Fronted by Hydra Head honcho Aaron, Isis were always The indie rock metal core band, fusing their pummelling metallic crush with plenty of Slint-isms, making them the perfect band for Allan and Andee, who are always saying, 'I don't understand why that post rock band doesn't just play metal'. On this, their newest ep, Isis do get heavier as well as a bit more varied. Half the songs
2-on-1 reissue.
According to a number of sources, the sole individual behind Jandek is the Texan recluse Sterling Smith. He has never given an interview and rarely spoken to anybody about his work, with most of those few correspondences being documented in Irwin Chusid's "Songs In The Key Of Z." In spite of the reclusive facade, Jandek is incredibly prolific with almost 30 records all of which show
"Your Turn To Fall" is the seventh Jandek album, and is still well within the 'classic' Jandek sound with Smith slowly plucking at open strings on his acoustic guitar and singing with a lithium soaked, breathy falsetto. That voice bares witness to a soul on the verge on a manic / depressive collapse, but wearily manages to hold on just long enough to get through one more song. While "Your Turn To Fall" is not as good as "The Blue Corpse" or "Ready For This House," it stands as one of the stronger, more musical outings for one of the great outsider musicians this world has gotten the chance to hear.
Two songs apiece from angular artrock punk bands Juno and Dismemberment Plan. Dismemberment Plan covers Jennifer Paige's "Crush," but the real gem on this EP is Juno's version of the DJ Shadow track "High Noon." How cool is it for a rock band (with relatively traditional instrumentation) to cover a song that is basically a turntablist collage of found sounds from super disparate sources?
Downtown NYC alto sax player Ori Kaplan combines international (Israeli, North African, Arabic) influences with both avant and trad jazz composition/improvisation, with the help of pianist Andrew Bernkey, and percussionists Geoff Mann and the wonderful
After making the recent domestic release of their "Tonight's Decision" opus our "record of the week" on the last AQ-L, we are now very happy to present this BRAND NEW import-only (as yet...) album from these Swedish gods of melancholy. Genius heavy downer pop
Vinyl only remixes of tracks from P.S. I Love You by Matmos, Twerk, Farben, and two by the Kid himself. Five tracks in all!
Double disc collection compiling the entire surviving body of the Kinks recordings for the BBC between 1964 and 1977. Includes an 18 page booklet with information on each of the sessions and a bio of the band.
We initially wrote this band off after a really uninspiring and boring S.F. performance, but this record is something else entirely. Dense and hypnotic, warm and droney guitar rock. Everytime we play this in the store, everyone in the store wants to
This is the long-awaited, highly anticipated full length release from Providence, RI's amazing bass and drums duo LIGHTNING BOLT! Imagine Tokyo drums/bass duo Ruins in their early years: way obvious prog influence and heavy as fuck, then subtract the zeuhl
Baltimore-based quartet (featuring former members of Universal Order of Armageddon and the Great Unravelling) who conjure up the same intense desperation and drug-addled lugubriousness that's already been perfected by the Jesus Lizard and the Birthday Party. Love Life's twist, however, is that it's a girl singing. Her voice is so unbelievable that without reading the liner notes you'd
So beautiful! Finally available, the debut album by local quartet Lumen, which features our esteemed co-worker (and ex-A Minor
P.S. The title of the album is from a story by Italo Calvino.
The Polish avant-hippy experimental ethno-folk duo (got that?) the Magic Carpathians release their first domestic US disc, quickly following up their recent import-only "Denega" album (and coinciding with their first ever US tour, which featured an appearance
Send out the Ork alarm! Here's a major event for those initiated into the cult of this French prog colossus, the Wagner-meets-Coltrane-meets-'70s prog rock outfit MAGMA. A rare, brand new release, with the current lineup of the band filling
Great collection of recordings made by Jimmy Martin, one of the greatest bluegrass bandleaders. The tracks here span back to his earliest recordings fronting his own band in 1956 and stretch as recently as 1970. Jimmy started out as a guitarist and vocalist (tenor) for Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1949, replacing Lester Flatt who left with Earl Scruggs to form their own group. Like
Kaffe Matthews is a UK electronic artist specializing in live sampling techniques in which she pulls a variety of sounds from her performance space and transforms them into a variety of loops to be collaged in real time. Her previous recordings had often featured her playing violin and specifically manipulating that sounds; but as can be heard here on her fifth album, Matthews' is
1973 "blues inflected out-soul" date from saxophonist Joe McPhee and his trio (piano, drums), reissued for the first time, and with much improved sound from the original LP, we're told. Albert Ayler-dedicated jazz wildness.
The Melvins, an often great band who are nothing if not self-indulgent, release this supposedly live cd on Mike Patton's Ipecac label. It's basically just one hour long track (with a split-second feedback coda occupying track two), being mainly a noisescape
Of all the pop bands that've been coming more and more to people's attention in the past few years, bands that specialize in reinterpreting the proudly pop roots planted by the Beatles, Kinks, Beach Boys, etc., Portland's The Minders are, in my humble opinion, head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. Like the Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo, The Minders' version
I have become completely obsessed with Chris Morris. He makes me sad. Sad that we don't have anyone nearly as funny in the United States.
He's been a staple of British radio / television for years now. And it seems like since day one, he's been trying to get himself blackballed. Or killed. His BBC program The Day Today, was a Today Show parody. Complete with a washed up, neurotic weatherman (the also amazing Steve Coogan), a narcissistic and completely cruel host (Morris), and a gorgeous and ice cold business reporting babe that spoke in complete gibberish. After The Day Today was cancelled, came Brass Eye, one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. This time a parody of evening news programs like 48 Hours or 60 Minutes, taking things even further. The goal of this show seemed to be to publically humiliate trusted government officials and public figures (quite successfully we should add) and contributed to Brass Eye's rather brief run. Then came Blue Jam, a totally surreal and unstructured radio show. featuring bizarre (and often offensive) free association / high (low) concept skits over music from a who's who of modern electronica / trip hop (Later turned into an even more unstructured television program called Jam. loosely adapted from the radio show). The Blue Jam cd is basically the best bits from the Blue Jam radio show, featuring Chris Morris and a few other folks, eating and killing and arguing and shitting off their limbs (?) over music from Labradford, Propellerheads, Amon Tobin, Funki Porcini, Herbaliser, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Fila Brazillia, 9lazy9, Clifford Gilberto, Jimi Tenor, and more. Until we can get Brass Eye over here, Chris Morris comes to you only via Blue Jam, quite possibly the funniest headphone mindfuck ever.
Welcome reissue of this early work by Swiss musical madmen Norbert Moslang and Andy Guhl, better known by their later moniker, Voice Crack. This 1982 recording shows them on their way to the "cracked everyday electronics" sound of VC, coming out of the FMP / European free improv scene in which they got their start. Although "normal" instruments like soprano saxophone do make an
So really what is the difference between Motion and Oval? You tell me, cuz I can't hear any difference. Twelve tracks of variously pitched glitch samples collaged into delicate structures that occasionally hint at something which could be a melody.
This Japanese electronic music experimentalist's new solo disc (last AQ-L we reviewed his recent collaboration with Sachiko M) on the always-interesting and handsomely packaged Zero Gravity label. No-Input Mixing Board's title accurately describes Nakamura's
Slow and sludgy doom metal from New York, simple but effective. Their basic approach seems to be a repetitive riff played at an agonizingly slow pace with some throat-tearing vocals and NASA samples thrown in, plus some spacy fx. These guys seem obsessed with astronauts and outer space (the cover art features pyramids on the Moon), it's not surprising that the bonus track is a
Phill Niblock is a minimalist contemporary of LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Tony Conrad, yet has been seemingly overlooked, minus a few avant rock footnotes from the likes of Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Band of Susans. In the liner notes,
The first piece "Hurdy Hurry" is an extended drone, based on samples of Jim O'Rourke and his hurdy gurdy. Niblock begins the piece simply enough with a single sustained whir of the wooden machine, but thickens the mix with multi-tracked layers of more hurdy gurdy drones tuned to specific pitches. The result is a glistening audio kaleidoscope of rich ambers, oranges, and blood reds.
The two versions of "A Y U (aka As Yet Untitled)" are based upon a similar multi-tracked technique as before, but based upon recordings of baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner. These two tracks have a nasally warble to them, sounding similar to the circular breathing of Tuvan throat singers. While sonically similar, the first version is open and diffuse, and the second is lumbering and forceful.
As with all Touch releases, Jon Wozencroft offers his usual amazing design sensibility to an amazing piece of minimalist composition.
Although there is no track listing or general information on this record, "Automating Volume 1" is a collection of recordings that Steven Stapleton made for compilations between 1981 and 1986. The album starts out on a really wacky note with "Duelling Banjos" (from the United Dairies compilation "Hoisting The Black Flag" released in 1981.) An uptight drum machine relentlessly chuggs
The remainder of "Automating Vol. 1" revolves around Stapleton's fascination with Robert Ashley's compositions in one form or another. "I Was No Longer His Dominant", taken from the 1982 United Dairies release "An Afflicted Man's Musica Box" is a creepy homage to Ashley's "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon". While both the remaining two tracks, "Ciconia" (from the 1982 Slektion comp "Masse Menche") and "Automating (Again)" (from the 1984 Frux comp "Born Out of Dreams" -- exclusive to the cd re-issue) are themselves influenced greatly by Ashley's "Automatic Writin." A coincidence in the title? I think not! The aforementioned Ashley piece is an unsettling meditation on muffled conversations and muted electronics which mysteriously express a psychosexual overtone. Stapleton's homages to Ashley are a fortunately less academic sounding and pack more of a punch.
Certainly, this work stands with "Homotopy For Marie" and "150 Murderous Passions" as the records to document Stapleton's formative years.
With baited breath, er, ears, we cracked open the new Old 97's. Would it live up to the brilliance of "Too Far To Care", or follow in the mediocrity of "Fight Songs"? Sadly, the verdict falls to the latter. No amount of re-attempts to listen to this album brings our opinion any higher as well. It seems as if the boys have just lost the ability to write smart and catchy songs, country
With the "Use Your Illusion"-style simultaneous release of these two new discs on HydraHead sublabel Tortuga, Boston's Old Man Gloom have vaulted to the forefront of the so-called "noisecore" scene, at least in our estimation. We were already big fans of
With the "Use Your Illusion"-style simultaneous release of these two new discs on HydraHead sublabel Tortuga, Boston's Old Man Gloom have vaulted to the forefront of the so-called "noisecore" scene, at least in our estimation. We were already big fans of
David Byrne's Luaka Bop label decided to follow up the Os Mutantes "best of" collection which was volume one of their "World Psychedelic Classics" series with this disc of by long-forgotten seventies singer/songwriter Shuggie Otis. Thus those of us who
Richard D. James is better known as The Aphex Twin, yet his first recording for Warp Records was under his Polygon Window moniker. At the time of this recording in 1992, Warp started the legendary Artificial Intelligence series (which is the origin for the dubious genre title Intelligent Dance Music) to encapsulate the mutant techno sounds of Autechre, Black Dog, F.U.S.E., B12, and
Finally, Warp has reissued "Surfing On Sinewaves" for the US (the UK pressings have still been in print, but unavailable for sale in North America due to that piece of paper with Wax Trax). Most clearly inspired by the claustrophobia of Chicago Acid House and Detroit Techno, James coaxed an arpeggiating barrage of metallic clangs and hammered rhythms out of his broken samplers and rewired drum machines. The alien melodies and warm dreamlike tonalities which dominated his epic "Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2" first found their way onto these records as ghost like afterimages surrounding the electronic rhythms. Even after nearly a decade, this album is still mindblowing.
While today's contemporary discourse of the glitch / click have their clear roots in the malfuctioning sounds of computers, Richard James' early pioneering productions spoke of technological errors occuring within his broken synthesizers and Midi plug-ins. If it weren't for records like "Surfing on Sinewaves," there would be no Kid 606, Lesser, or Hrvatski.
Stephan Meissner is a mainstay of the Mille Plateaux clicks 'n cuts crew via his work in Autopoesies and his solo projects Random Industries and Random Inc. "Jerusalem" is his latest work, the resulti of four years of gathering and editting sound material, specifically related to the complex and often volatile relationship between Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem. Meissner's
The leader of the Scottish group Appendix Out releases a solo record at around the same time a new (wonderful) Appendix Out record arrives. I know I am constantly referring to Palace Bros' Will Oldham when speaking of Appendix Out, but really it's unavoidable
The beloved Bay Area saxophone quartet (whose Bruce Ackley managed AQ around the time this record was released!) gets the honorary reissue treatment from Atavistic's wonderful Unheard Music Series. This originally self-released 1981 record has never before been
Super catchy, southern tinged stoner rock from Canada. This is Sea of Green's second record and is a huge leap ahead of its predecessor. Great production (same guy who produced Deep Purple and Nazareth) and super catchy songs. Sounds a bit like Kyuss if
The cd is out of print and no longer available, but is reissued here on 180 gram vinyl in a beautiful gatefold sleeve. Originally released in 1969, Archie Shepp, Lester Bowie, and Malachi Favors (from the Art Ensemble of Chicago), Philly Joe Jones, Dave Burrell, and Jeanne Lee. So nice.
Silo are a Danish trio who boastfully proclaim their allegiance to Metallica, yet sound nothing at all like metal. Instead, the group takes a post-rock approach, with metronomically tight, cyclical rhythmic patterns of guitar, bass, drums, and electronics, not dissimilar to the AQ-endorsed sounds of Fridge, Village Of Savoonga, and Circle. While the sounds on "Alloy" certainly
Sweet indie rock of the Elephant Six / Kindercore / post-Beatles / post-British Invasion variety. Mostly acoustic, with melodica, tambourine, boy and girl vocals. Unpretentious but also unexciting in any way. With members of the Essex Green.
This rare EP from the Baltimore-based quartet Sonna is a gem, and we're pleased to be the only store to carry it. The disc was originally issued as part of the subscription-only Travels in Constants series of EPs from bands such as Low, Mogwai, Bonny Billy,
New single from AQ pop faves Spoon. Described in a former list as: "rough and raw, simple and dark, late night pop. Breaking up with your girlfriend mixtape pop. Really stripped down sounding with warm guitars and shimmering vibes, and a fucking amazing voice." This single has one track from their recent and brilliant album Girls Can Tell, one non-album track, and a Yo La Tengo
From the black-on-black packaging worthy of a Keiji Haino release, complete with badass photos of these two '70s Japanese free jazz legends (the soon-to-die-young saxophonist Kaoru Abe clutching his horn in a suitably doomed pose, and jazz-meets-noise
Most of us who already love powerbook maestro Nobukazu Takemura will be familiar with his other domestically-released album, Scope, a brilliant record that is all about austere sonic textures and half-melodic gestures. Another side to Takemura's talent is
Tennis is the collective nom de plume for British electronica artists Ben Edwards and Douglas Benford, who are respectively known better as Benge and Si-Cut.Db. At first, their collaboration sounds like a mutation of the utopian neo-dub of Pole and Kit Clayton, in which all of the grooves have been shredded into jagged patterns, and reassemled into disjointed filter techno
"Cyclorama Lift 3" is a 21 minute out-take from the same sessions that warranted the "Aeriola Frequency" album for Perdition Plastics. These recordings marked Toral's first exploration beyond the guitar based approach to the Phil Niblock drone minimalism. Here, he has used an open circuit on an empty circuit on a mixing board with two 8 second delay pedals and a 4-band parametric
The current glut of mediocre compilations from the computer glitch faction of experimental music demands that the compiler of any collection should hold greater standards than, "I'm selling yet another compilation featuring Kid 606. Please buy my product." Simple curatorial questions such as: why these artists? Why these tracks? What is the thematic connection? What is to be learned
Thus, Anomalous should be commended first for not recycling the mimetic electro-glitch roster on their "An Uncommon Nature" and second for putting some thought into the production of the compilation. This vinyl only album documents discrete physical actions which address the age old dichotomy between humanity and nature. Erik Lanzillota -- the curator of this album and founder of Anomalous -- has for the most part succeeded in creating a near seamless aural flow between the long thin wire striations of Jonathan Coleclough and the muffled thunderstorm field recordings of David Knott. The one snag is the annoying nasal blurt from Agog, but the wonderous drones from Mirror and the rich texural rubbings form Jeph Jerman keep this compilation from sinking like so many others.
"Between Two Points" is yet another compilation of electronic glitches and lowercase music. Disc one is more rhythmic in its nature with morse code bleeps and rhythmic sine wave modulations from Noto, Taylor Deupree, Sogar, Mikael Stavostrand, Komet, Dan Abrams, Kim Cascone, and Vend. Disc two is barely there with Bernhard Gunter providing the most activity of sound amongst the
Please will somebody issue a moratorium on compilations as predictable as this one? I'll give you 20 bucks if you make it happen. Well, maybe just 10. But it's gotta happen.
A fantastic package here: 3 cds (that's 193 minutes!) of musical/field recordings spanning 25 years, documenting the pre-industrial culture of the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea (y'know, it's an island to the north of Australia) and their
Queer nation underground comes together here for a great mix tape (CD, actually) of some better knowns and some lesser knowns. Features tracks by Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Kiki & Herb (featuring Justin Bond, here doing a hilarious rendition of Sleater-Kinney's "I'm Not Waiting"), the Butchies (NC, feat. Mr. Lady's Kaia), Amy Ray (of Indigo Girls fame), Oakland's
