[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 9751 through 9800 of 19388.

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Chicago's favorite (perhaps only) one man band plays an assortment of instruments (often at once) including: melodica, chord organ, chime piano, steel pan, speed up guitar, tap shoes, saw, and more. From catchy pop songs to moody soundscapes, really cool.

The lone Chicago fellow Jeremy Jacobsen might indeed be the Lonesome Organist, but he's also exceedingly adept at a number of other instruments and assorted noisemakers. He incorporates them all into his music which is just as varied in style as it is in instrumentation. With so much going on, you might think things would get a little chaotic or out of hand, but no! Jacobsen's got it all well under control with some very fine songcraft and musicianship. There's a sense of the grand and the tiny coming together on Forms And Follies. A bigtop circus! A vaudeville theater! An antique musicbox! In fact, you might even find his music stirring fond memories of the Musee Mechanique here in San Francisco, but then before you know it he's suddenly shifted gears over to a distorted trashy garage tune, then to a frantic organ mouse chase, then to some haunting barbershop-quartet-meets-Brian-Wilson-style vocal harmonizingand then... ??? Seemingly oblivious to current trends, Jacobsen follows his muse through dreams, nightmares, toyboxes, genres and decades. Won't you join him? Plus if the music ain't enough, the cd comes with a big (cd jewelcase sized) flipbook which shows some of the Lonesome Organist's hijinks. A splendid bizarre delight! MPEG Stream: "Walking To Weston's" [/audio/lonesomeorgwalking.m3u]

MPEG stream: Walking To Weston's

No, the name is not Lonely, Dear!!! Can't tell you how many times we've seen this one-man band's moniker spelled incorrectly. It irks us, and we imagine it must drive him nuts too! Anyhoo, all that business aside, we've been diggin this Swedish gent's new album plenty. It starts out far more driving and far less sweet than 2007's Loney, Noir. Last time he drew easy vocal comparisons to Arcade Fire, but his fifth album Dear John finds him slipping gracefully in line with the elaborate high tech bedroom recordings of Postal Service. Hmmm, haven't heard from them in quite a while, so it's a fine time for Loney Dear's dreamily wistful electronic pop to fill the void. Lovely, dear!

MPEG stream: I Was Only Going Out
MPEG stream: Summers

Loney, Dear is a one man band from Sweden whose given name might not be Loney, but his music is very very dear. In fact, his name is Emil Svanangen and he makes fey, verging-on-twee, pop. Loney, Noir is shaded in soft pastel hues with ultra high male vocals. We thought it fit quite well alongside Arcade Fire. What do you think? Super charming and breezy, no?

MPEG stream: Sinister In A State Of Hope
MPEG stream: I Am The Odd One

The Long Blondes are neither lengthy tressed nor flaxen haired, but we won't hold the false advertising against them. Ha ha! They are mighty hip and cute tho'! These three gals and two fellas from Sheffield, UK are raring to go go go with their high octane kicky punchy tunes. Their bio offers influential touchstones Human League, ABC and Pulp, but after hearing their debut album Someone To Drive You Home we'd bet their record collections are also heavy with '80s lipgloss'd goddesses Blondie, Kim Wilde and Pat Benetar. Super pop good times with more than a little sassy edge.

MPEG stream: Lust In The Movies
MPEG stream: In The Company Of Women

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Solem, folkish "spirituals" from a band about which we know just a few things: they're from Balitmore and include members of the very-different-sounding Oxes, and they spent some time last year on tour opening for Will Oldham, who was apparently taken by Long Live Death's "incantory" aspects. Their music is melancholic and stately, not quite of our world, though clearly with an indie-rock pedigree. A short little album (just over 25 minutes) of some power and grace. And, along with voices, cello, gongs, flute, bells, and violin there's musical saw on it, which is always a plus!

MPEG stream: There Is No Death
MPEG stream: That Summer

From the lead-off track, I might have expected The Long Winters' debut full length to be somewhat of a dour downer of an album, but by the second song things definitely pick up. Barsuk has likened mainman John Roderick's songwriting style and vocal delivery

RealAudio clip: Car Parts
RealAudio clip: Medicine Cabinet Pirate

This Dodo Bird is charming from the very first song! The other four gentle folk pop tunes with their effusive acoustic guitar and soft-spoken male vocals are pretty darn lovely too. The gent behind all of them is Meric Long, a singer/songwriter from right here in SF (fyi: he's recently performed under the moniker Dodo Bird). This is his impressive debut ep, and it's super confident and composed. Very much in the easygoing, engaging tradition of Simon And Garfunkel, Astrud Gilberto, and definitely recommended for fans of Iron & Wine, Kings Of Convenience and Elliott Smith. Can't wait for more!

MPEG stream: Notes
MPEG stream: Fiends

The final two installments in the long overdue comprehensive Loop reissue campaign are finally here. World In Your Eyes, the newly expanded 12" collection, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this right here, the final proper Loop album, A Gilded Eternity. Contemporaries of legendary drug rockers Spacemen 3, Loop took the same sonic influences but rocked a little harder, opting out of the extended soporific drifts the defined the Spacemen, (although they were perfectly capable of blissing out with the best of them) and instead creating looped, krautrock spacejams, that were downright heavy, as well as being space-y, druggy and surprisingly catchy. Guitars were fuzzed out, vocals way down in the mix, reverb and delay EVERYWHERE, riffs often processed into stuttering textures and looped rhythms, the drums alternatingly motorik and skeletal, and pounding and explosive, all wreathed in a glorious otherworldly haze. A Gilded Eternity, their final record, originally released in 1990, might just be their heaviest and most rocking yet, definitely their tightest, album opener "Vapour" has one of those riffs TO DIE FOR, the main melody is so completely catchy, the song a woozy, repetitive chunk of gloriously propulsive dronerock, less space-y than much of what came before, but definitely more rocking and relentless. the next track "Afterglow" pushes that new heaviness even further, sounding not unlike Swervedriver, big crunchy distorted guitars, pounding tribal drumming, the arrangement a lurching start stop, that slips into cool washed out breakdowns, before exploding right back into the stuttery groove. And so it goes, the band unfurling their masterwork, in a career of masterful works, "Blood" is total abstract minimal krautrock, the guitars stripped away, leaving just a super spare drum part, wrapped all up in processed vocals and swirling effects, another jam that easily could have gone on for 10 more minutes. But then just like that, the band slip back into "Breath Into Me", whipping up another killer riff, the track a looped space garage groove that rivals record opener "Vapour". The record proper ends with the nearly 10 minute "Be Here Now", the Loop version of a slow jam, beginning with some strange processed guitar, the band ease into a languorous groove that drifts druggily through soft focus clouds of lysergic buzz, brief squalls of wild wah guitar, but remaining locked and looped, the weary vocals drifting above the warm endless buzz. A Guilded Eternity comes with a bonus disc as well, perhaps the least critical of the bonus material, considering it contains 5 demo tracks and 3 Peel Sessions, BUT, it also includes the Loop track "Shot With A Diamond", which happens to be Jim's favorite Loop track alongside "Arc-Light." This track provides the perfect sonic segue between Loop and the sounds guitarist Robert Hampson would later explore with his post Loop solo project Main, an ominous bit of electronic sample laced dronemusic, creepy and haunting and so fucking awesome. Previously only available as a 7" single, and as a bonus track on the original cassette version. Essential! In fact, all four of these Loop reissues are absolutely required listening for anyone with even the mildest interest in sounds space-y, druggy, metallic and psychedelic!!!

MPEG stream: Vapour
MPEG stream: Afterglow
MPEG stream: Be Here Now
MPEG stream: Shot With A Diamond

Holy shit!! Loop!!! We were floored when Robert Hampson decided to re-ignite his seminal hypno-rock project with the original lineup back in 2013. While the brief sojourn with the original Loop fizzled out, Hampson wanted to keep going with these ideas and recruited a new cadre to continue as Loop. This lead to a larger number of live dates, included one hell of a great performance here in San Francisco, and now the first in a trio of long eps. Given that many a band in this day and age will issue a 25 minute set of recordings and call it a full album, these 30 minutes of Loop seems weighty for the qualification as a paltry ep. Semantics. The A side begins with two taut, drugged-into-monotone, psych-rock numbers each mighty with their propulsive underbelly and blown-out riff as rhythm structures. Hampson's vocals are still as weary, detached, and washed-out as always, making him one of the most unlikely of frontmen. The lazer-shot drone-on number "Coma" rounds out the A side as a slumped piece of feedback, distortion, and sculpted guitar minimalism that recalls more of Hampson's recent Editions Mego recordings under his Main moniker. More Organum-like fug-drone miasma opens the B-side with its slow-burning swirl that ignites into a magnificent Neu! / Can motorik rhythmic excursion dripping with gilded guitar distortion and the occasional wammy-bar bent solo flares out of Hampson's post-Stooges / post-13th Floor Elevator riffs. So fucking great Loop is, was, and hopefully will continue to be!

MPEG stream: Precession
MPEG stream: Aphellion
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When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop. For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more tranquil guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut-infused space rock bliss. Fade Out was record number two for Loop, and found the band making a definite move forward in terms of production and sound, and an obvious shift away fro a sound they shared with countrymen Spacemen 3. The sound on Fade Out is much heavier, and way louder, the guitars sharper and more jagged, the bass more present, the vocals way more prominent, the sound immediately less druggy and washed out and more rocking. "Black Sun" is a propulsive slab of spaced out garage-y krautrock, the guitars ringing out, the second guitar a buzzing over the top, the drums busy and powerful, the whole thing still wreathed in effects, but now the murk had been replaced with something much more effulgent, a strange burnished glow, suffusing the sound, less like laying in darkness and watching colors swirl and shimmer, and more like staring directly into the sun. "This Is Where You End" continues on in the same vein, with gruff almost growled vocals, over that distinctive looped guitar figure, with multiple guitars offering up extra melody and texture. "Fever Knife" stands out as it slows things way down, and the guitars are muted, not quite as sharp, with plenty of squiggly fun house mirror guitar melodies intertwined with that main riff, the tempo, a head nodding soporific groove, definitely reaching back a bit to the sound of Heaven's End. But then comes "Torched" with a incendiary guitar sound so loud and in the red, it threatens to blow your speakers, dwarfing the drums and bass in the background, churning and soaring, white hot and blown out big time. The title track is another slowed down druggy dirge, the main riff lumbering woozily along side a steady simple beat, haunting processed vocals, and chunks of extra guitar buzz, the whole thing downright doomy. The last three tracks are gorgeous squalls of druggy throb and crumbling guitar buzz, the record finishing up with a short stretch of shimmering ambient drift. SO GREAT!! The deluxe reissue of Fade Out not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring a whole mess of extra stuff, alternate mixes of three tracks on the record, an awesome demo version of "This Is Where You End", the Peel Sessions from the Fade Out era, and most exciting of all a series of Fade Out Guitar Loops, from shimmering high end buzz, to whirring smears of low end rumble, definitely hinting at Hampson's post-Loop outfit Main. SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!

MPEG stream: Black Sun
MPEG stream: This Is Where You End
MPEG stream: Fade Out

When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop. For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts Krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut infused space rock bliss. Heaven's End was Loop's debut, released in 1987, just a year after Spacemen 3's first record (and apparently Spacemen 3 were always quite annoyed by constantly being compared to Loop), and inadvertent or not, it's the Loop record that is the most Spacemen sounding. Lo-fi, raw and gritty. The opener "Soundhead" is surprisingly rocking, with lots of wah guitar, propulsive drumming, ethereal vocals, the song that would define the sound of Loop, but it's the second track where the record really gets going, slipping into a slow motion Stooges groove, a lurching looped riff, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums a simple pound, a main refrain that's catchy as fuck, the whole thing constantly repeated over and over and over and over, totally blissed out and trancelike. The following track slips even further out, the guitars super sharp and buzz drenched, the tempo a lugubrious crawl, the drums total barebones, swirling spaced out effects, the guitar billowing out into soft focus buzzscapes over which the rest of the instrumentation seems to hover weightless. The title track is a simple garage-y pound, with the cymbals and the guitars looped backwards (hinting at some Teenage Filmstars to come maybe?), the guitar stuttering creating incidental rhythms, very druggy and mesmeric. And so it goes, each song, a simple motif, locked in and set on repeat, the core remaining near static, looped into infinity, while all around that groove various guitars and effects and voices swirl and whirl and spin and stretch and shimmer divinely. Easily one of our all time favorite records for sure. This deluxe reissue not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring alternate mixes of two of the album tracks, as well as a killer cover of Suicide's "Rocket USA", with a cool programmed drum beat, tripped out psychedelic guitars, and hushed almost crooned vocals, and the three tracks from the Peel Sessions, included a seriously stretched out version of "Straight To Your Heart". SO AWESOME!!! SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!

MPEG stream: Soundhead
MPEG stream: Straight To Your Heart
MPEG stream: Forever

Finally!! Ever since the first two Loop records got the deluxe multidisc reissue treatment, we've been anxiously awaiting the last two, their final record A Gilded Eternity, and this one right here, many folks around here's favorite, a compilation of 12"s called World In Your Eyes. Originally released in 1987, the updated World In Your Eyes, is even better, a TRIPLE disc collection of 12"s, 7"s, bonus tracks, unreleased tracks, demos, and covers. Seemingly always (unfairly) overshadowed by their sonic brethren the Spacemen 3, Loop managed to give the drugged out drone rock thing their own distinct spin, infusing some serious krautrock mesmer and some metallic muscle into their slow burning drones and effects drenched psychrock workouts. Slipping easily from super dreamy one riff blown out hypno rock, to in-the-red space garage pound, to hushed soft focus inner space drift, Loop were masters of modern psychedelia. Take the 10 minute drug drift of "Burning World", with its processed guitar chug, the swirling clouds of effects, the blooping bass, the motorik drums, like the perfect mix of Can and Hawkwind. Or "Brittle Head Girl", which sounded like a spacier more tripped out Galaxie 500, its lazy drawled vocals, and woozy guitar hook, and that irresistible bassline. Or "I'll Take You There", a super fuzzed out bit of garage-y space groove, the band easily out spacing the Spacemen themselves. We could probably go track by track, every one here is a gem, and the extras! Holy shit. Where to start? Besides a plethora of demos, live tracks and the like, this collection also includes some incredible covers, A spaced out version of a Pop Group track, Neil Young's "Cinammon Girl", Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" and Can's "Mother Sky (which Andee sez is better than the original, yeah we know, we know). Then there's the Arc-Lite 12" that takes up the first half of the third disc, one of our favorite Loop eps, and the track "Arc-Lite (Sonar)" is one of the best Loop jams ever, with its relentless riffing, it's strange flurries of tribal drumming, the echo drenched vox and the swooping streaks of effects, a 4 minute song that could easily have been ten times that. The song is reimagined as the "(Radar)" version, getting sort of supercharged, heavier and fleshier, less spare and skeletal and jangly than the original. There's a third version still, that gets all remixed into something less space rocky and more tripped out and dizzying. Let's not forget the ten minute "Sunburst", a sprawling bit of lysergic minimal krautdrone, woozy and druggy and slow burning. There's also the legendary live Prisma Europa Live 12", and finally, to top it all off, Loop's Godflesh cover, from their Loopflesh split 7", where each band covered the other, one of our Holy Grail 7"s, if anyone out there has one they can part with, we will be forever in your debt, and of course it's a killer, Godflesh's "Like Rats" transformed into something much spacier but no less menacing, in fact, it's most definitely the heaviest meanest slab of Loop-age ever, while still retaining plenty of that Loop-ed FX drenched shimmer. So goddamn GREAT. These reissues have been shuffling tracks around enough to cause a little confusion, as some of the tracks on the original issue of WIYE are left off here, but are tacked on elsewhere on the other reissues, and disc 3 here seems like it could have been included on the Gilded Eternity disc as this disc highlights one of our favorite Loop tracks, the above mentioned Arc-Light, originally a 1989 single, which was lumped onto the cd edition of A Gilded Eternity which came out a year later in 1990. But who really cares, as long as it's all here, and it's ALL here, and then some. Space rock and drone rock and psychedelic rock fanatics should buy all four, one of the most supremely transcendent and kick ass bodies of work in rock. Hyperbole? We think NOT. Killer packaging, three paper sleeves with various reproductions of the included 12"s, all housed in a slipcover, with a booklet that includes track listings credits, but sadly, not much in the way of liner notes.

MPEG stream: Head On
MPEG stream: Burning World
MPEG stream: Mother Sky
MPEG stream: Pink Moon
MPEG stream: Cinnamon Girl
MPEG stream: Arc-Lite (Sonar)

Our stance on Belle & Sebastian has never been a positive one. And Looper is the sweet electronica project of one of the B&S's. But Looper is actually pretty good, wispy lispy pop augmented by beats, and electronic twiddling trickery.

Lots of you probably remember the first Loose Fur record which came out a few years ago. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame teaming up with man of so many hats Jim O'Rourke along with Wilco's drummer extrodinair Glen Kotche for a record that surpassed side-project trappings and had such a nice life of it's own. It came right at the peak of Tweedy's more adventurous and daring musical mind awakening coming in between Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. Much like Radiohead, there tends to be two camps with Tweedy/Wilco those who love the early more straight ahead rock stuff and those who think the above mentioned albums are the real ones worth obsessing over. The second Loose Fur affair with its tongue in cheek title will make those who like the rocking and straight ahead side of Tweedy very happy. With O'Rourke adding his pop leanings which seem as sharp here as on records like "Insignificance" and "Eureka." While we miss some of the drugged vibe of the first Loose Fur record there is no denying that Tweedy & O'Rourke know their way around a hook and a catchy song.

MPEG stream: Hey Chicken
MPEG stream: Stupid As The Sun

When Uncle Tupelo broke up way back, their fans were split into two distinct groups. Those that sided with Jeff Tweedy, and preferred his voice and his songs. And those that were Jay Farrar boosters all the way. Around these parts, we pretty much all fell into the latter camp. Farrar's desperately ache-y, whiskey soaked drawl beat out Tweedy's reedy whine every time. And post UT, it could've gone either way, the first Son Volt was perfect, exactly where we wanted to see Farrar go. But then the first Wilco was no slouch either. But we quickly lost interest in Wilco as record after record continued to become more bland and pointless (regardless of critical praise). But then unexpectedly, Jay Farrar took a horrifying detour into what we can only describe as adult contemporary country rock. Mediocre. Boring. Bad. And then out of the blue, Jeff Tweedy made a similar about face, but instead of sinking into radio friendly pap, he turned towards US, you and me, the ones that love weird, beautiful, fucked up, experimental goodness, with arms outstretched. And thus, we were given Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a beautiful record for sure, but beautiful in a way that wasn't always obvious. Kind of like the "ugly" girls in movies who are actually totally hot, but just happen to be wearing glasses and paint splattered overalls and pigtails. And if you're like me, she's always WAY hotter than the "pretty" girls. Anyway, a totally great record. Not so experimental that there couldn't be good songs. And catchy songs that only seem to be helped by their experimental surroundings. So now we have Loose Fur, which sounds just like you imagine it would seeing as it's 3 folks from Wilco, two of which, Jim O'Rourke (unofficial Wilco member and Tweedy cohort) and Glenn Kotche, are hugely responsible for Wilco's new sound and direction. Loose Fur sound a lot like Wilco kicking back and jamming for fun, recording on an eight track with some beer and some take out BBQ instead of in a $5000 a day studio with a catered buffet and a 'producer', recording in the basement or at home, whenever the mood strikes 'em. Like a fuzzed out, druggier, dreamier, more lo-fi Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. A sweet and unassuming mix of pop, country, folk and psychedlic weirdness. Really really great! The perfect thing to hold you over until the new Wilco, or to drown your 'what-happened-to-Jay-Farrar-well-at-least-we-have-Jeff-Tweedy' blues.

RealAudio clip: Nuts
RealAudio clip: Racoonists

As sweet and warm as a fresh baked apple pie and as soft as a kitten... that's what The Loose Salute sound like. This is some of the sweetest sun-kissed and country-tinged female sung pop with a retro feel that touches on '60s girl group perkiness and '70s West Coast breeziness. Looks like this band has some close ties to Neil Halstead and Mojave 3 (he co-wrote one of their tunes and the album was partially recorded at Mojave 3's headquarters in East Cornwall). The two bands' music is pretty cozy too. Ahhh, birds of a feather... and these birds have such lovely pastel hued plumage!

MPEG stream: Death Club
MPEG stream: Through The Stratosphere To The Bars

Following their very well-received Penny Drop 5-song ep, Loquat issue forth a slightly longer 7-song cd of equally pretty pop that once again brings to mind that fine British pop combo The Sundays. Wide-eyed, wistful, girlish vocals from Ms Kylee Swenson with a subtle, hushed backing of gentle piano, guitar and drums that tip toe gracefully around her voice. Be forewarned if you already have the ep, four of those five songs make a reappearance here (the final song "Band-Aid Queen" didn't make the cut), however they do deliver a sweet rendition of The Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out". Should tide fans over until their soon-to-be-released debut full length. FYI: this is the third in Devil In The Woods Magazine's delightfully low priced Builder series.

MPEG stream: Friends Without Thumbs
MPEG stream: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Jackpine Records is home to many fine Bay Area artists' releases (Kelley Stoltz's Antique Glow, Parchman Farm's self titled debut, Oranger's Shutdown The Sun, as well as the compilations paying tribute to Joe South and Kris Kristofferson). Now they welcome a new member to the family... Loquat! You might already be fondly familiar with this SF band's sweet brand of smooth pop from their two cdeps (Penny Drop and Before The Momentum) and one 10" which we've carried in the past. If so, you'll probably be quite pleased with their latest offering, and if not, then this should make for a very pleasant introduction. If you like female fronted, lilting pop bands such as The Cardigans, The Cranberries or The Sundays, Loquat might be your new crush. Lead singer Kylee Swenson's voice continue to be a deadringer for that of The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. Please note: some of the songs from their previous releases reappear here. The ninth song "To The Floor" was originally on their debut Penny Drop cdep and their song "Swingset Chain" has been included on every cd release thus far. Yeah it's a great song, and yeah it was on a WB TV show, and yeah this is a freshly recorded version, but c'mon Loquat don't milk it to death! We know you've got plenty more where that came from. Okay, enough grousing, but we just thought we should alert you to all of that, in case you were expecting a completely new album. Anyways, the sun is shining brightly today, and Loquat is taking its cue, beaming out warm, wonderful, well-crafted pop songs. Dreamy!

MPEG stream: Slow, Fast, Wait & See
MPEG stream: It's Yours To Keep

With their sweetly lilting female vocals and pretty mid tempo pop songs, Loquat's Penny Drop EP slips very gracefully in alongside the music of the Sundays or early Cranberries. Simply put, this SF quintet make very well-executed, warm and dreamy pop music. Pretty darn polished and radio-ready! Shuffling drum beats, synthy strings, and understated piano and guitar melodies swirl around the lead vocals of Kylee Swenson and the kindly male back-ups which come to think of it, also really brought to mind the loveliness of Emma Pollock from the fabulous Scottish band the Delgados. Soft but with a little twist of wryness in it.

RealAudio clip: Swingset Chain
RealAudio clip: To The Floor

I love In The Red Records. They are one of the few labels that continues to put out great punk rock records. The Lord High Fixers were from Austin, TX and featured both Tim Kerr (of the Big Boys and Monkeywrench) and Mike Carroll (of Poison 13). 'The Beginning Of The End' just happens to be this band's swan song released posthumously. It's jam-packed with covers, many of them old blues and soul classics: Curtis Mayfield's classic "People Get Ready" with a surprise appearance of slide trombone, Booker T's "Stop And Think It Over", a suitably raunchy cover of Mudhoney's "You Got It" as well as "One Way Ticket" by the Morlocks. A wild collision of garage, blues, punk, and even some free jazz skronk! Scattered between the songs are brief spoken word clips from the likes of Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, Angela Davis and Woody Guthrie. A gorgeously raw and gritty goodbye to these garage rock heroes.

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Latest blast of nekro morbid death metal primitivism from the drummer of LA black metallers Harassor, and like on previous tapes, Drink My Tears is a twisted, lo-fi, blackened, psychedelic freakout, a warped strain of primitivism, the recording this time around even shittier (read: genius), the guitars brittle and buzzy, but not black metal buzzy, more sort of tinny, the drums cardboard box thumps, everything super distorted and in the red, the vocals a raspy grumbly croak, heavily processed, and made super trippy, the sound surprisingly melodic, with what sounds like piano, the recording not so black metal as damaged lo-fi dirge pop with black metal elements? Maybe. Well, really, it IS black metal obviously, but seriously mutated, black metal the way Circle Of Ouroborus is black metal, as much the mood and atmosphere and intent as the sound, cuz really some of the tracks here are weirdly hypnotic slabs of lo-fi psychedelic weirdness, that out of context, we might not even classify as black metal. But then there are tracks that are raw as fuck, and black as fuck, but those are far outweighed by the trippy, the tranced out, the droney, the woozy and wonderfully weird. Swirls of distorted guitar melodies emulate carnival organs, a sort of blackened kosmische, others are lurching lumbering dirges that again seem too heavy on the chiming clean guitar to be truly black metal, but fuck it, not of that matters, this is some super rad, super twisted, outsider sonic weirdness, that whether it sounds psychedelic, or grim and black, or freaky and WTF?, to you, or hell even all of the above, this is some amazing, inspired, dementedly genius stuff that is KILLING us. So totally and absolutely recommended. Comes in swank packaging, colored cases, stickered red tapes, heavy cardstock J-card, each one marked with real blood, and each one with two buttons.

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Ah, the second release from the Mimaroglu Music Sale sponsored "No Label" which probably will stick as a name, when it really was meant to be a private imprint with the absence of a label name. No matter, though as this split LP from Mark Lord (the pseudonym of Christopher Forgues) and Morgan Egg (who we know next to nothing about). Forgues has previous work under the Whitehouse inspired project Kites with blistering pierced noise surrounded by shock-horror tactics; and that sensibility has been tempered under the Mark Lord moniker. The only semblance of that former self appears in an appropriated dialogue of a '70s porn, buttressed by some fantastic retro-garde / minimal wave electronics. These looping synth modulations arppegiate and expand along linear pulsations dappled by circuit bent twiddle and scrags of cheap noise. Sort of like a more progressive take on the Units without so much of the punk overdrive. The final cut "Warpath" tops the drum machine propulsion with an almost charmingly playful melody to the counter the insistent synth bass pulse. Really great stuff! Morgan Egg's snarled drone tempests declares their influences from the classic Italian industrial work by Maurizio Bianchi and Giancarlo Toniutti. Washes of grey static and revolving chunks of leaden distortion meld into the grim atmospheres that Egg laces with oscillating electronics and curiously languid bell tones. Quite a departure from the Mark Lord side, but just as incredible. This small pressing is less than 300 copies, of which we have less than a dozen. Who knows if more will be in our future.

Yup, she's back, and she hasn't changed a bit -- her unmistakable achingly honeysweet voice and jangle-crunch guitar in hand. What seems to have seldom been addressed in the past is that, although she was trumpeted as an indie folksy singer/*songwriter*, what Mary Lou Lord did and still does best is sing other people's songs. Sure she got a lot of attention for writing a bunch of songs about Kurt and Courtney, but when that inkwell ran dry, her other wells proved less juicy. You may recall that many moons ago she was a busker. She clearly knew that one of the best ways to lure an ear for a dime in the streets 'n' subways is to target the familiar in the form of well-executed cover versions. She's kept that wisdom close to heart. In particular, it's when she sings the songs of Bevis Frond's Nick Salomon that she truly shines... and that's exactly what she wisely does on this album. He wrote nine of the album's fourteen songs, they collaborated on three, and the other two are covers of songs by Pink Floyd and Badfinger!

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#1 lame aspect to Ms. Lord's major label debut: "Includes Internet Access" (via AOL to add insult to injury). Nice songs, the majority of which were written or co-written by the Bevis Frond's Nick Saloman...

This six-song split cd includes Mary Lou Lord performing, as she often does, a song by Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond. Also, the other half of this cd features Sean Na Na doing Andee's new favorite Pacific Northwest indie-rock hit: "Princess and the Pony". A nice surprise.

This has a lot going for it. First off, they're called Lords Of Falconry, which is kinda cool. Lordly, even. And this, their debut full-length, comes to us via the also quite lordly Holy Mountain label, who have a pretty stellar track record as far as we're concerned. In fact, Holy Mountain probably has had a higher number of AQ Records Of The Week per capita than almost any other label. Furthermore, our discerning pal JW who runs Holy Mountain tells us that THIS is precisely the sort of thing he's always wanted to release on his label. So far, so good. Our appetites are whetted. And then, there's the music. ULTRA fuzzed, freaked out, high energy, heavy psychedelic guitar jams, to put it plainly. Can't complain about that, no siree. But (you knew there had to be a but), we do have one minor caveat for you potential emptors... it concerns the vocals. If this was all-instrumental, there'd be no hemming and hawing. But, some of the vocal stylings struck some of us as, well, a little bit goofy. Self-consciously "rawk" or something. You may not mind a bit, and we actually don't much either. Anyway, it's hard to be picky about the vocals when Lords Of Falconry's guitars are blasting jet-engine like, turning the air into cottage cheese they way they used to do back in Blue Cheer's daze, the wild FX and throbbing distortion turning yr head inside out so your brain is being caressed and cudgeled by these riffs and rhythms without any help from your ears. Recommended to folks who get off on bands like Julian Cope's Braindonor, DMBQ, Midnite Snake, The Heads, Hawkwind, High Rise, and other fuzz-laden, pedal-stomping, heavy-duty psychedelic throwbacks. And by the way, though Holy Mountain didn't tell us this, we're pretty sure that one of these Lords Of Falconry is in fact none other than guitarist Steven Wray Lobdell of Davis Redford Triad, Sufi Mind Game, and Faust fame! If true (it is), that explains a lot about this. The other dude in the band we believe to be one Sammy Adams, formerly the drummer for Fireballs Of Freedom. Talk about a power duo. So, despite a slight case of what we might call the Scissorfight syndrome, this gets a solid recommendation from us!

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The return of this aQ beloved Mexican fuzzed out, druggy, dreamy garage rock duo, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, made up of, if you hadn't guessed already, Lorelle, who plays guitar, organ and sings, and her partner The Obsolete, who plays drums and does everything else. And like the two records that came before, Chambers is another killer collection of droned out psychedelic garage-kraut noise pop, like a heavier, fuzzier Moon Duo, or a creepier crawlier (old) Dum Dum Girls, the songs here are stretched out and trance-y, heavy and hypnotic, there's definitely a sort of classic sixties pop vibe, reminding us at times of another aQ fave, the Liminanas, but where that band went the full Gainsbourg, Lorelle and The Obsolete, take a similar sound, and run it through a bank of FX, a wall of distortion, adding some seriously drugged out Spacemen 3-isms to the proceedings. Just give a listen to the opening track "What's Holding You", with its fuzzy bass, crunchy guitar, ethereal female vox, whirring organ drones, super dark and dreamy and mesmerizing, the sound seesawing between moody stripped down verses, and blown out fuzz drenched 'choruses', but the real pay off for psych-heads, is the whole second half of the song, where the duo lock into a total Hawkwind worthy space rock blowout, delivering the sort of heady heart-of-the-sun heaviness, that should have fans of the Heads and White Hills and the like frothing at the mouth. The rest of the record follows suit, the band displaying a brilliant knack for murky noise-pop soundcraft, transforming clouds of chaotic sound into dreamy, lilting, hook laden jangle garage, the sound effortlessly straddling the line between drone-pop mesmer, swirly psychedelic garage, and full on, unhinged heavy psych, the magic being that the songs are GREAT, and just get greater as more sounds are piled on, fantastically noisy, but again, impossibly catchy and melodic, and so goddamn good. Some of the songs do slow down, and get sort of balladic, some are all swaggery and Stooges-y, and still others tap into the sound favored by the current crop of garage rockers, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees, etc. and fans of those bands, if you don't know this band already, you're in for a treat, but really, Lorelle and Mr. The Obsolete, have managed a rare feat, and taken the sound of a million other bands all seemingly trying to do the same thing, and made it ALL their own, truly unique and special, still pushing all of our garage pop buttons, as well as some of our space and psych rock buttons, but most importantly, revealing a whole bunch of other musical buttons we never even knew we had!!

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We already loved this Mexican duo based entirely on the name, even more so when we discovered that it wasn't just a band name. Lorelle sings, plays guitar, bass and organ. The Obsolete plays drums, percussion, bass, Casiotone, organ, synth, piano guitar and also sings. Not sure if they're a proper couple, but they should be, so we're just gonna assume they are. And they do in fact make beautiful music together. A sort of psychedelic krautrock, noise pop, garage rock. In a way, they remind us of another recent fave Liminanas, but where that band channeled French pop, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete seem to be drawing their influence from something much more noisy and raw, psychedelic and dark. Sure it's jangly and poppy in places, but they lock into seriously hypnotic grooves, fans of outfits like the Moon Duo will be utterly enthralled for sure. They also have a bit of swaggery twang, reminding us at times of Crystal Stilts, and at others a little bit of Stereolab, albeit a much rougher low fidelity version. The sound here is lush and warm, woozy and hypnotic, druggy and dreamy, tracks like "The December Riots" sound like the Dum Dum Girls slowed down to a gloriously murky crawl, slo-mo girl group bliss out, while tracks like "Art For Free", add some new wave to the group's garage pop crunch. All the songs here though at their core are jangly and catchy, Lorelle and her partner delivering them in varying states of decay, and varying states of tranced out drugginess. At their poppiest, this is the sort of thing fans of Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and Mikal Cronin will flip over, and at their droniest and druggiest, it's a sort of lysergic dirge that should appeal equally to fans of old school drug drift mesmer a la Spacemen 3, and more modern psychedelic noise purveyors like Carlton Melton. Although really, this is just some noisy krauty fuzzy pop, and we LOVE it. A new favorite for sure!

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A few lists back we made the oddly named duo Lorelle Meets The Obsolete one of our Records Of The Week. And as we explained then, it's not just a cool weird band name. Lorelle is the woman who fronts LMTO, and her partner is in fact named The Obsolete, and together, the duo whip up a head, druggy brew of darkly psychedelic garage-kraut mesmer, and actually, when we made Corruptible Faces our Record Of The Week, it easily could have been this record instead, as we discovered both albums at the same time, and they feel sonically like two parts of a bigger whole, which means, any/every one who dug Corruptible Faces, is gonna want this one too, the same mix of murky, motorik mesmer and psychedelic garage groove. The opener gets all Stooges by way of Spacemen 3 by way of Moon Duo, fuzzed out riff, loping, minimal rhythm, processed vocals, wheezing organ, everything wreathed in delay and echo, washed out and druggily woozy, totally blissed out zoner-groove garage psych radness for sure. The sound soon morphs into something much more stripped down and acoustic, but no less droned out and druggy, a hazy sprawl of steel string strum, and acoustic percussion, all tangled up beneath whirring organs, and echo drenched, breathy vocals, the whole thing blossoming into something a but more lush and layered, the vibe sorta Suicide via Bob Dylan, but druggier and garagier if that makes any sense, but before you know it, the sound shifts again, and we're in total psychedelic trance mode, buzzing drones, and reverby female vocals, swirling FX, languorous ruffs and abstract percussion, all drifting in a cloud of sonic fug, and all tethered to a simple, pulsating groove, it's the sorta song that most bands would stretch out for 10 or 20 minutes, but here it's less than 4, LMTO restlessly moving on to yet another subtle variant of their dreamy druggy sound, this time it's all sixties soft focus shimmer, classic girl group sound stripped down to a haunting bit of skeletal drift, before the organs swoop to the fore, wrapped in strange swirling FX and slowly drifting swaths of gauzy shimmer, which eventually blossoms into some sweetly melodic fuzz bass garage rock girl pop, and so it goes. Lorelle and her partner The Obsolete have a knack for weaving disparate short songs into a lush, interconnected whole, a gorgeous, gloriously psychedelic songsuite that's druggy and dreamy, hazy and hypnotic, and like Corruptible Faces, is one of our new favorites...

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Germany's Bureau B label is pretty keen at coming up with cool krautrock curiosities, like this, an album from 1984 by a lone synthesizer nerd named Rudiger Lorenz. Pharmacist by day, electronic music hobbyist in his free time, Lorenz began his obscure (but prolific) DIY career in the early '80s, collecting gear and putting out his own recordings on limited edition cassettes, his compositions clearly inspired by the previous decade's pioneering krautrock greats like Kraftwerk, Cluster, and Harmonia. So, he was sort of a "2nd wave" krautrock electronic artist, keeping the kosmiche dream alive - until he passed away in 2000, sadly enough. By '83 he was doing vinyl instead of tapes, and then made the move to cd releases in the '90s, ultimately having 18 full-lengths to his name. Just this year, his earliest tape productions were the subject of an lp box set via Vinyl On Demand, and at least one other of his '80s era albums has recently been reissued as well, so he's beginning to get his due. Certainly he deserves it on the strength of this enjoyable album, his sixth, like we said originally released, as an lp, in 1984. It's an excellent set of homebrewed instrumental electronica, partly in the mode of serious Berlin school synthscapers, partly more playful and poppy, with a touch of exotica to it as well (we note that many of his albums, this one included, have some sort of geographic theme). Some tracks on Southland take after the aforementioned Tangerine Dream, et. al., with moody cinematic shimmer and pulse, that should also appeal to the more cosmic-minded fans of John Carpenter and, latterly, Emeralds, while certain other cuts bring to mind Moog-goofs like Bruce Haack and Jean-Jacques Perrey - especially on the delightful "Francis And Friends", which sounds like it's sung by a ribbeting robotic frog. Works by contemporaries like Pyrolator and Conrad Schnitzler could also be cited. Good company to keep. Yup, Bureau B keeps their track record intact with this quite recommended reissue, on both cd and 180 gram vinyl.

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Let's keep the electricity of the summer months goin' a little longer, shall we? We here in SF have had some deliciously warm sunshiney days this week, and now we've got some tunes to go along with the blue skies and high spirits... Los Abandoned's debut album Mixtape! Its hard rockin' pop is delivered with big crunchy guitars and a truckload of sass and attitude much like Elastica, The Breeders and Metric, but with a notable difference. Their vocals are all sung in a mish-mash of English and Spanish! It can be a bit confusing if you like to sing along, but it also makes for some pretty entertaining misheard lyrics too.

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Yes, you read that correctly. The title for this two cd set is 1991-1988! Munster Records and Los Bichos are taking a few liberties with chronology and wanna take you back in time. And what a wild ride it is! We have to admit that we're totally new to this long-lost, mysterious punk band from Spain, but we gather from this release that they clearly had a strange swagger all their own. Hmmm, kind of Birthday Party meets Os Mutantes?! Sure wish we'd witnessed them back in the day. If you happen to be familiar with them, you might find yourself jumpin' for joy at the thought of hearing tunes from not only their albums Bitter Pink, My Deaf Pink Love and Color Hits, but also a heap of previously unreleased material. Thirty six tracks total packaged in a hardcover book-style package. Included is a 76-page book filled with tons of historic notes and photos.

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We tried to fight it. We wanted to hate Los Campesinos! (exclamation point part of the name btw), and we tried our hardest, all the hype, the blog love, their extreme cuteness, the mandatory exclamation point, the fact that the band members all take the last name Campesinos (a la the Ramones), on the surface, barring the music, they seemed like a band we would hate. But we're big enough to admit when we're wrong, and so, here goes: we were wrong. This Welsh troop of quirky pop kids are pretty dang great, we can't speak to past records, although odds are we'll be digging into those now too, but this record is fantastic. Weirdo pop, jangly and playful at its core, but rife with strange electronics, bizarre production, surprising horns, tinkling chimes, even glockesnpiel, but those quirky elements can't detract from how awesome and awesomely catchy these songs are. Equal parts Belle And Sebastien, Superchunk, Pavement and old Yoyo and Kill Rock Stars groups like Crayon, Nuzzle, the Cannanes, Some Velvet Sidewalk and the like. Exuberant and fun fun fun. Weird instrumentation, boy / girl vocals, crazy HOOKS everywhere, sing-alongs, goofy smart lyrics, crunchy and jangly and so goddamn catchy, and fun, did we say fun. Okay! We're sorry, we love these guys and gals, and we love this record, and you probably will too.

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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. All right! Two of our favorite things, weird limited cassette tapes, and amazing psychedelic and garage music from all over the world. Plustapes is a new cassette only label, specializing, in... well, limited tapes and obscure international psych and garage music!!! Their first release is a doozy, and it's darn near criminal that it's limited to only 100 copies. The debut from Peru's Los Holy's, who just happen to count as a member a fella who would go on to play in another aQ fave Peruvian psych act, Tarkus. But unlike the heaviness of Tarkus, Los Holy's trafficked more in a fuzzy surfy garage music, thick with effects, a mix of the Ventures and Joe Meek. A few tracks are dead ringers for Meek jams, and still others sound like Ventures outtakes, but Los Holy's definitely add their own spin. There's plenty of fuzz, these all instrumental jams slip from groovy kitchy garage rock, to super psyched out and fuzzed out under water sounding surf music, often a mix of the two, all slathered in Farfisa organs, moaning Theremins, swirling bloops and bleeps, primitive delays and echo effects, tons of reverb, all packed into kick ass super catchy psychedelic sixties surf garage jams, surprisingly heavy and tripped out for the time (mid '60s), really awesome. Essential for anyone into super obscure, super far out sixties psych, especially, from South America, a la groups like Tarkus, Traffic Sound, and Los Nuevos Shain's. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, Each one hand numbered, clear red cassettes in full color sleeves. ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!

Fans of Kiko, proceed. Fans of Latin Playboys, proceed with caution.

Argentina's Los Natas were once a Kyuss clone (and a good one) but now they're really come into their own. First they impressed us with last year's mighty rockin' "Corsario Negro" opus (second in our personal Stoner Rock Of The Year estimation only to "Heavy Rocks" from Japan's Boris, maybe even tied with 'em), now they branch out further with this psychedelic "trance" album released on Jussi of Circle's Ektro label. And they fit right in with the likes of Ektro labelmates Circle and Acid Mothers Temple. The Los Natas trio has emerged from the pot haze of their Buenos Aires "Death Studios" to unfurl the banner of "Toba-Trance", a mostly instrumental (though we like the brief vocal "hoo hoo" bit in the middle of track 2) laid-back spacey exploratory opus that's not really "heavy" in the way we were expecting. The metal part of the stoner rock equation is mostly missing. Rather, the acoustic guitars and Latin flavored jazz improv elements of the druggier, more atmospheric tracks found on "Corsario Negro" set the standard here. Droney, melodic, extended (three tracks, fifty-two minutes total)...this is a very nice lil' trip. Guitarist Sergio Chotsourian channels his '70s heroes with some lengthy psych solos. Flutes and South American Indian instruments also show up in the mix. Immediate references might be Circle's stoner-rock side-project Pharoah Overlord, or the lighter side of Boris's semi-acoustic "Flood". Byram's thinking of Grateful Dead jams (and we know Jussi loves the Greatful Dead) but this is as much Agitation Free or some other Krautrock hippy stuff. What it definitely is, is spacerock, mostly mellow and quite pretty, mesmerizing and intricate, great going-to-bed-at-night music. As we said, it never gets really heavy, though there's some riffier moments throughout and distorted noisiness that kicks in towards the end of track three, not loud but satisfying nonetheless. The more we listen, the more we like. Recommended. MPEG Download: "Que Rico..." [/audio/losnatasque.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Que Rico..." [/audio/losnatasque.m3u]

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