[ 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 79.

Split cd between L.A.s legendary sludgesters 16 and the completely maniacal Today Is The Day. 16 (who you can check out at the Sight Sounds Liberties festival Jan 31 if you live in SF) have been around forever, and their sound hasn't changed a whole lot,

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Squeaking, scraping scraps of violin improv turned into musique concrete via magnetic tape and razorblade -- that's the specialty of Japan's Hideaki Shimada, aka Agencement. This disc contains two long, low-key, slowly unravelling tracks, one from '93 and the

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What the hell happened here? The Anniversary has poised themselves as the heir apparents to the emo / power pop throne now occupied by labelmates the Get Up Kids, yet with their second album "Your Majesty," these kids from Lawrence, Kansas suddenly think they're Noel and Liam, constructing a bombastic album of baroque pop with lots of harmonizing choruses, extended guitar solos, dramatic piano chords, and distant nods to The Pixies and Supertramp. This record was a real slow burner. In the beginning we all hated it, wondering what happened to our emo pop anniversaries, but the more we listen, the more we began to understand. I began catching Jim or Cup listening to it when they thought no one was the wiser. And Windy is pretty much playing it nonstop in her car: http://aquariusrecords.org/windyscar.html. So now, we give it a thumbs up. The only bummer is the one guy singer who whispers in a earnest croon and ends up sounding lame. Outside of that, they're probably the best Brit pop band America has. A few painfully public inter-band squabbles and loads of coke and the sky's the limit!

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Once you get past the mildly problematic naked-little-girl album cover, and the STUPID band name, you'll discover probably one of the best black metal records of the year. Furious and relentless, amazingly aggressive, and FAST. With catchy riffs, fucked song

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Yet another one of Andee's guilty pleasures (hard to believe there can be so many). Bad Religion record number 341 or something, and while it's nowhere as good as 'Suffer' or 'Against The Grain' (both are completely amazing), the sound is still quite similar

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A book chronicling the American hardcore scene, mainly 1980-86. Written in an engaging oral history collage style (a la Please Kill Me -- the book about the NYC '70s punk scene), this covers everything from the straight edge scene to Black Flag, Dead

Boards of Canada fans take note! Outside of solipsistic IDM circles, Bola has, for the most part, been forgotten due to the overwhelming popularity of Boards Of Canada -- an electronica duo just as good as a Bola who got the fortunate break of landing on Also, a word about the cover art -- it's so beautiful that several of the AQ-staff bought it on vinyl just cos it's so gorgeous. Since the designer is not credited, we'll just assume it's the Bola folks who put together these incredibly detailed, full color illustrations of fantastical insect-like creatures that have been created by careful collaging of imagery seemingly lifted from under the sea or inside the body. Just great looking! We will soon have two versions of this album on vinyl -- both are nice gatefolds holding two lps. The cheaper one is black vinyl, the $24 one features two gorgeous pictures discs. You may reserve copies.

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Two new songs from the Boston-based formerly-metalcore band Cave In, who have morphed into a great heavy guitar rock band. They're as anguished and epic as Radiohead only less annoyingly arty. They're as anguished and epic as Jeff Buckley only not afraid to

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At long last here's another stellar issue of Cometbus. Here Aaron explores the idea of going "back to the land" and how we have this cliched idea that if you do that you are freeing yourself from urban problems and that it's idyllic and shit in the country.

Hiroshi Hashimoto has been active as Contagious Orgasm since 1986, haunting his native Japan with a Gothic application of disjointed samples, anachronistic collages, and early-Coil industrialisms. "The Flow of Sound Without Parameter" is supposedly treatments of field recordings from a small town in Germany, but have been joined by so many horror film samples and shards of electro-shock rhythms, that the sound is more like a bombastic fusion of Pan Sonic and Foetus than an Eric La Casa album of delicately processed environmental sounds.

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Ah, Cornelius. Japanese soundmeister. Label impresario. Citizen of the world. Promoter of the bowlcut. A cynic might predict that this album would be full of cutesy lounge music and tired samples... indeed that's what I (non-Cornelius fan) thought. But actually, I'm happy to report this record is kinda really good. Point begins quietly, admirably not screaming for attention, utilizing static to create anticipation. Then it slips effortlessly into a Stereolab-like groove, where the chiming sampled voices of the Stereolab women (that is them, right?) hover over organic, stumbling drums and precise guitar strumming. The entire album runs at this loping, kooky pace. Like the dearly departed Esquivel, Cornelius uses the voices only as sonic elements; the lyrics are relatively nonsensical. And once in a while you'll even hear an honest to gosh distorted guitar solo, or insane speedmetal riffing superimposed over the mellowness, or a sweet cover of "Brazil". (These changes in tone are not gimmicky -- they're worked in seamlessly well.) This is a consistent, fine album, just don't expect the cut and paste theatrics of his previous record Fantasma. Buy it if you don't like the recent Stereolab albums, this will satisfy that craving quite handily.

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Aquarius Records is proud to present the newest in field recording fuckery: "Daddy's Curses". The disc is exactly as the title implies, a recording of someone's father cussing his brains out. Apparently, in 1987, someone by the name of Ethan Perry

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The Dark Revolution Collective was the first musical group formed by Kawabata Makoto, who has since earned considerable notoriety in the incredibly prolific Acid Mother's Temple. Recorded back in 1978, Kawabata with Tetsushi Kawagishi and Yasuo Iwaki had no While these recordings are not as good as the recent flurry of AMT activities, you should realise that the mean age of the Dark Revolution Collective at the time of this recording was 13!!! Some of the Acid Mothers Temple freaks here think it's worth it, yet also some of us think you could save your money and get Andee's upcoming tUMULt label AMT picture disc "41st Century Splendid Man" instead.

Ah, the poor man's R.E.M. Well, that's not really fair, how about the less hooky, more underground less successful R.E.M.? The DB's were born of the same fertile scene that spawned Stipe and Co., but cruised along just below commercial radar, enjoying a bit

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A little blast from our college radio punk rock past. I was 15 years old when this record came out, but I didn't truly appreciate it until I was in college and learned to like music other than heavy metal. Dean Clean, Joe Jack Talcum, Dave Blood, and Rodney

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Right off the bat, I'm not sure whether this video from Death Squad is more of a stupid spectacle like MTV's "Jackass," or an Industrial production worthy of comparisons to autopsy-film era SPK, or as a very sad piece of confrontationist art that purposefully seeks to terrify its audience. The simple fact that Death Squad -- the former moniker of San Francisco's Michael 9 -- The first portion of this video is a live documentation of a performance Death Squad gave at The Lab back in 1999 called "Intent." After starting off with a backing tape of� blasting screeches and power electronics / death industrial noise accompanied by two video projections of medical footage, war atrocities, and putrefaction, Michael switches on lamp revealing that he is at a desk, with a small box of razors, a syringe, a gun, and a box of bullets. The assumption is that the needle is for heroin, and Michael taps his arm and shoots up. As the backing noise increases in intensity with higher frequencies, he picks up the razors and begins slicing his forearms. Michael then proceeds to load the gun, knocks the desk over, and menacingly stalks through the space, screaming and pointing the loaded gun at members of the audience. At this point, the documentation of the performance gets rather vague, as you can't really see Michael acting out his agressions on the audience. Yet, there are plenty of people quickly leaving the space, and the video also contains several written confessionals from members of the audience decrying this performance. The second video is almost tame in comparison, situated much more within the aforementioned SPK agenda of exposing society's "cathedral of death" as public spectacle in which catharsis is actively pursued, but never actualized. Michael 9 seems to truly believe that there are *no* absolutes in culture and society, thus there is no one that can wield a moral judgement, claiming that his performances are not art. If Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh can qualify their shared life from 1983-1984 in which they were physically bound together by a rope, as art, then shouldn't Michael 9 be able expose his nightmares in a public venue? As art? I can't honestly say whether I approve or disapprove of this work, which left me quite uncomfortable and disturbed, even in witnessing it through the safety of a television. And I can't say if I would have shit my pants had I personally witnessed Death Squad's "Intent" performance at The Lab. But it's quite possible. Proceed with caution.

A smouldering, spaced-out, farfisa organ-fueled sonic journey which suitably befits its title "Rock It To The Moon". Quite a bit like a more garage-y version of the heady, repetitive jams often found within the Too Pure roster (especially Th' Faith Healers,

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The Extra Glenns is two musicians near and dear to Aquarius' heart: John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Franklin Bruno (Nothing Painted Blue and an esteemed solo artist). Together they've brought their li'l side project Extra Glenns to full fruition

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Way back in the beginning of 2001, we came across the selftitled debut from Fog, a one man band out of Minneapolis, and Windy took a real liking to it, thinkin' it one of the best-executed examples of rock-meets-scratching (and we all know how often that combo

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Despite the designation as being "Volume 1," "Long Wire In Dark Museum" is the second documentation of the long thin wire music of New Zealand's multi-talented violinist Alastair Galbraith and American composer Matt De Gennaro, following their previous

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Just in time for Enterruption's big San Francisco 3 day music festival 'Sight Sounds Liberties' featuring Gravitar's first West Coast performance in 6 years, cones the ultimate Gravitar document. Split into two different versions, each with different

Preteen sassy harlots comin' at you with sexy, foul JJ Fad-style lyrics, on top of fucked-up and ghetto sounding drum machine and keyboards. This dirty little threesome is from the Bay Area and are touring with Bratmobile.

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Here's a new example of an up and coming (albeit questionable) subgenre in the metal realm: the onesonghourpluslong disc. Sleep, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Sabbat, Boris, Corrupted, now Green Carnation. Their experimental bent goes beyond the song length,

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As one of the many indie-rock bands resurrecting the theatricality of the New Wave, Heart of Snow has almost perfected their mimicry of Siouxsie and The Banshees, down to the bombastic vocal delivery of Cynthia Mansourian to the phased 'n' flanged

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Youthful, angsty synth-driven post-punkiness bursts forth from Victoria, BC in the shape of the quartet known as Hot Hot Heat. This is their first full length, but they've already gone through a batch of changes since these recordings. Word has it the

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What needs to be said? Everything Ice Cube touches turns to gold (or platinum). He makes gangsta rap sound not-so-tired, and even makes shit movies somewhat enjoyable to watch (Anaconda? Ghosts Of Mars?). But it's all about the voice, and the songs and no one

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New York's Ida have been together since 1994, and in those years they've found themselves on a handful of record labels including Simple Machines, Capitol and most recently Tigerstyle. Apparently their brief stay with a major label afforded them a copious

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David Kilgour's name will be familiar to anyone who was into the New Zealand indie rock scene of the '80s and early '90s -- he was a founding member of The Clean and Great Unwashed, etc. His solo album Here Come the Cars (1991) is one of my very favorite

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Currently, Thomas Koner has been stepping outside of the heroin house persona that absorbed his work within Porter Ricks as the defining force for the Chain Reaction sound. Complementing his recent low-end frequency collaborations with Asmus Teitchens as Kontakt Der Junglinge, Thomas Koner's "Daikan" is a return to the isolationist aesthetics that were indicative of his earliest work (such as "Teimo" and the aptly titled "Permafrost"). Koner opens the album by breaking a pristini, black silence with deep bass rumbles that ominously plod, as if made by some Promethean creature from a Lovecraft horror story. Amidst these distant pulses (which resemble a 909 kick slowed way the hell down), cold washes of densely layered synthethic drones intrude into the audible realm, only to pass back into silence, but with an altered acoustic teleology, sounding sort of like the doppler effect. These fluctuations in and out of silence build up to a rather subtle climax in which Koner introduces a very simple descending three note melody composed out of those same synthetic drones. As simple a compositional technique, this melody, which only appears twice throughout the 54 minutes, is incredibly dramatic. For all of the metaphors and allusions that Koner implies in this work, it is a little odd that he would claim that it "will create a presence of sounds which do not refer to anything, and not only allow, but stimulates a complete awareness, free of dramatized illusion." While he's obviously intended something other than his end results, "Daikan" is a breathtaking vision into an existential void, just as powerful as anything Lustmord or Main has created in the realms of dark acoustic soundscapes. Very nice indeed!

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Aaaiiieeeee! Sounding just as you'd expect a collaboration between Aavikko and Felix Kubin would sound! "Superlake Beat" will make ya wanna do a juiced-up-funky-twist-shimmy-shake on your orange shag-carpeted ceiling. "Antarktis Slow Rock" is a four minute

The story of how this record came to be is almost impossible to believe, yet Michael Gira (Angels of Light / Swans) seems like a reliable enough source that it could in fact be true. Beginning sometime last year, Gira started receiving a series of arcane The one qualm with the album is on how the record ends. It has been a longstanding belief of mine that Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation" should have ended with the graceful haze of "Hyperstation" and done away with the unnecessary exclamation of "Eliminator, Jr." Similarly, Larsen ends "Rever" badly, as a beautifully repetitive groove simply cuts out, making you wonder if California is returning to the days of rolling blackouts. If only every record had one thing wrong with it instead of eighty-eleven problems, and in spite of that one misgiving, this is one of the best records we have heard in quite a while.

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A band that continues to haunt us from the grave, it's the defunct SoCal art-spazz-punk assembly known as Le Shok. The very special feature of this record? Why they've pressed an additional track right onto the sleeve - a cover of the Chosen Few's "No Fun at the Beaches". The record itself contains two suitably hyper-garage-wave short spurts from the days when Le Shok were a

It always seemed a little odd that during the past couple of years, a series of unlikely remixes of Malaria! had been popping up from Sun Electric, Dr. Motte, Westbam, Chain Reaction's Moritz Von Oswald, and the reprehensible Chicks on Speed (all of this due Malaria! is clearly dated from the early '80s and sometimes shows their age. But I'll take Malaria! over Le Tigre any day.

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Electro-Acoustic composer Lionel Marchetti has built quite a considerable discography, consisting mostly of collaborations with the likes of Jerome Noettinger (who runs Metamkine) and Voice Crack. "Portrait d'un Glacier" -- one of the handful of his solo

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Rejoice! For here is the second full length album from the local duo Mates of State. We've raved on and on about their debut, and are happy to report the new album is equally wonderful. This is just shiningly-great power pop that is remarkable not only for

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With well over two dozen albums, singles, eps, and compilations to their name, Yorkshire's Mekons have been around so long you can divide their career into distinct stages. In my opinion, prime Mekons territory begins well into their timeline, with the release

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The first 2002 peep from the prolific pen of Stephen Merritt (following the epic "69 Love Songs 3-cd box set) comes not as a new Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes nor Sixths album, but as an indie film soundtrack. Sounding just as you'd expect film music

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Mike Fellows (of the monumentally important and awesome band Rites of Spring) has had a helping hand in records by Royal Trux, the Silver Jews, Will Oldham, and even Smog. Now he's finally struck out on his own. But don't expect any ass kicking emo. This is a

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A collection of unreleased oddities and remixes from the Cologne duo. Frustratingly, the cd version omits the live "Introduce" featured on the 7" which comes with the vinyl edition, and adds two tracks not featured on the vinyl! Argh! "Rustc" is a lovely,

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I spent a few moments (too many actually) pondering who the New Amsterdam's singer sounds like. I just couldn't put my finger on it. Then - p o o f ! - I remembered, "it IS the guy from Get Up Kids!" Anyway, two words for ya... "Emo Unplugged"! Get Up Kids

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New Band is a group spearheaded by Dean Drummond, custodian of Harry Partch's collection of unique micro-tonal instruments. The group's mission includes both performing the works of Harry Partch (which can only be played on Partch's own instruments for the

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Like the aforementioned Bola album Fyuti, Phonem's Ilisu represents one of the finer moments of IDM based electronica from the past couple of years. Ilisu finds Phonem remembering what made Autechre, Mu-Ziq, and Reload so special when they first hit the

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Henri Pousseur is one of the lesser known European avant-garde composers, and has been active since the '50s embracing most of the various trends within the 'academic scene' (dodecaphonic, serial, electronic, aleatoric, etc.). "8 Etudes Paraboliques" finds

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When the Richard Pryor box set came out over a year ago I was so excited, I wanted to buy it for everyone I knew. But alas I was broke and didn't even get to hear it myself. Now a second, more affordable chance has presented itself in this two cd anthology. Richard Pryor is so fucking funny, and smart . His comedy style is flowing and personal, about life and politics. He was one of the first high profile comedians to reclaim the word nigger, defiantly and as a political statement. (He later publicly decided to not use the word.) He talks dirty and crass, offending people left and right, does painfully hilarious impressions of fuck ups and drunks. Oh, and the best thing is when he makes fun of lame ass white folks! Funny and essential.

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The Secretly Canadian label is generally known for stuff (like Songs:Ohia and the Danielson Family) much more quiet and gentle than this, the debut album by a "PA destroying" crew of raucous rockers from Nebraska. They word on these guys was: Heavy (a la screams of their endlessly ranting vocalist(s). The songs on here seem to get better towards the end of each, as the band starts winding down and individual parts are given more space, and get more distinct. Altogether, on "In the Grips of the Light" Racebannon are more noisy than heavy, but either way will interestingly impact your skull. File with other American avant-hard-rockers like Clawhammer, Mount Shasta, US Maple, Liquor Ball, Dazzlingkillmen, Lightning Bolt...

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The very first album by Swedish prog-rock gurus Samla Mammas Manna finally reissued by Silence. Originally released in 1971 and recorded at their home studio (as were all of their albums come to think of it) the Chickenhouse. Founded and led by

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[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 129 ]