[ aquarius records new arrivals

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Showing results 1 through 50 of 115.

At last, we've gotten some import copies of the latest full-length from this beloved Finnish band! We'd heard rumors of its release for some time, so we were thrilled to finally track it down. At first listen, while the Casios and '80s video game noises

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"Gold" is Whiskeytown vocalist Ryan Adams' second solo effort, and with each release both in solo and band mode, his songwriting's gotten progressively more and more accessible and radio-friendly, and much less rootsy. And quite honestly, much less appealing. Adams previous effort was a breathtaking Beatlesque rock record with just the right amount of twang. Unfortunately, this record

Have to say that the current trend of new New Wave is right on with me. Love those old synth sounds and programmed beats... just as long as these new bands bring some fresh elements into the sound as opposed to simply rehashing Human League, Pet Shop Boys or New Order tracks. Unfortunately in the case of the Gainesville, FL trio known as The Aeffect, it seems to be leaning towards the

Wow, what a refreshing surprise of an album, sez Miss Windy. Aereogramme, a four-piece band started by Craig B of Ganger, play a super appealing combination of (get this) the theatricality and LOUD-soft dynamics of Mogwai, and the intensely emotional delicacy Aereogramme has released two 7"s and an EP, and this is their full length debut, on Matador via the respected Scottish label Chemikal Underground (Arab Strap, Mogwai, Delgados). Highly recommended if you like Mogwai or Sparklehorse, Badly Drawn Boy, Delgados, Red House Painters, etc.

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We asked beloved AQ-friend Alexis G to write this review, since he loves the record (and we think he's such a good writer too): Since the demise, or rather, mutual split of pseudo-legendary hip-hoppers Company Flow, journalists and fans alike have been spittin' all manner of hyperbole in the direction of all associated with El P's Def Jux imprint. Maybe it's a way of giving the Flow, a group whose releases were largely ignored and hard to find until recently, belated props. But though the Hype Machine is admittedly in full effect - designating Def Jux as Hip-Hop's new saviors, and making those of us skeptical of hipster press idolatry, well... skeptical - both Cannibal Ox's recent The Cold Vein and Aesop Rock's Labor Days have convinced me that, in fact, such boasting may be dead on. First, the Music: you won't find the murky underwater-via-nitrous-and-coke vibe that has made The Cold Vein a staple on my phonograph lately; As the moral goes, Aesop's gots his own bag. And it's a decidedly cinematic one. Rock's man Blockhead delivers most of Labor Days' musical nourishment (along with a few contributions and scratches from Omega One) in the form of obscure soundtrack, rare groove and, bewildering as it may sound, classical music breaks. Chock full of string and brass sections, harp, glockenspiel, flutes and slinky bottom heavy bass lines, the filmscore mood that pervades most of the album should make fans of Automator, DJ Shadow, and Wu-Tang happy folk. As it should fans of Italian soundtracks, Lalo Schifrin and David Shire's The Taking of Pelham 123 (re: I'd love to see this guy's soundtrack collection). And The Words? Ace's flow is furious and frenetic. Actually, I can't really figure out when this guy finds time to breathe. Maybe he does that circular breathing shit. Seriously though, his rapping style is ceaseless, restless and full of slurred rhymin' and bangin'. After all, anyone whose mic rockin' skills have garnered comparisons to Kierkegaard deserves a listen, no? All said, this is a damn fine hip-hop album. Maybe a contender for hip-hop album of the year in my book. And an instrumentals version wouldn't be wrong either.

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Although I don't predict that Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto and Alva Noto) will be taking a sabbatical any time soon, the global electronica community might be better for it if he did. Not because his work's not great -- quite the opposite. It's just that the proliferation of Noto imitators might subside, and maybe artists would be more inclined to try something new. Maybe.

While Christian Fennesz has been very active in working with a diverse group of musicians, few of his collaborators have exhibited the likemindedness found in Sydney's tinkering guitarist Oren Ambarchi. For both Ambarchi and Fennesz, the guitar is the

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Following last year's wonderful compilation of this Austin, TX gentle pop combo's miscellaneous singles and unreleased tracks 'Through The '90s' and their warm'n'breezy album from '99 'The Golden Band' is 'Know By Heart' their fourth full length. Another batch of the lovely, hushed tunes for which the A.A.S. are well known and loved. Plentiful chiming organ tones, lightly strummed

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Kicking things off with a bizarrely animated turn into what might be described as a Man Or Astro-man? surfy motif that almost had me lighting up my tiki torch, is... hmmm, I think this is Amor Belhom Duo. Ah yes, the second track - an early version of

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The Amor Belhom Duo are "avant-french pop from Paris, France via Tucson, AZ" -- so sayeth their press kit -- however that tag may prove to be far too limiting for their sonic endeavours. They've collaborated with such artists as Valerie Leulliot of Autour De Lucie, French filmmaker Marianne Dissard (who pens a great deal of their lyrics) and the very likeminded Calexico. Wonderfully

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None of us here are huge Tori Amos fans, but part of me really wants to be. She is such a rock star. Bizarre and perplexing in interviews, aloof but good to her fans, and sort of political (as much as a rock star can be these days). In the past she's

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North Carolina's kings of southern sludge, and the South's answer to GG Allin (due mostly to lead singer Jeff Clayton's penchant for violence, to himself and the crowd) return with a collection of covers culled from a handful of splits and compilations.

Beautiful! This new release from prolific Barcelona-based Japanese experimental composer Koji Asano, number 22 (!) in his ongoing series of fascinating self-released recordings, is described by Asano as "a long lost memory of a once heard piano." Now, he has

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Here's an album of (sometimes radical) interpretations of traditional British and American folk songs, all done by Bob Bannister of Tono Bungay. Melancholy stuff beloved by fans of Shirley Collins and the like ("The Murder Of Maria Marten", "George Collins",

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Kevin Blechdom (of acclaimed Oakland duo Blectum From Blechdom) busts out her first solo recording, nine short, laconic lullabies (one of which, "Shooshee", is a variation of a Blectum From Blechdom track) composed entirely with software programs written by

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Pretty cool new disc from R&B star Mary J., who also boasts a cool new haircut in her cool new video.

Richard Chartier's "Decisive Forms" would be a great record for cats, dogs, dolphins, baleen whales, bats, elephant seals, octopuses, grasshoppers, sea lions, harbor seals, moray eels, sharks, noctruid moths, hermit crabs, giraffes, american alligators, african crocodiles, hyaenas, elephants, black rhinos, common rats, grey pigeons, walruses, mice, drum fish, bauerbirds,

Just in, straight from the source (yup, CF bassist Jasper brought these in to us), Citizen Fish have just issued their third collection of odds'n'ends on cd-r (the previous two were released on cassette). Not to be mistaken for their newest album out now

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Clientele, a London area trio, play dreamy, lo fi, Brit pop that is reminicent of The Zombies, Nick Drake, The Go Betweens, and The Byrds. Suburban Light has an atmospheric '60s quality throughout but the songs vary enough from each other to keep ones interest.

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Man, I am so into this band right now! This CD is a compilation featuring the tracks from the group's first three 7"s ("The Voot", "Monkey On Your Back" and "Cement Mixer" originally issued in 1997 on the Aladdins' Cave of Golf label). Clinic are four groovy

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"Love Uncut" is the newest EP from Russian electron engineer Coh and it features vocal contributions from various members of Coil. More so than any of the other Raster-Noton artists, Coh is not afraid of the power of the pop song, turning Pan Sonic minimalist

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Jazz giant John Coltrane's last recorded live concert performance, at Babatunde Olatunji's Center of African Culture in NYC, on Sunday April 23rd 1967 (only 3 months before Coltrane died), consisting of two half-hour pieces: the Afro-Brazilian "Ogunde" and

Not a new release, but we managed to get a few in stock for the moment, so we thought we'd list this. We got turned on to the Confusional Quartet (great name!) a while back because of a review our friend Tim Ellison wrote in his great 'zine Modern Rock

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Record number two from local country rockers the Court And Spark takes the whispery desert twang of their debut on Andee's tUMULt label, and expands on it, creating a lush, dark and surprisingly varied masterpiece. That may seem a bit effusive, but these guys

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It's with a heavy heart that I bring you this report of the new Death Cab For Cutie record. I've listened to it several times now in the hopes that, like the last two albums, it would grow on me. Sadly, rather than grow, it has shrunk upon me like a pair of

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Dose One, of underground hip hop phenomenon the Anticon collective, here reissues his 1997 debut and it's a doozy. Filled with hiccupping beats and incredibly deft rhyming. Not doom-laden, like some other hip hop we've been enjoying (ClouDdead, Zion I), this is more fresh and not as heavy but still bass-thumping. Mr Dibbs, Mr Len (Company Flow), J Rawls, etc on the decks and behind

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Whether or not you find this album palatable will depend on your feelings towards the three principals in the group: terminally-mopey introvert Bill Callahan of Smog, Keith-Richards-in-an-alternate-universe Neil Michael Hagerty of Royal Trux, and Oh yeah, other bandmembers include Tara Key of Antietam, Rian and Brendan Murphy, Mark Greenberg of the Coctails, Azita Youssefi of Scissor Girls, and of course the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke.

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So very very lovely! Brooklyn based septet Edison Woods weave shadowy gossamer ribbons of dream tunes. These are the warm blanketing lullaby sounds for starry winter evenings. Former San Franciscan Julia Frodahl's gentle whisper of a voice glides

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These are some crappy two-step "remixes" of Missy Elliott's ever so popular "Get Ur Freak On". Apparently someone wants us to believe that they could shit a Timbaland beat on a 12" and people will buy it. These remixes have got nothing on the spartan "Bounce A Gal" (the Special Remix 7" of Lexxus plopped onto the GUFO rhythm), and the Capleton "Mi Food" single which uses the

Originally released in 1970, this album of influential folkster Ramblin' Jack Elliott features mostly covers of well known tunes such as: Me & Bobby McGee, Folsom Prison Blues, I'll Be Your Baby Tonight, Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, Lay Lady Lay, With God On

1968 release by Mr Elliott, now available on cd. Elliott performs If I Were A Carpenter, Tennessee Stud, Rock Island Line, and more.

Norwegian black metal emperors Ihsahn, Samoth and Trym are back with what's billed as their latest and greatest achievement in a career of evil that's second to none. And by latest we also mean last: supposedly this is their final album, ever, sob. And so

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The highly anticipated debut full length from four Oakland/SF gals with little intention other than to make furious, loud music that demands your ears and shakes your ass. In this day and age, it's hard to make a strong distinction in a punk context and

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Newly issued on disc comes this John Fahey album from 1972. It was his first album for a major label and Fahey, one of the most genius guitarists of all time, wanted to bring in some musicians to augment his twanged out blues-based American style. The major

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John Fahey's second major label album was sort of a continuation of the fuller-sounding, more-musicians, New-Orleans-brass-band direction he had begun with the 1972 album Of Rivers and Religion. There's clarinet, trombone, trumpet, ukulele, mandolin, alto And let's all get a kick out of the terrible, terrible cover art, featuring a couple in prom gear waltzing blissfully under a disco ball. Oh my GOD it's bad.

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LA stoner rockers Fireball Ministry are like a more metal version of Queens of the Stone Age: same irresistibly catchy songwriting, same fuzzed out heaviness, same laid-back vocals, but with much more of a denim clad, iron fisted, devil sign waving,

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Kieran Hebden, Putney, London-based wunderkind, has released some lastingly beautiful records as part of Fridge (whose amazing Eph was Windy's #1 album of 1999). Four Tet is his solo project. A little more "electronic" than the post-rock Fridge, this is very

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The UK trio Fridge's 1999 album Eph was a big staff fave here at Aquarius, a stunning combination of dark theatrical Morricone style melodies alongside electronic and organic instrumentation. It swelled with emotion and tasteful skills, like other Fridge's new album Happiness is another fine work, in my opinion, although some of my coworkers disagree and think this is unimpressive post-rock. While Happiness isn't as breathtakingly surprisingly good as Eph (which by the way is out of print until Temporary Residence reissues it stateside in 2002), it's nonetheless soooo lovely. The magic is in the simplicity of the music: each song features a lilting melody that simply carries you along for four or seven or eleven minutes, building upon itself with just a minimum of elements -- cut up piano and xylophone on one track, childrens voices on another, drum machines and glockenspiel on yet a third. The record will appeal to fans of Tortoise, Papa M, To Rococo Rot, and definitely Four Tet (Fridge member Kieran Hebden's other project).

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Members of the fairly interchangeable bands Califone, Red Red Meat, and Loftus along with a person or persons from Boxhead Ensemble. Described as "Gram Parsons meets Pavement" and I'd certainly agree with that. Light, unassuming indie twang.

Byram once asked the rhetorical question, "What self-respecting composer doesn't have their oevre divided into three periods?" While Mr. Abbott was describing one of the many successes from the late period of Morton Feldman, Bernhard Gunter is a composer Where albums like "Un Peu De Neige Salie," and "Details Agrandis" situated barely audible pin pricks of piercing sounds against fields of Promethean silences, that aforementioned trilogy finds Gunter increasing the volume to far more perceptible levels and filling lengthy spaces with fluid passages of gradually building / decaying tonalities. He has proudly exclaimed all of his influences (Xenakis, Rothko, Feldman, Nono, and Bill Viola) through his work, and these pieces clearly show how great an influence Feldman especially has been upon his electro-acoustic minimalism. Gunter has quite literally been extending the slow motion aesthetics of Morton Feldman out of the chamber ensemble and into the language of electronic abstraction. Gunter still maintains that all of his compositions are the manipulation of everyday sounds, yet these processed elements hold richly complex sonorous qualities that are more in common with oboes, cellos, and church organs than radiator pipes or rustled cutlery. The problems with the argument that Gunter has entered his second period are obvious: his changes aren't terribly radical in scope, and may merely give evidence to his aesthetic malleability, he hasn't made any grand existential changes in his life that could warrant a profound change in aesthetic; and, of course, Gunter hasn't made such a proclamation. Regardless of this silly romp into semantics, Gunter has produced his best record to date in "Crossing The River (Night Music)." Thank you for your patience.

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Richie Hawtin (aka Plastikman) really wants you to know the concept behind this album. So, in his own words, here it is: "After recording, sampling, cutting and splicing over 100 tracks down to their most basic components, I ended up with a collection of Well, not exactly. In reconstructing his decontructed history of Detroit / Berlin techno, Hawtin hasn't really "created something which had not existed before" as much as he's stated the obvious: the techno rhythm is wholly interchangeable. There, of course, are differences amongst the work of Wolfgang Voigt, Carl Craig, Maurizio Bianchi, Stewart Walker, and Richie Hawtin... but their use of techno's rhythm is all virtually identical. Thus, in cutting all of those tracks down to a near molecular level (where the sampled sounds don't much opportunity to manifest their uniqueness), Hawtin is purposefully not emphasizing techno's aesthetic individuality, but its ultimate uniformity. So, Hawtin's "DE9: Closer To The Edit" may technically be something new, but it really sounds exactly like what techno should sound like -- big 909 or 808 four-on-the-floor drum kicks with tight cybernetic arpeggiations. This is NOT a slight against this record, it's just that Hawtin has failed in achieving his lofty goals, BUT Hawtin has created a really great techno record, sounding just like Jeff Mills' "X-103" or his previous "Decks, EFX, and 909."

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In spite of their punk-as-fuck name, Jackie-O Motherfucker is a Portland avant-rock ensemble that draws much more from the inner-connectivist logic of Harry Smith (the curator of Smithsonian's Anthology of American Folk Music, amongst other things), "Liberation" is Jackie-O's seventh album and continues their explorations into the psychedelic recombinations of traditional American folk and the non-linear agendas of free-jazz. Rather than utilizing the approach of the like minded No Neck Blues Band's squalid lack of structure, Jackie-O smartly plays patterned composition and free improvisation off of each other. "Ray-O-Graph" is a solid example of such a strategy, with its cheap but unwavering beatbox and a twangy guitar that repeats its bent notes at an unhurried pace, while the rest of the massive ensemble makes itself known with a quiet racket. Yet, just when the erosion and upheaval of form starts to make sense, Jackie-O issues forth an honest-to-God song in "Something on Your Mind," a backwoodsy ballad complete with Southern drawl and front porch stomp. For all of its sonic complexities, "Liberation" lives up to its name as an album content in the disorienting freedom to allow oneself to wander.

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When this showed up at Aquarius, I made a stupid comment to a customer who was curious about this record. I said that Jackie-O Motherfucker were somewhat of a Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn communal project featuring a bunch of random No Neck Blues Band style "pipe Now that I've actually cracked the duct-tape seal which encases the two records and immersed myself in the wonders of "The Magick Fire Music," I must gladly admit that I was very very wrong. There certainly is a rustic Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn aspect to the Portland ensemble's sound, but there is much less of the expected jazz element. Instead, Jackie-O Motherfucker has carved out a sound that is emotively quite similar to the post-rock melancholia of Godspeed / Sigur Ros but with none of their overly dramatic orchestrations. The album opens with a buried collage of shortwave radio heterodyning and disconnected voices, but emphatically steps forward with a guitar duet between a saddened David Pajo-esque riff and an intertwining effects-laden chimed tone. After the clunky twang of Jew's harps on "Bone Saw," Jackie-O returns to the evocative, spacious, and cinematically Western riffs (especially on the breathtakingly melancholy "The Cage"), as an effective means of transcribing sound into a psychic landscape that is strangely similar to the aforementioned Godspeed. While Godspeed brackets their tight orchestrations around a social pessimism that eventually leads to cathartic enlightenment about how shitty the world is around us, Jackie-O Motherfucker settles back into a drugged stupor of oddly psychedelic grooves, something I prefer. A very, very good record!

Khanate = slow, plodding, dark, distortion-filled, droney, dissonant DOOM, in the (sliced and bleeding) vein of Esoteric, Burning Witch, Corrupted, Earth, Boris, Eyehategod...5 looong tracks (56+ minutes total). And if you haven't heard, this new doom-metal

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Okay, so is it just me or does this remind you of Alan Parsons' "Eye In The Sky"? Apologies to Kingsbury Manx, but once that vocal familiarity popped into my head it kinda got difficult to hear much else. Anyway, setting those initial comparisons aside, this is a pleasing, tranquil, folky pop sophomore release. Not a big departure from their self-titled debut, so if you enjoyed that one

Krush proudly boasts his jetsetting lifestyle in that he produced this album in four different cities (Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia - to be read like the bottom of Donna Karan ad). "Zen" is a downtempo hip-hop album designed as a soundtrack for drunk couples humping, with soulful guest vocal appearances from Black Thought, Zap Mama, Tunde Ayanyemi, Company

Anyone captivated by the hypnotic grooves found on the great "Ethiopiques" series should check out this not-dissimilar music by one of Ethiopia's neighbors to the north. The late Egyptian bandleader Ali Hassan Kuban, who passed away this summer at the age of

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Lambchop has been around since, like, 1987 and the revolving membership has at times included from 3 to 14 members. If you've ever seen Lambchop live, you know how delightful they are, each member working together to create a harmonious whole, and boy do they Tools in the Dryer is a collection of long out of print singles, one offs, b-sides, cassette releases, etc. AQ-pal and Lambchop member Jonathan Marx did the compiling, and he came up with the jewels from Lambchop's past, there aren't any duds here and it's all quite pretty. Includes a remix by Mark Robinson (Unrest / Teenbeat Records). Recommended.

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Phil Lee is a long haired, beret-wearin' geezer who plays guitar and harmonica. Folky backwoods twang. Backed up by three members of Wilco, and also assisted on the album by Alison Moorer and Gillian Welch. On roots-music label Shanachie.

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[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 122 ]