[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 11951 through 12000 of 19388.

This one is a total mystery. Not sure where they're from (New Zealand we guess) or what their story is, other than the fact that it was released on Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, and that it is one seriously blown out punked up slab of garage-y scuzz and roll. Heavy and noisy, spastic and sludgy, when this was playing in the front of the store, Allan went up to see what black metal record was playing if that tells you anything. Filthy and crumbling ultra distorted guitars, boy girl vocals WAY down in the mix, riffs that go from paint peeling shred to gut churning rumble. Some ungodly hybrid of vintage Dead C, the Butthole Surfers, The Germs, Flipper, recent AQ faves the Violent Students, and recent Siltbreeze noisemakers Times New Viking. This is definitely punk as fuck, but wrapped in layer after layer of guitar grit and broken amp splatter, classic punk rock swallowed whole, chewed up and spit out in huge sludgy gobs of grrrrr and rrrroooaaar. Epic sludgescapes of pound and churn, showered with wild lightning bolts of squealing feedback. There seem to be pop songs in there somewhere, but don't even try to dig that deep, you'll just end up bruised and bloodied, or you'll lose a hand or an arm. Best to just lay back, close your eyes real tight, clamp your hands tight over your ears, let these noise rockers just back their ten ton punksludge steamroller right over you and pray you survive.

MPEG stream: We've Got TV
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Creeper Lagoon fans can take some comfort that after a brief break, former singer guitarist Ian Sefchick of their fave band has gone on to make more poppy goodness in On The Speakers. Following a similar path to that of his former band in more ways than one, Sefchick's new combo released this EP on the lil' indie label 17 Reasons last year only to have it re-released shortly thereafter on major label Universal. Not surprisingly, On The Speakers sound bears more than a striking resemblance to the Creeper Lagoon template of catchy clever guitar indie rock. Each of these six songs come complete with soaring choruses, boyish vocals, winking lyrics and swelling teen movie soundtrack fuzzy distorted guitars.

MPEG stream: Could I Be Right

Oakland's Once And Future Band, featuring among their ranks guitarist Eli Eckert (ex-Drunkhorse) and keyboardist/vocalist Joel Robinow (ex-Howlin' Rain), have become minor sensations in the local scene, with friends of ours like Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach), singing their praises. And having heard this record, and also having seen 'em live, we can see why - musically, they're REALLY GOOD, and they have to be, 'cause their chosen style - super '70s soundin' laid back groovy pop prog jazz fusion (!!!) is all about chops, after all. And they have 'em. Chops, chops, chops - more chops than a kung-fu flick. But, also due to their chosen style, we can see how one -could- have a differing opinion about 'em. Depends on your taste/tolerance for certain aspects of '70s kitsch. What we mean, is, ok, virtuosic '70s keyboard prog, yeah, we like, a lot actually, maybe more than we should (ELP! ELP!). So go whole hog on that, ok. Er, but then, the more yacht-y, Steely Dan-ish side of Once And Future Band, well, is it ironic? Is it NOT ironic? We suppose it doesn't matter, if you like Steely Dan, which you certainly can. Still, it's funny how these guys are SO perfect at every detail of what they're doing that it comes off a bit like historical reenactment. That's not a criticism - in fact, it might be a compliment. A matter of perspective. We never complain about bands that sound like Goblin, after all, and parts here do. A band like these guys, who also have parts that sound like Caravan, and parts that sound like Return To Forever, is perhaps just braver and bolder (and better?) than most. Anyway, Brain, their 24 minute mini-album debut, is what they call "a four-song suite of soaring psychic jazz and Rundgrensque pop" and well that does describe it pretty well, leaving aside the question of just what is 'psychic jazz'. Something to do with their collective chops perhaps. But Brain is about more than chops, melody is big too. The songs and the singing strongly support the pop side, and all in all, it's pretty dang impressive - and quite enjoyable, if you like listening to music now that, when very similar music was made in the '70s, was more or less the reason punk rock happened (in reaction to it). Let the pendulum swing back!! 140 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve, download included.

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MPEG stream: Heavenly Bodies

The Once And Future Herds brings together two overlapping Jewelled Antler duos: The Blithe Sons (Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse) and the Skygreen Leopards (Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn). The material on this five song, 18-minute lil' 3" cd-r released by our friends PseudoArcana in New Zealand finds Glenn, Loren and Donovan relaxing back at the ranch (literally, this was recorded on a hillside out at Borges Ranch State Park) after a hard day of wrangling field recordings. As Jewelled Antler efforts go, this leans in a country-folk direction, more strummy and structured than is sometimes the case, with guit-fiddle to the fore and vocals that, at times, remind us of a muffled, mumbled Devendra Banhart. But all the weird, textural nature ambience you'd expect is also fully in the mix. It's really really nice and all you Jewelled Antler fanatics need to jump on it now, as we only have a dozen in stock of this limited release.

MPEG stream: Ranch Raga

Onde hail from the Belgian underground, and members of Onde had all been part of the psychedelic collage ensemble Noise-Maker's Fifes, a project that had more than a few parallels to HNAS. The first Onde record was something of a continuation of the gloomy atmospherics built from semi-improvised gestures; but Purple is an entirely different beast, that seems to lock itself onto the motorik rhythm and atonal squalor that Tony Conrad & Faust generated on their seminal Outside The Dream Syndicate. Even if they are not intentionally paying homage to that album, they do a damn good job of replicating that single-minded, art-rock minimalism with sustained violin harmonics shot through with an insistent heartbeat kick-drum rhythm and double-timed guitar arpeggiation that phases out of its monotone with throat-singing harmonics. Onde's harmonics seem to have more of an expressionist urgency than the cantankerous pursuit of a pure minimalism that Conrad demands on Outside The Dream Syndicate; but this is nevertheless fantastic. While the album was cut to be played at 45rpm, we are probably not alone in dropping the needle onto this record at 33rpm. This surely must have been by Onde's design, as at 33rpm the record now takes on a Neu! 2 feel with a slow-motion crawl of those hypnotic rhythms and detuned heaviness now oozing forth from the thick stringed drones, sounding all the more monstrous. Yeah, it's like getting two records for the price of one. Fuck, yeah!

Although this cd is credited to the individual talents of three artists -- Colophon aka Jefre Cantu of Tarentel, the guitar and synthesizer duo 1 Mile North and The Wind-Up Bird aka multi-instrumentalist Joe Grimm -- you really can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Indeed, Conduction. Convection. Radiation. as a whole is a cohesive, near-seamless work. Very spacious, drifting and atmospheric, the first three tracks are by 1 Mile North, and the following three are by Colophon. Gauzy drones cloud the skies with occasional austere guitar melodies coming in and out of focus. The latter four tracks are by The Wind-Up Bird and they're crafted from delicate elements such as violin strings that softly wheeze, and piano keys that sound as if they're being struck as if by random raindrops. Beautiful and haunting.

MPEG stream: Texas Heat
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Nico meets Jandek in these beautifully introspective proto-goth dirges by an anonymous woman from Czechoslovakia who moved to Canada and self-released these songs on a series of singles in the late seventies and early eighties. Music was her outlet to deal with the depression and alienation she felt living away from her home country, and these songs are almost laughably dour, though also quite lovably naive. Mostly performed with delicate Eastern-European tinged organ drones, she later recorded under the name, The Triffids (no connection to The Australian group), with an instrumental track that includes percussion and synth. Early demos are also included here, and display a slightly brighter air with acoustic guitar and reverbed vocals that will appeal to fans of Liz Harris (aka Grouper). Perhaps not a record for everyone, but those with unusual and eccentric tastes towards obscure but sincere outsiders will find a lot to love here! Comes with insert with lyric translations. Limited edition of 500.

MPEG stream: Life Is So Hard
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Does this One Umbrella possess special powers a la Mary Poppins? Not quite sure, but we can say that they are a duo from Austin, TX whose members have suitably unconventional, enchanting names Quebron and Novella, and whose soundscapes just might set you adrift. Their 23 minute long debut floats in from the outer space wing of the new SF label Tell-All Records. Layers of drones ebb and flow, while gentle and not so gentle digital glitches, pulses and hisses provide the more insistent elements along with an occasional unexpected pretty piano melodic line. Sooo dreamy.

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Yes. God created a new Oneida ep and it is GOOOOOD. Unearthly constructions of aural impairment deliver us once again unto the artfully murky and damaged realm of Ooooonnnneeeeiiiiiiiiiddddddaaaaaaaaaaaa. This ep psychedelically drones its way through guitar drawn melodies and distant, fuzzy, darkly dreamy vocals. "Hakuna Matata"'s 15 minutes is an entrancing ROCK monolith that forcably delivers the nearly signature-Oneida prog-psych-rock kick in the head we've grown to love. This is a must-have for all fans of this band of Oberliners and hopefully a teaser for the next full-length. Might even be the release to sway the many Oneida-doubters on the AQ staff...

MPEG stream: Summerland
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Ok, we admit that we have never been the biggest fans of this group, having only reviewed one previous full length and an ep out of the almost dozen or so they have released over the past ten years. And even when we gave praise to the releases we reviewed, not everyone here was so convinced. Their was always something a little too precious, mannered and often inconsistent about their past recordings that left many of us unsatisfied. Overrated, we thought. So we are all quite wonderfully surprised that their latest has become a unanimous store favorite. Big time! A far cry from the lush lavender orchestrations of The Wedding, the last Oneida record we dug, Preteen Weaponry is the first part of a planned trilogy that showcases the bands new beefed up sound. One full of thick rumbling krauty trance pulse, acidy sheets of distortion, and big dynamic cavey pummel. Thanks to the addition of Phil Manley (Trans Am, The Fucking Champs), the band's sound has more "in the red" heft and focus, earning heaps of praise for their recent stint of mindblowing live shows. Comprised of three long parts, Preteen Weaponry is less vocal-driven than previous outings. In fact, there's barely any vocals on here at all or melodic song structures even. Instead we're introduced to the album by a loud buzzing wall of subtlety shifting noise before the drums make the song propel forward in a lurching rhythm while bass keyboards and guitar start begin layering interweaving progressions reminding us of This Heat, Cave or a more fucked up Mogwai. The rhythms become more tribal and Boredoms-like for the second piece with layered and swelling sheets of feedback that build intensely into the albums only vocal passage before unwinding into the final part. Beginning with an almost cosmic peacefulness before hurtling full throttle into the sonic stratasphere, exploding and unfurling synth stabs and loud ear-shattering drones leave us aurally exhausted by the end. Definitely the heaviest and trippiest album we've ever heard from this group, and one that makes us extremely excited for the next two rounds. If you dig any of the bands mentioned above than you need to have this record. We're doubters no more!

MPEG stream: Preteen Weaponry Part 1
MPEG stream: Preteen Weaponry Part 2

Here it finally is. Oneida's loooooong promised TRIPLE album, itself part two in a trilogy of releases that appear to chronicle the long and epic history of Oneida itself. We're still trying to piece together a narrative, but judging by song titles like "Story Of O" and "O", not to mention the album title, the fact that the previous record was called Preteen Weaponry, and artwork that seems to imply the chronicling of said long and epic history, we're just going with our gut on this one. Either way, with a decade plus of mostly ups, Oneida have delivered what is arguably their best record yet, or at least since 2001's psychedelic mind fuck Anthem Of The Moon, and it's really one of the most challenging, out there, and overwhelmingly rad albums of the year. The greatest thing about this band is how they use psychedelia as a blueprint, reinterpreting it in the process, and twisting their tunes into something beyond simple classification. There's heaps of krauty goodness, ominous electro groove, strange dubbed out hellscapes, and bluesy psychedelic squall, but in the end Oneida sound unlike anyone else, not even themselves on their other records (though we won't neglect to mention that anyone digging the recent works of groups like Circle and Cave will find plenty to go crazy for with this one). One of the most noteworthy things about Rated O is the truly astounding precision playing that keeps everything in place. Everyone in the band (now augmented by Shahin Motia of Ex-Models and long time collaborator Barry London) is an ace performer, but GODDAMN is drummer Kid Millions' sense of pure rhythm mind boggling. The patterns Kid creates are essential to holding it all together, and his cyclical drumbeats are definitely the kind of next level shit that we should all aspire to. Coupled with literally some of the best fuzzed out organ tones ever committed to tape (EVER) and plenty of amazing psych guitar work, Rated O rocks and sways in all kinds of different directions, and it goes without saying that over the course of almost two hours, Oneida have given themselves plenty of time to seer their super repetitive jams deep into every nook and cranny of your brain. Throughout it all, they never cease to surprise, amaze, and with one song in particular, completely terrify (more on that in a bit). Rated O plays out like a long journey, with each disc representing specific elements of the diverse sound Oneida has forged over the years. The album begins with the uncharacteristic yet somehow totally appropriate "Brownout In Lagos," an electro-dub sort of number with a constant sub bass presence providing much of the movement as atmospheric noises swoosh about. When the awesome guest vocalist comes in you have to remind yourself that you are listening to Oneida as your eardrums are pounded into supplication. "What's Up Jackal?" sounds more like what you might expect from these guys, with feral, distorted howls and a bubbling, percussive organ accompanied by all kinds of synthy ambience and what sounds like an electric sitar. While they have no difficulty pounding out expansive drugged out numbers, this song perfectly displays Oneida's unique talent at creating tense, claustrophobic psych pieces that seem much more focused than anything that could be produced with mindless jamming. No doubt, the big surprise here is "The Human Factor," which pretty much succeeds at redefining "heavy". We almost couldn't believe what or who we were listening to, since this number is more what you might expect from Khanate of Fleshpress. The song begins with an impossibly slow, yet super tight drum pattern, which remains throughout the 13 minute song. The only other sound is provided by an electronic hum, and eventually creepy siren noises and the most HELLISH, completely out of control screaming we have heard in ages. We're still trying to figure out just how Oneida managed to create such an unsettling and awesome piece with so little, making most doom bands sound like Dan Fogelberg in comparison. This song obviously tested the limits of many folks, but if you are able to sit back and focus, you will find yourself marveling at the almost comedic yet totally fucked up intensity of it all. Disc 2 is the most typically Oneida-sounding of the three, starting with the epic jam "The River." This song is very much in the vein of the material from "Each One Teach One," with awesome repetitive organ pulses and fuzzy guitars that are both heavy and beautiful. Things really take off with this song, as the majestic sustained guitar chords and somewhat mournful vocals add a good amount of emotion. "I Will Haunt You" follows into similar psychedelic territory with big MC5 guitars and a generally mountainous sound. The final disc is the loosest and seemingly most improvised of the album, its three songs venturing farthest into the drug zone with their lumbering improvisational feel. Closing number "Folk Wisdom" is a huge 20 minute piece, perfectly sounding like the culmination of the entire record with its epic, growing intensity before ending with a queasy organ blip. If you've gone about things the right way, you will have listened to all of Rated O straight through, and you will wonder just what the hell hit you. Double albums are often enough to scare the shit out of any discerning music fan, and triple albums are generally unheard of. But Oneida cannot be generalized in terms of what is going on now or in the past. They are one of the few bands that truly has found its own unique voice and has taken things into realms most bands would never consider. Rated O is a serious piece of work, maybe a little too intimidating for the casual listener, but enough to keep Oneida's rabid fanbase jonesing for part three of the trilogy.

MPEG stream: Brownout In Lagos
MPEG stream: The Human Factor
MPEG stream: The River
MPEG stream: Ghost In The Room
MPEG stream: Folk Wisdom

First things first, it was just brought to our attention that those Oneida guys actually BUILT A GIANT MUSICBOX (apparently the largest in Eastern U.S.) out of plywood, saw blades, marine pilings and motor parts. Then they put it to good use forming the foundation of this album. Okay, hang on a sec, can we just say, HOLY SHIT!! Before we were aware of this considerable undertaking, we'd already written the following review. While we have added a few points, we still stand by our initial glowing praise: A very different Oneida greets us on their latest album The Wedding. More somber and delicate, less propulsive, abrasive and multipersonality-ed, but fortunately still unmistakably Oneida. The compositions and the album as a whole appear to be their most cohesive and even-keeled (in style, mood and tempo) to date. It's a refreshing change from past albums which been very rollercoaster-y with some of the band's strongest and weakest moments right next to each other -- perhaps due to their jam tendencies to fearlessly and freely follow their muse. Having said that, by no means does this shift indicate that Oneida has become any less adventurous, dynamic or challenging in their music-making. Hell, the fact that they dreamed up *and* constructed a GIANT MUSICBOX is proof of this alone (although to be honest, a few of us couldn't actually hear the music box, mixed as it is amidst the usual rock instrumentation, and due to the fact that the giant music box apparently ends up sounding a bit like the synths it's nestled up against). These guys are fucking astounding musicians with a wealth of creativity and chops that show no signs of drying up anytime soon. The analog synthesizers with which they've created some dense, fierce and otherworldly atmospheres in the past have been joined by not only the musicbox but also an impressive string ensemble (arranged and assembled by New York's Fireworks Ensemble's Brian Coughlin) which certainly makes for some of the band's most stunningly beautiful and introspective songs ever. Also contributing to this new persona is the consistency of the vocals which occasionally swoop up to falsetto, but generally linger in the gentle range of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour or Radar Brothers' Jim Putnam. Definitely more psych-folk than psych-rock. Quite a stunning achievement. Highly recommended.

MPEG stream: Heavenly Choir
MPEG stream: August Morning Haze

This vinyl-only split 12" from Oneida and Plastic Crimewave Sound is pretty darn rulin'. Recorded during their Thank Your Parents session, Oneida's "Psychedelic Maze" is an eerie and homespun late-night jam which sparsely used ukuleles, hexoleles, a lute and homemade drums to conjure a sorta hokey but amazing self-conscious folk sound that's almost more Sun City Girls-ish than Oneida-y. PCS's side is a fuzz-soaked drone-rock opus. "End of Cloud" utilizes some production tricks, motorik drumming and various waves and blasts that creates a pulsing frenzy to which a very stoned person could "meditate".

A while back we reviewed Hypnos, the most recent release from composer/guitarist Mario Diaz DeLeon, which at the time we described as sounding like the soundtrack to some strange apocalyptic planetarium show, fusing tranced out minimal kosmische drift and processed guitar textures to churning SUNNO))) like doomdrone, all blurred into a constantly shifting landscape of seriously heavy modern minimalism, that bordered on the maximal. So here we have DeLeon's most recent release, now under the name Oneirogen, the name of a track from Hypnos, and it should this come as no surprise that Oneirogen is not all that far removed from Hypnos, if anything the sound here are more song-like, and overall more metallic. Just check out the first track, which begins as a swirl of processed guitars, before suddenly a massive downtuned riff rolls in, thick, sludgey and doomy, and soon those two disparate elements seem to coalesce, and a second guitar swoops in the lay down soaring dramatic guitar melodies over the top. Almost leads in fact, giving the whole thing a seriously epic power metal vibe. It's not hard to imagine this as the intro track to some unreleased Lost Horizon or Blind Guardian record. Which if you couldn't tell, means we're digging this like crazy. We were all prepared to say that the rest of the record wasn't so overtly metal, but then track two "Pathogen" starts up with shimmering synths, pulsing cosmically, and then BAM, in comes the guitar, a roiling low end rumble, and a soaring distorted melody, another track that sounds like some strange hybrid of epic power metal and blissed out komische new age. And this time we won't bother, the rest of the record IS more of the same, and it's awesome, and epic, sure the guitars don't always come crashing in. Occasionally the sound stays locked in a shimmery synth swirl, or a gristly drone, but more often than not, those two sounds collide in a glorious supernova of sound. The 14+ minute centerpiece "Katabasis" is the ultimate example, with long stretches of wild squealing drones, and tranced out minimal buzz, but then total epic power metal riffage, some cool wavery high end sine tone shimmer, and some grinding epic upper register sort-of-shred, not to mention some creepy, twang flecked synth soaked ambience, and one stretch that sounds almost chorale. We were wondering when the worlds of kosmische new age, modern minimal composition and epic power metal would collide. And now that they have, it sounds so much better than we ever could have imagined.

MPEG stream: Numina
MPEG stream: Pathogen
MPEG stream: Mutilation
MPEG stream: Katabasis

You may remember Onelinedrawing from the split he did with Rival Schools a while back, and boy did we love that record. But this is the first we've heard of OLD on his own. And the sound is much less rocking. Much more sensitive and lo-fi, recorded mostly at home directly to his lap top and featuring mostly voice and guitar with the occasional 'full band' effort. Weary and emotive male vocals that brought to mind Soul Asylum, Goo Goo Dolls and Wilco. Jangling indie-pop rock with dreamy acoustic-y Sentridoh-ish ballads and shining, driving songs like the college radio ready "Smile". Pretty cool.

RealAudio clip: Um...
RealAudio clip: Smile

On this 7", the title track from the most recent Oneohtrix Point Never full length gets two radically different reworkings, one from Antony (of & The Johnsons), the other by Christian Fennesz. The original "Returnal" was a dizzying slab of robotic future funk, all pulsing synths, processed machinelike vox, a tripped out hybrid of Gary Numan, Kraftwerk and M83, all fuzzy, and swirly and psychedelic and spaced out, but these two reimaginings couldn't be further from the original. First up, Antony strips away all the synths, and reinterprets it as a torch song, played entirely on an acoustic piano (by Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix, himself), the sound lush and elegiac, Antony's vocals moving and emotional, intense and so dramatic, the new version a haunting dark ballad, that even to fans of the Oneohtrix original, will most likely sound like a completely different beast. Fennesz takes the Antony version from the A-side, and pulls it apart, blurs and softens the sounds into softly spinning clouds, taking various tones and stretching them way out, letting the piano drift in and out, the vocals slipping from gently reverbed to layered heavily effected, looped and repeated mantra like, occasionally disappearing into a squall of dubbed out effects, other times suspended in a field of pixilated piano and thick streaks of chordal clusters, eventually building to a warm lush psychedelic climax, before settling back to earth, fading out completely, leaving just shadowy traces and slowly decaying sonic contrails... Probably quite limited, as these things most often are, features some sleek minimal Mego style cover art/design by none other than Stephen O'Malley.

Copies from copies of copies upon copies to copies through copies on copies of more copies. Daniel Lopatin was but a babe in the early '80s - the global time frame which stands central to his Oneohtrix Point Never project, where Russian TV advertisements, faded slow-jam hits, and forgotten futures all get misinterpreted, rewired, and misremembered through an android dream. Much of his past work revolved around the step sequencing and ambient swoosh that filtered through the kosmische aesthetic of Conrad Schnitzler with plenty of sci-fi sound design moments thrown in for good measure amidst the angular trajectories of his obtuse electronica. Where Lopatin had been instrumental in bringing this retrogarde aesthetic to a broader audience, he's dropped much of the compositional framework that went into albums like Zones Without People and Betrayed In The Octagon. Some of the swelling Vangelis synth pads reappear on Replica, but this album has much more in common with a plunderphonia aesthetic, with his 'ghost vocal' samples getting caught in an inexplicable feedback loop as a self-perpetuating syntax error within a Cray supercomputer which got hung up trying to come to terms with the audio-visual data from bad VHS transfers from old episodes of Max Headroom. Some of Lopatin's sounds originated from a series of compilations of late night TV commercials from the '80s, with the saccharine strings, flutes, and pianos cycling in elliptical patterns that scrub backwards and forwards. On "Sleep Dealer" in particular, these loops snap with a hard-disc rigidity more in common with the Oval disc-skipping mantras on Diskont 94 or the winking electronica of The Books. "Submersible" locks onto a middle-eastern rhythm, conjuring the ghost of Muslimgauze in an appropriation of an appropriation. For as much hype as this record has received, Replica is a very abstract and deliberately confusing proposition for OPN, one which we have been digging quite a bit. Killer cover art to boot!

MPEG stream: Sleep Dealer
MPEG stream: Nassau
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It makes perfect sense that Daniel Lopatin is a fan of J.G. Ballard, the late author of dystopian environments plagued and / or graced with the dilemmas of the relationship between man and machine. Lopatin's previous entry as Oneohtrix Point Never was the Memory Vague dvd on Root Strata, recycling '80s computer animation from YouTube to serve as the visual data for his sci-fi soundtracks of analog synthesis; and there was no doubt about the peculiar Ballardian aura to that dvd which enjoyed a bittersweet optimism for the future of technology with its sensual grasp upon the 'new.' For this album - Zones Without People - Lopatin continues to delight us with his perfectly anachronistic use of synthesizers to capture the early '80s memories of early afterschool science specials, cheap sci-fi soundtracks, and the never-ending fascination with space. Lopatin is keenly aware that we don't have teleportation devices, jetpacks, or holidays on the moon; and an undercurrent of sadness does seem to bubble from below all of his compositions. In fact, Lopatin describes the strategies he employs for his poly-synths as "grid tears," imbuing a sense of melancholy through his rigid network of percolating tones and bleeps. Above an solar-powered electric hum, the album opens with a series of interwoven synth pulses which insistently push up against each other, collapsing into the electronic sunrise which is the next track of slowly building arppegiations and sequences situated on top of cybernetically pastoral ambience. When Lapotin gets to the title track, his laser beam pings have calmed into a sublimely sad offering, easily the best thing that he's produced to date. This isn't to say that the flip side is a dud. Far from it, as a wigged-out squiggling collage splatters as the second side's opening cut. Cosmic arpeggiations and star-gazing drones settle in the rest of this amazing record. Don't expect this to be around for long. We're not the only one's freaking out about Oneohtrix Point Never, and Zones Without People is limited to 400 copies.

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

SORRY. These two tapes, housed in a soft-plastic case a la RRRecords, offer documentation of four live, and very nice electronic sets from one evening at the Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn, featuring the 2009 darling of outro-electronics Oneohtrix Point Never, the ever impressive Keith Fullerton Whitman, No Fun Acid (aka Carlos Giffoni in his 'acid' guise), and Prehistoric Blackout (aka Taylor Richardson of Infinity Window). Oneohtrix Point Never begins his set with a lugubrious plodding synth melody before nestling into those stratospheric arcs of Juno-synth tones found on his recent Russian Mind LP. Keith Fullerton Whitman kicks out squiggles and step-patterned melodic phrases via a C64 emulator on his iPhone (no shit!) which gradually explode into a kaleidoscopic supernova after lifting out of a thick set of modulated tones 'n' drones. Giffoni has been talking up his love of acid techno with No Fun Acid being the project to act upon that infatuation. He sets down a simple breakbeat and begins a set that would make Phuture proud, in a pretty straight forward, but wholly effective techno workout. Prehistoric Blackout offers a four-note synth melody that drifts with counterpointed arpeggiations, tremolo lazer beams of sound, and tripped out, looping electronics. It should be noted that this is a room recording, and not a board mix. But as a result, there is some very amusing banter that Whitman provides at the end of his set with two enthusiastic women describing his set as a being akin to achieving multiple orgasms. Ahem. Throughout most of the sets, the audience politely stays quiet with the exception for the beginning of the Prehistoric Blackout set. Super limited, we've got less than a dozen of these.

Boasting members of Beulah and Guided By Voices (obviously not *the* members), Yuji Oniki's debut album is a... well, if you like Bread, East River Pipe and The High Llamas then this is for you.

Certainly one of the best things about working at a record store is coming across new bands that give you that undefinable, but very real feeling in your stomach where you can't imagine having ever gone on without THIS band. Even better is discovering something from the distant past (not too distant in this case), something whose existence could have eluded you forever had good fortune not smiled down in the form of a reissue. Onna were the Japanese duo of Keizou Miyanishi and Mafuyu Hiroki, whose 1983 7" has thankfully been rescued from obscurity by the mighty Holy Mountain label, and has been blowing minds left and right here at aQ. One of the coolest things about this record is just how surprising and unexpected it all was, the whole "1983" part in particular. With a nod to the past but no doubt out of place in the early 80s, Onna were without question inhabiting a world of their own. The most obvious point of reference soundwise would be legendary psych/noise enigma Les Rallizes Denudes, especially in the vocal department. This is a very good thing for anyone who loves those somewhat lazy, partially detached, Japanese sung vocals of groups like LRD and LSD-March. The use of a drum machine keeps these two songs pulsing like a mechanical heartbeat, which when combined with the fairly free form guitars, definitely gives this record its own vibe. Side 1 begins with a meditative two chord lament before noisy, white hot guitar squalls begin creeping about in the distance as simple and repetitive bass lines keep the foundation strong and focused. The second track introduces catchy psych guitar chords with a machine modified quasi-girl group drumbeat, the bass again holding things down nice and steady. The heavily reverberated strummed guitars bubble about as fake cymbal explosions recede and return over and over again, until a prolonged fadeout is replaced by a locked groove note that keeps this record spinning endlessly, just as it should. The lack of information on Onna only adds to the mystery (and just a note, they are not affiliated with those other Japanese psych monsters Christine 23 Onna). PSF has issued an album by the group called Katawa, which we will definitely be paying close attention to after this 7". Until then, the only things we have to judge the duo by are the perplexing ugly/beautiful cover featuring an androgynous female figure lying naked on a bed (is she sick and decaying? is she just hanging out in bed? waiting for a lover?), and more importantly, their music, which we cannot recommend highly enough. Seriously, how many 7" singles would receive this much of a write up? You know this one is a winner. PS for the non-turntable-havin' folks, apparently these tracks are also to appear on an upcoming cd collection Holy Mountain's putting out with other Onna stuff...

Love her or hate her, Yoko Ono is the rare kind of artist that is hard to be indifferent about. There are those of us who love nearly everything she does, and there are at least one of us here who can't stand her at all (though perplexingly, that said person is a HUGE fan of Harry Pussy whose singer's vocal style is wholly copped from Yoko's, so go figure.). While this is not a new reissue, we recently found out it was still available, and if you were ever going to buy only one Yoko Ono release, this is definitely the one! This double album, Fly, released in 1971 after the concurrently released Plastic Ono Band solo debut lps with husband John Lennon is a widely varied but creatively inspired affair with an amazing back-up band (featuring Ringo Starr and Klaus Voorman) that covers both straight-ahead rock numbers as well as mind-melting experimental realms. The sixteen minute proto-krautrock groover "Mind Train" is a definite highlight, sounding like Yoko fronting Can or Faust, but this disc also covers tender acoustic pieces, outsider blues, femme folk, fluxus noise experiments, as well as her trademark howling scream jams, some full throttle noise, others more restrained inner turmoil. But for all its variation, it flows together like a complete piece that grossly engages and vulnerably assaults in equal measure. Probably not for everyone, but highly recommended nonetheless!

MPEG stream: Mind Train
MPEG stream: Hirake
MPEG stream: O Wind

What's this? Another collection of remixes from Yoko Ono already?! You're darn tootin' right! But whereas Yes I Am A Witch (released February 2007) enlisted the very varied and very 'now' cool cats (i.e, Peaches, Antony and the Johnsons, Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Polyphonic Spree, and Cat Power) to do new remixes and reworkings of Ono's music, Open Your Box (released April 2007) compiles her previously released dancefloor smash remix 12"s. In case you're unacquainted, these remixes are far more NYC house, techno and disco scene oriented (a scene that has celebrated and embraced Ono and her music over the years), and feature the likes of Orange Factory, Basement Jaxx, Danny Tenaglia, Felix Da Housecat, DJ Dan and Pet Shop Boys. Sure some of them are pretty dated, but it's terrific to have and hear all of these tracks together. Throughout the two releases, much love and reverence and fun flow freely, and in the case of Open Your Box also much giddy clubland nostalgia. Yes.

MPEG stream: Walking On Thin Ice (Pet Shop Boys Electro Mix)
MPEG stream: Open Your Box (Orange Factory Club Mix)

We can't help but love Yoko Ono. I mean c'mon, who else at her age could rock those face-blocking shades and look so incomparably awesome? Plus, apart from some really schmaltzy songs (i.e. "Children Power") she has recorded, arguably more often then not, some pretty damn amazing music (Plastic Ono Band, Fly, Feeling the Space, Season of Glass). Here, she enlists the help of a wide array of indie-music collaborators including Peaches, Antony and the Johnsons, Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Polyphonic Spree, and Cat Power, who each chose a song from her back catalog and were given access to the multi-track masters to rework them how they wished. Most of the songs come from Ono's more songwriter-ly albums (Double Fantasy, Season of Glass, It's Alright, and Approximately Infinite Universe), with most of the artists keeping Ono's vocal tracks intact. Only Flaming Lips ventured further back and used vocals from "Cambridge 1969" one of John and Yoko's first performative collaborations of screeching shrieks and distorted feedback. Personally, we wished there were more songs selected from that period, better yet being done by artists of our choosing (c'mon, Circle re-doing "Mind Train"? You know you want to hear that!!). At first scan, this seemed like the type of hip remix compilation we dread, the kind which inevitably takes both artist and re-mixer down a notch by needlessly updating old songs through dated trip-hop, trance, or house idioms (she's done it before, more than once, even -- hence our wariness). Thankfully that isn't the case here. Most of the artists breathe new life into the songs through restraint rather than bombast, coming to a halfway point that is neither entirely Ono's nor her collaborators. Cat Power creates a duet with piano on "Revelations". Porcupine Tree deemphasizes the slow burn of "Death of Samantha" with acoustic guitar and atmospheric washes. Jason Pierce from Spiritualized takes the disco out of "Walking On Thin Ice" and gives it something more majestic and much colder. Even the electro and dance-ier tracks submitted by Peaches, Le Tigre, Shitake Monkey and Blow-up don't disappoint as you would expect but contribute a nice flow to the more subdued moments. All in all a surprising listen, and according to the Astralwerks website, this is not the end of it. Another Ono remix album is on the way later this year! Now, if they'd only reissue Fly (hint, hint).

MPEG stream: Revelations (w/Cat Power)
MPEG stream: Walking On Thin Ice (w/ Spiritualized)
MPEG stream: Cambridge 1969/2007 (w/ Flaming Lips)

Remixers make each song sound like themselves: Cibo Matto, the ABA Allstars (Adam Yauch aka MCA, Mario Caldato Jr, Cibo Matto and Sean Ono Lennon), Ween, Tricky, and Thurston Moore, who features in his remix Masonna, Incapacitants, CCCC, Hanatarash, Aube, Monde Bruits, Gerogerigegege, Keiji Haino. There are also some cd-rom-able additional trax.

Depending on where you stand with Yoko Ono and Sonic Youth's avant explorations, this is either a dream come true or a nightmare collaboration. It sounds exactly like what you would imagine. Extended vocal freakouts, chiming detuned arpeggiations, blithe detached whispered murmurs, ritualistic vocalized koans, distorted feedback squalls and even some right wing slamming poetry in the round. But besides that last part, it rarely comes off as indulgent as we feared, and the fact that it was recorded in a day, gives the pieces an urgency and vitality that would have been lost had it been more composed. Yokokimthurston definitely would have made a great installment in the group's SYR experimental series, and as a part of that series might have felt more substantial, and been granted more of a musical gravitas. As it stands in most music press this record is being treated more as Yoko acting as some therapeutic arbitration for Kim and Thurston to work out their post-marriage musical relationship. Please! As if the three of them didn't have anything better to do. Disregard the hype (or lack of) and check it out, it's definitely pretty great!

MPEG stream: Mirror Mirror
MPEG stream: Let's Get There

Oh Yoko! After all these years and all you've gone through, you still manage to have such dynamic energy and such a magnetic spirit. Who else at 76 years of age could make a record that pretty much blows away all the stuff made by folks in the supposed 'prime' of their lives. With Between My Head And The Sky, Ono has done just that, this is maybe one of the most rewarding, immediate and satisfying albums in her expansive back catalog. Sounding so totally modern yet so totally Yoko at the same time. With an awesome band behind her featuring Cornelius (!) and the amazing drummer from his band Yuko Araki, as well as cellist Erik Friedlander, saxophonist Daniel Carter, Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto, Yoko's son Sean Lennon, and a few other great musical minds. While they all help to create beautiful layers of sound and incredible grooves to each of these songs, it's Yoko's compositions and of course idiosyncratic delivery that pushes these songs into another realm. This is a record that perfectly blends Ono's more "out" and cosmic tendencies with her astute awareness of presence and nature and our surroundings, ranging from the charged and manic to the sweet and organic. We know that folks tend to have quite strong opinions of Ono, with some of us at the store falling decidedly and staunchly on both sides of that divide, but a true testament to how great this record is, was when we were playing it in the store the other day, a customer asked what it was, when we told him he looked so surprised and told us he always assumed he didn't like her music, but that this was in fact a disc he would end up listening to over and over. For those of us here who are way way in the pro/in-love-with Yoko side of the equation, this is simply an amazing reconfirmation of why she is one of the most striking, sincere and creative forces of nature to live in our lifetime. Along with folks like Ornette Coleman and Asha Bhosle she is a constant reminder that growing old has nothing to do with losing spirit or soul, quite the opposite. So what will you be doing when you're 76??!!

MPEG stream: Waiting For The D Train
MPEG stream: The Sun Is Down!
MPEG stream: Healing

The fifth release in David Byrne's World Psychedelic Classic series for Luaka Bop (the previous ones being from Os Mutantes, Tim Maia, Shuggie Otis, and the West African funk comp, Love's A Real Thing) is a killer survey of Nigerian Afro-electro-funk by the elusive William Onyeabor who self-released records between 1978 and 1985, before apparently converting to Christianity and refusing to discuss himself and his music ever since. Long in the making after years of trying to negotiate licensing with the difficult Onyeabor, this compilation is a revelation of outsider analog synth and politically-tinged Afrobeat caught right in between Parliament/Funkadelic and Fela Kuti. Having previously only heard the tracks featured on the Love is A Real Thing and Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970s Funky Lagos comps, it's amazing to hear a whole collection of Onyeabor's music, with songs that sprawl well over the ten minute mark, and like Fela Kuti's music, filled with call and response female backing vocals and pointed lyrics over an infectious funk groove. "Something You Will Never Forget" repeats that line between Onyeabor and the female backing group before revealing, "One day you'll be lying dead". Other songs denounce war and the atomic bomb. But what separates Onyeabor from Kuti is his astonishing analog synth skills that propel the music into much stranger psychedelic territory. Like that Francis Bebey collection we raved about a while back ago, this release is bumping and of course comes highly recommended. Only here on cd at the moment, but we'll get the triple vinyl version back in hopefully real soon!

MPEG stream: Body and Soul
MPEG stream: Good Name
MPEG stream: Why Go To War
MPEG stream: Heaven and Hell

We have always loved Yoshimi, whether she's bashing the skins in the Boredoms, hanging out with Kim Gordon in Free Kitten or kicking up a serious ruckus in OOIOO, her main love these days. Hot of the heels of their latest outing Taiga comes this scorching remix e.p. courtesy of Yoshimi's Boredoms cohort Eye Yamatsuka. He takes the Roberto De Simone inspired standout tracks Uma and Umo and turns them into hot flashes of an African influenced late night rave that we wish we could be at. The other two tracks are the original versions from Taiga.

MPEG stream: Eye Mix 1
MPEG stream: Eye Mix 2

Initially we were mostly intrigued by this new ep from Italian punx Thee Oops, cuz the six year old daughter of a friend of ours, has a band called the Oops, where she and her same aged friend, each sit at a drum kit, and try to hit all the drums without hitting the cymbals, and every time they do, they both shout "OOPS!" This record is by no means as cute as that, but then what really could be? Instead, these guys have tacked on an extra E and delivered 10 short sharp blasts of furious, catchy as fuck punk rock, nothing twisted or weird or experimental, just three chords, pounding drums, yowled vox, and hooks galore. Like all the best punk rock, these songs are essentially pop songs, super charged, revved up and let loose. Opener "1994" has been stuck in our head for weeks, even after only a handful of listens, and the more we listen to this (ten songs in a little over 12 minutes, so it's a lot!), the more it's true of pretty much every song here. Wild little squalls of lead guitar, crazy catchy choruses, some kick ass riffs, the songs flitting from anthemic singalongs to crunchy almost metallic punk to J-Church / Jawbreaker style pop punk to fuzzy midtempo UK punk rock to Toy Dolls style hyper pop. They even do a Beastie Boys cover (as in old punk rock BB!!). So great! Vinyl folks, fyi, this will be coming out as a double 7" sometime soon.

MPEG stream: 1994
MPEG stream: Happy Charlie
MPEG stream: Global Warming
MPEG stream: Hope You Die Tonight

Attention all Calexico, Giant Sand, and Lisa Germano fans! In case you missed it the first time around, the collaboration between those fine artists has been re-issued. Yessiree, and those jubilant cheers you may be hearing are undoubtably coming from our Cup. Why? Well, 'cause it's one of her absolute most favorite albums ever. Not just another Giant Sand side project. No! It's a magical one-time combination of John Convertino, Joey Burns, Howe Gelb AND Lisa Germano. The beautiful rich twang we've grown to know and love from the gents' main projects (Calexico and Giant Sand) is most definitely in full glorious bloom here. Combine it with Ms Germano's off-kilter, melancholic vocal delivery and you've got yourself one very special album. Odd textures and noises creep in to keep the slow bittersweet melodies company. Originally released in 1997, these eleven moody, heartswelling 'n' handwringing songs never ever fail to break Cup's heart (especially tracks #3 and #5). Beautiful downer music. Includes a breathy, slow-winding world-weary duet between Germano and Gelb covering Lee Hazlewood's "Sand". Damn fine listening. Sooo very very recommended.

RealAudio clip: If I Think Of Love
RealAudio clip: It's A Rainbow

The first thing you notice is the amazing die-cut artwork. Orange and red overlapping circles each with target like concentric inner circles, cut to resemble a fuzzy washed out mountainscape of orbs and spheres, with the tray card cut so the cd nestles perfectly into one of the valleys. So nice. The second thing you notice, or the first thing you notice once you throw this in the player, is how compltely KICK ASS this record is. This is literally all we've been listening to the last few weeks! We always talk about Queens Of The Stone Age as being this guilty pleasure we all seem to have. But what's so guilty about liking them? They rock, have great catchy songs, the remnants of that huge sun baked Kyuss fuzz guitar. What's not to love? Well, it could be our aversion to the whole MTV / VH1, dating or not dating Brody Dalle?, People Magazine / US Magazine, Dave Grohl killing time, supergroup, more crooning than rocking, not really about the music anymore?, corporate rock element. Yeah, could be. So what if there was a band of young guys, who put out a record on punk / metalcore label Trustkill, and who took all of the stuff that made QOTSA so great, but turned that stuff inside out, and added all sorts of other disparate elements, turning what could have been just a decent QOTSA rip off into one of the coolest, catchiest rock records of the year?! Well, we'd probably make it record of the week and gush like giddy music nerds. So let us commence gushing, shall we? Imagine huge fuzz guitars, unfurling super rocking Kyuss / Rocket From The Crypt / Burning Brides sort of stoner garage pop riffs, sometimes langorous and lysergic, sometimes so heavy and intense it's almost impossible to not air guitar! One track in particular, "The Kaleidoscope" has perhaps one of the best riffs EVER (sez Andee and Jason) an impossibly God-like Kyuss / Sabbath fusion, that gets everyone in the store nodding along like Wayne And Garth in Wayne's World. So we've got the riffs, now we go to the vocals, which go from breathy falsetto, to growly indie whine, to howled rock wail, with plenty of occasional female vocals, sometimes employed in surprisingly unorthadox ways giving a couple of the songs a really bizarre edge. Hard to describe, you just have to hear it. But this is not just about rocking, as much as we wouldn't mind that at all. No, there's lots of weird wonderful pop experimentation all over, from loping bass driven Pinback-ish lullabies, droning brooding minor key dirges reminiscent of the Deftones or maybe Tool, some Sonic Youth-y skree and textural weirdness, even some moody electronic miserablism that has Depeche Mode worship written all over it. It all works so well together somehow, heavy and head banging, dreamy and blissed out. Can't believe this band isn't HUGE. But we're secretly a little glad they aren't. For now at least. The sticker on the front insists that You And Me "obliterates the boundaries between indie rock, stoner rock, metal, emo and garage." Before we heard it we were pretty sure that was some serious label hyperbole, but now we're not so sure. Open Hand take all that stuff and more, wrapping everything around some of the best pop songs we've heard in ages and comes up with a record that hasn't stopped kicking our ass since we got it. Record of the week is always a tricky proposition, we try to make it something out of the ordinary, something mysterious and weird, maybe something hard to find or impossible to get or maybe just overlooked, but once in a while, those things don't seem to matter as much as the simple fact that a record gets played over and over and over over, every day, all day, here AND at home, on our computers, in our iPod's, with no end in sight, that speaks volumes. And sure, maybe you can catch their video on MTV once in a while, or maybe hear them on the radio, but that's not a bad thing at all. If only everything on the radio or on MTV was this good. The world would be a much better (and most likely much stranger) place!

MPEG stream: Pure Concentrated Evil
MPEG stream: Her Song
MPEG stream: Tough Girl
MPEG stream: The Kaleidoscope

Now reissued on vinyl! In their vigilant unearthing of one-off psych and folk obscurities, the Sunbeam label has been one of our favorite reissue labels even if their catalog can sometimes be hit and miss. Their vision, however is remarkably consistent, never reissuing a rare record just for the sake of it being rare, and making a practice of working with the original artists whenever possible to put together these reissues, like this one, a 1969 British psych rock rarity by The Open Mind, who were a mop-topped gang of guys from the paisley era. They liked to stroll on the harder, rockier side of the '60s psych-pop street, and this album contains a few gems for sure, *especially* the first of the four bonus tracks included, their truly great single "Magic Potion". That's the one for which they'll really be remembered (and it can be found on the Speaking My Mind: New Rubble Volume 2 compilation as well). It was also later covered by '90s space rock band Sundial. We think some proto-metal fans might dig it too!

MPEG stream: Horses And Chariots
MPEG stream: Cast A Spell
MPEG stream: Magic Potion

One of our very favorite metal bands returns with a new album, a domestic release for big-league metal label Roadrunner, which made us wonder if they'd somehow gone all nu-metal on us. Opeth as an Ozzfest band? Well, this is the slickest Opeth record yet, surely. And there's clean singing on here that does seem like it might be geared for (gasp) radio airplay...but, that singing is in the same song with total death metal growling. So it's really the same ol' Opeth we know and love. A well produced, super dynamic and atmospheric blend of death metal and progressive rock, with epic-length songs, ripping technical playing, and sensitive acoustic interludes. And a healthy dose of Mellotron and other keys, moreso even than in the past, as they've now made their keyboardist an official, permanent band member. It could be we're hearing a hint of nu-metal in some of the bouncier, stop start bits...but put that in the context of proggy baroque keyboards, and this is definitely not Slipknot or Korn, that's for sure. And if Opeth can turn what they do into "pop" music and get away with it, more power to 'em. Not that that's likely... Is this eighth Opeth opus destined to be considered a classic like several of their earlier albums? Well, c'mon, it's undeniably tough for 'em to top what they've done in the past, regardless of how good this is! We are glad to have all the shades of Opeth back together on one album after the heavy disc/light disc dichotomy of their twin previous releases Deliverance and Damnation. And anyway, at this point we can't imagine any Opeth fan daring to not purchase, listen to, and (out of love or awe) worship this!

MPEG stream: The Ghost Of Perdition
MPEG stream: The Baying Of Hounds