French connection

Y'know the speedfreek French acidpunkpsych act Gunslingers, whose fuzz-filled album No More Invention we highlighted on list #299? Well we just learned something interesting about 'em we didn't know before. The rhythm section of Gunslingers is the same Antoine and Matthieu who play in two other AQ faves: krauty post rock/metal act Aluk Todolo and black metallers Diamatregon! Thanks to J.R. from the Public Guilt label for passing along that info, we hadn't made the connection. Now the question is, are those guys in any other bands, 'cause if so, we need to hear 'em!

Kerry and Christine have blogs too

We're sure that AQ mailorder customers who've been with us for more than a year or two, must have fond memories of our former mailorder staffers Kerry and Christine. Apparently K&C's current jobs elsewhere allow them a lot of free time, 'cause Kerry emailed - in response to our blog - to say "OMG! I started a blog too!" which you can find at http://momforwards.blogspot.com. She also teamed up with Christine to start yet another blog, http://radduderadkidradlady.blogspot.com. The URLs for both should give you a fairly accurate idea as to the respective contents of these blogs. Neither have much to do with music (well, the radduderadkidradlady blog does sometimes, sorta) but should provide some, uh, amusement nonetheless, so we thought we should pass these links along! Check 'em out.

Heads up, heavy vinyl junkies

Thought you might want to know we got in stock today, these two lp releases:
Harvey Milk "Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men" (Chunklet / Reproductive Records) 2lp $30.00
SUNNO))) "Domkirke (Live In Bergen Cathedral 031807)" (Southern Lord) 2lp $17.98
Both of 'em on many, many grams of precious vinyl, housed in fairly substantial, handsome packaging. And limited too, of course. We'll be reviewing these on list #302 next week, if we don't run out.
But if you're reading this, and you want a copy of either or both, just hop on down to the store or email us to grab you one for mailorder.

White Hills instore! also, Krautrock videofest...

If you didn't already read about it on our email list, we'd like to remind locals to come down to Aquarius tomorrow, Wednesday Sept. 24th, to see AQ fave spacerockers White Hills play an instore show here, 6pm.

Also, they'll be performing at a Klaus To The Edge projekted krautrock video extravaganza at the Knockout, Monday the 29th... here's the flyer:

Neon gone

You know the blue neon sign hanging in our window, that says "Aquarius Records"? Well it's not there anymore. Sadly, it bit the dust sometime after we closed on Friday. When Andee came to work on Saturday morning, he found that the wires holding it up had snapped or something, and it had crashed to the floor, smashing into a million tiny bits. R.I.P. neon sign, we'll miss you.

Thankfully, though, this happened in the middle of the night, and not during they day when the store was full of people!

So, anyone know where we can get a deal on getting a new neon sign made?

Death Magnetic, distilled

As you may be aware, there's a new Metallica album out. We just 'reviewed' it on list #301. We mentioned that it's hard to be objective about that band, after everything they've put their original fans through over the years. But parts of it were definitely pretty cool, harking back to the Metallica of old. We have proof of that for those of you who might have doubts about the new album.

It's a 98% percent instrumental edit of Death Magnetic "that distills the album into one decent 14 minute song". Check this "Death Magnedit" out here.

And there's also this, a 33rpm rip of the 45rpm vinyl version of "Ride The Lightning"!

Thanks to AQ pal Jace for directing our attention to these.

New Arrivals list #301

Might as well make a habit of mentioning that another edition of our New Arrivals list has been uploaded to our website. You'll find #301 right here. Of course, you probably also got our New Arrivals #301 email telling you the same thing, especially since how else did you know we had a blog? 'Cause we only just publicly announced its existence in the intro to #301.

Records Of The Week:
Ishikawa Akira & Count Buffalo "Uganda" (Tiliqua) cd $28.00 

Mind blowing reissue of this '70 Japanese psychedelic artifact. Intense African drumming meets jazz meets acid rock proto metal prog.
Darsombra "Eternal Jewel" (Public Guilt) cd $12.98 

Second disc of brooding kraut flecked, spaced out blackened ambience, definitely for fans of Expo '70 and other dark droners...
Woven Hand "Ten Stones" (Sounds Familyre) cd $14.98 

Latest disc of apocalyptic bluegrass gothic folk from David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower. The heaviest WH yet!

Return of the KFJC Penny Pitch! This Saturday at AQ!!

We're excited to play host to this fundraising event for one of our favorite community-supported radio stations, KFJC (98.7 fm). It's this weekend, Saturday afternoon, September 20th from 1 o'clock to 6 o'clock pm here at Aquarius Records (that's 1055 Valencia St. in San Francisco, but you know that).

We had a lot of fun with the KFJC folks when they did this here last year, looking forward to it again! Glad to help them out with this kickoff to their fundraising season.

There'll be a bunch of KFJC DJs here, broadcasting live from a tent set up on our sidewalk. Maybe a guest AQ DJ too. And snacks. Please come on by and check it out, it'll be fun. Or at least tune in, if you can't come out - KFJC can be heard over the internet, via the links on this page of their website.

Here's the schedule for the live KFJC DJs:
1pm Morris Minor
2pm Cadillac Margarita
3pm Belladonna
4pm Maybelline
5pm Capt. Jack

Hey Ma, look we're in the New York Times!

A bunch of folks pointed out to us that we got a nice mention in Sunday's NYT travel section, as part of a piece entitled "36 Hours In San Francisco", focused on the Mission District.

"A friendly sanctuary for music lovers" they said. And we were like, oh yeah, we remember a photographer coming by to take some pictures a little while ago, that's right! Pretty cool, we're given props alongside other favorite Mission places to go like Creativity Explored, Weird Fish and Dolores Park. Check out the whole article (with slide show) online at the link above.

New in stock

Well we got a heck of a lot of cool new stuff in this week, we're not even gonna try to list much of it here quite yet. But if you're a Deathspell Omega fan, you might want to stop in. Also if you're looking for the new Blue Sabbath Black Cheer LP.
We're still working on a way to list new stuff in stock on this blog, with a button that will allow you to actually order it via our website, with a "buy it now" button... should be some progress on that next week, with luck.

Leaky leak

It got just a little bit damp here Friday night. A plumber had been installing a new bathtub in the apartment upstairs during the day, and late that evening, Jon (working at the front counter) detected, with his keen senses, a drip drip drip coming from our mailorder room... thankfully, the leak was a minor one, and no equipment or merchandise was damaged. Longtime local customers have probably been here when we've had similar (but worse) emergencies in the past, with our racks moved around and plastic sheeting over everything. It's an old building! But fortunately our landlord is super conscientious & responsive about stuff like this, and had the plumber back down here first thing in the morning Saturday to fix things up. Fingers crossed that's the last of this particular leak.

Indeed it was rad

Rock n' Roll All Night, tonight

Y'know how I (Allan) have been on a KISS kick lately, reviewing a bunch of old Kiss cd reissues for the AQ website? Well, you can imagine how stoked I am to be about to see Destroyer (not the Dan Bejar band, which is what SF Gate mistakenly thinks, but the local Kiss tribute band) at Annie's Social Club tonight. And it's sort of friend rock too, 'cause an old pre-AQ co-worker of mine is Ace Frehley in this band. Should be rad.

This just in

One of today's new arrivals:
DARSOMBRA "Eternal Jewel" (Public Guilt) cd 12.98
Should be reviewed on list #301!

New internet is go

All right! Today is our first day with our new, faster cable internet connection turned on here at the store. We flipped the switch and, lo and behold, it worked. Our local network didn't get screwed up, our emails seem to come and go as they should, yay! Supposedly it's 16x faster than our old internet service. Dunno about 16x exactly, but it IS faster. Of course, our old DSL seemed like dial-up. So... we can get more done, more quickly. Or that's the idea. And 'cause we're so excited about our new internet, we're also gearing up on some of the internet-related projects we've been planning for a while - like this here blog. The idea is, soon we'll be posting something every day or two. Right now we're just trying to get used to the concept. And it's a bit weird, posting to this blog now, 'cause we haven't actually told anybody about it (yet) so that there's very little chance that anyone (right now as I post this) is gonna be reading it. Still, it's worth doing it now, as an exercise!
The other internet related projects? Perhaps an AQ podcast, and some (gradual) graphical redesign of our website, among other things.... we'll keep you posted.