16 BITCH PILE-UP / MIKE SHIFTLET
Make Like A Fetus And Abort / Extract, Behold
(Ecstatic Peace) Used Split LP $5.00
Shiflet’s free-fall of acoustic wonder backed with noise improv by Sarah Bernat, Sarah Cathers and Shannon Walter. From 2007
Radio Guitar
(Ecstatic Peace) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nine untitled tracks from 2001, with Ess on effects-saturated guitar and Ahwesh playing the short wave radio as if it’s a musical instrument. Partly planned, partly spontaneous musical compositions of dense and often melodic sounds and noise.
Gang Wizard / Algebrassiere
(Ecstatic Peace) Used Split LP $5.00
Gang Wizard’s “gush of air is free from all known styles. Sure, these young Californians use ‘rock’ tools, but the stuff they get out of them is purist munge,” the un-hoodwink-able Arthur would like you to understand. “It varies between accreted noise-form and the kinda free-plonk that makes hot ducks wiggle from sea to shining sea. Algebrassiere’s blow is sweet and weird in a way that almost recalls some of Smegma’s early early crudity. Stylish!” Paste-on cover art. Numbered edition 246/264
Kjetil D. Brandsdal
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $5.00
Intense and mesmerizing instrumentals from 1999 by this Norwegian sound-explorer. Experimental guitar, turntables and electronics.
Haze
(Ecstatic Peace - E!#60) Used LP $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Heavily attacked articulations that burst forth and leave trails of echoes behind them” from 2002, says Dusted, with “tinny, scratchy atonal guitar scribbles… clouds of guitar tremolo… [and] distant-sounding drum loops.”
Ten Compositions (New Frontiers In Free Rock)
(Ecstatic Peace - E#99) LP $7.00
A deft and transcendental blending of aleatory strategies, free jazz, psychedelia, and progressive garage-rock from 1997 by Thurston Moore and cartoonist J.D. King.
Suppression In The Third
(Ecstatic Peace) Used 10-inch $10.00
Deep and considered brainmelt that moves from dark drone solace to sick shards of noise hell by ultra-weirdo troublemaker and one half of Relay For Death.
Dara
(Ecstatic Peace - E70d) LP (one-sided) $11.00
Plenty of noise (in the form of processed guitar squall) and the influence of synth-pop (simple Casio beats and vintage keyboards galore). Dara seems to be singing mostly to herself, with a voice distant and sporadic. The songs meander; favoritism clearly for noisy textures more than obvious pop hooks. Not especially poppy, and the noise is far from confrontational.
Das Damen
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Original pressing of the six-song debut from 1984 by Jim Walters, Alex Totino, Phil Leopold Von Trapp, and Lyle Hysen. The quartet’s sound “melds ’60s psychedelia and heavy acid rock with … noisy, punk-derived alternative rock.” Clipped corner.
Human Brain Wasting Syndrome
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $4.00
Hazy post-psychedelia from 2004 by John Olsen and Tovah O’Rourke, using rewired electronics, homemade reed instruments, and metal percussion. Paste-on artwork, cardboard jacket.
The Songwriter
(Ecstatic Peace) Used CD $25.00
“Sloppy and fun, but meant to be taken seriously, Doyle is at his best when playing the saxophone, where simple melodies explode into a fury of squawking.” From 1995
Broods
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $9.00
“Wonderfully awful” is how one Sputnik Music writer who nearly destroyed summarizes what’s happening on this 2010 skull-crushing platter by Bhob Rainey, Victor Signore, Jeremy Phloyd Starpoli, and Peter Bonos. “The payoff is that some parts are so bad that it makes you laugh. This is an album meant to make you laugh, it is a completely new take on music; sounds so bad that they are hilarious. But it’s painful sound; they have covered the entire spectrum of hurtful sounds with this album. You can feel the flimsy aluminum lid from a can of Campbell’s tomato soup slicing your thumb open. That stupid pain when a tiny cut could be annoyingly painful. During the explosive tantrums of hurt they’ll precisely pluck the *** of a guitar string while tightening or loosening the tuning peg. They simulate the sound of the creak of a floor board in a dilapidated vacant house. The rhythm section is done perfectly using what sounds like objects they found lying around in a hoarder’s attic. Most songs sound like a kid shouting as he runs around a house destroying anything he can get his hands on while his parents are at the store. It’s hard to create something beautiful; Fat Worms of Error do the exact opposite. They create the most awful and disgruntled sound you’ve ever heard. They seem to have put a lot of effort into creating such a filthy, painful, mess of an album.” Mark Breyer cover art.
Jekyll Loves Hyde
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $6.00
“This filthy, destroyed, early Sonic Youth-influenced album thrives on a bent rhythm playing off the higher frequency guitar attacks with momentum building convergence and space creating divergence,” notes our friends at KFJC. “While they cast their shadow on the lo-fi, igno-rock sound, Gang Wizard smartly explore percussive possibilities within the hard-driving outside rock sound. Clashing, driving, pounding structures ride the waves with an aggressive, instinctive posture that the ultra-meter drumming makes wholly fucked.”
Subconscious
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $20.00
The ever copacetic Richard Keen (reeds), Louis Belogenis (reeds), Lewis Barnes (trumpet), Jesse Henry (guitar), and Marc Dale (bass) “guided through the terrain’s intricate rhythmic paths, as Hooker quietly asserts himself without once overplaying.” From 1992
Stereo Mars
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $5.00
“This stunningly stoned and mesmerizing wastoid action / improv trio from the nethervoid of Ohio is jaw dropping. Stereo Mars was recorded and mixed in a single day by three blasting concept dub-zone visionaries (Zac Davis and Kathy O’Dell on guitars and drummer Shane Mackenzie).
I Saw The Ghost Of An Unknown Soul And It Said…
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Supremely amazing cello noise, energy, vibration, friction and true sound-feeling music by this mind-snapping Korean improviser / composer. Deep and resonant, at once furious and hushed, accepting the dare to be beautiful and frightening. Edition of 400
THURSTON MOORE / NEW BLOCKADERS / JIM O'ROURKE
Voloptulist
(Hospital - HOS144) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Ecstatic Peace - HOS144) Used LP $10.00
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.
LP jacket has cut corner
Through the Panama
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $25.00
Seizures and sharp angles, dance rhythms, clearer mixing, and subtly shaded dynamics separate the old Sightings from the new. Every sound shines while preserving the earlier grimy, low-gloss vibe. Sightings may action-paint their canvases with viscous, theatrical brushstrokes, but it’s the countless, cunningly placed scrapes and flecks that make Through the Panama vibrate with meaning and real menace. From 2007
TV Shit
(Ecstatic Peace) Used LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
A symphony mix of Youth Brigade’s legendary “No Song II” in four takes, with backing vocals from Mark Arm and J. Mascis. Sealed
Charmed, I’m Sure
(Ecstatic Peace) Used CD $8.00
1997 solo album by Curlew guitarist and longtime LaDonna Smith collaborator, showcasing his electric playing on the headless Steinberger guitar, and Beefheartian instant compositions that overdub multiple guitars and basses, a tobacco tin, a tape measure, and a cordless drink mixer. Sealed.