Aagoo Records presents the re-release of Philippe Petit’s acclaimed first album, HENRY: THE IRON MAN. Originally released by Ring Records in 2009, this seminal work is now available on glorious vinyl.

Petit considers himself a “musical travel agent” and Henry marks his maiden voyage over soundscapes of the unconscious. Inspired one night while sleepwalking on a lost country road, Philippe dreamt that Shinya Tsukamoto was working on a blurred remake of Eraserhead, and in the dream, Petit knew that he was to score the soundtrack of Henry’s mutation into an Iron Man. And so this dream sowed the seed for an album that Petit would make real.

“I embarked on a visceral musical voyage -- an intricate and imaginative soundtrack, gathering both organic and sonic elements and giving life to a noisy magma where unexpected clicks stumbled over interferences -- where digital accidents happened, and drones and acoustic resonances filled the spaces in time.”
Exploiting the physical virtues of vinyl, Petit manipulates the material, fondling cracks and releasing noises until they resonate into a vertiginous movement of sound. The result is both sonic and visual: a conjuring of flashes, grainy black and white pops, behind-the-scenes close-ups, and rapid nightmarish stop-motion effects. Henry: The Iron Man is not only about Henry’s transformation; it’s a journey for the listener who transforms as well.

New album by Israel Martinez.Limited to 200 copies on 180 gr. vinyl.Housed in a massive 9 panel poster designed by Bas Mantel.

Two espressos in separate cups is originally a sound work about 56 minutes for 16.2 channels, a commissioned piece by Mexican Contemporary Art University Museum (MUAC) for its Sound Experimentation Space (EES). The work was on exhibition from March to July 2011. This is a 40 minutes stereo version, specially made for limited edition vinyl and digital download.

"For me, cinema has influenced the way we associate sound and image, offering the idea that audio has to be eternally subordinate to the vision. I sampled a few seconds of silent moments (1) from different movies which have influenced me (all from recent decades and many geographies) and then mixed them with my own field recordings from multiple sites or situations as cantinas, sports courts, streets, airports, gardens, lakes, mountains, etc. Finally I produced electronic sounds from analog-digital synths and computer, creating a loop of 56 minutes which runs without any pause at the Museum, there's no matter about the moment that the listener enters to the space, he's free to stay and listen to it for a few minutes or long hours. I tried to make a metaphorical exercise "robbing" and "freeing" sound from its dependency to image, adding another sound gestures to be a representation of itself."

Israel Martinez

"This work brings an immediate reference to a Jim Jarmusch film, but also creates a distinction in the experience while also a poetics. The cinematographer's experience, vision and sound, is different from that generated by the autonomy of the eye and the ear, such as the difference of drinking two espressos in separate cups, rather than a double espresso" says Marco A. Morales on exhibition's information.

Two espressos in separate cups was composed between January and March 2011. Mastered by D.ego at Lumen lab (www.lumenlab.net).

Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, Hunters’ music
is charged with wild energy -- led by
singers/guitarists Derek Watson and Isabel
Almeida.Mixing boy/girl harmonies with super
catchy guitars, their songs tend to get stuck in
your head before you even finish listening to
them. Somewhere along the way they got with
Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs who mixed
their upcoming EP, and former Smashing
Pumpkin James Iha on the production end.
The result is exactly what you would expect.
Well maybe not... think The Vaselines on a
wonderfully chaotic acid binge.

“While they have the credentials to hide behind, Hunters doesn't
need them. "Deadbeat" is a bass-lead romp through New York
City basement noise to Olympia-approved grunge, catchy
boy/girl tribal vocals and heavy on the feedback.” – RCRDLBL

“Brooklyn bubblegum-sludge bashers Hunters are the bastard
children of Lollapalooza 1996, a perfect blend of Boss Hog cheer
and Melvins churn.” – Village Voice

“NYC-based neo-no wave scuzpoppers...make their fore-bearers
in bands like Teenage Jesus and The Jerks sound like purveyors
of smooth jazz...What these kids lack in facial hair and legal
imbibing, they more than make up for white-hot pokers
masquerading as pop songs” – My Old Kentucky Blog

Father Murphy’s sound can best be described as dark, melodic, heavy and haunting. Imagine 5,000 Viking Oars being dipped into the cold sea; 500 Cherokee drums summoning the spirits of battle; and a 50-foot tall Grace Slick presiding over a midnight pagan ritual with torch, sword and microphone. This is Father Murphy.

The Italian rock trio’s previous album …and He turned to the sun was warmly embraced by the UK and the US press (see below for some review snippets) and won fans like Julian Cope, Deerhoof and Michael Gira. Father Murphy is now back with a new, four song EP that is both an extenuation of their previous albums and a huge step forward.

Taking the title from a line of Joy Division’s Day of the Lords and building from the same sound that made the LP such a strangely eerie aural experience (detuned guitars, droning toy organs, strangled boy/girl vocal harmonies), Father Murphy takes the listener to a short but increasingly deep and suffocating trip into their collective mind.

Lyrically, the EP deals with the dubious joys of mysticism, convoluted theology, enlightenment through self-inflicted pain and a perilous, twisted way to an equally twisted idea of salvation.

Musically, it is another exercise in what the guys at Aquarius Records described as “woozy and ominous, dreamy and dense, a glorious deathlike dirge.” But this time, thanks also to Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle main man, who mixed it at its Ectoplasmic Studio) the music pulses with much more attention to sonic detail and sound dynamics. There is an apocalyptic cover of Leonard Cohen’s There is a war and originals like We got worry are just pure Father Murphy—off kilter and dramatic in their own peculiar way.

But the crowning achievement of the EP is probably the 9-minute long Now we pray with two hands, a dark monolith of psychedelia and blackened drone rock located somewhere between early Amon Duul and Grails. Glorious and deathlike indeed, with its ringing bells and rattling guitars, but also quietly compelling and mesmerizing—a perfect realization of the band’s sound.

We are honored to be working with Philippe Petit. Petit’s A Scent of Garmambrosia takes us into a dense, cinematic world that mixes acoustic instrumentation with digital filtering; swaying and unfolding amid the psycho-film-noir syntax of a Lynchean universe.
Fans of Kronos Quartet, Philip Jeck, and The Boxhead ensemble will no doubt appreciate Petit’s pioneering post-classical soundtrack.
A Scent of Garmambrosia is as much the work of Petit’s collaborators as of Petit himself. Over decades of being immersed in music, he has assembled a dream team of musicians, artists and thinkers without whom this album would not have been possible.
COLLABORATORS:
Bas Mantel (art)
Helena Espvall (cello)
Bela Emerson (cello)
Raphaelle Rinaudo (electric harp)
Maria Grigoryeva (violin)
James Johnston (violins)
Andy Diagram (trumpet/FX)
Richard Harrison (percussions)
Fred Lonberg-Holm: cello
Alexander Bruck (strohviol/viola)
Tom Heasley (tuba)
Hervé Vincenti (guitar)

WhiteHorsesInTechnicolorEverywhere (W-H-I-T-E) presents its debut album SUNNA , a blend of eerie pop melodies, meteoric noises, and gravitational rhythms.

SUNNA, the debut album from Cory Hanson's new project White Horses In Technicolor Everywhere presents artful pop melodies and experimental space sounds, not combined, but as one, in the vein of Panda Bear or Dan Deacon. It's like an expansive platform of sound falling from space and entering the stratosphere, where it burns and bends and twists and melts to reform as airy melodies and a beautiful voice, gravitational beat's and oceanic fluidity. The songs shift seamlessly from earthly musical conventions to floating spacial sounds, always culminating to present the experience of breaching the stratosphere in both directions. The result is an ethereal yet grounded album, something to listen to in both caverns and cars.

W-H-I-T-E is Cory Hanson, residing in Valencia, CA, has played with Magic Mountain, Blackagar Boltagon, Hellomynameischad, and yes, DEER.
Cory also recorded and produced OKIE DOKIE's s/t E.P.
SUNNA, will be released as CD/ Digital and as three 7" vinyl’s.Get your 7" s athttp://swillchildren.org/ and buy CD's right here at the Aagoo store.

It's flanked at one of its ends by the blissful bombast of a 20-plus person vocal chorus, and concludes some forty minutes later in the hushed strains of a wistful lullaby. Between these disparate bookends lies the staggering aesthetic expanse ofVerbs—the sophomore record from acclaimed Portland, OR. experimental pop collective Au—which, in its swirling depths and subtleties, promises to be one of this year's most satisfying surprises.

In the year's time since last leaving off with his self-titled, beautifully accomplished debut, Au (pronounced 'ay you') architect Luke Wyland has made tremendous strides beyond the warmly retiring sensibilities that marked so much of Au—stepping (wisely) outward, and into the less insular confines of community. In practical terms, this mostly meant acquiring a proper band—the core of which consisting of mutual multi-instrumentalists Johnathan Sielaff and Mark Kaylor—but in a vaguer sense, it meant opening up to Portland's considerable creative resources. Consequently, Verbs is padded out with contributions from nearly thirty collaborators, a list which includes featured vocalists Sarah Winchester (track 6; of Team Love recording artists A Weather) and Becky Dawson (tracks 2 and 4; of Ah Holly Fam'ly, Saw Whet), as well as members of Yellow Swans, Parenthetical Girls, and Evolutionary Jass Band, among many others—inadvertently resulting in a strange and singular snapshot of a very particular corner of the city's famously sprawling musical community.

The resulting record—recorded over three days at Portland's Type Foundry Studios and finished over a subsequent two-month period in Wyland's own attic studio—seamlessly segues through new and unlikely ecstatic extremes with an arresting economy. Breakout Pop jams like "RR vs. D" rub shoulders comfortably with retreating meditations ("Two Seasons", "Summer Heat")—the record's several distinct movements working at once with more autonomy and cohesion—with arrangements that stretch in longhand across the album's length.

Verbs is the elated realization of those many asymmetrical pop diamonds that shone so brightly throughout Au's artful debut (whose warm, Appalachia-informed gems found many favorable comparisons to the far-reaching likes of Arnold Dreyblatt, Animal Collective, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Grizzly Bear)—its many swift and unexpected evolutions shepherded confidently by Wyland's competent, classically-trained hand. As surprising as it is immediate, Verbs is infused with all of the earnest and palpable joy of its creation—the delightfully enveloping whole of which demands to be heard.

Some of the most brutal and epic noise-infused black metal sludge from Evan Pacewiz (Moth Drakula, Roman Torment) and Jay Howard (Circuit Wound). The city of angels has never seamed so dark.

pressed on single sided red vinyl with as silk screened b-side. Limited to 300 copies.

Los Angele's secret folk weapon is back, and better than ever on their sophomore record. Rather than sticking with the bedroom orchestra arrangements of their debut, Snaggle and Buck (Oedipus), with Trumpet they opt for a more traditional band arrangement. They round their song out with plenty of electric and acoustic guitars, stand up bass, drums, and a piano here and there. Although darker than it's predecessor, Trumpet finds them flirting with alt-rock and traditional country to find them sitting seamlessly on the Drag City roster between Silver Jews and Will Oldham without losing their California porch-country bliss.

Breaking a four year silence with her strongest album to date, Blevin Blectum's "Rapid Cooling" 12-inch ( a precursor to the full-length “Gular Flutter” CD) confirms her gift for making electronic music that is allergic to cliche. Blectum's new songs throb with swarms of transient surface details, but they never come off as haphazard. Asked about her title, Blevin notes that "Gular fluttering is the pulsation of the upper esophagus in some species of birds in response to heat-stress," an oblique reference from avian anatomy that stems from her recently completed training as a veterinary technician. It's a title that perfectly captures the mysteriously organic shifts that pulsate across this heavily processed music.

On Sife A, "Cygnet" bursts into action, as martial drum rolls and distant horns bend and recombine around keening runs of strings in a manner that cops moves from Middle Eastern music and darkstep jungle but takes them in a wholly other direction (happily, Blevin's background as a classically trained violinist does more hovering than smothering in the midst of such delicate maneuvers). "Foyer Fire" follows, and keeps things bumping with a stomping kick and a lasertag maze of chirping synth patterns. Blevin has said that "99% of my music is about trying to keep your head above water", and that mixture of liquidity, dread and endurance is at the heart of this release.

Side B contains the track "Avian Enamel", a remix of Bay Area band Ellul. Threading field recordings and conversation across a lattice of tightly edited rhythm, this tricksy, elastic assemblage provides an an emphatic finale to a work that demonstrates just how personal, brave and autonomous electronic music can still be. Some things are worth waiting for.
- Drew Daniel, 2/16/2008

It took me exactly six months from the day of its release to begin writing about Au’s self-titled “debut” album. Despite the crippling procrastination that plagues most Tiny Mix Tapes reviewers (okay, just me, but I am not averse to dragging my superior wordsmiths into my wading pool of incompetence), I am genuinely surprised at my lack of motivation and overall laxness in penning this one. It’s not like the album hasn’t gaily danced its way into my pleasure center and taken up residence in my hypothalamus during the past few months or anything!

u (“ay-yoo”) is primarily Luke Wyland, a musically promiscuous Portlander who in 2005 released peaofthesea under the simple handle “luc.” Some of Au will appeal tremendously to those longing for Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective. Opening track “Boute,” in particular, recalls that same exciting positive folk feel that Messrs. Tare and Bear practice when the mood strikes them. “Sum” is just as thrilling; after an intro of tinkles and strums, the song starts in earnest around 0:43 with a mix of banjo, Zoë Wright’s dreamy vocals, and then a full muddled arsenal of rattles and clangs as it quickly builds a sound drift of intoxicating proportions.

“Shelter” is a quiet dazzler that thrashes together two important sections of Wyland’s creative CV: his childhood classical piano education and his avant-garde work. It is a lovely piece of vocal-splicing and piano- and sleighbell-abetted drone that runs a course without any real end goal. In fact, it doesn’t really go anywhere at all, but it feels wonderful getting there. Elsewhere, without hinging on any major sensational events, Au reveals itself slowly, subtly, and satisfyingly. “Death,” which features vocal help from A Weather’s Sarah Winchester that actually sounds like creeping death, starts a dark troika from cleanup to sixth in Au’s batting order. After this bout of introspection comes the meditative exercise “Life” and “Ask the River,” closing the album with a discharge of freshly-plucked notes.

Maybe it is not entirely my fault that I sat on this album a little longer than I would have preferred. It would be easy to disregard this li’l slip of an album if it were not for the music it contains. With a non-descript, hand-drawn cover and very little fanfare trumpeted by my beloved Rolling Stone and Spin (joking), Au perhaps suffers from underexposure, which is a shame because it would take a malcontent of the highest order to find many faults with this superb example of modern songwriting. While comparisons can be made to other forward-thinking acts, Au genuinely feels like a blank slate record: it is devoid of many thoughts of the past, instead relying on painting little, unique pictures with sounds. It has the feel of a “graphic score” rather than an album. In musical notation, Au is all warm wingdings.

The whole album soundtracks a stimulating encounter between song and sound. At times haunting and morose, at other times uplifting, Au is a mixed bag with plenty of tasty tricks. Rather than patching things together like a weekend carpenter in a vain effort to make a million things “fit,” Wyland employs the skills of a seasoned curry cook, sprinkling in a measured variety of sonic concepts like garam masala into the finest of dishes. Wyland and his Au collaborators have produced an accomplished and commendable album. Dig in and dig often. -Tiny Mix Tapes

Drawing sounds from field recordings, to the inner creaks of paper towel rolls, or the subliminal textures of white noise; Tumbao unravels as an emergence, a projectile with infinite projections, each sounding a different call. An immersion in inner dialects, stretched and displayed like an entomologist's wet dream. Full of beats syncopated like an eight armed drummer and textures that ride a subconscious bed to lie in.

Before Au was one of the brightest lights in the modern indie-folk scene, Luke Wyland was simply luc. Best described as sketches of what would become Au, luc's debut "PeaoftheSea" was recorded in scattered locations across new england, soaking up the calm and beautiful landscapes with lush soft sounds and timid vocals. A definite for Au fans or anyone who wants to take a walk through snow covered hills.

Beautiful home made CD's from Phillip (Double Triple) limited to 500.

It's a bit like folk, a little bit like post punk math rock, a little avant noise, but stripped way down into something skeletal, they definitely sound a little bit like one of the new breed of freak folk psych folk cd-r outfits, but at the same time, they sound like NOTHING you've ever heard. Detuned guitar plod, spaced out rhythmic thump, lots of deep shimmery ambience and FX drenched drifts, wavery falsetto crooning, warbly organs, and the occasional bursts of feral yowling, wow. Unhinged, fractured, freaky, passionate, super intense and awesome. In discussing Father Murphy, other reviewers have mentioned Robert Wyatt, This Heat, Samla Mamas Manna, we also hear plenty of Marc Ribot in the guitars, all angular and off kilter, there's also some mysterious female vocals that surface here and there, field recordings, crickets, birds, all beneath weepy mournful Morricone-ish twang, a sound both woozy and ominous, dreamy and dense, a glorious deathlike dirge, part Dirty Three, part fluttery forest folk, a little wheezy organ dirge pop, some slooooooowed down Blonde Redhead, like we said this is super hard to describe. but what we do know is we love it. And you will do, if your tastes run toward the dark, the dolorous, the mysterious, the haunting, the dirgey and the deathlike."
Aquarius list

Okie Dokie is a power drill of top speed voodoo black magic. One growling guitar of battering directness and one thick burning muscle of walloping bass. No human drummer could supply the austere precision required, so they flinched off the fat and put the machine to work. Finally, a maniacal vocalist spins criptic riddles like dark spells in menacing rhyme to grip this beast together. This is what post-hardcore set out for but couldn't cut.

"Nareah" Israel M’s first album, transcribes a journey through a deeply introspective sonic desert. Presented as 5 mental landscapes, Nareah is a work in which Israel merges his primary sound source, field recordings, with synthesized and sampled instruments. Everything is then processed through the computer, generating a richly complex yet minimalist hypnotic music.

From 20 to 2, AU's new EP, Versions, builds joyously from the successes of it's previous LP, Verbs. Shifting from AU’s previous albums, which saw lengthy lists of friends helping out and a live act that could swell to 20 with a revolving door of players from Portland, OR, Versions marks the evolution of it’s sound into something more singular and uniquely it's own brand of experimental pop. From its start in 2005 as an art student’s bedroom recording project, it has become a road worn live act comprised of multi-instrumentalist/singer and founder Luke Wyland and percussionist Dana Valatka. Long time collaborators outside of this project, they are an accomplished live act that have been touring incessantly for the last year and a half throughout the US and Europe with great bands including Deerhoof, the Dodos and the Parenthetical Girls. Recorded in Vermont and New Hampshire through the winter of 2008-9, it stands as a document of their distinctive ability to reinterpret songs from their recorded form and the heightened energy of their live show. With Dana's virtuosic drumming spawned from a youth playing in heavy metal bands, Luke's ability to multitask on numerous instruments at once, and their “special one-on-one musical, almost telepathic connection,” it is a snap shot into their sprawling sets that find them deftly navigating between bombastic walls of sound (Ida Walked Away), lilting lyrical numbers (All Myself) and carnivalesque organ celebrations (Are Animals). Versions includes one new song, Ida Walked Away, and reworking of older songs from previous albums* It will be released as a limited edition of 500 on 10" vinyl, CD with digital download including extra tracks.

Triptych is a collaborative piece that combines the visual art of Luis Felipe Ortega and the musical compositions of Israel Martinez. Luis and Israel wanted to create a platform for a dialogue between visual spaces and sounds, which provided the basis for their first interdisciplinary endeavor, Solar (2009). As the piece progressed, new rules of assemblage and editing emerged, along with specific concepts central to their investigation: the sculpted character of the landscape, the translation of this into sound, and the necessary intervention of silence. 

A few months later, Luis Felipe finalized editing Macapule (2009). Filmed in remote regions of Argentina, Luis sought to capture places strange to their time and space. Soon after, Israel began to compose the sound, sometimes parallel to the video cuts, independent at others. The piece is a discussion about the significance of the trip in the present, the relationship between traveler and tourist, and in the manner of Marc Augé—an accounting for what one or the other does. 

For their third and final piece, Xiriah (1010), sound became the point of departure—an extended note that finds variations in its pitch and frequencies. The image is a flat sequence of 180 degrees, a horizon that intends to maintain itself out of focus until one recognizes an old lighthouse at the edge of the sea. Zoom in, focus. End of sequence. 

Triptych is normally presented in large format projections in museums or galleries. Presented here in a limited edition of 300 copies in conjunction with Aagoo Records, the idea is to bring these pieces to the format of the monitor, where the spectator can have a personal relationship with the works in a domestic context.