while I'm at it
Talking about my visit to Aquarius reminded me that I’ve already had one shopping trip so far this year. There’s only one store in San Francisco / North America that can really compete for my affections with Aquarius, and that would be Amoeba. I don’t really see them as competing; Aquarius is run by my friends and is a boutique with a high density of specialty items and Amoeba has a huge variety and much better coverage of electronic dance music (such as it is these days). Neither of them has any trouble separating me from large piles of my money.
Anyway, here’s what I picked up at Amoeba last week:
- Akimbo: Harshing Your Mellow (Alternative Tentacles)
- Akimbo: Navigating the Bronze (Alternative Tentacles)
- Cabaret Voltaire: Eight Crepuscule Tracks (Giant)
- Cabaret Voltaire: The Living Legends (Restless / Mute)
- Darkthrone: FOAD (Peaceville)
- Nick Drake: Bryter Later (Island)
- Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left (Island)
- Nick Drake: Time of No Return (Hannibal)
- Echospace: The Coldest Season (Modern Love / Baked Goods)
- Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief (Island)
- Fairport Convention: Unhalfbricking (Island)
- Fotheringay: Fotheringay (Fledg’ling)
- Gravenhurst: The Western Lands (Warp)
- PJ Harvey: White Chalk (Island)
- Daniel “belteShazzar” Higgs: Metempsychotic Melodies (Holy Mountain)
- LCD Soundsystem: 45:33 (DFA)
- Gram Parsons with The Flying Burrito Brothers: Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 (Amoeba)
- Pylon: Gyrate PLUS (DFA)
- Seefeel: CH-Vox (RePHLeX)
- Six Organs of Admittance: Shelter from the Ash (Drag City)
- Wiley: Eskiboy – The Best of Tunnel Vision (selected by Logan Sama) (Eskibeat)
- Wire: Read & Burn 03 (Pink Flag)
- v/a: Fabric 36 (mixed by Ricardo Villalobos) (Fabric)
I’d say it’d been a while since I’d been shopping, but this happens pretty much every time I go to Amoeba.
now the year can begin
After reading this inspirational article, I decided to do my part for the music industry and pay a visit to my friends at Aquarius. Some of this stuff had been on hold for me for months now, so it was past time.
I spent a while distracting Andee and Allan while they feverishly tried to finish the newest edition of the infamous and sprawling Aquarius New Releases list. And “feverish” is right – there’s a certain amount of urgency to the proceedings, but they’re also not too tough to distract, the sustained effort of putting together the behemoth list having broken them down until they have the attention span of disease-enfeebled gerbils.
Here’s what I got:
- A Sunny Day In Glasgow: Scribble Mural Comic Journal (notenuf)
- August Born: August Born (Drag City)
- Buried At Sea: Ghost (Neurot)
- Dead Meadow: Howls from the Hills (Xemu)
- Malicious Secrets / Antaeus / Mutilation / Deathspell Omega: From the Entrails to the Dirt (End All Life)
- The Necks: Townsville (ReR)
- Paolo Parisi / John Duncan: Conservatory (San Sebastiano) CD + book (Mascietto Editore)
- Jack Rose: Raag Manifestos (vhf)
- Torche: In Return CD + 10” (Robotic Empire)
- Wolves in the Throne Room: Two Hunters (Southern Lord)
- Xasthur: Defective Epitaph [2CD Daymare edition] (Hydra Head / Daymare)
The Torche is packaged in a seriously beautiful gatefold sleeve with the vinyl in one sleeve and the CD fixed inside the gatefold, with art by John Dyer Baizley (by way of Pushead and Alphonse Mucha):
(Many thanks to Cosmo Lee for his excellent article on John Dyer Baizley’s illustration, which alerted me to the existence of this record. I shamelessly stole his high-quality scans, which are of course © John Dyer Baizley, used only for purposes of promotion and review.)
My record is marbled pale green vinyl; if anybody else with this stops by, let me know what color yours is.
SPECIAL, POSSIBLY RECURRING, FEATURE!
tUMULt Corner:
While I was at the store, keeping Andee from finishing his reviews, he was kind enough to bring me up to date with the goings-on at his label, the mighty tUMULt, source of many things kvlt and trve. He’s been extraordinarily generous to me over the years, so the least I can do is pimp tUMULt’s new releases a little here:
Nordvargr / Drakh: The Betrayal of Light: Blackened ambient (that means “lots of spooky noises and ominous drones” in normal English) from two of the members of harsh industrial artist Maschinenzimmer 412 / MZ412.
Crebain: Night of the Stormcrow: reissue of one man NWOSFBM band’s first demo. It’s aggressive and very weird, like most black metal out of San Francisco’s cultish underground scene.