[ aquarius records new arrivals — issue 457 ]

Showing results 51 through 52 of 52.

WHITE HOSPITALHolocaust(Steinklang)cd$ 17.98

A shortlived project of Japanese industrial noise / power electronics, White Hospital was the duo of Jun Konagaya and Tomo Kuwahara - the former better known for his work as the janus-faced Grim and the latter fronting the industrial-mantra project Vasilisk. Holocaust was their only album, released in 1984 on Eskimo Records, an imprint that has released both the work of Grim and Vasilisk over the years. Presumably, there was a political content to the White Hospital project; but any declaration of political intent is relatively opaque behind the discordant rhythmic noise and feral vocal masochism. It is pretty damn safe to say that White Hospital was nihilistic in their outlook, screaming violently at Japanese society and collapsing the hyperactive anxiety of modernity through a decentralized aesthetic of brute force, Lovecraftian tape collages, strangely pretty organ impressionism, and an incendiary live presence which could be the missing link between Les Rallizes Denudes and Skullflower. Holocaust has finally been reissued after 30 years with some choice bonus material including un-festive material from their "We Wish You A Merry Christmas / White Christmas" 7" - with both tracks grinding and grating with monomaniacal rhythms on junked metal and grunt-fuck utterances of lobotomized primal energies. As impressive as the pre-Missing Foundation industrial jams from Holocaust are, the live tracks are downright amazing. Joined by Yukio Nagoshi on guitar, White Hospital transforms themselves into an X-ray shedding black hole of a rock trio with Kuwahara and Konagaya laying down a monstrous trudge with plenty of megaphone barked vocals slashing through Nahoshi's incendiary guitar work that's eerily prescient of what Matthew Bower and Gary Mundy would deliver in Skullflower and Ramleh respectively. It's a safe bet that Zeni Geva got their start by emulating what White Hospital was doing live. Damn straight.

|�_.__� �||| . ._____��| (NIGHT TOILET)a.house.no.books.no.clocks(self-released)2lp$ 28.00

It took us a while to suss out the name of this band, as the way it's written is actually a series of lines and dots and squares, which somehow equate to Night Toilet. It's almost better not knowing, as the music here is much better represented by the mysterious Morse code like moniker, a sprawling collection of abstract guitar/drum experimentation, that ranges from the spare, minimal, skeletal kraut-pop of the opener, all simple abstract drumming (apparently played by two drummers, sharing one and a half drum kits simultaneously), the guitars clean and shimmery, spidery melodies, pocked with the occasional chordal soft squall, to dirgey NZ style noise rock, all knuckle-dragging drum thud, and wild tangles of guitarnoise, sputtering, stuttering, avant-rhythmic doom-dirges that occasionally blossom into something much more fierce, as often as they (d)evolve into something more blissed out and dreamy, whether that be long stretches of softly tangled kosmiche shimmer, of abstract, nocturnal ambient drift... Some good band math might be Dead C meets Aluk Todolo meets Geronimo? Or This Heat meets Bastard Noise? But then all the pretty parts should appeal to fans of all strains of drifty dreaminess... Grinding, crumbly, noisy, loose, free, but also dense and driving and repetitive, circular and mesmeric, hazy, atmospheric, cinematic, there even seems to be what sounds like horns, bleating forlornly on some of the tracks, we won't say too much, cuz we only have THREE copies. And can't get more, but wanted at least three of you our there, with a thirst for abstract instrumental drone-noise WTF outsider damaged psychedelia, to get a chance to get your hands on one of these. The packaging too is over the top: super thick, gatefold sleeves, paired with a heavy two sided silkscreened chipboard insert. Grab one quick if you can, before they're gone for good.