1975
(Intransitive - INT037) CD $13.00
Debut solo album of unsettling electro-acoustic miniatures and tightly-coiled, crackling electronic ambience, more vertical than horizontal, a step away from Yeh's familiar violin-and-vocal improv, the rock/noise Burning Star Core, and recent forays into pop music. This is sensual abstract music with a light touch, a confident minimalism that reveals unsettling depth, sharp corners, and playful malevolence with repeat listens.
OREN AMBARCHI / CHRIS CORSANO / PAUL FLAHERTY / C. SPENCER YEH
Ambarchi / Flaherty, Corsano, Yeh
(Krayon Recordings) split 7-inch $9.00
The Flaherty, Corsano, Yeh Trio's oceans of bawling drum kit fire and fluttering string overtones fuse a complex web of ear asterism. Infiltrated by a woozy sax line that soon reduces in duration and increases the overall vehemence, with fragmented reed chewing rasp and roar joining myriad coordinates in this dense labyrinth of free magic. On the flip, an unexpected monolith from Ambarchi, stunningly crafted harmonic percolations of feedback glare, and riff particles slam into tantric drum force blast beats by Matt Skitz Sanders. Art by Paul Coors.
Cincinnati
(DroneDisco - fig.95) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Previous full-length documents by the cooperative of composer/improvisers John Wiese (Sissy Spacek) and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) have been culled from live performance situations, and one could cite Cincinnati as the duo's first studio album. Recorded face-to-face in late 2007 at Ashworth Tap Room in Cincinnati OH, it reveals unexpected developments and strategies of this ongoing partnership. Familiar machineries were primed, but an increasingly alien attitude was fed through and processed into churning and bewildering shapes. The results of these sessions were cataloged and surgically isolated into specimens by Yeh; a little editing employed to carve the forms somewhat presentable, but no "studio trickery" to mask the organic nature. A monumentally intimate body touched by indeterminate intuition, instant composition, and interior logic.
Compound
(Von Archives - VON002) 7-inch $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A threshold of sound composed from the electrocacoustic improvisations of Yeh and the chirurgical, abrasive noise patches of Wiese. A majestic experiment by two unclassifiable masters of the new improv. Edition of 300.
In the Blink of an Eye b/w Condo Stress
(Destijl - IND087) 7-inch $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
In addition to Songs 2002 (What The... Records 2009), the only Yeh effort that is electronics music, furniture music, modernistic music, and music with experimental new vision.
Live at Kathy’s B-Day
(Rococo) Used LP (one-sided) $6.00
Previously released on Delwar Showdown (American Tapes 2006) Silkscreened jacket. Numbered edition 105/200
Live In Nottingham
(What The ... - WHAT004) LP $25.00
Live collaboration by Wiese (to be played by Sasha Cohen in the upcoming film Noise Movie) and Yeh, in front of their best gear with loudspeakers and a room full of wanting Brits. Rude blast noises, deep-brain droning, twisting tape press record, vocals that are just torn-apart and strung up in electronic torture chambers. Recorded direct from the board for maximum clarity, detail and quality. Limited edition of 330 with insert and red silkscreened covers.
TONY CONRAD / MICHAEL F. DUCH / C. SPENCER YEH
Musculus Trapezius
(Pica Disk - PICA013) CD $14.00
An epic performance captured pristine, unfurling its massive limbs patiently and cannily over the course of seventy-plus minutes. Conrad mingles among trusted wood-and-steel sidekicks, engaged in both age-old conversations and inspired new inquisitions; Yeh bookends his passive/aggressive behavior on violin with spare piano incantations; Duchs acts as a ghostly anchor, casting formidable binding and deft velocity. Drones flow freely, but these reliable horizons fracture into surprising detours, tearing apart the instruments, the players involved, and the expectations of the music itself. From the abstract of the article "EMG Trapezius Muscle Activity Pattern in String Players:: Part I—Is There Variability in the Playing Technique?" authored by Anncristine Fjellman-Wiklund, Helena Grip, Jan Stefan Karlsson, and Gunnevi Sundelin, first published in the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics (Volume 33, Issue 4, April 2004): "Work-related neck and shoulder disorders are a great problem for string musicians; a playing technique with more relaxed muscles and a greater variation in the muscle activity pattern, i.e., with shorter sequences at a varied number of amplitude levels... might prevent pain." Oops.
New York / Atlanta
(Helicopter - H49) CD $10.65 (Out-of-stock)
Two of the best sets from a 2007 tour by this developing audio partnership. On these direct-from-the-soundboard recordings, steel string binds knobs, vocal cries machine code, fuzz and foil avalanche, fireworks and drought. Epic movements in their entirety, with minimal editing and post-meddling.
JUSTIN LIEBERMAN / C. SPENCER YEH
Object Lessons
(What The ... - WHAT008) LP picture disc $25.50 (Out-of-stock)
Beginning with a shared love of sound poetry, psychedelic rock, Japanese scum noise, Japanese psychedelic rock, Object Lessons' itinerary embodies more present-time sensibilities: Lieberman's sculptural and multimedia work The Corrector's Custom Pre-Fab House (itself inspired by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown's 1972 examination of “the decorated shed,” Learning From Las Vegas), which includes a character inspired by Nobusuke Tagomi, from Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle. Created in the style of a Katamari video game, the program features texts on each object taking various forms such as objective accounts, plagiarized product descriptions, aesthetic meditations, poetry, short fiction, satire, and prose; these texts were then transformed into this a collaboration between Lieberman and Burning Star Core's C. Spencer Yeh. The result is one part Bruce Haack, another part Charlie Gocher -- a head-on collision you don't see every day. Full-color gatefold jacket. Limited edition. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009
Solo Violin 1-10
(Tone Filth - TF46) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
Minimal and tense recordings from 2004 by the man behind Burning Star Core. Made up of ten unprocessed live-to-tape violin experiments edited from original sources previously issued as limited edition CDRs on Yeh’s Drone Disco imprint, the sounds on this record range from tense scrapes to minimal textural drones. Silkscreened jacket. Edition of 400.
Solo Voice I–X
(Primary Information) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
Yeh’s first LP devoted entirely to the voice has its most obvious precedents in ’60s and ’70s sound poetry (the raw and a-verbal Four Horsemen, post-Lettrist France, Joan La Barbara). Having moved from virtuosic, intensely physical performances to more focused studies attached to performance situations and the body, he maintains a strict fidelity to the specific properties of his voice. Yeh has relied on amplification and various studio techniques; here the breaths have been edited out, letting the vocalizations run together in palpitating continua. The effect is an elision of phrasing as an element of both linguistic and musical convention, and an uncanny protraction of the voice into vast, hypnotic slurs. Solo Voice I–X progresses from shorter tracks, each honing in on a particular sound or technique, toward more open-ended territory in which the formal rigor begins to dissolve, with Yeh’s voice playing off both silence and itself. Check out a four-minute excerpt here: https://soundcloud.com/primaryinformation/solovoice-excerpts-vii-iii-v2
Tiny Red Tables b/w Big American Hole
(Helicopter - H48) 7-inch $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Handheld tape recordings of source material and stage clips that Wiese (Sissy Spacek, Bastard Noise) and Yeh (Burning Star Core) used during the Free Noise tour sets -- the first unofficial Free Noise document, in fact. Very low-fi, but sounds great. An astounding twenty-six minutes total, no joke. Edition of 150.
Transitions
(Destijl - IND102) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
(Destijl - IND102) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
Having rattled the hinges with last year’s “In the Blink of an Eye” seven-inch, C S Yeh flings open the door and steps inside. The startling songs on Transitions flit between sculpted guitar riffs and measured, just-shy-of-lush synth-pop with wry lyrics delivered in guileless tones. Ardent fans will have little trouble understanding the move away from handsomely carved drones or speckled and serrated noise; Transitions is simply a different form of Yeh’s unmediated expression, of a spirit with Slapp Happy, but which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Magnetic Fields record.