[ aquarius records new arrivals

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 1 through 50 of 91.

Still more awesome French pop from the Lithium label. Dark, shambling minor key laments with spoken/sung French vocals. Shimmering guitars, muted trumpets and skittering drums. (We also have three of his other records, all of them great.)

Everybody knows 'Balls To The Wall', Accept's early 80's hit that almost made the 'You Shook Me All Night Long' leap from Headbangers Ball to FM radio, but their 1982 release 'Restless and Wild' (reissued here, digitally remastered and in a spiffy digipack) is the only truly essential Accept record. And essential it is. Equal parts catchy eighties hard rock and proto-thrash-metal and featuring the unique balls-in-a-vice/tracheotomy vocals of sort-of-dwarf Udo Dirkschneider, 'Restless and Wild' is easily one of my favorite metal records of the eighties, and it holds up surprisingly well, almost 20 years later.

After a handful of painfully limited edition 12"s which never really got any distribution in the States, Arab Strap has released this single with a fortunately much larger pressing. While the title track is one of Arab Strap's more idiosyncratically upbeat songs (with a funky Ninja Tune-esque trip hop / pseduo jazz groove), the other two tracks are more quintessentially Arab Strap -- dark, epic dramas that sound like the more dymanic moments of Mogwai and allow for Aidan Moffat to mutter his morose tales of heartbreak and alcoholism. It's good.

RealAudio clip: Love Detective

First off, let me just say that Artimus Pyle is one of the best person's-name-as-band-name ever, second only to Lynyrd Skynyrd (and oddly enough, the real Artimus Pyle just happened to be a member of L.S.). Pounding furious crusty grind from this Bay Area super group (featuring members of What Happens Next?, Fuckface, Los Rudiments...). This posthumous cd collects most if not all of their of their recorded output.

Fuzzed out seventies style stoner space rock from this Dutch band. Equal parts Sabbath and Zeppelin. Heavy and groovy, huge fuzzy guitars, throbbing bass, and gruff (but still high) vocals. Reminds us a lot of AQ faves The Want. One of the better stoner rock bands around. And one of the most beautiful cd packages we have ever seen!

Not a new album from these Norwegian black metal thrashers, but a re-release of their rare 1995 debut mini-cd "Dreams Like Deserts" with the addition of a bunch of previously unreleased tracks, including a few live tracks and two recordings with Fenriz of the illustrious Darkthrone on vocals! Aura Noir's guitarist plays in black metal legends Mayhem, and the band also features members of weirdos Dodheimsgard and the even weirder Ved Buens Ende (who we'd rather see a new release by, but what can you do?)... "Increased Damnation" is indeed a great speedy slice of artful blackened thrash metal, however.

RealAudio clip: Towers of Limbs and Fevers

Apparently Sergej Auto holds down a day job composing cartoon music in the Czech Republic. For his debut release "Auto", he's put together 13 tracks that starts out with some quaint pop-electronica a la Mouse On Mars / Jimi Tenor that eventually becomes Chain Reaction / Mike Ink style dub-house / click-hop / filter-tech / (fill in your own cute adjective for what Force Inc does). Like most stuff from the Germanic techno genre, Sergej Auto is not super innovative... but certainly effective in the deep groove department.

Wow. This is one ridiculous record. Solo 6 & 12 steel string guitar and singing by '60s acoustic guitar hero Robbie Basho (plus a little South Indian Log Drum accompaniment by Ramnad V. Raghavan). This record (a reissue of Basho's 1972 Vanguard debut) might have been almost passable (for solo proto-nu-age guitar in the usual mode of Basho and his contemporaries Fahey and Kottke) had Robbie not opened his mouth to moan pseudo-Native American vocal stylings (with similarly themed lyrics that may have been quite sincere but come across as very silly). It's only a surprise that the Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God label (of "Celebrities At Their Worst" fame) didn't get around to re-issuing this themselves. Indeed, although the absurd, wavering vocals might ruin one's enjoyment of Basho's fine guitar playing, they also really do make this a hilarious listen. Connoisseurs of the weird/kitsch should check this out, it's like a cross between "Ein Wigwam" and a Fahey album. For fans of the Sun City Girls, Yahowah, Telly Savalas, and other absurdities. Allan finds this record to be quite enjoyable on those grounds, and once you're done laughing, you'll see that some of it is quite beautiful and Tim Buckley-esque as well. "I am the voice of thu-u-und-rrrrr" etc. Reissued in a nice mini-LP style sleeve.

RealAudio clip: Voice of the Eagle

Though most of the throngs of Pixies fans poo pooed Frank Black's solo workings after disbanding the Pixies, both his eponymous first release and second -- "Teenager of the Year" -- were true underrated gems. Even now, I find myself picking up these albums to play more than any of the later Pixies releases, or any other rock record for that matter. So it was understandably a bit of a disappointment when "The Cult of Ray" was released, and following it, two more very disappointing Black albums. At the time, to me, it seemed that maybe a good deal of the creativity that went into making those albums was to the credit of producer / bass player / keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman (of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band & Pere Ubu) or guitarist Jeff Morris Tepper (also a Beefheart as well as a Tom Waits alum) as Cult Of Ray found these two conspicuously absent and the album self-produced by Black. With his sixth solo release though, Black may be returning to his prior songwriting glory. Returning to play with Frank for a few tracks on this album is former Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago, and Tepper lends a hand on banjo for one track ("St. Francis Dam Disaster"). To be sure, this isn't a 100% great album but it's got enough great songs on it to be an excellent short album if you just program your cd player to skip tracks 1, 2 & 6 -- at least for starters (your results may vary) and see how they grow on you in time. Among the awkward moments on this album that may require some getting used to are a couple tunes in which Mr Black apes the Rolling Stones ("I've Seen Your Picture" and especially "Hermaphroditos") and an homage to FM radio rock ("If It Takes All Night"). But there are some truly great songs on here, as good as anything he's done since the Pixies, which make this album worth giving a shot -- certainly if you own and or cherish copies of his first solo outing or "Teenager Of The Year"-- replete with Frank Black's wonderful ability not only to slip in and out of his wonderful falsetto, but his almost patented way of switching from a scream to a croon. Let's hope this is a sign of even better things to come from Frank.

RealAudio clip: St. Francis Dam Disaster
RealAudio clip: The Swimmer

Yet more stoner rock from the deserts of Scandinavia!

Loren Chasse, proud owner of a brand new cd-burner, began the Jewelled Antler label as an outlet to release small cd-r pressings of a variety of warbled psychedelic projects that have spun-off from his bands Thuja and Knit Separates. The Blithe Sons is the first such release, featuring Chasse and Glenn Donaldson (from Mirza as well as Thuja / Knit Separates). Despite hailing from San Francisco, Chasse and Donaldson have tapped into a vein of melancholic UK psychedelia which runs from the Wicker Man soundtrack through to the early instrumentals of Eyeless In Gaza and the pensive sounds of Richard Youngs. While Donaldson's expressive guitar lines are central to the Blithe Sons arrangements, the album's uniqueness is found in the production work which often positions the quiet instrumentation in the pronounced foreground making the songs so intimate, as to seem played right inside your ears... or brings in some quite textural noises (very common to Chasse's solo sound investigations and manipulated field recordings) as a 'duet' with the melodic lines of the guitar. Very nice work! Based on this, the next Blithe Sons release deserves be a "real" cd release on a proper label (although the musical quality, beautiful packaging and reasonable price of this release shows that cd-r labels are sometimes quite worthwhile).

RealAudio clip: Calamus Parade
RealAudio clip: Crescent-Shaped Sails

Last year's Them record was easily one of the coolest, weirdest and most creative hip hop records we'd heard in a while. Dose One (the main mc from Them) takes it a step further out on this one, hooking up with dj Boom Bip to come up with a sort of 'free-hip-hop' record, like a cross between a poetry slam gone bad, a handful of rap records playing at once, phones and buzzers and bells gone haywire, and a particularly disorienting acid trip. A mix of freeform spoken word, erratic and non-linear beats, bizarre samples (even Van Halen makes it into the mix), lots of low-in-the-mix mumbling and muttering, and Dose Ones whiny nasal white boy drawl make this one crazy, schizophrenic, sloppy and beautiful mess.

Ok, here's one for all the AQ customers who we know are always hankering for the state-of-the-art in "drone-metal" (i.e. those who can't get enough of the likes of Earth, Melvins "Lysol", Sunn 0))), Corrupted, Esoteric, etc.). Thanks to noted label-of-doom Southern Lord, we've got the new domestic reissue of the 1996 full-length debut from this amazing Japanese band. We actually used to stock the import version back when it first came out, but never were able to get very many and it's been unavailable for a long long time. Souther Lord's new "Super Low Frequency Version" features new artwork and (doubtless much to the annoyance of the three or four people who manged to get the original import) a seven minute appropriately named bonus track, "Dronevil2". That makes this a 73 minute, two-track disc, as the title track itself is one of those rare, slow motion, maximum riff glacial drone songs that stretches out over (previously) the entire length of the cd! Heavy duty stuff indeed. It makes sense that the name Boris comes from a Melvins song. And also that one of their other albums is a collaboration with Japan's king of dark psych guitar, Keiji Haino. Now we're waiting for their fantastic second disc, "Amplifier Worship", to get reissued domestically as well (watch this space). Recommended, doom freaks.

RealAudio clip: Dronevil2

"Lakte" is definitely something completely new from Kit Clayton, whose last few recordings delved deep into the melancholic dub of Pole and Monolake. Clayton himself describes this 4 song ep with the following: "Scraping your head against the ground, you hear sounds you do not tend to find while scurrying amongst carefully constructed and willfully digested worlds. Puddles of knobs, twigs, paperclips, loose change, and other items unnamed. What you were listening for is sidestepped by environmental residue's unwavering determination to be heard. Background and foreground are reversed. And reversed again. And again." Mostly arrthymic and atonal, "Lakte" is a willfully difficult piece of avant-electronica recalling the likes of '60s tape-music pioneer Tod Dockstader much more than current artists like Autechre.

Kit Clayton broadcast this piece live on KALX in Berkeley using a shortwave radio to generate all of the material that he shoved through his sequencer and laptop. While stuff like Stockhausen's "Hymnen" and the work of John Duncan may be suggested by the use of the shortwave, Clayton's electronic manipulation overwhelms the usual aesthetic of the shortwave (like the strange flanges of alternating currents run simultaneously, the erratic behaviour of the huge electro-magnetic field which shortwave travels through, the general static, etc...). There is no doubt this is a digital production, with harsh glitches and timestretched compterized drones. By the end of the piece, Clayton does work in some of his trademark electro dub rhythms, which push the whole piece into a more dystopic environment than before. Certainly not as consumer friendly as his work for Scape, but a very interesting tangent from one of the better practitoners of the plastic arts.

Certainly an odd pairing for a split release, with '60s minimalist Tony Conrad on one side, and the surrealist Edward Ka-Spel on the other. This is a release that will certainly not win over any fans from the grumpy minimalist school into liking Ka-Spel or his outfit the Legendary Pink Dots... but will certainly make LPD collectors very happy. Ka-Spel percolates a variety of somewhat silly synthetic sounds that could have been informed by Terry Riley's "In C" but conform more to Ka-Spel's fragmented lullaby approach, with all of the pseudo-goth references one would expect from a Ka-Spel / LPD release. On the flip, playing with Alexandria Gelencser on cello, Conrad sets down layers of extended intonations of abrasive violin drones. Numbered and limited to 500 copies.

A remix album, but not OF Console, rather, BY Console (the German electronicist responsible for the fab "Rocket In The Pocket" cd issued by Payola, and later, Matador). This collects remixes originally found on other other artists' albums, comps, and so forth, of stuff by Tied & Tickled Trio, Barbara Morgenstern, Isan, Console himself, and more.

One of the Alice Cooper Band's most successful albums, from 1973, gets the Rhino reissue treatment, complete with a bonus disc of rare stuff (mostly live cuts, plus a few outtakes that really maybe should have remained outtakes and a non-LP single track). While not our favorite of all Alice Cooper albums, "Billion Dollar Babies" is still a classic and this is certainly the version to add to your collection. But, if you already have it, you'll have to decide if you want to buy it again just for some pretty decent live versions of, mostly, the same songs. Someone out there definitely needs to get this, though, just to sample Alice's intro to 'Raped And Freezing': "This next song is DIRTY, you'll love it!" The main cd, in case you don't know, contains such hard-rock and glam-horror hits as 'No More Mr. Nice Guy' and 'I Love The Dead'. (Note, this is filed under Cooper, Alice under protest, as we hold that up until "Welcome To My Nightmare", the Alice Cooper Band LPs should rightfully be filed under A, since Alice wasn't yet a solo act and the other original band members should get their due.)

Colley is a self-taught sound artist from Sacramento, where he has slowly been building an extensive (if underappreciated) catalogue of dissonant rumbles and threatening drones out of lo-fi electronics (piezo microphones, malfunctioning speaker cones, buzzing wires). I admit a skepticism about Colley and the industrial bent of his earliest work. Yet, he, more than a lot of California noise artists, has stepped beyond the 'noise for noise' purism for an expressive and at times gentle broad band of electro-acoustic drones that have demonstrated the potential to parallel the awe-inspiring absolute concrete work of Francisco Lopez. "Everybody Gets What They Deserve" is Colley's fifth album which begins with demonstrations of the aforementioned lo-fi electronics and ends with an assortment of Hafler Trio-esque media collage cut ups.

Also known as former Archers of Loaf-er Eric Bachmann. Here he sounds not unlike a hoarse, embittered Neil Diamond. Join him as he continues his slow ride on the bummer train. Plucking away at his battered old guitar and regaling you with tales of sorrow and pain from an empty boxcar as it creeps and lurches through the hills in the chilly evening air. Taking him farther and farther from his Archers off-kilter pop past. Faint sampled sounds and guest female vocals only add to the sombre mood. With beautiful sleeve art. All parchment-y and translucent like an old aquatic x-ray.

RealAudio clip: Devil's Train

Charles Curtis is a classical cellist and avant garde composer and this is a reissue of a super limited double lp released only in Germany last year. Four long tracks that can be played separately, or in different combinations on multiple stereos. Three of the tracks are gorgeous drones built from cellos, electric guitars and sinewaves, while the fourth track is a dreamy hypnotic mini-epic ala Godspeed You Black Emperor; dark rumbling post rock with a monotone disembodied voice rambling throughout. Quite nice.

L.A. native Alfred Weisberg-Roberts is Daedelus, and he apparently wasn't as sure about the success of this project as was Dimitri from the Phthalo label, who claims he had to pry this out of Weisberg-Roberts fingers in order to release it. "Her's Is> [sic]" is a dark electronic narrative riddled with strange answering machine recordings from a dosed-up raver girl who thinks she's a poet. Rapid rhythmic cuts and muddled electronic calliope melodies mutate into the harsh, almost industrial aesthetic of the early Rephlex catalogue. For an electronic record, this has the uncanny lo-fi feel, as if this album's originated on a 4-track rather than a computer. Odd to say the least. We haven't yet decided who (Alfred or Dimitri?) was right about the merits of this recording...

Another fine disk of shrill and annoying 8-bit, high pitched noise-fuckery from Dat Politics. Not quite as "melodic" as some of their other releases, methinks. Those AQ customers who choose to come in near to closing time to shop have the greatest likelihood of hearing this disk in the store, as it may soon become our new "Hello, Aquarius is now closed" cd.

Mark Spybey (Zoviet France, Download, and innumerable collaborative projects) and friends -- among them some members of Legendary Pink Dots -- meld together their individual sonic imaginations, seemingly shatter the outcome, and piece it all back together again to bring you this long-titled, meticulously beautiful work. Constructed from recordings made in Canada, Cuba, and Germany (the latter by krautrocker Michael Rother of Neu!, Harmonia and Cluster). It was produced and engineered by Spybey along with the multi-talented Frank Vershuuren (LPD engineer) and Darryl Neudorf (who's worked with such divergent artists as Neko Case, Twilight Circus' Ryan Moore and the New Pornographers). At times, swirling and crystalline. At others, sputtering, heavy, and percussive.

RealAudio clip: mknt37
RealAudio clip: Zeehond

Yay! With all the drama of DJ Shadow's seminal early single "What Does Your Soul Look Like", DJ Food's new EP on the always-dependable Ninjatune label is a 16-minute masterpiece of tension, buildup, and release. But where Shadow uses hip hop as a template with which to venture outwards, DJ Food beautifully manhandles post-rock. (And thank god, seeing how post-rock's been behaving badly lately.) This is the record Tortoise should've made. Filled with sounds of glass -- rims being rubbed, sustained chimes, etc. -- the record begins with four minutes of atmospheric minimalism that sounds like you're in deep silent outer space... and then Mr. Spock radios in (really) with some deep words and you realize you ARE in deep space. With a swoosh of broken glass, the drums kick in, brightly echoing layers of active breakbeats John McEntire probably has wet dreams over. The album concludes serenely with warm glass chimes. It's so lovely, a wonderfully refreshing surprise. Highly recommended.

RealAudio clip: Hour Glass
RealAudio clip: Monocle (Silver Dub)
RealAudio clip: Shattered Glass

"Palace of Mind" -- released on his own imprint All Questions -- is a collaborative effort between longstanding experimentalist John Duncan and Italian mathematician Giuliana Stefani. In this work, he returns to the architectural metaphors that he previously explored on 1996's "The Crackling", a documentation of the aural properties found within SLAC, Stanford University's titanic particle linear accelerator. "Palace of Mind" follows a labyrinthine architectural schematic which parallels not only the minute circuitry of the computer but also the rhizomatic synaptic connections of the brain. With the movement from an irritable data-stream purity to the gossamer haze of shortwave distortion to gaping drones of treated vocal vibrato, Duncan and Stefani have set a trajectory deep into the heart of their sonic architecture. Each room is saturated with an anxiousness for what may be on the other side of the door. It is not Duncan firing a gun at your head, but an interlocking network of chambers that resonate and breathe with a profound beauty. Dare it be said that John Duncan has created something holy? Certainly, this is Duncan's best work to date!

RealAudio clip: palace of mind fragment 1
RealAudio clip: palace of mind fragment 2

More sludge trickles down from heaven, giving all you Earth fanatics another reason to live. This is a one sided, live lp, recorded at the Hyperstrings Festival in Vienna in July of 1996. Anyone who bought one of those limited clear vinyl 12"s from a few months back, obviously needs one of these. Crushing tarpit sludge from the masters of all that is slow and heavy. Former Earth-lings include Joe Preston of the Melvins and the Thrones and Kurt Kobain! This is their first 'official' release since their last (Pentastar) on Sub Pop. This is VERY LIMITED. Not sure how long we'll have these.

This live recording, made in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1983, was voted the best "unofficial" live Fall recording by the Fall's fan club members. Now it's here for you, made official by Cog Sinister and remastered to boot.

"The Unutterable" is the 41st or 43rd album from The Fall, a band that refuses to quit. That unstoppable nature of The Fall is certainly based on Mark E. Smith's assertion that The Fall could be any band (including your grandmother) as long as he's singing. For this incarnation of The Fall, Smith has acquired the most focused outfit around him... which is surprising, considering the latest US tour decimated the ranks of the band. The music is tight, dark, and guitar driven sounding like a better produced version of what you'd expect from the '78 punk sound of Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, and of course The Fall. Smith is still drunk, and sounds just as incomprehensibly cryptic as ever. He's going on and on about Oprah and Libyans, or something. Does content really matter to The Fall anyway?

RealAudio clip: Sons of Temperance
RealAudio clip: Two Librans

Leader of Karate releases a solo effort full of mournful musings and solo electric guitar.

One of Feldman's later, and longer, works, "For Philip Guston" clocks in at just under five hours. Performed by Petr Kotik (flute, alto flute, piccolo), Joseph Kubera (piano, celeste), and Chris Nappi (vibraphone, marimbaphone, glockenspiel, chimes) of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Guston is one of the zeniths of Feldman's acheivements. A piece stretched out to such an extreme length is, as Feldman admitted himself, quite a difficult task. The ability to have a piece which retains a natural, organic quality without losing control over it and controlling the development of the piece without being forced into repetitive banality was a compositional conundrum that Feldman struggled with more and more as his pieces grew in length. How Feldman manages to get this piece off the ground, I don't know, but he does and keeps it flying the whole 4-plus hours -- with the help of some excellent musicians. The entire piece (I hope I'm not scaring anyone out there with this) was recorded in a studio, but still has the quality of a hall performance, perhaps touched up with some nice reverb. The studio method of recording the piece has the side effect of causing such everyday performance anomalies such as page turning to become amplified much greater than what one would experience in a hall setting and the flautist Kotik suggests that this be used as a measuring device to set the volume properly at home: if you can hear the page turns clearly, turn down the volume. The booklet included with this issue has a conversation between Petr Kotik and Walter Zimmerman... but maybe "conversation" is the wrong word. I think maybe "argument" might applied here to better describe their dialog, and a hilarious argument it is. A hoot for anyone who gets a kick out of listening to musicologists scrapple.

RealAudio clip: For Philip Guston

No frills bootleg 1970 UK folk-psych reissue, featuring a young David Toop (currently a musician and writer, of "Oceans of Sound" fame, among other things), who not only plays on this disc but did the cover as well. Supposed to be really nightmarish and weird, but we didn't quite "get it". Definitely nothing like the Comus or Cromagnon we were hoping for! However, it does have a spirit of mellow melancholy that some might enjoy.

First in this label's "New American Ethnic Music" series. "Avant-garde hillbilly and blues music" by violinist (and Fluxus conceptual artist) Henry Flynt. Each disc documents a live improv session, the first from 1981 and the second from 1980, and both are quite lovely indeed. I guess it's "hillbilly" 'cause he's playing a fiddle, and there's echoes of Appalachian trad music amidst the drone. For one concert/disc he's joined by a tambura player, and on the other by a guitarist (both strangely uncredited). Definitely in a Tony Conrad / fake Indian raga mode, and good at it. Fans of the aforementioned, as well as those into (Flynt associate) LaMonte Young, Ashtray Navigations and even the Dirty Three (it's actually VERY Dirty Three sounding at moments, with Flynt's melancholy, almost psychedelic violin being the dominant voice). More specifically, these are (we're told) "extended extemporizations on extended alpha-state ascension through excessive application of overtone-series note relationships/harmonics over a single chord/form". Check out www.henryflynt.org for more info on the man's art and writing (there's some strange essays to be found there). A very cool archival release, can't wait to hear more in the series.

The third cd release from former Belle & Sebastian-ian Isobel and co. opens with the title track of this EP sounding so familiar we'd swear it was a cover of an old ballad originaly sung by some French chanteuse a la Francoise Hardy. The only thing missing is a pretty la-la-la refrain. Breathless crooning, finger snaps, clarinet, double bass. Slow, pretty and destined for the next string of Volkswagon commercials.

Old/rare stuff from this Dutch death metal combo, whose later Metal Blade albums are all pretty good. Includes video clip.

Latest in a long line of records from Anton Fier, mastermind behind Golden Palominos (former member of Feelies, Pere Ubu, etc), who since 1981 has been making increasingly smoother and more conventional pop music. But this is about a hundred times better than what you're going to get on the radio, of course.The Palominos' apparent open door policy with regards to membership has meant that artists as diverse as Peter Blegvad, Bill Laswell, T-Bone Burnett, Bob Mould, & Richard Thompson have all appeared on the records. There are absolutely no liner notes on the album, so I'm mystified as to the personnel on this album, much less who the new vocalist is (Syd Straw, Lori Carson, PiL's John Lydon, Michael Stipe have all previously guested), and am also similarly mystified as to why there are two versions of a really old Golden Palominos track here -- "The Animal Speaks". Hmmm. Anyway, the pop songs are pretty luscious and beautiful; you may want to pick this up.

RealAudio clip: Angel of Death
RealAudio clip: The Animal Speaks (vocal:John Lydon)

Good solid indie rock with enormous energy from local group, featuring two guys from Thin White Rope, and members of Granfaloon Bus and Lunchbox. Fans of Thin White Rope, Giant Sand will enjoy this.

RealAudio clip: Gypsies, Whores and Doctors

Gunshop is the work of Chicago noise artist Blake Edwards. This album (quite possibly his first) falls cleanly within the purist boundaries of noise culture and power electronics, with elements of Mego's computerized collage stutter introducing extended passages of whistling electronic squeals found on all of the Whitehouse albums (no William Bennett-esque nightmarish rants on Gunshop tho). What is surprising about this record is how it relies on the subtlety of sound rather than the all consuming control of the listening experience...

Hamijama is a collaboration between Jake Mandell and Safety Scissors. This single for Beta Bodega (a label with a propensity for presenting their electronica within rambling pseudo-intellectual drivel) runs between Kim Rapatti / Mono Junk style techno groove minimalism and mid-'90s AFX / Autechrist melodic angularities.

Expanded, remastered reissue of this French guitarist's first album, originally released in 1978. Thierry Muller (for he is Ilitch) makes use of "destructured" guitar, droning organ, harmonium, tapes, synth, etc. to create dark, electronic soundscapes comparable to countrymen Heldon or a scarier Fripp/Eno. Experimental, atmospheric stuff indeed. Primitive, eerie, abstract, sometimes violent. This double disc set includes the previously unreleased third and fourth sides of what was originally intended to be double LP, as well as quite a lot of other bonus material, all of it equally nightmarish and excellent. Trainspotters should note that Ilitch is one of the avant-garde obscurities that appeared on the notorious Nurse With Wound list found on NWW's first album, along with much other seminal krautrock/noise/experimental weirdness, more and more of which is thankfully being reissued every day...

A great new record by Junghans, a soon-to-be much more well known guitarist from the former East Berlin. Solo acoustic steel string guitar is his thing. "Inside" is a folk-trance album of exquisite beauty that has been compared to his evident hero Robbie Basho as well as to Loren Mazzacane Connors. Obviously, John Fahey would be another reference point, and Junghan's sometimes quite repetitive minimalism also puts us in mind of Rod Poole. The disc is divided into three "movements", starting in a simple, rhythmic manner (sounding very avant-garde & "Eastern" & Rod Poole-like) before morphing into some equally radical intricacies. There's no overdubs, but lots of variation. It's all very beautiful and hypnotic, never too difficult (to listen to, that is -- to play this stuff I'm sure is difficult). With colorful liner notes by Byron Coley.

RealAudio clip: First Movement
RealAudio clip: Second Movement, Part One

"Extreme Onction" is the first collaborative production between Acid Mothers Temple's guru Makoto Kawabata and France's Jean-François Pauvros. Kawabata has led the Japanese collective on some wild trips through psychedelic mayhem and eerie dronescapes, and Pauvros has a number of releases of improv guitar work on Spalax. These two have revisted the guitar isolationist sounds that found their way on Sentrax and Subharmonic in mid '90s: thick guitar reverberations taking on the challenge of creating a dark ambient music entirely out the guitar (and of course a shit load of effects). Just as Buckethead (he's got a bucket on his head - that's funny) and Bill Laswell had the ability to produce some amazingly expressive and dark atmospherics, Kawabata & Pauvros have succeeded in getting their guitars to speak with a bleak torpor. But similar to their predecessors, Kawabata & Pauvros want the listener to know that they are masters at their instrument and can shove 30 million notes in less than 10 seconds. Wow. What virtuosity.

RealAudio clip: Vertige

After a long absence, here's a new, third album from these former Napalm Records recording artists, the sometimes very weird Austrian black metal outfit Korva, now rechristened Korovakill. They've always been one of our favorites, playing unclassifiable epic metal with baroque keyboards and downright bizarre male and female vocals (too silly for some, it must be said) that on their first album even reminded us of the Sun City Girls! The album after that dabbled in electronica, ending up even stranger than some of Arcturus' experiments, but with this disc they rely on more standard, blasting black metal techniques, making for probably their most "accessible" release, but definitely still one for fans of the weird in black metal, along the lines of the aforementioned Arcturus, Borknagar, Enslaved, etc. We haven't had this disc long enough to fully comprehend the watery concept at play here, but "Waterhells" seems to refer to a mythology of the sea that ties together the songs (interesting subject matter for a band from the Alps).

RealAudio clip: Into The Underwhirls

Pop music simply doesn't get much more stylin' than this euro-fashion plate quartet. 604 is packed with groovy moments that bring to mind the sound and mood of "Sexy Boy" by AIR (but with female vocals). Lots of retro-futuristic (yes, at times quite Giorgio Moroder, New Order and Kraftwerk-esque --- in fact, their song "He Took Her To A Movie" is a shameful deadringer for "The Model") synth fluffiness along with equally light, playful lyrics delivered by the two female vocalists in sweet breathiness cozied up next to almost-spoken drollness a la Flying Lizards. Add in the bouncing, boogie-worthy beats and - voila! - a perfect fit on the Emperor Norton roster (amid such kindred spirits as Fantastic Plastic Machine and Takako Minekawa). Although I do have to ask -- why? Why do something that was done to perfection in the '80s and not even add anything new to the formula?

RealAudio clip: Discotraxx
RealAudio clip: The Way That I Found You

Libythth is the wacky electro-percussion project from the same sick mind who came up with the Guy Albino persona in Hawd Gangstuh Rappuhs MCs Wid Ghatz. "Dissolve A Diamond" is the first recording for the Libythth project, being a spasmodic spluttering of car-crashed electronic rhythms and bango jangle. Think Matmos attempting to collaborate with Atom & His Package... so silly it borders on the painfully moronic.

What can we say about Luna "Live"? Dean Wareham has honed and polished every last inch of this band to a positively glowing sheen thus making this a very well-recorded, well-performed live album that in a sense is a 'best of' also. You almost can't tell that these are live - non-studio - performances except for the applause that ends each song. Many of the lovely Luna faves are here. "Tiger Lily", "Bonnie and Clyde", "Anesthesia" to name a few. From 1999/2000 performances in Washington, DC's 9:30 Club and NYC's Knitting Factory.

In the same Collector's choice series that has brought us classics by Faust and H.P. Lovecraft, comes a single-disc reissue of the two albums ("Mad River" and "Paradise Bar & Grill") by this lesser-known '60s San Francisco psychrock outfit. Their guitars are employed in both the "acid" and "country/folk" modes common to other Bay Area bands. Mad River is comparable to a somewhat spookier sounding Quicksilver Messenger Service, I guess. Not really classic stuff, but cult material nonetheless for fans of the era/genre, certainly possessing some weird, dissonant charm.

New side project / 'supergroup' from Black Heart Procession and 764 Hero.

Pavement is no more, yet Stephen Malkmus is making another go at it, as a solo artist (as if everybody didn't know that Pavement was basically his project anyway). His debut album is a marked improvement from the last couple of Pavement records, but this still doesn't break Indie-Rock Rule #326: 'the only good Pavement is early Pavement'. By the way Indie-Rock Rule #325 is '500,000 Slint fans can't be wrong', and Indie-Rock Rule #327 is 'Thrift store slacks will never go out of style.'

A teaser ep from Matmos' upcoming record "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure" -- the medical album for San Francisco's beloved electronica duo, who of course keeps this rather sterile and grim theme lighthearted and wacky. In keeping true to the medical theme, Matmos procured remixes from Dr. Rockit and Surgeon of the title track... and did a cover of Coil's "Disco Hospital" (which features Stephen Thrower - formerly of Coil). Who said drilling through a person's nose or suctioning out all of the fat from some rich lady's ass couldn't be fun? Or sound great?!

[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 108 ]