[ 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.

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Sun City Girls! Einsturzende Neubauten! Davis Redford Triad! Charles Mingus! Joe Boyd! Hafler Trio! And more! As always every month, an informative issue of the English speaking world's premier music magazine dedicated to avant rock, electronica, improv, dub, etc.

Newest release from AQ black metal favorite Xasthur, who was responsible for the godlike Nocturnal Poisoning album a couple years ago which was a buzzy droning slab of Burzumic grimness that rivalled almost any black metal we had heard. Xasthur is just one man, a misanthrope called Malefic, who carves bleak crushing black metal buzz-scapes from sheer wells of blackness and despair. While Nocturnal Poisoning was a monochromatic wash of midtempo Norwegian style blur, with lots of sonic murk and low end rumble, The Funeral Of Being adds more uptempo numbers and a lot more treble. Yep, treble. Harkening back to ear shredding classics like Ulver's Nattens Madrigal and any old Darkthrone, this is a drill to the cranium of high end mosquito swarm guitars, splattery buried-in-the-mix drums, and barely audible anguised howls. In fact the production is really quite strange, considering how weirdly lush the first record was. It's as if Malefic thought that Nocturnal Poisoning was *over produced* and prurposefully set out to make this new recording as RAW as possible. And raw it is. Even the ghostly keyboard breakdowns are under a fuzzy layer of hiss. But the production only enhances the beautiful grimness of The Funeral Of Being. Rarely is an artists tortured soul so perfectly laid bare by the cacophonous sound of his instruments but then Xasthur is indeed a rarity.

MPEG stream: The Awakening To The Unknown Perception Of Evil
MPEG stream: Tyrant Of Nightmares

In addition to getting the brilliant new Xasthur full length back in (see elsewhere on this list), we finally managed to get copies of this amazing split (now out of print!) between AQ black metal fave Xasthur and the unknown to us and now defunct Acid Enema. Xasthur offers up more of his grim, bleak, depressive blackness: buzzing guitars churning in a murk of tape hiss and amplifier grit, barely audible anguished howls, relentless drumming, all weaving melancholy melodies and dark fugues into epic and harrowing soundscapes of abject misery and soul ripping hatred. Blasting Burzumic squalls give way to loping melodic breakdowns with finger picked guitars and mournful keyboards. So gorgeously grim. Seems everything Xasthur touches turns to black. The Acid Enema tracks take the buzz and dirge of Burzum and Darkthrone and add some industrial weirdness and damaged brutality. Razor sharp speaker shredding guitar tone and big boomy drums underpin some seriously demonic howls. A whirling, blood-red pool of sonic chaos, threatening to crush and blacken your ears and your heart and your soul. Some weird melodic ambience and then a DHR worthy industrial cover of Mayhem's "Deathcrush" with rigid hyper-distorted beats and punch-to-the-skull machine gun rhythms. Now out of print, so when these are gone, they're gone for good.

Ok, we've got one here for anyone into the sludgy, stoner sounds of the likes of Electric Wizard and Sleep!! Yob is perhaps your new favorite band. From Portland, Oregon, these psychedelic doom lords take their chosen genre's obligatory Black Sabbath worship to the extent of incorporating the swingin' jazzy/jammy aspects of the Sabbath sound that most doomsters tend to disregard. Nor do they skimp on the the meaner, rigidly metallic side of the Sabs, or on the mountains of the moon sized riffage doom fans require. Yob is slow motion, sweat leaf'd sludge to the max. Most notably, while their vocalist does dip into a demonic growl at times, mainly he soars like an insane, heavily effected hybrid of Ozzy and Geddy Lee. The result is a remarkably unique sound for a band that unquestionably wears their influences on their collective sleeve. The closest comparision would be to a spaced-out combination of Sleep and Dead Meadow. The three long tracks (18, 7, and 23 minutes) showcase a stoned style that even fuses funk with full-on dirge doom. There's a couple other fine doom metal releases on this weeks' list (Solitude Aeturnus, Well Of Souls). But while those bands' style is to build big castles, these guys tunnel through the earth, out the other side, and into outer space. Recommended.

MPEG stream: Aeons
MPEG stream: Ether

*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* Here's one of them limited edition cds on the AMT's own label, this one the work of the band Zoffy, otherwise known as the duo of key AMT players Kawabata Makoto and Tsuyama Atsushi, armed with electric and acoustic guitars, bouzoukis, saz, violin, electric sitars, percussion, electronics, raygun (?), and more. Though the title is Thou Shalt Not Mess With Zoffy!!, Zoffy don't seem to mind messing with other people's music, with some or all of the lucky 13 tracks on here being deliberately fucked covers of songs like "Smoke On The Water" and "21st Century Schizoid Man". Utterly retarded, wrong, and noise-infused messes are made. But maybe that's the only way you could cover "Smoke On The Water" these days? Then again, there's always the option not to cover it at all... And although several other tracks here have ring-a-bell titles ("Hocus Pocus", "Heart Break Hotel", "Mysty Mountain Hop", "I Talk To The Wind") not all remain recognizable in any way when you hear 'em. It's just acid-psych-ethno-freakout-playtime for these guys, like Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Sun City Girls or Reynols huffing glue in the boys room at Classic Rock School. But persevere in listening, and all of Zoffy's wacky highjinx somehow add up to something more than just a joke. For instance, I really really like their take on the oft-covered "21st Century Schizoid Man" -- it's a new song all of a sudden, if you know what I mean. And elsewhere on here, the noisy bits subside and there's moments of real beauty.

MPEG stream: Smoke On The Water
MPEG stream: Kanzenon

[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 180 ]