[ 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 110.

Is it a zip code? Nope. A padlock combination? We're not quite sure, but in the case of Bay Area artist 51717's also mysteriously numerically titled debut 557, the figures add up to seven atmospheric instrumental tracks of resonant bells, bassy shoves, prickly electronics and plucked strings. Ultra Spartan chiminess is gradually overtaken by more ominous cloudy distortions. Packaged in a handmade, hand-painted gold envelope.

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We love Drone records. And their series of ultra limited, hand assembled 7"s. There's even a forthcoming 2cd on Andee's tUMULt label collecting a handful of the early long out of print 7"s. We can only ever manage to get a tiny handful of these singles since they're so limited, but when we do we try to list them, and it's definitely lucky for the tiny handful of you who are quick on the buy-it-now trigger. Some of the best drone and dark ambient music around. Allfang Mit Pferdekopf unveil, very slowly, a super minimal shimmer and glisten, with a barely there glitch and click percussive filigree. Slightly metallic reverberations with high pitched overtones shifting and drifting. Side 2 is much thicker, and much more active, a thick crust of sonic grit over haunting industrial chimes, ringing out in a slow motion sorrowful melody, very grim and cinematic. First edition. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Marbled lime green vinyl, in a hand painted abstract water color sleeve with liner notes and insert.

Holy fuck, this record is amazing! You'd never guess it, but Aluk Todolo is the occult trance rock side project of French black metallers Diamatregon. OK, maybe it doesn't seem that off the wall, Diamatregon definitely dabbled in strange rhythms and distinctly non-black metal sound forms. But this is definitely something else altogether. Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy. Gorgeous packaging, white and silver on black, a fold out die cut sleeve with a Japanese style obi, and a cover image that manages to be totally familiar ('got yer nose') but somehow creepy as hell.

About a year and half ago, Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) dazzled us with the Transall trilogy of cd eps that bristled with crisp sinewave shards and low slung rhythmic blasts that sounded down right funky from time to time. For is an entirely different facet for Mr. Nicolai, as he's soothed the systematic sex machine grooves for ionized molecules into a shimmering palette of elegant vibrations. As Nicolai explains in the liner notes, For "brings together disparate recordings created throughout the last four years, unified under a theme of dedication. All nine studies share the history of being made specifically for someone or for a project that for one reason or another remains open ended." And those individuals earning dedications include John Cage, Jhonn Balance, TVPow, Jeff Wall, Peter Roehr, Ernie & Bert (we can only assume he means the Sesame Street characters), and a few others. Nicolai gently crafts each of the dedications into a polite, electronic ambience cobbled from intertwined sinewaves and hushed rhythms.

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When the dollars-to-minutes ratio eeks close to 1:1, we tend to get a little uncomfortable. Really, what's the big deal about David "Organum" Jackman doubling or even tripling up the sounds on his $15.00 singles that clock in at a couple of minutes? There's also been talk of this marketing psychology from this mathematical ratio due to a pending Boris LP, which is not going to be cheap (not surprising), but also isn't one of their monstrously long drone-doom pieces either... well it's just sorta long. So the question always comes down to the quality of the merchandise, is Boris worth the price of admission? The same question should be asked of the third collaboration between Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) and Ryuichi Sakamoto, which clocks in a little under 20 minutes. Again, the division of labor puts Sakamoto at the piano and Nicolai at the laptop, with Sakamoto providing a series of impressionist clusters of piano notes and elegant repetitions, and Nicolai smudging those sounds through his pixel crunching software. Harmonically crisp and deftly performed, the three pieces on Revep offer a nice variation on the theme set by the first two collaborations Vrioon and Insen. Sakamoto fans will delight that he's offered a new arrangement for his classic piece "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence," which Nicolai aerosolizes into a fine mist of digital ephemera and pin-pricked ambience. Certainly as lovely as the first two!

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Another awesome Supernal release from a few years back that we never managed to review until now. Loyal AQ list readers should already be intrigued just based on the fact that some of our all time favorite black metal records and dark ambient drones have come courtesy of Supernal, Benighted Leams, Drudkh, Hate Forest, Dark Ages, Fall Of The Grey Winged One, Contra Ignem Fatuum and on and on. We're happy to report that Ashes fall into that category of black metal we just can't ever seem to get enough of, that freaked out midtempo, stumbling, damaged, demented, outsider black metal. Imagine Benighted Leams if they were a little dronier and a little more ambient, leaning a bit more toward Burzum instead of Darkthrone. Weird warbly melancholy acoustic guitars, wavering keyboard ambience, totally fucked up drumming, spastic and stumbling, totally damaged drum programming, all wrapped in a blissed out stumbling black metal buzz, and topped off with some of the most fucked up vocals EVER, a guttural, super processed, creepy insectoid gurgle. Hymn To A Grey Sky is tracked as a single 47 minute track, which is usually annoying, but in this case, we can't imagine NOT listening to the whole thing at once. Long expanses of distant keyboards and simple martial drumming, buzzing loping Burzumic buzz with circusy keyboards way down in the mix, more of those creepy vocals draped over the top, dizzying confusional double bass drum programming, dreamy soft focus drone interludes, a big stretch right in the middle of the record of nature sounds, running water, insect buzz, birds chirping, rustling leaves before stumbling back into a killer midtempo buzz drenched black metal dirge, complete with muted classical guitars, some weird dark ambient In The Nursery style timpani and synthesizers, drifting into an almost new age coda to yet another one of the weirdest slabs of damaged blackness to come our way!

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Medicine Fuck Dream is the debut recording for the Texan ex-patriot Greg Ashley, who now calls Oakland his home. With the current roster of multi-faceted psychedelia spread throughout Northern California (i.e. Jewelled Antler, Six Organs Of Admittance, Kelly Stoltz, etc.), the East Bay seems well suited to Ashley's druggist songwriting. Yup, the whole album seems to be cast in a fog of pot smoke; but, Ashley's craft is in pulling together a great range of influences from the haze and turning it into his own. Big Star stands strong in his pantheon, as does the Opal / Mazzy Star sound of dreamy troubaour folk. A couple of the tracks reflect Syd Barrett's flair for the stumblingly comical, but always cast under the doped-to-oblivion spell of Spacemen 3. Ashley's fluttering whisper of a voice may not be the finest in the world, but his eccentric production with massive Joe Meek reverb bathing some of his tracks and fizzling tape hiss on the others, more than makes up for what he lacks on that front. A great debut!

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We totally dig local free noise one man band Axolotl, and were ready for another blast of gorgeously abstract drone, clatter and skree when we threw this on, but holy cow is this record completely something else. We had to keep checking to see what we were listening to. Some of the elements are certainly similar, but it's way dreamier and laid back, muted and murky, subtly propulsive, it actually sounds quite a bit like Oval or Gas! Which is a VERY good thing. Slow shifting underwater drift, a looped hypnotic dreamworld, rich waves of warm sound, a totally gorgeous abstract minimal ambience. So so so good! SUPER LIMITED! 525 COPIES. Each copy is hand numbered and has a cool paste on cover.

You know we must confess it is getting harder and harder to write about instrumental acoustic guitar records and not repeat ourselves. Sure we can talk about the various fingerpicking styles, the different tunings, the long-enduring influence and lasting legacy of John Fahey, but it starts to sound routine and in a wide field of players concentrating solely on one instrument, it's not easy to keep a fresh perspective. So thank the stars that the Tompkins Square label has reissued this amazing 1970 recording from Robbie Basho because it sounds so refreshing. Basho was the least known of the Takoma label trio, John Fahey and Leo Kottke being the brighter stars. But Basho's style heavily influenced by raga modalities and Celtic melodic structures was more akin to the classical and Eastern hybrid styles of Sandy Bull and Pete Walker. Venus in Cancer is a transitional recording originally released on ABC's Blue Thumb imprint just after he left the Takoma label and before his later New Age dabbling on Windham Hill. The songs are long and flowing, spiritually imbibed (but not overtly so) with melancholic melodic structures and raga-ish tempos that occasionally burst out in song. Yes, folks, Robbie Basho sings on this one (a point other reviews we read seem to ignore). But, before you all run away into the hills, let us tell you that his voice is a) pretty great in context with what he's playing and b) it's thankfully sparse throughout the record. On one song, he does some Henry Flynt-style field hollering, on another a bit of spoken verse, and yet on another his voice recalls a slowed down Antony or John Jacob Niles. This has got to be one of the best and unusual examples of primitive guitar we have heard in a while and as you well know we have heard a lot. Plus the cover art is pretty damn rad. Highly Recommended!

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We sure are suckers for unconventional music making. Be it accidental (ice melting, applause, junkyards, metal rusting, fire burning) or environmental (elephants, sled dogs, cats purring, FROGS!, bats) and most especially the mysterious or unexplained (the sounds of the dead, breaking through the radio waves, haunting shortwave spy transmissions). Then there is a whole other realm of unconventional music making: the mad scientist. Why form a band, when you can construct robots and machines to play all the instruments? Why actually play the piano, or the guitar, or the drums, when you can construct an elaborate set of pulleys and levers and gears and axles that will play them for you? Why be happy with a turntable that plays records with only one stylus when you can make music with a turntable equipped with multiple needles? We can only assume Pierre Bastien asked these same questions, and the answer he came up with is Pop. Forty five minutes of simple, repetitive, hypnotic and mesmerizing machine driven minimal krautrock. That's right, krautrock is what this sounds like. In lesser hands a room full of self playing instruments would most likely result in a sterile series of sound events, but Bastien has a deft hand and a keen ear, and breathes life into his automatons, delicate contraptions that each contribute a unique element to a song, not just spitting out sounds -- strange gadgets that play simple chords on a keyboard, an apparatus to beat out simple insistent rhythms, all manner of haunting minor key plinkety plonk, crisp windup toy clickety clacks and disgruntled grinding large machinery groans and whines, some strange warped turntablizations, wearily wheezing woodwinds, all woven into spare stretches of minimally propulsive ambience. Sounds a bit like an army of tiny wind up toys assembled in an automated sonic ballet, an inhuman menagerie making music more human that it seems possible. The vibe is very fuzzy and washed out, droney and dolorous, smeary and sepia-toned, definite shades of Philip Jeck and Tim Hecker, with plenty of creak and crackle surrounding the minimal melodies and subtle rhythmic pulses within each song. It's easy to become obsessed with the method behind the music, and the amount of obviously painstaking preparation that went into creating these machines. And why not?! It's absolutely mind boggling to be sure, but even beyond the mere construction of these music making mechanisms, imagine figuring out how to get these 'things' to make these sounds, and THEN somehow to compose music this lovely and captivating. Seems impossible. Surely, Pop is too perfect to be accidental, too beautiful to be pure luck, too musical to be anything other than the work of a brilliant mad sonic scientist. Or better yet, and possibly more likely, imagine Bastien is nothing if not lucky, a man who somehow stumbled upon a secret world of machines, in some mysterious forgotten warehouse, in some dark overlooked part of town, an insulated little world populated by these devices, not a living breathing creature in sight, just shelves full of strange little contraptions, all running endlessly and self controlled, creating this beautiful music as if that's what they were designed to do, and he was just the first to stumble upon this place, these things, and was able to capture these mysterious sounds before one night, that building and those things were nowhere to be found. Sounds farfetched, maybe a little silly, but it's the sort of romantic story that befits music this warm and beautiful and mysterious, whether it was ultimately the work of a man, or the just the serendipitous sounds of a room full of machines.

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This dvd features live footage of the Beastie Boys performing at Madison Square Gardens back in 2004. Most of it was shot by audience members using fifty DV and Hi-8 cameras! The editing style is pretty darn chaotic at times -- you're definitely not going to feel like you're at the show -- but that just adds to the frantic, tripped-out, tricked-out fun that is the Beasties, don't it?! Lots of silly extras including a cappella tracks, band commentary and a 'documentary' about director Nathaniel Hornblower (aka Adam Yauch) that guest stars David Cross. This is sure to be a fan pleaser... especially if you were one of the peeps handling one of the cameras... hence the title...d'oh!

We just can't get enough of the Believer. If we had nothing to do but read, we'd fantasize about the Believer becoming a daily, but as it is, we're usually still digging the last issue when it's time for a new one. A dense, informative, smart and funny collection of fiction and interviews, art and humor, music and politics. This month: novelist Aniruddha Bahal, the most feared writer in India, Toni Schlesinger's novelistic real-estate writing (?), How writing about animals can help you enjoy irony-free sex, rats in literature, America's preeminent Jack London impersonator, an interview with Steven Soderbergh, Nick Hornby on books he's been reading, a handful of book reviews, graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, a conversation with Oscar Villalon, publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, writer Jennifer Egan, and the return of Amy Sedaris' advice column, with special guest advisor Jerri Blank! And as always, killer cover art by Charles Burns.

It's a mystery how we managed to miss the previous recordings from the British ultra-minimalist Keith Berry, because if there's any justice in the world, he should be mentioned alongside such blue-chip drone artists as William Basinski, Thomas Koner, Bernhard Gunter, and Akira Rabelais. Yeah, his work is that good! He's got the sublimely romantic melodicism of Basinski, the glacial pacing of Koner, the hushed restraint of Gunter, and, um well, he's got a copy of Rabelais' legendary Argeiphontes Lyre software in his repertoire. But Berry is no mere aggregate of previously mined aesthetics, there's plenty to his work that speaks of his own beliefs and agendas which all draw heavily from Zen philosophies. While Berry's previous work The Golden Boat (Trente Oiseaux, 2003) and The Ear That Was Sold To The Fish (Crouton, 2005) were both exceptional releases (with the Crouton album easily being the best smelling record of 2005!), each of Berry's albums makes small adjustments that add up to an improvement and refinement of his sound; thus A Strange Feather stands out a remarkable achievement. Like all of the previously cited composers, Berry's fundamental structure is the drone supreme into which he bends field recordings, subtle instrumental arrangements, and small tactile events. Like falling snow, his dreamy work drifts with a poetic chill and tranquil hypnosis through which peripheral elements tease the listener with subtle details. It's so damn beautiful; and oh yes, the double cd version is very limited to 100 copies of which we only have a handful!

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Hey, have you heard of this newfangled technology? It's called a dualdisc. A CD on one side, a DVD on the other! Pretty good idea except you should be forewarned that these discs do not play on every cd player nor every dvd player. For one thing they are thicker than 'normal' cds and dvds. Yeah, we know these things aren't all that new, but we felt the need to elaborate a bit 'cause they do seem to cause some confusion and disgruntlement. Anyhoo, Bjork fans probably already own these just-released reissues of her early albums, right? And everyone else is to some degree or other probably pretty darn familiar with them too just by their omnipresence, eh? Sooo are introductions to these albums all that necessary? Back in '97 we had this to say: Even weirder than her last record (Post), with orchestrated stuff and more jazz/lounge crooning. The cover image is a Photoshop masterpiece art-directed by fashion designer Alexander McQueen that must be seen to be believed. Pretty much the same can be said for the otherworldly music in all of its elaborate intricacies. What we will bring to your attention today though is that these dualdisc Bjork reissues are all subtitled 'Surrounded'. Why? Because a major feature on the dvd side of each one is a Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS Surround Sound version of the album. So why listen to Bjork's third full length Homogenic 'just' in stereo, when you can have her "Alarm Call" resonating though your whole living room!? Of course, if you do want the stereo option, the cd side has that for ya too in a freshly remastered state. To sweeten the deal even further, there's also five of her deliriously delicious videos -- "Joga", "Bachelorette", "Hunter", "Alarm Call" and "All Is Full Of Love" -- which are also in Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS Surround Sound. Swoon. Psst, we should add that for all of you SERIOUS Bjork fans there's also a deluxe seven dualdisc Surrounded boxset which includes her six studio albums plus the Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack!

Hey, have you heard of this newfangled technology? It's called a dualdisc. A CD on one side, a DVD on the other! Pretty good idea except you should be forewarned that these discs do not play on every cd player nor every dvd player. For one thing they are thicker than 'normal' cds and dvds. Yeah, we know these things aren't all that new, but we felt the need to elaborate a bit 'cause they do seem to cause some confusion and disgruntlement. Anyhoo, Bjork fans probably already own these just-released reissues of her early albums, right? And everyone else is to some degree or other probably pretty darn familiar with them too just by their omnipresence, eh? Sooo are introductions to these albums all that necessary? What we will bring to your attention today though is that these dualdisc Bjork reissues are all subtitled 'Surrounded'. Why? Because a major feature on the dvd side of each one is a Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS Surround Sound version of the album. So why listen to Post (originally released in 1995) 'just' in stereo, when you can have Bjork's "Army Of Me" completely engulf you in the privacy of your own home!? Of course, if you do want the stereo option, the cd side has that for ya too in a freshly remastered state. To sweeten the deal even further, there's also a half dozen of her deliriously delicious videos -- "Army Of Me", "Isobel", "It's Oh So Quiet", "Hyper-ballad", "Possibly Maybe" and "I Miss You" -- which are also in Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS Surround Sound. Swoon. Psst, we should add that for all of you SERIOUS Bjork fans there's also a deluxe seven dualdisc Surrounded boxset which includes her six studio albums plus the Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack!

We here at Aquarius Records can be proud that we have an audience who is just as passionate and devoted as we are to a broad spectrum of musics. As much as we would like to, we just can't completely cover every amazing genre, sub-genre, regional dialect, and radical enclave of the world's musical community. We definitely try our best, but just imagine if we did somehow manage, those biweekly email lists would easily triple in size with our fingers spread even further than they already are. While it would be nice to expand our little aesthetic fiefdom, we have to admit that there are plenty of shops around the globe that fill in the gaps. One of those is London's Sound 323, whose niche market emphasizes all things dealing with academic composition, free improv, electro-acoustics, and in particular the pristine aspects of what has been dubbed the "New London Silence." In fact, one of chief protagonists of this London circle of Feldman-esque composers is Sound 323's proprietor Mark Wastell. He along with The Wire's scribe Brian Marley are the editors of a brick of a book published by Sound 323, handsomely designed as an art edition monograph and filled with articles by David Toop, Clive Bell, Brian Marley, Dan Warburton, Andy Hamilton and Will Montgomery as well as texts expounding upon the eroding distinction between improvisation and composition from the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Bernhard Gunter, Phil Durrant, Steve Roden, Jerome Noetinger, Mattin, and many many other. The book also features a DVD of concert footage from the likes of Keith Rowe, Evan Parker, John Tilbury, Tetuzi Akiyama, Eddie Prevost, John Butcher, and more. Hmm, curious that all of the latest members of AMM make appearances, but no footage from the ensemble that pretty much started the whole push toward the decentered notion of what is composed beforehand and what is created in the moment. With sound art becoming more and more of a cultural force in the art world (perhaps that should be art with a capital 'A'), Blocks Of Consciousness And The Unbroken Continuum is bound to be one of those historically important documents, detailing one particular cultural phenomenon as it happens by those who are making it happen. At 350+ pages bound in a hefty hardcover book, this is no easy tome to digest; but is well the effort you'll put into it.

Since we first discovered local primitive black metal outfit Bone Awl, on a tip from Leviathan's Wrest, we've been pretty much totally obsessed. As have most AQ customers considering how fast we fly through their limited cassette only releases. So finally, two of those long out of print demos (so long out of print in fact that we never actually had ANY) reissued on super deluxe 180 gram vinyl. Two demos, one on each side. Bog Bodies on side A, originally released as a cassette in 2003, limited to 300 copies, now LONG out of print, and on side B, Magnetism Of War, originally released as a cassette in 2002, limited to 150 copies and also long out of print. So this vinyl reissue, is also of course limited. Only 400 copies. Each sleeve is cut and paste style, to sort of keep with the aesthetic of the Bone Awl cassettes and as you can well imagine, this stuff is SICK SICK SICK. Bone Awl play super lo-fi black thrash, simple throbbing, furious and fucked up. Murky and primitive, just guitar and drums, manned by the brilliantly named duo of He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth! Simple riffs pounded into your skull, a crushing static black buzz, that is totally trancelike in its simplicity. Tape hiss wraps it's blackened tendrils around downtuned guitars, the drums a simple pounding framework, the vocals a guttural demonic howl. Actually, Bone Awl sound strangely like some sort of black metal Brainbombs, and we shouldn't have to tell you how goddamn good that sounds. As far as we know this is already out of print at the label. We have 30 copies, and once they are gone, they are GONE FOR GOOD. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

It seems like every Boris release is more anxiously anticipated than the last. But somehow this is the one everybody's been waiting for. A double cd reissue of the previously vinyl only Dronevil. And just to ensure that Boris obsessives who already have the lp don't get off easy, the cd version adds two lengthy tracks to each disc and eliminates the pressing defect that plagued the lp release. Dronevil is like the Japanese doom sludge version of the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka! Two discs, one drone, one heavy, intended to be played simultaneously on two separate stereos, but both equally listenable on their own. The 'drone' disc is gorgeous, the first track is a shimmering swirl of sizzling cymbals, thick clouds of reverberating metal, sounding almost like some lost Organum track. Warm metallic swells, that undulate and subtly swing, layer upon layer of gorgeous high end sound. The second is a lugubrious trawl through some dimly lit cavernous underworld, thick tones swirl and drift, super minimal, like the slowed down sound of tolling bells, a slow motion ringing that shimmers and hums, like some distant soundscape viewed through thick panes of fogged up glass. The final drone track is another high end excursion, this time it's a whirl of densely layered tones, like sheets of feedback, played back at different speeds, creating strange tonal clusters and causing the various sounds to beat against each other producing subtle rhythms and streaks of upper register melody. Like a much more minimal Sunroof! or a Phil Niblock piece using Total outtakes as source material. The sludgier disc (or the 'Evil' disc of the Dronevil pair) starts off with the 21 minute "Red", which starts off with some rumbling low end swells, mirroring the shimmering cymbals of it's ambient corollary on disc 1, then some abstract clean guitar, lots of space, about halfway through in come the keening distorted guitar feedback, streaks of psychedelic skree above the spacious abstract soundscape, finally about 15 minutes in the drums kick in, a simple post rock skitter, the clean guitars coalesce into a sort of Morricone-ish spaghetti western twang, above which some spare soulful leads drift and delicately soar, a slow loping groove like some strange slowcore hybrid of Codeine and Low. Dreamy and so good. The second track is where it actually gets heavy, a super distorted slow motion riff builds and builds until Boris are lurching along like some monstrous space rock behemoth, a sludgy trudge, thick walls of distorted guitar, simple pounding drums, all beneath wild psychedelic leads. Very Hawkwindy for sure. A brief near silent interlude sets us up for the hammer to fall, and it does, huge crumbling riffs dripping with filthy distortion, a sludgy black hole riff, and the wild psychedelic leads just keep getting more tangled and freaked out. So totally intense and heavy and super spaced out. The final track is another massive space doom workout. Heavy and thick and dense, but still somehow spacious and epic. Guitars grind and crunch but they also drift and hover weightless, the drums pound one second, and skitter jazzily the next, everything a huge swirling mass of psychedelic spaciness wrapped in massively thick guitars, ending in a barely there acoustic steel string coda. Now when you play the two discs together it all makes sense. The heavy disc is so spare and spacey, because the first disc introduces all of these extra layers of sound, and the first disc is so abstract and minimal, because it's main purpose is to fill out the doom drenched space rock on disc two. But it barely matters. Together, the two discs perfectly meld into a killer postspacerock doom sludge record, heavy and dense and layered. Apart, you've got two amazing records, one super abstract free drone record, and one post slow core psychedelic spacerock record. You can't really lose either way. And as always the packaging is absolutely breathtaking: a Japanese style mini gatefold, printed inside and out, black and light blue ink on thick textured brown cardstock, along the bottom a black and grey printed vellum obi, each disc in its own pocket and beautifully packaged with three circular plastic printed transparencies, all of the images combining with the printed image on the disc. WOW.

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Taking a cue from fellow British drone alchemist Andrew Chalk, Paul Bradley offers an elegant miasma of elongated tones from guitar and piano, the latter of which was contributed by Current 93's Maja Elliott. The overall feel of Sketches From Dust is thoroughly amorphous in its strategy for a pure ambience (in keeping true to the Brian Eno ethos of such early masterpieces as On Land and Thursday Afternoon). After stretching the timbral monochrome from piano and guitar into a shimmering chorale, Bradley gingerly places these sounds in a loosened compositional framework that shares some similarities to how Mr. Chalk arranged his abstracted piano on Blue Eyes Of The March. On occasion, Bradley allows for clusters of Elliott's piano to flicker within the freefloating drone breathing with the quality of billowing clouds and transient early morning fog whose refracted light through water vapor makes everything obfuscated and luminous at the same time. Very nicely done.

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What really needs to be said about the Brainbombs? Other than they totally fucking rule! Happy to report that rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated, this is the second 7" in the last year from these demented Swedes and it's another killer. Two tracks of gritty, grimy, sludgy Stoogesy garage stomp. Murky and lo-fi, thick and abrasive, bleating trumpet skronk and strangled whiney vocals are buried within a massive roiling blast of divine scuzz rock. Blown out, sloppy and sick, a single badass riff pounded into your skull over and over and over and over, while some lunatic rants about his need for speed and how you'll just end up dead. Completely godlike!

Enjoying this so much right now, it's hard to actually write about it, I just want to sit and listen... but here's what I've managed to come up with so far: Oh yeah! We've been looking forward to this second album from Sweden's Burning Saviours for months, it was supposed to come out earlier this year but got delayed until now. Basically, we can make this simple if a) you've heard the first Burning Saviours and liked it and/or b) you're a fan of that -other- Swedish band that channels Pentagram, Black Sabbath and all that good obscure early '70s proto-metal heavy prog psych stuff, namely Witchcraft. If those conditions apply, then get Hundus, 'cause this new Burning Saviours disc is just as good as their amazing debut, sounding (due to shared influences, and perhaps something in the water over there in Sweden) EXACTLY like Witchcraft's equally fine retro-proto-metal. But again, we don't see them as being blatantly unoriginal vis-a-vis Witchcraft or anything, it's just that both bands are so good at capturing the authentic vibe of their heroes, making music well worthy of the upper echelon of Vertigo swirl label heavies. Those not already tuned in and turned on to Witchcraft / Burning Saviours / the current retro-heavy-psych scene, well, you're gonna think this sounds like Black Sabbath. And maybe a bit Led Zep too, especially some of the vocal phrasing on the epic "Lilly Marion". And some of the riffing and soloing reminds us of very early Judas Priest, in their pre-leather, psychedelic Rocka Rolla phase. So, obviously, lots of appeal here to classic rock lovers! One thing that really makes Burning Saviours sound so great is the "openness" of their sound, spacious and clean, every part hitting our ears just right... the more quiet n' pretty moments making us think of -another- current band of retro-obsessed Swedes who are favorites 'round here, Elope. Even the heavier riffing is still sorta laid back, loping. Witchcraft definitely already have a cult following (and are gonna be touring the States soon, hitting SF in October with Danava, yeah!), and these guys deserve the same... but their name just isn't as good as "Witchcraft" is it? Burning Saviours are named after a Pentagram song, but maybe we'd have chosen a different one... coulda been called, uh, The 20 Buck Spins? No, that's no good either. Well anyway, another essential hippy-doom album that really seems like it must have been recorded in 1971 and recently unearthed!

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What's this? Some unexpected prettiness on the usually angular edgy Narnack label? A refreshing change. The Cairo Gang's music brings many other non-Narnack artists to mind. Despite the moniker, this is a one man band. Most notably Mr. Emmett Kelly's softly lilting vocals and bossanova rhythms that pepper the album draw immediate comparisons to Sam Prekop and Sea And Cake. Further into the album, the ninth song "Last Time Since September" seems like a breezy lil' something that The Shins might do on a mellow afternoon, while the eleventh track "Silhouette" is very awash in swishy shoegazin' guitars a la Ride, Slowdive or Jesus And Mary Chain. To boot, the sweet flittery recorder playing evokes a wide-eyed innocence seldom heard these days. Amid all of this laidback, contemplative melodicism though Kelly does on occasion descend into brief periods of dissonance and wooziness which prevents the listener from completely drifting off into dreamland. Taken in one sitting, this album's variety of indie pop sounds is quite reminiscent of Unrest and The Lilys too. A hazy late summer evening kind of listen.

MPEG stream: Last Time Since September
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It's been a while since we were knocked on our asses by a random cd-r that just showed up in the mail. But this debut disc from a band called Cambodia did just that. We got a copy of this disc almost six months ago and it's take the band until now to get us enough copies to list, but holy fuck was it worth it! Huge mournful riffs, that manage to be heavy and sludgy, but super emotional and minor key. Almost like someone took some sadcore moperock riff and dipped it in some SUNNO))) then rolled it in some Boris. The riff just hovers, all by it's lonesome, for almost three minutes before the drums kick in, and then the vocals. Woah, the vocals, an insane menagerie of growls and hysterical shrieks, sort of reminiscent of Bathtub Shitter. Dueling howls and screeches. But it's all about the loping metallic mope. Massive, lumbering, and intense. You can almost imagine some sort of Katatonia style clean vocals happening, but this is a whole different beast, a much harsher and brutal beast. But it's that main melodic refrain that makes this such a keeper. No matter who's howling, or what the drums are doing, or if there's ten tracks of chugging guitars, when that melody surfaces in a sea of sludge, it immediately grabs you and gives you that weird hairs standing on end feeling. If only most heavy bands could come up with these kinds of melodies. Just to be clear, this is definitely some sort of slow motion sludgy doom, but it's got that special something that keeps it from being just another boring doom metal band. Instead it's almost more like the heaviest harshest indie slowcore band ever. Only more metal. VERY recommended.

MPEG stream: Weight Of Ages

The Torontonian artist Dan Snaith who now goes by the professional moniker Caribou used to prefer to be addressed by the name of a Canadian prairie province. Minor legal battles ensued with the elder musical artist Handsome Dick Manitoba claiming the name, and the rest is history. While Snaith was Manitoba, he released two terrific albums 2003's Up In Flames and 2001's Start Breaking My Heart which have now been reissued under his 'new' name, each with a bonus disc packed with extra material. Snaith has amassed quite an impressive body of work to date culminating in last year's very warmly received The Milk Of Human Kindness. Draws comparisons to fellow electronic popsters such as Jimmy Tamborello's select projects (Dntel, James Figurine, Postal Service) and the whole Morr Music roster (LaliPuna, Isan, Styrofoam), but incorporates a broader palette of more defined styles and influences. Swirling dreaminess occasionally drifting into jazzy and shoegazer territory. Always a pleasure!

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MPEG stream: Air Doom

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A killer live DVD from our favorite Japanese, serial killer obsessed, stoner groove doom lords, Church Of Misery. We've gone on and on in the past (and elsewhere on this list, their debut was just reissued) about how much we love these guys. Some impossible mix of Sabbath, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Antiseen and Boris. Heavy as fuck, groovy and spacey, blown out and super psychedelic. Live it's everything we would have hoped for. A band of crazy Japanese hippies in ripped concert shirts, bell bottoms, berets, dreadlocks, furry coats, big ol' silver rings on every finger, flying V's, on a tiny stage, heads banging, hair swirling, in a closet sized dark club, packed to the gills with a heaving, sweaty, head banging crowd. The sound is amazing. A truly MASSIVE guitar sound, huge blown out crumbling riffs, the band a whirlwind of lurching groove, and a bass player who wears his bass lower than anyone we've ever seen (even the Ramones!). SO low in fact, that the body of the bass is at shin level and he ends up sort of playing way up on the neck. Awesome! Three live shows filmed over the last two years, a handful of CoM classics as well as some free form freaked out space jams. Also included are videos for "Filth Bitch Boogie" and "I, Motherfucker" (best song title ever maybe), both look quite similar, filmed in creepy black and white, on fuzzy degraded film stock, haunting shots of two emotionless girls making out, dead bodies in forests, plenty of violence and gore (mostly perpetrated on the band themselves) and of course the band trudging through mysterious woods all very Sabbath-like. So cool. Packaged in a blood red Japanese style DVD case. NTSC and ALL REGION!

The first actual full-length from these serial-killer fixated Japanese doom-mongers. Super sludgy psychedelic doom metal like a sloppy Sabbath with samples from documentaries about John Wayne Gacy and other famous murderers mixed into the musical mayhem.

We love Drone records. And their series of ultra limited, hand assembled 7"s. There's even a forthcoming 2cd on Andee's tUMULt label collecting a handful of the early long out of print 7"s. We can only ever manage to get a tiny handful of these singles since they're so limited, but when we do we try to list them, and it's definitely lucky for the tiny handful of you who are quick on the buy-it-now trigger. Some of the best drone and dark ambient music around. Closing The Eternity sound like some lost dusty old tape, slightly warped from laying unused in an old box a the bottom of some forgotten crawlspace. Warped and warbling whirs, a bit like some old William Basinksi 78 played on a rickety old turntable, with a damaged speed mechanism, causing the tempo to fluctuate and subtly shift. Eventually, this antique warble is overtaken by dense melodic washes of more and more drone, layer after layer, a huge dense drift of sound. The B side is a bit more abstract, a sound much more cavernous and haunting, a delicate slow burning whir. First Edition. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Clear swirled blue vinyl. Plain black sleeve with a little silver metallic plastic emblem affixed to the front. Includes liner notes and insert.

Everybody's favorite Bay Area band of fuzzy freak rock throwbacks are back with their fourth proper album, the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2004's Blue Cathedral. In the past, though very much inspired by '60s psych and '70s acid rock, Comets On Fire would always go a bit beyond, get more frenzied and noisy than any of the bands back then really got, at least on records we've heard. And they still do. But as any fan of Comets will tell you, they've gradually progressed percentage-wise from totally over-the-top distortion and Echoplex FX fueled mania to much more song- (and singing-) oriented music, reigning in their more noisy psychedelic excesses, to an extent. And Avatar is the next logical step in that progression, though rest assured there is still PLENTY of the original Comets sound shining through, blasting chaotic supernovas of spaced out electronic squiggles and fuzz guitar. But at other times, you could actually almost mistake this for an actual, authentic '70s era classic rock record, melodic and mellow, frontman and guitarist Ethan Miller honing his whiskey-soaked Southern-rock vox, a surprising set of husky pipes last aired on the recent album by his side-project Howlin Rain. Plus you've got the influence of band member Mr. Six Organs Of Admittance Ben Chasny, known for some glorious tunefulness in his own band (as well as Rallizes-like mayhem). Really we're a bit shocked at how darn pretty some of this is. And what's probably our fave track on this album, the nearly nine-minute, mostly-instrumental "Sour Smoke", sounds more like vintage Wishbone Ash (but with keyboards), kinda folky and proggy and definitely untouched by the "unclean" sounds of what we might term "classic Comets". Very cool though! So, this is, to our ears, a successful mix of Comet's new-found laid back approach, alongside sonics that are still quite reminiscent of in-the-red Japanese psych destroyers like Mainliner. The common ground are the cuts wherein they kick out the jams in the vein of an especially drug-damaged Blue Oyster Cult, who we hear here especially on the song "The Swallow's Eye". Bottom line: if you liked Blue Cathedral, you'll like Avatar too!

MPEG stream: Dogwood Rust
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It's hard to imagine that Anla Courtis had any time to dedicate to his own work throughout the '90s when he was the technical wizard for Reynols, the now defunct Argentine avant-rock project whose primal rock thud and conceptual oddities confounded many a listener across the globe. We'll admit to being huge fans of Reynols' more tripped out works, such as the 10,000 Chicken Symphony, their collaboration with Pauline Oliveros, and their infamous / brilliant album Blank Tapes. When Courtis and Reynols were cranking out recordings, we could hardly keep up with the output. There were hundreds of recordings popping up on every label imaginable, and hundreds more that only materialized in Reynols' mythological parallel universe Minecxio, never making themselves known to those of us on this side of the astral divide. Yet despite all of this activity, Courtis had been composing a number of tape pieces independent of his work in Reynols, many of which have been collected on this rather self-evidently titled collection Tape Works. Dating from 1991 - 1998, Courtis' experiments with the tape deck are an exaggerated distortion of cassette mechanics, with magnetic storms of hiss and drone bristling with mechanoid thunder, drowning microphones, volatile screeches, sicktone minimalism, and mutated electronic splutter. There's even a piece which sounds as if Courtis is reclaiming Pierre Henry's "Variations For a Door and a Sigh" through his own rickety recordings. While in Reynols, Courtis certainly played the part of the mischief-maker very well; Tape Works proves that Courtis has long been a mighty fine sound-sculptor.

MPEG stream: Asma De Tia De Alga
MPEG stream: Reducido A Hemorragia De Merluzas

Isn't it always about a girl? Unless boys are your thing, and then the rhetorical question would be 'isn't it always about a boy?' Well, for me (Jim) it was girls; and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me was the soundtrack to many a teenage romance. In hindsight, these relationships were all doomed from the start; but at the time, youthful idealism and the magnetic bond between two social outcasts was more than enough reason to think that any of these love affairs would last forever. Of course, the original cassette of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me that was played over and over and over again in balmy nights during Tennessee summers is long gone, replaced by an equally well worn piece of vinyl. While the claustrophobic oppression of Pornography and the wintery sparseness of Faith marked The Cure's prior dourness, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me was their breakout album as a kaleidoscope of emotional instability, just the perfect recipe for a couple of arty misfit teenagers. There are schmaltzy love ballads. There are tempestuous firestorms of churning guitar psychedelia. There are mope rock epics. And there are two bona fide Top 10 hits on the album. Listening to the album now as I'm well into my 30s, I find myself occasionally embarrassed... not entirely because of what Robert Smith is crooning about, but because of the memories that the album conjures up from the past. I'll spare you the details of my teenage relationships (for both of our sakes), but as for remastered and repackaged reissue of Kiss Me, it holds up pretty well. To be completely honest, I probably don't need to hear "Why Can't I Be You?" and "Just Like Heaven" again; but The Cure has crafted plenty of mood-altering gems on this album darkly lysergic tracks such as "The Kiss" and "The Snakepit" interpersed with more goth-pop delirium as on "Hot Hot Hot" or "Catch." As on the previous Cure reissues, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me comes with a CD of bonus material. Unfortunately, there aren't too many great tracks to behold from the live material and demo versions... Really what the hell happened to all of the b-sides to the singles? That quibble aside, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me is now available again; and it's probably one of those albums that you already know whether you need it (again) or not.

MPEG stream: Shiver and Shake
MPEG stream: The Kiss (RS Home Demo)
MPEG stream: A Thousand Hours (Studio Alt Mix)

I'm not going to lie to you. The Head On The Door was never my (Jim's) favorite Cure record. I'm sure it is for somebody; and that's not to say that The Head On The Door is a bad record. It's just that The Cure's legendary gloom, mope, and dourness was always far more appealing than the jiggly goth-pop of albums such as The Head On The Door and The Top. In looking at the band's history, The Head On The Door is the ultimate transitional record, following what could only be seen as a disaster dressed up as bubblegum pop (i.e. The Top). During the mid '80s, The Cure distanced themselves from the self-destructive behavior which spawned 1982's Pornography and drove Robert Smith to temporarily shelve the band while playing guitar in Siouxsie & The Banshees. Smith et al, decided to re-invent The Cure without the drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. The Head On The Door succeeds where The Top stumbled, but was pretty much just working up to the brilliantly skewered pop and bloodshot kaleidoscope of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, and eventually providing the foundation for the band to sell millions of records. Hence The Head On The Door adopted a slightly darkened, pogo-pop catchiness as heard on "In Between Days" and "A Night Like This" with hints of a former gloominess hidden well behind the amazingly silly tunes of "Close To Me" and "Six Different Ways." As on all of these remastered reissues, Robert Smith has filled an extra disc with demos and live material; and what's nice about this disc is the selection of legitimately rare songs including the demos for a couple of b-sides and possibly four unreleased tracks.

MPEG stream: Sinking
MPEG stream: A Night Like This (Demo)
MPEG stream: Stop Dead (Demo)

Cursive come tearing out of the gate with the tumultuous opening number "Opening The Hymnal / Babies". They follow it with the vibrant, fiery "Dorothy At Forty", and we thought to ourselves, "Geez, this is great! If they keep going the way they're going, holy shit, this is gonna be a doozy!" And they do and it is! They've always crafted their music with more drama and dynamics than most of their emo contemporaries, but while they've certainly retained their very emo core, this is Cursive at perhaps their most varied and their least aggressive (tho' there's still an occasional gritty moment here and there). Happy Hollow is both more angular'n'skronky (yes, there are saxophones and trumpets!) and more Brit-poppy than previous Cursive releases. So it's not surprising that as a result they kinda end up sounding less like the Cursive of old, drawing comparisons to a number of other faves of AQ with whom you're probably already familiar. For instance, "So-So Gigolo" drives with a very Queens Of The Stone Age-y propulsion. "Bad Science" sounds like a latter day Cure song. The abovementioned second song and "Rise Up! Rise Up!" bring to mind the feverishness of Doug Martsch's pre-Built To Spill band Treepeople. Pretty darn great!

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In case the title didn't already give it away, this is part of the German label TomLab's special 7" single series dedicated to the alphabet! It all began with Mark Robinson and the letter 'A' back in July 2004. Now it's mid-2006 and they've reached the letter 'N', but don't punish yourself if you've missed a few (if not or all) of 'em thus far. Each edition has only been pressed in a super fleeting run of 500. Geez, you can barely catch a glimpse of them. 'M' by Max Tundra and 'L' by Les Georges Leningrad (which came out in May and March of this year respectively) are already long gone. Sooooo, while it lasts we have 'N' which features two tunes by SF art-popsters The Curtains (aka Deerhoof's Chris Cohen). Snooze and lose...

By now all readers of the aQ list understand our obsession with fucked black metal. Demented, damaged, bizarre and brilliant. We can't get enough. From Benighted Leams to Rehtaf Ruo to Furze to Necrofrost to Striborg. Now, bow before the mighty black metal warriors of Detsorgsekalf.We discovered them quite by accident. Andee saw their video online (check it out here: http://www.eyeblister.com/inframe_main_1.html) and was so immediately smitten that he emailed them and first offered to play drums for them (they were drummerless, see the video), and barring that, offered to release a record for them. So with a forthcoming release on tUMULt in the works, we managed to get a handful of copies of their first self released cd-r, and if anything it more than lives up to the promise of the video. Once you see the band and the video, you might get the impression that there's some sort of humor going on, maybe it's some sort of joke, but be aware this is as troo and grim as it gets. So serious in fact, that the band has already received numerous death threats from other disgruntled black metalheads, the contents of which will provide the conept and story for the upcoming full length. Lead vocalist Balfobar Nosugref is a massive behemoth of a man, clad in spiked armor and smeared in corpsepaint as he spews all sorts of necro wisdom in a demonic screech WAY up in the mix. Then there's the ultrahot Morksjal The Necrowench, who wields a bloodied black axe like a woman posessed. The whole band is a motley crew of blackened misfits form the bowels of the earth, sprung forth to spread musical disease and pestilence. The sound is a Burzumy buzz, with blasting drum machine beats and no bass! Just buzzing guitar after buzzing guitar, a swirling droney blast of black frost. Balfabar's vocals are absurd and insane, spotuing all manner of satanic drivel as well as rants about his girlfriend and other evil thoughts. There are some strange falsetto vocals, some random funk bass, strange samples, all mixed in amdist the evil buzz. Sometimes things get almost a bit too goofy, reminding us a little bit of a necro Steven Schultz (who we obviously love), but the band is at their best when they are in full on black buzz mode, then they can hold their own with any of the above mentioned black metal bands. The demented elite for sure. They may be true and grim and evil, a black metal fist crushing all false metal, but Detsorgsekalf (their name being "frosted flakes" backwards but with a "g" instead of an "f" we just figured out, maybe) manage, in the process of being evil and true, to take the wind out of the sails of all those black metal blowhards that take themselves too seriously. Not that this isn't serious, because it is. Really. Just check the bonus tracks "Keyboard Solo" and their holiday chestnut "Black Xmas." Or the video. And enjoy the Troo Grim Warriors Ov The Necrokkult while you anxiously await the new full length: A.B.B.A. -- Apocaalyptic Blasphemed Battle Anthems!!

MPEG stream: The Embers Of Your Church Burn So Bright
MPEG stream: Troo Grim Warriors Of The Necrokkult
MPEG stream: Frostburn Upon The Winter Of Mankind's Discontent

We're still perplexed how Dialing In, AKA Rieta Piecuch manages to make such a gorgeously thick guitar drenched concoction WITHOUT any guitars. Ever since her first record on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, we've found ourselves returning to her music again and again. There's just so much to hear, and so many sounds to discover. It's definitely noise music, but a sort of noise music that we rarely encounter. Beautiful noise. Listenable noise. Mysterious noise. Thick and gritty, harsh but gently harsh. Cows In Lye continues on from where Ketalysergicmetha Mother left off. Each track a dense sonic journey rife with looped found sounds, voices and inadvertent rhythms, instruments and snippets of songs, all beautifully tangled up into absolutely breathtaking miniature worlds of sound. It's like Jeck and Basinski, Hecker and Marclay all playing at the same time. It can be that confusional, but can also be that compellingly complex. Thick corrosive washes of crumbling sound that so distinctly resemble blown out downtuned guitars cover everything, beautiful looped melodies, strange disembodied vocals, rumbling bass lines, everything an abstract beautiful fragment doused in a crackling gritty patina. Like a supercharged, sludgier Oval, or some beautiful ambient record played on a broken old tape player, and broadcast through a set of busted up high school loudspeakers. echoing off the concrete walls until the natural reverb piles up into a whole 'nother layer of murk and hum. We really can't think of anyone making music this weird and mysterious and so strangely beautiful. There may be a future Dialing In release on Andee's tUMULt label, but for now luxuriate in the gorgeous soft cacophony that is Dialing In.

MPEG stream: He Just Fused Your Minds
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We have to admit we were never that into DJ Olive, he always seemed to be the token turntablist on records by NY based rock ensembles trying to be 'edgy' or wanting to 'experiment', either that or the go to guy if Spooky was already booked. We're not trying to be harsh, we'd definitely take Olive over Spooky ANY day, but that's just the impression we got, but this record, boy did it shut us up good. Real good! This is definitely one of the most beautiful turntable drone records in recent memory. Really. One epic 50 minute track, a murky underwater drift, equal parts Oval, Jeck, Basinski, Marclay and Hecker. Gauzy and slightly warbly, loops seemlessly integrated into a single glacial drone. Fans of any of the above mentioned turntablists should just stop right now and buy this immediately. It's not just a drone record either. The first half of the disc is thick and warm, a slow moving slab of rich multi timbral sound, but partway through, the smooth dreaminess begins to peel back, revealing little bits of guitar, or strange rhythmic clicking, brief glimpses of the inner workings, that reveals a strange skeletal system beneath Sleep's seemingly deep organic surface. Which only adds to the deep listening, feeling strange shapes moving just below the surface, the drone interrupted to skip and skitter before resuming its glacial pace. I know we say this about a lot of records, but Sleep truly is dreamy.

MPEG stream: Sleep (excerpt)

Here's a new four-song ep from Eluvium aka solo instrumental soundscapist Matthew Cooper. When I Live By The Garden And The Sea is a slow-building stormfront of hazy distortion washes, gradually materializing contemplative note sequences and an occasional dialogue sample. This cd might be only four tracks long but they're quite lengthy -- plenty long enough for you to stretch out and sink into.

MPEG stream: I Will Not Forget That I Have Forgotten

Now on vinyl! Here's what we said about the cd version back in 2005: A no-frills and super down to earth debut. As the title states this is a half dozen tunes (plus one extra titled "Come Sit Beside Me" on the LP!) from Bay Area folksy folks The Finches. The duo of Ms Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Aaron Morgan share the singin' and guitar playin' duties, and Morgan also handles the bass playin' too. Each of their songs is thoughtful, well-crafted and slightly rough around the edges much like Carolyn's lovely lino-cut cover art. Achingly intimate and pretty, and quite along the lines of folk-pop songstresses such as Cat Power or Julie Doiron. Nice!

Sometimes, after listening to all of the ambient / improvised / noise / drone music we so dearly love, part of us truly longs for songs, and pop, and hooks, and choruses, and pretty singing, and cool arrangements. Which is precisely why there's no chance of our pop sweet tooth going sour any time soon. And when it comes to pop, we definitely have two distinct sides, our crashing, big guitar power pop pummel side, and our lush dreamy jangly sweet and subtle side. Every once in a while though, a band manages to touch on both, and of course, when that happens, we are in absolute pop heaven. Thus we have the Format, who definitely lean more toward the sweet jangle side of the spectrum, but manage at the same time to pack a secret serious powerpop punch. Dog Problems is a gorgeous collection of dizzying kaleidoscopic pop, lush and swirling, bouncy and crunchy, but moody and melancholic at the same time. Killer hooks constructed from sweetly distorted guitars, circus-y keyboards, shuffling rhythms, dreamy harmonies, and some seriously keening, near falsetto vocals that wail and swoop so charmingly. You can definitely hear bits and pieces borrowed from the Beach Boys, the Flaming Lips, Posies, Sloan, Postal Service and the Elephant Six Collective, but the Format, manage to turn all those bits and pieces into their own peculiar and perfect pop. We've been listening to this nonstop since we got it in! So good. Produced by retro power pop super hero Steve McDonald from Redd Kross!

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MPEG stream: I'm Actual
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Mr. Fiery Furnace goes it alone for this double (!) album. That's right, he's thrown his hat into the ring of prolificacy, joining the irrepressible songsmith likes of Robert Pollard, John Darnielle and Ryan Adams? The Winter Woman / Holy Ghost Language School combo is an undeniably immense and admirable undertaking, but apologies Brother Friedberger! On our first couple of listens to this album, we just couldn't help but feel like we were listening to a Fiery Furnaces album and hence we totally missed your sister's singing. That magical (and yes fiery) Friedberger spark initially seems somewhat muted (like it's running on half power... which it sort of is). That's a bit of a hurdle to overcome, but the elder Friedberger seems to have knowingly come prepared for it, bringing new elements into his palette of styles and sounds to distinguish his solo efforts from his band endeavors in more ways than just his sister's voice. Through these two albums Friedberger reveals two distinct personas -- one as the yarn-spinning eccentric pop singer/songwriter (with whom we're already well acquainted by way of the 'Furnaces) and the other as a more adventurous less conventional artist. Winter Women showcases the former with some utterly addictive hook-laden treats (hmmm, imagine if Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted were born under a circus bigtop!), while Holy Ghost brings out Friedberger's inner curious carny juggler. He indulges his whim which beckons him through a wildly varied array of styles with brief stops in bluesy swamplands, murder mystery incidental music, antique puppet theater, incorporating a lot of Beatles-isms throughout. Indeed, the latter does serve as his musical catch-all, but with all of its winding tales and sonic twists'n'turns he doesn't let things get all willy-nilly. No, 'tho he tackles both the big and small, the elaborate and the simple, he maintains a consistent level of composition from start to finish. Each album stands solidly on its own merits, and we wonder if the reason why he chose to release these two albums together was to ensure the audience's awareness of his multifacetedness. They leave no question, his uniquely tweaked songcraft talents are many.

MPEG stream: Up The River
MPEG stream: Holy Ghost Language School

Axe smashing, bare chested, mega muscled, mighty thewed, old school DOOM metal here! Just take one glance at Ken Kelly's Frank Frazetta-styled cover painting and one listen to the opening attack "Angel Of Death" (no, not a Slayer cover, it's more like a Cirith Ungol track!) and you'll know this third cd from Indiana doom trio The Gates Of Slumber is one for cultish, denim n' leather garbed fans of Saint Vitus, Reverend Bizarre, Manowar, Electric Wizard, and of course ye olde Black Sabbath -- especially if you're a reader of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. If you are, perhaps you knew that "Suffer No Guilt Ye Who Wield This In The Name Of Crom" is the motto inscribed in runes on the sword that belonged to the father of Howard's famed Swords & Sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian? And Conan of Cimmeria is indeed the subject of this album's 14 minute long title track. But TGOS also take this "Suffer No Guilt" theme further elsewhere on the album, in the lyrics to the 20 minute long (!) "God Wills It" tying the idea of not suffering guilt for the sins of one's culture's past to their views on the (historical) Crusades and the current "clash of civilizations" that some see as occurring in this age of War on Terror, War in Iraq and sundry other Middle Eastern conflict. So, some deep thoughts here... but also plenty of blood and thunder entertainment, in the form of heavy riffing and psychedelic soloing, with pulpy escapism as its purpose. By the way, Allan saw these guys this past summer at the Alehorn Of Power festival in Chicago. They were the opening band for a bill that included Bible Of The Devil, Twisted Tower Dire, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, and freakin' Manilla Road! TGOS definitely set the "heaviness bar" pretty high for the night.

MPEG stream: Suffer No Guilt
MPEG stream: Riders Of Doom

Genghis Tron might have a joke name, but their music comes across as serious business. Not played for laughs, anyway. They blenderize genres like electro pop, grindcore, techno, screamo, and heavy metal into a delicious smoothie packed with blasting "boosts" and nutritious noise. Their name is still silly, but also fairly descriptive. The power and might of metal meets the computer age of music making! It's 100mph headspinning mayhem and sorta new wavey '80s synth pop sensibilities in collision, one or both of 'em subverting the other, it's not clear. Those of us here into The Locust and An Albatross and Horse The Band and the like were all thumbs up for GT's hyperkinetic debut ep Cloak Of Love and are equally stoked on Dead Mountain Mouth, which spreads their love all over ten tracks, a whole half-hour plus of gonzoid synthcorespazzmetalfusion. Very cool. Note too, they have a few tracks on one of our recent Records Of The Week, the Drummachinegun compilation!

MPEG stream: Dead Mountain Mouth
MPEG stream: Greek Beds

Congratulations and bestest wishes to Giant Robot co-captain Martin Wong on his recent nuptual-ization! Whoo hoo! But the extracurricular excitement hasn't slowed down the production of his and Eric Nakamura's great Asian pop culture mag (nor that of their stores nor their restaurant)! This month we have heaping helpings of killer toys, comix, drawings as well as book reviews, record reviews, a trip to the South Pole, the paintings of Rachell Sumpter (one of which adorns the cover), a look at killer NY based Reed Space design and boutique, Asian American film fests, SooYoung Park of Seam and Bitch Magnet, boy bands in Hong Kong, the cool and creepy artwork of Louie Cordero, an interview with legendary tattoo artist Ed Hardy, Japanese toy auctions and more and more and more!!!!

We shouldn't really have to say anything about this SUNNO))) SIDE PROJECT!!!! But we will, because it's pretty different that the various members' other bands, and it's really fucking great. There have been a handful of Ginnungagap releases over the last few years, all of them featuring various lineups, and all of them invariably WAY too limited and selling for a fortune on eBay. We imagine this super limited lp won't be any different. Which is funny since this is actually a vinyl reissue of one of those long out of print and selling for way too much on eBay releases. Originally an installment in Southern's Latitudes series, this incarnation of Ginnungagap features SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Tony Sylvester (Iron Monkey, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine) and Alexander Tucker. A pretty cool group for sure, which is why the music on this disc is all the more surprising. A laid back, outer space, drifting buzzing abstract raga. Droney, dreamy and so hypnotic. Eclectic instrumentation (tamboura, harmonium, mandolin) helps the band weave a dense swirling drone from layers of buzzing steel strings, and wheezing chords, while above and throughout and within float tiny melodic fragments, a bit of buzz here, a little detuned twang there, all adding to the overall mesmeric drone. Eastern melodies materialize once in a while, only to drift into the ether as subtly as they appeared. SO NICE. As with all Aurora Borealis lps, this is gorgeously packaged, gold ink on a vellum sleeve, packed in a thick clear sleeve, the vinyl is a glow in the dark looking milky white, the whole thing quite striking. And as always. VERY VERY LIMITED. ONLY 700 COPIES MADE! We got 40 copies, most likely never to get more.

We'll still never be able to understand why the whole world isn't gaga for Guapo. Without a doubt one of the best, weirdest, and most inventive modern prog outfits there is. Everyone who digs Magma should definitely have some cd shelf space set aside for Guapo. Record after record of dense, tangled, catchy spacey, far out post rock prog brilliance. A record on Andee's tUMULt label, a release on Mike Patton's Ipecac label, tours with Circle and various other underground bigwigs. What's it gonna take? Well at least we know AQ customers are hip to Guapo's unique musical world, and with that in mind we managed to get a bunch of these super limited tour EPs, from Aurora Borealis, the same folks who put out the Grails 12", the Moss cd, the Fungal Hex double picture disc, the Crebain picture disc and the Moss / Wolfmangler split cd. And this Guapo cd ep somehow manages to fit just perfectly. Or imperfectly. Especially considering how weird this ep is, even by Guapo's already weird standards. Gone is pretty much any trace of musical bombast, which is what pretty much defines prog. Instead, this two part epic is a gorgeously slow and moody crawl, a slithering jazzy shimmer, with shuffling drum skitter and melancholy piano, slippery underwater bass that's murky and smoky and dreamily ominous. The second track picks up where the first one left off, gradually adding more elements, a distant wah guitar, some strange metallic percussion, creepy zither like melodies, the whole thing growing ever so slightly busier musically and getting creepier by the second, with the bass building into the driving force, a thick propulsive throb under a swirl of haunted house like jazz shuffle. Sounds a bit like what we might imagine a horror movie soundtrack by the Necks might sound like. Cool! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: The Heliotrope

Our pals at Conspiracy Records, a label/distro based in Belgium, who in the past have brought us records by Boris, Jesu, Shora and more, are this year celebrating their 10 year anniversary. A decade of amazing music. From a bedroom based punk label, to one of Europe's most important and influential labels and distros, all we can say is HURRAY! And HUZZAH! It's always so exciting, when a bunch of folks get together to spread the word about great music, great WEIRD music, and survive, even thrive. Such is the case with Conspiracy. And as if that weren't already enough, just knowing that some great people were selling some amazing music, those sweeties at Conspiracy have decided to share the love with us. And you. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they've decided to do a super limited subscription series, 12 records over 12 months, each limited to somewhere between 200-500 copies, ONLY available to series subscribers. EXCEPT, they've decided to let AQ have 20 copies of each, we're the only store with copies of these subscriber only lps, and for a brief moment, we can offer them to you, our loyal AQ customers. Needless to say we are thrilled, as the series lineup reads like a who's who of AQ faves, as well as including a handful of lesser knowns. All pressed on super thick vinyl, and packaged in killer hand screened original art sleeves. But be warned, we only got 20 of each, and we will run out fast and we will not be able to get more. When we do run out, there is a chance you can still get more (or even subscribe to the series) from Conspiracy direct, but what that means is act fast and prepare to leave empty handed. Horns are a Belgian super group of sorts, drawn from all sorts of legendary outfits, not a single one we'd heard of. But this slab of freaked out sonic weirdness has us making lists of all these bands we need to track down. Cuz Horns are one mighty damaged super fucked up and gloriously noisy beast. The band describe their sound as "wild and free improvisations. 78 bpm wounded prog from hell's children's corner. An encyclopedia of fatal mistakes crammed into a power ballad's intro" or alternately a "dirty avantnoiseambientbitchesbrew", both of which come pretty dang close. A seriously demented outrock psychedelic free for all, super angular guitar, killer pounding Albini-ish drums, throbbing low end bass rumble, everything doused in swirling fuzzed out super distorted affects, a dense cloud of malfunctioning electronics and processed vocals. Like some insane tagteam match between Shellac, Whitehouse and Acid Mothers Temple while some misguided DJ keeps dropping in bits of black metal and Hawkwind, and another Dj does his best to scratch and beat match, using nothing but the two bloody stumps where his hands used to be. Awesome! Original artwork by artist Jella Crama, who also hand silkscreened each copy. The LP's are pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl and housed in thick plastic sleeves.

Quite possibly one of the nicest lp packages we have seen. Definitely top 10. Hard to even know how to describe it. You sort of have to hold int and unfold it and feel the texture and the heft. Wow. Thick textured cardstock, fastened all over with black rivets, the whole thing embossed and letterpressed with black ink, abstract designs and very classy looking calligraphy, the back is die cut about half way down, so it opens like a barn door, split down the middle, held shut by black string, once opened, it reveals the 180 gram lp nestled inside as well as still more embossed design and text. So gorgeous. And the music is definitely deserving of such over the top extra attention. A reissue of a long out of print cd-r, Hush Arbors explore a dark murky side of their soul, a drifting cloudy otherworld of soft freefolk bliss, flecked with all manner of detuned guitars, warped melodies, creaking percussive clatter, shimmery effervescence, but with a definite ominous edge, a lo-fi Third eye Foundation recording for Siltbreeze maybe? But with more twang, and more shuffle, and more delicate dreaminess. So nice. An essential dreamfolk / free folk / folknoise / dronetwang artifact beautifully preserved and offered up again for a very limited time. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each copy hand numbered, we got a bunch but these definitely won't last.

True black metal fanatics know this band, whose album on No Colours, The Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer, was Allan's number one black metal pick of 2005, for sure, Satan help me. Well here's the hard to find second Inquisition, the 2001 record that preceded that slab of infernal genius that Allan likes so much, and which cultish aficionados of plodding, aching black metal should delight in as well. It took us forever to get (just a handful) more of these to list, and they probably won't be around for long. As we've said, this one is Wrest from Leviathan's favorite Inquisition opus, and not only just because it features guitarist/vocalist Dagon croaking the immortal line: "Touch me with your magic hoof"!!

MPEG stream: Embraced By The Unholy Powers Of Death And Destruction

The hip kids have been all a-buzz about this album for weeks already, and it's no wonder. Silent Shout is the bestest electro-party record around right now. Super super fun from Sweden that treads the shadowy perimeter of goth industrial (think: WaxTrax Records circa early '90s My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult). The brother and sister duo Olof and Karin Dreijer have really come into their own on this one. We've heard some comparisons to Ladytron, and we can certainly hear some similarities in the softer synth pop tracks, but The Knife are looser, edgier, more gregarious, more... strange! So if you dig Ladytron, but you maybe want something that struts with more attitude and ambition, give The Knife a go! Silent Shout is packed with a variety of juicy jaunty beats, sputtery'n'swooopy synth lines and the vocals... ah, the vocals! In particular, Sister Karin's are a bit like Bjork in their cooing expressiveness but a lot more tweaked, petulant and sauced up. Brother Olof provides a complementary smooth deep croon and downright weird guy delivery. Right around the time your feet get tired from all the dancin' (or other involuntary body movements), The Knife deftly insert a little down time in the form of the sweet lilt of "Na Na Na" and the beautiful euro-cabaret stylings of "Marble House". Then they pick it up again for the delightfully bizarre stomp of "One Hit". Recommended!

MPEG stream: We Share Our Mother's Health
MPEG stream: Marble House
MPEG stream: One Hit

[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 246 ]