[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 6651 through 6700 of 19388.

We're always amazed that so much awesome and little known music from the sixties and seventies continues to be resurrected, and remain very worthy of its cult status. Case in point, this anachronistic synth-heavy psych gem from 1977 by the George-Edwards Group. While punk, disco, glam, bland FM radio, and heavy metal ruled the musical zeitgeist of the era, two multi-instrumentalist friends with a love of synthesizers, home-taping and melancholic spacey folk-pop made a mini-masterpiece in their Detroit, Michigan basement. Briefly mentioned in the Acid Archives book, it doesn't feel so much a late hippie-psych artifact, as it does a sublime and moody soft-rock epic that would have been huge on '70s AM radio in a parallel universe of our fantasies. Where instead of Bread, Chicago, and Seals & Croft, being played ad nauseum, music by Dreamies, Shuggie Otis, Fresh Maggots, Roger Rodier, Emmanuelle Parrenin, Collie Ryan, Biff Rose, Big Star, Scott Walker, Warlus, and of course, the George-Edwards Group would have scored our parallel universe childhood. Yet even that said though, 38:38 is much stranger than we can describe. Often the tracks with their multilayered Arp, Moog, and Mellotron drones and harmonies often sung in falsetto, sound like the less musically-damaged touchstones of what Ariel Pink recorded on his Doldrums album. And though the synthesizers are most prevalent, especially in sci-fi themed instrumental tracks like "Solar Flare" and "Magnetic Variation", other instrumentation like xylophones, autoharps, bells, piano and acoustic guitar play a big part in the compositions. One of our favorite tracks is "Floating Away", a druggy ballad with just acoustic guitar and what is purported to be recordings of ocean sounds, but sound like huge sheets of metal crashing in the background. Even the longest track, the instrumental "Hypertrain" is a kraut-y fuzzed electric guitar raga over drums that reminds a bit of Circle and Cave, while the second to the last track called "Some Fun" features maniacal laughter over a repetitive groove that adds an element of bad trip creepiness to the proceedings. One of the headiest records from the seventies we've heard in a while; those into druggy cyber-space folk-pop weirdness will be very satisfied with this. Solid! Vinyl only, not sure if there's plans for a cd reissue too.

Something new on the label that brought us Bright Eyes, The Faint and Cursive! Georgie James is not a loner, it is the name of girl/boy duo John Davis and Laura Burhenn. The nearest comparison that we immediately thought of was: if Halifax boy band Sloan collaborated with Halifax girl band Jale this is what they'd sound like! Check out "Look Me Up" and the handclappy "Need Your Needs". Bright, buoyant, polished pop possibly inspired by The Kinks, Bread, The Raspberries and maybe the TV theme song from "WKRP". Sweet!

MPEG stream: Look Me Up
MPEG stream: Need Your Needs

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SORRY. Produced by Pell Mell's Steve Fisk, the new Fibbers record is heady mix of dark twang, screeching violin, and benefits especially from the experimental guitarwork of one of our favorite musicians, Nels Cline, who like Marc Ribot can go from improv skree to song-oriented work as displayed here, and still imbue his signature sound all over the record. Features one of the best covers of Can's "Yoo Doo Right" that we have ever heard.

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SORRY. Another fine Elephant 6 (Apples In Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power...) group. Their debut full length.

Mellow, lo-fi Elephant 6ers The Gerbils rollick along like a travelling band of musical mischief makers. If this quartet of Scott Spillane, John D'Azzo, Will Westbrook and Jeremy Barnes look and sound familiar, well it's probably 'cause they've spent a great

RealAudio clip: The White Sky

BACK IN STOCK, new slightly higher (sorry) price! Still totally worth it though! We're kind of obsessed with weirdo LA pop-murk minimalists German Army. We've only reviewed two of their records so far, but they have tons of releases and we've been trying to track more of them down. Everything we've heard has been bafflingly brilliant; twisted outsider genius, with a distinctive sound that straddles multiple genres, and fuses them into tangled, fucked up musical hybrids. It's likely a sound that will leave more casual music fans's heads spinning. But folks who dig their pop music fractured and damaged, who like when electronica is pulled apart and reassembled into downcast new wave, or woozy downer pop, or who love to hear music that sounds utterly alien, or like it must be from an alternate dimension, with just enough sonic landmarks to make it familiar, but in every other way, something nearly indescribable, well then German Army might be for you. In Transit is a collection of rarities, singles and unreleased tracks, a whopping 27 in all. Many of them short avant pop fragments, others smoldering landscapes of crumbling ambience and buried rhythms, and still others noisy, clattery, experimental post punk. Tracks are laced with bizarre found sounds, random samples, squalls of wild guitar noise, programmed beats, processed vocals, skittery electronics, fields of crackle, whirr and thrum, fragmented twang and bizarre industrial crunch. There's also mysterious whispering, haunting music box melodies, stretches of bouncy electro pop, along side stretches of muddy, muted electronic pulsations, some tracks sound like a proper band, others sound like some bedroom alchemist, or some studio recluse, the sound warps and warbles, drags and speeds up, guitar parts and vocals and rhythms do the same, everything in constant flux, on the verge of collapse, sometimes blossoming into something surprisingly lovely, more often splintering into something distressingly tense and trippy, all of the tracks here strangely mesmerizing, and as a songsuite, In Transit sounds like some impossible lost electronic new wave / post punk / gloom pop gem unearthed from a golden era of music that never existed, and likely never will.

MPEG stream: Alms For Arms
MPEG stream: Twisted Lichen
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There was a bit of confusion on the last list, when we finally got around to reviewing a record from LA minimalist murk pop duo German Army, we mentioned in the review that the band had lots of records, and as if to prove that point, we ourselves got confused and, uh, reviewed the wrong record. This week, all is put right, we're finally reviewing the 'right' record, the one we meant to review in the first place, and we got the other one in, the one we actually DID review. So double dose of German Army on this week's list, and odds are, if you're anything like us, you're probably gonna want both. Last Language is not all that removed from their record on Skrot up, drawing from a similar sonic palette, opening with a bristlingly brutalist bit of electro-dirge pop, a glitchy skeletal rhythm, over haunting swirls of low end thrum, the vocals a mumbled whisper, wreathed in gristly buzz, the whole thing blurred and smeared into an abstract electronic creep, a slow stuttery skitter that almost sounds like it could be a backing track for some lost Sensational album, blunted and wasted and washed out, but also prickly and staticky, some seriously heady sonic miserablism. Not all of the record is so bleak and blasted, but it is all hauntingly spare and blissfully tripped out, the band's MO seemingly unfurling crystalline sprawls of rhythm and texture, with lots of space, the vocals almost like an afterthought, delivered in a sort of couldn't-be-bothered drawl, the sound slipping easily from twang flecked, woozy shimmer, to grinding industrial churn, and back again. The vibe definitely seems to fall somewhere near classic cold wave, but this is cold wave from some terrifying other dimension, fractured and freaky, this is some band from the eighties, the sort of band you might have seen at the Scream club, playing with Kommunity FK or the Abecedarians, but transported to some alien world, and then whisked right back, their music mutated and damaged in the process, the resulting sounds, a twisted outsider gloom-wave dream pop, some of the tracks downright lovely, like "Rebuild The Story", which is all hazy, casting some spidery almost Durutti Column sounding guitars amidst soft synthy swells, and some swooping, backwards effected rhythms, and some echo drenched vocal warblings, but others, like that aforementioned opener, are caustic and intense, and still others, elsewhere, drift from twisted new wave, to post-krautrock avant pop, to blown out industrial clatter, to mumbly Residents like art rock whatthefuck weirdness, to almost DHR like electro-crunch, to trippy, drifty, dreamy murk-wave shimmer, with most tracks somehow mashing all of those together. Fantastic stuff. And like we said, we'd recommend grabbing both of the German Army lps on this week's list, and then tracking down anything and everything else you can find! you won't be sorry. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!! Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Includes a download code!

MPEG stream: Basket
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MPEG stream: Rebuild The Story
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There was a bit of confusion on the last list, when we finally got around to reviewing a record from LA minimalist murk pop duo German Army, we mentioned in the review that the band had lots of records, and as if to prove that point, we ourselves got confused and, uh, reviewed the wrong record. This week, all is put right, we're finally reviewing the 'right' record, the one we meant to review in the first place, and we got the other one in, the one we actually DID review. So double dose of German Army on this week's list, and odds are, if you're anything like us, you're probably gonna want both. This self titled lp is on Skrot Up, a label who in the past has given us records by the Grave Babies, Water Borders, Psychic Ills, and they released the recent lp from long time aQ fave and former Net Shaker Ernest Gibson. German Army's distinctive sound is in full effect here, a gloriously dour post punk murkiness, hauntingly rhythmic, ominous drones, creepy sung/spoken crooned vox, opener "Guinea Strong Arm" almost sounds like This Heat at their poppiest, but slowed way down, and filtered through a cracked cold wave filter, a minimal pulsing beat, throbs beneath long moaning tones, and buzzing spidery guitar melodies way off in the distance, all of the sounds gradually growing more and more intense, all except the vocals, which remain perfectly cool and detached, wreathed in occasional swaths of dubbed out echo and reverb, all eventually crumbling to a bleary blackened halt. And that pretty much lays out GA's sonic template, and it's a good one, all six tracks here sounding like they could be lost eighties industrial post-punk rarities, from the arrangements, to the sound, to the recordings themselves. Lo-fi and raw, darkly primitive, murky and muddy and mesmeric, woozily psychedelic, the vocals in constant flux throughout, way up in the mix, strident and dramatic, then suddenly slowed down to a monstrous gurgle, before being quickly sped up a la Butthole Surfers, but all the while, the music remains a blurred, tarpit miasma, of loping, lumbering bass, primitive programmed tribal rhythms, and swirling old school FX. Sadly, in the long journey to the US from overseas, the package was a little bit brutalized by the US postal service, so most of the jackets are a little worse for wear, some bumped corners, some slight bends, the usual, so if you're super anal and a collector who needs to have his records be pristine, then you might wanna pass on these, but for everyone else, come get a taste of one of our favorite weirdo outsider dirge-murk post-punk creep-wave combos. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! Includes a digital download too!

MPEG stream: Guinea Strong Arm
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SORRY. A whole bunch of German Army on this week's list, including this, and EXTREMELY LIMITED split single with Austrian industrial neo-folk crew Novy Svet. And when we say extremely limited, that means we got maybe 5 copies, and that's ALL we'll ever be able to get. They're pricey too, but it's just about THEE thickest vinyl ever (at least since that Brainbombs 7" on tUMULt). Worth it we think just for the GeAr side, which is a mini songsuite of gloomy, electro-industrial creep, and haunting dour pop introspection. Glimmering synths drift over what sound like tablas, all beneath a grimy patina of rumble and whir, the gothic vocals buried in the mix, culminating a gorgeous finale, a dismal, distorted, downer dirge that oozes and slithers, driven by muted percussive pulsation, and distant grinding sheets of chordal drone, while some demonic invocations lurk just below the surface. Novy Svet's side is a perfect fit with GeAr's, woozy, warbly landscape of circusy synths, and a minimal rhythm, sounding a bit like an industrialized version of some gypsy folk jam, the vocals, strange and intense, the sound lurching and hypnotic. A totally mesmerizing psych-synth / avant industrial folk jam, that partway through, splinters into something even more damaged and abstract, the vocals flipping, and suddenly transformed into backwards incantations, while fragments and shards of the original melody are peppered along the final minute's This Heat like groove. SUPER COOL!! LIMITED TO 90 COPIES!! Pressed on extremely heavy/thick blood red / bronze flecked vinyl!

Music For Sick Queers is very strange album from the bowels of the San Francisco synth-punk scene during the early '80s. The band was founded by Stephen Scheatzle and Sandy Stark in 1981, who concocted lumbering, atonal synth blorping and stumbling drum machines that served a very loose backdrop to the flat, cynically delivered lyrics that mocked the paradigms of control - politics, morality, and religion, complete with the requisite Jim Jones appropriation that was commonplace for the proponents of Industrial Culture. Their first single from 1981 featured a song entitled "Booty Jones" which told the true crime story of child molester who kidnapped a young boy and then raised him as his son for many years. The infamy of that song devolved into the suicide of Sandy Stark who in 1984 was awaiting trial on trumped up charges of child molestation. The band continued on with Mark Hutchinson replacing Stark, well sort of... as Stark and Hutchinson were in fact the same person, and the Sandy Stark suicide was all just a publicity stunt to support the 1984 album Music For Sick Queers. Woah! The album is an exercise in deliberate confusion, with the songs being loose, visceral collages of sicktone electronics lurching around broken rhythms and megaphone vocal distortions that at their best take on the guttural aspects of Factrix or what Debbie Jaffe would later manifest as Master/Slave Relationship (might any of her stuff get reissued?). On more than a few tracks, German Shepherds push the vocals forward in the mix and their lunatic ranting embraces an unrefined, performance art ethos with an affected, flat intonation of sarcastic mockery. This was one of those records that you would see around San Francisco pretty much everywhere back in the '90s; but obviously they slowly got snatched up, making this a pretty intriguing reissue for those outside of the Bay Area interested in the more out there proponents of DIY post-punk electronics. The Superior Viaduct reish comes wth a bonus 7" of unreleased material, and the LP has a single-only cut not found on the original vinyl. Yup, there is a download code.

MPEG stream: Communist Control
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Another breathtaking album from Ms. Lisa Germano. Few are capable of capturing in song the shadowy outer limits of total heartbreak and distressed frailty as she does. Her slightly unstable, velvety voice alone can cause your heart to unexpectedly find itself lodged in your throat. Add in the accompanying melancholic strings and willowy piano and you just might be reduced to a quivering puddle of tears. Deceptively potent. Wow. Need we say more?

MPEG stream: The Day
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Finally, the long-awaited sixth album from Ms Lisa Germano has revealed itself after a five year silence, and it's so well worth the wait! Is she the female equivalent of kindred spirit Howe Gelb? Or perhaps is it vice versa? Both artists pour themselves so completely into their music, and in doing so bring light to the most intimate, strange, and darkest corners of the heart and mind. Gloriously spooky, rich and eccentric. Each word she sings and each off-kilter dusty musicbox melody that echoes around her voice pull back the covers to reveal raw hurts, half-healed heartaches and the scars of the past. Ghostly images blurred by tears and sleeplessness fully materialize and dissipate. The personae who inhabit Germano's songs always seems either right at the brink of emotional collapse or perhaps resurfacing from just such an unravelling, but there remains an ever-present glimmer of hope. Hers are deeply moving songs that linger with you long after the curtains close. At once, it's somehow both immensely soothing and unsettling... and absolutely gorgeous. She's joined by a stellar group of musicians too including Johnny Marr, Wendy Melvoin, Joey Waronker, and Neil Finn. Very very recommended. MPEG Download: "From A Shell" [/audio/germanofrom.mp3] MPEG Stream: "From A Shell" [/audio/germanofrom.m3u] MPEG Download: "Lullaby For Liquid Pig" [/audio/germanolullaby.mp3]

MPEG stream: From A Shell
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Oh, we love love love Lisa Germano! At times so whimsically enigmatic, at others downright hallucinatorily strange. Yet even in such elliptical and cryptic manner she seldom fails to make a direct hit on your heart. It doesn't take long on Magic Neighbor to show that Ms Germano's aim is as fine as ever. A brief chamber ensemble instrumental opens the album onto her drowsy effected voice singing witheringly "It's a beautiful day..." over and over again as if to perhaps convince herself and anyone listening. Few do melancholia as she does - bleak, despairing, an endless search for solace and escape that winds its way in and out of dream states - mostly inhabiting the shadows, but with glints of sun and starlight when she fleetingly comes up for a gasp of air. The lush backing of primarily strings and piano with some unconventional percussive sound makers (that offer texture more than rhythm) is a perfect accompaniment for her singular presence. Sometimes it enshrouds her in a protective velvety cloak as on "Cocoon", sometimes as on "A Million Times" it ominously clitter-clatterily spirals up with a life of its own. The ninth track "Snow" is the album's standout though, beginning with Germano's trademark always slightly off-kilter piano playing and her singing "I love how you see things" suggesting that she's at long last found a kindred spirit (or a like-minded haven, and perhaps she has with Michael Gira's Young God label). It's a beauty that slowly take flight at a point marked by four pensive single strikes on the piano. Wonderful. Recommended.

MPEG stream: To The Mighty One
MPEG stream: A Million Times
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It was sort of inevitable that this disc would end up being an aQ record of the week. But before we tell you the strange tale of how we got to this point, how we discovered this band and this disc, let's offer up a quick, succinct, three word description that might render the rest of this rambling review moot: CAVEMAN THIS HEAT. Sold? We would be. Imagine Man Is The Bastard transported back to the early seventies and let loose in This Heat's Cold Storage recording studio, or take the black hypno kraut noise of former aQ record of the week, Aluk Todolo and strip it down to its bare essence, a sound based almost entirely on rhythm. A pounding, Neanderthal groove, pelted with squelches, and laced with a strangled inhuman mewling, huge chunks of grinding minimalism and long swaths of dreamy shimmering bliss, an ultra intense slab of kraut-doom power violence for sure. The weird thing is, the first time we hear Geronimo was several years ago, when Circle came to play some shows on the West Coast, and so I (Andee) was happily drafted to drive them around, roadie for them, all that stuff. So one of the shows was at Arthurfest in LA Circle were playing with SUNNO))), in a way-too-small seated theater, based on how many angry folks were turned away (as in HUNDREDS!). I spent the whole time, running back and forth, up and down the stairs, trying to sneak as many people into the show as possible, through the emergency exit, the backstage door, every time I went back out I would run into someone who wanted me to get them inside. While this was all going on, a band started playing, and they were AMAZING. A bunch of cholo looking dudes, handkerchief headbands, all sort of just standing there, behind huge racks of busted looking equipment, making the most unholy racket, a gorgeously destructive rib cage rattling pummel, eventually I had to stop running back and forth, cuz this band was totally sucking me in, and so I just sat down on the floor and let the band's vibrations wash over me, the floor literally shaking violently with every note. Well, we later discovered they were called Geronimo, but no one knew anything about them, and the folks waiting for Circle and SUNNO))) didn't seem to get it or be that into it at all. We never got to talk to them in the chaos of getting Circle sorted. And eventually it sort of just slipped my mind. So flash forward two years to the end of 2007, when we highlighted that No Skull Left Unturned comp a list or two back, collecting the various offshoots of Power Violence pioneers Man Is The Bastard. And we were particularly taken with the band Sleestak, a doomy math rock variant on MITB's bassy grind, and their sound reminded us of THAT band, the one that opened for Circle back in 2005. Then we sort of randomly stumbled across this here disc, and suddenly everything clicked, THIS was the band we saw and loved so much, and whaddayaknow, Geronimo just so happens to feature folks from both Man Is The Bastard and Sleestak. And it sounds even better than I remember, heavier, groovier, way more fucked up and WAY more freaked out. So here's a song by song breakdown of this devastating chunk of brutal beauty and monstrous minimalism: The opener, the 18 minute "Firewater", is perfectly placed to test the listener's mettle, an endless epic stretch of looped high end klaxons and choked cymbal crashes, like a metal intro stretched into an entire song. All around this constant crunch and whine, whip flurries of electronic glitch and crunch, swaths of grinding crumbling analog buzz, while beneath it all a rumbling minimal bass line lopes lazily, until about half way through, when the track suddenly switches gears, and turns super abstract, minimal smears of drone and muted feedback, LOTS of space, and huge percussive crashes spread WAY out. It's like a super minimal abstract doom. But with bits of atonal keyboard and strangled vocals. Like the rhythm section of Khanate scoring a Dario Argento movie. That soaring high end from the beginning of the track returns, along with some speaker destroying analog buzz, still spaced out around long stretches of silence, finishing off with a brief burst of intense fury, distorted vocals, thick wall of crumbling distortion, If you survive the first track, then track two, "Headdress", is your reward, a short sharp shock of rhythmic groove, it's all about the drums, a simple, killer rhythm, the drums slightly distorted, locked into a relentless loop, while all around it, malfunctioning synths and skittering shards of glitch and skree soar and swoop, until it too shifts suddenly, into a mathy breakdown, another mesmerizingly minimal and hypnotic looped drum fill, pounding its way through a sky filled with creaks and groans and whirs and garbled grinding lo-fi squelch, finishing off with another furious blast, this time a spray of super distorted bass riffing, howled ultra effected vocals, and total drum destruction. "Spiritwalker" offers up another side of Geronimo, the strange homemade electronics muted and smeared into much softer shapes, allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums a muffled pulse, lots of low end rumble and whir, darkly droning and cinematic, thick swells of minor key melodies, over a wasteland of glitch and buzz, slow motion tribal percussion, everything wrapped in a gauze-y haze of psychedelic textures, low end murk, and abstract FX, a gorgeous soundscape, of slow black krautrock ambience. "Medicine Man" is another brief chunk of abstract doom. A simple plodding rhythm, a thick grinding rumbling low end synth, huge blasts of effects-drenched crunch, and ominous spoken vocals and shrieked demonic howls, And then there's "Facepeeler", which begins with a propulsive drum part, a serious metallic jam, huge bass riffs, shrieked maniacal vocals, and speaker shredding, super stereo panned effects, until suddenly the song slows down into a lurching doomic plod, the drums blown out and in the red, locked into another super simple, but completely intense and relentless slow motion rhythm, again, the sky full of FX, squealing and grinding and buzzing and screeching, but now sprawled over Geronimo's angular what-the-fuck minimal math doom, are some of the most fucked up and intense vocals ever, alternately growling, roaring, howling, whispering and mewling, it sounds a bit like an industrialized Wolf Eyes-ian Oxbow, until you realize that the vocals in question belong to one David Yow, of Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid (if only Qui sounded this bad ass). The suddenly it begins to sound like some Jesus Lizard outtake, slowed down, pulled apart and run through a bank of rusted and duct taped effects. One of those songs that easily could have been stretched out to the length of a whole record. Abrasive and brutal and hateful and super intense and heavy as fuck, but somehow weirdly hooky, and impossibly catchy, it's almost like having your pain and pleasure centers swapped, so having that anvil dropped repeatedly on your head ends up feeling so so divine. Definitely the song we keep coming back to, and playing over and over and over and over... Finally, the band finish things off with the uncharacteristically mellow "Prints Tie", wrapped around a fluid almost jazzy bassline, drifting keyboard melodies, and shuffling abstract percussion, the Neanderthal electronics are still present, but used much more sparingly, gorgeous and glimmering, a soft smeared minimal workout that almost sounds like a more lo-fi Necks. Super dreamy and darkly shimmery, and just pretty enough to almost make you forget the 47 minutes of glorious sonic punishment you just endured. Almost. So so so recommended. The minute we threw this one, we knew, THIS WAS THE ONE. Definite contender for record of the year (and actually, since I got it in December, it WAS my record of the year for 2007, even having only had it less than a month!) Folks who dug the Aluk Todolo will for sure dig this too. Likewise if the idea of, say, Mammal doing This Heat songs sounds cool to you too. Basically anyone into brutal rhythms and abstract minimal heaviness NEEDS this...

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Here's one that perhaps need no introduction nor description... 'Tis quite impossible to sum up this grand dame's expansive career as one half of Dead Can Dance and film score composer (Whale Rider, Gladiator, etc) on one compact disc, but The Best Of Lisa Gerrard is an admirable attempt on 4AD's part. It offers the merest glimpse of the sweeping grandeur of her classical and world music steeped compositions, but such an enveloping one. Diehard fans (and there are legions of them!) probably own every one of these tracks already, but it serves as a great introduction for newcomers. Evocative and sumptuous.

MPEG stream: Sacrifice
MPEG stream: The Host Of Seraphim

Lisa Gerrard's soundtrack to the movie The Whale Rider glides and cascades gorgeously. So wonderfully moving regardless of whether or not you've seen the film. It's a finely composed, predominantly instrumental album but one that's laced quite effectively with her ethereal voice. With it's lustrous harp sounds and delicate piano melodies, it very easily could be found filed in the New Age section of some record stores simply towering over the rest of the flock. A soothing delight for any Dead Can Dance fan.

MPEG stream: Biking Home
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My goodness! When did Lisa Gerrard become Enya? Just (sorta) kidding! Really though, there is a striking resemblance on Immortal Memory. Following her Whale Rider soundtrack, Ms Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) continues on her solo path of otherworldly aural elegance. Fans have undoubtedly already swooped in for their copy of this sumptuous, ethereal new collaboration with Irish composer Patrick Cassidy. Who'd like to wager that we'll be hearing her on the soundtrack to the next Peter Jackson film? Well, maybe the one after King Kong!

MPEG stream: Sailing To Byzantium
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A resurrected slab of blown out heaviness from this druggy sludgerock combo, featuring a current member of metallic post rock heavyweights Isis and the Red Sparowes. You won't hear much epic moodiness or brooding metal lope here though. Most folks compare the Gersch to bands like Sabbath, Sleep and Kyuss which is definitely fair, but if you ask us, we're hearing a whole lot more Amphetamine Reptile, like a total timewarp back to the good ol' Amrep days, you know, Halo Of Flies, the Cow Bullies, Lubricated Goat, Unsane, Surgery, Tar, Killdozer, the Cows, Boss Hog, Helmet, Vertigo, King Snake Roost and the rest... What's weird is that the recording quality sounds genuinely old, almost as if it could have been recorded in the seventies, although the band sounds just a wee bit too metal to actually be from way back then. But the combination of Amrep style heaviness and that seventies production, makes for a deadly combo, and had us imagining the miraculous discovery of some lost tape from this weird band from 1971 called the Gersch, who were somehow channeling the spirit of Sabbath though a super chaotic metallic freaked out buzz. By now you should be able to tell whether this is your cup of tea or not. It most certainly is ours. A steaming hot cup of dense jagged guitars, convoluted mathy rhythms, chugging downtuned grooves, shouted and grunted vocals buried in the mix, massive slabs of rumbling low end, all stretched and twisted into churning, thrashing, pounding seventies-via-nineties metallic RAWK. Awesome!

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It's as though Owen from Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and Alec Empire went through that teleport machine in The Fly and got fused body and soul. Insane, insistently catchy pop-punk ditties, with crack cocaine powered casiotones, overdriven guitars and vocals. This is the type of record that, when we play it in the store, people will invariably want to buy a copy or ask "Can you play this ______ cd?" (ie: "take this off") Highly recommended.

As much as some of us love grind, we definitely don't get enough grind on the list. This split cd, released we think to coincide with a Japanese tour, features unknown to us until now Japanese grinders Gesewa, and SF grindlords Utter Bastard, who since have broken up, but who happen to feature aQ pal Roberto behind the kit. Gesewa definitely hit the spot, the songs mostly clocking in at less than 30 seconds, aren't so much blazing fast, although there are bursts of extreme grind, instead, Gesewa are of the weirdo, pounding metallic what-the-fuck school of grind, sharing more in common with say Bathtub Shitter than Unholy Grave. Lurching start stop arrangements, plenty of D-beat pound, wild hysterical dueling vocals, one grunty and low, the other shrieky and high, the guitars downtuned and chuggy, plenty of buzz and chaotic noise drenched thrashing, pretty awesome stuff. Utter Bastard are much more technical and heavy than their twisted and bizarre Japanese compatriots, and tend toward a more classical grind sound, pounding and relentless, the guitars frenzied and furious, the drums pounding and blasting, with mathy complex arrangements, but UB too offer up some bizarre dueling vocals, only here and there, but for the most part, they chug and churn, spewing out some seriously crusty classic American grind. Rad stuff for sure. Too bad they're no more. Beautifully designed cd as well, super striking layout, with liner notes and lyrics inside.

MPEG stream: Gesewa
MPEG stream: Eikounohibi
MPEG stream: Watarase Suicide
MPEG stream: Morning Broke
MPEG stream: Broke Down Man

We're not sure if the band Get Him Eat Him are actually carnivorous, but if their music is any indication, we can tell you that they do have an appreciation for sweet treats of the pop variety. Geography Cones is loaded up with dreamy boyish pop very much along the lines of Death Cab For Cutie and Pinback. In fact, the vocals bring to mind a more gaspy Benjamin Gibbard. Their new label home Absolutely Kosher has certainly become quite the trusted hub of brainy pop studiousness -- Wrens, Sparrow, Rob Crow and the abovementioned Pinback to name a few artists whose releases grace that label. For those of us who always crushed over the shy bookworm sitting in the front row versus the loudmouth rowdy bruiser or eye-catchin' jock Adonis in the back... catch our drift?

MPEG stream: The Celebration
MPEG stream: Pardon My French

A snotty young crew of Providence Rhode Island roughnecks, both male and female, kicking up a seriously intense racket. Aggro, over the top, grinding, post punk / punk rock. Angular guitars, furious drumming, like some long lost Amrep band brought back to life and given a serious hit of screamo, and dosed with a little metallic sludge. Limited to 500 copies, on cotton candy pink vinyl, in cool hand cut sleeves.

We had heard rumours that this record was going to ROCK and would be the Get Up Kids' return to form, form in this case being the pop/emo masterpiece Something To Write Home About from a few years back. A record so kick ass, and so heavy, and so catchy that we still find ourselves listening to it all the time. Well, the good news is that compared to their last record, the Guilt Show does indeed rock. The bad news however is that while this may sort of rock, when you get right down to it, this is basically super polished, generic, glossy pop rock. Could be any one of millions of bands. Gone is all the angst and tension that made Something... so lyrically intense. Gone too are the amazing songs and crazy catchy hooks. The sound is immediately familiar, but just totally watered down. And thus, I'm sure we'll see this all over MTV. Good for them. If you're new to the Get Up Kids, then you'll find this to be a perfectly decent slab of bouncy pop rock, but for those of us who LOVED this band, it's hard to get over the disappointment of listening to an amazing band get less and less amazing with each record. Do yourself a favor and pick up Something To Write Home About to hear what this band is (was) truly capable of.

MPEG stream: The One You Want
MPEG stream: Never Be Alone

Really good, straight up emo-pop. Reminiscent of early Superchunk singing their guts out. Lyric sheet included.

The current darlings of emo pop/punk scene have released this collection of odds 'n' out-of-print ends for anyone who hasn't been collecting since day one. Those of us addicted to melodic pop with punk energy and lots of sentimental boy feelings (just imagine

RealAudio clip: On With the Show
RealAudio clip: Burned Bridges
RealAudio clip: Close to Me

The first thing you notice is that this record does -not- rock. Not at all. So already you're a little disappointed, because after all, the Get Up Kids did rock. The second thing you notice is how 'indie rock' this record sounds. And I mean like R.E.M-eighties-college-radio-indie-rock. And most of us kind of got tired of that sound years ago. Still with me? Good. 'Cause even after all that, this record manages to be really really good. But not at first. At first we were all sort of horrified. What happened. This is so...mellow. But the more I listen to it, the more I find these songs stuck in my head ALL the time. A whole different scenario than The Get Up Kids' last record, which was instantly catchy, so catchy in fact that we all played it incessantly until we were darn near sick of it. But this record didn't stick until listen #10 or #11. And by that time it was too late. This will definitely lose them some fans, I imagine. But maybe what we hear as 'indie rock' (the negative connotation) is just a band growing out of their underground rock ghetto. Or maybe they just suck now. But if you're like us and LOVED the last record, odds are you'll end up loving this one too.

RealAudio clip: Overdue
RealAudio clip: Stay Gone
RealAudio clip: Fall From Grace
RealAudio clip: High As The Moon

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

SORRY. Japan's premier psych-folk outfit produces another amazing domestic 7". One song is from 1989; the other is from 1994, another version of a piece from the first record; said new recording sounds utterly fresh and rich and features a blazing, screeching guitar solo from White Heaven's Michio Kurihara.

Hallelujah! Ghost are back! Since Drag City's simultaneous release of their Snuff Box Immanence and Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet albums back in 1999, we hadn't heard hide nor hair of Japan's wonderful acid-folksters Ghost (unless you count their liason with Damon & Naomi). Indeed we'd begun to wonder what was up with Masaki Batoh, Michio Kurihara and crew -- we missed them! And in those four or five years, it seemed that fans of '70s inspired Japanese psychedelic music had switched their allegiance to the much more prolific Acid Mothers Temple camp led by Kawabata Makoto who emerged in the meantime. But we Ghost fans know that, as good as AMT can be, in the realm of cosmic communal Japanese hippy rock, there is no comparison. Ghost rule that particular hypnotic underworld. Depth, beauty, originality -- on all those counts they have it over AMT. Unlike the excessive pastiche of AMT, there's nothing tongue in cheek about Ghost. And as for quality control, well, you do the math. So, needless to say, we were supremely excited to get this brand new Ghost album! The sun was sure 'tangging' the day this showed up. Word was that this might be Ghost's best album yet, and while we each have our favorites (mine's Lama Rabi Rabi, with their self-titled debut in close competition) this was immediately revealed as a contender. In short, it's freakin' great. Ghost explore some heavier, rockier, more prog-tastic directions in some of these songs, yet let their incomparable delicate psych-folk flow as well. Stirring guitar/drums workouts coexist with Batoh's fragile vocals and trembling sunshine melodies. And Terrascopic trainspotters will be interested to know that Ghost interpret songs by both Syd Barrett and the obscure '70s Dutch prog-rock act Earth & Fire, and make them completely their own. The album takes its name from the four-part, 25-minute suite that opens this disc, which ventures from lovely, hazy jazz-inflected jams to bombastic, utterly prog-rock flourishes complete with grandiose choirs. That alone is worth having waited four or five years for!

MPEG stream: Piper
MPEG stream: HU pt. 2: Escaped And Lost Down In Medina
MPEG stream: HU pt. 3: Aramaic Barbarous Dawn

Gatefold vinyl or cd, the domestic full-length debut for the psychedelic sounds of Japan's answer to Can. "Who Found A Lost Rose In The Warship?"

Let's get this out of the way first. Ghost seem to be the new Deafheaven - a metal (or maybe not?) band everyone loved and flipped out over, but then the more popular they became with the squares, the more the cool kids began to distance themselves. In the case of Ghost you could argue that record number two wasn't as good as the debut, which sure, is probably true, but this new one RULES. And we would suggest that any haters that jumped ship, jump right back on, cuz Meliora is a doozy, heavier than Infestissumam, catchier too, and we're saying that even though actually several folks here seriously DUG Infestissumam. We might make an argument that Meliora rivals Opus Eponymous too. Seriously, some of us have been unable to listen to anything else. The production is polished and perfect, the songs are classic rock with hints of prog and occult metal, moody and melancholy, crunchy and fierce, majestic and epic, the rock band lineup augmented by organs and keyboards, the arrangements lush and the songs at once timeless but also modern and mysterious. The Blue Oyster Cult influence looms large, moreso than on any of the other records, which as you might have guessed is a very good thing. And that's just the music. Let's not even get into the costumes, the band of nameless ghouls, the demonic pope vocalist Papa Emeritus III (there's a different Papa on each record, except not really, they just claim to fire the previous one and hire a younger Papa, but somehow it's the same voice, hmmm...). They're like a KISS for the underground weirdos, which KISS was kind of too, but you know what we mean. Totally hooky, totally headbangable, for at least a few of the big Ghost fans at aQ, this is their best, and a definite contender for a record of the year (certainly already in the lead, based just on its impossibly heavy rotation). If you've yet to check these guys out, don't let all the grumpy anti-hipsters dissuade you, cuz almost nobody is making heavy rock records like this anymore, certainly not rock records this weird and great, we're guessing you'll probably it. We definitely do.

MPEG stream: Spirit
MPEG stream: He Is
MPEG stream: Mummy Dust

Ghost and Drag City bring us this cd + dvd set, a quite fine, fan-o-centric release that will definitely excite the many folks devoted to these modern masters of Japanese psych! Indeed, one customer of ours, Brent from Chattanooga, already chimed in with a review (to save us some time and trouble he says), which goes something like this: "OK, first things first, for all of you Ghost freaks out there, there's no reason you will need to even read this review. Just order it now, cause it's great, it's songs that're not on anything else you've got, and it's, well, it's Ghost. One hour of folked-up improv music, from their early days, say late 80's. Plus not to mention the two hour DVD that spans they're entire career. But, if this is not enough, well read on. For all you fiends of the Finnish psych bands like Avarus and the rest, then this disc will please. Very krauty, droney, out there stuff that sounds like it was recorded in some dark forest in a remote part of Japan. Tribal, chants, moans, it's all here. Even the Jewelled Antler fans will love this stuff..." And that's pretty much our take on it too. (Thanks, Brent!) We'll expand a bit on his review by saying that although at first glance the music cd is perhaps overshadowed by the novelty of the DVD that's got two hours of rare live video footage (of a band that not all that many people over here in the States have had the opportunity to see, after all), we think that it's the cd that's what you'll keep coming back to, after you've several viewings of the DVD of course. The cd is certainly not a *new* Ghost album or anything -- and is about as far from the professionally progged-out compositions of Ghost's well-liked, most recent album Hypnotic Underworld as you can get. These "Unreleased Ghost Tracks From the 1980s" see Ghost in sorta Sunburned Hand of The Man or NNCK territory (or the Finnish/Jewelled Antler realm as suggested by Brent), doing improvised fractured folk (a la first album outtake "Cow's Green Cosmic") and noisy free-jazz freak-outs (as on the half-hour minute track "Children Of The Earth"). Even without the dvd disc, we'd be recommending this, it's right up the AQ alley. Meanwhile, the DVD assembles home video style footage of Ghost performances from the early days (all the way back to a solo Masaki Batoh protest "concert" in front of the Chinese embassy in Tokyo, back in 1984!!) up through 2004. The more recent footage (along with the menu graphics and box cover) reveal just how dangerously slick Ghost have gotten, while the earlier stuff has a charming amateur edge to it. In either case, a treat for Ghost fans -- though we wonder if a band that makes such otherworldly music (and is named Ghost, after all) risks losing some of their mystery by being documented visually like this... But fans can't really complain! Comes packaged with a booket containing notes and credits for everything you'll see and hear here.

MPEG stream: Hakkyou Dojin (1989 live)
MPEG stream: Improvisation (1987 live)

There's been so much hype about this Swedish metal outfit, before we had ever heard a note, we had heard ABOUT them, seen amazing pictures of the band playing live, the vocalist with a face painted like a skull, dressed in robes like some demonic priest, the album cover, a creepy seventies oil painting of that same vocalist, hovering demon like over an old haunted looking church, their satanic lyrics, their epic heaviness, so we were prepared for something seriously demonic and devastating, black metal or at least black-ISH metal we were assuming, so when we finally heard it, we were lured in by the sound of a church organ, so far so good, haunting and mysterious, and then the first song kicks in, thick buzzing metallic bass, pounding drums, okay, so not black metal, but heavy, fuzzed out, a little psychedelic, and then the vocals, woah, sounding a lit like Voivod weirdly enough, soaring majestically over chugging churning, and them suddenly, so POPPY, the song shifting gears, slipping into something way more melodic, replete with oooh's and aaaah's and some strange liturgical sounding crooning, some cool seventies style organs too, so it may not be what we were expecting but we were loving it, so then the next song started, and wow, even less metal, more like classic rock, seventies psych, a surprise, but fuck it, still pretty damn killer, the guitars still plenty heavy, and then the chorus, holy shit, a dead ringer for Blue Oyster Cult, total hooky pop, and it was then that we realized we were totally hooked. C'mon, chugging satanic metal meets dark psychedelic rock meets Blue Oyster Cult? How rad is that?! The Answer is VERY. The vocals occasionally sound a bit like King Diamond, the band slipping into some Mercyful Fate-isms here and there, but a way poppier, more psychedelic, less overtly metal version, the leads are awesome. And it's pretty cool to hear actual singing and real melodies and a sort of classic psych rock formula with these explicitly Satanic lyrics. "Death Knell" gets a little doomy, and features the refrain "Six Six Six" amongst other evil ramblings, but the song is far from fierce and heavy, instead it's trippy and broody and mysterious and haunting, the vocals wreathed in reverb and draped over muted guitars, fuzzy organs, with some cool dynamic stop/starts, as well as some tolling bells and a few definite Sabbathisms. We were sort of hoping "Prime Mover" was a Zodiac Mindwarp cover, but instead it's a pretty stellar original, droned our layered high end guitars wrap around a chugging churning riff, the bassline buzzy and ominous, again, a super dynamic arrangement, maybe one of the heaviest jams on the record, a little mathy, the guitars thick and fierce, and then the vocals come in, and the sound shifts to something more melodic and moody, drifty and creepy and psychedelic. So yeah, don't be misled by the hype, or the satanic imagery, this isn't black metal, or really strictly metal, but if the idea of some awesomely Satanic psychedelic seventies styled heaviness, a sort of more metallic and WAY more evil and over the top classic rock, sounds like your sort of thing (and why wouldn't it?), then you'll probably love this as much as we do. Killer packaging too, the aforementioned cover art, a sweet slipcover, and of course lyrics, so you can sing along and perform your own little musical black masses at home.

MPEG stream: Con Clavi Con Dio
MPEG stream: Ritual
MPEG stream: Satan Prayer

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. Japan's Ghost bless us with not one, but two new albums of their psychedelic "heavy chamber folk" sounds! Of the two, "Snuff Box..." rocks a bit more, even indulging in a Rolling Stones cover. The beautifully silvery-packaged Tune In... is their album of protest songs. Folkier and longer than "Snuff Box..." and featuring a Pearls Before Swine cover. Lovely, haunting, melodic.

Japan's Ghost bless us with not one, but two new albums of their psychedelic "heavy chamber folk" sounds! Of the two, "Snuff Box..." rocks a bit more, even indulging in a Rolling Stones cover. The beautifully silvery-packaged Tune In... is their album of protest songs. Folkier and longer than "Snuff Box..." and featuring a Pearls Before Swine cover. Lovely, haunting, melodic.

Not only referencing a rare strain of flower, but also an AQ favorite collection of ghost voices, otherwise known as the Electronic Voice Phenomenon, the Ghost Orchids stand in direct contrast to the confrontational screamo-spazzcore of most of their San Francisco contemporaries, with their cold, detracted aesthetic of new wave electronics and goth theatricality. "The King Is Dead" is the Ghost Orchid's debut full length, having recorded the album at I Am Spoonbender's Seismic Seance studios. Much of the avant-pop plasticity which coats the Spoonbender aesthetic carries over into The Ghost Orchids' sound, although the Ghost Orchids have dropped all of the Factory label references of their "Architecture" EP in favor of the detached electro stares of contemporaries like Adult. but keeping truer to the '80s darkwave electronics of Clock DVA or Cassandra Complex with spartan, repetitive programming and hard EBM rhythms. Black eyeliner required. MPEG Download: "A New Bloodtype" [/audio/ghostorchidsanewblood.mp3] MPEG Stream: "A New Bloodtype" [/audio/ghostorchidsanewblood.m3u]

MPEG stream: A New Bloodtype
MPEG stream: Love Inversions

Anyone remotely familiar with aQ knows we've long had a soft spot for earthy, psych-tinged music that weaves its way along beautiful shadowy paths through the dewy glimmers and murky sludge. Well, here's something new that fits the bill and has been pleasing many an ear around here! We actually put a call out to these Portland, OR folks back in October to send some of their music down the coast. A few months have passed and here we are finally with cds in hand, and we think it was worth the wait! Heck, in the short time we've had Like This Forever in stock, in-store play has already been stirring up many many queries with at least one purchased each time it's spun. Stormy waves of electric guitar distortion and reedy woodwinds crash upon one another, then melt into clear smooth bell chimes. Horns and piano also enter the fray that ebbs and flows around mainman Eric Crespo's emotive vocals that have been compared to those of Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. As you listen you get a sense that Crespo and co. may have been raised on a balanced diet of Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac as well as Pavement and Slint. Yes, all the most nutritious and tastiest food groups! Recommended.

MPEG stream: Hopeless Or Not
MPEG stream: The End

Fomer Sugarcubes singer Einar Bendiktsson does a Mark E. Smith over very wrong hip-hop techno electro. It's Sprocketsy, Eurotrashy and, hopefully, tongue in cheek. If that, then kinda funny!