[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 7101 through 7150 of 19388.

Full color cover art by AQ-favorite Jim Woodring.

The name had us expecting something blackened and metallic, but the lineup gave us a more realistic idea of what Grim Tower might sound like. The duo of Stephen McBean of Black Mountain, and aQ pal Imaad Wasif (Lowercase, Electric Flower Group) is self described as 'death folk', and Grim Tower do most definitely deliver a sort of dark psychedelic folk, lush and laced with effects and electronics, trancelike and ritualistic, the sound obviously beholden to classic seventies acid folk, but with plenty of modern psych folk tropes as well. Opener "Soft Seance" sets the scene pretty perfectly, over a bed of backwards rhythms, and softly swirling FX, the duo lay down some distorted psych guitar buzz, and some steel string buzz, the vocals a moody echo drenched croon, all minor key melodies, cool vocal harmonies, some big drumming toward the end, and a heavy psych finish, all distorto shred wrapped chug and churn. The second track is all banjo and sruti box buzz, Wasif's keening vox a nice contrast to McBean's croon, the vibe super apocalyptic and swampy, reminding us for sure of Woven Hand / 16 Horsepower big time. And so it goes, the sound shifting from dark brooding folky psychedelia, to culty, ritualistic acid folk, to almost pop, all jangly and melodic (check out "Orpheus Light") with fluttery flute and fuzz drenched acoustic guitars, to broody, balladic folkiness, to strummy, almost classic rock sounding psych, even some buzzy Appalachia, but all of these variations are definitely woven into a fantastically cohesive whole, a dark, mysterious, death obsessed psychedelic songsuite that we're digging big time!

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MPEG stream: Reign Down
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We loved what we heard on Grimes' split 12" with D'eon that we were finally able to review a few lists ago, but our love for Grimes really blossomed when some of us got to catch her/them live several months ago, in town opening for Austra. We could tell then that they were on the verge of creating something pretty awesome. Visions totally delivers on that promise, Grimes' glorious soft gaze synth driven sound creating not just a hazy atmosphere but producing memorable and mesmerizing pop songs as well. Like the sounds of Gang Gang Dance and Glasser softly drifting through a smoke filled room, the sounds here manage to be both tender and sexy. While Grimes may too often be pigeonholed as a witch house band, there is something much more bright, melodic and sonically rounded about their sound and approach. Each song has its own distinct vibe and tonal color. Sometimes it sounds like Little Dragon doing the most seductive Blondie song ever and other times it's like Chromatics letting their hair down at an after hours '90s RnB dance party. Airy without being too light, addictive without being too saccharine. Visions definitely transports us to some fantastical sonic otherworld that we're digging big time...

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So it seems like you can't be a singer/songwriter these days without having a bio involving, either Eastern gurus, nomadic quests or shamanic encounters. Larkin Grimm is definitely no exception, with her lengthy bio reading more like a fairy tale then a back-story. Between growing up in rural Appalachia and hitchhiking through Alaska, the elegant songwriter's magical lifestyle has inspired her vibrant career and her latest and most promising release, Parplar. Ms. Grimm has succeeded in conjuring a sound that is solely her own, haunting finger-picked, acoustic sorcery that cuts to the bone. But don't think this album is so easy to wrap your head around, it's dense with all kinds of instrumentation and fantastical production. With some songs that are stripped down, sparse and folk oriented, and others that are rather twisted in a child-like, whimsical way. Kind of like a fucked up Disneyland nightmare, or a malfunctioning carnival ride. Really bizarre and twisted, but unique and intriguing, Parplar is finely crafted and is the perfect addition to the Young God records catalogue.

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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.

Testosterone. Yep, Grinderman are back with their self-explanatory second album, and it's a motherfucker. Just like the first one. If for some reason you've been living under a rock, Grinderman is a supergroup, if you will, comprised of Nick Cave, and his Bad Seeds cohorts Warren Ellis (also of Dirty Three), Jim Sclavunos and Martyn Casey. True to that pedigree, this record RULES. The best thing about this is how it bypasses the curse of the side project in ways that few records can (the same could be said of the recent Shrinebuilder and Twilight records). So yeah, the first record was no fluke, and this one is even BETTER. Punked out blues with a dirty mind, muscular riffage, pounding rhythms, and of course, Cave's psycho-sexual vocals delivered with just enough restraint to keep things nice and tense. Every song is totally dirty and sleazed out in the best way imaginable, and the album moves forward with an unstoppable swagger that just reeks of sexxx, sweat, and blasphemy. The production is top notch and perhaps the only thing "tasteful" about this record. It simply SOUNDS amazing, huge swirling psychedelic atmospheres for the band to immerse themselves in. Grinderman 2 is already sounding like a classic after only a few weeks on the shelf. After a few seconds of pleasantly melodic reverse guitar, the album gets right to the point with opener "Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man", with some burly bass keeping Cave from completely losing his shit as he spits out memorable lines like "And he sucked her and he sucked her and he sucked her dry". Things soon morph into an aggressive stomp that simply rocks. "Heathen Child" sort of continues this theme with its psych blues vibe and more lyrics that involve some literal sucking. The boys know how to switch things up as well, like on "What I Know", the closest thing to a ballad that you get here. Of course, it's still creepy and weird as fuck before leading into the raucous "Evil", one of the album's most aggressive numbers. "Places Of Montezuma" sounds a bit like classic late '60s/early '70s Rolling Stones interpreted by Nick Cave. So in other words, it's pretty rad, setting things up for the perfect closing song "Bellringer Blues", a midtempo dirge with all kinds of psychedelic haziness thrown in with the cool group vocals. If you dug the first record, this is a no brainer. Not sure if anyone was ever skeptical about Grinderman, but if they were, this should put all fears to rest. Accompanying this kick ass record is some equally kick ass packaging, with shiny blue foil lettering and a super thick booklet overflowing with amazing artwork from Ilinica Hopfner.

MPEG stream: Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man
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NEW NICK CAVE!!!! NEW NICK CAVE!!!! NEW NICK CAVE!!!! And for any fan of The Birthday Party, Bad Seeds, or anything else Mr. Cave has released in his vast and varied career, you will not be disappointed by this, the first release from GRINDERMAN!!!! For this new project Cave has taken a turn towards caustically energetic. This record is frenetic and convulsive, reminding us a bit of The Birthday Party combined with the refinement of The Bad Seeds. The songcraft is definitely up to snuff with Cave's entire oeuvre, but what makes this album exciting is the fact that Cave has closed the lid on his piano (an instrument which has been his main writing tool throughout his career), and picked up the Stratocaster! The resulting sound is noisy and bombastic. The guitar lines are as hooky as they are interesting, and at points are actually trippy as hell. Phasers and wahs aplently. The other element that sets this album apart are the droney loops created by Warren Ellis, the best example of which is heard on "When my Love Comes Down" which starts with a scraping violin loop that remains throughout the entire swampy shuffle. That's not to say there aren't tender moments on this record. "Man in the Moon" for instance is a beautiful Fender Rhodes ballad, a sad little musical picture for sure. All and all, this record is awesome. If you are an avid Nick Cave fan, as we are, you will love this record. Cave's lyrical content is consistent with most of his work...dark and sexual and greasy and smart. The sound of this record is also vaguely psychedelic, which is an interesting development that seems to spring mostly from the fact that Cave's guitar tone is fuzzed out and heavily effected... SO RULING!

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It's impossible to predict which bands will get that big break and blow up and which bands will never get all the love and glory they deserve. It seems like the Gris Gris were always on the verge of their big break but for one reason or another it never seemed to happen, and we're not sure why. To our ears they were one of the most impressive and refreshing in the recent onslaught of psych revivalists. Fueled by a 13th Floor Elevators inspiration they cranked out songs with some serious fire and substance. In fact it's Greg Ashley's sophisticated songwriting chops that really set the Gris Gris head and shoulders above so many of the others, the bands who knew how to look the look and make all the right psychedelic signifier sounds and images but didn't really have the true songs to back it all up. Sadly they called it quits or at least decided to take a long hiatus a few months ago, but luckily their legend can live on through this great record, a live show recorded in Oakland this past spring. Fiery renditions of lots of our favorite Gris Gris tracks and further proof that this is a band that deserves more ears to hear just what made them so special.

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Talented Oakland guitarist/vocalist Greg Ashley's Gris Gris gang is back, with a fab sophomore album mostly recorded at a cabin in Texas belonging to Greg's parents. So it's not garage rock, it's cabin rock. Probably good that they were presumably far from any neighbors since this quite often one dang noisily feedback-filled and fuzzed-out freakfest that might have gotten the cops called -- and who knows what manner of illict substances fueled the recording sessions, with which Gris Gris wouldn't want to be busted? Maybe The Man would mellow out knowing that the noisy rave-ups co-exist on this record with plenty of catchy melody and jangly folk and relaxed droniness and other good stuff. Although "Ecks Em Eye" starts the album off with a free jazz warm-up with Funhouse saxophone, the Gris Gris' psychedelic trip soon passes through the overgrown, shadowy backyards of bands such as Pink Floyd and the early Stones ('specially on the fake raga of the title track). Ashley & Co's retro-sensibilities venture even further into total oldies territory on "Medication #4". More current artists that this sometimes reminds us of (or whose fans we think might also like this) include Mudhoney, Greg Weeks/Espers, Comets On Fire, and Devendra Banhart, a little. Definitely recommended to anyone into the psych scene today, and cabin rock of course. With songs with titles like "Big Engine Nazi Kid Daydream" and "Down With Jesus" these guys aren't ever gonna have hits, but in our little world they should!

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It's the debut from this Oakland trio lead by guitarist/vocalist Greg Ashley, whose solo album last year Medicine Fuck Dream won kudos from many amongst our staff and customers...if you liked that, you'll surely like this. Very authentic '60s sounding stuff from a paisley garage a la the Yardbirds, Kinks, Stones, and Syd Barrett. Ashley's got a whispery voice well-suited to the new nuggets The Gris Gris deal out here, ranging from gentle jangle-pop to raucous feedback rockers and psycho-delic drone-outs. Along with The Cuts, two way-back aligned winners from Birdman n' Oakland!

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EP's in the indie world in recent years usually equal some slightly different versions of songs you already heard on the full length and a throwaway live track or two. Luckily this trend has taken a little break in the last month or so as there have been some pretty great ep's lately from folks like White Magic, Bonnie Prince Billy (who has been guilty of the throwaway ep in the past) and now this great offering from Grizzly Bear. Anyone who has seen Grizzly Bear live in the last year knows they have really come into their own as a full band and this record really brings that into clear focus. With totally new versions of songs from Yellow House, a haunting cover of The Crystals "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)" as well as covers of some of their tracks done by a few of their famous friends like CSS, The Knife and members of Deerhunter. Another exciting chapter in a band who are proving once again, that they're in it for the long run.

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We initially thought this to be another of the menagerie of wildlife named artists associated with Animal Collective, but they aren't. While they do tread in and around a similar lo-fi, art-folk trail as A.C., their travels take a gentler pace through prettier passages. So hushed, introspective and slightly woozy with brittle male vocals, delicate chimes, an occasional guitar strum, barely-there drones and mysterious wisps of texture. The percussion sounds as though it's being tapped and shaken out on random twigs, pebbles and pods. Check out the seventh song "Fix It", a particular highlight on the album. A great rainy day record!

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It took some of us a while to come around, but we eventually ended up digging Grizzly Bear's debut, Veckatimest, quite a bit - orchestral pop equal parts Van Dyke Parks and Elliott Smith, lush and lovely, impossibly catchy, dreamily dramatic. So we were definitely prepared to dig this new one, but we weren't necessarily prepared for THIS. Give the opening track a listen (the first sound sample below), and be as baffled by us by GB's new sound, and we mean baffled in a good way, a really good way, in place of their sweetly twee Pitchfork-y pop, is something downright PROGGY, dark and driving, they sound like some obscure Italian prog from the seventies, we hear a little Yes too, some Comus even, everything minor key and darkly tinged, intensely strummed acoustic guitars, the vocals reminding us of Terry Reid, the dense mix rife with blooping percolating synths, driven by bombastic drumming, the sounds stereo panned, swooping from speaker to speaker, there's even some seriously hard rocking fuzz drenched psych guitar, it's total modern retro trip out psychedelic prog. We're curious how fans of the last record will feel about this, but we can definitely tell you we're LOVING it. Sort of the way Malachai reimagined seventies proto metal and fuzzy psych rock, the sound here, at least in places, is equal parts obscure prog and acid folk, a bit modernized for sure, but that opener, wow. Nothing else on the record is so overtly retro prog, but that vibe does ooze into the rest of the record, giving the whole thing a definite retro feel, the production, the arrangements, the songs, plenty of tripped out experimentation, dark drones, GB's dreamy pop does of course shine through in places, but for the most part, the feel is a bit more haunting and melancholic, and yeah, folky / proggy / sixties / seventies sounding, with some of the songs dipping into early Peter Gabriel and Genesis territory (just check out "What's Wrong"), and others unfurling as almost classic rock sounding ballads, but darkly psychedelic and dramatically brooding (check out the closer "Sun In Your Eyes"), which makes for a cool / strange balance for the overt pop that surfaces throughout. Awesome!

MPEG stream: Sleeping Ute
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Looks like this is gonna be the album that establishes Grizzly Bear and brings them to the next level, and for good reason, as it's their most ambitious and assured outing yet. Filled with such lush deep harmonies, these are songs that create such lovely states of brooding, dramatic pop both smart and emotional. Imagine sprinkling Van Dyke Parks arrangements on top of the songs Elliott Smith was creating near the end of his life as well as a healthy dose of inspiration from Nina Simone and you start to get an idea for the kind of intense orchestral baroque pop Grizzly Bear have created with Veckatimest. They enlisted Nico Muhly to create arrangements on a few of the tracks, but even the songs without Muhly's touch are are still impossibly lush and rich sounding. Veckatimest almost makes us want it to be gray and wet outside forever as these are the kind of sounds to keep you warm in the darkest and coldest of times. So nice! And even Andee, who was never that keen on Grizzly Bear, was immediately smitten by the track "Two Weeks". If that track doesn't convince you, then maybe you just don't like pop music...

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MPEG stream: Cheerleader
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If you're anything like us, you'd been hearing about Grizzly Bear long before you actually got to hear them. When we finally did hear "Horn Of Plenty", their record which came out a few years back, we immediately realized why people had been buzzing. And thus we were the ones buzzing about the impending release of Yellow House, a dark and delicious mix of rich pop and grand bedroom orchestration. Yellow House is the kind of record you keep by your side on cold and rainy days. It almost sounds like Sufjan Stevens on valium with Jim O'Rourke on the board and the Black Heart Procession helping out with extra moody layers of longing and a deep sweet musical ache. We love how their songs have a sense of movement and space, and how they actually write great goddamned songs. "On A Neck, On A Spit" is most definitely a contender for song of the year! And this entire record is turning out to be chock full of song of the year contenders. The perfect warm music to stave off the impending winter chill.

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The third beautiful lp of sublime guitar instrumentals from local luminary Danny Paul Grody. Grody has a rich history of intricate musicianship with bands The Drift, and Tarentel and his side-projects Believer and Moholy-Nagy, but it's with his deeply introspective solo records that Grody shines the most. He tends to be lumped in with the American Primitive scene, and he can play with the best of them, but his music draws from deeper wells, such as Eastern mysticism, ritualistic drone music and the timbre explorations of influential composer Lou Harrison. Grody uses chiming guitar figures and sonorous synth drones that build slowly into vast mountains of sound then cascade into fluid filigrees and rapturous waves. We've loved all of Grody's solo records, but this one may just be our favorite. Download code included!

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First proper solo record from this core member of SF post rockers Tarentel, as well as the mastermind behind another post rock combo we dig, the even dreamier The Drift. Fountain is simply fantastic, a subtle and varied affair, that dips into various sounds and moods, with acoustic and electric guitars as the main instrumentation, although the guitars are augmented by melodica, keyboard, bow, voice, and of course, rain. The sounds here are delicate and crystalline, lush and warm, dreamy and sun dappled, deftly fingerpicked abstract Appalachia, gives way to melancholic folk, chamber music drifts into thick layered dronemusic, hushed one second, exuberant and joyful the next, a gorgeous, ever shifting songsuite, that definitely harkens back to classic seventies folk music, but is infused with the more abstract home brewed abstract bedroom dronemusic of today, as well as nods to the post rock that informs so much of the music Grody plays. Totally blissful and dreamy, from the hushed opener, simply strummed guitars, and slow shifting overtones, to the spare finger picked beauty of "Well Wisher", that gradually blossoms into a sunshiney bit of glimmery instrumental dream pop, to the pop ambient haze of "Covered Mirrors", to the sprawling "Eve", a gorgeous folk flecked steel string work out, interrupted part way by a gorgeous cloud of lush shimmering whir, to the dark, muted, blurred guitarscape that makes up the record's closer "Finding Time", notes suspended in space, tones drawn out into extended humming soft focus drones, little melodic fragments chiming in the distance, all moving glacially through a sepia toned haze. So so lovely.

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Such a gorgeous second solo effort from Danny Paul Grody (The Drift, Believer, Moholy-Nagy, Tarentel). Adding beautiful elements of harmonium, synthesizer, bows, and bells to his blissful guitar playing, Grody has made the perfect autumnal album. These instrumental tracks take you to a place where your mind and body start to gently sway, and the stress, sadness, and loss of being alive are both acknowledged while also allowing you to drift into a dreamier state of mind, recalling some of our favorite records by folks like William Eaton, James Blackshaw, Bruce Langhorne, Jozef Van Wissem, and Steffen Basho-Junghans. While many other solo records by great guitar players can often feel as a show off session for how well trained they are, In Search Of Light is an album more invested in creating an actual mood and atmosphere then hitting you over the head with tricky playing or trying to sound exactly like John Fahey. In fact it's the patience and subtly of Grody's playing that always attracts us to his work and keeps us listening for the reward of repeated listens. So perfect for fall, this record makes us want to put on our favorite autumn sweater as we cuddle up near a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and read a book of poems or just daydream the afternoon away. Highly recommended! Comes with a digital download so you can also dream the day away while in transit or at your computer...

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We are SO PSYCHED that this has finally been reissued. Back in the eighties there was an amazing punk/noise rock scene happening in Australia, Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost, the Kryptonics and of course Grong Grong, and it seems like the Memorandum label has been started up with the sole purpose of rescuing those classic sounds from obscurity. There is a double disc Lubricated Goat reissue coming soon, which will most likely be a Record Of The Week, the catchy Kryptonics record is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, we've emailed the label asking them to please please please reissue the King Snake Roost records, which brings us to Grong Grong, Australia's answer to Killdozer, or maybe Flipper. Originally released on Alternative Tentacles, the record is fleshed out here with a ton of bonus tracks, live tracks, and even a dvd with amazing archival footage of the band! But you say, why should we care? Grong Grong was born on a whim, named for a small Australian town, that one of the members just happened to be passing through, when he got home, he decided he had to start a band, and it had to be called Grong Grong. And apparently the simple approach of asking folks "Do you want to be in a band called Grong Grong?" was enough, and soon, Grong Grong were playing shows and making records. Or at least a record, and what a record, filthy, grimey, noisy, raw, primitive, pounding, chaotic, punk as fuck, a little post punk, a little new wave, crunchy angular guitars, throbbing low slung bass, wild drumming, and big bellowed vocals drenched in reverb, the band locking into a single riff, and working it and pounding away, the guitar spiraling off into weird little tangles while the bass and drums stayed locked into their groove, and the vocals swooped all over the place, the delay sending the grunts and growls careening from speaker to speaker. Not sure how these guys ended up on AT (well, Jello was a big fan), seems like they might have been just as at home on AmRep, where most of the other bands from this scene ended up. Hardly matters, this is some awesome classic Aussie weirdo noise punk, and it sounds as good as it ever did, and listening to this now, it's shocking how many young bands are aping these guys big time, whether they realized it or not. Swampy, bluesy, woozy, psychedelic, lurching, lumbering, sloppy and loose, but so goddamn good, and those vocals, totally pushing all those same Killdozer buttons, but these guys were way more minimal, all about mood and texture and vibe, not parts, not verses and choruses, they sort of just launched into a song and kept going until it ground to a halt, or the band collapsed into a heap only to stumble into the next track, which is evidenced by the bonus DVD which features tons of old recordings, even their very first show, and even back then they were a serious force to be reckoned with. Seems like we already have a contender for reissue of the year and it's only January, only possibility of it getting knocked out of the running, is if those Lubricated Goat or King Snake Roost reissues materialize, and more than likely all three will rank in the top ten, but for now, this is THEE shit.

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MPEG stream: Angels & Demons
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We made a huge deal about the recent double disc reissue of this gnarled, noiserock classic from these Australian misanthropes, and lucky for you vinyl freaks, one of our distributors discovered a stash of the original lp release in their warehouse. So grab one while you can... Grong Grong was born on a whim, named for a small Australian town, that one of the members just happened to be passing through, when he got home, he decided he had to start a band, and it had to be called Grong Grong. And apparently the simple approach of asking folks "Do you want to be in a band called Grong Grong?" was enough, and soon, Grong Grong were playing shows and making records. Or at least a record, and what a record, filthy, grimey, noisy, raw, primitive, pounding, chaotic, punk as fuck, a little post punk, a little new wave, crunchy angular guitars, throbbing low slung bass, wild drumming, and big bellowed vocals drenched in reverb, the band locking into a single riff, and working it and pounding away, the guitar spiraling off into weird little tangles while the bass and drums stayed locked into their groove, and the vocals swooped all over the place, the delay sending the grunts and growls careening from speaker to speaker. Not sure how these guys ended up on AT (well, Jello was a big fan), seems like they might have been just as at home on AmRep, where most of the other bands from this scene ended up. Hardly matters, this is some awesome classic Aussie weirdo noise punk, and it sounds as good as it ever did, and listening to this now, it's shocking how many young bands are aping these guys big time, whether they realized it or not. Swampy, bluesy, woozy, psychedelic, lurching, lumbering, sloppy and loose, but so goddamn good, and those vocals, totally pushing all those same Killdozer buttons, but these guys were way more minimal, all about mood and texture and vibe, not parts, not verses and choruses, they sort of just launched into a song and kept going until it ground to a halt, or the band collapsed into a heap only to stumble into the next track. This is THEE shit.

MPEG stream: Grong Grong
MPEG stream: Angels & Demons
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The Mamas and The Papas meet Midnight Cowboy for some dark L.A. Sunshine Pop.

When the Ghoulies are around you're guaranteed a good time. A veritable pop punk whirlwind of bats, monsters and creepy crawlies. Vocalist Kepi bounds around the stage like a possessed, manic monkey. And with this their newest release on Lookout! Records, you can almost relive their live show experience featuring their current line-up: Roach (guitar), B-Face (bass, formerly of the Queers), and new drummer Amy. Handwritten lyrics and an array of tour photos included.

We reviewed Harald Grosskopf's effervescent 1980 solo debut, Synthesist, a few lists back, an album inspired by LSD and heartbreak in equal measure. Along with that new reissue, Bureau B has also reissued Grosskopf's follow-up from six years later, Oceanheart, with a remastered sound and new cover art, and it's equally effervescent if slightly more tranquil than its predecessor. Is there a more new-ageish title than Oceanheart? The change in cover art too had us scrambling to Google to see what the original cover looked like, and there it was in all of it's new age glory, a softly painted ocean vista as viewed from behind a strange rock wall, not bad really. But then that FONT! Not even a good terrible eighties font, but that more pretentious bookstore font that was so overused in the later eighties. Ugh! Glad they changed the cover. The thing is Oceanheart is not really that new agey. Apart from the title song that is the only true ambient track, most of Oceanheart is very percussive and propulsive, apt for someone who began his career as one of Krautrock's foremost percussionists. Most of the tracks carry minimal driving uptempo rhythms that suggest a flowing stasis with built-up melodic nuances. Even when the tracks slow down to mid or even no tempo, there is still a strong Teutonic vibe that reminds us of a more ambient Kraftwerk, or more rhythmic Manuel Gottsching. In fact it's VERY reminiscent of Gottsching's New Age of Earth, and as that is one of our favorite ambient kraut records ever, that is not a bad thing whatsoever!

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Previously reissued via the RVNG label in 2011, Bureau B reissues this kraut-synth rarity once again with its original cover. Here's what we wrote about it previously: Before 1979, Harald Grosskopf was mostly known as a percussionist for Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers and Klaus Schulze. But during one bleak summer where his longtime girlfriend left him, he fortuitously met up with two musicians who he would later collaborate with in the band You (whose 2 releases have also been reissued on Bureau B). One of them lent Grosskopf his flat for the summer and a mini-Moog and sequencers to work on a solo record. With a reel to reel and eight track recorder he received from Schulze as compensation for his contribution on some recordings, Grosskopf then had to teach himself how to use all the new equipment, which was no easy task. But his perseverance paid off as the result is one of the finer synth outings we've heard from the era. There is a nice percolating exuberance to the tracks aided with the forwarding momentum of percussion that keeps things moving along, while other tracks show a deep space ambient side. Definitely a precursor for what much of what Jonas Reinhardt and Zombi are doing nowadays. Highly Recommended!!!! Bureau B has also reissued Grosskopf's more new agey follow-up, Oceanheart, which we also have in stock, and will review soon too, probably when the cd versions of both show up...

We've been wanting to list this for awhile, but the first pressing went out of print rather quickly that it took us awhile to get enough to list from the second pressing. And you can see why it's been so popular, what with all the love for rare kosmische music, and this one is a stunner! Before 1979, Harald Grosskopf was mostly known as a percussionist for Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers and Klaus Schulze. But during one bleak summer where his girlfriend left him, he fortuitously met up with two musicians who he would later collaborate with in the band You (whose 2 releases are soon to be reissued on Bureau B!). One of them lent Grosskopf his flat for the summer and a mini-Moog and sequencers to work on a solo record. With a reel to reel and eight track recorder he received from Schulze as compensation for his contribution on some recordings, Grosskopf then had to teach himself how to use all the new equipment, which was no easy task. But his perseverance paid off as the result is one of the finer synth outings we've heard from the era. There is a nice percolating exuberance to the tracks aided with the forwarding momentum of percussion that keeps things moving along, while other tracks show a deep space ambient side. Definitely a precursor for what much of what Jonas Reinhardt and Zombi are doing nowadays. In fact, included with the lp is a cd of 11 reworkings of Synthesist by the newer vanguard of electronic artists including: Oneohtrix Point Never, Arp, James Ferraro, Pink Skull, Bronze and Stellar Om Source. Highly Recommended!!!!

As if he's not busy enough with his main band's latest fierce full length New Erections and running his own indie label ThreeOneG, The Locust's Justin Pearson juggles many a side project including this new one Ground Unicorn Horn. And well, actually we guess he and his three pals Chris Hathwell (of Moving Units), Amy Szychowski (of Josh Taylor's Friends Forever) and Chuck Rowell (of Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower) really didn't need a whole lot of time to spit out this lil' 2 song 3" cdep. It's a whopping three minutes and twenty four seconds of primitive eye-gouge and brain fry rawk which probably doesn't possess the potent cure-all and hallucinatory qualities found in the substance of the same name, but it sure packs its own riled up mucus-loosening wallop.

MPEG stream: Damn I Wish I Was Fat

Hey! Just in time to tie-in with our recent review of the new album Rhythms From The Cosmic Sky by Earthless (a highlight on list #265), we've received several brand new cd reissues of old Groundhogs albums, among them this one from 1971, Split. What's the connection? Well... take a listen! And also recall that the bonus track on that Earthless disc was a cover of the Groundhogs' "Cherry Red", the original of which is to be found here. Knowing how much y'all love Earthless, we figured we'd order up on these and make it a highlight too. The other Groundhogs reissues we have to refamiliarize ourselves with a bit, but this one we know is an ultimate psychedelic blues rock classic. The title track is an extended epic four-part suite, taking the blues far into prog territory, while "Cherry Red" is simply a hard-driving, HEAVY bomb track for sure. And for this reish, the album's original eight tracks are augmented by four bonus BBC live in concert recordings, versions of "Cherry Red" and parts 1, 2 and 4 of "Split"! Lead by guitar hero Tony McPhee, the Groundhogs were among the best of the late '60s British blues boom, heavy and freaky enough for today's backwards-looking proto-metal fanatics to cotton to. The occasional hippy goofiness and old tymey Beefheartian hijinx may or may not be to everyone's taste, but we (Earthless fans for sure) can all agree on awesomeness of the wailing fuzzed guitar parts, can't we? And those are NOT few nor far between. Split is all about the energetic riffage -- and the concept of (drug induced?) mental breakdown readily conjured by McPhee's wild soloing. File with other early, exploratory heaviness like High Tide, T2, Arzachel... and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac as well.

MPEG stream: Split, Part 1
MPEG stream: Cherry Red

Not too legit lookin' cd reissue of the 1969 second album by Group 1850, a Dutch heavy psychedelic group featuring (in addition to the usual bass, drums, and guitars) some freaky flute and droning organ, plus effects-laden vocals in accented English. Spaced-out-there in the Floyd realms for sure. Their first album, 1968's "Agemo's Trip To Mother Earth" is considered a sixties psych concept album classic, and this ain't too shabby either. Songs like "Purple Sky" and "Hunger" are quite stoned-sounding, and probably sound even better if you are.

RealAudio clip: Hunger

Finally both extremely limited and way out of print lps, that came and went in a flash last year, have been reissued together on a not-as-limited double cd set via Kranky! We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these albums are utterly gorgeous! While 2008's Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill found Liz Harris, aka Grouper, starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these cds, Alien Observer and Dream Loss (framed together by the personally symbolic pictographic title, "A I A") blur that focus once again. While one leans towards songs and structure, and the other towards more abstraction, they are pretty much equal companion pieces that mirror each other, and share similar tendencies that defy a defined experience (especially since it seems we discovered by the track listing that the cd labels are switched, making it even harder to pin down which one is which, but it's really no matter!). They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Harris' voice a murmur built up through tape and Dictaphone loops like soft whispering leaves swirling in and out, and every sound and tone, whether it be acoustic guitar strums, far-off distorted delayed electronics, piano, bell tones or static, she uses and manipulates them with such a mastered ease. There's a hushed reverence to this suite that demands rapturous attention to Harris' cathedral like sound world, as if we were in some universal congregation listening to an angelic choir singing from the deepest remote space. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. And smehow whenever we listen to them, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the music plays.

MPEG stream: Dragging The Streets
MPEG stream: Soul Eraser
MPEG stream: A Lie
MPEG stream: Moon is Sharp
MPEG stream: Vapor Trails

Just as ghostly and mystical as her music is, so is the availability of Grouper's records. One moment they're here, but before you can even blink they're out of print. Lately Liz Harris (Grouper) has been releasing her own recordings, but not pressing that many of them when she does. We know she doesn't do so out of a desire to keep things 'limited' but instead it's her humble nature which tends to keep her scope small, even when the truth is there are thousands of people across the globe who have become huge fans of her dreamlike sounds. The first pressing of these two new Grouper lp's "A I A: Alien Observer" and "A I A: Dream Loss" went out of print so quickly we weren't even able to review them. The thing about these small pressings that bother us is that the only folks really winning, are the eBay speculators selling copies for ridiculous amounts, none of that money ends up in Grouper's hands. So we do hope that in the future she (and the labels she works with) will start pressing more copies as she is the one who deserves to reap the reward of her beautiful creation. OK, now that our rant is out of the way, we should let you know that although this is a repressing we're not sure how many, if any, more of these we're going to be able to get. What we got, So before we start going on and on about the music you probably should just add this to your cart asap to better your chances of actually ending up with these. Now on to what really matters - the music on these records. We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these lp's are utterly gorgeous! While Dragging A Dead Dear, found her starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these lp's blur that focus once again. They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Her voice swirling in and out, and every sound and tone she uses and manipulates with such a mastered ease. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. Somehow whenever we play these lp's, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the records spin. We can't imagine only getting one of these, as they really do work as companion pieces. Totally beautiful! And sadly, AGAIN, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!!

Finally available on cd! It doesn't really seem possible that the music of Grouper could get any more beautiful, any more majestic and epic, or any more mysterious and dreamlike. No, but what it can do is change, and grow, expand, and subtly alter its shape and timbre, it's coloring and shading, which is what it has been doing, on every single outing, but never so much as on Cover The Windows And Walls. The core of Grouper's sound remains unchanged, dense bleary eyed fields of druggy reverb, thick swirls of blurred vocals, smeared into indistinct melodies, all abstract and shimmery, soft focus and billowy, the musical version of those soft fuzzy grey clouds that fill the sky at twilight. It's still an impossible blend of Arvo Part, Morton Feldman and Skullflower, but the new record sounds a little bit more, well, folky maybe, or perhaps slightly less tripped out. A lot of it has to do with the vocals, which have attained an until now unheard of clarity. Which in no way means you can actually hear the vocals, they are still another gauzy layer in Grouper's blown out soundscape, but, sometimes, they -are- a bit clearer, you can actually pick out words here and there, sometimes even whole lines. Before, if we hadn't been told, we wouldn't necessarily have even known that the main element of Grouper's sound was in fact vocals. They were that indistinct and that drenched in FX. But here, it actually sounds like a singer, singing songs, but just barely, it's almost like listening to some super lonesome stripped down folk, recorded onto a wax cylinder, and then broadcast through a huge speaker mounted at the very bottom of an elaborate cave system, the songs careening back and forth and picking up more and more reverb and echo with every bounce, until they become this blissed out beautiful blur. Thick buzzing single guitar notes spread out into wavery fields of murky muted twang, which wrap themselves serpent like around the equally disembodied vocals. Imagine a field recording of ghosts performing ancient folk songs, a whispery thrum, so barely audible, that it's nearly impossible to capture, but once it is, and the sound is turned up enough to be audible to the human ear, it becomes this gorgeously distorted smear of sound. What else can we say about Liz Harris and her Grouper project? We've hardly heard anything this beautiful and mysterious ever. EVER! Absolutely and emphatically recommended.

MPEG stream: Cover The Windows And Walls
MPEG stream: Opened Space
MPEG stream: Down To The Ocean

The THIRD repress of this exquisite album on vinyl. If you missed it the last two times, don't expect this one to last any longer! The only difference is the black & white artwork, but the musical content is the same. Here's what we said way back when... Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with an entirely characteristic yet coy swell of effected elemental smear, crumbling delicately yet forcefully, until giving way to what is, to date, and here is the coy part, Liz Harris' most songwriterly and structured album. As opposed to the rich swaths of drone that up until now defined her sound, Harris has shifted from the abstract towards a more distinct and figurative sound. True to the title, the record unfolds like a sort of mysterious and morbid fairytale, innocent in its clear and elegant melodies, yet creepy and highly abstract in its more droney and sublime interludes. For the most part, her guitar playing is laid bare, removed from the dense fog of effects that typically occlude them. And what we discover is actually a pretty strummy record, with plenty of clean guitar articulation though certainly the aroma of her previous tech heavy approach remains in what is relatively speaking still pretty effected. At times she even reverts back to the gorgeous icey crunchy string attack of some previous efforts. With so much space liberated in the absence of drones, we also get to hear her stunning voice. Furthermore, the occasional audible lyric creeps to the surface, one standout fragment being "Love Is Enormous," a somewhat shockingly affirmative sentiment from an otherwise darkly mysterious and abstract persona. From start to finish Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill lulls you into its graceful murmurings and hypnotic thrumming. An exquisite addition to an already compelling discography. Recommended.

MPEG stream: Disengaged
MPEG stream: Heavy Water/ I'd Rather Be Sleeping

We were totally gaga for Grouper's Way Their Crept cd from last year. So much so we made it Record of the Week. A more aQ record we couldn't have imagined, a gloriously thick and fuzzy swirl, equal parts Arvo Part, Morton Feldman, Skullfower and all manner of drift and drone. Dense smears of processed vocals and mubled guitars, all so heavily affected they became indistinct blurs, drifting fuzzy drones. We've been anxiously awaiting more, and were thrilled to discover this new 3" cd-r on the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label. The good news is that it takes everything we loved about Way Their Crept and made it more, daker, denser, thicker, prettier. The bad news is it was limited to 130 copies of which we only managed to get 20. And the rest are sold out, so after these are gone we won't be getting any more. He Knows is very short, three songs, ten minutes. But what it lacks in lenght, it makes up for in depth. The first track could of come straight off of Way Their Crept. Disembodied vocals hover and drift, guitars (are they guitars?) rumble and murmur and shimmer and hover, not so much an instrument as some sort of musical spirit. The vocals, the guitars, the sounds Grouper produce are like wraiths, floating like whisps of smoke, drifting in and around and through each other, a thick cloudy soundscape, warm and enveloping, pusling and reverberating, an indistnict blur, lovely but ineffable. The second track is like chamber music recorded at the bottom of the sea, listening to it after it has bubblrd up to the surface, warm and warbly and murky and so lovely. Melodies are nothing but streaks of barely there sound, like sunbeams filtered through the prism of swirling seawater. The final track sounds like a hymn, but muffled and indistinct. Imagine laying in a field outside a smalll stone chapel, blankets wrapped tight around your head to stave off the cold, the warm sounds of the church drift across the icy ground, the sounds barely making it through your wool shroud and into your ears, but what does make it, sounds warm and safe and beautiful. So good. Limited to 130 copies and already OUT OF PRINT! We have the last 20, once these are gone they are GONE!

MPEG stream: One

Piano and voice. That's what we encounter in the latest incantation from Liz Harris, once again recording as Grouper. Chillingly beautiful smears from dankly shoegazing guitars, loop-station electronics, mumbled vocals, and a near constant wash of stoned introspection were the common elements of those albums of hers that captured our imagination like Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill and AIA: Dream Loss. She's eschewed pretty much all of the gauzy blur and the narcotic diffusion that runs through all of her previous albums; but the delicacy of these songs on Ruins and beguiling poetry of sadness makes this very much another fantastic Grouper album. Harris wrote all of the material for Ruins during a residency in Portugal back in 2011. There, she made full use of an upright piano, recording these songs onto a four-track with occasional overdubs, just for an additional layer voice here and there in order to harmonize with herself. Without all of the fuzz and drone, Harris' lyrics enjoy a bit more clarity, though she has long been one to slur the syllables into a cooing gasp of pitch-perfect intoxication. Her songs arpeggiate on simple piano chords evolving the minor key repetition into secretive, plaintive lullabies, slowly tapped out to match the torpor of her voice. The album is starkly naked in the emotional fragility of these arrangements, but Harris is very much in control of the poetics calmly painting her songs in a sonic palette of rainy-day blues and greys. It's much closer to the under appreciated Mirroring collaboration that hopefully wasn't just a one-off with Tiny Vipers' Jesy Fortino. Yes, another gem from the wintery soul of Liz Harris. Note: we're listing the Kranky cd and vinyl now, but we'll also soon have a handful of the special self-released vinyl edition direct from Liz, which includes a bonus cd of a thunderstorm field recording... if interested, please let us know now!

MPEG stream: Clearing
MPEG stream: Labyrinth
MPEG stream: Holding
MPEG stream: Made Of Air

Good news and bad news: Yay we got a few of the new Grouper 12"s for you all, BUT they were shipped to us with the records inside the sleeves and all of the copies we got have an inch long seam split on the side. Arggh! We won't be able to get more, but we are able to discount these a bit so we can sell them at $3 less than the normal asking price of $16.98. Sorry about that! Please don't order if you are overly anal about the condition of your record sleeves. Another mysterious missive from the ever elusive Grouper, this one even more mysterious since it is a one-sided fragment of a longer sprawling piece she has been performing live for the past couple of years, first at the Berkeley Art Museum, but also recently in such exotic locales as an abandoned polar bear enclosure at a Vancouver zoo. The vast space of the museum and zoo provided the opportunity to set up remote speakers throughout the space, so the sonic dimension of the multiple collaged tape loops of murked out guitar drones, pianos, built up vocals and other gorgeous hiss and noise could easily be manipulated spatially as the sound hovered in shimmering miasmas or pooled in delicate ripples of sound. The piece culminating in a swirling fading vortex of disintegration, like a beautiful drowning. Limited to 800 copies on white vinyl, we only have a few so act fast as they'll be gone before you know it!

Grouper's Liz Harris seems to be settling in comfortably on the Kranky label, with the release so far of the two AIA lps on cd for the first time, the debut from Mirrorring (Harris's duo project with Jesy Fortino from Tiny Vipers), and this "new" release, The Man Who Died In His Boat, which has come out in conjunction with a lp and cd reissue of her 2008 record Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, an AQ favorite. The release/re-release of both records together is no coincidence as the tracks on The Man Who Died In His Boat were recorded during the same sessions as Dragging A Dead Deer, and the new record has a long lost twin feel that we haven't heard on subsequent Grouper records since then. While she still employs the waves of foggy reverb and layered far away voices, there is a reappearance of fully formed songs and a sheen of less-filtered clarity. Both records are informed by key childhood memories, this one by a discovery with her father of beached sailboat, and their speculation about the man who disappeared sailing it. The ocean roar, swelling waves of reverbed sound, and the far away sadness of acoustic sea shanties pour throughout the release creating a moving hypnotic spell which invariably holds us helpless in its grasp. Beautiful! Currently, we only have the cd version, but the vinyl versions of both this and the reissue of Dragging A Dead Deer are supposedly alredy being repressed.

MPEG stream: Vital
MPEG stream: Difference (Voices)
MPEG stream: The Man Who Died In His Boat
MPEG stream: Living Room

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

SORRY. Latest in Type Records' 7" singles series (past releases included Machinefabriek, Goldmund, Paavoharju, Benoit Piolard and Tarentel) comes from local vocal soundscaper Liz Harris, aka Grouper, and it's another beauty. Not sure if she just keeps getting better, or it's just that we love here records so much that every new one just reminds us why and how much we dig here deliriously dreamy sounds. The A side just might be the closest to a proper pop song Grouper has ever recorded, but it's still appropriately buried in soft murky fuzz, making the notes mushy and indistinct, her breathy vocals shimmering streaks of melody, the whole thing a warm, melancholy blur of soft pop abstraction. Absolutely stunning. In the time it's taken to review just the A side, we've listened to it three times in a row! In fact we would have gone for a fourth had we not moved on to the other side... If the A side is a glimpse of Grouper's perfect pop, then the B side is her torch song, a gorgeous moody ballad, and it's like the dense clouds of reverb have finally parted, revealing what lurked behind all that shimmer and buzz, delicate sensual vocals, drifting minor key piano, a stripped down late night dark nightclub on the edge of town sort of stormclouds and roaring fire, folk flecked ballad. Still a bit of reverb and delay, but they merely drift by, or hover in the background. Totally gorgeous.

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

SORRY.

Imagine Arvo Part if he was a punk rock woman from Oakland. Or imagine an ultra lo-fi Morton Feldman jamming with Matthew Bower of Skullflower, backed up by a ghostly choir. This is one of those records that is so perfectly aQuarius it sounds like it was composed and recorded just for us. And you. A perfect blend of warm textured ambience and thick corrosive drones, delicate melodies wrapped in a gorgeously crunchy gritty hissy production. The whole record is a ghostly shimmer, warm washes of otherworldly vibrations swirling in a thick morass of processed vocals, murky keyboards and guitars rendered so unguitarlike they more resemble warm wiggles of sound, like slinky's stretched as far as they will go, slightly vibrating, barely disturbing the air around them, small waves of sound like ripples in a pond building and building and piled atop one another until it's a massive, thick blanket of sound. Imagine the saddest slowest band you've ever heard playing at absolutely deafening volume, then imagine stuffing your ears full of cotton, and listening from behind a closed door, through a wall of mud and straw, warm wispy tendrils of sound creeping and crawling through the cracks, wrapping themselves in thick coils around your arms and legs, the whole room slowly filling with sound, until soon you're totally ensconced, submerged, surrounded by thick billows of slow shifting sound. Melodies become indistinct whispers stretched across minutes instead of seconds, guitars and keyboards become blissed out blurs, like floating weightless in a warm dark mysterious place made entirely of soft sound. Wow. Totally haunting and captivating.

MPEG stream: Way Their Crept
MPEG stream: Hold A Desert, Feel Its Hand
MPEG stream: Sang Their Way

We made the debut full length from this Bay Area one woman dream drone outfit Record of the Week a while back, and ever since, have been waiting patiently for another slab of her beautifully dense ghostlike soundscapes. Since then, it seems like any one with a microphone and a delay pedal has decided to make some atmospheric vocal based drone record. And while some of those have indeed been quite good, few can come close to the utter abstract beauty of Liz Harris and her Grouper project. When describing Grouper, the most mentioned comparisons seem to be Arvo Part and Morton Feldman, Part no doubt because of the vocal/choral aspect, and Feldman because this is definitely a sort of dreamlike minimalism, but Grouper is definitey something else entirely. A murky dreamworld of shimmering guitar and indistinct voices, swirling clouds of smeared melody, drifting whirls of warm thick delay, and dense layers of mumbly reverb. It's the sonic equivalent of wandering through some ghost town, almost everything obscured by thick fog, the streetlights, like distant lightning bugs, warm orange glows, staining the fog like a child's fingerpaints, even sound can barely travel so you exist sonically in a tiny muffled and muted cocoon, like listening to the world around you with ears full of wet cotton. Drifting disembodied vocals drenched in thick dubby FX are spread out paper thin into nearly transparent sheets of gauzy whir, like a chorale of ghosts, singing in some vast underground cavern. Within all of this murk and fog, lurk heartbreaking melodies, perfect little melancholy pop songs, but almost completely obscured from view, so instead of hearing songs, it's like barely remembering a little melody, or getting a tune stuck in your head only to have it fly away moments later, and struggling to remember just how that song went. A strangely emotional sonic trigger for lost memories, and indescribable landscapes, amorphous sounds, and a world both familar and completely alien. Unlike her freenoise / dronerock / whatever contemporaries, who are happy to just make a big loud sound, or push a few buttons and start a low rumbling drone, with Grouper, it's more like the songs started out as proper songs, verses, choruses, sweet little melodies, gentle lilting vocals, but those songs were left in a corner, and allowed to get dusty, then set outside where they leaned for weeks, propped up against the side of the house, getting rained on, dappled with morning dew, they began to rust, and decay, weeds grew up around them, small animals made nests in them. Eventually, they were collected, and placed in a dusty old wagon, where they spent the majority of the journey, getting bumped and jostled, pieces breaking off, bits smearing into other bits, becoming less and less obviously songs, and more like the decayed husks of songs, still beautiful, and lovely in their own way, but lonely, and forgotten, until one day, they were all gathered up and placed in order, dusted off, polished up until they glow with some dim inner light, and thus they become Wide, and we close our eyes and listen...

MPEG stream: Little Boat / Bone Dance (Audrey)
MPEG stream: Imposter In The Sky
MPEG stream: Agate Beach