ARV & MILJÖ

Samling

(Krim Kram) 2xCD $18.00

Originally compiled as a two-cassette release by Archivio Diafònico in 2016, now reissued as a double CD for optimum playback at your next MRI scan, Samling documents the earlier, “noisier” years of Arv & Miljö, collecting all compilation appearances from the project’s inception in 2010 up to 2015. Gritty, claustrophobic sound that includes environmental recordings, primitive melodic synth tones, and fragile failing electronics.

ANDY HECK BOYD

Blondie - Thanks For Sharing

(Krim Kram) CD $12.75

You know Andy Heck Boyd: wanted to write but typing caused too much pain (tendonitis), and so began to experiment with tape recording after getting into it around early 2017. Has never performed live, but has exhibited paintings at galleries in Seattle, Maine, NYC. Coupla comics to his name. Yeah, that’s the guy. He goes out on the daily with a tape recorder all the time, sometimes switches it up with Super-8 or drawing or collage work. You know how it is. Some tracks here were made using an amp, SK-1 keyboard, and microphone, lyrics composed on the spot. On another, the blood of a woodpecker caught by a friend’s cat is the muse. For others, a short dead-end road and a hiking trail in the Red River Gorge area are the stages where Heck “recorded my thoughts and improvised ideas, I like to perform in a sense, embellish or exaggerate things I see and observe, and I like to analyze layers wherever I go, layers of things that require looking at one thing or area slowly for a little bit, in the supermarket that day I was looking around the produce section at people smiling and some gathered in small groups talking and stuff, and saw glittery, cheap USA flags adorned everywhere around the bread and donuts near the bakery.”

BREN’T LEWIIS ENSEMBLE

Hand Signals

(Krim Kram) CD $11.75

The debut release on this Ireland-based label is the first Mark-Knopfler-approved “real” CD by Bren’t Lewiis. Eleven disorienting tracks: heavily edited sound collage; Orchid-Spangiafora-style word play; malfunctioning, sputtering machines; instruments and objects that are blown, shaken, scraped, and generally sabotaged in various ways. You won’t know whether it’s intestines, brains, or macaroni salad. If the CIA had access to this kind of arsenal during MKUltra, who knows what kind of damage they could have inflicted.

TED BYRNES

Roads

(Krim Kram) CD $13.00

Solo percussion by this noted resident of the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise, described by Decy as “subtle, generous, extremely dexterous and keeps showing up some new layer with each listen.”

CYESS AFXZS

No One Bull Left Behind

(Krim Kram) CD $13.50

Belfast-born, Swiss-based artist, Stuart McCune expands upon techniques explored in previous releases, offering a wide palette of sounds and compositional approaches. The album opens with what Krim Kram’s grandmother, a lifelong harsh noise aficionado, would have described as an absolute banger, a roaring behemoth of joyous blasting, before subtly shifting gear to more experimental ground. There is a very singular musical quality to each of the tracks, each containing its own distinctive character. And while the album as a whole certainly falls within the harsh noise realm, the lines between noise and musicality are continuously blurred.

DRESSING

Dressing

(Krim Kram) CD $11.75

After about a decade of activity in the visual arts, Dublin-based Kevin Kirwan jumps into experimental sound using field recordings, found objects, feedback and tape manipulation. His noise is restrained and textural with occasional melodic undercurrents. Krim Kram’s CD reissues two cassettes originally self-released in editions of 15 in 2021, described by S. Grey as “concise explorations of materiality and physicality via hard-panned, lumbering slow-burn buzz and cut up blasts of spidery frequencies [with] an exquisite sense of timing.”

KAPOTTE MUZIEK

Discon

(Krim Kram) CD $12.00

One thing that has been a constant factor for Kapotte Muziek since its formation in 1984 is the recycling of sound. In the first phase, Christian Nijs recorded sounds and instruments, and Frans de Waard created collages using these recordings. Each of the 13 pieces here is created by cutting, pasting, superimposing, and editing one concert. No other electronic treatments were used, no granular synthesis, etc. The cover is a collage from the booklet that came with Kapotte Muziek’s Columbus, Ohio, CDR (Gameboy 2004), which was created from a black and white painting for which de Waard exchanged merchandise with an unknown painter at that concert.

LDSN / YAKKIDA

Can Yr Ysgol

(Krim Kram) Cassette $9.75

Rhythmic sounds both dissonant and harmonious by Lauren de Sá Naylor and Hilary Knott, who use voices, loops, field recordings, bells, drums and harmoniums. c60

FABIAN LÖWENBRÜCK / DANIEL LÖWENBRÜCK

Das Lebacher Orgelwerk - Weihnachtsoratorium (LWV 156)

(Krim Kram) CD $12.75

Performed December 26th, 2006 on the Hugo Meyer organ of the Evangelische Kirche in Lebach, Germany.

LUCIANO MAGGIORE / MICHAEL SPEERS

Necesse Est Numquam Revelare Stercorem Tuum

(Krim Kram) CD $13.00

Speers works with natural and synthetic sound material — drums, computer, microphones, feedback; the use of speakers and playback devices (samplers, CD players, walkmans, tape recorders) characterize the work of Maggiore, whose main interests include mechanisms of sound diffusion, performance, repetition, endurance, non-human animal languages, dance, and folklore. Together the duo’s music contemplates the kernel of black metal.

SMEGMA

Dives Headfirst Into Punk Rock 1978/79

(Krim Kram) CD $11.75

Krim Kram’s expanded CD reissue of the cassette first issued on Pigface Records in 2015 documents the earliest recordings of Smegma performing live as part of the Portland punk rock / new wave scene (Myrtle Tickner, Jerry A. and Pig Champion from Poison Idea would all later go on to play with the band at various stages throughout the 80s and 90s). Included are the complete Flashcards and Disco Diarrhea 7s, both originally self-released on Pigface Records in 1979.

DECLAN SYNNOTT

Everything Lost In The Image

(Krim Kram) Cassette $10.75

Analogue synthesizer-based music with an emphasis on low resonant bass tones and slow sound progressions, continuing threads explored by the Ireland native in previous solo works — subtlety rendered to near inertia, meditation on mundanity, intuitive composition in avoidance of stylistic models. It is sometimes austere, sometimes visceral, often beautiful.

USURPER

The Big Two

(Krim Kram) CD $13.25

The final curtain on two decades of heroic toil by Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff in the experimental / noise / improv / no-audience underground combines elements of post-Fluxus performance art and absurdist theater with a thoroughly Luddite sound palette (via a flea market’s worth of dismantled instruments, household detritus, and recontextualized children’s toys). Their well-developed colloquial Gesamtkunstwerk blurs the lines between sound, performance, theater, and life.