A Squirrel Could Never Be A Disappointment To Me
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC263) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Scattered and haunted sounds, ethereal nonsense.
Black Night / New Morning
(Spam - #10) Cassette $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nocturnal and noisy collage fueled with wee-hours caffeine. Includes Biro Crimes, a sixteen-page riso-printed zine of Melchior’s drawings done in the waiting rooms of the Duke Cancer Clinic. Edition of 80.
Listen to a five-minute excerpt of “Black Night” here: https://soundcloud.com/flamingocreatures/dan-melchior-black-night-excerpt-spam10
C.C.D.E. Music
(Little Big Chief) LP $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
In the hazy afterburn of the lyrically candid Backward Path (Northern Spy, 2012), words are half-smothered in the molted earth on C.C.D.E. Music. It’s a backyard wedding of Assemblage Blues (Siltbreeze, 2011) and Excerpts & Halfspeeds (Kye, 2012), with Lard Free and Yuzo Iwata on the bride’s flank. The voyage into the sunset of these two involves a roaring mutant chassis and plenty of muddy vistas off the backroads of songform.
Excerpts (& Half-Speeds)
(Kye - KYE16) LP $15.50 (Out-of-stock)
Throughout his fifteen years of service as foot-soldier of garage rock, Melchior has willingly tested the flexibility of an otherwise stagnant genre. Here he glues together fractured sketches, riffs, and run-throughs; what emerges is something akin to Another Green World for the Fuck Off generation. With insert. Edition of 450. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2012
For Letha
(Vin Du Selecte Qualitite) 7-inch $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Four tracks of instrumental, acoustic guitar.
Gud’ Bye Ta Sluggo!
(Plastic) Used CD $2.00
Five-song tour-de-force will that will make your skin shake. In addition to the huge tornado of guitar and Melchior’s unique misanthropy, the big draw is the seething “JC Slug Pt. 2,” a blues-y disembowelment of the New York City music scene circa 2004. Covers of Gene Vincent and Little Willie John are fine buttresses of the Broke Revue’s great black humor and violence. Sealed
Happiness Is Overrated
(Ultra Eczema - UE191) LP $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Beautiful recordings that sink as deep as some of Robert Wyatt’s, possessed by a natural melancholia, the horror of saying goodbye translated in an incredible psychedelic sea of field recordings, guitar, synth and recordings of Letha Diane Rodman Melchior’s voice. With insert and sticker. Edition of 200. Listen to a five-minute excerpt here: https://soundcloud.com/ultra-eczema/dan-melchior-happiness-is-overrated-excerpt
Home Of The Blues
(Kye - KYE41) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
The hardest-working troub in Fairlawn destabilizes his natural songwriting process and tests the durability of the stressed blues idiom. A sincere and multi-faceted presentation of damage and survival as sound. With 18 x 24 poster. Edition of 400.
Human Of Stow
(Tutore Burlato - #05) Cassette $8.75 (Out-of-stock)
An oddly satisfying instrumental-and-sound collection, layered without listening to what was already recorded. C40
Listen to a three-minute excerpt here: https://soundcloud.com/tutoreburlato/dan-melchior-human-of-stow-excerpt
Melpomene
(Idea) LP $20.00
At times caustic, dubbed out and/or haunting, Melchior removes himself from established schools of sound. Recorded on a little Sony mini cassette recorder. Some of Melpomene is live (pots and pans being hit, etc.) and slowed down; some of it was recorded off of records and tapes, blurred to fit the tonal needs. The influence of Letha Rodman Melchior is in evidence, their combined techniques explored through years of creative collaboration. Melodies arrive as well, with the melancholy ballad “Mall Walker” in particular evoking images of Satie if he recorded for Vinyl-On-Demand. Melchior has, does, and will run the gamut of conventional, non-conventional, and bastard hybrids. 180-gram vinyl
Plays ‘The Greys’
(Ever/Never - E/N015) LP $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Songs and sonic vignettes that dip down deep into life’s trenches, where light fights to be noticed, misery, monotony and melancholy mingle and bleed into one another. In Melchior’s non-academic approach to musique concrete’s a-musical gestures, field recordings bump up against back-porch guitar plucking that morphs into radio declarations by the good Christians among us. Midway through the album’s hazy meanderings, “Death Has No Mercy” jumps into an uptempo backwoods jaunt, because the guitar is always there, providing a means for expression and catharsis.
Rock And Roll
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.288) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
A concept album about the fundamental naffness of popular culture — the force that molds an androgynous threat to society into a fat comedian in a rhinestone jumpsuit waffling on about being a narcotics officer while high on Demerol. It’s about people in jean leggings saying “In this country jesus is our king.” It’s about “the yankee preppers — who want you to believe their poo doesn’t stink!” It’s about Steven Segal’s reply to a corrupt senator who dares to tell him to “take that to the bank.” It’s about the fantasy of rebellion in a culture that’s turned your means of expression into a Broadway play enjoyed heartily by unwitting fascists longing for the good old days. It’s about Carl Lewis refusing to accept he can’t sing. It’s about using the word “freedom” a lot. It’s about inappropriate use of pathetic sound effects. It’s all these things, and so much less.
Seaslime
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.336) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
In-the-red guitar froth, vocal cut-ups, floundering electronic pulse, junk and clunk all come together to put barnacles on your brain, “an attempt,” says the man himself “to replicate the ebb, flow and convergence of sound / noise / information that the human receptor experiences when passing through the urban (specifically) grotto.” You bet it’s wild shit.
Slow Down Tiger
(Starlight Furniture Company - *27) LP $12.00
Two side-long pieces by The Dauphin Of Durham. “Tongues” is a grand, found-sound tape composition mosaic of mostly dissenting voices (Chilean poet Nicanor Parra; a clip from Sult, the Swedish film based on Knut Hamsun’s Hunger; Russian absurdist / surrealist Daniil Kharms; Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins; author of modernist masterpiece Briggflatts Basil Bunting; the eternally disenchanted Alan Dugan; Victorian heritage booster John Betjeman; and field recordings of the 1990 poll tax riots in London). On the flip, the obvious touchstone of “Hospital Poem” is minimalist drone à la Basinski, Harold Budd, or Tony Conrad, though Melchior’s very personal approximation of the subtlest of ectoplasmic melodies repeated over and over ends up more dissonant and darker than one would expect. With its tightly arranged, graceful marbling, as if restrained by a massage therapist, this elegant sausage would make the ideal soundtrack for an all-Lego remake of Solaris. Excerpt from “Tongues”: http://youtu.be/KEaoeutQ3Sw
Squirrel II (The Sequel)
(Chocolate Monk - choc.434) CDR $8.00
Surrey’s favorite expat’s fourth solo disc for the label (not to mention his two collaborations with both halves of Blood Stereo) follows up his Chocolate Monk debut A Squirrel Could Never Be A Disappointment To Me. Most was recorded during a very brown period in his life when he was lived in northeast Ohio. So, computerized commentary on the Cuyahoga River is here, along with other weighty subjects that haunt this particular area of the great Satan. He also makes a primitive attempt, Presque-Rien-like at a recreation of the Fairlawn’s infamous Giant Eagle supermarket, which was forward-thinking enough to employ a bearded lady, and a woman with the exact same haircut as the lead singer of Journey. “If you have never visited The Rubber City,” warns the man himself, “Take this musical tour as a good reason to avoid it on your future itineraries.” Edition of 60