Yes, the notorious Whitehouse are still at it after twenty years. Love them or hate them, you've probably got a strong opinion about Whitehouse. While we at Aquarius do not necessarily agree with the lyrical content of past Whitehouse releases, some of us
Whitehouse have always seemed to position themselves in close proximity to the artworld (while at the same time alienating themselves from the music world), and in doing so, may be positioning themselves closer to the accepted forms of transgressive art such as Vito Acconchi's public masturbation or Jeff Koon's airbrushed pornography. Whatever you may think about Whitehouse (i.e. if they are or are not 'art'), that which lies underneathe the packaging is certainly not going to change your mind about them. You probably know already if you need to own this. However, Whitehouse does change things up a bit on 'Cruise', taking their normally ear shredding shrieks, and lowering the ultra high frequencies to a more gritty mid-range analogue noise. ----* ----* Printed Matter : ----* GIANT ROBOT #21 magazine 3.95 Art-focused issue of one of our favorite magazines, celebrating Asian Pop Culture and Beyond. Wong Kar-Wai, Asian haircuts, Superflat Murakami, Seattle grunge photog Charles Peterson's photos of Vietnam, Hong Kong hiphoppers Lazmuthafucka, Katsushige Nakahashi who makes stunning huge sculptures out of polaroids, Tony Leung, qi gong and its psychic potential, etc. ----* ----* In Stock, No Time to Review : ----* BERTHOLO, RENE "Um Argentino no Deserto" (SIRR.ecords) cd 14.98 CAGE, JOHN / DAVID TUDOR "Music of Change" (Hat Hut) cd 16.98 CRAWL UNIT "Stop Listening" (Ground Fault) cd 9.98 CRAWL UNIT "The Future In Reverse" (Povertech Industries) cd 9.98 CRAWL UNIT "Trans History - Works 95-99" (Ignis) cd 9.98 CRAWL UNIT "Vs. Silence" (Povertech Industries) cd 9.98 FAMOUS BOYFRIEND "s/t" (555) cd 14.98 GORILLAZ (the singer from Blur and members of Deltron 3030!) "s/t" (EMI UK) cd 25.00 ITS ALL MEAT "s/t" (Hallucinations) cd 14.98 MUM "Yesterday Was Dramatic - Toady Is OK" (TMT / Thule Music) cd 17.98 PHONOPHANI "Genetic Engineering" (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98 PINK & BROWN "Final Foods" (Toyo) cd 10.98 ROXY MUSIC "Vintage" (Burning Airlines) cd 12.98 VITRIOL "Randonee 0.06" (SIRR.ecords) cd 14.98 WARWICK, HENRY "Keraunograph" (Kether Music) cd 11.98 _______________________________________________________________________ KOJI ASANO INSTORE APRIL 29th SUNDAY -- 4 pm Experimental musician Koji Asano (who makes his home in Barcelona, Spain, although he's originally from Japan) will be in town at the end of the month, on his first-ever US tour (West Coast, anyway), after playing shows in Italy and Slovenia. He's been a long-time favorite of ours, so we're very pleased to announce that he'll be doing a free in-store performance here at Aquarius! His work has always been super creative and eclectic, so we're really excited to hear what his stuff is going to sound like in person. His recent recordings have focused on computer-assisted electroacoustic drones, full of beautiful feedback and dark mystery. But we'll see what he does here at Aquarius -- be here Sunday April 29th at 4pm to find out! Koji's other Bay Area shows are on these evenings: April 26th -- The Luggage Store, SF April 27th -- Capp Street Community Center / Moving Target Series, SF April 29th -- Tuva Space / Acme Observatory Series, Oakland -->another AQ-fave, LOREN CHASSE (of id battery / Thuja) will also be performing at this show! From our review of his last work, a four-part set called "The Last Shade of Evening Falls": "Japanese composer/experimentalist (and AQ fave sound artist) Koji Asano is known not only for the quality of his work (almost always quite excellent) but for the sheer quantity of his releases over the last few years -- sixteen of 'em as of today, more if you count limited edition cd-rs -- which run the creative gamut from gorgeous piano meditiations, to computer noise, to chamber music, to rock guitar improv." _______________________________________________________________________ RAWA BENEFIT "To prevent music... In shops, hotels, vehicles and rickshaws cassettes and music are prohibited... If any music cassette found in a shop, the shopkeeper should be imprisoned and the shop locked. If cassette found in the vehicle, the vehicle and the driver will be imprisoned. "To prevent music and dances in wedding parties. In the case of violation the head of the family will be arrested and punished. "To prevent the playing of music drum. The prohibition of this should be announced. If anybody does this then the religious elders can decide about it." -- Taliban edicts regarding music Fire Museum is proud to present a benefit concert for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) at the Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, featuring the following fine artists (in reverse order of appearance): BLECTUM FROM BLECHDOM THE BRAN (...) POS + PLANETSIZE DEEP DICKOLLECTIVE CONE, featuring members of Zmrzlina SPEZZO ROTTA Saturday, May 5th 2001 The Stork Club (2330 Telegraph Avenue, cross Street 23rd Avenue, near 19th Avenue BART) Oakland doors 7:00 p.m. / $6-$10 sliding scale / 21+ concert website: http://www.geocities.com/tomato_gazelle/Fire_Museum.html _______________________________________________________________________ UPCOMING RELEASES ----> should be here any minute, if not in already! v/a "Clicks & Cuts 2" 3cd (members of) Add N to (X) / Stereolab / Hairy Butter "Alternative 3" soundtrack cd v/a "Bip Hop Generation vol. 2" cd Hazard / Fennesz / Biosphere "Light" tour cd on Touch Hazard "Wind" cd on Ash ----> April 24th (crazy new release day!) Mouse On Mars "Idiology" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey Bardo Pond "Dilate" cd/2lp on Matador Kammerflimmer Kollektief "Maander" cd on Temporary Residence Modest Mouse "Sad Sappy Sucker" cd/lp on K unreleased 1994 recordings + other rarities Vic Chesnutt "Left To His Own Devices" cd on SpinArt (rarities and demos) Mogwai "Rock Action" lp/cd The Ex "Dizzy Spells" cd on Touch And Go US Maple "Acre Thrills" cd/lp on Drag City Steven R. Smith "Tableland" cd on Emperor Jones Paul Burch "Last Of My Kind" cd on Merge Portastatic "Looking For Leonard" cd on Merge The Clientele "Suburban Light" cd on Merge, domestic Nels Cline "Destroy All Nels Cline" cd on Atavistic Raging Slab "s/t" cd reissue on Spitfire Terrie Ex & Han Bennink "The Laughing Owl" cd on Atavistic Danielson Famile "Fetch the Compass Kids" cd/lp on Secretly Canadian Of Montreal "Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies" cd/2lp on Secretly Canadian Vivian Sisters s/t cd on Avant Mekons reissues (Rock 'n' Roll, Curse of, Fun '90) Red Allen "The Folkways Years 1964-83" cd on Smithsonian Folkways The Country Gentlemen "On The Road (And More) cd on Smithsonian Folkways John Zorn "Love, Madness and Mysticism" cd on Tzadik Rothko "In The Pulse Of An Artery" cd on Instinct Destroyer "Streethawk: A Seduction" cd on Misra Ryoji Ikeda & Carsten Nicolai "Cyclo" cd on Raster-Noton ----> May 8 To Rococo Rot "Music is a Hungry Ghost" (Mute) Burning Airlines "Identikit" cd ----> May 15 Autechre "Confield" cd/2lp on Warp Neu! "Neu! 1", "Neu! 2", and "Neu! '75" all legitimately reissued on cd and lp, on Astralwerks! Sonna "We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight" cd/lp on Temporary Residence Cannibal Ox "The Cold Vein" lp/cd on Def Jux Borthwick/hollAnd "helene" CD on Temporary Residence Tool "Laterus" new studio album ----> May 22 Absu "Tara" cd on Osmose Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet "Flutter" cd on Tzadik Abigor "Satanized" on Napalm Mammoth Volume "a single book�" cd on TMC Mark Eitzel "The Invisible Man" cd/lp on Matador ----> May 29 Spirit Caravan "Elusive Truth" cd/lp on Tolotta Plaid "Double Feature" cd/2lp on Warp Karaboudjan "Sbrodj" on Relapse EyeHateGod "10 Years of Abuse and Still Broke" live cd on Century Media ----> also in May Destiny's Child "Independent Women" Oval "Commers" cd/lp on Thrill Jockey Gram Parsons "Anthology" 2cd on Rhino Whiskeytown "Pneumonia" Missy Elliot "Miss E...So Addictive" Mira Calix "Prickle" cdep/12" on Warp Squarepusher "My Red Hot Car" cdep/12" on Warp Zeni Geva "10,000 Light Years" cd on Neurot Candiria "300 Percent Density" cd on Century Media MF Doom "Operation: Doomsday" cd on Sub Verse Ex-Girl "Back To Mono Kero" on Ipecac Deltron 3030 "Tron 3030 (The Instrumentals)" cd/2lp on 75Ark (delayed from way back) ----> June 18 Summer Hymns "A Celebratory Arm Gesture" cd/lp on Misra Jeff Mangum "Live At Jittery Joe's" cd on Orange Twin Bonny Billy (Will Oldham) "More Revery" cdep on Temporary Residence Ltd. Orange Twin Fieldwork (Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel) "Volume 1" on Orange Twin ----> also in June Lucinda Williams "Essence" R.E.M. "Reveal" ----> July 23rd Neutral Milk Hotel "Everything Is" cdep reissue on Orange Twin ----> July Bjork "tba" _______________________________________________________________________ The Aquarius Records New Arrivals list has 5163 subscribers. If you like our list, please buy your records from Aquarius; we produce this list just for you and it's a lot of work! "The first record was pretty much stories about my drugged out childhood plus a little bit of Spinal Tap on top -'I'm gonna rule the world with my leather penis!' or whatever. And then all that stuff started coming true..." --Monster Magnet's Dave Wyndorf on fame, from Terrorizer #86. "I met an undercurrent of peopel that were into severe behavior, weird mind games and weird physical games- Dungeons, high faluting lawyer women who were having these massive fuckin' orgies, with slaves- and in the middle of it all I remember looking out of a hotel room in L.A. smoking a cigarette. The sun was coming up and I just remember thinking 'Who am I? What am I doing?'. And there was this girl lying there that had just applauded me for performing the appropriate torture on her- 'You were a master at it,' and I'm like 'What the fuck am I doing?'" --Monster Magnet's Dave Wyndorf on the influences that shaped the sound of the new album. From Terrorizer #86 Love, Windy Cup Byram Andee Jim Allan and Jeff
Utterly beautiful, velvet-warm blankets of sound unfold simply and slowly on just a guitar and a bass. "Womb-like" is an overused adjective, but in Windy & Carl's case it's really quite apt. Mix the blissed-out rough strum of Flying Saucer Attack with the
(Windy and Carl also have a record store, www.stormyrecords.com, tell 'em we sent ya.) (And btw, Windy of Windy & Carl is different person from me, Windy of AQ.)
Here we thought exquisite dronesters Windy & Carl were paying tribute to Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist, but no! This limited edition release is dedicated to their dearly departed doggie, Flea. It features two lengthy tracks of their trademark glistening guitar and keyboard drone compositions embellished with some scuttling sounds from recordings of their pup. Just over 37 minutes long. We just have a few, and it's a LIMITED PRESSING OF 500!!!
More music to fall asleep to, which Windy & Carl call the highest compliment. The cover looks like Willie Wonka's chocolate river.
Within the sweeping orbits of the Michigan space rock community, Windy & Carl (whose Windy is not the same as AQ's Windy, thank you!) have continued to count as one of the best and most consistent projects to emerge from that fertile scene. With an incredibly simple template that finds Carl on effects laden guitar and Windy on bass and occasionally singing, the duo crafts gentle washes of blissed-out, shoegazing haziness which is lazily structured by the sparest of songwriting elements -- a vocal melody whispered on one song, an acoustic guitar strumming on another, or a bass steadily progressing through a simple chord progression on another. It seems a little hard to believe that so much of their dreamy output was through tiny edition 7" singles and EPs; yet as this triple cd compendium is filled with tracks from those early singles, as well as compilation tracks, and live / unreleased tracks. Fantastic sleepytime music.
Dream-drone, slow-slowcore uberwunder duo Windy & Carl are long-time favorites of Aquarius, and by long we mean looooong. As in, we've been with them the whole way, and this fall marks 19 years for the project. So anyway, we were plenty excited when we finally got a copy of this, their newest record. Hot on the heels of Windy's lovely (and haunting) solo record, these tracks were actually started at the same time and nearly went unfinished. Thankfully they were saved! Press releases mentioned vocals, vocals, vocals. Those who know W&C probably understand that "lots of vocals" is relative. Two or three songs a record with Windy singing is kind of a lot! Yeah, so when we got this we were totally blown away. Again! Man, there's definitely a reason we hold them in such high regard: they never fail to take us exactly where we want to go. If you're a fan, you already know that W&C can conjure up the dreamiest six-string drones, never, ever drums, and the sweetest daydream vocals, employed sparingly and pretty damn perfectly. Fans of Labradford, Stars of the Lid, maybe even the quietest Low, this is already - or soon to be - your favorite band! We love Windy & Carl, and we want you to have the chance to love them, too. This is definitely a great place to start. Oh, and check out "Snow Covers Everything," it might be our favorite track on here. If you couldn't tell already, recommended!
While we're not sure we would really want to do it, had we been asked Continuum Press to write one of their 33 1/3 mini books about a favorite album, we just might have to choose Wire's third album 154. Partially, this choice would be something of a compromise as we doubt that a book on Nurse With Wound's Homotopie To Marie would make for a saleable product. 154 stands in our minds as the epitome of what post-punk should be: a bold fusion of post-situationist / punk antagonism and legitimately experimental methodologies with an undercurrent of smarty-pop to keep the kids bouncing up and down.
I (Jim) actually came to Wire somewhat late in my record nerd existance, and I actually grew to admire the band through a reverse history of sorts, as I didn't really start enjoying the first three Wire albums (Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154) until other Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert projects entranced me with thier experiments in proto-electronica. This was especially true for the ghostly post-structuralism found on their Dome records. And those Lewis / Gilbert projects took their genetic code for shadow and gloom from elements of 154. An album that was made under personal duress, 154 drips of disintegration. In fact the band split apart for almost 7 years after the making of 154, pursuing a variety of projects -- traces of which are quite present in this album as Colin Newman's pop sarcasm continued through his solo records and the vast array of Lewis / Gilbert projects.
Recorded in 1979, 154 marks the band's third radical reinvention in three years. Wire's pacing has slowed to a lugubrious, Factory-esque crawl but lost none of their punk antagonism. The slower pacing better suited the baritone vocals of Graham Lewis, who had penned many of the lyrics that Colin Newman sang. In lesser hands, the patchwork of forboding atmospheric dirges and punchy power pop numbers would appear disjointed; but Wire's deft use of synthetic coloring, exquisite timing, and simply great songwriting smear the whole album into a wholly convincing masterpiece. "I Should Have Known Better" and "A Touching Display" represent a few of Graham Lewis' baritone marches through plodding drone and heavy basslines, which have more in common with the late '80s, proto-doom of Swans than of the snarl of the Buzzcocks. Newman's pop brilliance also shines on 154 through "The 15th," which sadly more people recognize from the tepid Fischerspooner cover than by this punk-pop gem. Of the first three Wire albums, 154 proudly stands as the most challenging and most rewarding. So good, we may have to buy it, yet again.
In 1978, being qualified as "the Pink Floyd of the New Wave" might have come across as something of an insult; and by today's artistic strategies of rampant revivalism such a pithy remark may ring true to many a listener. That statement was, in fact, the critique prescribed to Chairs Missing, Wire's second album, as the album decelerated the pogo punk minimalism found on their first album with an increasing use of experimental production. In hindsight, Chairs Missing is the perfect transition between the high-strung velocity of Pink Flag and the staggering gloominess of 154; yet most transition records have a clunkiness about them, like a lanky teenager not quite able to fit into his sunday best. But Chairs Missing is miles above the average transition album. To many a listener, Chairs Missing stands as the ultimate Wire album, with near perfect pop songs alternating between anthemic punk and eccentric production techniques (i.e. atonal synth drone, staccato guitar chops, overdubbed guitar distortion, etc.). Where Pink Flag kept many of the songs under a minute and half, Chairs Missing is downright baroque in its presentation of 3 minute tunes. The genius of Chairs Missing is how Colin Newman, Robert Gotobed, Bruce Gilbert, and Graham Lewis manage to steer through the diverse songwriting landscape, in how the album's opening track "Practice Makes Perfect" transitions from a delicate prance for jangled guitar into a precise expression of menace, in how "Outdoor Miner" creates the catchiest, Beatlesque chorus you'll never be able to sing back to yourself given the complexity of its rejoining, nonsensical syllables, in how jaggedly clean the guitars of Newman and Gilbert attack each other, in how Lewis' bass is fluid and effortless, in how this run-on sentence seems to have lost its way trying to fathom the complexity of Wire. If you believe that the length of Aquarius' reviews directly correlate to how good the record actually is, then we have failed as we would need to write a fucking a book about how stunning this album is. Yeah, Chairs Missing is incredible; and if you don't have it, you really should.
Okay, one thing to bitch about the reissue of Chairs Missing is that the cover is curiously bleached out of its color; the reissue also doesn't come with the (really great!) bonus tracks found on the EMI cd version of the album. Come on Wire, you released this album on your own label. At least you could give us all the bells and whistles found on other versions of this album! This is our only complaint, and a minor quibble for sure.
Really, what more can we say about Wire's Pink Flag that hasn't already been said? The album is so good, so burned in the retina of our brains (even though we still cannot for the life of us unscramble Graham Lewis' lyrics), so nearly perfect that it's sort of hard to write about. In a perfect world, whatever nonsense we may have to say about the record would be moot, as you should already own this record (along with Chairs Missing and 154, Wire's second and third albums respectively). But for those of you who may be enraptured by the recent flurry of post-punk revivalists who continue to make quite a stir, let the reissue campaign of the first three records introduce you to the band that Interpol, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, and Bloc Party only wish they could be.
Recorded in 1977, Pink Flag is an immaculately concise punk record, even as Wire recognized that punk was becoming a self-parody and willed themselves to develop through experimentation with structure, technology, and process. Pink Flag's 21 songs cover a mere 35 minutes, many of themclocking in around 90 seconds or "when they ran out of words" as bassist / vocalist Graham Lewis once quipped. Energetic and volatile, each of the songs on Pink Flag thrash through the repetoire of reductivist power-pop riffs as immediately catchy and aggressive as anything by the Damned, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. But even on their first album, Wire demonstrated an uncanny ability with chord changes and melodic shifts that by '70s standards were much artier than their punk bretheren. Of course, in the aftermath of math-rock's acrobatic twists and turns, Wire's Pink Flag hardly sounds unpredictable... but if it weren't for Wire would we really have Laddio Bollocko? Probably not. The album's opening track "Reuters" is an anxious introduction to Wire's provocation with lead vocalist Colin Newman over-annunciating a polemic against government's abuse of propaganda (sound familiar?) on top of an increasingly agitated metronomic blast of bass, twin guitar, and drums. Elsewhere near perfect pop songs develop out of the angular punk slashing, as heard on "Ex Liontamers" and "Mannequin." Wire ends the album with the monotone anthem "12 X U" which many have declared their "Anarchy In The UK." With a motorik rhythm punctured by concise punk riff, the track simultaneously decries homophobia and censorship with the song's entire lyrics "I saw you in the mag kissing the man / 1 2 X U!" So yeah, Wire are a seminal band for a reason, and it all started with this album. If you don't have it, please do yourself a favor and buy this album. You won't regret it!
Holy shit. Doom fiends rejoice, for NWN! and BBT&D have unearthed *another* disc of rarities from the most Sabbathy of NWOBHM bands, the illustrious, infamous doom metal pioneers Witchfinder General. Like the live cd that came out last year this one is again material from the archives of original guitarist Phil Cope, who provides liner notes in the cd booklet (which is also filled with vintage photos and graphics) discussing the music herein, which consists of tracks from Witchfinder General's 1981 debut 7" single ("Burning A Sinner" b/w "Satan's Children") and their 1982 12" single Soviet Invasion (three songs: "Soviet Invasion", "Rabies", and a live one, "R.I.P."), along with four further live tracks recorded at a pub in Birmingham circa '81. The songs from the 7" and 12" are all raw, riffy, heavier-than-thou tunes bearing all the hallmarks of the material we know and love from the General's subsequent classic albums Death Penalty and Friends Of Hell. "Burning A Sinner" (which Cope mentions was often referred to as "Burning A Singer") was later re-recorded for their first full-length Death Penalty, but the other songs remained available only on those original two hard-to-find single releases -- until now. Reason enough for most Witchfinder General fans to want this! In addition, the rather rough-sounding live stuff here is a headbanging hoot, singer Zeeb Parkes charmingly and so obviously a (drunken) pupil of Ozzy's in the stage banter dep't. and vocal style too... and also they do a totally unreleased composition, "Phantasmagorical", never heard elsewhere. So definitely a bit of history there, and all the more reason that this collection of early tracks is essential for all true fans of the band and old school doom metal in general! In fact, considering that currently we can only seem to sporadically get copies of the reissue of Friends Of Hell, but never Death Penalty, this is all the more welcome of a release, being a good place as any to start for anyone keen on hearing what this cult doom band was all about.
"Death Penalty" is one of the lost metal albums from the early '80s, falling victim to its own indecisiveness, not that such is a bad thing. Never really staying "true" either to the glam metal of Hanoi Rocks, Fastway, and Motley Crue or to the shocking horror
Witchfinder General's second album picks up right where "Death Penalty" left off, with an album split evenly between the party rock elements from the New Wave of British Metal back in 1983 and their undeniable influence from Sabbath. Just as bipolar
The infamous Yellow Swans return -- this time without any D-something word in front -- and continue to blur the line between noise rock and good ol' noise. Given that they have approximately a billion tape/cd-r/whatever releases, you may want to assume that all the tricks are out of the hat and this is just in fact another Yellow Swans record, but you'd be wrong. At All Ends is somewhat of a departure from much of their previous work, and it focuses more -- okay, a bit more -- on melody and song structure. Gorgeous sheets of noise, gut-punching blasts of sonic destruction, percussion and vocals both reverbed and distorted into total oblivion, and an underlying sense of danceable rhythm. Through it all, this album is one of those noise rock epics that proves the it-all-sounds-the-same haters wrong and shows that its possible to celebrate, break some shit, AND have a good time doing it. Recommended!
1st actual cd from these exciting Bay Area noisemakers.
Deterioration was originally released as a tour only cassette, which is interesting given that it seems more instantly accessible than many of their more widely available and well-known records. Of course, even though this Portland duo has since broken up, it's going to take a while to slowly sift through their catalog and really make sense of it all. The earlier days found these guys making overtly political noise tracks, devoid of really any discernible melody at all. Towards the end, the final releases (the 12" split with Ex-Cocaine, the 12" collaboration with Burning Star Core, the full length At All Ends, etc.) showed a somewhat different side. More obviously psychedelic, more melodic, and seemingly an increased attention being paid to composition. Not to say that the older tracks were completely improvised, because we can't definitively say without asking, but there is a greater cohesion and flow with releases like this one. It really is a shame the guys parted ways, because the last year or so of their records seemed like one collective Revolver. If you're a fan of YS and haven't picked up anything in a while, you'd be well-served to check this one out.
It's been a seriously productive year for the Yellow Swans. Multiple cd-r releases, some 7"s, a Australian tour with pals the Grey Daturas, as well as loads of splits and collaaborations with folks like Axolotl and the Skaters as well as teaming up with the Daturas for a couple releases as well. Phew! But thankfully, there seems to be no end in sight. With all those releases, it's a bit surprising to realize the Yellow Swans only have one proper non cd-r release, and that one flew so far under tha radar we wouldn't have known about it at all had one not drifted through here used a while back. So here we have a brand new, shiny silver, actual cd, non-cd-r, blast of Yellow Swans nooooooooooize! Joined on a few of the tracks by fellow noisy folks Inca Ore, Gerritt and Christina Carter (of Charalambides), Psychic Secession is another gorgeous chunk of sweet sweet noise, equal parts glistening shimmer, crushing and jagged skree, skittery diembodied rhythms, haunting ghostly vocals, blistering sheets of distorted electronics, squealing feedback, chiming reverb drenched percussion, glistening delicate ambience, even some ultra processed psychedelic rock, all woven into a dense chaotic and surprisingly gorgeous whole!
This will be coming out in the states on Load Records, but not until way later in the year, so for now we got this Australian import version which comes in a super spiffy oversized cardboard sleeve and is a completely different (supposedly 'noisier') mix than the forthcoming Load version!
Latest in Not Not Fun's Bored Fortress 7" series, featuring two long time AQ faves.
Former Bay Area freenoise duo the Yellow Swans check in with probably their harshest heaviest sounds yet. A full on white hot soft noise assault, totally blown out and drenched in distortion, dripping with speaker melting crumble, a seriously punishing blast of brutality, BUT, hidden beneath it all is some serious dreaminess. A simple lilting melody, a bit melancholy, a bit mournful, drifts beneath a veritable sonic shitstorm imbuing the noise with emotion and feeling. Very few folks can make caustic noise sound this pretty, you gotta hand it to these guys...
The flipside features the Goslings, a husband / wife sludge rock duo from Florida, who we have been totally obsessed with when we first heard them back in 2005. This track demonstrates they still got it going on, so heavy, so impossibly pretty, so damaged and amazing.
Outrageously distorted guitar, so much so that it's not just crumbling, but melting into a weird black puddle, the amp literally falling to pieces, so in the red, that the riffs keep overwhelming the recording device adding all sorts of alien buzz and damaged Basinski like drop outs. It's a bit like Boris or SUNN))) produced by Faxed Head, but it's the Goslings, so you gotta toss in a dorky little Casio rhythm, and some drifty throaty female vocals. So what was once just a crumbling heap of melted guitars and chunks of desiccated amplifier, albeit an insanely cool one, becomes some sort of blissy dream sludge. And then there's the weird melodic slowcore outro, which sounds like Low run through a million broken distortion pedals...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Here's the latest Dark Yellow Swans...or you might better know them as simply Yellow Swans! As with most releases by the very DIY San Francisco fella Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Big Techno Werewolves, Nam, Sounds Of The Barbary Coast, The Ropers, Dial Records), there is only going to be a very small homespun run of these made, so needless to say, don't snoooooze! Pssst... we also have a small number of some of Donovan's other Folding cassette releases, all with hand made covers -- a couple of short ones from Death Sentence: Panda and Donovan's own current band Sic Alps plus a compilation he compiled with artist Chris Johanson called SSSSSOSS2 and one by NVH with Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny. Dust off yer cassette deck!
Zoviet France formed in relative isolation in Newcastle, far removed from the rest of the UK industrial and art-punk communities. They furthered the mystery around their sonic abstractions by working in anonymity and by presenting their work in beautifully eccentric packaging (i.e. roofing shingles, aluminum foil, wood boxes, porcelain baked cassettes wrapped in radioactive feathers, etc.). The exact history of Zoviet France remains elusive, although a dramatic rift in the project occured in the middle '90s when founding member Robin Storey left Zoviet France to form his solo project Rapoon. Ben Ponton, one of the other founding members, continued on with Zoviet France, drifting away from Storey's signature looping technology and towards an alien isolationism tricked out with disembodied samples. While both Rapoon and the recent Zoviet France records have certainly had plenty of successes, none had matched the collaborative genius of Zoviet France during the Ponton / Storey days.
In a rare interview in the mid '80s, Ponton explained that Zoviet France would record hours of material and then sort it out at a later date. This brings us to Music For A Spaghetti Western which dates back to 1986, one of the most prolific periods for Zoviet France as they began recording numerous large scale projects including the 4-part series Charm, Ceremony, Chance, Prophesy which included two LPs and two cassette only material as well as the monumental Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music (originally housed in the aforementioned porcelain packaging). Given the amount of material that Zoviet France had finished during that time, it's not surprising that a couple of things never got completed, such as Music For A Spagehtti Western. With many of the ZF recordings being splattered collections of short fragments anyway, the shards of hypnotic loops that comprise the ZF Spaghetti Western make sense in the greater context of the band.
As on those aforementioned albums, ZF explore the imagined ceremonial music for non-existant cultures bringing chiming strings, hand percussion, breathy flutes, and extended vocalizations to a dark kaleidoscope of tape loop machinations and multiple delay pedals. If this sounds similar to the work of Finland's Avarus or Kemialliset Ystavat, Zoviet France does share some of those aesthetics, expect for the undeniable fact that ZF are maybe even better at it. With almost their entire catalogue in limbo, any new recordings are a reason to rejoice, and recordings as beguiling as these are certainly most welcome indeed.
We first heard of Zoviet France's latest offering "The Decriminalization of Country Music" back in December; yet it has taken until now for the distribution channels to get into place for this record to finally make its way here to Aquarius. With almost
Zoviet France began 20 years ago as an anonymous collective of musicians who embraced the DIY attitudes of Punk and Situationism, yet found inspiration in Terry Riley's tape mechanisms, Lee 'Scratch' Perry's schizoid dub production, and the wonders of non-Western instruments (tablas, bouzoukis, Tibetan bowls, Egyptian reeds, etc.). While each of their albums hold very distinct aesthetics, the basic ZF sound is a eerie cyclical drone built from a interlocking network of tape loops with dubbed intrusions of the aforementioned ethnic instruments. One of the subtle ties between all of the Zoviet France records is the process of recycling material, in which a handful of discreet sound elements repeat throughout the album within a broad spectrum of recognizability. For an album like "Hessian" it would be the surreal chant "OK, Boys!" and for "Feedback" it would be the distant whir of a sputtering drum machine.
"The Decriminalization of Country Music" is one of the more obvious examples of Zoviet France's recycling process, as they had been commissioned by the Tramway Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland to re-interpret the sounds of the gallery's extensive redevelopment from a desolate warehouse to a workable exhibition hall. While ZF utilizes various construction site sounds and the resonant properties of the room itself, the dominate theme for "Decriminalization" is the sound of a languorous slide guitar, making comparisons to Ry Cooder inevitable. At the beginning of the record, Zoviet France boldly introduces the haunting guitar sounds against quiet static loops and rich drone synthesis. Yet as the album progresses, the guitar's presence becomes more diffuse, with only a few fragments of muffled twangs hovering amidst the post-industrial ambience by the end of the album.
"The Decriminalization of Country Music" stands as Zoviet France's most minimal piece to date, and like all of their records is an amazing, if not required listening experience.
