(Raster-Noton) 2cd 23.00

FENNESZ Black Sea (Touch) cd 15.98
Which came first Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz? If one is to merely look at the discographies of the twin kings of digitally tricked out guitar sculpting, the chronological answer is obvious: Christian Fennesz. But in the four years that have transpired between his brilliant album Venice and the 2008 opus Black Sea, Fennesz must have seen a younger protege in Tim Hecker coming up in the rear view mirror with his own dramatic sound for smeared guitar whose beauty is similarly rendered through error. Not only does Black Sea feel like a response to Tim Hecker's work, it also stands as Fennesz' most fully realized album, perhaps even more so than the sunburst explosion of meta-pop on Endless Summer.
Fennesz works best in the cold, with ice, snow, and frost dusting the strings of his guitar and seeping into the circuitry of his computer; and the cold landscape is exactly where he situates himself on Black Sea. Not surprisingly, Touch's Jon Wozencroft perfectly matches a photograph of an abandoned train track set onto a barren wintry landscape, looking a hell of lot like the photographs that Anselm Keifer uses as a background over which he dumps tar, paint, cement, lead, ash, and whatnot into his alchemical paintings.
Black Sea opens with the fizzling crunch of digital errata getting mangled even further by digital means, with Fennesz sculpting a sea swell of a half melody in the distance. Considering the contemplative and cold nature of the rest of the album, this track is a bit discordant; but Fennesz isn't going for the Menche / Merzbow attack, just something of a wake-up call. But gradually, even this first burst of noise quells in a plaintive round of finger picking on the guitar, out of which a beautiful cloud of vaporized drone begins to amass and a subharmonic throb of distortion settles in. These sounds become the template for the rest of the album, all wrapped in gray, muted timbres. When noise bursts through Fennesz' circuits, the attack almost immediately blurs into clustered loops, drones, and sympathetic noises to smooth the edges into a shimmered glisten of remarkable beauty that exhibits a cold, overcast, and gray soundsmear, certainly on par with the sleepytime shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine. After an exceptional collaborative track with Rosy Parlane of lunar landscape ambience riddled with dust before opening into a hymnal melody, Black Sea comes to an end with one of Fennesz' best tracks ever in "Saffron Revolution," with its soaring vapor trail of tone-bent guitar drone and a majestic crescendo of sustained, soft focus distortion. A truly marvellous piece of work.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Glide"
MPEG Stream: "Saffron Revolution"

ULAAN KHOL II (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
It may be odd to single out one component of a series for Record Of The Week, especially when it's the second of a proposed three record trilogy. It's not that we didn't love the first installment, we did very much! And it's not like the Academy Awards where we're belatedly acknowledging the first installment by rewarding the second. It might be just that we didn't realize at the time the magnificent depth and far reaching direction in which Steven R. Smith would take his latest project. And as we have heaped tons of praise on his past work, we wanted to single out this project and particularly this installment as something utterly amazing and wholly breathtaking.
Despite the tons of killer music that goes in and out of the aQ doors, it's not everyday we get an album that really lifts us out of our seats and straight into an alternate dimension. The latest release under the Ulaan Khol moniker is a celestial trip into desolate plains where the water rises and the skies are ripped open.
A prominent member of the Jeweled Antler family, Steven R. Smith has been seriously influential in defining the California psych/drone sound for over a decade. We've mentioned it in plenty of reviews, so folks gotta be by now pretty aware of Smith's extensive discography, ranging from countless solo records to his releases as the Eastern European-tinged Hala Strana or with the famed JA flagship act Thuja.
The first Ulaan Khol record, though made up of nine untitled tracks, felt like one spacious drifting piece of big fuzzy distortion and fragile drone bliss. Something like the gorgeous feedback-laden free music of Les Rallizes Denudes or others from the Japanese Underground scene. We loved it a lot, but didn't go into extensive detail about it, probably because we had also just reviewed his Owl record (released under his own name) around the same time.
On II, we hear a lot more range. There are still the big swaths of massively distorted psych heaviness, but the eight untitled tracks feel more distinct and structured. Some tracks have faster Spacemen 3-like tempos and fuller driving progressions with pummeling drums mired way deep in the mix, while others feature more calm, drifty drones made up of intimate guitar, electric violin and organ passages that conjure up gorgeous swells of luminous sound. The pieces are more varied and layered, dense yet melodic and at times more rock-ish. The majestic guitar radiance Smith manages to create is not unlike the solo work of Kawabata Makoto or Tom Carter, but here we also hear shades of Roy Montgomery, Flying Saucer Attack and even Asa Osbourne from Zomes and Lungfish (Zomes being a recent Record Of The Week too).
As with the first disc, there are no liner notes, just an abstract painted cover, this time in bleak blue-grey winter tones. And inside the sleeve is an awesome painting of a lamp-holding monk (perhaps the same skull contemplating monk from the first disc) at the mouth of a giant cave! Yes!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 3"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 4"

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE AND THE COSMIC INFERNO / WHITE HILLS Sonic Attack (Psychedelic Warlords) (Trensmat) 7" 5.98
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7":
Volume 2, "Psychedelic Warlords", features Acid Mothers Temple, who are an obvious choice to pay homage to a band who was doing the AMT thing 30 years ago, and in true AMT fashion, Kawabata and company go for it, covering "Brainstorm" although it's difficult to tell, as it's buried under sheets of wild freaked out psych guitar and blown out space rock effects EVERYWHERE. It really doesn't sound all that different from any number of other AMT jams, but that's basically because every AMT jam is a tribute to Hawkwind, isn't it?
AMT are matched up with NYC's White Hills, who ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, tackling "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer.
The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!

KINSKI / BARDO POND Sonic Attack (Lords Of Light) (Trensmat) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7":
On volume three, "Lords Of Light", Kinski definitely get their Hawkwind on, covering "Master Of The Universe", and like Mugstar on the first volume, not so much making it their own, as transforming themselves into a vessel through which the spirit of Hawkwind can flow, and flow it does. That main riff is such a killer, all the band have to do is ride it out, adding plenty of freaked out effects and psychedelic leads, the vocals buried in the mix, not getting in the way of the endless spacepsych jamming.
And finally, the series is closed out by another group of modern psychedelic masters, Bardo Pond, who add female vocals to their take on "Lord Of Light", the vocals drifting ethereally, over a roiling black cloud of FX drenched guitars and some seriously pounding drums, even a bit of flute (we think), and maybe more than any of the others managing to meld the sound of the original with their own, plenty of wah wah guitar, loads of effects, most of the track spent drifting through space, cloaked in blown out super distorted psych guitar and shimmering outer space ambience. Surprisingly heavy and totally blissed out.
The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!

MUDHONEY / MUGSTAR Sonic Attack (Motorheads) (Trensmat) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7":
The first of the three, subtitled "Motorheads", features two aQ favorites (as do they all), Mudhoney and Mugstar. Mudhoney tackle "Urban Guerilla" and totally make it their own, so much so, that minus a little chunk of extended droney space rocking in the middle, those not well versed in Hawkwind would certainly be forgiven for thinking it was a Mudhoney original. Mugstar on the other hand are a DEAD ringer for Hawkwind, their sound murky and muddy, squalls of psych guitar, clouds of swirling spaced out FX, droned out jams, all tangled up and slowly unwinding into a long sprawling space rock jamscape. Hawkwind would be proud.
The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, with naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!

ANIMALS & MEN Never Bought, Never Sold (Mississippi) lp 10.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Just wanted to get the attention of the growing legion of Mississippi Records obsessives, as this week we have not one, not two, but THREE new releases from this PDX based all vinyl, mostly reissue label.
The first we heard from Animals & Men was on one of the long out of print Messthetics compilations, and then again on the Hyped To Death disc Revel In The Static which collected almost everything the band recorded. A bunch of those tracks are included here, available on vinyl again, for a super limited time.
Animals & Men were a female-fronted DIY art/blues/punk from rural England, totally charming and catchy and homemade, comparable to Kleenex/LiLiPUT, Delta 5 and the Vaselines with a wide array of influences including black American blues...and the novels of J.G. Ballard!
Many touted them at the time as New Wave coulda-woulda beens, especially with patrons like John Peel and their long-time pal Adam Ant. Yet, obscure they remained, but that obscurity allowed wonderful idiosyncrasies to flourish in their songwriting.
The sound is irresistible, with sing songy vocals, simple tribal drumming, fragmented blues riffs wrapped in reverby jangle, and rubbery almost dubby basslines (and don't forget the harmonica). Groovy, hypnotic, punky, even a little bit funky, their sound, while pretty darn unique, wouldn't have sounded at all out of place in the early days of K Records or Kill Rock Stars.
Nice thick black and white sleeves, and a super detailed cardstock insert, with a song by song guide and lots of cool photos.
MPEG Stream: "Terraplane Fixation"

ANIMUS Hallucinations: Ideals Surrounding Water, Sand, And Clouds Of Dust (Ars Magna) cd 13.98
Two years ago, we discovered a one man band from Israel called Animus, who crafted a depressive buzz unlike any we had heard before. An incredible dirgey depressive landscape of blown out buzz, of layered whir, a sound that in other hands would sound downright blissful, but there was nothing blissful about that sound, it was miserable, melancholy, suicidal, dejected and despondent, the darkest of emotions rendered it varying shades of black, painted in varying degrees of buzz.
Two years later, Animus returns with another bleak sonic missive, another exercise in blackened buzz, but right from the start something is different. The record begins with hushed minor key steel string acoustic guitar, softly strummed, shimmery, until the buzz swoops in, and immediately locks into a static blast, the drum machine rigid and unswerving, pounding out a relentless beat, while the guitar is locked into a buzzy loop. Impossibly mesmerizing and hypnotic, exactly the sort of subtle transcendence we are always looking for in black metal. And so it goes, slipping back and forth from soft fluttery folk, to frenetic black flurry, until halfway through, after another brief soft interlude, the sound shifts to an impossibly dense doomy crawl, the guitar continuing to buzz furiously, but the drums slowed down to a tarpit crawl, and the vocals spewed out like some noxious black fog, gurgling and growling, a thick layered wall of droning sound. The deeper you sink, the further it moves from black metal, and the closer it gets to some experimental dronemusick. But even that only lasts briefly, before the song shifts back to the opening riff, and resumes its back and forth, only this time introducing extended pauses and haunting church bells. And that's just the opening track.
The next few tracks offer up some cinematic black ambience, soft piano, moaning strings, deep shimmering drones, muttered otherworldy invokations, folky steel string strum, hushed harsh vocals drenched in effects until it becomes crumbling streaks of distortion, before the vocals how and wail over the lilting minor key melody.
That tranquility is disrupted by a flurry of chaotic drumming and buzz drenched riffage, which gives way to a speeded up black krautrock, muted layered fuzzed out guitars, and impossibly fast blast beats, all over a pretty swoonsome guitar melody, and peppered with super random cymbal crash crescendos. Along stretch of incredibly deep rumbling blackened ambience, all subterranean drones and distant whirs, gives way to a haunting washed out final track, the guitars so blurred and smeared it's hard to even hear the riff, instead the guitars sway back and forth like black swells, the drumming spare and a bit off kilter, the vocals a raspy croak, the tone of the track not heavy or grim or brutal, as much as weary and worn, the sound of spirits slipping into the darkness, of the world slowly falling to pieces, the sound of stars blinking out, leaving a vast expanse of utter blackness, rendered in sound, it becomes a woozy whirling almost seasick dirge, with muted militaristic drumming, and a gorgeously thick and viscous soft focus roiling sea of warm languid buzz. So gorgeous and abject, so dreamily depressive, and so fucking amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled I"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled II"

BAHIMIRON Southern Nihilizm (Moribund) cd 14.98
Sure, "You don't mess with Texas" is a cliche as old as the hills, one that has lost much of its import, but those are definitely words to live by if "messing with Texas" means messing with these guys. Houston's Bahimiron return with the aptly titled Southern Nihilizm, a furious slab of blasting grim blackness, that owes no small debt to the mighty Gorgoroth, giving that classic Norwegian sound through their own cracked Texan twist, the guitars are crunchy and buzzy, the drums are buried in the mix, but are wild and frenetic, and the vocals are seriously demented, going from processed guttural growls, to monstrous roar to almost Cradle Of Filth shriek, often in the same song.
The other weird thing about Bahimiron's sound is the production, tons of effects and what sounds like reverb, so everything is dense and noisy, and the riffs sort of blend into one another, turning a black buzz into a droned out buzzing blacknoize. There are some strange moments scattered throughout the record as well, the end of "The Cauldron Born" features a bizarre, awesomely out of place chromatic sort-of-guitar solo, "Agonist The Filth" has killer squiggly leads draped all over the place, "Chambers Empty" features deep bellowing clean vocals doused in effects that transform them into confusional speaking in tongues garbled mumbles then moments later into hysterical howls. The title track has a cool melancholy breakdown in the middle with a distorted guitar playing out a mournful minor key melody, before the band explodes into another blown out black frenzy. And "War Whiskey Sodomy" closes the record with a brief lumbering sludge soaked doom outro. But all that weirdness is deftly tangled up and tucked away in and within the band's furious noisy black metal buzz, making it just weird enough for us, but just grim and true enough for everyone else.
Cool cover art, the band's logo and evil goat image rendered in super subtle gloss black ink on a flat matte black booklet.
MPEG Stream: "The Cauldron Born"
MPEG Stream: "Shattered and Crowned in Deceit"

BAKER, AIDAN Letters (Basses Frequences) lp 17.98
Originally released as a cd-r in 2002, so limited we never managed to get ANY. So for lots of Baker fans, this will probably be your first chance to wrap your ears around Letters.
Really hard to know what to say about Baker anymore. He definitely has a sound, unlike his dirgier more metallic blissed out doom duo Nadja, his solo stuff tends toward the super minimal, the dark and droney and drifty, the hushed and shimmery, and Letters is no different. But within that somewhat well defined sound, there is in fact much variation, subtle as it may be.
On Letters, Baker offers up soft billows of sound, which are wrapped around a hushed vocals, more of a murmur actually, but instead of a drone record, it transforms the sound into some super minimal slowcore, the pop element sublimated to almost non existence, the vocal melody being the only thing keeping the track from sprawling out into abstract smears and blurs (not that we mind that either mind you). The instrumentation is simple, just guitars and cymbals, but deftly processed into something deep and sonorous, and surprisingly melodic. Streaks of high end drift in and out (guitar or falsetto vocal, it's hard to say), as the record drifts dreamily. The sound does change dramatically here and there, deep overlapping low end tones, soft squalls of spaced out effects, glimmering streaks of washed out doomic blur, stretches of almost symphonic shimmer, the guitars transformed into hushed string sections, but it all resolves in an extended outro of soft deep swells. As always, absolutely lovely.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!!!

BASTIEN, PIERRE Visions Of Doing (Western Vinyl) cd 14.98
Oooh. We're always excited about any new releases from French automated-instrument builder and trumpeter Pierre Bastien. How often do we get records featuring music made (in part) by robots? Not often enough. And such lovely music too. All these tracks were originally composed as soundtracks to projects by a Dutch experimental filmmaker by the name of Karel Doing (hence the title). But Bastien's music so readily stokes the imagination than Doing's cinematic visions are not necessary accompaniment.
We said 'automated-instrument builder', those instruments being what Bastien calls his 'Meccano', simple sound-making robots or kinetic sound sculptures, that make looping music box melodies and provide a backing of slow, steady mechanical clank for Bastien's own wheezing, muted trumpet. Bastien plays in a smokey jazz mode, breathy, beautiful, oh so melancholic, that in the this context reminds us of Chet Baker in some sort of Tom Waits-ish instrumental junkyard. The gamelan or thumb piano like plinkings of Bastien's Meccano - exotica for scrappy homebuilt robots - are rendered somehow more human by the sweet sighs of Bastien's trumpet. He also makes use of field recordings, unidentified underwater warblings, and other mysterious textures in constructing these tracks. Wonderful stuff, so languid and relaxed and full of life, animated indeed by Bastien's Visions Of Doing. Bastien's previous discs for Rephlex, and others, have all been 'late night faves' here at AQ, and this latest gentle gem from Bastien joins them for sure.
MPEG Stream: "The American On The Highway"
MPEG Stream: "Visions Of Shanghai"
MPEG Stream: "The Thermodynamic Orchestra"

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN The BBC Sessions (Matador) 2cd 15.98
For many of us the classic era of Belle & Sebastian is when Isobel Campbell was still in the band and they made truly classic and timeless albums like Tigermilk, If You're Feeling Sinister, The Boy With The Arab Strap, and so many great ep's too.
Dedicated to the memory of John Peel, this collection of BBC recordings originally recorded between the years 1996-2001 is packed with tons of their instantly recognizable heart melting classics, as well as four previously unreleased tracks, that fit perfectly amongst all of the super smart and heartfelt songs Belle & Sebastian have crafted over the years. Stuart Murdoch's voice sounds so amazingly effortless and seductive throughout and we still get tingles when Isobel Campbell makes her way to the mic. The first batch of these come with a bonus disc featuring a live show recorded in Belfast in 2001 and include endearing covers of "I'm Waiting For The Man" and "The Boys Are Back In Town." B&S have inspired way too many wannabe lisp-having over-sensitive pop peddlers but that's not their fault, and no matter how many bands try, none of them will be able to match the true ease, breeze and nostalgia that Belle & Sebastian are able to evoke with their beautiful sounds.
MPEG Stream: "I Could Be Dreaming"
MPEG Stream: "(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique"
MPEG Stream: "Dirty Dream (Live)"
MPEG Stream: "Legal Man [Live]"

BIBLE OF THE DEVIL Freedom Metal (Cruz Del Sur) cd 11.98
This is pretty much exactly what you'd hope for from a band who has a Flying V guitar as part of their logo! Chicago's Bible Of The Devil are back, all hairy and bearded, with another ripping record of '80s, NWOBHM inspired heavy metal rockin'. It's their fifth album, so along with the guitar, they've got a (Roman numeral) V in the logo on the cover of this, too. V can also stand for victory, and "triumphant" is a word we've used to describe these guys' metallic gallop in the past, a gallop graced with gruff Lemmy-ish vocal gargle and (of course) tons of twin Flying V fret burnin' leads and dual harmonies.
Catchy stoner riffage, soaring melodies, singalong choruses, total shred, these guys bring it on Freedom Metal, recorded by their hometown heaviness production guru, Sanford Parker. No wonder they're such good buddies with those epic eccentrics known as Slough Feg. Their rollicking riffs even seemingly share some of the same Celtic/folk influences at times... or Thin Lizzy influence anyway, as on the likes of "Greek Fire", "500 More", and especially the super Lizzyish, upbeat "Ol' Girl" (which we could also describe as sounding like Southern rock with extra Champs-y guitars). Furthermore, while the whole album hews to BOTD's usual raw rock vibe, one foot still in the garage, they mix it up from track-to-track, some more blazingly metallic, and a few more melodically mellow, as with the moody "Heat Feeler" which has moments that make us think of Elvis Costello or something!
Basically, Bible Of The Devil just keep gettin' better n' better, and Freedom Metal is a blast. And like a blast from the past that ain't actually from the past. Our only question: why no song called "Turn It Up, Man"?
NB. we also have a new BOTD split 7" with Pennsylvania doom metal act Valkyrie, we'll try to list that next time if we still have copies.
MPEG Stream: "Hijack The Night"
MPEG Stream: "Womanize"
MPEG Stream: "Greek Fire"

BIBLE, JEREMY & JASON HENRY Vectors (Experimedia) cd-r 10.98
Jeremy Bible and Jason Henry are two Ohio based sound artists, who draw heavily from field recordings from the rust belt and obfuscate them into seductive, occasionally dark pieces of fizzing ambience. The details of decaying leaves from the artwork of Vectors immediately translates into the opening passages of Vectors, as a tactile crackling nestles into a womblike drone. The soft crunch could easily come from Loren Chasse's meditations on broken earth and crumbled leaves, but they could be confused for the vintage turntable collages of Philip Jeck. But as the passages for layered tones and variable loops begin to articulate themselves against the tactile grit of those aforementioned sounds, Bible and Henry showcase themselves more as digital sculptors closer to Aidan Baker and Tim Hecker. Their looping repetitions progressively appear as a slowly generative kaleidoscope with cross-hatched smears, refracted distortions, and slightly eerie abstracted noises, all set against a static electrical hum. Flickered haunted melodies appear and disappear amidst
thobbing metallic drones, 8-bit distortion and post-Fennesz fizzing ring modulation before seamlessly shifting into an obfuscated field recording. On one occasion, a blustery chorus of blackbirds breaks through the shimmer and pixelation; on another, the two include the modulated Doppler effect of cars roaring past along a freeway, recalling the Hafler Trio's revelation that God told him to record the sound of cars passing by. Limited edition to 150 copies, or thereabouts.
MPEG Stream: "Alska"
MPEG Stream: "Flck2"
MPEG Stream: "Lmp"

BLOOD CEREMONY s/t (Rise Above / Candlelight) cd 13.98
Been looking forward to this one! The debut album from this seemingly time-lost Toronto band, the latest in the current spate of retro-proto-doom-metal bubbling up from the underground. All the heavy '70s Sabbath/Pentagram riffs -and- occult vibe of a band like Witchcraft, with soaring female vox and a thick coating of vintage Hammond organ, spooky and bombastic. It's an equation along the lines of Atomic Rooster + Jacula + Jex Thoth, maybe. Yeah, we're down with this. And that's just after hearing the first song. Then track two kicks in with some proggy flute! With LOTS more flute to follow on the rest of this album. So now they've added some Jethro Tull to the mix... Black Widow, Uriah Heep, Rainbow, and a mess of other more obscure '70s acts could also be cited as references too, along with the much more recent likes of the aforementioned Witchcraft and Jex Thoth.
Now, if you hate Jex Thoth's singing, you might have a similarly tough time with Blood Ceremony, but we found that the lady here isn't quite as polarizing a proposition. And it's her dramatic vocals that gives Blood Ceremony their special sound, along with her flute playing. She's also the organist. But let's not forget the guitars... it's tough not to grow your hair long and sprout bellbottoms when exposed to these lumbering, loping riffs, all of 'em seemingly from the school of Sleep's Sabbathier-than-thou classic "Dragonaut"! Or imagine Electric Wizard given a medieval, madrigal makeover.
And the lyrics... "I see witches in the sky, flying toward the quaalude eye"?? Ok. These guys and gal are definitely "smoking black drugs from Satan's bong" (I think that's what they said). Speaking of witchcraft, the dark arts of pagan ritual are of course Blood Ceremony's main subject matter, on tracks like "Into The Coven". The grooviest black mass we've attended in a while, right here. After spinning this for a while, if you find toads hopping about near your stereo, we wouldn't be surprised...
MPEG Stream: "Master Of Confusion"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Coming With You"

BRETHREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT The Wolf Also Shall Dwell With The Lamb (Important Records) cd 14.98
The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!
MPEG Stream: "The Wolf Also Shall Dwell with The Lamb"
MPEG Stream: "Into The Dust of The Earth"

CITY OF CHURCHES Memelust (Eolian) 7" 3.50
What might you expect from a group featuring members of doomdrone heavyweights Trees and Tecumseh? Something slow and low and lumbering... Probably, us too, but City Of Churches is anything but. Not slow, or low, or lumbering, instead, Memelust is 63 tracks (yep 63 tracks on a 7") of super hyper spastic tech-grind insanity. Some songs are literally one second long, a single harsh guitar-drums-shriek burst, others sprawl to 5 or 6 seconds, a few even longer, those 'extended' tracks jam way too many parts into way too little space, so each blast is a bursting at the seams micro-blowout of chaotic screamo grind fury.
The sound is so short and sharp, the songs so jagged and fragmented, that at times, when there are 5 or 6 2 second long tracks in a row, it almost sounds like someone is just fucking around with the volume knob, turning it down, then up, then down, and up again, creating the briefest of shards from a larger grinding whole. But that is not the case, these are all actual tracks, songs even... some improvised, others composed using an invented system of musical notation! City Of Churhes has been described as 'brutal prog', we might alter it a bit to GRIND-prog, equal parts Harry Pussy, Naked City, Napalm Death, Anal Cunt, Brutal Truth... we could go on, but you get the drift, this is about as UN-easy as un-easy listening gets. A dizzying onslaught of total grinding metallic fuck-you-up.
Packaged in gorgeous hand screened black and white and yellow on heavy cardstock sleeves, with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!

CJA Vintermanederne (Celestial Jars) cd-r 10.98
We found a stash of these, and realized once again, that we hadn't listed these yet, it came out last year, and is now WELL out of print, so these are the last 8 or 9 copies we'll ever get.
CJA for those who don't already know is Clayton Noone, who also plays in aQ faves Armpit and NZ new wavers the Futurians. On past solo joints, Noone offered up a stumbling lo-fi bedroom folk, rife with all sorts of random noise and random production fuckery, and Vintermanederne follows a similar course, but manages to be even more abstract.
The opener is a 20 minute sprawl, that seems to be mostly field recordings of rainfall, occasionally interrupted by fragments of fractured lo-fi folk, underpinned by distant shimmer, which eventually builds to a roar (maybe that's the wind whipping by the microphone), before slipping back into some sort of murky dronemusic, ending with some folky flutter and still more rainfall. The second track is much more straight ahead, simple acoustic guitar, and sweet crooned vocals, soft downer bedroom folk for sure, really quite pretty. The record finished off with some lo-fi indie jangle, muted electric guitar, a gorgeous vocal mantra, all very reminiscent of Alastair Galbraith, before some percussion enters the mix, and song spreads out growing gradually more and more abstract.
Fans of Galbraith, Milton, Noone, Horton, Carter will definitely dig, and there's enough field recording sound manipulation weirdness to keep it interesting for the free-noise cd-r set.
And again, already OUT OF PRINT, these are the last copies ever.
MPEG Stream: "Winter Months"
MPEG Stream: "Wastelands"

COLD CAVE Painted Nails (Hospital) 7" 8.98
Seven inches of awesomely depressive distortion drenched new wave downer pop. Imagine a couple of old school synth pop classics, dipped in a vat of white noise, then rolled around in shards of fractured synth buzz and crumbling distortion, a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The surface is a prickly wall of in-the-red lo-fi fuzz, a curtain of soft focus blacknoise, but just below that surface lurks a secret heart of classic eighties new wave, the programmed rhythms, the swirling synths, the deep dramatic vocals, but taken together, this is everything we always wanted new wave to be, harsh and heavy and dark and deliriously catchy, buzzy and brutal and abrasive but still fuzzy and hooky and weirdly melodic. The B side takes CC's noisy new wave even further out, the sound generously doused with heaps of that blissy Tim Hecker-ish blur of which we can never get enough.

CONIFER Crown Fire (Important) 2lp 27.00
Available on vinyl, limited to only 500 copies, includes a massive bonus track NOT on the cd!!
If we had to pick a favorite, out of all the post rock / math rock / post metal hordes, a sound we do admittedly dig a whole lot, and one we can't seem to get enough of, Maine's mighty Conifer would be right there at the top. Which is saying something, as up until this brand new full length, we'd only heard from them twice, their debut, and a split with Ocean. As compared to some of the other bands who have released 2, 3, 4 maybe more records in the same amount of time. The first Conifer disc was fresh when it came out, taking classic math rock and beefing it up with huge swells of Neurosis crush, but the thing with Conifer is that they never completely buried that post rock vibe, even at their most metallic, when they were slipping into full on doom territory, they hung on to those loping rhythms, those fractured melodies, and figured out a way to infuse those elements into the roiling heaviness. On the debut we were hearing Slint and Bastro and Seam as much and as often as Isis or Neurosis, probably even more so.
In that way, the sound of Conifer hasn't changed all that much, their sound is still rooted heavily in mathrock, the metal elements more adorning the postrock instead of the other way around. In fact more than ever, they sound like a nineties mathrock band supercharged and transported to the oughts. Even at their heaviest, they don't get HEAVY, as in metal heavy, they get louder, and more dynamic, more intense, the sound gets fuller and more expansive. And this time around the band we can't help but hear all over this record is Polvo. The guitar parts are all woozy and warbly and angular and sort of seasick, the opening track is the perfect example, it almost sounds like some metal band covering the opening track from Polvo's Cor Crane Secret, with its multiple parts, its liquid arrangements, the clean guitars, layered and indeed woozy, the drum part and the arrangements, loping and mathy and not a little bit groovy. We hate to go on and on about mathrock and Polvo, cuz it could all be a big ol' coincidence, but we doubt it. Every song on Crown Fire is mathy and melodic, sometimes locking into repeating figures for just a tad longer than would be comfortable for most bands, opening up and drifting through wide open spaces, all glimmering harmonics and shuffling rhythms, backwards guitars floating in a sea of muted soft drones, tripped out almost Pink Floyd action here and there, complete with space-y synths and fluttery flutes. "Into The Gauntlet" almost sounds like a heavier Codeine, a bit doomy, with a strange lurching arrangement beneath glistening sparkling chimes, and flurries of shuffling snare drum and floor tom. Hard to say what it is exactly,
as it should be with music, but regardless, this is definitely a new high for a genre that becomes more and more overpopulated every day. Whenever we find ourselves listening to one of these new post rock / metal hybrids, as much as we love metal, and we do, we find ourselves longing way more for the intricacies and arrangements and dynamics of the post rock side of the equation, it's too easy to just turn it up and let downtuned guitars chug, and Conifer prove that you can make a super heavy, super catchy, epic record, without even bothering with faux metal chug, which is something else for sure.
If that weren't enough, the record closes with the 13 minute title track, featuring Eugene from Oxbow on guest vocals (normally Conifer are instrumental). The result is pretty excellent, and finds the band, doing their best Oxbow, a sort of abstract bluesy groove, that over the course of the song gets a little bit mathier and more complex, while Eugene sing-talks, howls, mewls, wails, growls, shrieks, moans, The track is super spare until about halfway through where it dials up the metal, offering up being churning chords and pounding drummage to support Eugene's increasingly unhinged and manic vocals, the song building to a furious climax, before drifting out in a haze of whispered mutterings and fractured electronics. It's a pretty awesome track for sure, but for us, it somehow works better when taken almost as a separate record. The first 6 tracks are so perfect together, a brilliant 38 minute post-math-metallic-rock suite, which just so happens to come with an equally brilliant bonus single song, 13 minute ep, featuring Conifer backing up Oxbow's Eugene Robinson.
However you slice it, WAY recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Surface Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Cruciform Empennage"
MPEG Stream: "Crown Fire"

DARA PUSPITA A Go Go (Plustapes) cassette 5.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
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, 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) 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 shone 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. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
MPEG Stream: "A Go-Go"
MPEG Stream: "To Love Somebody"
MPEG Stream: "Aku Tetap"

DARA PUSPITA Green Green Grass (Plustapes) cassette 5.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
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, 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) 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 shone 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. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
MPEG Stream: "Lonely Street"
MPEG Stream: "Bertamasja"

DARA PUSPITA Jang Pertama (Plustapes) cassette 5.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
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, 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) 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 shone 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. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
MPEG Stream: "Mari Mari"
MPEG Stream: "Minggu Jang Lalu"

DARKTHRONE Dark Thrones & Black Flags (Peaceville) cd 16.98
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"
MPEG Stream: "Hiking Metal Punks"
MPEG Stream: "Blacksmith Of The North (Keep That Ancient Fire)"

DE SALVO Mood Poisoner (Rock Action) cd 21.00
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"

DEAD SCIENCE Villainaire (Constellation) cd 15.98
If you have a penchant for arty pop that's filled with theatrical flourishes and hand-wringing croon-swoon emoting a la Antony & The Johnsons, Scott Walker, Xiu Xiu and Frog Eyes, then you should definitely chance a visit from Dead Science's latest affair Villainaire. Mind you, it is considerably more aggressive than any of those artists' music. It's a stormy shroud of a listen not for the faint of heart. Unquestionably it's the band's most composed and fully realized album to date. Menacingly jagged post-punk and forebodingly atmospheric post-rock thunderheads run headlong into a delirious whirlwind of orchestral string arrangements and free-jazz-ish skronk. Yes, you might think it to be a seemingly incongruous meeting of styles, but Dead Science's pervading shadowy dramatics brings them all together. With special guests Craig Wredren of Shudder To Think and Katrina Ford of Celebration.
MPEG Stream: "Throne Of Blood (The Jump Off)"
MPEG Stream: "Make Mine Marvel"

DRAGGING AN OX THROUGH WATER The Tropics of Phenomenon (Awesome Vistas) lp 14.98
Another limited Awesome Vistas release this week along with The Jackie-O Motherfucker lp (reviewed elsewhere on this list) is this debut full length from the strangely monikered Dragging an Ox Through Water. Dragging An Ox Through Water is the solo project of Portland multi-instrumentalist Brian Mumford who conjures up a warped Americana of old-timey sounding ballads filtered through damaged electronics, field recordings and off-kilter use of horns, guitars, banjos and kazoos. Imagine the early pop-country side of Arthur Russell covering Neutral Milk Hotel's In an Aeroplane Over the Sea with just a broken guitar, a dented tuba, a child's steel drum and a busted radio shack electronics kit, and you come close to the feel of this oddly beautiful record. Oh yeah, it's limited!!!! Cool hand screened covers too!

EARTHLESS Live At Roadburn (Tee Pee) 2cd 14.98
Ever been to an Earthless show? If yes, then you probably are already in line to purchase this. You know that San Diego's Earthless are a live band first and foremost, their heavy, psychedelic stoner rock instrumentals best experienced at appropriate (loud) volume as they unfurl and unfold, lead guitarist Isaiah Mitchell's epic beyond-blues soloing seemingly never-ending, lifting the proceedings far, far out into space. He's not a guitar hero, but a guitar demi-god!
This double disc document captures the trio blowing minds at last year's Roadburn Festival over in Holland (good place for 'em). Disc one features a massive piece (or two?) entitled "Blue/From The Ages", which is as far as we can tell a massive improv jam exclusive to this recording, while disc two consists of versions of "Godspeed" and "Sonic Prayer" from their last album Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky... again, though, the disc is one long track, the two songs flowing together...
The sound is excellent, the band is on fire, it's prime Earthless action all right, wailin' away awesomely and endlessly. The energy level somehow builds and builds, this band intense and heavy and locked in tight, all night it would seem. Must have been a great show, well we KNOW it was a great show, these discs are the proof. Any Earthless fan should get this, likewise if you're into, say, Acid Mothers Temple, get this and you just may have new favorite band.
(And how come they weren't one of the bands on those 7" Hawkwind tributes we're also listing this week? That would have been good!)
MPEG Stream: "Blue/From The Ages"

FARQUHAR, JW The Formal Female (Shadoks) cd 17.98
Woah. This is a weird one. A home-recorded psychedelic one-man-band "rock opera" from 1972, originally a rare privately pressed LP, now reissued on cd. Super freaky and moody and fuzzed out, with a messed-up "my woman done me wrong" vibe to it all. One JW Farquhar of Philadelphia sang and played all the instruments, though there are some other, presumably non-existent musicians credited on the sleeve... get a load of his supposed band, some of the best fake names ever: "Riffery Lowknut" on fender bass, "Slash Mullethead" on percussion, and "Callust Likfinker" on lead guitar! Steel Mammoth wishes they'd thought of those.
In the liner notes JW says that many of these songs "were written as an outcry against the materialistic nature of the woman during that time period". Maybe a little bit misogynistic? Well, apparently JW had just recently gone through a difficult divorce after having been married for 10 years, and was pretty down on women in general. Regardless of the merits of his bitter outlook, the bummed-out emotions expressed are certainly real. And feed into some genuinely twisted, trippy music.
The first two tracks, "The Formal Female" and "The Want Machine", are both multi-part suites, 11-12 minutes each. Groovy, laid back, lonely stuff, rife with FX and heavy doses of fuzz guitar (at one point, JW does to the traditional wedding march what Hendrix did to the "Star Spangled Banner"). "The Want Machine", with its funky guitar and guttural dialogue, almost sounds like the freakin' Jimmy Castor Bunch circa It's Just Begun, jivin' and acid-dosed (here, downer-dosed).
On "My Bundle Of Joy", JW's sad, melodic vocals are accompanied by what sounds like a primitive drum machine ticking away. It's really weird and lovely. Not sure what it reminds us of, maybe Vincent Gallo? Also, there's a good deal of woozy harmonica, or what could be Augustus Pablo style reggae melodica, all throughout the album. "Where Have You Been" and "Mansions" are equally odd and entrancing. Spacey, echoey, outsider rad dudeness! JW Farquhar is part George Brigman, part Dreamies, part Bobb Trimble, part Perry Leopold... like we said, a weird one. Not every Shadoks reissue is amazing, but sometimes when they find an obscure gem, like this, they really hit it out of the park, we're telling you. And as break-up records go, this one's unique.
MPEG Stream: "The Formal Female"
MPEG Stream: "The Want Machine"
MPEG Stream: "My Bundle Of Joy"

FLASKAVSAE / LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL split (E.E.E Recordings) cd-r 13.98
It's take a couple years and about a million cd-r's, but here it is, the first proper actual cd (not cd-r) release from both of these groups, two of our favorite UN-black metal bands. And for those out of the loop, un-black is another name for white metal, which is another name for Christian black metal, which does indeed seem like an oxymoron, but avid readers of the list by now are well familiar with the sound, and the groups, Glaciial, Agathothodion, Drommer, Elgibbor, Offerblod, Njiqahdda, and of course Flaskavsae and Light Shall Prevail.
LSP is the work of EEE records head honcho W.S. and prolificacy is so extreme, he fronts or is a member of at least 5 different outfits. LSP seems to be his main one and is definitely one of our favorites. Like on past releases, the sound here is a mix of classic grim black metal, and all sorts of fucked up lo-fi production, the core being a relentless buzzing riff, and furious blasting beats, but the sound is wrapped in strange sheets of hiss, and layers of murk and mire, the drum machine is strangely processed, the cymbals unleashing sprawling clouds of hiss, the guitars always buried in varying degrees of fucked up buzz or fuzz, turning riffs into streaks of blurred sound. The first LSP track here offers up a super strange, arpeggiated melody, very sing songy and major key, right in the middle of a roiling sea of blast and buzz. Ends up sounding quite mysterious and haunting. The big change this time around are the vocals, that are a dead ringer for Wrest from Leviathan's hellish corrosive howl, but within LSP, those vokills are simply another layer in the droning hypnotic buzzscapes, and that weird sing songy melodic element resurfaces throughout the other three tracks as well, culminating in the 15 minute closer, a sprawling, woozy and warped black metal, the guitars super blown out and washed out, the sound more of a blurred drone than black metal, even the drums are so static and relentless that they evoke a sense of mesmer as well.
Flaskavsae (a one man band, whose one man plays in Glaciial with Mr. LSP) are a perfect match, a similarly twisted take on (un-)black metal, but instead of speed and aggression, offer up something more depressive and midtempo, the guitars warbly and the distortion crumbling, the drums buried in the mix, except for the cymbals, that like LSP offer up sizzling streaks of hissy sibilance. Even when the songs launch into more furious tempos, something about the sound still manages to remain lugubrious and druggy, the riffs, less insectoid, and more blackened melting psychedelic. The final Flaskavsae track, begins with a creepy almost classical sounding circusy melody, over a lurching almost industrial sounding rhythm, before the blackness and buzz seeps up from below, transforming the track into a weird droned out black buzzscape.
Packaged in a super glossy full color digipak.
MPEG Stream: FLASKAVSAE "Hymns Of Praise"
MPEG Stream: LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL "Epicism"

FM3 Buddha Machine II : Brown (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).

FM3 Buddha Machine II : Burgundy (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).

FM3 Buddha Machine II : Grey (FM3) battery powered soundbox 26.00
That's right Buddha Machine II!!! As in a whole new machine. New design. New features. And all new sounds. Most aQ customers are probably quite familiar with the Buddha Machine by now, most of you probably own one, or more, and a bunch of you probably bought one or more as gifts for your music nerd friends or significant others. We freaked out over the Buddha Machine just like everyone else when we discovered it. Rumor was that the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! Just here at aQ we've sold HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS!!!
For those of you who missed out, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. It was designed by the group FM3, aka Christian Virant and Zhang Jian, who recorded nine loops specifically for the tiny handheld soundboxes. These boxes are ubiquitous in China ands all over Asia, where they are used in worship, with the boxes featuring recordings of chants and prayers. FM3 took that concept and expanded it, offering musical loops, to be used in meditation or relaxation, or perhaps even prayer, if one was so inclined. The boxes are very simple, the sound lo-fi, but as an object, especially a sound producing object, it was, and is fantastic, and totally mesmerizing. The original Buddha Machine is still available, and comes in multiple colors: purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow, but mover over old Buddha Machine....
There's a new Buddha Machine and it's a doozy, improving on various elements of the original, adding an awesome new control, and most importantly featuring nine new loops. So even if you have one of the old ones, you're probably gonna want one of these too. The sounds this time around, are much less meditative, a bit more active, ranging from deep swells laced with feedback and strange processed electronics, to pulsing minimal melodies, to what sounds like a distorted music box / piano duet, to a stripped down strummed metallic dirge wreathed in buzz, to single sustained notes draped over random bits of room sound, to dubbed out thumb piano, a few with an almost post rock vibe, albeit way more stripped down and spare, and some of the loops are really long, sounding much more like song fragments that loops, and even more than the first Buddha Machine, the new sounds definitely lend themselves to playing multiple boxes at once, creating your own Buddha Machine symphony. The big change besides the sounds, is the addition of a pitch control, which allows you to dramatically change the pitch of any or all of the loops, for us, everything sounds better slow, but you can speed it all up, or you can continuously adjust the pitch while the loops are playing, adding all manner of warble and pitch shift, creating your own woozy dizzy loops.
Definitely the perfect stocking stuffer for the music freak in your life, and totally worth getting, even if you have the old Buddha Machine. The new machine comes in three colors, brown, burgundy, or grey, and all of them come in a nice printed cardstock boxes. No batteries included this time, though, you'll have to provide your own (2xAA).

GHAST / RAPE-X Split (Obskure Sombre) cd 11.98
We first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both ever since.
So Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths, buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody, creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!). The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim.
Rape-X existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness. We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up, and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience, falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel.
Caveat Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new, corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically, the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.
MPEG Stream: GHAST "Tetanos"
MPEG Stream: RAPE-X "Civil Servant: I The Cop"

GOOD STUFF HOUSE Endless Bummer (Root Strata) cd 12.98
Endless Bummer is such a good name for a record. Usually we're not all that into puns as titles (or band names), but Endless Bummer manages to be a pun, while sort of flipping the spirit of the original inside out. We always wanted to call a record Endless Bummer, but we've now been beat to the punch TWICE. At least. Once in the nineties by Further, whose Endless Bummer was an effervescent chunk of in the red post-Pavement slacker Beach Boys worship, and now this record right here, by the mysteriously named Good Stuff House, whose own particular Endless Bummer is much darker and more sedate, a sprawling drift of minimal shimmer and fluttery folk enveloped by dense clouds of natural reverb and billows of soft buzz.
We didn't know too much about Good Stuff House, we had another cd-r that we dug quite a bit, but which went out of print before we could get enough to review, but now we know just why we liked GSH so much, it's the two guys from dronedrift duo Zelienople, and none other than long time aQ fave, guitarist Scott Tuma, he of the legendary Souled American as well as a clutch of amazing solo records (including a recent record of the week). Pretty much hard to go wrong. And Endless Bummer is further proof of just how far from wrong these guys can get....
Apparently Endless Bummer was recorded in unorthodox spaces, warehouses, churches, basements, and it's not just the band performing live, but much like Taj Mahal Travellers 30 years earlier, who would record various performances, then broadcast them into the space, playing along live, often more than once, every step adding more and more murk and buzz and reverb and echo, the sound getting less and less distinct, until it became the sound of drifting along some murky body of water, through a sonic fog so thick it clings to the surface of the water, every note sounding like it had travelled up from the bottom of the sea, or echoing off of the distant shore. Tuma offers up bits of his gorgeous distinctive guitar, and while they do manage to hover briefly, they seem to absorb the sounds around them, soft spidery tendrils transformed into thick swells, the trio introducing bits of voice, various other sounds, all rendered almost immediately unrecognizable, becoming more another part of this sprawling organic whole, cymbal sizzle becomes shimmering clouds, drifting over the drifting murkscape below.
The sound is simultaneously muddy, murky and lo-fi, yet warm, glistening, and subtly melodic, everything is muted, the softened edges barely hiding the glowing sonic glimmers within. Gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in super subtle silver ink on pale blue fold over origami style sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled I"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled II"

GOODWIN, SCOTT Off Light (Root Strata) cd 12.98
First proper cd (not cd-r) release from Scott Goodwin, whose day job is in the group Bonus, but who spends his spare time, making even MORE drone music. Unlike the thick and rumbling, almost doomlike drone of Bonus, on his own, Goodwin tends toward the minimal, more Niblock than SUNNO))), less distortion, more timbre and tone. Goodwin's most recent cd-r Impeccable Surface demonstrated a dramatic shift in that direction, but with Off Light, Goodwin full realizes his vision, crafting too extended drones from pure tones, sine waves, the result is a subtle dronescape of shimmering overtones, and of sound in flux. Niblock is definitely the closest reference, as Goodwin seems to approach his drones in a similar fashion, lining up the layers, the tones, and then shifting them microscopically to create various rhythms and colors. For what seems fairly static, the sounds are incredibly active. Changing shape, their textures constantly shifting, the overtones creating rhythms, those rhythms interacting with the tones and creating counter rhythms and more overtones. With headphones it's easy to get sucked in, it almost makes the listener dizzy, the way the sound seem to move and breathe, but take a step back, and the sound seems more static and manageable, but ever beckoning, with its own impossible gravity. The two tracks, one low, one high, both offer up glimpses into sound, both entrance and enthrall, each soothing in its own way, but far too complex to be ambient music. The sound is academic as well as primal (what's more primal than the drone?), ethereal and ineffable, yet measured and composed, the sounds here are complex enough that they can be appreciated on either level, as a world of sound to explore, and attempt to understand and unravel, or as pure sound, simple and subtly lovely. Or better yet, a mix of the two.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Arc"

HEBDEN, KIERAN AND STEVE REID NYC (Domino) cd 15.98
We've been big fans of the previous collaborative efforts between Kieren Hebden (Four Tet) and legendary free jazz drummer Steve Reid, but NYC demonstrates the two truly finding their own pulsating and exciting outer groove. This isn't fusion or jazz, instead it really sounds like two musical innovators reaching out into each other's orbits and succeeding in making something wholly new.
NYC was recorded right in the heart of New York City over just a couple days and both the city and the urgency shines through as these tracks play like some amazing version of Liquid Liquid performing live at the Village Vanguard. We almost want to send copies of this to some of our favorite rhythmic and percussion fueled bands like Tussle, Mi Ami, !!!, Lemonade and Trans Am, for a shot of fresh inspiration. Hot off the heels of Hebden's recent collaboration with Sunburned Hand Of The Man and a dazzling stripped down and drugged out Four Tet ep he's really sounding like he's on top of his game lately and Reid keeps proving that getting older has hardly dimmed his soul and passion as his percussive skills have never sounded more alive and full of fire. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: