[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 8901 through 8950 of 19388.

Genius or madman? Both? Neither? It's going to be tough to decide as you delve into Ecstasy (sic) To Frenzy by Rodd Keith, the second Keith release in Tzadik's "Lunatic Fringe" series. Unreleased and unknown until now, Keith's studio epic "Shome Howe Jehovason Plays" takes up the bulk of this disc. There's two versions presented, each over a half-hour in length, the second playing in reverse. It's sheer lunacy from a man best known for his for-hire song-poem compositions like "Beat Of The Traps" (which, along with the title track and "Little Rug Bug" appear here as boni, although they also were included on The American Song-Poem Anthology released last year by Bar/None, so you might already have them.) However crazed and wonderful those examples of Keith's commercial songcraft are, they won't prepare you for "Shome Howe Jehovason Plays". His "cool cat" persona flies out the window, replaced with something altogether more alien. Wandering organ and maddening Vince Guaraldi Peanuts piano meets wordless, backwards Magmoid vocal babble. If you told me this was some Fluxus piece, or an Italian avant-garde prog experiment gone wrong, I'd believe it. We're not sure what Keith was thinking back when he recorded this opus (we don't know when that was exactly, but he died in 1974), but we do find it weirdly enjoyable. Outsider art for sure, completely cracked in fact. It certainly goes to prove that Rodd Keith was the right guy to tackle all those crazy poems folks sent in to have set to music, he was obviously feeling where they came from!

MPEG stream: Shome Howe Jehovason Plays (version one)
MPEG stream: Beat Of The Traps

Wow, such a beauty! Ms Larissa Loyva is the comely female voice of Vancouver's eclectic chamber pop band P:Ano as well as one of the dulcet songbirds in The Choir Practice. As Kellarissa, she steps out on her own, crafting an incredibly full ensemble sound all by her lonesome with the use of her voice, a Yamaha synthesizer, a loop generating processor and effects pedals. Flamingo is a sumptuous tapestry of sweet voices, whimsical piano melodies, wheezing drones, and mysterious ambient sounds. Her angelic vocals shine sparklingly bright and crystal clear like stars in the deepest indigo night sky. While many songs are surprisingly somber on tone - some even verging on ghostly vision conjuring gothic chamber pieces ("Night Wind", "Carrying On", "When Did I Become") - one of album's most delightfully delicious moments is the title track. "Flamingo" is an awesome buoyant pop song deeply inspired by '60s girl groups. Other poppier songs such as "Tiny Things" cuddle up to the sound of Stephin Merritt's Magnetic Fields. An intimate and absolutely captivating listen! If you swooned for the recent Mira Cook cassette and are seeking something in a similar vein but a bit more elaborate and composed, this may be right up your lovely alley! Recommended!

MPEG stream: Flamingo
MPEG stream: Carrying On
MPEG stream: Tiny Things

While Kellarissa's 2008 solo debut Flamingo tempered solemn chamber pop elements with a '60s girl group style sweetness, the Vancouver artist's latest album, the vinyl only Moon Of Neptune allows the shadows to fully envelop each song. Drawing inspiration from themes of outer space, ancient Egypt, and her own Scandinavian roots, it is a far more heady work than any of her other projects (P:ano, Gigi, and The Choir Practice). The opening track immediately brings to mind the darkwave synth pop of the '80s. "Passages" commences with cycling icy staccato synth melodies from her trusty Yamaha and basic programmed drums, and those sounds taken on their own can make it easy to instantly dismiss this as retro fluff, but you are urged to listen further because where the song (and the album... and her music in general) truly soars is when she sings. Some have called her voice ethereal, and while it certainly has its heavenly tones, it is far from delicate. Its range is more substantial and has more gut than that adjective allows. It's a gorgeous outpouring from her heart and soul that once doubled and tripled via her looping effects pedal is truly a force unto itself. In this way, she stands apart from many of her heavily processed reverb'n'loop laden indie contemporaries, she doesn't hide behind or let her voice be buried in the clouds of effects. Darkly bewitching, hypnotic and haunting. If you've dug the like-minded aQ fave Mira Cook and her Signs cd-r, or simply have a penchant for a truly enchanting female voice, this is for you! Limited pressing of 500. So don't dawdle!

MPEG stream: Passages
MPEG stream: Moon Of Neptune

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

SORRY. As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up. Greg Kelley, meet Alex Nielson. UK, meet USA. And the proceed to hurl shards of chaotic free noise at each other for about 40 minutes. Lots of feedback, tortured guitars, swirls of effects, random free jazz rhythmic clatter, swooping space age electronic bleep bloop and flutter, an abstract soundscape constructed from just the fade out parts of Hawkwind songs, Acid Mothers Temple with all the actual rock taken out, Sunroof! out takes and the very free-est of jazzes. Cool.

"Spirit Bound Flesh" is the debut solo album from Scott Kelly, guitarist / co-vocalist for the Bay Area tribal-metal outfit Neurosis, and follows the path set forth by fellow Neurosis member Steve Von Till with an album of desolate acoustic numbers. Kelly wishes himself to be to US country (in particular Hank Williams) what David Tibet is to UK folk (in particular Shirley

RealAudio clip: The Passage

Although this came out just last year, we've been lacking this in our racks for some time now 'cause the label had sold through 'em all and needed to do a re-press. Well, now, thankfully for the legions of lovers of all this fabulous Finnish free-folk stuff, Fonal has put this gem back into circulation! So queue up if you missed it before. Here's the review we wrote on list #191 when it first came out: The 18 tracks found here are a riotous festival of Finnish folk-psych. A pagan parade in a forest glade. Abstract, druggy, dark, delightful... We're always entranced by Kemialliset Ystavat's damaged improv folk mystery, and Alkuharka is yet another reason for us to keep saving our pennies in order to afford a trip to Finland (lucky Andee's been there once already). Anyone into anything along the lines of Tower Recordings, Thuja, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Six Organs Of Admittance, the whole Broken Face 'zine scene (to whom Kemialliset mainman Jan Anderzen used to contribute much art) will want/need this. Horns flutes guitars drones bells tapes voices feedback. Weezing buzzing bliss. With contributions from honorary Finns Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay) and Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel), Jan and company are the true underground krautrock heirs, making music so long haired that it's furrier than any Animal Collective. Music from the soundtrack to The Wickermoomin, perhaps?

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Hallelujah! More droning, buzzing, flickering folk-psych from Finland's mysterious Kemialliset Ystavat collective. Sure, we know who's in the band -- Broken Face 'zine artist/contributor Jan Anderzen, Fonal label head Sami Sanpakkila (Es, Kiila), and a host of other Finns -- but they still SOUND mysterious. The damaged four-track folk sound of NYC's Tower Recordings filtered through the forest ambience of AQ-fave improv-psych outfit Thuja might, MIGHT be an approximation of Kemialliset's sonic space. They inhabit that territory previously explored by the likes of Amon Duul, Ghost, Kalacakra, Toho Sara, Parson Sound, International Harvester, Amps For Christ, Six Organs Of Admittance, Algarnas Tradgard, etc. If any of these names bring a warm sensation to your frontal lobes, then you're likely already a Kemialliset fan even if you haven't yet heard 'em. Each track (there's 17 of 'em, spread over 47 minutes) is a psychedelic miniature constructed of drifting, chanting vocals, gentle melodies, and primitive rhythms, contrasting distorted electric guitar wash with pretty, chiming percussion, strings and woodwinds. Freaky and far-out yet mostly mellow and warm and cosy. Fucking lovely. Ah, Finland.

RealAudio clip: Kellari Juniversumi
RealAudio clip: Uruaurat
RealAudio clip: Kuuma Tomu

Lucky for us there's not a whole lot to do in Finland other than drink, smoke and make records. It means that we will never have to worry about running out of weird and wonderful Finnish foresty psych rock jams. And by now, we're quite comfortable in admitting that we can never get enough. EVER. Circle, Avarus, Uton, Islaja, Es, Kiila, Anaksimandros, Tivol and of course Kemialliset Ystavat. They've all tapped into something special and mysterious, some gorgeously primal world of drones and simple rhythms, minimal psychedelic freakouts, deliriously primitive drumming and outer space melodies. A sort of Krautrock meets seventies pagan folk meets minimal drone meets free rock meets everything else. No wonder it all sounds so good. It's little purloined scraps of everything we love, woven haphazardly together into gorgeous rambling and meandering sonic explorations. Banjos accompany wavering falsetto vocals, shuffling seasick rhythms underpin wild songbird like melodies and fluttery flutes, buzzing distorted guitars rumble beneath full on harmony pop vocals, warped and warbly organs and woodwinds nestle up against the clattery clang of kitchen sink percussion. It all sounds so perfectly imperfect together. Dreamy and melancholy, stumbly and goofy, dark and brooding, woozy and hypnotic, innocent and playful, exuberant and festive, creepy and bizarre, pretty and darn near perfect.

MPEG stream: Verta Hiuksissa
MPEG stream: Black Holes M.I.
MPEG stream: Haisee Kissojen Taivaalta

And if a repress of the beloved Kellari Juniversumi wasn't enough (no it's not, and might we suggest their Suurempi Pieni Palatsi album get reissued sometime too?) there's also this "new" cd from Finland's foresty freak folksters Kemialliset Ystavat. Actually, this has been released twice before in other formats: first as a cassette on Finland's Huutomerkki label (hmm, missed that) and then again as a lathe cut double vinyl 8" on New Zealand's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (dang, didn't get one of those either!). So thankfully Fonal has now put it out on cd for those of us who somehow inexplicably failed to get either of those previous versions when they were "available". Yay! And what of the music? Well, imagine sitting somewhere deep in the forest... not alone with nature though. No, you're hanging out with a bunch of elves and trolls, drinking or smoking pot or something delinquent like that. Actually this isn't even that foresty really... maybe you've invited your little friends back to the city and you're hanging out in your apartment listening to weird '80s industrial experimental music and electronic krautrock records. And maybe you've got a few of these records going on several turntables at once, at 16 rpm, the volume turned down low, and some of the trolls are joining in (faintly) on vocals, and one of them's got a flute, and another one's got a broken music box, and some bells, and a shortwave radio. But the music you're hearing/making is still amazingly nice and mellow and organic 'cause you're with a bunch of elves after all. The sun's going down and the light is fading and you feel all warm and toasty and kinda sleepy-drunk. Ok, stop imagining. You'll have your own (better) mental images to go along with this music when you hear it. But we'll say that right from the get-go this is immediately some of the rawest, most primitively-electronic Kemialliset Ystavat stuff we've heard. There's what what sounds like layers of loops, tape machine fuckery, all kinds of pleasingly distorted textures folded into a mysterious and still somewhat (abstractly) melodic sound-world, with haunting eerie vocals and tribal clink-clank. And yet, among the 15 tracks here you'll find some of the simplest and prettiest of the Kemialliset canon too. Loose, lovely and loveable stuff.

MPEG stream: Metsa
MPEG stream: Systeemi 4

The last week or two of our so-called "summer" here in San Francisco, has been pretty darn gray. Cold, overcast, gray, a bummer. But, getting the long-awaited new album from Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (aka Jan Anderzen and friends) has made a big difference! You know how we love love love all things Finland, and Fonal. That magic hasn't abated. Lively, lovely, colorful; woozy and wonderful, this Kemialliset is just what the doctor ordered. Have you heard 'em before? Kemialliset, and their fellow Fonal artists, have been referred to by us (and others) as "Finnish Forest Folk". Fairly accurate... as long as you're ok with folk music made using computers. From a forest that's full of brightly colored trees and plants whose pharmacological uses are probably entirely recreational and specifically hallucinatory. Populated by strange creatures like gibbering gnomes and tittering trolls. And of course, they ARE from Finland. Of course of course. Carefully constructed by Jan in his forest laboratory, a collage of contributions from folks like Roope Eronen (Avarus, Maniacs Dream, Pylon), Kevin Regan (Fricara Pacchu, Anaksimandros, Avarus), Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club), Markus Maki (Anaksimandros, Avarus, Kiila), Pekko Kappi (Kiila), Hitoshi Kojo (Juppala Kaapio), Joshua Stevenson (Jackie-O Motherfucker) and others, this is, as you might expect, a delirious and dense tapestry of seamlessly flowing, ever-changing, psychedelic soundz. 14 tracks total to delight the ear with such teeter-tottering elements as lilting layered female vox, bleepy glitchy background electronix (track six sounds like they've wandered into an '80s video arcade to record), wheezing harmonium drones, rattling ritual percussion, cartoon SFX, snippets of synth melody seemingly snatched from a '70s Bo Hansson record, and much much more, from krauty rhythmics to lullaby babble, and hybrids thereof. It's part Incredible String Band, part Raymond Scott or Bruce Haack. Or imagine a completely dosed and demented Black Moth Super Rainbow making a cd-r for Jewelled Antler, maybe. Truly a phantasmagorical tour-de-force, utterly what we needed to brighten these grey days and/or make 'em cosier. The compact disc version is packaged in a tri-fold digi with a thick booklet packed with beautiful full-color photographs and some very interesting text in both Finnish and English, and the vinyl is nice too.

MPEG stream: Kivikasan Rauhassa
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MPEG stream: Ystavalliset Miekat

Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue. NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.

MPEG stream: Tulinen Kiihdytys
MPEG stream: Superhimmeli
MPEG stream: Himmeli Kutsuu Minua

Awesome vinyl reissue of these two long out of print 3" cd-r's from one of our favorite Finnish outfits Kemialliset Ystavat, one originally released on UK noise-experimental label Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, the other released by Finnish underground folk label Lal Lal Lal and originally packaged in a velvet sleeve designed to be used as a petting glove! Everything we love about KY is present here, gorgeously primitive / innocent / timeless Ur-folk, simple strummed guitars, outdoorsy lo fi recording, chant-like vocals, simple clattery percussion, dreamy hazy ritualistic soundscapes, delicate melancholy melodies, deliberate rhythmic stumble, subtle tape malfunction and home recorded production fuckery, loping late afternoon, staring at the sun rhythms, and occasional swirling swooping electronics. Fans of Kemialliset and all things Finnish (you know who you are) definitely need to pick this up. And all you folks who have been digging the Jewelled Antler stuff (Blithe Suns, Thuja, Ivytree, Child Readers, etc.) will find a whole new world of sonic forests and audio landscapes to explore and get lost in.

Another fine reissue from fine reissue label Sundazed (who put this out in '99 -- so we're slow, sorry) of late sixties era psych rock. Kennelmus were from the Arizona desert and played a sunbaked style of almost surfy psychedelia, as documented on this, their sole LP release from 1971. Influenced by the Beach Boys, early Alice Cooper, and we'd have to assume some mind-expanding drugs, this is gorgeous stuff that's also weirdly unhinged as you'll discover as the album progresses. 'Indonesian instrumental '60s guitar pop band The Steps doing Morricone Western soundtrack music' (cool!) is the first thing we thought after hearing the initial three or four songs, but then as the tracks advance, more and more songs feature vocals, often silly, nasal ones...partially because of this, at times this reminds us of another strange band originally from Arizona, the Sun City Girls! Kennelmus have their own, unique vibe, but you never know what to expect: there's the song "Mother Of My Children" with vocals that sound exactly like Lee Hazlewood, lotsa studio trickery and effects (backwards guitars galore), and then album-closer "The Raven" (yes, the famous Edgar Allen Poe poem set to music). Which explains the bird silhouette on the disc's fantastic purple cover. If you liked Sundazed more recent reissue of the Gandalf album we reviewed last list, this is way weirder but similarily lovely and obscure.

RealAudio clip: I Don't Know
RealAudio clip: Dancing Doris
RealAudio clip: Black Sunshine
RealAudio clip: Think For Yourself

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SORRY. Released on Sasha Frere-Jones' (Ui) label, this album from the Kenny Process Team collects a bunch of work from 94 - 97 including an out-of-print Hemiola album. Whimisical post-rock for guitar, bass, and drums tries to replicate a Capt. Beefheart Trout Mask with punkish Firehose-esque complex stumbles.

An interesting twist on the guitar soli genre sees these two old friends who both have deep roots in various hardcore, skate culture and street art scenes come together for a series of cinematic dual guitar vignettes. Rich Jacobs, whome we have featured here before with a tape on the Sanity Muffin label, is a prominent Bay Area artist with ties to the Mission School, who has designed skateboards, shoes for Vans and many of the album covers for Salt Lake City avant-hardore collective Iceburn. Tim Kerr, who most folks may know from Texan punk legends The Big Boys, is also a graphic portrait artist whose work has been featured nationwide in books, magazines and skateboards as well. Both long inspired by roots and folk music, they craft here a variety of sounds with electric and acoustic guitars that look back on a dusty Americana filtered through a rigorous DIY indie sensibility. Beautiful strummed and picked melodies countered by searching improvisations and roughhewn noisy atmospheres weave oblique tales of small boondock towns and wide open abandoned spaces. A wondrously sublime take on the "soundtrack without a film" convention, mainly because it doesn't try too hard and their mutual compatible playing style ends up coming through quite effortlessly. For fans of Bill Orcutt, John Fahey, and Sir Richard Bishop.

MPEG stream: Light Through Your Window On That Train
MPEG stream: Early Morning Ride Around Lake
MPEG stream: The 100's For Days

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SORRY. Recordings from/for one of Kesey's infamous Acid Tests.

As much as we think sometimes we have a real way with words, there's always somebody who totally puts us to shame, which is exactly why we're gonna start our review of this, the sixth and latest record from Finnish underground outsider rock weirdo one man band Keuhkot ('lungs' in Finnish), with a description written by Jussi of Circle, whose label Ektro released it: "The sixth struggle album of Kake Puhuu. The combat noise and insect world music downpreaching book. Rawer than its precursors, this album strips it down to marrow and squeezes juice out of it. Keuhkot batters mindless attributes of humanity from insects' point of view by means of reverse pop music. The aim is towards backwoods motorism, meritocamping, real men, moose hunt madness and established global upstarts. The most bearded feminist of Finland, Keuhkot, kicks the real man's groin. Keuhkot makes its own ethnic fusion gadding from rhythmic highways to distorted sidepaths in a refreshed guitar oriented soundscape. You may call it freaky but according to Kake, pop music (including metal, of course) is a freaky industrialized illness that needs a vaccination � which is Keuhkot." We definitely couldn't have said it better ourselves, but heck, why not give it a try? Longtime readers of the aQ list might remember Andee's harrowing and ultra personal private Keuhkot performance in an abandoned schoolhouse in the wilds of rural Finland (you can read more about it elsewhere on the aQ site, in one of the other Keuhkot reviews), and are quite possibly already fans of Kake Puhuu's twisted sonic world of primitive programmed drums, twisted percussion, weird samples, layered loops, warped and woozy synths, detuned guitars and warbled guttural vox, and how could you not be, Puhuu is like the underground electro minimal abstract noise rock Jandek of Finland, record after record of totally idiosyncratic, ultra personal, musical weirdness, that sonically is all over the map, be it twang flecked almost Western sounding folk, woozy crooned torch songs, junkyard percussion driven lo-fi dirge rock, stumbling hypno-prog, who knows how the heck to classify any of this, easiest to just say this is some sort of utterly singular, surreal Finnish psychedelia, equal parts the Residents, Tom Waits, Birthday Party, Cop Shoot Cop, and who knows what else, all filtered through that totally cracked Finnish sensibility that informs so much of the Finnish music we love. A little bit circusy, a LOT whatthefuck, droney, fuzzy, distorted, stumbly, we want to say this is the best Keuhkot yet, but we sort of love them all, cuz they're all great. We'd say it's the weirdest, but they're all pretty goddamn weird too. We will say the opening track "Kuuluisia Alkemisteja Vol 1", is one of the coolest jams we've heard in ages, all super blown out synth buzz, pulsing and undulating, laced with haunting disembodied vocals, but the sort of droned out abstract psych trip out we could listen to forever. Just check out the samples, and prepare yourself to be baffled and confused and totally transported to some seriously demented sonic otherworld, and Jussi did in fact say it best: Keuhkot kicks the real man's groin!

MPEG stream: Kuuluisia Alkemisteja Vol 2
MPEG stream: Puhumatta Paras
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Yet another notable export from the weird wide world of the Finnish underground. And again, courtesy of the mighty Bad Vugum. If you were at the AQ 30th Anniversary party you may have seen Circle mainman Jussi spporting a Keuhkot shirt, as hey/they are huge fans. Kehkot is a maniacal one man band, that leaps stylistically all over the map from record to record. 'Minun...' starts out sounding like woodblock electronica, Autechre played on sticks and logs. But with ominous Darth Vader exhalations in the background. Eventually this mutates into some sort of psychotic calypso, sounding a bit like bizarre soundtrack music, albeit laced with strange Finnish mutterings. Really weird, and really great.

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

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Keuhkot (lungs in Finnish) is Kake Puhuu. A one man band /art installation / travelling circus / raving lunatic. Kake plays everything: basses, drums, flutes, kimbara, ud-luth (?), samples, sequences, recordings and vocals. As well as appearing multiple times in his videos and photos (which consist of wastelands and wild sculptural gardens inhabited by 4, 5 sometimes even 10 Kake Puhuus!) This is the first Keuhkot record on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label and it is pretty amazing. Some kind of wild junkyard gypsy music, equal parts Birthday Party, Pussy Galore, Cop Shoot Cop, The Three Tenors, Devo, Finnish folk, circus music, looped/sampled electronica, all with Kake's distinctive Tom Waits-ish growl over the top. Wild percussion, hypnotic rhythms, sinister bass loops, growled spoken word passages, crashing waves, rattling spray paint cans, calliope-like melodies, chanted vocals, and groovy almost-exotica, all taken in directions you would never expect. Weird and wonderful, bizarre and beautiful. Is there no end to the musical bounty Finland has to offer? We're beginning to think not.

RealAudio clip: Pois Zagorasta
RealAudio clip: Syksyn Kirjasatoa
RealAudio clip: MaanKaytto (a. Suunittelu b. Toteutus)

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Probably the best way to describe the mad genius that is Keuhkot (Finnish for lungs) is to describe my bizarre, up close and personal encounter with Kake Puhuu aka Keuhkot, when I was visiting Finland a couple years ago. I was picked up by Jussi from Circle and Peltsi (formerly of Circle, now in Stalwart and Lee Miller) and we proceeded to drive for nearly an hour into the woods. An hour in the car is not ideal after 10 hours on a plane, but I put myself at the mercy of my Finnish hosts. We finally pulled up to a huge red schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by dense dark forest. We rang the doorbell and waited outside until a madly barking dog leapt out of the just opened door, being barely restrained by a small quiet Finnish man. We were hustled inside, into a large gymnasium, complete with wooden benches and chalkboards on the walls. We sat for quite a while, not entirely sure what was going on, when suddenly that same small man with the dog that we met at the front door, walked into the gymnasium with no shirt on. He proceeded to crawl around on the ground, turning on all sorts of switches, plugging in lots of strange looking devices, all manner of buzzing and hums began to emanate from these various devices. The man proceeded to then strap on this huge apparatus, covered in lights and microphones all on the ends of strange metal tentacles, he stood up, behind a huge wooden podium, grabbed a giant hammer and suddenly lurched into a blasting tribal pummel, shouted Finnish vocals, crazed percussion and freakout guitar. I suddenly realized that I was in fact witnessing a personal Keuhkot performance and proceeded to sit there dumbfounded, totally blown away, not only by the ridiculous spectacle, but the totally mesmerizing music as well. After about a half hour, he dropped everything and walked out. Maybe twenty minutes later, he returned with tea and biscuits, and we all sat having tea and desperately fending off the wildly barking and biscuit crazed hound we had experienced earlier. Woah. That definitely says a lot about Finland, and for sure gives you a glimpse into the brilliantly warped mind of Keuhkot. So while this new Keuhkot record might not be quite as visceral as a harrowing personal encounter, it's most definitely still a bit harrowing, and most certainly, completely and bizarrely brilliant. Much more subdued than his previous releases, Toimin... is a dark and dizzying expanse of alien synth melodies, simple industrial percussion, mumbled insistent vocals, fuzzy far off guitars, simple rock riffs re-imagined as some muted David Lynchian garage rock, a lo-fi horror movie Krautrock with simple hypnotically repeated motifs, beneath subtle shuffling percussion, and growled Finnish spoken word. The whole record is a slowly shifting moonlit world of fairy tales gone bad, demented nursery rhymes, sweet music slightly soured, haunting and ominous, but strangely playful and mysterious. Like a late night stroll on the moon, if the moon was a Finnish Raymond Chandler novel, with strange alien creatures packing heat, lurking in doorways, looking shifty and rootless, looking for whatever trouble they can find on the seedy side of the moon. Keuhkot is exactly what that would sound like.

MPEG stream: Presentaatio Raumanjuovassa
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Very late one night in the summer of 2000, Kentuckian sound artist Keenan Lawler, metallurgist Eric Clark, and three members of the psychedelic-drone ensemble Pelt (Patrick Best, Mike Gangloff, and Jack Rose) ventured into a stone silo at a Franciscan monastery just north of Louisville. Bringing within them an arsenal of cymbals, gongs, bells, Tibetan singing bowls, bronze

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SORRY.

Kicking Giant may be long gone but its leader certainly isn't. Tae Wu is back musically under the moniker The KG. In recent years, you may be more familiar with his graphics than his sonic output, designing several striking album sleeves, posters, etc. Here he is assisted by many of his Olympia, WA co-horts (including Kento from IQU). Spartan and raw recordings not veering far from the dissonant Kicking Giant scope but with more blips and bleeps.

Not sea shanty, but space shanty. Great title for a space rock record, right? And this 1972 album, newly reissued on cd with two bonus tracks, is definitely space rock - there's even a crazy looking space ship on the cover. But how come it's not called Space Shanties? There's eight tracks here after all, including the bonus ones. Anyway this is a classic, classic prog record, the first and only album from the UK's Khan, a band formed by guitarist Steve Hillage, just prior to his stint with those self-proclaimed "pot-head pixies" of the planet Gong. While Hillage is probably best known for playing in Gong after Khan passed on, he also had a successful post-Gong solo career as a prog rock guitar hero, and later found favor with the trance/techno/ambient crowd in the '80s and '90s. But you don't have to be down with The Orb or The Ozrics to enjoy this album! And actually, Aquarius customers just as likely might know Hillage from his appearance in an even earlier, college-daze outfit, the obscure but beloved heavy psych act Arzachel. Khan, while more polished and "pro", isn't that far off from Arzachel, really, at least in terms of the amount of psychedelic guitar action and organ jamming going on. Also, another ex-member of Arzachel appears in Khan, keyboardist Dave Stewart (not the Eurythmics fellow, but the guy who founded mathy proggers Egg, and later on played in Hatfield and the North). So... in brief, Khan's a mixture of gentle, Pink Floydian atmospheres, Canterbury style organ burble, and hard rockish guitar power, with song titles like "Stranded (Effervescent Psychonovelty No.5)", "Mixed Up Man Of The Mountains", and "Stargazers". Being prog, the instrumental parts are paramount, but also look out for cool spacey lyrics like "Starstruck moonman looks so blind/You're still a slave within your mind". It's very of its era, that's for sure! Excessively prog, but in the best way. The songs are all longer than your typical pop single of course, though none break into the double digits minutes-wise. And, importantly, it's all very melodic, the singing expressing much majestic emotion, as does Hillage's searing acid rock guitar leads and the driving organ grooves of Stewart. At times we're reminded of Atomic Rooster, at others Van Der Graaf Generator, and at still others of Caravan... so a definite AQ prog recommendation, all right.

MPEG stream: Space Shanty (incl. The Cobalt Sequence and March Of The Sine Squadrons)
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Awesome new group from the Bay Area who channel international psych of years past to create some totally engaging and undeniably fun sounds. We're lucky to have so many amazing bands and musicians in San Francisco and we're even luckier that many of them are customers of ours. So it's always cool to see what lots of our favorite music makers in town are listening to and checking out when they swing by the store. And not that we've been spying but every time Max Balaoin (one of the master minds of Khi Darag) has come into the store over the last couple years it was hard not to notice how fast he'd make a beeline to the '70s Turkish Psychedelia section, as well as always seemingly after left of center sounds from across the globe circa late '60s and '70s. With a band that features folks from groups like Rube Wadell, Rupa & The April Fishes, Charming Hostess, Lord Loves A Working Man and even the SF Mime Troupe, these extremely talented musicians have taken those international psych sounds from years past and brought in their own elements of surf rock, klezmer, and soundtracks to create music that is pretty impossible not to move to. Much like Dengue Fever they use their influences from the past with total respect and love and it comes out in the sounds that they create. They also have a bit of a suspenseful undertone to their aesthetic which makes us think this is exactly the kind of band Mike Patton or John Zorn would want playing at their wedding with a dancefloor of weirdos having the time of their life. So fun!

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For those mourning the recent passing of creeping doom sludge lords Khanate, we've got the next best thing. In fact in some ways, it might almost be the next -better- thing. Khanate low-end technician James Plotkin suddenly jumped ship only to start up this dour little duo with Runhild Gammelsaeter, the Nordic goddess you might remember as the vocalist for bleak black/doom metal outfit Thorr's Hammer. On first listen, Khlyst sounds remarkably like Khanate, huge sluggish low end doom, a thick glacial sludgey plod, while over the top a shrieking, impossibly guttural mewling howl, like a demon clearing her throat or a hysterical cheerleader possessed by the devil and spewing impossible foulness. But even at their most Khanate, Khlyst ends up sounding just a whole lot weirder. Instead of downtuned riffage, the guitars are twisted and processed into strange slippery licks, drenched in chorus and phaser, like some sort of alien guitar synth, sputtering and stumbling, a jagged series of noodly little six string blasts, fragmented metallic chunks, over ultra dense tangles of free jazz drum splatter, everything thick with buzzy guitars and ominous ambience. A super freaked out, utterly demented psychedelic doom sludge stretched and twisted into a sputtering spastic black buzz, pelted with bits of prog and wrapped in thick layers of damaged drone. Elsewhere, the duo, stretch out into hauntingly blissful soundscapes constructed from processed vocals, swirling billows of reverb, echoey guitar shimmer, almost like a creepier Grouper. Drifty and hauntingly lovely. And sometimes the rhythmic furor builds into a vortex of impossibly dense drumming, over thick swaths of low end drone, with growling panting Diamanda-like vocalisations struggle breathlessly over the top. Like some sort of demonic sludge jazz drum solo torture session. Imagine weirdo black metallers Rehtaf Ruo crossed with UK doomlords Moss, featuring Buddy Rich and Rashied Ali on dueling drums, and a vocalist one part Bathtub Shitter, one part Kevin Sharp from Brutal Truth and one part Dani Filth from Cradle Of Filth, the whole thing recorded by Lustmord. Bleak and blackened, squirming and slithery, shivering and stumbling. An epic and deranged slab of ultra-ambient-doom-prog-drone-sludge splendor.

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Hot on the heels of all those Morr Music label releases that have arrived in the last few weeks, comes some more pretty electronica. This time it's from UK label Type Records. Okay, first things first, our initial beef with this cd was the record label's decision to plaster not the shrinkwrap, but the digipak itself (!) with stickers of ten unreasonably pants-shitting review excerpts. It not only makes the cd look like a promotional copy, but also may elevate your expectations of an album that can't possibly stand up to those over the top superlatives. For example, Grooves sez, "No one, anywhere, has melded indie rock and electronics as perfectly as this... The most jaw-dropping debut since Music Has The Right To Children". What the?! Gimme a fuckin' break!!! No, more simply stated, Khonnor (aka teenager Connor Kirby-Long) would fit quite well on the Morr Music label alongside the likes of Styrofoam, LaliPuna and Ms. John Soda (all of whom do this kind of music as well if not better that Khonnor). It's nice and dreamy and pleasant, especially the tracks without vocals. That said, Khonnor might not be as successful as the aforementioned label's artists in fusing the pop with the electronic -- he's much stronger at crafting layers of dreamy textures than pop hooks -- but if you're seeking an album to wrap yourself in fuzzy blankets of digital shimmer with fleeting glimpses of pop melodies, this could be the one for you.

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Yay, record number two from this rotating ensemble who took the internet (and aQ) by storm a couple of years ago when a mysterious video surfaced on the Dangerous Minds blog of a group of young men in a village processional in Northern Thailand unfurling THEE craziest psychedelic guitar music from their huge homemade soundsystem (proudly featured on the cover of the new record). Shortly thereafter an lp appeared, which we made Record of The Week, and now here we have its follow-up and we were so excited we couldn't help but make Khun Narin a Record of the week once again!! So what has changed? Apart from a couple of new members, not very much. And that's the way we like it! As with Konono No.1, the rhythmic African group who hooked up kalimbas and homemade percussion to their own homemade soundsystem, their indigenous DIY sound isn't rooted in seeking out mainstream popularity (it actually sought them out!), but in pursuing a self-reliant approach to a deeply traditional music. There are subtle differences between the two albums - the songs here are more languid and flowing, yet still increase with hypnotic tempos and intricate searing guitar lines - the structure of the music remains the same, which is totally fine with us. It's funny to think that music that sounds so far out and strange to Western ears is so rooted in everyday life somewhere else that it could be seen as routinely commonplace. We would gladly trade the last 20 years of mainstream western pop music for music like this, any day. Recommended!

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It all started with a video on YouTube. Odds are one of your music nerd friends sent it to you already, or maybe you WERE one of those music nerds, sending it to everyone you know. Check it out: KHUN NARIN ELECTRIC PHIN BAND [http://youtu.be/IYGl-l0Toig?list=FLCuwmGlbaOAStwXMiPVY5Kw] A mysterious video with very little in the way of description, but really, it hardly needed a description, the sound was incredible, a wild, percussive, effusive, droning psychedelia, like a Thai version of Konono No.1, all buzzing distorted melodies, hypnotic rhythms, we, like many of you, must have watched that video a hundred times. And the visuals too, a group of musicians, relaxing in plastic chairs, in a town square, all in matching red vests, presumably from their jobs as taxi drivers, the sound pumped out through a wheeled, home built PA, all manner of instruments, double necked guitar style lutes, hand cymbals, drums, percussion, while all around them, people mill about, seemingly oblivious, to the psychedelic genius going on right before their strangely averted eyes! Well somehow, some fella got in touch with the band in the video, and organized a proper recording for the group, which we discovered was in fact, Khun Narin Phin Sing, or Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, the name taken from the group's use of an electrified, double necked version of a traditional Thai instrument, the lute-like phin. As for the folks in the video that seem to be ignoring the music and the musicians, apparently this sort of music is pretty commonplace in Thailand, even former aQ staffer Byram, who lived there for the last few years, told us he'd wander past bands like this playing all over, all the time, but for the rest of us, this stuff is a revelation, and Khun Narin Phin Sing crazy new Thai psych rock stars that we're totally obsessed with. The record itself was recorded in a way to as closely as possible replicate the YouTube video, no fancy studios, no expensive mics and multi-track recorders, no overdubs, instead, the band set up in a field right outside their town, in the mountains on Thailand's Northern border, and the music was captured field recording style, live, one take, the group made up of multiple generations, from kids in high school, to men in their '60s, the band running their instruments through chains of guitar pedals, using home built instruments and amplifiers, and of course that custom PA system, a visually and sonically striking behemoth made of 8 loudspeaker horns mounted atop a huge bass cabinet, with wheels of course, and the group just let loose, unfurling a glorious sprawl of droning, buzzy, heady, hypnotic Thai psychedelia, spidery distorted guitar melodies over motorik rhythms, minimal percussion, loping sinewy basslines, the sounds growing more urgent and frenzied, the wild phin shredding drifting atop a roiling bed of constantly swirling and shimmering buzz and thrum, gloriously mesmerizing, and totally transcendent, so utterly amazing, and absolutely recommended to anyone into weird and wonderful sounds, but especially fans of Sublime Frequencies style desert psych, who will be in heaven!! Vinyl version comes with a download card, btw.

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Took a while for these to materialize from the man and his peeps, but better late than never we s'pose! Bay Area lone mouthpiece Kid Beyond takes his moniker seriously taking the art of beatboxing beyond the hip hop common place. And though he definitely isn't a youngster (when we saw him perfom live a while ago he resembled a life size Barney Rubble!), he keeps energies and spirits youthfully high and welcoming as he loops and layers his oral utterances and sputterances into a catchy grooviness. Who'd think a beatboxer would cover Portishead? Seems like an unlikely choice, but KB does it style and it totally works!

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Brutal and monolithic guitar/electronics and drum pairing featuring the dynamically primal pounding of Oneida's Kid Millions and the scorching psychedelics of China's Zhang Shou Wang. Long-form heavy squalls of noise, thrum and pummel. Watch out for incessant noise complaints from your neighbors while playing this as loud as you can!

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Second album from these amazing kids, students at unique program at L.A.'s Widney High School where disabled students are taught about music and helped to write and sing their own songs. The results are sometimes funny, sometimes really sad and sometimes just completely bizarre. On Mike Patton's Ipecac label.

Another new release from Slumberland, who have been cranking out release after release since they resurfaced after a bit of a break, thankfully all these new Slumberland jams kill, and this latest one is no different. Featuring a bunch of folks from psych pop combo From Bubblegum To Sky (who are pretty dang great, even though we've never managed to review anything, yet!), this is a modern homage to Phil Spector and the old Brill Building songsmiths, and yeah, we know, everyone and their mother have a reverby garage rock band that is trying to do that whole Phil Spector wall of sound thing, and there are plenty of Something-Girls or Girls-Something bands, Dum Dum, Vivian, At Dawn and the rest, who are doing it quite well thank you. But fuck it, there's always room for another fuzzy, dreamy retro sixties style pop band, especially if the songs are great, and the sound is warm and wonderful, and Kids On A Crime Spree nail it on both counts, using old equipment and vintage recording techniques to capture that classic sound, these guys pull it off songwise too, with warm crunchy softly fuzzy guitars, plenty of jangle, hooks galore, and an awesome second guitar, all warm and woozy, clean and clear, playing the melody over the top of the fuzzy jangle, we LOVE that. Just check out "I Don't Want To Call You Baby, Baby", shades of the Raveonettes for sure, the same sort of washed out dreaminess, but there's just something about KOACS that make these songs sound special. "Trumpets Of Death" has those super echoey vocals, but adds some fat fuzzy bass, and a bizarre chorus that seems to have nothing to do with the titular trumpets of death. All the songs here are awesome, warm and fuzzy, sunshiney and handclappy, hazey and dreamily druggy, softly psychedelic, mixing the classic pop sound that they're paying tribute to, but adding little subtle modern sonic bits that help make this stuff sound special, with some tracks erupting into crunchy fuzzy almost punky blasters, while others getting all warped and blurred and laid back, finally finishing with the piano pounding fuzz bass buzzing "Jean-Paul Sartre 2", which adds a glistening super melodic chorus to the otherwise fuzzed out feedback drenched verses, as well as a cool dynamic stop/start post chorus bridge, and some soaring, super melodic vocals, a strangely tweaked and twisted take on classic popsmithery, that definitely has us hoping that the next record will head more in that direction.

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Finland's Kiila play, for want of a better description, experimental indie-rock. They share with other Finnish bands like Circle a predeliction for the effective use of repetition, utilizing loops like band member Sami "Es" Sanpakkila's solo A Love Cycle record. Kiila specialize in going off on adventurous, but mostly low-key explorations, from moments of happy pop to dark strum to noisier beats and drones. They take many approaches to music making, but as the extensive liner notes/essay state, their art is rooted in their listening, both to others music and to their own material, which is thoroughly crafted but never "complete". I'm not so much a fan of Kiila's occasional English-language vocals (Finnish is so much better, guys!) but those vocals are indie-rock standard and anyway much of this is instrumental. A very nice discovery -- and even if this record wasn't as good as it is, it would be worth it for the fucked-up but gorgeous, stumbling final track "Heartflowers".

RealAudio clip: Contemporaries
RealAudio clip: Crystal Fields
RealAudio clip: Heatflowers

Some of you will remember Kiila from their 2001 album Heartcore, a lovely disc of low-key indie rock and Circle-like loopage from a couple friends of ours in Finland. In the intervening years, Kiila has morphed a bit. Their new disc Silmat Sulkaset is quite as nice as Heartcore, even better we think as the band has both expanded into a seven-piece ensemble and simultaneous seemingly retreated into the Finnish forest where they now play achingly beautiful psychedelic folk rock, not unlike the more traditionally-influenced efforts of '70s Swedes like Arbete Och Fritid and Trad Gras Och Stenar, venturing into the improv territory of fellow Finnish forest-dwellers Kemialliset Ystavat as well. Male and female voices sing sweetly (in Finnish only -- taking our advice?) over sundry acoustic guitars, electric drones, wavering flutes, and hand percussion. Magical, melodic, mysterious. Krautrock ghosts smile on them. The USA might offer comparisons like Black Forest/Black Sea, Skygreen Leopards, Golden Hotel and Espers, but the Finnish folk element here is irreplaceable... Really really nice. Nice Fonal packaging too!

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Of all the Finnish bands we love, and all the bands on Finnish label Fonal, Kiila might just be the most traditionally indie rock. But then that's really relative, since we're talking about Finland, and the fact that Kiila is made up of members of other, much more far out bands like Es, Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Anaksimadros. So you can figure that even though Kiila traffic in indie rock, it's unlike most indie rock you know. Right off the bat the first track reminds us of a much more blissed out folkier Animal Collective, chiming guitars, delicate fingerpicking, softly tangled harmonies, reverbed abstract vocals, sunshine-y and dreamy, really quite lovely. The rest of the record is not so blissed out though, the second track is a fiddle laced bit of indie rocking, jangly guitars, propulsive drumming, lots of swirling drone-y organs, and much more traditional sounding vocals, in fact it almost reminds us a little of Wilco, albeit filtered through the cracked Finnish pop sensibility. The rest of the record continues in a simialr direction, channeling much of what we love about indie rock, but infusing it with plenty of twang, Finnish forest folkiness, and plenty of off kilter weirdness, whether it's thick sheets of undulating buzz, fluries of birdsong, streaks of tripped out effects or thick swells of rumbling low end crunch, those various elements are deftly woven into more traditional pop smithery. A few tracks revisit the dreamy folkiness of the record opener, stripped down to just acoustic guitar, fiddle and voice, while others are almost entirely vocal harmony drive, and at least one is a gorgeous droned out synthscape, and another is a ramshackle horn flecked, chaotically percussive tripped out free jam. The sounds are lush and beautiful, jangly and poppy, and just a little bit twisted and fractured, they may be the most 'traditional' sounding of all our Finnish faves, but that still means this is weirder and more awesomely abstract thatn 90 percent of music out there. Gorgeous Fonal packaging as always, the cd in a full color 6 panel cardboard gatefold jacket, with a printed inner sleeve which includes liner notes and lyrics and cool printed Japanese style obi, the vinyl in a normal but quite colorful sleeve.

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A split release between Kilara (heavy, slugde rock from Virginia sorta like Eyehategod, but with an unhealthy hillbilly country obsession) and Hellchild (Japanese strangled hardcore who were previously on Howling Bull and here covers Venom).

David Kilgour's name will be familiar to anyone who was into the New Zealand indie rock scene of the '80s and early '90s -- he was a founding member of The Clean and Great Unwashed, etc. His solo album Here Come the Cars (1991) is one of my very favorite

RealAudio clip: Today is Gonna Be Mine
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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. The best of the worst -- demos of demos. 20 songs, intakes and outtakes, "ideas i've used". From New Zealand so you can be pretty sure it's great (though this rule does *not* apply to some recent Flying Nun output).

The latest shimmering album from New Zealand's pop fave David Kilgour can only and justly be described through the following haiku: frozen orange pop from sea-shanty, autumn comes to green ocean wash

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