[ 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 51 through 95 of 95.

Loney, Dear is a one man band from Sweden whose given name might not be Loney, but his music is very very dear. In fact, his name is Emil Svanangen and he makes fey, verging-on-twee, pop. Loney, Noir is shaded in soft pastel hues with ultra high male vocals. We thought it fit quite well alongside Arcade Fire. What do you think? Super charming and breezy, no?

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Back in 2004, Lustmord and The Melvins released what turned out to be a truly magnificent collaboration in the form of the album Pigs Of The Roman Empire. For Juggernaut, Brian Lustmord entered the studio with the Melvins' King Buzzo once again. The result is less of a collaborative project and more of a Lustmord album with Buzzo contributing vocals and guitars to Lustmord's dark, dark ambient sound design. The album opens with some signature Lustmord moves: cavernous bass drones, tectonic plods for a rhythmic underbelly, and loops of weeping violin. All of this points to the same creep show ambience that worked so well on Lustmord's seminal albums Heresy and The Monstrous Soul; yet, when King Buzzo's guitar comes into focus, the two signatures couldn't sound any more mismatched. It's really quite baffling: a hardly distorted chug of the guitar that sounds more like a teenager who's just figured out that you can downtune an E chord rather than a legend of dirge and doom. And Lustmord just lets it sit there; no manipulation, no augmenting sounds, nothing else. And so it goes. Towards the end of the record, Lustmord brings in some screeching Ligeti strings that do improve upon the previous 30+ minutes of tedium. Given that Stephen O'Malley and Pita raised the bar pretty high for avant-garde doom metal hybrids with their recent KTL collaboration, Juggernaut needed to be a hell of a lot better than this.

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This is volume three in God Is Myth's 3" cd-r series paying homage to the late great H.P Lovecraft. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, the second from Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist. This volume features the strangely monickered LVTHN, pronounced Leviathan, and not to be confused with our own Leviathan. LVTHN just so happens to be the black ambient ritualistic alter ego of one Gaendaal from the band Wraiths, whose Paradigms disc we reviewed recently, and if you dug the Wraiths disc, you'll for sure want to check this out. This is gorgeously bleak and mysteriously abstract, an ambient world of strange sonic events and ominous drones. Inspired by the Dunwich Horror, Sentinel Hill is one long, slow crawl through the blackest of terrors, distant tolling bells, crumbling wastelands of blood drenched hills and drone drenched swells, rhythms are muted pulses, layer after layer of black sonic gauze is wrapped in billowing clouds around every sound no matter how slight, disembodied vocals and clanging metal are smeared into still more layers of blackness. Truly dark and dense and harrowing. Another perfect sonic tribute to the master. Each disc includes a full color booklet as well as an insert with information on Lovecraft as well as a killer creepy portrait. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 15 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.

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Wow! Another cd-r from Machinefabriek, who seems to be in some sort of competition with his sometime partner in sonic crime, Jasper TX, who seem to in the throes of trying to out release each other. But that is most definitely not a complaint. We're all winners in this contest. But for those of you keeping score, it's 6 to 5 Machinefabriek, but heck, that's only counting the ones we got here. Anyway, we're just happy to have more Machinefabriek to listen to. This 20 minute 3" bucks the usual trend of most 3" cd-r's and instead of offering up one ultra long sprawling epic, splits his 20 minutes into 11 bite size pieces, which actually suits the sounds on Hapstaart as well. Unlike the blissy gauzy ambience of his other releases, on Hapstaart, Rutger Zuydervelt, the man who is Machinefabriek, pushes his sounds to the extreme, ending up with a disc that has more in common with Ryoji Ikeda than it does any of his drone bliss peers. The whole disc seems to be based on a massive, barely audible low end thrum, that pulses and throbs subtly over the course of the 20 minutes, sometimes dipping to near silence, other times threatening to blow the speakers. Textures and layers are ultra minimal, with the volume turned waaaaaaaay up, you can hear these little drones twist and shimmer. The record is peppered with bits of crackle, of little pops, brief exhalations of hiss, or static, crumbling sine waves, intense streaks of jagged high end, but these intrusions are typically brief, fading out as fast as they appeared, only to leave the records active ultra low-end to slither almost silently on its way. An awesome slab of microscopic sound. Headphones recommended!

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Two artfully infectious lo-fi power pop songs from local trio of guitar, drums, and one rockin' cello. Very catchy songs with quirky lyrics, hummable hooks and back-up vocals. Good stuff, but try to see them live if you can, we're guessing you'll find it pretty hard to keep from dancing.

We know a lot of you, like us, are fans of the supreme sludge majesty of Portland, Oregon's mighty Yob. Over the course of four albums, Yob reigned as one of the heaviest, spaciest doom-prog outfits ever, sounding something like a tripped-out Rush on 16rpm, mixed with the riffs of Sabbath and Sleep, all super epic, doomy and psychedelic. What's not to love? Not only that, but they always stopped in to shop at Aquarius whenever in town. So, we were certainly sad when Yob broke up, a while ago. But now, we're very glad to report that Yob mastermind Mike Scheidt has bounced back with a new band, Middian, who have just made their debut on Yob's old label Metal Blade. And Middian pretty much take up where Yob left off. It's again a trio, it's again totally doom, and Mike's trademark combination of soaring, electronically effected clean singing and growling gutturalisms is still in place. But the five new tracks that comprise Age Eternal's 57 minutes are if anything darker and denser than anything Yob had yet achieved, yet also maybe more melodic. Middian is at times faster paced (not all doom, even with songs as long as these, has to be slow all the time) than Yob ever was, but Middian's songcraft embraces a wide array of emotions and dynamics. The aggro impetus of opener "Dreamless Eye" definitely reminds us that Mike was often looking for death metal records when visiting our shop, while elsewhere on this album the listener is enveloped by blissful swirling layers of slo-mo, melodic drone. If you liked Yob, if you like Mammatus, if you like Neurosis, if you like Lesbian, this should be right up your alley. However we're not sure if Metal Blade's marketing idea (as expressed on the cover sticker-blurb) that this is for fans of The Sword, High On Fire, and the Obsessed is quite correct... while fans of those bands could and should love Middian, this is still quite a bit more sonically and structurally "extreme" than any of those. Maybe add Boris and Ufomammut to that list, at least, to come closer to Middian's mean between psychedelic stoner metal and brutal doom. PS we noticed online that Middian is playing a record release party for this album in Portland tonight, Friday April 13th, with both Asunder and Slough Feg also on the bill -- damn, wish we could be there!

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Now available on vinyl for a limited time!! There is a certain level of possessiveness that seems to go hand in hand with being an independent music enthusiast. Sometimes this possessiveness turns to snobbery in thought or can often be expressed in comments like: "they were never as good as their first 7 inch" or "I only like the OLD stuff", etc... It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but part of it is definitely the fact that discovering cool bands is a lot of work, and when you do discover a band, even though you're eager to share them with all your friends, you're NOT eager to share them with the rest of the world. The rest of the world discover their new bands by simply turning the radio to some random top 40 or even lower 100's college station, while the indie music obsessive is reading zines and going to shows and checking out opening bands and reading music blogs or whatever. Sometimes the indie music nerd (okay, snob) can feel ripped off when their special "find" becomes popular. It's safe to say that Modest Mouse is no longer a special find (if your aforementioned possessiveness is contained check out the American Idol contestant's cover of "Float On" for a Mustang commercial; if your possessiveness is not so easily contained, steer clear...it might make you blow your top!) Most of us remember the first time our bodies came alive to the sound of Modest Mouse. For some of us no record will ever compare to This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About or Lonesome Crowded West (or maybe even actually, their first 7 inch!), while others will find themselves flailing uncontrollably to the angsty lispy yells of Isaac Brock for the first time with the band's latest, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Brock's folky growl may be the only thing that has remained constant over the years as the band's instrumentation has turned from raw ruckus to structured madness. The highly anticipated recruitment of The Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr is subtly felt throughout the band's most recent project and The Shin's James Mercer contributes some nice airy backing vocals on "Florida" and "We've Got Everything," but it is clear that Brock still holds the reigns...and let's them go at exactly the right moment. Whether this is the first or fifth full length you've heard by Modest Mouse, we think you'll be pleased. And who would have EVER thought Modest Mouse would be #1 on the Billboard charts?!?! Wow.

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We have a friend who has become so obsessed with the work of Nadja and its mainman Aidan Baker, that he spends way more time than is healthy trolling the internet looking of long lost 7"s and rare out of print cd-r's. It's easy to see why though. Baker's sonic explorations are as mesmerizing as they are ominous. A truly unique musical voice in a suddenly way too crowded microniche. Call it doom. Or drone. Or dirge. Or better yet deathdoomdronedirge. It's a sound we can't get enough of, the logical extension of our obsession with the drone. And while we still love to drift off to the soft shimmer of a distant rumble, when you imbue a drone with more power, and more volume, and more wattage it becomes something new, a fearsome sonic beast, whether it's a subtly snarling growl of grit and grime, or a massive undulating wave of black hole fury, a drone possessed of power becomes a glorious thing to behold. And no one has as deft a hand with the drone than Baker, And Nadja is the ultimate drone via rock band. Beyond the ultra minimalism of Sunn 0))), way prettier than the filthy dirges of Moss or Monarch, Nadja are almost like some indie slowcore band but lit from within by some otherworldy source. Every track is suffused with a warm rich glow that is almost blinding, but at the same time warm and inviting. It's heavy, sure, but it's more just plain beautiful. Like staring into the sun until your eyes start playing tricks on you. Imagine listening to a sound so loud, so bright, that the synapses in your brain misfire, and your ear scrambles to make sense of this sound, and in doing so, forges all kinds of unlikely connections, subtle melodic threads, paints a lush sonic portrait. Now imagine a music that was played to already sound like that, before it even got to you. Just imagine what your mind and your ears would do with a sound like that. Some sort of unreachable aural nirvana suddenly within reach. That's the music of Nadja. It's like watching a sunset slowed down so each subtle shimmer stretches out forever, each ray of sunlight is tangled up with another, writhing in sparkling glistening knots, slowly unraveling, stretching, into endless streaks of gorgeous muted color. Imagine Jesu, but dosed to the gills on Prozac, a shiny happy Godfleshian dirge, or a My Bloody Valentine riff looped and repeated forever, underpinned by some Can drum loop at 16 rpm, or a Teenage Filmstars 45 played at 33. This is epic ultradoom metal, but with the metal replaced by soft billowy clouds of fuzzy distortion, the howling fury twisted into dreamlike tranquility, the blasting beats pulled apart and sprinkled here and there like percussive raindrops. This is as soft and pretty as a dirge-y drone can get while still retaining its inherent doomic mass. Utter and absolute loveliness drenched in a thick patina of crushing heaviness. Impossible but perfect.

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While not a 'new' record per se, Touched, by AQ dreamdoom faves Nadja is in fact their newest release, a collection of older tracks, from a long out of print cd-r, reworked and retooled into arguably one of the prettiest, heaviest, most blissed out doom records of recent memory. Which makes sense when you consider the fact that Nadja mastermind Aidan Baker, spends the rest of his time creating gorgeous, fuzzy dark ambient soundscapes, all of which end up informing his more metallic alter ego, turning what could have been a run of the mill funereal downtuned trudge, into a mind bending, ear melting psychedelic drift. Quite possibly the heaviest Nadja record yet, this is a serious slab of spaced out, acid fried, FX drenched doom, all wrapped in thick swirls of soft fuzz, and dense clouds of blurry buzz, a monstrous caveman plod through a thick, smeary sonic storm. It's like Godflesh wrapped in My Bloody Valentine filtered through some Wolf Eyes, or the Swans covered by the Jesus And Mary Chain, remixed by Tim Hecker. Or even Mogwai's Young Team run through a bank of effects pedals and played back at 16rpm. Heavy and pretty, punishing but strangely serene. And then there are the vocals, soft and lilting and dreamy, fluttering and floating amidst the crash and cacophony, like mysterious spectres, an amazing juxtaposition of industrial throb and glistening shimmer, which ends up sounding almost more Jesu than Jesu. The guitars are massive, but instead of sounding like the black tar rumble of impossibly downtuned strings, or the jagged crunch and black buzz of other purveyors of metallic slowmotion, Nadja transform their guitars into thick washes of textured sound, constantly pulsing and throbbing, changing shape and color, thick and dense and suffocating, like being submerged in some strange viscous liquid, warm and syrupy, heard from inside this strange sonic cocoon, the outside world becomes a buzzy blur, all the beats and vocals, when they finally make it to your ears, are dull murky plods, or distant wisps of melody. Each track, at its center, contains a perfect little pop core, some gorgeously melancholy melody, a seriously sublimated hook, which is summarily stretched and twisted into long black stretches of blown out sound, an impossibly heavy slowcore, the poppiness, all but totally obscured by the coruscating sheets of sonic rumble and whir, the pumelling pound, and the gauzy swaths of dreamy shimmer. A never ending (we wish) trudge through epic landscapes of black beauty and bleak mystery. Doom was never meant to sound this pretty, but we're sure as hell not complaining!

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The veteran Japanese noisician (and guitarist of heavy prog act Zeni Geva) K.K. Null is back with his first solo album on the Touch label, and it's one of KK's best solo efforts we've heard to date. Perhaps inspired by labelmate Chris Watson (with whom he collaborated a few years ago, in conjunction with Z'ev), K.K. has brought some field recordings (birds, bugs, frogs, fire...) he made on a trip to a national park in Northern Australia to this project, mixing those with his own studio-conjured electronic sounds. No wonder, then, that Fertile is a spooky soundscape of nocturnal hiss and buzz, parts of it sounding like video games played by insects, others ominous with ghostlike voices buried beneath... chattering rhythmic components underlie what sound like shortwave freakouts, tracks often building to stactic-y explosiveness, droning and noisy, extremely dynamic and distorted. You could almost imagine that this is what a hybrid of a John Carpenter soundtrack and a Japanese noise record would sound like. Null calls it "cosmic noise maximal/minimalism." We don't know what to call it, exactly, but we like it!

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This collection of sure-shot classics from this veritable Senegalese institution has been making us seriously crave hammocks and sunshine. All you're gonna want to do when you hear these songs is rock back and forth ever so gently as the wind blows and the sun shines and you forget all your worries at least for just a little while. The way Orchestra Baobab mix their Senegalese musical roots with elements of Latin, Caribbean and Cuban musical styles meshes so perfectly. Soulful vocals, call and response delivery, and a masterful use of horns. So good! All too often horns are brash and upfront and nothing but a shiny annoyance, but Orchestra Baobab know how to use horns, subtly and seductively, making them ring in our ears with such delight. The perfect lazy Sunday afternoon record for sure. Highly recommended!

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More medieval minstrelry!! Last list we reviewed the cd reissue of the first two albums by Germany's Ougenweide, early '70s German krautfolksters produced by Achim Reichel. Here's the another disc of their mainly acoustic "Mittelalter-Rock", featuring their third and fourth albums Ohrenschmaus and Eulenspiegel, both from 1976. Again this cd is a delight for anyone who can dig a Teutonic twist on ye olde folk, with dash of hippie psych/prog, played by people who wouldn't look out of place in a Joanna Newsom video. Singing in Old German -- sometimes in Latin -- Ougenweide took their obsession with the Middle Ages quite seriously indeed. They set old poetry to music, putting 'em in the same realm as that wonderful Kay Hoffman album Floret Silva from circa '77 we reviewed last year, and also reminding us a bit of the approach taken by a more recent (and more metallic!) German band, In Extremo -- remember them? The vocals are lovely, the various stringed things in the band get an, um, incredible workout, alongside hornpipes and jangling percussion... the mood ranges from melancholic atmosphere to pure reeling energy, and if you let yourself get into it, let your mind dance about in Ougenweide's ancient forest glade, you'll find that their melodies and rhythms are utterly infectious. Germany's Bear Family label, best known for their elaborate (and expensive) box sets, of course do a nice job with the packaging here, the thick cd booklet full of liner notes (in English and German), lyrics (not in English), and photos. Just turn to page 33 in the booklet for a gander at the appalling original album cover of Eulenspiegel -- the band playing tug-o-war in full RenFaire get-up, with a jester-garbed child dancing on the rope! This is a LOT cooler, and generally less silly, than that picture would suggest!

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B-Music's "Anatolian Invasion" continues. We reviewed the Selda album a few weeks ago, now it's time for the one with the monkey on the cover, the incredibly groovy 1973 instrumental album from this super-obscure Turkish artist Mustafa Ozkent and his "orkestrasi". We're told (and we believe it) that this is one REALLY obscure album, definitely a find for any digger and a welcome reissue from the discerning heads at Finders Keepers/B-music. It's simply jazzy, sazzy, dancefloor fodder here folks, nothing but a party y'all. Fuzz guitar and Turkish trad. folk grooves like we like, but done all badass as if the JBs, "funky drummer" included, were ushered into the studio with a bunch of Turkish musicians, each teaching the other some new tricks. '70s funk, Istanbul-style! Totally full of beats and breaks that pioneering hip hop DJs woulda been all over, had hip hop originated in the on the banks of the Bosphorus rather than in the Bronx... The acid organ spasms and rhythmic workouts found here are still fresh and fun today. We know a lot of you dig the Turkish psych reissues we've been freaking on, this one should definitely appeal to those who liked the '70s cop show car chase sounding numbers found on the Edip Akbayram reish. Ten tracks, 30 minutes, and your body WILL be moving long before you need to hit "play" again to start it over.

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Richard Pinhas is the mastermind behind French '70s synth-prog-proto-industrial pioneers Heldon, who combined spacey analog electronics with punkish attitude, hypnotic rhythms, and Robert Fripp-style flights of electric guitar. Next to Magma they're one of our all-time favorites from France. Japan's Captain Trip label has been digging into the Heldon/Pinhas vaults, bringing us some cool live recordings reviewed here not long ago, and now this. Packaged in a handsome silvery metallic mini-LP styled jacket, this cd collects Pinhas's various singles releases as a solo artist, under the Heldon moniker, and in various other earlier guises -- starting with his heavy psych act Schizo from 1972, who were obviously heavily influenced by Hendrix, sounding also quite a bit like the "heavy metal thunder" of Steppenwolf! Those tracks, such as "Schizo (And The Little Girl)" and "Paraphrenia Praecox", certainly fit with the so-called Francais Metal de Proto scene we've been digging lately, bands like Les Variations and Docdail. Cool! That's only the first four tracks and already we're pretty excited. This disc also contains singles from Heldon, one-off spin-off band T.H.X., and Pinhas solo, all progressively getting more and more into a space age new wave prog thing that fans of the band Zombi will love, cult sci-fi writer Norman Spinrad even showing up for a guest vocals on the paranoid groove of "Houston 69". While some of these singles are are in fact extracts from albums (Heldon's "Baader-Meinhof Blues" for instance), others were only available in this format (like T.H.X.'s version of Joe Meek's classic instrumental "Telstar"!). So this is essential for any dedicated Heldon fan -- and in a lot of ways a great single-disc introduction to the the Pinhas oeuvre, one that's more eclectic and extreme than we'd previously imagined, ranging from Schizo's ponderous psych to the circa-1980, NYC Disco-Not-Disco cool of his solo singles! And as we said, this comes handsomely packaged, with a cd booklet including track details and images of each 7" release compiled here.

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If memory serves us correctly, the previous Pole album (which was the eponymous 2003 release) was a complete dud, as it ventured into clunky jazz tropes that didn't meld with Pole's murky dubbed electronica. Steingarten arrives four years later; and while it's a vast improvement upon that aforementioned album, it can't be said that this is a 'return to form' necessarily. No, the days of druggy Chain Reactive soundscapes are gone for Pole. Stefan Betke (the German artist behind the Pole moniker) still sees the merit in bringing an organic ethos to digital produced electronica, and frosts his downtempo breakbeats with acoustic basslines, playful vibraphones, and fizzing psychedelic guitar noise, all of which have been sampled and framed tightly into place. If this sounds like a digitized version of early Tortoise or a more tight-laced Fridge recording, that's because it does.

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Ok, hold on a second, got to turn off the music and wait 'til I'm not so dizzy anymore to write this review! Yep, it's the second album of ultra spazzy brutal metalcore from Psyopus. Once again, it's a heavy chops-explosion of technicality, testosterone and tomfoolery with slashes of jazz fusion amidst the metal madness. We know a lot of people might like this, just to marvel at the band's insanely complex compositions and performance thereof, but you have to have a taste for some mean nasty vocals shouting at you the whole time (not something you always get with other, more tame varieties of metal, jazz and/or prog), but Meshuggah fans should have no problem with it! However, we don't recommend listening to the hidden, 28 minute bonus track...most of which consists of the word "annoying" looped over and over, though that's not the worst part! You've been warned.

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Just who the heck is Israel Quellet? Somebody who sent a really cool home-recorded cd-r in to the Sub Rosa label that's who. The back cover of this digipack contains text all about finding Quellet's demo in their office slush pile, giving it a listen, and realizing, hey, here's something that really doesn't sound like anything else! And thus, it's now a Sub Rosa release. Quellet's intimate and unique sound-world is built from simple sounds, generated by ordinary means like striking a metal oil tank, dragging a bucket across the ground, tapping a telephone keypad, or playing with a noise-making toy. Quellet's French-speaking voice, laughter and "throat sounds" also are heard to much mysterious and evocative effect. But actual musical instruments? Who needs 'em? About the only "real" instrument appearing here is his Swiss town's church organ, and even that still fits into his "field recording" aesthetic. (Oh, and there's also several percussion instruments here too: a bass drum, gong, timbales etc.) As depicted on the cover, which features a photo of a stereo-mic'd electric sander, Quellet's REAL instrument is the microphone and with it he zones in on a level of a level of blown-up, microscopic detail that makes "saturation" (or distortion) another common and crucial element to his "music". He then mixes and edits these recordings of his various sound-ingredients, musique-concrete style, never adding too much, keeping it simple, focussing on just a few specific sounds and employing them to their fullest. Some tracks are percussively rhythmic, others distorted and droning, some simply bursting with joyous cacophony. All these pieces are carefully constructed, though, never randomly noisy. It's about method, not madness. Something this abstract needs verve and vision to be a good listen, and this has all that to a fascinating degree. Always bold and surprising and alive. Recommended.

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Just what we've been hankering for, some perfectly breezy and colorful pop done just right. And lucky for us Santa Maria has got a perfect batch of the good stuff for us to enjoy. Leave it to the Swedes to make some of the most infectious and smart pop we've heard in ages. Best known as the guitarist in The Concretes, Maria Eriksson, aka Santa Maria steps into the spotlight with fantastic results. Joined throughout the record by some of Sweden's best and brightest, including members of Sagor & Swing, Tape, and Laakso, this is the kind of pop music we never ever ever get tired of. Equal parts peppy and bittersweet. Proving once again that pop doesn't have to be dumb or simple to be catchy and infectious. While her former Concretes bandmate, vocalist Victoria Bergsman stole the show with her contributions to the latest Peter Bjorn & John album, we're pretty sure that Maria Eriksson deserves the ears of all those who appreciate smart pop as well. With a sound similar to the great Concretes debut, Peter Bjorn & John, Camera Obscura, and The Aislers Set, this is one of the best pop records we've heard so far this year!

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Hilarious. Bizarre. Amazing. As always. Can you tell we're fans? The humor of Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster is one of the reasons that New Jersey's WFMU is one of the best radio stations anywhere. Every time a new cd from these two comes out (there's been four previous releases) we drop everything to put it on in the store and listen and laugh our asses off. And every time, customers previously unfamiliar with Scharping & Wurster start laughing too, ask what the heck we're playing, and instantly buy copies. Basically, the S&W formula is that easily-bemused regular-guy DJ Tom Scharpling is taking calls on this show, when some weirdo and/or jerk (not always obvious as such at first) calls in to talk and the two of them get into some ridiculous verbal battle. Said caller always being played by Jon Wurster. It's a theatre of the absurd, with Scharpling & Wurster spinning some really strange and incredibly funny scenarios which they somehow make almost believable -- in part 'cause they have an uncanny ability not to crack each other up, dunno how they do it, especially since a lot of these calls/tracks go on for upwards of 20 minutes! Originally we got into S&W 'cause of the indie-rock connection, they love to make fun of rock snobbery (like Wurster's character Ronald Thomas Clontle on the classic Rock, Rot, & Rule). But they don't limit themselves to music-related humor at all -- though the bonus third disc here is devoted entirely to the efforts of the would-be rock star guy originally introduced on New Hope For The Ape-Eared to have his band Mother 13 play on Mount Everest. Meanwhile, disc one features "Jock Squad" (think Geek Squad but different), "The Auteur" (a self-important slasher film director), and "Philly Boy Roy" (a lampooning of such supposed Philadelphia pastimes as the "running of the cheesesteaks" and "Laser Allin"). Disc two has "Andy From Lake Newbridge" (who turns out to live in, not on the lake, and in fact is a carp), "Tornado Todd" (a guy whose life-changing escape from death doesn't stop him from being a total sleazeball), and "Postal Slap Fight" (wherein Tom gets threatened by a guy whose uncle is the Postmaster General). You've got to hear these to understand why they're hilarious, but trust us, they are. Recommended to anyone with a funny bone.

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A few lists ago you might remember us gushing over the work of India's Dilip Roy. His record Namaskar was the perfect musical open armed welcome to the India we always see in our dreams. We mentioned in our review of that record how Roy had done production and arrangements for Ananda Shankar. And then just a few weeks after basking in the glory of Roy's great early 80's masterpiece we were met with the reissue of two great Dilip Roy arranged Ananda Shankar albums on this cd. A Musical Discovery of India was originally a 12" made for the India Tourism Development Corporation in 1978. It makes obvious sense why this would be used to sell travel to India because after listening to these lush arrangements, who in their right mind would not want to jump on the first plane to India?! The second record collected here is the fiery and frisky Sarrega Machan. On this album Shankar was once again joined by Dilip Roy and his majestic arrangements for a record with bizarre themes, of twilight and playful animals, a record that ignites a full sensory experience, like some soundtrack to a wildly colorful nature adventure filled with suspense and intrigue. Ananda always possessed a lighter, groovier and more playful touch then his much revered brother Ravi, but these two records prove once again that in his own approach he added so much richness to Indian music and culture. Highly recommended!

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We recently received an lp simply called "Thai Record". Hmmm, very mysterious we thought, so we threw it on, and were instantly smitten. At the same time, it sounded sort of familiar... but how could that be, what were the odds that some random Thai recording would just so happen to be one we had heard or already owned. It finally clicked, this was no mysterious "Thai Record", this was an old AQ favorite, renamed and pressed on vinyl. Not to infer that it's not mysterious, it most certainly is, it just so happens to be a mystery we had faced before. The record, titled Siamese Temple Ball, was one we had reviewed years ago and was always a steady seller, and for good reason, it's an amazing album. The lp was gone as quick as it came, but it reminded us, that many of you probably missed out on the Siamese Temple Ball cd when we first listed it waaaaaay back, so now here's your chance. A brief discussion of this musical mystery from our original review: Not much information comes with this disk at all, on the shrink wrap there's a faux pidgen English description claiming: "Flight comes to Thailand in the Year of the Rat. Siamese Temple Ball provide the lilting soundtrack for a chemical journey. Schoolgirls dance bashfully for the expectant throng. Life continues at a comparatively slow pace away from the rigours of fierce sun-light." Which is followed by the (label's) description: "In the tradition of Sun City Girls, Ya Ho Wha 13, The Spacious Mind, Taj Mahal Travellers, Mu, Word of Life, Group 1850, and Ghost, Siamese Temple Ball give maximum pleasure for thirsty brains." Quite a roster of comparisons, the most fitting of which is definitely the Sun City Girls. So while we assume that this record was recorded by a group of precocious, dilettante, ethnomusicologist hipsters, we like to suspend our disbelief and imagine this to be a genuine Folkways-style field recording, as the recording certainly has a genuine field recording presence - a single stereo microphone in a good location. The music itself is a catchy and mesmerizing steady pulse of various and sundry percussion instruments (metal, wood, skin), hollers, yelps, and rococo melodic lines spun out by tinny electric guitars, xylophones, flutes and Khan (mouth organ.) And yes, it's quite good.

MPEG stream: Track 1
MPEG stream: Track 2

Ultra limited cd-r release from Belgian outfit Simulacra, the black ambient project of NOTHingness head honcho Miguel Boriau. NOTHingness is responsible for a handful of AQ faves, including the dark doomy ambience of Tenhornedbeast and the epic doom of the recently released Morkheim. Boriau's Simulacra project falls more in line sonically with the former, although it's less doomy and more glacial and lovely. Imagine a more blissed out Lustmord, or Coleclough and Chalk tackling some sci-fi dark ambience and you'll be getting warm. Two epic tracks, each clocking in at over 20 minutes, each a slow burning, outer space drift, deep resonant swells, sweeping majestic vistas of low end shimmer and fuzzy dreamy drift. Mesmerizing and meditative, but still pretty dark and ominous. It's hard not to picture the vastness of space, or barring that, some endless series of underground caverns, this is the sound of black holes drifting through a starry sky, of our bodies hurtling through space in slow motion, gorgeously bleak and barren, warm and immersive, a dreamily dense slab of sonic swoon, the perfect soundtrack for your own late night interplanetary drift. LIMITED TO 96 COPIES! Each disc individually numbered, we got a handful and will probably be unable to get more.

MPEG stream: Wandering The Spirit World
MPEG stream: Disintegrate Into Nothingness

Another jam packed issue of this amazing music magazine, that somehow manages to slip through the cracks when in fact it's as good or better than any of its modern music contemporaries (The Wire, Terrorizer, Magnet, Sound Projector). With a distinctly indie rock bent, Skyscraper manage to still touch on all sorts of amazing music, reading like maybe the most AQ magazine of them all. This month: Neurosis, Jesu, Baroness, Panda Bear, Black Lips, Explosions In The Sky, Converge, An Albatross, Hot Cross, John Wiese, Die! Die! Die!, Demonstrations, Athletic Automaton, Foreign Islands, the Willowz, Graham Coxon, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, VietNam, Unsane, a focus on Now Wave Chicago and of course tons and tons of reviews!!

First in a new batch of releases from Campbell Kneale and his Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. This one from some mysterious UK outfit called Slow Listener. Kneale has dubbed them slumberpunk which is as good a descriptor as any. Five tracks, the shortest 7 minutes, the longest 14, each an expansive sonic sprawl, from distantly drifting soft fuzzy warbles, to silvery slivers of high end twinkle and glimmer, from full on lo-fi vacuum cleaner hum, to crumbling soundscapes of muted melody and mumbled industrial clatter, from cavernous scrape and shriek, to effulgent streaks of white hot guitar grind, from gauzy soft focus melodic whir, to thick swirling shimmer, from dense blistering abstract space psych blow outs, to upper register sun dappled ur-drones, a gorgeous and utterly dreamy cacophony of sound. Birchville, Skaters, Yellow Swans, Quetzolcoatl, Bonecloud, Bonus, Ghosting, you can now add Slow Listener to that ever growing list... SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!

MPEG stream: Bad Santana
MPEG stream: Sarcasm My Old Friend

You've been waiting, we've been waiting, here it is! The 15th handsomely red-black-and-white, thick-as-a-brick issue of one of the best magazines for weird music obsessives currently going, The Sound Projector out of the UK. As we always say, sort of an underground, 'zine-style counterpart to The Wire, but more diverse and genuinely enthused. And as always, this 148 page issue is made up mainly of record reviews (we know you love record reviews, you're reading our list after all!). Interesting stuff new and old sorted into a bewildering array of micro-genres and categories, from "Maladroit Rhythms Of Rock" to "The Crackling Ether" to "The Nordic Realms" to "The Droning Ones"... improv, folk, industrial, international, black metal, everything, There's hundreds of reviews here, with special attention this issue to "Noisy Rock, Evil Noise, and Black Noisy Music" alongside "marginal musics" of other sorts from around the world. On one page you'll be reading about Phill Niblock, on another Emit / Vrolok, on another Cellutron and the Invisible, on another Rehtaf Ruo, and on yet another Getatchew Mekurya... And the SP's reviewers are perfectly willing to slag stuff they find lacking, no matter what the "received wisdom" about an artist is, and indeed, some of 'em we find a bit too harsh upon occasion. But that generally makes for good readin' and plenty of arguments. There's also a batch of interviews with music-makers on the fringes: Russ Waterhouse (The SB, Blues Control), Peter Strickland (Sonic Catering Band), Clay Ruby (Davenport Family), Mudboy, and UW Owl. All in all, another essential slab of reading material for all dedicated AQ customer-types. We love it.

Sorry. Sorry folks. We're very sorry. In fact, we've been putting this off, so maybe we won't be the first to tell you, that this new, eagerly-awaited Stooges reunion album sucks. That's just the way it is. No songs to speak of. Terrible lyrics ("She Took My Money", "Free & Freaky In The USA"). It's just not good. Iggy's made way better solo albums than this, even in recent years. For a leathery old guy Iggy still has the long hair and rambunctious energy of someone much, much younger, that's true. But that doesn't mean that getting together after thirty some years with the surviving Stooges to do anything other than play their old songs was a good idea. We wish we could tell you different, we were excited before we heard it too. But it's bad and we've yet to talk to anyone who didn't agree. Oh well, we bet they'll still be worth seeing on tour, as long as they don't do too many of these tracks...

MPEG stream: Trollin'
MPEG stream: The End Of Christianity

Alex Cobb, aka Taiga Remains, has been a busy boy of late, with a whole clutch of cd-r's, a brand new proper cd full length, as well as finding time to run his Students Of Decay label. This, his first for Celebrate Psi Phenomenon is a bit of a departure from his usual modus operandi, trading in an electric guitar and a suitcase full of FX for an acoustic guitar, an organ and a delay pedal. And the results are pretty fantastic. It's a little bit difficult to believe that the majority of this disc was made with an acoustic guitar, there's so much jagged scrape and mysterious shimmer. The opening track alone is a strange slow shifting stretch of insectoid buzz, with little bits of melody drifting up here and there, but for the most part, it sounds like a dentist's drill, or as if he were somehow playing the guitar with a tiny fan, an endlessly oscillating reverberation, that is rife with subtle overtones and barely discernible melodic color. At first it sounds a bit harsh, but as you sink in, it's strangely soothing and dreamy. The second track somehow whips the acoustic guitar into billowing clouds of glistening metallic whirs, again transforming any trace of a typical acoustic guitar into blissful drifts of soft focus drone. The third track is the most acoustic sounding of the bunch, almost like a slowed down, stretched out bit of abstract Appalachia, the guitar humming lazily upon a thick layer of wheezing organ. The final track is another gorgeous expanse of dreamlike sound, the organ and acoustic guitar whirled into a looped hypnotic drone, thick with lo-fi detritus, room sound and all manner of buzz, sounding quite a bit like Birchville Cat Motel oddly enough. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!

MPEG stream: Upon Reflection On Think Language
MPEG stream: Blown Ash Firmament

In the AQ canon of all time essential artists, of groups who have shaped all the music that followed in their wake, somewhere very near the top spot would be Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. This sprawling seventies psych drone unit led by Fluxus legend Takehisa Kosugi, were crafting gorgeous abstract drone drenched ambience long before most of the current crop of dronesters were even born. The Taj Mahal Travellers were masters of the organic, of vibration, texture, timbre, utilizing bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material, this collective created some of the most enduring and unique psychedelic music ever recorded. Their music and performances were the physical embodiment of a philosophy, a way of life more than just simple 'playing music.' It's hard to imagine the Skaters or Birchville Cat Motel or the Yellow Swans or even Wolf Eyes without the Taj Mahal Travellers. Often referred to by the press as "La Monte Young on acid", in a review of another, unfortunately out of print TMT album, we described their sound as "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas performed on beaches, deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated into the sound. Feedback, time-space lag, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound." The music of the Taj Mahal Travellers thought is stubbornly indescribable. No words can possibly do justice to the spirits they were able to invoke, the atmosphere they were able to create, dark and dense and mysterious and ominous, but at the same time beautiful and brilliant and epic and spacious. This double cd features nearly 100 minutes of improvised droning captured live in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971, the group run stand-up bass, tuba, trumpet. select percussion, violin, flutes, mandolin, harmonica and synthesizer through primitive tape loops and delay effects for an awesome ritualistic performance, predating the likes of Zoviet France and about a million others by decades! The live sound is just as amazing as their records, which makes sense since their albums were essentially documents of live aktions. The first disc is a single nearly hour long low end ritual, strings buzz and reverberate, as do voices, and bits of bowed metals, all beating against each other and creating all manner of cosmic vibrations, all accompanied by simple bells, or a single plucked note repeated over and over. Near the end, the vocals are soaring, and the tones have become long buzzing streaks, with plenty of spacey echo and strange damaged FX, it's hard to hear this and not wonder where in the hell Sunburned Hand and No Neck get off, these guys were creating the same sort of primitive primeval sounds, nearly 4 decades earlier, and with so much more depth and emotion. The fact that a music so minimal and abstract can be so utterly moving is testament to the Travellers' unparalleled skill. Disc two is much less low end rumble, and more a dizzying swirl of strange sonic events, here the horns are in full affect, sounding like a herd of alien elephants, moaning and bleating, the tones stretched out and draped across all manner of lower register rumbles and whirs. Percussion surfacing now and again like an angry rattlesnake roused from a midday nap, or a swirling cloud of tiny buzzing insects. Vocals drift in and out, shamanistic and chant like, moaning out strange melodies, mostly low and throaty but sometimes like curious feline mewling, all intertwined with the various other drawn out sounds. An incredibly intense organic ritual, purified by it's intransitive nature, the improvisation guaranteeing that each performance belonged to the time and the place as much as the players. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking. A really nice reissue of this long out of print two disc set, with liner notes, a history of the band, the story of this recording as well as amazing photos. Not sure how long we'll be able to keep these in stock, so please be patient if we run out, and it takes us a while to track down more. Absolutely essential, and probably more recommended that nearly any record we've ever reviewed!

MPEG stream: Improvisation, Part 1 (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Improvisation, Part 1 (excerpt 2)
MPEG stream: Improvisation, Part 2 (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Improvisation, Part 2 (excerpt 2)

Oh man. Over the past year or so we've been lucky enough to get a hold of reissues of a bunch of rare albums by Japanese jazz legend Masayuki "Jojo" Takayangi performing with his New Direction(s) unit: Axis Another Revolvable Thing Parts 1 and 2, Eclipse, La Grima. Lucky 'cause we LOVE way-out-there improv electric guitar, which Takayangi provides in spades, 'specially when he and his group are off on one of his "mass projection" freakouts. Well this here cd reissue (a deluxe gatefold mini-LP sleeve styled import on the always interesting and well-packaged Tiliqua label) is another must have for any Takayangi fan, documenting his first recording session in 1969 as leader of the initial incarnation of his New Directions group, a trio consisting of drummer Sabu Toyozumi and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa along with Takayangi. That's right, no saxophone for you sax haters out there! Just amped-up, feedback-filled guitar skree, brutally bowed bass and crashing drums on such lengthy mass projections as "The Galactic System" and "Piranha". There's also quieter, "gradually projection" pieces here too, some really beautiful, abstractly atmospheric ones including "Herdsman's Pipe Of Spain" (with Yoshizawa on folk-pipe) and the interludes "Deepnight...Swamp" and "Sick...Sick...Sickness...My Aunt". Wow what great titles!! This Tiliqua reissue of this classic adds a bonus track, from the 1970 compilation LP Guitar Workshop, that in fact is maybe the most intense thing on here. There are also liner notes from the perceptive and well-informed Alan Cummings, who proceeds to really set the scene for this music with his evocative description of the seedy Tokyo jazz quarter of Shinjuku in the sixties and early seventies, a place where Takayangi's revolutionary jazz explorations fit right in with experimental artists and acid rock radicals.

MPEG stream: The Galactic System
MPEG stream: Herdsman's Pipe Of Spain

Long lost legendary slab of classic British industrial music, originally released in 1986 on the amazing Broken Flag label. The most noteworthy thing about Toll, besides it being a killer record, is the fact that it just so happens to feature a pre-Stereolab Tim Gane (!) as well as Paul Lemos from Controlled Bleeding. But Stereolab fans won't necessarily dig this, Toll is grim stuff. Cold and harsh, lots of metallic percussion, looped rhythms, skipping records, bits of shortwave radio, disembodied voices, plenty of metal on metal clang, thick distorted drones, all held together by huge lurching basslines, that give the whole thing a definite depressive miserablist vibe, like a seriously industrial Joy Division. At their most musical, like on the loping mantra like "Broken Frame", they do sound quite a bit like the darkest of Factory bands, with simple plodding percussion, and hypnotic low end throbs, all beneath a dramatically crooned vocal line. Imagine any of the current crop of new wave revivalists, Interpol for example, slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaay down and wrapped in plenty of rumble and clang, and you'll get an idea of the sound of Toll. But that's only one element of their sound, the other being much more abstract, epic, wide open expanses of industrial crunch and shimmering drone, mournful melodies drifting in and out of machinelike rhythms, and crumbling landscapes of sound, wheezing hisses and keening feedback, jagged shards of buzzing electronics, all sorts of strange vocals, dripping with reverb and delay, grinding whirs and thick moaning low end, very dark and dreary and very prescient of the whole modern Wolf Eyes and friends noise scene. In addition to the entire Christ Knows LP, the cd includes 3 bonus tracks, two that sound like they could be lost Wire jams, all blown out and relentlessly throbbing, with wild squalls of feedback and buzzing guitars over bouncy bass lines and simple propulsive rhythms, while the other is an epic drone-y crawl, thick with layered voices, pulsing bass lines, muted percussive thumps and shuffles and tangled guitar scribbles, all swirled into a dense cloud of slow shifting sound. So awesome. Fans of old school industrial (Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, Nurse With Wound), classic post punk / new wave (Wire, Joy Division, the recently reviewed Arkansaw Man, etc) as well as mode modern outfits like Skullflower, Wolf Eyes, Dead C and the like, will seriously dig!

MPEG stream: Broken Frame
MPEG stream: As We Live And Breathe
MPEG stream: Brute Freeze

It's finally here. The fourth part of the Trollmann quadrilogy, a mysterious assemblage of four recordings, once kept together in a hidden temple, far beneath the Earth's crust. But over millennia, scattered far and wide. We have long been searching. It took us years to find all four. We first searched in the Forest Of Doom, and soon discovered the first recording, wrapped in a blood soaked cloth and kept at the bottom of a deep well, protected by a strange group of deformed bear like creatures. Once this was in our possession, we struck out in search of the second piece of this mysterious dronedoom puzzle. We soon discovered the second sacred recording by reciting a series of Arcane Runes which Adorned The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars. We holed up in our secret lair, every time the two recordings were brought together they gave off an unearthly glow and emitted some impossibly slow heavy dirgelike sound. We knew we were on the right path. Years passed, and we found ourselves in a truly strange land, arid and barren, always dark and freezing cold, when suddenly, Dark Clouds Blackened The Sky and it became apparent that it was in fact The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice, and had we tarried a moment longer, the third recording would have been lost to us. Three pieces collected, each recording, a bleak rumbling world of black sound leading us closer and closer to whoever, or whatever is Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. Perhaps we will never know. We may perish before we have discovered the truth. Here it is, seemingly ages since we first set out upon this quest, with our final breath, our last ounce of strength, we began Tolling Beyond The Tombs Of Ancient Grimnity, and lo and behold, there it was, the fourth part, the key, the last part of the fourfold sonic grail that is Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. We may be bidding farewell to this plane, and it may have taken us many lifetimes, but we shall die with a smile on our lips, and ears full of black buzz and cavernous rumbling. Adieu. What the hell are we talking about? Well, if you're just tuning in, only our most favorite, caveman ultra doom duo EVER, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, who we first discovered years ago and as the story above suggests have ever since been trying to track down the rest of their recordings. Recently we finally did, and have been wallowing in Trollmann's peculiar brand of funereal ambient doom ever since. Just bass and keyboards, no drums, no guitars. Each record sonically similar, but each with its own particular sound, every one a different facet of Trollmann's strange sonic world. First their was Forest Of Doom, then there was Arcane Runes Adorn The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars, after that there was Dark Clouds Blacken The Sky On The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice, and now, we have Tolling Beyond The Tombs Of Ancient Grimnity, quite possibly the prettiest and most ambient of the four, but no less ominous and dark. Tolling begins with a simple, subtle slow motion bass line, over which drifts a dreamy melancholy synth melody. Dark and mournful and vaguely foresty, this drifts on and on an on, very trance like, until about half way through the track's 15 minutes, the bass suddenly becomes distorted, and the track becomes somehow creepier and more intense, the same melody, the same loping rhythm, but wrapped in a tattered cloak of crumbling distortion. Some strange blend of new age, dark ambience and doooooom. At times it almost sounds like a doom metal Three Mile Pilot. Track two is another epic, 17 minutes, beginning with a simple buzzing low end, a rumbling drone, that seems to spread like some viscous black liquid, gradually growing more and more dense, the low end pulses closer and closer together until a rhythm seems to surface. The keyboard joins in, offering haunting atonal notes, that hover and drift above the monotonous throb, angular and ultra creepy. The bass and keyboard all tangled up in unlikely melodies and weird dissonant tangles, almost like abstract free jazz Trollmann if you can imagine such a thing. But even at its most jagged and atonal, it still manages to be dark and droney. And really really creepy. The album closer, the 11 minute long title track, begins with some shimmery harmonics, before the bass kicks in, all super fuzzy and ultra blown out, not so much weaving a melody, as laying down layer after layer of thick fuzz, a haunting black riff stretched out into long stretches of rumbling whir, while the harmonics in the background become more and more dense. The entire track building in intensity, a furiously buzzing lugubrious crawl, that suddenly fades to silence. We've written plenty about the mysterious men behind Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, Belegur on "Cosmic keys to gates unknown" and Thundarr on "Rumblings Of Doom and Prophecies Of Times To Come", and the other recordings, just check elsewhere on the AQ site, but Tolling is as good a place to start as any, and if you're anything like us, you too will be mesmerized by the strange sounds of Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg, and will embark on your own spiritual quest to track down all of their sacred recordings (we've made it a bit easier, as we carry 'em all! Including an amazing live record, AND a live dvd, where the men of Trollmann reveal their mortal forms!) Needless to say, utterly recommended.

MPEG stream: Aether
MPEG stream: Dooms Children

I believe it was 1997 when a small posting came my way stating that Maeror Tri had dissolved. At the time, this German trio had become one of my (Jim's) favorite ensembles alongside the likes of Organum, Skullflower, and :zoviet*france:. Maeror Tri's dedication to grimly focused atmospheric music harbored all of the things that succeeded in the campaigns of industrial and ambient music; and the Maeror Tri anonymity (or at least a mysteriousness about the group that lead to such a reading of their collective persona) certainly enhanced their charm. Albums such as Emotional Engramm and Multiple Personality Disorder had achieved heavy rotation status on my stereo (and still get pulled from the shelves quite often in this day and age); so the news that Maeror Tri was no more was met with sadness. Fortunately, two thirds of the Maeror Tri ensemble had decided to continue on but under the moniker Troum. While the name of this duo was an archaic German word for dream, Troum's pursuit of unconscious symbolism through their heavily processed guitar drones still maintained the ashen darkness that Maeror Tri perpetuated, as was evident on their first CD release Ryna, which originally came out in 1998 on the Belgian label Myotis. It should be noted that Ryna is not the first Troum recording; that honor is held by a cassette called Dreaming Muzak that came housed in a tiny pillow. Ryna quickly went out of print, along with much of the Maeror Tri back catalogue; but thankfully, Troum have repressed this early gem through their own Transgredient imprint. An album of constantly billowing black clouds, Ryna achieves the same dark ambient / dronescape signature that had marked so many great Maeror Tri / Troum releases. On occasion, cracked / decayed loops of rhythmic surging emerged from beyond the horizon of Troum's guitar suites, alluding to a Norse mythological bellow of impending doom and apocalyptic battle. While I've not done the side-by-side taste test of the two albums, the 2007 redux of Ryna appears to much louder and cleaner. Regardless, it's a pleasure to hear this record once again!

MPEG stream: Ennoia
MPEG stream: Rigis
MPEG stream: Tochar

Imagine Interpol, Arab Strap and My Bloody Valentine havin' a menage a trois.... nine months later you'd have The Twilight Sad. Ooooooh la la! With the moody melancholic poetics of this their debut release filling our ears in the bestest of ways, what else can we say, except that we've got another Glasgow band to adore! This ep's been released exclusively here in U.S, and was mixed and produced by Max Richter, an artist who himself has please our ears plenty. Epic waves of washy shoegazerly guitar distortion and emotive Scottish inflected male vocals. What's not to love? Sooo lovely!

MPEG stream: But When She Left, Gone Was The Glow
MPEG stream: Last Year Rain Didn't Fall Quite So Hard

Students Of Decay, the label run by Alex Cobb aka Taiga Remains, seems unable to do anything wrong. Pretty much every release so far has been amazing, discs from Ghosting, Flash Lights, Jade Emperor, David Kirby, Heavy Winged, and of course a bunch of Taiga Remains discs, including the breathtaking Ribbons Of Dust series. Creeping Dawn is another Students Of Decay series, one so limited, the first two volumes came and went without us even noticing. But we jumped on volume three, and grabbed as many copies as we could of the criminally limited pressing (50 COPIES!!). We got about a third of all the copies made, but these won't be around for long so don't dawdle or you'll be sorry. A killer combo for sure, this quadruple 3" cd-r boxset collects a handful of luminaries from the underground free noise cd-r scene and gives each of em a disc to do with as they will. And the results are as good as we would have hoped. The first disc teams up the Nether Dawn (aka PseudoArcana head honcho Antony Milton) with Little Skull, otherwise known as Dean Brown. The two incorporate guitars, violins, clarinets, tape loops, feedback and vocals into their slow abstract ambient crawl. Guitars drift like wisps of smoke, everything is slightly off kilter and warbly as if the tape machine was slightly busted, dreamy, indistinct melodies hover and drift away, very sun baked and druggy. Like Loren Mazzacan Connors recorded on an old 4-track after way too many bong hits. Gloriously laid back and spaced out. The second disc features legendary Kiwi noisemaker Clayton Noone, who does his thing as CJA. Here, he takes his guitar, and wraps it in a thick layer of crumbling distortion, and proceeds to unfurl a dreamily lugubrious minor key jam, repetitive and hypnotic, a strummy folk bathed in fuzzy ambience. For track two, the guitar is supercharged and allowed to sort of sprawl out, into a thick pulsing layer of downtuned chug, sprinkled with little bits of random mechanical whir and little fragments of melody. The final track is another ultra murky stripped down jam, the guitar almost lost completely beneath the roiling surface, melodies getting all twisted up and tangled in the thick shards of guitar grrr. The third disc features the group Pefkin, who we had never heard of before, but who fits perfectly in this set, with long drawn out wheezing drones, haunting minor key melodies, the opening track almost sounds like a Parisian cafe in the midst of some sort of sonic storm. Disc two adds some killer backwards melodies (we love anything backwards) and some percussive steel string buzz, the rest of the disc meanders from warbly drone to blissy abstract Appalachia and back again. We definitely need to hear more from these guys. Finally, wrapping things up, is the ubiquitous duo of Bjerga / Iverson, who weight in with an epic 20 minute soundscape of speaker rattling low end, buzzing electronic glitch, thick fuzzy stretches of rumbling drone and muted melody, all whipped up into a glacial crawl, but rife with under-the-surface activity, plenty of weird little stuttery squiggles, layers of sound shifting and shimmering, all submerged beneath a rich resonant low end thrum. Four discs, all of them kick ass, and all exclusive to this release. Gorgeously packaged, each disc in a mini 3" jewel case, with full color artwork, housed in a little white box, with cool abstract green artwork affixed to the top, inside is an insert, with the liner notes, each one hand numbered. And again.. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!! These will be gone in no time so if you want one, act fast...

MPEG stream: A Dog's Hair Reverie
MPEG stream: Ich Lieb
MPEG stream: The Other Room
MPEG stream: Cosmic Recovery

Living in the Bay Area, we've obviously been hearing all about Hyphy for about a year now, a distinctly Bay Area sound, not all that dissimilar to Crunk or the chopped and screwed sound of the Dirty South, but with a vibe that was distinctly, well Hyphy (a mix of hype and fly btw). A sound that supposedly just sort of sprouted up in the beginning of 2006. We'd heard tracks by all the main movers in the scene, Keak Da Sneak, Mac Dre, E-40, and while we dug it, it didn't really sound all that different from the Bay Area hip hop we'd been hearing for years, and it sort of smacked of the great hype machine, coming up with a catch phrase to make something old and tired sound new and fresh again. But maybe we weren't hearing the right tracks, cuz we got our hands on this comp, featuring all the best Hyphy bangers from the first year, and HOLEEEEEEEEE SHIT, is this stuff amazing. Fucked up and funny, funky and fun and so totally over the top. Absolutely irresistible. In fact we sold one to a customer, who called us from his car ten minutes later FREAKING OUT about how great it was, and how every track was so good, he'd skip to the next one, expecting it to be a dud, only to discover it was even better. We had the exact same experience. We listened to a few minutes of each track, constantly skipping forward, not believing that every track could be that fucking great. But they were, and they are! We've been freaking out about grime for ages, a killer UK hybrid of hip hop and jungle (Dizzee Rascal, Lady Sovereign, Wiley...), we can't get enough of that grimey sound, so fucked up with killer beats and weird loops, and some of the funniest freaked out flows we've ever heard, dense and tongue twisting. With our new found love of grime, we had been lamenting the sad state of US hip hop, the same beats, the same boring gangster rap, the same glossy MTV stuff, but damn if these tracks don't push the exact same buttons that grime does, sounding fresh and thrilling all over again. But what does Hyphy actually sound like? It's kind of hard to pinpoint, it may be about location as much as sound, the scene as much as the music, but most of the tracks have some common elements. Synths for one. Lots of synths, thick and fuzzy, often the main hook is just a massive buzzing synth melody over a shuffling laid back rhythm. And the rhythms, they don't bang and pound as much as sort of slink. And the rapping, some seriously strange flows, from marble mouthed mumbles, to urgent whispers to Lil' Jon style hollerin' but it's not just the delivery, it's the actual words, a confusional mix of Hyphy slang that has you scratching your head as often as laughing out loud. Check out "I Got Grapes", the main lyric being a wailed "I got graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapes" over a super stripped down beat. Or "Yadadamean" where the main hook is a strangely affected "Yadadamean" repeated over a weirdly epic cinematic synth line. WTF?!? So amazing. I wish we could describe it more explicitly, but you just gotta hear it. If you're anything like us, you'll be grabbed in the first 30 seconds and won't be able to stop. Normally we're pretty skeptical of 'hits' collections like this, but it's hard to argue with a comp this jam packed with stunners, and we're not about to. Did you dig the B'more Music comp? The Science Faction: Grime comp? The Rio Baile Funk comps? The Warrior Dubz comp? The Razor X Productions comp? Well, you just might have a new favorite. THE dance party record of the year. Whether you're slow rolling with the top down, cranking it through the headphones, or bumpin' and sweatin' up the dancefloor, this disc is THE ONE.

MPEG stream: Yadadamean
MPEG stream: Get On My Hype
MPEG stream: I Got Grapes
MPEG stream: Hyphy Juice

The streets of New York in the '60s and '70s were brimming with a melting-pot of musicians. Puerto-Rican, Latino and African-Americans, all bringing together their musical histories and legacies to create all new sounds like booglaoo, latin jazz, salsa, and a brand of disco that just can't be denied. This Soul Jazz collection brings together some of the biggest names in Latin music (Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Candido, Ray Baretto) along with some more obscure folks (Ismael Quinones Nature Zone, Johnny Zamot) all of whom know lots about creating songs that splash with color and vivacious energy. As always the Soul Jazz packaging is top-notch with informative and well written liner notes and some pretty amazing photos. Every time we need a lift in our spirits we've been blasting this really loud and the next thing we know we're moving just a little bit faster and cracking big ol' smiles! New York Latin Hustle does the trick every single time. Forget about St. Johns Wart this is our sure way to get in a better mood. So great!

MPEG stream: Do It Any Way You Wanna
MPEG stream: El Bollinski en D7
MPEG stream: Sorongo
MPEG stream: Om Marreo

MPEG stream: Do It Any Way You Wanna
MPEG stream: Sorongo

MPEG stream: El Bollinski en D7
MPEG stream: Om Marreo

Another fantastic release from the brilliantly named Yarn Lazer label. This one from Honey Owens who also does time in Jackie O Motherfucker. We mentioned it elsewhere on this list, but there definitely seems to be a preponderance of vocal based music surfacing lately, Grouper, Bastard Wing, Pump Kinn, Lichens, and Valet also uses the voice as a major component of her sound. Twisting and stretching it into broad sonic strokes and dreamy drones. But it's not just vocals, Owens also weaves darkly delicate little sound worlds, of muted tribal percussion, dark cavernous rumbles, lots of buzz and creak, alien transmissions, clattery minimal percussion, crumbling guitar grit, murky swirls of reverb and delay, the perfect sonic backdrop for all manner of processed and unprocessed vocals, ranging from sultry chanteuse like croon, to chopped and delayed Boredomsy "boop boop"s to breathy ambiance. Really beautiful and understated. Packaged in simple and striking silk-screened cardboard sleeves. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT 30 AND ONCE THEY ARE GONE THAT'S IT!!

MPEG stream: April6th
MPEG stream: Blood Is Clean

The sinewy, scary sounds of The Jesus Lizard, Melvins, Rapeman? All sorta rolled into one?? Yes, that's the kind of punch that this new German trio packs. And they're not shy about it. If you have a soft spot for that style of post-HC noise-rockin' heaviness, with whipcrack rhythms, angular guitars and rubbery bass brawniness, backing up some wretchedly angsty vox, you'll get a kick out of Volt. Indeed, they'll be kicking you in that soft spot with a steel-toed boot! The noise-rock scene that apparently inspired Volt may have peaked way back in the early '90s but these kids (along with Noxagt) are bringing it back with a vengeance. This debut album exhibits an energetic, precise, metallic attack that grabbed us as soon as we heard it, and almost didn't believe it. Then we were like, cool!

MPEG stream: Griffel
MPEG stream: Stativ

Whoa, when Xiu Xiu's music gets all remixed and covered, it becomes something altogether new, lovely and unrecognizably 'Xiu Xiu'. This new double cd presents nine varied covers (Larsen, Oxbow, Sunset Rubdown, Marissa Nadler, Good For Cows, Kid 606, Why?, Her Space Holiday and Devendra Banhart) and nine remixes (Gold Chains, Warbucks, Cherry Point, Son, This Song Is A Mess But So Am I, Kid 606, Grouper and To Live And Shave In LA). Shining standouts on the covers disc are Nadler's version of "Clowne Towne" and Banhart's take on "Support Our Troops". Meanwhile on the remix disc, Gold Chains busts out a rump-thumpin', female sung "Hello From Eau Claire", and Xiu Xiu traumatize, errrr, remix their own anguished, tortured version of New Order's "Ceremony".

MPEG stream: Mousey Toy
MPEG stream: Clowne Towne
MPEG stream: Hello From Eau Claire (Remix)
MPEG stream: Ceremony (Remix)

Latest in Not Not Fun's Bored Fortress 7" series, featuring two long time AQ faves. Former Bay Area freenoise duo the Yellow Swans check in with probably their harshest heaviest sounds yet. A full on white hot soft noise assault, totally blown out and drenched in distortion, dripping with speaker melting crumble, a seriously punishing blast of brutality, BUT, hidden beneath it all is some serious dreaminess. A simple lilting melody, a bit melancholy, a bit mournful, drifts beneath a veritable sonic shitstorm imbuing the noise with emotion and feeling. Very few folks can make caustic noise sound this pretty, you gotta hand it to these guys... The flipside features the Goslings, a husband / wife sludge rock duo from Florida, who we have been totally obsessed with when we first heard them back in 2005. This track demonstrates they still got it going on, so heavy, so impossibly pretty, so damaged and amazing. Outrageously distorted guitar, so much so that it's not just crumbling, but melting into a weird black puddle, the amp literally falling to pieces, so in the red, that the riffs keep overwhelming the recording device adding all sorts of alien buzz and damaged Basinski like drop outs. It's a bit like Boris or SUNN))) produced by Faxed Head, but it's the Goslings, so you gotta toss in a dorky little Casio rhythm, and some drifty throaty female vocals. So what was once just a crumbling heap of melted guitars and chunks of desiccated amplifier, albeit an insanely cool one, becomes some sort of blissy dream sludge. And then there's the weird melodic slowcore outro, which sounds like Low run through a million broken distortion pedals... LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!

Geeze, will you look at that cover?? A gory painting of a severed, hairy hand, dripping blood with hanging sinews and jutting bone, clawing at a wall. For 1978, when this album was first released, that had to be considered pretty extreme! It would be at least another ten years before the likes of Cannibal Corpse would make such "shocking" images commonplace on album covers. So perhaps it will come as no surprise that apparently this band went on to become an important part of the '80s heavy metal scene in their native Spain. But this debut album of theirs, recorded when the guys in the band were in their mid-teens (!), actually harks back more to the proto-metal heaviness of the early '70s and even '60s, to which we say, right on! It's fuzzed-out, garagey psych, tons of fierce, heavy acid rock guitar, sounding something like Stray or Sir Lord Baltimore, or seventies Spanish older-brethren Tapiman and The Storm. The first three tracks are all vicious stormers. Really raw and riffy!! Tracks four and five mellow out just a bit, balancing the heaviness with more melody. They've got a balladic '60s psych pop element to 'em, but they definitely don't wimp out in the end. We've gotta say, wow. Apparently the original of this is an expensive, rare-ass record (some collectors, we're told, even doubted its existence) but thanks to this cd reissue it's alive and well and and bloody and clawing at the walls. Recommended to all proto-metal freaks.

MPEG stream: Los 4 Jinetes Del Apocalipsis
MPEG stream: Lacontaminacion

About a year ago we were completely floored by the cd release of a cassette recording made in Jerusalem circa 1980 of the intense and trance inducing zorna playing of Zadik Zecharia. His Kurdish Melodies On Zorna had the kind of fire and intensity that appealed not only to Middle Eastern music aficionados, but also noise freaks, drone lovers and experimental music-heads of all stripes. So when we heard that the Israeli label Something On The Road had compiled a remix cd of Zacharia's masterful record we were both intrigued and a little skeptical. We'll be the first to admit that most remix records tend to miss the mark, adding generic beats and kind of killing the original spirit of a work that we love. And the first couple tracks on this collection while ok weren't totally doing it for us but then...oh my god!!! after a few tracks things started to heat up FAST! While most records, especially compilations and remix albums, tend to be top heavy, this is in many ways quite the opposite. Things start off with a nice smoky Planet Mu almost dubstep kind of vibe and then as the record goes on the beats start to diminish in favor of drone and noise and buzz. We love how Something On The Road have such a good sense of continuity, mood and pacing, something most remix records completely ignore. We weren't familiar with most of the Israeli bands and DJ's involved in this record but now we will for sure try to seek out more music by the likes of Nemoi, Gal Tushia and David Ovadia. The one artist we were familiar with was Poochlatz an amazingly bleak and primitive noise project out of Israel who always whip up beautiful and chaotic doom & gloom! We love the tidal wave that erupts as this remix record unfolds. Like the best moments of Muslimgauze, this is Middle Eastern experimental electronica that resonates so strongly and does it's source material proud!

MPEG stream: Zecharia Remix By Nemoi
MPEG stream: Zecharia Remix by Gal Tushia
MPEG stream: Zecharia Remix by Poochlatz

From the downright aggro get-go, it seems that Zu is the dominant force in this new collaboration with laptopper Nobukazu Takemura. The Italian trio's thick and heady free jazz muscles its way out of these eight glowering and at times violently dismembered pieces. On the other hand it could be that perhaps we're catching a frightful glimpse of Takemura's dark side as he takes the album's title to heart? Whatever it is, Identification With The Enemy: A Key To The Underworld is definitely a whole different beast from the pretty electronic effervescence of his solo endeavors. Bringing together such disparate styles, could be a recipe for confusion / disaster or it could make for a tightly wound intense work. We think the latter!

MPEG stream: Alone With The Alone
MPEG stream: New Buddhas In Stock

[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 263 ]