This weeks releases of note

Culled from Forced Exposure, Insound and Aquarius - I of course get no compensation, blah blah, (in fact I'm "stealing" their images - but that's okay cuz there's links to where to buy), I'm not even recommending since I haven't heard most of these records (in fact all in the case of below) just thought these looked interesting and am passing them on.....................:



REID, TERRY: Superlungs CD (ASW 63968CD) 16.00
Single CD version, also available as 2CD from EMI UK (EMI 77144). "A mixture of metal, folk, blues and pure rock & roll, together with a fiery guitar attack and a set of superlungs that Mojo recently called 'one of the greatest voices in British rock'...one could easily be referring to the mighty Led Zeppelin, but that description is reserved for just one man, Terry Reid, an artist whose immense vocal and songwriting talents led him to be Jimmy Page's first choice as lead singer in Led Zeppelin. Forced to turn down Page's offer due to a contractual impasse, Reid quietly became the unsung architect of Led Zeppelin by leading Page to both Robert Plant and John Bonham. Now Superlungs presents 17 tracks that showcase the power of Terry Reid's vocal performance (comparable to the vocals Robert Plant would record for Led Zeppelin several months later) as well as his bristling guitar work, all the more jaw-dropping for having been neglected all these years."



BEATTY, CAROLEEN: You're Only as Pretty as You Feel CD (BB 72009) 11.00
"Caroleen Beatty was the dynamic female voice of the acclaimed Brian Eno 's Taking Tiger Mountain tribute CD. Now she steps forward with this collection of diverse cover songs from the likes of Bill Withers, Pentangle, Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger, Jefferson Airplane, and Ginger Baker's Airforce. This collection of 1960s and '70s funk, folk, and psychedelic nuggets features backing from members of Mushroom, Steve Wynn, Chris Cacavas, Ralph Carney and fellow chanteuse Alison Levy."



M83: M83 CD (MUTE 9299CD) 16.00
"Recorded in 2000, M83 is M83's first album (recorded before Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts), never before domestically released.



HENDRIX, JIMI: Live at Berkeley - 1st Show 2LP (RR 087LP) 35.00
Double LP version. Recorded live at the Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA. May 30th, 1970. Hendrix, Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell.



SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN, THE: Complexion LP (R13) 15.00
"While Sunburned Hand has traveled from Europe to Alaska in the past two years, and will be releasing a massive double LPs worth of material recorded entirely outdoors in Wasilla, Alaska on Ed Hardy's Eclipse Records, the urge to feel the home soil led the band to create Complexion. Recorded entirely in a small public garden outside of Union Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. Musically, and visually the album carries a local theme as the artwork is by Somerville artist John J�gel. You can see Mr. J�gel's work on other classic records such as Ornette Coleman's Ornette! and John Coltrane's Ole Coltrane."

http://aquariusrecords.org/cat/newest.html

KUVEZIN, ALBERT AND YAT-KHA Re-Covers (Plane / Yat-Kha Recordings) cd 19.98
The best cover versions, we always think, are the ones where the band doing the covering really makes the song being covered their own, do you agree? Then, that makes this one of the best covers albums ever, 'cause regardless of whether Kuvezin and Yat-Kha are doing Led Zeppelin or Kraftwerk, it sounds like the music of the steppes. That's right, Yat-Kha are the band from Tuva in Central Asia whose music is already a hybrid of the rustic folk traditions of their native land and Western rock, on records like Yenisei-Punk and Tuva-Rock. We like 'em very much. I mean, a rock band with a throat-singer is hard to beat!
Vocalist Albert Kuvezin is always a regular member of Yat-Kha (he's the band leader in fact), but he gets special star billing here I guess 'cause the songs they're doing are his selections, reflecting his influences outside of Tuvan folk music. You can tell that the counter-cultural Kuvezin is no garage-band or electro-clash obsessed youngster, but the tracks he's picked are, taste-wise, pretty right-on. A good balance of the hip, classic, and obscure. The aforementioned Zeppelin and Kraftwerk songs are also joined by the works of Hank Williams, Iron Butterfly (it says "via Slayer" but we don't hear any of the latter), Joy Division, Captain Beefheart (whose voice Kuvezin must love!), Motorhead (another vocalist Kuvezin clearly appreciates), the Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, and others, including some less familiar names like Russian cult figure Vladmir Vysotskiy and Tuvan symphonic composer Alexei Baktrevitch Tchyrgal. There's notes on each track (about why they were chosen, what they mean to Albert and Yat-Kha) and even a map pinpointing the geographical origins of the original artists. There's of course a novelty aspect to this in part, we can't deny (just as we can't deny that it's just plain cool to hear "Orgasmatron" performed acoustically with a singer who makes Lemmy's gargle sound like the voice of a song-bird) but it's not as if Kuvezin and Yat-Kha aren't serious, and like we said, they really make these songs their own -- you might not always immediately figure out what you're hearing, and even when you do, if you didn't know better you might be able to believe that "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" was originally a Tuvan tune, for example, meant for Kuvezin's rumbling voice and the high lonesome Country Eastern sounds of Yat-Kha's traditional instrumentation.
MPEG Stream: "In A Gadda Da Vida"
MPEG Stream: "Love Will Tear Us Apart"




BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL WITH LEE RANALDO 30th December 2004 (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd 16.98
Now this is a bit of an odd combination, AQ faves Birchville Cat Motel, aka Campbell Kneale going one on one with none other than Mr. Lee Ranaldo, he of indie noiseniks Sonic Youth. How did it come about? Why did it come about? Who knows, and who really cares as the results speak for themselves. These two fellas, with some kind of 'noise' as their common thread, managed to conjure up some gorgeous dronescapes, that eventually ramp up to some serious NOISE, before drifting back into dreamy shimmery bliss. A single hour long track recorded live in New York at the Tonic in December of 2004 on BCM's last trip to the US, this is a slow building drone, equal parts chord organ, guitars, maybe even bagpipes (at least that's what it sounds like) all sort of swirling and reverberating, with distant tinkling chimes and simple stretched out melodies. About halfway through, Ranaldo kicks it up a notch and lets the distortion rip, a huge wall of white hot guitar, kept in line by a simple and very spare single snare-hit beat, a sort of free noise doom, with little bits of backwards electronic rhythm, and keening lawnmower like guitar melodies. The last fifteen minutes is a sweetly languid wind down, distortion disengaging, rhythms drifting into the ether, melodies dissipating like clouds after a storm, all as the chatter of the crowd slowly encroaches on the barely there sounds that moments later are not there at all.
MPEG Stream: "30th December 2004"


MELT BANANA / CHUNG Split (Sounds of Subterrania) 10" 35.00
We hate to do this to you, but there's not much we can do about it. THIS IS INCREDIBLY LIMITED!! WE ONLY GOT A HANDFUL OF COPIES, MOST LIKELY NEVER TO GET MORE! SO ACT FAST. This 10" is limited to a couple thousand worldwide, only 700 or so made it to the US and only 20 made it to AQ. So definitely don't dawdle. Yet another split from masters of the split record, Japanese ultra spaz rockers Melt-Banana, this time teamed up with another unlikely, but still quite cool band we've never heard of. The strangely monickered Chung offer up short sharp bursts of angular post punk on their side, kinetic new wave rhythms, fuzzy organs and yelped vocals. Like a punkier mix of the Fall, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and all those sorts of bands. Melt-Banana counter with some of their most unlikely music to date, confounding and confusing with their three tracks (be sure to play their side on 45 -- we were WAY more confused when we mistakenly played it at 33 the first time). Strangely sparse, with a bouncy minimal rhythm, poundiing piano (!) and even some horns all sort of new wave-y and abstractly angular with lots of blooping space sound effects, rockabilly guitar and a trippy tweaked out production. Definitely MB's most melodic and least spastic record to date. But just to remind us who we're dealing with, they finish things off with a mega distorted blast of classic Melt-Banana style spaz-grind-pop weirdness. Comes packaged in an amazing sleeve, thick screened cardstock, and affixed to the front is one of those lenticular stereo 3D cards that moves when you shift the image, the image just in this case is a cartoon city and a giant fly and a madman with a flyswatter and an explosion.WOW. And once again, VERY LIMITED!

insound.com

THE TITLE CEREMONY 'Cheerful Impressions Awakened By Arrival in the Country' (Daniel Beech)
The Title Ceremony is a instrumental/ experimental/ ambient project out of Wilmington NC. Their stereophonic audio creations presented to masses creates a sense of weightlessness in a room with air that feels heavier than lead. The Title Ceremony does draw some inspiration from other bands, but they have an original sound that blends silence with noise, passion with discomfort, and love with war. With the outbreak of many indie-instrumental bands in the past 5 to 10 years, The Title Ceremony has found a niche in the music scene that is thriving on new and even more original sounds than the last group. The bands main influences from present groups are: Mogwai, Kinski, Explosions in the Sky, Maserati, Godspeed you Black Emperor, The Mercury Program, and Silver Mount Zion.