The latest release from Andy Votel and Demdike Stare's Dead-Cert label comes in the form of a rare industrial oddity from Alessandro Alessandroni, who is either most famous for whistling that iconic melody from Ennio Morricone's "A Fistful Of Dollars" or for playing that oh so memorable riff on Morricone's "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly". We've reviewed some other Alessandroni records before, those more in keeping with the sound of a frequent Morricone collaborator, but this 1976 chunk of experimental weirdness is even more far out than anything you might expect from a guy who we already had pegged as pretty far out. Twisted tape loops and sinister synths are wrangled into pulsing sprawls of spaced out mesmerism, prepared pianos and acoustic guitars are recontextualized into some sort of heady kraut-psych styled avant groovery, and fractured melodies and stuttering rhythms are collaged into strangely pastoral and woozily lysergic stretches of motorik and minimal avant hypno-pop. Fantastic!
And extremely limited, we have less than 10 copies and after that it's apparently out of print and gone for good!
We've long been enchanted by Felicia Atkinson's smeared electronic abstractions and figurative tone-poems. This Belgian drone-concrete chanteuse has crafted a beautifully liminal body of recordings that equivocate a bedroom downer folk strum with drifting oceanic thrumming and dream-time electronics, alternating her recordings both under her own name and as Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier. There doesn't seem to be much difference as to what name goes with what recording, as all of her work documents her polymorphous arrangements of psychic and emotional residues. Her whispered, intimate vocals (most in French, some in English) that dot these recordings mutter decontextualized quotations from the transgressive / Surrealist writers that brought such her inspiration in her youth - Artaud, Bataille, Rene Char, etc. She frames these vocals through an equally deconstructed form of sound collage, bringing cinematic sequences of forlorn drone passages to twinkling synth melodies and fractured gravity well resonance to an uneasy resolution. While it never sounds like a Nurse With Wound album, she seems to be inhabiting a similar conceptual framework. The second half of the record gets quite bleak, with her whispered utterances cycling around smoldered echoes of overdriven rumbles and controlled infernal noise. Where Stapleton and Luc Ferrari would employ the female voice in psychosexual terms, Atkinson's application as a ritualized intimacy finds a complex and nuanced poetry that furthers her work beyond that of the sexual and into the sublime.
Not to be confused with the eponymous Bourbonese Qualk album from 1987, this is an exemplary compendium of the British post-punk industrialists' first five records, including tracks from Laughing Afternoon (1983), Hope (1984), The Spike (1985), Preparing for Power (1986), and that self-titled album. During this time period, Bourbonese Qualk was the trio of Simon Crab, Julian Gilbert, and Steven Tanza. They were a band who were uniquely self-sufficient and autonomous, running their own label and forming an artist co-operative not only for their own use but also for other artists, musicians, writers, and political activists. Their wholly independent stance was also one that avoided dogma, leaving their content of their work to stand as an agent that could lead towards change instead of barking against Thatcher, the Falklands War, or the conditions that lead to the Miner's Strike of 1984.
Thus, the studio in that co-op housed a collection of what could be borrowed, what could be repurposed, and / or what could be stolen. Their sound is very much an extension of the situation they crafted for themselves, warts and all.
Much of Bourbonese Qualk's output during this time period is highly rhythmic in nature, aligning with the spirit (much more so than the sound) of a 23 Skidoo and Clock DVA. Metronomic click tracks thrust to the foreground amidst a clatter of metal bashing, detuned bass fug anti-grooves, tape manipulation, and thrashed vocal cord utterances. It's a further deconstructed abstraction of the mutant disco that Clock DVA presented on their early outlier White Souls In Black Suits. For all of their unkempt angularity and droned disorientation, they could craft numbers of dour-dub beauty akin to very lo-fi versions of The Slits or PIL instrumentals. A well-deserved anthology from this oft-forgotten band. The vinyl sports four additional tracks not found on the cd version!
Ah, this record is bloody gorgeous, introducing us to Kate Carr's wondrously droned-out field recordings and somnolent avant-folk strum. Carr is a peripatetic soul, spending her formative days in Sydney, Australia and currently plunked on the other side of the world in Belfast, Ireland with numerous travels that hardly make a straight line between the two locales. On these travels, she tireless collects field recordings - her soundcloud page sports an ever growing archive of fragments of wind, metal, birdsong, subterranean echo, mechanical purr, and nocturnal street emptiness. In her composed work, she'll find sympathetic textures within this archive, and turn these worldy sounds inward to illuminate a dreamlike radiance and an introverted otherness in these sounds. These hushed lulls and emotional pregnant impressions interweave with the more archetypically musical figures from guitar, synth, and their cohabitating shoegazed wash. The utterly downer track "I Remembered It All Somewhere Near Glasgow" centers on a particularly maudlin ellipsis played on acoustic guitar, dripping with sadness as reverberant pools ripple outward from her treated field recordings and distilled environmental hum. The drone is central to her work, but it is one that meanders as coaxed by the wind striking an Aeolian harp, rather than adhere to the plumb line of microtonal adjustments. That organic quality of her harmonics in conjunction with the sodden field recordings and the rainy-day song fragments make for quite a beautifully sad album. Limited to 70 copies.
Slithering slimily forth from our very own San Franciscan tombs comes this arcane analogue artifact of bestial bewitchment, the debut burnt offering from decrepit black/death/punkers Cloak! Indeed their label Transylvanian Tapes (run by none other than Jimmy from East Bay doomlords/aQ faves Swamp Witch) describes Cloak as "pummeling black/death metal executed by punks", but we would go so far as to describe them as "pummeling black/death metal executed by punks WHO ALSO WORK AT AQUARIUS!!!", since Cloak features our very own Kirk wrenching out malignant bass guitar asphyxiations and general low-end terror! Cloak's debut demo is a writhing, twitching leviathan mass of primitive draconian horror, squirming back and forth between glacial doom-vertigo, shadowy crypt-dwelling death metal buzz, and gutter-crawling crusty grooves. The sound is immediately musty, dusty and cemetarial (Is that word?? It is now!), but remarkably catchy and well recorded. The riffs absolutely infectious, the drums a merciless militaristic pummel, the vocals grotesquely dripping with thick droplets of venom - a mid range throaty rasp as opposed to DM's typical low-end gurgle. But for as simple and primal as Cloak's songs can be, there's also a deadly focus and tightness, a sense of sadistic regal purpose. It's a perfect blend of hazy nightmarish atmosphere, hectic energy and genuine fist-pumping metal intoxication free of gimmicks or tricks - organic, pulsing and suffocating! And having had the privilege of catching them live we can say with confidence that it ain't no studio fluke, Cloak is the real dirty deal. Definitely highly recommended for fans of death and black metal's filthiest crevices. Prepare to succumb!
There's a constant monologue uttered on Repetition Reinforcement from Phillip Best, he of the sick mind and the filthy mouth. Even when he steps away from the microphone, you get the sense that he's just whispering epithets and muttering profanities as the default means of existence. So much rage and disapproval he has of the world; and yes, the word 'cunt' gets tossed around as something of a punctuation mark to his rants. Best is, of course, the longstanding pilot of the British power electronics outfit Consumer Electronics as well as one of the longest standing members of Whitehouse alongside fellow malcontent William Bennett. Consumer Electronics is now a fully fledged trio, Best joined by the noted noise agitator Russell Haswell and Sarah Froelich, whose own recited narration pairs with that of Best on one of the two lengthy tracks on this long EP in a duel of churlish misanthropy. The electronic accompaniment is brutishly minimal, with a whumping techno pulse stripped of all groove and movement acting as a gridded architecture for atonal tweaking, teeth-clinching electronic tension, and ghastly noise wash. It's still Best who commands Consumer Electronics with his vitriol, which seems to be a bottomless well of rage and contempt.
Wow! What is it about the sudden appearance of a cache of lost amateur folk recordings that just makes us stop everything we're doing and pay attention? Well, in the case of Connie Converse who made these recordings between 1954 and 1961, her sadly beautiful songcraft coupled with her mysterious (and most likely, tragic) disappearance in the early seventies, paints a tinge of regret and missed opportunities on the proceedings that make her gentle and deeply personal songs resonate more poignantly. A bookish gal from New Hampshire with academic leanings and no strong musical background, she took to writing poems and songs after leaving college in New York a year before she was to graduate. Her songs attracted the interest of animator and amateur recordist Gene Deitch who taped over 40 songs of hers, before she moved to Michigan to live with her brother and set her mind to other pursuits. In the years since, she still played music for friends and family, but her hopes that her recordings would lead to successful opportunities did not pan out and she became more despondent. Taking a leave of absence from her job, she wrote several farewell letters to family and friends, packed up her Volkswagon and disappeared, her whereabouts still unknown...
Similar in tone to Vashti Bunyan and Sibylle Baier, Converse came from a generation earlier. Her songs have a folk-country revivalist vibe popular during the time but her songs don't seemed to be influenced directly by the folk revival movement. Instead it seems she was orbiting in her own parallel universe, like a folksinger version of Emily Dickinson, focussing on the subtle details of daily life and the lovely and lonely qualities that intertwine throughout. Those qualities are heightened by the raw and intimate feel of the recording with its natural imperfections, and side dialogue left thankfully intact.
Fans of Bunyan and Baier, Barbara Dane, Ruth Friedman, Karen Dalton and Niela Miller will find lots to love here. How Sad, How Lovely, Indeed!
We've had a bunch of different reissues of stuff by Crime, the legendary San Francisco punk band. This is the fanciest one, though, a box set containing seven 7"s and a cd, plus a 20 page booklet. The first three 7"s are facsimile reproductions of Crime's original singles, the other four feature other studio tracks circa '77-'79. And the cd collects 'em all together for convenience. It's basically the same thing as the Murder By Guitar anthology that Kitten Charmer put out on cd, and then Superior Viaduct did on lp, so take a look at our review of that for more information. This box is for the folks who want their Crime on 7", like it was originally!
We thought the last few weeks of 2014 would be spent just compiling our year end best of lists and revisiting our favorite records of the year. Little did we know one of the best records of the year would be released in those final days of the year which grabbed us on first listen and has had us hooked ever since.
It had been 14 years since his last album was released and while we knew he had started to play live again we didn't know when a new record would emerge. The timing for the release of Black Messiah couldn't have been more perfect and much needed. In the aftermath of the grand jury decision in Ferguson, and the choking death of Eric Garner, the nation and our collective psyche were in desperate need of some healing and deeply conscious music that could lift our spirits while being steadfast to its awareness of the reality of the times.
Musically this is the most forward and left-field leaning of D'Angelo's releases. Psychedelic soul drenched in warmth, reverb, and unpredictable twists, turns, and instrumentation. This is one of those records that unites music lovers of all variations. Whether your a soul fanatic or a psych rock lover this is a record that breaks down barriers and digs into the skin with deep impact. There is so much to take in from the dense recording, so repeated listens become ever so rewarding.
There's no doubt with Black Messiah, D'Angelo has created a musical masterpiece that will stand next to legendary works by folks like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Prince, and Sly & The Family Stone.
A few months back, we listed a one-sided, one-song 12" vinyl record that was a teaser for this, the debut album from Portland, Oregon's magnificent Danava, an eagerly awaited release 'round here for sure. And so we'll pretty much recap a bunch of what we said in the review of that 12", which featured their epic tune "Quiet Babies Astray In A Manger", also found on this disc: we first heard this stoner-garage-prog-metal combo on the Invaders comp of happenin' hipster heavy psych metal that the Kemado label released earlier this year. Their track was one of several highlights on that collection. We went to go see 'em when they played in Oakland with Parchman Farm not too long ago, and even more recently in The City when they were supposed to be opening for Witchcraft, and in both instances the Danava boys SLAYED, shredded, and (incidentally to the music) were all really skinny. Awesome band. Basically a rollicking, rippin' power trio with extra psychedelic embellishments from keyboards and electronics. If we were a label, we'd have signed 'em in an instant, and that's what Kemado wisely did some time ago. This resultant product comes close to capturing the excitement of their live show, while revealing other aspects we didn't hear whilst headbanging. It's got a reworking of their killer tune "By The Mark" from the Invaders comp, plus the aforementioned 12" track, and three others that are equally masterful, like "Eyes In Disguise" (hearing a hint of Black Sabbath in the vocal line on that one). When the fleet-fingered guitarist gets goin', and when the drummer and bassist lock in, Danava build to pure, amped up, enthused rocka rolla ecstasy and almost could just as well be a totally instrumental band and get away with it, but they have the bonus of actual decent singing capability and vocal hooks as well. Recommended if you like to rock.
This would be the first release we've reviewed from local dreampoppers Dissolve, but only under that particular name, as both members play in the similarly dreamy Modern Charms, whose record we reviewed in 2014 (and which seriously kicked ass). The influences on this EP are relatively the same as Modern Charms - '90s swirly and ethereal pop a la Swervedriver, Lush, Slowdive, and the like. Beautiful, reverb'd out guitar, a big, pounding rhythm section, and Inna's mesmerizing vocal lines all blur and swirl into a gorgeous haze. Like we said about Modern Charms, you could have TOTALLY fooled us into thinking this was some unearthed '90s gem that we hadn't heard before. Dissolve's songwriting chops are really what takes this EP to the next level though - the songs on this EP could straight up go toe-to-toe with any of the 'gaze all-stars (seriously, listen to "Innocence" and tell us that couldn't be a track off the Loveless demos!). Seriously, these tracks are damn catchy! We're super stoked on this EP and can't wait to hear more from these guys. Do we really need to say dreamy any more in this review? Pick it up quick, these are fairly limited!
We've got two new releases from local label Time Released Sound on this week's list, the other is the latest from long time aQ fave Sonmi451, and then there's this, the first we've heard from Drawing Virtual Gardens, an American ex-pat living in Belgium, who sounds right at home on TRS, crafting a moody, lowercase sprawl of isolationist tones and darkdrone textures. Another ultra minimal excursion into some sonic otherworld, not as lovely or pastoral as many of the other TRS releases, instead, much more ominous and sinister sounding, at least from the outset, bell like tones, woozy chordal blurs, an overcast ambience that spreads its delightfully dour pall over the rest of the tracks, a blackened blanked of dreary dreaminess, beneath some of which soft swirls of strings sing, and others, wispy clouds of pointillist piano. For the most part, the sounds get lost in streaks of static, blunted glitches, and wheezing swells of softly crumbling thrum. A disembodied black dub rendered even more disembodied, emerging as a spectre like impression, as if viewed through a rain drenched window, or heard from afar.
As always, two different versions, one of 'em ultra deluxe, that one limited to just 70 copies, a corner hinged booklet of industrial engravings, hole punched pages from vintage children's books along with other antique ephemera. Everything is housed in a hand stamped / hand worked envelope covered with a 120 year old engraving.
There's also the standard version, that one in the usual lovely TRS digipak, and limited to 150 copies.
We've got two new releases from local label Time Released Sound on this week's list, the other is the latest from long time aQ fave Sonmi451, and then there's this, the first we've heard from Drawing Virtual Gardens, an American ex-pat living in Belgium, who sounds right at home on TRS, crafting a moody, lowercase sprawl of isolationist tones and darkdrone textures. Another ultra minimal excursion into some sonic otherworld, not as lovely or pastoral as many of the other TRS releases, instead, much more ominous and sinister sounding, at least from the outset, bell like tones, woozy chordal blurs, an overcast ambience that spreads its delightfully dour pall over the rest of the tracks, a blackened blanked of dreary dreaminess, beneath some of which soft swirls of strings sing, and others, wispy clouds of pointillist piano. For the most part, the sounds get lost in streaks of static, blunted glitches, and wheezing swells of softly crumbling thrum. A disembodied black dub rendered even more disembodied, emerging as a spectre like impression, as if viewed through a rain drenched window, or heard from afar.
As always, two different versions, one of 'em ultra deluxe, that one limited to just 70 copies, a corner hinged booklet of industrial engravings, hole punched pages from vintage children's books along with other antique ephemera. Everything is housed in a hand stamped / hand worked envelope covered with a 120 year old engraving.
There's also the standard version, that one in the usual lovely TRS digipak, and limited to 150 copies.
Missive number six from Chris Dixon's Computer Tapes and his Earth Jerks project, now a fully fledged duo with Noel Harmonson (Comets On Fire, etc.), with the two method acting over overdriven organs, tone generation, feedback guitar harmonics, and a couple of pots of tea - all of which expressing the clarity of a focused mind that then slips down the rabbit hole of innervoid delirium. It's a braindrain, psychedelic fug from Earth Jerks, of sweeping ur-drone filtering along the lines of the mystical fog cast by Pink Floyd on "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" minus the hushed liturgy of Syd Barrett. Dixon is quick to point out that any comparisons to Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze are missing the mark a bit; so we'll only allude to these in passing even as we drool over these fancifully crunchy drones bringing forth darkly ecstatic melodies that slowly unfurl on the 8 minute "Just Because It Isn't Mine, That Doesn't Make It Yours", followed by the Leslie speaker discombobulation of psychoactive holy minimalism quickly mapped out on three short tracks that have more of a Phill Niblock doing a 7" feel. Yeah, of course, it's great; and limited to just 100 copies, but now pressed on pro-duplicated cd-rs.
Record number two from aQ pal and longtime mailorder customer Eddie Harari, aka Elfmilk. The first Elfmilk Extragalactic Distance was a strange mix of decaying atmospheres, distorted dirgery and electronic flecked kraut-psych, all of which are present here, but the sound is more brooding and moody, the opener downright jazzy, adding horns to a swagger twang, and a distorted recording that swaddles everything in gristly crumble. And that jazziness seems to bleed into much of the rest of the record, distant horns drifting over dizzying collaged loops and mysterious sonic squelches, lumbering downtempo grooves again recorded super hot, and transformed into slo-mo, in-the-red minimalism. Elsewhere female vocals soar, sounding like some lost sixties psych jam, or some alien exotic unfurls like the score to some alternate reality James Bond movie, and in this version the funky, groovy theme is pelted by burst of static and shards of white noise crunch, while the drums sound like they were recorded in a different time zone.
The last 'movement' fully embraces Elfmilk's jazzier direction, getting all washed out and smoldery, at one point sounding like a band playing after last call in some shadowy dive bar, at another blossoming into a slow building, languorously lush post rock/out-jazz trip out, and on the final track, getting a bit Portishead-y, the song in constant flux as the speed seems to change constantly, turning the buzzing synths into a woozy melody, that undulates beneath a wasted rhythmic skitter, and more of those melancholic horns.
Killer stuff for sure, and way recommended for fans of dark jazz, and moody, instrumental mystery. Which we're assuming is a whole lot of you...
Merzbow, Merzbow, Merzbow. We love the ultra-prolific king of Japanese noise as much as the next person - maybe even more, since several of us here own the 50-cd Merzbox! But, it's almost impossible to keep up - and also, when you've already got at least 50 cds of Merzbow's noise, do you really need any more? However, we do still get intrigued whenever Merzbow goes and collaborates with (or remixes) some other artist, like a rock or metal band. Maybe 'cause we like our Merzbow rhythmic, as in, with drumming. Also a little bit of, uh, music, in the mix tends to make the noise parts even MORE effective and interesting in our opinion. So this new release on Profound Lore caught our ears - East Coast metalcore band Full Of Hell teaming up with Masami "Merzbow" Akita for not one but two cd's worth of intense destructo mayhem. The blasting drum battery, filthy riffage and throat-shredded vokills are all par for the course with Full Of Hell, but the presence of Merzbow's mad noise skillz tips the scales further into the extreme and avantgarde! More "power electronics" feedback, more hellish drone and distortion, more abstract abjection. It sounds as if the pit is feasting upon itself, as FoH's fierce metal core breaks loose from its moorings and plunges into the abyss, accompanied by what sounds like 1,000 vacuum cleaners in a windtunnel, that sort of thing. Of the two discs, there's one that's presented as the "main course" with printed lyrics in the digipack, that one seems more like Full Of Hell doin' their usual thing, with a (powerful) side of Merzbow - and also, some free jazz style horns on a few of the tracks!! The other disc, entitled Sister Fawn, seems intended as a bonus, and finds FoH and Merzbow more fully enmeshed, blurring the lines a bit more, the noise to the fore with beats and demented vocals in the background. Noisefreaks can go straight to that one, the metalheads should start with the first disc...
We've loved pretty much every single record from this fuzzy, garage-y French dream-pop combo, who fuse buzzy guitar crunch, and simple propulsive rhythmic pound, with classic sixties French pop, swirling psychedelia, and even add a little ukelele! This comp collects, as the title suggests, all the group's various singles and comp tracks (as well as a few unreleased rarities), and really if you've yet to hear the Liminanas, this is as good a place to start as any. Some of the tracks here sound like Brigitte Bardot or France Gall if they recorded for Castle Face, and were backed up by White Fence or Thee Oh Sees, others channel the druggy kraut-psych of outfits like Moon Duo, through that sixties Ye Ye Girls sound we can't seem to ever get enough of.
They do some cool covers too, a dreamily fuzzy and buzzy version of the Beach Boys' "I Know There's An Answer", they tackle Jay Reatard's "An Ugly Death", making it dirgey and breathy, and do a lo-fi, garage pop take on Darlene Love's Phil Spector penned "Christmas". The band make those songs totally their own. Perfectly fitting in with their sexy, sultry, French Garage pop originals, the vocals alternately crooned or purred, both male and female, they're almost like a fuzzier, garagier, modern day version of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, which you know is not a bad thing at all!
Controversial as always, Brooklyn's Liturgy, the band 'troo' black metallers love to hate, is back. And it's not just purists who have found Liturgy's self-proclaimed 'transcendental black metal' (and accompanying manifesto) to be way too pretentious, arty, overly intellectual and dare we say hipsterish. And yeah, sure, Liturgy ARE intellectual and/or pretentious, but they also make some freaking amazing, weird music. So let's get all that out of the way by saying, they can call it whatever they want, just don't expect us to read the manifesto. To us, ok, maybe we wouldn't really consider them a bonafide black metal band, but the music they make wouldn't exist (probably) if there weren't such a thing as black metal. It's a part of their sound that they, well, have transcended? They're definitely their own 'thing' whatever it might be, a thing that beyond the black metal elements also incorporates math rock and academic new music and IDM electronica and other strange stuff besides. Totally up our alley in other words - although making The Ark Work an aQ Record Of The Week was also was a wee bit controversial here, 'cause we'll admit right off the bat that this isn't an easy album to sit through all at once. It's just so tripped out and CRAZY and exhausting, as you mentally process what you're hearing. But even if you can't take it all in one sitting, it's the sort of thing where we swear you'll be compelled to play individual tracks on repeat, over and over, just to get your head around 'em, and because certain parts can be so intense and mesmerizing, you want to really try to fully absorb/understand the awesomeness of them before experiencing the next draining yet uplifting track. So Record Of The Week it is, none can deny that it's an impressive piece of work and unlike anything else really. It's gonna have you going, what IS this? Very aQ-worthy, indeed.
Liturgy's bandleader, guitarist/vocalist/composer Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (whose name is only slightly less plausible than, say, Guy Mann-Dude, anyone remember that '80s metal shredder?) is one ambitious & talented dude... man... guy. Some pretentiousness may be a side effect of that, but whatever. It's not like we're paying attention to the conceptual lyrics about who knows what (though you might, they could be worthwhile). We're just busy being blown away by all the choppy stop-start arrangements; the symphonic horn parts; the insectoid guitar buzz that sounds like a Glenn Branca guitar orchestra made up of a whole bunch tiny, tiny, pygmy-like black metal guitarists; the mesmeric, trance-inducing drumming by the inhuman Greg Fox (Guardian Alien); the glitchy digital stutter that, seizure-like, grips bits of these tracks occasionally; the post-rocky, sea-saw way these tracks can build and build; the sheer proggy/mathy grandiosity of the whole thing, and all the other surprises, including, despite this music's difficulty-factor, some really beautiful, blissful parts too.
There are bagpipes, too, along with the trumpet and trombone, all played by guest musicians, but in addition there are also synthesized MIDI horns on here, the latter giving a bit of the vibe of an outsider composer realizing his epic opus with DIY bedroom recording technology. Then there are the processed vocals, also kinda melodic, but chant-like, a mantric supplication, sorta sounding like Om, but with the tape sped up perhaps or otherwise manipulated, and still quite emotive.
Yeah, we said they sure came up with something that doesn't sound like anything else, at least not anything that exists, though we can come up with some this-meets-that, hybrid of this-and-that esoteric band math equations to try to describe it, like, um, Orthrelm doing their version of Om (if Om attended the Church Universal and Triumphant), or Phantomsmasher goes to conservatory... or how 'bout this: the track "Vel Valhaal" sounds like a song by outsider epic metallers Realmbuilder, remixed by Venetian Snares, with a gamelan thrown in for good measure, mashed up with a Herman Nitsch aktion. How's that? We're trying.
If all that's not ridiculous enough, oh then there's the fact that Liturgy recently they appeared on an episode of NBC TV show The Blacklist, with freakin' Peter Fonda behind the drum kit. WTF? If haters gonna hate anyway, you might as well cash in with surreal shit like that.
You've got your whole life to listen to this Liturgy album, so don't delay, get it now! While maybe we can't say yet for sure, we think it's one we will be coming back to when some other, more acceptably 'troo black metal' albums are long forgotten.
Oh, and 'cause we told 'em we were making it a Record Of The Week, Thrill Jockey has kindly offered a special BONUS for folks who buy it from us, and only us, this week. While they last, we'll be including a download coupon with each purchase that gets you an mp3 of the crazy remix that Soft Pink Truth (Drew from Matmos) did of the track "Vitriol", which is otherwise is only available on the version of the cd released in Japan. It's not as if Liturgy isn't already insane and fucked up enough sounding, but you can imagine what SPT does to 'em.
FYI the swank gatefold double vinyl version includes a download of the full album, too, while the gatefold cd version has no need of that.
"I love the idea of burying sounds beneath layers of noise, things seem to sound better to me." So sayeth the New Zealand sound artist Richard Francis in the transcribed conversation with the Basque conceptualist Mattin that serves as the liner notes here. Over the years, we've championed both of these artists with Mattin being perhaps best known (at least in these parts) for the monstrous Afro-noise / thud-rock of Billy Bao; and Francis being one of the most interesting modern-day minimalists from his island nation. For this project, Francis brings a his array of organically slippery electrical static to Mattin to recompose those sources into a malleable structure of crackling pink noise and swarming sibilance. The A-side builds in stepped ascents to a densely packed morass of texture, sounding like a multi-channel smashjob of one of those amazingly loud Michael Gendreau performances of run-out grooves on very old 78s. If Gendreau is too obtuse a reference, try Marclay or Jeck without any of the musical references or that long-forgotten Loren Chasse album Hedge Of Nerves composed entirely of vinyl crackle, fire, and bristling textures. Where the A-side is a dramatic, swollen tactile violence, the B-side is a contemplative drift of softened white noise caressing itself into near-emptiness and just at the edge of frequency audibility. As different as the two pieces are, the anchor of this buried texture and this buried noise provided by Francis is more than enough to ground this album. A very solid piece of tactile minimalism! Limited to just 300 copies.
Well, they're here. Melvins fans, giddyup. Seriously, what to say? The four classic early Melvins records newly reissued on these two double lp sets (why'd they do it like that? dunno) are all ESSENTIALS. Back on (remastered) vinyl for the first time in 15 years, they're too old to have much in the way of reviews from us previously, when originally released, so we figured we'd have to write new ones, and we could, heck we could go on and on about 'em. But really, most folks who are likely to buy these already know what they're all about, right? And if for some reason you are a fan of sheer heaviness, and buy records, and these AREN'T in your collection, then, well, all we can keep it simple and say YOU MUST BUY THESE!
This paring brings together the Melvins' "holiday" record (at least, we always put in in our holiday music section when that time of the year came 'round, and it always sold!!), a four song ep from 1991, originally released on 10" vinyl, that featured three short rippin' tracks on the A-side (including the mighty "Hog Leg"), and an epic sludge drone fest on the B-side, "Charmicarmicat", over 12 minutes long, that sounds more or less like the blueprint for the first Earth album (though that was released the same year, so it can't really be). Meanwhile, 1992's Lysol, excuse us, for legal reason they're now calling it Lice-All, another fucked up Melvins classic, that features, along with several originals, covers of both Flipper (they do "Sacrifice") and Alice Cooper (not one but two songs!) all sounding perfectly Melvins-y.
Includes download!
Well, they're here. Melvins fans, giddyup. Seriously, what to say? The four classic early Melvins records newly reissued on these two double lp sets (why'd they do it like that? dunno) are all ESSENTIALS. Back on (remastered) vinyl for the first time in 15 years, they're too old to have much in the way of reviews from us previously, when originally released, so we figured we'd have to write new ones, and we could, heck we could go on and on about 'em. But really, most folks who are likely to buy these already know what they're all about, right? And if for some reason you are a fan of sheer heaviness, and buy records, and these AREN'T in your collection, then, well, all we can keep it simple and say YOU MUST BUY THESE!
Ozma, from 1989, is the one that first turned us on to the genius of this band. Nonsensical lyrics, Black Sabbath meets Black Flag heavosity like nothing heard before (yeah, Flipper, yeah Gore, sure but Melvins took it to another level). Dale's drumming, Buzz's vocals, sheer brilliance. Bullhead, from 1991, was maybe even better, and heavier, really, somehow. Among other great tracks, it's got the song "Boris", which inspired a certain band from Japan. 'Nuff said.
Includes download! Which has a bonus track!
Wow, when reissue label Superior Viaduct decided to get into the jazz game, they weren't playing around. First Alice Coltrane, now Charles Mingus! Yeah, they're bringing out the heavy hitters (thanks, it would seem, to an arrangement with the Impulse! label).
These two Mingus reissues are certainly nice to have, heck 1963's The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady has long been considered one of the jazz bassist, composer, and bandleader's all time masterpieces, forever appearing on all sorts of best jazz albums ever lists, 5 stars from the All Music Guide, recipient of a literally orgasmic review from legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, etc., etc. And we highly recommend it too, even if our own thumbs up is somewhat superfluous, we know!
A powerful post-bop, partly free jazz 'ballet' orchestrated for an 11-piece ensemble (featuring among others Charlie Mariano on alto sax), with elements of drawn from Ellington and flamenco, and apparently one of the first jazz recordings to utilize of overdubs due to its ambitious complexity, there's no argument it's a true classic.
And then, while not as high up in the Mingus pantheon as Black Saint (but still garnering 4 stars from the AMG), Mingus Plays Piano, also from '63, is pretty great, too - and very different, being a solo set of both standards (like "Body And Soul") and pure improvisations, beautifully performed by Mingus on an instrument that's not the one he's best known for playing (but is what he mostly used for composition). Intimate and revealing.
Both albums are remastered from the original master tapes, and packaged in gatefold jackets.
Wow, when reissue label Superior Viaduct decided to get into the jazz game, they weren't playing around. First Alice Coltrane, now Charles Mingus! Yeah, they're bringing out the heavy hitters (thanks, it would seem, to an arrangement with the Impulse! label).
These two Mingus reissues are certainly nice to have, heck 1963's The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady has long been considered one of the jazz bassist, composer, and bandleader's all time masterpieces, forever appearing on all sorts of best jazz albums ever lists, 5 stars from the All Music Guide, recipient of a literally orgasmic review from legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, etc., etc. And we highly recommend it too, even if our own thumbs up is somewhat superfluous, we know!
A powerful post-bop, partly free jazz 'ballet' orchestrated for an 11-piece ensemble (featuring among others Charlie Mariano on alto sax), with elements of drawn from Ellington and flamenco, and apparently one of the first jazz recordings to utilize of overdubs due to its ambitious complexity, there's no argument it's a true classic.
And then, while not as high up in the Mingus pantheon as Black Saint (but still garnering 4 stars from the AMG), Mingus Plays Piano, also from '63, is pretty great, too - and very different, being a solo set of both standards (like "Body And Soul") and pure improvisations, beautifully performed by Mingus on an instrument that's not the one he's best known for playing (but is what he mostly used for composition). Intimate and revealing.
Both albums are remastered from the original master tapes, and packaged in gatefold jackets.
Remember why you fell in love with punk rock? The fearless spirit, the ethos, the sweat, the youthful energy, the conviction, the elation. Remember why you eventually got bored with punk rock? The predictability, the empty slogans, the forced posturing, the generic delivery. Well lucky for many of us past punkers, No Age are doing an amazing job of reminding us of a time when it felt like punk rock could save lives.
No Age (not to be confused with the nineties musical movement) are a duo from Los Angeles who have gained a cult-following for their totally engaging and sweat filled live shows. Wild performances on their home turf, at the tiny LA club The Smell, are legendary. They've also put out a handful of kick ass, but now impossible to find 7"s. But lucky for those of us who missed the boat on those 45's, Fat Cat has put them all together on this here cd. Now we know why people have been freaking out over this band.
Imagine a youthful exuberance that feels so pure and sincere by guys who love Black Flag and Fugazi as much as they do My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. In fact there's a lot about No Age that makes us think of prime-era Husker Du, all kinds of great lo-fi feedback and shoegaze moments infused with some serious punk rock spirit. Unpredictable and so immediate, for once the hype is totally right!
Probably some of you have seen this movie. I (Allan) have not (Andee has, and LOVES it)... but I do have an idea of what it's about. Don't think I'll be seeing it anytime soon, although by all accounts Italian director Roggero Deodato's horrific 1979 'mockumentary' (or 'shockumentary' perhaps) Cannibal Holocaust is a classic of '70s Italian horror films, said to be super intense, ultra-violent, and gorily realistic (so much so that it was falsely rumored to be an actual snuff film). But I am enjoying the soundtrack by Riz Ortolani, which by itself is unlikely to give anyone any nightmares, unless kitschy '70s film scores somehow frighten you, mixing (as this one does) maudlin string orchestration for lush romantic themes, wakka-wakka funk vamps, and eerie synths a la Goblin. Check out the porno-groove of "Cameramen's Recreation" or the jazz/disco numbers like the one called "Drinking Coco" that also boasts a pretty wild distorto-guitar solo. Meanwhile, one of the loveliest tracks is entitled "Crucified Woman"! Titles like that (which Andee says is indeed appropriate), and the raw, menacing electronic creep-out soundscapes that filter into the disc amidst the brighter and more melodic material, will remind you that this is music for a horror movie after all. Plus the cover picture of course.
We're pretty sure this soundtrack is on a lot of fans' wish lists, so it's nice that this has finally been properly released on cd, remastered and complete with bonus cd-rom video material including the theatrical trailer and an interview with Ortolani.
The latest (posthumous?) single from local noise pop geniuses the Ovens, fronted by Tony Molina of the Tony Molina Band, and if you've been digging Tony's recent solo lp, and have yet to hear the Ovens, prepare yourself for some seriously mind blowing pop overload. This single is untitled like the last two (and the cd on tUMULt) and like those records, this new (old) 7" is another dizzying survey of this group's impeccable pop chops. Eight songs in about 6 minutes, equal parts Weezer, Guided By Voices, Teenage Fanclub, the Beatles, the Fastbacks, Dinosaur Jr, plenty of fuzz and crunch and jangle, glorious harmonies, some shredding leads, laid back laconic vox, and as always, hooks galore, oodles of catchiness crammed into seconds. These tracks were recorded back in 2008, and this 7" is meant to be a sort of companion to the last single on Catholic Guilt. The sounds is a bit more lo-fi, but there's no disguising this sort of utter pop mastery. The only frustrating part of these micro-missives is that you'll find yourself flipping this single over and over and over and over and over, every three minutes...
With a name like Pallbearer, and a record cover that looks like an illustration from some obscure Dungeons and Dragons monster manual, you might be expecting some grim, oozing blackened slo-mo tarpit creep, or heck maybe even some full on over the top swords and sorcery power metal epic-ry, but what you might not expect, is precisely what this Arkansas doom crew conjures up, a surprisingly melodic, and downright dreamy chunk of true epic, super melodic, classic sounding doom, complete with acoustic guitars and soaring clean vocals, all wound around a sound that's more warm and fuzzy and washed out oftentimes than downtuned and sludgey. Reminding us a bit of aQ faves Megaton Leviathan, the same sort of shoegazey sound and dreamily psychedelic vibe, but Pallbearer sound much more beholden to classic metal, with some of these songs sounding like some lost eighties metal jam, slowed down and blissed out, often slipping into almost slowcore dirgery, that sort of haunting druggy mesmer, still epic and melodic, but more bleary and gauze-y, with the guitars not crunchy and buzzy, so much as thick and dense and lushly layered, the songs slow building and hauntingly brooding. Not that Pallbearer, aren't heavy, they most definitely are, like on "Devoid Of Redemption", a re-recorded track from their demo, the sound is massive, the guitars thick and churning, the drums a muted massive pound, but even then, those clean vocals change the whole vibe, and within the music itself, the melodies almost sound like horns, mournful and funereal, and the sound, even at its heaviest, seems to ooze into something much more dreary and dreamy and druggy. The recording and production too, perfectly suits the sound, vintage and classic, the sound Sabbathy, and Candlemass-y and St. Vitus-y, heavy but spacious, plenty of reverb, and deftly applied effects, but smeared and subtly stretched into something even more crushingly heavy, spaced out and psychedelic, and weirdly hauntingly lovely, a sound that's both murky and mesmerizing, magical and mysterious, which is making this a new favorite with the metalheads around here and a definite contender for doom record of the year...
We've given good reviews to several Benoit Pioulard releases in the past, but if you think you know just what to expect here, think again. Pioulard's fifth album shifts away from those languid dream-pop songs of bedroom folk melancholia sung with a maudlin, reverb-saturated baritone we'd often heard from him before, in favor of thoroughly abstracted numbers. He builds this lush shoegazing wash from field recordings and his responses to them through guitar and tape manipulation, with nothing digital getting in the way of all of this tactile, gossamer haze.
Sonnet is an entirely instrumental album, which is certainly not out of the ordinary for the roster of Kranky Records, the home for A Winged Victory For The Sullen and Tim Hecker, two heavyweights of blearily atmospheric music; but we have to say that the Pioulard (instrumental) voice is especially a thing of beauty. The sibilance of air conditioning vents, summer time lawn sprinklers, washing machines, and the mid-day rasp of a swarm of locusts can become indistinguishable from amplified tape hiss. That's where Pioulard (who sounds French but is actually a Pacific Northwesterner named Thomas Meluch) begins to shape the work of Sonnet. Guitars, loops, and some twinkling synths come into the mix all of which are firmly sympathetic and complementary to the bittersweet coloring from his tapestries of sound. These droning nocturnes reflect the shimmer and feel of a Cocteau Twins instrumental or the ambient interludes found on Boards Of Canada or the even more soaring numbers from Troum. Highly recommended, this gets asked about and purchased by customers nearly every time we play it in the store!
Not sure what you might expect from a band called Rectal Hygienics, but if you weren't expecting squalls of feedback, downtuned caveman riffage, buried drugged out vox, and blown out wasted heaviness, well then, you might be a bit disappointed. We however got exactly what we were expecting, and hoping for. Falling squarely somewhere between Brainbombs and Rusted Shut, late period Black Flag, and some mutant strain of slo-mo hardcore, these bruisers deliver some fucked up and fierce noise rock that lurches from psychedelic and freaked out jammage to pure Neanderthal churn, more often than not cramming those two together into something beastly and seriously bad ass. Easily one of our new favorite slabs of brain damaged brutality.
Here comes another slab of tripped out, and fuzzed/fucked up weirdness from The Anja Offensive! This one in the form of the second full-length by Swedish drug-doomsters Saturnalia Temple, which we're of course totally stoked about.
To The Other's foundation is the huge, wall of doom riffs that lumber and lurch a la Sleep records, just on a MUCH worse acid trip. While the bones of this record might be the massive doom riffs, layered around it are all sorts of screeching, barely guitar-like leads, delayed and distorted vocals, and a Hawkwind-esque repetivive psychedelia that you can't help being totally sucked into. Like labelmates Aluk Todolo, these guys have a penchant for holding a groove for as long as they possibly can, making you honestly wonder if the cd might be skipping, or if that windowpane is finally kicking in. Like Candlemass meets Oranssi Pazuzu. Or Electric Wizard meets Aluk Todolo, really. The weird leads and occaisonal synth (maybe? or just weirder sounding guitar) sound pretty damn unique and twisted, sometimes making you wonder if this dude actually plays guitar or he's just making it up. It all somehow works though, all twisting and bubbling into a thick black doomy murk that won't let go. The cover art on here is actually really telling - a huge vortex-like hole absorbing the weird, maze like landscape around it. If that intrigues you, or (Satan help us) makes total sense, then this record is for you.
Y'know, it's a fact that is easier for us to write reviews of stuff we just discovered, being all eager to share whatever it is with you guys. Once an artist has gotten a little bit popular, and we've had a few releases in by them, then we sometimes find ourselves slacking off on the reviewing, even though we may still be big fans. Maybe 'cause we figure we'll be repeating ourselves, maybe 'cause chances are folks are gonna wanna buy the artist's new stuff regardless. Which all goes to perhaps explain why we've been tardy in getting this Ipecac disc by English post-punk white rap duo Sleaford Mods written-up for our list. We've been spinning it a lot since it came in, though, 'cause Sleaford Mods rule.
It's actually not a new album proper, but instead a compilation of tracks from a bunch of hard-to-find 7" singles that they've released over the past year or two. Any Sleaford Mods fan will dig it, naturally, it's another dose of their hilariously sardonic stream of consciousness rhymes laid down over the same sort of stripped down, lo-fi grooves as always. The main rapper guy (whose delivery never fails to remind us of Mark E. Smith, though it's a cheap comparison) is brilliant when it comes to non-sequitur witticisms taking down 'wankers' left and right. Half the time we don't even understand what he's on about with his lyrics, in part 'cause of the accent, in part 'cause of the British cultural/political references, but it's still funny and the beats will keep your head nodding and feet tapping. And while funny, they mean it, these rhyming complaints are pointed, some targets more significant than others. Twitter haters will want this for "Tweet Tweet Tweet"...
Anyway we wanted to get this listed so you'd know we had it. Supposedly Ipecac released a vinyl version too but we've never been able to get any in. However, today we DID just get brand new Sleaford Mods vinyl 12", entitled Tiswas, on Invada, just FYI, also, which, further FYI, will have a picture disc Record Store Day release this year, but you can get it now on regular vinyl.
The 50th release from beloved local label Time Released Sound heralds the return of Sonmi451, whose two previous releases on TRS were big hits around here. The Limbic System finds Sonmi451, aka Bernard Zwijzen, pushing his already hushed and haunting sound even further into the ether, a soft focus soundscape of treated electronics, muted melody, pizzicato note suspended in billowing clouds of barely there shimmer, a whispery drift that at its most active, sounds a bit like a more pastoral Bohren & Der Club of Gore, but more often seems like some sort of sonic mirage, the sound waves simply microscope vibrations, like ripples in a placid pond, a hazy musical daydream constantly on the verge of blurring into pure empty sound, its shapes and surfaces smooth and glassy, born from new age and shaped into something more modern and yet more minimal.
Like all Time Released Sound releases, there are two different versions, the first, FANCY, in this case, limited to just 70 copies, packaged like a case file, made from an art deco photo folder, each one containing, a unique photo, with a vintage glass brain specimen slide (!) hinged and laid over the top. Included also are some papers, poetry, handwritten sheet music and notes from vintage books on the study of the brain. The whole thing hand stamped, labeled and notated, the cd housed in a cotton sleeve.
Then there's the standard version, which is limited to 150 copies, and comes in a full color digipak, sans all the rest of the above ephemera.
The 50th release from beloved local label Time Released Sound heralds the return of Sonmi451, whose two previous releases on TRS were big hits around here. The Limbic System finds Sonmi451, aka Bernard Zwijzen, pushing his already hushed and haunting sound even further into the ether, a soft focus soundscape of treated electronics, muted melody, pizzicato note suspended in billowing clouds of barely there shimmer, a whispery drift that at its most active, sounds a bit like a more pastoral Bohren & Der Club of Gore, but more often seems like some sort of sonic mirage, the sound waves simply microscope vibrations, like ripples in a placid pond, a hazy musical daydream constantly on the verge of blurring into pure empty sound, its shapes and surfaces smooth and glassy, born from new age and shaped into something more modern and yet more minimal.
Like all Time Released Sound releases, there are two different versions, the first, FANCY, in this case, limited to just 70 copies, packaged like a case file, made from an art deco photo folder, each one containing, a unique photo, with a vintage glass brain specimen slide (!) hinged and laid over the top. Included also are some papers, poetry, handwritten sheet music and notes from vintage books on the study of the brain. The whole thing hand stamped, labeled and notated, the cd housed in a cotton sleeve.
Then there's the standard version, which is limited to 150 copies, and comes in a full color digipak, sans all the rest of the above ephemera.
Earlier in 2014, the multimedia artist John Davis presented an amazing series of expanded cinema at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, showcasing Bay Area artists whose work operate in the liminal regions between avant-garde composition and experimental filmmaking. The most visible and vocal proponent of such work is San Francisco's Paul Clipson, whose 8mm and 16mm films of in-camera edits & overlaid imagery have long been the visual accompaniments to the likes of Barn Owl, Grouper, Tarentel, Joshua Churchill, and Brendan Murray (just to name a few). Clipson's work was just one of many artists presented during the month-long festival that Davis curated, with this weighty object - two slabs of vinyl, a hefty book, and four dvd-rs each dedicated to one of four filmmakers - documenting a handful of the pieces that were exhibited / projected / performed during the festival. So, there are filmmakers Lawrence Jordan, Craig Baldwin, and Kerry Laitala joining Clipson on the video programs; and Tashi Wada, Maggi Payne, and Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken joining John Davis as the composers. There were far more notable artists whose work did not get covered in this compendium (e.g. Keith Evans, Beige, Mary Helena Clarke, Steve Dye, Andy Puls, and aQ's own Jim Haynes), meaning that there's more than enough material to warrant a second volume.
The two slabs of vinyl contain long-form tracks from each of the aforementioned composers, whose work corresponds to the soundtrack of the video programs, but these sounds are also designed to be listened to independent of the image, harboring an indeterminacy to the marriage of sound and image as well as its severance. Bellouin & Bracken are stalwart performers here in the Bay Area, who sadly have not released any of their work up until now. Overtones and harmonics from bowed metal rods, handcrafted glass harmonica, and subtly reinforced electronics offer an amazingly rich composition of melodic sound pools progressing at the pace of a late period Morton Feldman composition. Davis has released his own work through Root Strata and Students Of Decay over the years, with world-weary delicacies of sonic filigree suspended upon field recordings and cracked electronics. Here, he takes on the contemplative sequences of analog synth / library musics with fragments alluding to Susanne Ciani that darken over time through scratchy loops and radiant black drones. The iconic Bay Area minimalist Maggi Payne slips through her quiet hush by way of downpitched white noise into thrumming masses, Shepard tone glissandos, and ice-sharp textures. Tashi Wada's downtuning compositions for two violins resonating acoustically in near lockstep with each other is a perfect recapitulation of Tony Conrad's ideas behind Slapping Pythagoras. Brilliantly done by all of the composers!
We'll leave the video components alone for the time being; as Gravity Spells is strictly limited to 100 copies, many of which were sold at the festival itself. There's only a handful of these left. A true labor of love from John Davis, and it shows!
Now this is the kind of church we'd attend. Not so much ecstatic gospel choirs and salvation sermons, but rather a deep open meditative environment tapped into an intuitive kinetic and vibrating communal groove carrying angelic voices of universal uplift. Space, form and light.
The sixth installment of Jazzman's great Spiritual Jazz series devotes itself entirely to the spiritual vocal, with excellent contributions from the sixties through the eighties from both obscure and famous jazz musicians around the world. Male and female voices in solo form or groups, these pieces are not necessarily religious, but whether slow and reverent, or kaleidoscopically propulsive, each song shares a gathering intention of cosmic unity, African awareness, and a long-suffering passion for justice and natural beauty. Featuring Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Sadaka, Norman Riley, E.W. Wainwright, Clifford Jordan, Pharoah Sanders, Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti, Eddie Gale, Gary Bartz, Byron Morris & Unity, Washington High School Band and Singers and The Vibration Society, this compilation also features great vocal contributions by Abbey Lincoln, Leon Thomas, Doug Hammond, Andy Bey, and Jane Sims. Fantastic!
The Black Twilight Circle is Southern California's answer to Les Legions Noires, the elite circle of French black metal groups which included Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, Torgeist, Belketre, Aakon Keetreh, Moevet and a handful of others. Like the Black Legions, the Black Twilight Circle also have a stable of different 'groups', that are made up of a small handful of artists, most of whom do time in multiple bands, an insular musical community, that manages to create a surprising varied catalog considering how much overlap there is between the bands and the various members. Tliltic Tlapoyauak is a killer collection of exclusive tracks from a handful of those bands, some we knew already: Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Volahn, Dolorvotre, Tukaaria, Arizmenda, Axeman, along with a bunch more we didn't: Cempopoloah, In Lakech Ala Kin, Kampilan, Blood Play, Acualli and lots more. And like the handful of full lengths that we've managed to hear from some of these groups, the sound of the Black Twilight Circle definitely tends toward the avant, melding classic grim buzz, with all manner of sonic experimentation, just check out the opening track from Kuxan Suum, who, after a brief bit of Native American sounding folkiness, all tribal drumming, shakers and whistles, launches into a furious bout of raw, churning, tangled black buzz, a frenzied berserker onslaught, but one rife with weird angular melodies, and twisted riffage, and then part way through, the track breaks down into a cool little stretch of clean guitar shimmer, almost a sort of alien Appalachia, before launching right back into it, this time way proggier and more angular, the sound lurching and slithering and sounding almost like a black metal Sun City Girls!
It's tempting to go through the whole record, track by track, as we are wont to do, cuz all the songs here are pretty incredible, but odds are, if you're into weird black metal, you are at least a bit familiar with these groups and this scene, but even if you're not, maybe especially if you're not, this is a killer place to start. The sound dizzyingly diverse, one second a wild wall of crumbling distortion swirling beneath super dramatic bellowed, almost go thic / post punk sounding vox, the next, total lo-fi grimnity, but even then, the sounds are twisted and obtuse, damaged and WTF, the mixes, the arrangements, the vocals especially, constantly lurching from gruff gurgle to wailing falsetto, to hellish shriek. There's very little in the way of straight ahead black metal to be found here, hell, we'd go so far as to say, maybe none at all. Even the most straight up buzz and blast, is only that way on the surface, and even then not for long, often sounds like it's melting, or collapsing, into a swirling black void. Elsewhere, the sound drifts into loping post rock territory, moody and meandering, while elsewhere the sound is some sort of twisted FX drenched noise rock, the demonic vokills the only truly black metal thing about it.
Somehow the second disc gets even weirder, starting with some detuned downer rock, a wasted zoner sprawl of woozy, melty slo-mo creep, gothic and gloomy and crazy psychedelic, before the second track explodes into totally tranced out black buzz epicry. Later, the blackness evolves into a weird sort of flute flecked, progged out post rock, only to then erupt into a barrage, of thick churning riffage, and smoldering slow build throb, and then some murky tarpit death metal, butted up against some blackened jazziness that transforms into more furious buzzing blackness, the comp finishing off with the weirdest of the bunch, from Axeman, which begins as a weird sort of over the top cabaret ballad, replete with flanged guitars, synths, and some crazy over the top vocal bombast, only to then splinter into a wild squall of tangled buzz, with some ridiculous, super distorted shreddery, and some classic metal gallop, the song lurching from sound to sound, working it's way through several shades of black only to dissolve some sort of South American / Native American outro, bookending the opener, this time though the tribal drumming, and whistles, accompanied by some inhuman shriek. So weird. And so cool! Easily some of the most adventurous weirdo blackness being made today for sure!
Killer packaging too, a full color triple digipak, with spaced out Aztec influenced cover art, and a huge booklet, printed with silver metallic ink, with a page for each of the band, including art, liner notes and lyrics.
Been wanting to list this for a while, they finally came back in, Aguirre's 180g gram vinyl reissue of this vintage library music lp by cosmic composer Vandroogenbroeck, originally released in 1980. It's kind of a no brainer how cool this is - 'cause it's got striking cover art by H.R. Giger, Vandroogenbroeck was a crucial member of trippy Swiss krautrock psychonauts Brainticket in the early '70s, and weird synth-laden library music is always a good bet too, especially when the tracks are given such descriptors as "mysterious vision, ethereal" and "pathetic, dark, mystic" to pick two from the back cover. To the layman, the music here is not far removed from the electronic work of more recognized 20th century avant gardists. Kind of the hippy version of Subotnick in other words. Eerie sci-fi sounds abound here - the whistling, echoing sounds of the dancing "Asteroids", the abstract unease of "Interstellar Insects", the nervous percussiveness of "Elements", the sweeping intensity of "Lost Planet", the sinister burbling bubbling drones of "Dark Plasma", etc. We could imagine it being used for some outer space, Outer Limits type of suspenseful low budget TV show. Makes for good listening with the lights off, eyes closed, staring into inner space, too.
Oh, and compact disc folks, sorry this hasn't been reissued on cd - not by itself, anyway. But it IS available on the third disc of a 4cd box set of Brainticket albums and related rarities released by Cleopatra in 2011, called Vintage Anthology 1971-1980, if you're interested we can try to order you one, they're like fifty bucks, but does include Brainticket's classic Cottonwood Hill, the Drum Circus album, and a lot of of other cool stuff along with Biomechanoid.
Vaniish emerge in the wake of the demise of San Francisco's goth pop quartet Veil Veil Vanish, whose anthemic album Change In The Neon Light was a dramatic sashay of glam pop ballast and urgent emotional bellowing in equal parts to Interpol and The Cure. Personal loss and tragedy left frontman Keven Tecon needing to re-evaluate where his art needed to be. He rechristened the project Vaniish, recruiting his previous collaborator Amy Rosenoff in Veil Veil Vanish to pick up the bass, along with guitarist Adam Beck and perennial Aquarius staffer Nick Ott on drums. There's certainly a maturing in the songwriting from Tecon that is notable between the two projects, with Vaniish becoming far more introspective, more droned-out, and more texturally complex. The immediate references that jump to the foreground are the very first Dead Can Dance album, which if you were to think of modern day takes medieval chants, let us kindly ask that you refresh your memory on the grimly militant goth-punk album that is the debut Dead Can Dance album. A very taut rhythm section of bass and drum offer metronomic pulses as the ground for Vaniish's proto-shoegazing wash of droned synth and flanged guitar. Tecon tempers his vocals within this archetypally 4AD / Creation production as more existentially circumspect as opposed to the brash hedonism of his former self. This was an album that instantly became a staff favorite here at the shop!
Death & Unity With God was originally one of those tiny edition tape boxsets that Hospital Productions released at some point in 2014. Yes, those six cassettes will be reprised at some point onto a 3cd anthology through Modern Love; but for now, we have this 2lp set which sports 12 of the 20 songs. Missing are a handful of the slug-paced techno torpor tracks from Vatican Shadow; and while the vinyl set is pretty outstanding, the complete package will be found on the triple cd set!
Vatican Shadow is, of course, Dominick Fernow - the man also behind Prurient and the Hospital Productions empire. Over the past three or four years, Fernow has shifted his focus almost entirely to toward Vatican Shadow, using a loose critique of religious indoctrination as the conceptual framework for his spare rhythmic exercises in crunchy Middle Eastern electro dervishes. The precursor this work is obviously Muslimgauze; and the work on Death & Unity With God continues along this same trajectory, linking the distinctly American cult of personality catastrophes (Jim Jones, David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh) with the ideological endgames of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The political rhetoric to this work quickly wane in the seductive power of Fernow's rhythms, and that may be the point. But more likely this disconnect recalls a common critique of Fernow's work as being thoroughly surface oriented with a armor-plated facades of masculinity, intellectualism, etc. covering up something that's hollow, missing, or lacking. This however is all thrown out the window when it comes to how good a producer Fernow can be, with Death & Unity With God being one of his most subtly dramatic piece of modern day electronica. Bleak electrical chorales and dread-inducing rumblings haunt these 12 tracks that are girded upon slowly unfurling spare rhythms whose breakbeats slink with an desert-dry Arabic groove alternating with nocturnally muted techno, laced with arid dub echo, gothy whipcrack snares, and motorik noise hypnosis. There's only 300 copies of this pressing; and these will not last long.
Record number two from these distortion wrangling, psychedelic-garage rock groovy ghoulies. We loved their last record, Ganglion Reef (released on Ty Segall's God? label), and now their In The Red debut manages to pretty much up the ante on everything we dug about the first one, not the least of which is the insane catchiness and ridiculously hook heavy songsmithery. The production is huge, the guitars thick and buzzy, the songs peppered with all sorts of twisted glitchery and malfunctioning synth freakouts, but really all that's in service of some of the best songs we've heard from this whole crew in ages (and yeah, we're counting Segall, Cronin, Dwyer et al). Golem sounds like some mutated hybrid of Queen, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, seventies glam, psychedelic metal and weirdo synth punk, bombastic and beautiful, the melodies massively earwormy, and not the least bit less catchy for being swaddled in shredding psych guitar leads and epic sonic majesty, all of that, and a total nod to classic pop of the past too, psychedelic Nuggets style shimmer and buzz, a little bit paisley here and there, and that's not to mention the sort of heaviness you might expect from an outfit like Harvey Milk, but here, recast as just another perfect part of Wand's demented psych-garage noise-pop WTF masterpiece.
As Friedrich Nietzsche once famously said, the moment he finished his first spin of Loveless, "When you shoegaze too long into the abyss... The abyss also shoegazes into you!" Or something like that anyway. Well, over here at aQ HQ the shoegaze renaissance is well and truly still in full swing, and we're at no risk of tiring of that wonderful hazy abyss any time soon! And from the get-go, on the forefront of that renaissance, has been our very own hometown gaze-greats Whirr. Sway is only album number two from these bleary-eyed swayers, although they have a healthy number of EPs & non-album releases to their name (their most recent being a fantastic split 12" with Nothing which we reviewed earlier this year - whom they also share members with!). This album actually predates that split, but we're getting to it second, and as usual it's a gorgeous enveloping wash of sun-dappled guitar delay, disaffected vocal melancholy, and bittersweet melodic nostalgia. But like that aforementioned split Sway shows Whirr varying up their style a little bit. Sure, it's shoegaze through and through, but there seems to be more of a focus on hookier songwriting - as well as a little more flirtation with up tempo pacing & rhythmic grooves than before, instead of getting bogged in the constant down-tempo mire that so many bands of this style often do. We're guessing most people who've been following this scene of bands are probably already familiar with these fellas, but if not Sway is probably the best place to start - definitely the most accessible outing yet from a band who seem to be going from strength to strength, and for sure recommended for fans of more recent aQ faves like Nothing, Deafheaven (with whom they also share past members), Modern Charms, Alpine Decline and latter-day Alcest, as well as classic Creation Record shoegaze like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Swervedriver, et. al.!
This latest issue of UK music magazine The Wire is full of good stuff - you've got Lightning Bolt being tested by the Invisible Jukebox, you've got a primer on Moondog, you've got sound artist Holly Herndon on the cover, you've also got Liturgy, John Wiese, and plenty more, including another installment in the Wire Tapper free cd sampler series stuck to the cover, yeah. ----* ----* Also Relatively New In Stock, But Not Yet Reviewed : ----* A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS "Transfixiation" (Dead Oceans) cd/lp 13.98/17.98
ABDU ALI "Best Of Abdu Ali" (Deathbomb Arc) cassette 6.98
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE AND THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. "High On Heaven: Live In New Haven" (Safety Meeting) 3lp 38.00
AG DAVIS "Audio Works" (Obsolete Units) cassette 4.98
AKATHARSIA "s/t" (Econo Jam) lp 19.98
AKATOMBO "Sometime, Never" (Hand-Held) cd 14.98
ALASTOR / TUNDRA "The Forbidden Fruit Of Purity" (Slava Satan / Total Human Collapse Movement) cd 14.98
AMBARCHI, OREN "Live Knots" (Pan) cd 17.98
AMK "Bungalow" (Obsolete Units) cassette 4.98
ASS "Live In New Jersey" (self-released) cassette 6.98
AT THE GATES "At War With Reality" (Century Media) cd 17.98
BAL PARE "Early Recordings" (Medical) lp 21.00
BARFIELD, CECIL "The George Mitchell Collection" (Big Legal Mess) lp 14.98
BARROW WIGHT "Unfinished Tales" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
BELLE & SEBASTIAN "Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance" (Matador) cd/2lp 14.98/31.00
BIOSPHERE / DEATHPROD "Stator" (Touch) cd 15.98
BIRTH CONTROL "Operation" (Zyx) lp 21.00
BJORK "Vulnicura" (One Little Indian) cd 15.98
BLACK SPIRITUALS "Live At Disjecta: High Vibration Resonance Vol. 1" (Tapeworm) cassette 8.98
BLACKSHAW, JAMES "Apologia" (Bladud Flies!) lp 23.00
BLAKULLA "s/t" (Mellotron) lp 29.00
BLOOD SISTER "Why Would You" (Grabbing Clouds) 7" 8.98
BOOTLEGS "s/t" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
BOOTLEGS "W.C. Monster" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
BROADCAST & THE FOCUS GROUP "Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age" (Warp) lp 25.00
BRODERICK, PETER & GABRIEL SALOMAN "s/t" (Beacon Sound) lp 16.98
BROKAW, CHRIS "The Periscope Twins" (12XU) 2lp 28.00
BROTHERS OF THE SONIC CLOTH "s/t" (Neurot Recordings) cd 14.98
BROTZMANN, PETER / JIM O'ROURKE / KEIJI HAINO "Two City Blues" (Trost) lp 24.00
BROWNOUT "Brownout Presents: Brown Sabbath" (Ubiquity) cd 15.98
BUTLER, WILL "Policy" (Merge) lp 17.98
CARAGNANO, ANNA / DONATO DOZZY "Sintetizzatrice" (Spectrum Spools) lp 22.00
CARIBOU VIBRATION ENSEMBLE "CVE Live 2011" (self-released) lp 36.00
CARTER, CHRISTINA "L'Etoile De Mer" (Emerald Cocoon) lp 21.00
CARTER, DEAN "Call Of The Wild" (Big Beat) lp 23.00
CHAIN, PAUL "Whited Sepulchres" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
CHAIN, PAUL VIOLET THEATRE "Opera 4th" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
CHAPELS "Night Thoughts" (Obsolete Units) cassette 4.98
CHERRY, DON "Complete Communion" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
CLENT, DJ "Last Bus To Lake Park" (Duck N' Cover) 2lp 24.00
CODE III "Planet Of Man" (Wah Wah Records) lp 35.00
COLE LODGE "RNB" (Death Records) cassette 4.98
COLLINS, LYN "Think (About It)" (Get On Down) lp+7" 35.00
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM "Confessions Of A Mannequin" (Industrial Recollections / Freak Animal) cd 14.98
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM "Corporal" (Industrial Recollections / Freak Animal) cd 14.98
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM "Thin Skinned" (Industrial Recollections / Freak Animal) cd 14.98
CORTINI, ALESSANDRO "Forse 3" (Important Records) 2lp
COSMIC DEALER "Crystallization" (Pseudonym) 2lp 38.00
CRAVING ANGEL "Dark Horse" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DAMON & NAOMI "Fortune" (20/20/20) lp 15.98
DECEMBERISTS, THE "What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World" (Capitol Records) cd/2lp 14.98/26.00
DECERF, JEAN-PIERRE "Space Oddities 1975-1979" (Born Bad) cd/lp 15.98/21.00
DEFYANCE "Amaranthine" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DEFYANCE "Time Lost" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DEFYANCE "Voices Within" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DENGUE FEVER "The Deepest Lake" (Tuk Tuk) cd/lp 15.98/15.98
DESTRUCTION UNIT "Live In San Francisco" (Castle Face) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
DEVIL CHILDE "s/t" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
DINOSAUR JR "Bug: Live At The 9:30 Club" (Outer Battery) lp 21.00
DISSOLVE "s/t" (Death Records) cassette 4.98
DREAMCRUSHER "Katatonia" (Obsolete Units) cassette 4.98
DROP DEAD "s/t" (Armageddon) lp 21.00
DUAL ACTION "Back In" (Bed Of Nails) 12" 17.98
DURTHANG "Passage Beyond The Cold Vales Of Desolation" (War Against Yourself) cd 14.98
EL HIJO DE LA AURORA "The Enigma Of Evil" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
ELDER "Lore" (Armageddon Shop) 2lp 38.00
ENGLISH, LAWRENCE "Viento" (Taiga) lp 26.00
ENSLAVED "In Times" (Nuclear Blast) cd/2lp 14.98/35.00
ESKATOZOA "Cosmic Elements Coalesce" (Bestial Burst) cd 12.98
FATHER JOHN MISTY "I Love You, Honeybear" (Sub Pop) cd 14.98
FEEDTIME "Flatiron" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98
FF "Ffeeling" (300 Mics) lp/lp+blotter paper 17.98/24.00
FUNEREAL PRESENCE "The Archer Takes Aim" (Ajna Offensive) cd 9.98
FUNHOUSE "The Way Things Will Be" (Minotauro) cd 14.98
FURY, THE "Sex" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
GALA DROP "II" (Golf Channel) cd 16.98
GORDON, KIM "Girl In A Band: A Memoir" (Dey St.) book 27.99
GORGUTS "...And Then Comes Lividity Vol 1" (War On Music) lp 21.00
GORGUTS "...And Then Comes Lividity Vol 2" (War On Music) lp 23.00
GORGUTS "...And Then Comes Lividity Vol 3" (War On Music) lp+7" 28.00
GRIM FUNERAL "Abdication Under Funeral Dirge" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
HESSLER, NIC "Soft Connections" (Captured Tracks) lp 15.98
HOLDERLIN "Holderlins Traum" (Zyx) lp 21.00
HORNWOOD FELL "s/t" (Avantgarde Music / Burma Music) cd 14.98
HUTCHERSON, BOBBY "Total Eclipse" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
IMPERIOUS RITUAL "Unholy Congregation Of Hypocritical Ambiguity" (Profound Lore) 2lp 34.00
IRON MAIDEN "Piece Of Mind" (Sanctuary) lp 25.00
IRR. APP. (EXT.) "CTIoU&PREITMoGDoVC" (Errata In Excelsis) cd-r 14.98
JANVS "Nigredo" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
JAUMET, ETIENNE "La Visite" (Versatile) lp 26.00
JESSO JR., TOBIAS "Goon" (True Panther) lp 25.00
JOYNER, SIMON "Grass, Branch & Bone" (Woodsist) lp 17.98
KALEVALA "People No Names" (Svart) lp 26.00
KALMA, ARIEL "Open Like A Flute" (Black Sweat) 2lp 40.00
KID MILLIONS & JIM SAUTER "Fountain" (Family Vineyard) lp 15.98
KING KHAN & BBQ SHOW, THE "Bad News Boys" (In The Red) lp 15.98
KITTY "s/t" (Medical) lp 21.00
KRITZLER, JIMI "Noise In My Head: Voices From The Ugly Australian Underground" (HoZac) book 49.99
LAST TRAIN TO THE SUN "Crawling Around" (self-released) cassette 7.98
LI XI "Meet Me Somewhere" (Sundowning) lp 18.98
LIGHTNING BOLT "Fantasy Empire" (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
LIVING EYES, THE "Living Large" (Agitated Records) lp 17.98
LOTUS THIEF "RERVM" (Svart) 2lp 34.00
LUNDE, ERIC (AKA TRAIT) "Inspirationals" (Industrial Recollections / Freak Animal) cd 14.98
MALE GAZE "Gale Maze" (Castle Face) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
MELCHIOR PRODUCTIONS LTD "Meditations 1-6" (Perlon) cd 17.98
MENACE RUINE "Venus Armata" (Sige) 2lp 26.00
MISS MARCH "That Is All" (self-released) lp 11.98
MORRISSEY "Autobiography" (Penguin Classics) book 18.00
NAHAR "The Strange Inconvenience" (Avantgarde Music / Sad Sun Music) cd 14.98
NAME, JACK "Weird Moons" (Castle Face) lp 15.98
NEW BLOCKADERS, THE & XTEMATIC "Degenerative Themes" (Equation) lp
NICOLE 12 "Playground / Lolita Love" (Freak Animal) cd 12.98
NICOLE 12 "Substitute" (Freak Animal) cd 12.98
NKVD "Hakmarrja" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
NOCTURNAL POISONING "Doomgrass" (The End) cd 12.98
NUDITY "Astronomicon" (Iron Lung) lp 16.98
OF MONTREAL "Aureate Gloom" (Polyvinyl) lp 17.98
OFDRYKKJA "A Life Worth Losing" (Avantgarde Music / War Against Yourself) cd 14.98
OGRE "Dawn Of The Proto-Man" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
OGRE "Seven Hells" (Minotauro) cd + dvd 17.98
OIL THIEF "Obsolencence & Monality" (Chondritic Sound) 2 x cassette 15.98
OLDER SUN "Bad Man b/w What You Need" (Valley King) 7" 9.98
ORB "Womb" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
PEINE PERDUE "Disparitions" (Medical) lp 21.00
PEOPLE OF THE NORTH "Era Of Manifestations" (Thrill Jockey) lp 18.98
PEOPLE'S TEMPLE CHOIR "He's Able" (no label) cassette 6.98
PINES "The Field Journal" (Time Released Sound) 3" cd-r + booklet 30.00
POP GROUP, THE "Cabinet Of Curiosities" (Freaks R Us) lp 22.00
POP, IGGY "American Caesar" (Plain Recordings) 2lp 31.00
POPULARE MECHANIK "Kollektion 03" (Bureau) cd/lp 19.98/27.00
PRATT, JESSICA "On Your Own Love Again" (Drag City) lp 19.98
PREKOP, SAM "The Republic" (Thrill Jockey) lp 17.98
PURE GROUND "Europa" (Chondritic Sound) cassette 8.98
PUSHUPS "Beast Jammz 2008" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
PYONGYANG HARDCORE RESISTANCE "II" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
PYRAMIDS "A Northern Meadow" (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
RODGERS, DEREK / SINDRE BJERGA "split" (Obsolete Units) cassette 4.98
RODMAN-MELCHIOR, LETHA "Shimmering Ghost" (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
ROLLINS, SONNY "Newk's Time" (Blue Note) lp 21.00
RUST WORSHIP "Expulsion" (Obsolete Units) cassette 4.98
SANULLIM "The Psychedelic Years 1977-1979" (Dounia) lp 25.00
SCHMIDT, M.C. "Batu Malablab: Suite For Prepared Piano, Flute And Electronics" (Megaphone / Knock 'Em Dead) lp 19.98
SETH "s/t" (Minotauro) 2cd 17.98
SHIT AND SHINE "54 Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral" (Rocket) lp 27.00
SIGNOR BEN EDICK THE MOOR "El Negro" (Deathbomb Arc) cd 8.98
SIGUR ROS "Agaetis Byrjun" (XL) 2lp 27.00
SILENCE, THE "s/t" (Drag City) lp 25.00
SILVERFISH "Fat Axl" (Southern) lp 16.98
SIR LORD VON RAVEN "The Age Of Machines" (Guitars And Bongos) 2lp 24.00
SIVYJ YAR "From The Dead Villages' Darkness" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SLEAFORD MODS "Tiswas" (Invada) 12" 26.00
SMILES "s/t" (Death Records) cassette 4.98
SONNY AND THE SUNSETS "Talent Night" (Polyvinyl) lp 15.98
SORDIDE "La France A Peur" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98
SPEAKING CANARIES, THEE "Platter Base Must Be Constructed Of Moon-Rock" (Chunklet) lp 16.98
SPECTRE "Ruff Kutz" (Pan) 2lp 30.00
SPELLJAMMER "Vol. 2" (Riding Easy) lp 19.98
STELZER, HOWARD "Narrow Escape" (Obsolete Units) cd-r 7.98
STONE ANGEL "s/t" (Acme) lp 24.00
STONEY & THE JAGGED EDGE "Chasing Rainbows" (Big Beat) lp 23.00
STRANGE HERE "II" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
SUMAC "The Deal" (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES "Calculations Of The Ancient" (Minotauri) cd 17.98
SWAMI JOHN REIS & THE BLIND SHAKE "Modern Surf Classics" (Swami) lp 14.98
SWEET TORMENT "Hell / Ancient Pantheon" (Heavy Chains) cassette 4.98
SWERVEDRIVER "I Wasn't Born To Lose You" (Cobraside) cd/2lp 12.98/26.00
SYNT.TOFS "Radio Centraal 2008" (Ormolycka) cassette 5.98
TACTICS "The Re-Mastered Plan" (Minotauro) 2cd + dvd 32.00
TAYLOR, LILY "The Ride" (Pour Le Corps) lp 14.98
THE AVENGERS VI "Real Cool Hits" (Dionysus) lp 15.98
THEESATISFACTION "Earthee" (Sub Pop) lp 17.98
TIARAS "s/t" (Mt. St. Mtn.) lp 15.98
TOMORROWILLBEWORSE "Down The Road Of Nothing" (Avantgarde Music / Bylec-Tum Productions) cd 14.98
TOO SHORT "Born To Mack" (Plain) lp 25.00
TORCHE "Restarter" (Relapse) cd/lp 14.98/23.00
TRAFFIC SOUND "A Bailar A Go Go" (Lion Productions / Repsychled) cd 15.98
TREPANERINGSRITUALEN "Veil The World" (Cold Spring) cd 15.98
TRUE NEUTRAL CREW "#Monsanto" (Deathbomb Arc) cassette 6.98
TRUE NEUTRAL CREW "#Poppunk" (Deathbomb Arc) cassette 6.98
TURZI "C" (Record Makers) lp 28.00
UFOMAMMUT "Ecote" (Neurot) cd 14.98
UNCLE SAM "Heaven Or Hollywood" (Minotauro) cd 17.98
V/A "Dance Mania: Ghetto Madness" (Strut) 2lp 29.00
V/A "Disco Dildar" (Finders Keepers) lp 27.00
V/A "Nordic Metal: A Tribute To Euronymous" (Hammerheart) 2lp 26.00
V/A "Off The Beaten Tracks" (Grown Kids Radio) lp 19.98
V/A "Punk 45: Extermination Nights In The Sixth City" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 29.00
V/A "Ultra High Frequencies: The Chicago Party" (Numero) 2lp 23.00
VOLAHN "Aq'Ab'Al" (Ajna Offensive / Iron Bonehead) 2lp 23.00
WEED "Thousand Pound b/w Turret" (Lefse) 7" 8.98
WEEPING RAT "Tar" (Handmade Birds) cd 10.98
WINTERFRONT "Northwinds" (Werewolf Promotion / Lower Silesian Stronghold) cd 14.98
XYZ "s/t" (Radical Elite) lp 16.98
YOUNG, DENNIS "Reel To Real" (Staubgold) cd/lp 17.98/19.98
ZERO DOWN "No Limit To Evil" (Minotauro) cd 12.98
ZS "Xe" (Northern Spy) lp 19.98
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