BACK IN PRINT! This exceedingly weird '80s fantasy metal band has another of their many obscure albums reissued on cd! We first listed this way back in 2000, and it's a reissue of a 1983 album in the first place. But these days, Manilla Road is probably much better known than they ever were, whether nine or 26 years ago, now being cited as an influence by everyone from The Gates Of Slumber to Wormsblood, so it's about the time this cd was available again, particularly 'cause it's also pretty much our favorite of their whole weird ouvre (though they're still going strong even today).
When you talk about a cult metal band, they don't get much more "cult" than this one... Hailing from the state of Kansas, but more at home in some sub-Robert E. Howardian prehistoric epoch of swords and sorcery, this band is beloved by the same folks who worship Cirith Ungol and The Lord Weird Slough Feg, and should appeal to bizarre-minded fans of Iron Maiden, Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, Manowar... "Crystal Logic" is a perfect illustration of what's great (and ridiculous) about Manilla Road: eccentric (to say the least) vocals, a totally wrong (tinny, thin, poverty-stricken) guitar sound that paradoxically sounds fantastic & punk, doomy bass, mythological/intellectual lyrics, and lets not forget the so-bad-it's-good cover art... But most importantly, Manilla Road had the talent and imagination to write some great songs, and truly rule their own unique sub-genre of progressive, remarkably catchy garage-metal. This reissue includes the crazed guitar instrumental "Flaming Metal System" as a bonus track. On the album proper, you'll find true Manilla classics like the oft-covered "Necropolis", the doomy "The Veils Of Negative Existence", and the especially epic "Dreams Of Eschaton".
You ever have that problem where you're in an internet sex chat room, and you make a date with some pervy girl for a phone sex session, and then when you call her up it's actually some jerk with a sampler loaded with a sexy female voice telling you things
A few of the callers figure it out, and then it gets even more pathetic as they continue to masturbate, being such geeks that they're turned on by the technical details of the joke (one guy asks, excitedly, about if the sampler is triggered by keyboard or mouse). But most of the guys are so clueless and horny that they're completely unfazed by Kathy's bizarre comments ("I think you might be racist", "I want to have your retarded babies", "I've got a pickle in my ass") and limited vocabulary (she says "Yesssss!" the same way every time), or her deafeningly noisy, Merzbow-level obviously-looped screams of orgasmic ecstasy. We could go on, but we don't want to reveal too much. Just get this, it's the best crank call disc we've heard in a long time. You'll be playing it for everyone you know, except maybe your mom. Absurdly funny.
If I was in a technical death metal band, or a technical band of any sort, I think I would absolutely shit my pants every time Meshuggah released a new record. Or played live. Or even walked by me on the street. These guys are so good. And so heavy. It's really scary. Ultra precise riffing, drumming that makes the rest of us drummers wither up and run home to practice, shredding leads that sound like a quadruple neck guitar played by a four armed guitarist, and song structures that require a degree in calculus to unravel. So what do you do when you have out-tech'ed every band in the world? Well, you write a 20 minute song, that is so complex and technical, it's like the death metal version of 40 Agoraphobic Nosebleed songs strung together. But it's not just technical for technical's sake. No, this is definitely a song, granted a long song, with melodies and hooks, and catchy bits. They just all happen to be draped perilously over the churning jagged musical machinery of these Swedish shredders. So fucking good.
One of the early filmworks from Mario Bava (best known for his horror flicks), Danger: Diabolik is a spectacular, unusual and campy romp of a movie. From 1967, it's an Italian comic book come to life complete with wonderfully mad leaps of logic, a bevy of
What will it take for us to convince you that Mr. Show is the greatest "sketch" comedy show EVER? Thimbles? Fake poo? Wyckyd Sceptre? Marilyn Monster Pizza Parlors? Probably nothing will do it at this point, you're either with us or against us. Us Mr. Show fans have to enjoy our obsession in secret (some of us here even have to sneak out of bed late at night and watch with headphones, so as not to wake our significant other who'd surely discipline such behavior). For those of you who do love Mr. Show and miss anticipating a new season every year, be sated with these final two discs. Not only will you get to relive the final ten episodes, but also enjoy some new items. Like the DVD reissues of the earlier seasons, this one has the usual hilarious commentary with Bob & David on all but one episode. Plus there's outtakes from the first three seasons, bloopers, "The Naked Improv" from a 1998 Comic Relief appearance, "The Grand Reunion" featurette and a Mr. Show Jukebox of songs from the entire series.
Best sketch comedy show ever. Hard to know what else to say. Everyone here has been OBSESSED with Mr. Show since it first aired on HBO years ago. To the point that some of us even spent a fortune buying crappy quality bootleg tapes on Ebay just to be able to see the show again! So we were SO EXCITED that HBO finally planned on releasing all four seasons! FUCK YEAH! A crazy mix of video and live sketch comedy starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. Cross you might recognise from his numerous guest appearances: Men In Black 2, Scary Movie 2, and about a million TV shows as well as his comedy record on Sub Pop 'Shut Up You Fucking Baby.' Mr. Show is brilliantly twisted, offensive and foul mouthed, ridiculous and unbelievably clever, obsessed with sex, drugs, rock and roll, reality police shows, old folks, streaking, British people, and of course cock rings! This is season three and features the amazing Sid And Marty Croft spoof Drugachussetts which is worth the thirty five bucks all by itself. And if you decide you are as obsessed as us, we can also order you the first and second season DVD set!
What could be cooler than a French guy in the '70s, hanging out with naked chicks and teetering stacks of analog synths, making underground DIY futuristic psychedelic new wave punk drone proto-industrial music??? Uh, not much. Particularly when said French guy (Thierry Muller) is so good at it. Longtime AQ list readers might recall us raving some time ago about something called Ilitch and something else called Ruth, both bands/projects of Muller reissued on the Fractal label. Now, those discs are all out of print (why? they should repress!), but the label has just presented us with a collection of mostly previously unreleased material from the man's various projects over the period indicated in the subtitle... and even the stuff that has been available is super rare. None of it included on those previous Fractal cds of Ilitch and Ruth. For the uninitiated, let us say, Thierry Muller was a French pioneer in the realm of electronic/prog/punk weirdness, an "early Industrial" genius indeed! This disc is all the proof you need. There's material from five different Muller led projects: Arcane (1974), Ilitch (1975), Breaking Point (1978), Ruth (1978), and Crash (1984). The progression, if we can generalize, from "band" to "band" is from the more abstract, lo-fi distorted homebaked soundscape-psych displayed by Arcane all the way to the robotic sci-fi FX pop of Crash. But it's all got a kind of tense krautrock meets the new wave vibe, and if you like the likeminded work of Muller's countryman Richard Pinhas (Heldon) you should check this out! You could buy it just for the blissful 28 minutes of Ilitch's 1975 "Un Jour Come Tant d'Autres" and get your money's worth. Highly recommended!!
We just realised that this record, one of AQ unanimous all time favorites, never got listed on the website OR the AQ list. And while most of you may already have this, a few of you are in for a big surprise and a musical awakening. "Loveless" stands at the
That track along with the equally groovy-yet-dreamy "Glider" ep had been the basis for Simon Reynolds curious thesis that My Bloody Valentine had produced some of the earliest jungle tracks. More plausible was that MBV were one of the first rock bands to actively incorporate sampling into their production techniques. My Bloody Valentine had resampled their guitar feedback digitally to created strangely warbling layers of sound and allow for additional tools to build their bittersweet, melancholic melodies. "Loveless" may remain the final testament to the musical prowess of My Bloody Valentine, as Kevin Shields continues to state the claim that another album is in the works... well it's been in the works for over a decade and has no signs of ever being realized. Nevertheless, this album *still* sounds totally fresh and wholly superior to all of the bands that have attempted to revive the My Bloody Valentine sound (Lilys, Swirlies, Flying Saucer Attack, Third Eye Foundation, Fennesz, Chessie, etc, etc, etc).
Perhaps our opinion best stated by former Aquarian Marc Kate: "If you don't own it, I won't be mad, but you will certainly earn my pity." An earthshattering record. Period.
While we wait for the cd to be restocked (hopefully, soon, maybe today!), we just got a few copies of a new VINYL reissue of this krautrock classic. It's an import, expensive and limited of course, but you're probably never ever gonna find an original LP at any price...not sure if it has the bonus tracks that the cd had, but it does have the liner notes. And more importantly, it's in packaging that folds out into a giant cross, just like the original LP sleeve apparently did!! Wow. Here's a portion of our review of this album from when we listed the Garden Of Delights cd version:
Aa masterpiece of suicidal, political Krautrock heaviosity from 1972. NECRONOMICON. Freaky then, freaky now. Psychedelic hard rock that was about as 'extreme' as it got at the time...definitely if Terrorizer magazine had existed back then, these Germans would have made the cover. Not that this extreme by today's blackened metal standards, as there's enough pretty and melodic elements included amongst the fuzz riffage to satisfy the mellower hippie types in the Necronomicon freak-scene. And, they're no Black Sabbath. Still, pretty far gone for '72. The title: How To Kill Yourself. Now that's a bad trip. The very first track, the seven-minute "Prolog", almost makes the remainder of this album superflous, as it's a full, epic encapsulation Necronomicon's heavy prog excess. Theirs is an album replete with stinging acid guitar, heady Hammond organ, and monkish chanting. Ecclisastical choirs wail over trudging, yearning guitar and organ -- shades of Magma and J.A. Caesar. It's like Amon Duul II murdering Pink Floyd and riding their animated corpses all the way to hell. Again, not in any way metal, but what you might call Wagnerian garage-psych... Definitely an obscure but A-list kraut/psych album for those with occult tastes...
Are you tired of mundane, regurgitated, redundant music that seems to be the only thing available these days? Well, Need New Body is the radioactive answer to your woes of uninspirational musical blahdom.
They combine frenetic percussion using drums, handclapping and any type of instrument they can make or find with organ, keyboards, bass, banjo, sax and retarded lyricism that fluctuates from power-alto to a crunchy Carol Channing to off-key group harmonizing all throughout oft-changing time signatures. Ugh. I know it sounds like it wouldn't be good. BUT IT IS. This band is not like any other, and you gotta love them for it. The only other ensemble I could link them to would be Sun Ra's Arkestra, with whom they've played with recently. Their sound is a broken free-jazz that comes together to form different ideas here and there (i.e. the electronic-arcade house-party energy of "Who's This Dude? / Tet No Eyes / Do You Want To Party With Me / Medley", or the arty noisy kraut jam of "Badoosh + Seagull War = Die", or the Dead Milkman sillyness of "SO ST RX") Yes, this record is all over the place but in an engaging way, even if it makes you feel a little embarrassed at tiny moments. An album from NNB couldn't be anything else. These guys rule a strange and infinite gap between Styx, funk, free-jazz, Nintendo 64 music and psychotic banjo art-rock.
Where's Black Ben is the first new record from this band of Philadelphian phreaks in two years! And well, if you've seen this album in the store, you'll notice that the artwork is, um... not all that enticing garish and dayglo, but it sure catches the eye! Problematic artwork aside, these guys totally rule. For fans of Sun Ra & His Arkestra, Hella, Deerhoof and Dada-ism.
There's a lot of weird stuff going on with this Noxagt band. First, it's maybe not the kind of band you would imagine finding experimental drone guitarist Kjetil Brandsal fronting. And playing bass no less. You might not expect it, but once you hear it, it makes perfect sense. And Noxagt has an instrumental line-up that you definitely don't see everyday: bass, drums, and...viola! But once you hear the viola, again it makes perfect sense. And you also then wouldn't necessarily expect to find this band on Rhode Island's Load records, although they fit quite nicely between the neanderthal noise rock of Pink And Brown and the spastic grind prog of Lightning Bolt. So here we are, the second record from Norway's Noxagt, a sludgy thud rock band in the finest tradition of pummelling crunch and spastic clomp. Pretty fucking heavy for just a bass and a viola. Take some Jesus Lizard, some Load rock, some Bulb rock, some eighties Homestead rock, and some modern noise rock (Laddio Bolocko maybe) and mush it all together into a stinky little rehearsal space or an even stinkier little van, and you get this brief (26 minutes) blast of burly, instrumental quasi-abstract abrasiveness. Produced by heaviness guru Billy Anderson (Sleep, High On Fire, Cathedral, etc.) with really funny liner notes by Stefan Jaworzyn (Skullflower, Whitehouse, Ascension, etc.) And the inside is one of those amazing pictures that when you stare at it long enough with your eyes blurred just the right way a hidden 3-D image pops up. So cool!
MPEG Download: "Mek It Burn" [/audio/noxagtmekitburn.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Mek It Burn" [/audio/noxagtmekitburn.m3u]
Yes. God created a new Oneida ep and it is GOOOOOD. Unearthly constructions of aural impairment deliver us once again unto the artfully murky and damaged realm of Ooooonnnneeeeiiiiiiiiiddddddaaaaaaaaaaaa. This ep psychedelically drones its way through guitar drawn melodies and distant, fuzzy, darkly dreamy vocals. "Hakuna Matata"'s 15 minutes is an entrancing ROCK monolith that forcably delivers the nearly signature-Oneida prog-psych-rock kick in the head we've grown to love. This is a must-have for all fans of this band of Oberliners and hopefully a teaser for the next full-length. Might even be the release to sway the many Oneida-doubters on the AQ staff...
First things first, it was just brought to our attention that those Oneida guys actually BUILT A GIANT MUSICBOX (apparently the largest in Eastern U.S.) out of plywood, saw blades, marine pilings and motor parts. Then they put it to good use forming the foundation of this album. Okay, hang on a sec, can we just say, HOLY SHIT!!
Before we were aware of this considerable undertaking, we'd already written the following review. While we have added a few points, we still stand by our initial glowing praise:
A very different Oneida greets us on their latest album The Wedding. More somber and delicate, less propulsive, abrasive and multipersonality-ed, but fortunately still unmistakably Oneida. The compositions and the album as a whole appear to be their most cohesive and even-keeled (in style, mood and tempo) to date. It's a refreshing change from past albums which been very rollercoaster-y with some of the band's strongest and weakest moments right next to each other -- perhaps due to their jam tendencies to fearlessly and freely follow their muse. Having said that, by no means does this shift indicate that Oneida has become any less adventurous, dynamic or challenging in their music-making. Hell, the fact that they dreamed up *and* constructed a GIANT MUSICBOX is proof of this alone (although to be honest, a few of us couldn't actually hear the music box, mixed as it is amidst the usual rock instrumentation, and due to the fact that the giant music box apparently ends up sounding a bit like the synths it's nestled up against). These guys are fucking astounding musicians with a wealth of creativity and chops that show no signs of drying up anytime soon. The analog synthesizers with which they've created some dense, fierce and otherworldly atmospheres in the past have been joined by not only the musicbox but also an impressive string ensemble (arranged and assembled by New York's Fireworks Ensemble's Brian Coughlin) which certainly makes for some of the band's most stunningly beautiful and introspective songs ever. Also contributing to this new persona is the consistency of the vocals which occasionally swoop up to falsetto, but generally linger in the gentle range of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour or Radar Brothers' Jim Putnam. Definitely more psych-folk than psych-rock. Quite a stunning achievement. Highly recommended.
Scottish pop fans, here's something you don't want to miss... especially if you missed 'em the first time around over two decades ago! These highly influential Scots finally receive a long-overdue, respectful retrospective compilation. Edwyn Collins, Steven Daly, James Kirk and David McClymont's distinct combination of sugary sweet jangle pop sensibilities with a wry wit and sharp tongue definitely made an impression on the young hearts and minds of bands such as Belle & Sebastian (on the sticker affixed to the shrinkwrap, Stuart Murdoch is quoted voicing his deep reverence), Heavenly and The Pastels, let alone more recent upstarts such as Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand (Alex Kapranos' devotion is also noted on the abovementioned sticker).
For The Glasgow School, Domino Records has unearthed the band's first four singles (originally released on indie label Postcard Records) along with eleven songs recorded in 1981 which were originally intended to be their debut album Ostrich Churchyard which was also to be released on Postcard. That never came to pass, and the album would in turn be rerecorded and renamed You Can't Hide Your Love Forever and released on Polydor in 1982. Ostrich Churchyard was eventually released in 1992. Also included are two previously unreleased songs -- "Blokes On 45" from a Peel Session and a raucous cover of The Ramones' "I Don't Care" from a pre-Orange Juice rehearsal tape when they went by the moniker the Nu-Sonics.
Beautifully packaged like a hardcover book with an introduction and song-by-song liner notes by Steven Daly as well as a scattering of live and candid snapshots. Recommended.
Along with composing the scores for some of Werner Herzog's greatest films, Florian Fricke was as much a musical pioneer as were his contemporaries Faust, Neu and Cluster. Unlike his contemporaries, Fricke's music is informed as much by music from arounds the world as it was rock and classical composition (in which he was schooled). Sitars, pan flutes and assorted ethnic percussion have as much a place in any given Popol Vuh album as moog synths, guitars, bass and drums. One only need look at his choice of a band name, taken from the title of a sacred Mayan text, to see where Fricke's affinities lay.
Affenstunde, recorded in 1970, was Popol Vuh's first album. The four original album tracks are a combination of dark, droning synth soundscapes, hippy drum circle-ish drum james and improvised moog keyboard workouts. Imagine if you could crunch the bubbly synth era of Tangerine Dream into their dark, early days circa Electronic Meditation and Alpha Centari. In contrast to his later works for film, Affenstunde is much more textural, intentionally devoid of any melody. As a bonus this remastered edition, like the others in this series, comes with an additional -- previously unreleased -- track from the same period. And that cover picture! Hard to resist.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
When I found out we were getting this record, I (Allan) just about flipped. Psychomania!? THE Psychomania?!? The soundtrack -- never before released, as it turns out -- to the creepy British zombie biker horror flick that has haunted my nightmares for years and years, ever since I saw it on TV, unsupervised by my parents I have to assume, when I was a little kid in the early '70s! Actually for a long time growing up I never knew it was an actual film, I kinda thought all these weird freaky mental images of maniac hippie bikers with British accents were my own imaginings from some bad dream but then as a teenager I found out the truth about my childhood trauma when I ran across the Psychomania VHS tape at a local video shop -- "Hey! That's the film I must have seen!" Perhaps you've seen it too, maybe even under similar circumstances (several people I've described it to have had long-buried memories come to the surface, and in fact one of the people who contributed liner notes mentions a similar experience to mine!).
As near as I can remember/surmise, it was about a gang of bikers who commit suicide and come back from the dead to terrorize innocents. Hence the cover tag line "Seven Suicides - and they roared back as The Living Dead!" But I also think that maybe someone gets turned into a frog? Or the bikers worship a frog, maybe? (Their must be a significant frog in the film, anyway, 'cause I remember one and there's a track called "The Frog" on here -- also the studio musicians on this soundtrack are billed as a band called Frog!)... Definitely some weird witchy LSD biker 'sploitation happenin's. A unique formula for a grade-Z flick to be sure. Released in 1972, this film about a cult has itself become a cult film, resulting a last in this release of composer John Cameron's soundtrack music.
While I can't really comment on the merits of the film (I still haven't seen it again since way back when, and while I'm tempted to find it and rent it now, I doubt it could compare to that initial experience!), it turns out that the soundtrack is KILLER. Yes indeedy. From the first track to the last, exploitation film scores don't get much better. It's got it all -- total Morricone/Goblin/Carpenter horror flick spookiness, interludes of suitably weird dialogue from the film (someone's mother telling him she's worried the police will arrest him and his delinquent friends gets the response: "the word, mother, is fuzz...the word, mother, is busted"), and lashings of evil acid rock/funk to further pander to and/or corrupt the long-haired kids to whom this must have been marketed. Repeatedly, you'll hear the band (that'd be "Frog") vamping on a simple but effective fuzz riff, presented slightly differently on every occasion. You can't argue with it, it's good. Oh, and let's not forget the folk-pop biker ballad "Riding Free" as sung by Harvey Andrews. Then it's back to the scary music and effects (was that a croaking frog?).
John Cameron explains in his liner notes that this was recorded before synths were in common use, so "every trick was used: Musser vibes through phase and wah-wah pedals, phased bowed bass, drumsticks inside a grand piano, electric harpsichord through a compressor, Hammond organ fed through a phase unit and Leslie speakers, and wordless solo voice." Thus, experimental ominous psychedelic bizarroid film music that gets our highest recommendation. And everyone we've played it for has been equally enthused. (We wouldn't make this Record Of The Week *just* 'cause of some repressed childhood memory...) Rev up your bikes and ride for the FROG. (Vinyl coming next week, for those who want even more of an authentic '70s experience.)
Tommy, Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Marky. They lived to see themselves reach iconic status. Yet, through intense inter-personal strife impacted by the eclipsing success of the musical acts that followed in their footsteps, these guys seem to have barely enjoyed anything at all. This incredibly well-made rockumentary tells the story of four kids from Forest Hills, Queens who bonded over a mutual admiration of The Stooges and found a way out of their shitty home and school-life by playing music together. It follows their early career in the 70's as The Ramones, playing gnarly Bowery-bum ridden CBGB's alongside other new acts like Television, Talking Heads and Blondie to touring through Europe and Latin America with huge sold-out gigs. Success seemed to shine on them overseas solely, while in small shitty clubs across the US, they were boo'd, jeered, laughed at or the subject of thrown bottles and cans. Simultaneously, their record sales refused to escalate as they had hoped.
The Ramones were a musical force, however. Their songs were brutal, consice and earnest. Their sound was fast, fierce and fucking impenetrable - in the vein of garagey Americana pop punk. But God dammit, you already knew that! Well, you've probably forgotten how fucking GOOD they were. You'll see some pretty amazing live footage inside this over-two-hour film. Early live shows and incredibly endearing interviews with bandmembers (save Johnny) will regenerate anyone's adoration for these boys. Their story also emphasizes the emotions involved in being a Ramone. This is a tragic but important part of who they were. For instance, of the band's original personnel, Tommy (the only one to quit pretty early on), is the only one still alive.
Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy created an inspirational legacy and this documentation does its absolute best to communicate to us their lives' work. It will award you with an awesome fight on stage, a re-telling of their experience with producer Phil Spector, priceless moments of Dee Dee's "other musical exploration", and... aw, c'mon, did you really think I'd tell you any more? I will tell you this and none more: extra features include bonus interview footage and among other things, the Marky Ramone Drum Technique! All you drummers out there will appreciate that little nugget.
By far, End Of The Century, The Story of The Ramones is not only an important addition to any rock collection, it's absolutely informative and inspirational to any musician and/or music-lover. But hey ho this baby's Region 1. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just cut and paste the info into the comments area on the order form, or just email mailorder@aquariusrecords.org. AKIYAMA, MITCHELL "Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep" (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98 AKIYAMA, TETUZI "Route 13 To the Gates of Hell" (DAT-3 / Fader) cd 19.98 AKIYAMA, TETUZI / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / OTOMO YOSHIHIDE / TAKU UNAMI "Compositions for Guitar Vol. 2" (A Bruit Secret) cd 17.98 AKRON / FAMILY "s/t" (Young God) cd 13.98 ALIAS "All Things Fixable" (Goodwithmoney) cd 14.98 ANDEREGG, BRENDON "Falling Air" (Psych-O-Path) cd 13.98 APOTHECARY HYMNS "Trowel and Era" (Locust) cd 14.98 ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI "In Case We Die" (Bar/None) cd 15.98 ATTACK, THE "The Complete Recordings From 1967-68" (Acme Gramophone) cd 15.98 AUBE "Chain[Re]Action" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98 AXOLOTL "Oranur" (Jyrk Collective) cd-r 5.98 AYLER, ALBERT "Live On The Riviera" (ESP-Disk) cd 14.98 BEANIE SIGEL "The B. Coming" (Roc-A-Fella) cd 14.98 BENT WIND "Sussex" (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98 BIZZY B "Science EP Volumes III + IV" (Planet Mu) cd 16.98 BLACK BONED ANGEL "Eternal Love" (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 14.98 BOOKS, THE "Lost And Safe" (Tomlab) cd 15.98 BRASIL AND THE GALLOWBROTHERS BAND "The Band Plays On, The Dunes Move On (Caught Me With My Eyes Closed)" (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98 BRIGITTE & THE HANSEN EXPERIENCE "Frau Hansen Am Bass" (Psychedelic Pig) cd 15.98 BROTHERS OF THE OCCULT SISTERHOOD "Run From Your Honey Mind" (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 14.98 BUDD, HAROLD "Avalon Sutra" (Samadhisound) cd 17.98 CEPHALIC CARNAGE "Anomalies" (Relapse) cd 14.98 CHEVRON "Everything's Exactly The Same" (Planet Mu) cd 16.98 CLARINET THING "Agony Pipes And Misery Sticks" (C + P BC Records) cd 12.98 COH "0397post-pop" (Mego) 2cd 24.00 COLD BLEAK HEAT "It's Magnificent, But It Isn't War" (Family Vineyard) cd 14.98 COMBAT WOUNDED VETERAN "This Is Not An Erect, All-Red Neon Body" (No Idea) cd 13.98 COMETS ON FIRE / BURNING STAR CORE (Yik Yak) lp 14.98 CONCRETE RUBBER BAND "Risen Savior" (Radioactive) cd 17.98 CORROSION OF CONFORMITY "In The Arms Of God" (Sanctuary) cd 16.98 CRAIN "Speed" (Temporary Residence) cd/cd 14.98/14.98 DAEDELUS "Exquisite Corpse" (Mush) cd 14.98 DALE, JON "Son d'Or" (Rhizome) cd-r 7.98 DAREDIABLO "Twenty Paces" (Southern) cd 14.98 DEB PLAYERS "Umoja - Love and Unity" (Badda) cd 22.00 DEBRIS INC. "s/t" (Candlelight) cd 15.98 DIG! "A Film By Ondi Timoner" (Palm) dvd 27.00 DIZZEE RASCAL "Off 2 Work (#1)" (XL) cd single/12" 4.98/4.98 DIZZEE RASCAL "Off 2 Work (#2)" (XL) cd single 4.98 DUNGEN "s/t" (Subliminal Sounds) cd 16.98 EDAN "Beauty And The Beat" (Lewis Recordings) cd/lp 16.98/16.98 ERICKSON, ROKY "I Have Always Been Here Before" (Shout! Factory) 2cd 31.00 ET SANS "Par Noussss Touss Les Trous De Vos Cranes!" (Constellation) cd 14.98 EVOL "Magia Potagia" (Mego) cd 16.98 FANTOMAS "Suspended Animation" (Ipecac) cd 17.98 FIELD MICE, THE "For Keeps" (LTM) cd 17.98 FIELD MICE, THE "Skywriting" (LTM) 2cd 17.98 FIELD MICE, THE "Snowball" (LTM) cd 17.98 FOG "10th Avenue Freakout" (Lex) cd 15.98 FOSTER, JOSEPHINE "Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You" (Locust) cd 14.98 FRANCISCO "Cosmic Beam Experience" (Radioactive) cd 17.98 GANG GANG DANCE "God's Money" (Social Registry) cd 14.98 GHOST "Metamorphosis" (Drag City) cd + dvd 17.98 GIRTH "Living In Truth" (Hector Stentor) cd 9.98 GRUBBS, DAVID & NIKOS VELIOTIS "The Harmless Dust" (Headz / Fader) cd 19.98 HALF-HANDED CLOUD "Thy Is A Word + Feet Need Lamps" (Asthmatic Kitty) cd 14.98 HALL, ARCH JR. "Wild Guitar!" (Norton Records) cd 14.98 HARMONIC 33 "Music For Film, Television & Radio Volume One" (Warp) cd 16.98 HAWK AND A HACKSAW, A "Darkness At Noon" (Leaf) cd 14.98 HYUN, SHIN JUNG & THE MEN "s/t" (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98 ISLAJA "Palaa Aurinkoon" (Fonal) cd 16.98 JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "split" (Very Friendly) cd 14.98 JAGA JAZZIST "What We Must / Spyderberg Sessions" (NinjaTune) 2cd 16.98 JANDEK "When I Took That Train" (Corwood) cd 8.98 KAMMERFLIMMER KOLLEKTIEF "Absencen" (Staubgold) cd/lp 15.98/14.98 KASABIAN "s/t" (RCA) cd 12.98 KILL THE VULTURES "s/t" (JIB) cd 14.98 KIRKEGAARD, JACOB "Eldfjall" (Touch) cd 15.98 KUTI, FELA "The Best Of Fela Kuti: Music Is The Weapon" (Wrasse) 2cd + dvd 33.00 KYLESA "To Walk A Middle Course" (Prosthetic) cd 11.98 L PIERRE "Touchpool" (Melodic) cd 14.98 LAST OF THE JUANITAS "In The Dirt" (Wantage) cd 13.98 LAVAGNINO, ANGELO "Gamma 1 Quadrilogy" (Dagored) cd 16.98 LOUIS XIV "The Best Little Secrets Are Kept" (Pineapple / Atlantic) cd ?14.98 MAGNOLIA THUNDERPUSSY "Starin' Down The Sun" (Mar Vista) cd 14.98 MARZURAAN "Solid State" (Traqueto) cd 14.98 MATHIEU, STEPHAN "The Sad Mac" (Headz / Fader) cd 19.98 MENCHE, DANIEL "Sirocco" (Important) cd 14.98 MERZBOW "Bariken" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98 MF DOOM "Live From Planet X" (Nature Sounds) cd 12.98 MIASMA & THE CAROUSEL OF HEADLESS HORSES "Perils" (Web of Mimicry) cd 14.98 MIKAMI, KAN "Bachi" (Abruit Secret) cd 17.98 MILTON, ANTONY "'Sirens' & 'And Where The Coloured Planes Are Rafts" (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98 MOBY "Hotel" (V2) 2cd 16.98 MONTAG "Alone, Not Alone" (Gooom / Carpark) cd 14.98 MOUNTAINS "s/t" (Staartje) cd 14.98 MOUTHUS "s/t" (Psych-O-Path) cd 13.98 MR. DORGON "God Is Greatest" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 MU "Out Of Breach (Manchester's Revenge)" (Output) cd 16.98 OCS "3 & 4" (Narnack) 2cd 14.98 OKKERVIL RIVER "Black Sheep Boy" (Jagjaguar) cd 14.98 OS MUTANTES "Everything Is Possible!: The Best Of Os Mutantes" (Luaka Bop) cd 12.98 OSBOURNE, OZZY "Prince Of Darkness" (Epic) 4cd boxset 42.00 PARLOUR "Hives Fives" (Temporary Residence) cd ep 9.98 PLAIN RIDE "On The Flow" (Ektro) cd 14.98 PREFUSE 73 "Surrounded By Silence" (Warp) cd 15.98 PRINCE PO & RAEKWON "Bump Bump" (Lex) 12" 5.98 RITUAL STEEL "Blitz Invasion" (The Miskatonic Foundation) cd 14.98 RODEN, STEVE "Ear(th)" (Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery) cd 13.98 ROVA :: ORCHESTROVA "Electric Ascension" (Atavistic) cd 15.98 RUNEMAGICK "Envenom" (Aftermath) cd 14.98 SAN UL LIM "s/t" (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98 SECTION 25 "So Far" (LTM) dvd 32.00 SEHT "The Voice Of The Taniwha" (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98 SHIFLET, MIKE "The City Is All In Your Head" (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 14.98 SMEGMA "Rumblings" (Hanson) cd 14.98 SNOW PATROL "The Trip" (Fiction) 2cd 28.00 STARZ "Attention Shoppers!" (Ryko) cd 12.98 STARZ "Coliseum Rock" (Ryko) cd 12.98 STARZ "s/t" (Ryko) cd 12.98 STARZ "Violation" (Ryko) cd 12.98 TAAKE "Doedskvad" (Karisma) cd 14.98 TAR BABIES "Face the Music / Respect Your Nightmares" (Lexicon Devil) cd 14.98 TARWATER "The Needle Was Travelling" (Morr Music) cd 16.98 TEMPLE OF BON MATIN "Infidel" (Spirit Of Orr) cd 14.98 TERRESTRIAL TONES "Blasted" (Psych-o-path) cd 13.98 THUNDERBIRDS ARE NOW! "Justamustache" (Frenchkiss) cd 14.98 TINDERSTICKS "Bareback: Nine Films By Martin Wallace" (Beggars Banquet) dvd 14.98 TOMOKAWA, KAZUKI "Itsuka, Toky Mite Ita" (PSF) cd 21.00 TOMOKAWA, KAZUKI "Pistol - Shibuya Apia Live" (PSF) dvd 26.00 TWEET "It's Me Again" (Goldmind) cd 16.98 V/A "Cold Heat: Heavy Funk Rarities 1968-1974 Vol. 1" (Now Again) cd/lp 14.98/16.98 WORKS, THE "s/t" (Subliminal Sounds) cd 16.98 ZORN, JOHN "Rituals" (Tzadik) cd 15.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
An old drum kit. Homemade amps. A dented old trombone. A bucket and a handful of firecrackers. The Reeks make a sound that is otherworldly. Dark and stumbling, folk-flecked basement blues. A mix of woozy slide guitar, swampy trombone, sparse and erratic percussion, tape hiss, amp buzz, shortwave interference and dark doomy brilliance. Like a ghostly, indie rock New Orleans funeral jazz band or Roland S. Howard fronting the Dead C. Haunting, mesmerizing, gorgeously raucous, dreamily creepy and absolutely unlike anything you have ever heard.
For years the Reeks played all up and down the West Coast, in basements, back porches, living rooms, pizza parlours, with only a 12" record and a battered old suitcase full of hand dubbed cassettes to their name, spreading their warm cloak of pulsing, droning creepy crawly throb over anyone lucky enough to be packed into the same sweaty space. At once jubilant and danceable, but at the same time, dark and lugubrious, ominous and somnabulent. Lovers of weird music couldn't get enough, but eventually, even dyed in the wool indie rockers began to embrace the Reeks, having perhaps found something that still smacked of their beloved indie rock, but was a little darker and a whole lot weirder than they were used to. But by then it was too late.
The release of Knife Hits is truly bittersweet. After years of recording and re-recording, mixing and remixing, when Knife Hits was finally ready to be released, and the rest of the world would finally get to hear the Reeks' amazing off kilter avant indie funeral folk, tragedy struck. Orion Satushek, Reeks mainman, guitar player, instrument builder and one of the nicest guys ever, was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The personal loss, is indescribable, a deep sting everytime we think about him, his band, his music, his friendship. And the loss to music, to the music community, is immeasurable. Years of playing, and practicing and rocking and sweating in tiny cramped basements and doing with a crappy old drum kit and a couple of homemade amps what most bands can't do with all the equipment in the world is somehow all crammed onto this single disc. These ten songs. The passion, the playfulness, the dark moodiness, the spaced out droniness, the wild sweaty chaos, the sheer joy of making an unholy racket. This record is not only a totally unique chunk of damaged outsider rock brilliance, but it's also a fitting tribute to the loss of a very special friend.
We miss you, Orion.
An old fave, in fact a former Record Of The Week, at last reissued and available again, previously it was part of a 2-on-1 cd with another A.R. album, Echolung, but here it's by itself (with bonus dvd, more on that later). Nice packaging, great sound, so glad to have this back in the store! Here's more or less what we said before:
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (one we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect - spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. A total krautrock essentials. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear it.
This new, artist approved "Achim Reichel Edition" of Die Grune Reise is digitally remastered, and comes packaged with an extra, dvd disc (PAL, region 0, so it'll work in your computer but maybe not your dvd player) that contains an album length 42 minute video interpretation of the whole record ("Grune Reise - Der Film") that looks to be made fairly recently, with lots of trippy computer graphics going on, it's maybe better than the watching the "visualizer" on your iTunes but not much. Chances are, the pictures A.R.'s music will make in your mind are better than this, so use your imagination instead. The dvd also includes a 10 minute "Making Of" feature, but we don't know if that's a making of the album or a making of the video, 'cause the dvd menu/interface is just about the most confusing thing ever and we weren't able to figure out how to access that segment. So, the dvd is a bit of a bust, though again we didn't actually watch everything... and maybe the surround sound feature is a cool. Regardless, the album itself is highly, highly recommended!
So we know a bunch of you bought the Ghost Dog soundtrack, threw it on, and realised you were listening to a completely mediocre rap compilation that had very little to do with the movie, and thought 'What the fuck?' Well, there is an explantion. If you were
First album from 1977 by this South Korean group of three brothers who began to play together while attending their university. Apparently the three, completely disconnected from the greater Korean rock scene, were most inspired by the likes of Australian rockers AC/DC, but lacking the right equipment or technical know-how couldn't replicate their sound. Whether this is factual or not the music of San Ul Lim, it must be said, sounds absolutely nothing like AC/DC; rather, they sound a lot more like Turkish psych faves Erkin Koray, Haramiler, Mogollar, et al. In fact, the second track on this album shared a space next to some of those very Turks on the Love, Peace & Poetry: Asia collection and despite the fact that their tune had been recorded as much as ten years later than some of the others, they sound as if they could have been cut in the late 60's. San Ul Lim, while ostensibly a trio -- with the eldest brother on guitar, the youngest on drums and the middle playing bass -- either did some over-dubbing work or had another un-named member playing keyboards. Small oversight maybe, but the keyboardist has as big a role as the eldest bro when it comes to carrying the solos for the group using a broad array of synths -- a harpsichord farfisa patch being popular -- and electric pianos. On many of the groups songs it seems like they just gave the keyboardist cart blanche to just solo through the entire tune. The bass playing of the middle brother is equally spirited. Not content to merely playing his role in the rhythm section and keeping harmony going, he has a tendency to keep busy with fast moving scale fragments and melodies. It's all almost too much for the youngest on drums to keep up with at times! Definitely something that anyone who dug the HE 6 reissue reviewed recently (or the Shin Jung Hyun disc reviewed on this list) and wants to further explore the Korean '70s psych scene ought to check out for sure. Likewise if you haven't yet delved into these sounds from SK but like the other international psych sensations we've brought you before...
YES! We're big fans of lesser-known krautrock guitarist Gunter Schickert (who also did production work with Klaus Schulze, like, for Japan's Far East Family Band). As soon as we heard that his Uberfallig album was getting a new reissue, we knew it was going to have to be a Record Of The Week. We've been in love with this record forever, referencing it and Schickert plenty of times in other reviews when we want to cite something incredibly atmospheric and minimalistically trance inducing from deep in the krautrock zone. There was a previous cd edition of this we stocked years ago, but that's been out of print for ages. Now Germany's industrious Bureau B label have stepped in and added this rare late-krautrock masterpiece to their ongoing, essential series of reissues of essential kraut / kosmishe albums. And it's on both digipak cd *and* vinyl now as well!
Uberfallig was Schickert's second album, originally issued in 1979 on the Sky label, the follow up to his 1975 Brain debut Samtvogel. It's hard to believe somebody this good didn't record more, or with other people, but we're only aware of a couple later recordings that have ever surfaced. Here on Uberfallig, Schickert's exceptionally hypnotic space-echo guitar work, similar to Manuel Gottsching of Ashra, is matched by fascinating rhythmic pulsations, at times recalling prime Can-like velocities or the circular bubbliness of aQ faves AR & Machines, and some Pink Floyd Meddle era pastoral psych vibes as well. And it's mostly just Schickert (guitar, voice) and a few friends (drums and vocals) plus nature sounds, deftly deployed.
Opener "Puls" is worth the price of admission alone. It does indeed pulse, for nearly 16 epic minutes, building from calmly rhythmic beginnings to pure hypno-guitar bliss, mixed with subtle, splashy, sploshy field recordings - evoking the idea of Schickert and his drummer colleague Charles M. Heuer wading upstream in the wilds somewhere as their music plays. That begins the recurrent watery theme found on this album, an ever present liquid watery ambience, the sounds of wind and rain and surf and babbling brooks woven in among the "actual" instruments. The cover image of an intense looking Schickert suggests this too, his visage overlaid with what looks like the play of light on the surface of water.
The second cut, "In Der Zeit", is a shorter, folkier number, with more surf-sounds and bird calls and a gentle, hushed female vocal, accompanying Schickert's pleasant, repeating acoustic guitar motif. So nice.
Track three, "Apricot Brandy II", as some may guess from the name, is a sequel to the first track on Schickert's debut Samtvogel (wish we still had a reissue of that - maybe Bureau B will do something about that, too). Again with a watery intro, then the nervous ticking of drumsticks, heralding a quietly unfurling, slightly sinister and suspenseful 12 and a half minute, gently percolating proto-post-rock trip. We're hearing some Can circa Tago Mago, and Tortoise and Circle, too, especially with the murmuring vocals chanting "Apricot Brandy" amidst other drones and moans. It's all druggy and delicate, moody and mesmeric. Quite the tour de force, coming to a close with strange samples and lovely crackling.
If that wasn't enough, the album ends with even more haunting mesmer, the aptly titled, the 8+ minute long "Wanderer", slow and spooky at first, with more of that tick-tock drumming and watery splashes. It's got a twilight sound to it, so beautiful and mysterious and mesmeric, like this whole amazing, organic, echo-laden album.
Includes, along with credits and lyrics, new 2012 liner notes from Schickert's contemporary Asmus Tietchens, in both English and German, and also an interesting note from Schickert, explaining that some of this music was used on the soundtrack to a film about the gay community in New York called Brooklyn 11238, which we'd never have guessed...
While we'll state that this is reissue definitely something crucial for fans of Agitation Free, AR & Machines, Moebius & Rodelius, Michael Rother, You, Ashra, and latter-day krautrockers Village Of Savoonga, we should also make clear that this is NOT just for krautrock collector nerds - even if you've NEVER heard a krautrock record before, we'd still recommend this one, obscure as it is. It's that good.
Yet another installment of Scientist-as-superhero LPs has arrived at Aquarius. Here's the skinny once again: Greensleeves finally gets off their duffs and reissues their classic Scientist dub LPs that have been floating around in various bootleg editions for ages now. Not only are they decent pressings, but they're pretty competitively priced to boot (the unsavory LP edition of "Wins The World Cup" that we had had in previously retailed for the same price as these.) Plus, you get the original artwork in all its heroic cartoon glory (possibly some of the greatest album cover art to come out of Jamaica - much of the time it seems people will buy them for cover alone.) With these handsome new editions there's really no reason to own the CD version anymore unless you no longer own a turntable (we do have all these Scientist albums available on CD as well for those who lack vinylability) and there's certainly no reason to waste good money on bootlegs. Let's hope that Greensleeves keeps these things in print for a while this time. The albums in this series are composed of tracks recorded by the Roots Radics band at Channel 1 between 1981 and 1982 which were later mixed by Scientist at King Tubby's.
The dubs on these LPs reside on the very minimal side of the dub spectrum. Not much in the way of additional tracking was done for these records aside from percussion. The rest of the crafting is done by the Scientist behind the mixing board chopping up the tracks, recklessly sliding faders and pouring tons of delay and reverb atop the mix.
Cover note: The Scientist wields not one, but two laser pistols while simultaneously kicking and shooting those pesky Space Invaders as onlookers run for cover. Meanwhile, a brave female accomplice takes out a big purple invader with a laser rifle. On the back cover is a cute drawing of a stand up video game console cum mixing board with the album's credits displayed on its screen.
Greensleeves finally gets off their duffs and reissues their classic Scientist dub LPs that have been floating around in various bootleg editions for ages now. Not only are they decent pressings, but they're pretty competitively priced to boot (the unsavory LP edition of "Wins The World Cup" that we had had in previously retailed for the same price as these.) Plus, you get the original artwork in all its heroic cartoon glory (possibly some of the greatest album cover art to come out of Jamaica, much of the time it seems people will buy them for cover alone.) With these handsome new editions there's really no reason to own the CD version anymore unless you no longer own a turntable (we do have all these Scientist albums available on CD as well for those who lack vinylability) and there's certainly no reason to waste good money on bootlegs. Let's hope that Greensleeves keeps these things in print for a while this time. The albums in this series are composed of tracks recorded by the Roots Radics band at Channel 1 between 1981 and 1982 which were later mixed by Scientist at King Tubby's.
The dubs on these LPs reside on the very minimal side of the dub spectrum. Not much in the way of additional tracking was done for these records aside from percussion. The rest of the crafting is done by the Scientist behind the mixing board chopping up the tracks, recklessly sliding faders and pouring tons of delay and reverb atop the mix.
Possibly the best album in this series, 'Rids the World...' utilizes the most effects and cut up wizardry in the bunch. Along with his usual bag of tricks, Scientist brings out what sound like rhythm boxes and loads them with so much effects as to turn them into proto-synthesizers. It's also the only title in this series that attempts to match the visual theme / title with an audio equivalent: "The Voodoo Curse", which starts the album, is full of ominous effects and several other tracks get vocal intros a la Lee Perry's "Vampire" requesting blood, and other stock horror intros including Mummies, Frankenstein, Werewolves and the living dead.
Cover note: features Scientist crashing a midnight monster party on his sound system loaded air boat. All your favorites are there: the mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf, and more. In the background is the Munster's house and tombstones cover the woods. Creeeeeepy!
Allan informs me to tell all you videogame fans that the reggae music on Grand Theft Auto 3's "Jah 1 Radio" for Playstation 2 is this entire album.
Chunka Bliss is back!!! When Sensational's Loaded With Power came out several years back it was a huge hit here at Aquarius. It made our heads hurt it was so bafflingly fucked up. But man, that was a loooong time ago -- long before the AQ list machine began grinding full force. When you look at the website, the description of Loaded With Power -- entered ex post facto -- is cursory at best. Truth is, we hadn't, nor still have, heard another hip hop artist torture the mic so well. He's the outsider artist of hip hop, dumbfounding all comers with his stoned non-sequiturs and stilted, arythmmic rhyming. God bless Kool Keith, we still love the Octagonecologyst record, but he's in a different league. We can see what street he's coming down and when he's going to make a left turn. Kool Keith is the sort of "crazy" in the same way that your friend who gets really drunk and puts a lamp shade on their head is crazy. Sensational however would be the guy that would come to a party, sit in the corner and make a lamp shade out of cigarrette butts and bottle caps. And somehow it would function in place of the one that Kool Keith was still wearing on his head. Sensational throws so much nonsense at you, that you're still trying to digest the first line before he's gone off on three other random tangents. We've figured that the only way you can keep up with Sensational is to get really, really stoned. Weed is the equivalent of the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy with which one is able to follow along with Sensational. Problem is, once you've come down from it you lose the ability to explain. We'd get baked at work so that we could write more about it, but we don't want to freak out straight edge Andee!
I really love this album.
Championed by Lester Bangs, Terry Allen of NRBQ, and Frank Zappa, who famously claimed the Wiggins sisters to be "better than the Beatles."
Perhaps the ultimate "outsider music" album, there's the obvious element of "so-bad-it's-good" or, for some, "so-bad-it's-excruciating," but deeper listens to the Shaggs yield rewards beyond surface novelty. No, they couldn't play well- the girls felt they really needed more practice before recording an album- but the resulting sounds, existing in realms apart from any usual notions of tempo, rythm or melody- are bafflingly compelling in their expressiveness.
Silberbart's one-off LP from 1971, with its non sequitur of a bleeding silver gnome on the cover, is one of those heavy krautrock rarities spoken of in hushed tones, in record-collector tomes like Cosmic Dreams At Play ("...legendary...extreme...") and the equally authoritative Crack In The Cosmic Egg ("...excellent...schizophrenic..."). It's desirable in part 'cause it's so darn obscure, yes. But also 'cause it IS heavy. In a loose and demented, frayed and jangled, utterly freakish way. The four tracks here (long ones, with great titles demonstrating Silberbart's psychedelic illogic: "Chub Chub Cherry", "Brain Brain", "God", "Head Tear Of The Drunken Sun") are crazy quilt of distorted guitar riffing, acid-fried songwriting, and unusually frantic, strangled vocals. The band's hippie power trio psych is played with an escaped lunatic's "what's next?" abandon, making for progged-out, crooked-grinning, drug-induced weirdness that deservedly garners comparisons to early Guru Guru.
Compact disc reissues of this have always been hard to come by. But we found a small supply and thought that there had to be some AQ customers who've always been curious about 4 Times Sound Razing...it's not exactly a work of genius but it's odd enough to please a few of you we wager!
All you folks who have been in a Sunroof! / Avarus / Kemialliset Ystevat / Jewelled Antler tizzy lately and can't get enough free-noise-drone-folk-psych weirdness, would do well to check out the Skaters, a lesser know outfit from right here in SF. These cats kick up a serious skree, huge swirling clouds of overblow guitars, washes of crumbly distortion, chaotic drumming, all over a bed of caveman percussion and plink plonk ambience. Closest comparison might be Avarus with Keiji Haino on supersonic black hole lead guitar. Or a Dead C / Sunroof! jam session gone mental. SUPER LIMITED. In fact this was tour only, the tour is over and we have the only remaining copies. Released on the Finnish Humbug label.
The This Is Spinal Tap soundtrack album now reissued and remastered, with 2 versions of "Christmas With The Devil" added as bonus tracks! An all-time classic, we don't have to tell you that. "Tonight I'm Going To Rock You Tonight", "Big Bottom", "Sex Farm" and all the rest never sounded better!
Hmm. We really should have gotten these listed a few months ago when they first came out, but we were debating with ourselves about whether we really needed to write a review that explained how awesome the Stooges are or not. I mean, we figure most AQ customers are hip to these punk rock pioneers, right? So basically, our recommendation boils down to this: if you don't have these albums, BUY THEM NOW. If you don't like 'em, we can't help you. But we think you'll like 'em. Some of the most primal yet avant-garde heavy garagey punk metallic rock n' roll ever made. Of the two albums, debate can rage as to which is most essential. We don't need to answer that question here. Get 'em both. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is on the debut, whereas you get all the crazy saxophone freakouts on Funhouse.
Now what about if you do have these albums? Should you buy 'em again 'cause they're now "deluxe"? Well, yeah. They've got an extra disc apiece of alternate takes and unreleased material. Damn!! For instance, the full version of "Ann" on the second disc of the s/t package is awesomely super sleazy -- we love it. And don't you wish you could buy a "new" Stooges album every week? Take this historic opportunity! With one caveat: if you happen to be a lucky owner of the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set, you might not need the deluxe version of that album, as we're pretty such (though we didn't do any exhaustive research) that all the extra material on the second disc also must have appeared somewhere on the many discs of that amazing (and long out of print) box set.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Reissued once again on cd, Torch... is most often referred to as the best SCG album; a good place to start.
The completely awesome fictional (or is it?) Sun Ra movie now available in a swank DVD edition courtesy of the fine folks at Plexifilm. If you've seen this already you know it's the best low budget science fiction afro-jazz freak film ever made, and you'll want this new version with bonus stuffs. If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for? Sun Ra was a genius and also had a sense of humor, this film proves. Made here in the Bay Area by some public television guys and shot on the same sound stage (at the same time!) as the Mitchell Bros. famed porno opus Behind The Green Door (!) this is simply out of this world: the music (lots of live performances), the story, the visuals. Sun Ra wrote all his own lines, by the way. This dvd 'director's cut' restores the film to its original 82 minute length, and includes some truly special features, among them a video interview with the director and producer, and and some silent bonus footage of Ra and the Arkestra cavorting at the Pyramids in Egypt!
And for more Sun Ra dvd action, see the review elsewhere this list for The Cry Of Jazz, a 1959 film featuring Sun Ra and his Arkestra.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
In an attempt to record an album that will induce coronaries in record collectors worldwide, the current monsters of sludge: Sunn 0))), Earth and Japan's mighty Boris, got together and recorded a single track, 11 minutes long, one chord, an E to be exact, with each band handling one of the notes in the chord. Sunn 0))) deftly tackle the G, as if it were a blackened, dying sunn. Earth spews forth the B, with as much vitriol as they can muster. And of course Boris offer up a soul crushing E to complete what is quite possibly the heaviest chord ever recorded. EVER! Unfortunately this is super limited, in fact we didn't get any copies at all. We're currently bidding on the only copy in existence on Ebay right now. The Buy It Now was $25,000, so the fact that the bidding is now at $18,301 and the reserve has still not been met is not very encouraging. But c'mon, three bands, three notes, one chord, eleven minutes, one copy. You just can't put a price on that!
And while we all want to own the first edition of this already out of print triple threat sludge match cd, rumours on several message boards suggest there will be a repress, another single copy, but this will be the timeshare version. For a small fee, you will be able to own, listen to, and gaze adoringly at the cd for a brief period of time each year (determined by the number of buyers, limited to 365, so at the very least you can own the disc one day a year), before a courier shows up to deliver it to the next owner. We'll of course keep you posted.
Tangerine Dream's second album from 1971. While it is a bit spacier and more synth-based than predecessor "Electronic Meditation", it's structurally much the same as the first, with lots of moody dark improv drones weaving and building into mad psychedelic rock jams. Mostly the change apparent here is that various synths and organs move to the fore while guitars, flute and drums hang out in the back, only dominating the sound in the loudest, rocking passages. This domestic reissue includes a bonus track, "Ultima Thule Part 1", an epic rocking single the group released in 1971. This one's also remastered, w/ slipcase, & liner notes from noted krauthead Julian Cope.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Over the years, I have met many people who have taken the pains to make cassette dubs of the "Stalker" soundtrack straight from the video. No longer necessary. Dark and heavy orchestrations and vibrations resonating from the claustrophobic cloak of the cold, cold iron curtain. And one folk dance. Very highly recommended. And if you have seen (heard) "Solaris" lately, you know how beautiful and mysterious it is too. Japanese imports, hence the price (nice packaging though.) "Ivanovo" is a little cheaper because it's a little shorter.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Over the years, I have met many people who have taken the pains to make coldhave seen (heard) "Solaris" lately, you know how beautiful and mysterious it is too. Japanese imports, hence the price (nice packaging though.) "Ivanovo" is a little cheaper because it's a little shorter.
Ok. This is potentially the BEST THING WE'VE EVER SEEN. Seriously.
If that isn't enough, we'll explain a little more. Jon Mikl Thor (aka THOR) is a Canadian body building champ and hunky metal cult icon from the '70s and '80s who got his start doing flashy, stunt-driven, super-human strong man performances (plus singing). These stunts include the bending of a steel bar with sheer muscle-power, then the blowing up a hot-water bottle with sheer lung-power. These became trademark moves as his metal-fantasy concerts progressed. Thor has described his high-concept shows as being based on Norse mythology where Thor (god of thunder and lightning) fights epic battles with monsters and evil warlords. We've seen him perform in person (in recent years) and it is actually kinda like that. As this DVD also proves. And on the DVD, he actually looks like "Thor" with long blonde hair and all, not someone's beefy dad, as he does now.
Thor's AN-THOR-LOGY contains mezmerizing classic performance footage from 1976 through 1985, including a special appearance on the Merv Griffin Show (!) and several rare music videos. As an old flyer states, "BODY, ROCK, SHOW, BAND". That about says it all. If I were Kathy McGinty watching this (see AQ list #213), I'd say "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugghhh!" Basically, if you do not see this, you are totally missing out. Hilarious, kitschy, rock n' roll beefcake fun.
And, we urge you to catch Thor on tour this year. He's still darn brawny, and a master of tongue-in-cheek metal/fantasy/punk entertainment. Apparently these shows will find Thor on a quest "to find the magic lantern" as he promises not to disappoint his fans. SF locals, he's playing at the 12 Galaxies on August 31st w/ Slough Feg...and just might be showing up at AQ for some sort of meet-the-fans event!! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just cut and paste the info into the comments area on the order form, or just email mailorder@aquariusrecords.org. AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED "Bestial Machinery (discography vol. 1)" (Relapse) 2cd 14.98 ASSHOLE PARADE "Say Goodbye" (No Idea) cd 10.98 BIRDS, THE "Birds Birds Birds In The World" (Important) cd 14.98 BJORKK, HENRIK NORDVARGR "Vitagen" (Essence) cd 14.98 BLUT AUS NORD "Memoria Vetusta I" (Candlelight) cd 13.98 BLUT AUS NORD "Ultima Thulee" (Candlelight) cd 13.98 BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY & MATT SWEENEY "I Gave You" (Drag City) cd ep 5.98 BORT, EDUARDO "s/t" (Fonomusic) cd 23.00 CLANDESTINE BLAZE "Deliverers Of Faith" (Northern Heritage) cd 14.98 COFFINS "Mortuary In Darkness" (Razorback) cd 14.98 CULPEPER'S ORCHARD "s/t +3" (Karma Music) cd 22.00 CULPEPER'S ORCHARD "Second Sight +6" (Karma Music) cd 22.00 DOUBLE LEOPARDS "Savage Summer Sun" (Stop It All) cd 12.98 DRAGUNS, GEORGE "Huffing Gas" ((self-released)) cd-r 9.98 EMIT "A Sword Of Death For The Prince" (Total Holocaust) cd 14.98 ETERNAL ELYSIUM "Searching Low & High" (DIW Phalanx) cd 24.00 EYEHATEGOD "Preaching The "End-Time" Message" (Emetic) cd 14.98 EYES AND ARMS OF SMOKE "A Religion of Broken Bones" lp 14.98 FALL, THE "The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004" (Sanctuary) 6cd 67.00 FAY, BILL "s/t" (Eclectic Discs) cd 21.00 FAY, BILL "Time of the Last Persecution" (Eclectic Discs) cd 21.00 FEAR MY THOUGHTS "Hell Sweet Hell" (Lifeforce) cd 13.98 FORENSICS "Hogback Mountain Sessions Vol.1" (Magic Bullet) cd 8.98 FRESH MAGGOTS "s/t" (Radioactive) cd 17.98 FRUIT BATS "Spelled In Bones" (Sub Pop) cd GINNUNGANAP "Remeindre (Latitudes)" (Southern) cd 11.98 GRUPA 220 "Slike" (Radioactive) cd 17.98 HELL, RICHARD "Spurts: The Richard Hell Story" (Rhino / Warner) cd 16.98 ICKY BOYFRIENDS "A Love Obscene" (Menlo Park) 2cd 15.98 IRON MAIDEN "The Essential Iron Maiden" (Sony) 2cd 21.00 KID 606 "Resilience" (Tigerbeat6) cd 14.98 KINSKI "Be Gentle With The Warm Turtle" (Intellectual Drunk) cd 13.98 KINSKI "SpaceLaunch For Frenchie" (Intellectual Drunk) cd 13.98 LESLIE, DESMOND "Music Of The Future" (Trunk) cd 17.98 MILK FROM CHELTENHAM "Triptych of Poisoners" (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98 NETO, JULIEN "Le Fumeur de Ciel" (Type) cd 16.98 ONDSKAPT "Dodens Evangelium" (Next Horizon) cd 14.98 PAINE, ANDREW & RICHARD YOUNGS "Mauve Dawn" (Fusetron) lp 14.98 PHOBOS "Tectonics" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 PUBLIC ENEMY "Power To The People And The Beats" (DefJam) cd 14.98 RILEY, TERRY & STEFANO SCODANIBBIO "Diamond Fiddle Language" (Wergo) cd 24.00 SHANKAR, ANANDA "And His Music" cd 24.00 SOILENT GREEN "Confrontation" (Relapse) cd 14.98 SON VOLT "Okemah And The Melody Of Riot" (Transmit Sound) dual cd/dvd 19.98 STRANGULATED BEATOFFS "Jacking Off With Jacko" (A Pop Records) 7" 6.98 TAKAHASHI, IKURO "Domoir To Sanshu" (Siwa) cd 14.98 THEE MORE SHALLOWS "More Deep Cuts" (Turn) cd 11.98 TIME FLYS, THE "Fly" (Birdman) cd 14.98 V/A "Blank Field" (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98 V/A "Mush Tour 2002" (Mush) dvd 17.98 VITALIC "OK Cowboy" (PIAS) cd 17.98 VOCOKESH "Through The Smoke" (Strange Attractors) cd 13.98 WOODEN WAND "Harem Of The Sundrum & The Witness Figg" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98 ZORN, JOHN "Masada Rock featuring Rashanim" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
We're big ol' Thrones fans here, and so the arrival of a third Thrones opus the other day was pretty darn exciting! It's been five years since the magnificent Sperm Whale, after all! And we're happy to report that Day Late, Dollar Short, despite its title, does not disappoint in any way (though, it's not exactly an entirely new album, more on that in a sec). Now, you know that the double necked guitart/bass wielding Joe Preston -- for he is Thrones and Thrones is he -- has quite the heaviness pedigree. He's played in the unholy heavy trinity of Earth, the Melvins, and SUNNO))), and he's currently the bassist for stoner metal lords High On Fire. Thus, from his one-man-band project Thrones you'd expect nothing less than H-E-A-V-Y, and you'd be right. But it's more than merely heavy. Thrones ain't just rubbery, head-caving bass, lotsa feedback nastiness, machine beats, and throat-rasped vox. Thrones is also really, really weird. As you'd expect from Joe, who used to be in the Melvins after all. There's certainly plenty of Melvins style fuckery going on here!
I mean, after the sheer noxious pummel (we like!) of track one, "The Suckling", you'll wonder what's going on with track two, "Young Savage". Punky and uptempo, with a gang-vocal chorus, it threw us for a bit of a loop until we figured out it was an Ultravox cover. That's then followed by the disarmingly gentle (but disturbingly child-voiced) "Algol". What's going on? Whatever the heck Joe wants, basically. And that's okay 'cause what he wants is to unleash a torrent of creativity that encompasses such things as utter sludge drone dirge, Buttholes Surfers-ish mania, indie rock pop (with some non-effected, clean singing even), drum machines kickin' old school hip hop beats, crazy prog structures, all-out rawk, thrashy riffs, electronic filtering, etc... almost all of which you'll hear in, say, track fifteen, "Obolus", which starts off doing the Melvinsy doom thing but with Bruce Haack/Electric Lucifer robot singing before segueing into a soundscape of bird twitters, bells and chimes, and waves of white noise (this from the "soundtrack" to La Foresta Della Norte). Then there's all the crazy covers that Joe tries his hand at: along with the Ultravox, this includes a Residents cover, a Blue Oyster Cult cover, and yes, unreleased track "A Quick One" is indeed a cover of a portion of the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away". Wow. Not afraid of a challenge, this guy.
And we do mean "unleash a torrent" -- there's 19 tracks here, almost 80 minutes of Thrones insanity, much of it compiled from rare, out-of-print singles, cassettes and comps, with some previously unreleased tracks as well, spanning the years 1994-2001. The lovely, bunny-adorned packaging (Mr. Stephen O'Malley, take a bow) also features personal notes on each track by Joe hizzelf. Here's hoping that he'll find time away from his regular gig in High On Fire to do a real *brand new* Thrones album... but in the meantime we're happy to have this "incomplete collection of smaller projects" all on one handy cd.
Yes! Maximum damaged Swedish guitar psych jamming in the house! Knowing how much we at AQ LOVE the sixties Swedish psych sounds of Parson Sound/International Harvester/Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar (multiple manifestations of basically the same band, whose crucial original LPs and unreleased recordings have been reissued on cd over the past couple of years, a boon to music-lovers everywhere -- see elsewhere on our website for reviews) you can imagine how excited we were to find out that TWO MORE Trad Gras Och Stenar LPs of early seventies vintage were now being reissued by new US label 1/2 Special, who indeed do a bang up job with these two discs. The booklets feature lots of photos and posters, a discography, and detailed liner notes from the band (delving into remembrance of the personal and social transformations of the hippie era). Plus, each disc's got a hefty bonus track (32 minutes on "Djungelns" and 27 on "Mors")! And of course it's the music that really makes these essential.
Influenced by Scandinavian folk music, drugs, radical politics, Terry Riley, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Indian ragas, etc. this is some awesomely messed-up far-out rock music for sure. If these guys were German instead of Swedish, we'd be talking about a Krautrock legend. TGOS, as the final incarnation of group that started as Parson Sound, features a stripped-down line-up playing music that is perhaps more conventionally "rock" based than earlier formations, but definitely the heavy minimalism of Parson Sound and the Amon Duulish folked-out trippiness of Harvester remain important elements of their lugubrous sound.
"Djungelns Lag" ("Jungle Law" in English), originally issued in 1972, collects tracks recorded by TGOS on tour in Sweden and Norway during the summer and fall of 1971. You get extended dual guitar tangle and lovely sad folk laments, brief bouts of sunshiney nonsense vocals backed with acoustic guitar strum ("Dibio"), and even hippie hoedown jaw-harp jams ("Munfiol"). Wherever they wander, this is generally mellow yet moving, always measured and stately even when at its most abstract and electric.
Likewise with "Mors Mors" (aka "Bye Bye"), a 1973 album of tracks originating on tour in Sweden and Denmark in '72, which continues with both the gentle freakiness and distorted thud. The Rolling Stone's "Last Time" gets a TGOS treatment (not quite as blasted as their take on "Satisfaction" found on their self-titled album, though) and again their originals feature plenty of what we dig: moments of ragged Haino-worthy axe attack, tripped-out Quicksilver leads, and lovely pastoral folk-drone...
So it's appropriate that both discs were reissued simultaneously, if you want one you'll want 'em both. What else can we say...well, anyone who buys Acid Mothers Temple discs ought to be sure to take some Trad Gras Och Stenar home too, that's for sure. As with all the reissues from this camp, highly recommended.
Yes! Maximum damaged Swedish guitar psych jamming in the house! Knowing how much we at AQ LOVE the sixties Swedish psych sounds of Parson Sound/International Harvester/Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar (multiple manifestations of basically the same band, whose crucial original LPs and unreleased recordings have been reissued on cd over the past couple of years, a boon to music-lovers everywhere -- see elsewhere on our website for reviews) you can imagine how excited we were to find out that TWO MORE Trad Gras Och Stenar LPs of early seventies vintage were now being reissued by new US label 1/2 Special, who indeed do a bang up job with these two discs. The booklets feature lots of photos and posters, a discography, and detailed liner notes from the band (delving into remembrance of the personal and social transformations of the hippie era). Plus, each disc's got a hefty bonus track (32 minutes on "Djungelns" and 27 on "Mors")! And of course it's the music that really makes these essential.
Influenced by Scandinavian folk music, drugs, radical politics, Terry Riley, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Indian ragas, etc. this is some awesomely messed-up far-out rock music for sure. If these guys were German instead of Swedish, we'd be talking about a Krautrock legend. TGOS, as the final incarnation of group that started as Parson Sound, features a stripped-down line-up playing music that is perhaps more conventionally "rock" based than earlier formations, but definitely the heavy minimalism of Parson Sound and the Amon Duulish folked-out trippiness of Harvester remain important elements of their lugubrous sound.
"Djungelns Lag", originally issued in 1972, collects tracks recorded by TGOS on tour in Sweden and Norway during the summer and fall of 1971. You get extended dual guitar tangle and lovely sad folk laments, brief bouts of sunshiney nonsense vocals backed with acoustic guitar strum ("Dibio"), and even hippie hoedown jaw-harp jams ("Munfiol"). Wherever they wander, this is generally mellow yet moving, always measured and stately even when at its most abstract and electric.
Likewise with "Mors Mors" (a 1973 album of tracks originating on tour in Sweden and Denmark in '72), which continues with both the gentle freakiness and distorted thud. The Rolling Stone's "Last Time" gets a TGOS treatment (not quite as blasted as their take on "Satisfaction" found on their self-titled album, though) and again their originals feature plenty of what we dig: moments of ragged Haino-worthy axe attack, tripped-out Quicksilver leads, and lovely folk-drone...
So it's appropriate that both discs were reissued simultaneously, if you want one you'll want 'em both. What else can we say...well, anyone who buys Acid Mothers Temple discs ought to be sure to take some Trad Gras Och Stenar home too, that's for sure. As with all the reissues from this camp, highly recommended.
Trans Am keeps getting better, their sound keeps maturing, and they keep surprising us. Rumbling analogue synths, vocoder, disjointed drum beats mixed with Kraftwerk electo beats, strung-out Tubeway Army guitars, just the right amount of emotive distortion, tha funky bass, Six Finger Satellite ass-kickin', cheesey low resolution Apple II cover art. The ingredients of a perfect record.
The love-'em-or-hate-'em electronic post-rockers' fifth album. Their Vocoder still ain't broken. Over twenty tracks here, including one that I thought was a cover of Black Flag's "Thirsty And Miserable".
Second full-length meanders from pretty amazing (if completely derivative) boomin' electro lowrider themes to distortion-happy techno. Way less 'rock' than previous album.
Local boys Tussle strike again with Don't Stop, an ep that brings us two new tracks along with the dub version of "Eye Contact" (found on the cd of this only) from their previous, debut 12" of that title, and remixes of said two new tracks, one by Mr. Drew Daniel of Matmos/Soft Pink Truth. You can hear here why folks are making such a fuss over Tussle -- their instrumental post-punk-funk jamming is so then it's now, so out it's in. Referencing krautrock, '80s NYC new wave disco, and Jamaican dub, amongst other hella retro, hella cool soundz, they just kick ass and make you wanna invite 'em to play your next freak party. Hopefully there's a full-length on the horizon, cuz these eps always leave us wanting more.
You'd have to have been living under a rock for the last year to not know about Konono No1, but for those of you who have been, let's recap shall we? Konono No.1 formed over 20 years ago in Kinshasa (the capital of Zaire) and have been performing their own version of Bazombo trance music, incoporating into their sound, more out of necessity than any avant garde aspirations, home built amps and microphones, hand made instruments, all assembled from old car parts and batteries, pieces of wood and various found bits of scrap material. Performing in the city and thus forced to compete with the din of cars and people and city sound, they built their own PA and speaker system, making their sound much louder but also lending it a buzzing distorted sound that became as much a part of the music as the insturments themselves.
The main instrument though, and the one which defines their sound, is an amplified likembe, a sort of thumb piano, which when run through the homemade pickups and ramshackle PA speakers buzz and distort and the melodies end up sounding like some strange sixties psych fuzz guitar. So those distorted melodies atop a wild festive bed of tribal percussion, hand drums, whistles, call and response vocals, it's like African highlife music but infused with all manner of, well like the title suggests BUZZ and RUMBLE.
But it would be naive to think a band like Konono No.1 developed in a complete vacuum. And one would assume that the music scene in Kinshasa would at least in some ways be like any place else, with loads of bands, all playing together, swapping members, that sort of thing, and this record demonstrates that for sure. While Konono No.1 ended up being the worldwide ambassadors for the Kinshasa sound, they are most definitely just one of many groups creating an amazingly vibrant scene. In fact some of the groups on Congotronics 2 take some of our favorite parts of Konono's sound and take them even further!
All of the bands on Congotronics 2 sound at least similar, employing the same basic song structure and same basic instrumentation. Cyclical repetitive rhythms, bells and hand drums locked in dense pulsing frameworks, loose but definitely the backbone of the music, the vocals are festive and wild, a single voice joined by a chorus. Each track is typically one part, maybe two, repeated and repeated with subtle variations, being as that it is an offspring of trance music, this hypnotic quality definitely defining all of these bands, a buzzing looped joyful noise, the sort of music that makes people want to dance and sway and move, eyes closed, getting lost in the mesmerizing repetition.
All of the bands also seem to employ the electric likembe as well to different effect. Sobanza Mimanisia up the distortion, their thumb pianos practically growl, super percussive and blown-out, definitely the heaviest band of the bunch. Whereas the Kasai Allstars employ their likembes as a swirling delicate percussive background, not at all distorted, gentle, liliting and pretty, sounding the most like traditional high life music. The one way in which many of the bands differ from Konono is their use of guitars, the interplay between a distorted thumb piano and a distorted guitar can be beautifully dizzying.
While all the bands are different, those differences are subtle enough that this could very well be a record by a single, albeit quite varied band, almost as if Konono No.1 decided to expand and explore a little for record number two. If you loved Congotronics, then this will for sure hit the spot, and actually the more we listen the more we think this might be even better than the first one. Konono No.1 have a SOUND, and that sound is amazing and beautiful and practically perfect, but they truly traffic in trance music, every song a subtle variation of the song before, almost like they have ONE hour long song that just happens to be split into parts, which we love, like most droning repetitive music, if there was a way to have each track last for six hours we would, but by the same token, one has to be in the right frame of mind to bliss out and trance out. So while this collection is still most definitely trancey, it's a bit more varied, with more instrumentation (one group even incorporates accordion!) and thus ends up being a bit more engaging, especially to the casual listener.
And as if another disc of buzzing rumbling joyful trance music wasn't enough, there is also a DVD featuring live footage of 6 of the bands, including Konono (so for those of you who missed their recent visit to the US, here's your chance to see what you missed). Each band performs live, surrounded by throngs of families and children, often performing in houses, on street corners, people dancing, smiling, embracing, this is truly happy joyful music. And the footage is amazing, allowing us a glimpse not only of these amazing bands, their individually customized instrumentation, sardine cans, milk crates, springs, lengths of PVC pipe, hubcaps, film canisters, wooden boards, tin cans, thier costumed and face painted dancers, their dramatic introductions to performances, but also a look at the people, and the city, and the houses, and the streets of Kinshasa, and the culture that inspired such an amazing music.
In the early 70s, the Capsoul label suffered a similar fate as Stax Records out of Memphis. Great small label, amazing artists, amazing songs -- but in the midst of a Motown big-hit explosion. Founded by Bill Moss in Columbus, Ohio, Capsoul produced some incredible soul and funk music. Musically, Moss had all the ingredients of a great label (he even wrote some of their hits) but his timing in the industry couldn't have been worse. As it was at this time, Motown had just moved to Los Angeles and was quickly growing to gigantic proportions. Sadly, Capsoul went out of business only five years after starting up. Even more sadly, when it did, all master tapes were destroyed. So the songs on this comp are actually taken from 45's gathered by the folks at Numero Group through various sources, including Ebay! Meticulously transferred, they sound totally awesome. The 19 funk and soul treasures are beautifully packaged and feature a couple cool studio photos. Extensive liner notes detail a bit of the label, its artists and historical context.
Without a doubt the Numero Group is becoming one of our favorite labels over the last few years. Releasing such tasty reissues with classy and informative packaging, a distinct aesthetic and most importantly amazing sounds that deserve to be heard! This time out they have excavated a lost treasure down in Florida. The short lived Deep City label put out a slew of totally rich 45's that unfortunately never made their way much past the confines of Florida. The core of the Deep City label were three high school teachers and former marching band members Willie Clarke, Johnny Pearsall, and Arnold Albury. They began recording in small studios with local artists like Clarence Reid (who some of you might know later would be known as Blowfly) and a then preteen Betty Wright. The sound that emerged was so gut hitting, soul wrenching, and totally right on. The warmth in these recordings makes you lament where soul music has gone in the last few decades, getting it so wrong with its slick glossy overproduction. Fans of the recent Searching For Soul comp on Luv N' Haight make sure you check this out as it's just as strong an offering as that amazing comp. If you are a big soul affieciando you might remember a few of the artists on this comp from the Soul Jazz comp Miami Sound a few years back but none of these tracks have been reissued until now and wow do these songs hit the spot. Highly Recommended!
