FLESHTONE AURA / SEYMOUR GLASS
Amplified Teacup
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.316) CDR $8.00
On both the 20-minute tracks here, sounds that have been found, forcibly appropriated, and/or rendered unrecognizably alien ricochet off the guillotine blades operated by a couple of North American experimental wombats. Performed with no preparation or rehearsal in April 2015 at Second Act in San Francisco, accompanying a film by Winston Hacket, “Live” bends the skull with blaaps and fwunks hurled out of the Cocoquantus, a five-oscillators-and-two-delays device created by Pete Blasser that yields complex and often bewildering waveform switcheroos. “Not Live” is the product of three months swapping, editing, colliding, and intertwining mass media voices, field recordings, the ambiance from a variety of interior locations, animal noises, snippets of music both popular and obscure, sound effects and signal processing, unidentifiable gurgles and more.
Area
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.283) CDR $7.00
Another hotpot of prime cut-up collage splut by Andrew Zukerman. Electronic zwonk expertly sewn together with life-affirming tape farts, plundered dialog mixed in with electric whizz and what sounds like ’80s doll burps vs. robotic cow groans. One especially zukadelic section sounds like Mayasa Nakahara teabagging Robert Ashley’s Wolfman.
A “Therefore” Between Two Non- Sequiturs
(Coherent States) Cassette $10.00
An orgiastic and furious sound collage (but, simultaneously, a minimalist composition with a repeating pattern in which to easily lose oneself). It is pure musique concrète. It is clearly tape music. It is the externalization of Andrew No C Zukerman’s mental state. It is a paranoid but delicate grotto. A Soft QSO. An experimental noise concert canceled at the last minute and moved from the venue’s basement to the adjacent pizza house’s parking lot with the artist performing for the occasional passersby as his only audience. It is the leftover fries of lovers who broke up in the midst of eating them. Dive in. Softly.
FLESHTONE AURA / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Dylan Nyoukis / Fleshtone Aura
(Beniffer Editions) split LP $17.25 (Out-of-stock)
One side is a throwback of sorts for fans of the crude, Fluxus-certified tape collage of early Nyoukis. Here he combines the spontaneity and natural course of direction of his bellyaches with straight-no-chaser editing. On the flip, Gastric Female Reflex founder and visual artist Andrew Zukerman side-steps his ironic didactic collage and dives into traditional tape music techniques, modified electronics, and Ciat-Lonbarde interfaces. Pierre Henry without the inheritance. Screen-printed three-color jacket. Marbled vinyl. Edition of 300
Infinity Keystroke
(Chocolate Monk - choc.473) CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Andrew No C Zukerman busts out a fine, demented piece of tympanic membrane tickling. Recorded in 2014 and 2015 using tapes, turntable, sampler, modular and Buchla synthesizers, he slow-bakes the burble to a perfect blend of heady, psychedelic, paranoid, and warped, with a dose of abstract musicality for good measure. Edition of 60
More Trivialities
(Healing Power) Cassette $7.00
“The mangled field recordings and wobbling tones continue Andrew Zukerman’s ongoing marriage of classic musique concrète techniques with his trademark sly playfulness,” observed NOW. “If early academic electronic hadn’t been so averse to pop, it might have sounded like this. Woozy tape loops, crackling static and manically skipping audio fragments often disorient but occasionally solidify songs like ‘A Man Urinating In Loblaws’ into something unexpectedly funky, albeit far too grimy and lo-fi to work on even the most forward-thinking dance floors.”
On Rusticated Slant
(Pleasance - PR013) LP $12.00
The “intricate and finely tuned landscape of auditory fart jokes and avant-gardism” on the first LP by Gastric Female Reflex’s Andrew Zukerman under the name Fleshtone Aura “bombard[s] … warm energy of a high-speed cut-and-paste dance mix” observes Tad Michalak. “This chaos quickly ends with the feeling that all these sounds have been simultaneously thrown off the CN Tower and are falling aimlessly through space, silent before their imminent demise…. A free jazz duet for motorcycle and percussion, gears twisting, ominous maneuvers in the dark. Sound crystallizes, refracting in a house of mirrors. Piercing sine waves slice through mundanity as this chameleon writhes and twitches. Bumping dance beats emerge out of human pauses and carefully placed electroacoustic junk percussion. A piano note stretches into a harsh rumbling landscape of wind noise, fire crackles, scrapping metal and hushed squeals. The definitive sounds of a world post-2012 disaster. The second side opens as a 1950s joke factory soundtrack. Classic rock riffs tango with child-ish bleeps and bloops in a birdlike call and response…. Zukerman’s collages gestate forward with an oddly nostalgic undertone. Abrasive screeches and sweeps lead to luscious and decadent tidbits of familiarity, unsettling…. Something like a recapping of a horse race meets postnasal drip. The bubbling voice of Jabba the Hutt dictates some unknown message from beneath the murk. Heart-warming abstractions of a human reality.” Edition of 300
Sounds Like Zydeco
(Stoned Again) Cassette $7.00
Andrew Zukerman “manipulates sound into tapestry using an endless supply of stolen music, city noise and the natural world, explains Neon Waste. “It’s the radio tuner in your mind backing-and-forthing in your subconscious, or the disjointed reality of half-remembered dreams.”