[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 11201 through 11250 of 19388.

Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!

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Killer new record from this Israeli trio, who traffic in a sort of bass-heavy, gothed out post punk / punk dub, that sounds like some twisted mix of Joy Division, Suicide and Pan Sonic. Thick, super distorted pig-fuck bass drives the proceedings, each track centered around a grinding bass riff, but anchored by programmed drums, all supporting echo drenched vox, a dark dramatic croon, that is what gives the sound such a gothic vibe. The opener sounds somewhere between Interpol and Iceage or the Holograms, albeit a bit more electronic, but then things get super twisted on the second track, a lurching, stuttering, start-stop, gothic industrial churn, with some cool sampled Queen-like harmonies, and bursts of psychedelic guitar noise, and the vocals locked into dubbed out spirals. As the record progresses, it seems like the effects are gradually cranked, with tracks like "A Path" devolving into near chaos as the rhythms get all dubby as well, careening wildly in all directions while the riffs hammer away, and the vocals slip into almost rage like drones. Some tracks sound super electronic, others almost straight post punk, but usually, those two sides of the band merge and bleed into one twistedly unique whole. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!

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We have recently been obsessing over the old Nickelodian show The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, with its recent reissue on DVD. Not only is it a totally amazing, completely bizarre show, cute enough for kids, but clever enough for adults, it also has a killer theme song, performed by a band called Polara, who just happen to feature a Mr. Mark Mulcahy on vocals. I knew I recognized that voice. Mulcahy also fornted the most amazing Miracle Legion, who were a bit of a college radio mainstay back in the day. Anyway, the upshot of all this is, we had sort of forgotten how great Mulcahy was, and what a totally amazing voice he possessed and then we remembered he had just released a new record so we figured we ought to check it out and we're happy to report it's absolutely fantastic. From the warm warbly organ of the title track, with Mulcahy's gorgeous vocals (along with some strange but lovely harmonies) to the simple sunny indie strum and unforgettable vocal melody of "Cookie Jar" to the Yo La Tengo-like jangle and stomp of "I Have Patience" complete with weird ELO style vocal effects and handclaps. This record never lets up. It's like a heavenly slice of nineties college rock all gussied up and given a good twentieth century going over. And with most pop records, it's all about the vocals, and Mulcahy has such a distinct and mesmerizing voice, smooth and sweet, but just a little scratchy and totaly unique, able to slip smoothy from a sweet falsetto to a warm rich croon. So good! Another record that we always seem to find ourselves returning to over and over.

MPEG stream: In Pursuit Of Your Happiness
MPEG stream: Cookie Jar
MPEG stream: I Have Patience

I'm a sucker for a certain kind of earnest male singer songwriter. Like Sparklehorse, Nick Drake, Tom Petty, Mark Eitzel, Mark Olson (Jayhawks, Creekdippers) -- those guys with a certain kind of warbly voice that can't quite hide all that inner pain and a chin-up resolve to make it through the heartbreak. A certain kind of toned down rock flavor that's way more Neil Young than it is

RealAudio clip: I Just Shot Myself In the Foot Again

Final pressing!! It's taken a long while to get enough of these in stock to list, as they've flown out the door since we started stocking it back in June, and then our distributors kept being sold out of it. Makes a lot of sense that folks have been freaking out over this, as the sounds on Science Of The Sea are some of the most blissed out sounds we've ever heard. Originally recorded in 1982 (there is debate over that, we will get to that later) by an oceanographer in Germany while living on a houseboat. The sounds on the album undoubtedly talk to the sounds and feeling of the sea. You not only feel like your floating but often that you are underwater yourself. With soft waves glowing in their ripple, as such warm shimmering sounds come gliding out of the grooves of this record. Imagine the right kind of new age bliss injected into the most pastoral & ethereal side of kosmiche glory and you begin to get a picture of what kind of beautiful sounds are found on this album. While some doubt has been risen as to whether this really is a reissue of some obscure private press from 1982, or in fact the work of a modern artists, perhaps even Brad Rose, the man behind Digitalis. But who knows, and in the end who really cares, as its the music that matters, and the music on this album is beyond gorgeous!

What could be cooler than a French guy in the '70s, hanging out with naked chicks and teetering stacks of analog synths, making underground DIY futuristic psychedelic new wave punk drone proto-industrial music??? Uh, not much. Particularly when said French guy (Thierry Muller) is so good at it. Longtime AQ list readers might recall us raving some time ago about something called Ilitch and something else called Ruth, both bands/projects of Muller reissued on the Fractal label. Now, those discs are all out of print (why? they should repress!), but the label has just presented us with a collection of mostly previously unreleased material from the man's various projects over the period indicated in the subtitle... and even the stuff that has been available is super rare. None of it included on those previous Fractal cds of Ilitch and Ruth. For the uninitiated, let us say, Thierry Muller was a French pioneer in the realm of electronic/prog/punk weirdness, an "early Industrial" genius indeed! This disc is all the proof you need. There's material from five different Muller led projects: Arcane (1974), Ilitch (1975), Breaking Point (1978), Ruth (1978), and Crash (1984). The progression, if we can generalize, from "band" to "band" is from the more abstract, lo-fi distorted homebaked soundscape-psych displayed by Arcane all the way to the robotic sci-fi FX pop of Crash. But it's all got a kind of tense krautrock meets the new wave vibe, and if you like the likeminded work of Muller's countryman Richard Pinhas (Heldon) you should check this out! You could buy it just for the blissful 28 minutes of Ilitch's 1975 "Un Jour Come Tant d'Autres" and get your money's worth. Highly recommended!!

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MPEG stream: Breaking Point, Pt.1
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Long before local garage rockers Thee Oh Sees were Thee Oh Sees, they were in fact called the OCS (need proof? Check out the double cd on tUMULt!), and were a much different beast, a duo, equal parts bedroom folk and abstract experimental noisiness, the duo at that point was made up of John Dwyer and Patrick Mullins. At some point, Mullins left, Dwyer expanded his 2 piece OCS into the 4 piece Oh Sees and the rest is history. Mullins went East, became a baker, but kept recording, and Don't Go To Sleep is the result. A haunting collection of fractured meandering abstract soundscapes, dreamlike drones, and constantly shifting textures, from twisted dark electronics-laced folk to minimal musique concrete, to deep swirling dronemusic, to blissed out soft noise, all assembled from field recordings, electronics, effects, guitar and musical saw. The opener is lovely, sounding a bit like Scott Tuma jamming with Whitehouse, a high end electronic pulse laced over delicate slow-mo Appalachia, hypnotic and alien, but so mysteriously beautiful. That's the sound that grounds most of the record, with Mullins constantly returning to that sort of woozy softly psychedelic glitchy electronic folk. But in between, the record constantly shifts gears, from pure field recordings, voices, and insects, thunderstorms, to drone-y minimal electronics, lushly layered yet raw and primitive, from blown out hazy Tim Hecker like blurscapes, to thick corrosive downtuned minimal doomdrone churn, to fields of gauzy drift, rife with buried melody and muted guitar strum, to glitched out digital crunch, to barely there ambient shimmer, finally culminating in the lengthy close, which begins as a hushed thrum, only to expand into a strange soundscape seemingly constructed from the sounds of rushing water, processed into textural smears, and laid over lush deep chordal swells. So nice! LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: How Terribly Human
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The moody, obscurantist ensemble Multer had its origins in the industrial / field recording outfit ABGS, who in turn had some connections to Cranioclast. Of course, these are references that mine the post-industrial currents of German experimental music; those dour atmospheres persist in the current Multer guise, but with an ear for what the likes of Village Of Savoonga had been up to (remember how great that band was?), in addition to all things Drone Records. The first of the three tracks on this 10" interweaves drone guitar chords into a two note melody that oscillates plaintively above of a set of electrical pulses. The whole ambience of the track is thoroughly evocative in its gloom that elegantly sits upon the lattice work of skittering rhythms and that simple turgid melody. The second cut wraps fuzzed out stabs of guitar noise above angular march of drum machines and electronics. Much closer to the Morr Records sound than what's ever appeared from Multer in the past. And the finale returns to the guitar drone, but blown out through distortion, all shoegazing and maudlin in its slice of noise that sheds all of its layering to reveal the melody hidden with. Really nice work found here; but limited stock!

Record number two from these mathy noise rock heavies, and like the first one, it sort of sounds like it was transported here directly from 1995. It's actually some lost record that was meant to come out on AmRep in 1994 but never did. Multicult are that band that opened for Helmet on the Born Annoying tour, the one who only had crappy cassettes for sale and shirts they had screen printed in the parking lot before the show. But they're not. In fact, we'd be willing to guess these guys might even be too young to have been there the first time around. But sonically, they sound like grizzled vets, this is the sort of music that makes us think big beards, shaved heads, old broken amps and a beat to fuck drum kit, touring the country in broken down old white Econoline, and whether or not that's all true or not (and it most certainly is NOT), fans of that stripe of noise rock heaviness, this is the sort of stuff, you probably find yourselves wishing bands still played, and thankfully, some (very few) still do! The songs are dense tangles of angular guitars, thick slithery serpentine bass, pounding intricate drumming, howled vocals, and a surprising amount of catchiness, like the first record, repeated listening is required for these jams to blossom into the kind of songs you get stuck in your head, but take it from someone who has, they do. If your record collection looks (or looked) like this: Big'n, Halo Of Flies, Slug, Surgery, Tar, Helmet, Unsane, God Bullies, Janitor Joe, King Snake Roost, Chokebore, the Cows, Guzzard, Hammerhead, well, odds are you're gonna wanna add Multicult to that motley crew. Includes a download coupon.

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If there was ever a band that sounded like they were transported directly from the heyday of AmRep records and nineties noise rock, it's Multicult. These Baltimore bruisers channel classic Jesus Lizard and Midwestern pigfuck heaviness through their own twisted take on modern math rock. Looking back on past reviews of previous Multicult records, that's essentially what we've said every time, and goddamn if it's not still true. Surgery, Helmet, Tar, Unsane, Janitor Joe, Hammerhead, we could go on, needless to say, if you like your rock dense and driving, your basslines sinewy, your guitars alternately jagged and brittle, crumbling and distorted, everything lathered in a sickly sweet patina of sonic grime, howled vocals over lurching grooves and fractured rhythms, then look no further. And that's not to mention some seriously great songs - "Foreign Object" might be THEE catchiest noise rock song we've heard in FOREVER! Includes a download too.

One of two new releases this week on the Sleeping Giant Glossolalia label, the other, the debut from the new Mick Barr / Brooks Headley duo Oldest reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this, the debut from this rhythmic lo-fi post punk noise rock combo, whose sound is a super distorted, lurching, lumbering mathed out monster, all gristly guitar buzz, blown out rehearsal space drumming, the sound fuzzy and washed out, but dense and tense and thick. The songs tangled arrangements of churning downtuned heaviness, of stop/start math rock stutter, angular and chaotic, with the occasional weirdly almost arena-rock sounding chorus, in fact most of the songs have some buried melodies that transform Mutlicult's blasts of rhythmic frenzy into something much more than just noise rock workouts. The basslines are thick but brittle, the vocals a buried bellow, there's definitely an AmRep vibe, but there's also a sort of early eighties UK post punk thing going on, some of the jams downright groovy, everything wreathed in crumbling distortion, but the pop hooks are there somewhere, and seem to surface with repeated listens, but they are subtle, Multicult is more about woozy, dirgey, muddy heaviness, a sound that seems to melt and ooze, almost like someone is dragging their finger along the record as it spins, which only gives the sound an even more tripped out psychedelic feel. For all their pound and crush, the band don't shy away from the rhythms that drive their sound, often striping things way down, and letting the bass and drums take control, it's at those points that Multicult sound more like they could be some lost eighties punk/funk artifact, but as rhythmic (and at times, groovy) as these guys get, they never ever stray too far from another blast of churning skull caving noise rock crunch. Packaged in a red 12" style sleeve, with a green and yellow sticker.

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Here's the second wee 3" cd single from Mum's Summer Make Good album. It begins with a majestic instrumental (which we're not sure of the title... is it "Kostrzyn" or "Kastryn"? the handwriting is pretty illegible!), then drifts into the shimmering "This Nothing Blowing In The Faraway". The love-her-or-hate-her, baby-voiced singer Kristin Anna Valtydottir is featured most prominently on the third song, the album track "Will The Summer Make Good For All Of Our Sins". It's got lots of cooing and murmurring that'll have listeners either swooning or scurrying. The fourth track "Books Of Fog" seems much like a deconstructed rendering of the second. Note: Once again the cd comes in a lil' digipak that is encased in a useless clear plastic blisterpak.

MPEG stream: Kastryn
MPEG stream: Book Of Fog

Confusingly enough, there are two Mum's who have popped up at around the same time and revolve around similar artistic spaces in electronica. The Mum we're talking about here is the Icelandic Mum and is the Mum which has been garnering tons of rave reviews and Sigur Ros-esque hype as being the next big thing from Iceland. Boards of Canada, Sigur Ros, Bjork, and even Belle & Sebastian are adequate jumping-off points in describing Mum. The latter reference may be of interest as Mum's twin singers Kristin Anna and Gyda Valtydottir had been cover stars for Belle & Sebastian's "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant". Mum builds bright-eyed, electronica tunes filled with childlike wonder, but contextualized by the grown-up disillusionment that those dreams will never step beyond the realm of innocent fantasy. Thus, a benign sadness seeps through Mum's adept orchestrations that (like Bjork) seemlessly integrates live instrumentation (accordion, melodica, glockenspiel, synthesizers, music boxes, guitars, bass, and cello) and laptop tricked-out beats and tweaks. All in all, Mum is pretty good, but never really jumps beyond any of those references.

RealAudio clip: Green Grass Of Tunnel
RealAudio clip: Now There's That Fear Again

Finally here, and well worth the wait! Icelandic princes and princesses Mum shake things up a little bit on Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy. Still very shimmery and splendidly sweet, but far from a typical Mum record. Album #4 is definitely more song oriented, bursting forth like an effervescent chiming pop parade. Horns, accordions and harpsichords (we think!) frolic as high vocal melodies tumble about in the sunny warmth like baby pandas. Really this cozies up close to the sound of Flaming Lips, Polyphonic Spree, and the most recent Caribou album. A beautiful surprise!

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A Mum completist's must-have! All others may find this lil' 7" less of a necessity. Just two songs from those glistening triste Icelanders. One of them is a Kristin-sung number from their latest album Summer Make Good. The other is a chimey, shufflin' instrumental. 8 minutes and 46 seconds total.

MPEG stream: Once A Shiny Morning Puddle

Hey, fans of Mum! Here's the reissue of their second release (the one just before the beloved Finally We Are No One). It's comprised of two originals, one 'interlude' and six remixes of those two songs by Arovane, B. Fleischmann, Isan, Phonem, Christian Kleine, and Styrofoam. Unlike their latest Summer Make Good on which they embody the now-familiar "Icelandic" glistening atmospheric sound and their childlike qualities prominently take center stage in the vocal form, Please Smile My Noise Bleed's visions of infancy are much more subtly infused -- only hinted at like faintly glimmering memories. Very chiming musicbox lullabies meet programmed thud-beats and scritch'n'scrape sounds. Nice!

MPEG stream: On The Old Mountain Radio
MPEG stream: Please Sing My Spring Reverb (Mix)

When Mum first hit the scene, they were part of that amazing Morr Music scene, when that label was releasing dreamy and delicate electronic tinged pop that soared and melted with such ease and lasting impact. Mum were really one of the best of the bunch, an Icelandic group who excelled in making sounds that sounded more like a magical music box than a regular old rock band. Several years later and much has changed, Morr Music is no longer the quite so dependable label they once were and Mum have found themselves on several labels since those early days, as well as going through some major lineup changes, all of which resulted in a pretty serious shift in sound on their last record, Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy. Their evolution of sound continues as they move more towards a much more full sound rife with rich and lush instrumentation as well as a delicate use of electronics, which they use much less frequently than on their earlier recordings, but when they do, they really find simple and engaging ways to make it sound magical. Much of the full and lush sound can be attributed to cellist Hildur Gudnadottir who has helped flesh out the groups sound since joining the group as a full member. While so many records tend to be front loaded we actually find that Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know gets better and better as the record goes on with many of its best moments found on the second half of the album. SO perfect for the crisp and cold days to come...

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MPEG stream: The Smell Of Today Is Sweet Like Breast Milk In The Wind
MPEG stream: A River Don't Stop To Breathe

Where you stand on this new Mum album (not physically! haha!) very well may be hinged on where you stand on adults singing like creepy little kids. As expected, their instrumental arrangements are total glistening elegance, however the vocals all adhere to a frail, childlike affectation, and they're chose to present them very prominently in the overall mix. Plenty of comparisons have been drawn to fellow Icelander Bjork -- sonically, not simply because of their common homeland -- however unlike that of Mum's vocalist Kristin Anna Valtydottir, Bjork's otherworldly dynamic delivery covers a much more vast range, veering in and around the pixie-like. Some may find Ms Valtydottir's voice positively enchanting, while others may find it maddening.

MPEG stream: The Ghosts You Draw On My Back
MPEG stream: Islands Of The Children's Children

Mum fans, you're probably already aware that Mum's debut album has been reissued, aren't you? But if you've yet to acquaint yourself with the shimmering pop majesty that is Mum's music, you simply won't go wrong with any of their gorgeous albums, but this one is a mighty fine place to start. Here's what we had to say the first time around... Mum hails from Iceland, a land whose musical exports have received proportionally higher praise per capita than bands from any other country on the planet. And, yes, Mum has been hailed as the next big thing from Iceland after Sigur Ros. This outfit places themselves within the border regions of electronica and post-rock, where they augment delicate IDM algorithms with Durutti Column-esque guitars, trumpets, and clarinets, but never dabble in the stagnant Tortoise sound. As a result of incorporating acoustic instruments into digital structures, their sound has a rich color palette somewhere between rich acoustic warmth and glistening digital. Mum's sound often recalls the romantic leanings of the early IDM sound (Aphex / Reload / Autechre), but without any of the big floor-filling techno rhythms. It's the aural equivalent of layer upon layer of delicate tulle, gauzy blankets, and goose down duvets. May we say this is dramatic and ever so much more than ok.

MPEG stream: I'm 9 Today
MPEG stream: Sunday Morning Just Keeps On Rolling

MPEG stream: I'm 9 Today
MPEG stream: Sunday Morning Just Keeps On Rolling

Ultra PC "kick in the balls" to indie kid complacency. Mumia, accused of killing a cop, speaks from his cell on death row. MITB add their two cents by bashing in your skull with a two-bass-and-drums hash-induced 4 song assault. PC, my ass. (Includes contributions from Allen Ginsberg, Jello Biafra, Assata Shakur, and Bob Dole. Really.)

Don't know much about this new Ektro release -- all the info we can find is in Finnish and of friend Jussi of Ektro/Circle has a cryptic way about him -- but we do know that it's a reissue of a '70s Finnish folk/prog LP by a band with the pleasant sounding name of Mummi Kutoo. They play a weird (and you may think wonderful) concoction of rustic folk, psychedelic rock, New Orleans jazz, honkytonk, and bluegrass...one track might be all flutes and Floyd, the next a brass band number! Quite diverse in mood and musical style. In parts, it's a bit like a countrifed Dungen, if you're familiar with that current-yet-retro Swedish band. And it's certainly the soft seventies mellow pop psych cuts, the dreamiest stuff on here, that we like the best. With 23 songs on here (14 from the band's self-titled album released on Love Records in 1975 plus another 9 bonus tracks from the era) there's plenty to enjoy.

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Punked-out garage stomp done by three fellas wrapped in bandages. Do you gotta be good when you've got a gimmick like that? Well, I guess they think so, that is if your idea of good is the same as theirs -- crazy raw manic distorto rawk with song titles like "Die!" and "Food, Sickles & Girls". Lo-fi, low-brow, and proud. They never cross that line into truly absurd avant-garde mayhem a la Guitar Wolf, they're just a little too vulgar and frat-house for that. But their brand of sickness is still gonna always sound good with a beer cracked. This disc collects 22 or so tracks taken from rare out-of-print 7" vinyl, dug up from the Mummies' Daly City, CA tomb for your pleasure.

MPEG stream: Your Love
MPEG stream: (Doin') The Kirk

Ahhh The Mummies, my (Sadie) garage rock heroes from right here in S.F.!!!! I remember seeing their fucked up mummy mobile, an old '60s ambulance with "The Mummies" painted across the side in scary writing, when I first moved here, parked in Bernal Heights, and I'd get so excited. They wore filthy rags as Mummy costumes, and just totally kicked ass. Simple, trashy, reverb-y garage rock. This is their first (and only) full length released only on vinyl in 1992, here on cd for the first time and with bonus tracks! It may be a cd but you can even hear the needle hit the record on the first track. So lo-fi and distorted but a total lean, mean sixties-garage dance party. Essential.

RealAudio clip: Your Ass
RealAudio clip: Stronger Than Dirt

We really like this album, but went through a few phases in appreciating it. First off, when we heard about it, we were like, cool! This first-time-on-cd reissue of an extremely obscure, self-released 1971 LP checks out pretty well, on paper: it was a one-off record of tragic love songs done in late '60s psych pop style written and recorded by a teenager from Cyprus recently relocated to New York City. Heck, Middle Eastern psych, we can't get enough! But when we actually heard it, at first it was a little hard to get past how odd it sounded -- it wasn't quite what we were expecting. Marc Mundy's voice and lyrics eventually charmed us, but it's easy to see why he never make it big on the pop charts in the USA, with his foreign accent and amateur (but decent) singing skills. Then there's his lyrics, written in English, which perhaps explains how awkward his turns of phrase can be -- though again, in the end we found ourselves marveling at his heartfelt, heartbreak poetry. Such lyrics as "baby I love your lips / when they're wet with wine and desire / I love your hair / when it is messed up in the wind / baby I love your arms / when your soft, warm flesh touches mine / I love your eyes / when the lovelight lies / not for me the cold, calm kiss of a virgin / not for me / the bless of a saint..." might at first seem like typical love song stuff, but not really... coupled with his so-sincere delivery, Marc's words will find their way closer to your soul than most pop music lyrics ever do. Maybe it's the atypical metaphors, situations and stories that crop up in his songs, some of which must be inspired by the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern folk songs he'd heard in his youth. For example, "How Can I Marry This Language" is about a father refusing to allow his daughter to marry the song's narrator, in language that he (the frustrated narrator/suitor) can't even understand. It's actually (intentionally, we think) humorous, which isn't the case with most of the sad, melancholic material on this album! Another track, "The Tragic House", is about an empty, abandoned house where the narrator's love used to live, before she vanished to who knows where, or why. Yup, super sad and melancholic. There's definitely lots of stuff on here if you ever need material for a breakup mix tape!! "Our Love Can Never Be", "Give Up Your Pride", "I'm Crying Your Name", "Don't Love Me Anymore", and others... Yet despite the sadness, these songs percolate along, Marc taking the melodic lead on vocals and guitar, accompanied by a now-anonymous band of musicians, sounding vaguely exotic while also of its time and place (the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk-rock scene, also home to The Devil's Anvil you'll recall). Ethereal female backing vocals also add to the lovely moodiness... This reissue is one of those wonderful finds you've got to thank some obsessed collector for, and comes complete with lyric sheet and new liner notes. And it's fully authorized by Marc, whom we're told gave up on music as a career soon after this album was originally released and now lives back on Cyprus, teaching school (and hopefully not still pining for lost loves!).

MPEG stream: How Can I Marry This Language
MPEG stream: Don't Love Me Anymore

We sure do love Slim Cessna's Auto Club. One of our favorite shit kicking, country punk creepy folk ensembles ever. Hailing from the lovely land of Colorado, which also of course gave us Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand and Boyd Rice, Slim and his crew are like some wandering band of wild testifyin' redneck gypsies. Slim's mainman and musical sidekick is one Jay Munly, who when not helping create the freaked out end of the world apocalyptic country rock of the Auto Club, spends some quality time on his own making his own music much more personal and somehow WAY weirder. The vibe is certainly similar, but Munly on his own is way more of a loose canon. Mixing fifties rock, with bouncy pop, indie rock jangle, mumbled country blues, his voice swooping from Buddy Holly croon to weird falsetto and back again. On this, the recently reissued debut from 1996, Munly seems to still be feeling his way around. Or alternately, and maybe much more likely, he just doesn't give a fuck and we just can't get it unless we climb into his head, which we probably won't do cuz it's scary in there. Shambolic and gloriously indifferent to any overreaching sonic theme, Blurry is a series of tweaked pop vignettes. The country twang that would define so much of Munly's later output is hardly present at all, instead this is some sort of damaged indie pop. Fans of Ariel Pink might really dig this, as it is sort of the same ultra personal cracked musical universe. Super lo-fi but surprisingly catchy. We like! Remastered. Limited to 100 copies.

MPEG stream: Virgin Of Manhattan
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We sure do love Slim Cessna's Auto Club. One of our favorite shit kicking, country punk creepy folk ensembles ever. Hailing from the lovely land of Colorado, which also of course gave us Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand and Boyd Rice, Slim and his crew are like some wandering band of wild testifyin' redneck gypsies. Slim's mainman and musical sidekick is one Jay Munly, who when not helping create the freaked out end of the world apocalyptic country rock of the Auto Club, spends some quality time on his own making his own music much more personal and somehow WAY weirder. The vibe is certainly similar, but Munly on his own is way more of a loose canon. Mixing fifties rock, with bouncy pop, indie rock jangle, mumbled country blues, his voice swooping from Buddy Holly croon to weird falsetto and back again. De Dar He is record number two, originally released in 1997 and what a difference a year makes. The twang is now in full effect. You can hear the sound that would later blossom into Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots as well as Slim Cessna. It's still lo-fi and a little bit scattershot, but the framework is now much more distinctly country. Accordions, harmonicas, steel string twang, the whole deal, but Munly's tweaked pop sensibilities are still plenty present giving these tracks the sort of twisted humor that made us dig him in the first place. While the debut was much more of a random damaged pop gem, this is definitely more of a cool country hoedown, wild and wooly, foot stomping, fiddle sawin', definitely the first step on Munly's path to his future as a swoonsome dark and twisted country folk troubadour. Awesome. Remastered. Limited to 100 copies.

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MPEG stream: My Erziehung
MPEG stream: Shoot Her With A Good Hand Gun

Munly, better known as Jay to his family and friends, is a member in good standing of Slim Cessna's Auto Club, one of our favorite sort of punk, sort of country, sort of creepy folk outfits, who hail from the fine state of Colorado. But as they say, there's something rotten in Colorado. Well, maybe they don't say that now, but they soon will. A beautiful state full of forests and snow and wildlife and mountains, has somehow become the home to the droning confrontational misanthropy of Boyd Rice, the swampy downer folk of Sixteen Horsepower, the crushing, biblical damnation of the Woven Hand, the snake oil selling country punk revival of Slim Cessna and now Munly, a bastard musical mutt incorporating bits and pieces of all the above mentioned misanthropes and miscreants. And we couldn't be more pleased. Munly definitely sounds like a head on collision between Slim Cessna and the Woven Hand. Dark and swoonsome, seasickly swampy dirges, with shuffling graveyard percussion, strummed acoustic guitars, minor key strings, fiery fiddles and banjoes. But unlike the rollicking punkiness of Cessna's Autoclub, Munly is a much darker proposition. Lurching like a strangely hideous beast, only ever glimpsed at dusk and only out of the corner of your eye, and always sending shivers down your spine. And while occasionally, the tempo does pick up, it's only the tempo that does, the mood remains one of hopelessness, bitterness and broken heartedness. And while Munly mostly sings in an ominous tenor, hovering somewhere between 16HP's David Eugene Edwards and Nick Cave, often the vocals go completely nuts: yodelling, falsetto trills, soulful female background vocals and even throat singing. And unlike the Woven Hand's stonefaced fire and brimstone proclamations from the pulpit, Munly is most definitely having fun, still warning you about the coming rapture, but at the same time planning to live it up right until the end. He also seems to be taking the piss once in a while. Which is actually pretty satisfying. Singing along, this could almost be the Woven Hand's more rambunctious less headed-for-doom little brother, but on closer inspection, the lyrics are pretty amazingly funny and absurd, tales of vampires, enemas (in the same song!) and various other seemingly unlikely topics. Enough to even make us laugh out loud a couple times. And all of these bizarre elements coalesce perfectly into perfect songs: beautiful and moving, funny and almost rocking, groovy and hypnotic, emotional and dark dark dark, but at the same time super dramatic (almost ridiculously so), campy and flat out WEIRD. Comes with a bonus disc: a surround sound DVD audio version of the whole record!

MPEG stream: Another Song About Jesus, A wedding Sheet And A Bowie Knife
MPEG stream: Cassius Castrato The She-Male Of The Mens Prison

MPEG stream: Funeral Blues
MPEG stream: All Men Are Divine
MPEG stream: Pretty Saro

MPEG stream: My Darling Sambo
MPEG stream: Circle Round My Bedside

All right, now you can stop worrying -- we didn't forget about it, here's number 9 in the Jewelled Antler Library series of 3" cdrs. It's a disc from SF's Muons, not a Jewelled Antler band per se, but in those guys' orbit. There's five songs here, just under twenty minutes of fragile, psychedelic folk recorded live, where they really shine. Inspired by traditional British folk music, but made soooo minimal and spacey that they've been called the "Bernhard Gunter of space-folk", the Muons make forlorn lullabys for adults. For this performance, the Muons were just the duo of Greg Bianchini and Rickey Reneau. Greg, who has played with Jewelled Antler acts Franciscan Hobbies, Thuja and Blithe Sons, is an gifted instrument maker, and on this recording plays a home-built 14-string electric lute as well as sings. Rickey plays an electric dulcimer, probably also built by Greg. Greg's languid strumming and melancholic vocals seem to drift out of the smoke and mist of another era, and could be from a lost UK psych-folk comp, although this is so slow and sad and desolate that no hippy could have made it -- they'd be too bummed out. We're also reminded of some Galaxie 500, or old NZ stuff like the Chills. Certainly this is a bit different than much else in the Library series -- it's got to be the most 'composed' set of songs found on any of these 3" discs. But we think JA fans will like it, a lot. It has a 'flowers in the rain' vibe that's just lovely. And the loveliness extends to the paintings Greg did for the 3" cover. Very nice.

MPEG stream: Green Man

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

SORRY. Local group notable for their inspired use of electric dulcimer and lute alongside the drums, guitar and tambourine. The Muons have been making music for years already, and it's nice to finally have a record to listen to. The tone is of warmth and yearning with an underlayer of sweetly droning psych guitar, chiming tambourine, and delicately murmured vocals. Fans of Belle and Sebastian and depressed folk troubadours of earlier eras such as The Incredible String Band will enjoy this.

RealAudio clip: The Green Man
RealAudio clip: Fishes

Last record from these Seattle garage goths. This e.p. was released right before they broke up a few weeks ago. Too bad too cause 'Thelema' is probably the best thing they've done. Dark and damaged garage punk filtered through Siouxsie and the Misfits. In fact, it sounds exactly like the Misfits at moments, mostly because of the singer's Danzig like howl. Tight black jeans, lots of

A lot of our favorite krautrock, like this, is really nothing more than what you might call super duper "heavy progressive" rock that happens to be from Germany. Not really eccentric or electronic or "kosmiche" like some of the more famous, innovative krautrock acts, but still darn good if you're into psych, prog and proto-metal and just want to hear some kickass longhaired jams -- often with flute! Though, sadly, there's no flute in this particular case. Berlin's Murphy Blend (named after a pipe tobacco, and featuring future members of similar acts Blackwater Park and Hanuman) made just one album, back in that magical year of 1971. Now reissued on cd, their album is a solid one, rocking bombastically. There's plenty of powerful guitar riffing, and even more in the way of Hammond organ jamming from their classically trained keyboardist, capably pumping out both rock n' roll grooves and neo-classical flourishes (as on "Praludium/Use Your Feet", before the track gets into breakbeat mining territory). Meanwhile, the sometimes goofy lyrics are delivered in heavily accented English, but the album's strength isn't the vocal melodies, but in the compelling, propulsive instrumental passages. Definitely a "heavy progressive" gem. Oh, and it's kinda cool that, despite all the prog excesses earlier, the final track ("Happiness") is less than three seconds long!

MPEG stream: At First
MPEG stream: First Loss

Rian Murphy (Drag City) and Will Oldham (Palace, Bonnie Prince Billy) team up with all their friends (Jim O'Rourke, Bill 'Smog' Callahan, Laetitia 'Stereolab' Sadier, Archer 'Sea & Cake-Coctails' Prewitt, Edith Frost and David Grubbs) and play music. A project supposedly over 3 years in the making, it's a little spotty. Recommended only if you *really* need everything that has anything to do with Will Oldham.

Long out of print cassette from 2006, available again, but now on vinyl, by Heather Leigh Murray, who is probably better known as the woman behind Scorces, and as one of the folks who runs the great Volcanic Tongue mailorder. On Jailhouse Rock, Murray offers up two gorgeous sidelong slowburns, all processed slide guitar and murky disembodied vox, washed out and smeared, blurred beyond recognition into slow motion avalanches of sound, swirling streaks of feedback, heaving swells of crumbling rumble and muted buzz, a gorgeously sprawling ebb and flow, slipping from murky muddy meander, to coruscating psychedelic meltdown, on the B-side the vocals are almost recognizable, a warped woozy moan, all tangled up with the strangely lysergic sounding distorted guitar melt, the whole of the second side sounding like someone has their finger held down on the record as it spins, a Japanese psych guitar style freakout chopped and screwed, the various bits of guitar and voice, constantly mutating and shifting, heaving and roiling, but always under a patina of shimmery drugged out buzz, a totally mesmerizing ur-drone jam, that manages to be dense and dark, but also mesmerizing and meditative. Free guitar soft noise oozes into floorcore dreamdrone expanding into blown out in-the-red spacedrift warp and warble, all dizzyingly psychedelic. So goddamn good. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!

Fog Hag is a brilliant slab of psychedelic pop music from Bronze frontman Rob Spector. Anyone who has seen Bronze's live performances over the last few years knows that they are one of the most hypnotic and engaging live acts in the Bay Area. They combine mastery of minimal instrumentation and dance beats with a little bit of costuming and a sense of humor. Their debut full length comes out this August on RVNG. Except for maybe the costumes, these elements are all present on Muscle Drum's Fog Hag, which sometimes sounds like the Beach Boys via Thee Oh Sees and sometimes uncannily conjures Crispin Glover via Barnes and Barnes. The album opens with a few tracks that feature tons of jangly guitar and muted synths riding around minimal or no percussion, vocal harmonies and reverb washes weaving the songs together deftly. Spector's vocal delivery is consistent in its open earnestness, and is never pretentious or showy. Halfway through the first side, just as "St. Christopher" shows off the record's synthier elements and "Sashay" introduces a drum machine, you might notice that there's something a bit weird about these songs, something OFF. Once you get to "Public Transportation", your suspicions are confirmed: never has the failed quest for a burrito been so hilariously combined with the phrase "tight-wads". This is not a "novelty" record or a "comedy" record, and never tries to be funny. That's why it succeeds. The B side contains more well-crafted psychedelic jangle-pop, a track that starts off sounding almost like death metal, and lots of gratuitous echoplex usage. The songs are sequenced well, however, so that the weirder ones flow out of and into the rest of the record without the overall mood being sacrificed or sounding unbalanced. Much like Type records has been doing lately, this first LP on the San Francisco based Break Up label comes with a CD of a completely different record ("The Early Drum Gets the Snare" also by Muscle Drum, though Fog Hag is the stronger of the two). Limited to 500 copies, do not miss out on this record. Be sure to play it at 45 and not 33 1/3 or you might have a completely different experience!

MPEG stream: Compromise
MPEG stream: Sashay
MPEG stream: Half Eye

More music coming to us from China, a bunch of new records and bands on this week's list. One of our favorites being the oddly monikered Muscle Snog, who masterfully mix avant experimentalism with classic jangle pop, shoegaze noisiness with angular post punk crunch. After a trippy ambient opener, the band launch into what at first sounds like some straight up noise pop, all thick fuzzy bass, chiming guitars, laid back vox, but then BAM, the song explodes into some fierce noise rock crunch, a la Sonic Youth, grinding freaked out psychedelic heaviness, swirling guitar weirdness over wild pounding drumming, and then they slip right back into it. And this is where we usually say something like "and the rest of the record plays out similarly", but this time it really doesn't, the band flitting from tripped out sound to tripped out sound. "Fuzz Rabbit" sounds like OOIOO via AmRep, with a bit of Lightning Bolt in the mix, melding playful twee pop, with buzzing, grinding heaviness, while "Happy Dreamer On A Sad Bad" sounds like a trippier Blonde Redhead, all spacey and prettily post rocky, and "Call It A Pop Song" is actually a killer pop song, sounding like the Swirlies mixed with Smashing Pumpkins, albeit a bit noisier. A few tracks get a little Melt-Banana-y, others get sort of Boredoms-ish, shades of another Chinese favorite White+ arise here and there, but really, Muscle Snog are fucking nuts, and not in sonically scatterbrained way, there's definitely a method to their madness, and it IS mad. The record is peppered with short experimental interludes, that somehow work perfectly with the proper songs, and that's probably cuz the songs are full of weird experimental bits. And as much as Beatles covers are played out, MS's version of "A Day In The Life" transforms the original into a noise drenched buzz-sludge creep, and it totally works. Fans of all the other Chinese stuff we've listed (White+, Carsick Cars, Dear Eloise, Boyz & Girl, etc.), this is fast becoming our new fave, and it's probably the weirdest of the bunch!

MPEG stream: Fuzz Rabbit
MPEG stream: Happy Dreamer On A Sad Bad
MPEG stream: Call It A Pop Song
MPEG stream: A Day In The Life

Muse are probably best know for sounding EXACTLY like Radiohead, which is most definitely a shame, cuz they really are awesome. Unfortunately, the fact is they really DO sound exactly like Radiohead. What can you do though? The vocalist has a voice like Thom Yorke's and they have a thing for epic indieprog bombast, you do the math. BUT, and this is a very big but, where Radiohead have veered into mopey introspective misunderstood inward looking stadium rock, tortured geniuses who are exhausted by fame and who now find making music as painful as having teeth pulled or birthing a baby, Muse just fucking love to rock. The have big guitars, HUGE choruses, incredible harmonies and they write killer songs. Imagine the most rocking Radiohead tunes of old, maybe off of OK Computer or Pablo Honey, but even more supercharged and rocked up, then give the vocals a serious Queen-ing, and mix in a little new wave electronica, and you'll end up with something almost as badass as Muse. This new record finds them incorporating all sorts of various elements, Depeche Mode-ish new wave, Silver Sun / Supergrass style power pop, some proggy metal (check out the track "Assassin", WOAH!) all seamlessly blended into their kick ass, head banging, fist in the air superrock. They do have their sensitive side, they can craft some seriously moody mellowness (and in the process manage to sound even MORE like Queen) but their hearts are solid ROCK. Not sure why there guys aren't huge here, they sure are in the UK. Might be the Radiohead thing, could be the fact that they actually are pretty weird, maybe too weird for a lot of folks, like Radiohead's geeky new wave little brother, the one with spikey hair and a punk rock band. Either way, don't let any of that discourage you. If you're in the mood for some epic rocking electronic tinged super dramatic stadium rock majesty, check this out! While supplies last, there's a bonus DVD, featuring their whole set at Glastonbury, playing in front off what looks like 100,000 freaking out fans! As well as a bunch of extra live and backstage footage including some pretty funny getting to the stage Spinal Tap silliness.

MPEG stream: Take A Bow
MPEG stream: Starlight
MPEG stream: Supermassive Black Hole

We're still not sure if/when there will be a domestic release of this new Muse opus, so in the meantime, here's the pricey import version. Muse? That's the British band that anyone who wishes Radiohead had made "OK Computer Parts II & III" instead of "Kid A"

RealAudio clip: New Born
RealAudio clip: Space Delerium

A beloved mailorder customer from far far away brought this one to our attention. It's a record we never paid much attention to, what with being on Maverick and having a godawful cover. But shit man, it's pretty cool. The best way to describe it is as lost Radiohead record (and the music is dead on Radiohead) with Jeff Buckley singing. Or some twisted mix of Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, and Freddie Mercury. It's like 'Paranoid Android' stretched into an entire record. Definitely a guilty pleasure, but Jim and Andee find themselves throwing this one on almost every day. Perfect if you need something to tide you over until the next Radiohead record. (see also Justin Clayton)

Kick ass Italian '70s prog band's only album, from 1973, reissued on cd in '97 and now here in our store. It's hard to talk about these guys without comparing 'em to other, equally obscure Italian prog acts like the New Trolls and Il Rovescio Della Medaglia,

RealAudio clip: Dell'Eterno Ritorno

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY. Uptempo stoner rawk from yet another group of Swedes caught up in the post-Kyuss band frenzy. Good though. Vocalist Spice was drafted in from his main band Spiritual Beggars, and as a result this doesn't sound too different from that band, just lacking the Hammond organ and some of the more overt metallic guitar hero elements. Quality.