Zoned
(Destijl - IND068) CD $13.50
The first public appearance pairing Christian Henjes and Juergen Gleue (inspired by and with names derived from LSD-25, they would become CH-39 and JG-39) was in 1976, at the Dada Nova (a space occupied by Otto Mühl's AAO commune) in midtown Hannover, Germany. Dada Nova would be a space of enduring clash. From the subtlety of a shat-upon organ to the ejection from communal meetings by bodily force, the AAO displayed that the presence of the 39 Clocks was one of their constant grief. Known for pranksterism and the destruction of the clubs in which they performed, friction in every form continually followed the band. In 1979 they were thrown out of a show in Kassel at Dokumenta (their sounds had disturbed Joseph Beuys). They created an outrage (see the tune “Art Minus Idiots”) at the Filmtage Hannover with their avant-garde Super 8 movies made under the disguise of director Zachius Lipschitz. At a Hannover show at the Cafe Glocksee, they are rumored to have played the vacuum cleaner and a circular saw instead of guitars, and there was even a knife throwing incident in Bremen. Inspired, then, clearly, by protest in the broadest and most romantic sense (see the tune “Radical Student Mob In Satin Boots”), their sound was attuned to classic American punk and Nuggets, although this is not Bomp rock; the thrust of 39 Clocks purposed deconstruction and reassembly in the most modern sense. This collection was put together with the non-completeist in mind (originals of some of these records are as rare as Italian underwear), intending to display the general 39 Clocks vibe, but also some of their more curious wrinkles. And as the Clocks were always interested in where they were going and not where they'd been, the chronology here is strictly reversed. Diedrich Diedrichsen, who wrote the first review of the band in Spex, scribed liner notes.
cloud
(Erstwhile - ERST046) 2xCD $23.50
Keith Rowe, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz and Toshimaru Nakamura, each with extensive discographies and distinctive styles, formed the Four Gentlemen of the Guitar (4g) in 2004, and played a series of shows in Europe and Canada, three of which (from Vand'ouevre, Paris and Victoriaville) are contained on cloud. The widely differing aesthetics of the four musicians meld fluidly, forming hovering, delicate masses of sound.
Itsukushimi no Ame no naka de
(Music Atlach - MA007) CD $16.50
Female accordion player based in Tokyo, whose noteworthy debut, Utsuho (Tzadik 2001), featured Haino Keiji as a guest musician. She crosses the border between pop and avant-garde with ease (a natural part of the territory when your instrument of choice is the accordion). Her hushed improv bears the beauty and nostalgia of folklore; within her delicate exotica are hidden fortitude and energy.
Ghast / Abandoner
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR079) split CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Ghast: tortured, slow black doom. Abandoner: sparse, post-industrial noise landscapes by members of Unearthy Trance.
KAORU ABE / DEREK BAILEY / TOSHINORI KONDO / MOTOHARU YOSHIZAWA
Aida's Call
(Starlight Furniture Company - *9) CD $40.00 (Out-of-print)
Wake up jazzbo, the free-train is leaving the station, and it won't be coming back. A limited edition of 500, once-in-a-lifetime, mysterious and previously cassette-only document of this 30-year old meeting between guitar-improv locomotive Bailey and Japanese heavyweights Yoshizawa (bass), Kondo (trumpet), and the legendary Abe (alto sax). A forty-minute improvisational rail splitting recorded live on May 3, 1978, during Bailey's tour of Japan, brought about via his meeting with Japanese "svengali" Aquirax Aida.
Buster
(Sentient - SR02) CD $10.75
Massive is an understatement. Absolutely monolithic down-tuned guitar assaults twist through almost mechanized, mind-bending rhythms while tortured vocals narrate how wretched life actually is, like a monstrous cyborg in the process of human extermination, all too aware of the atrocities it commits.
Boquetot / Paris / Port Jerome
(Groundfault - GF021) CD $12.00
Music produced by Eric Cordier (processing, contact microphone recordings), Jean-Luc Guionnet (long string recording devices, mixing), and Eric La Casa (condenser & contact microphone recordings, filtering, processing, mixing) at specific sites: a windy day on a highway exit ramp near a hemispherical tunnel made of sheets of corrugated iron, with amplified steel strings stretched between it and the recording van; a train station; and an emergency training day at a huge petroleum factory, near valves regulating steam pressure).
Paternoster
(Music Atlach - MA005) CD $16.50
Naomi Hoca's funereal, dark drones are based on old sacred songs. As a devotee of ancient religious music from the Renaissance and Middle Ages, she is affected by the work of mystics and tries to combine music from Christianity and the point of view of the pagan. Her sound consists of drone, quotation, sacred song and her vocalization, and is dedicated in condolence to forgotten casualties of war.
Memory & Hearing
(Hospital - HOS327) CD $13.50
Difficult collage noise requiring repeated listening.
Unconfirmed Reports
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR001) CD + DVDr $12.00
The second full-length release from Hiroshima-based Scots musician, filmmaker, and photographer Paul Kirk (ex-Twisted Nerve, ex-Bigshot) is an in-depth, electronic-based, audio/visual travelogue of late autumn through to early spring. Dark, brooding, occasionally menacing, deeply seductive, Unconfirmed Reports carries on the urban alienation and social exclusion first heard on Akatombo’s Trace Elements, released by Colin Newman’s Swim label. By skimming the surface and trawling the dank underbelly, Kirk presents the daily minutiae of life in a large Japanese city in all its garish hues and faded glories. Mix engineered by Makoto Kubota (Les Rallizes Denudes). The DVDr contains three films with music from the album. Hand-numbered edition in oversized printed envelope, containing two photographic art-prints, two random newspaper cuttings.
De Speenzalvinge
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR081) CD $14.50
First full-length. Three tracks of brutal, driving blackened sludge doom.
Luizig
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR029) CD $9.00
Reissue of demo from this Belgian primitive black metal / doom band. One haunting, brutally lo-fi track. Black-on-black silkscreened covers.
Paradieswärts Düül
(Captain Trip - CTCD017) Used CD $12.00
1995 reissue of their third album (Ohr 1971). Includes two bonus tracks "Eternal Flow" and "Paramechanical World," from their only seven-inch (Ohr 1970).
ANAL MAGIC AND REV. DWIGHT FRIZELL
Beyond the Black Crack
(Paradigm Discs - P06) CD $14.25
Beyond the Black Crack was originally released in mono in an edition of 200 copies (Cavern Custom 1976) in commemoration the First Annual End of the World Celebration, November 18, 1976. This little known classic, one of the most unique listening experiences in modern experimental music, was conceptualized by legendary musician, filmmaker, Doctor of Metaphysics and minister in the Universal Church of Life. Recorded between 1974 and 1976 in locations as diverse as factories and the pyramid opposite Harry Truman's grave site (as well as more "conventional" concert settings), Beyond the Black Crack is a dark, dizzying and exhilarating journey through free jazz, electronics and environmental sound, all shattered by Frizzell's radical tape editing. This CD adds further material to the original LP: a previously unheard suite from 1977 called "The Wandering Madness of Basilea" and more unreleased material from the Black Crack sessions.
THOMAS ANKERSMIT / VALERIO TRICOLI
Forma II
(Pan - PAN16) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four electroacoustic pieces based largely on analogue synthesizer material and one long-form swarm-like composition for multiple overdubbed saxophones -– the duo’s first collaborative output, composed and recorded in Berlin between 2008 and 2010. Additional sounds range from metal foil floating on ultrasonic sound-beams to mechanical clickers recorded in the abandoned radar domes at Teufelsberg. The raw materials have been extensively processed and re-constructed using analogue tape and digital methods. The five pieces shift between sharply detailed blizzards of electronic interference to passages of delicate balance, between calm and turbulence, between stasis and rapid shape-shifting, between multiple virtual spaces and non-spaces.
ANTIMATTER / ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI
KHz
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50
The second collaboration by Karkowski and Xopher Davidson (Antimatter) slowly rattles one’s skeleton with gradually intensifying hums and buzzes and rumbles and drones and pulsations (and trots out plenty of onomatopoeia from ye olde noise almanac), until one’s bone marrow is more slippery than week-old cat piss pooled in a bean bag chair. Powerful and focused for 45 minutes. You can take it.
World Turns On Its Hinge
(Tour de Garde) CD $12.00
The first full length CD from the black metal band of Dominick Fernow (Prurient) follows an acclaimed demo “Genital Tomb.” This incredible opus should please fans of Burzum, Satanic Warmaster, Katharsis or Akitsa.
Deep Wind
(Quasi Pop) CD $13.50
Intercontinental file-swapping is the means that yielded this collaboration between Japanese noise bigwig Hiroshi Hasegawa and Puerto Rico’s harsh noise / experimental electronic duo, released by a scrappy Ukrainian label. Both long tracks on Deep Wind are based by each artist on the other’s noise. This complex, sometimes brutal and disturbing journey beyond the margins of consciousness incorporates totally psychedelic sounds, extreme frequencies, and deep, pulsating drones. Oversized gatefold jacket.
Galactic Desert Song
(Light Room) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
A hard-to-find, limited edition release by ex-C.C.C.C. analog synth master Hiroshi Hasegawa, described by one somber expert as “vast waves of space-age tones and sci-fi atmospheres,” hyped by another as “sounds to make your inner child curl up and die in a 80 mile pile of black Ernst vomit.”
Fountains
(Auscultare Research - AUS16) CD $10.50
Digital synthesized contact microphone recordings of simple fountains pouring water into 40-gallon steel trash cans. An electronic whirlpool of water sounds (of course), meaty drones, and metallic roars by this heavy composer with Mills connections. For fans of Hafler Trio, Francisco Lopez, Aube.
DEREK BAILEY / TONY BEVAN / PAUL HESSION / YOSHIHIDE OTOMO
Good Cop, Bad Cop
(No-Fi) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
This incredible document unites four legendary performers in some outstanding musical freedom, recorded at the Frakture Festival in Liverpool, 2003. Bailey and Otomo have famously sent shockwaves through international notions of improvisation over the years, while Bevan and Hession are rightly regarded as part of the very backbone of British free music. Sleeve designed by John Wiese.
I Fall Into You
(Basses Frequences - BF4) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Originally released by Public Eyesore, Basses Frequence’s reissue of Baker’s 2002 recording begins, according to Dusted, with DNA gently floating in a mitochondrial soup, and ends with an ambient texture piece that incorporates words from Milton's "Paradise Lost." The highlight of the disc by this Canadian guitarist, loopist, and lyricist is the mesmerizing two-guitar gamelan of "Symbiosis."
I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind
(Small Doses - DOSE87) CD $9.00
CD reissue of Baker’s long out-of-print, highly regarded 2007 solo work. Fifty-one minutes of shimmering, pulsating drone broken into twelve parts that come together in seamless, wordless narrative. Packaged in a sleeve with insert and obi.
Oneiromancer
(Die Stadt - DS90) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Baker (ARC, Nadja) explores the deconstructive sonic possibilities of the electric guitar as a primary sound source (with help from bass guitar, drum machines, tape loops and vocals), creating music that ranges from experimental to post-rock to contemporary classical.
#10
(Tedium House - BF10) Magazine + CD $11.00
With David Tholfsen (two stories told with shadow-puppets by the creative force and vocalist of U.S. Saucer), Melt Banana (interview with Tokyo’s amped-up grandchildren of Gertrude Stein), William Hooker (New York jazz percussion veteran tries to shed light on something -- don’t know what it was, but whatever, okay? -- as Ian Christe smiles politely), Couch (Scott Derr moderates a roundtable discussion with the Bulb Records flagship band, a trio whose numerous “issues” they will not or cannot discuss; includes a tour diary by Jodie McCann of Duotron), Prick Decay (incestuous brother-and-sister duo from Scotland reveal more than all), Alexander Ross (selected writings and drawings by New York artist), Vagtazo Halottkemek (Bruce Russell interviews Attila Grandpierre, world-class astrophysicist and leader of this band of Hungarian shamen; includes excerpts from Grandpierre’s Punk as a Rebirth of Shamanist Folk Music [The Magic Forces of Art at Work]), Macronympha (show-stopping interview with Joe Roemer and Rodger Stella, who discuss their prodigious drug intake, close encounters with transsexuals, mice-eating, terminally ill relatives, the Pope’s big pussy and baboon heart, and numerous other gut-churning topics), and Emil Beaulieau (creepy hate mail to the two-time mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, and American’s favorite noisician).
#13
(Tedium House - BF13) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Diesel Guitar (Japanese droneur interviewed by Satoru Higashiseto), Ilhan Mimaroglu (Columbia–Princeton post-pioneer and electronic composer interviewed by Scott Foust, with selected excerpts from Mimaroglu’s unpublished autobiography), Le Dernier Cri (French publishers of silkscreened comix and outsider art books, filmmakers, animators, interviewed by Eva Revox), Nautical Almanac (electronic-noise duo who traffic in improvised electronics created with homemade, hotwired and otherwise corrupted gear), Solid Eye (Los Angeles free-music kingpins and improv sound collagists, interviewed by Don Bolles), Universal Indians (Patrick Marley interviews this free-electronics trio from Michigan led by John Olson, who also designs and fabricates the hand-assembled packaging of his own prolific American Tapes label), Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase (free-electronics talk with CCC and fiction by Alesandro Moreshi III), William Winant (interview with the hardest working percussionist in new music, and principle architect behind Sonic Youth’s Goodbye 20th Century), irr. app. (ext.) (surreal autobiographical data, excerpts from the Errata in Excelsus newsletter, and Bosch-like illustrations by electronic deep theorist M.S. (H.) V. Waldron), A.Z. (Dante-esque comics by this former Scissor Girl and Bride of No No leader), Witcyst (collages and an interview, apparently, with beloved New Zealand noise freak), and Nigel Bunn (New Zealand filmmaker, animator, and electricity demon gives Barbara Manning a guided tour of his gadgetry wonderland).
#14
(Tedium House - BF14) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Trey Spruance (over-the-top cultural paranoia tracts and denunciations by this member of Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3), Peg Murray (Cooks ’n’ Chefs ’n’ Their Assistants comix by U.S. Saucer bassist), John Wiese (interview with type designer, member of Bastard Noise, solo noise artist, and curator of Helicopter’s MoonLanding seven-inch series), James Goode (interview with San Francisco-based Mills College postgrad, and a short essay on “phylogenetic music,” excerpted from his Mills thesis), Reynols (photo-autobiography by celebrated Argentinean oddballs who have collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, released recordings of blank tapes and 10,000 chickens, and splashed around the limited edition noise CDR cesspool), Panicsville (hostile interview by Tina Gladden with this Midwest noise artist, raconteur, sculptor whose chosen medium is roadkill sealed in clear plastic, cartoonist with a unique quasi-kaleidoscopic style, and designer of handmade CD jackets for the Nihilist label), Vote Robot (Canadian duo with hotwired reel-to-reel decks and an uncanny knack for creating erotic electro-lullabyes), Polar Goldie Cats (Los Angeles-based instrumental quartet interviewed by Carla Bozulich and Nels Cline), Jazzfinger (English low-decibel noise duo with a strong cinematic sensibility, interviewed by Neil Campbell), and Octavian Nemescu (translation of an essay by Romanian “new complexity” composer [contemporary of Dumitrescu and Anatol Vieru, known for heavily layered, polystructural works for various instrumental combination and tape], calling for a return to conceiving of music as an initiative, participatory event made of “energy ladders").
#15
(Tedium House - BF15) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Christine Shields (interview with the artist behind the surreal, dreamlike Blue Hole comic book, banjo-player for the Appalachia-influenced Grouse Mountain Skyride [also featuring Dame Darcy and Ian Christe] and Shady Creek Girls), Mal Sharpe (interview with author, jazz musician, and Man-on-the-Street interviewer most well known as half of much loved ’60s prankster duo Coyle and Sharpe), Ana-Maria Avram (translation of an interview by Costin Cazaban with Romanian acousmatic composer and Editions Modern recording artist whose uncompromising, demanding music gives heavyweights like Dumitrescu and Fernando Grillo a run for the money), Volcano the Bear (interview by Neil Campbell with this mind-expanding UK surrealist quartet whose music straddles “a strange, ambiguous line between comforting and terrifying … executed in such a manner that is purely hypnotic”), mad-cow.org (Brandan Kearny interviews Dr. Thomas Pringle, webmaster of this project of the Sperling Biomedical Foundation containing thousands of articles on mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, prions, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, scrapie, and numerous other crimes against nature that’ll drive us all to veganism), John Crouse (guest editorial and another previously unpublished text by this inspirational author, whose writing his publisher describes as “a non-stop torque conflating the distinctions of sky, people, forest, political costume store; a torque which enhances the writing’s own motions, nightmare, images in forward gear only as: 'historically: (actively) voiding reverse gear.… He makes his own vocabulary rushing forward at full tilt, the 'camel of wow'.' "), Rats With Wings (freeform essay and images by Australian noise artist Bill Burston), Volvox (interview with two members of this Australian band whose leader was brain-injured and comatose after a fall through a skylight; includes a chapter from his book Betrayed by the Senses), and Agog (interview with noise artist Damian Bisciglia who incorporates collage, improvisation, contact-mic-as-instrument and sources such as multitracked loops, shells, balloons, metal heater, springs, matchbox car; includes photos of his nightmarish creatures sculpted from various found materials, and Rohrshach-like comments and descriptions).
#16
(Tedium House - BF16) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Oren Ambarchi (Bill Burston interviews the founder of the Australian Noise Users’ Society, who has made ultrarefined space-station scree with AMM’s Keith Rowe, Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, out-of-control spazzassins Phlegm, The Menstruation Sisters, Robbie Avenaim, et al.), Leif Elggren (interview with Swedish electroacoustic musician, letter-writing prankster, dream theorist, national monarch of Elgaland-Vargaland, and conceptual artist whose work ranges from oblique performances to near-static installations), Robert Dayton (Earl Kuck interviews one of Canada’s most notorious extroverts [imagine Nardwuar as a real human being] about comics and diaries in the self-published Bunyon and his hilarious karaoke duo Canned Hamm), Jason Kahn (onkyo debunked, and his electronic duo with Toshi Nakamura discusses, as well as work with Arnold Dreyblatt, Universal Congress Of, and Sainkho Namtchylak), Parmentier (Dylan Nyoukis interviews hyper-relaxed New Zealand expats Rosy Parlane and Dion Workman about their bi-continental “work” as psychotropic electronic musicians; includes sidebar by Marcel Bear about a Parmentier-induced out-of-body experience), Halim El-Dabh (selected excerpts from Denise Seachrist’s biography of the Egyptian-born composer whose pioneering musique concrète predates that of Pierre Schaeffer, and is also noteworthy for an unusual Native American musical influence), Paul Winstanley (another New Zealander interviewed by Dylan Nyoukis, about his time in Texas performing electroacoustic improv/noise with Dave Dove Paul Duo, crashing Lone Star bohemian enclaves, and cruising with Pauline Oliveros’s mother), Lateral Agriculture Order (overview of mysterious, acronym-damaged Italian organization, including discography, particulars about performances, roster of artists (eighty different ones!) and other inexplicabilia).
#17
(Tedium House - BF17) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Jason McLean (Canadian cartoonist talks with Robert Dayton about his hallucinatory style and techniques, and the effect on his work of education, interior decoration, comics, Fluxus and other abstruse art movements, and mental illness), Hetty Maclise (Angus’s wife and collaborator recounts how they met, her art editorship at The Oracle in the ’60s, homeopathic uses of LSD, and her life as an artist in Spain, Morocco, Mexico, San Francisco, and New York), Lara Allen (the exploits of a high school bad girl and the deprogramming subsequently inflicted upon her, problematic theatrical experiences, her series of consistently eerie paintings of old family photos, acting, and filmmaking), Jazzkammer (Lasse Marhaug chats with David Cotner about mainstream Hollywood flicks, cult films, the Nordic singles scene (both 45s and dating), Norwegian culture, Viking blood, and communication through music and abstract sound with John Hegre, Tore Bøe, Del, and Origami Republika), Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa instructs Dylan Nyoukis in the ways of reaching “final paradise” and achieving “freedom from everything” via Moog synthesizer, field recordings and computers; he also discusses soundtrack work, collaborations with a who’s who of Japanese space noise huffers, and the shocking truth about C.C.C.C.), The Towne Dandies (Geoff Ellsworth’s homemade, props-heavy musical theater, the history of the band, paying the rent (which can involve processing ham), life under a microscope in a small town, and fledging jingle-writing venture Barefoot Hockey Goalie), Paul Dutton (Canadian soundsinger and author talks about his work with ’70s sound poets The Four Horsemen and free improv trio CCMC, literary efforts and visual poems, the nature of expression through sound, and various giants in the gibberish tradition, from Schwitters and the dadaists through Bob Cobbing), and Carla Bozulich (her Sound.-produced event at the Schindler House, self-described as “new music dressed up like a party meets a social event disguised as art,” reimagined as comics).
#18
(Tedium House - BF18) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Nelson Gastaldi (lost and overlooked Argentinean psycho-spatial composer found and restored by South America’s premier avant sideshow barkers Reynols; topics include pure sound, ethnomusicology, paranormal occurences), Burning Star Core (autodidact C. Spencer Yeh tracks his development from adolescent pyromaniac to violin/electronics/voice iconoclast, with sidetrips as a writer of unreadable fiction, painter, documentarian, Cincinnati gallery brat, and live venue doyen), Joe Colley (easily fixated Crawl Unit noise mumbler issues subdued proclamations on field recordings, arcane electronic gadgets, public invisibility, charalatans and quacks), Monotract (Dylan Nyoukis gets schooled in Big Apple wisdom by this group of beach-blanket acidheads and New York City improv tour guides), David Lester (Mecca Normal guitarist’s surreal, interdisciplinary comics that combine choreography, quasi-clip art, collage, painting, text and typography), and Jim Leftwich (texts, images, collages and other hors de guerre by experimental writer, visual poet, xtant editor and Juxta publisher).
We Make Nihilists Smile Again
(Phage - PT152) CD $12.00
Starting off, Barrikad's dark ambient collaboration with Kriminaaliset Metsanhaltijat clocks in at a modest nineteen minutes. Ominous soundscapes, sparse vocals, the clang of metal objects. With Fear Konstruktor, they produce synth warble with strange vocals. The final track is a straight-up harsh noise blast collaboration with Government Alpha. With eight-page book. Edition of 500.
Descent to Mimas
(Groundfault - GF018) CD $12.00
John Wiese has been instrumental in pushing the evolution of Eric Wood’s Man Is The Bastard side project toward the predatory galactic monster it is by combining its original caveman electronic roots with new atmospheric sounds. Using oscillators, mixer-feedback and other electronic grit, this is a fairly killer concept album about traveling to one of Saturn’s moons, drilling through the surface of the cold, cold rock, fatally stumbling upon a catacomb of alien millipedes, and drifting lifelessly inside space coffins.
Beins / Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE01) CD $14.40
The first volume in Erstwhile live series took place during the first night of outside shows in the Berlin half of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. This was their first set as a duo since the sessions which resulted in Grain (Zarek, 2001). “Rowe (credited with guitar, electronics) seems to be responsible for the buzzsaw-encountering-sheet-metal racket and fastforward/rewind activity,” Exclaim muses, “while Beins (percussion) contributes everything from tingling bells to rusty playground-equipment shrieks. The results are a terrific earcleanser of an album, a salutary blast of spleen and perversity…”
Felt, If Not Seen
(Phage - PT175) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. A single fifty-seven-minute track of tension-building electronics and percussion, hovering in between apocalypse and rapture. For fans of ambient room-filling organic sounds. Recorded live in 2009, the music features drums, metal objects, slack-stringed de-tuned guitar, winds, and electronics. Edition of 500.
Your Messiah Will Fail
(BloodLust! - B!143) CDR $12.00
Your Messiah Will Fail takes a far more confrontational approach than Bereft's "Tough Man" b/w "Religious Leaders" single, which had a darker, more death-industrial feel to it. Comparable to the high-fidelity assault of the recent Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck 7-inch and the classic P.E. approach of Slogun -- all the while maintaining its own personality and style -- Bereft is now a venomous two-piece group, as Andrew Grant (aka The Vomit Arsonist) has joined Peter Lee to accost listeners with harsh-yet-nuanced electronic sounds and potent vocals that feature prominently in the mix. The songs were written prior to the 2008 US presidential election, about which Lee vented, particularly Barack Obama's exceedingly "star" or "godlike" status. Lee makes a vehement cry against the current two-party political system, and the ever-changing system of support that allows too many politicians to avoid responsibility for their actions.
Computers S.P.A. / Com.SA
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR077) 2xCD $18.00
The second in At War’s series of CD reissues of early tapes by noise legend MB features very primitive use of synthesizer, tape loops and tape manipulation. Lo-fi, otherwordly. Edition of 500.
Industrial Murder / Menstrual Bleeding
(Phage - PT157) CD $12.00
An early work of Maurizio Bianchi recorded at Mectpyo Studio in 1981. Originally released by Banned Productions in 1992 on LP. CD packaged in five-color screen-printed arigato packs. Two tracks, fifty minutes. Edition of 300.
Symphony for a Genocide
(Hospital - HOS103) CD $12.00
(Hospital - HOS103) Used CD $5.00
Originally released in 1981, this debut album followed numerous tape-only releases by this Italian industrial legend. MB's bleak, chilling drones contain plenty of well-constructed brutality with hallucinatory blasts of electronic noise, grinding rhythms of hand-cut tape noise, and overblown synthetic distortion.
Technology 1 & 2
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR048) 2xCD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
First in a series of early recordings by one of the noise originators. More ambient than some of his legendary work, with strange machine beeps and mechanical sounds.
Birds Call Home Their Dead
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $6.00
The thirty-minute title track on this 2007 disc comes on like "supercharged outerspace noise-rock ... that builds ... until the whole thing explodes into a full-on in-the-red space-rock free jam.... "Kissing Dragon" ... [with its] languid, high-end shimmer, layers of guitar, tangled melodies [and] deep reverberant swells [is] woven into a ... dreamlike raga...." The final track, "Her Anger Is Limitless," previously released as a tour CDR (Celebrate Psi Phemenon 2006), "sounds like a million guitars..., guys outside cutting down trees and tossing them in the wood chipper..., [a] futuristic synth battle, thousands of little bells and chimes, a roomful of amps turned on and buzzing with no instruments plugged into them...."
Gunpowder Temple of Heaven
(Pica Disk - PICA04) CD $14.50
Since the mid-’90s New Zealander Campbell Kneale has been a leading voice within his generation of NZ sound artists. The single 40-minute track here builds and unfolds in a manner that is heavenly for drone-noise enthusiasts. Bruce Russell of The Dead C notes that the “ ‘more is more’ strategy [often] backfires into murky sludge, where the increasing layers merely obscure each other. On the contrary, the more Birchville Cat Motel puts into a piece, the more you hear coming out.”
BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL / BRUCE RUSSELL
Untitled
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $6.00
2003 collaboration by Campbell Neale and that one guy from the Dead C and A Handful of Dust. The former plays violin, turntables, space phone, bamboo rattle, amplified sugar bowl, milkshake mixer, turntables, contact mics, computer speakers, tapes, clarinet, recorder, transceiver mic, organ, and cheap synth, while the latter handles guitar, effects, tape loops, fire, pine cones, water, electric toothbrush, percussion, and oscillator.
Aperture
(23five - 23F06) CD $12.00
Coarse streams of electrons flange and pulsate within caustic firestorms recorded without overdubs in real time by kick-ass Mills composer who’s been using computers and electronics since the ’70s. Plenty of cold wheezatronics and busy, subterranean computer hoot. Guest appearances by piano, percussion, and water manipulator Kenneth Atchley.
Filthy Communions 2005/2009
(Turgid Animal) CD $15.00
Five live recordings from Helsinki and Rio De Janeiro. Total filth, complete noise, no bullshit (meaning no foolishness; actual bovine fecal matter is more than welcome, in all likelihood). Twelve-page booklet with pictures from the gigs and shit-smeared all over. Edition of 300.
Melancholy of a Pagan Bucolic Spirit
(Legion Blotan - BLOT005) CD $14.00
The third album. Two long tracks, over forty minutes of raw, melancholic black metal, closely attached to the land and nature.
BLACK LEATHER JESUS / RICHARD RAMIREZ
Scrapyard
(Phage - PT136) CD $12.00
CD reissue of an LP (Praxis Dr. Bearmann 1995) plus a ten-minute bonus track. Lots of metal noises, violent distortion, porno samples and an overall assault on the senses.
Skuff
(Turgid Animal - TA371) CD $10.00
Join Kevin Novak, Richard Ramirez, Scott Houston, Vance Osborne and Sean Matzus on this journey into self-degradation and filthy, revenge-riddled noise violence. Step back in time to the slave auction. Hear the abuse.
The Defining Love (Top / Bottom Exchange)
(Shamanic Trance - STCD1) CD $17.00
Harsh junk noise from Richard Ramirez, Sean Matzus, Kevin Novak (T.E.F.), Scott Houston (Respirator), Robert Newsome, Vance Osborne and Thomas Mortigan. Also features a collaboration with Ascites. CD is housed in a black paper wallet packaged in seven-by-seven folded cover. Edition of 300.
Sex Magik
(Troniks - TRO282) CD $7.50
A legacy-destroying new low. A single session spoken word interpretation of the complete lyrics to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' landmark album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. All audio stumbles, mispronunciation and apartment squeal preserved. Edition of 100.
Children’s Suite and Live at PBS
(Dual Plover) 7-inch + CD $15.50
Possibly the sickest release produced by a label that specializes in a sweet variety of ill. Contrary to expectation, Kevin Blechdom (Belctum From Blechdom, Erase Errata) transforms the Beatles classic “Twist and Shout” into a celebration of prenatal pleasure. The first 500 copies come with a bonus CD of La Bleckles recorded live at PBS FM during her 2006 tour of Australia. Nice ’n’ womby.
Stealing From Helpless Children / Look Up
(Ad Hoc - ADHOC16/17) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
This two-disc set compiles the entire recorded output of this band that came of age during the ascent of '80s DIY -- two full albums and bonus material collected from compilation appearances and the like. The first album reflects the irreverence of Residential / Zappa-esque rock and their own untamed personalities. One the second disc, their darker 1992 album, drum machines and lo-fi synthesizers dominate. Still fractured.
BLOOD STEREO / KOMMISSAR HJULER / MAMA BÄR
Blutige Polize
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC213) CDR $7.50
This three-way split for audio vérité aficionados. Hjuler's down the pub with his mates, laughing, singing, listening to old Anal Probe comps. Baer plugs in her guitar and hollers long-ass hymns to hysteria. A bit of me-time and all is rosy. Blood Stereo unfolds the first part of their digestive tract concept triptych with the sounds of Nyoukis's bowels rumbling, moving along with stalker-friendly imported bird-calls, concluding with a post-prandial take on the opener.
Magnetism
(BloodLust! - B!057) CD $12.00
CD re-release of the fourth full-length Bloodyminded album (Bloodlust 2006), comprised of fifteen feedback-drenched tracks set apart from current Bloodyminded by the more abstract, eccentric, and guttural vocals.
Plays Bloodyminded
(BloodLust! - B!095) CDR $10.50
CD edition of out-of-print cassette, first released in a numbered edition of 100 copies for the April 2007 Bloddyminded tour, then in a numbered edition of 25 copies for the Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now exhibition at Printed Matter in New York City. Special conceptual recordings approved by Pierpaolo Zoppo himself.
Novum Castellum
(Turgid Animal - TA405) 3xCD $30.00
The first ever doom record on Turgid Animal reissues In And Around Newcastle, a live CDR box set (Fuckin' Amateurs, 2008) by these Northeast England masters. The live sets are essentially "bootleg" (albeit official) recordings and as such are not of the clearest quality. Includes the entire In And Around Newcastle recordings plus an extra disc of bonus live material. Limited to 300 copies. Packaged in DVD case.
Barbed Wire Maggots
(Agaric - 1983) CD $12.00
Reissue of their essential 1983 album. Highly recommended by Hindu gnostics such as Byrey Colon, to wit: "Upper register bowel tingling never felt so good. Miller's guitar joins [Sauter and Dietrich's saxes] in the stratosphere, plugging raw current into metal bowls, sizzling like a wok full of stewardess jiz, just creating and distorting and worrying the fabric of the cosmos like some idiotic terrier-god from a lost part of the Upanishads."
Royals
(Monotype - MONO034) CD $12.75
Three new pieces somewhere between composition, song, literary essay, poem and unreligious mantra, without embracing any genre in particular. Bosetti translates intonations of speech into complex and seemingly orchestral scores where meaning, tone and noise melt together. Inspired by Arcimboldo's 16th Century paintings, which he calls "examples of hand made convolution and shadowing," he pours words into notes, notes into noise, and noise into meaning. Repetition, meditation, hallucination. Harpsichord, piano, guitar, soprano saxophone, field recordings. The core of the sinuous "Gloriously Repeating" is generated from a short fragment from the W.G. Sebald poem "After Nature." "Life Expectations" is constructed around the intricate emotional, rhythmic and melodic counterpoints of a casual conversation, where the sensitive interaction between voices becomes the matter. The text of the surreal and short “Dead Man” implies a ready-made pseudo-zen philosophy of resurrection derived from quotes of Iron Maiden lyrics.
Instant Oblivion
(Dual Plover) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Sydney, Australia’s favorite chronically depressed, long-term unemployed, alcoholic, asthmatic, homosexual electronic music pioneer spent the waking half of two years concocting his third collection of solo works. If his previous Ruffini Corpuscle was a plumb designed to measure the depths of a luscious aural abyss, Instant Oblivan is the measurement discovered by its predecessor’s journey deep into exquisite musical epiphany. “Bradbury is a master sonic bricklayer,” concludes Mess + Noise, “who has the ins and outs of tension and release down pat.”
The Meta Mega
(Melon Expander - ME007) CD $13.50
In January 2007, seven-year-old Sienna Sol hosted a jam at her family's Three Kings Day party. Sienna and her friends explored the tickly extra-terrestrial voices of Old Mr. Grassi (an electronic instrument designed by Ciat-Lonbarde's Peter Blasser); an active six months followed during which Sienna and her nine-year-old friend Valentin partook of free jams on analog electronics, rock instruments, amplified bicycle, microphones, and surreal stream-of-consciousness storytelling that is image-inducing, playful, and at times, haunting. Experimenting with most of these instruments and organized-sound concepts for the first time, the duo's raw intuitive creativity surpasses the outer limits of what is usually heard in “children's music.”
Drive Home With a Hammer
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD036) CD $13.50
Early works previously released on Smalltown Supersound -- solo, as one half of Larmoyant duo, and in collaboration with Masami Akita, Bruce Russell, Jon Hegre, Kjetil D. Brandsdal, Maja Ratkje, Zbigniew Karkowski and others.
Debon
(Paradigm Discs - PD07) CD $13.50
Obscure, crazed mantric rock by an underground Japanese group from the mid-’70s and/or ’80s, about whom no information was ever given, and no production date or location is indicated. Long pieces of hypnotic free form rock hysteria with heavily fuzzed electric guitar à la Faust; Damo Suzuki-like vocal gibber; rhythm courtesy of sleigh bells, tambourine, bass drum and other whackadoo; hard-blown harmonica sludge; and plenty of masterful keeko-bleeko: flute, zither, mandolin, acoustic guitar and synth, tape loops, electronics, environmental sounds, backward tapes and the hysterical laughter of Stan Laurel.
A Real Nice Clambake
(BUFMS - BUFMS35) CDR $8.00
Recorded at a confusing and ambiguous event in 1987 at Wooj, where pockets of inexplicable activity included the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble applying their singular style of awkward to guitars, bass, Casio, wooden recorders, mandolins. Cassette players throughout the house were recording, while others played loops, telephone answering machine messages, and field recordings. Numerous television sets broadcast anything from The Brady Bunch to cornball noir, while radios broadcast The Isley Brothers, Crosby Stills & Nash, XTC, Paper Lace, Malcolm McLaren, and The Archies. Hours and hours of material was edited into four tracks totaling 51 minutes in length. The incidental, the involuntary, the unintended and the accidental take the lead on A Real Nice Clambake, which captures and repeats sneezes, coughs, burps, mumbles, grunts, moans, clicks, clacks, and clunks, the obnoxious zont of cables getting plugged in, tape hiss, bottles opening, keys and bottle openers rattling on tables, silverware scuttling on porcelain plates, and doors slamming. Mics are jostled and papers are shuffled, amid the spastic xylophone–windchime hybrid of coffee mugs getting stirred with strange vigor. The motor of one of the tape recorders wheezes so loudly that its own microphone picks up the sound. The group’s magical ineptitude perseveres through abrupt left turn after abrupt left turn, dizzying in their constancy, and through stretches of meandering guitar-playing, repetition, interruption, and the peculiar declarations of those present. Released to coincide with Bren't Lewiis's performance at Colour Out Of Space, November 2011. Includes an Industrial Expressionist collage made of hand-painted screen, fragment of found photograph, and defective scrap from commercial print shop.
At The North Pole, Easter Day, 1982
(What The ... - WHAT012) LP (one-sided) + 3in CDR $17.00
In comparison to the only other available recording of a complete live performance by the BLE (the side-long “Industrial Barbecue,” on the BUFMS boxset), At The North Pole, Easter Day, 1982 is starker and more minimal overall. Performing as a quintet at an open mic night in a student cafeteria, the group had played live only once prior and had yet to amass the collection of ubiquitous tape players and answering machines that accompanied most subsequent performances and recordings. The absence of overt forward progress in some parts gives the performance an incidental resemblance to those tense moments in grim power electronics just before the singer goes berserk, but then ridiculous verbal repetitions and Top 40 references come out of nowhere like nerdy Fluxus rehearsals in the middle of a New Orleans funeral. Other segments highlight the difference between aboriginal metal percussion and pots ’n’ pans getting banged together by people with a remarkably spastic sense of rhythm. Visually, Bren’t Lewiis were like a cross between the jackets of early Nurse With Wound albums and a bunch of hicks impersonating Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Television sets flickered throughout. Doug Roberts brought his bicycle onstage. Dressed in a labcoat and white wool-felt USAF boots, howling into his signature plastic lawn flamingo, Lucian Tielens stretched the limits of publicly acceptable intimate congress with inanimate objects. Tim Smyth wore a bunch of Christmas lights attached to a Civil Defense helmet. Peter D had a garbage bag filled with helium balloons taped to his head and toilet paper wrapped around his face. As some sort of oblique Day-Glo homage to Carmen Miranda, Gnarlos wore a handmade upside-down sweatsuit. The amplified 21-foot aluminum sailboat mast, the undisputed star of the show, was so unwieldy that use of a special freight door was required just to get in and out of the building, and yet a single, lonely metallic “ploong!” was pretty much the limit of its sonic palette -- appropriate testament to the methodology of this absurdly inefficient group. Includes insert printed with glow-in-the-dark ink, and a reproduction of the flyer advertising the show. Edition of 129. All orders placed here include a 3-inch CDR of previously unreleased hoot, not available elsewhere.
Out Patience
(BUFMS - BUFMS33) CDR $8.00
Performed inside a darkened, cavernous student union on the evening of April 28, 1984, this after-hours guerrilla action corrupts the thirteenth text from Aus den Sieben Tagen in a barn where damaged minotaurs are stabled. Lucian Tielens, Tim Smyth and Gnarlos were in constant motion, re-positioning themselves throughout the building, possessed by plastic flamingo, goink visions, and the compulsion to insert their heads into buckets and howl. Four excerpts totaling eight minutes in length appear on Three Christs of Ypsilanti (Siltbreeze 2010), but this is the first and only time the recording of the complete, uninterrupted 47-minute session has been available. In addition to "hurled cafeteria cutlery, defective boomboxes and answering machines blaring prerecorded tape, the public piano, and a variety of unidentified flailing objects," brentstrumentation includes The Nube Tube (a corrugated hose from a hair dryer swung like a bullroarer), harmonica, metal remnants of antique armaments, hula hoop, socket wrench, aluminum bicycle crankset, toy guitars, toy pianos, bongos, glassware, marbles chucked off the balcony, the staircase, aluminum cans (kicked), pie tins (spun), metal coils, jewelry, Star Wars pinball machine, moans, gurns, chants, sneezes, whistles and insectoid heralds. Includes hand-painted screen, and either a found photo or a damaged scrap from a print shop. Edition of 50.
Three Christs of Ypsilanti
(Siltbreeze - SB131) LP + 3-inch CDR $15.00
The first post-BUFMS-boxset disgorgement of ramshackle outsider clatter and howl from one of California’s many rural nowheres exposes previously hidden, 25-year-old whack-off (à la Smegma and other bent LAFMS trippers, the UK’s A Band, 5 Starcle Men, Gastric Female Reflex, Id M Theft Able, and the sort of visionaries currently promoted by labels such as Chocolate Monk, Destijl, and Ultra Eczema). The murky “Take It Out And Kill It” whirls around in conflicting directions in a manner one critic long ago described as “schizophrenic muzak.” “Dark Surprise,” a 1986 recording from the crossroads of DIY autism and darkened psychedelia, is previously unreleased (the first playback of the master tape didn’t happen until 2008). In contrast to the group’s usual embrace of any and all kitchen sinks in the immediate vicinity, this recording was made solely with electric guitars, voice and prerecorded audio frottage. Book-ending both sides are excerpts from an after-hours, no-audience, guerrilla action recorded in a multistory, split-level university student union, using hurled cafeteria cutlery, defective boomboxes and answering machines blaring prerecorded tape, the public piano, and a variety of unidentified flailing objects. “[As] secretive as a posse’ve Masons bidding in a goat auction … a weird , befuddlin storm comin’ outta the night … tryin’ to charm you into the muddy arms of the undertow.” –Roland Woodbe, Siltblog NOTE: Copies of this LP purchased here include a 3-inch CDR of previously unreleased bonus tracks.
Celadonia
(Melon Expander - ME008) CD $13.50
Selected from hundreds of hours of solo material and collaborations with Petra Haden (That Dog, Decemberists, Foo Fighters), Rick Potts (Solid Eye, Dinosaurs With Horns, LAFMS) and Leticia Castaneda, Bryan Eubanks, and Joe Foster (Seoul, Korea), Celadonia is the first substantial release of Brown's electronic and electro-acoustic music. Working primarily with magnetic tape, analog synthesizers, organ, contact microphones, various resonant objects and signal processors, these extended improvisations were recorded and sculpted into compositions between 2002 and 2006. At times the magnetic tape loop techniques employed seem to stem from seeds planted by pioneering tape manipulator and Zen-humorist Henry Jacobs, Terry Riley and his time-lag-accumulator method or the one-man Melon Expander house-band, Joseph Hammer. Fused with other electronic systems created to exist as sustainable yet pliable sound fields, these sprawling cinemas-for-the-ear embody anything from ghostly distant memories to funhouse mirror refraction to enveloping shimmering cyclones. Brown has also recorded and/or performed with Points of Friction, Paramecial Wedding, Joe Potts, Joseph Hammer, G.E. Stinson, Tom Recchion, Albert Ortega, Loachfillet, John Wiese / Sissy Spacek, Johannes Bergmark, Smegma, Ezra Buchla, Leticia Castaneda, Lionel Marchetti, Giussepe Ilasi, Jerome Noetinger, Barry Conley, Thomas Dimuzio, Kevin Shields, Los Cincos/ Syncopation, Martian Mellows and Gasp among many others.
Terminal Hz
(Groundfault) CD $12.00
32-minute five-movement slap-and-tickle by Japanese bombastic guitarist KK Null (Zeni Geva) and Australian guitarist David Brown (Dumb And The Ugly, Bucketrider). Terminal Hz leans on electronic-based improv, nosebleed textures, musique concrète, high-pitched tones, and sparse electric guitar. Not really soothing, not really noise either. Sort of like a cross between Derek Bailey and two spaceships having a near miss.
Inside The Shadow
(Hospital - HOS212) CD $13.50
Unlike the majority of C. Spencer Yeh’s electronic compositions, this reissue of an obscure tour-only recording from 2005 brings three textures to life with violin, chimes and bells. Yeh’s landscape-oriented, linear compositions surpass the limitations of most of his contemporaries’ synth-only exercises.
Mes Soldats Stupides ’96 -’04
(Cenotaph) 2xCD $13.50
Disc one features primarily vocal/electronics selections from the out-of-print White Swords in a Black Castle, Amelia, and Crystal Castles releases, along with a few choice tracks originally released on Chondritic Sound and Gods of Tundra. Disc two stretches back a bit further into the archives, with some live performances and unreleased tracks in the mix.
BURNING STAR CORE / HOTOTOGISU
Volume One
(DroneDisco) CD $10.50
Five tracks, totaling approximately fifty minutes by the time-defying duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Ramleh, Sunroof!, Total) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, GHQ, Zaimph) collaborating with C. Spencer Yeh, Robert Beatty, and Trevor Tremaine (the latter two of Hair Police, Eyes And Arms Of Smoke, Sick Hour). Originally released as a tour merch CDR, this edited and re-sequenced edition begins with an appropriate invocation and from there punches blindly through one stone cloud after another, coughs and gasps from exhaustion, stumbles and lies motionless. The ritual concludes with a moment of naked acoustic/instinctual spasm. Packaged in a black polycase with black-and-white inserts and a special randomly-selected one-inch button (five button variations in all). All different material from the companion volume HG/BxC II released by the Heavy Blossom label.
BUTTE COUNTY FREE MUSIC SOCIETY
Induced Musical Spasticity
(BUFMS - BUFMS25) 4xLP + CD $65.00
Induced Musical Spasticity commemorates the nascent pollination — in the musty shadows of the real ersatz Sherwood Forest, a couple hundred miles north of San Francisco — of the Buttecounty Free Music Society, an apocryphal institution that encouraged anything and nothing, in musical and amusical contexts, sometimes intentionally, sometimes because no one knew any better or cared. Highbrow concept tracks by The Marques (brothers Cole and Steve Marquis) and the dramaturgical Unlikely Modernists, along with Ambivalent Dosage’s pre-Vomit Launch nihilism, mutter and howl next to mad paisley destructo by Dilwhip and the quartet edition of 28th Day, Hypnagogic Jerk’s overmodulated roar, and sweet, YMG-influenced instrumentals by Hallucinatory Companion (aka Barbara Manning and Cole Marquis). Ripe dementia by Experimental Artists, Lawrence Crane and John Young, and Tops Inc. stops rational people in their tracks, while turntable experiments, tape yoink, and high-lonesome electro-twarnk by Rory Lyons, Ziplok, Sidney Afrika, The Conduits, Lucian Tielens, and Richard Streeter shuffle the consciousness. And then you’ve got primitard rock dunt by The Flamboyant Offals, Walking Jock, Dead Boy 3, and shockingly raw 28th Day material that predates most anyone’s idea of the original line-up of that influential band. Four episodes of Matt Mumper’s serial radio play Beor The Friendly Thing appear, in all its inscrutable, deadpan glory. The Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble pollutes the lion’s share of real estate with a side-long tape cut-up a la Faust Tapes called “Goat Embryo (Covered With Glue),” and their entire live set from the Industrial Barbecue. Also here are the spot-on country lament “Plastic Jesus”; the electronic damage of “Mid-Range Phase/Link 3"Dome”; the Smegma-influenced “Lightbulb Incident,” infamous for its live, on-air sodomy; a KCSC radio interview that includes the group’s first recordings; and a handful of previously unreleased tracks. Two-thirds of the material here was previously released (translation: a few dozen cassettes were dubbed one at time and passed through the hands of people in the same rural Northern California area code 25 years ago). All the relics in this boxset are likely unheard by anyone not specifically mentioned above.
Suave Siesta
(Purple Soil - PS2004) Used CD $8.00
Part reissue of an out-of-print Jazzassin release called Siesta, part new material in the same vein (Suave) by this Origami Republika head of state. Environmental collage, field recordings, minimally processed sounds, plenty of silence, and devices referred to as "analog laptops."
Abuse / Breathing Sewage
(BloodLust! - B!120) CDR $12.00
This release brings together hard-to-find tracks from the repugnant noise-era of Lexington, Kentucky's Cadaver In Drag, a shadowy period prior to their mutation into a filthy, free-sludge-doom-psychedelic behemoth (as heard on Raw Child [Animal Disguise 2007]). The first two tracks come from the Abuse CD (Husk Records 2005); “Breathing Sewage” (Animal Disguise 2005) is the A-Side of the ultra-limited, tour-only cassette of the same name. The sinuous and turbid connection between these three affiliated tracks comprises lurking danger, darkness, discomfort, dissonance, deviance, and dread. The fourth and final track is a collaboration between Cadaver In Drag and Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded, The Fortieth Day, Anatomy of Habit, ex-Super Eight Loop, ex-Animal Law, ex-Intrinsic Action). They created a bass-heavy bedrock foundation, over which he delivers feedback-laced vocals.
Delay 1968
(Restless) Used CD $6.00
Recorded 1968/1969 at Schloss Nörvenich. With Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, Malcolm Mooney.
Music (Live 1971-1977)
(Mute) Used 2xCD $10.00
With "Jynx," "Dizzy Dizzy," "Vernal Equinox," "Fizz," "Yoo Doo Right," "Cascade Waltz," "Colchester Finale," "Kata kong," and "Spoon." Released 1999.
Soon Over Babaluma
(Restless) Used CD $6.00
1990 reissue. Recorded 1974. Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli.
The End Of Irony
(Dual Plover) LP + CD $15.00
Electronic breakcore disco by Jonathan Snipes and crew. Dual Plover's edition (aka the red edition) is similar to Deathbomb Arc's (aka the blue edition), but not identical. Fifteen tracks total, five of which are not on the blue edition, two are on vinyl for the first time, and three are drastically reworked.
EUGENE CARCHESIO / LEIGHTON CRAIG
Leaves
(Naturestrip) CD $14.25
Eugene Carchesio’s timeless work as a visual artist has unjustly eclipsed his extraordinary output as a soundmaker. Since the early ’80s, he has proliferated a sackful of barely released cassettes and CDRs under the D.N.E moniker, consisting of some of the most waywardly original and exploratory music made in Australia. Similarly, Leighton Craig’s work, usually documented in tiny editions on his own Kindling label, has been heard by relatively few ears, but those who listen are immediately struck by the sublime sensibility, the effortlessness, and the exquisitely detailed understatement of his music. Carchesio and Craig are core members of the freely improvising psych-primitive ensemble The Lost Domain, whose CDs on Pseudo Arcana, Broken Face and Digitalis have created a fairly hefty underground stir, yet as a duo, their music has never previously traveled further then the ears of a handful of close friends.
The Knotted Constellation (Fourteen Rotted Coordinates)
(Monotype - MONO039) CD $12.75
Field recordings from around the world, surreal collage techniques and synthetic sounds derived from digital audio tools. With contributions by C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Lithuanian sound artist Darius Ciuta and Berlin-based circuit bender Guido Henneböhl, among others.
Radio Ghosts
(23five) CD $12.00
Catlin’s recorded output stands among the best that Glenn Branca, Keith Rowe, and Jim O’Rourke have mustered from their six strings hard wired into the histories of electroacoustics, minimalism, and post-punk experimentation. The Melbourne guitarist incessantly tinkers with the mechanics of his instrument, envisioning it as a mimetic sculptural object and as a pure sound generator. Through his experiments with alternative tunings, atypical string gauges, and Rube Goldberg contraptions of interconnected motors, speakers, and radios, he seeks rasping textures of strings vibrating against each other, acoustic phase patterns of two microtonally tuned strings, and the electrical purity of circuits feeding back upon themselves, essentially creating a polyglot drone symphony cast in smoldering monochrome. Radio Ghosts is devoid of Marshall stacks, Sunn amps, and stomp boxes; Catlin captures the acoustic phenomenon of the guitar’s transient vibrations and steers clear of any tricked out sonic demolition.
RICHARD CHARTIER / ASMUS TIETCHENS
Fabrication
(Die Stadt - DS99) CD $30.00
The first collaboration by these two renowned sound artists, which began during the production of Re-Post-Refabricated, a project where Chartier selected artists to rework and create new works from his 1998 CD Postfabricated for its reissue in 2003, and evolved into its present state after Tietchens continued to explore the source materials and suggested further formal collaboration. Include a limited edition bonus CD entitled Pre-Fabrication.
Air In The Sand
(Naturestrip - NS3004) CD $14.25
San Francisco sound artist Loren Chasse’s recording processes revolve around active participation within particular, unspecified environments into which he broadcasts drones, textures, and field recordings. Crickets gurgle within aqueous percolations and tectonic surf crashes against rock; rain vaporizes in a caustic sizzle as it hits electrical wires, compounded by the sharp crack of branches and the slow hiss of sand. Outside ongoing pastoral contributions to the polyphonic Jewelled Antler constellation, Chasse exposes something profoundly beautiful lurking in the shadows of the landscape.
Grey Ghost
(Box Kite - BK005) CD $10.00
Greg Freeman (Pell Mell) and Jeff Palmer (Granfaloon Bus) have been making "dub fodder" together since 1996. The duo creates organic atmospheres by crossing analog randomness with the digital control of Logic Audio. No less an authority than Germans have nothing but admiration for the results: "Checksum create a blueprint for the dub of the future: warmly and personally. Arrivals! 100% of hearing experience guarantees!" -- Gleis 22 Club "Sounds to a nocturnal walk by a San Francisco wrapped in nebulas. Somehow terribly, somehow fascinatingly." --Szene "Checksum filter the straight pure, reduced dub elements (emphasis bass and schlagzeug, plus a quantity resound and Krimskrams noises)." --DE:BUG
Oxide
(23five) CD $12.00
New York-based sound artist Scott Konzelmann's activities have comprised installations featuring his speaker construction assemblages and sonic compositions since 1987. His sound and noise are intrinsically connected to his sculptural objects, which, forged from re-purposed junkyard fragments fitted with functional loudspeakers, compress and articulate particular frequencies into hissing static, jet-engine drones, and noxious rumbles. The original analog tapes of Oxide happened to become moisture-damaged, creating drop-outs, print-throughs, and ghostly noise shadows of Konzelmann's muscular drone music, and the tape itself also began to crumble during playback, in eerie parallel to both William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and Hafler Trio's Intoutof. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008.
Shiny Crystal Planet
(Alchemy - ARCD119) Used CD $20.00
A fusion of the psychedelic phrasing of Angel’in Heavy Syrup guitarist Fusao Toda and the spacey electronics of Masonna’s Maso Yamazaki, pumped full of pop fashion sense, the perfect soundtrack for an astro-modernist go-go lounge.
You’re Never Safe
(BloodLust!) CDR $14.00
Comprised of nine pieces -- including a cover of the delightfully indelicate Deathpile song, "Breaking A Doll" -- You're Never Safe blends power-electronics, death-industrial, and noise.
Buried on Bunker Hill
(Groundfault) CD $12.00
Guitarist Nels Cline and bassist Devin Sarno have been playing together for almost 10 years, and this is their first multitrack recording (their past collaborations have been live). With a focus on improvisation and texture, Buried on Bunker Hill rumbles thick, low and foggy, as Cline’s detuned and bent guitar mechanics gravitate, distort, meander and hover. For fans of Labradford, Flying Saucer Attack, and the like. Easily the best recording by a duo with chemistry to burn.
Mit Neuen Waffen
(Trash Ritual - TRASH052) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
First recordings by Belgian industrial / experimental group, along with live documentation from Budapest, July 17, 1982, originally released on cassette (Club Moral 1983). Contains the early workings of future classics such as "Exces Kontrol," "Eating Limbs," "Lonely Weekends," etc. Connections here can be traced to V-Side, Minus Delta T, Gyuri Kozma and Janos Veto's Band. All material originally recorded onto a plain cassette deck and Sony walkman. Trash Ritual's first in as series of Club Moral archive reissues.
Glass Sponge
(23five) CD $12.00
The textural flutters, squeaks, and mobile scrabblings of Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler Collective, Thuja) and corrosion aficionado Jim Haynes bring minimalism back from the dead. Bell tones, ghostly feedback, and tuning fork resonations all spiral together into translucent drones.
Mud Wall
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Audio speleologists Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler, Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies) and Jim Haynes (The Wire) collaborate on their third album of “broken minimalism,” an exploration of sound possibilities originating from traditionally non-musical materials (copper, stone, glass, sand, shortwave radio, rust, wind, water and mud). Sifting through viscous electrical fields, slumbering vibrations, and aerosolized pricklings, the duo invokes an aggregate of sustained harmonics, continuously evolving sound forms, and broad gestures of textural details. Monumental physicality somewhere between the quiet expressionism of recent AMM and John Duncan’s psychological inquiries.
Wrack Light In Copper Ruin
(Seal Pool) CD + DVD $15.00
Jim Haynes and Loren Chasse collaborated with Keith Evans to create Coelacanth’s fourth and most complex record. Culled from two performances -- a five-hour recording session during Matmos’s 96 hours at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and an audio/visual performance with Keith Evans -- Wrack Light in Copper Ruin is more delicate than Coelacanth’s previous recordings, inhabiting a space where artists such as Jonathan Coleclough, Andrew Chalk, Mirror, and MNortham can be found, yet it maintains the mysterious, oceanic nature its name implies. Their sound illustrates a constant evolution of decay, encroachment, and repossession of the border space between the natural and the man-made.
Desperate Attempts At Beauty
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
At times startling, at others mysterious, Desperate Attempts at Beauty is an audio exploration of the damaged, and an excavation of inaudible murmurs from hidden recesses. With a strong pedigree in low-key noise and sound, Joe Colley of Crawl Unit should know how to spook a listener with the methodical patience of a thriller villain. An alien journey through a vast, rumbling institution.
Color Him Coma
(Paradigm Discs - PD27) 2xCD $18.50
The guest musicians on this CD set are many and varied, but it’s all put together by Gus Coma, Lepke B’s dwarfish cousin, who renounced show-biz to work as a Heavy Goods Vehicle driver. The kind of strange and experimental that makes a mutant proud to be defective. Expect gigantic tape loop symphonies, sundry plunderphonics, lo-fi Sparks and the voice of JFK, a William Burroughs interview (on one track), and a worn out teach-yourself-English tape. You're probably saying to yourself, "You had me at 'dwarfish'," but read on: The first disc reissues an obscure C60 (It's War Boys 1983), half of which is formed around several mixes of an experimental track, constructed from a room-sized 24-track loop (a different version appeared on The Just Measurers' Flagellation LP (It's War Boys 1983)), the other half of which is a tape collage of mostly unused (and some remixed) excerpts from what became the title track of the Milk From Cheltenham's Triptych of Poisoners LP (It's War Boys 1983 and Alga Marghen 2005); it's a live mixdown of seventeen cassette recordings of locked record grooves, stray radio and an infernal matchbox. The second disc is an alternative version of the tape on disc one; it follows a similar blueprint but also contains some very different music, primitive disco drum programming, and a somewhat more sophisticated sound quality. Two bonus tracks are included, originally intended as working material for the unfinished second Milk From Cheltenham LP. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
Repetition Is The Sincerest Form of Repetition
(BUFMS - BUFMS37) CDR $10.00
Inspired by Non’s Pagan Muzak (more by the repeating form than by the content), Repetition Is The Sincerest Form of Repetition was created in the early 1980s by two agriculture students (now anti-GMO activists), and released on their own Chair Chair cassette label. Using a handful of sound effects records as their sole audio source, Canker and Chancre created loops on reel-to-reel tape and endless cassettes used for answering machines, which were then manipulated via cut-up, speed, direction, saturation and multitracking for their independently made submixes; those were then merged together for the final mixes with virtually no further changes, because, as Chancre explains, “We didn’t want it to sound composed, so much as manufactured, as if it was all just happening by itself.” At times maddeningly busy with the stock-in-trade of old sound effects records -- animals and machines -- smeared, repeating, overlapping, the album’s raw and relentless uneasiness is further enhanced by omnipresent crackles and infrequent but abrupt silences. Includes non-GMO pasta (raw), and one of two different reproductions of artwork from Captain Protein noodle packaging. Edition of 50.
TONY CONRAD / MICHAEL F. DUCH / C. SPENCER YEH
Musculus Trapezius
(Pica Disk - PICA013) CD $14.00
An epic performance captured pristine, unfurling its massive limbs patiently and cannily over the course of seventy-plus minutes. Conrad mingles among trusted wood-and-steel sidekicks, engaged in both age-old conversations and inspired new inquisitions; Yeh bookends his passive/aggressive behavior on violin with spare piano incantations; Duchs acts as a ghostly anchor, casting formidable binding and deft velocity. Drones flow freely, but these reliable horizons fracture into surprising detours, tearing apart the instruments, the players involved, and the expectations of the music itself. From the abstract of the article "EMG Trapezius Muscle Activity Pattern in String Players:: Part I—Is There Variability in the Playing Technique?" authored by Anncristine Fjellman-Wiklund, Helena Grip, Jan Stefan Karlsson, and Gunnevi Sundelin, first published in the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics (Volume 33, Issue 4, April 2004): "Work-related neck and shoulder disorders are a great problem for string musicians; a playing technique with more relaxed muscles and a greater variation in the muscle activity pattern, i.e., with shorter sequences at a varied number of amplitude levels... might prevent pain." Oops.
Outside The Dream Syndicate
(Table Of The Elements - Li) Used CD $10.00
1993 reissue of minimalist classic, recorded in 1972. With one previously unreleased bonus track.
Pretties For You
(Enigma Retro) Used CD $8.00
Remastered reissue of their debut album (Straight 1969).
A Personal Hell
(Small Doses - dose47) 7-inch + CDR $10.50
Rarely is harsh noise done as well as when Crumer's in charge: deliberate, personal, and soul-shredding. Metal drags, scrapes, bangs, and creaks - blowing microphones, speakers, and your mind. Edition of 300 on brown/green vinyl.
Ottoman Black
(Hospital - HOS215) CD $13.75
Fresh off a breakthrough Future With No Chance LP (RRRecords), Jason Crumer returns with an album of midnight drones and true noise. Using powerfully clear electronics as a base for declarative noise bursts, Crumer manipulates the sounds with a resounding animosity. His mean streak yields to an array of silences over the course of the album but nothing here is not painful here, especially the quiet; the peaks are almost a relief. "Betrayal After Betrayal" stands out with its conversational quality, both the screams and the muffles, the physicality, while "Where Were You" is an actionist-influenced piece of torture. Ottoman Black is a stern and unforgiving universe. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008
Dedicated To Soledad Miranda
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR043) split CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
One massive, long and heavy dense drone track from Skullflower man Culver, and two tracks from Seppuku, famed for their antagonistic live shows (an ultra-heavy doom track and a power electronics attack).
Sugar Tip
(BloodLust! - B!121) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Lee Stekoe (Skullflower, Inseminoid, Marzuraan) moves air around with sound in a fairly unsettling way, à la Damion Romero, though Stokoe's is far denser and more complex. Heavier than drone, a far cry from simple harsh noise, Sugar Tip is described by the label as "blackened psychedelic noise."
Day For Night
(Paradigm Discs - PD14) CD $12.00
The foundation of this work consists of location recordings layered with the live or recycled sounds of Eastley's kinetic sculpture, delicate and elegant kinetic sound devices, either motor driven or animated by environmental forces like the wind, streams or the sea. "A brilliant tape-collage suite," says our friend Ed Pinsent from The Sound Collector. " 'Peep Show' mixes a firework display, a marching band, insects buzzing and snatches and samples of music and sound. 'Zero Day to Zero Night' has a bonfire, birdsong and a wild dog.... Peter Cusack is a veteran improviser on stringed instruments, including the guitar and bouzouki, both of which he plays here.... 'Cast' [is] a documentary tape from the factory floor with added layers of droning music. Most sublimely ... 'Arc Light' ... presumably features the electroacoustic monochord - without doubt a device of Eastley manufacture.... 'Shade 1' and 'Shade 2' ... are the most haunting...; both suggest stations on a surreal train-journey worthy of De Chirico."
Heavy Days Are Here Again
(Atavistic - ALP207CD) CD $11.00
Pianist, composer, unsung hero of Dutch creative music, member of the first incarnation of the Willem Breuker Kollektief, Cuypers brings Han Bennink and Breuker back together after a somewhat fractious split. The reunited band toured, made a national TV appearance, and then recorded this killer studio LP (BVHAAST 1981).
Canaxis
(Spoon) Used CD $6.00
"Boat-Woman-Song" and "Canaxis" were recorded in Cologne 1968, originally released 1969, remixed from the original tapes. The previously unreleased "Mellow Out" was Czukay's first piece of music performed for an audience in 1960 on the German radio, cut into vinyl by a small recording studio straight from the broadcast.
Sounds of Sacred Places
(Kye - KYE13) CD $15.00
"The presence of water and an enormous monolith in the midst of the vast desert plain is given as an explanation [for the] magical appeal [of] the 'Shadowgiving Mountain' of the Aborigines," writes the artist, "Better known under its western name ... Ayers Rock (Australia)...." [T]heir ancestors, the 'Dreamtime People' ... live in this mountain and speak to them in the sounds of the winds howling through the crevasses and rockholes. Uluru is also the dwelling-place of the 'World Serpent', the most powerful totem shared by the surrounding tribes. Sounds of Sacred Places attempts to transform the listener into a living witness of the sounds of similar places, not far away in any specific ethnic culture, but in Flanders." Kye's CD reissue of Sounds of Sacred Places (Igloo 1987) includes a 16-page booklet of photos and notes. Remastered from the original tapes by Darge. Edition of 500.
A Sound Atlas Of Venereology
(Trash Ritual - TRASH054) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second installment of the Club Moral archive series is DDV's interpretation of Anthony Wisdom's A Colour Atlas Of Venereology (Wolfe Medical Atlases 1973). All tracks were performed on Wasp and Korg MS50 synths, and recorded at Club Moral in 1982 on a plain stereo cassette deck with no additional remixing or mastering. Samples from Andrezej Zulawski's 1981 movie Possession were used; lyrics from the Colour Atlas, "Haut Und Geschlechtskrankheiten IV," "Visites Cliniques," and "Revue de Dermatologie" are recited in DDV's typically deranged, animal-like fashion. Almost all material here was never performed live nor featured on other Club Moral related recordings in any other form. Raw and offensive, with all original materials reprinted in a sixteen-page booklet. A classic piece of industrial history.
The Damned
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $14.00
Nasty rock screech that sacrifices not an ounce of the grace and finesse required of tamers of gigantic, wild sandworms. The Dead C’s improvised noise rock verges on disintegration with a trademark hazy disorientation, invariably evoking hypnotic and heavy moods. But The Dead C are no bummer. They have always sought liberation from shallow and easy rock conventions; amid the murk of cardboard box guitars, underwater vocals, and ramshackle drumming, a new consciousness emerges. The recognizable, sullen strumming, mumbling and lyrical ennui of Michael Morley, anchored by percussionist Robbie Yeats and punctuated by Bruce Russell’s atonal bursts coalesce in a solid front that mocks the efforts of schmaltz-peddling hacks.
Quadtych
(Present Time Exercises - PTECD1) CD $18.00
The entirety of Deas's colossal work for 12-string guitar spanning over 70 minutes in four parts. Exploring the sonic possibilities of guitar through a legion of extended techniques, the piece investigates the space between composition and free improvisation, moving between melodic sections reminiscent of Eastern folk music, vicious free improvisations and gradual minimalist transformations. Edition of 1000 copies.
Death & Beauty Foundation
(Somnimage - som018) CD $15.00
Val Denham and Andrew M. McKenzie's (Hafler Trio) 1982 avant garde masterpiece for the bewildered; that's right, the legendary Darlington tapes available after 26 years. “One long collage,” observes Vital Weekly, “The main instrument at work here is the voice … best described … as sound poetry, with a melodic touch…. [G]uitars, the good old Casio VL-tone 1 and several tape editing techniques (speeding up of sound, slowing down) [are] played rather naively and free.” Remastered, frightening and beautiful. The strangest album ever recorded.
DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE / FROGSKIN / SEMTEX
By The Malice Of The Evil... Death Comes! Vol 1
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR094) split CD $10.50
Three young Finnish sludge bands who take their cues from Eyehategod, Iron Monkey, Grief and, of course, Black Sabbath, putting their own spin on heavy, feedback-laden and bluesy dirges. Edition of 500.
Sublimation
(SNSE - SNSE073) CD $11.00
The debut CD from Diaphragm is an amalgamation of dark droning machinery, choppy shuddering, and static-laden buzz and whir augmented by a rusted mountain of ancient oscillators. These are exacting compositions inspired by the grayed-out hulks of broken concrete and broken razor wire that litter the landscape of the artist's surroundings. The sounds on Sublimation may appeal to listeners of Speculum Fight, Iovae, Tom Grimley. Diaphragm is the project of New York native Nicholas Pace. He is part of a core group of diverse young artists that include Halflings, Cathode Terror Secretion, Ahlzagailzehguh, Pharmakon, and others, that are providing for some serious and difficult listening in early 21st century NYC.
Pacta Daemoniarum / Crasse
(Hospital - HOS232) 2xCD $17.00
Diapsiquir's two remarkable double-albums on End All Life warrant the term avant-garde, without regard for blueprints, a rare honor. An obscure and controversial French outlaw black metal band known for their decadent activities, this 2xCD contains their first two demos -- Pacta Daemoniarum from 1999 and Crasse from 2001 -- both of which spit twisted, vociferous, manic vocals over complex, orchestrated, highly distorted chaotic metal. It never rests and is fully absorbed in the savage, sexually violent, drug-laden nihilism of French subculture.
AARON DILLOWAY / ROBERT TURMAN
Blizzard
(Hanson - HN211) CD $12.00
Total misery by Robert Turman (ex-NON, Z.O. Voider) and a former Wolf Eye, recorded in January 2009 during a horrible Ohio snowstorm. Dilloway on synthesizer and tape delays, Turman on tapes and effects, both frozen and stuck in the snow. Very minimal, very slow, very cold.
Shining Path
(Melon Expander) CD $13.50
Live sampling pioneer Thomas Dimuzio and tape-loop maestro Joseph Hammer (Solid Eye) swallow audiences with dark explorations of sound. They specialize in a symbiotic sound process as they continually loop, reloop, sample and resample within an interactive feedback circuit linking both artists. Nearly every aspect of Dimmer's live performances grace The Shining Path, yet this is not a live document, but rather a pastiche and reworking of everything Dimmer has accomplished in their years of performing as a duo. Recursive circuits meld into rich and seething sonic masses with subtle waves pulsing sound within sound. The Shining Path suspends the listener over dim and dank planes on an aural trip spanning and scanning from a celestial vista.
Return of the Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus
(Melon Expander - ME006) CD $13.50
Since 1983's self-titled cassette release on The Solid Eye label, Rick Potts and Joseph Hammer have delicately dispensed laughing-gas-balloon-animals-go-pop music as Dinosaurs With Horns. This cryptic LAFMS-related group occurred during and in between periods of playing with Points of Friction, Steaming Coils and Solid Eye. Spencer Savage and/or Tom Recchion played with them in the mid-'80s and continue intermittently since. A smattering of Dinosaurs With Horns material appears on various compilations and limited cassettes and CDRs, but Return of the Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus is the first full length CD, recorded November 2000 on KXLU and January 2007 at the LACE Gallery in Hollywood. It is the perfect soundtrack to a snorkeling dream or stumbling down the stairs with berries and cream. Obviously. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008.
Vol. 1-3
(Gaping Hole - GH01) CD $10.50
This scathing and unrelenting, perverted mix of static, distortion and feedback harkens back to the mid-'90s heyday of loud, sleazy noise. Dog Holocaust is the collaborative effort of Nolan Throop (Kakerlak) and Dan Johansson (Sewer Election) and this CD is a reissue of their first three now-out-of-print cassettes. An absolute must for fans of Macronympha, Incapacitants, Merzbow.
Human Interface
(Dual Plover - DP42) CD $16.00
Dokaka is a DIY human synthesizer: just a man and his voice. No effects, no auto-tune, no edits, no sampling. Not really a true beatboxer (he multitracks his vocals sometimes as many as 20 passes per song), he began vocally mimicking music while humming along to the television as a child and by the age of six was making tapes of his efforts. The bass-player missed a practice session by the band in which Dokaka played drums as a teenager, and he filled in by humming the bassline. The singer was so taken with his vocal ability he encouraged him to record more on his own. His vocal-only interpretations of Led Zeppelin, Slayer, The Rolling Stones, and many others gained cult status when his mp3s went viral (and attracted the attention of Björk, who incorporated his unusual skill into her 2004 Medúlla album). Available for the first time outside of Japan, Human Interface includes 17 hours of vocal insanity multi-tracked into 88 muttered micro-tracks.
DOUBLE U / GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION
Double U / Glands of External Secretion
(VHF - VHF31) 2xCD $12.00
An ambitious 30 minutes of pristine Double U klank und sturm, hailing their fjordic past while heralding their arrival at a new underwater home where mermaids play magic tubas and ghostly mariners dream of the four winds thousands of leagues above, plus a track-by-track demix of the same length, colliding the Glands’ kerflump with the Double U’s structure. Your music box will be coated with a sweet amber resin of wholly illogical proportions.
Episodes at 4 AM
(Paradigm Discs) CD $12.00
Throughout his varied career — including diverse musical activity such as working with the John Barry Seven and playing on Egg’s second LP — this jazz flautist, composer and group leader had his own fluid conceptual group Open Music with principle bass player Barry Guy and drummer Denis Smith. Players that passed through Open Music include Chris Spedding, Kenny Wheeler, Ray Russell, Ian Carr, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Harry Miller, Barre Phillips, John Stevens and many others. After his early ’70s releases on Philips, Vertigo and Music For Pleasure, a series of three privately pressed LPs on his own label Openian explored this more experimental style. Episodes at 4 AM is the second in this series and is by far the strangest of the three. Released in 1974 and commissioned by the Welsh Dance Theatre, its ten short duos are performed by Wendy Benka on zither, dulcimer and small percussion, and Downes on flutes, various percussion and plenty of electronic manipulation. Nearly every sound on this LP was processed using a variety of shimmering delays, controlled feedback, reverb and speed change to create a haunting and delirious mix of musical styles and atmospheres. Taken from the master tapes, this thirty-three-minute LP has been expanded for the CD release with thirty-five minutes of previously unreleased experimental works, mostly from the same period, that cover even more ground than the LP, including one piece made entirely from the sounds of various phone booths on the streets of New York.
Ninth Set
(Die Stadt - DS103) CD $22.50
A 67-minute masterpiece in five parts by this Irish composer who was awarded the Magisterium Prize at Bourges International Electro-acoustic Music Competition (open to composers with a minimum of 25 years of professional experience, with the objective of promoting and diffusing works that might become milestones in the history of electroacoustic music). Previous works include the 5xCD set Babel which took ten years to compose, the three-hour Passades, and Operating Theatre's Rapid Eye Movements (United Dairies, 1980). Doyle has worked with Fovea Hex, Clodagh Simonds, Brian Eno, Percy Jones and Colin Potter.
Mascarade
(Autobus - AUTO009) CD $13.50
An anti-Christmas album, with songs from all over the world sung in Hungarian, Japanese, German, Portuguese, English, Yiddish and French. All fourteen tracks are thematically related to Christmas and/or winter (most of them are against either or both). The new-music-for-children duo (Franqo Rythmo -- aka Franq de Quengo of Bimbo Tower and the Sonic Protest festival -- on drums, electronic and acoustic percussion, toys, electronics and cheap effects; and Lore -- aka Laure Barges -- on voice and toy percussion) becomes a full quartet on Mascarade, their fifth album, joined by Mr. Pinguin (electric and acoustic guitar, electric bass and ukulele) and Mami Chan (keyboards).
All Are Guests In The House Of The Lord
(Hospital - HOS201) CD $13.50
The first collaboration between Prurient and Kevin Drumm is one of the darker records in either artist’s discography. Prurient (Dominick Fernow) has toiled in the fields of noise for over a decade and has developed an increasingly dynamic output incorporating darkly arranged synths. Using source sounds of intense tonal drones supplied by Drumm, the two create a haunted atmosphere that is far removed from noise, exploring minimal junctures, using field recordings and clean, patient vocals to lead the way. Subtle electronic textures combine with near-cinematic arrangements.
Imperial Horizon
(Hospital - HOS251) CD $14.00
Imperial Horizon examines sustained tone in greater depth than Drumm's previous Hospital benchmark, Imperial Distortion, stretching out minimalism to unreached heights of serene ambience. Lulling electronic drones slowly transform over the course of the hour-plus piece, echoing both an existential terror and Zen calm. Mutations grow so quietly, only the body opens to identify this change while the mind closes. The ephemeral and seeming lightness of the tones hang with taut balance in contrast to the method in which they are overlapped and rotated with deadly weight. How wildly divergent emotions rise, hover, and fall using so little is a mystery only Drumm can solve.
Impish Tyrant
(Dagda Hammer - DAGDA001) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Remastered CD reissue of this 2004 burner, the debut release on Drumm's own label. Absolutely gnarly rectified cut-ups, up there with Sheer Hellish Miasma as one of the lofty peaks during his harsh investigation of full-bore guitar / synth / computer tactics.
Necro Acoustic
(Pica Disk - PICA017) 5xCD $37.50
Lights Out (new album recorded 2006-2008); Malaise (reissue of limited-edition double-cassette [Hospital Productions, 2009]); Decrepit (previously unreleased material from 1998-1999, plus tracks from split LP with 2673 [Kitty Play, 2005] and the LP on Dilemma, 2008); No Edit (new album of prepared guitar material recorded in 2009); and Organ (first-time release of the 55-minute version of this track [believed for years to have been lost, recently discovered] previously released in edited form on Comedy [Moikai, 2000]). Solid box with gold print, individual CD-wallets and 24-page booklet.
JOHN DUNCAN / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLF
Our Telluric Conversation
(23five) CD $18.00
A bold, expressive piece of sound art, confident in its multiplicity of perspectives caught in a constant flux of attraction and repulsion. Performed with shortwave, data streams, uncanny use of the human voice, oscillators, sonar, and wire tapping microphones, the recording comes with a 40-page booklet with an interview between Duncan and von Hausswolff about their histories, ideas, and methodologies. Packaged in a curiously tactile O-card, embossed with braille and covered with a rubbery coating.
JOHN DUNCAN / KONTAKTE DER JUNGLINGE / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLF
Untitled
(Die Stadt - DS104) CD $22.50
A collection of live recordings. Duncan's was made at The Compound in San Francisco 2007. Kontakt der Jünglinge's (aka Asmus Tietchens and Thomas Köner) is an excerpt from their live performance at Mutek Festival, Montreal, 2003. C.M. Von Hausswolff recorded his at All Tomorrows Parties, London, 2005.
Mommy Close The Door
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $14.00
Recorded live in France in late 2002 by Japanese vocalist Junko Hiroshige — whose murderous wail hypercubes Patty Waters, Yoko Ono, and the titular victim in Olivia de Havilland’s 1972 crime flick The Screaming Woman — in collaboration with Yves Botz, Thierry Delles, Michel Henritzi, who extend the trad power trio into a Marclay mash with brutal rock’n’roll energies. Extremely nasty, unholy screaming that’d peel paint mixed with maniacs destroying the history of popular western music one record at a time.
Recluses Unite
(Dual Plover) CD $13.00
Spend the evening in the company of a bottle of whisky instead of your sweetheart, and the tune you bellow out in the wee hours -- with arms around a snake oil merchant and a boxing ballerina -- could well be a ditty from the mind of Al Duvall. He crafts wicked vaudevillian hits on banjo, kazoo, and various percussive detritus; his “gentle but deadly” songs draw from working-class music of pre-war America, blending jug-band, medicine show, music-hall, and Victorian parlor ballads. Duvall delivers a loving backhand to the fringe dweller in this expertly crafted collection of aural ephemera. With an overdose of morbid puns and sly innuendo, Recluses Unite is the perfect primer for any aspiring vagrant.
Timid Mischief
(Dual Plover) CD $15.25 (Out-of-stock)
An unguided tour guide down Memory Lane. First stop: turn-of-the-century style American folk played on banjo, kazoo, guitar, musical saw, and a collection of spittoons, frying pans and medicine bottles. Duvall’s vaudevillian songs are steeped in black wit, double entendre and clever wordplay about kleptomaniacs, moonshiners, criminals, loners and even more shadowy figures. Timid Mischief mixes old-timey, ragtime, sea shanty, Victorian parlor and jug band musics recorded on wax cylinders and other lo-fi devices. These songs should have been written between 1900 and 1930; he just never got around to it until now.
Installation Recordings (1973 - 2008)
(Paradigm Discs - PD26) 2xCD $24.00
What is essentially a retrospective of Eastley’s installation work updates and adds many new examples to New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments (split LP with David Toop, Obscure Records 1975). Of the 35 tracks on this, Eastley’s first solo CD, only the last two have guests or “playing” (the most virtuosic moment being George Lewis wailing on a grass blade). All the other pieces are either powered by the natural forces of wind and water, or else motor-driven gallery installations. The ethereal sounds of the Aoelian harps, the haunting Aeolian flutes, and the violent tension of his aerophone installations are hallmark Eastley sounds, which sit, with many others, amid a wide range of acoustic settings, from windy hill tops to quiet brooks, residential street scenes to coastal shores. The range of indoor recordings is no less varied: a rich variety of acoustics and gallery spaces from tiny micro sounds to large-scale amplification. Wood, metal and stone are brought to life with electricity. Although there are many photos in the 20-page booklet, much is left to the imagination; such limited access to the visual pulls the focus toward the musicality of the sounds themselves, reinforced by slow crossfades from indoors to outdoors, forming a series of suites. The recordings mostly date from the mid-’70s, but there are pieces from later decades. Nearly everything was recorded either to Revox or Uher and occasionally to cassette, using what microphones were available at the time. Recent recordings are digital. The varying quality of the recording set-ups across this double-CD adds yet another dimension to the shifting sound fabric of the anthology.
JULIA ECKHARDT / MANU HOLTERBACH
Do-Undo (in G maze)
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS018) CD $13.00
Do-Undo emerged out of Q-O2 Werkplaats, a sound-art laboratory of sorts based in Brussels, where Julia Eckhardt, one of the artistic directors, has built an archive of recordings of long-form viola pieces played exclusively in G. Sound-artist, field recordist, and ingenious instrument builder Manu Holterbach, who has taken part in several Q-O2 residencies, reconstitutes her recordings which, on their own, seek the rich if occasionally dissonant overtones central to the minimalist works of Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Ellen Fullman. Holterbach populates his compositions with field recordings, turbulent textures and bristling movements that sympathetically weave amid the rasping drones from the viola. On a technical level, Holterbach’s field recordings on his composition “Two stasis made out of electricity” -- an arc lamp, the Parisian subways, an electric powerplant -- all naturally buzz with the same G of Eckhardt’s viola, without the benefit of digital pitch shifting. The resulting drones transcend conceptualism and strategic intent, and instead make no differentiation between the environment (man-made or otherwise) and the academy. Limited edition with letter-pressed covers.
45 Minutes From Underneath The Beds
(Absurd - A6) CD $12.00
Scandinavian performance/composition iconoclast’s speech impedimentia heralds his highly idiosyncratic noise bordering on personal field recordings.
Emeralds
(Hanson - HN200) CD $15.00
CD edition of the sold-out Wagon Records LP pulls the thick drone sound of Solar Bridge into an even more abstract and strange place. Emeralds' visual music transports listeners through tubes of sound and occasionally sweeps them in the opposite direction with unexpected entrances into another world entirely. An intense journey that drops you off in a place just beyond death. With field recording contributions from Aaron Dilloway and a 16-page color booklet of photo artwork by the band.
European Tour 2009
(No-Fi - NEU015) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
To celebrate their European tour together in January 2009, the prodigious trio from Ohio takes on the punishing Japanese noise legend with "Landlocked," a journey through the planet they share with Popol Vuh and Terry Riley. Pain Jerk responds with the aptly titled "Berserker," featuring Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock) and Mai Sau in a noise / voice / aktion showdown. 500 copies.
Solar Bridge
(Hanson - HN183) CD $12.75
The trio's first full-length after numerous cassette and CDR releases on American Tapes, Chondritic Sound, Wagon and Gneiss Things. The side-long "Magic" builds a quiet drone into an extreme thick saw blade of swirling noise as beautiful as it is menacing. The side-long flip "The Quaking Mess" stabs your brain with fluttering sparks of synthesized needles before relaxing you into a Göttschingesque dream state while slowly bringing you back to earth with an electronic wave of molten rumble. Fans of the smooth tones of New Age Of Earth-era Ash Ra Tempel and the buzzing, thick drones of Throbbing Gristle's Heathen Earth should take note, as Emeralds may be their new source for electronic drugs.
Moonlight in Vermont
(Hospital - HOS250) CD $13.50
With bizarre turntable machinations, a sweater-vest, tie and table-lamp, a live show by the RRReal Emil is a possessed demon dance in service to the relationship of normality and not-rightness. Originally released -- following one snafu after another -- on LP (Ecstatic Peace 2006), Moonlight In Vermont is one of BBBeaulieau’s most masterful documents.The true sound of love by America's greatest living noise artist.
Switches and Knobs
(Phage - PT133) CD $10.00
One live and one studio track of similar theme: lots of starts and stops, blasts of sound and silence by the former Killer Bug and the younger harsh noise composer also known as Bloody Letters and Cracked Mirror. Edition of 500.
Hasselt
(Turtles' Dream - TDCD03) Used CD $6.00
WIth Chie Mukai, Eric Cordier, Seiichi Yamamoto. From 2003.
Hidden
(BloodLust! - B!105) CDR $12.00
Dark, echoing, analog synthesizer music by Columbus, Ohio's David Reed, also of Luasa Raelon, that flows like winter's icy embrace. Reissue of out-of-print 2006 cassette, remastered by Greh Holger (Hive Mind, Cleanse, Chondritic Sound).
When The Epidemic Arrived/Worst Afflicted Rapture
(Legion Blotan - BLOTCD01) CD $10.00
The French black metal horde’s first two dark and incredibly well recorded demo albums on one CD. Nearly 50 minutes of mid-paced, diseased black metal with agonizing and painful high pitched screams. “Epidemia Mortaliis are grim and true and raw,” according to Aquarius, “and as with most black buzzers, owe much to their mighty Scandinavian forbears, but … EM … have their own distinct and slightly skewed take on black metal, which results in a sound both buzzing and brutal, but also stumbling and weirdly lo-fi.”
Earless Childbirth / Draculina, Princess Stomach Gas
(Starlight Furniture Company) 2xCDR $14.00
Toys, noises, unidentifiable sounds, and mangled mass media detritus decimated and sewn back together the only way possible. Mastered etc. by Tom Smith (To Live & Shave in LA). Eight-page book designed by Andy Bolus.
Fatanarchy On Airtube
(Harbinger Sound - HAS033) CD $12.00
The long-awaited collaboration record by Yamastuka Eye and Andy Bolus. Performed, mixed and designed between 1994 and 2004, this is as weird and confusing as it gets. Including jaw-dropping takes on "Eye of the Tiger" and The Exploited's "Sex and Violence."
KAI FAGASCHINSKI / BURKHARD STANGL
Musik - Ein Porträt in Sehnsucht
(Erstwhile - ERST057) CD $14.50
Stangl and Fagaschinski, both masters at fluidly combining melodicism and abstraction, carefully intertwine field recordings of birds, storms, and “morning silence” with guitars, electronic devices, piano, vibraphone, and clarinet. Guest appearance by Bernhard Gál, “re-recording and musical car driving.”
Failing Lights
(Intransitive - INT036) CD $15.00
Mike Connelly (Wolf Eyes, Hair Police) evokes bleak electronic atmospheres, suffocating dread, and sinewy horror with a fine-tuned beauty embedded in its darkness. Connelly’s self-released cassettes and CDRs of rough drones, detuned improvised grit, blown-out burl, and unstable acoustics tend to vanish quickly; Intransitive’s CD, the first one widely available, is sure to become a defining statement. The single piece -- in five sections -- begins with disquieting, barren negative space, creeps forward, steadily dispenses sheets of diffuse throat-scratch and skittering strings, and culminates in a blast of molten organ.
R.K. FAULHABER / JIM HAYNES / SIGTRTYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON / STEVEN STAPLETON / M.S. WALDRON
Sleeping Moustache
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.00
Members of irr. app. (ext,), Nurse With Wound, Stilluppsteypa, and Coelacanth present a psychically unstable landscape where dreams and nightmares wreak havoc upon the drudgery of daily life. Part epiphany of controlled disorder, convulsion of beauty, and cascade of thought from delirious minds, Sleeping Moustache exquisitely manifests sound poetry scattered into a tortuous collage mired in an oblique melancholy. Magnetic tones extracted from the ether, mechanical sounds smeared into lugubrious growls, horns trumpeting straight out of John’s Book of Revelation, ululations sliced into information overload of which Schwitters himself would be proud. The closest audible territory might be the psychoactive constructions of Nurse With Wound’s Homotopy To Marie, although the characters in this drama happened upon an entirely different map of that terrain.
Like A Dog
(BloodLust! - B!115) CDR $12.00
A great blend of power-electronics and harsh noise, a crystal-clear yet filthy sound generated by yet another in a long line of superlative Italian screechers. With tastefully obscene artwork by Nicola Vinciguerra.
No Fun Demo
(No Fun - NFP31) CD $5.00
On this 2008 CD, "there are melodic, structured songs," says Pitchfork, but Felipe's "approach is still hazy, off-kilter, and weird. Most of his tunes sport skewed hooks and off-key riffs which get dipped in fuzz and echo, half-hidden by distortion, pitch shifting, and ghostly distance. "
Live at the LU
(Erstwhile - ERST043) CD $14.50
Rowe and Fennesz are two of the most prominent and influential musicians in experimental music; their commercially released work, despite their joint participation in the 12-person MIMEO collective, rarely intersects, which is why this document of their first duo show together is so revealing. Their sound world is jagged yet bright, stark and jarring, but in the end, somehow still soothing.
Wrapped Islands
(Erstwhile - ERST023) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
A fully improvised first meeting of two driving forces of contemporary music. The predominantly Viennese quartet Polwechsel have explored the grey areas between composition and improvisation, electronic and acoustic, jazz and classical for much of the past decade. Austrian Christian Fennesz, while initially a guitarist, is primarily known for his abrasive yet melodic laptop explorations on labels such as Mego and Touch. Warm, deep, seemingly simple, with different details and passages emerging to the surface with each listen. “The music is slow, extremely minimal, stretched to the point of disappearing,” says All Music Guide. “The attentive listener will be completely absorbed, holding his or her breath in expectation of the next move -- yes, Wrapped Islands has something to do with watching a game of chess.”
First, Second and Third Drop
(Siren - SR014) CD $28.50
Andrew Chalk's early material, originally recorded in January 1986, remastered in 2004 with two additional tracks re-edited from the original recordings. Beautiful hand-made sleeves. Limited edition of 500 copies.
Imaoto
(Erstwhile - ERST055) CD $14.50
Vienna-based ultraminimalist composer/improvisor Radu Malfatti is joined by empathetic explorer Klaus Filip for a pair of undeniably gorgeous, sparse pieces that perambulate around the world of hidden contours and curves. Malfatti's trombone is deep but not heavy, with personal, nearly vocal presence. Filip works miracles of intuition with his sine tones, seemingly providing precise harmonic answers before the questions are asked.
Carrion Wind
(Turgid Animal - TA389) CD $10.50
This ambitious work consolidates sounds explored with F/I/T/H and Sky Burial into a single project, focusing them into a complex and meticulously composed 63-minute industrial opus, a dark and ominous dirge, both beautiful and brutal with aspects of metal percussion, dark ambient, drone, doom and industrial electronics. Noticeably absent are Page's vocals as F/I/T/H takes a more "restrained" approach that favors slow layering of synths, field recordings, guitar loops and electronics. Tension occasionally peaks at an explosive level comparable to the shorter tracks of F/I/T/H's previous releases.
Glissando No. 1
(Recorded) CD $16.00
A trance-tape piece, constituting one of three known examples of the Illuminatory Sound Environment genre (the other two being Catherine Christer Hennix's The Electric Harpsichord (Die Schachtel 2010) and Flynt's upcoming Celestial Power (Quadraphonic Version)). John Berdnt's enthralling liner notes explain ISE as "an unfurling sound field of overwhelming but far from gratuitous sensuality, a highly 'tuned' texture where all of the aspects are coordinated to make a deeply unusual 'whole,' a new kind of perceptual gestalt.... The piece has a disorienting flow that does something strange to 'time.' Its internal structural logic is fascinating but lacks the distraction of an obvious narrative drama—an eternal sound, implying a potentially endless process.... Glissando No. 1 is perhaps the darkest and most feverish expression of the genre, its massed strings and continual timbral transformations covering both a broad audio spectrum and saturating all points in the stereo field with a hallucinogenic and emotive canopy." Companion track "Stereo Piano" from 1978, performed by Hennix, is also included (her “billowing cloud” piano technique applied to a scale of Flynt’s, subsequently layered by Flynt himself). With sixteen-page booklet. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
New American Ethnic Music Volume 1: You are my Everlovin’ + Celestial Power
(Recorded - REC003) 2xCD $18.00
Recorded in 1980 and ’81, this pair of mind-blowing discs deliver flowing, trance-inducing violin solos of extreme beauty and seriousness. In these incredible electronic hillbilly music violin performances, an exalted synthesis of American ethnic music, raga-like lyrical virtuosity, and a deep sensibility takes place — a nod to human culture from the great nihilist philosopher and so-called father of Concept Art. Named as a top ten critics pick for 2001 in The Wire.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 2: Spindizzy
(Recorded - FR006) CD $15.00
These archival recordings date from 1968 to 1983. Before the publication of his music, Flynt was most known as an often distorted footnote in art history — the man who invented Concept Art — and for his formal attacks on logic and mathematics, often presented in art galleries. He was a composer of the post-Cage school who quickly turned completely against modernist music and created his own genres, primarily through radicalizing Southern musical forms like bluegrass, country, and country blues, and elevating them to an enchanted level, much as Coltrane did with jazz. Flynt’s music is a parallel stream to his extremely distinct and radical philosophy.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 3: Hillbilly Tape Music
(Recorded - REC007) CD $15.00
The third release in Recorded’s archival series deals with Flynt’s most “electronic” work to date, but the modern-experimental aspects of his work are, as always, in the service of deeply rooted ecstatic hillbilly sensibility. Opens with the startling “Violin Strobe” and contains pieces which verge on kryptonite rockabilly and tranced-out shades of Bo Diddley. Completely essential, breathtaking music from one of the most original and driven musical minds of the century.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 4: Ascent to the Sun
(Recorded - REC021) CD $15.00
The final release in the NAEM series (but not the last Henry Flynt on Recorded) is a brilliant, sparkling hillbilly raga in the family of “You Are My Everlovin’ ” but with a unique double violin approach and a mind-bending structure all its own. The piece covers incredible ground in terms of specificity of mood and sentiment, and is deeply listenable and experimental at once. It is a new creation by Flynt circa 2004, engineered by Tim Barnes.
The Illusion Of Movement
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR101) CD $9.00
Dense, suffocatingly heavy drone noise from the UK, second only to Culver. Sound-in-a-vacuum stasis and churning, crunching, collapsing-building noise with a foreboding, horror-movie atmosphere. Edition of 500.
The Eyes Of Erodern Reviema
(Small Doses - DOSE60) CD $11.25
Alec Bowman and Kingsley Ravenscroft create unique rhythmic, chaotic yet structured works, twisting a variety of sounds into creeped-out electronica, frozen ambience and sporadic wayward beats. The music of this miraculous electric musical ensemble strays into dark territory, inhabiting forgotten grounds; less of a showcase for new technology and more an essential medium for the expression of the human psyche, where the soul is the interface.
I
(BloodLust! - B!097) CDR $10.50
The duo of ISIDRO REYES and MARK SOLOTROFF, both key players in the power- electronics outfit BLOODYMINDED, a unit known for its confrontational live shows show off their kinder, gentler side via guitar, bass, and synth to improvise. Quoth the Chicago Reader: "Sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
II
(BloodLust! - B!106) CDR $10.50
The duo of ISIDRO REYES and MARK SOLOTROFF, both key players in the power- electronics outfit BLOODYMINDED, a unit known for its confrontational live shows show off their kinder, gentler side via guitar, bass, and synth to improvise. Quoth the Chicago Reader: "Sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
III
(BloodLust! - B!107) CDR $10.50
The duo of ISIDRO REYES and MARK SOLOTROFF, both key players in the power- electronics outfit BLOODYMINDED, a unit known for its confrontational live shows show off their kinder, gentler side via guitar, bass, and synth to improvise. Quoth the Chicago Reader: "Sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
IV
(BloodLust! - B!114) CDR $12.00
The Fortieth Day is the duo of Isidro Reyes and Mark Solotroff, both key players in the power-electronics outfit Bloodyminded, a unit known for its confrontational live shows. Reyes and Solotroff show off their kinder, gentler side, using guitar, bass, and synth to improvise what Bill Meyer calls "sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
Pelusium: 540 AD
(BloodLust! - B!145) CDR $12.00
Drawn from the last of the first wave sessions recorded by Isidro Reyes and Mark Solotroff, this release delves deeper into a heavier drone mode; thick walls of bass and guitar noise envelop the mix, creating a contrast for the occasional loop, melody, or slothful beat rising to the surface. Fifty-eight minutes, previously released on cassette (Cipher Productions 2007).
Syria: 638 AD (The Complete Recordings)
(BloodLust! - B!128) CDR $12.00
Extremely dense, powerful, and brooding, with absolutely monstrous bass. Comprised of Mark Solotroff (BLOODYMINDED, Intrinsic Action, and the BloodLust! label) and Isidro Reyes (BLOODYMINDED), the dense and murky Fortieth Day lurks between noise, industrial, and ambient. Various recording sessions are processed, re-processed, and mixed together to create the final studio recordings. This CDR contains the remastered, 61-minute-long version of the complete recordings from the "Syria: 638 AD" sessions. Diophantine Discs previously released an abridged version of these recordings (approximately 36-minutes in length) on vinyl.
THE FORTIETH DAY / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS
The Fortieth Day & Sshe Retina Stimulants
(BloodLust! - B!142) CDR $13.50
Re-mastered CD with bonus tracks not on the original 1997 cassette. Opening track is the original live recording performed on WLUW Chicago -- the first live outing by The Fortieth Day, in collaboration with P.NG5361.B (aka Sshe Retina Stimulants, also a founding member of Sigillum S) -- subsequently processed in Milan by P.NG5361.B, which are tracks two thru five.
Technology of Tears
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $6.00
2008 reissue of Frith's mid-'80s pieces commissioned by choreographer Rosalind Newman. Guests include Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Tenko. Still sealed but the barcode has been drilled, so we're listing at used.
What Leave Behind
(S.K. - SK28) CD $9.00
All-female Oakland collective collaborating with a giant of prepared guitar, performing Dan Plonsey’s five-part Concerto for Electric Guitar and Toy Orchestra. Lord Frith mixes shimmery noise, strange tunings, brushes, kitchen utensils, and folk-like melodies with the group’s ensemble of toy instruments, actual instruments, and objects. A far cry from a bunch of children banging around, What Leave Behind is a sophisticated sound experience created with intricate recording and mixing techniques. Surreal and dramatic.
άTOMO∑
(Music Atlach - MA010) CD $15.00
Cello, violin and electronics intertwine with the vocal drones of these Overhang Party and Majutsu no Niwa veterans. Recorded live in Japan, the passionate sound and ambiance, which includes Fukuoka’s radio waves, offers “a glimpse of unbearable reality,” while the Paris recording, made at the church Église Saint-Merri, uses solemn drone loops a la Overhang Party’s “Prayer of a Fool.”
TETSUO FURUDATE / ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI
World as Will II
(23five - 23five003) CD $12.00
While the influence of Karkowski’s tutelage under Xenakis is obvious in World As Will II's orchestral clusters and general density, it is dwarfed by elements solely serving that notoriously untrustworthy god, the human ego. Xenakis’s opaque masses of sound grow from the interaction of mindless external forces, beyond the realm of emotions and personality. Furudate and Karkowski, though, dwell in glorification of the self. Whatever one may think of Schopenhauer's writings, from which this album takes its philosophical cues, it's hard to deny the CD’s exceptional belligerence, courtesy of myriad bombastic tokens -- martial drums, ominous orchestral drones, primal screams with echo, Wagner samples.
Phythogenetics: Collection
(Turgid Animal - TA285) CD $10.50
Finnish harsh noise fiend Pekka PT's brutal mix of junk metal abuse and pedal worship sometimes results in total unflinching chaos and other times in a more structured industrial noise masterwork. Whittled down from dozens of tapes, CD and vinyl, here is 74 minutes of what Pekka considers his best work under this now-defunct moniker. Liner notes by Mikko Aspa (Grunt/, Freak Animal Records) and Pasi Markkula (Bizarre Uproar / Filth and Violence).
Vitoj
(Auscultare Research) CD $9.00
Longtime San Francisco-based sound artist, internationally known for his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, continues his microscopic exploration of dense sonic landscapes within volatile stases. Vitoj eavesdrops on pressurized states of compressed gas within hydrogen tanks, diaphanous vinyl recordings of archaic voices, and perilous work environments in the far east. Wicked dream-like.
Severance
(Hospital - HOS254) CD $13.50
No Fun’s Giffoni defines his signature with compositional electronic music that melds analog drone with tonality of the past expressions and a collision of minimalist sequencer details on a pure electronic landscape.
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
From the Earth to the Spheres Vol. 5
(Very Friendly - VF023) split CD $15.00
Fierce blonde Barbara Manning and Bananafish founder Seymour Glass are joined by Nels Cline on lap steel for “Icebox,” a slow ascent from isolation through frozen tape manipulation, icy drones, and subtle infernal groans from the obscure side of the moon. The unearthly fragmented vocals of the Italian Opalio brothers create the heavy, emotional textures of the interstellar “After the Meteor Shower,” with howling guitars and electronics, the distant echo of a drum, and a whispered chant emerging from the concrete surface of the planet.
Meat Receiving
(Ultra Eczema) LP + 3-inch CDR $25.00
Two sidelong tracks of ground-up tape noise and uneasy electronics. One track is not quite side-long, but has been, ahem, fleshed out with the five-minute "Venison" (previously released by From The Same Mother on a CDR comp; features Tom Lax on tongs). Overall, an off-kilter abattoir of dread and fear and suffering. Tedium House copies include a bonus three-inch CDR, unavailable elsewhere.
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / PRICK DECAY
Who’s Who In Hospitalization
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $14.00
Together in one noisological bed (so to speak), Barbara Manning, S. Glass, and Dylan and Lisa Nyoukis donate an hour of full-on collapsing noise and tape loops of junk. Sweet, sweet bounty. With Doug Pierson on electronics. Produced by Tom Smith.
Enspiel
(Krayon Recordings - KR004) CD $7.50
Using tapes, electronics and guitars through chains of effects, Adrian Dollemore's fundamentally Earth-ground chords and astrally-projective processing paint a rural tonality with a bristling white afterglow. Glistening arpeggios rise and fall against gurgling analogue electronics, washes of processed cymbal and ethereal drone filigree.
Chaining The Last Hopes Of Humanity
(Legion Blotan - BLOTCD02) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A classic of ultra-evil, originally released on CDr in 2003, by fast and furious supreme Italian black metal band. Debauchery runs amok. Not for the easily offended.
A Peaceable Kingdom
(BloodLust! - B!126) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This Chicago ecstatic drone duo began in 2007 as an exploratory collaboration between software engineer, visual artist, and composer Steve Fors (unseen|unknown, United Steelworkers Union, blstr) and schoolteacher, label proprietor, and experimental musician Chris Miller (Number None, Th’ Exceptional Child, REBIS). Bound by a shared love of red wine, the Kranky aesthetic, and the eclectic recordings of off-beat Christian rock visionaries Daniel Amos (aka D. A., Dä), the two utilize a combination of electric and lap steel guitar, salvaged thrift store keyboards, pedals (both broken and boutique), obscure analogue synthesizers, and other obsolete noise-making esoterica. Fors and Miller forge deep into the realms of drone in pursuit of the perfect marriage of harsh and beautiful sounds, simple melodies, and song structures through spontaneous and ecstatic improvisation.
Somniloquy
(James Goode) CDR $9.00
The score of Somniloquy was composed collectively by Goode and the players -- Lara Allen (Heavenly Ten Stems, Ragtime Germs), Eric Marc Cohen (Job's Daughter's, United Noise), Timb Harris (Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere), Jason Schimmel (Orange Tulip Conspiracy, Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere), Ches Smith (Secret Chiefs 3, Xiu Xiu, Trevor Dunn, Marc Ribot), Trey Spruance (Mr Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Faxed Head). For two weeks all participants logged what they experienced while repeating phrases generated by Goode (a different one for each night) as they drifted off to sleep. A portion of the subsequent dreams and hypnagogic experiences serve as the piece’s narrative score, which was constructed to highlight the visual and thematic similarities between different people’s dreams and hypnagogic experiences taking place during the same twenty-four hour period. The performers interpret the dreams within the score, and make choices regarding how they to translate sounds and/or music (literally, emotionally, symbolically or oneirically). Recorded live at The Stone, NYC, July 13, 2007. Gatefold chipboard card jacket.
Resolution Of Remembrance 1992-1999
(Pica Disk - PICA012) 4xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Yasutoshi Yoshida's Government Alpha project started in 1992 and became one of the leading names in the third generation of Japanese noise. Few artists embody the “pure energy” noise fans speak of feeling when listening to noise better than the ferociously intense Government Alpha. This 4xCD box set collects 62 tracks from obscure cassette releases from 1992 to 1999, as well as a number of previously unreleased tracks. Packaged in a solid box with silver foil printing (similar to the Incapacitants box), with a 24-page booklet featuring liner notes by Yoshida and Tommy Carlsson, and graphic collage works by Yoshida.
Grain Belt
(Small Doses - DOSE75) CD $10.50
Harsh noise and metal abuse from Minneapolis trio (Wince, Baculum, Willful). Three tracks recorded live. Edition of 200 copies. Co-released by Phage Tapes and White Centipede Noise.
GRAVITY ADJUSTERS EXPANSION BAND
One
(Paradigm Discs) CD $13.50
The GAEB started in 1967 and remains one of the America’s long lost and underestimated groups who explored the areas of free jazz, improvisation and experimental music. Drummer Lee Charlton shifts moods from jazzy phrasing to more abstract sound sculpture; in this world the GAEB mainly reside, using the self-invented percussive and bowed instruments of multimedia artist Richard Waters, many of which incorporate water-filled resonators to bend and tune. Other improvisers at the time — AMM, MEV, Sonde and Taj Mahal Travellers — made extensive use of homemade and adapted instruments, but the GAEB are a very different concern with their own unmistakable identity. Their first LP appeared in 1973 on Nocturne Records, a small Californian label (the first of their two LPs, the second appearing some eight years later). Paradigm Discs’ CD edition contains the entire first LP, plus fifteen minutes of extra material from the time.
Lingual Music
(Paradigm Discs) 2xCD $20.65
Lily Greenham was Danish, spent her childhood in Vienna and after several relocations across Europe settled in London in 1972 with her British husband (musician and poet Peter Greenham), where she lived until her death in 2001. Nearly all of her own writings and compositions date from after her arrival in London, but prior she had been involved in two major European art movements: The Wienner Group in the late 1950s and the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel in 1964. In London she began to record her own text-based compositions that use a mixture of sound poetry techniques, electronics and multi-tracking. “Lingual music” is a term she coined for her compositions and refers to her technique of using tape loops of text to create complex and dense musical structures. This 2xCD set compiles live solo performances, film soundtrack pieces, and many tape pieces. There are also examples of her performing works by Britain’s best known sound poet Bob Cobbing, Rühm and other sound poets, as well as recordings of her work with Bob Downes Open Music. The recordings date from between 1968 and 1984.
Judgment
(Hospital - HOS247) CD $13.50
A CD reissue of Hospital’s favorite cassette-only release from the legendary UK industrial icon in celebration of their twenty-third year of existence. Famed for their power electronics, Judgement instead exhibits Grey Wolves’ dark, rhythmic industrial and ritualistic, minimal synth self. Two side-long oil-slick tracks of filthy, crumbling, rotten beats hammer away with nihilistic chaos. Militant synth lines raise the occult flag. Ancient ethereal feedback howls voiceless language through the hallway of industrial fallout.
Gruel
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR090) CD $14.00
CD reissue of classic avant-sludge, the only recording Gruel made. Like The Melvins playing King Crimson's Red album, this is theatrical, beautifully composed, and troglodyte heavy. Four 15-minute, utterly immersive songs, with quiet, atmospheric passages getting shattered by barrages of repetitious riffing. Edition of 500 in a stickered PVC sleeve, with the disc wrapped in a big double-sided, full-color poster.
Vinyl Anthology: The Complete Gum Recordings From 1987-1990
(23five - 23five005) 2xCD $18.00
Back in the late ’80s, Australians Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis gathered up thrift store turntables and soiled records and formed Gum. The duo’s caustic rupture of skipping records and smoldering surface noise predates current avant-turntablists like Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, and Otomo Yoshihide. Between 1986 and 1990, Gum piled thick layers of electrically charged static, spiraling repetitions, and arrhythmic palpitations. Vinyl Anthology includes everything from their self-released albums Vinyl and 20 Years in Blue Movies and Yet to Fake an Orgasm, comp tracks originally released by RRRecordS and Korm Plastics, as well as plenty of previously unreleased material.
The Electronic Record For Children
(King Record Co. - KICP2633) Used CD $20.00
Electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack and child educator Esther Nelson dive into the world of psychedelic music compositions designed to open the minds and hearts of 1969's young. Their far-out electronic music evokes a space age alternate universe. Joining them is pianist Praxietellis Pandit and the relaxed friend Chris on songs about everything from ancient folk tales to outerspace to what the world sounds like when you listen with your inner self. Japanese reissue from 2005.
The Way-Out Record For Children
(King Record Co. - KICP2632) Used CD $22.00
Heavy songs about robots, Indian mysticism, motorcycle-riding fantasies and other touchstones of any psychedelic masterpiece. Recorded in 1968, the music is all generated by Haack's homemade electronic instruments, which churn out proto-hip-hop beats and straight-up avant garde moments left and right, while the voices of the kids in Esther Nelson's community chime in here and there. The record ends with a haunting existential twist that leaves all free-thinkers screamin' for more. Japanese reissue from 2004.
Madon Evankeliumi
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR091) CD $16.00
Total swirling psychedelia, heavy shifting tides of drone with evil organ lines permeating the noise, self-described as "a slow, heavy bell.” Based on source sounds provided by Olly Pearson, Chris Chantler and Dom Finbow. Edition of 500 in foldover wallet and PVC sleeve. Art by Andrew Labanaris (Electric Wizard and MOSS).
MMVII
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR041) CD $14.00
Beyond-heavy necro-doom from France in the vein of Burning Witch, Corrupted, Thorr's Hammers. etc, but ten times slower and heavier. Comes in a six-panel digipak.
Execration That Accept to Knowledge
(Forced Exposure - FE032) CD $18.00
Live solo guitar visions from Fushitsusha mastermind, his first domestic CD release (from 1993).
Empty Quarter
(Harbinger Sound) CD $15.00
New 2007 recordings from the Beatty / Tremaine / Connelly trio. Digipack packaging. Limited edition of 1,000 copies. Recorded in Ypsilanti, Michigan, January/March 2007.
Dynasty Suites
(Melon Expander) CD $13.50
Solid Eye's Joseph Hammer cites receiving more than one AM radio station at the same time and an episode of '70s TV show Land of the Giants, the one where astronauts use tape loops to thwart alien tyrants, as a couple of his musical influences. His unique utilization of consumer audio technology, tape loops, samplers and analog synthesizers yilelds compelling and varied musical expressions. Since 1980, he has performed and recorded with Points of Friction, Dinosaurs With Horns, Solid Eye, Blue Daisies, Steaming Coils, Debt of Nature (which became Medicine), Vector 3 Niner, Paramecial Wedding, Kitten Sparkles and Dimmer. Dynasty Suites is Hammer’s first solo CD, 51 minutes of real-time tape loops certain to scramble your eggs.
Twig Harper
(Hanson - HN237) CD $8.50
This continuation in the alternate universe tradition of Harper's three-volume Intuitive American Esoteric series, and his first proper CD release, is forty-three minutes of psychedelic tape manipulations and droning synthesizer, electronic and organic sound mixed to brain-warping perfection, bells, homemade electronics, synth, piano, strings, junk, horns and voice treated with tape for full-on musique concrete / sound poetry / electronic trance-inducing confusion. Edition of 500.
In The Shade of Fire
(Hanson - HN206) CD $12.00
Originally released on LP by Silent Records in 1986, minus two tracks (for length), In The Shade of Fire can now be heard how it was originally intended for the first time. The harsh sound works of The Haters bring to mind the idea of process: ideologies behind something being destroyed or manipulated; the amplified and sometimes distorted sounds of the processes representing a document of acts carried out upon the objects, machines, or otherwise. The Haters intend listeners to experience the process of the audio lines as they were primarily constructed in the recording area. In the Shade of Fire, remastered by Warn Defever from the original master reels, reflects their strong textural aesthetic through object manipulation and recording that defines GX Jupitter-Larsen's place in the world of harsh noise. “Glsam” and “Diti” are explosive, introductory and side-concluding / framing pieces that highlight and pronounce the breaking and crashing down of material, all gelled with bass-driven strikes whose trails deteriorate into hints of cascading dirty and dark Americanoise distortion. “Bebas” powers through a heavier dynamic with conscious falling apart of source material, but in abstracted waves that suggest rebuilding just to simply crash fall apart again in futility. “Thuch” enhances the textural elements of the explosions and crashes as the sharpness of the strikes are slightly rounded at the edges and expose a quasi-gurgle that moves and slaps with vicious perplexity. “Taisic,” a study of hiss manipulation, is accented with minimalist scraping. “Cassas” is the album's meditation on sharp, shot-driven violence, articulated and layered for optimum cutting and breaking, bringing forth sound dynamism from very physical deterioration. “Fire 5,” a highly textural wall of sound that, to the contemporary fan of gritty and dirty crunch waves, is a primary early example of crackle lines that focus on the inner dynamism of sound itself.
Sever
(Intransitive - INT032) CD $15.00
Evocative, highly visual drone music, layers upon organic layers in constant motion, and yet seem somehow still. On the third solo album by San Francisco-based composer Jim Haynes, the process of decaying and wearing down materials is implied; its passages of rough clang and cyclic scraping metal seem implacably tangible, as if one is witnessing time-lapsed erosion in action.
Telegraphy by the Sea
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
Rust-tinged artist Jim Haynes prefers to abstract recorded sounds to the point that he can’t remember how he made them, so that it’s impossible to go back and reverse engineer anything. The source material for Telegraphy by the Sea spans four years and several continents. Fragments come from an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, a marathon six-hour performance at the Diapason Gallery in New York City, and a fortuitous encounter with a rainy stairwell. This breathtaking album of mangled field recordings and droning techniques perches at the allegorical intersection of electromagnetic landscapes and meteorological phenomena, where exasperated blasts of air bellow in harmony with a swarm of mechanical locusts and a tumbling landslide of jagged rock, grounded for the most part in a dynamic play of sinusoidal drones.
CHRISTOPH HEEMAN / ANDREAS MARTIN
Lebenserinnerungen Eines Lepidopterologen
(Robot - RR20) Used 2xCD $15.00
A retrospective look at their early solo works, which move between minimalist guitar compositions, tape-music narratives, and cascading electronics. Includes Martin’s Doppelpunkt Vor Ort ten-inch (Robot Records 1993) and Heemann’s Über Den Umgang Mit Umgebung Und Andere Versuche ten-inch (Robot Records 1991), previously unreleased material, obscure seven-inch tracks, and their collaborative H.N.A.S. opus from Ach, Dieser Bart! LP (KK Records 1988). This is the 2010 edition, with two additional tracks not on Robot’s 1999 edition.
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot
(Thrill Jockey - THRILL184) CD + hardcover book $12.00
The Lungfish frontman and Holy Mountain recording artist offers 48 pages of full-color painting and writing in six-by-eight hardcover book, with CD of home recordings on guitar, piano drones, jew’s harp and banjo. The six pieces are lo-fi stretches of piano drone (fingers, mallets, etc.) and banjos/guitars loaded with swift Eastern/Sun City scales, zoning static, eschatological subtexts, and spectral / emotional ambiance. The gorgeous book depicts his totemic paintings and acrostics -- which delineate themes he's intoned about in the past -- including a climactic centerfold with two facing emblems after which the order of art / word shifts.
Polar Nights Live
(Pica Disk - PICA005) CD $14.50
The shredding guitar of bandleader Jojo Hiroshige along with the high-pitched, piercing voice of Junko instantly identify Hijokaidan. A rare appearance outside Japan at the All Ears Festival in Oslo, Norway in 2006, Polar Nights Live documents these historical (they very rarely perform anywhere as a duo) and astonishing performances. Jojo also collaborates here with guitarist Per Gisle Galåen (DEL, The Birds), unleashing thick layers of psychedelic and distorted guitar fog, which fans of Fushitsusha, Les Rallizes Denudes will appreciate. Junko also hooked up with Sten Ove Toft (Ryfylke) for a hellish meltdown of twisted electronics and the most intense voice in music.
Eureka Tapes (The Complete Recordings)
(Small Doses - DOSE94) 2xCD $15.00
Anthony Mangicapra’s music spans styles and moods like a suspension bridge and dissolves into explorations of texture, acoustic phenomena and the psyche. Originally issued as three separate volumes -- A Whisper in the Sow’s Ear (Small Doses 2008); Graduating from Clocks to Watches (Peasant Magick 2008); Taxonomy of Divine Organisms (Goat Eater Arts 2009) -- The Eureka Tapes (The Complete Recordings) also includes Hoor-Paar-Kraat’s side of their split cassette with Last (Acid Casualty 2008) and a previously unreleased recording from the same sessions.
Chimarendammerung
(Destijl - IND062) CD $12.75
Marcia Bassett has recorded with Un, GHQ and The Double Leopards, while Matthew Bower is all over Total, Skullflower, Sunroof, etc. A Wikipedia entry says “his huge discography of visceral, free drone-rock is probably the most formidable of its kind and he was rightly considered in 2005 by The Wire to be one of the map coordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the ’80s and ’90s”. Chimarendammerung is the third Hototogisu release on Destijl and its five untitled walls of vertical viola drone/overtone represent a current plateau for the duo — lapped by shifting electronic waves of feedback and blackened guitars, in tune with the breath of the cosmos, like a glacial reimagining of Van Der Graaf Generator’s “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers.”
Power
(BloodLust!) CDR $14.00
Nearly twelve years since its first release in an edition of 50 cassettes, nearly five years since the death of Hydra-head Greg Scott, with little of his musical legacy remaining, the time seems appropriate to re-visit this barely heard recording from Scott's short-lived, post-Final Solution band. The disc is comprised of studio and live recordings (including memorable, between-song banter) for fans of power electronics, noise and old-school industrial.
ID M THEFT ABLE / COUNT LOACHFILLET
Organ Standards
(Beniffer Editions) 2xCDR $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
The sound structures of West Coast solo anomaly with LAFMS connections Loachfillet are the sort of thing that occur when one dissects Quintron’s Frog Tape, Rosa Rio’s horror picture theatre organ, or The Phantom Of The Opera, and reconstitutes them as a horrific, ungodly monster meant to roam the filthy sewers, or tend to overgrown bats and spiders in a deep, dank cave (to be determined on a case-by-case basis). Whereas East Coast stag entity and maker of ever stranger organ audacity ID M Theft Able sings, raps, abruptly stops, skips and fluctuates sound. Meaning: weird-ass sequential counting, cut-ups in a glitchular noisy atmosphere, loops and echoes of nonsensical mutterings, and at no extra charge because you are my friend, odd and playfully spazzy interludes. Certified A-1 by Guy Montag. Screenprinted and sewn foldout. Edition of 100.
Box Is Stupid
(Pica Disk - PICA008) 10xCD $105.00 (Out-of-stock) (Out-of-print)
Contains 90s tape releases: Stupid Is Stupid (one disc each of studio and live materials), Extreme Gospel Nights, Ad Nauseam (one disc Edition Mikawa, one disc Edition Kosakai, one disc live), D.D.D.D., The Tongue, Cosmic Incapacitants, and I, Residuum. Remastered from original master tapes. Includes 40pp book with liner notes by Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus), Otomo Yoshihide, Toshiji Mikawa (Incapacitantrs, Hijo Kaidan), and Fumio Kosakai (Incapacitants).
Lon Guy
(Harbinger Sound - HAS045) CD $12.00
Shit-your-pants loud, or another day at the office for Mikawa and Kosakai.
Bad Jack
(BloodLust! - B!044) CD $12.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2003 re-release of the fourth Intrinsic Action cassette (Arbeit Recordings, 1988) contains dark, decayed, rumbling electronics, and meditations on Chicago’s Gacy murders. With two previously unreleased bonus tracks (one live, one SCTL).
Five
(BloodLust! - B!048) CD $12.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2004 re-release of the fifth Intrinsic Action cassette (AWB, 1988) is sonically intense and was recorded live opening for Swans at Chicago's Cabaret Metro. With one bonus SCTL track.
II
(BloodLust! - B!046) CD $12.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2004 re-release of the second Intrinsic Action cassette, originally issued in 1987. It consists of long, minimal, analog-synth piece created on an Arp 2600. With four bonus SCTL tracks
III
(BloodLust! - B!050) CD $12.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2005 re-release of the third Intrinsic Action cassette, originally issued in 1987, contains the band’s third live show, with two bonus SCTL tracks.
Peepland: The Complete Singles
(BloodLust! - B!052) CD $12.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. Peepland compiles the band's five 7-inch singles: “Dazed” (AWB, 1990); “Male Payment” (Private, 1990); “Manhattan Power Surge (Private, 1992), “Adult Books and Video” (AWB, 1993); and “Groupies” (Bloodlust, 1997). Three bonus tracks from the Woman Hater 7-inch (Self Abuse, 1997) by Surgical Stainless Steel also appear, including a cover of The Sodality’s classic, “I Can’t Stand A Bitchy Chick.”
Sado-Electronics
(BloodLust! - B!029) CD $12.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2002 re-release of the first Intrinsic Action CD (Tesco, 1992) has eleven tracks of analog synth-driven power-electronics, bordering on minimal-synth -- followed by a long, dark, electronic dirge “Surgical Stainless Steel,” broken into eleven segments -- including the first “blast song” that later shaped the direction of Bloodyminded.
Cosmic Superimposition
(E.I.E.) CD $12.75
irr. app. (ext.)’s second installment in a planned trilogy that draws from the philosophical ruminations of Wilhelm Reich is a single 45-minute track of revolving organic fluctuations that wax and wane in accordance to a well-tuned internal logic. Glassine ambient passages of processed environmental noise slide into the sustained harmonics of bowed metals which in turn couple with the off-kilter phase pattern of an exhaust fan whose motor is not quite properly aligned. All the while gurgles from streams, clatter from subterranean actions, singing bowl reverberations, and dark elliptical cycles of blackened electronics pock the stately progressions of Cosmic Superimposition’s dronemusik foundation.
Kreiselwelle
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS016) CD $12.00
Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment of irr. app. (ext.)’s Wilhelm Reich-influenced series. The title translates as “spiral wave,” a structuralist form Reich had observed throughout nature within numerous systems, from the grand arcs of galaxies to the radial symmetries of micro-organisms. Californian sound engineer M.S. Waldron returns to the same collection of field recordings which began this trilogy that includes Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition; however, he restricts himself here to sounds with spiraling origins: resonating springs, the sounds of the ocean cyclically churning over pebbles on the beach, the wafting of air around various objects, or simply a lamp-shade spinning in place. The result develops as an organic sublimation of one sound transforming from one state into another and then another. Motorized sounds of mechanical toys set askew settle into a tremolo phase pattern of electrical vibrations. These in turn morph into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. Many of the sounds seem to have origins in objects that are broken, obsolete, or just plain wrong; but through Waldron’s deft alchemy, sounds flourish in a richly dark and oddly serene amalgamation.
Ozeanishe Gerfühle
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
irr. app. (ext.) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, who has collaborated with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. The post-surrealist sympathetic drones, field recordings, and psychological tension of Ozeanische Gefühle rival such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio’s Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk’s Sumac, and Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith. The heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles disperse amid discordant, Bernhard Hermann-esque string-slashing. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies of bowls and bells.
Tone Redust
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD044) CD $13.50
Japanese guitarist, improvisor and field-recordings passionist, Naoki Ishida takes his main inspirations from electronic avant-garde music, free jazz and Japanese traditional music. Tone Redust represents lush and disturbing ambience of modern megapolis, subtle and clinking synthesizer drones and minimalist guitar chords.
Time Drops
(Paradigm Discs - PD13) CD $10.00
Two pieces that explore a broad range of traditional electronic techniques, both subtle and powerful. The title track attempts to poetically correspond infinity, cosmic equilibrium and harmony, with moments of creation in the form of electroacoustic music. "Ab Ovo" (previously released on 5 Composers Second Coming (Fylkingen 1994)), starts with a rather striking impact of breaking an egg, initiating the journey through the imaginary sound world circling around eternity and the inevitable point of disruption in a figure of eight. Composed at the Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, England.
Destination: Toujinbou
(Phage - PT141) CD $12.00
Sascha Mandler (Mazakon Tactics and Namazu Dantai) under the influence of Japanese noise. Composed but quickly changing harshness with the occasional vocal outburst and ambient synth transition. Edition of 250.
Chestnut Thornback Tar
(Pica Disk - PIC018) CD $14.00
The May edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series mixes harsh noise, drone, and rock, with assistance from associates Nils Are Drønen and Jean-Philippe Gross. The album begins and ends with two massive tracks, with a slew of short little sketches in between.
Cover By Hair Stylistics
(Pica Disk - PICA021) CD $14.00
On the July edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series, Iver Sandøy joins Hegre and Marhaug for some improvised noisecore. Fans of short bursts of blastbeat drumming backed by screaming vocals and heavily distorted guitar might recall Jazkamer's Art Breaker album (Smalltown Superjazzz 2008), with fifty-nine songs in mere seventeen minutes; Cover by Hair Stylistics ups the ante with 129 songs in twenty minutes. The artwork is by Japanese actor, author and composer Masaya Nakahara (Hair Stylistics, Suicidal 10CC and Violent Onsen Geisha). That's him on the front cover drawing the artwork used on the inside of the cover.
Failed State of Mind
(Pica Disk - PICA024) CD $14.00
The October edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series is their 25th studio album. A mellow and easy-on-the-ears recording the likes of which have not been heard since Panic (Bottrop-Boy 2006). Nine tracks, a drifting tapestry of droning guitars, distant location recordings and tasteful percussion, are woven together in a seamless stream of subtlety and abstraction. Melody is hinted at, but never achieved, buried beneath layers of sound. With clarity Jazkamer shifts between different swaths and bandwidths of noise: a pinball machine, a child's electronic toy, a rasping insect, a fax, or simply the abstract whir of sonic information are all caught up in an articulate but pressured streamline. Argentinian sound-wizard Anla Courtis of Reynols contributes guitar to two tracks.
Matthew 28:17
(Pica Disk - PICA022) CD $14.00
The August edition is the first in Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series by the core duo of Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre. This reduction does little to lighten the sonic density; their thick haze of dopey fuzz-guitars and droning organ recalls an earlier Jazkamer album The Sound of Music ([OHM] 2002). Here Hegre and Marhaug mingle astronomy and religion, a duality and conflict of science and spirituality they express as Dionysian ecstasy via primitive psychedelic noise. Cover art by Yasutoshi Yoshida (Government Alpha).
Metal Music Machine 2
(Pica Disk - PICA026) CD $14.00
The November edition of Jazkamer's monthly series of CDs and the sequel to their 2006 album, recorded with the same line-up in the same studio, continues the group’s exploration of metal’s deep dark fjords – from ’80s German thrash to ultraslow doom and classic ’70s heavy metal. The original album was something of a surprise hit for the band, live incarnations of which swayed more in the direction of noise meltdown, but Metal Music Machine 2 is more metal than the first with absolutely no noise or electronic elements audible. As a sign of respect for the memory of Ronnie James Dio, Metal Music Machine 2 is completely instrumental.
Monroe Doctrine
(Pica Disk - PICA016) CD $14.00
The March edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series. Free-form funk-noise.
Musica Non Grata
(Pica Disk - PICA015) CD $14.00
The February edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series, Musica Non Grata is a feedback-fest. Locked inside Duper Studios in Bergen with guitars and analogue synths and an arsenal of amps, Hegre, Gross and Marhaug explore feedback timbres recorded on an analogue 24-track two-inch tape-machine. The three slow-moving tracks are long-form meditations on feedback that are bliss for a select few and hell for most. February is not an easy month.
Peanuts
(Pica Disk - PICA023) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
The September edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series, a carefully constructed mixture of transparent sound-surfaces mixture, location recordings and percussion, can be seen as a continuation of Timex (Rune Grammofon 2000) and Pancakes (Smalltown Supersound 2002). Peanuts is not a noise record, nor is it ambient, but it might work well as very detailed background music. Cover photographs by Valeria Picerno.
Self Portrait
(Pica Disk - PICA017) CD $14.00
The April edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series. The first all-acoustic Jazkamer record.
Solitary Nail
(Pica Disk - PICA014) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
The January edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series. A trio recording of Jean-Philippe Gross, John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug. Studio live-electronics recorded to analog tape at Duper Studios in Bergen. Edited and post-produced by Gross. A dense tapestry of perfect electronic happiness. CD in digipak cover.
The Young Person's Guide To Jazkamer
(Pica Disk - PICA027) 4xCD $30.00
The final release in Jazkamer's monthly 2010 series is a 4CD Box-set. CD1: Wind On Wednesday (their first album from 1998, previously unreleased). CD2: sixteen tracks selected from various compilations released between 2000 and 2007. CD3: first-time-on-CD versions of the Turntable Surface Fireball 2 LP (Smalltown Supersound 2001), Knitter seven-inch (Tonschacht 2002), and the Jazkamer sides of split LPs with Opec and Sandbleistift (Reverse Recordings 2005 and Licht-Ung 2007, respectively). CD4: live recordings from 2002 and 2010, and rarities. Includes sixteen-page History of Jazkamer booklet and twenty-page booklet of photos.
We Want Epic Drama
(Pica Disk - PICA020) CD $14.00
The June edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series. Jazkamer performed as a big band from 2006 to 2008, with two drummers (Iver Sandøy and Nils Are Drønen), multiple guitarists (Lasse Marhaug, John Hegre, and Jørgen Træen), and electronics (Jean Phillipe Gross). They were often billed as the metal version of Jazkamer, but precious little metal is audible here (especially compared to their Metal Music Machine album [Smalltown Supernoise 2006]). We Want Epic Drama bears more resemblance to the Mass Projection work of Masayuki Takayanagi than any death metal bands. Two long tracks, recorded live to 24-track tape, no overdubs.
The Ducal Palace
(Turgid Animal - TA408) CD $12.00
A chronicle of the first ever rehearsal and recording of the core duo of Ben Jones and Hasan Gaylani. Thirty-plus minutes of raw guitar recordings from 1996, plus on the final track, the police turn up and perform their most popular track by law enforcement the word over "Cease Making That Racket." Old school experimental work out from a simpler time. Limited to 300 copies.
Cities In Flight
(BloodLust! - B!151) CDR $12.00
On the striking follow-up to Invisibility, Jendon (Catherine, Zelienople, Abduction) steers his Doepfer Analog Modular System through three electronic music pieces, commencing with a startling throb-throb, and working through loud, noisy, aggressive passages and more subtle, thoughtful, tempered segments.
Invisibility
(BloodLust! - B!117) CDR $12.00
This fixture in Chicago music shifts between roles as a psychedelically-driven guitarist in Catherine (TVT Records), a more experimental-minded guitarist in the avant-garde group Zelienople, and as half of Abduction (with Michael Miley). The core of these vivid modular synthesizer recordings seems to be a familiarity with the palette of early industrial music (e.g. Maurizio Bianchi, Lustmord, the grittier instrumentals of Throbbing Gristle).
Totentanz and other electronic works 1958-1973
(Melon Expander) 2xCD $16.50
Warner Jepson filled over 200 reels of quarter-inch tape with electronic sounds at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, Mills College and The National Center for Experiments in Television. Some were used as soundtracks for theater productions and art films, some were heard ephemerally at art galleries, parties and happenings in the late '60s and early '70s, but only the soundtrack to Totentanz, a theater work by Carlos Carvajal, was ever released (300 copies on LP in 1971). Melon Expander's 2xCD reissue of that LP includes plenty of other pieces unheard by anyone in the past thirty years -- late '50s musique concrete experiments; rhythmic, prepared-piano-and-tape pieces; and sprawling, meditative sound paintings done on the 100 and 200 series Buchla synthesizers. With liner notes by the composer. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008
Solo 78 /79
(Destijl - IND057) CD $12.75
One of the crown jewels of the early Smegma dawn, originally released in a limited run in 1980. Also known as Do Unseen Hands Keep You Dumb?, the album is a post-Zappa, stoned blues/concrete melange of guitar, tapes, found sounds and voice. Liner notes by John Olson of Wolf Eyes.
G.X. JUPITTER-LARSEN / ALLAN ZANE
Banjax
(Somnimage - som014) CD $15.00
A collaborative / conceptual project by the masterminds behind The Haters and Wyrm respectively satisfies appetites for "aesthetics" of "noise," as well as the dark ambiance sensibility. Sound manipulations involving explosions, breaking glass, and the destruction of various items by power tools spread over three tracks.
Abdominal Electricity
(Phage - PT140) CD $10.00
Another cut up masterpiece by this influential harsh noise artist. Sixty minutes, four tracks of quickly moving screech, sure to please any fan of 90s style Japanese noise. Edition of 500.
Intervals
(Monotype - MONO032) CD $12.75
Duo performances by two outbound percussionists (with Kahn on synthesizer also) from Switzerland 2009 recorded by Kahn, composited into their final versions here by Z’ev. Not surprisingly, the heavy processing transcends the inherent rhythmic quality of percussion and settles instead on their complex sonic qualities. “Lausanne” layers metallic noises with delicate grains running through a hollow wooden body; dark clouds gather, undefined sounds appear, a soft metallic hum becomes for a moment the sole audible component, underlying drum tremors rise to the surface. “Zürich” goes through light and dark phases, and rather bare moments where only drone-like electronics and processed drum noises create an impenetrable vacuum.
Vanishing Point
(23five - 23five015) CD $12.00
American sound-artist Jason Kahn is exacting when it comes to the principles of noise. His application in composition is not that of Merzbow or Masonna, with teeth-gnashing explosions of distortion, feedback, and volume; rather, Kahn's psychoacoustic techniques employ the specific frequencies of white, pink, brown, and blue noise in works that reflect the ideals of minimalism. These are sounds that regularly occur through the constant vibration of machinery; and Kahn is more than happy to appropriate such events through field recording. He also generates complementary noises through systems that involve the rattling architecture of a drum kit and an analog synthesizer. For all of the phenomenological studies and stoic mesmerism attributed to much of Kahn's catalogue, Vanishing Point is a subtle and hypnotic elegy for rattling metals, timbral vibration, gossamer static, hissing field recordings, and those aforementioned colored noises.
Kali Ensemble
(Turgid Animal - TA578) CD $11.00
The debut CD by Mike Page (Fire In The Head, Sky Burial) and Pentti Dassum (Umpio, Deep Turtle). Electronics and junk metal / percussion. Two tracks, both 33:33 long.
Alomoni 1985
(Paradigm Discs - PD08) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
A Japanese mystery of mind-bending iconoclasm from the mid-'70s and/or '80s. Enthralling Beefheart-like skronkadelia, with loops and tape rhythms, obsessive-compulsive vocals, out-of-control sound effects. Check your shorts for cake.
Saucers In The Sky
(Roaratorio - ROAR10) CD $12.00
Rodney Keith Eskelin (aka Rodd Keith, Rod Rogers) would’ve certainly found the recognition during his lifetime that his talent demanded had he not chosen to work in the lowest depths of the music industry: the “send us your lyrics” field, known today as the song-poem genre. Saucers In The Sky gathers together twenty-six previously uncollected Keith gems from the hundreds upon hundreds of songs he recorded before he lept from a highway overpass in 1974. Packaged in mini-LP gatefold sleeves with liner notes from Del Casher (inventor of the wah-wah pedal and guitarist on many of Rodd’s early recordings), and Stacey Keith (his daughter).
Bats in the Attic
(Pica Disk - PICA025) CD $14.00
From the swamps came the Nords, and to a swamp of blistering warped noise they now return. Active for years as Rulla, Tommi Keränen raises hell with his solo debut full-length CD. He’s dirtied his hands as an Incapacitants and Pymathon collaborator and as a member of Testicle Hazard, Gentle Evil and Les Manures. His messy sound -- thick, out-of-control electronic chaos -- reaches a boiling point, with source material recorded at the prestigious EMS in Stockholm using vintage analogue synthesizers. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
Gratitudes
(Small Doses - DOSE97) CD $11.25
Elements of doom metal, dark ambient, and early industrial music all work their way into Kinit Her’s ritual neofolk. Previously released on cassette under the title Divine Names (Brave Mysteries 2010), Small Doses' CD reissue includes an unreleased full-length companion recording, bringing their complete vision to fruition. Artwork by Sineater.
Spectrum
(Autobus) CD + Enhanced CD $18.00
Beginning in the 1950s, ethnomusicologist Király has been collecting the vocal and instrumental music of the people of the Voïvodine region (Hungarian, Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, gypsies) as well as their folk instruments: zithers, drums, flutes and fifes. Includes "The Little Glutton," an opera for children based on a folk tale recorded in 1963; early '70s recordings with Katalin Ladlik and Ensemble Acezantez on citraphone, tablophone, acoustic guitar and zither; and a 1998 home-recorded tablophone solo improvisation. CD-ROM is a 24-minute solo performance on zither, recorded live at Le Batofar in Paris in 1999.
Wealth
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD038) CD $13.50
Debut solo CD by Norwegian experimentalist and audio-inventor, one half of the highly acclaimed duo Information (with releases on Rune Grammofon & Beatservise), based on field recordings and audio collage.
Thiocarbamide
(Phage - PT91) CD $10.00
The fifty minutes on this release were composed using constructed metal objects and violin. All four tracks are pure, unrelenting harsh noise with plenty of movement, low bass rumbling, high-frequency feedback and the sound of metal being abused. One of Canada's most reliable mad dogs. Edition of 200.
Asylum Lunaticum
(Intransitive - INT033) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Intimate, absurd, feral and aggressive in its homemade weirdness, the music of Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Bär is deceptively simple -- typically created using their voices, a cassette-tape recorder and a microphone. Their astonishing suburban dramas are both charming and psychotic, sometimes at the same time. The husband-and-wife duo have self-published their dada-esque sound poetry experiments on small-edition lathe-cut LPs, tapes, and CDRs for years, usually adorning them with elaborate junk sculptures and paintings. Recommended if you'd rather spend the big bucks on food and rent and you're into Henri Chopin, Raymond Dijkstra, Ultra Eczema, Paul McCarthy, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Mike Kelley, LAFMS, Dylan Nyoukis, Aaron Dilloway.
PETER KOWALD / TATSUYA NAKATANI
13 Definitions of Truth
(Quakebasket - QB17) Used CD $16.00
Captured live at BPM in New York City, drummer Nakatani and contrabassist Kowald's improvisations play more like meditations. From the quiet hum of the almost silent instruments to the chaotic swirl of the music itself the arrangements here hold the listener in their spell from start to finish. Unplayed CD with the barcode crossed out, so we're listing it at used.
Anarkkia, Kaaos, Maailmanloppu!
(BloodLust! - B!129) CDR $10.00
A scarce recording by cult industrial noise group, Kriminaaliset Metsänhaltijat -- which barely saw the light of day when it was originally released on cassette (Triangle Records 2008). The members of this shadow group of old-school industrial acolytes originally hails from Finland and from Karelia (northwest Russia, between the Gulf of Finland and the White Sea). Kriminaaliset Metsänhaltijat claim to have built their sound on the bones of S.P.K. and Throbbing Gristle, through a prism of Japanese harsh-noise and Finnish hardcore-punk, spewing out a nihilistic nightmare of diffused synth hiss, commanding metal percussion, waves of harsh-noise, anarcho-punk attitude, and dissident power-electronics. An exciting and satisfying introduction, in preparation for Bloodlust's release of Koskemattomuus CD.
Koskemattomuus
(BloodLust! - B!138) CDR $12.00
Bloodlust's second release by this emerging group of old-school industrial acolytes. Recorded in 2001, Koskemattomuus furthers their association with anarcho-punk with its fiercely grim, anti-war statements; their aggressive, dark, industrial noise includes segments of traditional, romantic Finnish World War II songs and impassioned battlefield vocal segments. A complex and compelling tableau that appeals to fans from the martial music, minimal synth, crusty punk, and noise.
CHRISTOF KURZMANN / BURKHARD STANGL
Neuschnee
(Erstwhile - ERSTPOP02) CD $14.50
Stangl and Kurzmann combine the former's acoustic guitar and the latter's electronic sound manipulation. Following concerts throughout Europe and Asia, they began incorporating song structures and pop vocals into their “delicate musical architecture,” yielding their live album schneelive, an elongated and meticulously structured version of a Prince song. Neuschnee is more complex, recorded over a four-year period; five tracks form an ambitious meta-song suite, with various lyrics and international musical styles that reconcile “experiment and tradition … thoughtful silence and expressive celebration of each moment … worlds of noises and clearly defined harmonies.”
CHRISTOF KURZMANN / BURKHARD STANGL
schnee_live
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE03) CD $14.40
The final show in Berlin on the last night of AMPLIFY 2004: addition, documents how much Stangl and Kurzmann's duo has changed since the initial recording of schnee in 2000, which was followed by numerous concerts over the intervening four years throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. “One might think that the incorporation of an existing song -- by Prince, no less -- into a context of austere eai experimentation is guaranteed to drag the music down into a swamp of postmodernism bordering on the kitsch,” explains Paris Transatlantic, “But nothing could be further from the truth. Gentle diatonic harmony [has long been] a feature of Stangl's guitar playing … and Kurzmann's own tastes in music are catholic enough…. [E]ven when Stangl drifts off into nostalgic Jim Hall comping, Kurzmann's oppressive loops drag him back into focus.”
Dar-As-Sulh Volume I
(Paradigm Discs - PD15) CD $12.00
Pure field recordings, psychoacoustic tone works, and techno-noise by this clinically inclined group with Morphogenesis connections. Sleeve notes contain information on ambisonic recording and at least one track is said to be UHJ encoded, whatever that is. "Fearsomely executed," according to Will Montgomery.
Allure of Roadside Curios
(Starlight Furniture Company - *16) CD $14.00
Formed in 1997 by guitarist G.E. Stinson with bassist Steuart Liebig and guitarist Nels Cline, L.Stinkbug consciously chose to complete their line-up with a drummer who could groove -- percussionist Scott Amendola. Both Stinson and Cline prepare their guitars with an assortment of springs, toys, paint brushes, an electric drink stirrer, enough clips to make a beautician queasy, an egg whisk (that’s right, an egg whisk) and numerous other custom-made objects, and run them through a variety of effects, harmonizers and looping devices; same goes for Liebig -- chopsticks between the strings, looping devices, extended technique, the works.
GRAHAM LAMBKIN / JASON LESCALLEET
Breadwinner
(Erstwhile - ERST052) CD $14.50
Subtitled “musical settings for common environments and domestic situations,” the material for The Breadwinner was recorded at Lambkin's house in upstate NY, where the duo treated the entire building and its surrounding grounds as a studio, welcoming in outside sounds, which were later kept or eliminated during two years of reworking and polishing. Numerous submerged fragments reveal the beauty in everyday life. Observes Tiny Mix Tapes, “The album consists entirely of sounds from Lambkin's flat -- the radiator, the creaks in the floor, the silence/noise of the various rooms/hallways, the neighbors talking through the wall -- all edited down to roughly 50 minutes from eight hours of tape…. Most everything on The Breadwinner feels a little off and uneasy, a little smeared…. But there's really no single epiphany here, nothing really to "get," no crucial subtext to be discovered. Instead, it's just about finding appreciation in sound and sound construction.”
BRUCE LAMONT / RIGHT-EYE RITA / MARK SOLOTROFF
Lamont / Right-Eye Rita / Solotroff
(BloodLust! - B!124) CDR $9.00
The trio's debut release, a single 19-minute live recording from a performance at Chicago's AV-aerie. Their tri-vocal approach utilizes treated and pure voice: the looped deep chants of Lamont (Yakuza); the spellbinding, electrified wails of Right-Eye Rita, who Stopsmiling compares to “Lydia Lunch drenched in absinthe”; and the feedback-laced drones of Solotroff (Bloodyminded, The Fortieth Day, Intrinsic Action). For fans of Diamanda Galas, Abruptum, and the earliest moments of Current 93 and Coil.
Soundmatters
(23five) CD $12.00
The compositions of this French-Canadian sound artist have rarely emerged beyond of the context of international electro-acoustic competitions and festivals. His only widely distributed piece has been Mantra, which Metamkine released in 1997 through their Cinéma Pour L’oreille series. This exceptional work of acoustic minimalism drew considerable notoriety thanks in part to a public misidentification that Laporte sourced the composition on the resonant frequencies of a Zamboni. This anthology includes the aforementioned 25-minute masterpiece, plus four accompanying compositions that share Mantra’s unique sensibility; it’s a series of visceral compositions that build upon the traditions of minimalism, graphical composition, and phonography. Given the numerous parallels to Xenakis’ smoldering electro-acoustics and Tony Conrad’s delirious harmonics, Laporte’s work demands the attention from devotees of avant-garde composition.
Maimed Left Arm
(Turgid Animal - TA289) CD $10.00
***Reissue of classic cassette (E.F. Tapes, 1995) by Richard Ramirez and Mary A.D. Fifty minutes, two tracks, lo-fi space noise with that straight-to-tape '90s harsh noise sound. Tones shine through the haze, aliens rape abductees and moan a feedback language only they can understand. A ghastly trip through time. With both original and new artwork by Tisbor.
Twist And Decease / Desinfektionsraum
(Trash Ritual - TRASH051) 2xCD $16.00
Post-mortem industrial hell from Il Diavalo Italiano, second only to MB in terms of psychological abuse via raw electronics, distorted voices, concrete sounds, self-assembled electronic circuits and samples of the execution and disposing of Aldo Moro, the assassination of Victor Emmanuel II, etc.
True Mask
(Small Doses - dose66) CD $10.00
The first compact disc release by Cadaver in Drag and Swamp Horse dude. Four tracks, nearly 40 minutes, elements of black metal, harsh noise, power electronics and dark ambient. Twisted environments built from electronics, guitar, and guttural vocals. Hand-made art work.
Le Voci del Buio
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6545) CDR $12.00
Document of a late-night session by Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost), featuring an obscure ensemble of radical folk musicians of the Western Alps. Classical and acoustic guitars, early 1800s homemade wooden string instruments from the rural tradition of the region. Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
LEONARD, SKROWCZEWSKI, ZAPPA TRIO
Visions
(Archive / Edition) CD $14.00
The debut recording from the trio of bassist Mark Leonard, percussionist Nick Skrowczewski, and saxophonist Stanley Zappa released by Bill Dixon on his Archive/ Edition imprint. Twelve tracks -- seven of which were recorded by Steven Lobdell of Davis Redford Triad and Faust -- influenced by the warm and tasteful tone of bebop pioneer Dexter Gordon, sympathetic to Dixon’s willingness to explore the limits of expression, and tempered by a Satie-like adherence to brevity and avoidance of tiresome, interminable pyrotechnics. Leonard and Zappa have worked as occasional sidemen in groups led by Rashid Bakr (Cecil Taylor’s longtime drummer), Zappa has also played with Lawrence Cook.
Love Me Two Times
(Intransitive - INT026) 2xCD $19.50 (Out-of-stock)
This twenty-three-track double-CD is the result of six years of live and studio collaboration between the Boston improvising duo of Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) and Greg Kelley (trumpet) with tape-loop operator/electronics whiz of some renown Jason Lescalleet. Recorded at a wide range of venues with correspondingly varied attacks (not to mention degrees of fidelity), Love Me Two Times provides as comprehensive a picture as is likely feasible of these three, from the microscopically subtle to blood smeared yawps, from gorgeously woven drones to, well, Julia Child.
Pilgrim
(Glistening Examples) LP + CD $36.00
An audio documentation of this electronics-and-tape artist’s coming to terms with the death of his father. The LP documents a performance Lescalleet gave after discovering his father had terminal cancer; its floor-rattling flux of abrasive, low tones invokes the purr of a Chevy’s engine Lescalleet’s father discusses in a letter reproduced on the record jacket. A snippet of the final conversation he had with his father is buried in a heat-haze of tape hiss and air conditioner hum. The CD further extrapolates on Lescalleet’s father’s email; its 74 minutes move from dreamlike bell tones, through abraded, metallic hum, escalating into fierce, brutalizing waves of noise which then cut to a recording of Lescalleet’s daughter singing the Irish folk song “Molly Malone” at her grandfather’s request. The book in which the CD is mounted has plenty more text and images. If you aren’t staggered by The Pilgrim, there’s something wrong with you.
This Is What I Do
(Glistening Examples - GLEX1101) CDR $11.00
A collection of previously released compilation tracks. “Lescalleet’s work is a monument to the notion that music is sound,” your Dusted correspondent will have you know. “He exploits the quirks of cheap or damaged equipment … [and] the malleable, impermanent ways of magnetic tape…. Sometimes the material’s origins are obvious, such as “Un Peu de Neige Sans Raison’s” church organ samples… [while] the ghostly low tones and flickering high ones on “Untitled” could come from anywhere. But whether he’s looping sound into long, mournful melodies or squashing it into tiny quavers, he consistently invests it with such gravity that it could absorb a black hole.”
Catastrophe Point #5
(Intransitive - int034) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. The latest stark, haunting album in Kuwayama Kiyoharu's series of compositions made from dragging metal chains across massive, dramatically reverberant warehouses implies unknowable enormity, sounds bouncing off of faraway walls in a landscape of factories and power plants. Catastrophe Point #5 is true industrial music enveloped by mystery, fog, and foreboding malevolence.
Cool Truth
(Heresee) CD $12.00
A contempo reissue of L.H. Wolf’s 1985 self-released, singular-vision masterpiece of free jazz, world blooz, WTF flow, and out-of-sync multi-track.
Drenched Lands
(BloodLust! - B!127) LP + 3-inch CDR $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
Since 2005, Locrian have been zeroing in on the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal. Drenched Lands unfolds with an almost narrative structure: it slowly descends into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began -- completely transformed. Clear vinyl, limited edition of 200 copies. Bonus 3-inch CDR contains 18-minute exclusive track "Sullage." CD released by Small Doses.
Drenched Lands
(Small Doses - dose43) CD $13.50
Since 2005, Locrian have been zeroing in on the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal. Drenched Lands unfolds with an almost narrative structure: it slowly descends into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began -- completely transformed. The hour-long disc is rounded out by an extended bonus track previously unavailable in any digital format. Black-on-black disc packaged in an arigato pack with a 4-panel insert. Limited edition vinyl released by Bloodlust.
Rain of Ashes
(Basses Frequences - BF19) CD $12.00
The duo’s guitar- and electronic-sourced metal-tinged drone / doom t his time out is not far removed from their earlier work, but the dynamic, complex guitar alternates between melodic post-punk tones and shrill piercing feedback, while a frozen wall of electronic textures stays in place, eventually allowing subtle low-end electronic sounds to move forward. Darker ambient electronics pull away and are replaced by simple 8-bit digital melody and rapid guitar plucking. The band’s combination of metal drone and noise infuses more meditative ambience and a subtle hint of post-punk rock that isn’t usually referenced in the heavier stuff.
Rhetoric Of Surfaces
(BloodLust! - B!113) CDR $12.00
This follow-up to Bloodlust's Plague Journal 7-inch, which showcased Locrian's distinctive style of deconstructed metal trance music, deftly unites a grouping of out-of-print and previously unreleased material from the duo, charting live and studio work that pre-dates their recent shift into more black metal-influenced territory. Rich, heavy, guitar/keyboard/voice-based drone for those who usually find such music to be too gentle or uneventful.
Live In San Francisco
(23five) CD $12.00
Spectral timbres and ominous fluctuations layered into a massive lump of sonic force by famed concrète composer with over 130 releases to his name. One track was culled from the infamous Hexaphonic show at The Lab in August 2000, and the other from an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. Comes with a blindfold to enhance the phenomenological experience of Lopez’s dramatic compositions. Insert firing squad remark here.
Machines
(Elevator Bath - eeaoa030) 2xCD $14.00
Four pieces recorded from 2004 to 2007, based on sounds of clocks, elevators, and laboratory and factory equipment in Amsterdam, Leipzig, Barcelona, and Riga. Permeated by an industrial sound, but the arrangements are very subtle. There is a strong rhythmic presence, heavy with the weight of machinery. Thick sounds held in crisp clarity. With fold-out insert featuring color photography. Edition of 500
Twist of Fate
(Monotype - MONO035) CD + DVD $30.00
A provocative journey into the dark groove of endless night where possibility, mystery and mania entwine the listener in a deep cocoon of sound and voice. Processed acoustics, field recordings, found sounds, electronics, turntables, percussion, synth, organ, piano, inflatable balloons and knives by Petit; vocals, guitar and found sounds by Lunch. Six-page digipak, case, and thirty-two-page, full-color book. CAVEAT EMPTOR: THE DVD IS PAL FORMAT (not playable in all US DVD players).
Colorado Terrain Investigation
(Industrial Recollections) CD $17.00
Includes the material from N3845 W10452.5/7.5 double-seven-inch (RRRecords 1988), Aztalan / Camp Douglas Quadrangle seven-inch (RRRecords 1988), and a twenty-minute live performance previously released on VHS only. Lunde does what nobody else is doing. The crude and decayed quality of these releases is still fresh today. With eight-page full-color booklet, reproducing the original artworks in all their aging, decayed glory.
XCHDX / TapeDeathCut
(Industrial Recollections) CD $17.00
Material from XCHdX: On The Terrain Of Prophecy LP (Alamut / Big Body Parts 1989), and split LP with Hands To (Complacency 1989). Includes bonus material from limited edition tape available only to subscribers of Witness To Disaster, not for sale previously.
Para Pacem Para Bellum
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD037) CD $13.50
Young Ukrainian who has composed symphonic, chamber, choir, vocal, cinema and electro-acoustic works. This CD builds links between two methods of creating music: academic (pieces for organ, piano, string quartet and choir) and experimental computer tools.
Contact
(Erstwhile - ERST054) 2xCD $23.50
Contact marks the first meeting of two pivotal, crucial experimental musicians who for the past decade have traveled parallel paths, intersecting occasionally (duo CDs with Toshi Nakamura; a 230-minute-long quartet with Nakamura and Otomo Yoshihide; the AMPLIFY 2008 festival). Full, unedited sessions with Rowe on guitar and electronics, M on sine waves and contact mic, recorded live and in the studio.
SACHIKO M / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / YOSHIHIDE OTOMO / KEITH ROWE
M / Nakamura / Otomo / Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE05) 3xCD $41.50
This document of the centerpiece show of AMPLIFY 2004: addition (the "four-hour quartet”) contains three individually packaged slimline CDs in a slipcase with original artwork by Keith Rowe, which wraps around the entire box, front, side, and back, as well as liner notes from all four musicians and numerous pictures from Yuko Zama. “The middle section of this concert sports some of the most effectively noisy utterances I've heard from these musicians,” marvels Dusted, “Even out-harshing Rowe's seminal Harsh. Extremities of frequency are both piercing and nauseating, the huge span of space between them never empty and often crowded by what can be described as organized sound. Only in rare instances are individual instruments readily identifiable -- a guitar plucked, the lower frequencies of the sounds transformed into dull echoing thuds before disappearing again into the miasma.”
Where Are We Going?
(BloodLust!) CDR $10.50
The first full-length release in over ten years by Pierpaolo Zoppo aka Mauthausen Orchestra. Perfectly cold, austere, and dark analog synth material, yet carrying enough weight behind it to please all but the fans of his early, violent, primitive, and raw Mauthausen Orchestra recordings (recently revisited for the lavish Broken Flag box set released by Vinyl-on-Demand in 2007). Handsome digipak, designed by Megan Emish (ex-Blodyminded). 46 minutes.
Go
(Public Eyesore - 96) Used CDR $5.00
Spastic sub-machinegun drum machine outbursts, random samples and squealing feedback noises. The secret bonus track is bass heavy electronic noise, marinated for a few weeks in reverb and dragged behind a car, rumbly, and lo fi.
Brain Damage In Oklahoma City
(Siltbreeze) CD $12.00
The second installment in the Siltbreeze / Quakebasket series of music by poet / mystic / shaman Angus MacLise. Culled from the archives of Mr. Tony Conrad, this volume (covering the years 1967-'70) highlights MacLise's unique and intricate drumming style. Cembalum, bongos, hand drum, barrel congas -- all are majestically thumped 'n' bumped for maximum orgasmic sensory satisfaction. Comprised of eight tracks, the acme of this collection is a pair of large ensemble pieces, "Dreamweapon Benefit for the Oklahoma City Police Dept. parts 1 & 2," featuring Angus (barrel conga), Hetty MacLise (tampura), the poet Jackson Mac Low (recorders and voice), Henry Flynt (song flute and voice) and Conrad (limp string). These tracks, recorded in May of 1968, are the apex of maximalist loft style psychedelic improvisation. Conrad's illuminating, occasionally hilarious liner notes set up the narrative of this volume and offer a brief glimpse into the mind-scrambling fracas that was NYC, USA, Earth, 1968. Along with more gorgeous, brain-warping Invasion-style sleeve art, included in the CD booklet is a reproduction of the poster for the Dreamweapon Benefit, confirmation in black and white that for four nights in May, 1968, Wooster Street Cinematheque was definitely one witchy place to be.
The Cloud Doctrine
(Sub Rosa - SR182) 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
159 minutes of minimal electronic music, readings, and soundtrack pieces circa 1963-1976 by this avant-garde mad dog. Taken from his own archives and featuring contributions from Tony Conrad, John Cale, Piero Heliczer, Beverly Grant Conrad, and Hetty Maclise. Packaged with a historical text by Gerard Malanga, and unpublished photos.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(Trash Ritual - TRASH050) CD $12.00
The long-awaited CD reissue, originally released on vinyl by Praxis Dr. Bearmann in 1995 -- one of the key foundations of the contemporary direction of noise. "Rusted Steel And Rotted Flesh" is restored to its full, uncut length (just under 45 minutes). Edition of 500 copies. "Western Pennsylvania is a graveyard. No ideas or worthwhile activities exist in this decaying nightmare of horror and stupidity. Just hatred and broken lives. The native population is an indigenous mutation of inbred sickness and mental corruption. Someday everyone and everything here will die a miserable death. That day cannot come soon enough."
At The End of Summer
(Music Atlach - MA004) CD $16.50
Live recordings by the new psychedelic rock band lead by Overhang Party's Rinji Fukuoka.
Ecstatic Crystallization
(Music Atlach - MA009) CD $15.00
Feedback-drenched guitar noise drones by Rinji Fukuoka's follow-up band to the legendary Overhang Party. Here the magical garden of post-Velvet doom is stripped to the bare essentials by way of the Japanese psyche. Eternal contemporary rock’n’roll theater.
Frontera
(There - TR005) CD $16.50
Second album (first studio) by what's left of Overhang Party. Deep song, vivid rock instrumentals, heavy feedback drones.
Φ
(Erstwhile - ERST060) 3xCD $32.00
The first meeting of two influential European experimental musicians. One disc of selected compositions (by Frey and Cardew), one disc of their own compositions, and one disc of improv.
Manilapede
(Turgid Animal - TA534) CD $10.75
"Makes me feel like I've bored a hole into the center of the earth with my teeth!" says one friend close to this Starving Weirdo's alter-ego band. Self-described as "dune rock" from the deserts of Manila, California; this band is very influenced by its surroundings. Slow-motion metallic riffs ring throughout the entire fifty minutes of the debut album, laying the foundation for waves of rolling synth lines and clangs echoing in the distance, presumably a shamanic attempt at drums but too lost in a trance to muster any concrete tempo or rhythm.
Pig Magic
(Pica Disk - PICA029) 7-inch + CD $15.00
Norwegian free noise duo with guests Maja Ratkje and Lasse Marhaug.
LIONEL MARCHETTI / SEIJIRO MURAYAMA
Hatali Atsalei (L’Echange des Yeux)
(Intransitive - INT031) CD $13.00
For his second album on Intransitive, Lionel Marchetti returns to his favorite subject: music as an essential element of ritual and ecstatic trance states. Unlike his Knud un Nom du Serpent CD (to be reissued in Spring 2008), which offers a critique of avant-garde and popular music as an extension of the transcendental impulse, Hatali Atsalei is more literally an experience of ritual. Using percussion, wind instruments, field recordings of natural sounds, and most importantly the voice of collaborator Seijiro Murayama, Marchetti once again gives us a multi-leveled engagement with the elemental urge to converse with nature and to use sound as a means to achieve altered states of consciousness. Referencing narrative radio art, musique concrete and acoustic ecology, Hatali Atsalei is a fascinating work that reveals more layers with each listen.
Knud un Nom de Serpent (Le Cercle des Entrailles)
(Intransitive - INT014) CD $15.00
Marchetti's classic album of harrowing tape music was originally released Intransitive in 1999, quickly sold out, and remains the most requested title in the label's catalog. This reissue boasts a new cover design and liner notes by Bhob Rainey (nmperign, The BSC). Knud un Nom de Serpent illustrates Marchetti's idea of popular music as shamanic ritual, a gateway to ecstatic altered states. Armed with fierce wit and a razor blade, he smashes together sounds from all over the world into a hallucinatory cyclone of Jamaican reggae, French chanson, American avant-garde vocalists, Thai pop songs, nature recordings, spoken text, and more. The result is a chilling work of furious, obliquely narrative tape-collage and tense, frightening scenes.
Une Saison
(Monotype - MONO036) CD $18.00
Four previously released tracks of fantastic musique concrète: La grande vallée (Metamkine 1998); Portrait d'un glacier (Alpes, 2173m) (Ground Fault Recordings 2001); Dans la montagne (Ki Ken Taï) (La Muse En Circuit 1997 and Chloë Recordings 2003); and L'oeil retourné (Selektion, 1999). All are elaborately composed galaxies of static and aggressive, self-sustaining sound explorations. The more sensitive among us will admit to feeling paralyzed by the swiftness of the reactions of the sounds from one layer to the next in Marchetti’s “microtonal stance of sound snorkeling.” Michel Chion says, “To my mind, the characteristics of numerous compositions by Lionel Marchetti, including those featured in this collection, are fullness and perfection, a design both obscure and transparent at the same time, so typical of a classic work.” Tri-folded cardboard jacket, sixteen-page booklet with Chion's "The Suspension Bridges.”
Country and Western
(Helicopter - H59) CD $12.00
No samples from the film Payday, but probably worth a listen anyhow. Edition of 300.
It's Not The End Of The World
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD043) CD $13.50
Methods and traditions of serious electronic avant garde integrated into the aesthetics of loud and bloody harsh noise music. Dynamic and inventive, full of lo-fi electronic sweeps, distortion and feedback.
Kiss of Acid
(Monotype - MONO033) CD $12.75
Wastell’s misfortune-prone project started with a gigantic tam tam, recorded in 2004 by Graham Halliwell; Marhaug applied his electronics, computer, and compositional structure to the recording in 2005. A mere five years later, here is the forty-minute result -- dark, haunting atmospheric. Cardboard gatefold jacket with twelve-page book.
LASSE MARHAUG / MAJA S.K. RATKJE
Music for Gardening
(Pica Disk - PICA009) CD $17.00
The fourth entry in Ratkje and Marhaug's "Music For…" collaborative series. After Shopping (2002), Loving (2004) and Faking (2005) comes Gardening, inspired by Ratkje's new life in the countryside. Seven tracks meant to inspire spending time on one’s hand and knees, fidgeting with dirt, taking care of plants.
Tapes 1990-1999
(Pica Disk) 4xCD $27.00
Almost five hours in length, the 47 tracks here were selected from Marhaug’s cassette releases in the 1990s on labels like Mother Savage Noise Productions, TWR, Slaughter Productions, Freak Animal, Xerxes, Pain Art and others; they range from cut-up voice and turntable thrashing to harsh wall-of-sound power noise and scum sounds. Packaged in a handsome custom-made solid box with a 24-page booklet of photos, cover reproductions and liner-notes by Tommy Carlsson (Abisko, Segerhuva) and Tore H. Bøe (Origami Republika, The Nordic Miracle). Limited edition of 500 copies.
Five Years of Fuck All
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR021) CD $10.50
Rare recordings, covers and out-of-print stuff from post-drone heavyweights. Approved by Julian Cope. Packaging by Thumbprint Press.
MASONNA / RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK
Clitoris Projectile Pump Action
(Tochnit Aleph - TA083) CD $15.00
First released as tape/object by Schimpfluch / Coquette in 1995 in an edition of 33 copies, this CD reissue makes available on a somewhat large scale (600 copies) the celebrity death match between the wild dog of Osaka (Masonna) and Mt. Lunacy's foreign ambassador (Rudolf Eb.er). Features R&G studio and live-actions material with guest appearance by Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant).
cd Bea
(Annette Works - AW02) CD $10.00
Live solo improvisation evolving from three interfacing elements, abstractly filtered through Matthews's psyche: a conventional violin, a heavy rig of special “live sampling” electronics, and the social and psychological space of the concert. Her unusual sense of expanded mental “space” is stocked with gripping science-fiction landscapes and somber delirium. Matthews is a fine violinist who can soar in a deranged sawing sort of way, but she deserves recognition for the live electronics; she keeps multiple streams of samples going at once -- truly polyphonic and polyrhythmic improvising. Dense droning layers are built up, cut out unexpectedly into choppy rhythms, and then suddenly turn the bend to become something else entirely, with very little obvious looping or hackneyed manipulation, more akin to composed orchestral music or tape-spliced musique concrete.
MARTIN MCKELVEY / JOHN PILCHER
A Bun Dance
(Dungeon Taxis - DT01) CD $18.00
The Eagle Has Strayed in this 48-minute opus of lunar musique concrete right out of late '60s Hastings, New Zealand. These squiggly, stellar tapezones joyously light years ahead of time emerge on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's inaugural moonlanding, having originally sampled and plunged that stuttering, televised transmission into another sea of tranquility and magnificent desolation. Pilcher's peripheral figure hangs ghostlike on the edge of the front cover next to a poster of The Beatles' semaphore (which does not spell HELP, by the way) -- a revealing allusion to the duo's radically warpage, a preamble for the winding genealogy of NZ's later musical lab tests. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009.
Face of Vehemence
(Groundfault) CD $12.00
Another blobalicious sound gulp from Portland, Oregon’s über-rattler Daniel Menche. Inspired by Yukio Mishima’s attitude toward art, flesh, death, and spirit, Menche constructs big-man bass pulses and harmonic drones that’ll make the hair in your ears turn green, and ignites more of the corrosion fireworks for which he is famous. Electro-crickets, grinding metal rain, hypnotic and sultry static -- Menche unleashes them all. He shall overcome.
DANIEL MENCHE / KIYOSHI MIZUTANI
Garden
(Groundfault) CD $14.00
Natural garden sounds electronically processed by Mizutani (high sounds), and West Coast chancellor of scrape Menche (low sounds). Subtle and disorienting.
Dead Zone
(Quasi Pop - QPOP059) CD $13.50
Fax machine blips, tortured whale song, 1950s sci-fi effects, theremin sounds coming off like a Geiger Counter lost in the fall out, crumbling buildings rendered as metallic noise crunch, twenty-foot waves as static, nuclear meltdowns as devilish shrieks. Recorded the day after the first explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Artwork depicts Chernobyl and Prypiat. This CD is dedicated to the worldwide anti-nuclear movement. Edition of 500
Canticle of Ignat
(Archive - ARCHIVE46) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
One track played on modified acoustic guitar and one track played on modified banjo, recorded in 2007 at BigJar in Philadelphia. Metzger offers an amazing mix of Indian ragas crossed with a junk yard band feel, highly evolved and unique. Slightly oversized sleeve silkscreened (by Alan Sherry of Siwa) and die-cut with an insert printed on vellum, hand-glued and assembled. Edition of 500 copies.
Deliverance
(Locust - 013) CD $12.00
A real time performance on overhauled 21-string banjo of deeply satisfying, impulsive outer cosmos ragadelia that is unfiltered aural transcendence, Metzger's hypnotic raga epic is both slow burning meditation and urgent mind / body duel.
Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo and Guitar
(Chairkicker's Music - CKM015) CD $12.00
Metzger may wrench unique and varied sounds and melodies from the banjo, but an irreverent approach and fluid dexterity are also in evidence via seamless hybrids of North Indian and Asian influences, jazz and folk. Recorded within the acoustically resonant former church Sacred Heart Studio in Duluth, his three long improvisations venture miles beyond what one normally expects from the banjo.
JENKS MILLER / NICHOLAS SZCZEPANIK
American Gothic
(Small Doses - DOSE92) CD $11.00
This landmark collaboration by Jenks Miller (Horseback) and Nicholas Szczepanik stretches from lilting, minimal drones to dark, dense, harsh soundscapes. The disc’s closer, “Cranberry Sauce,” was featured on a Wire Tapper comp, but don’t let that turn you off.
Live in Japan
(Gold Soundz) CD $9.00
This document of the NYC trio’s 2002 J-jaunt is heavier on electronics than usual (no bass or guitar this time), and explodes with crunch, crackle, and sizzle. It’s some of Monotract’s most inorganic music, robust and unintelligible. Roger Rimada, Nancy Garcia, and Carlos Giffoni’s crowded mix has room for a rhythmic base, but the beats are just another conflicting voice within many. Packaged inside origami-style card foldout, silkscreened in eyeball-searing pink, designed by Jelle Crama.
THURSTON MOORE / NEW BLOCKADERS / JIM O'ROURKE
Voloptulist
(Hospital - HOS144) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two tracks, one a collaboration with Thurston Moore, the other with Jim O’Rourke (and Chris Corsano on percussion). Tense drones with English clutter dissolving into tape hiss ambiance with booming, free barbaric yawps. Such butchery.
In Streams Vol. 1
(Paradigm Discs - PD16) CD $13.50
Everything here by this legendary UK free sound conglomerate, working together for well over a decade without ever using laptops or samplers is performed and processed completely live, using varispeed CD player, prerecorded analog tape (manually inched past the playback head), amplified objects, piano, biofeedback, water machine, percussion. Volume one collects performances from the late '90s - two recorded live in London, one in Cologne, and the studio track "Charivari Remnant." Start here unless you've already been frozen in the center of an ice block and thawed by ten-thousand heated centipedes. Otherwise, you'll miss the shrieks of agitated head-footed mollusks transmitted by hacked long-distance telecommunications motherboards. After Morphogenesis have rustled the gag jewelry on your lumbar vertebrae, an elusive ringing does wheelies throughout the central nervous system, with no guarantee that paralysis will assist in reorientation. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2001.
In Streams Vol. 2
(Paradigm Discs - PD17) CD $13.50
Volume two collects four more performances recorded between mid 1997 and mid 2000, when no one surpassed the sextet at draping sprawling, waterlogged tapetum over spiney shoulders of lymph-challengers waving a black flag. Gong-pepper shavings drift down from the sky like fish food in an aquarium, settling on boulevards slick with alien phlegm, and causing a complex chemical reaction that yields light blue denatured pus resembling sapphire pie crust. A map wouldn't even help navigate the plumbing anomalies here, the mess hall assemblies, the monorail prototype demonstrations (pre-kink removal), the arboreal growth spurts, the ultraviolet snowplows, the speculum-induced, big-cat belches, or the freefalls through three-dimensional matrices of snorts, snuffles, blurts and scrapes (with optional rebounds through pinball machines). With human error as the cornerstone of civilization, it's amazing that in a group the size of Morphogenesis, no one fucks it up with bad judgement or prolonged lapses of indulgence. In Streams reveals just a few facets in an ongoing montage that doesn't act like a montage because of the collective discipline of Adam Bohman, Ron Briefel, Clive Graham, Clive Hall, Michael Prime and Roger Sutherland, who improvise with a high degree of coordination on enough home-made and hot-wired gear to fill several wholesale outlets. They selectively deploy prepared instruments, signal processing, purely electronic sources, and non-musical objects; meningiomata, papillomaviruses, and liquidy protrusions you could look up in Diseases Of The Skin get raked across bongo drum terrain, and digital goink meows vault over the corpse of Count Amadeo Avogadro's body as if part of a score derived from migratory lesions of burrowing nematodes and larvae, and it could go on forever, easily. Unless it doesn't. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2001
Wooden Enclosure
(Turgid Animal - TA386) LP + CD $15.00
With a focus on the Mondo Cane side of heavy drone music and the murderous side of old school industrial noise, this full-on bass/guitar kraut-styled work out from the depths of the Sparrow Pit slowly weaves and blurs itself into an abyss, ending with a slow growl of discomfort. The CDr features two drawn out synth experiments. Grim, laser-printed artwork on blue paper loose inside a PVC sleeve with the record inside a white paper sleeve and housed in a black card outer sleeve.
We Share a Shadow
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.25
Patrick McGinley’s field recordings of activated environments (e.g. resonant industrial spaces, windswept telephone lines, bowed branches, gasping ventilator systems, etc.) originate in locations from his travels; yet he is far more interested in extracting emotional, transcendent, or metaphysical kernels and recontextualizing them as sympathetic compositions of magnificent dronemusik. We Share A Shadow continues where Husk left off, with its spiraling manipulated field recordings slowly revealing environmental sonorities that go unnoticed each and every day. Limited edition of 300 copies, with hand water-colored artwork and letterpress printing.
Commonwealth
(23five - 23FIVE013) CD $12.00 (Out-of-print)
A central figure in Boston's sound art vanguard, Brendan Murray specifically shapes his repetitions and sinewy tonalities within the rigors of compositional frameworks and temporal restraints, setting himself apart from the conventional wisdom that drone-based music is an open-ended exercise into the "realm of the infinite." A single crescendo terminating at the end of 49 minutes, this epic investigates subtle harmonics and overtones expressed through layered slippages of pure sound conceived through guitar, analog synthesis, and plenty of digital manipulation. A worthy parallel to the work of Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Iannis Xenakis.
Wonders Never Cease
(Intransitive - INT027) CD $13.50
Big, beautiful, opiate drones by this Boston artist, vaguely in the same vein as Keith Fullerton Whitman, Birchville Cat Motel, Greg Davis, Jonathan Coleclough, but more melodic, assertive and rough than the stuff to which it seems similar. This is the first thing by Murray written to be a single statement (as opposed to a collection of tracks or quick experiments). It has a real epic quality that is pretty awesome.
Music Ensemble
(Roaratorio) CD $10.50
The first documentation of influential mid-’70s free improv group featuring Daniel Carter, William Parker, Billy Bang, Malik Baraka, Roger Baird, and Herb Kahn bears the seeds of contemporary ecstatic jazz freeweights Other Dimensions in Music and Test. Arresting live recordings of immediate, post-ESP free hoot. Packaged in a mini-gatefold sleeve.
What's Left
(Turgid Animal - TA353) CD $10.00
The first CD release by the Turgid Animal label's hombre del queso muy grande blurs the lines between rough harsh noise, power electronics and almost industrial soundscapes. More than fifty minutes of blown-out hatred from one of northern England's most evil. Reissues tracks from the Shift split CDr (Alfa Male Discharge), the What's Left? business card set (Dumping Ground), the No Bodies CDr (Amorf Sounds) and the Grunt split tape (Turgid Animal).
Alienology - Selected Works 1998-2008
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6555-64) 10xCD $79.00
Rare and out-of-print material from space brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio available for the first time in digital format, including the previously unreleased “Where The Lines Go To Sleep” from 2004. Starting with Landscapes Of An Electric City, MCIAA pondered Polaroids they had taken of their hometown Torino and decided a two-guitar improv would best represent the bare essence / sublimation of the metropolitan soul the way it felt inside them. Throughout the decade that followed, the brothers entrusted their “pictures of infinity” to a variety of labels that released their material in limited vinyl-only editions. Among other fundamental works, Alienology contains their self-described Great Void Trilogy, originally released on three separate LPs by Eclipse Records in the middle of the last decade. The latest work presented in the set, Alien Blood (Opax 2008) is the duo’s original soundtrack to the homonymic film by Roberto Opalio, shown at European museums as part of the Sonic Youth etc: Sensational Fix exhibition. Includes extensive liner notes and special art cards. Landscapes Of An Electric City (Ecstatic Peace 1999); The Rest Is Silence (Eclipse 2003); When The Windmill’s Whirl Dies (Eclipse 2004); There’s A Flame___Sometimes (Rococo 2005); Into The White Vortex (Opax 2007); Where The Lines Go To Sleep (previously unreleased); Greetings From The Great Void (Eclipse 2006); The Secret Of The Dancing Snow (Ikuisuus 2006); For The Tears Of The Land, Prayers From The Outer Space (Important 2008); Alien Blood (Opax 2008).
Black Shadows from Jupiter, Vol. I & II
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6547-48) 2xCDR $16.00
Volume I was issued in 2005 by the Opalio brothers' Opax Records imprint in “Monalien Fidelity,” a reference / tribute to ESP's monaural sound recordings. Available in stereo for the first time, Volume I’s two long tracks are the very first music recorded by MCIAA after they moved to the new recording space located in the Western Alps, and contain Roberto Opalio's first experiments in wordless vocals. Five years later, in October 2009, they recorded Volume II, almost one hour of new material representing a unique journey in the darkest secrets of the S-System. Gatefold cardboard jacket with tape binding and paste-on artwork, with insert. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
For the Tears of the Land Prayers from the Outer Space - Vol.1
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6543) CDR $12.00
The first of an ambitious two-part series by the cosmic brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, kicking off with an acoustic blues performed by Roberto, dedicated to the pioneers of the American primitive music and in particular to the spirit of Charley Patton. "It’s magical, mysterious and dreamy," says Indieworkshop, "19 million light years worth of dreams." Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Fragments Suspended In Time
(Opax - OPX32A) LP + CDr + DVDr $27.00
Recorded after the brothers Opalio spent a long period of self-imposed isolation in the Western Alps, far from everything but their own spirits. Side A ( the “alba” or “sunrise” side) overwhelms immediately with delicate grace, melodic texture, and Roberto's intimate, wordless vocalizations. Side B ( the “tramonto” or “sunset” side) increases the sweet, anti-gravitational sweet mood. One-time pressing of 250 copies on multicolor vinyl. Handmade, heavy cardboard jacket with paste-on silver artwork and 12-inch insert. A professionally duplicated CDr is included as a digital version of the album. The region-free DVDr (limited to 100 copies) contains a film by Roberto Opalio, inspired by the alba side.
Fragments Suspended In Time
(Opax - OPX32A) LP + CDr + DVDr Box $120.00
This art box edition adds to the regular edition the following: original art work by Roberto Opalio on six-page hand-bound booklet, mounted on 12" panel, numbered and signed; hand-lettered LP labels; hand-crafted box, numbered, hand-stamped and signed. Edition of 20.
Photoelectric Season
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6549-50) 2xCDR $16.00
During six months of physical and psychic isolation while on mystic retreat in a remote region of the Western Alps, the Opalio Brothers listened to Giacinto Scelsi, Erik Satie and Maki Asakawa and read Strindberg and Lautréamont. Created with electric and acoustic guitars, vocals, mini-keyboard, alientronix, and ancient zither, Photoelectric Season is a milestone in MCIAA's innovative and mysterious discography: their new “cosmic tones for mental therapy.” Gatefold cardboard jacket with tape binding and paste-on artwork, with insert. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
What Space Is Made For
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6552-54) 3xCDR $33.00
The first step in the new parallel universe the brothers Opalio call "multi-layered instantaneous composition." Celebrated as sound sculptors, trance-state minimalists, impressionistic noisicians, hallucinators of dislocated inputs and outputs, haunting ambient mantra-chanters, cathartic tribalists, and visionary voyagers through three millennia of cosmic music, MCIAA recorded What Space Is Made For in their secret base on the Western Alps, and unlike previous works, it's mostly made of short pieces and songs, performed on electric and acoustic guitars, space toys, percussion, and home-made, modified, and assembled / disassembled primitive electronic equipment. An alternate edit of "The Antigravitational Sense Of Nothingness" is featured on the Wire Tapper 25 CD (April 2011). Booklet includes liner notes and text by Roberto Opalio. With six full-color art cards. Discs look like tiny replicas of vinyl platters, right down to the color.
Haro
(Whosbrain - WHB34) CD $20.00
Abrasive, physical and powerful music (sometimes tagged "jazzcore") by Claude Spenlehauer (Micro_Penis, Hell’s Gate) and the fake Gully brothers -- guitarist Nicolas (Cheval) and drummer Pascal (Zakarya). Jonathan from Built on a Weak Spot describes Myself as "a rock band at their very core, surrounding the deeper rhythmic sounds with the harsh rubbing down of sax, synth, electronic looping, and the occasional vocal spewing to bring forth what is a rather impressive display of wildly erratic yet aggressi[on].... Most of the songs on Haro! are balled up into two to three minutes bursts ... the perfect canvas for Myself to work with...."
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / KEITH ROWE
Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE08) CD $14.50
September 2008 duet by one of the big men of guitar-and-electronics and his long-time partner, the world's foremost practitioner of the no-input-mixing board.
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / AMI YOSHIDA
Soba To Bara
(Erstwhile - ERST056) CD $14.50
Influential Japanese free improvisors Yoshida and Nakamura first performed together at the AMPLIFY 2008 festival; in preparation, they recorded solo tracks separately (Yoshida on voice, Nakamura on no-input mixing board), overdubbed them without hearing the other, and then listened to the results before performing the concert. So satisfied were they with the power and synchronization of the overlapped solos that they are hereby released as is.
The Blood Pressure Sessions
(Dual Plover) CD $14.25
Lucy Cliché and Mathew P. Hopkins dive deep into a world of apocalyptic pop and psychedelic weirdness with disparate vocals that grip onto menacingly hook-laden basslines and stabbing keys, pushed by an unrelenting drum machine far past the end of its warranty period. Expanding on the final moments of no-wave and what that imploded scene might have become, this nine-track punk assault ranges from almost danceable, short-and-sharp “hits” to gloomy, extended freak-outs. Life never looked so bleak. Vinyl reissue on Siltbreeze in early 2008. “Distilled nihilism.” —Drop Dead
Mindset
(ReR Megacorp - 10) CD $10.00
Two engrossing, long-form tracks, each an organically shifting mass of piano, bass and drums, in which jazz, drone and electronic soundscaping coalesce. On "Rum Jungle," rendered with a minimalist vision, layers swirl and swoon without friction. The more richley textured "Daylights" deploys filigree electronics around sparse, plangent keys and stalking bass. Hypnotic and dazzling.
Inhuman
(Legion Blotan - BLOT004) CD $10.75
Obscure and disturbing black metal from the depths of the Bulgarian forest. Hard and heavy nihilistic sound. Edition of 500
Dark Garden
(Intransitive - INT029) CD $13.00
Idiosyncratic analog buzz by Hiroshi Kumakiri and Tagomago. This album of short, song-like home-made synthesizer pieces might take its cues from manga, science fiction, early electronic music, and minimal techno but the Tokyo duo is overall inexplicable. Dark Garden assimilates fractured beats, stuttering pulses, naked static, and impatient drones. Synth builder Kumakiri describes spirits that lurk in the shadows and watch people go about their lives, existing in a parallel world that brings to mind fairy tales and myth. Nerve Net Noise’s music is similarly just out of reach, present in the natural world but not quite a part of it. For fans of Klaus Schultze, Jessica Rylan, Henri Pousseur, or Pan Sonic. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008
Love Got In My Way
(Eabla - EAB101) CD $13.50
The first release by the reissue-only label Eabla Records fetches an offbeat masterpiece back from the grave in search of the audience it was denied 33 years ago. Construction worker and stock car racer by day, polyester-clad musical powerhouse by night, Joe E. Neubauer risked everything to create Love Got In My Way, originally released in 1975 on an enigmatic, ill-fated vanity label from South Florida. A profusely illustrated 16-page booklet tells the shocking story of the $20,000 gamble that gave birth to this lounge-pop Pet Sounds for the middle-aged melancholic. Joe E.’s brooding music sounds more sensational than ever, having been lovingly remastered from the original tapes that Neubauer himself pulled out of his label’s dumpster in 1976.
Neuters
(Dual Plover) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
A retrospective Best Of New Waver’s infamous cassette series spanning the 1990s -- essentially Top 40 hits with the lyrics changed to address all aspects of loserdom, or Weird Al with a severe case of neo-Darwinian pessimism (a worldview in which everything comes down to survival of the fittest, where the strongest and most dominant triumph and the rest are sidelined, ostracized, beaten up, and generally lead miserable, pointless lives). Inpress nailed it: “Boring folks from the tax office ... tired ... and beaten down by society ... singing boring songs from the ’80s. It sounds terrible, but it’s not. It’s genius.”
Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
In Scandinavia, it’s not uncommon to hear of someone’s mother, grandfather, uncle, or plumber who drank him- or herself to death at an early age; and the Swedish drone artist BJ Nilsen has felt the alcoholic pangs which may foreshadow his own demise. In recent years, he has turned to his Icelandic neighbors Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson for existential sympathy over the problems of their collective lust for alcohol. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna marks the second collaborative document of abject minimalism that these three have composed; and like its predecessor Vikinga Brennivin, it is spiked with drunken thought. Any alcohol-induced euphoria has been tempered by perturbing blackouts, moments of cruelty, and an all-consuming nihilism. Beyond their shared Scandinavian heritage, their expressionist urge for the frigid drone, and their penchant for drink, Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa intend this recording as an open ended experience, wandering through their sound without the burden of any exegetical text that may get in the way.
Passing Out
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
The final component to a trilogy -- thematically linked by the psychotropic effects of alcohol -- of isolationist compositions for barren field recordings and lumbering electric drones by these Nordic sound artists. With one singular track that spans 60 minutes, a nearly constant thrum and rumble of monochromatic low frequencies casts a grim pall upon the precisely dialed-in modulations and vibrations. Spectral guitars, maudlin tunes from haunted radios, angrily growling voices, and field recordings of wind-whipped snow and ice bury themselves deep amid these subharmonic drones. Letterpress and silkscreen artwork in an edition of 1000.
Vikinga Brennivin
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
For the Icelandic electro-absurdist outfit Stilluppsteypa, the near-lethal alcoholic beverage brennivin oozes out of their terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures. Their clinical minimalism reflects the introspection, headaches, and melancholia of the morning after. Swedish composer BJ Nilsen has rendered the commonplace sounds of wind, rain, and snow as seductive and quietly menacing drifts of frozen sound. Their resultant collaboration is a drunken stumble in a Scandinavian winter night via extended soundfields that breathe with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
Ommatidia
(Intransitive - int035) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. While nmperign have been active as one of the most celebrated and influential bands in improvised music for at least a decade, Ommatidia is the first ever studio recording of Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) as an unaccompanied duo. Previous albums have employed guest musicians (tapeloops composer Jason Lescalleet, improvisors Gunter Mueller, Axel Doerner, and Burkhard Beins) and subversive or dodgy recording techniques; their 2xLP on Siwa was recorded entirely to micro-cassette and walkman, while an early CD on Selektion was edited from live mini-disc recordings. This is the nmperign album fans have been waiting for: the core duo, beautifully recorded in an actual studio with excellent microphones... finally, pure nmperign. The music is spare and peerlessly inventive as always, but the mood remains light and joyful.
Noma / Rejectamenta
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR052) split CD $12.00
Two long tracks of minimal drone (achieved by running household appliances through guitar pick ups) from Noma, and one of full-on bizarre electronics from Rejecta. How do they do it? Circuit bent instruments and toys, horribly detuned guitars, feedback, and occasional outbursts of throat. Duh.
Desert Fires
(Saffron Recordings - SAFF01) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The solo project of Brooklyn-based guitarist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate (Rhys Chatham's Guitar Army, Glenn Branca's 100 guitar ensemble, Parts & Labor, Carla Bozulich / Evangelista, Cold Cave), follows up her Red Rainbows CD (No Fun 2009) with this compositional evolutionary step from layered, loop-based drones to more expansive formal arrangements of swells, throbs, tones and shimmer. “Almost Alright” explores territory charted by Fripp & Eno or synth-heavy contemporaries Emeralds. “Kites Calm Desert Fires” is a sandstorm of rich, percussive guitar, warm humming bass and swirling rhapsodic chimes. “Toothnest (for Chris Habib)” arrives at an idyllic sonic plateau of windswept fuzz and tremolo, then charges blindly with a soaring guitar solo evocative of bagpipes triumphantly marking a return from battle.
Galactic Tornado
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD510) CD $13.50
Deeply abstract, dense and dynamic “psychedelic electronic sound” from 1970s space / electronic / krautrock albums filtered through the Null sensibility. Strong synthetic and cosmic sounds, electronic machines, electro-acoustic audio signals and sonorities.
JIM O'ROURKE / EDDIE PRÉVOST / MICHAEL PRIME
Alpha Lemur Echo Two
(Mycophile - SPOR05) CD $15.00
Radio, bioelectronics, water, guitar, more electronics.
Moonlight Farm
(Destijl - IND055) CD $12.75
Jakob Olausson farms sugar-beets in the south of Sweden. Not to deify the life of the prole, but the workday sun has had a clear influence: this is a record made on a dime, in a dime-sized bedroom apartment, and it transcends all the limitations the scenario has taught us to expect. Moonlight Farm’s ten songs comfort and unsettle, and are concerned with the classic subjects: the garbage, the flowers, one’s mother, and the love of them all. Laid thick with a vague dissonance, they possess a mask of fog / haze, but the trail between writer / performer / song is not often trodden in such a deftly crystalline manner.
Maximum Rock
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR092) CD $12.00
Grind maniacs Total Fucking Destruction playing a fusion of early ’90s-style thrash and classic rock, with Megadan Tumelo on vocals. Catchy riffs, tight-as-fuck drumming by Brutal Truth’s Rich Hoak, sing-a-long heavy metal choruses, beefy production. Covers include Tull’s "Fat Man," a refreshingly non-obvious Sabbath cover in "Rock And Roll Doctor," and a thrash re-imagining of CSN's "Almost Cut My Hair.” Rise, hessian, rise.
Electronic Works
(Paradigm Discs) CD $12.00
Three early electronic works from 1965-66 utilizing the techniques of amplifying combination tones and tape repetition (no editing or tape splicing). Twelve sine tone square wave generators connect to an organ keyboard, two line amplifiers, mixer, Hammond spring type reverb and two stereo tape recorders. UK import.
PAULINE OLIVEROS / JESSE STEWART
The Dunrobin Session
(Nuun - NUUN008) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. V-accordion and percussion duets recorded during Oliveros’s residency at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, in collaboration with percussionist and composition teacher Stewart. Part of the labels Pulsions Series. Liner notes by Gayle Young.
Interceptor
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS012) 2xCD $14.25
New Zealand electronic musician Clinton Williams’s home-spun constructs detour from the sculpted grit and mottled distortion in the work of his countrymen and -women. His opus Quad 3xCD (Corpus Hermeticum, 1998) makes palpable the artist’s contentious argument with his own unwieldy mousetrap of tape-loops, modular electronics, effects pedals, drum machines, and the creaking sounds of his house. Interceptor is the result of an experiment with a portable studio outside his longtime home of Blenheim. With two suitcases of drum machines, effects, and analog synths, Williams recalls being “pissed off with myself wasting time recording this stuff when I was trying to find a job.” His frustrations stripped away much of the grandiose sweeps of ambience and shadow, leaving behind a life-support system grid of overlapping, phase-shifted blip and click. An undertow of hypnotic tonalities pulls those rhythms toward a crepuscular gloom. Williams has always been at odds with his own work, yet his self-doubt continues to deliver magnificent albums which thrive in a symbiotic struggle with mechanical disintegration.
Tracer
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.50
As with the previous works by obsessive electronic composer Clinton Williams, Tracer is an antiquated behemoth, constructed from analogue synthesizers, primitive drum machines, homespun electronics, and numerous effects pedals. Simple wooden rhythms trot, trudge, and even glide along taut metric grids hot-wired with bursts of mechanical splutter and the occasional creak from Pierre Henry’s wooden door. An occasionally menacing, but more often melancholy, orchestration of synthetic tones ripple, flex, and dissolve across the uniform structuralism, creating an ecstatic paranoia rarely heard with such splendor, rigor, and sublime blackness. If sonic references are required, then the Klaus Schulze masterpiece Cyborg is close.
Vuoy
(Polystar - PSCR5592) CD $25.00
Released in 1997, the second major label effort by Yamamoto Seiichi (Boredoms) and Tsuyama Atsushi (Acid Mothers Temple), with guests aplenty, reaches new heights of what our colleagues at Aquarius call “toothy melody and sludgy sweetness, along with their usual tour through the murky depths of rock’s weirder edges.” Japanese import.
ROBERTO OPALIO / MAURIZIO OPALIO
Liquid Spring
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6546) CDR $12.00
Amazing work of quiet contemplation played on acoustic and classical guitars by the My Cat Is An Alien void-busters, with Roberto's disembodied vocals levitating high above like a cosmic breath. Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
The Hexagram on Grace
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6551) CDR $12.00
The third solo album by Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Praxinoscope) was made during the same period of self-imposed isolation in the Western Alps that brought to life MCIAA's Photoelectric Season. Inspired by the mystic aura of the surrounding nature, he focuses on his peculiar wordless vocalizations, and uses only a mini-keyboard and prepared alientronics as instruments (brother Maurizio supplies acoustic guitar at the beginning of “Like An Empty Glass”). Sublime abstract expressionism around the heliocentricity of his voice. Cardboard jacket with paste-on artwork, with insert. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Oramics
(Paradigm Discs) 2xCD $19.50 (Out-of-stock)
Oram is best known for her design of the Oramics system, and for co-founding the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1957, but until now the only easily available piece of music by her on CD has been the eight-minute “Four Aspects.” There was also a 7-inch EP from 1962 on HMV, released as part of the Listen, Move and Dance series specifically designed to help children dance. Oramics is the first survey of nearly all the major pieces she produced since her departure from the BBC in January 1959 until her final tape piece in 1977. The two and a half hours of music here cover the whole range of Oram’s post -BBC output. Everything is electronic with occasional use of real instruments, especially small percussion and piano frame, and a bit of musique concrète techniques. The works fall roughly into the following categories: works for TV and cinema advertising; film soundtracks; music for theatre productions, installations and exhibitions; concert pieces; and studio experiments. There are also a few short pieces that resulted from an experimental music course given by Oram at a high school in Yorkshire in 1967.
In The Midst Of Chaos
(Destijl - IND064) CD $13.00
This free-jazz group's one and only release, recorded in 1978 by legendary out guitarist Barry Greika, Bob Laramie on bass and Glen "Hobbit" Peterson on drums, screams, howls, blisters, bitch-slaps, and defies categorization as it pushes the '70s into uncharted confusion. Two hundred copies were pressed originally, which earned it the notice from almost no one. Two people did hear it; one sailed it out the kitchen window, the wife of the other said to get the fuckin' thing out of the house. So here it comes again, reissued on CD. Hardcore freeform shit rejuvenated without shame.
Amen
(Die Stadt - DS95) CD $22.50
A work in two parts using grand piano, Hammond organ, tower bell, gong and voices.
Die Hennen Zähne
(Die Stadt - DS57/DS66) 3-inch CD $20.00
Four-track mini CD combining tracks from two planned but never-released 10-inches Maus and Die Hennen Zähne. “Die Kralle” is a David Jackman track from his archives, recorded in the early 1980s. The title track recalls TNB/Organum material and includes the sound of broken glass and Tibetan horns. “Maus” is the centerpiece, typical old school Organum. The quiet and haunting “Kazi” is a live improvisation featuring Michael Prime and Emma O'Bong.
Omega
(Die Stadt - DS101) CD $22.50
The third and final part of the Organum trilogy that includes Sanctus (Robot) and Amen (Die Stadt)
Temporal
(Die Stadt - DS111) CD $20.00
David Jackman and Z'ev's third collaboration following Tinnitus VU CD (Touch) and Tocsin (Die Stadt). Z'ev reworked basic sound material from the Organum archive back in 2006, which resulted in a collaborative mixing of the material in early 2008, followed by Jackman's finishing touches. The overall tone owes more to the classic multi-layered and intense Organum sound than to recent works.
Otherside of
(Pataphysique - DD89) 2xCD + 7-inch $40.00
Tokyo psych mainstays from 1990 to 2008 who, according to Dusted, “mixed the melodies with the mope to achieve a Paisley Underground sort of effect, albeit with virtuosic guitar freakouts by leader Rinji Fukuoka…. [M]ajestic melodies, challenging and progressive outlines, ripping leads, and proper song structures … recorded in Japan rattle the cages of … young, “tribal” drug-pee band[s]… with the skill and professional freakout-making abilities they all lack.” The seven-inch contains two songs from the band's 1999 US tour: “Le Few Follet” with its pop-psych layering and dueling lead guitars that are thick and confident and “Cut Up Us,” a collage of sounds from the entire tour and symphonic tapeloops.
Mike Page
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR042) CD $12.00
Solo album by Fire In The Head / Slogun / Sky Burial man. Really heavy-duty, powerful, bordering on psychedelic noise. Very brutal.
Works 1958-1979
(Sub Rosa - SR178) CD $20.00
Hommage à John Cage (1958-1959), Étude for Pianoforte (1959-1960) and Simple (1961) are good examples of Paik's neo-dada music, de-structuration, and irreverent collage. Prepared Piano for Merce Cunningham (1977) captures an improvised performance on a de-tuned piano (it was later mixed and edited for use by Cunningham, but this raw, straight-to-tape version was favored by the Paik). Duett: Paik/Takis (1979), the only previously released piece (Edition Kölnischer Kunstverein 1979), is an improvisation on piano and voice, with Takis on his own metal sculptures.
Terrazzo
(Harbinger Sound) CD $11.25
Collaboration between Los Angeles noise giant and Tokyo noise legend.
Inweglos
(Absurd) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
A perfectly timed reissue of this 1980 LP by Ralf Wehowsky (RLW, P16.D4), Jochen Pense, Joachim Stender, and Achim Szepanski. Synthesizers, rhythm boxes, the group’s monotone delivery, and a dark Berlin vibe that’s creepier than running into Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard at a key-swapping party, all contribute to Inweglos’s position as a one of the key Neue Deutsche Welle links between dejected No Wave disco and a Quaalude-damaged Kraftwerk. With non-LP bonus tracks. Imported from Greece.
(1982) It Was A Live Cassette
(Starlight Furniture Company - *7) CD $14.00
The “instrumental” stigma has dogged Pell Mell since 1980, when the band was first formed in Portland, Oregon, by drummer Bob Beerman, guitarist Bill Owen, and Arni May, the other original guitarist who worked in a record store in Portland and brought in Jon-Lars Sorenson to play bass. It’s not that any of these seemingly well-educated gentlemen were too dimwitted to consider sprucing up their drabby music with a provocative frontman; they auditioned singers in the beginning, and didn’t like what they heard. And who can blame them? Singers, with their gaudy necklaces and their unzipped pants and their idiotic gestures, are egomaniacal distractions from the main event -- the music. More than drummers, even. Whether Jimi Hendrix was correct in regarding surf music as a plague upon humanity, Pell Mell were nevertheless perplexed to be continually categorized as such. Truth be told, the band’s “vision” was nothing more complicated than the creation of music as cool as all the records coming out at the time by great surf bands such as PiL, Josef K, the Fire Engines, the Feelies, A Certain Ratio, Pere Ubu, the Contortions and others. Following the recording of the quartet’s Rhyming Guitars EP in January 1981, May departed, leaving the band to continue as a trio. The following year Beerman, Owen and Sorenson released the live cassette primarily as a promotional and tour-booking tool, but also to distance themselves from the dual-guitar EP, with its newly unplayable songs (except for “Par Avion”). Intentionally designed to keep listeners on their toes, the tracks on (1982) It Was a Live Cassette were written to be played live and are much more aggressive, raw, and abrupt than anything else done by the band since. It was a live cassette and it was all about proving things: that Pell Mell didn’t need or want a singer, that they were punk, and, most importantly, that they were not a goddamn surf band.
Exécution des Hautes Oeuvres
(Premier Sang) CD $13.00
Sixty-eight tracks in twenty-two minutes -- a plausible incarnation of some sort of harsh folk, like a French rogue and degenerate cousin of Bill Orcutt, or a Loren Mazzacane Connors on Temesta. The new project from Romain Perrot, aka Vomir, obsessive head-bagged Harsh Noise Wall icon. Edition of 500.
PHILIPPE PETIT / EUGENE S. ROBINSON
The Crying of Lot 69
(Monotype - MONO040) CD $12.75
The sound, the song, the words, and the mounting narrative spool of the efforts of Petit and Oxbow founder / frontman Robinson draw in equal parts on Pynchon and the dog-eat-dog laws of senseless jungle indifference. Compassion denied. Tales from a killing. The Crying Of Lot 69 pulls up a blanket of concrete and cozies you into the comfort of a world where the mildest intentions have the wildest effects. The first part in a trilogy. With Rhys Chatham on trumpet, Helena Espvall on cello, and Hervé Vincenti on guitar and synths.
Pharmakon
(BloodLust! - B!130) CDR $10.00
This four-song disc compiles previously released and currently unreleased songs by Margaret Chardiet, a New York-based noise artist known for spectacularly vehement live performances. Her one-woman hailstorm of cold analogue electronic terror is violently bewitching and pushes the boundaries of the dark and heavy death-industrial music. She is a part of the Far Rockaway experimental noise scene that includes Yellow Tears, Halflings, Hands Rendered Useless, Teeny Bopper, Tension Fields, and also performs in Throat, with Ryan Woodhall of Yellow Tears, etc.
III+
(Tochnit Aleph - TA029) CDR $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
61 tracks by this Schimpfluch Gruppe / Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock collaborator, most of which are from a 1997 Schimpfluch cassette-only release. In the gain-attendant tradition of consciousness-captains R&G and S-G, gorked-up splats leap out of nowhere and try to permanently damage internal potentiometers by abusing the far reaches of impact detection. III+ enforces awareness of annexation of all empirical data receptors with magnifying glasses (or a suitably sexy analog). As in all great works of literature from the macrobiotic punctuation school, it's all about the crossing and the dotting. In oversized sleeve.
Illusion is a Natural Condition
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50
The long anticipated collection of Dave Phillips and R.H.Y. Yau collaborations culled between 2000-2005. Phillips began his musical career when he was 17, co-founding the hardcore extremists Fear of God in 1987, whose increasingly faster, shorter, and noisier approaches to grindcore Philips realized were merely a springboard for more psychologically challenging and physically demanding artforms. Soon after Fear of God’s demise in 1989, he joined the actionist Schimpfluch-Gruppe which has followed the traditions of abjection and transgression as dictated by the Viennese Aktionists. Phillips has further developed these transgressions along with sociopolitical actionism in his solo efforts. Yau is a curator and sound artist who has been active in the sonic arts since 1993; his works are inspired by sound poetry, actionism, and the processes of musique concrète. Bored by academic cliques, Yau creates what he calls “action-concrète” -- organic synapses of voice, body, and raw materiality combined with raw electronics into sound experiences of both ultra-violence and absolute absurdity at the most base level. With ten lithographic reproductions of original drawings by Leif Elggren.
Afterlife DNA Fingerpainting
(Melon Expander - ME003) CD $13.50
When Points of Friction formed in January of 1981, they had no formal musical training (or even knowledge of freely improvised music) and relied on their voices and whatever else was at hand -- wire mesh, sheet plastic, an old guitar, etc. Gradually the group acquired electric instruments, toy keyboards, multi-track tape recorders, and pedal effects, and moved toward a more processed sound, informed by groups such as Faust, Cluster, Nurse with Wound, Dome, This Heat, Can, AMM, Fripp and Eno, and Negitivland. After a 20-year hiatus Joseph Hammer, Damian Bisciglia (Agog), Tim Alexander, and Kenny Ryman reformed with Mitchell Brown and dropped this, their third official release.
For the Tears of the Land Prayers from the Outer Space - Vol.2
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6544) CDR $12.00
The second in My Cat Is An Alien's new series, performed by Roberto Opalio and long time collaborator Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petal on Planet Ghost, Black Magic Disco, Z'ev), concluding with a piece of total cosmic blast... and of archaic transcendence. Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Guidelines for Basement Non Fidel / Mic Gravy For Freek
(Starlight Furniture Company) 2xCDR $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Their 1995 album plus remixes and demixes by David Cross, Stewart Walden, Scott Colburn, Vote Robot, Jod Russell, Glands of External Secretion, Jeph Jerman, Jeff Fucillo, Landers Duo, Kenui Ullin, June Powers, Clinton Williams, Karen Lollypop, Neil Campbell, Matt Anderson, Mykl Veet, and Thurston Moore.
Cellular Radar
(Mycophile - SPOR01) CD $12.00
Water machine, radio, strings, electronics, biofeedback from the mid-90s. With Emma O'Bong, voice, on one track.
Domestic Science
(Mycophile - SPOR04) CD $12.00
Late '90s computer manipulations with some use of a Lexicon LXP-5, an Akai S2000, Ufesa rk-8e electric radiator, Franke gas hob, pasta preparation, Lec fridge/freezer, and Indesit wn 850 wg washing machine.
Elements I
(Mycophile - SPOR06) CD $12.00
The sound source of "Surface Tension" is water, recorded at the 13th Note, Glasgow 30/10/98, the Rising Sun Institute, Reading 31/10/99, the Spitz, London 27/2/00, and Orpington November 2000. The Sound source of "Salamander" is fire, recorded in Orpington, February to November 2000. Edition of 500.
Sounds of American Doomsday Cults
(Faithways International) CD $15.00
A document of the spellbinding chants, call-and-response decrees, hypnotic invocations and prayers performed against the demon rock’n’roll by the ultra-conservative New Age Church Universal and Triumphant, led by charismatic, gun-hoarding nutjob Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Humorous for its damnation of seemingly harmless rock stars like Billy Joel (which explains why Negativland and other culture-jammers would sample it), this mesmerizing, all-vocal performance should fascinate listeners interested in La Monte Young’s drones and that kind of party music. Guru Ma, RIP, 10/17/09
Cocaine Death
(Hospital - HOS232) CD $13.75
Cocaine Death is a collects three of Prurient's limited edition 10-minute cassettes -- a triptych exploring the relationship between futile pleasure, substance and escape (escape being a myth): “Cocaine Death” is based on the glamor and destruction of toxic nightlife, and features guest vocals from FFH); “Caribbean Overdose” explores a different but strangely direct topic of the sexual reproductive life of plants; “Tylenol Murders” expands on the sounds of the others to further limits of cracked static, strained vocals and strange melodic loops. For the diehards, two unreleased tracks of Prurient are included. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008.
Shipmaker's Diary
(Groundfault) CD $12.00
For those who have grown immune to regular dunkings in steaming cauldrons of hot tar and hydrochloric acid (as pleasant a homeopathic remedy for ailments of the skin as they may be), Dominick Fernow sloshes 33 minutes of unbelievably thorny, hard-scouring noise, adding a new chapter to the Total Pain, Instant Death playbook. Here, the high-concentration electronic defects of Wolf Eyes meet the stroboscopic rainbows of distorto-screech that the Load Records crowd takes their shirts off for.
An Illustrated History
(Bar None - BRNCD128) Used CD $6.00
Infectious J-pop from 2002. Punched barcode.
Duckside of the Moon
(Dual Plover - DP40) CD $10.25 (Out-of-stock)
Not to be confused with the Purple Loon, Purple Diver, Purple Grebe, Purple Gallinule or Purple Coot the Purple Duck is the more common name for the best MC in the world—hot enough to burn down a herd of yobbo MCs like pieces of wood. Dual Plover fans undoubtedly remember the Duck from his appearance on the seminal Suicidal Rap Orgy album Genital Warfare. The less threatening side of duckmania is on display here, with dope hip hop tracks alongside a quick succession of genres that fly hard and fast (everything from the punk rock of "Love Tampon" to the tear-jerking ballad "Everyone's Dying."). Australian import, as if you couldn't tell.
Oven Bait
(Adult Contemporary) CD $10.00
Savage! Young! Wild! Jon Spencer, Julia Cafritz, and the rest in all their snarling, sneering, spoiled-rotten-Ivy-Leaguer glory, recorded live in the mid-’80s. Extremely lo-fi to begin with and made even more unlistenable after the fact by disgruntled percussionist Tom Smith, who originally released the tapes in an act of revenge after the band gave him the boot. He thought Oven Bait would embarrass Pussy Galore, but it has gone on to achieve near-mythical status as one of the rawest, most insanely (un)produced recordings you’re likely to hear. Good luck sitting through all 55 minutes.
Hypertension Classics Volume 2
(Harbinger Sound - HAS030) 4xCD $20.00
Mark Durgan has been doin' the lord's work within UK noise since 1986 (via his Birthbiter label) and keeping his shoulder to the wheel with recordings for Broken Flag, Artware, MSBR, RRR and others. This luscious doorstop collects the long out-of-print "Hypertension Classics" double-seven (sold at shows in Japan in the 90s), plus a four-hour “noise assault [that] combines the mid-air ectoplasmic gloop of mid-period Merzbow with a bone-grasping tactile edge that seems to come more out of post-Industrial DIY traditions as articulated by New Blockaders.…” according to our astute colleagues at Volcanic Tongue.
Cosmic Birth
(Turgid Animal - TA331) CD $10.00
Recorded by Pete Burn and Dean Glaister in 2003 and 2004 using a variety of places, moods and instruments, Cosmic Birth as a whole flows like a river, surprisingly, with long drawn out psychedelic tones that buck under guitar motifs, and heavy, metallic bass forming the album's core. Mastered by James Plotkin.
One (Snow Mud Rain)
(Erstwhile - ERST051) CD $14.50
One (Snow Mud Rain) is the first duo CD by Peter Rehberg (Pita) and Marcus Schmickler, two long-time two of the leaders in the electronic revolution. Despite having barely worked together as a duo previously, the results were so successful that after two days, the record was basically completed. Its rawness and energy hearkens back to the explosive power of early Mego bursts, further enhanced by the remarkable density and clarity of the recording. “It's not all brimstone / hellfire throughout,” Mimaroglu reminds us, “[T]he second piece devolves into subdued spectral smear after smacking us around for a bit with its fully-rectified stammer (which reminds of recent Whitehouse more than anythings else); other spots introduce jittery, off-axis grains that echo Florian Hecker's recent work with wave geometry.... [T]hese two are master frequency-range craftsman; both are in peak form throughout.”
Battle
(Wolcnum) CD $10.75
Three intense tracks of raw and proud pagan black metal from Bulgaria. Edition of 500.
Amarillo Ramp (for Robert Smithson)
(Starlight Furniture Company - *8) CD $14.00
Sonic Youth’s left-minded and soft-spoken lead guitarist wields a big stick with a solo outing of the highest sonic magnitude. The title track is a 34-minute live recording from 1994 with after-the-fact wave-shaping and spectral improvement by Rafael Toral, followed by an instrumental “Anagrama” type frolic with Steve Shelley and Thurston Moore. Plus, a couple of soundtrack excerpts and a John Lennon cover featuring the late Epic Soundtracks.
Broken Circle / Spiral Hill
(Starlight Furniture Company - *2) CD $10.00
Five early ’90s tracks by one of the original lords of howling, including a Sebadoh cover. With cover art by Michael Morley (of The Dead C. and Gate), this is the flailing ultimate in rubberized, flatline wawaaarph.
False
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR038) CD $12.00
Debut album of heavy power electronics in the vein of Bloodyminded, Slogun, etc.
They Sang and Chanted For Hours, Then The Locked in Hundreds Set Themselves Ablaze
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR093) CD $12.00
Four tracks of the heavy, slow, despairing sludge recorded in 2004, before this doom band from the UK fell apart. Members were in (or went on to be in) Hard To Swallow, Charger, Gruel, Narcosis, Like A Kind Of Matador and They Are Cowards. Edition of 500.
Mrs Rice
(Dual Plover - DP41) CD $15.00
Only the government of Australia would dispatch a lunatic artist known for smashing amplified glass against his face to China as a cultural ambassador. Fortunately for Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham), such a profile describes him perfectly. In Beijing for less than two months, he formed the pick up band Rice Corpse (named after the Chinese character for shit, which itself is the combination of two characters for corpse and rice), and jammed with them four times (two of which appear on Mrs Rice) before heading off for a ten-city tour of China. First to be recruited for drums was Yang Yang, whose antics in his own band Mafeisan have earned him a reputation as the craziest exponent of the conservative Beijing scene. His ultra-loud, out, and proud personality starkly contrasts with the mild-mannered and brutally shy saxophonist Li Zenghui, who came to the project as pianist, because, simply put, there were no suitable pianists in the city. Together as a trio for a limited time and without a common language to interrupt, they managed to create six varied and strangely focused improvisations. This despondent attempt at musicality is by far Abela’s most accessible work to date; the Yang-and-Li rhythm section forced the seasoned glass man to take the instrument in surprising new directions. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009
Beta Wave Nemisis
(Small Doses - DOSE80) CD $11.25
On the premiere recording of the monumental collaboration by Daniel Jansson (Deadwood) and Osman Arabi (20.sv, Seeker), dark ambient textures blend with industrial soundscapes, and harsh noise floats with minimal drone and power electronics vocalizations. One movement flows well into the next, making for an intense and epic debut recording. Art and design by Seldon Hunt.
Ajatollah Carter (eaRLy W 4)
(Editions Zero - ED6) CD $15.00
Live recordings from 1980 by avant maverick Ralf Wehowsky (PD, P16.D4) and crew. Debauched, low-key back-room skronk of the sort incorrigibly unskilled combos such as Door and The Window have delighted dozens of listeners worldwide meets the beyond-rational improv that over-educated Euros can play drunk off their asses on Jagermeister. Numbered edition of 444 copies, in a textured card gatefold jacket. Imported from Europe
Translations & Articulations
(Griffin Contemporary Exhibitions) Used CD $15.00
Includes Of Space Enclosed By Planes Or Surfaces CD, but this is primarily a twenty-page catalog documenting Roden's titular installation from 1997. Color photographs and essays by Steve Roden, Christopher Miles and Brandon LaBelle. Edition of 966. The disc in mint, but there's some scuffing on the back cover of the catalog, so it's listed here as used.
You Can’t Get There From Here
(Monotype - MONO038) CD $12.75
The works of the London-based conceptual artist, writer, plasticien sonore and composer Robin Rimbaud traverse experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form. Philosopher, musician, and author Rothenberg takes his inspiration from the melodies and beats of birds, insects, whales, water, and wind.
Duos for Doris
(Erstwhile - ERST030) 2xCD $23.50
More than two hours of music recorded in Nancy, France, at the CCAM studio in January 2003. Understated, intricate beauty and modesty belies the complexity of Duos for Doris, named for Tilbury's mother, who passed away two days prior. Rowe and Tilbury first met in 1965 when both were asked by Cornelius Cardew to perform Treatise for a BBC broadcast. They have enjoyed a fruitful professional relationship ever since, in the Scratch Orchestra, various Music Now and Cardew groupings, performing Christian Wolff and John Cage pieces, and most notably, in AMM since 1981. This is their first performance as a duo, and, according to Stylus, it is “challenging in the richest sense of the word -- full of bracing tension, riddled with sumptuous ambiguity and overflowing with strange and spectacular musical inventiveness…. brimming with rare detail and thought provoking turns...”
Keith Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE07) CD $14.40
A solo set recorded at the AMPLIFY 2008: light festival in Tokyo, Rowe's individual statement strongly contrasting with his duos there, which he later titled “Cultural Templates.” A Spiral Cage concludes, “Clarity of thought permeates this piece, which flows with an internal logic, but still retains that uncatchability that has been a hallmark of Rowe's career.”
Room
(Erstwhile - ERSTSOLO01) CD $14.50
The third full-length solo recording of his career, following A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality (1989) and Harsh (1999), a very personal project for Rowe, who struggled with its precise conception over the last few years. This tribute to two of his important influences, Cornelius Cardew and Mark Rothko, after months of thought and attempts to transfer ideas in his head to a concert context, began in early 2007 with daily home-recordings, eventually becoming something that did justice to his feelings. “Unless you know that Rowe is a guitar player, “ponders Dusted, “You wouldn't guess it from this music [which] consists of electronically generated sounds of differing qualities. Even live it is difficult to determine exactly how Rowe generates all the sounds; on disc, it is impossible.”
Rowe / Unami
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE06) CD $14.50
Legendary guitarist Keith Rowe played four sets in three nights in the AMPLIFY 2008: light festival in Tokyo, marking Rowe's fourth trip to Japan in his 40+-year career and the first time he was able to work closely with so many Tokyo musicians on their home turf. As the only non-Japanese participant in the festival, Rowe move his aesthetic toward his collaborators'. Indeed, A Spiral Cage says, “Unami … seems much more interested in subverting received notions of music and disrupting expectations. Rowe, on the other hand, is questioning his own notions of music and what it is for…. The uncatchability … the transient nature, the unexpected but not arbitrary. This duo pushes all of the boundaries, it is right on the edge, the arbitrariness constantly threatening but it stays together, no matter how tenuous.”
Zunya
(Music Atlach - MA006) CD $16.50
Not to be confused with Sachiko M, Japanese vocalist Sachiko (ex-Kousokuya, Overhang Party, Vava Kitora) bases her sound on the interface between voice and electronics, producing fantastic, ritual noise-drones that glide into the quiet Great Beyond. This live recording from 2008 distills her modest expression into psychedelic and organic hypnosis.
Essential Shit
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD047) CD $13.50
Ukraine’s top indie-pop / electropop band, as magical and spiritual as its title suggests. Recorded on poor analogue equipment during the 1980s and ’90s.
Bleed Now
(Total Life Society - TLS002) CD $13.00
Scarcity frontman Matthew Wascovich is surrounded by veteran musicians who are also painters, writers, and heavy thinkers -- drummer Scott Pickering (Spike in Vain, My Dad Is Dead), guitarist Theodore Wiggs Nulls Flynn the Younger, and bassist Sebastian Wagner. Feeling like both a revival and a step forward, Bleed Now mixes classic punk with art and improv, in particular the authoritative heft of Saccharine Trust and Slovenly, the raucous blurt of Cleveland forefathers Electric Eels and Easter Monkeys, and the grit and pulse of Flipper and Suicide. Cover art by Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee). Insound calls it "intelligent, impressionistic free-rock ... an earful of splenetic discordance," while Pink Eye goes one further and calls it "a minor-masterpiece. Churning bass lines ... improvisational jazz motifs, spoken word, jagged Stoogesque guitars ... kind of like some art-punk-rocking-jazz-poet jam gone crazy for a night on mushrooms.... Most of the songs are pretty simple, riding a key through to the end –- falling in and out of chaos, the tempos change but the groove remains present."
Fear Is Not Conscience
(Total Life Society - TLS005) CD $13.00
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals).
Sensational Grade
(Total Life Society - TLS003) CD $13.00
The third album by self-described "anti-heroes with no message [who] exist so that you don’t have to.... Distortion. Bass and drums that make you move. Guitars that make you feel sick or alive. Vocals that you cannot relate to most of the time." It used to be that performing rock music was a kind of evocation of Washington crossing the Delaware -- the famous painting of him standing in the boat with his crew, on their way to meet their fate, confident, proud, ready to be who they are and do what they do. Nowadays, it evokes a senior citizen getting paid minimum wage to stand by the front door and say "Welcome to K-Mart" to everyone who walks in. So in that way, Scarcity Of Tanks is a throwback to a consciousness where sincerity and a fighting spirit were enough, before everything became the product of arcane calculation, the most common side effects of which are cringes and grimaces, and yet that's acceptable if the money's there. You're gonna get taken higher, and it's gonna get done by Matthew Wascovich, Dave Cintron, Jeff Deasy, Brent Gemmill, Theodore Wiggs Null Flynn The Younger, Andrew Klimeyk, John Petkovic, Scott "Puff Tube" Pickering, so fucking get with it, grayballs. Recorded by Brent Gemmill in Cleveland, Ohio, during the summer of 2010 and early 2011, mixed by Don Godwin and mastered by Weasel Walter. Cover by Aleksandra Waliszewska.
Vulgar Defender
(Total Life Society - TLS004) CD $13.00
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals), Don Godwin (keyboards, backing vocals).
Exactly What You Lost
(Intransitive - INT028) CD $13.50
Seht is one of the post-Corpus Hermeticum bands whose peers are Birchville Cat Motel, Peter Wright, A.M., and folks like that. Stephen Clover and Boston artist Howard Stelzer first swapped recordings from their respective locales -- cars going by, planes overhead, birds in the bushes, just humdrum suburban stuff. Next, the recording of the NZ birds were played in Boston’s trees and re-recorded as the local birds sang along with the foreign tweets. Likewise, tapes of Boston cars going by were mixed with NZ cars going by. After it was all processed, scrambled and reassembled, it wound up having a certain melancholy feel. A cassette-blurp mess straightens out steadily until it’s just a flat line and the tap tap tap of a dying tape deck motor. A party record, basically.
Live Performances: 1992-1994
(Pataphysique - DD4) CD $16.50
A 1996 release, one of a few solo outings by sax biting NNCK collaborator and Fushitsusha co-founder. LSD March drummer Ikuro Takahashi makes a guest appearance, as do the streets of Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Erosion of the Analogous Eye
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS015) CD $12.00
The studio of Matt Shoemaker is alive with electricity: impossibly complex wirings channeling signals in and out of analog synth modules; an array of curious aluminum boxes with unmarked knobs; Slinkies strung from ceiling to floor creating a set of giant spring reverb units; accelerometers attached to consumer electronic errata; and even a few conventional tools like guitar stomp boxes and a bruised computer. Yet for all the convoluted engineering that goes into his equipment, the resulting mesmerism seems effortless and strangely organic. Shoemaker's ever-evolving album of mutant dronemuzik and electrical seas of synthetic bristling undulate with placid regularity. Brain-melting psychedelics contort into cancerous, atonal bellows. Out of his allotropic shifts, irradiated static transforms into the graceful chime of temple bells; and electrical phase patterns slip into deep forest murmurings dotted with narcoleptic birds calls. On one hand, this album is prescient of the revival for progressive electronics currently underway in the flood of US post-noise projects; it's easy to triangulate this between Emeralds and Heldon. But on the other hand, Erosion of the Analogous Eye is the continuation of Shoemaker's early work on Trente Oiseaux, with its grotesques exaggerations of field recording. Artwork features unique, hand-dyed abstractions mounted on letterpressed paper. Limited edition of 300 copies.
Soundtrack for Dislocation
(Elevator Bath - EEAOA034) CD $8.00
An entirely self-contained account of a fantastically abstract and intensely personal vision, permeated with potent unease. Enigmatic cover and interior images, the cryptic track titles, and the recordings themselves -- densely packed and elaborately evolved aberrancies. Edition of 509. That's right, Stonehange, 509.
Spots On The Sun
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
A grotesque, sonic landscape with details exaggerated out of proportion and narratives folded upon themselves in a magnificent abstraction of electro-acoustics, rarefied field recordings, and particulate matter plucked from ether. While the familiar sounds of encircling birds, turbulent weather, and temple bells litter Shoemaker’s recordings, the sonic topography describes a vulgar and hostile landscape where fits of delirium and circadian arrhythmia are common human responses. In many ways, Shoemaker’s Spots in the Sun could be mistaken for Bernard Parmegiani at his most focused or even John Duncan at his most gracefully brutal.
Terror Auto-Obstetrics
(BloodLust! - B!108) CDR $9.00
Released to coincide with the very first USA Sigillum S show in the Italian post-industrial audio project’s 20+ year history, this EP pulls together four songs originally released on AWB Recordings: "Terror Auto-Obstetrics" and "Transkathartick Endoscopy" (7-inch, 1990), "Suck Inside Thee Ov Bulb" (Effete compilation cassette, 1988), and "Purulence Peaks, Hairy Knobs, And Death Disturbances" (Private Thoughts compilation cassette, 1991). The tracks were re-mastered by band member Eraldo Bernocchi. Sigillum S’s ongoing explorations of forbidden areas of the subconscious yields alien electronic mutations that merge concrete noise research with acoustic transmigration, while visuals and other media achieve maximum interaction intensity.
California Ax
(Helicopter - H50) 4xCD $32.00
All four of Sissy Spacek’s extant proper albums could probably fit onto a single CD; flipping that notion on its head, California Ax contains four new full length albums in one trim little boat. Tinsel Dripping Ink (disc one) covers territory from grindcore, noise, electro-acoustic improv, musique concrete, noisecore, and electronics. It's primarily made up of new work, but also ruts through the cutting room floor for the best bits that didn't make it onto previous efforts, with a few tracks dating as far back as 1998. Police (disk two) is 11 tracks in 40 minutes of electro-acoustic improv with girls on drums. Abreq Ad Habra (disc three) -- named after an Arabic phrase pre-dating "Abracadabra," the preferred mistranslation of which is "hurl an even lightning bolt until death” -- contains Sissy Spacek’s rawest recordings ever: a 40-minute inferno from KXLU and a 20-minute live set in 2002 in St. Louis. 13-Tet Los Angeles (disc four) is a live document of a 13-piece lineup that performed two sets at The Smell in Los Angeles in December 2007 and is also the first live performance of a score by John Wiese. Completist alert -- the Spacek core of John Wiese and Corydon Ronnau called upon the following for contributions to California Ax: Mitchell Brown, Sarah Cake, Kevin Drumm, Gerritt, Kate Hall (Mika Miko), Joseph Hammer (Solid Eye), Aaron Hemphill (Liars, Skull Sküll), Jesse Jackson (Flaspar), Greg Kelley (Nmperign), Tim Koh (White Magic, Ariel Pink), Danny McClain (Grand Ulena), Giles Miller, Oblivia (Smegma), Andy Ortmann (Panicsville), Sam Ott (The Fucking Angels), Tom Recchion (Airway, LAFMS), Damion Romero (Speculum Fight), Jarrett Silberman (Skull Sküll, Young People), Dean Spunt (No Age), David Scott Stone (Melvins, Get Hustle), and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pileup).
French Record
(Dual Plover) CD $15.50 (Out-of-stock)
Using full-on blur/grindcore as a starting point, Sissy Spacek has evolved toward the extreme, intense fringes of musique concrete. On this, their fifth proper album, they explore new territory, as always, and take unforeseeable turns into electro-acoustic improv, collage, industrial, noise and heavy metal, with a line up that includes Kevin Drumm, Kate Hall (Mika Miko), Sam Ott (The Fucking Angels), Corydon Ronnau, John Wiese, and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core).
Harm
(Troniks - TRO296) CD $7.50
A lo-fi garage clash by Phil Blankenship, Jesse Jackson, Charlie Mumma, Corydon Ronnau and John Wiese, recorded during preparation for the December 2011 Sissy Spacek tour. Thudding sickness, black-souled vocal retch, and thrashing violence turn to blistering white out. Recorded direct to tape and straight to hell at F-House. Edition of 200.
Dystrophy
(Hanson - HN236) CD $8.50
Crude noise from the filthiest Cleveland basements and scum punk bars by Wyatt Howland (Dead Peasant Insurance, Apartment 213), whose knack for writhing in the underbelly of sound using junk metal, field recordings and primitive electronics is not easily matched. Dystrophy is complete audio horror texture: pulverizing harsh sounds of fluttering static, feedback and crushed metal. Edition of 500.
Pure Imperial Reform
(Turgid Animal - TA309) CD $10.00
Recorded 2006 live on an Antwerp radio station comes this new guitar wall "composition" from Matthew Bower and Lee Stokoe. A good harsh racket. UK import.
Threnody for Collapsing Suns
(Phage - PT151) CD $11.50
Mike Page of Fire In The Head doing the dark ambient. This 50-minute, thoughtfully composed triptych incorporates deep drones, shimmering synth work, lamenting melodic lines and layers that form a surprisingly organic, well-crafted narrative. A journey into the nebulous dusk of Kosmische Musik. Edition of 500.
Acnalbasac Noom
(ReR Megacorp - RERSHCD) Used CD $10.00
Slapp Happy (Peter Blegvad, Dagmar Krause and Anthony Moore) joined by four of six members of Faust as their backup band. Tracks 1 to 11 recorded at Wümme, West Germany, 1973. Tracks 12 to 15 are CD bonus tracks from the private collection of the group. CD is new, sealed in the original shrinkwrap, but has a small hole drilled in one corner of the jewelbox, so it is listed here as Used.
Core
(BloodLust! - B!096) CDR $9.00
Four tracks of true minimal synth music; the fifth track is a 27-minute experimental analog synth piece, dark electronics à la M.B.
Home
(BloodLust! - B!118) CDR $9.00
The fourth and final disc in a series of Sleep Museum EPs features rhythmic, darkly melodic synth-and-drum-machine-driven minimal electronic music, with unrepentant, eccentric vocals and dour lyrics. A nearly 36-minute-long experimental analog synth piece is closer to the M.B. and Lustmord styles of dark electronics. Total running time, nearly 60 minutes
Replica
(BloodLust! - B!112) CDR $9.00
Five tracks of rhythmic, darkly melodic synth- and drum machine-driven true minimal synth music, with unrepentant, eccentric vocals and dour lyrics. Utterly contemporary, yet also bearing the frost of certain late 1970s and early 1980s recordings -- a hint of Joy Division mood and a dose of electronic-era Death in June. "In Time" is a 32-minute experimental analog synth piece, far closer to the M.B.-style of dark electronics.
Bloody Roots
(Trash Ritual - TRASH044) CD $12.00
Each track is built around a thick, low end / lo-fi rumble with just the smallest bit of vocal samples breaking through. Lyrics filled with hatred and self-loathing, manifesting itself in violent reactions and a vocal approach to match. Slogun's preoccupation with violent crime has been replaced by focus on self-loathing; its not about distractions anymore, it's about facing a dark, useless reality. Power electronics at its finest.
Glory Of Murder
(BloodLust! - B!090) CD $12.00
The sixth and final release in Slogun's "History of Violence" reissue campaign was originally released on cassette (Soffitta Macabra, 1998); it was a major landmass in the evolving world of true crime subject matter. Like the five precursors in the series, it boasts ultra-violent, harsh electronics, great samples, and raging vocals.
A Whole Other World of Fun
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR018) CD $12.00
Known for split records with bands such as Corrupted, Grief, Floor, Upsidedown Cross, Noothgrush, Ohio's Sloth have been creating some of the most fucked up, weird, funny music from the past ten years. The painful sludge noise is still here, but on this their first ever CD full-length, there's an altogether more considered approach. It's got piano on it, for fuck's sake. Sloth's weird, lo-fi songs sound like they were written by a fucked up kid, but then there are garage rock high-end jams and tarpit slo-mo doom dirges. Bizarre and hilarious as ever.
30 Years of Service
(Radon) CD $12.00
In July 2003, Smegma celebrated their 30th anniversary as a musical collective with a series of concerts featuring Stooges saxman Steve Mackay. These landmark noise spectacles were highly praised, most notably the exceptional performance at The Derby in Hollywood. At the end of the year, the set was recreated in Smegma’s legendary Portland, Oregon, studio and painstakingly mixed and manipulated over the course of several months. From their mid-’70s work in the Los Angeles Free Music Society up through their critically exalted collaboration album with Wolf Eyes, Smegma’s influential free honk’n’gibber is like no other.
33 1/3
(Important - IMPREC145) Enhanced CD $12.00
Leaning here toward their 20th century avant-garde and out-jazz influences, Smegma have obviously spent of good portion of their 33.3-year history free-thinking their heads off. Magnificent blotoo honk by Oblivia, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Burned Mind, Conroy, and Dr. Id. CD includes live videos of “Happy Holidays” live at End Times Festival (with Spencer Yeh and Twig Harper) and “Grubsteak” live at the Three Million Tongues festival in Chicago.
Beast
(Destijl - IND036) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
Intergenerational discomfort rock performed together by two free-sound conglomerates -- the sprawling Portland, Oregon-based LAFMS progenitors Smegma, and the more compact Wolf Eyes. With cover art depicting crop circles, alien grave rubbings and cryptographs, and group portrait inside resembling a family reunion snapshot you might find at a thrift store, The Beast merges Richard Meltzer’s nasal meander, reptilian pulsations, exploratory tweakadelica, outsider improv, toys, devices, and electronic noises. Proof that old weird America is far from obsolete and more than capable of frying the fiendly skies.
Glamour Girl
(Japan Overseas - JO9728) CD $10.50
This 1997 CD reissue of vintage gorked-out wahoo originally released by Los Angeles Free Music Society in the late ’70s includes four bonus tracks (the Pigface Chant 7-inch). A bizarre combo of the tape-loops-and-nonsense later perfected by Negativland, the meandering skronk of Jandek or Gate, and the nightmarish hippie meltdowns of the No-Neck Blues Band and their offshoots.
Nattering Naybobs of Negativity
(Harbinger Sound) CD $10.50
Digital reissue of Smegma’s 1987 LP, rounded out with the studio recordings from 1988’s Morass cassette. Contains twenty-one tracks and an eight-page booklet featuring the complete Smegma discography up to 1988.
Pigs for Lepers
(Harbinger Sound - H043) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of second long-player, originally the seventh release on the band’s Pigface Records imprint back in 1982. With an eight-page color booklet of artwork and photographs from the archives. Bonus track “Mutant Baby” was recorded live in 1979 and appeared on an obscure Trap Records compilation.
Tiromancy
(Japan Overseas - JO9731) CD $10.50
Japanese CD from 1997 by this oblique improv collective. In some ways, just as traditional as a bunch of Sun Ra acolytes, in others more bent than actual acid casualties, Tiromancy splashes down swaddled in rainbow dots, early Playboy chic, laughing gas electronics, conflicting vapors, surround-seep ooze-adelia, and highly agile mental capabilities.
Snakes Alive
(Sentient) CD $12.00
With this step forward from the split LP with Wire Werewolves, Snakes Alive take powerful, heavy rock into new levels, combining catchy, well crafted songs that don’t compromise a thing with psychedelic textures. Eyeball scorching artwork from the late Daniel Kraus. Weird, heavy, meltable throughout.
Voyage to See What’s on the Bottom
(Melon Expander) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts & Steve Thomsen have each spent 25+ years exploring various avenues of music described by their 1970s collective, the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) as "avant-schmaltz." With an ear for unsettling detail, Solid Eye suspends the listener in a lurching, oozing, hallucinatory river of sound that unfolds with its own peculiar sense of internal logic. Neither fish nor fowl, their aesthetic impulses bear scant resemblance to the dominant modes and methods that govern the domain of much contemporary experimental music. This surrealist cabal immerses itself in the creation of a pata-physical metaphysic, a slippery, elusive territory where the profound is coaxed from the ludicrous and the seemingly innocuous is inverted into the preternaturally haunting... a cosmology where the absurd, the uncanny and the unsettling coalesce, the result distilled into a sense-deforming, reality-eroding, alchemical elixir.
Archive01
(BloodLust! - B!131) CDR $12.00
The lead track is taken from Side A of Bloodlust’s 1995 debut release, Instrumental Demonstration Of Death-Noise cassette. The bonus track is remixed from an edit of that material. BloodLust’s Archive series of seven CDs covers all of Solotroff's solo output, released under his own name in 1995 and 1996. All were originally released on cassette (labels include Bloodlust, G.R.O.S.S., Less Than Zero, Old Europa Café, and Slaughter Productions), include bonus material consisting of either compilation tracks from the same labels, or newly created remixes. At the time that these recordings were made, the idea of using guitar effect pedals as primary "instrument" was still fairly novel; Solotroff’s arsenal included distortion, delay, flanger, phaser, and other pedals, running either radio frequencies (scanner or shortwave) or his voice through the complex chain. The results fit squarely into American noise’s development away from power-electronics into today’s harsh noise subgenre.
Archive02
(BloodLust! - B!132) CDR $12.00
The lead track is taken from Side B of Bloodlust’s 1995 debut release, Instrumental Demonstration Of Death-Noise cassette. The bonus track is remixed from an edit of that material. BloodLust’s Archive series of seven CDs covers all of Solotroff's solo output, released under his own name in 1995 and 1996. All were originally released on cassette (labels include Bloodlust, G.R.O.S.S., Less Than Zero, Old Europa Café, and Slaughter Productions), include bonus material consisting of either compilation tracks from the same labels, or newly created remixes. At the time that these recordings were made, the idea of using guitar effect pedals as primary "instrument" was still fairly novel; Solotroff’s arsenal included distortion, delay, flanger, phaser, and other pedals, running either radio frequencies (scanner or shortwave) or his voice through the complex chain. The results fit squarely into American noise’s development away from power-electronics into today’s harsh noise subgenre.
Archive03
(BloodLust! - B!133) CDR $12.00
For the third entry in the series, the two core tracks are taken from Solotroff's A Venom In The Blood, cassette (Old Europa Cafe, 1996), and the bonus track is derived from a newly edited and remixed construction of that material. Hand-written notes and diagrams indicate use of a battery of effect pedals used in conjunction with scanner, radio, Roland SH-101 analog synth and Boss DR-55 drum machine.
MARK SOLOTROFF / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS
Excellent #1 - The Edit
(BloodLust! - B!101) CDR $10.50
In 1996, NG5361 (also of SIigillum S) and Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded) collaborated on the Excellent Manipulation of Distorted Tape Death 4xC90, which utilized progressive analog tape generations and sound fidelity decay. NG5361 revisited those recordings ten years later, in a more digital manner, and came up with The Edit (eight tracks, each drawn from one of the original cassette sides) and Super Density Assemblage (two self-explanatory, 28-minute-long tracks, built from multiple sections of the box set).
MARK SOLOTROFF / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS
Excellent #2 - Super Density Assemblage
(BloodLust! - B!102) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
In 1996, NG5361 (also of SIigillum S) and Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded) collaborated on the Excellent Manipulation of Distorted Tape Death 4xC90, which utilized progressive analog tape generations and sound fidelity decay. NG5361 revisited those recordings ten years later, in a more digital manner, and came up with The Edit (eight tracks, each drawn from one of the original cassette sides) and Super Density Assemblage (two self-explanatory, 28-minute-long tracks, built from multiple sections of the box set).
Live From The Canteens Of Atlantis
(Absurd) CD $15.00
Part performance art, part live music installation, Live From The Canteens Of Atlantis was created by Colin Fletcher, Tim Kirby and Peter Strickland using contact mics, samplers and signal processing to document themselves cooking. Predominantly percussive mixes with loops, grinds, and clanks should satisfy industrial technoids; plenty of splatches, cutlery jiggles, rumbling climaxes, and big ol’ sizzles will please the noise-heads; and conceptualists, well, those beard-strokers will buy anything, so you know they’re on board. Disc one contains selections from 1998 to 2001, disc two the group’s complete final appearance in Switzerland. Imported from Greece.
Offrendas de Luz a Los Muertos
(Beta Lactam Ring - NEGRO33) Used CD $12.50
Noise technician Power Circus slices old bones into Soriah's power electronics scrimshaw. "Sonically devastating," and comparable in its "operatic qualities" to MB, Hafler Trio and New Blockaders. Edition of 300 numbered and signed copies.
Space Time Echo
(P-Tapes - PSM201) 3-inch CD $13.00
The third volume of heavy, all-analog psych from Maso Yamazaki’s (aka Masonna) Kosmische music project. This one is all-solo, with Maso playing Maestro Echoplex EP-3 and P-Tronic Sound Lab Mini-Synth in a fairly brain-shredding style. Recorded at Space Machine Systems Studio in Osaka, December 2004. Nice package with full-color three-inch sleeve featuring details of vintage circuitry. Edition of 500.
Zone of Avoidance
(P-Tapes - PSM202) 3-inch CD $13.00
The fourth volume of heavy, all-analog psych from Maso Yamazaki’s (aka Masonna) Kosmische music project. Here Maso pilots a Roland System 100, System 100M and RE-501 all the way to the other side of the horizon. Recorded at Space Machine Systems Studio in Osaka, December 2004. Nice package with full-color three-inch sleeve featuring details of vintage circuitry. Edition of 500.
Ananta
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS017) 2xCD $15.00
Hitoshi Kojo (aka Spiracle) finds it difficult to fall asleep. Ananta urges the listener toward a dreamless sleep-state, while reflecting the glowing warmth of a blossoming sunrise. To finely tuned drones extracted from a Dilruba and a Sarangi, Kojo merges sympathetic field recordings and other tonal interferences alongside the instrumental sounds. The results are elliptically static drones that brightly shimmer with hues of gold, crimson, and aquamarine. One of the two variations of Ananta was released in 2006 as a micro-edition CDR through Mystery Sea; tiny churning textures stream along a linear path, nearly achieving infinity, which happens to be the translation from Sanskrit of "ananta." If you find Roland Kayn, Yoshi Wada, or Charlemagne Palestine hypnotic, you'll want to check this out. The Strato Version of Ananta is previously unreleased. It bends and undulates around a fundamental drone, while maintaining the sun-flecked glints magnified in the Mystery Sea version. Limited to 300 copies
Eravamo Così Felici
(Turgid Animal - TA400) CD $10.00
Nicola (Fecalove) and Marco are joined by Lorenzo (Thanatologist, Nave, Entropic Degrade Behind Phylogeny) for seven tracks of decayed and wrong industrial / noise / power electronics. Brutal vocals in Italian, analogue and digital noise, various electronics, tape looping and lyrics by Mirko Sartori (a reclusive mad man who lived with the mummified corpse of his mother Anna for three years in a little town in northern Italy, in an apartment with walls covered with weird, hand-written prayers and requests of help). Pure Italian suburban depression, madness and void. Eight-page booklet with lyrics in Italian and translation in English.
Stereo Telepathy Academy
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.25
The San Francisco-based Spoonbender 1.1.1 outlines itself as the “tele-ambient dream self” of the critically-acclaimed, “populist avant-tronics and media group” I Am Spoonbender. Stereo Telepathy Academy takes spoken text from one film and overlays it onto images from another film; the score was composed while viewing a third unnamed film. As images of Cronenberg’s rarely seen Crimes Of The Future flickered, Spoonbender 1.1.1 radiated an inverted telekinetic minimalism of undulating tones supporting the third piece of the puzzle: spoken text from Cronenberg’s Stereo, a faux-documentary detailing a surgical procedure for the advancement of telepathic communication. The result is a sort of Wizard Of Oz / Dark Side Of The Moon for the mimetic engineering mindset.
Bond Inlets
(Intransitive - INT030) CD $13.00
Ten years after Stelzer’s debut CD, Stone Blind (Intransitive, 1997), Bond Inlets dissects the source sounds of that work and filters it through the lens of the interceding decade in order to build a piece that more accurately reflects what his intentions were then and what his aesthetic is today. His first widely available solo cassette-tape composition, Bond Inlets is a subtly emotional work of foreground drone that beats its head against the plastic walls of cassette-tape technology, laying bare the physicality of the process of its creation. The dying motors of cassette players, tape-saturated percussion, and blown-out condenser-mic wail mix with elements of new live improvisations and local field recordings. There is an implacable melancholy to Bond Inlets, with oceans full of no-fidelity murk, and evocative hiss, and fragments of distant melodies that surface only to be subsumed again into the grime.
Music for Found Objects
(C3R - C3R009) Used CD $8.00
Well-regarded Canadian jazz percussionist gives a good whack to water, metal and stone. Downtown Yawnsville, right? Guess again. Manipulated salad bowls floating in a bath tub. The sonic capabilities of canoe paddles. Building bells approximated with a mallet and a 50-inch length of galvanized steel sliding through Stewart's fingers. Marble tables and air pockets. Detailed liner notes.
Radio One & Two (Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vols 11 & 12)
(Abduction) 2xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Overseas shortwave and field recordings, Uncle Jim rants, skronky improv madness, pretty instrumental interludes, re-engineered soundtrack themes and bizarre mixes. Recorded in 2002 on WFMU.
Farben Raum
(Heard Worse) CD $10.50
Sun of the Seventh Sister’s debut CD -- a woolly mammoth of mushroom-fueled free-psych -- follows a 2007 New Zealand tour triple-lathe-LP and a septuple-cassette boxset on Breakdance The Dawn. The floating line-up ranges from ten to twenty-five players (with members of xNoBBQx, UnAustralians, Arse Lunch, Cock Up Shitting Whore, Rats With Wings, Stasis Duo and others): multiple drummers, multiple electrified chordophones, horns, vocals, oscillators, etc. Imagine half a dozen freak-folk ensembles congealing into a psychedelic din of Borbetomagan proportions. The CD consists of three immense tracks, taken from a three-hour session, lovingly recorded by the Pulled Out mobile unit, with mastering analysis by DJ Beefcurtains.
Loose Bugs
(Magnetic Expansion - MER001) CD $12.00
Sax blowing, cymbal scratching, upside-down-bicycle-with-a-wooden-stick-in-the-spokes free jazz, analog tape spinning forward and backward while broken stringed gourds are quietly plucked, a perfectly contented demon child occasionally mumbling, a tribe of self-proclaimed psychic gamblers blowing Thai flutes. Loose Bugs documents the first few months of Sunburned’s formation, recorded on Vestax 6-track with overhead hanging mics at Con-Artist loft in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1998. In hand-packaged and -numbered card jackets, covered inside and out with hand-carved stamps.
Cloudz
(VHF - VHF75) Used CD $6.00
Layers of twinkling keyboard, guitar, unidentified fuzz, short wave, etc., very much in the style of Harmonia and Cluster in spots. There are a couple of amped-up moments here and there, including surprise lead guitar action on "Tornado Rose Canoe," and the excellent fuzz-grilled rock of "Primavera." According to no less of an authority than Neil Campbell, Cloudz is "the best Sunroof ever."
Fall of Nature
(Groundfault) CD $11.15
New material recorded in 2007. One track, nearly an hour in length, depicting a nihilistic nightmare on personal and social levels. This epic track evolves gradually, starting with the voice of creation, building to a fury, and ending with man's desperate screams of realization and madness. The relentless music in between is "nothing short of monumental."
This Is The Truth
(Groundfault) CD $13.50
The first studio album in eight years by Sutcliffe Jugend, who began in 1982 as a Whitehouse side project that gained notoriety as one of the harshest exponents of the original power electronics scene. After the monumental 10xCS boxset We Spit On Their Graves (Come Organisation, 1982), Sutcliffe Jugend released a handful of albums until 1999. A single 7-inch was released in 2001 and they weren’t heard from again until 2006, when they played their first-ever live show, followed by more that same year. This Is The Truth is an original and perfectly balanced noise composition, referencing classic as well as unique and fresh elements one does not hear in noise. Foreboding tension and anxiety, lively, disturbing, and textual elements of noise all come together with detail and balance.
Absolut Nothing
(Trash Ritual) CD $15.00
Long delayed CD debut by this Fecalove side project. Ten tracks of ugly and filthy power electronics, Italian style. Cock, self-deprecation and booze, over and over again. Includes Brainbombs and The Sodality covers, twelve-page booklet with lyrics and sexy pictures. Edition of 300.
Kama
(Pica Disk) CD $25.00
A monumental 41-minute colossus recorded between summer 2006 and February 2007. The single track is mostly sourced from the French horn (not that anyone would have guessed). Layers upon layers of distorted, processed and mangled pieces of sound form a consistent stream of sonic bliss. This massive construction slowly builds to an epic climax. Tafjord is known as part of projects like SPUNK, Fe-Mail (her duo with Maja Ratkje), Agrare (Fe-Mail with dancer Lotta Melin), Trinacria (Fe-Mail with black metallers Enslaved) and collaborations with Birchville Cat Motel, Wolf Eyes, Matmos, Ikue Mori, Otomo Yoshihide, Carlos Giffoni, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith and countless others.
Crushed Radiant Deities
(Students of Decay - SOD32) CD $8.00
In this dense, polyphonic fugue of dynamic collisions and endless collapses, luminescent, wrecked shards of overtone drones merge with zoned and disembodied choral whispers and ribbons of pure white electricity. Includes remastered versions of the two tracks on Paper Lanterns (Students of Decay 2006). Edition of 500.
Action Direct
(Tiliqua - TIL5001) CD $20.00
(Tiliqua - TIL5001) Used CD $15.00
Nine tracks that freak out, whisper funk, scream, stomp, and storm with abandon, always on the first and only take. The capacity of the riffs and grooves to mimic German prog bands of the same era, psychedelic rock bands of several years previous, or the as-yet-uncreated avant sounds from the indie rock movement a decade away is demonstrates Takayanagi's profound connection to the source of human inspiration itself.
Surfacedrift
(Naturestrip) CD $14.25
Melbourne sound artist Eamon Sprod creates textures from microphones dragged through leaves and gravel, rain pounding against buildings, and waves crashing inside an abandoned factory. Tarab’s field recordings and improvisations combine natural and artificial sources in richly layered sonic environments. Imported from Australia.
Take All of the Ships From the Harbour, And Sail Them Straight to Hell
(23five - 23five014) CD $12.00
Corroded locations where mankind has scarred the surface of the earth feature prominently in the work of Melbourne sound artist Eamonn Sprod, documented through field recording and sympathetic actions with found objects from those sites. One such location that features prominently in Take All of the Ships... is Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, once the home of an immigration station at the turn of the 20th Century and later a Nike Missile site for the US military; it now rests in the hands of the US National Park Service, which has left some of the buildings to succumb to the forces of decay. From the sounds culled from this site and others closer to his antepodean home, Tarab diligently overlays and stitches together a tactile composition with few digital treatments. As the opening ominous rumble ebbs and flows, with its frequencies appearing to emerge from the center of the Earth and liquefy the surface upon impact, Tarab unveils a revolving series of exaggerated details from a hyperbolic gash of two heavy pieces of metal grinding against themselves to a toxic chorale of nighttime insects to sand, wind, and surf detourned into sedimentary white noise. Tarab's compositional sensibility shifts throughout the album, at first sparsely situating these sounds into shadowy vignettes. Gradually, an arcing crescendo exhibits sustained harmonics rarely heard in the best of the contemporary dronemusik technicians, much less from the realm of sound ecology.
Wind Keeps Even Dust Away
(23five) CD $12.00
Through installation, performance, and composition, Australian sound artist Eamon Sprod reinterprets the physical detritus of the landscape within a hypothetical topography where dirt, soot, and smog emerge as privileged materials, in to which he grafts the potential for a transcendent response. Field recordings are fundamental to this creative process, bolstered by sympathetic sounds activated by Sprod’s own hands rummaging through crumbling leaves, rusted bits of metal, broken concrete, and shattered glass, to name some of the more obvious sources. Wind Keeps Even Dust Away is only the second documentation of Sprod’s compositions but it’s an accomplished work on par with the contemporary sound ecologists such as Chris Watson, Eric La Casa, and Toshiya Tsunoda. Sprod intertwines compacted collages that tease aquatic references from abandoned and overlooked sites of the arid Australian landscape. Every sound of a pipe gurgling with water is but a mirage of sand, rust, and dirt cleverly tricking the ear.
Repas Froid
(Pan - PAN17) LP $27.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Tanzprocesz - TP7) Used CD $10.00
An extraordinary combination of culled found and taped fragments juxtaposed against drums, field recordings and mystery noises, sound loops, birdsong, keyboards and Tazartès's throaty drones and voice propelled by hypnotic, ritualistic rhythms balanced on a razor sharp edge. Pan's LP is the complete work of Repas Froid, including archival and previously unreleased recordings from the late 1970s and early 1980s, strung together to form two long compositions (the CD edition on Tanzprocesz is brief tracks of source material and a palette of various sounds). A French musician of Turkish parentage, Tazartès is an uncompromising character who defies categorization. Born 1947 in Paris, he's one of France's most idiosyncratic talents. He has spent over 30 years within musical practice and experimentation, letting his musical work wander from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. Utilizing magnetic tape recorders into a rough collage and loose ethno-instrumental mulch, he paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. 140-gram vinyl, color jacket, silkscreened PVC sleeve. Edition of 500.
Text of Light
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $14.00
Text of Light was formed in 1999 to perform improvised music during screenings of films by Stan Brakhage and other American avant-garde filmmakers from the 1950s and ’60s. These should not be considered soundtracks for Brakhage’s works, which are intended to be screened silently. Rather, the group uses the films as an element to stimulate improvisation, like an additional player, juxtaposing film and music in a real-time performance mixed-media collage. On this CD the group, in various combinations, includes: Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht on guitars and devices; Christian Marclay and DJ Olive on turntables; William Hooker on drums and percussion, and Ulrich Krieger of Zeitkratzer on sax and electronics.
This Heat
(This Is - THISIS1) Used CD $15.00
One of the docents at All Music Guide offers this sober perspective: "[This Heat's] self-titled debut is a radical conglomeration of progressive rock, musique concrète, free improvisation, and even -- in a bizarre distillation -- aspects of British folk can be heard in Charles Hayward's singing." This is a sealed copy, though we're listing it as a used CD because it has a drill hole in the upper right corner.
CAREI THOMAS FEEL FREE ENSEMBLE
Mining Our Bid’ness
(Roaratorio) CD $10.50
Free-wheeling, harmonically complex debut album by 64-year-old pianist/composer who gigged with Sun Ra in 1959-60, did brief time in AACM during the mid-’60s, and co-founded The Light with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (which also included Jerome Cooper and Wadada Leo Smith). This live recording swings both ways and ignores the boundaries between gorgeous Ellingtonian ballads and combustible free jazz testification. Features Curlew’s George Cartwright and tenor saxophonist William R. Lang. Packaged in a mini-gatefold sleeve.
Abfleischung
(Die Stadt - DS108) CD $20.00
The twelfth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one based on material recorded as early as 1967-1970, recycled into short, completely different tracks in 1989 (Hamster Records, 1989). With two previously unreleased tracks from the original master tapes.
Aus Freude am Elend
(Die Stadt - DS105) CD $22.50
Eleventh part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one based on the human voice as a primary sound source: ecstatic religious people; other people making love; someone singing to Annette and Peggy out of the trash bin of a publishing company; the screams of furious teachers. Includes two tracks that were not on the original LP (Dom America, 1988).
Geboren, um zu Dienen
(Die Stadt - DS92) CD $22.50
The eighth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one his industrial album originally released by Discos Esplendor Geometrico in 1986. Here Tietchens adds his own musical aspects to the general apocalyptic noises of the genre, inspired by the canonical topics of fear, hysteria, claustrophobia, machine and the imminent threat of the end. Tracks were recorded hastily, with little thought for dynamics, duration, precision and construction. What sounded dirty stayed dirty, the raw and the unsculpted part of the industrial dogma. With three unreleased bonus tracks from the same period.
Marches Funèbres
(Die Stadt - DS112) CD $20.00
On this installment of the ongoing reissue program of early works of Asmus Tietchens, the good Herr melds ambient funeral music with a modern classical / experimental touch. Two tracks from the original LP (Multimood 1989) plus one previously unreleased nine-minute bonus piece from 1979. Edition of 600.
Notturno
(Die Stadt - DS102) CD $22.50
The tenth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one an old-fashioned avant garde album that crosses over from industrial to academic electroacoustics, and uses grand piano with prepared strings played with electric beater, wire brush, coins and other unusual aids, and generously treated with studio tricks. With two tracks not on the original LP (Discos Esplendor Geometrico, 1987) but were on the first CD reissue (Barooni, 1992). Remastered from original tapes.
Zwingburgen des Hedonismus / Mysterien des Hafens
(Die Stadt - DS96) CD $22.50
The ninth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one combining the Fairlight CM1 composition “Zwingburgen des Hedonismus” (Multimood, 1987) with “Mysterien des Hafens” (Odd Size 1988), which uses underwater microphones. The bonus track “Faircomp 1K” is a previously unreleased different version of “Zwingburgen des Hedonismus.”
Poopin
(Dual Plover) CD $13.00
The fractal-crackin’ third album by Brisbane, Australia’s favorite slumber party hosts, Synthia J. Pop & Cyndii Valentine, squeezed out while exchange students in Osaka, Japan. This reverse enema for the brain by the girls from the wrong side of the bike racks includes eleven steamy crowd-thumpers like “Rape Me,” “Itchy Balls,” and “Teen Mum,” all worthy of inclusion in any self-respecting rock eisteddfod production. Their unique brand of electro-crap –- compared favorably to "Sigue Sigue Sputnik scoring Mortal Kombat porn” -- is a bass sensation in the brown note that proves once and for all that turds can be polished, especially if contained in pants while gyrating on the dance floor.
Become The Objects of Daily Use
(Monotype - MONO037) CD $12.75
Making music based upon two simple principles (it is derived from speech; it repeats incessantly), the main project of Alessandro Bosetti, fretless guitarist Kenta Nagai, and drummer Tony Buck is entirely dedicated to Bosetti's loop compositions. Melodies are crafted out of speech profiles of recordings of Bosetti's emotional, often surreal or non-sequitur lyrics. Words cast into everyday speech are subsequently transcribed and played as endless loops. Speech becomes song and the non-metric, irregular rhythms that it creates turn into powerful grooves and precise pulsations never lining up with any regular beat. The band's performance is a meditative exercise in precision and intensity. Musical action begins in little shifts of intonation and inflections, anticipation and delay, played out by voice, fretless guitar, drums and electronics. Music warms up to a calm incandescence. Development is patient and inexorable. It never misses to reach a further level and it never loses its bizarre sameness. The controlled but restless energy mutates and transforms this trio into a devastating stage monster during live performances. The insistently repeated speech fragments at the center of the music end up disappearing from perception while leaving a cloud of vaporized meaning behind.
In The Sack
(Destijl - IND061) CD $13.50
The cast of characters on In The Sack is familiar to anyone who spent time with Tucker's Batstew record -- upright piano, backward vocals, rants, ravings, life savings. The man is very mean on the piano and the best backward vocalist Jim O'Rourke's ever heard. Pop symphonies in the same solar system as David Ackles, bootleg Brian Wilson, the first Residents record, Moolah, Bruce Haack's kids records, Song Cycle and Horrific Child.
Minus The Divine
(Turgid Animal - TA406) CD $12.00
Norway's Sindre Foss Skancke follows up 2007's Mutilation Epoch with his experimental black metal and noise rolled into one well composed, exciting and bizarre-sounding album. All the best bits of Skullflower, with early industrial and other influences drawn from his country's native black metal underworld fighting for space in front of a backdrop of blackened harsh noise filth. Limited to 300 copies.
From the Twilight, Next to Nowhere and Disappeared
(Music Atlach - MA008 ) CD $15.00
Jani Hirvonen's one-man project wanders through silent, dark, semi-acoustic mysteries where outer space echoes and alien atmospheres adorn noisy walls of sound. Sources include electric guitar, electronics, voice, percussion, bells, violin, flute, keyboards. Past collaborations include Anla Courtis (Reynols), Antony Milton (Mrtyu, Black Boned Angel), Ben Reynolds, Peter Wright, Jari Koho (Vapaa), Maxime Primault (Enfer Boreal, High Wolf) and Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ystävät), among others.
33 RPM
(23five - 23F/SFM 903) CD $12.00
The third anthology in nonprofit org 23five’s sound event series presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The selections here, chosen from SFMOMA’s Ten Hours of Sound From France, emphasize acousmatic approaches toward electroacoustic construction, which means a heavy historical influence from musique concrète and computer music. Tracks by Kasper T. Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, compiler Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Champagne, pizMO, Jean-Phillippe Gross, and Mimetic. 24-page booklet includes essays and detailed program notes about the MOMA installation.
A Cage Went In Search of a Bird: Music Inspired by Franz Kafka
(Somnimage - som04) CD $15.00
Compiled by Mykel Boyd (Angelhood), this 17-band, international compilation of darkwave, neo-classical and experimental sounds features Attrition, La Funcion De Repulsa, Angelhood, Maras Torment, Loren Jan Wilson II & Ryoji Furui, Neither/Neither World, Halo Skycrash, Julian Tulip's Licorice, Benjamin Stauffer, Chagas, Shinjuku Thief, Chthonic Force, Garden of Dreams, Remora, Oblivia, E.A. Zann and The New York Room. Art and graphics by surrealist Christian Faur.
Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music 1992-2008
(Sub Rosa - SR265) 4xCD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Forty-eight tracks from Mainland China (Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guilin, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Shanxi, Harbin), and from countries within the Chinese area of influence (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia) that look at the recent past and the key role of pioneers like Wang Fan, Dajuin Yao, and also Hong Kong-based Li Chin Sung aka Dickson Dee who, for almost two decades, has been spreading the word about experimental music in Mainland China. Includes the short yet intense advent and history of the Chinese noise explosion, co-written by Zbigniew Karkowski and Yan Jun, “The Sound of the Underground: An Overview of Experimental and Non-Academic Music in China.” Documented for the very first time, this release provides a complete panorama of the roots and buds of an ever-growing, promising experimental community in China and beyond, with nearly five hours of music.
Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / First A-Chronology
(Sub Rosa - SR190) Used 2xCD $15.00
Major works, rarities, previously unreleased tracks, and a "huh?" track or two. With Luigi and Antonio Russolo (1921), John Cage (1965), Sonic Youth (1983), Pauline Oliveros (1966), Iannis Xenakis (1958), Einsturzende Neubauten (1998), Dj Spooky (2001), Maclise-Conrad-Cale (1965), Henri Pousseur (1957), and more.
Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / Second A-Chronology
(Sub Rosa - SR200) CD + Enhanced CD $14.00
Academics and mavericks (Vladimir Ussachevsky + Otto Luening, Luc Ferrari, Tod Dockstader, Johanna M. Beyer, Morton Subotnick, Daphne Oram, Scanner, Hugh Davies, Alan R. Splet, Kim Cascone) rub elbow patches with Autechre, Multiphonic Ensemble, Meira Asher + Guy Harries, Choose, Woody McBride, Arcane Device, Laibach, SPK, Percy Grainger, Sun Ra And The Arkestra, Captain Beefheart. Contains mainly unreleased works in a digipak sleeve with a 40-page booklet. The enhanced CD contains the video of "She's Too Much For My Mirror / My Human Gets Me Blues" by Captain Beefheart.
Color In Absence Sound
(Hell's Half halo - HHH08) CD $8.00
1999 comp with Diadal, Monostat 3, Vote Robot, Watt, Thurston Moore, Smack Music 7, Alasdair Willis, Elklink, Decaer Pinga, Sun City Girls, Alvarius B, 2/5 Bukatu, Glands Of Eternal Secretion, Ron Lessard w/ Theoretical Munt, Hochenkeit, Ashtray Navigations, Julien Bradley, Gar Funk Featuring KZA, Whiteout, Idea Fire Co., and Unknown Artist.
De Nagalm Op De Kopf
(Ultra Eczema - UE60) Magazine + CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Throw a rock in Belgium and you’re likely to draw blood from someone to whom Ultra Eczema's Denis Tyfus owes a trade, or who wants to piss down his neck because his tail is longer then their’s, or wants to hurt him physically because they sent a master of unbelievably great recordings years back that everyone should hear, yet no one, after all this time, has. De Nagalm Op De Kopf is a fine representation of the label’s reliable variation of odd, funny, retarded, great, noisy, free, off, loud, harsh, sad and brutal. With tracks, some over five years old, by Noise Nomads, Krystal Knight (aka Jessica Rylan / Can't), Hacky Pack Zac Sac, Mudboy, Cement Future, Happy Mother's Day I Can't Read, Cards On My Cunt, Prurient, Ex Members Of Josh Hydeman, Cloaca & Vom Grill, Xo4, Burning Star Core, Kites, Defneg, Tumble Cat Poof Poofy Poof, Trashbusters, Anthro Rex, Eric Boros, Bloated Ego and The Compliments, Mouthus, Mix Ape Synb, Orphan Fairytale, Unicorn Hard On, Muslux, Grey Skull, Black Tie Rubber Pussy, God Willing, Bobby Colombo With Silver Cindy, and JB de Kunst. Cover designed by Tyfus, Joshua Burkett, Noise Nomads and Bill Nace. With 16-page paper full of drawings and collages by Tyfus and liner notes by Carlo Steegen.
Delirious Music For Delirious People
(Arvo - ZYLO1) CD $11.50
A slithering swath of surreal songs and sounds compiled by Arvo Fingers, host of the weekly Delirious Insomniac show on WLUW in Chicago. With Hans Grüsel's Krankenkabinet, Big City Orchestra, Gary Wilson, The Centimeters, I.M.M.U.R.E.,Verdant, Pharmakon, Controlled Bleeding, Jarboe, Zola Jesus, Mac Blackout, Art Phag, Haunted George, Rancid Hell Spawn, The Dreams, WOLD, Vapid Apparition, Murderous Vision, BeNe GeSSeRiT, Boyd Rice and Friends (with Little Fyodor), Diatric Puds & The Blobbettes, Istvan & His Imaginary Band, and Irene Moon.
Escaping From Color – Rapoon Recomposed and Remixed
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD045) CD $13.50
Rapoon’s original sound loops re-composed by Francisco Lopez, TV Pow, Machinefabriek, Troum, Steve Roden, Jorge Castro, Paulo Raposo, Aidan Baker, Anla Courtis, Gert-Jan Prins, Heimir Bjorgulfsson, Mike Shiflet, Family Underground, Ronnie Sundin, and Cisfinitum & Rapoon.
Ghana Soundz
(Soundway) Used CD $6.00
Rare and previously unreleased afro-beat, funk and fusion from the 1970s. With 3rd Generation Band, Oscar Sulley & The Uhuru Dance Band, Marijata, Ebo Taylor, Gyedu Blay Ambolley & The Steneboofs, Sweet Talks, Ogyatanaa Show Band, Honny & The Bees Band K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas, Apagya Show Band, African Brothers, Rob, Alex Konadu, and Black Star Sound. Includes sixteen-page color book of history, photos, original sleeve art.
Hell
(Lost Frog) CD $15.00
Dedicated to Glen Hobbs of Five Starcle Men, with tracks by Animals Within Animals, Isis and Werewolves, Kingdom Scum, Decaer Pinga, Cotton Museum, Empty Head, Death Karaokes, Five Starcle Men, Ene, Glands of External Secretion, Tamarin, Panicsville, Lordx, Slop Cake, and Xper.Xr With The Neck of a Fish.
I.D. Art #2
(Paradigm Discs - PD23) CD $14.25
The second LP on the LAFMS label (right between Le Forte Four's Bikini Tennis Shoes and the double-LP Live at the Brand by Le Forte Four and The Doo-Dooettes) was released in 1976 in an edition of 200 copies, most of which went to the contributors (tracks were paid for by contributors at a rate of eight dollars per minute in exchange for four copies of the album), who were, by and large, students at Otis Art Institute in L.A., and many of these tracks are the only recordings ever made by some artists. Among the known names from the LAFMS scene are: Le Forte Four, Joe Potts, Fredrick Nilsen, Mr Foon, Ace & Duce, Dennis Mehaffey, and, of course, Smegma, who contribute six tracks. Other artists include painter Miles Forst, violinist Josie Roth, filmmakers Doug Henry and Gary Beydler, mail artist and dog portrait painter Irene Dogmatic, Otis librarian Joan Hugo, graphic designer Kathe Schreyer and many other creative artists and designers at the start of their careers.
Ju-Jikan
(23five - 23F/SFM 901) 2xCD $18.00
The first anthology in nonprofit org 23five’s sound event series presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The selections here, chosen from SFMOMA’s Ten Hours of Sound From Japan, emphasize the stylistic diversity achieved through electronic synthesis (computer music, anti-academic, noise, anti-pop permutations, ambient, field recordings, post-improv, etc.). With tracks by Merzbow, Otomo Yoshihide, Masonna, Astro, Tetsuo Furudate, Pain Jerk, Yuji Takahashi, Yasunao Tone, Ryoji Ikeda, Nerve Net Noise, Hanatarash, Tamami Toro, compiler Atau Tanaka, i.d., Kozo Inada, Ichiro Nodaira, and Kazuo Uehara. 20-page booklet includes essays, milestones, timeline, detailed program notes about the MOMA installation.
Million Ways To Spend Your Time
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD042) CD $13.50
Exclusive and unreleased tracks from Andreas Brandal, Biblioteka Prospero, Peel Off The Bass, Jørgen Knudsen, O. Lamm, Lasse Marhaug, TV Pow, Andrey Kiritchenko, Black To Comm, Monofilament, The Complainer, Continental Fruit, Origami Epileptika, 8Rolek, Alexey Petrov, Batcheeba, CharSky.
Music From Madagascar
(Yazoo - 7003) Used CD $6.00
Classic traditional recordings of the 1930s compiled from rare 78s. WIth Hiran'ny Tanoran'ny Ntao Lo, Choeur Malgache, Hirand-d Razafimahefa, Hira Malaza Taloha, Hiran-d Razafimahefa, Mpilalao Malgache.
No Tribute
(Sunship / Little Mafia / Carbon / Breathmint) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
All covers of material by the Nihilist Spasm Band. WIth Baku, U Can Unlearn Guitar, The Pin vs. Bellchamber, Unconditional Loathing, Jacopo Andreini, Winter Carousel, Roughage, V/Vm, Dapper, Madame Chao, Alan Licht, Smell & Quim, Inca Eyeball, Carlos Giffoni, Reynols, Cock E.S.P., DEL, Pengo, Glands Of External Secretion, Panicsville, Wolf Eyes, Wrong, Newton, Hijokaidan.
Noise Is All In Your Head
(Gold Soundz - GS1) CD $15.00
A Norway-centric comp of surprisingly cohesive free sound, with Thurston Moore, Noxagt, Oren Ambarchi, Volcano The Bear, Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra), Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay/Decaer Pinga, Chocolate Monk), Lasse Marhaug, Rats With Wings, Songs of Norway (Aaron and Nick from Volcano the Bear), Continental Fruit, Ojn (ex-Landshipping/Metrotone), Sindre Bjerga/Anders Gjerde, The Wife Contract, If You Meet Your Anti-Self Don’t Shake Hands (Neil Mackay of LOOP, Hair & Skin Trading Co., Juicy Eureka), Julian Bradley/A Companion as Glamourous as Sleeping, Duo Kanel, and DJ Bra Nesegir.
Overland
(Naturestrip - NS 3002) CD $14.25
Four sound artists working with field recordings. Toshiya Tsunoda’s “Reclaimed Land,” recorded in Japan, captures an immersive and rich environment, momentarily framed. Melbourne-based sound artist and improviser Joel Stern’s track was produced using binaural microphones, two bottles of soda water, damaged cables and speakers; it moves between richly textural surface noise, investigations of acoustic space, and minute gestural detail. The cyclic mixture of breathing, resonant drones, static rustlings and scrapings of Tarab’s “Of Hollow Traces” was constructed from a series of improvisations, using found objects, microphones, simple electronics and field recordings. Brisbane-based writer, composer and artist Lawrence English collects together a series of field recordings captured in Tokyo and New York into an audio diary of abstract reflections. Imported from Australia.
Paper & Plastic
(Suitcase - SUTPAPSUTPLA) 2xCD $24.00
This two-disc audio project begun by Suitcase in 1991 features rare and unreleased material by Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Yeast Culture, z.B.u.a., Achim Wollscheid, Small Cruel Party, Ios Smolders, Agog, Chop Shop, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Wash Your Brains, Appi, Kapotte Muziek, Emil Beaulieau, Inzekt, Native X, tac, Sudden Infant, Merzbow, and A4. The discs are packaged inside a clear silkscreened DVD case, with handmade inserts, a folio of original color silkscreened postcards, and 16-page booklet, and sealed with an Obi strip and barcode. Each copy is a unique and the entire package is much heavier than a standard two-disc set due to the original artwork included. Each piece is shipped individually wrapped in addition to using extra caution with the packing. Selection of the audio and visual materials, and packaging design are by A4 in collaboration with Incubator and Petri Supply. Abo of Yeast Culture silkscreened each individual copy. Edition of 600 copies only.
Raggle Taggle Vol. 1
(Tag Rag - TRCD005) Used CD $6.00
Japanese comp from 1996 with U., Spasmom, Off Mask 00, Domlock Sandhill, Grind Orchestra, Corrupted, Nasca Car, and Rise From The Dead.
Taking The Pulse Of The World's Musics
(London Musicians' Collective - RES7.2) Used CD $10.00
Released in 1999 with UK magazine Resonance volume 7, number 2. With Phil Tanner; Margaret Barry, Robin Williamson; Hal Rammel; Muzsikás featuring Márta Sebestyén,; William Ingosi Mwoshi; John Wynne; Reite Villagers; Marfa Rastarguev, Sergei Rastarguev, Sasha Berioskin, Tim Hodgkinson & Ken Hyder, Surreal Estate; and George Hunt.
The End of Fear of God
(Tochnit Aleph - TA048) CD $15.00
(Tochnit Aleph - TA048) Used CD $6.00
All source material by Swiss hardcore/noise legends FEAR OF GOD (1987-88), reworked/covered by (in order of appearance) RLW, N.O.G., Norbert Moeslang, Rudolf Eb.Er, Sudden Infant, Strotter Inst., Soviet Subliminal Seduction, Suntour, Andrew Phillips, Schurer, Unholy Grave, Kevin Drumm, Bela Kiss, Evil Moisture, Killer Nuts, Hecker, Eye Yamatsuka, R. H.Y. Yau, The Idealist, Gorebitch, Massaccesi, Kure Kure Takura, Dylan Nyoukis, Mike Patton & Kid 606, Genetic Transmission, Eric Boros & Jason Flowers, Stress, Jason Kahn, DJ Smallcock, Imperative, Shoji Goto, The Glands Of External Secretion, Jim O'Rourke, Dropdead Ww/ Outosushi, K2, Doris Tomasoni, Kouhei Matsunaga, Eva Revox, Merzbow, Kein Babel, Blackjewishgays Feat. Django, Eva D., Ommyth, Medieval Moisture, Humectant Interruption, Saicobaba, Rabid Dogs, J.C., Dave Noyze, Djkillroy Vs. Von Wurstfinger, Rm74, Raionbashi, Vicious Circle, Ecrase-Merde, Atta, Shite Minor, Voice Crack, Thomas Ankersmit, Silvum, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Takedown Uav, The Haters, Russell Haswell, The Nautilus Deconstruction, Chicken & Monkey, Bloodstar Vs. Saalschutz, Pita, Seaman Staynes & Master Baits, Zbigniew Karkowski, and The Machine Gun TV. Packaged with a 12-page booklet including You Can't Reason with Logic, a short story by G.X. Jupitter-Larsen.
The Rebirth Of Fool Volume 3
(Dual Plover) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Years of focus groups and market research went into the making of this perfect audio product for today’s consumer: the biggest load of shit ever, handbound in a 24-page gold-blocked book so fancy someone must have won Lotto. Dual Plover’s third installment in the series is one of their pearliest pearlers, their most impressively packaged and labor-intensive disc yet. So if you wanna dumb down between bouts of Xenakis and Cage with some of the latest in retardation -- 7u? channeling Wesley Willis in an ode to Dual Plover; Fool veterans New Waver putting testimonials from mymiserablelife.com to music; songs of unrequited love wallowing in seedy Adelaide establishments; excerpts from instructional songwriting cassettes, absurd police tapes, and gay porn spoken in thick Australian accents -- then this album is for you.
Variable Resistance
(23five - 23F/SFM 902) CD $12.00
The second anthology in nonprofit org 23five’s sound event series presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The selections here, chosen from SFMOMA’s Ten Hours of Sound From Australia, emphasize the composers’ use of the titular electronic gizmo, as well as their diversity of approaches. You get environmental, plundered, and digitized sound from compiler Phillip Samartzis, a cybersonic lullaby by Pimmon, and a duet for jarring guitar and creaking door by David Brown, along with exclusive tracks by Oren Ambarchi, Rob Avenaim, Xonk, Thembi Soddell, Darrin Verhagen, and Deliere. 24-page booklet includes essays and detailed program notes about the MOMA installation.
Variations
(Paradigm Discs - PD01) CD $13.50
John Wall's abstract "Distil (1)" samples maltreated strings to create post-classical music that sounds more like New Complexity than plunderphonia. Andrew Jacques' "Ronco" pits a microphone against an amplifier for many minutes of glowering electrical crackle-and-drone. Crow's contribution cuts-up and muddies female recitation suprisingly effectively, while Alquimia mixes wordless vocal sighing and chirrupping with ethnic percussion and a sure sense of how to structure these various elements. John Grieve's '"2-4-5-T" loops huge clouds of saxophone drone. Kymatik remix abstract improvisations into a more-electronic sounding swirl, while Adam Bohman, a member of Morphogenesis, wins the special prize for Least Predictable Contribution with a barely edited extract from an audio diary recorded in Brussels.
Variations 3
(Paradigm Discs - PD10) CD $13.50
Wits's quartet piece distills anxiety attacks into religious euphoria (more pleasant and serene once you get the pure stuff uncut with rat poison and drain declogger). Phil Durrant's "Depths," originally composed for a performance of Salomé, strides confidently into the arms of electronic skreedlings and big bellied yormp. Voltage's uptight music with rock instrumentation feels more overworked than the stockboy at an organic produce market. It flirts with typical theatrical swooping, grandness of effort, showiness of gesture, but succeeds mainly because spontaneous departures that originate as stumbles quickly materialize into ergonomic improvisations. After an underwhelming duet for airbrush and locust swarm intro, Clive Graham's "Time Spool" gives the status an extended leave of absence while he packs the court with processed king-of-the-jungle purrs and mercurial wedding bells, tape manipulation whamola, deflating pipe organs, peels of feedback and diagonal electro-blip. Other highlights include: Bob Cobbing, who some would call a poet, others a wild old man who's so used to yelling at cars that he's forgotten how to say anything lasting longer than 1.4 seconds; Syngen Brown's motorized shimmers and electronic skidmarks across the forehead of a Teflon inlaid portrait of the Prince of Tibet; and Hasting's Of Malawi's contribution, more of an archival piece, consisting of found voices (all these one-time Nurse With Wound collaborators could "find" back in 1980, apparently, was an example of preschool "Let's Sing" mind control and the English time lady).
Viva Negativa! A Tribute To The New Blockaders, Volume I
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR064) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first of three or four CDs compiling and expanding upon the original Vinyl-on-Demand tribute. Tracks from VoD's vinyl boxes plus a fair swag of new ones. Nocturnal Emissions, Smell & Quim, Dieter Muh, Putrefier, srmeixner, Cheapmachines, Evil Moisture, Ashtray Navigations, Jazzfinger, Mutant Ape, Anomali, Halalchemists (incl. members of Skullflower, Culver, Snotnosed, Romance & Marzuraan). Edition of 500. Twelve-page full-color booklet.
Woodlot Surer (Five Pieces 5)
(From The Same Mother - FTSM43) Used CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Five one-minute tracks by each of the following: Chris Smith, Snawklor, Flies Inside The Sun, Keynote Speaker, Glands Of External Secretion, Undecisive God, Hi-God People, Green Beret, Jon Dale & Kynan Lawler, Lowest Common Denominator, Julian Williams, David Haines.
Zelphabet Vol. A
(Zelphabet) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Achim Wollscheid, AMK, Arcane Device, Asmus Tietchens.
Zelphabet Vol. B
(Zelphabet - B01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With The Beast People, 16 Bitch Pile-Up, blackhumour, Bob Bellerue.
Zelphabet Vol. C
(Zelphabet - C01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Charlemagne Palestine, Chop Shop, Contagious Orgasm, C Spencer Yeh.
Zelphabet Vol. D
(Zelphabet - D01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With 20-minute tracks by Damion Romero, Daniel Menche, and Dave Phillips.
Zelphabet Vol. E
(Zelphabet - E01CD) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Ed Osborn, Elliot Sharp, Emil Beaulieau, and Evil Moisture.
Zelphabet Vol. F
(Zelphabet - F01CD) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Failing Lights, Fin, Francisco Lopez, and Frans De Waard
Zelphabet Vol. G
(Zelphabet - G01) CD $9.50
The seventh in Zelphabet’s series of 26 alphabetically oriented compilations of noise. Volume G eviscerates with cuts from Giancarlo Toniutti, Government Alpha, G*Park, Gregory Whitehead, and GX Jupitter-Larsen
Zelphabet Vol. H
(Zelphabet - H01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Halalchemists (live TNB Tribute), Hanatarash (exclusive 30 minute track!), The Haters, Howard Stelzer.
Zelphabet Vol. I
(Zelphabet - I01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With IDX1274, If Bwana, and Incapacitants.
Zelphabet Vol. J
(Zelphabet - J01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With John Duncan, John Wiese, Jon Rose, Joseph Hammer, Joshua Manchester, and Justice Yeldham.
Zelphabet Vol. K
(Zelphabet - K01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With K2, Key Ransone with Seattle Creative Orchestra, KK Null, Kluster 07 (Conrad Schnitzler, Michael Thomas Roe and Masato Ooyama).
Zelphabet Vol. L
(Zelphabet - L01) CD $9.50
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Lasse Marhaug, Leather Bath, Lee Gamble, The Legendary Pink Dots, Leticia Castaneda, and Lionel Marchetti.
¡Music For The Psych-Eye!
(Cast Exotic Archives) CD $10.00
Comp from 2000 with Ashtray Navigations, Eyelickers, Metabolismus, Las Dirty Arcades, -Outhern Acific+, Bushwick Trio, Brian Ruryk, Glands Of External Secretion, This Was Your House Until We Moved In, Terminal Waste Band, TonalMotl, Kopfende, and Staked Plain.
The Spinning Song
(There - TR06) CD $15.00
Formed by Sachiko (ex-Kousokuya, Overhang Party) and Yama-akago in 2002, who create psychedelic noise from two female voices. Live recording from 2005 and 2006, improvised on the theme of a mystery spinning in a humid, mysterious, and profound world that is lost in the woods. It's an occult-drenched sound, with an intensely mystical mood that is eerily hypnotic.
Ten Arrows
(Turgid Animal - TA388) CD $9.00
First released in a CDR edition of 17 copies, Ten Arrows gets the kind of legit reissue treatment worthy of top-quality harsh pedal noise. Both tracks from the original, along with a bonus track from vault.
Interpol Alchemi
(Hospital - HOS161) CD $13.50
Harsh noise and sound collage by this Long Island, New York group formed in 2001 by John Vibg. Known for ultra-violent live performances (consisting of up to nine collaborators at a time) and layered cut-up recordings, ranging from musique concrète to harsh cut-up noise.
Classic Erasmus Fusion
(Beta Lactam Ring - MT092a) Used 2xCD $15.00
The strange geometry in Volcano The Bear's musique concrete lurks between celestial duck honks and what sounds like a flood in the living room. Disc number one births gently into a lo-fi-adelic Comus-like saline. Song becomes fever dream and then pitches into a barren place of low estate. With typical minimalist pageantry, VTB mutates from piece to piece: melodious tales are subliminally hooky, after a fashion, spiritual and surreal; quiet ritualism queues with dada and progressive harmonies, together on the same fractured, out world, sing-along journey. Disc number two crawls slowly from the echo-y ooze, grows legs and then presents a different, more dramatic creature. A long, shifting organ drone becomes a deeply psychedelic statement that bleats loud and strong like an acid bleached Spiral Insana or a sneaky This Heat.
Voltigeurs
(Turgid Animal - TA399) CD $12.00
Matthew Bower (Skullflower) and Samantha Davis (GYR, Harm) head toward black metal in its purest form. Davis's input certainly alters Bower's musical vision and it is easy to hear the sound of a true collaboration at work. Six long tracks of heavy music, nearly 65 minutes.
Primitive Arts
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR069) CD $12.00
Dark fusion of Siousxie And The Banshees, Killing joke and Ramleh. A loud, repetitive racket.
Proanomie
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR050) CD $12.00
First full CD of brutal harsh noise wall. No dynamics, no change, no music, no entertainment, only wall.
Hylic
(Utter Psalm) CD $15.00
Brian Marley actually took the time to put his thoughts to paper; least we can do is butcher and reproduce 'em. "Like Parmegiani, Wall constructs transformative electroacoustic soundscapes of remarkable individuality. His ... muscular, energetic music ... seems to contradict itself by being perpetually on the verge of doubt and disintegration.... Even the most minimal of the soundscapes has, for example, an astonishing degree of inbuilt complexity, although it may consist of little more than the endlessly varied coloration, weight and placement of bumps and clicks."
Original Warmth
(Turgid Animal - TA308) CD $10.00
Three long tracks of beautiful drone ambience by Steev Thompson (Roxanne Jean Polise) and Branden Diven (Drenches), previously released on Warmth’s self-titled LP (Arbor) and Quintana Roo split tape (Not Not Fun).
Untitled
(Crime Club / Curious - CCR5 / CUR7) CD $21.00
This four-piece band from Antwerp, Belgium -- Jelle De Cremer (vocals/guitar), Jan Matthé (bass/vocals), Sis Matthé (vocals/guitar/piano/organ) and Krist Torfs (drums) -- has a background in fast punk / hardcore, and more recently toured with TV On The Radio, Magick Markers, Lightning Bolt. This recording of live instrumental improv, veering from post-Kraut drone rock to high-pitched minimalism, was performed on the roof of the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania, with Building Transmissions and 70-year-old accordionist Jean Martens. Contains a huge foldout photo collage poster.
White Gold
(Troniks - TRO297) CD $7.50
A Wiese / Blankenship maelstrom at maximum fucking pressure. Over forty minutes of new harsh electronics from the duo behind LHD. A white hot sheet of deafening sound recorded August 2011. Edition of 150.
Cincinnati
(DroneDisco - fig.95) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Previous full-length documents by the cooperative of composer/improvisers John Wiese (Sissy Spacek) and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) have been culled from live performance situations, and one could cite Cincinnati as the duo's first studio album. Recorded face-to-face in late 2007 at Ashworth Tap Room in Cincinnati OH, it reveals unexpected developments and strategies of this ongoing partnership. Familiar machineries were primed, but an increasingly alien attitude was fed through and processed into churning and bewildering shapes. The results of these sessions were cataloged and surgically isolated into specimens by Yeh; a little editing employed to carve the forms somewhat presentable, but no "studio trickery" to mask the organic nature. A monumentally intimate body touched by indeterminate intuition, instant composition, and interior logic.
New York / Atlanta
(Helicopter - H49) CD $10.65
Two of the best sets from a 2007 tour by this developing audio partnership. On these direct-from-the-soundboard recordings, steel string binds knobs, vocal cries machine code, fuzz and foil avalanche, fireworks and drought. Epic movements in their entirety, with minimal editing and post-meddling.
Teenage Hallucination: 1992-1999
(Troniks) CD $9.00
From pure analog bedroom havoc to intense cut-up harsh noise blasts, Wiese steadily developed his highly personal and specific style of extreme music while trying to survive the St. Louis experience. Fifty-two tracks, including the best material from Catwoman 7-inch, split LP with The Haters, split 5-inch with Panicsville, collaborative tracks with GX Jupitter-Larsen and Corydon Ronnau of Sissy Spacek, and unreleased and unheard tracks of isolated Midwest basement obscurity.
Journey Into Space
(Paradigm Discs) CD $13.50
Composed between 1970 and ’72 at York University (in one of the UK’s first ever electronic music studios), Journey Into Space was Wishart’s first release. Privately pressed as two separate LPs in 1973, the album credits forty-eight different participants with junk and toys, bike bells, squeeze horns, bottles, metal tubes, combs, flute and brass sections, everyday field recordings, scraps of NASA Apollo transmissions, multitracking, editing, vocal acrobatics and musique concrète. Griddle-fried immediacy for fans of LAFMS-style communal yip.
Machine
(Paradigm Discs) CD $17.00
Completed in 1971, before Journey Into Space (but released after), Machine is the first major work by Trevor Wishart. It was composed at York University and was originally issued on vinyl as three sides of Electronic Music From York 3xLP in 1973. Like Journey Into Space, Machine makes use of a large number of volunteer contributors, mostly from the student body at York. With this recording, however, no instruments are used. Instead, it is entirely made up of spoken text and carefully directed improvising choirs that take their lead from prerecorded factory sounds. These are extensively mixed and edited with yet more collected machine sounds and other sources of musique concrète, as well as occasional use of basic electronic sources. The scale of this work, and the degree of preparation involved in scoring it, seem to have more resonance with the world of theater or film rather than tape composition. Much of Wishart's early work involved the use of musicians and artists being directed to perform in new ways, outside of their usual remit. A combination of late ’60s openness, detailed scores that provide frameworks for improvisation and slavish editing yield this incomparable sound work. With a continuous playing time of one hour, the wild and previously unexplored terrain covered by this pioneering example of British experimental music moves through oceanic calm to earsplitting factory mayhem.
Wolf Eyes
(Bulb - BLB069) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
An early Wolf Eyes artefact, from a pre-glam era when it was owned and operated by the duo of Aaron Dilloway and Nathan Young. Loved for its knowing glances to Throbbing Gristle, admired for its Suicide innuendo, revered for its sinister, stripped down, lo-fi atmospheres.
The Grey Emperor
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR055) CD $12.50
Wraiths are the wretched sound of the plague-ridden, the unclean and the befouled. Wraiths are the dead in their lime-pits and the dying in their beds. Wraiths are the horror of infection. Wraiths exclusively utilize found and re-structured equipment, location acoustics and human vocals. No computers or synthesizers are used in any Wraiths recording or live event. All Wraiths releases are recorded live and improvised, under ritual conditions. One hour-long track. Limited to 500 copies. In a wax-sealed cardstock jacket (approx. size of a DVD package).
Steel Negro Music
(Trash Ritual - TRASH049) CD $12.00
The first recordings by Chris Scarpino on synth and guitar, and Scott Foust (Idea Fire Company, Anschluss, Swill Music) on guitar, bass and rhythms. Originally issued on cassette in 1982 by John Gullak's A.R.P.H. label, the majority of these recordings served as blueprints for the Network LP (Thermidor 1982), where roughly half the material was later reworked, remixed and retitled to fit more of a minimalistic dead mix. This CD reissue -- a full hour of ritualistic loops, pounding industrial rhythms, distorted guitar squeals, ominous rumblings, and desolate atmospherics that play on the chaotic nature of the sound itself -- contains the full tape in its complete unedited form, along with "Schwerpunkt" (a bonus track found on an unreleased 1980 tape performed by the original three-piece line-up), drone sessions, and "Slaughterhouse," originally released on the Sex & Bestiality tape compilation (Bain Total 1984) and on Sounds Beyond The Grave tape compilation (Sachsenhausen Industriale 1985). Additional liner notes by Foust.
Coagulation
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50
Selected action-concrète noise from 1996 to 2000 (with guest appearances by Kazumoto Endo (Killer Bug) that’ll prep you for a body bag better than just about anything shy of a 150-pound meat tenderizer with your name on it. Coated with electronic rawness, Coagulation combines belligerent noisician-gone-wild screech with micro-crustaceous nastiness. Go ahead and jump.
1975
(Intransitive - INT037) CD $13.00
Debut solo album of unsettling electro-acoustic miniatures and tightly-coiled, crackling electronic ambience, more vertical than horizontal, a step away from Yeh's familiar violin-and-vocal improv, the rock/noise Burning Star Core, and recent forays into pop music. This is sensual abstract music with a light touch, a confident minimalism that reveals unsettling depth, sharp corners, and playful malevolence with repeat listens.
Sapphie
(Oblique) Used CD $12.00
The 1998 fifth solo album by the man described by a sensitive romantic at Melody Maker as “grand-meister of contemporary British improv, spiritual son of Eddie Prévost and Maddy Prior; gentle manipulator of English hymn-notics and religious incantations … poet-seducer of souls.” Classical guitar and voice that fans of reclusive sages like Nick Drake, Anne Briggs and Robert Wyatt will appreciate.
M
(Monotype - MONO045) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. The unique musical language of this Austrian pioneer of electro-acoustic performance and composition is based on the de- and reconstruction of the sonic possibilities of the violin, expanding the instrument with live electronic effects and innovative performance techniques. Primal and organic, screaming, lyrical, explosive and composed, her "automatic playing" is a continuous exploration of sound and music as physical phenomena, constantly pushing back the boundaries in radical and provocative performances and compositions.
88888888
(Newtexture) CDR $8.00
Beginning somewhat exploratorily, like an unassuming Bennington-scented take on junk operatics, replacing lo-fi trashcan lid connotations with windchimes, 88888888 quickly ascends a holy plateau where it maintains a loving embrace shared by Sun Ra and Conlon Nancarrow. As an acolyte of Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor, Zappa’s wank detector is finer tuned than most; so when a tenorman sets down his axe and scoops up a handful of MIDI — “started in 1999, finished in 2009, and still only 20 minutes long,” he says — rest assured there’s a reason. And that reason has twice the awkward beauty as the Barrons thrashing a homemade gamelan in their garage. Constructed and printed entirely by hand with block prints and rubber stamps. Edition of 33. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2010.
Eternal Darkness
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR022) CD $12.00
Demos by French sub-underground bedroom black metal weirdo. Out of time, badly recorded, fucking amazing.
Flight of Infection
(Tariff - TAR001) CD $13.00
Mythic music that comes from hardship, a need to challenge an oppressive state with internal and external liberation. ZGA is a collection of musicians from the Russian town of St. Petersburg, the first still active Russian noise group, started in 1984. Nick Sudnick is the sole remaining member from the original line-up. Their first mid-'80s recordings were home-made distort-o-industria, but their roots in '70s prog were discernible. Western industrial/noise influences such as Nurse with Wound, Factrix, Mnemonists, reached them later during perestroika, when Sudnick started to build his zgamoniums. The zgamoniums (contact-miked springs hammered with mallets, metal sheets gently stroked with medieval-looking miniature whips, strings attached to brutally constructed iron grids, and much more).
Sing and Play the Three Doctors and Other Sounds of Today
(Eabla - EAB102) CD $13.50
From their supposed beginnings as a Doors cover band from Texas, to their shameful years of bloated excess, to their acrimonious breakup and inevitable decade-later reunion, this CD details the hope and anger, the trauma and triumph, of this quintessentially American folk-punk combo. In addition to their astonishing 1992 debut LP Sing and Play the Three Doctors and Other Sounds of Today, this CD compiles the overlong 7-inch The Man Can’t Bust Our Music (1993) and the inexcusably short 12-inch 94124 (1995), all of which have been lovingly remastered for today’s more discerning listener. This deluxe package also includes previously unheard outtakes and compilation tracks, four songs from an incendiary 1993 show at CBGB, and a touching tribute to Seals and Crofts from a 2006 reunion show. Includes 16-page booklet with liner notes by Will York, and a rub-on ZCR tattoo, which can be worn for a day, or cherished for a lifetime.
Trilogi Peradaban
(Dual Plover - DP42) CD $12.00
Zoo's successful concoction of punk rock seasoned with traditional music elements makes them a beacon of the Indonesian Underground. Their debut album, Trilogi Peradaban (Civilization Trilogy) is formed by three distinct movements forged from sessions in 2007 amd 2008; it traces the band's fast evolution from the Ruins-esque proto-punk of Neolithikum (New Stone Age) and Mesolithikum (Middle Stone Age) to the spontaneous, folkish, neo-traditionalism ranting of Palaeolithikum (Old Stone Age). Twenty-two tracks range from dissonant math-rock, expelled in quick Melt-Banana-like succession, to acoustic shamanistic vocal utterings produced with the skeletal lineup of drums, bass and djembe, all with the deft vocalizations by Rully Shabara Herman, who tells a story of the deterioration of cultural roots in modern civilization.