[ aquarius records — Rock Pop Goth Industrial Darkwave ]

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Our good pal Cayce, who sadly passed away back in 2007, was as obsessive about freaky and fucked up music as we are, and was the first to bring this record to our attention, which we might have otherwise ignored on account of the somewhat dodgy sounding band name they possess. Black Mayonnaise? Eww. But Black Mayonnaise are definitely AQ-material, Cayce was right. Self-described (it says it right on the back cover) as "Warped Lunar Sludge-core", this band is akin to a lo-fi melding of SUNNO))) and Godflesh. It is sludgy and doomy, but not so much heavy or riffy, more just ominous and creepy and droney and dubby and distorted... Imagine plodding, repetitive, hypnotic, echoey drum machine hits mixed with mellow Merzbow-ian drone, whilst gargling, not-even-vocals bubble up from a tarpit of rumbling bass, amidst sundry sci-fi synth noises and the distant wails of whales and wookies. And there's a 'cover' song on here too, "Graveyard" by the Butthole Surfers, a choice that speaks volumes. Listening to this disc is like stumbling through a miasma AND slowly sinking into a mire. We love it! Chances are there's only one guy behind Black Mayonnaise, and he recorded this in his bedroom -- but it sounds more like it was recorded in a moist, dark cave...perhaps the cavernous stomach of some extraterrestrial monster. Gastro-intestinal, interstellar doom, anyone? If that sounds good to you like it does to us, then this is quite recommended.

MPEG stream: Narcotic Fog
MPEG stream: Floating Body II

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

SORRY. Blood Box is a project of Michael Hensley whose work in the terrorist ambient ensemble Yen Pox we have praised before. On his own, Hensley strikes a more menacing pose; where Yen Pox conjures a narcotic numbness laced with the imagery of fear, death, and horror, Blood Box places you directly in the midst of a tragic aural nightmare. Snarling beasts and whispering demons haunt the nether regions of bleak reverberating dronescapes, giving way to majestic swells of minor key orchestral fragments. Later on, claustrobophia from The Iron Dream's sonic catacombs open into expansive forests, ominously crackling and creaking in the wind. At the same time, subtle musical gestures punctuate the wash and din, offering a hint of optimism to this otherwise oppressive album. On the Iron Dream, Hensley brings together the shadowy ambience found on Burzum's Filosofem, the soul-crushing depression of Anenzephalia, the darkly shimmered elegance of Maeror Tri, and subterranean terror of Lustmord. Morose, creepy, and gorgeously frightening.

MPEG stream: Fall In
MPEG stream: Far Side Of The Sun

Sometimes we find ourselves reviewing music that we don't necessarily have the vocabulary to describe in a way that properly references all the sonic touchstones, but in a lot of ways, those sorts of the reviews are the ones we dig the most, where the comparisons are not the ones from right off the label's onesheet, or borrowed from some other reviewer who is an expert in whatever genre is being discussed. Which is appropriate since we know very little about EBM, or electronic body music, a strain of electronic music popular in the late eighties, which is how Body 11 would most likely be classified, alongside more well known bands like Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and labels like Wax Trax and Nettwerk. The label does mention Skinny Puppy, which definitely gets more to the heart of why we dig this so much, and we DO. If those above bands mean nothing to you, don't despair, cuz to these ears, the sound of Body 11 is more proto-grebo, 'grebo' being shorthand for greasy bastard, a phrase coined to mean a group of bands that included Pop Will Eat Itself, Gaye Bykers On Acid and the like. And that's actually more what we hear in the music of Body 11. Super dramatic vocals, crooned, howled, drenched in reverb and delay, the vibe swaggery and almost glammy, the pulsing electronic backdrop, peppered with super distorted percussive blurts, and the occasional slash of crunchy fuzzed out guitar, which is why we'd do the musical math for Body 11 like Sigue Sigue Sputnik meets Suicide? Or Pop Will Eat Itself fronted by Gary Glitter, via the aforementioned Skinny Puppy? Of all the Medical reissues, this is the grittiest, and grimiest of the bunch we think, and we're digging it like crazy, the first four tracks, culled from Body 11's original 1988 single are untouchable, swarthy and swaggery, creepy and crunchy, slithery and groovy, snarly and pulsing, like early Depeche Mode demos roughed up and transformed into something altogether more misanthropic. Way worth it just for those 4 tracks for sure. The bonus tracks are cool too, but are missing some of that attitude, and are a bit more polished, and thus less grimey and grungey, definitely a fun listen, but we find ourselves listening to those first four over and over and over... LIMITED TO 650 COPIES!! Pressed on heavy 180 gram milky clear vinyl. Includes a printed insert with extensive liner notes!

MPEG stream: Wasteland 2
MPEG stream: Under My Command
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Way back in 2009, we reviewed a record by a band called Body Hammer, a brilliantly dizzying hybrid of damaged hyper grind, blackened dronescapery and frenzied math metal, all housed in a dvd case, wrapped in a sumo cloth. Now here we are five years later, and the man behind Body Hammer, just walks into aQ, having moved to the Bay Area to attend Mills, and in hand, a new Body Hammer record! And while we'd like to say it's way weirder, or way more fucked up, we just can't cuz the first one was pretty demented and damaged, but what we can say, is the new one is just as tweaked and twisted, which all we could have hoped for, hell, even the first track is pretty difficult to describe, a sort of psychedelic industrial blowout, all metallic percussion, and wild electronic squiggles that could be guitar shred, but is likely something else entirely, a dizzying rhythmic workout that leads directly into a 33 second blast of furious metallic grind, only to then explode into a nearly as brief burst of power electronics, which again in turn, transforms into a blurry bit of collaged field recordings and short wave broadcasts, and then� Well, before we go track by track, it should be noted there are lots of brief tracks here, some ambient, some blacknoise, some grinding metal, some all three combined, the metal parts are totally frenzied drummachinegun style blowouts, while the more abstract tracks are all over the map, eventually as the track lengthen, the sound becomes more harrowing, the terrifying sample laced atmosphere of "A Presence", the churning black buzz ambience of "A Disappearance", laced with buried vokills and tangled guitar shred, or the slo-mo doomdrone of "The Church", but peppered throughout are dense bouts of Godflesh-like industrial metal churn, all robotic deathmarch and machine like lumber, barely there soundscapery, cinematic and haunting, tripped out psych-noise, blasts of guitar clang, and billows of hazy FX, symphonies of feedback, and finally, a hazy long form sprawl of field recording flecked, murky industrial drift, a strangely disturbing coda, for a fantastically fucked up record.

MPEG stream: The Iron Bough
MPEG stream: Body Blockade

The Body Lovers was the first project that Michael Gira established after dissolving his stalwart abject rock ensemble Swans. For this project (which presumably will be a trilogy of albums, if the title is an indication), Gira has chosen to concentrate on the production techniques which culminated so magnificantly on Swans "Great Annihilator" album - dominated by epic song structures built out of increasingly dense tape splices of archetypal Swans' rock grooves. Here, Gira has all but done away with the song (leaving that for his folk etherialism on Angels of Light) in favor of a beautifully ornate if nervously bleak drone album. Multiple layers of sustained organ chords resonate violently against each other as distant choruses of Branca like single note guitars and anguished non-linguistic chants build in intensity, sounding very much like a claustrophobic and highly controlled version of Hermann Nitsch's monumental Aktion pieces.

Our favorite Teutonic twilight doomjazz combo, the awesome Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, is back with a new, 35+ minute ep, once again released via mega fan Mike Patton's Ipecac label (as have been their past few domestic outings). It's classic Bohren we know and love, more of their usual slow, sad, sparse jazz, that's "heavy" and noirish and minimalistic. But this ep also introduces a WTF? factor we weren't expecting. Of the three (long) songs here, one's a cover. And it goes a long way to establishing their metal cred, more than the Immortal and Emperor t-shirts they sometime wear (with suits) on stage. No, rather than cover a black metal song, as you might expect, they instead proved that they're real old school metal fans by doing "Catch My Heart" by '80s German heavy metal band Warlock, you know, the outfit fronted by blonde metal siren Doro Pesch before she went solo. It's a nice, melodic song, and Bohren successfully adapt it to their own style, extending it to over 13 slowly trickling minutes, and making it all the more emotive and moody. And... they got Mike Patton to sing it. Which is where your mileage may start to vary, depending on how much of a Mike Patton fan you are. Patton doesn't get too over the top or anything, he sticks to a deep voiced, torch-song croon that's only a little bit weird, reminding us a bit of the singer for Urfaust in fact. But, we kinda think they should have done it as an instrumental (which is of course Bohren's usual mode), and also that way the weirdness of doing a Warlock cover woulda been a bit more subtle. Or, if they had to have somebody sing it, maybe they should have just gotten Doro herself!! Aside from the presence of Patton's vocals, though, "Catch My Heart" sounds very much like a typical Bohren piece. As do the other two songs here, quietly droning, glacially paced, utterly gorgeous, no vocals. "Zombies Never Die (Blues)" is all drifting near-ambient synth, adorned with some smokey sax which tends to give this the vibe of the soundtrack to an '80s Jonathan Demme film, wistfully perfect for a late night street corner scene between two young lovers. The final, title track, is the longest, over 14 minutes, wonderfully atmospheric, shimmering textures from the trap kit, limpid notes arising from the keys, no sax. Nice. But, the Warlock song isn't the only thing that's really weird about this ep. Another truly WTF? element to this release is the cover art, as discerning music fans will recognize it as some sort of tribute to the album Fun At The Funeral by the band Jesters Of Destiny (you know, the late '80s LA alt-metal act beloved by our Finnish friends Circle, they reissued that album on their Ektro label!). Same logo/typeface, almost identical (but different) artwork. No explanation. We're really curious what the deal is with that, 'cause it's such an obscure thing to reference and has nothing to do with anything else about this release, if they'd have done a Jesters cover on the ep rather than a Warlock one, it would make more sense. Instead, it's a total non-sequitur that almost nobody will even "get". And thus, Bohren are somehow even cooler now than we already thought they were!!!

MPEG stream: Catch My Heart
MPEG stream: Beileid

Imagine a blackened, funereal dooooooom band like Skepticism or Nortt morphed into the jazz idiom (after having kissed a frog, or some fairytale scenario like that), playing their slow, sad music in a smoky Berlin jazz club. The sound is jazz (electric piano, organ, vibes, sax, double bass, trap kit...) but the feeling is doom. That's our usual shorthand for describing the unique music made by longtime AQ fave, Germany's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Here at last is their eagerly anticipated 5th album, Dolores (not named after the San Francisco street near us, presumably). If you're fans like we are, you know what to expect, it's just as ponderously "heavy" as a "jazz" band can be. No, not loud, not harsh, not noisy. The opposite of all that. Rather, whisper-quiet, glacially slow, and spacious, with sparse snare hits keeping time like a wound-down clock ticking off the eternity between 2 minutes to midnight and the witching hour itself. Doomsday so slowly arrives on a velvety bed of somnolent deep bass notes, and the cool slinky tones of vintage Fender Rhodes. Cymbals shiver in a dark haze of ambient drones near to silence. Several of the songs are infused with the warmth of tenor or baritone sax breathes gorgeous expiring breaths. It's all so sad and woeful and achingly beautiful, Bohren nodding off, their fragile melodies trickling like tears, and by the end you may find you have shed a few too. This newest Bohren differs mainly from their previous Ipecac outing Geisterfaust by being composed of somewhat shorter, sweeter tracks, ten in all, in about an hour. But it is, again, an-ever-more-perfected example of why Bohren is one of our all time favorite bands, especially at twilight and late at night...

MPEG stream: Staub
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MPEG stream: Still am Tresen

Bootblacks are a relatively new NYC outfit mining classic 1980's post-punk and no wave, creating dramatic songs that, in their best moments, evoke Depeche Mode as much as The Birthday Party. This self-titled lp captures the group early on in their career, on the cusp of a transformation into a really great live band, one we here on the Left Coast have only managed to see twice. Strange pyramids, ever-present smoke and psychedelic lights frame really loud songs that wear their influences like a runway model wears the latest designer frock: with pride and style. Bootblacks have found moderate success in Europe, through touring there multiple times, and on the East Coast where they play constantly. On the record itself, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds are ever-present, especially on "Save Me Maria" which sounds, in the best possible way, like a B-side off Tender Prey. Jim Sclavunos (of the Bad Seeds / Grinderman) produced a few tracks, including one of the record's best, "The Flood". A tom-heavy beat stomps around a big fuzzy bassline and a clean vocal line. Layers of guitar lines slip in and out, building tension, until the chorus erupts with some weird backwards sounding laser-gun effects. The guitar playing throughout the entire record is excellent, full of skill and heart and hooks. Alli Pheteplace, musically the record's shining star, fluidly conjures the spirit of Rowland S. Howard and makes it her own. Melodies seem to fly effortlessly from her reverb-laden instrument. Her backing vocals on songs like "The Things We Did" and "The Flood" provide an almost sensual contrast to vocalist Ryan MacDonald's in-your-face sexual overtones. Pheteplace and MacDonald are both formerly of San Francisco's The Holy Kiss, another group that worshipped at the altar of The Birthday Party, albeit the swampier-blusier side of the band. The best track off the second half of the record is "Machina", a cacophonous rolling ride of a song. A repeating trumpet line and lyrics you can't quite understand play call and response until the chorus busts through with a perfectly complimentary marching snare beat. There's just enough noise to make the song sound fucked-up and interesting without distracting from its bass-and-drums guts. The record is housed in a nice silver and black jacket, with some kind of sliver sticker on the back. An obi proclaims the glories of Bootblacks and provides the only information available on the outside of the sleeve. Limited to 350 copies, each one hand numbered. Also includes an mp3 download card, as well as a silk-screened patch for all you punks out there.

MPEG stream: The Flood
MPEG stream: The Things We Did
MPEG stream: Machina

Here, Dark Entries reissues the terminally obscure second album from the Slovenian minimal-wave quartet Borghesia. The band formed in 1982 during the death throes of the fractious Yugoslavian republic, operating in a liminal space between the art world and the underground punk scene, through their own club Disco FV. During these early years, the quartet produced video installations and performances alike, with the sound design being an instrumental, hard-edged variant on new wave sensibilities. By the mid '80s, the project stripped down to a duo and took up a sweaty DAF-inspired muscularity of industrial funk. But here on Clones (originally self-released as a cassette in 1984), we find Borghesia doing their best work. All instrumental trax of hypnotic, pulsing electronics with some very forward thinking 808 drum programming that foreshadowed the reductionist strategies of Detroit electro and techno, albeit within a context that favored the darker sounds of The Human League and Soft Cell. The A side features spry and punchy tracks with plenty of elliptical arpeggiations and ramped up BPMs, whereas the B side is more pastoral and slower, sporting an eerie, melodic homage to Cindy Sherman. Clones, indeed!

At the time Borghesia was formed in 1982, Yugoslavia was beginning to exhibit the cracks in its federalist system of government; by good fortune, the Croatian born members of Borghesia, Aldo Ivancic and Dario Seraval, chose to study in Ljubjana, located in Slovenia - the state which peacefully separated from the Yugoslavian federation in 1990, unlike those states to the south. Ljubjana had long been the home of a lively arts and music scene, having spawned a number of underground venues / art-spaces including the first gay disco which caused considerable controversy within the conservative society at large. This was also home for Laibach, the Irwin Group, and other arms of the Neue Slowenische Kunst collective. Borghesia had always played second fiddle to Laibach, even though they really sounded nothing like the band. Where Laibach offered bleak appropriation of cultural elements within a cold industrial context, Borghesia was one of the early proponents of "electronic body music" - the sweaty electro-funk that really exploded out of Belgium by the late '80s, with D.A.F., Cabaret Voltaire, and Chris & Cosey influencing Borghesia's hedonistic, leather-clad electronics. The mutant funk sensibility takes up tracks like "A.R." and "Brisk Vomit" with choppy guitars, darkly bubbled electronics, and neck-wrangled basslines. On the aforementioned "A.R.", Borghesia filters the vocals through a megaphone of barked sloganeering for the closest thing that the band ever came to sounding like Laibach. The dirge "Tako Mladi" with its whip crack, reversed delay, and stalking electronic sequences is probably the strongest track on the record, through its oppressive atmosphere. This album was originally released on an Italian label in 1985, and came with Italian translations of the Croatian lyrics. Those have now been transcribed into English, but keeping the same oversized poster with dot-matrix artwork / text that was on the original. As with all Dark Entries releases, this has been exquisitely remastered and pressed on big chunky vinyl. Limited to 500 copies.

MPEG stream: Tako Mladi
MPEG stream: Kdo Je Ugasnil Luc
MPEG stream: On

The return of these Pittsburgh heavies, the oddly named Br0wn Angel (yup, that's a zero), who deliver their swansong in the form of this epic and darkly melodic chunk of churning low-end heaviness, having recently called it a day. But what a note to go out on! And what a change from their self titled debut. That record (which is included here on the accompanying cd-r) was a sick and sinister chunk of superdistorted sludge, equal parts industrial pummel and droned out black crawl, with the band equally capable of kicking some seriously dense mathrock jams as they are churning, downtuned ultradoom. But the first track here, at least the first few minutes, displays a side of the band only hinted at on the first record. Starting with some mysterious field recordings, the band unfurl a thick sprawl of minor key buzz, and washed out melancholic heaviness, the title "You Can Find Heartbreak Anywhere" suits the sound perfectly, the vocals a weary croon, in a different context this would be some woozy dreamlike slowcore, but here, wreathed in thick, crumbling swaths of guitarnoise, squalls of feedback, and massive drum pound, it somehow makes it sound even that much more moody and malevolent. But then again, this is Br0wn Angel, so halfway through, the song splinters into a woozy start/stop, with squealing feedback, and harsh vokills, before again switching gears, and adding some chiming melodies to the proceedings, giving the sound a sort of ultra melodic Godflesh style industrial vibe, maybe Godflesh fused to Interpol, which sounds like a weird, but an AWESOME combo, especially the final salvo, where the vocals are belted out, and the song is transformed into something seriously dark and emotional. The rest of the record is equally progressive and emotional and WEIRD, the second track is a dense slab of math metal chug and churn, a definite AmRep thing going on, but much more abject and downtuned, and like that first track, the band deftly incorporate all sorts of unlikely melody and still more clean vox. From there on out, it's a constant battle between light and dark, noise and melody, the sort of sonic tension that makes for compelling heaviness, "Days Of Vagrancy" taking those massive drums, and wreathing them in woozy, heavily effected guitars, and thick caustic bass buzz, the result more atmospheric than brutal, at times reminding us of eternal aQ faves Geronimo, that sort of almost motorik pound and mesmerizing bassline, surrounding by swirling clouds of noise and FX. "Did You Ever Need Me" is some seriously heartfelt indie rock / post rock in industrialblacknoise's clothing, stripped of the huge drums and buzzing guitars, it might pass for pure indie rock, but but instead, the sonic heft and underpinning darkness elevate Br0wn Angel's sound to something much more intense, and emotionally resonant. The last two tracks offer up more of BA's new twisted industrial / metal / gloom pop hybrid, seems like exactly the sort of thing fans of Pinkish Black and Wreck And Reference would dig big time. Sad that this is the last we'll hear from these guys, but like we said, we couldn't have hoped for a better final missive. The lp includes a cd-r, that contains both the new record, AND the self titled debut, which we described thusly: Br0wn Angel (yeah, that's Br0wn with a zero) hail from Pittsburgh, and offer up a heaving helping of blown out, super industrial metallic crunch, some strange hybrid of Godflesh, Author & Punisher, Big Black, and Jesu, but they add all sorts of unlikely stuff that makes this SO much more than just wannabe Streetcleaner. The opening track alone should have metaldrone obsessives in a trance, it's a blackened doomdrone raga, that finds these guys weaving a sprawling landscape of crumbling, superdistorted guitar crunch, a bit like SUNNO))) but way more melodic, infusing this blackened crawl with chiming melodies, strangely melodic seeing as they're set amidst barren fields of crumble and pound, the sound thick, gristly, but warm, and thick, and then the vocals come in, and they're quite unexpected, a monk-like chant, transforming the song into something way more ritualistic and spiritual, and we can tell you, if that first song had been stretched out to fill up both sides, we would have been pleased as punch, but instead, the band do get way more metallic and propulsive, the sound thickening into a sort of slowed down tarpit Austerity Program, thick guitars, lots of harmonics, streaks of feedback, starts and stops, ultra dynamic, sheets of guitar skree over black industrial creeps and proto industrial metal pummel, which again would have been just fine, but these guys continue to twist and tangle up their sound, occasionally launching into full on progged out math rock, but just as often slipping into some sort of super sludge death march, the interesting part is how those two sides bleed into that plodding, industrial core, creating a fucked up hybrid that is all their own.

MPEG stream: You Can Find Heartbreak Anywhere
MPEG stream: Days Of Vagrancy
MPEG stream: Did You Ever Even Need Me

Br0wn Angel (yeah, that's Br0wn with a zero) hail from Pittsburgh, and offer up a heaving helping of blown out, super industrial metallic crunch, some strange hybrid of Godflesh, Author & Punisher, Big Black, and Jesu, but they add all sorts of unlikely stuff that makes this SO much more than just wannabe Streetcleaner. The opening track alone should have metaldrone obsessives in a trance, it's a blackened doomdrone raga, that finds these guys weaving a sprawling landscape of crumbling, superdistorted guitar crunch, a bit like SUNNO))) but way more melodic, infusing this blackened crawl with chiming melodies, strangely melodic seeing as they're set amidst barren fields of crumble and pound, the sound thick, gristly, but warm, and thick, and then the vocals come in, and they're quite unexpected, a monk-like chant, transforming the song into something way more ritualistic and spiritual, and we can tell you, if that first song had been stretched out to fill up both sides, we would have been pleased as punch, but instead, the band do get way more metallic and propulsive, the sound thickening into a sort of slowed down tarpit Austerity Program, thick guitars, lots of harmonics, streaks of feedback, starts and stops, ultra dynamic, sheets of guitar skree over black industrial creeps and proto industrial metal pummel, which again would have been just fine, but these guys continue to twist and tangle up their sound, occasionally launching into full on progged out math rock, but just as often slipping into some sort of super sludge death march, the interesting part is how those two sides bleed into that plodding, industrial core, creating a fucked up hybrid that is all their own. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!! Packaged in super swank, metallic bronze silk screened covers, each on hand numbered, and each one with a random photograph insert.

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

SORRY. "Necrose Evangelicum" is a bleak 'death ambient' album from the founder of the Swedish label Cold Meat Industries. Ghastly sounds from beyond the grave wallow through the bass-heavy drones in the best Lustmord tradition of dark ambience.

Latest on Dom Fernow's (Prurient, Cold Cave, etc.) Bed Of Nails label comes from Kris Lapke, aka Bronze Age, whose three song 12"s is a fierce slab of Teutonic gothic techno, pulsing four on the floor synth squelch, backed by ethereal swirling melodies, peppered with low end percussive stutter, dense and driving and super hypnotic, definitely an extension of Fernow's Vatican Shadow, albeit much more intense. The second track is probably our favorite, a creepy slab of dour techno pop, a rhythmic drag that churns and chugs, moody, murky, morose, dubbed out, rife with plenty of skitter and hand clap rhythms, it's a dark drowsy pulsing techno trance out, that we almost wish went on for way longer. The side long third track is super spare, still plenty housey, but with a seriously anthemic vibe; it's propulsive and stuttery, a bit spaced out, but still driving and hypnotic. And since we accidentally spun this at 33 instead of 45, we can tell you it sounds even better slowed down, the side long track becomes some lost Burial jam, a gorgeous washed out dub dirge, while the other two sound like doomy Depeche Mode and murk step creepiness respectively! Either way, super rad.

We've been diggin' some killer late '70s, early '80s French punk rock lately, or "paink" as the as the recent compilation of that name has it, discovering some new obscure faves from the scene we hadn't known of before, bands to file alongside Soggy and Metal Urbain in the realm of Stooges-y, snotty, sometimes synth-laced underground French-speaking rawk from the new wave era. Here's a good example, reissued for the first time on cd (and also on vinyl too, backordered at the moment - but the the cd has 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks anyway). C.O.M.A., aka Clinik Organik Musak Anatomik (great name, whatever it means exactly!), originally unleashed this way weird and super rare full-length, their only album, in 1979. It's some intense & experimental, minimal wave synth punk, manifested with shamboblic precision, their odd "musak" loaded with blurting synthesizer, noisy guitar, mechanical drumbeats, distorted disembodied vocals (often a gravelly croak), and electronic FX galore. Some tracks are more abstract, like the soundscapey segue of "Consequences", consisting of about 50 percent feedback, while others, like "Demain", are more groove-oriented, dark and dancey new wave numbers, still loaded with synth strangeness, to which we can totally imagine stylish French punks doing some kind of robo-pogo. Yup, it's a diverse disc, wherein a moody, sparse piano piece like "Coma" could be followed by the hard-charging mechano-aggro beatdown of "Assaut", complete with wiggly wild guitar/synth solo. The sporadic mad scientist's laboratory bleep bloop of "La Valse A Mutant" kinda has a Francophone "Hardcore Devo" vibe, and definitely Devo were an inspiration on this groop, along with the likes of Kraftwerk, Wire, and The Residents. Think Devo meets Metal Urbain, you're on the right track. Great stuff. C.O.M.A. didn't appear on that Paink comp, we don't know why, they shoulda been, though maybe just a bit weirder than the others. Fans of stuff on Medical and Dark Entries ought to check it out...

MPEG stream: Tete De Gomme
MPEG stream: Assaut
MPEG stream: Demain

Wah? We STILL have copies of this limited edition 2014 Record Store Day release lying around?? You mean we didn't sell out of this $15 reissue of this Dusseldorf new wave noise band's rare 1983 7" single yet? Well that's messed up, 'cause actually, import RSD price aside, it's pretty killer. Two tracks of beat-heavy art punk madness with aggro screaming echoing vox. Shocking. Actually we only have 2 copies left, so if you're looking for one, better grab it quick.

MPEG stream: Obsession

Holy cow, this is a weird one. Rock fans may recognize the name Tony Carey, knowing that he was of course the keyboard player in Rainbow (playing alongside Ronnie James Dio and Richie Blackmore!), but then those same folks might find themselves wondering what the heck he's doing on Medical Records, who specializes in new wave / electro pop reissues. Well it seems that after Rainbow, Carey did indeed have a bunch of solo records that did quite well, but in the late seventies, he took up a residence in Germany, and began to work on mastering all sorts of instruments and studio gear, and writing a ton of songs, some of which would eventually end up on these records. Influenced by what he called "Euro-electronica", Carey's version of that sound is equal parts swirling kosmische synthscapes, Italo-disco, proto-techno, and yeah, a little eighties style electro pop. This two lp collection gathers up two essential and long sought after Carey rarities, Explorer and Yellow Power, Explorer might be the more essential of the two, if just for the opening track "Enjaw J", which is such an amazing song, from its pulsing synth swirl open, a cascade of dizzying melodies, leads into a darkly dramatic groove, with a killer hook, surprisingly melancholic, the song stretching out, and letting the drum machine, and pulsating synths drive this electro-kraut workout, peppered part way through with a strange noisy swell and a splatter of abstract percussion. You'll find this one stuck in your head after one listen guaranteed. The rest of the record is pretty great too, but definitely leans more toward an eighties electro-pop. "Transit To Nowhere" almost sounds like an alternate version of the Sparks' "Cool Places", while "No.8" is a strange abstract slab of minimal electro-dub, and "Queen Of Scots" sounds a bit like A-Ha, a moody and dramatic, with a cool cascading main melody that again, like the opener is crazy catchy. There's definitely a cheesy element to these songs and sounds, but it's kind of what makes them so cool, that and realizing this guy once rocked out in Rainbow! The other record, Yellow Power, is a sort of companion to Explorer, and shares much of the same sonic palette, but seems a it more thematically linked, to the somewhat problematic title, when you realize some of the song titles are "Peking Duck", "Radio Tokyo" and "Hai Samurai", that one complete with some weird processed vox singing "HAI!" There are some of the same tracks on both records, it has been theorized that one was demos for the other, but the version are different enough the make it worth it. Yellow Power definitely features more vocals overall, whispers here and there, wailing operatic female vox in the background, and it's interesting to hear some of the instrumental tracks on Explorer with vocals. There seems to be more guitar too, and more studio fuckery, they're both weird, each one weird in a slightly different way. We're digging this a LOT, and we should say, that of all the Medical releases we've reviewed, this is the one our distributor excitedly insisted we get a bunch of cuz it's so weird, and so good, and we most definitely agree. Super swank packaging, the records pressed on thick 160 gram colored vinyl, one record green, the other blue, housed in a super thick full color gatefold sleeve, limited to 100 copies, each one hand numbered. Includes a bonus insert with a retrospective and interview.

MPEG stream: Enjaw J
MPEG stream: Transit To Nowhere
MPEG stream: Hai Samurai
MPEG stream: Tojo
MPEG stream: Yellow Power

Carter Tutti. Chris & Cosey. There may be a semantic difference somewhere to be discussed, but this album brigades what those differences may be as the pair of Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have crafted an album of material mined from the back catalogue of Chris & Cosey albums under the moniker Carter Tutti. Over the past four years, the couple has been touring vigorously, with the set including revamped / recorded / reengineered versions of the older Chris & Cosey material. So many people approached them with requests for the live recordings of these newer versions that they went into the studio to properly sequence these tracks for an album. And we gotta say that Carter Tutti offer up one hell of a recapitulation, and at times, they really do better themselves than what they had done back in the '80s. When Throbbing Gristle broke up and Chris & Cosey ventured out on their own, they adopted the seductive electro-pop subversion facets of TG to their own devices. Their albums eagerly consumed technology and fused any and all forms of electronics into the sexual / somatic rhythms of the human body. Admittedly, some times their ideas were hindered by the technologies that were at their disposal. Samplers that could only fire so fast and so much. MIDI programming that was limited by latency, memory, and timing issues. Jump several decades, and what Chris & Cosey did in the '80s with a bank of synthesizers and sequencers can now be done on any given phone. So many of these recapitulations work with the same set of melodies and sequences, but smoothed out the technological stumbling blocks. "Driving Blind" was one of the better tracks on their 1984 album Songs Of Love And Lust; and here, the two flesh out the arpeggiation of the sequences with a dense polyphony of streaming electronics above their whipcrack techno production - and Cosey's skulldrill monotone mantras are as compelling, delirious, and sexy as ever. "BeatBeatBeat" is one of the most refreshing recreations, mostly because the original was pretty damn annoying, again with a minimal, surgical set of cybernetic techno and Cosey reworking the vocal chorus into more of a celestial chime and less of a mosquito irritant. The S&M inspired "Sin" finds Cosey channelling Siouxsie more so than she's ever done in the full-throated bellows of sexual depravity above another finely tuned machine of chome-plated techno. One can hope that whatever new material comes out of this redux, it will follow this template which is pretty fucking great.

MPEG stream: Retrodect (2015 Version)
MPEG stream: Driving Blind (2015 Version)
MPEG stream: Sin (2015 Version)

Killer debut of swaggery, gothy murk-punk / noise rock from these East Coast knuckledraggers, whose sound seems to channel everyone from the Stooges to His Electro Blue Voice, Slug to Pussy Galore, Unwound to Cop Shoot Cop. Shambolic and chaotic, wild and unhinged, a sort of bastard blooze, with loose-limbed octopoidal drumming, filthy guitars, howled feral vox, all recorded super hot and in-the-red, lurching from wild almost psychedelic freakouts, to doomy, dirge metal creep, some moments smack of classic glam rock (a la Hanoi Rocks, Smack) but doused in distorto-noise and rolled in dirt and broken glass. Even at its noisiest, some killer melodies and surprising hooks surface throughout, moments of extreme poppiness here and there, but almost always buried beneath an avalanche of crumbling distortion, strangled guitarnoise, flurries of drum damage, psychedelic squalls, out of which emerge some seriously kick ass and weirdly groovy sludge punk not to mention some unlikely and impossibly catchy, dirge-gloom noise pop. Killer stuff. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: To The Sea
MPEG stream: Autumn Cannibalism
MPEG stream: Dear Professor

While Exotika is the fourth and final volume of Chris & Cosey's reissue campaign, this is not the fourth record in their discography. That designation goes to the 1985 album Techno Primitiv, and while there might be some reason for this chronological anomaly, here we have the 1987 album Exotica. At this point in the history of Chris & Cosey, the two had been collecting a considerable amount of gear, expanding upon the voltage control Gristlising machines Chris built for Throbbing Gristle and working with a much more complex MIDI set-up alongside a bunch of Roland drum machines, bass sequencers, and the like (There's a long interview with Chris Carter geeking out over all the gear, for those who may want to know what he was using out of the box). All of this was certainly at the cutting edge of technology in 1987, but you get the sense that Chris & Cosey might have had too many ideas for the technology to handle. The punchy rhythms which drove a good number of their earlier records (and some of the TG tracks as well) move on Exotica at a downtempo electro pace, as if the speed of each tune needed to be slow enough for all of the MIDI gear to catch up to without crapping out. Regardless, Chris & Cosey work well with this slinky, disjointed electro pacing that's always punctuated with a whipcrack of the snare for a seductive, dominatrix vibe. "Dancing On Your Grave" is a particularly choice track, noted more for Cosey's uncharacteristic operatic style of singing which meant bellowing the lyrics instead of whispering them as a sultry spell. "BeatBeatBeat" finds Cosey purposefully clipping her words to match the stream of movie dialogue snippets, moans, screams, and howls that decorate all of the percolating electronics and minimal wave surface tension. The production on Exotica is particularly clean, even as they've polished up all of these early recordings for this vinyl remastering. Here, the duo are more in line with the British avant-pop constructions of He Said, Art Of Noise, and some of the more disjointed moments of New Order.

Throbbing Gristle ceased to exist (for the first time) in 1981, shortly after the transgressive industrialists performed in San Francisco in May of that year. TG were deft in their manipulation of media, ominously stating that "The Mission is terminated," with the 'mission' referring to their numerous stark proclamations against society at large conjoined with their adventurous manglings of noise, rhythm, and atonality. But there's another rather self-evident historical fact: that TG's Genesis P-Orridge broke up with fellow bandmate & long-term partner Cosey Fanny Tutti. Shortly thereafter, Cosey and fellow TG member Chris Carter struck out on their own (with a romantic partnership not far behind), and later on in 1981, Chris & Cosey released their first solo project, the minimal wave / synthpunk masterpiece Heartbeat. In TG, Carter's propensity for beguiling electronic melodies and disco rhythms could be heard on such classic tracks as "United" and "Hot On The Heels Of Love." Both of these were signature tracks for Carter's aesthetic, which espoused an economic proto-techno approach to drum machine rhythms and heavily sequenced electro pulse melodies. Such has been the template for Chris & Cosey's sound since. "Put Yourself In Los Angeles" opens the album with a dizzying percolation of flanged electronics which snaps into a militant march of Cosey's gnashed guitars locked against barked samples of a lunatic radio host and insistent rhythms. At least on this track, it's easy to hear the influence that Chris & Cosey would have on the likes of Front 242, Ministry, and Nine Inch Nails. Other tracks such as the metronomic spiralling of "Voodoo" and the downright pastoral birdsounds of "Moorby" looked back to the Krautrock electronic meanderings of Cluster. "Just Like You" is one of Chris & Cosey's finest tracks, oozing with paranoia and dread throughout the slashed noises and found dialogue haunting the minimalist techno-horror sequencing and sustained minor-key melodies. The title track completes the album brilliantly by looking forward to any number of Detroit-inspired techno trax with double timed rhythms emerging out of maudlin, if cybernetic melodies and electronic-pop propulsive sequencing that really does act as a bridge between the realm of Kraftwerk and the British new wave that was bubbling up around Chris & Cosey back in the day. An absolute classic!

MPEG stream: Put Yourself In Los Angeles
MPEG stream: Just Like You
MPEG stream: Heartbeat

Album number three from the electronic pioneers Chris & Cosey is Songs Of Love & Lust, which originally came out on Rough Trade back in 1984. It was on this album that the signature sounds of Chris & Cosey really developed as something other than what they managed to produce in Throbbing Gristle. It may not be a surprise that this was also around the same time that the other former TG members began to really flourish in their own projects with Psychic TV's masterful Dreams Less Sweet and the epic Scatology record by Coil. Here, on Songs Of Love & Lust, Chris & Cosey were polishing their electro / minimal wave surfaces with hypnotic cascades of arpeggiating synths, plucky drum machinations, and outright majestic swells of electronic wash. A handful of these tracks clearly became anthemic floorfillers that inspired acid house in Chicago, EBM in Belgium, and the Detroit / Berlin axis of techno. "Walking Through Heaven" is one such track with its soaring sustained electronics counterpointing all of the scintillatingly brilliant sequencing. Chris Carter had long been a non-ironic fan of Abba, and yes, he was responsible for the cold-sex disco TG classic "Hot On The Heels Of Love" which essentially eviscerated the Abba structures of baroque disco down to a skeletal rhythm with an uncomfortably breathy sensuality thanks to Cosey's vocals. And the ghosts of "Hot On The Heels Of Love" and "United" (another stellar Carter engineered TG song) emerge within this album (e.g. "Love Cuts," "Chiron" and "Driving Blind"), although they are wholly detacted from the grand guignol commentaries of TG. Rather, Chris & Cosey spoke more of a cybernetic sensuality, embracing the technologies around them as a means of expressing, well songs of love and lust. This album has held up remarkably well, and is required listening for anybody who's been gobbling up anything on Dark Entries, Minimal Wave, Anna Logue, or Vinyl-on-Demand.

The second record released in 1982 from former Throbbing Gristle alumni Chris Carter and Cosey Fanny Tutti still mines the coldwave and industrial electro aesthetics of their debut, Heartbeat (reviewed elsewhere on this list). But it may be their least regarded record due to its more removed soundtrack feel, exploring supposed realms of medieval chants and non-Western religious music, buried as they are under stuffy rhythms, slithery washes and ambient death-disco permutations. Apparently the band and label, Rough Trade had a dispute over the retail price of the record (our original copy says in printed type along the bottom edge "Please Note: Mid-Priced Record") and moved to various other labels shortly after, so it's hard to say if Trance got any real promotion at all. That's not to say Trance is not a worthy album, but its murky combination of earthy propulsive synthesis and detached ritualism make it less instantly accessible than their debut. Trance works best as a connected suite of songs, than individual tracks, a lot like Demdike Stare's twisted soundscapes, which share Chris & Cosey's fascination with an arcane British-ness. Especially the final two tracks, "Until" and "The Gates of Ancient Cities", which are two of our favorite C&C tracks ever, partially because they offer a shimmer of light from what preceded them and make a beautiful pastoral move towards grace.

Calling all goths! Found two last copies of this 2014 RSD title - a 7" packaged with poster, featuring the tracks "Cavity - First Communion" (alt. version) on the A-side and "The Lord's Prayer" on the B-side. It's the Edward Colver edition because "photographer Edward Colver's photographs of the original Christian Death line-up are so integral to the band's oeuvre we decided to create a special 7" package to showcase them". Includes poster. White vinyl.

Longtime regular aQ customer Joshua Maremont commented that Cindytalk's Camoflage Heart is a record which was only really meant for about 30 people. Not that only 30 copies of this record were released, or that it is so terminally obscure and willfully difficult that it by design has a marketing ceiling of an elite few. What he's on about is that Camoflage Heart is such a personal document of self-realized torment, pain, and sorrow that when Cindytalk embarked on the project, it's hard to imagine that they had any delusions about the intensity of this album and the potential for these songs to alienate beyond a limited few. At the helm of Cindytalk is transgendered vocalist Gordon Sharp, who to this day is probably still best known as one of the multitude of vocalists who appeared in This Mortal Coil. In many ways, Sharp is the masculine equal to the Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser in delivering expressionist falsettos, trills, and banshee wails in an eerie, yet heavenly fashion. He's one of those few vocalists who can make the lyrics embody their content by shaping the words into emotionally charged sound. In fact, Sharp and Fraser had come together for a duet back during the Cocteau Twins' Peel Sessions of 1983. In his 4AD lineage, Gordon Sharp's first band was the criminally overlooked punk-glam ensemble The Freeze, where his Marc Bolan strut matched the nightmarish lyrics on top of some truly fantastic Bowie / Buzzcocks sparkplug riffs. Sharp, alongside fellow Freeze band members John Byrne and David Clancey, found shortcomings in the glam punk agenda, and sought a wholly new direction that became Cindytalk. While undeniably dark and theatrical, Cindytalk cannot be pigeonholed as an '80s goth band, even in comparison to such off-kilter groups like The Virgin Prunes, Princess Tinymeat, or Sex Gang Children. Camoflage Heart was Cindytalk's first album and originally came out in 1984; and it's an album like those This Heat albums which is quite unique in terms of production and aesthetic. The album opens with the militant drum machine of "It's Luxury" setting the stage for an explosion from a monotone guitar riff, coated in amplifier grit, distortion, and detuned heaviness that comes across as a mix between late-'80s Skullflower and The Cure's Pornography. At this moment, Sharp's voice also erupts into the mix crooning with a downtrod beauty to this industrial dirge, spitting and swooning at the same time. The next track "Instinct (Back To Sense)" is more of an ambient interlude with distant heartbeat rhythms, haunted with impressionist piano trickles and Sharp's siren song buried between an atmosphere of smoke and mirror. Two more explosive tracks -- "Under Glass" (featuring Mick Harvey from the Birthday Party for a disjointed stutter of abject rock) and "Memories of Skin and Snow" -- are examples of loud / quiet / loud dynamics, later embraced by the likes of Slint and Mogwai to equally profound effect. "Everybody Is Christ" is often viewed as the pinnacle of Camoflage Heart with its harsh arppegiation of electronics cast against Sharp's heavenly voice. Soon after, the album disintegrates in a cascade of delicate piano, voice, and grim drones. As Cindytalk had suffered through the fate of several record companies going out of business (first Midnight Records then World Serpent), their work might have been forgotten had it not been for this reissue. Thankfully, that oversight can now be remedies with this long overdue reissue.

MPEG stream: It's Luxury
MPEG stream: Memories Of Skin And Snow
MPEG stream: Everybody Is Christ

So the rumor goes that Gordon Sharp was invited to join Duran Duran after Sharp dissolved his Edinburgh glam-punk band The Freeze in the late '70s. He turned them down. Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie also put out the request for Sharp to join the Cocteau Twins. After a brief stint accompanying the Cocteau Twins for a Peel Session in 1982 and a guest spot on This Mortal Coil's It'll End In Tears, he opted for his own project -- the obscure, yet majestic Cindytalk. In This World is an opus in every sense of the word. Originally, In This World came out in 1988 as two separate albums under the same name, each with slightly different artwork. One album, a masterpiece of abject post-punk that in all honesty is the closest parallel to Swans' Children Of God; the other, a delicate ambient construct of melancholy piano scarred with surface noice prognosticating pretty much everything that Type Records has released (e.g Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, etc.). It's very good thing that both of these albums have been repackaged into one self-contained object, as the only half of In This World that seemed to be floating around was the piano-laced ambient one. As good as that half is, you need the grit and dirge of its companion album to complete Cindytalk's ideas of grand dualities: heaven / hell, pleasure / pain, holiness / transgression, etc. While billed by Sharp as the 'disgusting' part of the In This World diptych, the first half begins with a lovely tonefloat of scratched violin drones and painterly piano notes. Yet, with the crushing rhythm and noise attack of "Janey's Love," Sharp does not disappoint with his disgusting tag. This is a monstrous industrial dirge with huge monotone slabs of distortion and atonal drones counterpointing Sharp's soaring falsetto. The punk poet Kathy Acker supplies a brief spoken word interlude as the coda to this incendiary number. Immediately hereafter, Cindytalk continue their turgid rhythmic marches with an angular distorted rhythm, slippery bassline mired in audio rust, and twin guitars spitting acid, fire, and brimstone on such tracks as "Gift Of A Knife" and "Circle Of Shit." As the first half of the album progresses, the songs steadily disintegrate as rhythm, song structure, and noise all collapse into a blur of smeared grey that is eerily reflective of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. The piano which opened In This World becomes the dominant sound in Cindytalk's soundscapes, also marking the delineation between the two halves of In This World. Yes, this is the beautiful side of Cindytalk, coated in ash, snow, bruises, and rust. Gordon Sharp's piano playing comes from Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon, which in turn came from Erik Satie; and that impressionist sentiment continues forward amidst subterranean drones and field recordings of barren spaces. Sharp's voice is mostly absent from these tracks, although the eponymous finale to the album showcases one of Sharp's most emotive croons. They really don't make albums like this any more, with such attention to detail and dynamics between rage and beauty. Fortunately, both of these records were concise enough that they could both fit onto one CD; and if you've not had the opportunity to hear Cindytalk, please do not let this album and its predecessor Camoflage Heart pass you by!

MPEG stream: Janey's Love
MPEG stream: Circle Of Shit
MPEG stream: The Beginning Of Wisdom
MPEG stream: Sight After Sight

Live!!

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SORRY. The year 2000 looks to be a busy year for Coil, after so many moons of sonic hybernation. "Astral Disaster" is the follow up to "Musick to Listen to in the Dark" and is equally as limited (only 2000). But that number is better than the original edition of "Astral Disaster" (a vinyl edition of only 99 copies!!!). Originally recorded on Samhain under the Thames River, "Astral Disaster" has been reworked into four lengthy pieces of Coil's techno-pagan ritual music that falls between the Coil aesthetic of the Solstice series of 1998 and "Time Machine"'s droning.

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SORRY. This has been a very productive year for Coil, with mixed results coming from so much activity after the long hibernation. "Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil" is a drastic turn for Coil away from their lunar drones and towards a more abrasive sound, with what sounds like manipulated recordings of rumbling diesel engines or malfunctioning amplifier tremolo. The clatter of cutlery and an intrusion of John Balance's seductive voice breaks up (adds to?) the dissonance of this noise production. Definitely better than the last couple of offerings from Coil, but their quality control could still see some improvement overall... Packaged in one of those plastic clam shell cases (a la the 20' to 2000 series).

We here at Aquarius haven't agreed with the critical acclaim that's greeted the recent output of Coil; however, we do agree that their second proper album "Horse Rotovator" should still be viewed as one of the great electronic albums of the 1980s. Immersed in Industrial Culture's transgressive ideologies, and thus intended as perversions of contemporary media and politics, Coil produced With bands like Peaches and Trans Am trawling the '80s solely for the purpose of irony, Coil's work from that decade may appear today as excessively bombastic, too homoerotic, or downright dated. However, "Horse Rotovator" and the criminally unavailable "Love's Secret Domain" undeniably stand at the apex of Coil's extensive career.

RealAudio clip: Anal Staircase
RealAudio clip: Who By Fire
RealAudio clip: Golden Section

A splendid live album! Actually this is the first in a series of four volumes of Coil live recordings. And if this cd is any indication of the other three, I can't wait! The series begins with the last two concerts (in Prague and Vienna) of their 2002 tour. As opposed to most of their recent studio recordings, each of which has had a considerably singular - primarily drone-based - focus, this presents a much wider scope of Coil's sound. Incredibly vivid soundscapes, meticulous collages, grand dramatic melodic orchestrations, seething minimal spoken word. Coil expertly traverse through all of these. If you're at all acquainted with their work, you'll hear a number of familiar segments, but they're all wonderfully incorporated into the album as a whole. I'd even venture to say that this live album makes for quite a nice introduction to Coil. That said, the one track that absolutely floored me was "Amethyst Deceivers". Although the audio sample only offers a mere glimpse, please do check it out! Of course it's all beautifully recorded, and the roar of the crowd is kept contained to in between songs - allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the performance that's in turns visceral, whimsical, and totally captivating. Recommended. MPEG Download: "Amethyst Deceivers" [/audio/coilamethyst.mp3]

MPEG stream: Amethyst Deceivers

Attention Coil fans... The fourth and final volume in this series of live documents has finally arrived, and it's a double cd set. A characteristically ever-evolving, dramatic montage with heaving drones, wheezing strings and sputtering electronics punctuated by John Balance's guttural shouts and moans and other ghostly effected voices. Visceral, beautiful and deeply moving. Yet another version of "Amethyst Deceivers" (one of Cup's favorites) is included on the second disc - a slower, quieter and much more minimal rendering. Furthermore, with the recent dissolution of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's personal and artistic relationships, perhaps this will mark one of the very final releases from this astoundingly groundbreaking and deeply influential British duo. Well... then again, they've probably got a secret vault filled with as yet unreleased Coil recordings. CD A, titled "The Industrial Use Of Semen Will Revolutionise The Human Race" features three tracks from their April 2000 performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London (please note: this UK live recording was originally released as the Time Machines limited edition cd). CD B contains six tracks from their Barcelona concert two months later. Coil's perfoming line-up for these dates was Balance, Christopherson, Ossian Brown, and Thighpaulsandra, plus viola player William Breeze joined on in Spain.

MPEG stream: Everything Keeps Dissolving
MPEG stream: Elves

The re-issue of "Love's Secret Domain" from 1991 is not unlike unearthing a long lost exquisite treasure. Obsessively coveted and revered over the last decade, it re-emerges still sounding fresh and current. Sadly and strangely, this album was often During the construction of this album, Coil's core duo -- Peter Christopherson and John Balance -- had immersed themselves in the acid house culture of the UK that flourished around The KLF (I don't care what you think of "What Time is Love," The KLF were geniuses in the art of pop subversion), 808 State, and even the early bleep techno from Warp Records. To Coil, the UK rave culture reflected many of their own ideas of transgression through almost pagan rituals of communities uniting around liberating music, sexual exploration, chemical enlightenment, and the release of hidden dark energies from the body and spirit. "Love's Secret Domain" embodied a near-perfect harmony between the dark, occultish overtones from their previous albums "Scatology" and "Horse Rotovator" and the technological futurism at the heart of rave culture. Within this synthesis, Coil has not just created a handful of singles (although "The Snow" and "Windowpane" off of this album still make great dancefloor fodder), but has articulated the entire album as a sonic narrative. Swelling through the sampledelic abstraction on "Disco Hospital" (recently covered by admitted Coil fans Matmos) and the surreal tension of "Things Happen" (with Annie Anxiety Bandez' obtuse guest vocal appearance), Coil offers "The Snow" as a magnificient techno track, with creepy cut-ups of choral elements, constantly shifting and reforming melody patterns, and an 808 techno pulse. "Windowpane" in turn is far more seductive in its low slung bassline and downtempo pace. The rest of the album continues through a darkened path of hallucinatory electronics, intricate instrumentations, and occasional bursts of subverted pop sentiment. Unlike a lot of electronica records, nothing on "Love's Secret Domain" ever feels like filler. This is a marvelous record that even after a decade has very few rivals.

RealAudio clip: The Snow
RealAudio clip: Windowpane
RealAudio clip: Love's Secret Domain

During the past decade, Coil has undergone a drastic metamorphosis that began with the extravagantly dark electronica of "Love's Secret Domain" and continued up to the kosmische ambience of "Musick To Listen To In Dark Vol 2." With all of the albums since Coil intended to thematically correspond these songs' droning poetry to the solstices and equinoxes corresponding to when they were made. Mostly they center around a miasmic abstraction of spartan, dirge arrangements for a few instruments (cellos, church organs, spanish guitar), maintaining their solemn pursuit into sonic alchemy. For the most part, Coil's John Balance hushes his voice into mere whispers of his pagan recitations, which barely stand out of the lulling instrumentation, although "The White Rainbow" track from the Winter single stands out as a eulogaic song dominated by Balance's rich singing. The album works much better than as a collection of singles whose original release format seemed far too abrupt for the extended atmospheres that are common throughout the whole series. And to piss off everybody who bought the original series, Coil included a bonus live track.

RealAudio clip: A White Rainbow
RealAudio clip: Bee Stings

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SORRY. While Coil has released a plethora of side-projects (Black Light District, Elph, Time Machines, etc.), soundtracks, and limited singles (including the solstice/ equinox series from 1998) since 'Love's Secret Domain' of 1992, they have finally released the fourth 'proper' Coil album. Dark brooding beatless synth chords and field recordings are slowly unveiled as John Balance delivers a menacing voice-over. Thighpaulsandra (Julian Cope's psychedelic sidekick) joins the band for this album, to effective means, with his Conrad Schnitzler-esque arpeggiated synth attack on 'Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night'. There's been much discussion as to whether 'Musick' holds up, as one of Coil's finer moments. But remove the pressure of the 'Coil legacy', taking it on musical merits alone, and you'll find it to be quite beautiful; a dark, brooding record of 'night music'.

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SORRY. The timeless electronic swoop of Coil's "Time Machines" repeats itself in the swelling warm drones of mostly analogue synthesis on "Queens of The Circulating Library." John Balance (without Peter Christopherson) had written a poem to be recited by Dorothy Lewis - the mother of Thighpaulsandra who aids in the breathy swells of sound.

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Music for fans of Coil, made by fans of Coil, and released with the blessing of Coil. "The Plastic Spider Thing" is a remix of Coil's past works by Drazen from Black Sun Productions, a Swiss outfit that follows the Coil's aesthetic with incredible precision (often to the point of losing their own personalities to Coil's spell, when Coil themselves emphasize the necessity for individual expression). Originally, this piece was a soundtrack to a sexually explicit performance between the members of Black Sun Productions. Drawing mostly from the lunar ambience of modern Coil (i.e. post "Love's Secret Domain"), Drazen ran Coil's occultish ambience through multiple delay machines and re-sampling techniques to attain a fractured collage of pulsated loops that point back to the original Coil numbers. The lack of John Balance's whispered vocals (which were once Coil's biggest strength on early albums like "Horse Rotovator," but now are the band's weakest link) is welcome for "The Plastic Spider Thing;" but, this album never strives to escape its orbit around Coil's little black sun. If you love Coil, here's another fine album for you. If you're only curious, try the aforementioned "Love's Secret Domain" first.

RealAudio clip: Track 6
RealAudio clip: Track 8

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This new one from cold wave gloom poppers Cold Cave definitely threw us for a loop at first. Although really, we shouldn't have been all that surprised, as the sound of Cold Cave has definitely seemed to be moving away from the underground for a while now. And it seems this is the record where they're finally going for it. Big time. The sounds are essentially the same, classic eighties synth pop, but here, that sound is delivered with such vitriol and bombast. And given such a massive shiny production, and hell even the songs are poppier and catchier and more commercial sounding. Folks were shocked when Cold Cave's "Life Magazine" wound up on a Radioshack commercial, and Cherish The Light Years takes that whole thing a step further, positioning themselves as a sort of stadium rock version of their former selves. It's still gloomy synth pop, but now the synths are epic and majestic, the arrangements too, and the vocals, even more dramatic and strident and ready to lead sing alongs at Madison Square Garden. If you didn't know this was Cold Cave, you might confusionally cycle through the various possibilities: Interpol, Maximo Park, The National, The Editors, yeah, seems weird, and it is, but this is the new Cold Cave, stadium rock era Depeche Mode merged with the new wave of, well new wave. We've seen folks mention New Order, and even Scott Walker, and those definitely could apply, but the Depeche Mode vibe is huge, imagine classic DM with a super modern production, and that's pretty much Cherish The Light Years. Lots of folks around here hated this at first, but once you get over the disappointment that there won't be any more Cold Cave records like Love Comes Close, and just embrace this new sound, this is actually pretty rad.

MPEG stream: The Great Pan Is Dead
MPEG stream: Pacing Around The Church
MPEG stream: Confetti

On one end of the Cold Cave spectrum, there is the blistering terror of low-fi electronics with sparse hints of new wave flecked through a sound better suited to Wolf Eyes; and on the other, Cold Cave can effortlessly toss out a darkly pop-eyed, minimal wave gem that wouldn't out of place next to Depeche Mode or Gary Numan. So far, Cold Cave (aka Wes Eisold) has not done us wrong no matter what he ends up producing. The hyper limited Etsel And Ruby 12" is of the latter, poppier sensibility, in the footsteps of the terminally catchy single The Trees Grew Emotions And Died from 2008. The production values here are a little higher than the gutter-punk scratchiness found on the Cremations collection; and while punchier drum machines and upfront vocals give Cold Cave a gloss with a broader appeal, we seriously hope that he doesn't leave the nastier sound behind. The A side "Love Comes Close" is a jangly, jaunty number that could very well be a lost track from The Cure's The Head On The Door, with Eisold's croon almost sounding like Stephin Merritt. The first of two B sides finds Eisold handing over the vocal duties to an unknown female singer, whose detached, cold vocals fit perfectly with the Cure / Joy Division basslines laced around the darkened electronics. The cut is like the best Fad Gadget song you've never heard before, with an insistent electroid melody that builds and builds throughout the track. Great stuff. Limited to 300 copies!!! Available only from the label and right here at aQ!