Aquarius Records closed in 2016. This site is an archive — a place to rediscover their extraordinary music recommendations. Nothing here is for sale.
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1/3 OCTAVE BANDFading Light From Distant Suns(Celebrate Psi Phenomena)cd-r$ 10.98
1/3 Octave Band's sound is a slowly unfolding haze of purposeful minor key guitar strum that dissolves into rumbling guitar shimmer and warm chordal washes of hum and fuzz and occasional electronic buzz. Buried in the gossamer layers of sound are
1349Revelations Of The Black Flame + Works Of Fire Live (Deluxe)(Candlelight)2cd$ 13.98
A quick look online reveals a crazy amount of negative feedback and terrible reviews for this, the newest record from Norwegian black metal supergroup 1349. Most of that negativity stems from the fact that everyone seemed to be hoping for a Hellfire Part 2. Hellfire being their last record, a frenetic non stop blast of frenzied lightning speed berserk blackened buzz. Which is strange, because we were actually hoping for something different. Hellfire was SO fast, and SO relentless, so much so that in many places it just became a furious black blur, which is fine, and we do love that record, but where does a band go from there? Certainly not faster, but somehow, faster seemed to be what most folks expected. What we can tell you is no one expected THIS. Slower. Weirder. Even a Pink Floyd cover. Could this really be 1349? It is, and it's awesome. Dark and lurching doom-ed blackness, shades of Celtic Frost for sure (whose Tom G. Warrior did some production work here). So fuck the haters, we already have a Hellfire, this is something way more interesting and original. The record opens with some anguished screams, which give way to a long drifting dronescape, deep rumbling dark ambience, thick and layered, caustic and ominous, before finally lurching into song, but not in a black blast, more of a chugging pound, a little bit of tangled blackness, and then woozy, midtempo meander, atonal chords, off kilter rhythms, lots of start and stop, the tempo sort of sea sick, the vibe still WAY sinister, but much more abstract and avant, and way doomier, and it suits them. At first it seemed like maybe drummer Frost was wasted here, but finally, he has the opportunity to do something other than blast maniacally. The second track is more of the same, a lumbering doomy bit of avant blackness, with gnarled riffs, simple pounding percussion, the arrangement mathy and convoluted, sounding more like Thorns or Khold or Tulus, which is a very good thing. The record does offer up some blasting black metal, but not a whole lot, as one disgruntled reviewer put it "there's like maybe 10 minutes of ACTUAL black metal on the whole record!", which is true, the majority of the record is still 'black', but much weirder, slower, atmospheric, with a few straight up ambient tracks, long snarling dronescapes, spaced out stretches of gauzy piano wrapped in streaks of feedback, and bits of glitchy buzz, drifty chunks of guitar flecked rumble and whir, all butted up against awesomely twisted bits of black doom weirdness. One of the best tracks sounds like a Deathspell Omega jam slowed way down, "Uncreation" is all woozy and tangled and almost gothy at points, but with cool bursts of staccato almost industrial sounding chug, and those dense black riffs, pulled apart and wrapped around the pounding rhythms. The record closes with the haunting "At The Gate..." which begins like some doomdrone record, all downtuned guitar drone, thickening and sprawling like some noxious black cloud, it eventually splinters into a song, but all that means is the wall of guitar buzz and grinding low end is peppered with occasional drum pound, distant guitar leads, and super creepy processed vocals, before eventually blissing out and drifting off. And let's not forget the Pink Floyd cover. It's almost unrecognizable, but for THAT bass line, super fuzzy and distorted, drifting through swirling layers of effects, the vocals whispered and doused in delay, the drums a machinelike pound, the guitars unfurling all manner of strange sounds, drones and whirs and shrieks and buzzes, no proper riffs, it's the bass and drums that drive this track, the guitars left to fill in the surrounding space with all manner of blurred black ambience. Haunting and spaced out but still plenty black. As if that weren't enough, while we have 'em, Revelations comes housed in a slipcover, with a bonus disc, a live recording, from in Sweden in 2005, raw and lo-fi and fierce and furious, perfect for folks still hankering for some Hellfire, this should definitely satisfy, meanwhile, the rest of us can revel in 1349's strange new direction. WAY recommended.
16-17Gyatso(Savage Land)cd$ 14.98
WARNING: You -should- play this loud. But still, be careful! Make sure any of your easily-aggravated housemates aren't asleep. Move breakable objects out of the way. Take your heart medication. All reasonable precautions before subjecting yourself to the might of 16-17's newly reissued Gyatso. The music of Switzerland's 16-17 has been called industrial free jazz. And it's certainly got the swarming, squealing saxophones of the most freaked out free jazz we've heard. But with its industrial/metallic elements, the BRUTAL trance-inducing grind of martial drumming and guitar chuggery, maybe "free" jazz isn't the word. How 'bout "totalitarian jazz"? When we previously highlighted the two-cd Early Recordings collection of 16-17's '80s output, we described the band as the "Gods of ultra extreme hardcore free jazz post punk whatthefuck". Ok, that's about right. Well, Gyatso, originally released in 1994 on Kevin Martin's long gone Pathological imprint (home to Martin's projects like Techno Animal, God, and Ice, as well as crucial discs by Oxbow, Peter & Caspar Brotzmann, Terminal Cheesecake, Zeni Geva, etc.) was even more insane than the stuff on Early Recordings, being to us the pinnacle of 16-17's recorded existence. The thing is, this album takes their earlier excesses into a whole new realm, finally getting their music the heavy duty production treatment it deserved. It's about the heaviest "jazz" ever! Basically, imagine Godflesh teamed up with Peter Brotzmann and this is about what you'd get. The aggressive, constantly-escalating tension of machine-gunning opener "Attack-Impulse" pretty much wipes the floor with all other contenders, going beyond the likes of Zorn's Painkiller or fellow Swiss maniacs Alboth! It simply kills. Having done so, for the rest of the disc 16-17 make sure you stay good and dead with an expansive onslaught of repetitive, rigid rhythms and psychedelic skree-scapes, with brassy bass drone and high-end sax skronk swimming in an ominous electronic miasma. A couple extra-noisy remixes are included at the end to wrap things up in the most extreme manner possible. (These appeared on the original version too.) The trio responsible for making this masterwork consisted of Alex Buess (screaming saxophones and bass clarinet), Markus Kneubuhler (guitar, electronics and tapes), and the relentless Knut Remond on drums. Also, this disc features a couple very special guests: on utterly sick, thuddering bass, there's Ben "G.C." Green of (indeed) Godflesh fame. And providing electronic samples, Pathological head honcho Kevin Martin. This essential reissue has been digitally remastered by Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and comes with a thick booklet of extensive new liner notes based on interviews with Buess and Martin, discussing the history of the band. We were fascinated to learn that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine was such a big fan of 16-17 that back in 1995, he actually invited Alex Buess to work with him on the (still unrealized) follow up to Loveless! Who would have guessed? Apparently Alex spent a month in the studio with MBV, without much to show for it unfortunately... though we'd be still interested to hear what they were up to.. But, it surely couldn't be anything like this, there's nothing better as far as "ultra extreme hardcore free jazz industrial" or whatever is concerned!!
3 LEAFSCanal Smarts(self-released)lp$ 14.98
Latest from these San Francisco psychedelic space rockers, and yet another record that has us wondering what it is exactly that keeps these guys from being huge. Sure here at aQ, we sell TONS of 3 Leafs records, but they've yet to start getting the sort of broader attention bestowed on many of their spacey / psychedelic brethren. Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, White Hills, Burnt Hills, etc. If you're into ANY of those bands, or just into space rock and psych rock and have somehow managed to miss out on these guys, now's the time to remedy that. And Canal Smarts is as good a place to start as any. With the band expanded to a sextet, including Anthony from Ezeetiger, Tim Cohen of the Fresh & Onlys, and Chris Cones, Canal Smarts starts things off with a sidelong slowburn sprawl, that might be the best thing we've heard from these guys yet. A thick crunchy bassline is looped and sent drifting into the ether, the drums are super minimal, a skittery shuffle, the guitars aren't riffing or chugging, instead they're emitting clouds of vaporous drift, of crystalline shimmer, and blurred chordal whir, the whole thing laced with intercepted cell phone calls, of what sounds like whirring organs, the mix heavily panned so sounds seems to be drifting from speaker to speaker, there are vocals too, some ethereal and angelic, others reverbed and croony, and throughout, there seems to be a miasma of random sounds, voices, percussion, strange production, random FX, a heady blurred swirl of droned out psychedelia, that seems to us like one of those long form Miles Davis space-jazz mega jams reimagined via modern psychedelic drug rock. There also seems to be a bit of Necks going on, that same sort of super minimal looped jazziness, mesmerizing and hypnotic, repetitive and circular, the sidelong epic unfurling as a slowly building sonic smoldering, that spends its second half winding down, becoming more spare and sparse, the rhythms fragmenting, much of the effects heavy atmospheres dissipating, leaving something almost poppy, with some proper vocals, a sort of slow motion psych pop drift, that disappears into a cloud of tangled melody and gradually fading shimmer. And that's just the A side! The flipside starts off with the oddly titled "Guacamole Window" (the band seem to have a thing for goofy titles), a surprisingly propulsive jam, urgent busy bassline over a skittery rhythmic shuffle forming the framework, while the rest of the band fill the rest of the space, with wildly looped samples, dense swirls of FX, clipped vox, plenty of industrial whir, more vocals, which give the song an almost old school post punk vibe, there are tangles of psyche guitar in there too, but so doused in effects they barely sound like guitars, spidery melodies underpin the proceedings, and near the song's end, the guitars grow more distorted and angular, the bass even buzzier and busier, the vocals sent careening back and forth, distorted and dubbed out, the song finishing off in a blaze of wild sonic chaos. And then finally, the comparatively low key title track finishes things off, with a slithery funky bassline, plenty of heavily effected percussion, and more vocals, another chunk of abstract psych pop, that seems to slowly coming apart, a dubbed out bit of psychedelic minimalism, that mixes classic melodies with fluttery dubbed out effects, guitars drift in and out, the whole thing delightfully druggy and dreamy, and the perfect spacey wind-down. Yet another kick ass record from 3 Leafs, with apparently another one on the way any day now! We can't recommend these guys, or this record, highly enough, especially for all of you into spacey psych (and we know that's a LOT of you), and who knows, maybe this will be the record that finally pushes them to the next level. But heck, if not this one, maybe the next one, or the next one, or the next one... LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
3+Kazesarai [Deluxe Version](Time Released Sound)cd$ 60.00
Another list, another fantastic new release from local label Time Released Sound. By now, regular readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with the musical focus of TRS: gorgeous field recording flecked ambience, pastoral dream folk, hushed, haunting dronemusic, gentle electronic soundscapery, lush cinematic shimmers; each record another glimmering facet in TRS's prismatic world of sound. Their latest melancholy musical missive comes from Japanese pianist/soundscaper Masashi Shiraishi, aka 3+, who sets his delicate crystalline piano pieces amidst the rustle of crashing waves, letting his softly reverbed notes drift through fields of ephemeral electronics, or settle gracefully like leaves falling from Autumn trees. Imagine Ryuichi Sakamoto, set up on a grassy hilltop on the coast, above a grey sea, the waves crashing on the rocks far below. Occasionally strings drift in, adding a bit of near symphonic gravitas. In places, this blissed out melancholia is threatened by swaths of deep resonant buzz, or alternately flecked with the distinctive twang of a mouth harp, or even woven into a brooding dark jazz reminiscent of The Necks or Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. There are moments of soundtrack like mood music, heart wrenching and dreamlike, there are moments where the piano is wrapped in a dense fog of modern minimalism, all rib cage rattling low end, and gristly, glitchy static, and there are moments where the individual notes seem to bleed and blur into woozy swaths of sound, but throughout it all, Shiraishi proves a master of mood and melancholy, the sounds here grey and cloudy and windswept, darkly dreamy and really quite divine. As always, there are two versions, the standard, which comes in a full color digipak and is limited to 200 copies, and the ultra fancy, meticulously handmade, deluxe version, limited to just 90 copies, of which we have a tiny handful, housed in a 6" square collaged green envelope, which in turn is wrapped in a hand stamped and tagged, translucent vellum outer envelope, held shut by a full tissue 'obi' made from the pages of a 50 year old book on Bonseki (tray landscape art, a little like Bonsai). The 'obi' can be removed, and wrapped around a votive candle to make a miniature paper lantern. There's also a second inner sleeve made from the pages of a vintage book of Japanese flower and pattern design! Phew! Fans of Anton Batagov and Lubomyr Melnyk, this comes HIGHLY recommended!!
3+Kazesarai [Regular Version](Time Released Sound)cd$ 14.98
Another list, another fantastic new release from local label Time Released Sound. By now, regular readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with the musical focus of TRS: gorgeous field recording flecked ambience, pastoral dream folk, hushed, haunting dronemusic, gentle electronic soundscapery, lush cinematic shimmers; each record another glimmering facet in TRS's prismatic world of sound. Their latest melancholy musical missive comes from Japanese pianist/soundscaper Masashi Shiraishi, aka 3+, who sets his delicate crystalline piano pieces amidst the rustle of crashing waves, letting his softly reverbed notes drift through fields of ephemeral electronics, or settle gracefully like leaves falling from Autumn trees. Imagine Ryuichi Sakamoto, set up on a grassy hilltop on the coast, above a grey sea, the waves crashing on the rocks far below. Occasionally strings drift in, adding a bit of near symphonic gravitas. In places, this blissed out melancholia is threatened by swaths of deep resonant buzz, or alternately flecked with the distinctive twang of a mouth harp, or even woven into a brooding dark jazz reminiscent of The Necks or Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. There are moments of soundtrack like mood music, heart wrenching and dreamlike, there are moments where the piano is wrapped in a dense fog of modern minimalism, all rib cage rattling low end, and gristly, glitchy static, and there are moments where the individual notes seem to bleed and blur into woozy swaths of sound, but throughout it all, Shiraishi proves a master of mood and melancholy, the sounds here grey and cloudy and windswept, darkly dreamy and really quite divine. As always, there are two versions, the standard, which comes in a full color digipak and is limited to 200 copies, and the ultra fancy, meticulously handmade, deluxe version, limited to just 90 copies, of which we have a tiny handful, housed in a 6" square collaged green envelope, which in turn is wrapped in a hand stamped and tagged, translucent vellum outer envelope, held shut by a full tissue 'obi' made from the pages of a 50 year old book on Bonseki (tray landscape art, a little like Bonsai). The 'obi' can be removed, and wrapped around a votive candle to make a miniature paper lantern. There's also a second inner sleeve made from the pages of a vintage book of Japanese flower and pattern design! Whew! Fans of Anton Batagov and Lubomyr Melnyk, this comes HIGHLY recommended!!
3RD BASSThe Cactus Album(Def Jam)lp$ 21.00
With this recent vinyl resurgence / renaissance, all sorts of classic hip hop records have been getting reissued, which has had us listening to lots of old favorites, and debating which are the best classic hip hop records. Sure Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions was mentioned, as was De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising. Scott suggested Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders. We even got to discussing more obscure selections, the D.O.C.'s No One Can Do It Better, Son Of Bazerk's Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk (remember "The Band Get Swivey On The Wheels"?), Allan even suggested Kwame, which got us talking about the Black Sheep, the Dream Warriors, anyway, we were deep in one of these debates, when what should show up in the shop, but The Cactus Album by 3rd Bass. And at least for one of us, the decision was made. Two white Jewish kids from Brooklyn, who somehow made one of the coolest, hookiest, funnest and funniest records of that era. All it should take is a quick listen to "Sons Of 3rd Bass", the whole song built from samples of Blood, Sweat And Tears' "Spinning Wheel", and holy shit it's so good, the bleating horns, the ominous piano, the way they take the horn part, loop it and turn it into a crazy stuttery melody, and the flows of both MC's, Serch and Prime Minister Pete Nice, Serch is the goofy one, but with a crazy nimble tongue, while Pete Nice's deliver is darker and more serious, perfect foils, and the lyrics are equal parts clever wordplay and cutting disses, and the music, no surprise it's so good as it's produced by both Prince Paul AND the Bomb Squad. You've probably heard "The Gas Face", which was the big hit, it's a goofy jam, but it's also pretty great, another meticulously arranged sample heavy jam, with some sweet disses (the whole song is essentially a dis), but beyond the goofiness of that track, and the various skits, there's some seriously classic hip hop going on, the loping, jazzy, almost LL Cool J sounding "Monte Hall", the drum heavy stutter of "Soul In The Hole", and then there's the other 'hit' single, "Wordz Of Wizdom", the other classic on the Cactus Album, with samples of "Dream Weaver", even some Steely Dan, the whole thing (like a lot of hip hop of the time) wound around the 'Amen' break by The Winstons, then there's the horn flecked, woozy bass driven groover "Product Of The Environment", we could go on, but pretty much every track here is killer. And while they sample all the usual suspects, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the Commodores, the Meters, Kool & The Gang, they also get pretty weird, nabbing samples from Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, the Doors, even Steve Martin! So yeah, so many great records from that era, but for now, we've voting 3rd Bass, and giving all those others the Gas Face!!!
5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T, THE (MUSIC BY FREDERICK HOLLANDER)OST(Film Score Monthly)3cd$ 32.00
We've never been much for musicals. Sure Jesus Christ Superstar had its moments. So did Godspell. And Hair. Hell, some of us even saw Annie and Evita when we were kids. But musicals definitely just seem to rub us the wrong way. Overly dramatic and hammy, the songs cloying and annoyingly earwormy. But then there's this. A live action motion picture musical, conceived of, and written by, none other than Dr. Seuss! A twisted Technicolor fantasy, the story of a young boy who hated practicing the piano, and the evil piano teacher who kidnaps him, and 499 other children, to play his insidious tune on a custom built 5000 key piano, and who also kidnaps and brainwashes the boy's mother, only to be rescued (spoiler alert) by a friendly sympathetic plumber! The movie was a only a middling success when it was first released in 1953, as it turned out to be a bit too scary for children (it's practically psychedelic as well), and thus ended up a cult classic, with viewings playing out like Rocky Horror screenings, the crowd singing along and reciting the dialogue along with the characters. The interesting thing is, that much of the music composed for the film was cut from the final edit, and when we originally carried the single disc version of this soundtrack way back when, it was woefully incomplete. But this right here is as about as complete as it gets, delivering not only the soundtrack as it's heard in the film, but also alternate versions, composer sketches, preproduction material, instrumental orchestral tracks, and most excitingly of all, the soundtrack as it was originally conceived and composed, with all the original cues, songs, ballets, and more. It's fantastical and over the top: sumptuous '50s orchestral arrangements meet soaring swoonsome strings meet marching band numbers and of course there are the various numbers sung in loopy Dr. Seussian rhymes, it's pretty far out, a twisted Seussian musical, that even removed from the incredible visuals, still sounds so fantastic. Originally, the movie was planned to be a vehicle for Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby (as the evil Dr. T and the plumber, respectively... how crazy would that have been?!), but they ended up casting relative unknowns, and the story itself was both an anti-Hitler allegory and an all encompassing anti authoritarian manifesto (focused specifically on the looming threat of the atomic bomb), but all of that stuff was very subtle, hidden underneath clever wordplay, a fantastical plot, and incredible costumes and sets. If you haven't seen it, you should, it's fun and funny and freaky, often compared to The Wizard Of Oz too, for its whole "It was all just a dream... Or was it???" premise, but all told, it's definitely the music that seals the deal, composed by Frederick Hollander, it's creative and inventive and playful and occasionally over the top, occasionally sweeping and dramatic, but always totally mesmerizing and catchy, whether goofy and fun and frolicky, or ominous and sinister. First check out "Ten Happy Fingers", that's the song Dr. T plans on having his kidnapped children play on the giant piano, it's super catchy, and that melody resurfaces throughout, but quickly, the soundtrack shifts, and the orchestra begins to weave gorgeous soundscapes of shimmery strings, and moaning horns, classic soundtrack stuff for sure, epic and majestic and darkly moody, sweeping and soaring, lovely and dreamy and mysterious, there are ballads, "Many Questions" is all torch songy, "Hypnotic Chant" sounds like a classic movie musical duet, but just a little bit twisted, it is the part where Dr. T is hypnotizing the mother after all! Then there's Dr. T's "Do Re Mi" where he sings about his favorite note, which is of course ME. Probably the most famous song is "Dungeon Shlim Shlam" also known as "The Dungeon Ballet", which is one of the best parts of the movie, where all the NON piano players are sent to a dungeon to play, well "What other instruments are there??", so they end up playing all sorts of fantastical made up instruments. "The Dressing Song" is one of the wackier tracks, and the one with the most obviously Seussian lyrics, "Get Together Weather" is another track with Seuss heavy wordplay, and so it goes. We could go track by track by track, but it's all just so good. Old timey for sure, but a lot of this stuff definitely sounds timeless. And the extras, WOW. The alternate versions are definitely worthwhile, and the liner notes go into extraordinary detail about just how they differ, and why there are multiple versions. And then there are the orchestral tracks, which are gorgeous, so lush and lovely and beautifully orchestrated, but it's the composer sketches and pre production material that we find ourselves listening to more than we expected, low fidelity recordings, very scratchy, but so lovely, just solo piano versions of the various tracks, which speaks to their timelessness, even sans orchestra and vocalists, these songs are incredible, and those skeletal versions definitely offer a unique glimpse into the process. And then of course, for folks who just want to listen to the songs EXACTLY the way they are in the movie, there is a soundtrack cut, with all the extras and cut songs and alternate versions removed, so it plays just like the film. So incredible, and incredibly curated. A true labor of love. The liner notes are extensive and super interesting, the story of the composer, of the film, and most impressively, track by track notes about each song's placement, and inspiration, and what scene it accompanies in the film. Tons of photos and anecdotes and pretty much anything and everything you could ever want to know about what is quite possibly one of the most enchantingly dreamy AND disturbingly nightmarish kids' films ever. And most definitely one of our all time faves!
5IVEHesperus(Tortuga)cd$ 14.98
The cover photo on this digipack release shows placid waters, probably some sheltered harbor near Boston, from whence this guitar-drums two-piece hail. The photo on the interior gatefold also depicts relatively calm seas. But the sonic waves that 5ive stir up are something else, bigger and meaner! 5ive's relentless and riff-repetitive, mostly-instrumental music is HEAVY all right. And thus, floats our boat, even as it tosses said boat about upon its stormy waves. We've been waiting for some new 5ive for quite some time. This is their first full-length of new material in forever. 2006's Versus ep, featuring a couple remixes by Justin Broadrick (Jesu), only left us hankering for more... so we're glad to report that this new 5ive is finally here and it's got what we want. Thick n' distorted stoner rock meets post rock jams, full of loud soft dynamics for maximum sludgecore beauty and power. Tracks like "Heel" and "Big Sea" have plenty of rollicking psychedelic swing to 'em, after the pretty parts that set you up for the heavier hitting... and while the likes of "News II" gets up into the 12 minute range, even the shorter tunes here manage some epic, hypnotic heft. Fans of 5ive won't be disappointed, and if you haven't heard 'em before check this out if stuff like Pelican, Kinski, godheadSILO, Isis, Old Man Gloom, etc. is on your personal playlist.
9DW / BORISGolden Dance Classics(Catune)cd$ 16.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Boris, mostly because they've seemingly been touring non stop for the last few years, but it looks like finally some new music is happening, including a forthcoming split with low end sludge popppers Torche, and this, another split with a Japanese band we've never heard of called 9DW, who as far as we can tell is sonically about as far removed from Boris as any band could be. A sort of eighties cosmic disco, like a way less edgier Justice maybe. More on those tracks in a second, since odds are most aQ customers will be all over this for the two brand new Boris tracks. But be warned, not sure if it's a general shift in sound, or they were just trying to mix it up for this split, but this is Boris like you've never heard them. The first Boris track, "Tokyo Wonder Land", in a blind listening test, everyone here, when asked who they though it was, invariably said Ariel Pink, or John Maus, yep, a warbly warped blurry lo fi alien FM radio pop, with primitive drum machine, mumbled vocals, shimmery eighties production, whirring synths, jangly reverbed guitar, buzzy rubbery cop show basslines, super woozy and trippy and WAY druggy, there are even some falsetto 'oooh's. It only really gets Boris-y briefly in the middle with a wild tangle of super distorted psychedelic leads. Woah, What the fuck? Not sure what's going on, or what happened, but we are digging it BIG time, in fact, we might go so far as to say, this is one of our favorite Boris jams in ages, as is the second track here, "Akirame Flower", which finds Boris in full on washed out bleary eared nineties shoegaze mode, My Bloody Valentine, Bailter Space, fuzz guitar, weary vox, tons of delay and reverb and effects, all smeared and blurred into a gorgeous hazy 16 Candles / Dinosaur Jr / M83 soft focus, dream jam. Fuck. Awesome. So what the heck are Boris doing with a band like 9DW? Can't say, and can't really say, how often we'll find ourselves listening to their two tracks, groovy, slightly jazzy, a little house-y, definitely eighties, not one guy, an actual band, sounds a bit like M83 if he were to do a techno record, stir in a little Justice stomp, some post rocky skittery, looped synths, and some total eighties MTV new romantic guitar jangle, a little Shadowfax and some worrisome funkiness... But fuck it, Boris is why you're here, and if you're an adventurous Boris fan, who won't be disappointed by the lack of fuzzed out buzzy psych rock, then two Boris jams will kick your ass something good. Dying to hear if they continue on in this direction, and give the rest of the warbly new wave noise pop outsiders a run for their warped druggy money.
A CAMPs/t(Stockholm)cd$ 27.00
Debut solo album from The Cardigans' Nina Persson produced / recorded by AQ fave Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse. Not as catchy and poppy as the Cardigans and not as delicate and hyper-produced as Sparklehorse, but still really really good. We loved the
A MINOR FORESTFlemish Altruism / Inindependence(Thrill Jockey)4lp$ 25.00
We ran out of the special Record Store Day limited tote bag version of the AMF reissues, but we just got the last remaining copies of the vinyl reissues (sans tote bag) direct from the band. Both lps are again sadly out of print. But while they last, we have a handful of the nice priced 4lp set which includes both Flemish Altruism and Inindependence... Here's our review of both when we listed this back around Record Store Day... In the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly (!), our very own Andee was asked about what Record Store Day Releases we were most excited about. He mentioned a bunch, but the two they actually included in the magazine, were the utterly hilarious music nerd classic Rock, Rot And Rule (now sadly out of print), and these two vinyl reissues, from recently reunited / reactivated nineties post/math/noise rock combo A Minor Forest, which as many of you know, is in fact Andee's band! He was kind of joking, and a bit embarrassed when THAT was one of the ones they picked to print, but really, we WERE pretty excited. These two records have been out of print on vinyl for a decade, and have been remastered, now come with digital downloads, and one has all new artwork! But instead of making Andee further toot his own horn, we figured we'd try to be more objective, and let some other folks weigh in. A couple reviews from the past, and a couple from the present. So when we first reviewed these back in the day, for AMF's debut, Flemish Altruism, we asked beloved aQ-pal Douglas Mosurak to say a few words about that record, here's that original review from years and years ago: "October 22, 1996: Bay Area rock trio A Minor Forest stop indie rock dead. Their new double LP on Thrill Jockey is so incredible, and subsequently so complete, that no other records of its kind need to be produced anymore. Lesser bands of their stripe are currently being petitioned to break up immediately to save embarrassment. And while some people will miss, like, June of 44 or the Archers of Loaf for a little while, with the proper exposure to Flemish Altruism, they'll forget all about it. AMF manage to piece together everything good about every post-Big Black and every post-Heroin outfit into a seamless, epic sound; fairly dense, deeply emotional and thoroughly human. They have the sense of humor required to lift it off, too. Some of their songs prefer to hide in the corner; some lunge for your throat. Their style is such that their original ideas fill in with ones borrowed from their rich lineage in such a manner that pays tribute without disrespect. It's a thoroughly engaging sound that I'd rank up there with the Bitch Magnet discography, with the Bastro LPs, with the Gore records, with the cream of the Gravity crop, even with the Shellac album. Best rock record of 1996, and currently outweighing all proposed rock concepts until the close of the millennium. Buy two. Wow." Then, the follow up Inindependence was reviewed thusly by us upon its original release (when aQ reviews were still concise and impossibly brief): "Simply put, this may be the last bastion of rock on Thrill Jockey, before they devolve into a purely electronic/jazz label. Sure we may be boasting a little, because A Minor Forest is our very own Andee Connors' band. But this truly is a great record of delicate math rock instrumentations executed with violent precision!" So here were are 15+ years later, and both records, now reissued and available as a swank 4lp / tote bag set, in honor of the just passed 2014 iteration of Record Store Day, are ripe for reassessment, a new listen to some old sounds, with fresh ears, a bit of distance, and years of subsequent music making in their wake. So, here's what the illustrious Pitchfork site had to say this week about both AMF records: According to legend, the A Minor Forest song "Bill's Mom Likes to Fuck" - a high point of the post-rock group's 1996 debut album, Flemish Altruism - was swiped from an inside joke that had circulated for years among the punk kids of Rapid City, South Dakota. A Minor Forest wasn't from Rapid City; they hailed from far-off San Francisco. But the band toured extensively throughout the country during its 90s-spanning existence, playing many of the same DIY venues that hosted the burgeoning post-hardcore and emo bands of that decade. If there's one thing that brings people together, it's cruel humor - and A Minor Forest, brooding and abrasive as well as downright delicate, knew a good joke when they heard it. Flemish Altruism was reissued on vinyl for this year's Record Store Day, alongside A Minor Forest's other studio album, 1998's Inindependence. The rollout has been humble one, and it can't help but be compared to Slint's deservedly lavish Spiderland box set this month. Slint blazed trails with its dour, eerie ominousness; A Minor Forest, on the other hand, neither innovated nor intimidated. That doesn't make Flemish Altruism any less tense. The shadow of Slint - as well of Slint's slower, icier cousin, Codeine - loom large over A Minor Forest's distended syllables and dangling chords. The group had been honing that sound on singles and EPs since 1994, but Flemish Altruism tracks like "...But the Pants Stay On" and "Jacking Off George Lucas" groped for a new vocabulary out of the fragments laying around after post-rock's early-'90s Big Bang. What resulted was pidgin Slint-but in that process of restructuring, A Minor Forest came damn close to inventing post-post-rock, where the subgenre's self-seriousness was wrestled with until it laughed, gasped, and collapsed. Steve Albini and Bob Weston produced Flemish Altruism, and the nerve-tightening cello they'd previously captured on Nirvana's In Utero feels almost deliberately evoked on the album's most arresting song, "Perform the Critical Straw Transfer". Singer/guitarist Erik Hoversten opens it with a deadpan punch line: "Guess you really lucked out�" he begins, his numb voice trailing off as bassist John Trevor Benson screams bestially yet faintly in the background, "�on this one." Sarcasm never sounded so black. Beneath them, cellist Dominique Davison saws with quiet strength, as if mocking and apologizing at the same time. The screaming gets pushed to the fore on thoroughly non-dainty "Dainty Jack and His Amazing Technicolor Cloth Jacket", an erratic spasm of dissonance that shows an affinity for San Diego screamo (A Minor Forest had previously recorded with Matt Anderson of Heroin), only broken up here and there with squibs of pinpoint jazziness. The balance is struck almost perfectly on "Bill's Mom Likes to Fuck", a 10-minute noise-cycle of mood swings, red herrings, and curdled blood. The wiseass, scattershot racket of Flemish Altruism settles into a more predictable groove onInindependence. Concise and controlled by comparison, A Minor Forest's second and final album (not including their 1999 singles-and-EPs collection, ...So, Were They in Some Sort of Fight?) drags more algebra into the rhythm and more calculation into the off-kilter melody. It wouldn't be fair to say the band had begun to take itself either more or less seriously - but the music is more serious, and even the song titles are less crass. If "Erik's Budding Romance" is to be taken at face value, that relationship flip-flopped randomly and often between coy, candlelit dinners and table-flipping eruptions of lust. Drummer Andee Connors, an unsung hero of his instrument and era, is in top form, coaxing every shade of texture, dynamic, and emotion out of the kit. There are honest, unabashed hooks on the deliciously brief (that is, under four minutes) centerpiece, "�It's Salmon!!!", as well as in "Michael Anthony", which skips a sweet melody across a minefield of disjointed changes and chords. At the same time, the album's 18-minute monster "The Smell of Hot" never fully jells; as A Minor Forest's recording career drew to a halt, patience-testing jams occupied one extreme of their spectrum, while a hint of pleasing pop teased at the other. A Minor Forest's legacy is not a towering one. Most notably, Hoversten went on to play with Pinback, where he was able to indulge his love of angular melody much more avidly. The band never seemed to want to make bold statements, and it always punctured whatever atmosphere it crafted with wiry self-deprecation and perverse wit. When A Minor Forest reunited in 2013 after a 15-year hiatus, Hoversten said in a radio interview, "[This reunion is] sort of like, take an outfit you wore 15 years ago, then put it on today. Clearly you liked it at one point, but it's not exactly the outfit you would have chosen today. That being said, it's not like I'm being asked to put on a clown suit." Despite their crank titles and in-jokes, A Minor Forest was never a funny band. But they had fun, and that fun seeped into their music. And that makes Flemish Altruism and Inindependence two of the most endlessly rewarding albums of the 90s post-rock boom, if never the most monolithic. And finally, here's a review of both Flemish Altruism and Inindependence from the always awesome Pop Matters: The bare truth behind two classic albums from the 1990s. I remember it clearly: the road was a hazy sequence of distant glares kept together by a dense, hazy lull immersed in the purest of mists. My friend, the proud owner of the CD, was holding the music artifact with one hand, while the other occasionally found its way up and down the wheel, now on this side; now on the other. I never knew how both hands also managed to offer such an accurate interpretation of the drumming, but his abilities ceased to amaze me when my side of the car hit a guardrail that seemed to have popped out from nowhere. My friend carefully placed the CD case in the glove compartment and met me outside the vehicle, where we assessed the damage. "That drumming! Oh boy, that drumming!", was all he had to say. Not much has happened in the 16 years that followed that day. My friend got married, paid his way to a divorce and when we meet, I drive, so he can be Andee Connors and I can take good care of our lives. In the real world, the influence of a band like A Minor Forest - a scruffy bunch of lads from San Francisco - still echoes on both sides of the Atlantic. Inheritors of the legacy initiated by bands like Slint, Bastro, Gastr Del Sol and Shellac, A Minor Forest's name appears, rightly or wrongly, almost invariably as part of the American post-rock scene, as if their own legacy could not be singled out and stand on its own two feet. But while most people blame them, together with a whole bunch of Midwestern acts loosely located in the "Corn Belt", for the explosion of the math-rock plague, the impact this short-lived ensemble has had on indie rock is probably still far from being recognised. Their two classic albums, Flemish Altruism and Inindependence, reissued on vinyl by Thrill Jockey for Record Store Day on 19 April, are both presented with an array of previously unpublished pictures in a special four-LP set that includes download cards. However, what matters the most is that these albums, which have been out of print for a decade, have been remastered from the original tapes. The sensuality of the naked, raw sound that was the core of that scene (and I hereby use this term in the artistic, rather than in the geographic sense) is therefore faithfully represented in all its purity and ingenuity. "The Dutch Fist", "So Jesus Was At the Last Supper" and "...But the Pants Stay On" are some of the finest representations imaginable of noise as the most spontaneous by-product of the deconstruction of rock grammar. This primary necessity regulated by tradition - Erik Hoversten (guitars and vocals) and John Trevor Benson (bass) had both studied music at Berkeley - found its champions in Steve Albini (who else?) and Bob Weston (he too of Shellac fame), whose uncompromised affection for stripped-down sounds and total lack of artificiality constituted the perfect match for the band. Flemish Altruism is the result of this formula, and tunes like "Jacking Off George Lucas" or "Ed Is 50" betray an improvisational approach which heavily relies on the dichotomy between the extreme unpredictability of noise and the discipline usually behind melodic patterns. The almost mandatory (at least back then) tour of most of the US would lead, two years later, to the recording of Inindependence: an album that followed the path traced by its predecessor, perpetuating the angularity and eclecticism that would make A Minor Forest easily recognizable years after their dissolution. Flemish Altruism and Inindependence are the band's only full-lengths and it could not be otherwise. Although a collection of much of their out of print material, plus a couple of new tracks made it onto the Were They in Some Sort of Fight? CD on My Pal God Records in 1999, these two albums vouch for an incredibly inspired band which disbanded once they realized that the traditional rock instrumentation was starting to restrict their enormous potential and creativity. Does this awareness affect these two records? Not at all. A Minor Forest didn't live long enough to see their craft surpass their inspiration, and for this reason their legacy is definitely safer now than it was 20 years ago! As mentioned above, both Flemish Altruism and Inindependence have been remastered, both include digital downloads, and are housed in swank full color gatefold jackets, Flemish Altruism has all new artwork!!
A MINOR FORESTFlemish Altruism / inindependence(Thrill Jockey)4lp + tote bag$ 31.00
In the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly (!), our very own Andee was asked about what Record Store Day Releases we were most excited about. He mentioned a bunch, but the two they actually included in the magazine, were the utterly hilarious music nerd classic Rock, Rot And Rule, which you'll find reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and these two vinyl reissues, from recently reunited / reactivated nineties post/math/noise rock combo A Minor Forest, which as many of you know, is in fact Andee's band! He was kind of joking, and a bit embarrassed when THAT was one of the ones they picked to print, but really, we WERE pretty excited. These two records have been out of print on vinyl for a decade, and have been remastered, now come with digital downloads, and one has all new artwork! But instead of making Andee further toot his own horn, we figured we'd try to be more objective, and let some other folks weigh in. A couple reviews from the past, and a couple from the present. So when we first reviewed these back in the day, for AMF's debut, Flemish Altruism, we asked beloved aQ-pal Douglas Mosurak to say a few words about that record, here's that original review from years and years ago: "October 22, 1996: Bay Area rock trio A Minor Forest stop indie rock dead. Their new double LP on Thrill Jockey is so incredible, and subsequently so complete, that no other records of its kind need to be produced anymore. Lesser bands of their stripe are currently being petitioned to break up immediately to save embarrassment. And while some people will miss, like, June of 44 or the Archers of Loaf for a little while, with the proper exposure to Flemish Altruism, they'll forget all about it. AMF manage to piece together everything good about every post-Big Black and every post-Heroin outfit into a seamless, epic sound; fairly dense, deeply emotional and thoroughly human. They have the sense of humor required to lift it off, too. Some of their songs prefer to hide in the corner; some lunge for your throat. Their style is such that their original ideas fill in with ones borrowed from their rich lineage in such a manner that pays tribute without disrespect. It's a thoroughly engaging sound that I'd rank up there with the Bitch Magnet discography, with the Bastro LPs, with the Gore records, with the cream of the Gravity crop, even with the Shellac album. Best rock record of 1996, and currently outweighing all proposed rock concepts until the close of the millennium. Buy two. Wow." Then, the follow up Inindependence was reviewed thusly by us upon its original release (when aQ reviews were still concise and impossibly brief): "Simply put, this may be the last bastion of rock on Thrill Jockey, before they devolve into a purely electronic/jazz label. Sure we may be boasting a little, because A Minor Forest is our very own Andee Connors' band. But this truly is a great record of delicate math rock instrumentations executed with violent precision!" So here were are 15+ years later, and both records, now reissued and available as a swank 4lp / tote bag set, in honor of the just passed 2014 iteration of Record Store Day, are ripe for reassessment, a new listen to some old sounds, with fresh ears, a bit of distance, and years of subsequent music making in their wake. So, here's what the illustrious Pitchfork site had to say this week about both AMF records: According to legend, the A Minor Forest song "Bill's Mom Likes to Fuck" - a high point of the post-rock group's 1996 debut album, Flemish Altruism - was swiped from an inside joke that had circulated for years among the punk kids of Rapid City, South Dakota. A Minor Forest wasn't from Rapid City; they hailed from far-off San Francisco. But the band toured extensively throughout the country during its 90s-spanning existence, playing many of the same DIY venues that hosted the burgeoning post-hardcore and emo bands of that decade. If there's one thing that brings people together, it's cruel humor - and A Minor Forest, brooding and abrasive as well as downright delicate, knew a good joke when they heard it. Flemish Altruism was reissued on vinyl for this year's Record Store Day, alongside A Minor Forest's other studio album, 1998's Inindependence. The rollout has been humble one, and it can't help but be compared to Slint's deservedly lavish Spiderland box set this month. Slint blazed trails with its dour, eerie ominousness; A Minor Forest, on the other hand, neither innovated nor intimidated. That doesn't make Flemish Altruism any less tense. The shadow of Slint - as well of Slint's slower, icier cousin, Codeine - loom large over A Minor Forest's distended syllables and dangling chords. The group had been honing that sound on singles and EPs since 1994, but Flemish Altruism tracks like "...But the Pants Stay On" and "Jacking Off George Lucas" groped for a new vocabulary out of the fragments laying around after post-rock's early-'90s Big Bang. What resulted was pidgin Slint-but in that process of restructuring, A Minor Forest came damn close to inventing post-post-rock, where the subgenre's self-seriousness was wrestled with until it laughed, gasped, and collapsed. Steve Albini and Bob Weston produced Flemish Altruism, and the nerve-tightening cello they'd previously captured on Nirvana's In Utero feels almost deliberately evoked on the album's most arresting song, "Perform the Critical Straw Transfer". Singer/guitarist Erik Hoversten opens it with a deadpan punch line: "Guess you really lucked out�" he begins, his numb voice trailing off as bassist John Trevor Benson screams bestially yet faintly in the background, "�on this one." Sarcasm never sounded so black. Beneath them, cellist Dominique Davison saws with quiet strength, as if mocking and apologizing at the same time. The screaming gets pushed to the fore on thoroughly non-dainty "Dainty Jack and His Amazing Technicolor Cloth Jacket", an erratic spasm of dissonance that shows an affinity for San Diego screamo (A Minor Forest had previously recorded with Matt Anderson of Heroin), only broken up here and there with squibs of pinpoint jazziness. The balance is struck almost perfectly on "Bill's Mom Likes to Fuck", a 10-minute noise-cycle of mood swings, red herrings, and curdled blood. The wiseass, scattershot racket of Flemish Altruism settles into a more predictable groove onInindependence. Concise and controlled by comparison, A Minor Forest's second and final album (not including their 1999 singles-and-EPs collection, ...So, Were They in Some Sort of Fight?) drags more algebra into the rhythm and more calculation into the off-kilter melody. It wouldn't be fair to say the band had begun to take itself either more or less seriously - but the music is more serious, and even the song titles are less crass. If "Erik's Budding Romance" is to be taken at face value, that relationship flip-flopped randomly and often between coy, candlelit dinners and table-flipping eruptions of lust. Drummer Andee Connors, an unsung hero of his instrument and era, is in top form, coaxing every shade of texture, dynamic, and emotion out of the kit. There are honest, unabashed hooks on the deliciously brief (that is, under four minutes) centerpiece, "�It's Salmon!!!", as well as in "Michael Anthony", which skips a sweet melody across a minefield of disjointed changes and chords. At the same time, the album's 18-minute monster "The Smell of Hot" never fully jells; as A Minor Forest's recording career drew to a halt, patience-testing jams occupied one extreme of their spectrum, while a hint of pleasing pop teased at the other. A Minor Forest's legacy is not a towering one. Most notably, Hoversten went on to play with Pinback, where he was able to indulge his love of angular melody much more avidly. The band never seemed to want to make bold statements, and it always punctured whatever atmosphere it crafted with wiry self-deprecation and perverse wit. When A Minor Forest reunited in 2013 after a 15-year hiatus, Hoversten said in a radio interview, "[This reunion is] sort of like, take an outfit you wore 15 years ago, then put it on today. Clearly you liked it at one point, but it's not exactly the outfit you would have chosen today. That being said, it's not like I'm being asked to put on a clown suit." Despite their crank titles and in-jokes, A Minor Forest was never a funny band. But they had fun, and that fun seeped into their music. And that makes Flemish Altruism and Inindependence two of the most endlessly rewarding albums of the 90s post-rock boom, if never the most monolithic. And finally, here's a review of both Flemish Altruism and Inindependence from the always awesome Pop Matters: The bare truth behind two classic albums from the 1990s. I remember it clearly: the road was a hazy sequence of distant glares kept together by a dense, hazy lull immersed in the purest of mists. My friend, the proud owner of the CD, was holding the music artifact with one hand, while the other occasionally found its way up and down the wheel, now on this side; now on the other. I never knew how both hands also managed to offer such an accurate interpretation of the drumming, but his abilities ceased to amaze me when my side of the car hit a guardrail that seemed to have popped out from nowhere. My friend carefully placed the CD case in the glove compartment and met me outside the vehicle, where we assessed the damage. "That drumming! Oh boy, that drumming!", was all he had to say. Not much has happened in the 16 years that followed that day. My friend got married, paid his way to a divorce and when we meet, I drive, so he can be Andee Connors and I can take good care of our lives. In the real world, the influence of a band like A Minor Forest - a scruffy bunch of lads from San Francisco - still echoes on both sides of the Atlantic. Inheritors of the legacy initiated by bands like Slint, Bastro, Gastr Del Sol and Shellac, A Minor Forest's name appears, rightly or wrongly, almost invariably as part of the American post-rock scene, as if their own legacy could not be singled out and stand on its own two feet. But while most people blame them, together with a whole bunch of Midwestern acts loosely located in the "Corn Belt", for the explosion of the math-rock plague, the impact this short-lived ensemble has had on indie rock is probably still far from being recognised. Their two classic albums, Flemish Altruism and Inindependence, reissued on vinyl by Thrill Jockey for Record Store Day on 19 April, are both presented with an array of previously unpublished pictures in a special four-LP set that includes download cards. However, what matters the most is that these albums, which have been out of print for a decade, have been remastered from the original tapes. The sensuality of the naked, raw sound that was the core of that scene (and I hereby use this term in the artistic, rather than in the geographic sense) is therefore faithfully represented in all its purity and ingenuity. "The Dutch Fist", "So Jesus Was At the Last Supper" and "...But the Pants Stay On" are some of the finest representations imaginable of noise as the most spontaneous by-product of the deconstruction of rock grammar. This primary necessity regulated by tradition - Erik Hoversten (guitars and vocals) and John Trevor Benson (bass) had both studied music at Berkeley - found its champions in Steve Albini (who else?) and Bob Weston (he too of Shellac fame), whose uncompromised affection for stripped-down sounds and total lack of artificiality constituted the perfect match for the band. Flemish Altruism is the result of this formula, and tunes like "Jacking Off George Lucas" or "Ed Is 50" betray an improvisational approach which heavily relies on the dichotomy between the extreme unpredictability of noise and the discipline usually behind melodic patterns. The almost mandatory (at least back then) tour of most of the US would lead, two years later, to the recording of Inindependence: an album that followed the path traced by its predecessor, perpetuating the angularity and eclecticism that would make A Minor Forest easily recognizable years after their dissolution. Flemish Altruism and Inindependence are the band's only full-lengths and it could not be otherwise. Although a collection of much of their out of print material, plus a couple of new tracks made it onto the Were They in Some Sort of Fight? CD on My Pal God Records in 1999, these two albums vouch for an incredibly inspired band which disbanded once they realized that the traditional rock instrumentation was starting to restrict their enormous potential and creativity. Does this awareness affect these two records? Not at all. A Minor Forest didn't live long enough to see their craft surpass their inspiration, and for this reason their legacy is definitely safer now than it was 20 years ago! As mentioned above, both Flemish Altruism and Inindependence have been remastered, both include digital downloads, and are housed in swank full color gatefold jackets, Flemish Altruism has all new artwork, and while they last, available ONLY at aQ (or from the band on their upcoming tour, which begins a few days after this week's list!), both records are bundled together (4lps!), for a special low price, and housed in a silkscreened tote bag, with a killer new AMF logo by none other than Christoph Szpadjel, the Lord Of The Logos!
A PERFECT CIRCLEMer de Noms(Virgin)cd$ 16.98
Almost everyone I know loves Tool. Whether it's a guilty pleasure, never spoken of, or something one listens to in the store all the time tormenting my co workers. Err.. I mean *one's* coworkers... Anyway Tool managed to barely avoid that whole Korn/Limp Bizket/Rage Against the Machine, by writing truly fucked, totally catchy and totally heavy epics, complete with jaw dropping musical prowess and bizarre Quay Brothers style videos. That said, this is Tool frontman Maynard's interim project while killing time before the next Tool record. And like you would expect, it sounds a bit like Tool. But a lot of the bombast and pummel is absent, replaced with a meandering gothy moodiness. It's a good record, just not a great one. So if you're tired of waiting for a new Tool record, pick this up and it'll tide you over for a while. If you've never heard Tool, or are a fan or weird heavy music and just always assumed Tool were a bunch of MTV pussies, try Aenima (which we also carry) and I'm pretty sure you'll be blown away.
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERSExploding Head(Mute)cd$ 14.98
The return of 'the loudest band in New York' as A Place to Bury Strangers are constantly touted, and it's hard to say, just based on recordings if that's true or not, since generally, the louder a band is, the harder it is to record them and not lose the power that comes with volume. But APTBS's first record was indeed loud, and heavy, and fuzzed out and shoegazey and we totally loved it. Rumor was that this new record ditched much of the volume for more concise songwriting and a focus on melody, which had us a bit worried, but apparently for naught, since the first track "It Is Nothing" is a total amp melting Bailter Space style dream fuzz blowout, looped mantra like vocals, massive washes of blurred guitar, hypnotic drumming, in fact, somehow we ended up listening to that song about 5 times in a row before we bothered going any deeper into the record. But the rest of the record is just as dense and noisy and heavy and blown out. The same sonic touchstones still apply, Jesus And Mary Chain, Loop, My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 and especially Bailter Space. The vocals washed out and weary, the drums a solid propulsive pound the bass wiggly and melodic, but a band like this, it's all about the guitars, and they are a monster, seemingly always on the verge of careening out of control, throbbing and buzzing, soaring and screeching, grinding out thick chunks of caustic crunch, or unfurling a gauzy sheet of glimmery haze. If anything, the new record seems more focused, the first one dipped its toes into all sorts of different sounds and moods, but this one is way more cohesive, the songs all sound like they belong together, albums like the way albums used to be, each song flowing into the next, the sequence sticking in your head as much as the songs themselves, and that too this time around, these songs are pure pop, they may be spikey and jagged on the surface, but the hooks are undeniable, and even the first time through we found ourselves humming bits throughout the day. Not sure what else to say, other than: this record rules, maybe even more than the first one, anyone into all of the above mentioned noisemakers needs this big time, and who among the aQ faithful can resist a gorgeous chunk of blissed out drone rock shoegaze heaviness? Exactly.
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERSs/t(Killer Pimp)cd$ 13.98
We'd been hearing about this band quite a bit, often touted by reviewers as being "the loudest band in New York", which is all well and good, but that sort of thing generally doesn't translate very well on record. What we can tell you, is that more than any band we've heard in ages, these guys have their My Bloody Valentine, Loop, Spacemen 3, Jesus And Mary Chain chops down pat. But before you get all exasperated as we would be likely to do, we do realize that the bands who actively rip off some or all of those bands couldn't be counted on your fingers even if you had a thousand hands. And most of those bands steal the sound, but then have no idea what to do with it anyway. And most of them don't even get the sound right. So it's definitely saying a lot, when we can say that, yes, these guys owe EVERYTHING they have to MBV and Jesus And Mary Chain and Loop and Spacemen 3 but still manage to totally rule. And somehow, they manage to make all of this borrowing sound totally fresh and original and exciting, and loud and heavy and like they just might have made our new favorite record. From the first track these guys have it nailed. Murky, fuzzy, lo-fi, super blown out, with a weird buzzy guitar sound, wrapped around an almost gothy Interpol-ish bassline and keyboard melody, but when the vocals came in we were immediately transported to Psychocandy era Jesus And Mary Chain, the vocals and melodies and even the drums buried beneath clouds of billowing crumbling distortion. The second track is even more in-the-red and distorted, a crashing wave of dissonant guitars, that gives way to some almost Stereolab like Neu!-worship, and some sing songy indie boy vocals, which of course are summarily crushed by the moaning massive bursts of guitar fury and what sounds like bleating horns in the chorus. "To Fix The Gash In Your Head" begins with sputtering drum machine and is quickly ensconced in thick minor key swells all dramatic and gothy, and the other distinct side of the band is revealed, a sort of super charged extra heavy Depeche Mode, which is in no way a bad thing. But on this track especially, the vocals are super Dave Gahan, with some industrial Skinny Puppy-isms thrown in for good measure, but still the heart of the song is a throbbing synthy new wave. And it sounds amazing! Later tracks veer from swirling washed out wall of sound dronerock, to murky doom pop, to super eighties John Hughes soundtrack electro-pop, to grungy distorted Grebo, to throbbing Joy Division miserablism, to rocking Swervedrivery shoegaze, to shimmering glimmering M83 blisspop, but always liberally doused with waterfalls of coruscating white light guitars, sheets of roiling feedback, massive walls of buzz and hiss. Noisy and chaotic and furious and epic but always with a heart of pure pop and a halo of washed out guitar shimmer. So great.
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS / CEREMONYsplit (LAMC #1)(Famous Class)7"$ 8.98
After reviewing parts #11 (Mikal Cronin / Wand), #10 (Fuzz / CCR Headcleaner), #7 (Ty Segall / Chad & The Meatbodies) and #3 (Thee Oh Sees / The Mallard) of this 7" series where some of our favorite bands offer up an exclusive A side jam, and introduce us on the B side to one of their favorite up and coming groups, we've finally started getting a bunch of the other installments in the series, and this one is the very first, #1, featuring 'the loudest band in New York', A Place To Bury Strangers, who dial back their usual psychedelic squall for something a bit more skittery and shuffly. It's a gloomy, druggy ditty driven by drums that sound programmed, beneath deep crooned, echo drenched vocals, and spidery almost surfy sounding guitars, a gorgeous, weirdly propulsive bit of gloom-kraut garage that aligns itself sonically with other outfits like Moon Duo or Spacemen 3. APTBS's choice for the B side is Ceremony, who we only just realized has never been featured on the aQ list/site, which is weird, cuz lots of aQ-ers are big fans - and their track here makes it easy to see why, as it's a noise drenched shoegaze post punk dirge that blurs guitars into sheets of shimmery buzz, the drums buried in the mix, the vocals a hushed whisper, a gloomy pop song wrapped in layer after layer of swirling guitarnoise and blown out psychedelic skree. So good. And a good reminder that we definitely need to give some love to their albums proper. And yeah, like the others in the series, very, very LIMITED!
A STORM OF LIGHT / NADJAPrimitive North(Robotic Empire)2lp + cd$ 25.00
Not sure why we never reviewed the recent full length from A Storm Of Light, if we remember correctly, it was a pretty excellent collection of post Neurosis brooding metallic heaviness. Bu we can't review everything, so we'll try to make up for it with this one, which features ASoL teaming up with big time aQ faves Nadja for some seriously blissed out doom drone heaviness. The A side features two tracks from A Storm Of Light, "Brother" and "Sister", the first, a sort of Neurosis / later period Swans hybrid, the verses a sprawling snare flecked rumble, the male vocals a deep croon, countered by more ethereal female vox, the verses crashing into an explosive chorus, huge soaring downtuned guitars, howled vocals, pounding drums, dirge-y but not doomy so much as epic, the guitar layered into thick swells, the whole thing getting almost orchestral near the end. "Sister" follows up with something a bit more mathy and lurching rhythmically, the vocals more raspy and rough, the guitars wreathed in effects, keyboards swirling and shimmering, the drums tribal and solid, the middle part features long stretches of softer drift, the arrangement almost sounds almost sea shanty-ish, albeit lumbering and heavy as fuck, super dramatic, and almost emo sounding when the two vocals harmonize near the end. Nadja counter with a sidelong jam called "I Make From Your Eyes The Sun" which begins with warm muted backwards guitars, skittery barely there percussion, tinkling chimes, woozy sun baked melodies, lots of gauzy hiss and whir, even some piano, eventually, as it always does, the song blossoms in a slow motion supernova of sound, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals a near whisper way down in the mix, the drums spare and simple, a gentle pop song buried beneath all manner of distortion and decay, woozy and washed out and dreamy and distant, although at one point, the ethereal guitar parts coalesce into some serious chugging, and for a short stretch the sound of Nadja gets all Godfleshed, a fierce industrial pound, beneath streaks of feedback, and undulating layers of buzz building and building and building to a warm, wonderfully warped climax, before the parts gradually slough off leaving just a minimal bit of warm whir. The last two tracks are remixes, the first lets Nadja transform ASoL's "Brother" into something very Nadja-like, a slow, brooding build up, all deep swell and swirls of muted feedback, warped reverby guitars, bits of backwards swoop, gentle tinkling keyboards, until the MASSIVE breakdown, ultra heavy pounding crush, the guitars epic and crumbling and fierce as fuck, the drums distorted and pummeling, the drums eventually dropping out for the most part, leaving just the guitars to drone and buzz their way to the end. And finally, A Storm Of Light gets to tackle the Nadja track, and right out of the gate, they chop it up quite a bit, bumping the vocals up in the mix, muting most of the guitars except for a little industrial squall of grinding buzz, stretching it out into something less warm and woozy, but still dark and ominous, eventually letting the guitars tangle and wrangle over the roiling sea of murk below, all sort of atonal and off kilter, the drums more machinelike, finishing off with a weirdly dreamy stretch of crumbling chug. Normally there would be a side 4, but here, that side is instead rendered unplayable by a beautiful super detailed etching. And both lps are pressed on super subtle blood red / black vinyl. And the packaging, holy shit is it over the top. The artwork is super eye popping photoshopped fantasy art with strange humanoids and polar bears and sweeping expanses of tundra and starlit skies and ruined castles, and birds and rams, it's almost silly it's so over the top but it's VERY striking. Gatefold, super thick, inside there's also a full color printed lyric sheet with liner notes AND a cd (not a cd-r) featuring all the music from the two records.
A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLENAtomos(Kranky)12"$ 12.98
Atomos is the most recent release from this offshoot of all time aQ guitar-drone faves Stars Of The Lid. Adam Wiltzie from that group, and his partner in A Winged Victory, Dustin O'Halloran, are joined here by a few other collaborators, most notably another big time aQ fave, Ben Frost! Whereas the last AWVFTS record seemed to focus on the piano, Atomos is much more orchestral, sprawling string-laden drones, chordal swells, extended tones, all woven into a haunting, elegiac threnody, darkly melodic and achingly melancholic, the A side is almost poppy with its exaggerated main melody, the dynamic swells almost jarring, but soon, the swirling background strings swell up and swaddle that melody, before dragging it back down into the dark, leaving something much more hushed and haunting, a sound that fades and blurs gradually, before dissipating completely, leaving just a single distant drone, which bleeds into the next track, at which point the piano returns, for a brief bit of wistful chamber music, over a smear of distant dronemusic, drifting atop a bed of excited strings, all woven into a gorgeous backdrop for the aching piano melodies which ebb and flow dreamily. The flipside begins with some abstract softnoise, before quickly building to a gristly, buzz drenched psychedelic crescendo, like multiple Spacemen 3 layered on top of one another, until some strings swoop in, and are quickly transformed Ben Frost style, into angry buzzing blackened swells, but only briefly, leaving a final movement, all hushed ambient shimmer, ethereal and abstract, over delicate piano, settled way down in the mix, and slow moving chordal thrum, a darkly dreamy, and gorgeously heartfelt coda. Fantastic!
AANAL BEEHEMOTHForest Paranoid(Suffering Jesus Productions)cd$ 13.98
We know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but c'mon!!! When that book is a cd by a couple of Finnish primitive black metal weirdos called Aanal Beehemoth and said cover features one of the members getting all Nosferatu in shades of green and white under a scrawled metal logo, with a little circle in the corner that reads "In Nekro Satanik Stereo Paranoia Sound"!! And on the other side you'll see both band members in ultra creepy clown-like corpsepaint, tongues out, shooting up, next to some ransom letter text that reads "100% Ultra Misery Blackout Metal Nekropunk Psykosound", and then let's not forget the inside cover, that features again both band members, in crazy corpsepaint, their names now revealed to be Deathly Fightar and Crazy Bomber (umlauts over the vowels of course) who play respectively: Deathbeat, OD guitar, bass and BG vox (that's Deathly) and Exorcism, bass, fuzz guitar and organ (!) (that's Crazy)... You see what we're getting at, we knew this would rule before we even threw it on, it was just a matter of HOW it would rule, and just how much. The answer of how much is easier to address, cuz it's a WHOLE FREAKING SHIT TON, that's how much it rules, but exactly how might be a bit harder to explain. Needless to say, these guys are fucked up and freaky, their blackness not so much of the blasting buzzy variety and the pounding punkish lo-fi raw and primitive variety, think Akitsa, Malveillance, Ash Pool. Ancestors, but even more punk rock, and weirdly poppy. Just check out the kick ass opener (after the ubiquitous creepy intro) "Dirty Soul", it almost sounds more like Turbonegro or Brainbombs, bounding punk rock rhythms, looped stripped down riffage, but then they paint it black and wrap it all up in tangled squiggly leads, the vocalist delivering his hellish sermons in an awesome croak / bark vokill, totally wrapped in reverb and seriously unhinged. The reverb sometimes going haywire making the vocals sound all dubbed out. As the record goes on, the blackness recedes and these guys sound more and more punk rock, which is not a bad thing at all, the sound is maybe like Darkthrone at their punkest, but this is Finnish after all, and these guys are nuts, so tracks slip into washed out woozy ambience, guitars explode into squalls of atonal Greg Ginn-ish freakouts, fuzzy organs drift in and out giving some of the tracks a weird underground garage psych vibe (check out "Witch Hunt"), that said, there are definitely some moments of full on frenzied classic sounding blackness, it's just that more often than not those parts lead directly into something much more fucked up and off kilter and WAY bizarre. This got released as a free download a while back, but it's way cooler to actually finally have the cd, with all its garish freaky green tinted artwork and weird scrawled lyrics, and of course with the download you would never have know that this was "recorded in stinky misery cubic helvete during period of total black morkness, mental distortion & painful agony of ghouls with the helping hands of Satan (naturally) $ Ass Lipstick, Pelvis, Onslow, under the influence of HELL!!!!".
ABDU ALIInfinity Epiphanies(Araca)7"$ 8.98
We loved the Public Guilt label, who brought us so many amazing releases - from the occult rock of Aluk Todolo, to the glacial avant doom of Habsyll; from the noise-jazz of Zu, to the spaced out dronescapery of Destructo Swarmbots; from the experimental turntablism of Strotter Inst, to the alchemical folk of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, and so much more. We were bummed when Public Guilt decided to call it a day, but were super excited to discover that PG mastermind JR was back with a new label, one that maybe surprisingly is focused entirely on underground / outsider hip hop and club music, all 45rpm 7"s, and all pretty goddamn great. First up is this blast of crunchy, distorted B-more noise-hop, courtesy of Abdu Ali, whose sound is all club music drum skitter, big distorted bass throb, some dubsteppy bass wobble, and a wild flow that had us imagining him toasting over a Bug track, and really, The Bug is not a bad reference, this is futuristic club music, hints of old school DHR, a little dancehall, definitely noisy, but groovy and funky as fuck, the sort of bangers that must send the dancefloor into a frenzy, and even if you're averse to actually making it out on the floor, strap on some headphones, and dig into the twisted, avant production, sounds swirl, beats fracture, melodies crumble, grinding, frantic, electro freak-outs that lurch from noisy funky stutter to almost cinematic sounding big beat bombast. Killer stuff. Definitely wanna hear more, and super duper psyched on JR's new label!! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
ABIGORFractal Possession(End All Life Productions)cd$ 15.98
The return of infamous Austrian black metal horde Abigor, after six years of near silence. The band broke up briefly in 2003, but reformed last year, with an almost entirely new lineup, but their sound continues pretty much right where their last full length Satanized left off. Abigor began life as grim epic buzz merchants, channeling the sound of classic Norwegian BM, but mixing it with raw primitivism and forest folkiness, all woven into a sound distinctly their own. Furious and chaotic, most songs blasting blurs of swirling blackness, peppered with confusional arrangements and epic flourishes. But on 2001's Satanized, the band changed direction, their sound becoming� more cold and clinical, more ultra technical and sci-fi, the same old buzz and blast but with a futuristic sheen... Right out of the gate, Fractal Possession (even the title!) ups the future tech sci-fi blackness ante big time, after a brief industrial soundscape of space FX, and angular guitar, bits of metallic clatter and clang, electronic beats and weird snippets of dialogue, the band lurches into a crazy squiggly blast of super dynamic, tangled guitar squiggles and furious blast beats, like some strange Mick Barr / Orthrelm style guitarist got dropped into a stretch of futuristic black metal buzz. The band soon settles back into a more recognizable pattern of blasting fury and relentless hellish pound, but those angular shred guitars are still everywhere, soaring and slippery, serpentine squiggles in, around, over and under the various riffs and drum blasts. There are also all kinds of ultra brief interludes, short stretches of creepy ambience or some subtle folky strum, that barely have time to leave your speakers before the band buzz back into action, giving the whole sound a super seasick, start/stop ultra dynamic feel. The rest of the record follows a similar pattern, with some songs offering up gothy minor key melodies, Borknagar-like clean vocals, stretches of mathy blackened post rock, damaged chunks of bizarre effects drenched buzz, even some classic old school metal riffing here and there. It's a confusional combination for sure, but it works, it really sounds like it could be the black metal soundtrack to an Alfred Bester novel. Dramatic, mysterious, original, heavy, weird, plenty of awesome what-the-fuck moments, but some unbelievably kick ass riffing as well. Everything just oozing creepy alien otherworldly ambience... If you can imagine some impossible (and improbable) crossbreeding experiment, where genes were taken from Emperor, Blut Aus Nord, Gorguts, Necrophagist, Orthrelm and Ved Buens Ende, then said genes were launched into space, where they were left to orbit some blackcloud shrouded planet, the genes gestating and mutating in the rays of an alien sun, returning to earth a hulking�buzzing blasting blackened alien sonic space creature, only to find the humans gone, the landscape a burning post apocalyptic wasteland of destruction and death, fire and fury, and of course, gloriously dense and complex black metal buzz.
ABIGORTime Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint(End All Life Productions)cd$ 12.98
We've loved Austrian black metal horde Abigor since we first heard them back in the nineties, their sound was total true kvlt blackness, every record, as grim and black as the last: Verwustung / Invoke the Dark Age, Nachthymnen (From the Twilight Kingdom), Opus IV, Supreme Immortal Art, Channeling the Quintessence of Satan, Satanized (A Journey Through Cosmic Infinity), every one of those a stone cold classic, at least to our ears, and then nothing for 6+ years, but something strange must have happened, because when they returned, with 2007's Fractal Possession, it was like a different band, with a new sound, a twisted, industrial avant blackness, that rubbed most black metallers the wrong way, tons of fans jumped ship, but not us, who expects a band to sound the same forever? Sort of how everybody seemed to hate the last 1349, it was too slow and experimental, people wanted more of the same. Well fuck it, folks who hated Fractal Possession are REALLY gonna hate Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint, and let em, cuz this is some serious fucked up, freaked out outsider electronic tinged avant black metal weirdness. It's hard to even describe, other than just going through the track part by part. Epic and sprawling and dizzyingly complex, a cacophony of voices and tangled melodies give way to some ambient drones, which in turn gives way to some pounding midtempo black metal, with weirdly effected vocals, TONS of weird effects, slipping into near silence, before exploding into some pumelling industrial blackness, but rife with wild squiggly leads, everything drops out except for those squiggles, some bizarre spoken word brings us right into what can only be described as a repeated almost hip hop style loop, before launching into some epic soaring power metal with harmonized lead guitars and blasting double kick, warbly basslines, arpeggiated melodies, thick synthesizer buzz, almost like dubstep, before the band spits out more churning chugging heaviness, and we're only halfway through the first song. Shall we go on? Whirring black ambience leads into some Khold like midtempo metal, with minor key melodies, and super processed vox, finally exploding into some frenzied black metal freakout, before again blissing out into a haunting expanse of churning processed guitars, chant like vocals, some near silence, then some awesome stuttering grinding crunch, a sort of black metal but with deep crooned vox, and some weird industrial filigree not to mention wild warbly bass, fading out in a flurry of classic metal pound, only to then immediately launch into the second track / half of the record, which if anything is just s varied and far out and fucked up, the highlights being some super distorted buzzing blurscapery, some twisted almost punk sounding convoluted lurch and lumber, some incredibly dense and complex gnarled black metal blasts, culminating in a super trippy chanted vocal outro. Fucking nuts, and totally genius, like mad metal scientist genius, not for the faint at heart, or the true grim hordes, this is for folks looking for the most twisted blackness they can find, technical, epic, and warped beyond all comprehension. Which in case you couldn't tell, means this is one of our new favorite records, and definite contender for weirdo black metal record of the year. And while they last, we have the limited deluxe box version...
ABRUPTUMDe Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet(Regain / Blooddawn)cd ep$ 11.98
Returning from a long absence, here's a three song ep from Sweden's infamous improv-black metal band Abruptum. None blacker! The first track, dating from way back in 1991, starts with gothic keyboards and has a lot of Satanic screaming, but with its gothic
ABRUPTUMEvil Genius(Southern Lord)cd$ 14.98
Ah Abruptum, how we've missed you. Nary a peep since 2004's killer black ambient masterpiece Casus Luciferi, which while an amazing gorgeously bleak slab of droning mystery, really barely scratched the surface, only hinting at the harsh, hateful, bizarre black metal beast Abruptum once was. That's where Evil Genius comes in. And evil Genius is exactly what it is. A collection of old demos, it was originally released with an actual razor blade inside and a sticker instructing the listener to kill themselves. There were also loads of strange rumors surrounding the band, including the one about mainman It being a dwarf, who tortured himself in the studio, in order to capture true anguish. After all, Abruptum were, according to their own edict, "the pure audial essence of evil"... Who knows how much of that stuff was true (we like to think ALL of it), and ultimately it doesn't really matter, the proof is in the pudding, and in this case the pudding is a sludgy, filthy, crusty, primitive chunk of harsh, stumbling, lurching, distorted psychedelic black metal. Or maybe black doom would be more appropriate. There are no blast beats or blazing buzzing riffs, instead, Evil Genius is a confusional garbled outsider mess, but a glorious one, keyboards lurch in and out of the mix, usually atonal and off kilter, the drums plod and pound, tortured and strangled vocals howl and grunt, belching out strange black growls, tons of thick black ambience surround everything, seeping into every bit of music like some strange black mold, weird squeaks and groans, and all sorts of random sounds pepper the entire record, hard to say if they are footsteps or the cracks of a whip or creaking hinges, but they all sort of get sucked into Abruptum's dizzying blurry and buzzy soundworld. And guitars of course, lots of them, tuned way down, sometimes not tuned at all, occasionally spewing out some strange black shaped riff, but other times just buzzing or droning, roaring or squealing, often sounding less like a guitar than some sort of hellish demon speaking in tongues. But as fucked up and bizarre as Evil Genius is, it's still eminently listenable, even catchy at times, almost pretty at others, but always, a totally baffling, fucked up and completely damaged way out black metal what-the-fuck blast of, well, EVIL GENIUS!! All new artwork, with brand new liner notes from It, and while it's hard to tell for sure, we're led to believe that there is at least one extra track, as EG compiles the first two Abruptum demos ("s/t" and "The Satanist Tunes") as well as the "Evil" 7" and their track from the long out of print Tribute To Euronymous compilation cd (which we think is the bonus track). So absolutely and utterly RECOMMENDED!!
ACCELERA DECKAddict(Blackbean and Placenta / Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers)cd$ 11.98
ACCEPTMetal Heart(Epic / Portrait)cd$ 5.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
ACID BATHDouble Live Bootleg!(Rotten)dvd$ 21.00
The dedication and worship and legend that this band inspires, even years after the end of their brief career is amazing. Not undeserved mind you, just surprising. Cult legends in the bayou's sludge scene along with Eyehategod, Crowbar, Down, etc... Acid Bath called it quits after the death of their bass player, and members went on to join Crowbar and Goatwhore after recording their post-Acid Bath masterpiece (and one of our favorite records) as the Agents Of Oblivion. But Acid Bath -were- amazing, melding furious grinding almost-death metal, buzzing hardcore, and super melodic hard rock ala Alice In Chains or Soundgarden. And writing amazing songs, evoking mystery and death and salvation and nihilism. It's sort of a crime they weren't HUGE. But maybe they are right where they should be, underground. Here's how we described our favorite Acid Bath record on a past list: "Imagine the sheer brutality of Eyehategod, the bluesy grind of fellow bayou residents Soilent Green, the stoned sabbathy swing of Trouble, and the melodic flair of late era Corrosion of Conformity or Alice In Chains, all forced onto one cd. Sound confusing? It is. But somehow, it gels perfectly, striking a pefect balance between catchy and heavy." While this is probably not the place to start for Acid Bath virgins (that would be their second full length cd 'Paegan Terrorism Tactics') this is a godsend for Acid Bath fans (like us) and an amazing document. Features multiple live performances of all their best songs from Boston in 1996, New Orleans in 1994, Metairie, Louisiana in 1994, Milwaukee Metalfest in 1994, Hollywood in 1996, Breux Bridge, Louisiana in 1996, Lafayette, Louisiana in 1996 and St. Petersburg, Florida in 1996. Also includes a video clip from 1994, rehearsals for their first demo in 1993 and a practice in their barn/practice space in 1992. Most of the video looks/sounds pretty good. All of it's interesting, and if you already love Acid Bath as much as we do, you already know you have to buy this!
ACID BATHPaegan Terrorism Tactics(Rotten)cd$ 14.98
Man, does this record rule! Not entirely sure how we all managed to miss this one when it came out a few years back. It was actually (re)discovered on the recommendation of a not-so-entirely-trustworthy source. Go figure! But now that we know, so must you...Imagine the sheer brutality of Eyehategod, the bluesy grind of fellow bayou residents Soilent Green, the stoned sabbathy swing of Trouble, and the melodic flair of late era Corrosion of Conformity or Alice In Chains, all forced onto one cd. Sound confusing? It is. But somehow, it gels perfectly, striking a pefect balance between catchy and heavy. This has become an absolute favorite of Andee, Allan, Elisabeth, and a handful of customers who have seen the light. Interesting non-music related facts: amazing cover art by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, one band member dead, one in jail...HIGHLY recommended!
ACID EATERBlack Fuzz On Wheels(Time Bomb)cd$ 22.00
When we think about it, we really should have made Acid Eater's debut, the awesomely titled Virulent Fuzz Punk A.C.I.D., a Record Of The Week, the most overdriven slab of in-the-red noise drenched hyperdistorted drug fueled punked out garage rock EVER. That is, until now. So we can right that wrong, by bestowing the honor on record number two, the equally bad assedly (and aptly) titled Black Fuzz On Wheels, another amp destroying psychedelic garage punk blowout, fronted by none other than Yamazaki Maso, aka MASONNA, on vocals and sound effects, and ably backed up by a classic garage rock lineup, fuzz guitar, organ, bass keyboard, drums and chorus, okay, well, maybe not totally classic, but then this is not your classic garage rock. Imagine fuzzed out sixties garage rock, but with a fucked up freaked out Merzbow production, the guitars so distorted the riffs seem to be on the verge of totally falling to pieces, the drums, a blown out pound, the vocals, a sneering yowl, also doused in effects, all held in place by thick whirring Farfisa, everything rollicking and rocking, loose and wild, heavy and psychedelic, and all wrapped up in a bristly, incendiary sheen of white hot buzz and skree. Thankfully these guys (and gal) have the fuzzed out garage pop songs to back up this sort of speaker shredding sonic onslaught, not to mention a little clutch of kick ass covers, songs by Crime, The Miracle Workers, and a band we'd never heard of before called The Tidal Wave, but whose composition here actually sounds like a sped up "TV Eye" by The Stooges! Weirdest of all, there's a cover of one of the tracks from those Schulmadchen Report soundtracks, y'know, music from saucy '60s German 'documentaries' about school girls making it with older men! Crazy, but it suits them, that cover is a cool surfy instrumental jam, with a bad ass main riff, and a cool breakdown with just drums and distorted hiss. The Miracle Workers cover is awesome too, maybe the noisiest of the bunch, and such a great song ("Love Has No Time"), the vocals especially effected, so snarly and snotty, as well as a tripped out psychedelic ambient effects drenched outro, all motorik pulses and swirling space age bleeps and bloops. But if you didn't know, you'd probably just figure those covers were originals too, every song on here sounds like some classic sixties garage jam, dipped in a vat of liquid LSD, set afire and sent careening from your speakers. We can only imagine how mind blowing Acid Eater must be live. Total psychnoise surfpunk distorto garage pop bliss. With super sexy naked lady motorcycle cover art to boot!!
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O.Live In Occident(Essence Music)cd$ 14.98
This long out of print slab of heavy Japanese psych from aQ faves Acid Mothers Temple (or more accurately, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.), originally released on vinyl, via the Detector label, WAY back in 2000, is one of a handful of new reissues from Brazilian label Essence (along with two Circle cds, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and is presented in a super swank mini-lp style gatefold sleeve, with the original sound of the lp, totally remastered, and revved up, heard for the first time the way it was meant to be heard. 'Cause according to the band, the guy who originally mastered the vinyl said the sound was "too heavy" to be mastered for vinyl, hence the sub par sound. And while the cd version definitely does sound better, it's still plenty murky and muddy and lo-fi, raw and in the red, with the band a wild chaotic squall of psychedelic sound, with lots of buzz and feedback, you can hear people in the audience talking here and there, the band offers up some funny between song banter, all of that non musical stuff woven into some of the band's fiercest rocking ever. The record starts off all drifty and shimmery, the band unfurling lush layers of whirling sound, wreathed in clouds of sci-fi swoops and bleeps, it doesn't take long for them to launch into it, and they never let up. Channeling High Rise and White Heaven and all the Japanese psych greats that came before, Kawabata Makoto and company tear it up, the guitars a constant barrage of wild Hendrixian blow outs, and tangled sprays of furious shred, the drums pound desperately in the background, the bass is nothing more than a low end thrum, and EVERYTHING is doused in effects, rendering all the sounds washed out and woozy and druggy. Occasionally the band do lock into some more krautrock like grooves, and its then that the bass comes to the fore and definitely drives the group, but most of Live In Occident is spent in full of freaked out psych-noise blow out mode, sounding like a modern version of the avant Japanese jazz noise of folks like Takayanagi, albeit run through a million fuzz pedals and transmitted from the furthest reaches of the galaxy. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE AND THE COSMIC INFERNO / WHITE HILLSSonic Attack (Psychedelic Warlords)(Trensmat)7"$ 5.98
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind. So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7": Volume 2, "Psychedelic Warlords", features Acid Mothers Temple, who are an obvious choice to pay homage to a band who was doing the AMT thing 30 years ago, and in true AMT fashion, Kawabata and company go for it, covering "Brainstorm" although it's difficult to tell, as it's buried under sheets of wild freaked out psych guitar and blown out space rock effects EVERYWHERE. It really doesn't sound all that different from any number of other AMT jams, but that's basically because every AMT jam is a tribute to Hawkwind, isn't it? AMT are matched up with NYC's White Hills, who ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, tackling "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer. The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!
ACID WITCHWitchtanic Hellucinations(Razorback)cd$ 12.98
Despite all the Acid- suffix and -Witch prefix bands out there (and vice versa for that matter), it appears that this is the very first band ever to use the name Acid Witch! And it really would have sucked if the name had already been taken, 'cause these guys are the PERFECT Acid Witch. Nobody could possibly do better justice to a moniker like that than this, um, coven. Are they psychedelic? Yes. Are they metal? Yes. Are they creepy? Yes. Are they deathly? Yes. Are they doomy? Yes, yes, yes! Psychedelic drug doom death horror metal that cackles, wears a pointy hat, and flies on a broomstick. And, they have a sense of humor about it (hence song titles like "Witches Tits"), the same sense of humor -and- horror that gets us all into those cult '70s and '80s Italian fright flicks. Speaking of which, this album is amply laced with sinister, proggy Goblin-esque keyboards, draped over fuzzy chugging heaviness worthy of early Cathedral. Heavy, heavy doom riffs indeed abound, along with guttural grunting deeper-than-thou vokills, both of which manage to be fairly catchy as well, this album casting a spell of instant headbanging most definitely. Acid Witch's songs are furthermore infested with droning psych guitar soloing, weird electronics, witchy laughter, and spooky-ooky sound FX (is that a bubbling, boiling cauldron in there?) which makes this sound something like a "haunted Hawkwind" version of death/doom metal! Or let's say, take Acid Mothers Temple and Witchfinder General and mix them together (including the band names), then get 'em to play old school death a la Hellhammer. It's a bewitching, if totally gonzo, sound. Further coolness: did we mention the main guy in the band is from Finland? And did you see the freaky EC Horror comics meets Cracked Magazine cover art? Which was done by Acid Witch member Shagrat (doubtless an Amon Duul II fan), who also provides a b&w portrait of the band done in the style of one of Witchfinder General's singles covers. Also, Witchtanic Hellucinations? Heck that's our review right there. These guys are brilliant (at least as much so as Electric Wizard and their "Satanic Rites Of Drugula" on Witchcult Today - hey maybe those two bands should go on tour and make black magic together!). Other bands that if you might like, probably means you should listen to this, include: Solar Anus, Coffins, Sigh (circa Imaginary Sonicscape), Moss, and Pan-Thy-Monium. As soon as we heard 'em, we knew this was a definite AQ highlight. It took us a while to get more, our suppliers never had enough, but finally we contacted the label directly and got some, so here they are! Get 'em before they turn us all into (lysergic) toads.
ACKAMOOR, IDRISMusic Of Idris Ackamoor 1971-2004(EM Records)2cd$ 29.00
As with every review of a release on EM records, we feel obligated to gush just a little. WHAT AN AMAZING LABEL! Most definitely the coolest reissue label going. Completely off the wall releases dug up and given new life. Amazing packaging, killer liner notes, tons of photos. So much love and passion obviously goes into each and every release we'd almost buy every one regardless of the music. Thankfully, pretty much everything we've heard so far is absolutely amazing, and well deserving of a deluxe reissue treatment. You may remember a while back we reviewed a 1976 disc from a free jazz ensemble called the Pyramids, whose sound was not just jazz, but a strange swirling mix of Funkadelic, Don Cherry and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, all with a groovy, funky, spaced out vibe. Chaotic and completely mesmerizing, some of the sounds as we described them in the Pyramids review: "Wild Eastern sounding tribal rhythms, shuffling jazzy post bop, fluttering flutes and skronking horns, chanted vocals, droning buzzing ragas, seventies psychedelic free folk, propulsive krautfunk jams, totally chaotic free jazz, octopoidal drumming, wild shrieking sax and haunting percussive soundscapes"! And those disparate elements were all wrapped up, in and around more traditional sounding African music. Wow! A total revelation for sure. And it appears to have been a revelation for everyone else as well. There's a massive box set planned for the near future, and then there's this, a sort of career retrospective of Pyramids mainman Idris Ackamoor, drawing equally from the Pyramids albums Lalibela (1973), King Of Kings (1974) and Birth, Speed, Merging (1976), as well as a track a piece from three of Ackamoor's solo albums. As if that weren't already enough, there are six unreleased tracks, over an hour of music! One track from Ackamoor's pre-Pyramids group The Collective, three unreleased Pyramids tracks, one unreleased track from the Idris Ackamoor Quartet and finally a recording of Ackamoor and his wife at the time (1973) playing with King's Drummers Of Tamale, Ghana!! Disc one is drawn from the earliest years, 1971 to 1974, and is completely mind blowing. Absolute free jazz nirvana! But with plenty of soul and groove. Long long tracks, heavy on the percussion, very tribal and experimental, but still soulful and jazzy. Fluttering flutes drift over dense beds of percussive shimmer, some tracks explode into full on drum solo percussion jams, others drift serenely, while still others careen wildly between the two. Modern ears will of course hear No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand, Avarus and Kemialliset, it's hard not to, after all this is where that sound came from!! Disc one would be worth the price of admission alone, and definitely has us excited to see these whole records reissued in their entirety. But lucky for us there's a whole other disc! The first two tracks on disc 2 are from Birth, Speed, Merging (1976) and if you don't have it already, these tracks should easily convince you that you absolutely NEED TO OWN IT! Gorgeous long form, slow burning jazz epics, horns skronk and shimmer, the bass is slippery and serpentine, the drums are wild and all over the place, utterly mesmerizing, extended blasts of controlled chaos. So goddamn good. The unreleased track is a killer too. Nearly twenty minutes. The stuff from Ackamoor's solo records is a lot less far out, but still really great, from straight up Bop, to groovy sort of cinematic jazz, to some softer Cuban style jazz (the final track taken from his album Cubana). It's hard to believe a band could be this amazing, and revolutionary and so brilliantly far out and not be spoken of in the same breath as groups like the Art Ensemble and Sun Ra's Arkestra, but here's hoping that this, as well as past and future reissues takes care of that! Absolutely essential!!!!!! Like all EM releases, the packaging is fantastic. A Japanese style extra thick jewel case, a printed obi as well as a MASSIVE booklet full of rare photos, and liner notes penned by Ackamoor himself, in both English and Japanese!
ACRIMONYBong On - Live Long!(Leaf Hound)cd$ 16.98
We've long been fans of the druggy stoner grooves of the UK's Acrimony, ever since 1996's�Tumuli Shroomaroom, a record that has been out of print for a while now, otherwise we would have most certainly given it some long overdue love on the AQ list. Just recently, Japanese label Leaf Hound reissued�Tumuli Shroomaroom (which we now have in stock, and will list next time) but also this killer odds and sods collection called appropriately enough Bong On - Live Long! So we figured we oughta tackle the newest release first, plus for long time fans like us, there's tons of amazing out of print stuff on it we'd been dying to hear. Acrimony exist in a similar sonic universe as their metallic countrymen Electric Wizard (as well as folks like Boris, Church Of Misery, Kyuss, Bongzilla, etc.) and while not quite as filthy and blown out and Sabbath obsessed, they are definitely just as heavy, but probably way more groovy and spaced out, adding some Hawkwind to the mix, and some organ (fuck yeah!) turning crushing druggy jams into crushing freaked out groovy druggy SPACE jams which is never a bad thing.� Collecting tracks from old eps, compilations, and a split with Church Of Misery (even a badass Status Quo cover!), every song here is a sludgy groovy stoner space jam of the highest order, the riffs are massive and downtuned, the drums a barrage of pounding pummel, the vocals a raspy howl, wah guitar everywhere, hooks galore, lots of swing and groove, throbbing distorted bass, churning riffage that often slowly morphs into a spaced out sprawl a la Monster Magnet or Hawkwind, even the folks who don't get high here (Andee, and...?), can imagine that this is exactly what that must (or at least -should-) sound like, heavy and freaky and groovy and mind blowing.� Fans of bands like Electric Wizard and Nebula and Ufomammut and Orange Goblin and Spiritual Beggars and the like who have somehow missed out on these guys might just have found a new favorite band...
ACRIMONYTumuli Shroomaroom(Leaf Hound)cd$ 16.98
A few lists back, we reviewed a newly released collection of odds and ends from stoner doomlords Acrimony, a UK band, who combined all the best parts of many of our favorite bands, Electric Wizard, Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Church Of Misery, Boris, Bongzilla, that list alone should have many of you already leaping for the 'buy' button, and that's as it should be. These guys destroy. Unbelievably heavy, crazy catchy, killer riffs, hooks galore, and plenty of spaced out druggy drone. But YEARS before that comp, Bong On- Live Long!, we were already huge fans of this here disc right here, Tumuli Shroomaroom, now reissued with new improved sound, maybe one of the best stoner rock records EVER. High praise indeed, but not unwarranted we think. The guitars are massive, downtuned and crunchy, spitting out groovy Sabbathy riffage, but way more psychedelic, plenty of wah guitar, streaks of wild leads, all over a super dense rhythmic foundation. The drums heavy as fuck, pounding away, the bass throbbing and buzzing and holding it all together. The vocals a rough raspy, but melodic caterwaul. And the songs, as catchy as they are heavy, super charged and blown out, like someone took perfect pop songs, dipped them in LSD, rolled them in broken shards of Monster Magnet, wrapped them in thick sheets of Hawkwind, lit them on fire and smoked them, and then picked up guitars and this was the result. Not sure why these guys weren't huge. Besides being a kick ass band, heavy and catchy, they also have a serious thing for repetition, and drone, most of the songs have long stretches of churning riffage that just repeats and repeats, mantra like, mesmerizingly headbanging, lots of them also lock into some sort of endless groove near the end, the song often transforming into an ultra heavy hypnorock workout, looped over and over, repeating sometimes for minutes, and then sometimes unexpectedly slipping right back into the song. Definitely part of what gives them such a druggy vibe. The best example of that is the track "Motherslug (The Mother Of All Slugs", a massive stoner rock jam, that is constantly locking into perfect looped grooves, so tight and hypnotic they almost sounds like the cd is skipping, a single riff churning again and again, so completely trancelike, while all around the main riff, other guitars swell and swoop, shimmering in little squalls pf psychedelic FX, sort of like those kick ass spaced out Hawkwind outros but way less spacey and more relentlessly and repetitively rocking, until the track suddenly and effortlessly slips back into the main groove again, eventually drifting apart into some awesome spacious doom jam, the guitar and drums locked in big crashes, spaced way far apart, the guitar chords crumbling and fading almost completely before the next crash comes, finally fading into some throbbing drone, buzzy and muted, maybe a didgeridoo or faux throat singing or something, finally fading out into the space-rock Sabbath riff that opens the next track. Hard to know what else to say, one of our favorite heavy records ever, every track on here is a killer. Heavy and groovy, droney and hypnotic, druggy and spaced out, the ultimate stoner rock doom disc for sure. As we mentioned above, folks into Monster Magnet, Sleep, Electric Wizard, Ufomammut, Orange Goblin, Kyuss, Black Sabbath, Spiritual Beggars, Nebula, Bongzilla, Green Machine, Boris, Lowrider, Spirit Caravan, Solarized, Fu Manchu, Dozer and Mammoth Volume and have somehow made it this far without hearing Acrimony, might just have discovered their new favorite band.
ACTRESSGhettoville(Ninja Tune)cd$ 14.98
We described the 2012 R.I.P. album from Actress, aka Darren Cunningham, like this: "subtly detailed, psychedelic sonic prisms drip playfully onto murky haunted fuzz-drones, other worldly squelches and squiggles interplay with analog drum machines, and science fiction melodies get tangled up with hazy, half remembered samples, creating an electronic alchemy that of which this world has never seen!" Tall praise for sure, but that record, was a unanimous store fave, and got played to death in the shop. So the prospect of a new record had us all pretty excited. And while we were expecting, maybe even hoping for, more of the same, the sound on Ghettoville is much darker and more minimal. Which if you know anything about us, is most definitely not a bad thing AT ALL. Things do still get woozy and alien and psychedelic, the sounds are in constant flux, but at least for the first half of the record, the vibe is super chill, low slung, and washed out. "Forgiven" sets the tone, with a sprawling, slo-mo slither, a gorgeous bit of downtempo slowcore, laced with field recordings, and little bits of gristle and rumble, but all anchored by a glitchy skeletal rhythm, and bolstered by some thick low end swells, it's the sort of dreamlike dirgery that could have stretched out for the entirety of the record, and we would have dug it just as much. If not even MORE!!! But this is Actress after all, so sonic restlessness manifests itself in the form of constant sonic shifts, although as we mentioned, things stay pretty murky in the early stages, so "Street Corp." is more of the same, an almost jazzy skitter, wreathed in crunchy crackle, a submerged bass pulsation, eventually, some soft billowy shimmer surface in the background, but again, a track that ends WAY too soon. "Corner" adds a bit of lo-fi hip-hop swagger, but casts it like those first two tracks in shadow, the edges blurred and smeared, everything sort of hazy and darkly druggy. "Contagious" is another beauty, almost metallic, industrial, a heaving distorted dirge, heavy and haunting, still super lo-fi, but with a different production, it could rival outfits like Nadja or the Angelic Process, bleary metalgaze churn that takes the dubbed out murk of Burial, and adds some serious heft. It's right around here, that Actress starts sonically drifting into less shadowy spaces, with some chiming, almost Pop Ambient shimmer, some dreamy prismatic electro, even some almost new wave-y sounding house music, but even then, the sound remains gorgeously woozy and washed out, a little bit alien, and for every moment like that, there's another one like "Frontline" near the end of the record, that takes some groovy house, and submerges it in thick, tarpit murk, gristly static, hazy thrum, and again recasts it as something swirly and shadowy and sublime!
ADAMS, JOHN LUTHERIn The White Silence(New World)cd$ 16.98
Oooh. So utterly blissful, beautiful, and contemplative. In The White Silence is a musical evocation of the endless white Arctic tundra. John Luther Adams lives in Alaska and this piece, like much of his work, is inspired by the remote Alaskan wilderness, in all its vastness and stillness, what he considers exploration in "sonic geography". We thought at first that sounded like it might be a bit too New Agey or something but as soon as we heard this we couldn't help but fall in love with it! This was recommended to us by one of our customers who said that it was basically the closest any modern composer had come to making "Pop Ambient" music (as in, the Pop Ambient compilations released by the Kompakt label, stuff like Gas, Markus Guentner, and Klimek). But it's not electronic, it's chamber music, performed by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. That means lots of sweet strings -- violins, violas, cellos, bass, harp. Also some additional coloration (and this is colorful, in the way that white is all colors) from vibraphone, celesta and orchestra bells. Although of course this composition has a beginning and an end, it seems like something that could go on forever, though it really only lasts about 75 minutes -- slowly unfolding, built from layers of cloud-like tone clusters and barely-shifting rhythms. The musically learned liner notes (which will tell you a lot more about the musical theory behind the construction of this piece than I could ever hope to do) speak of "static textures of densely layered sound, sustained tones, short repetitive patterns, and long rising and falling lines." All true, but you have to hear it to understand how NICE that can be. If the Arctic really sounds like this, we're all set to fly up there and strap on the snowshoes... A gorgeous, extended, and immersive piece of minimalist, "pop ambient" chamber music indeed!!
ADERLATINGThe Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression(Shadowgraph)cd-r$ 10.98
A quick glance at this, the first release from the strangely named Aderlating, will reveal some very telling clues, the record is called The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression, the cover features a terrified figure, clad only in a bit of cloth, cowering from the darkness, and on the other side some sort of ritual that involves a naked woman with burning candles inserted in her ass, laying on an altar in front of mysterious cloaked figures. The songs are titled things like "Cut Off My Penis In Praise Of Black Satan", "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles", "Death Knell" and "Doodstorm", so even before we get to the caustic gritty blackened filth on the disc, we're feeling a pretty heavy Gnaw Their Tongues vibe, which makes perfect sense as Aderlating is in fact another project by Gnaw mastermind Mories. It's a little unclear what differentiates this from a proper Gnaw Their Tongues release, there's plenty of harsh black noise, rumbling mysterious drones, buried riffage and mysterious chanting, creepy almost choral sounding voices, pounding percussion, harsh hissing feedback, crumbling distortion, buzzing black metal guitars smeared into blurred buzzscapes, howling harsh vocals buried in the mix, static, whir, glitch, all doused in effects and buried under layer after layer of distorted noise and noisy distorted. Hell, even sounds like we're describing a GTT record. Fuck it, anyone into Gnaw Their Tongues, you're gonna want this, it could essentially be the new GTT record, the only difference we can hear really, is that it's a little more harsh, a little less orchestral, where GTT employed all sort of almost cabaret like sounds, Aderlating is a much more furiously aggressive and abrasive beast, but even amidst all the white noise and grinding feedback drenched distortion, there lurks all sorts of sonic mystery, be it buried melodies, haunting disembodied voices or fucked up fragmented loops. Needless to say, we dig it. Heavy and harsh and droney and dark and just what we needed to tide us over until the next Gnaw Their Tongues record... LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! We got about a quarter of those but judging by past Gnaw Their Tongues releases, those won't be around for long...
ADRENALIN O.D.The Wacky Hi-Jinks Of...(Chunksaah)2cd$ 15.98
Adrenalin O.D. really get a bad rap as being some sort of joke band. Sure they were funny, and goofy, and had ridiculous song titles, and sang about a lot of stupid shit, but it was more a case of 4 really funny guys getting together to play some serious kick ass metallic punk rock, and the thing is when you get to the music, there's really nothing funny about it at all. A.O.D. were faster and heavier and more brutal than most of their early eighties contemporaries, just check out the first sound sample "A.O.D. Vs. Godzilla", perfectly encapsulates what's so awesome about Adrenaline O.D. With a dead pan introduction "Hi, welcome to our album", the band lurches into a chugging doomy metal dirge, that probably had the punk kids back in 1984 when this came out thinking "what the fuck?", before launching into a super heavy, ultra furious punk rock blast, that is heavier than most metal bands. A.O.D. slip back and forth between some angular Maidenesque guitar harmonies, and that furious blasting punk rock, shifting gears at the end into another kick ass buzzing outro. Holy shit. We forgot how good this stuff sounded. The rest of the disc is not quite so metal though there are moments, this is just punk as fuck punk rock, and even when these guys are singing about silly shit, the songs still destroy. Be sure and check out "Rock & Roll Gas Station", Fenriz from Darkthrone's favorite song. Which makes sense, listening to Darkthrone you can tell those guys were into punk rock as much as metal, maybe even more. There's a video floating around on internet of Fenriz being interviewed in his apartment, and there's a big part where he goes on and on about that track and these guys. FENRIZ ENDORSED!! What else do you need?! As if the The Wacky Hi-Jinks record wasn't enough on its own, this reissue also includes a whole extra disc of rarities, including singles, comp tracks, live recordings, most of 'em as kick ass as the record proper. Also includes a bunch of photos, and essay and liner notes...
AESTHETIC MEAT FRONTEmbalmer Tapes (Dissected)(Old Europa Cafe)cd-r$ 12.98
As you probably well know by now, we here at AQ have long been fans of manipulated found sounds and field recordings -- dogs barking, ice melting, whatever -- either on their own, captured just as they were heard, or better yet, twisted and smeared into drones and soundscapes, reimagined as completely alien worlds of sound. And while the source material may not be obvious, just knowing where the sounds come from, can make the listening just that much more thrilling. And the creepier and more unlikely the source sound the better. And it sure doesn't get any creepier than this. Sure Matmos used the sounds of rhinoplasty and various other procedures to concoct their abstract electronica, but Aesthetic Meat Front used only the sounds of a corpse being embalmed for Embalmer Tapes. Every single sound, whether it's the casual whistling of the embalmer, the slow rumble of processed suction sounds or the clang of metal instruments dropped in bloody metal trays, each and every sound was captured deep in the sublevels of a funeral home, while an embalmer removed all the fluids from a corpse. Euuuw. But sonically, WOW! Sometimes the sounds are instantly recognizable, the above mentioned whistling and clatter of surgical instruments, snippets of conversation heavy with the reverb of a small tiled room, small motorized pumps, footsteps, but more often, the sounds of suction, and the sounds of the machines pumping, are stretched out into warm whirring rumbles, or chopped up and reassembled into hissing blasts of fuzz and grrr. But mostly this is a weird warped world of drones, from dreamy and shimmery, to harsh and jagged, all imbued with the specter of mortality, life most fleeting, the great abyss, the sounds already sonically ominous and foreboding enough, but even more so on a psychological level, knowing the source of every sound, engendering a creepy dark ambient atmosphere thick with the heavy hanging shroud of death. So awesome. SUPER LIMITED!!! WE GOT THE LAST 20 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!
AGENTS OF OBLIVIONAgents of Oblivion(Rotten Records)cd$ 15.98
Dax Riggs and Mike Sanchez of the criminally overlooked Acid Bath (RIP) continue to rock with the metal of their former (and much loved) outfit tempered with Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie and slithery Iggy production. Plus the emotional intensity and murky melodicism of Jeff Buckley. Excellent! A runner-up for album of the week, actually. This proves that "classic rock" wasn't only made in the '70s. Music to drive your Camaro to.
AGENTS OF SATANDiscography(Ormolycka)cassette$ 5.98
Folks who went to metal shows in SF in the nineties no doubt remember seeing some crazy grind metal band, fronted by a maniacal one armed vocalist, who would do flips constantly during the set, landing flat on his back, due to the fact, that he was holding the mic with his one hand. The music a gloriously chaotic blown out powerviolence, very reminiscent of the Slap A Ham stable (Spazz, No Less, etc.). Short blast of furious grinding riffage, sick vokills that swooped from guttural cookie monster death metal bellow, to hysterical shriek, the music lurching from lurching doomy churn, to chaotic blasting fastcore, with song titles like "Rape Your Ass With Drugs", "Silver In Christ's Cornhole", "Snatch In Your Eye", "Cut Off My Dick", "Vomit tar" and "Crust = Glam". While some of this is just goofy noisemaking, some of the tracks here are fierce blasts of metallic mayhem, and punishing bursts of hardcore ferocity. Unsung Bay Area grind from back in the day, leave it to the madmen behind Ormolycka to dig this up and give it new life. Some folks might remember AoS from their split with Burn The Priest (later to become Lamb Of God), this tape collects pretty much everything, and it KILLS. It's also, like most Oromolycka stuff, crazy limited...
AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEEDAgorapocalypse(Relapse)cd$ 17.98
Much like when the Butthole Surfers signed to a major label, who would have thought that a band with a name like Agoraphobic Nosebleed (and a sound like theirs for that matter!), would reach the point they're at now. For the longest time, Scott Hull kept Agoraphobic Nosebleed a dirty little secret, like the deformed child you keep locked in the basement, while focusing on his 'real' band Pig Destroyer (another bad ass band name), Agoraphobic Nosebleed a much spazzier and more drum machined grind proposition, which Pig Destroyer kept drifting more and more toward a somewhat more mainstream metal sound. As much as we love PD (see the Natasha review elsewhere on this list) our bleeding blackened hearts always belonged to Agoraphobic Nosebleed, every record packed with 30 second long tracks, amazing artwork, insane song titled, a fully fucked and warped sense of humor, killer artwork, and let's not forget that amazing 100 song 3", what wasn't to love? They were just so twisted and heavy and brutal, their sound a lightning speed burst of grinding ultraviolence, 1000 mile an hour hyperspeed fury, complex, convoluted, stuttering, blown out sonic insanity. So we've been waiting patiently for a new AnB record, it's been almost 3 years since the PCP Torpedo / ANBRX comp / remix record 2cd, and finally, lo and behold, the band resurface, with a new member (a lady no less, and not just ANY lady, the vocalist from ultra doom outfit Salome) and a new sound. We of course expected 30 or 40 songs, but there are only 13, and the sound is not so fast, not so unhinged, definitely still grind, but more a sort of fast core / power violence variant. At first we were a little disappointed with that, but the more we listen to this, the more the songs sink in, with slower tempos and longer track lengths, comes more melodies, more hooks, it's now a bit more about the songs, and THE RIFF, than just a twisted blown out blast of tangled grind. Not that we don't love us a twisted blown out blast of tangled grind, but between all the AnB records we already own, we have about 300 tracks of that, so this new record is pretty exciting. Still a drum machine, but the programming is wicked, it sounds almost like a real drummer (there's even a sort of drum!!), the guitars are still amazing, jagged and corrosive, the riffs much more like riffs instead of shards of guitar grind, lots of chug, and super almost technical squiggles, a bit of groove too, and some definite Greg Ginn-ish worship, the whole sound is still plenty gnarled and harsh and brutal, it's just that now you have time to get into the songs. There's some bits of plodding doominess, some long stretches of churning crunch, but for the most part this is a gloriously grinding chunk of damaged metallic chaos. And be sure to check the negative track, that's right, rewind past the beginning, and there's a whole other secret track (well not secret, it's listed on the disc and there are lyrics in the booklet), and speaking of the booklet, it's jam packed with fucked up cartoony drawings of death and cocks and naked women and sex acts and drugs and snakes and gore (it is a grind record after all) as well as the band's twisted non-PC lyrics. And while they last, the jewel-cased cds come packaged inside old school long boxes, the amazing cover art spread out over one of those big cardboard boxes cds used to come in back when they had to fit in bins stores previously were using for vinyl, but the extra dough is not just for the box, it also comes with pins, a poster and a bad ass embroidered patch. The vinyl has none of that stuff, but does have a huge full color booklet, and is housed in a sweet deluxe jacket.
AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEEDAltered States of America(Relapse)3" cd$ 14.98
The grand return (albeit slight) of the masters of hyperspeed, crushing, gore-y metallic grind. We raved about their most recent full length Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope, hailing it as the best grind record of last year, which it was! So how does this new one stack up? Well, musically, it's got everything its predecessor had, drums like handfuls of ball bearings hurled at your windshield, guitars like electric carving knives hooked up to a car battery and used to saw your ears off and low end like a hot tar blanket wrapped around your head. But the concept rules on this one. 100 songs (the first being tracked -before- track one to accomodate the 99 song cd limit), the majority clocking in at or a little under 10 seconds, all on a 3" cd. Pretty cool. But the listenability of 4 second blasts of short sharp grinding carnage is maybe a bit debatable. And taking into consideration how unbelievably complex and convuluted AnB songs are, it seems like all 100 tracks could've been woven into 3 or 4 proper tracks. But where would the fun be in that?! And those of you who have been hankering for more of that sick, sick, fast as fuck, brutal blurred grinding metal that only a few bands can pull off (AnB, Pig Destroyer, etc.) and miss song titles like 'Children Blown To Bits By The Busload', 'When Taking A Shit Feels Sexy', 'Mosquito Holding Human Cattle Prod', 'Holiday Bowl Full Of Asshole' then look no further. The 100 song 3" grindcore ep of the year without a doubt! MPEG Download: "Spreading The Dis-Ease" [/audio/agoraphobicnosespread.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Spreading The Dis-Ease" [/audio/agoraphobicnosespread.m3u]
AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEEDFrozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope(Relapse)cd$ 14.98
Second full length by this outfit led by Scott Hull (of Pig Destroyer and formerly of Anal Cunt). The distinction between Hull's other project Pig Destroyer and ANB (both are furious grind metal units) is maybe a little nebulous, but the most obvious differences are: ANB uses a drum machine instead of a live drummer, and their songs are way more varied and for the most part, WAY weirder. Totally inhuman, lightning speed hyper-blast beats, harsh and brutal guitar tone, insane riffing, and super distorted totally sick vocals. Most of the tracks are blazing fast and brutal as fuck, but occasionally they slow it down to a midtempo old school thrash attack (speaking of old school thrash, there's even a Nuclear Assault cover with Dan Lilker on bass/vox!). The production is really bizarre with lots of samples, weird electronic bits, and lots of digital fx and processing on the vocals and guitars. There's even a weird almost techno number that manages to be just as fearsome as the rest of the more metal tracks. All the production craziness and occasional electronic bits remind us a little of James Plotkin's WAY far out glitch-grind Atomsmasher album we dug so much. And the cover art courtesy of Hydra Head honcho and member of Isis, Aaron Turner, is also very cool. So far, "Frozen Corpse" is easily the best grindcore record this year, as far as Andee and Allan are concerned!
AHABThe Call Of The Wretched Sea(Napalm)cd$ 16.98
While it may have been a bit of a misstep to release a metal record based on Moby Dick and with a big ol' whale on the cover in the long black shadow cast by Mastodon's Leviathan record, it would be even more of a mistake to pass up this Ahab record based solely on that. Obviously a lot of though went into the sound and the artwork and the execution, and if anything, we actually like this record more than the Mastodon. So if you can get past the whole Mastodon thing, you're in for some massive and fantastically epic slow motion doom. This German outfit is CLASSIC doom, well not quite like Sabbath and Candlemass, but not the filthy slow motion grungy grimey dirgey sludge sort of doom either, this is epic and majestic, slow and sorrowful, occasionally loping with bursts of wild kick drums, more often trudging along glacially, a funereally death march through the pouring rain, knee deep in black sonic murk, but with a surprising amount of dynamics, stops and starts, some super hooky riffs, mournful guitar melodies, massive downtuned chugs that sometime morph into mathy metal workouts. Vocals that rumble and groan, a huge guttural gurgle, the whole thing impossible heavy and aggressive, but strangely pretty. Definitely reminds us of old Cathedral, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, that sort of thing. Like classic heavy doom metal slowed waaaaay down and made somehow even heavier. As much as we love extreme doom, the slower and the sludgier the better, it's actually nice to hear some extremely dark depressive doom with some actual melodies, and some memorable riffs, heck even some songs. We'd forgotten how good stuff like this sounds. One of our favorite new TRUE DOOM records for sure.
AHMED, ILYASBetween Two Skies / Towards The Night(Digitalis)2cd$ 21.00
FINALLY! FINALLY!! FINALLY!!! Lots of you probably remember when we listed these discs a few years back, both were cd-r's back then, and both were limited to about 50 copies. We got so many orders, and rightfully so, Ahmed's sound as and is gorgeous and spare, simple and spacious, darkly emotional and sweetly mournful. Ilyas promised to make more cd-r's for all the people who ordered them, but somehow, he never managed to make it happen. We waited and waited and waited� But you know what? That's okay now, as Digitalis has thankfully stepped in and taken Ahmed's first two cd-r's and reissued them as real cds, and in some super deluxe packaging to boot. For those who missed out on the cd-r frenzy way back when, Ahmed is a guitarist, pianist, and crafter of drones, but guitar is his main instrument. He explores a sonic steel string world similar to folks like James Blackshaw, Jack Rose and of course John Fahey, dense little tangles of minor key finger picking and lush metallic strum. Darkly melodic, and strangely timeless sounding. Moody and so so gorgeous. Fans of the above mentioned guitarists will absolutely want this, even just for the Towards The Night disc, which finds Ahmed doing his best modern Appalachia, and he does it so well, completely mesmerizing and intense and emotional and impossibly lush. On the other disc, Between Two Skies, Ahmed takes his guitar, that ghostly Appalachia, all subtle and subdued, washed out and weary sounding, and sets it amidst mysterious and lush sounding soundscapes, tinkling piano, long drawn out vocal parts, slightly reminiscent of Sigur Ros, wordless, warm and fuzzy, unfurling like another layer of sound, the atmosphere gauzy and dreamlike. All the while the guitar weaves delicate little melodies, little blurs of soft focus sound wrapped in shimmering drones and warm whirring ambience. Both discs are distinctly different, but manage to sound perfect together, each subtly complimenting the other. Folks who were lucky enough to get those cd-r's the first time around, have probably played them to death and can no get some much sturdier replacements, and for everybody else, a long overdue to get lost in Ahmed's mysterious and lovely soundworld. Beautifully packaged in a thick two color offset printed cardstock gatefold sleeve, with a printed cardstock insert. Remastered by Pete Swanson of The Yellow Swans with extensive liner notes from David Keenan.
AHMED, MAHMOUDJeguol Naw Betwa(Mississippi)lp$ 15.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** You'll want to pay attention to this one, because this rare Mahmoud Ahmed, originally self-released in 1978, has never been reissued before in any form, cd or lp, and it's a KILLER! Recorded with The Ibex band forming funky circular rhythms of bass, guitars, horns, organ, and percussion around Ahmed's soulful and sultry vocals, the songs are upbeat yet heady, hypnotic and serpentine in a way that only Ethio-jazz can be. We've long been fans of Mahmoud Ahmed, waxing rapturously about his many contributions to the long-running Ethiopiques series and we've covered plenty of his back story in past reviews. But just when we thought his entire back catalog must have already been made available, turns out there are apparently new treasures to be found and this record is certainly worthy of that esteem. An awesome find that is truly magical and beguiling. Don't sleep on this one! Highest Recommendation!
AIR WAVESDungeon Dots(Underwater Peoples)cd$ 14.98
We loved this record before we even heard a note. C'mon, the band's called Air Waves, the record is called Dungeon Dots, and the cover photo is a bearded man and his baby, both sporting chainmail made out of what appears to be beer can pull tabs. How could we not be smitten? And even though we loved it already, when we finally heard the music inside, it wasn't at all what we expected, yet we still loved it. In fact, we might love it even more for precisely that reason. With all the music coming out these days, that relies so heavily on atmosphere and ambience, echo and delay and reverb and lo-fidelity and buzz and drone, not to take way from that stuff, it's stuff we most definitely love, but enough of those things and much can be forgiven in the way of songwriting and performance. So we were sort of expecting another chunk of eighties beholden lo-fi lysergic garage pop, but instead, we were greeted by big jangly, strummy, sunshiney, melancholic warm, swirling pretty much perfect pop music. Softly crashing, dreamily bombastic, the basslines woozy and warm, the guitars chiming and lush and layered, and the vocals, well, let's just say we got so used to boys singing super high, and sounding female, that we were surprised to discover that Air Waves was in fact a one woman band, her vocals plaintive and emotional, the perfect balance for the jangle and strum, the shuffle and shimmer. The songs striking a similarly delicate balance between wistful and melancholy, sunshiney and dreampoppy. Opener "Knock Out" sealed the deal within seconds, simple jangle guitars, some sorta twangy melodies drifting around that main riff, the bass warm and liquid, the drums crashing and loud, but not overwhelming, and the vocals, immediate and intimate, weary and emotive, all wound up into the sort of jangle pop we just can stop listening to. "Bisous" is another favorite, that starts out all brooding and melancholy, the vocals so bittersweet, over hazy minor key chords, a ballady dirge, drifting and droney, and subtly sad, but slow building too, eventually bursting into a super propulsive stretch of distorted fuzz pop, rocking and rollicking, but still retaining the pathos of the intro. And so it goes. We could definitely go song by song, and sure there's reverb and delay and echo, but it's used way more judiciously here, cuz really the songs don't need 'em, but they are subtly colored by the various effects, the chords and arrangements, the melodies and the vocal lines powerful enough to carry even the most barebones sound, but thankfully, Dungeon Dots is anything but, it manages to be lush and lustrous and layered, but still simple and minimal and pretty and hooky and catchy. And sneaking in just hours before the end of the year, which will most likely require an adjustment to our year end top ten, since this definitely is one of our favorite pop records of 2010. Anyone who dug recent aQ faves like Jaill, No Joy, Avi Buffalo, or who loves stuff on Captured Tracks and Sacred Bones, or who digs classic modern pop like the Shins, Built To Spill, Neutral Milk Hotel and all that amazing nineties indie rock that still sounds so great, odds are you're gonna love this too!