[ 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 72.

Melvins drummer Dale Crover's side band, where he straps on a six string and does his southern rock, '70s stoner thing. The Altamont trio also includes a member of Acid King. Their last album had a Hendrix cover, this time they do one by the Heartbreakers, and a Mose Allison by way of The Who tune, among their retro originals.

When I saw the cover of this cd (two clean-cut , young lads in front of a city skyline) I immediately thought "from Chicago, possibly post-rock", and I suppose I wasn't too far off on the first part at least. Finding their home on Danville, IL label

Be not mistaken, there's certainly no Robert Blake here, nor any sign of his bird. What we have is the soundtrack for those nights when you just wanna kick back and chill. Got it? Slow to mid tempo grooves for when you feel like spinning something new along the lines of Thievery Corp or Kruder & Dorfmeister.

Bark! is an electoacoustic improv trio from the UK featuring guitar, percussion and electronics. The players are really good at generating cool noises (not just plain old noise) with their instruments, and create an enjoyable interplay of these sounds, sometimes resembling a rhythmic, wild, alien conversation. This stuff reminds us a bit of Supersilent, or the Shaking Ray Levis,

Berkowitz, Lake & Dahmer have easily become our new favorite electronica renegades (having easily overtaken V/Vm, what with being more musical and less annoying (just barely) and not so concerned with inane 'concepts'). The 'Missionary District' cd is their 1. an indian soundtrack being overtaken by a bleeping hyper distorted techno marching band. 2. grinding scraping pulsing drone, like a small village being over run by snakes made out of bowed cymbals and broken samplers. 3. hissing ambience created by a choir of traecheotomy patients w/intercepted short wave transmissions interrupted by gunfire, only the bullets are Masonna cassettes. 4. skittery but smooth. like someone drugged Boards of Canada and then pushed them down the stairs, while outside BL+D tried desperately to start the getaway car. 5. shortwave, high pitch skree like a Skullflower / Sun City Girls pool party. 6. like laying prone in a pool of Rephlex 12"s while hundreds of 'electronica artists' piss on you from above. 7. ultra harsh noise over a strange man humming into a broken telephone, while Glen Branca and his orchestra try desperately to compete in the background. 8. unwrapping cellophane candies in a hyperbolic chamber, while little girls in tap shoes run laps around the room. 9. pipe fight and synthesiser fight double tag team. broadcast through a toy megaphone set on 'monster'. So definitely, if you've bought anything or everything on Fflint, then this is obviously essential, and if you haven't yet, what the hell's wrong with you?! This is as good a place to start as any. Fucking great!

Funky afro-rock from this '70s Nigerian band. This compiles tracks from their four albums, and ranges from the mellow psychedelic rock (in a West Coast mode) of their early stuff to a much more dance-oriented, disco-inflected groove later on, that you could

RealAudio clip: Miss Sagit
RealAudio clip: Chant To Mother Earth
RealAudio clip: Scandi Boogie
RealAudio clip: Number One
RealAudio clip: Get That Groove In

"1-2-3-4!" That same intro which kicked off 1989's "Onanie Bomb Meets the Sex Pistols" also kicks off this, the third volume in the Boredoms' series of megamixes, this time by the mighty DJ Krush. Subtitled "DJ Krush Gigamix (44:51 Non-Stop DJ Mix)", and

Graced by the presence of Jon Spencer's sister Muffin, Brassy pump out the tunes like an amped up 'n' funkier Luscious Jackson with lots of bum-bumpin' beats and squitchy-squitchy scratchin'. Certainly a welcome release for those who wept at the demise of the aforementioned LJ.

Tim Rutili, formerly of Chicago group Red Red Meat, conjures up a dusty, sunbaked, introspective Sunday morning of a record. Full of lush acoustic guitars and piano, this is not, rest assured, an annoying singer/songwriter record; it instead sounds like a

RealAudio clip: Bottles & Bones (shade and sympathy)

Even though Cornelius Cardew composed this piece from 1963 - 1967, the world premier complete recording of "Treatise" did not see the light of day long after his death in 1998. That's not surprising, considering that the manuscript of the score is 193 pages long, and serves as an open ended graphical display rather than a collection of specific notations. There are no suggestions as to

Nick Cave's songwriting has steadily devolved (or evolved?) from the rock bombast that once dominated his early career fronting the purposefully confrontational Birthday Party. With "No More Shall We Part," Cave once again situates himself comfortably behind Nick Cave may have stumbled slightly in trying to position himself as an elder statesman of mope-rock with his abject previous outing "The Boatman's Call." But here, Cave confidently stands tall and proud, older and wiser.

RealAudio clip: Hallelujah
RealAudio clip: As I Sat Sadly By Her Side

Cex certainly has some artistic talent, but "Starship Galactica" shows him to still be just a dorky kid from Baltimore. The majority of this album features what Cex does best -- Autechre / Funkstorung breakbeats with sad, romantic chords derived from both warm acoustic instruments and cold digital algorhythms. However, he inexplicably drops in skits / introductions to these

Compilation of version sides recorded by Ernest & Jo Jo Hookim at their Channel One studio during its heyday (between 1974-79). Though not always known necessarily for the innovation in their own productions (an incredible exception here being the Natty A

Split cd with Boston's Converge and Japan's Hellchild. Converge take their normal metal core sound and twist it a bit, adding weird stop-start arrangements and bizarre keyboards making for a super heavy prog workout. And then try their hand at a Depeche Hellchild slow down their grinding metal to a more midtempo 80's thrash. One new song and a Bulldozer cover! Both bands finish up with some live tunes. Pretty great.

RealAudio clip: Thaw
RealAudio clip: 1

These German post-rockers continue on in the light, jazzy, prog-ish pop vein that they embarked on in their previous endeavour 'Fantasy', but it's perhaps even more bright and pretty than that. Yes, it appears they've definitely left the advanced math books behind. Lovely and chiming like a super-deluxe music box, but with a steady, anchoring rhythm section so it won't float away.

The misanthropic Italian grindcore legends, the one and only Cripple Bastards, return with a brand-new full-length (no, not another singles collection!) on former Brutal Truth drummer Rich Hoak's Deaf American imprint. Giulio the Bastard, Alberto the

RealAudio clip: Misantropo A Senso Unico

This is about the most emo record I've ever heard. Imagine a mostly acoustic Get Up Kids with high keening sad boy vocals, and massive minor chord swells of teenage heartbreak and dateless / post-break up saturday night loneliness lyrics. I wish I had this

RealAudio clip: The Brilliant Dance
RealAudio clip: Screaming Infidelities

As the cd package clearly states "Two discs. 29 new songs. Two hours of music. One righteous babe." Do you really need any more? I didn't think so.

A three cd collection of classic old soul, disco and r'n'b gems. The first disc is a continuous mix by DJ Spinna, whose skills aren't all there but somehow his clunkiness adds a charm to the whole thing. The two remaining discs are the originals of each of

RealAudio clip: Reasons
RealAudio clip: Hunk of Heaven

This Czech Republic ensemble made a big stir in the early '90s with a number of exceptional shoe-gazer singles on par with the best Creation work from Ride and Slowdive, but dissappeared from the hipster radar after a questionable ambient-techno album. "In Dust 3" marks Ectacy Of St. Theresa's first album in nearly a decade, and finds them eclectically mixing the dark synth pop sheen

Absolutely Kosher traffics mostly in pop prettiness, and has discovered it in its many different shades and styles. A few examples? Well, the angular off kilter pop of PEE (r.i.p.), the complex lovliness of Optiganally Yours, the brooding melancholy of Telegraph Melts and more recently The Places and Jim Yoshi Pile-Up. Eltro is no exception. A glimmering, gliding earful. Actually

There are two ways to look at the work of V/Vm and their croneys: 1. that they actually are the ultimate post-modern pranksters offering aural jokes so complex as to confound even the most astute cultral analyst, or 2. that they have convinced themselves that they are the ultimate post-modern pranksters, but have gotten so wrapped up in their self-consecration within the realm of

Check out these stylin' Brit-inflected synth-wavers from Nebraska! The Faint make music that's coolly sparse and punchy with synth sounds straight outta the '80s. And they throw in a well-placed hook or herky-jerk when they see fit. Makes me think of a young, pouty, punky Pulp. Quite good, yes.

RealAudio clip: Sex Is Personal

Mithotyn, AQ's fave "Viking" black metallers after Enslaved, are sadly gone. Their last album, the magnificent (and silly) "Gathered Round The Oaken Table" was the perfect epic Norse sing-a-long disc, merging blackened-folk-metal riffing with

RealAudio clip: Upon The Grave Of Guilt
RealAudio clip: Heresy In Disguise

Drifting in like a female Chris Isaak of old - a la 'Don't Want to Fall in Love' - and a hint of Patsy Cline, is Paula Frazer (of Tarnation acclaim). All lilting and lovely. The music offers shades of Calexico with a sprinkling of clarinet and piano. For fans

Wow! UK noise-skree-experimental rock duo Guapo really take their prog-rock obessions to the limit on this new album, a joint release between France's Pandemonium label (home to AQ-faves Hint as well) and our own Andee's tUMULt label. Guapo have always

Our own Andee proves himself, and his tUMULt label, to be truly dedicated to the Heaviest of Metal with this new release! Following on from prior tUMULt metal-oriented releases (the grim and trancelike black metal genius of Weakling, the blackened Formerly known as Unholy Cadaver, Hammers of Misfortune is the demented brainchild of local metal master John Cobbett, who also plays guitar in the cult SF "celtic epic metal" outfit The Lord Weird Slough Feg. Mike from Slough Feg is also in Hammers, playing guitar and providing the "clean" male vox. And we must mention the contribution of Janis Tanaka (ex-Stone Fox) on bass and the exellent female vocals. "The Bastard" comes across like a mixture of Cradle of Filth and Blind Guardian, or Slough Feg and Opeth, or Satyricon and Mercyful Fate: it's that eclectic, that classic, that amazing.

RealAudio clip: The Dragon Is Summoned
RealAudio clip: The Bastard Sapling
RealAudio clip: You Should Have Slain Me
RealAudio clip: Sacrifice / The End

Hood are so schizophrenic; each of their albums sounds different. With some bands you feel like this means they haven't really found their true sound yet, but then again Hood's records are so well done that maybe that means they're just good at whatever they do. This mid-length 5-song record runs the gamut from Mogwai-like loud-soft dynamics with tons of layers and drama, to

RealAudio clip: Home is where it hurts
RealAudio clip: The fact that you failed

Brimming with confidence and charm, it's the Jim Yoshi Pile-Up. These bay area boys have brought forth their first full-length of sensitive, lovely quiet-quiet-loud music that's leaps and bounds from their first release (the self-released self-titled ep from

This is definitely one of my favorite metal records from the '80s (and now Allan's too even though he hadn't heard it until a few years ago). And one of the few that has actually held up pretty well, all things considered. Sure it's cheesy, I mean, c'mon,

RealAudio clip: Cause For Alarm
RealAudio clip: Dreamin' About You
RealAudio clip: Stay On Top
RealAudio clip: Heavy Metal Shuffle

This record has been out for a while in Europe, but is only now being released in the U.S. by the folks at Hydrahead. Knut (pronounced like newt, not like nut) are a punishing metal core powerhouse from Switzerland, who play heavy downtuned midtempo

RealAudio clip: Crawling On All Fours

This is a reissue of a pretty obscure late 60's garage / beat outfit from Hollywood. Leathercoated Minds offer a number of covers: Donovan, Bob Dylan, the theme to "Puff The Magic Dragon," and The Count Five (of course, it's "Psychotic Reaction"). Their own

Life Without Buildings is the next big thing according to the often overzealous and easily bought UK music press, but this time, they just might be right. Definitely too weird to -actually- be the next big thing, Life Without Buildings does offer some new and appealing sounds. They have an indie-rock jangle somewhere between Sleater Kinney's urgency and The Smith's precious perfection;

Another reissue of late '60s psych / fuzz / garage stuff, this time from Chicago's Little Boy Blues. This album compiles all of their early singles and their "psych" album "In The Woodland of The Weir" (an album about such AQ-endorsed themes as ghouls and

The second EP from Mr. Malkmus. The title track can be found on his recent solo debut album, but the other three tracks were recorded live in Germany. And what are they? Well, they're three covers of songs by Black Oak Arkansas, Coloured Balls and Greg Sage.

The mighty metal panzer divsion return with a vengeance, to lay waste to all poseurs in their path. Marduk's buzzing and blazing-fast black metal is fully intact, but this time around, it's tempered with lots of droning mid tempos and old school eighties metal riffs making for a pretty great 21st century black metal/80's thrash hybrid.

Surprise solo album by Mark Deutrom, the cowboy-hatted Melvins bass player through their Atlantic years (on "Stoner Witch", "Stag", etc.). He also produced some early Melvins stuff like their "Ozma" masterpiece. On this disc, the man plays everything

RealAudio clip: The Hobnail Paisley
RealAudio clip: One Thousand Nights
RealAudio clip: Gateau D'Amour
RealAudio clip: Van Diemen's Land

Christof Migone is not kidding around with that title. Migone is a French-Canadian (with the accent definitely on the French side of that equation) conceptual sound artist, who has based this album on recordings of (or inspirations from) the canon which fires daily at noon in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Migone punctuates his incredibly quiet reflections on this explosive sound with extended silences. Migone has at least enough sense to offer a track listing which indicates the silence tracks with the demarcation [0] and warning when an untreated recording of the canon blast (it's track 18)... so you can simply program out all of the unnecessary silent parts and have a concise collection of muffled shock-waves.

Now available domestically, for those who sweated out their Monster Magnet addictions and held off buying the expensive import version that we've had for a few months. The same reveiw applies: the newest record from the reigning kings of drugged out

RealAudio clip: God Says No
RealAudio clip: Heads Explode

Mountain Goats fans already familiar with John Darnielle's signature combination of smart, stark vocals with intensely strummed guitar and angular melodies will find this record does not disappoint. It is a collection of 6 songs, softer and more gentle than other Mountain Goats song cycles but no less emotional or intense for its rounded edges. With Lalitree Darnielle guesting on This is the second in a reported series of three 12" releases by The Mountain Goats on Yoyo Recordings. Vinyl only. Side B is an etching by Nikki McClure. This is mainly available thru Yoyo mailorder, but we're happy to be carrying several copies.

Stoner rock split cd from these two South American bands, both falling somewhere in the Kyuss/Sabbath realm.

Packaged in a deluxe gatefold LP sleeve with a handful of gory-but-beautiful, blood-drenched photographs overprinted with shimmering transparent lettering, this triple cd is a partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day Unlike previous releases of Nitsch's musical works where visual evidence of his "actions" (for which his music provides the soundtrack) appear only as album cover art, this time we get a CD-Rom with video of portions of Day 3's activities (the usual Nitsch spectacle of people stomping tomatoes, disembowling butchered pigs, crucifying naked participants, and pouring lots and lots of blood over everything). But regardless of whether that sort of thing interests you, the two audio cds in the set provide what we have come to expect from Hermann Nitsch's orchestrations: tense, swelling masses of atonal strings, the performers told to play loud, and then to play even louder. The major difference in these scores is in how Nitsch arranges the breakdowns of these swells. On one of the discs, Nitsch inserts some festive Polka tunes between his signature walls of sound; on the other, Nitsch required a drummer to back up the drones with stumbling, haphazard beats. His truncated fills and erratic rhythms making it into something almost "free jazz", if anything this dark and droney could be so described. You get the impression that this drummer is slipping and sliding off his drum stool because of all of the blood, and randomly striking his drums on the way down. In conjunction with the ominous, building strings and horns this creates a sound not at all unlike recent AQ fave Crystal Fist. As with almost everything we've heard from Nitsch, droning and mesmerising and magnificent.

RealAudio clip: Day Of Dionysius 3pm
RealAudio clip: Day Of Dionysius 10am

Packaged exactly the same as the triple cd (in the same deluxe gatefold LP sleeve adorned with blood drenched photographs), this vinyl album is the second partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day performance, and features

New album from the "word jazz" guy, famous for his LP "Colors" and weekly syndicated radio show. Though his voice is still quite nice to listen to, the album is a big disappointment. The musical accompaniment consists primarily of cheesy synth factory presets -- so sad to waste such a nice voice on such drivel.

This is the second album from Osaka's OOIOO (say it with us: "oh-oh-eye-oh-oh"), an all female quartet led by Yoshimi (of the Boredoms, UFO or Die, Free Kitten, etc.) More melodic than their first outing, while heavier than last year's Green and Gold,

RealAudio clip: Ah Yeah / Switch On
RealAudio clip: Asozan

New on Man's Ruin. Operator: Generator are the Bay Area's answer to Kyuss. Groovy doomy swinging stoner rock. Not quite as heavy though, O:G sit somewhere right between Kyuss and Queens of the Stoneage. Warm fuzzy guitars, reverb drenched vocals, and a rhythm section that spits out prime chunks of seventies groove.

RealAudio clip: Equinox Planetarium

It is quite plausible to propose that Organum is one of the many logical extentions of '60s minimalism. After all, Organum's David Jackman has maintained a longstanding friendship with AMM (whose Eddie Prevost joined Organum for a couple of records) and wrote Sonically, this stands as maybe the finest work from Organum. The extended screech of bowed cymbals fits perfectly with non-verbal deep vocal chants and the hovering wisps of a flute to create a timeless and ancient sounding music. As soon as Organum sastisfactorily meets the requirements for the drone supreme with complex interlocking timbres from various tones and abrasions, Jackman orders everything to cease. The shortened program of these beautiful sounds appears as a let down at first, but Jackman's fleeting constructions say everything that needs to be said with all of economy of a three minute pop song. If you disagree, the digital format will work in your advantage as you can simply repeat this album indefinitely for extended listens. Regardless, this is highly recommended!!!

RealAudio clip: Crawl
RealAudio clip: The Slaughter

Before we actually listened to this reissue, we didn't expect too much from these fairly obscure Swedish psychedelic underground rockers, having never heard them before, and knowing only that they were an earlier incarnation of another Swedish hippy rock

RealAudio clip: Tio Minuter
RealAudio clip: From Tunis To India In Fullmoon (On Testosterone)
RealAudio clip: India (Slight Return)
RealAudio clip: A Glimpse Inside The Glyptotec-66
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Listen on: Deezer

One of the saddest records ever made. Prime krautrock (from Austria), circa 1972, what goths would have listened too had there been goths back then. Complete with full-blown psychedelic guitar freakouts, coupled with somber church-like organ and a vocalist Hew it strew it do it too/Say it slay it just to do/Try to call yourself on the phone/Surely you are not at home/Sweep the swept floor once again/Stab yourself and feel the pain/Then stand and watch the speed/Clean your eyeballs wash your feet/Listen and repeat'. Or from "Stop These Lines": 'Morning peace dusty air/Clean your teeth comb your hair/Dressed in clothes you always wear/Go to work I won't be there/Lunchtime snackbar eating chips/Ketchup's running down your lips/Deadeyed waiters selling bibs/Which you have to fix with clips/Sitting waiting find an end/Meaningless with no comment/Is this life in your own hand/People are like grains of sand/Pick up streets and pull down skylines/Ravish women blast the mines/Burn the whiskies spill the wines/Find beginnings stop these lines'. A most melancholic, wonderful record, and it's too bad that it's the sort of thing usually relegated to the prog/psych collectors corner (y'know, because of the distribution and press that this sort of reissue gets). More people (people without ponytails and huge record collections) should get to hear this. So, even though it's not a really new reissue at all, we ordered a bunch to turn people on to. It's an odd, but excellent, hidden treasure!

RealAudio clip: Realization
RealAudio clip: Stop These Lines
RealAudio clip: Blind Children
RealAudio clip: The Pope Is Wrong

[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 111 ]