Italian noisemakers Aquarian (of no known relation to the alternative weekly newspaper based in New Jersey) left off the back end of the quote with the title of their album Art is the Flower, Life is the Green Leaf. Architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh said in 1902, ?Art is the flower, Life is the green leaf. Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing.? Be that as it may, the album shimmers nonetheless with its own lifelike qualities, if modern and alienated ones. Art is the Flower, Life is the Green Leaf paints a sonic spectrum of drone and purported minimalism, injecting noise into its open spaces to give a feeling of fullness.

A duo comprised of Esse and The Pop Anarchist, who handle between them guitars, bass, drones and sundry other noisemakers, Aquarian are at once ritualistic (?Bright Glass on a Chain Being Wound Around Us?), organic (?Some People Feed on Other People?) and inhuman (?Clear Dry Space?). The music is mostly drone and electronics-based, but there is liberal use of feedback throughout, and the 26-plus minute ?Iris, Tulip and Columbine? is about as close as Aquarian gets to actual heavy riffing. With sounds both dense and cohesive, the band is able to fuse various styles and moods to create a sound unique among its noisy peers.

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