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.
Here We Are Together Again b/w Yellow Dollars
(Destijl - IND086) 7-inch $6.00
The last of the vintage, tipple-era Askew, before the fingers cramped and began tickling digital ivory. Two wondrous cuts that would've been included on the Little Eyes CD were time not space: live versions of "Here We Are Together Again" and "Yellow Dollars," taken from David Porter's Show on WYBC, November 1969.
The Jaguar and The Yellow Colours
(Destijl - IND014) LP $20.00
That Liebfried Loch has been making his found sound / voice / guitar / organ recordings more or less unnoticed since the late 1970s is a real shocker. He has played among and with the bigger names of a DIY, Velvets-Barrett-Drake-inspired scene in and around Berlin, with connections to 39 Clocks, Phantom Payne, Beauty Contest, etc. But Loch has no patience for a melody, preferring layers of sound, a method that has yielded tiresome results by a great many artists, but for whatever reason, is much kinder to Herr Loch. Edition of 300.
Portrait
(Destijl - IND093) LP $16.50
Haley Fohr’s third LP is a massive step in cohesion and fidelity. The modest, clarion sparkle of Portrait is expected considering the arc of Symphone and Sirenum, and it stands as a cornerstone and a monument, a testament to the daily practice of channeling her twenty-one-year-old roiling emotions into sound recordings.
Ode to Fidelity
(Destijl - IND085) 7-inch $6.00
Seemingly inspired by something or someone that has pierced her young, little heart, Haley Fohr has established herself as an ambitious songwriters. Three songs that form part of the sound arc it is difficult to believe has apexed. This single promises to echo between the ears till Fohr's next full-length is complete, surely a monster.
Sirenum
(Destijl - IND070) LP $17.00
Circuit des Yeux made Sirenum in Indiana, where there aren't exactly pipers at the gates of Lafayette. It's the sound of “issues,” the sound of “troubles.” You don't get but one phone call, and, honey, the girl's voice makes this message a bit rubbly anyway. Take the manic snorts of Captain Liberty, dissonant as chalk and the next moment as melodic as sharp yet slick, metal teeth. Take the mermaid, 1988, turn the tides, gently, gently away. Selected breath / silences / selected feedback. Take an argument you have here with an empty street while the memory of high traffic is leaking back. Sirenum has a real “spiritual food” vibe and it's fucking pain and pleasure relief in this real met en zonder sort of way. This world is her world, and pipe if you like it.
The Sun Splits For ... The Blind Swimmer
(Destijl - IND063) CD $13.25
(Destijl - IND063) LP $13.25
The bedrock of this NJ-based concoction is based in folk, but there's no headband and King Darves (Asps, Gorgot, Human Adult Band) does not sing about pixies in the moss. This is somewhere between rolled cigs and the foggy vision of Big Pink from somewhere on Jersey Avenue. “An excursion into mountain man folk music, with a few surprises thrown into the mix here and there,” as Smooth Assailing puts it, “Pure and earthy.” This one-man Meat Puppets with a deep, rich voice has really cobbled something together in his kitchen sink –- a shocker, a pleaser, a toe-tapper, a head-nodder.
Swiss Cheese Back b/w Watching TV
(Destijl - IND083) 7-inch $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue by a legendary Hawaiian band from 1979/1980 that provides one of the more exciting links between typified conceptions of punk and noise. If “Swiss Cheese Back” is the final aggregate, regimented elements of deconstructed hardcore (displayed by Harry Pussy via the Magic Band), “Watching TV” is the excess of Experience-inspired freedom that recklessly abandons anything that even vaguely resembles form. A recording that is so radically mixed, one might wonder if they just fucked up, or were working with a broken machine. Completely astounding, and, according to the December 1980 issue of Damage Magazine, “not recommended for anyone with high blood pressure.”
Hertta Lussu Assa
(Destijl - IND089) LP $16.50
Gnomic no-fi plunk, wheeze, rattle and moan courtesy of Jonna Karanka (aka Kuupuu), Laura Naukkarinen (aka Lau Nau) and Merja Kokkonen (aka Islaja), who draw from the seemingly eternal well of stoned detuned mischief that feeds the viaducts of the Finnish underground. A choice manifestation of heavy-lidded third-mind acoustic weirdity. Ungainly and mystically and chemically blasted.
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.”
Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, And Start Gettin Reel
(Destijl - IND088) Used LP $9.00
D. Blunt and Inga Copeland's latest installment in Denna Frances Glass's 18-year relay project. Joss Stone is alleged to have content and financing connections. "Ritolin" (sic) and "Rama Lama 555" (sic) also contain the key to understanding what this is. Joseph Stannard clears up some of the mystery, with the reminder that Hype Williams have also operated under the names Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band and Paradise Sisters. He observes that their “obscure, lo-fi form of dub-inflected half-pop [is] as much akin to the post-industrial funk of 23 Skidoo and early Cabaret Voltaire as the scratchy psych of The Skaters et al…. It’s like somebody flooded the wine bar with cough mixture…” all “hazy nihilism and sensual flow.” So give it up for Joseph Stannard.
Han Dynasty 1
(Destijl - IND077) 7-inch $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Hype Williams is an eighteen-year "relay project" conceived in 2005 by husband and wife motivational speakers Father Ronnie Krayola and Denna Frances Glass. Every three years it gets passed on to someone else to "look after." Recordings from the first three years were stuffed into a pinata and will be released at the conclusion of the project. In May 2008 it was passed on to a heckler called Roy Bundy (Paradise Sisters) who, along with Karen Glass and Bahaama Moutchaka (Arch M) have released numerous CDRs through the Ceylan Projects gallery in London. They have a large rotating cast of deviants they play with live under the moniker Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band.
Dost
(Destijl - IND091) LP $16.00
Memphis-born songwriter Jeremy Freeze has spent the last few years in Columbia, Missouri playing and recording with Kim Sherman. Freeze says more by saying less, after a few years of gigs with Times New Viking, Wooden Wand and a short list of more or less limited releases.
Room 8 b/w Swingin' Vine
(Destijl - IND078) 7-inch $6.50
This duo (sometimes augmented) plays unfashionable, unpretentious and completely devastating pop music, though there is scant evidence -- a handful of impossibly rare cassettes and a split LP with Skarkraou Radio, and The Howling LP (Radio Fonico). With a vibe that sounds like the third Velvet Underground LP played by The Terminals, a righteous guitar tone any stoner rock Chud would envy, and catchy, infectious tunes (with a recent emphasis on country melodies) that will stay in your head for weeks.
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.
Messages
(Destijl - IND076) LP $16.50
Visual artist Taketo Shimada moved to New York in late 80s and has been making music with Tres Warren of Psychic Ills since 2006, exploring a hybrid of raga, techno and drone rock. Odds are someone walking down Canal Street in NYC will hear the sound of Messages coming from a fifth floor walkup: sine waves, bass loops, guitars, samplers and turntables mashing into a storm of slowly shifting repetitions, heavy, monotone low-end and smoky echoes that conjure unexpected subsonic grooves. Dusted called their Social Registry seven-inch "heavy, humid drone, pregnant with 4am electricity and, in the end, thick fuzzy beats. A beautiful surprise, engaging even in its abstract tendencies."
Michael and the Mumbles
(Destijl - IND074) LP $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Before Michael Yonkers revised the history of recorded music with the clarion chords of Microminiature Love, he was in Michael And The Mumbles, who made this self-titled LP in 1966 -- a naive, teenage trip through garage band moves typical of the era at first glance, but repeated listening reveals a darkness beneath the crisp, winsome visage. Same characteristics that make Micro the singularly original piece that is (just slightly less visible is all): emotionally bleak themes, dissonant undercurrents, and recklessly wild performances. So, once again, a Michael Yonkers LP is going to turn the world upside down, make the college girls scream and leave you to wonder how many more times this can happen. Vinyl only, with a digital download coupon, made from 45-year-old master tapes that, aside from a glitch on "Cold Town," sound amazing.
Mother of Fire
(Destijl - IND082) LP $17.00
Inspired by Krautrock's rhythmic throb and the gutterized / Behead the Prophet stance that once seemed to run up and down the West Coast (where MOF have called home for some time) -- filtered through post-Spacemen sensibilities, fueled with violin, bass and drum -- this is one disjointed listen that evokes things you've heard before in a completely surprising and fresh way.
Outside / Inside
(Destijl - IND041) LP $17.00
Charlie Nothing was the fractured-psyche pseudonym of author, father, horsekeeper, organic farmer, beekeeper, philosopher and clown Charles Martin Simon, inventor of the dingulator (guitar sculptures made of the metal from American cars). The second Charlie Nothing LP, originally issued by Everitt Enterprises, thematically follows The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing (Takoma, 1967) with two side-long flute-based instrumentals. Palpably preserved on these sides of Nothing is the air of a real-time dropout scene. It is a wonder that Outside / Inside circulated at all beyond the vacuum in which it was created. Nothingness, a California existentiality looping back on itself, preserved and disseminated as evidence. There are indeed very few records like these.
Morning & Sunrise
(Destijl - IND097) CD $13.50
(Destijl - IND097) LP $18.00
Olausson ventured deep on Moonlight Farm (De Stijl 2005), and his singular expression returns on Morning & Sunrise, an explorer’s codex, a gaze at what’s more important and less seen. There is more electric guitar here, beautifully played. It really whisks at your earbones. Olausson’s singing glows more. Words like "loner" will be hung on Morning & Sunrise, with good reason: one doesn’t just happen upon such potent clarity without solitude. Possibly the most lucid psychedelic record ever.
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.
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.
THE PARASITES OF THE WESTERN WORLD
Politico / Zytol Automation
(Destijl - IND095) 7-inch $8.00
Reissue of the lead single for their second album, Substrata (Match Box 1980). "Politico" is a rippin' new wave roller full of glam stomp, proggy arrangement and punky attitude. The synth-fuelled non-LP instrumental "Zytol Automation" features Terry Censky and Patrick Burke in an ebullient symphony of synths, drums and guitar.
THE PARASITES OF THE WESTERN WORLD
The Parasites of the Western World
(Destijl - IND072) LP $18.50 (Out-of-stock)
This Portland, Oregon, band released their debut in 1978, a fascinating, galactic ramble across the otherworldly themes of alienation and paranoia, seemingly inspired by LSD and Philip K. Dick. Primarily the creation of Patrick Burke and Terry Censky, The Parasites were limitless with invention and completely DIY. They were recorded in an apartment by a crew thoughtful enough to curtail its loud excursions for the daylight hours. Informed by the typical institutions of the era (Pink Foyd, The Beatles and Hawkwind), its many electronic flourishes presage the likes of Vertical Slit, F/i and Vertigo. The Parasites remain light years ahead of a time that has yet to come. Edition of 1000. Includes digital download coupon.
Love Rules
(Destijl - IND081) 7-inch $5.25
Pens are three girls who take an old-school approach to a hum and riff and add their own who-gives-a-fuck, homemade panache.
Hey Friend, What You Doing?
(Destijl) CD $15.00
(Destijl) LP $12.75
A Pens live set lasts about fourteen minutes. The girls swap instruments between tunes mainly because it appears none of them really know what they are doing. The whole shambolic thing seems on the verge of falling apart; it's swathed in so much static and reverb that it's like watching the YouTube clip of that kid kicking through the granite wall and snapping his ankle in half. Their cover of The Gun Club's "Sex Beat" sounds like The Germs trying to be The Shangri Las through a gauze of early K Records fuzz.
Phantom Payn Days
(Destijl - IND079) LP $18.00
During the late 70s, while in the widely neglected 39 Clocks, Juergen Gleue made records that never sold and played gigs that few ever saw. Though an important exponent of electrified German sound, his Phantom Payn Days LP, made in the mid- to late '90s, has never been released. It's Gleue's final LP and overflows with all the elements that romanticized, loner / stoner music claims, an encoded expression of highly private feelings, an ambiguous, emotional quotient, and a dark, murkily melodic vibe.
Lee Rockey Music
(Destijl - IND060) LP $16.50
This hard-swinging jazzbo mastered the modern style by 1946 and became known as one of the Vancouver whiz kids. He went to the city in 1953, jammed with Neil Hefti, and appeared on the first few Herbie Mann records. Upon his left coast return, he began developing his own sound and style, intending to transcend traditional musical forms and expectations. Ju Suk Reet Meate of Smegma caught one of his performances in early 1976, and eventually invited him to play on some early Smegma records. Aside from a few record booth lathes cut in the ’40s and ’50s, this is his first solo release, which on first spin, briefly brings to mind Toshi Ichiyanagi, but these sounds inhabit a self-contained universe. Recorded between 1959 and ’73, they own a keen third-eye prescience that portends the likes of C. Spencer Yeh and Axolotl.
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.
Shh!
(Destijl - IND039) LP $17.00
Legit LP-only reissue of this Helsinki monsterpiece from 1970. "Shh!" documents Pekka Airaksinen's experimental compositions, consisting of primitive samples, guitar loop feedback and musique concrete. Sperm also functioned as a wildly theatrical live act a la Dionysius in '69 and arranged underground happenings which occasionally inspired a rallied public outcry against the derisive act of public humping atop a grand piano. Edition of 500. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009
Lose Today
(Destijl - IND096) LP $17.00
Nate Young and John Olson (perhaps you’ve heard of Wolf Eyes?) wield the ethereal meditative power leftover from The Velvet Underground’s Sweet Sister Ray epic bootleg. Their melodious, somnolent grievance leaves the listener to feast on a curiously endless and internal banquet. Young snarls and writhes in irritated, spiraling pronouncements that trail off in regretful, pained fashion, producing the same eventual something-isn’t-right that The Velvet Underground secured, but set aside to allow the Michigan basement bluesmen to borrow. Young’s virgin performance on bass proves suiting, as his sparse yet stable meanderings are the backbone to a jam lost in the arcane. At times the bass lines seem to be counting off the seconds until an eventual meltdown. Meanwhile, Olson wanders off on woodwinds, seemingly tangled in wavelengths, letting his own sounds guide him through a brassy and chilling darkness. He follows scales—Indian scales, blues scales—and lets the spiraling mania of the VU-inspired lose-all jam blossom into a soundtrack for a secret think tank whose sole purpose is to maintain a shadowed fire.
Batstew
(Destijl) LP $15.00
Roland Woodbe, the The Pro From Dover himself, summed up Batstew thus: “It is one odd fucker of an LP.” He goes on to note that it “teeters on a precipice between euphoria and anguish. It is certainly the work of an unstable mind and tortured soul. I mean, you can almost feel Tucker's circuits shorting out as the record progresses.” He talks to his car, slams the doors, the girl whispers and sings along sometimes, there are occasional naif, art brut-ish noisescapes and “the dingaling song at the end of side two … about a Cadillac (among other things) that eventually crumbles into a fuzzy guitar ‘freakout’.” Overall, Woodbe compares Tucker to someone who claims to be Daniel Johnston who rerecorded Smile,” or "Larry Fischer [doing] Pink Moon … as literally a Volkswagen commercial.”
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.
Illusions of The Maintenance Man
(Destijl - IND046) LP $35.00
Crashing back to Earth / Dallas, following an unsuccessful attempt at hawking originals to the manicured hippies making the scene in Laurel Canyon, Bert and Eve Long recruited Wayne Lamar Boogs the third (vocals / madness) and Jud Chapin (drums / vocals), and recorded Illusions Of The Maintenance Man while the first gush of anything-could-happen was still upon them. Their beautiful teenage-tribe-in-America anthems are animated by the same lost / utopian garage band spirit as The Bachs, Index and The Rising Storm; their creepy sun-blind cultic edge tastes of acid and neural backroads in a way that brings to mind the Manson Family Jams. De Stijl’s reissue is an authorized exact-reproduction of the 1971 original with stamped and stickered jacket, insert and labels. Edition of only 500.
In Vogue Spirit
(Destijl - IND090) LP $16.00
Their third LP, but the first where synths, drums, flesh, blood, organs, ideas and the astral concepts they support have gelled: the hazy, shifting experimental semi-thrust, the psychedelic production and the effortless melodic flow.
In the Blink of an Eye b/w Condo Stress
(Destijl - IND087) 7-inch $6.00
In addition to Songs 2002 (What The... Records 2009), the only Yeh effort that is electronics music, furniture music, modernistic music, and music with experimental new vision.