Anvil Easter

We mentioned this before when we did a ticket giveaway on our list, but just a reminder (especially if you don't get VH-1, who are sponsoring it). The documentary Anvil: The Story Of Anvil is playing this Sunday, April 12th at Slim's in San Francisco - followed by a performance from the band Anvil themselves! That's right, it's a package deal billed as "The Anvil Experience". A clever idea, 'cause an audience that has just watched the hilarious, sad, depressing, touching documentary will be the most adoring (or at least sympathetic) audience that the veteran '80s Canadian speed metal act could ever hope for.

The movie we've already seen - more than once - and we really, really recommend it. It was just reviewed in today's New York Times, and they liked it too. And actually some of us have seen Anvil before too, years ago, and they were great.

Seriously, when we first heard about there being an Anvil documentary, even those of us who were Anvil vans wondered if it would be all that interesting. Turned out to be one of the best films we'd seen in a long time, about dreaming dreams and (foolishly?) never, ever letting go. Even when you're in your 50's. It's about friendship and love and family (all kinds of family). Oh and metal. 

Imagine a cross between This Is Spinal Tap, The Wrestler, and Some Kind Of Monster.

It's really really funny. They're a real life Spinal Tap - with enough inadvertent references to said band/movie to confuse the heck out of some folks who weren't paying attention to metal in the '80s when Anvil was briefly popular, like the fact that Anvil's drummer is named Robb Reiner and that Anvil is shown visiting the actual Stonehenge whilst in England... plus it IS a movie about a heavy metal band, so there's bound to be similarities. Except, again, it's REAL, not a mockumentary.

Being real, it also can be - and is - really really depressing. But ultimately... well we won't spoil it. Go see it. God we hope people go see it, and them.

Anvil, with Anvil: The Story Of Anvil

Sunday April 12th @ Slim's

Doors at 6:30, movie at 7:30, followed by live performance

$18

Here's the movie preview from YouTube:

Free Qulfus

Our pal Dominic Cramp (of various projects including Qulfus, Borful Tang, Arthur Dent, and Modular Set) passed along this link for us to share:

http://www.gigantesound.com/fr_oneday.htm

It's free album download of his latest Qulfus creation, a sort of plunderphonics meets John Cage-ian style chance determined composition called One Day At A Time, each "day" (track) utilizing as source material a randomly selected cd from the Berkeley Public Library. Follow the link for more information! Pretty neat.

Sunday krossword

We know we've mentioned before just what big fans we are of Julian Cope's hipper-than-thou Head Heritage website, in particular the Unsung section with all the reviews. Especially Cope's Record Of The Month reviews. Sometimes he picks a disc we already knew about and are happy to see get the extra recognition of a J.C. endorsement (like Vincent Black Shadow, Jex Thoth or To Blacken The Pages). Sometimes it's something we had never really heard of before and then go order for AQ, review, and sell a ton of (like Cadaver In Drag, Orthodox, and Gunslingers). Once in a while it's something we don't know about, and still don't know about, or can't get (and maybe don't exist as a real release?). Occasionally it's an old classic, like the Melvins' Lysol. And then there's the times he creates his own cool compilation and writes up a review about it, like his recent "Glamrocksampler". (Fortunately, in all cases, Head Heritage provides a mp3 stream of the Record Of The Month, for that month only.)

So, 'round about the first of the month, we're always excited to click on Head Heritage and see what's gotten the Record Of The Month treatment this time. Cope's reviews, even if you don't agree with (or understand) 'em, are always entertaining, enthusiastic and esoterically erudite, complete with footnotes.

All this by way of saying that the April 2009 pick is one we were stoked to see: KISS! Remember last year, when Allan reviewed a klassic Kiss album on every AQ list for a month or two? Dynasty, Music From The Elder, Destroyer, Love Gun, Hotter Than Hell, Kiss, Rock And Roll Over? Well, if he didn't convice you that Kiss are kool, maybe you'll believe Julian Kope, we mean Cope. He's made his own Kiss "best of" kompliation called Krossword and reviewed it as the current Record Of The Month. So, check it out! We would have included "I Want You" from Rock And Roll Over, but it's still a pretty killer comp.

And Julian Cope has indeed also included a special Kiss krossword puzzle as a pdf download to go along with it. Haven't worked on it yet, looks pretty challenging, with such clues as "66 down: Confusing vocational surname of post-post-Peter Criss drummer" and "25 across: The colour of Ace's aura, as revealed on the sleeve of his solo LP". It's not all about Kiss, either.

So, something do this lazy Sunday afternoon. Along with browsing more of the Unsung reviews... definitely crack open the Book Of Seth when you get the chance, too.

Some aQ April Fool's Day tomfoolery comes true, AGAIN! Sort of... Introducing CHORD!

Not sure if everyone remembers an April Fool's Day aQuarius New Arrivals list from a few years back, where one of the made-up highlights was a record featuring three doomdronedirge bands, all playing a single chord. It was Boris, SUNNO))) and Earth. A drone doom dream team for sure. Then lo and behold, shortly thereafter, those three bands were in fact found sharing a record together (although not sharing a chord), on Altar...

So here we are, a few years later, and whatta ya know? One of our pals in Pelican has a new band called... wait for it... CHORD! A band in which each member plays a single chord! We hope they each play one note, creating a chord together, although they're probably just all playing the same chord. Either way, it's pretty awesome, very meditative and heavy and of course drone-y. Definitely owes a little to the late great San Diego band Physics, whose shows routinely consisted of a single chord (often a 'C' if we remember correctly) Not sure when the CHORD record comes out, or if there even is a record yet. There may have been some live performances too, we're not sure... but for now, enjoy these ringtones. Courtesy of aQ and CHORD. That's right, ringtones. The perfect telephonic accoutrement for the discerning dronelord (or lady!). So without further adieu...

CHORD RINGTONES:

Listen (Try playing all 4 at once!):

Am

Am7

E9

Gmaj(flat13)

Download:

MP3:

Am

Am7

E9

Gmaj(flat13)

iPhone:

Am

Am7

E9

Gmaj(flat13)

Enjoy!

Skweee publicity

Check out page 30 of the new, April 2009 issue of SPIN magazine, the one with U2 on the cover - there's a piece about skweee. You know, our favorite Scandinavian underground electro/techno/hiphop subgenre. Aquarius gets a mention, 'cause they interviewed me (Allan) for the article. The quote they ended up using doesn't amount to much ("It sounded so fresh... customers loved it." Did I really say that?), but it's still cool to help promote the skweee scene...

Here's some YouTube skweee action also, from Swedish TV:

Too bad we don't speak Swedish, or we'd understand why they're going on about a Cat Stevens record. If you poke around some more on YouTube, you'll find a lot more skweee, with more music, less talking too.

AQXWFMUXSXSW video on Aural Suppository

Ok, back from the uber-low-end-noir-jazz Bohren & Der Club Of Gore experience last night. So much BASS! Wow. Amazing set, mostly in total darkness, with little Ikea-style colored lights suspended above each musician's head. They had a glowing Bohren skull logo in the middle of the stage, and you could barely see the black, spikey heavy metal bass guitars they had. Pretty cool that a band we've been into for ten years, finally came over from Germany and played at the Great American here in San Francisco. Their between-song stage banter was amusing, at least what could could be understood due to the German accent involved. "Even if you expect nothing out of life, you will be disappointed."

But, I'm supposed to be writing more about our SXSW showcase, not what I saw last night... except that with all that bass still echoing in my ears, it's been hard to think straight.

So, first off, we should direct you to a different blog entirely that's doing a better job of documenting said show that we are: http://auralsuppository.blogspot.com/

That blog (which you'll also find in our "blogs we like" sidebar to the right) already has stuff about the sets by Wildildlife, Absu, and Woven Hand. Write-ups, video clips from the performances, and video interviews with Matt from Wildildlife, Gregory from Gunslingers, and Proscriptor of Absu, too! And that's only what's been posted so far, maybe there's more. All done by AQ customer Denman C. Anderson who got a lot of good use out of his Flip video cam during SXSW. Thanks Denman!

Yet more SXSW - our show!

Thought we'd get to finishing up our SXSW-blogging-about sooner - it was over a week and a half ago now, wasn't it? But what with the New Arrivals this past Friday and other stuff going on, well, you know... And now it's April 1st so we probably should make some stuff up about, like, how Metallica actually also played OUR show at 1am calling themselves "Elm" (and did only Diamond Head covers - you shoulda been there!) but as it is we're behind with the blogging so we'll stick to the actual facts, no foolin'.

So, the show. We're happy to report it turned out really well!! Not exactly without a hitch, but no major ones anyway. Does John Dwyer taking a tumble off one of the concrete steps of the Spiro's "amphitheatre" count? He was ok, does stuff like that every day no doubt...

Bands started turning up at the venue around 5 o'clock, with the show due to start at 7pm. It was nice to see those Gunslingers guys from France once more, we'd met 'em for the first time the previous week in San Francisco. And cool to finally meet Proscriptor McGovern and the other dudes in Absu, and all their wives! (Absu Wives, that sounds like another band name right there...) 

Anyway, there wasn't that much for us to do before the show, just some last minute fiddle faddle. Most of the difficult stuff had been dealt with already by the WFMU folks, who'd already been at Spiro's the previous day getting things set up to do their live radio broadcast. We did have to help solve some minor issues with the backline, particularly making sure that the drum kit on the outdoor stage was up to Proscriptor's exacting specifications. And then there was the business of locating the guy from the club who had all the drink tickets for the bands, very important! (One bummer - the club only would allow the tickets to be redeemed for Miller Lite...). And we had to find the box of Gunslingers LPs we'd shipped from Aquarius to Spiro's when they showed up in the mail in SF the day after those guys left for LA.

Then suddenly it was 7pm and the AQXWFMUXSWSW 2009 showcase was officially underway! Prizehog on the outdoor stage, Gary War on the indoor stage. We were a little worried that 7 was sorta early for a start time, people might still be out at afternoon parties and stuff, but lo and behold, folks showed up. By 8 o'clock, when Wildildlife and XYX were scheduled, there was definitely a decent crowd, and it kept getting bigger. The highwater mark crowd-wise was probably during Absu's set, when the outdoor area was TOTALLY packed, with Woven Hand likely getting the biggest indoor-stage crowd, later on. 

All the bands rocked. We knew we liked all of them (well, took WFMU's word on a couple we hadn't really heard before, and were right to do so, and vice-versa) but hadn't seen all of 'em live before. Even Ovens from San Francisco, it was Andee's first time seeing them play and he had already put out their cd! So we weren't sure what to expect in all cases. Fortunately, all the bands definitely delivered. We were rushing back and forth between the two stages to try to see it all. We could have not seen any other bands at SXSW and been satisfied (actually, that's pretty much what Andee did).

You may have already read Andee's Twitter tweets about each band, he kinda reviewed 'em as they played (hmm, 140 characters max, maybe we should do our New Arrivals list reviews Twitter style too, whattya think?). You can find 'em here if you missed his play-by-play account of the evening. My camera's battery crapped out pretty early on, but I got some pics with my phone. Also our friend Denman managed to take video of some of the sets which we'll link to, too.

Here's a few shots...

The outdoor ampitheatre stage area empty, while things were being set up. I think that's Ovens sitting against the wall on the right.

A blurry Andee chatting with the sound guy outdoors.

Prizehog! Awesome droned out guitar/synth/drums sludge. A nice start for our "heavy" part of the evening, outdoors. And until we saw 'em, we had no idea there was a woman in the band.

Gary War!

 Wildildlife!

Ok, gotta run now (otherwise I'll be late to tonight's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore show at the Great American). So, more pics/posting tomorrow...