So, we raved about Small Cruel Party a few months back, being an unheralded genius of tactile minimalism hailing from the Pacific Northwest; and now we have the reissue of the Yeast Culture album IYS, in many ways, a document originating from the same time and place that's even more cryptic and more obsessive than Small Cruel Party all the while achieving similarly cracked abstraction of sound-art. Yeast Culture was the brainchild of an artist named Abo, who set up shadowy installations, performances, and even a record shop in an abandoned building in Seattle. The days of such romantic squatting are surely over in Seattle, but they provided the context of damp concrete, rusted rebar, and festering mold. Through collaboration and in piloting the ship himself, Abo steered Yeast Culture into a strange beast of DIY musique concrete, self-immolating electro-acoustic strategies and dangerous field recording situations, amidst all that rubble and decay. While there were only a handful of releases to coincide with the seemingly rich history of activity through that space, the 1989 album IYS is the Yeast Culture masterpiece. An enigmatic smear of crumbling events, metallic scribblings, aerosolizing hiss, poltergeist-like clunks of grey noise, and strange whirring machines caught in their last dying breath. What little information that can be found on the record is that the source material was entirely taken from a three day session on an island in the Puget Sound, after which Abo quite literally ripped those recordings to shreds and painstakingly reassembled the artifacts. Like Small Cruel Party and Organum, Yeast Culture's constructions are densely layered and aggregated, with the compositional strategies keeping to a blank linearity. The sounds themselves have the feeling of being an amplification of the wood beetles gnawing through oak trees or an invasion of mechanical insects adopting a scorched earth policy in miniature or perhaps some unwritten noise symphony for Jan Svankmajer's films, full of disembodied teeth chewing incessantly on cutlery and old furniture. As if that weren't enough to entice, there's the artwork - a densely silkscreened poster that wraps around an equally densely silkscreened inner sleeve with multiple belts of paper holding everything in place. As chaotic as the heavily overlaid silkscreens look, the packaging is quite elegant and perfectly reflects the sounds on the grey / splattered vinyl. While the artwork on the original was pretty stunning, it's even better here on the reissue. Yeah, it's pricey; but when you get your hands on this, you'll realize that the price is totally justified given the amount of work that went to each album. Of course, it's super limited and so fucking recommended! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
The resurgence of the cassette as a viable media may provide an additional context for the work of Jason Zeh, as his gritty drone-noise constructions are entirely based on the contact points between magnetic tape and the tape heads that read / translate that magnetic information into sound. His approach to sound often deals with the dislocation of this contact point, which is akin to the way that Christian Marclay, Gum, or Phillip Jeck approach the turntable. Zeh might wield sandpaper to abrade the tape itself, magnetized razor blades to slice the tapes, leaving irradiated coronas of electrical hum near the edit, and even smearing globs of dirt into the gears and mechanics of the tape deck. All of these very tactile methods impart very tactile results, and as such, A Vacant Lot To Be In is much more akin to Chop Shop's obliterated tape saturation than the somber self-immolation found on William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. Both tracks on this vinyl only release rise through scabrous crumplings into a steady arcing mass of high-voltage dronework whose phase shifting patterns give the impression of an electrified sea of ferric oxide churning through tidal forces. One of the sides builds towards an intense crescendo of turbulent, boiling, junked noise, while the flip eerily navigates an insectoid minimalism. Zeh's work is very strong and deserves as much acclaim as we can muster, especially given his relatively low profile. Highly recommended for fans Joe Colley, Hive Mind, Mike Shiflet, and the more industrially slanted aspects of contemporary sound art. Oh yeah, limited to just 300 copies. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
This is one of those reviews that's both so exciting yet daunting to write. Trying to describe in mere words how a record has totally taken over our ears and left us in awe of its power, intensity, not to mention its incredible sound. We have always loved what we've heard from Zola Jesus in the past. But something has changed and the bar has been raised seriously high with this new ep. Without a doubt, one of the most mesmerizing and entrancing records we've heard all year. Zola Jesus has left behind the layers, noisiness and muddled sound of her past efforts and found her way to something much more clear, emotional, epic, haunting and so precisely focused.
There is definitely something to be said for quality control. The six songs on Stridulum are all practically perfect, not a wasted note, not a throw away line, each and every one has already seemed to seep into our subconscious, to get stuck in our head, and to resonate at such a deep level. With a sound like classic '80s Siouxsie revamped for the oughts, dark and ominous with soaring and strong vocal that leave no room for doubt. She means every single note, every single word, every single sentiment , that she expresses with such undying spirit on this record.
In lots of ways this transition to a new more focused and intense sound reminds us a lot of the leap that John Maus made when he released Love Is Real. While his past outings were eccentric, cool and weird, Love Is Real felt like a statement, a totally unique vision that had the ability to capture your attention right away and keep you coming back for more. That's what Stridulum is like, Zola Jesus demonstrates that her music doesn't rely on some sort of noise / FX aesthetic or trendy sound (lo-fi, washed out, layered drones, etc.) but that she is an artist with a truly unique and special vision. Don't get us wrong, we loved her past records and we love so much of the music that has come out in the last few years that is aligned with many of the aforementioned musical trends but there comes a time when you want to hear something that really feels like it has weight, strength and something true to say. More songs than sound, more music, than art.
There is no other way to say it, we have been totally intoxicated by this record. It's under our skin, on the tip of our tongues. It's made its way into our heads and every part of our body. It's both so physically moving and emotionally present. We also think its one of those records that could appeal to so many different folks. People who dig all sorts of sounds: Kate Bush, Fever Ray, Chromatics, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bat For Lashes, Nico, PJ Harvey, The Creatures, Diamanda Galas, John Maus, Joy Division, Blessure Grave, Jarboe, Bjork, White Magic, Cold Cave, Bauhaus, Patti Smith, etc. With Stridulum, Zola Jesus has really carved out her own unique niche, positioning herself as one of the most interesting, original and exciting music makers in the underground these days. What makes it even more impressive is that she is barely twenty one years old and somehow manages to find time to go to school when not creating these sublime sounds. We're almost scared (in a good way) of what her future holds. This is the sound of someone truly coming into their own and owning their moment with such fierce clarity and hypnotic power. Absolutely stunning!
Sacred Bones is turning into the go-to-label for rad vinyl (and cd!) from both up and coming bands s well as a bunch of way deserved obscure reissues. In the last year they've put out stuff by Blank Dogs, Gary War, Cultural Decay, 13th Chime, and a whole bunch more. We first heard Zola Jesus on a split with Burial Hex but with this full length we've been fully engrossed with her much needed female take on warped bedroom psychedelia. You can't just sight one easy reference for the sound of Zola Jesus and that's a good thing. From the dark and brooding elements of Siouxsie & The Banshees, the haunting spirit of Lydia Lunch, hints of the mystical world of a way lo-fi Kate Bush, layers of haze and echo that would be at home on records by folks like Valet and Pocahaunted. She offers up a much needed scuzzier, moodier, more dense version of what slicker folks like Bat For Lashes and Cocorosie have gotten quite famous for recently. The Spoils is a record filled with dark psychedelic explorations that are able to manifest that aura into really compelling songs that we find ourselves coming back to again and again. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
Here's the second pressing of the 2009 EP by Zola Jesus, whose neo-goth theatrics have made quite a big splash around these parts, especially with her 2010 Stridulum EP. Zola Jesus (born Nika Roza Danilova) had been trained in her formative years as an opera vocalist, but she's far more interested in taking a similar path as Siouxsie Sioux and Diamanda Galas by grafting her powerful vocals onto a grim post-punk latticework of cold, almost no-wave electronics. The arrangements are skeletal with little more than mechanical drum programming and simple atonal melodies, performed with a naive panache more in keeping with the anti-aesthetic of early Ariel Pink or John Maus. There's tons of lo-fi, energy negating reverb and swaths of blackened noise (after all she did have a split LP with Burial Hex on Aurora Borealis!) that splatter throughout the seven tracks on Tsar Bomba (the title alludes to the world's largest nuclear bomb held in the Russian arsenal... ah, nihilism!). The dichotomy between her vocals and the arrangements shouldn't work; but against the odds, it works magically, coming across like an early Cabaret Voltaire fronted by Lydia Lunch. As with the first pressing, there's 500 of these in print. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
No need to belabor the point on this one. This is the first Zoviet France record in 13 years. It's a triple vinyl set with a 12", a 10", and a 7". This is the second pressing mind you, as the first sold out in less than a day when it was released back on October 7, 2012 (a fitting date for the format!). We can safely report that the droning loops are as good as anything that Zoviet France did during the latter part of the Robin Storey era (e.g. Shadow Thief Of The Sun, Shouting At The Ground, Look Into Me, etc.). Storey and Ben Ponton were responsible for the best work for Zoviet France from 1981 to the early 90s, producing beautiful hypnogogic sounds, looping passages, and ethnomusicologically unhinged instrumentation all cast through tape delay effects and time-lag accumulation. Storey left unceremoniously in 1992 taking with him Zoviet France's prolific work ethic, but never really achieved the full glory that Zoviet France once had. Ponton continued on with the project in fits and starts, but he never seemed to find the right chemistry... until now. If you know Zoviet France's work even in passing, you will NOT be sorry. At the same time, we are not all that confident we'll be able to stock this in the future. Delay picking this up at your peril.
It's a little strange that we had never written anything about Zoviet France's 1995 classic album Digilogue, since we love this band and their albums were all uniformly exhilarating and hypnotic, this one especially. So, here we are waxing poetic about this album even as Zoviet France has all but disappeared from the public eye, with founding member Ben Ponton holding onto the project even though no new recordings appear in sight and as former member Robin Storey has released a whole bunch of middling albums (amidst a couple of greats) as Rapoon.
Given how many contemporary gutteral drone artists have been delving into tape loop manipulation, multiple delay pedal configurations, and transcendent tones vulcanized from base elements, listening to Zoviet France in today's climate is essential... as it would prove that this British semi-anonymous collective had better ideas, better execution, better packaging, and better results than 99% of what's coming out today. Sadly, the Zoviet France albums that would have best paralleled much of the current lo-fi drone obsession (i.e. Eostre, Norsch, Mohnomische, and even Shouting At The Ground) are all woefully out of print thanks to a unreconcilable rift between the aforementioned Ben Ponton and Robin Storey. Only a handful remain available for public consumption; and Digilogue is one of them, demonstrating the Zoviet France process of overlapping loops, hypnotic atmospherics, and ephemeral dub activity when applied to digital technology. While there is a considerable crispness to many of the sounds heard on Digilogue, Zoviet France still managed to render their sounds as if they were the liturgical / ritualist music for some hitherto unknown non-Occidental culture hidden in the English countryside. Digilogue's opening track "Alchemagenta" is a noteworthy entry into the Zoviet France pantheon of sounds for its eerily dubbed out miltaristic horn stab which former AQ-employee Byram Abbott was convinced made its way on to an early episode of The Simpsons. Mechanized bells, streched out vocal plainsongs, and oceanic swells of electric wash all cascade through Zoviet France's graceful use of delay patterns for what truly is one of the best records of the '90s and is absolutely required listening for anyone with a passing interest in experimental music over the past 50 years.
Digilogue has been out of print for quite some time now, and now is available once again.
Throughout the '90s, the legendary post-industrial ensemble Zoviet France had experienced a handful of changes within its anonymous citizenship, with newcomers bringing forth digital technologies and propensities for that 'new' electronica sound. While Zoviet France itself maintained its aesthetic trajectory of building miasmic looping drones and radical dub deconstructions that
While Post Modernity and its malcontent little brother Punk effectively deconstucted and ridiculed religious institutions by pointed out their hypocrisies and inconsistancies with rational thought, the two have been wholly unconcerned in addressing the possibilities of transcendence or the notions of the sublime. Zoviet France is an anonymous collective of British sound artists who have been clearly educated with the halls of Post Modernity and inspired by Punk's self-sufficiency; yet, the lack of an existential awe in the face of the Divine never settled easily with the group. Beginning back in the early '80s, Zoviet France developed a musical aesthetic for private rituals built from the artifacts and residues from what they saw as a cultural disintegration (both physically and existentially). To a certain extentw, Zoviet France was making liturgical music to a religion that never existed, but offered resemblences to what transcendent music should sound like. The hypnosis from a drone, the relentlessness of a tribal drum circle, and dub's etherial references to various nether regions are all part of Zoviet France's arsenal of quiet noise making devices.
Originally released as a cassette back in 1988, "Loh Land" is one of the few albums from Zoviet France's early days that is still in print, and encapsulates many of their ideas for a fictional music rich with amorphously spiritual connotations. The aforementioned drones, dubs, and drums alongside distanced vocal chants with have been thoroughly abstracted through a series of delay effects boxes, tape loop machines, and multi-track studio tricks, to create the album's murky atmopshere. Zoviet France's "Loh Land" succeeds in being beautifully but indeterminantly holy.
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.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In 2014, we were blessed with a few copies of the first collaboration between the like-minded alchemists :zoviet*france: and the Fossil Aerosol Mining Projects, which came to us as a double lp, housed in a beefy slab of metal. Those few copies did not take long disappear, and we certainly expect that same fate to fall upon this outing as well. Flexible Pooling is intended to be the material antipode to the heft and durability of that first, with this 7" being a mere flexidisc and housed in a thin paper sleeve, with various printed ephemera gracing the package as well. There's two tracks found on the flexidisc and a download track, making the entire program an honest 30 minutes in length. It's a radioactive blizzard of tape machined errata, countervailed with subcutaneous drones and slippery layers of bedraggled, haptic noise compressed and / or exhumed from the vaults of some deep sea science station collecting data on thermal vents at the ocean floor before it was abandoned. The two entities organically sift through their material, sending various flutters, glissandos, snippets of unknowable dialogue, and electrical malfunctions into accreted and aggregated chorales of raw hypnogogia. Beautiful and eerie, Flexible Pooling represents a perfectly realized sound between two already exceptional authors of the sublime drift. Extremely limited.
Thankfully, we can offer this cd reissue of the instantly out-of-print collaborative album from :zoviet*france: and Fossil Aerosol Mining Project! Back in 2014, we were able to get a handful of the 2lp which was housed inside two slabs of rusted metal; and the cd version maintains the same packaging in a metal folio rusted just the same and laser-etched with the collective acronym emblazoned in the corner. The work of :zoviet*france: is scarce these days, with very little of the back catalogue available due to the interpersonal politics dating to the early '90s. So any recordings are more than welcome here at aQuarius, and this is also proving true for the like-minded sound spelunkers Fossil Aerosol Mining Project. Both outfits have long histories dating into the '80s (even as FAMP is a relatively new discovery to most) working with forgotten media, destroyed cassettes, uneasy ambience, radioactive feathers (oh, yes, it is true, though not on this recording), and tape-loop technologies. This "call and response of residue and hybrid" becomes a lucid dream of industrial gnosticism wandering through hypnotic cycles of fogged pattern, thrummed acoustic harmonics, and organic decomposition into jaw-droppingly sublime minimalism. As collaborations go, it doesn't get much more seamless than here on Patina Pooling. So highly recommended.
Once this inventory is gone, it is highly unlikely we'll be able to supply these at these price. (And mailorder folks, be aware, these are heavy, it'll count as more than one cd for shipping for sure.)
So by now everyone knows how great the New Pornographers record is. I mean, the label sold out of 'em in a matter of months, it got written up in the New York Times, and we've sold tons of it. And while some of the credit goes to Neko Case's sublime vocals, the songs, and the vocals of lead pornographer Carl Newman, remind us of a band we were raving about 3 or 4 years ago, and that coincidentally featured one Carl Newman on vocals and keyboards. Zumpano put out two records of absolutely perfect pop, with enough musical bite and lyrical savagery to keep it interesting, even after all this time. Unlike all the pop groups that stole liberally from the Beach Boys and the Beatles and Supertramp, Zumpano, while obviously indebted to the above, dug much deeper and/or much farther back finding influences in the Zombies, Kinks, Chicago, Redd Kross, Jimmy Webb and even Neil Diamond. Amazing musicianship, crystalline production, beautiful harmonies, and some of the catchiest kick ass songs we've ever heard. Here's what we had to say about 'Goin Through Changes' way back on AQ list 38:
"THE pop record of the year. An amalgamation of all those AM radio anthems you heard day in and day out as a child yet it's somehow still wholly original. A pinch of Jimmy Webb, a dash of Chicago, a little Kinks, a little Zombies. Horns!... Piano!... Harmonies!... Somehow it still rocks!... Andee and Byram swear by this record & even Windy loves it. Allan loves it too but Andee refuses to believe him."
All of you that love the New Pornographers record should definitely give Zumpano a try, if you haven't already!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
So by now everyone knows how great the New Pornographers record is. I mean, the label sold out of 'em in a matter of months, it got written up in the New York Times, and we've sold tons of it. And while some of the credit goes to Neko Case's sublime vocals, the songs, and the vocals of lead pornographer Carl Newman, remind us of a band we were raving about 3 or 4 years ago, and that coincidentally featured one Carl Newman on vocals and keyboards. Zumpano put out two records of absolutely perfect pop, with enough musical bite and lyrical savagery to keep it interesting, even after all this time. Unlike all the pop groups that stole liberally from the Beach Boys and the Beatles and Supertramp, Zumpano while obviously indebted to the above, dug much deeper and/or much farther back finding influences in the Zombies, Kinks, Chicago, Redd Kross, Jimmy Webb and even Neil Diamond. Amazing musicianship, crystalline production, beautiful harmonies, and some of the catchiest kick ass songs we've ever heard. While this record predates the AQ list, it's equally as amazing as recor number two, which we reviewed on AQ list 38:
"THE pop record of the year. An amalgamation of all those AM radio anthems you heard day in and day out as a child yet it's somehow still wholly original. A pinch of Jimmy Webb, a dash of Chicago, a little Kinks, a little Zombies. Horns!... Piano!... Harmonies!... Somehow it still rocks!... Andee and Byram swear by this record & even Windy loves it. Allan loves it too but Andee refuses to believe him."
All of you that love the New Pornographers record should definitely give Zumpano a try, if you haven't already!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Fortunately kept back in circulation with a little more regularity, this is the first (and perhaps best) album from Mika Vainio. As with his work in Pan Sonic, Vainio's techno minimalism holds a crystalline purity due to the use of several handbuilt random noise generators. Vainio situates these seemingly delicate high-end pulses within Steve Reich-esque phase shifting and then sets down rigid techno structure similar to early Plastikman or even the Profan sound of Wolfgang Voigt. Hypnotic techno achieving the drone supreme.
If you happen to be reading this review online and you get some unkempt bit of jibberish for the artist's name, this is Mika Vaino using his moniker of just an O with Slash through it. While the ascii may come out all screwy, we've been told that the correct pronunciation is "ohm." Anyway, Mika Vainio is the Finnish electronic genius who began recording in 1993 under this moniker with a handful of absolutely essential singles matching the equally essential Metri cd from 1994. Along with Ilpo Vaisanen, Vainio is also responsible for the equally Arctic but considerably more muscular techno project Pan Sonic (nee Panasonic). The records he's best known for embarked on a hyper minimal techno of 4/4 pulses smashing through phase-shifting patterns from his self-built synthesizers and so called "complex sound generators." Recently, the rigidity of Vainio's techno architecture has given way to slinkier grooves of variable breakbeats and plenty of excursions into electro-acoustic abstraction. As cool as his devices are, he's never been one to muster anything truly exceptional without being grounded upon rhythmic principles; and for the most part, Vainio delivers the beat. And he delivers a mighty fine album of frozen electronica. The tracks are dominated by very groovy breakbeats with pristine electronic melodies, frigid ambient gestures and descending icy tones with slinky basslines. It's certainly more captivating than Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda, but coming from a similar place. Vainio also offers a mighty fine cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls To The Heart Of The Sun" with the vocals cast as an downer electroid riff laced with acid squiggle. Recommended!
� is one of the many monikers of Mika Vainio, who is one of the figureheads of the Finnish techno scene, having first recorded in 1991 and forming the group Panasonic in 1993 (now referred to as Pan Sonic for obvious reasons) "Tulkinta" compiles the now impossible to find tracks off
of Sahko 001 & Sahko 002 onto CD + 6 unreleased tracks. All of the Vainio projects have involved a number of one of a kind electronic devices which generate crystalline tones and "pure dream-crackle" (according to Forced Exposure) within phase shifted Techno format, emulating the Reichian experiments within an electronica format. This is an essential listen for anyone interested in the 90s vangarde of electronica.
While "Mikro Makro" gives the false impression that Mika Vainio (aka � and half of Pan Sonic) and Carsten Nicolai (Noto) actually collaborated together for that album, "Wohltemperiert" is technically the first documented collaboration between these two figureheads of the minimalist electronica pulse. Mostly recorded in the winter of 1998 during an extended stay in New York, Vainio and Nicolai did not employ any of their own gear, instead using equipment provided by their friend Lary Seven.
While both artists have made previous works that openly explored the clean schematics of archetectural forms within a crystalline techno, they have mostly done away with the archetypes of purist techno on "Wohltemperiert." It's quite possible that Nicolai has subjugated himself underneath Vainio's recent predilections for much more private procedures of coaxing little accidents out of mis-configured analogue equipment and ill-grounded cables. Much like the preceding Vainio albums "Onko" and "Kajo," "Wohltemperiert" ripples with buzzing electrical drones, twin-tone melodic vibrations, the occasional glisten of a technotic pulse, and vast extended crackles, resulting in an album that is surprisingly dark for these two. Take away much of the death / abject imagry from the industrial masterpieces by MB or SPK, and you come close to the wintery bleak atmospheres found here.
"Wohltemperiert" is a welcome diversion from the Raster-Noton sound, which has been running the risk of self-parody and self-reflexivity as of recent.
