oaf, including more kick ass merch (check it out: http://www.wuvableoaf.com/) as well as an actual single from the imaginary(?) Ejaculoid.
Punk rock, kitties, lots and lots of hair, and of course big muscly dudes, what's not to love???
Once again, the big, hairy, doll making, lovestruck punk rock behemoth better known as Wuvable Oaf returns! We've been champions of Luce's crazy creation since the moment we first laid eyes on Oaf and his equally hirsute cadre of pals and lovers and hangers on. Not to mention the kitties!
For those new to the Oaf, in a city, suspiciously like San Francisco, lives the Wuvable Oaf, who spends his days making cool little stuffed dollies, filling them with his shaved body hair, living in a house full of kitties, and pining after Eiffel, the diminutive lead singer of the band Ejaculoid, who are constantly battling their arch rival band, Spincterine, and that's just scratching the surface. There's lots of unrequited love, nightmarish dream monsters, wild punk rock gigs, nightmare dates, aggro-massage, jilted evil ex-boyfriend chefs, blind dates, bands with names like Muff ' N' Top Grrrlz and Wasp Women, a broKENCYDE shirt pops up during a show, so do the bad guys from Superman 2, as does our very own Andee!
It's definitely a wild ride, the art is amazing, super detailed, over the top, there's so much hair everywhere, on the big beefy dudes, on the kitties, it's no wonder why it takes Luce ages to finish each issue, but it's well worth the wait, funny, and fun, and sexy and silly, now we're dying for issue 3, especially after the back page teaser, a big hairy, horned, devil tailed man-beast with the legend "Who is Gote Blud?". Well?? WHO IS IT??????????????
A little while back, we listed issue #2 of one of our favorite comics, starring the big, hairy, doll making, lovestruck punk rock behemoth better known as Wuvable Oaf! But now for a very limited time, we got a handful of copies of the super limited special edition version of Wuvable Oaf #2. And we're the only store that's got em. So what's so exciting about the special edition you ask? More on that in a second, first a bit about the Oaf...
We've been champions of Luce's crazy creation since the moment we first laid eyes on Oaf and his equally hirsute cadre of pals and lovers and hangers on. Not to mention the kitties! For those new to the Oaf, in a city, suspiciously like San Francisco, lives the Wuvable Oaf, who spends his days making cool little stuffed dollies, filling them with his shaved body hair, living in a house full of kitties, and pining after Eiffel, the diminutive lead singer of the band Ejaculoid, who are constantly battling their arch rival band, Sphincterine, and that's just scratching the surface. There's lots of unrequited love, nightmarish dream monsters, wild punk rock gigs, nightmare dates, aggro-massage, jilted evil ex-boyfriend chefs, blind dates, bands with names like Muff 'N' Top Grrrlz and Wasp Women, a broKENCYDE shirt pops up during a show, so do the bad guys from Superman 2, as does our very own Andee! It's definitely a wild ride, the art is amazing, super detailed, over the top, there's so much hair everywhere, on the big beefy dudes, on the kitties, it's no wonder why it takes Luce ages to finish each issue, but it's well worth the wait, funny, and fun, and sexy and silly, now we're dying for issue 3, especially after the back page teaser, a big hairy, horned, devil tailed man-beast with the legend "Who is Gote Blud?". Well?? WHO IS IT??????????????
So okay, the special edition, what's so great about it? Well howsabout a custom glow in the dark cover, each one signed and hand numbered by the artist? Or what about a set of custom Ejaculoid picks, affixed to a special printed insert? Okay, well if that ain't enough, the special edition comes with a bonus 7" SINGLE, one sided, featuring Ejaculoid's synth punk grind jam "Fearce" on one side (and just so you know, the musical Ejaculoid is made up of members of Limp Wrist, Los Crudos and Needles!), the flipside featuring an awesomely gory etching, that goes along with the super gory eviscerated super model record cover, and it includes a torn ticket stub with info on where you can download a digital version of "Fearce"! All in a plastic bag sealed shut with a kitty sticker (of course). Only 200 in existence, and we're the only store, comic, record or otherwise that has 'em!
Two fine record reference works on the list this week, there's the Encyclopedia of Swedish Progressive Music (reviewed below), and this one, a tome devoted American private press musical weirdness from the psychedelic era; its subtitle is "Guide To Underground Sounds 1965-1982". And yes, it's an A-to-Z of bands, each release getting an opinionated write-up, sometimes from more than one reviewer, who don't always agree! Not just psych bands, but also folk-rock, hard rock, "incredibly strange music", sunshine pop, all sorts of stuff. As long as it's rare and obscure and has collectors salivating...
Here's a few of the bands included: Anonymous, BF Trike, Cromagnon, David Allen Coe, Euphoria, Francisco, Josephus, New Hobbits, Charles Mason, Peace Pipe, Ya Ho Wha 13... that's a very small fraction (hey I bet Fraction is in here... let's see, yep) of what you'll find. There's literally hundreds and of entries. Hours of browsing to be had.
In addition to this "Acid Archive" of reviews, which include discographical info on both the original releases -and- (where applicable) reissues, there's some other special features to this volume. You'll find top tens and "fave raves" from the book's various contributors, also a buying guide for collectors on a budget, and a forward by Mike Stax of Ugly Things magazine -- and if you're a dedicated Ugly Things reader, you definitely want this book!!
15 years in the making, this is as authoritative and indispensable as it gets, when it comes to weird music from way back. It's not quite as deluxe as that Swedish Encyclopedia (and not as expensive, either), but still really nicely put together. Paperback, 11 3/4" x 8 1/4", 298 pages, three columns per page of text, lots of cool b&w graphics (album covers, record labels, promo photos). Trippy!!
