[ aquarius records — Rock Pop ]

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Showing results 16051 through 16100 of 19388.

Newest in the Mort Aux Vaches series of live performances, here are four pieces from local boys Tarentel, in their best lineup -- when Trevor Montgomery and Jeff Rosenberg were still in the band -- during Holland's 1998 VPRO festival. If you've never heard Note: we got these straight from the band so they're relatively inexpenisive. All future copies we may carry will be more expensive.

RealAudio clip: When No One's Listening

Tarentel's 2004 album We Move Through Weather found the San Francisco's sonic journeymen balancing their penchant for moody atmospheres and a new found spirit of improvisation, which hurtled them somewhere near Jackie-O Motherfucker meets This Heat territory. In constructing that record, Tarentel had to sift through hours and hours of recordings in order to pare down to a mere 72 minutes. Well, they could have done the Supersilent or Necks thing of releasing a massive 3 or 4 cd set of material; but instead they chose to wait and publish two EPs (which both clock in well above 30 minutes each) of material that was not included on the We Move Through Weather album. Paper White is the four-song companion EP to the drone-rock epic EP Big Black Square. Strangulated post-Joy Division guitar chords jaggedly alternate with atonal Gastr Del Sol stabs of repeating clunky guitar melodies on top of the atypical marching percussion supplied by drummer Jim Redd. Tarentel fleshes out their skeletal sound with a subtle use of live Max-MSP patches and more conventional guitar pedals that actively transform their sounds into a aural kaleidoscope with muted colors and blue-gray hues. In comparison to Big Black Square, this could be constued as the "pop" side of Tarentel; but even so, this is a pretty avant-garde mutation of what pop music could be.

MPEG stream: Isalais Straight
MPEG stream: Paper White

AQ has previously praised the post-rock instrumental drama of popular local kids Tarentel. Certainly fans of Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and the like have found Tarentel quite enjoyable as well. Nearly two years after their stunning debut album, From Bone To Satellite, the band is back with The Order of Things, released on Neurosis' label Neurot. In addition to the traditional

RealAudio clip: Adonai
RealAudio clip: Ghosty Head

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

SORRY. Rare UK import limited to 500 copies, and we have only a few left. Local spacerock group that's been compared to everyone from Ennio Morricone to Mogwai. Emotional, stretched out music that makes you wait for the climaxes.

Very little has remained constant with San Francisco's Tarentel over their seven year existence. Revolving around two core members Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Danny Grodinski, the band has shifted from their original beginnings as a slowcore, post-rock trio to an explosive radioluminescent on their debut album From Bone To Satellite to the art rock experiments with absence on The Order Of Things. We Move Through Weather marks yet another transition for Tarentel, but perhaps what is remarkably diffferent about this album is that its inspirations are far more difficult to discern. All of the previous Tarentel albums wore their influences on their sleeves: Winsdor For The Derby, Mogwai, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Radiohead, Fennesz, Stephan Mathieu, etc. Here on We Move Through Weather, the spirit of This Heat is the only thing that's recognizable. Even so, Tarentel doesn't really sound like This Heat but they share a similar lust for adventurous and risky music. Sonna's Jim Redd has been moonlighting with Tarentel for sometime on the drums, bringing vertiginous, stumbling percussive patterns that are somewhat like Charles Hayward or Jaki Leibezeit. Around Redd's centering rhythms, Grodinski and Cantu-Ledesma fill the space with a sort of humid Bark Psychosis abstraction with sad sack piano melodies, haunting tape flutterings, and twin guitar drones. After so many years of reinvention, Tarentel have finally come out the shadow of mimesis and produced an emphatic album that is uniquely their own. Well done, boys!

MPEG stream: Hello! We Move Through Weather
MPEG stream: Get Away From Me You Clouds Of Doom
MPEG stream: A Cloud No Bigger Than a Man's Hand

The third in a new series of 7" singles from some very familiar names. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the first two volumes, one from local boys Tussle and the other from A sunny Day In Glasgow, and now this one, number three, comes from another bunch of local boys, Tarentel, who have been a bit quiet as of late, the various members pursuing their various solo projects, leaving us to enjoy little bits of Tarentel here and there, archival recordings mostly, as we wait patiently for a new full length. We recently reviewed Tarentel's Live Edits disc on Digitalis, a collection of, well, live edits from various performances, and one of the things we noticed was how rhythmic and almost heavy some of the performances were. The A side, here, or the North side, in keeping with the series theme, sounds like it could have come from the same performance, very drum heavy, a loping groove that sounds almost looped, as the drums are subtly effected and all around them swirl bits of feedback and blurred noise, very krautrocky, with that noisy backdrop surprisingly caustic at points, but just as often smoothed out into buzzing snarling dronescapes, still littered with jagged shards of feedback, and still hovering over that relentless rhythm. Turning South (to the B side) we find the band ditching the drums completely, for a brooding soundtracky drift, spidery abstract guitars, warm whirring buzz, lush smears of hazy ambience, subtle effects and mysterious rumblings, all woven into the theme music for some late night rainy day wander through some crumbling city, culminating in a haunting bit of cacophony, a corrosive blackened drone, that plays out to the very end of the side before suddenly blinking out. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Super simple, striking covers, mint green vinyl!

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SORRY. An impressive debut from this delicate spacy local group that is very reminiscent of Low and the good stuff from Kranky. A hidden bonus track features a great electronica reworking by Arrow.

Yet another collaboration between local filmmaker Paul Clipson, and musician and Root Strata co-head honcho J.C. Ledesma (although the first three of the previous collaborations were with Ledesma solo, so technically this is the first one with the whole band) and it's another fantastic feast for the eyes and the ears. Clipson is a master of Super 8, his films more about light and shadow than the particular images, street lights, lit buildings, reflections of the moon or the sun on bodies of water, all become streaks and blurs, trains racing by, escalators, street signs, are examined close up and become textures, moving designs, Clipson often layers image upon image creating lush tapestries of dense visuals, sometimes high contrast, sometimes colorful and saturated, here, the first film is a nighttime cityscape, but rendered city-less in Clipson's able camera, instead a series of shapes and lights and textures, visuals that play like a score to some late night symphony, Tarentel offer up an equally busy sonic backdrop, mostly percussion, a tribal wash of toms and the occasional flurry of snare, shrouded by soft distant shimmers, looped guitars, also blurred and smeared, all very abstract and ethereal, a perfect match for the visuals. The second film, Over Water, begins with shots of rivers reflecting the sunlight, photographed from a plane, clouds, edged by sunlight, a constantly shimmering slideshow of water in its various forms, already gorgeously abstract, with no help from Clipson, although he edits them and occasionally superimposes to create even more abstract impressions of water, the music this time around is equally hushed, no drums, just shimmery guitars, distant loops, lots of textural buzz, and warm barely there whirs, super delicate and dark. Finally, Tuolumne finishes off the program, the visuals impressionistic, close ups of what seems to be leaves and water, slow moving streams filmed with bubbles and a strange white scum that makes gorgeous patterns as it floats atop the nearly black water, branches offer a high contrast foreground, Tarentel counter with the most active of their scores, a muted insectoid buzz, drifting atop a deep thick smoldering thrum, which builds to a gorgeous almost metallic crescendo. Gorgeous packaging too, sort of mimicking Clipson's films, light dappled vellum, yellow on a warm brownish backdrop, that folds over and into itself, a small Xeroxed insert inside, and like the first three installments, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!

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

SORRY. Tarentel "Sets And Rises". Lilienthal "Rises And Sets". Two new songs exclusive to this release, limited to 500 copies. Tarentel, you may already know, play majestic instrumental post rock. Lilienthal, the electronic solo project from New Yorker Arrow Kleeman, are similar in prettiness and mood to Boards of Canada.

Decemberists alert! This was Colin Meloy's band before the Decemberists that not many people got to hear. Maybe if you were really on top of the Montana indie-rock scene of the late '90s you have one of their releases that were limited to a couple hundred copies. But if you are like us, maybe you missed the boat on them the first time around, but thanks to the popularity of his current band the all out of print recordings of Tarkio have been unearthed on this two-cd set. There is no mistaking Meloy's voice and lyrical stylings with Tarkio but with a more Midwestern/salt-of-the-earth, less Victorian and dramatic delivery. In fact this reminds us so much of early and mid-era R.E.M. which ain't a bad thing at all. And his Robyn Hitchcock-like delivery was in full effect as well. Had they been on a label like Merge, Alias, or Matador they would have been staples of college radio but their location and lack of distro kept them pretty much a Missoula secret. A must have for Decemberists enthusiasts!

MPEG stream: Keeping Me Awake
MPEG stream: Save Yourself

What's this? Maybe the cover, all-black but for the name Tarkus, caught your eye? Holy grail time here, people. We've been wanting to get this album on cd FOREVER. There was a hard-to-find LP reissue some years ago, but we'd never yet found a cd version -- until now, at last, and it's a totally legit one from the master tapes! Released (barely, in an edition of just, like, 50 copies) in Tarkus' native Peru back in 1972, this is an album to go down in the annals of heavy rock, proudly belonging to the pantheon of proggy proto-metal!!! We'd definitely rank this with favorites of ours in that truly cult realm, other early '70s stuff like Necronomicon and Night Sun and Eduardo Bort and Steamhammer's Speech! It may be that they're named after the ELP's 1971 album Tarkus (you know, the one with that freaky armadillo/tank on the cover), but they don't sound much like ELP in any event. While progressive rock is part of their sound, this Tarkus come across more like a bizarro hybrid of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and some of the more out-there and baroque Italian prog outfits of the era, rather than ELP. It's music that's dark and doomy and powerful and psychedelically dosed, sometimes with really weird operatic vocals -- and always with about a zillion cool, heavy guitar riffs. It's meant to be played LOUD. Shouldn't be hard to comply! With some very pretty melodies and acoustic moments, Tarkus somehow seem like a '60s garage psych act (which they previously were, Tarkus being formed by members of Peruvian psych-pop group Telegraph Ave.) in possession of a crystal ball that enabled them to gaze into the future to be anachronistically inspired by Black Sabbath's Sabotage album, which was released three years later in 1975 (we'll have to assume that crystal ball had a place to plug in earphones). This comes packaged in a gatefold, miniature LP styled sleeve. There's a folded color insert, another black and white lyric sheet, and also separate liner notes in both Spanish and English, which make mention of the band dressing like monks when they made one of their rare live appearances. And by the way, we'd somehow suspect that Portland's Danava have heard this record. If not, they should -- we think they'd like it! And we think you will too, if any of the above raving and referencing strikes a chord!

MPEG stream: El Pirata
MPEG stream: Team Para Lilus

This underground, Down Under band's first disc, which mostly collected tracks from their cassette EPs, really wowed us last year (landing the number two spot on Allan's 2015 Top Ten, in fact), with their highly enjoyable retro facsimile of early '70s keyboard-driven symphonic proto-metal, a la Deep Purple, Rainbow, and especially the very 'humble, very 'eavy Uriah Heep - what we termed Musty Tasmanian Wizard Rock! Tarot have now returned with their first proper full-length album, and heaping helpings of Heep are still on the menu, with lots of pomp and majesty, heavy Hammond organ riffing, as well as folky acoustic guitars and mellowed-out choruses. Aside from Heep and the like, we're also reminded of the arcane old school metal of Pagan Altar and Manilla Road - the latter especially due to the nasal delivery of the band's vocalist, who is also the frontman for eccentric sludgy, Sabbathy doom faves The Wizar'd, here taking a much more mystical, rainbow-hued, progtastic path to olde tyme metallic glory!

MPEG stream: Heed The Call
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The wizened seer tentatively flips the last card, her eyes illuminated by the dancing firelight. Her eyes widen as she gasps, before letting out a croaking grotesque cackle. "In your future... I see... MUSTY TASMANIAN WIZARD ROCK!" Well, congratulations! It must be your (Magician's) birthday, because no finer fate can await gods nor men than the prospect of delving into this arcane helping of mystical, mythical, organ-driven heavy folk prog from far off Tasmania. The Warrior's Spell comes hurtling across the astral plane courtesy of Tasmania's Heavy Chains Records (undoubtedly one of our fave new sources for weird & wonderful heavy rock and metal, along with Minotauro, having recently brought us the Outcast ep and latest The Wizar'd album), and conjures all of the torchlit corridor mystery & dusty crumbling aroma of some of our favorite proto-metal, proto-doom & witchy folky proggy rock bands, all swirling Hammond organ, plucked acoustic strums, seriously epic heavy riffing, plaintive flutes & distant nasal vocal prophecies. Uriah Heep is obviously a major touchstone here, the album title and cover clearly paying homage to the technicolor fantasy wonder-realm of Heep's 1972 opus The Magician's Birthday specifically. But just us clearly one can hear the sepia-toned Medieval echoes of Rainbow and the crackly mournful dirge of Pagan Altar. Tarot also shares their vocalist with another one of our favorite obscure quirky heavy acts, The Wizar'd! And while here he sounds significantly less theatrical and maniacal than in his other wilder doomed project, his more restrained approach in Tarot lends the music a much more sombre, majestick, archaic air. Very highly recommended for fans of all of those aforementioned groups as well as anything from early Wishbone Ash to Witchcraft to Comus to The Lamp Of Thoth to the Darkscorch Canticles compilation. Consider us well and truly... under the spell!!!

MPEG stream: The Watcher's Dream
MPEG stream: Street Lamps Calling
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This dynamic Bay Area duo continue onwards and upwards into the stratosphere of terrific music making with their latest release, Nests Of Waves And Wire. After 2006's Us Upon Buildings Upon Us left our ears wonderfully tangled in its wild mathiness and quick twists, we still have to admit we're a bit happy to hear Tartufi bringing back some of their earlier poppiness. This is really really good! Just as ambitious as its predecessor and perhaps even more fully realized. Lynne Angel and Brian Gorman really let their creative juices flow. Each of the seven tracks are impressively multilayered and detailed musical journeys incorporating elements of prog, post-rock, psych (yup, all the good stuff!) - particularly the almost thirteen minute long awesome third track "Engineering" and the final "Hole Or Space". Most are feverishly propulsive and highly rhythmic with vocals chanted and howled in hypnotic cycles. That said, the fifth song "System Folds" does brings a bit of calm to the otherwise breathless proceedings! Recommended.

MPEG stream: Fear Of Tall Giraffes, Fear Of Some Birds
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Tartufi's second cd is simply burstin' with energy and confidence. We still stand by our previous comparison of this Bay Area band (which we made with regards to their six-song EP Westward Onward) to what you might imagine a collaboration between Jody Bleyle (Team Dresch, Hazel) and Rob Crow (Heavy Vegetable, Pinback) sounding like. Sounds pretty darn good to you, don't it? As well, some of their new songs are very much along similar lines as the recent Electrelane album Axes. Hope that doesn't sound like we're oversimplifying things. Really, we're just tryin' to say that Tartufi's music is packed with all the good stuff: a solid emotive pop core, infectious hooks, smartly crafted, challenging twists and strong female vocals. And they just keep gettin' better. Recommended!

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Bay Area indie pop trio Tartufi have reached across the ocean to release a four-song EP with the Spainish label Acuarela... and we're glad to hear the word is spreading on this terrific band. If you've dug their intelligent, well-crafted first two cds So We Are Alive and Westward Onward then this will surely be a welcome treat too. Pop tunes played primarily on the straight-forward instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums (okay, there's a little piano, synthesizer and xylophone too), but with lots of plot twists (melodic, rhythmic and tempo-wise) to keep things interestin' and movin' along at a spritely clip. Check 'em (all) out!

MPEG stream: Slow Man
MPEG stream: Nurses

Now that they're a duo instead of a trio, SF's Tartufi have shifted their focus away from punchy pop hooks and towards a more epic and expansive punk/prog/pop exploration. The news has created some division around here between those who totally thought their old incarnation was pretty darn great and let down by their new direction; and those who think their old sound was good but a tad derivative and find their new direction amazing, ambitious and refreshingly their own. Perhaps this division would have been better resolved with a new name for their new sound, but what's done is done. Singer and guitarist, Lynne Angel and drummer, Brian Gorman with the help from Tim Green (of The Fucking Champs) have crafted a mathy stew of beauty and noise with vocals that are at times both angelic and damning with turn-on-a-dime changes, majestic sweeps, soft interludes, and only a touch of over-indulgence. The acrobatics that Angel brings doubly to the guitar and her voice have to be seen live to be believed, where they seriously sound like a four piece with a choir. While their new sound to some of us is definitely less immediately engaging than their old sound and may take a little getting used to, we think there will be plenty of fans, love and support for their new shift in focus. Rock on!

MPEG stream: Mourning's Wake
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The introduction to new SF duo Tartufi comes in the form of this six song EP. From the get go, Westward Onward brings to mind the power pop smarts of bands such as Jody Bleyle's Hazel and Team Dresch or any one of Rob Crow's many incarnations (that is, if he were a she). Very energetic and emotive with lots of lilting vocal counter melodies (which Cup's a total sucker for!). A little amusing side note: if you put this album's cover side by side with that of Adult.'s Anxiety Always, you get a complete picture of a car.

MPEG stream: Los Lomos
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Excellent album! Tarwater come out of a very fertile German electronica meets rock scene, one which has also sprouted To Rococo Rot and Kreidler, both big AQ faves. You want details? OK -- Tarwater is the duo of Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram. Ronald and brother Robert are in To Rococo Rot along with Stefan Schneider who is in Kreidler and who also lends his keyboard sound to Tarwater on a track here. Jestram has engineered a couple of To Rococo Rot's recordings. This close proximity has resulted in a some amazingly beautiful records from all three of these groups, and as a whole they just keep bettering themselves for our delight. Dwellers On The Threshold is one of the very best of the bunch. Just gorgeous! About half instrumental, the album's vocal tracks feature Lippok's vocals which are a morose sort of talk / sing murmur that reminds me of Tindersticks. Several of the tracks feature bittersweet strings and the exact same lush plucked harp-sounding thing that made the last Kreidler record Eve Future so stunning. There's lots and lots of serenely picked guitar amongst the programmed beats that don't call too much attention to themselves; rather it's the melody and songwriting that stand out. And the whole thing runs on a consistently stately pace. Really well done. Highly recommended, especially if you're a fan of the Notwist, Fridge, Tindersticks, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, etc. A big fave of Windy and Allan.

RealAudio clip: 1985
RealAudio clip: Be Late
RealAudio clip: Metal Flakes

As we've said before, we've both loved and not-loved-quite-so-much past releases from the modern day kraut-tronica duo of Robert Lippok (To Rococo Rot) and Bernd Jestram. But overall we like 'em pretty well. So we're sorry we didn't get around to listing this disc when it came out... last year... since it's certainly a nice enough entry in the ever so textural Tarwater discography. We particularly dig the track that sounds like underwatery video game music, sonar pings in a soundscape of moodiness...

MPEG stream: A Marriage In Belmont
MPEG stream: Lower Manhattan Pantoum

Tarwater, the German postrock/electronica duo featuring a member of To Rococo Rot, has had their ups and downs with their fans here at AQ. If you look back at our reviews of their several previous albums you'll find some we rave about and some we pan. Their last full-length, Dwellers On The Threshold, got a rave. So does that mean that this new one, their first for new label Morr Music, is bound for the downswing? Or are they at last on a steady upward trajectory with us? Well if you're a fan by now you've probably made up your own mind 'cause this has been out for a little while now. But for what it's worth, we like this one. The unique Tarwater charm -- the combination of bloodless vocals and mellow beats and instrumental textures -- does it for us again. Relaxed, pretty, downtempo stuff for the most part. With the aid of various guests, Tarwater's Robert Lippok and Bernd Jestram have come up with 14 songs that (as always) blend "live" instruments and singing and electronics into a variety of melodic, moody soundscapes and low-key synthpop tunes. There are some more upbeat numbers with percolating rhythms but the vocals are never upbeat! Indeed, the singing remains the thing that is either going to make or break this for most listeners. Depends if you like their style of gently spoken-sung, kinda soft and dreary, English-language vocals. Their unexcitable, deadpan delivery would be easy to parody. But Tarwater's intimate, rainy-day electro-acoustic symphonics give this album human warmth. The Needle Was Travelling is mysteriously groovy, whilst being laid-back and droney too. It's modern-day krautrock after all. Some might like it better in an instrumental version, but Lippok's vocal limitations are for better or worse a key part of the Tarwater sound that we enjoy.

MPEG stream: Across The Dial
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Last time we were in New York, we managed to grab a single by this band, Taylor Bow, named for an infamous online porn site featuring videos posted by a disgruntled and spurned ex boyfriend, we heard it playing in a store, and had to buy it. An insanely furious and frenzied, blown out chunk of metallic punkness, or maybe punked out metal, either way, the speakers seemed to be melting and malfunctioning, spewing red hot daggers of sound, the vocals ultra distorted and in the red, the drums, total practice space boom and crunch, chaotic and unhinged, the guitars slipping from wild feedback soaked squalls, to churning Brainbombs-y sludge. So we of course tried to order a bunch, but it was the LAST copy. So we waited and waited, and our patience was finally rewarded with this, the first full length from NYC hardcore noise metal weirdos Taylor Bow, fronted, you might not be surprised to discover by Dom Fernow, of Prurient, Vegas Martyrs and Ash Pool among others. Taylor Bow features the same sort of lo-fi metal-punk noise drenched crush, but instead of blasting blackly, or exploding into sheets of white noise, TB slip back and forth between freaked out on-the-verge-of-collapse hardcore and looped sounding sinister dirges, that totally push all our Brainbombs buttons. The sound is red hot, blown out, brittle and brutal, but still thick and heavy, the vocals are super intense, which sometimes makes Taylor Bow sound like a way more rocking Whitehouse, but there are definite nods to the current crop of stripped down raw black metal, Fernow's Ash Pool for sure, but also stuff like Akitsa and Bone Awl. But even with that metal edge, this stuff is way more filthy and punky, and we're loving it. Released on the same label that brought us Ancestors and that Hallow record, which makes perfect sense, just more fucked up freaked out heaviness that we can't seem to get enough of. SUPER LIMITED of course, we may have the last 20 or so copies, so grab one while you can...

The Texan experimental pop chanteuse Lily Taylor crafts a supple, liminal album of abstract song matched with twinkingly electronics and rosy dronescaping. These songs are the candy colored variations on much of the narcotized lullabies that Liz Harris and Rachel Evans have been conjuring in recent years. Taylor keeps the wash and the slumbering blur, but arranges her songs with the soft electronic patter of twinkled, simple melodies that could easily be mistaken for something off of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol II. Her fullbodied voice extends well beyond this bed of electronics, getting looped, layered, and treated through various effects, often becoming a miasma of self-harmonizing repetitions and chorales, all lush and ethereal.

MPEG stream: Miss It
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Sunbeam brings us a lost classic of '60s modern British jazz, the 1965 debut as leader from ill-fated pianist Mike Taylor, who, at the tragic end of a drug-induded downward slide, died (drowned in the River Thames) just four years later in 1969 at age 30, after making only one other album. As a result, not too many folks have heard of him, although he was a major young talent on the scene while he was alive. Reissued on cd for probably the first time, remastered and with new liner notes as well as vintage photos in the cd booklet, Pendulum is a both an historically important release to pique the interest of jazz buffs with its promise and originality, and also a thoroughly enjoyable, melodic and moody listen for more casual jazz fans as well. Taylor eases us into his personal sound-world by stocking all the first side with well-known standards, including pieces by Gershwin and Gillespie, adding to 'em a level of avant-garde abstraction that mirrors the way his sometimes saturnine original compositions, which occupy the entirely of side two, possess a certain foot-tapping familiarity.

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MPEG stream: A Night In Tunisia

Five sunkissed, laidback pop songs make up this debut from this Bay Area singer/songwriter Mr. Steve Taylor. Very much along the lines of The Shins, Elliott Smith and Matthew Sweet... or the soft side of Sloan and The Posies... or perhaps actually reaching further back in the school of pop timeline there's a good deal of Big Star and '70s soft rock in there too.

MPEG stream: Trials
MPEG stream: If The Summer Should Change To Winter

Ghedalia Tazartes' Diasporas might be most famous at this point for being included on the infamous Nurse With Wound list, a list of artists that was included with NWW's 1979 classic album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, and was basically a list of musicians and groups that NWW head honcho Steven Stapleton was influenced by. Looking at it now, it almost reads like an aQ list: Agitation Free, Algarnas Tradgard, Zweistein, Iannis Xenakis, Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, Igor Wakhevitch, Ya Ho Wha 13, Taj Mahal Travellers, Supersister, Der Plan, Sperm, Achim Reichel, Moolah, Magical Power Mako, Basil Kirchin, Jan Dukes De Grey, Exmagma, Cromagnon, Crass, Il Balletto Di Bronzo and so many more. And Ghedalia Tazartes fits perfectly amidst such esteemed and such gloriously twisted company, a French ethno-experimentalist and composer, whose sound is a dizzying concoction of mysterious vocal chants, traditional gypsy folk music, bizarre sonic rituals, sound collages and tangled tape loops, his records playing out like alien field recordings, often layering multiple sound sources into twisted psychedelic freakouts. Diasporas, originally released in 1979 (recorded in 1977), is the perfect example of Tazartes' idiosyncratic sound, a thick layered stretch of multiple voices starts things off, his gypsy croon wailing over a lopped snippets of opera, as well as looped growls and, sampled strings, the sound building to a deafening crescendo, before settling into a strange bit of hypnodrone, with the operatic vocals relegated to a clipped pulse, the sampled strings creating a hauntingly repetitive melody, over which he mumbles and growls, the sound building and building until somehow it's just piano, and strangely processed voices stretched out into a swirling undulating drone. And it continues on in a similar fashion, each track beginning like some field recording, simple percussion, strange vocals, like some abstract alien world music, those voices underpinned by drones and murky loops, which seem to become more pronounced as the tracks progress. A few of the tracks to play out almost like straight folk music, but even then, there's something slightly off kilter, whether it's the production, the arrangement, or some subtle sonics lurking below the surface but it's never long before the sound returns to something much more twisted, be it some growled almost throat singing, blurred into a weird almost scat singing dronescape, or thick squalls of rumbling growls over which, samples are draped, and Tazartes' feral wail, or machine like loops and mechanical skitter wound around super passionate howls and looped baby talk. It's definitely WAY out there, but there's a reason even back in 1979 Stapleton had this on his list, cuz it's one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful and fantastically disturbing listens EVER.

MPEG stream: Un Amour Si Grand Qu'il Nie Son Objet
MPEG stream: La Vie Et La Mort Legendaire Du Spermatozoide Humuch Lardy
MPEG stream: La Berlue Je T'Aime
MPEG stream: Casimodo Tango

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MPEG stream: On The Walk To Crissy Field

So very sadly defunct, Portland, Oregon's Team Dresch empowered young women everywhere back in '94. And continue to do so with this feistily fantastic album as a document of their inspiring greatness. Some extraordinarily right-on raging music including the awesome "Fake Fight". Super catchy, driving and emotive dyke punk for everyone. All salute Kaia, Donna, Marci and Jody. A co-release on Jody's label Candy-Ass and Kaia's Chainsaw Records. Is that enough superlatives for ya?

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Combining the wonders of cEvin Key (of Skinny Puppy and Download to name but two of his many projects), Edward Ka-spel (of Legendary Pink Dots), Ryan Moore (aka Twilight Circus) and their cast of like-minded co-horts, it's Tear Garden. Rich, velvety, and hypnotic. Check out track 3 "In Search Of My Rose". If you like the more dub-tinged moments of the Pink Dots' album A Perfect Mystery (undoubtedly due to the bass and percussion presence of Mr. Moore), this earlier album is definitely for you. Gorgeous!

The only two proper albums released by The Teardrop Explodes have finally been reissued on one handy cd. Kilimanjaro (1980) and Wilder (1981) were the products of pop eccentric Julian Cope and band. While Kilimanjaro features upbeat, but also very strange, pop tunes borne of Cope's love of Krautrock, they were written by the full band and are thus a lot more straightforward and

RealAudio clip: Seven Views of Jerusalem
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When I (Andee) visited Finland a couple years ago, I was picked up at the airport by Circle frontman Jussi and former Circle drummer Peltsi. I was hustled into the car and we sped off. Jussi apparently had a surprise for me. Two hours later, with me jetlagged and barely awake, we pulled up to the local community center, where Circle and most of the bands in their town practice, and where they just happen to have a theatre. My surprise was the opening night performance of Circle / Kuusumun Profeetta vocalist Mika Ratto's new play Le Grande Anaale (The Giant Ass), the tale of a man who builds a giant ass, through which all sorts of demons escape into the city. The townsfolk are so mad, that they build a giant cock, place the builder of the ass in the cock and stuff the cock in the giant ass, keeping the demons safely in the ass. Phew. Wow. Hard to say how good it was, as I had just spent 10 hours on a plane, and then 2 hours in a car. But boy was it weird. A HUGE paper mache ass, with cheeks that slid apart like a sliding glass door, all red and evil and lit up from inside, and then a giant paper mache phallus made from what appeared to be a wheelbarrel! And basically everyone I knew in Finland was in the play in fake beards and powdered wigs, wearing wings or false noses, fake moustaches and bizarre costumes. Those who weren't in the play, supplied the music, which was quite cool. Dark and percussive, dramatic and spooky, occasionally goofy and jaunty. So now, a couple years later, we ALL can at least experience the sounds of Le Grande Anaale if not the sights. Omnious and macabre one moment, cacophonous and crazed the next...overall very atmospheric and striking. A good "what the heck are you listening to?" album that unexpecting listeners (your partner, housemates) might end up liking. Imagine a sinister Carl Stalling making music for a cult religious ceremony, or Goblin meets J.A. Caesar in a madhouse. Haunting strings drone, wind howls, bells chime, excited actors declaim in incantory voices. Probably a good thing that it's all in Finnish, too! English speakers will never guess its all about a giant ass. Key players here include not only the Circle singer Mika Ratto, but also two members of Magyar Posse. Presented in the usual lovely Fonal non-jewel case cd packaging.

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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. We only have about a dozen of these, a lucky warehouse find at one of our distributors, the awesome 1991 debut from Techno Animal, aka Kevin Martin (the Bug) and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, etc.), a grinding feral chunk of early industrial pound and crunch, all mixed up with long stretches of swirling dark dronemusic, tripped out dubbiness, haunting ethereal shimmer, Einsturzende Neubauten style junkyard clatter and clang and caustic sheets of Merzbowian hiss. Programmed beats, howled vox, churning low fidelity loops, buzzing blown out bass, buried samples... The first half of the record is pretty much what you might expect from an early nineties Godflesh sideproject, the heft and heaviness of Swans, but wrapped around strange machinelike beats, murky washed out ambience, old school samples and loops, but then around track five, "The Dream Forger" the record shifts gears, a sprawling drift of fluttery flute, a sort of new age-y soundscape all reverbed and blurred into gorgeous hazy streaks, only to explode back into churning lumbering industrial metallic crunch in the next track, a super blown out Skinny Puppy meets Cop Shoot Cop / Swans hybrid dirge, laced with wild skronky sax, only to lead directly into the misleadingly titled "God Vs Flesh", a 23+ minute expanse of deep tones, slow motion piano, distant tinkling chimes, a harrowing Lustmordian dronescape, that grows gradually more abrasive, but never erupts, instead remaining dark and drifty and menacing, before the punishing final track, "Spineless" a cloud of processed vocals, drenched in effects, layered and dense and weirdly and impossibly hypnotic. Definitely grab one of these while you can, one per customer obviously. Definitely for fans of Godflesh, the Bug, God, Ice, 16-17, Curse Of The Golden Vampire, and that whole nineties avant industrial / Pathological Records sound, and if you need even more incentive to get one of these before they're gone, good grief there's one of these cds selling on Amazon right now for $700!! Not sure it's worth that much, but it's most definitely a steal for eight bucks...

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In Limbo is the debut full length from Kristina Lieberson, who plays keyboards in a band called Here We Go Magic (who we've never heard), but as Teen, Lieberson whips up a pretty sweet slab of indie pop post punk, heavy on new wavey swirliness, and minimal space out dreaminess. There's definitely a serious old school post punk vibe, but filtered through something more modern and psychedelic. Opener "Better" pairs Lieberson's strident vocals (that remind us a bit of Grass Widow) with primitive simple drum pound, and clouds of swirling synth shimmer, not to mention the occasional handclaps, the vocals layered into a dizzying round. Which leads right into "Come Back", with it's strange calypso percussion, and stripped down muted guitar chug, a weird match for the squiggly synths and hazy echo drenched vocals, but those disparate elements seem to mesh more and more as the song goes on, before slipping into a weird swirly psychedelic breakdown. "Charlie" slows things down into a woozy, trudging, synth heavy ballad, that sounds a bit like Best Coast on horse tranquilizers. And the rest of the record unfurls similarly, like some weird Grass Widow / US Girls hybrid, taking a simple jangle pop garage rock core, mixed with some quirky new waviness, and adding some dirgey, murky post punk churn, not to mention some serious weirdness (the cool pinball sound effects on "Electric"), and some crazy catchy songs. In fact "Electric" might just be our favorite of the bunch, those aforementioned pinball sounds mixed with some M83 style electro glam bombast, some blown out synth buzz, and a chorus to die for.

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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.

Anyone who somehow doesn't own any Teenage Fanclub records, should probably buy this, a pretty decent introduction to one of the best pop bands ever, but might as well also find copies of A Catholic Education and Bandwagonesque, their first two proper records. Equal parts Big Star / Byrds jangle, and wild psychedelic Neil Young guitars, Teenage Fanclub were born of the same Glasgow scene that would also give us Mogwai among others, and while they shares a proclivity for extended jams, their sound was way more rooted in classic pop, as was evidenced not only by their sound, but their choice of covers (Beatles, Beat Happening, Alex Chilton, Gerry Love). Their star shone pretty brightly during the nineties alt rock explosion, but a surprising number of folks missed out on these guys completely, which is a shame, especially considering all the pop bands of today, who owe much of their sound to these guys whether they know it or not. Deep Fried Fanclub gathers up all the songs the band recorded during their brief stay on Paperhouse Records in the early nineties and also tacks on their K records single. The opener "Everything Flows" is pretty much perfect, in a single song, demonstrating what makes them so great, perfect jangle pop, with big crunchy guitars, sweet vocals, incredible melodies, extended jam outro, so impossibly catchy, in a weird way like a way janglier poppier Swervedriver. "God Knows It's True" is another classic, big guitars, big hooks, heavy and poppy. There's some weird demos and some odd covers, their version of the Beatles "Ballad Of John And Yoko" sounds like Redd Kross / Tater Totz, but the K single finishes thing off pretty perfectly, a killer rendition of Alex Chilton's "Free Again", sounding weirdly like a way more rocking Partridge Family, and Beat Happening's "Bad Seed" reimagined as some sort of dirgey garage rock jam with a verse that almost sounds like the Suicidal Tendencies. Still one of the best pop bands around, this collection is essential for fans, and anyone into heavy hooky pop, these guys could be your new (old) favorite band!

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Damn! Such a great band! And what a fine way to remind us of this fact... a 21 song collection of their fab Scottish pop gems including eighteen that you might already be very familiar with, and three new ones! The oldies were culled from their five albums: Bandwagonesque, Thirteen, Songs From Northern Britain, Grand Prix, and Howdy! Certainly they wore their Big Star and Byrds influences proudly on their sleeves, but they did so in such splendidly blissful fashion -- the most infectious hooks, the most soaring boyish vocals harmonies, crunchy cool guitars -- and we're delighted to report that the new tunes totally stand as tall as their predecessors. Yaaaay! Listening to this makes Cup a very happy gal. Please note: a couple songs ("Star Sign" and "My Uptight Life") have been edited so that all twenty one would fit on a single cd.

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The newest record from these Scottish popsters doesn't offer any new surprises. If you like their slow drift into lighter and lighter pop (almost Belle and Sebastian territory) then this record will hit the spot. If you hated the last couple records, and miss the rambuctious sort-of-rocking Teenage Fanclub of old, then you'll probably hate this one too. UK import.

Sometimes you need a great pop record. Not twee indie pop, not orchestral power pop. Juts pop. Perfect pop, and Teenage Fanclub are still kicking out the perfect pop jams even after all these years. In fact, this might just be their best since Bandwagonesque. A little bit Byrds, a little bit Big Star, plenty of jangly guitar, gorgeous harmony vocals, simple solid drumming, subtle but ridiculously infectious hooks, and perfect Perfect PERFECT songs. Catchy and hummable, rocking but laid back, just so goddamn good. One of our favorite pop records in forever!

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Now here's a sure fire way of ensuring your album's spot in the bargain bin of record stores everywhere. As if Teenage Fanclub's popularity hadn't fallen off enough already, they decided to get rid of any remaining fans by teaming up with friggin' Jad Fair!!

While Teenage Filmstars would go on to rival the legendary My Bloody Valentine, in crafting some of the most intense, next level, tripped out shoegaze (in fact some aQ-ers believe TF are way better than MBV, hate mail welcome!), in the early days, they were essentially an extension of Filmstars mastermind Ed Ball's other outfits, the Times, O Level and Teenage Filmstars, belting out crazy catchy sixties influenced new wave jangle pop. This lp was originally released as a super limited Record Store Day release, and gathers up the group's first three singles, reissued on vinyl for the first time ever. All the tracks here are super catchy, but their 'classic' track "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape" is definitely the gem here, replete with a goofy mid song breakdown with the group reciting classic lines from The Prisoner, not to mention a chorus so catchy, it's hard to believe it's not actually a classic jam from the sixties. The other singles are great too, "(There's A) Cloud Over Liverpool" is another impossibly catchy sixties pop jam, but "Odd Man Out" might be the weirdest, a horn flecked ska-pop groover, reminiscent of the Specials and Madness. A whole different beast than later Teenage Filmstars, but for fans of retro sixties style pop, it doesn't get better than this (or the -other- Record Store Day lp included elsewhere on this list, a vinyl collection of early singles from Ed Ball's O Level!)...

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

SORRY. The Creation bands My Bloody Valentine, Oasis, Primal Scream, Ride, Slowdive, St.Etienne, etc. have been championed by fans around the globe, and have unfortunately overshadowed the brilliant trickery of the mysterious Teenage Filmstars. Working from the same influences of 60's British psychedelia as their fellow Creationists, the Teenage Filmstars succeed where others fail, in sending psychedelia to its most damaged and most hallucinatory end. With an innate understanding of how to write a near perfect pop song, Teenage Filmstars do their best to undermine the structures by creating them out of guitar lines and vocals literally _played backwards_ on top of the punchy rhythm section, to totally kick ass effect. From here, square wave generators, overdosed phase shifting, and explosive feedback enact the aural equivalent to an extremely excessive dose of acid. But that's only half of each Teenage Filmstar album; as they're filled out by odd kaleidoscopes of pseudo electronica, waivering sitars, and sedative-laiden drones resembling Can's trippy collages like 'Aumgn' from 'Tago Mago'. We've had some difficulty getting their material, and for now this album is all we have. Nevertheless, everything the Teenage Filmstars has released comes with Aquarius' highest recommendations!

Finally. Finally. FINALLY! If ever there was a more anticipated (around here at least) or a more criminally overdue reissue, it's this one right here. A mind blowing three-fer from should-have-been-massive blissed out fractured psych pop masters Teenage Filmstars, fronted by the inimitable Ed Ball, whom as we mentioned in our review of Star, TF's genius debut, was once described by My Bloody Valentine mainman Kevin Shields as "A sensitive soul from another planet. A modernist musical alchemist". Shield also had this to say about Ball: "Where other people struggle, Ed Ball plays what we're thinking." Which coming from the man behind My Bloody Valentine means a lot. Especially when considering Teenage Filmstars, who employ a sonic palette not all that far removed from MBV's. BUT, and a very big but at that, minus the explosive bursts of caustic noise, MBV hewed more to a traditional pop sensibility than Teenage Filmstars. Where as Loveless, even for all its amazing wall of guitar heaviness, and effects drenched dreaminess, was still anchored to a verse chorus verse framework, with Teenage Filmstars, those conventions are tossed aside, or at the very least, flipped over, doused in effects, chopped up and played backwards. Which is why once again, we must proclaim, that in the landscape of (not so) popular music, TEENAGE FILMSTARS ARE BETTER THAN MY BLOODY VALENTINE. And don't get us wrong, we LOVE LOVE LOVE My Bloody Valentine, but imagine an alternate universe MBV, where for some reason, Shields' guitars played backwards, effects boxes grew sentient and demanded as much space as the instruments and voices, imagine viewing all of those sounds, already twisted and skewed, through a fractured funhouse mirror, and then, if you can, imagine some musical wizard, who is able to reign in all of those sounds, and somehow shape them into some of the most perfect UNpop you've ever heard. Which brings us to Rocket Charms, record number two from Teenage Filmstars, which finds all the sounds on Star, pushed even farther out, the backwards sounds are more backwards (and there are more of them), the guitars are crunchier and more crumbly, the melodies are more catchy, the murk and shimmer are both murkier and shimmerier, and the production, is even more hazy and spaced out and lysergic and psychedelic and fucking head spinning. And yet somehow, Rocket Charms is a pop record, hooky and catchy, lilting and melodic. Opener "Pressure" is an immediate 'hit' if there ever was one, processed falsetto vox over swooping backwards rhythms and washed out guitar haze, a sort of druggy backwards Beach Boys pop ambience. And it just goes on from there, every song, a gorgeous slab of outsider twisted pop, on the surface a whirling sonic dervish, but within drift all manner of classic pop tropes, in the able hands of Ed Ball, subverted and turned inside out, wreathed in hiss and sparkle, and rendered, well, Teenage. But then amidst all this deconstructed shoegazey noise pop (or pop noise), comes the track "Alone", quite possible our favorite jam on Rocket Charms, a slow brooding dirge, all skittery Stone Roses-y drums, thick distorted bass, disembodied voices, swirling ominous dark ambience, and a main melody that just might be the catchiest bit on the record, sounding like a slowed down twisted take on the Cure's "Close To You", but via Pop Will Eat Itself or some other warped UK grebo combo. The crazy thing is, Rocket Charms for being as fantastic and over the top and incredible, isn't even our favorite Teenage Filmstars record. That honor belongs to the awesomely titled Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness, which takes all of the songs and sounds from Rocket Charms and Star, and makes them WAY HEAVIER, WAY MORE FUCKED UP, the processed guitars and backwards guitars and vocals have gone haywire, the songs are less songs here and more fucked up fragmented pop experiments, but again, Ball has such a deft hand that he manages to take all these totally freaked out elements, and gets them to work, and sound like pop songs, albeit, totally dizzying and abstract, psychedelic and almost metallic at times. The record's defining moment is the opener "Physical Graffiti", not a Zeppelin cover, but hell, it sounds like it could be some sort of insane My Bloody Valentine / Led Zeppelin mash up maybe, but one that had been totally tweaked, chopped and screwed, then sped up and flipped reverse again, listening to it, it's hard to imagine how anyone could envision music like this, let alone actually make it. The guitars swoop all over the stereo field, stuttering, blurring into huge backwards swells, the drums are chaotic, the vocals sound backwards too, but not overtly, the melodies so memorable and catchy, at one point the whole track begins to stutter, almost as if your cd player is skipping, but it soon swoops back into the dreamlike psychedelic swirl. Not all of Support Our Sickness is as heavy and crunchy, many of the tracks begin as classic sixties sounding pop, but as they progress, the effects seem to slowly take over, often one or more of the instruments flipping backwards and erupting into a squall of psychedelic freakout, but just as often, sprawling into a woozy almost balladic bit of slithery backwards slowcore. But even at its prettiest, the sounds are slightly tweaked, the vibe is subtly menacing, laced with bits of sunshiney jangle for sure, but this is some seriously drugged out dream pop damage, and remains to this day, one of the most amazing, and unlikely genius pop records EVER. The first disc features 5 bonus tracks, two from the Support Our Sickness sessions, as well as three other unreleased jams, none quite as twisted, but still awesome, and in fact, they almost sound like they were rough drafts, just waiting to get the Ed Ball mad scientist backwards fucked up FX makeover. So that's it, BUY IT, you won't be sorry, this is easily some of the most forward thinking pop music ever, heavy and psychedelic, druggy and delirious, catchy and crazy and bafflingly brilliant. But wait, what's this, a THIRD record? Teenage Filmstars final missive, and a pretty bizarre sonic sea change, in fact, it sounds like a totally different band. To be honest, we're not into it at all, Bring Back The Cartel found the band doing some sort of skittery smooth jazz electronic mood music, it makes very little sense that this one would get tacked on with the other two, when we first ordered this we actually thought it WAS just those other two, but maybe some folks will dig Bring Back The Cartel, there are some moments, here and there, but it doesn't at all approach the sheer brilliance of Rocket Charms or Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness, so our advice would be probably to just give it a spin, and if you dig it, cool, if not, just ignore it, pretend it's not there, and immerse yourself in those first two, let the sounds twist you inside out and carry you off, play it over and over and over and over, forever and ever and ever and ever. Totally fucking incredible, and not just worthy of Record Of The Week honors, definitely something more, like how about Record of FOREVER!?!?

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By now, pretty much everyone knows who Kevin Shields is. He of shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine. Who over the course of the last 20 years or so have released all of THREE records. But what about Ed Ball. A musical contemporary of Shields. A man Shields described as "A sensitive soul from another planet. A modernist musical alchemist", going on to say "Where other people struggle, Ed Ball plays what we're thinking." Ball, over the last 20 years, has released close to 40 records, a whole mess of amazing discs with UK mod popsters The Times, a handful under his own name, and a bunch with power poppers the Boo Radleys, among others. But what Ball is most famous for, at least around these parts, is releasing three of the most perfect, and perfectly fractured genius shoegaze blisspop records EVER, as Teenage Filmstars: Star, Rocket Charms and Buy our Record Support Our Sickness. Each a kaleidoscopic blurred and blown out avant pop fantasia of sound, mixing in gorgeous melodies, with all manner of found sounds, backwards loops, ethereal vocals, studio fuckery, with very little regard for form or function, for the rules of pop. Instead, seemingly feeling their way through a totally tactile world of sound, everything bristly or buzzy or fuzzy, smeared or blurred, wah guitars wrapped around roaring motorcycles, Spectorish wall of guitars spread over, skittery almost Stone Roses-y rhythms. The most obvious reference is My Bloody Valentine. And at the risk of receiving an avalanche of hate mail, Teenage Filmstars are better. They may not have invented the sound, and they definitely didn't perfect it, instead, they fucked it all up, twisted it and chopped it and doused it in FX, and flipped it backwards, and let it sprawl and spin out of control, wrapped tightly into perfect pop gems one second, then let loose in unhinged squalls of sonic whatthefuck meltdowns the next. Each of the three records growing continually more abrasive, more intense, heavier, more backwards, more fractured and freaked out, and somehow only getting better and better and better. Star is the first proper release from Teenage Filmstars, and was released a year or two after MBV's epochal Loveless. Opener "Kiss Me" is TOTALLY cribbed from Loveless, but it sounds like it was recorded on a busted 4-track, the rhythm track supplied by a fluttery backwards loop, the guitars super distorted but also brittle, woozy and wavery, all wrapped round the main hook, a guitar / vocal harmony that is just incredible, soaring and wistful but sort of super rocking, the whole thing dripping in effects, Loveless filtered through DIY bedroom pop, and then filtered through the twisted musical mind of visionary sonic alchemist Ball. The track crumbles near the end, the guitars disappear, motorcycles zoom by, the drums all distorted, snippets of classical piano, the twitter of birds, disembodied voices, one intoning "this just might be the finest composition I ever wrote", which it might have been, if it weren't for the follow up "Loving", which follows a similar template as "Kiss Me", with the main hook, a hushed wordless vocals crooning along to a slithery guitar line, all over a looped tribal rhythm, and tripped out wah guitar all over the place. If this was just a single, "Kiss Me" / "Loving", A side B side, it would be hands down one of the greatest singles ever! But we've barely just begun. And it only gets weirder and weirder. "Inner Space" predates the fuzzy gauzy drift of Fennesz and Jeck and Tim Hecker by 20 years, unfurling sweeping vistas of sound, intertwined with buried melancholy vocals, muted rhythmic skitter, and deep whirring strings. "Apple" is all sixties strum and whirling effects laden swoosh, simple pop stretched out and blurred and distorted into something slightly alien, a warm dreamlike missive from beyond the stars. "Flashes" is a strange sort of electronic calypso, with a subtle techno throb beneath divine female vocals, propulsive krauty drums, and of course loads of FX. "Kaleidoscope" returns to the more MBV style rocking of the openers, and does indeed sound like a shoegazing fuzzrock kaleidoscope, a swirling dizzying space pop jam, the sounds slipping from speaker to speaker, the drums relentless and hypnotic, the vocals buried, but the main guitar melody soaring over the wavery sonic swirl beneath. Then comes a three song suite of tripped out avant weirdness, drifting fuzzy almost melodies, strange intercepted radio broadcasts, a super deconstructed version of "Kiss Me", looped and flipped backwards and transformed into something else entirely, deep whirling drones, weird voices, samples, deep black ambience, shot though with streaks of glimmering buzz, the sounds of engines, choir like vocals, damaged effects laden rhythmscapes, flange and chorus and delay and reverb all wrapped around little sonic events, laced into a delicate framework of tripped out sound. Until the closer, "Moon", a gorgeous explosion of distorted pop effulgence, thick warbly organs, epic melodies, the guitar so distorted they almost sound like white noise, almost proggy keyboards, the whole thing fracturing into a brief falling apart coda of drum freakout, and skipping lurching guitars. Holy Shit. So maybe it's not that Teenage Filmstars are -better- than My Bloody Valentine. Just weirder, more fucked up, more spaced out, more fractured, more challenging, more out there, less like ANYTHING you've ever heard, more... oh fuck it, okay... BETTER!!! Bring on the hate mail!! This reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, all good enough to have been on the record proper, but with way more of the backwards production that would come to define their sound on future records, blissed out fuzzy shoegazey power pop, but crumbling and often in reverse, and thus fantastic. Also included lengthy liner notes, as confusing and obfuscated as the music itself. The other two Filmstars discs are getting reissued soon, and will definitely also be Records Of The Week, so immerse yourself in Star while you can, cuz it only gets better and weirder from here on out...

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