GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / ORCHID SPANGIAFORA
Couscous Bizarre
(Feeding Tube) LP $15.00
Maximum sentencing. Threads of unease, cunning strums, the rhythm of the loop. Includes download card.
Chowders
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $9.00
Perched like a weathered gargoyle ruminating behind an undiagnosed nutjob glare, this batch of grating, surrealism-ravaged sound collages and bent audio blurt arrives on the 130th anniversary of the birth of F. Bushnell Tanks, director of silent films A Girl Called Minusha and The Lady In The Filing Cabinet, whose star Irene Gordon-Pheldt is depicted on the front cover. A live recording (from Wednesday Night Live on KZSU in Stanford, another from Shapeshifters Cinema in Oakland), plus two homemade beauty massacres from the Day Three of Dead Bats on The Porch sessions (for frappéd electronics and boomer delirium, respectively), and the third in a series of paper towel dispenser Fluxus actions.
Alone In A Room
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS80) CDR $12.00
Over an hour of unheard recordings by the legendary singer-songwriter, 18 tracks in all, recorded in 1997 by herself — one mic, voice, acoustic guitar. All proceeds will be dispersed to three of her friends who lost everything in the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Artwork by Karen Constance.
*** Money from all sales of any other Butte County Free Music Society release ordered before December 31 2018 will also be donated to the above families.
Unexplained Bite Marks
(Butte County Free Music Society) CDR $8.00
(Minimum Table Stacks) LP $25.00
Released in April 2012 to coincide with Glands of External Secretion’s third-ever live appearance (at Trapdoor Fucking Exit, a performance series connected to Helga Fassonaki’s Touching Them Touching You - A Love Song for the Dead C), Unexplained Bite Marks took place on May 20, 1994, at legendary subterranean niteclub The Purple Onion, in the Chinatown / North Beach district of San Francisco, where a loveable maniac by the name of Tom Guido holds court whenever and with whomever he wants. Michael Morley (of The Dead C and Gate) happened to be in town, and Margaret Murray of U.S. Saucer (and Manning’s Truth Walks In Sleepy Shadows album) never refuses a challenge, so this utterly impromptu occasion also marked the first and only time Glands of External Secretion was a quartet. The raw and monolithic result is loud, distorted, saturated and more obscured by murk than The Loch Ness monster on a menopausal rampage.
LP is mastered by Weasel Walter. Paste-on artwork, postcard, hand-stamped labels. Edition of 200
Cesspool Of The Angels
(Minimum Table Stacks) LP $20.00
“This solo album by the former Bananafish editor is a recording of naturally jarring qualities and intent,” says Duncan Harrison of Adhuman. “The rippling, continuous pace doesn’t allow a whole lot of time for sinking the talons in. Incongruous sound sources are bent, warped, wrung and wrenched between the ears, as if one’s brain is an object to be flossed by Glass’s quietly punishing dentist’s hand. Clattering machines and burnt-out organs fizz as though amplified via baby monitor. Brief, ad-hoc choirs of rendered vocals are drenched in clicky synthesis and, yeah, some train noises are even detectable in the mix. But don’t for a minute ascribe his motivations to churlish desire to throw crap at a kitchen sink, then a wall, with no sense of what should stick. I’ve spoken before about the supreme deftness with which Glass sculpts his sounds and it’s all in shining evidence here. If you’ve paid attention to our man’s offerings for decades via Glands of External Secretion, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, This Is Yvonne Lovejoy, and the many various collabs, you’ll recognize a ton of now-trademark things on Cesspool of the Angels, too. We could talk about how painstaking it is to collect speech samples of American Assholes tricking themselves into believing something incorrect, or the nerdily inclined might be keen to know serial and model numbers responsible for the massive palette of often rich, pristine electronics and processes, but the skill of Glass’s editing is more interesting, especially his ear for… production, lacking a better word for it. This stuff is not necessarily serious, but Glass and his peers are serious as hell about doing it, deserving of consideration among some of the finest, most world-class people pissing about with difficult sounds today. It’s got action enough to suit all, from bottom-feeding post-underground burnouts to all you guys who collect that INA-GRM type shit.” First handful of copies ordered come with a bonus fridge magnet.
On Governors
(Chocolate Monk) Cassette $8.25
“On Governors takes its name from the 1868 essay by Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, a foundational work in feedback control theory from a mathematical and physical point of view, which laid the groundwork for more in-depth research into feedback and self-controlling or self-regulating systems. His paper did not focus on sound, but rather on the forms of feedback and control at play in steam engines, and, more generally, helped work out the mathematical foundation of the forms of regulation and control integral to mechanical forms of feedback. The pieces that came together for this release were recorded between 2023 and 2026 in Vienna on electronic, electro-acoustic, no-input, motorized, modular and magnetic feedback systems.” Edition of 50
And I, And I
(Chocolate Monk) Magazine + CDR $11.00
Hoffmann needles down into Fluxus-type performance / sound happenings: “Multi-track recordings of overwhelming and exhausting situations recorded over the past year,” they say. “Used laptop, objects, amplified zither, portable turntable, bluetooth transducers, fans.” Recent appearances in China and the UK prove that this Oberlin-based young’un ain’t your average bone-headed yank. No, sir. They know all about the power of the hum of a room. The clunk of a chair. Minimal tones. Space. Focus. Booklet of recent collages of black-and-white abstractions. Breathe deep. Edition of 50
Climax Denali
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $7.00
Don’t let that bird nest hairdo fool you. Andrew No C Zukerman threads together well tailored sound collage contraband from his Toronto hot box. Climax Denali finds our electronic whuzzman manipulating his machines to palate-tingling effect. Straight-to-video Euro thriller synth soundtrack outtakes sit cheek-to-cheek with deftly arranged exotic cut-ups and overheard band tune-up chat. Slow burners fade in with the promise of dirt and scandal before more nifty electro-tidbits get arranged with menacing pan. Rhythmic fever hook and tones tune out before more sounds get quickly fried. Our maestro’s tools are well oiled and greased. Let his anodic audio bacteria decompose the organic matter in your skull and convert the stored chemical energy into electricity. Edition of 50
Without Murmur
(Chocolate Monk) Cassette $8.25
Tongue Depressor’s pipeman gets the orgone pulsing. “Four columns of bagpipe drone repossessed by tape speed alteration, sometimes palindromic,” he says. To avoid the temptation toward melody, “I took the chanter out of the instrument. The three drone pipes are the true wellspring anyway. The drone reeds behave strangely when loosened and played below typical air pressure thus the stuttering, murmuring, fluttering.” Edition of 50