[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 5851 through 5900 of 19388.

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

Fastest's Theme, a Record Of The Week a few lists back, was a surprise hit around here (not a surprise for everyone though, some of us knew, few would be able to resist the twisted confusional home brewed madness that is Fastest), but we sold them like crazy, and in that review we mentioned Fastest also had a handful of other records, and got a bunch of reponses from folks wanting more. So here you go, Into The Night, not sure where it falls in the Fastest catalog, which is now up to 8 or 10 releases, but it's another one of our favorites, second only to Theme, and like Theme, the sound here is pretty idiosyncratic and difficult to describe, warbly buzzying synths, stumbling weirdly programmed drums, that seem to explode into impossibly tangled rhythmic flurries, that is when they're not locked into some warped robotic groove, the melodies are twisted as well, moody and melancholy one second, then all sunshiney the next, like the music for the final screen on some old school video game, all 8 bit bleep and bloop, underpinned by weirdly bloopy low slung bass, and those chaotic beats. And did we mention the vocals, sort of sung/spoken, Allan here thinks it sounds like rapping, and likens Fastest to mush mouthed headphone rapper Sensational, but Fastest is much more strident, his vocals urgent and dramatic, often delivered in what sounds like a growled death metal grunt, but just as often whispered or crooned, the vocals locked tight with staccato rhythms, the ominous buzzing synths, the midi guitar melodies, slipping from epic and intense and almost heavy, to fuzzy and bouncy, but more often than not somewhere right in between. In some ways, Into The Night is a bit darker than Theme, and the spastic avalanche like drum programming sounds even more out of control, which is most definitely a good thing. For more on our obsession with Fastest, check out our review of Theme elsewhere on the aQ site, but if you've yet to check out the fractured and fantastically fucked up musical stylings of this one man band, this is as good a place to start as any, and who knows, you might find yourselves needing ALL of them. We did! Like Theme, the packaging is awesome and over the top and a bit confusional. A custom (not real) barcode right on the front cover, a cool tray card that wraps up and around the edge, the Fastest logo all sharp and heavy metal looking, notes exclaiming "digital audio compact disc" and "state of the art phonorecord", the ASCAP publishing logo/info not less than FOUR times on the back cover, a shoutout to TDK, and of course, like Theme, a production credit for someone/something named Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical. Oh, and a cool lazer etched discface! Needless to say (but we will anyway) CRAZY RECOMMENDED.

MPEG stream: Mnemonic Dreams
MPEG stream: Prevail
MPEG stream: Effusive Feelings
MPEG stream: Legend

We've noticed a lot of customers going a little Fastest crazy recently. Which doesn't surprise us. In fact, we were so nuts for Fastest, we made his Theme album our Record Of The Week one week. Although considering what Fastest actually sounds like, maybe we are a little surprised. It is, as we've explained in the past, some of the most fantastically twisted, and utterly polarizing music we've heard in ages. Like all the best art, there's no middle ground with Fastest. There are only two responses, the first, a baffled look on the face, and the thought that how could something like that exist and why would people want to listen to it. The second being, a baffled look on the face, and the thought that how could something like that exist and I MUST OWN EVERY SINGLE RECORD!!! And we're not exaggerating. While there may be a few folks out there who have indeed just bought one, maybe two, the majority of folks do indeed go nuts and order them ALL. This one might be designed more for you dabblers out there, as it's a sampler of sorts, featuring a couple tracks from each of the Fastest records, but we have to say, we've sold a bunch so far, and most to folks WHO ALREADY OWN ALL THE RECORDS!! Such is the power of Fastest. If by now, you're wondering what the heck we're on about, and haven't already checked out our Record Of The Week review for Theme, or or review of Into The Night, well, let us tell you all about the many joys of Fastest. This time it starts with the wonderfully redundant album title, MAGICMANCY, which yes, basically means 'magic magic', and this is indeed some magical musical magic. This one man bedroom band from the East Bay, seemingly armed with a guitar synth and a drum machine, creates some of the strangest music we've ever heard, it sometimes gets filed in the metal section, due in part to the very metal looking Fastest logo, but also because the vocals are a mysterious sort of black metal rasp, but the music is about as far from metal as it could get, Allan thinks it sounds like hip hop (no one else does), imagine warped synth melodies, sputtering stumbling rhythms, slipping from dark ominous creep, to sweetly melodic Legend Of Zelda style video game music, and back again, it's twisted, baffling and totally brilliant. Check out opener "Blame", with it's wild free jazz blackened psych squall opening salvo which quickly gives way to some fuzzy synthy drift, the vocals here definitely almost rapped, the song constantly peppered with reprises of that opening squall, not to mention jagged shifts, from part to part, the sound buzzy and fuzzy, the vocals sounding very Lou Reed-ish here for sure. Then there's "Legend" with its pounded synth organ churn, it's mechanical drumming, dirgey and doomy, a little bit proggy, the grunted vocals all tangled up with the awesomely atonal synth buzz. "Foresee" offers up our favorite side of Fastest, wildly sputtery almost Indian sounding rhythms, haunting minor key melodies, the opening is dark and mysterious, but then it suddenly shifts into a fuzzy groove, again, constantly twisting and shifting, the sounds all over the place, often the song structured like changing channels, abrupt and off kilter. "Jetsound II" is one of our favorites, starting with the simulated rumble of jet sounds before slipping into a dreamy lilting little ditty that sounds like the final screen from some 8-bit video game, transformed into a sort of eighties soft rock ballad. We could go on, but by now you probably know if this is your cup of tea. For more about Fastest, and to feed what we can only imagine will blossom into a full blown obsession like it has in the rest of us, go check out the reviews of Theme and Into The Night elsewhere on the site. And for those who have resisted up until now, this might be the perfect way to ease your way in. Brilliant and baffling. If you want all six of the other records too, just ask...

MPEG stream: Blame
MPEG stream: Legend
MPEG stream: Foresee
MPEG stream: Jetsound II

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

It's been a boom in outsider music these last few weeks at AQ, first it was the random rediscovery of Doug Hream Blunt's Gentle Persuasion, a fantastic and fantastically strange disc of breezy lo-fi outsider funk, that was dropped off by the man himself and required quite a bit of reconnoitering to track him down to get more (a continuing saga). And now there's this. A mysterious disc by a one man band known simply as Fastest, a cd-r that just showed up here one day, and none of us can remember how or when. In the mail? Dropped off? Spontaneous generation? It was just here one day, and we were mesmerized from the second we laid eyes on it. The cover is a huge blue owl against a blue background. The band name Fastest is written in big green letters, in a sort of cartoonish metal font, and superimposed right on the cover is a big barcode. The whole thing printed out on a home laser printer. The tray card folds all the way up around the side so there's an extra panel visible through the clear tray that boldly proclaims: "digital audio compact disc - state of the art phonorecord." The tray card features the ASCAP logo (ASCAP is the company that determines musician royalties) no less than three times, the logo is superimposed again on the back in a little white square, and at the top, blue text explains that the record was "Produced by Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical". We were almost afraid to throw it on, because we were convinced that there was no way the music could live up to the cryptic promise of the packaging. We were wrong. The title track starts things off, and immediately you know this is like nothing you've ever heard... a flurry of lo-fi distorted programmed beats, that sound like they could have been lifted straight off that Vijaya Anand Dance Raja Dance Bollywood compilation on Luaka Bop from years back, but any resemblance to Bollywood ends there, as some strange atonal midi synth guitars swoop in, along with some woozy warbly bass, the strangely syncopated programmed beats sputtering wildly in the background, the song slipping into a moody drift, the vocals a strange ominously hushed whisper, that even remind us a bit of the slowed down mush mouthed rapping of Sensational, eventually there's a sort of chorus, the midi guitars buzzing, while a strange synth unfurls a twisted melody, and then there's the most brilliantly baffling break, a stop/start flurry of stuttering beats, and some more warped woozy melodies, eventually joined by a sort of midi guitar least, atonal and detuned, the whole thing sounding like it's melting before your ears, before finally returning to the 'chorus'. Holy shit. What just happened? What is this? How had we not heard this before? Very reminiscent in fact of those absurd midi guitar releases we raved about on lists past, all of them work of a single man, released under different names: Shevelreq, Xynfonica, Gluttony, Thursar. If you were as into those as we were, stop reading and buy this now. Everyone else, read on, and sink deeper into the glorious musical madness that is Fastest... The first song is so perfect, and perfectly demented, we dared not go on. We just kept listening to that one song over and over and over. Heck we wanted it to be OUR theme song. But eventually we knew we had to go on, and somehow, Fastest managed to confuse us again. And again. After some simulated jet engine sounds, "Jet Sound II" begins, but it's super melodic and all 8 bit sounding, and reminds us of music from The Legend Of Zelda, but those vocals, dark and ominous, weirdly offset the cheerful melodies and loping programmed rhythms. "Televise" begins with sample bells, and immediately returns us to The Legend Of Zelda, until the vocals come in, locked in tight with the main melody, making for some strange electronic lo-fi midi-pop mystery. "While You're Here" might be our other favorite (if we were forced to pick), with it's haunting melody, over minor key distorted finger picked guitar, tinkling chimes, very cinematic, again like some dramatic moment in a video game, but definitely dark and haunting, but of course, the song slips right back into some Zelda-y minimal 8 bit balladry, replete with those slightly ominous gruff vocals. "Million Lies" begins with some dramatic syncopated start/stop dynamics, before slipping into some pulsing electronic groove, but this time, the vocals are super distorted, and even more creepy, and the drums erupt into little flurries of rhythmic tangle. And so it goes, the sound drifting from Bollywood flecked 8 bit video game soundtrack songsmithery, to eighties style midi driven synthwave, and some hard to describe stops in between, culminating in the final three tracks, maybe the darkest and heaviest of the bunch. "Seasons Change" is all distorted bass, stereo panned so the buzz flits from ear to ear, the drums spastic and skittery, the vocals as grim and ominous as at any point, the melodies creepy and minor key, which leads right into "Alter Fate" all swirling synths and stuttery almost IDM sounding beats, the whole thing blurry and smeary, before slipping back into the dirgey synthy creep of the previous track, a sort of second movement, laced with more strange disembodied high end melodies over the tumbling drum fills and more gruff whispery vox, finally culminating in "The Wind", which begins with appropriately enough, swirling wind, distorted acoustic guitar, a gauzy patina of lo-fi buzz, before finally launching into a tense stretch of buzzing swirling electronic weirdness, the various chunks of low end fuzz and warped melodies, adding some serious pathos, growing ever more distorted and finally finishing in a blaze of super distorted programmed beats, chaotic and noisy and psychedelic, before winding down with more acoustic guitar. Absolutely baffling and disturbing brilliantly, total genius outsider mystery music, this is the sort of thing groups like Gary War and Ariel Pink are striving for, but just can't ever quite reach. Fantastically idiosyncratic, highly personal, and completely warped and cracked and demented and literally unlike anything you've heard. It's not hard to imagine this finding its way onto one of those incredible strange music comps or one of those Songs In The Key Of Z collection, it's certainly divisive, it's definitely too much for some folks, so be warned, this is strange strange stuff. But folks around here have become a bit obsessed, and can't seem to get enough. Which is good, cuz there are at least THREE other cd-r's. If you decide you need those too, just ask...

MPEG stream: Theme
MPEG stream: Televise
MPEG stream: Million Lies
MPEG stream: Seasons Change

**SALE **SALE* *SALE**

Last list we recommended an album of ethnic-improv jamming recorded in Morocco, circa 1991, by eccentric Canadian avant-garde instrumental trio FAT. That was one of two previously unreleased (and very different!) FAT albums from the early '90s that only just saw the light of day, and this is the other one - which, getting even more eccentric & avant-garde, doesn't actually even feature a single note of music played by anyone in FAT. Instead, it's an illicit, unauthorized 'remix' of a 1990 album by a then-popular Czech heavy metal band called Citron, the 24 track masters of which FAT somehow got their hands on while on a sojourn in Prague, and proceeded to completely fuck with, to the point where it sounds pulled apart and twisted inside out, Citron's cheesy metal processed into a very strange, unrecognizable soundscape, full of histrionic vocals soaring into echoing void-space, backing synth fills morphed into symphonic ambience, and stripped-down drums juxtaposed with random-seeming guitar licks. It's like the album itself took some very bad drug, with various elements oddly emphasized and effected, stuff sped up or slowed down, making for a delirious, utterly WTF? mix that's both creepy ('cause it's so insane-sounding) and amusing for the same reason, reminding us a little bit at times of what those 'shreds' videos on YouTube sound like, if you know what we're talking about. Certainly unique, and certainly weird.

MPEG stream: Uragan
MPEG stream: Hrabenky, Hrabata
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We remember FAT from the late '80s, early '90s, a noisy experimental improv-rock trio from Canada (by way of Prague, for a while there) who palled around with the likes of Borbetomagus and Elliott Sharp, their music often difficult, but interesting and unique. Now, suddenly, FAT are back, or rather, a couple previously unreleased (and very unusual) recordings from their heyday have just appeared on cd - one that's an illicit, extreme "remix" of a 1990 album by a Czech heavy metal band (!) called Citron, and another, this one we're listing now, that FAT recorded in Morocco in 1991, collaborating seamlessly with a number of local Berber musicians that FAT befriended, and had already spent much time jamming with on visits over several previous years. It's full of squeaky, endless trance-like grooves, joyous voices, traditional folk melodies, dense percussive rhythms, and some bits of damaged Derek Bailey sounding guitar - quite an ethnic/improv fusion for fans of Sun City Girls, The Ex, and lots of the North African guitar music you'll find on Sublime Frequencies. Pretty phenomenal, and probably now FAT's most accessible album as well as most exotic.

MPEG stream: Fih L'Ain
MPEG stream: Shluh
MPEG stream: Tbia Sem L'hnache

Sometimes some good old fashioned 'rock math' is the best way to start a review... Imagine Rhode Island spazz-rock duo Lightning Bolt, via Japanese hyper-prog heavies Ruins, mix in a little Hella, maybe some Crom-Tech and some Flying Luttenbachers, and then filter it all through the cartoon music of Carl Stalling, but don't stop there, this drums/keyboard duo also lace their sprawling drum-synth duels with stretches of gorgeously creepy Carpenter-ish synth soundtrackery, and bizarre samples, sometimes locking into churning sprawls of krautish hypno-rock, and other times exploding into shards of what almost sounds like Venetian Snares style drill & bass. Thankfully, there's more to Fat32 than pointless ADD mathiness, with the songs displaying a surprising knack for melody and groove, and cleverly hiding proper songs amidst all the genre stutter and controlled chaos. That said, this is still the sort of head spinning, ultra acrobatic musicianship that makes Fat32 sound right at home on Web Of Mimicry, alongside outfits like Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, although sonically these guys do tend more toward the metal/punk side of the spectrum. Just check out the sample below for "Hard Drive", which might be the best of the bunch, a dizzying, super hypnotic blast of hyper rhythmic metallic pound, the Lightning Bolt vibe in full effect, but the keyboard gives Fat32 a much more expansive sonic palette, letting the keys somehow supply both the buzzing synth riffage, as well as blasts of 8-bit video game squiggles, all sort of effects and constantly morphing tangled melodies, the sound shifting frenetically from looped metallic mesmer to pounding chugging heaviness and back again. Then there's the epic 17 minute closer, which displays the group's Naked City like mastery of genre hopping, and the same sort of desire to cram it all into one song, and they pull it off, with most of the track pounding mathily, but they pepper it with squalls of psychedelic shimmer, bloopy video game goofiness, Pantera vocal samples (!), lumbering downtuned doominess, cheesy organ grinding polka, wide open stretches of abstract free noise drift, droned out textures and layers, super angular math-punk and plenty more. Fans of any or all of the above mentioned bands will dig for sure...

MPEG stream: Hard Drive
MPEG stream: Temper

One of two new tape releases from Root Strata this week, this one from the cryptically monikered Father, who we know absolutely nothing about, but whose sound will no doubt hit the spot for fans of other recent Root Strata cassette jams from Arrow Kleeman, Ekin Fil, Tom Carter and Ben Vida. Return Of The Father is a hushed blurred shimmer of sounds, a collage of what sounds like tangled melodies, finger picked guitars, deep resonant drones, all smeared into hazy, gauzy, shapeless atmospheres, lush layered clouds of disembodied melody drifting through grey skies, a muted murky bleary eared churn one second, a soft cacophony of chimes and tinkling melodies the next, occasional tiny avalanches of percussion woven into dreamily clattery drift, but the sounds seeming to all slowly gravitate toward a gauzy pop ambient blur, channeling Tim Hecker, Belong, Mountains, Klimek and other similarly minded sonic obfuscationists. So nice. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Blocks
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Everything about Father Beard is far away, which makes sense since it's the project of former Mirza members Brian Lucas and Mark Williams and they live far away -- from us and from each other. Brian lives in Thailand and Mark lives in Spain, but somehow, it seems like they managed to meet in an air cave high above their two countries and record an album of narcotic, whisper-quiet songs. Plodding bass keeps the music from drifting aimlessly in the ether, while street-sound field recordings lend a Sublime Frequency sense of mystery and foreignness. Imagine Spacemen 3 buzzing out of a broken radio in an un-airconditioned cab on a street crowded with tuk-tuks and bovine - but instead of being sweaty, dusty and stressed out, you're high on delay pedals, drifting down the Mekong and off the edge of the earth. Recommended listening for humid afternoons and early morning opium dens.

MPEG stream: Siamese Gift
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Yet another Fleet Foxes offshoot whose sound doesn't fall that far from the FF tree. And we're not complaining. It took us a while to decide that we did indeed love the Fleet Foxes, but once we did, we couldn't get enough, which makes this proliferation of sort-of-sound-alikes good news for folks like us who love THAT sound and want more. But like the Poor Moon record we reviewed recently, Father John Misty, the work of former FF drummer Joshua Tillman, who seems to effortlessly capture the same sort of timeless sounding folk pop as the FF mothership. But where Fleet Foxes tended more toward traditional folk sounds, Father John Misty is definitely on the pop side of the spectrum, the arrangements lush and expansive, strings and percussion, piano and all manner of studio filigree, the songs rife with rich layered drones, lush old fashioned production, and Tillman's voice is fantastic, spending much of its time in the upper registers, sounding not unlike Roy Orbison at times, the music appropriately orchestral, and then there are the lyrics, which pop out once in a while, especially when Tillman is singing something about punching himself in the face, or something about Jesus Christ, but delivered in that gorgeous velvety croon, over some lush dreamy twang flecked pop, it's hard not to love. Lots of dreamy ooooh's and aaaah's, cool crunchy guitars, big bombastic drumming (just check out "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings", which might be our favorite track), wheezing organs, groovy electric pianos, programmed beats here and there, slippery slide guitar, the songs all over the map, stripped down folk, fuzzy almost indie pop, dark country, lush chamber pop, sixties psychedelic rock, and more often than not, some mix of them all. Super cool eye popping psychedelic cover art too!

MPEG stream: Hollywood Forever Cemetary Sings
MPEG stream: Funtimes In Babylon
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The return of these aQ beloved Italian sonic oddballs, and it seems they just continue to get more and more odd with every release. After their first record showed up mysteriously at aQ a few years back, we became pretty obsessed, their sound a twisted DIY punk rock / dronefolk / math rock weirdness, that creeped and slithered more than it rocked (although it occasionally did that too), but whatever FM were doing, it always seemed strangely rickety, and on the verge of collapse, haunting dirges, weirdly twisted industrial plods, the guitars gnarled and angular, the rhythms junkyard crunch and clatter, the melodies wheezing and woozy, the vocals hazy and druggy and lost in the mix, and if anything, this new one seems to be the culmination of that twisted sound, simultaneously pushing it even further, but also honing it into something impossibly tight, while still appearing shambling and darkly chaotic. The opening track almost sounds like some lost seventies folk outfit filtered through some more modern freakfolk combo, the vocals a lovely mellifluous croon, over tangled detuned melodies, wheezing chordal whirs, little squalls of angular crunch, all stretched out and blurred into some sort of hazy psychedelic sonic ritual, it's not hard to imagine these guys cover Comus, or even this as some sort of seance with the group channeling Comus' frenzied demonic acid folk, but here transformed into something a bit darker and woozier. The second track employs the same palette, and uses it to create a Swans like lumber, all super distorted crumbling crunch, and keening high end melody, so gorgeously creepy and darkly ominous, harrowing and haunting in equal measure, way too short at 2+ minutes, we definitely found ourselves wanting it to never end. But then the next track explodes with some strange pulsating processed riffing, sounding almost metallic, even a little black metal, but smeared and warbly, transforming into something more buzzing and almost jazzy, maybe like a more frenzied Necks, but over the top, the group layer strident boy / girl vocals, the result fierce and feral, but pulsing, pulsating and totally mesmerizing. Normally, this is where we'd say something like, "and so it goes", or "the rest of the record plays out similarly", but it just doesn't. After a brief bit of doom flecked witchy dirge-folk, the band offer up what might be our favorite track, a dark intense industrial epic, all soaring strings, and martial percussion, with crooned male vox, yowled female vox, it almost sounds like some modern opera composed by Der Blutharsch or Death In June, which halfway through collapses into a glorious sprawl of swirling, shimmering, buzzing layered dronemusic, that again ends way too soon. The band touch on dark doom-ed balladry, twisted, bizarrely produced circus-y post industrial stomp, blackened dronescaping, and some strange gnarled detuned dream pop before it's over, proving impossibly adept at pretty much every bizarre thing they try, and at combining any seemingly incompatible sounds they fancy. So great, and once again, we find ourselves wondering how Father Murphy continue to fly so far beneath the radar. We imagine they won't remain there for long...

MPEG stream: How We Ended Up With Feelings Of Guilt
MPEG stream: His Face Showed No Distortions
MPEG stream: It Is Funny, It Is Restful, But Came Quickly

Croce is the newest collection of distorted, dark psychedelic, industrial cabaret from this Italian boy/girl duo, who, after a series of ever darkening releases, have arrived at this, a concept record about the cross, and yeah, it's THAT cross (Croce in Italian), with one side of the record sonically representing the suffering and sacrifice, the flipside reflecting what comes after, the end of said suffering, resurrection, or perhaps oblivion. The sounds are shadowy, the atmospheres muddy and murky, from which spring unexpected blurts of impossibly catchy noise pop, approaching at times something almost operatic, like some twisted psychedelic musical detailing the trials and tribulation of the crucifixion, with male and female vox intertwined over distorted blasts of guitar crunch, anchored by stuttering homebuilt percussion, a sound both textural and nuanced, but also noisy and chaotic, that chaos carefully sculpted into jagged shards of fragmented pop, and that pop oven into a dramatic, almost theatrical songsuite. At points, the songs can seem to gradually lose cohesion, the lumbering and loping angular grooves (d)evolving into wild psychedelic squalls, or alternately stripped down to just the skeletal essence of the song, while the duo proceed to add layer upon layer, rhythm upon rhythm, working their way up to another blast of glorious cacophony. That percussion is a driving force throughout, whether it's swirling billows or rubberband twang and big booted thump, or sinewy pulses, wound up into tense, and intense low slung swaggers, all beneath cascades of wild junkyard crumble and soaring devotional vox, sung/spoken intonations over bell-like clang and the almost tuned sounding metallic sproings of reverberating springs. The first side finishes up with "In Solitude", an appropriately dour slab of murky miserablism that sounds like a slow sonic death, the hazy, nocturnal sound gradually fading, retreating further into the shadows, loping, lumbering creeps, soft chordal swirls beneath strange metallic rhythms, too slow to be motorik, but a similarly hypnotic vibe, albeit more sort of druggy and slo-mo, a haunting moody dirge that dissolves into that ineffable space that exists between the record's second side, the netherworld, the afterlife, Purgatory even, an endless expanse of nothingness, from which few return. But Father Murphy erupt from this Stygian blackness, with the second half of Croce, meant to be the light, to the A side's dark, and yet the opener is still somehow strangely doomy, a field of metallic shimmer, and more junkyard percussion, strung together into a spare framework, over which dramatic male vocals soar, the female vocals responding like some demonic Greek chorus, but true to the theme, the vibe grows strangely warm, an otherworldly glow, nearly sundappled in places, you can almost hear the rays of light breaking through the grey cloud filled skies. But really, these two have a strange idea of 'light', with "All The People Yelling Fire" seemingly still cloaked in shadow, a lumbering cacophony of rhythmic crashes and metallic pounds, not to mention some elephant like bleats, moaning horns suspended in a field of distant drones, very ominous and sinister, but before you know it, it's right back to the clatter and clang, leading directly into the penultimate "We Walk By Faith", a harrowing hymn, both droney and almost liturgical, with throat singing like vocalizations, wound around long, softly undulating tones, modern minimalism by way of some ancient ritual, the music evoking flickering firelight, dancing shadows, primitive worship to the cosmos, driven by muted thumps and buried beats, another one of those rickety rhythms surfacing from beneath the murk, a swampy, apocalyptic psychedelia, melted down into a viscous sonic crawl. The finale, "They Won't Hurt You", is all majestic pipe organ, a stirring and stately court music, lush and lovely and epic, the sound of rebirth, redemptive and ultimately restorative, a return from the beyond, arisen from the grave, ascended into the heavens, the sounds drifting upwards, beyond the galaxy, the universe, into the unknowable infinity.

MPEG stream: A Purpose
MPEG stream: So This Is Permanent
MPEG stream: In Solitude
MPEG stream: We Walk In Faith

A while back we went kind of nuts for these Italians, selling tons of their And He Told Us album. We've been hankering for more, and here we do indeed have more, sadly, we managed to get just TEN copies of this, a super limited live release, limited in fact to a mere 50 copies. Needless to say, this is already sold out at the label and out of print. But we figured folks who dug the full length might want to grab one of these, or folks who somehow missed out completely, might find this inexpensive live set a good introduction. Either way, we only have 10 copies, so act fast. They're pro silver cassettes, and they're housed in cool hand stamped recycled sleeves. So what's the deal with Father Murphy, let's revisit out review of And He Told us, and our description of FM's sound: It's a bit like folk, a little bit like post punk math rock, a little avant noise, but stripped way down into something skeletal, they definitely sound a little bit like one of the new breed of freak folk psych folk cd-r outfits, but at the same time, they sound like NOTHING you've ever heard. Detuned guitar plod, spaced out rhythmic thump, lots of deep shimmery ambience and FX drenched drifts, wavery falsetto crooning, warbly organs, and the occasional bursts of feral yowling, wow. Unhinged, fractured, freaky, passionate, super intense and awesome. Comparisons have been made to Robert Wyatt, This Heat, Samla Mamas Manna, we also hear plenty of Marc Ribot in the guitars, all angular and off kilter, there's also some mysterious female vocals, all beneath weepy mournful Morricone-ish twang, a sound both woozy and ominous, dreamy and dense, a glorious deathlike dirge, part Dirty Three, part fluttery forest folk, a little wheezy organ dirge pop, some slooooooowed down Blonde Redhead, like we said this is super hard to describe, but what we do know is we love it.

Latest mysterious missive from these Italian post punk noise rock drone folk oddballs, whom we initially discovered via a strange unmarked package that just showed up in the mail one day. We like to think it was preordained, cuz these guys seem like they belong in aQuarius. As the above descriptor again demonstrates, these guys are definitely hard to pin down, their sound constantly mutating, not just from record to record, but from song to song. A gloriously dark and haunting world of sound, that here takes the form of a brooding sort of dirgery, reverbed guitars, simple plodding percussion, wheezing organs, drawled down-in-the-mix vox, occasional bursts of strange effects, a mesmerizing bit of dronerock, equal parts post and kraut, fans of Circle will dig too, it's that sort of minimal meditative cyclical hypnorock, but here dialed way down, to something more brooding and haunting. The whole record is equally compelling, shimmering guitars wreathed in hissy static, tense stretched out drones, pulsing percussion, slow building churns drenched in sonic grit, abstract vocals, all very dramatic and intense, brooding and darkly ominous, a swampy slithery gloom, some sort of apocalyptic slowcore balladry, like a way more minimal and abstract Woven Hand, occasionally peppered with creepy Comus like acid folk vocals, but for the most part stripped down and murky and gorgeously malevolent. And they finish off with Leonard Cohen's "There Is A War", which the group easily transform into their own, with sung/spoken male/female vocals over looped sounding fuzzy melodies and propulsive muted rhythms, the whole track at once ominously Teutonic, but also strangely melodic and mesmerizing. Which pretty much describes this whole record. Such a weird and amazing band, such a weird and amazing record. Definitely recommended for anyone into dark and droney, murky and mysterious, dense and dreamy, which we'd guess is a whole heck of a lot of you!

MPEG stream: We Now Pray With Two Hands We Now Pray With True Anger
MPEG stream: Until the Path is No Longer

We raved about the most recent record from these Italian weirdos, a confusional mix of droned out folk, abstract psychedelia, math rock, punk rock, and who knows what else, but that's precisely why we dig them so much. We initially thought this was a new single, but in fact, it's part of a remix campaign for that record, "Anyway, Your Children Will Deny It", with various tracks being reworked and reimagined by friends of the band. The A side here finds Indian Jewelry transforming the FM original into a weird industrial abstract loopscape, a pulsing chordal bleat, over metallic shimmer and FX squiggles, which are soon joined by brass like moans, that begin to skip and glitch and skitter, the whole track becoming more and more rhythmic and hypnotic, all the while remaining murky and woozily psychedelic. French composer and aQ pal Philippe Petit offers up his FM rework, a staticky field of glitchy pulsations, heavily panned, swinging druggily from speaker to speaker, before in swoop moaning processed cellos (?), but wrapped in a crumbing distortion, the sounds blurring and bleeding into each other before transforming into a drowsy dirge, laced with mysterious effects and random blurts of clatter and crunch. The sound suddenly warped and fractured, pitch shifted as if someone has their finger on the single and are altering the speed, the end result is a little bit dubby, and a whole lot creepy, and haunting, and weirdly lovely. Pressed on bright yellow vinyl.

First time on cd (outside of the God and Hair box set, that is) for this, the 2nd album from the Ya Ho Wha collective... we of course strongly urge the purchase of that whole set, but if you want to get this one separately, now you can. And it does include new liner notes from "family" members written for this reissue. Contraction dates from 1974 (like most of the Yod LPs, including their ultimate masterpieces Penetration and I'm Gonna Take You Home), and of course originals are hopelessly rare. So...does groovy loungey hippy jams, doing the choo-choo train build up, but never really totally freaking out, with flutes and organ and guitar, and most significantly the wacked-out weird wisdom of Father Yod rappin' o'er top, sound good to you? Half-spoken, half sung, kinda drunken sounding. Here's a transcript of a portion of one of his raps here, to give you a bit of the flavor: "Let it all out and take it all back. But take it all back with consciousness. Desire, man. Desire's a trick. That's the trick. That'll bring old Saint Nick. Here he comes, see him there. All those goodies on his back. And he ain't got no prayer. He just wants to give to you, energy. The greatest gift of all, you'll soon see. That's it. Give it with a beat. Come on. Give it..." Hmm. The Father Yod-Santa Claus connection made explicit by the man himself! One 24 minute, 41 second track. But you know what, that's quite a dose...

MPEG stream: "Contraction

Elves, dwarves, birdies, deer, bunnies and every other woodland creature gather 'round when Faun Fables (aka Dawn McCarthy with assistance from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's Nils Frykdahl) sings her pagan-infused songs. And if you've been digging the recent burgeoning neo-folk movement (Jolie Holland, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver to name a few), you'd do well to follow their lead. You might recall that we reviewed her Family Album cd earlier this year, and Drag City has kindly reissued two of her previous albums -- this one which was her (originally self-released) debut and her second, Mother Twilight. Overall her voice is a surprising meeting point of unlikely bedfellows Cat Power's Chan Marshall, Grace Slick and Beth Orton. Early Song even closes with a little bit of lonesome yodelling. Some folks may find her unrestrained vocal style a bit challenging (or trying) at times, but those who are into it will surely be very much so.

MPEG stream: Old Village Churchyard
MPEG stream: Bliss

Enchanting! The mysterious Faun Fables is primarily the work of Ms Dawn McCarthy. On occasion however, she's joined by Mr. Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. This is her third magical album of timeless, transportive music. Her songs truly seem spirited from another era. This earthy, dramatic Family Album is not unlike encountering a pagan festival or... the Wickerman film! With both solo and chorus performances of empassioned male and female vocals, as well as some lively flutes and strings.

MPEG stream: Eyes Of A Bird
MPEG stream: Lucy Belle

Elves, dwarves, birdies, deer, bunnies and every other woodland creature gather 'round when Faun Fables (aka Dawn McCarthy with assistance from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's Nils Frykdahl) sings her pagan-infused songs. And if you've been digging the recent burgeoning neo-folk movement (Jolie Holland, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver to name a few), you'd do well to follow their lead. You might recall that we reviewed her Family Album cd earlier this year, and Drag City has kindly reissued two of her earlier albums -- this one and her debut Early Song. Of the three, Mother Twilight is perhaps her darkest, most otherworldly and vocally complex album. It fully envelopes and transport the willing listener to her fantasy land. We previously likened Family Album to the Wickerman film soundtrack, and the comparison is just as fitting here. Overall her voice is a surprising meeting point of unlikely bedfellows Cat Power's Chan Marshall, Grace Slick and Beth Orton. Some folks may find her deeply emotive vocal style a bit challenging (or trying), but those who are into it will surely be very much so.

MPEG stream: Beautiful Blade
MPEG stream: Mother Twilight

Dawn McCarthy, the central force behind Faun Fables, takes a few more exploratory steps in expanding her neo-folk realm, and the results are an impressively composed and expansive album. Far less fey, timid woodland pixie and more self assured earth mother. If you've enjoyed her previous albums, The Transit Rider makes for a smooth transition with some intriguing developments, perhaps most notably in its being a concept album of the stage show she toured in 2002. The album's peak is definitely its fourth track "In Speed", and it's a perfect demonstration of her growth. The song's spiraling urgency stands in stark contrast to the album's slower more traditional folk numbers. On the latter, she could easily be mistaken for alternately the granddaughter of Vashti Bunyan or the kid sister of Chan Marshall. However on this song McCarthy's handwringing despair conjures much more stormy times (almost in a Jon Anderson Yes fashion) and is countered in an effectively foreboding manner by frequent FF collaborator Nils Frykdahl's deep Laibach or Swans-esque countenance. A set of particularly offbeat numbers come later in the album, the peculiarly stagey "The Questioning" and the subsequent spoken whispery "I No Longer Wish To" and then there's the very "The Cat Came Back"-ish eleventh tune "The Corwith Brothers". Although it stands solidly on its own merits, listening to this album certainly piques your curiosity with regards to the live theatrics. Hopefully they'll be dusting off their costumery for those of us who missed it a few years back!

MPEG stream: Transit Theme
MPEG stream: In Speed
MPEG stream: Dream On A Train

There's just something about music that is slow and mysterious, foggy and indistinct, fuzzy and dreamlike that just gets us everytime. Any sort of music sounds better to us, once it's buried in record crackle, or wrapped in thick swirls of fuzzy distortion, or smeared with a gauzy ambient haze. But the music of Faunts is so perfectly suited to being goergeously obfuscated that it's hard to imagine this music any other way. High Expectations doesn't sound like some crystal clear recording that was later treated with all sort of foggy filters, no this record sounds like it was created like this, birthed from some mysterious ether, a ghostlike sonic wraith, dreamy droney slow motion rock drifting skyward like some disembodied slowcore spectre. Blissy and incandescent, with a candelit churchlike warmth, a glow suffusing the air all around. Like a druggier more fuzzy Low. Each track a lugubrious creep, romantic and melancholy, hushed vocals, brushed drums and swoonsome lapsteel. Occasionally the songs build to a ferocious climax, the sound like a wall of blown out shoegaze guitars, with big distorted drums, beneath squiggly white hot traces of incendiary psychedelic skree, before drifting back to earth, a slow simmer, fuzzy melodies drifitng over and around ethereal vocals and muted mood rock minimalism. Imagine a late night slowcore band, viewed through fogged up glass, thick with running rainwater, everything wavery and blisssfully unfocused, every once in a while the headlights of a passing car flare brilliantly, spinning wild prisms of color and white hot sparkles before fading back to a muted dusky drift. High Expectations has lots of varied elements, even if they only surface briefly her and there, some jazzy shuffle, some jangly indie rock, some Flaming Lips-ish big beat drug pop, some epic Godspeed-ish even a bit of near-new wave, but those disparate elements all manage to get woven deftly and beautifully into Faunts' delicate and drowsy sonic world.

MPEG stream: High Expectations
MPEG stream: Instantly Loved

Sounds as though Canadian indie rockers the Faunts got their instruments a wee bit intoxicated and the resulting music is itself quite intoxicating. Gauzy, highly processed guitars, shadowy drones and rounded pulses swirl and drift in and out of focus. A heady late night new wave, a lot more songy and a little less fuzzy and blissy than their full length, but it's still dark and delirious, wrapped in various degrees of instrumental haze and drone psych buzz, with bits of electronic skitter, and loping laid back down tempo groove mixed in here and there. A great follow-up to their High Expectations / Low Results 2005 album!

MPEG stream: Sleepwalker
MPEG stream: Meno Mony Falls

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SWANK DOUBLE VINYL REISSUE FOR THESE KRAUTROCK LEGENDS! This compiles the posthumous Faust odds-n-ends LPs Munic & Elsewhere and The Last LP. But of course, Faust is all about odds-n-ends. That's kinda their whole aesthetic. Not the first Faust record to buy, but definitely worthy of purchase.

RealAudio clip: Knochentanz
RealAudio clip: Psalter

Recommended completes their reissues of all the early Faust material with "71 Minutes of Faust". Essentially the same as the previous reissue known as "71 Minutes of Faust" this compiles the posthumous Faust odds-n-ends LPs "Munic & Elsewhere" and "The

RealAudio clip: Knochentanz
RealAudio clip: Psalter

Probably if you're a rabid Faust fan (aren't you?) you've already got this, the disc of rarities that was previously only obtainable through purchase of the entire Faust box set. But in case you didn't get the box, the individual discs are now being released piecemeal for your snacking enjoyment, with this one being the disc that people are going to get the most excited about, for obvious reasons. The album starts off with a 22 minute track recorded at the BBC in 1973 of Faust performing a medley of "The Lurcher", "Krautrock" and "Do So". Though the disc is named the "BBC Sessions", the rest of the tracks here appear to all have been recorded at Faust's Wumme studio, and with the exception of "We Are the Hallo Men" which was originally released on Munic & Elsewhere (though Recommended still persists on claiming that it was originally on The Last LP) most of these cuts are previously unreleased. Included are some nice tape experiments like "(360)" which is a mix of various stereo (possibly binaural) recordings like the Faust boys playing ping pong, plus some alternate versions of songs from So Far and Munic & Elsewhere including "So Far" and "Meer". It's all totally worthwhile, classic krautrock from one of the best bands ever. If you're new to Faust, you'll want to start with one of their proper albums (or heck, just get the whole box) but folks who already have IV, So Far and the rest should definitely invest in the BBC Sessions.

RealAudio clip: Party 9
RealAudio clip: (360)

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Legendary krautrock band Faust's 30th anniversary is being celebrated with not free pinball and fireworks, but remixes... The remix cd ep that preceeded this was ok, if unneccessary. Here's the full remix album, with one of that Soft Cell guy's mixes from the ep, plus mixes from other mostly Euro electronica folks (Kreidler, Howie B., Surgeon, Funkstorung among them). Dead Voices On

We've been wanting to correct a glaring omission from our site for some time now. Well, its not so much an omission as it's an overdue update on a very old review; one that was made when our reviews served only as shelf-talkers in the store instead of entryways into the vast online catalog of our website. And now with an affordable reissue with a bonus disc of rare BBC radio sessions and alternate versions, the time is right to reappraise this mighty, weird, and awesome jewel of classic krautrock greatness that is Faust IV. Essential as any krautrock album we can name, including Can's Tago Mago or Future Days, Amon Duul II's Yeti, or Neu! 1, Cluster, Kraftwerk etc. It's also the record that coined the term "krautrock" which is the title of the nearly 12 minute opening track, a thick pulsating rumble of motorik groove that out-Neu's Neu!. But things definitely get stranger after that with bizarre forays into reggae, pretty ballads, prog, pop and free jazz. Yet for all the weirdness, this is the record to get if you've never heard Faust before as it's their most accessible and structured. Not nearly as kaleidoscopic and avant as, So Far or Faust Tapes, and even with the genre-hopping, the songs all seem to belong together. "The Sad Skinhead" has got to be the most left-field excursion into reggae we've heard, complete with marimba passages and echoing vocals, while "Jennifer" has to be about the prettiest song ever made. Each song linked together by odd passages of detuned piano, far away screams and noisy stews of synth warbles and feedback stabs. "Giggly Smile" obviously influenced Battles recent debut Mirrors, as strange effected vocals accompany groovy prog excursions that abruptly shift tempos into one of our favorite rocking moments ever put to tape before suddenly ending, launching into the sublime folk groove of "Lauft... Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald... Lauft". And it just keeps getting better and better. The bonus disc features many alternate versions of the songs including a much longer version of "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", plus rare BBC radio sessions of two songs "The Lurcher" and "Do So" and one previously unreleased piece, called appropriately "Piano Piece". This is definitely one of those records, where we wish we could just invoke some physical force to reach out and grab you through the computer by the shoulders and just scream "Buy this already!!!!!!"

MPEG stream: Krautrock
MPEG stream: Jennifer
MPEG stream: Giggly Smile
MPEG stream: The Lurcher
MPEG stream: Piano Piece

Ahh, the German sense of humor. Once, while flying somewhere, my German neighbor told me a "German joke"... it turned out to be in actuality a philosophical puzzle, and not very funny. For some reason, German jokes and joking around has this heavy sillyness that I love. It's never actually all that "funny" per se, but so so endearing! That said, this Faust dvd opens with some 8mm footage from the 70s. The band is in their hometown of Wumme, Germany and approached by a giant panda bear who read about the band in a newspaper while tanning on the beach. It's a very strange, probably very stoned interaction set to a Faust song. Not that funny really, but totally endearing. Cause it's Faust! One of the most abstract of core Krautrock bands. But then that's it!!! I mean, as far as actual visual documentation from the band during the 1970s. The remaining classic Faust tracks on here are set to horrendous, freshman-year-art-student video collage made recently by Faust's Zappi Diermaier as interpretations of the songs' original themes. Every track and "film" is a nauseating combination and so incredibly confusing to us. Even more puzling is why Zappi decided to add additional accompaniment to some of the audio tracks. Man. As extremely devout Faust fans, we have to say, "WTF?!" Is there no other footage of the band -- either playing concerts, or interviews, or any photos, or then even commentary? There's also an audio cd included that has no Faust songs, but new tracks by Zappi that are from a dvd of his solo stuff coming out in the future. Writing all this down is making us feel like we need to cry or something. Wish there was more FAUST to SEE. We don't know what Zappi was thinking. Sure do hope that all the feedback (like this) from fans will inspire the band to get something together for an actual document-worthy dvd at some point in the future. That little nugget of Faust and the polar bear, boy. That's something special. Can't imagine what we'd do with a whole dvd full of that sorta stuff! Meanwhile, all we can do is keep on sitting around listening to Faust IV over and over again.

Forget for a second that this is a Faust album. What if it was just some unknown new band, some cd-r we got in the mail, some limited edition cassette release? Heck we've tried that thought experiment, and we'd be all over it! Telling you that it's a mysteriously murky, throbbing psychedelic freak-scene, fraught with krautrocky rhythms and tense textures. Sorta reminds us of a mix of Blues Control and Wooden Shjips... or White Hills and Expo 70... there's a druggy '60s garage vibe, industrial electronic atmosphere, blissful moodiness, and clockwork Circle-like propulsivity, all crammed into one crazy counter-intuitive whole, raw and live! Everything in the way of organ drones, harmonica blurt, echoing voices, shuffling drums, and serious dosage of searing psych-rock geetar found here were all taken from various European performances in 2006, later mixed and edited at fauststudio. We'd assume most of the tracks are pretty much unique to this disc... Yeah, we'd be pretty into it if it was some new group! Does the fact it's a new disc by krautrock legends Faust, released by Circle's Ektro label, make it any cooler? It doesn't need to. Though if that's what it takes to get you to check it out, that's ok. Conversely, if you were like, oh just another umpteenth Faust reunion album, don't be like that. First off, Faust rule. Even today. Sure, this isn't the original line up. In fact, it's not even the ONLY current line up! Apparently, in the grand tradition of, uh, Saxon and others, there's now more than one version of Faust, each featuring different original band members, going around touring under the name. Weird. Not sure if this fractured factioning is an agreed-upon thing (to cover more ground?) or if they're in competition. Hopefully the former! It would be sad to hear that there's litigation pending. So anyway, THIS Faust consists of Jan Wolbrandt on drums, Michael Stoll on bass (and flute), Lars Paukstat on percussion and vocals, Steven Wray Lobdell on guitar, and Hans Joachim Irmler on organ, keyboards and vocals. That's a good line up all right, they've got Lobdell in the band after all! Hence the dosage of searing psych-rock geetar previously mentioned... Recommended, as one of the two very different and very cool live albums newly issued by Ektro that we're reviewing this list (the other one is by '80s strong-man metaller Thor, believe it or not!). Hmmm. Faust + Thor, does that sort of = Circle?? (And note, there's another new live Faust 2cd that we have in stock and hope to review soon, Od Serca Do Duszy, that's the work of the OTHER active Faust unit, featuring Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Amaury Cambuzat.)

MPEG stream: Foam Of War
MPEG stream: Crawling Wax
MPEG stream: Terrorize Me

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SORRY. Wow, two new Faust titles, both in handsome cardboard sleeves...Nosferatu is a soundtrack of sorts to the classic silent film, Live documents the explosive (literally) Faust performance at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The "pop" aspects of Faust past may have been abandoned by the reunited band, but the psych-guitar and industrial smasheroo quotient is way up. Both discs are fine nightmare soundscapes.

And here's the other new live album from the what is also in fact the *other* Faust (mentioned a couple of lists back when we reviewed Faust's Kleine Welt cd on the Ektro label). Od Serca Do Duszy was recorded in Krakow, Poland at the wonderfully named Loch Ness Club on November 15th, 2006, by a Faust "power trio" lineup consisting of Zappi Diermaier (drums, metals, tools), Jean-Herve Peron (voice, guitars, horns) and Amaury Cambuzat (guitars, keys, voice). Note that this is an entirely different lineup than the one responsible for Kleine Welt, also recorded on tour in 2006. We'd like to think that Faust has splintered into these two different touring groups (both featuring original '70s members as well as new blood from the band's initial reunion era in the '90s) in an amicable fashion, but we don't really know. Maybe they hate each other. But we also wonder if it's just 'cause their individual schedules didn't work out to all play together, or so they could cover more ground, or 'cause they had different interests in terms of what songs should go into the band's current set? For Diermaier/Peron/Cambuzat, that means doing some of Faust's famous old songs like "A Bit Of A Pain" and "The Sad Skinhead" alongside newer stuff and full-on improv jams. We figure that if you were AT the show, you'd want to hear a few of those old favorites. But listening to this at home, it's probably the new material that will actually be most of interest... although hearing how they mutate and reinterpret their own "hits" is cool too. Anyway, either way, this excellently-recorded, lengthy live set is one for Faust fans, and also those into the likes of Acid Mothers Temple, really anyone looking for experimental explorations of clattery murk, with feedbacky psychedelic guitar, quasi-industrial improv chaos, plodding drums, and noisy textures! The raucous Krakow crowd certainly is into it, stoking Faust into further frenzies, including shouted vocals (in French?) among them some yelling about "George Washington!" and "George Bush!"... it must have been a memorable night. Disc two begins with two tracks (20 minutes) of pure, heavy-duty improv, which the band follow with a fairly wild rendition of their classic "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" to make even the old time fans happy... and then for their encore, for good measure, they launch into "Schempal Buddha", an urgent and repetitive number that fans will recognize from The Faust Tapes album.

MPEG stream: We Are Not Here...
MPEG stream: Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl

"We've always liked the idea of releasing records which lacked conventional 'finish' in terms of production...the music should sound like bootlegs, as if recorded by someone who passed a group rehearsing or jamming and then cut the recorded material wildly together." That's a quote from Faust mentor/manager Uwe Nettelbeck circa 1973, reprinted in the liner notes to this aptly-titled odds n' ends collection, a collage of pieces recorded by the idiosyncratic krautrock legends over the past thirty years. It helps explain the sounds here, as well as the aesthetic behind their classic "Faust Tapes" album (which this echoes) and much else of their output. The material presented here will fade from stuff recorded in the early days at their communal studio directly into things put down on tape by the reunited/retrofitted incarnation of Faust just last year -- sometimes within the very same track! Mostly this is early '70s stuff, but there's a few '80s derived recordings and material from the currently active Faust line-up. It's all pretty great. Unreleased archival alternate versions of familiar Faust favorites, forgotten experiments, live bits and pieces -- wild psych guitar/effect noise fests, Stoogesy jamming, droning electronics, sweet strumming folk, jazz freakouts -- all this is woven together in a truly kaleidoscopic krautrock "patchwork" indeed. Very Faust-ian. Uwe's quote describes this perfectly.

RealAudio clip: Stretch Over All Times 1971/73, 2000/01
RealAudio clip: Psalter (slow version) 1980
RealAudio clip: Zerr:aus 1971

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SORRY. More so than Aphex Twin's score to a Bank of America commercial or Oval's contribution to one for Calvin Klein, Faust's appearance on a commercial for Nike has clearly been the oddest commodification of experimental music. Fortunately, the "success" of the venture has not gone to Faust's collective head... Their highly-anticipated new album Ravvivando succeeds where previous '90s ventures You Know Faust and Rien (which could be argued was more of a Jim O'Rourke album) perhaps did not. On this album, the hypnosis induced by the constant churning of percussive blasts and springy basslines is complemented by washed out drones dissolving to reveal their construction from swells of organ and guitar. It should be noted that the resurrection of Faust about five years ago did bring a drastic change to their Krautrock mutations of pop, noise, carnival music, jazz, and general experimentation which characterized their seminal '70s records such as Faust IV or So Far. One cannot expect that a musical hibernation of 20 years would not affect the artistic process. But rather than making contextual comparisons to Faust's work from the '70s, we proclaim that Ravvivando is their best record of the '90s. So there. The new Faust is a great band, on their own merits.

Soft Cell remixes Faust?? That's right, the legendary, eccentric krautrockers Faust hit the dancefloor with the help of Soft Cell's David Ball (and one Ingo Vauk as well). The track "Wir Brauchen Dich #6", taken from Faust's last (and quite excellent)

RealAudio clip: Wir Brauchen Dich #6 remix

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SORRY. Need we say any more than to announce that this is finally available?! Well, okay, here's the obi blurb: "These are the first studio recordings from German group Faust in over 20 years. An aggressive collision of electronic pastiche musique concret, power tools and group improvisation results in an extraordinary return by one of the seminal experimental ensembles of all time."

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One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice. But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"

MPEG stream: It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl
MPEG stream: No Harm

Faust's third album (or fourth if you count the Tony Conrad & Faust "Outside the Dream Syndicate" album), originally released in 1973, is now available for the first time on cd with the original artwork (excepting the box set) instead of the horrible cover

RealAudio clip: Exercise - With Several Hands On A Piano
RealAudio clip: Flashback Caruso
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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. Wow! Krautrock/Faust fans have had a lot to be thankful for these past few weeks. First we are presented with the instantly-essential "Wumme Years" 5-cd box set (see AQL #104) of old Faust classics and rarities, and now we are blessed with this double cd set of new Faust material! San Francisco Faust fans disappointed by the legendary krautrock band's last SF performance (a lackluster jam-filled session at the Great American Music Hall a year or two ago) may find their faith in Faust's live abilities renewed by this album, released on our new favorite label, Ektro (run by Jussi Lehtisalo of Circle). No, they're not doing old Faust songs from "So Far" or "Faust IV", but their current improvisational efforts are very effective in a dark and droning way. As well, they do at least two songs derived from their last studio album, 1999's pretty great "Ravvivando" -- the line-up of which, minus only one guy, performs on this set. "The Land of Ukko and Rauni" (Ukko and Rauni being ancient Finnish gods, of course) documents a Faust show in Helsinki on April 20th, 2000, beginning with sub-aquatic dirge-rumble, like music for whales -- you get the sense of large, intelligent beings moving fluidly in the darkness. Soon the band is engaged in some exploratory, but quite propulsive, psych-rock, with keys, guitar (courtesy of the Davis Redford Triad's Stephen Wray Lobdell), and Zappi's drums, augmented by additional mysterious sounds (Faust's trademark proto-industrial sound effects). The textures and rhythms of this mostly-instrumental set (there's a few moments of nonsense word-blurt but nothing much) are unmistakably Faust-ian, and worthy of a double discs' investment in listening. Faust, even thirty years on, remain a potent outfit, one from which today's crop of supposedly trend-setting spacey post-rock bands could learn a thing or two.

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A 5cd box set devoted to krautrock legends Faust? We were salivating from the moment we heard about it! The output of the band from 1970-73 is truly remarkable, and their work can hardly be compared to any of their contemporaries. They transcend both psych and prog, they influenced countless acts and anticipated many musical trends, from This Heat to Nurse With Wound, New Wave and No Wave, Industrial and "Post-Rock", the Boredoms old stuff to the Boredoms new stuff. Seminal musical genius that everyone should hear. And this is both a good place to start for newcomers (I envy anyone hearing Faust for the first time!) and a necessary collection for fans. The nitty gritty details, for those who wanna know it all: Wumme refers to the schoolhouse-turned-studio that Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck rented out at Polydor's expense (he also managed to get Polydor to buy the band all the recording gear they needed and pay for a 24-hour a day, live-in engineer.) It was under these ideal conditions that Faust recorded almost all of the material on this box set, which includes (get ready!): Faust's self-titled debut, their second album "So Far" (both of those terribly hard to find on cd, with the Japanese edition of "So Far" having been out of print for years now), the ever-popular "The Faust Tapes" (now with a track listing and indexing!) and "71 Minutes of Faust" (collecting both the "The Last LP" and "Munic and Elsewhere" LPs). And, also included in this set is an amazing disc of unreleased material, some recorded live at the BBC in 1973, plus some recently discovered & never before listened to tapes as well as the track "We Are the Hallo Men" which was originally on "Munic & Elsewhere" (though curiously credited here as having been on "The Last LP"), but previously left off of ReR's previous version of "71 Minutes of Faust". For this disc alone the set is worth the money to Faust aficionados! Then add in the 40 page booklet, illustrated with rare color photos (of them playing darts outdoors in the nude! THE NUDE!) and Super 8 stills, that features essays/memories from Faust friends/fans Chris Cutler and Peter Blegvad, and interviews with several band members as well as with their producer (the reclusive Nettelbeck) and, for the first time ever, with sound engineer Kurt Graupner! Of course, the individual discs may be issued separately at some time (or not? all we've heard is that the BBC sessions will come out individually) but then again with those first two Faust cds being so hard to come by, and so essential, there's got to be lots of you out there you not only will want this whole box, but NEED this box. Nicely presented, clearly a labor of love, with the cds in not-fancy-but-serviceable individual digipacks (and don't worry, the paintings from "So Far" are included in a color booklet with that disc).

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What can we say, other than that this may be the year of the Faust re-issue! Yet another (and quite cheap, all things considered) way to delve into the seminal work of these eccentric krautrock geniuses. Fairly well packaged, with reproductions of the original artwork and notes from the first album (no, not on clear plastic as the LP was) included, as well as the front and back cover images from "So Far" (but not the color prints found inside the original LP or in the previous cd reissues--if you want those, you gotta get the "Wumme Years" box). But, this disc comes with two pages of additional notes by Jason Gross of "Perfect Sound Forever" magazine.