JONQUIL - Whistle Low  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois068: 8426946903793)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Hailing from the musical city of Oxford, Jonquil have had a very prolific two years of existence that has resulted in two full length albums, both on Try Harder Records (Foals, Blood Red Shoes), and two self-released tour CDRs. Numbering six members and a far greater number of instruments (the usual guitar bass and drums plus accordion, flute, violin, trumpet, melodica, piano, organ…) Jonquil have moved on significantly from the noise-tinged avant-folk of their debut, Sunny Casinos. This new Mini-CD, the first non-album release of the band, sees Jonquil reinventing themselves as re-inventors of pop music, with moments of sublime melodicism set against dense polyrhythms that call to mind Animal Collective, Built to Spill, early Arcade Fire or Akron/Family, and some camp-side gathering, incorporating doo-wop, party horn arrangements and gentle balladry. “Whistle Low” was recorded initially by front-man Hugo Manuel in his bedroom and finished with the rest of the band over a two week period at the end of 2007, hot on the heels of their much lauded second album, Lions, which received glowing reviews in publications such as the Wire and Rock Sound as well as many of the world’s most influential blogs such as ‘My Old Kentucky Home’, ‘La Blogotheque’ and ‘Nothing But Green Lights’.

SECRET SOCIETY, THE - I Am Becoming What I Hate the Most  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1084: 8426946903106)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Three years have passed since Sad Boys Dance When No One’s Watching, the first album from The Secret Society, came out. That was an important work for Pepo M. (actually the only permanent member behind this changing society that has been visited randomly by people like Frank Rudow of Manta Ray and JR, or Remate, and that it’s always ready to admit submissions) for several reasons: it ended up being the Best Spanish Album of 2005 for Go!, one of the most important music magazines in Spain, ahead of people like Nacho Vegas, Enrique Morente or Sr Chinarro; it obtained really surprising and moving reviews on international magazines like Rolling Stone, Les Inrockuptibles, Uncut, Rif Raf, as well as on fanzines that document the cultural underground; it made thousands of miles playing, Pepo alone or with their long time mates Andrés Perruca on drums and Javier Vicente on guitar, lapsteel and piano; together they visited several times the most important cities in Spain, they visited Portugal, Austria, Russia, France or Belgium; they shared vans and stages with bands like Arab Strap, Xiu Xiu, Dominique A, Magnolia Electric Co., Tara Jane O’Neil, Destroyer, or Frog Eyes to name a few; they played at important festivals such as Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, FIB at Benicassim, Tanned Tin, Avant Festival in Moscow or South Pop Festival. This is October 2008 and The Secret Society has their new ammunition ready to launch, hidden in one of those long and intriguing names so beloved by Pepo: I Am Becoming What I Hate the Most. So explicit, so fast: 10 songs in 35 minutes. Be ready those who have to be ready because this album is not, by any means, another album. It is not a sequel. It is not an easy work. It is not a folk album. This is not an adult album, not a fussy album, not a self-assuring album. I Am Becoming What I Hate the Most is an album that goes way beyond. It has rage, obscurity, sadness, doubts; it is winter and summer all together. It’s really shocking to find a record with so many details in so few minutes. It is also a surprise: five out of ten songs are sung in Spanish, hidden under English titles. A way of writing without impostures, direct and true. Probably the best way for Pepo to join with honors in the Spanish singer- songwriters club that started writing in English before they find the guts to express themselves I their native tongue. In this transition to normalize its own vision of music, The Secret Society hands this unique gift to us. And I Am Becoming What I Hate the Most is such an honest album that listening to it makes you feel dirty and, no doubt about it, will bring Pepo and his mates to places they still don’t know; they will play again with bands they love, and they will meet again a bunch of people, emotions and satisfactions. All with a sense of unimportance and true love: just like the most important things in life, the ones that last forever.

GROUPER / INCA ORE - split  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1086: 8426946903823)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  The sound Liz Harris projects on her records under the moniker Grouper has been said to be deceptively simple, but truly emotional. Layers of vocals processed again and again through loop delays and chains of effects that create gorgeous whirlpools of chants, guitar drones and tape noise, all full of something unique, pure and powerfully beautiful. The kind of magic Harris manages to inject into her recordings is something Eva Saelens knows about quite well, as Inca Ore she has also sung and produced music with a touch of wilderness and witchery. Liz and Eva compiled twenty minutes of unreleased material each on both sides of a C40 recorded at home, a recording that Acuarela now re-releases on CD with new cover art and remastered sound. Eva and I met the first time I went to Portland. Since then we've been playing and making music around/with a lot of the same folks from Oakland and Portland. We lived in Huffin House/Teenage Fantasy in Oakland, CA together as well. We had talked for a while about doing a split together. I've always liked Eva's music a lot, and I had been hearing new solo music she was making and thought it was really intense and beautiful. It was this strange and eerie music about being in foreign place that felt like some sort of trying and formative journey. While I was recording, I was getting these emails from her about being lost in Mexico where she had gone on a purposely unplanned and unfunded trip, with fevers, feeling alternately happy and alone in an unknown place. I was up here in Portland in the winter, feeling very alone in a new place, but more internally alone I think, alone with people all around, looking for my neighbor's cat that had disappeared mysteriously, out on its own journey. My neighbor was distraught, it had been raining and storming for weeks without letting up. The cat had been gone for a long time. It felt really dark here. I became determined that I had a mission to find this cat for her, that if I did not look for it, no one would ever find it. I knew this was a skewed way to think of it, but after it was in my head I couldn’t get it out, and I spent hours each day in the rain wandering around our neighborhood and in abandoned house lots and construction sites calling out to Pica. I was really depressed at the time, not feeling connected to the physical world, and looking for this cat became something to focus on everyday. The music I ended up writing wasn't a straight up song about the cat in particular as this specific lost animal and me being sad about it, because in the mind state I was in, it didn’t feel like that. It felt worse, like a bad spell that was sweeping things around me, a part of me, the cat, Eva, off to somewhere dark, portal-like, possibly not in the same plane as everything else, someplace we'd have to find our way back from, and all the looking I might do wouldn’t help because they, it, we weren't even really here. Some sort of spirit wrangling would have to happen, something mysterious that would have to be learned. With all this weighing together, I felt like symbols were combining to make this common shape. Something dark, feminine, powerful, trying to work itself out of some hole, to fight against itself and build up to someplace new. Liz Harris (Grouper)

LA JR - 17 Animales  CD (Acuarela (Spain): NOIS1088: 8426946904004)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  The best unheralded Spanish (or European?) band of all times, LA JR, are led as usual by Frank, Rafa and Borja as the ultimate Dadaist-pop ensemble. There is no exact definition for the word ‘dada’ and there are no exact words to describe the multifariousness of LA JR. “17 animales” is a work of dark atmospheric lounge, trance Kraut-Rock groove or just anti-jazz-folk, as we like to name it: THIS is to music what assemblage is to art; an overlaying of diverse, motley materials; it sounds like porcelain, wood, glass and it squeaks even though it doesn’t sound like squeaking. Pendulum-like piano playing, husky basses, humming from the tide of the keyboards, every element bursts into bubbles. “17 animales” an ultra-contemporary album about Death, Sex and the slight possibility of turning Life into Art and back again.

CLIENTELE, THE - That Night, A Forest Grew  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois067: 8426946903762)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  This is the third, and last, of a trilogy of E.P.s the Clientele have recorded for Acuarela. They have always used the Acuarela E.P.s as a way to stretch out between albums, to create a through-the-looking-glass version of the band that shadows the better-known history of their albums. 'Ariadne' experimented with drones and minimalism, 'The Lost Weekend' stretched the foggy sound of their debut to epic proportions. In contrast "That Night, a Forest Grew' is the most commercial and -shockingly- danceable thing they've ever recorded. Part Bacharach, part Television, part Orange Juice, the E.P. shares the pristine clarity, light and shade of 'God Save the Clientele', but adds a new element of summer pop perfection. This is The Clientele as a hazily remembered 1970s cartoon series, all distanced off-key colours; imaginary summer hits, radio waves beamed in from a dream-discotheque. Reviews: Pitchfork

MAQUILADORA - St. Cecilia's Drowning: Ritual Of Hearts & White Sands Revisited  2XCD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1083: 8426946903779)  $14.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Maquiladora create songs from a sense of place. Eric Nielsen, Bruce McKenzie and Phil Beaumont (with occasional guests of Black Heart Procession, Modest Mouse and The God Machine) approach music from all sides, a sound which conjures up moods of the deserts and oceans providing a landscape that is both familiar and remotely distant. Acuarela is pleased to release a new take on Maquiladora's early works on St. Cecilia's Drowning - White Sands And Ritual Of Hearts Revisited. A re-mastered collection of songs recorded between 1995 and 2002, including nine previously unreleased songs, which present a graceful invitation into the musical journey of this reclusive band. This is the natural sound of the sands of Alta California aglow in warm sunshine and awash in the cool blue Pacific. This is the sound of the golden landscape, a buzz with honey bees, sea breezes, and the spirit of natives and first Californians who came to live and love here. Tucked in the southwest corner of the US is San Diego, a city bordered on the north by suburban trail to Los Angeles, to the west by the spirit of the Pacific Ocean, to the east by the vast dimension of the Borrego Desert, and to the sound by the cacophony of sites and sounds that makes Tijuana, home of the busiest international border crossing in the World. Why the geography lesson? Because all these are constant source of inquiry and inspiration for Maquiladora. The band's name comes from their birth in a warehouse ("Maquiladora" is the Mexican term for a sweatshop). Lyrics were written on travels both foreign and internal. Albums recorded in former funeral chapels, warehouses, school halls and attics that send a homing call to resonant sounds that travel to places both familiar and strange. Made up of a painter, a stage actor and an elementary school headmaster, these musicians play for the love of it and find time in their lives to present their music in special places, switching instruments between players from song to song, and making careful decisions on when and where to play live. St. Cecilia's Drowning compiles the re-releases of White Sands and Ritual Of Hearts with nine bonus tracks recorded during the same time period as the albums. Those two records forged the soul of a band that relied on their slow paced manners on following efforts such as A House All On Fire (Darla, 05) or their last recording 'til date, the half an hour plunge of The Gulf (Acuarela, 06). White Sands was recorded between the old Union and Beech warehouse and in the Corner Studio. It showed Maquiladora as a band who slowed down America's musical heritage to a dirge, inventing a new strain of Americana that sucked out all the twang and replace it with the expansion space of psychedelia. While White Sands journeys from the almost straightforward country of "Happy Day" to the creepy tinkling and eerie chants of "Termez 1936," the production suspends the songs in a wispy fog that lends cohesion and elegance to the record. Captivating, intriguing and moody, but ultimately accessible, this album has even been described as the perfect substitute for the unbalancing effects of drugs and dreams. Two years later, Ritual Of Hearts (originally released on Better Looking Records in 2002) founded welcoming ears where tasteful, somber depth used to be considered a coup. As Magnet's Magazine's Fred Mills, who also wrote liner notes for this newly re-mastered versions of the albums, puts it "on the second and third Maquiladora albums a sound as fully formed as I could wish from an artist. From White Sands opening strains, all rustic, country-folk-twang and elegiac vocal falsetto, to the shifting waves of tribal psychedelia that comes later on; from Ritual Of Hearts' minimalist, brooding blooze to its yearning, gospel-tinged drone-pop; from both records' invocations of everyone from Neil Young, Tom Waits, The Band to The Red House Painters, Giant Sand and Lambchop: Maquiladora's re-envisioning of the Americana form was profound, moving and utterly unique". There are many guest appearances on these 2 CD's including Pall Jenkins (Black Heart Procession and Mr. Tube), Tobias Nathaniel (Black Heart Procession), Lynn (The God Machine) and more. The bonus tracks were selected from 200 minutes of unreleased material from the time period. The menu of instruments that catered to these recordings stretches from the expected guitar, drums and bass to Hammond organs, piano, melodica, xylophone, accordion, lap steel, flute, gas pump, golf ball, lungs, throats and tongues. This two disc boxed package is released with a twelve page booklet of art done by the band and Joe Plummer. "Occupying a space between the desolate balladry of Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Sessions and Giant Sand's backporch psychedelia, Maquiladora slow down America's musical heritage to a dirge. Just like how Codeine slowed down indie rock and punk to their base elements, Maquiladora play country ballads as if they were dusty Jimmy Rodgers tracks stretched out like taffy. Its as if they're inventing a new strain of Americana that has sucked out all the twang and replaced it with the expansion space of prog and psychadelia. While everyone else plies tired tales of whiskey and women, Maquiladora attempt to find new sonic and lyrical avenues for a music unwilling to shed its past." ALTERNATIVE PRESS "San Diego trio Maquiladora shares (Neil) Young's knack for infusing minimalist sketches with a cinematic, wide-open spaces vibe. Its third album Ritual of Hearts (Better Looking) has the same stark austerity that marked Young's Sleeps with Angels, it also contains Giant Sand's Chore of Enchantment brand of losing-control wooziness. This intersection of manic folk thrill and drunken psych- with piano, synth, melodica, mandolin and accordion darting like honeybees - proposes a craftsman's worldview that, likewise, is deeply passionate." MAGNET "Maquiladora's visceral music captures the ghostly feeling of deserts, or other otherworldly locales, through a unique sort of haunted country/folk/experimental music filled with atmosphere." ERASING CLOUDS WHITE SANDS: 1. Prostitute Song // 2. Julian // 3.Happy Day // 4. Little Miss R. C. // 5. Ankle // 6. So Far Away // 7. Itchy Song // 8. Termez 1936 // 9. Mr. Grey // 10. Bueno Mis Amigos // 11. Cousin // Bonus Tracks: 12. Light of the Rain // 13. Itchy Song (Live at VPRO) // 14. 12 Steps // 15. A/part // 16. After All RITUAL OF HEARTS: 1. The Secret // 2. Ritual of Hearts // 3. Heaven // 4. Sweet Afton // 5. I’m In Love // 6. A Vow // 7. Sound Of Rain // 8. Dream Of Snakes // 9. Chinese Girl // 10. Avow // 11. She’s More Beautiful To Me Than Water And Pure // 12. Static Hum // Bonus Tracks: 13. So Young // 14. Buddy // 15. Boatman’s Mantra // 16. Mexico D.F.

TEX LA HOMA - Little Flashes Of Sunlight On A Cold Dark Sea  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1087: 8426946903786)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Departing from the more electronic oriented sounds on previous albums by Tex la Homa, Little Flashes Of Sunlight On A Cold Dark Sea is a collection of eleven acoustic songs featuring Matt Shaw on every instrument, mainly guitar and piano. After releasing six exclusive tracks (which were a prelude to the sound of this last record) entitled Into Timeless Shadows a couple of years ago, Acuarela is proud to present the fourth album by Tex la Homa, an approach towards a more intimate and personal side of his music. Ever since the beginning of Tex la Homa Matt Shaw has played very quiet acoustic concerts, a side of his music he really wanted to explore more on his recordings. A wooden guitar, some keyboards and pianos and his voice. All against a microphone and a computer, within the emptiness of his room in Poole, Southern England. The aim Shaw tried to achieve while writing the songs of Little Flashes Of Sunlight On A Cold Dark Sea was to have mostly acoustic sounds and try to write very simple but melodic songs. To reduce everything down to what it is actually needed to communicate an idea or a story, and to try to keep things clear. Old friends' names and past events served as inspirational memories. So there are songs about people Matt was around when he was writing the songs ("Dream Sliding") and people from his past ("The Ginnel") but sometimes written about as if it were all still happening now ("The Unanswered Question"). Matt reaches the idea that within our memories these past events can be as real as what is happening in our present lives. The eternal now, with things happening on several planes of existance, that we may or may not really understand. But this music is also deeply influenced by places like Sandbach in Chesire, where Matt grew up, Barnoldswick and surrounding Lancashire and Yorkshire, where he spent a lot of his childhood, Poole in Dorset where he currently lives and snapshots of various places he has travelled over the years. Also by the sea which he lives close to. As an extension of what was started with Into Timeless Shadows, the EP Matt recorded for Acuarela two years ago, this new record sees no use of electronic programming or heavy atmospheres and textures featured on Some Lost Bliss (& Records, 06 / All Is Number, 07). If that record was Tex la Homa's best electronic effort, taking even further the mixture of dream pop, folk and ambient of If Just Today Were To Be My Entire Life (Talitres, 03) and Dazzle Me With Transience (Superglider, 02), his two other albums, Little Flashes Of Sunlight On A Cold Dark Sea opens a new direction for Tex la Homa. One based on personal experience as an engine for creating music with an undeniable healing power.

MIKEL SALAS - Bajo Las Estrellas (Beneath The Stars)  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1080: 8426946903878 )  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Acuarela releases the original soundtrack of “Bajo las estrellas” [Under the stars] Félix Viscarret’s debut film (2008 Goya* for best Adapted Screenplay), starring Alberto San Juan (2008 Goya for best Actor) and nominated for best Soundtrack music by Mikel Salas with twilight western instrumentation. Surprising bonus track by Flamenco big star, Enrique Morente, who sings the standard classic "Stella by Starlight." *Goya is the equivalent of the Oscars for films in Spanish language. “Bajo las estrellas” starts, and we hear an ukelele, a xylophone; suddenly it bursts a fun rogue melody, with an ubiquitous banjo and a persistent rhythm, as if we were travelling in a ramshackle bus. We are entering the impossible city of Estella (in Navarra, Spain), more imaginary than real, a world fraught with losers who cling to any chance of leading a more ‘normal’ life. Mikel Salas’ music is that of iron, scrap metal and abandoned caravans, rusting, with twilight western instrumentation and lo-fi sound, a succession of instrumental landscapes, almost borderline abstractions that travel along with Benito Lacunza (actor Alberto San Juan) in his journey towards happiness, to the possibility of a remote happiness. In previous conversations between the director and the musician, it was much discussed Daniel Lanois, and, above all, his album "Shine". Félix Viscarret says that Mikel Salas likes to get into a project before even shooting. But the proper ‘revelation’ came when “Mikel faced the first editing of the film. That’s when we started talking about road music for our peculiar road movie à la navarra, an industrial western, the redemption story of an embarrassment guy, Benito Lacunza, who’s going to show us that behind his dirty appearance lies someone with a huge heart.” This is Acuarela’s first published soundtrack. But it’s also almost like any other release this label has got us used to. Almost folk, dark but flooded by rare cracks of light, intimate, warm, sometimes funny and sometimes bleak. Mikel Salas has written and recorded (by himself) the sound of how is traveling on roads filled with dust, deep into the mists of the north, or bordering small towns. And to conclude the record, a surprise: the voice of Enrique Morente and his amazing, magical version of Victor Young’s standard “Stella by Starlight, filling the sky with stars.

FANTASY BAR - Friday Afternoon Car  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1085: 8426946903502)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Kieran, Diego, Jordi and Rubén used to be part of Migala, probably one of the best Spanish bands ever. It’s something they won’t try to hide. Now they are Fantasy Bar, whose debut album, Friday Afternoon Car, takes their music –and influences ranging from American Music Club to Nick Drake, Arab Strap to Neil Young…- into enchanting new territories. Friday Afternoon Car is an album of nostalgia and yearning for a brighter dawn; of harshness and tender feeling; of hopes and of fears. Its 14 stately, slow-paced rock songs are suffused with the beauty that lies just beneath the surface of existence. The careworn yet compassionate vocals of Scottish songwriter Kieran Stephen (ex-bassist with Los Planetas and Migala, bass guitar on El Hijo’s album “Las otras vidas”, live musician with QZIOS) speak of the emotions these four friends know so well: the persistence of memories; friendship and wasted love; the knowledge, throughout it all, that the good times can prevail. It’s there from the first moments of “Spiders”, which opens Friday Afternoon Car: the story of a bad dream called solitude, wrapped in gentle guitars and upbeat but delicate drums. The album was recorded at Rock Soul Studios in Madrid with the assistance of Carlos Torero, and features keyboards and guitar by Abel Hernández (El Hijo, former singer and guitarist of Migala) and electric guitar by Chris Bathgate (Sans Trauma, ex-Ganger, who also used to play bass with Arab Strap). It takes its name from an old British phrase that alludes to the belief that car-factory workers lose interest toward the end of the week: as the brief liberation of the weekend looms, everyday cares cease to matter. Friday Afternoon Car invites the listener to enter the universe of these songs: to discover a place to reflect and, above all, to feel. Fantasy Bar are: Kieran Stephen (vocals, guitars, bass), Diego Yturriga (keyboards, accordion and melodica), Jordi Sancho (bass, fender rhodes) and Rubén Moreno (drums).

BOY OMEGA - Hope On The Horizon  CD (Acuarela (Spain): NOIS1079: 8426946902871)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  On “Hope on the Horizon”, Boy Omega (Swedish genius Martin Henrik Gustafsson) follows up his critically acclaimed 2006-albums “The Black Tango” and “The Grey Rainbow”, with yet another impressive collection of songs that showcase the growth of his songwriting. As always when you hear a new Boy Omega-record, there’s something new going on. This time it’s a lot less electronic than before. This is something warm and analog, featuring big walls of strings, horns, acoustic pianos etc. It sounds melancholic and drenched with the bitter beauty of life. Besides from recording “Hope...”, releasing two albums, a tour-cd (feat. 15 rare tracks and covers), two singles, the split cd “If we were oceans” and appearing on the Magnetic Fields tribute cd “Our love is meaningless”, Boy Omega also managed to play more than 60 shows in 2006. Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and the UK were frequently visited. In the summer they played the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, The End of the road festival in the UK along with artists such as Ryan Adams, Ed Harcourt and Badly Drawn Boy. They also did shows together with Isobel Campbell, Akron/Family, The Hidden Cameras and Jason Collett. "Fans of Sufjan Stevens and Elliott Smith will feel a kinship to these allusive tunes ... A fascinating series of snapshots, both disarming and engaging ... something incredibly fragile and perfectly crafted." - UNCUT "Sad songs and little-boy-lost vocals recall Bright Eyes, but his settings are all his own, mixing lo-fi sensibilities with gnarly electronics, warm cellos, lustrous violins, banjo and sax to lush effect ... One to watch." - THE INDEPENDENT "Naked and bare but still powerful, and not self-pitiful as so many others in the same genre." - GROOVE

STRUGGLERS, THE - The Latest Rights  CD (Acuarela (Spain): NOIS1081: 8426946903489)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  The Latest Rights, the fourth full-length by the Strugglers, features violinist Daniel Hart (John Vanderslice, St. Vincent), multi-instrumentalist Alex Lazara (The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers), and a host of other accomplished North Carolina musicians. The Latest Rights glides through its nine deftly crafted tracks with a calm confidence. Bickford tosses off sly line-breaks, equates youth’s freedoms with adulthood’s burdens, and addresses love, sex, and death all with the same penetrating sanity (to borrow Martin Amis’s phrase), as if in the same breath -- one long, slow reflection.

LD & THE NEW CRITICISM - Amoral Certitudes  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois062: 8426946903212)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  ‘It’s to Beghtol and friends’ credit that TRAGIC REALISM manages at once to offer such charming and cheeky fun while also being so full of genuine sadness, so marked by the cold hard facts of life. They turn the deepest sadness into a lark, a dance, a game, a celebration even—while singing boldly and beautifully about the darkest of matters.’ —erasingclouds. The latest offering from New York’s tuneful, eclectic LD & the New Criticism is a delightful morsel of pop yumminess—a musical amuse-bouche sure to linger in your ear as it momentarily satisfies your hunger... yet still leaving you wanting more. Created as a musical bridge between TRAGIC REALISM, the band’s critically-acclaimed 2005 debut, and a new full-length collection the band are currently constructing, AMORAL CERTITUDES is a brief survey of crimes of the heart that has one elegantly-shod foot planted firmly in the fetid grave of romance, and the other in the giddy, arnivalesque Tunnel of Love. LD BEGHTOL's playful lyrics sing of the unabashed humor and pathos of human amatory relations, even as the swirling musical accompaniment entices you inward and onward to your doom. Or redemption. Or whatever—it's your trip, baby; you decide. AMORAL CERTITUDES opens with “Love Theme from LD & TNC,” a brief lesson in literary criticism (in lullaby form) that soon gives way to “AKA Paradise”—a rousing three-minute pop number replete with sonorous clarinets and what just might be a hint of hopefulness. Well, maybe. Next is “What You Will,” a neo-60s folk-rock nugget that features the wondrous vocals of Dana Kletter and Kendall Jane Meade, as well as oceans of chiming 12-string electric guitar. An enchanting cover of Lisa Germano’s “If I Think of Love” is followed by another Beghtolian song-epigram, the doowop confection “Light Verse.” Bringing it all home is “Sex Surrogate,” a mechanized sea chanty about the search for sexual validation in today’s consumer-driven society. Is that desperation in the air? Or just the sweet smell of excess? Reviews: Chicago Free Press | All Music Guide | Erasing Clouds | Neon Buzz | Delusions of Adequacy

DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON - David Thomas Broughton vs. 7 Herz  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois064: 8426946903434)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  David Thomas Broughton’s talent has garnered praise with the passing years. This doesn’t come as a surprise. The way Broughton merges endless processed guitar loops with his own and very personal voice –something between Odetta and Tim Buckley- throws light upon a unique sound. After astonishing audiences at the most recent edition of fave Spanish festivals Primavera Sound or Tanned Tin, Acuarela introduces an exclusive mini-album that the English musician has recorded with Leeds experimental group 7 Hertz. Layer after layer of sound, David Thomas Broughton has defined himself as a name to keep in mind, song after song, test after test. Challenging the limits of his own music, this Leeds singer songwriter has toyed at stretching a singular discourse bound to the well-worn parameters of folk and electronics, combining influences and just by following intuition and taste, enveloping it all with a warm and velvet voice. Without a doubt challenge has been a constant in his career. The Complete Guide To Insufficiency (Birdwar/Plug research, 2005) was a debut aimed at demonstrating Broughton’s live performance, recorded in one sole take in a church and barely intervening through mixing, one could even hear the sound of pedals being changed and other details that could only be appreciated in a live show. This atmosphere that suits the record so well, somewhere between narcotic and chaotic, has accompanied his next effort It’s In There Somewhere (Birdwar, 2007), though channeled through song format as we know it. 7 Hertz are a Leeds band dedicated to improvisation within a strange mixture of folk, classical, jazz and any other label that you can slap the term free on. David and the band hardly had time to greet each other before embarking on a recording session in a cold church in Leeds on a winter afternoon (a scene much like the one Broughton’s first record was drawn in). Every song would enjoy only one take, so there would never be any previous rehearsals between the parties involved. Throughout the first part of the album David performed a song he had in mind, around this the band built walls of sound. But for the second part of the record was created as it was performed for the first time, improvising lyrics and casting vocals towards the temple’s vaults, creating and unimaginable acoustic. The result is a record full of strength and experimentation where sound contracts and expands, always floating, carried over currents towards the impossible whirlpool that is “River Outlet”, the twenty-two minutes with which the session ends, where Broughton and 7 Hertz shyly fade, stretching their music until the very instant in which it separates. Reviews: Pitchfork

HIS NAME IS ALIVE - Firefly Dragonfly  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois065: 8426946903601)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Mini-album (4 tracks/31 minutes). A year after resurfacing into memory with Detrola (Silver Mountain, 06) and with eyes set firmly on the next step, XMMER, which should be seeing the light soon, His Name Is Alive present four new songs exclusively through Acuarela, recorded in their living room in Livonia, Michigan. Firefly Dragonfly is a laid-back, acoustic mannered pitstop for the quixotic North-American band. Five years ago Warren Defever understood how irony and contingency were out of bounds in his life: “Last Night”, the album, turned out to be too prophetic a title to be true, but in fact, it would be the last night that his band would spend under the shelter of 4AD. The lack of commercial success demonstrated by insufficient sales, according to the London-based label, and the poor response the previous two records had brought up among followers ended a relationship that had lasted over twelve years. Suddenly, Defever rose with the slashing rock sound that was “Detrola”. The album rescues a sound that might have easily linked it to Ft. Lake (4AD, 1998) and that managed to baffle and audience that conjugated both old admirers and new faces, relinquishing the soul essence of his two previous albums and exchanging Lovetta Pippen's gospel flavored voice for the caress of Andy FM's (who happens to be the cousin of Karen Oliver who used to sing in the band). FM's vocal soaks each syllable of the four songs that comprise this record in candor. “Firefly Dragonfly” contains a warm atmosphere, an undiscovered guise of His Name Is Alive, an intimate side. Listening to this half hour unveils a single live recording session, the testimony of an encounter between Defever and a bunch of friends under the directive set by acoustic guitar and piano. This mini-album opens softly with a cover of Sufjan Stevens' "The Dress Looks Nice On You" (baptized here as "I Can See A Lot Of Light In You"). It's an imagined vision of the Stevens original, imbued here by Andy FM's subtle accent, with much sparser & simpler arrangements, with no banjo. "Come Out The Wilderness" begins with what sounds like an acoustic variation of Neu!, lain over harp frills, to then evolve into reflection of a traditional folk song. "There's Something Between Us And He's changing My Words" appeared on “Home Is In Your Head” (4AD, 1991), His Name Is Alive's second record, and what was a studio experiment smoothly becomes a campfire song with Jessica Bailiff's vocals and under the cloak of a harmonium. It's a delicate song, with a feeling of uncertainty surrounding all of it, entangling each chord. After it, what was one day meant as a tribute to Alice Coltrane appears here in the form of a beautiful fourteen-minute duet between piano and harp, flowing freely until the end of the record. TRACKLIST: 1. I Can See A Lot Of Light In You, 2. Come Out Of The Wilderness, 3. There's Something Between Us And He's Changing My Words, 4. Send Me A Dragonfly.

REFREE - Els Invertebrats  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1078: 8426946903472)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Refree, Raúl Fernández’s alias, presents us with a fourth album that establishes his reputation as one of the most imaginative composers in Europe today. Its 10 songs seduces us from beginning to end with its rich, wide-ranging concept of pop and its stylistic and emotional references. Any open-minded fan of Paolo Conte, Dirty Three, Dominique A, Van Dyke Parks or Nick Drake could fall in love with “”Els Invertebrats”. Here Refree achieves an adjustment between Pop tradition and more excessive and questioning musical arguments, combining patterns that search for the small perfection of a classic song with new expeditions into rhythmic and harmonic territories. Emphatic portrait-songs always influenced by contemplation, that have preferred to find rough edges and multiplied vanishing lines. Beauty and life from a cubist perspective. Though it may imply straying from a clear line of action, Raül Fernández is one of the rare musicians on the Euro scene that will invariably choose the road that appears more interesting or exciting to him, the least boring, to be coherent with his ravenous musical appetite and unique artistic temperament. And because of it the songs on "Els invertebrats", fourth studio album by his alter-ego Refree, might have made for the most pop-flavored album of his career, said songs being so accomplished and clamorous, with punch, melodic smoothness and just the right words. But Fernández preferred to distance himself from such security and comfort, and to wander into the jungle instead. On "Els Invertebrats" Raül Fernández backs his voice with a group of musicians composed essentially by Giovanni Di Domenico on the piano, Manolo Cabras on upright bass and Oriol Roca on drums (musical snipers belonging to the avant-garde jazz trio Sweet Cut). In five days (with their respective nights) of cloister in Brussels, Fernández throws his compositions over a loom of loose strings that weave into each other freely over mutant rhythmic and harmonic structures which resolve into conflicts and conclusions, broken pianos, out of tune whistles, chords that break like eggs against a hot surface, a sharp voice balancing melodically over trembling upright bass strings that sound like the footsteps of a tip-toeing giant. But also high definition songs that move along thanks to a rhythmic security, as bold as it is honest, that allow the vocal its place without encroaching on its lead role. Songs develop in continuity, in a game of curious acrobatics that resolve brilliantly. Like impossibly contorted centipedes, invertebrates moving forth in unwavering and unpredictable fashion. Actually, from another point of view, we also have here a collection of portraits, a sort of one-frame story that unfolds a set of everyday likenesses of men, women and children (all of them, in one way or another, invertebrates), ranging from kind satire to caricature, drama and the irreversible lightness of ordinary lives, love and death. Words and games that tackle the subjects of maturity, frequently affected by a sweet and comic outlook: Dawn in the abstract city, with the memory of lives unlived, an orgasm fades to silence in a room with an open window, a mature gentlewoman with her sterile loneliness, a man disgusted with his routine arrives where the whores are wobbling, in a neighborhood that turns into a boat of which he his self-proclaimed captain. Matrons guard the stairwell, an endangered species, going about their business and gossip, in the midst of the atrocious ocean a black man ponders, friends gathered together find that not only years pass, coupled lovers want to dream like children, children are born dead. Odes to flesh, beauty and love, and reflections on fleetingness, the expiration of bodies. Time that in its passing, alters and molds, and runs through the record until becoming the Theme.

AROAH - El Dia Después  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1066: 8426946903229)  $13.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Aroah's much anticipated third studio long player, El día después, brings ten songs sung in Spanish where sincerity lays next to hope: smart, moving, stylistic and melancholic folk pop music that's often orchestral yet intimate. Irene Tremblay goes from somber blame into the brightness of a morning walk, like faint sunlight slipping through leaves. 29 minutes worth of poetry, rich instrumentation and sharp observations of everyday life. Lots of things have happened since Irene R. Tremblay made her debut with "Cuando termines con todo, habrá terminado contigo", six songs that spread her name on everyone's lips. Firstly, two albums were released by Acuarela ("No podemos ser amigos" and "The Last Laugh"), and so did an EP with Nacho Vegas ("Seis canciones desde el norte", which is almost impossible to find nowadays). She has appeared in festivals such as FIB and Tanned Tin or Les femmes s'en mêlent in France, and performed in different countries like Belgium, Russia, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Canada or the US. Tara Jane O'Neil, Greg Weeks, Manta Ray, Tristeza, Labradford, Retsin, Dawn Landes and, recently, Yo La Tengo are some artists Irene has shared stage with. She even saw her name starring a greatest hits compilation -properly entitled "The Best of Aroah"- which came out in the Japanese label Moorworks. But the strange thing about all this is that her story seems to have just begun. El día después is a record of an intense, harsh reflection. Produced by Raül Fernandez (Refree), who also helped Irene crafting the acoustic and inspired atmosphere of "En el patio interior", an EP released about two years ago. In this new album, Irene's voice sounds like anew and clean. She now sings every line in Spanish (except for some words in English and French), surmounting all the shyness she has suffered from since she started writing lyrics. Not far from Ida, Mary Timony or Lisa Germano (she has even been called “a Catpower you can relate to”), Irene now turns what used to be folk raised in an American hotbed into a sincere and moving and (often) orchestral pop. We either have to point out El día después is nearly a rupture with Aroah's first two records, or just mention she has chosen to take a new and adventurous path. Irene reveals all of her poetry, talent, humor and shy optimism throughout its 29 minutes. Aroah has grown older, wiser. All of her thoughts evolve in this touching album of beautiful simplicity.

YELLOW SWANS - Descension  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois063: 8426946903366)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  29 minutes-2 tracks. Yellow Swans are back and Descension is their most psychedelic recording till date, two tracks recorded while on tour that maintain the expansive and melodic qualities the Drift EP (their last year's release on Acuarela) presented, but harbor the intensity of a Yellow Swans show. Caged beast. Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman are the vibrant duo behind Yellow Swans. Working on improvisation and the use of either electronica or guitars and the assembling/reassembling of sound through a bunch of musical influences: hardcore, dub, death metal, hip hop, noise, jazz, folk, all mixed up by an unlimited creative process. An improvisional approach to music that creates a unique experience for each live performance. Swanson describes the music he crafts with help of Saloman as "a constantly evolving mass of psychedelic noise that is both physically arresting and physically liberating". An exercise of freedom. After self-releasing a series of EPs and limited copies 7", Bring The Neon War Home, their first album, came out garnering much recognition in the US. And so it did their sophomore record Psychic Secession, which contained some politically oriented lyrics. Drift was a unique presentation of the more melodic and gentle side of Yellow Swans. Shimmering guitars, electronic squalls, harsh walls of static and burning wires. Electronic grit smeared over gentle finger picked guitars, Martian melodies. As Drift, Descension is a consequence of months of live concerts and tours. Recorded live, this new release finds a more abstract line. This two drones stick to our heads for weeks. Swanson and Saloman go and totally lay a psychedelic trip where gauzy clouds of melodic whir inflate and expand covering our minds. Recorded in late 2006, these two pieces of ambient-noise show a new purified noise smog column that will guide us back to what we used to be.

SCHWARZ - Heavengazers  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1075: 8426946903090)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Schwarz return with “Heavengazers”, recorded in Germany last summer. Embracing a brunch of pirouettes full of sound and melody, Schwarz have created a unique and personal language based on bands like Loop, Spectrum, 13th Floor Elevators, The Stooges and even Can. Ten songs that swing between precision and exploration, risk and fun. Psychedelic pop is not an easy game to play when you live in Murcia, a small town in eastern Spain. Let’s just say that the distribution/communication channels don’t really know what’s going on there. But isolation can sometimes turn into your best allied, being away from pressure and trends. So that’s how Schwarz have developed such an intense and vibrant career. Alfonso Alfonso, Juanma Martínez and César Verdú have always been true to themselves. Since their debut “This Songs Mean Nothing” in 1998, they’ve followed their path silently and with firm steps. A path where psychedelia turned into a lighting fire, krautrock expanded sound as a magnifying glass and indie rock became a hand to hold. The warm welcoming of “Hard Listening” brought more glances to these Martians, as so did their acclaimed live performances. That’s how they reached “Heptágono”, an odd album recorded with the Spanish masters of voltage Manta Ray. “Heavengazers”, their first Acuarela release, can only ensure Schwarz’s sound expansion. By the way, this tortured trio reinforces their indescribable style filled with hypnotism, energy and personality. Drone-rock, kraut-rock, art-rock... Why using such “euphemisms” when we only mean “ROCK”? Dirty and intense rock. Rock that, ahem, really rocks. A genre that assumes and works with different possibilities of creating a new type of noise. Sonic spirals remind us of Jessamine, Quickspace or Oneida, with whom they share influences and a pride of being very fond of risk. This new release by Schwarz evolves us in a new rhythm from which we can’t be blinded. A rhythm that will guide us to the end of a tunnel of atmospheres drilled by dense, cloned, mysterious music where you won’t even notice a hint of seriousness or importance. Schwarz knows how to put the exact amount of sugar needed in what’s salty, and the right pinch of salt to what might taste too sweet. To explore and enjoy seems like the premises of “Heavengazers” because it contains songs that are catchy (you can’t take them off your head). All of this to reach an album in which there is nothing missing or needed, promising to bring another dimension (even one more!) live.

EL HIJO - Las Otras Vidas  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1077: 8426946903359)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  El Hijo is Abel Hernández, whose sheltering voice used to appear on Migala, possibly the best Spanish indie band ever. Surrounded by old book fantasy, Abel has written nine notes full of folk, country and pop sung in Spanish that thrive in a personal songwriting. Las otras vidas (The other lives) is an enchanted tapestry where knights ride miles of moor to know who they are, where love is finally gonna be fruitful and the horizon seems to be moving further away. Far from Migala's dregs of American tradition or instrumental post-rock, El Hijo is a glance at the gone days.

REMATE - No Land Recordings  2XCD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1074: 8426946903151)  $14.99

EXCLUSIVE.  REMATE is a musician trained in classical music since was wearing short trousers and long socks. His first hero was a heroine, a skinny Bielorrusian piano teacher, who taught him how to play piano for hours without hurting his hands and wrists. The second hero was a Southafrican guitar teacher with a curly toupée, who instilled him the significance of the posture if you wish to turn into a good guitarist. After these pre-Olympics he became a singer-songwriter without limits: from folk to blues, from rock to gospel, from country to pop, always with the ambition of the one who knows that you must deserve your own influences, and that having style means much more than quoting other stylists. His distinctive features are, apart from playing piano avoiding pain, and having a good posture and/or a stance of defiance with the guitar… to be a very good singer, sometimes high-pitched ("Ballads Don't Change Things", 2004), and keen (also in person); at the beginning his voices sounded like a drunk Ry Cooder or between J. J. Cale and Neil Young; then (since "On Junk", 2005) a cocktail of Kurt Wagner (Lambchop) and Wagner without Kurt (he would have a voice as cavernous as his operas). Lately his singing has been non dissimilar to Bob Dylan yapping in a small town library. The process, of course, finally turns up to Remate’s signing to Acuarela for a brand new ouvre created like a labour of love. "No land Recordings", his new double album with 25 songs, is jam-packed with clouds of latex, giant wings, toxic passion, dinosaurs, enemies, falls, one-eyed singers, pain in vain, kitties and beautiful ladies, love at first sight, howls, fireflies, propeller beanies, TV shows, sports, calls, Superman, glowing colours, bankruptcy, tenderness, mends. Whereabouts are the best songs being born? Where do they grow up like unhappy children? Which are the shops where you can buy propeller beanies? From gospel sketches and echoes to silences. From children playing to omnichords and pedal steel guitars. The dregs of his songs spread out like purple stains. Split in two CDs called "Beetle" and "Bird", we face the work of a brilliant and dazzling personality. A diptych drowned by a bitter liquid chained to an umbilical cord of appellant substances: free will, digressing songs and great enemies. Their morphology and dynamics go beyond these recordings, where we also find several collaborations, like the Loco Band (Paco Loco, Muni Camón, Pablo Errea), members of the Spanish band PAL (Carlos Toronado, Kike Pierrot) and even Gary Louris of the Jayhawks). Rumour is that a girl came close to him drawled: "Remate... you are sinister. I close my eyes and I become part of a David Lynch film". We have seen other girl crying because something moved inside her, and anoher guy holding himself trying not to fall down listening to the piano that opens "Toxic Love II". John Golden (a sound engineer who has worked with Sonic Youth, Chris Isaak or Low...) praised the CHARACTER (right this way, in capital letters) among others virtues of "No Land Recordings". And a family in not the best of moods/situation/emotional balance drove a hundred miles at night just to listen to his songs. It was very foggy in the lost highway, and next to the steering wheel, there was a compass to get lost by GPS. Remate: specie on the way to extinction. With a proper voice, manner and language. With plenty of humanity (faith and madness), the one and only inhabitant of No Land Recordings. Come in without knocking.

DECEMBERISTS - The Tain  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois038: 708527393826)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  These might be the very last 100 copies... If we agree The Decemberists are one of the main features on the current music scene, mostly thanks to their last album, Her Majesty the Decemberistsand to the reediting in Kill Rock Stars of their debut album, Castaways and Cutouts, it comes as no surprise that one of their next releases is an Ep for Acuarela. This fascinating and creative Portland (Oregon)-based pop-art group that is reputed not only for its music, but also for the romantic and epic spirit in the best sense, has recently handed us its 18-minutes long release titled The Tain, whose cornerstone, according to leader Colin Meloy, is a cycle of Celtic mythology under the same name, and is basically a conceptual work, a song divided into five parts. Recorded with producer Chris Walla in Seattle, one of its fragments marks the first time that group drummer, Rachel, puts her voice and literary talent into a record.

LOU BARLOW - Mirror the Eye  CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois061: 8426946903205)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Lou Barlow is a true workaholic and quite addicted to surprising us with his work. The musician born in Dayton in 1966 and now based in Los Angeles has become one of the most fundamental references of the North American indie music of the two last decades thanks to that blessed channeled hyperactivity in essential bands like Dinosaur Jr. or Sebadoh and in multitude of parallel projects like The New Folk Implosion, Sentridoh or Lou's Wasted Pieces. And more than that, in 2006, Barlow was immersed in new work for Dinosaur Jr (J.Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph) and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow, Eric Gaffney and Jason Lowestein), but he has still managed to find enough time to record a EP of five songs exclusive for Acuarela, Mirror the Eye. Barlow continues on the path of his first solo album, “Emoh” (Merge, 05), not only because the recording of these five tunes was done at his home studio, but also because it sets the idea that each song is different from the previous one, making this EP as unpredictable as enjoyable, always led by the unique voice of a Lou Barlow in a state of grace that seems to retake the ways of the best and more emotional songs of Sebadoh. This is, without a doubt, a tremendously accessible collection of melodies and tunes that go direct to the feet and the heart and sound more like old-school Sebadoh like than anything he has done in a while. Thus we find the nakedness of “Yawning Blue Messiah” and “You' re to Goat”, the distortion of “Faith Defies the Night”, in which he shows his more aggressive side, the two voices used in “My Surrender”, to finish with the song that gives title to the EP, “Mirror the Eye” a touching gem, just ninety seconds long. Five lo-fi pieces of simple and sometimes rough construction but that with successive listening display a lot of small details which reveal the dedication this North American musician put in each one. And that reveal to us is that Mr. Barlow is in one of the sweetest and mature moments of his expanded trajectory.

LA JR - Dos Casas  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1071: 8426946903120)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  LA JR (previously know, simply, as JR) are back, led as usual by Frank Rudow (also a member of Viva Las Vegas and Manta Ray), Rafa and Borja. Almost three years after their latest release (also titled “La JR”), “Dos Casas” is a work of dark atmospheric lounge, trancey Kraut-Rock groove or anti-jazz-folk, as we like to name it. Less hermetic than their previous albums, less strictly “autistic pop”, LA JR could be a blend between Ry Cooder, The Sea and Cake, AR Kane or Sun Ra, and their new 11 songs –all created thru’ modest handicraft ingredients-, part of what we think is one of the best European albums of 2007. When writing a music review or in this case a press release, it is difficult not to resort to subjectivity -the me, myself and I syndrome. The reader doesn’t give a damn that I woke up a day later feeling like it was Friday when actually it was Thursday, that the sun had skulked away shyly as it had come at dawn or that a spike from my cactus had prickled me reminding me to water it. Having said this, I have not been asked to write about time travel, weather reports or botany. It could mean absolutely everything or absolutely nothing. And it is exactly this everything and nothing that awakens my interest in LA JR. Please excuse the subjectivity. I came across Jr or more specifically a fragment of the track ‘Abrir, amar, y dos sonrisas’ from the album 127 (1999, Acuarela) two years late. I can’t remember if I invented the tag or if I read it in a press release, but whatever the case I associated it and type cast it as dadaist pop. Speaking of dadaism, I would like to quote a text in a book by Richard Huelsenbeck that I coincidentally finished today: “Anyone can be a dadaist. Dadaism does not restrict itself to any particular art form. The waiter in the Manhattan Bar who serves a curaçao with one hand whilst scratching his gonorrhoea with the other is a dadaist. The gentleman dressed in a raincoat who takes off around the world for the seventh time is a dadaist. A dadaist should be someone who thoroughly understands that you have the right to ideas only when you apply them to life; the dadaist is a totally active person who only exists through actions, their only means of knowledge”. I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions. There is no exact definition for the word ‘dada’ and there are no exact words to describe the multifariousness of La Jr. Last year, with the release of La Jr (Acuarela) I chose pantheist rock instead of dadaist pop to pigeonhole them (because of 'Las dos en la nave'), but as I’m listening to their recent release ‘Dos casas’, I am finding it more difficult to sum it up in a nutshell. The cookie jar opens and the sound of 'Lav decoración 1' renders the air, I nod my head, tap my toes and duly change my position although not my perspective as many things remain the same; Frank Rudow is still an outstanding percusionist (that hypnotic softness in ‘Un lado útil'), Rafael Martínez’s disjointed singing is just as lustful and irreverent (‘Mi a Mi’ and ‘Arrebato’) as ever and equally seductive, I’m sure you’ll agree. This is most evident in ‘Yo voy a cambiar eh!’, so much so that it is not necessary to refer to the title to be convinced there’s been a change here. ‘Pistoleros’ is to music what assemblage is to art; an overlaying of diverse, motley materials; it sounds like porcelain, wood, glass and it squeaks even though it doesn’t sound like squeaking. Continuing in the same vein about ways to destroy (construct or even deconstruct) art, it’s worth talking about the collage in 'La decoración 2', the photo montage (‘Cu’) and Man Ray’s creative process using the rayogram method.

NUM9 - The Glowworm Resistance  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1070: 8426946902987)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Featuring ex members of Migala, Hood, Disco Inferno. num9: the light after MIGALA's demise. There is a death and a resurrection in Coque Yturriaga’s career, Emak Bakia member and ex guitarist for Migala, followed now by num9. In summer 2005, the group that changed the parameters of indie folk music in Spain decided to shut up shop and separate after eight years together. So after giving their last concert in Benicassim that year, Migala died. Full stop. What now? The abyss? Or maybe not. For now an album titled "The Glow-Worm's Resistance" which will see the light domestically on December 12th and internationally on December 28th. With Emak Bakia on the back burner, Coque Yturriaga locks himself in his house to start what he doesn’t know will develop a year later into The Glow-worm's resistance (title that obsessively refers to childhood and those glow worms which lit up summer nights and are now impossible to find). Equipped with a computer, electric guitars, Spanish guitars, synthesizers of all shapes and sizes and his voice, he opens a door revealing syncopated beats and heady rhythms. He also reopens another door revealing his writing, which he had kept shut since Emak Bakia’s last album. This was the genesis of num9’s lyrics and intentions. Rhythm and impulse. Pop with electronic shades, melodies sporting a strange and subtle electronic overlay. num9, the name which Coque Yturriaga hides behind and glows through, has been born. num9 is the courteous branching off from Migala and Emak Bakia. Much more poppy than Migala whilst preserving some guitars from its tenebrous period, sometimes as strange as Emak Bahia but much more danceable. With one eye on the dance floor and the other on a more light hearted pop, there’s echoes of Four Tet, Hefner, New Order’s “Technique” and the Pet Shop Boys’ “Introspective”. And the result? Ten tracks of pop slipped in between rhythm and intoxicating dance. Created with a freshness and an immediacy unheard of in the panorama of independent music in Spain, it successfully goes way beyond this categorisation, accompanied with samples, melodies, bass drums, cajas, noises, clicks and cuts, catchy basses and dreamy guitars and arrives at a unique place which only has comparison way beyond Spanish borders. The album treads between the dancing steps of imaginary discos (The Dream, a story of a no-hoper swollen with contentment when he’s not dancing and everyone else is; The Wait, about the fear of getting up on stage), the sweet tempered fluctuations of layers of synthesizers (Stars about nostalgia of past eras) short stories of disgust with politics (A Giant Step) and society (Poema de la resistencia). There’s also room for simple narration (Perfect y The Travel Magazine), stark pseudo industrial stories (Poema de la luciérnaga) and tales of sweet deaths (The Glow-worm’s death which brings the album to a close). An ambitious and risky proposal, a change that distances Coque from past exploits, with lyrics that turn on and off our emotional, reminiscent and beauty appreciation buttons and transport you to his land - an illuminated and disturbing, melancholic and euphoric world. A disparity of stories, emotions and lives - those which die and those which are thankfully resurrected.

APSE - Spirit  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1063: 8426946903168)  $12.99

EXCLUSIVE.  After releasing a EP of 6 songs on Acuarela the past year, this quintet - with residence between Boston and New York- returns with a work that seems to have been recorded with a knife between the teeth. Direct, intense, tribal, cathartic and even hallucinogen, “Spirit” strikes with the force of a band which handles masterly the ingredients of the most unorthodox post-rock, late post-punk and, of course, psychedelia in ten songs which do not leave any doubts: this is one of the debuts of 2006. APSE consist of five lads from the East Coast who have been playing together –with slight changes in line-up- during the last 7 years, creating one of the most serious and inspired sounds today: the nerve of slowcore, bits of post-rock dynamics and avant-garde perceptions; beauty, darkness and tension. They showcase a solid, potent and mature musical sense with influences spanning Classical compositions, Slint, Joy Division/New Order, and The Cure– to the first Sonic Youth noise adventures, ambient music and a wide range of post-punk. In 2005 they released “S/T” (or “Apse”, as some people call it), an EP/mini-album, 34 minutes in length. It more then demonstrated their brilliance: Sonic whirlwinds that begin with a spasm, accelerate to the rhythm of nervous drums trotting around an arpeggio, tie themselves round high-pitched guitars, spin round golden melodies and agonise after a final sound explosion. That’s what “Leer”, the first song on the release was like. And although this formula was not repeated in the remaining five songs we can say it exemplified Apse’s nonconformist approach to composing music. On the upcoming release of Spirit, Apse have opted-out of everything we thought we knew about what to do in writing independent rock music in 2006. Where the “S/T” Ep was often associated with genre-anchoring terms and identifiers such as 'post-rock' or 'ambient', we find the band charting entirely fresh musical territory. They have shed the 'post-rock' catchall, and have created something that leaves those who have seen their live performances in a state of warm catharsis, astonished and bewildered all at once. Upon listening to the record, none of the band's influences are immediately clear. Spirit absorbs the listener in rough, bold percussion and dark, churning basslines, arguably referencing The Liars' 2006 Drum's Not Dead or the locking cyclical rhythm of early Echo And The Bunnymen. Over a hard-hitting bass-and-drum core, ethereal guitars, haunting vocals, and quiet synths nod to the Cure's Pornography, Disintegration, or B-Sides from Radiohead's Kid A. Spirit leads the listener through it's multi-percussional swamplands, plodding bass riffs, and alien melodies - both bittersweet and empowering. It is chock full of post-punk's disjointed rhythms, rough guitar passages and tribal stomp. Layers of tone and hand percussion top it all off, creating a beautifully produced record that a damaged pop odyssey as much as it is a breathtaking wall-of-sound. Spirit is one of the most astounding and unique records of this year. TRACKLIST: 1. (intro) - 2. From the North - 3. Legions - 4. Shades of the Moor - 5. (transition) – 6. The Crowned- 7. Wind Through the Walls - 8. Blackwood Gates - 9. Earth Covers Us - 10. Spirit

EL HIJO - Canciones Gringas  CD (Acuarela (Spain): nois060: 8426946902932)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  Cover versions tend to be based on someone else’s work with the aim to present a more defined image of the interpreter. Ignoring the continuous attempts to underrate this form throughout rock’s history, covers have assured their survival mainly thanks to the evolution of the interpreter’s role, who rereads and remodels the original to serve their own understanding and diagnosis. Through a process of personalization which reinforces El Hijo’s identity, Abel Hernandez (ex-singer of Migala, one of the best Spanish independent bands of all time) has managed to modulate his voice in the four cover versions found in this second release, overtly called Canciones Gringas (Gringo songs). It follows the first EP La piel del oso (Acuarela 2005) in which Abel Hernandez went back to the studio after Migala’s amicable demise. Although both title and song selection show manifest reverence to certain musicians and models of North American rooted folk-rock highlighting the penetrating vision that El Hijo’s music represents, the value of these four songs is intimately bound to the exhilarating narration/interpretation game and the final result is as complimentary as it is renovative. On one hand, melody, harmony and rhythm are treated with respect while maintaining independence from the original. On the other hand, the songs are made into an emotional and aesthetic mouthpiece, originating with Abel’s deep, hued voice and culminating with an instrumental structure with a bold acoustic approach in which friends such as Raül Fernández (Referee), Xavi Molero (San Pedro), Kieran Stephan y Jordi Sancho (both from Fantasy Bar) and the members of Grupo Salvaje, Pepe Hernandez and Ernest Gonzalez have been implicated. The first and sober recreation of “These Days” (the song that the young Jackson Browne composed for Nico’s magical “Chelsea Girl”) titled now as “Últimamente”, reveals his emotive lyrical powers –“These days, I rest on my foundations while I watch how time flows by”– which extend throughout the other songs in “Canciones Gringas”. The presence of gems such as Michael Penn’s “A Long Way Down –Look What The Cat Drug In” -called here “Una larga cuesta abajo”- Jackson C. Frank’s “Milk and Money” -changed to “Leche y Miel”- and the inescapable Bob Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left home” -entitled “Era joven cuando me fui”- clearly shows the subtlety and the depth charge of Abel’s selection. The seductive features of both the first EP “La piel de oso”, in which he composes his own songs, and these four cover songs breathe the same spirit. The appropriate definition of their content brings us a few degrees closer to the tangible image, the prominent personality and the consistent creativity of El Hijo.

XIU XIU - Tu Mi Piaci   CD EP (Acuarela (Spain): nois058: 8426946902918)  $7.99

EXCLUSIVE.  5 tracks. Thankfully, 2006 will not pass without Jamie Stewart's impassioned shouts and murmers. Apart from releasing their next album, The Air Force, in September/October on 5RC (on Acuarela ONLY for Spain and Portugal), their new release is a five-song covers EP (think 2003's Fag Patrol and its Stewart-centric acoustic focus) with fascinating style and instrumentation and titled Tu mi piaci (“I like you”, in Italian). Unlike Fag Patrol, however, these covers target non-Xiu Xiu material from folks like Air Force comrade Nedelle, Bauhaus, Alex Chilton/This Mortal Coil, Pussy Cat Dolls, and Nina Simone.

MANYFINGERS - Our Worn Shadow  CD+DVD (Acuarela (Spain): nois1064: 8426946902826)  $12.99