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Third re-issue (first in a jewel case) of this seminal release of Amon Tobin's under the moniker of "Cujo." Very mo-waxy, down-tempo drum and bass with lots of lifted jazz breaks. An excellent album that has aged much finer than most of its contemporaries from 1997.

Despite the Emperor t-shirt Cul de Sac's Robin Amos wears so proudly on the inside cover of this new album, the Boston band has not gone black metal (although it's apparently much of what they listen to in the tour vehicle!) Still, this long awaited -- three years in the making -- record from one of our favorite groups is a stylistic breakthru for them, and a very successful one at that. Amos and new member Jake Trussell (electronics/turntables) first created a sonic foundation: samples contributed by each bandmember (everything from a gurgling Missouri River to Peruvian rainforest ambience, a scratchy Cajun 78rpm record, and a 1933 German a capella 5-part harmony group) were looped, treated and otherwise manipulated into electronic roadmaps over which the band then played acoustic bowed bass, warm gentle guitars, muted tickings, violin, sinister twanging sitar, hunting horns, melodica, and more. The electronically manipulated elements were meant to stand equally alongside the organic acoustic sounds -- something Amos points out is attempted often by other musicians but rarely happens successfully. It's really no surprise that if any band could do this well, it would be the always-amazing Cul de Sac. This record is the hands-down best lull-you-to-sleep record of the year so far -- Reminiscent of lots of AQ faves (Phillip Jeck, No Neck Blues Band, Bohren, Jackie O Motherfucker, Birchville Cat Motel Band, Third Ear Band) but totally amazing and original as always!

RealAudio clip: Dust of Butterflies
RealAudio clip: I Remember Nothing More

More spaced out psychedelic garage from the Cardinal Fuzz label, this one, record number two from UK fuzz merchants Cult Of Dom Keller, whose sound is a perfect fit for the 'Fuzz, all reverbed riffage, simple motorik drum pound, laid back echo drenched spacer vox, all smeared into druggy sprawls of lysergic hypno-rock that falls somewhere between Spacemen 3, Moon Duo, Loop and any number of other like minded drug rock space explorers. The opener "Plague Of All" sets the stage perfectly, with a killer main riff, that's soon bolstered by some primitive rhythmic pound, and spidery distorted guitar melody, doused in FX, and seriously fuzzed out, when the vocals swoop in, the sound gets way more spacey and drifty, the sound seesawing back and forth between ethereal space rock shimmer and swagger psych blooze crunch. The rest of the record seems to melt and ooze and drift, the template laid down on the first track seemingly left in the sun too long, whirring organs dripping all over loping and lumbering drug-rock grooves, the guitars churning, warm and distorted, on tracks like "The Snake Keeps Changing", the vibe is practically somnambulant, tripped out and gloriously laid back, it's almost impossible to not imagine some crazy psychedelic light show enveloping you when you close your eyes and strap on the headphones. Other tracks add sitar-like buzz, swirling backwards FX, walls of crumbling distortion, some explode into serious heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind like pound, others sprawl and expand into hazy sonic supernovas of sound. Epic spaced out psychedelia for fans of the usual suspects (Carlton Melton, the Heads, White Hills, Wooden Shjips, as well as the rest of the Cardinal Fuzz roster), and SUPER LIMITED of course, pressed on tripped out swirled red/green vinyl...

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Another blast of twisted rhythmic "Afro-Noise" from William Bennett, most famously known for his confrontational harsh noise combo Whitehouse, but who around here is probably more beloved for this project, Cut Hands, his most recent project, which fuses traditional African rhythms, with industrial electronics and techno rhythms, creating a series of dark tangled grooves, that somehow push all our buttons. And this new one basically continues on where the recent Black Mamba ep left off. The A side is a furious polyrhythmic barrage, that slips easily from tribal groove, to lurching, loping, stuttering, industrial crunch and back again, driving and fierce, percussive and pretty goddamn hypnotic, the sort of thing we could listen to forever, and we just listened to the A side about four times in a row, and basically had to force ourselves to stop. The tracks on the flipside are a bit less aggro, sounding a little like old Muslimgauze, or like some current Dom Fernow project (Christian Cosmos, Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement), the beats muted and blunted, at times downright mellow and blissed out, at others, rhythmic but dialed back, sort of murky and moody, but still tranced out and seriously psychedelic...

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Record number two from the new project of Chris Spencer of late great NYC nineties noise rockers the Unsane, and while the sound of The Cutthroats 9 is maybe a bit less metal, it still retains much of the negative sonic energy of Unsane. Skull caving riffage, thick, corrosive bass buzz, pounding drums, and maybe most notably, some bad ass slide guitar (peep the cover photo, a close up of said slide guitar happening) which adds a definite distinctive sound, CT9's down tuned grooves laced with slippery melodies, the band locked into explosive churning heaviness, Spencer's slide guitar woven throughout, adding some surprising melody to the proceedings, a nice balance to the unhinged ferocity that oozes from pretty much every other part of the record, with Spencer's throaty bellow, cracking into more unhinged near-shriekiness on tracks like "Trouble", which sound essentially, like a groovier, more melodic Unsane, which is most definitely not a bad thing at all. The AmRep noise rock vibe is pretty huge too, hugely beholden to that label, and that era, fans of eighties and nineties pig fuck heaviness will dig this stuff like crazy, but then the band whip out a track like "Dissension", where the slide is right up front, and suddenly it almost sounds like a more metal Raging Slab, sort of, cuz really, the blood that adorned most of the Unsane records seems to still flow through Spencer's veins, and thus through his amp, dripping all over these jams as well, so fans of Spencer's old outfit will feel right at home, but really, any one whole likes it heavy and groovy, step right up... Includes a download code too!

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BACK IN STOCK!!! First release from the oddly named Cvbe Ov Falsehood, the new project from one of the guys in aQ faves Servile Sect, and like that group, whose connection to black metal is tenuous at best, CoF deliver some seriously avant blackness, to sidelong 15 minute tracks that combine drifting drones, with symphonic fragments, layered strings, pizzicato melodies, churning blurred riffage, swirling psychedelic FX, what sounds like field recordings, the first track/side begins with what sounds like an orchestra tuning up, while in the background, the earth begins to rumble and the crust of the earth collapses into subterranean caverns. But that tectonic/Teutonic rumble, is soon smoothed out into a glorious bit of black drone drift, laced with all manner of subtle sonic fluctuations, buried industrial rhythms, the whole thing coalescing into a sort of murky kraut-psych, wreathed in dense black ambience. Soon the sound is wreathed in hiss and static, a cloud of swirling sibilant shimmer, that gradually becomes more and more caustic, before transforming into a strange staticky rhythm, churning machinelike to the end of the side. The flipside begins with the sounds of a gamelan (we think), lush, lustrous, resonant tones, ringing out, the sky filled with the ripples of subtle overtones, mysterious samples surface from the murk, the low end becomes more active, a strangely muted melody, pulsing, super distorted, over another barely there industrial rhythm, the result a pulsing sprawl of blackened kosmische, that gradually becomes more and more abstract and tranquil, before beginning another slow build, beginning with a burbling thrum, laced with cricket like chitter, and distant keening melodies, all draped in a black sonic gauze, suddenly erupting into some serious caustic crunch, grinding and corrosive, but somehow also weirdly melodic and psychedelic, the burst brief, soon settling back into a final stretch of deep tones, and hushed ambient dronemusic. Gorgeous packaging too. A clear tape in a black and white J-card adorned with black and white space diagrams, the whole tape then housed in a black on black embossed, textured cardstock slipcover. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Some of which include a Tarot card!

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This disc has quickly become one of Andee and Allan's most played. After getting over the initial surprise of absolutely *loving* a super commercial MTV style heavy rock band, one can enjoy what is in our opinion a totally great record. Definitely hyper produced, too heavy to be totally mainstream "alternative", but too poppy to be a metal record, it just pushes all the right buttons. Sounding a bit like a more metallic Smashing Pumpkins, or a smoother, non-rap Rage Against the Machine, but with what sounds like GEDDY LEE FROM RUSH ON VOCALS!!. So great. Totally kick ass, totally catchy. It's a crying shame that these guys are major-label also-rans when they are as good or even better than the above mentioned bands. The sound, the look (hottie alt-hunk lead vocalist with dyed red hair and no shirt!) -- they should be huge. Must be the totally stupid album cover. Maybe a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

RealAudio clip: Violet High
RealAudio clip: Supergod

The return of this minimal bleep-glitch super group, or maybe super duo would be more accurate. Cyclo is Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto), and for their second record, they've upped the ante conceptually, as the project was already focused on the visualization of sound, on Id, this is taken to its logical extreme, where the duo focused on the actual images of the sound, using stereo image monitoring equipment, and these pieces are the results of creating sounds, by manipulating their visual components, there is a forthcoming book of the images, but THIS is what those images SOUND LIKE. It's pretty awesome. We're fascinated by wave forms as well and had actually often wondered about reverse engineering sound, but these two have done it, and the results are pretty amazing. And as always, not that far removed from the Raster-Noton aesthetic, extreme lows, impossible highs, sine wave tones, rumbles so low you can almost feel them more than hear them, skittery glitches, and abstract squelches, rhythmic, but not seemingly purposefully so, just a result of crafting particular sonic shapes. Headphones are definitely required, but be careful, even at low volume, some of these sounds seem to bore right into your skull, especially the low tones, the opening few seconds is a field of static and barely there dog whistle tones, but when the bass comes in, it rattles your brain, and might hurt your ears if you have it cranked. We couldn't help but imagine blasting this in a lowrider with a massive booming system, it would probably level everything for blocks. Minimal, austere, haunting, clinical, weirdly lovely, some of the tracks crafted into actual grooves, but strangely alien robotic hyperminimal clean-room click-buzz grooves, some of the sounds super thick and buzzy, these guys could definitely give Justice and Daft Punk some pointers, in fact, a few of these tracks are ready to be sampled, and transformed into dancefloor destroyers. As always fantastic stuff, and simultaneously the most groovy, and most sonically extreme sounds we've heard from these two, and we're digging it like crazy.

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Of all the dark, drone-y, druggy synthiness that's been popping up lately (and believe us, it's a LOT), this lp from mysterious Los Angeles duo D.A. is most definitely our favorite. A heady collection of dark and dreary, lush and spaced out sci-fi synth creep that tapes into classic Goblin soundtrack music, the best John Carpenter scores, and mixes in plenty of modern lysergic lo-fi experimentation, conjuring up some of the most tense and dramatic and hypnotic sounds we've heard in ages. Like some strange mix of Zombi and Expo '70, but with a hint of new age-y drift that makes these songs sound like they could only be the music from some lost eighties film, only the visuals could never hope to match this haunting otherworldly music. Looped synths are looped into slow shifting swells, pulsing over a bed of softly swirling minor key tension, alien tones, blurred buzz and dense shimmery drones, shot through with moody melodies, laced with super spare abstract percussion and everything wrapped in a gauzy warmth, total kraut drone new age soundtrack bliss. The second side changes gear toward the end, evolving into a sound akin to Godspeed meets Zombi meets SUNNO))), a thick thick buzz wrapped around twisted looped melodies and all sorts of simulated haunted forest sound effects, growing ever more harrowing, ominous and dramatic, and surprisingly, yet subtly heavy. The flipside is much more minimal and abstract than the A side, but no less intense and mysterious. Reverbed piano is sent drifting into blackness, tons and tons of space, softly wheezing organs, deep muted tones, that distinctly eighties sounding bass pulse, long thick swirls of softly distorted synth buzz, tinkling high end tones, all of that gives way to another thick, and surprisingly heavy space synth drone, a starlit slow motion swirl, abstract, super space-y, dark and emotional, tense and INtense, it still boggles the mind that filmmakers aren't constantly on the lookout for groups like this, whose cinematic soundtrack ambience is way more compelling and original and ruling than 90 percent of the music that actually ends up in movies. But who needs the movies, best to just throw this on, close your eyes, and let these sounds ooze into your consciousness, creating a fantastical and unreal world all for you, populated with far out sights, worthy of these far out sounds. Incredible hand silk screened, ultra thick card stock sleeves, LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

Ah-ha! The first D.A.F. record! And boy, was it quite a surprise to hear this one. D.A.F. began in 1978 as a post-krautrock outfit from Dusseldorf, with Robert Gorl, Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke, Wolfgang Spelmans, Michael Kemner, and Gabi Delgado originally calling themselves You; but with another German band snatching up the name and releasing the mighty fine album Electric Day in the same year, they decided upon Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft as the new name. A couple of band members were not all too pleased with Gabi Delgado's vocals and lyrics, and he was promptly sacked after their first attempt in the studio. Delgado returned to the band a year later when a few of his detractors left, and he became the iconic frontman for the stripped down D.A.F. with Robert Gorl. That incarnation of D.A.F. spawned an aggressive synth-punk sound that dominated the more abrasive side of new wave throughout the '80s; but this instrumental, motorik album is an entirely different beast. While electronics do make some interesting punctuations to the D.A.F. sound, they were fundamentally a damaged art-rock band with a rhythm section well versed in the classic Can, Neu!, and early Kraftwerk records from earlier in the decade, but they also exploded with slashing guitars, pummelling basslines, and an aggressive angularity that responded to the American contemporaries like DNA and Pere Ubu. Could this influence from American degenerate art-rock be an explanation for the name of the band? In any case, threads of this first D.A.F. record certainly look forward to the likes of Sonic Youth and Circle. The album is a collection of 22 untitled extracts from what seemed to be an exhausting recording session of constantly accelerating rhythmic marches with jagged-toothed guitar riffs that get pretty heavy and churning at times (even reminding us of instru-metallers Gore!), with plenty of interludes of amplifier feedback and spark-plug noise bursts. Part krautrock, part no-wave and new-wave, all rad. Not what we would have expected from their first album, but this is totally an excellent record!

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No one wanted to like Eminem, but we all sort of did, at least musically (definitely not lyrically/politically) and the same holds true for Eminem's 'band' D12. With all the hype and the controversy, you just sort of want to pretend they don't exist, but

RealAudio clip: Purple P****

This collaboration between Howie B and Naked Funk is surprisingly good, reminding us of Two Lone Swordsmen-style melodic expansive electronica.

First we've heard from Mark Dall, aka Dalhous, who on his second record, delivers a gorgeous collection of wistful electronica, and darkly textured soundscapes of blurred samples and haunting synthesized sounds. We're immediately reminded of Boards Of Canada, but Dall's sound is even more human, and organic, just check out the one-two punch of opener "First Page From Justine", a hazy smear of hushed shimmer, and slow shifting melody, dreamy and drifty, and "A Communion With These People", which expands on that ethereal thrum, letting it blossom into something haunting and lovely, almost like a more IDM version of DJ Shadow, a simple beat, wreathed in crackle and hiss, all over a bed of minor key shimmer and swirl, soft slow-motion swells of sound, peppered with fragmented melodies, and lushly textured layers, one of those tracks that could have stretched out for two or three times its length, and we would have remained utterly mesmerized. "Function Curve" foregoes the rhythm, and instead unwinds a swirling skyful of kosmische glimmer, that sounds like stumbling upon the ruins of some old planetarium show, where impossibly, ghostly music plays on, even though the ceiling that once displayed projected stars and planets, has crumbled, the soundtrack now accompanying the actual cosmos. The whole record plays out like that, like sound out of time, music from another world, or another plane, the sound modern, but at the same time, reminiscent of so many sounds of the past, the best moments, when the sound seems to crumble and fall apart, the sonic decay present throughout, as if the record were constantly struggling against the ravages of time, and the fading of musical memories, hints of the Caretaker abound, as well as Pye Corner Audio, and even Demdike Stare in places, but the vibe is not nearly so dark, instead it's wistful and melancholy, the beats and rhythms, instead of the focal point of the record, almost seem like bridges between the ambience, rhythmic passages connecting the strange synthscapes and hushed shimmerscapes, sometimes sounding like a lost soundtrack, other times like vintage new age, and other times like the music from some strange educational filmstrip from the seventies, but throughout, it's gorgeous, fantastic, dreamy electronica that seems like it was brought here from somewhere, or some-when, far far away.

MPEG stream: A Communion With These People
MPEG stream: Lovers Of the Highlands
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We've long championed the work of Joel Phelps, an unsung hero of the indie underground, beginning with his stint in Silkworm - he was the group's secret weapon, with an aching, about to break voice that could soar into a powerful howl, his songs tense and intense, delicate balances of hushed brooding shimmer and explosive angular crunch, his wild guitar wrangling the perfect match for that utterly distinctive voice. Then came a clutch of solo records, all stunning, and almost all completely under the radar. And then, nothing. He seemed to have disappeared. Stopped making music. Until now. There's a new Phelps solo record, which is fantastic, and we'll review that one soon too, but this new project is something else entirely. We often talk about bands or records that seem custom made for aQuarius, and this definitely seems like one of those. Joel Phelps, teamed up with Stuart Dahlquist, of Burning Witch, Asva and SUNNO))), the result very much like you might imagine, and like we would have hoped, the best, creepiest, Silkworm songs, fused to the slow, droned out creep and crawl of Dahlquist's previous bands, ultra-doom torch songs, indie rock fused to Arvo Part, avant drone meets intimate songsmithery, a difficult combination for sure, but one that rewards patient and deep listening. Fans of either/both Phelps and Dahlquist will marvel at this haunting soundworld the two have conjured, from the brief opening, with Phelps, crooning over simpler percussion, and slow shifting layers of chordal shimmer, aching and heartfelt, bittersweet and melancholy, seemingly setting the stage for something much more like Phelps' previous works, but instead, the sound shifts, the second track "Stravinsky" unwinding as a dense layered drone, and when the vocals swoop in, they explode into strange harmonies, those harmonies woven into thick bass tones, the result some sort of alien chorale, downcast and stirring, even sans vocals, it would be a gorgeous sprawl of bass driven droned out dirgery, at once ethereal and atmospheric, dense and down tuned, but the song, like the whole record is rife with dramatic dynamics, long stretches of airy organ, drifting weightless, other movements bordering on avant doom, and still others dreamlike and choral, which is a sonic microcosm of the rest of the record. Dahlquist delivering some breathtaking sound design, field sod digital glitchery, wound around glimmering soft focus swirls of sound, heaving low end thrum, soundtrack like melodies, all wound into tense slow-builds, sometimes transforming into some hushed Phelps like downer slow core pop, othertimes blossoming into something even blacker. On tracks like "The Chant", simple percussion underpins Phelps' harrowing vocals, which are soon joined by keening organ drones, the vibe intense and sinister, until another cascade of thick bass buzz swoops in, and Phelps' vocals explode into incredible and alien harmonies, the sound mutating into drowsy, sun dappled doom, laced with twinkling electronics, and buried dreamlike melodies. And without going track by track, the rest of the record continues to expand, prismatically, slipping easily from strangely psychedelic indie pop, albeit fractured and flecked with weird steel drum like percussion, to field recording laced dronescapes, to quietly broody stretches of moody agent pop, psychedelic slowcore drift, to minimal, almost liturgical ambience. Dizzying in scope, stunning in execution, a practically perfect, and perfectly IM-perfect, hybrid of haunting avant indie rock and modern composition, brooding, downer folk minimalism and expansive sound designed dronescapery, dreamlike torch songmithery and outsider, cinematic ambient bliss.

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Second album from this Southern crust and doom metal outfit. Huge and droning and hypnotic and heavy and pretty weird, with a female vocalist that adds some surprising warmth and depth to the usually all too typical cookie monster metal vocals. Wicked cover art by Pushead (Metallica, Aerosmith, Septic Death, etc.)

We had been hearing about this for a while, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees' 'electro synth pop' solo record, and while we were envisioning lots of things, it wasn't this. It's definitely electro pop, lots of synths, and programmed rhythms, but there's still plenty of the fuzzy, jangly garage pop of Thee Oh Sees, and Dwyer's songwriting is in fine form, so much so, that this is fast becoming our favorite set of Dwyer jams in ages. Listen to opener "Gloves For Garbage" and you'll know just what we mean. Ostensibly, it could really have been an Oh Sees song proper, just with more synths, but it reveals itself as something else entirely, a gorgeous chunk of gloomy pop, with some of the catchiest hooks we've yet heard from Dwyer, the vocals delivered in an uncharacteristically deep, dramatic croon, plenty of clean guitar jangle and simple drumming, surrounded by pulsing, fuzzy synths, not to mention an end of song breakdown where things crumble into a cool churning sprawl of motorik kosmische, Dwyer's vocals draped over the top, totally blissed out electro-gloom, goth pop that we can't stop listening to. So much so, that it took 4 or 5 listens before we even made it to the next song. And if you need more clues as to what Damaged Bug is all about, the most telling is probably the inclusion of a painting of Brian Eno included in the record's futuristic psych-ship cockpit cover art, cuz if you can imagine Eno as a SF garage rocker / synth wrangler, you wouldn't be that far off the mark. And the rest of the record, maybe unsurprisingly, is just as good. "Eggs At Night" sounds like a more lo-fi version of something you could hear on the radio. Instead of the swoonsome moody distorted vocals, you can almost imagine some overproduced diva, but instead, it remains a quirky little electro pop gem, with some mid-song synth swirl that transforms the song into some alternate universe John Hughes misunderstood-teen movie anthem. There's another side to Damaged Bug, which is a serious krautrock obsession, which first pops up via the unabashed Neu! / Kraftwerk worship of "SS Cassidinea", all motorik pulse and psych-kraut throb, but continues to surface throughout. There's plenty of Radiophonic Workshop style bloop and bleep, often wound around woozy primitive electro pop creep, the result strangely dark, all moody and broody, but that's balanced by plenty of spaced out, synth driven fuzz pop, with awesome swaths of thick, rib cage rattling low end, but before you know it, the sound swoops back into some warped electronic kraut-pop, complete with some weirdly effected vocals that sound almost Germanic, and remind us of a certain infamous Dwyer project of old, Zeigenbock Kopf, but this isn't nearly so leather-y and Teutonic, instead, Damaged Bug slips easily from billowy and dreamy in places, like on the super spaced out sonic fever dream of "1/2 An Airplane", to gurgly, rumbling synth-doom dirgery like on "Metal Hand", the dirge-y doominess somehow blossoming into another gorgeous tranced out sprawl of kraut-synth mesmer. And yeah, it's an electro pop record, so there are of course some vocodered vox, but they're usually all tangled up in sounds not so distinctly electro pop, whether it's spaced out rhythmic skitter, fuzzy, garage-y jangle, or shimmering, pulsing drones. The record finishes off with a heady, hypnotic blast of wild, chaotic, non-programmed, actual drumming, pounding away through fields of lazer zap squiggles and thick, fuzzy, squelches, almost like some free-synth freakout, but not noisy, just sorta swirly and psychedelic and totally hypnotic, and then the vocals come in, and the song quickly takes the shape of yet another practically perfect. dreamily dour electro pop gem, but only briefly, before disappearing in one final swirl of electronic starburst swirl...

MPEG stream: Gloves For Garbage
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Okay, odds are most aQ list readers aren't gonna be interested in this. But in the spirit of aQuarius, and the sort of open mindedness we try to engender here, hopefully a few folks will give this a chance, cuz it's actually pretty great. The math sounds bizarre and it most definitely is, take two parts Fallout Boy, two parts Anthrax, and one part Every Time I Die (literally, it's members of those bands!), and this is what you get, a bombastic blast of super heavy, ultra melodic, catchy as hell classic eighties style hard rocking heaviness. Big riffs, wild leads, pounding drummage, some super epic clean vocals, classic metal guitar harmonies, all wound into super hooky heavy jams that kick tons of ass. "We've Got A Situation Here" is THEE one here, a pretty much perfect pop song rendered in shades of chug and crunch and wail and blast and pound. The guitars crunchy and heavy, the vocals throaty and what you might expect from the dude from ETID, but with a chorus most bands would kill for, not to mention some seriously heavy breakdowns, one in particular that seriously swings and sounds almost like Pantera or Down. And the rest of the songs are pretty much just as good, born from a shared love of Thin Lizzy, it's got that kind of classic rock vibe, some songs sounding a little like Kiss, others more like Queens Of The Stoneage or Foo Fighters, but the Damned Things, definitely temper their poppiness with some serious heaviness, and some killer songs. Scoff if you must, but some of us (mostly Andee) have been listening to this like crazy!

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David Daniell was the guitarist for WAY underrated post rock slowcore drifters San Augustin, whose records were ultra understated and hushed expanses of soft focus guitar filigree, whispered melody, and barely there percussion, and his past solo records were super minimal as well, microsound explorations that basically required headphones to truly appreciate. So we were sort of expecting Daniell, for his entry in TOTE's Guitar series of one sided 12"s, to offer up a disc of near silence, coaxing the gentlest of sounds from his guitar, but instead, I-IV-V-I, named for the basic blues progression, is anything but. The opening track is a monstrous slab of tectonic buzz, layers of rumbling and crumbling distorted guitar, blurred into a Niblockian drift, warm and wavery, smeared and dreamy, but suitably tense and dramatic. Which is followed by a sort of looped Appalachia, steel string guitar, locked into a mantra like progression, the main figure locked into endless repetition, while in the background, a second (and maybe third) guitar offer up pretty little counterpoint and extra steel string buzz, texture and melody that seems to swirl beneath that hypnotic main riff. "V" is all new age-y drift, another bit of soft dronemusic, laced with subtle layers of hiss and crackle, the melody a distant swell, which all gives way to a sweet melancholy guitar line that is processed into a layer of warm buzzing dreaminess, and finally the record finishes with a mournful, almost funereal sounding steel string buzzscape, that sounds almost like bluegrass, if it was stretched way out into long streaks of metallic shimmer, but Daniell drapes some playful major key melodies over the top, and the two, while seemingly at odds, mesh into something both haunting and mysterious, soft and weirdly pretty. Pressed on super thick, swirled green, yellow and white vinyl. One sided, the other side features an etching by Savage Pencil, housed in a thick PVC sleeve, and as always, VERY LIMITED!

We first heard about this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group when three of their records were reissued on Chicago label PlusTapes, we all went nuts for them, as did you, we couldn't keep them in stock, but sadly they were crazy limited. Even at the time, and even on tape, we wanted to make one or all of them Records Of The Week, but they disappeared before we had a chance. But now Sublime Frequencies swoops in and saves the day, reissuing on a compact disc all three of the Dara Puspita's records proper (all the stuff on the cassettes, and then some!). But what's so great about these ladies? Read on.... Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live (Koes Bersaudara in particular, whose Sublime Frequencies disc we reviewed a few lists back - Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara had very similar histories, their careers often directly influenced by each other, the whole story to be found in the copious liner notes). Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform, the very songs that got Koes Bersaudara jailed!) and the like, but giving it their own twist. Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shine on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Just listen to the sound samples. You'll be hooked in no time. Lavish packaging, a full color six panel digipak, with tons of photos, a huge booklet of liner notes, with the story of the band, of the recording, more about the state of Indonesia at the time, the producer and more more more. So great!!

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MPEG stream: Bertamasja
MPEG stream: Mari Mari
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SPECIAL SALE PRICE! Even though this split release is from a few years back, it really couldn't be more timely. Two groups, two songs from each, both dedicated to the loss of their countrymen. Up first is Dark Ages, the medieval dark ambient project of Roman Saenko (Hate Forest, Drudkh, Blood Of Kingu, etc.), who hails from the Ukraine, which is, as we write, in political and social turmoil, so these two haunting elegies are even more moving. Unlike past Dark Ages recordings, that conjured up visions of ruined villages, and crumbled cathedrals, the first track here is achingly melancholic, brooding and moody, and truly haunting, soft swirls of string like synths, drift beneath delicate piano, the sound laced with delicate percussion, the sound cinematic and darkly sweeping, the sort of heartbreaking instrumental you would expect in the denouement of some bittersweet drama. The second track though slips back into the Dark Ages of old, unfurling a gristled expanse of crackle and deep chordal thrum, strange industrial percussion, and tranced out synth drones, but over the top, more aching melodies, strings this time, like some gypsy folk troubadours, playing for their fallen, the static almost like the sound of rain. So so lovely. Dark ages share the split with a duo from Ireland, with the mouthful moniker From The Bogs Of Aughiska, and whose sound, while ambient, is a much different beast, murky and muffled, thick, rib cage rattling tones, smeared into tectonic rumbles, rife with buried shadows of melodies, a rich, churning thrum, peppered sporadically with scraping, groaning tones, and what sounds like mutated slowbuzz guitars, transformed into grinding hums, the whole thing is closer to SUNNO))) or Phurpa or Mohammad. The second From The Bogs track cranks everything up, building a wall of sound, that seems to be constructed from white noise, but that white noise has been blackened and curdled, a suffocating grey wash of sound, laced with subtle slivers of melancholy melody, softly swirling and darkly psychedelic, there's a brief bit of sampled voices, and then the sound seems to blackly blossom into more sinister noisiness, still murky, but with some grim black heft, that at the very last minute, seems to peel back, and reveal a little bit of choral dreaminess beneath the roiling black surface.

MPEG stream: Requiem On That Black Autumn
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Odd and obscure '80s heavy metal alert!! If that got your attention, you may remember that not too long ago we reviewed a disc by a band called Black Hole, '80s Italian metallers who were all spaced-out and psychedelic, like some strange mix of Jacula and Voivod. In that review, we made mention of one of their contemporaries, a band by the name of Dark Quarterer, whose debut album from 1985 is to be found on this slipcased cd reissue. We were pretty stoked to find a supplier for these and grabbed a bunch 'cause we figure anything that both Allan and Andee and Andee's fiancee Heather all instantly fell in love with, is something that at least a select few AQ customers are gonna dig too. Why did A, A and H all fall for DQ? Well Dark Quarterer just push all our eccentric, ancient metal buttons. To us, the low-budget, fidelity-impared production is part of their charm (what are those drums made of? cardboard?), the English-almost-as-a-second-language vocal stylings as well (without looking at the lyric sheet you'll have some trouble puzzling out what he's singing about -- his pronunciation is, let's say, creative). And the name "Dark Quarterer" curiously great too. But what's most important (and the reason why they indeed do have a cult following to this day) is that they wrote some awesomely epic and undeniably catchy metal songs. While Black Hole's favorite band must have been Black Sabbath, we're pretty sure Dark Quarterer were inspired by the grandiose he-man metal of Manowar. But it's Manowar-worship laced with the influence of Goblin and Yes and other proggy weirdness, as befits a band from the prog-crazy land of Italy. Andee even detects some hints of our beloved Comus in the title track, though we should stress that Dark Quarterer are very, very metal. Bizarre and poverty-stricken, yep, but metal through and through, with heaps of heroic vocals and majestic riffage to put some starch in your shorts (or loin cloth?). Not terribly unlike another eccentric '80s metal fave 'round here, Manilla Road.

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Seems to me like every hardcore kid in America must have gotten an In Flames songbook for Christmas, cause more and more US metalcore is sounding remarkably like Swedish melodic blackened, death metal. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Now that In Flames have their eyes on the nu-metal prize and wear matching white denim outfits and prance around on MTV lip sync-ing to sing-along choruses and playing cookie cutter "MTV metal" someone had to step up to the plate. Darkest Hour are one of the few metalcore bands that are truly capable of writing actual songs and crafting honest to goodness hooks with super catchy melodies and totally original parts. They still destroy. Thick guitars and howled vocals. Super complex song structures and crazy drumming. It's all HEAVY AS FUCK! But amidst all the chaos and pummelling brutality are the kind of hooks that stick with you the way a pop song does. I find myself humming Darkest Hour riffs all the time lately and that's pretty strange. Although maybe it shouldn't be. One of our favorite new metalcore records, and it may just be catchy enough for you brave pop fans. But probably not.

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Latest release from one of the strangest and most unique black metal bands around. How many groups, black metal or otherwise can you think of that hail from the tiny country of Kyrgyzstan? We actually couldn't think of any, although apparently there are at least three black metal bands. How many grim buzzing BM outfits can you think of fronted by a female? Not many we'd bet. Or how many black metal bands incorporate traditional Middle Eastern instruments into their sound? Again, the answer is not a whole lot. So thus we have Darkestrah, a female fronted black metal trio from Kyrgyzstan who we've raved about in the past, but who seem to only get better and better with each record. The production this time around is amazing, so thick and heavy and polished, but without losing any of the ferocity. The songs are multi part epics, slipping from woozy midtempo dirge to blackened blast, frontwoman Kriegtalith's vokills a harsh demonik shriek, the songs rife with melodies and hooks, managing to be both blasting and brutal, but catchy and epic. The coolest part though is how the band mix in traditional folk instruments and vocal techniques from Kyrgyzstan into the songs. While much of that is used as intros, gorgeous stretches of plaintive mournful throat singing and deep shimmery rage like strum, those instruments and sounds also surface within tracks, fluttering woodwinds hovering over churning black buzz, strange lilting folky melodies wound into otherwise straight ahead blasts. It turns the record into something much more haunting and mysterious and so unique. So easy to get lost in the buzzing drones and Middle Eastern melodies... The Great Silk Road is quickly becoming one of our most listened to new BM records...

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We know the black hearted AQ legions rely on us to trawl the dark depths and the fiery pits, in search of any essential blackness, that their cursed souls would wither without. With that in mind, we have been trying, for ages now, to get a hold of these two mysterious releases from Swiss black metal horde Darkspace. Those of you in the know, probably realize, that one of the cloaked and corpsepainted members of Darkspace is the man responsible for the epic frosty buzz drenched majesty that is Paysage D'Hiver. And judging from how big a hit Paysage was around these parts, it's no small leap to think that EVERYONE who bought the Paysage absolutely NEEDS this as well.� Whereas Paysage was one man's vision, twisted buzzing glorious epic blasts of grim black metal and extended Tangerine Dream like sythnscapes, gorgeous subterranean drones and hushed ambient shimmer, based around themes of winter and spirituality, darkness and astral projection, the music stitched into expansive worlds of sound, Darkspace is an actual band, and in many ways is WAY heavier than Paysage. The focus is on the riff as much as the ambience, if not more so, and the riffs are some of the best we've ever heard, downtuned and super distorted, minor key and crunchy, thick and dense, twisted and black, gnarled but incredibly catchy, often, the band explodes into furious wintery blasts, dense chaotic furies, topped off by huge sweeping melodies that sound like washes of keyboards (although no keyboards were used), before settling back into a gorgeously loping buzz encrusted mid tempo, a weird black groove, haunting and intense. But fast and fierce is the order of the day, and these guys are indeed true Blizzard Beasts, whipping up nearly impenetrable walls of swirling, roiling black frost. Which is sort of why the slow parts have such impact, the riff just sort of emerges from the dense black blur, to chug briefly before being swallowed up again. And whereas in most music, sound samples and snippets of dialogue from films, usually mean less re-playability, and often eventually bug more than they enhance, here are used to fantastic effect. Darkspace are futuristic black metal voyagers, the stars, planets, the universe the cosmos, the music is all about space, and it sounds like it, epic and so MASSIVE, simultaneously like a black hole sucking up all light, and a blinding supernova, the bits of dialogue are buried in the mix and delivered like some mysterious transmission from the farthest reaches of the galaxy. The fast bits and Burzumic passages are balanced by tripped out ambience, crazy dub drenched interludes, long drawn out SUNNO)))-scapes, huge walls of guitar, riffs splayed and spread out over epic expanses of low end drone, rumbling murmuring ambience.... Listening to Darkspace, we almost wish we hadn't used so much hyperbole in the past, or described other black metal bands as epic, or majestic, or even intense or brutal, or frosty and grim, because this is the music those adjective were designed for. In fact, we're almost compelled to create new words, a handful of superlatives, black metal specific, in order to do justice to these sounds. To explain just how fucking massive and intense this stuff is. NOW is the time for hyperbole, but it's not hyperbole if it's true right? And never has anything sounded this intense and blown out, heavy and black, we almost forgot how completely mind blowing this stuff was. But hearing it again, it makes us wonder why most black metal bands even bother... The first album is separated into seven parts (1.1-1.7), with song lengths averaging about 10 minutes. Each one a burst of black chaos, little epics compressed into the length of a normal song, like it must be some trick of the light, as if unleashed they would expand and stretch out forever. Their second album is split up into just three tracks, two of them 20 minutes plus, with a much more ambient bent, a ten minute sprawling drone separating two lengthy black metal spacescapes, and much of those are taken up by drifting black hole ambience as well, but the metallic fury everywhere else is positively overpowering... And�there's a reason that both these releases have the same review, besides the fact that they are both sonically similar, it's that BOTH are essential, they are two parts of a bigger whole (with a third in the works), they might as well have been released as a double cd, they flow perfectly into one another, one massive journey through the endless blackness of space... You can certainly buy one without the other, but you will quickly find that you need more and can not live without both... As if the music wasn't enough (and it is), their aesthetic is just as intense and mysterious. The band, all in matching corpsepaint and high necked robes, look like some alien black metal priests, or cenobites even, the band's logo, simple and subtle, a pentagram within a crescent moon, the artwork, spare and sparse, just the band logo, and the name of the record, either I or II, the song titles are numbers, "Dark 1.1", "Dark 1.2", "Dark 2.8" (you can go to their website and download the first demo, titled -I for free), a barely visible alien image beneath the tray card, everything printed in bluish silver on black, very austere and space-y... A gloriously blinding sonic dying sun, a burst of pure blackened brilliance, both discs, separate or together, obviously black metal record(s) of the year, this year, or whatever year they actually came out, maybe black metal record(s) of forever. And yeah, we're serious.�

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There have been plenty of contenders so far for metal record of the year. The grim noise drenched buzz of Korean one man (boy) band Pyha, the fucked up almost industrial dramatic dirges of Urfaust, the freaked out flute flecked prog blackness of Quest For Blood, the blown out blacknoise of Nekrasov, Leviathan's latest (read: last) and greatest of course, Jumalhamara, Wrnlrd, Fen, Varghokarghasmal, Happy Days, Leaden, we could go on and on and on... But the thing is, for any and all of those records to even be metal record of the year contenders, one simple requirement had to be met. That there was no new Darkspace record. And the fact that the long anticipated III was just released, means that all of those other records will have to settle for runner up status. Because the music of Darkspace is not just black metal, not just metal really, and in some ways not even simply music, Darkspace is in fact the sound of 'dark space', of vast black expanses, of collapsing suns and colliding galaxies, rendered in a black metal template, only insomuch as there are distorted guitars, harsh wailing vocals, and blasting drums, but even within a somewhat familiar framework, those parts become something alien in the hands of Darkspace, and are woven into epic black tapestries of sound, like ancient sonic maps, depicting the whole of the universe, all of creation, laid out before us in a series of super distorted noise drenched howling black blasts of drone and buzz. The songs are long, and repetitive and hypnotic, so much so that they often seem to smooth out into pure drone, like staring at something until your vision blurs and the object is transformed into a series of streaks and smears, there are structures here, and parts, and melodies, but those basic elements are more often than not subsumed by furious roiling black clouds of buzz, a relentless blur that stretches into mesmerizing black shapes, the drums barely exist, if anything, they are the beast's bones barely visible through its skin, machinelike and industrial, rigid and dense, but wrapped in thick veils of rich thick blackness. Synths are everywhere here too, but unlike most metal bands, Darkspace don't employ keyboards as delicate little melodic interludes, instead those swirling swaths are an essential part of the blackened soundscapes, adding soft swells of warm whir, or near static single note tension, adding a distinctly psychedelic vibe to the proceedings, like 1349 crossed with Tangerine Dream, but often bearing the brunt of the song's heft, relegating the buzzing guitar to a supporting role, but without losing any power or heaviness. While most of the record is in fact spent droning relentlessly, one gloriously massive blown out ethereal blast of blurred buzz after another, when the band does shift gears, slowing things down into a sea sick chug, or a doomy pound, it only serves to sound that much more intense, but even then, when the band seems to be exploring something much more traditional, the chug and pound is routinely unfurling beneath a gauzy veil of swirling spaced out synths, peppered with glimmering star like harmonics, deep swoonsome swells, strange super effected guitar glimmer, most notably on the second half of "3.13" (all the songs are named numerically), an intense repetitive space math black groove that is as heavy and brutal as it is dizzying and ethereal, and the end of the final track "3.17", where for the first (and last) time, the band slows things down into much more traditional songform territory, a fingerpicked clean Slint style guitar melody, space-y synthesizers, simple understated drumming, a gorgeously melancholy and musical outro to a record that in its extreme and abstract beauty, up until the very last few moments, seemed to exist in a world entirely of its own invention. As with all sounds transcendent, the magic here is ineffable, there is definitely some sort of musical alchemy going on. The sound of III is rooted enough in black metal orthodoxy to appeal to fans of the more traditional forms, but at the same time, the sound is so abstract, so free, the process is so transformative, that fans of all things heavy and dark, minimal and repetitive, should be equally enthralled. It's impossible not to hear elements of new age, of modern minimalism, of free drone, all deftly woven around an incredible collection of churning black heaviness. Once again packaged in that immediately recognizable minimal black packaging, housed in a black and silver slipcover, adorned with mysterious diagrams of some 'dark space'.

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None more self-referential. (Not even Manowar.) This album actually has the words "Dark" and "Throne" in the title. Dark Thrones & Black Flags, could they make it any more plain? Implying the grimnity of Darkthrone's traditional necro Nordic black metal with a severe dose of '80s punk (and metal) infesting the proceedings, which is basically the Darkthrone formula of recent years. If you liked, say, last year's Darkthrone album, F.O.A.D., you'll like this (and if you didn't, you won't!). While we can't expect 'em to replicate old classics like A Blaze In The Northern Sky or Transylvanian Hunger, we do know they can make F.O.A.D. Part II! Heck, it even looks almost identical. Similar cover art, same rounded-corner jewel case. And as with F.O.A.D., the text in the cd booklet delves into fannish detail, including another page of interestin' record-buying recommendations from drummer Fenriz, and individual liner notes for each song on this disc, explaining their inspirations. Which often have to do with obscure '80s bands only collectors know about. Or, have to do with camping trips! These guys love the great outdoors, and thus the cd booklet is illustrated with many photos of Norwegian forests and lakes taken by these "Hiking Metal Punks" (yes, that's a song title here!). You gotta love it. So many black metal bands claim to be "of the forest", but these guys prove they are. They also prove, again, to have a sense of humor... yet remains totally cvlt 'cause heck they're Darkthrone! Musically, this album rocks, it's a punked-up slab of riffy, raw black metal. Utterly old school - even though it's Darkthrone's new school sound (for the actual ye olde Darkthrone stuff, we still have a few copies of their deluxe demos collection The Frostland Tapes reviewed 2 lists back). There's anthems like "Hiking Metal Punks" and icy epicks like "Norway In September", but whatever the style, headbangingness is job number one. The production is typical Darkthrone filth, the vocals (from both Fenriz and stringed-instrument wielder Nocturno Culto) range from the usual rasping croaks to higher pitched yelps and even some weird, clean vocals (like the chorus of the opening track, "They Winds They Called The Dungeon Shaker" - that's an awesome title by the way, whatever it means). Fenriz does a Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost) sometimes, and even gets kinda witchy, sounding just a bit like ol' King Diamond on "Hanging Out In Haiger". On the drums, he bashes away enthusiastically as always. Guitarwise, Nocturno keeps it grim (of course) but throws in the occasional surprisingly widdily solo. So, basically, the cold, old ones are back with another album of all about their favorite stuff: metal, camping, Darkthrone. It mixes their punk side (which they took to the furthest extreme a couple albums back on The Cult Is Alive) with hoary heavy metal homage, again a la F.O.A.D. And there's definitely a bunch of tracks on here that give that album's biggest hit, the catchy "Canadian Metal", a run for its money! We like.

MPEG stream: They Winds They Called The Dungeon Shaker
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Released to coincide with the band's 21st anniversary (!!!), Frostland Tapes collects a bunch of super sough after rarities, lost and live recordings and most importantly (at least for Darkthrone fanatics), the unreleased instrumental version of their Goatlord album. As much as we're tempted to say every metalhead probably should own almost anything these guys release, this one, while pretty fucking excellent, might just be more of a 'For Fans Only' sort of thing. Although if you've never heard Darkthrone before, and want to jump in way back at the beginning, and experience the band through rough lo-fi live recordings or raw primitive demos, then hell yeah, this will definitely do the job. But if that sounds a bit too intense of an introduction, then try either Transylvanian Hunger or A Blaze In The Northern Sky, we guarantee you'll be hooked, you can always come back for this one later! For the rest of you, who have all the records proper, odds are you're gonna want this too... the 1988 Land Of Frost demo, the 1988 A New Dimension demo, the Thulcandra 1989 demo, the legendary 1989 Cromlech demo, a 1990 show recorded live in Denmark, and of course a rare instrumental version of Goatlord recorded in 1991. Lots of songs you know, some you probably don't, varying degrees of fidelity, but c'mon it's Darkthrone, the more raw the better!!!! Housed in a super fancy hardcover book style package with tons of rare photos, liner notes and a funny (aren't they all?) interview with Fenriz...

MPEG stream: Land Of Frost
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Album number ten from perhaps the most revered (or as the band prefers, most hated) of black metal's old guard, the dynamic duo of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto. Clocking in at just over a half an hour and according to the liner notes, recorded AND mixed in a mere 26 hours, Hate Them is the latest installment in more than a decade of Christ crushing, poser smashing, misanthropic, grim and buzzy black metal. Emperor are gone, Mayhem are old news, Immortal are cartoons, Satyricon are techno, which leaves Darkthrone to carry the torch of simple, hateful, aggressive and virtually-unchanged-since-1990 black metal. You don't fix what ain't broke! Howling barbed wire guitars, bloodied vocal chords, and Fenriz's 'unique' mostly midtempo drumming, thrashy and sloppy. The blast beats may be 1/10 the speed of other black metal bands, but what Darkthrone lack in speed and finesse they make up for in grim atmosphere and raw aggression. Possibly the only true black metal band left. MPEG Download: "Rust" [/audio/darkthronerust.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Rust" [/audio/darkthronerust.m3u]

MPEG stream: Rust
MPEG stream: Det Svartner Na

Break out the headphones, relax the body, and close the eyes, it's another one from the devastatingly droney and dark Darsombra, whose debut Ecdysis disc we really liked a couple years back. We like this just as much, maybe more. There's a great deal of melancholic, mesmeric beauty in Darsombra's isolationist grinding and evil ambient shimmer. We can imagine Darsombra's human operator, Brian Daniloski from the Maryland metalcore band Meatjack, up late at night alone in his home studio, lights dim, wreathed in smoke, hunched over his guitar and synth and effects and whatever else he uses to conjure this music, willing himself off into another place, out into the void of space, riding the dense waves of his own creation, returning only at dawn with another track for this album finished. Let's discuss these tracks, but not in order... The echoey minimalism of "Drops Of Sorrow" is simply glorious, it's Riley or Reich from a psychdronedoom perspective. Or perhaps krautrock's Achim Reichel & The Machines playing Black Boned Angel!? Elsewhere, there's more gloom and glory, from the hushed sinister soundtrack melodies of opener "Auguries" to the haunting, spacey drone-whispers of "Night's Black Agents" - this disc's longest track at 17:34, reminding us of the 'Vox Insecta' work of old AQ fave Q.R. Ghazala. Then, with an intro of ommming voices (or synth) there's "Lamentings / Auguries", featuring sparse melodic guitar weepery buried beneath fuzzed out layers of deep, electronic drone and distortion. Again, this definitely sounds like it would make good soundtrack material for some eerie, arty Italian horror flick. And further cementing our love affair with the abstract attractions of Eternal Jewel, the calmly vibrating "Incarnadine" brings some rays of light to this disc at its very end, with its peacefully repetitive clusters of gentle chimings over a quiet drone. Packaged by Public Guilt in a nice black, gothically graceful gatefold sleeve, this is definitely recommended. Imagine Expo '70 cloaked in black, performing a seance with Tony Conrad and Lustmord, and you'll have an idea of how much we must like this!

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Hopefully you already know Darsombra, seeing as we made their last Public Guilt release, Eternal Jewel, a Record Of The Week not too many moons ago. Atmospheric dark doom-drone experimentation not unlike a more sinister Expo '70 or a proggier Nadja. If you don't know 'em, get this and you'll get to know at least one of their songs really really well, in a way. Track one here, "Nymphaea", is a head-nodding exercise in bass heavy, slow-building psychedelic instrumental throb. It starts out with plenty of distortion, and only gets heavier and more blown-out as it plods forth, adding a snakily melodic guitar line to further entrance the listener. It originally appeared as Darsombra's contribution to the "untitled" 3cd comp PG help put out last year, and now it has spawned this collection of remixes, a dozen of them, tracks 2-13! It's pretty fascinating to hear this single song morph from track to track, 'cause they're all very different, the each remixer definitely making it their own, from blissed out vocal pop (Max Bondi & Bleeding Heart Narrative's "Hyena Amp mix") to big-beat crash-boom electro (Pulsoc's "True Love Never Dies remix") to creepy drone-noise ambience (Guilty Connector's "Dotonburi Neonnights") and that's just the first three mixes on here! Elsewhere, Ala Muerte adds eerie female voice doing Latin chant, Destructo Swarmbots strip the track down to a minimal low-end hum, The Heirs Of Rockefeller crank up the fuzz, focussing on the song's incessant hypnotic plod... all these and the rest of the remixers generally fucking with this track in many compelling and often unexpected ways. Darsombra have every reason to proudly approve what's been done with, or done to, their "Nymphaea" here. Remixers not already mentioned above also include Perfekt Teeth, Magicicada, Strotter Inst., Decimation Blvd. & Darla Hood, Blood Fountains, and le knell. LIMITED EDITION! 250 COPIES ONLY! We only got 20! On a black cd-r in a slim, screen printed sleeve with vellum obi.

MPEG stream: Nymphaea
MPEG stream: Nymphaea Seance remix
MPEG stream: Nymphaea True Love Never Dies remix
MPEG stream: Nymphaea The Drugs Won The Drug War Mix

The Date Palms debut lp on Root Strata, Of Psalms (now sadly out of print) was one of our standout favorite records from last year. A blissful combo of Eastern drone classicism and hypnotic psych fluidity. Now the core Oakland-based duo of Gregg Kowalsky and Marielle Jakobsons follow their debut up with this stunning, no doubt limited, vinyl-only release on Mexican Summer (which comes with a download card). Composed of two side-loooooong tracks, the structure of Honey Devash is set up in the form of two ragas as their basic foundation but open wide enough to allow a number of key compositional elements to play through. The title track is the morning raga stirring softly at first with slowly energizing phase shifts and bowed violin drones setting up the mood before the heavy bass riff bursts forth into a forward moving momentum aided by percussive elements and all sorts of sonic layering: oscillating bloops, arc-ing violin loops and modal electric piano phrases. Slowly-burning upward toward a white hot light, the gorgeously smoldering momentum breaks off into a purifying hypnotic cosmic bliss punctuated by spacy violin figures before a long slow fade. The second side track, "Honey Dune" is the evening raga and it cools down with a wide drifting expansiveness lke the end of a long desert heat just before twilight. The mood is less propulsive, more contemplative but beautifully rich with added instrumentation of bass clarinet, tampura and cascading piano motifs. Melodically pretty and explorative, the track gives ample room for each instrument to stretch out and play yet remain tethered to a unifying whole by the grounation vibes of Trevor Montgomery's basslines. Like some heady hybrid of spiritual Eastern jazz and rockish psych extrapolation, fans of Bruce Palmer, Dadawah, L. Shankar, Brightblack Morning Light, and Spacemen 3 should definitely scoop this up. This is the perfect soundtrack for hot desert nights, staring at the stars. Sooooooo gooooooood!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*

Date Palms is the new project of heavy electronic / cassette tape manipulator Gregg Kowalsky and Marielle Jakobsons (Myrmyr, Darwinsbitch) and is a strange, yet fantastic fusing of Eastern style raga drones, and hypnotic Spacemen 3 style bass buzz, which seems like a weird combo, but it definitely works, situating the Oakland duo right between those two not so disparate (as you might think) sounds, the music almost like some sort of slowcore spacerock dronedrift, writ abstract and minimal and Eastern, if that makes any sense. Sure it's on Root Strata, and both Date Palms are individually involved in the avant garde, but this could have easily come out on Kranky, or some other similarly outrock label, and these two could totally tour with a band like Low, or Stars Of The Lid, their slow smoldering drift a perfect fit, but the exotic array of Eastern instruments, and the duo's deft arrangements, and meticulous crafting of this hushed meditative minimal dronemusic, most definitely positions this just as easily outside the realm of 'rock music', and firmly in the world of the 'experimental'. The opener is a perfect example, beginning with layered drones, the sound is immediately recognizable as some sort of Eastern raga, but the minute the bass comes in, the sound is transformed, and we can't help but hear Spacemen 3, at their most blissed out, and heck, they did make a record called An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music after all, which if we're not mistaken contained no sitar at all, the point is, Date Palms are channeling the same sort of druggy psychedelic minimalism, but adding that distinctly Eastern element, this opening track sounds like a way slowed down Moon Duo, with the keyboard swapped for some mysterious Indian instrument, and the guitar swapped for a bass, the groove is glacial, and is the perfect anchor for the more abstract buzz and drift. The bass does dissipate briefly, and at that point it sounds like Indian classical music, but then when the bass comes back in, along with some gorgeous melodic guitar counterpoint, the sound is brought right back to something more Western. The push and pull is dizzying, but subtly so, a fantastic hybrid, that works perfectly, combining to musics that both traffic in repetition and drone, the resulting hybrid is absolutely mesmerizing, the sort of rare sound that would appeal to the space rock bliss out crowd as much as the abstract minimal dronemusic crowd. The rest of the record follows suit, the warm liquid basslines introducing a looped style mesmer, while all around, the duo introduce various bits of percussion, tinkling chimes, processed tape loops, sympathetic overtones and harmonics, on at least one track, the sound grows particularly fierce, the drone and drift wrapped in a squall of tangled psychedelic guitar, but that leads directly into the most blissed out of the bunch, the nearly 14 minute centerpiece, a smoldering drift where the bass part is so slow it almost sinks right into the background buzz like another layer, this time the processed guitar shimmer definitely evokes Sound Of Confusion era Spacemen 3, a gorgeous blurred dronescape that is utterly hypnotic, and 14 minutes is not even nearly long enough. The record closes though with what to us is the strangest of the bunch, definitely the most traditionally melodic, with a proper 'riff', the bass pronounced and fuzzy, and the melody played on an organ, the vibe almost classic rock, weirdly enough, but again, slowed waaaaaaay down and stretched waaaaaaay out, resulting in another gloriously abstract bit of raga drone slowcore drift. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Psalm 7
MPEG stream: Psalm 3 Intro
MPEG stream: Psalm 5

From the same label that brought us the amazing reissue of Lloyd Miller's A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz comes another killer collection, this one from Nathan Davis, a frustratingly under appreciated musician in the US, whose records for the most part remain out of print, but who in Europe was quite a sensation, performing with Eric Dolphy, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Johnny Griffin, Sonny Stitt and loads more. This relative obscurity was due in part to Davis' avoidance of the limelight, as well as his early flight to Europe. But he would later return to the US and become a pioneer in Jazz education. This collection gathers up some of Davis' best tunes, sonically varied, from bop to modal, spiritual jazz, seventies funk, even some ethnic Turkish jazz (which will for sure appeal to fans of that Lloyd Miller), which makes sense as he would become a professor of Ethnomusicology. The first half of the record is totally classic sounding, inspired and emotional, with cool passages of dark mystery butted up against soaring ebullience, as the record progresses, the sounds become more exotic, "A5" is a brooding moody drifter, very haunting and mysterious, with a distinctly 'exotica' feel, "Mandingo's Pad" offers up some gorgeous flute, over languid piano and slippery bass, "Uschimaus" is another flute driven number that sounds like an abstract version of "My Favorite Things", all shuffle-y and serene, "Cecen Kizi" sounds like it could have been taken from a Sublime Frequencies collection, funky and soulful and very Eastern sounding, while "Atlanta Walk" sounds like the soundtrack to a chase scene in a seventies cop show, and the last few tracks follow a similar path, dark and smoldery and funky, barring the record closer, an alternate version of "A5" that's way more raw and dirty, and a bit more sweaty and sultry. Killer stuff for sure. And like the Lloyd Miller, and incredible booklet packed with tons of liner notes, about the tracks, and Davis' life, photos as well, all part of a fantastic, and long overdue introduction to this unsung jazz legend.

MPEG stream: B's Blues
MPEG stream: Sconsolato
MPEG stream: Theme From Zoltan
MPEG stream: A5

Superheavy jagged post-math-metal with trumpet, from Germany. Like Jesus Lizard crossed with Brasil 66!

Composer John Harrison's iconic soundtrack to George Romero's legendary horror zombie classic, Day Of The Dead, is the second release on Waxwork after Re-Animator, and comes pressed on 180 gram vinyl, the first time ever the COMPLETE score has been available, including EVERY musical cue used in the film. Also of note about this release: the 1985 master tapes were restored and remixed by former White Zombie guitarist, J. Yuenger (!!). The two lps are pressed on cream yellow marbled / 'military green' marbled vinyl, the cover is a heavy old school tip-on sleeve, with matte varnish, a full color gatefold and spot UV gloss printing, the liner notes include an essay by Romero himself, and the whole thing features all new art and design by artist Jay Shaw, PLUS, there's also an 11" x 22" replica of "THE DEAD WALK!" newspaper article from the opening credits of the film, which features notes on the music from John Harrison. So cool!!!! The sound? Much of it is very John Carpenter sounding, check out the sample below, which is pretty indicative of Harrison's score, brooding synth shimmer, pulsing rhythms, strange percussion, haunting melodies, thick swaths of ominous bass rumble, faux strings, the whole thing darkly psychedelic and truly creepy, fans of the new wave of Carpenter / Goblin worship, will be in synth/soundtrack heaven. Old school drum machines, moody ambience, shimmery new age drift, cheesy eighties grooviness, total eighties VHS credit sequence psych-funk, synth-groove radness that is totally of its age, but informs so much of the new music today. And like all great soundtracks, has us wanting to see the movie again! We had thought they were doing Rosemary's Baby next after Re-Animator, still looking forward to that, but no complaints about this!

MPEG stream: Breakdown

Death Waltz strikes again. And again! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the Death Waltz release of the killer soundtrack for the modern documentary Room 237, a fantastic study of the crazed conspiracy theories that have surrounded Stanley Kubrick's classic The Shining, since it was first released, the soundtrack an homage to classic scores by Goblin, John Carpenter, etc. And then there's this one, the score to director Lucio Fulci's infamous 1982 Italian giallo The New York Ripper, aka Lo Squartatore Di New York, famously banned in many countries (in fact, to this day unavailable in the UK, where it is still considered a video nasty!), a story set in a pre-clean up Times Square. There's of course a serial killer, who has a weirdly Donald Duck like voice (!), a burned out police detective, a repressed psychotherapist, plenty of prostitutes, and loads of gore and seedy sex. Decried for its purportedly misogynistic tone, and often accused of pandering to the lowest common denominator, The New York Ripper does a pretty good job of conjuring up the filth and depravity of the city and its inhabitants. A classic exploitation slasher flick for sure, De Masi's score is a strange one, which much of the soundtrack being not all that scary at all, from groovy eighties funk, laced with sax and aching electric guitar, to cheesy jazzy ditties that sound like variations on the theme from the Love Boat, to wild, sweaty Latin Jazz jams, to dark slowjazz drifts, all fluttery flutes and muted trumpets, amidst all this pops up brief moments of creepy ambience, of seriously haunting John Carpenter-isms, reminiscent in places of Carpenter's They Live soundtrack for sure, but it's the way these ominous undertones creep into the otherwise UNscary soundtrack, that make it so insidious, and the perfect score for the depravity taking place on screen! Like all the Death Waltz records, fancy pants packaging, the vinyl 180 gram and a sick greenish color, housed in a heavy casebound tip-on style jacket, includes a 4 page insert with liner notes, as well as a huge poster of the new cover art, oh, and killer new classic comic book style cover art by artist Nick Percival.

Not sure how many folks remember the late great Stretchheads, a Scottish quartet who kicked up a serious din back in the early nineties, fast heavy and so fucked up, culminating in the genus Pish In Your Sleazebag album, a record of total percussive grinding chopped up, dubbed out heavy heavy weirdness. Not sure what those guys have been doing for the last couple decades, but at least a few of them have resurfaced in De Salvo, whose first disc Mood Poisoner has just come out on Mogwai's Rock Action label. But don't let the Mogwai connection mislead you, this is not any sort of brooding post rock shoe gazey shit, this is super abrasive, ultra technical, harsh and brutal, grinding, chugging metallic post punk hardcore heaviness. Imagine Black Flag, Converge, Coalesce, Butthole Surfers and of course the aforementioned Stretchheads, all pulled apart and tangled up into a whole new whirling dervish of hardcore metallic fury. But it's not just heavy for heavy's sake, there are melodies all over the place, the arrangements are tight, and super complex. Some tracks slip into slithery almost stoner rock, others into lurching doom, but for the most part the sound here is jagged and relentless, stuttery start stop riffage, freaked out drumming, the vocals a harsh high yelp slipping from Jesus Lizard howl to Cradle Of Filth shriek, more often some impossible mix of the two, and yeah, cool guitar harmonics lacing the churning chug, the drums and bass locked tight into super staccato bursts, flurries of double kick, brief stretches of woozy prettiness, but always quickly swallowed up by a wall of crumbling corrosive blown out rrroooaaar. There are hooks, everywhere, the more you listen the deeper they sink, and the more those wounds bleed and fester. The opener is like a super charged tech metal Halo Of Flies, or like Converge's Jane Doe and Brutal Truth's Need To Control melted down and covered by the Refused. Just listen to the sound samples. Heavy record of the year, easy. And another fearsome export from Scotland (see Black Sun on the last list!), that has us dying to hear more.

MPEG stream: Brown Flag
MPEG stream: Tonguescraper L & Li
MPEG stream: Ripper Situation

Been trying to list this for a while but we were never able to get enough. This is easily one of my favorite metal records of the past couple of years. Sort of doom metal, sort of black metal, but completely epic and gorgeous and totally captivating. Not to mention heavy as fuck. Lots of keyboards under thick guitars playing huge minor key riffs while sorrowful melodies weave in and out. Mostly midtempo, but with the occasional burst of lightning speed, Finland's Dead Beginners craft timeless metal epics (with a definite medieval vibe), melancholy and sorrowful, dark and doomy. The sound reminds me of some strange mix of old Paradise Lost, Old Cathedral, Skepticism, Cradle Of Filth, Candlemass, and Burzum. Or something like that. Some of the best dark depressing doom / black-bleak metal. SO recommended.

RealAudio clip: Calling Ruby
RealAudio clip: Treason Via Magdelene
RealAudio clip: The Wounderable One

Newly reissued on vinyl, our very favorite record from New Zealand noise rock legends the Dead C. This is IT. One of THEE most perfect slabs of abstract free rock ever set to tape. Yes, noise rockers, this is where it all started. Originally released way back in 1992, about five years into their recorded career. Long out of print and finally available again (on vinyl, cd still sadly out of print). We're of the mind that the Dead C never made a bad record, but of their entire recorded output, Harsh 70s Reality continues to be our all time favorite. Most of the vestiges of pop that showed up in their past records, the legacy of their NZ pop heritage, were jettisoned or at least transformed into something much harder, and much weirder. The pop remained, but drastically altered, more often twisted and tangled, buried or burned, a soft glowing core barely visible through the Dead C's abstruse ambient noise. Truly hard to describe, there are guitars and drums, but Harsh 70s Reality never really rocks, it does however manage to be heavy and psychedelic and dense and droney all at once. Blissful, tranquil, harsh, jagged, dreamy, dark, atonal, an impossible collision of sounds and emotions. This may be noise rock, but it's not precisely noisy, nor rock. By this point, the Dead C were channeling Cale and Conrad and Maclise and the Taj Mahal Travellers as much as any rock or noise outfits. This is immediately evident on the opening track, the 22 minute "Driver U.F.O.", a massive dirgescape of angular guitar, clanging and keening, a sound that hinted at the noise to come, their future trajectory, headed for sonic worlds even further out. A world first visited here, of strange little abstract chordal figures, not riffs per se, just strange smears of sound repeated over and over, totally mesmerizing, but completely alien, sheets of guitar noise, big slabs of metal percussive clang, creepy wheedly little melodies, lots of drone and drawn out streaks of feedback. Sounds almost like the first musicians ever, musical cavemen, suddenly stumbling upon a stage full of amps and drums, and curiously exploring, discovering all the strange ways the different instruments can be poked and prodded and struck to create an abstract and gorgeous primitive din. This is divine dronemusic. A clattery atonal dronescape. If you took this first track, stuck it on a crappy cd-r, made up some crazy name, Black Tomb Resurrect or something, added some xeroxed cover art, and sent out a handful to the Wire and Eclipse and Volcanic Tongue, made sure it was limited to 100 copies, you would have indie hipsters shitting themselves to get their hands on one, buying copies on eBay for $100. It's that prescient. Either that or the current breed of noisemakers are not hiding their Dead C obsession AT ALL. The shorter tracks here do actually 'rock'. Sort of. As much as a jagged smear of super distorted crumble and crunch can 'rock'. "Sky" sounds like the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" covered by Reynols, a stumbling rock drum beat beneath a white noise riff, all crumbly distortion and blown out fuzz, and some strange sort of crooned vocals drifting in and out. "Suffer Bomb Damage" is a haunting keyboard drone, all off key lo-fi Casio wheeze and reverb spring percussion, very reminiscent of NZ legends Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos. "Love" sounds like the Velvet Underground fronted by Jandek, covering the MC5, lurching fuzzy garage stomp with damaged guitar and weary, drawled vocals. "Constellation" is some long lost Velvet Monkeys joint, an East Village folkfuzz jam, throbbing and saturated in dense distortion and wrapped in thick sheets of druggy droney guitar swirl, all wrapped haphazardly around a cracked pop hook. The record ends on a truly strange note, a sort of fuzzy folk drift, warm acoustic guitars are picked and strummed, a mournful lament, crowd sounds and occasional bursts of distorted fuzz, as well as a brief stretch of wailed anguished vocals and a few splatters of snare drum, but for the majority of the nearly ten minutes of "Hope", we drift lazily through a murky world of soft muted guitars and sad, mumbled vocals. So lovely. A most perfect noisefolk elegy. It's hard to understand how the hell this record ended up here, drifting dreamlike and swathed in murky folk, especially after the 20+ minutes of face melting freaked out abstraction of "Driver U.F.O." Or the blown-out deconstructed noiserock in between. But that's exactly what makes the Dead C so special. This is exactly where it had to end up. Where you were meant to emerge. It seems like an impossibly confusional journey, an improvised exploration. And it is. But taken as a whole, Harsh 70s Reality is exactly as it was meant to be. Perfect. Perfectly imperfect. A world of noise that slips from sound to sound, taking many forms, many guises, a world where letting fuzzy folk guitars and soft vocals wash over you is not all that different than letting a wall of crumbling guitar grind and feedback freakout collapse and bury you alive. Two different sides of the same glorious noise. Includes a download coupon as well.

MPEG stream: Driver U.F.O.
MPEG stream: Sky
MPEG stream: Love

So, this is the quote-unquote rockin' Dead C album? So we were told, that was the supposed spin on this one, the twenty-somethingth album from these veteran NZ "free-rock" heroes. But maybe we got that wrong, 'cause aren't they all equally (free-) rockin'? Probably what was meant was that this was more "song-y", in comparison to their previous album, last year's Future Artists, 'cause there's more singing... but otherwise, not such a huge departure. And their album before that, 2003's The Damned, was WAY rock on tracks like "Truth". It's always kinda funny getting into discussions about just how rock or noise or whatever the Dead C are, anyway, since the thing about them is that they're playing Dead C music exclusively, forging into otherwise uncharted, unnamed sonic territory with each release even after 20 years in the "biz", leaving all other underground noise/drone/rock/experimental/floorcore acts to play catch-up. As we said in our review of Future Artists, the Dead C have an amazing ability to take "unmusical sounds, caustic, abrasive, minimal and harsh, and weave them into something beautiful." That they surely do here. If you've never heard 'em before, this could be a fairly accessible starting point. Certainly, you can't argue that lead off track "Mansions" (the 1st of 4 songs on this 45 minute disc) does not, underneath its avant-garde, noisily shambolic exterior, have a rock n' roll heart that's a-beatin'. As well, there's melody amidst the murk, with mumbly, half-whispered vocals rising to the fore. But really it's more moanin' than it's rockin', the whole album moaning and droning, full of shrill feedback textures and an eventually hypnotic sheen of percussive clangor (on the lengthy track 2 "Stations", and track 3 "Plains" especially). They stir up quite a dense din on the latter, leaving more space on album closer "Waves" for Michael Morely's plaintive vocals to wend thro' the distortion, showing the kinder, gentler side of the Dead C... Such a fine blend of immediate emotional impact and unsettling, unfamiliar audio explorations. As "song-y" as we say this is, who else writes songs that at each and every moment seem maybe like they are finishing, and/or beginning anew? Standard song structures and instrumental roles are abandoned or deprioritized in favor of an alien Dead C agenda of experimental, improvised (yet to their own logic disciplined) expressiveness that really does justify the "free" in the free-rock tag. As essential as ever. (And if you can, don't miss 'em on their first US tour in ages - they played SF last night and it was great.)

MPEG stream: Mansions
MPEG stream: Stations

Has it really been more than 25 years? And close to 40 releases? These NZ noise rock legends have been making their particular brand of abstract, avant free-noise beauty for what seems like forEVER. And somehow, over all those years, and all those releases, they've both managed to keep making music that is distinctly and defiantly their own, while constantly re-inventing that sound in a way that has kept that sound impossibly interesting, extremely relevant and ridiculously influential on legions of other noisemakers, whether they realize it or not. Listening to Armed Courage, we were initially forced to wonder, what exactly it is that makes a Dead C jam a proper record? Cuz barring their flirtations with pop songs (and there have been many), the sound of the Dead C, and of Armed Courage, does in fact sound like a band letting loose, jamming endlessly... Both the tracks here sound like the could have been plucked from even more epic jams, as if someone just pushed 'record' in the middle of a 24 hour jam, affording us a glorious glimpse into what could only be a never ending noise rock jam, our glimpse's brevity dictated by the limitations of recorded media. It tickles us to imagine Bruce Russell, Michael Morley and Robbie Yeats locked in a perpetual jam, the Hawkwind style heart-of-the-sun freakouts recontextualized into something WAY more loose and abstract and while not perhaps lo-fi in sound, certainly in spirit. The two tracks here offer up the two sonic sides of the Dead C, alternately crafting an alien lo-fi avant indie rock minimalism, and at their most fierce and free, with Yeats delivering some of the wildest drumming we've heard from him on the opening track, a tangle of multiple free jazz freakouts, locked into weirdly unhinged krautrock style motorik grooves, that constantly splinter, fall apart and somehow come right back together again. All the while, Russell and Morley transforming their guitars into noisemakers, the drums wreathed in billowing clouds of rumble and whir, of crumblingly distorted drones, and fragmented riffs, tones pulsing and undulating, all blurred into constantly shifting sheets of smeared sound, the occasional bit of loose clattery percussion, the cool second half of the first track, where the band lock into a crazy Necks-like minimal groove, all skittery rhythm, pulsating distorto-buzz, and a cool, almost electronic sounding field of percussive guitar scrape that sounds a bit like a damaged synth, the whole thing barreling forward with a strange buried propulsion. It seems impossible that something this formless, and free, this shapeless and abstract could somehow be so sonically mesmerizing, but for all its shapelessness, the sound is teeming with strange sonic shapes, and for all its looseness, the group sound impossibly tight, flying into wild musical tangents, but always finding their way back, or not, sometimes just following each other on those tangents and changing the direction of the song and sound entirely. Nearly 30 years of playing together will do that to a group. The second track shifts gears completely, the band slipping into their warbly low fidelity songcraft, the sound unfurling sedately, with a field of rhythmic static, some woozy guitars, some strange percussion, lots of tape hiss ambience, and weary, whispery, crooned vocals, the band seemingly locked into a somnambulant drift, before Yeats lets loose again, his octopoidal skitter mirrored by caustic guitar scrabble, and gristly electronic buzz, all still anchored by some detuned strum, the drums building, driving the song into a dense driving noise rock jam, laced with streaks of high end guitar freakout, before shedding all the noise and bash and howl, leaving just a shadowy sprawl of murky mesmer, which again, slowly builds from hushed creep, to a weirdly math bit of motorik churn, simple, but loud drumming, over FX wreathed wah wah, and streaks of droned out warble, a stumbling bunkurfunk dirge that gradually loses momentum, eventually disappearing into a soft fading cloud of Jandekian guitar-warble. Fucking fantastic.

MPEG stream: Armed
MPEG stream: Courage

It's a bit hard to believe that it's been just over 20 years since New Zealand's Dead C first unleashed their unique brand of 'noise rock' on our unsuspecting ears, but 'tis true, and while the band have gone through many sonic permutations over their two decades, their sound somehow has always remained distinctly their own. There have been long stretches of inactivity too, with the various members pursuing their own projects, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, etc. but they always seemed to find their way back. A new record, and a recent US tour, has upped the band's profile of late, but what better time to look back, at their first two proper full lengths, available on vinyl in the US for the first time, with all sorts of extras. While the Dead C are generally considered to be a 'noise rock band', to many THEE 'noise rock' band, it's easy to forget that at their heart, they are a pop band. With songs, and verses and choruses and crooned vocals, and strummed acoustic guitars, and all of that stuff. Never was that more apparent than on their first two records, Eusa Kills and Dr 503, which found the band sort of straddling two worlds of sound, the prevailing 'New Zealand' sound, a sort of lo-fi bedroom pop, and their own peculiar trajectory, a loose ramshackle assemblage of guitarnoise, fractured FX, noisy ambience, and a general clang and clatter. A pretty heady mix for sure, which probably had more conservative listeners reeling, but had the rest of us clamoring for more. Dr 503, was their first proper full length (3rd actual, depending on who's keeping track), and opens up with what many consider the penultimate Dead C track "Max Harris", and if a single song could indeed be a microcosm for the Dead C sound, it's probably "Max Harris". Woozy rhythms, stumbling off kilter rhythms, the middle part sounds like a lo-fi This Heat crossed with Geronimo, all abstract distorted crunch, and muted squalls of tribal drumming, streaks of clipped effects, murky processed vocals, slivers of feedback, even a mere seconds-long acoustic guitar outro. The record veers and careens all over the place, spoken word over splattery percussion and clipped minimal strum, thick doomy dirges of heavily reverbed guitar, gloomy Joy Division basslines, and hushed muttered vocals, skipping phonographs draped over stripped down slowcore, Sebadoh style lo-fi bedroom folk, primitive tape experiments, pounding almost garage-y jams that transform into spare Jandekian sprawls, but all held together by some nearly impossible to define Dead C aesthetic. The record finishes off with a devastating one-two punch, the 9 minute Dead C classic sort-of-ballad "Polio", which begins all folky and strummy, gradually the guitars warp and warble, the drums stumble in, and the song just sort of drifts and skitters, the guitars weirdly effected, the vocals heartfelt and buried way down in the mix, the drums almost Can-like in their motorik simplicity, there are some moments of chaos, but for the most part "Polio" is dark and dreamy and murky and softly buzzy, a little jangly, and sort of pretty. And then it's on to the 13+ minute "Max Harris 2" which does seem to contain some sonic elements of the original, but the sound here is repetitive and clangorous, the guitars buzz and whir, the riffs angular and jagged, the sound washed out and lo-fi, the vocals another buried mumble, until the song shifts gear part way through, and it's just a single guitar, plucking out that same main riff, accompanied by super spare percussion, and wreathed in tape hiss, after a sudden burst of crash and crunch, the track jams on and on and on, becoming slowly unhinged, the sounds slowly detuning, everything getting more and more warped and warbly before stuttering to a halt. This reissue tacks on the Sun Stabbed ep (originally released as a 7"), from right around the same time, which is pretty impossible to find at all, on vinyl or otherwise. Offering up more of the same, a handful of gorgeous and confusional tracks offering up still more of the Dead C's unique clash of classic New Zealand songsmithery and noise drenched, abstract, sonic deconstruction. Absolutely and utterly essential listening. Gorgeously repackaged in a super heavy gatefold sleeve, reproducing much of the original art, and pressed on super thick vinyl. And as you might have guessed, VERY VERY LIMITED!

MPEG stream: Polio
MPEG stream: I Love This
MPEG stream: Angel

It's a bit hard to believe that it's been just over 20 years since New Zealand's Dead C first unleashed their unique brand of 'noise rock' on our unsuspecting ears, but 'tis true, and while the band have gone through many sonic permutations over their two decades, their sound somehow has always remained distinctly their own. There have been long stretches of inactivity too, with the various members pursuing their own projects, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, etc. but they always seemed to find their way back. A new record, and a recent US tour, has upped the band's profile of late, but what better time to look back, at their first two proper full lengths, available on vinyl in the US for the first time, with all sorts of extras. While the Dead C are generally considered to be a 'noise rock band', to many THEE 'noise rock' band, it's easy to forget that at their heart, they are a pop band. With songs, and verses and choruses and crooned vocals, and strummed acoustic guitars, and all of that stuff. Never was that more apparent than on their first two records, Eusa Kills and Dr 503, which found the band sort of straddling two worlds of sound, the prevailing 'New Zealand' sound, a sort of lo-fi bedroom pop, and their own peculiar trajectory, a loose ramshackle assemblage of guitarnoise, fractured FX, noisy ambience, and a general clang and clatter. A pretty heady mix for sure, which probably had more conservative listeners reeling, but had the rest of us clamoring for more. Eusa Kills originally came out in 1989, and makes it the Dead C's fourth proper full length (maybe 6th, hard to tell with the band's convoluted discography) and finds the band in full on song mode, with a somewhat improved production, which definitely suits them. Years later, the band would release a single called The Dead C. Vs. Sebadoh, the title a joke obviously, but even 5 years early, when Eusa Kills came out, the band did in fact sound quite a bit like Sebadoh at moments, dark and brooding, sort of rocking, melodic but a bit off kilter, especially on record opener "Scarey Nest", which is a dead ringer for some lost Sebadoh B-side, with a killer main hook, simple solid drumming, wistful sort of sad boy vocals, the guitars alternatingly jangly and corrosive. After a 43 second Butthole Surfers style abstract drum / guitar crunch jam with distorted vocals and a lumbering tempo, the band slip right back into more dark jangle, a minor key guitar unfurling, a shuffling military snare, more weary crooned vocals, it is easy to see why lots of folks refer to Eusa Kills as the Dead C's 'songs' record. Most of the tracks are 2 or 3 minutes, poppy and jangly, the whole record clocking in at a lean 36 minutes, the exceptions being the 6 minute "Phantom Power" which begins as an extended abstract jam, all simple solid drumming and jagged guitar, but then the vocals drift in all ghostlike and the sound is transformed into something much poppier, and the 7 minute "Maggot", which is probably the heaviest of the bunch, with its grinding guitars, it's lurching drum part, and the super distorted Buttholes style processed vox, but even then, there's a definite pop sensibility at work, although a bit obscured. The rest of the shorter tracks tend toward the pop-ish, whether it be pounding noise drenched indie rock, moaning slow motion Jandek style sprawl or the gorgeously languid hushed folky jangle that finishes off the disc. Also included is the Helen Said This 12" originally released around the same time. Not quite as songy as Eusa Kills, but enough that the two fit together perfectly, an extension of Eusa's twisted jangle, muddled pop smithery, warm wooziness, and occasional cracked heaviness. Totally recommended, and essential for all fans of fucked up music. And heck, even fans of not-so-fucked up music. This just might be the Dead C record you can handle. Gorgeously repackaged in a super heavy gatefold sleeve, reproducing much of the original art, and pressed on super thick vinyl. And as you might have guessed, VERY VERY LIMITED!

MPEG stream: Scarey Nest
MPEG stream: Alien To Be
MPEG stream: Phantom Power

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Newest Dead C record released on their own Language Recordings label and expectations are HIGH since that last double Dead C cd was so amazing. We all went to see the Dead C live a few months ago, many of us for the first time, which is actually when we first discovered this new Dead C record, and to be honest we were WAAAAAY disappointed. Some didn't even stay for the whole set [although some did and actually dug the concert quite a bit!] Rambling, scattershot, clumsy percussion, noisy but not really all that inspired. Lots of aimless on stage wandering and interband discussions MID-SET!!! But you gotta cut them some slack, improvised music is really hit or miss, and relies as much on the audience's perception as it does the band's performance, and that's what makes it so exciting. So we weren't sure what to expect from the new record. A couple of folks had expressed their diappointment with 'New Electric Music', but we are happy to report, while it's a lot different than the self titled double cd, it's still a GREAT Dead C record. 'NEM' starts off with six minutes of burbling barely audible low end, pulsing and creeping, like a thick fog. Track two launches into a primitive rock and roll cave-stomp, simple propulsive drumming pins down whirls of white noise and chaotic rumble. The next two tracks veer more towards the traditional Dead C sound with track three a crumbling avalanche of guitar skronk and fluttery percussion, squalls of noise and waves of rumbling drone, and track 4 a sort of Jandek of the South Seas, with mumbled distant vocals over a loose free-twang framework. The final 30 minute track is gorgeous and if you ever had any doubts about the 'C being at the top of their game, this track should silence non believers. A rumbling, low end drone-scape with a metronomic burst of feedback that sets the whole thing into an hypnotic , almost-industrial rhythm. While in the background, electronics and unrecognizable guitar creaks and swells, rumble and soar and wrap the relentless one-beat rhythm in a coarse blanket of grit. As the track progresses, the background sounds intensify, threatening the rhythm but never quite overtaking it. So gorgeous. Probably one of the best things they've ever recorded. Dead C fans will not be disappointed and those unfamiliar could do worse than starting their education here!

RealAudio clip: Repulsion
RealAudio clip: Killer
RealAudio clip: Hush

We always have trouble knowing what to say about a new record from legendary New Zealand noise rockers the Dead C. They don't come very often, but when they do, it's kind of a big deal. We know it will be amazing. We just don't know how. Which is probably what's kept this band so exciting and vital for so many years. Equally adept at crafting strange muted noise drenched pop songs, as they are sprawling expanses of chaotic abstract sonic experimentalism, we really can't think of a Dead C record that we don't love. And with most bands, nearly 25 years into their career, the later era records, no matter how good, almost always pale in comparison to the early ones, the ones made when the band were hungry, and young, and full of piss and vinegar, rebellious and angry, wanting to make us much noise as possible, and piss off as many people as possible. But somehow, with the Dead C, while their sound has definitely changed, in some ways dramatically, we have to say, we actually do like the new records just as much as the old ones. They're still noisy, occasionally poppy, rhythmic, dense and intense, they're just different, as they should be, 30 releases and 2 decades on, and Patience is no different, a sprawling fantastical songsuite of hypnotic rhythms, swirling ambient noise, murky melodic drift, album opener, the 16 minute Empire, is a gorgeous hazy psych jam, meandering mesmerizing, the drums pounding away through an ever shifting cloud of grinding super distorted heavily effected guitarnoise, the result is a sort of psychedelic krautrock, a weird mash up of German Oak and High Rise maybe, the sound appropriately lo-fi, but still somehow lush and loud, about midway through, the band pulls apart the various elements of the first half, the guitars unfurling in hazy streaks of burnished melody, the drums even more minimal, offering up strange scattershot bits of cymbal crash and snare shuffle, before stumbling back into forward motion, like a blissier more mellowed out version of what came before, the drums again motorik, but the noisy guitar squalls a bit softened, a little dreamier, as the song marches lazily to its conclusion. There are two shorter tracks next, the brief interlude of "Federation", with its swirling cymbal sizzle, and murky churning guitar thrum, and then the more proper song lengthed "Shaft", which tempers some intense blown out guitar damage, with a beat that almost sounds electronic, thumping and jittery and surprisingly groovy, a perfect foil for the roiling crunch and rumble and screech all around, but for a band with a record called Patience, they've been known to not have much, and in that spirit, terminate the strangely groovy jam and transform it into something way more loose and free, a huge billowing wall of tangled guitar, of swirling feedback, and grinding scraping amp punishment, which somehow, doesn't sound harsh or noisy, just hypnotic and far out. Finally, the band bliss out into the smoldering epic closer "South", loping mumbled low end melodies, wreathed in everpresent amp buzz, while over the top, guitars pulse, and streak, and shimmer, the guitars growing more restless and animated, offering up gorgeous chunks of fragmented melody, of truncated riffage, textures and overtones, whirs and crunches and howls, all the while the track pulses along hypnotically. Eventually the drums lurch into the fray, offering a chaotic, unpredictable rhythm, with which the rest of the band counters an incredible array of freaked out psychedelic guitar weirdness, finally, the drums lock in, and it's like a crumbling noiserock This Heat, strange high end squiggles, thick blasts of chordal rumble, plenty of static and hiss, the track pounding away, until finally the drums retire, leaving a sky full of squiggly super distorted high end, which then too dissipates, leaving, a churning minimal riffscape, pulsing, and heaving, and still surrounded by that ever present amp buzz, before just ending abruptly. Incredible as always. Okay, so maybe we DO know what to say.

MPEG stream: Empire
MPEG stream: South

All right, while Andee is the biggest Dead C expert here at Aquarius, we're ALL fans of New Zealand's long-running noise rock geniuses. And since he took responsibility for writing the extensive and effusive reviews we've published in recent weeks for the repressings / warehouse finds of The Dead C's Harsh 70s Reality and Trapdoor Fucking Exit albums, I (Allan) thought I'd step up and take over reviewing this brand new release, which is in fact a sort of "best of" anthology selected and compiled by the band themselves, featuring 22 tracks spread over two compact discs, spanning their career to date. Not being as much of an expert as Andee, but still a fan (I've got a few of their albums, and would have more but missed out on some releases when I wasn't as 'hip' to this band as I am now), this 2cd is just what I needed: a primer of sorts on this sometimes confusional, confounding, and obscure-but-important band. And as far as reviewing goes, what's to review? THIS SHIT IS ESSENTIAL! End of story. It's an ideal introduction for newbies and even the most dedicated Dead C fanatic will want it as well. Even if you've collected every last rare tape or vinyl track from these guys it's still nice to have a few of 'em on cd. You'll hear how The Dead C trio of Michael Morley, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell blazed their own unique path through the down under underbelly of indie-rock experimentation, pushing the boundaries of (between?) noise and rock in their New Zealand laboratory. True originals, appreciated at first only by a hardy few (themselves, mainly, as well as the likes of Sonic Youth). Their deliberately lo-fi, song-subverting, willfully 'wrong' music-making was and is perhaps an acquired taste. We'd venture to guess though that at this point, few regular AQ customers would have less than positive reactions to The Dead C's seasick lurchings, to their sounds of droning flybys from UFOs made out of straw, and feedback stomp and damaged thrash. No complaints about caustic liquids somehow coursing through guitar strings, amps, and ears. Thumb up to their hazy hints of melodies, buried beneath solid static storms of guitar distortion, or their moments of quietly emotive indie-pop prettiness in the NZ tradition, left to rust and decay. The tracks are arranged chronologically, from "Max Harris" off their 1988 Flying Nun album DR503 starting off the first disc, to the track "Truth" taken from The Damned released in 2003 that ends the second disc. Disc one might be considered a survey of their "songier" era, going up to about 1992's Harsh 70s Reality, while disc two deals with material from 1994 on that saw them becoming less of a particularly noisy indie-rock band and more of truly abstract, improvising noise band, still with some rock and pop elements weirdly woven in. The tracks selected comprise both some "greatest hits" (things we'd have picked too, for sure) and some total rarities from long-deleted cassettes and limited vinyl-only releases, like the Clyma Est Mort LP, The Operation Of The Sonne LP, the Xpressway Pile-Up cassette comp, and the Helen Said This mini-LP, among others. Actually most of these tracks are rarities, in the sense that a lot of their '90s cds on Siltbreeze like The White House and Repent, and even more recent albums like the incredible self-titled double disc on Language Recordings from 2000 are out of print now too. There's two tracks from Harsh 70s Reality, but strangely enough nothing from Trapdoor Fucking Exit, by the way. The thick cd booklet contains essays, in ascending order of non-fictional detail, from Seymour Glass of Bananafish mag, Tom Lax of Siltbreeze, and Nick Cain of Opprobrium fanzine. And there's track-by-track commentary from Bruce Russell as well, adding to the "primer" value of this release. It may be true that this band's stuff takes a while to "get". Years maybe. But this crash course gives a great head start. The blurb sticker on the front of this proclaims The Dead C as "the GREATEST noise/drone rock band of all time" and we really might not have any argument with that at all! It goes on to suggest that fans of Wolf Eyes, SUNNO))), Lightning Bolt and Growing would/should dig The Dead C quite heavily. Probably true as well. The implication being, though, that fans of those bands wouldn't have heard of The Dead C before. Perhaps -- and if that's the case, and that's you, you definitely should check this out!!! We'd probably go on to say that as much as we enjoy all those bands, The Dead C is much closer to our hearts for sure...

MPEG stream: Hell Is Now Love
MPEG stream: 3 Years
MPEG stream: Tuba Is Funny (Slight Return)
MPEG stream: Bitcher

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. The Dead C is the stalwart collective of free noise / avant rockers from New Zealand comprised of Bruce Russell (member of A Handful of Dust and boss of the Corpus Hermeticum label), Michael Morley (aka Gate), and Robbie Yeats, beloved of Bananafish readers and Siltbreeze junkies everywhere. We thought that perhaps their day had passed but, think again, they've gone and created a superb new album! This new, long awaited release is a sprawling double cd that finds them in the least-rock space they have ever occupied. Recorded over the past 5 years, this album is saturated in a langurous humidity produced by guitar feedback scrapes, ring modulation, and the buzzing din of improperly balanced amplifiers. Disc One is the noisier of the two, dominated by the epic 33 minute "SpeederBot" which passes from militant percussive stabs into twin tremolo guitar feedback, similar to the controlled chaos found on their masterful "Harsh '70s Reality" album. But Disc Two is where this eponymous Dead C release really shines. Sort of like an analogue version of Main, or like a Raster record coming in badly on a shortwave radio, full of erratic hissing and eerie static. The trio striates the slow motion hypnodrone of sampled guitar feedback (yup, the lo-fi mirror version of My Bloody Valentine) with creaky little events. It's apparent that all of the recent drones from New Zealanders like Lovely Midget, RST, and Surface of the Earth have definitely made huge impact on the Dead C. They've picked up the gauntlet and, after a few years in their lonely NZ laboratory, have again come up with something that can be only called Dead C music (more so than it can be called rock or anything else). Adventurous, idiosyncratic, fantastic. This is as recommended as it limited (to 500 copies and may not see a repress, sorry). Buy now or cry later!! (as we like to say.)

RealAudio clip: One Night
RealAudio clip: Realisation con Slider

For years now, the cryptically (and coolly) monickered Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words has been quietly and consistently releasing some of the most haunting and beautiful minimal dronemusic we've heard, a blend of soft skittery glitch, brooding guitar loops, deeeeeep drone, dreamy drift, and experimental post-everything soundscaping, that is as good if not better than anything produced by the legion of overhyped sound makers constantly fawned over by the public and press alike. We've only managed to review two DLSODW releases so far, both sadly out of print now, but the release of this new one, quite possibly his best, seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally throw our weight behind Dead Letters, and hopefully open some ears to these mysterious and wondrous sounds, and reveal to the hordes of dronelords and free music freeks just what they've been missing. Dead Letters is the work of Swedish musician Thomas Ekelund, and over the years, his music has drifted from extreme near silent ultra minimalism, to warm whirring dronescapes to muted crunch and clatter to shimmering underwater ambience, but on Lost In Reflections, all of those elements are present, in lesser amounts, the perfect distillation of a lifetime of sounds, here presented more as background then the main event, that main event here being the guitar. Each of the six tracks, however distorted or refracted or fragmented or obfuscated, seems to be borne of the guitar, with Ekelund working his mysterious alchemy and transforming those buzzing steel strings into wholly new shapes. The opener, "This Room Seems Empty Without You" held us spellbound from the very first few seconds, a bit of reverby guitar, moody and minor key, very post rock, slow core and abstract, the notes hovering in a dark expanse of overtones and deep low end shimmer, the guitar unfurling gradually, subtly processed, peppered with a strange percussive glitch, that gives the music a sort of downtempo vibe, still droney and abstract and free, but with a little Portishead or Bowery Electric mixed in. The glitches coalesce into an almost-rhythm, the end result is some strange minimal instrumental downtuned Galaxie 500 mixed with the brooding barely there drift of Bohren, and a sort of late night lugubrious skitter. The next track, "Lost & Losing", takes a whole 'nother tack, beginning with bits of scrape and creak, amp buzz, muted harmonics, a subtly percussive textural soundscape, quietly and slowly surrounded by a gorgeously hazy sea of sun spots and solar flares, taking the shoegaze-y shimmer of Nadja and Jesu and dialing it way back, until it's a glimmering sheet of prismatic buzz, all the while those strange sounds from the song's beginning continuing to weave a buried barely there rhythm, everything locked into deep woozy bleary eyed swells. We have the tendency to go song by song, describing the sound of each, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but often it's not just the sound, it's the mood and the vibe and the feel and the deft and delicate arrangement of those sounds. And Ekelund is a master, taking simple strummed guitars, and wrapping them in a gauzy patina of blur buzz, locking the original riff into a loop, and then gently adding bit of melody, bits of texture, turning something simple into something complex and gorgeous, there are hints of Earth all over Lost In Reflections as well, a particularly abstract bit of fuzzy drift, will suddenly part to reveal a dark elegiac guitar line, slowed way down, creating some sort of underwater blues, while elsewhere, the twang and pluck of the guitar strings is wreathed in sonic sunlight, the sounds allowed to overlap and tangle up, the notes and melodies all wound up, spinning slowly and spitting out sparks, bits of glitch and high end tones, streaks of feedback, until those sounds are smeared into one long undulating stretch, and over the top a string of chiming notes are hung like Christmas lights on a tree, the, guitar often disappearing completely, leaving just a bit of twang to hover and then fade away. The final track is a monster, nearly 20 minutes, imagine Nadja, Merzbow and Tim Hecker covering Arvo Part, and you might be close. This is some sort of soft noise, blindingly effulgent upper register ur-drone chorale, the streaks and shards of guitars sound like voices, the distortion thick, the effects crumbling and swirling, a glancing listen reveals a wall of sound, but headphones are like a diving bell, allowing us to sink into this roiling sonic sea, that seems to stretch out forever, bottomless and endless, part way through, the song changes shape, that which constituted the whole of the sound up until that point is relegated to a background for these new sounds, a sweeping, loping epic bit of post rock, still washed out and woozy, but with a simple propulsive rhythm, and a gorgeously melodic chiming central riff, darkly fervent and slightly ominous and hauntingly epic, the swirling sounds around those new elements growing more frenetic, thickening, while the song just grows and grows, sprawls and expands, as if any second the heavens will open and the song will become the sonic manifestation of the rapture. So totally intense and powerful and moving and majestic, and simply breathtaking.

MPEG stream: This Room Seems Empty Without You
MPEG stream: Lost & Losing
MPEG stream: What I Wouldn't Give To Feel Alive

This is the first time we've reviewed anything by Swedish dronescaper Thomas Ekelund, aka Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, which is weird as folks around here are big fans. It's not for lack of releases, he's been pretty prolific, it just one of those things, so many releases, artists, records, so little time. Well, we aim to change that all right now, with this, the latest from Ekelund, a limited cd-r released on night-ocean-drone label Mystery Sea, and Ekelund's sounds here sound right at home. Three looooong tracks, the first, ultra minimal, it takes minutes to get going, but once it does, it's a fantastic expanse of ultra minimalism, so minimal in fact that much of it borders on Francisco Lopez territory. But turn it up, and listen close, and Ekelund's soundworld will reveal itself to you. A washed out murmur, peppered part way through with footsteps, the sound of metal on metal, some sort of random field recording, of men working, the clang and clatter overshadowing the whispery sounds beneath, but by the end of the first track, those whispery sounds have built into growling swells, thick smears of muted melody, crumbling and almost industrial sounding when paired with the grind and creak of the workmen. The second track starts off in a similar fashion, strange super close mic'd sounds, thumps and scrapes, crinkles and cracks, over a super busy microscopic dronescape, all hisses and whirs and little bits of almost invisible melody, but it doesn't take long for that track to also swell into something dense and thick, high end tones rest atop a pulsing sea swell like drone, the low end fading out leaving a strangely dreamy high end shimmer, eventually fading out and leaving just those strange clunks and scrapes and that whirling swirling whisper beneath. The closing track is a continuation of track two, in fact, they all sort of fit together into one sprawling soundscape, but the closer remains murky and minimal, a subtle scraping floating on a thick, but soft and smeared low end rumble, it's only in the last minute or two that other sounds join in, strange twinkles and glimmers, like laying on the ocean floor and watching bits of sunlight slowly make their way through the swirling blue grey sea. Amazing packaging too, full color tray card, numbered, the booklet a half booklet, leaving half of the cd face exposed. Very striking. And as always LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.

MPEG stream: At Keiller's Park (Summer 2006)
MPEG stream: At Keiller's Park (Fall 2007)