Total Vacuum
(Hanson - HN208) CD $11.00
(Hanson - HN208) LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
California sound artist Tom Darksmith's crude musique concrète uses tapes, voice, records, radio, guitar, drums, objects, and field recordings. Assembled on cassette four-track in 2008 and 2009, this total mystery of perfectly paced dirt sound -- not harsh, not mellow, just unclean, weird, and confusing -- tests your audio Rohrshach; Hanson hears weedwacking, getting zipped into a suitcase and shipped via train, ghost voices roaming in sewers, riding in a helicopter with mid-grade noise reduction earmuffs on, a shitty metal door locking on a crew of mumbling idiots, and a garbage disposal. Whatever you hear, that’s your problem. Recommended for fans of Yeast Culture, Agog, Joe Colley, Graham Lambkin, Jason Lescalleet, Hands To. LP is an edition of 300, with hand-stamped labels, and heavy-duty two-color silkscreened sleeves with Darksmith’s hilariously macabre artwork. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2010.
Modern Jester
(Hanson - HN250) 2xLP $19.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. With the exception of "Eight Cut Scars," this is completely different from the cassette of the same name, though every second does contain subliminal messages (some things are just too good to let go of). "Hyper-focused [and] monolithic," according to All Music Guide, "harrowing, but strangely beautiful," while East Village Radio describes it as hallucinatory and sprawling. Silkscreened gatefold jacket. Edition of 500.
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.
Chain Shot
(Hanson - HN209) CD $11.25
(Throne Heap - THS01) LP $18.75 (Out-of-stock)
This new platter by Padre Dilloway (ex-Wolf Eyes, ex-Couch) was seemingly recorded by tape heads dusted in ancient kitty litter. Decode the messages embedded in his relaxed weirdness (the looped tapes provide the pacing) if it’s revelations about woodpecker attacks and/or butter churning you seek. With a dash of thighbone horn wail here and there, and the use of homemade mixers and loop machines from 1943, this platter teeters on a restless energy ocean, while an MSG-ridden hiss crawls within its rotten grooves.
CD version contains a 28-minute bonus track.
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.
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.
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.
Slice Through Or / In Glassmetal
(Hanson - HN240) LP $17.50
Debut LP, three years in the making, by John Mannion of Red Light Collective and Cathode Terror Secretion. This extreme electronic composition is an ultra-dynamic mix of modern classical, electronic, noise, and power electronics techniques. Whirling electric box fan, piercing electronics, junk metal clang, screeching violins, harsh and whispered vocals, and haunting vocals by opera singer Caitlin Haughney. Silkscreen jacket, lyric sheet. Edition of 500
Nautical Almanac
(Hanson - HN014 ) LP $30.00
Their 1996 tetanus-inspired debut album by Twig Harper and crew, the rusty nail that pierced the skin of the Midwest frontier with nary a an upper division credit (lecture, labwork or otherwise) in electronics management to their name. Covers hand-smeared.
Meta-Klamauk (For Jean Tinguely) / Crincum Crancum
(Hanson - HN191) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
“Meta-Klamauk returns us to that garage of doom featured on Changez Les Blockeurs,” notices Sound Projector. “The mechanics have installed a noisy fan-heater device, and are getting a lot more work done. Crincum-Crancum is, relatively speaking, a near-musical concoction. Perhaps twenty plus years hath mellowed their saturnine psyche and dulled their appetite for relentless noise; this is less urgent, and there’s almost an air of resigned weariness to this 2002 work. That said, it is no less bilious, the reservoir of hatred still fuels the evil intent.” Both sides originally appeared on the delirious, jawdropping Gesamtnichtswerk 4xCD (Hypnagogia 2003); this is their first appearance on vinyl. Edition of 300 copies, silk-screened covers with the usual Hanson Droll-Flaps.
History of Nothing
(Hanson - HN199) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Freq’s testimonial should make anyone who reads it giddy with anticipation: “Sheer sheets of onanistic sound ruin the rack and explode across the consciousness. Imagine what it would’ve been like to hear this in 1982, when it was completely new and very few frames of reference were hanging on any wall, anywhere. This is the hard rain that’s promised to fall -- this sound is a rage against loneliness in one of the loneliest places on Earth while pursuing one of the loneliest forms of expression. Totally interstellar, completely vital, utterly timeless.” Now go record your next C10, you little pussy. All tracks are from the 80s and early 90s, previously released on CD (Siren 2001); this is their first appearance on vinyl. Edition of 300 copies. Heavy duty silk-screened covers with the usual Hanson Droll-Flaps.
Birth Of An Older, Much More Ugly Christ
(Hanson - HN203) LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded in 2009 by sisters Roxann and Rachal Spikula during their participation in a health study that required them to drink nothing but Shasta for like two weeks. (The master tape, according to Hanson, arrived duct-taped inside a hospital gown with the address written on it in Sharpie.) Menacing organ drone kicks off and mutates into the lo-fi skree of an empty room, eventually becoming a swirling abyss of tape hiss and the sound of nothing happening in a hospital. Distant creaks, buzz, and hums littered with hiss. A very unsettling frenzied drone. The flipside is a crunchy noise inferno that eventually leads to what sounds to Hanson like watching the earth exploding from outer space. A saddening, descending synth wave appears, buried by blasts of destroyed earth. It ends and you are disturbed. Everything fucking sucks. Edition of 300. Heavy duty black and silver silkscreened jackets with the Hanson droll flaps.
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.
Labyrinths & Jokes
(Hanson - HN050) LP $50.00
Released in 1998 on vinyl (reissued on CD in 2005) the first statement from a brilliant and fucked-up group of noise lunatics -- Nautical Almanac's Anti-Systems, Isis & Werewolves, Ron Of Japan, Andrew Wilkes-Krier, The Mini-System, The Beast People. Spray-painted jackets with pasted-on artwork.
Michigan
(Hanson) 6xLP $61.50 (Out-of-stock)
The latest in the geography-themed noise boxset series follows California, Texas, Portland and New England with a full side of screech apiece from twelve different noise bands that call The Damn Shame State home. With Princess Dragonmom, Raven Strain, Redrot, Aaron Dilloway, Tovah D-Day, Charlie Draheim, Hive Mind, Mammal, Evenings, Cotton Museum, Sick Llama and Wolf Eyes. Compiled by Greh Holger and Aaron Dilloway. Limited to 600 copies. Packaged in fully silkscreened record mailers.