[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Record number two for the Emeralds' synthesist on Kranky; and like pretty much everything from that prolific trio, Hauschildt's sonic fruit doesn't fall too far from the Emeralds tree. Where his cohorts delve more into emotionally saturated post-kraut explorations of guitar and synth, Hauschildt's ethos tends more toward a grid-snapped electronica with taut sequencing and the occasional drum machine pulse, and he's probably the responsible party for bringing the beatbox to the 2012 Emeralds album Just To Feel Anything. He reprises those electronic rhythms once again on about half the tracks here, and those rhythms are anything but heavy and deep. Their airy spaciousness is only outdone by Hauschildt's luminously bright arppegiations, melodic sequences, and faux-chorale vocal samples that again look back to Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre for inspiration. While the more rigid tracks with their LFO squelching and vintage synth stabs come across at best as a decent attempt at Kraftwerk homage (e.g. "Accelerated Yearning") and at worst pre-fab soft-porn fluff (e.g. "Constant Reminders"), he's much better when he applies his craft to the atmospheric and the cosmic sensibilities of a track like the ethereal "Kept" and the gauzy, lovely title track.

MPEG stream: Interconnected
MPEG stream: Accelerated Yearning
MPEG stream: Kept

Both Mark McGuire and John "Blue Randa" Elliott maintain quite a public profile outside their work in the kosmische synth-guitar trio Emeralds, but the third member of that outift, Steve Hauschildt, has remained relatively quiet. We had a super limited cd-r of his solo work on Gneiss Things which came and went in a just a few days, but beyond that, nothing outside Emeralds. Tragedy & Geometry is Hauschildt's first full album beyond a small and unavailable selection of cassettes, and it's found a suitable home on Kranky. If McGuire and Elliott have embarked on parallel trajectories for effervescent, impressionist ambience through guitar and synth respectively, Hauschildt's own vision is that of the machinist - ratcheting the electronic percolations that he brings to Emeralds within very precise grids and architectural blocks for his electronics to operate. Oneohtrix Point Never is also obsessed with the mathematical poetics of electronic music; but where OPN always skews his retrogarde flares through lost time, Russian mistranslation or sci-fi replication, Hauschildt adopts a tightly controlled rigor in his engineered electronica. Nowhere is that more true than on "Batteries May Drain", with its clockwork drum machine ticking at autobahn speeds amidst rasping motorik electronics and comet dusted synth melodies, in line with Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. Elsewhere, hints of Emeralds' signature bittersweet atmospheres seep through the pulsing arpeggiations and synthesizer swoosh, aligned on tracks such as the "Overnight Venusian" which alludes to Aphex Twin's heralded Selected Ambient Works Vol. II. Quite fine!

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

SORRY. A 'repress' of a cd-r that we never got the first time around. Mr. Hauschildt is one of the three members of Emeralds; but unlike John Elliott and Mark McGuire, he doesn't seem to be as prolific in terms of solo and side projects, with less than a half-dozen tape and cd-r releases to speak of (compared to mountains of material from those other two). With The Critique Of The Beautiful, Hauschildt doesn't stray too far from the Emeralds sound of kosmiche dronescaping through analog synths and pedals. The album is dying to be made into a piece of vinyl, with the first four pieces acting as one suite that would be nicely matched by the lengthy finale. One of those first four - "What One Does To Another" - has almost a brightened Tim Hecker feel with percolating melodic phases piled below a thickened mass of warmly buzzed distortion. This is followed by "Runway" lovely post-Cluster track of pastoral synthesis built from a rhythmic arpeggiation anchored by a spiralling set of sequential notes and tone-bent phrases. And that extended finale opens with an oscillating flange of church organ minimalism, settling upon a melancholy melody which slowly shifts between just a few minor key notes which gradually wanders into zoned-out passages of electronic bubbling and fizzed textures. Very beautiful, very moving stuff. Limited stock on this, so don't be surprised when this one sells out.

MPEG stream: What One Does To Another
MPEG stream: Runway
MPEG stream: Critique Of The Beautiful

Time to get swept away by some deep dreamy Icelandic beauty, as our favorite experimental cellist Hildur Gudnadottir teams up with composer and pianist Hauschka for a stunning collaboration. We already deeply smitten with the meditative music Gudnadottir has made on her own as well as in collaboration with Angel, BJ Nilsen, Mum, et cetera. But we hadn't spent much time with the music of Hauschka, but this pairing definitely has us wanting to hear more of his stuff. Together they create music that sounds like a solemn soundtrack for ghost towns, abandoned buildings, and isolated existence. With elements in sound, composition and an overall feeling that reminds us of some of our favorite works by Gavin Bryars, Charlamagne Palestine, Harold Budd, Sylvain Chauveau, and The Rachels, this is one of those records we love playing early on a crisp winter morning or as it turns dark on a Sunday night and it's time to clear our heads of the distractions of the world, and start taking deep breaths and immersing ourselves in thoughtful introspection. Utterly beautiful and stirring.

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Let's just get it right out in the open, first thing. This should have been record of the week. It's beautiful, weird as fuck, mysterious, it's two whole discs of far out sounds, it comes with a massive photocopied book, filled with lyrics and text from some mysterious professor, and they're called Have A Nice Life... BUT, the band decided to not make any more copies, and let us have their last 40. It will probably be available as a download or something in the future, but for now, these are the last 40 physical copies available EVER. And the only way, as far as we know, to get the book as well. So what's the deal with Have A Nice Life? People are always emailing us about the new wave of shoegaze bands, nu-gaze as some folks like to call it (the same ones who now have us using the term metalgaze), and someone recommended Have A Nice Life, telling us the band was some sort of doom, metal, black metal, gothic, new wave, shoe gaze outfit, so obviously we were pretty curious. So we emailed the band. No response. Emailed the label. No response. Then we just happened to be going through piles of records, and found this one just sitting on the desk, where it must have been for weeks, a cool creepy cover, a color painting of a man's arm, bleeding, the words "the plow that broke the plains" on a black field above it. And it was bundled with a book. Hmmm. With the word Deathconsciousness printed on the front. And wham. It clicked. Those guys had already sent us a copy, which had somehow slipped through the cracks. So we quickly threw it on, and it was everything we had expected, everything we had hoped for, and more. We finally got in touch with the band, who told us they were not going to make any more, but would make one final batch for us. So here they are. Two discs, jam packed with dark blissed out shoegazey, new wave-y, slightly metallic nearly perfect pop. The songs insanely varied, but impossible cohesive. Some sort of sprawling bliss rock opera. Each track, perfect on its own, but even more perfect as part of the bigger whole. The first disc is the prettier and poppier of the two. The opening track is a creepy stretch of Goblin like synth ambience, peppered with simple minor key acoustic guitar, haunting and lovely, which quickly gives way to thick ropy basslines, and reverbed electronic drums, a definitely Joy Division vibe, swirls of thick guitar, gorgeous melodies and heartfelt vocals, it's dirgey and doomy and depressive, but so catchy and poppy. The next track is a big blown out pop epic, all effected vocal harmonies and washed out watercolor guitars, reminding us quite a bit of M83. The rest of the first disc slips easily from gloomy goth pop, to minimal drone, to shimmery shoegaze, often all at once. The disc finishes off with a gloomy dirge, all downtuned grindguitar and pointillist piano. Softly crooned vocals, and a surprisingly catchy melody. Which perfect leads into the second, darker and heavier disc, which begins with a track the boasts probably the greatest song title EVER: "Waiting For Black Metal Records In The Mail". But don't be expecting any black metal, instead it's a killer slab of eighties style indie doom pop, jangly guitar, propulsive drumming, and killer vocals, all wound into an awesome blast of hooky retro gloom, very reminiscent of the Comsat Angels. Hot on the heels comes another awesomely named song: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000", but again the title gives no clue that the song is a lilting mostly acoustic jam, with more piano, sad vocals, minor key melodies, a super reverby eighties production, all set to that Casio keyboard preset metronome rhythm. But about half way through, the track shifts and becomes a pounding rocker, the guitars thick and distorted, the drums pounding, but then all around synths buzz, vocals croon, the heaviness transformed into something much more dreamy and blissy. "The Future" is an aggro, almost no wave workout, all jagged guitars and shouted vocals, and more of that thick throbbing bass, but just like the rest of the tracks, it gets totally twisted around, his time by the addition of fake strings, and yet another killer and totally irresistible hook. "Earthmover" finishes things off, but instead of being some dirgey doom epic, it's another blissed out popscape, lots and lots of fuzz and buzz, glistening melodies, minimal rhythms, all buried beneath layers of woozy whir and sun dappled sparkle. Almost like a much prettier and poppier Nadja. And the thing about this record and these songs, is that, they all manage to be outrageously catchy, but not obviously so, and while they straddle about a million different genres, they manage to weave them all seamlessly into each other, making Deathconsciousness feel less like a rock band's collection of songs, and more like one massive organic mass of blackened dronepop jangle-goth bliss. Which as far as we're concerned it actually is. The packaging is amazing. A slimline dvd case, two cd-r's each hand spray painted, full color cover, super spare and striking, and then there's the book. A dvd sized 80 page book, filled with lyrics, liner notes, woodcuts, engravings, illustrations, and a massive amount of text on the soul, spirituality, death, sorcery, Medieval heresy and more, all supposedly penned by an East Coast professor and scholar. So awesome!

MPEG stream: Waiting For Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail
MPEG stream: Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000
MPEG stream: Bloodhail
MPEG stream: The Big Gloom
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The first release from this twisted avant shoegaze, black-doom, new wave, industrial psych pop duo, Deathconsciousness, was a sprawling double disc, complete with a huge book filled with lyrics and obscure text, strange illustrations, sonically and conceptually it was utterly stunning, we had been getting emails about that band and record for months before we got our hands on copies, and in our review of that record, we proclaimed that it really SHOULD have been a Record Of The Week, but the band decided to stop making copies, and we had the last copies ever. We were so obsessed with the record that at one point it was even slated to be reissued on Andee's tUMULt label too, but sadly, that never came to fruition either, and we hadn't heard much from Have A Nice Life since, a tape, a cd-r of outtakes, a few live performances, we began fearing the worst, that Deathconsciousness was the first and final proper record we'd hear from these guys. But now, six years later, local label The Flenser continues their shift from black metal to twisted dark pop and avant heaviness, and reveal a brand new Have A Nice Life record, and we get to right that old wrong, and finally make Have A Nice Life our Record Of The Week, cuz the new record is really damn near as good as the first. And sonically a good fit for The Flenser too, their new even less metal sound settling somewhere right between outfits like Aussie black-jangle noise poppers Loss Of Self and math-doom electro-sludge goth rockers Wreck And Reference. And yeah, HANL were really never metal, and now, they seem to have settled into a sound that's equal part gloomy death rock, noisy jangle pop and nineties style shoegaze, with a weird lo-fi production, almost entirely clean vocals, lots of angular guitars, reverb heavy goth rock drumming, and huge thick swirls of crumbling distortion and psychedelic freakout guitars. The record opens with "Guggenheim Wax Museum", a heady blast of fuzzy, super distorted dirge pop, blown out and shoegazey, with deep, dramatic vocals, and wild squalls of swirling psychedelic noise, like a slo-mo Godspeed fused to a blackened My Bloody Valentine, which bleeds right into "Defenestration Song" a super melodic, gloomy, goth pop gem, all thick fuzzy bass, a little Joy Division, molded into a sort of post industrial doom-gaze death rock with some super dramatic, almost emo vox. "Burial Society" sets moody pianos amidst a slowly skittering drum machine, beneath crooned hushed vocals, buzzing guitars, sounding almost like a darker, meaner, more underground Deftones (which is a VERY good thing by the way), the same sort of goth informed, dramatic metallic pop, but filtered through a much more fractured and fucked up sonic filter, laced with some surprising vocal oooh's and aaah's that add even more poppiness. "Music Will Untune The Sky" unfurls as a creepy raga like drone, keening, wailing vox, heaving low end swells, lush and layered, slowly blossoming into something darkly melodic and prismatic, before slipping into the confusionally chaotic opening to "Cropsey", a tangle of overlapping samples, buried muted rhythms, chiming barely there melodies, before the song finally explodes in a frenzy of tribal drumming, swirling strings, and more strident death rock vox. "Unholy Life" is some serious, total eighties style goth pop, a little bit new wavey, echo drenched drums, minor key melodies, but with some cool angular metallic guitars, and a wild noisy, psychedelic shoegaze second half, which gets gloriously blown out and blissed out. "Dan And Tim" cranks up the mathy post punk, sinewy and slithery, before transforming into more hazy gloom pop shimmer, the mathiness of the opener continually churning away beneath ethereal swaths of fuzzy guitar and heavily reverbed vocals, blurry and bleary. And finally, closer "Emptiness Will Eat The Witch" is all hushed and dreamlike, buried melodies and muted shimmer, all beneath a hypnotic drone, that shifts subtly, changing timbre and tone, vocals surfacing, the sound coalescing into some dour pop dreaminess, but still darkly droney, it's not until 5 minutes in that the song truly takes off, but instead of exploding into something heavy, the vocals soar and swirl, thick clouds of dreamy, droney vocal harmonies, pulsing and pulsating, peppered with strange abstract percussion, before settling into one final drift, haunting, and hypnotic, and darkly and dreamily mysterious. So goddamn great, and while it was totally worth the six year wait, let's hope we don't have to wait that long for more...

MPEG stream: Guggenhein Wax Museum
MPEG stream: Defenstration Song
MPEG stream: Burial Society
MPEG stream: Unholy Life
MPEG stream: Emptiness Will Eat The Witch

... is noneother than Elephant 6 Collective member Jeremy Barnes (of Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon). We know very well the degree of creativity and craft that goes into all of the E6 family's musical endeavors, and Barnes' latest musical pursuits are no exception. This is his second release under this moniker, and it picks up right where his self-titled debut left off, traversing the great expanse of folk music from around the globe (of which he's done his fair share of exploring in the past year). However, whereas he made his first AHAAH album all by his lonesome, for this one he recruited a full band. Heck, we can see why! In typical E6 fashion, he's encorporated an overflowing mixed bag o' acoustic instruments (various horns, bagpipes, accordion, ouds, piano, harp and assorted percussion). Barnes invites seemingly divergent elements from distant plains to entwine on Darkness At Noon. Keep your ears peeled for moments influenced by klezmer, flamenco and mariachi as well as interludes seemingly inspired by Carl Stalling, Steve Reich, and the solo accordion work of Lars Hollmer (member of Swedish prog rock greats Samla Mammas Manna). Like musical ivy, they creep and wind their way in and around each other. Very much in a similar film soundtrack-y vein to Tin Hat Trio's most recent album, the gorgeous Book Of Silk. The lead-off track "Laughter In The Dark" is a fitting entrance point. The seven minute long, richly atmospheric piece gradually lures you away from the lights and roar of the city towards more fire-lit enchanted surroundings. Barnes allows his adventurous spirit to run free, and we're fortunate to have a front row seat on his musical caravan.

MPEG stream: Laughter In The Dark
MPEG stream: A Black And White Rainbow

Also available on vinyl... Following up their glorious, but sadly very limited edition 78rpm 10" record Foni Tu Argile, A Hawk And A Hacksaw present their latest full length via more modern technological means. As always, the band remain deeply reverent and faithful to the traditional Eastern European gypsy folk styles that they hold near and dear. Their songs rush by at a frenzied pace. It's almost faster than your toe can tap, but the music does spur your limbs into action. We found ourselves moving a bit quicker around the store while it played. Even without our morning coffee fix! So if you've been trying to kick caffeine, maybe consider this a healthy substitute... no, seriously! Check out the wild piano action on "Kertesz" and the twisting horns on "Turkiye". Amazing musicianship! Stunning stuff! They do slow things down briefly for numbers such as the mesmerizing "Raggle Taggle" (though it ends with an unexpected lively clip!) and "I Am Not A Gambling Man", only to start back up again at an even more frantic tempo! If you've dug their previous recordings, this will surely please you a-plenty! Also recommended for fans of Beirut and Gogol Bordello!

MPEG stream: Kert�sz
MPEG stream: Raggle Taggle

Following up their glorious, but sadly very limited edition 78rpm 10" record Foni Tu Argile, A Hawk And A Hacksaw present their latest full length via more modern technological means. As always, the band remain deeply reverent and faithful to the traditional Eastern European gypsy folk styles that they hold near and dear. Their songs rush by at a frenzied pace. It's almost faster than your toe can tap, but the music does spur your limbs into action. We found ourselves moving a bit quicker around the store while it played. Even without our morning coffee fix! So if you've been trying to kick caffeine, maybe consider this a healthy substitute... no, seriously! Check out the wild piano action on "Kertesz" and the twisting horns on "Turkiye". Amazing musicianship! Stunning stuff! They do slow things down briefly for numbers such as the mesmerizing "Raggle Taggle" (though it ends with an unexpected lively clip!) and "I Am Not A Gambling Man", only to start back up again at an even more frantic tempo! If you've dug their previous recordings, this will surely please you a-plenty! Also recommended for fans of Beirut and Gogol Bordello!

MPEG stream: Kert�sz
MPEG stream: Raggle Taggle

Wow! If you loved this duo's last album Darkness At Noon and/or Beirut's Gulag Arkestar album and/or eastern European folk music in general, keep the love a-flowin' cause we think this might be your new fave! Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost (also of Beirut) clearly possess a deep respect, admiration and understanding of traditional Balkan, Bavarian and Turkish gypsy music. Together with guests Beirut's Zach Condon and old aQ faves Fanfare Ciocarlia, they've crafted a fantastic, faithful patchwork of the distinct regions' sounds. In fact, the latter were recorded in the tiny remote village of Zece Prajini, Romania. The air prickles with the intricate interwoven rhythms of sputtering brass, rattling percussion, reeling accordions and flourishing strings. Immensely vibrant and moving. Very very recommended!

MPEG stream: In The River
MPEG stream: Oporto

No sense in messing with a sure thing! A Hawk And A Hacksaw's latest release delivers more of their wonderful authentic Balkan folk sounds, but this time we also get the added delight of visual accompaniments. The group's enthusiasm and deep reverence for the music's history and artistry remains true, lively, and vibrant. Sure to please their growing legions of fans and win them a few more in the process.

MPEG stream: Kiraly Sirat�s
MPEG stream: Romanian Hora And Bulgar

I believe that this is the first recording for Gerald Hawk, who managed to land this recording on the Sun City Girls' Abduction label. I have to say that this is more interesting than the recent series of monthly Sun City Girls releases, sounding much more like the solo recordings from either of the Bishop brothers. Simple off key acoustic guitar strum with a Jandekian vocal meandering that often has a ghostly double as an ominous whisper. Certainly for fans of No Neck Blues Band and the aforementioned Sun City Girls.

The first we heard from these mathy noise rock heavies, was on a 7" split with Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings, and we finished that review by saying: "There's a Hawks full length out there somewhere, and these two songs have us begging for more!!" And here it is, a crushing collection of dense, mathed out heaviness, with bellowed Melvins like vox over churning downtuned riffage and big booming drums (recorded by Harvey Milk's Kyle Spence!), and that Harvey Milk connection can't be a coincidence, they're from the same state, and even though this isn't nearly as slow and low as the 'Milk, it is definitely drawn from the same sludgey well. Think classic old school AmRep noise rock, Midwest Homestead style pigfuck, and nineties math rock, all wound tight into some serious RAWK action, the bass thick and grimey, super distorted, all tangled up with the wild, intricate drumming, while all around guitars grind and buzz, chime and chug, sometimes everything bleeds into surprisingly melodic and downright poppy shapes, but more often, it's all angular, chaotic crush and knuckle dragging caveman pummel, the finest moments here when it's a little of both. Fans of current noise rockers like Gay Witch Abortion, Harvey Milk, the Melvins, Buildings, Seawhores, Kowloon Walled City, Hex Machine and the rest will flip for these guys. As will anyone who missed the good ol' AmRep / Homestead days...

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Seems like Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings were the big hit from the last list. We sold out of their record immediately, and hell, for good reason, that record was a fierce chunk of old school AmRep style heaviness, beholden to all the bands we grew up with and still love, Buildings paying homage, but making that sound their own. So here we have a brand new split single from those guys, teaming up with fellow noise rockers Hawks. Buildings offer up more of what we dig, chugging, churning, rhythmic mathy radness, the bass super distorted, the guitars buzzy, the band immediately locking into some serious crush, swaggery and snarly and heavy as fuck, both tracks here laced with squalls of feedback and driven by some seriously kick ass drumming, not to mention some soaring distorto guitar swirl and some blown out bass buzz. Cannot get enough of these guys! Hawks counter with their own take on mathy, noisy heaviness, starting off with a weird sample, and a slow swell of distorted guitar, before the drums kick in, and the song lurches into a pounding, riffy swagger, the vocals a bearded bellow, it all reminds us of that old classic Sub Pop sound, a bit grungy, a little poppy, but seriously heavy. And when the lead guitar swoops in, it transforms everything, and the song is suddenly catchy as fuck! The second track is a bit busier, with weird chiming guitar harmonics, wild drumming, more bellowed vox, and again, the grunge vibe is huge, which is really the only way we could dig this sort of noise rock sound ANY more. There's a Hawks full length out there somewhere, and these two songs have us begging for more!! While they last, we have the yellow vinyl version. Includes a download code too!

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I've been going Hawkwind crazy lately. I [Andee] pretty much missed out on Hawkwind completely the first time around. I was only 2 years old when this record came out. Later, I missed out again, having opted out of the whole high school, pot smoking, parking This reissue contains the original album plus 5 bonus tracks!

RealAudio clip: Brainstorm
RealAudio clip: Space Is Deep

More Hawkwind. And more and more and more. Lately all I [Andee] want to listen to is Hawkwind. Somehow I manged to make it to 32 without hearing Hawkwind ever. And man, did I miss out. "Hall Of The Mountain Grill" seems to be the poppiest of these 4 Hawkwind

RealAudio clip: The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)
RealAudio clip: Wind Of Change

One of our favorite records EVER from one of our favorite bands EVER (and yeah, we said that about the other Hawkwind reissue on this week's list, but in fact, the first 4 or 5 Hawkwind records most certainly qualify for such effusive praise!), newly reissued as a super deluxe lp, 180 gram colored vinyl, in super swank, heavy gatefold sleeves, here's what we had to say about this record when it was reissued on cd a while back (expanded a bit)... We've been going Hawkwind crazy lately. We pretty much missed out on Hawkwind completely the first time around. We were all about 2 or 3 years old when this record came out. Later, we missed out again, having opted out of the whole high school, pot smoking, parking lot, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind thing as well. Third time's the charm though, and we are now immersing ourselves completely in HAWKWIND! And we're not entirely surprised to find that some of our favorite bands have been borrowing heavily from Hawkwind (consciously or not) for years. This stuff is heavy and drone-y and hypnotic and endless. Like the Stooges or the MC5 stretched and stretched until they become these epic riffscapes of wah wah guitars and thrumming low end drone, all stretched loosely over an unwavering motorik beat. Monster Magnet, Circle, Salvatore, and basically every stoner metal band/psych rock ensemble we have ever heard owe it all to the 'wind, whether they know it or not. It's probably worth mentioning the opening track "The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke), which besides being a total space rock drug psych classic, also happens to be an impossibly perfect pop song to boot, with a chorus that KILLS, that is woven seamlessly into the otherwise soaring and swirling psychedelia and crunchy fuzzy stomp that surrounds it. And the rest of the record ain't too shabby either, heavy and heady, tripped out and hooky as hell, total psychedelic space rock bliss for sure. Anyone into the current crop of retro psych combos who have somehow yet to discover Hawkwind, here's your chance... Also features a youthful Lemmy Kilmister, pre-Motorhead, and like the cd, the lp re-ish, contains a handful of bonus tracks!

MPEG stream: The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)
MPEG stream: Wind Of Change

If you need a little background on my [Andee's] current Hawkwind obsession see the review for "Doremi Fasol Latido" elsewhere on the list. Needless to say, these records are killing me. How did I mange to miss Hawkwind for all this time. All the stuff I love, Originally released in 1971. This reissue contains the whole original album plus 3 bonus tracks.

RealAudio clip: You Shouldn't Do That
RealAudio clip: You Know You're Only Dreaming

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

SORRY.

RealAudio clip: Born To Go
RealAudio clip: Down Through The Night

Two discs of sonic mayhem beamed from space through a hazy cloud of pot smoke. Hawkwind are seriously kicking my [Andee's] ass. This is a double live disc of Hawkwind at their best (that would be Lemmy-era). Taking the studio cuts and stretching them out, twisting them all out of shape and turning them into endless jams, looping and repetetive and hypnotic. Once the rhythm section locks into their motorik groove, the rest of the band just follows, through a swirling morass of drug addled psychedlia and into another plane altogether. Never has a band made me want to get high so much. [This from a guy who's completely straight-edge.] I already almost feel high just listening, when I'm all stretched out, eyes closed, stereo turned up as loud as it'll go, my whole body vibrating from the sound, my mind drifting off. Like a faster, meaner, hippier Spacemen 3 but with better drugs, or Loop or Godflesh or Circle or any band that tries to transport you through repetition and subtle shift. Simple riffs spread out into a warm landscape of fuzz and thrum, while flutes and saxophones and tweaked wah wah guitars ride wildly atop the mayhem. So so so so good. Hawkwind make music to take drugs to make music by better than almost anyone else.

Mayer Hawthorne is the pseudonym for Ann Arbor native and multi-instrumentalist/DJ /producer, Andrew Cohen, who began recording as the retro-soul heavy Mayer Hawthorne as a sort of joke. When Stones Throw label head Peanut Butter Wolf first heard it, he thought he was listening to reedits of some obscure late sixties soul singles, not realizing Cohen had laid down all the tracks himself. Cohen is definitely channeling the same retro soul vibe that the Daptone label is putting out, and listening to this, he's got all the right soul references down from The Dells, The Delfonics, The Stylistics and The Moments, with the benefit of great song writing hooks. His first single, "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out", released on a red heart shaped 45 is probably the most groovy breakup song we've ever heard (It ironically get played a lot at weddings!). But our favorite track is the second single, "Maybe So, Maybe No", that shows that his hip blue-eyed soul persona is no mere shtick, but a viable modern soul force to be reckoned with.

MPEG stream: Maybe So, Maybe No
MPEG stream: Just Ain't Gonna Work Out
MPEG stream: Green Eyed Love

One of the most intoxicating male voices we've heard in so long belongs to Mayer Hawthorne. On How Do You Do, he makes the leap from the indie Stones Throw to the big time, now finding a home on Universal, but luckily his soulful music is not compromised one bit. In fact when we first heard Mayer Hawthorne a couple years ago we had a feeling he could get HUGE. Looks like maybe we were right. His blue eyed soul shines nice and bright on this new outing and shows off both his ability to create such a seductive mood, while also his super strong song writing chops. Equally influenced by amazing singers like Al Green, Dusty Springfield, Otis Redding, Smokey Robinson as well as sweet sounding west coast pop like The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Herman's Hermits and The Louvin Spoonful, there's just no denying he creates make-out jams that sound so damn good, and thus he's amassed a pretty awesome list of bigtime fans which include Dam-Funk, Peanut Butter Wolf, and even Snoop Dogg who appears on "Can't Stop", a totally killer track on How Do You Do. Speaking of amazing guests, legendary psych-funk guitar god Dennis Coffey plays on two tracks as well. The only thing we don't love about this record is the album cover and the marketing campaign that Universal has launched in support of it. We understand that they want to make him a huge star, but truthfully Hawthorne is so much more talented then what major labels like to push as the next big thing. He is not just a pretty face and voice, he wrote and produced every track on the album, and his sense of arrangements and pop structure are so spot on. But like we we were always told, you can't judge books or records by their covers, cause what's inside is what really counts, and the songs on How Do You Do are pure proof.

MPEG stream: A Long Time
MPEG stream: Can't Stop ( Feat. Snoop Dogg)
MPEG stream: Stick Around

The easiest way to describe Hayaino Daisuki is like this: they're the band we always wished existed. Imagine classic eighties metal but about 100 times as fast and furious, or maybe a blasting grind version of power metal, or Iron Maiden crossed with Discordance Axis. That last one being particularly appropriate, seeing as Hayaino Daisuki is the new band of former DA screamer Jon Chang, even though the band do everything in their power to disguise who is in fact in the band, the first record purported to be a bunch of teenage metal girls, this one has a huge booklet with comics and interviews and lyrics, but very little actually band info. But it hardly matters, once you lay ears on this stuff, you'll be totally and utterly obsessed, it may be only 12 minutes, but if you play it ten times in a row it's 120 minutes, and we DARE you to try to just listen to this once. Music this heavy and fast and furious and brutal should not be this catchy. The riffs are incredible, the drumming insane, the vocals of course are untouchable, and the wild leads and constant shredding harmonies is what pushes this over the top. What more do you need to know than 'Iron Maiden meets Discordance Axis'? Absolutely nothing. But if you're looking for something that totally shred and slays, is crazy catchy, you'd be hard pressed to find something more perfect than this. It's either the most melodic and hook filled shredding grind record ever, or the most blasting brutal grinding power metal record ever. Either way, this totally destroys, and is quickly becoming our favorite 12 minutes of music this year. Now 24 minutes. Now 36 minutes. Now 48 minutes...

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2006 was most definitely the year of Harvey Milk. A year most of us had been waiting for forever! A live DVD, a double disc reissue of Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men, a brand new fucking album!! Some tours, a bunch of live shows. We've basically been in downtuned sludge rock Nirvana. And as if that weren't enough, now we've got a brand new 7" from the boys, a split with Hayride, a band they shared another split with way back in 1992. The Harvey Milk track is an oldie, recorded at home way back sometime in the early nineties, a riffy mathy dirgey masterpiece. Very lo-fi, with the vocals buried WAY down in the mix, but it's a killer, roiling and churning, a slow motion groove, like the Melvins covering ZZ Top at 16 rpm. Essential if you're a HM nerd, and if you're not, what the hell is wrong with you?!? Hayride, we assume are also from Athens, and unlike Harvey Milk, they sound like it. Sort of jangly and mathy, what you might imagine R.E.M. would sound like if they had recorded for Touch And Go. Some June Of '44, even some Interpol with the deep dramatic vocals. But with plenty of jangle and math rock riffage. But no matter how cool Hayride are, the 'Milk is the reason to pick this up. Super limited, already out of print it seems. We were one of the only stores to get copies, and while we did get a bunch, they won't last...

'Bout time we had a cd reissue of this obscure slab of heavy, hard rockin' high weirdness, the only album released by this late '60s/early '70s band, who if nothing else, should get an award for having one of the best names ever. Haystacks Balboa, just what were they on? Also, one guy in the band is a dead ringer for the MC5's Rob Tyner (big dude with honky Afro). Originally released back in 1970, produced by Shadow Morton (The Shangri-Las, Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly, New York Dolls), this is a crazy little record, part acid rock, part blues, part prog. There's lots of heavy groovin', proto-metal riffing mixing it up with proggy keyboard action a la ELP's self-titled debut from the same year. More cogently, we'd recommend this to fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, The Good Rats, The James Gang, Mountain (whom they were buddies with) and Billy Joel's Attila (don't laugh - we love that record and really wish it would get reissued too!). Or, for a more recent reference, sometimes SF's own Hot Lunch sound a bit like Haystacks Balboa, actually! The album starts off in full-on fuzz guitar & jammin' organ mode, with "The Spoiler", the rough-edged vocals hollerin' hard. The next track, "The Children Of Heaven" is even heavier at first, with ultra-gruff deep voiced vocals and lumbering riffage, but then veers into twee thespianism and ornate keyboard melodies, the track teetering back and forth between light and heavy extremes, with some maniacal laughter thrown in as well. Next up, "Bruce's Twist" (aka "Gasbag") is rollicking number with sleazy lyrics, blues guitar licks and carnivalesque organ, hardcore honky-tonkin'. Following that, the mostly melodic epic "Auburn Queen" takes center stage for nearly nine minutes, and many moods - one of which sounds a bit like ELP doing the theme music to The Simpsons, and another of which is kind of in the mode of spooky, atmospheric Alice Cooper, like "The Ballad Of Dwight Frye", but with a dash of Tom Waits due to the especially gruff singing. Haystacks Balboa give us the "Sticky Finger" next, a great garage-prog headbang, and then offer up another ambitious psychedelic epic, the two-part "Ode To The Silken Men", before winding things up with the mellow "Riverland", a sweet song about a place "where life is grand and wars are fought with loud rock bands". Yeah!

MPEG stream: Spoiler
MPEG stream: Children Of Heaven
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Ethiopiques meets Torch Of The Mystics? Cambodian pop meets Turkish psych rock? Freaked out surf rock meets Saharan guitar music? Howabout all of the above...? The very first release on the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequency label from Istanbul-based instrumental psychedelic surf / space rock band Hayvanlar Alemi, their first vinyl lp, and their first record readily available outside of Turkey. The thing that makes this Hayvanlar Alemi record work in the context of Sublime Frequencies, is that it borrows from a super varied set of sounds, from all sorts of musics, each track here sounding like it could possibly be from some other SF release, twanged out desert psych, moody Eastern garage pop, fuzzy druggy almost krautrock style drift, a few of the tracks even sound like they could be some Sun City Girls Torch Of The Mystics B side! But somehow these guys make all those different sounds work, this whole record holds together perfectly and flows like a proper album, a super expansive and sonically rich collection of modern psychedelia, beholden to all the various musics that came before. The sound on Guarana Superpower is definitely exotic, lush, with Eastern melodies, simple hypnotic percussion, long droning tones, looped motorik grooves, plenty of buzz, and jangle, and crunch, rhythms that veer from spare and skeletal to wild and splattery, songs drift from tranquil shimmer to meditative buzz to occasional blasts of full on chaotic freaked out in-the-red psychedelia, but even in the midst of those noisy squalls, the instrumentation is distinctly Eastern, the result some fantastical Eastern psychedelic noise rock. It's during those moments that the Torch Of The Mystics comparisons become even more apt. The record is of course rife with references to traditional Turkish folk music, Turkish classical music, sixties and seventies Turkish psych rock, as well as all the above mentioned NON Turkish sounds and influences, all filtered through a modern avant rock sensibility. There are a few tracks of surfy, bluesy garage rock stomp as well, but again, even those jams are infused with a vibe and energy that is way more Eastern than Western. So good. And such a perfect fit for Sublime Frequencies... As always, this is a super limited one time vinyl pressing, nice thick vinyl, housed in a heavy old school style tip-on jacket.

Yay, Turkey's answer to the Sun City Girls is back with their 3rd full-length album! We're talking real GOOD Sun City Girls, like Torch Of The Mystics, 330,003 Crossdressers, or the group's swansong Funeral Mariachi. Not a surprise that their previous record and 7" single both came out on ex-Sun City Girl Alan Bishop's Sublime Frequencies label, and that this one is on Unrock, a German imprint that up to now had specialized solely in releases featuring Sir Richard Bishop, also formerly of the Sun City Girls. The Ankara-based Hayvanlar Alemi trio (their name in English means 'The World Of Animals', btw) clearly have the Bishop brothers' seal of approval, and could be considered SCG proteges, carrying the torch (of the mystics) passed by the now defunct SCG's. Their all-instrumental music is a similar, wide-ranging, partially improvised mixture of Western and 'world music' influences - an exciting, exotic synthesis of psychedelic surf rock and various Near Eastern / Middle Eastern / Far Eastern ethnic sounds� So if you're into classic Ethiopian groove (they are, covering Mulatu Astatke's wonderful "Yekermo Sew" here, which also appeared on that aforementioned single), and contemporary North African guitar groups like those found on many Sublime Frequencies releases, and all those cool obscure international '60s garage combos from everywhere from Turkey to Thailand we're always heralding reissues and compilations of, then Hayvanlar Alemi's jams are gonna be your jams too. Likewise probably if you dig some other excellent bands also currently doing the 'ethnic-psych' thing, like Swedish Afro-fuzz purveyors Goat or Mexican cumbia-psicodelico instrumentalists Sonido Gallo Negro. This new lp-only album, limited to 750 copies, provides eight more 'twisted souvenirs' from Hayvanlar's sonic world explorations, which can be both heavy and atmospheric, shimmering and sinuous, fuzzed-out and groovy, often all of the above at once! Great stuff, recommended!

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Sun City Girls acolytes from Turkey, Hayvanlar Alemi ("World Of Animals") have been wowing with their exotic-international-psych-surfing ways for a while now - they started back in '99 but we (and most of their non-Turkish fans, we can assume) only got hip to them when Sublime Frequencies released their fab second album, Guarana Superpower, in 2010. Visions Of A Psychedelic Ankara was originally a self-released cd-r they put out that same year, now reissued on vinyl for the first time as the A-side here, with the B-side of this record, Selected Visions, consisting of other, related, unreleased Hayvanlar Alemi rarities circa 2009-2011. The title Visions Of A Psychedelic Ankara references African Head Charge's Visions Of A Psychedelic Africa, and that's 'cause it's Hayvanlar Alemi's heavily echo-effected expedition into the realm of DUB. It's no surprise that the group's instrumental global-psych sound would align well with reggae/dub, so really that they had to dabble. They do a cover of an Eek-A-Mouse track, and some Turkish radio jingle, also giving the dubwise treatment to a bunch of their own compositions as well, some are older tracks, others were written with reggae rhythms and melodicas for this release. As per usual we think the dub version of anything is always the better version so for our money the already great Hayvanlar Alemi shoulda just kept on doing this dub thing!! Think Rastas with hookahs (and bit of a trippy spaghetti western vibe too, with all that reverb). Definitely a treat for fans. Vinyl only, 180 gram, gatefold sleeve, limited edition of 500 copies.

MPEG stream: Adrasan Dub
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We already know that any Sublime Frequencies release is gonna be desirable - and not just 'cause it's undoubtedly limited in edition, especially the vinyl variety. But this one's really rad. A 45rpm 7" single from modern day Turkish psych band Hayvanlar Alemi, whose SF full length Guarana Superpower had us likening 'em to a surfy Sun City Girls steeped in the Anadolu pop playbook of the late '60s/early '70s, in other words they're the descendants of the likes of Mogollar, 3 Hur-el, Baris Manco, and Sublime Frequencies labelmate Erkin Koray, mixed with many other psychedelic influences. The B side here is a cool unreleased improv jam, live in the studio in their hometown of Ankara. But it's the A side that makes this a double whammy for international groovy music lovers - it's a heavily rocked up, killer cover of the classic song by Ethio-jazz legend Mulatu Astatke! Even if you don't know it by name, chances are you'll recognize it when you hear it. Now we'd like to hear Hayvanlar Alemi do an entire Ethiopiques album...

Live duets from ex-This Heat member Hayward with Keiji Haino, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), Otomo Yoshihide and Peter Brotzman.

Charles Hayward of This Heat performing live in Japan. Accompanied on several tracks here by Jin Harada, Makoto Nomura, Otomo Yoshihide, Akira Toyonaga, Kazuhisa Uchihashi & Tatsuya Yoshida.

Highly recommended solo album from the This Heat drummer.

Some of you may know Grant Hazard from Oakland-based band The Very Hush Hush, whom we have carried records from in the past. For his first solo effort, Hazard gives us an instrumental cd of icy cool but beautifully melodic ambience. Comprised mostly of minimalist solo piano inflected with spacious textures and droning loops, Hazard's classically-trained musicianship serves him well in recalling the dulcet tones of impressionist composers such as Debussy and Satie, the modern day minimalism of Brin Eno and William Basinski, and touches of the dark-natured cinematic temperaments of Bohren & der Club of Gore. Limited to 500 copies. An excellent debut!

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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. One of Lee's rarest records (it saw just a limited release in Sweden only), this 1972 gem is full of horns and upbeat songs about, according to Lee, "pimps, whores, pushers, dopers, gangsters, and bottom of the human-chain shitheels. Now you're probably thinking I'm writing about major record companies and their unscrupulous executives, but this time, you're wrong! I'm describing the characters in my cd '13'" Recommended!

Light in The Attic continues their awesome Lee Hazlewood archival series with this rarest of rare releases, a 1975 soundtrack to the last (and least known) of the many films for Swedish television Hazlewood made with longtime collaborator Torbjorn Axelman. Half surrealist anecdote and half documentary, A Room Safe for Tigers is a bizarre self-portrait of the artist as he embarks on a new life in a new land. Filmed on the island of Gotland, Hazlewood shoots various scenes with the local townsfolk, running a marathon, trying to convince Swedish children to take sides against Nixon, and seeking protective spells from a witch. The centerpiece of the soundtrack, the song "Soul's Island", reads like a pastoral response to the Nancy & Lee classic, "Some Velvet Morning" with its epic orchestral sweeps and never-ending fade out. There are a couple of revisitations from the back catalog, namely "The Nights", a spoken-sung epic about Native American genealogy and genocide and an early Shackletons' cover, "Little Boy Blue". But the bulk of the release is material never released before including instrumentals, some country-funk numbers and a strange duet with Axelman as he recites all of Hazlewood's lines in Swedish. As seen with the last archival release, The LHI Years, Hazlewood's less heard '70s Swedish output was just as vital and essential as the famed sixties material he was best known for. Kudos to Light in The Attic for continuing to make the work of this eccentric American voice more widely available.

MPEG stream: Souls's Island
MPEG stream: A House Safe For Tigers
MPEG stream: Absent Friends