Something Approaching Zero
([ no label ]) Magazine $2.00
The rectal thermometer has been slipped under the tongue of western society and Harrison’s findings are unequivocal: cultural despair driven by pre-apocalyptic stress syndrome. Poetic prose that underscores how witnessing the decline and fall is worse than the inevitable doom that seems to be goal. Seven essays, “Spiel,” “Test Message,” “Vashti,” “I Just Live Here,” “Untitled (But A Dream To Read Aloud W/ Flu Symptoms),” “Council,” and “The End Of The World.” Twenty pages, some of which are blank, because we’re all dying and can’t tell the difference anyway.
Snack A Delica
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.399) CDR $7.00
A fine selection of mostly live actions that capture the magnetic power of The Cardboard Prince. He works hard so you can get down. Numbered edition of 60.
A New Normal
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.401) CDR $7.00
Part hot shot of life-affirming glimmer, part wounds-cleanser, and, in the words of Emmert himself, part “quick postcard to people who are suffering from traumas and there is no way out. That’s what the title means: finding a new place to rest inside yourself, because all previous normalcy was destroyed by trauma…. There is no fixing things….” Numbered edition of 60.
Time Vaccine
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.400) CDR $7.00
Philadelphia reprobate Cody Brant joined by Tim Alexander (LAFMS, Points of Friction, Moth) for a real ear-greaser. The duo – both of them collagists, multimedia-ists by nature — share a near-telepathic bond when it comes to organizing textures and colors, shaping primal meeting grounds, discovering soundscapes together by taking turns painting in the elements, making horizontal gestures while the other works out vertical contrasting marks, creating an atmosphere while the other counteracts with a chilling arrhythmia. Numbered edition of 60.
Preamble To Nihil
([ no label ]) Cassette $6.00
Ideas that day were viewed as a bird’s eye from the foreboding above. Empty of meaning where meaning could at last be emptied. “Sounds of wonky lo-fi guitar, dreamscape poetry (word and mouth play), looped vibes, arguments, church bells and brass bands (Brighton parklife?), turntables, general rustle, hustle and bustle,” notes our friend at Remuhmuration blog. “Sax blurts, ampnoise. There’s … recorder playing that sounds like an intro to an old Good Missionaries song. It’s all in the editing and presented so smoothly, like listening to a jigsaw being built.” C32
Twisted Nerve
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.403) Cassette $6.00
Ferric bruxism by the lowlife behind Clam Bake (Chocolate Monk 2014) and one half of the mysterious Occult Hand. Don’t let the Hawaiian shirt fool you; this album leaves your integrity in a pool of jellied crumbs on the floor. Like a three-day chemical chew with no additional hydration. Let the Prince of Dorkness help get your ass on that dissecting table, baby. Numbered edition of 50.
Mona Cost Returns To Canton
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.402) CDR $7.00
Continuing the fine family tradition of euphoric ear shred, Miss Howland gives Brother Skin Graft a run for his bitcoins with a heavy dose of hot gruel, guaranteed to singe the inner lughole hairs. The four tracks recorded live in the practice space while Howland was working on her novel Don’t Fear the Night Duende, much of which takes place in Canton, Ohio, where she grew up. The listener is encouraged to find his or her own inner Monument Park and get woke. Artwork by Karen Constance. Numbered edition of 60.
1978 Hound Dog Recordings
(Ace & Duce / Negative Jazz) LP $15.00
Vintage antisocial punk from Los Angeles with obviously comic over-the-top attitude and sentiments. Four hilarious vile and hideous tracks. Liner notes by Tork Lugnutz. 2017 reissue, mastered from original tapes. Edition of 500
Discaholics! Record Collector Confessions Volume 1
(Marhaug Forlag) Magazine + 7-inch $37.50
Ten interviews conducted by the Swedish saxophone player / improviser / composer / music archivist with artists / record collectors Brian Morton, Byron Coley, Dennis Lyxzén, Elena Wolay, Harald Hult, Henry Rollins, Oren Ambarchi, Paal Nilssen-Love, Thurston Moore and Robert Crumb. 120 pages. One-sided seven-inch has an exclusive new track recorded using elements from Gustafsson’s record collection. Second edition.
In Praise Of Shadows
(Pica Disk - PICA045) LP $15.00
First-time collaboration by Singapore-based musician, artist, designer and curator whose stylistic oeuvre in improvised music is marked by internalized reflections on memory and loss, invisibility and indeterminacy working with the Nordic Miracle Worker himself. One side-long-track bearing a certain drone-ishness recorded during a humid all-night session at the now-defunct FluxUs record store in Singapore, backed with a more angular electronic recording captured ten years later in the daytime during the brutally cold January winter of Norway. Computer, electronics, guitar. Edition of 300
JEAN-MARC FOUSSAT / GEORGIOS KARAMANOLAKIS
Substunce Sans Scrupule
(Coherent States - CS25) LP $18.00
Ultra-vivid dialogue and communication, completely spontaneous, an immersive ritual of shocking sound, illusionary image and complementarity. Witness the union of musique concrète ideas with noise, of field recordings with vocal delays, of electroacoustic music with drone. Faraway splinters of jazz fuse with japanoise, the dreamy with the real, the Magical-Religious with the Scientific. 140g vinyl. Numbered edition of 300
Accelerant
(Coherent States - CS29) Cassette + 3-inch CDR $22.00
Five massive drone repetitions (plus the fourteen-minute “Mind Gate” on the disc) by Heath Moerland that momentarily become hints of rhythm, only to retreat into subdued and atmospheric tape manipulation. No linear flow would emanate more an essence of synthesis and less a sustained improvisation. In stenciled drawstring cloth bag with six color prints. Edition of 20. C22
Concepcion Huerta / Eve Matin
(Sploosh - SPLOOSH11) Split cassette $7.00
Damaged, pock-marked textures roll around inside oblong funnels on one side (Ms. Huerta uses tapes and contact microphones), while Ms. Matin on the flip grinds a harp into dark zones previously regarded as the exclusive domain of didgeridoos blown through the eye sockets of charred giraffe skulls. c48
Huachafa
(Sploosh - SPLOOSH09) Cassette $7.00
Disorienting grit-befouled gusts from the ledge of a skyscraper by Messrs Escalante and Leguia, the former a lone gunman whose weapon of choice is brass AF, the latter your apex improviser from Lima. c60
MARTÍN ESCALANTE / CHARLIE MUMMA
Escalante / Mumma
(Sploosh - SPLOOSH14) Cassette $7.00
In which the Peruvian sax maverick and Sissy Spacek’s lord of percussion imagine a hospital getting ransacked by an insane porcine tyrant riding a donkey with a giant scrub brush jammed up its ass. Heavily wobbled screech delivered with cross-eyed power madness, blur-limbed hooves swatting at every sterile thing in sight. Fucking stellar. c22
MARTÍN ESCALANTE / MATT MOTTEL
Chop Party
(Sploosh - SPLOOSH13) 7-inch $8.00
One half of Talibam! turns in some top quality rust belt synthesizer prowl in collaboration with Peru’s high priest of air-bending. “The frayed edges of jazz,” as one Bandcamp follower put it. Which must be code for “hornets the size of hippos.”
LASSE MARHAUG / GURO SKUMSNES MOE
La Región Salvaje
(Sploosh - SPLOOSH12) LP $18.00
Exquisitely heavy, skin-moistening soundtrack to Amat Escalante’s film The Untamed. With Moe on octabass, contrabass, voice and synthesizer, and Marhaug on electronics, plus Ole-Henrik Moe on violin and violincello, Kari Rønnekleiv on violins, John McCowen on bass clarinet, Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen on percussion, Jenny Hval on voice, Jacob Felix Heule on drum, Håvard Skaset on guitar, and Danishta Rivero on hydrophone.
Juanita
(Sploosh - SPLOOSH15) Cassette $7.00
Above a jagged undercurrent of pulsating wub, Escalante blasts strangulated heat on solo sax. c20
Noncanonical Gospels From The Cult Of The Immortal Tapir
(Coherent States - CS28) Cassette $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Bren’t Lewiis’s after-hours guerilla performance at a Sacramento playhouse was the site of their latest maculate conception: desert-blind tales and sun-scorched allegories expunged from The Ongoing Dialogue during the greasy, soothing Council Of Nivea. Imagine an old-time radio broadcast of a pagan tent revival interrupted by shortwave transmissions from an isolated and weather-beaten theater where Swell Maps are stage-managing an all-nonmusical-interstitials variety show. The bizarre compendium of revelations include a beastiary by an unreliable ornamental horticulturist, a sampler inventory of treats-centered Eucharist self-abasement, a postcard texticle, ersatz Beat poetry, idealized warrior vows, shattered testimonials from addled pitchmen, and faith-based texts about: limbless lizard infestation; inter-dimensional chonch worship; the personal toll of crimes against humanity; the banality of insane self-pity; pepper abuse; autobiographical cannibalism; hemoglobin-and-fur-based cocktails; false Elvis resurrection and messianic flim-flam orchestrated by the pastel mafia; compulsions of infectious diseases camp prisoners; the psychic struggles of a pilgrim getting telekinetically bombarded by epistles from spiteful, sentient mass transportation; interspecies organ transplant; and heavenly expectorant. The ramshackle performances and sound design display a pattern consistent with questionable Sudarium stains. Created using toys, tools, objects, instruments, and found voices, some details about audio events bleed through time and space while others fade into dust and ash. c50