Aquarius Records List

We're on it (PG & Alter): Aquarius Records

(If you are not already familiar) This, the oldest record store in San Francisco, does a great service to contemporary bands and shoppers. They offer up the best of the best, along with great description/reviews to help out the buyer in decision making.

Check it out.


Alter Dusk-Dawn
One half of epic cinematic ambient black chamber doom soundscapers Pussygutt strikes out on his own to create an epic bit of abstract doom creep, that strips down the Pussygutt sound to its essence, and creates something equally as haunting and harrowing. Clean spidery guitars unwind over squalls of distorted rumble, drums offer the occasional thud, feedback streaks and shimmers, the sound subtly intensifying, but never really moving beyond a slow motion moonlit drift. It almost sounds like Slint at 16rpm, a glacial post rock, laced with hints of doom, allowed to creep and crawl through an ever shifting field of whir and buzz and shimmer.
The song(s) continues on the B side, the drums and guitar dropping out leaving just a high end shimmer like a soft focus Sunroof! ur-drone, until some of the doom drifts back in, lush swells of ominous keyboard, muted chugs, sloooow minor key guitars, distant vocals, the overall affect way more pop and pretty than Pussygutt, but still retaining the same overall grim vibe, eventually finishing off with another soaring sheet of harmonized high end which gives way to that original spidery guitar line, drifting all by it's lonesome in an epic expanse of black, only to be joined by delicate pointillist piano for the slowly slipping away outro. So nice.
Beautiful packaging, a silver on black silkscreened tri-fold sleeve, released on Pussygutt's Wolveserpent label. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, hand numbered...

PussyGutt: Gathering Strengths:
The return of Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho, who traffic in slow brooding black ambience and ultra doom, and whose last two records have been huge favorites around here, which makes sense as we really can't get enough of sidelong tracks, and sprawling expansive stretches of slow rumbling drones, and minimal slabs of blackened doomic crawl, and gathering Strengths does NOTHING to disappoint, offering up a single two part track, spread out over two sides, beginning with what sounds like oboes or some sort of woodwind (it's in fact a clarinet), long layered tones, emitting endless overtones, laid atop a barely there bit of low end rumble, strange melodies emerging from the constantly shifting layers, eventually joined by mysterious strings, chiming bells, super cinematic and soundtracky, and yet another instance of 'why don't these guys score movies', the music sublime and emotional, not what you'd expect necessarily, slowly building in intensity, until finally, the hammer falls, and a black cloud of rumbling doom descends, hardly overwhelming, but instead wrapping around those keening strings, creating a haunting otherworldly bit of black doom chamber music.
The flipside starts off a bit folkier, shimmering drones drift over simple hand drums, the melodies simple and melancholy, a muted firelit psychfolk, smoldering and dreamlike, eventually building to something much more epic and intense, never exploding into a frenzy of doom, or exploding at all, instead, just hovering, and ratcheting up the tension, again, totally cinematic and dramatic, like some timeless ritual being performed by cloaked figures gathered before a fire, while in the background cities crumble and the sky turns to ash.
Intense, and intensely beautiful. LIMITED TO 550. Each one hand numbered, and housed in super striking, silkscreened heavy sleeves.