[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 13001 through 13050 of 19388.

This new Promise Ring is nothing like their previous releases. They have catapulted themselves beyond plain old emo rock. I suppose it's nice that they are using different instrumentation (strings, a choir, vocal soloists, and keyboards) and they do have

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A while back we made the record World, by Aussie noise rock / shoegaze outfit The Bunyip Moon, our Record Of the Week, a gloriously blown out, chaotic sonic gem, that even now we have trouble keeping in stock. So were were psyched to discover that one of the guys from The Bunyip Moon had a new solo record, a tape in fact, under the name Pronoun, and like World, it's weird and wonderful. But UN-like World, Faux is not all bombastic noisiness and buried blown out melodies, instead, it's a darkly moody, lush, almost cinematic creep, right from the get-go, we're sucked into some mysterious soundworld, that to our eras exists right between the epic with house of Salem, and the soundtracky synth bombast of M83. So if that sounds good to you (and why the heck wouldn't it?!), then there's much to dig here. The opener unfurls as a brooding plod, all primitive drum machine, over processed strum and thrum, before majestic synths swoop in, faux strings, the whole thing epic and stirring, but with just the right amount of distortion and noise, gristly, and staticky, and distorted and psychedelic, but even at it's most explosive, it's still lilting and lovely, it's a tough one to describe for sure, but it's pretty stirring stuff. The whole record expands from that sound, with some of the tracks a bit more garbled and chaotic, darkly noisy and murky, sounding a bit like a way more abrasive Caretaker (which is most definitely a good thing), while others, slip into a more kosmische haze, all swirling chordal thrum and deep, lustrous sonic swells, and on at least one track, the sound slips into some strange, tripped out avant shoegaze new wave, although the best moments of course are when those disparate sides collide, which they do often, resulting in blissful noisiness, and noisy dreaminess in equal measure, culminating in the strangely gristly garble of crunched static and crumbling decaying distortion of the closer, which ditches pretty much all poppiness in favor of a strange sprawling field of grinding textures, and the sporadic sputter of alien transmissions from the ether. Fantastic, and so so so recommended. The packaging is pretty ace too, totally over the top. The tape housed in a sleeve, housed in a second embossed outer sleeve, then housed in yet ANOTHER sleeve, hand silkscreened and ink splattered, a weighty arts/sound object, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered. Includes a download code too...

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Certainly the best band on Fat Wreck Chords (unless of course you're in a fraternity, or you're a snowboarder, or a skater, or a high school student). It may be pop punk, but it manages to transcend what has become a frightfully dull and amazingly asinine genre. Propagandhi craft super complex songs that stop and start and are heavy and are arranged so bizarrely it's amazing that they can sing along at all. And then there's the lyrics (queer positive, animal rights, anti-moron), funny and insightful, scathing and clever and so right on. Really cool.

As much as it hurts us to say, it might just be time to give up on hoping for a new Absu record. That bizarre Texan horde is responsible for some of our favorite weirdo black metal ever. But it's been years since we've heard from them, collectively that is. We recently reviewed an electro record from Absu guitarist Equitant. Not metal electro, but real, squelchy, house-y electro. Cool stuff, but nothing we ever imagined hearing from any of the Absu guys, no matter how weird they were. So here we have the latest recording from Absu drummer Proscriptor, who in the past has dabbled in some serious weirdness outside of Absu, with a handful of strange ambient recordings, but this, this is so far out we thought at first we must have put on the wrong record. But as with most things Absu it didn't take long for us to become completely and utterly smitten. Packaged in a mysterious silver sleeve, with bits of strange numerology and symbology, including an appropriately black metal Proscriptor logo with bat wings and candles and flames. So side one begins with tinkling new age chimes, very tranquil and serene, when suddenly very intense male female vocals, harmonizing, singing of the 4 Horseman, very haunting, almost cheesy, when the band kicks into a fill on rock jam, BIG drums, crunchy guitars, throbbing bass, heavy riffing, wild guitar solos... and then back to the weird dramatic vocals. It doesn't sound so much like metal as it does some sort of bombastic musical. Over the top with a through-the-roof WTF factor. But after a few listens, we sort of WANTED it to actually be a musical, we could imagine some sort of Bat Out Of Hell super stage show, with Proscriptor and his lady battling the Four Horsemen. So it was on to side 2 and if we thought it couldn't get any weirder, well, we were WRONG! Groovy almost Southern rock, but with harsh black metal vocals and bizarre female back up vocals, the whole thing sounding like a metallized Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some impossible mix of Venom and ZZ Top and... wait a minute, we suddenly recognize the song, the cover says it's called "Epod No Sknup Etihw", but it sounds, suspiciously like... THE TUBES. Holy shit! It's a cover of the Tubes "White Punks On Dope"! Again, WHAT THE FUCK?!? Sure, it's amazing, demented, tweaked, bizarre, but this is the drummer from Absu!!! Who would have thought?!?! Only makes us love him more. And for some reason we can't stop listening to either of these tracks... Cool packaging, metallic silver jacket, printed inner sleeve, and pressed on the THICKEST white vinyl ever!!!

Sometimes it's funny when everything in the whole world is so nasty and extreme that people have to go to unbelievable lengths to gross us out. And then end up being more silly than gross or scary. Such is the case with Prosthetic Cunt (whom we'll call,

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Prosthetic Guitars is the latest offering from Dial Records, the label run by Church Steps mainman Mike Donovan. "RU-486" is a collection of guitar-based sketches that have have been roughly stitched together through basic edits that strive to form connectivity through the repetition of various leitmotifs (one a maniacal guitar strum over free-jazz drum noodle, another being a stilted Arabic melodic flourish, another a pleasantly fingerpicked guitar chord, etc.). As none of these individual elements ever really go anywhere, and as the album as a whole sounds basically 'unfinished', it's hard to say what the Prosthetic Guitars are trying to do simply because there is never a fully realized idea. Giving them a huge benefit of the doubt that "never fully realizing an idea" is their raison d'etre, Prosthetic Guitars are another entry into the realm of 'post-irony' or fake outsider art ("it's so mysterious and alluring how I can't spell or draw or actually play...), in which they are actively trying to sound like they just learned how to play guitar.

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We threw this on initially thinking it would be another chunk of that new fangled screamo-prog we like so much, Coheed, Chiodos and the like, and it sort of was, but it was so much MORE METAL! Seriously. When the record kicked in, first track, first 30 seconds, we thought maybe we had thrown on the wrong record, ultra tight, blazing Swedish style deathmetal, with tons of stop / start intricacies, crushing downtuned chug and every nook and cranny stuffed with blazing, shredding, squiggly leads, licks and little woodleewoos. Almost like an emo Necrophagist! Imagine some of the tightest catchiest screamo / emo / metalcore drenched in crushing blazing fast deathmetal and gussied up with plenty of Yes-y progisms, strummy acoustic breakdowns, and soaring almost eighties metal style vocals. And it's mostly the vocalist that pushes the band over the edge. If Protest The Hero had a screamer or a growler, they would be just another killer tech-prog deathmetal band, but with the crazy vocals and lush harmonies they turn into something completely different. The singer alternately sounds like Joey Belladonna from Anthrax, Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden and aQ mailorder Jason thinks the singer sounds like a screamo-metal Lou Gramm from Foreigner, which we can definitely hear. But imagine just that sort of soaring epic eighties vibe but tangled up in huge sticky webs of dense ultracomplex new wave of Swedish death metal (In Flames, At The Gates, etc.), and with crazy staccato Meshuggah / Poison The Well breakdowns all over the place. So fucking great. We listen to this NONSTOP. But it's definitely all about the guitars, heavy and epic and slippery and complex and squiggly and wanky but totally mind blowing. And the songs are catchy as hell too. It's like our eighties-self musical fantasy dream come true, a totally eighties hook filled pop record, turned inside out and massively progged up, the whole thing transformed into a crushing metal beast. If we had heard this when we were in our early teens, our fragile musical minds would have been so thoroughly blown we'd have been musically ruined for life. But hearing it now, we can definitely handle it, but just barely.

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NOW ON LP TOO! The latest collection (after two previous) chronicling the work of Australian outsider artist / primitive folk songsmith Pip Proud, comes courtesy of Japanese label EM, who gather up some of his best tracks from the late sixties and early seventies, selected by Proud's biographer David Nichols, who also provides the booklet's extensive liner notes. Fans of early Flying Nun, Xpressway and Homestead Records, will be immediately smitten. Proud, whose primitive folksmithery falls somewhere between the Tall Dwarfs, the Frogs and Sebadoh, was like a proto Syd Barrett, with a voice that's a dead ringer for Jimmy Flemion of the Frogs (R.I.P.), and his music for all its amateur primitivism, was geniusly crafted, perfect little introspective folk pop gems, the sound, the lyrics, the guitar playing, even the recordings themselves... We're also reminded of Bill Direen, the sung/spoken vocals, the raw guitar style, the lo-fi recordings, almost every track here impossibly catchy, with the oddest bits getting stuck in your head like crazy. Some tracks are haunting and otherworldly, with truly unique and bizarre guitar parts (or are those synths), the guitar playing sometimes folk, but other times percussive and more rhythmic, and still other times, weirdly psychedelic. There's one track with a full band, that is killer, all Velvets-y murky, tense kraut-psych garage pop, with truly twisted vox, and some weirdly atonal melodies, but the rest of the record is made up entirely of home recorded bedroom jams, with only the most minimal and primitively achieved overdubs, sometimes it's strange gamelan like percussion, sometimes noisy fuzz distortion, sometimes weird tangles of multiple guitar lines, all deftly woven into some of the most endearing, and mysteriously mesmerizing music you might never have heard. There are a handful of bonus tracks, as well as a huge booklet, with liner notes, rare photos and lyrics.

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

SORRY. Older Australian (the album is subtitled "Songs from the 60s and the 90s") who writes lonely, lovely songs in the vein of mellow Lou Reed... Store favorite Alastair Galbraith loves Pip Proud so much that he convinced Trance to release this collection!

Australian outsider folk singer/guitarist Pip Proud has a kind of gentleness and seeming naivete that play with or against his exceedingly honest, emotional and sometimes darkly bizarre lyrics. Sloppily tuned guitars, breathily spoken stories over blues-tinged psychedelic washes and halting, personal interpretations of the notions of rythm and time-- I find his unique musical style to be incredibly charming, but also just disturbing and weird enough to prevent a descent into syrupy sweet childishness, making him somewhat more kin to Jandek than Jad Fair. "Catch a Cherub" is a collaboration with Charlambides guitarist Tom Carter.

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One of our favorite iconoclastic New Zealanders accompanies his idol Pipp Proud, an older Aussie who writes quiet, heartfelt songs.

Woah! cool! Out of nowhere comes this amazing tape on San Jose-based Life Sucker records, who also put out another great release on this list, that being the debut of San Jose's Infernal Slave. As anyone keeping up with our list knows, we LOVE weirdo B-movie soundtracks, the more weirdo, and the more "B" the movie, the better, and it doesn't get much more out there than a soundtrack for a fake movie! This, the soundtrack to "Mercy Stroke," which doesn't exist, by Provoker, who totally worship at the altar of '80s soundtrack classics. Weird Soft Moon-style '80s obsessed pop run through the CRT-lens of a Dario Argento movie. Catchy and poppy, but dripping with warbling tape and bizarre production that put it right up there with aQ faves like the Street Trash soundtrack. Only four songs, but so SO promising! And - awesome move on the band's part - it comes with a download code!

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Attention: Fans of the sadly defunct SF band Fuck, you don't want to miss this new solo effort from the former vocalist of said band, Mr. Timothy Prudhomme (and also featuring fellow Fuck bandmate Geoff Soule on drums, piano and vocals). So lovely, warm and dark, this is an album of intimate evening stroll music. The rich, deep vocals that he delivers at a drowsy lullaby's pace are carefully embraced by a gathering of soft twang guitar, haunting organ, piano, theremin, minimal percussion and wistful backing vocals - all of which beautifully showcase his lyrics so steeped in heartache.

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Originally a cassette put out by Hospital in 2011 and now reworked for cd release via Tesco's archival series on their Functional subsidiary, Annihilationist finds Prurient eschewing the sequencers of his recent output for a long-form album of synth-noise miserablism. Grimy bellows of feedback surge upon the near constant roar of sunken battleship drones that are further strafed with corrosive distortion, arsenic laced dinscapes, sonar-sweep phased noise, and the occasional Teutonic drum machined plod. When noise artists of a particular caliber have veered into the realm of dark ambient. Think Drumm. Think Menche. Of course, think Fernow, with the Annihilationist being a particularly claustrophobic recording.

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THE VINYL VERSION IS HERE! The ever-prolific Dom Fernow is back with another Prurient release (the 23rd we've reviewed, actually!!), and it seems the days of nonstop releases of pure harsh noise are long in his past. There was a time not too far back when 30 minutes of mic-against-amp feedback squall on limited release cassette was all you needed to be a noise all-star, but luckily for everyone it looks like we've moved past that. Fernow, in addition to the "whatever I'm listening to right now" vibe of Prurient, has been busy with, let's see, Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, Exploring Jezebel, and Cold Cave (probably a bunch more too). On Frozen Niagara Falls, Fernow has THREE slabs of vinyl to explore everything he's been busy with for the past ten plus years of work, and it shows. He drifts and darts between bleak industrial soundscapes, the overblown amp-shattering noise of early Prurient, cheesy coldwave sawtooth synth leads, and pounding, overtly sexual Whitehouse worship. There's moments when Fernow lets a track or an idea really breathe and envelop, and there's some actual tranquility. In the liner notes, in fact, Fernow recommends you listen "at night while snow falls silently under street lights". But, this is still a Prurient album, and what kind of Prurient album would it be if it didn't have the occasional outburst of pent up hypersexual rage? Channeling the distorted, fucked up rhythms and lyrical themes of classic power electronics, Fernow makes you look up and listen, to forget the snow falling under the street lights and pay attention. Those moments quickly disappear into the albums frozen landscape, though, as this album is more brood then bludgeon. A huge fucking statement of an album, easily the best Prurient record thus far, and highly recommended for old fans and new. LIMITED PRESSING. We have what we have, not sure we'll be able to get more anytime soon.

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Not sure what it is exactly, but the days of Prurient being a full bore noise band are long gone. We're guessing it has a lot to do with Prurient aka Dom Fernow joining Cold Cave, the shift seemed to coincide, and not that we're complaining, we've never been all that into harsh noise ourselves, and we much prefer the more melodic, less harsh side of Prurient, but even we weren't prepared for this new double 7", which is most definitely the most mellow, and melodic, and subtly striking Prurient record yet. It makes sense when you discover that these were essentially conceived as sketches for the record that would become Bermuda Drain, another Prurient record that had us marveling at how much the group had changed, but these tracks, even as sketches, are pretty lush and lovely, surprisingly mellow certainly, but still dark and brooding. The first single layers sample voices, children talking and laughing, over drifting dreamlike swells, over which a weird muffled vocal rumbles wordlessly, the sound shimmery and washed out, laced with bits of glitch here and there, the feel layered and collaged, and quite lovely. The flipside is even more ambient, all glistening and crystalline high end drift, distant vox buried in the mix. The second single begins with a hazy whir, and soon introduces a murky buried almost house-y percussive pulse that runs throughout the A side, slowly blossoming into deep lush melodic drones. The B side is the strangest of the bunch, the main chunk of the track, a warped bit of abstract guitar strum, weirdly tuned (or perhaps it's a harpsichord), a disembodied alien folk of sorts, bookended on both sides by more hushed minimal drifting drones. Super swank packaging too, full color jacket, with artwork by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, both records pressed on different colored vinyl, with sensationalist tabloid record labels, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

A very strong debut release from Los Angeles' PS001 (starring Ron Russell, Gabie Strong, and David Patton). These spacious instrumental tracks fit quite comfortably between a pair of headphones, and meld into an arid minimalism for guitars and cymbols somewhere between Gastr Del Sol, Labradford, and Nurse With Wound's "A Missing Sense". Recommended!

Yet another DIY electronic-industrial album from the wacked archives of Alain Neffe. This Belgian was a mover and shaker in the cassette culture of all things industrial, post-punk, minimal wave, and otherwise zonked musics in the '80s. His Insane Music imprint released something close to 60 cassettes, most of which were compilations of his own constellation of projects including Bene Gesserit, Cortex, Human Flesh, and Pseudo Code. His work garnered one of the early Vinyl On Demand boxset; but that only covered a small sliver of Neffe's output and a number of labels have embarked on the daunting task of sifting through all of that material. Pinkity Plonk has now published three such Neffe / Insane reissues, first being that wistful Cortex collection of sci-fi tone poems (which we lauded as a Record Of The Week back in early 2012), the second being a Human Flesh album (albeit with that project 'pretending' to be Pseudo Code), and now a proper collection of Pseudo Code material. Pseudo Code was ostensibly a trio of Neffe, Xavier S., and Guy-Marc Hinant (who later went on to found Sub Rosa Records), and With Helpful Hands finds that trio augmented by some of Neffe's other cohorts. Pseudo Code operates well within Neffe's visionary pursuits of snaking drum machine rhythms, ominous synth chords, and scatterings of judiciously extemporaneous sci-fi guitars. These four lengthy tracks including one drugged-out, 34-minute voyage of inner/outerspace explorations simultaneously recalling Conrad Schnitzler, the Legendary Pink Dots, and Cabaret Voltaire. Limited to just 300 copies, we might add!

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Ripping jazzed-up proggery here from this new SoCal band, featuring members of Radio Moscow and Astra. As big fans of Astra's already impressive authentic '70s style spacerock we were intrigued, and Psicomagia are right on the money, with their early '70s sounding blend of organ/synth wig outs, heavy bass grooves, propulsive prog drumming (which never lets up!), and energetic saxophone eruptions - with plenty of psychedelic, esoteric atmosphere as well, thanks to ritual bells and gongs and occasional dramatically chanted lyrics in Spanish (though this is, appropriately, mostly instrumental). The four long tracks find the band constantly hurtling forward, the rhythm section in particular always on the boil. Imagine Acid Mothers Temple, with horns, on speed! Or, likewise, a prog version of Earthless, with sax and keys instead of guitar. Definitely AMT and/or Earthless aficionados open to the endless jams of another band, and who like a little bit of free jazz freakout, should give this a whirl (or let it give you one). Obviously influenced by such vintage '70s jazz meets prog and acid rock greats as Magma, Soft Machine, Out Of Focus, Tony Williams Lifetime, and electric Miles Davis, Psicomagia successfully bring all that together in a compellingly badass yet quasi-mystical way. Bravo! NB. There's a vinyl version too, we should be listing next time.

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The sticker on the cover sez: "A collection of sound waves to disturb your air-space! Journey to the dark side of drone psych!" Well, okay. This mysterious Psychatrone Rhonedakk fellow was last heard 'round here in the company of former Acid Mothers Temple keyboardist Cotton Casino on their collaboration entitled Baron Von Rhonedakk and the Crystal Sun. His new solo disc is again an exploration of dark, synth-heavy psych, full of haunted hippy percussion and whooshing electronics jamming in total '70s krautrock style. You'll also hear his gentle vocals on three cover songs, tracks written by Warren Zevon, Bill Martin, and Peter Sando of Gandalf (whose "Can You Travel In The Dark Alone?" is such a freaking great song -- get the Gandalf reissue on Sundazed to hear the original, you'll be glad you did). I'd buy this just for Rhonedakk's droned-out Gandalf cover, personally, 'cause I like them and that song so much, but all the moody, Moogy spacescapes found here are also an attraction.

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Before Dwayne Gottel re-engineered synth-pop to embrace a signature aesthetic of shock and horror in Skinny Puppy, he proved to be a thorny creative foil for the Huss brothers of Edmonton, Canada. Stephen and Darrin Huss met Dwayne in their late teens in high school, after the Huss brothers ditched early attempts at standard punk in favor of something akin to the darker elements of UK new wave (i.e. Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, OMD, etc.). In the naive and earnest diary entries found in the Xeroxed booklet (a very nice touch of punk memorabilia we might add), Darrin writes in the third person that it was Dwayne who first christened the band The Pinstripe Club after a British nudie bar. The band changed names and managed to gig around Edmonton with a notable opening slot for Moev, the Canadian synth-punk band who were always on the verge of something great throughout the '80s. The early '80s founds a lot of creative disagreements between the three members of Psyche, but they did manage to convince somebody to record them onto a 4 track. By the end of 1983, Gottel had split for good, heading to Vancouver, only to join up with Skinny Puppy a couple years later. The Huss brother continued on, exhibiting considerable promise early on. But the band proved to be much better in slicing up eyeballs than crooning to the pretty goth boys and girls; nonetheless, that's where Psyche ended up. Re-Membering Dwayne is a collection of the 8 tracks that the band recorded back in 1983 with Gottel. The swarming synth noise, John Carpenter-esque / psychologically tense sequences, whipcrack electronic snares, and aggressive percolations which soon became the backbone to Skinny Puppy's first recordings and demos can be tracked back to these pieces. Gottel seems to have sung on at least one track - the very primitive synth-punk number "Screaming Fire" noted for its brusque, guttural vocals, with Darrin Huss taking up the vocal duties elsewhere vamping effectively like Marc Almond. Another remarkable find from Dark Entries, who present this collection, as always, with a great remastering job by George Horn!

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Good grief, how rad is this! Another one, where we think, do we really even need to write a review? Authentic African garage groove from the '70s, by a band that was freakin' called THE PSYCHEDELIC ALIENS! From the same label that brought us the likes of Ofege, and the Lagos Disco Inferno comp. C'mon, what else do you need to know? This archival release collects everything ever recorded by this Ghanaian band, who put out just 3 super rare records in their day: two 7"s and a 12" ep. Thanks to a several years of dedicated effort by the compiler, Frank "Voodoofunk" Gossner, all those tracks are here (8 of 'em, 23 and a half minutes total), and they are plenty groovy indeed, bursting with lively rhythms, wildly jamming organ, James Brown influenced funkiness, and not just a little bit o' fuzz guitar, especially on the mind-melting "Okponmo Ni Tisitsi Emo Le" that wraps this up in a throbbingly mesmeric finale. While we can't tell you what that particular title means, there are 3 here in English: "Hijacking", "We're Laughing", and "Extraordinary Woman" which might (or might not) give you a sense of what sorts of things this band was concerned with, lyrically. We've been lucky lately, so many great reissues from the '70s African rock/funk scene, Ngozi Family, Amanaz, Witch, Tirogo, Sweet Talks, now this! Of course if you're familiar with those, these Aliens won't seem quiet so alien. For instance, if you liked that The World Ends comp, these guys (who weren't on it, as that was all Nigerian acts) woulda fit right in! Due to the rarity of these records, and possibly the name of the band, this is considered by some to be one of those "holy grail" releases, though spoiled as we are already by those other great reissues we are just happy to have even MORE great African '70s garage to groove to. The compact disc comes in a swank hardcover package, with a 32 page booklet. The regular vinyl lp edition is nice too... and then we have ONE COPY (though we can maybe get more) of the expensive, ultra deluxe 4x7" box set version for those who need such a fetish object in their collection.

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These shitgazers from Ohio started their recording career by just dubbing tapes at home and leaving them in local record stores, an endearingly haphazard way to spread the word about your band, and for a band like this, it seemed pretty perfect. Ramshackle and chaotic, DIY and constantly on the verge of collapse, no reason the format and the distribution shouldn't be representative of the music itself. Acid Tape finds PHS returning to the format where it all began, and thankfully even after all the hubbub and hype, after records on Siltbreeze and Woodsist, magazine articles and ridiculous blog love, these guys (and gal) still sound pretty much the same, and Acid Tape sounds like it could have come straight out of the free box on the floor by the front door of your favorite record store, but like those early tapes, it's the sort of 'holy shit' surprise that sometimes lurks in the free box or the bargain bin, part of the record shopping experience that ca never be replicated online. Acid Tape starts off with one of our favorite PHS jams yet, "Unseen Voids", a big swirling cloud of super distorted fuzzed out guitars, simple scattershot percussion, drawled sad boy vocals, tangled melodies, a gorgeous squall of home brewed bedroom psych, definitely worth the price of admittance. After that, it's a meandering wander through a drugged out busted 4-track shoegaze FX pedal popscape, gnarled wah guitars, skeletal rhythms, woozy almost dubby bass (especially on "Hard As It Gets (Chill Sax Mix)"), super reverbed vox, detuned acoustic guitars, lots of tape hiss, tripped out electronic drums, gnarled riffs, finishing off with a pretty mighty two-fer, the brief but hooky "Gliderz", with it's melted lysergic fuzz guitar, warbly tape speed, and twisted melodies, and he 7+ minute "Bleak Vacations", a Velvets style blues jangle hypno jam, mesmerizing and spaced out, stripped down and dreamily druggy.

And you thought other Psychedelic Horseshit records were lo-fi, whoooeee, then this collection of out of print cd-rs and tapes, from way back in the band's early days must be NO-fi, or shit-fi, or whatever the next step down is. But damn if this stuff doesn't sound just as good, short sharp bursts of punked up garage pop and indie jangle, caked in filth and hiss and crackle and buzz. Tin can and twine vocals, garbage can lid drums, fuzzy transistor radio bass, warped Casio organ warble and crappy practice amp guitar crunch, all woven into some seriously classic sounding fractured pop, thing Guided By Voices if instead of being raised on British Invasion bands, it was Pavement and Sebadoh and all that killer nineties lo-fi indie rock. Catchy and quirky and surprisingly lush here and there, and not surprisingly UN-lush everywhere else. Some of their best songs for sure, the grit and grime only adding to the magic of these lo-fi noise pop miscreants. Total proto-shitgaze genius!

As sad as it is for us to say, it's it may just be about time that that THEE prime purveyors of 'shitgaze' should be forced to give up that charming sobriquet, considering this is their least shitty sounding record yet (and we mean that in a good way). Ohio's Psychedelic Horseshit leave the four track behind and record in a proper studio for the first time, and while the results are pretty spectacular, they're far removed from their shitty older recordings (and again, we mean that in a good way). All of the core elements are present, the jangly guitars, the warbly fuzzy organs, the loose simple drummings, the off kilter boy/girl harmonies, the crazy catchy songs, but here they're presented in high fidelity (at least by PH standards), the sound lush and a little reverby, if you didn't know this band was in fact called Psychedelic Horseshit, you might think it was some new group on Kill Rock Stars or Slumberland, so if buzz and hiss and noise was what was keeping you from digging into PH's killer back catalog, then this is definitely for you, the songs are clear and sunshiney and jangly, the vocals dreamy, the sound reverby and softly fuzzy, the songs still great, in fact, this might be their best batch of songs yet, but fear not, there's still plenty of glitchy shitgaze-isms that wouldn't cut it on most pop records, tape drop outs here and there, the sound slipping into the red and peaking in places, the tape speed shifting now and again, the actual performance, loose and ramshackle, but fuck all the haters who are lamenting PH's new less lo-fi direction, as much as we love those old records, we might even love this one more. With every listen, more and more of these songs blossom into new faves, and we find ourselves spinning this like CRAZY, which is really the ultimate test. Fans of all stripes of ramshackle pop will love this, and might even be convinced to dig deeper into Psychedelic Horseshit's shitgazier past...

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Another band we were in love with before we heard a single note of music. C'mon, they're called Psychedelic Horseshit! And they're on Siltbreeze. And they sound almost exactly how we imagined, only BETTER. Willfully noisy and chaotic, snotty, snarky and blown out, in the red, a complete feedback drenched dissonant pop shamble, it's like a mad scientist beneath some mountain top somewhere, discovered the gene for the Siltbreeze sound and injected it into these guys when they were babies, ensuring that they would blossom into this, perfectly fucked up freaked out noise drenched pop miscreants. And pop is the key here. Cause these guys at their core are a kick ass pop band. Little nuggets of crunchy jangle, but dipped in filthy amp buzz, and rolled in busted casio beats, doused with liquid LSD, plugged into an amp with a blown speaker, set up on a street corner, and blasted into the empty street at midnight in the pouring rain. The clatter and clang of old Pussy Galore, yelped distorted vocals, like a punk rock Dylan, that whiny drawl, all around it crumbling distorted bursts of psychedelic guitarnoise, a totally damaged snarling lo-fi punk rock jangle, like the Strokes via the Strapping Fieldhands. Or the Dead C covering Pavement. A glorious, chaotic, hook filled crust pop mess. Awesome.

MPEG stream: Nothing Is Revealed
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You gotta love Psychedelic Horseshit. First off, the name. And of all the new breed of 'shitgaze' bands, the super lo-fi noisy pop outfits that seem to be popping up with remarkable regularity, PH are the only ones who continually manage to sound more fucked up and lo-fi while managing to at the same time sound tripped out and impossibly lush. Some jangly out of tune guitar will wrap itself around some deadpan vocals, some stumbling almost tribal drumming, lots of tape hiss, even some dropouts that sound like maybe they recorded on an old cassette tape they found in the back seat of the tour van, until suddenly they'll bust out with a blown out glimmering wall of progged out arena keyboard bliss, all wozzy and warbly but soaring and totally retardedly majestic. And then they slip right back to their Pavementy lo-fi lurch and stumble, before whipping out another insanely catchy hook, or burst of musical nirvana. As much as we love the SOUND, and lots of the bands who now practice it, Psychedelic Horseshit still manage to sparkle like a dirty diamond in a sea of even dirtier diamonds. According to the sleeve, these are B sides from the forthcoming full length, and hell, if these are the album rejects, we can't wait to hear the jams that made the cut! WAY recommended.

This is some great spacey rock! Something so confident and seamless about these songs and their delivery. There is this great ability to be spaced out and rock out all at once. Like they are channeling the legacy of Spacemen 3, Psychic Ills have made one of the most striking and satisfying guitar centered records of this young year. We love how they take from both the forefathers of psych as well as the seductive and slightly drugged out sounds of post-punk luminaries like Joy Division and Psycho Candy era Jesus & Mary Chain. The record has not one lull or weak moment. Songs flow right into each other. Whether they are swaying back and forth with a late night ease or turning up and blasting out bleached out melodies; they get it right with every twist and turn the record offers. We would love to see them tour with The Gris Gris as they both take a slightly different approach to psychedelic rock but share a level of excellence that's pretty hard to come by. Highly recommended!

MPEG stream: East
MPEG stream: January Rain
MPEG stream: I Knew My Name

Early last year we fell head over heels for the Psychic Ills album Dins. It was some of the best post-punk gone spacey psych-rock with a punch we had heard in quite a while. What was even more impressive was how they seemed to have come out of nowhere. We had never heard them before so we just assumed that Dins was their debut. We later found out that in fact they had released a couple EPs before, but there was no way we were able to get our hands on them as they were very limited 12"s called Mental Violence I and Mental Violence II. Those two 12"s make up this reissue along side some previously unreleased tracks. While not drastically different in sound than Dins, these recordings are a little more raw and primitive sounding. While there are countless bands influenced by Joy Division, what's so nice about Psychic Ills is how they have translated that influence into their own sound. Instead of just focusing on doing a poor imitation of Ian Curtis' vocal stylings, they understand the sensuality and dark swirling lust that made Joy Division so special. This is almost how we imagine Interpol would sound if they were way more rough around the edges and allowed themselves to get lost in hypnotizing guitar and hazy melody. Kind of like Spacemen 3 practicing in a sparse basement with an 8-track, a strobe light and some really good weed. Umm... isn't that what Spacemen 3 did? Regardless, highly recommended!

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On the last Psychic Ills full length, these spaced out dronerock drifters has changed their sound pretty substantially, ditching much of their Spacemen 3 worshipping drugginess and spaced out rocking for something that we had heard folks calling "doomtronica", which we have to say, we found pretty appealing, but on this latest one, they seem to have mellowed out a bit and returned to the shadows, unfurling song after song of smoldering slo-mo shimmer, all muted guitar strum, hushed vox, whirring organs, super spare percussion (what sounds like bongos), and coolest of all, what sounds like a reverb drenched jaw harp (!), which plays the solo on opener "Midnight Moon". And while "Mind Daze" picks up the pace a bit, it's really only just a bit, a hazy softly propulsive shuffle, all woozy and laid back, sort of stonery and later night feeling, but with some thick, buzzing distorted guitar woven in, adding a thick patina of scorched psychedelia to the proceedings. And so it goes, the record was definitely perfectly titled, cuz this does sound like a Hazed Dream, and the song titles: "Sungaze", "Incense Head", "Mind Daze", "Dream Repetition" definitely further hints at what's in store for the listener, a dark brooding fuzzy spaced out psychedelia, that sounds like Wooden Shjips after downing a mess of downers, and speaking of "Dream Repetition", it's only two minutes, but what a gorgeous chunk of layered psychedelic guitar drone, churning and undulating SUNN-like rumble wrapped around gauzy organ shimmer and some strange processed barely-there rhythms. So good. A practically perfect collection of dreamy druggy late night bliss out come down jamz for sure...

MPEG stream: Midnight Moon
MPEG stream: Mind Daze
MPEG stream: Incense Head

We were big fans of previous outings by the Psychic Ills, which were dark and rocking Spacemen 3 and Joy Division inspired late night stompers. With Mirror Eye they have totally switched gears. No longer sounding much like a rock band but instead tapping into an even darker disposition. We heard one local journalist refer to the record as doomtronica, and we got to say that's pretty well put. With long songs that are much more concerned with atmosphere and space then with bringing the rawk. (Though you could say they bring the krautrock, here.) In lots of ways it reminds us of a similar shift that one of our favorite bands, Unwound made with what would be their last album, Leaves Turn Inside You, where they deftly added electronics and much spacier elements to create a totally stunning album. We imagine that Psychic Ills have been getting entranced by the drone as of late as well as the early years of Cabaret Voltaire. While we have to admit, we do miss the rocking-out moments, but only because they did it so well, but heck, there's lots to get lost in and space out to on this album, which will for sure please any and all ears that have an appreciation for drones with a burning, brooding disposition.

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MPEG stream: Eyes Closed
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Via Sacred Bones, here's another dose of sensual, spacey post-punk psych pop from this Brooklyn band, who remain in a mostly laidback mode for this recording, nobody's breaking a sweat here, but the fuzz n' throb still does its job. Nicely head-nodding, full of languid dreaminess, torpid grooves, spacious stoner jangle, and occasional moments of almost-rocking. One-track mind is right - the title to their previous album, 2011's Hazed Dream, could do for this one just as well, better actually as this is a mellower trip. Neil Hagerty (Royal Trux, Howling Hex, etc.) produces and provides some backing vox, and certainly does nothing to interfere with this record's zoned out pop vibe. Which is good 'cause we like it just like it is.

MPEG stream: One More Time
MPEG stream: See You There
MPEG stream: Might Take A While

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

SORRY.

NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!! This former record of the week available on lp for the first time... Over the years, there have been plenty of records that have become AQ hallmarks, the Conet Project, a quadruple disc of short wave spy transmissions, The Ghost Orchid, EVP recordings of the voices of long lost loved ones as intercepted via radio waves, the Thai Elephant Orchestra, a real live elephant gamelan, and of course Laddio Bolocko, a rock group that made the most beautiful white hot, black hole noise we had ever heard, a seriously jaw dropping blast of superdistorted, ultra complex, psychedelic prog rock freak out. When LB disbanded, half the band went on to form Electric Turn To Me, a curious neo-cabaret act complete with icy campy female vocals and a sort of new wave Krautrock sound. Definitely interesting but not at all what we were hoping for from a post LB outfit. So along comes The Psychic Paramount, featuring the -other- half of Laddio Bolocko, guitarist and bassist Drew St. Ivany and Ben Armstrong, joined by the drummer from Sabers, and it is EVERYTHING we could have hoped for and more. It's like they took Laddio Bolocko and just smashed it to bits, reassembling all the parts into a gorgeously Frankesteinian blown out, fuzzed out psych rock, bizarre and beautiful, chaotic and always on the verge of falling apart. The record starts off with almost three minutes of dreamy, noisy, backwards psychedelic bliss out, equal parts My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Filmstars, keening hyperdistorted guitars, dreamy sunsoaked melodies, that awesome percussive fthhhhp sound of backwards drumming, all in supercharged splattery Technicolor swirl. The rest of the record is some sort of outerspace Krautrock, where the order of the day is still hypnotic and motorik, but this is not Neu! or Faust, not unless you took those guys, lit them on fire and launched them into space! Guitars careen and wail and keen and shriek, slipping fluidly from gorgeous melodic runs to full on fiery freakouts, all over a thick snarled bed of throbbing serpentine bass and ultra distorted drums (recorded so hot that every hit sends the needle even MORE into the red). This is like an indie rock Last Exit, or a more freaked out metallic This Heat. It's not just noise and pummel though, these are killer songs, the guitar parts especially, not only are they so complex and confusional they make you think this band must have at least three guitarists to whip up this sort of squall, but they are totally hook laden, which they sort of have to be as The Psychic Paramount are all instrumental. You'll totally find yourself anticipating certain riffs and licks, like you would your favorite line in a normal song. This record effortlessly steps all over pretty much every record in its path, it's not metal but manages to be way heavier than half the metal we hear, it's not really prog, but it's so much more complex and, well, progressive than nearly ANYTHING we've heard, and on top of everything, it's totally catchy, and noisy, and weird. It's really weird. Lots of that is just the sound of the record. In fact the recording is as important as the drums or the guitar or the bass. Ultra blown out, drenched in organic fuzz and room noise, super hot and in your face, with occasional tape drop outs and natural reverb and recording level abuse that adds a whole 'nother layer to the already dense sounds herein. The record finishes off with a completely confounding, but totally killer one two punch. "X-Visitations" is a ten minute free noise dirge, equal parts, SUNNO)))-like rumble and Sunroof!-like shimmer, that just sort of slithers and vibrates. The final track, "Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural", starts off as a jazzy shuffle, building slowly in intensity and distortion, until it's a roiling relentlessly propulsive pummel, before it just cuts out suddenly, only to burst back into motion after an entire minute of silence! So awesome.

MPEG stream: Megatherion
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MPEG stream: Echoh Air

Years and years and years ago, we first heard this band called Laddio Bolocko, who pretty much instantly became one of our favorite bands ever, and whose records became one of those aQ staples, a record we tried to always carry, and would always recommend to folks, because those guys KILLED. Totally epic, heavy, super intricate, droned out hyper distorted, in-the-red post This Heat sort of math rock psychedelia. We described them way back as "A modern day This Heat, but with bigger amps, more lo-fi production, free-jazz scud missile saxophone, unlikely melodies, relentless rhythms, ear-ringing dynamics and a sound unlike anything you've ever heard." Sounds pretty incredible, and it was. The band called it quits, and we were heartbroken, until 2/3 of the late great LB resurfaced as a band called Psychic Paramount, who essentially ditched the sax, and cranked up EVERYTHING else. A lean and mean power trio, guitar, bass and drums, but the sound these guys conjure up sound like three times that, each track is an explosive hyper rhythmic blowout, the slips deftly from mesmerizing motorik churn, to white noise soaked freakout and back again. The opening track here doesn't bother to ease you in, instead they hurl you kicking and screaming into a chaotic swirl of loose and wild free jazz drum splatter, soaring clouds of chiming guitars, lots of low end buzz and high end skree, but then after a minute the band settle into a riff, and then BAM, they're off, a churning, chugging, mathed out, soaring hypnotic psych kraut math rock blowout, like This Heat meets Don Caballero meets Faust meets Fushitsusha, the guitars epic and so heavy, the drums somehow bashing their way through the din, like a WAY less restrained Circle, just total dronerock epicness, and then the band switch gears once again, the guitars muted, the bass sinewy, the drums so solid, a chugging noisy krautrock workout, that builds again to another even more frenzied climax, before slipping into a super intense, almost robotic groove, the drums holding down a simple rhythm, over a thick droning buzz and muted rhythmic guitar chitter, and what sounds like weird processed wheezing chords, the song gradually seeming to get more and more warped and off kilter, until it just stops, leaving a hazy contrail of layered high end harmonies... And then it's right back into it, a bit of hushed crystalline shimmer sprawls beneath some spidery guitars and some shuffled almost jazzy sounding drums, pretty blissy and krauty for a couple minutes before a weird super distorted drum fill and then the song explodes into an impossibly blown out metallic churn, before slipping right back into that shimmery kraut groove, and so it goes, the track lurching from blissy to brutal and back again. The rest of the record follows suit. Less about songs, and melody, more about texture, and tempo, timbre and arrangement, these are physical songs, anyone whose seen these guys play, can attest to the fact that this is about as intense as rock music gets, people gather around the band wide eyed and slackjawed as they create this very same sound live. The record never lets up, it's almost like Mick Barr if he was raised on nineties math rock and seventies krautrock, the songs white hot blasts of intricately arranged avant math rock mesmer, even when the band seems to be doing something simple, close listening reveals, the tempos are definitely off kilter, the rhythms deceivingly intricate, and the guitar is doing the work of an army of guitars, the bass driving the songs but also adding all sorts of texture, these guys really are pretty much the only real successors to the legacy of This Heat, but they've boiled that sound into something more focused and singular, a blown out, heady psychedelia, a modern krautrock that manages to forge its own super unique, idiosyncratic path through a world of same sounds, creating a fantastically exhausting, totally exhilaratingly punishing, noise rock / math rock / post rock / krautrock hybrid, that literally sounds like nobody else.

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Long time list readers and aQ customers know just how much we loved the now defunct Laddio Bolocko. And just how excited we were when half of Laddio Bolocko resurfaced in The Psychic Paramount, displaying a sound that somehow managed to be the perfect extension of what LB were doing when they called it quits along with a healthy dose of some all new shit that took all the things we loved about Laddio to impossible to imagine extremes. Laddio Bolocko was like a super distorted, blown out, mathrock Krautrock band. Repetitive, propulsive, complex, heavy, but weird as fuck! And actually we would probably use the same set of words to describe PP. But PP has a more looped quality, less jammy, more psychedelic, if that makes any sanse. The sound is close enough that EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO BOUGHT THE LADDIO BOLOCKO SHOULD OWN BOTH THIS AND THE PSYCHIC PARAMOUNT FULL LENGTH. Seriously. Allan and Andee got a chance to see Psychic Paramount a few months back, and we were transfixed, standing by the side of the stage, slack jawed and wide eyed. Loving it, but at the same time trying to figure out how the fuck these guys make those sounds. It was really that amazing. They somehow managed to out heavy Khanate (who were also playing) while still managing to be dense and complex and weirdly catchy. They sound like a heavy metal This Heat! The most amazing part was the band locked into an impossibly furious freak out, when the bass player just stopped playing and packed up his stuff and walked off stage. A few minutes later the drummer stopped, broke down his whole kit and then walked off stage. The whole while, the guitar player is at the front of the stage, in a manic, eyes-closed trance, unfurling massive super distorted loops and dense washes of sound that sounded like there was still a whole band up there. A few minutes later, the guitarist put his guitar down, and it continued to churn out this heavy sludgy psychedelic loop, the stage totally empty, but a massive crowd frozen in place, watching the guitar laying on the stage as if there was a full band up there. After about ten minutes a super cute anime looking girl, short skirt and pigtails walked up on stage and shut off the guitar and the crowd went apeshit. That's what this cd sounds like. Exactly. And live! How the hell do they make these sounds LIVE? Huge swaths of looped guitar, impossibly amazing drummer, maybe one of the best drummers we've seen/heard in ages, there's one track on here where the bass and guitar drop out completely and the drummer just GOES for a few minutees and he somehow stirs up a din that sounds as dense and full and freaked out as the whole band playing. Some tracks are just full on blasts of NOISE, wild and dense, thick swirls of psychedelic sound, freaked out and chaotic, but even at its most noisy it's still so musical. Loud, weird, repetitive, hypnotic, mesmerizing, so so so good! Recorded live in 2002 in Europe. Packaged in a swank black digipak, it also includes a short film shot on tour that you can watch on your computer.

MPEG stream: Paris Pt. Two
MPEG stream: Ex-Visitations

Over the years, there have been plenty of records that have become AQ hallmarks, the Conet Project, a quadruple disc of short wave spy transmissions, The Ghost Orchid, EVP recordings of the voices of long lost loved ones as intercepted via radio waves, the Thai Elephant Orchstra, a real live elephant gamelan, and of course Laddio Bolocko, a rock group that made the most beautiful white hot, black hole noise we had ever heard, a seriously jaw dropping blast of superdistorted, ultra complex, psychedelic prog rock freak out. When LB disbanded, half the band went on to form Electric Turn To Me, a curious neo-cabaret act complete with icy campy female vocals and a sort of new wave Krautrock sound. Definitely interesting but not at all what we were hoping for from a post LB outfit. So along comes The Psychic Paramount, featuring the -other- half of Laddio Bolocko, guitarist and bassist Drew St. Ivany and Ben Armstrong, joined by the drummer from Sabers, and it is EVERYTHING we could have hoped for and more. It's like they took Laddio Bolocko and just smashed it to bits, reassembling all the parts into a gorgeously Frankesteinian blown out, fuzzed out psych rock, bizarre and beautiful, chaotic and always on the verge of falling apart. The record starts off with almost three minutes of dreamy, noisy, backwards psychedelic bliss out, equal parts My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Filmstars, keening hyperdistorted guitars, dreamy sunsoaked melodies, that awesome percussive fthhhhp sound of backwards drumming, all in supercharged splattery Technicolor swirl. The rest of the record is some sort of outerspace Krautrock, where the order of the day is still hypnotic and motorik, but this is not Neu! or Faust, not unless you took those guys, lit them on fire and launched them into space! Guitars careen and wail and keen and shriek, slipping fluidly from gorgeous melodic runs to full on fiery freakouts, all over a thick snarled bed of throbbing serpentine bass and ultra distorted drums (recorded so hot that every hit sends the needle even MORE into the red). This is like an indie rock Last Exit, or a more freaked out metallic This Heat. It's not just noise and pummel though, these are killer songs, the guitar parts especially, not only are they so complex and confusional they make you think this band must have at least three guitarists to whip up this sort of squall, but they are totally hook laden, which they sort of have to be as The Psychic Paramount are all instrumental. You'll totally find yourself anticipating certain riffs and licks, like you would your favorite line in a normal song. This record effortlessly steps all over pretty much every record in its path, it's not metal but manages to be way heavier than half the metal we hear, it's not really prog, but it's so much more complex and, well, progressive than nearly ANYTHING we've heard, and on top of everything, it's totally catchy, and noisy, and weird. It's really weird. Lots of that is just the sound of the record. In fact the recording is as important as the drums or the guitar or the bass. Ultra blown out, drenched in organic fuzz and room noise, super hot and in your face, with occasional tape drop outs and natural reverb and recording level abuse that adds a whole 'nother layer to the already dense sounds herein. The record finishes off with a completely confounding, but totally killer one two punch. "X-Visitations" is a ten minute free noise dirge, equal parts, SUNNO)))-like rumble and Sunroof!-like shimmer, that just sort of slithers and vibrates. The final track, "Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural", starts off as a jazzy shuffle, building slowly in intensity and distortion, until it's a roiling relentlessly propulsive pummel, before it just cuts out suddenly, only to burst back into motion after an entire minute of silence! So awesome.

MPEG stream: Megatherion
MPEG stream: Para5
MPEG stream: Echoh Air

Have you experienced The Psychic Paramount yet? If you get the chance, see 'em live, they're pretty much the ultimate in ultra-heavy, This Heat/krautrock inspired, interestingly rhythmic instrumental post-rock... An intense, very controlled freakout is how we'd paradoxically put it. They just played two nights at The Hemlock here in San Francisco, and boy were they good! On record, too, they're great. Last year's Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural was a HUGE fave 'round here, proving TPP to be worthy of the same high regard we had for their progenitors, the late great Laddio Bolocko. So of course we're excited about a new Psychic Paramount album! Well, to be precise, this is only sort of a "new" Psychic Paramount album, not exactly a follow up to Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural. That's 'cause this double disc set consists of material recorded solo by TPP founding member Drew St. Ivany. Disc one features his solo electric guitar live to stereo cassette recorded in France during 2001-2002, plus two tracks recorded in Brooklyn, 1996, on a four-track, Drew performing guitar, drums, tapes and organ like a one-man band. Disc two consists entirely of more solo guitar pieces Drew playing an electric-acoustic with loop pedal and effects, recorded in France, 2002. Guitars and loops -- shades of Robert Fripp or Ash Ra Tempel's Manuel Gottsching! Swooping, melancholic guitar lines, sometimes droning and churning, though a lot of this (especially the second disc) is rather more quiet and mellow and melodic compared to the full TPP band set we witnessed the other night! But still fantastic, of course. And there's plenty of jumbled sounds and scrambled chaos to disturb your placid listening, like we'd expect from these guys (or guy, in the case of this album). Another krautrocker that this brings to mind, besides Gottsching, is Achim Reichel, whose reissued albums we've so recently raved about. The four-track pieces on disc one could be a post-rock A.R. & Machines!! High praise indeed, from us!

MPEG stream: Solo Electric Guitar With Pre-recorded Drums
MPEG stream: Microphone II
MPEG stream: Soorcerer

A haunting, damaged and enchanting new musical endeavor/state of mind from local soundstress Leyna Noel. Using primitive and crumbling electronics, distorted murky guitar and captivating vocals, Noel taps into a very fuzzy, buzzy, witchy and sonically rewarding state of sound. The opening track "Omni" is noisy and deliciously disturbing, roaming in a territory similar to early Pocahaunted and recent Inca Ore, although the true show stopper is the next track which is a completely breathtaking adaptation of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come", here transformed into something that sounds both so modern yet timeless, spellbinding, hypnotic endearing. While her vocals are buried beneath many layers, the secret weapon and what really sets this apart from so many other like-minded warped/bedroom creations is that Leyna really does possess such an amazing and powerful voice, an instrument that she channels into a truly dense and tripped out atmosphere. Just under 15 minutes of music but a totally great introduction to what is no doubt just the beginning of what will be a long journey for Psychic Reality. Imagine what could happen if Grouper, Kuupuu and The Skaters joined forces and begin to get a glimpse into the exciting otherworld that Psychic Reality inhabits. There is also a new Psychic Reality cassette that we have in called Real/Chic that we hope to list next time but they might not last long so might be smart and grab one of those now as well.

MPEG stream: Change
MPEG stream: Omni

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

SORRY.

We almost thought we would never get to list this. When we first got it Vibrant New Age in stock, it flew out the door and we were never able to get enough copies back in to review, depriving us of the opportunity to gush about how much we love this album. Luckily we were finally able to get our hands on a stack of these, a record that ranks near the top of the list of the awesome sounds Not Not Fun has been releasing over the last few years by folks like Sun Araw, Ducktails, Maria Minerva, and LA Vampires. After a slew of limited run cassettes, cd-r's as well as splits with LA Vampires and Sex Worker, Vibrant New Age finds Psychic Reality really taking her sound to the next level. Stuttered synths and analog electronics creating a sound that blasts with radiant color and a warped left-field pop sensibility. In fact the record sort of sounds like what it might be like to show up at a late night dance party only to discover a secret side room filled with smoke, candles, and languid bodies brushing up against each other creating magical sparks that bring about a shift of energy. Like our favorite parts of Gang Gang Dance and Peaking Lights, or how we daydream a collaboration between Fever Ray, Throbbing Gristle and Lizzy Mercier Descloux would sound. Intoxicating, intense and full of a haunting potency. Jump on this fast, as we're not sure if we will be able to get more once this batch is gone.

Two-way split from these two weirdo soundscapers, the debut vinyl release for Leyna Noel, aka Psychic Reality, after a whole mess of super limited cd-r's and tapes. She lets it all hang out (on the naked sparkly cover too), spreading a clutch of interwoven songs over a whole side, letting them all blend into one organic whole. A dizzying mesh of primitive home brewed new wave avant pop, skittery looped rhythms and weirdly chantlike vocals, playful little almost-African sounding melodies, eventually adding a thick layer of buzzing feeding back guitar, a heaving, churning swirl, that sounds almost metallic, but at the same time weirdly poppy, that mechanical rhythm and Noel's soaring vox the link between the various movements. Blown out fractured cold wave noise pop gives way to hushed abstract ambient drift, which gives way to squalls of Eastern style skronk, and intense swells of howling caterwaul, a haunting intense Diamanda Galas / Lydia Lunch soul purging, only to slip back into a dark swirling abyss, tranquil and shimmery. LA Vampires are a whole different can of warped distorted musical worms, sounding more like a floorcore, underground noise version of Madlib, taking snippets of old tapes, dusty, scratched up records, adding lots of effects, random bits of noise, extra vox, all under a haze of tripped out lysergic crackle and hiss, a patina of bongsmoke and druggy warble, flutes flutter, voices flit, beats, lurch and shuffle, everything twisted and washed out, and seemingly melting very very slowly right before your ears, cool cool stuff for sure. LIMITED TO 450!! With awesomely sexy, sparkly, painted, hippy, nude cover art.

We managed to get a very small handful of this very limited, Not Not Fun, Bored Fortress series split, between Psychic Reality and Sex Worker (Daniel from Mi Ami). And what a nice slab of damaged and entrancing sounds it is. Sex Worker's side is a Blondie cover transported to an underworld within an underworld of sound that is both decaying and roaming in another orbit, which had us imagining Cupid Car Club remixed by Excepter, Replikants (that awesome Justin Trosper side project) or Black Dice. Psychic Reality continues to really come into their/her own as this track finds her bringing moments of beauty and sweetness into an overall fucked up and disorientating sound. Fresh off her split with LA Vampires, this finds her sound lurking somewhere between early Gang Gang Dance and a much more primitive version of what's been radiating out of the witch house scene as of late. We would gush even more but like we said we only have a handful of these and once they're gone they are GONE for good. So you know what to do....

We first heard Philly psychedelic shoegaze death rockers via their VHS tape (!) released on Video Horror Show, and as we mentioned in that review, the band describe themselves as sounding like "the time you saw your creepy metalhead brother at 80's night", which while hilarious is really pretty spot on. The guys are most definitely gloomy and gothy, thick Joy Division-y basslines, reverbed dramatic vox, all moody and minor key, but beyond that, they buck lots of gloom pop and goth rock convention by tethering that stuff to big muscled drum pound, clouds of wild psychedelic guitar freakout, not to mention dense distorted guitars, reminding us at time of Bailter Space, thus the shoegaze vibe, the result a sort of eighties death rock, cranked up and spaced out and metalized, in fact that Bailter Space comparison definitely taps into what makes us dig these guys so much, cuz in some ways, with the noisy guitars and thick bass, and the deep vox, they almost sound more like some super obscure Flying Nun band from the eighties, who put out one lp that no one really heard but that still pretty much destroys everything else you've heard. They also remind us of AmRep Aussies Kingsnakeroost and Lubricated Goat, that sort of noise rock blues stomp just gothed up a bit. Plus they pepper their gloomy crush with blasts of almost punk sounding crunch, which makes them seem even heavier when they slip back into the churn and pound. These guys must kill live, which definitely seemed to be the case from what we could discern from that VHS tape (of which we have a few copies left), and this record oozes the sort of live energy most recordings lack, which of course means this is WAY recommended, for fans of gloomy heaviness, metallic gothrock, psychedelic shoegaze deathrock and other sonically similar genres we just made up! Pressed on white vinyl, housed in a cool striking heart-art cover, with a big white 'x' affixed to the outer sleeve. Includes a download coupon as well!

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