Two extended improvs by AQ favorite Dean Roberts from (Thela, White Winged Moth) and Werner Dafeldecker (Polwechsel, and an assortment of improv ensembles with folks like Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Martin Siewert) both playing guitars, electronics and percussion. The first track pairs sine waves with guitar textures while the second epic track rumbles and glides through metallic cycles and stalled clickery. Sinecore meets clankcore.
Really beautiful improv by Keith Rowe (AMM), G�nter M�ller and Taku Sugimoto recorded live at Les Infants Chavires in October 1999. All three musicians are masters of restraint and here create a delicate and rich world of sound, Rowe and M�ller building the perfect context around Sugimoto's minimal guitar reflections. Recommended.
"Giacinto Scelsi is unique among composers in this (or any) century. Trained in the New Vienna School, he grew into a totally personal style in which he focused completely on tone and sound. Scelsi was highly influenced by Oriental philosophies and the deep meditative aspects underlie his stark, expressive music. This disc presents five works that document this growth. 'Yamaon' has the voice (a booming operatic baritone) using no words -- only syllables and sounds, with instruments gradually taking over. 'I Presagi' is about the visionary precognition of the downfall of a Mayan city. In three movements, each focused on a single pitch, it is scored for 2 trombones, 2 tubas, saxophone, percussion and wind machines. 'Anahit' is a work for 18 instruments with violin solo. It is a very difficult work, creating a brilliant sound-world which defies any conventional description. 'Tre Pezzi' for solo saxophone contemplates a unique approach to sound, and 'Okanagon' is, according to the composer, 'to be understood as a rite, or if you choose, as the heartbeat of the earth'."
Collaboration spearheaded by Zbigniew Karkowski and compiled from performances in Tokyo, London and Berlin. It featuring performances by KK Null, Tetsuo Furudate and 17 other musicians edited into one intense track that builds with caustic fury into a wall of sumptuous noise.
The weirdest of the Digital Hardcore crew breaks out with his first full length. Unanimous store favorite. Includes his stellar Sweat single, and features some of the hardest, most distorted yet intelligent bass and drums this side of Panacea. Recommended (esp. the next time you're pissed off.)
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Experimental quintet fronted by Martin Siewert and including former Naked City keyboard player Wayne Horowitz. Meditations on water dripping are conceived here as a continuous performance. Churning guitars blend into tinkering effects and improv drum sweeps with a surprisingly lovely effect.
2nd album (duh) of dark dub hiphop, an AQ-fave. Mostly "instrumental", though one highlight is the guest spot by rapper God Albino. Pretty much everytime we play this in the store, someone buys a copy--it's that good.
As the title of this record indictates (if you remember your high school German), Stangl (acoustic and electric guitars, percussion) and Kurzman (G3) seek to invoke the stillness, texture and monotony of snow -- snow composed of millions of unique snowflakes. Stark and beatiful.
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This is a great record from a band recently profiled in the last issue of Bananafish magazine (and they cover "Dear Prudence" on the accompanying cd, remember?). For those who didn't happen to read that, the Starfuckers are an Italian group who combine krautrock, Stooges and experimental new music influence into a radical new aesthetic. As AQ-mascot John Whitson succinctly dubs them: "Funhausen."
Supremely awesome instrumental rock trio of guitar/drums/upright electric bass from Philadelphia. Last weekend they played a beautiful and energetic show to a lucky crowd at the TipTop bar a couple of blocks from here. And last year they did a great Aquarius instore performance. This is their brand new disc. If you like old Gone, or Fripp, or previous AQ-list Record of the Week honorees The Champs, you must bow down to Stinking Lizaveta. Meditative virtuoso impassioned metal/jazz explosive bliss!
San Diego's Tarantula Hawk create a heavy, epic rock soundscape, a bit like a metal version of Godspeed You Black Emperor, with a healthy dose of Hawkwind. The band is a four piece: with not one, but two bassists, a drummer, and a guitarist/keyboardist, and a couple of samplers amongst them. This, their debut recording, consists of one 40-or-so minute long track, all instrumental, that combines metallic math-rock (including the occasional blast-beat) with bombastic prog-rock keyboard sounds of the sort unheard since the early '70s! The keyboards make TH remind me (and perhaps only me) of a malevolent version of the organ-led seventies Italian prog cult-band Le Orme, but mixed with the majestic bass-heavy attack of Japanese prog-punk technicians the Ruins. All these sounds are then eventually subsumed into an experiment in drone science. Ominous stuff indeed! It's like the soundtrack to the military-occupation of a haunted house: martial drum beats, grandiose synth themes, eerie abstract electronics. For fans of Thrones, Neurosis, Magma, The Champs, Old Man Gloom, etc. No wonder they've toured with both California grindcore heroes Dystopia and Texas neo-psych spacerock act Yeti, drawing as they do from both genres. The cd version also includes a gritty cd-rom video of a live show, about the same length as the audio track on the cd, that's if anything heavier and scarier. Highly recommended!
Originally conceived in Paris in 1924, George Antheil's ideal instrumentation for Ballet Mechanique called for 16 synchronized player pianos, in addition to two human-played pianos, percussion, electric bells, a siren and three airplane propellers. Despite his close relationship with a Parisian manufacturer of player pianos who had in fact patented a way to synchorize the "pianolas," the piece has never been possible to fully realize and has been played only in scaled-back versions until last year when the piano parts were sequenced for MIDI. The result is a 30 minute rampage of frantic, beautiful, insane brilliance. Just fucking incredible. Seeing it at SF's Davies Hall a couple months ago, the cute little-old symphony-subscriber-lady next to me alternately had her hands over her ears, jerked back and forth to the rhythm and yelled at me over the cacophony, "Can you believe you're seeing this!?" It's that great! Oh yeah, there are also six other pieces on this disc by John Cage and Lou Harrison, Richard Grayson, Amadeo Roldan and Mendelssohn.
Dark and lovely, abrasive tapes with interludes on piano and cello. Delicious, an AQ favorite. The Village is a modern German post-rock combo, part of the burgeoning Hausmusik scene, here making soundtrack-worthy music that certainly stands by itself.
Murky drama played out on guitars, tapes, electronics, and samplers, with a heavy dose of clanky percussion to remind you of their roots, Germany's Village of Savoonga possesses an enviably original sound that owes much to their krautrock forefathers, not the ultra-structured Kraftwerk, but the loose sound experiments of Faust. Spacerock fans will find so much to like, too, but expect more than just easy ambient layers, this record climbs mountains and fords streams. Totally excellent. This is their third album, and the record we've been recommending people buy if the new Tortoise just doesn't do it for ya...
After an odd album on United Daries (a home to many an odd album), Volcano The Bear's third disc destroys perfect pop songs in the best way, blowing them wide open and letting all their grimmy guts fly free. For fans of Village of Savoogna, Shadow Ring, Sun City Girls, No Neck Blues Band, and other likeminded sonic transgressors.
When Nurse With Wound's "A Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table.." was first released in 1979, the response was one of bafflement. Volcano The Bear's first album for NWW's United Dairies is just as baffling. Ostensibly following the 70s art-rock damage of Faust (especially 'Tapes') and the willfull eccentricity of The Shadow Ring, Volcano The Bear (Byram refuses to call them anything but BJ and the Bear) plods through disjointed percussive riffs with alien droning, incongruous guitar work, and a crystal clear production which wouldn't be out of place on Too Pure. It's not hard to see why Steven Stapleton sought this group out after their Pickled Egg debut for a United Dairies release.
Notorious Swiss drummer (of Alboth! and 16/17 fame) Wertmuller and guitar experimentalist Wittwer release improv tracks that are equal parts airy and dense, raucous and careful. Lovely yet super heavy. Caspar Brotzmann fans (like us) will enjoy. Recommended.
