Aquarius Records closed in 2016. This site is an archive — a place to rediscover their extraordinary music recommendations. Nothing here is for sale.
Showing results 51 through 72 of 72.
PLAN TO PINKThe Spring Project(Extra Small)7"$ 3.98
A light, dreamy and all too short record from these Bay Area honey-pie popsters. Me thinks these two songs -- "The Spring Project" and "Lemon Fresh" -- might tickle the fancy of pretty pop fans even more than the quartet's fine Debutante Ball cd from late last year! Super soft and sweet.
SABIANS, THEShiver(The Music Cartel)cd$ 15.98
This hard-to-categorize, paradoxical Bay Area bunch are back with their second album of doubtlessly avant-garde and original yet at the same time almost totally mainstream rock/metal. The Sabians feature former members of seminal SF doomsters Sleep, the guys who *didn't* go the expected stoner rock route a la the ex-Sleeper who formed the popular High On Fire. Nope, though The Sabians are still a heavy proposition, they've pretty much nixed the overt Sabbath worship in favor of a much more modern, melodic mixture of Tool (lots o' Tool) and Metallica, with maybe some hints of an Irish/Pogues thing. Dark, rockin', heavy, hummable, and a bit weird. If you liked their debut from last year, this too will def float yr boat. Still haven't heard 'em on the radio, but if they keep at it, who knows?
SENTRIDOHWasted Pieces '87 -'93(Shrimper)cd$ 13.98
The last of the Sentridoh cassettes to find its way onto compact disc is "Wasted Pieces" and accordingly has been reissued with a bunch of extra tracks, all culled from another cassette called "Most Of The Worst And Some Of The Best." Sentridoh has been the outlet for Lou Barlow of Sebadoh and Folk Implosion, taking those two projects' lo-fi, home-taping ethos even further into the bedroom, as Sentridoh was pretty much always just Lou, his guitar, his four-track, and his miserable life exposed for our entertainment, voyeurism, and / or sympathy. Occasionally, Barlow produces gratingly amateurish collages of radio static, tv chatter, children's records, oversaturated tape hiss, and sporadic vocalizations uttered in between bong hits. However, the majority of the Sentridoh "Wasted Pieces" is super gritty, acoustic tunes of varying quality, both in terms of sound quality and songwriting quality, making Sebadoh sound downright crisp and clean. That said, lots of these self-deprecating confessionals could have easily found their way onto an early Sebadoh record.
SERPENT ECLIPSESeven Desires & Wolves' Blood(Oaken Shield)cd$ 13.98
"Surreal Metal Dementia" as they call it, might not be an American Psychiatric Association approved diagnosis but it isn't a bad description of this American black metal band's somewhat unusual take on the genre. Rather than ape the droning, raw and primitive spikes n' corpsepaint stuff that seems to inspire so many USBM acts, these guys' condition seems related to a more, uh, advanced style of Norse metal, symptomatic of "666 International" Dodheimsgard and "Declaration of War" Mayhem for instance. That is, they throw lots of left-field electronik experimentation into their already choppy brew of black metal chaos. If you like stuttering sci-fi synth bleepage and think that would go well with twisting-turning song structures at 100 mph, then you might do well to check this out. This nine-track album is maybe kinda short at just 25 minutes, but they sure do cram a lot in!
SILVA, ALANSkillfulness(Abraxas / ESP - Disk )cd$ 15.98
Another contender for Andee's flute hall of fame. More spaced out celestrial divinity from the master himself, Alan Silva. Two lengthy tracks of abstract fluttering flutes, free jazz clatter, and spaced out otherworldly wildness. Violin, cello, piano, organ, vibraphone, rattles, cymbals, percussion and FLUTE, all woven together into a gorgeously thick miasma of drone-y, scrape-y,
SMITH, ELLIOTTPretty (Ugly Before)(Suicide Squeeze)7"$ 5.98
We were beginning to worry about Mr Smith. After so much critical hoopla and even a performance on the Academy Awards, you would think he would have been a perennial on the Hollywood party circuit, but instead he just up and disappeared. We were beginning to fear the worst. Maybe he picked up some of his old bad habits, pawned his guitar and was wandering the streets. Or worse?! He may very well have been, but it seems everything is okay now, as we've now got this two song 7" and look forward to a forthcoming full length. Musically, not much has changed, jangly, chiming guitars, loping simple rhythms, tinkly pianos, warbly organs, some fuzzy psychedelic guitar, mournfully melancholy melodies and Smith's sweet, aching, gorgeously whispery vocals. Nice to have him back, safe and sound, warm and dry.
SONIC CATERING BANDLive From The Canteens Of Atlantis(Absurd)cd$ 14.98
I can hardly begin to describe the Sonic Catering Band without cracking up. The whole idea is completely silly, but totally brilliant. The Sonic Catering Band are as much about concept and execution as they are about sound. Basically, the members of the band prepare, cook, and consume a meal, while mic-ing every single step of the way, plates and pots, utensils and cuttlery, and processing, cutting, mixing and layering those sounds into gorgeous drone-y, clattery soundscapes. The concept has evolved, sometimes including band members' mothers brought in for the actual cooking and sometimes including the actual prepared food with the finished record. Their debut was a very limited (ten copies actually) cd-r / cd-sized cake (!) which obviously went out of print immediately, or at least got thrown in the fridge to keep fresh. And outside of a few singles, there hasn't been much else until now. Greek label Absurd has put together this massive 2 cd live document of EVERY SCB performance. Disc one is a dense collage drawn from all of the bands live performances while disc two is their final show in its entirety, unedited and un-fucked with. The sounds of cooking are transformed in the deft hands of the Sonic Catering Band into dense, throbbing soundscapes of pulsing, fuzzed out low end rumble, crackling, staticky clatter, upper register, tweeter shredding skree, and the clinking, distant ambient whir of dining and cooking and sitting down to a homecooked meal. You can even get all the recipes from their website and try them out at home! Think Total, Skullflower, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Lustmord, Angus Maclise, Jonathan Coleclough, and Troum all battling it out on Iron Chefs. Brilliant and delicious!
STARS AS EYESLoud New Shit(Tigerbeat6)cd$ 10.98
Stars As Eyes traverse through such varied musical terrain on their new cd that it almost sounds like a compilation of a bunch of different bands. Perhaps they've been drawing inspiration from their vast array of Tigerbeat6 labelmates (psst, check out the label's recent bargain-priced compilation Open Up And Say...@<%_|^[!] for a thorough sampling of their roster)? Actually this is more of a remix collection than an album proper. Of the dozen tracks, one third are new, and over half are remixes... which probably factors in greatly to the diversity of the track selection. It all starts familiarly Stars As Eyes-y. That is, chiming, airy electronic dreaminess (track 1 "Some Life"), then things darken and churn somewhat into something akin to 'industrial-lite' (track 2 "Rotten"). But wait! Let's not get all gloomy! Party down with some disco punk a la The Rapture, Outhud (track 5 "Falling Picture - Shy Child Remix"), and lighten back up with more soothing melancholic-tronica (track 9 "Our Light - Casino Versus Japan Remix"), then brood, brood, brood into some very moody Brit rock-ish songs (track 10 and 11 "La Methode Francaise - Dwayne Sodahberk Remix" and "Resistance Days - Mum Nostalgia"). Delightfully eclectic or puzzlingly wishy-washy, you decide.
STEAMHAMMERSpeech(Akarma)cd$ 16.98
The '60s/'70s psych reissue label Akarma comes through once again with this gem! England's Steamhammer had a heavy name and lotsa chops, but never really made the big time. Their first three albums were British blues rock incarnate, real good at that but not our cup of tea really. THEN came "Speech", their swansong. Something happened (lots of drugs, maybe?) -- it was real different. This is an unusual album for sure. Probably not what Steamhammer fans at the time were expecting: Psychedelic doomy prog-tastic epic instrumental slaying, with fuzz fx, jazzy percussion, and emotive vox. It's not metal but it's got a lot of what we like about metal that's for sure, and kicks ass on most of what came out in '72. Fans of some of the real heavy underground bands from the era like the Groundhogs, Lucifer's Friend, Socrates Drank The Conium, even Il Balleto Di Bronzo ought to check this out for sure! Unfamiliar with those obscurites? Well just imagine Led Zep gone off the rails. Creative, deftly timed/structured songs full of psychedelic atmosphere. From quasi-religious 20th century avantgarde interludes to manic guitar rippage, from gorgeous vocal lamentations to jammy improv spaciness, this is AQ-approved prog weirdness for sure. The 22 minute "Penumbra" that opens the record erupts from a spooky three minute intro into sheer pulse-pounding rock trio shred, then dives into a bass-heavy dirge from which a vocal chorus emerges...and on they go. Everytime we play this for someone who we think *might* like it, boy, they *really* like it. This gets a big thumbs up from all the heavy/psych/prog heads here at AQ!!!
SUPERCHUNKCup Of Sand(Merge)2cd$ 15.98
Holy cow! Superchunk have been around for fifteen years?! Have to say, they've aged very very VERY gracefully - far better than most of their peers - and with a successful, respected record label to boot! We tip our hat to Mac, Laura, Jon and Jim! To commemorate this occasion, they've unfurled a double cd filled with singles, b-sides, rarities and four previously unreleased songs which include their versions of Adam And The Ants' "Beat My Guest" and Government Issue's "Blending In". Cover-wise, they also tackle Bowie's "Scary Monsters" but that one already made an appearance on the 1000 Pounds ep. All twenty five songs were compiled from Superchunk's musical output of the last decade. So, that means... no "Slack Motherfucker" here! This might be a for-diehard-fans-and-completists-only kind of release 'cause they've admittedly included stuff that falls short of the high Superchunk quality control standards. Even still, the caliber of their cast-offs is pretty darn good, making for an interesting and still very engaging peek at what went into the growth of what was and is a great pop band.
THEGAVINWILHELMMILLERQUARTETs/t(Impatience Or Indifference)cd$ 10.98
AQ pal Drucifer (and the guy who runs Dielectric Records, who released those amazing 12" a few months ago: Sote, Karen Stackpole, etc...) had been threatening to play this record for us for a while, and he's got pretty darn good taste so we were looking forward to finally checking it out. I always just sort of assumed from the title and from talking to Drucifer that it was going to be some sort of jazz, but boy was I surpried when we threw this on. The quartet in question is actually a trio, and while the music these three play does have certain qualities one might find in jazz, this is GRINDMETAL through and through. Five tracks of furious, chaotic, brutal and pummeling hyper complex metallic grind ala Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destoyer, Discordance Axis and the like. But unlike most grinders, TGWMQ stretch their songs way out (none of the songs is shorter than 3 minutes, most significantly more), allowing them to expore and develop and stretch out a bit. The final track is nine minutes long ferchrissakes, with lots of splattery free noise, rumbling ambient passages, found sounds and ethereal female vocals, almost-groovy riff rock parts, and buzzing droning weirdness. But don't be frightened off by all that, 'cause the core of this record is dense and grinding, ultra complicated, dizzyingly agile, and crushingly savage heaviness. So good. All you folks who freaked out over the last Agoraphobic Nosebleed record definitely need this!
TURBONEGROApocalypse Dudes(Burning Heart / Epitaph)cd$ 13.98
This is the second half of legendary Norwegian pop-metal-sleaze merchants Turbonegro's denim and leather, head banging, fist pounding (pun indeed intended) one two reissue punch, the first half being their brilliant breakthrough full-length Ass Cobra. Apocalypse Dudes, recorded in '97 was the maybe-even-better follow-up. Like a Tom Of Finland drawing come to life, Turbonegro channel the spirit of Kiss and Judas Priest, mix in some Alice Cooper and stadium COCK rock, and top it all off with some big moustaches, assless chaps, tight denim pants, sailor outfits and wickedly funny songs: 'Rock Against Ass', 'Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker!', 'Rendezvous With Anus'. Fucking funny and brilliant and totally rocking! Genius!
TURBONEGROAss Cobra(Burning Heart / Epitaph)cd$ 13.98
Desperately needed re-issue of one of the more amazing discs from Norway's kings of gay-sailor-leather-pants-moustache-rides-metallic-punk-rock-sleaze, 1996's "Ass Cobra". How can this band not be your favorite band?!?! They are everything Kiss should have been, and pretended to be (or not to be in terms of sexuality). Big and noisy and glammy and catchy and so fucking funny. C'mon...Ass Cobra? Best album title ever maybe? And how about these song titles: The Midnight Nambla, Denim Demon, I Got Erection, Hobbit Motherfuckers! But don't think for a minute they're some kind of joke band, although the jokes do flow freely. Turbonegro totally have the chops and they completely shred. Heavy metal meets poppy punk, all wrapped up in tight denim and sweaty, studded leather, and ready to rough you up and spank you silly. Speaking of Ass Cobra, one of Cup's fondest (!?) live show spectacles was seeing Turbonegro at the old Chameleon bar here on Valencia Street back in '97. They pummelled the eyes and eardrums of all in attendance with their unique stage presence. The bizarre pinnacle of the eve came when we heard the crowd gasp (yes, it was audible above the din of the band). We looked up at the stage just in time to see the lead singer turn around, bare ass to the audience, with a bundle (not just one or two) of lit roman candles... er... in there. Jaw-dropping and absolutely unforgettable.
UNEARTHLY TRANCESeason Of Seance, Science Of Silence(The Music Cartel)cd$ 13.98
Great title, that. Try saying it ten times fast. Anyway, this debut from New York's Unearthly Trance is something that we've been waitin' for ever since we witnessed their solid set opening for Electric Wizard and Sons of Otis a year or so ago. Dirgey and ugly doom metal, y'know, the kind of thing that makes our hair hard. They were good then and so is this album, lovingly co-produced and mixed (and graphically designed) by like minded lost soul Stephen O'Malley of SUNN0))), Khanate, and Burning Witch infamy. And yes, this sounds A LOT like O'Malley's Khanate in particular -- the "vokills", the feedback, the mammoth tarpit mogadon [insert additional heavy n' slow metaphor here] riffage. Which means it also sounds a lot like those grandads of the sludgecore scene, Eyehategod. Definitely music of the bat-bitten, wrist-slittin', hard drugs not-quittin' variety. No shittin'. Compared to Khanate, though, UT are a bit more "rock n' roll" at times, and also specialize it what we can only call the "march of doom"! Oh, and for additional chills (and thoughtful life advice) they cop some lyrics from ol' Mr. Crowley...
UUTSKE BUUTSKEThe The Interpretations(Mukow)cd-r$ 9.98
Another crazy and mysterious release from Mr. Ergo Phizmiz, introduced to us by our pals at WFMU and quickly becoming a favorite here at AQ. Supposedly this release is by someone named Uutske Buutske, but I'd bet anything that's just a pseudonym for Phizmiz himself. As the title proclaims, 5 of the 8 tracks here are indeed versions of songs by The The. Those tracks are less experimental than most of the Phizmiz stuff we've heard, and tend more towards the dreamy and pastoral, like a slowed down creepier Love And Rockets, or Magnetic Fields, with wispy female vocals, chimes and accordians, all dreamy and hypnotic. It's on the other tracks where things get a little bit weirder, with clattery clangy instrumental chaos a bit like those clattery percussive soundscapes on later period Tom Waits records. The sixth track is the real gem here though, a sweet and lovely perfect little pop song, with soaring strings and an angelic voice, both gracefully navigating a melancholy melody. So nice. Comes in a cool slipcover covered with negative photographic images of flowers.
V/AContre Tous(Dead Mind)cd$ 10.98
Sent to us by the fellas in Infidel Castro, this Dutch compilation features 3 new-to-us bands and two new tracks from the always impressive IC. Infidel Castro start things off with two tracks, the first, a spacious almost Melvins/Harvey Milk-ish sludge, with stretched out guitars and almost-pulled-apart beats, but with Mr. Roboto style vocals and lots of glitched out mayhem and high-end splatter, verging on new wave/electro at moments. The second is a weird and rumbling, claustrophobic soundscape, with chiming guitars and warm waves of sound, again augmented with some strange production glitchery. Next up are the Dead Husbands with a beeping, clicking sort of whimsical elctronica goofiness, kind of like an instrumental People Like Us. The oddly named Pidpi are also mostly electronic, but keep things a bit more serious, with fuzzed out rumbling drones, abrasive scraping, swarms of crunchy white noise, strange voices, and chopped up weirdness. And finally we have De Fabriek, who follow in the same sort of elctronic, chop and glitch, weird and almost goofy collages of hooting owls, ringing phones, throbbing pulses, scratching sandpaper rhythms, childrens voices, foreign cartoons, and squelchy synths, but finishing off with a super distorted, almost Laddio Bolocko style rhythmic jam. Pretty cool stuff.
V/AGravity Video 2(Gravity)dvd$ 11.98
Pretty cool visual document of San Diego's Gravity records, featuring mostly bands who did time on Gravity back in the day and since have moved onto bigger and better things. The Locust huddle in a low ceilinged concrete bunker/sewer, tinted a puke-y shade of green and thrashing wildly. The Rapture who since have become the 'next big thing' sort of just look bored, playing in some random apartment looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Tristeza -- who usually traffic in Tortoise-esque post rock -- explode with a frenzied free jazz, wild and spastic workout, with the video to match, chopped with hyper-quick edits, a sort of sixties, acid-fried visual freak out, After a few minutes the music and the video bliss out and return to much more familiar, and tranquil waters. Black Heart Procession perform a dark piano driven ballad, in a black and white, home movie style video, eyes to the floor, back to the camera, hats pulled low, all somber and evasive. The Men's Recovery Project is one of my two favorties on here, a massively dark and demented, outer space / dirty bathroom creepfest, like the movie Aliens, crossed with a snuff film, and a Roswell alien autopsy film, and directed by Stan Brakhage. So weird and so cool. My other favorite is the Sea Of Tombs video, a dreamy, colorful sampling of undersea life, jellyfish and eels and the like that are quickly tossed into a surreal kaliedoscope, tripped out and druggy, vivid and mesmerising, the screen is split and mirrored and all sorts of indescribable sea creatures melt and bleed into each other. So nice. A pretty good collection and a great reminder that Gravity really knows their shit, having picked up on all these bands years before the rest of us!
V/AJapanese Assault(Relapse)cd$ 14.98
Yet another entry in Relapse's Assault series, a cartographer's worst nightmare, mapping out the world according to sheer brutality, and vicious pummel. Instead of the smooth flowing lines of hills and valleys, there are the sharp crags of buzzing riffs and guttural growls. And instead of the smooth colorful shades of elevations, there is only the black of pure grinding evil. Past entries in this series have focused the Czech Republic, Holland, Brazil, Sweden and Poland, but it was only a matter of time before the scales tipped toward the land of the rising noise. Japan has an incredibly rich history of heavy music, from hard rock psych gods Flower Travellin' Band and Les Rallizes Denudes, to thrash metal legends S.O.B., to crustcore legends Gism to contemporary heavyweights like Boris and Corrupted. So of course there's gonna be a swirling pit of lesser knowns just waiting to crush skulls and kick ass with the big boys. So Relapse has hand picked their favorite four of those heavy hopefuls, and while we may not recognise any of these bands, they are pretty well known in Japan and in international underground crust circles. The first fourteen tracks come courtesy of Senseless Apocalypse, fastcore legends from Shizuoka, who spit out a venomous splatter of lightning fast grind and stuttering stop start dynamics. All the songs hover around the minute mark but are stuffed to the gills with buizzing riffs, pounding blast beats and more parts than most 4 minute songs. Muga are up next, but don't be fooled by the pretty acoustic guitar intro, as it soon devolves into crushing Neurosis style metallic fury, with soaring guitar melodies over sludgy riffs and a dual vocal attack (high and low). Next up are Realized, who tune their strings so low they're practically falling off their guitars, pouring out thick grunting death metal, with impossibly low grunted cookie monster vocals and blast beats buried under a suffocating layer of guitarrrgghhh. Finally, we have Swarrrm (yep, that's three r's) who take the grinding metal of the their Japanese Assault brethren and mix in some SST/Greg Ginn style guitar discordance, some Swedish style melody, and some bizarre almost ambient bass/vocal breakdowns. Maybe my favorite of the bunch. And just like with the other Assault comps, you'll more than likely find yourself wanting more by at least one of the bands, if not all of em!
VIENNA VEGETABLE ORCHESTRAAutomate(Extraplatte)cd$ 14.98
I hate vegetables. Always have. I haven't eaten a vegetable other than corn since I was a kid. My mom tried everything. Disguising them. Frying em. Drenching them in stew. Making me stay at the table until I ate them all. Telling me I wouldn't grow up big and strong if I didn't eat them. Withholding desert. Nothing worked. But had I known vegetables were so, well, musical, things just might have been different. I probably still wouldn't have eaten them, but I sure as hell would have played music on them! This is one of the weirdest wildest discs we've ever heard. And it's pretty difficult to believe that all the sounds on this record are produced or played on actual vegetables (slightly modified for playability of course). The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, is in fact a small-ish ensemble, that customizes vegetables, and then composes scores to be played on those very same vegetables. That's right, composed! All of the music is composed and notated just like regular musical scores, except in this case they are scored for radisynth (radish), digiginger (ginger), vegital synthesizer (?), soundseeds (?) and all sorts of customized carrots, tomatoes, peppers and some completely unrecognizable vegetables. But what does it sound like you ask? Not how you might think actually. This is the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra's second release, and as stated in the liner notes, their goal was to produce electronic music using entirely organic means, and the results are pretty spot on. Lots of clicking, and hollow thumping, resulting in a complex Raster-Noton style minimal techno rhythm which is the framework for most of the record. Sort of swaying between super clinical electronic minimalism and sort of jammy hippy tribalism. Gurgling, inhuman vocalisations occasionally accompany the almost static, slowly shifting rhythms, as does the sound of burbling liquids, shimmery ambient hum, and occasional super distorted ultra processed screams. The end result is a pulsing throbbing Chain Reaction heroin house minimalism that is totally mesmerising and hypnotic. They even manage to do a couple covers: fellow Austrians, Radian, giving that group's electronic/post rock hybrid a little shot of vitamin B, and a fairly abstract version of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity. Allan really wanted me to mention their (food) processing and of course their 'beets' and how they can't be 'beet', but I wisely choose not to. Fans of all things glitch, Raster-Noton, minimal techno and even the hippy jams of NNCK and Sunburned Hand Of The Man will be begging for seconds.
WOODTEMPLEFeel The Anger Of The Wind(No Colours)cd$ 14.98
Eastern European evil rears its horned head once again, this time in the guise of the evocatively monickered Woodtemple. Occupying a suitably satanic space alongside the black metal elite (Graveland, Nargaroth, Burzum), Woodtemple do dabble in buzzing blazing plague of locusts riffery like their blackened brethren, but spend most of their time loping malevolently at a slow to midpaced clip, dirge-y and fuzzy, hypnotically static, stumblingly midtempo with struggling double kick drums and super simple, heavy handed buzzsaw riffs, pounding and sawing away, with distant keyboards picking out some ancient rhythm, while the drone-metal crush powers relentlessly hellward. Woodtemple are not about virtuosity or musical agility, they are all raw feeling and dark emotion, communicated through brutal and incessant metallic forcefulness, and that means it's not always smooth and slick. In fact sometimes it's just the opposite. Some of the drumming is so bad it's downright laughable, but in the context of the record it just becomes a swaying, stumbling stuttering piece of the already fuzzy, rough and damaged whole. This is one of those records that really straddles the line between brilliant ineptitude and inspired brutality. Which of course makes it one of our favorite black metal records of the year.
YOSHIHIDE, OTOMOBlue(Weather / Headz)cd$ 18.98
This is Otomo's second soundtrack for a Hiroshi Ando film. Blue, the film, is a live action version of a Japanese comic about two budding lesbian high schoolers destined for heartbreak. So it makes sense that Blue, the soundtrack, is correspondingly wistful and melancholy. Simple in its spare use of recorder, trumpet, acoustic guitar, pump organ, etc, and very, very pretty. Nothing like Otomo's other sampling/noise/jazz/whathaveyou outfits like Ground Zero, New Jazz Quintet, MC Hellshit... this is meditative, melodic, organic, warm, and quiet. Very nice, but not groundbreaking. There also appears to be a track from another soundtrack he did, this time for Tian ZhuangZhuang's The Blue Kite.
ZORN, JOHNThe Unknown Masada(Tzadik)cd$ 16.98
Otherwise known as "Masada 10 Years Volume 3" this disc is the third in a series of covers discs celebrating a decade of jazz iconoclast John Zorn's Masada, the jazz-meets-Judaism project that in a lot of ways is his masterwork. What do they mean by "The Unknown Masada"? Well apparently the twelve tracks here are all Zorn/Masada compositions that have never before been recorded! The diverse lineup of contributors include the usual downtown NYC jazz supects, outsider avantgardists, some klezmer-oriented troupes, and prog rock weirdos. Specifically, this features Mike Patton's Fantomas (with easily the most frightening cut on here), Dave Douglas, Naftule's Dream, Eyvind Kang, Wadada Leo Smith, Eric Friedlander, Jami Saft, and others. Tatsuya Yoshida of Japan's Ruins contributes an amazing acrobatic progged-out track that's one of the disc's highlights. If you heard the previous "Voices In The Wilderness" double cd comp of Masada covers (vol. 2 in this series) this is quite similar, varied yet sounding "Masada" through and through (with the exception perhaps of that Fantomas cut). A worthy tribute, again.