Passagen
(Monotype) 6xCD + DVD + book $60.00 (Out-of-stock)
Long overdue retrospective and entirely appropriate veneration of “the abstract, surrealist, and occasionally terrifying organism” that is Ralf Wehowsky and company. Collected here are Kühe In 1/2 Trauer (Selektion 1984); tracks from Masse Mensch compilation (Selektion 1982); Distruct (Selektion 1984) plus bonus tracks “Schmutz-fugen,” and “Black, Black, Always Black”; Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie (Selektion 1986) plus bonus track “Ephemeral March Of The Dead Monks”; Tionchor (Selektion 1987) plus bonus track “L’effiface et l’effet,” “Dorothy Malone with Glasses,” “Easter Anywhere,” and “Essenz”; Acrid Acme (Selektion 1989); Three Projects (RRRecords 1993) plus bonus Merzbow collaboration track “V4”; and, on the DVD, nine Captured Music films (studio footage and visual collages) plus “Luxus & Mehrwert,” “Improvisation Jan. 87,” “Les Honteuses Alles,” “Kühe in 1/2 Trauer,” created by Markus Caspers for an unrealized, posthumous video project. In other words: pulsing synths; crashing percussion; horror film piano passages; tense, uncomfortable moods; scattershot tape collages; mangled and mixed raw materials from Nurse With Wound, The Haters, Merzbow, Asmus Tietchens, The Halfer Trio, and Psychic TV, among many others; junk percussion fused with the sound of guitars being slowly pulled out of tune; horns and indiscernible reed instruments rising up amid the chaos; electronics, tape cut-ups, jackhammer edits and weird synthetic outbursts in collaboration with Achim Wollscheid’s Swimming Behavior Of The Human Infant; ghostly, raw walls of noise that ooze menace; overdriven rhythmic throb obscured by noise; cheap drum machine loops and erratic electronic outbursts; dredged and repurposed recordings from their 1981 punk incarnation; Merzbow collaborations; erratic percussive bits; slowly building and collapsing frameworks; abstract Dadaist material; skittering tape collages and subtle jazz elements. The forty-eight-page booklet includes texts by Dan Warburton and Howard Stelzer, archival photos, a discography, reproduced flyers and record reviews. Four postcards. Two buttons. Edition of 400.