New Arrivals #338

Amazingly, we this week's huge list done early last night, so we ran off to the Saint Vitus show (which was awesome) or, in Andee's case, went home and to bed... thus didn't get a chance to blog about it until now, but you're already gotten the email and looked at the site, right? If not, go here, now and check it out!

Records Of The Week:

ACID EATER "Black Fuzz On Wheels" (Time Bomb) cd $22.00
Record number two from these Japanese noise psych garage rock freeks, fronted by Masonna, spitting out ultra distorted, organ driven demented garage, and covering Crime, the Miracle Workers, and Schulmadchen Report!
HARVEY MILK "s/t" (Hydra Head) cd $14.98
Finally officially available, the long lost debut full length from these legendary slow motion sludgelords, total divine heaviness, raw and blown out and epic, even nearly 20 years later.
V/A "The Minimal Wave Tapes Volume 1" (Stones Throw / Minimal Wave) cd $14.98
An incredible collection of long lost cold wave, new wave and synth punk gems. Some of the best tracks culled from the Minimal Wave reissue library as well as plenty of unreleased rarities!!

Speaking of video...

Here's a neat video clip that AQ's very own Irwin Swirnoff directed for The Younger Lovers (aka Brontez from Gravy Train!, Fag School 'zine, etc.)

Pure Ecstasy AQ instore video on Pitchfork

We just noticed, Pitchfork has posted a video clip from the recent instore by Pure Ecstasy here at AQ. You'll find it here: http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2103-pure-ecstasy/1

Nice!

New Arrivals #337

Here we go again!

Records Of The Week:

NIGHT CONTROL "Life Control" (Kill Shaman) cd $12.98
Record number two from this mysterious one man lo-fi noise pop deconstructionist, tighter and more polished, but still twisted and far out, after Death Control comes Life Control!
NECRO DEATHMORT "This Beat Is Necrotronic" (Distraction) cd $11.98
Beat heavy drone doom bliss, SUNNO))) meets Squarepusher? Maybe. Scorn gone dubstep, grim electronic laced doomdrone, whatever it is, it just might be our new favorite.
WHOURKR "Concrete" (Crucial Blast) cd $11.98
Head spinning electronic grind pop, chopped and processed and looped, an impossible melding of stuttery machingun metal, Melt Banana like hyper pop, Circle-style hypno rock, all woven into something fucked up and far out, dense, druggy, technical and abstract and impossibly catchy.

Silver Pines @ AQ, video

Turns out, someone in the audience remembered their video camera, found this clip on YouTube, nice!

Pics from the awesome instore last week

Andee didn't bring his new video camera to the Silver Pines / Pure Ecstasy instore last Thursday like he did to the bus, d'oh, but Allan did snap a few stills with his phone...

That's Pure Ecstasy in action, above... and below, the blurriness perhaps being indicative of their shoegazey psych sounds...


And here's Silver Pines. You can't see the guitarist or drummer in this photo, but they're in the pictures above, since they play bass and drums in Pure Ecstasy as well!


Thanks again to these fine folks from Austin for doing the instore at AQ, it was great! And thanks to all who turned out to see 'em!

At last... 2008!

There's procrastination, and then there's procrastination. And then there's us, getting around to posting the all the AQ customers' favorites lists of 2008! Well, we've finally done it. You can find all those fascinating year end best of 2008 lists compiled here. Thanks to everybody who shared, and again, apologies it took us so long to get this page together. We promise, we'll force ourselves to do better with the best of 2009 lists (which we're already soliciting, please send your top tens or twenties to store at aquariusrecords.org, with TOP TEN 2009 in the subject line, deadline the end of January, w/ two $25 AQ gift certs to be won by random drawing btw). And by better, we mean we expect to get 'em up on our site BEFORE the end of 2010, in fact, let's be crazy and say before early spring!

So, go take a look at those 2008 lists, if anything, it's interesting to look at 'em now, just as a reminder of what you were listening to before 2009 took over. And also to make sure your 2009 Top Tens measure up to what you selected the year before!

Bus show video

In case you missed the last-minute OLWDTW performance that took place on "The Bus" this past Wednesday, here's a film Andee (who got a new digital video cam for Christmas) made of some of it...

OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD playing TONIGHT in SF on THE BUS!!!!

We know it's short notice, but we figured we'd better post this for locals just in case.

Our good pal from New Zealand, Mr. Campbell Kneale, aka Our Love Will Destroy The World, formerly Birchville Cat Motel, and also known as Black Boned Angel (whew) is playing TONIGHT Wed. January 6th in San Francisco on THE BUS. 8pm. With some other bands, to be announced... or perhaps not announced, but there will be other bands.

The bus will be parked at 16th and San Bruno, under the freeway. You can't miss it.

Silver Pines / Pure Ecstasy instore!

We're pleased to be starting the new year off with a cool instore right away, this week in fact, we'll be hosting Silver Pines along with related act Pure Ecstasy here at AQ for a free instore performance on Thursday, January 7th, 6pm. Be sure to be here!

Here's what we said about Silver Pines' full-length "Forces":

We weren't sure what to expect of this, when one slow night we were going through a pile of cd submissions and it was the last thing we put on. But we were instantly floored! We didn't really know too much about this band except they were from San Marcos, TX and recently relocated to Austin, having dropped off the cd-r with us when they were on tour (we had mistakenly assumed at first they were local!).
Silver Pines revel in a sound that can be best described as shoegazey stoner country-rock. Thick, warm, slow-burning and gauzy with lots of reverbed slide guitar and heavy psych amp fuzz underscoring the female singer's pretty heavy-lidded drawled vocals, the songs on Forces remind us of smoky perfumed parlors from a forgotten age. The kind of music that instantly transports you to an a dreamy antiquated time but in a way that seems refreshingly unfamiliar and charmed. Reminiscent of a fuzzier more narcoleptic Mazzy Star or a more heavier slow-rocking Beach House, Silver Pines has taken us all quite by surprise by their majestic grace and atmospheric beauty. Soooo good!! Hopefully this won't be the last we hear from this band. Each cd-r hand silkscreened and colored. Already assured a spot on our top ten lists for the year. Don't miss out!!!

And also what we wrote re: Pure Ecstasy's recent 7" debut, "Future Nostalgia":

Pure Ecstacy comes from the same home-grown Austin scene as Yellow Fever, Silent Land Time Machine and Smokey Emery, and includes members of Silver Pines. This is their first self-released 7" of lackadaisical lo-fi stoner rock, taking its time to unfurl through hypnotic washes of wah'd and delayed guitar and low-key vocals that slowly build, reminding us a bit of Ducktails on a breezy Beach Boysish roadtrip through the American heartland. Only 50 copies of this 7" were made with hand assembled spraypainted covers.

Should be rad, so come on by Thursday!

New Arrivals #336

Happy New (Arrivals List) Year! You'll find the first AQ update of 2010 here.

We didn't pick a Record Of The Week this time, in part 'cause we couldn't decide amongst a bunch of cool contenders, and also because if we had, it was too late to order an extra batch of anything in time due to our suppliers being closed and mail being slow during the holidays... However, had we picked a Record Of The Week, there's a good chance it would have been the disc by Opium Warlords, or the one by Cleaning Women, or the G.R. & Full-Blown Expansion, or the Emitt Rhodes collection, or, well, there's a lot of good stuff on this list, albeit a shorter one than usual. But everything is a Highlight!

Also you'll find each AQ staffer's personal Top Ten (or 20...) of 2009, if you're curious.

AND, this list also includes a HUGE special end of year clearance SALE section. So don't forget to scroll down to that!