What Those Ingredients Are
(Sijis) Used CD $4.00
Field recordings of San Francisco Bay Area from 2004 by Steve Polta
Bury Me Deep
(Troniks) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
A rare album that assuredly sustains a distinct mood of dread throughout its entirety, with the 18-minute “The Dead Boy Would Not Go Away” most successfully enrapturing via minimalism and low-rumbling grime, and “The Earth Was Loose” including an orchestra of motorcycle rev-ups and crashes in the manner of sleazy teen exploitation flicks from the ’50s and ’60s. Bury Me Deep is a bit difficult to process upon the first listen, but coming back to it reveals an incredibly nuanced and pronounced craft, that requires patience and an appreciation for understated disquietude.
Daily Basic
(Phons) CDR $14.25
3 gon’s debut album consists of one recording and seven others related to it. This synthesis of electrical signals, speaker cone displacement, air compression and rarefaction, textual differentiators, image-borne aesthetic contaminants, and a dynamic web of social relations describes itself when in use. Edition of 50.
Theology
(Soleilmoon) Used CD $10.00
The group straddles the line between live improvisation and studio experimentation, shaping raw sounds into living pieces and gently dissecting the delicately structured songs into disruptive excursions evocative of moving shadows and swirling leaves. Acoustic instruments and vocals form a familiar reference point, but studio treatments take the music into psychedelic and cinematic realms. Wooden box. Insert. Edition of 450
Zoned
(Destijl - IND068) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
The first public appearance pairing Christian Henjes and Juergen Gleue (inspired by and with names derived from LSD-25, they would become CH-39 and JG-39) was in 1976, at the Dada Nova (a space occupied by Otto Mühl's AAO commune) in midtown Hannover, Germany. Dada Nova would be a space of enduring clash. From the subtlety of a shat-upon organ to the ejection from communal meetings by bodily force, the AAO displayed that the presence of the 39 Clocks was one of their constant grief. Known for pranksterism and the destruction of the clubs in which they performed, friction in every form continually followed the band. In 1979 they were thrown out of a show in Kassel at Dokumenta (their sounds had disturbed Joseph Beuys). They created an outrage (see the tune “Art Minus Idiots”) at the Filmtage Hannover with their avant-garde Super 8 movies made under the disguise of director Zachius Lipschitz. At a Hannover show at the Cafe Glocksee, they are rumored to have played the vacuum cleaner and a circular saw instead of guitars, and there was even a knife throwing incident in Bremen. Inspired, then, clearly, by protest in the broadest and most romantic sense (see the tune “Radical Student Mob In Satin Boots”), their sound was attuned to classic American punk and Nuggets, although this is not Bomp rock; the thrust of 39 Clocks purposed deconstruction and reassembly in the most modern sense. This collection was put together with the non-completeist in mind (originals of some of these records are as rare as Italian underwear), intending to display the general 39 Clocks vibe, but also some of their more curious wrinkles. And as the Clocks were always interested in where they were going and not where they'd been, the chronology here is strictly reversed. Diedrich Diedrichsen, who wrote the first review of the band in Spex, scribed liner notes.
cloud
(Erstwhile - ERST046) Used 2xCD $12.00
Keith Rowe, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz and Toshimaru Nakamura, each with extensive discographies and distinctive styles, formed the Four Gentlemen of the Guitar (4g) in 2004, and played a series of shows in Europe and Canada, three of which (from Vand'ouevre, Paris and Victoriaville) are contained on cloud. The widely differing aesthetics of the four musicians meld fluidly, forming hovering, delicate masses of sound. Sealed
Audio Super Predator
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
David Brownstead’s harsh noise project from the late 1990s delivers a wall of hellfire and damnation. Crushing, agonized, archetypical noise that never lets up.
Panegyric
(Nextbestway - NBWAY08) CD $10.00
Thirty-minute live recording from 2006, with Bruce Russell on Clavioline and guitar, and Alastair Galbraith on glass harmonica and violin.
Diaspora Brag
(Chocolate Monk - choc.566) CDR $8.00
“Him who was Wanda Group takes time off from flexing his guns and punching up at the twats,” explains our friend Corriander from Mutek PR,” To present more than 70 minutes of lurk-affirming tunes / no tunes. Four-foot-eight in heels, the grizzly man of Hudds (a dog’s hole) is the gift that keeps on seeping.” That same Hudds-based grizzly man chimes in, “I have become infatuated with this theory of the human clock system — each section or item inside and on your body having a built in time code; each particle, each piece of blood, having a tempo or a moving, self-regulated grasp on seconds; each lung being its own lung, and each bone or tongue being the king or queen of itself.” That all of Diaspora Bag was made on an iPhone 6 is of little consequence in the hands of a Hudds-based grizzly man who is naturally gifted at bending and crafting vibrations. Nevertheless. Edition of 60
Itsukushimi no Ame no naka de
(Musik Atlach - MA007) CD $16.50
Female accordion player based in Tokyo, whose noteworthy debut, Utsuho (Tzadik 2001), featured Haino Keiji as a guest musician. She crosses the border between pop and avant-garde with ease (a natural part of the territory when your instrument of choice is the accordion). Her hushed improv bears the beauty and nostalgia of folklore; within her delicate exotica are hidden fortitude and energy.
Merzbow / A Torture Mechanism
(Crucial Blast) Used Split CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Merzbow’s “Unknown Tape 1994” is rather slow-paced wall noise, powerful enough to satisfy primal noise cravings. A Torture Mechanism’s roughly cut cassette noise is at times not unlike early Ramleh, with a solid bass end ridden with all sorts of meaty oscillating saw waves. 2001 reissue of Fistfight’s 1999 edition packaged in card a sleeve and held in an A5 sized pink paper folder with two info inserts and two thin clear plastic outer sheets.
Ghast / Abandoner
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR079) split CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Ghast: tortured, slow black doom. Abandoner: sparse, post-industrial noise landscapes by members of Unearthy Trance.
KAORU ABE / DEREK BAILEY / TOSHINORI KONDO / MOTOHARU YOSHIZAWA
Aida's Call
(Starlight Furniture Company - *9) CD $40.00 (Out-of-stock) (Out-of-print)
Wake up jazzbo, the free-train is leaving the station, and it won't be coming back. A limited edition of 500, once-in-a-lifetime, mysterious and previously cassette-only document of this 30-year old meeting between guitar-improv locomotive Bailey and Japanese heavyweights Yoshizawa (bass), Kondo (trumpet), and the legendary Abe (alto sax). A forty-minute improvisational rail splitting recorded live on May 3, 1978, during Bailey's tour of Japan, brought about via his meeting with Japanese "svengali" Aquirax Aida.
ERYCK ABECASSIS / FRANCISCO MEIRINO
La Gueule Du Loup
(Fragment Factory - FRAG41) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
This high-voltage electronic collaboration is a brutal jump in an ocean of noise steel. Modular synthesizers sing cruelly in the duo’s exploratory and abrasive free improv. La Gueule Du Loup arises rough from the manipulated modules and is propelled immediately into the atmosphere where it becomes virtual plasma. Elements, sounds, tones, micro-tones, and rhythms cohere in order and chaos. Edition of 300
Set Of Five
(New Albion - NA036) Used CD $10.00
Violinist David Abel, pianist Julie Steinberg, and percussionist William Winant’s 1990 view of Pacific Rim influences in modern classical composition. Henry Cowell’s title composition and Lou Harrison’s “Varied Trio” use exotic percussion and the-world-is-one inspiration, while John Cage’s “Noctourne” is not so explicit, and Somei Satoh’s “Toki No Mon” opens time to “not simply progress from past into future, but slowly describes a circle.” The five-part “Invocations to Vahakn” by Alan Hovhaness delves further through cultural icons to the ancient Armenian sun god.
Benny Does Jets
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.369) CDR $8.00
A sound agitation hoedown between the Australian wonder scruff (all sweat, blood and beers performing on glass) and Zealand’s best-trimmed beard (four years running) on electronics and voice. Recorded live at the Tempe Jets rugby club at the edge of Sydney International Airport. Visceral electronic fart tones stomp a happy jig and attempt to crack that code you have floating in your skull. Numbered edition of 60
Carbon & Chairs
(Monotype - MONO046) CD $14.00
The second release by Vienna-based musicians and sound artists Andreas Trobollowitsch and Johannes Tröndle, who started collaborating in 2006 on sound composition, experimental radio plays, and manipulated field recordings. Beginning as an extension of their live electroacoustic duo Nörz, Carbon & Chairs pushes the instrumentation, structural complexity, and accessibility, which in turn convinced Trobollowitsch and Tröndle to christen themselves Acker Velvet, after the title of their previous Nörz album (Schraum 2009). The twelve tracks here are based on a series of improvisations, separately performed and recorded, and subsequently restructured and re-arranged on the computer. The results are dense and diverse, colorful and full of tension, settled somewhere between noise and harmony, collage and composition, experiment and pop. Viennese singer Werner Kitzmüller guests on one track.
The Rotten Opacity Of It All (All This Rot)
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.280) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Glasgow’s best-dressed hun Stuart Arnot and wee fireplug Susan Fitzpatrick continue the good fight for bizarre ear treats. Purposeful, primitive playing full of violin creaks and scrapes, which then morphs into seasick wooze. Vocals sputter, mumble and sing with Mogadon droop. Sprinkles of archaic tape manipulation. A musique brut take on a Harry Partch piece. Wallow in their inquisitive sound world.
ACRID LACTATIONS / GWILLY EDMONDEZ
You Have Not Learned To Play And Mock In The Psychic System
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.341) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Stuart Arnot and Susie Fitzpatrick stumble out good-foot-style with everyone’s favorite academic dunderhead Gwilly Edmondez for inspired avant jig, coming off at times like a more abstract John Gavanti or a peasant island take on Fatty Jubbo’s missing-in-action Ritualistic School Of Errors. This could be post-Brexit “Last of The Summer Wino” blues, as they trundle down the mind slide with a wheelbarrow full of string instruments, tapes, keyboards and other junk — sometimes arse over tit with plenty of yelps, gurgles and hollers, only to land upright again and blow your spinning skull with gentle creepy sway and yodel. Seriously munged magic. Edition of 60
Ta Yu Ta 1
(Hören) Used CD $25.00
Gentle and flowing understatement by Akinori Yamasaki and drowsiness (guitar and sounds) with Akio Suzuki (stone flute, analapos, glass harmonica) and Atsumi Yasuda (voice). Ideal for mopping the inside of your skull.
Stranger On A Couch
(Central Control International) Used CD $5.00
Ninth solo album, from 2006, swinging through dark pop, atmospheric instrumentals, demented circus music, catchy pop spilling over with Hammond organ and acoustic strumming, slide guitar and a big harmonica hook, cinematic soul, martial drums, beautiful string synths and piano, funk and dub leanings.
Buster
(Sentient - SR02) CD $10.75 (Out-of-stock)
(Sentient - SR02) Used CD $7.00
Massive is an understatement. Absolutely monolithic down-tuned guitar assaults twist through almost mechanized, mind-bending rhythms while tortured vocals narrate how wretched life actually is, like a monstrous cyborg in the process of human extermination, all too aware of the atrocities it commits.
Boquetot / Paris / Port Jerome
(Groundfault - GF021) CD $12.00
Music produced by Eric Cordier (processing, contact microphone recordings), Jean-Luc Guionnet (long string recording devices, mixing), and Eric La Casa (condenser & contact microphone recordings, filtering, processing, mixing) at specific sites: a windy day on a highway exit ramp near a hemispherical tunnel made of sheets of corrugated iron, with amplified steel strings stretched between it and the recording van; a train station; and an emergency training day at a huge petroleum factory, near valves regulating steam pressure).
Viosphere + Selected Works 1984 – 1991
(Art Into Life - AIL007) CD $19.00 (Out-of-stock)
As a continuation of some of these ideas formulated during art and improvised violin experiments in the late 1970s, Hideaki Shimada started adding tapes, which led to the creation of the Agencement electronic project in 1985. Art into Life’s reissue of Viosphere (Pico 1991) adds three previously unissued tracks from the same period. Of particular interest is a heavily avant-garde performance for guitar, amplifier and autoharp from a 1988 studio session with Toukaseibunshi’s Hironari Iwata. With twelve-page booklet of period performance photographs and several 2011 visual works. Edition of 200.
Paternoster
(Musik Atlach - MA005) CD $16.50
Naomi Hoca's funereal, dark drones are based on old sacred songs. As a devotee of ancient religious music from the Renaissance and Middle Ages, she is affected by the work of mystics and tries to combine music from Christianity and the point of view of the pagan. Her sound consists of drone, quotation, sacred song and her vocalization, and is dedicated in condolence to forgotten casualties of war.
Memory & Hearing
(Hospital - HOS327) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Difficult collage noise requiring repeated listening.
Radio Guitar
(Ecstatic Peace) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nine untitled tracks from 2001, with Ess on effects-saturated guitar and Ahwesh playing the short wave radio as if it’s a musical instrument. Partly planned, partly spontaneous musical compositions of dense and often melodic sounds and noise.
Live At Mark Moore Gallery
(Helicopter - HEL 95121) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Multi-channel and heavily dosed with subliminal messages, recorded June 21, 2014 in Culver City, California. The line-up includes: Don Bolles, Ted Byrnes, Dennis Duck, Ace Farren Ford, Michael Foster, Juan Gomez, Fredrik Nilsen, Joseph Hammer, Kevin Laffey, Jorge Martin, Rick Potts, Dani Tull, John Wiese, Vetza, and of course the master of skull-crushing himself, Mr. Joe Potts.
Listen to an excerpt here: https://soundcloud.com/meditations/airway-live-at-mark-moore-gallery-excerpt
The Lowest Form Of Music
(Helicopter) split 2xCD $16.00
Los Angeles Free Music Society titans and Japanese icons energetically tear through boundary-pushing movement, raucously combining free improv experiments and sonic daggers with feral roar and pounding percussion. Disc one features the legendary live performances by each group recorded at The Lowest Form of Music weekend in London, 2010. Disc two reissues the split record originally released on Harbinger Sound to celebrate the festival, featuring performances from 2009 by Airway in New York and Hijokaidan in Tokyo. Mastered by John Wiese, packaged in a six-panel digipak with liner notes by Takuya Sakaguchi in Japanese and English.
Chonmage
(Satsugai Enka) Used 3-inch CD $10.00
Lo-fi destroyed hardcore from 1994 by Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba) and Toyohito Yoshikawa (Boredoms, UFO or Die, Grind Orchestra). Fourteen tracks in under 15 minutes. In standard size CD jewelbox, with 8pp book of drawings. Includes obi
Delicate Instruction
(Pure) Used CD $5.00
Rather dark, slowly enveloping noise fields from 1996, manifested with synths, loops and radio sounds. Primitively made but with intensity.
Akaten
(Magaibutsu) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Using a moniker that translates “red heaven,” Tsuyama Atsushi (Omoide Hatoba) and Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins) embrace irresponsibility by using common objects like scissors, toothbrush, zipper, camera and plastic bottle as percussion, and brand names shouted over and over as the lyrics. Low cost, maximum sound effect, experimental convenience store punk recorded 1995. Paper bag cover with glue-on artwork.
False Positives
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR02) CD + DVDr $11.50
Dark and brooding or mellifluously uplifting (take your pick), the third full-length album from Hiroshima-based, ex-pat Scotsman Paul Thomsen Kirk carries on from Unconfirmed Reports the recurrent, underlying theme of urban and cultural alienation in a media-saturated Japanese metropolitan environment. Whether skimming the surface or trawling the dank underbelly, Kirk examines the daily minutiae of life in a large, concrete-and-glass-and-steel Japanese city, in all its garish hues and faded glories. Accessing all areas, and dispelling some Japanese urban myths along the way, False Positives is a thoroughly enticing, mesmeric, 360-degree adventure. Limited edition DVDr contains six videos.
Short Fuse
(Alt.Vinyl - AV071) LP + CD $24.00
Paul Thomsen Kirk’s fifth full-length album navigates the last of the concrete, glass and steel of the large urban cityscapes of Japan and enters the de-populated rural villages and barren rice fields. Sound-tracked by pounding rhythms; disembodied electronics; roughly hewn, effected samples; whirling dervish dance-marathons; concussive percussion; and twisted snippets of lost conversations, the album is akin to listening to a multi-waveband radio tuned into post-Fukushima short wave transmissions replete with static-laden, disembodied newscasters lamenting forgotten faces and life-lines to the gone forever, the extinguished firmament of normality. CD contains entire album plus three non-vinyl bonus tracks. With inserts. 180-gram, colored vinyl. Edition of 250
Unconfirmed Reports
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR001) CD + DVDr $12.00
The second full-length release from Hiroshima-based Scots musician, filmmaker, and photographer Paul Kirk (ex-Twisted Nerve, ex-Bigshot) is an in-depth, electronic-based, audio/visual travelogue of late autumn through to early spring. Dark, brooding, occasionally menacing, deeply seductive, Unconfirmed Reports carries on the urban alienation and social exclusion first heard on Akatombo’s Trace Elements, released by Colin Newman’s Swim label. By skimming the surface and trawling the dank underbelly, Kirk presents the daily minutiae of life in a large Japanese city in all its garish hues and faded glories. Mix engineered by Makoto Kubota (Les Rallizes Denudes). The DVDr contains three films with music from the album. Hand-numbered edition in oversized printed envelope, containing two photographic art-prints, two random newspaper cuttings.
NOËL AKCHOTÉ / ROLAND AUZET / LUC FERRARI
Impro-Micro-Acoustique
(Blue Chopsticks) Used CD $9.00
Impressed by Akchoté mistreating his instrument in his characteristic, inimitable manner, the venerable composer regarded the Parisian guitarist’s solo set as “new, real-time concrete.” Auzet, who had previously performed the demanding percussion part in Ferrari’s Cellule 75, is another obvious choice for this trio, with Ferrari on piano – utterly at home and in-the-moment for this first encounter in 2003. This meticulously crafted assemblage of shifting sonic perspectives is “a play of depths, where individual attacks come abruptly and unpredictably to the fore. Its taut, edge-of-seat, aggressive interplay is deployed within the wondrous frame of Ferrari’s montage.”
The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue
(I Release) Used CD $8.00
EMS synthesizer, Ishibashi theremin, tapes, and noise electronics. Composeed for the Theatre play Akutoku No Sakae/ Bitoku No Fuko by Romantica, and based on the Marquis De Sade’s Historie De Juliette Ou Les Prosperites Du Vice and Les Infortunes De La Vertu. From 1996
MASAMI AKITA / JOJO HIROSHIGE / MASAHIKO OHNO / MIKI SAWAGUCHI
Uterus and Human
(Alchemy) CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
International Domestic
(Corpus Hermeticum) Used CD $5.00
In these duets by Akiyama with guitarist Greg Malcolm, no-input mixing board whiz Toshimaru Nakamura, and Bruce Russell on electronics and clavioline, you’ll hear “how aggressive and off-balance a music founded on restraint can get,” promises Paris Transatlantic. “Akiyama leaves vast spaces between his jagged twangs and clanks…, and does things to his guitar pickups with a steak knife that would have a sushi chef sweating. Nakamura’s work is more disjointed here too, and their fourteen-minute duet packs a few nasty surprises. The duet with Malcolm sounds more like what you’d expect to hear in Tokyo’s Off Site, but Russell … is more confrontational…. Their duet emerges out of a babble of audience noise … [and] exists in a permanent state of impending catastrophe, building a fantastic sense of tension that’s all too often lacking in Japanese-style micro-improv.”
TETUZI AKIYAMA / JASON KAHN / UTAH KAWASAKI
Luwa
(Rossbin) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Analog improv trio date led by Akiyama (on tape delayed electric guitar) with Kahn on modular synth and cymbal, and Kawasaki on dismantled Roland synthesizer.
Résophonie
(A Bruit Secret) Used CD $8.00
Prepared guitar played with a resonator. “Strings buzz…, as … the resonator triggering unsuspected responses from the paper clips, pens, and other objects inserted under the strings,” say All Music Guide. “The pieces sound both harsh and crystalline…; in the realm of reductionis / lowercase avant-garde music, this album comes as a strange proposition.”
TETUZI AKIYAMA / TOM GREENWOOD
Stoned Runes
(Akti) Used CD $8.00
Quiet, intimate and beautifully wandering document from 2008. Zonked folk improv played on acoustic guitars, recorded live at Ringoya in Tokyo. 2021 reissue.
Akron/Family
(Young God) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Opaque psych-folk weirdness [from 2005] with each of the Brooklyn band’s four principal members receiv[ing] a ‘bric-a-brac’ credit next to the more conventional listings for guitar, piano, melodica, glockenspiel, and percussion…. Unidentifiable noises have a way of splattering suddenly across the album’s plaintive acoustics…. melding … animalistic percussion, layered voices, pleading melody, and hints of electronic noisemaking to the lo-fi aesthetic….”
Love Is Simple
(Young God) Used CD + DVD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Chaos, rock action, tribal bongo-banging, sentimental sing-alongs and pop gems galore. From 2007. Sealed
Playback Device Confusion Volume One
(Mego) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live at Rhiz Records, Austria, 2002. Guests include Tiefpunk Crew, Schimpfluch-Gruppe International, Good Looking Communists, Costes, Fear Of God, K2, R. H.Y Yau, Raionbashi, Noize Punishment, Mouse, General Dub, Doormouse & Stuntrock, and Arsedestroyer. Shaped CD, packaged in a slimline jewelcase, with obi. Sealed
SYED KAMRAN ALI / LUDO MICH / PASCAL NICHOLS
The Wet Black Poodle Transforms
(Singing Knives) CD $10.50
Recordings from November 2011 in Manchester and Sheffield of performances by legendary Flemish Fluxus artist, performer and filmmaker, with the Harappian Night Recordings mastermind and the percussionist from Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides. “Mich is in mind-bending form here,” observes our mole inside Volcanic Tongue, “Forsaking established ‘sound poetry’ modes for spontaneous body strategies, snores, bursts of song and screams, at points getting into an amazing Patty Waters-esque riff on ‘black,’ at others channeling the ferocious osmotic tongue of Blixa Bargeld circa “Negative Nein.” Ali and Nichols bolster the industrial ritual feel with metal tones, tonal skin sounds, weird moments of gamelan drone and sudden explosions of full bore improvisation that nod to the kinda volcanic interplay of the Music Improvisation Company or the large scale percussive constructs of Tony Oxley.” Edition of 150. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
De Speenzalvinge
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR081) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
First full-length. Three tracks of brutal, driving blackened sludge doom.
Luizig
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR029) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of demo from this Belgian primitive black metal / doom band. One haunting, brutally lo-fi track. Black-on-black silkscreened covers.
MARSHALL ALLEN / HAMID DRAKE / KIDD JORDAN / WILLIAM PARKER / ALAN SILVA
All-Star Game
(Eremite) Used CD $17.00
“There’s much to celebrate about these two discs, classic encounters of the energy chapter of free jazz -- in each case two saxophones and rhythm section blowing toward some apocalyptic possibility; no theme in sight, with power and conviction that have too often seemed drained from American free jazz. What happens in each case is an explosion of impassioned utterance, soul-searing work in the rituals first defined by Ayler, Coltrane, Sanders, and the Sun Ra reed section of which Marshall Allen was a member. These may not, in any sense, be regular bands, but they’re bands without a weak link, whether ego-centric, technical or conceptual. The All-Star Game features what is unquestionably the senior ensemble. It’s a marvelous meeting in which Allen and Jordan dance across the pulsing maze of multiplying rhythms set up by Drake an\d the two basses of Parker and Silva (another early presence). While Jordan unquestionably belongs in the All-Star Game, he is among the most under-rated of musicians, a fountain of torrid energy and exalted invention who is entirely worthy of this rhythm section.” From 2000. Clipped corner
Let New Life Rise In The Face Of Death
(Hasten & Korset - 045) Used CD $24.00
This CD reissue of Mattias Gustafsson’s haunted and solitary tape (Sprachloss Verlag 2011) includes two new compositions, one with Joachim Nordwall on analogue synths and effects. “Although the trademark oscillator, synth and feedback work of Altar of Flies still echoes in the tracks,” notes Peter Henning, “Let New Life Rise In The Face OF Death references classic avant-garde composition as much as it embraces the seedy grit of industrial and noise music…. [A] haunting blend of environmental and found sounds that seriously throws out a challenge to the established canon of Swedish concrète.” Edition of 300.
Reconnaissance
(Staubgold) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Analog electronics and guitar fused together, a subtle and compelling realignment of Eastern and Western minimalist traditions.
Highland Park
(Chocolate Monk - choc.230) CDR $9.00
Nine tracks ranging from tranquility to ghostly static and voice mazes. Records, record players, montage flexi discs, electrical interference, cassete tape hiss, shortwave, and field recordings. A rather addictive and mesmerizing piece of work with contributions from Gen Ken Montgomery, Damion Romero, Bob Bellerue, Das, and Howard Stelzer.
Play
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Loops of spliced flexi-discs — a monument to recycled sounds. Guests include Michael Johnson, Wm. Christman, Chemical Toybox, Damion Romero, PBK, and Crawl Unit.
From A Strange Place
(PSF) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
As with many a concert by mature incarnations of AMM, a large portion of this 1995 live event in Japan is quiet, spare, and gestural. Pianist John Tilbury is in post-Feldman mode throughout, softly raining isolated, lovely figures while Eddie Prévost delicately, if atonally, bows cymbals and other metals, and quietly rustles objects over his drumheads. Keith Rowe’s muted rubbings and radio transmission are supremely attuned to the ruminations of his companions.
Paradieswärts Düül
(Captain Trip - CTCD017) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 reissue of their third album (Ohr 1971). Includes two bonus tracks "Eternal Flow" and "Paramechanical World," from their only seven-inch (Ohr 1970).
PETER ANDERSSON / MAURIZIO BIANCHI / HENRIK NORDVARGR BJÖRKK / ERIK JARL
S.F.A.G. / S.F.A.G. De-Composed
(Old Europa Cafe - OECD134) 2xCD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The full-length work as heard in its original form on Broken Flag’s 1983 cassette, digitally remastered. The second disc contains three de-compositions by Nordic sympathizers using extracts of the original S.F.A.G. recordings.
La Hora Lobicán
(Lemuria) Used CD $16.00
The return of historically significant Basque singer-songwriter revered for his ability to capture in song, through cultural and political comment, the lights and shadows of the Spanish society of the 1970s. Sealed
The Tubular West
(Torpor Vigil Industries) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Avant garde pop with a modern composition vibe by Canadian multi-instrumentalist who plays everything from heckelphone to synth, stylophone to piano, oboe and English horn to, of course, wooden plank. Aided and abetted by bassist Andrea Agostinti; Ayako Okubo on piccolo and bass flute; Olivier Maurel on drums and vibraphone; his brother Léo on bass guitar, fiddle and, ahem, a box of bumblebees; and Steve Venright doing the real-time electronic modulation. Recommended if you like the song cycles of Van Dyke Parks, Club Foot Orchestra’s soundtrack to Metropolis, Andy Partridge’s recent collaborations. Includes twelve-page book.
Best of The Android Sisters
(EM) Used CD $45.00
2004 Japanese reissue of the PKD-inspired Songs of Electronic Despair (Vangaurd, 1984), which combines MIDI / Synclavier, genre-hopping, dual femme robot-disco vox, and social satire. Includes five previously unavailable tracks taken from various episodes of 1980s radio series “RUBY: The Galactic Gumshoe” plus 48-page book of facts, interviews, and lyrics in Japanese and English.
Litaniæ Mortuorum Discordantes
(The Epicurean - CURE11) CD $21.00
Soul-shredding funeral music built on dissonance, intended for church performance, triggering spiritual delight (aka dread, existential anxiety, feelings of death and decay). Anemone Tube and Post Scriptvm stage a linear, gradually unfolding “oratorio” which begins with layers of lush brass synths resounding a time and place enveloped in ancient mythical beauty. The pristine serenity, however, slowly deteriorates through the influx of anguish, social decay and profanity. Raw field recordings, throbbing electronics, metallic tremors, distant voices and chants portrait a life of numbness and confusion, where man — tormented by ignorance, ignoble desires and anger — has become a plaything of insane “Weltanschauungen” and the commercialization plague. Ka-ching.
How I Loved You
(Young God) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Far from M. Gira’s usual terrain of brute excess and into a zone of languid reverie, bittersweet longing, this 2001 album is “largely acoustic with a palette of oblique electronic washes and blurred sonic architectures applied for cavernous, orchestral atmosphere. Its elegance is seductive.” With Gira on vocals, guitars, and effects; Christoph Hahn on lap and electric guitars; Lawrence Mullins on percussion; Dana Shecter on bass and piano; Birgit-Cassis Staudt on accordion, piano, and Casio; and Thor Harris on dulcimer and piano, joined by Bliss Blood on vocals and Kid Congo Powers on electric guitar. Digipak. Sealed.
New Mother
(Young God) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“M. Gira continues with his intentional break from Swans. Anything but a softening of his art…, New Mother instead … experiment[s] even further, concentrating on acoustic guitar songs accompanied by a variety of musicians…. The general feel of the entire record draws on a juxtaposition of lush ’60s American and European pop orchestration (the use of a banjo inevitably recalls Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks) with often stark, ominous recordings and arrangements…, creating a marvelous.…” Digipak.
Sing Other People
(Young God) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pitchfork calls this 2005 album “a gutsy record. It maintains the band’s lo-fi intimacy while expanding its breadth to include back-up singing and more voluminous instrumentation. Fans of Everything Is Good Here / Please Come Home, the Angels’ tumultuous 2003 stab at lysergic goth-folk, shouldn’t be faulted for thinking they’re hearing a different band altogether. Part of this metamorphosis can be attributed to the assistance of fellow Young God signees Akron/Family. ‘Lena’s Song’ stakes Michael Gira’s booming baritone against a glistening backdrop of nylon-string plucking, fretless bass, glockenspiel, and a chipper Beach Boys-esque vocal harmony. The song proves Angels of Light capable of clarity and levity…. ‘My Friend Thor’ is as subtle an act of self-immolation as a club to the head from its namesake: It starts acoustic, with a laconic Gira following the rigid outline of his strumming, before he’s blindsided by a burbling gamelan orchestra. The detour moves the song from the sound of stark isolation to a full-on fireside jamboree, replete with a veritable tabernacle-full of backup vocalists.” Digipak
We Are Him
(Young God) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
On the sixth and “most engaging [of Michael Gira’s albums] as Angels of Light,” according to Pitchfork, “he’s backed by one of the most impressive guest lists of the year (Akron/Family providing the basic tracks, plus new friends or longtime collaborators Larkin Grimm, David Garland, and Bill Rieflin)…, [and has] rarely sounded this foreboding: Prodded by a scathing, raw violin drone and a daring chorus of sirens, it’s an escalating dirge for the collapse of society, full of floods, blood and mouths too stupid to scream. Beneath an electric guitar twitter, heavy drums and furious strings…, Gira hands down … imprecations.” Digipak edition from 2007
Bidden
(Glistening Examples - GLEX1501) CDR $10.00
Six compositions from between 1996 and 2009, and the previously unreleased 20-minute “Feldweg” by one-time secret weapon for Caroliner, Fat Worm of Error, and Deerhoof. Tiny Mix Tapes is pretty sure Bidden can easily “satisfy your deep and abiding desire for your head space to get crackled,” while Bhob Rainey is equally reassuring: “No one [else] handles so many skittering, teeming particles with such (alien) bar room elegance.” Listen to “The Arduous Transmigration Of An Incongruous Plastic Child” here: https://soundcloud.com/glistening-labs/angst-hase-pfeffer-nase-the-arduous-transmigration-of-an-incongruous-plastic-child
THOMAS ANKERSMIT / VALERIO TRICOLI
Forma II
(Pan - PAN16) CD $12.00
Four electroacoustic pieces based largely on analogue synthesizer material and one long-form swarm-like composition for multiple overdubbed saxophones -– the duo’s first collaborative output, composed and recorded in Berlin between 2008 and 2010. Additional sounds range from metal foil floating on ultrasonic sound-beams to mechanical clickers recorded in the abandoned radar domes at Teufelsberg. The raw materials have been extensively processed and re-constructed using analogue tape and digital methods. The five pieces shift between sharply detailed blizzards of electronic interference to passages of delicate balance, between calm and turbulence, between stasis and rapid shape-shifting, between multiple virtual spaces and non-spaces.
Absolut Null Plunkt Live In Japan
(Important) Used CD $6.00
Stark pummeling fusion from 2003 by Zeni Geva founder KK Null and original Fushitsusha drummer Seijiro Murayama, combining elements of free jazz, heavy rock, industrial noise, glitch and free improv dynamics. Sealed.
ANTIMATTER / ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI
KHz
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50
The second collaboration by Karkowski and Xopher Davidson (Antimatter) slowly rattles one’s skeleton with gradually intensifying hums and buzzes and rumbles and drones and pulsations (and trots out plenty of onomatopoeia from ye olde noise almanac), until one’s bone marrow is more slippery than week-old cat piss pooled in a bean bag chair. Powerful and focused for 45 minutes. You can take it.
ANTLER / RICHARD MELTZER / ROBERT POLLARD / SMEGMA / VOM
Complete Soundtrack for The Tropic of Nipples
(Off - 998) Used CD $10.00
A once-in-a-lifetime sickness: Guided By Voices chairman joins forces with Blue Oyster Cult lyricist and long-running noise outfits for oddball bubble-and-burn words and music. Features all twelve tracks from the out-of-print seven-inch version, plus eleven bonus cuts.
Fetish
(Silent - SR9009) Used CD $8.00
The inexplicable, alien communiqué by David Myers, “Penetrating Black Ice,” uses rhythmically repeated and sustained feedback tones, vibrations, static and resonances to penetrate the subconscious. With the use of a sampler, various sound effects, and a guest appearance by AMK, Kim Cascone attempts something similar on four shorter tracks of cloudy, paranoid drone and ominous sound vapor.
Edit For Unconscious
(Auscultare Research) Used Split CD $3.00
“Arford’s ‘Drift Counter’ is a white wash of buzzer noise and open mic sizzle,” says Igloo Magazine. “At about 23 minutes the isolated energy of the mower-like sonics freeze the subconscious for a moment and stir-fry it back up again…. Drops of threatening noise taunt in Yau’s ‘Second Coming,’ like a griddling of some type of hovering being that gets caught in the radiant glow of drone. The track climaxes to a gas-like explosion which melts all in its course to the din of reverberation. Edit for Unconsciousness also includes Arford’s barely grounded ‘Headworms,’ originally released as part of a split mini-CD with the Haters. The piece has a molten core slow-roasting all in/outputs. Yau’s ‘Realia’ opens this recording with a quick cut-up-cum-slow-perk approach. Its mild side is nothing if not an eerie message from a force outside of our realm. Suddenly the plug is pulled and wavers out in slow motion. The drama invigorates and has the ability to give you the shakes.” From 2001
Ark Drane
(Chocolate Monk - choc.587) CDR $8.00
“Ark Drane’s debut is a collaboration between Karen Constance and Kristafer Abplanalp. ‘Hangnail Persistence’ dips the listener to a loping gate that fords up through the swales and circles round the midden, like if Brothers Quay whittled dub music out of wooden blocks forging a beat of wet earth stirred in memory dimly carried to bed at night on rainy days. ‘Laugh like Midwestern Wind Chimes’ is the resonating afterimage of finding yourself in an unfamiliar neighborhood liquor store asking for a six-pack of Peroni, only to be told that Peroni used to live down the block but has been locked up for ten years. ‘Monks on a Train’ produces the aural translation of the following Cormac McCarthy sentence: ‘Wasps pass through the laddered light of barn slats in a succession of strobic moments, between black and black, like fireflies in the serried upper gloom.’ Most of the source material to ‘Bloodline Stitches’ was reportedly recorded in a Kentucky hospital’s Cardiology Wing of an Intensive Care Unit, summer of 2021. From what this listener can discern, black husks of pupae swarm the purloined insurance agents rendering portraits of their noses, caked in enamel, framed in gold, with miniscule chains to fit under their clothes.” —Crozier Lathrop. Edition of 60
Eternal Life In New York City
(Phase! - PHR123) CD $9.00
Outsider songwriting through stripped playability on the verge of ’90s-era 4AD melancholy and Shadow Ring’s isolated ghost reverb. The mature epitome of decaying urban loneliness. Edition of 100. Become one with yourself and listen to “The Soulless Boy of Eden” here: https://soundcloud.com/phasemag/arklight-the-soulless-boy-of-eden
Sonic Experimentation
(Bizarre Audio Arts) Used CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 noise by Sabatto, Coronel and F. Torres using tapes, old records, machines, pipes. Stickered label.
Fitness Landscape
(Takashi Mobile) Used CD $5.00
Live and studio guitar / electronics from 2009 and 2010.
ARTBREAKHOTEL / NEW BLOCKADERS
Haikagura
(Art Into Life - AIL002) 2xCD $26.00
Rusting metal junk, discarded as valueless trash, but when filled with blood, flesh, and bone, transformed into potent sources of energy, chunks of which rouse the savage souls, dragging us out of comfortable, everyday reality into an imaginary world — a choking, vacuum-like, hermetically sealed space where one loses touch with the senses as they are push toward freedom. Cover art is a classical, elegant portrait photo by Rupenus walked over and spat upon by Yamada. Package consists of a long box, containing a handmade objet card made of scrap metal (each unique in shape and design) and twelve-page booklet of artwork. Edition of 250. Listen to an excerpt from “Syntax Destruction 3” here: https://soundcloud.com/a_i_l/the-new-blockaders-artbreakhotel-syntax-destruction-3
Distori (Noah)
(Sondris) Used CD $5.00
Slawek Kwi’s late ’90s recordings of birds, amphibians, and insects in their natural environments, mixed with bits of a computer crash captured on tape and synthesized voice samples.
Vol 5: Th Ality Absfract
(Audioview) Used CD $7.00
This volume of Slavek Kwi’s project concentrates on pulsation and rhythm. All sounds used come from concrete sources (birds, animals, household objects, street sounds, etc.), except for a computer voice and the drum beats, which were taken from a sampler CD. The astonishing number of layers give these works unusual depth. There is a whole ecosystem living in this CD ready to engulf.
Water Regions Of The Southwest USA
(Wholly Other) Used CD $3.00
Long and layered bass-triggered synth pieces by Paul Guilford / Locasta of the Dave Dove Paul Duo form an oblique concept album related to the fact that there are no naturally occurring lakes in Texas. Sounds range from appropriately aquatic to ambient (if your idea of ambiance is a construction site).
Unity + Peace = Strength
(Hanson) Used CDR $30.00
One twenty-minute track from 1998 performed by James T Harper, Steve Kenney, Aaron Dilloway, Adris Hoyos, Andrew Wilkes-Krier, Dan Hosker, Andy Roach. Edition of 40.
Samling
(Krim Kram) 2xCD $18.00
Originally compiled as a two-cassette release by Archivio Diafònico in 2016, now reissued as a double CD for optimum playback at your next MRI scan, Samling documents the earlier, “noisier” years of Arv & Miljö, collecting all compilation appearances from the project’s inception in 2010 up to 2015. Gritty, claustrophobic sound that includes environmental recordings, primitive melodic synth tones, and fragile failing electronics.
Saint Catherine Torment
(Discus) Used CD $5.00
Martin Archer’s atmospheric and varied improvisation from 2005 orchestrated with piano samples which are by turns aggressively insistent and delicately shaded. Shades of Stockhausen and Galina Ustvolskaya.
ASH CASTLES ON THE GHOST COAST
Ash Castles On The Ghost Coast
(Wholly Other) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The only full-length to emerge from the half-decade partnership between Galveston-based experimental musicians Shawn David McMillen and Heather Leigh Murray, Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast remains a highly listenable node on the Ptolemaic Terrascope-driven lo-fi psych scene of the mid-’90s,” explains All Music Guide. “Though McMillen would go on to make more guitar-oriented recordings for Tompkins Square and others, guitar is often only an instrument in the palette here. On ‘Ride Cactus Glide Cliff Explode,’ it acts as a source of detonation and disorientation, a layer of sound atop a percolating bed of noise. Elsewhere, it behaves almost normally — which is to say, it is strummed acoustically — on the vaguely folky ‘Dust of My Grave.’ But even there, the six strings drip into home-recorded reverb trails, instantly [placing it] on the global psychedelic timeline. The album has both vague inclinations toward prettiness [and] totally scorched noise jams…, unified by a distinct home-recorded sheen, the sound of creativity and youth.” Hand-painted inserts
World Turns On Its Hinge
(Tour de Garde) CD $12.00
The first full length CD from the black metal band of Dominick Fernow (Prurient) follows an acclaimed demo “Genital Tomb.” This incredible opus should please fans of Burzum, Satanic Warmaster, Katharsis or Akitsa.
Yet More Warnings / Object Permanence
(Chocolate Monk - choc.606) CDR $8.00
This South London duo improvises micro pseudo-music in order to cope with the chaos of overwhelming information and Tory governments. They organise Cliff-Edge, a regular show of “improv for end-times” at Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton. The pieces presented here were recorded a week apart in November 2021, both with a Bastl Microgranny each. It is the sound of goon men gathering the electronic shrapnel of what was music and gluing it back together with all the huff and wheeze of spore-huffing delusionals. A no-let-up set of frothing pitter patter. Sonics which are ripe to dissipate the gloom. Do you want a shovel or a spoon? Edition of 60
Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon
(Bôłt - BRPOP04) CD $14.00
Voices by Ergo Phizmiz and Lula, piano by Phizmiz, guitar by Maciej Cieślak, violin by Julia Ziętek, laptop by Alessandro Bosetti, turntable by DJ Lenar. Volume four in the label’s Populista series.
String Quartet Describing The Motions Of Large Real Bodies
(Alga Marghen) Used CD $8.00
Originally composed in 1972 — for an opera based on the text of “In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women” — when significant changes in electronic instrumentation were just beginning, and recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Oakland, California, that same year, Ashley’s twenty-minute piece calls for an electronic orchestra of forty-two sound-producing modules, where the string quartet makes intentional but unpremeditated streams and pulses like pitched clicks, which go directly to a set of four loudspeakers, but are also delayed electronically and sent to a series networks activated when original sounds and delayed sound coincide. One version of “How Can I Tell the Difference?” uses electronic orchestra sounds and other collages ingredients, such as reverberations and motorcycles sounds inside San Francisco’s underground labyrinth of concrete tunnels constructed by the military in the 1930s. On a second version from 1973, a solo string player opens and closes the sound gates to electronic reverberations and prerecorded sounds running continuously with the performance. With eight-page booklet of scores and liner notes by Ashley.
ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS / UNIVERSAL INDIANS
Ashtray Navigations / Universal Indians
(Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers) Used split CDR $12.00
“In the welter of home recording releases, it has to be said there is nobody quite like Phil Todd and his splendid Ashtray Navigations,” promises Sound Projector. “No other music sounds as chronically symptomatic of a week-long influenza fever, fraught with hallucinogenic visions of discomfort.... [S]tarting off with a whimpering puppy of a toy organ loop [the CD follows] the corridors of sound-leakage, ambient room recordings and noisy clutter with a suite of metal guitar solos…. Universal Indians … play very loud guitar and drums…, turgid and slow…, while the vocals are wrenched from the chest cavity of the singer as though he’s being given the Heimlich maneuver by a masked wrestler.”
Four More Raga Moods
(Ikuisuus) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four more slow-glowing trance bombs that combine lucid, transparent guitar gliss with spectral folk, subliminal drones and guest appearances from Alex Neilson, Ben Reynolds, Mel Delaney, Chris Hladowski, Matt Cairns, Andy Jarvis and Pete Nolan of Magik Markers, et al. From 2006
Four Raga Moods
(Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
There are indeed four untitled tracks from 1997 here, the first of which clocks in at a monolithic 41 minutes. “Compared to other Ashtray indulgences from the same era, it’s downright minimal,” observes Outer Space Gamelan, “Based around what I’d approximate to be harmonium, guitar, cheap percussion, field recordings, effects pedals, violin.... The only two general constants are a hazy pool of tape buzz, static and a woozy hand-drum rhythm…. At times it sounds like Phil Todd is trying to communicate a greater whole through an impenetrable wall of static, like a busted Walkman picking up alien satellite feeds or a shortwave radio station occurring just beyond the limits of the dial.”
To Your Fucking Feather’d Wings
(Gold Soundz) Used CDR $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Great, epic, slow-burning, surreal drone rock,” swears Head Heritage. “One of Phil Todd’s best.”
You Cannot Tell Cigars By The Picture On The Box
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Bedroom legends shower the parched earth with canonized filth and cheap-tape degradation,” sputters The Wire, “Setting a brand new bench mark in foggy-psychic-swuzz. Six extended tracks that run the gamut of ooze, sliming a cast of guest contributors along the way.”
Ed Askew
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $6.00
Ask The Unicorn from 1968 plus three tracks selected by Askew — “Accordion Man” from WYBC radio1970, “Green Song” from the early 1970s, and “A Soldier’s Song” from 2005.
Go Go Telescope
(EastWest Japan) Used CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Tantric tantrum dum-dum go-go music” is how KFJC tags this hard-to-find import disc. “As catchy as your favorite STD. Fashion king husband and helium queen wife dote over their child, the drum machine. Unlike their Stingy Banana releases, most lyrics here are in Japanese but the titles tell the story pretty well. Stupid, silly, and sexy with a banzai scream. This is mangled musical manga. Cartoon tunes that rawk!”
Phuket A La Bum Bum
(Bulb) Used CD $5.00
This is some fucked-up shit. While general roustabout Bob Limp thumps along in the background on a variety of acoustic, analog and digital instruments, Japanese comedienne Naoko Nozawa screeches in the foreground like a geisha with a foot caught in a bear trap. The arrangements are riffy, repetitive, and not afraid to use a slide whistle or a bit of hobo scatting. “Headache For Sisyphus” alternates a propulsive, quasi-tropical Casio beat and a creepy chorus of tiny voices. Echoes of Mr. Quintron, The Boredoms, that comedy bit Margaret Cho does about her mother, a heavily medicated Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and all manner of deviant influences. Disturbing, distressing, but ultimately loads of fun. From 2002. Sealed
Spanking The Species
(Stingy Banana) Used CD $6.00
Bad-ass craziness from Japanese comedienne Naoko Nozawa as she squeaks, chirps and howls her way through twelve rockin’, noisy songs with the abandon of an insane seven year old.
Astral Social Club
(VHF - VHF100) CD $12.00
Selections, edits, radical re-works and remixes of tracks from Neil Campbell and Tirath Singh Nirmala’s instantly sold-out, limited edition CDRs. This dense mega-mix of continually peaking sound-flow, shimmering and throbbing in a truly psychedelic manner, works a tricky hybrid ground between contemporary UK teams like Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra, and the influence of Kompakt-style pulsating electronic techno.
Starballs
(Chocolate Monk - choc.574) CDR $8.00
Blown-out fuzzed-out ragged sister to the shortly forthcoming pro-lounge Occultics CD / machine flicker, celestial scrota, no mind / make-out music for hermaphrodite Venusians floating through the zero gravity pleasure palaces of Alpha Centauri / Tangerine Fucking Dream, more like / feedback, the only good thing ever to happen to guitars / The Return of The Electric Mistress / there’s probably a tune buried under there somewhere / pennine exotica bionica erectronica (sciatica). Edition of 60
Adversity And Marginalization
(Chocolate Monk - choc.494) CDR $6.75 (Out-of-stock)
Let’s dream big for a moment, gonk: a silent Ray Harryhausen remake of that movie about roughnecks landing their rocketship on an asteroid heading for Earth so they can blow it up. And here’s the soundtrack. Hm, that was easier than anyone had a right to expect. So, yeah, Hiroshi Hasegawa — interstellar synth noise royalty, commander of the violent squad of loyalists protecting Sun Ra’s birth nugget on the surface of Prometheus, and your freak brother inside C.C.C.C. He’ll get you high, anoint you with a tap on the shoulder of his blight sabre, and take you for a terrifying joy ride in a glass coffin. Three long tracks, each turbulating through jagged disintegration and dense fields of toxic dust, well parallax’d fur judders, stir-fried collapsing howls, and jump cuts from acidic feedback into thick burning pools of all-contaminating rumble’n’screech that makes the GOMAD weight-builders from the ’90s lose consciousness. Edition of 60
Deep Wind
(Quasi Pop) Used CD $5.00
Intercontinental file-swapping is the means that yielded this collaboration between Japanese noise bigwig Hiroshi Hasegawa and Puerto Rico’s harsh noise / experimental electronic duo, released by a scrappy Ukrainian label. Both long tracks on Deep Wind are based by each artist on the other’s noise. This complex, sometimes brutal and disturbing journey beyond the margins of consciousness incorporates totally psychedelic sounds, extreme frequencies, and deep, pulsating drones. Oversized gatefold jacket.
Galactic Desert Song
(Light Room) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
A hard-to-find, limited edition release by ex-C.C.C.C. analog synth master Hiroshi Hasegawa, described by one somber expert as “vast waves of space-age tones and sci-fi atmospheres,” hyped by another as “sounds to make your inner child curl up and die in a 80 mile pile of black Ernst vomit.”
Fountains
(Auscultare Research - AUS16) CD $10.50
Digital synthesized contact microphone recordings of simple fountains pouring water into 40-gallon steel trash cans. An electronic whirlpool of water sounds (of course), meaty drones, and metallic roars by this heavy composer with Mills connections. For fans of Hafler Trio, Francisco Lopez, Aube.
Beginners Mind
(Chocolate Monk) Magazine + CDR $12.00
Recordings and paintings from summer 2024. Tapes, contact mics, loop pedals, objects, Yamaha PSS-50 keyboard, percussion and field recordings. The Haiku paintings were made by exploring the parameters of minimalism, with just a red circle and single black stroke allowed for each one. The gouache paint gives a distinctive and delicate texture to each untitled piece. The sounds and textures flow together in a spirit of meditative minimalism, with each element given space to breathe and unfold, much like the strokes in the pictures. 24 pages, full color, in hand-stamped envelope. Edition of 60
Futile Phantoms
(Chocolate Monk - choc.597) CDR $8.00
Flout the floatation tank and the devouring of celestial orbs, lay down the pipe and lend your ears to the inimitable allure of sonic innovation of the two-headed nature. Atkins and Scott-Buccleuch seem to almost whisper out these transmissions of crisp psychedelic sound collage. Dictaphone scutter and vacillating tapes are folded into mellow drones and intoning loops deftly. Field recordings, electronic purr and gentle clatter infused with warm hiss. A sound paste that can be applied liberally to yr cracked case with rejuvenating effect. Edition of 60
Demonstro: 1982 - 1985
(Peripheral - PM5) CD $16.50
Twenty primordial tracks — rough outtakes and previously unreleased alternate versions — that burn with desperate intensity. Naked, savage and crudely abrasive, this era of Attrition was extremely minimal. A couple synth lines, some jarring percussion, Martin Bowes bellows, Julia Niblock rasps and wails. The pacing is manic, the production definitely shoe-string. No clever hooks, no catchy choruses. This is the bare bones skeleton of Attrition. The free-form electronic experimentation here predates their later refinements. Highlights include a demo of “Monkey in a Bin” and another take of “Mind Drop.”
AUBE / FUMIO KOSAKAI / MONDE BRUITS / KATSUMI SUGAHARA
Aube / Katsumi / Kosakai / Monde Bruits
(Japan Overseas) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
From the late 1990s, when some Japanese noisemakers were taking a turn at ambience. This untitled comp sprawls toward the deeply droning side of the kosmische found on early Cluster and Klaus Schulze records.
Junkyo
(Noctovision - NCVCD11) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four long tracks of drowsy noise ambiance from 2005 by MB (piano and feedback) and Akifumi Nakajima (electronics).
Maschinenwerk
(Charnel Music) Used CD $10.00
Powerful machine-noise sounds from 1996 supplied by Cock ESP and de-composed by Aube. Letterpress jacket. Edition of 1000.
Mectpyo Saisei
(Para Disc) Used CD $20.00
“A magnetotherapeutic leakage bridled in the impartial passivity of our univocal meditations, the second haemodialysis generated by Maurizio Bianchi and Akifumi Nakajima announces the new era of untamed audio-inflammation. Both operators have sharpened their pathologist scalpels to intoxicate the aural hemisphere with rhizospheric microorganisms and mononuclear blood-cells. Inside the parasite plasmodium of Mectpyo Saisei the clinical rhythm-impulses by Aube and septic piano-fragments by MB form the intransigent symbiosis. From ‘Carnal Deterioration’ in its complete neuropsychological disorder to ‘Metamorphic Humus,’ fermented and putrefied by pathogenic slag, we enter the cirrhotic carnage-lava of ‘M.Blut.’ The final genesis of necrobiotic industriousness.” From 2005
Lucky Crystal Wave / Exit Generator
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.549) CDR $8.00
Chocolate Monk’s favorite living violin sorceress Samara Lubelski teams up with Werner Nötzel of Metabolismus for heady violin and electronics whatthefuckery that comes off like a tripped-out sibling to Kosugi’s Catch Wave (yes, it’s that good). Douse your chakras in this sonic sauce and embrace the cosmic quease. Recorded summer 2021 at Sumsilobatem, Germany, with next level adjustments taking place at Uniform Recording with Jeff Zeigler and Bill Nace.
Rule Of Spirit
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00
2004 reissue of the 1987 heavy psych album by Naoto Hayashi and company. Sealed with obi
AVEY TARE / GEOLOGIST / PANDA BEAR
Danse Manatee
(Catsup Plate) Used CD $18.00
The Animal Collective brings in a live electronics ringer for this stranger, darker 2001 follow-up to Spirit They’ve Gone Spirit They’ve Vanished (Animal 2000) -- a soundtrack to a meandering journey to nowhere in particular. Complex lattices of noise and streams of consciousness, the marriage of clanking drone to disembodied voice. Hand assembled “matchbox-style” CD slipcases with four-color silkscreened art.
ONISHI AYA / RINJI FUKUOKA / MICHEL HENRITZI / JUNKO
Live At Penguin House
(An’Archives) Used CDR $10.00
Noise improv from 2007 with a degree of attention to detail worthy of classical ballet by Hijo Kaidan vocalist, Sekiri / Nihilist Spasm Band percussionist, Overhang Party founder on guitar and violin, and Dustbreeders’ guitarist. With red paper seal. Edition of 125
DEREK BAILEY / TONY BEVAN / PAUL HESSION / YOSHIHIDE OTOMO
Good Cop, Bad Cop
(No-Fi) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
This incredible document unites four legendary performers in some outstanding musical freedom, recorded at the Frakture Festival in Liverpool, 2003. Bailey and Otomo have famously sent shockwaves through international notions of improvisation over the years, while Bevan and Hession are rightly regarded as part of the very backbone of British free music. Sleeve designed by John Wiese.
DEREK BAILEY / DENNIS PALMER / BOB STAGNER
Live At Lamar’s March 1999
(Shaking Ray) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Free improvisation that goes in some surprising directions,” declares Gino Robair about this brief collaboration by the UK guitar legend and the Shaking Ray Levis released in 2002. “Prog elements implied!” Jazzword elaborates: “distorted oscillations,” “distended reverb washes,” “stuttering rhythm guitar chording,” “Bailey … using delay to transform himself into a flat-picking guitar army as Palmer lays on the organ chords,” “spinning massed drone,” “atmospheric rocket launching suggestions and burbling space tones,” “buzzing feedback, complementing similar wavering aural data from the keys, and completing the rhythmic thump.”
Pieces For Guitar
(Tzadik) Used CD $12.00
The earliest known solo recordings of this guitar innovator, dating from 1966 (possibly 1965), originally recorded for personal study during a transitional period. The only instances of Bailey performing his own written compositions reveal an influence of the music of Anton Webern on the variety of techniques he uses to formalize his unique approach to music in general and the guitar in particular. Sealed
I Fall Into You
(Basses Frequences - BF4) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Originally released by Public Eyesore, Basses Frequence’s reissue of Baker’s 2002 recording begins, according to Dusted, with DNA gently floating in a mitochondrial soup, and ends with an ambient texture piece that incorporates words from Milton's "Paradise Lost." The highlight of the disc by this Canadian guitarist, loopist, and lyricist is the mesmerizing two-guitar gamelan of "Symbiosis."
I Will Always And Forever Hold You In My Heart And Mind
(Small Doses - DOSE87) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
CD reissue of Baker’s long out-of-print, highly regarded 2007 solo work. Fifty-one minutes of shimmering, pulsating drone broken into twelve parts that come together in seamless, wordless narrative. Packaged in a sleeve with insert and obi.
Oneiromancer
(Die Stadt - DS90) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Baker (ARC, Nadja) explores the deconstructive sonic possibilities of the electric guitar as a primary sound source (with help from bass guitar, drum machines, tape loops and vocals), creating music that ranges from experimental to post-rock to contemporary classical.
#10
(Tedium House - BF10) Magazine + CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
With David Tholfsen (two stories told with shadow-puppets by the creative force and vocalist of U.S. Saucer), Melt Banana (interview with Tokyo’s amped-up grandchildren of Gertrude Stein), William Hooker (New York jazz percussion veteran tries to shed light on something -- don’t know what it was, but whatever, okay? -- as Ian Christe smiles politely), Couch (Scott Derr moderates a roundtable discussion with the Bulb Records flagship band, a trio whose numerous “issues” they will not or cannot discuss; includes a tour diary by Jodie McCann of Duotron), Prick Decay (incestuous brother-and-sister duo from Scotland reveal more than all), Alexander Ross (selected writings and drawings by New York artist), Vagtazo Halottkemek (Bruce Russell interviews Attila Grandpierre, world-class astrophysicist and leader of this band of Hungarian shamen; includes excerpts from Grandpierre’s Punk as a Rebirth of Shamanist Folk Music [The Magic Forces of Art at Work]), Macronympha (show-stopping interview with Joe Roemer and Rodger Stella, who discuss their prodigious drug intake, close encounters with transsexuals, mice-eating, terminally ill relatives, the Pope’s big pussy and baboon heart, and numerous other gut-churning topics), and Emil Beaulieau (creepy hate mail to the two-time mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, and American’s favorite noisician).
#13
(Tedium House - BF13) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Diesel Guitar (Japanese droneur interviewed by Satoru Higashiseto), Ilhan Mimaroglu (Columbia–Princeton post-pioneer and electronic composer interviewed by Scott Foust, with selected excerpts from Mimaroglu’s unpublished autobiography), Le Dernier Cri (French publishers of silkscreened comix and outsider art books, filmmakers, animators, interviewed by Eva Revox), Nautical Almanac (electronic-noise duo who traffic in improvised electronics created with homemade, hotwired and otherwise corrupted gear), Solid Eye (Los Angeles free-music kingpins and improv sound collagists, interviewed by Don Bolles), Universal Indians (Patrick Marley interviews this free-electronics trio from Michigan led by John Olson, who also designs and fabricates the hand-assembled packaging of his own prolific American Tapes label), Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase (free-electronics talk with CCC and fiction by Alesandro Moreshi III), William Winant (interview with the hardest working percussionist in new music, and principle architect behind Sonic Youth’s Goodbye 20th Century), irr. app. (ext.) (surreal autobiographical data, excerpts from the Errata in Excelsus newsletter, and Bosch-like illustrations by electronic deep theorist M.S. (H.) V. Waldron), A.Z. (Dante-esque comics by this former Scissor Girl and Bride of No No leader), Witcyst (collages and an interview, apparently, with beloved New Zealand noise freak), and Nigel Bunn (New Zealand filmmaker, animator, and electricity demon gives Barbara Manning a guided tour of his gadgetry wonderland).
#14
(Tedium House - BF14) Magazine + CD $11.00
With Keiti Ota (prominent Japanese illustrator with a deliciously noir-ish nightmare vibe interviewed by Ukawa Naohiro), Trey Spruance (over-the-top cultural paranoia tracts and denunciations by this member of Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3), Peg Murray (Cooks ’n’ Chefs ’n’ Their Assistants comix by U.S. Saucer bassist), John Wiese (interview with type designer, member of Bastard Noise, solo noise artist, and curator of Helicopter’s MoonLanding seven-inch series), James Goode (interview with San Francisco-based Mills College postgrad, and a short essay on “phylogenetic music,” excerpted from his Mills thesis), Reynols (photo-autobiography by celebrated Argentinean oddballs who have collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, released recordings of blank tapes and 10,000 chickens, and splashed around the limited edition noise CDR cesspool), Panicsville (hostile interview by Tina Gladden with this Midwest noise artist, raconteur, sculptor whose chosen medium is roadkill sealed in clear plastic, cartoonist with a unique quasi-kaleidoscopic style, and designer of handmade CD jackets for the Nihilist label), Vote Robot (Canadian duo with hotwired reel-to-reel decks and an uncanny knack for creating erotic electro-lullabyes), Polar Goldie Cats (Los Angeles-based instrumental quartet interviewed by Carla Bozulich and Nels Cline), Jazzfinger (English low-decibel noise duo with a strong cinematic sensibility, interviewed by Neil Campbell), and Octavian Nemescu (translation of an essay by Romanian “new complexity” composer [contemporary of Dumitrescu and Anatol Vieru, known for heavily layered, polystructural works for various instrumental combination and tape], calling for a return to conceiving of music as an initiative, participatory event made of “energy ladders").
#15
(Tedium House - BF15) Magazine + CD $0.01
DAMIAN BISCIGLIA, RIP. With Christine Shields (interview with the artist behind the surreal, dreamlike Blue Hole comic book, banjo-player for the Appalachia-influenced Grouse Mountain Skyride [also featuring Dame Darcy and Ian Christe] and Shady Creek Girls), Mal Sharpe (interview with author, jazz musician, and Man-on-the-Street interviewer most well known as half of much loved ’60s prankster duo Coyle and Sharpe), Ana-Maria Avram (translation of an interview by Costin Cazaban with Romanian acousmatic composer and Editions Modern recording artist whose uncompromising, demanding music gives heavyweights like Dumitrescu and Fernando Grillo a run for the money), Volcano the Bear (interview by Neil Campbell with this mind-expanding UK surrealist quartet whose music straddles “a strange, ambiguous line between comforting and terrifying … executed in such a manner that is purely hypnotic”), mad-cow.org (Brandan Kearny interviews Dr. Thomas Pringle, webmaster of this project of the Sperling Biomedical Foundation containing thousands of articles on mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, prions, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, scrapie, and numerous other crimes against nature that’ll drive us all to veganism), John Crouse (guest editorial and another previously unpublished text by this inspirational author, whose writing his publisher describes as “a non-stop torque conflating the distinctions of sky, people, forest, political costume store; a torque which enhances the writing’s own motions, nightmare, images in forward gear only as: 'historically: (actively) voiding reverse gear.… He makes his own vocabulary rushing forward at full tilt, the 'camel of wow'.' "), Rats With Wings (freeform essay and images by Australian noise artist Bill Burston), Volvox (interview with two members of this Australian band whose leader was brain-injured and comatose after a fall through a skylight; includes a chapter from his book Betrayed by the Senses), and Agog (interview with noise artist Damian Bisciglia who incorporates collage, improvisation, contact-mic-as-instrument and sources such as multitracked loops, shells, balloons, metal heater, springs, matchbox car; includes photos of his nightmarish creatures sculpted from various found materials, and Rohrshach-like comments and descriptions).
#16
(Tedium House - BF16) Magazine + CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
With Oren Ambarchi (Bill Burston interviews the founder of the Australian Noise Users’ Society, who has made ultrarefined space-station scree with AMM’s Keith Rowe, Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, out-of-control spazzassins Phlegm, The Menstruation Sisters, Robbie Avenaim, et al.), Leif Elggren (interview with Swedish electroacoustic musician, letter-writing prankster, dream theorist, national monarch of Elgaland-Vargaland, and conceptual artist whose work ranges from oblique performances to near-static installations), Robert Dayton (Earl Kuck interviews one of Canada’s most notorious extroverts [imagine Nardwuar as a real human being] about comics and diaries in the self-published Bunyon and his hilarious karaoke duo Canned Hamm), Jason Kahn (interview with quiet percussionist in which onkyo is debunked, and his electronic duo with Toshi Nakamura is discussed, as well as work with Arnold Dreyblatt, Universal Congress Of, and Sainkho Namtchylak), Parmentier (Dylan Nyoukis interviews hyper-relaxed New Zealand expats Rosy Parlane and Dion Workman about their bi-continental “work” as psychotropic electronic musicians; includes sidebar by Marcel Bear about a Parmentier-induced out-of-body experience), Halim El-Dabh (selected excerpts from Denise Seachrist’s biography of the Egyptian-born composer whose pioneering musique concrète predates that of Pierre Schaeffer, and is also noteworthy for an unusual Native American musical influence), Paul Winstanley (another New Zealander interviewed by Dylan Nyoukis, about his time in Texas performing electroacoustic improv/noise with Dave Dove Paul Duo, crashing Lone Star bohemian enclaves, and cruising with Pauline Oliveros’s mother), Lateral Agriculture Order (overview of mysterious, acronym-damaged Italian organization, including discography, particulars about performances, roster of artists (eighty different ones!) and other inexplicabilia).
#17
(Tedium House - BF17) Magazine + CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
With Jason McLean (Canadian cartoonist talks with Robert Dayton about his hallucinatory style and techniques, and the effect on his work of education, interior decoration, comics, Fluxus and other abstruse art movements, and mental illness), Hetty Maclise (Angus’s wife and collaborator recounts how they met, her art editorship at The Oracle in the ’60s, homeopathic uses of LSD, and her life as an artist in Spain, Morocco, Mexico, San Francisco, and New York), Lara Allen (the exploits of a high school bad girl and the deprogramming subsequently inflicted upon her, problematic theatrical experiences, her series of consistently eerie paintings of old family photos, acting, and filmmaking), Jazzkammer (Lasse Marhaug chats with David Cotner about mainstream Hollywood flicks, cult films, the Nordic singles scene (both 45s and dating), Norwegian culture, Viking blood, and communication through music and abstract sound with John Hegre, Tore Bøe, Del, and Origami Republika), Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa instructs Dylan Nyoukis in the ways of reaching “final paradise” and achieving “freedom from everything” via Moog synthesizer, field recordings and computers; he also discusses soundtrack work, collaborations with a who’s who of Japanese space noise huffers, and the shocking truth about C.C.C.C.), The Towne Dandies (Geoff Ellsworth’s homemade, props-heavy musical theater, the history of the band, paying the rent (which can involve processing ham), life under a microscope in a small town, and fledging jingle-writing venture Barefoot Hockey Goalie), Paul Dutton (Canadian soundsinger and author talks about his work with ’70s sound poets The Four Horsemen and free improv trio CCMC, literary efforts and visual poems, the nature of expression through sound, and various giants in the gibberish tradition, from Schwitters and the dadaists through Bob Cobbing), and Carla Bozulich (her Sound.-produced event at the Schindler House, self-described as “new music dressed up like a party meets a social event disguised as art,” reimagined as comics).
#18
(Tedium House - BF18) Magazine + CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
With Nelson Gastaldi (lost and overlooked Argentinean psycho-spatial composer found and restored by South America’s premier avant sideshow barkers Reynols; topics include pure sound, ethnomusicology, paranormal occurences), Burning Star Core (autodidact C. Spencer Yeh tracks his development from adolescent pyromaniac to violin/electronics/voice iconoclast, with sidetrips as a writer of unreadable fiction, painter, documentarian, Cincinnati gallery brat, and live venue doyen), Joe Colley (easily fixated Crawl Unit noise mumbler issues subdued proclamations on field recordings, arcane electronic gadgets, public invisibility, charalatans and quacks), Monotract (Dylan Nyoukis gets schooled in Big Apple wisdom by this group of beach-blanket acidheads and New York City improv tour guides), David Lester (Mecca Normal guitarist’s surreal, interdisciplinary comics that combine choreography, quasi-clip art, collage, painting, text and typography), and Jim Leftwich (texts, images, collages and other hors de guerre by experimental writer, visual poet, xtant editor and Juxta publisher).
Black Babies
(Young God) Used CD $4.00
A UK-only EP from 2003, with six hushed and intimate lo-fi tracks otherwise unavailable plus two from Oh Me Oh My...The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit.
Niño Rojo
(Young God) Used CD $6.00
“A songwriter of guileless vision, Banhart’s unaffected aesthetic is etched in the ether of mysterious traditional and psychedelic folk musics from the British Isles and in an America that disappeared the first time in the 1930s with the Dust Bowl and for the second time in the grimness of mid-’70s determinism in the shadows of post-Vietnam shame and malaise. His songs don’t hearken back so much as remind us of what we no longer possess as a culture. His songs are spiritual, terminally unhip, with labyrinthine grown-up melodies and the keen unsullied wisdom of children.” Digipak. Sealed
Oh Me Oh My...The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit
(Young God) Used CD $4.00
“The first thing that strikes you about Devendra Banhart is his utterly unique and soft voice, which seems a mix of Nick Drake and Marc Bolan…. Originally recorded on shoddy and broken four-track recorders, the songs have a … roughness and audible hiss on nearly all of them…. Lyrically they are quite odd and occasionally nonsensical…. A lot of the songs appear to be not fully realized, but perhaps that’s the beauty of them.” From 2002
Rejoicing In The Hands
(Young God) Used CD $7.00
Unlike Banhart’s debut, his 2004 second album “was professionally recorded, and a few tracks feature … Angels of Light alums Thor Harris, Joe McGinty and Siobahn Duffy,” explains Pitchfork. “It’s far from slick, though, reeking of rustic, homemade charm.” With singing and writing both surpassing Oh Me Oh My, “his songs no longer veer into bizarro cadences or witchy vocal overdubs.” Rather than get pigeonholed as a “lo-fi eccentric…, the singer’s range of expression (and surprising delicacy) [gets] full justice.” Sealed
Bufo Alvarius
(Drunken Fish - DF15) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Their 1995 zoned-out stoner-psych debut album in service to an hallucinogenic toad. Fuzz-soaked weirdness clouds the loosened-up blues rock and coarse melodies. Includes the 29-minute non-LP track “Amen.”
International Dictaphone Relations
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.364) split CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two directions in contemporary Dictaphonix. Loops of slimy chaos from Argentina’s steaming tape underground, created in the same way birds swim and bees honk. Tight and vital, in-your-head meditations and reflections evoke heavy psych smoke and wild, wild painted eyes staring through the bushes. The essential tape control makes the listening passage easy, like swallowing soft lead pellets. Meanwhile that British lag serves a gentle riot of slow faze, cut-up speech patterns, and tape jaxx along with some seriously grievous organ wonk. Deceptively strong wrists whip an undertow of “cuh-vimp-curr...,” poking once again into the psychedelic domestic for inspiration. Numbered edition of 60
All Acoustics
(Quakebasket) Used CD $12.00
Two expansive free percussion improvisations performed July 18, 2001, between 9pm and 11pm with one foot in downtown New York avant-jazz and traditional indie rock.
TIM BARNES / TONY CONRAD / MATTIN
Untitled
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $15.00
Withering screeeeech and grubby microtonal shudder in a near-Stalinist attempt for total mind control. A twenty-story Hoover gobbles the entire Northeast of the USA, pausing to empty the bag and replace smoldering fuse wire. Hard, harmful, full of choking dust.
We Make Nihilists Smile Again
(Phage - PT152) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Starting off, Barrikad's dark ambient collaboration with Kriminaaliset Metsanhaltijat clocks in at a modest nineteen minutes. Ominous soundscapes, sparse vocals, the clang of metal objects. With Fear Konstruktor, they produce synth warble with strange vocals. The final track is a straight-up harsh noise blast collaboration with Government Alpha. With eight-page book. Edition of 500.
STEVE BARSOTTI / ERIC LEONARDSON
Rarebit
(Transparency) Used CD $10.00
These sound artists / instrument inventors take cues from Russolo and Partch, amplifying coil springs, eyebolts, various pieces of wood, and other familiar materials using contact microphones. Their streams of sound move fluidly with a communicative style and a dramatic sense of presence and dynamic range: from effervescent burbling, animal-like whines and grunts, to gritty metallic drones that transform into forlorn hissing and ethereal soundscapes. Some passages are nearly silent, breathy, and tranquil.
Descent to Mimas
(Groundfault - GF018) CD $12.00
John Wiese has been instrumental in pushing the evolution of Eric Wood’s Man Is The Bastard side project toward the predatory galactic monster it is by combining its original caveman electronic roots with new atmospheric sounds. Using oscillators, mixer-feedback and other electronic grit, this is a fairly killer concept album about traveling to one of Saturn’s moons, drilling through the surface of the cold, cold rock, fatally stumbling upon a catacomb of alien millipedes, and drifting lifelessly inside space coffins.
Live At Babycastles
(Small Doses - DOSE124) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The very first performance of the Anthony Saunders / Eric Wood iteration of Bastard Noise, whose approach this time is fully electronic, devoid of any vocals or more traditional instrumentation. The near 40-minute performance starts at a slow, quiet boil, and builds progressively into an intense onslaught of oscillators, noise, and ambience. See the trailer here: http://youtu.be/DoIL4PR1368
Live In Japan
(Helicopter) Used CD $12.00
John Wiese and Eric Wood’s incredibly quiet and subtle sounds recorded August 2000 at Tokuzo in Nagoya and at JNR in Tokyo.
BASTARD NOISE / MAN IS THE BASTARD
Mutant
(Manufracture) Used CD $10.00
Eric Wood and John Wiese continue the brutality of previous efforts and belch forth textured and heavily layered noise-scapes torched with hand-made electronics, laptop computer, and death vocals.
Skull Wave
(Helicopter) Used CD $8.00
“From the dark environment, my chicken, so: not too many muscles this time, except the one that twists the brain up and down!” as Google Translate would have you know. “The nasty has been accommodated for some time…, generally enamored of rhythms or atmospheres with latent violence. As a result, this CD only contains a single piece of 46 minutes. Noisy, dark environment, guitar distortion songs, all amalgamated with the ceiling in the shape of a heavy cloud. Everything masterfully mastered by the master of skulls that is John Wiese” From 2002.
Spastic Colon / Bastard Noise
(Pinch A Loaf) Used Split CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Carefully arranged late ’90s noise tracks from Bastard Noise, who make good use of low-end rumble and high-end screeching, and Spastic Colon, who toss around and spew unrecognizable samples in a droning stew of fantastic muck. One bonus non-LP track from each group, with Bizarre Uproar making a guest appearance on “Earned Extinction.” Embossed cardboard sleeve.
BASTARD NOISE / THE SLASHER FILM FESTIVAL STRATEGY
Split CD
(Kill Frank Lantini ) Used Split CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Bastard Noise's caveman electronics, vocals, and atmospheric sounds versus The Slasher Film Festival Strategy's minimalist film-score inspiration (a solo project founded by Christopher Ashley in 1996).
BASTARD NOISE / MAN IS THE BASTARD
Throne Is Melting
(Helicopter - H8) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Previously released bad-ass, ear-cracking scrape by Wiese, Wood, AFC’s Tara, Kenny Sanderson of Facialmess, and Erik Hoffman & Jorge Martin of Groundfault and Spastic Colon. The twenty-plus minute “Red Hurricane” is a highlight. Sealed.
Mantra
(White Dog) Used CD $15.00
One forty-minute track of god-awful new age. Recorded late 1990s, reissued 2016.
Wave Train
(Alga Marghen - plana-B 5NMN.020) CD $25.00
1998 collection of groundbreaking experimental compositions dating from 1958 through 1968 by Austrian-born American composer, assisted by David Tudor (piano) on “Canons,” supported on percussion by Christoph Caskel. Prepared piano piece “Ricecar,” with its spacious and ambiguous narrative, is performed by Behrman himself, while the album’s otherworldly title track is a feedback-driven tapestry of drone performed live with Gordon Mumma. “Sounds For A Film By Bob Watts” feels incredibly modern, a template for microsound composers for years to come, joining environmental recordings with mimetic synthesizer sound designs, which seem to melt into the broader soundscape like weird, metallic insects.
Beins / Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE01) CD $14.40 (Out-of-stock)
The first volume in Erstwhile live series took place during the first night of outside shows in the Berlin half of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. This was their first set as a duo since the sessions which resulted in Grain (Zarek, 2001). “Rowe (credited with guitar, electronics) seems to be responsible for the buzzsaw-encountering-sheet-metal racket and fastforward/rewind activity,” Exclaim muses, “while Beins (percussion) contributes everything from tingling bells to rusty playground-equipment shrieks. The results are a terrific earcleanser of an album, a salutary blast of spleen and perversity…”
Grain
(Zarek) Used CD $5.00
The “first track is one of Rowe’s liveliest performances for several years,” asserts The Wire, while “the second track finds him in more customary static mode, with Beins sounding like he’s arc-welding as a distant thunderstorm subsides into an eerie metallic calm. Beins’s work is more about friction than percussion: his masterly use of polystyrene blocks and small stones to create sustained timbres seems to have no precedent, except perhaps AMM’s Eddie Prévost, of course. The final live track is a tour de force: at first Rowe seems content to lead from the rear, his radio emerging imperceptibly from behind a cloud of cymbals, before he gradually warms up and unleashes a volley of dazzling rattles and buzzes while Beins’s close-mic’d bass drum cranks up the tension.” From 2001
Stockholm Totentanz
(Artware) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Broad tapestry of diverse soundscapes, some with an industrial throb, others with slow, archaic dancing rhythms. Distant voices mutter incomprehensible prophecies. Two pieces commissioned by the Protestant Parish of Stockholm and first presented in 1996 at St. Gertrud Church on the occasion of a symposium on the Apocalypse.
BOB BELLERUE / JARRETT SILBERMAN
Amplified Piano Duets
(Anarchymoon) Used LP (one-sided) + CDR $10.00
A lost journey to unknown planets, defective machinery, dead pilots at the controls, recorded December 2006, released in 2009, paste-on jacket
Felt, If Not Seen
(Phage - PT175) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
A single fifty-seven-minute track of tension-building electronics and percussion, hovering in between apocalypse and rapture. For fans of ambient room-filling organic sounds. Recorded live in 2009, the music features drums, metal objects, slack-stringed de-tuned guitar, winds, and electronics. Edition of 500.
HAN BENNINK / PETER BRÖTZMANN / FRED VAN HOVE
FMP0130
(Atavistic) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
2003 reissue, originally released on FMP in 1973, with Brötzmann on clarinet, alto, tenor, baritone, bass saxophones; van Hove on celesta, piano; and Bennink on drums, khene, rhythm-box, selfmade clarinet, gachi, oe-oe, voice, tins, homemade junk, elong, dhung, kaffir piano, and dhung-dkar.
Music Of The Middle East
(Universe) Used CD $15.00
2001 reissue of Armenian oud virtuoso’s masterful mid-’60s fusion of ethno jazz and psychedelic rock.
Your Messiah Will Fail
(BloodLust! - B!143) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Your Messiah Will Fail takes a far more confrontational approach than Bereft's "Tough Man" b/w "Religious Leaders" single, which had a darker, more death-industrial feel to it. Comparable to the high-fidelity assault of the recent Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck 7-inch and the classic P.E. approach of Slogun -- all the while maintaining its own personality and style -- Bereft is now a venomous two-piece group, as Andrew Grant (aka The Vomit Arsonist) has joined Peter Lee to accost listeners with harsh-yet-nuanced electronic sounds and potent vocals that feature prominently in the mix. The songs were written prior to the 2008 US presidential election, about which Lee vented, particularly Barack Obama's exceedingly "star" or "godlike" status. Lee makes a vehement cry against the current two-party political system, and the ever-changing system of support that allows too many politicians to avoid responsibility for their actions.
The Private Language Problem New Electro-Acoustic Compositions 2001-2007
(Abstract On Black) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Performed on a variety of handmade and sculptural instruments, ranging from work that contains continuous washes of sound that fill large rooms to heady pans of pure electronic tones. With liner notes and track-by-track breakdown.
Pinkfoot
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Intimate croak concrète from London based poet/musician Betteridge. Like a low key ear tonguing. Moist and at close quarters. “Pinkfoot’s fragments are cut from vocal improvisations done in the house while the baby slept — just a mic and a reel-to-reel tape emulator: there’s sound poetry, Ami Yoshida / Junko overidentification, some rattling on,” explains the artist. “Compression and EQ are instruments and also feature. I projected some of the snippets into different environments — it’s often good to drag withdrawn things outside — and populated others (my partner and daughter, my father-in-law, geese). Uncanny / on the cusp of too intimate / spectral but mucky — that’s the hope.” Edition of 60
s’Approcher s’Éloigner s’Absenter
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE009) CD $14.75 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live September 2011 as part of Jon Abbey's Amplify 2011 festival at The Stone in Manhattan. The world premiere of this piece by German composer and Wandelweiser founder was performed by Ben Owen, Barry Chabala and Dominic Lash.
Scchh...phh
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.387) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Quit saving pennies for that Embryonic Cell Fusion device. Forget about annoying questions that swirl around inside your dome (What part of the ear hears? Why do you have that strange thirst?) because Ireland's Natalia Beylis has answers, all hidden within a wonderfully weird sound collage that’s more intoxicating than a handful of seed vomit. Keep your face and feet open. Stay Alert. Numbered edition of 60
She Came Through the Window to Stand by the Door
(Nyahh) CD $14.00
Two mesmerizing duets for cello and the William Telford organ at St Georges Church, built in 1846.
Lemonade
(Parkwood) Used CD + DVD $11.00
Soulful R&B with an electro edge by this up-and-coming singer who sang on a string of regional hits by obscure girl-group Destiny’s Child and collaborates on occasion with Andy Samberg. Sealed
Unprecize Music
(Chocolate Monk - choc.422) CDR $8.00
Tapes, voice and rudimentary household objects are the main instruments of this shadowy outfit hailing from the South of Brussels. The ghost is a key feature, acting as the specter for the vitalist poet and the overt Romantic. This collection of cuts made over the last three years explores, in the most literal sense, possible forms, through pure sinus waves, boring repetition and raw randomness. Each piece is a materialization of a neuroscientist’s view of reality. Action precedes cause, and cause is nothing but a narrative to justify action. Numbered edition of 60
A M.B. Iehn Tale
(Small Voices - SVR04012) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eight decomposed tracks from 2005 with cold atmospheres and reverberating piano. Dissonance and soothing tones interplay constantly, so that it never gets too harsh nor too sugary sweet.
Aeternum Aevum
(Peripheral - PR013) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two long, slowly whirling pieces of ambience dedicated to the Conrad Schnitzler. Edition of 250.
Aktivitat
(Kubitsuri - S;E;X59-041CD) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Second CD reissue of the original cassette (Tegal 1983), considered a high-water mark of early industrial. Aktivitat went against the grain prevalent at the time; rather than pushing the boundaries of volume and pummeling rhythm (for example), the album goes for lo-fi murk, where dour restraint is the tool of depressive darkness.
Apokalypsis XXIII
(Nitkie - PATCHSIX) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four long tracks inspired by verses from The Book of Revelation using synthesizer and loops. Chaotic but mild, MB’s final electronic music album. Gold-foil embossed jacket. Edition of 500
Archeo #1
(EEs’T) Used 5xCD $60.00
1998 boxset compiling Symphony For A Genocide, Menses, Neuro Habitat, Regel, and Mectpyo Bakterium with extensive inserts. Guts Of Darkness says, “Each disc has been enriched with bonus tracks, all from obscure and unobtainable compilations, rather unequal titles in terms of quality, even dispensable, except for … ‘Plutoniometrio’ and ‘Acido Prussico’.” Texts include articles written by MB (on the Come Organization, Throbbing Gristle, Conrad Schnitzler, etc), chronicles, interviews (Monte Cazazza, SPK) as well as unpublished or very rare artwork. Sealed
Armaghedon
(Officina Fonografica Italiana - OFI001) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
CD reissue of this historic work originally released on vinyl in 1984, a cornerstone of the MB discography. Conceived as a soundtrack for a movie by Bianchi himself, Armaghedon’s noisy, long, minimal dreamscapes include physical addictive sounds. The most intellectual, hallucinatory sequences of Phaedra, suggests SoundOhm, crossed with “the destructive, destructured sounds of Whitehouse and the sacred electronic music of Ramon Sender.”
Atholgog
(Stridulum - STR012) 3-inch CDR $5.50 (Out-of-stock)
“A martyered detumescence is restraining our average affliction in this cumuliform damnation,” proclaims the insert preface to this three-track EP from 2007. “And the indolent deconsecration of the egotistic aestheticism radicalizes our judicial barbarization against liquescent brains. This is the circumspect prevention of Atholgog.” Numbered edition of 100.
Blut Und Nebel
(Slaughter Productions - SPCD60) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Remixes and decompositions of early 1980s tracks from MBs first ten LPs that demonstrate il Maestros’ skills at dadaistic collage, free-form improvisation, abstract sound-sculpting, and noise employed like an electric guitar to produce solos of manic intensity.
Carcimetrio
(Simple Logic - SIMLOG036) CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Necrotic rhapsody for concrete segmentations and electronic tissues, originated and spread during the decay of the 2005. Edition of 100.
Celtichants
(Alone At Last - AAL3) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
An hour-long excavation that brushes away thick layers debris and reveals ancient drones that emerge from the ether. Fragments of chants are agonized screams in the far distance, only in the closing minutes forcing their way through with any great clarity. Packaged in custom-made textured paper with three photos of miocenic basalts made by Siegmar Fricke in Maspalomas (Gran Canaria Island).
Computers S.P.A. / Com.SA
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR077) 2xCD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second in At War’s series of CD reissues of early tapes by noise legend MB features very primitive use of synthesizer, tape loops and tape manipulation. Lo-fi, otherwordly. Edition of 500.
Das Platinzeitalter
(Incunabulum - INC002) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Dark ambient” barely describes Das Platinzeitalter “These tracks are from the history of dust,” remarks Insound, “Ancient as the catacombs and spectral, like the last rays of hope…. [The] eerie calmness [is] as timeless and inevitable as the setting sun, as if this music has always been here…. This recording captures the never-ending decay of beauty at the point when it is realized that resistance is futile and the metamorphosis has begun.”
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / FREQUENCY IN CYCLES PER SECOND
Der Abgrund
(Silentes Minimal Editions - SME0719) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“An opus of metasonic metamorphosis in seven movements,” says Rockerilla about this 2007 collaboration by MB and Sandro Kaiser. “[S]eductive [and] impenetrable under … blankets of granulous droning eclipses.”
Elisionem
(Klanggalerie - GG115) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dark and droney album from 2006, considered by the label as a true sister to Neuro-Habitat or Symphony For A Genocide.
Escape To Bela-Zoar
(L.White - LW040) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three long tracks full of curdling, pulsating drones, unsettling tonal washes, and strong, black undercurrents. Minimal, but penetrating, palpably bleak and grim. Based on Genesis 19:15-23. On a DVD amaray case
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / FREQUENCY IN CYCLES PER SECOND
Final Signal
(CPS Private Releases - CPS0506) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Episodic fermentation submerged in mysticism, reverberating between isolationist industrial brutalities and more environmental traditions. Acoustic-noise foundation by MB, electronics by Sandro Kaiser, new frequencies from MB, more effects and loops by Kaiser.
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / MUSEO DELLA TORTURA
Genologic Technocide
(Spatter - SPCD3) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Strong industrial noise opera by MB and Davide Femia. A rollercoaster of tension. Primordial.
Habitats
(Kubitsuri - S;E;X59-033CD) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
A flood of repeating harsh noise fills the space with a desolate landscape. Siegmar Fricke of Pharmakustik guests on electronics.
Industrial Murder / Menstrual Bleeding
(R.O.N.F. - CDO002) CD $7.00
An early work of Maurizio Bianchi recorded at Mectpyo Studio in 1981. Originally released by Banned Productions in 1992 on LP. CD packaged in five-color screen-printed arigato packs. Two tracks, fifty minutes. Edition of 300.
Inexistence
(Cold Current Productions - CCCD09) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks of minimal, cryptic and static neo-Futurism.
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / FRANCISCO LOPEZ
KRMN
(Important - IMPRPEC322) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Over a background of sputtering, noxious static, MB lays down seven- to nine-second blasts of a grimier, harsher sound” for forty-four minutes, marvels Dusted. “There is something trance-inducing [the] utterly relentless repetition, which also forces the brain to hear every varied facet of that blast.” Meanwhile, Lopez immerses the listener in digital silence, low bass presence, and “a multi-layered spray of bright, pixilated frequencies…, like a sped-up film of light playing off of clouds…, ranging from feather-light to medicine ball-heavy without ever lapsing into anything so mundane as a tune.”
M.I. Nheem Alysm
(Silentes Minimal Editions - SME0502) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Decompositive triad for reverberating piano and osmosized keyboards that dives into minimalist, hypnotic, and complex patterns.
Men’s True Hated
(Menstrual Recordings - LH01) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dysmenorrhoeic dissonances for floating keyboards, diagnostic modulations and absorbent strings, discharged during the autumn of 2005. Handmade tri-fold cardboard sleeve with three pasted photos and handstamped MB logo. Numbered edition of 278
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / SPARKLE IN GREY
Nefelodhis
(Musica Di Un Certo Livello - MCL06) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
In which the Italian noise legend gets his shoegaze on with an experimental post-rock boy band. String sections and bassy atmospherics swell in the background behind streaks of violin. Noise and electronics merge instead of obliterating. Nefelodhis has its unnerving elements, too: sustained. detuned piano and subtle tinkering portray skies darkening and storms getting ready to break.
Nervo / Hydra
(Kubitsuri - S;E;X59-034CD) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Originally released on cassette in 1981, Nervo / Hydra churns through “carcinogenic electronics … deadly, corrosive atmospheres… and electro-shock dronings” that crawl through cycling variations, according to our friends at Aquarius, “punctuated with frigid divebomb squeals and slabs of flickering melodies erupting from MB abused Korg synth.”
Niddah Emmhna
(Silentes Minimal Editions - SM0504) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two long tracks from 2005 based on the book of Leviticus, chapter 15, verses 19-33, and dedicated to all the ransomed mankind. The thirty-eight-minute “Niddah” is a plasmatic symphony for electronic particles, erythrocyte frequencies and menarchal viola, while “Emmhna,” at a mere thirty- seven is a hemolytic decomposition for neurologic piano, coagulant clangs and leucocyte sonances.
Oidiconeg
(Kubitsuri - S;E;X59-036CD) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nazi speech collage and violent corrosion noise decomposed in the early 1980s, originally titled Genocidio 20, and self-released on cassette in the 1980s, and then reissued on CDr by W.M.O./r in 2006.
Pharmelodies
(Silentes Minimal Editions - ME1254) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
A colossal and epic post-ambient symphony in three movements, where echoes of string instruments, deep drones of indecipherable origin, layered synthetic waves, slowed-down and distorted masses challenge time with a para-immobility in constant turmoil, in an unpredictable, progressive and sometimes cyclic combination of statuesque forms whose physiognomy is often known and familiar, while at the same time elusive, disturbing, arcane and mysterious. Edition of 300
Regel
(FinalMuzik - FM08) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two twenty-three minute untitled tracks originally released on LP by Mectpyo in 1982, plus “Acido Prussico” from the Neuengamme comp (Broken Flag 1982). Brutal noise stabs, cold and deranged machine-like loops, and dismal synth patterns with vague melodic hints collide and give birth to a monstrous wall of sound.
Regolelettroniche
(Baskaru - KARU8) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks of systematic sonorous assemblage for electronic instruments, axiomatic waves and essential reverberations, developed between 2004 and 2006 by MB and Emanuela De Angelis. Quiet austere drones, in other words, made of processed textural loops layered into vast cyclic suites.
SFAG
(Tegal) Used CD $13.00
Early ’80s remix of Symphony For a Genocide released in 1994, a “truncated” version of the material eventually released on Recursion’s SFAG 81 LP.
Spiritualis
(Kubitsuri - S;E;X59-025CD) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Synth-processed field and location recordings, with misted-out chamber and choral music.
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / SIEGMAR FRICKE
Stroma~Konkret
(Monochrome Vision - MV07) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three long tracks that fuse industrial noise and musique concrete. Extra heavy mechanical aggression, clinical obsession and uncompromising psychic attack. Dedicated to Pierre Schaefer.
Teban Slide Art
(Menstrual Recordings - LH40) 3xCD $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
Disc one: both tracks from Triumph Of The Will LP (Come Organisation 1981), plus the previously unreleased thirty-one-minute “Ygolonhcet.” Disc two: all four tracks from Weltanschauung LP (Come Organisation 1982), plus “Zyklombie” from a 1990s bootleg reissue of the same LP, and “Plutoniumetrio” from Für Ilsa Koch (Come Organisation 1982). Disc three: two untitled tracks from a 1990s cassette issued by the Italian label Murder Release, plus “Examples Of Cannibalism” from a split cassette issued without permission (Come Organisation 1981). Insert includes essay by MB of early ’80s vintage. Packaged in a DVD case. Edition of 413
Technology 1 & 2
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR048) 2xCD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
First in a series of early recordings by one of the noise originators. More ambient than some of his legendary work, with strange machine beeps and mechanical sounds.
MAURIZIO BIANCHI / HITOSHI KOJO / KASAHARA NOBU
The Epidemic Symphony No. 9
(Octpia - 08) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
This “thoroughly amazing blur of noise, drone, acoustic tumult and electronics” by the Italian master, the Japanese sound artist who also records as Spiracle, and another obscure Japanese sound artist who has collaborated with The New Blockaders. “Precisely placed sounds,” according to our friends at Aquarius, “growl, rumble, vibrate, and bristle…. [T]he first lengthy track steadily builds up to a crashing crescendo that abruptly cuts to silence, the second track … return[s] to the Sacher Pelz techniques of varispeed tape and crushed turntable clatter…. [T]he finale … blurs … source material into an industrial chorale marked by a surprisingly elegant two-note melody.”
The Industrious Tubal-Cain
(TIBProd - TIBCD129) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Norwegian reissue of an album based on Genesis 4:22 (Sasha 2009), combining the old, harsh sound of M.B. with his newer, more experimental and often more minimal approach. In a slim DVD case with insert. Edition of 150
The Plain Truth
(Officina Fonografica Italiana - OFI007) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two long tracks of layered synthesized sounds, originally released by Broken Flag in 1983, treated with vintage effects, departing from the aggression of earlier works into the realm of desolate, dark electronics, and claustrophobic, ghostly droning sequences with long, immersive synth lines.
The Valley Of Deep Shadow
(Menstrual Recordings - LH08) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Bleak sonic atmospheres based on the 23rd Psalm. Synthesizers that sound pale, cold and distant.
Ynohpmys
(Tourette - 013) CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Six tracks from 2010. “Ortni” is reverb-battered drone, with layers of deep tremolo’d scrapes. “The Inflammatory Sesor” adds more compelling church-organ-like textures. A bit of the old MB shines through “Oigada,” where overtly flanged, rudimentary rhythms, and complex layering match with sci-fi beeps and tones in the background. “Ogral” pushes deep mournful tones into slow reverb, which swells in volume to reach a stride that is harsh but spare electronic noise. “Evarg,” with its decaying tape recordings of symphonic music, leans into the higher frequencies and pushes into grinding harsh noise territory. Music-tinged tones swirl up to the surface of “The Plain Elanif,” which is otherwise an industrial swamp.
Pigpile
(Sento) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded at the Hammersmith Clarendon, London, during Big Black's final tour in the summer of 1987. Twelve blistering songs that crackle with lo-fi menace. Japanese edition. Sealed
Stanchenzza
(Obfuscated - OR19) CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Six tracks of mystifying delights, sea shanties and cosmic drones.
Via St. Louis
(Drunken Fish) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A Charalambide and a Pelt guy stare into the white dot at the center of the sun for this cosmic gunfight at the four-track corral. Tense.
In Brownswood
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Billa Ensemble was formed in the winter of 2023 on the occasion of Michiu (electric guitars), the concept horse (no-input feedback, bells, reel to reel tape machine, dictaphone), Turmeric Acid (tapes, contact microphones, objects), and Marie Vermont (electronics, tape, keys, contact microphones, mixer, mallets, cymbal ) getting together in Vienna. Coming from different musical backgrounds, the members share a dedication to working with and manipulating magnetic tape in various forms (reel to reel, cassette, minicassette); their shared approach to music making, improvisation and listening embraces electroacoustic and analog instrumentation in live performance. Recorded in a small flat in June 2024 before a set at Café Oto. Edition of 60
Bring Back Hanging
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.356) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
In these dispatches from the UK’s No Audience underground, former A Band beardy weirdy and mathematical Doctor dork Karl M V Waugh shoots the shit with poet gonkette and Mumsnet terrorist Verity Spott. They attempt to put some grit in your oyster with recordings made in their Brexit bunker which are then given a crude lubing from swivel-eyed scruff bag THF Drenching. Burble and wheeze, baby. Numbered edition of 48
Birds Call Home Their Dead
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
The thirty-minute title track on this 2007 disc comes on like "supercharged outerspace noise-rock ... that builds ... until the whole thing explodes into a full-on in-the-red space-rock free jam.... "Kissing Dragon" ... [with its] languid, high-end shimmer, layers of guitar, tangled melodies [and] deep reverberant swells [is] woven into a ... dreamlike raga...." The final track, "Her Anger Is Limitless," previously released as a tour CDR (Celebrate Psi Phemenon 2006), "sounds like a million guitars..., guys outside cutting down trees and tossing them in the wood chipper..., [a] futuristic synth battle, thousands of little bells and chimes, a roomful of amps turned on and buzzing with no instruments plugged into them...."
Gunpowder Temple of Heaven
(Pica Disk - PICA04) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Since the mid-’90s New Zealander Campbell Kneale has been a leading voice within his generation of NZ sound artists. The single 40-minute track here builds and unfolds in a manner that is heavenly for drone-noise enthusiasts. Bruce Russell of The Dead C notes that the “ ‘more is more’ strategy [often] backfires into murky sludge, where the increasing layers merely obscure each other. On the contrary, the more Birchville Cat Motel puts into a piece, the more you hear coming out.”
Siberian Earth Curve
(Drunken Fish) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Impeccably layered squalls of feedback, recorder, cymbals, and electronics by Campbell Neale.
BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL / BRUCE RUSSELL
Untitled
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
2003 collaboration by Campbell Neale and that one guy from the Dead C and A Handful of Dust. The former plays violin, turntables, space phone, bamboo rattle, amplified sugar bowl, milkshake mixer, turntables, contact mics, computer speakers, tapes, clarinet, recorder, transceiver mic, organ, and cheap synth, while the latter handles guitar, effects, tape loops, fire, pine cones, water, electric toothbrush, percussion, and oscillator.
Aperture
(23five - 23F06) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Coarse streams of electrons flange and pulsate within caustic firestorms recorded without overdubs in real time by kick-ass Mills composer who’s been using computers and electronics since the ’70s. Plenty of cold wheezatronics and busy, subterranean computer hoot. Guest appearances by piano, percussion, and water manipulator Kenneth Atchley.
No Play Or Movement
(Copyright Police) CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. The debut release by a low-profile mix artist whose collages are intentionally rudimentary, made exclusively of loops from previously released or otherwise publicly available music by other musicians. The work by this anonymous DJ is simple and basic. There are no additional edits or effects. Edition of 20
Filthy Communions 2005/2009
(Turgid Animal) CD $13.00
Five live recordings from Helsinki and Rio De Janeiro. Total filth, complete noise, no bullshit (meaning no foolishness; actual bovine fecal matter is more than welcome, in all likelihood). Twelve-page booklet with pictures from the gigs and shit-smeared all over. Edition of 300.
SINDRE BJERGA / DUNCAN HARRISON / CLAUS POULSEN / PAUL WATSON
Blind Dates
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.294) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pretty much fresh off the bus. Cosmic true head vibes. Bjerga and Watson scrape and scratch in gleeful unison. Norwegian ALF cassette. The kind of Happy Birthday drop that only The Baron can get away with. Edition of 66.
Dig Your Own Hole
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.275) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sound collages, gnarled-out microphone psych and the glorified magic of everyday rituals, filtered though shit-stained cassettes and over-cooked frequencies. One complete live recording from Oslo (including a section where a tower of chairs was pulled down from the stage) and a mobile phone recording of parts of a show at the Klinker Club in London.
Huffing The Semantic Smoke From The Deep Hum
(Chocolate Monk - choc.490) CDR $6.75
In the midst of it all, Sindre Bjerga escaped for a while through secret tunnel passages and met up with Tanto in his underground lab, where piles of tape machines oozed and buzzed, dozens simultaneously. He hooked up his stuff to the main frame, which made it overheat, creak, thump, and melt until the sounds were on fire and language combusted into a cloud of fog. Words and meaning went up in smoke and duo was cast into the big, deep hum of vapor. Edition of 60
Black Bikini
(Musik Atlach - MA014) CD $13.50
Pentti Dassum (aka amplified junk metalist Umpio) and Jonna Karanka (aka visual artist and improviser Kuupuu) locked themselves indoors for three days during the winter of 2013. The resultant arrangement of space debris and wriggling dark worms is built from tapes, loops, junkstruments, harassed guitar, bass, electronics, processing and manipulations.
Grab yourself a sniff here: https://soundcloud.com/musikatlach/sets/black-bikini-st
Beaches & Canyons
(DFA - 2125) 2xLP $25.00
(DFA - 2125) Used CD $10.00
Brooklyn sound manipulation specialists’ fluid, swelling and blissed-out frenzy of chaotic and orchestrated electronics, percussion, vocals and treated guitars.
Melancholy of a Pagan Bucolic Spirit
(Legion Blotan - BLOT005) CD $14.00
The third album. Two long tracks, over forty minutes of raw, melancholic black metal, closely attached to the land and nature.
The Rain Is The Weeping Of The Forefathers
(Legion Blotan) CD $10.50
A new phase of Black Howling’s inspired blend of melancholy and paganism. One song, nearly forty minutes of disgust, sorrow and hatred toward the modern world. Edition of 500.
BLACK LEATHER JESUS / INCAPACITANTS
A Purpose Not Necessary
(Dada Drumming - DD30) split CD $10.00
“Heavy, crunchy shit abounds” in The Black Leather Jesus’s “Shelter,” marvels The One True Dead Angel. It “steers toward processing combinations that threaten to spiral wildly out of control until the chop-shop layering technique carries the piece into a new direction… This is nasty, sinus-cleaning stuff that operates at two basic volumes, Really Fucking Loud and Even Louder….” “Yellow Silk Buddha” by Incapacitants is “a screeching metallic roar augmented by overloud junk noise and pounding, usually on found metal scraps and using contact mics….[T]his is an inspired pairing, and its cumulative effect is … pure noisehead nirvana at a volume capable of sterlizing mice…, if not killing them outright.”
BLACK LEATHER JESUS / RICHARD RAMIREZ
Scrapyard
(Phage - PT136) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
CD reissue of an LP (Praxis Dr. Bearmann 1995) plus a ten-minute bonus track. Lots of metal noises, violent distortion, porno samples and an overall assault on the senses.
Skuff
(Turgid Animal - TA371) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Join Kevin Novak, Richard Ramirez, Scott Houston, Vance Osborne and Sean Matzus on this journey into self-degradation and filthy, revenge-riddled noise violence. Step back in time to the slave auction. Hear the abuse.
The Defining Love (Top / Bottom Exchange)
(Shamanic Trance - STCD1) CD $15.00
Harsh junk noise from Richard Ramirez, Sean Matzus, Kevin Novak (T.E.F.), Scott Houston (Respirator), Robert Newsome, Vance Osborne and Thomas Mortigan. Also features a collaboration with Ascites. CD is housed in a black paper wallet packaged in seven-by-seven folded cover. Edition of 300.
THEE BLACK ONE / GERRITT WITTMER
Gerritt / The Black One
(The Witch Is Screaming ]) Used CDR $6.00
Two twenty-five-minute live sets recorded March, 20, 2004, in New Brunswick, NJ. Screen-printed cards. Numbered edition of 50
Choking On Grave Soil
(Troniks - TRO224) Used CD $5.00
Cinder block snakes pummeling through intricately woven nests, kneading maliciously at the middle. A silver haired piper Greh Holger (Hive Mind / Chondritic Sound) tries calling his snakes back home, stretches his vocal chords deep and wide but only whispers trickle out. Their scales push outward and gash the softness open leaving shards and soggy ash. Meat tears in waves of coarse, uneven static, swelling and expanding. Their buzzing rattles growing larger. The digging continues, getting further inside, spilling wildfire in the folds of flesh. The end is here. A blister-covered whistling tone thins itself into nothing and disappears. They are lost and so is he...
Earth
(Destijl - IND098) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Destijl - IND098) LP $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Destijl - IND098) Used CD $8.00
It's always unfortunate to have to blow heavy painkillers on actual physical pain, but Earth was built on a foundation of broken bone; most of this, the seventh Black To Comm album, was composed under the influence. And like the 2009 silent flick of the same name by Singapore filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen, for which this album is the soundtrack, it's about slowness and decay, states of unconsciousness, sleeping and waking up, dying and being reborn. Marc Richter translates the film's post-apocalyptic collage (based on paintings by Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, and Géricault) by employing similar collage-based sampling techniques using loops made from vintage vinyl and shellac records, combined with startling vocal work by David Aird (Vindicatrix), Renate Nikolaus's array of instruments and noise devices, singing saws played by Christopher Kline, and Rutger Zuydervelt on singing bowls. Evocative of a mindset similar to Gifts-era Loren Connors and Scott Walker's Tilt. LP includes free download card.
One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met and Everyone Thought I Was Whistling
(Sonaria) Used CD $15.00
2001 CD reissue of limited edition LP (Orgel Fesper 1981) containing two side-long tracks of extended dada reverie, the ne plus ultra of cut-up sound art put together by a then-teenaged future New Blockader, at the time possessed by a fevered desire to surpass the excesses of the United Dairies lunatic fringe. Sinister, madness-inducing, completely absurd, futile. Sealed.
Children’s Suite and Live at PBS
(Dual Plover) 7-inch + CD $15.50 (Out-of-stock)
Possibly the sickest release produced by a label that specializes in a sweet variety of ill. Contrary to expectation, Kevin Blechdom (Belctum From Blechdom, Erase Errata) transforms the Beatles classic “Twist and Shout” into a celebration of prenatal pleasure. The first 500 copies come with a bonus CD of La Bleckles recorded live at PBS FM during her 2006 tour of Australia. Nice ’n’ womby.
Stealing From Helpless Children / Look Up
(Ad Hoc - ADHOC16/17) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
This two-disc set compiles the entire recorded output of this band that came of age during the ascent of '80s DIY -- two full albums and bonus material collected from compilation appearances and the like. The first album reflects the irreverence of Residential / Zappa-esque rock and their own untamed personalities. One the second disc, their darker 1992 album, drum machines and lo-fi synthesizers dominate. Still fractured.
Music For Multiples
(Fresnl) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sound experiments created by this Ralph Haxton / rhBand droneur, permeated by all things organic in design. Gorgeous tones via metal bowls, clarinet, contact microphones, saxophone, trumpet, PVC pipe, harmonium, piano.
Keynote Dialogues
(Monotype - MONO053) CD $14.00
The first solo album in twelve years by the Dutch master of the interface of voice, electronics, samples and sound synthesis. Blonk combines a childlike freedom in improvisation with a keen grasp of structure. Highlights include: "Buitenboordspuug" (a multi-track mouth piece that utilizes his "cheek synthesizer" technique); the title track, comprised of texts generated from the word "pukhterg" in his invented GeenKrimpian language; "Cimbrod King" (made of processed samples of a mockingbird's singing, and poetry containing anagrams of the names of birds); and a live scrambling version of the multi-track voice piece "Gramm."
Blood Folke
(Small Doses - DOSE107) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Dan Wieken’s doom-laden guitar riffs and unearthly vocals blend with Lauren Gaffney’s discordant viola. Both are rounded out with Bryan Pierson’s precise pounding to form a cohesive blend of doom, post-rock, and black metal.
Pentecostal Gymnast Trapped in Lime Jello
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS52) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
This is some Big Gurn, Ethel: a warm and twitching box of meat long-awaited (by someone somewhere, maybe) as a requisite for the passage of Blood Stereo and Bren’t Lewiis to the next stage in their mud-worshiping pupation. The bulk of the album consists of fried and munched decimations of recordings from live events in sunny Caledonia-Upon-Entrail, miscellaneous unincorporated villages throughout the backwoods of Lower Scotland’s Britain Minor region, and a handful of West Coast pear orchards in what is now known as California. Spookily hovering objects gently clang against one another in arenas of witchy ambience. Lo-fi reproductions of crushing rumbles hiss through passages of spastic regurgitation. Voices and mouth-hole-sourced noise-type audio jiggle and whither between swirling montages of home-made fweent, bent found sound, loops, and tape-manipulated jiggery-pokery. The gorp-meisters also disrobe for “Conversation With Bicycle Horn,” a graphic score composed in the early 1980s by Richard Sterling Streeter, who hails the first-ever recording of his work thus: “Exactly as annoying and monotonous as intended.”
The Toadstool Millionaires
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.384) CDR $8.00
The unholy union follows 2016’s Pentecostal Gymnast Trapped In Lime Jello with further stabs at hobbling the mind. A two-course pig-out of time-distorting tape collage mangle and beady-eyed space bending sound processing by Gnarlos, Lucian Tielens, Karen Constance, Dylan Nyoukis, The City Councilman, Tom Chimpson, Lilly McBilllly, Elkka Reign Nyoukis, The Two Winnies and Lindy Lettuce. One section sounds like a melon-headed child fondling a dried umbilical stump. Includes I’m A Toadstool Millionare badge.
BLOOD STEREO / KOMMISSAR HJULER / MAMA BÄR
Blutige Polize
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC213) CDR $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
This three-way split for audio vérité aficionados. Hjuler's down the pub with his mates, laughing, singing, listening to old Anal Probe comps. Baer plugs in her guitar and hollers long-ass hymns to hysteria. A bit of me-time and all is rosy. Blood Stereo unfolds the first part of their digestive tract concept triptych with the sounds of Nyoukis's bowels rumbling, moving along with stalker-friendly imported bird-calls, concluding with a post-prandial take on the opener.
Palatine Arches / Tape Hiss For Brainwash / The Gither
(Chocolate Monk - choc.224) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of everything from Palatine Arches cassette (Beartown Records 2011), Tape Hiss For Brainwash cassette (Feeding Tube 2011) and the USA tour three-inch CD The Gither (Chocolate Monk 2011). Dumpster Diving describes the former as “Rabid short wave … elastic voices and rare rattletrap steel percussion…. [L]ittle naked people [pulled] out of the cinder[s] … shimmer and cry…. [P]hantasmagorical sound scheme. Absolutely freaky and very inspiring work.” About Tape Hiss, The Quietus says, “[E]verything feels born of mouth, spittle and groan. Even when [Constance and Nyoukis] move across the bows of great elegiac tones, there’s a meat-born Parkinson’s buzz of damage to it….”
Spools & Frolics
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.370) 2xCDR $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hot guff from the previously released cassettes Into Aquatic Maze (Hanson 2011), The Creaking Thirst Alien Passenger 2013), and Hackit (Chocolate Monk 2016); tracks from the compilations Hip Hop Shop Sweepers (Be Saint 777), I Don't Think The Dirt Belongs to The Grass (Carbon 2006), George Ferguson McKeating (Belishill 2009), Songs About Dying (Pjorn 72 2011), and Fug Gum Volume 2 (Freakdom 2013); plus some random unreleased gunk. Each cover hand-collaged by Karen Constance, rubber-stamped, hand-numbered. With insert. Numbered edition of 50
Two Paths To An Outer Edge
(Chocolate Monk - choc.465) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recordings of A Bedside Traveller were stashed away for ten months before a well infused listening session took place in November. Constance and Nyoukis retreated to their respective creative hovels and constructed new tracks, mixing the original recordings with ones made at the year's end. Both sets of tracks where then mixed one night in December. The borders became blurred and now we have one 30- minute collage that travels further down the Alice hole of non music / dream mulch. Each cover is handmade and unique. Edition of 50 with insert.
Where There’s Raw Grace in Garbage
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.363) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
While everything may seem terrible, Blood Stereo continue on their personal quest to become brain food mechanics. Their tape collage piece stitches together electronic chirps and blips with low tech keys: chair squeaks, manipulated mechanical groan, text recital by Mayuko Fujino; vocal drones; groggy horn bloot; field recordings; tones, tape loops and dissected voice by Elaine Kahn. High-scorers on The Hare psychopath test get to inflate their self-esteem. No reason you don’t deserve good grub, too. Numbered edition of 60
Magnetism
(BloodLust! - B!057) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
CD re-release of the fourth full-length Bloodyminded album (Bloodlust 2006), comprised of fifteen feedback-drenched tracks set apart from current Bloodyminded by the more abstract, eccentric, and guttural vocals.
Plays Bloodyminded
(BloodLust! - B!095) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
CD edition of out-of-print cassette, first released in a numbered edition of 100 copies for the April 2007 Bloddyminded tour, then in a numbered edition of 25 copies for the Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now exhibition at Printed Matter in New York City. Special conceptual recordings approved by Pierpaolo Zoppo himself.
BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / PIG HEART TRANSPLANT
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer / Pig Heart Transplant
(Phage - PT184) CD $9.75 (Out-of-stock)
Five bleak-as-fuck untitled tracks of dark oppressive atmosphere with a healthy dose of vocals and some well placed drumming.
BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / IRR. APP. (EXT.)
Discordant Convergence
(Phage - PT197) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks of dark, brooding, atmospheric noise. Fifty-three minutes. Edition of 500.
Poppies & Cocks
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC249) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Spittle from the underbelly of UK freakdom. Dictaphone choke and sputter stops, panic gasps and glossolalia gulpage, cracked-up breathing and cat purr, creaking and chirping spurts, deathbed wheeze and swollen throats, horse blow and smut panting by Fiona of The Hunter Gracchus Luke Poot.
Blues Control
(Holy Mountain) Used CD $8.00
A hazy, spaced world that exists between fuzzed distortion, jabbering electronics, and a lazy, stay-in-bed psychedelic glaze, with Leo Cho’s rhythmic keyboards pulsating below. Guitar player and manipulator of assorted junk-on-table Russ Waterhouse cuts through, whittles and lays waste. “It’s like the soundtrack to Rainbow Bridge” says Tobjörn Axelrod of Bus Rider, “If it were in the Caribbean.” From 2007
Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hit (Take 2)
(Toeblock) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Making a saxophone honk, screech and generally giving the impression of Mother Goose meeting armageddon,” explains All Music Guide, Blurt squawks “their way through a noisy avant-garde netherworld between jazz and rock…. [Frontman] Ted Milton’s voice is … a grumbling, gurgling, bleating (if not bleeding) blurt of a sound, silenced only when his mouth is wrapped around a saxophone reed [which] would just as soon imitate fingernails down a chalkboard or elephants in heat as conform to the jazzy warmth the instrument might yield in other hands.”
Mansdoof
(Absurd) Used CDR $3.00
Hums and vibrations cohere into a riddle of electrical static and occasional sudden movement,” notes E/I about this 2003 release by Martijn Tellinga. “The impression is of marshaled electro-acoustic improvisation…. [H]igh pitches and scuffles…, field recordings … the edited bounce of a table tennis ball…, sticky tape, disquieting vocal sounds…, traffic noise recorded in Morocco…. [A]n attractive balance between the lived, the meditative and the electronic.” Edition of 131
Unmanned Vehicle
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.287) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Cody Brant and Shane McDonell serve up a bowl of bubbling sound befuddle through overlaid tape loops jammed on wonked-out four-track players. Field recordings are mixed in with tapes of bowed guitars and cymbals, door creaks, electronics and other smooch, and although there is much happening on these recordings it is always afforded time and space so the loop worm can burrow deep into your lugs. Imagine Rock n Roll Jackie passing a Jazz Cigarette to Dilloway after his whitey decides he would like to have a bash at covering Brown Supper’s “Quarantine The Aliens.”
34:13
(Young God) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Body Haters is the crude, arrhythmic and elemental evil sister of The Body Lovers, another instrumental project by Swans’ Michael Gira. Constructed entirely from raw field recordings and primitive cassette loops, 34:13 is a rude chunk of electronic concrète, simultaneously abstract and visceral. Edition of 2000.
Number One Of Three
(Atavistic) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Conceived and structured as one long piece divided into ten untitled parts, this 1998 album captures “the extreme intensity which defined Swans in a new fashion: it completely avoids lyrics in favor of instrumental flow, build, and atmosphere, from solo acoustic guitar to a full-on band attack, with instrumentation ranging from flugelhorn to hammered dulcimer to melodica, all carefully interwoven throughout.” Digipak
Hair Strings and Magnets
(Chocolate Monk - choc.537) CDR $7.00
A continuing viola-shaped entry under the Core of the Coalman category for the bureau of international mystery recordings of Chocolate Monks. Five pieces performed on solo viola with electronic things, and recorded in empty, disused, and leaking churches, warehouse spaces, and a dance studio, while Boehringer lived in Huddersfield from 2014 to 2020. Signals bowed, intercepted, and fed-back upon themselves until they become their own memories. Scores for tracks two and five are also available for anyone who wants to take a stab. Edition of 60
The Suspicious String Quartet Plays Tape Guts At The Core Of The Coalman
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC225) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
These tracks were laid down on one of those hot nights, and the tracks were burning, man, burning. Most were destroyed instantly, in fact, upon entry. Others were partly rescued and reconstituted using an advanced avant-garde dietary cloning process involving transparent magnets whose fields can be read like musical notation, but vertically. No longer needing to scratch cats with horse parts, Boehringer instead utilizes here a gravitational horsefield, altering tempos fluidly to outrun the ever-changing winds of fashion and rescue the princess, whose harmonic tongue might resist definition, but is never short on other types of suggestion.
Last Orders
(Mycophile) Used CD $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Objects struck, rubbed, chafed, chivvied, bothered and caused by other means to resonate over the course of eight coherent soundscapes, each with its own distinctive feel and inner logic. Rather than draw attention to the materials, Bohman foregrounds their conventional musicality as an echo to what is being done by electronics musicians and avant garde classical ensembles in their respective avant gardes.
Music And Words
(Paradigm Discs) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The freest possible improv by this UK national treasure (whose soundmaking devices include disassembled violin, springs, lightbulbs, barbecue grill, wire record rack, wooden box with wires stretched across) presses more detail into every split second of a post-serial slipstream of variegated events than ought to be allowed. Bohman also tapes audio-letters containing commentaries on his daily life spoken in hilariously lugubrious tones (Christmas with the family, collage-making in the kitchen, receiving gifts of home-made Turkish delight, walks to the local pub, the state of public restrooms). DIY dada from the midst of suburban banality.
Text Pieces + Compositions for Prepared Strings and Objects
(Krim Kram) CD $14.00
“Exposing the absurdities of everyday life,” summarizes MJE, “knowing of the cynicism that could ensue, and taking a complete 180 from that — joyous deconstruction.”
Transmutations
(Somnimage - SOMCD113) CD $12.00
Exquisite drones and soundscapes by French sound-sculptor Christian Renou and the duo of Mandy Matz (Theory Anesthetic) and Mykel Boyd — one by each and two collaborative tracks. Renous treats, assembles and mixes acoustic sounds, relying on dense, rapid-fire montages and electroacoustic ambience. Bokeh transforms and layers Boyd’s processed field recordings, and adds vocals and violin. Preview it here: http://somnimage.bandcamp.com/album/transmutations-by-brume-bokeh
ANDY BOLUS / JOSEPH HAMMER / JOHN WIESE
Prelude To Hawaiian Radio
(Helicopter) CD $12.00
Recorded on a dark and lively night at Studio 1/4 in Los Angeles, Andy Bolus’s cadaverous murk combines with Joseph Hammer’s reel-to-reel jitters and John Wiese’s electronic jolts to veer from sonic claustrophobia to audio manipulation wipe-out across a thirteen track cocktail of stumbling hiss, voltage-impinged oscillations, and tangles of oozed-out blurt and whirling, chirping lurch. Featuring exquisite color artwork by Sayo Mitsuishi and liner notes by Seymour Glass of Bananafish.
Novum Castellum
(Turgid Animal - TA405) 3xCD $30.00
The first ever doom record on Turgid Animal reissues In And Around Newcastle, a live CDR box set (Fuckin' Amateurs, 2008) by these Northeast England masters. The live sets are essentially "bootleg" (albeit official) recordings and as such are not of the clearest quality. Includes the entire In And Around Newcastle recordings plus an extra disc of bonus live material. Limited to 300 copies. Packaged in DVD case.
Night & Daylight Yeibichei
(Indian House) Used CD $7.00
Ten songs from a nine-day Navajo ceremony performed in the winter to treat a patient afflicted with eye trouble, ear trouble, or paralysis of some part of the body. 1995 reissue of 1968 album
Asbestos Shake
(Agaric) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Bleak Bliss summarizes this collaborative recording by the New York sax-guitar monsters and the mad Swiss scientists of cracked everyday electronics as “a six-headed beast beyond the imagination of mere mortals.”
Barbed Wire Maggots
(Agaric - 1983) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of their essential 1983 album. Highly recommended by Hindu gnostics such as Byrey Colon, to wit: "Upper register bowel tingling never felt so good. Miller's guitar joins [Sauter and Dietrich's saxes] in the stratosphere, plugging raw current into metal bowls, sizzling like a wok full of stewardess jiz, just creating and distorting and worrying the fabric of the cosmos like some idiotic terrier-god from a lost part of the Upanishads."
Borbetomagus
(Agaric) Used CD $15.00
This 1995 reissue of Borbetomagus’s 1980 debut album contains the previously un-released “The Lost Concordat,” recovered from badly deteriorated master tapes of the session. “Heavy noise, deeply coiled feedback manipulation, hair-raising electronic squeal,” says Forced Exposure, “and the ultimate in air propulsion explosiveness.” With Brian Doherty on electronics. Sealed
Buncha Hair That Long
(Agaric) Used CD $20.00
This “collection of live recordings from 1991, says Pitchfork, “Is one of Borbetomagus’s most sonically-diverse releases, moving from heavy, growling noise to churning, electronic-sounding drone to a track called ‘In The Nursery that mixes trebly test-tone whine with moments of … near-silence. The album ends with a 16-minute ‘cover’ of the Beatles’ ‘Blue Jay Way’, recorded at CBGB…, [where] the trio [was] all plugged into a single bass amp, and the result is a sonic tidal wave that’s both terrifying and weirdly calm.”
Experience The Magic
(Agaric) Used CD $10.00
“With their acerbic wit and bloodthirsty attack, Borbetomagus are virtually unlike any other band anywhere. They make Peter Brötzmann seem warm and fuzzy,” according to All Music Guide. “This is [the kind of scary music … that makes you have nightmares about serial killers. But it’s also the kind of fun-house fare that makes you want to live free or die, to scream in ecstasy, and laugh with glee with the knowledge that the creative impulse is alive and terribly well and living in America, of all places. This is music beyond language because it is the roots of language itself: the impulse that attempts to express and organize that which is unspeakable.”
Live At Inroads
(PSF) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
This 1992 reissue of Cluster Project’s 1983 cassette is one of the heaviest live documents of the original Borbetomagus big-band (Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich on saxophones, Donald Miller on guitar and Brian Doherty on live electronics). Nothing beats the glorious primal gush of these guys in flight, and Live At In-Roads remains the source of so much that came after, as well the first ever release by a western group on PSF.
Live In Tokyo
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live at the La Mama, June 1996. Sealed
Songs Our Mother Taught Us
(Agaric) Used CD $10.00
“The three performances from London and Glasgow captured on this disc have no real reference points in even the free-est of jazz,” asserts All Music Guide about this 1999 album, “Rather, they sound like some huge machine sanding away at itself in an attempt to break free and lumber down the highway toward an uncertain destiny. Sauter, Dietrich and Miller play through so many pedals and distortion devices that it’s entirely impossible to discern which saxophonist is making which noise, and sometimes impossible to tell whether it’s a saxophone or a guitar one is hearing. But even as each man blows or strums or otherwise plays his guts out, seemingly entranced, space always remains for the other two to be clearly heard, commenting and amplifying (in every sense of that word) and turning what could be a storm into a genuine three-way creative interaction.”
Trente Belles Années
(Agaric - 1998) CD $15.00
Like worms through an hour glass, so are the days of our live recordings – such as Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich, and Donald Miller’s final concert of their 2009 tour of Europe. Performing at Instants Chavires in the land of la vache qui fond, the trio celebrates thirty goddamn years of impossibly loud and uncompromising screech, pioneering unique strategies such as bells together, extended, flexible mouthpieces, open mouth wah wah, and never ever conserving a single volt of energy. “You know that bit at the end of the Monterey concert where Hendrix sets his guitar on fire?” guitarist Donald Miller famously asked. “That’s what we do. For a whole hour.” With Borbetomagus, bigger is bigger, better is better. It’s not up for debate. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
Zurich
(Agaric - 1984) CD $15.00
First-time CD reissue of the trio's classic early live recording. Capturing the sheer density of their shows being an impossible dream, along with the non-aural undertow that comes from immersion in the uncommon frequencies the trio tends to inhabit, Zurich establishes the band's ability to build something other than a tsunami of sound. Hellish, unrelenting firestorms of sound, for example.
Anal By Anal
(SSE Communications) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
1993 reissue of their first single (Trans 1986), recorded one hot summer afternoon by Eye and Tabata (later of Zeni Geva). Three riff-dismantling old-school punk tracks set to sporadically edited drum samples, lifted from an instructional cassette by jazz drummer Ponta Murakami. Sealed
Soul Discharge
(Shimmy Disc) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Indexed as two tracks, the first being all ten tracks from the original album (Selfish 1989), the second being another forty-one-and-a-half minutes of early recordings from 1982 to 1987, some of which later appeared on Onanie Bomb Meets the Sex Pistols.
Super Roots
(Reprise) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Fourteen quick blasts that show the band at a warped apex, with emphasis on vocal experimentation, grunts, groans, and chants, documenting new work in a state of transition, raw and not fully shaped ideas, and chaotic sketches. Gloriously messy, totally nuts, utterly joyous.
Vision Creation Newsun
(WEA Japan) Used 2xCD $75.00
Spazmo-transonic rhythm: first came the idea, then came the action, and then it got hot. Vision Creation Newsun builds on the grooves of Super Are with additional funkiness and breaches in space-time. Includes T-shirt and sticker. Box plays a 40-second sample when the inside is exposed to light. Sealed
Wow2
(Disk Union) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Crisply captured live recording from 1993. Unfettered, loose and immediate, yet so freakishly welded together at all times — whether stopping dead or accelerating with joyous abandon into cartoonish explosions of twitchy screeching and unhinged gibbering.
ALEXEI BORISOV / OLGA NOSOVA / DAVE PHILLIPS
Borinosophil
(Monotype - MONO051) CD $14.00
The Russian duo also known as Astma worked with Phillips in June 2009; the recordings combine the energy unleashed by Borisov and Nosova together with the more continuous sound world of Phillips and occasional rapid editing from him. Densely orchestrated electronics with a hypnotic, psychedelic feeling that embraces elements of weird free-form spoken word, minimalism, free jazz, noise, heavy acid, electroacoustic, dub and a variety of acoustic torture.
Xenoglossia
(Insofar Vapor Bulk) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two masters of experimental electronic noise present a series of destroyed music of varying tapestries. In card folder.
Royals
(Monotype - MONO034) CD $12.75
(Monotype - MONO034) Used CD $8.50
Three new pieces somewhere between composition, song, literary essay, poem and unreligious mantra, without embracing any genre in particular. Bosetti translates intonations of speech into complex and seemingly orchestral scores where meaning, tone and noise melt together. Inspired by Arcimboldo's 16th Century paintings, which he calls "examples of hand made convolution and shadowing," he pours words into notes, notes into noise, and noise into meaning. Repetition, meditation, hallucination. Harpsichord, piano, guitar, soprano saxophone, field recordings. The core of the sinuous "Gloriously Repeating" is generated from a short fragment from the W.G. Sebald poem "After Nature." "Life Expectations" is constructed around the intricate emotional, rhythmic and melodic counterpoints of a casual conversation, where the sensitive interaction between voices becomes the matter. The text of the surreal and short “Dead Man” implies a ready-made pseudo-zen philosophy of resurrection derived from quotes of Iron Maiden lyrics.
MATTHEW BOWER / RICHARD YOUNGS
Relayer
(VHF) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A dense set of layered studio recordings from 2002 where rainbows of color and textures — string drone, percussion, bleeps, and the unidentifiable — compete in a mix devoid of the traditional “lead with backing” schema. Many tracks have the kind of welcoming electronic bed seldom heard since the demise of Harmonia, with ring modulated fuzz bleeping away over a chugging but non-oppressive beat. Elsewhere, there’s Youngs’s Riley-style organ ping-pong, a little virtuoso kalimba, thick wads of analog synth.... You know where this is going.”
A Hundred Camels In The Courtyard
(Dom) Used 2xCD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, in these stories, Salam uses suggestions supplied by smoking kif to rid himself of a possible enemy; He of the Assembly catches himself up in the mesh of his own kif-dream and begins to act it out in reality; Idir’s victory over Lahcen is the classical story of the kif-smoker’s ability to outwit the drinker; Driss the soldier, aided by kif, proves the existence of magic to his enlightened superior officer. For all of them, the kif pipe is the means to attaining a state of communication not only with others but above all with themselves. On this 1999 reissue, originally released in 1981 by Cadmus Editions, Bowles’s gravelly speech is the perfect medium in which to encounter these smoke-filled stories. At times, Moroccan music and chattering voices can be heard faintly in the background, a presumably unintended decoration that inevitably flavors the final mix.
Black Star At The Point Of Darkness
(Sub Rosa) Used CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded in Tangier, this album is a unique kaleidoscope of Paul Bowles’ talents. The writer, musician, musicologist and wanderer reads poems and short stories, and shares recordings of ritual Morrocan music. Jean-Luc Fafchamps performs what Bowles considered one of his most accomplished works, the Six Preludes for Piano.
Blondie - Thanks For Sharing
(Krim Kram) CD $12.75
You know Andy Heck Boyd: wanted to write but typing caused too much pain (tendonitis), and so began to experiment with tape recording after getting into it around early 2017. Has never performed live, but has exhibited paintings at galleries in Seattle, Maine, NYC. Coupla comics to his name. Yeah, that’s the guy. He goes out on the daily with a tape recorder all the time, sometimes switches it up with Super-8 or drawing or collage work. You know how it is. Some tracks here were made using an amp, SK-1 keyboard, and microphone, lyrics composed on the spot. On another, the blood of a woodpecker caught by a friend’s cat is the muse. For others, a short dead-end road and a hiking trail in the Red River Gorge area are the stages where Heck “recorded my thoughts and improvised ideas, I like to perform in a sense, embellish or exaggerate things I see and observe, and I like to analyze layers wherever I go, layers of things that require looking at one thing or area slowly for a little bit, in the supermarket that day I was looking around the produce section at people smiling and some gathered in small groups talking and stuff, and saw glittery, cheap USA flags adorned everywhere around the bread and donuts near the bakery.”
Green Glass
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Further broadcasts from two champions of true-brow / street level sound art, or is it an imageless art movie for your ears? Either way, belief makes real. Edition of 60
Munterated Merropity
(Chocolate Monk - choc.560) Magazine + CDR $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Whether or not you believe that the gloved mouse is pulling the levers to our reality, Kentucky curveball Andy Heck Boyd is here to bring more confusion to the seed swap. Priscilla Presley is watching Pinocchio on mute, someone decided to eat all Paul McCartney’s food, the mouse died three days in a row, there is a neon slime face-sit, and so much more to decipher. Just be sure to take a right at the end of Spalding Lane. Energize! Energize! Energize! 36 pages, color. Includes Parking Lot three-inch CDr featuring The Frankenberrys and The Gay Zorros, six-by-four photograph, and one-inch badge. Numbered edition of 54
This Is Not A Tape
(Chocolate Monk - choc.621) CDR $8.00
Part split, part collaboration of audio diary gubbins, in which Spencer first turn their back on their usual “sound artsy” style and embrace the joy of a new tape player, framing everyday domestic nonsense with ferricobalt and asking us to come graze on the shrubbery of failure. Andy Heck Boyd responds with insights from his digs out west, including a rare appearance by Uncle Dog & The Sickos. The disc ends with a 12-minute collaboration that shines a spotlight on the “special relationship,” sweet Transatlantic hiss and wonk. God save the beans.
I’m Gonna Stop Killing
(DiCristina) Used CD $4.00
Two songs from Red Headed Stranger (one a duet with Willie Nelson), new explorations of music from that album, and seven unreleased live tunes, including original material from The Geraldine Fibbers and Scarnella, a Neil Young cover, a Marianne Faithful cover, and some world class improvisations. With Nels Cline, Devin Hoff, Carla Kihlstedt, Marka Hughes, Jenny Scheinman, Scott Amendola, Todd Sickafoose, Shahzad Ismaily, Ches Smith, and Dina Maccabee.
Instant Oblivion
(Dual Plover) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Sydney, Australia’s favorite chronically depressed, long-term unemployed, alcoholic, asthmatic, homosexual electronic music pioneer spent the waking half of two years concocting his third collection of solo works. If his previous Ruffini Corpuscle was a plumb designed to measure the depths of a luscious aural abyss, Instant Oblivan is the measurement discovered by its predecessor’s journey deep into exquisite musical epiphany. “Bradbury is a master sonic bricklayer,” concludes Mess + Noise, “who has the ins and outs of tension and release down pat.”
The Meta Mega
(Melon Expander - ME007) CD $13.50
In January 2007, seven-year-old Sienna Sol hosted a jam at her family's Three Kings Day party. Sienna and her friends explored the tickly extra-terrestrial voices of Old Mr. Grassi (an electronic instrument designed by Ciat-Lonbarde's Peter Blasser); an active six months followed during which Sienna and her nine-year-old friend Valentin partook of free jams on analog electronics, rock instruments, amplified bicycle, microphones, and surreal stream-of-consciousness storytelling that is image-inducing, playful, and at times, haunting. Experimenting with most of these instruments and organized-sound concepts for the first time, the duo's raw intuitive creativity surpasses the outer limits of what is usually heard in “children's music.”
Turn Your Shit Off
(Pegasus Farms) Used CDR $3.00
Free jazz from 2008 by Danny McClain (drums), Raglani (electronics), Chris Smentkowski (guitar), and Dave Stone (sax)
3xx3
(Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack) Used CDR $4.00
Recorded in 33 straight days in late 2000, using the World of Many Dans comic book as a recording reference and calendar where a different Dan was scheduled to music each of the 33 days, resulting in 33 varying pieces of music, which were then mixed together and/or trashed over the following three months and separated into three suites to be listened to at three varying sun/moon phases of the day and further split and assigned to three personalities: the morning suite by the Brain Pause (4am-12pm); the afternoon suite by (Distraction) (12pm-8pm); the evening suite by the Bran (Another plight of medic’s...) Pos (8pm-4am). Special guest Planetsize on “ingrown (morning suite).”
Symphony No. 2 – The Peak Of The Sacred
(Atavistic) Used CD $8.00
This magnificent, resonant, clangorous soundscape of almost imponderable density and length swell to maximum volume and maintains a high level of intensity for over an hour with little relaxation. The unpredictable but intended interplay of overtones and acoustics, evoked by Branca’s mallet guitarists and percussionists, adds considerably to the music’s power, sense of space, and cosmic scope. First edition from 1992 with gold sticker as front panel artwork
Drive Home With a Hammer
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD036) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Early works previously released on Smalltown Supersound -- solo, as one half of Larmoyant duo, and in collaboration with Masami Akita, Bruce Russell, Jon Hegre, Kjetil D. Brandsdal, Maja Ratkje, Zbigniew Karkowski and others.
Don’t Call Me Dali, Darling!
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.391) CDR $8.00
German avant madman and all ’round groovy art hack Stefan Brand sports nothing but his crumpled Y-fronts, energy and a message that needs to bust out for broadcast to the outside world. Such intimate insight into the artist in his natural habitat includes a selection of his infamous Thursday morning bedroom recordings done on his favorite Casio SK1 and the SA-21 tonebank unplugged, with vocal ramblings sung directly into the recorder and a splattering of rough toy samples. Numbered edition of 60
BRANDSTIFTER / DIURNAL BURDENS
Fireabend
(Chocolate Monk - choc.512) CDR $8.00
Hey, boink, you want proof that Brexshit doesn’t have to totally sour the Kraut / Limey handhold? This wee document of whatthefuckery will put the rise in your mind dumplings. The mad man of Mainz, Mr. Stefan Brandstifter, supplies sporadic spurts made of toys, glossolalia, Casio, field recordings and stuck records which he documents on his cruddy yet well made German Dictaphone; Wigan walloper Ross Scott-Buccleuch mangles, chews, loops and assembles. Potential soul scurvy averted! Keep on the grass. Edition of 60
Fuck Piss
(Chocolate Monk) Magazine + CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
In which the Moustache of Mainz (Brandstifter) collages together a 12-page full-colour zine from lost-and-found scraps sent to him from the Portland Peasant (Brant) while the roles are flipped when Brant collages together a short album of sonic nonsense from recordings sent to him from Brandstifter. As delightful as you would expect and with enough random strangeness to send Q-Anon nutters into a froth with their eyes smarting. One person’s detritus is a another fool’s symbolism. Numbered edition of 67
Backdoor Escape From Frog’s Gut
(Chocolate Monk - choc.507) CDR $7.50
Even though no Vietnamese pop music was harmed in the making of Backdoor Escape From Frog’s Gut, be careful not to choke on bones during your travels throughout the westernmost quadrant of The Stinking Empire, that wasteland of mass-comm eavesdropping, loop hypnosis, burgled field recordings, and fracture-scapes that’ll clamp down on your skull like a Gorilla Glue nutcracker. Chocolate Monk’s in-house Clint Eastwood, Jr. (Brant) and Joanne Worley gender reassignment disaster (Glass) have taken every possible precaution to ensure no one exits their hour-long clatter-and-clunk buffet with blood on their hankies. Still, gnaw judiciously, you lion-hearted gonk. Edition of 60
Don’t Bump Your Head!
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.378) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Chocolate Monk’s favorite gutter level archivist splices and dices field recordings sourced from the streets of Philadelphia. Discordant happenings regurgitated into hypno-vignettes. Surprising musical textures and patterns emerge. Numbered edition of 60
Drop-Off Center
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.357) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twenty-four short tracks by this visual and sound collage artist, smeared into one continuous, delightful ear wallop, sometimes sounding like a Puzzle Punk riding aback a Pork Queen. Recorded while destroying all breakables during their removal from the abandoned house of a hoarder, and at the donation area of a recycling center. Numbered edition of 60
Scratch Music
(Chocolate Monk - choc.467) CDR $8.00
“Recorded while laying low in Las Vegas,” according to the man with the golden ears about his strange brew of musical noises and non-musical aural fritterings, “using homemade spring boards, hair buzzer, Fukuoku 9000, radio, cicada drones, two-stringed electric guitar, prepared lap steel guitar, found microcassettes, voice, field recordings and DJ mixer feedbacker.” Numbered edition of 50
Smoke Detail
(Chocolate Monk - choc.622) CDR $8.00
Description sequence. Location: Mexican restaurant. Coordinates: 100 miles north of primary residence. Food status: suboptimal. Journey status: optimal. Each travel event: transforms into raw data processing. Route: winding, lesser-known roads. reality distortion detected. Key object: mucho burrito. Symbolic significance: minimal. Twilight detection: active. driving duration: hours. Burrito quality: average. Ritual status: enhances journey experience. Event log: night drive. Data received: initial tracks from Cody. Output: smoke detail. Krautrock framework: raw, minimalist. Album synthesis: rapid, seamless. Recommended use: reflective open-road journeys. Reality-dream boundary: blurred. Edition: 60
Whether on the Ones
(Chocolate Monk - choc.584) CDR $8.00
Frantic yet focused sound collage work by two of The Stinking Republic's finest noise manglers. Many layers, peel to reveal. “In the winter of 2021 I started squatting at my friend’s art studio in Longview, Washington,” explain Brant. “Along the way I started an audio diary of the experiences I had in and around the thrift store. Quickly I became well acquainted with all the local miscreants and these characters also became part of the mix.” Kruger continues, “The collected source recordings for this project themselves ended up resembling a thrift shop: seemingly haphazard but treasure-filled for the patient digger. Collaging them resulted in 40 minutes of junk-drawer memory-shard channel-surfing.” Edition of 60
19 [Solo] Compositions, 1988
(New Albion) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sixteen originals recorded live plus “You Go To My Head,” “Round Midnight,” and “Half Nelson.” Although free in spots, Braxton’s performances also have their own logic and are quite concise.
Composition N. 165 [For 18 Instruments]
(New Albion) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Performed by the University of Illinois Creative Music Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Braxton in 1992, who describes it thus: “There are static and mutable cloud formations that drift in and out of the canvas of the music…, yet there are target recognition states. This is a sequential event continuum that places equal emphasis on sound and space — the moments come ... the moments go.”
Composition N. 169 + (186 + 206 divided by 214)
(Leo) Used 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
A string orchestra plus four saxophonists tackle this gloriously sprawling concerto. “There is a static quality to much of the piece,” notes All Music Guide, “Characterized by pulsating, thrusting strings. The timbre of the strings actually softens the blows, making this more listenable than some of the composer’s other assemblages…. [T]he fine work of the Slovenia Radio Orchestra, coupled with excellent soloing from Braxton and his saxophonist colleagues, gives this a serious, if somewhat difficult demeanor. There are the usual flashes of brilliance, the complex rhythmic patterns, and the repeating quarter tones…. [T]his is a substantial work … [of] considerable depth and originality.” From 2001
Composition N. 247
(Leo) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A trio outing featuring saxophonist / clarinetist James Fei and bagpipe performer Matthew Welch,” notes All About Jazz. This “unlikely instrumentation mix” places “this extended composition … within [Braxton’s] Ghost Trance Music series, which he describes as a ‘melody that doesn’t end’.” From 2001
Knitting Factory (Piano / Quartet) 1994, Vol. 2
(Leo) Used 2xCD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The never-less-than-impressive Braxton “moves from swing to cool to bebop and back, all the while never letting go of his love for free jazz,” notes All Music Guide, essentially putting “every jazz influence that came his way during his musical upbringing in the boiler and distilling a powerful ersatz. The quartet’s renditions can be very faithful at times, very mainstream. These moments are propelled by Marty Erlich’s soulful saxophone … and Joe Fonda’s bass…. Then again, [Braxton’s] subversive language is never quiet for very long. Every tune moves in and out of focus…. A powerful jazz lesson from a master.”
Ninetet (Yoshi’s) 1997 – Compostion N. 207 / Compostion N. 208 Vol 1
(Leo) Used 2xCD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Pounding pulses devoid of melody, a somewhat limited tonal palette, and lots of repeating phrases … add to the complexity and the opaqueness” of this live recording, notes All Music Guide. “Appreciating the theoretical underpinnings of the compositions … make it more approachable, and the glorious improvisations by Braxton and his colleagues mitigate the harshness of the whole…. [T]he solos and trio breakouts are nothing less than splendid…. [T]hese two performances are among his best for a small group.”
Solo (Koln) 1978
(Leo) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Performing solely on alto sax, there is a searing lyricism and a surprisingly jazz-oriented underpinning to even the most abstract of Braxton’s improvisations,” according to All Music Guide. Released twenty-four years after they were recorded, the tracks here show “him in an energetic mood, and should satisfy those who appreciate his more radical side within the ‘mainstream’ of the jazz avant-garde. He barks, screeches (though only occasionally and in characteristically good taste), and shows some outstanding technical skills, including incredible speed. While he has recorded some of these compositions elsewhere…, Braxton is in peak form on this one and the results are uniformly excellent.”
I Managed to Get Out Through a Secret Door
(Eh?) Used CDR $4.00
“Two long pieces for prepared guitar, where Josh Ronsen, resembling an uncertain version of Hans Reichel, strings together disconnected and non-musical phrases, accompanied by Jason Pierce’s politely restrained cymbal brushing,” mentions our friend at Sound Projector. “ ‘Shoham’ showcases Ronsen’s solo live electronics work…, an extended bout of frowning and glowering translated into monolithic electric moans. He combines his electronics set-up with a turntable and guitar on ‘Art brings a tiny gleam…’, and again succeeds in erecting an inscrutable wall which asks more questions than it answers.”
JOHN WOLF BRENNAN / HANS KENNEL
Pipelines
(Leo - LR292) Used CD $5.00
Eclectic pianist Brennan translates himself onto a church organ for the purposes of an uncompromising culture clash somewhere between baroque music and jazz with trumpeter Kennel, whose playing is brilliant and bright, sharp and clear. This music of fanfares avoids strong dissonances in favor of harmonic nuance and the sound of a church celebration transported en masse into the twenty-first century. The uneasy parp of Marc Unternährer’s tuba on four tracks pushes into slightly edgier waters. Despite an aura of pleasing-enough sound, only close-up do the cleverly intertwined lines and deep, snooty weirdness of Pipelines really emerge.
A Real Nice Clambake
(Butte County Free Music Society - 35) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded at a confusing and ambiguous event in 1987 at Wooj, where pockets of inexplicable activity included the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble applying their singular style of awkward to guitars, bass, Casio, wooden recorders, mandolins. Cassette players throughout the house were recording, while others played loops, telephone answering machine messages, and field recordings. Numerous television sets broadcast anything from The Brady Bunch to cornball noir, while radios broadcast The Isley Brothers, Crosby Stills & Nash, XTC, Paper Lace, Malcolm McLaren, and The Archies. Hours and hours of material was edited into four tracks totaling 51 minutes in length. The incidental, the involuntary, the unintended and the accidental take the lead on A Real Nice Clambake, which captures and repeats sneezes, coughs, burps, mumbles, grunts, moans, clicks, clacks, and clunks, the obnoxious zont of cables getting plugged in, tape hiss, bottles opening, keys and bottle openers rattling on tables, silverware scuttling on porcelain plates, and doors slamming. Mics are jostled and papers are shuffled, amid the spastic xylophone–windchime hybrid of coffee mugs getting stirred with strange vigor. The motor of one of the tape recorders wheezes so loudly that its own microphone picks up the sound. The group’s magical ineptitude perseveres through abrupt left turn after abrupt left turn, dizzying in their constancy, and through stretches of meandering guitar-playing, repetition, interruption, and the peculiar declarations of those present. Released to coincide with Bren't Lewiis's performance at Colour Out Of Space, November 2011. Includes an Industrial Expressionist collage made of hand-painted screen, fragment of found photograph, and defective scrap from commercial print shop.
At The North Pole, Easter Day, 1982
(What The ... - WHAT012) LP (one-sided) + 3in CDR $14.00
In comparison to the only other available 1980s recording of a complete live performance by the BLE (the side-long “Industrial Barbecue,” on the BUFMS boxset), At The North Pole, Easter Day, 1982 is starker and more minimal overall. Performing as a quintet at an open mic night in a student cafeteria, the group had played live only once prior and had yet to amass the collection of ubiquitous tape players and answering machines that accompanied most subsequent performances and recordings. The absence of overt forward progress in some parts gives the performance an incidental resemblance to those tense moments in grim power electronics just before the singer goes berserk, but then ridiculous verbal repetitions and Top 40 references come out of nowhere like nerdy Fluxus rehearsals in the middle of a New Orleans funeral. Other segments highlight the difference between aboriginal metal percussion and pots ’n’ pans getting banged together by people with a remarkably spastic sense of rhythm. Visually, Bren’t Lewiis were like a cross between the jackets of early Nurse With Wound albums and a bunch of hicks impersonating Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Television sets flickered throughout. Doug Roberts brought his bicycle onstage. Dressed in a labcoat and white wool-felt USAF boots, howling into his signature plastic lawn flamingo, Lucian Tielens stretched the limits of publicly acceptable intimate congress with inanimate objects. Tim Smyth wore a bunch of Christmas lights attached to a Civil Defense helmet. Amoeba Man had a garbage bag filled with helium balloons taped to his head and toilet paper wrapped around his face. As some sort of oblique Day-Glo homage to Carmen Miranda, Gnarlos wore a handmade upside-down sweatsuit. The amplified 21-foot aluminum sailboat mast, the undisputed star of the show, was so unwieldy that use of a special freight door was required just to get in and out of the building, and yet a single, lonely metallic “ploong!” was pretty much the limit of its sonic palette -- appropriate testament to the methodology of this absurdly inefficient group. Includes insert printed with glow-in-the-dark ink, and a reproduction of the flyer advertising the show. Edition of 129. All orders placed here include a 3-inch CDR of previously unreleased hoot, not available elsewhere.
Attract And Reproduce
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS107) 3-inch CDR $4.25 (Out-of-stock)
Eighteen minutes of electro-squawk inspired by bot larvae gestating in a nutrient-rich aspic of rancid custard and leech waste. The fourth three-inch CDR in the Dumb Tangerine Dream series. Includes a swatch of Yale University sweatshirt courtesy of This Is Yvonne Lovejoy. Cover photo by Lacie Pound. Edition of 25
Being Happy All The Time Would Be Extremely Depressing
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS77) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Understated and skeletal arrangements, but still chock full of unsettling mixing and weirdos voicing peculiar narratives, sort of like a bizarre misreading of ASMR.
Borderline Dogfood
(Spleencoffin) CD $10.00
The BLE’s first full-length of 2023 is a table scrap pâté of junk percussion, recycled sounds, roasted tapes and electronics, surrealist soliloquies, and decontextualized lyrics squished through the meat grinder and smeared into a professionally replicated compact disc (not a CDR). After-hours sessions at Musiclandria in Sacramento in late 2021 – at the time freshly upgraded to a mammoth instrument lending library with a stream-ready live venue, a recording studio, and a community center — form the sponge-y foundation of much of Borderline Dogfood. Joining the irregulars were The Viper (a violinist who was a defiler of catgut par excellence back in the early 1980s iteration of Bren’t Lewiis, now resembling, as an added bonus, an Edward Gorey character come to life) and The Affable Chap (a recruit from the UK home office who hurled himself into the variety of gear and gizmos available at Musiclandria, especially items in the genus keyboards). With access to everything on the premises, from the synthesizers to the guitars, from the billiards table to the guts of a piano leaning against a wall, the Ensemble floods your delta with electronic doink, insectoid crackling, and brackish murmurs. They avoid becoming what John Whitson of Holy Mountain would describe as “a chance-oriented jam band” by framing everything between (and interrupting everything with) loops and fragments from field recordings and internet fails videos where behavior is modified by life crisis hormones and one deadly sin or another. If you wanted to call it “Olmec improv filtered through contemporary snartwave,” it’s unlikely anyone’d try to shove you down a flight of stairs. Mixed throughout are passages going back to 2017 from Lucian Tielens and the City Councilman’s weekly sessions at Fluxus Enigma in Fair Oaks, where anything can happen — grunt’n’moan montages, Theremin vs Stylophone battles, journeys to the dark evil soul of toys, contact mic endurance challenges, backing vocals by beautiful ol’ hounddogs with heads shaped like lightbulbs, objects rustling in a laundry basket... Shalimar Fox makes a rare appearance with a monologue about exerting the power of eminent domain on Pucci’s din-din. Meanwhile, a helium-dosed Lala Lu delivers her remarkable take on a bit o’ swill from the Disney canon, Tielens loses himself in the black forest that is the lyrics to “The Porpoise Song,” Gnarlos uses Pete Beck’s lyrics to the Dilwhip / Educated Mess / 28th Day track “Do You Know How It Feels” to conquer the baby monitor while standing in the parking lot, and then the slobber-drenched chewtoy is back in Lala Lu’s yap (metaphorically) for a Venus de Sunnyvale style reading of Misfits lyrics. The 17-minute “Emperor Guillotine Nukes A Lush Valley Using His Fingernail,” anchored by sessions at Hazel’s ’Lectric Washouse in Oakland, is especially grand, with Jimmy The Baptist’s worship of degraded guitar wheedle taking center stage, while psychological textician Tom Chimpson recites self-penned pre-hypnotic suggestions on “Executive Lullabyes Courtesy of Binky The Wonder Squid LLC.” Another standout is the complete soundtrack to the City-Councilman-edited 13-minute film “Lackey Demand Indicator,” which premiered at Wonder Valley Experimental Festival #14 in 29 Palms, California, in April 2022. Hand-screenprinted gatefold chipboard wallets. Includes download code. Edition of 100.
Bygone Baguette Mailboxes Of French Polynesia
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS88) 3-inch CDR $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
A single 18-minute track of synth yarng and woon, electronics, and messed up turntablism. More pleasant than watching a puppy try to hump a seahorse’s face. Includes a wallpaper swatch courtesy of Michael Morley. Edition of 25
Cavoli Riscaldati
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS63) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first of two warm-up prequels to the group’s upcoming reimagining of Live at Pompeii, “Squat And Elevate The Perforated Cylinder” sweeps swatches of ring modulator grit across expansive Herbertian wastelands like second-hand, moose-befouled flying carpets. Lucian Tielens and Gnarlos attack the fetid void by cacking together spritz mosaics sourced from an interstellar vinegar bath. The newest member of the group, Count Darkula draws on previous experiences within the cold hard swamp and fires off volleys of epic woont, diseased mastication struggles, and mechanical flutters. Picking up on the intrusion of turd-nourished car alarms (because Bren’t Lewiis always records with the windows open), The City Councilman counter-attacks with fractured yelps from bio-chimerical slaughterhouses and a black yoga move known as “upward oozing glue gun.” Fragments of his electric guitar fwa-garnk seep into the obstacle course from all corners, deflecting mushy roars as they deep-throat throbbing and discordant echo. The second one “Plummeting Blobs Of Unguent” is slightly more low key but every bit the exercise in weightless, animalistic flailing. Pre-recorded reel-to-reel tape yoink passes through layers and layers of distressed transmissions. The edges of unidentified blocks of congealed fluids crackle and crumble. Fur-choked warbles pulsate from the intestines of a lunatic grizzly sickened by the irresistible sweetness of blood berries and lead paint. The distant screeches of metallic fruitflies gnawing the mold off the sides of a dumpster become the sickening threat-assessment howls of cats with telephone abdomens. Bracketing the twin epics are: a sullen invocation by gargoyles forced to navigate insectoid percussion, the luminescent yawp of Babuna Virus, belligerent gurgitations, and acid reassurances; and Limphoma’s impromptu, heckle-based “My Down Booties Were Eaten By Pat’s Dog,” recorded live opening for The Tenses, ending the album in a mangle of stomped-upon slurry.
Chewing Scenery
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS108) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A slow-motion buckshot spray of Lost in Space bleeps and bloops spreads the group’s heat-sought rash across the canvas, as usual, throbbing and twinkling in a void seemingly sponsored by the Wubb Telescoop. But be on the lookout for collisions with gravity fields that pull the elements apart, leaving their piercing shrillness to jab at nothing within the corridors of your personal solitude. If that seems a little too Star Trek for your tastes, don’t worry: no one’s gonna mention the time you took ecstasy at the convention and thought one of the parking attendants was Nyota Uhura. Still, moog-adjacent yoib whizzes past like fresh junk, courtesy of The Library At Musiclandria in Sacramento, where much of Chewing Scenery was recorded in November and December 2021. The Affable Chap, on loan from the UK home office, makes his debut appearance in Bren’t Lewiis here, and returning champion The Viper was on board to scrape the cat gut — a real life saver since the fingernail-friendly chalkboard had been borrowed by another patron earlier that day. From sessions at Hazel’s ’Lectric Washouse, a re-christened Jimmy The Baptist wrings pure glory from the ether like a brand new solar panel so potent you’d be advised to mind the UV, while Tom Chimpson reads OCD laundry demands from the script for an abandoned prequel to Seven centered around the origin story of Kevin Spacey’s character. The customary disembodied voices, field recordings, household catastrophes, animals losing it, fails video soundtracks, edits both smoother and more jarring than Daddy-o’s morning anxiety dump abound, so don’t think this is nothing more than a fresh take on space rock no one was desperate enough to ask for. Lacie Pound pops up throughout, eavesdropping on neighbors, performing a bit of Blood Stereo karaoke, and investigating electronics-enhanced grooming procedures of the co-inhabitants of his place of dwell. Lala Lu maintains her in-house wild card monopoly, singing back up to avant Cleaver Babs Billingsley, citing Shakespeare, and musing about high school sports admins. An electric baby monitor flashes the creep-on-the-subway voice of Gnarlos reading a selection from Spike Milligan’s Puckoon (page 129, to be exact). Consider that Lucian Tielens’s cover art mosaic of post blizzard powder reads like an explosion at a fire extinguisher factory, and the hint is there for you to take.
Complete Implant Solution
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS94) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
During innumerable hours isolated from each other and the world at large, and having undertaken a variety of new hobbies (such as breathing, binge-watching Ozark and Locked Up, and scraping skin off their shoulders), Bren’t Lewiis dives into this new go-crazy with their customary zeal and willful wrong-headedness. Each individual member of the group exploits assistance from consciousness-depriving substances in order to achieve isolation from him- or herself, an endeavor both effortless and far more difficult than it seems. If nothing else, the practice affords opportunity to consider that Tiffany’s version of “I Think We’re Alone Now” is actually about getting buried alive. Likewise, the despondent wail of Lee Moses in his 1971 cover version of “California Dreamin’ ” reminds us that mere gray skies and brown leaves are nothing to worry about compared to dodging pestilent spittle huffed by joggers as they prance maskless through the opaque silver morning air of West Coast fire season. Probably imminent are dead-frog hailstorms and a slurry of pig blood and bone marrow bubbling up from storm drains. Indeed, our current era may well be remembered by those who survive it as one that not only enshrined bad, vanity-based decisions but immortalized them — from face tattoos and psychedelic dentistry to any online comments section relating to public policy — an expectation hinted at by Karen Constance’s cover art depicting a rogue Moai apparently constructed in a DIY enthusiast’s garage using raw chicken, reclaimed wood, and a kilogram’r two of hijiki congealed in rubber cement. Under a rainbow of red roses, clad in a ballgown of purple roses, the monstrous head either spews celebratory streamers from its sourdough lips and tin pupils or else passively accepts the inevitable penetration of its body by aggressively parasitic space eels. Excerpts from numerous improvised sessions where life itself was squeezed into and out of guitar, synth, turntables, tape players, theremin, radio, thrift store cassettes, and laundry baskets filled with toys and objects have been sutured together tidier than the aftermath of a shopping mall massacre. Several tracks contain grafts courtesy of back-alley amputation of the more psychotic blobs from an old-timey promotional cassette starring Ronald McDonald, while others still attempt blood transfusions served in shot glasses by Stumpo (a duet for passing train and Black Sabbath, and a duet for seagulls and the spacy part of “Whole Lotta Love”). Smart discount shoppers will spot good deals on helium mice, Waylon Jennings versus carpentry, throat crackles, Lucy N’s signature gurn, the now-ubiquitous low-bit ambience of Zoom meetings, low drollery by early ’50s wise-gal Anna Russell, corrupted fife-and-drum loops strong-armed away from slack-jawed antebellum re-enactors, a hypnotism reading, screeching bigots, operatic warbles, and Inger Nilsson croaking the theme to Pippi Långstrump at 16rpm. So here it is, another pestilence-inspired, plague-mandated black hole in which the density of withholding surpasses the atomic structure of the source impulses of the refuseniks-in-chief. Cover by Karen Constance. Includes 16pp industrial expressionist collage.
Consumption
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS105) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Finding unorthodox anchors that strangle the fatuous out of abject grimness is a squid-free squid game Bren’t Lewiis mastered long ago, and Consumption certainly reaffirms that. The album’s fifty-minutes of quacking at the moon was inspired largely by mandatory wellness sequestering at a Walgreens post-inoculation, and the attendant anxiety that the pharmacist might be required to rush out of the bullet-proof cubicle because Gnarlos can’t handle the side effects of another microchip in the bicep. On any other day, a disoriented stumble up and down aisles stocked with gleaming fruits of capitalism, so desperately packaged with hot colors and zazzy lettering and borderline-lascivious hype, might earn a person a request to vacate ASAP from a polite rent-a-cop. When nano-bots in the bloodstream are part of the equation, forget it, back to the factory with you, we’re gonna have your head changed to something more aesthetic. Those surveillance cameras are not here to protect the mouthwash. Anonymous chatter from field recordings is maddeningly constant, passages of repetitive electronic yoib hopscotch across cowering backdrops, there are more cut-ups and loops than a knife fight at a prison knitting circle, and the dynamics feel like flu symptoms. The first time The City Councilman heard the finished album, he said, “I tried to listen while I was grant-writing and found it so intense that I could not do both things at the same time.” Among the album’s final straws are Lucian Tielens reading pick-up lines found in an abandoned notebook at the public library (a truncated early mix of which was included on Cough Park’s Bandcamp-only mix EZ Street Cheeze), and Steve Marquis’s psychedelic heart attack on “Tumbling Down An Embankment With A Stomach Full Of Bowling Pins.” Absent-minded mumbling, concerns about post-op complications, the appropriated voices of self-help mutants colliding in surreal patchworks of entendre all lead to the inevitable: that Hastings Of Malawi no longer have to reimagine I Think You Should Leave as an old time radio drama.
BREN’T LEWIIS ENSEMBLE / THE TENSES
Daughter Of The Boot
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.352) CDR $6.00
On a gorgeous spring afternoon in the PacNW, there is no better way to spend it than inside a 420-square-foot windowless room rattling sleigh bells with your foot, dropping rubber balls onto a broken old bongo drum, spinning scratchy records backward by hand, and sputtering into a shenai steadily and slowly so that it sounds like you’re pushing a desk across the floor. Here is sixty-five minutes of spontaneous sound collage, bent improv, non-musical weirdness that resembles injured mammals on the verge of giving up, surprisingly delicate noise, and general quasi-cinematic clatter by LAFMS royalty The Tenses (aka Oblivia and Ju Suk Reet Meate of Smegma) and two of the many goons (Lucian Tielens and Gnarlos) from the BUFMS spazolopolis Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, with field recordings contributed astrally by Silvia Kastel and Leroy Tick. The two pieces delivered here by these clunkmeisters -- recording together for the first time -- are rusty, crusty, dusty and musty epics in the tradition of groups such as Morphogenesis, Solid Eye, Taj Mahal Travellers, and early Zoviet-France. Cover art by Ace Farren Ford. Numbered edition of 80
Dreamhouse Prison Of The Pastel Mafia
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS66) CDR $8.00
With as many lop-sided bleats per minute as L. Ron Hubbard’s third annual vivisection of one of Anton Lavey’s goats of Christmas past in the parking lot of Dismaland, The Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble’s cave noise conniptions get spinal-tapped by indelicate incursions of raw, untamed electronic thrusts and stabs. Toys, scratchy LPs of old Vietnamese showtunes, various nube-tubes, the forced laughter of a little person courtesy of Werner Herzog, and kitchen objects are some of the reassuring soundposts in this chiaroscuro dungeon, blinking between the cavernous scrape of dejected janitorial tasks, the feeble thuds of someone or something getting dragged across cobblestones caked with layer upon sickening layer of effluvia, and tiny metallic splats scurrying like immortal tapirs from one corner to the other. Disembodied voices speak not so much to communicate but to keep the creeping dread of the speaker at bay. The damaged soliloquy of the permanently distracted gets a thorough examination here, bolstered by the weirdly spirited yelps of the doomed and murmurs from a decomposing mule born under a wandering star. Throughout their patched-together network, spastic clunks engage in intimate congress with mechanical gasps, chokeholds, grunts, and the struggles of the restrained, rising and falling in parallel with irrational wheedle pulsations and hopeless density. Remote controlled drones buzz in and out of view, according to the trajectories of nonsensical flight-paths. Peculiar grinding from homemade spirit-breakers (known in the trade as aluminum maidens) morph from dispassionate sketches of abscess-befouled meadowlands to up-close chakra punctures and hi-sheen abscess pierce to collapsed thunder from failed Russian barge maneuvers. Includes industrial expressionist collage.
Dumb Tangerine Dream
(Krim Kram) CD $14.00
Extended snart-scapes where loops. distressed scroichles, outsider guitar improv, and electronic pasta (al dente) converge in the back of the bus, with the animals and prisoners. Four tracks, all previously released as limited edition 3-inch CDRs. With inserts.
External Organs
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS74) CDR $8.00
Simian incantations made of over-saturated squelch clangs and reptile-friendly textures that are smooth as a cheese grater to the back of the head. Hiding under asynchronous grinds and competitive echo sharpness, the five long tracks here seem to recede unnaturally, like reverse footage of a smoldering grease fire, or a predatory ballet choreographed for It Had Been An Ordinary Enough Day In Pueblo, Colorado. The ensemble feels cooked alive on External Organs, maintaining a rhythm throughout comparable to extras from Night Of The Living Dead bonking into a wall over and over again as if trying to memorize the bloodstains on the sheetrock.
F.A. Henderson's Casino Sordide
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS61) CDR $8.00
Recorded in Portland, Oregon, under the influence of King Tubby, The Frogs, and shared fantasies about a 30th Century interpretation of Grey Gardens, the foundational spwahaohao of F.A. Henderson’s Casino Sordide could easily pass as the soundtrack for a demented, Justice-Schanfarber-hosted straight-to-public-access travelogue. The ingredients manifest includes: jumbush; damaged sitar; shamisen-type thing; kalimba seemingly custom-made for Richard Keel; suitcase zipper; messed-up log with big lead bolts, wire, and sounding gourd attached (like a Gambian ko that could double as a cudgel for a midget Viking); metal lid from tea canister; ScratchBox; air mattress pump; acoustic guitar; toy ukulele; flutish wind-instrument made of wood; Velcro; big exercise ball; bells; lychee-shaped keychain; metal ruler; plastic lid from a bottle of hot flash pills; homemade zither; cat toy; aloe vera gel; mild dyspepsia; and wood scraped with pushpins. These quiet, understated recordings are considerably gilded by overdubs of loops, tape manipulation, found noises, remote individual performances by farflung members of the group. Two mid-’80s tracks previously released on their debut cassette Make It Stop, along with new collage pieces, cast this album as the red-headed stepchild of Pork Queen’s Strang geeking the sort of quasi-shaman visions present on Buffy Saint-Marie’s Illuminations, covertly harassed by parasitic sociopaths, temple desecrators, and a language-impaired tribe locked in a basement long after the tornado has passed.
Fifth Dementia
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS113) CDR $8.00
There’s nothing technically inaccurate about saying the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble releases albums, though behind the scenes they are thought of as “escorted from the building.” A few just escape. Their second disc of 2023 arrives much like the contents of a piñata stuffed with Streptococcus pyogenes and exotic succulents. As the opening track shuffles into view wearing nothing but a bathrobe and slippers on the wrong feet makes clear, Fifth Dementia is glued together with preparations for the end. In the BLE’s vision of The Big Not-Any-More, the past wobbles toward oblivion and wipes its feet on the welcome mat, while the adhesives-slathered future rises up in an infinite tidal wave of impending collapse, leaving the present as a ventriloquist act called Lil Tired And Captain Defeated. On “Nearly Drowned by The Anti-Merm,” Lala Lu’s cut-up reading of the lyrics to Yoko Ono’s “What Did I Do?” — recorded as a memento mori for the late Tom Smith of To Live And Shave In L.A. — slithers between tossed scrape salads, snow-blowers, noxious Star Trek hippies, and an animatronics-damaged “A Mighty Fortress.” Tom Chimpson and Jimmy The Baptist stage their retirement-home magic show with the surreally tense “Sterno The Magnificent Spotted Bone Gambler,” seemingly for the benefit of an audience of sedative-abusing rabbits. It’s a beautifully perplexing mix of resinated guitar, epicurean wheedle that disfigures itself just above the horizon line, and disembodied clunks and clacks that ping the pong of all but the absolutely hairless. The 24-minute “Sous Vide Meat Glue Experiment” is the soundtrack to the Ensemble’s video of the same name that premiered in August 2021 as part of the UK TUSK Festival’s online concert series. To create this gargantuan cut-up, The City Councilman began by mashing together home-made footage of various recording sessions and boosts from the public and corporate domains, and then, without revealing the final sequence, shared the unassembled effects-heavy fragments with Lucian Tielens, Gnarlos, and their fellow mutants, who nevertheless assembled with pinpoint accuracy a nightmare-triggered quilt of voices (their own as well as those appropriated from thrift store cassettes, children’s records, and YouTube videos), electronics and noises plucked from years of recording sessions, sound effects records, vintage radio shows, and home-made documentation of strangers losing it on public transportation. Listen for the tinkle of cat toys on “Answer Correctly And I’ll Send You Wicker Furniture On Your Birthday” — that’s Lacie Pound saying no-no-no with tiny bells woven into his glorious winter beard, silhouetted against a Musiclandria sunrise featuring The Affable Chap on electronic sputters and The Viper on squawk fiddle. The album closes with “Looks / Isn’t Shoe Needle,” inspired in equal measure by ancient cave paintings of primitive-lobed skull jockeys and the inevitable all-consuming deep-fakes that await us all 24/7. This 57-minute cocktail (two parts premature geriatrics, one part second childhood, a splash of MK Ultra) radiates an age-inappropriate vibe on par with Dr. Zachary Smith taking over a quinceñera while dressed in an off-brand foam carrot suit.
BREN’T LEWIIS ENSEMBLE / SILVIA KASTEL / NINNI MORGIA
Found On Road, Dead
(Butte County Free Music Society - 46) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A single track, just over sixty minutes long — the companion piece to the quartet's LP Fix It Again, Tony, using the same material from the same session, completely different mix and edit. Covers are hand-cut from discarded rejects rescued at a print shop. Insert has small metallic medallion glued to it. Edition of 50.
Gloria
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS49) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
What The Red Dragonfly calls “the well-mapped out, but slightly unmeasured, off-kilter nature” of Bren’t Lewiis’s (ahem) music welcomes overmodulation, sound saturation, tape hiss, tape decay, tape damage, room noise, and many an audio defect aided and abetted by AM radio, cell phones, police scanners, weather-damaged microphones and speakers, and anything else that could impinge signal fidelity. Massive tape collages dejectedly shuffle through hopelessness and despair. Percussion-only pieces seem to be aiming for regal, yet achieve debasement. Slowed-down, amplified voices reinforce the feeling of beaten exhaustion. Tempos come from objects getting dragged clumsily across the floor and field recordings of children, machines, and workers. The same mound of objects, electric gizmos and detritus from Rapture Piles is here (as well as some of the same tape loops and answering machine microcassettes), along with new recordings of throat-clutchingly spastic electric guitar noise, claustrophobic violin, plainly declaimed words, reel-to-reel tape, and more decrepit toys. Scandalously repetitious, enthralled by the arbitrary, and peculiarly deadpan, Bren’t Lewiis does all three in a minute and a half and makes it seem like a month. Comes with a reproduction of one of the original 24 tickets to the never-performed theater piece. Edition of 50.
Hand Signals
(Krim Kram) CD $11.75
The debut release on this Ireland-based label is the first Mark-Knopfler-approved “real” CD by Bren’t Lewiis. Eleven disorienting tracks: heavily edited sound collage; Orchid-Spangiafora-style word play; malfunctioning, sputtering machines; instruments and objects that are blown, shaken, scraped, and generally sabotaged in various ways. You won’t know whether it’s intestines, brains, or macaroni salad. If the CIA had access to this kind of arsenal during MKUltra, who knows what kind of damage they could have inflicted.
Hard Molt
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS58) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
On the duskiest and murkiest album so far by this group of noise hillbillies, looped excerpts from studio improvisations form the congealed muck where chunky ashes of cacophonous live recordings embed and dissolve like wilted arugula paste. The album’s opening and closing tracks tear off their own feathers and hurl themselves down an embankment, choreographed by Tom Timpson’s eBay-worthy 45s on the turntable. Corrupted technique is on fine display here — a cross between Aufgehoben with lobotomies, a tourist hotel band attempting to cover The Starfuckers, and the Christian folk trio Jandek once played accordion with during his days in the military. Defeated-sounding whine’n’wheeze is the order of the day, as are Nyoukis/Constance-influenced collisions of the preordained and the spontaneously erupting, in which cut-up, looped noises and purposeful soliloquies compete with one another and sickeningly abstracted content. Lucian Tielens, wielding guitar and antique potato masher, wreaks King Guillotine-like depuration upon the unclean. Among the dark guitar extrapolations, dense processing, no-instruments montages, field recordings, live performances, and zero tolerance for finesse, warmth, or stylishness, highlights include “Baked Alaska,’’ the score for immobilist filmmaker Melvin John Addington’s Vast Expanse Of Rock And Snow, performed live by Tielens and Gnarlos at Colour Out Of Space in 2011, using nothing but toys and objects purchased at 99p shops in Brighton, England; and a centrally located duet by Tielens on Fisher-Price turntable and Silvia Kastel on electronics and voice, burbling like a mudpit underneath a crimson haze with more grace than typically dared by BuFMS mutants. With three inserts, including flyer reproductions and an industrial expressionist collage. Edition of 100
Harvester Of Eyes
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS57) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A year in the making and largely informed by the Ensemble’s roots and experiences in the level of DIY broadcasting that SCTV once lovingly parodied, this 56-track bucket of stovies is Bren’t Lewiis’s most thorough homage yet to vox populi media: call-in AM radio, YouTube, public access TV, infomercial fails, obsolete instructionals, and amateur self-help cassettes that offer guidance of dubious utility. You get several meanings in the blink of an eye (to paraphrase Olivia Tremor Control) in this 69-minute rationality-flouting obstacle course. Assertions and their opposites contain veracity and patent untruth. Cyclical repetition meets the deliberately deployed and the gloriously arbitrary. Electric guitars and toy instruments and maniacal grunts careen across layers of grinding reel-to-reel noise and compromised cellphone transmissions. Looped fweeps and saturated hornk keep time throughout stretches of impromptu stress tests, insect percussion, anonymous background rumbles and rustles, pizza cutter schwing, and the crackle of scratchy old thrift store records. Sing-song chirps from skewed pop and cult memories meet hacked and damaged recordings of insufficient improv and anthropomorphized household objects. With two inserts. Edition of 100
All Tedium House orders of this item include the bonus three-inch CDR Translation Of The Dress, with twenty-two tracks in twenty minutes.
I Have No Idea What You’re Talking About
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS75) CDR $8.00
Percussive noises are a constant menace on I Have No Idea What You’re Talking About, familiar in style and purpose to crank-addled crutzers with guinea worms freaking out about dive-bombing bats that aren’t really there. Off-kilter loops and crossfades seem derived from a Waza Ensembles competition held during a calamity on a construction barge. There are more roadblocks in this twitching, raw-fi mess than would be present if Scrantonicity covered Joeboy In Rotterdam, it was filtered through Ichiyanagi’s Extended Voices and then re-imagined by Edith Hillman Boxill as an instructional music therapy album. Includes inserts.
Inspired By Actual Events
(Chocolate Monk) Cassette + 3 x 3in CDR $26.00 (Out-of-stock)
A modest treasure box of audio oddities and WTF constructions. The 3-inch CDR Lobster Dildos contains four new blithers that could easily pass for the soundtrack to scary parts of a TV show about the paranormal. You know, with the distressed breathing and the uncanny metallic grinding, unnerving assurances, 1930s melodrama, unnatural chittering, left-handed shredding and distortion ejaculate, bio-mechanical threat blurts, and clusters of passion-damaged voices competing to get their bizarre assertions heard. A second 3-inch CDR extracts the audio from footage of a Bren’t Lewiis live show in 1984 in support of the so-called Mad Bombers. Viewers of Tusk TV from the golden era of Covid lockdown might recall seeing resurrected VHF footage of this clatter-rich caterwaul. Minus the visuals and left with little more than the sound of ramshackle simian-grade percussion and an audience that is clearly more interested in their own conversations than the off-center thwacking of scruffy would-be surrealists, one can pinpoint the moment that obsolescence of grandeur became a manifesto. And then a third, “value-addled” 3-inch CDR uses the Mad Bombers audio as a foundation for wild additions, brute subtractions, and EQ shenanigans. Fresh into their trial separation from Usurper, Malcy Duff and Ali Robertson team up with Lucian Tielens and Gnarlos for the collaborative cassette Lewsurpiia. Eight tracks, 38 minutes, electroacoustic AF, tape cut-ups and plentiful narrative delirium, the Wizard of Oz staged in an antique mall. Also included is a 28pp comic book Many Hands Make Light Work, which re-purposes an old Jack Chick morality tract with all new BuFMS-centric text. It’s a bona fide Easter egg hunt where a disgruntled puritan storms through a methy suburb in search of coherence, buttressed at either end by a transcript of Tielens’s early ’80s doctrine chat with an unsuspecting evangelist knob. A real page-turner. To aid in keeping the Chocolate Monk customer’s consumption conspicuous, the box also includes a small enamel lapel pin. Follow-up selfies are your responsibility. There’s also a postcard adorned with eccentric art of a sort all returning champions would expect, plus miscellaneous scraps sourced from the lost-and-found box at a California public library. Hand-stamped edition of 75
BREN’T LEWIIS ENSEMBLE / GERONIMO ARAFAT
Intro To Owl Tranquilizers
(Coma Kultur - BUFMS89) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
An hour of janking and detritus decimation in which this noted Los-Angeles-based moogalator and unrepentant synthophile lures the Sammy Davi of freeform sound collage out of their hall of mirrors and ensnares them in a cactine swamp of prickly, modular screech. With silkscreened folder. Edition of 40. The Tedium House sucker edition includes complimentary Tootsie Pop
Keystone Cyclops
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS95) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Kinda-sorta but not really a concept album, noise opera or what-have-you, the final 2020 release by Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble is named after a one-eyed turkey from one of the many unreasonably vivid and detailed dreams that tiger-lily their way out of the subconscious of Gnarlos and make a grab for life on the material plane. While the album is free of all reference to Les Nessman, it instead jumps across time and space, logic and proportion, and intersects with scenes of obliquely rendered insurrection led by the titular character who, in addition to being that most ill-tempered of the class of land fowl known as “delicious,” also happens to be a superhero. His accomplishments in that role remain undetermined, as do whether they have any effect on anything, and if they do, whether it’s good or bad. No, it doesn’t make sense, just leave such hopes in a paper bag somewhere and move on. The group keeps things moving at a zippy pace, layering objects-only jam sessions, field recordings, guitar treatments, tape manipulation, and primitive electronic garnk that drops through the ceiling like a fat man stepping off the beams on the attic floor. You might actually omg aloud once immersed in this loop-saturated, collage-heavy snart-nado of dystopian pop culture and sci-fi, where Wanda Jackson, Lenny Bruce, Mr. French, and an ugly bag of mostly old hotdog water masquerading as a talk radio host enhance the spectrum. Not surprisingly, audio boosted from homemade internet videos, persistent voicemail scams, silverscreen classics, cornball commercials of yesteryear, old sound effects libraries, and thrift store cassettes abounds, while on the other hand, no one foresaw cover versions of Destroy All Monsters’ classic nihilist anthem, Edward Alderson’s delirious visions of revolt, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s gavotte-slash-inexplicably-affecting-lullabye-dirge (voiced with maximum creep factor by newest Ensemble inductee Commodore Slaiman and Jon The Baptist). Overall, it’s a screwball empire-toppling as heard through a cellphone infected by nano-parasites that are eating the transmission. Cover photo by Toni Smith.
Live At Pompeii
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS60) CDR $8.00
Anyone whose mind was sawed in half by The Stallion’s liberties-hogging interpretation of The Wall released by In The Red stands a chance of not hating what The Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble does to the soundtrack to Pink Floyd’s legendary concert film (plus a couple tertiary Floyd-related pieces), finally joining us all in the noxious haze of daylight after a fitful four-year gestation. The hairless apes don’t come at it sideways so much as burrow through the dirt underneath and pop their heads out in various places like moles trying to ambush a housecat. Hands with no arms. Torso like a leftover chile relleno. Vulcan autoharp. Alpacas recovering from the effects of tainted codeine. A cameo by Darksmith of California. You know how it is. Edition of 50, the first 25 of which include a tardigrade air freshener, because prog rock.
Loose Meat
(Butte County Free Music Society) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Over an hour of viscera untethered! A cephalic card-counting snuffler memorizing the dress-code for visitors published by the Commonwealth Of Virginia’s department of corrections. Cranksters rutting through the neighbors’ storage shed and trying to power a homemade UFO with an aquarium air filter. Miscegenation of texts by John Steinbeck and Led Zeppelin. Foul seepage and damaged percolations. Toys-and-turntable spasticity recorded live on KXLU. Heat massage grimness. Gelatinous conflagrations. Brittle geekiopathy. A spontaneous gurnathon recorded at the fire pit behind The Dome. Lily McBilly’s WTF mash-up of the go-go-boot morality ditty “Teenie Weenie Boppie” by France Gall and Play It Again Sam’s failed-pick-up-at-the-museum scene. The 21-minute “Boiling The Grackle That Killed Suzanne Pleshette,” a live recording from The Handbag Factory in Los Angeles that delivers twice the juddering oomph of sleep-deprived space cats overdosing on bovine tranques dreaming of a laser battle with a hot water heater.
Map of Something?
(Butte County Free Music Society - 51) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two long, trigger-word-dominated tracks composited from a grim live set at The Terminal in Oakland and a hotel room recording. Kitchen-based shenanigans, inbred instrumental passages, pre-recorded voices and sound effects, live noise, samples, loops, electronics, home-made devices, field recordings, and fractured readings derived from DVD liner notes and hospitality literature. Students of veterinary medicine will find much in common here with their study of digestive disorders of livestock. All feel-good grooves are dead on arrival, put out of their misery by the lethal anti-suave of this ensemble with a perpetually rustled hive mind. Edition of 50.
Moose
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS86) CDR $8.00
Pointedly undignified improv is Bren’t Lewiis’s consistent tripping off point, the elements of which swap bacteria indiscriminately and form mutant heaps of questionable awareness. Fragments butchered from recording sessions — electronics, guitars, objects from kitchens and garages and toolsheds, turntables, loops, nonverbal vocalizations, and a variety of accidental and/or unintentional activities — spiced with nuggets plucked from the public domain (because any recipe with mayonnaise is not complete without raisins) are reconstituted with compositional prowess easiest described as unkempt; many of the tracks on Moose don’t fade out so much as wander at a leisurely pace toward silence. Highlights from the department of field recordings include the idiot neighbors playing their idiot drinking game, arguably gongable street musicians, and a time-lapse document of Warvette’s bullfight against the GPS in his pick-up truck. Gnarlos delivers the vocals on a cover of Peter Hammill’s “A Ritual Mask” with a level of passion rarely heard beyond a police scanner dispatch operator, while the reincarnation of Stentor himself, Lindy Lettuce, bellows and gurgles through a mash-up of words to the Christina Aguilera hit “Beautiful” and “The Light, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise” from Flipper’s second album. Lucian Tielens grins and bears it on a reading of execrable lyrics to an antique show-tune written to enhance the rich fantasy life of Coca-Cola salesmen. Thus, the end result is an album that’s one part stoned teenagers sloshing around the back of a station wagon taken off-road without permission, one part long-winded recollection of an erotic Tardigrade cosplay party, and one part endless loop of Linda McCartney’s synth solo on “Jet.” Artwork by Steve Marquis.
Noncanonical Gospels From The Cult Of The Immortal Tapir
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS67) CDR $8.00
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS67) CDR Deluxe Edition $30.00
Bren’t Lewiis’s after-hours guerilla performance at a Sacramento playhouse was the site of their latest maculate conception: desert-blind tales and sun-scorched allegories expunged from The Ongoing Dialogue during the greasy, soothing Council Of Nivea. Imagine an old-time radio broadcast of a pagan tent revival interrupted by shortwave transmissions from an isolated and weather-beaten theater where Swell Maps are stage-managing an all-nonmusical-interstitials Kubrick-inspired variety show. The bizarre compendium of revelations include a beastiary by an unreliable ornamental horticulturist, a sampler inventory of treats-centered Eucharist self-abasement, a postcard texticle, ersatz Beat poetry, idealized warrior vows, shattered testimonials from addled pitchmen, and faith-based texts about: limbless lizard infestation; inter-dimensional chonch worship; the personal toll of crimes against humanity; the banality of insane self-pity; pepper abuse; autobiographical cannibalism; hemoglobin-and-fur-based cocktails; false Elvis resurrection and messianic flim-flam orchestrated by the pastel mafia; compulsions of infectious diseases camp prisoners; the psychic struggles of a pilgrim getting telekinetically bombarded by epistles from spiteful, sentient mass transportation; interspecies organ transplant; and heavenly expectorant. The ramshackle performances and sound design display a pattern consistent with questionable Sudarium stains. Created using toys, tools, objects, instruments, and found voices, some details about audio events bleed through time and space while others fade into dust and ash. Artwork by Ace Farren-Ford. With two inserts and dried-tapir-blood tea. Includes three bonus tracks from Refreshing Hemorrhage. Co-released with Coherent States
Deluxe version in fur-covered jewelbox, hand-numbered edition of 35.
Occupy Infantry
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS62) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
In abundance here are excerpts from a March 2016 appearance in the Creative Music Guild’s Outset Series at Turn Turn Turn in Portland, Oregon -- plastic egg stomps and solitary hockey ape by Gnarlos; ecto-synchronous screech from cassette players left under chairs and tables, pre-recorded by Babuna Virus, Lindy Lettuce, and The Viper; and Lucian Tielens in DJ Bruce Haack mode with his gigantic all-in-one toy console. Highlights from No Spray 205 sessions include a marvelous solo by Tielens on popcorn box, bent Memorial Day ragas with mammoth curls, and a cut-up of a clutzy failure’s stammering death spirals sourced from a found self-help cassette. But it’s the 26-minute storage closet recording “Erika’s Last Day” that is the centerpiece of the album. From Tom Timpson on the credit card machines to newest ensemble member Count Darkula raking a window to nowhere and working cardboard tubes like Paul Lynde dry heaving into a didgeridoo, the only other source for such extended anxiety and astonished dread would be a psychic battle between a levitating junior high school shop class and a home-ec class rolling around the kitchen blind-folded. One part guerilla confinement test, one part circular firing squad, the no-instruments track boasts the wince-inducing weeent of metal clothes hangers getting dragged across a metal dowel, old doors opening and closing, the hoarse scrape of porcelain mugs and bowls grinding on a nail sticking out of the wall, the brittle clink of jars and vases rotating against one another, and the insane helium whine of sticks making frantic scribbling gestures on cardboard boxes. Slats on doors of wooden cabinets and plastic hangers are clacked; boxes of nails and screws are shaken; cans of paint, vacuum cleaner tube, metal rods and anything else that could be held onto are dropped on the floor and kicked back and forth. So, yeah, it’s a very percussive odyssey, in the same sense that a hornet’s nest thwacked moments ago with a tennis racket could also be considered percussive. Using enhanced cross-pollination techniques such as running the water in the sink and molesting components of half-built mannequins, the group passes an important milestone in their self-imposed primal grunt therapy.
Out Patience
(Butte County Free Music Society - 33) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Performed inside a darkened, cavernous student union on the evening of April 28, 1984, this after-hours guerrilla action corrupts the thirteenth text from Aus den Sieben Tagen in a barn where damaged minotaurs are stabled. Lucian Tielens, Tim Smyth and Gnarlos were in constant motion, re-positioning themselves throughout the building, possessed by plastic flamingo, goink visions, and the compulsion to insert their heads into buckets and howl. Four excerpts totaling eight minutes in length appear on Three Christs of Ypsilanti (Siltbreeze 2010), but this is the first and only time the recording of the complete, uninterrupted 47-minute session has been available. In addition to "hurled cafeteria cutlery, defective boomboxes and answering machines blaring prerecorded tape, the public piano, and a variety of unidentified flailing objects," brentstrumentation includes The Nube Tube (a corrugated hose from a hair dryer swung like a bullroarer), harmonica, metal remnants of antique armaments, hula hoop, socket wrench, aluminum bicycle crankset, toy guitars, toy pianos, bongos, glassware, marbles chucked off the balcony, the staircase, aluminum cans (kicked), pie tins (spun), metal coils, jewelry, Star Wars pinball machine, moans, gurns, chants, sneezes, whistles and insectoid heralds. Includes an Industrial Expressionist collage made of hand-painted screen, fragment of found photograph, and defective scrap from commercial print shop. Edition of 50.
Rapture Piles
(Butte County Free Music Society - 48) CDR $8.00
Another transmission from the pataphysical intersection of surrealist cabaret, show-tune bombast, enhanced dementia, and vintage Caedmon Records, recorded live in San Francisco, October 2012. No instruments were used in the rendering of the ensemble's emerald-colored darkness, jagged with alien corrosion and haze that befouls the synapses, just mounds of thrift store objects and yard-sale treasures. Highlights include a quintet for lettuce spinners, and covers of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Klaatu, Magazine, and A.M. Baggs. Freeform weirdness from beginning to end. Edition of 50.
Soiled Gas Mask
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS84) CDR $8.00
“Sugar brings nice sweetness to the sauce” says an accented voice a few minutes into the group’s third album of 2019, one heavy on the fevered claustrophobia. Disturbing froth and gothic Mommie Dearest shame dissolve in a dark woont piece named after Alan Wagner’s legendary milk-bath poster (a Freakdom meme-of-the-year finalist). Joan Of Art — in surgery recovery mode, deluded and paranoid from the opioid painkillers — wanders out into traffic muttering the words to The Fall’s tale of sinister government agencies. Turntables and contact mics scrape layers of hardened parrot mucus for nearly twelve minutes in an epic examination of the difference between phlegm and sputum. There are two field recordings from The Dome in Scappoose, Oregon, made at the end of BLE’s August 2018 tour (one piece came about when The City Councilman’s phone was accidentally recording while stuffed into his pocket, and the other documents Gnarlos throwing balls of goat dung at a poster hung above the dumpster by the garage depicting President Shiklgruber cradling a baby dinosaur rescued from the twin towers on 9/11). Lucian Tielens dodges golfball-sized blobs of toxins and revelations that flicker across the bottom of an apocalyptic bucket, propelled only by grunting and orally expressed distress. A freeway execution narrated by a helicopter-bound ghoul. A jaunty celebration of urushiol. Cthulhu crèpe. Hemotoma. “The Funky Chicken” as fetishist’s instruction manual. So much dirty. So much unclean.
Stop Yelling At Me In Neon Braille
(Butte County Free Music Society) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first Bren’t Lewiis album of the New Year arrives on Inauguration Day, on purpose, even though there are no illusions that it will have any more of an impact on the nature of the nation’s venomous collective consciousness than the event it commemorates. Still, as part send-off, part retrospective obstacle to wound management, this screeching, undulating psychocosm is dominated by four shrill, seemingly interminable portraits of noxious invisibility. Dissonant synth pulsations; loops of unpleasant contact mic scrape; atmospheres that resonate less than the aftermath of a collapsed parking garage; incessant electric guitar fractures; keeko-bleeko theremin scribbles; lost transmissions of PBS documentaries that resurfaced in a desert trailer park; unnatural congress with the inanimate populace of that rich musical wonderland, the suburban garage — screamin’ babeh jazus, what building blocks! Accompanied by production values that are both supportive and antagonistic, Lucian Tielens reads an account of a husband and wife forced to slaughter a sea turtle as published in their autobiographical 117 Days Adrift. The group’s minister of psychological effrontery and textician scrambler-in-chief Tom Chimpson navigates a cactus labyrinth of construction site field recordings, mad radio, turntable aliens, and Jon the Baptist’s murble-possessed guitar. His matter-of-fact message — about insurance, maritime infestations, messianic origin stories, and fragments that seem to say “no idea, you tell me” — arrives more garbled than perjured testimony in a kangaroo court where Masons are getting persecuted. One of two very brief tracks, Lala Lu’s confessional / plea / accusation / state of the union opens the album. And then, functioning as an oasis at the midpoint, a short mashup where Kristin Anderson’s boat slip sonata field recording rests on top of the gleeful self-pleasuring of Nixon, the rhino-hound sculptor owned and operated by Glub Pasha and Stanley Zappa. Stop Yelling At Me In Neon Braille could be a rare MRI that ends up providing no useful diagnostic assistance; fortunately, an hour-plus of your time that drops an extra smidge of stress, discomfort, and claustrophobic panic into the skull is your idea of a prized resource. That’s what it says in your file, anyway. Cover art by Steve Marquis
Surrendering Hair to Lord Venkateswara Swamy
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS115) CDR $10.00
Six long droneur manqué tracks get to the bottom of the mystical aspects behind time-lapsed refrigerator attrition, the brotherhood of forlorn balloon animal guys, and the difference between getting carved up in tandoori hell and having to scrape chicken-meat from under the fingernails. Throughout the group's low-key but tension-infused screech, looping theremin, synthesizer, guitar, and toy instruments roil to be heard in malignant EQ baths of malfunctioning peptide and degenerate serums of unknown origin. Anonymous voice montages are silhouetted against the fading light of gut health. Murky blobs in oblong landscapes suggest gastrointestinal dusk. It's a 60-minute kaleidoscope of doom expectorant, in which nausea becomes an abstract expression of the afterlife, basically, the opposite of a perky restoratif. Includes insert.
Taxidermy Frogs Copulating
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS72) CDR $8.00
Over an hour of primordial muck extracted from the squishy lobes of these rurality-damaged urp-meisters. Bendier and more musk-slathered than a nudist farm trampoline, this Eros-preoccupied companion to the group’s upcoming Thanatos-exploiting The Inevitable Typo On Sheila Ostrich’s Tombstone applies electronic yeem to backward Marx Brothers opera, the voices of slimy novelty degenerates, and everything writhing on the tiles in between. Ample time on their first release of 2018 is allotted to reimagining several of fiction’s great lotharios -- Dwight Shrute, Ernst Blofeld, Mr. Magoo, and Rod McKuen -- as a cross between fascistic playboys and sex Nazis. Bug-eyed gurgles and clacks advance and recede with satyriasis-enriched determination worthy of a home-made installation of Rauschenberg’s Mud Muse. All buttons on the cookie machine are pushable: Moistened sputters, lascivious fwaps, cascades of dirty corn popping, weird grunting, perv huff, dejected shuffling of objects unaccustomed to the attention, and primitive electronic wub from toys and gizmos and manipulations. Salacious alien screeches serenade the reluctant, propelled by the percussive fiddle-faddle of incessant gorge harassment and creepy shoulder rubs. In master suites where violins get sawed in half by morning-after dental floss spat out of inflamed urethrae, Thundertubes and Stylophones grapple like surreal Greco-Roman tadpoles. BLE’s confusing, heavily mirrored demimonde, where everything and nothing is disturbing and inappropriate, allows the sound of children’s toys to infiltrate the needlessly elaborate hideouts of villains and make everyone uncomfortable on several levels. Keeps things spicy.
Thank You, L.A., It’s Been A Great Test
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS00) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Absolutely live recordings of “Waiting For The Dumpster,” “Elevators — How The Hell Do They Work?” “You Shoot Heroin, I’ll Wait Here In The Dark,” and “110-Degree Vulgar Tambourine Phantom.” Not as legendary as Springsteen defacing a billboard, but in the same intoxicating spirit. Thank You, L.A., It's Been A Great Test pumps the sump like no other album in Bren't Lewiis Ensemble's catalog, resembling a no-audience Fluxus document based on impossible actions never to be completed, crossed with an omelette made with eggs long after their sell-by date, stuffed with microscopic plankton and unpalatable, Pynchon-esque candy known as completist’s nightmare. Their lower-than-lowercase electroencephalography digs into a realm one might call post-reactionary, where meaning itself is a cosmic ugh, wasteful of time and space, sight and sound. Whenever one observes others gazing into an unmemorable void, it is never immediately clear if they’re dispassionate or dumbfounded, but given that they’re dissolving and the resultant grit is melting and the subsequent blobs are evaporating, and the atmosphere is an ur-destructive vacuum withholding all possibility of transcendence, it doesn’t matter. What madness it would be were this any different.
That’s My Deathbed
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS96) 3-inch CDR $4.25 (Out-of-stock)
For the third installment of the group’s Dumb Tangerine Dream series, Lucian Tielens extracts from underneath a waterbed in a ’70s skin flick bendy slide guitar wheem (bejeweled with a tasteful quantity of froth, and devoid of exaggerations about length), while loops of cheap electronic burble peer in through the slats in the closet door, rise to the surface and collapse in a haze of lo-fi turntable-and-toys clack-off. Cover art by id m theft able. Includes upholstery swatch courtesy of Kristin Anderson. Edition of 25
The Armless Marvel
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS59) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
This supplementary hit of the dark, bad acid that birthed Bren’t Lewiis’s Hard Molt (via elagabalusian section, according to the doula) wallows in a comparably jagged dead-end of monolithic schmutz. Skull-bending free improv waterlogged by tape manipulation, body-snatched sound collage, and gaseous disorientation; off-center guitar wobble impaled on spikes of fuzz; relatively meditative spaz-outs, household objects, tape noise, waves of fweemp; apocalyptic, maniacally saturated and self-engorged Echoplex; lascivious caliph vocals, the moist fwapping of a bicyle-powered chicken-plucking machine, field recordings, and disturbing phlegm loops; murky, impaired fidelity. More inscrutable than a murder at an old-fashioned smorgasbord. Includes industrial expressionist collage insert. Edition of 100
The Inevitable Typo On Sheila Ostrich’s Tombstone
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS73) CDR $8.00
In Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble’s latest reportage from the front row of a nightmarish debacle no one would want to stage, Thanksgiving is a revolting feast of Pynchon-inspired cuisine on the front edge of an exploding dirigible, yoga mats double as coffin liners, heavenly choirs are replaced by glitchy, private-press inbreds howling themselves sick in vortices of serrated cubism, and people who don’t know they no longer exist are the only ones who cry “Mortality as home entertainment? This can’t be the future. Can it? Can it?” Harmonic disarray and sour electro-splat seep upward and outward like a disturbing organ meat experiment going horribly awry. Dense electronic processes mingle with field recordings of machines defective and dying of old age. Alarm klaxons and calls to arms do not overpower the soundscape so much as wanly ooze from some anemic sky sphincter worthy of an Arch Oboler thriller. The forty-minute “The Flesh Is Already Engulfing The Guns” crawls into view like a family of zombie executives exiting a fallout shelter. Nauseated screeches dry-heave at strings of metal scraping marrow-less bones into bite-sized chunks. Swarms of clinking locusts disperse above fields of plastic thrift-store detritus getting overrun from all angles by locomotives locked in emergency deceleration mode. Flightless birds elongate their synchronized death squawks and amplify their internal doom. Molecules of electronic corruption wheeze complaints to no one. Violins groan with the vigor of an old rocking chair where a corpse has been dumped. Unattended radios transmit useless advice. Drones and pulsations slowly fall apart and atomize, a mirror image of decay and putrid nothingness enveloping untethered astronauts. A portrait of the void, disembodied space globules and all. The ensemble's version of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Assassination Raga” embalms all the stripes of the rainbow that is America’s creep-show optimism with congealed blood. That the album is released on the poet’s 99th birthday is not a coincidence.
The Thirteenth Century German Poet (And Who Can Forget Him)
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS55) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rampant gaping immensity and pathologically polychromatic hoot from the BuFMS wing of Saint WTF’s Asylum. Micro-episodic tape pieces (with a head-spinning variety of appropriated voices, noises, electronics, music and sound effects) merge with field recordings, cut-ups, loops, improv, live performances, and a range of cover versions that includes a Korean plastic surgery infomercial, bona fide poetry, a book review, a YouTube waif, and Van Morrison. The group delivers pastoral yet alien meander à la The Way Out by The Books, spots of electro-creep worthy of Ruth White’s Flowers Of Evil, entertainment at a LAFMS barbecue, and a variety show extrapolated from the A.M. radios in the background of Firesign Theatre’s Everything You Know Is Wrong. A dazzling and peculiar assemblage. Edition of 50.
Three Christs of Ypsilanti
(Siltbreeze - SB131) LP + 3-inch CDR $15.00
The first post-BUFMS-boxset disgorgement of ramshackle outsider clatter and howl from one of California’s many rural nowheres exposes previously hidden, 25-year-old whack-off (à la Smegma and other bent LAFMS trippers, the UK’s A Band, 5 Starcle Men, Yximalloo, Gastric Female Reflex, Id M Theft Able, and the sort of visionaries currently promoted by labels such as Chocolate Monk and Beniffer Editions). The murky “Take It Out And Kill It” whirls around in conflicting directions in a manner one critic long ago described as “schizophrenic muzak.” “Dark Surprise,” a 1986 recording from the crossroads of DIY autism and darkened psychedelia, is previously unreleased (the first playback of the master tape didn’t happen until 2008). In contrast to the group’s usual embrace of any and all kitchen sinks in the immediate vicinity, this recording was made solely with electric guitars, voice and prerecorded audio frottage. Book-ending both sides are excerpts from an after-hours, no-audience, guerrilla action recorded in a multistory, split-level university student union, using hurled cafeteria cutlery, defective boomboxes and answering machines blaring prerecorded tape, the public piano, and a variety of unidentified flailing objects. “[As] secretive as a posse’ve Masons bidding in a goat auction … a weird , befuddlin storm comin’ outta the night … tryin’ to charm you into the muddy arms of the undertow.” –Roland Woodbe, Siltblog NOTE: Copies of this LP purchased here include a 3-inch CDR of previously unreleased bonus tracks.
Time Lady Rangoon
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC241) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second volume in Chocolate Monk’s Well Spliced Breath series of “sound-tape collage, text-sound, radiophonic, horspiel-type muck.” Above a hazy razzle dazzle of simultaneous background music and spoken word records typical of The Sidney Africa Safari (the KCSC radio show where the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble were regular guests in the early 1980s), skull-crushed revelations about human anatomy and reproduction are expressed, interspliced with surreal texts, fractured word association and a climactic go-crazy. Peculiar sound effects and dusty music come and go amid an ancient Asian circus from the afterlife, a nonsense raga, spastic in-studio percussion, tape collage, loops and excerpts from damaged audio- and videotape, haphazard turntablism, and the unbridled yelps of milk-deprived semi-mechanical gargoyle pups. Edition of 60.
Toupée Made Of Weather
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS98) CDR $8.00
Eventually the spring-breakers who survive their pandemic-era bacchanals are going to discover nostalgia, and Toupée Made Of Weather hereby provides many options for the inevitable retrospective anthology Befuddled Goobers of Shartwave with which all Jersey Shore wannabes worth their anti-viral cream will soundtrack their fevered reminiscences. In addition to sentences from thrift store cassettes, near constant field recordings of indecipherable voices in the background, collages of suburban VHS psychosis, and fragments of guitar and electronic flubba dubba from Fluxus Enigma and Hazel’s ’Lectric Washhouse sessions, lots of processed loops grabbed from various coordinates within the audiosphere are present — an instructive percussive vamp from Art Blakey here, disco hits by KC & The Sunshine Band and Kool & The Gang there, a little fortune-telling from Jan & Dean’s inexhaustible supply of face-palmistry, bluesman Jimmie Revard’s alien doink, weird shit by Steely Dan, yogurt-slathered sitar from a Carnaby-era Marianne Faithfull, and glitches sourced from a Paul Bowles album uploaded to Spotify (proof that the death of quality control is the noisician’s librarian card). “Dead Mackerel and a Bucket of Flaming Housepaint” is a demo submitted for consideration as the band playing in the foyer at the ceremony when guitarist Brian Ruryk earns his Lifetime Achievement Award. The Ensemble’s cover of a French black metal song relies on a phonetic mistranslation of the lyrics of the original by a wiseguy YouTube user and is also loaded with enough backstory to fill an escape pod (“you get 3-D pictures of space porn!”); in the hands of Bren’t Lewiis, it now reads like a dystopian travelogue penned by an incel from the future visiting the past to impregnate baby Hitler. Other highlights include their transformation of lyrics lifted from Daffy Duck and The Groovie Ghoulies into pathos-rich nightmares, Lala Lu’s baby-doll-off-her-meds multi-track soliloquy, and the deliciously anticlimactic finale when Stanley Zappa and Glub Pasha spend some time between two ferns.
Toxic Beard
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS92) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
As with any improbable object that can’t help but be era-specific, especially during a time when the relentless strobe of an unpleasant glare makes the grime and pestilence smeared every place all the more opaque, when Civil War 2.0 often seems more imminent than not, when you have to wonder if you’ll get in trouble because your browser history shows that you were looking into getting a permit for a bow-and-arrow, Toxic Beard stews in disgust-suffused withdrawal. Many of the recordings feel remote, bordering on apathetic, a series of tosses-and-turns across the bow in the softness wars. A corny advertisement prattling fake bonhomie jive launches the album, and Lucian Tielens immediately annihilates it with “Blood Clot,” a solo turn on cornetto (as seen on episode number two of the Colour Out Of Space series Plague Time Television). For just over three minutes, he studiously avoids producing a single note in any key, opting instead for a tonal palette more common to slapping a disembodied lung left unattended on a stainless steel gurney in the hall. Tom Chimpson’s flat caroling dissects institutional text from the world of religious scolding on “Scuttlebutt Within Our Bubble.” Later in the album, on “Hoopo Koomkl Inheritance: Discuss,” he locates encrypted data worthy of espionage, as only a master textician and minister of psy-ops can, in toddler brainwashing narratives. It’s like The Conet Project produced by Up With People. New voices making themselves heard for the first time here will attract a decent audience on the steps of the gackolopolis, plentiful though the group’s stock-in-trade vocalizations barely more coherent than slurred vowels delivered supine on the floor may be. With Count Darkula as his missionary wingman, Vishnu Richelieu makes his first public appearance since The Date Fork Seeps The River (Nauscopy 2003) on “The Hardy Boys Meet Reverend Werewolf,” where he reads, in the style of a pro wrestling announcer, an apocalyptic email written by none other than Maurizio Bianchi himself. Lala Lu, the second of four new ensemble members making their debut on Toxic Beard, gets her diaphanous poet laureate on during the front end of “Reptile In Name Only” (with words penned by that president, our diarrhea nutsack sculpture), while Joan Of Art and Asskicker Bob jank the back end’s zarnt-scape with lyrics by noted pro-rape deer-piss salesman The Nuge. For the three-part suite by The Experimental Artists — an obscure Hayward-based trio of suburban creeps who directly catalyzed the formation of the group in the 1980s — they recruited Lacie Pound of Birmingham, England, to ensure the track pulsates underneath the gray matte non-sheen it deserves. The monolithic “Lateral Incisor At The Bottom Of A Swimming Pool” is more rickety and cartilage-deprived than a near-eight-minute track requires in order to survive, but Lily McBilly and our final noob Amferz commit to the plastic hysteria and zealous dealth-cult patriotism as if pitching an Annie Graham theme to Ari Aster. The thing shimmers hard with Hereditary-adjacent menace and otherworldly apparitia of pyromaniacal squirrels trying to set your feet on fire while you sleep. Consider yourself trigger-warned. Regular listeners do not need to be reminded of Bren’t Lewiis’s views regarding the interchangeability of features and defects. From the warble of kitchenware to the chatter of inane neighbors and ascended-master pretenders ostentatiously gasping for air, urban field recordings, elusive turntablist chirps and ping-ponging decontextualized voices, defective electronic fragments, faraway and backward everything, mumbles, clacks, grunts, loops, and cut-ups, this album rolls in the short’n’curlies on the floorboards of a schizophrenic harmhouse.
Tremendous Pace Of Melt
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS91) 3-inch CDR $4.25
The second in the Dumb Tangerine Dream series delivers a single eighteen-minute track of spoon-bitten synth murb, irregular guitar noise pulsations, dry-rubbed crackles, clunks of indeterminate provenance, and a warped children’s record or two. Constructed of stellar foam and layers of drone-toasted loops, organized into abruptly shifting episodes that mimic a series of Julius seizures at subterranean laundromats, this amorphous-adjacent block of charred goo is sicker and sweeter than a midnight s’mores fail. Includes a burlap swatch courtesy of Yvonne Lovejoy. Front cover by Shalimar Fox. Edition of 25.
Unable To Suppress The Twitching
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Exploring the intersectionality of spooky chamber music and the failures of profane janitors, unnecessary announcements from the futuristic lair of a James Bond villain, and bones of the southern skull. Guests include Dylan Nyoukis and Warvette. Studio material and live recordings from Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland and KXLU in Los Angeles
Worst Utopia Ever
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS76) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
On their fifth full-length album this year, the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble charges into a blood-snake melee like public-access heroes the Ill-Advised Mutants Of Wrestling. Psychedelic euphoria and dread-poisoned torpor grapple all over landscapes smeared with swirling scrape bubbles and the post-hypnotic wobble that cleanses residua from an overdose of personality suppressants. “Very smooth,” as one disembodied and uncertain and completely inaccurate voice describes hopefully, “And somewhat spooky.” Punctuated by phlegmy coughs and metallic chirps, phasing in and out of common-area ambiance, this slow-moving travelogue through between-station grinds, animalist crunch vistas, and long-form dissection of beige respiratory gack rises and falls inside an onslaught of sinister machine drones that flay and smother everything with placid steadiness. There are multiple screech havens embedded throughout Worst Utopia Ever, where ghosted rescue attempts suffocate under the hairy mud of cross-eyed tape manipulation, mushy expressway pile-ups, and out-of-control clang orgies.
Volum
(Jazzassin) Used CD $5.00
’90s improv power trio John Hegre on guitar and electronics, Jorgen Larsson on synth, and drummer Nils Are Dronen push the limits of noise, rock, and human endurance. Almost like a lo-fi collage. Edition of 500.
Insect Electronica from Southeast Asia
(Sublime Frequencies) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A tribute to swarms of male dragonflies of Southeast Asia that during mating join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates — the ones that don't succeed in finding a mate eventually scream so loud their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground (kind of like emo-core bands). Recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in Laos, Thailand and Burma, Brokenhearted Dragonflies features field recordings of droning cicadas, dragonflies and other insects that create a tropical hallucination of strange symphonies and alien sounds. Liner notes by Hakim Bey.
Plays With Itself
(Hypnagogia) Used CD $40.00
2011 reissue of a “totally bonkers cut-up record, comparable to the notorious Bladder Flask experiment, though far more stupid and abrasive in its relentless onslaught. ‘Broken part 1’ is particularly effective in the way it passes on feelings of alienation and disconnectedness.” In pink clamshell case #29/100
Alienacustica
(Elliptical Noise - alphaomega6568-70) 3xCD $33.00 (Out-of-stock)
Another side of the Opalio brothers’ musical universe: classical and acoustic guitar strings, Roberto’s “human” voice as a primordial instrument. The celestial harmony of their beloved Western Alps reigns over this triple-disc box set, hidden in the surroundings, like birds singing through the leafy branches of the trees outside the brothers' Alien Zone studio, the creaking of wooden floor, and the echoes inside the bodies of their acoustic guitars. Includes the Opalios’ In The Middle Of The Air / Glacier Sommeiller, Liquid Spring, and MCIAA’s Folclore Alieno.
Celadonia
(Melon Expander - ME008) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Selected from hundreds of hours of solo material and collaborations with Petra Haden (That Dog, Decemberists, Foo Fighters), Rick Potts (Solid Eye, Dinosaurs With Horns, LAFMS) and Leticia Castaneda, Bryan Eubanks, and Joe Foster (Seoul, Korea), Celadonia is the first substantial release of Brown's electronic and electro-acoustic music. Working primarily with magnetic tape, analog synthesizers, organ, contact microphones, various resonant objects and signal processors, these extended improvisations were recorded and sculpted into compositions between 2002 and 2006. At times the magnetic tape loop techniques employed seem to stem from seeds planted by pioneering tape manipulator and Zen-humorist Henry Jacobs, Terry Riley and his time-lag-accumulator method or the one-man Melon Expander house-band, Joseph Hammer. Fused with other electronic systems created to exist as sustainable yet pliable sound fields, these sprawling cinemas-for-the-ear embody anything from ghostly distant memories to funhouse mirror refraction to enveloping shimmering cyclones. Brown has also recorded and/or performed with Points of Friction, Paramecial Wedding, Joe Potts, Joseph Hammer, G.E. Stinson, Tom Recchion, Albert Ortega, Loachfillet, John Wiese / Sissy Spacek, Johannes Bergmark, Smegma, Ezra Buchla, Leticia Castaneda, Lionel Marchetti, Giussepe Ilasi, Jerome Noetinger, Barry Conley, Thomas Dimuzio, Kevin Shields, Los Cincos/ Syncopation, Martian Mellows and Gasp among many others.
Terminal Hz
(Groundfault) CD $12.00
32-minute five-movement slap-and-tickle by Japanese bombastic guitarist KK Null (Zeni Geva) and Australian guitarist David Brown (Dumb And The Ugly, Bucketrider). Terminal Hz leans on electronic-based improv, nosebleed textures, musique concrète, high-pitched tones, and sparse electric guitar. Not really soothing, not really noise either. Sort of like a cross between Derek Bailey and two spaceships having a near miss.
KYLE BRUCKMANN / TOM DJLL / JACOB FELIX HEULE / KANOKO NISHI-SMITH
Brittle Feebling
(Humbler) CD $12.00
Brittle Feebling prickles and bleats, an abrasive delicacy. Fricative rasp and withheld breath seethe together in a discomfiting cuddle. Perfectly respectable instruments (oboe, English horn, trumpet, floor tom, and koto) born of classicisms both European and Nihongo are recast and glanced at askance, as the misbegotten miscreants of imperialisms they (also) are.
In Heaven
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD062) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Dedicated to David Lynch’s Eraserhead, a cult film and soundtrack which had a profound impact on Christian Renou back in 1982, leading to an ongoing personal interest in musique concrete and electro-acoustic experiments. Edition of 300
Getting Away With Murder
(Eremite - MTE007) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Two musicians recorded down in New York’s subway [in February 1995],” explains Ben Watson, “And, surprise, surprise, they’re playing excellent jazz. Bruno uses brushes on his busker’s pared-down kit: a glorious, intricate waterfall of beats. Tenorist Mateen leaps in like a salmon, flashy and wise…. Mateen’s meditative, Lowe-like intimacy is just what is required [for this 45-minute improv]. When the sax lays out for nine minutes, Bruno’s fluid ebullience comes to the fore. Mateen’s concluding flourish lets in some subway ambience — train-door slams and commuter chatter — and the results are haunting…. Byron Coley’s sleevenote is, as usual, a gas.”
The Shy Tuff Bunny Runs Away
(Transparency) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Instrumental electronica by the dude from Polar Goldie Cats and Best Coast. “Crunchy, noisy mad scientist soundtrack stuff,” says Aquarius, “With beats and … melodies amid abrasive spastic metallic outbursts. Very frenetic and constantly in flux.” Guest Nels Cline plays slide on one song.
Fuck De Boere (Dedicated to Johnn Dyani)
(Atavistic) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Two of the most explosive, riveting pieces of music to come out of the European vaults — never before released, mastered from original radio master tapes — by larger groups led by the German saxophone legend, both recorded by Hessischer Rundfunk at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival, in 1968 and 1970. First is an unheard alternate version of Brötzmann’s groundbreaking Machine Gun, this time with a nine-piece group (same as the LP, adding tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek), recorded three months before the BRO/FMP record was made. Then there’s a forty-minute masterpiece from 1970, with a large group featuring three tenors, three trombones, no bassist, Fred van Hove on organ, Derek Bailey on guitar, and Han Bennink and Sven-Ake Johansson on drums. It’s a monumental piece, featuring some of the most extreme Bailey on record (sounding at times like Masayumi Takayanaki from five years later), and tremendous interplay between Brötzmann, Evan Parker and Willem Breuker. Twelve-panel foldout booklet with liner notes and period photographs.
Machine Gun
(FMP) Used CD $30.00
“The marathon, lung-bursting howl of Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, which the saxophonist self-released on his BRÖ imprint 50 years ago,” remarks Downbeat, “captures the anxiety of a generation grappling with the Vietnam War and civil unrest. The emotional and political complexity it was born from still resonates today…. It’s easy to explain the album’s singular energy as Brötzmann and company harness the era’s ambition of plotting a new path forward. But in the bandleader’s mind, ‘There is no contradiction between creation and destruction. I never thought music was a healing force of the universe. I didn’t agree with Mr. Ayler. But we wanted to change things; we needed a new start…. We were angry. We wanted to do something’…. Machine Gun’s 45-second intro forms one of jazz’s most distinctive mission statements. Evan Parker weaves around the horn section’s staccato blasts, before Han Bennink’s drums blast a nervy military march alongside Peter Kowald’s wildly rumbling bass. The brutality of the album’s remaining 36 minutes exceeds the number of commonly recognized synonyms for ‘violent’…. Ultimately, Machine Gun is the blues for a continent ravaged by a century of internecine warfare, unfathomable crimes against humanity and an uncertain future.” 1990 reissue.
More Nipples
(Atavistic) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This session from April 18, 1969, put British improvisers Evan Parker and Derek Bailey into a once-in-a-lifetime sextet with Brötzmann and Buschi Niebergall, and Dutch radicals Han Bennink and Fred van Hove. “The title track is 17 minutes of some of the most important music in the history of European free jazz,” Pitchfork assures us. “As it unfolds with duos and trios crystallizing from the splinters of the entire group’s nuclear mass, it’s … apparent how well these guys understood each other’s playing, to the point of being conscious of what the group performance sounded like as a whole…. Don’t let the fact that these are outtakes scare you away from this disc, because this stuff is essential to anyone interested in how Herr Brötzmann earned his status as one of the most devastating forces to ever touch a saxophone.”
For Adolphe Sax
(Atavistic) Used CD $10.00
The German tenor saxophonist’s first, recorded with bassist Peter Kowald and drummer Sven-Ake Johansson. This is intense, unrelenting free jazz with little in the way of clear structure or melody. Apart from a few brief moments of quiet during “Sanity,” this stuff just doesn’t quit, with Brötzmann’s consistently abrasive, high-pitched wailing leading the charge and the other two members stirring up a pretty good ruckus themselves (Kowald especially gets in a good string-sawing bass solo on “Morning Glory”).
HAROLD BUDD / RICHARD MAXFIELD
The Oak Of The Golden Dreams
(New World Records - 80555) Used CD $15.00
1999 reissue of Budd’s staunch minimalist works (realized on the Buchla Electronic Music System at the California Institute of the Arts (then in Burbank) in 1970, originally released by Advance in 1971) and Maxfield’s four compositions that skitter from electronics to tape loops. The disc’s centerpiece is his 1961 “Piano Concert for David Tudor,” a twelve-minute exploration of a wired-up piano. Tiddlywinks pluck amplified strings and gyroscopes whir inside the instrument, releasing an array of sounds you never thought a piano was capable of creating.
Simple Version Of A Difficult Question
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Japan’s Buffalomckee grew up a solid second-generation LAFMS huffer, contracting all the telltale signs and ticks of that free music crowd. For many years in the Wild West (Osaka) he slathered himself in free improvisation, noise, avant-garde art, electronica, onkyo-psyche, and nazo-ongaku. Those in the know called him “LAFMS of Naniwa.” Now residing in Tokyo he continues to emit all kinds of fine audio gas: ebullient out-sound, tropical grease, broken leg dance, mouldy minimal. Sometimes burnt toast just tastes right. Edition of 60
Rural Trash
(Chocolate Monk - choc.581) CDR $8.00
This sound diarist and crafty composer’s assemblage of scraps and bits were recorded in Pennsyltucky, London, Reykjavik and elsewhere. Far from a shuffling Xerox of sound blame, a most “meaty” yet “crispy” audio document takes you from a poor stand-up comedy show to waterfall-adjacent whistling in Gufufoss, not to mention looped Britten head scratch and log book scribble. If that doesn’t float your fancy, how about an entire track assembled and featuring English avant sound old head Rod Summers? Migrate the bingo hall and bring your soup bowl. Edition of 60
Light Ships
(Freedom To Spend) Used CD $3.00
“William Sabiston and guitarist Jon Almaraz traffic in screechy, broken electro-acoustic noise, flirting with song structure and formless improvisation. Their ugly, spackled palette weds keening shards of guitar, prepared piano, and glockenspiel sounds with furry drum machine grime. A garish coupling that veers tantalizingly close to pretty melodies and sensuous textures without fully capitulating to coherence.”
Bunalim
(Shadoks) Used CD $10.00
2006 reissue of early 70s tracks by this underground Turkish psych band who mix heavy hard rock with the style of traditional Anatolian folk dances and songs. Sealed
Upcoming Events
(No Fun) Used CD $3.00
An unending spur of equal parts gorgeous and uncomfortably perplexing sound spread across fifteen tracks from 2008. Crackles of electronic fire, tremolo-infused waves of sustained guitar, broken music boxes and found sounds among all other sorts of unfounded wails of gargantuan melancholy drone, Burke and Dimuzio’s collaboration is a forceful, early industrial sound ruination combined with classic krautrock ambiance of the Tangerine Dream / Cluster ilk.
Life Less Lost
(Spirit of Orr) Used CD $5.00
Frenetic, impressively free-form and yet technical guitar-playing from 2003 by this Vermonster, matched with a typically modest vocal performance.
Myself Among Others
(Feather One's Nest) Used CDR $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Collaborations with Kemialliset Ystävät, Willie Lane, Thurston Moore, Parrotprobe, Ron Schneiderman, Sound Of Pot, Ed Askew, Lau Nau, Ralph White, MV, Dan Brown, and Red Favorite. Nine tracks previously released, eight heard here for the first time. Cover is photocopy on red paper. Assembled with silver mylar tape. Hand-burned disc.
Inside The Shadow
(Hospital - HOS212) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Unlike the majority of C. Spencer Yeh’s electronic compositions, this reissue of an obscure tour-only recording from 2005 brings three textures to life with violin, chimes and bells. Yeh’s landscape-oriented, linear compositions surpass the limitations of most of his contemporaries’ synth-only exercises.
Let’s Play Wild Like Wildcats Do
(Hospital) Used CD $8.00
Full-on experimental electronics from 1995, with the first track “Mes Soldats Stupides (Demo)” gradually fracturing kraut / funk drums, horns, and white noise into a whirling mess of synthesized mayhem. “Clouds In My Coffee” is a darker piece of devastating, resonating analogue drone. Sealed
Mes Soldats Stupides ’96 -’04
(Cenotaph) 2xCD $13.50
Disc one features primarily vocal/electronics selections from the out-of-print White Swords in a Black Castle, Amelia, and Crystal Castles releases, along with a few choice tracks originally released on Chondritic Sound and Gods of Tundra. Disc two stretches back a bit further into the archives, with some live performances and unreleased tracks in the mix.
BURNING STAR CORE / HOTOTOGISU
Volume One
(DroneDisco) CD $10.50
Five tracks totaling approximately fifty minutes by the time-defying duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Ramleh, Sunroof!, Total) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, GHQ, Zaimph) collaborating with C. Spencer Yeh, Robert Beatty, and Trevor Tremaine (the latter two of Hair Police, Eyes And Arms Of Smoke, Sick Hour). Originally released as a tour merch CDR, this edited and re-sequenced edition begins with an appropriate invocation and from there punches blindly through one stone cloud after another, coughs and gasps from exhaustion, stumbles and lies motionless. The ritual concludes with a moment of naked acoustic/instinctual spasm. Packaged in a black polycase with black-and-white inserts and a special randomly-selected one-inch button (five button variations in all). All different material from the companion volume HG/BxC II released by the Heavy Blossom label.
Austin
(Rockatansky) Used CD $10.00
“Flesh Parade,” a vulgar tape manipulation collage by Shin Chida, “overcomes the meaning of horror, cancels it, and repaints it with another dimension of fear and violence.” To contrast, in the field recording collage “Scab Eater,” space is palpable, and “filled with fear from another vector.”
JOHN BUTCHER / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA
Dusted Machinery
(Monotype - MONO041) CD $13.50
“Whisper-soft soprano squeaks and gently coaxed feedback saxophone meld fluidly [and] seamlessly with the stripped-metal tones from Nakamura,” writes an Internet poet. “Butcher’s occasional crackles and sizzling flareups from his electronics derail … restrained inclinations in provocative ways.”
BUTTE COUNTY FREE MUSIC SOCIETY
Induced Musical Spasticity
(Butte County Free Music Society - 25) 4xLP + CD $65.00 (Out-of-stock)
Induced Musical Spasticity commemorates the nascent pollination — in the musty shadows of the real ersatz Sherwood Forest, a couple hundred miles north of San Francisco — of the Buttecounty Free Music Society, an apocryphal institution that encouraged anything and nothing, in musical and amusical contexts, sometimes intentionally, sometimes because no one knew any better or cared. Highbrow concept tracks by The Marques (brothers Cole and Steve Marquis) and the dramaturgical Unlikely Modernists, along with Ambivalent Dosage’s pre-Vomit Launch nihilism, mutter and howl next to mad paisley destructo by Dilwhip and the quartet edition of 28th Day, Hypnagogic Jerk’s overmodulated roar, and sweet, YMG-influenced instrumentals by Hallucinatory Companion (aka Barbara Manning and Cole Marquis). Ripe dementia by Experimental Artists, Lawrence Crane and John Young, and Tops Inc. stops rational people in their tracks, while turntable experiments, tape yoink, and high-lonesome electro-twarnk by Rory Lyons, Ziplok, Sidney Afrika, The Conduits, Lucian Tielens, and Richard Streeter shuffle the consciousness. And then you’ve got primitard rock dunt by The Flamboyant Offals, Walking Jock, Dead Boy 3, and shockingly raw 28th Day material that predates most anyone’s idea of the original line-up of that influential band. Four episodes of Matt Mumper’s serial radio play Beor The Friendly Thing appear, in all its inscrutable, deadpan glory. The Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble pollutes the lion’s share of real estate with a side-long tape cut-up a la Faust Tapes called “Goat Embryo (Covered With Glue),” and their entire live set from the Industrial Barbecue. Also here are the spot-on country lament “Plastic Jesus”; the electronic damage of “Mid-Range Phase/Link 3"Dome”; the Smegma-influenced “Lightbulb Incident,” infamous for its live, on-air sodomy; a KCSC radio interview that includes the group’s first recordings; and a handful of previously unreleased tracks. Two-thirds of the material here was previously released (translation: a few dozen cassettes were dubbed one at time and passed through the hands of people in the same rural Northern California area code 25 years ago). All the relics in this boxset are likely unheard by anyone not specifically mentioned above.
Piouhgd
(Capitol) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Upon its initial release in 1991, Rough Trade claimed that Piouhgd was pronounced “pee-owed” (as in the abbreviation for “pissed off”) and that it also meant “I told you” in the Navajo. This explanation, as well as the spelling, were fabricated by the label unbeknownst to the band; the album title was intended to be unpronounceable. Features “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” a single that found its way onto MTV.
The Hole Truth... And Nothing Butt!
(Trance Syndicate - TR35) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Originally released as a bootleg by the shadowy Totonka outfit,” explains All Music Guide, “The Hole Truth [was legitimized] when Surfers’ drummer King Coffey simply took a copy and re-released it on his own label…. [The live material] sounds fairly good throughout…, [as does] an early 1983 studio demo [of] ‘Butthole Surfer,’ and three numbers from 1985 San Antonio date on the Independent Worm Saloon tour. As a ten-year snapshot of the band’s evolution from freakish punk weirdness into a more professional but no less insane band, it’s manna from heaven for the hardcore fan…. [T]he 1983 demo of ‘Something’, a slow stomp and throb with what almost sounds like a horn section coming from Leary’s deathdrone guitar work, sounds utterly unlike the Pioughd version. Haynes’ screeching makes everything even nuttier…. Other highlights include [a straightforward “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” an out-of-nowhere snippet of “Come Together,”] a ridiculous version of ‘Lady Sniff’ taped in San Francisco in 1986, and a 1987 interview on a New York college station featuring various insults about Oliver North and bizarre takes on ‘Kum Ba Yah’ and ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’.” Sealed.
Turn it On Again - The Guitar Works of Timothy James Byrne
(Chocolate Monk - choc.482) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
This “Buckinghamshire-based musician, filmmaker, actor and photographer … has spent year upon year documenting life via a diverse array of mixed media in what would appear to be near total isolation,” explains Duncan Harrison. Byrne had been “creating and publishing multiple new works each day since at least late 2010, before stopping suddenly and without explanation in the summer of 2019. The result is an intimidatingly dense and difficult-to-comprehend archive filled with thousands of obscure artworks, the vast majority of which remain entirely undiscovered outside a tiny underground community of obsessive fans. Though he is best-described as a multi-instrumentalist and singer…, [this] selection of covers, improvisations, original numbers and outtakes focuse[s] on his work for acoustic and electric guitar. This … unauthorized, unoffical fan bootleg exist[s] primarily for documentary purposes and is to be understood as an abstract of Byrne’s wider body of work and artistic practice. With that said, this release represents perhaps the first and last instance of his work being made available outside his personal publishing efforts.” Edition of 50
Roads
(Krim Kram) CD $13.00
Solo percussion by this noted resident of the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise, described by Decy as “subtle, generous, extremely dexterous and keeps showing up some new layer with each listen.”
Coma Box
(Alt.Vinyl - AV059BOX) LP + CD $60.00 (Out-of-stock)
This German post-industrial electronic innovator works with a curetronic modular system, a mopho, and Korg MS-20. Inspired by the awful and yet fascinating process of observing a close friend’s coma following a motorcycle crash, the album moves through initial hopes of recovery, followed by melancholic hopelessness as time passes. Contains LP, CD with bonus track, stacks of handmade inserts and photos. Outer black box with hand-punched metal plates showcasing the coma artwork. Edition of 50
Suave Siesta
(Purple Soil - PS2004) Used CD $3.00
Part reissue of an out-of-print Jazzassin release called Siesta, part new material in the same vein (Suave) by this Origami Republika head of state. Environmental collage, field recordings, minimally processed sounds, plenty of silence, and devices referred to as "analog laptops."
Castle Two
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.382) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Samantha Flowers’s sweet, slow, burning clump of strangeness. Eleven live spliffs created at night deep in the 836 Ashland swamp hole. Keyboard burbles and vocal waver bob alongside creepy tape jams, all recorded in between the floods sopping up sog in the process before the electronics fizz out. Pardon her hiss. Or as SF says, “Fragmented nonlinear renaissance crude nonesuch peasant sound tapestry.” Numbered edition of 60
Cosmic Coincedence Control
(Endorphine Factory) Used CD $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
Claustrophobic and imposing noise layered with heavy fuzz and set at a fairly slow pace from 1992, reaching a wall-of-sound intensity. Edition of 500
Loud Sounds Dopa – Live In USA
(Endorphine Factory) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
There’s something to be said, says Unborn Whiskey, about how Mayuko Hino, Hiroshi Hasegawa and crew “close-mic collapsed stars” and allow us to “travel inside these dead lights and see colors as the truest reflections possible.” Hand-numbered sample/1000.
Love & Noise
(Endorphine Factory - EDP012) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The colonizing whine of the infinitely tiny and reactionary,” says [Desperation + Noise], “… the pink fire expelled by ant synapses when they connect…, brushing harsh against its similar brothers…, and screaming … to no one in particular.” From 1996.
Phantasmagoria
(Helicopter) CD $12.50 (Out-of-stock)
A vortex of psychedelic shimmer and swirling whiteout recorded live at Theatre POO on July 27, 1992 by trailblazing Japanese icons Mayuko Hino (electronics, voice), Hiroshi Hasegawa (synthesizer, voice), Fumio Kosakai (electronics, voice), and Ryuichi Nagakubo (bass). Originally released in 1992 on cassette by Endorphine Factory, remastered for CD by Hasegawa.
Abuse / Breathing Sewage
(BloodLust! - B!120) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This release brings together hard-to-find tracks from the repugnant noise-era of Lexington, Kentucky's Cadaver In Drag, a shadowy period prior to their mutation into a filthy, free-sludge-doom-psychedelic behemoth (as heard on Raw Child [Animal Disguise 2007]). The first two tracks come from the Abuse CD (Husk Records 2005); “Breathing Sewage” (Animal Disguise 2005) is the A-Side of the ultra-limited, tour-only cassette of the same name. The sinuous and turbid connection between these three affiliated tracks comprises lurking danger, darkness, discomfort, dissonance, deviance, and dread. The fourth and final track is a collaboration between Cadaver In Drag and Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded, The Fortieth Day, Anatomy of Habit, ex-Super Eight Loop, ex-Animal Law, ex-Intrinsic Action). They created a bass-heavy bedrock foundation, over which he delivers feedback-laced vocals.
Potential WW3
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.371) CDR $8.00
Adam Cadell of Australia forcing Carter Thornton’s sounds through a wire into a small echo chamber hand-built from a fiddle. Numbered edition of 60
The Partial Obliteration of GMT
(Chocolate Monk - choc.444) CDR $6.25
Proof, as if any was needed, that working with Stefan Jaworzyn will drive ye bonkers. Some time ago, Mr. Tony Irving (of Ascension infamy) done a runner to the other side of our heating globe, rumored to have downed tools and taken a vow of silence in Oz backwaters. Next thing Chocolate Monk knew, a disc arrived with a scrawled note that read “In 1894, a mad French Anarchist attempted to blow up the Royal Greenwich Observatory to stop the enslavement of humanity by the regimentation of time. Since 2014 I have tried to finish the job from Brisbane with nowt but my drums and the fiest of a young fiddler.” It’s clock-smashing time. Numbered edition of 50
Sun Blindness Music
(Table Of The Elements - Re 75) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Home-recorded improvisations from 1965 through 1968, this is the first disc of three documenting Cale’s solo experiments and collaborations with other members of New York’s avant-garde underground (all previously unreleased until 2001). Without any real structure, the title track -- an incredibly extended improvisation consisting of just Cale and the Vox Continental organ -- explores minimalist sound dimensions, jams keys into place, locks into a series of drones, mounts pressure on the organ, clusters notes and creates a dissonant wash of noise. Resonant, booming drones escalate and disintegrate into silence as he prepares to wedge another cluster of keys in place. Raucous, guitar-driven “Summer Heat” is so awash with massive distortion that is sounds like pounding percussion more than guitar strumming, predating Branca’s guitar symphonies, Arnold Dreyblatt’s “sound of one string” experiments, and Metal Machine Music “The Second Fortress” manipulates the Vox in a series of high-pitched drones, and repetitious ambient textures.
Cozinha Mágica Electrônica
(Chocolate Monk - choc.625) CDR $8.00
A psychedelic wormhole unravels on the fourth floor of an apartment complex. Kitchen jams are made with utensils, synths, beatboxes, folk harp, vocals, recorder. The balcony doors open wide and spew improvisational prayer, from the strange to the ridiculous within the shadows of Quarry Hill. If your foot refuses to get muddy, then cut it off. Numbered edition of 60
Displacement Activity Terminal 2019
(Chocolate Monk - choc.466) CDR $8.00
Electronic plod and clang from an exclusive perv lair in West Yorksire, a secret location chosen as optimum for the recording of finely churned euphoric sonics. Numbered edition of 60
Enge Chaleur Telegraphique
(Chocolate Monk - choc.419) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two of Chocolate Monk’s favorite duffers got together for the label’s 25-year birthday bash at Cafe Oto for this long-distance psychic hook-up. These very old friends, one globetrotter involved in international espionage, the other a suburban West Yorkshire housewife, filled the venue with the sounds of far-flung places, piano, electronics, rambling, etc. Disorientation never felt or sounded so sweet. A Daktari for free sound adventurers. Numbered edition of 60
NEIL CAMPBELL / STUART CHALMERS
Frog Dreaming Skull
(Chocolate Monk - choc.433) CDR $8.00
Hurtling toward the horrors of their biological selves, these two aging Yorkshire-based freaks follow up In the Vicinity of the Reversing Pool with an altogether more organic, rolling affair. Chalmers ladles on his signature stuttering tape loops and even dusts off his old zither, while Campbell is in a definite Vibracathedral vibe zone on guitar, percussion, toy piano, violin, electronics and voice. A continuously evolving piece, from the opening strum and stroke that will get your chakra shimmering to a gurning sonic joy mess full stop. Listener, you must struggle with glorious reality! Edition of 60
ROY CAMPBELL / DIE LIKE A DOG QUARTET
From Valley to Valley
(Eremite) Used CD $7.00
Peter Brötzmann, percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker with Campbell subbing for Toshinoro Kondo on trumpet. “From the perspective of free-style jazz, it does not get much better than this” live recording from the Fire In The Valley Festival, 1998, according to All Music Guide. “Campbell is a big plus, his clipped phrases, bold gestures, and confidant lines a welcome addition to the group sound. As to be expected, Brötzmann electrifies with never-ending torching, while Parker and Drake flow in and out with mesmerizing solidity.”
Itinerant String Section
(Freedom From) Used CDR $5.00
More minimalistic than Astral Social Club, and a bit introverted.
Lump Of Stuff
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.318) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Back in 2008, one-time Nipple Erector and The Pogues’ most handsome got together in North London with Vibracathedral’s dad about town and former A Band swing king. Result: heavy, private jam blowout. The walls were hung with heavy rugs, the censer was filled to bursting, and the duo took off — Campbell on charged and elated guitar, Stacy handling commotion with whistle and clarinet. Their fried alien brew centers around a cloud of electronic rust that prevents nervous collapse and steals you away. Edition of 50.
Orange Emulsion Gush
(Chocolate Monk - choc.529) CDR $8.00
These two old heads were recently reunited when El Stickoid was granted a short break back to the Brexit Isles by his handlers after successfully sewing confusion in Tunisia. With his never-waning Protestant work ethic Campbell dragged our bedraggled Agent to Huddersfield’s Dai Hall on a Saturday afternoon in August for a short but savory jammer of sonic sourdough positivity. Praise the raise! “From a fine Calder nosebag we headed to the sandstone tones o’Hudd, Neil effusively introducing the jewelcase misery geyser, whose wares we browsed before hirsute sarnies and mauve sambuca coffee,” reports Foster, if the above seems to good to be true. “Vacated shop had space, signs of good goings on, hot beverage access. Deep, dark broom cupboard of bags of janglers, cables ’n’ footstomp extracted, and Neil applying suitable pluggings. Ebb ’n’ flow of harmonium lungs overstretched the retied strap and foot pedal duo down to one. Painted pedestals for swapping toys, alpini and no-lamb chanters, things fumbled out of parps to a scratchy throb, between mugs of tea. So long since I’d had a tinkle with anyone, but felt so good! I didn’t see it coming, but a gush of white emulsion appeared down my thighs as we deposited the clangers back in the broom cupboard. Glee turned to distress as we realized we’d tipped it into one of the few items not purchased in a Bradford poundshop, but teetering bows and floor rolls had a wind-down follow-up as we rubbed back the Superstition’s orange panels. ’Twas a guilty tale to confess at the well ventilated head of steam.” Edition of 50
Sol Powr
(Music Mundane) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A logical precursor to Astral Social Club, with its heavy focus on keyboard-driven electronic pulse flotation, originally released on LP (Lal Lal Lal 2002). This 2007 reissues also includes previously released, impossible-to-find bonus tracks “Rolling Exploding” and “Sky Full Of Love” from a lathe-cut seven-inch (Gold Soundz 2003) and “Fuzzjam / Dub,” which was available for download from TechNOH.
String Quartets, Loops, Garden Talk
([ no label ]) Used CDR $6.00
“Thirteen haunting episodes you’re not likely to forget in a hurry,” says Sound Projector. “The program alternates two strands of musical activity. There are brief, faintly hilarious pieces of speeded-up records sabotaged by Campbell’s intermittent electronic belches…, followed immediately by deeply resonant, scorching drone-fests … effected using violins, guitars and scraped percussion, all recorded in such ways as to massively distort the natural sounds and generate far too many conflicting frequencies.”
NEIL CAMPBELL / HOWARD STELZER
Their Crowning Achievement
(Chocolate Monk - choc.480) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Stelzer got the ball rolling on this old-school transatlantic collab with the sounds of kids playing, bass guitar, and dozens upon dozens of layered cassette tapes played outdoors and in hallways — a pile of stuff from unrelated or subconsciously-related sources, basically, hung together by crossed fingers and willpower, to which Campbell, in the wilds of West Yorkshire, added electronics, guitar and percussion. The resulting near-hour-long piece is a Rorschach rumble that keeps your gravy wet for the forseeable. Edition of 60
NEIL CAMPBELL / LATE / IAN MIDDLETON
Vatic Lamps
([ no label ]) Used CDR $14.00
Exquisite layered drone from three underground legends.
Campfire Songs
(Catsup Plate) Used CD $6.00
Though the sound is radically different from the digital processing and sound manipulation previously employed by The Animal Collective, the results are clearly of a piece with the percussive, almost incantatory feel of their earlier records. This was recorded on a screened-in porch in rural Maryland and the hum of the outdoors adds depth and presence impossible to achieve otherwise. The trio knits together threads of guitar strum and pluck; chanted, nearly wistful vocal harmonies; and often a pulsing rhythm that seems like it might break apart at any moment, and sometimes does. The melodies are simple and repetitive, recalling the early work of the Third Ear Band, ’70s German commune-music, and similar folk-psychedelic explorers. Edition of 1000 copies in handmade chipboard digipaks with offset printed decals and insert.
Delay 1968
(Restless) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded 1968/1969 at Schloss Nörvenich. With Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, Malcolm Mooney.
Music (Live 1971-1977)
(Mute) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
With "Jynx," "Dizzy Dizzy," "Vernal Equinox," "Fizz," "Yoo Doo Right," "Cascade Waltz," "Colchester Finale," "Kata Kong," and "Spoon." Released 1999.
Soon Over Babaluma
(Restless) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
1990 reissue. Recorded 1974. Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli.
Candlesnuffer
(Dr Jim's - 28) Used CD $7.00
David Brown (of Dumb & The Ugly, Signals, Skeleton, Ultratune) collides musique concrete and rock with Derek Bailey-esque guitar destruction, looped guitar twangs, repetitive percussive chimes, drones, samples, doom-laden power chords and out-of-nowhere noises.
The End Of Irony
(Dual Plover) LP + CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Electronic breakcore disco by Jonathan Snipes and crew. Dual Plover's edition (aka the red edition) is similar to Deathbomb Arc's (aka the blue edition), but not identical. Fifteen tracks total, five of which are not on the blue edition, two are on vinyl for the first time, and three are drastically reworked.
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND HIS MAGIC BAND
Dust Sucker
(Milksafe - BF6003) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nineteen-track collection of rare material, including twelve from Don Van Vliet’s own tape of the original Bat Chain Puller, with five live versions of Bat Chain Puller songs, a version of “Well Well Well” featuring Rockette Morton, and a live festival performance of “My Human Gets Me Blues.”
EUGENE CARCHESIO / LEIGHTON CRAIG
Leaves
(Naturestrip) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Eugene Carchesio’s timeless work as a visual artist has unjustly eclipsed his extraordinary output as a soundmaker. Since the early ’80s, he has proliferated a sackful of barely released cassettes and CDRs under the D.N.E moniker, consisting of some of the most waywardly original and exploratory music made in Australia. Similarly, Leighton Craig’s work, usually documented in tiny editions on his own Kindling label, has been heard by relatively few ears, but those who listen are immediately struck by the sublime sensibility, the effortlessness, and the exquisitely detailed understatement of his music. Carchesio and Craig are core members of the freely improvising psych-primitive ensemble The Lost Domain, whose CDs on Pseudo Arcana, Broken Face and Digitalis have created a fairly hefty underground stir, yet as a duo, their music has never previously traveled further then the ears of a handful of close friends.
Four Principles On Ireland And Other Pieces (1974)
(Ampersand - ampere07) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
2001 CD reissue of all of the piano music Cardew wrote in the early ’70s, originally released on LP by Cramps in 1975, when the Scratch Orchestra was questioning its relevance. “Red Flag Prelude” is a take-off on "O Tanenbaum” enriched with alternate chord progressions. “The Croppy Boy" utilizes a dirge form, rolling chords in the key of G Major, and laments a seventeen-year-old Irish boy (who happened to have close-cropped hair), hanged for his resistance. “Four Principles on Ireland” is a self-contained six-minute work with flights of virtuosity, even with Cardew’s always threadbare, clean musical language: un-Romantic, directness of gesture, nothing opaque or convoluted.
Oar of Panmuphle (First Begemot)
(Alethiometer - WHISTLE03) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The off-kilter collage-based compositions of sound designer Gregory Scharpen, who has worked with irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound, are slow-motion, carnivalesque incantations of ectoplasmic horror and gallows humor. Clattering machines glide into a murky cut-up of organ-grinding Victoriana muffled by reverb; disembodied whispers, slapstick sound effects, and mechanical howls bound maniacally alongside purloined rhythms; wind-up springs and the wooden percolation of noises set a perfectly spooky mood for mechanical toys coming to life. The odd and surreal Oar of Panmuphle drifts eerily among shapeless clouds of darkened thought, and haunted and semi-musical flourishes.
POTIONS!!!
(Chocolate Monk - choc.516) CDR $8.00
The beloved “Beard of Bristol” Owen Chambers spent several weeks trying to unlearn guitar but found that a toxic knot once tied is hard to undo. His resolve failed him. Well, not totally. While his splendid guitar playing would remain intact he decided he could at least add a smear of “whatthefuckery” to his belt by spending the next week listening only to a handful of Glands Of External Secretions and Karen Constance recordings. He then set about making POTIONS!!!, a self-described “soup of sounds made from old Russian sci-fi films, lo-fi synth improvisations, dueling radios…, choral vocals,” and suchlike. It is better to travel well than to arrive. Artwork by Karen Constance. Edition of 60
The Cooking Stove Beast
(Subterranean) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Released in 2008 in oversized folder with splash of red paint. Include lyrics insert.
Beats For The Beast
(Free Porcupine Society) Used Split CD $5.00
All three members of Charalambides take a moment in 2004 to pursue passionate, simple beauty. The title track by Tom Carter is a “30-minute psychedelic dustbowl of slide guitar meanderings…, lush and impressive…,” explains Tiny Mix Tapes. Christina Carter and Heather Leigh Murray add textures and “touches of vocals to their mind-expanding cuatro.” Packaged in a silk-screened tri-fold sleeve with handmade obi.
The Knotted Constellation (Fourteen Rotted Coordinates)
(Monotype - MONO039) CD $12.75
(Monotype - MONO039) Used CD $10.00
Field recordings from around the world, surreal collage techniques and synthetic sounds derived from digital audio tools. With contributions by C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Lithuanian sound artist Darius Ciuta and Berlin-based circuit bender Guido Henneböhl, among others.
Acid Rock Noise Cowboys... Just Playing The Blues
(Psychedelic Farm) Used CD $5.00
“This five-piece includes current and former members of notable bands from the local fringe,” notes Pittsburgh City Paper. “Macronympha, Young Men’s Department, Motorpsychos, Lord Bird Golden Cobra…. [These] … lo-fi studio and live recordings made in 2009 [challenge] notions of rock music while keeping within the basic idiom and instrumentation of a psych-rock band…. Mostly extended, aggressive guitar jams.”
Lemniscate
(Sonig) Used CD $10.00
In 2008, following Jorinde Voigt’s concepts, composers Patric Catani and Chris Imler, developed the “lazy 8” of the infinity motif at Watermill-Center, NYC, a laboratory for performance, in the form of an acoustic “cluster.” The looped composition, formed of sixteen chapters, snakes around seven points realized using a multi-channel arrangement of six loudspeakers and thus describes the shape of a lemniscate through pure sound.
Radio Ghosts
(23five) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Catlin’s recorded output stands among the best that Glenn Branca, Keith Rowe, and Jim O’Rourke have mustered from their six strings hard wired into the histories of electroacoustics, minimalism, and post-punk experimentation. The Melbourne guitarist incessantly tinkers with the mechanics of his instrument, envisioning it as a mimetic sculptural object and as a pure sound generator. Through his experiments with alternative tunings, atypical string gauges, and Rube Goldberg contraptions of interconnected motors, speakers, and radios, he seeks rasping textures of strings vibrating against each other, acoustic phase patterns of two microtonally tuned strings, and the electrical purity of circuits feeding back upon themselves, essentially creating a polyglot drone symphony cast in smoldering monochrome. Radio Ghosts is devoid of Marshall stacks, Sunn amps, and stomp boxes; Catlin captures the acoustic phenomenon of the guitar’s transient vibrations and steers clear of any tricked out sonic demolition.
MONTE CAZAZZA / MAYUKO HINO / MASON JONES / ELDEN M.
Chaos Of The Night – Live At KFJC
(Endorphine Factory - EDP010) Used CD $20.00
Massive 1994 noise jam with C.C.C.C.’s Hino playing a metal sheet, Cazazza on bass, Allegory Chapel’s Elden M. on sampler, and Jones on electric guitar. Huge, bass-cabinet-shredding eruptions. A deep noise battle loud and sublime. Sealed.
White Medal / Caïna
(Legion Blotan) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Two brand new tracks of dedicated Black Metal from England. The last ever recorded work of Caïna. First CD release for White Medal. Artwork by Si Clark. Edition of 500.
Will Over Worlds
(Legion Blotan) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Demos, miscellany and juvenilia from 2004 to 2007 by this English black metal monolith — the raw, rough and not-so-mild beginnings one of UKBM’s shining dark lights. Includes When We Are Grown, We Will Be Strong; The Cold Taste of Perdition (Drakkar 2006); The King Beneath (Drakkar 2006) ; unreleased tracks from a split that never saw the light of day. Edition of 500.
Ashcan Mind Dig
(Ear Noises?) CDR $8.00
This “heavy swath of deftly constructed scrape” explains Andy Brack, “from Cody ‘Lonely Mutant’ Brant and Shane ‘Still got a tré flip’ McDonell is a pristinely layered construction of sounds that have nowhere else to fit but with each other. This disc is like hanging out with all your weird fucking friends, except everybody’s on time and knows exactly when they need to fade out or turn up. Also one of the refreshing instances where you’re not wondering ‘Digi or analogue?’ between juul hits, ’cause this thing is smoother in ways that your average compression worshipper only dreams about, but at the same time jagged enough for all the table flippers in the realm. Really high-class noise, through and through, nothing that’s going to beat you over the head, but you’re not bored either. I’m tempted to call it effortless, but once you take a second to sip the soda and think about the fucking thing, you can’t deny that a shit ton of effort went into this. Total masterpiece from two masters.”
Loop Phantasy No. 4
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.367) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Mind altering tape-loops for clogged heads, mental chatter and drunken monkeys. Ingredients: junk cassette samples, synths and effects. May also contain small traces of Steve Reich, Sufi Trance, Terry Riley and Tom Recchion. Dosage: one or two listens until symptoms ease. Headphones recommended. Warning: do not listen when repairing rare antiques, entertaining family relatives or operating dental equipment. Numbered edition of 60
CHAOS AS SHELTER / IGOR KRUTOGOLOV / TIDAL
Ingathering of Exiles
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
Collaboration from 2003 by David Brownstead of 666 Volt Battery Noise, Vadim Gusis (composer of soundscapes, neo-folk, and ambient drones), and experimental multi-instrumentalist Krutogolov. Sealed
Internal Eternal
(Wholly Other) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Subtle psychedelia imbued with reverberating guitar echoes and luscious drones, recorded on Christmas Eve 1995,” explains Brainwashed. “Faint voices can be heard in the background…, and subtle atmospherics lend to the album a haunting, hollow quality. What is new, however, is the Arabic feel…, as if you are standing in a deserted casbah, only to hear the music of the desert and the departed wash in over the distant dunes.”
XAVIER CHARLES / KRISTOFF K. ROLL
La Pièce
(Potlatch) Used CD $8.00
Dynamic headphone music from 1999 by French electroacoustic duo and clarinetist who can get it on via noise electroacoustics or sound poetry. See-sawing violin sample glides through a quiet storm of bowed cymbals, tiny skittering sounds and gestural clarinet that generally offers up timbres rather than melodic lines.
XAVIER CHARLES / JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS / FRANZ HAUTZINGER / LIONEL MARCHETTI
TSSTT!
(Monotype - MONO048) CD $14.00
“TSSTT matches the textures emanating from the electric-acoustic devices of … Gross [and] the tape recorder and short-wave sounds of musique concrète composer Marchetti,” says Jazzword, “With the acoustic contributions of clarinetist Charles and quarter-tone trumpeter Hautzinger…. Short-wave signals and computer-game-styled buzzing and explosions … reveal distinctive concussion-like impulses…. [A]lso audible are bugle-like triplets from Hautzinger and pseudo dog yelps from Charles’s clarinet…. [W]hile blurry loops and an undertow of tape-machine buzzing predominates on other tracks – along with unexpected gun-shot like pops – so do aleatory and contrapuntal acoustic squeak and peeps…. [A]ir-filled vibrations … gradually turn to harsher, narrower sine waves with tandem instrumental extensions…, escalating and burbling timbres from Gross’s … devices and flanged abrasions from Marchetti’s motor-driven Revox join with the horns’ multiphonic hisses and whistles.”
DENNIS CHARLES / JEMEEL MOONDOC
We Don’t
(Eremite) Used CD $10.00
“Moondoc is in powerhouse form” on this 2003 disc, notes Cadence, “Blowing hard but in control and shaping his sound even when playing free. The late Charles shows that he belongs in the pantheon of great modern drummers right beside Cyrille, Murray, Jones, Blackwell, and Shannon Jackson. The patterns he uses to set off Moondoc’s hellacious blasts and create a perpetual undercurrent of rhythm are remarkable…. This is exquisite stuff from two masters and very highly recommended.” Clipped corner.
RICHARD CHARTIER / ASMUS TIETCHENS
Fabrication
(Die Stadt - DS99) CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first collaboration by these two renowned sound artists, which began during the production of Re-Post-Refabricated, a project where Chartier selected artists to rework and create new works from his 1998 CD Postfabricated for its reissue in 2003, and evolved into its present state after Tietchens continued to explore the source materials and suggested further formal collaboration. Include a limited edition bonus CD entitled Pre-Fabrication.
Air In The Sand
(Naturestrip - NS3004) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
San Francisco sound artist Loren Chasse’s recording processes revolve around active participation within particular, unspecified environments into which he broadcasts drones, textures, and field recordings. Crickets gurgle within aqueous percolations and tectonic surf crashes against rock; rain vaporizes in a caustic sizzle as it hits electrical wires, compounded by the sharp crack of branches and the slow hiss of sand. Outside ongoing pastoral contributions to the polyphonic Jewelled Antler constellation, Chasse exposes something profoundly beautiful lurking in the shadows of the landscape.
Raga Desh
(India Archive Music) Used CD $5.00
Accompanied by Shafaat Ahmed Khan on table, Chaudhuri brings the “sweet, singing, ringing tone” of his Jaipur-Senia sitar-playing to this raga (Alap and Jor / vilambit and drut gasts in tintal) associated with the monsoon season, reflecting the joyful spirits as the rains bring relief from the hot, dry summer.
juicy output
(Chocolate Monk - choc.576) CDR $8.00
The life’s aspirations of Shang Ren — vocalist, audio programmer, electronic musician — no one’s gonna check her ID and ticket. Numbered edition of 50
Grey Ghost
(Box Kite - BK005) CD $10.00
Greg Freeman (Pell Mell) and Jeff Palmer (Granfaloon Bus) have been making "dub fodder" together since 1996. The duo creates organic atmospheres by crossing analog randomness with the digital control of Logic Audio. No less an authority than Germans have nothing but admiration for the results: "Checksum create a blueprint for the dub of the future: warmly and personally. Arrivals! 100% of hearing experience guarantees!" -- Gleis 22 Club "Sounds to a nocturnal walk by a San Francisco wrapped in nebulas. Somehow terribly, somehow fascinatingly." --Szene "Checksum filter the straight pure, reduced dub elements (emphasis bass and schlagzeug, plus a quantity resound and Krimskrams noises)." --DE:BUG
Nice To Err With You
(Love Earth Music) Used 2xCDR $10.00
“Rhythmic mayhem layered and punctuated with electronics and mutilated sounds from objects and voice by aberrant sound artists Roger Smith and Matt Anderson, with beats that feign steadiness but derail in amusing and embraceable ways.”
Black Witchery
(Troniks - TRO223) Used CD $5.00
The dark spell has been cast with this murky potion of macabre frequencies, derelict moans, satanic power and the hideous stench of occult slaughter. Reissues tracks previously released on three-inch CDRs by Chondritic Sound, Fargone Records, and Audiobot.
Misery Guts
(Phage - PT194) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Harsh noise as its finest, full of crunch and thick, layered distortion. Originally released on cassette (Since 1972, 2004).
White Gold
(Helicopter - H 74) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Insane harsh electronics. Ten-year anniversary reissue.
Be Somebody Else, It’s Fine
(Chocolate Monk - choc.513) CDR $8.00
They say repetition is the key to unlocking the lizard brain. Yup. Chlorine’s scabby fingers needle the lock, hinges and front piece. Feel the nimble fumbling in your head. Graeme Hopper scoops time into small piles and sets a direction like iron fillings clustering round a magic magnet. The multiple click-click of metallic pegs acts as a lubricant. I’m willing and ready. Surreptitiously-captured voices plough fever-drenched narratives. Make room for glottal beat-boxing, Lear-esque nonsense and hummed tunes to self. I smile at the shuffle of some rattling shells or the pale blue Farfisa mood. Some machine whirrs as an owl flutters wildly in the gears; then our poor feathery professor gets snaffled by a bigger (yet unseen) beast. I tidy out the shed, one ill-judged elbow starts a cascade of paint tins to bounce playfully off the shins and forehead. Edition of 60
Ultra Fluff
(Chocolate Monk - choc.477) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
In the late summer of 2019, Graeme Hopper and Joe Murray met up on Saturday afternoons to jam. After a few sessions, a pattern emerged. Chlorine’s deconstructed percussion / electronics set up and Posset’s Dictaphones, megaphone, and vocal jaxx started in a hectic, everything-playing-at-once ecstasy, an overload of sensory information with the emphasis on texture and rhythm. After some time, busy layers sloped off, colors became clearer, and the vigorous back-and-forth of frantic improvisation settled into a steady psychic pulse. These raw jams were further messed with, looped, sliced and taped back together. Expect lightning-quick “v- vas-h” and elongated “whumm.” Climb inside a seashell to appreciate the tight, creamy crenulations. Feel the air get sucked out the room by the electric pressure blowing out your speakers. This marriage of real live-room jam and abstracted studio-sweat is not unique. But the light hand on the tiller and hurling the moral compass into the frothing waves just might be. Edition of 60
Chop Shop Plays Emil Beaulieau — Red And Buried
(Pure) Used CD $5.00
Fourteen untitled tracks from 1995, pure industrial noise.
Oxide
(23five) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
New York-based sound artist Scott Konzelmann's activities have comprised installations featuring his speaker construction assemblages and sonic compositions since 1987. His sound and noise are intrinsically connected to his sculptural objects, which, forged from re-purposed junkyard fragments fitted with functional loudspeakers, compress and articulate particular frequencies into hissing static, jet-engine drones, and noxious rumbles. The original analog tapes of Oxide happened to become moisture-damaged, creating drop-outs, print-throughs, and ghostly noise shadows of Konzelmann's muscular drone music, and the tape itself also began to crumble during playback, in eerie parallel to both William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and Hafler Trio's Intoutof. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008.
Upheaval Of The Soul
(Hospital - HOS329) CD $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
The second album of compelling black metal from France, combining the serpentine violence of early Deicide with the thunderous, tom-heavy drumming of early Mayhem. Salivating barks echo amid an engulfing atmosphere of crawling obscurity. Darkness upon the world.
Shiny Crystal Planet
(Alchemy - ARCD119) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
A fusion of the psychedelic phrasing of Angel’in Heavy Syrup guitarist Fusao Toda and the spacey electronics of Masonna’s Maso Yamazaki, pumped full of pop fashion sense, the perfect soundtrack for an astro-modernist go-go lounge.
Hi No Tamaki
(Jigen Production - 015) CD $24.00
Mukai Chie, Tori Kudo, Nishimura Takuya and Takahashi Tsukasa combine folk, psych, and free improv in simplicity-embracing compositions. Led by the melodies of Mukai’s voice and erhu, the results are lyrical, compelling, and unconventional avant-elegance.
Patience Wears Thin
(Obfuscated - OR17) CDR $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Stark sonic landscapes by Jay Howard, where exhausted wrecks decompose under the blazing desert sun. A sweet release from the grips of rusting decay that never comes. Professionally duplicated. Includes sticker and postcard.
CARLFRIEDRICH CLAUS / HARTMUT GEERKEN
Einem Luftigen Akustischen Kosmos Entgegen
(Rumpsti Pumpsti) Used CD $8.00
Recorded in the Lyrik-Kabinett München, June 1991. Both artists prepared a 60-minute tape and a detailed composition for live-presented sound poetry and speech operations that were unknown to each other. In addition, they left room for improvisation and the use of small percussion instruments (chinkas).
You’re Never Safe
(BloodLust!) CDR $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Comprised of nine pieces -- including a cover of the delightfully indelicate Deathpile song, "Breaking A Doll" -- You're Never Safe blends power-electronics, death-industrial, and noise.
Highly Bred and Sweetly Tempered
(North East Indie) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The band’s fifth album is baked from simple, sparingly implemented ingredients sometimes spiked with challenging timbres and, on occasion, indebted to the ramshackle sound of ancient acoustic blues,” says Pitchfork. “That scraped, crackly, hazy feel is appropriate for a band whose website sells cassettes recorded from dusty 78s on their hand-cranked 1924 Victrola and also made a name for themselves in sound installations and soundtracks. Those same 78s — field recordings, audio letters to loved ones and heirs, dramatic readings and the like — pop up on several of these songs, speaking out of the ether like wandering souls.” From 2004
Lovely Drone
(Gravelvoice) Used CDR $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
Quiet and cyclical music from 1998, a surreal lo-fi collage of drones, electronic noise, voices, and field recordings. Night Night Series Volume 1.
Banning + Center
(Experimental Music Research) Used CD $8.00
“Recorded live at Line Space Line in Los Angeles in January 2005, Banning + Center employs treatments, effects, distortions, and an ever-present sense of structure, purpose, and articulation. The dominant sound is abrasive, and during occasional passages of quiet reflection, a howl of feedback or over-amped chording is never far away, giving the entire album an unpredictability that makes it edge-of-the-seat listening.”
Buried on Bunker Hill
(Groundfault) CD $12.00
Guitarist Nels Cline and bassist Devin Sarno have been playing together for almost 10 years, and this is their first multitrack recording (their past collaborations have been live). With a focus on improvisation and texture, Buried on Bunker Hill rumbles thick, low and foggy, as Cline’s detuned and bent guitar mechanics gravitate, distort, meander and hover. For fans of Labradford, Flying Saucer Attack, and the like. Easily the best recording by a duo with chemistry to burn.
At The Mountains Of Paranoia
(Turgid Animal) CD $10.50
Eight songs of linear sonic devotion from Finnish industrial / power electronics expert. Edition of 500
Present Cracks
(Chocolate Monk - choc.539) CDR $6.75
Hot in the house, hot outside, hot sweaty hands poking things. Sounds of the Nottingham neighborhood of Matthew Hamblin and Lila Matsumoto of Food People. Cars barking like dogs. Voices of friends and voices from the TV. Flute, radio, tape, violin, guitar. Numbered edition of 50
Waggon
(Chocolate Monk - choc.456) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Recently observed at Supernormal festival applying salve to hungover Sunday brains, two-thirds of Food People beam in spoken word, spooling tapes, loops, violin, percussion, accordion, and wind instruments. Only the headstrong and foolish would refuse the soothing effect these intimate broadcasts bring. “Lila Matsumoto and Matthew Hamblin make sounds and words from cloth for layering or peddling piecemeal. A rouleau of songs, a bluster of raw sedge scuffed and hemmed. Or maybe a sylvan tableau in merit bone weave.” Don’t be a lunkhead. Edition of 60
Metropolis
(Heyday) Used CD $5.00
Recorded live at Castro Theater in 1991 as part of the Smithsonian Institute’s Exhibit of Degenerate Art, Club Foot scores Fritz Lang’s 1926 film about a technological future where workers toil with mind-numbing devotion to their machinery while the privileged few pursue their pleasures in palaces built in the sky. Compositions by Richard Marriott, Steve Kirk, Beth Custer, Sheldon Brown, Nik Phelps and Myles Boisen draw inspiration from Stravinsky, imperatives of West African folk idioms, swing, jazz, rock, blues and modernist atonality.
Mit Neuen Waffen
(Trash Ritual - TRASH052) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
First recordings by Belgian industrial / experimental group, along with live documentation from Budapest, July 17, 1982, originally released on cassette (Club Moral 1983). Contains the early workings of future classics such as "Exces Kontrol," "Eating Limbs," "Lonely Weekends," etc. Connections here can be traced to V-Side, Minus Delta T, Gyuri Kozma and Janos Veto's Band. All material originally recorded onto a plain cassette deck and Sony walkman. Trash Ritual's first in as series of Club Moral archive reissues.
Excessive Size Punisher
(Fever Pitch - FP25) CD $5.00
A welcome embarrassment to the noise scene from 2000, with appearances by Misty Martinez, Rat Bastard and Weasel Walter). Thirty tracks.
Glass Sponge
(23five) Used CD $12.00
The textural flutters, squeaks, and mobile scrabblings of Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler Collective, Thuja) and corrosion aficionado Jim Haynes bring minimalism back from the dead. Bell tones, ghostly feedback, and tuning fork resonations all spiral together into translucent drones.
Mud Wall
(Helen Scarsdale) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Audio speleologists Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler, Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies) and Jim Haynes (The Wire) collaborate on their third album of “broken minimalism,” an exploration of sound possibilities originating from traditionally non-musical materials (copper, stone, glass, sand, shortwave radio, rust, wind, water and mud). Sifting through viscous electrical fields, slumbering vibrations, and aerosolized pricklings, the duo invokes an aggregate of sustained harmonics, continuously evolving sound forms, and broad gestures of textural details. Monumental physicality somewhere between the quiet expressionism of recent AMM and John Duncan’s psychological inquiries.
Wrack Light In Copper Ruin
(Seal Pool) CD + DVD $15.00
Jim Haynes and Loren Chasse collaborated with Keith Evans to create Coelacanth’s fourth and most complex record. Culled from two performances -- a five-hour recording session during Matmos’s 96 hours at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and an audio/visual performance with Keith Evans -- Wrack Light in Copper Ruin is more delicate than Coelacanth’s previous recordings, inhabiting a space where artists such as Jonathan Coleclough, Andrew Chalk, Mirror, and MNortham can be found, yet it maintains the mysterious, oceanic nature its name implies. Their sound illustrates a constant evolution of decay, encroachment, and repossession of the border space between the natural and the man-made.
Museum of Dannys
(Tzadik - TZ7405) CD $10.00
Cult hero, kook, renegade, Cohen brings the best of his work spanning three decades to Tzadik’s Lunatic Fringe series. Said the label when Mueseum of Dannys was released in 1999, “Arrangements as creative as Joe Meek, lyrics as real as Dylan, hooks as catchy as Brian Wilson, Cohen’s unique blend of astral projection, bad tacos, suicide and Satan makes him the most original songwriter since Daniel Johnston.”
Love's Secret Domain
(Wax Trax) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Coil’s most dance-oriented and accessible release, weaving together acid house, lounge, flamenco, and didgeridoo rhythms. Corner of book is clipped.
RANDALL COLBOURNE / PAUL FLAHERTY
Ottowa
(Zaabway - 2006) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
After a decade of intensive, near-telepathic interplay and wide ranging expressive armory, on this live recording from 1991 at Art Court in Canada, “Flaherty’s alto warbles like an Evan Parker, preaches like an Ayler, or croons like a subdued Sanders, while Colbourne remains … sensitive and creative.”
RANDALL COLBOURNE / RICHARD DOWNS / PAUL FLAHERTY / FROC
Prana
(Zaabway - 2007) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Quartet performance from 1989 (released 2001) with some really beautiful high-powered ache from Flaherty,” describes our friends at Volcanic Tongue, “Working almost Ornette-ish flights of blue spirit into the path of bassist Downs and drummer Colbourne. Guitarist Froc ... plays with a fairly clean tone and comes from relatively deep within the jazz guitar tradition but he rarely distracts from the flow of ideas making their way around Flaherty’s hot-wired brain.”
RANDALL COLBOURNE / PAUL FLAHERTY
Ringtaw
(Zaabway - 2004) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Almost big-band scale free-jazz conceptions,” concludes Volcanic Tongue, “From a sextet led by these legendary drums/sax shooters and featuring James ‘Chumly' Hunt on trumpet and plastic castanets, Matt Moran on vibes and percussion, Mike Murray on guitar and long-term collaborator Richard Downs on bass. A pretty singular installment in this on-going saga, with the music existing in some kind of flux between all-valves-exploding high-energy gush and slightly more elaborately conceived big band geometries. A beauty, for sure."
RANDALL COLBOURNE / PAUL FLAHERTY
Visitants
(Zaabway - 2001) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Classic thunderous now-fi recording of this killing unit,” according to Volcanic Tongue, “Scything their way through mountains of hidebound mediocrity with huge gulps of liberated human spirit. From 1994, this one also features Richard Downs on baritone horn and bass and Mike Murray on guitar. Massive.”
Annihilate This Week
(Korm Plastics - KP3024) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
On the ninth release in the Brombron series, Colley and Lescalleet find music in the natural process of decay amid the detritus of yard sale junk and old, broken equipment. These 2006 compositions seem weathered and eroded. Rather than aiming for excitement or dazzling expression, Colley and Lescalleet embrace the tedium of everyday life as something beautiful and compelling. This is music with a slow absorption rate and a high toxicity.
Desperate Attempts At Beauty
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
At times startling, at others mysterious, Desperate Attempts at Beauty is an audio exploration of the damaged, and an excavation of inaudible murmurs from hidden recesses. With a strong pedigree in low-key noise and sound, Joe Colley of Crawl Unit should know how to spook a listener with the methodical patience of a thriller villain. An alien journey through a vast, rumbling institution.
Waste of Songs
(Oral) CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
This tightly edited collage from 2006 jumps between brutal noise, field recording, psychoacoustic tonal interactions, states of mental duress and negative reactions to an environment, the sounds of broken or dying equipment, devices pushed to limits, spontaneous reactions coaxed from feedback and linked cheap electronics.
Midnight Winds
(Chocolate Monk) Used CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Meditative drone to solid noise from 2009
How To Build A Cabin
(Yik Yak - YIKYAK012) Used CD $5.00
With raw viola, haunting vocals, and noise guitar, Rob Fisk (Badgerlore, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, ex-Deerhoof) sounds perfectly at home in the natural world between dusk and dawn. Packaged in a hand-sewn book of drawings.
Descending Order
(Chair Chair - hh420) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Minimalist industrial from this process-obsessed duo who are so committed to understatement and simplicity, it seems almost spiteful. Loops of noise, synthetic screech, dumpster field recordings, and a general feeling of disembodiment make up the twelve tracks on their only non-cassette release aside from the CDR reissue of Repetition Is The Sincerest Form Of Repetition (BUFMS 2011). Recommended if you like Video Aventures, Craig Leon.
Repetition Is The Sincerest Form of Repetition
(Butte County Free Music Society - 37) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Inspired by Non’s Pagan Muzak (more by the repeating form than by the content), Repetition Is The Sincerest Form of Repetition was created in the early 1980s by two agriculture students (now anti-GMO activists), and released on their own Chair Chair cassette label. Using a handful of sound effects records as their sole audio source, Canker and Chancre created loops on reel-to-reel tape and endless cassettes used for answering machines, which were then manipulated via cut-up, speed, direction, saturation and multitracking for their independently made submixes; those were then merged together for the final mixes with virtually no further changes, because, as Chancre explains, “We didn’t want it to sound composed, so much as manufactured, as if it was all just happening by itself.” At times maddeningly busy with the stock-in-trade of old sound effects records -- animals and machines -- smeared, repeating, overlapping, the album’s raw and relentless uneasiness is further enhanced by omnipresent crackles and infrequent but abrupt silences. Includes non-GMO pasta (raw), and one of two different reproductions of artwork from Captain Protein noodle packaging. Second edition of 37, in support of California Proposition 37.
“After strolling through [Repetition Is The Sincerest Form Of Repetition], the squeak of this ergot-tomato-therapeutic mesh still seems very far from me, its radio links out of reach of my rakes.” —Princecranoi, Reeds & Birches
TONY CONRAD / MICHAEL F. DUCH / C. SPENCER YEH
Musculus Trapezius
(Pica Disk - PICA013) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
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.
Outside The Dream Syndicate
(Table Of The Elements - Li) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
1993 reissue of minimalist classic, recorded in 1972. With one previously unreleased bonus track.
KAREN CONSTANCE / DYLAN NYOUKIS
??????
(Chocolate Monk - choc.543) CDR $8.00
Who does what? Well, put these in your pantheist pipe and have a guess, dummy. Huff 1: The dreaded yet joyous satsuma nightmare. You have never heard of it, but you know it. That pulse and burp and craw that leads to the electric scuttle. In a movie, it is protein farmed from a peat bog with a dollop of silver acrylic paint. Wheeze. Omit the atmosphere. Huff 2: Set deep in a dank boot. Crumpled birds bent into figure eights in woozy frame. Cave people recorded straight to paper. A crooning lothario slipped a healthy dose of something good/bad. A pot of ooze poured upon any negations. A broken laser as your friend. Huff 3: Boomers straight to walkman give good song and life advice. Edition of 50
KAREN CONSTANCE / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Background Noise For Eating Soup
(Chocolate Monk) Magazine + CDR $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
Demented audio and heavy tape cut-up with additional gadget malarky run wild on the disc, while visual collage in the 24-page full-color booklet turns old magazine scraps and such into new wonder for your peepers. All praise to the scissors. Edition of 54
KAREN CONSTANCE / ELKKA NYOUKIS
Bicker Sweet
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.355) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Mother and daughter Monk keep the crude and tripped-out tape jams super queasy with a healthy dollop of echo and delay. Loops and manipulation go from crinkled, hissing ear wobble to more in-the-red what-the-fuckery (à la Polly Shang Kuan Band). Numbered edition of 30.
Gudgeon-Snout
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.360) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Blood Stereo’s better half lurches out of the Shed of Dread to present us peasants with a solo disc of tape and loop damage, recorded ten years apart (one half laid down in the shit basket that is 2017, the other during the rosy days of 2007 when the Doomsday clock was a comfy five minutes to midnight. Take a heavy sniff of this doink. Numbered edition of 50
Lalo Mendy
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $7.00
Cinematic molecules from another era, having seeped through fissures in the timeline, arrive on Lalo Mendy disguised as neurological pulsations and astrally projected trailers from a drive-in theater. Does this mean La Constance is here to willy Enter The Dragon and Cool Hand Luke samples all over your nilly? You deserve a slap for even asking, Bun-Bun. The repetitions here feel compulsive and hypnotic, yes, but also off-kilter and Just Not Right, away from which one is loathe to look. Areas rumble like boats traveling where they oughtn’t, shot through with the kazoo-like quack of bleeps and voice fragments and shadows of transmissions intercepted from intercoms at Business Goose HQ. A recurring tempo recalls quasi-synchronous swingsets rocking back and forth as enjoyed by the surreal children often depicted frolicking and assuming recognizably-Constance postures in her paintings and collages. It is also, however, a bit more complicated. Orders from the Supreme Honk simultaneously ooze over and whiz toward an all-femme Space Force, destabilizing civilians like us with Doppler Effect howls that leave us feeling pushed out of an airplane and descending through a hailstorm of whistling meat rocks. Destination: Unarius picnic overtaken by groundskeepers scooping up damaged mechanical heads with shovels. Edition of 50
KAREN CONSTANCE / JOSEPH HAMMER / JOHN WIESE
Live At Colour Out Of Space 2009
(Chocolate Monk - choc.233) split CDR $9.00
Split release recorded live in Brighton 2009. Solid Eye’s gloved maestro of live tape manipulation conjures up amazing, smoked-out loop wobble. If you cut the guy, he would bleed Ferric Oxide. Constance and Wiese twist knobs and deliver spectral head scratch of marble-losing proportions. A sweet ear pickle all round.
Nothing To See, Hear
(Chocolate Monk - choc.474) CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Using the same set up, Little Sister presents a companion release to the Dylan Nyoukis disc of the same name, recorded inside Wino Lodge. Further dollops of loop damage which aim to disorient and frazzle in the nicest possible way. Numbered edition of 50
Old Scar For New Nose
(Chocolate Monk - choc.509) CDR $8.00
Processed surreal appeal from Wino Lodge’s hardest working dweller. The words are garbled, but the tapes and gadgets are in enough oscillation to keep your ass anodic. It’s hard to believe Miss Constance’s craft graft wasn’t always so strong but chance meetings at an early age set her on the path of prevalence: First meeting the Tartan Lads in Blackburn Chemists at the age of seven where “Scotland’s top performing duo” informed her “even a wee lassie can wear a skirt of many colors,” and then just a few years later a caged mynah bird in a Coldingham pub told her “the life of an artist is a fucktard’s waddle!” Numbered edition of 60
Positively Susan
(Chocolate Monk - choc.601) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The more I come to consume work by Karen Constance, the less I find it helpful to think of in terms such as ‘sound work’, ‘film work’ or ‘painting’. At this point I consider what she does as an ever-living, ever-growing ecosystem of audiovisual dream logic; one that may express itself in the shape of the above media yet exists in an essence far less tangible. Positively Susan is another prime instance of the great arc of images, motifs and obsessions that live via the now-buckling shelves of Constance’s zero-filler back catalogue. Such is the profundity of this gesture toward the abstract infinite that I can no longer tell whether I am listening to a reinterpreted, reanimated take on materials previously encountered in older jams / films or if this is an entirely virgin experience for my lugs and bonce. Maybe it’s both. Like getting to read a missing page from a beloved novel or finding out an action figure you’ve had for years has a gun you didn’t know about hidden in its arse. Fresh perches from which to angle your head whilst gazing at the aesthetic biosphere. But to concede to categorical thinking a moment; what am I actually talking about vis à vis the lived tasting experience of this disc? Pearls dropping from wet cave roofs, as seen from a static-y television? Shattered memories of hearing a piano glued purposely into the wrong shape? Spoken word tracts detailing dreams (probably) amidst deep larynx level non-verbal utterances? Sampled and stitched with a calm, delicate poise then gently warped and looped into heaving inhaling / exhaling living organs? Maybe so. But much like a decent plate of Chongqing Xiao Mian, the proof can only ever be in one’s own tasting. Whether you’ve had the prior pleasure of a toe’s dip in similar culinary waters or find yourself a first time diner, ready your mouth and heart for an earful of the most auditory numbing chilli oil to be found this side of Preston St.” —Mr Duncan Harrison
The Junk Merchant
(Chocolate Monk - choc.497) CDR $6.75 (Out-of-stock)
Further tape and electronic zoink broadcast from the unfettered mind of Covid Karen. Unlike the recent shorter tracks on Still Awake (Beartown) and Still Asleep (More Mars), here we get many sections meshed into one long collage that has that satisfying cut-up yet fluid feel to give you the burbles. If you get giddy on the cool hum of autumn then this click clacker is for you. Hand danglers should approach with caution. Edition of 60
KAREN CONSTANCE / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Therapeutic Effects
(Chocolate Monk - choc.533) Magazine + CDR $13.25 (Out-of-stock)
Solo works and collaborations cooked up in both the audio and visual realms. The full-color stapled A5 booklet features paintings, collages and life pointers. The accompanying disc comes in a one-off hand-collaged cover and gives you a solo track from each Wino Lodge dweller and a spun-out hand hold. Remain prescribed to the outer edge. Includes stickers, badge. Numbered edition of 50
K2 / Constrain / Fenian
(Oxen - OXEN016) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
One solo track by each artist, plus a fourth three-way collaboration. The fluid and propulsive “Sarrogate For Mass Murder” is impossible to mistake for any artist but K2, with its shuddering-soaked layers of frenzy. Constrain delivers blasts of harsh electronics and static assault textures on “Recognizable Mask.” Electronics meet glass smash on Fenian’s “Phenomenology,” where unrepentant harsh noise careens across multiple lanes of blacktop. The brain-bending collaboration track “Spreading Particles Go Smokey” overflows with petulant dissonance and repeated lightning strikes of shuddering rubble blasts. A pristine surge assault of cut-up harsh noise protocol.
Rapid Decline
(Angry Island) CD + cassette $13.50
Kevin McEleney and Matt Purse aggregate their respective harsh noise incarnations for five tracks of up-close Airbus-fuselage impact disintegration and junk-sprung mutilated harsh noise. The cassette is a split c20, with Constrain’s “The Other Side of Hell” on one side, and Fenian’s “The Last Remains of Papal Superstition” on the other.
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS / MERZBOW
Horn Of The Goat
(Freek) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Odd collaboration from 1995 by drummer Stuart Dennison, Philip Best on oscillators, guitarist Gary Mundy, Matthew Bower on loops, and Masami Akita on EMS synth. Space-age phazer noise, trumpets, ambience, yelping female, saccharine dreck melting into top-shelf screech.
Teenage Nuremburg
(Pure) Used CD $15.00
1995 CD collecting six tracks of pure noise by Phillip Best from 1982-83, long before noise music became a genre. Shortwave radio, primitive delay and distortion effects, ranting and incoherent vocals about National Socialism, John Lennon samples, field recordings of Best’s unimpressed schoolmates.
Division and Combination
(Phage - PT199) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Industrial synth beats, guitar-based atmosphere and noise collage. Six new tracks and five tracks previously released on comps (Lágrimas De Miedo Nº10 – Subduction [Fear Drop 2003]; (si'ke-del'ik) Volume One [Psychform 2004]; The Walls Are Whispering... Volume III [EE Tapes 2005]; Peacemakers Inc [Invasions Wreck Chords 2009]; and Spiral Organ Of Corti [SSSM 1995]). Edition of 500.
The Cleansing
(PacRec) Used CD $4.00
A storm of crushing dead electronics by Thomas Garrison. Four tracks from a three-inch CDR on Frozen Empire Media, plus one each from the Bitmapping comp (Objective Subjective), the Field Tapes comp (Hospital), and the Praying to Bleed seven-inch (LSDO).
Oto Live
(Chocolate Monk - choc.244) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel get delirious in the premier London jive joint and showcase the sound of catatonic Italy with all the quiver of a love sick robot. Their sound is always a mix of wieldy, tactile, smart and sleazy. Plenty of vocals, aquatic synth bloot and six-stringed gutter wail. Do your big ham-hock of a face a favor and let them pervade.
Bladderbags and Interludes
(Vanilla) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
1992 collection of thirty minutes of remixed, remastered noise from Knees and Bones (Psychout 1985) and Body Samples (Dossier 1985), plus thirty-five minutes of previously unreleased material.
Pretties For You
(Enigma Retro) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Remastered reissue of their debut album (Straight 1969).
CHRIS CORSANO / PAUL FLAHERTY / GREG KELLEY
Sannyasi
(Wet Paint Music - 3001) CD $10.00
Seven bursts of careful yet flamboyant free improvisation from 2002. Trumpeter Kelley blasts fast, high-register, staccato lines in contrast to Flaherty’s alto and tenor playing, which is less frantic than on The Hated Music. Similar feel, though: intense splashes of bombast sit next to pensive passages, pushing and pulling, jumping moods quickly and logically.
The Hated Music
(Ecstatic Yod - E#1B) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Flaherty’s impassioned overblowing and legato style recall Noah Howard and early-70s Joe McPhee, and his chord outlines, sheets-of-sound-era Coltrane. The Hated Music is raucous but well-crafted: the visceral and incendiary duo captures the spirit of the wildest, most hectic, most flamboyant free improvisation without blowing themselves into monotony.
Die On Me
(Koch) Used CD $25.00
Beat poetry recorded between 1959 and 2001, set to orchestral, jazz, and electronic music by Hal Willner. Guests include Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull, Orlovsky, Studs Terkel, Liza Richardson.
Bible and Machine Gun
(Tochnit Aleph) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A 2001 trash-culture reaction — typical of Costes’s inflammatory and bonkers provocations — to the conflict with Israel and Palestine, which he compares to the horror tales of World War II.
Enfant Criminel
(Radio Bongout - LWA002) CD $6.00
Thirteen songs from 2001 about the innocent cruelty of children by this hard-to-assimilate French genius. After decades of performance, artwork, and homemade recordings, Costes is best known in his homeland for the numerous obscenity cases brought against him. It's not easy being a psychotic terrorist chanteur.
Hung By The Dick
(Nihilist) Used CD $3.00
Blazing casios and techno beats, spastic singing, sensitive thoughts and utter madness. Dare to explore, dissect and analyze this hefty collection of mental disorders vomited up like poisonous bile from an insane primate, jumping up and down, feverishly masturbating and throwing feces, racism, scatology, homophophia, homoeroticism, Nazi sentiments, misogyny and violent, megalomaniacal attitudes at anyone within range. From 2002
Les Oxyures
(Costes Cassette) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twenty-one songs from 1987 about the worms living in your body. One of the earliest works by this infamous French performance art legend who smears the scatology of G.G. Allin, the depravity of Whitehouse, and the transgressivism of Karen Finley, across the relentless devotion to craftsmanship of Rick Wakeman.
Livres Les Blanches Aux Bicots
(Costes Cassette) Used CD $5.00
Twenty-five love songs from 1989 by a confused and crazy homosexual racist.
Lung Farts
(Costes Cassette) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Extreme abstract noise from 1989 with perverse and degrading sexual and social deviations. So many selling points it’s difficult to know where to start: not at all funny; little to no musical merit; every track is excruciatingly long; screaming; strong French accent. You should be ashamed you don’t already have this. Just go away.
Sorcière
(Costes Cassette) Used CD $5.00
Twenty songs from 1990 dedicated to (or directed at, most likely) a young girl. Probably underage. Vulgar, profane, explicit, atonal, interminable – the very stuff that makes life worth living.
Terminator Moule
(Costes Cassette) Used CD $10.00
Twenty-nine songs about the vagina from 1992. He does not care for it. You think you know awful. You don’t know awful.
Glass Brothers 1993-1994
(Bulb - BLB041) Used CD $8.00
Four tracks from their first seven-inch (Bulb 1993), four tracks from Silver Owl LP (Bulb / Nightcap 1993), plus seven previously unreleased tracks. This influential group wasn’t “really noise per se,” explains Marlon Magas, “But we were influenced by noise and had noise in our music (same with the no wave angle), which arguably set the tone for the well-documented Ann Arbor noise explosion that would follow (Wolf Eyes, Nautical Almanac, et al).”
Interventions
(Fringecore) Used CD $5.00
The stunning compendium of the multi-instrumentalist’s amassed knowledge released in 2000 on a Belgian label (later reissued on Young God). “Whether Coulter plays violins, saxophones, the didgeridoo, ukulele, or singing, Intervention sounds as if it were from another world, where musical languages are interchangeable and complimentary rather than codified and restrictive….” On “Kinsnow Orchestra,” the former member of The Pogues and Test Dept. plays jew’s harp, krar, and one-string fiddle, and is accompanied by a sheet-like soundscape by Palix, a double bass, and guitar. “There is an Indian raga feel to the piece, but it has no time signature; it’s all microtones strung together in rows. On ‘How Can I Love Thee?’ Coulter’s soprano saxophone accompanies an over-the-phone reading by Iain Morris of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem of the same name. Its darker-than-night feel gives the impression of a suicide note being left on an answering machine. When Coulter does a vocal in the tradition of the Tuvans and Tibetans meeting in the Himalayas while using a plectra violin and a piano for sonic architecture, it doesn’t tower above you, it floats through your body, leaving a longing for the sacred with the taste of the profane on your skin…. ‘Harmonik’ … is a dance tune created and executed in just intonation with Ghedalia Tazartes on vocal and accordion, with overtones from the sawing of the violin in its high register, just behind its own drone and the accordion pulsing with the organic percussion the same series of chords over and over again. The effect is not just hypnotic. It’s entrancing.” Phil Minton, Marc Ribot, and Steve Naïve “appear on the album’s astonishing closer, ‘Polaroids,’ a composition of such dynamic and textural wealth and modal invention it appears to defy musical logic while sounding so far inside Western musical systems as to be inherent in their origins.”
Flokka Kur
(Musik Atlach - MA011) CD $15.00
Collaborative “Shamanic music in urban context” and “sounds for non-Euclidean geometry landscapes,” which start with the noisy, mystical drones of the Finnish Uton and continues with the Argentinean Courtis’s manipulations and extra noise. Thematically linked by flowers, mixed with Spanish and Finnish language.
KPPB
(Earbook) CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Earbook) Used CD $5.75 (Out-of-stock)
Jump-cuts abound on the second postal collaboration by Reynols spokesmodel and one of the charming lads from Volcano The Bear, shifting the album through contrasting moods with cinematic élan. Touches of the anarchic and exotic, such as mbira, hazy Mexican-style trumpet, and Hawaiian guitar on “King Pancreas,” bring to mind Volcano The Bear, while melodic piano cells add a Cluster-like charm. The deeper and darker “Punk Butter,” with its layered, bowed drones that progress to a dissonant swell, concludes with thundering mallet-struck drums, impossible cymbals, and frantic slide work. Edition of 200.
Las Sales Fundentes
(Om Discos - OM25) 2xCD $20.00
Irrepressible spirit and infinite curiosity regarding the properties of sound animates Courtis’s double-CD, which compiles unreleased pieces and tracks previously issued by labels all over the world. Several are drone works that describe a gradual movement along a static horizontal plain, yet are ever changing; Courtis unleashes multiple frequencies which interact through the vertical laminates, revealing a microtonal world full of drama and incident.
ANLA COURTIS / SEIICHI YAMAMOTO / YOSHIMI
Live At Kanadian
(Public Eyesore - PE110) CD $15.00
(Public Eyesore - PE110) Used CD $7.50
A guitar duet by Courtis and Yamamoto with tons of delays and plaintive keyboard tones that grow increasingly harsh, climaxing in a steel mill din. On their silence-punched duet, Yoshimi and Courtis pile shrieks on top of layers of effects, guitars, and synths. The headache-inducing sustained keyboards and guitar banging on Yamamoto and Yoshimi’s track conjures up 1980s hair metal. The twenty-six-minute trio is the boldest and most aggressive thing here: commanding Yoshimi vocals, fuzzed-out guitar grinds, spacious metallic rhythms.
Unstringed Guitars & Cymbals
(Blossoming Noise) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Waterfalls of humming and squealing, carnival organs, windchimes, and blown-glass swan calls [flow out of the Reynols global ambassador’s] tortured axe,” notes Startling Moniker. “Making excellent use of a cymbal … he fashions layers of shimmering washes, a perfect environment for [the] rising and falling guitar clarion to inhabit. Sealed
THE CRACOW KLEZMER BAND / JOHN ZORN
Balan
(Tzadik) Used CD $12.00
All Music Guide describes the beguiling performance here of compositions from Zorn’s second Masada book as an “entrancing, ingenious, and by all means exotic [recording — a melding of] traditional klezmer, symphonic cadenzas, and free improvisation….” Jaroslaw Bester’s witchy bayan signals “from some far-off place to Oleg Dyyak’s hand drums, Wojciech Front’s double bass…, the small army of strings [by] violinist Jaroslaw Tyrala and the DAFO String Quartet…, the seemingly random guttural vocals of Jorgos Skolias…, [and] Ireneusz Socha’s minimal electronics….” Bester’s arrangements push “the klezmer genre to its limit and then past it, letting in a flood of other musical approaches and ideas.” Sealed
Craniostomy Vol. One
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS64) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The founder of Tape Op magazine and Vomit Launch recorded and self-released numerous cassette-only albums throughout the ’80s, mostly passed around to friends and fellow noise-makers, consigned at local record shops, and traded with like-minded travelers through the mail. One reviewer wrote, “The echoing sounds, pulsating tones, and other space age noise creations melodically swim through the compositions, occasionally colliding in dissonant tones that pout over the rhythm, sometimes created by a fuzzy bass or Schroederesque toy piano rambling.” Six previously unreleased tracks plus thirteen selections from a half dozen self-released cassettes, with Steve Valin of Ziplok on three tracks, and Matt Mumper on the full version of “Beor’s Theme.” Cover art by Karen Constance. Edition of 100
Craniostomy Vol. Two
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS90) CDR $8.00
Collaged, layered, and rebuilt selections from solo cassettes Fast Moving Shadows (1983), Fragment (1984), and Sad Poetry of Departure (1985). In these two brand new mixes with a combined length of 43 minutes, Crane sticks to the more droney and repetitive parts of his original recordings rather than the song-oriented material. You won't hear electronic gargle this determined outside of a modular egg dream, no sir. This is a robust cruise through a downpour of crud-blurred shards and pulsating piles of free-rock membranes scraped off the eyeballs of zombies. All of it was originally tracked via a pair of home stereo cassette recorders, years before Crane had access to a multitrack. Using a 9v battery-powered Radio Shack mixer, he played one deck while adding another layer of instrumentation and recording both on the second deck. “If I’d had the ability to edit, multitrack, and add more effects at the time,” he says, “I certainly would have presented my recordings in this manner back in the ’80s.” Instrumentation was Steve Valin’s fake P-Bass, his Hawaiian lap steel guitar, fake Gibson SG electric guitar, Mattel Synsonics Drums, Maestro Echoplex, Casio PT-10, Casio VL-1, Texas Instruments SN76477 Complex Sound Generator, Roland synth, Pearl AD-08 analog delay pedal, Jaymar toy piano, Boss DM-2 analog delay pedal, Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal, PAiA EK-5 analog delay kit, homemade triple oscillator box, homemade mono keyboard oscillator box, guts from a toy piano, homemade passive mixer, 8-track cartridge recorder (for distortion), two Radio Shack Realistic 33-1080 Electret Microphones, and samples from The Soul of Mbira LP, 1973. Cover art by Karen Constance
CRANK STURGEON / TRUCK VAN RENTAL
Crank Sturgeon / Truck Van Rental
(De Hondenkoekjesfabriek) Used split CDR $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Non-stop freaky collage of weird noises. Timeless stuff! With 12pp booklet and color photocopy cover, homemade obi stapled in Ziplok bag.
CRANK STURGEON / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Dulles Unt Huso
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $7.00
According to Crank Sturgeon himself (or itself (your call)): We recall the tactic: trundle off to visit the Scottish branch of our international cult, make a pile of recordings using a handy dandy Aiwa cassette recorder featuring the retractable mic, remix the sounds a couple months later on the pink boombox at BBF in Harpsie, Maine; then, finally, dash it off into the mail, maybe circa 1997, and wait a few decades for it to re-emerge from the lichen curds of memetic cardboard and bubblewrap. Edition of 60
Get Somewhere Without Words
(Yeah!) Used CD $5.00
Melody always comes first with Flavio and Fabrizio Steinbach’s rough and direct instrumentals in an old-school indie style, without sacrificing intensity and energy. With bassist Christiane “Tepe” Baur and guest Chris Cacavas.
Serpentaire
(Naive Hören + Sehen) Used CD $3.00
German Brit-pop by Flavio and Fabrizio Steinbach and company.
Everyone Gets What They Deserve
(Crippled Intellect Productions) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Deep and dense industrial soundscapes with lo-fi electronics on one horizon and Hafler Trio-esque media collage cut-ups on the other.
Stop Listening
(Groundfault) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Avant-garde minimal drone meets totally entrancing noise. Joe Colley shapes a slowly evolving piece and punctuates it with strange pollutions.
JONATHAN CRAYFORD / GEOFF MAD MARSLAND
Suburbia Volume 1
(Xblend) Used CD $3.00
Two 30-min tracks of lawnmower. With astroturf glued to outside otherwise standard jewelbox. From 2000
JONATHAN CRAYFORD / GEOFF MAD MARSLAND
Urban Assault Vol 1
(Xblend) Used CD $3.00
Urban sound effects: dog barking, party, lawn mowing, waves crashing, car alarm, phone ringing, baby crying, plane taking off, train, chainsaw, car revving, Kango hammer.
Geronticus Eremita
(Chocolate Monk - choc.445) CDR $6.25 (Out-of-stock)
Mysterious south-coast outsider tape wonk that tries to convince you that our normal waking consciousness — rational consciousness as we call it — is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. It’s made of “PsyOps anti-hypnosis tapes Thomas stole. No idea where,” according to Andy Bolus. “Featuring a cyborg Mrs. Mills soundalike. Used for unbrainwashing or ‘brain dirtying’.” Numbered edition of 40
Cooh-Choh-Choh-Cook
(Chocolate Monk - choc.487) CDR $6.75
Two simple kids who learned their passive-aggressive vernacular at the corner shop — not the same lingo, however — dreamt of a bigger bookcase, both with the wickedness of da’ sweet doing hee haw. Neither of them were on the Malibu beach party’s guestlist. Not Pernod-hound Olivier Di Placido abusing a p-petrol broken guitar. Not positive-stepper Renato Grieco, the handlecrackradio-surfer with at least twenty voices in his n-notebook. Together they stitch their spaghetti eyebrows to the crest of a playground nag, bake leftover viennoiserie and sshmptufflin’ down the block. Something’s bending there. It’s clicking. It is boingin’. Edition of 60
Homegoing
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR03) CD $12.00
J. Anthony, G. Darden, and R. Donne (Labradford, Spokane, ex-Aix Em Klemm) journey through simmering electronic, wide-screen vistas to seismic, swelling and undulating soundscapes. From the shifting sands-like textures of “Yoke” (replete with deeply moving, melancholic cello sifting through the ether) and “Streaming Wisdom” to the ever-so-slightly somber tones of “Dead Bird,” Homegoing is a wondrously thought-provoking, uplifting aural adventure. A technicolor travelogue of things possibly lost, possibly not. Available previously as a free digital download with Swedish Child seven-inch, (Flingco Sound System 2010), Hand-Held’s first-time-on-CD reissue has two unreleased bonus tracks, including a Pan American remix. Edition of 500. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
Cave Rock
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
This was the first issue on CD, from 1993 by ZYX, made from an LP needle-drop with side B (tracks five through eight here) being incorrectly mastered at 45 rpm.
Plummet Sound
(Chocolate Monk - choc.493) CDR $6.75
One-time neighbors in that hotbed of commie anarchism / hipster hops known as Portland, Oregon, Cody Brant and Bob Desaulniers started Crude Mirage back in 2016, meeting up for live jams of tape muck and sputter in Desaulniers’s swanky shack. Brant upped sticks to Philly before finally landing in Dougie Jones country for his sins. In the meantime, cassette tapes were exchanged via the post and finally big fat WAVs got wizzed via web until this hard punch of cut-up crud came to pass. A stinking diamond of collage whattheactualfuckery. Edition of 60
A Personal Hell
(Small Doses - dose47) 7-inch + CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Rarely is harsh noise done as well as when Crumer's in charge: deliberate, personal, and soul-shredding. Metal drags, scrapes, bangs, and creaks - blowing microphones, speakers, and your mind. Edition of 300 on brown/green vinyl.
Ottoman Black
(Hospital - HOS215) CD $13.75 (Out-of-stock)
Fresh off a breakthrough Future With No Chance LP (RRRecords), Jason Crumer returns with an album of midnight drones and true noise. Using powerfully clear electronics as a base for declarative noise bursts, Crumer manipulates the sounds with a resounding animosity. His mean streak yields to an array of silences over the course of the album but nothing here is not painful here, especially the quiet; the peaks are almost a relief. "Betrayal After Betrayal" stands out with its conversational quality, both the screams and the muffles, the physicality, while "Where Were You" is an actionist-influenced piece of torture. Ottoman Black is a stern and unforgiving universe. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008
Home-Made Authority
(Delayed) Used CD $15.00
“Band leader Perry Webb’s marginal everyday appearance and rotund midriff speak to lifestyle habits he may or may not be endorsing on ‘A Day at My Job,’ one of the more bracing and succinct tracks,” according to All Music Guide. “He blathers semi-coherently over guitarist Dan Workman‘s reverbed metal leads, which suggest Eddie Van Halen on nitrous. Webb is that rarest of lead vocalists who sing just as he speaks — in a slurred delivery that implies either a state of semi-drunkenness or mild brain damage. But as the bluntly articulated disgust on Home-Made Authority attests, Webb is no bungling half-wit, and he’s as fed-up as he ever was. With such unnerving titles as “Ten Orgasms a Day,” “Feeling/Die,” and “Tunnel of Blood,” the 16 songs here are not for the emotionally queasy or the easily offended. On the requisite hidden bonus track, Webb admonishes the weak-willed to find sympathy and understanding elsewhere: “Run away from your feelings / Run away from your problems / But don’t come here.” Throughout the droning diatribe, Webb sounds like a weary visitor from another dimension transmitting through a broken speaker phone. From a musical standpoint, Culturcide’s voracious appetite for disassembled noise and found sounds, not to mention its steadfast adherence to the punk ethos, is more pronounced than ever, as is the band’s erratic attention span. Wildly uneven and borderline unlistenable in spots, Authority tackles heavy metal, hardcore, keyed-up trucker country, white-trash psychedelia and more, contaminating the mix with random profanity and a sick undercurrent of self-parody.” From 1998
Dedicated To Soledad Miranda
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR043) split CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
One massive, long and heavy dense drone track from Skullflower man Culver, and two tracks from Seppuku, famed for their antagonistic live shows (an ultra-heavy doom track and a power electronics attack).
Sugar Tip
(BloodLust! - B!121) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Lee Stekoe (Skullflower, Inseminoid, Marzuraan) moves air around with sound in a fairly unsettling way, à la Damion Romero, though Stokoe's is far denser and more complex. Heavier than drone, a far cry from simple harsh noise, Sugar Tip is described by the label as "blackened psychedelic noise."
Northeastern
(Chocolate Monk - choc.559) CDR $6.75
An album about vacationing in the American northeast when the autumn trees are at or near their most psychedelic. Herein is incidental life, baked into new ambers: laughing strangers, enthusiastic tour guides, restaurants and airports, a fountain, two young twentysomethings on a street corner staging a lonely action for reproductive rights, the world’s most mesmerizing hotel refrigerator, and more besides. Edition of 60
Curfew Recordings
(Harbinger Sound - 110) CD $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
All-acoustic, unprocessed recordings from 1984 by John Smith (then publisher of Interchange magazine), Sean Dower (ex-Death Magazine 52, later of Bow Gamelan Ensemble) and John Mylotte (Metgumbnerbone). Bull roarers, spirit whistles, human thigh-bone trumpet, chimes, pipes, gongs, flutes, drums, projectiles, scraped and bowed glass, metal, bones, wood and other objects and materials recorded inside a ten-meter-by-twenty-six-meter steel-plated cylindrical structure once used for bitumen storage located at a disused industrial site on the river Tyne. Edition of 300.
Toto Angelica
(I Dischi Di Angelica) Used CD $10.00
Recordings of the label’s annual festivals held from 1991 to 2001, mixed into a new work of otherwise impossible combinations (e.g., Fred Frith with two Inuit women, Pavarotti with Mike Patton). This collage of samples collates vocal and instrumental passages and achieves a sense of urgency climaxes in a crescendo of glorious cacophony.
Nature Unveiled
(Durtro - DJ94) Used CD $12.00
Remastered 2008 reissue of the apocalyptic debut album (L.A.Y.L.A.H. 1984) by David Tibet, Steven Stapleton, John Balance, Annie Anxiety, Isidore Ducasse, John Fothergill, John Murphy, Nicholas Rogers, Roger Smith, and The Youth. Intense chanting, loops slowing down and speeding up, demented opera samples, eschatology, Crowley. Booklet with early photographs of the group members and original insert materials. Sealed.
The Grape That Takes No Prisoners
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.358) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Living legend Adam Bohman with fellow London Improv Orchestra member Adrian Northover and Sue Lynch, recorded at OXO studios in 2015. The trio combines the putter and wheeze of saxophones with home-made strings, objects, tapes and text cut-ups to great effect.
Heavy Days Are Here Again
(Atavistic - ALP207CD) CD $11.00
Pianist, composer, unsung hero of Dutch creative music, member of the first incarnation of the Willem Breuker Kollektief, Cuypers brings Han Bennink and Breuker back together after a somewhat fractious split. The reunited band toured, made a national TV appearance, and then recorded this killer studio LP (BVHAAST 1981).
Ethereal Stairwell Suite
(Mu) Used CD $7.00
“Dark ambient textures created with guitar and bass with a mellow late-night feel,” according to 1000 Flights. This 1998 disc lurks “in the dark while the rest of the world lies unconscious and unaware…. [A]n excursion into the more ancient and primal layers of the human mind…., kind of like wandering alone through a vast cavern with no light, the dark night, the abyss, in the dark north before the sun is reborn.” Cover art is hand-cut section of a painting with stenciled pray-paint text.
No One Bull Left Behind
(Krim Kram) CD $13.50
Belfast-born, Swiss-based artist, Stuart McCune expands upon techniques explored in previous releases, offering a wide palette of sounds and compositional approaches. The album opens with what Krim Kram’s grandmother, a lifelong harsh noise aficionado, would have described as an absolute banger, a roaring behemoth of joyous blasting, before subtly shifting gear to more experimental ground. There is a very singular musical quality to each of the tracks, each containing its own distinctive character. And while the album as a whole certainly falls within the harsh noise realm, the lines between noise and musicality are continuously blurred.
Canaxis
(Spoon) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
"Boat-Woman-Song" and "Canaxis" were recorded in Cologne 1968, originally released 1969, remixed from the original tapes. The previously unreleased "Mellow Out" was Czukay's first piece of music performed for an audience in 1960 on the German radio, cut into vinyl by a small recording studio straight from the broadcast.
WERNER DAFELDECKER / BORIS D. HEGENBART
Eis 9
(Grob) Used CD $5.00
Acoustic-meets-electronic-meets-abstract sound by multi-instrumentalist Dafeldecker and electronic musician Hegenbart, who emphasize sound over energy and introspection over panache. Soft hits on a gong, a few notes of prepared guitar, minimal percussion, non-intrusive electronic treatments, and carefully selected samples all come together in the duo’s post-minimal free improv from 2001.
Pterodactyl Bunker
(Chocolate Monk - choc.451) CDR $8.00
For twenty years Dai Coelacanth has been masquerading as a Graveyard Alligator, or a Radio Alligator. Hanging around bus stops. Shouting the odds. Hear him now: “Cannibal King and her friend The Colonel shook loose in an imaginary dream. Whatever the situation, there could be no suspension of broadcast. Suzi handed out nose-plugs. Don’t touch my legs, you creep. I don’t have to tell you anything.” Don’t cheat yourself by not listening to Pterodactyl Bunker in its entirety. Cheaters never win. Numbered edition of 60
LESLI DALABA / STUART DEMPSTER / ERIC GLICK RIEMAN
Lung Tree
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $4.00
Nine rather short tracks from 2005 by three West Coast improvisors, each one exploring a different mood within the realm of quiet contemplation. Dalaba and Dempster weave sinuous, slightly sad lines, occasionally engaging in spontaneous two-part skirmishes, while Rieman’s modified piano seduces the ear with unusual plink-plonking. “The Dock-Red Ice” and its sparse landscape, the quiet “Bed Shadows into Sleep,” and the dirge “Morning Light Through Smokestacks” stand out as particularly strong self-contained pieces, but each track brings its share of surprising sounds and pleasant ideas to the table.
MIKE DANDO / RUDOLF EB.ER / G.X. JUPITTER-LARSEN / JOKE LANZ
Wellenfeld
(Fragment Factory - FRAG31) CD $17.25 (Out-of-stock)
Sound transformed from data transmitted via wireless electroencephalograph headsets worn by the performers, received by sound engineers and processed before emerging through eight speakers surrounding the audience. Performing live without prior tests or rehearsals, each member of the quartet develops and gains control over his own brainwave patterns by listening to the results of his mental activity and changing electric impulses of the brain, thereby sculpting the sound through their minds alone. Edition of 300
Continuous Hole
(Cold Spring) CD $12.00
Turbulent complexity from a real-time cage match of no-holds-barred signal processing. Cross-multiplying tape manipulation and software, each processing the other into a writhing feedback loop, creating a volatile ouroboros of sound.
Sounds of Sacred Places
(Kye - KYE13) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
"The presence of water and an enormous monolith in the midst of the vast desert plain is given as an explanation [for the] magical appeal [of] the 'Shadowgiving Mountain' of the Aborigines," writes the artist, "Better known under its western name ... Ayers Rock (Australia)...." [T]heir ancestors, the 'Dreamtime People' ... live in this mountain and speak to them in the sounds of the winds howling through the crevasses and rockholes. Uluru is also the dwelling-place of the 'World Serpent', the most powerful totem shared by the surrounding tribes. Sounds of Sacred Places attempts to transform the listener into a living witness of the sounds of similar places, not far away in any specific ethnic culture, but in Flanders." Kye's CD reissue of Sounds of Sacred Places (Igloo 1987) includes a 16-page booklet of photos and notes. Remastered from the original tapes by Darge. Edition of 500.
Collapse
(Mom Costume) CDR $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
A single twenty-two-and-a-half minute track by the master of externalizing the inner maelstrom. Edition of 30.
Imposter
(Throne Heap) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Lo-fi basement surrealism, domestic and field recordings, tapes, electronics, and radio. Recorded 2012 -2019.
Moral Injury
(Mom Costume - 017) CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Metal, piano, tapes, keyboard, records, domestic and field recordings.
Poverty Of Will
(Chocolate Monk - choc.435) Magazine + CDR $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
With many Darksmith recordings, one’s imagination doesn’t immediately conjure a person creating or manipulating sound, but rather drifts toward visions of depopulated areas getting damaged by alien weather events — choked by toxic dust, pelted by freeze-dried rocks of ooze, ruptured by shrieking subterranean trauma. Human agency, when its presence is unmistakable, occupies a position of forced abandonment, like cinematic ghosts unwilling to quit the material plane or an individual dehumanized by efficient banality. Through grit-flecked remnants of grainy field recordings from environs luscious and bleak. Weighed down by cackles and croaks blurred by humidity and contact mics. Tangled in rusted-over playgrounds dominated by geese and tumors. Molested by magnetic tape instability, truncated fidelity, and corrupted modulation fur. As the companion book demonstrates, the lad has an eye for evoking from bland and wholesome portraiture the incipient horror unknowingly embedded within. Darksmith’s stark, high-contrast line art dispenses with gradation, a nice echo of the flatness of the subjects’ lives immortalized by disposable time-killing entertainment magazines ubiquitous throughout medical waiting rooms. 44 pages.
Untitled
(Mom Costume - 015) split CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two pieces each to unearth. Darksmith Of California keeps the hiss and confusion to a maximum on “Jumbo On The Floor” and “Jumbo Up The Stairs” while Nyoukis Of West Lothian digs deep with walkman compositions “Midge Down The Hole” and “Midge In The Gutter.” Edition of 60.
Hapax (Legomenon)
(Phage - PT178) Used CD $9.75
Three long tracks that are re-compositions of live recordings made between 2003 and 2011 best thought of as field recordings of art instillations: sounds generated by everyday objects manipulated by electric motors or applied mechanics and then amplified.
DAVE + ERICK / DAVE MIKO / TWOTHIRDS
We Were Where
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
1990s primitive SoundEdit collage alongside the two-man live jam band, supplemented with leftover interview snippets from an oral history tome about New York City graffiti writers and a new live acapella lament. Edition of 60
Enigma, The Complete Blue Note Sessions, 1952-1953
(Birdland) Used CD $8.00
Two sessions, both from WOR Studios — one with JJ. Johnson, Jackie McLean, Gil Goggins, Oscar Pettiford, and Kenny Clarke; the other with Jimmy Heath replacing McLean, Percy Heath instead of Pettiford, and Art Blakey taking over for Clarke. In heavy, hardback-style digipak, with brief liner notes by Matteo Piazza. From Italy
Ewige Blumenkraft
(Holy Mountain) Used CD $10.00
Six tracks (including an epic, eighteen-minute alpha state called “Plum Village”) by occasional Faust guitarist Steven Wray Lobdell. A new psychedelic chapter in the little known tradition of Karnatic rock (other entries being Ustad B. Khan, Clarke Hutchinson Band, and Sun City Girls). Sealed
DAYGLOW EXPLODING SUPER INFINITE
The Clingfilm Survival Diaries
(Chocolate Monk - choc.496) CDR $6.75
Karl M V Waugh doesn’t let his day job as software developer sour him —far from it. Big Hairy has used his work-from-home schedule to put in the obligatory Zoom meetings, do the minimum amount required, and then set about developing his own noise-making apps. Priorities, people! One of which is a crude looper with manual varispeed control per loop with a very tactile approach, albeit a tad chaotic, like Pierre-André Arcand’s Macchina Ricordi for the Tik Tok generation. This album is made up of four shards from improvisations where Waugh runs various live sources into his phone and from phone to handheld recorder. All via the lens of exhaustion, parenthood, home working, and lockdown 2020. Edition of 60
A Sound Atlas Of Venereology
(Trash Ritual - TRASH054) Used CD $13.00
The second installment of the Club Moral archive series is DDV's interpretation of Anthony Wisdom's A Colour Atlas Of Venereology (Wolfe Medical Atlases 1973). All tracks were performed on Wasp and Korg MS50 synths, and recorded at Club Moral in 1982 on a plain stereo cassette deck with no additional remixing or mastering. Samples from Andrezej Zulawski's 1981 movie Possession were used; lyrics from the Colour Atlas, "Haut Und Geschlechtskrankheiten IV," "Visites Cliniques," and "Revue de Dermatologie" are recited in DDV's typically deranged, animal-like fashion. Almost all material here was never performed live nor featured on other Club Moral related recordings in any other form. Raw and offensive, with all original materials reprinted in a sixteen-page booklet. A classic piece of industrial history.
Exorcist Blues
(Chocolate Monk - choc.585) CDR $8.00
An invitation to take a deep dive into the intergalactic mycelial network of Teonanacatl — the sacrament of Teotl — the totality, the pulsing, undulating wave of Time ~ Space ~ Becoming ~ Unbecoming. The two a cappella vocal songs were received by ancestors while wearing an upside down trash can mask in rural Scandinavia. The more electro-acoustic pieces do their best to replicate some of the various sounds received during the Ceremony of the Deified Heart in which one BECOMES the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl. Sacred mushrooms optional. Edition of 60
Automates Ki
(Plastique) Used CD $5.00
Montreal-based musician and performance artist Maxime Rioux produces compositions played on homemade musical instruments (often specific to a single live performance, usually string or percussion) that are not played directly by a musician. All of the music on this recording was improvised on bottles, boxes, lamps and, everyday objects, springs, sticks, cymbals, bells, cans, drums and other pieces of percussion by Rioux’s Automates and human musicians.
Justine
(Bôłt - BRPOP05) CD $14.00
Voice, melodies and adaptation by Jean-Louis Costes, premiered at The Birth Of Noise out of the Spirit of XVIII Century Music series accompanying the exhibition Ladies With A Doggy And An Ape. Farce and horror. Volume five in the label’s Populista series.
FRANS DE WAARD / HOWARD STELZER
Torn Tongue
(Absurd) Used CD $10.00
The recorded voice of Kelly Sams manipulated by computer and effects in a dense six-track collage. Packaged in a 6.75-inch round, three-panel cardboard cover. Edition of 160
Maximum Dose
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Not much compares to Gabriele Giuliani’s dense, snarling loop-based low end and wild-hell aggressiveness. Recorded and mixed in July 1996 at the Zero Factory.
The Damned
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $5.00
SPECIAL SALE PRICE FOR A LIMITED TIME, to coincide with Trapdoor Fucking Exit, a series of performances taking place inside Helga Fassonaki’s Installation Touching Them Touching Me – A Love Song for the Dead C, at Human Resources Gallery April 20 – 22 in Los Angeles. (more info here: http://helgafassonaki.net/) Nasty rock screech that sacrifices not an ounce of the grace and finesse required of tamers of gigantic, wild sandworms. The Dead C’s improvised noise rock verges on disintegration with a trademark hazy disorientation, invariably evoking hypnotic and heavy moods. But The Dead C are no bummer. They have always sought liberation from shallow and easy rock conventions; amid the murk of cardboard box guitars, underwater vocals, and ramshackle drumming, a new consciousness emerges. The recognizable, sullen strumming, mumbling and lyrical ennui of Michael Morley, anchored by percussionist Robbie Yeats and punctuated by Bruce Russell’s atonal bursts coalesce in a solid front that mocks the efforts of schmaltz-peddling hacks.
White House
(Siltbreeze - SB40) CD $10.00
“The off-kilter tones and noises on ‘The New Snow’ sound a bit like Perry and Kingsley going nuts, at least here and there,” observes our sous chef at All Music Guide, “While the usual noise, fuzz and detuned strangeness skips around the mix. Then there’s the minute-long ‘Aime To Prochain Comme Toi Meme’, which could be anything from minimal guitars to kalimba…. [T]he majestic ‘Bitcher,’ with a just-epic enough swoop to it, [sticks] to a big and bold sound along with some heavy-duty flanging throughout on the lead guitar….” The album concludes “with one of the band’s best ever songs — the steady, addictively paced, surging ‘Outside’.”
Gainer
(Phase!) LP + CD $29.25
Guitar and voice through minimal effects to create instant songs, psychedelic collages and direct, stripped-down bursts by Panagiotis Spoulos. Partially improvised but fully psychographic, Gainer has anthropocentric characteristics and lo-fi character, and flirts with punk, bedroom pop and analog noise. Vinyl is 180-gram. Edition of 250. Check out the video for “Float” here: http://youtu.be/rvdWSa9rHQY?list=UUPqvcMshhRs0X8JZ6ccM_jg
Voiceprints & Aircuts: Sound Poetry By Other Means
(Adhuman) CD $14.00
From a distinctly leftfield position relative to the gnarled, textural tape noise works of Nothing New Under the Sun cassette (Gift of Music, 2022), that guy from Melkings, Zwangsbeglucktertum, and Association Copy offers an obscure, bloody-minded take on Sound Poetry and voice-based sound art. “According to Enzo Minarelli, the Italian pioneer of Polypoetry,” says DeAngelo, “Every poet needs a theory. With pince-nez tilted towards nothing less than the failure of the avant garde to realize itself, Sound Poetry By Other Means utilizes the strategies of audio poems circa-mid 20th century as a vehicle for this virtual history tour. The various deficiencies, missteps, gear fuck ups and general atmosphere of ‘Why?’ all bleed into the smudged margins to reinforce the cart-before-horse nature of producing art indifferent to, nay, incapable of commodification within a cratering Marketplace of Ideas. While the message is by no means optimistic it is voiced in an unaffected, at times even joyous register befitting the paradox of post-End of History déclassé unfreedom. Although intended to be taken as a whole, the disc provides plenty of meat in the purely sonic form of alienation for audience members antagonistic to such prescriptive formalities.”
Quadtych
(Present Time Exercises - PTECD1) CD $18.00
The entirety of Deas's colossal work for 12-string guitar spanning over 70 minutes in four parts. Exploring the sonic possibilities of guitar through a legion of extended techniques, the piece investigates the space between composition and free improvisation, moving between melodic sections reminiscent of Eastern folk music, vicious free improvisations and gradual minimalist transformations. Edition of 1000 copies.
Death & Beauty Foundation
(Somnimage - som018) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Val Denham and Andrew M. McKenzie's (Hafler Trio) 1982 avant garde masterpiece for the bewildered; that's right, the legendary Darlington tapes available after 26 years. “One long collage,” observes Vital Weekly, “The main instrument at work here is the voice … best described … as sound poetry, with a melodic touch…. [G]uitars, the good old Casio VL-tone 1 and several tape editing techniques (speeding up of sound, slowing down) [are] played rather naively and free.” Remastered, frightening and beautiful. The strangest album ever recorded.
Live @ Leeds 4.15.00
(Nihilist) Used CD $10.00
Uncompromising twenty-three-minute power-industrial attack. Silkscreened all-black jewelbox. Includes Fratricide video.
Live At Karachi
(213 Records) Used LP + CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Thirteen studio tracks by this French band who arrived at postpunk- and no-wave-influenced noise rock via the straightforward grind and pound of Jesus Lizard. Occasional dub elements, hints of expansive skronk, and sharp tones with ounces of sax and beats pepper their tried-and-true head-on punkers. Overall, real solid sleazeball shit here. Edition of 300.
Ne Plus Ultra
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nine unrelenting tracks, performed and recorded at Not An Exit, 1997. Sci-fi horror and spooky, unearthly soundscapes, layer upon layer of harsh, swirling atmospheres, volcanic eruptions, ear-splitting whistles, garbled shortwave static, and distorted voices.
The Ready Made Boomerang
(New Albion) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The title track is a John Cage mesostic written for Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis. Guests include vocalist Thomasa Eckert and William O. Smith on clarinet, recorded at Fort Warden Cistern in 1990, where balloons are exploded, vocals are suspended, percussive stuff is dropped, and instrumental sounds are lovely and mysterious.
Halfbird
(Menlo Park) CD $7.00
The fourth full-length album from San Francisco masters of “quiet-loud” experimental rock cacophony. A fifteen-track juxtaposition of extremes and hybrids that push the limits of beauty and power, as the band moves from thermonuclear sound assault to moments of calm. Spectacular drumming, flesh-hacking guitar, roaring bass, and nerve-tingling female vocals.
Holdypaws
(Kill Rock Stars) Used CD $6.00
“[T]he band’s debut alternated actual melodies with meandering bits of downtown-style guitar noise, [but] everything on Holdypaws could easily be classified as a ‘song’ …, [sounding] very much like a less-refined Blonde Redhead. This development represents a steady progression toward relative normality…. Deerhoof’s songs universally portray a surreal, nightmarish place seen through the eyes of a child, as if Glenn Branca composed a soundtrack to ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ Songs like ‘Queen of the Lake,’ ‘The Moose’s Daughter’ and ‘Crow’ describe an interior landscape populated by shadowy, half-beast mutants…. There are no songs about ‘relationships’ or anything else vaguely connected to the sane world’s agreement about what constitutes reality; this is the stuff of dreams, and as such, they are effectively creepy and strange.” From 1999
The Man, The King, The Girl
(Kill Rock Stars) Used CD $5.00
The early recordings on this disc by Rob Fisk (bass and guitar) Greg Saunier (drums), and Satomi Matsuzaki (vocals) took about two years to compile from zillions of practice tapes. There’s a conscious moving away from their improvisatory noise roots here, with a focus on what to the group sounds the most catchy, hi-fi, and powerful.
The Night I Met Maria C
(Locust) Used CD $4.00
The fifth volume in the Met Life Location Sound series from 2003 is an “aural take on waste and getting wasted,” accomplished by pairing a field recording of Seattle City Dump Wallingford Transfer Station, unedited and complete from start to finish, with the title track, which was “aggressively edited from a single evening of drunken prowling.”
Unreliable Narrative
(Chocolate Monk - choc.420) CDR $8.00
Cody Brant and Shane McDonell bust out their warped musical minds for this doozy. Strung-out toe-tapping tunes and creeped-out paranoid shuffle to make your third eye twitch. Imagine the Puzzle Punks got slipped a roofie by a young, pimple-faced Rick Potts. Kill voice to skull. Sometimes good things fall apart, putting the pieces back together. Kill voice to skull. Chewing off the insides of your cheeks. Very suspicious. Numbered edition of 60
DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE / FROGSKIN / SEMTEX
By The Malice Of The Evil... Death Comes! Vol 1
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR094) split CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Three young Finnish sludge bands who take their cues from Eyehategod, Iron Monkey, Grief and, of course, Black Sabbath, putting their own spin on heavy, feedback-laden and bluesy dirges. Edition of 500.
STUART DEMPSTER / PAULINE OLIVEROS / PANAIOTIS
Deep Listening
(New Albion) Used CD $42.00
“Recorded in a massive underground cistern in Washington State with a 45-second reverberation time, the recordings are defined by a surreal smearing of [the] tones [of accordion, voice, conch shell, metal pieces, trombone, didjeridu, garden hose, whistling, and metal pipes]. Like much of Oliveros’s and Dempster’s work around this time, most of these improvisations … focus [on] extended drones, with Dempster’s trombone and didjeridu providing the backbone. Far from evoking any sort of stasis, these tones swell and resonate actively throughout the space, and the effect is hallucinatory. Melodic lines intertwine as they ripple and decay, and momentarily raised voices seemingly emerge from within the insistent, omnipresent root…. In a contemporary context, Deep Listening still sounds revolutionary. While drone, minimalism, and ambient music have proliferated in the intervening decades, few albums in those fields are as rich texturally and harmonically or have such clarity of vision. The album remains vital largely because it embodies Oliveros’s ideas, which have themselves resurfaced as a corrective to the sinister undercurrents of social and technological advancement.” From 1989. Manufactured at Disque Americ.
BOB DESAULNIERS / TRANSLUCENT ENVELOPE
Grimly Forming
(Chocolate Monk - choc.515) Magazine + CDR $15.00
Yet more sweet eye-and-ear yolk in the Lunk Headed Library series and further recordings from the under-documented tape-mangling sound wizard whose use of tapes, sampler, electronics, phone recordings, contact mics, and objects render “a fairly accurate … depiction of my brain turning to mush over the last eight months or so.” The 20-page A5 color booklet is a selection of collages made between 2015 and 2021. Nothing soothes mush brain like magazines, scissors, paper, and glue stick. Balance, dear Bozos. Numbered edition of 69
Destromo
(Works Fatagaga) Used CD $15.00
Three tracks of fractured noise guitar and electronics. Spray-paint stencil lettering on jewel box with glued die-cut insert and traycard. Edition of 250. Visible crack on front of jewel box.
1974—1976
(Ecstatic Yod) Used 3xCD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
Early lo-fi vintage recordings by Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara and Jim Shaw when they lived and performed at God’s Oasis in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The almost-too-good-to-be-true cream of the crop of pre-punk American Midwest weirdness.
Immortal Gods
(Majora) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
1998 reissue of the debut album (Pan Records 1982) by one of the key fixtures in the Phoenix, Arizona, scene of the early ’80s. This high-water mark from within the exotic, cult, folk, beat, punk, and outsider rock musical canon was recorded with Sun City Girls’ Alan Bishop and Charles Gocher; Dan and Mary Clark (of The Feederz and Victory Acres); Paris 1942’s Jesse Srgoncik; and Brandon and Audrey Curtis. A better backing band for realizing a hot tango with Detroit’s African / voodoo / Hitchcock vision can’t be imagined. Sealed
Hardcore Vol. 1
(Rykodisc) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded on various four-track machines and in tiny studios, basements and garages between 1974-1977, originally released in 1990, Devo’s pre-punk conceptual art project strips rock ’n’ roll bare of its collective cool and jerks back into propaganda and radical philosophy fit for post-modern man. Noisy synth, strangled guitar chops, grinding, pent-up energy and a primitive rhythmic thud power early Devo, beneath which are threaded lyrical themes of post-McCarthy paranoia, middle-class ephemera and lack of sex. Ten-page book of lyrics and pictures. Drilled promo.
Frankenstein Symphony
(Asphodel) Used CD $5.00
Stitched together fragments of other musical pieces, woven together into a coherent, workable whole, from friends and former students who gave their blessings to be part of the electroacoustic / acousmatic pioneer’s experimental venture from the late 1990s, the 64-minute piece consists of layers of tape manipulations and musique concrète, with reassuring hints of traditional harmony and melody appearing in the middle distance and then slowly transforming into something entirely different.
Sprut
(Tzadik - TZ7050) Used CD $12.00
1999 reissue of a “strange, hyperactive musical slide show” made of sampling collages, originally self-released (Goodbyeboozy 1995) by this Italian neo-primitive composer. Combining modern technology with concepts inspired by John Oswald and mystery tapes, Di Gregorio chops, mixes, and blends the known and unknown. Sealed with a promo drill mark on the jewelbox.
[Retro 01]
(Eden Gully) Used CDR $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three tracks from 2001, recorded during Dial’s only tour of New Zealand’s north island. A roaring media culture stew made from radio and shortwave transmissions.
Sublimation
(Scratch And Sniff Entertainment - SNSE073) CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
The debut CD from Diaphragm is an amalgamation of dark droning machinery, choppy shuddering, and static-laden buzz and whir augmented by a rusted mountain of ancient oscillators. These are exacting compositions inspired by the grayed-out hulks of broken concrete and broken razor wire that litter the landscape of the artist's surroundings. The sounds on Sublimation may appeal to listeners of Speculum Fight, Iovae, Tom Grimley. Diaphragm is the project of New York native Nicholas Pace. He is part of a core group of diverse young artists that include Halflings, Cathode Terror Secretion, Ahlzagailzehguh, Pharmakon, and others, that are providing for some serious and difficult listening in early 21st century NYC.
Pacta Daemoniarum / Crasse
(Hospital - HOS232) Used 2xCD $5.00
Diapsiquir's two remarkable double-albums on End All Life warrant the term avant-garde, without regard for blueprints, a rare honor. An obscure and controversial French outlaw black metal band known for their decadent activities, this 2xCD contains their first two demos -- Pacta Daemoniarum from 1999 and Crasse from 2001 -- both of which spit twisted, vociferous, manic vocals over complex, orchestrated, highly distorted chaotic metal. It never rests and is fully absorbed in the savage, sexually violent, drug-laden nihilism of French subculture.
AARON DILLOWAY / ROBERT TURMAN
Blizzard
(Hanson - HN211) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Total misery by Robert Turman (ex-NON, Z.O. Voider) and a former Wolf Eye, recorded in January 2009 during a horrible Ohio snowstorm. Dilloway on synthesizer and tape delays, Turman on tapes and effects, both frozen and stuck in the snow. Very minimal, very slow, very cold.
AARON DILLOWAY / DYLAN NYOUKIS
Dropout Elements
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.328) Cassette $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.328) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dilloway turns tapes of Nyoukis singing, playing violin, pogo stick and other junk into four tracks of heavy loop madness. Saltier than a mumified German sailor. Edition of 50
I Drink Your Skin
(Hanson - HN260) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dilloway messes with Renaissance and noise 8-track loops, Drumm spills coffee on a mini-disc. One track by each using sound sources by the other. “A major convergence of two of the most relevant midwestern freenoise artists of the day,” declares Earpeace, “Get it or you suck. You suck anyway.” Previously released on cassette by American Tapes in 2001. Edition of 500
Modern Jester
(Hanson - HN250) 2xLP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Hanson - HN250) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
With the exception of "Eight Cut Scars," this is completely different from the cassette of the same name, though every second does contain subliminal messages (some things are just too good to let go of). "Hyper-focused [and] monolithic," according to All Music Guide, "harrowing, but strangely beautiful," while East Village Radio describes it as hallucinatory and sprawling. LP in silkscreened gatefold jacket, edition of 500. CD
Shining Path
(Melon Expander) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Live sampling pioneer Thomas Dimuzio and tape-loop maestro Joseph Hammer (Solid Eye) swallow audiences with dark explorations of sound. They specialize in a symbiotic sound process as they continually loop, reloop, sample and resample within an interactive feedback circuit linking both artists. Nearly every aspect of Dimmer's live performances grace The Shining Path, yet this is not a live document, but rather a pastiche and reworking of everything Dimmer has accomplished in their years of performing as a duo. Recursive circuits meld into rich and seething sonic masses with subtle waves pulsing sound within sound. The Shining Path suspends the listener over dim and dank planes on an aural trip spanning and scanning from a celestial vista.
Pink Cow
(Chocolate Monk - choc.510) Magazine + CDR $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Master loopist and audio hypnotist Joseph Hammer and loopy sonic magician Rick Potts are the “antique brass holes” who have been plundering phonics since the pre-MIDI era of the LA Free Music heyday. Their chunks of discombobulated ear worm wax are still circling around heads like stars and birdies after a mallet blow to the frontal lobe. This slice of kaleidoscopic audio fruitcake was recently discovered in their jewel-encrusted archive treasure chest. Milk the Pink Cow’s psychoactive soda pop and go for a swirl with floating fragments of dolled-up cartoonery and prismatic rigamarole bouncing off rubber walls of repurposed Exotica malarkey in a sauce of dreamy semi-gelatinous electro-stoolage. The eye-dazzling 16-page full-color booklet of Potts’s tainted surrealism is included for purusal while submerged in the Dinosaurs’ sound swamp.
Return of the Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus
(Melon Expander - ME006) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Since 1983's self-titled cassette release on The Solid Eye label, Rick Potts and Joseph Hammer have delicately dispensed laughing-gas-balloon-animals-go-pop music as Dinosaurs With Horns. This cryptic LAFMS-related group occurred during and in between periods of playing with Points of Friction, Steaming Coils and Solid Eye. Spencer Savage and/or Tom Recchion played with them in the mid-'80s and continue intermittently since. A smattering of Dinosaurs With Horns material appears on various compilations and limited cassettes and CDRs, but Return of the Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus is the first full length CD, recorded November 2000 on KXLU and January 2007 at the LACE Gallery in Hollywood. It is the perfect soundtrack to a snorkeling dream or stumbling down the stairs with berries and cream. Obviously. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008.
Peak To Peak
(PSF) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Electric strings…, saxophones, electronics, and samples move with unexpected ease from meditative passages to intense blow-outs to free scatter,” says Eddie Flowers about this 1994 disc, “The wash of precision rumble and sound-tweaking that surrounds everything creates chaos from an intensely ordered technology.”
Dead Souls
(Chocolate Monk - choc.226) CDR $9.00
Violin feedback bloom from Mike Collino, whose spirit of scrape triturates tiny minds. Suitably ajar tape swashbuckle with dollops of bent spooned electronic glup and soured bass harmonic preserve whispers “let’s get mysterious.” Doglady truly represents the crude with lots of style, like a spleen tarantula running roughways, educating the peasants. Let the muscle be heard.
Future For The Body
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.361) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Further nocturnal transmissions from Mike Collino, who eases the burbling in your sick head with a collection of short pieces that utilize electronics, indefinable strings, piano, violin, electrical hum, modified tape / voice, music boxes and who knows what else. Eerie and beautiful as ever. “These are closed systems,” says Collino. “Inexplicable failures and therefore shareable. I’m able to make it and keep it because I don't understand it.” Numbered edition of 60
Try To Put Your Hand Right Through Me
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.269) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
LAFMS-esque gloop by Southampton’s finest duo of non-musicians cranking out disorienting sound collage. Broken instruments, dictaphone wheeze, mouth gurgles, electronic puff and pant. Cover art by Miss Constance.
Untitled
(Chocolate Monk - choc.577) CDR $8.00
These Southampton sound gibberers have brought many a face-bursting smile to those lucky enough to see and hear them in all their live glory. Life affirmation through noises and prance is their bread and butter, while recordings have been scant over the years. Be grateful that Chocolate Monk is here to present this egg of Fluxus-level blubber and bent class. All hail that damn goose and these noise joy masters. Edition of 60
Human Interface
(Dual Plover - DP42) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dokaka is a DIY human synthesizer: just a man and his voice. No effects, no auto-tune, no edits, no sampling. Not really a true beatboxer (he multitracks his vocals sometimes as many as 20 passes per song), he began vocally mimicking music while humming along to the television as a child and by the age of six was making tapes of his efforts. The bass-player missed a practice session by the band in which Dokaka played drums as a teenager, and he filled in by humming the bassline. The singer was so taken with his vocal ability he encouraged him to record more on his own. His vocal-only interpretations of Led Zeppelin, Slayer, The Rolling Stones, and many others gained cult status when his mp3s went viral (and attracted the attention of Björk, who incorporated his unusual skill into her 2004 Medúlla album). Available for the first time outside of Japan, Human Interface includes 17 hours of vocal insanity multi-tracked into 88 muttered micro-tracks.
Take Me To Cape Town (Mary Visits Elisabeth)
(Research Laboratories) CDR $8.00
“Bert Kaempfert’s foot tapping easy listening classic “Afrikaan Beat,” notes our friend at Idwal Fisher is “the backbone of a Basinskie-esque” opening track on this disc by Bristol-based musician Richard Beale (of Head in the 1980s and Receiver in the ’90s), “slowed down to less than half speed and drowned in a lethargic steel mill rhythm…. A lava-lamp stoner trip…. The other three tracks move in a similar fashion —underwater communications, submerged wanderings, Eraserhead murk and drones, ultra tape sludge extraordinaire.” Edition of 20
MICHEL DONEDA / ERIK M / JÉRÔME NOETINGER
Dos D’ânes
(Ronda) Used CD $8.00
Hacking away on a homemade system and twisted electronic tools, eRikm and Noetinger gleefully activate levers, tactile screens and joysticks with the utmost concentration. Doneda makes the air shake with acoustic vibrations. Together, they give free rein to their audio tricks, buzzing, interference, constructive feedback, electro-shocks, concrete slipping, hazed quotes, white noise, saturations and incisive scratches.
Razine
(Monotype - MONO043) CD $13.50
Self-described by the improvisers as “the wild horseman of sound,” Razine slides, breaks rhythmical lines, transforms textures suddenly, and suggests the ring of the “Trumpet of the Martians,” caught through utopian poetry by visionary and transreason linguist Velimir Khlebnikov, inspirer of futurians, serialism, surrealism and lettrism.
Chuncked And Muddled
(Bloat) Used CD $8.00
1993 debut from Tuscon’s spastic lo-fi gut-bucket garage blues duo. The wicked growl of guitarist / singer Bob Log III on acoustic and electric slide homemade dobro approximates an electrocuted McDowell on amphetamines, mixed with AC/DC. Thermos Malling’s unique microphone setups distort vocals via vacuum cleaner hose or two hairdryers, whatever it takes. For percussion, there’s a Budweiser box, a tin bucket, an old film reel, an iron shopping basket used as a hi-hat, other found objects. In white hinged box, with cover glued onto front and inside, rubberstamped. Includes patch. Autographed
Copula
(Corpus Hermeticum) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
With guitars, bass, synthesizer, organ, and drums, Kim Pieters, Sara Stephenson, Adria Morgan and Andre Richardson elegantly roll through clouds of blissful free improv noise, angular guitar abstractions, and buried distant voices.
Absurd Fjord
(Communion) Used CD $6.00
Guttural neo-prog tales of inner journeys and outer limits. Mark Davies of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 guests on two tracks
DOUBLE U / GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION
Double U / Glands of External Secretion
(VHF - VHF31) 2xCD $12.00
An ambitious 30 minutes of pristine Double U klank und sturm, hailing their fjordic past while heralding their arrival at a new underwater home where mermaids play magic tubas and ghostly mariners dream of the four winds thousands of leagues above, plus a track-by-track demix of the same length, colliding the Glands’ kerflump with the Double U’s structure. Your music box will be coated with a sweet amber resin of wholly illogical proportions.
Ninth Set
(Die Stadt - DS103) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
A 67-minute masterpiece in five parts by this Irish composer who was awarded the Magisterium Prize at Bourges International Electro-acoustic Music Competition (open to composers with a minimum of 25 years of professional experience, with the objective of promoting and diffusing works that might become milestones in the history of electroacoustic music). Previous works include the 5xCD set Babel which took ten years to compose, the three-hour Passades, and Operating Theatre's Rapid Eye Movements (United Dairies, 1980). Doyle has worked with Fovea Hex, Clodagh Simonds, Brian Eno, Percy Jones and Colin Potter.
The Songwriter
(Ecstatic Peace) Used CD $25.00
“Sloppy and fun, but meant to be taken seriously, Doyle is at his best when playing the saxophone, where simple melodies explode into a fury of squawking.” From 1995
Alabama Feeling
(DRA) Used CD $65.00
“In late 1977, Arthur Doyle brought his quintet to New York to play at the Brook, a loft space on West 17th Street managed by Charles Tyler, with whom Doyle formed the label Dra that same year. The saxophonist / flautist / vocalist was joined by old friends from his hometown of Birmingham — Charles Stephens on trombone and Rashied Sinan on drums. Sinan turned up with a student of his, Bruce Moore, ‘to give it more rhythmic feel,’ and Richard Williams was brought in on Fender bass to take on both drummers. From the opening, splendidly titled “November 8th or 9th — I Can’t Remember When,” Alabama Feeling pounds the listener into the ground with thrilling energy; dreadful sound quality perfectly suits the no wave ethos of the period.” This 1998 reissue includes liner notes by Rudolph Grey
Mascarade
(Autobus - AUTO009) CD $13.50
An anti-Christmas album, with songs from all over the world sung in Hungarian, Japanese, German, Portuguese, English, Yiddish and French. All fourteen tracks are thematically related to Christmas and/or winter (most of them are against either or both). The new-music-for-children duo (Franqo Rythmo -- aka Franq de Quengo of Bimbo Tower and the Sonic Protest festival -- on drums, electronic and acoustic percussion, toys, electronics and cheap effects; and Lore -- aka Laure Barges -- on voice and toy percussion) becomes a full quartet on Mascarade, their fifth album, joined by Mr. Pinguin (electric and acoustic guitar, electric bass and ukulele) and Mami Chan (keyboards).
Dragon or Emperor
(Pickled Egg) Used CD $4.00
Stewart Brackley of Black Carrot and Aaron Moore of Volcano the Bear make a drum and bass racket version of Pere Ubu meets Lightening Bolt. From 2006
Live
(Raoul’s Left Ear) Used CDR $5.00
Two live recordings from Ohio and Michigan, plus “Wasted Time,” a seven-minute track decomposed by Silvum in 2006. Numbered edition 76/80
Brothers Together
(Eremite) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
On “this reeds’n’traps free jazz duo workout” from 2002, “there are four long tracks, of which the first is superbly arresting, mixing hard bop with afro-funk in a way which makes it seem they always belonged together, while on the final track Mateen quotes from Carmen,” marvels Jazz Review, touching “all sorts of bases along the way…. A fine example of a rarified but highly rewarding area of music, this goes next to Roach/Braxton, Maslak/Moffett and indeed Coltrane/Ali, where it surely belongs.” Clipped corner
The Whys of Fire
(Ecstatic Yod) Used CD $5.00
“An overlooked 2003 album that features fretwork from Thurston Moore, percussion by Chris Corsano, and additional backing from Patrick Best, Mike Gangloff, and Jack Rose of Pelt,” notes Tiny Mix Tapes, “Produced and mastered by Jim O'Rourke with vocals, drums, and any other incidental backing instrumentation buried way down in the mix. Dan Ireton’s lyrics are almost entirely incomprehensible and constitute, in essence, an eerie howling and wailing. Buried under heavy feedback, dense bursts of overlapping, overdriven guitar skronk, extraordinarily liberal use of reverb, bowed and scraped guitar strings, prepared and treated instruments.”
Dressing
(Krim Kram) CD $11.75
After about a decade of activity in the visual arts, Dublin-based Kevin Kirwan jumps into experimental sound using field recordings, found objects, feedback and tape manipulation. His noise is restrained and textural with occasional melodic undercurrents. Krim Kram’s CD reissues two cassettes originally self-released in editions of 15 in 2021, described by S. Grey as “concise explorations of materiality and physicality via hard-panned, lumbering slow-burn buzz and cut up blasts of spidery frequencies [with] an exquisite sense of timing.”
Turntable History
(Important) Used CD $5.00
A recording of a 40-minute multi-channel sound composition conceived as part of an audio-visual installation in the circular vaulted brick space of a historical water container in Berlin in 2009. Harmonically resonating, pulsating signals derived from recordings made by Arnold Dreyblatt of a Magnetic Resonance Imagining Scanner (Siemens Magnetom Symphony Maestro Class) in a radiological practice in Berlin.
All Are Guests In The House Of The Lord
(Hospital - HOS201) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
The first collaboration between Prurient and Kevin Drumm is one of the darker records in either artist’s discography. Prurient (Dominick Fernow) has toiled in the fields of noise for over a decade and has developed an increasingly dynamic output incorporating darkly arranged synths. Using source sounds of intense tonal drones supplied by Drumm, the two create a haunted atmosphere that is far removed from noise, exploring minimal junctures, using field recordings and clean, patient vocals to lead the way. Subtle electronic textures combine with near-cinematic arrangements.
Comedy
(Moikai) Used CD $8.00
“Firmly in line with monster-minimalists Tony Conrad and Phil Niblock, with extrapolations of microscopic detail familiar to fans of Bernhard Gunter and the Mego scene.”
Imperial Horizon
(Hospital - HOS251) Used CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Imperial Horizon examines sustained tone in greater depth than Drumm's previous Hospital benchmark, Imperial Distortion, stretching out minimalism to unreached heights of serene ambience. Lulling electronic drones slowly transform over the course of the hour-plus piece, echoing both an existential terror and Zen calm. Mutations grow so quietly, only the body opens to identify this change while the mind closes. The ephemeral and seeming lightness of the tones hang with taut balance in contrast to the method in which they are overlapped and rotated with deadly weight. How wildly divergent emotions rise, hover, and fall using so little is a mystery only Drumm can solve.
Impish Tyrant
(Dagda Hammer - DAGDA001) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Remastered CD reissue of this 2004 burner, the debut release on Drumm's own label. Absolutely gnarly rectified cut-ups, up there with Sheer Hellish Miasma as one of the lofty peaks during his harsh investigation of full-bore guitar / synth / computer tactics.
Necro Acoustic
(Pica Disk - PICA017) 5xCD $37.50 (Out-of-stock)
Lights Out (new album recorded 2006-2008); Malaise (reissue of limited-edition double-cassette [Hospital Productions, 2009]); Decrepit (previously unreleased material from 1998-1999, plus tracks from split LP with 2673 [Kitty Play, 2005] and the LP on Dilemma, 2008); No Edit (new album of prepared guitar material recorded in 2009); and Organ (first-time release of the 55-minute version of this track [believed for years to have been lost, recently discovered] previously released in edited form on Comedy [Moikai, 2000]). Solid box with gold print, individual CD-wallets and 24-page booklet.
Purge
(Ideal - 105) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of instantly sold-out cassette (Ideal 2007) that guarantees exhaustion. Powerful and dynamic noise built with travelling frequencies, rich with details, very little hope.
Tannenbaum
(Hospital - HOS371) 2xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Malignant electronic ambient music by a true master whose subtle, roving drones keep the pace with Hitchcockian tension, while details of a story emerge and recede, and sequences are lost in the clatter of long chambers of isolation adorned with the trimmings of pagan beauties. Edition of 500.
Entire Musical Work of Marcel Duchamp
(Ampersand) Used CD $20.00
Predating the work of John Cage (it was composed in 1913), this radical experimental composition employs chance operations and non-musical sounds. “Erratum Musical” and “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” were realized by the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1976 (Petr Kotik, alto flute; James Kasprowicz, trombone; William Lyon Lee, celesta; John Bondler, glockenspiel), and was previously released in 1976 on Multhipla Records. S.E.M.’s soft, slow-motion studies bear similarities to Cage, Christian Wolff, and Morton Feldman. Booklet from this 2000 reissue contains notes by Kotik.
Atmospheres Of Metal
(Dr Jim's - DRJIM06) Used CD $15.00
Monstrous riffs expand and evolve into sheer sinister ambience, shortwave sounds, distorted operatic singing, underwatery drones, power electronics and various tape fuckery zones before delivering the lumbering thud-rock punch. From 1992.
I Can Hear Music
(Brinkman) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew’s second full-length release as Dump plays up the lo-fi elements of his one-man-band recordings with deliberate distortion and tape glitches, but it’s overall a bit poppier and less experimental; arrangements are heavy on the weedy synths and inexpensive drum machines, which adds to the homemade charm. Sealed
Superpowerless
(Brinkman) Used CD $4.00
Modest, fuzzy, loser-happy indie pop from the early ’90s by James McNew of Yo La Tengo.
That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice?
(Shrimper) Used CD $25.00
Prince covers by James McNew of Yo La Tengo. From 2001. Sealed
JOHN DUNCAN / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLF
Our Telluric Conversation
(23five) CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
A bold, expressive piece of sound art, confident in its multiplicity of perspectives caught in a constant flux of attraction and repulsion. Performed with shortwave, data streams, uncanny use of the human voice, oscillators, sonar, and wire tapping microphones, the recording comes with a 40-page booklet with an interview between Duncan and von Hausswolff about their histories, ideas, and methodologies. Packaged in a curiously tactile O-card, embossed with braille and covered with a rubbery coating.
River In Flames / Klaar
(Staalplaat) Used 2xCD $50.00
Beautiful acousmatic work with Orjan Hendriksson, Zbigniew Karkowski and Andrew McKenzie. River In Flames has rhythmic loops, fax machines, Morse code, exceptionally deep bass, sharp interruptions, a long electronic wash, electric buzzes that confine the listener in a center of white noise. Klaar alternates electroacoustic sources between loud and soft, with heavy use of ambient recordings; loops of circling electronics mix with voices and found sounds smooth the road into a sort of mantra; radio frequencies immerse in a sea of clicks, pops and explosions of a desperate mob. 32-page book of Duncan’s writing and photography.
JOHN DUNCAN / KONTAKTE DER JUNGLINGE / C.M. VON HAUSSWOLF
Untitled
(Die Stadt - DS104) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
(Die Stadt - DS104) Used CD $11.00
A collection of live recordings. Duncan’s was made at The Compound in San Francisco 2007. Kontakt der Jünglinge’s (aka Asmus Tietchens and Thomas Köner) is an excerpt from their live performance at Mutek Festival, Montreal, 2003. C.M. Von Hausswolff recorded his at All Tomorrows Parties, London, 2005.
Music, Language and Environment
(Nyahh) 2xCD $19.00
Six composed performances that articulate an aesthetic of environmental interactivity through sound-making outdoors. Foremost in these experiments was a concern for sound as a means to explore the emergent intelligence of non-human living systems.
Mommy Close The Door
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $7.00
Recorded live in France in late 2002 by Japanese vocalist Junko Hiroshige — whose murderous wail hypercubes Patty Waters, Yoko Ono, and the titular victim in Olivia de Havilland’s 1972 crime flick The Screaming Woman — in collaboration with Yves Botz, Thierry Delles, Michel Henritzi, who extend the trad power trio into a Marclay mash with brutal rock’n’roll energies. Extremely nasty, unholy screaming that’d peel paint mixed with maniacs destroying the history of popular western music one record at a time.
DOMINIC DUVAL / JOHN HEWARD / JOE MCPHEE
Undersound
(Leo - LR295) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Joined by McPhee on soprano and tenor saxophones and Heward on drums and kalimba, Duval steers the trio through mostly short free improvisations to many of which there is a quietness, though hardly a lack of intensity. Heward’s carefully constructed, prodding kicks urge on his compatriots. Duval's distorted, squeaky bass lines weave in and out. The stunning McPhee swings, stretches, and instantaneously composes at virtually any tempo or level of dynamics.
Recluses Unite
(Dual Plover) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Spend the evening in the company of a bottle of whisky instead of your sweetheart, and the tune you bellow out in the wee hours -- with arms around a snake oil merchant and a boxing ballerina -- could well be a ditty from the mind of Al Duvall. He crafts wicked vaudevillian hits on banjo, kazoo, and various percussive detritus; his “gentle but deadly” songs draw from working-class music of pre-war America, blending jug-band, medicine show, music-hall, and Victorian parlor ballads. Duvall delivers a loving backhand to the fringe dweller in this expertly crafted collection of aural ephemera. With an overdose of morbid puns and sly innuendo, Recluses Unite is the perfect primer for any aspiring vagrant.
Timid Mischief
(Dual Plover) CD $15.25 (Out-of-stock)
An unguided tour guide down Memory Lane. First stop: turn-of-the-century style American folk played on banjo, kazoo, guitar, musical saw, and a collection of spittoons, frying pans and medicine bottles. Duvall’s vaudevillian songs are steeped in black wit, double entendre and clever wordplay about kleptomaniacs, moonshiners, criminals, loners and even more shadowy figures. Timid Mischief mixes old-timey, ragtime, sea shanty, Victorian parlor and jug band musics recorded on wax cylinders and other lo-fi devices. These songs should have been written between 1900 and 1930; he just never got around to it until now.
New Life After Fire (For Thom Thomson)
(Art Metropole) Used CD $8.00
The complete set from a live performance in Toronto 2001, ranging from quiet ambience to destructo wall-of-noise. Playing alongside his own experimental films, Ranaldo coaxes a wide range of sounds from his guitar while pre-recorded voices from prepared tapes float in and out of the mix. Working with a sampler and CD deck, Dyment adds bursts of noise and ambient bed-tracks. Edition of 500
Slewn A Gout
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Two of Los Angeles’s finest performance art freaks hold hands, hug and salivate together for your pleasure. This beautiful little creeper of a recording will wrap your head in smoke so tenderly that you won’t want to re-emerge. Listen to the ghost screams of two ungrown men, interpreted through heavy petting sessions where they were forced to unexplore consciousness and speak in hymn. Don’t leave your things slewn a gout. Is the faucet still dripping? Edition of 60
An Event In 4.75 Time
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Mystery noise from the always ripe Mr. Eastman, recorded live in the Garden State, originally broadcast on WFMU. Excerpts were previously released on The Glamorous Life cassette (Throne Heap, 2024), but the reworking here is guaranteed to puff green smoke out your ears. Edition of 60
Brainnectar
(Schimpfluch Associates - SHA02) 2xCD $20.00
Eb.er's most developed program to date, combining psychodynamic environments built from specific nature sounds and extreme acoustics, often including ecstatic elements on instruments of shamanic origin. Binaural beats as well as isochronic tones stimulate a direct neural reaction to this unique and unheard audio art. The title of this 128-minute work derives from tantric techniques that raisie psycho-physical energy, or inner fire, from the perineum up to the top of the brain, from where it drips (as nectar). This consciousness-expanding heating and dripping during creation and/or reception of Brainnectar is given priority over any musical aesthetics. The grand lady of japanese extreme music -- screamvocalist Junko Hiroshige of Hijokaidan -- participates on several tracks.
JULIA ECKHARDT / MANU HOLTERBACH
Do-Undo (in G maze)
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS018) Used CD $13.00
Do-Undo emerged out of Q-O2 Werkplaats, a sound-art laboratory of sorts based in Brussels, where Julia Eckhardt, one of the artistic directors, has built an archive of recordings of long-form viola pieces played exclusively in G. Sound-artist, field recordist, and ingenious instrument builder Manu Holterbach, who has taken part in several Q-O2 residencies, reconstitutes her recordings which, on their own, seek the rich if occasionally dissonant overtones central to the minimalist works of Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Ellen Fullman. Holterbach populates his compositions with field recordings, turbulent textures and bristling movements that sympathetically weave amid the rasping drones from the viola. On a technical level, Holterbach’s field recordings on his composition “Two stasis made out of electricity” -- an arc lamp, the Parisian subways, an electric powerplant -- all naturally buzz with the same G of Eckhardt’s viola, without the benefit of digital pitch shifting. The resulting drones transcend conceptualism and strategic intent, and instead make no differentiation between the environment (man-made or otherwise) and the academy. Limited edition with letter-pressed covers.
Cleverness Ferments Meat
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Cleverness Ferments Meat “won’t revolt your housemates so much as the previous one,” promises Andrew Ciccone of Navel-Gazers. “If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably on the lookout for duck noises drenched in reverb — well, I can guarantee you’ll find that here. But there’s more. On ‘see you Friday’ I could swear I detect — get this — *over*dubbing. Either that or these clone-farmers have managed to herd a half dozen Eggs, a handful of Crisps and even an Ivor Kallin or two into a single room simultaneously, for some sort of a barbershop TwelveTet. By the end of the final track (titled, predictably enough, “puppet 7 eating up the crap peacefully’), with several wrongfully-detained harmonicas seeming to have been waterboarded most unceremoniously, I am ready to concede that I have no idea what’s going on.” Edition of 60
Ego Derpz
(Chocolate Monk - choc.462) CDR $8.00
Fritz Welch and Adam Campbell’s system of hyperextended rumblings is designed to break a hole through invisible or undetectable barriers. It goes for the mind, ear, leg, heart, hand and scalp. Its first impulse is subtracted from the overall net of intentions beyond an overflowing golden toilet. For example, the sound is produced for the sole purpose of abseiling clogged and crystallized hierarchies before finally putting it all to rest. Speakers and surfaces are thoroughly interrogated, yielding a steady diet of perpetual come down. Guests are Lucy Duncombe and Tony Bevan. Edition of 60
Epitaph Für Aikichi Kuboyama / Sechs Studien
(Wergo - 67332) Used CD $15.00
Powerful spoken-word based tribute to Japanese fisherman Aikichi Kuboyama, who died of radiation poisoning incurred when the first hydrogen bomb was tested in the South Pacific in 1954, paired with seven studies derived from the same source material, using only abstract musical sounds in a spectrum where the spoken word can no longer be recognized.
Heiner Müller's Die Hamletmaschine
(Ego) Used CD $10.00
The soundtrack for Müller’s postmodern cut-up play, recorded for East German radio in 1990. Monologues and stage directions incorporate alien routines (every word of the play is here, in German, of course; another voice recites the directions. When Ophelia laughs on the page, it’s read aloud but no laugh proceeds), changes in perspective and soundstaging resemble film edits and heighten the schizoid nature of the enterprise, while the protagonist’s bleak prognosis and the junkyard aesthetic, not surprisingly, is a perfect fit for Neubauten, who frequently interrupt their workshop percussion and overlay a jumble of voices. A few elements (slammed buckets, low-end piano notes, electronic pedal points, machine wails) circulate on various tasks, but avoid interacting with the rhythms of Hamlet’s speeches recited by Blixa Bargeld. Digipak.
Kollaps
(Potomak) CD $14.00
2003 reissue of the seminal, form-destroying debut from 1981, a violent collision of urban primitivism and punk sensibilities, combining an intense mess of atonal guitar drones with brutal scrap metal percussion. With nine tracks from Stahldubversions (Eisengrau 1982) plus the previously unreleased “Schieß Euch Ins Blut.”
Zero Return
(Chocolate Monk - choc.432) CDR $8.00
Francesco Calandrino lives and works way down in Alcamo in the fields of research music, net-art, language and wine — no doubt guzzling down the good grape while he generates hyper lo-fi sounds from sputtering mechanical systems like his beloved old radio-cassette stereos and wonky Walkmans — while Cristiano Deison has his lab way up in Varmo, where he can usually be found frothing over his Tascam 404, turntable guts and objects churning out skillful tape loop burbles, electronic skittering and field recordings. The whole thing has a great eavesdropping throb that feels like it’s beaming in from afar. Both are part of the ferment of ideas here but Zero Return is a real whodunit. Better get out your ear magnifier, Sherlock. Edition of 60
Crossing Into The Electric Magnetic
(Without Fear) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Early recordings from electronic music pioneer whose work predates musique concrete. He combines everything from Native American music to opera to chanting to Egyptian mythology into fascinating fever dream. Most tracks are from 1959 at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (Otto Luening is on one track), but one is from 1944 at Middle East Radio Station of Cairo, another is an excerpt from a piece made walking around San Marco Basilica in Venice in 1961 with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and another manipulated audiotape / sound sculpture piece was recorded in a New York art gallery circa 1974. Twelve-page book with liner notes by Mike Hovancsek.
Eyeball of Hell
(Scat) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
With clothing held together with rat traps and safety pins, Marshalls covered in fiberglass, a lawnmower, and songs like “You’re Full of Shit,” The Electric Eels were unabashedly confrontational, angry, absurd, desperate, and self-destructive, swapping abrasive three-chord rock of utter despair with free improv.
45 Minutes From Underneath The Beds
(Absurd - A6) CD $12.00
Scandinavian performance/composition iconoclast’s speech impedimentia heralds his highly idiosyncratic noise bordering on personal field recordings.
Latrine
(Firework Edition) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Scandinavian performance / composition iconoclast’s speech impedimentia heralds his highly idiosyncratic noise -- personal field recordings from on the toilet and reworked and adapted for the sound installation Avträde in conjunction with the group show Transformation at Karlsborg Castle, Sweden, during the summer of 2000.
The Cobblestone Is The Weapon of the Proletariat
(Firework Edition) Used CD $10.00
Source material is a single recording made while throwing a cobblestone on the street outside Firework Edition, Stockholm June 15, 2001. Booklet includes an excerpt from a conversation between Jim Haynes and Elggren from Activating the Medium at SFMOMA, San Francisco February 2003. Sealed
A Kind Of Air
(Chocolate Monk - choc.468) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A slightly different edit of the Glasgow-based writer and artist’s beautiful and strange piece recorded for Mark Vernon and Barry Burns’s Radiophrenia in 2019. A slow moving thing that seems to stretch out time. “If I were to tell you how I arrived here, I would have to explain the voicemails,” says Ms. Ellul. “The voicemails have been in the back of my mind for some time. They had accumulated over several years, in fits and starts. A waxing and waning of words spoken into the void. For months, I watched them arrive but I did not listen to them. When I eventually did hear the messages, certain things were immediately clear. The condition of his lungs was deteriorating. His breathing was labured. The messages had never been easy to follow. They were often slurred, because of the drink. But now when he spoke his words were interrupted by coughing fits, more and more so as time went on. By groans and gasps. Belly-speech. Gurgles of outflow.” Edition of 50
Third Parties
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $7.00
Most of the sounds that Wilcox and Ellul make come from close-to-hand, everyday, tactile objects, accidents, or routines. And from the body as it rubs, carries, plays, waits, dawdles with its surroundings. The voices are chatting, syncopating, trying to change position, getting in a mess. Edition of 60
Embryonnck
(Staubgold) Used CD $8.00
New York mavericks and Munich-based Krautrock legends explore the indigenous urban music phenomenon on this collaboration from 2006, melding forays into experimental, blues, Middle Eastern, Turkish and African musics. “A sweet, innocent recording, with improvisations that pulsate with the warmth of breathing bodies, conjuring images of flower children and the haze of drugs.” Includes 24-page booklet with photos and liner notes.
European Tour 2009
(No-Fi - NEU015) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
To celebrate their European tour together in January 2009, the prodigious trio from Ohio takes on the punishing Japanese noise legend with "Landlocked," a journey through the planet they share with Popol Vuh and Terry Riley. Pain Jerk responds with the aptly titled "Berserker," featuring Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock) and Mai Sau in a noise / voice / aktion showdown. 500 copies.
Love Belch
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS110) CDR $8.00
Throughout the third album of recordings from the late 1980s by EL&C (congealed into a trio for this particular session), the bent scrapings just stop and go, because destinations are a myth. The hoity-toity can have their posh beginnings and endings. Thematic development — ew, gross. If you want a meaningful, satisfying arc, go buy opera tickets. These nine tracks do not fuss with making progress from one point to another on some big deal spectrum. Between guitarists Scud Mandrill and Phil Smoot’s heavy, bulldozed twang, damaged tape yoink streaks with more unhinged glee than nude exhibitionists, shoulder to shoulder with delay pedal jabs (and ’70s kitsch, and fragments from Bren’t Lewiis sessions). For 46 minutes, thick and rennetless improv gnaws on rock-infused, decibel-saturating garnk with a level of tunnel-vision determination that’d alarm your average neurologist. Includes bagged sample of inedible orange powder.
The Show That Never Starts
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS102) CDR $8.00
On this 40-minute live recording from 1987, seven guitarists chop the audio space into nuggets and hoard it like desperately stir-crazed fanatics in a cave. Twitching streams of bending amp shriek and atonal blats ricochet as if the guitars are getting repossessed in real time, which makes it seem like the set meanders; it does lack direction, but it’s not at all lost. EL&C knows where they are — “writhing in a filthy pile,” to quote Fred Rinne. Invert the ratios of a Peach Of Immortality / Stefan Jaworzyn collaboration and here you are: Nothing sounds like anything, and everything is louder than everything else. Grinding, churning, sharpness, nausea, a post-godly orgy of guitar noise stabbing itself in the head. Then the queasy side effects kick in and you can practically feel the octet deflating, wound-licking, seeping into the floorboards of the MCS like a bunch of doused witches. Unimpressed silence, four people slow-clapping. Pure victory. Includes bagged sample of inedible orange powder.
“A bizarro-world whack on vanilla prog heavies. Selten Gehörte Musik and Nitsch actions, check, but surely with more clothes on.” —Tom Lax
Wild America
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS99) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Atrocious as the name of the band may be — as the name is, no need to hedge — there is no denying its accuracy as a descriptor: two parts shrill, overblown, and longer than necessary; one part aberrant, oversaturated, and lacking in nutrients. The near-hour-long nature-show soundtrack recorded live on KALX in Berkeley, 1987, by a short-lived group consisting for this session of Scud Mandrill and Phil Smoot (The Whitefronts), Greg Freeman (Pell Mell), and Chas Nielsen (Idiot (The)), aims to singe whatever porthole of empirical data collection is chosen. No matter what, part of you will end up scarred by Day-Glo hues, unpleasant grit, overexposure to reptilian crunch, the hot mulch of regret, and untamed electric howl.
Dedicated To Charlie Ward
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
The four-tonearmed Minutoli turntable plays excerpts from assorted Stomach Ache releases by Faxed Head, Pork Queen, Jeff Dugan, P.69 Deflower, Jaunties, Bringdownzz, Omit, Steeplesnakes, etc.
Memories
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Noise collaboration with Haters, Asmus Tietchens, Juntaro Yamanuchi, Schimpfluch Gruppe.
Moonlight in Vermont
(Hospital - HOS250) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
With bizarre turntable machinations, a sweater-vest, tie and table-lamp, a live show by the RRReal Emil is a possessed demon dance in service to the relationship of normality and not-rightness. Originally released -- following one snafu after another -- on LP (Ecstatic Peace 2006), Moonlight In Vermont is one of BBBeaulieau’s most masterful documents.The true sound of love by America's greatest living noise artist.
A New Normal
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.401) CDR $7.00
Part hot shot of life-affirming glimmer, part wounds-cleanser, and, in the words of Emmert himself, part “quick postcard to people who are suffering from traumas and there is no way out. That’s what the title means: finding a new place to rest inside yourself, because all previous normalcy was destroyed by trauma…. There is no fixing things….” Numbered edition of 60.
A Serpentine Summer
(Chocolate Monk - choc.440) CDR $6.25
Brother Todd’s third ChocoMo is his sixteenth full-length album since 2015. It’s an instrumental album. “Isn’t that good?” he asks rhetorically. “Enough with my voice…. If you don’t like vaguely minimal experimental home recorded music, you’re not gonna like this either. But I do think it’s good. This one is kinda twinkly in parts and it’s built for the heat.” Edition of 60
A Summer’s Day And Night
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.390) CDR $8.00
No one makes being a visionary seem like an attractive career more than Todd W. Emmert. His beguilingly unassuming compositions slip through the cracks between the cosmic binaries — your yings and your yangs, the bottom of the aboves and the tops of the belows, the magic hours of twilight and dusk. A Summer’s Day And Night oozes with sacred perspiration wrung from the garments of the children of the supreme hypno-void getting dizzy on an interstellar merry-go-round. Four opening tracks lull you into a false sense of New Age security, better than any vegan restaurant hold muzak, before Emmert goes full ghost story and bakes your head into a wax unagi pie replica in the galley of a Unarius UFO with a series of heavy, scalp-striating distorto drones that have every right to take up entire album sides. A fine, fine distillation of “splashing” and “down.” Huff it. Numbered edition of 60
Devil's Return
(Therapy Tapes - #11) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Another masterpiece by the visionary behind Inspector 22. Infusions of loops, psychedelic structures, non-traditional instruments and techniques, and alienology take Emmert's home-recorded space-folk into new levels of the afterworld.
Everything’s Coming Up Roses
(Chocolate Monk - choc.580) CDR $8.00
The eternal golden braid that Todd W Emmert twists from strands of ectoplasm (seldom accessible to likes of you, me, or the cleaning lady wearing a gas mask) pulses like a healthy body. But this time, the tobacco haze is illuminated a little differently; the aura shimmers a little harder than usual, for a simple reason: Emmert Has Gone Electric. Instead of acoustic guitar molding the character of his songs — which are more than sketches or demos, though referring to them as compositions feels gross and flashy — here electric bass is the generative force, followed by electric guitar, electric keyboards, and (non-electric) tambourine with a drum head on it. Visions of instrumentals from Pink Floyd’s More / La Vallée era drift through the lobes. Migrating birds pass by, thunder reverberates across the valley, bleating sheep navigate the fields out back. The man understands and feels the cycles. He doesn’t seek to dazzle you, or really to entertain you at all, and probably cringes at the mere thought of your existence, to be honest. Maybe not. You seem like one of the good ones. But Everything’s Coming Up Roses is an album that invites you to immobilize yourself for a bit. Allow its languid mini-anthems to prick you with a micro-dose of perfect ratios. Nine tracks or nine variations on a theme, you don’t need to know for sure. Stop fussin’ over everything. Just sit and vibrate there like a miracle of nature for 25 minutes, whydoncha.
Hitchin’ A Ride
(Therapy Tapes - #13) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“I listened in my morning haze and thought it was [Emmert’s] best work yet,” says Caleb Mulkerin of Big Blood. “The … songs [capture] a southern Joy Division and the instrumentals … range from weird music box lullabies to cockroaches pouring out of the cracks in the walls right after the bomb went off.”
Innocence Of The Antichrist
(Therapy Tapes - #14) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Experimental folk music for the Spider God and Her followers. In Emmert’s allegorical tale of “someone” born evil trying to make good, there is beauty in existential dread and lullabies for invisible girls. The noise of ending with a question instead of an answer.
Memento Mori
(Therapy Tapes - #12) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The latest and greatest in avant garde experimental folk that Asheville, North Carolina, has to offer. Includes a cover of Spacemen 3’s “Come Down Easy.”
Open Doors, Open Graves
(Chocolate Monk - choc.525) CDR $8.00
North Carolina’s number one porch lounger returns to the microphone and the craft of song after spending 2020 singing not a single note (too busy blowing cigar smoke in the face of the cardboard God). He repents nothing and knows not to mourn this mess of a world as we are all just sea-monkeys observed from afar. You want a monk’s cell with a ceiling fan? Sorry, all we have is the mellow sound in which to drown, covering, according to the Tarheel Troubadour, “themes of death, mental illness, loneliness and solitude, and mysterious bohemian bloodlines.” Edition of 60
Talking To Yourself Is Better Than Talking To No One
(Chocolate Monk - choc.502) CDR $7.25
Emmert’s 14th and final full-length album of 2020 is a paperback pandemic romance novel without words, completely instrumental. Feel the warm themes, if you can. True pandemic romance isn’t dead, it’s just taken another form, again. Do your current pandemic lifestyles got you down? Well, just try and remember the time before time, when it was slightly more enjoyable to be alive and the clock wasn’t weighing on your back like an albatross. Let your worries slip away into the ether. Remember the fun before time existed. Edition of 60
The Key To The Seven Gates Of Heaven is Love
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Another relief cascade from this beloved mountain mystic who can atomize the ambiguity and hateful confusion that eat away at your psyche by a mere twitch of his eyebrow. If you’re not grateful, piss off. Emmert’s tremolo-ruffled drone-adjacent porch gaze favors episodic, self-contained constructs with little use for large, dramatic jumps and twists. Those of us who appreciate an all-consuming application of The Hard Soothe have known this since Dome covered “Flying” and replaced the pastel industrialism with the barn rock sound of the first Modern Lovers album. Join us. If Studio Ghibli would have a look at the Licensing Agreements page on Chocolate Monk’s website, they’d realize they could get Miyazaki’s upcoming anime about a justice-enforcing capybara soundtracked for the little more than the cost of a handful of shiny beads. The steady, micro-stated clunk of percussive objects here, what someone somewhere might refer to as drumming, backstop reverberations colored by the elusive mysticism of an Appalachian Gamelan appreciation society ploinking upstream. Each track glides into view, drifts across the panorama and exits into the blurry mosaic of silence without once making eye contact. Edition of 60
Unintentionally Marginalized
(Chocolate Monk - choc.480) CDR $6.25
The return of one of Chocolate Monk’s more musical family members who, as always, brings strumming and sonorous sound to ease the pain. “These days,” says the man himself, “Being marginalized is like getting a gold star in some segments of society. It’s a social boost that gives some people more clout in some circles. People want attention. So much so that everyone is scrambling to out-marginalize each other…. And I know I am insignificant in the greater scheme of things. I wish more people realized this about all of us…. Unintentionally Marginalized is an instrumental album of songs recorded by myself at home about living with extreme mental illness. A lot of people claim marginalization just for social bonus points, but I just want to be normal….” Edition of 50
Grand Mal
(Empty Gate) CDR $7.00
Eleven songs of a slightly different flavor than the punk-leaning indie-pop of the band for which singer Patricia Howard is best known (Vomit Launch). Grand Mal leans toward weirdo garage-rock, which is no surprise given the band’s pedigree: guitarist Bob Howard (The Vesuvians, The Asskickers, Termite); bassist Mark Zempel (Fang of Gore, Folkenstein); keyboardist Greg Spont (Black Fong); and drummer Matt Coogan. “The most striking link is, of course, Howard’s vocals,” says the Chico News And Review. “The lyrics are intelligent and often poetic … and her rough-hewn voice is as evocative ever.” Includes coupon for free download.
EMPTY GRAVE / NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU / PURE NOISE
3 Way Grindcorenoise
(Latincore - 002) Used Split CD $5.00
One-hundred-seventy-two songs.
Blood Dreams
(Pure - PURE47) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Bass-heavy bombast from the center of a nauseating typhoon of power electronics. Interminable, unadulterated misery from 1997.
Psychic Constellation
(Obfuscated - OR31) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
From zone deep within the sub-conscious where emotions and memories swirl about, draping over stone facades of psychology and mirroring deep into the pool of the dream state -- the realm of dreams, nightmares and the physical aspects of night terrors -- eight masterly tracks delving between the surreal, the bombastic, and the troubled. Symbolism personified through sound. A sequence of confused mental projections envisioned and amplified.
Brick and Mortar
(Rhystop - R003) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Potent and masterfully composed electronics from 2003. Dynamic, harsh feedback tones intertwined with nostalgic Japanese pop. Edition of 500
Switches and Knobs
(Phage - PT133) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
One live and one studio track of similar theme: lots of starts and stops, blasts of sound and silence by the former Killer Bug and the younger harsh noise composer also known as Bloody Letters and Cracked Mirror. Edition of 500.
Hasselt
(Turtles' Dream - TDCD03) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
With Chie Mukai, Eric Cordier, Seiichi Yamamoto. From 2003.
Heavy Duty
(Influencing Machine) CD $13.50
Reissue of Entre Vifs’ debut tape (Cthulhu Records 1989), a crucial part of the canon of industrial noise. The chaotic roars of Zorin (musician and visual propagandist in the legendary Le Syndicat) are generated by hand-designed instruments, resulting in one of the most distinctive sounding projects of the era. “Scraping, dragging, sawing, crunching noise,” says Rodger Stella of Macronympha, “the epitome of noise in the late 1980s / early ’90s and this is the most chaotic and raw of their three major releases…. [F]orward-moving, fast-paced and constantly changing noise … the tonal landscape collapsing in on itself and rebuilding in explosions of sound.”
Hidden
(BloodLust! - B!105) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dark, echoing, analog synthesizer music by Columbus, Ohio's David Reed, also of Luasa Raelon, that flows like winter's icy embrace. Reissue of out-of-print 2006 cassette, remastered by Greh Holger (Hive Mind, Cleanse, Chondritic Sound).
When The Epidemic Arrived/Worst Afflicted Rapture
(Legion Blotan - BLOTCD01) CD $10.00
The French black metal horde’s first two dark and incredibly well recorded demo albums on one CD. Nearly 50 minutes of mid-paced, diseased black metal with agonizing and painful high pitched screams. “Epidemia Mortaliis are grim and true and raw,” according to Aquarius, “and as with most black buzzers, owe much to their mighty Scandinavian forbears, but … EM … have their own distinct and slightly skewed take on black metal, which results in a sound both buzzing and brutal, but also stumbling and weirdly lo-fi.”
TOM ERBE / CHRIS MANN / LARRY POLANSKY / DOUGLAS REPETTO / CHRISTIAN WOLFF
Trios
(Pogus) Used CD $8.00
“Mann’s Schwitters-like Dadaist texts haunt the background,” says Exclaim, “Swept around by the mutated sounds of bent guitars and time-lag piano. Machine noises are netted overtop and through, lending constant awareness of technology’s plastic fingerprints all over the process. Each track possesses an identity all its own, different tempos, balances, densities, but the album as a whole has a consistency of vision likely not present at the music original moment of creation.” From 2004
Cartouche
(Monotype - MONO049) CD $14.00
A mixed duet of fragments that break off a body, like a shattering windshield. Erik M’s electronics and Natacha Muslera’s voice trigger eruptive sound phenomena, either rushed or stretched. The listener is immersed in a physical experience that is transversal to music itself. Only debris and brilliant ruins remain. Untamed and convulsive.
Rooby
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.339) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Glen Galloway, master glumpf from (g)olden days Trumans Water and current mung mind of Octagrape, creaks out solo guitar on all tracks except “Andromedae,” where he mangles keys. Small bits of sporadic drum crunch are thrown in, and one song, “Leveled Sea,” begged so hard for a bristling vocal it was finally granted. That said, spidery worm guitars really do gnaw up most of the screen as would so many yling-yling-soaked digits re-engaging vertebrae in a dreamhaze day spa. The concept: pitting no-wave against protein sprawl. High ceilings, bare walls, wire-infested floors. Branca’s Lesson No. 1 served as monolithic diving board, alongside things like Jack Ruby and Rosa Yemen. Small and mutating on-the-fly loops are improvised and mixed live with generous panning and pitching to approximate a transparent single-member guitar army. Sprawl then reveals itself either with more flickering numbers or when mismatched single takes resemble Parable Of Arable Land or Twin Infinitives or Hairdryer Peace. O stark splurge. Ice bath in sauna room, then at least several hundred heavy towels. Best of luck on the drive home. Edition of 54
Mûysikî
(Barn Re-leasing) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Released in 1974 on Intex Records, this cosmic free jazz improvisation by legendary trio guided by drummer Ertunç (with Michael Cosmic and Phil Musra on reeds, piano, organ and additional percussion) highlights the group’s primitive and physical approach. Massive cymbals and drumming build a carpet of trance-driving vibe where the reeds freely dance without any structure. A new world of improvisational freedom. 1990s reissue.
Blackhole
(Musik Atlach - MA015) CD $16.50
On this unique and unexpected collaboration by the mad doctor Kimihide Kusafuka and the piano-and-sax duo Takayuki Hashimoto and Sara, mineral-like noise coalescences around improv pulsations. Chimeras and human machinery, organic and inorganic matter fuse, and sudden strange creatures made of space probes and skin induce panic with their harsh, dystopic sound.
MICHAEL ESPOSITO / G.X. JUPITTER-LARSEN / MUENNICH
The Wraiths of Flying A
(Firework Edition) CD $16.50
Subdued, quiet, with loops of found sound, hissing, ticking, voice material dropping in and out of the mix. Solos, duets and trios -- spectral voices, other voices that are abused, cut, crushed or stifled, a drone decorated with samples and percussive inserts. Vital Weekly likes to think of it as “a radio play of highly obscured sounds, always looping around.”
The Complete Film Soundtrack Recordings By Maria Estevez
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS28) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A barren, low-contrast, spooky construct from the early 1980s made of primitive field recordings, raw tape loops, machines, gadgets, objects, a variety of keyboards and string instruments, thrift store records, and guest vocals by The Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, Barbara Manning, and an Akita named Grizzle. Based on the fiction of redactivist author C.F. Calderwood, the results flirt with Eraserhead filtered through Smithsonian Folkways, halfway between Dungeon Taxis’ excavation of John Pilcher and Martin McKelvin’s A Bun Dance CD, Galerie Pâche’s LP by the obscure Mr Labrador, and the backwoods subterranea of Darksmith of California. Booklet includes Calderwood’s original short story.
Feu
(Aposiopèse - APO10) CD $17.75
This French artist, activist, and sound art researcher uses electronics, phonography, analog synthesizers and the hurdy-gurdy to question the perception and physicality of sound spaces. Edition of 300. Listen to “La Lueur” here: https://soundcloud.com/aposiopese-music/yvan-etienne-la-lueur-apo-10
All Bone Shakers
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Andy Bolus’s woozy, double-vision noise throb, crude electronic and tape wizen, and hiss-filled smear globs conjure up a giddy, Day-Glo bile vibe. Parts that were recorded at the apparently haunted Chateau de Ligore are likely to give Granny the willies. Crank loud and levitate. Edition of 60
Drool Freezers
(Chocolate Monk - choc.430) Magazine + CDR $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
Thirty-six full-color pages packed with insight into the bizarre mind of Andy Bolus who “spent endless nights, fortified with Chinese bath salt smoothies made from polystyrene packaging materials and shredded pages of Ohayo Chinpo magazine, condensing this stuff down on the trusty Bruel & Kjaer, reducing any surplus baroque residue and streamlining the information flow to ensure only the finest and most essential neon worms and Day-Glo green dog chew toys are highlighted in LSD-sharp-focus-wide-stereo-panorama for maximum ear goops.” Listen to the disc as you stare and marvel at its pages, created and presented “in the tradition of those terrible cod-surrealist chess-board landscape cover-paintings on early Klaus Schulze albums like Timewind.” Edition of 69
Earless Childbirth / Draculina, Princess Stomach Gas
(Starlight Furniture Company - *10 / *11) 2xCDR $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Toys, noises, unidentifiable sounds, and mangled mass media detritus decimated and sewn back together the only way possible. Mastered etc. by Tom Smith (To Live & Shave in LA). Eight-page book designed by Andy Bolus.
Fatanarchy On Airtube
(Harbinger Sound - HAS033) Used CD $12.00
The long-awaited collaboration record by Yamastuka Eye and Andy Bolus. Performed, mixed and designed between 1994 and 2004, this is as weird and confusing as it gets. Including jaw-dropping takes on "Eye of the Tiger" and The Exploited's "Sex and Violence."
The Tentacles Of The Octopus Sometimes Compete Against Each Other
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Ultra harsh ’n’ heavy distortion / noise / feedback cut-up collage … [by these] grenade-tossers,” says Second Layer. “Chopped up yet surprisingly rhythmic slabs of extremely abrasive frequency manipulation and chugging, rumbling scum tones…. Twenty tracks of crushing, intricately detailed electronic carnage.”
Prototype Plus Garage Tracks
(Vinyl on Demand - VODCD3) 2xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks from the Philadelphia synth-pop duo’s Prototype LP (Short Circuit 1982), Garage Tracks from 1985 (including covers of John Cale and Eno), demos from 1982, live recordings from City Gardens 1983, and Tracks to Glow In The Dark subscriber-only seven-inch.
XOXO
(Birdman) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Paul McCarthy on free-form voice improvisation. Fredrik Nilsen on prepared acoustic guitar, antique analog organ and digital keyboard, all in an especially unorthodox style. Joe Potts on his chopped optigans. Tom Recchion on Kurzweil, guitar, radio, CDs, production, processing. Creepy and wonderful as any gothic horror movie soundtrack.
Melt / Surround
(Chocolate Monk - choc.605) CDR $8.00
The fourth album of insidiously immersive headphonic haze by alliteration-loving living legends Brian Grainger (Milieu, Coppice Halifax) and Howard Stelzer sculpts sensuous, vivid drone music out of steamrolled cassette tapes, mountains of modular synthesizers and repurposed suburban ephemera. In this deeply serene, time-defying expanse, all participants hover several feet above safe ground. And so on. Edition of 60
Orange Ice & Wax Crayons
(Cat|Sun) CD $14.50
Reissue of early ’80s demos collection by Martyn Bates and Peter Becker, with seven tracks from Document’s 1992 edition, and four previously unreleased tracks (“Formerly at Midnight,” “Egg Box Mask,” “Red Letter Day,” and “Music For Playgrounds”). Moody, quirky and atmospheric pop rock, influenced by Eno, late-’70s Bowie, Kraftwerk.
Pattern Interrupt
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.286) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Martin Denny’s quiet village from a frog’s point of view, courtesy of Bolide’s Paul Wilson. Guitar, log bonking, bird peeping, electric marimba clunking, insect fwapping instrumentals that waft and meander through an enchanted bog.
Wilson Schmilsson
(Chocolate Monk - choc.417) CDR $8.00
Brighton’s very own “Yogi Bear” (to his nearest and dearest) follows up last year’s brilliant The Unstruck Sound Centre (Ikuisuus 2017) with further treks into the mind meld zone. Exotic electronics and warm swiggle nurture your sagging chakras. Musical chirps and sonic pulse cleanse your psychic stink eye. This is the Chew Age. Numbered edition of 60
Helioscopium
(Ceres) Used CD $8.00
Space rock from 1997 that one can “really sink [one’s] teeth into…. John Thompson and Brian Wensing (guitars), Jeff Chase (cello), Steve Schrank (bass), and Rick Hale (drums and keyboards) … exhibit a variety of interests — from heavy jamming … to intriguing, experimental space / electronic collages.”
Majik On The Moonlight
(Pure) Used CD $4.00
“This Michigan artist makes sounds inspired by heavy industry,” explain our friends at Subterranean. “Abrasive, rattling, roaring, pounding, full-on noise, vividly executed.”
KAI FAGASCHINSKI / BURKHARD STANGL
Musik - Ein Porträt in Sehnsucht
(Erstwhile - ERST057) Used CD $10.00
Stangl and Fagaschinski, both masters at fluidly combining melodicism and abstraction, carefully intertwine field recordings of birds, storms, and “morning silence” with guitars, electronic devices, piano, vibraphone, and clarinet. Guest appearance by Bernhard Gál, “re-recording and musical car driving.”
Failing Lights
(Intransitive - INT036) CD $15.00
(Intransitive - INT036) Used CD $6.00
Mike Connelly (Wolf Eyes, Hair Police) evokes bleak electronic atmospheres, suffocating dread, and sinewy horror with a fine-tuned beauty embedded in its darkness. Connelly’s self-released cassettes and CDRs of rough drones, detuned improvised grit, blown-out burl, and unstable acoustics tend to vanish quickly; Intransitive’s CD, the first one widely available, is sure to become a defining statement. The single piece -- in five sections -- begins with disquieting, barren negative space, creeps forward, steadily dispenses sheets of diffuse throat-scratch and skittering strings, and culminates in a blast of molten organ.
TAV FALCO & THE UNAPPROACHABLE PANTHER BURNS
Panther Phobia
(In The Red) Used CD $10.00
These Memphis legends (and the missing link between the unbridled howl of early swamp blues and the psychological onslaught of the new millennium) herald a return to the tumultuous and exuberant tones and groans of the band’s landmark LP from 1981 Behind The Magnolia Curtain. Panther Phobia is as “organic as a landlord’s eviction squad,” proclaims Robert Gordon. “Drums pound like irate neighbors at the door. Slow songs snake like a chick passing out on ’ludes. You will lock your doors when you hear this record, you will bar your windows, blood will flow from your nose, your lungs will itch. You will get a divorce, a speeding ticket, eleven twenty nine in the workhouse.”
Grotesque
(Cog Sinister - COGVP106) Used CD $10.00
1998 reissue of the 1980 album that underlined the band’s musical confidence and Mark E. Smith’s growing lyrical maturity. Ten classic tracks including the faves “New Face In Hell,” “The Impression of J. Temperance,” and “Container Drivers.”
Live At The Witch Trials +
(Cog Sinister - COGVP138) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eleven excellent songs from the screaming edge of rock, recorded in one or two takes in 1979, containing elements of The Fall’s recurring themes — realism, surrealism, and paranoia. Remastered and reissued in 2002, with three bonus tracks: “Bingo Master,” “Psycho Mafia,” and “Repetition.”
Room To Live
(Cog Sinister - COGVP105) Used 2xCD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
1998 reissue of The Fall’s sixth album, from 1982, featuring long, shambolic shuffle classics like “Joker Hysterical Face,” “Marquis Cha Cha,” “A Hard Life in Country,” plus the tracks from the “Lie Dream Of Casino Soul” single. Second disc is a limited edition EP, with four tracks recorded live at The Band On The Wall in 1982: “Drago’s Guilt,” “Joker Hysterical Face,” “Lie Dream Of Casino Soul,” and “Hexen Strife Knot.”
At War With Windsor
(Chocolate Monk - choc.592) CDR $8.00
In which self-taught artist Hannah Walker (nee Salt) and rock’n’roll singer / lyricist Russell Walker (no relation) get inspired by cut up noise (NWW, Mixed Band Philanthropist, Gus Coma) and the British poetry revivial of the 1960s, as well as their own squalid and depraved domestic situation. Edition of 60
Half-Time 1916
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.406) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hitchin’s finest scruff about the square Russell Walker (The Teleporters, Lloyd Pack, Pheromoans, etc.) reads from his upcoming novel, the follow-up to his poorly selling When New Towns Act Tough. James Tranmer adds tech yes/no beat crud and Tom James Scott more of a loopy drone mumph vibe. Come feel the mundane mumble, friend.
The Acetone Of Flowers
(Chocolate Monk - choc.608) CDR $8.00
At their D7 lair, a well loved hovel behind ten thousand layers of paint, Copenhagen’s finest purveyors of pulse, drone and general mind-float made tape loops which were then curled up and stomped on the floor, fed through an old plastic National reel-to-reel and combined with synths and guitar skree. The opening two tracks are performed by the classic duo of Sara Czerny (Buchla Easel, tape loops) and Nicolas Kauffmann (guitar, Moog), while the final two tracks introduces new member Matt Saporito, a NYC transplant whose manipulated tapes and keyboards create a new hive mind of smashed fragments and resonant strings. Buckle it up. Edition of 60
Un Tratto Di Malinconia
(Turgid Animal) CD $10.50
The band’s first industrial album proper. Familiar drones are still present — but more controlled, subtle, and psychedelic — tying together five harsh industrial tracks. Reminiscent of Whitehouse, Godflesh and more than anything else Throbbing Gristle, complete with screamed, desperate vocals and harsh, oscillating synths. Edition of 500.
Artificial Stupidity
(Chocolate Monk - choc.588) CDR $8.00
Andrew Sharpley got busy during the lovely lockdowns of 2021/22. Robots wake up, go to sleep, new age, old age, a plague on all your houses, wellness, sickness, gloop or goop? William Shatner, the Dalai Lama, facemasks, COVID, conspiracy nonsense, bad jokes, live in a bubble, live outside a bubble, who cares? The whole nine yards in 38 minutes. With some added Valery Pasanau. Sharpley reckons it is “a not very weird record of a very weird time. A kind of relic.” But it surely lifted the spirits of all in Wino Lodge. A repeater for sure. Comes with sticker. Edition of 60
R.K. FAULHABER / JIM HAYNES / SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON / STEVEN STAPLETON / M.S. WALDRON
Sleeping Moustache
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Members of irr. app. (ext,), Nurse With Wound, Stilluppsteypa, and Coelacanth present a psychically unstable landscape where dreams and nightmares wreak havoc upon the drudgery of daily life. Part epiphany of controlled disorder, convulsion of beauty, and cascade of thought from delirious minds, Sleeping Moustache exquisitely manifests sound poetry scattered into a tortuous collage mired in an oblique melancholy. Magnetic tones extracted from the ether, mechanical sounds smeared into lugubrious growls, horns trumpeting straight out of John’s Book of Revelation, ululations sliced into information overload of which Schwitters himself would be proud. The closest audible territory might be the psychoactive constructions of Nurse With Wound’s Homotopy To Marie, although the characters in this drama happened upon an entirely different map of that terrain.
Like A Dog
(BloodLust! - B!115) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
A great blend of power-electronics and harsh noise, a crystal-clear yet filthy sound generated by yet another in a long line of superlative Italian screechers. With tastefully obscene artwork by Nicola Vinciguerra.
Dwindling Correspondence
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.381) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pete Cann emerges from his mystical house of clocks in Leeds and shows us what he has been working on for the last year. Sounds like a suitcase full of strangely lacquered secretions, electronic feathers and little moments of truth put through the scurry man’s mind blender. He’s got what you want, when you want it: peculiar passages. He’s got what you need, when you need it: sonic calcification. Anton Bruhin would part a million, just to keep it. The Cann man is ready to debunk your mind. Numbered edition of 54
No Fun Demo
(No Fun - NFP31) CD $5.00
On this 2008 CD, "there are melodic, structured songs," says Pitchfork, but Felipe's "approach is still hazy, off-kilter, and weird. Most of his tunes sport skewed hooks and off-key riffs which get dipped in fuzz and echo, half-hidden by distortion, pitch shifting, and ghostly distance. "
Live at the LU
(Erstwhile - ERST043) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Rowe and Fennesz are two of the most prominent and influential musicians in experimental music; their commercially released work, despite their joint participation in the 12-person MIMEO collective, rarely intersects, which is why this document of their first duo show together is so revealing. Their sound world is jagged yet bright, stark and jarring, but in the end, somehow still soothing.
Wrapped Islands
(Erstwhile - ERST023) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
A fully improvised first meeting of two driving forces of contemporary music. The predominantly Viennese quartet Polwechsel have explored the grey areas between composition and improvisation, electronic and acoustic, jazz and classical for much of the past decade. Austrian Christian Fennesz, while initially a guitarist, is primarily known for his abrasive yet melodic laptop explorations on labels such as Mego and Touch. Warm, deep, seemingly simple, with different details and passages emerging to the surface with each listen. “The music is slow, extremely minimal, stretched to the point of disappearing,” says All Music Guide. “The attentive listener will be completely absorbed, holding his or her breath in expectation of the next move -- yes, Wrapped Islands has something to do with watching a game of chess.”
First, Second and Third Drop
(Siren - SR014) CD $28.50
Andrew Chalk's early material, originally recorded in January 1986, remastered in 2004 with two additional tracks re-edited from the original recordings. Beautiful hand-made sleeves. Limited edition of 500 copies.
AGUSTÍ FERNÁNDEZ / ILAN MANOUACH / IVO SANS
Wry
(Clamshell) CD $13.50
Warped, misdirected and perverse improv containing no straight lines, clear planes, or regulated flows. Pianist Fernández, Manouach on soprano, and drummer Sans oscillate between the opposing incentives of moral reductionism and extroverted cut-up shifts, creating a sound field resembling a porous territory with jagged limits. With liner notes by Jorge Wagensberg of the Museum of Sciences in Barcelona.
Cellule 75
(Tzadik) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The title track “tampers with the percussive function of the instruments and plays with instrumental role-switching and layering,” notes All Music Guide. “It opens with simple, repeating melodies provided by pianist Chris Brown and percussionist William Winant, backed by a humming machinery ambience. Layers and notes get added onto successive loops, until the phrases become relatively lengthy and complex. After establishing this theme and structure, the variations begin, as the piano switches to soloing, referencing parts of the theme out of different layers, and usurping the phrasing of the other electronic sounds present. The piece is a continuous buildup of musical layers, imperceptibly segued into the beginning’s stripped-down simplicity, from which the process starts again, but never turns out the same. After continually playing with the expectations of the close listener, it appropriately closes with several false stops. The second piece begins with slowly turning loops overlaying small electronic swells that pan between channels. This turns into an electronic atmosphere that’s a seeming precursor to the ‘space’ of ’90s space rock bands, followed by a repeating of the opening form, this time with vocal samples. The panning continues, echoing from side to side, while newly added electronic sounds rise out of the center. About halfway through the piece, Ferrari switches briefly to saxophone and water sounds, providing organic contrast to all of the electronic construction.” From 1998
Far-West News (1998-99) Episodes Two and Three
(Blue Chopsticks) Used CD $4.00
The core of these recordings, made during a trip across the American Southwest, presents speech-oriented audio snippets — conversations with acquaintances, stops at restaurants and shops, inquiries for directions, tacky Hollywood tours — overlaid and mixed in with tapes of passing automobiles, airplanes flying overhead, minimal electronic tones, disquieting reverberations, and what sound like brief distorted tumbles of synthetic percussion.
Interrupteur / Tautologos 3
(Blue Chopsticks) Used CD $15.00
First recorded by EMI in 1970 and never released in the US prior to this 1999 CD issue on David Grubbs’s label, “Interrupteur (For 10 Instruments)” and “Tautologos 3 (For 11 Instruments)” both depart from the animation and activity of Ferrari’s piecee from the ’50s and ’60s. The former is “an orchestral stasis point that begins to move,” notes All Music Guide. “In the stillness created by the strings, time becomes one long block…, [against which] various timbres and textures rub…, creating muted colors and shades…. [C]hance actions (flurries of woodwinds or brass, a shriek from an errant viola, etc.) … cannot help but to move against that which is already unmoving and therefore deconstruct it…. [C]yclic in nature and [using] a limited scale of notational devices…, [the latter, with its] standard orchestral instrumentation…, electric guitar, and magnetic tape, is … hypnotic … [and] maddening. The [short] musical ‘cycles’ … [move] forward and backward…. During the editing and mixing process, Ferrari manipulated and spliced tape to create other cycles to overlay over the original compositions….The result … drifts and drones its way into the listener’s consciousness and changes right at the point where familiarity is established.” Sealed
Les Arythmiques
(Blue Chopsticks) Used CD $9.00
A starting point of one of the final works by Ferrari is representing in sound the jolt of electricity that had been sent across his heart to treat his arrhythmia. Vaguely terrifying, crackling jolts Les Arythmiques into life and reappears throughout to interrupt the regular beeps of an EKG, the distant tolling of a church bell, and even more distant sounds resembling birds. Enforced rest of a patient immobilized looms over the small repertoire of concrete sounds, examined with a disorienting repetitiveness and ultimately moving beyond the hospital room by delving into an archive of memory.
Presque Rien
(INA-GRM) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Recorded and released over a period of thirty-one years, the four collected works here offer a telescopic cross-section of Ferrari’s far-reaching oeuvre, ranging from the subtly faithful, non-diegetic documentation of a Dalmation fishing village waking … to the altered reality of nocturnal field recordings meshed with ultra-fine electro-acoustic processing and his hushed commentary in the more dramatic composition…, through a stormy intro and voyeuristic, augmented serenity, and a journey to the old town of Ventimiglia, Italy…. A surreal, vivid and psychedelic experience.”
Bossypants
(Little, Brown & Company) Used 5xCD $5.00
Unabridged autobiography from 2011 read by the author
Cauldron
(Weasel Disc) Used CD $8.00
1994 reissue of “one of those remarkable and truly revolutionary ’60s albums,” according to Audion. “Fifty Foot Hose took the Jefferson Airplane type sound, fused it with a good deal of weirdness, home-made electronic instruments, innovation in every department, comparable in its excesses to later albums by the likes of United States Of America, White Noise, Brainticket or Friendsound.” With three bonus tracks (two demo versions of songs from the album, and the 1966 single “Bad Trip.”
Imaoto
(Erstwhile - ERST055) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Vienna-based ultraminimalist composer/improvisor Radu Malfatti is joined by empathetic explorer Klaus Filip for a pair of undeniably gorgeous, sparse pieces that perambulate around the world of hidden contours and curves. Malfatti's trombone is deep but not heavy, with personal, nearly vocal presence. Filip works miracles of intuition with his sine tones, seemingly providing precise harmonic answers before the questions are asked.
Untitled
(Chocolate Monk - choc.478) CDR $6.25
Jameson Sweiger of Maths Balance Volumes beams forth further transmissions from his mysterious bunker out in Mankato, Minnesota. The weird warble of the tapes and the Chopinesque throat burbles are all present and correct, but is he telling us of the seven plagues of the petrochemical age or informing us of the fact that the internet is an alien life form? Whatever the answer, just be sure to keep your sick room windows closed while you try to decipher. Edition of 60
Precision In Exactitude
(Lotus Sound) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
This live duet from 1997 by Fine on drums, electronics, piano and clarinet, and Steve Gnitka on guitar, got a big thumbs down from Allmusic.com, which means one thing: scooping up this masterpiece in a heartbeat is the way to go. “This set … feels messy and sloppy and completely uninspired. Notes are played, and played, and played, and played some more…. This is noodling free jazz, without purpose or passion… Why this was released is a mystery.”
Pass The Distance
(Little Big Chief - LBCR011) LP $20.25 (Out-of-stock)
(Durtro) Used CD $15.00
Originally released by Mushroom during the hazy crossfade of late-’60s burn-out and early-’70s tribal pyres, Pass The Distance falls short “of the barbituric dexterity and unfettered invention of Syd Barrett, [but] Finn is a fellow dark globe sage in an era of folkie sprites and gonzo longhairs…. Songs lurch through psycho-ward strums accompanied by campfire third-eye improvisations…. Wizards, mermaids and the requisite metaphorical fauna may crop up in Finn’s lyrics, but his words mostly ring with vague bleakness made even more desperate by the singer’s absinthe-drunk channeling of Tim Buckley’s range…. [S]crawled hieroglyphic trim is provided by Paul Burwel’s … fluid percussion and David Toop’s … scrapes, drones…, freeform skiffle [and] loose dawdling on various instruments, many he was never trained on.” Ten tracks from the original album, two from the sole surviving acetate of a projected single from the collection of David Tibet, and two more previously unreleased studio tracks.
A History Of Obsession
(Phage - PT212) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nine tracks of power electronics and uncomfortable atmospheres, FIFH's first material since 2011. Watch the video for "One More Delusion" here: http://youtu.be/BrFhPunmOdE
Carrion Wind
(Turgid Animal - TA389) CD $10.50
This ambitious work consolidates sounds explored with F/I/T/H and Sky Burial into a single project, focusing them into a complex and meticulously composed 63-minute industrial opus, a dark and ominous dirge, both beautiful and brutal with aspects of metal percussion, dark ambient, drone, doom and industrial electronics. Noticeably absent are Page's vocals as F/I/T/H takes a more "restrained" approach that favors slow layering of synths, field recordings, guitar loops and electronics. Tension occasionally peaks at an explosive level comparable to the shorter tracks of F/I/T/H's previous releases.
Firm Friends
(Chocolate Monk - choc.568) CDR $8.00
Materials from the distant end of a dim tunnel gathered in an inscrutable stack by Martin Greenwood and Kate Armitage out of Silver Dick. Iridescent mold, water-logged fibreboard, medium density clang-procession, irrational tablature, inching up the spout to the gutter: friendship, starboard. Point a flashlight at them. Point a couple. Edition of 60
Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs
(Adhuman) CD $15.00
As if to kick the existing ideas of Syed Kamran Ali’s Harappian Night Recordings work into all new orbits of singularity, Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs wrenches a dense throng of voices, electronics and busted instrumentation thrashing and wailing through filters of avant-psychedelic glimmer, mock exotica and atrophied, fusion-esque sheen. A dry, mysterious spoken prose underpins the sonics, appearing to speak in terms of daunting geopolitical allusions in one breath, then glib, tongue-in-cheek piss-taking sarcasm the next. These narratives pull you immediately into what feels like an entire universe of vivid though scarcely penetrable imagery, begging to be decoded and explored in detail. Yet even through repeat listens of this enticing work it is difficult to fathom exactly the type of thinking this music has sprung from. Far too crude and homespun to be the product of arch cultural strategy, the blown-out fidelity is indicative of untarnished, DIY spontaneity and the willingness to let things emerge as they will. Clear as day from the moment of playback, however, is a confident, fully realized other-worldliness to this music that is anything but accidental.
Pacific Rim and Hastings
(Chocolate Monk - choc.418) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The wild man of the jaw harp went hiking with the sax gonk deep into the wilds of the rainforest of Tofino, British Columbia, where they stumbled upon a hermit hut and cooked up this weird, slobbery affair. Those six tracks are topped off with an improv piece recorded in squalid East Hastings, Vancouver. Numbered edition of 60
999 Levels Of Undo
(Sub Pop) Used CD $10.00
Third solo album by Seattle producer from 2001. Grooves built from dissonant beats and quirky blips resolve into exotic, lush symphonies worthy of adulation routinely afforded Aphex Twin and Radiohead. Instrumentation includes Mellotron, Optigan, Arp 2600, Yamaha CS-60, Big Briar Theremin, Akai and Ensonique samplers. Sealed
Voices
(Wet Paint Music - 3002) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Forceful, punishing, destructive free improv for solo alto and tenor saxes from 2001, with “some reflective bluesy playing and aggressive low-register honking,” according to Dusted, “But much of Voices consists of tangled, high-pitched runs and screaming multiphonics. Without any other musicians to create the sort of interaction that drives The Hated Music and Sannyasi, it feels like a single [overwhelming and shocking] sound rather than a collection of related ones.”
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.
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
GABBY FLUKE-MOGUL / JACOB FELIX HEULE / KANOKO NISHI-SMITH
Non Dweller
(Humbler) CD $12.00
(Humbler) Used CD $8.00
Violinist Nishi-Smith and Heule on bass drum, together as a duo since 2007, recorded two long-form free improvisations with violinist Fluke-Mogul in 2019, traversing the uncharted depths, hand in hand, inch by inch. “Thorny, gnarly, and excellently paced,” says Brian Olewnick, while Alex Tripp of Endaural observes that the trio’s “creaks and groans fill the walls,” as if placing the listener “in an old building that struggles under its own weight. But the music also allows the walls to come down, to make the activity plainly visible.”
In Search Of Spaces
(Corpus Hermeticum) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Fifty unbroken minutes of audience-captured live recordings from 1994. Beautifully smeared and blurred drones and ever-present feedback, vaguely guiding beacons that emerge from the dense fog of tape hiss — sounds like unrecognizable snippets of voice, occasional drums that fade in and out of audibility, and guitar bellowed from the depths of a cave.
Backporch Hillbilly Blues Vol. 2
(Locust) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Peculiar set of electrified and acoustic bumpkin fiddle howls and screeches from the early to mid-1960s. Sealed but there's a hole drilled in the barcode so we're listing it as used.
Glissando No. 1
(Recorded) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
A trance-tape piece, constituting one of three known examples of the Illuminatory Sound Environment genre (the other two being Catherine Christer Hennix's The Electric Harpsichord (Die Schachtel 2010) and Flynt's upcoming Celestial Power (Quadraphonic Version)). John Berdnt's enthralling liner notes explain ISE as “an unfurling sound field of overwhelming but far from gratuitous sensuality, a highly 'tuned' texture where all of the aspects are coordinated to make a deeply unusual 'whole,' a new kind of perceptual gestalt.... The piece has a disorienting flow that does something strange to 'time.' Its internal structural logic is fascinating but lacks the distraction of an obvious narrative drama—an eternal sound, implying a potentially endless process.... Glissando No. 1 is perhaps the darkest and most feverish expression of the genre, its massed strings and continual timbral transformations covering both a broad audio spectrum and saturating all points in the stereo field with a hallucinogenic and emotive canopy.” Companion track “Stereo Piano” from 1978, performed by Hennix, is also included (her “billowing cloud” piano technique applied to a scale of Flynt’s, subsequently layered by Flynt himself). With sixteen-page booklet. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
New American Ethnic Music Volume 1: You are my Everlovin’ + Celestial Power
(Recorded - REC003) 2xCD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded in 1980 and ’81, this pair of mind-blowing discs deliver flowing, trance-inducing violin solos of extreme beauty and seriousness. In these incredible electronic hillbilly music violin performances, an exalted synthesis of American ethnic music, raga-like lyrical virtuosity, and a deep sensibility takes place — a nod to human culture from the great nihilist philosopher and so-called father of Concept Art. Named as a top ten critics pick for 2001 in The Wire.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 2: Spindizzy
(Recorded - FR006) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
These archival recordings date from 1968 to 1983. Before the publication of his music, Flynt was most known as an often distorted footnote in art history — the man who invented Concept Art — and for his formal attacks on logic and mathematics, often presented in art galleries. He was a composer of the post-Cage school who quickly turned completely against modernist music and created his own genres, primarily through radicalizing Southern musical forms like bluegrass, country, and country blues, and elevating them to an enchanted level, much as Coltrane did with jazz. Flynt’s music is a parallel stream to his extremely distinct and radical philosophy.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 3: Hillbilly Tape Music
(Recorded - REC007) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third release in Recorded’s archival series deals with Flynt’s most “electronic” work to date, but the modern-experimental aspects of his work are, as always, in the service of deeply rooted ecstatic hillbilly sensibility. Opens with the startling “Violin Strobe” and contains pieces which verge on kryptonite rockabilly and tranced-out shades of Bo Diddley. Completely essential, breathtaking music from one of the most original and driven musical minds of the century.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 4: Ascent to the Sun
(Recorded - REC021) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The final release in the NAEM series (but not the last Henry Flynt on Recorded) is a brilliant, sparkling hillbilly raga in the family of “You Are My Everlovin’ ” but with a unique double violin approach and a mind-bending structure all its own. The piece covers incredible ground in terms of specificity of mood and sentiment, and is deeply listenable and experimental at once. It is a new creation by Flynt circa 2004, engineered by Tim Barnes.
Chilly Mortal
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Matthew’s parents’ neighbor Joan came over for a drink during the 2023 Christmas period and at one point admitted, “I guess I’ll just have to face the prospect of ginormous bills this winter. I have to have the heating on, see. I’m a chilly mortal.” All of the voice recordings on Chilly Mortal that aren’t Greg’s grandad Charlie talking about a car he used to own in the 1920s come from Matthew and Lila’s neighbor Bob, who, during one of his daily tea-over-the-fence meet-ups with Matthew, revealed that in the late ‘80s he used to go to Sneinton Market to buy used tapes to record over, but “kept the ones of interest.” Lucky for us, Bob’s fields of interest include weird voice messages. Guest appearance by Theo of Territorial Gobbing just to offset the purely old person vibes. Edition of 60
God With Stripes
(Chocolate Monk - choc.492) CDR $6.75
Lila Matsumoto and Mathew Hamblin (aka Cloth) hook up once more with the reclusive guitarist Greg Thomas (Helhesten), last seen terrifying discombobulated tourists at the foot of Leith Walk with his “spare any change / pay me to stop” drone und strang meditations. This, their follow-up to their 2018 Monk disk Vetch, heads deeper into the wilds searching for their I AM Presence with musical ears attuned to deep listening. Get grounded, have empathy, enjoy the visuals. Edition of 60
Vetch
(Chocolate Monk - choc.411) CDR $8.00
Lila Matsumoto, Matthew Hamblin and Greg Thomas’s engrossing follow-up to their Animal Work cassette (Beartown Records 2017) pulses, drones, scrapes and baffles — a strange sedative to help you cover that attitude of cynical indifference. Somebody once said, “Vetch is a food made out of flowers. The violin is made of mouths. The computer is also eating the food. Hens roused and goaded to tumors, the monk is known to write nonsense. Moping at doofus, the violent node of edam is shut for maintenance. Everything will be played backwards. Sprawling peyote limbs and bees. There will be a guitar, pills and bream enacting Cnut. Everything will be played at once. Chocolate slipping into pugs, spume of rats. Tunnocks cantering at veal. There will be a sampler. Shy and numb, the tulips and goats eloped.” So keep that in mind. Numbered edition of 60
Foot
(God Bless) Used CD $7.00
Three 23-minute tracks of electronics and freeform soundscapes from 1998 by Don Fleming, Jim Dunbar, Thurston Moore.
Octuary
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.380) CDR $8.00
Fraser Burnett is Oxgang’s only one-man discordant drone unit, sent here to expose your ears to everything they thought they didn’t want to hear. He rubs carpet in your face and adds a lump of charcoal tone, while rocking back and forth in “a moment” with one eye closed and a gurn on his puss. Sure, the Northern UK has a rich vein of bleak monochromatic head borers, conjuring up that weird cocktail of dour-tempered-with-joy head gorf, but none are huffed out on the spores from Sharnoth more than FRU. Numbered edition of 54 (but numbers add up to nothing)
The Illusion Of Movement
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR101) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dense, suffocatingly heavy drone noise from the UK, second only to Culver. Sound-in-a-vacuum stasis and churning, crunching, collapsing-building noise with a foreboding, horror-movie atmosphere. Edition of 500.
Pic-Nic
(Fibrr) Used CD $4.00
2003 album by Christophe Havard, Manu Leduc, Julien Ottavi, Anthony Taillard, Fabrice Gallis, Jérôme Joy, named after the networked black box created to introduce cybernetic programming in music, Pic-Nic is the result of continuous analysis of the sound inputs according to programmed behaviors. Sound selections, diffusion, the superimposition of different layers, speeds, and spatialization are all determined by internal memory that is ultimatel responsible for the composition.
The Eyes Of Erodern Reviema
(Small Doses - DOSE60) CD $11.25 (Out-of-stock)
Alec Bowman and Kingsley Ravenscroft create unique rhythmic, chaotic yet structured works, twisting a variety of sounds into creeped-out electronica, frozen ambience and sporadic wayward beats. The music of this miraculous electric musical ensemble strays into dark territory, inhabiting forgotten grounds; less of a showcase for new technology and more an essential medium for the expression of the human psyche, where the soul is the interface.
untitled
(Chocolate Monk - choc.616) CDR $8.00
The Forrest Friends return to their spiritual crack shack (aka Chocolate Monk) bearing a shovels, teaspoons and everything in between. The plate has been ladled high with nutrients and paranormal fortifications to fuel the third-eye dusty trail wandering. Come gormandize on alien jukebox tubthumping, haunter cavescape, head-scrimmage dancefloor stroll and kitchen sink syncopation. Or maybe you would rather lounge and kick back to ritual doowop exorcism and industrial helium string majesty. It is all in here, playing out like a primordial mixtape compiled by a twitching dumpster-man. Watch out for the juice and gases emiting dark hallway anxiety muppetry and demon campfire storytime vibes. File under: mystical bog karaoke / back-porch astral strum’n’pluck. Edition of 60
untitled
(Chocolate Monk - choc.519) CDR $7.00
The Forrest Friends emerge from 2020 and show how the old passing-an-eight-track-back-and-forth can get you to some strange places. Imagine Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase doing some alien gas-huffing wangers or one of the dribblers from Caroliner getting their drool on to insectoid funk-a-gunk puzzle muzak. Devolving righteously into a mish mash of mood musics. There are plenty of little creepers, too, wee sonic plucks matured just right to deliver that all-important ear larva, so pull up a chair to the blown-out tables and let the psych-colored world seep through the window. “All’s I can say about it is that we had never done things this way before,” says Garrison Heck. “There’re hip-hop beats, maybe some alien dub. Not what I initially thought we’d be coming up with, but here we are. Blur your ears and it’s just cowboy soundtracks, dancefloor bangers, goth-industrial lullabies, rural land-lubber sea-shanties, ’80s sax-laden jams, etc. Or maybe that’s not what it is at all? Ugh, honestly, I’m really confused by this thing that we have birthed from our aural womb, and not the Wordy Rappinghood with describing this particular thing. But a straight-up pop album for sure, the closest we’ve come to such a thing, anyway.” Edition of 60
Untitled
(Chocolate Monk - choc.429) CDR $8.00
In an old issue of a London-based porn mag, the one with Funko Geräte on the cover, an essay attempts to recast Esplendor Geometrico as a Massachusetts freak-folk band. With the appropriate dosage, anything’s possible. Probably. Maybe they changed their name and emigrated from Spain and due to a translation error ended up in Seattle. Who knows what’s real and what’s made-up with that publication. From Forrest Friends’ opening herald announcing the commencement of a marathon sweat lodge cotillion, where consensual flora gropings and various pagan engorgements run their respective courses until the inevitable dousing of the nethers with ritual electronic ooze, to the spent, post-credits vibe of a homemade horror movie, this album resembles little in the Chocolate Monk catalog. The duo’s debut release for the label was recorded by the side of the road in the middle of the night, naked but for banana-leaf loin cloths bound together with twine, crouching in the mud, staring intently at a nematomorph exiting the used-up husk that had been a typically happy-go-lucky praying mantis before the zombifying parasite took over its brain. This thirty-eight-minute disc’s high-primitive hoot coaxes spirit lizards out of a secluded northern-facing lichen shack and forces them to march on an infinity-symbol-shaped path, invoking visions of communion with First Nations spasticity. Patches of impaired fidelity, damaged by overdriven sound, smear the otherwise intimate recordings with heavy whiffs of opium cinders and Wiccan-roasted genetic structure that’s mustier than an old towel full of three-day-old phat si-io. Everybody loves the idea of a lost world. Well, here’s one with hypnotic yelping, otherworldly accordion, dreams of the pipe, and processions of re-animated wooden children invoking the great drillbit in the sky to exact vengeance on the new president of Brazil. Edition of 60
I
(BloodLust! - B!097) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
The duo of ISIDRO REYES and MARK SOLOTROFF, both key players in the power- electronics outfit BLOODYMINDED, a unit known for its confrontational live shows show off their kinder, gentler side via guitar, bass, and synth to improvise. Quoth the Chicago Reader: "Sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
II
(BloodLust! - B!106) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
The duo of ISIDRO REYES and MARK SOLOTROFF, both key players in the power- electronics outfit BLOODYMINDED, a unit known for its confrontational live shows show off their kinder, gentler side via guitar, bass, and synth to improvise. Quoth the Chicago Reader: "Sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
III
(BloodLust! - B!107) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
The duo of ISIDRO REYES and MARK SOLOTROFF, both key players in the power- electronics outfit BLOODYMINDED, a unit known for its confrontational live shows show off their kinder, gentler side via guitar, bass, and synth to improvise. Quoth the Chicago Reader: "Sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
IV
(BloodLust! - B!114) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Fortieth Day is the duo of Isidro Reyes and Mark Solotroff, both key players in the power-electronics outfit Bloodyminded, a unit known for its confrontational live shows. Reyes and Solotroff show off their kinder, gentler side, using guitar, bass, and synth to improvise what Bill Meyer calls "sustained, withering blasts of high-pitched noise that are as distinct from one another as spotlights sweeping across the night sky; jackhammer clatter, jet-engine whines, and forlorn keyboard melodies dart in and out of those huge sounds with the grace and impunity of plovers picking a crocodile's teeth."
Pelusium: 540 AD
(BloodLust! - B!145) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Drawn from the last of the first wave sessions recorded by Isidro Reyes and Mark Solotroff, this release delves deeper into a heavier drone mode; thick walls of bass and guitar noise envelop the mix, creating a contrast for the occasional loop, melody, or slothful beat rising to the surface. Fifty-eight minutes, previously released on cassette (Cipher Productions 2007).
Syria: 638 AD (The Complete Recordings)
(BloodLust! - B!128) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Extremely dense, powerful, and brooding, with absolutely monstrous bass. Comprised of Mark Solotroff (BLOODYMINDED, Intrinsic Action, and the BloodLust! label) and Isidro Reyes (BLOODYMINDED), the dense and murky Fortieth Day lurks between noise, industrial, and ambient. Various recording sessions are processed, re-processed, and mixed together to create the final studio recordings. This CDR contains the remastered, 61-minute-long version of the complete recordings from the "Syria: 638 AD" sessions. Diophantine Discs previously released an abridged version of these recordings (approximately 36-minutes in length) on vinyl.
THE FORTIETH DAY / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS
The Fortieth Day & Sshe Retina Stimulants
(BloodLust! - B!142) CDR $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Re-mastered CD with bonus tracks not on the original 1997 cassette. Opening track is the original live recording performed on WLUW Chicago -- the first live outing by The Fortieth Day, in collaboration with P.NG5361.B (aka Sshe Retina Stimulants, also a founding member of Sigillum S) -- subsequently processed in Milan by P.NG5361.B, which are tracks two thru five.
17 Years In Ektachrome
(Hand-Held Recordings - HH004) CD $14.00
Fossil Aerosol Mining Project’s soft, fluorocarbon textures are perfect backdrops for mellifluous overlays of travelogue-style field recordings. The album has a distinctly archaeological perspective, utilizing what seem to be decayed quarter-inch analogue tapes that were processed and looped many years ago. The resulting layers of found sources and environmental recordings have been fragmented, slightly decomposed, and pulled away from their original contexts. 17 Years is the perfect soundtrack for vast open plains, abandoned industrial complexes, and forgotten small towns washed in the shadows of a bygone age. The group regularly contributes to Zoviet France’s widely subscribed Duck in a Tree weekly podcast of all things electronic and/or analogue,
FOSSIL AEROSOL MINING PROJECT / ZOVIET FRANCE
Patina Pooling
(Alt.Vinyl - AV052) CD $36.00 (Out-of-stock)
This extended collaboration from the industrial northeast England and the spiritually neglected wastelands of Illinois delivers a mesmeric hybrid of two groups’ shared fascination with the residual, both real and metaphorical. Mirroring the alchemical, organic processes of decomposition, this album of exploratory call and response is a heaving, acousmatic mass of blurred found sound and breathing tape loops. The CD re-release replicates the original 2xLP packaging (Alt.Vinyl 2014) with individually weathered, rusted, etched sheets of steel. Heavy and messy.
Get the fourth component from the project, only available as a free download from SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/zoviet-france/zovietfrance-and-fossil-aerosol-mining-project-by-north-tundar-influence
Revisionist History
(Afterdays Media - ADM019) CD $15.75 (Out-of-stock)
Fossil Aerosol Mining Project’s first studio experimentation dating back to the mid-1980s employed found sounds, such as fragments of open reel quarter-inch tape and 35mm film recovered from burnt out warehouses and abandoned drive-in theaters. The earliest work involved tape loops and analog signal processes, which were gradually replaced by digital delay treatments and multi-track manipulation. They continue to work primarily with found audio artifacts and field recordings, and signal processing equipment remains the principal form of instrumentation. In the observation of three decades of obscure, faked resurrection, the recordings on Revisionist History are hybrids, old artifacts grafted onto new material. The bonus download adds another hour to the 69-minute CD — remixes and reconsiderations of nine old favorites, totaling more than two hours of enhanced decay and mnemonic devices. This edition of 300 is packaged with manipulated page of pseudohistorical text (circa 1972) and a souvenir fragment of open-reel dictaphone tape collected as source material in Chicago in 1988.
JOSEPHINE FOSTER AND THE SUPPOSED
All The Leaves Are Gone
(Locust) Used CD $6.00
A tangle of swooning vocals, tickly electric guitars and an omnipresent, incense-laced haze.
RICHARD FRANCIS / JASON KAHN / BRUCE RUSSELL
Dunedin
(CMR - CMR27) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Thirty-eight minutes of immersive sound and fractured electronics by Richard Francis (modular synthesizer, computer), Jason Kahn (analog synthesizer, radio, mixing board) and Bruce Russell (analog electronics), recorded live at Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand. Russell’s analog system cleaves a path through Francis’s thick cloud of dusty field recordings and swirling standing waves; Kahn’s chaotic feedback system of synthesizer and radio spikes and sputters, like a dying bird in the midst of some caustic low pressure front moving slowly across the horizon.
RICHARD FRANCIS / BRUCE RUSSELL
Garage Music
(Alone At Last - AAL2) CD $11.25 (Out-of-stock)
Three parts mail music exchange, one part juxtaposition of two solo sets from 2009, and one part live recording from The Physics Room, Christchurch, where Francis plays modular synthesizer and computer, and Russell uses guitar, tapes and Clavioline synthesizer. Hand assembled in textured paper. Edition of 500.
RICHARD FRANCIS / FRANCISCO LOPEZ
In De Blaauwe Hand
(Korm Plastics - KP3033) CD $11.25
(Korm Plastics - KP3033) Used CD $8.00
Working with very small seed source sound samples during a residency at Extrapool, the two intermingling compositional paths of Lopez and Francis unfold in parallel; the single sixty-six-minute track merges a dreamy geography of subtleties and complex organics. With a barely perceptible crawl in from silence, softly mechanical drones begin to appear, rippling with a radiant, ever-building hum. As the piece progresses the hum gets thicker and the drone texture strengthens. Clicking pulses are overtaken by thick drones of buzzing, hypnotic, and comfortable noises.
Warmth
(CMR - CMR26) CD $14.25
Vignettes composed using modular synth, computer, field recordings, looper, and Edirol recorder, riffing on memories and impressions of brief sound moments, melting into a fine, delicate mass of sound. In Francis’s minimal and tense music, ticks and crackles, maybe one or two drones, meander about, falling somewhere between the cracks of improvisation and composition.
Music For No Title
(Mik Musik) Used CDR $20.00
Covertly drony collaboration with Frans de Waard from 2003 with typical Freiband elements -- cracklings, mini-funkings, gentle hard-disk manipulations – reassigned to a new environment (a brain pulsating in space), new time (lava-like fallout), and new tempo (deliciously unpredictable and awkward). Sexy brooming, as they say in the lowlands. Hand-screened cover. Edition of 55 (number 54).
Conversions in Metric
(Scratch) Used CD $6.00
Scott August lays the groundwork for a new breed of electronic-based pop. The music is instantly recognizable for its Oval and Land of the Loops influences. From 1999
Frequency Curtain
(Elevator Bath) Used CD $6.00
Excerpts from extended improvisation sessions in 2002 by John Grzinich, Rick Reed and Josh Ronsen, using analogue and digital sine wave generators, processing and interventions from the radiophonic spectrum.
Technology of Tears
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $6.00
2008 reissue of Frith's mid-'80s pieces commissioned by choreographer Rosalind Newman. Guests include Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Tenko. Still sealed but the barcode has been drilled, so we're listing at used.
What Leave Behind
(S.K. - SK28) CD $9.00
(S.K. - SK28) Used CD $4.50
All-female Oakland collective collaborating with a giant of prepared guitar, performing Dan Plonsey’s five-part Concerto for Electric Guitar and Toy Orchestra. Lord Frith mixes shimmery noise, strange tunings, brushes, kitchen utensils, and folk-like melodies with the group’s ensemble of toy instruments, actual instruments, and objects. A far cry from a bunch of children banging around, What Leave Behind is a sophisticated sound experience created with intricate recording and mixing techniques. Surreal and dramatic.
The Common Error Of Ordinary
(Chocolate Monk - choc.438) Magazine + CDR $12.50 (Out-of-stock)
After much arm-twisting and beard-tugging, the beloved artist /composer / sound wizard injects Swedish visual / aural magic into the pipeline. Get ready to get really, really sleepy. Book is full color, 24 pages
Live Electronics At End Of Europa Tokyo Nov. 2000
(MSBR) Used CDR $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tour disc with forty-two minutes by Koji Tano, ten by FT. Edition of 100
άTOMO∑
(Musik Atlach - MA010) CD $15.00
Cello, violin and electronics intertwine with the vocal drones of these Overhang Party and Majutsu no Niwa veterans. Recorded live in Japan, the passionate sound and ambiance, which includes Fukuoka’s radio waves, offers “a glimpse of unbearable reality,” while the Paris recording, made at the church Église Saint-Merri, uses solemn drone loops a la Overhang Party’s “Prayer of a Fool.”
TETSUO FURUDATE / ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI
World as Will II
(23five - 23five003) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
While the influence of Karkowski’s tutelage under Xenakis is obvious in World As Will II's orchestral clusters and general density, it is dwarfed by elements solely serving that notoriously untrustworthy god, the human ego. Xenakis’s opaque masses of sound grow from the interaction of mindless external forces, beyond the realm of emotions and personality. Furudate and Karkowski, though, dwell in glorification of the self. Whatever one may think of Schopenhauer's writings, from which this album takes its philosophical cues, it's hard to deny the CD’s exceptional belligerence, courtesy of myriad bombastic tokens -- martial drums, ominous orchestral drones, primal screams with echo, Wagner samples.
Sub
(23five - 23five018) 2xCD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Marc Zeier’s first major album since the cryptic electro-acoustic Reuters (Tochnit Aleph 2008) is a sprawling masterpiece of modern day musique concrete, reflecting the early pioneers’ use of razor cut tape with a grandiose revelation of an existential horror. Zeier describes is as a manifestation of amorphous conditions that lead to (or interfere with) representational forms or states of being. For every malignant drone and turgid thrum, Zeier punctures fluttering, frozen methane surfaces with jagged incisions, pneumatic hammerings, and decompressed gasps. This fragmented punctuation is a signature to the G*Park aesthetic, used effectively in mapping clinical situations turned septic. The exact nature of the sound object is informed more by a shadowy deconstruction than by a direct representation, thrust into an absurd existence as an abomination, a violation, a monster.
Dancing With The Sun
(Neurot) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Since their emergence in 1975, the instinctive primal rock of Hungary’s legendary Galloping Coroners (Vágtázó HalottKémek) has celebrated the elementary powers of creation. A shamanistic / psychedelic / hardcore / space rock blend realized in an unrestricted outburst of total life energy.
PER GISLE GALÅEN / LASSE MARHAUG
In Store
(Humbug) Used CDR $3.00
A ramshackle, stumbling-down-a-flight-of-stairs kind of guitar improv duet recorded live at Progress Record Store, January 23, 1999, released in 2004. Edition of 80.
Reluctant Divers
(w.mo/r) Used CDR $5.00
Piercing electronic tones inspired by a recurring dream experienced in the hospital. Gambardella, who uses “test equipment for installations and performances, adapted and made electronic and acoustic devices that investigate and experiment with the physical and emotional properties of sound.”
Metal Notes
(Locust) Used CD $5.00
According to a jambands.com (not making that up), Metal Notes “moves away from tradition into approaches influenced by Cage and minimalism…. [Highlights on Locust’s 2006 reissue of what was previously released on cassette by New Wilderness Foundation in 1985 include] “the opening suite ‘Gamelan NEA, [which] alternates ethereal, high-pitched patterns (a bit reminiscent of the early ‘little instruments’ experiments of the Art Ensemble of Chicago) with solemn gongs. Denise Rightmire-Womelsdorf’s ‘Keith Rays” is an effective elegy for a friend killed in a car crash. Peter Griggs’s ‘Through the Looking Glass’ is a variation on traditional music with similar charms.”
The Complete Gamelan In The New World
(Locust) Used 2xCD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
2004 reissue of two legendary recordings originally released by Folkways in 1979 and 1982. This New York performance group counts as its founders Fluxus pioneer Phillip Corner, electronics composer Daniel Goode, and core member Barbara Benary. Equally inspired by the resonant decaying sounds of New York school composers like Morton Feldman, the stunning pacific gamelan music of its namesake and the wild antics of Fluxus, their sound is trancelike and beautifully inspiring. With new liner notes by Marcus Boon.
DAVID GAMPER / PAULINE OLIVEROS
At The Ijsbreker Jan 24 1999
(JDK) Used CD $6.00
“The EIS is greatly in evidence on this … improvised live recording …[which recreates] the sounds of Oliveros’s accordion and Gamper’s piano and in a virtual acoustic space, distorting them as if … in a hall of mirrors. The lengthy ‘Breaking the EIS’ showcases a divergent sound menagerie: plaintive electronic yowls, scatterbrained pitter-patter, ghostly wavering and wailing. It’s mostly downcast and alien, but impressively grotesque. ‘Pauline’s Solo’ is more serene, but there’s a rippled depth to be heard in the laminated accordion drone, which recalls Penderecki’s chilly tautness. Whenever it seems [to be] subsiding into mere atmospherics, piercing flurries of shrapnel erupt and disrupt expectations. The two instruments work best together on ‘EIS Cream’, which sounds like … subterranean … cyborgs … mak[ing] a Windham Hill record, and where the flickering piano blends well with the dilated accordion tones.”
Areal
(23five - 016) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Garet has employed photosensors to control a particular audio signal through the erratic nature of a violently pulsing abstract film; he has also flooded a performance space with fog to disperse multi-channel video work into an ephemeral yet sculptural mass, accompanied by an equally diffused sound design. His ongoing research in interference continues here with electromagnetic disturbances through radio: the process of transmission and reception is treated as a routing system for the audio signal, while the nodes that direct the course of that signal are deliberately agitated and distressed. For example, an electrical motor might be situated near a radio's antenna, disrupting its ability to properly receive a transmission. Through the controlled use of electro-acoustic techniques (some rough and volatile, some refined and delicate), he organizes the signal distortion, the crackling static, and the ever-present tendencies for feedback into swarms of chiming resonance, electrically sourced harmonics, tactile bricolage, and impressionist din.
Live In Japan
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
No script, no rhyme, no reason. When the audience doesn’t laugh or doesn’t understand him, he just speaks in tongues.Full-blown, sweaty, gibberish-heavy rants that come out in wild spurts, his voice rising and falling like a deranged revival meeting preacher. Half comedian, half performance art disaster, Gas Can doesn’t have an act so much as a vortex. A tornado of confusion, punctuated by nonsense about chili, Fritos, and “real” American comfort food. Edition of 60
Golden
(IMD - 10050) Used CD $12.00
1995 collection of singles by The Dead C’s Michael Morley. Includes Prophet Rebel (Siltbreeze 1992); Sunshine (Twisted Village 1992); Julian Dashper Gate Experience (Precious Metal 1993); and other rarities. Sealed
Live In Boston, NYC 1994
(Poon Village) Used CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Michael Morley and Lee Ranaldo’s mesmerizing thirty-minute guitar duo instrumental layers feedback, delay and looped drones. Six shorter tracks, with electric harp improviser Zeena Parkins joining the duo faded in and out of densely organized sectors of gloriously abstract noisic combinations. Screenprinted card-folio.
I Turn Black Keys
(Troniks - TRO159) Used CD $5.00
This 2005 monster by Greh Holger (of Hive Mind) and Mike Connelly (of Hair Police and Wolf Eyes) collects material from two limited cassettes —Bane (Chrondritic Sound 2004) and House With The Clock In Its Walls (Gods Of Tundra 2005) — and adds the title tracks, a new, thirty-eight-minute opus dedicated to dysfunctional machinery of all kinds.
HARTMUT GEERKEN / MICHAEL RANTA
The Heliopolar Egg
(Art Into Life - AIL009) 5xCD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
The CD reissue (original LP, Qbico 2010) of documentary recordings of the duo’s late 1976 tour of Iran, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Korea, and Japan includes an Osaka concert with Toshi Ichiyanagi on synthesizer, solo performances by Ichiyanagi and Shoko Shida, as well as a rare Delhi performance. Twelve-page booklet with flyers from the period. Edition of 500.
Frigo
(Permis De Construire Deutschland - PPP109) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Vincent Hachet and Thierry Merigout’s studies in rhythmic patterns, yielding polyphonic and polyrhythmic textures, and harsh, grating, percussive, yet full, supple, rich, even polished timbres. 1992 reissue of album from ’89.
Phythogenetics: Collection
(Turgid Animal - TA285) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Finnish harsh noise fiend Pekka PT's brutal mix of junk metal abuse and pedal worship sometimes results in total unflinching chaos and other times in a more structured industrial noise masterwork. Whittled down from dozens of tapes, CD and vinyl, here is 74 minutes of what Pekka considers his best work under this now-defunct moniker. Liner notes by Mikko Aspa (Grunt/, Freak Animal Records) and Pasi Markkula (Bizarre Uproar / Filth and Violence).
Vitoj
(Auscultare Research) CD $9.00
Longtime San Francisco-based sound artist, internationally known for his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, continues his microscopic exploration of dense sonic landscapes within volatile stases. Vitoj eavesdrops on pressurized states of compressed gas within hydrogen tanks, diaphanous vinyl recordings of archaic voices, and perilous work environments in the far east. Wicked dream-like.
Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home
(Virgin) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Oppressively heavy, both musically and emotionally, delivery of punk rock as close as it has ever come to sounding rootsy. Ferocious and painfully beautiful, singer Carla Bozulich channels Patti Smith and Patsy Cline. Daniel Keenan’s numbing, relentless, bleeding guitar and Jessy Greene’s weeping violin grind and moan. Teetering throughout between goodnight prayer and bad nightmare. Drilled promo from 1995.
45 RPM Performance
(Dark Vinyl) Used CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Our friends at Art No Art say that “the first track simply sounds like tectonic plates crushing Masami Akita to death,” while the second, with its “explosions and metal-on-metal action flooded in an ocean of reverb” provides an “overwhelming sensation of being at the foot of a skyscraper during a 5.0 earthquake….As far as recordings concerned with documenting the degradation and abuse of vinyl records are concerned, this 1992 release is the audio equivalent of dropping the needle onto sandpaper and scratching along to your favorite rap song.”
Endless Humiliation
(Japan Overseas) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
This 1994 disc is “one of the most eerie and haunting pieces of music Juntaro Yamanouchi ever bothered recording,” concludes Art No Art. ”Pretty much just a field recording of a drunk homeless Japanese man rambling over the sounds of an incredibly distant piano. Probably the quietest work done by the group…, either a long winded … social commentary or … created for or about Yamanouchi’s mother, who was supposedly a rather famous Japanese classical pianist.”
Hotel Ultra
(Kubitsuri) Used CD $30.00
“At almost any given point” on this 1994 CD, notes Art Not Art, “There is the sound of a saxophone in the background playing nothing in particular…. A gay porno movie is playing (the police officer pulling over the speeding leatherboy type scenario) during the first track, along with some moaning and screaming and lots of Japanese ’70s funk and pop music…. The recurring sound of various amounts and types of static also show up…, [and] whipping sounds come in as well…. The second track starts off fairly quietly and gets back into the same groove…, sans the gay porn…. [S]ax and … static return, along with … melodramatic classical music that fades … into … electronic fidgetiness that breaks into … [a] Santana-type funk jam. This lasts for a bit before we are left with nothing more than just the electronic tones, static and … saxophone…. [A]irplanes, a large crowd singing inside of an arena, and a man giving … a speech … bleed in and out.” Includes obi
Instruments Disorder (170 Songs)
(Mediacapsule) Used CD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The genius of this rotating line up of freakish musicians and Gero 30 (an overweight, middle-aged man known to masturbate on stage during performances),” explains Sputnik Music, “comes from the fact that their music gives you exactly what you put into it…. If you expect a bunch of idiots making hardcore locked behind a thick layer of migraine…, [you get] a befuddling enjoyable noise album that plays out like Burmese or early Sore Throat trapped in a distortion pedal. On the other hand, if you go into it with an anti-art lens, looking for something like a much, much more frenzied Duchamp or Maciunas…, [this 1994 album] stands directly and boldly in front of the restraints called ‘music theory’ and ‘melody,’ spitting in their eyes. The overwhelming amalgamation of sloppily fast instrumentation pulsates at the heart of an avalanche of feedback and strife, burying the traditions of punk in a cascade of static…. Each fragment of this record starts to piece together slowly, melding into a continuous noise separated only by indecipherable yelps of Japanese song titles. The pulsating guitars shriek as the blisteringly fast drums go off the rails in a blaze of glory. As Instruments Disorder pounds on, the vocalist sounds more and more at wit’s end, like each second of hysteria hits him like a bullet through the chest…. Utter obtuse mayhem.”
Adult Life
(No Fun) Used CD $5.00
Venturing closer to austere, experimental electronics, Giffoni’s thick band of oscillations from 2008 is underscored by a rhythmic pulse. Rising and falling sweeps, dusty switches, and a block-by-block composition style that mesmerizes the listener before catching him or her off-guard with a sudden change. Sealed
Severance
(Hospital - HOS254) CD $13.50
(Hospital - HOS254) Used CD $8.00
No Fun’s Giffoni defines his signature with compositional electronic music that melds analog drone with tonality of the past expressions and a collision of minimalist sequencer details on a pure electronic landscape.
Zamuro
(Important) Used CD $5.00
Side A on this LP is a live realization of solo composition piece for portable synth and analog filter recorded at the Compound in San Francisco in 2006. One Side B is a studio piece recorded live on a much larger modular synth, based around the same theme, but with structural and tonal variations not in the original composition. Pure psychedelic electronic music.
Archives Box 1983 - 2005
(Art Into Life - AIL008) 5xCD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first archival release to cover this French composer’s work in its entirety: Devil’s Picnic (Ding Dong 1983); Lxgrin (CRI 1984); Aha (DMA2 1984); Monétacheck (Rangehen 1985); Bishérigori (Rangehen 1986); Rementact (Rangehen 1989); Encored Dust with GX Jupitter-Larsen (Noisopoly 2000); Euragine (Sounds For Consciousness Rape 1994); most of her compilation tracks and eleven previously unreleased tracks. Dense and detailed work, ripe with ancient dreams, bodily functions, darkness, secrets, and beautiful seclusion. Her tools of the trade include water, catgut, skin, latex, steel, bronze, everyday actions, feedback, voice, sewing machine noise, flute, and crumpled magnetic tape. Includes twenty-page booklet. Edition of 500.
BILL GILONIS / CHATALE LAPLANTE
Zürich Bamberg
(Ad Hoc) Used CD $2.00
Electro-acoustic hörspiel mail collaboration for which the duo abandoned conventional instrumentation in favor of collaged and manipulated street noise, household clatter, fragments of radio, and close-mic’d objects. Drilled digipak
I Am Singing To You From My Room
(Young God) Used CD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
One installment in Gira’s ongoing series of home recordings songs — nice and pleasant renditions of various songs from his solo career and the Angels of Light catalog, plus new tracks and sketches. The tone is warm and inviting, even on occasions when the music and/or lyrics get decidedly dark. In a card envelope with woodblock print and hand lettering by the artist. Includes lyric sheet and personal thank-you note.
Living ’02
(Young God) CDR $175.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eleven tracks recorded by an audience member in Portugal 2002. “Gira’s sense of timing and delivery,” say All Music Guide, are sharp, shifting easily and perfectly “between wrenching calls to the sky and carefully focused, close-to-the-mic words.” “God Damn the Sun” sounds forlorn and heart-touching. “Meanwhile, the quiet but tense arrangement of ‘Nations’ is punctuated by … harrowing vocals, high-pitched and powerful, and even those are trumped by the blasting conclusion of ‘All Souls Rising,’ Gira sounding on the verge of trashing both his guitar and vocal cords.” #000/350
Solo Recordings At Home
(Young God) CDR $65.00 (Out-of-stock)
With an emphasis on Gira’s voice and guitar only (an exception being the live recording “Irish Queen”), the 2001 performances here are astonishingly direct. His singing “balances command with empathy, cracked and tender at once,” according to All Music Guide. “His guitar playing similarly … shift[s] on a dime from sudden, brusque runs to gentler, steady fingerpicking, evoking everything from strung-out rural blues to Nick Drake’s hushed emptiness.” The other exception is “God’s Servant,” a fully orchestrated outtake from Angels of Light’s New Mother sessions. Swans diehards will also want to hear the evocative reworking of “Love Will Save You” from White Light From the Mouth of Infinity and the wracked take on The Burning World’s “I Remember Who You Are,” which “easily trump[s] the smothered, smoothed-out production of the original.”
FRODE GJERSTAD / LASSE MARHAUG
Red Edge
(Carbon) Used CD $4.00
The free-jazz saxophonist and the beloved noise artist collaborate on this highly accomplished blend of electronic noise and free improv from 2004
Lost In Rooms, A Virtualectric Story
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $5.00
Storytelling, sampling, mainstream electronica, and experimental collage. This captivating hörspiel from 2003 evolved from music written for a dance project where the dancers recorded texts of their choice in English, French, Chinese, and Estonian. “In the narrative sections, voice is untreated, lying on top of heavily processed textures mostly derived from vocal sounds. In the other tracks, other voices are sampled and processed, often brought back to their animal content: breaths, gasps, unintelligible syllables. They become beats, melodies, or background textures for thumping electronica tunes — true enough to the ear not to sound forced or like academic exercises in popular dance music. The whole piece flows seamlessly and elegantly, negotiating the shifts between narration and music, between beat-driven electronica and very delicate sections.”
Absent-Minded Control Freak
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS50) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Forty-one minutes of deformed gurgles; electro-chemical spasms; Nyoukis-inspired gibber smacked by cut-up electronic damage; field recordings both exotic and mundane, mechanical and untamed; scratchy, bottom-of-the-barrel turntablism; and muy picante appropriated garble.
Chronic Pussyfooting
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS101) CDR $12.00
If this is not Barbara Manning and S. Glass’s post-apocalyptic homage to Fripp and Eno’s early ’70s monolith, the only other explanation is hermit crabs having brain seizures inside Tibetan singing bowls. Using loops and digital delay to enhance the steroidal calliope atmosphere with a touch of relentlessness and dread, the duo’s two long, whirling tracks fling ropes of bright ooze this way, that way, and the other way. Be on high alert for supernatural beings wobbling through a series of movements and gestures that make sense only to a black yogiraj lost in some unspecified realm where space and time are mashed into an origami-like lump. Thirty-eight minutes of symmetrical splats, crackling wheem, crystals made of congealed blood, and Tortuga silt. Includes reflective packaging.
Convicted Felon Adjusted For Inflation
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS68) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
A surreal collage of songs, sounds, Barbara Manning’s vocals, voice samples, loops, out-of-context rhythms, field recordings, electronics, cut-up manipulated noises, a cover of The Shaggs’ “Why Do I Feel?”, and anything else which is not considered music, even if it is, and does not need actual instruments to be played, even if they are used. The duo’s twisted orgy of sound borders on audacious, which the phrase “extremely psychedelic” fails to completely encapsulate. Co-released with Coherent States.
Do Not Disturb
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS93) CDR $8.00
Released to kick off the Summer Of Ugh, Glands Of External Secretion’s noise-snuffled psychedelica sounds like what you see when you look through a kaleidoscope that’s been sat on by the creeper staring dude who’s always around even though no one knows him well enough to say if he’s a narc or a pedophile. Doesn’t talk for long time, and then all of a sudden does, loudly. It’s an album of disconnected visions and unstable passages from recuperation diary entries come to life, composed during recovery on a moldy waterbed surrounded by unreliable nomads in a hands-free hospital run by machines. Or a Volkswagon repair shop, possibly. Hard to say. Although it’s definitely trippy. Not in a way that expands the consciousness but rather stubs your toe on the paint in the crosswalk and makes you fall over. All the cars are honking at you because the light has changed in the time it took you to get up. The bag of kung pao take-out has been annihilated and you can’t decide which of the three traumas your forearm is experiencing hurts the most. That’s what this is. The second kind of trippy. The bad kind, with the overdriven speakers, online instruments, radios, sound effects, household objects and office supplies, sentences boosted from thrift store cassettes and the internet. Three pieces are soundtracks for videos (one of which screened in November 2019 at the Poesie Carnosa / My Dance The Skull festival in Italy, and in December at the Lip Bar X Psychic Communities film festival in England, while the other two were part of the Plague Time Television and Heinous Whining isolation concerts, respectively). Duo appearances live on WRCT and at Skeleton Dust Records from April 2019 are included, as well a re-creation of a solo set performed on the air at KFJC in December 2019. Lyrics were extracted and assembled from Roberta Flack’s early ’70s soul ballad, autobiographical notes in an anthology of amateur photography, and dreams published in the first issue of Andy Bolus’s Barbequeue’d Humans zine. Plus a bunch of outbursts and symptoms of preexisting conditions. Ominous rectangles and just, you know, general yarrrnnnnng.
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
From the Earth to the Spheres Vol. 5
(Very Friendly - VF023) split CD $8.00
Fierce blonde Barbara Manning and Bananafish founder Seymour Glass are joined by Nels Cline on lap steel for “Icebox,” a slow ascent from isolation through frozen tape manipulation, icy drones, and subtle infernal groans from the obscure side of the moon. The unearthly fragmented vocals of the Italian Opalio brothers create the heavy, emotional textures of the interstellar “After the Meteor Shower,” with howling guitars and electronics, the distant echo of a drum, and a whispered chant emerging from the concrete surface of the planet.
Inoperable Turmeric Malignancy
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS83) CDR $8.00
Released in support of the April 2019 tour by Seymour Cassel and Barbara Mandrell, as Aaron Dilloway refers to them, this mostly live recording reveals the crazed shards of flavor-blasted rock always present in the duo’s idiosyncratic gack but usually obscured by a psychotic interfacing of the psychedelic and the concrète, a là Ceremony. The five tracks here, including covers of The Dead C. and Traffic, writhe around like a bunch of unforeseen side effects to ill-advised pharmaceuticals sharing. Screeching, bellowing, collapsing, meandering toward oncoming vehicles, too many impaired functions to name.
Masters Of Atlantis
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS29) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
This quasi-concept album chronicles an old man's nervous breakdown, his inevitable collapse, and the disastrous wake-up call. Like Meat Receiving (Ultra Eczema 2009), Tubular Bells (Starlight Furniture Co., 2003), and Icebox (Opax 2005), it is both an electronic album and a musique concrète album, though not strictly either. An unnerving montage of found sounds and field recordings (rusty hinges, antique calculators, security alarms, spewed liquids, defective mechanical pumps, public address announcements), narcotized sound effects from cartoons and children’s records, tape loops and tape cut-ups, and a smidge of electric guitar. Previously released on Inyrdisk.
Meat Receiving
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS41) CDR $8.00
Two long tracks of ground-up tape noise and uneasy electronics, plus the five-minute "Venison" (previously released by From The Same Mother on a CDR comp; features Tom Lax on tongs), all previously released on the Ultra Eczema LP of the same name. Overall, an off-kilter abattoir of dread and fear and suffering. With bonus tracks.
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / POSSET
Obedience To Authority
(Chocolate Monk - choc.452) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Huffed synth bubbles float over soapy tape? Language-collapse injected inside a plump proto-punk donut like so much unsavory butter? It’s them California goofballs Barbara Manning and S. Glass holding claws across the ocean with the bristly Joe Murray. Whatever the dance steps, this is one scatty reel; arms and legs flying, with the good whisky getting spilled all over the parquet floor. If you have a fancy, lie low in your scratcher and drink it all in. Yes, freak, gobble it down, this rich clotted draft. Leave sense at the door and wipe a flannel across your knotted brow. Layering (filo-like) ouch sounds becomes a universal “um.” It’s pure and simple. It’s dream weapon ammunition. Edition of 60
Unexplained Bite Marks
(Butte County Free Music Society - 34) CDR $8.00
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.
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / PRICK DECAY
Who’s Who In Hospitalization
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $6.00
Together in one noisological bed (so to speak), Barbara Manning, S. Glass, and Dylan and Lisa Nyoukis donate an hour of full-on collapsing noise and tape loops of junk. Sweet, sweet bounty. With Doug Pierson on electronics. Produced by Tom Smith.
Black Confetti
(Blue Spectrum Tapes) CDR $10.00
Challenged by the label to write a harsh noise album, Glass delivers this abomination instead. Guitar and screw; varispeed tape loops; defective disc burner; plumber’s snake; Sulphur box; field recordings; washing machine; metal plate; fails videos; 45 and flexidisc played with razor, thumbtack, staple. Standard edition of 20. Cover art by Andy Bolus
Donut Oil
(Chocolate Monk - choc.518) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
When Ali Robertson witnessed Seymour Glass tell Joe “Posset” Murray that he was the “only guy in the UK whose writing is worth a damn,” Robertson knew exactly who he was going to rope in for a future journalistic favor. Clearly, the Yankee behemoth knows which side of his scone is buttered. Nothing happens without fealty to the institutions of butchery and bakery, after all. “Sprinkle, crinkle, pit of mud, how I wonder who’s yer fud.” So began the silent incantation that protected the lesser half of Usurper and the decrepit 1/40th of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble in their completion of this magenta-cloud hallucination. From what, one might ask. Hard to say, as they overcame all obstacles and nefarious phenomena seen and unseen attempting to keep them from their appointed sounds. Emboldened by bullshit sorcery, the reckless pair of hobbits dove into a shared dreamstate, thrashed around inside pink cubes for a while, where disembodied voices and conveyor belts stacked high with body parts and vegan substitutes ensorcelled and nauseated, and slid back out with nary a grease stain on their Brunello Cucinelli perforated, suede-panelled, cashmere gloves. That’s all we know. Rest assured, friend, Robertson and Glass have packed all 48 minutes of this disc with primo slurps, throttled puckers, fairytale calisthenics, fading electronics, tape manipulation, intimate congress with inanimate objects, naïve instrument prowess, and the finest crackle that can be derived from stale peat loaves. Edition of 60
If You Can't Be Good, Be Reasonable
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.393) Magazine + CDR $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
An alarming, detailed travelogue by The Fourth Chinz-man Of The Apocalypse about his November 2017 trip to witch-trial country, where he played shows with Phil Milstein and Ariella Stok (aka Suppressive Persons) and on his own. CDR includes the trio’s entire set at Feeding Tube Records in Florence, Massachusetts. “The only thing weirder than what comes out of this motherfucker’s mouth is what goes in,” says Roland Woodbe. “Seriously, is there anything S. Glass won’t eat?” Forty-eight pages. The first in Chocolate Monk’s Lunkhead Library series. Numbered Edition of 100.
Indicate Damage Area
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $8.00
Live recordings from Philadelphia Record Exchange (2017), Temescal Arts Center (2019), Canessa Gallery (2021), and Red Gate Arts Society (2018). Admired by Burning Star Core's C. Spencer Yeh for its rampant “parking garage logic.” Joe Murray of Posset values the “super subtle quivering and very arresting vocal pieces. It’s everything I wanted to be wrapped up during the nog fog.” Cover art by Toni Lee Smith
Make Yourself Useless
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $8.00
Electroacoustics, tape music, field recordings, loops, objects, non-musical music, and like that. As C. Lavender says, “There’s more than one way to play a piano with knives.” Cover art by Toni Lee Smith
Molasses
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.394) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Forty minutes of electronics and loops recorded during an impromptu session at No Spray 205 in San Francisco, named after the 1919 disaster that buried an entire neighborhood of Boston in deadly sweetened ooze. Numbered Edition of 60.
Motion To Vacate
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $10.00
No special protection is required during exposure to the particle waves expelled by Glass from the inverted forehead of James Dean, counter-intuitive as that may seem. Loops, field recordings both found and provoked, media snippets, the dispassionate mashing of the moving parts of musical instruments, amplified objects, and electronic blobs throbbing and crackling under green moonlight all find their stripe in diffusions more splayed than whatever’s coming out of a lighthouse that doesn’t understand the assignment. With pacing quite comfortable for a lard-ass composer who flirts with incoherence but prefers the term “indefatigable,” Motion To Vacate rarely approaches the keeko-bleeko cut-up orgies of our Adderall nieces and nephews, settling instead into environments with suitably squishy platforms upon which to erect recitations of vocabulary words from a third-grader’s pop quiz, the butchered lyrics to “Impossible Dream,” and mosaic-style speeches suited to Antarctic statue dedications. The 24-minute “The Cost Of Parsimony Is Starvation” is presented here, a deconstructed version of which was first heard in Port Chalmers, New Zealand, at Lines of Flight in October 2023. Don’t be surprised that Glass was the only one at the festival to play amplified cabbage and drop tuned cockle shells into a metal bowl.
SEYMOUR GLASS / STEFAN JAWORZYN / DYLAN NYOUKIS
My Disgusting Heart
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.353) CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
A live set of horrible noise recorded at Café Oto in 2014, a slurry of guitar, voice and other oozed junk, with prodigious post-application of tape loop lunacy and other audio tricks. Cover art by Karen Constance. Numbered edition of 80
No One Cares About The Drama Queen’s Potassium Intake
(Butte County Free Music Society - BuFMS100) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
With the CDR edition sold out, Chocolate Monk and Butte County Free Music Society pressured their respective kingpins to add another 30 minutes of audio and a couple more frames of Karen Constance artwork for an expanded reissue on replicated CD (not a CDR) in a six-panel eco-pak.
Churning and honking like a couple of white apes in a suntan lotion sento, Nyoukis and Glass bromance the mud for a solid uninterrupted half hour. They manipulate field recordings, befoul sound effects recordings, loot audio thrift store cassettes, violate the public domain, and contaminate domestic objects. Auntie Pearl clinks and coughs and laughs and listens to Led Zeppelin. Duncan Harrison tries to teach Ms. Elkka how to ollie in a Hastings train station after a day getting pissed with Steve Underwood, because life skills. It’s just a good long wallow in ghostly moon flatch, something you look like you could use right about now. Allow the duo’s ballet-dancing electronic bendables to pirhouette and plié through your skull. A little equilibrium-challenged DNA, splatters of tube-squeezed murk, and descending plasmatic crud are the universal pick-me-up. If not yourself, do it for the plague babies. Co-released with Chocolate Monk. Edition of 150
No One Cares About The Drama Queen’s Potassium Intake
(Chocolate Monk - choc.520) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
With the CDR edition sold out, Chocolate Monk and Butte County Free Music Society pressured their respective kingpins to add another 30 minutes of audio and a couple more frames of Karen Constance artwork for an expanded reissue on replicated CD (not a CDR) in a six-panel eco-pak.
Churning and honking like a couple of white apes in a suntan lotion sento, Nyoukis and Glass bromance the mud for a solid uninterrupted half hour. They manipulate field recordings, befoul sound effects recordings, loot audio thrift store cassettes, violate the public domain, and contaminate domestic objects. Auntie Pearl clinks and coughs and laughs and listens to Led Zeppelin. Duncan Harrison tries to teach Ms. Elkka how to ollie in a Hastings train station after a day getting pissed with Steve Underwood, because life skills. It’s just a good long wallow in ghostly moon flatch, something you look like you could use right about now. Allow the duo’s ballet-dancing electronic bendables to pirhouette and plié through your skull. A little equilibrium-challenged DNA, splatters of tube-squeezed murk, and descending plasmatic crud are the universal pick-me-up. If not yourself, do it for the plague babies. Co-released with Butte County Free Music Society. Edition of 150
No One Cares About The Drama Queen’s Potassium Intake
(Chocolate Monk - choc.479) CDR $6.25 (Out-of-stock)
Churning and honking like a couple of white apes in a suntan lotion sento, Nyoukis and Glass bromance the mud for a solid uninterrupted half hour. They manipulate field recordings, befoul sound effects recordings, loot audio thrift store cassettes, violate the public domain, and contaminate domestic objects. Auntie Pearl clinks and coughs and laughs and listens to Led Zeppelin. Duncan Harrison tries to teach Ms. Elkka how to ollie in a Hastings train station after a day getting pissed with Steve Underwood, because life skills. It’s just a good long wallow in ghostly moon flatch, something you look like you could use right about now. Allow the duo’s ballet-dancing electronic bendables to pirhouette and plié through your skull. A little equilibrium-challenged DNA, splatters of tube-squeezed murk, and descending plasmatic crud are the universal pick-me-up. If not yourself, do it for the plague babies. Edition of 60
The Butcher Of Valencia
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Field recordings, guitar, voice, loops, sound processing, objects, excerpts from fails videos, radio, sulfur box, and synthesizer converging in a vortex of mutant ambience.
Thinking Of You, Naked
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Aiming for the tonality brut of something like Morton Feldman’s For Samuel Becket, S. Glass hits the bullseye of unintended targets such as Eleanor Parker’s malfunctioning electric wheelchair scene in Eye of the Cat, birds squawking as if getting crushed to death, and the rhythmically stunted remixes of “You Are My Love Angle” by ’80s Quebecois dubmeister Tad Quanphieu as Felix Nappledab. Which is about all one can realistically expect from electroacoustic sound collage after a sensuous night of Morris dancing. Seven new studio recordings — scraping, screeching, moaning, howling, recitations, voices, collages, loops, clunks, thuds, fwips, and reeeeeeeeer.
Withered Foot
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier - LELE10) CDR $10.00
Commissioned by Dylan Nyoukis for his monthly Resonance Extra radio show Fae Ma Bit to Ur Bit, "Please Return to Your Seat" is an audio journal using material sourced from San Francisco, Australia, and New Zealand during Glass’s solo tour in October 2023 with People Skills. The 30-minute edit of the original 50-minute collage sutures together field recordings, noise improvised on found objects, processed fragments of live shows and other artists’ soundchecks, raw material, loops, treatments, and sounds prepared but not used for the shows. The ambience of air travel, tourism, nature, broadcast media, and chuffa dialogue are consistent background beds throughout. Snatches of candid conversations can be heard (with Michael Zulicki of the Alberts Basement label and with Messrs Russell, Yeats, and Morley of the Dead C), as well as montages of a studio interview with radio host Pat O’Brien of 3RRR in Melbourne and a workshop tour by electronics legend Nigel Bunn in Dunedin. Deconstructed versions of "Cane Toad Euthanasia" and "Spine Found in a Ditch Near Uluru" were first presented on the radio during the same tour — the former on O'Brien's 3RRR program The O'Tomorrow Show, and the latter on Hamish MacKenzie's 2BOB program Lost And Found Sounds.
Enspiel
(Krayon Recordings - KR004) CD $7.50
Using tapes, electronics and guitars through chains of effects, Adrian Dollemore's fundamentally Earth-ground chords and astrally-projective processing paint a rural tonality with a bristling white afterglow. Glistening arpeggios rise and fall against gurgling analogue electronics, washes of processed cymbal and ethereal drone filigree.
Terminal Epic
(Phage - PT195) CD $9.75 (Out-of-stock)
Minneapolis-based power electronics with a variety of vocal styles, synth work, metal junks and a healthy dose of feedback.
Chaining The Last Hopes Of Humanity
(Legion Blotan - BLOTCD02) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A classic of ultra-evil, originally released on CDr in 2003, by fast and furious supreme Italian black metal band. Debauchery runs amok. Not for the easily offended.
Pond Life Noir
(Chocolate Monk - choc.562) Magazine + CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Time and logic totally fly out the window as soon as this stuff starts to spool,” admires Neil Campbell, who would know and is not prone to exaggerate. Godbert himself explains the genesis of his wonderful lo-fi reed / fog blare, “I was stuck in Edinburgh for five days due to a mammoth snow storm. Fortunately, I had at hand a copy of the Ladybird classic Pondlife, published in 1966, and decided to alter it and make it enjoyable for the people who are more interested in guns and murder. As the original preface to the book says, ‘A pond might look like just another patch of water, but beneath the green scum, many interesting things are happening’.” With 36pp full-color A5 book of collages. Edition of 50
The Sealed Container
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.396) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three absolute mind-melders from the dusty archives, hand-picked by Yorkshire’s favorite bear-hugger Neil Campbell. Vast aching tableaux where Godbert wails on the reeds and causes irreparable damage to guitars and keyboards borrowed from Matthew Bower — your key to understanding of Northern English heavy liquid infinite blah third eye whatever. Numbered Edition of 60.
Power Plant
(Sunspots) Used CD $15.00
Originally released in 1967 on International Artists, the debut album by this Austin group, easily one of the best of the Texas psychedelic underground, is considered a folkier, more West Coast-influenced companion to Easter Everywhere; it was recorded before the The 13th Floor Elevators’ psychedelic masterpiece, though the label released it after. Lead vocalist George Kinney was friends with Roky Erickson and they briefly played together in a teenage garage band, and while Kinney lacks Erickson’s feral intensity, and his songwriting couldn’t quite match the acid-fueled philosophizing of Tommy Hall, lyrics do reach for something deeper than the “listen to the sound of purple” clichés. The band’s gentleness sets them apart from their contemporaries, and the sophisticated interplay of guitarists Tom Ramsey and Jimmy Bird makes Kinney’s melodies all the more compelling. 2002 reissue.
A Peaceable Kingdom
(BloodLust! - B!126) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This Chicago ecstatic drone duo began in 2007 as an exploratory collaboration between software engineer, visual artist, and composer Steve Fors (unseen|unknown, United Steelworkers Union, blstr) and schoolteacher, label proprietor, and experimental musician Chris Miller (Number None, Th’ Exceptional Child, REBIS). Bound by a shared love of red wine, the Kranky aesthetic, and the eclectic recordings of off-beat Christian rock visionaries Daniel Amos (aka D. A., Dä), the two utilize a combination of electric and lap steel guitar, salvaged thrift store keyboards, pedals (both broken and boutique), obscure analogue synthesizers, and other obsolete noise-making esoterica. Fors and Miller forge deep into the realms of drone in pursuit of the perfect marriage of harsh and beautiful sounds, simple melodies, and song structures through spontaneous and ecstatic improvisation.
Planet of The Apes Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
(Intrada) Used CD $8.00
One of the composer’s most iconic scores. 1992 edition
Convolutions
(Nyahh) CD $12.00
With a “rugged tone and feel for treading the space between consonance and dissonance, the leading cellist of her generation grips the senses to a fierce see-saw, channels arcane energy, harks back to Irish and Scottish folk via Appalachian styles (and even classical phrasing), settles down into a sort of enchanted modal free jazz subtly informed by folk melody, and then suddenly bursts into flames, betraying a background with some of doom rock’s greatest in coruscating riffs of potency.”
Orion Awake
(Acme / Lion) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Epic early to mid-1970s instrumental psychedelic space-rock from the Pyramid Records archive, said to be pseudonymous after-hours studio sessions featuring the biggest names on the Krautrock scene at the time. Heavy drums, jamming guitars and Hammond organ — in short, an amazing improvised free-form trip of impressive magnitude, on par with the music of heavyweights like Neu! and Gila. An adventurous atmosphere throughout, whether the result is hallucinogenic and jazzy, heavy freak and roll with crushing guitars and massive, repetitive, almost funky rhythm, or Jimi Hendrix-inspired. Booklet essay examines the controversy surrounding this and other recordings first made known to the world via Virgin Records’ three-disc Unknown Deutschland series of compilations from the 1990s, including the fact that one ‘Genius P Orridge’ is named as producer of the Golem album.” Jewelbox edition from 2010
Kazue
(Trackshun Industries) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
The pop sensibilities of Pork Queen’s Justice Schoenfarber and Max Lee, and Mark Szabo (Infernal Devices, Capozzi Park) hide non-jangly surprises around every corner. Each plays a wide variety of instruments including electric guitars, bass, drums, organ, ukulele, violin, xylophone, tapes, pie pan, party favors, and scrap metal. From 1994.
Somniloquy
(James Goode) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The score of Somniloquy was composed collectively by Goode and the players -- Lara Allen (Heavenly Ten Stems, Ragtime Germs), Eric Marc Cohen (Job's Daughter's, United Noise), Timb Harris (Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere), Jason Schimmel (Orange Tulip Conspiracy, Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere), Ches Smith (Secret Chiefs 3, Xiu Xiu, Trevor Dunn, Marc Ribot), Trey Spruance (Mr Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Faxed Head). For two weeks all participants logged what they experienced while repeating phrases generated by Goode (a different one for each night) as they drifted off to sleep. A portion of the subsequent dreams and hypnagogic experiences serve as the piece’s narrative score, which was constructed to highlight the visual and thematic similarities between different people’s dreams and hypnagogic experiences taking place during the same twenty-four hour period. The performers interpret the dreams within the score, and make choices regarding how they to translate sounds and/or music (literally, emotionally, symbolically or oneirically). Recorded live at The Stone, NYC, July 13, 2007. Gatefold chipboard card jacket.
GREG GOODMAN / HENRY KAISER / LUKAS LIGETI
Heavy Meta
(Ecstatic Yod - E#76/FYPC22) Used CD $15.00
Pianist Goodman, protean guitar improvisor Kaiser and powerful, cross-cultural drummer Ligeti maintain structurally complex and taut inter-relationships as they shift between different paired settings and in and out of trio formation. “Logical Types” is “a bravuro performance from all hands,” according to Byron Coley. “From the strumbly, Magic Band-like opening cadences by Ligeti and Kaiser, through the sequences of equally whacked piano … the piece spurts and blurts with everything from a broken lyricism that recalls Paul Bley to squabbling crescendos that have a density approaching Nancarrow’s machine cycles. This is a ferocious and lyrical bastard of an album.” Sealed.
Googoosh
(Finders Keepers) Used CD $13.00
Despite being a national treasure to generations of free-thinking Iranians and one of the most well-known and beloved songbirds from the East, Faegheh Atashin found her songs and performances — combining inspiration from a deep-rooted history of Persian poetic verse and indelible Arabic songcraft — banned after the Iranian revolution of 1979. Her most famous songs have become anthems among international Iranian communities. Finders Keepers’ first Googoosh release focuses on a handful of her lesser-spotted tracks —mid-tempo pop peons with pulsating rhythm sections awash with expertly orchestrated strings (akin to that of intense Italian or French film composers). Other tracks take cues from jazz, bossa and early disco, unconsciously inducing political paranoia from the era’s imminent anti-pop restrictive regime.
Escalator
(Breathless) Used CD $15.00
A classic of sinister psychedelia from the late 1960s, featuring lead vocals and guitar by Lemmy Kilmister, and tabla instead of drums which gives Escalator a mystical quietness. This 2005 reissue includes all eleven tracks from the original LP (Stable 1969), plus bonus cuts “Horse” and “Back Door Man,” from a rare seven-inch.
Resolution Of Remembrance 1992-1999
(Pica Disk - PICA012) 4xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Yasutoshi Yoshida's Government Alpha project started in 1992 and became one of the leading names in the third generation of Japanese noise. Few artists embody the “pure energy” noise fans speak of feeling when listening to noise better than the ferociously intense Government Alpha. This 4xCD box set collects 62 tracks from obscure cassette releases from 1992 to 1999, as well as a number of previously unreleased tracks. Packaged in a solid box with silver foil printing (similar to the Incapacitants box), with a 24-page booklet featuring liner notes by Yoshida and Tommy Carlsson, and graphic collage works by Yoshida.
Sporadic Spectra
(Groundfault - GF004) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Extremely harsh, rumbling, crushing noise from Japan.
Venomous Cumulus Cloud
(PacRec) Used CD $10.00
A sci-fi odyssey by the Japanese legend, a cataclysmic adventure of volcanic blazes, time-machine blasts, and extremely loud electronics. Six tracks, forty minutes.
Grain Belt
(Small Doses - DOSE75) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Harsh noise and metal abuse from Minneapolis trio (Wince, Baculum, Willful). Three tracks recorded live. Edition of 200 copies. Co-released by Phage Tapes and White Centipede Noise.
Frog Soil
(Chocolate Monk - choc.591) CDR $8.00
Another offering congealed and solidified from the amorphous GP Kids technicolor quasi-song noise deluge. Leeds oiks Hils (Yakkida!, Cowtown) and Theo (Territorial Gobbing) whittle cheapo keyboards, janky cassette loops, toys and bells into spontaneous slop-pop rituals while all singing together. Honky tonk country lurches, synth pop sweetness and mumbled abstraction all fed through the one tube into the one Tupperware. Numbered edition of 50
Alice In Wonderland
(Soleilmoon) Used 5xCD $40.00
“This surreal and wildly ambitious project began quite humbly in 1988” explains Brainwashed, and took five years to complete. Greif finds “inspiration in literature, exotic field recordings, and musique concrète. As a result, [this eclectic] stew … [blends] radio serials, tape loop cut-ups, avant garde classical cacophony, clanking early industrial textures, horror movie soundtracks, and brooding ambient over the course of six mind-bending hours…. [In doing so, he] exercises a great deal of tact, largely allowing the narration to continue unmolested and seldom plunging into lengthy instrumental stretches…. [M]ost of the creative heavy lifting on the album involves the skillful and aggressive manipulation of the actors’ voices, surrounding the narration with disjointed phonemes, pitch-shifting, panning, backwards voices, and sundry other neat tricks…. [W]hen Grief does attack the actual narrative flow, he generally does it to supremely hallucinatory effect, making Alice and her friends sound submerged, fragmented, or narcotically slowed-down when it suits the story…. [D]issonance and disorientation serve the themes of the story quite well…. Greif … giv[es] the story a compelling dynamic arc, as his clanging rhythms and garish sound colors bring … animation and tension to the more action-packed parts of the tale, which in turn heightens the impact of the woozier, more drugged-sounding passages…. Of course, six solid of hours of [electronic landscapes, desconstructed text, computer manipulations], and mechanized…, unsettling, creepy and Kafkaesque … psychedelia is certainly exhausting, but … total immersion seems like the only way to fully experience a work this singular and consuming…. Alice in Wonderland is a spectacular achievement. Third edition, remastered in 2000. In multi-disc amaray case with the barcode brutally sliced off the paper inlay.
ABRACUJO
(Chocolate Monk - choc.593) CDR $8.00
Abracujo was glued together with stream of consciousness poetry, field drip and mouldy lab manipulation. This part of a trilogy (the other two consisting of Barnie Bewail, A Film Soundtrack cassette (Half A Million / Belltower Records) and Churn Clockburner Ace cassette (Torn Light) was recorded at Lincoln Shoppe and other parts of Brighton, UK, then performed live (with visuals by Karen Constance) shortly thereafter at the Bees Mouth in Hove, UK. early summer 2023. Edition of 60
GREY WOLVES / MACRONYMPHA / SUDDEN INFANT
Interzone 3
(Industrial Recollections) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
First-time CD reissue of SSS Productions’ 1992 cassette of this collaboration by noise masterminds with different approaches -- versatile Swiss aktionism meets brutal American harsh noise unit meets bleak, lo-fi UK industrial / power electronics.
Judgment
(Hospital - HOS247) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
A CD reissue of Hospital’s favorite cassette-only release from the legendary UK industrial icon in celebration of their twenty-third year of existence. Famed for their power electronics, Judgement instead exhibits Grey Wolves’ dark, rhythmic industrial and ritualistic, minimal synth self. Two side-long oil-slick tracks of filthy, crumbling, rotten beats hammer away with nihilistic chaos. Militant synth lines raise the occult flag. Ancient ethereal feedback howls voiceless language through the hallway of industrial fallout.
Folk Songs For An Obscure Race
(Haang Niap - HAANG002) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twenty-one tracks from one end of oblivion to the other. Misanthropic ’80s industrial comparable to SPK, early Ramleh and Whitehouse, for their shitty production, locked rhythms and medieval folk passages. A perfect soundtrack for your personal disintegration.
ANASTASIS GRIVAS / NICOLAS MALEVITSIS / VIC RAWLINGS / HOWARD STELZER / JASON TALBOT / THEODORE ZIOTOS
Howard Stelzer / Jason Talbot / Vic Rawlings vs. Anastasis Grivas / Theodore Zioutos / Nicolas Malevitsis
(Editions Zero) Used CDR $5.00
Twenty-four minutes each by two different trios: Howard Stelzer (tape), Jason Talbot (turntable), and Vic Rawlings (cello and circuit-bent electronics); and Anastasis Grivas (prepared bowed guitar), Theodore Zioutos (electronics), and Nicolas Malevitsis (amplified objects). Recorded 2000 and 2001. Edition of 140
CD2: Verwerfungen
(Obfuscated - OR21) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Quaking, roaring and dominating constellations originating from Freiburg, Germany. Manipulated samples paired with waves of synthetic noise drones and atmospheric shreds of everyday sounds form the basis of Grodock’s industrial ambiance.
Battimenti 1964-1966
(Ants) Used CD $12.00
“An electronic work composed and realized in 1965, made by 94 combinations of near frequencies, organized in groups of two, three, four and five sine waves, couplings that yield ‘harmonic beatings’— overtones born of the intersection of frequencies. The rigour of Grossi’s working method creates an imaginary sound painting … that anticipated and was contemporary to other masterpieces of modern music, a real forerunner of electronic minimalism.” In gatefold CD jacket with booklet. From 2003
Gruel
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR090) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
CD reissue of classic avant-sludge, the only recording Gruel made. Like The Melvins playing King Crimson's Red album, this is theatrical, beautifully composed, and troglodyte heavy. Four 15-minute, utterly immersive songs, with quiet, atmospheric passages getting shattered by barrages of repetitious riffing. Edition of 500 in a stickered PVC sleeve, with the disc wrapped in a big double-sided, full-color poster.
Petturien Rooli
(Freak Animal) Used CD $12.00
2009 disc that steers clear of the previously obligatory harsh noise blasts, in favor of a more textured, detailed, and experimental approach to PE / industrial-noise. Metal objects, wood, water, stones, glass, sand, mud, concrete, tools (shovels, lawnmover, cement mixer), metallic pipes (wind instrument), radio transmissions, digital keyboards, analogue synthesizer, analogue Walkman with field recordings and tape manipulations, 8-track MD, 4-track analogue tape, digital hard-drive recorder for field recordings, various effects, bass-amp, PA system, guitar-amp.
Angela, David and the Great Neapolitan Road Issue
(Cenotaph) Used CD $7.00
“A mysterious little enigma of an album” from 2001 by Jeremy Barnes (of Bablicon), Aaron Moore and Laurence Coleman (both from Volcano The Bear), along with Nick Mott and Korena Pang, says Brainwashed, “Seeming at once intimate and detached…, primitively recorded and loosely improvised…. The instrumentation is minimal, with clattering percussion and warm organ tones. Its idiosyncrasies are beguiling, and much of the album washes over like a gentle afternoon hallucination…. The lyrics are disjointed and surreal, bringing to mind the spaced-out whimsicality of solo Syd Barrett. Even the occasional areas of tension and noise seem oddly pastoral.” Sealed
Cosmic Trigger / 2AM Visit
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
“Harsh-noise from 2004 that pleads guilty and makes no apologies. Everything is said in the name, already: the Faulty Connector, the defective connection. The damaged cable, the messed up solder that blows up the amps. A return to the basics of the genre, in fact: white and pink noise, acoustic aberration assumed, sought after, pursued headlong — straight ahead. In fact, Guilty Connector attacks the racket with a grindcore, punk, rock’n’roll mentality.”
Bientôt Votre Mariage
(Partycul Systems) Used CD $8.00
2003 album by Thomas Fernier and crew that approaches, according to Néosphères, electronica, post rock, and krautrock (motorik rhythms à la Neu!, electric guitar saturations and concrete music à la Faust), “but also solo piano, small ramshackle banjo ballads, string glissandi (DJ Spooky style), jazzy atmospheres and almost trip-hop grooves.”
Vinyl Anthology: The Complete Gum Recordings From 1987-1990
(23five - 23five005) 2xCD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Back in the late ’80s, Australians Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis gathered up thrift store turntables and soiled records and formed Gum. The duo’s caustic rupture of skipping records and smoldering surface noise predates current avant-turntablists like Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, and Otomo Yoshihide. Between 1986 and 1990, Gum piled thick layers of electrically charged static, spiraling repetitions, and arrhythmic palpitations. Vinyl Anthology includes everything from their self-released albums Vinyl and 20 Years in Blue Movies and Yet to Fake an Orgasm, comp tracks originally released by RRRecords and Korm Plastics, as well as plenty of previously unreleased material.
Raga Jhinjhoti
(India Archive Music) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pure energy from beginning to end by this legendary sarodist, with Samar Saha on tabla, performing Alap Jor and Jhala, and Vilambit and Drut Gasts in tintal. Complex and fascinating layakari (polyrhythmic improvisation), made all the more mind-blowing by their intricacy and the mathematical virtuosity of Gupta’s machine-gun bursts of notes. From 1991
WILL GUTHRIE / JÉRÔME NOETINGER
Face Off
(Erstwhile) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
An interactive duet with Guthrie on percussion, microphone and electronics; Noetinger on Revox tape machine and electronics. Sealed
The Electronic Record For Children
(King Record Co. - KICP2633) Used CD $20.00
Electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack and child educator Esther Nelson dive into the world of psychedelic music compositions designed to open the minds and hearts of 1969's young. Their far-out electronic music evokes a space age alternate universe. Joining them is pianist Praxietellis Pandit and the relaxed friend Chris on songs about everything from ancient folk tales to outerspace to what the world sounds like when you listen with your inner self. Japanese reissue from 2005.
The Way-Out Record For Children
(King Record Co. - KICP2632) Used CD $22.00
Heavy songs about robots, Indian mysticism, motorcycle-riding fantasies and other touchstones of any psychedelic masterpiece. Recorded in 1968, the music is all generated by Haack's homemade electronic instruments, which churn out proto-hip-hop beats and straight-up avant garde moments left and right, while the voices of the kids in Esther Nelson's community chime in here and there. The record ends with a haunting existential twist that leaves all free-thinkers screamin' for more. Japanese reissue from 2004.
Madon Evankeliumi
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR091) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
Total swirling psychedelia, heavy shifting tides of drone with evil organ lines permeating the noise, self-described as "a slow, heavy bell.” Based on source sounds provided by Olly Pearson, Chris Chantler and Dom Finbow. Edition of 500 in foldover wallet and PVC sleeve. Art by Andrew Labanaris (Electric Wizard and MOSS).
Unlawful Noise
(Atavistic) Used CD $18.00
The energy of this group — Kees Hazevoet, Peter Bennink, Peter Brotzmann, Han Bennink, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo — is truly incredible and will likely cause waves of both emotion and thought in receptive listeners. Although there are noticeable spots where individual reedists shine, many of the most exhilarating moments on this 1976 recording come when three or four of them unite in bursts of sonic joy. The fury on exhibit might not be revolutionary anymore but when Bennink breaks out the bagpipes, and it remains nearly impossible to discern who is playing what. Always a good sign. Moholo delivers blistering patterns akin to Rashied Ali or Sunny Murray but with a greater sense of rhythm if not outright swing. Hearing him beat the hell out of his cymbals at the end of the first track will do the soul some good. Traycard has a promo cut on one spine.
MMVII
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR041) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Beyond-heavy necro-doom from France in the vein of Burning Witch, Corrupted, Thorr's Hammers. etc, but ten times slower and heavier. Comes in a six-panel digipak.
HAFLER TRIO / ANDREW LILES / COLIN POTTER
3 Eggs
(Important) Used CD $8.00
Originally intended as a merch item for a tour that never took place, their first collaboration.
A Bag Of Cats
(Touch) Used CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
First issue of Spiral audio-magazine, with booklet and postcard, in slipcase card sleeve. From 1990
An Utterance Of The Supreme Ventriloquist
(Soleilmoon) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
A psychedelic head-trip from 1996, reissued in 2005, with two twenty-one-minute pieces reaching a similar plane of consciousness occupied by Nurse With Wound. In outsized semi-transparent printed card wallet, with similarly-packaged booklet.
Being A Firefighter Isn’t Just About Squirting Water
(Important) Used CD $9.00
On the fifth installment in Important’s series of EPs from sound sculptor Andrew McKenzie, a 20-minute construction from 2005 starts with soft metallic harmonics, sounding like heavily treated guitar strings, with low-frequency hums and whistle-like feedback entering the mix as it progresses. Edition of 500
Kill The King
(Korm Plastics) Used CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
“One of the qualities,” explains Brainwashed, that makes this 1991 release “such a satisfying work is that Andrew McKenzie balances his characteristically aggressive contrarian and experimentalist impulses with massive, sustained, and subliminally buzzing drones and an occasional languorous pulse….” Guests include “a disappeared” (presumed to be John Duncan), “a never was” (ditto Zbigniew Karkowski), and “performance artist / sexologist Annie Sprinkle…, lending her voice to be chopped and mangled into unrecognizability for a cathartic and disquieting mid-song sequence as they are all distilled into either a swirling, quivering shimmer or an ominous rumble…. [T]he accompanying booklet is a masterpiece in its own right, both as a feat of graphic design and as an impenetrable enigma. [W]himsically disquieting pictures, pages of brief evocative text, six seemingly extraneous song titles, and [silver] words [that may] have nothing to do with the music … [come] from a rather curious and alien place, and bear little resemblance at all to the comparatively homogenous commodities released by ‘serious’ musicians that want to be liked…. [T]his album could have emerged from an aborted military experiment to create sound waves that are so vibrant and psychotropic on a microcosmic level that hapless enemy combatants would be unable to do anything but listen intently…. [A]n utterly absorbing and unpredictable release from one of the most twisted and calculating minds in modern music.”
Kirk
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $6.00
Slanted, off-kilter chord progressions by Susanne Lewis (vocals, guitar, violin, organ, keyboards, sampler), Bob Drake (organ, keyboards, bass guitar, drums), Dave Kerman (drums), Bill Gilonis (guitar), Faon Lewis (viola), Chris Cutler (drums). From 1992. Sealed
Execration That Accept to Knowledge
(Forced Exposure - FE032) CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live solo guitar visions from Fushitsusha mastermind, his first domestic CD release (from 1993).
Bijou Bastard Box Room Suite
(Chocolate Monk - choc.415) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The mystery duo has added a third member and invites you into their brown study for more contemplative probing that sometimes sounds like Solid Eye twanging and rippling underneath a radio broadcast by a crunked-up Lexie Mountain. “An artist arrives to paint a portrait of the royal family, but Trinket is unable to get her mane to stay in place and chaos ensues when a bird flies off with her hairgrip,” according to TV Guide. “Starring: Gonçalo F Cardoso, Alex Jones, Phil Lane — three sensitive gits, tight as a piss purse. This shiny disc is better than your last 27 purchases. Dust ain’t randy no more. (Subtitles) (Repeat) Rating: 6.6” Numbered edition of 60
III
(Public Eyesore - 28) Used CDR $5.00
Thirty-six short duets from 2001, perfect haikus éléctroniques, semi-fermented and compressed much like a fine oolong or adolescent foot-binding.
Blow Out Your Blood
(Freedom From - FF0172) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A demonic wall of sound from 2002, straddling thrash metal and industrial noise.
Certainty of Swarms
(No Fun) Used CD $5.00
Masterful combining of piercing vocals with walls of guitars, precise heavy electronics and thundering drums. A fusion of metal, noise rock, free jazz, industrial, and harsh electronics. From 2008. Sealed
Empty Quarter
(Harbinger Sound) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
New 2007 recordings from the Beatty / Tremaine / Connelly trio. Digipack packaging. Limited edition of 1,000 copies. Recorded in Ypsilanti, Michigan, January/March 2007.
First Came Love, Then Came The Tree
(Amish) Used CD $4.00
Treading similar waters as the psych-folk of Tower Recordings and the partially composed harsh improv of the Dead C. Dan Brown Samara Lubelski, and Theo Angel filled pour it on with primitive rhythms, droning violin, skipping records, unplugged electric guitars, bowed cymbals, drums, bass and a wealth of found sounds. Cut corner promo.
Laugh Out Lord
(Drag City) Used CD $6.00
The funniest unfunny man in America recorded live at various hotels with laugh-tracks dubbed in. Jokes about religion and terrorism fall flat and the crowd turns on our hero like a pack of drunken wolves.
Dynasty Suites
(Melon Expander) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Solid Eye's Joseph Hammer cites receiving more than one AM radio station at the same time and an episode of '70s TV show Land of the Giants, the one where astronauts use tape loops to thwart alien tyrants, as a couple of his musical influences. His unique utilization of consumer audio technology, tape loops, samplers and analog synthesizers yilelds compelling and varied musical expressions. Since 1980, he has performed and recorded with Points of Friction, Dinosaurs With Horns, Solid Eye, Blue Daisies, Steaming Coils, Debt of Nature (which became Medicine), Vector 3 Niner, Paramecial Wedding, Kitten Sparkles and Dimmer. Dynasty Suites is Hammer’s first solo CD, 51 minutes of real-time tape loops certain to scramble your eggs.
Roadless Travel
(Art Into Life - AIL003) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Unparalleled works of tape manipulation by this Solid Eye veteran. With twenty-four-page booklet of liner notes (essentially a full history of Hammer) by T. Sakaguchi, the foremost Japanese LAFMS historian.
A Black Box
(Static Music) Used CD $12.00
Emphatic, powerful and technically excellent production from 1988, which smooths a path between the 1970s and the ’80s. More rocky than pH7, less techno than Moving Targets.
pH7
(Virgin) Used CD $15.00
The spirit of experimentation that prevails on other albums by the VdGG founder are set aside on his eighth album from 1989 in favor of the comfort of tighter, more mainstream songs.
The Future Now
(Virgin) Used CD $12.00
One of Hammill’s best and most disconcerting albums since the mid-’70s, filled with beautiful piano ballads, strange experiments, and anthemic rock.
Music To Eat
(Shotput) Used 2xCD $35.00
Reissue of the group’s only album, drawing upon jazz, progressive and psychedelic guitar rock, and a generally surrealist bent to back Col Bruce Hampton’s savant ravings. Comparisons with Zappa and Beefheart might seem inevitable, but their more guitar-oriented sound skirts even closer to the lunatic fringe. Includes lengthy history by guitarist Glenn Phillips, crammed with believe-it-or-not anecdotes from the group’s fascinating career.
4: Aids-A-Delic
(Public Bath) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
It’s a sweet pile of junk. No, it’s tape loop madness. Don’t argue, internets, Goodbye Doctor arbitrates your conflict thus: “One of the many off-spews of Yamatsuka Eye and the whole Boredoms noise phenomenon (before they drifted off into some kind of ur-Jam band heaven) … [was] recorded on a poorly functioning boombox; I’ve also heard that a drill was used to make noises [and] break gear…. More like mood music, at least for me…, memories of a kind of unhinged mental state…., this is a soundtrack to a breakdown.”
Live!! 82 Apr. 12 Studio Ahiru-Osaka
(MoMnDad - MoM003) Used CD $40.00
Twenty-four minutes of Eye goin' nuts. Plus The Exotic Mood Of Chaotic Voo-Doo! and Riot In Jungle! – voodoo- and jungle-themed exotica by Richard Hayman And His Orchestra, Prince Onago / Princess Muana, Chaino Guy Warren, John Berkely “Peanuts” Taylor, Cyril Jackson, Bertha Egnos, Don Randi Trio, and Walter Wanderley. From 1993. Sealed.
Live!! 84 Dec. 16 Zabo-Kyoto
(MoMnDad - MoM002) Used CD $30.00
Twenty-seven minutes of Eye Yamatsuka on voice, tapes, glass-crash-percussion, cat cutting; Taketani on metal throw, army hammer, electric saw. Plus The Exotic Moog Of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (#2 Moog Groove) – vintage easy listening tracks by The Moog Machine, Dick Hyman, Ralph Carmichael, Provocative Electronics, Morton Subotnik, Spaced Out, Hugo Montenegro, The Electric Concept Orchestra, and Les Baxter. From 1993. Sealed
We Are Hardcore
(Black Operations) 6xCDR + DVDR $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
Expanded reissue of Superman Cha Cha’s 2005 collection of rare early Condome Cassex cassette releases, collaboration cassette with Kyoakukyojindan, rare compilation tracks and “Cock Action” video. With twenty A4 inserts (cassette artworks, rare early interviews, articles, pictures, etc. from Japanese magazines such as Fool’s Mate, P.O.W, Gekko-Luna).
Boolean Blues
(Digitalis) Used CD $4.00
In trying to find new pathways in electronic music, this former member Hochenkeit and The Davis Redford Trio spins solo modular synth exploits to the stars. Boolean Blues is psychedelic and mathematical all at once. Softness and melody hook you straight off, but heavy doses of electronic mayhem keep things uneasy.
Text Sound Snowflakes
(Sham Repro) CDR $7.25
One side of the sound poetry / musique concrete album Text Sound Compositions (Fylkingen 1978) by the Swedish experimental poet and composer at the same time as one side of the Japanese synth-player’s electronic-arrangements-of-Debussy album Snowflakes Are Dancing (RCA Red Seal 1974). Straight through with no manipulation.
Breaks
(Krim Kram) CD $14.00
Debut solo CD by Wuhan-born, London-based artist who also performs in the duos Oishi (with Ren Shang) and ecm (with Joseph Khan). Four lean and sinewy improvisations —tightly controlled buzzing and rippling electric currents; pointillistic, splintering rhythms and textures; sparse, jagged incursions; and wiry, static blasts — that explore “rhythmic patterns from dusty potentiometers and dirty electronic circuits in modular synthesis improvisation.”
Flowers on 45: The Homestead Singles
(Homestead - HMS161) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Totally bonkers guitar and berserk screaming from Mr. Anus and Mr. Horribly-Charred–Infant’s late ’80s and early ’90s singles: They Cleaned Out My Cut With A Wire Brush; BB Gun; Call Me Pudge; and Peel Sessions.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY I CAN’T READ / OVA!
The Number On My Forehead Is Gone
(Freedom From) Used Split CD $3.00
“Guitar, drums, a bit of electronic tinkering,” explains Perte & Fracas about the eight track here by Ova! “Relentless rhythms. Temporary madness. Things that collide in all directions. Shooting power.” About Happy Mother’s Day I Can’t Read, they continue, “Tony Remple works in hardcore electronics, the one that does a lot of shzzzzzz and crrrrrriiii with some twisted beats and feedback in your face.” Plus five collab tracks. From 2004
Eight Knots Bathing
(Chocolate Monk - choc.573) CDR $8.00
Glistening Examples recording star and British Library good egg Tom Bench finally gives in to Chocolate Monk pestering. Recordings of significant and insignificant situations from 2021 and 2022, mostly. Tightly tangled up together and left to marinate. Not so fast. A fine set of simmering lower case noise and field recordings utilizing electronics, tapes, loops, Dictaphone, spring reverb, broken violin / guitar, phone, feedbacker and whatnot. Cover art from our man Malcy Duff. Edition of 60
Standard Pub Music
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Lovely anti-music from two of the UK’s most bent-out-of-shape gents. Tom Bench (Hardworking Famlies) brings guitar, coffee machine, electronics and ghosts, while Joe Baldwin (Hello Spiral) settles for guitar, data corruption, taking out the bins and Casio VL-Tone. Edition of 60
Music For Higher Dimensional Consciousness
(Somnimage - SOMCD112) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Remastered CD reissue originally released on CDR (Heresee 2009). Say hello and goodbye to time and space.
Twig Harper
(Hanson - HN237) CD $8.50 (Out-of-stock)
This continuation in the alternate universe tradition of Harper's three-volume Intuitive American Esoteric series, and his first proper CD release, is forty-three minutes of psychedelic tape manipulations and droning synthesizer, electronic and organic sound mixed to brain-warping perfection, bells, homemade electronics, synth, piano, strings, junk, horns and voice treated with tape for full-on musique concrete / sound poetry / electronic trance-inducing confusion. Edition of 500.
Two Variations for the Shadow of the Absolute
(Primordial Void) CD $10.00
Incorporating synthesized instrumentation and digitally manipulated studio recordings, the one-two punch of “Positive Charge” and “Negative Charge” falls somewhere between Ligeti’s electronic works and Boulez conducting Zappa, yet Harper’s trademark compositional techniques are present, and, above all, these two variations could only have been made by him and his shadowy cohorts (Dolphin Webinar, anyone?).
As a bonus for Tedium House customers, order this and receive a complimentary copy of Bananafish #13, featuring an interview with Twig Harper from the late 1990s, plus the companion compilation disc with an exclusive Nautical Almanac track.
Ride A Dove
(Siltbreeze - SB50) CD $10.00
Behold the awesome splatter in all its raw disregard. You may rightly wonder what you have done to deserve such thrills as will be bestowed upon skull once Harry Pussy’s guitar-drums-shriek begins its inward seepage. Something wonderful, no doubt.
What Was Music?
(Siltbreeze - SB60) CD $10.00
Lo-fi and off-the-cuff. The explosive spirit of free jazz applied to post-punk experimental aesthetics. Gloriously primitive highbrow hoot by one of the greatest duos of all time.
You’ll Never Play This Town Again
(Load - 121) CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced and peppered American free rock from the Clinton-era three-piece. Complies the long out-of-print self-released tour 12-inch from 1997, the Live 10-inch (Cherry Smash 1998), Live at Salon Zwerge 12-inch (Blackbean And Placenta Tape Club 1998), Toxic Drunks / Radiation Nation (De Stijl 1997), and tracks from split-7s with Pelt (Klang Industries 1998) and Frosty (Menlo Park 1997)
Under Glass
(Drunken Fish - DFR44) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second album by Bardo Pond and Roy Montgomery, who in 1998 churned great slabs of guitar and keyboard drift, deep-ended bass grooves, staggered rhythms, and topped it all with a kiss of flute and quiet mumble. Fifty-six minutes.
They Must Be Clapping For… Me!
(Crank Automotive) Used CD $3.00
The second full-length album from these Connecticut-based free-improv monsters. A body-cracking collection of tracks created with horns, guitars, drums, and electronics.
Differently Desperate
(Ad Hoc) Used CD $4.00
2007 reissue the 1991 studio album of diverse avant-pop songs by Bill Gilonis (Art Bears, The Work), Catherine Jauniaux (Fluvial), Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now) and Tom Cora (Skeleton Crew, Curlew) — with guests David Thomas, Amos, Chris Cochrane, Tim Hodgkinson, Hahn Rowe and Rick Brown, among others. Even though Rock In Opposition bands were known for their seriousness, here they branch out into a lighter, more whimsical side of the genre, exploiting pop idioms and structures. There’s even a cover of The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar.” Hole drilled into digipak
In The Shade of Fire
(Hanson - HN206) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Originally released on LP by Silent Records in 1986, minus two tracks (for length), In The Shade of Fire can now be heard how it was originally intended for the first time. The harsh sound works of The Haters bring to mind the idea of process: ideologies behind something being destroyed or manipulated; the amplified and sometimes distorted sounds of the processes representing a document of acts carried out upon the objects, machines, or otherwise. The Haters intend listeners to experience the process of the audio lines as they were primarily constructed in the recording area. In the Shade of Fire, remastered by Warn Defever from the original master reels, reflects their strong textural aesthetic through object manipulation and recording that defines GX Jupitter-Larsen's place in the world of harsh noise. “Glsam” and “Diti” are explosive, introductory and side-concluding / framing pieces that highlight and pronounce the breaking and crashing down of material, all gelled with bass-driven strikes whose trails deteriorate into hints of cascading dirty and dark Americanoise distortion. “Bebas” powers through a heavier dynamic with conscious falling apart of source material, but in abstracted waves that suggest rebuilding just to simply crash fall apart again in futility. “Thuch” enhances the textural elements of the explosions and crashes as the sharpness of the strikes are slightly rounded at the edges and expose a quasi-gurgle that moves and slaps with vicious perplexity. “Taisic,” a study of hiss manipulation, is accented with minimalist scraping. “Cassas” is the album's meditation on sharp, shot-driven violence, articulated and layered for optimum cutting and breaking, bringing forth sound dynamism from very physical deterioration. “Fire 5,” a highly textural wall of sound that, to the contemporary fan of gritty and dirty crunch waves, is a primary early example of crackle lines that focus on the inner dynamism of sound itself.
These Things Happen, Volume 1
(Helicopter - 92091) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Seven-inch works, including several impossibly rare and unheard. All tracks have been newly transferred and remastered from the original DAT tapes. An absolutely crucial collection of classic entropy that inaugurates Helicopter’s new series focusing on West Coast artists.
These Things Happen, Volume 2
(Helicopter - 92092) Used CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Pieces originally submitted to compilations, including several impossibly rare and unheard. All tracks have been newly transferred and remastered from the original DAT tapes. An absolutely crucial collection of classic entropy that inaugurates Helicopter’s new series focusing on West Coast artists. Includes obi
TEPPO HAUTA-AHO / EVAN PARKER / PHIL WACHSMANN
The Needles
(Leo) Used 2xCD $12.00
One disc showcasing a 2000 live performance in Finland by violinist Wachsmann, saxophonist Parker and bassist Teppo Hauta-Aho (the trio’s first time together), one disc recorded a year later in the studio.
CHRISTOPHE HAVARD / EMMANUEL LEDUC / JOHN MORIN / JULIEN OTTAVI
Digital Live Radio Session
(Fibrr) Used CD $8.00
“Tinny, noisy tones (rather than severe, sub-frequency glitches) consume the majority of the [2001] session,” explains Matt Roberson, performed on radio, tape, motors, contact microphones, mini-disc (Havard), no input mixing board, radios feedback, sampler (Leduc), turntables, sampler (Morin), and laptop (Ottavi). “Halfway through [the information-and-media-permeated atmosphere], a soft drone emerges with equally soft bursts of music and other sound … minutes before harsher tones enter.”
Sever
(Intransitive - INT032) Used CD $4.00
Evocative, highly visual drone music, layers upon organic layers in constant motion, and yet seem somehow still. On the third solo album by San Francisco-based composer Jim Haynes, the process of decaying and wearing down materials is implied; its passages of rough clang and cyclic scraping metal seem implacably tangible, as if one is witnessing time-lapsed erosion in action.
Telegraphy by the Sea
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rust-tinged artist Jim Haynes prefers to abstract recorded sounds to the point that he can’t remember how he made them, so that it’s impossible to go back and reverse engineer anything. The source material for Telegraphy by the Sea spans four years and several continents. Fragments come from an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, a marathon six-hour performance at the Diapason Gallery in New York City, and a fortuitous encounter with a rainy stairwell. This breathtaking album of mangled field recordings and droning techniques perches at the allegorical intersection of electromagnetic landscapes and meteorological phenomena, where exasperated blasts of air bellow in harmony with a swarm of mechanical locusts and a tumbling landslide of jagged rock, grounded for the most part in a dynamic play of sinusoidal drones.
Ununtrium’s Daughter
(Semperflorens) CD $13.50
With a somber mood prevalent during the compositional process, ghosts of that emotional state resonate within the four interlinked pieces on Ununtrium’s Daughter, somewhat akin to an imagined version of Harold Budd’s dark ambient masterpiece Abandoned Cities. On Haynes’s soundtrack to allegory for an existential transitory state of self-disintegration, “Virgo” came to fruition through a very brief field recording (captured before the batteries died) of a huge piece of plate glass shattered during a Black Bloc splinter riot in San Francisco, 2012; it groans under its own weight through a filigree of delicate crackles, while ultrasound recordings of a diesel locomotive punctuate “As We Spiral Backwards” with microsonic rasps and blurts emitted by a lonely, idling engine at the Port of Oakland. Sounds of the tides of the Atlantic Ocean on the South Carolina shore recorded through a long-thin wire vibrating in the churning currents are found on “…And The Flowers Fall.”
Head Of The Demon
(Ajna Offensive - FLAME76) CD $9.00
Sepulchral and doom-laden, Lovecraftian in intent, and aimed at the abyss, Head Of The Demon’s hypnotic and honed debut plays mainly on the rawness of riffs and cyclically repeated chants. Psychedelic vertigo is assured, and with it the stimulation of perceptions that open windows to mysterious parallel dimensions. Vocals recall a mentally dissociated Tom Warrior while the guitars constantly seek oblique pathways of expression without foresaking metal altogether — creeping ominously between proto-doom Sabbathetic realms and the atmosphere of Mortuary Drape’s cenotaph —but it’s the ancient and mysterious sound of an organ which gives additional character to such ritualistic music, making the result extremely gruesome.
Under The Stress of a Headlong Drive
(Invada) Used CD $11.00
These supreme masters of all things wah-wah with an unhealthy obsession with krautrock blast off on a hypno-space jam trajectory, without losing track of songs or perfectly deadly riffs.
A Horse In Your Head When You Made That Horse
(Chocolate Monk - choc.557) CDR $8.00
The work by this little-heard duo Fiona Kennedy and Jon Marshall (the couple behind shared projects including The Hunter Gracchus and Singing Knives Records, and individual projects such as Roman Nose, Blue Yodel and Papal Bull) draws on their professional and personal experiences of mental health as manifested in the individual and the family, set against contemporary depoliticized, pathologizing and commodified interventions, playfully disrupting attempts to determine sound sources, attribution and intent. Edition of 60
HEART OF GLUE / ORCHID SPANGIAFORA
Calm Down
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.342) split CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
With delicate hands Robert Carey and June Price fudge up your brain and send it spinning across the room in a colorful smear of whodunnit confusion. Your ears will be all hopped up and out of joint via serious loop damage, smart-ass edits and pulverizing radio talk-show gibberings, advertisements (fungal infections, anyone?), religious and political gonks, etc. Two tracks apiece from these maestros, concluding with “Half Life,” where Carey mixes a junky thirty-dollar Japanese synth drone with a Matt Krefting sampler duet performed to harass attendees at a shindig in Byron Coley’s barn. It will have you turning to the loony juice. Edition of 75
CHRISTOPH HEEMAN / ANDREAS MARTIN
Lebenserinnerungen Eines Lepidopterologen
(Robot - RR20) Used 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
A retrospective look at their early solo works, which move between minimalist guitar compositions, tape-music narratives, and cascading electronics. Includes Martin’s Doppelpunkt Vor Ort ten-inch (Robot Records 1993) and Heemann’s Über Den Umgang Mit Umgebung Und Andere Versuche ten-inch (Robot Records 1991), previously unreleased material, obscure seven-inch tracks, and their collaborative H.N.A.S. opus from Ach, Dieser Bart! LP (KK Records 1988). This is the 2010 edition, with two additional tracks not on Robot’s 1999 edition.
Sleeper Awakes On The Edge Of The Abyss
(Streamline) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
The CD was originally released in 1993 and has just now been reissued by Streamline Germany. “Heemann restrains and refines Akita’s normally brutal noise and adds his own collage of sounds,” explains Brainwashed. “Drones, washes, electronics and samples (such as metals and chirping birds). Heemann truly paints with sound and here the Merzbow material is just another shade of audio color for his abstract and impressionist palette. He then shapes it all into five pieces, each with a particular character all its own…. [U]tterly beautiful. Hypnotic passages of waterfall wash, layered electronic drone, metallic churnings, gurgling static and deep ambiance perfectly flow into one another.” From 1993
Cold Planet
(Living Myth - 003) CDR $10.50
Hypnotic, apocalyptic drone by Chuck Bettis (electronics) and Brendan Murray (electronics), who seamlessly blend analog and digital electronics. Five tracks, sixty-eight minutes. Edition of 100.
Guitarded
(Chocolate Monk - choc.596) CDR $8.00
This scruff really wants to put rock’n’roll in the ground. If you soak the ego in whisky long enough, it becomes a dissonant crank. Individually made collage covers, no two alike. Numbered edition of 50
A Walk Thru The Bazaar
(Locust) CD $8.00
(Locust) Used CD $6.00
“The fourth installment in the 2003 Met Life Series by this Turkish composer takes the listener through an Istanbul marketplace and captures the energetic day-to-day activities of hawkers buying and selling goods, children running about, traditional music in the distance, cell phones playing unfamiliar melodies. Helvacioglu’s response is almost like an enriched memory of the market’s cultural texture that musically retains much of that raw Earth feeling one initially encounters on the field recording. But source material is elevated as field-recorded voices are transformed into a rich chorus ensconced in an infectiously pulsing electronic trance that seems to float above the market itself.” Used copy has scribbled barcode.
Behind The Door
(Blossoming Noise - BN063) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Six love songs including a cover of Suicide’s “Cheree.” When love is more painful than deaf. Edition of 200.
MICHEL HENRITZI / JUNKO / MASAYOSHI URABE
Ecstasy Of The Angels
(Opposite) Used CD $6.00
Talk about a power trio. Dustbreeders’ Michel Henritzi creates bleak, fractured landscapes with snare drum, wood and metal junk, turntable and feedback. Cult favorite Masayoshi Urabe adds uneasy atmosphere with alto sax and guitar. Junko’s vocals bring almost indescribable dread to the mix. From 2009
Intérieur Extérieur
(Phillips) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded in 1996 “in the middle of Henry’s incredible museum of contraptions and machines of all kinds, and the tens of thousands of magnetic tapes accumulated over the years, rows by themes, which line all the walls of the house. Gurgling, choking, howls of terror, hoarse and monstrous cries, mad laughter; this journey into the depths of a subconscious which could also be ours is not easy. On some tracks, the rhythm is given by the distortion of samples from the Violent Femmes. In the second part of the work, the atmosphere calms down somewhat, but the listener remains lost in a dark landscape.”
Remixe Sa Dixième Symphonie
(Phillips) Used CD $6.00
Hyper-contemporary album in which the master reconstructs Beethoven’s 10th symphony as a collage.
Concerts
(ReR Megacorp) Used 2xCD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
The band’s first serious space allotted for improvisations that accounted for maybe a third of any of its lengthy stage performances in the mid-1970s. 2006 reissue that includes five tracks from Greasy Truckers. Drill hole in jewelbox, book, traycard
Stockholm & Göteborg
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $10.00
Volume six from the 2008’s 40th Anniversary Box set fills in some of the history between In Praise of Learning (1975) and Western Culture (1978) – most notably Tim Hodgkinson’s “Erk Gah,” a fiendishly complicated epic that avoids any hint of riff, solo or modular assembly. At the other extreme are the two wide-ranging improvisations built around extended technique, aleatorics, quotations, more-or-less randomly inserted prepared materials and a disregard for genre rules. Between, constantly shifting ground, are a straight-ahead version of Phil Ochs’ “No More Songs,” an unreleased composition by Fred Frith, and a version of the “Ottawa Song,” which, it turns out, dates from a Hamburg concert from around the same time. Sealed
The Long Awaited Etcetera...
(Recorded) Used CD $5.00
Mat Maneri’s protege takes centerstage live at the High Zero Festival in 2001 with a violin-lead improv ensemble featuring Dan Breen, Charles Cohen, John Dierker, Helena Espvall-Santoleri, David Gross, Andrew Hayleck, Catherine Pancake, Evan Rapport, and Jack Wright.
Nega The Eight Headed Serpent
(Varispeed - 006) Used CD $8.00
Cosmic art-rock jams, evolution performance epics, and improvised not-rock from Australia that flashes on 1967 Pink Floyd, early Art Ensemble of Chicago (when the percussion comes in), minimal repetitions, just about the whole of post-WW2 outsider music. Pop stars doing the tango with some psychedelic monk. Two albums on one disc: a self-titled collection of 1998 recordings, and the soundtrack to the imaginary film Nega the Eight Headed Serpent, recorded live in a performance room at VUT.
Guitar Solos
(Chocolate Monk - choc.541) CDR $8.00
Michigan mangled guitar extemporizations from one half of slow-moving weirdos Creode. Empty the fridge of thoughts and fill the cauldron with shrugs and flutter. Hicks resists ball-dangling collision course tactics and instead deals in concentrated alien farts for the hushed and humbled. There are no words, just hunched-shoulder meditation. Toenail gaze. Feel the mind cigar bloom and the malfunction get greasy. Not a single Van Halen or Nace were hurt during the making of these recordings. Edition of 60
Across The Neighborhoods
(Total Life Society - TLS009) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Guitarist Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple), drummer Jim Sykes (Invisible Things), vocalist Matthew Wascovich (Scarcity Of Tanks) bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen) and guitarist Norman Westberg (Swans). Cover art is by Aleksandra Waliszewska
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot
(Thrill Jockey - THRILL184) CD + hardcover book $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Lungfish frontman and Holy Mountain recording artist offers 48 pages of full-color painting and writing in this six-by-eight hardcover book, with a CD of home recordings on guitar, piano drones, jew’s harp and banjo. The six pieces are lo-fi stretches of piano drone (fingers, mallets, etc.) and banjos/guitars loaded with swift Eastern / Sun City scales, zoning static, eschatological subtexts, and spectral / emotional ambiance. The gorgeous book depicts his totemic paintings and acrostics -- which delineate themes he's intoned about in the past -- including a climactic centerfold with two facing emblems after which the order of art / word shifts.
HIROSHI HIGO / PHIL MINTON / YUKIE SATO / TSUKASA YAGIHASHI
Nippara-Tokyo
(Austin Record) Used CD $25.00
Three tracks recorded live in 2004 at a former elementary school, three at the Temple Of No Power No Virtue. “All six improvisations, from little more than two minutes to about thirteen in length, run the gamut of dynamics with a preference for starting calmly and gradually lose composure in a parade of tempers, outbursts, stomach-derived moods, various kinds of walruses and other assorted entities.”
Jojo and Junko
(Alchemy - ARCD117) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second volume in the Hijokaidan rarity series. Two track from No Paris / No Harm (Alchemy 1988), plus a live recording from The No Music Festival in Canada 1998. Sealed.
Konomama Shinde Shimaitai
(Alchemy - ARCD124) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hijokaidan mastermind’s 2000 album that goes from harsh outbursts of guitar feedback accompanied by painful vocals to cold, hushed vocals over eerie synth drones, to drum / noise freakouts scarier than anything on a black metal record, to the pulsing krautrock-inspired. Guests include drummer Takeshi Ishida and Naoko Otani on keyboards and drums.
Noise From Trading Cards
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three tracks of drawn-out ache from 1997 that linger somewhere between pain and an unyielding disturbance of comfort. With Merzbow’s Masami Akita playing drums on one track, Junko screaming on two, Kosakai adding electronics to one and Mikawa adding same to all three tracks, Hijokaidan resolves fits of chaos into manageable textures and sounds, never moving too far away from pure intensity. Sealed
Polar Nights Live
(Pica Disk - PICA005) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
The shredding guitar of bandleader Jojo Hiroshige along with the high-pitched, piercing voice of Junko instantly identify Hijokaidan. A rare appearance outside Japan at the All Ears Festival in Oslo, Norway in 2006, Polar Nights Live documents these historical (they very rarely perform anywhere as a duo) and astonishing performances. Jojo also collaborates here with guitarist Per Gisle Galåen (DEL, The Birds), unleashing thick layers of psychedelic and distorted guitar fog, which fans of Fushitsusha and Les Rallizes Denudes will appreciate. Junko also hooked up with Sten Ove Toft (Ryfylke) for a hellish meltdown of twisted electronics and the most intense voice in music.
Romance
(Alchemy) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
A single harsh-mad track, seventy-seven minutes from 1990. Loud, freeform, relentless.
Unlimited Edition
(Alchemy - ARCD120) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third volume in the Hijokaidan rarity series reissues Limited Edition (Alchemy 1987), the first with the Jojo / Junko / Mikawa. Incudes a bonus track fro No Paris / No Harm (Alchemy 1998). Sealed.
Zouroku no Kibyou
(Vinyl on Demand) Used 2xLP $50.00
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twentieth anniversary edition (remixed, re-mastered and reissued in 2002) of Hijokaidan’s first album (Unbalance 1982), recorded live during their heyday of highly confrontational, somewhat unnerving performances. “Their music,” notes Female Trouble, “has little driving rhythm [and] is extremely disconnected…. It was said that Hijokaidan originally set out to sound like Hawkwind performing at an airplane landing, which is really not too far off…. Although this [abrasively spacey and psychedelic] record may not be as noisy as their future releases, it certainly captures a sort of essence of raw violence….”
2xLP includes live bonus tracks from 1988 and 1994
SATOSHI HIRONAKA / KATSUYOSHI KOU
State, State, State
(Ftarri) CD $9.50
Oddball, concept-infused improv with Kou on guitar and Hironaka on drums, recorded in July 2012. The first track is a duet; the drums, then the noise and guitar, were recorded individually. The same guitar sound was played several times, and about a second afterward the electricity was cut for a brief instant. Just where that happens in the recording, Kou inserts a split-second blank in order to shift the drum’s rhythm very slightly. The second track, a live improvisational performance by Kou solo, includes mechanical beeps inserted randomly in order to move the consciousness away from the performance. The theme of dislocation on the third track, Hironaka solo, is expressed by overdubs of different recordings with different rock-style rhythms and phrases. Fourth and final track is an unaltered improvisational duet. Edition of 500.
Donarichirasu Baku No Koe Wa Amarinimo Chiisai
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00
Solo album from 2002 by Hijo Kaidan founder. Heavy, dark words, backward noise guitars, growling vocals and violent cries. Title translates to My Bawling Voice Sounds So Quiet. Sealed.
Kimi Ga Shinette Ieba Shinu Kara
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00
Debut solo album of noise songs from 1997 by Hijo Kaidan founder. Titles translates to I Will Die if You Say So. Sealed.
Minna Shinde Shimaeba Iinoni
(Alchemy) Used CD $25.00
Second solo album of existence transcending noise from 1999 by Hijo Kaidan founder. Electric guitar distortion, screaming, blown blood. Title translates to I Hope We All Die. Sealed.
The Very Best Of Jojo
(Alchemy) CD $12.00
Sonic malevolence, brute force, the far reaches of noise and word condensation.
Shadow Cat
(Sartorial) Used CD $15.00
Fourteen solo tracks recorded between 1993 and 1999. Fans who like Hitchcock best when he’s in a deep and atmospheric mood will be rewarded by the minimal but absorbing “Beautiful Shock,” the stripped-down rock guitar figures of “Never Have to See You Again,” and the ominous yet playful title cut. More a sampler of odds and ends from his notebooks than a new album proper, it’s a fine reminder of why he’s regarded as one of the most gifted and singular British songwriters around. UK edition
A Stagnant Plague Cast Through Shallow Earth
(Helicopter) Used CD $16.50
Purely miserable synth explorations and crumbling drone. The two-part 28-minute title track, plus both tracks from Cast Through Shallow Earth LP (No Fun, 2007). Sealed
Under Old Earth They Made Me The Keeper Of The Vineyards But Mine Own Vineyard I Have Not Kept
(Helicopter - HEL 95091) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Early forays into arrhythmic and poly-rhythmic synth work and crude structures not found in Greh Holger's more free-form drone pieces. Remastered CD reissue includes Under Old Earth (Chondritic Sound 2010), They Made Me The Keeper Of The Vineyards (Chondritic Sound 2012), and But Mine Own Vineyard I Have Not Kept (Chondritic Sound 2013).
Im Schatten der Möhr
(Streamline) Used CD $25.00
Haunting mix of drones, found sound samples, and vocal melodies that add another level of trippiness without changing the underlying darkness. Our friends at Certain Music praised this album back in the late 1980s, “a carefully crafted journey of soundscapes, drones and songs reminiscent of Faust, Nurse With Wound, Pierrot Lunaire [which] seems to form one long piece that comes across like a surreal bus ride into post-psychedelic wonderland.” 2002 reissue
The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders
(Water) Used CD $13.00
From Richie Unterberger’s liner notes: “Fragmented song structures, odd dabblings in weird reverb and electric instrumentation, and a hallucinogenic aura of heightened fear and ecstasy. Often the songs reflect states of mind that are not just altered, but on the verge of disintegration. And no [other] acid folk album mixes inspiration and lunacy in as downright deranged a fashion.”
Dgtlhrm
([ no label ]) Used CDR $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nine tracks by Jonathan Browning recorded in 2001, made from processed drums, guitar and hammering. Tinfoil cover with a band-aid stuck to the front of the jewelbox, photocopied tracks and credits taped to the back.
Complexity #2
(KOS) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live at the Knitting Factory in 2000 with Doug Walker on synthesizer, turntablist DJ Olive, and Eyvind Kang on electric violin. The forty-one-minute “Twelve Windows” meanders into focus from the ambiguous, primordial ooze from which all life sprang, and is greeted by Hooker’s intermittent percussion, staticky bleeps and bloops (mmmm, staticky bleeps and bloops), evolving through episodic miasma and other high-pressure natural selections, eventually erupting into an immensity powered by the passion and glory of Kang’s violin. A well-sculpted journey from this daredevil quartet.
Envisioning
(Knitting Factory Works) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Wailing, high-volume, ecstatic-noise excursions from 1995. Hooker’s free-jazz drumming propels Ranaldo fluxuating guitar odysseys into the deep subconscious.
Radiation
(Homestead) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
With Brian Doherty on electronics, Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller, Charles Compo on reeds, and trombonist Masahiko Kono. Recorded at The Knitting Factory, 1992 and Virginia Tech 1994.
Shamballa
(Knitting Factory Works) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Duets with Thurston Moore and Elliot Sharp from 1993. A mind-numbing explosion of mathematical chaos and mutant free jazz.
The Celestial Answer
(Xeric) Used CD $5.00
Working together, the kinetic avant percussionist / poet and the indefatigable experimental guitarist are a blinding, brilliant, elemental force. Rays of white guitar noise penetrate clouds of analog synth; molten drumming blasts across free-form poetics. The dynamic is beautiful and inspired — a simple cold-fusion of intuitive interaction and boundless freedom. From 2005. With hype sticker
WILLIAM HOOKER / ZEENA PARKINS / LEE RANALDO
The Gift Of Tongues
(Knitting Factory Works) Used CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Noise oriented free improv recorded live in the mid-’90s. Hooker’s time-giving percussion bounces around the edges of barrage, Parkins’s electrified harp induces personality trauma, while Ranaldo goes deep hypnosis with screeching guitar.
Master Of The Hawaiian Guitar Volume One
(Rounder) Used CD $8.00
Traditional Hawaiian music meets standards of early American jazz. Early ’90s reissue of late ’70s collection of recordings from 1926-1930. Japanese edition with insert and obi
Eureka Tapes (The Complete Recordings)
(Small Doses - DOSE94) Used 2xCD $7.50
Anthony Mangicapra’s music spans styles and moods like a suspension bridge and dissolves into explorations of texture, acoustic phenomena and the psyche. Originally issued as three separate volumes -- A Whisper in the Sow’s Ear (Small Doses 2008); Graduating from Clocks to Watches (Peasant Magick 2008); Taxonomy of Divine Organisms (Goat Eater Arts 2009) -- The Eureka Tapes (The Complete Recordings) also includes Hoor-Paar-Kraat’s side of their split cassette with Last (Acid Casualty 2008) and a previously unreleased recording from the same sessions.
With Hidden Noises
(Grab Rare Arts) Used CDR $8.00
Bringing to life Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made, this binaural disc documents Holland’s four-channel audio installation of the same name which features a replica of Duchamp’s sculpture (outfitted with sensors that translate motion into sound). Abstract electronic soundscapes, an intriguing mix of minimalist samples, field recordings and immersive noise. In a card folder with string tie.
If You Can Hear This You’re Too Close
(Chocolate Monk - choc.531) CDR $8.00
Hey, poser, forget the much-vaunted cardiovascular workout and let masterful triumvirs Sindre Bjerga, Max Nordile, and Theo Gowans ratify your brain and ears with their beyond-crunked cut-up music. A heavy session of scrambled listening awaits if you are ripe for said ratification. Breathe deeply. Says Bjerga, “The tracks are packed dense with cut-ups and synth-boggle and shredded microphonie — split open wide with slowed-down stories from the subterranean ditches dripping icicles, mad locusts swarming.” Edition of 60
Look At My Bum
(Stingy Banana) Used CD $15.00
“Basically this is upbeat Stones-y R&R,” explains Cosmic Debris about this NY-based mid-’90s pre-Ass-Baboons combo, “With a totally bizarre lead singer who shrieks, barks, hiccups, screams and caterwauls his way through these 15 songs.” In hand-painted jewelbox.
Chimarendammerung
(Destijl - IND062) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
Marcia Bassett has recorded with Un, GHQ and The Double Leopards, while Matthew Bower is all over Total, Skullflower, Sunroof, etc. A Wikipedia entry says “his huge discography of visceral, free drone-rock is probably the most formidable of its kind and he was rightly considered in 2005 by The Wire to be one of the map coordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the ’80s and ’90s”. Chimarendammerung is the third Hototogisu release on Destijl and its five untitled walls of vertical viola drone/overtone represent a current plateau for the duo — lapped by shifting electronic waves of feedback and blackened guitars, in tune with the breath of the cosmos, like a glacial reimagining of Van Der Graaf Generator’s “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers.”
Mona Cost Returns To Canton
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.402) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Continuing the fine family tradition of euphoric ear shred, Miss Howland gives Brother Skin Graft a run for his bitcoins with a heavy dose of hot gruel, guaranteed to singe the inner lughole hairs. The four tracks were recorded live in the practice space while Howland was working on her novel Don’t Fear the Night Duende, much of which takes place in Canton, Ohio, where she grew up. The listener is encouraged to find his or her own inner Monument Park and get woke. Artwork by Karen Constance. Numbered edition of 60.
Earth Junk
(Drag City) Used CD $3.00
“If you figured on an electric country-pop hoedown for small ensemble (featuring circus organ), as minimal and repetitive as all rock’n’roll, you’re getting somewhere. Recorded in Austin in the late winter of early 2008, Earth Junk is a ramble in the dappled sunlight of the American southwest, twisted metallic folk-art in the ever-changing breeze, an offering to all nations.” Punched barcode, sticker on jewelbox
JOHN HUDAK / JASON KAHN / BRUCE TOVSKY
For The Time Being
(Cut) Used CD $10.00
The “drone- and texture-focused track, recorded at Diapason Gallery, New York” by Hudak and Kahn, consists mainly of “field recordings … from Dobbs Ferry….” according to The Brain. “While changing slightly over its twenty-minute running time, this first piece fluctuates with minute strokes, brushing ever so softly on tiny changes and developments. Themes emerge then reemerge at steady intervals through a soft haze which blankets the rest of the oscillating cycle…. High, smooth, piercing drones inhabit this performance with light and airy shuffles slowly broadening as the loops multiply. The textures gradually come to the forefront from its muted beginnings to an exhilarating density. The second piece is more upfront, with Hudak slightly plucking a guitar subtly contrasted with the processed playing of Tovsky…, an evolving universe of sound and morphing microcosmic shapes.”
Human Horses
(Memoirs of an Aesthete) CD $16.50
An exquisite interlacing of acoustic and electronic tones with spaces for high flying solo excursions – the first collaboration between improv duo Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides (Pascal Nichols, percussion; Kelly Jayne Jones, flute, electronics and piano) and analog synth drift improv duo Human Combustion Engine (Ashtray Navigations’ Melanie O’Dubhslaine and Phil Todd), recorded live in Manchester, England. Edition of 250.
Wreckage
(Phage - PT206) Used CD $9.00
Phage’s CD reissue of Kollaborative Wreckage cassette (Savage Discharge 2012) adds eleven minutes of solo material by Mania and fifteen by Hutchinson to the original thirty of collaborative acoustic metal noises, synth squeals and high pitched feedback.
Power
(BloodLust!) CDR $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nearly twelve years since its first release in an edition of 50 cassettes, nearly five years since the death of Hydra-head Greg Scott, with little of his musical legacy remaining, the time seems appropriate to re-visit this barely heard recording from Scott's short-lived, post-Final Solution band. The disc is comprised of studio and live recordings (including memorable, between-song banter) for fans of power electronics, noise and old-school industrial.
I.S.O.
(Alcohol) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Electroacoustic improv from 1999 by turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, no-input mixing boardist Sachiko M, and percussionist Yoshimitsu Ichiraku.
ID M THEFT ABLE / COUNT LOACHFILLET
Organ Standards
(Beniffer Editions) 2xCDR $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
The sound structures of West Coast solo anomaly with LAFMS connections Loachfillet are the sort of thing that occur when one dissects Quintron’s Frog Tape, Rosa Rio’s horror picture theatre organ, or The Phantom Of The Opera, and reconstitutes them as a horrific, ungodly monster meant to roam the filthy sewers, or tend to overgrown bats and spiders in a deep, dank cave (to be determined on a case-by-case basis). Whereas East Coast stag entity and maker of ever stranger organ audacity ID M Theft Able sings, raps, abruptly stops, skips and fluctuates sound. Meaning: weird-ass sequential counting, cut-ups in a glitchular noisy atmosphere, loops and echoes of nonsensical mutterings, and at no extra charge because you are my friend, odd and playfully spazzy interludes. Certified A-1 by Guy Montag. Screenprinted and sewn foldout. Edition of 100.
Popsicles, Icicles, Baseball And Fancy Clothes
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC260) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Having emerged a smiling (somehow chubby) skeleton from the hot bubbly tar bath of the endless blooper, with an invisible wince he flips bittersweetly through old disintegrating photo albums, trying to laugh, but sneezing instead, just a bit before sprouting himself a wicked flaccid lilac in the nethers.
ID M THEFT ABLE / WAX MAGNETIC
Wax Magnetic / ID M Theft Able
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.327) split CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Newcastle duo gets fruity with turntable, devices, dictaphone and mouth, while the mung master of Portland, Maine, stuffs the ears with imaginary dough and pulls it off using hunks of metal, a pastry blender, gob and his ample frame. The whole ruckus is guaranteed to put some pepper in your pipe. Cover art by Karen Constance. Edition of 60
Pterodactyl B&B
(Chocolate Monk - choc.514) CDR $8.00
Do you remember Colonel Dai from Graveyard Graveyard? Suspend your tears — the creep took cannibal odds shouting Suzi with twenty on to win, so what’s all this nonsense about? Friendly coffins. Love voltage. Death fictions. Familiar alligators. The Pterodactyl. The bed and breakfast. A lot of words. Words repeated. Repeated words. Worms worms worms. It goes on and on and on and on and on forever but it’s over in thirty minutes. Edition of 60
The Island of Taste
(Fördämning Arkiv) Used CD $10.00
“The slow, eerie music benefits enormously from Borecky’s move toward the acoustic piano” notes our friends at Sound Projector. “Now she can actually deliver resonant chords, instead of struggling with monophonic synths. Indeed, the analogue electronic sound which used to feature so heavily on IFCO records has been all but replaced by other, simpler sounds: principally the radio and tapework of Foust, the found sound of Lambkin, or the mixed singing voices of Borecky, Swenson and O’Reilly.”
Kubelik Unbugged
(Butte County Free Music Society - 39) CDR $8.00
Forty-six minutes of slightly off-kilter, instrumental soundtracks for non-existent, noir-ish movies, edited from three hours of improvisational boombox tapes recorded in the late '80s by Larry Crane (Vomit Launch, TapeOp), Mark Evans (Fat Chick From Wilson Phillips, Uh-Moncst), and Lucian Tielens (Bren't Lewiis Ensemble, Serious Problmz). Kubelik Unbugged collects straight excerpts with no additional processing beyond modest crossfades; the trio’s spontaneously rendered squalls form a surprisingly coherent patchwork a la Obscured By Clouds, filtered through the atmospherics of 3R4 and retrofitted for a Doug Roberts-directed episode of The Twilight Zone. Edition of 50.
Gruntle
(Absurd) Used CD $5.00
Al Margolis’s mid-aughts sounds and loops and musique concrète. Beyond ambient, before noise, in a gray area with more hints to modern classical music than one might guess. In over-sized, circular sleeve.
I Am Sitting In Phill Niblock's Kitchen
(Monotype - MONO042) CD $13.50
Warburton time-stretched about one-hundred If, Bwana recordings and multitracked them into a single forty-five minute sludge cocktail, before decanting and editing them into a single span of music. Al Margolis then added the ambient sounds of the food-preparation parlor of the titular multimedia minimalist. The two subsequently performed live in Belgium in 2008, mixing the recording with live electronics, clarinet, violin, and a time-stretched and pitch-shifted piano piece of Warburton’s, Speed Study I.
Rex Xhu Ping
(Pogus) Used CD $5.00
Joining Margolis (on tapes, electronics, clarinet, and sundries) are Laura Biagi (vocals), Dan Andreana (speaker, tapes), Detta Andreana (tapes, bowed cymbals), and Orchestre de Fou. From 2005
Thirty
(Inyrdisk - IYD90) 3xCDR $13.25 (Out-of-stock)
Over three hours of riveting musique concrete, long-form drone compositions, the infinite worlds found within bassoons and voices, and refined experimentation from Al Margolis, remastered and repackaged from the self-released tapes sold in a nearly invisible edition during a 2013 tour. Gatefold package, sturdily pasted-on art over disk envelopes and an insert. Edition of 99.
Canticle
(VHF) Used CD $4.00
Prog rock from 2005 by Richard Youngs and Andrew Paine, draped in production tricks, vocal layers, Steve Howe-style leads, synth bleeps, and other racket in beautifully intricate arrangements.
As Loud As Possible
(Zabriskie Point) Used CD $45.00 (Out-of-stock)
“There’s something very primal about this album” from 1995, according to Rate Your Music. “The sound of the very fabric of reality itself. Electrons making their rounds around the nucleus. The chaos that the world we know is built upon.”
Box Is Stupid
(Pica Disk - PICA008) Used 10xCD $135.00 (Out-of-stock) (Out-of-print)
Contains 90s tape releases: Stupid Is Stupid (one disc each of studio and live materials), Extreme Gospel Nights, Ad Nauseam (one disc Edition Mikawa, one disc Edition Kosakai, one disc live), D.D.D.D., The Tongue, Cosmic Incapacitants, and I, Residuum. Remastered from original master tapes. Includes 40pp book with liner notes by Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus), Otomo Yoshihide, Toshiji Mikawa (Incapacitantrs, Hijo Kaidan), and Fumio Kosakai (Incapacitants).
Feedback Of N.M.S.
(Alchemy) Used CD $40.00
“A continuous force of low-end rumble with high-pitched clashes of frequencies,” according to Tiny Mix Tapes, “With what sounds like ongoing screaming for much of the three tracks presented. ‘Curse Of Ceauşescu’ takes almost thirty minutes to unroll, yet you barely feel it lasting that long…. Incapacitants themselves call their style hard noise. I call it ‘relentless, collapsing art’ — it should be on permanent display at all museums, schools, and mental hospitals the world over.” From 1991
Lon Guy
(Harbinger Sound - HAS045) Used CD $10.00
Shit-your-pants loud, or another day at the office for Mikawa and Kosakai.
Ministry Of Foolishness
(Pure) Used CD $22.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Many different blends of harsh sounds that are super captivating, which leads to it being oddly hypnotic, allowing each of the three tracks to more or less become a part of you for the moments your ears are subject to its beauty.” From 1995
New Movements in CMPD
(Alchemy) Used CD $18.00
“Unusually fragmented and stripped down, ‘20 Years of Corporate’ throws … high-end scathe and low-end rumble into the background, and foregrounds the concrete sources: voice, shithawk screeching, single unprocessed feedback waves, unidentifiable crumbling brick structures, and other crackling intrusions,” notes Jason Kushnir about this 1996 disc. “ ‘High Yield Cult’ … equalizes the high/low-end relationship and attempts to simulate the sound of speakers getting shredded by [a] overblown, maxed-out…, overindulged layers of cannibalistic low-end compression…. ‘PT Team, What’s That?’ … burbles to life and roars into a furious rage…. Ultra high-end, brutally beatific delirium unloads layer upon layer upon layer.”
No Progress
(Alchemy) Used CD $35.00
“Stupid, primitive and totally demented, but it comes out as a perfect soul-cleaner for a civilized man who has to push his instincts into backward.” Dedicated to Takuya “Synapse” Sakaguchi
Operorue
(Kubitsuri) Used CD $30.00
Three tracks of howling shriek from 1995, blistering screech and piercing chaos. Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai expanding the possibilities of extreme frequencies and sound with reckless abandon and incredible results.
Quietus
(Alchemy) Used CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Comparable, according to All Music Guide, to a “type of chemical weapon designed to mentally or physical paralyze opposition soldiers.” From 1993
Unauthorized Fatal Operation 990130
(Or) Used CD $15.00
“Total immersion in a powerful tsunami….[that] can induce a blissful hypnotic state akin to transcendental meditation…. It was recorded live at a club in Tokyo and captures nicely the sheer wall-to-wall non-stop roar.” Card jacket with small drill hole in front cover
Infinite Article
(Oblivion Music) Used CDR $8.00
Robert Horton and Edward Guerriero’s collaboration was born from a primary challenge: how to make music together when the latter performed primarily as a vocalist and the former did not like music that featured vocals. One thing they agreed upon was to dismantle compositions by John Martyn, Young Marble Giants, Pearls Before Swine, Moondog, and Neil Young. A secondary challenge — lived in different cities — was conquered over a period of eight years in an electro-acoustic mosaic of aching melodies and defamiliarizing baroque arrangements, a wedding of the familiar and the strange in a raw and haunted psychic landscape. With guests Bob McIntosh and Dan Plonsey.
Trans Fat
(Chocolate Monk) Used CDR $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Great, mulched “new age” synth bliss from 2008 by a Black Egg goon and one of the gonks from Astronaut. Feel Taylor Richardson and Dan Lopatin’s cloud envelope your head as their creeper moments of giallo / porn keys blossom into a full-card wrestling match with a 6000-armed guitar-cable sea creature. your car tires vibrate right off the pavement.
Biomekano
(Rune Grammafon) Used CD $7.00
Norwegian experimental electronic ambient, minimal techno pulsations, and open space music from 2007. Jørgen Knudsen and Per Henrik Svalastog’s crisp sound and beat structures range from precise mechanical organizations to intricate organic constructions supporting insistently waxing and waning composed melodies.
Nature
(Chocolate Monk - choc.594) CDR $8.00
Guitar and tape maestro Jeff Barsky wants you to talk to the trees. Talk to yourself when you’re around the trees. Let the sun devour you and bake your skin. Lie under the stars and let the constellations cool you down. Know that you belong to them. Perceive that the grass is even greener at night. Let the impossible light touch your internal organs. Peel off your old skin. And breathe. Again, a little slower. Surrender to everything. A few years in the making, Nature is beautiful meditative throb of Frippy guitar and cassette scuttle that blossoms and stays ripe. Howard Stelzer contributes his ferric finery to a couple of tracks for added whumpf. Numbered edition of 50
INSECT FACTORY / HOWARD STELZER
Title One
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.359) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Massachusetts tape crud maestro gets into a heady hoo-ha with processed guitar gonk Jeff Barsky. Together they excrete over 40 minutes of slow-moving electric trickle for your tickle spot. This foggy acid test hints at something unsavory under the floorboards. Those in need of a head filter look no further. Numbered edition of 60
Nonsense Codes vol. 3
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Edinburgh lifer Euan Currie (Dead Labour Process, Muscletusk, etc.) and Albany NY’s Eric Hardiman (Rambutan, Sky Furrows, Spiral Wave Nomads, etc.) continue their murky and perplexing excursion into unknown mumbo jumbo undergrowth where voltages are stroked and tones are mangled. Edition of 60
18th Anniversary Set
(Therapy Tapes) 3xCDR $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Big ol’ retrospective collection of boombox recordings by underrated folk visionary Todd Emmert. Includes: The Beatnik Suicide Sessions (eight songs recorded between 2007 and 2014, with a guest appearance on two tracks by The Blue Band); Friendship Cemetery Revisited (twenty-two songs recorded between 1997 and 2003); and the all-instrumental six-track EP Remember You Will Die. Discs are hand-lettered, photocopy inserts and obi-strip are hand-cut. Sealed with a band-aid.
Hey, Man, I Understand
(Odessa) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The tonality of [the six-minute centerpiece of this album by Chapel Hill musician Todd Emmert] ‘Tea With Pazuza’ recalls two avant-garde godheads,” proclaims Indy Week, “Charlemagne Palestine and … Tony Conrad…. Maybe that’s a saxophone blowing … grainy notes…, occasionally pushing the microphone past its capacity…, a violin scraping the sky in the distance, its mean tone stretching like a filthy canvas made of flesh…, a split, spliced, and essentially subverted boogie-woogie piano line [coming] from every direction…, but its peculiarity [turns] textures into a labyrinth…. His music moves from busted country songs and scowling barroom anthems to long-tone, hypnotic instrumentals and propulsive, beat-driven pieces without a hiccup…. [This] agitated experimenter sport[s] a dashing sense of observational humor … and a gloriously intense appreciation for mangled tones.”
INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOACOUSTICS AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC
50 Years Of Electronic And Electroacoustic Music At The Ghent University
(Metaphon - 004) 2xCD $45.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Metaphon - 004) 3xLP + 2xCD $120.00 (Out-of-stock)
Haunting experimental recordings made at Belgium’s IPEM, mastered from original tapes, spanning unearthly electro-acoustic, drone and concrète compositions recorded between 1958 and 1999 and “distinguished by a certain gothic or dark mittel European sensibility” that really pushes the buttons of our friends at Boomkat. Eighteen mostly unreleased tracks by Lucien Goethals, Didier Gazelle, Louis De Meester, David Van de Woestijne, Stefan Beyst, Helmut Lachenmann, Boudewijn Buckinx, Karel Goeyvaerts, Emmanuel Van Weerst, Peter Beyls, Raoul De Smet, Frank Nuyts, Ricardo Mandolini, Peter Schuback, Stephen Montague and Yves Knockaert. In Dutch and English, the 88-page LP-sized book offers in-depth history, photos, and essays by alumni and professors on the development and contributions of this lesser known counterpart to the esteemed GRM, Studio Für Elektronische Musik, or Studio di Fonologia Musicale. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
Bad Jack
(BloodLust! - B!044) Used CDR $9.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2003 re-release of the fourth Intrinsic Action cassette (Arbeit Recordings, 1988) contains dark, decayed, rumbling electronics, and meditations on Chicago’s Gacy murders. With two previously unreleased bonus tracks (one live, one SCTL).
Five
(BloodLust! - B!048) Used CDR $9.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2004 re-release of the fifth Intrinsic Action cassette (AWB, 1988) is sonically intense and was recorded live opening for Swans at Chicago's Cabaret Metro. With one bonus SCTL track. Sealed
II
(BloodLust! - B!046) Used CDR $9.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2004 re-release of the second Intrinsic Action cassette, originally issued in 1987. It consists of long, minimal, analog-synth piece created on an Arp 2600. With four bonus SCTL tracks. Sealed
III
(BloodLust! - B!050) Used CDR $9.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2005 re-release of the third Intrinsic Action cassette, originally issued in 1987, contains the band’s third live show, with two bonus SCTL tracks. Sealed
Peepland: The Complete Singles
(BloodLust! - B!052) Used CDR $9.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. Peepland compiles the band's five 7-inch singles: “Dazed” (AWB, 1990); “Male Payment” (Private, 1990); “Manhattan Power Surge (Private, 1992), “Adult Books and Video” (AWB, 1993); and “Groupies” (Bloodlust, 1997). Three bonus tracks from the Woman Hater 7-inch (Self Abuse, 1997) by Surgical Stainless Steel also appear, including a cover of The Sodality’s classic, “I Can’t Stand A Bitchy Chick.”
Sado-Electronics
(BloodLust! - B!029) Used CDR $9.00
Founded by Mark Solotroff in Chicago, 1984, Intrinsic Action evolved from an experimental industrial noise group into a full-blown power-electronics unit, eventually touring the U.S. with Whitehouse in 1993. They disbanded in 1995 and regrouped as heavy electronics trio Bloodyminded. This re-mastered 2002 re-release of the first Intrinsic Action CD (Tesco, 1992) has eleven tracks of analog synth-driven power-electronics, bordering on minimal-synth -- followed by a long, dark, electronic dirge “Surgical Stainless Steel,” broken into eleven segments -- including the first “blast song” that later shaped the direction of Bloodyminded. Sealed
Adapt
(Under The Sun) Used CDR $5.00
Dark-ambience from 2000 with lots of percussion, weird saxophone sounds, samples, loops and bass.
Quatervois Four-track Magnetic Tape Arrangements
(Zarek) Used CD $8.00
2004 reissue of Cincinnati resident Ron Orovitz’s killer sound collage (Drone Disco 2001), who has been using unusual sound sources and layering them into rather dense and industrial etudes of found sound since the late 1980s, when tape and turntable manipulations were the medium. Scientific instruments such as tone generators eventually became a favorite tool, as well as the fashioning of various “procussion” instruments (utilizing fire-works). The recordings here demonstrate some of these characteristics as composed and processed stochastically.
Tamafumi
(PSF) Used CD $15.00
Originally released on cassette on this husband-wife duo’s Shaman Label in 1985, Shizuko and Toshio Orimo’s fantastically charged blend of ultra-propulsive ethnic drone, free jazz drumming with harsh noise textures and intense, almost possessed vocal incantations “feels intensely dangerous, like a nuclear reactor-core going into meltdown, throwing out waves of radiation and intense heat.”
Cosmic Superimposition
(E.I.E.) CD $12.75
irr. app. (ext.)’s second installment in a planned trilogy that draws from the philosophical ruminations of Wilhelm Reich is a single 45-minute track of revolving organic fluctuations that wax and wane in accordance to a well-tuned internal logic. Glassine ambient passages of processed environmental noise slide into the sustained harmonics of bowed metals which in turn couple with the off-kilter phase pattern of an exhaust fan whose motor is not quite properly aligned. All the while gurgles from streams, clatter from subterranean actions, singing bowl reverberations, and dark elliptical cycles of blackened electronics pock the stately progressions of Cosmic Superimposition’s dronemusik foundation.
Dust Pincher Appliances
(Something Weird - SOME06) 10-inch $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Crouton - SOME06) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
The original 10-inch edition from the late 1990s, subsequently reworked and bonus-tracked for Crouton’s CD reissue. Here’s Igloo’s sober assessment: “This is a pixilated haiku. Dense and academic are the first words that pop to mind -- however, don't let that fool you. This could be a pseudo study on the linkage between literal and anatomical encryption. A deep constructive sound work that celebrates the open spaces between sound -- the emptiness and residual tonalities as well as its play on both acoustic and digital sources. This has its own context, and as such has somewhat of an overall industrial feel, not at all caught up in its experimentation -- they have a sense of humor with understanding and a peculiar edge…. Clashing organics, bees, mysterious corners, wind, human waste, birds of paradise and a whole lot more. The mind/body politic are explored frankly and without gauze and Vaseline…. This is your atypical symphony at the periphery of the universe -- a stunning dark portrait of ghostly-like beings illustrated by its very weird cover art.”
Kreiselwelle
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS016) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment of irr. app. (ext.)’s Wilhelm Reich-influenced series. The title translates as “spiral wave,” a structuralist form Reich had observed throughout nature within numerous systems, from the grand arcs of galaxies to the radial symmetries of micro-organisms. Californian sound engineer M.S. Waldron returns to the same collection of field recordings which began this trilogy that includes Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition; however, he restricts himself here to sounds with spiraling origins: resonating springs, the sounds of the ocean cyclically churning over pebbles on the beach, the wafting of air around various objects, or simply a lamp-shade spinning in place. The result develops as an organic sublimation of one sound transforming from one state into another and then another. Motorized sounds of mechanical toys set askew settle into a tremolo phase pattern of electrical vibrations. These in turn morph into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. Many of the sounds seem to have origins in objects that are broken, obsolete, or just plain wrong; but through Waldron’s deft alchemy, sounds flourish in a richly dark and oddly serene amalgamation.
Ozeanishe Gerfühle
(Helen Scarsdale) Used CD $12.00
irr. app. (ext.) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, who has collaborated with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. The post-surrealist sympathetic drones, field recordings, and psychological tension of Ozeanische Gefühle rival such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio’s Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk’s Sumac, and Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith. The heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles disperse amid discordant, Bernhard Hermann-esque string-slashing. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies of bowls and bells.
Compressed Happiness
(Phage - PT201) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Mad science junk noise by pathologist-by-day Kimihide Kusafuka collaborating with the famed multi-instrumentalist for heavy over-modulation and cut-ups. “Cold Pastoral,” the more lyrical of the two tracks here, is Ms. Ishibashi on synthesizers and raw sound materials by K2, while “Sweet Paranoia’s Heaven Version 3” is K2 on acoustic piano, e-violin, junk electronics, MTR, and raw sound materials by Ishibashi.
Tone Redust
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD044) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Japanese guitarist, improvisor and field-recordings passionist, Naoki Ishida takes his main inspirations from electronic avant-garde music, free jazz and Japanese traditional music. Tone Redust represents lush and disturbing ambience of modern megapolis, subtle and clinking synthesizer drones and minimalist guitar chords.
Pace-Delve
(Chocolate Monk - choc.599) CDR $8.00
A frenetic collage of domestic recordings, crumbling tapes and cheap electronics that smudge together quite a few sonic ideas with which Paul Merger has been playing for the past few months. Cack-handed minimalism, amateur improvisation, barely passable sound art. Some of these things have been ripening for a while. Others are new flowerings. Somewhere between points of departure and dead end streets. Edition of 60
Winged Leaves
(Catsup Plate) Used CD $5.00
Glenn Donaldson brews “potent and unique acid folk balanced with incidental and instrumental pieces that focus on field recordings and less traditionally structured pieces. The songs here are based on guitar and voice improvisations, and fleshed out with layers of bowed bouzouki, banjo, and dulcimer, along with organ and percussion. There is a distant melancholy in these songs, a mournfulness that somehow manages to be stately and tuneful in the rumble of sounds passing by. Donaldson’s voice accounts for much of this: his echoing, wordless (or, at the very least, indecipherable) falsetto cuts through the layers.” Edition of 1000 in hand assembled, letterpressed chipboard digipaks, with full color tipped-on cover image and poster with Donaldson’s dizzying collage work.”
Destination: Toujinbou
(Phage - PT141) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sascha Mandler (Mazakon Tactics and Namazu Dantai) under the influence of Japanese noise. Composed but quickly changing harshness with the occasional vocal outburst and ambient synth transition. Edition of 250.
God's Got It
(CaseQuarter - CS101) Used CD $5.00
A collection of the legendary Booker and Jackson label singles from the gospel / blues master. Eighteen tracks recorded between 1970 and 1978, including singles cut by Brother Ike Gordon and Sister Frances Jackson, and an unreleased track discovered in March 2003.
The Wide Weird World Of Henry Jacobs / The Fine Art Of Goofing Off
(Important) Used CD + DVD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The brilliantly sequenced CD cycles “through a kaleidoscopic array of sound bites that are alternately funny, charmingly nostalgic, bizarre, psychedelic and inexplicable,” notes Brainwashed. “From the odd verbal tennis of Jacobs and Ken Nordine … to a soft-spoken public radio DJ introducing … the ‘new sounds of musíque concrète,’ to the spooky psychedelic brain shivers of ‘Telephone Therapy,’ or the numerous excerpted bits of the wacky ‘Laughing String’ sketch, listeners unfamiliar with Jacobs’s work are in for a treat. Unlike [his] tape collage[s] from this period, Jacobs is unconcerned with formalism or overworking his sources too much…. [His] free-form approach [is] tuned toward less academic pursuits [with a] sensibility … informed by exotica and cartoon soundtracks, the radio landscape and early television…. [On] the TV programs on the included DVD, produced by Jacobs, animator Bob McClay and producer Chris Koch…, strange audio cues of various interviews and spoken-word bits set different primitive animations into motion, using a stream-of-consciousness editing style to meditate, albeit very abstractly, on the subject of leisure and leisurely activities. Stop-motion claymation, experimental film techniques, Terry Gilliam-style cutouts, subliminal image juxtapositions and psychedelic animations complement an eclectic soundtrack of music, jarring sound effects, and a series of narrators ruminating on leisure, delivering anecdotes and reading from funny ‘social engineering’ pamphlets. It’s undeniably reminiscent of early episodes of Sesame Street in its attempt to marry the surreal and psychedelic to family-friendly, educational programming.”
Delphi
(Coherent States) CDR $8.00
Double bass, electronics, dictaphones and effects recorded July 2022 in Berlin at the crossroads of noise, improv and electro-acoustic music. Janek approaches the bass as part instrument, part object to be hit, scrubbed, scratched, beaten, bowed, plucked. Surak’s pre-recorded material interacts with dynamics and diversity. Hand-stamped disc, individually ripped cover. Numbered edition of 50
Art Breaker
(Smalltown Supersound) Used CD $6.00
John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug, joined by Iver Sandoy, deliver fun, fun, fun grindcore. It’s just mad. Almost like a more ferocious Napalm Death with a Merzbow fixation. From 2006
Chestnut Thornback Tar
(Pica Disk - PIC018) CD $14.00
The May edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series mixes harsh noise, drone, and rock, with assistance from associates Nils Are Drønen and Jean-Philippe Gross. The album begins and ends with two massive tracks, with a slew of short little sketches in between.
Cover By Hair Stylistics
(Pica Disk - PICA021) CD $14.00
On the July edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series, Iver Sandøy joins Hegre and Marhaug for some improvised noisecore. Fans of short bursts of blastbeat drumming backed by screaming vocals and heavily distorted guitar might recall Jazkamer's Art Breaker album (Smalltown Superjazzz 2008), with fifty-nine songs in mere seventeen minutes; Cover by Hair Stylistics ups the ante with 129 songs in twenty minutes. The artwork is by Japanese actor, author and composer Masaya Nakahara (Hair Stylistics, Suicidal 10CC and Violent Onsen Geisha). That's him on the front cover drawing the artwork used on the inside of the cover.
Failed State of Mind
(Pica Disk - PICA024) CD $14.00
The October edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series is their 25th studio album. A mellow and easy-on-the-ears recording the likes of which have not been heard since Panic (Bottrop-Boy 2006). Nine tracks, a drifting tapestry of droning guitars, distant location recordings and tasteful percussion, are woven together in a seamless stream of subtlety and abstraction. Melody is hinted at, but never achieved, buried beneath layers of sound. With clarity Jazkamer shifts between different swaths and bandwidths of noise: a pinball machine, a child's electronic toy, a rasping insect, a fax, or simply the abstract whir of sonic information are all caught up in an articulate but pressured streamline. Argentinian sound-wizard Anla Courtis of Reynols contributes guitar to two tracks.
Matthew 28:17
(Pica Disk - PICA022) CD $14.00
The August edition is the first in Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series by the core duo of Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre. This reduction does little to lighten the sonic density; their thick haze of dopey fuzz-guitars and droning organ recalls an earlier Jazkamer album The Sound of Music ([OHM] 2002). Here Hegre and Marhaug mingle astronomy and religion, a duality and conflict of science and spirituality they express as Dionysian ecstasy via primitive psychedelic noise. Cover art by Yasutoshi Yoshida (Government Alpha).
Metal Music Machine 2
(Pica Disk - PICA026) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
The November edition of Jazkamer's monthly series of CDs and the sequel to their 2006 album, recorded with the same line-up in the same studio, continues the group’s exploration of metal’s deep dark fjords – from ’80s German thrash to ultraslow doom and classic ’70s heavy metal. The original album was something of a surprise hit for the band, live incarnations of which swayed more in the direction of noise meltdown, but Metal Music Machine 2 is more metal than the first with absolutely no noise or electronic elements audible. As a sign of respect for the memory of Ronnie James Dio, Metal Music Machine 2 is completely instrumental.
Monroe Doctrine
(Pica Disk - PICA016) CD $14.00
The March edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series. Free-form funk-noise.
Musica Non Grata
(Pica Disk - PICA015) CD $14.00
The February edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series, Musica Non Grata is a feedback-fest. Locked inside Duper Studios in Bergen with guitars and analogue synths and an arsenal of amps, Hegre, Gross and Marhaug explore feedback timbres recorded on an analogue 24-track two-inch tape-machine. The three slow-moving tracks are long-form meditations on feedback that are bliss for a select few and hell for most. February is not an easy month.
Peanuts
(Pica Disk - PICA023) CD $14.00
The September edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series, a carefully constructed mixture of transparent sound-surfaces mixture, location recordings and percussion, can be seen as a continuation of Timex (Rune Grammofon 2000) and Pancakes (Smalltown Supersound 2002). Peanuts is not a noise record, nor is it ambient, but it might work well as very detailed background music. Cover photographs by Valeria Picerno.
Self Portrait
(Pica Disk - PICA017) CD $14.00
The April edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series. The first all-acoustic Jazkamer record.
Solitary Nail
(Pica Disk - PICA014) CD $14.00
The January edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD series. A trio recording of Jean-Philippe Gross, John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug. Studio live-electronics recorded to analog tape at Duper Studios in Bergen. Edited and post-produced by Gross. A dense tapestry of perfect electronic happiness. CD in digipak cover.
The Young Person's Guide To Jazkamer
(Pica Disk - PICA027) 4xCD $30.00
The final release in Jazkamer's monthly 2010 series is a 4CD Box-set. CD1: Wind On Wednesday (their first album from 1998, previously unreleased). CD2: sixteen tracks selected from various compilations released between 2000 and 2007. CD3: first-time-on-CD versions of the Turntable Surface Fireball 2 LP (Smalltown Supersound 2001), Knitter seven-inch (Tonschacht 2002), and the Jazkamer sides of split LPs with Opec and Sandbleistift (Reverse Recordings 2005 and Licht-Ung 2007, respectively). CD4: live recordings from 2002 and 2010, and rarities. Includes sixteen-page History of Jazkamer booklet and twenty-page booklet of photos.
Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe
(PacRec) Used CD $4.00
“Jazzkammer’s ‘Requiem for Officer Bobby Barker’ begins nearly silent, with small, creaking sounds that evoke the minimalism of AMM. As the pair gradually distributes metallic clangs, morse-code-like blips, and filtered static, their swelling mix becomes like a wordless shortwave radio conversation. That the piece ends with a noisy maelstrom might be predictable, but it’s the way Jazzkammer gets there — building noise through patient, organic construction — that’s the surprise. Stelzer follows with the stranger ‘Last Night at BLD’ which doesn’t build so much as shoot all over the place without any obvious meshing or melding. Springy twangs, warping scratches, and the sound of tape rolling over playheads all create a cartoon soundtrack without the music. On the collaborative, album-ending title track, Stelzer’s tape warps chime in immediately, tempered by Jazzkammer’s low guitar rumbles and electronic slashes. Loops of noise provide rhythm here and there, but the main attraction is the connective tissue that the three use to string their noises into arcs.” From 2004
We Want Epic Drama
(Pica Disk - PICA020) CD $14.00
The June edition of Jazkamer's 2010 monthly CD-series. Jazkamer performed as a big band from 2006 to 2008, with two drummers (Iver Sandøy and Nils Are Drønen), multiple guitarists (Lasse Marhaug, John Hegre, and Jørgen Træen), and electronics (Jean Phillipe Gross). They were often billed as the metal version of Jazkamer, but precious little metal is audible here (especially compared to their Metal Music Machine album [Smalltown Supernoise 2006]). We Want Epic Drama bears more resemblance to the Mass Projection work of Masayuki Takayanagi than any death metal bands. Two long tracks, recorded live to 24-track tape, no overdubs.
The Ducal Palace
(Turgid Animal - TA408) CD $12.00
A chronicle of the first ever rehearsal and recording of the core duo of Ben Jones and Hasan Gaylani. Thirty-plus minutes of raw guitar recordings from 1996, plus on the final track, the police turn up and perform their most popular track by law enforcement the word over "Cease Making That Racket." Old school experimental work out from a simpler time. Limited to 300 copies.
PHILIP JECK / MAIN / OVAL / HENRI POUSSEUR
4 Parabolic Mixes
(Sub Rosa) Used 2xCDR $8.00
Musicians of different generations attempt new mixes on the basis of Pousseur’s original eight parabolic studies. The first mix (not a re-mix) is a re-interpretation by Pousseur himself. The second mix is Robert Hampson’s (aka Main), who gives a personal but faithful interpretation of Pousseur’s studies. Another degree of alteration is highlighted by Philip Jeck, who creates a massive and powerful set, adding sounds from other sources (totally allowed according to Pousseur’s original concept). Markus Popp (aka Oval) produces a piece far removed from its sources.
At Swim 2 Birds
(Drunken Fish) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
1997 reissue of stunning instrumental album (named after the surreal Flann O’ Brien novel), originally released in 1987 on Flying Nun / Xpressway. Piano-scapes, ambient noise, minimalism to experimental moods and homemade instruments by the This Kind Of Punishment leader and the beloved Dunedin folk musician.
Cities In Flight
(BloodLust! - B!151) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
On the striking follow-up to Invisibility, Jendon (Catherine, Zelienople, Abduction) steers his Doepfer Analog Modular System through three electronic music pieces, commencing with a startling throb-throb, and working through loud, noisy, aggressive passages and more subtle, thoughtful, tempered segments.
Invisibility
(BloodLust! - B!117) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This fixture in Chicago music shifts between roles as a psychedelically-driven guitarist in Catherine (TVT Records), a more experimental-minded guitarist in the avant-garde group Zelienople, and as half of Abduction (with Michael Miley). The core of these vivid modular synthesizer recordings seems to be a familiarity with the palette of early industrial music (e.g. Maurizio Bianchi, Lustmord, the grittier instrumentals of Throbbing Gristle).
Totentanz and other electronic works 1958-1973
(Melon Expander) 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Warner Jepson filled over 200 reels of quarter-inch tape with electronic sounds at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, Mills College and The National Center for Experiments in Television. Some were used as soundtracks for theater productions and art films, some were heard ephemerally at art galleries, parties and happenings in the late '60s and early '70s, but only the soundtrack to Totentanz, a theater work by Carlos Carvajal, was ever released (300 copies on LP in 1971). Melon Expander's 2xCD reissue of that LP includes plenty of other pieces unheard by anyone in the past thirty years -- late '50s musique concrete experiments; rhythmic, prepared-piano-and-tape pieces; and sprawling, meditative sound paintings done on the 100 and 200 series Buchla synthesizers. With liner notes by the composer. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008
Live from Devil’s Den
(Pauf Recordings - PAUF022) CD $7.50
Fantastic and mysterious dead-of-winter in situ group sound survey — also described as field recordings from a cave / theme park in Florida. Having recorded for Kye and Bánh Mì Verlag, the Fribergs and the DiMaggio collaborate with Jeronimo Jimenez of Ñaka Ñaka on a single 49-minute track so diminutive in nature it has to be a performance. “Arrangement of sound with depth,” according to Nothing / Shut Down, “A story that seems to have no pulsation but firmly exists.”
Duos
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
This Norwegian sound explorer cooks up a delightful bunch of short, skittering improvisations with Felix Nussbaumer, Saul Rayson, Raoul P, Tripp Nasty, Julius Menard, Raoul van Herpen, and Chester Winoweicki. A glorious aural smelting of trumpet and ether deerhorn, drums and sampler, wooden flute and weevil, bells and deerhorn, shruti and phashi, gitarre and kraakdoos, trumpet and board chirper, bansuri and weevil, harmonium and gibber, drums and fingetrap, and bass and chirper that will float autumnal brains. Edition of 60
Back and Forth / Exhibition Sound
(? Records) Used CD $30.00
Recorded August 1985, Jones’s whirring, clanking mechano-constructs refuse to sit still. “Back cover shots display several motor-agitated automatons with single beaters attached to end(s), pre flail. Heard: motorik-accent hand drum, metallic ping, bells, glockenspiel (possibly), distant melodic informations, presumably of aleatoric / wind-based selection. Jones’s music continues to exasperate and provide much needed WTF synapse-misfire. Defiant.”
Green Just As I Could See
(Erstwhile - ERST065) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
The structures here are thick and elastic, filled with variety, balancing long-held tones with skitterish ones. Overall, a staggering, sophisticated electroacoustic dialogue between Neumann, using the inside of a piano and a mixing board to speak a language of quick bursts and sheer atonality, and Jones on electronics, where delicate meditation meets the sound of surgery on dying robots.
Xylophone
(? Records) Used CD $25.00
A 31-minute, deliriously good sound piece recorded in 1976, made by a music machine xylophone (a motorized cork beater that runs over the Lyrica tone-tubes in monochromatic fashion, creating an illustrious wave of cosmic fracture). Edition of 500
Solo 78 /79
(Destijl - IND057) CD $12.75
One of the crown jewels of the early Smegma dawn, originally released in a limited run in 1980. Also known as Do Unseen Hands Keep You Dumb?, the album is a post-Zappa, stoned blues/concrete melange of guitar, tapes, found sounds and voice. Liner notes by John Olson of Wolf Eyes.
The Julie Mittens
(Holy Mountain) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
This Dutch power trio specializes in extended improvisation at extreme volumes. Inspired by John Coltrane’s The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording and the knowledge that Fushitsusha has more to do with Thelonius Monk than Blue Cheer, guitarist Aart-Jan Schakenbos, bassist Michael van Dam, and drummer Leo Fabriek consistently wreak havoc with lavish, textural, speaker-blowing meltdown jams; they surge with psychedelic power and a stellar rhythm section on the four studio recordings here. They “walk a harrowing path between amplifier anarchy and balanced interaction, never failing to make the two meet,” says Dusted. “Schakenbos provides the skyscraping as he warps and mutilates single notes with the centrifugal force of massive feedback. Van Dam either drops terrifying bass bombs that fill the vacuum Schakenbos leaves in his wake, drones ominously, or dialogues. Fabriek, however, harnesses the others’ energy, as he resists the urge to flail away, and instead inserts a fill when it increases tension, thumps steadily when a groove is needed, or colors when space beckons.”
Something For Everyone
(Pro-Am Entainment - PA866) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
This unavoidable debut album from Vancouver’s engaging pop masterminds is a classy and classic collection of sing-along-friendly folk-pop perfections, delivered with powerful hooks, engaging melodies, and poetic charm. Features members of Young And Sexy, Perfume Tree, and Canned Hamm.
Vasilisa The Beautiful
(Musik Atlach) CD $16.50
The “ultimate screamer” from Hijo Haidan recorded live with Vava Kitora’s “shamanistic vocalist.” The duo’s intermingling of noise and drone is from a sphere beyond. Sudden, seemingly bi-polar in the extreme, fortified with delay and fuzz.
G.X. JUPITTER-LARSEN / ALLAN ZANE
Banjax
(Somnimage - som014) CD $15.00
(Somnimage - som014) Used CD $7.00
A collaborative / conceptual project by the masterminds behind The Haters and Wyrm respectively satisfies appetites for "aesthetics" of "noise," as well as the dark ambiance sensibility. Sound manipulations involving explosions, breaking glass, and the destruction of various items by power tools spread over three tracks.
Jurajium
(Alchemy) Used CD $12.00
Solo noise album from 1997 by early Hijo Haidan member, who plays synthesizer, keyboards, tape, and electronics. Jojo Hiroshige guests on electric guitar.
Visitors
(Ninth World Music) Used CD $5.00
Thirty electronic percussion and synth compositions for one to nine players, with a chaotic, neo-LAFMS vibe. From 1998.
Pterodactyl Graveyard
(Chocolate Monk - choc.540) CDR $8.00
Dai Coelacanth Ida Coelacanth Ida Koelacanth Ida K agitation confusion paranoia wigs worms the bunker the B&B the Graveyard. The Pterodactyl. The Pterodactyl trilogy. The final part of the Pterodactyl trilogy. Over fifty minutes of shouting whispering mumbling jumbled up sounds and incessant banging. Bovril smeared on an aching skull can evaporate and cause oily plumes in shafts of light. No prisoners taken or required. A small pie hug given. Make lard not war. Edition of 60
Infinity
(Ad Hoc) CD-ROM $10.00
Gendos Chamzyryn, Ken Hyder, and Tim Hodgkinson’s electroacoustic improvisation from 2008 rooted in Tuvan shaman ritual music. Each play of the program remixes source material located on the disc and produces a new twenty-minute musical piece. The disc cannot be paused or fast-forwarded, and there are no tracks to select. It uses special software to recompose the music each time it is played and runs on computers (PC / Mac) with 2 MHz processors, 1.5 GB RAM, a sound card and a CD drive.
Abdominal Electricity
(Phage - PT140) Used CD $10.00
Another cut up masterpiece by this influential harsh noise artist. Sixty minutes, four tracks of quickly moving screech, sure to please any fan of 90s style Japanese noise. Edition of 500. Sealed
Dritte Atombombe Auf Japan
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Almost 30 years on from his previous Chocolate Monk release, Kimihide Kusafuka returns with a blistering set of in-the-red noise goodness guaranteed to put the pep back in your step while clearing your mind of society’s gunk. Heavy huffing is recommended. Live sounds by modular synth and delay and reverb only. No distortion, fuzz, or overdrive pedals. Edition of 60
In The Monotonous Flowers
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
Spacious and concrete-ish industrial from 2002.
Metal Dysplasia
(Cheeses International) Used CD $35.00
“Big heaps of crunching, acoustic and electronic tape collage” from 1996
Metaloplakia
(Kinky Musik Institute) Used CD $40.00
Debut release of cut-ups of junk noise from 1994. Numbered edition of 300
Molekular Terrorism
(Pure) Used CD $12.00
This “electroacoustic noise college,” promises Rate Your Music, is “a step above … average…, without a doubt.” KFJC is even more effusive, referring to this 1996 discs as a “necropolis that never sleeps and never shuts the fuck up, blowing hot farts of scrap metal out of its torn asshole at all of hours of the night. The hammering shrapnel destroys transients and stray animals like insects, splattering blood and offal across the irretrievably filthy pavement.”
MSBR / K2 / Magmax
(MSBR) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Live Grappling Electronics” and “Eco Eco Magma Azarak” by Koji Tano, “California Dry Socket” and “Soap For Wet Vagina 2” by Kusafuka Kimihide. Packaged in a clear slim-line jewel-case without any artwork. From 1999
Sissy Spacek / K2
(Helicopter - H66) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
An hour of face-melting noise from John Wiese, Charlie Mumma, and Kimihide Kusafuka.
The Rust
(Kinky Musik Institute) Used CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
“An utterly crushing masterpiece of metal junk cut-ups” from 1996. “Nothing to hang on to, just pure tonal punishment, decimated rhythms, and non-linear arrangements and rejection of any convention beyond pure concrete cacophony.”
Transición II / Phonophonie
(Mode) Used CD $10.00
Early, forward-looking works are constructed so that no two performances can ever be alike. For Transición II, pianist Aldo Orvieto performs on the keyboard while percussionist Dimitri Fiorin performs inside the piano. The score calls prerecord sections to played during the performance, as well as another tape of recordings of different live performances (sometimes manipulated to change timbre and frequencies in order to make recognition of the original sounds impossible), but for this recording, Alvise Vidolin’s live electronics are used in place of the analogue tape loops. Phonophonie is a piece of musical theater performed by Nicholas Isherwood on bass, produces a monotone gurgling sound similar to the noise produced when one expires. Stefano Bassanese handles tapes and sound direction — a mix of other sound sources, extraneous sounds and voices.
Analogues
(Cut) Used CD $5.00
“Atmosphere, depth, a sense of direction, and the exploration of sound” is how Sound Projector sums it up, with “repetition and a minimalist approach [providing] structure and direction…. [S]amples of radio and field recordings, and of drums and metal objects … create moody and sometimes ominous [atmospheres].”
Drums And Metals
(Cut) Used CD $5.00
“The six compositions on drums and metals are, Feldman-fashion, named after the instruments employed on each track,” notes Avant Reviews. “ ‘Snare Drum + Bell’ features a bell, hieratically tolled, and as each toll decays there’s a rustle of activity on the snare drum. The articulation of the snare is indistinct; it sounds like someone panning for gold, or perhaps a distantly recorded rain stick. Progressively, as the snare gets louder, it is joined by a buzzing screech as a resonator is touched lightly to the surface of the bell. The snare-work gradually reduces in volume, and when it becomes barely distinguishable the track ends…. Minimalism … has obviously had an impact…. Kahn makes sparing use of phase-shifts, and throughout the CD emphasis is placed on repetitive rhythmic patterns, especially pulses and waves. Kahn doesn’t foreground human agency, how a sound has been made; he focuses attention on sound itself, its timbral qualities, its duration, its relationship to other sounds and their placement in space.”
Intervals
(Monotype - MONO032) CD $12.75
(Monotype - MONO032) Used CD $10.00
Duo performances by two outbound percussionists (with Kahn on synthesizer also) from Switzerland 2009 recorded by Kahn, composited into their final versions here by Z’ev. Not surprisingly, the heavy processing transcends the inherent rhythmic quality of percussion and settles instead on their complex sonic qualities. “Lausanne” layers metallic noises with delicate grains running through a hollow wooden body; dark clouds gather, undefined sounds appear, a soft metallic hum becomes for a moment the sole audible component, underlying drum tremors rise to the surface. “Zürich” goes through light and dark phases, and rather bare moments where only drone-like electronics and processed drum noises create an impenetrable vacuum.
Level Limb (The Shadow of The Wizard)
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Two of the Kobe studio recordings on the third album by this duo are vocal / magnetic pickup journeys if not into the heart, then perhaps the liver of what seems to be some sort of semi-darkness. A live recording from Osaka using synthesizer and magnetic pickups channels the conflict and majesty of the battle section of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” Edition of 60
Miramar
(Sirr) Used CD $6.00
Using an analogue synth as a basic source plus a floor tom (as a resonator) and small cymbals,” says Touching Extremes, “the New York / Zurich-based sound carver achieves that kind of phenomenon where the vibrating propagations turn ears into resonance instruments themselves, something varying through placing our stance in different listening perspective…. The sound quality ranges from tidy oscillations to semi-distorted beating of frequencies, both cases yielding membranes’ movement and strange responses from the brain. Looks like you’re undergoing a transformation of the way you accept an acoustic code, it takes a while before your body reacts correctly…. [T]his is a radical approach to a delicate argument but Jason demonstrates much more about physics with such a few means than hundreds of theories could ever explain with hollow words and formulas.”
Papercuts
(Crouton) Used CD $5.00
“With subtle electronic processing and various grades of handmade and commercial paper, Kahn and Mueller devote 18 minutes to exploring the ‘movement and malleability’ of paper, shoveling deeper into more esoteric forms of percussive experimentation,” according to Tiny Mix Tapes. In “what could be a gimmicky run-through of exchange-value bombast and tripe, Papercuts instead allows the subtle, tangible qualities of paper itself to dictate where the music goes (or doesn’t go), without the intentional efforts of the musicians to use it as a replacement for acoustic or electronic percussion…. It’s discreet, delicate, and rewarding… [I]t will make you appreciate the simple pleasures of material sonority itself, while reintroducing a bit of Dada-esque uneasiness.” Numbered edition of 500
Plurabelle
(Cut) Used CD $5.00
“Kahn works with loops and waves of sound, most of which are generated from percussion (metalophones in particular — he likes harmonics) and treated electronically,” notes Avant. “He constantly modulates his sounds; nothing is allowed simply to be; it always has to be becoming, albeit at a slow and steady rate. These pieces are attractive and engaging, without in any way emulating the sugar-spun electronica those descriptors would imply.”
Shimmer /Flicker /Waver /Quiver
(Korm Plastics) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Together for a session at the Extrapool studio in Nijmegen, The Netherlands,” explains Boomkat about this disc from 2003, “Roden plays contact mics and guitar while Kahn takes up percussion, laptop and analogue synthesizer…. The end product is exquisitely subtle and charged with warm, microsonic details that nicely fit alongside the grade-A minimalism these two author as individuals. Throughout this album the music seems to reside in the upper frequency bands, riding gentle waves of hiss with looped sonorous textures.”
Songs For Nicolas Ross
(Rossbin) Used CD $3.00
Electronic lullabies and/or brief sonic environments from 2003
Vanishing Point
(23five - 23five015) Used CD $9.00
American sound-artist Jason Kahn is exacting when it comes to the principles of noise. His application in composition is not that of Merzbow or Masonna, with teeth-gnashing explosions of distortion, feedback, and volume; rather, Kahn's psychoacoustic techniques employ the specific frequencies of white, pink, brown, and blue noise in works that reflect the ideals of minimalism. These are sounds that regularly occur through the constant vibration of machinery; and Kahn is more than happy to appropriate such events through field recording. He also generates complementary noises through systems that involve the rattling architecture of a drum kit and an analog synthesizer. For all of the phenomenological studies and stoic mesmerism attributed to much of Kahn's catalogue, Vanishing Point is a subtle and hypnotic elegy for rattling metals, timbral vibration, gossamer static, hissing field recordings, and those aforementioned colored noises.
A Soundtrack For Nightmares
(New Underground - NU666) Used CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Solo electronic experiments by the man behind the legendary “consummate weirdo tape noise / guitar thunder” album Zurich 1916 (Iridescence 1984). Admired by our friends at Volcanic Tongue for its “cold, dark appeal that feels close to Steven Stapleton’s vision for early Nurse With Wound but with less of the sonic surrealism and a more claustrophobic, drone-based atmosphere,” the “deliberately unnerving” A Soundtrack For Nightmares moves “from deep wells of suspended sound a là early-AMM into distant tectonic scrapings and doomy single note guitar bombs a là Pete Swanson, all drenched in haunting fog-horn calls and shortwave flutter a là the Conet Project recordings.” All-black jewel case with insert and silver-stickered front.
Kali Ensemble
(Turgid Animal - TA578) CD $11.00
The debut CD by Mike Page (Fire In The Head, Sky Burial) and Pentti Dassum (Umpio, Deep Turtle). Electronics and junk metal / percussion. Two tracks, both 33:33 long.
Vaporous Clamor
(Chocolate Monk - choc.528) CDR $8.00
Cody Brant (objects, feedback, tapes, and voice) and Ian Mckenzie (synthesizers) know you never asked to be born. They have just the right soundtrack for your last hurtle toward the finishing line. Let’s see what Angela Sawyer has to say: “The sound of the electric other has been here for 65 years, and while it changes a little depending on which technology is cheap, or whether or not you’re American, it never progresses per se. And I don’t think it should. Because we’re all trapped. Round tones hang like a heat, and then are slowly punctuated by the ugly gallop of some somethings plugged back into themselves. Give yourself over to this sound, and you can intuit the heartbeat of a Boston Dynamics robot — a mechanical cop that will keep coming until everybody that isn’t rich is eradicated from existence. There is no foreground on this record, no depth. Sometimes the electronics are juicy, and sometimes flat. Sometimes a snorg has a fuzzy edge, and sometimes it’s metallic. But be certain, you’re always inside the robot and the robot can’t feel. It has no head to feel with. It can only do backflips and open doors while it endlessly patrols. You know it’s looking for you.” Edition of 60
Raga Shahana Kanada / Raga Pahari
(India Archive Music) Used CD $5.00
The playing of Shujaat Khan extends the vocal aspects of the style innovated by his father, legendary sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan. With table-player Shyam Kane, Raga Shahana Kanada reflects the romance and beauty that enlivened the Mughal court’s grandeur. Raga Pahari continues another Vilayat Khan tradition with lyrics sung about the mischievous and flirtatious Krishna teasing an outwardly upset, but inwardly pleased, girl. From 1992
7 NADEs
(Tzadik) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Astonishing and eccentric album from 1996 with a stellar collection of supporting instrumentalists largely put to use in generating short bursts of blinding, grating noise. Sporadic melodic chunks do sneak in, usually underlined by unrelated elements like the sound of running water, because, after all, no sound exists in a pure space without distraction.
Live Low To The Earth, In The Iron Age
(Abduction) Used CD $35.00 (Out-of-stock)
Atmospheric instrumental excursions for guitar, violin, bass, and drums, performed in an elusive higher-key sunset mode with The Sun City Girls (doing business here as The Neti Neti Band). Purely ecstatic.
Sweetness of Sickness
(Rabid God Inoculator - RGI004) Used CD $20.00
Beautiful, cacophonous, yearning, melancholy, Kang “gets more tonal variation from his violin than anyone else in the history of Western music,” sputters a breathless Amazon reviewer about one of Kang's earliest albums, released in 1996, “Making it sound, by turns, like a buzzing bee, a Stealth Bomber firing up its engines, faux-demented fugal madness, a cranky bear waking from hibernation, a barking dog, a train wreck, Hendrix on steroids, a badly played saw, the theme to a demented marionette production, a buzz saw, a passel of falling-down-drunk clowns, a pack of robot coyotes mating (or maybe being run over by Cadillac Escalades), pigs being slaughtered, dial-up internet connections, flipping the dial on your radio when its turned up full blast, and the heaviest death metal band ever.”
The Story of Iceland
(Tzadik) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The Story of Iceland hides its perversity and strangeness underneath a peaceful surface,” is how William York sums up this 2000 release, three years in the making. “A five-part, thirty-minute suite that brings together elements of minimalism, quiet droning soundscapes, and various world music strains, it is built on a simple six-note motif that first shows up in ‘Circle of Fair Karma,’ a sort of oriental funeral march with tuba, violin, trumpet, martial snare drumming, and Uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes). The theme shows up later in the Indian-flavored ‘Sweetness of Candy’ and again in the marimba/oud/acoustic guitar finale, ‘Circle of Fair Karma’. The title track is followed by the entirely different-sounding 10:10,” a bizarre and psychedelic cult anthem “with David Bowie-esque singing and swirling cymbal effects; this track repeats the same three-chord progression and main vocal part for the entire ten minutes…” The album closes with a short, beautifully scored gamelan piece.
Theater of Mineral NADEs
(Tzadik) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Among medieval crumhorns, ecstatic arrangements, lilting melodies, unusual concepts and virtuosic violin playing takes a central position in this 1998 album, highlighting the strength of Kang’s tone and technique. The NADE concept travels through genres from around the world, paying tribute to the traditions while random, discordant elements inhabit a space much further in the background than usual.
Blessed Clue In The 3 Sided Dream Of Entwined Saxophones Heads + Busts (On The Sands At Barge Grove)
(Inyrdisk) Used CDR $5.00
Live electronics and field recordings by Kevin Hainey from 2011, a three-sided concept album landscape from a not-so-picturesque Canada, exploring mysterious new drifts for very wavy avant-garde experience. Edition of 100
Discon
(Krim Kram) CD $12.00
One thing that has been a constant factor for Kapotte Muziek since its formation in 1984 is the recycling of sound. In the first phase, Christian Nijs recorded sounds and instruments, and Frans de Waard created collages using these recordings. Each of the 13 pieces here is created by cutting, pasting, superimposing, and editing one concert. No other electronic treatments were used, no granular synthesis, etc. The cover is a collage from the booklet that came with Kapotte Muziek’s Columbus, Ohio, CDR (Gameboy 2004), which was created from a black and white painting for which de Waard exchanged merchandise with an unknown painter at that concert.
Praag Rotterdam
(PacRec) Used CD $2.00
“Random shuffling sounds and foreground textures pass across … intermittently,” notes Aversion about the Prague recording on this disc by Roel Meelkop, Peter Duimelinks, and Frans de Waard. “Other machinated types of noises and faint samples … are … quiet and restrained…, so it’s all rather abstract and obscure….” The Rotterdam piece “build[s] up more quickly with … glitchy wisps of distortion and rather hellishly piercing high-end feedback … until it finally retreats to the distance and shifts back and forth into a lower sizzle.”
Works 1987-1993
(Korm Plastics - KP3050) 3xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks from their first cassette, Merzbowkapottemuziek (ZSF Produkt 1987), the complete live recording from a 1989 collaborative concert at Radio Rataplan, two compilation pieces that were made around the same time, the complete Continuum LP (Cheeses International 1993), and three compilation tracks, including the long reworked “Radio Rataplan” from the Dutch Tour 1989 double cassette (V2_Archief 1992). Carton box with sleeves, poster. Edition of 300. Sealed
How To Make A Happening
(Primary Information) CD $15.75 (Out-of-stock)
Allan Kaprow lays out eleven rules on how, and how not, to participate in the art movement he began in the late 1950s and which became known for its unpredictability, open scores, and constantly-evolving form. On Primary Information’s CD — reissued with the cooperation of the Estate of Allan Kaprow and the Getty Research Institute — he speaks plainly into a microphone, delivering private cut-to-the-chase style instruction on Happenings that is both informative and contradictory, both a practical and theoretical how-to with frequent dead-pan humor. He also reads the program and notes of three Happenings (“Soap,” “Calling,” and “Raining”), which serve as loose instruction, as they involve improvisation and forces beyond human control, such as acts of nature and other environmental forces. This spoken word recording, which reflects and informs on a movement that fifty years ago jump-started a seminal shift in postwar contemporary art and performance, was made without the advantage of hindsight and naturally lacks sentimentality and a sense of its relevance within this history. In fact, Kaprow shrugs off its place in the arts. As he declares in rule number one: “Forget all the standard art forms — don’t paint pictures, don’t make poetry, don’t build architecture, don’t arrange dances, don’t write plays, don’t compose music, don’t make movies, and above all don’t think you’ll get a happening by putting all these together.” Hand-silkscreened jewelcase that replicates the laminated 1968 edition by Alison Knowles and Something Else Press while preserving Mass Art’s original artwork from the 1966 edition. Listen to an excerpt here: https://soundcloud.com/primaryinformation/allan
The Tattooed Date of the Earthquake Across the Abdomen
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Crozier Lathrop at the controls: “Do you remember the first gasp of air you ever sucked down, abjectly sensing that things outside you can go inside you, as you crawled out from inside into the outside unknown: still-born at the still-lodge reflecting still-waters, perpetually distilling your daily boils, bils, dungs, romans, and countryfolk throughout the last half of adolescence, more-or-less mute, and then those who didn’t already live there all migrated down river to a Kentucky city-town and blurred into the salon-saloon weekly-gatherings held in foreign-tongues, obliterating toward no-known-object, only, for those who survived, to wake up decades later to a set of Pappy Van Winkle-wrinkles, and a good-enough smile? The two general rules for Kark— and what distinguishes Kark from their sibling-limb Sapat—are that there are no amps and no guitars allowed. The 19 tracks and 79 minutes of sound on this album were recorded over a 21-year period and co-created between 47 people in Louisville, Kentucky. Membership overlaps with too many bands to list here, but some highlights include The Cherry Blossoms, The Magik Markers and Ron Pate, big band leader of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s 1970’s Dada-heavies Rev. Fred Lane. Arkestrial Moondogs soak Kenny G’s jazz-concrète saxophone reeds in a Xenakis-Joujouka urinal cake. Secret agreements between past and present selves flash-form into a joyful body of outsider music.” Edition of 60
Ksiega Utopii
(Obuh - D11) Used CD $15.00
Second album by ex-Atman Marek Styczynski and Anna Nacher with friends, released 2000. Flocks of acoustic instruments from all over the world in airy ethno-psychedelic dance. Refined spaces and moonlight trance.
MAKOTO KAWABATA / RICHARD YOUNGS
Makoto Kawabata / Richard Youngs
(VHF - VHF64) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Duets by the leader of Acid Mothers Temple and the slightly less available Glasgow librarian in a relaxed yet psychedelic mood. Throughout the five untitled tracks, simple modal melodies are performed on acoustic guitar, autoharp, organ, voice and other instruments rubbing against the swirling production and layers of shifting haze. Youngs’s identifiable voice, guitar and autoharp greet Kawabata’s echo treatments on the first track, while track three reverses the process with Youngs’s minor key picking cutting against Kawabata’s thick, visceral drones. Tracks two, four and five all use a base of fingerpicked guitar melodies, layering organ, synth, tape effects and echo.
[Four Plus One]
(Eh?) Used CDR $4.00
“Michael Kimaid, Gabe Beam and Ryan Dohm’s electroacoustic timbral array includes drums, percussion, signals, strings, horns, electronics, objects, trumpet, cello and no-input mixer. Spare instrumental touches and slices of freely resonant metal are often present, as are cycles of tones and hums that Tod Dockstader would approve. The purr and the clink, the static and the segmented, the logical and the unclassifiable live together effortlessly, making for a five-track assortment that bears frequent spins and by no means outstays its welcome.” From 2008
Diorda
(Old Europa Cafe) Used CD $10.00
Two droning post-industrial de-compositions from 1996 by Sandrini and Cesena, mixed with treated voice of Japanese opera vocalist Naoko Hodaka. Numbered edition of 550 in stamped metal folder.
Temple
(Chocolate Monk - choc.535) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
After a much needed drop off the radar when she got with a UFO cult and huffed it up to preserve her mind from the outer-mush and swerve of the sanitorium, Keffer reemerges with a gentle, soothing throb of spew-age music. Recorded deep in Toad Holler, Chesterhill, Ohio. Edition of 60
Saucers In The Sky
(Roaratorio - ROAR10) CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Rodney Keith Eskelin (aka Rodd Keith, Rod Rogers) would’ve certainly found the recognition during his lifetime that his talent demanded had he not chosen to work in the lowest depths of the music industry: the “send us your lyrics” field, known today as the song-poem genre. Saucers In The Sky gathers together twenty-six previously uncollected Keith gems from the hundreds upon hundreds of songs he recorded before he lept from a highway overpass in 1974. Packaged in mini-LP gatefold sleeves with liner notes from Del Casher (inventor of the wah-wah pedal and guitarist on many of Rodd’s early recordings), and Stacey Keith (his daughter).
GREG KELLEY / KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN
3 Shows
(Entschuldigen) Used 3xCD $30.00
Recorded live at Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston, 4/29/05; Knitting Factory 5/2/05; and Mercury Lounge 5/8/05. With O-card. Sealed
GREG KELLEY / JASON LESCALLEET
Conversations
(Glistening Examples - GLEX1402) CD $12.00
Anticipated second collaboration by tape maestro and interstellar trumpet-biter, who map unexplored regions of free improv. Matthew Revert's video for “A Frank Discussion” is here: http://youtu.be/1-zXFx78ON8
Nmperign
(Selektion - SHS 009 ) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
“At low volume, there doesn’t seem to be much going on at all in this 2011 recording, but pay attention and a whole micro-world of nervous flutterings, clickings, and half-muffled yelps comes into focus (along with various strands of ambient noise picked up by ultra-sensitive microphones: passing cars, amp hums, even a low-flying aircraft). Rainey and Kelley know each other's moves very well, and when things get busy, the result is as exciting as a martial arts bout.” With ten-page booklet.
Trumpet
(Meniscus - MNSCS 009 ) CD $7.50
In which the Nmperign trumpeter transforms an instrument which has remained static since the 19th century into a claxon or a rhythm machine. Buzz saw tones, foghorn reverberations, lip kisses, wind tunnel trills and the sounds of rubbing and crunching metal appear, as do passages that could be a small fire being lit, a dental hygienist at work or a locomotive leaving a station. Air forced through the valves at different speeds, velocities and intensity makes up the longest track, which extends a note -- and its echoes --through lip vibrations and throat whistles.
GREG KELLEY / KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN
Yearlong
(Carpark) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nearly 18 hours of live audio recording from 2001-02 whittled down to a 45-minute “astonishing, constantly evolving pool of noises and textures, considerably freer and more dissonant than what one associates with either performer. The opening track immediately thrusts the listener into an inhospitable electronic dust-bowl, with loose, jarring fragments of sound flying from every direction. Other tracks are studded with random, percussive scraps that stubbornly refuse to assemble themselves into recognizable rhythms. Elsewhere, snatches of piano or orchestral samples briefly bubble and surface before being dashed against the duo’s rugged electronic coastline. The most vibrantly constructed piece, recorded at the 2002 Impakt festival in Holland, finds the two sounding as if they are conducting a distant symphony from within a gentle meteor shower.”
Alkuhärkä
(Fonal) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Beautiful chaos from 2004 where neo-psychedelic acoustic fragments mud-bathe in lo-fi noise-folk ambience.
Kellari Juniversumi
(Fonal) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Psychedelic avant folk from 2002 that stutters just as much as it should.
Latvasta Laho
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CD $6.00
“It is the drunken bird’s dream, the mouldy instrument, the evil music box, the song of half past 4am joy, people bathing in fairy’s pee and releasing the enchanting sound and the tantalizing sound.” Ralf Normaali is no liar.
Decay and Persistence
(Fragment Factory - FRAG28) CDR $12.50 (Out-of-stock)
A slowly building but eventually violently churning sea of noise by this member of the Lazarus Corporation artists’ collective who also baffled speechless audiences with her performance at 2012’s Schimpfluch Carnival in Bristol, UK (which is no mean feat). Includes double-sided full color booklet. Edition of 100.
Bats in the Attic
(Pica Disk - PICA025) CD $14.00
From the swamps came the Nords, and to a swamp of blistering warped noise they now return. Active for years as Rulla, Tommi Keränen raises hell with his solo debut full-length CD. He’s dirtied his hands as an Incapacitants and Pymathon collaborator and as a member of Testicle Hazard, Gentle Evil and Les Manures. His messy sound -- thick, out-of-control electronic chaos -- reaches a boiling point, with source material recorded at the prestigious EMS in Stockholm using vintage analogue synthesizers. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
Peruskivi Francon Betonia
(Ektro) Used CD $10.00
2002 disc by one-man band / art installation / travelling circus / raving lunatic by the name of Kake Puhuu. “Wild percussion, hypnotic rhythms, sinister bass loops, growled spoken word passages, crashing waves, rattling spray paint cans, calliope-like melodies, chanted vocals, and groovy almost-exotica, all taken in directions you would never expect,” marvels Aquarius. “Weird and wonderful, bizarre and beautiful.”
Garden Of Dreams
(Worldly Music) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Classical Indian music (sitars and tablas) meet western melodies (violins). Ali Akbar Khan demonstrates that fusion can be done beautifully and sublimely, with actual chord changes played against raga melodies in tunings not of equal temperament. “India Blue,” for example, starts as a rupak tal (seven-beat cycle) ostinanto blues lick, and evolves into a gorgeous exploration culminating in a crackling teehi that ends on a high note.
Journey
(Worldly Music) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A successful blend of tradition and technology produced by Khan-sahib’s protégé and student Jai Uttal. Sarod, sitar, tabla and dholak interact with electronic synthesizers (none of which sound forced or mechanical). Reissue from 1992
Then And Now
(AMMP) Used 2xCD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sarod maestro’s debut album Music Of India (Angel Records 1955) and a live recording from late 1994.
Devotional and Love Songs
(Caroline) Used CD $4.00
“Recorded in the wake of the late Khan’s triumphant performance at the 1985 WOMAD festival, this 10-track collection features the lighter, folkier side of the Pakistani classical music singer’s repertoire,” opines James Rotondi. “Accompanied by his nine-member ‘party’ on acoustic guitar, mandolin, and a full complement of tabla and harmonium, Khan unleashes typically stunning vocal phrases marked by blinding speed, cutting tone, and unearthly ornamentation. The infectious ‘Yaad-E-Nabi Gulshan Mehka,’ with lyrics in praise of Muhammed, finds the qawwali singer at his most effervescent, while the ghazal (love song) ‘Mast Nazroon Se Allah Bachhae’ features an insistent hand-clapped rhythm and the full Party chorus singing together in unison.”
FIRAS KHNAISSER / ALI ROBERTSON
Midlife Pandemics
(Chocolate Monk - choc.495) CDR $6.75
As worrying times might be leading to welts of mind and soul, Edinburgh based Khnaisser & Robertson invite you to rest your eyes and dream. Presenting two audio flashcards of meager movements and top-drawer wee letter improvisations. Dullards might call it non-music, but the smart money is on “tunes for goons.” According to the duo’s official statement, “Firas puts nae garlic in his hummus and it turns out that’s great. It’s buttery like the sort that you’d spread on yr paws to show you the way hame fae yrs to theirs to the park to the loch to the woods, for a pish, to the dirt, build a ganghut and back to yrs fr yr daily bread with a smile. And it was all just round the corner waiting for ye all this time! Ali is ready to eat.”
OXS
(Nyahh) CD $13.50
Cyber-tech texted phonemes, sibilants, velar nasal agmas, buzzing hiss-pops and fricative fun recorded in Derry, N. Ireland in June 2019 by the performance artist / sound poet — much of whose work is organic, spontaneous and site specific — and the composer / sound artist, whose work for and with human, performers, computers and (sound) objects often deals with memory, time, language and the relationship between text, code and gesture. The ten tracks on OXS are from “20 Performance Texts (2019),” O’Doherty’s collection of computer-generated pseudorandom texts.
Gratitudes
(Small Doses - DOSE97) CD $11.25 (Out-of-stock)
Elements of doom metal, dark ambient, and early industrial music all work their way into Kinit Her’s ritual neofolk. Previously released on cassette under the title Divine Names (Brave Mysteries 2010), Small Doses' CD reissue includes an unreleased full-length companion recording, bringing their complete vision to fruition. Artwork by Sineater.
Moonrise Over Legends Gym
(Chocolate Monk - choc.618) CDR $8.00
“Yes, yes, this gunk is gonna smear perfectly amongst all you Choco Monk lunkz,” weary Paul Magree assures us. “It’s a solo debut (sort of, if you exclude the self-released stuff) Mike Holland, one half of noise amateurs Wellness Regime and full-time aural dissolver. Skittish and heavy it is, Holland’s avant sniffer hoovering up all sorts of debris from his metropolitan surroundings. If these mournful yowls and gristly heaves seem initially to push molecular nihilism into your lobes, further exposure peels back these blistered surfaces to reveal a carnivalesque delight in the chaos of urban life. Madness, bro, but this Kinver Pond guy loves it, his antennae always set to the ‘on’ position, continually flipping the jostling carnage of our reality into deep cuts of topographical collage. Back in the day you’d need a room full of mainframes in a basement in Paris to get this kind of musique concrète jibber-jabber, but fortunately for us, Kinver Pond’s access to the means of production is far less arduous. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, babycakes. That’s what gets results.” Edition of 60
Abstractions Of The Industrial North
(Trunk) Used CD $30.00
Never commercially released before, Kirchin’s strangely addictive library music — recorded in 1966, during his “imaginary film” period, including guitar work by a pre-Zep Jimmy Page, and sax by Tubby Hayes — ranges from blissfully sad to hypnotically weird and pastoral jazz.
Spectrum
(Autobus) CD + CD-ROM $18.00
(Autobus) Used CD + CD-ROM $8.00
Beginning in the 1950s, ethnomusicologist Király has been collecting the vocal and instrumental music of the people of the Voïvodine region (Hungarian, Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, gypsies) as well as their folk instruments: zithers, drums, flutes and fifes. Includes "The Little Glutton," an opera for children based on a folk tale recorded in 1963; early '70s recordings with Katalin Ladlik and Ensemble Acezantez on citraphone, tablophone, acoustic guitar and zither; and a 1998 home-recorded tablophone solo improvisation. CD-ROM is a 24-minute solo performance on zither, recorded live at Le Batofar in Paris in 1999.
TATSUYA KITAJIMA & SHISHOW BAND
Aishite Kurenai No Nara
(Alchemy) Used CD $24.00
Delicate monologues layered over dark and heavy folk from Osaka, 1999
Royal Paint With The Metallic Gardener From The United States Of America Helped Into An Open Field By Women And Children
(Load) Used CD $3.00
Powerful live band with an experimental bent, a multi-headed sound, and a clear fondness for ugliness and grit. This 2004 album boasts noisy distorted guitar heroics, high-pitched whines, squiggles of dog-whistle frequencies, sustained fire alarm bleeps, token Indian and exotic, caterwauling vocals, splintered instruments, layers of droning noise, visceral sensations of heavy objects being moved and things being violently broken, ear-clenching debris.
38cbm
(ND - NDCS09) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Audio work for a metal freight container installation, with quadraphonic loudspeaker system, low-frequency vibrations of the walls and floor, and twelve people locked in the dark.
Chosen Powerless
(Expectorant) Used CD $3.00
Venomous analogue synth textures from 2009 by Ryan Oppermann
1970-1971
(Water) Used 3xCD $25.00
2008 reissue of the first three albums by the trio of Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Dieter Moebius (which became a duo after Schnitzler departed in 1971 renamed Cluster). Klopfzeichen and Zwei-Osterei were sponsored and released by a church-run record label (Schwann) who contractually obligated the group to feature religious-themed text on the first side of each. Eruption is a live recording of the band’s last concert together in 1971. Guitar, percussion, keys, and cello heavily processed with echo, filters, and tape machines — unlike anything else that was being made at the time. Contains liner notes.
Admira
(Important) Used CD $6.00
Post-Moebius / Roedelius tracks from 1971 by Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Freudigmann, and Wolfgang Seidel, seven of which were previously released on the Eruption LP (Qbico 2005), plus another continuous piece (indexed in five parts). Heavy, primitive. Gatefold card cover, embossed.
Vulcano
(Important) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Post-Moebius / Roedelius recording by Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Freudigmann, Wolfgang Seidel live in Wuppertal, Germany, 1971. Raw and dark and demented and apocalyptic (especially the ending, with its distressed, echoed vocals). Gatefold card cover, embossed.
Pink Stalingrad
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon - 1013) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A loose-as-hell rumination on human tragedy of a magnitude beyond imagining that takes on a white-knuckled ride through snow and smoke and blood and fire the everlasting, golden-superchord of Birchville Cat Motel, the growling tectonic, under-par riffage of Black Boned Angel, and the Burzum-o-phonic, cassette-left-on-the-dashboard fidelity disruption of Ming.
REVEREND LESTER KNOX OF TIFTON GEORGIA
Put Your Face in Gwod: the 366th Revival
(Smack Shire) Used CD $4.00
This radio personality of “questionable religious pedigree, but with enough hootin’ n’ hollerin’ holy-ghost ferocity to more than compensate for his lack of Biblical acumen,” according to Brainwashed, “Was something of an eccentric who felt his message was important enough to buy airtime (out of pocket, every week for more than 18 years) to broadcast his demented God-type message to Southern Georgia, despite his rather noticeable speech impediment. Recorded straight off the airwaves between the years of 1982 and 1992 by Tom Smith, the sound quality throughout this 71-minute compendium of the more unhinged moments of Knox’s broadcasts varies but Knox still comes through loud and clear, delivering his hellfire-and-brimstone message of sweaty-toothed allegiance to the spirit in the sky. He is frequently joined in the studio by a revolving cast of blithering hayseeds, po’ white trash and hill people, many of whom are invited to warble a gospel number or two, and their performances give new meaning to the term neo-primitive. Unorthodox guitar tunings and hilariously off-key vocals contribute to the real-people / outsider feel of this material. But Knox himself is the main attraction, whooping wildly and feverishly whipping up religious fervor.” From 2003
Wealth
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD038) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Debut solo CD by Norwegian experimentalist and audio-inventor, one half of the highly acclaimed duo Information (with releases on Rune Grammofon & Beatservise), based on field recordings and audio collage.
Cytostatic
(Panta Rhei) Used CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Blaring washes of brutal white noise and effected metal objects, bowed with other metals." From 2004
Nervescrap
(Pure) Used CD $12.00
“Walls on walls on walls of noise. Blistering, full-spectrum, ear-piercing, colon-clenching noise. Bottomless layers of samples, static, and screeches combine to an overwhelming chaos that fills every second of this [mid-’90s] album,” says KFJC, before explaining that “Knurl is Toronto-based experimental musician Alan Bloor. He avoids synthesizers digital sounds, instead using found objects such as fan blades, typewriters, scrap metal and car springs to create music that is completely devoid of rhythm, melody, vocals, and production quality.”
Obtain By Sacrifice
(Krim Kram) CD $14.00
The Montréal monster completes another chapter and verse in the life Godzilla would choose for him. Alan Bloor’s nauseating feedback and bio-volcanic growls are abominations to the natural world, with raw electricity spraying damage and sickness across plateaus and into valleys, and of course the saturated clang of pulverized metal grinding jagged holes into your neck like the most sarcastic tracheotomy lesson ever.
Paramecium
(Panta Rhei) Used CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Paramecium inspires thoughts of cataclysmic events,” assures Exclaim, “Such as tectonic shifts where the Earth’s plates grind against each other, the onslaught of powerful hurricanes, or the eruption of volcanoes.” Spray-painted cover
Periodic Nephromucilaginocity
(Total Zero) Used CDR $5.00
Bookended by darkness, spooky bass and delay, the three central tracks, with their shrieks of feedback, oil drum percussion and electronic distortion “gnaw at the ear drums with variable intensities” according to Mental. “Cosmic chalkboard scraping…, convoluted [and] glued.”
Scyamine
(Troniks - TRO227) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
The sound of distorted, amplified metal from 2006 by Alan Bloor, whose scrapyard inferno roars with the sounds of feedback and blown speakers, live and raw, produced from found stainless steel. Relentlessly rushing forward, constantly moving through a maze of grinding scrapes and crashes.
Thiocarbamide
(Phage - PT91) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
The fifty minutes on this release were composed using constructed metal objects and violin. All four tracks are pure, unrelenting harsh noise with plenty of movement, low bass rumbling, high-frequency feedback and the sound of metal being abused. One of Canada's most reliable mad dogs. Edition of 200.
Vorticose
(Panta Rhei) Used CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
At times more ambient drone than harsh noise, yet with sharp, hammering, acoustic sources more prominent than ever. Sadistic and smoking hot. From 2003 with color print insert.
Acousmatrix 1|2
(BV Haast) Used 2xCD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of 1990 collection of mid-century electronic works by the creative director of the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, and right-hand man to Stockhausen, Ligeti and Kagel
TIM KOH / KOHEI NAKAGAWA / KOJI TANO / JOHN WIESE / YASOTOSHI YOSHIDA
Frankenstein and Dracula Girls Tokyo Headlock
(Helicopter) Used CD $5.00
Various collaborative combinations recorded in 2003 that hit on what Blastitude calls “the screaming harsh thing,” “weird deserted cubicle atmospheres,” and “tons of edits and crazy psychedelic volume fluctuations.”
Nova
(Prisma) Used CD $6.00
Electronic tape composition composed for a multi-media work created with Anders Kjær, originally presented at the Henie Onstad Art Centre in August 1972. One of Norway`s first sound installations, it included a light show and a 13-by-19-meter construction of glass, rubber tires and piles of paper that the audience could walk through. Mimaroglu recommended this 2009 disc for its “chopped-up trumpet, lid-slam grand piano, vocal phonèmes arranged into a heavily-filtered, explosion-heavy array.”
Asylum Lunaticum
(Intransitive - INT033) Used CD $5.00
Intimate, absurd, feral and aggressive in its homemade weirdness, the music of Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Bär is deceptively simple -- typically created using their voices, a cassette-tape recorder and a microphone. Their astonishing suburban dramas are both charming and psychotic, sometimes at the same time. The husband-and-wife duo have self-published their dada-esque sound poetry experiments on small-edition lathe-cut LPs, tapes, and CDRs for years, usually adorning them with elaborate junk sculptures and paintings. Recommended if you'd rather spend the big bucks on food and rent and you're into Henri Chopin, Raymond Dijkstra, Ultra Eczema, Paul McCarthy, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Mike Kelley, LAFMS, Dylan Nyoukis, Aaron Dilloway.
Organ
(Eskimo - 01) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
The inner surface of the universe is filled with deep sorrow; so goes the malformed story by the GRIM main man, told via floating folk song. With twenty-six-page booklet.
Travel
(Art Into Life - AIL013) CD $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second part of the story begun with Organ (Eskimo 2012) about a young girl named Magnolia and a monster called Gamahead. This installment documents the many things she sees and hears on her journey between dream and reality, where she stumbles across ruins in the middle of a forest, hears a woman singing underground, and engages in other possibly imaginary adventures. With forty-page book of illustrations. Edition of 300. Listen to an excerpt from “Sanctuary” here: https://soundcloud.com/a_i_l/jun-konagaya-sanctuary
Erkin Koray
(World Psychedelia) Used CD $60.00
This unauthorized edition is truer to the original, has solidly informative liner notes, and boasts excellent bonus material. It’s essentially a collection of Koray 45s recorded from 1968 to 1973, encompassing everything from the wild, Anatolian surf guitar of “Cicek Dagi” to the beautiful, slo-mo psych balladry of “Yagmur.”
Voice Of Fire
(Junior Motel) Used CD $15.00
An hour-long spoken sermon and about eight minutes of feathery music written and sung by the leader of the Waco-based Branch Davidians cult. This is an original edition with three tracks (“Book of Daniel,” “Oration,” and “Shesonahim”) and does not include “Children of Waco” or “April 19, 1993.”
FUMIO KOSAKAI / IKURO TAKAHASHI
… Of Dogstarman
(Pataphysique) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A single, monolithic piece of itinerant synthesis, based on the Stan Brakhage film, never quite getting into harsh noise realms, instead a continuous ghostly blur of steely electronics.... Something of a neglected classic” from 1998 by the Incapacitants / Uchu-Engine / C.C.C.C troublemaker and the Kousokuya / LSD March / Fushitsusha tour guide.
Violin Improvisations New York September 1989
(Lovely Music) Used CD $10.00
“1990 CD release of solo violin and electronics by the main Taj Mahal Traveler and key player in Fluxus-related activities during the sixties. It’s some of the most beautiful mathematical-relationship-inspired solo performance grate-scrape out there… with just enough … Eastern micro-tonalities and alien gestures to keep your ears dancing on end…. [H]ard to believe that [the] glossed-out cavern / tank sonics are all derived from a single violin and a digital delay unit.”
Violin Solo NYC 1980
(P Vine) Used CD $28.00
A previously unreleased solo violin performance by legendary Fluxus conceptualist and founder of the Taj Mahal Travellers. “This CD presents rare and previously unreleased solo violin improvisation” says All Music Guide, “that employs techniques of free jazz mixed with the abstract sensibilities of the classical avant-garde. A stunning historical work, this requires a degree of attention to find reward in its details, but is a solid and compelling piece of avant-garde music.” From 1998
Deaf in Sugar Avalanche
(Wildlife Insect Fish) CD $16.50
Solo work by Tokyo-based noise artist, recorded at Gallery of Chuo-ku, divided into ninety-three tracks. A rather abnormal, anti-hedonist wall of noise, with which one is encouraged to interact via whatever adjustments to one’s playback system’s functions one cares to make. No wrong answers.
Haiawan
(Small Doses) Used CDR $10.00
Arabic-themed power electronics “indebted to the ’80s tape scene, with a similar sense of not-quite functioning equipment and a structure held together with horse glue and packing tape.” In an envelope with insert. Edition of 66.
MARIJA KOVAČEVIĆ / RORO PERROT
Push Broken Duet
(Chocolate Monk - choc.598) CDR $8.00
A duo birthed by chance at one of Perrot’s Broken Impro soirées at Le Chair de Poule in Paris quickly entered the PUSH studio to capture their broken music for broken times. “Crafted from the fervid echoes of broken violins and the crude energy of improvised guitar,” explains the very self-assured Capucine Bonenfrant, “this album is a unique testament to the compelling beauty that resides in unexpected corners of composition. New life into forgotten fragments, using the cracked, splintered, and cast-aside that promises the unfamiliar yet resonates with a primordial musical instinct we all carry. Both players splayed out on the concrete floor teasing out their spontaneous sound, showing us that music can bloom in the most unsuspected environments.” Edition of 60
PETER KOWALD / TATSUYA NAKATANI
13 Definitions of Truth
(Quakebasket - QB17) Used CD $16.00
Captured live at BPM in New York City, drummer Nakatani and contrabassist Kowald's improvisations play more like meditations. From the quiet hum of the almost silent instruments to the chaotic swirl of the music itself the arrangements here hold the listener in their spell from start to finish. Unplayed CD with the barcode crossed out, so we're listing it at used.
Tape Chants
(Kranky) Used CD $12.00
The second album by this Oakland-based composer opens with a minute-long track of tactile, engine-rev drone…. His drones get denser and moodier as they progress, gathering dust and debris to become more like field recordings than studio compositions,” says Pitchfork. “[T]ones begin with a sandy hue, then drift into low-end rumble and what sounds like acoustic string plucks…. Kowalsky’s work … is mostly for hardcore drone-fans, and even they might not be blown away by Tape Chants. But anyone can appreciate his attention to detail.”
Anarkkia, Kaaos, Maailmanloppu!
(BloodLust! - B!129) CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A scarce recording by cult industrial noise group, Kriminaaliset Metsänhaltijat -- which barely saw the light of day when it was originally released on cassette (Triangle Records 2008). The members of this shadow group of old-school industrial acolytes originally hails from Finland and from Karelia (northwest Russia, between the Gulf of Finland and the White Sea). Kriminaaliset Metsänhaltijat claim to have built their sound on the bones of S.P.K. and Throbbing Gristle, through a prism of Japanese harsh-noise and Finnish hardcore-punk, spewing out a nihilistic nightmare of diffused synth hiss, commanding metal percussion, waves of harsh-noise, anarcho-punk attitude, and dissident power-electronics. An exciting and satisfying introduction, in preparation for Bloodlust's release of Koskemattomuus CD.
Koskemattomuus
(BloodLust! - B!138) Used CDR $8.00
Bloodlust's second release by this emerging group of old-school industrial acolytes. Recorded in 2001, Koskemattomuus furthers their association with anarcho-punk with its fiercely grim, anti-war statements; their aggressive, dark, industrial noise includes segments of traditional, romantic Finnish World War II songs and impassioned battlefield vocal segments. A complex and compelling tableau that appeals to fans from the martial music, minimal synth, crusty punk, and noise.
Tacoma Narrows Bridge / Someday Anywhere
(Alien8 - aliencd8) Used CD $10.00
Dense ambient drone electronics from Canada and Japan .
CHRISTINA KUBISCH / FABRIZIO PLESSI
Tempo Liquido
(Ampersand) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Four-channel ambient sound continues throughout the whole performance. With no sampling possibilities at that time (late 1970s), all of the instruments had to be recorded solo in Kubisch’s studio on a Revox machine (one channel for each instrument, repeated several times in order to create a mega-loop, and the final result was transferred to a four-channel-tape for the performance). The superimposition of the sequences of different durations generated continuous layers of sound with minimal variations: a music that could go on forever... Tempo Liquido was one of her and Plessi’s most complex pieces, mixing life, performance, video images, different projections, and a multi-channel sound system.” With O-card
CHRISTINA KUBISCH / FABRIZIO PLESSI
Two and Two
(Ampersand) Used CD $15.00
Performed in Europe and the United States in the 1970s, Two And Two was a live performance for two performers (Kubisch and Plessi), two video cameramen, a wall of monitors and uncommon objects and instruments. Throughout the performances, people were invited to walk around and observe the live action in real time as close-up images of the performance were projected on video screens and a vibrator, water, swanee whistle, voice, contact microphone on ventilator, prepared alto flute, electronic metronome, waterjet on steeldrum were all amplified. The resulting four pieces on this 1977 recording alternate between heavenly, rhythmically shifting drones and Gamelan-tinged, blistering electronics that sound like distant, corrupted morse code dispatches. The entire album is an organic revelation of the discreet acoustic nature of everyday objects, intensely mechanical, startling and elemental. Reissue. With O-card
Electro-Acoustic
(Pogus) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks by the founder and director of Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives in Brussels: “Electro-Acoustic Santur” (1989), for two santurs, four micro-processors and electronic sounds; “Guitarra Cubana” (1988), combining guitar and phonetic sounds; “Inflexions Vocales” (1982) with Françoise Vanhecke (soprano), a vocal composition with accompaniment by a stereo tape; and “Le Reveur au Sourire Passager” (1977) with Jean-Claude Frison (reciter), which explores in sound and word a dark, deep, incomprehensible, and mysterious world. From 1996
CHRISTOF KURZMANN / BURKHARD STANGL
Neuschnee
(Erstwhile - ERSTPOP02) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Stangl and Kurzmann combine the former's acoustic guitar and the latter's electronic sound manipulation. Following concerts throughout Europe and Asia, they began incorporating song structures and pop vocals into their “delicate musical architecture,” yielding their live album schneelive, an elongated and meticulously structured version of a Prince song. Neuschnee is more complex, recorded over a four-year period; five tracks form an ambitious meta-song suite, with various lyrics and international musical styles that reconcile “experiment and tradition … thoughtful silence and expressive celebration of each moment … worlds of noises and clearly defined harmonies.”
CHRISTOF KURZMANN / BURKHARD STANGL
schnee_live
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE03) CD $14.40 (Out-of-stock)
The final show in Berlin on the last night of AMPLIFY 2004: addition, documents how much Stangl and Kurzmann's duo has changed since the initial recording of schnee in 2000, which was followed by numerous concerts over the intervening four years throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. “One might think that the incorporation of an existing song -- by Prince, no less -- into a context of austere eai experimentation is guaranteed to drag the music down into a swamp of postmodernism bordering on the kitsch,” explains Paris Transatlantic, “But nothing could be further from the truth. Gentle diatonic harmony [has long been] a feature of Stangl's guitar playing … and Kurzmann's own tastes in music are catholic enough…. [E]ven when Stangl drifts off into nostalgic Jim Hall comping, Kurzmann's oppressive loops drag him back into focus.”
01.05.10
(Alluvial) Used CDR $5.00
Five pieces, “brilliantly recorded with natural echo so that the instruments shine like polished mirrors,” says Sound Projector. “These scheming homunculi attack their instruments with a vigor that borders on pathological hatred: energetic sawing motion produces tremendous effective harmonics leaping off the bridge and shimmering in the air like the northern lights; tiny fingers the size of a crab’s claws create plucking motions so sharp they could break the neck of a Canadian goose…; busy left-hand fingering motions running up and down … as though a colony of ants had escaped and had to be wiped out, using only fingertips, in two minutes flat. It’s fine, crucial stuff, but a harsh dissonance also results, and the way it seeps off the record like so much ectoplasm may frighten those afraid of atonality.”
01.06.16
(Trente Oiseaux) Used CD $7.00
The sound of crickets and waves outside the building, transmitted inside the empty warehouse where Kuwayama and Kijima played along with them. Close attention is required for successful immersion in the ongoing transformations of sounds and musical figures.
02.08.31
(Trente Oiseaux) Used CDR $5.00
The duo’s second release for the label, released in 2003, was recorded in an empty warehouse at Nagoya Port, where the sound of crickets and waves picked up by microphones placed outside the building were transmitted into the space. This recording’s ambience is much quieter and more static, a peaceful canvas to hold explorations that, with a bit of attention, can immerse the listener in ongoing transformations of sounds and musical figures.
See Reverse Side For Title
(Vanguard) Used CD $15.00
On this charming and vastly entertaining recording, the rhythm is hardly an issue. Whether the tempo is fast or slow, everything is as solid as it needs to be in the tradition of the best string bands. Highlights are banjo whiz Bill Keith, fresh off his stint as a bluegrass boy for Bill Monroe, and the vocals of a youthful Maria D’Amato (later Muldaur).
Voyage Of Time
(Ethereal Mother) CD $7.50
CD reissue of the out-of-print CDR edition, repackaged in a DVD amaray box. Propulsive retro-ish psych-prog electronics, a kind of missing link between the sci-fi rock explorations of Heldon and the cosmic grooves of Tangerine Dream and Conrad Schnitzler. Sequences multiply, combine, fade in, fade out, all in intense astral syncopation. Motorik drums pulsate underneath cerebral arpeggiators, and droning dark matter undercuts the entire ritual. Free download includes two non-CD tracks (one of which is twenty minutes long), art, and videos.
Allure of Roadside Curios
(Starlight Furniture Company - *16) CD $14.00
Formed in 1997 by guitarist G.E. Stinson with bassist Steuart Liebig and guitarist Nels Cline, L.Stinkbug consciously chose to complete their line-up with a drummer who could groove -- percussionist Scott Amendola. Both Stinson and Cline prepare their guitars with an assortment of springs, toys, paint brushes, an electric drink stirrer, enough clips to make a beautician queasy, an egg whisk (that’s right, an egg whisk) and numerous other custom-made objects, and run them through a variety of effects, harmonizers and looping devices; same goes for Liebig -- chopsticks between the strings, looping devices, extended technique, the works.
Psychoacoustics
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
Live improvisations from 2004 — electronics and mechanics treated with scientifically approved methods; together with composed sections interpolated with sounds of science; illustrates the musical sounds of the human psyche.
Shamansong
(New Albion) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
The title-track, according to no less an authority than Blue Gene Tyranny, is “a mysterious 25-minute concert suite from a soundtrack to Anima, a film concerning a woman who journeys to the desert seeking to enter ‘the world where magic happens’ by performing certain rituals and labors. La Barbara recorded voice (sighs, whispers, lamentations, ululations, calls, cries echoed by the surroundings, lullabies and ‘vocal winds’) and percussion sounds (ancient Balinese gamelan instruments, tar and dumbek hand drums, shakuhachi, music box tines, rainstick, and African rattles) on location, high in the rocky cliffs of Diablo Canyon, NM, with its ‘ravens and echoes, birds and thunder’. Several of these sounds are also modified by computer…. ‘Rothko’… emulate[s] painter Mark Rothko’s layering techniques in sound…. Tapes of multiphonic and microtonal voice choirs and bowed pianos move through … space…. The mood is sombre, meditative and intense, with a pervasive constantly moving drone filling and reconfiguring itself in the space as a living presence. ‘Calligraphy II / Shadows’ … for voice and Chinese wind, string and percussion instruments … [is] gentle [and] evocative [of mysterious] gestures.” From 1998. Drilled barcode
Krabas Musique de Ultrá
(Chocolate Monk - choc.475) CDR $7.00
Odie ji Ghast and Thomas Tyler use dictaphones, voice, guitar, mountain dulcimer, bells, electronics, tapes, miscellaneous objects and baby to tear a sizeable chunk out of your clue hole. “Pre-language hoffs and quacks spin out of control,” chimes in our friend Joe Posset. “Instruments (whatever they are) become worried with hectic rubbings and coated in a sort of headache-y varnish…. There’s a canny intertwining going on somehow. Voices whittle like electric kettles, rubber birds sing to high heaven while the neighbors clank about looking for the good frying pan. Occasional electronics mean a finger is jammed deeper into your sense-lobe and the grey matter stirred like a cocktail. Behold! Mitten-enrobed hands rustle various stringed contraptions. Later I dream of Django, Paris in the 1930’s with pelican-throated hoofers warbling to the wee small hours.” Edition of 60
Balance
(Human Wrechords) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
In the left channel is Masami Akita’s “Floating Eloy,” an ear-inflaming … “clattering-creaking-scraping-pelting-frizzling … suite presumably named after Eloy Pruystinck, the Anabaptist / Free Spirit agitator who was condemned to the stake in Antwerp in 1544.... In the right … Tanja Kopecky with her ”Berlin karaoke group perform hypnotic, minimalistic cover versions of smash hits by Army of Lovers, Kraftwerk and others. Listeners are encouraged to adjust the balance control as they see fit, naturally. From 1998
Obitorio Veneto
(Von Archives - VON007) Used LP + CD $8.00
SALE PRICE. Italian band -– “a social punk sculpture” -- conceived by artist Nico Vascellari as a contribution to the Diedrich Diedrichsen-curated exhibition Rock Scissors Paper at Kunsthaus Graz. Lago Morto is “about things that casting calls usually exclude -- targeted aggression, unpredictable social effects and local politics.” The band performed for fifteen days in Vittorio Veneto in nonmusical venues such as bars, hotels, pizzerias, laundrettes, video stores, etc. All fourteen of the band’s songs are on the LP. The DVD contains a video from each of the sixteen locations of the tour, plus an extra montage of sixteen videos simultaneously. Edition of 200
GRAHAM LAMBKIN / JASON LESCALLEET
Breadwinner
(Erstwhile - ERST052) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Subtitled “musical settings for common environments and domestic situations,” the material for The Breadwinner was recorded at Lambkin's house in upstate NY, where the duo treated the entire building and its surrounding grounds as a studio, welcoming in outside sounds, which were later kept or eliminated during two years of reworking and polishing. Numerous submerged fragments reveal the beauty in everyday life. Observes Tiny Mix Tapes, “The album consists entirely of sounds from Lambkin's flat -- the radiator, the creaks in the floor, the silence/noise of the various rooms/hallways, the neighbors talking through the wall -- all edited down to roughly 50 minutes from eight hours of tape…. Most everything on The Breadwinner feels a little off and uneasy, a little smeared…. But there's really no single epiphany here, nothing really to "get," no crucial subtext to be discovered. Instead, it's just about finding appreciation in sound and sound construction.”
Softly Softly Copy Copy
(Kye) Used CD $25.00
Field / location recordings (sampled water, ringing bells, bird calls, etc.) with the occasional violin (Samara Lubelski) and acoustic guitar (Austin Argentieri). There is constant disruption of the music’s assumed trajectory: crescendos are cut off, buildups interrupted, and conventional harmonic sensibilities nearly obliterated. A study of sound and non-sound.
BRUCE LAMONT / RIGHT-EYE RITA / MARK SOLOTROFF
Lamont / Right-Eye Rita / Solotroff
(BloodLust! - B!124) Used CDR $3.50
The trio's debut release, a single 19-minute live recording from a performance at Chicago's AV-aerie. Their tri-vocal approach utilizes treated and pure voice: the looped deep chants of Lamont (Yakuza); the spellbinding, electrified wails of Right-Eye Rita, who Stopsmiling compares to “Lydia Lunch drenched in absinthe”; and the feedback-laced drones of Solotroff (Bloodyminded, The Fortieth Day, Intrinsic Action). For fans of Diamanda Galas, Abruptum, and the earliest moments of Current 93 and Coil.
Soundmatters
(23five) CD $12.00
The compositions of this French-Canadian sound artist have rarely emerged beyond of the context of international electro-acoustic competitions and festivals. His only widely distributed piece has been Mantra, which Metamkine released in 1997 through their Cinéma Pour L’oreille series. This exceptional work of acoustic minimalism drew considerable notoriety thanks in part to a public misidentification that Laporte sourced the composition on the resonant frequencies of a Zamboni. This anthology includes the aforementioned 25-minute masterpiece, plus four accompanying compositions that share Mantra’s unique sensibility; it’s a series of visceral compositions that build upon the traditions of minimalism, graphical composition, and phonography. Given the numerous parallels to Xenakis’ smoldering electro-acoustics and Tony Conrad’s delirious harmonics, Laporte’s work demands the attention from devotees of avant-garde composition.
BRETT LARNER / BURKHARD STANGL / TAKU SUGIMOTO
Compositions for Guitars
(A Bruit Secret) Used CD $8.00
“Different propositions questioning the limits of the instrument through radical and oblique approaches. Close minimalist electronic experience in Larner’s piece, games on detuning in Stangl’s piece, and a Cagian questioning of silence in Sugimoto’s piece ‘Hum’. Beyond the instrumental stakes, it is a question of our relation with space and time. The guitar is only the vector through which we apprehend our musical object.” From 2003
Maimed Left Arm
(Turgid Animal - TA289) CD $10.00
***Reissue of classic cassette (E.F. Tapes, 1995) by Richard Ramirez and Mary A.D. Fifty minutes, two tracks, lo-fi space noise with that straight-to-tape '90s harsh noise sound. Tones shine through the haze, aliens rape abductees and moan a feedback language only they can understand. A ghastly trip through time. With both original and new artwork by Tisbor.
Laube
(Small Doses - DOSE122) 2xCD $15.75 (Out-of-stock)
Pulling from jazz, ambient noise and drone, this German trio slows it all down and allows dark, downtempo, slow-swinging compositions creep out of the speakers. You could imagine them playing in a dark corner of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. All track previously released on cassette: Ausmerzen (Sonic Meditations 2009) and Schwach Gerkerbt (Sonic Meditations 2013). See the trailer here: http://youtu.be/9ju3m8spMZc
Gaze Into The Drain
(Chocolate Monk - choc.441) CDR $6.25
Lock up your grandparents. Cody Brant and Jonnie Prey are on the prowl. Two of the Monk family’s scruffiest, most colorful siblings deliver more fun than a knees-up at the crack shack. Numbered edition of 60
Twist And Decease / Desinfektionsraum
(Trash Ritual - TRASH051) Used 2xCD $18.00
Post-mortem industrial hell from Il Diavalo Italiano, second only to MB in terms of psychological abuse via raw electronics, distorted voices, concrete sounds, self-assembled electronic circuits and samples of the execution and disposing of Aldo Moro, the assassination of Victor Emmanuel II, etc.
True Mask
(Small Doses - dose66) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first compact disc release by Cadaver in Drag and Swamp Horse dude. Four tracks, nearly 40 minutes, elements of black metal, harsh noise, power electronics and dark ambient. Twisted environments built from electronics, guitar, and guttural vocals. Hand-made art work.
Microsonics
(Dr Jim's - 31) Used CD $8.00
David Brown and Sean Baxter’s textures of microscopic acoustic gestures, produced with prepared electric guitar, drum kit and percussive junk. From 2002.
Cup Queen
(Chocolate Monk - choc.558) CDR $8.00
“The energy of the Queen is situated between the 4 (security) and 5 (appeal of an ideal). She rests upon something that has been established, all the while knowing a new point of view exists. She is a pragmatic and active figure who knows her symbol well. She can become excessive, submerged by her element. Sea, shower, rain water hit the edges of their boundary spaces — shore, bath, polythene roof — and LDSN speaks variously on the subject of the water element, receptivity, fluidity and time, care and recovery. These are spare, playful compositions with vocal loops, field recordings, wind, strings, bells, birdsong, breath, claps, slaps, percussion and a mesmerizing quote from Ursula le Guin: ‘Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy.’ ” Edition of 60
In Each Act Processing Grief and Longing
(Chocolate Monk - choc.469) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
These transmissions from the weird and wet Upper Calder Valley follow on from releases by Roy Claire Potter, The Singing Isle, and Embla Quickbeam). Here Todmorden-based poet, writer, teacher, barkeep, dogsbody, collector of dreams, occasional performing artist presents lo-fi spoken word pieces peppered with the sound of home and countryside. Use words to get your weary arse out the ditch, pal. Numbered edition of 40
Compositions Demonstrations 1946-1974
(JWD Music) Used CD $20.00
Thanks to contributions in the fields of radar and atomic physics Le Caine Le Caine was allowed to develop a variety of instruments and devices incorporating technology several decades ahead of their time, including the electronic sackbut, one of the first analog synthesizers, a special purpose tape recorder which allowed pitch alteration and incorporated primitive multi-tracking techniques, and a touch-sensitive keyboard which enabled a performer to manipulate the notes on an electronic keyboard. Le Caine did not consider himself a composer as such, but he did have a background in music and the creative drive to use his training to create some exquisite exercises to show off his machines. He created at least one classic of the electroacoustic genre, “Dripsody,” constructed entirely from the manipulated and transfigured sounds of a single drop of water. From 1999
Le Voci del Buio
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6545) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Document of a late-night session by Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost), featuring an obscure ensemble of radical folk musicians of the Western Alps. Classical and acoustic guitars, early 1800s homemade wooden string instruments from the rural tradition of the region. Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Nature’s Crackling Fire
(Leather Bath Inc.) Used CD $8.00
Two lengthy tracks by Greh Holger and John Weise packed with close-up textures, one exuding an open tonal quality between the creaking, bowing, striking, and scraping stone, wood, and metal, the other focusing on drones, scrabbling, and treated horn. Edition of 200
Legend Trip
(Chocolate Monk - choc.506) CDR $7.50
These two, illicit camping on Mt St. Helens, Greek ferry discotheques, do you know where your CD player is? the Acropolis ’til dawn, free float boat in the ragged islands with call from Lax, alien lights coming from Texada, the reward is in the adventure, do you really want an explanation? Theo Angell (Hall of Fame, JOMF) and Joshua Stevenson (Staked Plain, Von Bingen, Magneticring, and JOMF) recognize that the welt on your forehead used to see. Worry not, they have the sonic third eye drops to get you blinking again. Edition of 60
Song And More Songs
(Rhino) Used CD $4.00
Includes Songs By Tom Lehrer from 1953, More Of Tom Lehrer from 1959, plus rare cuts and a previously unreleased 1996 recording of “I Got It From Agnes.” Liner notes by Dr. Demento and an interview with Lehrer.
LEONARD, SKROWCZEWSKI, ZAPPA TRIO
Visions
(Archive / Edition) CD $10.00
The debut recording from the trio of bassist Mark Leonard, percussionist Nick Skrowczewski, and saxophonist Stanley Zappa released by Bill Dixon on his Archive/ Edition imprint. Twelve tracks -- seven of which were recorded by Steven Lobdell of Davis Redford Triad and Faust -- influenced by the warm and tasteful tone of bebop pioneer Dexter Gordon, sympathetic to Dixon’s willingness to explore the limits of expression, and tempered by a Satie-like adherence to brevity and avoidance of tiresome, interminable pyrotechnics. Leonard and Zappa have worked as occasional sidemen in groups led by Rashid Bakr (Cecil Taylor’s longtime drummer), Zappa has also played with Lawrence Cook.
A Matter Of Scale And Other Pieces
(Anomalous) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live pieces using amplified small sounds from piezo discs (blowtorch on metal, amplified drinking straws), along with other instrumentation in live performance (including a recording from inside the Houston Astrodome).
Music Of David Lerman 1964-1987 Featuring Travelon Gamelon (Music For Bicycles)
(EM) Used 2xCD $25.00
Travelon Gamelon was originally released on Folkways in 1983, including four tracks of promenade and concert versions. This 2012 repress of the 2007 reissue includes an unissued bonus track. Disc two is packed with other soundworks performed and recorded from 1964 to 1987. With obi, booklet, insert. Both discs are enhanced with PDFs of scored and videos.
Within Earreach
(Artifact) Used CD $6.00
Recordings going back to 1984 made at site-specific sound installations or as soundscapes, mostly using self-built microphones and transducers. From 1994
Love Me Two Times
(Intransitive - INT026) 2xCD $19.50 (Out-of-stock)
This twenty-three-track double-CD is the result of six years of live and studio collaboration between the Boston improvising duo of Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) and Greg Kelley (trumpet) with tape-loop operator/electronics whiz of some renown Jason Lescalleet. Recorded at a wide range of venues with correspondingly varied attacks (not to mention degrees of fidelity), Love Me Two Times provides as comprehensive a picture as is likely feasible of these three, from the microscopically subtle to blood smeared yawps, from gorgeously woven drones to, well, Julia Child.
Pilgrim
(Glistening Examples) LP + CD $36.00 (Out-of-stock)
An audio documentation of this electronics-and-tape artist’s coming to terms with the death of his father. The LP documents a performance Lescalleet gave after discovering his father had terminal cancer; its floor-rattling flux of abrasive, low tones invokes the purr of a Chevy’s engine Lescalleet’s father discusses in a letter reproduced on the record jacket. A snippet of the final conversation he had with his father is buried in a heat-haze of tape hiss and air conditioner hum. The CD further extrapolates on Lescalleet’s father’s email; its 74 minutes move from dreamlike bell tones, through abraded, metallic hum, escalating into fierce, brutalizing waves of noise which then cut to a recording of Lescalleet’s daughter singing the Irish folk song “Molly Malone” at her grandfather’s request. The book in which the CD is mounted has plenty more text and images. If you aren’t staggered by The Pilgrim, there’s something wrong with you.
Songs About Nothing
(Erstwhile - ERSTSOLO03) 2xCD $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
"Mind-erasing loops, avant classical drone and minimal cold wave threat," explain our comrades at Volcanic Tongue. "[T]he sound of pure entropy, moving from ear-scalding feedback sculptures through nod-out minimal synth repetition through scrambled choral works and widescreen soundtrack drones.... [A]n increasing atmosphere of all-out psychosis ... like you’re listening in on advanced surveillance electronics or experiments in sonic/psychological warfare.... The second disc consists of one massively extended track ... the sounds of helicopter blades, distant cries, riot tones, hallucinatory / piercing upper-register violence and huge blocks of eviscerated silence..."
This Is What I Do
(Glistening Examples - GLEX1101) CDR $11.00
A collection of previously released compilation tracks. “Lescalleet’s work is a monument to the notion that music is sound,” your Dusted correspondent will have you know. “He exploits the quirks of cheap or damaged equipment … [and] the malleable, impermanent ways of magnetic tape…. Sometimes the material’s origins are obvious, such as “Un Peu de Neige Sans Raison’s” church organ samples… [while] the ghostly low tones and flickering high ones on “Untitled” could come from anywhere. But whether he’s looping sound into long, mournful melodies or squashing it into tiny quavers, he consistently invests it with such gravity that it could absorb a black hole.”
Catastrophe Point #6
([ no label ]) Used CD $10.00
On the first track here, Nagoya-based Kiyoharu Kuwayama “foregrounds what sounds like a handful of pebbles being clicked together against a distant backdrop of scraped sheet metal. The thickness of the room’s acoustics lends the whole an almost frightening clarity, and there’s an unreality to the way the two different reverberant layers combine that only adds to the sense of unease. We’re thrown into a subtly heightened acoustic realm, in which scale and perspective are altered, to disquieting psychological effect. The second piece heightens and complicates the acoustic picture even further, and increases the density of the sonic activity. The sound sources here seem to be bundles of sticks, bottles, tea trays and iron girders thrown down lift shafts. Once again the ear tries to make sense of the altered relationships Kuwayama set up between loud and soft, close and distant. Slowly, the piece starts to focus more and more strongly on a huge, dark vibration at the furthest end of the acoustic spectrum, which builds in intensity, racking up the tension and subtly disturbing the mind’s equilibrium. By this point, the music sounds like it's taking piece in a vast, pitch black aircraft hangar of the soul.” From 2005. In A4-size cardboard sleeve. Edition of 500
Even Still
(Troniks - TRO298) Used 2xCD $14.00
Two-and-a-half hours covering the LHD vinyl discography recorded between 2002 and 2007 by the double flamethrower unit of Phil Blankenship and John Wiese. Pure West Coast destruction, maximum density and speaker shred. Includes tracks from these sevens: Asthma (Helicopter); Hands of the Priestess (Miisc); Fascination (Swampland); Hotel Fire (P-Tapes); Normandie (Tape Room); Lock Up (Helicopter); Los Angeles (Troniks); and Veiled (Helicopter), and tracks from these twelves: Triple Void (Chondritic Sound): Electrophorus (Collective JYRK): Trap (Troniks), split with Immaculate:Grotesque (Truculent Recordings), plus two previously unreleased bonus tracks. Edition of 200.
Young And Restless
(Blossoming Noise) Used CD $5.00
Sixteen-plus minutes Los Angeles smog tones by Phil Blankenship and John Wiese. Sealed
Scope
(Monotype - MONO044) CD $13.50
Driven to amalgamate mechanically and electronically generated sounds, Carl Ludwig Hubsch (tuba), Thomas Lehn (synth), Philip Zoubek (piano), and Franz Hautzinger (trumpet) create vividly structured architecture. Multilayers, soundscapes, and chamber compositions created in the peak of the moment.
Our Lips Are Sealed
(Pure) Used CD $5.00
“Shirashi’s saxophone is more Borbetomagus than jazz —short and mostly irritating sounds, the equivalent of screeching glass. Licht’s role here is to create noisy electronics by abusing twin reverb, digital delay, turbo rat, snf tube screamer. From 1997
Rabbi Sky
(Siltbreeze) Used CD $10.00
Listening to the opener, the title track executed in five movements, one is cast headlong into a minimalist menagerie; the bracing, string-tingling beginning segues into a hypnotizing, ecclesiastical chord organ drone, resurrecting into a tremendous cut-and-paste finale of looped and overdubbed guitar that whirls around in the air performing a lascivious, improvisational fandango. On the other hand, “All Blues” (dedicated to both James McNew and Phill Niblock) is pure aggro-muzz that takes on an almost anthemic persona — a 10-plus-minute battle royale of MXR Blue Box fuzz and feedback carnage that sounds like a chimney full of hornets fornicating on the first day of mating season.
Early Tape Works
(Monochrome Vision) Used 2xCD $7.00
“Poetic images, frantic interchange of subjects, twisted and broken mosaic of fuzzy elements, the breathtaking incoherence of perception, the mark of primitive life, the absence of organization and rational thoughts.” This 2006 retrospective of Philippe Blanchard’s “theatrical view of musique concrète” shares common ground with Nurse With Wound — “surreal and humorous, breaking rhythm of everyday life, household inventory instead of real instruments.” With tracks from L’Odyssee Du Lieutenant Caramel (Audiofile Tapes 1989), Les Bonnes Archives du Dimanche (Old Europa Café 1986), Du Plomb Plein les Ailes (Acteon 1985), Et Ca Vole! (SPH 1993), and Je Ne Veux Plus Voir le Ciel (Acteon / SJ Organisation 1988).
Mechanical Music
(Sony Germany) Used CD $10.00
All of Ligeti’s music either written for mechanical reproduction or arranged for mechanical instruments. Dating from his brief flirtation with the Fluxus movement, “Poéme Symphonique,” scored for 100 metronomes, produced one of the great scandals of Ligeti’s career. As the metronomes wind down, what sounds like a waning rainstorm evolves into overlaying rhythmic patterns and finally a single metronome coming to a halt. From the other end of his career come the Nancarrow-inspired etudes arranged for player piano. The barrel organ works, for the most part arrangements of the composer’s earliest keyboard music, sound like a calliope gone mad.
Death Of The Moon
(Pogus) Used CD $10.00
Electronic and concrete music from 1953 to 1960 by this Swedish composer, reissuing material previously available on LP via the Pogus and Radium labels.
Objekt 2
(Pogus) Used CD $8.00
Stark, mesmerizing and historical electronic and musique concrete — the remainder of the long out-of-print Radium double LP, recorded 1962-1988. 1998 reissue
Cool Truth
(Heresee) CD $12.00
A contempo reissue of L.H. Wolf’s 1985 self-released, singular-vision masterpiece of free jazz, world blooz, WTF flow, and out-of-sync multi-track.
TOBY LLOYD / POSSET / YOL
Basement Tapes
(Chocolate Monk - choc.428) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Using Toby Lloyd’s art project Between Eating And Sleeping as a starting point, Yol (bottled rust), Joe Murray (tape gasbag), and Mr. Lloyd himself (energy positive) tear new holes in the Dictaphone / metallic junk / throat-war scene. Recorded live at Bradford’s Fuse and Basement Arts Project in Leeds, three heads nod in total concrete hardcore improv mode. Switches are slipped as eyes roll back in heads. Numbered edition of 60
Electric Pond: Solar Solution (Music For Synthesizer and Electronic Sounds)
(Resipiscent) Used CD $8.00
Loachfillet dwells on the lakebed of a lifelong musical vision where analogue synth, beaten bass, tape loops and aging electronics pour forth sound too crushingly deep to escape. From a funneling eddy at the start of track one, down you go, descending his bubble column to a booming bass guitar wreck shimmering with algae. You plunge deeper still, down ten expansive tracks to the finale, titled “Hell,” with waves so heavy they’d buckle prettier heads; but you’re here to stay, lungs full at last.
Automatic Writing By The Moon
(Holy Mountain - 777) Used CD $7.00
Melodic compositions for acoustic guitar and ring modulator from 1999 by the Baseball Astrologer collaborator, leader of Davis Redford Triad and of Sufi Mind Game, and string-wrangler for Faust. The whispery, fluffy-cloud dynamism of the thirteen tracks here mix massive overdubbing, wondrous cinematic composition, folksy improvisation and studio experimentation. The backwards feedback of “Astral Projection” is vibrantly illuminating, while the instrumental arrangement of Chilean folksinger Victor Jara’s “The Departure” evokes a cosmic western.
Eutectic
(Groundfault - GF006) Used CD $5.00
Karen Thomas and Steve Makita resample, loop, process and distort sounds of power tools, machinery and weapons. From 2000.
Thousand Year Dreaming / Floating World
(Pogus - P21045) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Previously issued by What Next in 1993, the forty-three-minute Thousand Year Dreaming, performed by Lockwood, Art Baron and N. Scott Robinson, along with Libby Van Cleve (oboe and English horn), Jon Gibson (didjeridu), J.D. Parran (clarinets), Peter Zummo (trombone and didjeridu) and percussionists Michael Pugliese and Charles Wood boasts the extraordinary timing and a masterly sense of space. The acoustic beats of the conch shells’ microtonal inflections might recall Alvin Lucier, but openness to melody situates it further to the East. The previously unreleased three-part Floating World assembles field recordings from the wilds of Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand to the New York Public Library Reading Room, made by Maggi Payne, David Dunn, Larry Austin, Chris Mann, Sorrel Hays, Steve Peters, Ruth Anderson, John Cousins, Philip Dadson, Warren Burt and Brenda Hutchinson.
Drenched Lands
(BloodLust! - B!127) LP + 3-inch CDR $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
Since 2005, Locrian have been zeroing in on the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal. Drenched Lands unfolds with an almost narrative structure: it slowly descends into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began -- completely transformed. Clear vinyl, limited edition of 200 copies. Bonus 3-inch CDR contains 18-minute exclusive track "Sullage." CD released by Small Doses.
Drenched Lands
(Small Doses - dose43) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Since 2005, Locrian have been zeroing in on the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal. Drenched Lands unfolds with an almost narrative structure: it slowly descends into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began -- completely transformed. The hour-long disc is rounded out by an extended bonus track previously unavailable in any digital format. Black-on-black disc packaged in an arigato pack with a 4-panel insert. Limited edition vinyl released by Bloodlust.
Rain of Ashes
(Basses Frequences - BF19) CD $12.00
The duo’s guitar- and electronic-sourced metal-tinged drone / doom this time out is not far removed from their earlier work, but the dynamic, complex guitar alternates between melodic post-punk tones and shrill piercing feedback, while a frozen wall of electronic textures stays in place, eventually allowing subtle low-end electronic sounds to move forward. Darker ambient electronics pull away and are replaced by simple 8-bit digital melody and rapid guitar plucking. The band’s combination of metal drone and noise infuses more meditative ambience and a subtle hint of post-punk rock that isn’t usually referenced in the heavier stuff.
Rhetoric Of Surfaces
(BloodLust! - B!113) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This follow-up to Bloodlust's Plague Journal 7-inch, which showcased Locrian's distinctive style of deconstructed metal trance music, deftly unites a grouping of out-of-print and previously unreleased material from the duo, charting live and studio work that pre-dates their recent shift into more black metal-influenced territory. Rich, heavy, guitar/keyboard/voice-based drone for those who usually find such music to be too gentle or uneventful.
Loner
(Non Mi Piace - 05) Used CD $10.00
The 2001 psycho head-melt of Michael Pullen (Circle X, Life of Falconetti) oozes down into the existential abyss, where heavy, growling cyclones and monotone, minimalist guitar riffs bare-back slow-motion beats, just as rough and rustic as early Swans or Live Skull. Bass by Algis Kizys, vocalist Kate Dariani, Katie X. Lewis on viola, and organ by Rémy Bux add even more guest lava to the futuristic troglodyte reverberations emanating from Loner’s concrete hell-caves. Four inserts.
Not Overtly Orchestral
(Quecksilber) Used CD $12.00
The third album by the legendary Australian group, all of whose compositions are rendered with tape loops on reel-to-reel tape machines.
Live In San Francisco
(23five) Used CD $12.00
Spectral timbres and ominous fluctuations layered into a massive lump of sonic force by famed concrète composer with over 130 releases to his name. One track was culled from the infamous Hexaphonic show at The Lab in August 2000, and the other from an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. Comes with a blindfold to enhance the phenomenological experience of Lopez’s dramatic compositions. Insert firing squad remark here.
Machines
(Elevator Bath - eeaoa030) 2xCD $14.00
Four pieces recorded from 2004 to 2007, based on sounds of clocks, elevators, and laboratory and factory equipment in Amsterdam, Leipzig, Barcelona, and Riga. Permeated by an industrial sound, but the arrangements are very subtle. There is a strong rhythmic presence, heavy with the weight of machinery. Thick sounds held in crisp clarity. With fold-out insert featuring color photography. Edition of 500
The Poacher
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.304) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Delights from the hutongs and parks of Beijing and from Vietnam — binaural field recordings, pick-up coil, contact mics, reel to reel, and piano crafted by Ben Morris (Chora, Akke Phallus Duo, Le Drapeau Noir) into something in the vein of Jacques Lejuene or Alvin Curran’s Natural History. Lewd worms be gone! Edition of 60
Completely Wastes Your Time
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.348) CDR $6.00
Luke Poot’s long-time-coming solo disk doesn’t disappoint. It lays out his brain bake in usual chaotic style; bedroom tape warble and vocal gurps, readings about Hull’s seedy underbelly, and no fidelity squelch are all scrubbed and buttered up for easy insertion into any No Audience Underground orifice of choice. Numbered edition of 40
Black Beings
(ZYX) Used CD $15.00
“Frank Lowe remained one of the last to carry on the “Fire Music” tradition in its truest form. Mixing post-bop influences, African heritage, and the experimentation of late Coltrane, Black Beings is one of the most soulful and extreme albums of its ilk…, encapsulate[ing] what’s great about improvisation at its very core: harnessing spontaneity in a way that can never be recreated. Aside from stellar, moment-to-moment playing, Black Beings also documents a pivotal time in music. Lowe takes free jazz to its fiercest and rawest states, while … deeply invested in the same roots as the previous generation of jazz experimenters. As avant-garde as Black Beings gets, it is indeed pure soul music, without a trace of pretension or self-indulgence….”
Twist of Fate
(Monotype - MONO035) CD + DVD $30.00
A provocative journey into the dark groove of endless night where possibility, mystery and mania entwine the listener in a deep cocoon of sound and voice. Processed acoustics, field recordings, found sounds, electronics, turntables, percussion, synth, organ, piano, inflatable balloons and knives by Petit; vocals, guitar and found sounds by Lunch. Six-page digipak, case, and thirty-two-page, full-color book. CAVEAT EMPTOR: THE DVD IS PAL FORMAT (not playable in all US DVD players).
Colorado Terrain Investigation
(Industrial Recollections) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Includes the material from N3845 W10452.5/7.5 double-seven-inch (RRRecords 1988), Aztalan / Camp Douglas Quadrangle seven-inch (RRRecords 1988), and a twenty-minute live performance previously released on VHS only. Lunde does what nobody else is doing. The crude and decayed quality of these releases is still fresh today. With eight-page full-color booklet, reproducing the original artworks in all their aging, decayed glory.
XCHDX / TapeDeathCut
(Industrial Recollections) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Material from XCHdX: On The Terrain Of Prophecy LP (Alamut / Big Body Parts 1989), and split LP with Hands To (Complacency 1989). Includes bonus material from limited edition tape available only to subscribers of Witness To Disaster, not for sale previously.
Para Pacem Para Bellum
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD037) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Young Ukrainian who has composed symphonic, chamber, choir, vocal, cinema and electro-acoustic works. This CD builds links between two methods of creating music: academic (pieces for organ, piano, string quartet and choir) and experimental computer tools.
La Voyelle Liquide
(Erstwhile) Used CD $6.00
“Seven pieces [that] place a premium on texture and dynamics. Müller and Lê’s sense of rhythmic subtlety is expressed through the opening and closing of a filter as often as it is through the development of a phrase or pattern. They have a penchant for bright metallic sounds: when a brisk rhythmic pattern is established, the music takes on the gamelan tinge of an early Lou Harrison piece; in a more eruptive soundscape, these sources can be harrowing. Müller and Lê also delve into very quiet sounds, which can lapse into silence…, leaving the listener on the edge of his seat.”
FABIAN LÖWENBRÜCK / DANIEL LÖWENBRÜCK
Das Lebacher Orgelwerk - Weihnachtsoratorium (LWV 156)
(Krim Kram) CD $12.75
Performed December 26th, 2006 on the Hugo Meyer organ of the Evangelische Kirche in Lebach, Germany.
Contact
(Erstwhile - ERST054) 2xCD $23.50 (Out-of-stock)
Contact marks the first meeting of two pivotal, crucial experimental musicians who for the past decade have traveled parallel paths, intersecting occasionally (duo CDs with Toshi Nakamura; a 230-minute-long quartet with Nakamura and Otomo Yoshihide; the AMPLIFY 2008 festival). Full, unedited sessions with Rowe on guitar and electronics, M on sine waves and contact mic, recorded live and in the studio.
SACHIKO M / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / YOSHIHIDE OTOMO / KEITH ROWE
M / Nakamura / Otomo / Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE05) 3xCD $41.50 (Out-of-stock)
This document of the centerpiece show of AMPLIFY 2004: addition (the "four-hour quartet”) contains three individually packaged slimline CDs in a slipcase with original artwork by Keith Rowe, which wraps around the entire box, front, side, and back, as well as liner notes from all four musicians and numerous pictures from Yuko Zama. “The middle section of this concert sports some of the most effectively noisy utterances I've heard from these musicians,” marvels Dusted, “Even out-harshing Rowe's seminal Harsh. Extremities of frequency are both piercing and nauseating, the huge span of space between them never empty and often crowded by what can be described as organized sound. Only in rare instances are individual instruments readily identifiable -- a guitar plucked, the lower frequencies of the sounds transformed into dull echoing thuds before disappearing again into the miasma.”
Where Are We Going?
(BloodLust!) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
The first full-length release in over ten years by Pierpaolo Zoppo aka Mauthausen Orchestra. Perfectly cold, austere, and dark analog synth material, yet carrying enough weight behind it to please all but the fans of his early, violent, primitive, and raw Mauthausen Orchestra recordings (recently revisited for the lavish Broken Flag box set released by Vinyl-on-Demand in 2007). Handsome digipak, designed by Megan Emish (ex-Blodyminded). 46 minutes.
Boundary Situation
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS51) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The debut solo album by the former vocalist of Serious Problmz front-loads dense tangles of diminutive noise squiggles and mechanical jitters, with elusive roars always corroding the fringes. It progresses through corridors and courtyards of increasing sparseness and disconnected unreality, and concludes in the peculiar triumphant glow of Man Against Nature. Voices with standard-issue clinical neutrality (as well as one or two that are unnervingly chummy) reciting assigned texts, institutionally formal instructions, and answers to FAQs zigzag between birds chirping, owls hooting, panting, a children’s playground, jet engines, railroads, and other sound effects. Mace’s labyrinths of looping and filtering, woozy guitar noise backdrops, appropriations of folky acoustic guitar, R’n’B instrumentals, and fragments of sharp piano playing are elaborate, yet navigable and uncluttered. This fairly vast, steadily churning chemo–narrative constructed with electronics, loops, signal processing, ambient textures, and eccentric voices is a masterful hybrid of electronics and musique concrete, inspired by good ol’ fashioned existential dread brought upon by a cancer diagnosis and treatment, overcome by dexterous manipulation of its own alienating elements. Includes printed insert and a section of medical gauze. Edition of 50. Tediumhouse.com mailorders include a bonus three–inch CDR.
Go
(Public Eyesore - 96) Used CDR $5.00
Spastic sub-machinegun drum machine outbursts, random samples and squealing feedback noises. The secret bonus track is bass heavy electronic noise, marinated for a few weeks in reverb and dragged behind a car, rumbly, and lo fi.
Displacement Records: Escapism
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.319) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Collage of field recordings by this Brighton-based sound artist, in which mysterious artifacts, voices, and environments clash with sounds of transit, evoking the intensity and magic of foreign places, and to some extent, the frustration of geographical limitations. Originally commissioned as a sound installation as part of Diep~Haven Festival Transmanche d'Art Contemporain. Hand stamped card sleeve with insert. Edition of 50
Brain Damage In Oklahoma City
(Siltbreeze) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second installment in the Siltbreeze / Quakebasket series of music by poet / mystic / shaman Angus MacLise. Culled from the archives of Mr. Tony Conrad, this volume (covering the years 1967-'70) highlights MacLise's unique and intricate drumming style. Cembalum, bongos, hand drum, barrel congas -- all are majestically thumped 'n' bumped for maximum orgasmic sensory satisfaction. Comprised of eight tracks, the acme of this collection is a pair of large ensemble pieces, "Dreamweapon Benefit for the Oklahoma City Police Dept. parts 1 & 2," featuring Angus (barrel conga), Hetty MacLise (tampura), the poet Jackson Mac Low (recorders and voice), Henry Flynt (song flute and voice) and Conrad (limp string). These tracks, recorded in May of 1968, are the apex of maximalist loft style psychedelic improvisation. Conrad's illuminating, occasionally hilarious liner notes set up the narrative of this volume and offer a brief glimpse into the mind-scrambling fracas that was NYC, USA, Earth, 1968. Along with more gorgeous, brain-warping Invasion-style sleeve art, included in the CD booklet is a reproduction of the poster for the Dreamweapon Benefit, confirmation in black and white that for four nights in May, 1968, Wooster Street Cinematheque was definitely one witchy place to be.
The Cloud Doctrine
(Sub Rosa - SR182) 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
159 minutes of minimal electronic music, readings, and soundtrack pieces circa 1963-1976 by this avant-garde mad dog. Taken from his own archives and featuring contributions from Tony Conrad, John Cale, Piero Heliczer, Beverly Grant Conrad, and Hetty Maclise. Packaged with a historical text by Gerard Malanga, and unpublished photos.
The Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda
(Siltbreeze) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first authorized collection of work to appear by this pure’60s free spirit, percussionist, poet, and founding member of the Velvet Underground. Includes the forty-five minute “St. Mark’s Epiphany,” and the complete version of “The Joyous Lake” heard here for the first time, and more.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(Trash Ritual - TRASH050) Used CD $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
The long-awaited CD reissue, originally released on vinyl by Praxis Dr. Bearmann in 1995 -- one of the key foundations of the contemporary direction of noise. "Rusted Steel And Rotted Flesh" is restored to its full, uncut length (just under 45 minutes). Edition of 500 copies. "Western Pennsylvania is a graveyard. No ideas or worthwhile activities exist in this decaying nightmare of horror and stupidity. Just hatred and broken lives. The native population is an indigenous mutation of inbred sickness and mental corruption. Someday everyone and everything here will die a miserable death. That day cannot come soon enough."
Super Oxide
(Ljud & Bild Produktion) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Early ’90s recordings: rhythmic scrap metal opus “Almost Human,” with bizarre tortured vocals ring through the opening moments; the equally bombastic “Dead Frequency,” with looped, overdriven metal sounds; the less claustrophobic but still harsh “Tempus Interludium,” with eerie echo that builds slowly toward a growling finish; the smothering “Necromania,” which builds up to heavy pulses of harsh noise before ending abruptly. Edition of 300
LUCIANO MAGGIORE / MICHAEL SPEERS
Necesse Est Numquam Revelare Stercorem Tuum
(Krim Kram) CD $13.00
Speers works with natural and synthetic sound material — drums, computer, microphones, feedback; the use of speakers and playback devices (samplers, CD players, walkmans, tape recorders) characterize the work of Maggiore, whose main interests include mechanisms of sound diffusion, performance, repetition, endurance, non-human animal languages, dance, and folklore. Together the duo’s music contemplates the kernel of black metal.
Three Things
(Adhuman) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
These long-term collaborators, known for multi-pronged activities as artists and organizers, have quietly but surely informed the shape of the United Kingdom’s experimental audio underground for many years. Under the guise of NOPAON, they developed a series of events and performances in which they realized scores by Alvin Lucier, Robert Bozzi, Ken Friedman, Emmet Williams, Walter Marchetti and of their own creation. Described by the duo as “unrewarding task-based actions” or simply “two people in a room, doing something” these outputs have resulted in an ongoing performance practice based on prompts, actions, and scenarios which they continue to explore. A persistent quality in Maggiore and Rice’s work is a willful embrace of humor and the acknowledgement of their performances as a basis for absurdity. This element runs throughout Three Things, starting with “Hissing for White Shoes (#6),” where an otherwise unremarkable recording of a drive around London is punctuated by loud hissing whenever their vehicle passes an unwitting participant in the street, their footwear acting as a prompt for the vocal intervention. The same sense of humor looms large in “Pocket Fascinator (#7)” where audio derived from EMS Stockholm’s Buchla synth is played back and re-recorded via mobile phone speakers in the duo’s pockets as they attempt to walk in sync with its pulses. “Phone Work,” the first piece realized outside of the project’s typical real-time approach, is a sequence of voice recordings exchanged via WhatsApp where they mimic each other’s contributions until all memory of the original has been lost. The results are set to synthesizer in a nod to the duo’s long-standing interests in electronic music as solo artists. The maddening audacity of Three Things is fundamentally driven by sincere observations of the historic avant-garde. At the heart of these recordings lurk conceptual strategies recalling the core methodological projects of Fluxus, classical sound poetry, field recording, electronic music, movement-based performance and contemporary composition. Their willingness to direct such methods toward nakedly silly outcomes whilst poking subtle fun at the emergent tropes of these cultures reinforces an entirely serious inquiry into the modern-day application of avant-garde technique in sound creation. When accepted in full, Three Things is a challenging, amusing assertion of genuine commitment to experimentation and aesthetic stress-testing.
Euscorpius Carpathicus
(Obuh - D16) Used CD $10.00
The 2003 psychedelic magnum opus from Eastern European dreamy visionaries. Climbing walls of acoustic-electric noise, energetic pulsations, cosmic electronic bubbles.
No Excess Is Absurd
(Twisted Village) Used CD $20.00
The first of three albums between 1994 and 1996 by Galaxie 500’s rhythm section (Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski) and Crystallized Movements' guitar wunderkinds Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar. Loose, cavorting, massive, vibrant psychedelic rock. Letter-pressed silver box with book. Edition of 1000.
Nightsongs For Ugly Children
(Nihilist) Used CD $10.00
KFJC hears Camilla Ha on this 2003 disc as a blend of the “reverb-drenched vocal stylings of the Ventricle label” and “digital depth charges. I think she plays a midi-bass with a maxipad. This CD is sonically dense, although the instrumentation is sparse. Her singing is more whispery muttering, like Julee Cruise … through pipes after being abducted and kept in an underground reservoir.” In a card sleeve with visible corner creasing, inside hand-sewn upholstery fabric pouch. Numbered edition 47/520
Majessic Dreams
(Oscillatone - OSC2N 5 ) Used CD $6.00
The striking self-titled debut full-length effort by Jessica Breitholtz Björk and Mats Björk positions the Swedish duo between post-Cocteaus shoegaze atmospherics and moody low-key folk. Hardly any beat to speak of, gentle vocals, layers of backward feedback, stark piano, a continuous flow of rising guitar textures.
At The End of Summer
(Musik Atlach - MA004) CD $16.50
Live recordings by the new psychedelic rock band lead by Overhang Party's Rinji Fukuoka.
Ecstatic Crystallization
(Musik Atlach - MA009) CD $15.00
Feedback-drenched guitar noise drones by Rinji Fukuoka's follow-up band to the legendary Overhang Party. Here the magical garden of post-Velvet doom is stripped to the bare essentials by way of the Japanese psyche. Eternal contemporary rock’n’roll theater.
Frontera
(There - TR005) CD $16.50
Second album (first studio) by what's left of Overhang Party. Deep song, vivid rock instrumentals, heavy feedback drones.
The Night Before
(Pataphysique - DD012) CD + DVD $20.00
The sixth album of psychedelic tunes and silent improvisation by the former leader of Overhang Party and crew issues a warning about the perishing of modern civilization. With a NY-flavored homage to Tom Verlaine & Richard Hell’s “Memories of Fire,” and a cover of “Search & Destroy.”
Volume V, Part I - The Visionaries’ Sand Zone
(Musik Atlach - TRCD-MA006) CD $15.00
Two years in the making, the first of two simultaneously released CDs, inspired by stillness and movement, lightness and darkness, the chaos of a city flickering with lights and the tranquility of a desolate seashore, rendered with unceasing waves of their characteristic hard rock.
Volume V, Part II - With à qui avec Gabriel
(Musik Atlach - TRCD-MA007) CD $15.00
Two years in the making, the second of two simultaneously released CDs, inspired by stillness and movement, lightness and darkness, the chaos of a city flickering with lights and the tranquility of a desolate seashore, rendered full of acid folk color, helped in no small part by legendary accordionist à qui avec Gabriel
Φ
(Erstwhile - ERST060) 3xCD $32.00
The first meeting of two influential European experimental musicians. One disc of selected compositions (by Frey and Cardew), one disc of their own compositions, and one disc of improv.
Double Nature
(Scratch And Sniff Entertainment) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Originally intended for release as a vinyl LP in 2003, Double Nature was turned away by three mastering engineers fearful of damaging their cutting needles due to the “extreme” nature of the sounds. Digital saves the day again. With poster.
MAN IS THE BASTARD NOISE / MERZBOW
Voice Pie
(Release) Used Split CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Five tracks of pure sludge by Masami Akita and co., a solid wall of noise with enough going on behind it. Man Is The Bastard Noise does their best to keep the balance of the disc more fun than an odd tropical disease. With three non-LP tracks. From 1996
Manilapede
(Turgid Animal - TA534) CD $10.75
"Makes me feel like I've bored a hole into the center of the earth with my teeth!" says one friend close to this Starving Weirdo's alter-ego band. Self-described as "dune rock" from the deserts of Manila, California; this band is very influenced by its surroundings. Slow-motion metallic riffs ring throughout the entire fifty minutes of the debut album, laying the foundation for waves of rolling synth lines and clangs echoing in the distance, presumably a shamanic attempt at drums but too lost in a trance to muster any concrete tempo or rhythm.
Alone In A Room
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS80) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
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.
Under One Roof
(Innerstate) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eighteen songs from singles, flexis, and compilations, as well as unreleased goodies and alternate versions. Includes covers of tunes by Paul McCartney, Hank Williams, Les Paul & Mary Ford, Jackson Browne, The Beatles, and others.
BARBARA MANNING AND THE GO LUCKYS
You Should Know By Now
(Innerstate) CD $12.00
Ten tracks of energetic pop music. Guests include Terri Manning and Jeff Palmer (Sunny Day Real Estate, Mommyheads).
Pig Magic
(Pica Disk - PICA029) 7-inch + CD $15.00
Norwegian free noise duo with guests Maja Ratkje and Lasse Marhaug.
MARBLE SHEEP & THE RUN DOWN SUN’S CHILDREN
Old From New Heads
(Captain Trip) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Solid, extended psychedelic guitar freak-outs, acid dirges, tribal drums, primal yelps, dense dark atmospheres and the sort of “bad” sound quality ideal for druggy, communal music. Recorded in 1987, released in 1993
MARBLE SHEEP & THE RUN DOWN SUN’S CHILDREN
Whirl Live — Good Old Marble Sheep II
(Captain Trip) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Les Rallizes Denudes meets the Grateful Dead — two guitarists, two drummers, and a bassist. Recorded 1989 release 1994
De Musicorum Infelicitate
(Alga Marghen) Used CD $25.00
While listening to these “Ten Pieces in the Form of Painful Variations” from 2001, each one with the precise duration of six minutes, you will realize that music, this extremely dense sonority close to the pulverization limit, is talking about itself. Sealed
LIONEL MARCHETTI / SEIJIRO MURAYAMA
Hatali Atsalei (L’Echange des Yeux)
(Intransitive - INT031) CD $13.00
For his second album on Intransitive, Lionel Marchetti returns to his favorite subject: music as an essential element of ritual and ecstatic trance states. Unlike his Knud un Nom du Serpent CD (to be reissued in Spring 2008), which offers a critique of avant-garde and popular music as an extension of the transcendental impulse, Hatali Atsalei is more literally an experience of ritual. Using percussion, wind instruments, field recordings of natural sounds, and most importantly the voice of collaborator Seijiro Murayama, Marchetti once again gives us a multi-leveled engagement with the elemental urge to converse with nature and to use sound as a means to achieve altered states of consciousness. Referencing narrative radio art, musique concrete and acoustic ecology, Hatali Atsalei is a fascinating work that reveals more layers with each listen.
Knud un Nom de Serpent (Le Cercle des Entrailles)
(Intransitive - INT014) Used CD $4.00
Marchetti's classic album of harrowing tape music was originally released Intransitive in 1999, quickly sold out, and remains the most requested title in the label's catalog. This reissue boasts a new cover design and liner notes by Bhob Rainey (nmperign, The BSC). Knud un Nom de Serpent illustrates Marchetti's idea of popular music as shamanic ritual, a gateway to ecstatic altered states. Armed with fierce wit and a razor blade, he smashes together sounds from all over the world into a hallucinatory cyclone of Jamaican reggae, French chanson, American avant-garde vocalists, Thai pop songs, nature recordings, spoken text, and more. The result is a chilling work of furious, obliquely narrative tape-collage and tense, frightening scenes.
LIONEL MARCHETTI / JÉRÔME NOETINGER / MATHIEU WERCHOWSKI
Marchetti / Noetinger / Werchowski
(Corpus Hermeticum - HERMES034) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Marchetti and Noetinger on tape decks, amplifiers, and “kick up an impressively varied array of whizzes, scrapes, whistles, groans, blips, and bleeps, all dynamically arranged,” says Dusted, “With both intuitive intelligence and a fine appreciation for a good racket. Werchowski tends to assert himself [on violin] by holding one texture or gesture while the sounds of electricity and metal under duress surge around him -- his conservatory trained technique makes him the one idiomatic voice in an untranslatable babel.”
Nei Mari del Sud, Musica in Secca
(Alga Marghen) Used CD $25.00
“The former version of Nei mari del Sud was originally conceived as acoustic theater that accompanied an installation staged on June 9, 1982, during the international contemporary festival Musicalia at Teatro Carcano, Milan. In this stage installation, Marchetti expanded for the first time on a larger scale the same figurative scheme that usually marks his major work in progress: a series of installations invariably entitled ‘Musiche da camera,’ where the ‘icon’ of a piano defines its role in a seemingly paradoxical context. In the scenery of ‘Nei mari del Sud,’ as shown in the photographic sequence reproduced on the CD fold-out, the black carcass of a grand piano appears on the surface of a large expanse of sea, artificially re-created with a shapeless heap of bluish tissue-paper. In the background, the slow, progressive unsticking of the blue paper-curtain, accidentally caused by the floodlight’s heat, configures the impeding threat of a gigantic wave on the point of completely submerging the scene. The acoustic décor projected for this installation invades through twelve loudspeakers set in a semicircle in the rear of the audience playing out-of-phase tapes. Included foldout with photo documentation, an essay by Gabriele Bonomo, a testimony by Robert Ashley and a poster.
Sirrus
(Auscultare Research) Used CD $8.00
“Marchetti’s music abstracts sounds at points equal to Schaeffer and Ferrari,” according to a noted Dusted guest lecturer, “But an even closer reference point is Stockhausen’s Sans la Soleil…, although [it] channels more eclectic sources…. In “Passerele,” a fragment of wild organ brings a moment of warmth to a landscape of analog blurbs. [On] “Sirrus,” … sped-up sounds …balance … the darker drones below…. “Micro-climat”… uses a structure closer to field recordings than the abstract sequences of distortions that make up much concrète. Perhaps Marchetti owes a little to the acoustic-ecology of R. Murray Schafer … [though] Marchetti seems less worried … about decorating casual listening environments with a conceptual premise. Sirrus is a complex work, with each segment unfolding into a recurring motif of ambient noises…. [A] challenging, rewarding, and engaging experience….” From 2002. Sealed
Une Saison
(Monotype - MONO036) CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four previously released tracks of fantastic musique concrète: La grande vallée (Metamkine 1998); Portrait d'un glacier (Alpes, 2173m) (Ground Fault Recordings 2001); Dans la montagne (Ki Ken Taï) (La Muse En Circuit 1997 and Chloë Recordings 2003); and L'oeil retourné (Selektion, 1999). All are elaborately composed galaxies of static and aggressive, self-sustaining sound explorations. The more sensitive among us will admit to feeling paralyzed by the swiftness of the reactions of the sounds from one layer to the next in Marchetti’s “microtonal stance of sound snorkeling.” Michel Chion says, “To my mind, the characteristics of numerous compositions by Lionel Marchetti, including those featured in this collection, are fullness and perfection, a design both obscure and transparent at the same time, so typical of a classic work.” Tri-folded cardboard jacket, sixteen-page booklet with Chion's "The Suspension Bridges.”
Country and Western
(Helicopter - H59) Used CD $7.00
No samples from the film Payday, but probably worth a listen anyhow. Edition of 300.
It's Not The End Of The World
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD043) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Methods and traditions of serious electronic avant garde integrated into the aesthetics of loud and bloody harsh noise music. Dynamic and inventive, full of lo-fi electronic sweeps, distortion and feedback.
Kiss of Acid
(Monotype - MONO033) CD $12.75
(Monotype - MONO033) Used CD $10.00
Wastell’s misfortune-prone project started with a gigantic tam tam, recorded in 2004 by Graham Halliwell; Marhaug applied his electronics, computer, and compositional structure to the recording in 2005. A mere five years later, here is the forty-minute result -- dark, haunting atmospheric. Cardboard gatefold jacket with twelve-page book.
LASSE MARHAUG / MAJA S.K. RATKJE
Music For Faking
(Clu Clux Clam) Used CD $3.00
Staggering assemblages of interferences, field recordings, processed noises, samples, and other sound sources from 2005
LASSE MARHAUG / MAJA S.K. RATKJE
Music for Gardening
(Pica Disk - PICA009) CD $17.00
The fourth entry in Ratkje and Marhaug's "Music For…" collaborative series. After Shopping (2002), Loving (2004) and Faking (2005) comes Gardening, inspired by Ratkje's new life in the countryside. Seven tracks meant to inspire spending time on one’s hand and knees, fidgeting with dirt, taking care of plants.
Tapes 1990-1999
(Pica Disk) 4xCD $27.00
Almost five hours in length, the 47 tracks here were selected from Marhaug’s cassette releases in the 1990s on labels like Mother Savage Noise Productions, TWR, Slaughter Productions, Freak Animal, Xerxes, Pain Art and others; they range from cut-up voice and turntable thrashing to harsh wall-of-sound power noise and scum sounds. Packaged in a handsome custom-made solid box with a 24-page booklet of photos, cover reproductions and liner-notes by Tommy Carlsson (Abisko, Segerhuva) and Tore H. Bøe (Origami Republika, The Nordic Miracle). Limited edition of 500 copies.
The Great Silence
(PacRec) Used CD $3.00
“In [Marhaug’s great wall of noise] there is a great silence, an unspoken and often yearned-for silence. For his noise to be so brutal, loud and destructive your mind almost needs to contrast it with the moments [of true] silence.”
Viovox
(Public Eyesore) Used CD $3.00
Marsh processes violin and cello, messes around with sampled loops, electro-percussion, and processes his voice, resulting in a series of weird radio transmissions from another dimension. The voice shifts through layers of meaning, instruments call and deconstruct and repeat, percussion weaves in and out, and the mind tries to build something from the words, grasping at interpretation as actual statements fly past. Loops and playful scraping scatter in the background echoes into darkness. An album of drama and fascination.
Unoccupied Areas
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $5.00
“Tightly focused electroacoustic compositions from 2005 that are austere, rich, strange and brilliantly executed. Martusciello’s music is never theoretical, always grounded in the grain of the sounds themselves.”
Five Years of Fuck All
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR021) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Rare recordings, covers and out-of-print stuff from post-drone heavyweights. Approved by Julian Cope. Packaging by Thumbprint Press.
MIYA MASAOKA / PAULINE OLIVEROS
Accordion Koto
(Deep Listening) Used CD $15.00
2004 recordings from Bard College’s MFA Program. Sealed
MASONNA / RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK / SCHIMPFLUCH GRUPPE
Arschloch Onna
(Japan Overseas) Used CD $40.00
Live and studio material from 1997, says Bleak Bliss, “Sliced, diced, blended and spat straight into your face.”
Beauty Beast
(Blast First) Used 3-inch CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
From dying theremin to wall-to-wall harsh and throat-burning noise blasts. A joy to behold.
MASONNA / RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK
Clitoris Projectile Pump Action
(Tochnit Aleph - TA083) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
First released as tape/object by Schimpfluch / Coquette in 1995 in an edition of 33 copies, this CD reissue makes available on a somewhat large scale (600 copies) the celebrity death match between the wild dog of Osaka (Masonna) and Mt. Lunacy's foreign ambassador (Rudolf Eb.er). Features R&G studio and live-actions material with guest appearance by Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant).
Ejaculation Generator
(Alchemy) CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Alchemy) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Who better than to shriek “eat shit dungeon synth” than Japan’s one-man hornets nest Maso Yamazaki. No one bests his hyperactive grotesque expression, glass-shards studded smoothie of truncated wailing expeditions, near-microsonic bursts of feedback, and no-fi scrabbling. Thirty-three tracks in thirty minutes.
Hyper Chaotic
(V Records) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nineteen “orgasmic blasts of spastic noise” from 1996 that “bludgeon your ear canals, distort your neurons, and obliterate all thought,” according to Chronicle Of Chaos. “A menagerie of frequencies fluctuating from both the high- and low-pitched ends of the spectrum smack into your skull at a nauseating pace…, so quickly that nothing can be grasped, and the entire thirty-minute barrage melts…. Sheer ferocity.”
Inner Mind Mystique
(Release) Used CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Seven tracks from 1995 that “drip with the fetid ugliness,” according to Ducks Battle Satan.
Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé
(Alchemy) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
A psychedelic touch from 1993: cascades of electronic noise and vocal belching.
Noisextra
(Pure) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Fairly psychopathic noise from 1995 referred to by Jukka Siikala as “the sound of a living destruction.” Two tracks with absolutely no breathing room.
Noskl In Ana
(Alchemy) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two tracks from Mad Onna cassette (1989), one from Like A Vagina cassette (1988), one from Masonanie 2 cassette-and-seven (1990), an outtake frm Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé CD (1993), an alternate mix from Masonna vs. Bananamara LP (1990), and three previously unreleased tracks, one of which is a live recording from Gilman Street, Berkeley. No obi
Shinsen Na Clitoris
(Vanilla) Used CD $75.00 (Out-of-stock)
On the debut CD from 1990, Masonna surpasses all extremes with full frequency violence as fast as it is psychedelic. Sealed.
Vestal Spacy Ritual
(Alchemy) Used CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Analog synth explorations form a lot of the instrumental passages here,” notes Mars Hottentot, “usually under a haze of good ol’ fuzz pedal … to keep it in the realm of harsh noise.” From 1998
We Are Not at The Opera
(Eremite) Used CD $7.00
“The ebb and flow of these extended performances” from 1998, notes Jazz Times, “Allow Murray to organically connect delicately brushed cymbal figures and full-bore barrages within a single piece. His underappreciated sense of structure is very well represented by this program. Mateen more than holds his own, often prodding Murray in unexpected directions; his well developed voices on flute, alto and tenor saxophones, are as compelling as Murray’s.” Clipped corner
Basic Math
(Bulb - 032) Used CD $20.00
A jolly romp by Michael Colligan, Jodie Mecanic, and Robert Rolston through klezmer circus territory utilizing organ, clarinet and percussion. In card box with sticker artwork.
Hospital Dubs From 128 Satanical Square
(Chocolate Monk) Used CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
More complex ear debris from these Minnesota heathens, going back to 2006. Out-in-the-woods weirdness with dirty hands put to all types of eerie jobs. Narcotic basement yammerin’, violin and guitar stutterin’, reed wailin’ and general tape damage.
Ba
(Engine) Used CD $10.00
Concussive yet agile drumming from Nimrod’s Sam Lohman meets guitarist Edward Ricart head-on for some wobbly, nervous ruckus. The duo share a slow-build patience not common in the anything-goes universe, and a knack for subtlety apparent even when scaring up a goliath-sized racket.
l’Oeil Ecclatante
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.276) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Concrète sound-poetry that digs deep into the Henri Chopin tradition of mining raw and visceral sounds from the manipulation of voice. Herr Institut Fuer Feinmotorik uses records of his own vocals and manipulates them on turntable; his sources are based on the original Lettrist alphabet of voice-noises, coughs, sighs and hisses.
Mendietan
(w.mo/r) Used CD $3.00
“Confronting geometries of technological interfaces with the more obscure and tense geographies of Basque country. Brittle insect clicks and digital replies, groaning, sub-sonic movements of a prehistoric landscape its made audible by ruined machines, tearing electricity, dense slabs of feedback, echoes and hush.” With Xabler Erkizia on three tracks. From 2002
Sakada
(w.mo/r) Used CD $3.00
Electronic goat-herder Mattin is joined in 2001 by percussionists Rosy Parlane (Parmentier, Sigma Editions, Thela, Pit Viper) and AMM’s Eddie Prévost. Well nurtured swarms of singularly malign hisses, gurgles and overtones occasionally swell up, invade, suddenly recoil and loiter darkly in an awkward middle distance. “Much of the music’s depth and elusiveness comes from the way individual sounds are sharply differentiated yet entangled tightly,” explains Matthew Hyland. “Percussion rarely interrupts liquid feedback with punctual impact; rather, it generates a second, third, fourth writhing body of sustained sound. Objects chime or are scraped or rung as often as hit, allowing distinct conjunctions to emerge and persist before falling away.” In card folder, with one crease ripped.
Mauve Sideshow
(Ventricle - 01) Used CD $10.00
Space collage, floating light ambient noise by Dusty Lee and Treva Dea. “Golden Sand,” “Barricades,” and “Jet Girl Talks In Her Sleep” from Dark Flowers (Refraction Sound 1990); “Beneath The Rose” from Stray Apparitions (Refraction Sound 1991); “Absorbed By The Periphery” is previously unreleased.
Meet Me In The Wasteland
(Ventricle - 3) Used CD $10.00
Neo-classical ambient with spacey synths, effects, hypnotic voice and tons of mellotron. Very spacey and hypnotic music, sometimes beautiful and sometimes dark.
The Girl
(Ventricle - 05) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Amorphous weirdity, an intoxicating, swarming morass.
Cut Up
(Hands In The Dark - HITD018) CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
The debut album by Sylvain Bombled, guitarists Boris Magnin and Jean-François Pauvros, and cello-player Sebastien Lemporte combines minimal dream-pop, downtempo and Kosmische. Edition of 200
Dreaming Like Mad
(Torpor Vigil Industries - TVRCD007) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Fifteen previously unreleased somniloquies by the world’s most famous dream-talker — over an hour of enthralling and hilarious adventures from slumberland’s master orator, recorded by Michael Barr with the windows open and the atmospheric noises of Manhattan’s First Avenue traffic in the background. Just in time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the initial release on Decca of the first batch of musings, stories, rants and screams of a man fast asleep.
Dreams Again
(Tzadik - TZ7404) Used CD $12.00
First time release (1999) of the follow-up to The Dream World of Dion McGregor (Decca 1964), recorded by roommate Mike Barr between 1960 and 1967, drawn from the same source material – the spoken aloud dreams of McGregor. Documentation includes photographs and a must-read essay by Felipe X. Milstein. Part of Tzadik’s Lunatic Fringe series. Sealed
The Further Somniloquies
(Torpor Vigil Industries) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third album by the world’s greatest sleeptalker (following Dion McGregor Dreams Again [Tzadik 1999] and The Dream World of Dion McGregor [Decca 1964]) is just as hilarious, bizarre, poignant, macabre and charming as its predecessors. Recorded in the ’60s by McGregor’s songwriting partner and roommate Michael Barr. Twenty-four tracks, almost eighty minutes.
MARTIN MCKELVEY / JOHN PILCHER
A Bun Dance
(Dungeon Taxis - DT01) CD $18.00
The Eagle Has Strayed in this 48-minute opus of lunar musique concrete right out of late '60s Hastings, New Zealand. These squiggly, stellar tapezones joyously light years ahead of time emerge on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's inaugural moonlanding, having originally sampled and plunged that stuttering, televised transmission into another sea of tranquility and magnificent desolation. Pilcher's peripheral figure hangs ghostlike on the edge of the front cover next to a poster of The Beatles' semaphore (which does not spell HELP, by the way) -- a revealing allusion to the duo's radical warpage, a preamble for the winding genealogy of NZ's later musical lab tests. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009.
17 Volts
(Crab Pot - CBPT101) Used CD $5.00
The first solo release by The Electric Eels’ Brian McMahon, from 1996. Gritty, poetic rock with ypnotic, arpeggiated guitar, wailing harmonica, subterranean rockabilly bass rumble.
Trinity
(Atavistic) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Outer space jazz, blues, and avant soul recorded in the parish hall of a Catholic Church. Atavistic’s 2000 CD reissue from the master tapes blows away the sound quality of the original groove-crammed LP (CjR 1971). On the spatially expansive “Ionization,” drummer Harold Smith moves through polyrhythms at blinding speed while McPhee recontextualizes without overcompensating, and Mike Kull enters pianissimo, throwing the energy into a tailspin of dynamic response. “Astral Spirits” has Kull playing an electric piano, McPhee roots his tenor playing in groove and nuance, while Smith dances on the cymbals. On the expressionist work “Delta,” Kull gets into an avant funk, McPhee goes modal, playing deep blues and Memphis soul without regard for bars and measures. The track is grease and fire personified, the cry of a bluer-than-black blues, cut through the belly with ghostly funk and a free jazz aesthetic. It slips in the back door almost undetected and wails its gospel-like roar as it exits.
Arboreal Frippery
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Ohio-based tape manipulator Tynan Krakoff returns with over 60 minutes of memory-mulching sound stew. The main aural sources stem from a momentous summer 2009 train-hopping / hitchhiking trip around America’s West Coast with his brother Max, a seminal coming-of-age experience during which Tynan carried a microcassette pocket recorder and captured hours of raw audio. These memories are collaged and juxtaposed with found tapes and other family recordings, touching upon themes of altered states and trips; exploring the tension between paranoia, elation, and revelation, holding space for each. “The first song I made was actually the album closer,” he explains. “ ‘Trainwreck Tunnel’ is built around a sample of my brother telling a train story from earlier in that trip. After rediscovering that particular tape in my old shoebox from trips past, I realized it fits perfectly into the Meadow Argus universe, which is all about tapping into nostalgia and jumbled memories. An ethereal blending of the past, present, and future.” Edition of 60
Eternal Absence
(Small Doses) Used 3-inch CD $3.00
Schizophrenic noise from 2008 by Franklin Teagle, Matt Yacoub, Ryan McGill, with moments of power electronics and dark ambient, soaked in feedback from a heart of stone. Edition of 115
4 (propositions)
(Tariff) Used CD $6.00
Cut-up and processed sounds from 2002 by THU20 founder. Sometimes jarring shocks, sometimes inaudible patterns.
The Night Watch
(Chocolate Monk - choc.511) CDR $8.00
He of Core Of The Coalman, she of The Slowest Lift, and him of Inca Eyeball serve up blossoming drones to clear the fug. Edition of 60
Notebook (Techniques for Self-Destruction)
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR043) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eight pieces of abrasive music made of electricity, mysterious forces, sharp knives, dying tape recorders and voices below the threshold of intelligibility, originally commissioned by Jérôme Noetinger for l’Audible Festival, Paris 2012. Listen to two tracks here: https://soundcloud.com/misanthropic-agenda/sets/francisco-meirino-notebook
Surrender, Render, End
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS037) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
An electro-acoustic dialectic, unremittingly engaged in a pugilist conflict between art and accident. The Swiss noise-composer began working on the skeleton for this piece in 2014 as a multi-channel, modular synth patch, which has been in an ongoing state of modification through public diffusions and private rumination. Meirino posits the album as a metaphysical puzzle of manipulated tape, atonal synthesis, and concrete sound —more than field recordings, better ID’d as an extreme amplification of natural phenomena.
FRANCISCO MEIRINO / GERRITT WITTMER
The Confidence Of Being Lost
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR045) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Swiss tour CD that explores the tension between the prepared concept and possible errors of a concert performance. Where Meirino Francisco focuses on unwanted sound, e.g. the background noise of a speaker, the faulty circuit of a car clutch, using computer, electro-magnetic sensors, synthesizers, field recordings, tape machines, and contact microphones, Wittmer mixes abstract, vocally expressive narratives with precisely timed body work. The three parts of The Confidence Of Being Lost are intended to be listened to in a continuous session, influenced as it is by the current state of global consciousness. A deep and thought-provoking quest for answers that do not exist. Magical and haunting. Edition of 200. Listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/misanthropic-agenda/francisco-meirino-gerritt-wittmer-the-confidence-of-being-lost-hachoir-edit
A Squirrel Could Never Be A Disappointment To Me
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC263) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Scattered and haunted sounds, ethereal nonsense.
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
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.
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
13000 Miles At Light
(Tzadik) Used CD $7.00
“Anyone impressed with studio recordings of the group’s scratchy, frantic rock will no doubt be bowled over with the way this sounds in a more direct and organic setting,” muses All Music Guide. “With a pace and energy that rivals kings of the genre…, [this 1999 live album] tears through most of their best tracks…. Most notable is a cover of ‘Surfing USA’…, [which] you can probably imagine how wonderful such a thing would be.”
Fangs Alot
(Nerve Rust) Used CD $8.00
“Fucked-up and hilarious. Jaunty rhythms, lowbrow samples, twisted humor and unbridled noise, all cut and spliced together with an exactitude that is frightening in such potential sociopaths. A downright addictive, hallucinogenic masterpiece.” From 2001
Behold The Scathing Light
(Helicopter) Used 3-inch CD $5.00
“Ambient music from 2004 that moves in masses of swirling sound or dense bands of tone that enter and exit the musical canvas effortlessly, and without commotion.”
Face of Vehemence
(Groundfault) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Another blobalicious sound gulp from Portland, Oregon’s über-rattler Daniel Menche. Inspired by Yukio Mishima’s attitude toward art, flesh, death, and spirit, Menche constructs big-man bass pulses and harmonic drones that’ll make the hair in your ears turn green, and ignites more of the corrosion fireworks for which he is famous. Electro-crickets, grinding metal rain, hypnotic and sultry static — Menche unleashes them all. He shall overcome.
DANIEL MENCHE / KIYOSHI MIZUTANI
Garden
(Groundfault) CD $14.00
Natural garden sounds electronically processed by Mizutani (high sounds), and West Coast chancellor of scrape Menche (low sounds). Subtle and disorienting.
Ma
(Fata - 3) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Raw and powerful war cries of flame-bellowing caterwaul, blessed-out feedback, and blood-boiling sonic wrath by one of the most bizarre, genuinely inspired free time outfits working the avant-mind body-love noise-worship axis. Hand-painted. Edition of 100
Do You Want To Go Steady
(MotNB) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Outsider vaudevillian chaos. Imagine Spike Jones with zero discipline.
Meringue
(Cherry Smash) Used CD $5.00
Five tracks of alien yet down-home indie rock from Gainesville, Florida, 1994
1930
(Tzadik) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
This 1998 disc accesses “unguessed-at dimensions,” according to All Music Guide, “via sensory overload of oscillations, infinitely layered static, frequencies from pitch to buzz…. It is the sound of tuning in the radio, only to catch the low-end frequencies of an earthquake…. [I]ndiscernible frequencies … poke pinholes in your eardrums and bleed out your preconceived notions of sound, music, and how they can affect you. This listening experience is not simply a result of sheer volume…; even while turned down low, the sounds all combine into an irresistible force that messes with your physical being.” Sealed
24 Hours A Day Of Seals
(Dirter) Used 4xCD $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Powered by a guitar, laptops and synthesizer, 24 Hours A Day Of Seals is mesmerizing and overwhelming,” marvels Big O. This 2002 disc “completely blurs the line between punishment and pleasure…. It’s easy to see why this album can be called ‘satisfying’…. ‘Good Morning Azarashi’ … hits you like a tropical squall for fourteen minutes. You feel almost refreshed and cleansed.”
Age of 369 / Chant 2
(Extreme) Used 2xCD $20.00
1996 reissue of mid-’80s material from ZSK cassettes, when the focus was on “cheap musique concrète elements, noise electronics, turntablism, and tape loops…. The recordings here are slow-paced, atmospheric, full of groans and the occasional (but persistent when they appear) high pitches…. The chirping modulations and distortion that mark much Merzbow’s mid-1990s work is … present…, but melded into the tape loops and other sounds instead of dominating them like they later would.” Bonus track “Itomakiei” from a Korm Plastic comp from the same era “starts of with distorted noise electronics and chirps before it falls into a maintained undercurrent of looped junk metal percussions mixed in with other tape loops.”
Anti-Monument
(Art-Directe) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
1991 reissue from Sweden originally released by ZSF-Produkt in 1986 as a picture disc. With bonus track “Three Types Of Industrial Pollusion” from Infidel Psalm Vol. 1 (Mental Decay 1986). This homage to the strange architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Goetheanum of Rudolf Steiner, Nishōtei, etc. is packaged in an A5 folder with a 12-page booklet.
Batz-Tou-Tai With Material Gadgets
(RRRecords) Used 2xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
The 1987 benchmark for classic industrial collage in which Masami Akita uses loops and cut-up sounds from electroacoustic and modern classical works by François Bayle, Conlon Nancarrow, Ivo Malec, and Luc Ferrari. Subtitled De-Composed Works 1985-86, this 1993 remix reissue includes a bonus disc of loops recorded at the same time as the original but omits “Semykyoku”, “Anus Anvil Anxiety” and “Mortegage” from the original release, and “Intermission” is a short excerpt of “Dahkini Disko” from the original.
Brisbane • Tokyo Interlace
(Cold Spring) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Masami Akita “approaches this record with a sound collage mindset and … brings … a ton of variation …[to] his own solo track…: silly, out-of-context, short loops of pop songs…, malformed rock tunes, [and] sudden trashy noise outbursts all over the place.” The collaborative track with Watermann “starts as a slightly more subdued and ambient piece [and] soon turns into a reckless opus of cut-up noise with so much going on and so fast that even I can’t properly keep up…. Watermann’s own [solo] track drops the noise walls and furthers the sound collage insanity into its absolute limits — covering nearly as much ground as the previous track in less than half the duration. Simply mesmerizing, pure ADHD brain music.” From 1996. Sealed
Cloud Cock OO Land
(ZSF Produkt) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The most important noise music album of all time,” according to Appotheozz. “It marks the start of Merzbow’s analog era but also the start of more complex and carefully crafted noise. This album features everything that can be done with harsh noise: glitchiness with the first half of “Brain Forest” and the first half of “Spinnozaamen,” ambient with the second half of “Brain Forest,” harshness with “Autopussy No Go Go,” and much more diversity.” From 1993. With O-card
Crash Of The Titans
(Merciless Core) Used CD $6.00
Thirty-five minutes each. Harsh electronics by Merzbow, and merciless factory metal field recordings with added analog effects by Napalmed. Blue-disc edition of 500 from 2001.
Dead Zone
(Quasi Pop - QPOP059) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Fax machine blips, tortured whale song, 1950s sci-fi effects, theremin sounds coming off like a Geiger Counter lost in the fall out, crumbling buildings rendered as metallic noise crunch, twenty-foot waves as static, nuclear meltdowns as devilish shrieks. Recorded the day after the first explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Artwork depicts Chernobyl and Prypiat. This CD is dedicated to the worldwide anti-nuclear movement. Edition of 500
Deus Irae
(Nux Organization) Used CD $6.00
1993 release of 1984 live recording from Gallery Komai in Tokyo 1984, w Masami Akita on drum and effects, KK Null on guitar, voice and metals, Asami Hayashi on bass, Reiko Azuma on cymbal, and Yushi Okano on electric violin
Electric Salad
(Etherworld) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The playful high-end bubble pulses and whips [are] everywhere…,” notes Ducks Battle Satan. Then “shit gets weird…. Merzbow chucks cuts-ups of movie dialogue, traffic noise and 1960s film music into the middle of [the] maelstrom.” From 1996
Eleven Live Collaborations
(Selektion) Used CD $10.00
“Feedback and sheet metal scraping noise assaults … recorded over a week of touring” in 1992, explains Rate Your Music, that “are particularly fierce…, [and possessed of a] specially twisted, dehumanized charm. Quite worthwhile.”
Eucalypse
(Soleilmoon) Used CD $60.00
Analogue noise odyssey from 2008 focusing on the plight of the ecosystem of Kerala, India, where Tasmanian Blue Gum trees have been doing what they do for over a century. Using an EMS synth, a Roland organ and handmade instruments, Masami Akita scrambles everything together via searing laptop noise and effects in a warm and rich five-part assault. The wooden box packaging (hand made in India) is a fittingly substantial and beautiful means of housing the music. Sealed
Frog+
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used 2xCD $17.00
Originally released in 2001 on vinyl, this reissue contains the original material from the LP plus a second disc of previously unreleased material, including a remix and an enhanced CD-ROM video / screensaver. Notes Angbase, “Misanthropic Agenda gathers a mix of noiseheads, Mego big-wigs, stoner drone-rockers, and unknowns…. Never Presence Forever … slows everything down to a bass-hum crawl…. House of Low Culture takes another unexpected route, offering up subtle low-volume scrapes very carefully edited. The best piece on here might be the opener, where Hrvatski offers an INA/GRM-flavored workout full of rapid fade-ins and fade-outs punctuated by mysterious silences. More along the lines of what you would expect from a Merz remix is John Weise’s expertly cut-up harshness that, at first, jumps out of the speakers and then descends into a sparse and quiet unease of softly clipped sounds before startlingly exploding back into loudness. Sunn O))) play with loops, CD-skips and tape hiss, building up to a dense mess floating over a rich sustained amp hum. Fennesz adds a two-note melody that softens the harshness, while Rusell Haswell mixes sparse grainy digital textures and blips to good effect. Hecker picks up where Haswell leaves off with a quiet mix through which sudden bursts of distortion struggle to explode. The track slowly builds up to massive noise roar that is well balanced in the bass department. Other remixers include Pita, Terror Organ, Ulver, Boris, When, Misanthropic Agenda label-owner Gerritt and Masami Akita himself.” Sealed
MERZBOW / PGR / ASMUS TIETCHENS
Grav
(Silent) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three lengthy pieces from 1991. A breathtaking collage of tape manipulations, sonic treatments utilizing home-made instruments, and feedback loops. AMK guests. Sealed.
Great American Nude / Crash For Hi-Fi
(Alchemy) Used CD $40.00
Seven of the eight tracks were recorded live during a tour of the USA in 1990, and as Evol Kween The Musical notes, “pretty much the entire album trades in an endless wash of squeak, hiss and rumble, as if Masami Akita [and Reika A are] forcing hundreds of sounds through a meat grinder and the end result is a raw mince…. The … live environment gives this hot mess some room to breathe…. [Y]ou can actually hear how the acoustics of each venue affects what [they’re] spewing out.”
Hole
(Heel Stone) Used CD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
“With the liner notes printed on four card-stock derriere portraits, the disc’s three tracks — ‘Noisematrix,’ ‘Krafft-Ebing Dick,’ and ‘Krautrock #1’ (recorded live in Deutschland) — pig-pile into one near-relentless hour of squalling sheets of static,” says Mike Rowell. “[T]here’s an impressive amount of dynamics lurking here, with a broad range of incessantly mutating squeaks, shrieks, rumbles, and roars.” From 1994. Hand-numbered edition of 500 in silver diecut folder. Visible creases on cover. Pix upon request
Hybrid Noisebloom
(Vinyl Communications) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Despite the abrasive nature of the music,” admits All Music Guide, “There is something organic and familiar in the raw sound of electricity. It doesn’t take much imagination to think of this album as an electronic parallel to natural phenomena like waterfalls and thunderstorms. Only Hybrid Noisebloom is the sound of a waterfall during a thunderstorm, with a massive earthquake shaking beneath. In other words, Merzbow all the way.” Sealed
Ikebukuro Dada
(Circumvent) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Exploring caustic noise, sharp ambient landscapes, chopped jazz interludes, and hypnotic bass pulses. From 2002. Sealed
Live Destruction At No Fun
(No Fun) Used CD $7.00
A blistering performance from 2007 bringing together classic analog and then-recently-explored digital concerns. Two laptops and an amplified sheet-metal instrument keep pace between walls of computerized droning, distortion, and psyched-out metallic scraping. Gatefold card jacket.
Live Magnetism
(Caminante) Used CD $15.00
Recorded live at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art in New York, a near-hour-long oppressive amalgam of jet drive, mechanical organ in a state of emergency, and the setting of dried poop streaks on the cell wall. Intoxicating.
Locomotive Breath
(Mort Aux Vaches) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live at VPRO, Amsterdam, 3 July 1995, by Masami Akita on handmade metal objects and electronic noise, and Reiko A on electro feedback drone. Mixed by John Duncan. Packaged in the standard Mort Aux Vaches series folder.
Magnesia Nova
(Staalplaat) Used CD $32.00 (Out-of-stock)
Noise and EMS Synthi A recorded in early 1995, subtitled, “A study on the connections between the Hellenic and Japanese cultures.” Packaged in a long card wallet with a 24-page color booklet stapled inside.
Maschinenstil
(Dual Plover) Used CD $15.00
Ducks Battle Satan admires this 1998 disc for its “screaming torrents of feedback and white noise with the occasional industrial loop.” Masami Akita reveals that his fascination with an organ sound on an old Lee Michaels records is what compelled him to extrapolate on it using five oscillators, ring modulator, twenty pitch shifters, enhancers, limiters, and a one-second sample from a Terry Bozzio drum solo on a Frank Zappa album. Likewise, the speed and landscape of a particular Japanese rail line led him to compose use the classic TR606 drum machine.
Mercurated
(Alchemy) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Masami Akita keeps his palette thick and abrasive on this 1996 record … all wah-wah-infected scree and electronic static.… All four tracks spend the majority of their time scraping along upper registers, which makes Mercurated’s relentlessness all the more punishing and impenetrable.” Foil printed on hologram stock. Sealed
Merzbow Loves Emil Beaulieau
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Masami Akita on Emil Beaulieau records and tapes, turntable, contact mic, teleband transceiver, feedback unit, alphatech relaxation trainer, contact mic, audio generator. From 1996.
Metalvelodrome – Exposition of Vivisection
(Alchemy) Used 4xCD $175.00 (Out-of-stock)
Admired by Rate Your Music for the “sheer size and scope of this set” from 1993 and its provision of “enough space to encompass pretty much every style Masami Akita has ever worked with in one way or another… [without sacrificing the “prominence [of] his rapidly developing, nowadays infamous style of screeching waves of mind-shreddingly loud harsh noise. Great highlights are to be found throughout all of the record, though special attention should be paid to … ‘Neon Worms’, which probably broke a few international records in abrasiveness at the time…, the terrific trio of shorter tracks … starting with ‘Electric Moon Tum-Tik’…, [and] the lengthy first track of the third CD, which goes from noise through sound collages and free improvisations done both live and in studio.” Includes poster and O-card.
Music For Bondage Performance
(Extreme) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Atonal, quite creepy, and offering a bit of an aesthetic counterpoint to the rest of the discography. Merzbow is here immersed in a calm atmosphere, sometimes bordering on ambient. No sound wall to pierce, no surge of all-out noise; instead a peaceful succession, a minimalist perspective which brings us closer in certain aspects to a more “classical” electro-acoustic music…. All of this is meant to be pretty unhealthy, of course…., adding the sharper, more acid color of … distorted bell sounds…. ‘Aimei nawa’ becomes more threatening: slow and heavy percussions install an oppressive ritual, more creaking distortions arise, and a pattern of pain gradually appears…. [S]ounds mutate in your mind into human screams … [and] an electric guitar.... Oriental bell, gong, roaring, barking, blowing in pipes, and strident squeaks [cast] a dreary and devastated soundscape.” From 1991
Music For Bondage Performance 2
(Extreme) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
“An all-around solid work” from 1996, according to the ever reliable Amazon. “One of Masami Akita’s earliest indications that he wouldn’t be content with the same old harsh assault with each release. Quite varied works, with … a focus on textures and strange rhythms…. While it’s not entirely laid-back or subdued, Merzbow displays a much different form of … hostility here. Lots of creepy ambient passages, glowing feedback, metallic rattling, and other sounds.” Six tracks recorded in 1993, including remixes of the EPs Electroploitation (Lunhare 1994) and Electroknots Parts 1 & 2 (Cold Spring 1995); four originally recorded for “Kinbaku-bi 2” CD-ROM (Cine Magic 1994); plus a bonus track from Music For Bondage Performance (Extreme 1991).
Noisembryo
(Releasing Eskimo) Used CD $70.00
This 1994 disc is legendary for its “depth and wild energy…. High-speed loops, roving automotive bass, and cacophonic drum machines gel together, with the surprising inclusion of a sound rarely heard [in] Merzbow…: Masami Akita’s own voice.
Oersted
(Vinyl Communications) Used CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Here’s Ducks Battle Satan’s mic-dropping summation: “The sort of noise you can drown in.” From 1996
Pulse Demon
(Relapse) Used CD $45.00
“Pulse Demon is simply pure sound, viciously unadulterated static,” Pitchfork informs us about Masami Akita’s 1996 benchmark. “The earlier releases stimulated the imagination; Pulse Demon decimates it…, probably one of the most archetypal Merzbow albums, the one most resolutely and incorrigibly reluctant to dilute itself with free jazz, industrial, world, or musique concrète…. All in all, seventy minutes that feel like driving an 18-wheeler made out of concrete into a remedial course on nuclear winter.” In six-panel folder with holographic printing.
Rainbow Electronics
(Alchemy) Used CD $35.00
“A trip through a cold, engineered universe of interstellar supermachinery and titanium celestial bodies … [where] grimy harsh noise tides couple with eerie, reverbed screeches and scrapes of iron objects…, steady drumbeats briefly emerge from the static and disappear just as quickly, stretches of subdued electronic drones buzz along sleepily…, [and] into something more violent.” One track from 1990, seventy-three minutes
Rainbow Electronics 2
(Dexters Cigar) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
A 1996 alternate-mix-slash-companion to the 1990 Alchemy masterpiece. Powerful electronics at their most detailed, subtly varied, and exhaustively kinetic. It doesn’t stop. It’s a thrill every two seconds, for seventy-five minutes.
Smegma Plays Merzbow Plays Smegma
(Tim Kerr) Used CD $10.00
1996 collaboration using MA-tape, audio generator, teleband transceiver, mixer, tape loops, record players, wood flute, vocals, Optigan, mussette, frequency analyzer. The Merzbow section is a churning inferno of molten sound and screaming speakers with a lot of dynamics. The Smegma section shunts the Merzbow noise to a continuous layer at the periphery of the mix, allowing their spazodelic improv to grab a few mouthfuls of air. Sealed
Space Metalizer
(Alien8) Used CD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
Masami Akita infuses the surroundings with reactive ferric noise using eletcronics, metals, Novation synth rack, EMS Synthi A, audio generator, MKII filter bank, Theremaniac theremin, tapes and Moog. From 1997
Spiral Honey
(Work In Progress) Used CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Noise is a beautiful thing when it’s done right. From 1995
Tauromachine
(Relapse) Used CD $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The third in Merzbow’s Relapse trilogy,” notes All Music Guide, “with its punchy, raw production, [and] balanced, fibrous mix works incredibly well with the very patient structure of most of the tracks. The lack of continuity and immediacy, as well as the increase in low-end…, take[s] the focus away from the abrasion and screeching and move it toward the chunky, pulsating bass….” From 1998
Venereology
(Release) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
This “foray into metal music, or at least [an] interpretation of it,” by Masami Akita from 1994, described by Pop Matters as a “dissident aggressor, unapologetic artist, naïve egoist, [and] pornography expert…, [is] inspired by grindcore, death metal, and copious beer-drinking. Venereology is a wailing, excruciating listen that cuts with a kind of ferocity so severe that listening to it feels like a total assault on your sanity…. Rather than emulating a death metal sound, he seems to be attacking it, exposing it as a childlike facsimile of real heavy music. This is much more extreme, grating, offensive, and terrifying than anything happening in even the most serious metal of the 1990s like Godflesh or Morbid Angel….” Barcode has a hole punched through it.
Canticle of Ignat
(Archive - ARCHIVE46) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
One track played on modified acoustic guitar and one track played on modified banjo, recorded in 2007 at BigJar in Philadelphia. Metzger offers an amazing mix of Indian ragas crossed with a junk yard band feel, highly evolved and unique. Slightly oversized sleeve silkscreened (by Alan Sherry of Siwa) and die-cut with an insert printed on vellum, hand-glued and assembled. Edition of 500 copies.
Deliverance
(Locust - 013) CD $12.00
A real time performance on overhauled 21-string banjo of deeply satisfying, impulsive outer cosmos ragadelia that is unfiltered aural transcendence, Metzger's hypnotic raga epic is both slow burning meditation and urgent mind / body duel.
Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo and Guitar
(Chairkicker's Music - CKM015) CD $12.00
Metzger may wrench unique and varied sounds and melodies from the banjo, but an irreverent approach and fluid dexterity are also in evidence via seamless hybrids of North Indian and Asian influences, jazz and folk. Recorded within the acoustically resonant former church Sacred Heart Studio in Duluth, his three long improvisations venture miles beyond what one normally expects from the banjo.
Sound Reportage
(Ants) Used Enhanced CDR $8.00
Timed recordings made on an endless cassette, without an erase head. Fragments of existing sound material overlap and when enough loud and possessing a distinct presence, inform with the newer layers recordings. The dominant frequencies, the characteristic of the sounds themselves, the various acoustic environments are reinforced and become increasingly manifest. From 2003. PDF is included in the data portion of the disc
Der Trompten Sauber
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.268) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Horrid gronk by these Tedium House faves, more twisted than a gut full of leeches and salt. Two long tracks by this quartet of French skull-benders slather fine confusion grease on pungent, garbled distortion, ill-advised sex music, electronic fumblings, red-hot plastic trombone poot. Numbing and enlightening.
Süra Wald
(Chocolate Monk - choc.565) CDR $9.00
Hey, free improv fan, fancy a forest stroll with France’s finest music brut weirdos? Come hear their yelps, grunts, gurgles and horns. Marvel at the clatters, electronics, small percussion and more. It is all very considered and strangely soothing. A deep listen, recorded in the Blackforest on April 17 and 18, 2010, at exactly the same two places (near Aufen and at the Schwarzenbachtalsperre lake) where Bennink and Brötzmann recorded their Schwarzwaldfahrt album in May 1977. In loving memory of the late, great Thierry Monnier. In half-size DVD case with 12-page color booklet. Edition of 75
Midnight Doctors
(Ourodisc - OURO04) CD $11.25
A collage of styles and approaches which include scored pieces, structured improvisations, (mostly) loving pastiche, cut-up jams, hi-fi and lo-fi textures, electroacoustic flourishes, and studio, home and location recordings. The record mutates and exaggerates various absorbed inspirations from the margins, back-catalogues and dustbins of popular culture (particularly soundtracks), the avant-garde, and traditional musics.
Through A Screen And Into a Hole
(Ourodisc - OURO05) CD $11.25
Focused and expansive instrumentals informed by cosmic Impulse! jazz, ’60s baroque pop productions and decades of cop themes (all viewed through a skewed psychedelic lens).
Oblique No Strategy
(Helicopter - H 78) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Hard to believe these two screech-zillas have never collaborated before now — the closest they ever got are Mikawa’s button-down liner notes for Wiese’s Teenage Hallucination CD — but a full fifteen years after first meeting, the pair bled electronics into one another in Tokyo at Ochiai Soup in 2015, leaving us with immersive and astounding energy. Mixed and mastered by Wiese during a residency at the studio of Ina/GRM in Paris, 2016.
Rising Sunset
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.386) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The master of Matsudo delivers his infamous demented electronics with a healthy wallop of wild yips, yurps and other mouth madness, coating your cochlea in joy grease, which is guaranteed to deflect all New Age hookum. It is time to let your skull glow. Numbered edition of 100
Almaron
(Double Naught) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Quintessential Texas acid from 1993. Live jams, studio work, guitar insanity, smart ass John Cramer lyrics, and guest vocalist Bliss Blood on two tracks.
Crumpled Cloud Café
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.365) CDR $8.00
No worries of quadragenarian mellowing for this New-York-based artist and all-round “sound as a pound” gonk whose singular art is not for the muted of mind. Numbered edition of 60
JENKS MILLER / NICHOLAS SZCZEPANIK
American Gothic
(Small Doses - DOSE92) CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
This landmark collaboration by Jenks Miller (Horseback) and Nicholas Szczepanik stretches from lilting, minimal drones to dark, dense, harsh soundscapes. The disc’s closer, “Cranberry Sauce,” was featured on a Wire Tapper comp, but don’t let that turn you off.
Obsession
(Phage - PT160) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Power electronics by James Keeler of Wilt and George Proctor of Mutant Ape. Obsession deals with sexual themes with lyrics appropriated from Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. Edition of 200.
Solaris
(Idea) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk’s soundtrack to regions of the deep sea where the fish need their own light sources and the sediment makes navigation nearly impossible pours out forty-one minutes of dark, understated minimalism and auditory hallucinations of numerous unheard sounds: the underwater songs of whales, radio static, labored breathing, rattlesnakes, the quiet hiss of air escaping a tiny opening at the top of a coffee pot. Swooshes of white noise are peppered with muted clangs and scrapes of what could be a piano or manipulated guitar while electronic glitches dance with high-pitched shrieks of sound. Dense drones come and go in relatively short durations, while scattered noises of acoustic and electronic origins play in the mix and a saxophone is quietly stretched to the limits of its palette of sounds.
Artificial Field Recordings
(Cat|Sun - CAT8) CD $13.50
The sixth solo album by the editor of M|I magazine, who slides off his chair whenever the opportunity to electrify and process analog synthesizers, guitars, trumpets and acoustic instruments comes along. Oscillating between organic lo-fi, ambient and psychedelia, Mirt always returns to a fascination with field recordings and the environment in which they are embedded, and replaces them with electronic music and acoustic sounds like the repetitive, subdued murmurs of urban agglomeration and chaotic pulsing of wild landscapes fused into entirety, woven from fragments of reality.
Journey Through The City Or Something Else
(Cat|Sun - CAT10) CD $14.00
Ten-year anniversary reissue of Mirt's second release, already a mature sound that melts synthesizer, trumpet, guitar and acoustic instruments and perhaps a sampling device. Ambient, lo-fi jazz, trip-hop-like, a perfect soundtrack for sipping, puffing, or stargazing.
Forget
(Taang!) Used CD $9.00
Twelve-track collection from 1988 of pre-Vs. demos and outtakes recorded between 1979 and 1982.
ROSCOE MITCHELL & THE NOTE FACTORY
Song For My Sister
(Pi Recordings) Used CD $7.00
Hard-bop from 2002 placed along side contemporary classical, open improvisations, and notated card pieces. On “Wind Change,” the band is augmented by clarinet, bassoon, violin, and viola, furthering the idea of the band as a classical improvising orchestra. Nine tracks
MIYANISHI KEIZO THE HUNDRED DEVILS
Japanese Original Rock Style
(Pataphysique - Dd013-014) 2xCD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
With their finely intermingling and ceaseless repetition, full of poésie, Miyanishi’s elusive songs are products of this well-known manga artist’s self-contained psychedelic world. His backing band includes Delta blues guitarist Roiki, and Louis Inage on bass and ring modulator. As with his illustrations for The Stalin, Les Rallizes Dénudés, and his own band Onna, the music on Japanese Original Rock Style is grotesque and erotic, yet precise and delicate. Liner notes by Endō Michirō. Artwork by Nemoto Takashi and Miyanishi.
Bird Songs
(Groundfault - GF010) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Voices, melodies, and trailing reverberations of delicate sounds, gliding through the echo-spheres,” says Mü-Nest, “Electro-acoustic hook lines, soul-tripping ambient, electro-infused dreamscapes, captivating rhythms.”
Millstone
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 disc by one-time Merzbow member, using primitive electrical feedback and field recordings.
Transcend Sideways
(Artware) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Subtle noise manipulations from ambient to harsh with electroacoustic sources, voices, and cut-ups, by onetime member of Merzbow.
Original Home Magick
(Chocolate Monk - choc.499) CDR $6.75 (Out-of-stock)
A joyous sonic adventure, from the suburban anti-dream to the commercial drag of the modern shopping center. Food, furniture, fitness routines and pharmaceuticals — they’re all in this modern trip for sick people. Edition of 60
New Fun
(Chocolate Monk - choc.570) CDR $8.00
More Fun. More Fun they said. The Molar Crime is afoot. These two young dukes play the percussion and objects (Chlorine) and the Dictaphone and objects (Posset). That’s clear. That’s naturally obvious. But sweep away the soot, brush away the leaves, and there is something breathing down there. What’s breathing? What’s huffing in the Oxygene? It’s a system of tubes and levers, rubbery and sweating. The tubes pulse, they wriggle with a cumin-scented gas. If you lean in you can smell the dusty fumes. Grab a lever and pull. What’s released? A fine sound. A sound sizzling like a greasy grill. A sound as fresh as autumn mornings, ripe with both promise and decay. Old worlds hum into life, ferns unfold. The saturated color of a de-tuned TV blitz each eyeball making it fizz.... Horns swoop up and around into dry cotton-mouthed clouds. Sherbet crackles in the Kool Aid.... A piano is detuned via mouldy fingers. Gears lock and then miss-fire — the machine delicately malfunctions. It’s a Jazz thing if your Jazz is heard though soil-clogged earholes, worms crawling between your lips and teeth. That’s more fun, eh? Edition of 60
Selected Audio Work 1983-1999
(Nyahh) CDR $12.00
Excavated from the archives of this Irish performance artist, presented for the first time as stand-alone audio pieces, this selection of sound work was originally made using multiple tape recorders, cut ups, mixed live and then recorded back on to cassette to accompany live performances and installations. If you've never been woken up at 3am and had to wonder what in god's name your eccentric neighbor is up to at this hour, here's your chance to share in the experience. Time has added hiss and noise to the cassettes over the years, only adding to the atmosphere and texture of the originals.
Tapes 1991 – 1994
(Audio Dissection / Industrial Recollections) 5xCD $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
2022 CD reissue of cassette releases Irresponsibility (Steeple & Globe, 1991), Purgatory (G.R.O.S.S., 1992), Portuguese Man-of-War (Vanilla, 1991), and Psychosomatic Performance (G.R.O.S.S., 1993), plus one disc of unreleased, live, and comp tracks. Twenty-page booklet includes liner notes and interview. Edition of 500.
From The Void
(Chocolate Monk) Used CDR $8.00
Dylan Nyoukis, John Olson, Mike Connelly, Nate Young recorded live at The Void, Brighton June 12, 2005
Live in Japan
(Gold Soundz) CD $9.00
(Gold Soundz) Used CD $5.00
This document of the NYC trio’s 2002 J-jaunt is heavier on electronics than usual (no bass or guitar this time), and explodes with crunch, crackle, and sizzle. It’s some of Monotract’s most inorganic music, robust and unintelligible. Roger Rimada, Nancy Garcia, and Carlos Giffoni’s crowded mix has room for a rhythmic base, but the beats are just another conflicting voice within many. Packaged inside origami-style card foldout, silkscreened in eyeball-searing pink, designed by Jelle Crama.
Stylt
(Absurd) Used CDR $3.00
Fusing together guitar pickup and turntable in a roar of feedback howl and rumble from 2004, this Portuguese improviser couples the idea of Cartridge Music with the anti-music bombardment of Metal Machine Music. Edition of 99
Unknown Destination
(A.T.M.O.T.W.) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sound collage by the master. Edition of 100
Voice Clippings
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.274) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The seventh volume in Chocolate Monk’s Well Spliced Breath series of “sound-tape collage, text-sound, radiophonic, horspiel-type muck.” More than sixty minutes of audio adventure that collages voices and other sounds, serving Montgomery’s aim of maximizing one’s “focus on the experience of listening” via “enduring impressions arising out of transitory moments.” Edition of 60.
Fire In The Valley
(Eremite - MTE008) Used CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live in 1996, with Moondoc in the throes of impromptu divination best achieved in front of an appreciative audience, riding the crest of a spontaneously combusting gust of energy that makes the minutes melt away. Percussionist Laurence Cook and bassist John Voigt bustle between volcanic eruptions and quieter dispersions; Cook works his cymbals and snare like pinball flippers continually buffeting a gleaming ball into nooks and crannies, while Voigt’s method is a manic juggling of bow and fingers in a continuous rough caress of his strings.
Tri-P-Let
(Eremite - MTE011) Used CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
“The thrill of this session is most conveyed through sheer grandeur of sound,” opines Boston Phoenix about this 1996 recording, “Moondoc’s alto sax, all sinewy, liquidy, and angular; John Voigt’s highly resonant and probing bass lines; Laurence Cook’s freewheeling drum colors. When the forceful beauties of their sounds combine to convey a surprisingly linear narrative … we’re presented with an overwhelming emotional drama…. [A] spectacular … aesthetic and spiritual adventure of high-level improvisation.”
The Point Of The Equator
(Chocolate Monk - choc.458) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Musical eccentricity from the fine mind of him from Volcano The Bear, Wizards of Oi, Gospels Of Mars, who indirectly affirms that brain-damaged aliens disguised as avant garde percussionists rule the earth. This collection utilizes archive recordings, homemade instruments, a 21-year-old nephew (whatever the hell that’s supposed to be code for) and some stolen Chinese. Edition of 60
Death Praxis
(¿What Next?) Used CD $12.00
Challenging, intense but listener-friendly soundscapes from 1993 with rich, dense, quirkily structured percussion and much sampling.
Labyrinth
(Tzadik) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eleven ear-splitting, brain-twisting electronic compositions for modified drum machine and triggered samples.
The Burning House
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.317) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Little Lord Corduroy unplugged! Believe it, purist, Morley has pulled a reverse Dylan and gone acoustic. “Warm, mid-range string scramble” is how Byron Coley describes it, and that dude never pulls it out of the rear quadrant. Edition of 60
Stromatolites
(Vintage Electronics) Used CD $10.00
Most of the band’s catalog is recorded live but Stromatolites requires the use of overdubbing (though the preferred the term is “lamination”) — mixed in the studio by superimposing separately recorded material. They consider these open-ended constructions to exist in more than one version. All three tracks on this 1998 album are louder and harsher (thank you, amplified springs; we’ll see you next time around, piano) while the organic unfolding and underlying shortwave and biofeedback drones make this a recognizable Morphogenesis album.
Revolver
(Dagored) Used CD $13.00
“Revolver is one the finest Morricone thriller scores, composed in 1973 for Sergio Sollima’s great giallo film. No sweeping themes, no quirky effects, no dissonant sounds — just simple ideas, executed to perfection. Contains ‘Un Amico’, the beautiful theme heard in Inglourious Basterds, and the thirteen-minute title track action piece. With O-card
MOSQ
(Rectangle) Used CD $10.00
Turntablist Erik M creates eerie soundscapes and textural backgrounds, and organist Charlie O., although recognizable in sound, remains out of any style, laying down intricate sustained chords and whisper-quiet burbling, while saxophonists Akosh Szeleveny and Quentin Rollet weave lines through the fabric or work off one another to bring the music to a climax. Mostly meditative but acutely avant-garde. From 2001.
Scintilla
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.408) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Life-affirming sound wonk by Tim Alexander of LAFMS and Points Of Friction. Burbling and oozing broadcasts from the mind flap of a madman / maestro. Alexander tries “to find just the right perfume for each robot…, to allow the ghosts in the instruments to haunt the soundscape,” and “balance … intentional and unintentional elements.... The sounds are generated by the improvised playing of objects and mostly broken or prepared instruments, field recordings, and other sources…. Multi-track looping, digital tape effects, sampling and pedal effects add new sounds, and take us into their cobbly worlds.” With guest appearance by the late Damian Bisciglia. Numbered edition of 75
Kryptopyrrole
(Industrial Recollections) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
Metal scrape and noise blast, rhythmic crunch and tape manipulation by Joseph Roemer and Rodger Stella, who were renowned for their physical and hands-on approach to industrial noise, whether recording under the name Macronympha or as Mother Savage. This was previously released on cassette in the ’90s by Mother Savage.
Haus Record
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.561) CDR $6.75
The proof is in the recordings, friends.... We are living in the Middle Ages. Forget about Get Back and hear two munt minds meeting in Koln for a domestic sit down / session of liquids, smoke and keyboard gronk. They attempt to stave off serfdom with Yamaha hoodoo and get into it with the Quantius vocal lo-jinx which, if cranked loud enough, is sure to suck the color from any nearby tie-dye shirts. Ten happy fingers, two throbbing brains. Edition of 60
Stone Shit Unicorn
(Chocolate Monk) Used CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Baltimore’s queen of tape hiss and swagger squats down and lays another fine egg of head-scratch. Lowbrow tape collage from 2008 showcase all her chops, from backyard jam band to psychic a capella damage, to ear / soul laceration, and further still — executed in her own street-level avant-thug style. Like the sacred mushroom, this will take you beyond mangled.
<Limites>
(Collectif & Cie) Used CD $8.00
Dense, complex pieces for electroacoustics, real instruments and field recordings from 2000. Vibrations and their inevitable displacement. Constructions audibly clashing (internal control vs. a schizophrenic pursuit of freedom, far from the transcendental but proud misappropriation of its sophisticated utopias). Shouting voices treated with granular synthesis. Hand put to clarinet, violin, flute, cello and tape. Real-time musique gastronomicale, with chef Marc Veyrat on pots, wild plants, cowbells. Sealed
Australian Sunshine Madness
(MSBR) Used CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tour disc from 1998, containing deep harsh noise, including rhythmic material by Koji Tano, while Magmax vocalist Yasushi Tahara mixes harsh noise with killer screaming. Edition of 100
Collabodestructivists
(Isomorphic) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Despite the mix of genres due to the different sound approaches of the guest artists (three tracks with Daniel Menche, two with Crawl Unit, one with Basic Noise), the seven long pieces on this 1997 opus are homogeneous and coherent. Apart from the fourth track, which incorporates cut-up sounds from raw exterior recordings, the ‘symphonic noise” evolves in slow movements [until] the massive sound texture pleasantly stuns you.”
Destructive Locomotion, Dedicated to Chizuo Matsumoto
(Pure) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Koji Tano’s gift to the blind leader of homicidal religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, admired by one articulate discogs birther because “churning, high-energy bass swirls and explosions mix with thick foghorn feedback shrills and assorted skree in an epic composition intent on building a black hole between your ears to suck away your brain.” Original edition of 500 from 1995
Ultimate Ambience 2
(20city) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
An hour-plus of “Spherical Electronics,” plus Final Harsh Work #16, recorded live in Chicago in February 1999. “The first chaotic spherical rumination opens with a looping skree shard,” reports Brainwashed, “Which soon fractures into feedback squeals and some low messy quakes. A stuttering synth-y keyboard seems to be rapidly losing its tuning as occasional shadows of lost keys flicker between the bright gulfs of distortion. MSBR … tweak[s] endless vortices of well defined entropy from his gadgets, and the noise shifts constantly and eddies endlessly, headlessly and leglessly. Patterns emerge but are quickly blown apart; MSBR kisses the noise as it flies.”
Visiting The Grave
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. This transatlantic collaboration by HM (Fag Tapes / Sick Llama) and JHP (Leer Ansturm / Concrete Stars / Mythofer) traverses strange a landscape located in and out of time. Barely there eerie electronic blip’n’ sizzle and ambient sound gestures soundtrack the silent waves of consequence in this remote location of disappearance – a secret cosmic language of images evolves. Can it be spoken? Should it be? How will you know what is being said? Edition of 60
Wooden Enclosure
(Turgid Animal - TA386) LP + CD $15.00
With a focus on the Mondo Cane side of heavy drone music and the murderous side of old school industrial noise, this full-on bass/guitar kraut-styled work out from the depths of the Sparrow Pit slowly weaves and blurs itself into an abyss, ending with a slow growl of discomfort. The CDr features two drawn out synth experiments. Grim, laser-printed artwork on blue paper loose inside a PVC sleeve with the record inside a white paper sleeve and housed in a black card outer sleeve.
Hellbore — A Quiver of Arrows
(Phage - PT202) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Stephen Petrus’s six new atmospheric dark ambient tracks with obvious industrial influence, plus “Horned Beast of Golgotha,” previously released on Kirkebrennen, the split cassette with Nyodene D (Phage 2010). Vocals range from spoken word to heavily distorted, power-electronics-influenced screaming. With contributions by Amanda Howland, Wyatt Howland, Richard Pflueger, Cunting Daughters, Michael James, Tym Flemming, N. Brewer and Aaron Vilk. Edition of 500.
They Were Dreaming They Were Stones
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
This 2003 album was composed over the course of two years, using the hypnotic rhythm of an ancient gas meter in a basement and telephone feedback recordings. Sealed
We Share a Shadow
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.25 (Out-of-stock)
Patrick McGinley’s field recordings of activated environments (e.g. resonant industrial spaces, windswept telephone lines, bowed branches, gasping ventilator systems, etc.) originate in locations from his travels; yet he is far more interested in extracting emotional, transcendent, or metaphysical kernels and recontextualizing them as sympathetic compositions of magnificent dronemusik. We Share A Shadow continues where Husk left off, with its spiraling manipulated field recordings slowly revealing environmental sonorities that go unnoticed each and every day. Limited edition of 300 copies, with hand water-colored artwork and letterpress printing.
What Are The Roots That Clutch
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS022) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Patrick McGinley’s first full album in nearly five years marks an elegant continuation of We Share A Shadow. Field recordings and abstractions overlap and crosshatch into acousmatic passages with ghostly, half-melodic qualities. Two unprocessed recordings are impossibly complex in their accretions of sound. McGinley’s composed pieces embrace lithe, mysterious drones whose mossy, damp atmosphere perfectly situate with tactile crunches and events, and signal noise generation. Eels and leaches would not be out of place in such an environment; but the subaquatic murk snaps into a hallowed manifestation of ritualized minimalism at the album’s finale -- one that LaMonte Young and Angus Maclise might have conjured in 1968 with clattering percussive elements and a hypnotic blur of harmonic drone. Letterpress artwork. Edition of 400.
Commonwealth
(23five - 23FIVE013) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock) (Out-of-print)
A central figure in Boston's sound art vanguard, Brendan Murray specifically shapes his repetitions and sinewy tonalities within the rigors of compositional frameworks and temporal restraints, setting himself apart from the conventional wisdom that drone-based music is an open-ended exercise into the "realm of the infinite." A single crescendo terminating at the end of 49 minutes, this epic investigates subtle harmonics and overtones expressed through layered slippages of pure sound conceived through guitar, analog synthesis, and plenty of digital manipulation. A worthy parallel to the work of Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Iannis Xenakis.
Wonders Never Cease
(Intransitive - INT027) CD $8.00
Big, beautiful, opiate drones by this Boston artist, vaguely in the same vein as Keith Fullerton Whitman, Birchville Cat Motel, Greg Davis, Jonathan Coleclough, but more melodic, assertive and rough than the stuff to which it seems similar. This is the first thing by Murray written to be a single statement (as opposed to a collection of tracks or quick experiments). It has a real epic quality that is pretty awesome.
Ritual Mouth-Organs Of The Murung – Bangladesh
(Inedit) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Chimbuck Murung People of Western Bangladesh perform “Piece For Plung Orchestra,” “Song And Rina Plung,” and “Dance For The Sacrifice” in 1997 at the Maison des Cultures du Monde, Paris — one of the first times the music was heard beyond their native hills. “Their main musical instrument is the plung, a mouth-organ (whose origin is from the region of Burma and Cambodia)” explains Bruno Deschênes. “It is made of a wind-chest made of a calabash gourd, several bamboo pipes (between three and five), and a bamboo mouth piece. Each pipe has a hole and contains a free reed which vibrates when the hole is closed. The main reed vibrates during inhalation and exhalation. A plung ensemble can contain between ten and twenty instruments of different sizes. The music is repetitive and rhythmic; it creates more tone-color melodies than real melodies.”
Music Ensemble
(Roaratorio) Used CD $10.00
The first documentation of influential mid-’70s free improv group featuring Daniel Carter, William Parker, Billy Bang, Malik Baraka, Roger Baird, and Herb Kahn bears the seeds of contemporary ecstatic jazz freeweights Other Dimensions in Music and Test. Arresting live recordings of immediate, post-ESP free hoot. Packaged in a mini-gatefold sleeve.
The Bicycle Eaters
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.282) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Post-concrète, psychedelic bad trip by free improv duo of Tom Nunn and Paul Winstanley, incorporating the former’s inventions: the percussive, hyper-chattering Skatchbox (made from combs and cardboard), and metal Resonance Plates played with his spooky-tone-generating Lukie Tubes (also made of cardboard).
I-II-III
(Elliptical Noise - alphaomega6565-67) 3xCD $33.00 (Out-of-stock)
The all-acoustic debut by My Cat Is An Alien’s Opalio brothers is dedicated to “total quietness.” Recorded in the mountains exclusively at night, this haunted music created solely on wooden instruments is a taste of the distant echoes from the other side. “Superb and atmospheric,” raves Musique Machine, “A pagan ceremony to welcome winter in a forest, dancing between the unknown strange states of mind.”
Leave The City
(Spalax - 14968) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
1997 reissue of this historic, floating-and-droning free-music hippie freak-out (originally released in 1970 by BYG).
Musica Transonic
(PSF) Used CD $30.00
“Jagged energy” is how Burning Ambulance characterizes the debut album from the mid-1990s by Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple on guitar, ex-High-Rise Asahito Nanjo on bass, and Yoshida Tatsuya of Ruins on drums, “Built around skyscraper-sized garage-rock riffs.” Sealed
What's Left
(Turgid Animal - TA353) CD $10.00
The first CD release by the Turgid Animal label's hombre del queso muy grande blurs the lines between rough harsh noise, power electronics and almost industrial soundscapes. More than fifty minutes of blown-out hatred from one of northern England's most evil. Reissues tracks from the Shift split CDr (Alfa Male Discharge), the What's Left? business card set (Dumping Ground), the No Bodies CDr (Amorf Sounds) and the Grunt split tape (Turgid Animal).
Flesh-Biting Paedophile
(Industrial Recollections) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
CD reissue of 1995 Mother Savage cassette recorded by three depraved gurus from the cult of crunchy, harsh noise -- Shohei Iwasaki of Monde Bruits (whose early ’90s tapes Portuguese Man-Of-War and Purgatory are treasured by noise fanatics) and Macronympha’s Joe Roemer and Rodger Stella, who transform Iwasaki’s ultra-busy and highly electric work into heavy crunch and brutally saturated rumble.
Alienology - Selected Works 1998-2008
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6555-64) 10xCD $79.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rare and out-of-print material from space brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio available for the first time in digital format, including the previously unreleased “Where The Lines Go To Sleep” from 2004. Starting with Landscapes Of An Electric City, MCIAA pondered Polaroids they had taken of their hometown Torino and decided a two-guitar improv would best represent the bare essence / sublimation of the metropolitan soul the way it felt inside them. Throughout the decade that followed, the brothers entrusted their “pictures of infinity” to a variety of labels that released their material in limited vinyl-only editions. Among other fundamental works, Alienology contains their self-described Great Void Trilogy, originally released on three separate LPs by Eclipse Records in the middle of the last decade. The latest work presented in the set, Alien Blood (Opax 2008) is the duo’s original soundtrack to the homonymic film by Roberto Opalio, shown at European museums as part of the Sonic Youth etc: Sensational Fix exhibition. Includes extensive liner notes and special art cards. Landscapes Of An Electric City (Ecstatic Peace 1999); The Rest Is Silence (Eclipse 2003); When The Windmill’s Whirl Dies (Eclipse 2004); There’s A Flame___Sometimes (Rococo 2005); Into The White Vortex (Opax 2007); Where The Lines Go To Sleep (previously unreleased); Greetings From The Great Void (Eclipse 2006); The Secret Of The Dancing Snow (Ikuisuus 2006); For The Tears Of The Land, Prayers From The Outer Space (Important 2008); Alien Blood (Opax 2008).
Black Shadows from Jupiter, Vol. I & II
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6547-48) 2xCDR $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
Volume I was issued in 2005 by the Opalio brothers' Opax Records imprint in “Monalien Fidelity,” a reference / tribute to ESP's monaural sound recordings. Available in stereo for the first time, Volume I’s two long tracks are the very first music recorded by MCIAA after they moved to the new recording space located in the Western Alps, and contain Roberto Opalio's first experiments in wordless vocals. Five years later, in October 2009, they recorded Volume II, almost one hour of new material representing a unique journey in the darkest secrets of the S-System. Gatefold cardboard jacket with tape binding and paste-on artwork, with insert. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Cosmological Eye Trilogy
(Last Visible Dog) Used 3xCD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Returning to the ancient spirit of Japanese national poetry, Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Z’ev, Black Magic Disco) and Roberto & Maurizio Opalio create fragile and unusual experiments somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ponzini sings excerpts from the poetry of Takamura Kotaro and plays furin and Japanese wind chimes (both metal and wooden). With Maurizio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto on mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations, the trio’s luscious and mysterious music is strange, distant and delicate. Includes alternate mixes of “Mars Appears” and “The Mountain” (Blackest Rainbow 2011); the complete “Transparent Winter” session; thirty-three minutes of previously unreleased material and a bonus ghost track.
MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / PRAXINOSCOPE
For the Tears of the Land Prayers from the Outer Space
(Elliptical Noise) 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
In which the Brothers Opalio successfully decode the aesthetic hall of mirrors and conclude that alien art and archaic art are the same thing. The first disc of this ambitious concept album is acoustic blues dedicated to the pioneers of American primitive music (especially Charley Patton), to whom there can no doubt about a psychic connection. On the second disc, Praxinoscope delivers a piece of total cosmic blast... and of archaic transcendence. Get on board or get used to oblivion. Both volumes were previously released as individual discs. This reissue comes in a gatefold cardboard jacket with clothbound spine and paste-on artwork. Includes liner notes, full introduction, and cover artwork by Roberto Opalio. With free download card.
For the Tears of the Land Prayers from the Outer Space - Vol.1
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6543) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first of an ambitious two-part series by the cosmic brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, kicking off with an acoustic blues performed by Roberto, dedicated to the pioneers of the American primitive music and in particular to the spirit of Charley Patton. "It’s magical, mysterious and dreamy," says Indieworkshop, "19 million light years worth of dreams." Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Fragments Suspended In Time
(Opax - OPX32A) LP + CDr + DVDr $27.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Opax - OPX32A) LP + CDr + DVDr Box $120.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded after the brothers Opalio spent a long period of self-imposed isolation in the Western Alps, far from everything but their own spirits. Side A ( the “alba” or “sunrise” side) overwhelms immediately with delicate grace, melodic texture, and Roberto's intimate, wordless vocalizations. Side B ( the “tramonto” or “sunset” side) increases the sweet, anti-gravitational sweet mood. One-time pressing of 250 copies on multicolor vinyl. Handmade, heavy cardboard jacket with paste-on silver artwork and 12-inch insert. A professionally duplicated CDr is included as a digital version of the album. The region-free DVDr (limited to 100 copies) contains a film by Roberto Opalio, inspired by the alba side.
The art box edition adds to the regular edition the following: original art work by Roberto Opalio on six-page hand-bound booklet, mounted on 12" panel, numbered and signed; hand-lettered LP labels; hand-crafted box, numbered, hand-stamped and signed. Edition of 20.
Photoelectric Season
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6549-50) 2xCDR $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
During six months of physical and psychic isolation while on mystic retreat in a remote region of the Western Alps, the Opalio Brothers listened to Giacinto Scelsi, Erik Satie and Maki Asakawa and read Strindberg and Lautréamont. Created with electric and acoustic guitars, vocals, mini-keyboard, alientronix, and ancient zither, Photoelectric Season is a milestone in MCIAA's innovative and mysterious discography: their new “cosmic tones for mental therapy.” Gatefold cardboard jacket with tape binding and paste-on artwork, with insert. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Psycho-System
(Elliptical Noise) 6xCD $49.00 (Out-of-stock)
My Cat Is An Alien’s most extreme work to date is quite an advanced expression of their current creative method of composition. Prolonged high-volume exposure to the brothers’ self-made strings and electronic instrumentation, they warn, can cause a psychotic break with reality, hallucinations, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, catatonia. Full-color artwork, liner notes and credits, two art cards, download coupon. Watch the official trailer here: http://youtu.be/CL1ZVhHzXuE
What Space Is Made For
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6552-54) 3xCDR $33.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first step in the new parallel universe the brothers Opalio call "multi-layered instantaneous composition." Celebrated as sound sculptors, trance-state minimalists, impressionistic noisicians, hallucinators of dislocated inputs and outputs, haunting ambient mantra-chanters, cathartic tribalists, and visionary voyagers through three millennia of cosmic music, MCIAA recorded What Space Is Made For in their secret base on the Western Alps, and unlike previous works, it's mostly made of short pieces and songs, performed on electric and acoustic guitars, space toys, percussion, and home-made, modified, and assembled / disassembled primitive electronic equipment. An alternate edit of "The Antigravitational Sense Of Nothingness" is featured on the Wire Tapper 25 CD (April 2011). Booklet includes liner notes and text by Roberto Opalio. With six full-color art cards. Discs look like tiny replicas of vinyl platters, right down to the color.
Haro
(Whosbrain - WHB34) CD $20.00
Abrasive, physical and powerful music (sometimes tagged "jazzcore") by Claude Spenlehauer (Micro_Penis, Hell’s Gate) and the fake Gully brothers -- guitarist Nicolas (Cheval) and drummer Pascal (Zakarya). Jonathan from Built on a Weak Spot describes Myself as "a rock band at their very core, surrounding the deeper rhythmic sounds with the harsh rubbing down of sax, synth, electronic looping, and the occasional vocal spewing to bring forth what is a rather impressive display of wildly erratic yet aggressi[on].... Most of the songs on Haro! are balled up into two to three minutes bursts ... the perfect canvas for Myself to work with...."
Header_Change
(Cut) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A harsh, brute and sometimes aggressive brick wall of drilling frequencies,” says Tokafi, “an attack of edgy drones drenched in distortion only occasionally pierced by flanger-effects or scraping noises, a world with a monochromatic palette” by the former Voice Crack noise guru manipulating the digital source code of video stills by Swiss media artist Silvie Defraoui.
Lat_nc_
(For 4 Ears) Used CD $7.00
The first entirely solo CD by the one half of Voice Crack. Beautiful and hypnotic soundscapes.
BelleView I-IV
(Atavistic) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
One of the earlier percussionists / electronicists to be inspired by the non-idiomatic group improv of AMM, Günter Müller and his work with the cooperative trio Nachtluft are strikingly presented on this 2000 Unheard Music Series reissue of an LP originally issued in 1987 on Unity Records. “With Andres Bosshard on cassette machines and Jacques Widmer on percussion, Müller creates abstract soundscapes where traditional melody and rhythms are entirely absent, but which boil and bubble with ceaseless and fascinating activity. The pieces vary from eerie, humming sections evoking a desolate landscape a-crackle with random electronic discharges to thrashing percussive firestorms. Throughout, a strong consciousness of sonic space is maintained, the pieces feeling very solid and palpable whether filled with noise or near silence. Punched barcode
Resituation
(Pure) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Diverse noise and power electronics from Lithuania 1995, ranging from quiet subsonics to whirlwind cacaphony.
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / KEITH ROWE
Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE08) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
September 2008 duet by one of the big men of guitar-and-electronics and his long-time partner, the world's foremost practitioner of the no-input-mixing board.
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / AMI YOSHIDA
Soba To Bara
(Erstwhile - ERST056) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Influential Japanese free improvisors Yoshida and Nakamura first performed together at the AMPLIFY 2008 festival; in preparation, they recorded solo tracks separately (Yoshida on voice, Nakamura on no-input mixing board), overdubbed them without hearing the other, and then listened to the results before performing the concert. So satisfied were they with the power and synchronization of the overlapped solos that they are hereby released as is.
Programmed Pain
(Mute - STUMM783) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The debut release by this San Francisco cross-genre experimental duo (sound and performance artist Gerritt Wittmer; musician / producer Jesse Jackson, ex-Sissy Spacek, touring member of The Liars) melds weird-core darkness with melody and rhythm via various electronica and synth-based instrumentation. Their depravity-and-austerity-embracing reality explores concepts of life, death, pain and its absence. Features their first single “LMAB,” the B-Side, “Born of Knight,” and four remixes (“Douleur Programmee” by sound artist Francisco Meirino; Black Claw” by filmmaker Orland Nutt; “Your Only Rite In Life Is Death” by G9) and “Resurrection” by Wittmer). Have a listen here: https://soundcloud.com/wearenames
Komblex
(Napalmed) Used CD $5.00
Eastern European noisecore from 2001 with a devoted scrounger’s aesthetic. Old equipment, garbage, junk and things discarded (metal, wood, glass, plastics, paper), prepared electronics, various microphones, tape deck, pedal effectors, drum module, mini disc, samples, turntable. Disc is mounted in golden paper in an oversized plastic bag
Mixes II. + III.
(Altsphere) Used CDR $3.00
This is not a remix album per se. It is more an album of originals which happens to contain several short, heavily manipulated samples from the band. From 2003
Never Mind The MSBR, Here's The Napalmed
(Sheer) Used CD $5.00
The 2002 debut by Radek Kopel’s harsh noise quartet in all its horrendous glory: two tracks, seventy-two minutes of metal junk, iron scrap, mix board, mutated acoustic and metal guitars, CD samples and pedal effects, household objects, demented screams.
An Evening with National Disgrace
(Chocolate Monk - choc.530) CDR $8.00
Paul Sturm famously observed in 1986 that “Times are bad” and here is proof, recorded live at Vis Club, San Francisco, California, July 3, 1986. Performing as a duo this night, instead of their usual quartet, the set is no less a caterwaul for the missing personnel. Hand-made sculptures produce their signature “waste sound.” Percussion is present and accounted for, courtesy of springs on metal, banging on scrap metal, rotating motor with objects whapping into metal. Industrial-sized shortening cans liberated from a restaurant and converted into amplified pseudo-guitars provide the strings. Vocals are by Fred Rinne, background vocals ably handled by melted records, harmonica, and an out-of-control audience. Edition of 60
Mindset
(ReR Megacorp - 10) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two engrossing, long-form tracks, each an organically shifting mass of piano, bass and drums, in which jazz, drone and electronic soundscaping coalesce. On "Rum Jungle," rendered with a minimalist vision, layers swirl and swoon without friction. The more richly textured "Daylights" deploys filigree electronics around sparse, plangent keys and stalking bass. Hypnotic and dazzling.
M.S. Stubnitz – Stockholm 9.07.1998
(Absurd - #46) Used CD $5.00
Geert Feytons (Noise-Maker’s Fifes) and Michael Prime (Morphogenesis) solemnize noise, using self-built instrumentation and an ever-changing mass of electronics and effects to raise dada cathedrals of immensurable mystery, shifting around grinding noises and menacing echoes from sinister rooms, only to deform reality through visuals that our brain accepts not without difficulty, due to the inherent dissonant power of these polymorphic bastard symphonies. Don’t even think to use these stirring emissions as a background: they will sneer for your attention, destroying your concentration on anything else.
Gone All To The Down
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.405) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
No-fi abstract crunk merchants Steve Clarke and Julian Bradley shuffled out of Birmingham in the 1990s before evaporating. Bradley resurfaced in Vibra Cathedral Orchestra etc., while Clarke teamed up with Sean Conway of Plastic Hooligans and UFO Antler Band to further confuse as The Gas Shepherds before disappearing again. He returns under The Negative kite moniker and serves up more than 40 minutes of solipsistic sound compost. Is he the only one here? Or is that you? Numbered edition of 75.
Hovering A Corner Into Carpet High Skies
(Chocolate Monk - choc.532) CDR $8.00
Birmingham’s mysterious The Negative Kite returns after a short three-year absence with 41minutes and 41 seconds of hard-to-pin-down lo-fidelity Xerox-like tape music. This thing wheezes, crackles and confuses. Bass rumbles and skittering cassettes float alongside distant resonating who-knows-what while unknown animal-ish sounds burble up into earshot. Feels like you’re floating over a monochromatic landscape. Astral projection music for all you ferric oxide animists. Edition of 60
First
(Pica Disk - PICA038) CD $11.00
Long-form, reductionistic, and near-static electronic music, the culmination of live and studio practice going back to 2008. First explores the perception of time, interference patterns, room reflection and hearing fatigue as primary compositional elements. Nelson favors textural over tonal development on his debut album, equal parts immersive environment and sound object. Listeners are encouraged to observe sound in a sculptural manner, specifically the slowly occurring changes. as one would to those of a physical object and its environment. Edition of 300.
Inhuman
(Legion Blotan - BLOT004) CD $10.75
Obscure and disturbing black metal from the depths of the Bulgarian forest. Hard and heavy nihilistic sound. Edition of 500
Dark Garden
(Intransitive - INT029) CD $13.00
Idiosyncratic analog buzz by Hiroshi Kumakiri and Tagomago. This album of short, song-like home-made synthesizer pieces might take its cues from manga, science fiction, early electronic music, and minimal techno but the Tokyo duo is overall inexplicable. Dark Garden assimilates fractured beats, stuttering pulses, naked static, and impatient drones. Synth builder Kumakiri describes spirits that lurk in the shadows and watch people go about their lives, existing in a parallel world that brings to mind fairy tales and myth. Nerve Net Noise’s music is similarly just out of reach, present in the natural world but not quite a part of it. For fans of Klaus Schultze, Jessica Rylan, Henri Pousseur, or Pan Sonic. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008
Love Got In My Way
(Eabla - EAB101) CD $13.50
The first release by the reissue-only label Eabla Records fetches an offbeat masterpiece back from the grave in search of the audience it was denied 33 years ago. Construction worker and stock car racer by day, polyester-clad musical powerhouse by night, Joe E. Neubauer risked everything to create Love Got In My Way, originally released in 1975 on an enigmatic, ill-fated vanity label from South Florida. A profusely illustrated 16-page booklet tells the shocking story of the $20,000 gamble that gave birth to this lounge-pop Pet Sounds for the middle-aged melancholic. Joe E.’s brooding music sounds more sensational than ever, having been lovingly remastered from the original tapes that Neubauer himself pulled out of his label’s dumpster in 1976.
Petit Pale
(Zarek - 05) Used CD $5.00
Arid, abstract, and cerebral, Schick’s live electronics and Neumann’s “inside-piano” converge somewhere between British free improv, German electronics-based improv, and electroacoustics. Occasional bursts of metallic sounds shaped like a human gesture, glitches, lo-fi electronics, and noise come together nicely.
Eye Of Every Storm
(Neurot) Used 2xLP $75.00
(Neurot) Used CD $5.00
Eight massive tracks from 1994 recorded and mixed by Steve Albini by these long-running heavy sound explorers and tribal rock warriors. “Adopting for a clean cut, post-rock sound, Neurosis drops much of their intensity in favor for an atmospherically poignant sound,” insists Metal Archives. The band’s “thick, dreary atmosphere of monochrome blackness is still present, the distinctive vocal work still here…. The lyrical work is outstanding as usual, dealing with feelings such as hopelessness and depression, the band deals with it subtly, never feeling overwrought or histrionic…. Essential.”
LP is sealed and pressed on gray swirled vinyl.
CD includes O-card.
20th Antiversary Offensive
(Hypnagogia) Used CD $9.00
Spontaneous and nihilistic live album, recorded at the Termite Club, Leeds 2003 with additional material by Anomoli, sounding more complicated and elaborate than some studio recordings. #34/500.
Gesamtnichtswerk 20th Antiversary Antiology
(Hypnagogia) Used 4xCD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
Career overview from 2004 (disc one: Changez Les Blockeurs and Reductio Ad Absurdem; disc two: live offensives: disc three: Simphonie in X Major, Simphonie in O Minor, Die Stunde X; disc four: 20th antiversary recordings). With two booklets
Neuters
(Dual Plover) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
A retrospective Best Of New Waver’s infamous cassette series spanning the 1990s -- essentially Top 40 hits with the lyrics changed to address all aspects of loserdom, or Weird Al with a severe case of neo-Darwinian pessimism (a worldview in which everything comes down to survival of the fittest, where the strongest and most dominant triumph and the rest are sidelined, ostracized, beaten up, and generally lead miserable, pointless lives). Inpress nailed it: “Boring folks from the tax office ... tired ... and beaten down by society ... singing boring songs from the ’80s. It sounds terrible, but it’s not. It’s genius.”
G2, 44+/x2
(Moikai) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hardcore minimal trance drone. Guests include Alan Licht, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Kevin Drumm, and Rafael Toral.
IV
(Cipher Productions) Magazine + CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Interviews with Hum of the Druid, Raionbashi, Golden Serenades, Kazumoto Endo, Dieter Müh, The Haters, Halthan and Posh Isolation. More than half the magazine is reviews — detailed, thoughtful, insightful. 136 pages
No Record
(Lion Productions) LP $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Lion Productions) Used CD $10.00
2014 reissue of the 1968 album by these Canadian national treasures. Begun as a twisted New Orleans-style “spasm band” that provided the kazoo chorus for an experimental film, the shrieks, screams, skronks and screeches begin immediately. Freedom, hilarious anger, homemade instruments, glorious bedlam.
22' 22"
(Ideal) Used CD $9.00
Emperors of drone pair up for three twenty-two minute, twenty-two second sound works (one of which isn’t listed). Their foggy mass of dread recalls later The Hafler Trio and Deathprod’s nebulous black mass audio.
Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
In Scandinavia, it’s not uncommon to hear of someone’s mother, grandfather, uncle, or plumber who drank him- or herself to death at an early age; and the Swedish drone artist BJ Nilsen has felt the alcoholic pangs which may foreshadow his own demise. In recent years, he has turned to his Icelandic neighbors Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson for existential sympathy over the problems of their collective lust for alcohol. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna marks the second collaborative document of abject minimalism that these three have composed; and like its predecessor Vikinga Brennivin, it is spiked with drunken thought. Any alcohol-induced euphoria has been tempered by perturbing blackouts, moments of cruelty, and an all-consuming nihilism. Beyond their shared Scandinavian heritage, their expressionist urge for the frigid drone, and their penchant for drink, Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa intend this recording as an open ended experience, wandering through their sound without the burden of any exegetical text that may get in the way.
Passing Out
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The final component to a trilogy -- thematically linked by the psychotropic effects of alcohol -- of isolationist compositions for barren field recordings and lumbering electric drones by these Nordic sound artists. With one singular track that spans 60 minutes, a nearly constant thrum and rumble of monochromatic low frequencies casts a grim pall upon the precisely dialed-in modulations and vibrations. Spectral guitars, maudlin tunes from haunted radios, angrily growling voices, and field recordings of wind-whipped snow and ice bury themselves deep amid these subharmonic drones. Letterpress and silkscreen artwork in an edition of 1000.
Vikinga Brennivin
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
For the Icelandic electro-absurdist outfit Stilluppsteypa, the near-lethal alcoholic beverage brennivin oozes out of their terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures. Their clinical minimalism reflects the introspection, headaches, and melancholia of the morning after. Swedish composer BJ Nilsen has rendered the commonplace sounds of wind, rain, and snow as seductive and quietly menacing drifts of frozen sound. Their resultant collaboration is a drunken stumble in a Scandinavian winter night via extended soundfields that breathe with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
Ommatidia
(Intransitive - int035) Used CD $4.00
“The first studio album as an unaccompanied duo by Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) … is spare and peerlessly inventive as always, but the mood remains light and joyful, with a subtle undercurrent of absurd humor…. [G]usts of breath, percussive splatter, and controlled explosions form six succinct pieces that feel alive and vital, while still speaking in nmperign’s utterly unique … language.”
This Is Nmperign's Second CD
(Twisted Village - TW1049) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
On this compelling investigation of sound in space and time from 1999, Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley make audible every particle of sound they produce. Every ounce of spit and cubic inch of air that is pushed through the sax and trumpet comes through the speakers in stunning colors and textures. Sharp, crystalline fractures of sound, with fragments of disembodied melody meted out in small quantities. Guest include Jason Lescallett on tape loops, Tatsuya Nakatani on percussion, and Phil Gelb on shakuhachi.
NO MORE MUSIC AT THE SERVICE OF CAPITAL
Universal Prostitution
(Ideal - iDEAL041) Used CD $5.00
Four shrill and repellent tracks in thirty-seven minutes from 2006 by Mattin the Basque maniac who produces hideous noise from computer feedback and yells at the top of his lungs, Argentinian saxophonist Lucio Capece on mixing desk and feedback. The duo’s sloganeering and screeching about the alienation of consumer society persuades, through sound, that all is not well with the world.
... On The Mountain
([ no label ]) Used CDR $4.00
Enlightenment synth with Phil Franklin on tambourine. Sealed
intensior corda sonus
(Chocolate Monk) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Chocolate Monk’s third “proper” compact disc release, this time by the French Revox maestro, references the equivalence between the tension of a string and the elevation of the sound, but also the link between the intensity of the lived and of the musical. “Les objets inaudibles,” commissioned by INA-GRM, is musique concrète in four parts, composed in 2018 in the composer’s studio. “Erase my head,” a live-to-air performance originally commissioned for Radiophrenia, was created in Glasgow using a mixing desk with several inputs like CD players, cassette players, radio, each playing randomly, followed by recording, processing, layering, erasing, hiss and tape delay on the live loop. “Eloge des ruines” is a suite of five two-minute miniatures, based on the idea of slowing down and collapsing, using sound samples taken from vinyl records, with the playback speed changed from 78 to 0 rpm, as well as accelerated playback of old magnetic tapes. The work on this material is the result of the accumulation, editing, mixing and filtering of all these materials. Edition of 150
Noggin
(Trackshun Industries) Used CD $4.00
Free improv violin / guitar duets from 1994 by Michael Griffen and Eric Ostrowski. Sealed
Down the Klahanie
(Fleece) Used CD $3.00
Free improv from the mid-1990s by Adam Griffen (bass) Arrington De Dionyso (clarinet), Jordan Rain (drums), Corey Brewer (harmonica, electronics), Orion Satushk (sax), Dave Harvey (sax), August Ursin (trombone), Joel Machamer (trumpet), and Lars Holmstrom (trumpet) under the direction of violinist Michael Griffen and guitarist Eric Ostrowski. In chipboard arigato pack. 2008 release
Rocket to D.N.A.
(Dual Plover) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
From the summit of the remote Spazolopolis Mountains, ascended geekballs Eye and Yoshimi of The Boredoms join forces with king dirthead DJ Smallcock to unleash simpleton electronic wheeze, highbrow thwack, toothache Muzak, and metallic piranha fish running amok.
Monomania Of Instinct
(Gold Soundz) Used CD $7.00
“A frightening miasma of non-musical elements” is how Foxy Digitalis describes the DNA of the single “thoroughly indigestible and stomach-churning” track from 1998 by Geert Feytons and associates, “a succession of shrieks, shouts and screamed words appear[ing] and disappear[ing] as clouds of rampant drones, electronic and concrete sounds make … surreptitious appearances….” It was created live at the M.S. Stubnitz-Stockholm, using a self-developed interaction between live music on sound-sculptures, video images and performance. Packaged in a gatefold card slipcase.
NOISEBITCH / SUICIDE PROPAGANDA
Nice Brainache
(Anima Mal Nata) Used CDR $5.00
“A pretty impressive collaboration” from 2001, according to Barbie Is A Bitch, with “complex layers of sounds and noises [that] build up with intensity as more and more diverse sounds get thrown in it, ranging from disfigured female vocals to elusive drones…. The thing that sets this collaboration apart from others is … complexity and sophistication.” Paper sleeve with insert.
Cochon
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Heady blurt and saucy wheeze and heavy strangeness via glorious saxophone by Claude Spenlehauer of French weirdos micro_penis. Edition of 60
Noma / Rejectamenta
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR052) split CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two long tracks of minimal drone (achieved by running household appliances through guitar pick ups) from Noma, and one of full-on bizarre electronics from Rejecta. How do they do it? Circuit bent instruments and toys, horribly detuned guitars, feedback, and occasional outbursts of throat. Duh.
Canti di Vita E D’Amore / Per Bastiana / Ommagio A Vendova
(Wergo) Used CD $20.00
Released in 1993 as part of the label’s Music Of Our Century series. On Canti di Vita E D’Amore, Michael Gielen conducts Sinfonieorchester Des Saarländischen Rundfunk (featuring soprano Slavka Taskova and tenorist Loren Driscoll), and on Per Bastiana, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Omaggio A Vedova is a magnetic tape piece from 1960.
La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura
(Montaigne) Used CD $12.00
Recorded at Experimentalstudio Der Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung Des Südwestfunks in February 1988, the six-part composition for solo violin and electronics, the title of which translates to “The Nostalgic Utopian Remote Future,” is performed by Irvine Arditti, founder of the Quartet, and André Richard who manipulates eight sources of pre-recorded sound material (created by violins and noises from the studio). 1994 edition
Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica
(Wergo) Used CD $15.00
For six instruments and percussion, composed in 1951. Also includes “Canti Per 13” for thirteen instruments, composed in 1955; “Canciones A Guiomar” for soprano solo, twelve voices, female chorus, and instruments, composed in 1962-63; and Nono’s final compition “Hay Que Caminar Soñando” for two violins, composed in 1989. From 1998
Dodeka
(Rune Grammafon) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twelve three-minute pieces from between 1968 and 1972, recorded in the studios of Polish radio. “They are ripe works, among the most graceful and urgent … from that period one is likely to hear. Sure, they sound crude, as any other ‘early electronic’ piece, but they don’t sound clumsy or arid. The tones are bright, even when drowned in their own reverb, and they move around with a freedom that makes you enjoy just lazily following them around, forgetting about how a piece is structured. Nordheim explores the whole sonic spectrum, from menacing low growls (the bass range on this CD is stunning) to high-pitched chirps.”
A Transparent Mask
(Asphodel) Used CD $7.00
“This late-in-life offering … continues Nordine’s lifelong mastery of the genre he created..., thought excursions and deceptively simple poems that take utterly unexpected twists…. With musical backing that enhances but never overpowers the words, this is a charming and engaging album.” From 2001
Colors
(Asphodel) Used CD $9.00
A Beat-inspired, mellifluous-sounding, Dr. Seuss-like exploration of the meanings of different colors. “Many of the pieces are parables on racism and human behavior, but they’re also totally silly, and meant to be. Recorded in the late 1960s, the thirty-four tracks … almost-sung to a delightful, freeform studio backing of hip jazz.” From 1995. Barcode punched
Wink: Ken Nordine Does Robert Shure
(Asphodel) Used CD $7.00
“The short poems of John Shure [from the late 1950s] are so in sync with Nordine’s style that it’s a very successful marriage indeed. At first the [late 1960s recordings] might seem so whimsical and slight as to barely exist, but … the world of wry and absurdist observations … is enhanced by his use of two distinct voices for each channel…. The result[ing] ongoing conversation … captures a particular time and state of mind.” Reissue from 2003. Scribbled barcode.
In Sea
(Firework Edition) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Alarm clocks, vibrators, piezo oscillation, thermos, babusjka doll and other stuff, processed with Max/MSP and various effect boxes.” From 2005
Data (Lo-Fi Duets)
(Monotype - MONO047) CD $14.00
(Monotype - MONO047) Used CD $11.00
Bassist who also builds unusual noise devices and stomp boxes performs with Martin Tetreault, Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour, Sebastien Cirotteau, and Mario Gauthier. “Active, airy and percussive music with little in the way of tonality or lushness” (thank God). Data is “harsh, angular, chewy,” and overall “of a piece with … late ’90s turntablism and cracked electronics.”
Wormwood
(Groundfault) Used CD $5.00
“The clicking, clattering, and scraping opens up a subterranean, microscopic world of incredible mystery,” says Stylus, “By turns metallic, organic, electronic, and simply unidentifiable, and the cumulative effect of all these insectile clicks and theremin-like whines akin to the first men confronting the massive nuclear-fueled ants from the cult horror classic Them. Northam and Stern’s sounds are towering, intimidating … but there is still something intimate and small-scale in this music that contrasts with its sometimes overwhelming aura…. This is an atmosphere record that truly infects and infiltrates the natural ambience of anywhere it happens to be playing. Played quietly enough, Wormwood's sounds hover sinisterly just on the edges of perception, poisonous fumes hanging invisibly (but fatally) in the air. With slightly more volume behind it, however, the album becomes oppressively dense; the music is all sharp edges and tiny charged particles, vibrating, electrified, buzzing with energized static that seems to crackle off the end of each sound pulse.” Sealed
Desert Fires
(Saffron Recordings - SAFF01) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The solo project of Brooklyn-based guitarist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate (Rhys Chatham's Guitar Army, Glenn Branca's 100 guitar ensemble, Parts & Labor, Carla Bozulich / Evangelista, Cold Cave), follows up her Red Rainbows CD (No Fun 2009) with this compositional evolutionary step from layered, loop-based drones to more expansive formal arrangements of swells, throbs, tones and shimmer. “Almost Alright” explores territory charted by Fripp & Eno or synth-heavy contemporaries Emeralds. “Kites Calm Desert Fires” is a sandstorm of rich, percussive guitar, warm humming bass and swirling rhapsodic chimes. “Toothnest (for Chris Habib)” arrives at an idyllic sonic plateau of windswept fuzz and tremolo, then charges blindly with a soaring guitar solo evocative of bagpipes triumphantly marking a return from battle.
Red Rainbows
(No Fun - NFP50) Used CD $10.00
Growing tonal drones and minimalistic structures by Sarah Lipstate that evoke visions of menacing, multicolored skies. Double-neck guitar, electronics, breathtaking atmospheres, dirty intensity. Includes a collaboration with Carlos Giffoni and a four-minute film Interior Variations.
Galactic Tornado
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD510) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Deeply abstract, dense and dynamic “psychedelic electronic sound” from 1970s space / electronic / krautrock albums filtered through the Null sensibility. Strong synthetic and cosmic sounds, electronic machines, electro-acoustic audio signals and sonorities.
Guitar Organism
(Nux Org) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Duets from 1996 by the Zeni Geva frontman with Fred Frith, Guy Lohnes, Ichiro Agata, Jim O’Rourke
KK Null + Scumearth
(Phage - PT145) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
One twenty-minute track from the venerable Japanese noise bad-ass, three tracks from the Spanish noiserati, and one collaboration track. A wide array of sound is covered in forty-eight minutes: Null goes for restraint and constant evolution rather than full-on harsh noise, while Scumearth tends to be more glitchy with blasts of harsh noise. Double-sided, screen-printed arigato pack. Edition of 250.
A Sucked Orange
(United Dairies) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A Sucked Orange is basically a much more fleshed-out version of the earlier cassette-only release, Scrag! (United Dairies, 1987)…. [S]nippets of weird noises, absurd samples, abstract sounds, jarring contrasts, spoken word sections. Two thirds of the tracks run for less than two minutes, with only the four-minute tribal … ‘I’m a Frayed Knot’ coming close to sounding like an actual song…. For every oddity, however, there is a really striking moment: the aforementioned ‘I’m a Frayed Knot’ is a wonderful Eastern-tinged percussive number, while ‘Crack Up’, although short, is one of Stapleton’s finest drone works. The vocal pieces sung by Sinan and Ritva are lovely in their own right. In some ways, A Sucked Orange feels like a Nurse With Wound album cut into its constituent parts.”
Acts of Senseless Beauty
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
“Many of the tracks start out in ambient territory, slow tentative explorations of improvisational scrapes and hums, building slowly or erupting into throbbing avant-rock structures, at which point Aranos’s violin dances and weaves wildly among clattering rhythms and other sounds, eventually to slide back into a droning murky dissonance or dreamy flows. Added to this mix are a few sections of processed vocal and chanting. A bizarre and hallucinatory journey into another musical dimension.”
An Awkward Pause
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
“Bizarre, beautiful, frightening and fascinating all at once…, the majority of the album is instrumental and subdued in nature, with the exception of ‘Two Shades And A Shine’ (which begins with an abrupt … bass guitar riff [and] David Tibet’s exasperated vocals...) and the latter half of ‘The Penis Fruit Loop’…, a long shifting piece [with] quiet, swirling ambient sounds / samples, bizarre processed narrative…, reversed and collaged guitar, R2D2-like beeps, upbeat saxophone-led acid jazz-rock on crack, carnival music, insane electric guitar squealings, and various percussive banging….” Single disc, in digipak with insert. From 1999.
Chance Meeting Of A Defective Tape Machine And Migraine
(Anomalous) Used CD $12.00
Accidental remix created during a tape transfer by Matt Waldron of irr.app. (ext.)
Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella
(United Jnana) Used CD $30.00
“The debut Nurse With Wound album lies halfway between the more tuneless explorations of krautrock and the then-new industrialism practiced by Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. Across three lengthy tracks, obtuse guitar freak-outs frame distorted synthesizers and mostly rhythm-less drum machines. Though it frequently defies easy analysis, Chance Meeting is one of the more glowing examples of uncompromising industrial noise of the 1970s.” 1994 reissue in jewelbox
Drunk With The Old Man Of The Mountains
(United Jnana) Used CD $9.00
Five stray tracks from the mid-’80s that were all out of print at the time of original release. “Mourning Smile” distills Steven Stapleton’s ability to mix disparate elements (ghostly drone with ragtime piano and pipe organ) into a disorienting collage that keeps listeners on their toes. “Swamp Rat” is a long exploration of drones working over a Neu!-ish motorik beat. “Sheela-Na-Gig” recalls Shining-era Penderecki. Barcode has black scribbles.
Echo Poeme: Sequence No. 2
(United Jnana) Used CD $9.00
Recorded in 2005, inspired by the film Last Year At Marienbad, reminiscent in tone of Soliloquy For Lilith, Echo Poeme No. 2 is one continuous piece based around the female voice. Features a four-page booklet designed by Babs Santini.
Funeral Music For Perez Prado
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
This CD collects tracks from two deleted EPs, Yagga Blues from 1995 and Soresucker from 1990, with one track from each considerably extended to their full-length versions. Here you’ll find a pulsing ethno-electro beat, Sarah Fuller jazzy non-word vocals, more punch, more electronic effects. The title track is ambient and meditative, with lots of minimal drones, shifting tones, and no rhythms. “Journey Through Cheese,” now extended to beyond twice its original length, consists of a harsh rhythm clanking mechanically over a collage of tweaked-out noises, from breaking glass and insidious laughter to loud pops of static and more drones.
Gyllensköld, Geijerstam And I At Rydberg’s
(United Jnana) Used CD $12.00
Reissue from 2007 containing the record in its original form, with the remixes as additional tracks. “The sound quality … is superb…, highlighting Stapleton’s increasing confidence in the studio. Recorded only a few months after Homotopy to Marie, the clarity in the mix and the general fine details in the arrangement are leaps and bounds ahead of even that album…. On a technical level, Gyllensköld, Geijerstam and I at Rydberg’s is a triumph.”
Homotopy to Marie
(United Jnana) Used CD $18.00
The fifth NWW album is no less unnerving and experimental than its predecessors but is far less chaotic. The four tracks from the original LP and the 12-minute “Astral Dustbin Dirge,” recorded during the same sessions, added to the CD edition) may be more elegantly constructed, but lengthy dada-esque soundscapes constructed of artfully edit tape manipulations, are just difficult to penetrate. Sealed
Insect And Individual Silenced
(United Dairies / Raash) Used CD $15.00
Jim Thirwell playing the hum of his amplifier by stroking and hitting the jack-plugs and leads, Trevor Reidy on a drum-kit reduced to one snare drum and a couple of brushes, and Stephen Stapleton fucking around with an old, beaten-up Woolworth’s guitar and a violin bow, along with a basket of junk, records, tapes and toys. Originally released in 1981, this is a 2007 reissue with silver-printed vellum O-card. Edition of 700. Sealed.
Live At Bar Maldoror
(United Dairies) Used CD $10.00
The emphasis on live and acoustic instrumentation recorded in the mid-1980s, with little in the way of tape edits, positions the music here in stark contrast to Nurse With Wound’s studio albums, yet the overall feeling of relentless exploration, experimentation and humor still evoke the same moods that Stapleton’s project always does. From 1991
Merzbild Schwet
(United Dairies) Used CD $20.00
Considered the first fully realized Nurse With Wound record, originally released in 1980 — more focused, with editing techniques out in front (abrupt transitions, quirky juxtapositions, strange sounds that would become the NWW hallmark). “Futurismo” begins with clanking rhythms, record skip clicks, and horn riffs before veering off into a crazed quilt of women singing, laughing, and talking in French. About halfway through, wild screeches of distortion disrupt the piece, and then more bizarre sounds take over before ending with a collage of over-modulated electronic hum and rambling piano. “Dada X” goes further into weirdness with silences, creepy creaking noises, tones that build up and collapse, and scattered spoken word in French and English from The Crass’s Eve Libertine. 1994 reissue.
Rock ’n Roll Station
(United Dairies) Used CD $18.00
An atypical Nurse with Wound record for any era, an obvious attempt to create something more palatable, even dance-floor friendly. With its handful of single-length tracks and two quarter-hour collages, the album …[sits] on the fence.… The two collages are prime examples of creative, top-quality NWW…, filled with uncanny sonic juxtapositions, disquieting twists and immersive drones. Peat Bog’s spellbinding didgeridoo performance on ‘Two Golden Microphones’ is a highlight.” In jewelbox from 1994 edition.
Salt Marie Celeste
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
One long track where a whisper of sound slowly builds even as it remains quite ambient. Noises are very gradually introduced to the underlying drone and repeated at regular intervals — whizzing; a one-second high-pitched tone that almost sounds like a distant ship’s horn calling for help in the mist; creaking; a low, clattering noise, a bit like thunder and then eventually, other clattering noises. One gets an eerie sense of doom, worthy of a ship slowly sinking. Toward the end, sounds fall away from the original minimalist drone, which ebbs and surges for another five minutes before slowly fading.
Second Pirate Session Rock ’n Roll Special Edition
(United Dairies) Used 2xCD $28.00
Outtakes from Rock’n’Roll Station (originally planned as a double album), never fully completed but which in hindsight benefit from their stripped down atmosphere. “Hypnotic, pulsating, and quite a departure.” Card jacket. Sealed
She And Me Fall Together In Free Death
(Beta Lactam Ring - mt040b) LP $25.00
(Beta Lactam Ring - mt040b) Used CD $15.00
Six tracks from 2003, another super-freaked, avant-gone experience. Includes all the creepy, sex-vibed sounds and psyched-out grooves one would expect, plus a cover of "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair."
Used CD is third edition from 2005 with negative image cover art..
Soliloquy For Lilith
(United Dairies) Used 2xCD $30.00
Originally recorded and released in 1988, Nurse With Wound’s ambient opus was years ahead of its time, a ground-breaking set of atmospheric sound patterns designed for ritual ceremonies. Reissue from 1993
Soresucker
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
Kind of a collaboration with Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus. “I Am The Poison” builds Wakeford’s trippy repeating bass motif; Stapleton provides a backdrop of drones, and mechanical percussion. The industrial sounding “Journey Through Cheese” is constructed around a backbone of pounding machine noise, smashing glass, and clanking metal. First edition from 1990
Spiral Insana
(United Dairies) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
One continuous piece of music, indexed as three, listed as twenty. Guests Robert Haigh, David Jackman, and Chris Wallis mix bowed piano, percussion, radio, loops, and what is credited on the sleeve as “stuff” into an hour-long collage of mashed-up sounds, jarring juxtapositions, buzzsaw distortion, and even a pipe organ. From 1997 with two non-LP tracks.
Sugar Fish Drink (A Layman’s Guide To Cod Surealism)
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
“Could almost be considered Automating, Vol. 3, in that it culls material released on vinyl, mostly from twelve-inch singles from the late ’80s and early ’90s. ‘Cooloorta Moon’ riffs off the weird noise from Wolfgang Dauner’s version of Gershwin’s ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ for a bit of jazz-funk with an upbeat rhythm. The five-part amorphous sound collage ‘Creakiness’ offers a varied mix of everything from calliope to haunted violin music to metallic machine rhythms to found vocals. It seems almost like an insane circus where everything is about to collapse. ‘I Am the Poison’ throws in guitar textures and gloomy vocals from Sol Invictus frontman Tony Wakeford. ‘Swamp Rat’ has a repetitive drum rhythm, lots of background drones, and … contagious laughter. ‘A Piece of the Sky Is Missing’ is mostly a subtle but dark ambient piece, though near the beginning there are pounding rhythms and screeching horns. ‘Nil By Mouth’ gets far stranger, as bursts of electro-noise and pounding percussion contrast starkly with creepy quieter sections of buzzes, chirps, and minor chord drones. The CD ends with a completely revamped version of ‘Brained by Falling Masonry,’ beginning more calm and cosmic, and then crashing with the effects and processing from psychedelic rock to explosions of disruptive noise.”
Surveillance Lounge
(Dirter) Used CD $20.00
“Long, spooky soundscapes from 2009 punctuated by noise, sinister voices, and the occasional rhythm section. Despite the demarcation implied by the presence of four separate tracks, the entire 66-minute album is one piece, except for, perhaps, ‘The Golden Age of Telekinesis,’ with its building percussive rage structured upon tribal, rhythmic drums, and lots of malicious static. All, however, are dark journeys down untraveled paths, and that is exactly what Stapleton (with cohort Andrew Liles and Current 93’s David Tibet among others) does best.”
Thunder Perfect Mind
(United Dairies) Used CD $12.00
This 2002 reissue (with bonus track) of the sister album to the Current 93 album of the same name punctuates soundscape drones with staccato bursts of percussion, origins uncertain, bleeps and bloops thrown in for good measure, and the occasional hoot and/or holler. In digipak
Thunder Perfect Mind
(United Dairies) Used CD $20.00
This 1992 reissue of the sister album to the Current 93 album of the same name punctuates soundscape drones with staccato bursts of percussion, origins uncertain, bleeps and bloops thrown in for good measure, and the occasional hoot and/or holler. In jewelbox
Who Can I Turn To Stereo
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
A daunting roller-coaster ride from 1996 through strange and abstract soundscapes with weird processed voices thrown in. Perhaps it’s made a little easier by a narrator with a soft voice and Italian accent, even if the words are as surreal and nonsensical as the music around them. One continuous collage of sound, broken down into conventional song-length tracks, with hypnotic electro-dance rhythms comparable to what crop up on “Yagga Blues,” “Space Funk With Springs,” and “Approaching Darkness Fish,” and lulling nursery rhymes.
Pearl Snake Bird Dawn
(Comma) Used CD $20.00
Downtempo debut album from 2002 by DJ Moochy’s spiritual jam band transceiver that mixes dub (a la Soft Rovo, 23 Skidoo, Pressure Drop) with spiritual jazz, female vocals, world music influences (especially African), and proto dubstep. Sound and primitive technology in perfect harmony. Sealed.
One Hundred People In London Can Not Be Wrong... Fuck The System!
(Look!) Used CD $18.00
“Crude, flailing and piss-takey…, the sub-underground currents that this highly obscure unit glance off would have made this crew a shoe-in for a release on Stomach Ache Records back in the day, as deconstructive games and lowbrow genre disruption are hewn from intentionally inept two-chord punk bashing.”
An Unripe Preoccupation With Nonagenarian Moroseness
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.305) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recordings from their duo show at the Train Of Thought Emporium in the wilds of Worthing, with additional cuts, splices, sonic burps, and wheeze. Almost half an hour of ferric tomfoolery that gently slips in and out of focus. Magnets at the ready. Edition of 50
Gukuruguh
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.362) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Vocal gurpings performed at the Nefertiti Jazz Club as part of the Gothenburg Art Sounds festival, later put through the wringer by Ralf Wehowsky. The alchemical sound transformer processes, cuts up, sprinkles liberally with electronics and other sounds, and adds healthy dollops of noise and silence. Numbered edition of 69
I Am Falling Down
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.547) split CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded in his infamous Kamo Road wack shack way down in Whangarei, Mykl Veet presents 35 minutes of wheezing computer music and hyperactive whir. 0s and 1s fall in dollops of noise, twitching. Meanwhile, the Moistest Scotsman gives you a 25-minute tape loop meditation recorded at 6am inside Wino Lodge one dreich April morning. Sit still and feel yourself slowly drifting upwards or sideways. More hiss than you can shake a snake at, pentecost. Numbered edition of 50
Life Is But A Smear
(Chocolate Monk - choc.431) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Part of this recording started life as the opening for Fae Ma Bit Tae Ur Bit’s year-end Festering Season episode on Resonance Extra. During the ensuing Dionysian haze the Scots gurp realized it was the start of a companion piece for his I Found A Photocopy Of A Dream On The Street & It Sent Me To Sleep cassette. A necessary bleak December / January sound collage purge (with some regurgitation) which may help the listener cast off his or her rank and rotten ruminations, originally titled Are The Voices In Your Head Weeping Or Singing?, it should be listened to as slumber is attempted. Featuring cameos from Crank Sturgeon, Ezio Piermattei, Ludo Mich, This is Yvonne Lovejoy, The Plastic Containers Of Nothing, Joe Possett, Karen Constance, Elkka, Grant Smith, Tina Kerkels, Jonnie Prey, Angela Sawyer and others. No Sting covers. Hand-stamped cardboard cover with insert. Numbered edition of 60
Nothing To See, Hear
(Chocolate Monk - choc.470) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Full-on loop damage recorded direct to the Wino Lodge hard-drive one afternoon in January. The World’s Toughest Milkman was armed with tape players for the blind, Boss DD20, and a small stack of random tapes nabbed from the cluttered and sagging shelves. Numbered edition of 50.
Perpetual Ear Brew
(Chocolate Monk - choc.536) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Almost 60 minutes of lo-fidelity tape warble and crug. “A box of cracked tapes are easy to shape” uses some equally limited tape releases as source material, while “A bowl full of crystal cabbage” contains recent recordings with added mystery twang. Numbered edition of 30
Scunnered At Breakfast
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.299) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
All the hot audio gorlins of an imaginary wintertime breakfast, cooked up with nowt but accordion, tapes and voice. Guest orators include Hitomi Arimoto, Marco Cazzella, Seymour Glass, Paul Kirk, Ludo Mich, Angela Sawyer, Norman Shaw and Erkki Sinnemaki. With four text inserts. Edition of 50.
The Failing Chase
(Chocolate Monk - choc.446) CDR $6.25 (Out-of-stock)
Further stumblings in the direction of dreams / mind gout. Life is a failing chase and we are all living on the frontline, but music is everywhere and if you just take a minute to pinch your nose, blow real hard, and pop your ears, you can get anchored to your surroundings and hear it appear within the smear. Nyoukis grew up among a communication of barks and angry gestures so pardon the lad, willya? Features contributions from Mayuko Fujino, Seymour Glass, Natalia Beylis, and Catherine Plenevaux. Numbered edition of 60
The Flood Wants Silence Of Tongue
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.290) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Tape mulch cassette mess recorded inside Wino Lodge one Thursday afternoon in April. Edition of 26.
Mind Yon Time?
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.343) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
First-person memories, reminiscences, accounts, and experiences of the gifts bestowed by narcotics upon users. The orators are Angela Sawyer, Fraser Burnett, Tom Timpson, Gnarlos, Louise Donoghue, Irene Siragusa, Mayuko Fujino, Aonghus McEvoy, Catherine Plenevaux, I’D M Thfftable, Andy Bolus, Stuart Cartland, Maureen Bourne, Simon Morris, Helen McBride, Silvia Kastel, Ben Jones, Bod Teare, Yoni Silver, Dave Miko, Malcy Duff and Bryan Lewis Saunders. Edition of 60
Long Night
(Streamline) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A two-and-a-half-hour electronic drone work recorded in 1990 and shelved for eighteen years. Tones morph and modulate slowly at first through strobing caused by the gradual shift of interwoven oscillations and their resultant overtones. Frequencies eventually tweak at an increasing rate, continuing into vibrant organ-like textures before reverting to a muffled, disciplined state of being where the various component signals of the drone detune and bristle with activity. Comparable to the synthesis experiments of Eliane Radigue.
The New Edge
(Family Vineyard) Used 5xCD + DVD $40.00
Includes the Strict, Brutality II: Balkana, Medication, Lugubrious, and Western Classics albums, plus the previously unreleased Godawful, a DVD of unprocessed and trance-like nature scenes shot by Dale Sophiea and accompanied by unreleased O-Type improvisations. The Bay Area group blends fields of ambient distillation and jagged, electroid rhythm fragments into sprawling narratives, composed in real time, evoking movie soundtracks, musique concrète, minimalism, and guitar psychedelia. Handmade box with wrap-around cover (ripped) and printed innercards
Bab
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.332) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Ben Jones (of Jazzfinger, Moon, etc.) is joined by the mysterious Dick Bass for further gem unearthings from the North East England “no audience” underground. As the crud seed that would later blossom into Moon, where Jones and Bass are joined by various other creative riff-raff layabouts, the Ob sound is made with Dictaphone, saz, mandolin, cymbal, keyboard and tape, all channeled through a karaoke machine. Super quiet front-room action, with mid-track cuts caused by in-room obstacle recovery and stereo effects from room flailing. Proper tit-to-mouth brain damage for budding perception blenders. Edition of 50.
Phantom Cupboard
(Chocolate Monk - choc.524) CDR $8.00
“Phantom Cupboard occupies a homemade spaceship the components of which are outmoded appliances that need regular adjustments and deglitching,” explains Rick Potts. “After docking onto a decommissioned communications satellite, the newly plundered obsolete hardware is cobbled into a charity store kitchen cabinet. Lost voices find a home in this makeshift rocket. Calm chaos ensues as the machines talk among themselves. Outside, beyond the repurposed microwave oven door, the vastly jaded cosmos has a bad dream.” Edition of 60
Twilight Immunity
(Chocolate Monk - choc.447) CDR $6.25
Shane McDonell’s first solo ride for the label is two 31-minute collages in traditional sound diary style. Sounds of voice, viola, feedback, drums, drum stick, bowed cymbal recorded through an old karaoke machine combined with radio, rental car radio feedback, river sounds, contact mic’d Broadway Bridge, keyboard/synth, voice sounds, drunken wedding orators and general party chit chat. Slickles captured all this on his trusty handheld tape machine and then, for your pleasure, cut stuff into loops, collaged it, fed some of it into his psychoacoustic computer to provide a sense of specific sound direction and panning. A stud. A gent. Numbered edition of 60
Angy Is You
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.321) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Odie ji Ghast (voice) and THF Drenching (dictaphones, whistles) are caught in the grid of a decelerated alarm bent down into human hearing. They carry out an hallucinatory conversation in a cloud, in a smoke. And you be like — what is that for? Misty as it is, cut through the chatter into ramparts of permeable car-chase; the sound is an inch from your eye, primary-colored and primary-processed in blocks of dancing nodes. They are on your eyeball. Fact is, now you can’t get them off. Edition of 50
DOMESTIC recordings
(Chocolate Monk - choc.522) CDR $7.00
Another snapshot of lockdown life on the Brexit Isles — “2020 summer full of domesticity that’s soaked in time,” says Odie ji Ghast aka Greta Buitkute (Labas Krabas, Historically Fucked, etc.), “slow moving back and forth between arising direction and reflections on past crumbles.” Multi-tracked vocals (both gibber and song) get mixed in with dictaphone, home appliances, keyboards and “loud thoughts.” An intimate insight into the clutter revolution. Edition of 60
The Instrumentalest
(Giant Tank) 2xCDR $10.00
“Mildly frazzled in the valley of the real instruments” is how Euan Andrews reacts to these improvisations, recorded as the families of Ali Robertson and Firas Khnaisser gathered in the warming glow of a winter Saturday night, and witnessed the duo paring back their sound to “basic components of rhythm’n’squall. Robertson, in his debut behind drum kit, pelts out syncopated abstractions regurgitating in upon themselves as Khnaisser veers from darkest parasomniac blues on guitar to trombone moan and throb, suggesting an agnostic union between the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Smegma. Hoarsely sucked trumpet curls its way around trombone splats before percussive clamor and scrape breaks out in a heat rash. Voices babble and scrunch while plastic horns emit gastric juices and the whole experience feels like a loving tongues-first kiss from a flatulent scrapyard.”
Ein Geisteskranker Als Künstler
(Ronda - RND11) CD $12.00
(Ronda - RND11) Used CD $6.00
Fourteen mesmerizing, nerve-wracking tracks from the archives recorded 1994 to 2006 by noise guitarist and founding member of French-Romanian experimental post-punk trio Sun Plexus 2. Guitar, bass, cymbal, analog synth, and misappropriated objects (45s, radio tube, “a person ‘trapped’ as drowsy” during Regreb and Ogrob’s Temple Of Rock installation) deliver ghostly visions from the depths of dark and wet caves. Expect nothing less from this member of Foi Pour Pusillanime, French Doctors, l’Autopsie A Révélé Que La Mort Etait Due A l’Autopsie, Le 9900, and Micro_penis.
Destroy Ohno Monsters 2
(Works Fatagaga) Used CDR $10.00
The 21-minute “Hose By Hose,” recorded live 2007 at Fukugan Gallery, Osaka. Chipboard foldover with inner paste-on credits.
Obsolescence And Monality
(Chondritic Sound - CH-305) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Lee Landey stunning debut release is an immense alloy of noise, ambient, rhythmic electronics and industrial music melted down to one solid vision. Snatches of datastream chatter and squalls of electric plasma color his unsmiling pieces of thumped kick, metallic klang and a well-heeled electronic array of ominous sweep and swoosh, that embrace goth-horror synth. Full-throated bellowing service the densest, deepest accretions of Oil Thief’s techno have the indecipherable vitriol found in grindcore and noise. Edition of 200
Moonlight Farm
(Destijl - IND055) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
Jakob Olausson farms sugar-beets in the south of Sweden. Not to deify the life of the prole, but the workday sun has had a clear influence: this is a record made on a dime, in a dime-sized bedroom apartment, and it transcends all the limitations the scenario has taught us to expect. Moonlight Farm’s ten songs comfort and unsettle, and are concerned with the classic subjects: the garbage, the flowers, one’s mother, and the love of them all. Laid thick with a vague dissonance, they possess a mask of fog / haze, but the trail between writer / performer / song is not often trodden in such a deftly crystalline manner.
Maximum Rock
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR092) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Grind maniacs Total Fucking Destruction playing a fusion of early ’90s-style thrash and classic rock, with Megadan Tumelo on vocals. Catchy riffs, tight-as-fuck drumming by Brutal Truth’s Rich Hoak, sing-a-long heavy metal choruses, beefy production. Covers include Tull’s "Fat Man," a refreshingly non-obvious Sabbath cover in "Rock And Roll Doctor," and a thrash re-imagining of CSN's "Almost Cut My Hair.” Rise, hessian, rise.
Chocolate Radio Band (The Golden Sceptre)
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.550) CDR $8.00
Further evidence of Olive’s full skill for mishandling sound. He recorded hours of mono radio signals in a hovel in Kobe, Japan, through a simple chain of EQ, spring reverb, and preamp, which he then chopped, combined, layered, arranged, scrambled, juxtaposed, and quilted to just the right degree for brain tapenade. Warm and cozy!
Sun Reverse The Footpedal
(Evolving Ear) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Tim Olive (guitar) and Fritz Welch (percussion) scratch and gnaw each other on this improvised collection of works” from 2004, according to All About Jazz. “A dry and somewhat stark or uninviting scenario.” Letterpress printed chipboard jacket.
Alien Bog / Beautiful Soop
(Pogus) Used CD $18.00
Two long tracks of emotionally stunning electronic music from the 1960s, “revolutionary … in [its] use of tape delay and heterodyne techniques, coupled with experimental use of combination tones and supersonic frequencies, presaged techniques now being explored digitally.” The brain-eclipsing “Alien Bog” is a masterpiece of electronic tone squelch. Only an excerpt of this had been previously issued, while “Beautiful Soop” is released here for the first time. During her first year at The Tape Music Center at Mills College in Oakland, Oliveros utilized the original Buchla Box 100 series and her tape delay system. From 1997
Electronic Works 1965-1966
(Paradigm Discs) Used CD $12.00
Three live experiments, which at the simplest level use either an array of oscillators and filters, or a mixer and one spool of tape feeding a series of (variously set up) stereo tape machines. Long delay lines, pile ups of noise and rich sonorities are the stuff of this music. “1 Of IV” and “Big Mother Is Watching You” from University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio, 1966 (the former previously released in 1967 on Odyssey, the latter previously unreleased piece, along with one more from San Francisco Tape Music Center 1965, first released in 1977 on the 1750 Arch Records’ New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media.
Four Electronic Pieces 1959-1966
(Sub Rosa) Used CD $25.00
Early and definitive contributions to tape and electronic music finely displayed here — Oliveros’s systematic exploration of electronic sounds, which was fundamental to this period. If ‘Mnemonics’ prefigures her meditative and breathing pieces, ‘V of IV’ structures sound as noise, ‘Time Perspectives’ is her first variations on silence, an ambitious four-channel work made by recording small sounds from objects resonated on a wooden wall, changing the tape speed, using cardboard tubes as filters by inserting the mic into them and a bathtub as a reverberation chamber, while ‘Once Again’ develops a wild energy that out-strips itself.
Tara’s Room — Two Meditations on Transition and Change
(Deep Listening) Used CD $10.00
Two tracks previously released on cassette in 1987: “The Beauty of Sorrow” (small accordion tuned in just intonation, Lexicon delay processors) and the title track, a multi-track recording with all materials played and sung by the composer. 2004 reissue.
PAULINE OLIVEROS / JESSE STEWART
The Dunrobin Session
(Nuun - NUUN008) CD $16.00
V-accordion and percussion duets recorded during Oliveros’s residency at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, in collaboration with percussionist and composition teacher Stewart. Part of the label's Pulsions Series. Liner notes by Gayle Young.
Pilgrimage
(Southern Lord) Used CD $10.00
“Beyond hypnotic, trance-inducing zen doom from 2007. Al Cisneros’s droning but melodic bass playing and mantras could be studied at a university level, combined with Chris Hakius’s explosive drumming wipe the mind clean of the pettiness of everyday life. Earth-moving riffs and dreamlike rhythms lurch forward with the inertia of a planet in orbit.” Card sleeve with quotes on back
Enclosures 2011–2016
(Pica Disk - PICA044) 5xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Remastered reissue of limited edition CDRs self-released on Deepskin Conceptual Mindmusic. Includes Transistor Rhythms (2011), Proportions Of The Skull (2012), Echo Dot (2014), EndClosures (2015), and Differential Hemispheres (2016). With booklet of Clint Williams's surrealist drawings and science fiction themed artwork, plus liner notes by collaborator Bruce Russell.
Interceptor
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS012) 2xCD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
New Zealand electronic musician Clinton Williams’s home-spun constructs detour from the sculpted grit and mottled distortion in the work of his countrymen and -women. His opus Quad 3xCD (Corpus Hermeticum, 1998) makes palpable the artist’s contentious argument with his own unwieldy mousetrap of tape-loops, modular electronics, effects pedals, drum machines, and the creaking sounds of his house. Interceptor is the result of an experiment with a portable studio outside his longtime home of Blenheim. With two suitcases of drum machines, effects, and analog synths, Williams recalls being “pissed off with myself wasting time recording this stuff when I was trying to find a job.” His frustrations stripped away much of the grandiose sweeps of ambience and shadow, leaving behind a life-support system grid of overlapping, phase-shifted blip and click. An undertow of hypnotic tonalities pulls those rhythms toward a crepuscular gloom. Williams has always been at odds with his own work, yet his self-doubt continues to deliver magnificent albums which thrive in a symbiotic struggle with mechanical disintegration.
Rejector
(Anomalous) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Admired by Prog Archives for its “evocative, spectral soundscapes full of drones textures, micro-accidents and events,” this is “a dark, glacial and gorgeous listen.” Real-time progressive electronic sounds in the tradition of ’70s Berlin underground. Sealed
Tracer
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
As with the previous works by obsessive electronic composer Clinton Williams, Tracer is an antiquated behemoth, constructed from analogue synthesizers, primitive drum machines, homespun electronics, and numerous effects pedals. Simple wooden rhythms trot, trudge, and even glide along taut metric grids hot-wired with bursts of mechanical splutter and the occasional creak from Pierre Henry’s wooden door. An occasionally menacing, but more often melancholy, orchestration of synthetic tones ripple, flex, and dissolve across the uniform structuralism, creating an ecstatic paranoia rarely heard with such splendor, rigor, and sublime blackness. If sonic references are required, then the Klaus Schulze masterpiece Cyborg is close.
Ruins-Hatoba
(Charnel Music) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Frantic punk meets grunting sound poetry, lunatic psych, and cut-and-paste prog rock on this early ’90s collaboration by Masuda Ryuichi and Yoshida Tatsuya of Ruins, and Omoide Hatoba’s Atsushi Tsuyama, Chu Hasegawa, and Seiichi Yamamoto.
Vuoy
(Polystar - PSCR5592) CD $25.00
Released in 1997, the second major label effort by Yamamoto Seiichi (Boredoms) and Tsuyama Atsushi (Acid Mothers Temple), with guests aplenty, reaches new heights of what our colleagues at Aquarius call “toothy melody and sludgy sweetness, along with their usual tour through the murky depths of rock’s weirder edges.” Japanese import.
Cassette Memories Vol. 3: South Of The Border
(Important - IMPREC309) CD $10.00
Astonishingly surreal field recordings from Mexico, in which “small fragments of recognizable human elements (voices, machinery, street bands) … leak into an otherwise abstracted and distorted swimming pool full of … fragments….[I]intoxicating.
Other Thunders
(No-Fi) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
This solo project of Daniel Padden (Volcano The Bear) quickly morphed into a quartet with the recruitment of Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy of Nalle, and Peter Nicholson. With Padden’s leadership, they developed a curious and strident brew of Eastern European folk, chamber music and some kind of earthy, psychedelic primitivism. Their approach is given the blaze of full technicolor glory as they expand to a septet, exacerbating their collision of the formal and the tribal and oftentimes recalling the soundtrack and mood of Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain.
The Owl Of Fives
(Textile) Used CD $5.00
Strangely minimal, weird and earthy, skewed folk music from a country that never existed by one-third of Volcano The Bear. As an album, it’s pretty difficult to pin down. Padden uses traditional folk structures as the basis for many of songs here. But other esoteric influences are at work here as well: Southeast Asian traditional music, acoustic jazz flourishes, perhaps even the mystical minimalism of Terry Riley, combining a strange and beautiful amalgam of (mostly) wordless vocals, stumbling piano, scurrying cello, mournful kazoo interludes, deranged waltzes, and stuff that’s totally unidentifiable with his wayward outsider music.
… And Take The Black Work With Me
(Nyahh) CD $14.00
Ian Lynch of Dublin experimental folk group Lankum explores submerged leylines of music and song with a dark approach more rooted in the raw aesthetics of second wave black metal than contemporary folk.
Chronicle Of A Death Foretold
(Non Mi Piace) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rodger Stella’s cut-up material from 2000, sourced from Macronympha and Mlehst.
Transmissions Of Fistulae Auris
(Industrial Recollections) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rodger Stella’s early ’90s psychedelic noise, previously released on cassette (Mother Savage 1994). Think Foucault Zombie meets Insane Torture Device. Source material by Macronympha and Onomatopeia.
Centrafrique : Trompes Banda Linda
(Buda Musique) Used CD $20.00
Farmers from the savannah region of Central African Republic use readymade tree roots (hollowed out by termites) for horns, similar in sound to a didjeridoo. Each one emits a single note and twenty are grouped together forming four pentatonic scales. For higher notes, antelope horns with lateral mouthpieces are used. Each player has his own tempo so the themes slide and evolve as if propelled by a polyphony of hiccups, recalling at times the cyclical, machine-like tape loops of Steve Reich. For variety the group also plays slit log drums, xylophones, and zithers. The repertoire here includes music for rituals (harvest cycles, weddings, circumcisions, the arrival of foreign visitors). From 2005
A Marble Holder From Andover
(Cheeses International) Used CD $3.00
Recorded in 1996, released in 2003. Shotar, metal percussion, harmonica, reverb spring, bass guitar, shortwave radio, polystyrene on glass, synth, found tapes “slip into noisier collage-styled moments before sidling into varied squeaky and scratchy effects, closing with some easy dancehall swing sounds.”
ROBERTO OPALIO / MAURIZIO OPALIO
Liquid Spring
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6546) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Amazing work of quiet contemplation played on acoustic and classical guitars by the My Cat Is An Alien void-busters, with Roberto's disembodied vocals levitating high above like a cosmic breath. Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
The Hexagram on Grace
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6551) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third solo album by Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, Praxinoscope) was made during the same period of self-imposed isolation in the Western Alps that brought to life MCIAA's Photoelectric Season. Inspired by the mystic aura of the surrounding nature, he focuses on his peculiar wordless vocalizations, and uses only a mini-keyboard and prepared alientronics as instruments (brother Maurizio supplies acoustic guitar at the beginning of “Like An Empty Glass”). Sublime abstract expressionism around the heliocentricity of his voice. Cardboard jacket with paste-on artwork, with insert. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
In The Midst Of Chaos
(Destijl - IND064) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
This free-jazz group's one and only release, recorded in 1978 by legendary out guitarist Barry Greika, Bob Laramie on bass and Glen "Hobbit" Peterson on drums, screams, howls, blisters, bitch-slaps, and defies categorization as it pushes the '70s into uncharted confusion. Two hundred copies were pressed originally, which earned it the notice from almost no one. Two people did hear it; one sailed it out the kitchen window, the wife of the other said to get the fuckin' thing out of the house. So here it comes again, reissued on CD. Hardcore freeform shit rejuvenated without shame.
Daddy’s Got A Spice Rack
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.291) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Raw, wild and beautiful guitar grunk previously released on cassette in 2014, with several pieces of text-based vocal gibber interspersed. Edition of 60.
Amen
(Die Stadt - DS95) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
A work in two parts using grand piano, Hammond organ, tower bell, gong and voices.
Die Hennen Zähne
(Die Stadt - DS57/DS66) 3-inch CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four-track mini CD combining tracks from two planned but never-released 10-inches Maus and Die Hennen Zähne. “Die Kralle” is a David Jackman track from his archives, recorded in the early 1980s. The title track recalls TNB/Organum material and includes the sound of broken glass and Tibetan horns. “Maus” is the centerpiece, typical old school Organum. The quiet and haunting “Kazi” is a live improvisation featuring Michael Prime and Emma O'Bong.
Omega
(Die Stadt - DS101) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
The third and final part of the Organum trilogy that includes Sanctus (Robot) and Amen (Die Stadt)
Temporal
(Die Stadt - DS111) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
David Jackman and Z'ev's third collaboration following Tinnitus VU CD (Touch) and Tocsin (Die Stadt). Z'ev reworked basic sound material from the Organum archive back in 2006, which resulted in a collaborative mixing of the material in early 2008, followed by Jackman's finishing touches. The overall tone owes more to the classic multi-layered and intense Organum sound than to recent works.
Tinnitus Vu
(Touch) Used CD $5.00
Despite David Jackman and Z’ev’s “love of muscular and metallic drones, natural sound decay, and endless mechanistic churning,” muses Pitchfork, “this new alliance leans more toward Organum’s propensity toward maddening brevity: this 2004 disc is four tracks long and clocks in at 16 minutes…. A resounding piano chord — stretched and morphed beyond recognition — introduces each shift in the drone. Even with all the manipulations, these suspended strings carry through the buzzing din…. That metal-scratched drone is dangerous, hypnotic, brutal, and beatific.” Digipak has small but noticeable spot on the back where artwork is ripped.
Endless Autumn
(Backwards - BWCD01) CD $15.40 (Out-of-stock)
The atmospheric field recordings created by this Berlin-based Italian artist penetrate the smallest gaps of the cerebral cortex. The environmental sounds that come from Puglia and the German capital capture the essence of the landscapes that Orsi loves to observe, allowing the listener to mentally fly over sunny Apulian coastlines and countrysides, up to German lush forests. Endless Autumn comes together naturally with melancholic electronic textures and guitar melodies.
Nightmania
(Nihilist) Used CD $5.00
One seriously creeped-out Musique Machine reviewer compares this 2004 disc to Argento-inspired horror with its “sick drone elements; nerve-jarring noise; sinister rhythmic mutterings; burn-your-skin-off, seething banks of static; bizzaro samples; ’80s movie synthesizer…; bent electronics; ritual gong pounding; face forced into a sink; crippling noise with layered mix of laughter and crying…; morbid synth tones; bubbling and dripping sounds; almost dub-like bass fluttering…; looped shutting door noise or something been chopped over and over.” You know, the whole genius / madness thing. Includes booklet of track-specific illustrations. Sealed
Boiling A Frog
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.281) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
A mellow beginning becomes a torrent of head-scrambling noise skronk and scrape, delivered with the usual love and tenderness by this one-time Noggin and King Frog.
Anode
(Tzadik) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“It sounds like an avalanche. Things are falling everywhere, and sine waves howl, terribly overwhelmed by the rest of this cacophony. There are watery sound effects (probably from Sachiko M’s and Tetuzi Akiyama’s microphones), and a scummy residue from what sounds like large Asian cymbals. This is distinctly symphonic music: each part is essential, as Yoshihide has chosen the perfect arrangement, and each movement contains specific instructions for the musicians as to what they are allowed to play, and even to whom they’re allowed to listen. Conceptually, it’s similar to John Zorn’s game pieces, where the rules determine the outcome of the music as much as the actual sounds produced (at least in theory). The second half of the suite is almost a mirror image of the first, as the third movement continues the static ambience of the second, and the final movement witnesses the reemergence of the full ensemble: percussion crashing, microphones squealing, sine waves howling, and a general tumbling sensation prevailing.” From 2001. Includes obi
Bits, Bots And Signs
(Erstwhile) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Recorded in March 2000 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where the trio generated gently pulsing rumbles, piercing whistles and lingering whines, fusing the varied sounds into a series of expansive panoramas. A brittle fabric of sound, unifying notions of instant composition with the radiating randomness of live electronics.”
Cathode
(Tzadik) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Modulation #1” and “Modulation #2” play on different tones produced by sampled sine waves and shô, a traditional Japanese mouth organ. For “Cathode #1,” Yoshihide recorded ten musicians performing a graphic score separately and later assembled the piece using speed variation, tape direction, splicing, and overdubbing. The resulting work reveals a very mature composer. For “Cathode #2,” he sampled eight musicians without any preconceived plan, and created an ambient collage through a technique inspired by Bob Ostertag’s groundbreaking album Say No More. From 1999. Includes obi
The Night Before The Death of the Sampling Virus
(Extreme) Used CD $10.00
Disjointed voices, a rush of sounds and then silence, almost sinister. There is a dazzling array of sound sources, intended for playback in random shuffle mode — live recordings, the prerecorded, the appropriated, etc., the common thread being the voices of the Japanese people. Notable inclusions in this area are Yamatsuka Eye and Tenko, with their distinctive abilities. Otomo is careful in his selections, leaving some alone in their spare original states, manipulating others are into a cacophonous fury, the light and dark. From 1993
We Insist?
(Sound Factory) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
No rest for listener in this free-form, high-velocity opus from 1992 that stands alongside Des Pas Et Des Mois by Martin Tétreault, René Lussier and Michel F. Côté as one of the crucial albums of turntablism and contemporary music in general.
The Top Tent
(Outlier Communications) CD $10.00
“Kevin Hainey and Sarah Tracy situate themselves in an unlikely liminal zone,” say Bryon Hayes, “stretching between thick proto-industrial murk and buoyant Berlin School kosmische. Tracy and Hainey trace the formlessness of fluid matter with their sound-making gear, dappling their soundscapes with a naivete akin to that of R. Stevie Moore. The Top Tent is the most fully realized artifact in the Outliers canon, shaping the duo’s primordial ooze in fantastical ways. The pair are in symbiosis with their gear, coaxing weird and wonderful phantasms out of sheer electricity.”
OUTRÉCHESTRA / BRYAN LEWIS SAUNDERS
Sewing Party
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.383) CDR $8.00
“Three nights in a row I had dreams about parties and/or sewing,” explains Bryan Lewis Saunders. “Also, the batteries in my recorder were dying and I did not know. So when I went to transcribe the recordings I threw the batteries away. But then after hearing the content (the dreams) I thought this would be perfect in subject and tone for Princess Haultaine III! So then I asked him if he wanted to work with me on these parties. When he said yes, I thought, shoot, I should get those mostly dead batteries out of the trash and use them to their fullest potential because I thought that might complement the tone and noisy party style of the great duo Outréchestra. So then I milked those batteries for every electron in them. Hundreds of false starts trying to capture every word of the dreams in the state of death. It was a challenging task. And then Princess Haultaine III took those recordings and stitched them together with the music.” Numbered edition of 60
Otherside of
(Pataphysique - DD89) 2xCD + 7-inch $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tokyo psych mainstays from 1990 to 2008 who, according to Dusted, “mixed the melodies with the mope to achieve a Paisley Underground sort of effect, albeit with virtuosic guitar freakouts by leader Rinji Fukuoka…. [M]ajestic melodies, challenging and progressive outlines, ripping leads, and proper song structures … recorded in Japan rattle the cages of … young, “tribal” drug-pee band[s]… with the skill and professional freakout-making abilities they all lack.” The seven-inch contains two songs from the band's 1999 US tour: “Le Few Follet” with its pop-psych layering and dueling lead guitars that are thick and confident and “Cut Up Us,” a collage of sounds from the entire tour and symphonic tapeloops.
You Without Sin Cast The First Stone
(CaseQuarter) Used CD $5.00
“The one-time lead vocalist of Alabama’s Flying Clouds of Montgomery unleashes his overpowering melismatic falsetto and growling exhortations to redemption — accompanied by a primal guitar unlearned over 20 years of solo radio preaching on the Cheerful Angels shows at WMGY. It’s Pops Staples meets Hasil Adkins in an electrifying devil-versus-angel axe showdown. Confrontational, baffling, inspirational. A mainline to the Truth.” From 2006. Punched barcode
I Told Ya I Love Ya, Now Get Out
(Signature / Sony Music Special Products) Used CD $8.00
Ten selections recorded when O’Day was 27, singing in several different settings, including the atmospheric “Ace in the Hole,” performed with Alvy West and the Little Band (a sextet including an accordion player), while the other eight numbers have the singer joined by larger orchestras arranged by either Sy Oliver or Ralph Burns. European edition from1991. Punched barcode
P
(Caroline) Used CD $9.00
This reissue of the sole 1995 album by Gibby Haynes, Bill Carter, Johnny Depp, and Sal Jenco is a rambunctious stew of grunge, over-the-top dub, twisted yet reverent covers, mutant blues, faux hillbilly, oddball ballads, and space jams. Guests include Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Steve Jones (Sex Pistols). Sealed
The Well Of Memory
(Amish) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tower Recordings founding member Pat Gubler continues the themes introduced on Parlor Tricks And Porch Favorites (Amish 2001), with nods toward 1960s folk artists like Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Incredible String Band, and John Fahey, while also exploring decidedly contemporary abstraction. Dreamlike and transcendent. Punched barcode
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.
East Of The River Nile
(Jet Set) Used CD $15.00
A must-have classic, originally released in 1977 on the Message label, by one of Jamaica’s canonical reggae and dub musicians. Recorded in Lee “Scratch” Perry’s legendary Black Ark Studio and mixed by the Scientist of Sound King Tubby, backed by a first-rate band that includes Robbie Shakespeare on bass, drummer Aston “Family Man” Barrett, and guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith. This 2012 reissue delivers a nondub instrumental album — meditational with a dark undercurrent and a surreal atmosphere — that serves as the syncopated soundtrack of the Rasta nation. Sealed
The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden
(Catsup Plate) Used CD $5.00
“At times turbulent and at others somber,” report Bryon Hayes of Foxy Digitalis, these “tiny symphonies … incorporate elements of Eastern European folk, minimalist drone and string-laced chamber psych. The One Ensemble’s humbly haunted, multifarious tales look back to post-WWII Europe, following displaced settlers voyaging across the Atlantic toward the unknown. Cello, bouzouki, clarinet, guitar and piano all play a key role in reciting the woeful tale of humanity’s uncertain future. The most prominent and effective instrument however, is Padden’s plaintive wordless vocal…. The intoxicating brew crafted by the deft hands of The One Ensemble…, formerly a solo venture,” now a group with Chris Hladowski, Peter Nicholson and Aby Vulliamy…, “is not difficult to swallow; its complex palette is cleverly disguised with beautiful melodies and a healthy dose of hopefulness.” Handmade digipack
Mike Page
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR042) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Solo album by Fire In The Head / Slogun / Sky Burial man. Really heavy-duty, powerful, bordering on psychedelic noise. Very brutal.
Works 1958-1979
(Sub Rosa - SR178) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hommage à John Cage (1958-1959), Étude for Pianoforte (1959-1960) and Simple (1961) are good examples of Paik's neo-dada music, de-structuration, and irreverent collage. Prepared Piano for Merce Cunningham (1977) captures an improvised performance on a de-tuned piano (it was later mixed and edited for use by Cunningham, but this raw, straight-to-tape version was favored by the composer). Duett: Paik/Takis (1979), the only previously released piece (Edition Kölnischer Kunstverein 1979), is an improvisation on piano and voice, with Takis on his own metal sculptures. Sealed
Terrazzo
(Harbinger Sound) CD $11.25 (Out-of-stock)
Collaboration between Los Angeles noise giant and Tokyo noise legend.
Trashware
(Pure) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Excellent, tightly edited and meticulous high-end squeal. Insane cut-ups. Structured in the sense that it changes often and expectedly, but low on the quasi-musical elements. From 1995
PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST
Transparent Winter
(Seven Solar Metals - Season Two) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Following the Haru No Omoi CD (P.S.F. 2009), hailed as a return to the ancient spirit of Japanese national poetry, Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Z’ev, Black Magic Disco), and Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien) create fragile and unusual experiments somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ponzini sings in Japanese (excerpts from the poetry of Takamura Kotaro) and plays furin and Japanese wind chimes (both metal and wooden). With Maurizio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto on mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations, the trio’s luscious and mysterious music is strange, distant and delicate. Includes alternate mixes of “Mars Appears” and “The Mountain” (Blackest Rainbow 2011); the complete “Transparent Winter” session; thirty-three minutes of previously unreleased material (“Notes From A Telephone Conversation,” “Winter Is Coming,” and the Yosano Akiko-inspired “Ochitsubaki”); and a bonus ghost track.
Where The Darkness Is Praised
(Legion Blotan) CD $11.00
The debut full-length album from southwest England’s black metal horde is forty-five minutes of pure hatred, pain, misanthropy and torment, dragging the soul ever deeper into the pitch black abyss of chaos, darkness and death. Edition of 500
Kuddelmuddel
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. This meticulously arranged series of compositions is made from Hurdy-Gurdy recordings taken at the Bristol Renaissance Festival in Wisconsin; bagpipes, shortwave radio recordings, wax cylinder recordings of Native American chants, electric guitar, binaural tones, field recordings taken in a chocolate factory in Oakland in 2018; and BBC sound-library sourced recordings of Morse code transmitters and office buildings. Edition of 60
Psychic Hygiene
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Mangled pop loops squirm in and out of the stereo field like a million thoughts drifting through your mind in the midst of a hot shower. Vocal chants greet you with the ethereal charm of a fine seaweed face mask. Synth textures possess a smooth quality that is not far off from a freshly shaven face. For a moment, pure bliss; the work day is over, the outside world no longer exists behind this closed door... Until you cut yourself shaving; blood drips from your face. The drums begin picking up. Horns that serenaded you earlier now blare at volumes far beyond “discomfort zone.” What Panic Boner presents here is no different from the age of self-care that envelops us all today. Equal parts ugly and transcendental, this is a record for the listener who understands the high risk / high reward nature of improvisational music. Edition of 60
Perverse
(Nihilist) Enhanced CD $4.00
Andy Ortmann’s soundtrack to Usama Alshaibi’s 32mm film “Convulsion Expulsion.” Sealed
Perverse
(Liquid Death / Hello Pussy) Used CD $5.00
Andy Ortmann blends the natural properties of found sounds and electronics to create a truly perverse beauty, a synthesis of the classically musical with the classically noisy — feedback, electronic manipulations and musique concrète. This 2004 disc is “one of an unsettling uncertainty, made all the more noticeable by its own self-assuredness. For the listener who … likes music to embark upon fresh, exciting, dangerous journeys navigated by nervous idiosyncrasies and unspoken compulsions” and “can stomach mangled baby’s cries, feedback, water and deconstructed industrial rhythms, this record gives you all that and more…. Dirty and secretly thrilling.” Includes the grotesque yet beautiful “Convulsion Expulsion” video by controversial Chicago underground filmmaker Usama Alshaibi.
Argot Of Incomprehension
(Discombobulate) CD $15.00
Double-quick Dictaphone-heavy scraping at a clay pot long regarded as sacrilegious for mortal men. Jon Marshall (of respected freak units Roman Nose, Akke Phallus Duo and Rotten Tables Golden Meat) and Posset’s Joe Murray poke a sensitive scab before ripping open a new wound filled with densely manipulated voice jaxx, swooping holler and tape fingering with tight ’n’ shiny production values like these bulls just strolled outta Houston, Texas. Fire escape music for risky fritters. Edition of 200 Sample here: https://archive.org/details/PapalBull-ArgotOfIncomprehension-LangueDe
In Ceres A Pig With Human Hands And Feet Was Born
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC253) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rabid clusters of sound from the UK’s unhinged underground courtesy of Ashley devotees Jon Marshall (The Hunter Gracchus) and Joe Murray (Posset). Dictaphone work that would give Gwilly Edmondez the horn, harmonica reeds, harmonium, sheng, particularly out-to-lunch drones and wails, vocals that veer from mussel-mouthed to a more caffeine-infused Euro-academic vibe to private language gurgle. Guest appearance by Stephen Chase on erhu.
Private Dreams and Public Nightmares
(Aperture) Used CD $8.00
Reworkings and new interpretations of unreleased material from the archives of Daphne Oram, one of Britain’s most influential electronic music pioneers. Bass drones and low-key, subtly shifting throbs, sometimes with incongruous drum breaks up front.
Two Rags
(Potlatch - 12.00) Used CD $12.00
Rowe’s use of almost ambient noise and circulating guitar loops lay out a calmness,” notes All Music Guide, “And Parker acts accordingly, playing free but without disturbing the soul. Bits of gray noise float in…, a radio searches for a station, all the while Parker (on tenor throughout) keeps the peace. It is easy to be lulled into this music, but don’t mistake their … pacific nature for anything less than complex improvisations. In the relative quiet there is fury.” From 2000
Bob’s Pink Cadillac
(Eremite) Used 2xCD $18.00
“For those of you who agree that far too little of Perry Robinson’s colorful playing exists on record after his totally classic 1962 Savoy album Funk Dumpling & esp 1026 (Henry Grimes’s The Call (ESP 1966), your suffering has just been eased. The man is still the last word for all the clarinet’s possibilities in creative music. From 2001. Clipped corner
EVAN PARKER ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE
Drawn Inward
(ECM) Used CD $8.00
Drawn Inward adds computer musician / composer Lawrence Casserley to the Toward The Margins line-up, which means at any given moment, up to five musicians are playing live electronics, increasing the fascinating maze-like complexity of the sound that swirls around Parker’s extraordinary saxophone. From 1999. Includes O-card
EVAN PARKER ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE
Toward The Margins
(ECM) Used CD $10.00
Grating strings first clear out the rafters, shafting like light from behind a broken cloud. Parker’s soprano scratches gently at their back. Grumblings and sampled ether flutter and churn, tripping down sand-covered stairs like a creature covered with feet, so that it is always standing no matter how it lands. Compartmentalized echoes share their cubicles with shallow utterances of deeper assignments. Barry Guy’s double bass ties its strings into a tangle of self-awareness as Parker trembles within his own computer-augmented aftershocks. Like a flock of geese in overdrive, he burns in the upper atmosphere before he dares dream of land. Melody is but an afterthought to the sputtering multitudes, caught in the welcoming stare of an unwanted stranger. The overall sound is subdued yet robust. It inhabits the crawlspace of our dreams. The haunting final track lingers in our bones, long after the silence comes, animating a body whose only fear is cogency. Overall, an amazing cross-referencing of free improvisation, live electronics and real-time sound processing. From 1997. Includes O-card
#1-4
(Sigma Editions) Used CD $4.00
Six tracks previously released on limited edition lathe-cut sevens, plus a new live recording from Sydney 1997.
Getxo
(Sigma Editions) Used CD $4.00
In which Rosy Parlane reveals an “interest in sublimity, minor keys and mesmerizing repetition … like melancholy carnival music devoid of sentimentality. The repetition … mimics mechanical reproduction in that the quality degenerates over the course of the track, ending in an enveloping, ever stronger fuzz…. Parlane has shifted from relatively lo-fi techniques of construction to the digital realm of computer music and [it] is reflected in the intricacy of the tracks…, innately musical, seductive and affecting, full of quiet and not so quiet catches and hooks, so easy that the difficulty is camouflaged.”
Iris
(Touch) Used CD $4.00
“Parlane’s rich and vibrant pulses emanate and exude away from a center boiling over with the unspeakable,” marvels Brainwashed. “Iris sounds like the universal Om hissing in through subjective ears, playing with the phenomenology of experience, and coming to rest in the form of a vision…. “Part 2” hums and modulates away over the organic sounds of glass, chains, and textured friction washing by in an organized concerto for metal surfaces and brooms. “Part 1” rolls along slowly, almost like a lullaby, until the processed sound of white noise begins raining down over the calm…. “Part 3” is perhaps the most stunning…. The rhythmic popping and snapping mix perfectly with the organ flows passing above and beneath.” Drilled hole in upper right
Jessamine
(Tone - TO068) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Second full-length release by former member of Thela incorporates unconventional and orchestral instrumentation, from ambient to noise, from languid and mournful to harsh and assertive. Guests include Marcel Bear, Tetuzi Akiyama, Lasse Marhaug, Anthony Guerra, Michael Morley, Donald McPherson, Matthew Hyland, David Mitchell, Stefan Neville and Campbell Kneale.
Fuzzy Warbles Collector’s Album
(APE) Used 8xCD $125.00
Long-bootlegged and highly collectible home recordings by the XTC frontman. Outtakes, demos, in-studio hilarity, rough sketches with different lyrics, remarkably less lush than the produced official versions, dominated by Partridge’s gnashing guitar and frantic drum machine that resembles a bicycle that has to go faster and faster or the wheels will come off (with tracks from the ’90s on sounding cleaner and less agitated). Does not include the bonus ninth disc, Hinges.
Inweglos
(Absurd) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
A perfectly timed reissue of this 1980 LP by Ralf Wehowsky (RLW, P16.D4), Jochen Pense, Joachim Stender, and Achim Szepanski. Synthesizers, rhythm boxes, the group’s monotone delivery, and a dark Berlin vibe that’s creepier than running into Lydia Lunch and Rowland S. Howard at a key-swapping party, all contribute to Inweglos’s position as a one of the key Neue Deutsche Welle links between dejected No Wave disco and a Quaalude-damaged Kraftwerk. With non-LP bonus tracks. Imported from Greece.
Jewels Were The Stars
(Water) Used 4xCD $65.00
Remastered from the original tapes and released in 2003 on CD for the first time: These Things Too (Reprise 1969), The Use Of Ashes (Reprise 1970), City Of Gold (Reprise 1970), and Beautiful Lies You Could Live In (Reprise 1970). Includes 60-page book with photos and interviews.
Fatale
(Hanson) Used CD $5.00
Prepare to be soothed and destroyed by washes of white noise, intensely edited, cut-up, abrasive electronics, and junk sound. And completely depressed by passages of truly dismal piano, tape manipulations and drones.
(1982) It Was A Live Cassette
(Starlight Furniture Company - *7) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
The “instrumental” stigma has dogged Pell Mell since 1980, when the band was first formed in Portland, Oregon, by drummer Bob Beerman, guitarist Bill Owen, and Arni May, the other original guitarist who worked in a record store in Portland and brought in Jon-Lars Sorenson to play bass. It’s not that any of these seemingly well-educated gentlemen were too dimwitted to consider sprucing up their drabby music with a provocative frontman; they auditioned singers in the beginning, and didn’t like what they heard. And who can blame them? Singers, with their gaudy necklaces and their unzipped pants and their idiotic gestures, are egomaniacal distractions from the main event -- the music. More than drummers, even. Whether Jimi Hendrix was correct in regarding surf music as a plague upon humanity, Pell Mell were nevertheless perplexed to be continually categorized as such. Truth be told, the band’s “vision” was nothing more complicated than the creation of music as cool as all the records coming out at the time by great surf bands such as PiL, Josef K, the Fire Engines, the Feelies, A Certain Ratio, Pere Ubu, the Contortions and others. Following the recording of the quartet’s Rhyming Guitars EP in January 1981, May departed, leaving the band to continue as a trio. The following year Beerman, Owen and Sorenson released the live cassette primarily as a promotional and tour-booking tool, but also to distance themselves from the dual-guitar EP, with its newly unplayable songs (except for “Par Avion”). Intentionally designed to keep listeners on their toes, the tracks on (1982) It Was a Live Cassette were written to be played live and are much more aggressive, raw, and abrupt than anything else done by the band since. It was a live cassette and it was all about proving things: that Pell Mell didn’t need or want a singer, that they were punk, and, most importantly, that they were not a goddamn surf band.
London Texas
(ReR Megacorp) Used CD $6.00
A hi-fi live recording of the short-lived line-up that toured briefly between the arrival of Eric Drew Feldman and the departure of Chris Cutler. The songs are economical and tightly arranged but harmonically elaborate with strongly performative and musical underpinnings, all with scary live energy.
Exécution des Hautes Oeuvres
(Premier Sang) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sixty-eight tracks in twenty-two minutes — a plausible incarnation of some sort of harsh folk, like a French rogue and degenerate cousin of Bill Orcutt, or a Loren Mazzacane Connors on Temesta. The new project from Romain Perrot, aka Vomir, obsessive head-bagged Harsh Noise Wall icon. Edition of 500.
NOHC On The Road
(Leo) Used CD $12.00
Michael Nick’s violin and Didier Petit’s cello shoot forth disturbing, unsettling spirals while Daunik Lazro’s alto and baritone saxes and Denis Colin’s bass clarinet turn conventional harmonies inside out. Three suites of three or four pieces, scratches and sublime beauty, various improvisational approaches (fast and slow, ear-shattering and gentle), no melodies.
Pharmakon
(BloodLust! - B!130) Used CDR $20.00
This four-song disc compiles previously released and currently unreleased songs by Margaret Chardiet, a New York-based noise artist known for spectacularly vehement live performances. Her one-woman hailstorm of cold analogue electronic terror is violently bewitching and pushes the boundaries of the dark and heavy death-industrial music. She is a part of the Far Rockaway experimental noise scene that includes Yellow Tears, Halflings, Hands Rendered Useless, Teeny Bopper, Tension Fields, and also performs in Throat, with Ryan Woodhall of Yellow Tears, etc. Edition of 100
III+
(Tochnit Aleph - TA029) CDR $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
61 tracks by this Schimpfluch Gruppe / Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock collaborator, most of which are from a 1997 Schimpfluch cassette-only release. In the gain-attendant tradition of consciousness-captains R&G and S-G, gorked-up splats leap out of nowhere and try to permanently damage internal potentiometers by abusing the far reaches of impact detection. III+ enforces awareness of annexation of all empirical data receptors with magnifying glasses (or a suitably sexy analog). As in all great works of literature from the macrobiotic punctuation school, it's all about the crossing and the dotting. In oversized sleeve.
Illusion is a Natural Condition
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
The long anticipated collection of Dave Phillips and R.H.Y. Yau collaborations culled between 2000-2005. Phillips began his musical career when he was 17, co-founding the hardcore extremists Fear of God in 1987, whose increasingly faster, shorter, and noisier approaches to grindcore Philips realized were merely a springboard for more psychologically challenging and physically demanding artforms. Soon after Fear of God’s demise in 1989, he joined the actionist Schimpfluch-Gruppe which has followed the traditions of abjection and transgression as dictated by the Viennese Aktionists. Phillips has further developed these transgressions along with sociopolitical actionism in his solo efforts. Yau is a curator and sound artist who has been active in the sonic arts since 1993; his works are inspired by sound poetry, actionism, and the processes of musique concrète. Bored by academic cliques, Yau creates what he calls “action-concrète” -- organic synapses of voice, body, and raw materiality combined with raw electronics into sound experiences of both ultra-violence and absolute absurdity at the most base level. With ten lithographic reproductions of original drawings by Leif Elggren.
DAVE PHILLIPS / RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK / SUDDEN INFANT
Schimpfluch-Commune Int.
(Nihilist) Used 2x cassette + CDR $60.00
Finalized at the 20th anniversary of Schimpfluch, December 28, 2006, released 2007. Numbered edition of 100. C28 + C34 + 45min disc
Finding Internal Asylum
(C3R) Used CDR $10.00
The ambient side of Canadian harsh noise master Alan Bloor is subtle, nuanced, and warm. This collection of reverb-drenched improvisations for a steel sculpture made by Bloor (found pieces of stainless steel of different sizes and thicknesses, bowed, scraped and struck) is perfect for lonely evenings of contemplation, or as mood music in your isolation chamber. With four-page booklet of photos by Bloor and text by Aidan Baker
In Accordance With Conscience
(Panta Rhei) Used CDR $9.00
“A dark, heavily moody, cavernous soundscape” says Exclaim. “One feels the sense of travelling through a series of interconnected underground caves, some cathedral-like in their echoing, others more claustrophobia-inducing…. [S]pelunking with Pholde means a slow…, cool and alienated…, sometimes spooky wander through the darker recesses and tunnels of consciousness.”
This Is Handiwork
(Humbug) Used CD $5.00
Bjørnar Habbestad on flutes, electronics and digitals, Morton Ohlsen on drums, and Nicolas Field also on drums play “extreme improvised noise,” according to Vital. On “It’s Benign,” “the high-pitched electronics bounce from left to right, with the drums sounded in a true cut up style. In none of the other nine tracks do they let the listener down. The sound level is cranked up, very vibrant and noisy. Certainly not improvised music for the weak at heart.”
Gran Trotto
(Chocolate Monk - choc.424) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Beautiful meandering collage piece from Italian sound artist using tapes, field recordings, voice, harmonica, organ, bells, objects, piano, etc., to weave a weird auditory place full of head scratch, voices, chimes, sing song and distant sounds, almost like a murder mystery that replays scenes from different perspectives. Numbered edition of 60
Turismo Dentale
(Chocolate Monk - choc.284) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Great sound collage from Pescara, Italy. The march of a mechanical army, far-off violin quiver, street accordion roly poly, pause button tom foolery, clanking and chiming, frantic gibbering, organ tones, trumpet bloot, guest vocals by the cover stars (Piermattei’s mother and grandmother), and a ton more.
The Pin Group
(Siltbreeze - SB63) CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Previously released tracks from singles by Roy Montgomery, Peter Stapleton, and Ross Humphries, with Mary Heney and Peter Fryer: “Ambivalence” b/w ”Columbia” (Flying Nun 1981); “Coat” b/w ”Jim” (Flying Nun 1981); Go To Town (Flying Nun 1982); and 11 Years After (Siltbreeze 1993). Covers include The Red Krayola’s “Hurricane Fighter Plane” and the previously unreleased “Low Rider” by War. Liner notes by Bruce Russell.
Mud Hen, Prick And Green Belt
(Chocolate Monk - choc.442) CDR $6.25 (Out-of-stock)
As far as unsolicited demos go, this head healer has to be near the top of the Wino Lodge pile, arriving as it did in a pastel purple envelope that reeked of Old Spice with nowt but a note reading “Take Back Your Mind!” hand-scrawled in green ink, of course. It goes without saying that the mysterious Mr. Duke Pinch performing Engelbert Humperdinck songs on zither — with such somnolent mellowness that it makes Korla Pandit seem like an utter spaz in comparison — is another fine entry in Chocolate Monk’s Brain Salve canon. So don’t tell anyone. Numbered edition of 60
MICHAEL PISARO / TOSHIYA TSUNODA
Crosshatches
(Erstwhile - ERST066) 2xCD $24.25 (Out-of-stock)
A beautiful, flowering extension the Pisaro’s Transparent City (Wandelweiser 2007), where sine tones were chosen to roughly correlate with the perceived pitches of field recordings, resulting in a silvery strand weaving through the soundscape. Echoes of that are here, with roughly musical sounds embedded within a landscape and vice versa. Though not completely serene and contemplative, there does seem to be an elusive connectedness, an interweaving of apparently natural and electronic sounds such as birds, metallic clanks and thin sine tones; or a funereal, low piano tolling that bridges a chasm between the severely abstract and the sincerely (not sentimentally) emotive. A deep, incredible recording.
How Do We Come Out A Cosmetic Front And Go Where
(Chocolate Monk - choc.488) CDR $6.75 (Out-of-stock)
Twenty-seven years after setting foot upon the spoiled carpets of the original Chocolate Monk HQ in Norfolk Square, Mr Julian Bradley beams in somnolent warmth. Many little repeating sections in twirl. In twirl. “What gives with this marvel?” demands the CEO. “Recorded over two afternoons in May,” comes the reply, “Hit by a desire to make weedy, thin songs. Bass and fogged rumble: OUT. Amp buzz and whiney riffs: IN. For now, anyway.” Feel the wheeze of minimal / maximal hypnoid. Edition of 60
Plastic Hooligans
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.389) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Sean Conway emerges once more from his dank Brum environs to follow up last year’s untitled debut with another untitled beauty of hiss and warble. Like some kind of mythical hash peasant, he cooks up weird sounds that are both musical and abstract, all recorded straight to his dying three track tape recorder. A gentle throbbing thing of dreamlike confusion. Highly recommended for all you garbage-eaters out there. Get smart, get saved! Numbered edition of 60
Plastic Hooligans
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.344) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Former stumble-bum of The Gas Shepherds and last heard as the navigational honcho of The UFO Antler Band, Sean Conway compiled this sweet grot at home in Birmingham. The opening track “January Is Telepathic” burbles like lo-fi Basil Kirchin with a terrible eye twitch. “Môr-Forwyn” jaunts down a Moroccan alleyway and emerges into “Where Are You,” a strange street scene augmented by a hypnotic tape loop and acid burble. The closing track “Bronze” conjures up the spirit of Chrome with all the rock’n’roll extracted and replaced with aquatic jelly. Beautiful, desolate brain ooze. Edition of 54
The Inner Workings Of The Mechanism
(PsychoChrist) Used CDR $8.00
Stan Reed of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and The Broken Penis Orchestra channels ear-friendly electroacoustic ideas from a series of minimal, electronic installations, subtitled An Odd Tale Of Life, where creaking and groaning are set in motion in front of the listener while the composer applies various sound treatments. Edition of 50
Afterlife DNA Fingerpainting
(Melon Expander - ME003) CD $13.50
When Points of Friction formed in January of 1981, they had no formal musical training (or even knowledge of freely improvised music) and relied on their voices and whatever else was at hand -- wire mesh, sheet plastic, an old guitar, etc. Gradually the group acquired electric instruments, toy keyboards, multi-track tape recorders, and pedal effects, and moved toward a more processed sound, informed by groups such as Faust, Cluster, Nurse with Wound, Dome, This Heat, Can, AMM, Fripp and Eno, and Negitivland. After a 20-year hiatus Joseph Hammer, Damian Bisciglia (Agog), Tim Alexander, and Kenny Ryman reformed with Mitchell Brown and dropped this, their third official release.
Sprinkle Of Blunder
(Chocolate Monk - choc.600) CD $14.00
“Even on occasions absent slide dissolves and the multiple super-8 projections that ornament their live shows, Points of Friction have remained an audio-visual group since their inception. Listen to Sprinkle of Blunder in complete darkness, and notice if your sponge doesn’t require a good firm squeeze by the end. Is anyone else seeing the mad flashes of painted film, hand-scratched emulsions, layers of transparent material, and magnified vegetation? Good, so we agree, then. The late 2011 session that gives us this album progressed from dark energy to its current state on the material plane much as others before it: Joseph Hammer, Mitchell Brown, Tim Alexander and Damian Bisciglia gathered informally in remote locations where acoustical situations were presumed to exist, waiting and ever-welcoming to seekers and freaks, like a tunnel or an abandoned bakery once owned by a crab-faced character actor from the 1940s. They did a bit of recording together, saved the results to their respective devices, and then played them at various moments during the recording session proper — in this case at Brown’s Los Angeles studio. Around these and other field recordings each had made on his own, Sprinkle of Blunder pulsates at every intersection of Brown’s synth, Hammer’s tape loops, and the hoarder’s paradise of objects, prepared instruments, toys, hot-wired and damaged goods that Alexander and Bisciglia considered their axes. But let’s not forget that the seamlessness of their entangled montages makes accounting for precisely what is being done by whom at any given moment superfluous. Curiosity might not kill the cat but it’s not going to clean its puke off the carpet, either. However we diagnose the root cause of our cognitive maladies, we know they need to be cured with a nuance-rich antidote free of side effects. Points of Friction’s model of the subconscious flows and jars with sublime finesse. It has a life-force all its own, flickering back and forth between the primal states identified in Goethe’s Theory of Gunk (gooey, gaseous and gelatinous) — one big thing ready to be absorbed. But, fair enough, knowing the constituent parts of what’s going into our bodies is an overriding concern of the times. How about this: metal sculptures, bristles, vocalizations, banjo, harmonica, effects processing, sampling, loops, zither, rubber trumpet, badge reel with clock spring, Speak’n’Math, spin whistle, synthesizers, keyboards, drums, field recordings, loops, tape loops, and tape loop manipulation. Mmmmmm, information…. so enlightening. At 12 tracks in 57 minutes, it’s more of a holistic, live-in-the-studio recording than a pharmaceutical confection (though just as sinfully rich as your Aunt Twiggy’s figgy pudding). As with any 600-piece jigsaw puzzle, once assembled in the correct combination, the mosaic is complete. Bisciglia in particular was certain right away that these recordings were suitable for release, and as such it has been in the works for a decade since his passing. It arrives not without a bit of after-the-fact touch up, minor editing, crafting, tailoring — sure. Listening to the master recordings of the jams, Alexander, Brown, and Jay Morales pinpointed certain themes or modalities, not all of which moved in a straight line. They didn’t hesitate to relocate bits and pieces that made sense elsewhere as a transition between two parts of a completely different track. Ultimately it’s the overall mood that connects everything, accounts for the continuity and internal logic, keeps it all related.” Order this item from from Tedium House and receive a complimentary copy of Bananafish #15, which includes an interview with Damian Bisciglia.
Polar Night Stress
(Up) Used CD $5.00
“Polar Night Stress bounces back and forth between PGC’s ‘standard’ steady pace,” notes Vaguely Offensive, “Brilliantly chilling and almost minimalist and horrific ambience, long-form slowburns that should appeal to those Tortoise and Godspeed! fans — [without revealing any] hint [about[ its progression until its totally upon you — and then wonderfully herky-jerky … rockouts where gentle note-tweaking turns into muted scrapes and somber drumming becomes tribal.” Sealed
You Used To Think
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $10.00
Recorded at the tail end of 1968 and remastered for this 2009 reissue, this densely packed album, rooted in blues-laden acid folk, is gradually dominated by more free-form, jazz-influenced vocals that usher a frantic climax. It’s a collage of fucked-up Eastern ragas, jazz, and atonal folk rock, delivered in a beautiful, raspy, feverish, drug-induced howl by Pomerance, a Canadian documentary film maker, poet and singer songwriter firmly linked to a lyrical base, with an eclectic band from a variety of disciplines. Groovy flutes, buzzing sitar, minimalist piano, bongos, sax squawk, and tambourines create a vision-drenched psychedelic stew.
Work Hard Play Harder
(Absurd) Used CDR $7.00
Peter Rehberg & Zbigniew Karkowski at Electrograph 02 at the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens in 2002. Edition of 199
Y
(Radar) Used CD $15.00
The classic 1979 hammering together of funk, jazz, punk, and dub-reggae by Mark Stewart and his coterie of firebrands. 2013 Japanese SHM CD reissue. With inserts but no obi.
Strang
(Scratch) Used CD $5.00
Justice Schanfarber manipulating the sound of guitar with devices and electronics. From 1995
Monotony Of The Veil
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC258) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Velocipedic hoo-ha and freeform click’n’whirrr by this decade-long ever-changing collective of gonks whose sounds are contact-mic’d and amplified implements touching bicycles. They’re a quartet this time: Pat Maher (Glamorous Pat, DJ Yo Yo Dieting, Indignant Senility), Lala Rinera (Diamond Catalog), Derek Monypeny (Freak Of Araby Ensemble) and Cody Brant (Toning).
My Hungry Holes
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC262) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Intricate tales woven in lurid tape, recounted in swatches of multi-sonic flaws, a deeply resonant harmoniousness which answers the surfaces of second nature while guzzling minerals in the first. Melodic ornamentation squirreled into unforgiven cassettes, tonguing spatial magnetics, ribbony skirmish.
Scally Nike Leather Glove Smoke
(Chocolate Monk - choc.416) Cassette $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Chocolate Monk - choc.416) CDR $8.00
Claire Potter’s collaboration with Bridget Hayden Mother To No Swimming Laughing Child (Fort Evil Fruit 2015) was a corker. Always an amazing performer and reader, she reads unaccompanied here. Sure to get your thinking juices flowing. Numbered edition of 60
CDR contains one bonus track.
Gift From The Dead
(Tiny Organ) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Potts’s tough acoustic solo work from 1996 involves a sensual female voice centered on an edgy noise loop. A masterpiece in which the noise carved at regular intervals creates a strange feeling of ecstasy.
Lillies (Of The Uncanny Valley)
(Chocolate Monk - choc.239) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Fruity gargoyles made of orphaned parts. A crazy quilt of misfires, misfits, dusty Chinese gangster soundtracks and wannabe disco hits that almost sound like music. Flights of fancy, airborne clowns, a fear of beans (featuring Dennis Duck’s drumming), turntable woozy, Appletalk gibberish, tributes to Nancarrow’s player pianos, whining dolls and air tank gongs.
Sex Machine
(Tiny Records) Used CD $8.00
Created using Potts’s bent version of the Optigan, a primitive optical “parlor organ sampler” marketed by Mattell Toys in the early 1970s. The recording additionally makes use of mixed subliminal audio. In plain while card mailer. From 2001
Hands On (Voidtronica Chapter Two)
(Chocolate Monk - choc.607) CDR $8.00
This duo’s method requires that they meet and record without either one knowing what instruments the other will bring. The resulting free improvisation with no overdubs or mixing by experimental musician Claus Poulsen from Denmark and Italian improviser and noise performer Michele Scariot (aka Nodolby), dubbed Voidtronica, is the opposite of emptiness: as if driven by a sonic “horror vacui,” the two create the pulses of their tracks by accumulating debris from self-made cassette loops and needle jumping the grooves of prepared vinyl. Voices enter, sighs and whispers blabber through hastily set-up filters and effects. Sounds come from the room, others are feedback from the electronics themselves. It is the emptiness that once again manages to feel musical. The recording session was held in Copenhagen during a break of the SUPERNOISE 2023 festival, where both musicians participated with their personal projects. Edition of 60
Museum Of Imaginary Animals
(Merge - MRG184) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Another swirling, dreamy and joyful offering from Birmingham, England’s melancholic pop wonders. Ten mysterious and moving tracks featuring Rosie Cuckston’s distinctive vocals over a beautifully crafted blend of accordion, zither, theremin, flute, samples, trumpets, and clarinet, along with the standard assortment of guitars, drums, bass and keyboards. Engaging, original, and sweet.
For the Tears of the Land Prayers from the Outer Space - Vol.2
(Elliptical Noise - ALPHAOMEGA6544) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second in My Cat Is An Alien's new series, performed by Roberto Opalio and long time collaborator Ramona Ponzini (Painting Petal on Planet Ghost, Black Magic Disco, Z'ev), concluding with a piece of total cosmic blast... and of archaic transcendence. Cardboard jacket with past-on artwork. Professionally duplicated in Germany.
Barbaro (Ma Non Troppo)
(Ad Hoc) Used CD + DVD $20.00
Unbelievable musicianship on a wide variety of instruments from former Univers Zero dudes who play with such proggy intensity and complexity, pulsating between all-out mayhem and quiet pensive passages, it demands a commitment to focus and concentration. The DVD is just under three hours long and has segments from a 2007 RiO festival in France, a 2006 art rock festival in Portugal and archival videos. Sealed
Life On Bob-Lo Island
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.407) CDR $8.00
Your man inside Coaxial Arts in Los Angeles remains an outsider lurking in the dreams of discarded mannequins. This concept album, about an abandoned amusement park outside of Detroit, Michigan — with its wooden rollercoasters, funhouse, drunk clowns, buzzing taffy machines, identical twins on the boardwalk, poisoned water slides — which became a hobo squat, a decrepit kingdom where strange men lurked, a sort of island of the dammed, cloaks Detroit darkness in a clown’s shroud. Holes puncture a laughing reality as a mask of spinning dice reveals the corroded dream: children playing in yellow haze, black corn swaying to the machines, families disappearing into the night like Polaroids developing in reverse, dogs conspiring with the shadows, machine laugher trapped in the bog, a UFO made of straw slowly crashing into a black swamp, abandoned vacations vacated by lost men. Give one an offering and maybe he’ll tell you a story.
Custic Witch Conflictory And In The Pols
(Chocolate Monk - choc.471) CDR $6.00
Take a moment to force yourself to forget that this junk-fi epic by Dora Doll, Mykl Veet, and Dylan Nyoukis was created during a time when, and on a globe where, air, food, and water weren’t classified as luxury poisons and it was easy to win an argument about whether fascism was bad or not. It’s not gonna hurt anyone to wonder at the gurgle of a cassette tape trying to move forward underneath the weight of someone sitting on the deck, at the flat-topped frequency range, at distortion eclipsed by its ever-present understudy overmodulation, at fist-filled mouths mimicking the slow death of a water-logged shack by the railroad tracks where teenagers huff glue. But these are 25-year-old recordings, no escaping that, and this recently unearthed, unreleased snail-mail collaboration made in 1996 snorfles on the very edges of the shadow cast by the influence of charred psychedelic hypermetropia. Crud fidelity bedroom recordings made straight to cassette. The Blackburn-Whangarei Freundschaft. Oh, the beauty and the damage. Obsolete tools like guitars and piano writhe and grind inside tubes of acidic digestion, decimated on arrival, congenitally defective, esprit-deprived. Very few existential howls from the abyss, plenty of shattered squeals from a mic too close to an amp in the carport. Jacked flutter vistas. Muffled turntable surrender. Wires that shouldn’t be touching. A big ol’ blur of electronic mud-scrape. No one forgets their first. Edition of 75
Guidelines for Basement Non Fidel / Mic Gravy For Freek
(Starlight Furniture Company) 2xCDR $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Their 1995 album plus remixes and demixes by David Cross, Stewart Walden, Scott Colburn, Vote Robot, Jod Russell, Glands of External Secretion, Jeph Jerman, Jeff Fucillo, Landers Duo, Kenui Ullin, June Powers, Clinton Williams, Karen Lollypop, Neil Campbell, Matt Anderson, Mykl Veet, and Thurston Moore.
Sounds of American Doomsday Cults
(Faithways International) CD $15.00
A document of the spellbinding chants, call-and-response decrees, hypnotic invocations and prayers performed against the demon rock’n’roll by the ultra-conservative New Age Church Universal and Triumphant, led by charismatic, gun-hoarding nutjob Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Humorous for its damnation of seemingly harmless rock stars like Billy Joel (which explains why Negativland and other culture-jammers would sample it), this mesmerizing, all-vocal performance should fascinate listeners interested in La Monte Young’s drones and that kind of party music. Guru Ma, RIP, 10/17/09
RIP VIP
(Phage - PT207) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Heavy synth beats, distorted vocals and dual live drumming from this Minneapolis industrial band.
Live 1981
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS40) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Proof that even as far back 1981, teenagers were revolting. Seven rehearsal tracks, recorded on a boombox in the park, and three at a high school talent show, performed by an unruly gang of Northern California wisenheimers led by the class president. Rants are raved, patois is bellowed, metal cans are bashed and crashed, glass bottles are ground together, general percussion and strange instruments are “handled,” toy pianos are pounded upon. Violent entertainment and guerilla war struggle, the reaching of their classmates’ inner minds and sanctifying them through sonic booms are the stated objectives, and barked polemics and nonsense, pomposity and insincerity, dry wit and tasteless camp are the glorious results. Twenty-three minutes of WTF in the grand old tradition of Psycodrama, A Band, Ceramic Hobs, and Drugs Are Nice. Edition of 50.
Annihilationist
(Functional Organisation - FUNCTIONAL018) CD $16.50
A reworking of one of Prurient’s darkest works (originally released on cassette in 2011). Drones, industrial soundscapes, and ambient layers littered with noises and frightening ruptures. Abstract voices and gasps of air bubble to the top, perverse atonal bass tones swing back and forth.
Baron’s Chamber
(Nihilist) Used CD $15.00
“A throbbing slab of low-slung static and burnt out vocals,” observes Evol Kween The Musical. This single thirty-minute track from 2005 features “distinct ‘movements’ weighed down in a sludgy and hopeless atmosphere [where] washes of classical waltz drift in and out at odd intervals, creating a sentimental and kind of creepy contrast to the relentless fuzz…. Vocals take a back seat [sourced though they are from the writings of Jean Feraca], and are well disguised within everything else that’s going on.” Sealed
Cocaine Death
(Hospital - HOS232) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Cocaine Death is a collects three of Prurient's limited edition 10-minute cassettes -- a triptych exploring the relationship between futile pleasure, substance and escape (escape being a myth): “Cocaine Death” is based on the glamor and destruction of toxic nightlife, and features guest vocals from FFH); “Caribbean Overdose” explores a different but strangely direct topic of the sexual reproductive life of plants; “Tylenol Murders” expands on the sounds of the others to further limits of cracked static, strained vocals and strange melodic loops. For the diehards, two unreleased tracks of Prurient are included. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2008.
Shipmaker's Diary
(Groundfault) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
For those who have grown immune to regular dunkings in steaming cauldrons of hot tar and hydrochloric acid (as pleasant a homeopathic remedy for ailments of the skin as they may be), Dominick Fernow sloshes 33 minutes of unbelievably thorny, hard-scouring noise, adding a new chapter to the Total Pain, Instant Death playbook. Here, the high-concentration electronic defects of Wolf Eyes meet the stroboscopic rainbows of distorto-screech that the Load Records crowd takes their shirts off for.
II
(Chocolate Monk - choc.453) CDR $8.00
Were the second ChocoMo album by Kev Nickells (violin voice, objects), Chris Parfitt (flute, clarinet, percussion, electronics), and Al Strachan (cornet, electronics, field recordings, found sound) presented to you, me, and the spastic Mennonite as the soundtrack to a film about a sleep-deprived desert castaway struggling with mixed feelings about a residual tail, no one would blame either of us for asking if the rescue UFO at the end seemed realistic. Which is something, given how condemnation of the other is one of our era’s most versatile social currencies. Not to oversell it, but the trio’s ten tracks here are kind of astounding in the consistent economy of their journeys from disparate zones such as distressed whining, daxophonic yoib, synthetic dream-theory, tense tribal curlicues, pizzeria tragedy, and crepuscular harmonics. Without a forced or unnatural move anywhere, Psanck II slips unscathed between the ribbons of razor wire that separate blue chip avant garde chamber ensembles from the nonmusical and unwashed ineptitudes who jostle household objects for a living. Personal experience allows me to assure anyone who may wonder whether residence in the latter is as comfortable a hometown as one could ask for (it is); still, Psanck’s epistles from the outside world are more welcome than guilt-free cinnamon rolls. Edition of 60
III
(Chocolate Monk - choc.619) CDR $8.00
Of the bucolic-uncanny / leaving things in the sun, Psanck III swings like an ADHD Necks. Careful listening but none too reverent. Horns, strings, electronic flotsam and, dare I say, jetsam. Psanck are an improvising band but more in the sense of sounding like field mice somehow tasked with making themes for children’s TV shows. Musicians, surely, but ones that have set their sights on wow and flutter amongst the melodic sprinkling. Edition of 60
Psanck
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.374) CDR $8.00
Kev Nickells, Chis Parfitt and Al Strachan got so goosed up on the combination of scritchy violin, growling cornet, pingy toys, electronics and sop sax that they yodeled in unison “let’s record.” At some time down the line they pieced together a thing full of beautiful, otherworldly imaginings, like a less processed Biota with that soft creeping Af Ursin vibe. Numbered edition of 60
Black American Flag
(Evolving Ear - EE08) CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two longish improvisations by guitarist Chris Forsyth, Jaime Fennely on electronics, and percussionist Fritz Welch, recorded in the studios of Columbia University’s WKCR, and live in Brooklyn. “Headfirst Into the Flames” is all harsh sputters and raw scrapings, notable for Welch’s upfront percussion. “May Day” sets up intersecting drones and percussive lines, swirling and evolving in exquisite tension.
Transmissions 104.5
(Blossoming Noise - BN061) 10xCD $50.00 (Out-of-stock)
New forms of radio techniques, wild cut-ups, sound recycling and sound manipulation, live-in-studio noise, and thematic sessions excerpted from the monthly radio show hosted by Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant) and Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck) between 1989 and 1995 on Radio LORA in Zurich. Custom letterpress printed box, individually numbered with text and photo pamphlet.
Time Vaccine
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.400) CDR $7.00
Philadelphia reprobate Cody Brant joined by Tim Alexander (LAFMS, Points of Friction, Moth) for a real ear-greaser. The duo – both of them collagists and multimedia-ists by nature — share a near-telepathic bond when it comes to organizing textures and colors, shaping primal meeting grounds, discovering soundscapes together by taking turns painting in the elements, making horizontal gestures while the other works out vertical contrasting marks, creating an atmosphere while the other counteracts with a chilling arrhythmia. Numbered edition of 60.
Where’s The Party?
(Richmond Records) CD + hardcover book $25.00
Deluxe reissue of the only album (Richmond Records 1990) by this East Bay band of proto-punk freakazoids, plus two bonus tracks. Forty-eight-page book includes extensive interviews, band history, photos, and, best of all, tons and tons of John Seabury’s artwork. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2012
Sloth / Psykick Witch
(Independent Woman) Used split CDR $10.00
Psychedelic sludge and bleak industrial power-rock. Numbered edition 17/25 in screen-printed sleeve.
No Love – No Hate
(Fishrider - FISH002) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Puddle have been around, in one form or another, since 1984, attracting critical appreciation and notoriety in equal measures for “pop as shambling and sweet as you could possibly imagine.” That is, when this unique New Zealand underground music institution’s strange odyssey wasn’t getting derailed (which it was, frequently). No Love - No Hate is George Henderson’s great leap forward, recorded in the 1990s but not released in 2009. The Puddle’s idiosyncratic character and wry, fuzzy delivery is infectious.
The Shakespeare Monkey
(Fishrider - FISH003) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second of the Puddle’s albums following their 2006 comeback — a sprawling masterpiece of wigged out dreamy indie-pop. Articulate and well-read, George Henderson’s typified literate guitar music in the 1980s and ’90s New Zealand.
An Illustrated History
(Bar/None - BRNCD128) Used CD $6.00
Infectious J-pop from 2002. Punched barcode.
Compilation Submission Collection
(Synthnoise) Used CDR $10.00
“Includes all tracks through 2007 except those that were vinyl sides, recorded live, excerpts from existing releases or on joke compilations, some of which never came out.”
I’ll Take No Chance Near a Volcano
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CDR $12.00
Stefan Neville shifts away from lo-fi aesthetics and noise explorations toward more free improvisational moments with a wider range of sonorities, while maintaining his outsider freak folk orientation. From 2001
Duckside of the Moon
(Dual Plover - DP40) CD $10.25 (Out-of-stock)
Not to be confused with the Purple Loon, Purple Diver, Purple Grebe, Purple Gallinule or Purple Coot the Purple Duck is the more common name for the best MC in the world—hot enough to burn down a herd of yobbo MCs like pieces of wood. Dual Plover fans undoubtedly remember the Duck from his appearance on the seminal Suicidal Rap Orgy album Genital Warfare. The less threatening side of duckmania is on display here, with dope hip hop tracks alongside a quick succession of genres that fly hard and fast (everything from the punk rock of "Love Tampon" to the tear-jerking ballad "Everyone's Dying."). Australian import, as if you couldn't tell.
Oven Bait
(Adult Contemporary) CD $10.00
Savage! Young! Wild! Jon Spencer, Julia Cafritz, and the rest in all their snarling, sneering, spoiled-rotten-Ivy-Leaguer glory, recorded live in the mid-’80s. Extremely lo-fi to begin with and made even more unlistenable after the fact by disgruntled percussionist Tom Smith, who originally released the tapes in an act of revenge after the band gave him the boot. He thought Oven Bait would embarrass Pussy Galore, but it has gone on to achieve near-mythical status as one of the rawest, most insanely (un)produced recordings you’re likely to hear. Good luck sitting through all 55 minutes.
Hypertension Classics Volume 2
(Harbinger Sound - HAS030) 4xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Mark Durgan has been doin' the lord's work within UK noise since 1986 (via his Birthbiter label) and keeping his shoulder to the wheel with recordings for Broken Flag, Artware, MSBR, RRR and others. This luscious doorstop collects the long out-of-print "Hypertension Classics" double-seven (sold at shows in Japan in the 90s), plus a four-hour “noise assault [that] combines the mid-air ectoplasmic gloop of mid-period Merzbow with a bone-grasping tactile edge that seems to come more out of post-Industrial DIY traditions as articulated by New Blockaders.…” according to our astute colleagues at Volcanic Tongue.
Trace Element Syntax
(Pure) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A clangorous cartoon soundtrack … at double speed through distortion pedals,” muse our friends at Subterranean. “A maniacal fun-house of mind-bending noise” from 1997 by Mark Durgan “serving up old-school power electronics since the early ’80s. Sure to entertain and drive you out of your mind.”
Entangled Stench
(Akti) CD $12.00
Finnish free-form thrash metal through the prism of free jazz, noise and free improvisation.
Seven Is In Rhinog Crown
(Chocolate Monk - choc.229) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Brighton-based audio-investigator sends chewed postcards from the eldritch heart of England,” Herr Mustache explains. “Melted snapshots of tea-breaks in post-diluvian seaside cafes, fading playgrounds ascending to heaven as the radiation levels rise, and village bells dissolving into pure light. Like Terry Riley’s Music For The Gift, were the gift a box full of eggshell and moss. Illogical, yes, but she has the tapes to prove it.” Silkscreened jacket. Numbered edition of 50.
Stones That Move And Grow
(Chocolate Monk - choc.459) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Further excursions into Rowan Forestier-Walker’s hidden sound world. Field recordings, VLF radio, foil, sand, crystal singing bowl, motors, copycat, Aeolian harp, wood stove, frequenting animals, frozen lake. Edition of 60
Antarctica
(Miramar) Used CD $20.00
Magnificent field recordings from the late 1990s made with an array of hydrophones and mics suited to above-the-ice work. A rich and spectacular soundscape.
R.O.T.2
(Veglia) Used CDR $4.00
“Lonely chord organ / accordion / hurdy gurdy grinds away on one or, at most, two chords” while “electric guitar picks out notes in the … haze,” says Blastitude. “Some of it is quite melancholy and indigo in mood.” Disc in plastic box with tape-on name and title. From 2001
Cosmic Birth
(Turgid Animal - TA331) CD $10.00
Recorded by Pete Burn and Dean Glaister in 2003 and 2004 using a variety of places, moods and instruments, Cosmic Birth as a whole flows like a river, surprisingly, with long drawn out psychedelic tones that buck under guitar motifs, and heavy, metallic bass forming the album's core. Mastered by James Plotkin.
One (Snow Mud Rain)
(Erstwhile - ERST051) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
One (Snow Mud Rain) is the first duo CD by Peter Rehberg (Pita) and Marcus Schmickler, two long-time two of the leaders in the electronic revolution. Despite having barely worked together as a duo previously, the results were so successful that after two days, the record was basically completed. Its rawness and energy hearkens back to the explosive power of early Mego bursts, further enhanced by the remarkable density and clarity of the recording. “It's not all brimstone / hellfire throughout,” Mimaroglu reminds us, “[T]he second piece devolves into subdued spectral smear after smacking us around for a bit with its fully-rectified stammer (which reminds of recent Whitehouse more than anythings else); other spots introduce jittery, off-axis grains that echo Florian Hecker's recent work with wave geometry.... [T]hese two are master frequency-range craftsman; both are in peak form throughout.”
Battle
(Wolcnum) CD $10.75
Three intense tracks of raw and proud pagan black metal from Bulgaria. Edition of 500.
Sediment
(Metonymic) Used CD $15.00
First release by the trio of Peter Stapleton (drums, synth, radio), Kim Pieters (bass, organ, drums, vocals) and Danny Butt (guitar, amplifier, synth) that sends you floating on a magic carpet over the city via filmic improvised drones. From 1995
Live 1972
(Over Level) Used CD $15.00
Early handheld audience recordings of fine Japanese rock psychedelia from 1972 (or 1974 or 1976, according to discogs). Frequently compared in sound and spirit to the Velvets and The Dead, for this slogged-out set Hawkwind comparisons may be more appropriate. Play it loud enough and you’ll think you are there, holding the mic. Six tracks: “Field of Artificial Flowers,” “More Deeply Than the Night,” “White Waking,” and untitled improvisation, “Ice Fire,” and “The Last One.”
Awake!
(Harbinger Sound - 054) 8xCD $85.00 (Out-of-stock)
Harbinger Sound's CD version expands upon the original 6x cassette (Broken Flag 1985) to include an additional recording of the Live at Morden Tower show, and "Fistfuck 2," which was omitted from the original release in error. Comes in a ten-inch deluxe boxset with each disc individually packaged in a digipak. Includes poster, two pins, signed insert and book. Edition of 500.
Homeless
(Freek) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
One of Mundy and Best’s most lumbering and intense. With Anthony di Franco and Stuart Dennison from Skullflower, Homeless is denser and freer with unrelenting drum work and unbridled stringed chaos.
We Created It, Let’s Take It Over Vol I
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 CD reissue of “Suction,” “Throatsuck,” “Deathtoll,” and “Ramleh,” from 31/5/1962 – 1982 cassette (Broken Flag 1982); “Emaciator,” “Onslaught,” and “Phenol,” from Onslaught cassette (Iphar 1982); and “Fistfuck” from Live New Force cassette (Broken Flag 1983).
We Created It, Let’s Take It Over Vol II
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 CD reissue of “McCarthy,” “Purge,” “Drancy,” “Korpolagnia,” “A Return To Slavery,” “Nordhausen,” “New Force,” and “Phenol,” from cassettes and vinyl previously released in 1982 and 1983.
We Created It, Let’s Take It Over Vol III
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 CD reissue of “Squassation,” “Prossneck,” “The Handy of Glory I,” and “The Hand of Glory II,” from The Hand of Glory seven-inch (Broken Flag 1983), plus a previously unreleased fifteen-minute track recorded live at The Roebuck.
Amarillo Ramp (for Robert Smithson)
(Starlight Furniture Company - *8) CD $14.00
Sonic Youth’s left-minded and soft-spoken lead guitarist wields a big stick with a solo outing of the highest sonic magnitude. The title track is a 34-minute live recording from 1994 with after-the-fact wave-shaping and spectral improvement by Rafael Toral, followed by an instrumental “Anagrama” type frolic with Steve Shelley and Thurston Moore. Plus, a couple of soundtrack excerpts and a John Lennon cover featuring the late Epic Soundtracks.
Broken Circle / Spiral Hill
(Starlight Furniture Company - *2) CD $10.00
Five early ’90s tracks by one of the original lords of howling, including a Sebadoh cover. With cover art by Michael Morley (of The Dead C. and Gate), this is the flailing ultimate in rubberized, flatline wawaaarph.
False
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR038) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Debut album of heavy power electronics in the vein of Bloodyminded, Slogun, etc.
Errant Angels
(Soleilmoon - SOL34) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hypnotic, otherworldly ethno-ambience recorded live in the studio at UK pirate radio station ICE-FM.
Fallen Gods
(Staalplaat) Used CD $10.00
Throaty intonations, woodwinds, repetitive rhythms, tabla loops, choral synth waves. A transcendental sound odyssey from 1994.
Recurring (Dream Circle)
(Soleilmoon - SOL11) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three remixes of tracks from Dream Circle (DOVe 1992) plus then-new 1996 recordings.
The Fires Of The Borderlands
(Release) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Malevolent minimalism from 1998. Mechanical repetition, deep drones, sinister synth washes.
The Kirghiz Light
(Staalplaat - STCD097) Used 2xCD $17.50
Formerly of Zoviet France, Robin Storey blends Eastern rhythms and trance with harsh beats and percussion on this 1995 release.
Vernal Crossing
(Staalplaat - STCD082) Used CD $12.00
Mind-bending tapestries of minimalistic percussion patterns and quasi-melodic drones from 1993, fused with doses of white noise.
Turkish Coffee and Twice Baked Potatoes
(Chocolate Monk - choc.583) CDR $8.00
These days there’s usually 1618 kilometres between Samaan Fieck and Mark Groves. The distance between the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and Greater Melbourne can be covered in around 17 hours. However, you’ll want to break that up with an overnight stay in Sydney or Newcastle to avoid driver fatigue. A flight’s probably a better option, but the closest regional airport to the Northern Rivers is Ballina. It’s privately owned and had a major upgrade a year ago. The updated building only allows for one security screening lane and one body scanner through which everyone must pass. Insufficient infrastructure means that the security queue is diabolically long and slow. In light of all this, Samaan and Mark tend to favor file transfers and conversations over Zoom to make Red Wine and Sugar music. Turkish Coffee and Twice Baked Potatoes was made slowly using this approach between 2018 and 2023. Edition of 60
American Masonry
(Anarchymoon) Used CD $2.00
“Recorded in an enormous warehouse in Tulsa where Bob Bellerue used the structure’s natural resonances to bolster whatever kind of damage he’s applying,” says Outer Space Gamelan, this “great slab of computer-generated and cement-slapped spectral waft [is] a dark grey cloud of fear and tension…. The other track is an angrier whack of synth-induced squalor, careening from the right side of the brain to the left, gently washing away only to roar back for a screaming finale. Excellently executed spaced, outer-reaching drone.” In chipboard, letter-pressed jacket
They Sang and Chanted For Hours, Then The Locked in Hundreds Set Themselves Ablaze
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR093) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks of the heavy, slow, despairing sludge recorded in 2004, before this doom band from the UK fell apart. Members were in (or went on to be in) Hard To Swallow, Charger, Gruel, Narcosis, Like A Kind Of Matador and They Are Cowards. Edition of 500.
Subterranean Transmigration
(Phage - PT208) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
A joint exploration of remote territories and deep, cavernous tonal atmospheres. Finely tuned death-industrial synth drones blaze a harrowing journey across desolate, frozen psychological landscapes.
Natural Incapacity
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS039) 2xCD $19.50 (Out-of-stock)
The noise mantras of twin sisters Rachal and Roxann Spikula transcribe the harsh realities of urban blight that complicate and threaten their survival. As with Birth Of An Older, Much More Ugly Christ (Hanson 2010), Natural Incapacity sprouts from a similar research and development, manifesting from the sonic pollution that proliferates in their current residence of Richmond, California: the seamless, glacial accretion of locomotive grind, subharmonic environmental rumble, nocturnal street sweeping, and the quavering hum of toxic chemicals perpetually leached into the water table. By design, Natural Incapacity’s oil-stained drone is completely relentless, implying neither beginning nor end to this cycle of contamination. The duo’s industrial meditation recognizes abjection, horror, and defeat as the prevalent conditions to existence. Even as a declared rejection to those conditions, Natural Incapacity is engulfed in a bleak nihilism constantly churning back upon itself. Grizzled antecedents can be found in the apocalyptic works of Maurizio Bianchi, Kevin Drumm’s Imperial Distortion, and Organum’s Vacant Lights. Includes download of the composition in unedited form. Hand-rusted metal covers by the corrosion artist Jim Haynes. Edition of 150
The Clockwork Ammonite Shells
(Worry) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Soaring analogue tape and synth explorations from 1997 by Ian Middleton
Proberta Gerber
(Pure) Used CD $5.00
“Psychedelic, organic, dynamic” is how Jason Kushnir sums up this 1996 disc. “Spacious, rolling reverberations swirl majestically around a full spectrum of waterlogged frequencies. Low-end, mild-mannered oscillators offer themselves up to ultrasharp, salivating upper-register incisors.”
Fragments and Articulations
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
Fragments and Articulations solidifies Renou’s transformation from dark ambient post-industrial figure to downright experimental soundsmith. The album presents three long works of sound art (between 19 and 25 minutes), each one developed out of a short sound source. The initial source becomes an excuse to unfold rich tapestries of articulated sounds and textures, like a magic hat trick. From 2002
Pool
(Cut) Used CD $7.00
“An album of haunting delicacy,” says Ampersand And Etc., “[S]low pulses, fading resonances, soft clicks and white noise shudder/beats…. [R]estrained and subtle minimalism.
Repeat
(Cut) Used CD $7.00
“Layers of metal-on-metal percussion,” The Wire informs us, “Chugging tape loops, real drums and scrawny, bodiless guitar in a series of semi-improvised sound snatches…, organize[d] into hypnotic yet resolute rock blasts.”
Select Dialect
(Cut) Used CD $6.00
Neutered percolations search for toeholds as they ascend cliffs toward absolute oxygen deprivation. Elastic pika bubbles swell and deflate, creating a terrain like a diagonal pachinko machine heated by sulfur. The first elevator in Europe arrives in the marble-floored lobby of a palatial hotel as toastmasters from every banquet ever held saunter out of the past to drink once again to the health of ostriches with steel drum skulls.
Temporary Contemporary
(For 4 Ears) Used CD $12.00
“Seven untitled tracks concentrating on the interplay of Nakamura’s self-sampling and solo (unconnected) mixing desk operations and Kahn’s percussion and sampling,” says Freq. “Their methodology for each track is essentially the same, building loops from fragments of percussion or feedback from the mixer, and taking the process from there, layering slow accretions of half-abstracted sounds into constructions of contemplative repetition and harmonic counterpoint and rhythmic interaction. There is quite a ceremonial aspect to the resulting music…, with a simple electronic squeak, subterranean bass motif or a ringing piece of struck, resonant metal making for an ear-catching point of entry into each piece.”
Phoenician Flu And Ancient Ocean
(Holy Mountain) Used CD $4.00
A seething mish-mash of psychedelia, krautrock and free-noise — absolutely staggering material that sounds like everything and nothing, baby.
Music Is The Music Language
(Ikuisuus) Used CD $3.00
“The most abstract and phantasmagoric release yet from the prolific Ashtray Navigations collaborator and bass-player for The Wow. ‘Swing + Maths’ begins with a subtle electronic trill and what sound like haphazardly manipulated hand drums. One instantly gets the feeling of being trapped somewhere on the wrong side of the solar system. Suddenly we’re transported to the bottom of an ocean, seemingly inside a pedal-powered submarine, as ‘Mother Legato’ shifts the mood. On ‘Spacious Yowl,’ delicious acoustic guitar resta atop the diluted remains of a synthetic beast’s mating call. Echoey chirps wrapped up in a gooey amorphous hum are prevalent on ‘Overcome Your Infinity (Fornever).’ Subtly manipulated tribal percussion – undoubtedly produced electronically – on ‘Curiosity’ leads into a final acoustic guitar number, the lush ‘Serial Hoper.’ There’s no shortage of whirrs, chirps, hiccups and burps in the forty-odd minutes of engaging, envelope-pushing music here.” 8pp card jacket. From 2005
Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018
(Pica Disk - PICA047) 6xCD + DVD + book $45.00 (Out-of-stock)
Since 1993, this Buenos Aires group, led by its Down’s syndrome drummer/vocalist and spiritual architect Miguel Tomasín has been a universe completely of its own. Booklet 1: Liner notes by Marc Masters, Lasse Marhaug, Oren Ambarchi, Sindre Bjerga, Sixto Fernando, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, C. Spencer Yeh, John Olson and others. Booklet 2: Photos, artwork, press clippings, quotes, flyers and posters (most have not been published before). Disc 1: Early recordings, some material from small edition cassettes, some previous unreleased. Disc 2: The never-released Vedeosmas Tecretre album, recorded 2001-2003. Disc 3: Selections from the 2001-2002 Jaz Ronco Jits sessions, previously available as very limited CDRs. Disc 4: Previously unreleased conceptual pieces, including performances at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, NASA in Houston, the Atomium in Brussels, outtakes from the 10,000 Chickens Symphony and from public street protests in Buenos Aires during the December 2001 crisis. Disc 5: The never-released Roniles Dasa Selebro album, recorded 2000-2001. Disc 6: Previously unreleased collaborations with Dr. Socolinsky, Pauline Oliveros, Nelson Gastaldi, Jazzy Mel and Acid Mothers Temple. DVD: A 90-minute collage of live performances and other videos that offer a rare portal to the world of Reynols. All discs come in individual printed wallets. Edition of 500.
Rampotanza Grodo Rempelente
(Locust) Used CD $8.00
“Sourced heavily in recordings made in a busy Buenos Aires street in 1994,” reports Rovi about the third volume in the Met Life Locations Sound Series, titled after “another one of drummer / guru Miguel Tomasín’s inspired manglings of Spanish, is another fine example of the kind of blurring of the difference between life and art at which the Argentinean avant-gardists are uncannily gifted. The second track, recorded in July 2002, remixes the same street sounds into a mist of grainy drone … before a crazy psychedelic jam session kicks in [where] Tomasín’s utterly original and totally wonky drumming steers the rest of the group into all kinds of odd corners, with hilarious and wonderful results.” Punched barcode. Sealed
Music Martinis and Misanthropy
(NER) Used CD $10.00
Acoustic and electronic neo-folk mellowness, Jackie-Gleason-inspired restructurings of works by The Carpenters, Rod McKuen, and Ragnar Redbeard, and brutal, Social Darwinist lyrics and poetry. With Douglas P. of Death In June on guitar and backing vocals, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus and L'Orchestre Noir on bass, Rose McDowall of Strawberry Switchblade, Spell, and Sorrow on guitar and backing vocals, Michael Moynihan of Blood Axis on drums, and Bob Ferbrache on piano and surf zither.
Mrs Rice
(Dual Plover - DP41) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Only the government of Australia would dispatch a lunatic artist known for smashing amplified glass against his face to China as a cultural ambassador. Fortunately for Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham), such a profile describes him perfectly. In Beijing for less than two months, he formed the pick up band Rice Corpse (named after the Chinese character for shit, which itself is the combination of two characters for corpse and rice), and jammed with them four times (two of which appear on Mrs Rice) before heading off for a ten-city tour of China. First to be recruited for drums was Yang Yang, whose antics in his own band Mafeisan have earned him a reputation as the craziest exponent of the conservative Beijing scene. His ultra-loud, out, and proud personality starkly contrasts with the mild-mannered and brutally shy saxophonist Li Zenghui, who came to the project as pianist, because, simply put, there were no suitable pianists in the city. Together as a trio for a limited time and without a common language to interrupt, they managed to create six varied and strangely focused improvisations. This despondent attempt at musicality is by far Abela’s most accessible work to date; the Yang-and-Li rhythm section forced the seasoned glass man to take the instrument in surprising new directions. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009
Misc Loops #1-#3
(Chocolate Monk - choc.595) CDR $8.00
The first three installments in this series of meditative loop exploration, previously released released between 2017 – 2018, collected onto a single disc. Each one utilizes homemade / wobbly / crusty tape loops that blend elements of field recordings with distorted and stretched spa / ambient music. All tracks were recorded in one take onto semi-functional and poorly maintained gear for that additional background noise, hiss, and distortion to bathe in during a drizzly late afternoon. Edition of 60
Unbalanced Contraptions
(Chocolate Monk - choc.575) CDR $8.00
The label sewn into the back of Norwich-based weirdo Michael Ridge’s shirt reads “Michael creates work incorporating elements of sound, video, electronics, sculpture, performance, collage. Key areas investigation include utilizing non-musical materials in sound and composition works, employing elements of chance, pieces with an auto destructive element or that degrades over a set duration, the metaphysical / self-referential, awkwardness in live performance and relishing cacophony. Compact audio cassettes / tape loops, phonographic records and microphones are commonly featured in his practice and used as the basis for sculptural / installation pieces.” Edition of 60
Book Of Secrets
(Alien Music Productions) Used CD $8.00
“Fantastically warped improv in which complex encrypted messages fly back and forth at blinding speed,” says Opprobrium, “An insane barrage of tonal bombast and palette overload.” Ridgway’s slinky, pointillist technique on guitar synthesizer and prepared guitar bears a strange, unique array of microtones, while Unruh bleeds notes together on bass clarinet in a worried, tangled skein of oddly pitched sounds. From 1996.
Shattered Landscape
(Alien Music Productions - AMP9401) Used CD $5.00
Decidedly abnormal and distinctly alien free improv duets from 1994. Guitar-synth-player Ridgway flickers into and out of sound worlds where stuttering crunches pass into golden washes and dissonant warbles morph into ringing telephones.
Card Mango #3
(Chocolate Monk - choc.620) Magazine + CDR $13.00
“You may be wondering where your latest issue of card mango had got to,” says R R-S, “For it did not arrive through your letterbox during this past frightful winter. Fear not, as issue 3 is a special edition.” Full-color, bonus disc of the hottest video game of the year — Boxing Barnies. But whats so special about it? Well not only is it in full colour but it also comes with a bonus disc of the hottest video game of the year Boxing Barnies. Numbered edition of 60
Cardboard Sane
(Chocolate Monk - choc.476) CDR $6.25 (Out-of-stock)
Our beloved Cardboard Prince returns with corrugated heart worn firmly on sleeve. Deep takes from an outsider looking in, who “wanted to make an album that was more specific about really suicidal mental health from my experience with it in the past,” admits RRS. “I wanted to crack fewer jokes in the first half and be honest about how bad it can get, but I also wanted part of it to be about how much of a party it can be when u have survived hell and u keep it card x.” Edition of 50
Snack A Delica
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.399) CDR $7.00
A fine selection of mostly live actions that capture the magnetic power of The Cardboard Prince. He works hard so you can get down. Numbered edition of 60.
The Best of RRS 2005-2019
(Chocolate Monk - choc.463) CDR $8.00
Just in time for the festering season, the Cardboard Prince finally bows to the demands of his avid fans and struts out this total stocking thriller. No filler here, just all the hits from between 2005 -2019. Edition of 60
The Opera
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.368) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Further insight into the subtle, misshapen mind of The Cardboard Prince, whose disorienting bedroom odor and outsider vision conjure up quivering flashes of the spirit, yummy fud funk, noise, thought and dance. Numbered edition of 60
Tupperwave
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.338) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
The shuffling, self-appointed Cardboard Prince gets down in post-Brexit Britain. With no wish to antagonize the “no audience” underground, he wants to wrap his arms around them, purple pleather jacket unzipped for their delight and comfort. As he notes himself, he isn’t an outsider, he can stay indoors for days, mind and body deep in his own little universe. Come take a peek through the crack of his bedroom door, try not to splutter. Edition of 42
Way Out Yonder
(Sri Moonshine Music) CD $10.00
Spontaneous improvisations and compositions by iconic composer and minimalist pioneer Terry Riley (on piano, voice, melodica and electronics) and his guitarist / composer son Gyan Riley, at three live performances in Canada, Japan and the US.
Selections From Bands 1985 - 2001
(Chocolate Monk - choc.508) Magazine + CDR $15.00
Painter, clothing-defiler, visionary of hilarious takes on the conventions of wretched pop culture and the metastasizing celebrity of public figures, Rinne is best known as the vocalist and lyricist for a gooey mound of Bay Area bands that have been spreading their indelible stains and demented approaches since the 1980s. His unmistakable tone-deaf warble is half overripe takedown, half sado-masochistic simian yelp. And he absolutely despises eucalyptus trees. At last, the Left Coast’s number-one Hagar huffer and outsider art wonker delivers an A5 booklet of posters and flyers of his numerous brain-shattering bands, plus a disc of tunes by National Disgrace, The Bringdownzz, The Framptons, The Oswald, The Sentimentals and The Patchkordzz. “We wound up in a dirty garage surrounded by shredded wood, paint cans, old records,” recalls the meat puppet of the hour. “Tortured by years of fad pop, all we could do was fight it off, banging on empty cans and screaming, vomiting all the pop music back into the aether. By sanding, grinding or melting old farty records we could gain a new truth from them. The old farts were always going to be supplanted by new farts but the struggle for sonic truth lives on.” Numbered edition of 75
Beta Wave Nemisis
(Small Doses - DOSE80) CD $11.25 (Out-of-stock)
On the premiere recording of the monumental collaboration by Daniel Jansson (Deadwood) and Osman Arabi (20.sv, Seeker), dark ambient textures blend with industrial soundscapes, and harsh noise floats with minimal drone and power electronics vocalizations. One movement flows well into the next, making for an intense and epic debut recording. Art and design by Seldon Hunt.
Agnostic Diaries
(Black Rose) Used CD $14.00
Consisting of raw materials from 2005, reworked and processed between 2016 and 2017, Agnostic Diaries centers around voice recording collaborations that, for one reason or another, fell through or never saw the light of day. From the fragmented communications on ‘Le Ballet’ (from George Antheil’s Ballet Mecanique) to the processed speeches and deep breathing of “For Gerald,” to the less treated dialogues of “Caute!” Ralf Wehowsky uses these voices, processed or otherwise, as he would any other sound source, do not constitute vocal pieces per se. Digital sounds processed into low fidelity bitrates is also common to many tracks here. On the aforementioned ‘Le Ballet,’ they form a framework onto which computer blips and shrill, painful electronics are grafted. ‘July 2006’ feels like a continuation, albeit one with erratic reverbs, cricket-like chirps and what could even be a Geiger counter. Anla Courtis’s squalling electric guitar shines through ‘For Gerald’ clearly, alongside spacy electronics and what almost resembles a spate of kick drums, or perhaps someone transitioning from walking into running on a hard surface. ‘Monotype #6’ is another notable standout with its multi-layered fragmented voice (courtesy of Dylan Nyoukis) and stabbing horror strings, creating a complex, yet menacing end to the record.
Ajatollah Carter (eaRLy W 4)
(Editions Zero - ED6) CD $15.00
Live recordings from 1980 by avant maverick Ralf Wehowsky (PD, P16.D4) and crew. Debauched, low-key back-room skronk of the sort incorrigibly unskilled combos such as Door and The Window have delighted dozens of listeners worldwide meets the beyond-rational improv that over-educated Euros can play drunk off their asses on Jagermeister. Numbered edition of 444 copies, in a textured card gatefold jacket. Imported from Europe
Pullover
(Table Of The Elements) Used CD $4.00
Four German language texts by Markus Caspers expressed in German, regardless of the native tongue the various readers. On the semantic versions of the pieces, untreated vocals are permitted to appear, sometimes fading in and out, sometimes whispered and echoed, and sometimes even in a straight reading and sung melodically, while no recognizable voices appear on the abstract versions. Here the listener gets radio static, harsh waveforms, buzzes, burbles, whistles, and other unnamable treatments. Overall, Wehowsky retains the complex character of the human voice and balances the texts themselves and their transformations into abstract sound, with the possibilities and limitations of using such restricted sound sources. From 1996
Revu et Corigé
(Trente Oiseaux) Used CD $5.00
A shattered déjà vu of truncated drones from 1995, flashbacks of chirp orgies where flea-sized harpsichords and polygon-shaped asphalt flatteners get magnetized and helplessly swept between the talons of an electroacoustic tuning fork. The effect is akin to sitting in a barber chair spinning around as a ballerina with a fish head pumps it higher and higher towards the ceilings of 30 different cathedrals per minute. Slow, without an end, almost nauseating in its relentlessness, but completely lacking in bombast, Revu Et Corrige eventually settles into a roundtable discussion between security beavers, tuba rehearsals in a mausoleum, government-inflicted pigment removal from the bills of live toucans, and bowling ball races in a lighthouse. As debates go, this one rages.
Tulpas
(Selektion) Used 5xCD $25.00
A generous and wide-ranging collection of “reinterpretations and transformations” of Ralf Wehowsky’s 1990s work by Artificial Memory Trace, Aube, Ramon Bauer, Marc Behrens, Brume, Contrastate, Crawl Unit, Peter Duimelinks, John Duncan, Werner Durand, Michael Gendreau, David Grubbs, Idea Fire Company, Ryoji Ikeda, Antanas Jasenka, Eric Lanzillotta, Francisco López, Lionel Marchetti, Koji Marutani, Roel Meelkop, Meeuw, Jérôme Noetinger, Noise-Maker’s Fifes, Jim O’Rourke, Peter Rehberg, RLW, Runzelstirn & Gurglestock, Bruce Russell, Minoru Sato, Jos Smolders, Asmus Tietchens, Giancarlo Toniutti, Toy Bizarre, Toshiya Tsunoda, Frans de Waard, Ralf Wehowsky, and Achim Wollscheid. Tulpas “combines two major aspects of his work,” clarifies All Music Guide, “Pieces … in a permanent state of flux (as witnessed by the number of times RLW has reworked his own pieces over the years), and the collaborations, which provide … new material and new impulses…. Different participants received different inputs, ranging from a score to sequences on floppy disk to original sound material on DAT. The starting points range from … recent pieces (including seven interpretations of Nameless Victims) to earliest work with P16.D4…. The degree of collaboration also varies, in some cases involving several exchanges of material. When all the pieces had been delivered, Wehowsky edited, remastered, and sequenced them.” In a cloth-bound book with 40 pages of essays, notes, photos, and sketches.
Views
(Anomalous) Used CD $3.00
The P16.D4 founder’s first truly solo release, featuring four new compositions based on instrumental improvisations, using simple devices (tone-generators, percussion toys, music boxes, electric toothbrush and electric guitar) played in unusual ways. The first three tracks focus on one of the sound sources while the last combines elements from the previous three to make something else. The disc opens with a 20-minute piece of mysterious and drifting electronic tones. Other tracks highlight very tactile sounds and bring a much more live element to his work. Punched barcode
When Freezing Air Stings Like Ice I Shall Breathe Again
(Streamline) Used CD $8.00
This very quiet album from the mid ’90s “often borders on the imperceptible with silence as structural consideration,” explains Resonance. “Imperceptibility goes hand in hand with intangibility and sounds having very few referential angles. There’s a whole lot of mystery here. A half-light, a veil over a doorway to another world. Absolutely beautiful.”
Christ’s Vipers
(Chocolate Monk) Used CDR $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
A blackened drone-drenched world of slime and knives and fire, dense clouds of distorted howls, a thick cloak of fuzz and buzz. From 2006
The Maze
(Fragment Factory - FRAG35) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
This multidisciplinary artist who has been active in sound and video art, installations, performance, computer art and writing since the late 1980s treats field recordings to the same processes employed by top-shelf geographers — surveying, gathering, scaling, removing, enhancing, and adding.
ALI ROBERTSON / NICHOLA SCRUTTON
The Longest Forty Miles
(Chocolate Monk - choc.589) CDR $8.00
“The last train is at 11:30pm and I wouldnae recommend the night bus. It’ll be full of Lothian troglodytes, Cumbernauld carbuncles and folks what like their improv idiomatic. Best hop in our taxi. It willnae be cheap and, with two drivers pulling in opposite directions on the same wheel, you’ll be unsure which way is up, let alone which is East or West. Ensure you’re wearing your seat belt on this tour of the Scottish Central Belt as your escorts are predisposed to unleashing belters for strings, gobs, and kerfuffle, and you’ll get pure pelters if you dinnae subscribe to their version of the Highway Code.” Edition of 60
Strugglediver
(Groundfault) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
This crude and harsh attack from 2001 begins immediately and with tremendous force. Handmade electronics, probably some guitar too, and Yasushi Tahara’s heavily distorted screams, varying textures -- from tortured wall flatness to puzzling metal-twisting and warped, abruptness.
Essential Tremors
(Nyahh) CD $12.00
This “improvising saxophonist based in Co. Sligo, in the Atlantic north west of Ireland, colors the air with a seductive display of versatility and virtuosity, initially hovering around liminal levels of extended instrumentals, and stealthily growing to a more full-bodied silhouette, and then commanding swarming dynamics…. Cathal’s disciplined control of volume and tone is key to its grip, as he proceeds, pregnant with noirish dread, to blow ribbons of anguished blues that hits all the right notes for lovers of late night musical introspection.”
Translations & Articulations
(Griffin Contemporary Exhibitions) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Includes Of Space Enclosed By Planes Or Surfaces CD, but this is primarily a twenty-page catalog documenting Roden's titular installation from 1997. Color photographs and essays by Steve Roden, Christopher Miles and Brandon LaBelle. Edition of 966. The disc in mint, but there's some scuffing on the back cover of the catalog, so it's listed here as used.
Feedback In A Lover’s Telegraph
(Harbinger Sound) Used CD $9.00
Two tracks, twenty-six minutes-plus apiece. Twenty-two-panel folver in PVC envelope with stickers.
It Gets Worse
(Helicopter - HEL 93031) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
One track, sixty-six-and-a-half minutes, created by a resonant electro-acoustic feedback system using audio power amplifiers and a variety of transducers and feedback regenerators of Romero's own design. The goal is to saturate the atmosphere with natural acoustic standing waves and pulses, large sounds, that are affected (or held in place) by very small movements in order to magnify an (as of yet) indescribable phenomenon.
Plate 1 / Triad / Feedback In A Lovers Telegraph
(P-Tapes) Used CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Digital multi-track home recording; live recording from Beyond Baroque Foundation; live recording from The Smell. No electronic processing or synthesis used, with the exception of band-pass and acoustic filtering on “Plate 1.” Packaged in folded card sleeve with credits listed on inside flap and individually cut paper from a book affixed to outside. From 1998.
Roundup Two
(Art Into Life - AIL001) 2xCD $26.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live performances with vacuum tube analog computers, solid-state manifestations of chaos and harmony, musical interventions on political tunes, virtuoso performers interlinked with hybrid processing, and more by composer, performer and developer of unique circuitry and software whose labors extend back four decades. Several of these pieces were previously released on cassette (Slowscan Editions 1987), and have been re-mastered; some that were originally presented as excerpts are here complete and unedited. Other works not on the original have been added. An essential, historical document containing important examples from a sixteen-year period in this innovative artist’s extraordinary, pioneering work. Second edition of 300.
You Can’t Get There From Here
(Monotype - MONO038) CD $12.75
(Monotype - MONO038) Used CD $8.50
The works of the London-based conceptual artist, writer, plasticien sonore and composer Robin Rimbaud traverse experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form. Philosopher, musician, and author Rothenberg takes his inspiration from the melodies and beats of birds, insects, whales, water, and wind.
Christian Wolff / Keith Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE010) CD $14.75 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live September 2011 as part of Jon Abbey's Amplify 2011 festival at The Stone in Manhattan. The first ever full-length duo set by the AMM guitarist and New York School stalwart / John Cage collaborator.
Duos for Doris
(Erstwhile - ERST030) 2xCD $23.50 (Out-of-stock)
More than two hours of music recorded in Nancy, France, at the CCAM studio in January 2003. Understated, intricate beauty and modesty belies the complexity of Duos for Doris, named for Tilbury's mother, who passed away two days prior. Rowe and Tilbury first met in 1965 when both were asked by Cornelius Cardew to perform Treatise for a BBC broadcast. They have enjoyed a fruitful professional relationship ever since, in the Scratch Orchestra, various Music Now and Cardew groupings, performing Christian Wolff and John Cage pieces, and most notably, in AMM since 1981. This is their first performance as a duo, and, according to Stylus, it is “challenging in the richest sense of the word -- full of bracing tension, riddled with sumptuous ambiguity and overflowing with strange and spectacular musical inventiveness…. brimming with rare detail and thought provoking turns...”
Harsh, Solo Guitar
(Grob) Used CD $12.00
Over 60 minutes of the master of prepared guitar sound recorded live in Cologne on December 11, 1999, in a cold garage. An unforgiving session but also repeatedly surprising, and always eluding the classical improvisational dialectic of tension and release.
Keith Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE07) CD $14.40 (Out-of-stock)
A solo set recorded at the AMPLIFY 2008: light festival in Tokyo, Rowe's individual statement strongly contrasting with his duos there, which he later titled “Cultural Templates.” A Spiral Cage concludes, “Clarity of thought permeates this piece, which flows with an internal logic, but still retains that uncatchability that has been a hallmark of Rowe's career.”
Room
(Erstwhile - ERSTSOLO01) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
The third full-length solo recording of his career, following A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality (1989) and Harsh (1999), a very personal project for Rowe, who struggled with its precise conception over the last few years. This tribute to two of his important influences, Cornelius Cardew and Mark Rothko, after months of thought and attempts to transfer ideas in his head to a concert context, began in early 2007 with daily home-recordings, eventually becoming something that did justice to his feelings. “Unless you know that Rowe is a guitar player, “ponders Dusted, “You wouldn't guess it from this music [which] consists of electronically generated sounds of differing qualities. Even live it is difficult to determine exactly how Rowe generates all the sounds; on disc, it is impossible.”
Rowe / Unami
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE06) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Legendary guitarist Keith Rowe played four sets in three nights in the AMPLIFY 2008: light festival in Tokyo, marking Rowe's fourth trip to Japan in his 40+-year career and the first time he was able to work closely with so many Tokyo musicians on their home turf. As the only non-Japanese participant in the festival, Rowe move his aesthetic toward his collaborators'. Indeed, A Spiral Cage says, “Unami … seems much more interested in subverting received notions of music and disrupting expectations. Rowe, on the other hand, is questioning his own notions of music and what it is for…. The uncatchability … the transient nature, the unexpected but not arbitrary. This duo pushes all of the boundaries, it is right on the edge, the arbitrariness constantly threatening but it stays together, no matter how tenuous.”
Avantgarde Explosion
(Dom Elchklang) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Easily my favorite piece of the HNAS saga,” ejaculates our friend at Mutant Sounds about this 1997 disc, a “completely bonkers dada shitstorm … comprised of protozoically pulsating lopsided dollops of tweaked and dissected electro-pop remnants luridly frottaging fragments of detourned adverts, avuncular German narrators, the THX swell and sundry other tawdry castoffs of consumer culture caca … like … Sylvie And Babs cutting the rug at Asmus Tietchens’ Aroma Club.”
Royal Trux
(Drag City) Used CD $10.00
1993 reissue of this strangely visceral debut, originally self-released on vinyl (Royal 1988). Started as a rumor, or more likely a threat, Neil Haggerty and Jennifer Herema were C-sectioned from the belly of NYC-cum-DC scum punks Pussy Galore in 1986 and followed their inclination to explore their own musical identity, a fusion of busted licks and synth abstraction.
JJ Got Live RaTX
(Drag City) Used CD $6.00
In which the denim’n’leather metal queen exorcises every last vestige of her former band’s avant-rock influence and enjoys the 1988 she never got to experience the first time around. Jennifer Herrema’s gruff, three-cartons-a-day voice sounds more ballsy than anything at the heavily spandexed Headbanger’s Ball (leave it to a woman to correct such a deficiency). JJ Got Live RaTX unashamedly revels in authentically ’80s details: the slowly swelling synth intro to “You Should Shut Up” that sounds like Giorgio Moroder’s intro theme to Scarface; the squealing lead fills on “Are You a Boy or Are You Girl” that fly by like orange globulars on expert level Guitar Hero; the crunchy-riffed break in the middle of “Virginia Creeper” lifted straight from Scorpions’ “No One Like You”; the brief Eliminator-style techno-boogie denouement to “Mr. Wall.” From 2008
Moveable Sites
(Humbug) Used CDR $4.00
Soundscapes mostly sourced from outdoor locations with light treatments (looping, sampling) and arrangements. Michael Burkard’s text and voice appears on one track, and Matt Broad adds zither and percussion to another. From 2002
Morx & Kotschlag
(Selektion) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Spearheaded by Aktionist acolyte and genial madman Rudolv Eb.Er,” explains Mutant Sounds about this 1994 disc, “These Swiss deviants … use the extended CD format … to enact a form of dadaist endurance test, exploring over one unbroken 74-minute track extremes of unhinged art abuse and glottal torture that sound like Yamatsuka Eye attacking a pack of dobermans with a toy accordion and a bicycle horn.” In a clear A5 sleeve with an A3 fold-out poster with liner notes. The CD comes in an extra cardboard slipcase.
12 Chairs for Chu Chu
(Chocolate Monk - choc.542) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twelve tunes of harmonically broad non-universal guitar cut-up’n’crete, guaranteed to create disillusionment in any lover of the guitar, music in general, acousmatic music, etc. Spoiler alert: fairy does not take tooth. Music, not-really music, self-stimulation (head banging, dancing), joint locks, irreparable loss, questionable grounding practices… it’s all here. Flicking off the ear-brain system and interrupting any continuum you like, Ruryk calls the plays, and he takes the blame for ignoring various stereo panning laws and the 3:1 mic placement rule. Guests include bBomit, Id M Theft Able, Toshiji Mikawa, Daniel Gregory, Brian Turner, Rob Michalchuk, Cody Brant, Giblet Gusset, Fleshtone Aura, Stephen Boyle, Territorial Gobbing, and Fray Bentos. Edition of 75
Live at The ICA June 11 1971 / Retrospective
(Moikai) Used 2xCD $12.00
A complete live show, other live recordings, and studio outtakes of some of his better-known material. The clear standout is the four-part blowing session suite “Stained Angel Morning,” where Russell reveals how deeply into the free jazz and heavy metal camps he really was. His stabbing, singing notes and psychotic runs up the fretboard have nothing to do with scalular architecture, but rather with viscera and tonal exploration. Even the studio version on the second disc is psychotic and unruly; it achieves all the feedback tones and affected sounds that Hendrix could get without the whammy bar or effects boxes and pedals. This is seven minutes of complete noise rock meltdown by a virtuoso playing the guitar like he’s strangling the thing and it’s fighting for its life.
Painting The Passports Brown
(Corpus Hermeticum) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
With guitar and analog tape loops, The Dead C’s Herr Sideburns creates a volatile collage of feedback and noise. The mood is spontaneous to the point of being shambolic. One of the label’s more striking releases.
Elixir
(Atavistic) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
This 1979 live recording documents a show where Russell, vibraphonist George Southgate, and bassist Russ DiTusa are joined by saxophonists Mars Williams and Spider Middleman. The tension and sweet release on Elixir, comparable to the sound of the post-Russell NRG Ensemble, uses the framed juxtaposition of individual voices and contrasting meters that seem complicated in theory, but are surprisingly natural in practice.
Hardship Like A Fortune
(Chocolate Monk - choc.421) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two of northern England’s finest purveyors of head scratch, Joe Murray and Sturat Arnot, get together for some real wild brut stylings. Do the avant hunch. “We’re outsiders here, unworthy uitlanders, carbuncles even,” they admit, “We’re intruders on, about, over and in this Novocastrian soil. One of us is, at least, perseverant; of three decades standing, a good chunk of anyone’s life, worthy of some sort of respect, perverse though it may seem, but the other is painfully unripe, fresh off the boat, all flapping gills and shivering and shriveling innards. Brazenly, we attempt to appease the local wigs by paying homage as best we can to their rituals, even as we fail to read the native semiotics: we drink ourselves the wrong red and, betweeded and sweating, bray loudly but unconvincingly these half-thought half-songs, misbegotten paeans to their heroic generations; we fall out, trip and fall out onto the moor and down, through the town to the Tyne, garbed suddenly, sullenly and awkwardly in unseemly black, where we desperately expose the ferrous ribbons of our tattered fake books to the corrosive, salty sweep of the northerlies and wail.” Numbered edition of 60
Interior Designs
(Important) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
More “classic” in nature than her work under the name Can’t, and inspired by Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Iannis Xenakis and especially Thomas Lehn, this collection of strikingly original pieces (incorporating the intuition of folk music with the techniques of the avant-garde), recorded on a Serge Modular and analog synthesizers Rylan built herself, influenced by plants, places Rylan among these monumental artists.
Verlautbarungen
(Tochnit Aleph - TA107) Used CD $8.00
Thirty-seven solo text-pieces, phonetic poems, and poetry duets with Monika Lichtenfeld, written and composed between 1952 and 2010 by the Austrian king of experimental poetry, founding member of the Wiener Gruppe, and spiritual forebear of Vienna Actionism. With twenty-four-page booklet with liner notes by Rühm.
Loka In The Black Ship
(Kubitsuri) CD $15.00
Based on a solitary boat making an ominous trip to Pluto, where organic and inorganic matters are mixed and carbonized to be dust, due to the invasion of the mirage of the universe. Metallic drone and noise are woven together while the previous ritualistic aspects are suppressed, reminiscent of an inner space of a dried black-and-white film.
Zunya
(Musik Atlach - MA006) CD $16.50
Not to be confused with Sachiko M, Japanese vocalist Sachiko (ex-Kousokuya, Overhang Party, Vava Kitora) bases her sound on the interface between voice and electronics, producing fantastic, ritual noise-drones that glide into the quiet Great Beyond. This live recording from 2008 distills her modest expression into psychedelic and organic hypnosis.
Sound On Sound
(Plinkity Plonk - 33) LP + CD $19.00
First-time reissue of the debut album by this Dutch postpunk multi-instrumentalist who subsequently vanished as suddenly as he appeared in the early 1980s. Lots of guitars, a hammering rhythm machine, and lyrics about desolation, drugs, suicide. All thirteen tracks from the original cassette (Ding Dong 1982) on the LP, repeated on the CD plus five bonus tracks. Color insert, 175-gram vinyl. Edition of 500. Listen to “Desolation” here: http://youtu.be/6VhQx9gW5XA
Free Music On The Clock
(Chocolate Monk - choc.567) CDR $8.00
Chocolate Monk describes Free Music On The Clock thus: “Mr. Malvern Brume pulls a few skivers at Cafe Oto. Liminal music for vacant minds,” and the only word here that makes sense to us is “at.” Salter steps in with a bit more detail: “Music recorded using bits laying around at the day job, on the clock, at the start of the summer break when there were spare moments. Recordings were then cut up and arranged at home, on the bed,” a description that infuriates Ecka Mordecai, who feels such a “cringe,” “shit,” and “rubbish” blurb is an affront to all concerned. “All those breathing sounds right up close, distorting into the mic... Muttering and complaining about stuff, it’s so intimate.” Mordecai notes that Salter’s soundscape, made “from the noise expressing what it’s like to go to work everyday and constantly be pulled away from the thing you want to be doing,” creates a tension that “is exciting and potent.” Is Free Music On The Clock straightforward and non-emotional? Hell, no. Mordecai says this album is “sick.” She is not opposed to his cello-playing, too. Edition of 60
Essential Shit
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD047) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Ukraine’s top indie-pop / electropop band, as magical and spiritual as its title suggests. Recorded on poor analogue equipment during the 1980s and ’90s.
Stone Curl
(Chocolate Monk - choc.623) CDR $8.00
A sculpted exploration into weird locations featuring blooming electronics, loops, voice, and amplified objects by this Ukrainian musician, composer, writer, and founder of electroacoustic / noise / industrial projects Starless, Kadaitcha, and others. Edition of 60
Reprint
(Anomalous) Used CD $12.00
2003 reissue of Snatch Tapes’ 1980 cassette by the king bee of Storm Bugs and Ice Yacht / Snatch Tapes, with Steven Ball (Storm Bugs) and Nancy Slessenger — originally released on under the moniker Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey. With bonus tracks.
Seed and Surgery
(free103point9) Used split CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live at free103point9 Gallery in Free jazz legend Roy Campbell, Jr joins the Louisville-based Sapat, while The SB collective experiments with audio intermodulation and sympathetic resonance, alternately producing strange attractors, unstable drones, standing waves, and complex fields of interference.
Saws
(Intone) Used CD $9.00
A whacked-groove celestial takeoff to the nether-regions of the musical saw by Rick Potts, Rick Frystak, Chris Guttmacher, and Brian A. Rosser, doing their business with electronic processing, hinged-neck guitar, melodic spaced bass, squeaky synths and crackling snare and cymbal. Consider the territory now marked with a sound unlike any other progressive music waveforms.
Taxi For Brahms
(Chocolate Monk - choc.486) CDR $6.75
ALERT: This harbors a lot of musically educated sensibilities, as hostage. They are barely let out, and when they are... it fucking kicks ass. Rock right up, folks! “I love the shape of my violin, It is sooo lushhhhhh / Where is also this sugarrr! It must be from the donut” are lyrics you will hear, obscured by more interestingly put-together noises by card-carrying degenerates who won’t ever be able to afford violins or doughnuts. Greeting the world online and off with as much “fuck-you-but-please-listen-to-what-I-have-to-say” as anyone else. Sad react. No asterisks, please. Artificially grafted2bits rock’n’roll exquisite corpse ft. Model Warship’s arms, Giblet Gusset’s mouth, and Terry T. Gubbin’s knees taking all three of thier bows. Edition of 60
Bleed Now
(Total Life Society - TLS002) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Scarcity frontman Matthew Wascovich is surrounded by veteran musicians who are also painters, writers, and heavy thinkers -- drummer Scott Pickering (Spike in Vain, My Dad Is Dead), guitarist Theodore Wiggs Nulls Flynn the Younger, and bassist Sebastian Wagner. Feeling like both a revival and a step forward, Bleed Now mixes classic punk with art and improv, in particular the authoritative heft of Saccharine Trust and Slovenly, the raucous blurt of Cleveland forefathers Electric Eels and Easter Monkeys, and the grit and pulse of Flipper and Suicide. Cover art by Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee). Insound calls it "intelligent, impressionistic free-rock ... an earful of splenetic discordance," while Pink Eye goes one further and calls it "a minor-masterpiece. Churning bass lines ... improvisational jazz motifs, spoken word, jagged Stoogesque guitars ... kind of like some art-punk-rocking-jazz-poet jam gone crazy for a night on mushrooms.... Most of the songs are pretty simple, riding a key through to the end –- falling in and out of chaos, the tempos change but the groove remains present."
Dissing The Reduction
(Total Life Society - TLS013) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Jonny Bell (Crystal Antlers) - bass, engineer, guitar, keyboards, saxophone; Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls) - guitar; Dennis Callaci (Refrigerator) - guitar; Nels Cline (Wilco) - guitar; Don Depew (Flaming Telepaths) - guitar; Jimbo Easter (Druid Perfume) - artwork; Doug Gillard (Guided By Voices) - guitar; Don Godwin (Impractical Cockpit) - bass; John Talley-Jones (Urinals) - bass; Ulrich Krieger (Text Of Light) - saxophone; Raul Morales (Mike Watt And The Missingmen) - drums, percussion; Caleb Mulkerin (Big Blood) - bass, guitar; Nate Scheible - drums; Matthew Wascovich - vocals, percussion; Tom Watson (The Red Krayola) - guitar; Mike Watt (Minutemen) - bass; and Norman Westberg (Swans) - guitar.
Fear Is Not Conscience
(Total Life Society - TLS005) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals).
Garford Mute
(Total Life Society - TLS008) 2xLP $32.00
(Total Life Society - TLS008) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Matt Wascovich’s voice … [has] an urgent angularity with the melodic sense of Jack Brewer and some of the rhythmic attack of Mayo Thompson,” notes Byron Coley. “[C]ombined with the great avant-garage thunk of the players (really beautifully recorded this time around by Paul Hamann at the legendary Suma Recording Studio), and the raw imagist power of the lyrics, the material approaches classic status from its own oblique angle.” Garford Mute is the eighth album from Scarcity Of Tanks and features: Dave Cintron - guitar (Terminal Lovers), Doug Gillard - guitar (Guided By Voices), Gnarlos - electronics (Bren't Lewiis Ensemble), Don Godwin - drums (Raya Brass Band), Tom Herman - guitar, bass, acoustic guitar (Pere Ubu), Elliott Hoffman - drums (Lawton Brothers), Andrew Klimeyk - guitar, bass (X-Blank-X), Scott Krauss - drums (Pere Ubu), Steve Mackay - saxophone (The Stooges), Rich Raponi - bass, guitar (Self Destruct Button), Weasel Walter - guitar, bass (The Flying Luttenbachers), Matthew Wascovich - vocals, and Mike Watt - bass (Minutemen). Artwork by Roger Ballen (South Africa).
Hinge
(Total Life Society - TLS010) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Doug Gillard: guitar, backing vocals; Don Godwin: bass, backing vocals, engineer; Nate Scheible: drums; Matthew Wascovich: vocals; and Michael Yonkers: guitar, electronics. Hinge was engineered by Don Godwin at Tonal Park, Takoma Park, Maryland. Artwork by Chris Yarmock. Liner notes by Jonathan Lethem.
Ohio Captives
(Total Life Society - TLS006) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Album number six by Matthew Wascovich’s group of lifers fueled by pollution, violence, driving around a bleak city, unemployment, liars, and scumbags with hearts of gold and malice. Challenging yet absurdly accessible out-there rock music recorded in Cleveland with Todd Tobias (Guided By Voices, Robert Pollard, Circus Devils). Scarcity Of Tanks’ working class ethos shows that though we may all still be bummed out by the daily grind, there are pockets of great music still being made all the time.
Ringleader Lies
(Total Life Society - TLS007) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
As any scholar of transcontinental avant-garage knows, when the city once called The Mistake On The Lake exports weirdo discord, it is unassailably top-shelf. Scarcity Of Tanks shift manager Matthew Wascovich and his crew certainly have the 216 brew pumping through their veins, but Ringleader Lies also resides in a space without a place — a scene without a hometown. This firm rejection of rock’s compliant and predictable snuggling with its own sense of self delivers hard-won darkness and exile. Virtuosity on the album lays within its economy. The ship is tight, the route, self-determined yet bereft of congratulatory sentiment, a crucial by-pass of the armies of mediocre dunderheads forever inner-tubing down rivers of flaming shit. This incarnation of SOT excels at nuanced heaviness, Pedro-esque flirtation with the infinite abyss within, and the classic Stooges / Suicide / Torch Of The Mystics slow burn, where grooves hammer sickening hypnosis into fragments. Each track delivers delicious tension in both form and feel; Wascovich’s sturdy visions of rust-belt dystopia are barked and crooned like some -opathic character in an unpublished Warren Zevon short story crawling across bent and grime-slickened cement in an amaretto-colored delirium. His insistent, calcium-charged voice is optimized when flanked by riff and texture. Guitars disorient from an assortment of vantage points, one layer groaning with stone-eyed purpose, another layer riddled with piercing, calisthenic ack ack, another writhing like a magnetic jump rope locked in a Faraday cage as part of some arcane beta-AI protocol. Beautifully recorded by Paul Hamann at the legendary Suma Recording Studio, the material transcends the classic moves upon which it is based, and without which it couldn’t exist. Long live disappearing.
Scarcity Of Tanks is Dave Cintron - guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, keyboard, backing vocals; Nels Cline - guitar; Noah Depew - guitar; Doug Gillard - bass, guitar, acoustic guitar; Gnarlos - guitar, violin, keyboard, electronics; Paul Hamann - bass, engineer; Andrew Klimeyk - guitar; Pete Mazich - organ; John Petkovic - guitar, piano, backing vocals; Scott Pickering - drums, electronics, percussion, vibraphone, xylophone; Lee Ranaldo - guitar; Rich Raponi - guitar, bass; Sebastian Wagner - bass, electronics, synth; Matthew Wascovich - vocals; Tom Watson - guitar; Mike Watt - bass; Norman Westberg - guitar, 12-string guitar.
Sensational Grade
(Total Life Society - TLS003) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third album by self-described "anti-heroes with no message [who] exist so that you don’t have to.... Distortion. Bass and drums that make you move. Guitars that make you feel sick or alive. Vocals that you cannot relate to most of the time." It used to be that performing rock music was a kind of evocation of Washington crossing the Delaware -- the famous painting of him standing in the boat with his crew, on their way to meet their fate, confident, proud, ready to be who they are and do what they do. Nowadays, it evokes a senior citizen getting paid minimum wage to stand by the front door and say "Welcome to K-Mart" to everyone who walks in. So in that way, Scarcity Of Tanks is a throwback to a consciousness where sincerity and a fighting spirit were enough, before everything became the product of arcane calculation, the most common side effects of which are cringes and grimaces, and yet that's acceptable if the money's there. You're gonna get taken higher, and it's gonna get done by Matthew Wascovich, Dave Cintron, Jeff Deasy, Brent Gemmill, Theodore Wiggs Null Flynn The Younger, Andrew Klimeyk, John Petkovic, Scott "Puff Tube" Pickering, so fucking get with it, grayballs. Recorded by Brent Gemmill in Cleveland, Ohio, during the summer of 2010 and early 2011, mixed by Don Godwin and mastered by Weasel Walter. Cover by Aleksandra Waliszewska.
Vulgar Defender
(Total Life Society - TLS004) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals), Don Godwin (keyboards, backing vocals).
NONNAH
(Chocolate Monk - choc.523) CDR $8.00
Thinking of your fate? Mired down in a mortality wobble? Deep breaths and audio hum can alleviate them shakes, while tapes and tones keep the lizards at bay. After a considerable bout of radio silence from Spoils & Relics, Johnny Scarr gets his thumb out of his arse and dusts down the old four-track. What starts off trying to fool you into thinking of this as just another miserable Spoils & Relics record morphs into something more mellow and almost musical, like the tipsy leader of a cult of one trying to reel in some starseed. “It’s just another mopey, shitty, synth record,” according to Chuckles himself, “Which obviously the world needs more of.” Cognition blurred. Ears pleased. Edition of 50
Étude in Black
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Bent bleak monochrome “music” for misery guts. “Some significant personal events occurred,” admits l’artiste, “and I made some inept ‘faulk’ music in response (so emo). Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the work fails to convey much of anything about those events. After making stuff which was intentionally devoid of emotional resonance for years, this way of working felt pretty revealing and somewhat pathetic. Which is probably why, by the time I was done with it, I think I ended up burying most, if not all sentiment that might have been there.” Edition of 60
Above Building
(FatCat - FATSP02) Used CD $5.00
Beautiful arrangements of found sound, thematically connected by their presence in the heights of tall buildings. Ambient and chaotic.
Out
(K-raa-k3 - K3017) Used CD $5.00
Turtablism in the musique concrète tradition, though Schaefer's careful, organic approach to the slowly evolving material ensures that it’s never too far away from the sort of trippy ’70s kosmische electronica. Nonetheless, the rhythmic stuck grooves and gaseous noise connect to illbient and experimental sampling genres. The thirty-minute "Construction Eight" opens with pops, crackles and rocks crumbling in tectonic readjustment, before windy drones suggest the blackness of a subterranean void. Radio signals and an unhappy choir transform into night insects. “Construction Five” takes things into outer space with a liberal salting of ’50s electronic bleeps and whistles.
On The Waiting List
(Atavistic) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
2004 reissue of this Italian free music rarity recorded in Rome in 1973, originally released by King Universal in 1975. An outstanding jazz outing with Schiano on alto sax, organ, and voice, along with co-founders of Gruppo Romano Free Jazz Bruno Tommaso (bass) and Giancarlo Schiaffini (trombone).
Tabit
(Zarek) Used CD $3.00
“Growling electronic bitterness seeps out of Schick and fills up the room, like exhaust fumes in a suicide garage,” comments Sound Projector. Using wires, piezos, contact mics, digital and analog feedback, mixing board noises and hiss, overdriven bass filters, distorted no-input, fast-forwarded footage, extreme high frequency manipulation, distorted ground, Tabit is “dominated by nagging, rumbling drone, which resembles the sound of an electronic outboard motor…. Tabit is a dark and urban recording, blighted with many symptoms of the evil side of 21st century life – overwork, stress, insomnia, weight problems, loneliness … recognise yourself in any of the above snapshots?” From 2000
Kankei UFO From Zanryu-shinen
(PSF) Used CD $15.00
The third volume in the label’s Japanese Avant Garde Cassette Reissue Series utilizes prepared instruments, and rejects regular rhythms and melodic development. At their commune north of Tokyo, this recording-only offshoot of Amanita jammed endlessly throughout the ’90s, filling their performance space with the “signs of blood and feverish becomings” as a means to communicate with the afterlife, the cosmos and manifestations of paranormal accidents. With obi
Gold
(Marginal Talent) Used CD $15.00
A 2003 song collection from Conrad Schnitzler’s archive, recorded between 1976 and 1978, with more at play here than two tape recorders, analog synthesizers and sequencers. Digital keyboards and computer-aided musical progressions are in evidence. “Structured like a symphony in various movements, utterly abstract atonal passages are followed by solid sequences of rhythm and harmony, as energetic as Cluster, yet equally evocative of 1980s electronic pop music. Schnitzler has pulled off the ultimate balancing trick between pop and so-called serious music.” Liner notes by Asmus Tietchens.
Dichterliebe
(Bôłt - BRPOP01) CD $13.50
Premiered at The Song Is You Festival in Warsaw in 2009, recorded in Berlin 2010, vocalist Bernhard Schütz and pianist Reinhold Friedl (of Zeitkratzer) perform the song cycle by famed 19th century German romantic (with lyrics by sarcastic poet Heinrich Heine). Schütz’s vocalizing would probably turn a conservatoire vocal trainer pale and induce a coronary seizure. He bends notes around the melody in a snide, mocking way, occasionally punctuating with an angry growl. Attack, sustain and room presence are served generously with Friedl’s assured, decidedly non-quiet keyboard work. The debut release in Bôłt’s Populista series of radical reinterpretations of historical music, curated by Michał Libera.
Thought Provoking III
(23five - 017) Used CD $8.00
The final document from the late electro-acoustic composer who described his work as "reflections on society structures, the blindness of modern and informed masses and everyday functionalism in between civilization." His intensity of expression took Schäfer around the globe, but his recording output is relatively small, focusing mostly on collaborative work with noted extremist Zbigniew Karkowski. Thought Provoking shifts away from his brutalist electronic engineering, toward a spatialized, open-ended composition based on the muffled tones from an ad hoc instrument he built from salvaged church organ pipes and hair dryers. The first presentation took place in Graz, Austria in 2003; the second was a collaboration with violinist Elisabeth Gmeiner in Vienna two years later; the third and final performance was in 2006 with percussionist Will Guthrie and Gmiener at the St. Andre Church, where he first presented it in Graz. After Schäfer's death, Guthrie reconstituted the rehearsal takes from that performance. The bellowing hums from Schäfer's organ pipe and hair dryer contraption ebb and flow amid intermittent percussive flourishes, subtle gong overtones, sustained violin trills, and fizzling electronic mark-making. On the second track, Karkowski pays tribute with a smoldering electro-acoustic remix.
Powerhouse Vol. One
(Stash) Used CD $7.00
Compiled from tapes in Scott’s own library of radio broadcasts and rehearsals from the 1930s and ’40s, all of it previously unissued and two of the performances predating the formation of his legendary six-piece Quintette. From 1991
ROSS SCOTT-BUCCLEUCH / ANDREW SHARPLEY / SIGTRYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON
Ghost Of Dada
(Chocolate Monk - choc.481) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Announcing of invitation principles. In early 2020, Scott-Buccleuch asked Sharpley to edit his solo record. He sent over a lot of files (DIY circuit-bent improv, tape stuff, recordings of rugby club toilets, overt dregs of blank weather, streams, train stations, drones, all kinds of audio gunk and goof that he was supposed to edit into some kind of shape). Lasting streaks of veer. A collage record with Siggtrygur Berg Sigmarsson had been planned since 2019, so there on his desktop was a folder containing a lot of vocal improvisations and audio glitches. Sudden guest. Tongues well and truly bit. Mysteriously the contents of the two folders leaked into each other. When is a door not a jar? When it’s a door. So now there’s this trio record that preserves the integrity of the original material but also enjoys a fair amount of freehandedness, with a casual and light quality. Today ear. Tomorrow gone. Play by it. A chance meeting that was perhaps inevitable. Edition of 60
We Move Together
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Donald Rafael Garrett and Zusaan Kali Fasteau rattle, strum, and bang bass, cello, clarinet, piano, nye, shakuhachi, and sheng. Notable for the twenty-minute epic “Stork Cools Its Wings.” Sealed
From The Beginning ... Until The End
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR041) CD + CDR $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
This 2004-2005 collaboration by Yellow Swans’ Pete Swanson and Names’ Gerritt Wittmer is an exercise in time, challenging communication and the transfer of energy during improvisations via developing instrumentation that allowed one player to influence the other’s sound through direct routing. Much of the music is built on various feedback loops and other chains of chance. From The Beginning … Until The End is tape music, drone music, psychic music, and spiritual music. Like the sound of the universe, it undulates and folds unto itself, filled with transference and decadent illusion. Edition of 100 copies with a bonus CDR Live Testament, recorded at Il Corral in Los Angeles by Damion Romero.
Synthetik I - Elektronische Muzik 1971–1973
(Plate Lunch) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Some of the most innovative electronic music this side of Conrad Schnitzler and Morton Subotnick,” proclaims Jive Time about the 2001 reissue of this self-released early-70s obscurity. “The Seesselberg brothers were clever electronics boffins who built their own synths, which obviously added special sauce to their distinctive sound. For 46 minutes two nerds revel in the temperamental strangeness of their gear, testing its parameters, and thereby drawing a blueprint for future synth iconoclasts…. Synthetik 1 starts spectacularly with “Overture (If Somebody Survives We Will Have A Return Match),” a compendium of burbling, zapping, and oscillating sounds that sets a disorienting tone and warns the listener that Seesselberg are serious about sending you to the craziest quadrants of the omniverse. The 62-second “Eintrachtkreis-Paranoia” is a staccato panic-inducer that resembles the Ronald Frangipane-composed “Fuck Machine” sequence in The Holy Mountain. The equally brief “Verhütungsfreudenwalzer (Kontinenzmusik Für Eine Akademie)” sounds like a computer stuttering a disturbing mantra. These two snippets come off like the brothers playfully fucking about with their equipment. The more focused “Speedy Achmed (Verhaltensanweisung)” offers low-key, sinister pulsations and eldritch screeches that foreshadow Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey…. The highlight, “Phönix,” a 10-minute piece composed for a 1972 film of the same name, is a dazzling menagerie of high-pitched synth discombobulations ruptured by pulsating spaceship-door percussion, emergency-warning bleeps, and weaponized drones.”
Dronemusic
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) Used CDR $12.00
Stephen Clover’s work “is about minimalism, field recordings, and still, beautiful moments. Some tracks,” say our friends at Last Visible Dog, “are outright disturbing and quite experimental, while others focus only on solo acoustic guitar … [or] demonstrate an all-too-genius use of field recordings.”
Exactly What You Lost
(Intransitive - INT028) CD $13.50
Seht is one of the post-Corpus Hermeticum bands whose peers are Birchville Cat Motel, Peter Wright, A.M., and folks like that. Stephen Clover and Boston artist Howard Stelzer first swapped recordings from their respective locales -- cars going by, planes overhead, birds in the bushes, just humdrum suburban stuff. Next, the recording of the NZ birds were played in Boston’s trees and re-recorded as the local birds sang along with the foreign tweets. Likewise, tapes of Boston cars going by were mixed with NZ cars going by. After it was all processed, scrambled and reassembled, it wound up having a certain melancholy feel. A cassette-blurp mess straightens out steadily until it’s just a flat line and the tap tap tap of a dying tape deck motor. A party record, basically.
369 1/2
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS50) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
This obscure ’80s quintet never released anything in their day, and performed live only a couple dozen times. The excerpts from their semi-private recording sessions preserved here (with minimal effort on a boombox) are pensive, quasi–industrial meditations peppered with dire and distorted melodies of immaculate brevity and the musings of disoriented hicks. The unhinged landscapes navigated by Serious Problmz would make Diane Arbus blush -- musical and poetic territories littered with paranoia, dread, desolation, emotional and psychological predation, spookily anthropomorphic farm animals, and objects of inexplicable provenance. As players, guitarist Lucian Tielens, Thor Heglund on Mattel Synsonics drum machine, Felix Mace on vocals, lyrics, homemade noise-makers, and assorted objects, guitarist Mark Evans, and Dave, the inevitable bass-player whose last name no one remembers, achieve a comfortable familiarity with one another, without sacrificing the ramshackle spontaneity essential to their brand of very damaged rural surf (aka rurf). Guests The Whitefronts’ Phil Smoot and Tim Smyth of Bren’t Lewiis help push the primitive jams in new directions with elements such as running water, the clack of a manual typewriter, a telephone ringing, random clangs of a metal canister, and the sinister grinds of an electronic corn-and-callous remover. Edition of 50. Tediumhouse.com mailorders include a bonus three–inch CDR.
Nervous Youth
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS38) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The featured guest on half the tracks on this obscure 1980s quintet’s second BuFMS disc is Cole Marquis (28th Day, The Downsiders, The Snowmen, The Marques), whose guitar playing merges his recognizable elongated twang and loosened psychedelic drawl with Serious Problmz’s industrial rurf (aka very damaged rural surf). The sustainable clang cultivated by Marquis, guitarists Lucian Tielens and Mark Evans, Thor Heglund on Mattel Synsonics drum machine, and Dave, the inevitable bass-player whose last name no one remembers, supports vocalist Felix Mace’s hazy, sun-burned encounters, who recounts in full voice with autobiographical authority episodes from a sketchy drifter’s harsh journey across peculiar landscapes made of salt, through disorienting urban environments, to the middle of somewhere or somewhere else. The apocalyptic tale covers survival techniques such as boosting toilet paper from public restrooms, transporting hitchhikers and potentially lethal alien larvae, avoiding capture by whomever or whatever is pursuing them, and finally mutating into some new kind of disturbed consciousness. Friend, it’ll drop your ass in the dirt.
Order from tediumhouse.com and receive a bonus three-inch CDR with the thirteen-and-a-half-minute track “Lazarescu Follies”
Sex / Death
(PacRec) Used CDR $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Raw, textured grit amid turbine electronics, harsh metallic hell, and devastating noise decadence by Dan Johansson from 2007.
Chimerism
(Adhuman) 2xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Based in Hamilton, Ontario, and operating with scant regard for the cultivation of listenership or exposure, Nathan Ivanco bears similarities to the mid-00s era of grimy USA basement noise and home taping, interpreted perhaps by the lo-fi obscurantism of fellow countrymen Korea Undok Group or the equally murky Makade Star outfit. Mangled, stripped-back samples are subjected to the crudest of electronic processing, while washed-out ambience saturated with tape hiss and eerie recurring motifs gently propel themselves across multiple tracks. Elsewhere more outwardly experimental and freeform works appear in the mix. Quiet sophistication is evident in the arrangements and pacing, which evoking the most classical instincts of concrete sound obsession even within such deeply homemade sonic environs. Presented in free-flowing sequence across both discs, the formerly distinct tracks play out in a longer form which lends new shape and context to the music. Despite sitting firmly in ‘reissue’ territory, Chimerism offers a refreshing angle from which to indulge in Shadow Pattern’s rough beauty and may well highlight areas of the project’s vision which have until now gone unnoticed. All music originally recorded during 2019-2023 and previously released on Hamilton Tapes and Radiant Clay Records
Underthought
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
The court jester of the new Canadian Confusion Sound, our man Nate is the master crafter of the disorienting, almost meditative experience. Lowkey field recordings and warm tape hiss lick lobes. Distorted, grainy, and slightly out of focus, yet undeniably present, Underthought has the same uncanny quality of a reproduction as a photocopy, where the original source feels just beyond reach, blurred and fragmented by the process of duplication, a distortion that holds you in a state of weird, suspended discomfort. Edition of 60
The Glass
(Chocolate Monk - choc.498) CDR $6.75 (Out-of-stock)
Edinburgh’s Shareholder retreats to the bedroom with hash pipe, free music software, and a very old laptop to bring the people musings on the cosmic feminine via Harold Pinter, midlife crisis ballroom dancing, and hallucinogenic Marxist inertia, Bowie-flavored internet entropy and field recordings of genuine public transport witchcraft, amongst other type things. Edition of 60
The Restless Desert
(Chocolate Monk - choc.569) CDR $8.00
With his happy-go-lucky new release Shareholder embraces the warm positivity of the 21st Century. Why not climb inside the mind of a deranged citizen as they negotiate waking from an anxiety nightmare? Or perhaps you’d like to join a drug-addicted aristo for breakfast, or listen to an abusive voice mail left on The Duke of York’s internal? But then you might be the type of person who’d prefer to ponder how the British colonial mindset remains active through leisure pursuits? Could it be you’re obsessed with the imminent collapse of society and the end of the world? Whatever your passion, you’ll find something to warm the cockles and tan the bones. Edition of 60
Rheuma
(Eh? - EH27) Used CD $5.00
Gently chaotic collage construct drone and noise-lite dribble from 2007 that keeps Sound Projector’s Ed Pinsent happy for hours as it spirals out in to never-ending whirlpools of slightly grimy seawater. The four long tracks here by Bryan Day, Alex Boardman, Joseph Jaros, and Andrew Perdue contain plenty of bizarro sound effects, electronics, muffled bass rumbles, and guitar noises, ultimately coming across like strange meeting between Frippertronics and early Tangerine Dream.
Blasé / Live At Pan-African Festival
(Charly - CDDR292) Used 2xCD $10.00
Recorded in Paris, disc one of this 2000 reissue of two late ’60s dates has Shepp on tenor, Dave Burrell on piano, Jeanne Lee on vocals, Lester Bowie on trumpet and flugelhorn, Chicago Beau and Julio Finn on harmonica, Malachi Favors on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Shepp and Burrell remain on tenor and piano respectively for the second disc, recorded in Algeria, with poets Ted Joans and Don Lee, Aleria and Tuareg musicians, Clifford Thornton in cornet, Garchan Moncur III on trombone, Alan Silva on bass, Sunny Murray on drums.
Feel
(Fishrider - FISH008) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Weightless, naturalistic psychedelia that updates angular, chiming, hypnotic drone-pop with injections of synthesizer and sitar, effectively turning The Flying Nun Sound on its head, alternating between the dreamy and the urgent. Michael McLeod (ex-The Alpha State) with guests aplenty: David Kilgour (The Clean), Robert Scott (The Clean, The Bats), Robbie Yeats (The Verlaines, The Dead C), Lesley Paris (Look Blue Go Purple), and Tony de Raad and Tom Bell (David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights).
Mechanica
(K-raa-k3 - K015) Used CD $5.00
Another facet of Frans De Waard’s minimal music, the debut release in the label’s improguitar series. Mechanica’s heavy processing builds guitar strumming into thunder rolling through a world that’s relaxing, tension-filled and bewildering. A mechanical orchestra humming on end.
Vertonen
(Humbug) Used CDR $3.00
Frans De Waard working out drones from very limited sonic material, transformed and augmented by electronics in short pieces that sound more like vignettes, miniature landscapes of a region of the artist’s imagination. From 2002
Live Performances: 1992-1994
(Pataphysique - DD4) CD $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
(Pataphysique - DD4) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
A 1996 release, one of a few solo outings by sax biting NNCK collaborator and Fushitsusha co-founder. LSD March drummer Ikuro Takahashi makes a guest appearance, as do the streets of Shinjuku, Tokyo.
No Jacket Allowed
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.551) CDR $8.00
Raconteur, math whizz, fine thread dresser and psychedelic noise psychonaut Lewis Duffy follows up Tango Super Bock with a deep dive into his post-Covid brain drain. Shimmering electronics and repetitive glee pulse out euphoric ear worms. He has a mind boner for the impossible, like a more hirsute Neil Campbell with a skill for shitty pant throwing. Bow down.
Tango Super Bock
(Chocolate Monk - choc.489) CDR $6.75
This Glasgow-based mystery merchant hatched in Holmfirth, before Bristol spritzed up their lugs. Here they serve slurries of audio ’shrooms for teetotalers while indulging in dry drunk sips from the wine hive of electric warble. Tape loops, violin, Yamaha keyboard, and a broken sequencer that a battery exploded in, (transforming it into a sound-mangler supreme), recorded in Lisbon, September 2019, mostly, then mangled and massaged a few months later up in the dreich. A woozy audio sip from the cracked glass of failure. Edition of 60
Erosion of the Analogous Eye
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS015) Used CD $10.00
The studio of Matt Shoemaker is alive with electricity: impossibly complex wirings channeling signals in and out of analog synth modules; an array of curious aluminum boxes with unmarked knobs; Slinkies strung from ceiling to floor creating a set of giant spring reverb units; accelerometers attached to consumer electronic errata; and even a few conventional tools like guitar stomp boxes and a bruised computer. Yet for all the convoluted engineering that goes into his equipment, the resulting mesmerism seems effortless and strangely organic. Shoemaker's ever-evolving album of mutant dronemuzik and electrical seas of synthetic bristling undulate with placid regularity. Brain-melting psychedelics contort into cancerous, atonal bellows. Out of his allotropic shifts, irradiated static transforms into the graceful chime of temple bells; and electrical phase patterns slip into deep forest murmurings dotted with narcoleptic birds calls. On one hand, this album is prescient of the revival for progressive electronics currently underway in the flood of US post-noise projects; it's easy to triangulate this between Emeralds and Heldon. But on the other hand, Erosion of the Analogous Eye is the continuation of Shoemaker's early work on Trente Oiseaux, with its grotesques exaggerations of field recording. Artwork features unique, hand-dyed abstractions mounted on letterpressed paper. Limited edition of 300 copies.
Soundtrack for Dislocation
(Elevator Bath - EEAOA034) CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
An entirely self-contained account of a fantastically abstract and intensely personal vision, permeated with potent unease. Enigmatic cover and interior images, the cryptic track titles, and the recordings themselves -- densely packed and elaborately evolved aberrancies. Edition of 509. That's right, Stonehange, 509.
Spots On The Sun
(Helen Scarsdale) Used CD $5.00
A grotesque, sonic landscape with details exaggerated out of proportion and narratives folded upon themselves in a magnificent abstraction of electro-acoustics, rarefied field recordings, and particulate matter plucked from ether. While the familiar sounds of encircling birds, turbulent weather, and temple bells litter Shoemaker’s recordings, the sonic topography describes a vulgar and hostile landscape where fits of delirium and circadian arrhythmia are common human responses. In many ways, Shoemaker’s Spots in the Sun could be mistaken for Bernard Parmegiani at his most focused or even John Duncan at his most gracefully brutal. Letterpress second edition of 400
Volume One
(Specimen Products) Used CD $20.00
A 1991 collection of early recordings, live tracks and related pre-post-rock ephemera by Sam Prekop’s pre-Sea and Cake outfit from the late ’80s, where herky-jerky rhythms and warm jazz-folk intermingle with late ’60s fragmentation a la Red Krayola.
Accelerant
(Coherent States - CS29) Cassette + 3-inch CDR $22.00
Five massive drone repetitions (plus the fourteen-minute “Mind Gate” on the disc) by Heath Moerland that momentarily become hints of rhythm, only to retreat into subdued and atmospheric tape manipulation. No linear flow would emanate more an essence of synthesis and less a sustained improvisation. In stenciled drawstring cloth bag with six color prints. Edition of 20. C22
Snake Code
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.404) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Detroit’s demented noise chess-master lays his first cracked egg for Chocolate Monk and it is the out-and-out mind-melter you would hope for. Cracked electronics sit alongside blown out-tape damage. Electric insect skitter and life-affirming creep pulse also make appearances. A heavy-on-the-hiss classic that will scribble your mystic center. Strange zones await unexplored. Numbered edition of 75.
I Have Become The Disease That Made Me
(Groundfault) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Constantly moving harsh noise that never stops jumping and changing. Includes “Bloodhunger,” previously released on Reconstruct the Caos #2 (Audio Intruder Pain 2001). Sealed
Terror Auto-Obstetrics
(BloodLust! - B!108) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Released to coincide with the very first USA Sigillum S show in the Italian post-industrial audio project’s 20+ year history, this EP pulls together four songs originally released on AWB Recordings: "Terror Auto-Obstetrics" and "Transkathartick Endoscopy" (7-inch, 1990), "Suck Inside Thee Ov Bulb" (Effete compilation cassette, 1988), and "Purulence Peaks, Hairy Knobs, And Death Disturbances" (Private Thoughts compilation cassette, 1991). The tracks were re-mastered by band member Eraldo Bernocchi. Sigillum S’s ongoing explorations of forbidden areas of the subconscious yields alien electronic mutations that merge concrete noise research with acoustic transmigration, while visuals and other media achieve maximum interaction intensity.
Operation From The Below
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC259) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The sixth volume in Chocolate Monk’s Well Spliced Breath series of “sound-tape collage, text-sound, radiophonic, horspiel-type muck.” A little treatise on trust, standards, and self-preservation. Guest appearance by Leif Elggren.
So Long
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS027) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Best known for his electro-surrealism in Stilluppsteypa, Sigmarsson has long been an artist of extremes and absurdities — mania fueled performances, wildly scribbled drawings, and Haflerian audio shock-therapy on one hand, and on the other, profound meditations on austere shape, form, and mood cast through similar media. So Long aligns itself firmly within the latter aesthetic of crypto-minimalism, having quietly simmered in his head over the years, a sublime gesture of polar impressionism flecked with hallucinatory ambience, Vaseline-smeared crackle, and hauntological displacement.
Negative Fascination
(Hospital - HOS357) CD $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
On the first official full length album from Silent Servant, long-time followers will feel the effects of a die cast over a decade of precision and dedication to underground minimalist electronic music. DJ and one of the founding producers of the Sandwell District label, Juan Mendez filters his interpretations of early post-punk through the monolithic works of Basic Channel and blends them with a progressively nihilistic vision of Industrial. He utilizes a relentless and uncompromising mastery of hard-as-nails sequencer techno at the forefront with dystopian atmospherics filling the void. Negative Fascination bridges disparate factions on ideological grounds, regardless of sound in the age of mutation.
Skillfullness
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Free jazz mind-blow and violin hypnosis from 1970 with violin Dave Burrell, Becky Friend, Karl Berger, Mike Ephron, Lawrence Cook, and Barry Altschul. Sealed
Staying On The Watch
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Stretched-out and powerful performance from 1966 by the altoist with Barbara Donald (trumpet), John Hicks (piano), Teddy Smith (bass), and Marvin Pattillo (drums). Sealed
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
(Mercury) Used CD $3.00
Includes “I Put a Spell On You,” “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” the title track, live versions of “I Loves You, Porgy” and “Mississippi Godamn,” plus eleven more. Liner notes by Imme Schade van Westrum
The Door Is In The Valley
(Chocolate Monk - choc.455) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Andrew J. Jarvis fends off the aimlessness, indecision, lack of energy and mental torpor of the Upper Calder Valley and inscribes this audio postcard thus: “Bats in flight, steam and hiss, hammer on stone – a vertical roll. The floating lady, a cymbal sounds! Tape loops, rocks fall – the door is in the valley. Sticks and stones, a womb a warble – the valley is the mother. Time ticks, past and – centres. A gong, an owl – the ringing Island. Stone telling stone.” Moss malady be gone! Edition of 60
Brath
(Oxen - 013) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
This full-length blizzard of bass and electronic noise, with fusillades of vocals and drums like Razors continues Sissy Spacek’s noisecore trajectory while at the same time achieving new elevations of extreme noise-gore. Fans will be rewarded with the velocity of putrefaction, bleakly unable to lay anchor amid relentlessly immersive chaotic fluctuation.
California Ax
(Helicopter - H50) Used 4xCD $25.00
All four of Sissy Spacek’s extant proper albums could probably fit onto a single CD; flipping that notion on its head, California Ax contains four new full length albums in one trim little boat. Tinsel Dripping Ink (disc one) covers territory from grindcore, noise, electro-acoustic improv, musique concrete, noisecore, and electronics. It's primarily made up of new work, but also ruts through the cutting room floor for the best bits that didn't make it onto previous efforts, with a few tracks dating as far back as 1998. Police (disk two) is 11 tracks in 40 minutes of electro-acoustic improv with girls on drums. Abreq Ad Habra (disc three) -- named after an Arabic phrase pre-dating "Abracadabra," the preferred mistranslation of which is "hurl an even lightning bolt until death” -- contains Sissy Spacek’s rawest recordings ever: a 40-minute inferno from KXLU and a 20-minute live set in 2002 in St. Louis. 13-Tet Los Angeles (disc four) is a live document of a 13-piece lineup that performed two sets at The Smell in Los Angeles in December 2007 and is also the first live performance of a score by John Wiese. Completist alert -- the Spacek core of John Wiese and Corydon Ronnau called upon the following for contributions to California Ax: Mitchell Brown, Sarah Cake, Kevin Drumm, Gerritt, Kate Hall (Mika Miko), Joseph Hammer (Solid Eye), Aaron Hemphill (Liars, Skull Sküll), Jesse Jackson (Flaspar), Greg Kelley (Nmperign), Tim Koh (White Magic, Ariel Pink), Danny McClain (Grand Ulena), Giles Miller, Oblivia (Smegma), Andy Ortmann (Panicsville), Sam Ott (The Fucking Angels), Tom Recchion (Airway, LAFMS), Damion Romero (Speculum Fight), Jarrett Silberman (Skull Sküll, Young People), Dean Spunt (No Age), David Scott Stone (Melvins, Get Hustle), and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pileup).
Dash / Anticlockwise
(Helicopter - H 69) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Scathing sound by John Wiese and Corydon Ronnau, joined by Lasse Marhaug and Will Strangeland of Tearist and Silver Daggers, cautiously partitioned into short bursts of truly obliterated hardcore. Ruptured and bleeding out, heavily. Seventeen bonus tracks not on Dash LP. Edition of 200
Duration Groups
(Helicopter - H 75) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Hellish chaos by Ted Byrnes, Mike Du Bose, Ace Farren Ford of Smegma, Debt Of Nature’s Brad Laner, Charlie Mumma, and John Wiese
First Four
(Helicopter - H 68) 2xCD + DVD $20.50 (Out-of-stock)
Their long out-of-print Sissy Spacek (Nuform 2001), Remote Whale Control (Gameboy 2003), Scissors (Misanthropic Agenda 2002), Devils Cone and Palm (Misanthropic Agenda 2006), plus the exclusive full-length Coast To Coast. The DVD contains live footage, exclusive videos and a tour documentary. Printed, hinged box.
French Record
(Dual Plover) CD $15.50 (Out-of-stock)
Using full-on blur/grindcore as a starting point, Sissy Spacek has evolved toward the extreme, intense fringes of musique concrete. On this, their fifth proper album, they explore new territory, as always, and take unforeseeable turns into electro-acoustic improv, collage, industrial, noise and heavy metal, with a line up that includes Kevin Drumm, Kate Hall (Mika Miko), Sam Ott (The Fucking Angels), Corydon Ronnau, John Wiese, and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core).
Gate
(Helicopter - H73) CD $8.25 (Out-of-stock)
Uncompromisingly bleak and harsh noisecore made from drums, vocals, bass, and electronics. All fifteen tracks from Charlie Mumma and John Wiese’s Gate seven-inch (A Dear Girl Called Wendy, 2013), all five tracks from their Incomprehensible Dehumanization seven-inch (Gilgongo, 2014), and a six-minute bonus track “Live At 799 Towne Ave,” recorded February 2015.
Glass
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used CD $8.00
Sissy Spacek’s fourth release for Misanthropic Agenda is a documentation of a duo piece developed in 2008 by Corydon Ronnau and John Wiese for breaking glass. Two performances in Los Angeles and San Francisco are included in their entirety. “It’s an exercise in defamiliarization,” according to The Wire. “On the first track, the sound of broken glass is sampled then bent out of shape — pitchshifted, processed and scattered across the stereo field, severing sound from referent. The second track is more brutish, recorded in mono and riven with feedback. The duo seems able to trap the frequencies, cancelling others out. It’s an idea of some vintage — the sounds of destruction used constructively — but Wiese and Ronnau execute it with brio.” Hand-numbered digipak in an edition of 300.
Live in Hong Kong
(Helicopter) Used CD $8.00
Mumma and Wiese’s performance at Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and its peripheral documentation is an example of the band’s abstracting style and approach to their broad range of work, from grindcore to musique concrète, with a considerable gulf of experimentation in between. Recorded on the occasion of Takeshi Murata’s “Infinite Doors” opening, the album combines a multi-tracked live set of electronics and grindcore, which bookends an array of recordings made throughout their 5-day residency, combining graveyard field recordings, barrel scrapings, impromptu noisecore, and tape collage.
Reversed Normalization
(Helicopter - H 76) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Hellish incomprehensible noisecore by Mike Du Bose, Chris Goudreau of Sickness, Charlie Mumma, Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s Jay Randall and John Wiese
Wreck
(Phage - PT176) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Thirty minutes of grind and harsh noise by John Wiese, Phil Blankenship, Corydon Ronnau and Charlie Mumma. Edition of 200.
How Can The Red Dusts Blow Here?
(Gameboy) Used CDR $5.00
“Solo guitar improvisations from guitarist Bryan Day [of the Public Eyesore label] in the vein of John Fahey,” says our friend at Korperschwache, “Only not quite so unadorned or overprocessed…. [On] ‘Hands Beckon’ … acoustic guitar and electric guitar (often treated) interact with each other…. ‘Sine Daughter’ employs extensive reverb and delay to generate pinging notes and shimmering drones…, while ‘Ladybugs’ pits intermittent snatches of melody from one guitar against muted noise and tweaking from others, and ‘Christmaseve’ is a solo performance (guitar, vocals, and squeaks).” Edition of 50.
Sitting
(Chocolate Monk - choc.579) CDR $8.00
Begun as a synth-drone duo in 2016 to pursue an “unaccountable method of music-making,” Aubrey Hornor and Bob Desaulniers eventually out grew experimenting with their self-designed indeterminate graphic scores, though never let go of the idea of Sitting as a band, recording sporadically and spontaneously together using whatever was lying around — household objects mostly, along with contact mics and sometimes tape loops. “Though the texture and tools of the project have changed, we continued to think of it as essentially drone.” Their years-long sound diary was compiled using “source material from those sessions, live recordings of our old synth incarnation, and voice memos of interesting sounds that Aubrey sent to me, all looped and layered into something new.” Edition of 60
Dust & Chimes
(Holy Mountain) Used CD $8.00
Ben Chasny’s second underground folk-psych album from behind California’s redwood curtain, where heavy, acoustic guitar and mumbled vocalizations merge with out-there jamming, in a Takoma-meets-the-first-two-Tyrannosaurus-Rex-albums style. Sealed
For Octavio Paz
(Holy Mountain) Used CD $12.00
Ben Chasny explores the guitar inside and out, solo and over-dubbed, steel and nylon string (in fact, For Octavio Paz is the first Six Organs album to feature the reverberations of a nylon string guitar). What really sets Chasny apart from the other modern Fahey worshipers is a willingness to accept a wider array of other guitarists into the pantheon — Peter Walker or Richard Youngs, for example. Sealed.
Case Studies In Early Taxidermy Techniques
(Hospital - HOS-400) 20xCD $125.00 (Out-of-stock)
The creator and main operator of legendary and eerie label Self Abuse Records, Patrick O’Neil founded Skin Crime in 1993-94 out of the morbid surrealism of mother project Hanged Man’s Orgasm. One of the earliest and most influential American noise institutions from the ’90s, Skin Crime is the missing link between European musique concrète, Japanese noise, and the gritty abstract electronics of what became the glory and gory days of American harsh noise — the largely undocumented moment when noise broke away from industrial to destroy further its electronic roots. No mere bedroom project, Skin Crime distinguished itself as a real dedicated live noise band with a rotating lineup surrounding their core as a three-piece; highly detailed, ascending compositions offset with their forceful and dynamic textures. Includes: Desecration (Self Abuse 1994); Prenatal (Self Abuse 1994); Eyestrain (Self Abuse 1995); Electroshock Treatment (Self Abuse 1995); Genital Modification (G.R.O.S.S. 1995); Urge (Bloodlust! 1996); Whorebutcher (Mother Savage 1996); Burn (Less Than Zero 1996); King Of The Death Match (Spite 1999); Audio Pathology (Armed And Loaded 1998); Tsunami (Alienation 2000); Parasite (Xerxes 2001); Skin Crime (Hospital Productions 2003); Trauma (Self Abuse 1996); Monster (Self Abuse 1997); previously unreleased studio and live recordings; early versions of Audio Pathology tracks; compilation and split tracks. Cloth-bound foil-stamped box with ribbon, including individual wallets, 40-page booklet and double-sided poster. Edition of 300.
Dystrophy
(Hanson - HN236) CD $8.50 (Out-of-stock)
Crude noise from the filthiest Cleveland basements and scum punk bars by Wyatt Howland (Dead Peasant Insurance, Apartment 213), whose knack for writhing in the underbelly of sound using junk metal, field recordings and primitive electronics is not easily matched. Dystrophy is complete audio horror texture: pulverizing harsh sounds of fluttering static, feedback and crushed metal. Edition of 500.
Exquisite Fucking Boredom
(Tumult) Used CD $12.00
Brainwash jumps right in and says “ ‘Celestial Highway’ is a massive, stomping heavy metal riff, a big hairy acid-drenched slab of fuzzy blues cribbed from the Blue Cheer handbook. The jacked-up shredding that twists around the central rhythmic stomp is directly inspired by the third-eye Satanic soloing of Glenn Tipton and Tony Iommi. That shit keeps cycling around, pulsating fuzzy tendrils of bombastic riffage, hairy to the Nth degree, lifting up to the clouds on a silver machine of over-amped guitar wreckage. And then it repeats. Over and over. For nearly an hour…. Skullflower pushes the envelope of acceptability in terms of musical content…. The nuanced production … by Colin Potter … add[s] sheets of compounding noise run-off to each successive riff, alternately burying the … guitars in a pile of audio rubble, or uncovering and highlighting them by pushing out the borders of distortion…. [S]ome of the most bizarre and unconventional “stoner rock” yet conceived.” With hole punch in the lower right back corner
Last Shot At Heaven
(Noiseville) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Madly pounding drums, the occasionally audible bass, but mainly a demonic, noisy blur possessed by distorted guitars. Skullflower’s hideous cacophony — altered artificially, mechanically, digitally, chemically — wavers across the spectrum of intensity, tension, meander, flow, and stutter. A divine and mesmerizing sandstorm.
Obsidian Shaking Codex
(RRRecords) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Five lengthy pieces from 1993 that signaled a change away from tribal drumming and wild guitar distortions toward droning, chaotic dissonance with horror-industrial overtones. Classic, crushing Skullflower that peaks with the titanic twenty-five-minute “Smoke Jaguar.”
Pure Imperial Reform
(Turgid Animal - TA309) CD $10.00
Recorded 2006 live on an Antwerp radio station comes this new guitar wall "composition" from Matthew Bower and Lee Stokoe. A good harsh racket. UK import.
Skullflower / Utarm
(Turgid Animal) split CD $11.75
Three tracks by Matthew Bower’s pioneering noise / rock unit, two by Norwegian relative newcomer. Extreme, beautiful, dark and wandering-in-the-woods noise, operating inside an experimental, black-metal-influenced twilight zone. Inspiring triumphant soundscapes, evil tepid ambiance and deadly esoteric world music. Edition of 500
Strange Keys to Untune Gods’ Firmament
(Neurot - NR067) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Guitar-based mass, Wagnerian bombast, Nietzchean worldview, and warlike cries of rebellion against the false, encased in a whirlwind both psychotropic and psychoacoustic, tortured, distorted, and eerily shamanic.
Pas The Sarvering Gallack Seas And Flaming Nebyul Eye
(Obfuscated - OR27) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Taking its name from a line in Russell Hoban’s dystopian novel Riddley Walker, Mike Page returns to the longer track tendency of earlier Sky Burial while continuing to develop upon the sound and compositional style explored on There I Saw The Grey Wolf Gaping (Small Doses 2012). “Some sort of very strange circus music,” ponders our friend at Obskure Pandemonium, “A pleasure to immerse yourself in…. Like a blissful childhood memory on LSD…. [O]ne of the strangest ambient type records … in some time…. A dizzying cacophony of out-there sound … composed of various movements … telling an incredible story of worlds beyond normal perception.” Guests include Craig McFarlane, Nigel Ayers (Nocturnal Emissions), Finnish multi-instrumentalist Pentti Dassum, John Balestreri (Slogun / Self), Andrew Grant (The Vomit Arsonist) and Stargazer’s Assistant.
There I Saw The Grey Wolf Gaping
(Small Doses - DOSE115) CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Shorter pieces this time out, inspired by diverse genres: kosmische / krautrock, musique concrète, early industrial, shoegaze, ambient / drone, and avant-garde composition. Still cohesive, though, always musing on esoteric and mythological subject matter. Guests include Danny Hyde (Coil), Jarboe, Anni Hogan (Marc and The Mambas, Willing Sinners), Jóhann Eiriksson (Gjöll, Reptilicus), Bridget Wishart (Hawkwind), Troum, Xiphoid Dementia and piper Craig McFarlane.
Threnody for Collapsing Suns
(Phage - PT151) CD $11.50 (Out-of-stock)
Mike Page of Fire In The Head doing the dark ambient. This 50-minute, thoughtfully composed triptych incorporates deep drones, shimmering synth work, lamenting melodic lines and layers that form a surprisingly organic, well-crafted narrative. A journey into the nebulous dusk of Kosmische Musik. Edition of 500.
Acnalbasac Noom
(ReR Megacorp - RERSHCD) Used CD $10.00
A reissue of the original Polydor 1973 sessions (not the re-recorded version released by Virgin in ’74). “The group’s songwriting are improved since their debut,” according to All Music Guide, “And Dagmar Krause’s German chanteuse-influenced vocals find catchier, more rock-oriented settings. The lyrics are witty and oddball without being pretentious. Tracks like ‘Mr. Rainbow’ recall Yoko Ono’s early-’70s song-oriented material…. ‘The Secret,” with its almost girl-group-worthy catchiness, and “Charlie ’n’ Charlie,” with its nifty surfish guitar riff, even sound like potential commercial singles. The four bonus tracks include the delightful 1982 single ‘Everybody’s Slimmin’.” Sealed with small promo drill hole
Sort Of
(Blueprint) Used CD $10.00
1999 reissue of the debut album (Polydor 1972) by Peter Blegvad, Dagmar Krause and Anthony Moore, recorded at Faust’s studio with Gunther Wusthoff, Werner “Zappi” Diermaier and Jean-Herve Peron. The band’s charming naiveté was never as pronounced as here. With bonus track “Jumping Jonah,” a non-LP B-side.
Call The Doctor
(Chainsaw) Used CD $8.00
Corin Tucker’s enormous voice powered by riffs that seem unstoppable, riding melodies whose irresistibility renders them barely less harsh. From 1996
Sleater-Kinney
(Chainsaw) Used CD $5.00
Ten songs in twenty-two minutes. Voice-on-voice and guitar-on-guitar. Fervor, disgust, and passion by heroines and outsiders. From 1995
The Romance Is Over
(Squirrelgirl) Used CD $3.00
Music created with 21st century laptop precision which pays tribute to the lush orchestrations of a bygone era of schmaltz pop, combining the effortless digital wizardry of Norway’s Lasse Marhaug and the anti-crooning / collage of Canada’s Zev Asher, who elevate the eleven songs here from just another trip down glitchy memory lane to a full-on exercise in pop-music deconstructivism. They incorporate everything from Leonard Cohen’s back catalogue to B-grade porno soundtracks in cohesive and lucid fashion. It’s less Merzbow-lite than a slightly disturbing journey through an avant-garde pop music wonderland.
Core
(BloodLust! - B!096) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks of true minimal synth music; the fifth track is a 27-minute experimental analog synth piece, dark electronics à la M.B.
Home
(BloodLust! - B!118) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The fourth and final disc in a series of Sleep Museum EPs features rhythmic, darkly melodic synth-and-drum-machine-driven minimal electronic music, with unrepentant, eccentric vocals and dour lyrics. A nearly 36-minute-long experimental analog synth piece is closer to the M.B. and Lustmord styles of dark electronics. Total running time, nearly 60 minutes
Replica
(BloodLust! - B!112) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Five tracks of rhythmic, darkly melodic synth- and drum machine-driven true minimal synth music, with unrepentant, eccentric vocals and dour lyrics. Utterly contemporary, yet also bearing the frost of certain late 1970s and early 1980s recordings -- a hint of Joy Division mood and a dose of electronic-era Death in June. "In Time" is a 32-minute experimental analog synth piece, far closer to the M.B.-style of dark electronics.
Beware
(Broken Rekids) Used CD $8.00
“Sludgy rhythms, monotone vocals, anarchist lyrics—this is what Flipper would’ve sounded like if they had been from England and had Penny Rimbaud on drums.” Include tracks from their Crass single, Leaving the Mind Behind LP and eight tracks from the unreleased Up From The Basement album. From 2004
Bloody Roots
(Trash Ritual - TRASH044) Used CD $9.00
Each track is built around a thick, low end / lo-fi rumble with just the smallest bit of vocal samples breaking through. Lyrics filled with hatred and self-loathing, manifesting itself in violent reactions and a vocal approach to match. Slogun's preoccupation with violent crime has been replaced by focus on self-loathing; its not about distractions anymore, it's about facing a dark, useless reality. Power electronics at its finest.
Glory Of Murder
(BloodLust! - B!090) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The sixth and final release in Slogun's "History of Violence" reissue campaign was originally released on cassette (Soffitta Macabra, 1998); it was a major landmass in the evolving world of true crime subject matter. Like the five precursors in the series, it boasts ultra-violent, harsh electronics, great samples, and raging vocals.
A Whole Other World of Fun
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR018) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Known for split records with bands such as Corrupted, Grief, Floor, Upsidedown Cross, Noothgrush, Ohio's Sloth have been creating some of the most fucked up, weird, funny music from the past ten years. The painful sludge noise is still here, but on this their first ever CD full-length, there's an altogether more considered approach. It's got piano on it, for fuck's sake. Sloth's weird, lo-fi songs sound like they were written by a fucked up kid, but then there are garage rock high-end jams and tarpit slo-mo doom dirges. Bizarre and hilarious as ever.
Live At Fort Process
(Chocolate Monk - choc.425) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Robin “Slim” Dickinson returns from hiatus with this live recording made at Newhaven’s 19th century fort — his first attempt at a site-specific set. Field recordings of the building breathing and wheezing in its old age mixed with imagined soldiers sitting there during the war listening to the radio and waiting. Numbered edition of 60
(Are You Taken) Aback
(Chocolate Monk - choc.578) CDR $8.00
Black Forest sound frazzler Norman Mueller can usually be found plying his trade under the Ypsmael moniker but with Smaely P, he branches out into even weirder atmospheric aural grease. Considered, composed pieces that are equal part soothing and discombobulating. Self-described by Mueller as “the zone where ‘it’ plays a moment of poetry wading through endless puke, anguish or slumber apparatus possibility. Unleashing only ruin to be there and arrange for the surrounding the ‘thing’ to happen up a pile of junk on a broth is not a job, more like an obsession to have another packet of Wheetabix else hungry the bug unnamed thing, it may not be when the feeling arises that roles are being swapped and being played by whatever floats around the room ‘antenna’ disSECTing explained missing the point entirely. Mindframe as guises or personae perhaps even something or ring out, rather, on the table, mostly.” Edition of 60
An Accident In Substance
(Harbinger Sound) 3xCD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
A massive retrospective, with tracks from out-of-print seven-inches and compilation submissions. “Even The Lives Of Our Grandfathers” (Methods of Achieving Satisfaction in a Goal-Oriented Society [Apraxia]); “Some Movements” (Nature Morte 2 [E’ostrate]); “Wind On Jets,” “Every Force Evolves A Form,” and “Micromelistmata” (Anodyne Effect of Habit [Small Cruel Party]); “12 Breaths On Shore” and “Seminal Brainpan” (Seminal Brainpan [Dom America]); “Without Arms But With Some Kind Of Peculiar Attachment” (Dedication-Zweite Auslese [Artware]); “Before The Dream” and “Of The Still Earth” (Before the Dream [Drone]); “Home Borders : Circling Outward Past Edge To Rest, Awaken” (Shiroseasons [Shirocoal]); “Cold Hell” and “This Moment” (The Subtle Body [Banned Production]); “Vasana” (Noisenet #4 [NOISE]); “1860-xii-30 Birds Explore Trees 15-v-1960” (America The Beautiful [RRR]); “Notes On Use” (Howard 31 [Artware]); “Double Entrance” (Precipitation [Partial]); “Sister - Well – Brother” (from split acetate with Daniel Menche [MSBR]); “Red, Wide And Driving” (Killing Me Softly With Noise [NOISE]); “7-1114/357-730 The Light Itself” (Parasit [Ant-Zen]); “Iron Moment” (Interference [23five]); “La Poussiere Des Murs Detruit Le Passe” (Regeneration – Degenerescence [Kaon]); “For The Coil Of Copper Underwood” (…And The Vultures Miss Nothing [Harbinger Sound]); “Second Honor: It’s Forever Again” (Links Outta Here [Generator Sound Art]); “To Have Been Seen” (To Have Been Seen [Shirocoal]); “Ceremonies Of Memory I & II” (Ceremonies of Memory [Fylkingen Records]); “Objects As They Change” (10 x 10 [Banned Production]).
Do You Believe In A Pencil?
(Small Cruel Party - SCP002) Used CD $17.50 (Out-of-stock)
Key Ransone focuses on the inherent mysterious and beautiful quality of sound itself, with the emphasis on obscure non-instrumental sources. The density comes from concentration of activity, usually derived from the acoustics of manipulation of physical objects. Even Small Cruel Party’s high-volume pieces on this self-released 1991 album maintain intense, zen-like calm. Silkscreened box.
Yinyue
(Dual Plover) Used CD $5.00
With a hopelessly romantic backstory in which the artist followed ViVi to China (after knowing her for mere days) during pre-Y2K madness that included the Macao handover and the trial of Falun Gong, this a fifty-minute edit of nine hours of Beijing radio is “a barrage of wildly distorted Chinese ramblings, brief encounters with actual songs, blips, and jerks of static.”
30 Years of Service
(Radon) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
In July 2003, Smegma celebrated their 30th anniversary as a musical collective with a series of concerts featuring Stooges saxman Steve Mackay. These landmark noise spectacles were highly praised, most notably the exceptional performance at The Derby in Hollywood. At the end of the year, the set was recreated in Smegma’s legendary Portland, Oregon, studio and painstakingly mixed and manipulated over the course of several months. From their mid-’70s work in the Los Angeles Free Music Society up through their critically exalted collaboration album with Wolf Eyes, Smegma’s influential free honk’n’gibber is like no other.
33 1/3
(Important - IMPREC145) Enhanced CD $12.00
Leaning here toward their 20th century avant-garde and out-jazz influences, Smegma have obviously spent of good portion of their 33.3-year history free-thinking their heads off. Magnificent blotoo honk by Oblivia, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Burned Mind, Conroy, and Dr. Id. CD includes live videos of “Happy Holidays” live at End Times Festival (with Spencer Yeh and Twig Harper) and “Grubsteak” live at the Three Million Tongues festival in Chicago.
Beast
(Destijl - IND036) CD $12.75 (Out-of-stock)
Intergenerational discomfort rock performed together by two free-sound conglomerates -- the sprawling Portland, Oregon-based LAFMS progenitors Smegma, and the more compact Wolf Eyes. With cover art depicting crop circles, alien grave rubbings and cryptographs, and group portrait inside resembling a family reunion snapshot you might find at a thrift store, The Beast merges Richard Meltzer’s nasal meander, reptilian pulsations, exploratory tweakadelica, outsider improv, toys, devices, and electronic noises. Proof that old weird America is far from obsolete and more than capable of frying the fiendly skies.
Dives Headfirst Into Punk Rock 1978/79
(Krim Kram) CD $11.75
Krim Kram’s expanded CD reissue of the cassette first issued on Pigface Records in 2015 documents the earliest recordings of Smegma performing live as part of the Portland punk rock / new wave scene (Myrtle Tickner, Jerry A. and Pig Champion from Poison Idea would all later go on to play with the band at various stages throughout the 80s and 90s). Included are the complete Flashcards and Disco Diarrhea 7s, both originally self-released on Pigface Records in 1979.
Glamour Girl
(Japan Overseas - JO9728) CD $10.50
This 1997 CD reissue of vintage gorked-out wahoo originally released by Los Angeles Free Music Society in the late ’70s includes four bonus tracks (the Pigface Chant 7-inch). A bizarre combo of the tape-loops-and-nonsense later perfected by Negativland, the meandering skronk of Jandek or Gate, and the nightmarish hippie meltdowns of the No-Neck Blues Band and their offshoots.
Name Of The Frame
(Moloko Plus) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four recordings from the late 1970s and early 1980s, plus a 23-minute solo piece by core member Ace Farren Ford from 1974.
Nattering Naybobs of Negativity
(Harbinger Sound - 051) CD $15.00
Digital reissue of Smegma’s 1987 LP (Dead Man's Curve 1988), rounded out with the studio recordings from the Morass cassette (Soleilmoon 1988). Contains twenty-one tracks and an eight-page booklet featuring the complete Smegma discography up to 1988.
Pigs for Lepers
(Harbinger Sound - H043) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Reissue of second long-player, originally the seventh release on the band’s Pigface Records imprint back in 1982. With an eight-page color booklet of artwork and photographs from the archives. Bonus track “Mutant Baby” was recorded live in 1979 and appeared on an obscure Trap Records compilation.
Tiromancy
(Japan Overseas - JO9731) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Japanese CD from 1997 by this oblique improv collective. In some ways, just as traditional as a bunch of Sun Ra acolytes, in others more bent than actual acid casualties, Tiromancy splashes down swaddled in rainbow dots, early Playboy chic, laughing gas electronics, conflicting vapors, surround-seep ooze-adelia, and highly agile mental capabilities.
Les Evening Gowns Damnées - 56 Ludlow Street 1962-1964, Volume I
(Table Of The Elements) Used CD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
Readings of short stories and other audio excursions (featuring musical accompaniment by Tony Conrad, John Cale and Angus MacLise, and excerpts from the soundtrack to Flaming Creatures (the earthquake orgy scene). Sealed
Silent Shadows On Cinemaroc Island - 56 Ludlow Street 1962-1964, Volume II
(Table Of The Elements) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Highlights from exotic live events at the legendary theater–studio of filmmaking visionary and founding father of performance art. Early ’60s hilarity, tape and sound experiments, a chunk of the soundtrack to Smith’s watershed film Flaming Creatures, and a reading of “Pfeffernuss Flavored Aspirin.” Sealed
Strip Ice Water To Listerine
(Nyahh) CD $14.00
In March 2020, Smith asked Turman to work on “a quick and dirty internet collab. It’s only six days old. A simple generative system. Why don’t we rework it together? Tear it apart, add your bits, then I can sprinkle some magic dust atop the rubble!” Turman was unable to get to it until after receiving the sad news that Smith had died in January 2022. By then he had developed new processes and began reworking Strip Ice Water To Listerine — cutting up, looping, and sampling Smith’s original, creating a series of rhythmic backdrops for his improvisations. In short, “an album’s worth of material that I could not stop listening to,” he says. “Unfortunately the rubble never got the magic dust but I think Tom would have liked it.” Liner notes by Thurston Moore. Cover art by Karen Constance
Snakes Alive
(Sentient) CD $12.00
With this step forward from the split LP with Wire Werewolves, Snakes Alive take powerful, heavy rock into new levels, combining catchy, well crafted songs that don’t compromise a thing with psychedelic textures. Eyeball scorching artwork from the late Daniel Kraus. Weird, heavy, meltable throughout.
Sun Storm Rampage
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD053) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Single forty-five-minute track by Ukranian sound artist, varying from delicate electro-acoustic textures to killer static power-drone, spaced synths and bestial metal junk. No edits or overdubs. Dedicated to supernatural solar activity and the sacral mathematics of Pythagoras. Edition of 500
Voyage to See What’s on the Bottom
(Melon Expander) Used CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts and Steve Thomsen have each spent 25+ years exploring various avenues of music described by their 1970s collective, the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) as "avant-schmaltz." With an ear for unsettling detail, Solid Eye suspends the listener in a lurching, oozing, hallucinatory river of sound that unfolds with its own peculiar sense of internal logic. Neither fish nor fowl, their aesthetic impulses bear scant resemblance to the dominant modes and methods that govern the domain of much contemporary experimental music. This surrealist cabal immerses itself in the creation of a pata-physical metaphysic, a slippery, elusive territory where the profound is coaxed from the ludicrous and the seemingly innocuous is inverted into the preternaturally haunting... a cosmology where the absurd, the uncanny and the unsettling coalesce, the result distilled into a sense-deforming, reality-eroding, alchemical elixir. Sealed
DLO
(Alchemy) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
“[M]utant guitar noise [boiled] down into shorter, shockingly well considered chunks,” says Mars Hottentot. DLO smashes together everything Solmania does “in a half-sentient Large Hadron Collider. The results are fantastic. The loops … are a dominant force here…: clicks, pops, scrapes and pulses are cycled against each other but never allowed to become boring…. As a free guitarist, Ohno proves his virtuosity beyond doubt here…. “Ovals” maintains its twelve-minute run time examining high tension scraping on multiple tracks…. Unlike his raw, ripped mid-period…, DLO returns to the effect boxes with a vengeance, “Bug Flutter In Toxic” and the robotic “There and Back” are so effected into synthetic oblivion, they barely resemble guitars at all. The album’s other long distance thrasher, “Push Comes To Shove” is … a non-stop torrent of screeching guitar sludge, sputtering Ginn hiccups, and breaking strings.” With obi
Evil Bed
(Alchemy) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Possibly Ohno’s most stylistically consistent effort yet,” according to Nightwrath. “It is a bit harsher than usual…. [G]uitar scraping goodness…, traditional harsh noise immurement…, trebly sheets of distortion.” From 1996. In card jacket with obi
Live - Big Rig
(Kubitsuri) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live recordings from the late 1990s presented, according to Mars Hottentot, “as hard sci-fi — the sounds of desperate conflict on alien planets by people and machines with access to weapons far beyond our own. ‘U.F.O.’ is sixteen minutes of harsh psychedelia, Masahiko Ohno’s guitar hovering above the burning canopy, spraying defoliant on Sugahara’s mole guitar writhing in the jungles below. ‘Gather, Grandell’ is science-versus-theology at the end of a pulse cannon. ‘Divine Invasion’ is a black room where arch-priests ply their tools upon non-believers. ‘Bug Flutter and Cloudy Sonic Blue’ opens with the sound of choppers in the distance, sirens on the ground awake the troops who come out, plasma rifles blazing, jabbering their little android heads off. ‘Psyclenation’ [revisits the] motorcycle fetish … [and] invokes the vehicle before it blasts through the barriers of reality and plows down … highways of unknown dimensions…. ‘Angst Bop’ is you, caught in the flaming, gelatinous mess of Solmania’s shock troop napalm hoses. Don’t bother dropping and rolling, that won’t put it out — you’re gonna burn until there’s no more you left to burn.” Sealed
Metamorphor Chorus
(Alchemy) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Unlike later works,” notes Mars Hottentot, this 1991 disc “jumps all over the place: phased-out drubbing…, hyper brief, speed scrap metal…, harsh noise / old school industrial factory fire…, doomed Pink Floyd slowed to a crawl, reversed and scrapped…, and vicious jet engine blast….” With obi
Psycledelic
(Alchemy) Used CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Solmania stripped to the bone,” marvels Mars Hottentot. “The production is clear and spartan.” Given “that Solmania’s heavily modified guitars allow anywhere from three to five amplifiers to be engaged on a single instrument, producing numerous different sounds simultaneously, there may not even be any overdubs [on] this … extremely feedback laden album…, the kind that pierces eardrums at school assemblies when the microphone is placed too close to the monitor, the kind most sane people turn off immediately. Masahiko Ohno, revels in it. He plays with it, [jerking] the cone-shredding tones … spasmodically across the audio spectrum…, [along with] recognizable guitar blurts, rumbles and scrapes….” From 1993
Trembling Tongues
(Alchemy) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Forty some odd minutes … of highly abrasive sludge, fuzz, feedback and buried screaming (through the on-board guitar microphones, of course),” says Mars Hottentot. “Trembling Tongues continues down the same uncompromising path as Psycledelic, but … seems to have more going on; the action between the ear-splitting feedback is bit more frenzied…. As far as noise guitar records are concerned…, Solmania is … brutal. There’s nothing here for the casual listener to hang on to — no psychedelic, trippy effects or wild production flourishes — just harsh, scraping, guitar torture. The effect is that of a giant, slow, grinding woodchipper being fed a steady diet of death metal guitars and full-blast amplifiers.... The standout … ‘Sunshine Overdoze’ … is about as close to psychedelia as this record gets; pulsing waves of feedback get chopped into something almost approximating melody and rhythm.” From 1995. With printed clear plastic insert and diecut traycard
Archive01
(BloodLust! - B!131) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The lead track is taken from Side A of Bloodlust’s 1995 debut release, Instrumental Demonstration Of Death-Noise cassette. The bonus track is remixed from an edit of that material. BloodLust’s Archive series of seven CDs covers all of Solotroff's solo output, released under his own name in 1995 and 1996. All were originally released on cassette (labels include Bloodlust, G.R.O.S.S., Less Than Zero, Old Europa Café, and Slaughter Productions), include bonus material consisting of either compilation tracks from the same labels, or newly created remixes. At the time that these recordings were made, the idea of using guitar effect pedals as primary "instrument" was still fairly novel; Solotroff’s arsenal included distortion, delay, flanger, phaser, and other pedals, running either radio frequencies (scanner or shortwave) or his voice through the complex chain. The results fit squarely into American noise’s development away from power-electronics into today’s harsh noise subgenre.
Archive02
(BloodLust! - B!132) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The lead track is taken from Side B of Bloodlust’s 1995 debut release, Instrumental Demonstration Of Death-Noise cassette. The bonus track is remixed from an edit of that material. BloodLust’s Archive series of seven CDs covers all of Solotroff's solo output, released under his own name in 1995 and 1996. All were originally released on cassette (labels include Bloodlust, G.R.O.S.S., Less Than Zero, Old Europa Café, and Slaughter Productions), include bonus material consisting of either compilation tracks from the same labels, or newly created remixes. At the time that these recordings were made, the idea of using guitar effect pedals as primary "instrument" was still fairly novel; Solotroff’s arsenal included distortion, delay, flanger, phaser, and other pedals, running either radio frequencies (scanner or shortwave) or his voice through the complex chain. The results fit squarely into American noise’s development away from power-electronics into today’s harsh noise subgenre.
Archive03
(BloodLust! - B!133) CDR $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
For the third entry in the series, the two core tracks are taken from Solotroff's A Venom In The Blood, cassette (Old Europa Cafe, 1996), and the bonus track is derived from a newly edited and remixed construction of that material. Hand-written notes and diagrams indicate use of a battery of effect pedals used in conjunction with scanner, radio, Roland SH-101 analog synth and Boss DR-55 drum machine.
MARK SOLOTROFF / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS
Excellent #1 - The Edit
(BloodLust! - B!101) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
In 1996, NG5361 (also of SIigillum S) and Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded) collaborated on the Excellent Manipulation of Distorted Tape Death 4xC90, which utilized progressive analog tape generations and sound fidelity decay. NG5361 revisited those recordings ten years later, in a more digital manner, and came up with The Edit (eight tracks, each drawn from one of the original cassette sides) and Super Density Assemblage (two self-explanatory, 28-minute-long tracks, built from multiple sections of the box set).
MARK SOLOTROFF / SSHE RETINA STIMULANTS
Excellent #2 - Super Density Assemblage
(BloodLust! - B!102) CDR $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
In 1996, NG5361 (also of SIigillum S) and Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded) collaborated on the Excellent Manipulation of Distorted Tape Death 4xC90, which utilized progressive analog tape generations and sound fidelity decay. NG5361 revisited those recordings ten years later, in a more digital manner, and came up with The Edit (eight tracks, each drawn from one of the original cassette sides) and Super Density Assemblage (two self-explanatory, 28-minute-long tracks, built from multiple sections of the box set).
Fields
(FMR) Used CD $5.00
Recorded in 2017, Fields explores improvisation, experimental music, and instruments. “3 Degrees Kelvin We Drift” demonstrates the ensemble’s range and dynamic playing. “8 Panes of Glass” combines rich layered vocals, chamber-music-influenced improvisation, and found materials. There is a variety of duos on the album, and “AGX” includes the group playing newly commissioned glass instruments by Edinburgh-based artist, Carrie Fertig.
Live From The Canteens Of Atlantis
(Absurd) CD $15.00
Part performance art, part live music installation, Live From The Canteens Of Atlantis was created by Colin Fletcher, Tim Kirby and Peter Strickland using contact mics, samplers and signal processing to document themselves cooking. Predominantly percussive mixes with loops, grinds, and clanks should satisfy industrial technoids; plenty of splatches, cutlery jiggles, rumbling climaxes, and big ol’ sizzles will please the noise-heads; and conceptualists, well, those beard-strokers will buy anything, so you know they’re on board. Disc one contains selections from 1998 to 2001, disc two the group’s complete final appearance in Switzerland. Imported from Greece.
Silver Session
(SKR) Used CD $10.00
Guitars and basses plugged in and left to roar and howl like airplanes burning over the Pacific; a sick, outmoded beatbox run through the P.A. blowing out horrendous distorted pulsations; mixed, edited, processed during the sessions for A Thousand Leaves.
Offrendas de Luz a Los Muertos
(Beta Lactam Ring - NEGRO33) Used CD $12.50
Noise technician Power Circus slices old bones into Soriah's power electronics scrimshaw. "Sonically devastating," and comparable in its "operatic qualities" to MB, Hafler Trio and New Blockaders. Edition of 300 numbered and signed copies.
Tiny Bubbles
(Taishita) Used CD $30.00
Originally released in 1980, “Tiny Bubbles captures Southern All Stars at the moment right before they became one of the most famed and influential Japanese acts ever…. Which is kind of surprising considering just how weird Southern All Stars sound on their third album…. [It] may not be a crazy piece of experimental art, but they jump from balladry to reggae-tinged to outright Broadway musical. It can be a confusing listen…, [but they masterfully] push J-Pop into stranger places all while sounding completely normal.… ‘Hey! Ryudo!’ [is] an honest-to-goodness stab at musical theater, complete with ragtime horns and a tap dancing interlude…. The most critical element [of the album] is Kuwata’s singing style. It’s a throaty, twisty thing capable of drawing out lyrics and also shooting them out at rapid-fire, like a burned-out lounge singer who tries pop…. It’s both the most unorthodox part of Southern All Stars but also the part responsible for them truly standing out…. Tiny Bubbles is a strange, catchy album…, the perfect showcase of all the little oddities that turned Southern All Stars into what they are today." 1989 reissue.
Templates Made or Found
(Drunken Fish - DFR38) Used CD $5.00
Cluster- and Tangerine Dream-inspired textures and moods, electronic meditations, amorphous underwater soundscapes, and lilting jetstream journeys.
Space Time Echo
(P-Tapes - PSM201) 3-inch CD $13.00
The third volume of heavy, all-analog psych from Maso Yamazaki’s (aka Masonna) Kosmische music project. This one is all-solo, with Maso playing Maestro Echoplex EP-3 and P-Tronic Sound Lab Mini-Synth in a fairly brain-shredding style. Recorded at Space Machine Systems Studio in Osaka, December 2004. Nice package with full-color three-inch sleeve featuring details of vintage circuitry. Edition of 500.
Zone of Avoidance
(P-Tapes - PSM202) 3-inch CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
The fourth volume of heavy, all-analog psych from Maso Yamazaki’s (aka Masonna) Kosmische music project. Here Maso pilots a Roland System 100, System 100M and RE-501 all the way to the other side of the horizon. Recorded at Space Machine Systems Studio in Osaka, December 2004. Nice package with full-color three-inch sleeve featuring details of vintage circuitry. Edition of 500.
The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman
(Li’l Beethoven - LBRCD5) CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Commissioned by Sveriges Radio to write and produce an original radio musical, Sparks created an hour-long musical fantasy based on the internationally acclaimed film director. Though his films’ themes have traditionally centered on matters of death, faith, God’s existence, and the struggle to find love and meaning in life, in the Maels’ musical, Bergman confronts the lure of a mythological Hollywood seemingly at odds with all he stands for — a Hollywood that tempts him and ultimately tries to control him. What starts as an exploration by Bergman of the possible mutual benefits of his working in Hollywood turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare, one that ends with the aid of a most unlikely savior. Linen-wrapped edition with a 32-page booklet featuring exclusive images originally produced for the Los Angeles Film Festival, first available at Ford Amphitheatre on June 25, 2011.
Meating Disorder
(World Serpent) Used CD $3.00
Two tracks, 10+ minutes. Guest Sam from Die Cheerleader
Spasmom
(Less Than TV) Used CD $10.00
Thirteen short, frantic spazz attacks from 1998 with a goofy edge, somewhere between hardcore and junk noise. Japanese import.
Highball
(W.I.N.) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three tracks of Earth-moving heavy tonal work by Damion Romero from 1997.
Medium
(P-Tapes) Used CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live recording from Reed College with acoustic sound processing by Tom Grimley, live recording from Beyond Baroque, live recording from Impact Café. Photogram by Seze Devres glued to chipboard folder.
White Elephant
(P-Tapes) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
1998 reissue of 1994 cassette of Damion Romero’s saturated drones and scratchy homemade electronics. With vellum insert
Obsolete Systems
(Electronic Music Foundation) Used CD $35.00 (Out-of-stock)
On this 2001 overview of Spiegel’s electronics works from 1970 to 1983, she utilizes analog synthesizers (Buchla 100, Electrcomp 100), tape, digital synthesis, Echoplex, Bell Labs’ GROOVE Hybrid system, etc. In the composer’s own words: “Each musical instrument, whether electronic or not, implies an aesthetic domain and sensibility unique to its design. These are a few I’ve personally explored. When it was new, each of these music systems, now long obsolete, was state of the art, visionary, radically new and so revolutionary that it required extended explanations in response to common questions such as ‘Why would anyone ever want to do that?’ ”
Fluoresce
(Monotype - mono050) CD $14.00
Four excellent, extended improvisations of intricately carved motifs and hectic clusters from Necks’ Tony Buck (drums, cymbal, gong bells, tabla, and percussion), and Magda Mayas (piano, tiger organ, clavinet, objects and preparations). The album-opening clatter becomes progressively more intense, while short bursts of increasingly dissonant piano are scattered throughout, until delicate, crystalline high notes swirl around Buck’s fluttering bells and cymbals. The epic “Coalesce” starts with the ominous hum of Mayas’s tiger organ, strips down for a groovier section and then disintegrates into a chaotic last few minutes.
Ananta
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS017) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hitoshi Kojo (aka Spiracle) finds it difficult to fall asleep. Ananta urges the listener toward a dreamless sleep-state, while reflecting the glowing warmth of a blossoming sunrise. To finely tuned drones extracted from a Dilruba and a Sarangi, Kojo merges sympathetic field recordings and other tonal interferences alongside the instrumental sounds. The results are elliptically static drones that brightly shimmer with hues of gold, crimson, and aquamarine. One of the two variations of Ananta was released in 2006 as a micro-edition CDR through Mystery Sea; tiny churning textures stream along a linear path, nearly achieving infinity, which happens to be the translation from Sanskrit of "ananta." If you find Roland Kayn, Yoshi Wada, or Charlemagne Palestine hypnotic, you'll want to check this out. The Strato Version of Ananta is previously unreleased. It bends and undulates around a fundamental drone, while maintaining the sun-flecked glints magnified in the Mystery Sea version. Limited to 300 copies
Eravamo Così Felici
(Turgid Animal - TA400) CD $10.00
Nicola (Fecalove) and Marco are joined by Lorenzo (Thanatologist, Nave, Entropic Degrade Behind Phylogeny) for seven tracks of decayed and wrong industrial / noise / power electronics. Brutal vocals in Italian, analogue and digital noise, various electronics, tape looping and lyrics by Mirko Sartori (a reclusive mad man who lived with the mummified corpse of his mother Anna for three years in a little town in northern Italy, in an apartment with walls covered with weird, hand-written prayers and requests of help). Pure Italian suburban depression, madness and void. Eight-page booklet with lyrics in Italian and translation in English.
Karyobin
(Chronoscope) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
1993 UK reissue of 1968 sessions by drummer John Stevens, trombonist Paul Rutherford, saxophonist Trevor Watts, saxophonist Evan Parker, plus trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, guitarist Derek Bailey and bassist Dave Holland. Despite not playing together regularly, they clearly have no problem gelling and finding common ground. Straight off, they sound like a long-established group on six freely improvised tracks, roaring with coherence and consistency of sound.
Stereo Telepathy Academy
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.25 (Out-of-stock)
The San Francisco-based Spoonbender 1.1.1 outlines itself as the “tele-ambient dream self” of the critically-acclaimed, “populist avant-tronics and media group” I Am Spoonbender. Stereo Telepathy Academy takes spoken text from one film and overlays it onto images from another film; the score was composed while viewing a third unnamed film. As images of Cronenberg’s rarely seen Crimes Of The Future flickered, Spoonbender 1.1.1 radiated an inverted telekinetic minimalism of undulating tones supporting the third piece of the puzzle: spoken text from Cronenberg’s Stereo, a faux-documentary detailing a surgical procedure for the advancement of telepathic communication. The result is a sort of Wizard Of Oz / Dark Side Of The Moon for the mimetic engineering mindset.
Round And Around
(Disques du Soleil Et De L’Acier) Used CD $6.00
The first couple of tracks on this 19991 album seem like “almost-cover-versions,” according to Soft Watch. “ ‘Embodyn’ has a slow start, then a gradual build up to a hectic charge, which immediately brings Modern English’s ‘Gathering Dust’ to mind. ‘Black & White’ is like a stripped-down and rebuilt version of Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ …, a total dance thing that will possess your primal urge to dance like a divine horseman, leaving you wrecked [and] gathering your breath [during] the strange, ballad-like ‘2023’…, [with its] talked-over clicky rhythm [and] warm, languid sound…. ‘Beele’ opens with high-pitched piano beneath deeper, more moody piano rhythm while the vocalist half-whispers…. ‘You-Hu-Man’ falls back toward the Neubauten sound — a complex, snappy build up of various rhythmic sounds, culminating in … unusual, thin supra-punk … with a whip-thin guitar line. ‘Rhythm & Mood’ has a dark, furrowed brow…. ‘Reality’ is another piece of poetry / words, set over a simple ‘dragging chains’ rhythm. ‘Round And Around’ … [is] something akin to Talking Heads circa Remain In Light, [with] a shimmering ‘Once In A Lifetime’ funkiness…. [S]udden stops [and] backward reverb … make this a warm piece of dance music.”
Live at the Pack Horse Leeds 14/04/02
(Idwal Fisher) Used CD $5.00
“Noise with a sense of humor that is British postcard surreal dipped in shit” by the founder of Smell & Quim. Or “It’s all protest folk,” according to Blastitude. “Protesting fucking squares who get too much money. Or you could call the style ‘macabre folkie’ like Liz Armstrong did in The Chicago Reader, and that’s pretty good, though on this disc the folkiness is pretty much flooded out by tape loops and TG-style animosity.”
SS LIve
(Alchemy) Used CD $50.00
1990 CD reissue of 18 live tracks from March 1979 by Japan’s first hardcore band, plus another 18 previously unreleased from June ’79. $50 Some songs are repeated, the recording quality varies, but you have to love how primitive it all sounds, especially when it feels like it’s missing structure or at least created via group improv. Loud wails and chants, ultra-fast guitars with the gain on maximum, constant rapid-fire drums through nearly every song. Primal aggression at its finest.
Greek Drama
(Chocolate Monk - choc.504) CDR $7.25
A collection of tracks investigating and researching some sort of “Greekness” within Tasos Stamou and in his music influences, recorded between COVID lockdowns in the summer at his father’s land in Agini Theodoroi, Greece. Using four-track digital handheld recorder, string instruments, abandoned albums of his Greek music collection, and homebrew synthesizers, the album is his first experiment using all the things he likes at the same time, aesthetically unfiltered, strictly transcendental in a very personal, non-Greek way. Edition of 60
STEVEN STAPLETON / DAVID TIBET
Musical Pumpkin Cottage
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two side-long tracks of strange psychedelic krautrock maximalism.
STEVEN STAPLETON / DAVID TIBET
The Sadness Of Things
(United Dairies) Used CD $13.00
A beautiful and nuanced construction from 1991. David Tibet is “unusually calm and direct [on the title track], and the whole breathes deeply of the sublime without swallowing any of the ridiculous. With just human voice and echo, Steven Stapleton and Geoff Cox’s “The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness” — the soundtrack to Diana Rogerson’s film Twisting The Black Threads Of My Mental Marionette— dislodges listeners and glides them to somewhere among the protoplasm and dark matter that holds existence together.”
(Infinitive Sessions)
(DBK Works - 102) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Released 2002, the final Starfuckers album (after which they changed their name to Sinistri) combines diminutive rock with a deconstructed take on staggered soul rhythms, proto-punk gusto, and enigmatic cycles of industrial repetition. A peculiar ride through the exoskeleton of musical form into a disorienting miasma of sound dislocation that demonstrates how music is a pollution of time.
Infrantumi
(Drunken Fish) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Italians legends’ 1997 follow-up to Sinistri maintains the unique approach to decimated sound arrangement. Sampler, small mixer, analog synth, digital multi-effect, electric guitar, cheap transistor amp, low-watt monitor, vintage drum kit, turntable, and that’s it. For recording they used mini-disc four-track recorder and a single microphone.
STAUBITZ AND WATERHOUSE AND SEAMUS
Gorgers
(Chocolate Monk - choc.571) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“On September 27th, 2021 Ms. Donna Parker and Messrs. TVE and Rhuem descended into Blackstone Gorge intending to capture the call of the Common Merganser,” explains Barrett Clark, Record Producer. “Although our allegedly ‘common’ feathered friend proved to be elusive that day, the expedition was not without event. The trio happened upon a clearing as dusk approached, and oddly enough, a well plated meal of fried Creek Chubsuckers worthy of Chaïm Soutine. Ravenous, our intrepid explorers made a feast of it before escaping nightfall and the penetrating gaze of the Castor Canadensis. This album documents their journey on ancestral lands of the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Nipmuc Nations.” Edition of 60
In E
(Rude Fans) 7-inch + CD $19.50
Harsh bleary-eyed wildness from the tea rooms of Mars and the hellholes of Uranus. Former Macronympha noise dude joined by Damion Romero, Greh Holger and John Wiese on the seven-inch. Live forty-minute solo recording from October 2012 on the CD. Two color inserts. Edition of 100.
The Electric Zodiac II
(AA) Used CDR $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
A synthesizer recording from 2001 combined in 2008 with then-recent material to create this oddity. Minimal, low-end synth pieces from a frozen atmosphere favor an eerily sci-fi and futuristic edge.
Anathematization Of The World Is Not An Adequate Response to the World
(Chocolate Monk - choc.457) 2xCDR $9.10 (Out-of-stock)
Emphatically corporeal and just as human as a public school math teacher, reaching out with open arms, filling up a large space with a manifestation of expanding joy. With contributions from Richard Youngs, Pete Hope, Jesse Kudler, Le Quan Ninh, Jason Talbot and Frans de Waard. Edition of 60
Bond Inlets
(Intransitive - INT030) CD $13.00
Ten years after Stelzer’s debut CD, Stone Blind (Intransitive, 1997), Bond Inlets dissects the source sounds of that work and filters it through the lens of the interceding decade in order to build a piece that more accurately reflects what his intentions were then and what his aesthetic is today. His first widely available solo cassette-tape composition, Bond Inlets is a subtly emotional work of foreground drone that beats its head against the plastic walls of cassette-tape technology, laying bare the physicality of the process of its creation. The dying motors of cassette players, tape-saturated percussion, and blown-out condenser-mic wail mix with elements of new live improvisations and local field recordings. There is an implacable melancholy to Bond Inlets, with oceans full of no-fidelity murk, and evocative hiss, and fragments of distant melodies that surface only to be subsumed again into the grime.
Shaking Off The Metaphors (Suburban Observances Volume 1)
(Chocolate Monk - choc.527) CDR $8.00
Sounds collected over many years, known very well to Stelzer, possibly so well he wasn’t truly hearing them any more. The first in a series of six volumes of collections of tracks to have passed through the hands of others and then back to the master incorporates processing by Theo Gowans (Territorial Gobbing), Andrew Zukerman (Fleshtone Aura), Theresa Smith (DeTrop), France Jobin, Ross Scott-Buccleuch (Diurnal Burdens), Frans de Waard (Modelbau), Joe Murray (Posset) and Stuart Chalmers. Tori Kuso sings on one track. Edition of 60
The Case Against
(Monotype) Used CD $5.00
The big master of tape manipulation builds a few pieces around a feeling of sound deterioration and landscapes falling apart.
Music for Found Objects
(C3R - C3R009) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Well-regarded Canadian jazz percussionist gives a good whack to water, metal and stone. Downtown Yawnsville, right? Guess again. Manipulated salad bowls floating in a bath tub. The sonic capabilities of canoe paddles. Building bells approximated with a mallet and a 50-inch length of galvanized steel sliding through Stewart's fingers. Marble tables and air pockets. Detailed liner notes.
Seriously Hot
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.366) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
New solo wonk by everyone’s favorite blaw bag, Ali Roberston of Usurper, whose take on a “summer album” is like a mouthful of hot pennies. Numbered edition of 60
Philanthropic Phalanges
(Recordings For The Summer) Used CDR $6.00
Loops and cut-ups from 2003. With toenails
Solothurn
(Pure) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Harsh but often understated electronic noise and distortion mixed with various industrial and tape sounds, shifting the mix and sources frequently. From 1994
Principia Sugimatica
(A Bruit Secret) Used CD $8.00
A note or two on a clean-toned electric guitar, followed by a rest for a precise period of time. The process repeats. sometimes resting for a different, but still precise, periods of time. From 2005
Half Alive
(ROIR - 8264) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
2000 reissue of all twelve original tracks recorded live at various venues and studios between 1974 and 1979 with three bonus tracks from 1989 recorded live in the UK (“All Night Long,” “Sweetheart,” and “Scream And Shout”). Includes liner notes by Lester Bangs.
330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda
(Get Back - GET718) 3xLP $55.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Abduction - ABDT008) Used 2xCD $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second vinyl reissue of their double-CD (Abduction 1996), partly an ethno-surrealist take on places and forms known (Indonesian gamelan, Bollywood soundtracks, Polynesian folk, surf stylistics, and sci-fi thematics) and partly a stupefying surreal ethnography of places yet to be discovered. Clear highlight is "Ghost Ghat Tresspass / Sussmeier," recorded live at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco with Eyvind Kang on violin, but two tracks from the Torch Of The Mystics sessions and a couple remixes of tracks previously available only on 78rpm 10-inch (Perfect 1994) are nothing to snuff the incense over either.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 2: The Dreamy Draw
(Abduction - ABDT013 ) Used CD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Ominous, dark, sour, and immediately engaging, where the lo-fi improv is in narrow focus, bell-driven, cohesive and dreamy. Shambling graveyard theme music for piano, Indonesian percussion, a slow harmonium line that purrs like a resting tiger. Javier Gallegos guests on the title track, a 21-minute free workout on gamelan that begins with intoxicated, near-random bashing and gradually works up to a demonic-possession trance state. Recorded live at GBU, Seattle in 1998.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 3: Superculto
(Abduction - ABDT014) CD $28.00
Totally unmusical music recorded live at GBU, Seattle in 1997. “It's like a refrigerated tosser, crushed fingers, full of hemline theory,” says Marty Perez, “Every angle is covered, explicitly.” Shoulder-biter Mark Prindle says “sharp ... satire…, nice … bit of nice banjo interplay…, great drumpile of rhythms. [T]witchy psychotic … floppy.”
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 4: A Bullet Through The Last Temple
(Abduction - ABDT015) CD $20.00
Forty-plus minutes of improv madness from December 1997, driven by Charlie Gocher’s drums and Rick Bishop’s piano, with guests David Carter (trumpet) and Teri Nelson Zagar (upright bass). Subdued yet still active Eastern explorations with a strange modal feel earn comparison to Alice Coltrane, while “In the Bosom of Uncle,” with its oddball mumbled vocals and percussion, could be a more dada Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 5: Severed Finger With A Wedding Ring
(Abduction - ABDT016 ) CD $28.00
Recorded live in Seattle 2000, where it’s gotta gotta rock, so here’s an organ-driven jam that Les Scurry recommends listening to “while driving a hearse with Angus Scrimm.” And there’s another jam, broken and spastic. The trio also captures an evil rite’r two, schizophrenia comes together, noise explodes, coherence slithers in for a nightcap. The Happy Occasion dynamic at its finest.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 6: Sumatran Electric Chair
(Abduction - ABDT018) CD $28.00 (Out-of-stock)
“My Friend RAIN” in beautiful trad Burma style opens the album, with the rest mixing short electric and acoustic procedures, studio effects, mixed found-sound, pavement rattle and actual wah-wah excursions.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 7: Libyan Dream
(Abduction - ABDT019) CD $28.00 (Out-of-stock)
Libyan Dream begins with a burst of brutal guitar and drum as the SCGs cover “Journey to the Center of the Mind” for a second time. Busted trash-squeal guitar; sprawling and demented instrumentals; frenetic, land-of-sand fuzzballs; an update of “The Vinegar Stroke”; Middle-Eastern hillbilly chants; and stunning sequences that range from completely falling apart to near-telepathy. The title track references styles from across the globe, from flamenco to rock to raga. “Sangkala Suite” is flat out gorgeous, the kind that makes fat men sit down.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vol. 8: The Handsome Stranger
(Abduction - ABDT020 ) Used CD $18.00
Gocher-centric hilarity in the form of a surrealist mini-opera involving JFK, Abraham Lincoln (can’t have one without the other), John Wilkes Booth, sodomy, and the mother of all dream vacations spots, hell. Puzzling, profane and therefore deeply satisfying, with supporting hoot ranging from saloon-style piano and swingin’ faux-lounge jazz daddy-o to maudlin easy-listening and rickety, uneasy drone ambiance.
Carnival Folklore Resurrection Vols 11 & 12: Radio One & Two
(Abduction) 2xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Overseas shortwave and field recordings, Uncle Jim rants, skronky improv madness, pretty instrumental interludes, re-engineered soundtrack themes and bizarre mixes. Recorded in 2002 on WFMU.
Dante’s Disneyland Inferno
(Abduction - ABDT007 ) Used 2xCD $40.00
The inevitable “sprawling masterpiece” in which Divine Comedian Charlie Gocher takes his rightful spot on the dais alongside Burroughs and Firesign Theatre. All the major mood musics appear: bongo bohemia, C & W, lounge swing, ooga booga rock, children’s melodies and the other 112 as well.
Flute And Mask
(Abduction - ABDT024) CD $24.00
Mostly acoustic instrumentation -- strings, percussion, gamelan, and other unidentifiable sources. With “Where's My Fuckin’ Jesus?” and “Dukun Olympic Theater” (epic theater pieces with percussion and voice, faux-monk chanting), “I Saw a Cigarette Breathing So I Smoked It” (Gamelan), “Lord Brown of Due South” (low tribal drums, bowed string instrument, chanting and shaken percussion), “Balcony Sampoerna” (arcane texts, mesmerizing chants), “Lord White of the North” (percussion, growling, bowed string instruments). Edition of 500
Funeral Mariachi
(Abduction - ABDT047) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eleven well-crafted gems that display the refined studio production side of SCGs, shrouded in an otherworldly glow. Beyond the gorgeous folk and vocals driving the trio’s final album, there is a heavy retro Italian cinema influence, Arabic and Indonesian references, and a ghostly psychedelic moodiness throughout.
Torch Of The Mystics
(Abduction - ABDT055) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The most popular and revered SCGs album, as unique a psychedelic statement as anything since the early 1970s. “Their recordings tend to be scattershot fiestas of lump-rich gumbo,” observes Byron Coley, “And Mystics is easily the richest, lumpiest puddle of guh they’ve yet emitted.”
Wah
(Abduction) Used CD $17.50
Instrumental tracks of drums, bass, and electric guitar with Rick Bishop’s wah-wah pedal in full force throughout, recorded in a Seattle garage in 2001, recalling a late ’60s acid-stoner jam. The playing is fluid, direct, and spontaneous with that semi-coherent SCG touch. Originally released as a tour-only CD in 2002. Edition of 500.
Farben Raum
(Heard Worse) CD $10.50
Sun of the Seventh Sister’s debut CD -- a woolly mammoth of mushroom-fueled free-psych -- follows a 2007 New Zealand tour triple-lathe-LP and a septuple-cassette boxset on Breakdance The Dawn. The floating line-up ranges from ten to twenty-five players (with members of xNoBBQx, UnAustralians, Arse Lunch, Cock Up Shitting Whore, Rats With Wings, Stasis Duo and others): multiple drummers, multiple electrified chordophones, horns, vocals, oscillators, etc. Imagine half a dozen freak-folk ensembles congealing into a psychedelic din of Borbetomagan proportions. The CD consists of three immense tracks, taken from a three-hour session, lovingly recorded by the Pulled Out mobile unit, with mastering analysis by DJ Beefcurtains.
Loose Bugs
(Magnetic Expansion - MER001) CD $10.00
Sax blowing, cymbal scratching, upside-down-bicycle-with-a-wooden-stick-in-the-spokes free jazz, analog tape spinning forward and backward while broken stringed gourds are quietly plucked, a perfectly contented demon child occasionally mumbling, a tribe of self-proclaimed psychic gamblers blowing Thai flutes. Loose Bugs documents the first few months of Sunburned’s formation, recorded on Vestax 6-track with overhead hanging mics at Con-Artist loft in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1998. In hand-packaged and -numbered card jackets, covered inside and out with hand-carved stamps.
Rare Wood
(Spirit of Orr) Used CD $5.00
The first commercially available compact disc from this gang of sound explorers is a hyperdriven, claustrophobic ride on a swaying line that takes free rock to new heights, lows, and in-betweens.
Cloudz
(VHF - VHF75) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Layers of twinkling keyboard, guitar, unidentified fuzz, short wave, etc., very much in the style of Harmonia and Cluster in spots. There are a couple of amped-up moments here and there, including surprise lead guitar action on "Tornado Rose Canoe," and the excellent fuzz-grilled rock of "Primavera." According to no less of an authority than Neil Campbell, Cloudz is "the best Sunroof ever."
SUNROOF / VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA
Wings Over America
(VHF) Used Split CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eight tracks by Sunroof, a mix of archetypical drone and shimmer, and wild, jarring sampler-analog-bloop-driven action. VCO weigh in with an eclectic mix, including the delicate “Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom,” a clip from a gig at the Royal Festival Hall, and Bridget Hayden blowing up a storm on the flute. Released in 2003 in conjuction with first-ever US tour both groups. Chipboard jacket.
Juicio al Perro
(Mansalva Tocadiscos - MT001) CD $12.00
Extreme improvisation by non-musicians and trained musicians — ex-Reynols member Anla Courtis, painter Alfredo Prior, writers Sergio Bizzio and Francisco Garamona, plus a large crew of special guests. Juicio al Perro shifts from the detuned through frack-dressed-punk and atonal-proto-rock to what could be folk music from countries not yet discovered.
SUPERNATURAL HOT RUG AND NOT USED
Supernatural Hot Rug And Not Used
(EM) Used CD $4.00
Rambunctious free improv rock from 2005 by Tim Olive on electric bass and Bunsho Nishizawa on electric guitar. Cover art by Marc Bell.
Fall of Nature
(Groundfault) CD $11.15
New material recorded in 2007. One track, nearly an hour in length, depicting a nihilistic nightmare on personal and social levels. This epic track evolves gradually, starting with the voice of creation, building to a fury, and ending with man's desperate screams of realization and madness. The relentless music in between is "nothing short of monumental."
Pigdaddy
(Cold Spring) Used CD $5.00
“A filthy dirt-mess of an album from 2008, six stories of mind-fucking depravity, with fucked up, histrionic and downright bizarre vocals. Moral decay, beyond perverse, sexual transgression.” Cover painting by Kevin Tomkins.
This Is The Truth
(Groundfault) Used CD $10.00
The first studio album in eight years by Sutcliffe Jugend, who began in 1982 as a Whitehouse side project that gained notoriety as one of the harshest exponents of the original power electronics scene. After the monumental 10xCS boxset We Spit On Their Graves (Come Organisation, 1982), Sutcliffe Jugend released a handful of albums until 1999. A single 7-inch was released in 2001 and they weren’t heard from again until 2006, when they played their first-ever live show, followed by more that same year. This Is The Truth is an original and perfectly balanced noise composition, referencing classic as well as unique and fresh elements one does not hear in noise. Foreboding tension and anxiety, lively, disturbing, and textual elements of noise all come together with detail and balance.
Monument Of Decay
(Small Doses - DOSE120) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Darkest and intense churn that references to noise, death industrial, and black metal, by this visionary outfit. Small Doses' CD edition of this previously released nightmare (vinyl, Black Horizons 2013; cassette, Beläten 2013) includes the four original tracks plus ten new minutes of bonus dystopia.
Children Of God / World Of Skin
(Young God) Used 2xCD $10.00
By 1986 Swans had run its course with the physical assault of sound, so Michael Gira pushed the music into unfamiliar territory. Recording in an old isolated medieval sawmill in Cornwall, England, Jarboe’s presence came to the fore as a presence. Children Of God was a major turning point for Swans; around the same time, Jarboe and Gira did two records under the name World Of Skin, a large assortment from which is included on the second disc of this 2008 reissue.
Forever Burned
(Young God) Used CD $100.00 (Out-of-stock)
The entire Burning World album that was released in 1989, plus the songs from White Light From The Mouth of Infinity, Love of Life and various B-Sides that were not included on Various Failures. Signed by M. Gira. From 2003
My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
(Young God - YG43X) Used 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Epic soul-crushery from 2010 that moves through pastoral terrain onto ever-ascending monotonal grooves. A filmic-folk idyll featuring Devendra Banhart on lead vocal abruptly shifts to cataclysm, and is followed by more airplane-taking-off ascensions, art songs and lethal sonic pummeling. With bonus disc of raw material compiled, mangled, edited, and re-arranged.
Soundtracks For The Blind
(Young God - YG01) 2xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Young God - YG01) Used 2xCD $10.00
Ten actual songs nestled among the found-soundscapes, ambient decompositions and twisted electronic noises that constitute the album’s remaining sixteen fragments. Soundtracks’ sheer length (two-and-a-half hours) and immensity are its own best explanation.
New CD is embossed digipak from 1996.
Used CD is second edition in single-width jewelcase from 2002.
Swans Are Dead
(Young God) Used CD $45.00 (Out-of-stock)
Performances from 1995’s Great Annihilator tour (with Larry Mullins, Vudi, and Joe Goldring joining M. Gira, Jarboe, Kris Force, and Dave Ouimet) and the tour from 1997 (with Clinton Steele, Bill Bronson, and Phil Puleo). The 1995 disc is taken wholly from a show in Norway, mixing a variety of then-unreleased tunes with both solo and Swans material. The 1997 disc collects tracks from New York, Atlanta and Europe. Throughout both discs, the audiences are loudly and happily appreciative of the group’s astonishing fire. 1998 edition in digipak. Sealed
Various Failures
(Young God) Used 2xCD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks from 1988 to 1992, ranging from delicate, acoustic ballads with accompanying strings to bombastic Phil Spector-influenced arrangements, to cinematic sound collages with found vocal narrations, all unified by Swans essential intensity of feeling. This double-CD collects the best of the material released previously on their Love Will Tear Us Apart 12-inch (Caroline 1988), The Burning World album and its various singles (UNI 1989), the World of Skin album 10 Songs For Another World (Young God 1990), White Light From The Mouth of Infinity (Young God 1990/91), and the Love of Life album and its various singles (Young God 1992). Includes “Love Will Tear Us Apart (Jarboe Version)” and “New Mind (Acoustic Version),” both removed from later editions. Jewelbox edition. Some discoloration on the front cover.
Various Failures
(Young God) Used 2xCD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks from 1988 to 1992, ranging from delicate, acoustic ballads with accompanying strings to bombastic Phil Spector-influenced arrangements, to cinematic sound collages with found vocal narrations, all unified by Swans essential intensity of feeling. This double-CD collects the best of the material released previously on their Love Will Tear Us Apart 12-inch (Caroline 1988), The Burning World album and its various singles (UNI 1989), the World of Skin album 10 Songs For Another World (Young God 1990), White Light From The Mouth of Infinity (Young God 1990/91), and the Love of Life album and its various singles (Young God 1992). Includes “Love Will Tear Us Apart (Jarboe Version)” and “New Mind (Acoustic Version),” both removed from later editions. Digipak edition
Same Diff
(Dual Plover) Used CD $3.00
An “earsplitting audio autopsy” from 2002, with Sweden’s vocals and secondhand records accompanied by Garry Bradbury (on electronics and treatments) and the inmates of Fanny Deacon’s Retirement Home (percussion). “It’s like karaoke without the practice rooms, a cabaret noise style re-enactment of cataclysmic musical moments from the 1960s and ’70s performed with all the skill of a young council official.”
International Rescue
(Alive) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nikki Sudden’s selected faves, with four songs that have never been on CD (including “Dresden Style (City Boys),” which was on a single); three that have never been released anywhere; three unreleased mixes; and a few songs that appeared on U.K. singles (“Let’s Build a Car,” “Real Shocks,” “Read About Seymour”).
I Am Kurdish
(Nyahh) CD $12.00
The ecstatic music of this Kurdish / Syrian refugee uses elements from Middle Eastern and North African music to create an atmosphere of joy, love and happiness. Three tracks feature accompaniment by fellow Leitrim-based musicians: composer, improviser, sound artist and saxophonist Cathal Roche; and composer, improviser and cellist Eimear Reidy.
Corrumpate
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hard, oppressive power electronics. Originally self-released on cassette in 1985.
Propagation
(BKO Media) Used CD $7.00
This 2010 release presents a somewhat glossier and more structured take on Le Syndicat’s sound, with cassette-era mechanical noise loops being muted by crisp digital editing and rich dynamic shifts, powered by a sense of free-form energy that is both uneasy and intriguing.
Rectitude
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
1984 album of martial loops, incessant feedback, electronics. Originally self-released on cassette in 1986.
Relikat & Schraguemusik
(Pure) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Classic industrial noise. Crushing, dark and unyielding. Originally self-released on cassette in 1985.
Terror
(Pure) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live recordings and two studio tracks of industrial deviance from 1997 by Alexis Weimer.
Out of Context
(Pure) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tape-splicing and feedback manipulation from 1997 by Tom Cox.
Absolut Nothing
(Trash Ritual) CD $15.00
Long delayed CD debut by this Fecalove side project. Ten tracks of ugly and filthy power electronics, Italian style. Cock, self-deprecation and booze, over and over again. Includes Brainbombs and The Sodality covers, twelve-page booklet with lyrics and sexy pictures. Edition of 300.
Kama
(Pica Disk) CD $25.00
A monumental 41-minute colossus recorded between summer 2006 and February 2007. The single track is mostly sourced from the French horn (not that anyone would have guessed). Layers upon layers of distorted, processed and mangled pieces of sound form a consistent stream of sonic bliss. This massive construction slowly builds to an epic climax. Tafjord is known as part of projects like SPUNK, Fe-Mail (her duo with Maja Ratkje), Agrare (Fe-Mail with dancer Lotta Melin), Trinacria (Fe-Mail with black metallers Enslaved) and collaborations with Birchville Cat Motel, Wolf Eyes, Matmos, Ikue Mori, Otomo Yoshihide, Carlos Giffoni, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith and countless others.
Crushed Radiant Deities
(Students of Decay - SOD32) CD $8.00
In this dense, polyphonic fugue of dynamic collisions and endless collapses, luminescent, wrecked shards of overtone drones merge with zoned and disembodied choral whispers and ribbons of pure white electricity. Includes remastered versions of the two tracks on Paper Lanterns (Students of Decay 2006). Edition of 500.
Action Direct
(Tiliqua - TIL5001) CD $20.00
(Tiliqua - TIL5001) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Nine tracks that freak out, whisper funk, scream, stomp, and storm with abandon, always on the first and only take. The capacity of the riffs and grooves to mimic German prog bands of the same era, psychedelic rock bands of several years previous, or the as-yet-uncreated avant sounds from the indie rock movement a decade away demonstrates Takayanagi's profound connection to the source of human inspiration itself.
Terracotta Tributaries
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.375) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The product of several stream of consciousness recording sessions by Bob Desaulniers and Shane McDonell spanning the first half of 2017, who subject indoor and outdoor sound materials to primitive manipulation and collage in universally agreed upon real time. The voice of the Bicameral Mind. Numbered edition of 60
Weeville
(Homestead) Used CD $5.00
From 1990, recorded “right at home, cloaked in duct tape and dust, dim buzz and rough performance,” notes Pitchfork. “Mostly just two guys and their guitars and whatever backdrops of fake percussion they could cobble together behind it all. Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate’s sharp, energetic pop is all the better for its lack of embellishment, and their homespun psychedelia is all the stranger and more intimate. “Breath” is raw, spooked psych-rock, joyously harmonized over two guitars and one drum ticking time. “Crawl” treads all the way over into Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs territory. The songs around them bring in creaky keyboards and piano and devolve in any number of unexpected directions; the whole thing is covered in dirt and odd ideas.” Punched barcode
Autumn Collection
(Humbug) Used CDR $10.00
Musique concrète from 2004 by Danish duo Christophe Meierhans and Koen Nutters, recorded in an old police station in Berlin using objects, samples, field recordings and a complex microphone set up. Folded cardboard sleeve with paste-on cover and tracklist.
I’m Lost
(23five - 23five019) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
A schizoid-concrete opus of environmental sounds heightened, stimulated, decontextualized, and teased into a psychic puzzle of industrialized and post-industrialized detritus, I’m Lost’s harsh edits and disjointed collages render sound with dysphoric associations through vacant drift, crumbled gravel, scalding plasma-tube frequencies, and putrid factory noise. Eamon Sprod achieves the same psychological gravity as Sudden Infant, P16.D4, and John Duncan with an even greater sense of dislocation from those pioneers of radical tape splicing. Listen to an edit of track number four here: https://soundcloud.com/23five/tarab-im-lost-track-4-edit
Surfacedrift
(Naturestrip) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Melbourne sound artist Eamon Sprod creates textures from microphones dragged through leaves and gravel, rain pounding against buildings, and waves crashing inside an abandoned factory. Tarab’s field recordings and improvisations combine natural and artificial sources in richly layered sonic environments. Imported from Australia.
Take All of the Ships From the Harbour, And Sail Them Straight to Hell
(23five - 23five014) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Corroded locations where mankind has scarred the surface of the earth feature prominently in the work of Melbourne sound artist Eamonn Sprod, documented through field recording and sympathetic actions with found objects from those sites. One such location that features prominently in Take All of the Ships... is Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, once the home of an immigration station at the turn of the 20th Century and later a Nike Missile site for the US military; it now rests in the hands of the US National Park Service, which has left some of the buildings to succumb to the forces of decay. From the sounds culled from this site and others closer to his antepodean home, Tarab diligently overlays and stitches together a tactile composition with few digital treatments. As the opening ominous rumble ebbs and flows, with its frequencies appearing to emerge from the center of the Earth and liquefy the surface upon impact, Tarab unveils a revolving series of exaggerated details from a hyperbolic gash of two heavy pieces of metal grinding against themselves to a toxic chorale of nighttime insects to sand, wind, and surf detourned into sedimentary white noise. Tarab's compositional sensibility shifts throughout the album, at first sparsely situating these sounds into shadowy vignettes. Gradually, an arcing crescendo exhibits sustained harmonics rarely heard in the best of the contemporary dronemusik technicians, much less from the realm of sound ecology.
Wind Keeps Even Dust Away
(23five) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Through installation, performance, and composition, Australian sound artist Eamon Sprod reinterprets the physical detritus of the landscape within a hypothetical topography where dirt, soot, and smog emerge as privileged materials, in to which he grafts the potential for a transcendent response. Field recordings are fundamental to this creative process, bolstered by sympathetic sounds activated by Sprod’s own hands rummaging through crumbling leaves, rusted bits of metal, broken concrete, and shattered glass, to name some of the more obvious sources. Wind Keeps Even Dust Away is only the second documentation of Sprod’s compositions but it’s an accomplished work on par with the contemporary sound ecologists such as Chris Watson, Eric La Casa, and Toshiya Tsunoda. Sprod intertwines compacted collages that tease aquatic references from abandoned and overlooked sites of the arid Australian landscape. Every sound of a pipe gurgling with water is but a mirage of sand, rust, and dirt cleverly tricking the ear.
Alone Gone
(Oxen - OXEN017) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Harsh noise cut ups by William Hutson of Anthracite, Rale, and Clipping. Nine tracks, fifty minutes, the complete works. Four tracks were previously released on the Nothing All Day Nothing cassette (Skeleton Dust 2013).
https://soundcloud.com/fenian/tattered-syntax-90027-oxen018
Repas Froid
(Pan - PAN17) LP $27.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Tanzprocesz - TP7) Used CD $10.00
An extraordinary combination of culled, found, and taped fragments juxtaposed against drums, field recordings and mystery noises, sound loops, birdsong, keyboards and Tazartès's throaty drones and voice propelled by hypnotic, ritualistic rhythms balanced on a razor sharp edge. Pan's LP is the complete work of Repas Froid, including archival and previously unreleased recordings from the late 1970s and early 1980s, strung together to form two long compositions (the CD edition on Tanzprocesz is brief tracks of source material and a palette of various sounds). A French musician of Turkish parentage, Tazartès is an uncompromising character who defies categorization. Born 1947 in Paris, he's one of France's most idiosyncratic talents. He has spent over 30 years within musical practice and experimentation, letting his musical work wander from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. Utilizing magnetic tape recorders in a rough collage and loose ethno-instrumental mulch, he paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. 140-gram vinyl, color jacket, silkscreened PVC sleeve. Edition of 500.
Blabber
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.333) CDR $7.00
One long improvisation for throat by Manchester’s Matt Dalby, who hits all the sweet spots just right. “The improvisation grew from my mother’s diagnosis of the cancer that later killed her,” he explains. “I created a textual score tracking different emotional responses to the diagnosis, propped my Zoom on a window-ledge and started. And as usual, closed my eyes, deviated from the script, and experienced whatever you call hypnagogic hallucinations when you’re not half-asleep or meditating. To me it now sounds like a collision of generations with bonus fart noises.” Edition of 40.
Underpath
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.296) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The result of a day trip to Bury with the dual intention of recording some short improvisations and getting lost,” says Matt Dalby. Underpath “reference[s] … Brötzmann / Bennink’s Schwarzwaldfahrt and images of The Zone in Tarkovsky’s Stalker — though without the manliness and musical ability of the former, or the intellectual and structural rigor of the latter. What comes out is a kind of personal ritual, with an obsession about water.” Edition of 40.
Empty Shell
(Chocolate Monk - choc.443) CDR $6.25
This set of crud-fi experiments by Maureen Hollomas (Polly Shang Kuan Band, Jettatura, Structure, etc.) demonstrates the existence of remote viewing, a hitherto non-validated human capacity. “On first listen,” says a ChocoMo spokesgonk, “it was a feeling of a snake crawling out of something. A real vivid feeling, but on a second listen it was a cat’s tail. Go figure.” Numbered edition of 50
You Are Not Alone
(Adhuman) CD $15.00
Even within an already microscopic community of oddballs resident among Brighton’s experimental art and music underground, Teignmouth Electron has continually stood way out on its own through deceptively crafted, conceptually guided works drenched in fun, bizarre and often profound sentimental atmosphere. With You Are Not Alone, Maureen Hallomas — otherwise known for involvement in projects like Polly Shang Kuan Band, Rubber Demon, Leopard Leg, Men Oh Pause and more — takes us back in time via two archival pieces derived from tape recordings predating the official existence of the project. Material from a cassette made in 2001 is presented here as “From Beyond the Attic,” a pair of tracks in which a single possessed tape walkman acts as conduit for a symphony of broken electromagnetic noise and interference. Punctuating the murk are snatches of barely discernible radio broadcasts and, shockingly, nearby phone conversations somehow picked up and voyeuristically captured on the tape unbeknownst to the callers. Where these tracks are presented largely unedited and unadorned, “Science TAC” sees a more compositional strategy put to work, with Hallomas pulling apart, processing and rearranging a 1999 recording of herself and a friend improvising surreal skits and zero-competence musical performance.
Buzzed In / Past These Herberts
(Chocolate Monk - choc.449) 2xCDR $8.75 (Out-of-stock)
This joint endeavor by The Pheremoans’ vulgarians Mad Headed Octogram and Russell Walker mixes spoken word and sound collage, as the pair depart on two separate voyages, both filtered through Octogram’s crude sound portals.
Songs Of Our Sceptred Isles
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.325) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Russell Walker and Octogram (of dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards-beat combo The Pheromoans) hit the winding B roads of England in an act of sauced-up anthropological hubris and return with cracking tunes of old and plenty of provincial prattle. Edition of 45
Selected Works 1961-1969
(Artifact) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tenney’s work constitutes the first significant and developed body of computer-composed and synthesized music by an American composer. From Cage-influenced aleatoric noise studies, to the influence of sounds heard while driving through a tunnel, to the Shepard tone phenomenon, many of the pieces on this CD were realized at Bell Telephone Laboratories where Tenney used Max Mathews’s digital synthesis program that eventually became Music IV (the model for many of the common computer music environments of the last forty years, and was the first system of its kind available to composers).
Blasted
(Psych-O-Path) Used CD $4.00
“A 33-minute subterranean landscape of gargling mud baths inhabited by the robotic chirps of rusted aviary grubs” from 2004 by Eric Copeland of Black Dice and Dave Portner aka Avey Tare of Animal Collective.
Suffer For Succotash
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.544) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Whether this manchild is an absurdist pin-up or the human embodiment of a dung beetle, Theo Gowans never lets up with his vision for a better world through sound and performance. Suffer For Succotash is a weird tour through a few different styles in which he has been dabbling for the past two years. Messy noise muckabout meets classy songsmithery — a sauce worth sampling. Numbered edition of 50
Toon Mould
(Chocolate Monk - choc.461) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Many aspects of Toon Mould will crowd your diaper, Bubba, not the least of which is Theo Gowans’s deliciously spatial understatement. Don’t sweat it if the show doesn’t seem to stop at such a relatively humble revelation. It is, after all, competing with an aromatic bouquet of nonrepresentational squirts, fragments of lo-fi scrabbling and uncomfortably close gacque dans la bouche (what the slurp-prone Quebecois call fellating a contact mic), elusive fwips of manipulated tape, and equilibrium-hostile pulsations that’ll totally give you the squeam. Good luck finding another album that twitches with the unforced glee of a coupla goobers who’ve reanimated a mechanical witch from an old-time-y arcade in the woods. With the end of the year and the end of the decade on everyone’s mind (although the latter is debatable), the time is optimal for clacky noisemakers to morph into seagulls getting impaled on punji sticks embedded in sand castles. Plain and simple, this is top-shelf wait-what surrealism from the lower levels of the fidelity spectrum, where the resin is stickiest and sweet, from the expansion and contractions of an underdeveloped bladder covered in a polkadots and fur (see also: leopard fetus, an air pressure hose, rogered by) to the guilt-crippled squid indulging in a midnight snack, rendered from the point of view of doomed jellyfish. So bendy. So unstable. Edition of 60
Text of Light
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $14.00
Text of Light was formed in 1999 to perform improvised music during screenings of films by Stan Brakhage and other American avant-garde filmmakers from the 1950s and ’60s. These should not be considered soundtracks for Brakhage’s works, which are intended to be screened silently. Rather, the group uses the films as an element to stimulate improvisation, like an additional player, juxtaposing film and music in a real-time performance mixed-media collage. On this CD the group, in various combinations, includes: Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht on guitars and devices; Christian Marclay and DJ Olive on turntables; William Hooker on drums and percussion, and Ulrich Krieger of Zeitkratzer on sax and electronics.
ToL
(Dirter) Used 3xCD $25.00
Seven examples of live improvisation, each one is totally different. Round metal box packaging design is an homage to the second PiL album, obviously.
THERAPIST JOHN’S ZIP CODE REVUE
Abundance
(Amarillo) Used CD $6.00
The professional-sounding and sorrowful post-split album by one half of Zip Code Rapists (and his assembled band) is packed with well-written, weird country and folk music, with help from Thinking Fellers Union Local 282’s Mark Davies, David Tholfsen of U.S. Saucer, and Susan Clark.
THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282
Bob Dinners and Larry Noodles Present Tubby Turdner's Celebrity Avalanche
(Communion - COMM53) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
TFUL282’s final studio album from 2001 melds the ugly beauty of avant rock with peppy little nard-kicking melodies. Faux operettas suddenly transform into ground-to-a-halt shanties at the wrong speed; whale songs spontaneously corrupt themselves and become cries of harpooned whales; stockcar guitar riffs fishtail across bluegrass mirages; between debased jingles that have college radio station ID written all over them and chilly tinklers that could have been lifted directly from an hilarious new episode of Star Trek, backward Carnaby Street melodies battle like simultaneously occurring concept albums by the Swell Maps, Pere Ubu and… hell, name someone, Motörhead.
THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282
Lovelyville
(Matador) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The power of hectic clamors harnessed. The massiveness of songs by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 is equaled by an underlying melancholy. Despite the screaming vocals, they still sound mellow, but never so listless as to be unable to get weird, eerie, and magnificent. From 1991. Sealed
THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282
Porcelain Entertainments
(Return To Sender) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Six live tracks recorded in San Francisco, four of which, according to a wet blanket, “appear in superior studio versions elsewhere (including a medley from A Fistful of Dollars, on a contemporaneous single). The other two are a formless jam and a great two-minute instrumental, ‘Quacky.’ The album also includes four practice-space noodles of varying degrees of inconsequentiality and [a] set of solo pieces, of which Eickelberg's Casio-on-speed ‘White Box’ is the best. Hageman's ‘52 Girlfriends’ has incomprehensible lyrics by Sun City Girls' Charlie Gocher. Illustrative, but really for completists only.” Anyone ordering this will be asked to show completist ID card.
This Heat
(This Is - THISIS1) Used CD $15.00
One of the docents at All Music Guide offers this sober perspective: "[This Heat's] self-titled debut is a radical conglomeration of progressive rock, musique concrète, free improvisation, and even -- in a bizarre distillation -- aspects of British folk can be heard in Charles Hayward's singing." This is a sealed copy, though we're listing it as a used CD because it has a drill hole in the upper right corner.
I’ll Judge You Later
(l’Esprit de l’Escalier) CDR $10.00
Cut-ups, assemblages, found voices and music loops, household pet karaoke, deadpan recitations of Queen, Beefheart, and the Buzzcocks, fondled and nuzzled into sound collages oozing fresher sauce than a failed samba lesson. Includes the five Decapitatío tracks released via Bandcamp in 2020 by the Italian label My Dance The Skull. “This reminds me of the monologues in the GTOs.” —WFMU listener Ridonkulous
CAREI THOMAS FEEL FREE ENSEMBLE
Mining Our Bid’ness
(Roaratorio) CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
(Roaratorio) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Free-wheeling, harmonically complex debut album by 64-year-old pianist/composer who gigged with Sun Ra in 1959-60, did brief time in AACM during the mid-’60s, and co-founded The Light with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (which also included Jerome Cooper and Wadada Leo Smith). This live recording swings both ways and ignores the boundaries between gorgeous Ellingtonian ballads and combustible free jazz testification. Features Curlew’s George Cartwright and tenor saxophonist William R. Lang. Packaged in a mini-gatefold sleeve.
Retrospective III
(Los Angeles Free Music Society) Used CDR $8.00
The through-line of the sonic universe of this LAFMS mage and former member of Monitor and Solid Eye, according to Mutant Sounds, “has always been a syrupy viscousness, through which his faded cycles of cheerfully cod-spooky and askew melodics pulse. Imagine a codeine-addled Danny Elfman orchestrating a Krofft Superstars inversion of Asmus Tietchens’ frosty cyclical wooze works under his Mechthild Von Leusch alias and pressing the results on aged wax cylinder discs. The glazed is paramount in Thomsen’s fishbowl universe and its protoplasmic essence ensnares my consciousness like a venus fly trap.”
Let Your Morsel Find Its Way
(Nerd Rock Music) Used CD $5.00
Improvised oddball wonder from 2002 by these rock aberrations — an inspired and psychological blend of fetal jazz, prog-rock discomfort, psychedelic hypnosis, electronic incontinence, and wandering anti-jam primal therapy.
Seven Years Golden
(Amphetamine Reptile) Used CD $8.00
Twenty-seven tracks from the late 1980s — AmRep singles, comp tracks, odds and sods. From 1997
Abfleischung
(Die Stadt - DS108) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
The twelfth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one based on material recorded as early as 1967-1970, recycled into short, completely different tracks in 1989 (Hamster Records, 1989). With two previously unreleased tracks from the original master tapes.
Aus Freude am Elend
(Die Stadt - DS105) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Eleventh part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one based on the human voice as a primary sound source: ecstatic religious people; other people making love; someone singing to Annette and Peggy out of the trash bin of a publishing company; the screams of furious teachers. Includes two tracks that were not on the original LP (Dom America, 1988).
Geboren, um zu Dienen
(Die Stadt - DS92) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
The eighth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one his industrial album originally released by Discos Esplendor Geometrico in 1986. Here Tietchens adds his own musical aspects to the general apocalyptic noises of the genre, inspired by the canonical topics of fear, hysteria, claustrophobia, machine and the imminent threat of the end. Tracks were recorded hastily, with little thought for dynamics, duration, precision and construction. What sounded dirty stayed dirty, the raw and the unsculpted part of the industrial dogma. With three unreleased bonus tracks from the same period.
Marches Funèbres
(Die Stadt - DS112) CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Die Stadt - DS112) Used CD $5.00
On this installment of the ongoing reissue program of early works of Asmus Tietchens, the good Herr melds ambient funeral music with a modern classical / experimental touch. Two tracks from the original LP (Multimood 1989) plus one previously unreleased nine-minute bonus piece from 1979. Edition of 600.
Notturno
(Die Stadt - DS102) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
The tenth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one an old-fashioned avant garde album that crosses over from industrial to academic electroacoustics, and uses grand piano with prepared strings played with electric beater, wire brush, coins and other unusual aids, and generously treated with studio tricks. With two tracks not on the original LP (Discos Esplendor Geometrico, 1987) but were on the first CD reissue (Barooni, 1992). Remastered from original tapes.
Zwingburgen des Hedonismus / Mysterien des Hafens
(Die Stadt - DS96) CD $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
The ninth part in the ongoing re-release series of Tietchens albums, this one combining the Fairlight CM1 composition “Zwingburgen des Hedonismus” (Multimood, 1987) with “Mysterien des Hafens” (Odd Size 1988), which uses underwater microphones. The bonus track “Faircomp 1K” is a previously unreleased different version of “Zwingburgen des Hedonismus.”
Script Geometry
(Aposiopèse - APO09) 2xLP + CD $33.00
Script Geometry comes from the idea that something in a tropical forest sounds like and plays within the realms of electronics, music and electronic noise, characteristic from an era long before the birth of biotopes that form this forest and create this sound. Tilly’s work with density attempts to extract forms that characterize these analogies. Taking these sounds out of their context (near the Nourages scientific research station in French Guiana in the heart of a tropical rainforest, where he stayed for a month in 2013), he rearranges his field recordings as easily as synthesizer patch cables with very little signal processing. Edition of 500. Check out “At Night, Mass” here: http://label-aposiopese.bandcamp.com/album/script-geometry
Tindegger
(Chocolate Monk - choc.412) CDR $8.00
Tina Krekels and Grant Smith go hurling ’round a gnarled crack and show us that German-Scots relations have never been fruitier. They do a fine job of blending and blurring Krekel’s wonderful skittering and burbling saxophone with Smith’s hyperactive and intoxicated electronics; no-fi text pieces are followed by crunked-up tape whirr that eventually tramples ear remnants into the rug. Add in serious dashes of yelps, spits and sputters and even some fried guitar strum; it all helps dishonor spiritual mentors. Numbered edition of 60
30-Minuten Männercreme
(Love Is Sharing Pharmaceuticals) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
The Andrew W.K.-approved debut CD from 1994. “Oddly disturbing” —discogs
Absence Blots Us Out
(Blossoming Noise - BN064) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
A tribute to their late brother-in-arms Chris Grier. Recording features nearly twenty members of the extended collective. Remembrance penned by Thurston Moore. Edition of 200.
An Interview With The Mitchell Brothers
(Audible Hiss) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Created in a single day (August 11, 1995) in response to a dare issued by Sir Ned Hayden of the august Audible Hiss imprint, Tom Smith used Kenneth Turan's invaluable 1980 reference work Sinema: American Pornographic Films and the People Who Make Them as a primary template to dash out ten lyrics and edit the cut-up backdrops over which Ben Wolcott and Rat Bastard shade and abrade.
The Wigmaker In Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg
(Menlo Park - MPK7020) Used 2xCD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
To Live And Shave In L.A.’s magnum opus, seven years in the making. “The only record I’ve ever heard that sounds like it was worked on continuously for seven years,” raves Chris Sienko, “The mix is dense, yet completely lucid … [with] at least four layers of different kinds of manipulations (tape edits, digital processing, computer manipulation, multitrack gymnastics)…. Layers shift in and out of focus, dissolve to static, intentionally overload, desaturate, flip to negative and snap back into shape with nary a tear in the fabric…. It’s like listening to a cubist mixtape of glam, death metal and no wave, with each and every facet remorselessly visible … a wake-up call to the avant community…. [T]he studio techs are going to be talking about (and maybe even studying in school) the mix on this album in twenty years – I have no doubt about that…. [T]he bar has been raised significantly.”
Tonal Harmony
(Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rat Bastard, Ben Wolcott, Tom Smith, with guest guitarists John Morton (Electric Eels, X___X) and Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy, Hall & Oates), and Silver Apples’ Simeon on oscillator. From 1997
Vedder Vedder Bedwetter
(Fifth Column) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
First, a word from Andy Alabama, who we must congratulate for hilariously riling up flat-footed Amazon commentators: “I think that this was from a more experimental period in the great man’s career…. I liked Eddie much better when he was more willing to take risks artistically. What with his intractable fight against Ticketmaster, it seems that he has fallen into something of a stylistic rut. Not so on this record — these were truly Eddie’s halcyon days. A must own for any true-blue Pearl Jam fan.” Good times, good times. On To Live and Shave in L.A.'s first full-length album of 1995, Tom Smith’s “preoccupations with Rashomon, Pound, King Tubby, and (ahem) power-fucking were co-mingled in an ungovernable torrent of splintered hubris. Whatever ‘full-on insane’ you think you have, believe me, we beat you to it, forever.” Guests include Harry Pussy’s Bill Orcutt, Don Fleming from ½ Japanese and Velvet Monkeys, Action Swingers’ Ned Hayden (yeah, man, on alto sax), Peach of Immortality’s Jared Louche, the biomechanical Nandor Nevai (mmm, das nice, Max), and The Flying Luttenbachers’ Weasel Walter.
Where A Horse Has Been Standing And Where You Belong
(Western Blot) Used CD $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
The twelve most troublesome tracks from The Wigmaker In Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg (still in progress in late 1997, when this was produced), jostled by Tom Smith as an exercise in problem solving. Stamped, hand-lettered card sleeve. First edition of 500
“Helen Butte” Vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell
(Full Contact) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tom Smith lacerates his 1995 recordings with manic intensity, blends hyper-literate texts with hyper-speed, musique-concrete deconstructions of rock sonics, and filters it through a free glam aesthetic. Maddening, comprehension-defeating, spiraling in all directions, layers of voices colliding with heavily fuzzed bass guitar riffs and screeching, sputtering oscillators, this album explodes out of the stereo.
Stille Gang
(Roggbif) Used CDR $4.00
Fuzzed bloont from 2004. Card folder with paste-on artwork, insert.
Wonder How It Left
(Chocolate Monk - choc.603) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Connecticut sound conjurers Henry Birdsey and Zach Rowden prove that you can find God in a dead dog. One track of duo organ and one of cello / bagpipe to levitate your weary arse. “An enigmatic scuttering scores the fabric of this dimly lit séance,” says Adam Buffington.
Medicine
(Tor Press) CD $10.25
Traditional folk and haunting drones recorded by Jake Blanchard in a gothic church and a wild, stout-fueled improvised jam, whose guests included members of Pelt, The Black Twig Pickers, Red River Dialect, Woven Skull, Core of the Coalman, Peat and more.
Torn Curtain
(Ventricle) Used CD $20.00
Mauve Sideshow side project from 1994. Rarefied, reverb-drenched vocals resonate on the threshold of feedback, and hazy mellotron wafts into the mix like stray echoes from a 15th-century dungeon.
In The Land of the Lullabye
(Charnel Music) Used CD $3.00
Electronic comedy from the early 1990s by Clam Lynch and Stephen Holman’s shock theater duo, who performed a series of shows in Japan as part of the Alchemism ’92 Anniversary Tour. Three live tracks from that tour with guests Hiroshi Hasagawa (Astro, C.C.C.C.) and Sam Lohman (Matta Gawa, Nimrod), and the studio work leading up to it.
Eternity's Beautiful Frontispiece
(VHF) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Using a droning electric guitar and organ in a variety of tones ranging from the excoriating to elegiac, Total envelops the listener in a haze of overtones variously evoking Indian music, machine noise, nature sounds, and monolithic power. Carefully edited and saturated with hallucinogenic juice.
Exploded Star Sad Servant
(Self Abuse) Used CD $7.00
Three long tracks of ypnotic, hallucinatory guitar feedback and densely layered shortwaves from 1995 by Matthew Bower.
Glassy Warhead
(Pure) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Chunks of noisy, churning madness from 1995 by Matthew Bower, with Philip Best of Ramleh and Whitehouse on violin for 22-minute title track. Wall-to-wall power noise perfected.
Hard + Low
(Turgid Animal) CD $10.50
The first cassette by Matthew Bower’s solo project (Broken Flag 1986), newly remastered, with updated artwork. All seven original tracks. An essential document of early British experimental noise. Edition of 500.
Sky Blue Void
(Freek) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Gloriously obnoxious noise rock from 1993 and 1994, with John Godbert, Simon Wickham-Smith and Russell Smith guesting here and there.
Tanzmusik Der Renaissance
(Freek) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Hypnotic walls of noise, heavy, droning miasma, and feedback noise collage from 1995.
Brule Mon Ame, Broie Mon Corps; Remodele-Moi A L’image D’un Chien
(Phage - PT190) CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tourette's follow-up to the crushing Jardin Du Sommeil Chant D'Amour Sur La Nuit Grandissante (Troniks 2009) delivers cut up noise at its finest. Two fifteen-minute tracks -- composed of material present on the L’Aube cassette (Lulle 2007), split cassette with PCRV (Alienated Hominid 2007), and additional recordings made in 2010 -- mix beautifully composed ambient soundscapes and blasts of harsh noise. Edition of 500.
Poopin
(Dual Plover) CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
The fractal-crackin’ third album by Brisbane, Australia’s favorite slumber party hosts, Synthia J. Pop & Cyndii Valentine, squeezed out while exchange students in Osaka, Japan. This reverse enema for the brain by the girls from the wrong side of the bike racks includes eleven steamy crowd-thumpers like “Rape Me,” “Itchy Balls,” and “Teen Mum,” all worthy of inclusion in any self-respecting rock eisteddfod production. Their unique brand of electro-crap –- compared favorably to "Sigue Sigue Sputnik scoring Mortal Kombat porn” -- is a bass sensation in the brown note that proves once and for all that turds can be polished, especially if contained in pants while gyrating on the dance floor.
Sassy Pony
(S.K.) Used CD $4.00
Naive and melancholic originals along with works by Perez Prado, Martin Denny and Dvorak, among others. Silkscreened chipboard jacket with photocopy booklet
A Slight Remove
(Chocolate Monk - choc.427) CDR $8.00
Low-tech cassette assemblages by Andy Bolus’s favorite tape wizard Bob Desaulniers, sourced from tapes and voice memos going back several years, like an audio junk drawer dumped out and arranged into neat little piles. Numbered edition of 60
Transmission
(Audible Hiss) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four out of five Amazon customers found this description of the 1996 album by Adris Hoyos (percussion) and Graham Lambkin (guitars) helpful: “This album is unutterably dire. No, really really awful. Listen to some of the 30-second chunks they give you — that’s all I heard, or needed to hear. I gave it one star because Amazon don’t give you the option of awarding none. Undoubtedly the worst music I have ever heard anyone attempt to sell.”
Pass Out
(Smitten) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
In 1986, back when Cyndi Lauper and Boy George ruled the world with a velvet fist, The Trash Monkeys took their first baby steps on the long march to obscurity. Founding members Lloyd Johnson, Bill Orcutt, Mark Feehan and George Kelley — fueled by a passionate need for public scorn and armed with a witches' brew of guitars, Old Milwaukee, illegal chemicals and provocative evening wear — attracted the attention of Miami's glittering, semi-comatose punk scene. They came off, according to Miami New Times, “like a whacked version of Guided by Voices, with a passel of bent but utterly catchy pop tunes that chronicled their obsession with Jesus, television, and housewives, as well as fuzzy guitar hooks that were alternately inventive and rooted in the minimalist pop of postpunk outfits such as Television Personalities and Beat Happening.”
Floristry
(Fishrider - FISH012) LP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
(Fishrider - FISH012) Used CD $5.00
The songs of this fragile, lucid but rough-around-the-edges flower cult pop band from Dunedin, New Zealand are unintentionally sincere and bashfully honest, performed with open arms and a soft indifference. With comparisons ranging from Black Tambourine to The Carpenters, Trick Mammoth have crafted a sound saccharine sweet yet doused in death. Sealed
Ur Lamento
(Potlatch) Used CD $8.00
This French improvising trio explores odd tonal contrasts via intersecting micro-themes. Laurent Dailleau on theremin brings subversive sounds and droning effects. David Chiesa’s cyclical arco bass passages mesh with clarinetist Isabelle Duthoit’s squeaking lines. Repulsive screams, altered voices, and sundry noises pepper frenetic exchanges and oscillating frameworks. From 2002.
Unclaimed Freight
(Lennie Line) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Lean, avant post-punk recorded between 1981 and 1986 by bassist Lennie Bove (who also does vocals and effects), original Pere Ubu guitarist Tom Herman, and drummers Roger Prehoda and Glenn Reynolds. Three tracks from the group’s first time in the studio, seven demos for an unreleased third album, and one that was yanked at the last minute from their second album A Warning To All Strangers (All Ball 1986).
Become The Objects of Daily Use
(Monotype - MONO037) CD $12.75
(Monotype - MONO037) Used CD $8.50
Making music based upon two simple principles (it is derived from speech; it repeats incessantly), the main project of Alessandro Bosetti, fretless guitarist Kenta Nagai, and drummer Tony Buck is entirely dedicated to Bosetti's loop compositions. Melodies are crafted out of speech profiles of recordings of Bosetti's emotional, often surreal or non-sequitur lyrics. Words cast into everyday speech are subsequently transcribed and played as endless loops. Speech becomes song and the non-metric, irregular rhythms that it creates turn into powerful grooves and precise pulsations never lining up with any regular beat. The band's performance is a meditative exercise in precision and intensity. Musical action begins in little shifts of intonation and inflections, anticipation and delay, played out by voice, fretless guitar, drums and electronics. Music warms up to a calm incandescence. Development is patient and inexorable. It never misses to reach a further level and it never loses its bizarre sameness. The controlled but restless energy mutates and transforms this trio into a devastating stage monster during live performances. The insistently repeated speech fragments at the center of the music end up disappearing from perception while leaving a cloud of vaporized meaning behind.
Pieces Of Air
(Lucky Kitchen) Used CD $20.00
This 2002 collection of uniquely compiled field recordings captured via multiple microphones professional and handmade, placed strategically about the recording subject matter (crickets, water against a rocky coast, Islamic calls to prayer in Istanbul), is a study of air movements and currents in open and enclosed spaces. “Tsunoda reveals the inherent beauty in everyday things…, thus creating an exposition of the sacred in the ordinary.
In The Sack
(Destijl - IND061) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
The cast of characters on In The Sack is familiar to anyone who spent time with Tucker's Batstew record -- upright piano, backward vocals, rants, ravings, life savings. The man is very mean on the piano and the best backward vocalist Jim O'Rourke's ever heard. Pop symphonies in the same solar system as David Ackles, bootleg Brian Wilson, the first Residents record, Moolah, Bruce Haack's kids records, Song Cycle and Horrific Child.
Beyond Painting
(Actual Tapes - 001) Used CDR $15.00
Recorded in 1990, self-released in 2010. The “light, echoing ambience and drifting feel” of “First Quarter,” says Brainwashed, and “the repetitive drone and almost chanting voices” … of “The Unforgiven” “seem to herald the development of” isolationism. “Bleakness comes [amid] gentle horn-like tones and reversed melodies” on “Soft Self Portrait” and “the layered, looped string sounds of ‘Beyond Painting’ …, a bit more tinged nostalgia rather than outright malignance…. [T]he stand out piece … ‘Al-Qa'ida’, with its vaguely jazz noir guitar and electronics structure … has … a rhythmic throb to it, rather than … spectral, textural ambience.
Innermost Dwelling
(Chocolate Monk - choc.624) Magazine + CDR $12.00
Seamus R. Williams of Worchester, Massachusetts, is the master of homebrewed no-fi concrète nothingness, but the truth is much more than the birds may say, so lend your ears to the audio scurvy. There are hidden tracks within tracks. The accompanying A5 booklet (24 pages, heavy card) showcases the goon’s unwavering eye when it comes to collage and demento photocopy optic psych. Scratch some Letraset onto your brain and ride a gripe swan! Hand stamped envelope, vintage stamp. Edition of 60
Charles Tyler Ensemble
(ZYX - ESP 1029-2 ) Used CD $5.00
This debut recording from 1966 as a leader by the Ayler sideman conceptualizes alto sax-player Tyler’s focus and the path he was on, with an ensemble well-constructed to fit in with those pursuits. (Kingpins of 60s avant garde Henry Grimes [bass], Ronald Shannon Jackson [drums] and Joel Friedman [cello] all played with Ayler at some point, while Charles Moffett [orchestra vibes], cast his die with Ornette Coleman, Carla Bley and Pharoah Sanders.) Tyler’s agonized, convoluted lines and taut guttural intonations cry out on “Strange Uhuru,” and he rips open a calypso melody on “Three Spirits,” twisting and turning like a frenzied avatar. German reissue of an ESP-Disk.
Magical Nights – Saigon Surf, Twist & Soul (1964-1966)
(Sublime Frequencies) CD $16.00
The unique strengths and qualities of Phương Tâm’s voice, coupled with her commanding stage presence, elevated her to top billings on Saigon’s nightclub stages in the early 1960s, eventually catching the attention of record companies and composers (Y Vân, Khánh Băng, Trường Hải, Thanh Sơn, Y Vũ and Mặc Thế Nhân, among others). Her energy translated well in the studio, backed by electric guitars, contrabass, drums, lush brass sections, saxophone, piano, organ and rich backing vocals. Between 1964-1966, Phương Tâm became a vital centerpiece of pop music of the time, and one of the first singers to perform and record rock’n’roll (known locally as nhạc kích động, or action music). She could also transform a jazz ballad into something otherworldly. While these styles were influenced by contemporary trends worldwide, the musicians and composers worked to localize the sounds, incorporating linguistic adaptations, lyrical content and artistic traditions into something all their own. The album features 25 tracks, restored and remastered from original records and reel tapes, six-panel digipak, two 32-page booklets in English and Vietnamese, liner notes by Hannah Hà and Mark Gergis, exclusive photos, album and sheet music art, original magazine and newspaper extracts, nightclub advertisements and more. At the heart of this project is a family story – Hannah Hà’s dedication to recovering and sharing her mother’s musical legacy — and also a story that adds critical context to the fragmented understanding of Vietnamese popular culture during the 20th century, particularly after so much has been lost to war and dislocation.
Cassettetape Superstar
(Public Bath) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
The cover of the The Godz’ “Radar Eyes” is just one of the highlights on this endlessly entertaining album, which undertakes some of the more extreme regressions rock music saw in the ’90s, what with Eye grunting neanderthal monosyllables over a backing of seemingly random percussion. With plenty of purposeful funk deconstruction and meta-rock insight, this is one of most unlikely party albums of that long-gone decade.
UFO Or Die Live
([ no label ]) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“These guys kinda straddle the divide between Boredoms and Hanatarash,” says a professional eBay-splainer, where “the spazzy thrash pop of the former collides head-on with the smashed noise jambalaya of the latter. Rough and raw live tapes [kick] up a monstrous ruckus, which is then heavily mixed into a collage of unhinged craziness. Weird changes in volume and pitch, oddball edits, needle-in-the-red overloading.”
UOD
(Bron) Used 3-inch CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four tracks from 1989 by Eye (Boredoms, Hanatarash), Yoshimi (Boredoms, OOIOO) and Hayashi (Leningrad Blues Machine), admired for their “violently undulating core, the sound of a sloppy sound that does not understand what is sounding, such as gash, shark, coin, pi, etc. Pop screaming flies forever. They used guitars before the introduction of the sampler as percussion. In other words, music like Art Lindsay’s DNA in a washing machine.”
Lifestyle
(Ajna Offensive) Used CD $15.00
This one is more about sound-scaping, with the first track stretching into guitar space-outs with brooding industrial undertones. Further on is more “traditional” Ultra — dark and gloomy, with cut-ups and a lot of samples — minus the mock-PE. Edition of 500 in outer card slipcase and five poster inserts
Roman Holiday
(GMBH) Used CD $9.00
Ultra combines the fine arts of subtlety, poetry and some bizarre sense of decorum that must be synonymous with piano. Because piano equals sophistication, right? The tracks are not necessarily overt or belligerent à la contemporary noise, although each track has its own disturbingly prickly quality. Throwback industrial / avant-garde / electronic music of the likes no longer known. Two tracks from Letter of Introduction seven (Syntactic, 1997), one from Circusirus triple-seven comp (Petri Supply, 1996), one from I Can’t Stand a Bitchy Chick seven (Aquilifer Sodality, 1989), and five previously unreleased tracks. Sealed.
Stain
(Dom) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
A sinister performance from 2002, this decadent musical accomplishment should leave listeners effectively paralyzed and eager for more.
Cornholecopia
(Breathmint) Used CD $3.00
“Nasty noise and experimental electronics interspaced with failed attempts to rehearse actual rock songs, as well as live recordings of the band getting unplugged by local noise promoters. A work of true genius.” from 2004.
UNSUSTAINABLE SOCIAL CONDITION
Dispersant
(Oxen - OXEN023) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Pure harsh noise and throat scrapings. Abrasive and unsettled, formed inside an air-starved oxygen tank. Fifty-five minutes, four tracks of peak volume, bleak oblivion, careening into the sonic rumble of a toxic death. Unyielding fulminations of harsh noise.
Fishing For Tripe
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC261) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
A real charming affair featuring two men, a wife, a pregnant partner and the Duff family plughole. As Louise was doing her upholstery next door, hammering on a chair, the sink started to glug. “It was just one of those moments, you know, Jaques Tati’s paint pot in the sea,” muses the clan patriarch Malcy, “Louise and the plug jammed blindly together, not knowing the other was singing the same song.”
The Big Two
(Krim Kram) CD $13.25
The final curtain on two decades of heroic toil by Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff in the experimental / noise / improv / no-audience underground combines elements of post-Fluxus performance art and absurdist theater with a thoroughly Luddite sound palette (via a flea market’s worth of dismantled instruments, household detritus, and recontextualized children’s toys). Their well-developed colloquial Gesamtkunstwerk blurs the lines between sound, performance, theater, and life.
You Can Do It
(Bug Incision - BIM74) CDR $6.00
Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff’s characteristically bizarre series of sound explorations, recorded during a week-long residency in Helsinki in May 2010 at the “mobile curatorial platform” known as Ptarmigan. You Can Do It opens with what sounds like a person working out, then traverses through all manner of molested detritus, small, gestural sounds, and absurd, wonderful, glossolalia. The pacing, which follows a logic not immediately apparent, sets this apart from other junk-music and free improv.
Minus The Divine
(Turgid Animal - TA406) CD $12.00
Norway's Sindre Foss Skancke follows up 2007's Mutilation Epoch with his experimental black metal and noise rolled into one well composed, exciting and bizarre-sounding album. All the best bits of Skullflower, with early industrial and other influences drawn from his country's native black metal underworld fighting for space in front of a backdrop of blackened harsh noise filth. Limited to 300 copies.
From the Twilight, Next to Nowhere and Disappeared
(Musik Atlach - MA008 ) CD $15.00
Jani Hirvonen's one-man project wanders through silent, dark, semi-acoustic mysteries where outer space echoes and alien atmospheres adorn noisy walls of sound. Sources include electric guitar, electronics, voice, percussion, bells, violin, flute, keyboards. Past collaborations include Anla Courtis (Reynols), Antony Milton (Mrtyu, Black Boned Angel), Ben Reynolds, Peter Wright, Jari Koho (Vapaa), Maxime Primault (Enfer Boreal, High Wolf) and Jan Anderzen (Tomutonttu, Kemialliset Ystävät), among others.
Sometimes, Good Things Happen
(V/VM) Used CD $5.00
The processed noise version with feedback and bursts of high-velocity melody. From 2002
Sometimes, Good Things Happen
(V/VM) Used CD $5.00
The melodic electronica version with nice atmospheres. From 2002
The Oob Eye Works
(Megaphone) Used CD $5.00
Second album of lurching, dissonant, dreamlike tunes from Californian group whose instrumentation includes sampler, vibes, theremin, didjeridoo, sitar, space junk, piano guts, and baritone sax (as well as guitar, bass, drums and vocals), without which surf would not be able to meet Arabic music, and reggae/pop could not greet serialism. And they must, as it is foretold.
Valley Of Fear
(Legion Blotan) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Debut release by Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Mirag), Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu), and Samantha Davis (Voltigeurs, Harm), with four tracks of off-kilter, noisy, black-metal-influenced experimental rock. Harsh and glorious! Edition of 500.
Oi To The World -- Christmas With The Vandals
(Kung Fu) Used LP + CD $50.00
Ridiculous, vulgar punk rock, hilarious parodies, strangely emotional ballads from 1996. Includes CD. Red vinyl. Hand-numbered edition of 300.
Here Be Lions
(Freak Animal) CD $16.00
Fierce and brutal harsh noise, full of energy with a strong focus on the physical object, displaying careful attention to textures and subtle details. The label considers it a genre-defining milestone for Northern European noise. “The CD starts with a track Vanhala submitted for Tapeworks Volume VI compilation (Hästen & Korset 2012),” says one agreeable Discogs commentator, “Mixing the finest elements of harsh noise with tape manipulations, exploiting acoustic sources and spaces…. [The] complete Here Be Lions tape [follows] (Sprachlos Verlag 2012)…. [New, previously unreleased track] … ‘Reality Shredder’ … starts with instant mayhem…, [and shares the] same intense atmosphere [with] the previous tracks…. [Another previously unreleased track] ‘Secret Dream’ … is an instant harsh noise explosion employing all the elements of previous attacks plus noise electronics.”
(si’ke•del’ik) volume one
(PsychForm) Used CD $5.00
Sounds characterized by allucinations, distortions of perception, altered states of awareness, and occasionally, behavior resembling psychosis. Tracks by Contagious Orgasm, Christian Renou, The Haters, Grillhaus, Noggin, John Wiese, Rowenta/Khan, Mixed Band Philanthropist vs. Broken Penis Orchestra. From 2004
2:00 Matinee
(RRRecords) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks recorded live at the shop in 1997 by Crank Sturgeon, Save Yourself, Jim Phelps Motherfucker, Lance Gargoyle, Foom, The Domains, Idea Fire Company, Commode Minstrels in Bullface, Quarreling Xenophobic Waitress, Jason Lescalleet
30/4
(Fragment Factory - FRAG30) CD $17.75 (Out-of-stock)
Fourth anniversary comp with twelve exclusive, unreleased tracks by former, present and future artists and friends of the label: Joachim Montessuis, AMK, Aaron Dilloway, Philip Marshall, Krube, Michael Barthel, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Michael Muennich, Giuseppe Ielasi, Leif Elggren, Michael & Basil Esposito. Seventy-seven minutes. Double-sided insert and hand-assembled cover. Edition of 300.
33 RPM
(23five - 23F/SFM 903) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third anthology in nonprofit org 23five’s sound event series presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The selections here, chosen from SFMOMA’s Ten Hours of Sound From France, emphasize acousmatic approaches toward electroacoustic construction, which means a heavy historical influence from musique concrète and computer music. Tracks by Kasper T. Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, compiler Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Champagne, pizMO, Jean-Phillippe Gross, and Mimetic. 24-page booklet includes essays and detailed program notes about the MOMA installation.
45'18"
(Korm Plastics) Used CD $15.00
Nine versions of John Cage’s track 4'33" from 2002 by Keith Rowe, Artificial Memory Trace, Thurston Moore, Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening Band, Jio Shimizu, Voice Crack, Clive Graham, and Alignment. 18pp poster style folder.
70 Years of Sunshine
(Monotype - MONO070) 2xCD $16.50
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Albert Hofmann’s first LSD trip, a batch of etheric lysergic soundscapes gather here to pay tribute to the man who changed 20th Century human consciousness with a single molecule. With tracks by Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mother’s Temple), Lord Tang (Arthur Dent), Chihei Hatakeyama, Makyo, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Legendary Pink Dots, Ethernet (Tim Grey), Invisible Path (Michael Bailey), Phil Legard, Andrew Liles, Rapoon (Robin Storey), Komora A, (Darius Ciuta), Mike Rooke, Robert Wheeler (Pere Ubu), Mystical Sun, Mirt, Ceremonial Dagger, Cotton Ferrox and Andy Rantzen (Pelican Daughters). Packaged in a DVD-size box. With texts by David Metcalfe and Kim Cascone, and blotter art by Mark McCloud.
A Cage Went In Search of a Bird: Music Inspired by Franz Kafka
(Somnimage - som04) CD $15.00
Compiled by Mykel Boyd (Angelhood), this 17-band, international compilation of darkwave, neo-classical and experimental sounds features Attrition, La Funcion De Repulsa, Angelhood, Maras Torment, Loren Jan Wilson II & Ryoji Furui, Neither/Neither World, Halo Skycrash, Julian Tulip's Licorice, Benjamin Stauffer, Chagas, Shinjuku Thief, Chthonic Force, Garden of Dreams, Remora, Oblivia, E.A. Zann and The New York Room. Art and graphics by surrealist Christian Faur.
A Cleansing Ascension
(Elevator Bath) Used CD $3.00
Previously unreleased recordings from Matt Shoemaker, Adam Pacione, Jim Haynes, Keith Berry, Rick Reed, Dale Lloyd, Colin Andrew Sheffield, James Eck Rippie, and Tom Recchion. Uneasy narrative, warm ambience, rusted drones, sine waves, field recordings, meditative composition.
A Collection of Songs in the Traditional & Sean-Nós Style
(Nyahh) CD $14.00
Inspired by Alan Lomax, this compilation brings together two generations of singers from all across Ireland. Some of songs are previously released and the rest are self-made phone recordings with a rawness, authentic feel and immediacy. Tracks by Conor O’Kane, Aoife Hammond, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Michael Frank Ó Confhaola, Méabh Meir, Rosie Stewart, Ruth Clinton, Fionnuala Maxwell, Neil Ní Chronoinin, Thomas McCarthy, Sarah Ghriallais.
Adventures in Modern Electronics
(Pinch A Loaf) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
1997 comp with tracks by Aube, Not Breathing, Pain Jerk, Smell & Quim, MSBR, Decible Orgy, Kazumoto Endo, Thirdorgan, The Haters, Spastic Colon. Includes 16pp book. Numbered edition of 500. Sealed
All My Sins Remembered - The Sonic Worlds Of John Murphy
(The Epicurean - CURE.10) 3xCD $23.25
All proceeds go to widow of this much beloved Australian musician. Carefully curated and compiled, All My Sins Remembered follows the chronology of Murphy’s career, from his high school band through his last studio recordings — a treasure of previously unreleased recordings by Associates, Shining Vril, Krang, Krank, Browning Mummery, Knifeladder, Sooterkin Flesh, Blood And Iron, Wertham, Foresta Di Ferro and Gerechtigkeits Liga, as well as rare collaborative tracks with Lustmord, News, Whirlywirld, Hugo Klang, Maa, Orchestra Of Skin And Bone, Slub, Dumb And The Ugly, Vhril, Bordel Militaire and The Walking Korpses. Murphy’s performances can also be heard on exclusive live recordings of Blood Axis, SPK, Whitehouse, Naevus, Nikolas Schreck, My Father Of Serpents & Disciples Of None, and Mandrix, while newly recorded personal dedications (partially making use of John Murphy recordings) come from Of The Wand And The Moon, Die Weisse Rose, Genocide Organ, Andrew King, and David E. Williams. Last but not least are live and studio recordings from March and May 2015 with The Grimsel Path, Zeena Schreck and Murphy’s last main band Last Dominion Lost. Outer cardboard folder, cardboard sleeves, 32-page booklet with texts by The Epicurean, Andrew King, Alan Bamford and Jon Evans, and photographs from the personal archives of friends. Edition of 750.
All Tomorrow Parties 1.1
(ATP Recordings) Used CD $12.00
2002 collection of previously unreleased tracks by Sonic Youth, Unwound, Stephen Malkmus, Stereolab, Bardo Pond, Cat Power, Papa M, Cannibal Ox, Dead C, Boredoms, Kevi Drumm, Satans Tornade. Black line through barcode
Altered States of Consciousness
(U.P.D.) Used CD $9.00
1991 comp with tracks by Merzbow, Maschinezimmer 412, Trance, Asmus Tietchens, PGR Thessalonians, Dissecting Table
America The Beautiful
(RRRecords) Used 2xCD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Mid-’90s tracks by Rougeux / Negativland, Barry Dalive, Mono Pause, AMK, Vampire Rodents, John Wiggins, Thomas Dimuzio, ST 37, Mandible Chatter, Idea Fire Company, Gregg Turkington, Chop Shop, Luxurious Bags, Grae.Com, Small Cruel Party, Hands To, TAC, Slughog, Randy Greif, Out Of Band Experience, Faxed Head, Lee Ranaldo, Neil Hamburger, Phil Milstein, Borbetomagus, Horse-Cow, Commode Minstrels In Bull Face, Goosewind, The Easy Goings, Philip Perkins, Blowhole, Shrilltower, Specula, Nisi Period, Nicolas Collins, The Haters, Crawling With Tarts, ConDemek, Scott Marshall & Mark Giangrande. With insert, sticker
American Primitive Vol. 1 - Raw Pre-War Gospel 1926-1936
(Revenant) Used CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twenty-six-track, Fahey-compiled 1997 collection of music from 78s, much of which was originally recorded for “race” labels like Paramount and Vocalion. Diabolically great gut-bucket, early gospel from Austin Coleman with Joe Washington, Blind Joe Taggart, Blind Mamie Forehand, Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother, Blind Willie Davis, Bo Weavil Jackson, Dennis Crumpton and Robert Summers, Eddie Head and his Family, Elder J.J. Hadley, Elder Otis Jones, Frank Palmes, Jaybird Coleman, Luther Magby, Patton And Lee, Rev. Edward W. Clayborn (The Guitar Evangelist), Rev. I.B. Ware with Wife and Son, Washington White, William and Versey Smith. Twenty-four-page book with copious info about each track and an essay by Fahey.
An Extremely Loud Silence (Audio Renditions Of Beckett’s Dramas)
(TraitMediaWorks) Used CD $7.00
Peter J Woods combines voice and loud bursts of noise, leaving the text sometimes unclear. The voice is clear throughout Eric Lunde’s use of three cassette players but with treatments that erode the speech effectively. Bryce Beverlin II speaks in the middle of a noise racket of distortion and feedback.
Anomalous Silencer #6
(Napalmed) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks from 2003 by Luca Miti, Chaos Holokaust Massaker, Oltretomba, Luasa Raelon, Astrogenic Hallucinauting, Pan Demla, Fever Spoor, The Mindripper, Skryty Puvab Byrokracie, Noisebitch, Johnny & Jhony vs. The Fox, Mauro Orselli, Imiafan, Andrew Duke, Guerraeterna, Crimen Familiar, Discotheque Gronland, Humberg, Fuck The Facts, Asistar_T, Enigma Eden, Tote Stadt, Plethora, Iron Bitchface, Nova-Sak, Nequaquam Vacuum, Sound Inhaler, ExMx, Tremor, Kromleqs, Ellis One, Noisecore Freak, CEOXiME, The Industrial Wiping System, K2, Maschinenmensch, Napalmed. One corner is slightly creased. #703 of 1000
Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music 1992-2008
(Sub Rosa - SR265) 4xCD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Forty-eight tracks from Mainland China (Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guilin, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Shanxi, Harbin), and from countries within the Chinese area of influence (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia) that look at the recent past and the key role of pioneers like Wang Fan, Dajuin Yao, and also Hong Kong-based Li Chin Sung aka Dickson Dee who, for almost two decades, has been spreading the word about experimental music in Mainland China. Includes the short yet intense advent and history of the Chinese noise explosion, co-written by Zbigniew Karkowski and Yan Jun, “The Sound of the Underground: An Overview of Experimental and Non-Academic Music in China.” Documented for the very first time, this release provides a complete panorama of the roots and buds of an ever-growing, promising experimental community in China and beyond, with nearly five hours of music.
Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / Fifth A-Chronology
(Sub Rosa) Used 2xCD $10.00
Works that have ripped apart ancient definitions, international in scope and a focused on the voice — not sung words, but on recitations, distortions, renderings made abstract or disaggregated and screamed. Masonna, Charlemagne Palestine, Pere Ubu, Sutcliffe Jügend, Li Chin Sung aka Dickson Dee, Rogelio Sosa, Christian Galaretta, Richard Maxfield, Wolf Vostell, André Boucourechliev, Mauricio Kagel, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Raoul Hausmann, Gil Joseph Wolman, Leo Kupper, Josef Anton Riedl, Sten Hanson & Henri Chopin, Dajuin Yao, Ground Zero, Club Moral and Dub Taylor. 54-page booklet.
Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / First A-Chronology
(Sub Rosa - SR190) Used 2xCD $15.00
Major works, rarities, previously unreleased tracks, and a "huh?" track or two. With Luigi and Antonio Russolo (1921), John Cage (1965), Sonic Youth (1983), Pauline Oliveros (1966), Iannis Xenakis (1958), Einsturzende Neubauten (1998), Dj Spooky (2001), Maclise-Conrad-Cale (1965), Henri Pousseur (1957), and more.
Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / Second A-Chronology
(Sub Rosa - SR200) CD + CD-ROM $14.00
Academics and mavericks (Vladimir Ussachevsky + Otto Luening, Luc Ferrari, Tod Dockstader, Johanna M. Beyer, Morton Subotnick, Daphne Oram, Scanner, Hugh Davies, Alan R. Splet, Kim Cascone) rub elbow patches with Autechre, Multiphonic Ensemble, Meira Asher + Guy Harries, Choose, Woody McBride, Arcane Device, Laibach, SPK, Percy Grainger, Sun Ra And The Arkestra, Captain Beefheart. Contains mainly unreleased works in a digipak sleeve with a 40-page booklet. The enhanced CD contains the video of "She's Too Much For My Mirror / My Human Gets Me Blues" by Captain Beefheart.
As Yet Untitled
(Realization) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
1991 comp with tracks by Architects Office, Randy Grief, PBK, Michael Chokholak, Hands To, Wisconsin Conservatory of Noise, Thomas Dimuzio, John Wiggins, AMK, Dimthingsshine, Illusion of Safety, Static Effect, Murray Reams, Arcan Device, The Haters
At The End Of The Rope
(Chondritic Sound - CH-020) 2xCD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
Thirty absolutely nasty tracks of morbid and harsh filth, with each disc separately themed on strangulation and auto-erotic asphyxiation. With Atrax Morgue, Cleanse, Clew of Theseus, Concrete Violin, Control, Deathpile, Dødsdømd, Eeyow Karoom, Gruntsplatter, Hentai, Immaculate:Grotesque, Inhalant, Lefthandeddecision, Mania, Moribund, Navicon Torture Technologies, Nicole 12, Omei, Priest in Shit, Propergol, Prurient, Redrot, Richard Ramirez, Sickness, Slogun, Steel Hook Prostheses, Stegm, T.E.F., Viodre, and Whorebutcher.
Audible: New Frontiers
(Physics Room) Used CD $4.00
NZ comp from 2003 with tracks by Radioqualia, Wendyhouse, John McCallum, Richard Francis, Rachel Shearer, Philharmonic.
Avantoscore 2003
(Avanto) Used CD $3.00
With tracks by Curd Duca, Radian, Dubbing Mixers, Mira Calix, Pekka Airaksinen, Helsingin Tietokoneorkesteri, Ibrahim Terzic, KK Null, FM Einheit / Jon Caffery /Alexander V. Borsig, Kari, Peitsamo, Leif Elggren, Terre Thaemlitz, Simon Wickham-Smith, Staalplaat Soundsystem, Ultra-Red + Kanak Attak, Emi Maeda, Mika Vaino
Ballads Of Seduction, Fertility & Ritual Slaughter
(Was Ist Das) CD $25.00
Spooky reimagining of The Wicker Man soundtrack by Burd Ellen, Alvarius B., Andrew Liles, Good Shepherd & Maydo Kay, Magpahi, Sophie Cooper, The Owl Service & Harriet Bradshaw, United Bible Studies, Meg Baird, Hawthonn, Téléplasmiste, Sharron Kraus, David Colohan, Burial Hex, The Banshees of Bunworth, Michael Begg, Dean McPhee.
Batak Of North Sumatra
(New Albion) Used CD $10.00
Traditional music of the Toba, the Karo and the Mandailing (three of seven ethnic groups living on the shores of Lake Toba). As noted by your dad’s old hippie zine Rolling Stone, “Voices and instruments rise in sacred and secular celebration with an idyllic elegance that belies the music’s vigorous, complex locomotion.” Music and dance play a crucial role in Batak society. The words for “ceremony” are actually a musical term and refers to the Batak orchestra of drums, gongs, and oboes and also to the tunes they play. The musicians are essential intermediaries between humanity and the Creator. The sounds of the drums and gongs convey human prayers to the spirit world.
Blanc Et Rouge
(Bôłt - BR ES07) 3xCD $16.50
So-called “absent” works, evidence of their creators’ critical approach and lack of consent to political pressure under which they had to function. These compositions to various degrees allude to then-current events but also point to the broader historical and humanistic context. Four by Eugeniusz Rudnik: Lesson II; Elegy to the Victims of War; Epitaph of Stones; Guillotine DG; plus The Pole Reports from Space (an excerpt from a radio play with music by Rudnik). Krzysztof Penderecki’s Death Brigade; fragment of the 1962 Radio Moscow program W mirie nowych zwukow. 20th Anniversary of the Polish Workers Party by Józef Patkowski, Rudnik, and Krzysztof Szlifirski. Two by Elzbieta Sikora: Rhapsody for the Death of the Republic; Janek Wisniewski-December-Poland. Bohdan Mazurek’s Epitaph on the Death of Jan Palach (2nd version). Maria Pokrzywinska’s Reglamentoso. Two by Krzysztof Knittel: Dorikos; Glückspavillon for Cathy. Thirty-two-page booklet. Sponsored by Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland and Capital City of Warsaw Municipal Office.
Bollywood Steel Guitar
(Sublime Frequencies - SF043) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Twenty-one pop instrumental music film hits from India between 1962 and 1986. All the masters of the steel guitar sound from the period are represented: Van Shipley, Kazi Aniruddha, S. Hazarasingh, Sunil Ganguly, and Charanjit Singh. An entirely different approach that rocks, swings, and grooves through some of India's most beloved film tunes, the electric steel guitar as lead instrument transforms the already infectious melodies into a multitude of higher sound dimensions.
Bowed + Popped
(Nur/Nicht/Nur) Used CD $10.00
Michael Vorfeld’s improv / composition hybrid for percussion trio bears the influence of electroacoustics as much as Stockhausen’s rhythmic and textural complexity pursued to the fullest extent. Stephan Froleyks’s half-hour “Hispeedo” is more volatile, owing to an apparent love of loops moving in and out of phase a la Steve Reich. Relentlessly inventive guitarist Hans Tammen bows, pops, grinds, and squeaks Styrofoam, for a strange collision of a friendly, intentionally unsophisticated material and rather horrible sounds with satisfying imaginative overdubbed textures. Metal box with inserts. From 1999.
Bruitisme 1913–2013
(Influencing Machine) CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Entre Vifs / Le Syndicat mastermind Zorïn honors the centennial of the publication of Russolo’s manifesto The Art of Noises with tracks by Le Syndicat, Tommi Keränen, Government Alpha, Rodger Stella, Lasse Marhaug, and Entre Vifs.
Burselm Accomplice
(Burselm Crypt Recordings) CDR $8.00
The Burselm. Small market town in the middle of the Midlands. Usual mither. Nothing good. Houses where the curtains don’t open. The only way in is by accident. A stranger parks herself at a table in the Turks. Seconds pass. First appearance; stick-thin youth tugging cheese from his drawers. Special price. Second appearance; short lady, ancient and crumbling. DVDs. Stars of yesteryear. Three for a fiver. And then nothing. No one. Nobody. Block of cheddar and a small pile of Charley Sheen. What is there to do in this town. Scan the room. Poster behind the bar. Handwritten promise of Live action. Inept punk and esoteric experimentation. Esoteric punk and inept experimentation. It’s hard to make out. Deliberately obtuse. Shitty. Upstairs. So she walks upstairs. The DVD lady is on the door. Five quid. Give me five quid and you can come in. Cheese boy is at the back of the room with a contact mic. Some old people huddle round an amplifier that has no plug on it. She pays her money. Five small coins. Already working on the cheese. Gobfuls of it. Hard to breathe. Starts up a glam rock medley. Nothing obscure. Just the hits. The numbers one. She’s part of it. That horrible thing. Horrible Burselm thing. She’s an accomplice. Like the fools on the disc you hold in your hand. Indoor market. Open coffin. Sealed fate. Tracks by Posset, Dai Coelacanth, Lovely Honkey, and Andrew M Jarvis.
Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind Vol. 1
(Chocolate Monk - choc.483) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Has lockdown laid waste to creative minds? Or sown seeds of wild whack? Join Cody Brant, Glands Of External Secretion, rlw, Wild Rani, Giblet Gusset, Sick Llama, Fatty Jubbo & Dylan Nyoukis, T.Mikawa, Duncan Harrison, Mark Morgan, Sophie Cooper, Michael Zulicki and Final Seed to find out. Artwork by Leif Elggren. Edition of 100. Order both volumes and get a Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind one-inch badge
Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind Vol. 2
(Chocolate Monk - choc.484) CDR $6.50 (Out-of-stock)
Further forays into the hovels and studios of some of Chocolate Monk’s favorite sound-churners during lockdown. Featuring contributions from Food People, Ogrob, Sharon Gal, Ash Reid Neil Campbell & Sticky Foster, Plastic Hooligans, Embla Quickbeam, Amanda R Howland, Territorial Gobbing, Leif Elggren, The Burbling Mind, Rubber Demon and Dan Melchior. Artwork by Leif Elggren. Edition of 100. Order both volumes and get a Cabin Fever Cleansed My Mind one-inch badge
Churchill’s Hideaway
(Esync) Used CD $18.00
1993 comp subtitled Music Generated by Geographical Seclusion and Beer, with tracks by Harry Pussy, Snatch The Pebble, Kreamy ’Lectric Santa, Postface, Quit, Holy Terrors, Cell 63, Blanket, Drive Choir, Human Oddities, Demonomacy, Pontius Pilot, Wahoos, Boise & Moss, Load
Clit Stop
(Swezlex) Used CD $3.00
2000 comp with tracks by 3 Day Stubble, 99 Hooker / Tom Scandura, Aerobics King, Alpha-Buts. Barney, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Chris Brown, Cokra, Commode Minstrels In Bullface, Deerhoof, Deb Foxx Hamhoxxx, Dr. Oblivious, Earwicker, Frank Gratowski, Fuel for Tongues, Chlorgeschlecht, Hammer Eye Dimuzio, Kit Clayton, Lo Fi Niesans, Lowdown, Mike Boner, Moron, Nautical Almanc, No-Neck Blues Band, Omnivorous Sensillum, Patchcords, Rubber O Cement with Karla LaVey, RX FXR BX, Schematic, Slusser, Spider Compass Good Time Crime Band, Symplx, Tamio Shiriashi, The Bran (another Plight of Medic’s…) Pos, Wicked With, Woof Pies, The Effable Lord Xiandino, Zeek Sheck
Color In Absence Sound
(Hell's Half Halo - HHH08) CD $8.00
1999 comp with Diadal, Monostat 3, Vote Robot, Watt, Thurston Moore, Smack Music 7, Alasdair Willis, Elklink, Decaer Pinga, Sun City Girls, Alvarius B, 2/5 Bukatu, Glands Of Eternal Secretion, Ron Lessard w/ Theoretical Munt, Hochenkeit, Ashtray Navigations, Julien Bradley, Gar Funk Featuring KZA, Whiteout, Idea Fire Co., and Unknown Artist.
Come Again II
(Furnace) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
1993 comp with tracks by Masonna, Tatsuya Yoshida, Solmania, Flying Testicle, Love and Sincerity, Incapacitants, Dislocation, Merzbow, Violent Onsen Geisha, C.C.C.C., Jojo Hiroshige, Abominable Snowman Effuse Anal Tibet, Nord, The Hanatarash, Mortal Vision, S•Core, Kinkakuji, Monde Bruits, Diesel Guitars, Null, Aube, Yellow Cab, Agencement
Compositions for Guitars Vol 2
(A Bruit Secret) Used CD $8.00
2004 comp with tracks by Tetuzi Akayama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Unami
Constructive Music
(U.P.D.) Used CD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
1990 comp with tracks by Dissecting Table, Asmus Tietchens, Deliberate Composition, Etant Donnes, Ruins, PGR, Howling of Himalaya
Contre Tous
(Dead Mind Records) Used CD $3.00
Two tracks by Infidel?/Castro! (one with live drums, noises and distorted textures, one with sinister and oppressive low-end tones and spoken vocals); five tracks of repetitive noise by Dead Husbands; five by PIDPI who do atmospheric experimental noise; and five by De Fabriek that revolve almost exclusively around minimal compositions of loops. From 2003
Cottage Industrial Volume 2
(Humbug) Used CDR $5.00
Tracks by Pål Asle Pettersen, The Cherry Point, Eric Cordier, United Bible Studies, Nol, Edward Ruchalski, Anders Gjerde, Shifts, Peter Wright, Ivar Grydeland & Øyvind Torvand, Murmansk, Agitated Radio Pilot, Uton, The Magical Fold of the Faraway Tree. From 2003
Cottage Industrial Volume 3
(Humbug) Used CDR $4.00
Tracks by Ryfylke, Raionbashi, Wawa, Orange, Manifold, Sinistri, Phô, Ovo, Wooden Wand & Satya Sai Baba, Excepter, Lunt, Maskinanlegg, Moth, Anders Hana, Violets Rock N Roll, Idea Fire Company. From 2004
Dancing With The Dead — The Music of Global Death Rites
(Ellipsis Arts) Used CD + Hardcover Book $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
1995 audio recordings of death rites from around the world by Pastor Ediemae Layne, The Eureka Brass Band, The Tainjin Buddhist Music Ensemble, Afif Ali Khan with Manzoor Hussain Santoo Khan and Ensemble, Los Nani, Nasloi, Janet Leuchter, Los Camperos de Valles, Antanosy / Mahafaly, Fong Naam, The Lileh Choir of Dmanisi, Sanjukta Sen, Koo Nimo and the Kumasi Ensemble Adadam Agofomma, Gabriel Souza Carvalho, Keith Mahone / Hualapai People of Arizona, Seka Gamelan Anklung “Karya Bakti,” and Bokoto. The book offers detailed track-by-track liner notes and essays.
De Nagalm Op De Kopf
(Ultra Eczema - UE60) Magazine + CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Throw a rock in Belgium and you’re likely to draw blood from someone to whom Ultra Eczema's Denis Tyfus owes a trade, or who wants to piss down his neck because his tail is longer then their’s, or wants to hurt him physically because they sent a master of unbelievably great recordings years back that everyone should hear, yet no one, after all this time, has. De Nagalm Op De Kopf is a fine representation of the label’s reliable variation of odd, funny, retarded, great, noisy, free, off, loud, harsh, sad and brutal. With tracks, some over five years old, by Noise Nomads, Krystal Knight (aka Jessica Rylan / Can't), Hacky Pack Zac Sac, Mudboy, Cement Future, Happy Mother's Day I Can't Read, Cards On My Cunt, Prurient, Ex Members Of Josh Hydeman, Cloaca & Vom Grill, Xo4, Burning Star Core, Kites, Defneg, Tumble Cat Poof Poofy Poof, Trashbusters, Anthro Rex, Eric Boros, Bloated Ego and The Compliments, Mouthus, Mix Ape Synb, Orphan Fairytale, Unicorn Hard On, Muslux, Grey Skull, Black Tie Rubber Pussy, God Willing, Bobby Colombo With Silver Cindy, and JB de Kunst. Cover designed by Tyfus, Joshua Burkett, Noise Nomads and Bill Nace. With 16-page paper full of drawings and collages by Tyfus and liner notes by Carlo Steegen.
Dedication -Zweite Auslese-
(Artware) Used CD $6.00
1993 comp with tracks by Freudwerk, D.D. Dobson, Andrew Chalk, Nord, Macronympha, Hijokaidan, Alan Lee, Chop Shop, Miguel Ruiz, Small cruel Party, Aube, Putrefier, Dislocation, Cement Women
Deep in the Heart of Tuva — Cowboy Music From the Wild East
(Ellipsis Arts) Used CD + Hardcover Book $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
Produced and annotated by Ralph Leighton, this 1996 compilation brings together traditional and contemporary Tuvan music by Kongar-ool Ondar, Aldyn-ool Sevek, Oleg Kuular, Oorzhak Khunashtaar-ool, Bichi-Maa Davaa, Shaktar Shulban, Kaigal-ool Khovalyg, Nadezhda Kuular and the Tuvan State Ensemble Sayani, Sainho Namchylak, Mikhail Alperin, Huun-Huur-Tu with the Bulgarian Women’s Choir Angelite, Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha, and Paul “Earthquake” Pena. Sixty-four-page hard-cover book provides a glimpse into the history and culture of Tannu Tuva, plus translations of Tuvan stories and poetry.
Delete The Elite
(Eerie Materials) Used CD $6.00
With tracks by IQ Inc., Teddybears, Squint, Kingdum Scum, Geronimo, Credit To The Nation & Chumbawamba, 45 KHz, Negu Gorriak, Clawfinger, Apocalypse Theatre, Womyn Of Destruction, Descojon Urbano, Phunk Jenkeez, Mikey Mikey, Atheist Rap, Papa Brittle, En Halv Kokt I Folie, Millions Of Dead Cops. With color poster, sticker, and fold-out newspaper. From 1994
Delirious Music For Delirious People
(Arvo - ZYLO1) CD $11.50 (Out-of-stock)
A slithering swath of surreal songs and sounds compiled by Arvo Fingers, host of the weekly Delirious Insomniac show on WLUW in Chicago. With Hans Grüsel's Krankenkabinet, Big City Orchestra, Gary Wilson, The Centimeters, I.M.M.U.R.E.,Verdant, Pharmakon, Controlled Bleeding, Jarboe, Zola Jesus, Mac Blackout, Art Phag, Haunted George, Rancid Hell Spawn, The Dreams, WOLD, Vapid Apparition, Murderous Vision, BeNe GeSSeRiT, Boyd Rice and Friends (with Little Fyodor), Diatric Puds & The Blobbettes, Istvan & His Imaginary Band, and Irene Moon.
Disco Dildar
(Finders Keepers) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rare, plugged-in proxy pop from some of Pakistan’s lesser-known teen flicks spanning the late 1970s and ’80s, featuring drum heavy disco guesstimates built around multilingual lyrics celebrating Saturday nights, Disco Dildars and Hindustani Hogmanays. These original synth-dripped 45 EPs are not from the front of the pile, nor the quirky result of some token musical tourism. The music found here once soundtracked rebellious all-nighters and hotel bar rendezvous from films parents would loathe. This opulent, off-center party targets the cut-and-paste, electronics and fuzz tones of flightless super heroes such as Tafo, Ashraf, Rana and Ahmed, voiced by Mehnaz, Runa Laila and Queen Noor Jehan. This workshop funk redefines both DIY and disco, revealing a whole new side to world music and marking Pakistani pop culture’s transformation from disposable and indefinable to indispensable.
Dissolve
(Fused Coil) Used CD $5.00
1996 U.S. reissue of the Melt compilation (Work In Progress 1992). Tracks by Beequeen, Antonym. Another Headache, Master/Slave Relationship, Lee Ranaldo, :Zoviet-France, Drome, Husk, Whiteslug, Earth Mother Fucker, The Hanatarash, Hydra, The Gerogerogegege, Merzbow, Fat Hacker. With punched barcode
Doel Presents Nextacy Recording: Distronica
(Nextacy) Used CD $10.00
Tracks by Thermo, CMT, New Eq, Feep, Itoken, Macaroniq, Damo Suzuki’s Network, Cannibalism Gandhi Band, Invisible Mountain. Includes obi
Does Time Effect Memory?
(Amanita / Trost) Used 2xCD $5.00
1998 comp with tracks by Splatter Trio, Fuehler, Ron Anderson, RWA, Miss Murgatroid, Scrooge, Shunatao, Phased 4°F, Circle, Figurehead, Badgewearer, Zuno Men, D.A.R.K., Happy New Year, TV Pow, Climax Golden Twins, Konic Thtr, Gino RObair, Raeo, Voodoo Muzak, Spaceheads, Fin De Sciècle, Headbutt, The Molecules, Trottel, Keuhkot, Pest, Nid. Sealed
EAR Magazine Presents Absolut CD # 2 — The Japanese Perspective
(EAR Magazine) Used CD $12.00
Tracks by Yuji Takahashi, Yoshiaki Ochi and Yoshihisa Ochi, Ushio Torikai, Yoshihisa Taira, Yoriaki Matsudaira, Roughage, Akira Sakata, Yamatsuka Eye & John Zorn, Ruins, Michihiro Satoh, Merzbow, Haruna Miyake, Ikue Mori, Toru Takemitsu. In 12pp poster-style folder. Visible glue residue from original sticker on bottom edge of front and back panels. From 1992
EAR Magazine Presents Absolut CD # 3 — Improvisation / Composition
(EAR Magazine) Used CD $12.00
Tracks by Roscoe Mitchell, James Tenney, Lois V. Vierk, David Moss, Joëll Léandre, Willem Breuker, Takehisa Kosugi, Foday Musa Suso, Maarje Ten Hoorne, Jin Hi Kim and Joseph Celli, Joan La Barbara, Wadada Selassie. In 12pp poster-style folder. Some creases visible. From 1991
Electronic Toys
(QDK Media) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Subtitled A Retrospective of ’70s Synthesizer Music. Nineteen kitsch-friendly tunes for films and commercials culled from music libraries KPM, Sonoton and Selected Sound, composed and performed by David Vorhaus, Ron Geesin, Mladen Franko, Steve Gray, Brian Benett, Heinz Funk, Eric Peters, Roland Hovac, Gerhard Trede, Ted Atking, Claude Larson & His Computer Controlled Oscillators, Dave Richmond, Rex Brown Company & Wersi-Electric-String Orchestra and Cecil Canterburn.
Entertainment Through Pain
(RRRecords) Used CD $15.00
Throbbing Gristle tribute comp with tracks by Skullflower, Merzbow, 7000 Dying Rats, Impact Text, Violent Onsen Geisha, Phlegm, Emil Beaulieau, Paul Lemos, Subtroochanteric Muta Ul Trag, Eper.Xr, Grae-com, Anchor Parents, Genital De Orange
Epicurean Escapism
(The Epicurean - CURE1) CD + DVD $26.75
The episodic track by Swedish industrial trio IRM is constructed with elements from Indications of Nigredo (Segerhuva 2008), Order4 (Cold Meat Industry 2010), and Closure (Malignant 2014) — unified into a new, holistic composition which contrasts aggressive noise segments with illusionary moments of lavish quasi-folk. The track by John Murphy’s Krank is a dark collage of fragmented noise, acoustic samples and female vocals. Erik Jarl (of IRM) contributes a subtle piece of circulating drone with a tranquil surface that makes partially hidden harshness more audible. Anemone Tube and Human Larvae’s lucid piece combines the knock-on effect of the former’s flow of sounds with the heaviness of latter’s doom-like industrial. The ninety-two-minute DVD by IRM’s Martin Bladh includes his earliest short film Pig and Tomboy (2005), the epic pentalogy Cycle (2006), and the conceptual installation video DES (2009), among others. All the films present unvarnished set pieces of the human body subjected to subtly implied violence within claustrophobic spaces, where the camera itself, the voyeuristic eye, is the only free player. The accompanying art catalogue includes collages and Polaroids, short essays by Bladh, and introduction text by Carl Abrahamsson. Edition of 350. Listen to an excerpt from “Triptych” by Irm here: http://epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/epicurean-escapism-i
Epicurean Escapism III
(The Epicurean - CURE.3) CD + DVD $21.75
The third and final edition of this series again unites music, film and visual arts in a vision of uncompromising utopian transgression, diving into this subjective counter-world. On the forty-nine CD Sutcliffe Jügend present a straightforward power noise track with a pulsating electronic hook; Swedish units Alfarmania and Skin Area dig deep into the depraved consciousness, each with of a unique version of morbid industrial resonating with decay; Budrus seduces the listener with beautifully melancholic Lithuanian poetry; German act Gerechtigkeits Liga clank and rattle with their brand of organic industrial; appearing as a vaudevillian, prominent voice of Radio Werewolf Nikolas Schreck’s perverse neo-psychedelic composition alludes to Lord Sutekh, merging European neoclassical with ethnic Indian music and poetry; one of the last recordings of John Murphy on drums can be heard on Last Dominion Lost’s ritual piece “To The Master, A Long Goodnight.” On the three-hour DVD are: video works, live performances and collaborations by radical Swiss sound artist Dave Phillips of the notorious Schimpfluch Gruppe, whose work has many facets — composition, performance, psycho-acoustics, sonic rituals, voice, video, field recordings, objects and electronics, etc. — and is presented here in all its undiluted brutality, urgency and topicality; documentation of unique solo live actions and the notorious Paris 1996 performance of Schimpfluch-Gruppe; recent collaborations with G.X. Jupitter-Larsen; visual interpretations of Phillips’s audio works by video artists Pakise Akin, Jan Van Hasselt and Remote-Control Rectum. Includes 24-page catalogue with a text about the work of Phillips, collages, pictures, drawings and lyrics.
Escaping From Color – Rapoon Recomposed and Remixed
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD045) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Rapoon’s original sound loops re-composed by Francisco Lopez, TV Pow, Machinefabriek, Troum, Steve Roden, Jorge Castro, Paulo Raposo, Aidan Baker, Anla Courtis, Gert-Jan Prins, Heimir Bjorgulfsson, Mike Shiflet, Family Underground, Ronnie Sundin, and Cisfinitum & Rapoon.
Eternal Blue Extreme - An Asian Tribute To Derek Jarman
(Somnus) Used CD $40.00
With tracks by Merzbow, C.C.C.C., Juno, Otomo Yoshihide, I.666, Aube, PNF and Z.S.L.O. Number 313 of an edition of 449, with cardboard O-card
Follow Me Down
(Vanguard) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pulsating liquefied grooves from 1966 to 1970, with several wonderfully elastic and ridiculous moments that capture all the odd, misshapen glory of the psychedelic era. Tracks by The Third Power, Erik, Listening, The 31st Of February, Elizabeth, Jeff Monn, Circus Maximus, The Frost, Notes From The Underground, The Vagrants, Serpent Power, The Family Of Apostolic, The Hi-Five, and The Far Cry.
Found Secret
(777 Was 666 - 777-022) CD $15.00
Tracks by Rick Potts, Spoils & Relics, Yeast Culture, Dylan Nyoukis, Smegma, Aaron Dilloway, Hair Stylistics, T. Mikawa, The New Blockaders, Yellowhouse, The Custodians Of The Realm, Altar Of Flies, Karen Constance, John Wiese, and Marc Hurtado.
Freak On!
(VHF - VHF63) Used CDR $10.00
Limited edition disc from 2002 originally made for sale at shows in UK. With “Pink Horse Sweat” and “Pillow Made Of Stereo” by Sunroof, “Worse Than Pug” by Richard Youngs, “Live in Glasgow 28 July 2000,” by Vibracathedral Orchestra. Copper folder with paste-on artwork.
From:/ To:/
(A Bruit Secret) Used CD $3.00
Eight duets from 2003, a gathering of then-young musicians from Lebanon, France and Japan playing in the fields of electroacoustic and improvised music. Tracks by Taku Unami and Norman D. Mayer; Masafumi Ezaki and Hugo Roussel; Utah Kawasaki and Jean-Philippe Gross; Yasuo Totsuka and Quentin Dubost; Masahiko Okura and Sharif Shanaoui; Yoichiro Shin and Olivier Brisson; Ami Yoshida and Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Kazushige Kinoshita and Fabrice Eglin. In card folder with visible creasing
Fug Gum
(Chocolate Monk - choc.245) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
Seventy-six minutes to tar and feather the inside of your cranium. With tracks by Tom Recchion, Andrew Coltrane, Crank Sturgeon, Glands Of External Secretion, Graham Lambkin & David Payne, I'dm Thfft Able, Dog Lady, Loachfillet, The Tenses, Phil Minton & Dylan Nyoukis, F Ampism, Kuupuu with Bamse, Tomutonttu, Glyphs, Smack Music 7, Pod Blotz, Steve Kenney, Preggy Peggy and Reijo Pami.
Fug Gum Vol. 3
(Freakdom - F02) CDR $8.00
More mutant brain-freeze and atmospheric squalor, a companion piece to Vol. 4 on Chocolate Monk. Tracks by The Canadian Romantic, People Skills, Crhd, Carla Bozulich And Devin Sarno, Melkings, The White Shark, Blind Spring, ForestForTheTrees, Orchid Spangiafora, Constant Complaint, Psychonic Imaging, Korea Undok Group, C. R. Odette, Fleshtone Aura, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase, and The Conduits. Edition of 100
Fug Gum Vol. 4
(Chocolate Monk - choc.501) CDR $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
You want to end the year on a wonk, right? Then here is the disc of audio spittle and vibe burble to get you there. Tracks by Karen Constance, The Occupant, Bill Nace, Hannah Ellul, DDAA, Translucent Envelope, Cloth, Dai Coelacanth, Kito-Mizukumi Rouber, Natalia Beylis, Odie Ji Ghast, Hair Stylistics, Sweat Tongue, Rick Potts, The Richard Youngs Foot Band and Mitchell Brown. Edition of 100
Fug Gum, Vol. 5
(Freakdom - FO3) CDR $8.00
Twenty-two tracks by today’s most nimble audio sherpas guide you to the apex of sour. Good luck coming down. Mind the partially thawed corpses, if you please. Tracks by Le Scrambled Debutante, Slums, Tom Recchion, Knurl, Zebra Secrets, Hastings of Malawi, Comfort Link, Puppet Wipes, Rump State, vrg bls, Tommy Birchett, Porest, Samara Lubelski, Mannlicher Carcano, Thomas Carnacki, Rin Peisert, Clarence Bison, Black Bikini, Microminx, Venison Whirled, Magneticring and Dr. Bruce Russell. Artwork by Ted Trager. The companion to Chocolate Monk’s Volume 6. Edition of 100.
Fug Gum, Vol. 6
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
The companion to Freakdom’s Vol. 5 is here to ease all jitters on bleak bonkers Globe. Thirteen tracks by these classy reprobates: Waldorf-Astoria, Cigarette Factory, Johana Beaussart & Èlg, Insect Factory, Alice Kemp, Diurnal Burdens, Fish El Fish, Forrest Friends, Xelís de Toro, Oishi, Ripped Spit, Movie Actor, Mark Groves and Alvarius B. Edition of 100
Fug Gum, Vol. Two
(Freakdom - FREAK1) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by L’Autopsie À Révélé Que La Mort Était Due L’Autopsie, Akatombo, Atelier Mediterranée, Balinese Beast, Blood Stereo, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, Control Unit, Darksmith of California, Dawn Davenport, The Dismantlers, Duck That, Inspector 22, Junko & Michael Henritzi, Mag Resistance, Dan Melchior, Micro_penis, MV & EE with The Golden Smokehound, Ono, Puff Tube, Dr. Judy Satori, Six Heads, This Is Yvonne Lovejoy, Stanley Zappa. Listening notes by Dylan Nyoukis. Second edition of 50.
Galleries 4-6
(20city) Used CD $3.00
"Several tracks each by three New Zealand artists. Doe achieves quiet and compelling, nirvana-like states of layered hum. Eso Steel’s “A Scratch” ups the noise ante a tad with more sound tidbits and “Ircania” goes one further with stretches of mild noise and furnace hum. Birchville Cat Motel’s three tracks bet the whole pot with feedback drenched guitar and clutter." From 2001
Gamelan Ubud - Field Recordings From Bali
(Smiller World Laboratories) Used CDR $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Street processions and performances from villages in and around Ubud, ambient sounds from surrounding islands, a proliferation of motorcycles buzzing through the background. Kuta Dawn, Kebyar Terompong, Funeral Procession, Frogs At Night, Queen Mother’s Funeral Procession, Queen Mother’s Burning, Thunder, Perang Undur-Undur, Barong And Rangda, and Javanese Birds, all recorded by Steve Miller throughout 1998. Cover is made of two metal plates, silkscreened artwork, held together by accordion-folded cardstock with liner notes. Price tag on back cover.
Ghana Soundz
(Soundway) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rare and previously unreleased afro-beat, funk and fusion from the 1970s. With 3rd Generation Band, Oscar Sulley & The Uhuru Dance Band, Marijata, Ebo Taylor, Gyedu Blay Ambolley & The Steneboofs, Sweet Talks, Ogyatanaa Show Band, Honny & The Bees Band K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas, Apagya Show Band, African Brothers, Rob, Alex Konadu, and Black Star Sound. Includes sixteen-page color book of history, photos, original sleeve art.
Guitarrorists
(No. 6) Used CD $10.00
Tracks by Sonic Boom, Kurt Ralske, Kathy Korniloff, Jeffrey Evans, Wayne Coyne, J Mascis, Dean Wareham, Mark E. Robinson, Marc Gentry, Dave Rick, Kat Bjelland, Thurston Moore, Helios Creed, Tom Hazelmeyer, Paul Leary, Nick Salomon, Don Fleming, Kim Gordon, Nikki Sudden, Kramer, Neil Hagerty, Wayne Rogers, Rick McCollum, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Albini. From 1991
Hallways — 11 Musicians and HMSL
(Frog Peak) Used CD $9.00
With tracks by John Bischoff, Phil Burk, Nick Didkovsky, David Fuqua, Charlie Haden, Robert Marsanyi, Jeanne Parson, Larry Polansky, David Rosenboom, Trichy Sankaran, Carter Scholz. From 1993
Hell
(Lost Frog) CD $15.00
Dedicated to Glen Hobbs of Five Starcle Men, with tracks by Animals Within Animals, Isis and Werewolves, Kingdom Scum, Decaer Pinga, Cotton Museum, Empty Head, Death Karaokes, Five Starcle Men, Ene, Glands of External Secretion, Tamarin, Panicsville, Lordx, Slop Cake, and Xper.Xr With The Neck of a Fish.
High Zero Festival Of Experimental Improvised Music
(Recorded - REC024) Used CD + DVD $12.00
This 10th anniversary package (released in 2009) gives a small three-hour taste of the inspired radical methods and utopian intentions that go into the annual Baltimore event’s new music, no-holds barred experimentation, spontaneous collaborations, varied performances on stage and on the street, special projects, and interviews. Featuring Jim Baker, John Berndt, Jac Berrocal, Nicole Bindler, Jaap Blonk, Tom Boram, Dan Breen, Jeff Carey, Audrey Chen, Dan Conrad, John Dierker, Michael Formanek, Eric Franklin, Chiara Giovando, Dave Gross, Daniel Higgs, Sofia Jernberg, Michael Johnsen, Bonnie Jones, Lukas Ligeti, Thomas Lehn, Kyp Malone, Ben Manley, Kaffe Matthews, Joe McPhee, Sean Meehan, Phil Minton, Scott Moore, Stewart Mostofsky, Lexie Mountain, Ian Nagoski, Le Quan Ninh, Catherine Pancake, Greg Pierce, Eve Risser, Matana Roberts, Marina Rosenfeld, Christine Sehnaoui, Roger Turner, Fuyuki Yamakawa, C. Spencer Yeh, and others. CD contains six strange gems from the High Zero vaults.
Ikebana: Merzbow’s Amlux Rebuilt, Reused And Recycled
(Important) Used 2xCD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
“According to the liners, artists were supposed to use the original album’s music as an element in a new composition, rather than piece together a traditional remix…. There are a few unruly moments that seem plucked from some forgotten cassette-only … release, but in general, much of this … could pass for an experimental IDM sampler. Alec Empire’s raging ‘Digital Hardcore Mix’ comes on like the soundtrack to a Terminator sequel that didn’t suck, with wildly distorted drum tracks kicking the shit out of all the extraneous debris…. Performing under his Plug alias, Luke Vibert’s excellent untitled futuro drum-n-bass slaps an engorged, fuzzy repeating synth bass under jagged glitch stutter beat…. Mouse on Mars’s ‘Superstar’ features no beats whatsoever, and in truth, sounds almost exactly like a Merzbow original, albeit a piece wherein he doesn’t so much opt for deafening displays of violent florescence as disorientating sound design. Cornelius’s untitled piece starts out innocently enough, with sampled jungle birds and rain, but gradually mutates into the pitter-patter of static electricity and industrial clang. Nobukazu Takemura’s ‘Assembler Mix’ takes the static idea and gallops with it, giving you hundreds of variations on the same grating implosion for what seems an eternity…. Makoto Kawabata’s amazing / nauseating ‘Revolved Jane’ … shows you don’t have to bother living up to a legacy if you’re perfectly capable of vandalizing it with a chorus of grotesque psych-locusts…. DJ Spooky’s trip-hop treatment doesn’t really sound like it belongs on the same album as the MoM or Takemura tracks, and Negativland’s highly annoying ‘An Actual Attack’ doesn’t sound like anything I need in my collection at all.”
I’m With The Band Of Gurps
(Chocolate Monk - choc.472) CDR $6.00
Recordings of Band Of Gurps (a one-off quintet of Sharon Gal, Dylan Nyoukis, June Whitchurch, Yoni Silver and Ali Roberston) performing at Cafe Oto on 28th July 2018 as part of the Chocolate Monk 25th anniversary two-day event were passed onto Cody Brant, Ju Suk Reat Meate, Karen Constance, Hannah Ellul, Rust Ruus, Kenny Carstairs, Posset, and Seymour Glass, who each proceeded to remix and rework and do over. All the huffing, puffing and wheezing weirdness you could hope for. Maybe more. Definitely not less. Edition of 75
Japanese American Noise Treaty
(Relapse) Used 2xCD $45.00
Tracks by Masonna, K2, MSBR, C.C.C.C., Painjerk, Contagious Orgasm, Astro, Incapacitants, Merzbow, Hijo Kaidan, Third Organ, Diesel Guitar, Solmania, Princess Dragon Mom, Pica, The White Rose, Haters, Taint, Walking Time Bombs, Macronympha, Cauterizer, Allegory Chapel Ltd, Crawl Unit, Daniel Menche, Speculum Fight, Cock ESP, Dog, Richard Ramirez, Namanax. Includes book with one page pert artist, from almost blank to artfully-designed manifestos. From 1995. Sealed, with hole punched through the barcode.
Japanoise
(Little Mafia) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
2003 collection with tracks by Pain Jerk, K2, CCCC, Melt-Banana, KK Null, MSBR, Masonna, Incapacitants, Mo-Te, Government Alpha. Sealed
Japanoise Of Death II
(Steinklang Industries - SKIN12) CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Compiled in 2008 by Joerg P. of Antracot. All previously unreleased tracks by Guilty Connector, Hijokaidan, KK Null, Government Alpha, Dissecting Table, Kazumoto Endo, Incapacitants, Aube, Mothra, Solmania, Screloma, Montage, Astro, Crossbred, Timosoara, and Nord.
JMSA Presents Wave From Free Music Undecided
(PSF) Used CD $8.00
Previously unreleased live recordings from late 2003 and early 2004 by Keiji Haino (hurdy-gurdy), Kazuo Imai (guitar), Junichiro Okuchi (piano), Michihiro Sato (tsugaru syamisen), Yoshihide Otomo (turntable), Masayoshi Urabe (alto sax). The six solo tracks here document a series of lecture-concerts at Mesar Haus in Tokyo, exploring the meanings, methods and implications of free music. “Approaches vary between the grey kaleidoscopic fields of Haino’s hurdy-gurdy, the art-brut physical terrorism of Urabe, the traditional improvisatory, plucking style of Sato, and the anti-fundamentalist feedback dialectics of Otomo’s turntable work. All bore channels through time-space continua and consensus reality like no one’s business.”
Ju-Jikan
(23five - 23F/SFM 901) 2xCD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first anthology in nonprofit org 23five’s sound event series presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The selections here, chosen from SFMOMA’s Ten Hours of Sound From Japan, emphasize the stylistic diversity achieved through electronic synthesis (computer music, anti-academic, noise, anti-pop permutations, ambient, field recordings, post-improv, etc.). With tracks by Merzbow, Otomo Yoshihide, Masonna, Astro, Tetsuo Furudate, Pain Jerk, Yuji Takahashi, Yasunao Tone, Ryoji Ikeda, Nerve Net Noise, Hanatarash, Tamami Toro, compiler Atau Tanaka, i.d., Kozo Inada, Ichiro Nodaira, and Kazuo Uehara. 20-page booklet includes essays, milestones, timeline, detailed program notes about the MOMA installation.
Killing Me Softly With Noise
(Noise) Used CD $13.00
1997 comp with tracks by Syllyk, Crawl Unit, Small Cruel Party, Strafe FR, Ching-Shen-Ching, CM Von Hausswolff, Hybrids
Kraftworks
(Spill) Used 2xCDR $10.00
Compiled as a souvenir for an event staged at the Empress Hotel, Melbourne, in November 1999. With tracks by Antediluvian Rocking Horse, Battery Operated, Case Managers, Clown Smiling Backwards, Craftwork, Dart, DJ Smallcock, Dreamland Happy Times For All, Fibrotown, The Gonks, Hi-God People, Home For The Def, Huon, Julian Williams, Kettle, Letraset, New Waver, Obsolete, Saint August vs The Microsleep Quartet, San Jose Cow Muzak, Sleepy Township, Tugboat, 2 Lire Dolby With Chris Smith, and Yamamoto.
Land Of The Rising Noise
(Charnel Music) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
1993 comp with tracks by Omoide Hatoba, Agencement, Dissecting Table, Aube, Children Coup d’Etat, DMV, Angel’in Heavy Syrup, Merzbow, Tokyo Dowzer, CCCC, Hijo Kaidan, Keiji Haino
Le Groupe Surréaliste Révolutionnaire, Dotremont er Broodthaers (1939-1978) - Volume 3
(Sub Rosa) Used CD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Rare archival recordings from Belguim: The Groupe Surréaliste du Hainaut, 1939 (with Achille Chavée, Fernand Dumont, Pol Bury, André Simon, Marcel Lefrancq), The Groupe Surréalisme Révolutionnaire, 1948 (with Christian Dotremont, Marcel Broodthaers, Paul Colinet, Achille Chavée), the Revues : Temps Mêlés, 1952 (with André Blavier), Phantomas 1953 (with Marcel Havrenne, Théodore Koenig, Marcel Piqueray), Les Lèvres Nues, 1954 (with Marcel Mariën), Daily Bul 1957 (with André Balthazar, Pol Bury, Marcel Havrenne, Paul Colinet, Marcel Piqueray), and the two outsiders: Marcel Broodthaers and Jean-Pierre Verheggen.
Light Bulb Magazine Number Four - The Emergency Cassette
([ no label ]) Used 2xCD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
Unauthorized reissue of the original 1981 double-cassette. Ricocheting back and forth from themes of rampant human decay, paranormal and supernatural phenomena, the campiness of mainstream wholesomeness (1950s style in particular), absurd and adolescent humor, and the elusive kernel of triumph within self-defeating nihilism and inward-looking mockery, the Emergency cassettes are a source of the contemporary avant garde’s most valuable asset - the irrelevancy of barriers between naïf outsiders, intuition- driven slackists, and sarcastic conceptual complainers. It establishes the central role of a common, infinitely malleable vernacular available to anyone with a desire to get mucky with it. The variety here is so initially stunning that it seems like nothing in the comp’s two-hour duration is remotely similar to anything else on it, even if that isn’t the literal truth: real songs made of backward tape loops, strummed folk tunes, spastic punk bands that run the gamut from unison drum-pounding and shouting to out-of-control dementia to college nerds in overdrive, destroyed electronics, shit that sounds like a senior citizens attempting a space opera in a cafeteria, janitors chasing mice with brooms, lunatic lounge singer impersonators, repetitive machines, ridiculous parodies, geeky showtunes and cartoon music, surreal carnival nightmares, et fucking cetera. Tracks by Tom Recchion And The Friends Of Leslie, Monique, Jad Fair, Doug Snyder, Creatures Lives, Smegma, Peepland, The Lunchmen, John Duncan, International Language, Duba / Sansome, 30 Windswept Dimes, Decayes, 45 Grave, Half Bodied Baby, Human Hands, Neef, Glo-Bin Treeflip, Bachelors Even, Rick Potts, Bridge, Fragile Hats, Fredrik Nilsen, Jes Grew, Bpeople, Phranc, Asmus Teitchens, Them Rhythm Ant, Tiny Holes, Random Samples, Flap, Tela Conversion, Meat Puppets, Doodooettes-That Moment, Pep Lester, Cameron Hands Penis Envy, Dennis Duck, Brent Wilcox, Planet Z, Arrow Book Club, Bruce Licher, Slimy Adenoid & The Fab Pabs, The Tribal Fops, Bill Noland, and Foundation Boo.
Live From The Devil’s Triangle Vol. 2
(KFJC) Used 2xCD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live-in-the-studio recordings from the late ’90s by High Rise, ST37, Jade Vincent Experiment, Amber Asylum, Cul de Sac, The Machine Gun TV, Overhang Party, King Brothers, Oh Kami No Jikan, Bardo Pond with Roy Montgomery, The Ex, Spaceheads, Petra Haden and Miss Murgatroid, The Palace of Love, Ass Baboons of Venus, Ex-Girl , Kirihito, and Mainliner. Sealed
Lo-fi Electric Acoustic & Radical
(Meldac) Used CD $30.00
Tracks by God Is My Co-Pilot, Melt-Banana, Polvo, Manga Band, Kiki, Okinawa, ESP Records, Brain Zero, Plastic Nuggets, the 1+2s, Den Do Ba, Kicking Giant, Railroad Jerk, Violent Onsen Geisha, Onsen Banana, Jad and David, Yo La Tengo with Jad Fair, Half Japanese, Jason Willet and Jad Fair, Jad Fair, Hattifatteners. Includes thick book, obi, logo sticker designed by Eye Yamatsuka affixed outside plastic box. From 1995
Lowercase-Sound 2002
(Bremsstrahlung) Used 2xCD $45.00
With tracks by The Beige Chanel, Tucker Dulin, Gal, Josh Russell, Bob L. Sturm, Dale Lloyd, Matt Shoemaker, Yannick Dauby, Electric Company, Reynols, Joseph Siemion, Animist Orchesrta, Radu Malfatti, Jason Lescalleet, David Gross, Undr Quarter, John Hudak, Otaku Yakuza, Francisco López, Rsundin, Akira Rabelais. Stephan Mathieu, Immedia, Dan Abrams, Peter Van Hoesen, Michael Schumacher, Carl Stone, Tetsu Inoue, Taylor Duepree. Kin Cascone, Toshimaru Nakamura, Jonas Lindgren, Civyiu Kkliu. Box with vellum inserts
Maboroshi No Sekai Samples
(Maboroshi No Sekai) Used CD $18.00
1995 comp with tracks by Bazooka Joe, P.O.N., Melt-Banana, Ausia, Black Stage, Saga Yuki, Houraku-Ya, Fukuoka Yutaka and Kido Natsuki, Ixa-Wud, Bondage Fruit, Painkiller, Yoshida Tatsuya and Katsui Yuji, Isoda Osamu, ZZZ, 20fingers, Harpy, Live Under The Sky, Katsui Yuji and Punchi Kyoudai.
Manifestation Vol II
(Awefull Records) Used CD $12.00
1991 comp with tracks by Happy Fingers Institute, Pleasure Center, Chemical Wedding, Liquid Mice, Alquimia, Evil Mother’s, Echoes of God, and Three Day Stubble
Mass Culture Control Bureau… Things From The Past
(Ad Hoc) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Minimal electronics, jilted avant-pop, artpunk, progressive music, and some folk as well, by The Black Sheep, Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest, Geoff Leigh, and Red Balune. Features cameo appearances by members of Henry Cow: Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Cutler. From 2004 with red promo stamp on front cover
Masters of the Scene — The Definitive ABBA Tribute
(Nihilist) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by Canned Hamm, Sockeye, Kazumoto Endo, Vertonen, Evil Moisture, Ungratefeul Deadbeats, Ski-Mask & The Bucketmen, Absorb, Guilty Connector, I & Makoto, irr. app. (ext.), Wäldchengarten, Brain Transplant, Foamula. Spider Compass Good Crime Band, Body Tong, The Rib, Wounded Head, Plastic Crimewave Band, Sudden Infant, Gunshop, Viki, Julia Sets, Methypnox. From 2003
Melt
(Work In Progress) Used CD $5.00
Original UK edition from 1992, reissued in 1996 by Fused Coil under the title Melt with different artwork. Tracks by Beequeen, Antonym. Another Headache, Master/Slave Relationship, Lee Ranaldo, :Zoviet-France, Drome, Husk, Whiteslug, Earth Mother Fucker, The Hanatarash, Hydra, The Gerogerogegege, Merzbow, Fat Hacker. No burlap bag.
Merzbow Frog Remix And Revisited
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used 2xCD $7.50
Tracks by Hrvatski, Pita, House Of Low Culture, Never Presence Forever, Sunn O))), Gerritt, Terror Organ, John Wiese, Merzbow, Fennesz, Ulver, Russell Haswell, Hecker, When, Boris
Mi Caballito Chulo…! Como Lo Quie Ro…
(Los Apson) Used CD $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by Made in CCR, Masatake Naozaki, Violent Onsen Geisha, Mom’n’Dad Productions, Roketship X-M, Manabu Yuasa, Papumi, Yoshimi, Lee, Surfers of Romantika, Hanatarash, Shakapee Yaa Motomoto, Mexico Ponco Puerto Rico, Malaria’n’Motorcar, Nijimura Oqyasu, Hoi Voodoo, Pain Jerk, Space Junko, King Of Besecity, The Scholarship, The Teacher, Cheese, Super Ball, Melt-Banana, Segovia Prince, Roman Cliff, McCoy’s Band, Yasuhiro Ohtani, Magical Power Band, Hardrock Livingroom, Doh Nose All, Sfinx, Merzbow, Knight Of Funk. From 1994
Million Ways To Spend Your Time
(Quasi Pop - QPOPCD042) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Exclusive and unreleased tracks from Andreas Brandal, Biblioteka Prospero, Peel Off The Bass, Jørgen Knudsen, O. Lamm, Lasse Marhaug, TV Pow, Andrey Kiritchenko, Black To Comm, Monofilament, The Complainer, Continental Fruit, Origami Epileptika, 8Rolek, Alexey Petrov, Batcheeba, CharSky.
Music From Madagascar
(Yazoo - 7003) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Classic traditional recordings of the 1930s compiled from rare 78s. WIth Hiran'ny Tanoran'ny Ntao Lo, Choeur Malgache, Hirand-d Razafimahefa, Hira Malaza Taloha, Hiran-d Razafimahefa, Mpilalao Malgache.
Music Should Hurt
(Self Abuse) Used CD $14.00
1996 collection with tracks by Smell And Quim, Merzbow, K2, Bacillus, Daniel Menche. OVMN, Evil Moisture, Third Organ, Hyper Ventilation, Iugula Thor, Pain Jerk, Macro Beaulieau, Killer Bug, and Hanged Mans Orgasm. Sealed
New Music From Central And Eastern Europe — Tamizdat Comp Vol 1
(Wire) Used CD $3.00
Turn-of-the-century compilation with tracks by Auktyon, Mapa, Kazik Mazzoll and Arhythmic Perfection, Tornádo Lue, Iva Bittová and Vladimir Václavek, Jablkon, Lajkó Félix, Sergey Kuryokhin, Kury, Ewabraun, Projekt = Projekt, Úzgin Uver, Projekt Karpaty Magiczne, Kampec Dolores, Ali Ibn Rachid, Stoka, Trottel, Uz Jsma Doma, Slide Zivé Slede, Plastic People Of The Universe.
Nganasan Chants Chamaniques Et Narratifs De L’artique Sibrien
(Buda Musique) Used CD $20.00
The narrative chants here, performed for a variety of situations, including Shamanistic séances, by autochthonic / indigenous minority populaces living in Siberia, represent some of the last vestiges of their dying culture, proof that they existed and maintained a structured belief system. The chants reverberate with rich images of universal abstract ideas — joy, sadness, prosperity — and recall a primordial culture that hunts wild reindeer and geese and partridges, and fishes in Arctic waters. A few of the tracks are intensely dramatic, as if the chanter was channeling all his / her energy into healing someone.
No Tribute
(Sunship / Little Mafia / Carbon / Breathmint) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
All covers of material by the Nihilist Spasm Band. WIth Baku, U Can Unlearn Guitar, The Pin vs. Bellchamber, Unconditional Loathing, Jacopo Andreini, Winter Carousel, Roughage, V/Vm, Dapper, Madame Chao, Alan Licht, Smell & Quim, Inca Eyeball, Carlos Giffoni, Reynols, Cock E.S.P., DEL, Pengo, Glands Of External Secretion, Panicsville, Wolf Eyes, Wrong, Newton, Hijokaidan.
Noise Is All In Your Head
(Gold Soundz - GS1) CD $15.00
A Norway-centric comp of surprisingly cohesive free sound, with Thurston Moore, Noxagt, Oren Ambarchi, Volcano The Bear, Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra), Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay/Decaer Pinga, Chocolate Monk), Lasse Marhaug, Rats With Wings, Songs of Norway (Aaron and Nick from Volcano the Bear), Continental Fruit, Ojn (ex-Landshipping/Metrotone), Sindre Bjerga/Anders Gjerde, The Wife Contract, If You Meet Your Anti-Self Don’t Shake Hands (Neil Mackay of LOOP, Hair & Skin Trading Co., Juicy Eureka), Julian Bradley/A Companion as Glamourous as Sleeping, Duo Kanel, and DJ Bra Nesegir.
Nordisk Sang — Music Of Norway
(New Albion) Used CD $6.00
A rare and intimate look from 1991 at genuine Scandinavian folk music courtesy of artists from the Heilo roster. Willow bark flutes, pristine voices, fiddles (both hardingfele and standard). Central to it all is Kirsten Brten Berg, a ear-swooning singer of pure tone and ethereal space. There are two pieces for transverse flute (one as a duo with a pipe organ that is quite unusual); one solo dulcimer piece; and one for willow bark flute. There are only two slightly larger ensemble pieces, one a trio for voice, saxophone, and hardingfele, another for voice, hardingfele, bouzouki, and recorder.
Orbital Confluence Benefit
(Neurec) Used CD $18.00
Tracks by Aube, Nagisa Nite, Naoki Zushi. Released in conjunction with a benefit concert supporting people suffered from Hanshin Awaji earthquake in 1995.
Overland
(Naturestrip - NS 3002) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Four sound artists working with field recordings. Toshiya Tsunoda’s “Reclaimed Land,” recorded in Japan, captures an immersive and rich environment, momentarily framed. Melbourne-based sound artist and improviser Joel Stern’s track was produced using binaural microphones, two bottles of soda water, damaged cables and speakers; it moves between richly textural surface noise, investigations of acoustic space, and minute gestural detail. The cyclic mixture of breathing, resonant drones, static rustlings and scrapings of Tarab’s “Of Hollow Traces” was constructed from a series of improvisations, using found objects, microphones, simple electronics and field recordings. Brisbane-based writer, composer and artist Lawrence English collects together a series of field recordings captured in Tokyo and New York into an audio diary of abstract reflections. Imported from Australia.
Paper & Plastic
(Suitcase - SUTPAPSUTPLA) 2xCD $24.00
This two-disc audio project begun by Suitcase in 1991 features rare and unreleased material by Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Yeast Culture, z.B.u.a., Achim Wollscheid, Small Cruel Party, Ios Smolders, Agog, Chop Shop, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Wash Your Brains, Appi, Kapotte Muziek, Emil Beaulieau, Inzekt, Native X, tac, Sudden Infant, Merzbow, and A4. The discs are packaged inside a clear silkscreened DVD case, with handmade inserts, a folio of original color silkscreened postcards, and 16-page booklet, and sealed with an Obi strip and barcode. Each copy is a unique and the entire package is much heavier than a standard two-disc set due to the original artwork included. Each piece is shipped individually wrapped in addition to using extra caution with the packing. Selection of the audio and visual materials, and packaging design are by A4 in collaboration with Incubator and Petri Supply. Abo of Yeast Culture silkscreened each individual copy. Edition of 600
Pathological Compilation
(Pathological) Used CD $15.00
Industrial metal, noise and grind from 1989 by Carcass, Godflesh, Terminal Cheescake, Stretch Heads, Coil, Silverfish, God, and Napalm Death.
Phrênésie #2 — A Space of Language Experimentation
(Fibrr) Used CD $6.00
2003 comp of poetic sound pieces with electronic treatments by Julien Ottavi & Sophie Gosselin, John Tilbury, Brandon Labelle
Popular Music For Popular People
(Gameboy) Used CD $3.00
2000 comp with tracks by Government Alpha, Cock ESP, Bob Marinella, Spastic Colon, Contamination Diet, Lockweld, DJ Smallcock, MSBR, Noumena, Goat, Fruehauf, Sodium, Dan Bodah, John Wiese
PRES Scores
(Bôłt - BR ES09) 2xCD $16.50
Original and new realizations of five of Polish Radio Experimental Studio’s seven published scores. Pieces by Andrzej Dobrowolski (Music for Magnetic Tape and Piano Solo; Music for Magnetic Tape No.1), Bogusław Schaeffer (Symphony: Electronic Music), Włodzimierz Kotonski (Aela; Study for One Cymbal Stroke), and Krzysztof Penderecki (Psalmus) “performed” by Eugeniusz Rudnik and Bohdan Mazurek and by Lionel Marchetti, Thomas Lehn, Philip Zoubek and Wolfram, Arszyn and Piotr Kurek, Marion Wörle and Małe Instrumenty. The scores are among the first attempts to write down electronic sounds, and provide links between music and graphics, making explicit the replacement of utilitarian functions for experimental ones. Precision of communication between a composer and a sound engineer — noticeable in early Dobrowolski scores or in Kotonski’s Study — yields to a tendency to experiment with this communication. In 1964 Bogusław Schaeffer’s graphic score was full of new symbols, well-defined by the author but which above all serve as tools of identifying the potential actions of the sound engineer. Six years later Włodzimierz Kotonski’s composition, deprived of graphic symbols, is a nineteen-page text-score describing the most important principles of a family of electronic pieces called Aela. The PRES Scores album is dedicated to the ambivalence of conservatism and experiment. Scores on paper are what the composer leaves behind and in this way requires, or at least allows, subsequent realizations. Twenty-eight-page booklet. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
PSF & Alchemy (20th Anniversary Live)
(PSF) Used CD $14.00
Tracks by Kan Mikami and Jojo Hiroshige, EXIAS-J, Kazuo Imai and Incapacitants, Marble Sheep, Keiji Haino and Narita Munehiro, L & Friends, Masayoshi Urabe & Junko, Go Hirano & Takshi Ueno. From 2005
Raggle Taggle Vol. 1
(Tag Rag - TRCD005) Used CD $6.00
Japanese comp from 1996 with U., Spasmom, Off Mask 00, Domlock Sandhill, Grind Orchestra, Corrupted, Nasca Car, and Rise From The Dead.
Red Wine For Grapes
(From The Same Mother) Used CDR $12.00
Tracks by Panel of Judges, Pip Proud, Ill Kept Dwelling, New Waver, The Lost Domain, Bruce Russell, Dworzec, Above Ground Pool, Julian Williams, Chris Smith, Solids, Huon, and Rhizome. Photocopy paste-on cover. From 2000
Release Your Mind
(Release) Used CD $3.00
1995 comp with tracks by Love Like Blood, Trial of the Bow, Fetish 69, Dead World, Merzbow, Malformed Earthborn, Pica, Room 101, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Dweller on the Threshold, Tearbox, Candiru, Namanax.
Riddle of Lumen
(FMN Sound Factory) Used CD $17.00
1995 comp with tracks by Dril Man, Pon, U, Peregrini, Otomo Yoshihide, Soap-Jo Henshi, O.A.D., Solmania, Bidziliba, Romp, EQ, Live Under The Sky
Rock’s Role (After Ryoanji)
(Art In General) Used CD $20.00
Responding to John Cage’s musical translations of the famed Japanese rock garden Ryonanji, the audio works in this exhibition are installed in a novel way to create an aural environment in which the pieces can be heard both individually and simultaneously. The speakers from which the sounds are broadcast are arranged to visually mimic the stones and space of the garden. Like the garden, which cannot be viewed in its entirety from any one point, Rock’s Role offers a separate experience from each position within the gallery. Tracks by Andrew Neumann, Barbara Held, Bernhard Gál, Brenda Hutchinson, Damian Catera, David Galbraith, David Matorin, Ed Tomney, Future Remix, Gabriel Burian-Mohr, John Hudak, Maggi Payne, Masahiko Sunami, Michael J. Schumacher, Mike Hallenbeck, Rilo Chmielorz, Ron Kuivila, and Stephen Vitiello. From 2004
Rubbed + Blown
(Nur/Nicht/Nur) Used CD $10.00
Claus van Bebber and Ron Schmidt’s well-constructed schizophrenic duet in five parts touches high-energy free jazz, isolationist noises, musique concrete, a barrage of droning, barely-changing synthesizer sounds decorated with a sprinkling of ugly samples, and conceptual art. Paul Hubweber gradually metamorphoses small cells of notes, via an ensemble of brass instruments and signal processing, into a dense slab. Another piece begins with homemade brass and deliberately clumsy edits, giving way to junk sounds and the virtual ambiance of industrial noises. Hubweber’s more minimal “Ab + Auf,” performed by a live ensemble, combines slowly sweeping drones with filigree solo-istic gestures. Metal box with inserts.
Salvage Job
(Chocolate Monk - choc.517) CDR $8.00
If it’s broken, don’t fix it. Further recordings made during the mess of the past year, which you may hear as a shining pathway out of the shit, or a “back to the egg!” warning cry. Pour yrself a drink, put on those headphones and let the gamble commence. With tracks from Hobo Sonn, Muyassar Kurdi & Ka Baird, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, A.S, Raymond Cummings, Hardworking Families, Stone Cornelius, Dora Doll, Duncan Harrison, LDSN, Angela Sawyer & Ethan Marsh, Glands Of External Secretion, Tania Caroline Chen, Mark Groves, Staubitz & Waterhouse, Kraus, Kate Armitage, Constance/Nyoukis and RRS. Artwork by Bill Nace. Edition of 100
Salvage Job Volume 2
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. Drone, nonmusical foraging and other refined audio by Adam Bohman, Hag Landscape, Weird Fields, Ones, Ashtray Navigations, Meadow Argus, TVE, Neil Campbell, Karen Constance & Elkka Nyoukis, Lonny Hoffmann’s Oonly Faces and Names Devine. Edition of 100
Sidereal Rest
(Scratch - #21) Used CD $5.00
1996 comp with tracks by Paste, Thee Crusaders, Melchor, The Extra Glenns, Roughage, Mark, Blaise Pascal, Good Horsey, Refrigerator, B.C. Scar, Loren Mazzacane, Sun City Girls, Kathleen Yearwood, Bügsküll, Pork Queen, Caroliner Rainbow Splinter Mine Deserves, Staked Plain, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Noggin, Payment
Solitude of Sounds
(Bôłt - BR ES08) 2xCD $16.50
A collection of works created at Polish Radio Experimental Studio by pioneer of minimalism Tomasz Sikorski and by his friends and followers. Four by Sikorski: Echoes II (1963); Antiphones (1963); Diario 87 (1987); Solitude of Sounds (1975). Two by Száblocs Esztényi: Created Music No 3: in memoriam Tomasz Sikorski (1989); Concerto (1971). One by Kasia Głowicka: Presence (2007). As opposed to American minimalism (with its urban soundscape flavor that emerges from frenetic human interaction), or Dutch minimalism (informed by a culture of activism), the Polish variation has been called “mystic minimalism” because of the personal experiences and environment of its creators, and their interest in expressing emotions in a grandiose way. Philosopher-minimalist Sikorski was concerned with the meditative properties of his compositions (which seem to long for brutal beauty), and impressed by the existential crisis in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death. His attraction to despair may have had roots in personal tragedy, where intoxication, abandonment and ridicule plagued his existence. Twenty-four-page booklet. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
Sonic Circuits V
(Innova) Used CD $8.00
Orchid Spangiafora’s ‘Radios silent’ (raw and untreated, spliced and looped radio broadcast samples), Michael Schell’s ‘Jerry Hunt: Song Drape 2’ (taped telephone conversations), Katharine Norman’s ‘Hard Cash (and small dreams of change)’ (snippets of taped interviews juxtaposed with other processed sounds), Lawrence Fitts’s one-minute spoken text by Australian sound poet Chris Mann), Colby Leider’s ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ (heavily processed Hilliard Ensemble source material), Robert Normandeau’s ‘Le Renard et la Rose’ (drawing on vocal samples of the actors from Odile Magnan’s radio adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince), Eirik Lie’s ‘112 Par Sko (112 pairs of shoes) and Beatriz Ferreyra’s ‘Soufle d’un petit Dieu distrait’ (giving the impression of voices embedded within) and Beatriz Ferreyra’s artificial electronic sound. From 1997
Sonic Circuits VII
(Innova) Used CD $8.00
“Jose Halac’s ‘The Breaking of the Scream’ (emotional exorcism through Argentinean folk song), Mario Verandi’s ‘Figuras Flamencas’, Thomas Gerwin’s ‘Rollenspiel (which turns your head into a roulette game), and the cavernous ambience of Christina Agamanolis’ Aftermath’, Mark Applebaum’s ‘Dead White Males Remix’ (a ProTools hatchet job on Applebaum’s existing orchestral work), Mike Frengel’s ‘Long Slender Heels’ (a Zorn-worthy slab of post-rock foot-fetishism, Timothy Oesau’s ‘Angola du Sons’ (to be played “at a volume slightly below permanent damage”). From 1999
Sound File 001
(Sound Channel) Used 2xCD $20.00
Breakbeats, dub, IDM and techno from Tokyo 2001 by Dol-lop, Riou, Akio Nagase, Taiyo, Phaedra, Numb, Maya, Jebski, Key of Knowledge, Juzu, Tomoki, Understars, Toru, Takayuki Shiraishi, and Gaxi & Zen
Sound Storing Machines – The First 78 rpm Records from Japan 1903-1912
(Sublime Frequencies) Used CD $15.00
Tracks by Suenaga Togi; Toyosawa Heikichi; Azumaya Kamanosuke; Sumako of Shinbashi; Uehara Sakima, Takahashi Kiyokusa and Fukushira Kado; Yanagiya Kosan; Mimasuya Kachigiri; Umewaka Manzaburo and Umewaka Rokurou of the Kanze Noh School; Nokiken Hanadou; Shimeiju of Yoshiwara; Takemoto Sumitau, Toyozawa Danpei and Toyozawa Sennosuke; Takemoto Haruko Tayu, and Toyozawa Shinzaemon; Toyozawa Shinzaemon and Inoue Satokishi. Sealed
Soundtrack For The End Of The World
(Self Abuse) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
1994 tracks by Native X, Taint, Con-Dom, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck, Macronympha, Haters, Aube, S·Core, Skin Crime, Diesel Guitars, Violent Onsen Geisha and Thomas Dimuzio. In manila envelope with color images affixed
Space is No Place – NYC Noise from the Underground
(Psych-O-Path) Used CD $3.00
2003 comp with tracks by Flaming Fire, No-Neck Blues Band, Axolotl, Centuries, Jesus With Me, Enos Slaughter, Electric Putas, Mouth US, Sighting, Naturally, Terrestrial Tones, Breast Fed Yak, Mountains of Mata Llama. Las Malas Amistades.
Space is No Place – NYC Noise from the Underground Volume 2
(Psych-O-Path) Used CD $3.00
2005 comp with tracks by Aeo & Anderegg, Tuba Mirum, Spaceman, Beard-O, Check Bettis & Toshi Kojiwara, Lucerne, Verbalala, Chaw Mank, Cocaine, Squaw, Tan as Fuck, Jah Division.
Sub Pop 200
(Tupelo) Used CD $15.00
Tracks from the late 1980s by Tad, The Fluid, Mudhoney, The Walkabouts, Terry Lee Hale, The Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, Green River, Nirvana, Steven Jesse Bernstein, The Fastbacks, Blood Circus, Swallow, Chemistry Set, Girl Trouble, The Nights and Days, Cat Butt, Beat Happening, Steve Fisk, The Thrown Ups. UK edition.
Taking The Pulse Of The World's Musics
(London Musicians' Collective - RES7.2) Used CD $10.00
Released in 1999 with UK magazine Resonance volume 7, number 2. With Phil Tanner; Margaret Barry, Robin Williamson; Hal Rammel; Muzsikás featuring Márta Sebestyén; William Ingosi Mwoshi; John Wynne; Reite Villagers; Marfa Rastarguev, Sergei Rastarguev, Sasha Berioskin, Tim Hodgkinson & Ken Hyder; Surreal Estate; and George Hunt.
Tard & Further’d
(Siltbreeze) Used CD $5.00
Tracks by Halo of Flies, Gibson Bros, Monkey 101, V-3, The Dead C, Alasitair Galbraith, Sebadoh, Queen Meanie Puss, Mike Rep & The Quotasm Terminals Guided By Voices, Thomas Jeffereson Slave Apts., Shadow Ring. From 1997
Taste Of Wild West 3
(Wax) Used CD $25.00
Tracks by UFO or Die, Incapacitants, Omoide Hatoba, Solmania, Angel’in Heavy Syrup, Boredoms, Hijokaidan. No obi. From 1990
The Accelerating World
(Pinch A Loaf) Used CD $10.00
1996 comp with tracks by Richard Ramirez, Lab Rat, Solid Eye, Crawl Unit, Bastard Noise, Fin, Nihil, Speculum Fight, Blow Hole, Spastic Colon, Crib. In box with paste-on artwork, twine-bound inserts.
The Basement Recordings - Live At Cicero's
(On The Clock) Used CD $5.00
Live comp from 1997 with tracks by Grifters, Promise Ring, Avail, Gnomes Of Zurich, Delta 72, Sugar Plant, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Old 97s, Blast Off Country Style, Lazy, Prisonshake, Kevin Drumm / Darin Gray / Jim O'Rourke, Flying Luttenbachers, The Cows, Bunny Grunt, Starfish, 90 Day Men, Castor, You Fantastic!, Space Streakings, Coctails. Sealed
The Bone Tickling Nightmare Pig — An Exercise in Futility
(PsychoChrist) Used CD $3.00
“Devotees of dadaist brain-scramble in the mode of Nurse With Wound and early Negativland are keenly advised to lend an ear to this delicately titled compilation from 2004, featuring several Richard Rupenus-related projects as well as a nice cross-section of post-industrial non-generic probings.” With Cybercantautores de Mierda, Erek Gita, Mixed Band Philanthropist, Plethora, Observe I, Nequanquam Vacuum, WaZu, Anomali, Broken Penis Orchestra, IDX1274, Komafuzz, Anakrid, Forms of Things Unknown, Gate 33 & DKD Girl, and Snma. Includes feathers
The Christmas Album
(Sony) Used CD $20.00
1996 comp with tracks by Hair Stylistics, Melt-Banana, Secret Chiefs 3, Gastr Del Sol, SxOxBx, God Is My Co-Pilot, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Merzbow
The East Village Other
(ESP-Disk') Used CD $8.00
A collage / montage in celebration of Hiroshima Day 1966 featuring The Velvet Underground, Marion Brown, Allen Ginsburg, Peter Orlovsky, Tuli Kupferberg, Ken Weaver, Steve Weber, Scott Holt, Ron Jackson, Ishmael Reed, Gerard Malanga, Ingrid Superstar, Plastic Clock Radio, Andy Warhol. Sealed
The Frog Peak Collaborations Project
(Frog Peak) Used 2xCD $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Short pieces based on a 66-second soundfile of text written and read by Chris Mann, resulting in a massive and varied voyage through the voice and its transformations by Roger Alsop, Rick Rue, Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, Han-Earl Park, Adam Silverman, John Phillips, Warren Burt, Ebony Hack, Rainer Linz, Lulu Ong, Carter Scholz, Kent Clelland, Ashley Scott, Tim Prezzano, Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner, Doug Michael, David Wardle, Paul Doornbusch, Lawrence Fritts, Ernie Althoff & Graeme Davis, Fernanado Iazzetta, Nick Fortunato, Petri Kuljuntausta, Roger Dean, Steven Miller, Jon Nelson, Trojan Theatre, Brian Belet, Mickey Helms, Paul Posasa, Bob Pearson, Paul Luevano, Ted Apel, Paul Dibley, Ricardo Dal Farra, Philo T. Farnsworth, Huk Don Phun, Maggi Payne, James Bohn, John Richey, Joseph R. DeFazio, Arun Chandra, Herbert Brün, Herb Jerchers, Mark Porcaro, Larry Polansky, Charles Grafton Hawthorne, Tyler Speedboy Kingdom, D’Arcy Philip Gray, Steven Curtin, Kristine Burns, David Fenech, Peggy Madden, Alessandro Fogar, Dennis Miller, Timothy Horrigan, Douglas Repetto, David Hirst, Akira Rabelais, Andrew Bucksbarg, Eric Lyon.
The Guiding Fever
(Chocolate Monk - choc.590) CDR $8.00
“Huffing in trilling devices and electrical crackle. Soothed by meditative crunk and mechanical whir. A feeling of paper scraps, lint and carpet debris stuck to feet and the infamous one-note pianist has Mod Podge slavered down his front. Prophetic glitching with accompanying echo throb is giving me a bad itch. The grunts and whelps of gobs repeating on themselves. What did the headshrinkers see? Static tone float trembles and there is a weird shuffler in the corner. Bedroom wheeze and half empty toner. Skittering tapes with warm warble. Is that dirty device mechanics or electronic sputs? A dank gutter man. I’ve got the groo.” This compilation celebrates that fever feeling, when cognitive processing is simmered to shit and, for better or worse, one idea, sentence, image or sound gets stuck in your delirious head. Tracks by Vitjist (aka Witcyst), Karen Constance, Ida K (aka D Coelacanth), The Daimon & The Sloth, Slums and Soft Migraine.” Edition of 50
The Human Breakdown Of Absurdity
(Carnage Press) Used CD $10.00
Four selections from Beat Of The Traps (Carnage Press 1992), plus 25 gems that are new to this compilation. Like other amateur and outsider art that has been reclaimed -- from thrift-shop paintings to ditties by schizophrenics -- MSR Madeness Vol. 3 can make observers think twice about what, if anything, separates naïveté and ineptitude from inspiration. Sealed.
The Juice From Your Pen Is Running Down My Leg vol. 1
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.546) CDR $8.00
Celebrating all things word, throat, tongue, mind. Tracks from Malcy Duff, Natalia Beylis, Of Habit, Sophie Cooper, Neil Campbell, Roy Claire Potter, S. Glass, Andy Heck Boyd & Kasper Melted, Mark Groves, Angela Sawyer. Cover art by Andy Heck Boyd. Edition of 80
The Juice From Your Pen Is Running Down My Leg vol. 2
(Chocolate Monk - choc.586) CDR $8.00
Continuing the celebration of all things word, throat, tongue and mind. This time featuring tracks from Ali Robertson, Anna Peaker, Home Secretary, Gee Rams Ensemble, LDSN, Lucian Tielens, Luke Poot, Olivia Furey, Karen Constance & Catherine Plenevaux, Posset, Raymond Cummings, Rebecca Rani, Richard Youngs and The Bohman Brothers. Artwork by Ms Constance. Edition of 80
The Nature of Systems
(Carbon) Used CD $3.00
Mesmerizing 2000 compilation of compelling outer sound exploration by Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Andy Gilmore, Charalambides, Finkbeiner, The Golden Calves Eskimo Time Band, The Flying Luttenbachers, Burlap, Pelt, Joe+n, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Nod, Mick Turner, Sheet, Sq, Bardo Pond, Karl Precoda / Mike Gangloff, and Pengo.
The Rebirth Of Fool Volume 1
(Dual Plover) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by Menstruation Sisters, Deano Merino, Justice Yeldham And The Dynamic Ribbon Device, Sabrina, Mu-Mesons, Volvox, New Waver, Scratch My Nose, Flash Moustache, Bass Herd, The Supercute Bye Byes, Dj Smallcock, Merzbow, Faxed Head, Runzilstern And Gurglestock, The Faxed Head, Ostomy. From 1997
The Rebirth Of Fool Volume 2
(Dual Plover) Used CD $3.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by Vivi, Melt-Banana, Funky Terrorist, Damien Gooley, New Waver, Sweden, Stacey Longbottom and The Tops, Sister Gwen McKay, Spasmodics, Kitchen Poofter, Ethan Walls, SA3, Golden Device, Jobs Daughters, DElire, Mute Freak, Bradbury, Simon Abulafia, M.O., Spanky, Toy Death, Meat Paste, Vocabularinist, Burner and Unknown Artist. From 2001
The Rebirth Of Fool Volume 3
(Dual Plover) Used CD $14.25
Years of focus groups and market research went into the making of this perfect audio product for today’s consumer: the biggest load of shit ever, handbound in a 24-page gold-blocked book so fancy someone must have won Lotto. Dual Plover’s third installment in the series is one of their pearliest pearlers, their most impressively packaged and labor-intensive disc yet. So if you wanna dumb down between bouts of Xenakis and Cage — 7u? channeling Wesley Willis in an ode to Dual Plover; Fool veterans New Waver putting testimonials from mymiserablelife.com to music; songs of unrequited love wallowing in seedy Adelaide establishments; excerpts from instructional songwriting cassettes, absurd police tapes, and gay porn spoken in thick Australian accents — then this album is for you.
The Wire Tapper 08
(Wire) Used CD $3.00
Previously released tracks by 23 Skidoo, Jah Wobble And Temple Of Sound, Cornelius, Fog, Goodheart Allen Powell Trio, Chas Smith, Michael Jon Fink, Murcof, Electrelane, No-Neck Blues Band, Set Fire To Flames, Workshop, Small Rocks, The Rip-Off Artist, Noxagt, Helvitis, Xinlisupreme. From 2002
The Wire Tapper 10
(Wire) Used 2xCD $12.00
Tracks by Guido Mobius, Kim Hiorthøy, Polmo Polpo, Alias, Mice Parade, Faust & Dälek, Animal Collective, Colleen, Four Tet, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Themselves, Rob Ellis, Sketch Show, Loren Connors & David Grubbs, David Sylvian, Heat Sensor Featuring M Sayyid, Laibach, Susanna And The Magical Band, Günter Müller & Toshimaru Nakamura, Lumen, Clogs, Stafrænn Häkon, Satoru Wano, Sagor & Swing, Schlammpeitziger, Ui, Satanicpornocultshop, Jah Wobble, Erik Friedlander. Sealed
The Wire Tapper 3
(Wire) Used CD $3.00
Previously released tracks by Supersilent, High Rise, Rothko, We, Gas, To Rococo Rot, Thurston Moore / Evan Parker / Walter Prati, Model 500, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Khan, Hood, Paul Panhuysen, Robert Ashley, Sheila Chandra, Void. Previously unreleased track by Rhys Chatham. from 1999
The Wire Tapper 6
(Wire) Used 2xCD $8.00
Previously released tracks by The Fall, Flanger Bosco’s Disposable Driver, Susumu Yokota, Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshide, Sensational, General Magic, Pan Sonic, Jan Jelinek, David Grubbs, Faust, John Fahey, Nils Økland, Djivan Gasparyan, Peanut Butter Wolf, c-schulz & hajsch, Pluramon. Previously unreleased tracks, versions, and /or mixes by Ran Blake, poire_z, HIM, Trio Hurricane +1, Angus MacLise, Glass Cage, Nurse With Wound, Coil, Janek Schaefer, Current 93, I-Sound, BitTonic & Si-Cut.db, Tom Recchion, Hermann Nitsch. From 2000
Tibet: The Heart of Dharma — Buddha’s Teachings And The Music They Inspired
(Ellipsis Arts) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four pieces recorded February, 1987 and March, 1988 in Tibet: Loseling Dratsang of Drepung Monastery (Geluk Order), Mundgod, Karnataka, India; plus another recorded at Khampagar Monastery (Drukpa Kagyu) in Kangra Valley, April 1981. With 64pp book
Tibetan Buddhist Rites from the Monasteries of Bhutan
(Sub Rosa) Used 2xCD $24.00
“For the rituals of the Drupka Order, the primary instrument is the long golden trumpet, along with various drums and percussion and a deep droning bass. Rather than soothingly meditative, the music, which can be a bit dissonant to Western ears, is chanted by 76 lamas and monks and played with long trumpets, shawms, cymbals, drums and other Tibetan instruments in sacred temples. The monastic music of Nyingmapa Order, recorded in a great fort-like monastery called a dzong, uses ethereal polytonal throat chanting, the long trumpets, shawms and percussion instruments.” Originally released in 1972 by Lyrichord as three separate records, t his 2005 reissue is packaged in a 56pp hardback book with liner notes, photographs, and musical illustrations by John Levy. Sealed
Tinker Compilation
(Tinker) Used CD $4.00
Tracks by Pork Queen, Merzbow, Staked Plain, Climax Golden Twins, Blowhole, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase, Noggin, Superconductor, Deerhoof, Roughage, Twerdocleb, Maji, Trailing Arm. Hole punched in front cover. From 1996
Tokyo Flashback
(PSF) Used CD $11.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by Marble Sheep & The Run-Down Sun’s Children, High-Rise, Ghost, Fushitisusha, White Heaven, Verzerk, Kousukuya, Keiji Haino. With obi. From 1991
Total Slitting Of Throats
(PacRec) Used CDR $8.00
Sixty-six minutes by Mania, Sewer Election, The Cherry Point, The Rita, Treriksröset, a “powerful minimalist deconstruction of the harsh noise object.” 2007 reissue.
Transparent Tape Music Festival
(New San Francisco Tape Music Center) Used CD $10.00
2002 collection with tracks by Kent Jolly, Thom Blum, Cliff Caruthers, Ma++ Ingalls, and Joseph Anders.
UHF/VHF
(Relapse) Used 2xCD $5.00
1995 comp subtitled The Relapse Records / Nuclear Blast America And Release Entertainment 1995 Promotional Sampler, with tracks by Tribes of Neurot, Trial of the Bow, Mindrot, Exit-13, Love Like Blood, Malformed Earthborn, Dead World, Purge, Tearbox, Pica, Atrax Morgue, Namanax, Allegory Chapel Ltd, Smell & Quim, MSBR, Masonna, Amorphis, Sinister, Dismember, Morgion, Pyogenesis, Benediction, Abscess, Meshuggah, Mortician, Human Remains, Womb, Hypocrisy, Dissection, Doomed, Enemy Soil, Deceased
Under the Island: Experimental Music in Ireland 1960–1994
(Nyahh) CD $12.00
Deep underground tape and handmade instrument works from bedrooms and non-studio settings by Desmond Leslie, Roger Doyle, David Cunningham, Seán Ó Huiginn, Daniel Figgis, Nigel Rolfe, Noel Molloy, Olwen Fouéré, Danny McCarthy, Giordaí Ua Laoghaire, Fergus Kelly, The Shit, Burning Love Jumpsuit, John Carson & Connor Kelly.
Untitled
(Humbug) Used 2xCD $5.00
2004 comp with tracks by Galåen, Anders Gjerde, Ivar Grydeland / Øyvind Torvund, Continental Fruit, Düplo, Dag-Are Haugan, HOH, Dr. Poliakov Egseth’s Kvartett, This Is Music, Inc., Fredrik Ness Sevendal, ARM With John Hegre, Waffelpung, Duo Kanel, DJ Bra Nesegir, Vehiculos De Ocasion, Vår Venn Gitaren, Bogus Blimp, Fusel Music, The Nordic Miracle, UM & The Detonators From Hell, Marakel, Reidarwebster, Lasse Marhaug, Andreas Meland, Cosmic Jinx, Dadaistisk Danseensemble, Pål Asle Pettersen, t++, O. Melby, KA, Fibo-Trespo, Sindre Andersen, Two Shot Sons, Origami Arktika
Untitled
(Freak Animal) Used CD $8.00
Late ’90s noise from CCCC (Hiroshi Hasegawa on Moog, Mayuko Hino on Theremin and electronics), Jalopaz (cellist Lisa Haglund and Alex Yusimov on electronics), and Alchemy Of The 20th Century (Mikko Aspa).
V/VM Hate You
(Offal) Used CD $5.00
2001 comp with tracks by V/Vm, Devil Chan, Skkatter, Remi Moses, Alien Porno Midgets, Icon of Throat. Rap Parker snr, Gai-/Jin, The Caretaker. Billy Ray Cyrix, Manpal Inv. In ziplok baggie
Variable Resistance
(23five - 23F/SFM 902) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second anthology in nonprofit org 23five’s sound event series presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The selections here, chosen from SFMOMA’s Ten Hours of Sound From Australia, emphasize the composers’ use of the titular electronic gizmo, as well as their diversity of approaches. You get environmental, plundered, and digitized sound from compiler Phillip Samartzis, a cybersonic lullaby by Pimmon, and a duet for jarring guitar and creaking door by David Brown, along with exclusive tracks by Oren Ambarchi, Rob Avenaim, Xonk, Thembi Soddell, Darrin Verhagen, and Deliere. 24-page booklet includes essays and detailed program notes about the MOMA installation.
Viva Negativa! A Tribute To The New Blockaders, Volume I
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR064) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first of three or four CDs compiling and expanding upon the original Vinyl-on-Demand tribute. Tracks from VoD's vinyl boxes plus a fair swag of new ones. Nocturnal Emissions, Smell & Quim, Dieter Muh, Putrefier, srmeixner, Cheapmachines, Evil Moisture, Ashtray Navigations, Jazzfinger, Mutant Ape, Anomali, Halalchemists (incl. members of Skullflower, Culver, Snotnosed, Romance & Marzuraan). Edition of 500. Twelve-page full-color booklet.
Waiting To Be Old
(Opprobrium) Used CD $16.00
Tracks by Musica Transonica, Bardo Pond, Mikami Kan and Toshiaki Ishisuka, Gate, Flaherty Colborne Duo, Thurston Moore, Richard Youngs, The Dead C, Alan Licht and NNCK, The Shadow Ring, Toho Sara, Flying Saucer Attack, Alastair Galbraith. From 1997
Wohlstand
(Human Wrechords) Used CD $6.00
1994 German Japanese noise rock comp with tracks by Melt-Banana, Zeni Geva, Space Streakings, UFO or Die, Merzbow, Ground Zero, Null, Ruins, Omoide Hatoba, Violent Onsen Geisha, Kissfreak Steven, Trickbeat, Knochengirl, Party Diktator, Sielwolf, Mutter, Fünf, Dead Chicken, H.P. Neidhart, Surrogat.
Woodlot Surer (Five Pieces 5)
(From The Same Mother - FTSM43) Used CDR $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Five one-minute tracks by each of the following: Chris Smith, Snawklor, Flies Inside The Sun, Keynote Speaker, Glands Of External Secretion, Undecisive God, Hi-God People, Green Beret, Jon Dale & Kynan Lawler, Lowest Common Denominator, Julian Williams, David Haines.
World Record
(Alchemy) Used CD $15.00
1992 comp with tracks by Controlled Bleeding, Solmania, Nihilist Spasm band, Hijokaidan, Freudwerk, Merzbow, Borbetomagus
You Gan’t Boar Like An Eabla When You Work With Turkrys
(Amarillo) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Tracks by Anton LaVey, Three Doctors Band, U.S. Saucer, Secret Chiefs 3, Zip Code Rapists, Dieselhed, Heavenly Ten Stems, Neil Hamburger, Charles Gocher, Zip Code Revue, Harvey Sid Fisher, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Faxed Head, Totem Pole Of Losers, Today’s Sounds, and Sun City Girls. From 1996. Sealed
Zelphabet Vol. A
(Zelphabet) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Achim Wollscheid, AMK, Arcane Device, Asmus Tietchens.
Zelphabet Vol. B
(Zelphabet - B01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With The Beast People, 16 Bitch Pile-Up, blackhumour, Bob Bellerue.
Zelphabet Vol. C
(Zelphabet - C01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Charlemagne Palestine, Chop Shop, Contagious Orgasm, C Spencer Yeh.
Zelphabet Vol. D
(Zelphabet - D01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With 20-minute tracks by Damion Romero, Daniel Menche, and Dave Phillips.
Zelphabet Vol. E
(Zelphabet - E01CD) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Ed Osborn, Elliot Sharp, Emil Beaulieau, and Evil Moisture.
Zelphabet Vol. F
(Zelphabet - F01CD) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Failing Lights, Fin, Francisco Lopez, and Frans De Waard
Zelphabet Vol. G
(Zelphabet - G01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The seventh in Zelphabet’s series of 26 alphabetically oriented compilations of noise. Volume G eviscerates with cuts from Giancarlo Toniutti, Government Alpha, G*Park, Gregory Whitehead, and GX Jupitter-Larsen
Zelphabet Vol. H
(Zelphabet - H01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Halalchemists (live TNB Tribute), Hanatarash (exclusive 30 minute track!), The Haters, Howard Stelzer.
Zelphabet Vol. I
(Zelphabet - I01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With IDX1274, If Bwana, and Incapacitants.
Zelphabet Vol. J
(Zelphabet - J01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With John Duncan, John Wiese, Jon Rose, Joseph Hammer, Joshua Manchester, and Justice Yeldham.
Zelphabet Vol. K
(Zelphabet - K01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With K2, Key Ransone with Seattle Creative Orchestra, KK Null, Kluster 07 (Conrad Schnitzler, Michael Thomas Roe and Masato Ooyama).
Zelphabet Vol. L
(Zelphabet - L01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Lasse Marhaug, Leather Bath, Lee Gamble, The Legendary Pink Dots, Leticia Castaneda, and Lionel Marchetti.
Zelphabet Vol. M
(Zelphabet - M01) CD $9.50 (Out-of-stock)
The GX Jupitter-Larsen-curated, 26-part noise series. With Manon Anne Gillis (live recording from 1995), Maria Moran (Zipper Spy), Mayuko Hino (DFH-M3, ex.C.C.C.C., Mne-Mic; first new studio recording in 12 years), Michael Muennich, Mike Shiflet, and MSBR (unreleased track from 1999).
¡Cinco Años!
(Trance Syndicate) Used CD $3.00
1995 comp with tracks by A.C. Acoustics, Bedhead, Butthole Surfers, Cherubs, Crust, Desafinado, Drain, Ed Hall, Roky Erickson, Furry Things, Johnboy, Lowbrow, My Dad Is Dead, Pain Teens, Sixteen Deluxe, Starfish, Sweetpea
¡Music For The Psych-Eye!
(Cast Exotic Archives) CD $10.00
Comp from 2000 with Ashtray Navigations, Eyelickers, Metabolismus, Las Dirty Arcades, -Outhern Acific+, Bushwick Trio, Brian Ruryk, Glands Of External Secretion, This Was Your House Until We Moved In, Terminal Waste Band, TonalMotl, Kopfende, and Staked Plain.
Дичь Авангарда
(Insofar Vapor Bulk) Used CD $5.00
“Wilderness of avant-garde” tracks from 2001 by Roughage, Cisfinitum, The Haters, Erinys, Streicher, Kallibris, Arkkon And Membranoids, Leif Elggren And Alexei Borisov, E-Shak MMS, De Fabriek, Kapotte Muziek, Ultra Milkmaids And Alexei Borisov, Cotton Ferox, Nomuzic, Nocturnal Emissions Remix Psilocybeast, Vishudha Kali. Numbered edition of 500 in angle-cut digipak
電子雑音-4 Compiletion
(ElektNoiz) Used CD $7.00
Tracks by Bastard Noise, Chop Shop, DSM, Farmers Manual & Shinichiro Okada, KK Null, Kiyoshi Mizutani, Klangkrieg, Lee Ranaldo, Leif Elggren, Spastic Colon, The Haters, Thurston Moore, Toy Bizarre, Veprisuicida. In card folder, with noticeable creases.
The Spinning Song
(There - TR06) CD $15.00
Formed by Sachiko (ex-Kousokuya, Overhang Party) and Yama-akago in 2002, who create psychedelic noise from two female voices. Live recording from 2005 and 2006, improvised on the theme of a mystery spinning in a humid, mysterious, and profound world that is lost in the woods. It's an occult-drenched sound, with an intensely mystical mood that is eerily hypnotic.
VCU
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $8.00
Huff up the raw beauty of San Diego weirdies Nathan Berlinquette (drums/organ), Cameron Presley (guitar) and Ryan Ebaugh (saxophone) as they cook up brutal absurdism and free improv noises with abandon. They want to set fire to your consumer electronic dreams. Fractured melodies and broken patterns have all the huzz you would expect from those vibing on Black Beings while suppin on the Harry Pussy juice. This ain't noise, pal. This is a deliberate exploration of sound and non-musical activity. Sonics for uncertain times. Edition of 60
NIKOS VELIOTIS / DAN WARBURTON
VW
(Absurd) Used CD $6.00
Cello and violin improvisations recorded live in 2001, reworked into two long electroacoustic pieces, with clicks, pulses, drones, sound manipulations, and samples. In over-sized, circular sleeve. Edition of 150
The Ocean Is Gone The Ship Is Next
(Groundfault) Used CD $4.00
Blake Edwards composed and recorded The Ocean Is Gone The Ship Is Next at Papin Sisters Studio in Chicago between 2001 and 2003, except for one track recorded live on WLUW. The audio terrain ranges from crunchy and dense sonic chaos to off-kilter rhythms to deep evolving drones, making plenty of stops between. Sealed
We Had A Few Sprinkles Today But Not Enough To Help Out The Garden
(Crippled Intellect Productions) Used CD $4.00
Treatments and sound manipulation by Blake Edwards. Deep, subterranean ringing textures. Flanged croaks and other textures from a microscopic universe. Low register thuds and tiny sounds deep in the distance. Quiet, tortured sounds with high-frequency intrusions. Stuttering, panned samples and hollow dings, reminiscent of harsher noise at a lower volume, but with a swirling, almost psychedelic quality. Almost-musical loops heard through reverberations and audio grime. Sealed
Dabbling With Gravity And Who You Are
(VHF) Used CD $5.00
Assembled from recordings of their weekly sessions in Michael Flower’s kitchen, the tracks here represent the joyous, celebratory side of the VCO — all forward motion, massed strings, percussion, horns, and little instruments rocketing in a swirl of sound, taking off from where the loose hippie-chant-and-drum action of collectives like Amon Düül intersects with the polygot instrumental approach of mid-’60s Sun Ra.
Hollin
([ no label ]) Used CDR $10.00
Companion piece to Lino Hi, recorded around the same time, and including two live sections. Comes in beautiful sleeve hand-painted and -assembled by Bridget Hayden.
Hot Booty
([ no label ]) Used CDR $12.00
Excellent dense drones from 1999, complete with pipe organ, recorded in a squatted church in Leeds. Clear plastic insert inside standard jewel box
Lino Ho
(Giardia) Used CD $7.00
“Possibly the perfect CD for anyone who wishes the intro to ‘Venus In Furs’ could last a lifetime,” according to Perfect Sound Forever. “ ‘Can I Put My Thumb In Your Pudding Please?’ sounds like the Art Ensemble of Chicago warming up for a bike race, but after that... wow! You’re thrown into a world where John Cale, Angus Maclise, pre-dipshit Sonic Boom, Elanora Romana, Terry Riley, The Seventh Sons, etc., all meet and climb a beanpole to the stars.”
Long Live The Weeds
([ no label ]) Used CDR $7.00
Three rough-hewn chunks from 1999 and 2000, all recorded in front of actual members of the public at notable Leeds drinking establishments. Each track sees VCO augmented by additional members, including Sticky Foster, Matthew Bower, John Godbert, John Clyde-Evans and Ross Parfitt.
Music For Red Breath
([ no label ]) Used CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Soundtrack for a film by NYC filmmaker Justin Allen, available at merch tables and via mailorder-only. Clear plastic front insert and metallic traycard in jewelbox
Pontiac Lady
(VHF) Used 3xCDR $12.00
2003 tour document with live recordings from WMBR (Cambridge MA), Ecstatic Yod / New Grass (Florence, MA), Free 103 (Brooklyn NY), Orbits (Fredericksburg, VA), Carhole (Belchertown, MA), and Khyber Pass (Philadelphia PA). Edition of 300
Ragged + Right
([ no label ]) Used CDR $15.00
Four tracks, self-released on the occasion of a live performance at the Holy Trinity Church, Leeds, in 2004. Cover is paint and photo on cardboard. Edition of 60
The Queen Of Guess
(VHF) Used CD $6.00
Immense, visceral, rackety, upbeat and percussive, the nine tracks here run through a wide range of styles. “The Slient Socket” has a gamelan-like five-note melody overlaid with a hovering drone. “Magnetic Burn” is the band at its most rock, with “Sister Ray”-style guitar careening along side actual drums. The two twenty-minute epics that bookend the record are a study in contrasts: “Ramshackle Sunrise” has the heavy and excited buzz of the group’s frequent and unpredictable live shows, while the closing “Goodnight Stars Goodnight Air” is a gentler acoustic epilogue, gliding into the rosy future.
Tuning To The Rooster
(Important) Used CD $6.00
The first record by VCO using a 24-track mixing board “is music as a shamanic aid, made as much for the players themselves as for the listeners,” asserts Julian Cope. “The twelve-and-a-half minute ‘Wearing Clothes of Ash’ is like a piano-led Paradieswarts-period drone-a-thon with John Cale and Terry Riley guesting on viola and keys. Following this, the sublime ‘Baptism Bar Blues’ is proof positive that they can rock the riot house with pure adrenaline rush.”
Versatile Arab Chord Chart
(VHF) Used CD $8.00
Led by Neil Campbell’s sawing violin, tracks like “Wearing Quid Frock” and the epic “Japan Banjo” build up arcs of lingering overtones beneath an undercurrent of melody. They cut the drones with extremely effective bursts of near rock, in a style reminiscent of the Velvet Underground, circa 1966. The band’s combination of clattering percussion, droning strings, and considerable sense of where to put the “groove” on tracks like “Catching Loners With Blank Arms” makes them unique among their peers. Sealed
Wisdom Thunderbolt
(VHF) Used CD $5.00
A rocking dispatch neatly combining the Ra-like collage of the title track with the insistent jams of the pulsing “A Natural Fact” and “Order of the Broad Eraser.” More old-school VCO thick blanket of sound are “Ochre Dust” and “Rainbow Whirlwind,” tuned-percussion melody peeking out from the fog. Music by Mick Flower, Bridget Hayden, Neil Campbell, and Adam Davenport. Guest appearances by Chris Corsano, Pete Nolan, John Godbert, and Matthew Bower.
Ten Arrows
(Turgid Animal - TA388) CD $9.00
First released in a CDR edition of 17 copies, Ten Arrows gets the kind of legit reissue treatment worthy of top-quality harsh pedal noise. Both tracks from the original, along with a bonus track from vault.
Excavation At Hobbs Lane: The Early Days Of Community Radio
(Burselm Crypt Recordings) CDR $8.00
“Totally oddball little loopy songs and scenarios,” marvels Duncan Harrison, “Creeping radioplay-style narrative occasionally revealing itself, the ever pervasive mysteries of Burselm, forever.”
Interpol Alchemi
(Hospital - HOS161) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Harsh noise and sound collage by this Long Island, New York group formed in 2001 by John Vibg. Known for ultra-violent live performances (consisting of up to nine collaborators at a time) and layered cut-up recordings, ranging from musique concrète to harsh cut-up noise.
Black Lovers (Early Lost Tapes 1988)
(My Fiance’s Lifework) Used CD $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Far noisier than later efforts,” notes All Music Guide. “Brutal assaults of feedback, sometimes with distorted voices screaming ... suddenly veer[ing] to some sweet little pop melody for several seconds or even a minute before the electro assault drowns it out, or stolen bits of funk music or a quiet piano plinking…. There are plenty of abrupt transitions that VOG is known for, and their usual junk-culture-in-a-blender collage style becomes more refined as the CD progresses to less noisy tape collage that is more in the patchwork style of later albums.” With obi
Excrete Music
(Vanilla) Used CD $40.00 (Out-of-stock)
Bloated Slutbag “wouldn’t call [this 1991 disc] disturbing so much as surreal; very odd, and (then) very unique, when taken together with the total package of the artwork and project name…. However raw and punishing the sound, it is also quite well-composed, the hour-long disc flowing through a sparsely humored series of properly harsh episodes to achieve a very sound compositional whole.”
Midnight Gambler
(Pure) Used CD $10.00
Bleak Bliss’s right-on summation: “It starts. It stops. There’s part of a loungecore version of ‘Foxy Lady’. Some things get smashed up. That’s just the first two or three minutes.”
Nation Of Rhythm Slaves
(Rail Recordings) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Classic bouncy and unhinged VOG,” marvels Bleak Bliss. “I’m sure there is a bit of Consolidated in the first track, Japanese covers of Canned Heat interfered with, twisted easy-listening salaryman karaoke and other such senses of false security, and then you hit the middle section. From there it’s all ‘oh shit, here we go!’ ” In screen-printed box
Otis
(Endorphine Factory) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
“This is not an album as much as it is a musical collage [of] … pop culture nods and strange mash-ups,” asserts Female Trouble. “To call Nakahara just another noise artist is almost undermining his finely tuned ear for the absurd. One notable song that fairly represents his humor is a loop of the main guitar riff from Lenny Kravitz’s, ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way?’ combined with his signature frenzied screams and some bells and whistles to boot.”
Que Sera Sera
(Rail Recordings) Used CD $25.00
Noisy collages from 1995, according to a zine called The New York Times, punctuated by disco beats and a grab bag of sounds, songs and ideas that does not exclude the mooing of cows.
Shocks! Shocks! Shocks! Remix ’93
(Ring Music) Used CD $25.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Sly and ironic, bizarre and sarcastic,” is how Bleak Bliss characterizes the 1993 reissue of Vanilla’s cassette from 1991. “Kitsch soundtracks and hippetty hop and blasts of disco and found sound and field recordings and spoken word and noise.” Includes a 23-minute bonus track “Anal Machine Music.” Sealed
U.S. Tour ’95
(Japan Overseas) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three collaboration tracks recorded with Smegma, Trumans Water, and Thurston Moore, respectively. Heavy rock improv with incoherent screaming, keyboard / tape noise, atonal guitar, and electronics in all the places you’d expect to find ’em.
Violent Onsen Geisha
(Bloody Butterfly) Used 3xCD + 3-inch CD $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Material from Tenderly (My Fiancé’s Lifework 1993), minus three tracks and an edit of another; Wagamama No Ofukuro (My Fiancé’s Lifework 1993), minus one track; Cry Baby Killer (My Fiancé’s Lifework 1989), minus one track. Three-inch disc contains six Dynamite Masters Blues Quartet collaboration tracks. Color print affixed to silver bag.
Art For Pain's Sake
(Butte County Free Music Society - BUFMS65) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
While enduring his high school years (1976-1980) in Livermore, California, where the jocks were known to lift up a person without warning and deposit him in a public garbage can, Richard Streeter channeled his blossoming passion for the work of Jefferson Airplane, Timothy Leary, musique concrète, comix and all things counterculture into boombox recordings with his sister and a cross-section of the local freakdom. Sometimes the batteries were due for a refresher and the results ended up fuzzy and all heliumed out. Sometimes mom and her snack tray made a cameo in the middle of the session. Whether jamming on violin in a group or scrambling his playing with reel-to-reel experiments, banging on coffee cans or trying to conquer unrequited love Charlie Brown-style, importing a little bit of Haight Street to the flavorless suburbs or navigating good ol’ fashioned angst, The Viper never loses sight of the value of his own innate lyricism. Art For Pain’s Sake has plenty of humor but it is never insincere. As anyone who has heard his track “Cookies Shaped Like Kites” on Induced Musical Spasticity or the Blood Lewiis recording of his graphic score “Conversation With Bicycle Horn” can affirm, Streeter remains committed to craftsmanship, whether exploring his fatuous side or just sketching in the margins for no particular reason. Edition of 100
Light From Another Light
(Humbler) CD $12.00
The instrumentation on Light From Another Light differs from the Song Cycle album (Humbler 2015) with Danishta Rivero of Las Sucias making extensive use of modular electronics, and Jacob Felix Heule (Sult, Bill Orcutt) expanding to a full drum kit. The improvised pieces here, representative of Voicehandler’s live sets from the past couple years, are loose and exploratory, at various times energetic and meditative. Rivero’s voice embraces noise and blurs the lines blurred between electronic processing and extended vocal techniques. Heule’s drumming maintains its typical ear for timbre within the context of driving percussive intensity.
Aq’ab’al
(Ajna Offensive - FLAME95) 2xLP $25.50 (Out-of-stock)
(Ajna Offensive - FLAME95) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“An almost hysterically chaotic mass of black, fractured noise,” marvels Zero Tolerance, where “song structures take second place to expressive, almost sitar-like contorted lead guitar and primitive percussion.” The Black Twilight Circle’s founding and most well-known band’s intersection of lo-fi black metal and Mesoamerican occult themes consists of a fast combination of furious guitar work, blastbeats, a few keyboards, melodies, and rasped vocals that periodically segue into acoustic guitar and spoken-word passages.
Amidst The Noise And Twigs
(Beta Lactam Ring) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
This album pours slowly and resolutely like a folk-psych dream urn, loaded with full metal banjoes, crumhorns at 12 o’clock, and autoharps at DefCon 5.The experimentalism is couched in shifting tides of self-spun acidic harvest ballads that noisily well up into proto-Kraut thrums and tribal night trips around the pyre. A rural, squelchy, DIY delicacy which stinks of occidental embouchure so crystal crisp that every skkrrrr, pphaaapph and brrruuuummmm resonates like a small, sound-specific god, intertwined with beautifully skewed notes, voices and rhythms. Amidst The Noise And Twigs plays like a recently discovered field recording of an obscured Celtic clan who accidentally stumbled onto psychedelia 600 years ahead of its time. Gatefold jacket eight-page booklet. Sealed
Classic Erasmus Fusion
(Beta Lactam Ring - MT092a) Used 2xCD $15.00
The strange geometry in Volcano The Bear's musique concrete lurks between celestial duck honks and what sounds like a flood in the living room. Disc number one births gently into a lo-fi-adelic Comus-like saline. Song becomes fever dream and then pitches into a barren place of low estate. With typical minimalist pageantry, VTB mutates from piece to piece: melodious tales are subliminally hooky, after a fashion, spiritual and surreal; quiet ritualism queues with dada and progressive harmonies, together on the same fractured, out world, sing-along journey. Disc number two crawls slowly from the echo-y ooze, grows legs and then presents a different, more dramatic creature. A long, shifting organ drone becomes a deeply psychedelic statement that bleats loud and strong like an acid bleached Spiral Insana or a sneaky This Heat.
One Burned Ma
(Misra) Used CD $5.00
Primitive folk, art rock, and filmic sound sculpting made of crackling electronics, rumbling percussion, unconventionally played guitars, manipulated vocal noises, and distorted piano.
Voltigeurs
(Turgid Animal - TA399) CD $12.00
Matthew Bower (Skullflower) and Samantha Davis (GYR, Harm) head toward black metal in its purest form. Davis's input certainly alters Bower's musical vision and it is easy to hear the sound of a true collaboration at work. Six long tracks of heavy music, nearly 65 minutes.
Bad Earth
(Dual Plover) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
2002 CD reissue of the limited edition 1991 cassette from this Australian band whose lead singer’s brain injury and subsequent speech impediments (due to a fall through a plate glass window) flips the idea and purpose of uncomfortable electronics, ugly depression, and deep despair on their heads. Epic.
Primitive Arts
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR069) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dark fusion of Siousxie And The Banshees, Killing joke and Ramleh. A loud, repetitive racket.
Musique de l’Indifférence
(Peripheral) LP + CD $22.00
One continuous track of battering, unmoving and crude walled noise, spread across side one of the LP at 33rpm, then the CD, then the second side of the LP at 45rpm. Simultaneous play is also encouraged. Artwork by Strom_Varx. Edition of 350.
Proanomie
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR050) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
First full CD of brutal harsh noise wall. No dynamics, no change, no music, no entertainment, only wall.
In Meorm Na
(Scratch) Used CD $6.00 (Out-of-stock)
Working exclusively with tapes, turntables, mixers, and analog synths, Scott August and Kevin Rivard stand apart from many electro experimenters; no laptops, no sequencers, no Pro-Tools, no drum machines, nothing high tech, or barely even a product of the 1990s present here. The key ingredient is the murky and essential intangible better known as “warmth.”
The Blue Shirt of Simon
(Chocolate Monk - choc.521) CDR $7.00
The Pheromoans’ main lunk and one half of The Teleporters was originally going to present a short chapbook of wanton sleaze, but felt the great unwashed were not quite ready for it yet, and instead submitted a piece of “noir crime fiction” in audio book fashion. It is set in a fictional West London town called Simon, taking place over two weeks in February 2021. All characters are fictional and any resemblance they have to persons alive or dead is coincidental. Aye, riiiiight. “I really liked it,” said someone somewhere at some point in time, “even though it sounds like a man of the edge of some sort of breakdown.” Edition of 60
Hylic
(Utter Psalm) CD $10.00
Brian Marley actually took the time to put his thoughts to paper; least we can do is butcher and reproduce 'em. "Like Parmegiani, Wall constructs transformative electroacoustic soundscapes of remarkable individuality. His ... muscular, energetic music ... seems to contradict itself by being perpetually on the verge of doubt and disintegration.... Even the most minimal of the soundscapes has, for example, an astonishing degree of inbuilt complexity, although it may consist of little more than the endlessly varied coloration, weight and placement of bumps and clicks."
Cassia Fistula
(Idea) Used CD $3.00
Angry noises and mechanical screw-ups derived from self-constructed instruments and electronic gadgets. From 2002
Original Warmth
(Turgid Animal - TA308) CD $10.00
Three long tracks of beautiful drone ambience by Steev Thompson (Roxanne Jean Polise) and Branden Diven (Drenches), previously released on Warmth’s self-titled LP (Arbor) and Quintana Roo split tape (Not Not Fun).
Sings
(ESP-Disk' - ESP1025) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Legendary 1965 debut, recorded with Burton Greene, Steve Tintweiss and Tom Price, establishing Waters as a pioneering force not only in jazz, but in contemporary music as well. Remastered from the original tapes. With notes, photos.
Country & Watson
(Leiterwagen) Used CD $4.00
Ambience and textures, new wave hooks, freeform guitar, complex finger-picking, and more, recorded between 1995 and 1998 by the ex-Slovenly guitarist just as he had joined The Red Krayola. Guests include Bob Mothersbaugh, Brian Christopherson, Diana Watson, Erik Bluhm, Gabie Strong, Lynn Johnston, Mayo Thompson, Stephan Prina. From 2000. Sealed
Neither Of Me
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.266) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Slowly unraveling guitar improvisations, exploratory collages and noise drone panels sure to tweak the inner nipple of hedonists whose innocent pleasure centers around luxuriating in a cloud haze. Send a thank-you card to this UK improvisor, noise-maker, soundscapist, doctor of mathematics and computer programmer who is half of droners The Zero Map and industrialist Binnsclagg, and also performs regularly with the modern day incarnation of The A Band.
Ceza Evi – Compleat Edition
(Cold Spring) 2xCD $14.00
Kevin Thorne’s post-Third Door From The Left debut, recorded using the built-in microphone on a dual cassette recorder, with the next layer recorded with playback of the first tape. Very lo-fi, no editing, no remixing, all spontaneous and raw. Halfway between Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. Disc one contains tracks from the Nanavesh edition of the cassette released in 1983, and disc two has the original cassette plus bonus tracks recorded 1981-1983. With Genesis P-Orridge and Iham on Tibetan thigh-bone trumpet.
Crumbs On A Dumpster
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC257) CDR $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The fifth volume in Chocolate Monk’s Well Spliced Breath series of “sound-tape collage, text-sound, radiophonic, horspiel-type muck.” A few years ago Welch was at a party in Miami listening to an amazing 82-year-old salsa singer called La Gata. “Halfway through her set,” reports Welch, “A large dark shape emerged from the swimming pool. It seemed like the water was growing. At first I was sure it was some kinda ancient ageless Ghatanothoa thing that squeaked its way backward through the drains but it soon became evident that it was an ATF agent covered in petrified sea cucumbers painted with gothic nail polish. The goon was there to interrogate me about the core structure of these works. He said Obama knew that I had ripped them from a bland reading of an important post-Situationist text about labor. Yes, of course, it was the reading that seemed flaccid, the content was solid and unyielding. He also pushed buttons regarding the integration of a random sequence of numbers that eased into a lenient refusal. I suggested he listen closely to the singer’s voice and consider the possibility of extended excavations. The stuff slipped out of old cassettes, field recordings and the dynamic and changing personalities of each Loa. I turned to head back to the bar for another margarita. The glistening speleothem tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and yelled right into its disembodied face, ‘Back off! I just don’t wanna go around with this turd in my pocket any longer!’” Fairly self-explanatory. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
Routine Happenings
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.267) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
An extended version of the four-channel sound piece installed in the Power Lunches bar in London during the May 2013 HAPPENING! Event. The source material was mostly recorded during the opening hours of the venue, including various mundane preparatory activity such as the unpacking of beer cans and bottles, tearing up cardboard packaging, bands and their sound-checking noise edited and collaged to an absurd extreme. The installation piece itself was played back in the space during the entire event until the party-hungry bar staff got irritated with the racket and chose to decorate their Friday evening environment with something more friendly. These edits were originally self-released on ten C20 cassette editions, each one different, to coincide with the event.
Untitled
(Crime Club / Curious - CCR5 / CUR7) CD $21.00
This four-piece band from Antwerp, Belgium -- Jelle De Cremer (vocals/guitar), Jan Matthé (bass/vocals), Sis Matthé (vocals/guitar/piano/organ) and Krist Torfs (drums) -- has a background in fast punk / hardcore, and more recently toured with TV On The Radio, Magick Markers, Lightning Bolt. This recording of live instrumental improv, veering from post-Kraut drone rock to high-pitched minimalism, was performed on the roof of the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania, with Building Transmissions and 70-year-old accordionist Jean Martens. Contains a huge foldout photo collage poster.
White Gold
(Troniks - TRO297) CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
A Wiese / Blankenship maelstrom at maximum fucking pressure. Over forty minutes of new harsh electronics from the duo behind LHD. A white hot sheet of deafening sound recorded August 2011. Edition of 150.
Yorkshire Heathen Black Metal
(Legion Blotan) CD $11.00
Demo collection that includes Agbrigg Beast (Grief Foundation 2010) and Alone As Owt (Seedstock 2011), “Northumbrian Tyrants” from the Old Ways, Once More (Legion Blotan 2011), and a pair of previously unreleased tracks recorded around the same time as Alone As Owt. Edition of 500.
The Beastly Hymnal
(Vurnk Bros.) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eighteen self-recorded tracks from 1987 to 2013 by one of the multi-instrumentalist / vocalists from TFUL282. Bent loops, tape treatments, and samples lubricate the path for these humid transmissions out of the Shark’s wonderful and frightening subconscious into the realm of uncanny and fractured melodies where The Kinks’ pastoral daydreams meet downhome avant-pop cream sauce worthy of the Elephant 6 collective. With lyrics insert.
I Can See Inside Your House
(Poon Village) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Beautifully ringing guitar tones of organic-metallic origin, bits of piano, and occasional whispered vocals by Dean Roberts of the New Zealand improv / drone trio Thela, originally released in the mid 90s. Dreamsearch ambiance from the tape haze. Screen-printed, die-cut folio. glued photograph
Live Ritual July 25 2011
(Small Doses - DOSE114) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Focused, intense noise-laden doom from Melbourne, Australia.
Halogen
(Susan Lawly) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The synths [on this1994 CD] are … awash in a sort of gauzy reverb that smoothes out the cleaner sound,” notices Brainwashed, “It is still by no means peaceful…, [with] ripping cloth synthesizers and explosions…, [and] warbling feedback…. [But] when the guttural, chugging synth and sampled Thai pop songs pop up, it is pretty placid…. ‘Dictator’ … is a low-frequency synth throb with piercing noise stabs on top, and largely indecipherable vocals shouted throughout… ‘The Way It Will Be’ … is a brief, melancholy ambient track with poetic, spoken words…, unlike anything else Whitehouse ever did, or would do again, which is one of the reasons it is so striking.”
22 Minutes For Electric Guitar
(Entschuldigen) Used 3-inch CD $8.00
Live / real-time guitar / computer synthesis from 2005. Dark, dynamic, monolithic.
Dartmouth Street Underpass
(Locust) Used CD $8.00
“Apparently, Keith Fullerton Whitman feels a … procreant urge to capture … brief moments of life that seem to be outside of ordinary reality,” surmises Pitchfork about the first volume in the Met Life Locations Sound Series from 2003. “In the Dartmouth Street tunnel that runs from Back Bay Station in Boston to Copley Plaza, a cavernous walkway lined with glass brick walls reflects the sounds of passengers and trains in such a way as to sound like music to his ears. We have utility doors banging, footsteps on a catwalk, some lost guitar reverberating down the walkways, the arrivals and departures of three trains, and all the percussive accompaniment of people running to make their transfers…. About five minutes in, this mechanized drone of trains disappearing down the tunnel coalesces into a heavy constant undertow of sound, swallowing up the guitar, passengers, and the approach of other trains, sustaining the snippet beyond its apparent qualities. What separates this material from the field recordings on the old Folkways label is that the raw sound taped by Whitman is conversely used to create a new piece, almost a reflection of the original sounds which are now bent and refracted through his eyes and ears. Whitman’s response piece runs nearly the same length as the centerpiece, and is remixed in real time, combining these elements along with some of the life sounds from where he was doing the remixing, on his front porch. Here, Whitman builds on the odd metallic train drone of the original with a harmonium-like resonance, washing everything out with a beautiful haze of generator buzz, becoming the thick air of the underpass itself, completely saturated in humid humming. He even lets the birds in the trees and the cars on the street make an appearance as the drone begins its gentle descent back into the everyday. Scribbled barcode. Sealed
SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH / RICHARD YOUNGS
5 Years
(VHF) Used CD $8.00
Five ten-minute tracks recorded a year apart, all of which reflect the duo’s long-established signature mix of “real human” instrumental expression and explosive musique concrète sensibility. “2002” starts with several minutes of looped snippets building up subtle patterns as they slide in and out of phase, changing to a tremulous chord organ driven section. “2003” starts with a drastically filtered base of hand drumming, with full-on hand-on-the-knob tweaking, before giving way to an over the top fuzz organ solo that sounds like Mike Ratledge on 200 rpm. “2004” is a throwback of ululating Metallic-Sonatas-era noise. “2005” is based on electronically treated percussion, the sparest and most minimal track of the bunch. “2006” finishes where we started, with a baffling electronic test pattern drone that segues into a section of beautiful, weird ambience. Sealed
Butterfly Dust
(VHF) Used CD $8.00
A strikingly intimate solo performance on organ, voice, Peruvian reed, and Dijeridu, combining virtuosity and exploratory improvisation in gorgeous Australian dronescapes.
SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH / RICHARD YOUNGS
Red And Blue Bear
(VHF) Used CD $3.00
A simple, charming children’s story (included in the 20-page color booklet) written, illustrated and, on the CD, performed by R!&S! Anglo-folky laments, bizarre improv, Casio madness, found sounds.
Two4dancin
(Celebrate Psi Phenomenon - 1006) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
This 2004 disc explodes with exquisite textures capable of blissfully enveloping daily life and driving one’s neighbors batty. An infinite block-rocking beat melts into deep transparency, revealing a subterranean omniverse of Casiotone mantras, silicon chip psalms, and the mystical babbling of angels and derelict gutter drunks. Think Steve Reich, 50 Cent, and a Buddhist throat-singing Devo.
Arrhythmia Wave Burst and Panner Crash
(Helicopter) Used 3-inch CD $2.00
Four tracks recorded live on the west coast 2004.
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.
Circle Snare
(No Fun) Used CD $4.00
Composed and realized during a European tour in 2008, Wiese scrutinizes his native tongue and vocabulary, and seeks new forms of grammar and cadence, as only extensive dives in unfamiliar waters can inspire. His given electronic anatomy of drum machine, microphones, tapes, and MSP break formation in this finely detailed album.
Magical Crystal Blah
(Helicopter) Used CD $4.00
“Harsh, ear-shredding noise most human beings will recoil at,” according to All Music Guide, “But the fast-paced action, the abrupt edits, the smorgasbord of sound sources and dynamic shifts all indicate that, while taking his art seriously, Wiese doesn’t necessarily aim at creating serious art…. The madman throws in snippets of free-form acoustic guitar, voice, rusty hinges, airplanes and gunfire, amidst tons of nondescript slabs of screeching noise and menacing hisses…. If anyone can provide proof that good noise music is more than just making noise, Wiese is that man.”
Magical Crystal Blah Vol 2
(Helicopter) Used CD $3.00
Recycled music by Gerritt, KK Null, Christian Renou, Mike Schiflet, Panicsville, Raionbashi, Frieband, Damion Romero, Zbigniew Karkowski, and Joe Colley
Mirror
(Troniks - TRO299) CD $10.50 (Out-of-stock)
A minimal and mesmerizing piece of real-time tape music exploring stark and brutal elements for absolute immersion. Mirror is simultaneously the extended soundtrack for a new video work by Wiese and a reissue of the long sold-out Tumbler LP (No Fun Productions 2006), remastered for playback intensity and with all new visuals.
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.
Teenage Hallucination: 1992-1999
(Troniks) CD $9.00
From pure analog bedroom havoc to intense cut-up harsh noise blasts, Wiese steadily developed his highly personal and specific style of extreme music while trying to survive the St. Louis experience. Fifty-two tracks, including the best material from Catwoman 7-inch, split LP with The Haters, split 5-inch with Panicsville, collaborative tracks with GX Jupitter-Larsen and Corydon Ronnau of Sissy Spacek, and unreleased and unheard tracks of isolated Midwest basement obscurity.
Charmed, I’m Sure
(Ecstatic Peace) Used CD $8.00
1997 solo album by Curlew guitarist and longtime LaDonna Smith collaborator, showcasing his electric playing on the headless Steinberger guitar, and Beefheartian instant compositions that overdub multiple guitars and basses, a tobacco tin, a tape measure, and a cordless drink mixer. Sealed.
Ouster Crawling
(Chocolate Monk - choc.563) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
The artists formerly known as Miracle Wheat, Pinked Eruptions, Unspoken Tide, Dumbluck Cycle, Artist Tonks, The No Concept People, Ear Making, Ignored Oven, Yellow Ponces, Wine 6000, Top Fuckers, Incest Insects, Cum Palace, Glorious Throat, Paedo Eaters, Brown Sabbath, Blood Stereo, Path Of Glue, The Danny Greer Unit, Rubber Toast, Gravel Connection, Neck Tar, Muehl Flowers, Crumb People, Wedding Beet, Tory Gods, Cum Crisis, Thyroid Massage, Baby Abusers, Randy Ankle, and NHS have slowly morphed into Wino Lodge. They present Ouster Crawling for your consideration. Electronics, tapes, voice, field recordings, objects. You know the drill. Why change a failing formula? Edition of 60
Pocket Mutations
(Chocolate Monk - choc.582) Cassette + 2x3-inch CDR $28.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second communique with the outside world from the re-christened Constance / Nyoukis joint is a nattering and belching collection of weird for the eyes and ears. Packaged in a rubber stamped cardboard box (24cm x11.5cm x 2cm) and obi, with A6 color booklet of collages, fold out art print, button badge. Liner notes by S. Glass.
Send Ultimate
(Pink Flag) Used 2xCD $15.00
This retooled edition of Send, the album Wire recorded between 2000 and 2003, when the band worked on new music for the first time in a decade, expands the frame around the album by adding rare and previously unheard material: both sides of 12 Times U; unreleased curiosities such as the exercise in hyperkinetic dancefloor lunacy that is “DJ Fuckoff”; tracks from the first two Read & Burn EPs and alternate versions of Read & Burn 03 tracks. Sealed.
Real Folk: Lathe Cut Singles 1993-1997
(Pica Disk) 4xCD $35.00 (Out-of-stock)
A bona-fide underground legend, Witcyst has been creating completely unique noise music from the isolation of smalltown New Zealand since the late eighties. This mysterious force of the deep noise underground is the freest of the free, unhampered by arch design or advanced technique. Forty tracks from twenty self-released seven-inch lathe-cut singles originally released in editions of ten to twenty copies. Three booklets (seventy-two pages) of artwork, photos and an extensive first-time home interview of Mykl Veet by Noel Meek. Edition of 300
Lumps For Lovin’
(Never Come Ashore - NCACD1) CD $12.25
(Never Come Ashore - NCACD1) Used CD $6.00
Named after a mishearing of the lyrics to “Got To Have Loving” by Don Ray, Lumps for Lovin’ documents Glasgow residents Fritz Welch (on percussion, amp, voice, electronics) and Neil Davidson (on guitar and amplifier) collaborating in the studio and live with Helhesten, Maya Dunietz and Liene Rozite (Muris). A fusion of batshit blustering mayhem with a precision normally associated with micro house, adumbrated by just a hint of adolescent breathlessness, this surprisingly danceable disc synthesizes noise and acoustic improvisation into a gurgling diaspora of juice.
Making Real
(Misanthropic Agenda - MA040) CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Tense and moody body performance, distressed noise from toys and machines, scraped and rattled objects, disembodied warbird buzzing.
Space Level Blaze
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used CD $3.00
“Psych-out acid noise. Stardust, inhalation and electric fire evidence in the wake of smoke and strobes. Meticulously deranged by John Wiese.”
Pop Oil View
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.397) CDR $8.00
Brandstifter and Volcano The Bear’s Aaron Moore return for a second swig of poison. With full bellies they foray further into the forest of broken music, incorporating a wide selection of instruments and guff to create sweet swaggering tomfoolery with a distinct whiff of Paul McCarthy in their demented vocal ditties or Mike Kelley (à la The Poetics or early Destroy All Monsters). Be brave, you sack o’ meat, tie one on. Numbered Edition of 60.
Wot It Is Not
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.379) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Spontaneous experimental abandon by Aaron Moore and Brandstifter utilizing whatever instruments and non-instruments are at hand. Numbered edition of 60
Wolf Eyes
(Bulb - BLB069) Used CD $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
An early Wolf Eyes artefact, from a pre-glam era when it was owned and operated by the duo of Aaron Dilloway and Nathan Young. Loved for its knowing glances to Throbbing Gristle, admired for its Suicide innuendo, revered for its sinister, stripped down, lo-fi atmospheres.
...Is Seen Through...
(American Tapes) Used CDR $6.00
Electronics by John Olson. Hand-burned and –scribbled upon Sony disc. #3/40
The Grey Emperor
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR055) CD $12.50 (Out-of-stock)
Wraiths are the wretched sound of the plague-ridden, the unclean and the befouled. Wraiths are the dead in their lime-pits and the dying in their beds. Wraiths are the horror of infection. Wraiths exclusively utilize found and re-structured equipment, location acoustics and human vocals. No computers or synthesizers are used in any Wraiths recording or live event. All Wraiths releases are recorded live and improvised, under ritual conditions. One hour-long track. Limited to 500 copies. In a wax-sealed cardstock jacket (approx. size of a DVD package).
Desolation Beauty Violence
(Ikuisuus) Used CD $4.00
A very personal take on environment and landscape recorded in England 2003, using a 12-string guitar and a handful of effects to illustrate an instrumental journey through the human detritus of city living juxtaposed with a wistful remembrance of pastoral isolation, its author torn between a desire to be part of a larger community and a need for space and solitude. 8pp card jacket
Open Wide
(Recorded) Used CD $8.00
Marvelously chaotic, sometimes jarring and rock-inflected series of improvisations with various combinations of players including Thomas Ankersmit, Dan Breen, John Dierker, Neil Feather, Andrew Hayleck, Katt Hernandez, Keenan Lawler, Christopher Meeder, Evan Rapport, and Jason Willett. Recorded at the High Zero Festival 2001. Sealed
Tamán Shud
(Inyrdisk) Used CDR $4.00
This fresh spirit from Pulawy, Poland, crafts dark ambient spells and impenetrable whorls of foggy nocturnal environmentalism in tribute to the mystery of the unknown man (all of the tags on his clothing had been removed) who was found dead on Somerton Beach, Australia, in 1948. Inside a secret pocket of the man’s clothing on a page torn from the Rubaiyat was written the great book’s final phrase “tamém shud,” meaning “finished” in Persian). Numbered edition of 30.
Heat Chief
(Hit-Dat) Used CD $3.00
“This Baltimore quartet searches for transcendence through repetition and incremental adjustments, and they find it during their most processed moments — long, humid, sustained tones and almost desultory, lagging, melodic progressions. Static drenched in echo cascades over the circled drum patterns; ghostly drips fall as their gradually echoed pings of sound bounce down different registers, their colors changing as they gradually fade. Heat Chief’s third movement rises, dark and ugly, all toms and guttural noise, while the fourth and final is the complete opposite, morning light gradually filtering into a cave.” From 2006
Oranges And Lemons
(Virgin) Used 3x3-inch CD $12.00
In this detail-rich opus from 1989, Andy Partridge and company loosen themselves up; as the cover implies, they were going to be gaudy and colorful and nobody was going to stop them. Oranges & Lemons lets everything hang out and boasts one of the band’s best songs (“Mayor Of Simpleton,” about as good as pop music can get), while “Chalkhills And Children” realizes Partridge’s lifelong dream of writing a timeless “Good Vibrations” of his own.
Steel Negro Music
(Trash Ritual - TRASH049) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first recordings by Chris Scarpino on synth and guitar, and Scott Foust (Idea Fire Company, Anschluss, Swill Music) on guitar, bass and rhythms. Originally issued on cassette in 1982 by John Gullak's A.R.P.H. label, the majority of these recordings served as blueprints for the Network LP (Thermidor 1982), where roughly half the material was later reworked, remixed and retitled to fit more of a minimalistic dead mix. This CD reissue -- a full hour of ritualistic loops, pounding industrial rhythms, distorted guitar squeals, ominous rumblings, and desolate atmospherics that play on the chaotic nature of the sound itself -- contains the full tape in its complete unedited form, along with "Schwerpunkt" (a bonus track found on an unreleased 1980 tape performed by the original three-piece line-up), drone sessions, and "Slaughterhouse," originally released on the Sex & Bestiality tape compilation (Bain Total 1984) and on Sounds Beyond The Grave tape compilation (Sachsenhausen Industriale 1985). Additional liner notes by Foust.
Easy Listening For Nightingales
(Chocolate Monk - CHOC.334) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
The creative mind juice spill of former A Band wonk officer Stewart Greenwood and his fellow A Band reprobate Neil “Lenty” Lent follows the piss trails of the finest UK underground gorf. But then, using clarinet, tabla, melodian, toy flute, glockenspiel, xylophone, keyboard, short wave radio, stainless steel bowl, guitar, toy drum and various objects to take a loving hatchet to the ancient concept of “music,” how could it not? Edition of 50.
Coagulation
(Auscultare Research) CD $10.50
Selected action-concrète noise from 1996 to 2000 (with guest appearances by Kazumoto Endo (Killer Bug) that’ll prep you for a body bag better than just about anything shy of a 150-pound meat tenderizer with your name on it. Coated with electronic rawness, Coagulation combines belligerent noisician-gone-wild screech with micro-crustaceous nastiness. Go ahead and jump.
The Hidden Tongue
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
Eight collages, varying in tone and dynamic. “A long, minimal, whispery drone will suddenly be followed up with machinery sounds or a sliced-up section of sample. More aggressive than John Watermann’s work (which is the obvious comparison), but at the same time not as thick….Most of the noises and samples are unidentifiable, ranging from miniscule snatches of conversation to pipes being dragged across knurled metal to harshly-distorted drum machine like noise.”
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.
Global Clone
(PacRec) Used CD $4.00 (Out-of-stock)
Five previously released cassette tracks: from Declawed Yellow Swans (Tone Filth); from Skaters split (Jyrk); from Sex With Girls split (DeathBombArc); two from Damage Yellow Swans (23 Productions). Sealed
Live During War Crimes #3
(Release The Bats - RTB038) Used CD $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Dark, sinister live recordings from the band’s 2006 European tour, released in 2009. Five dense, desperate, and bleak tracks loaded with trashy dark rumblings and a feeling of complete coldness. Sealed
Der Zweck Dieser Serie Is Nicht Unterhaltung, Vol. 1
([ no label ]) Used 2xCDR $100.00
Drone, strident minimalism, noisy Fluxus performance, obsessive repetition. Excerpts from: Day Of The Antler [The Obsidian Ocelot] (1964); For Brass (1957); Poem For Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. (1960); Bb Dorian Blues 28th63 (1963); Early Tuesday Morning Blues (1963); Tortoise’s Dreams And Journeys (1966); Well Tuned Piano (1964)
Der Zweck Dieser Serie Is Nicht Unterhaltung, Vol. 2
([ no label ]) Used 2xCDR $100.00
Noisy Fluxus performance, electronically generated sinewave, percussion work, classical Indian raga and the teachings of Pandit Pran Nath. Excerpts from: Drift Study VIII68 (1968); Map Of 49’s Dream The Two Systems Of Eleven Sets Of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (1966); Volga Delta 23 (1959); 13/73 (1973); Rag Bhairava (1960); Soundtone Installation 27-72 (1972)
Advent
(Table Of The Elements) Used CD $4.00
Privately issued in 1988 in a batch of 300, the 1997 reissue of this uncompromising, highly-individualized work earned a spot on Alan Licht’s “minimalism top 10” list. The primary distinguishing characteristic of the 41-minute composition, divided into three segments, is a hypnotic, two-chord piano figure that pulses with limited variation. In Part I Youngs makes his approach wielding only his plaintive vocals, repeatedly pleading “don’t fall apart,” in a manner that suggests he’s not directly addressing anyone outside his own skull. The heavy artillery comes out in Parts II and III, where extensive surgery (without an anesthetic) performed on a diseased oboe or two, conjures unearthly noises from every sector of the instrument’s established range and beyond, until he finally resorts to a full frontal electric guitar assault that unleashes rapturously anarchic sheets of sound, filling the air with red sparks as Youngs sharpens and bends all his blades in a futile attempt to overtake the unyielding piano.
Bad Words
(Chocolate Monk - choc.436) CDR $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
Richard “The Riddim” Youngs returns to Chocolate Monk and he is none too pleased. Launched at Colour Out of Space 2019, this is 69 minutes of pitch corrected vocal, in the modern style. High concept derives from a conversation with Dylan Nyoukis concerning some popular musical tastes, and the collection’s title is an elusive reference to the lyrical content. Numbered edition of 75, with button.
Sapphie
(Oblique) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
The 1998 fifth solo album by the man described by a sensitive romantic at Melody Maker as “grand-meister of contemporary British improv, spiritual son of Eddie Prévost and Maddy Prior; gentle manipulator of English hymn-notics and religious incantations … poet-seducer of souls.” Classical guitar and voice that fans of reclusive sages like Nick Drake, Anne Briggs and Robert Wyatt will appreciate.
Lost Teeth
(Chocolate Monk - Choc.552) CDR $8.00
Here’s something that’ll keep your kitchen lit. (For you 20-year-olds, a “kitchen” is like the break room at work, but in your apartment.) From front to back, this disc hits like possessed plasmatic visitations happening in the middle of an otherwise silent instructional cooking program. You know that means metallic borborygmus and delicious lurching — the percussive collateral damage recognizable to anyone who has attended after-hours jousting with live but grievously unwell horses in a public library. Fear not, disdainers of randomized flail, Ypsmael + Eloine have done this before (because late fees). The duo maintains a delectable balance between electro fweep, tape fwip, and considered fwunk of the hit-it-or-quack ilk — without neglecting, as some of our peers are wont (let’s face it), sonic backdrops that enhance the ambient depth of field. The beautiful yet unprecious recording and the bounty of friction throughout Lost Teeth bring to mind a compact, super-portable Nuova Consonanza. Oh, yes they do. The homemade instrument, the field recording, the non-musical object, and the musical instrument manipulated outside the bounds of traditional propriety serve the needs of these two freedom-lickers, based respectively in Germany and San Francisco, a detail that should scream “secret tingle spoken here.”
Yuan
(Oblivion Music) Used CDR $8.00
Four spacious and evolving improvisations by Dean Moore, Michael Shannon, Robert Horton, Edward Guerriero, with guest appearance by “Yoko’s Thai wind chime.” Described by Shannon himself as “a crossroads meeting. nothingness time. process-ion. breeze, light drifts. ancient fusion.”
M
(Monotype - MONO045) CD $13.50
The unique musical language of this Austrian pioneer of electro-acoustic performance and composition is based on the de- and reconstruction of the sonic possibilities of the violin, expanding the instrument with live electronic effects and innovative performance techniques. Primal and organic, screaming, lyrical, explosive and composed, her "automatic playing" is a continuous exploration of sound and music as physical phenomena, constantly pushing back the boundaries in radical and provocative performances and compositions.
Weird Tales And Elegant Motion
(Monotype - MONO052) CD $14.00
Austrian violinist / visionary’s improv triumvirate with Czech MVP and Iva Bittová partner Pavel Fajt (on drums and live electronics), and Kammerflimmer Kollektief’s bassist Johannes Frisch, whose extreme technique works it like a sound machine.
La Voce ed il Sintetizzatore
(Rossbin) Used CD $10.00
Founder of SMET (Studio di Musica Elettronica di Torino) in 1964, this pioneer of multimedia, electronic and ambient music used electronic instruments to find new musical perspectives based on a structuralist principle derived from Euclidean geometry. In these works from 1973 to 1988, the Arp synth meets the voice Ellen Kappel.
Étreinte
(Krim Kram) CD $13.86
Jean-Baptiste Lévêque’s first CD follows a string of excellent tapes on Satatuhatta, Narcolepsia, and Bent Window Records. Meticulously executed harsh noise compositions made with tapes, effects, microphones, junk metal and computer. for-panel digisleeve with a color poster.
88888888
(Newtexture) CDR $8.00
Beginning somewhat exploratorily, like an unassuming Bennington-scented take on junk operatics, replacing lo-fi trashcan lid connotations with windchimes, 88888888 quickly ascends a holy plateau where it maintains a loving embrace shared by Sun Ra and Conlon Nancarrow. As an acolyte of Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor, Zappa’s wank detector is finer tuned than most; so when a tenorman sets down his axe and scoops up a handful of MIDI — “started in 1999, finished in 2009, and still only 20 minutes long,” he says — rest assured there’s a reason. And that reason has twice the awkward beauty as the Barrons thrashing a homemade gamelan in their garage. Constructed and printed entirely by hand with block prints and rubber stamps. Edition of 33. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2010.
Eternal Darkness
(At War With False Noise - ATWAR022) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Demos by French sub-underground bedroom black metal weirdo. Out of time, badly recorded, fucking amazing.
Noise \ ... [Lärm]
(Tourette) Used CD $25.00
With the heaviest of the heavy: Masami Akita, Zbiniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler. Real surrealistic music from 2002 composed in a non-musical way. Noise as the primitive and collective consciousness of music. Expanding perceptions. Intuitive molten metal brutality. Evolved, individually perfected performance techniques, the musicians’ rapport with electronics and technology and their hybrid background experiences that extend from improvised to contemporary art music, from jazz to experimental rock and pop, from noise to ambient. Sealed
Flight of Infection
(Tariff - TAR001) CD $13.00
Mythic music that comes from hardship, a need to challenge an oppressive state with internal and external liberation. ZGA is a collection of musicians from the Russian town of St. Petersburg, the first still active Russian noise group, started in 1984. Nick Sudnick is the sole remaining member from the original line-up. Their first mid-'80s recordings were home-made distort-o-industria, but their roots in '70s prog were discernible. Western industrial/noise influences such as Nurse with Wound, Factrix, Mnemonists, reached them later during perestroika, when Sudnick started to build his zgamoniums. The zgamoniums (contact-miked springs hammered with mallets, metal sheets gently stroked with medieval-looking miniature whips, strings attached to brutally constructed iron grids, and much more).
Sing and Play the Three Doctors and Other Sounds of Today
(Eabla - EAB102) CD $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
From their beginnings as a Doors cover band from Texas, to their shameful years of bloated excess, to their acrimonious breakup and inevitable reunion a decade later, all the hope, anger, trauma, and triumph of this quintessentially American folk-punk combo are detailed here. In addition to their astonishing 1992 debut LP Sing and Play the Three Doctors and Other Sounds of Today, this CD compiles the overlong 7-inch The Man Can’t Bust Our Music (1993) and the inexcusably short 12-inch 94124 (1995), all of which have been lovingly remastered for today’s more discerning listener. This deluxe package also includes previously unheard outtakes and compilation tracks, four songs from an incendiary 1993 show at CBGB, and a touching tribute to Seals and Crofts from a 2006 reunion show. Includes 16-page booklet with liner notes by Will York, and a rub-on ZCR tattoo, which can be worn for a day, or cherished for a lifetime.
Trilogi Peradaban
(Dual Plover - DP42) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Zoo's successful concoction of punk rock seasoned with traditional music elements makes them a beacon of the Indonesian Underground. Their debut album, Trilogi Peradaban (Civilization Trilogy) is formed by three distinct movements forged from sessions in 2007 amd 2008; it traces the band's fast evolution from the Ruins-esque proto-punk of Neolithikum (New Stone Age) and Mesolithikum (Middle Stone Age) to the spontaneous, folkish, neo-traditionalism ranting of Palaeolithikum (Old Stone Age). Twenty-two tracks range from dissonant math-rock, expelled in quick Melt-Banana-like succession, to acoustic shamanistic vocal utterings produced with the skeletal lineup of drums, bass and djembe, all with the deft vocalizations by Rully Shabara Herman, who tells a story of the deterioration of cultural roots in modern civilization.
Sneeuwstorm
(Glistening Examples - GLEX1502) CDR $10.00
A dense and dynamic thirty-one minutes, created by Dead Neanderthals saxophonists Colin Webster and Otto Kokke improvising with an electronic framework composed by Zuydervelt, who then restructured, processed, and looped the results, and added field recordings, samples and electric guitar. Listen to a six-minute preview here: http://youtu.be/Caze2-bJ6vU
Long Lut De Bélemnite
(Prométhée) Used CD $5.00
This French group — Eric Cordier, Christophe Grosos, Jean-Yves Delamer / JYD, Mélina Doudoux, Luc Thiburs, Lionel Thiebaut, Vincent Legrand, Patrick Sorel, Vincent Vivien — centers its variable geometry on the crossroads of electroacoustic, industrial, and improv, while also remaining open to the influence of plastic practices such as engraving, photography, performance, sculpture, sound environments, oulipo… Housed in an LP-sized ten-page booklet with information and photos. Cardboard CD sleeve is affixed to the last page of the booklet. Slight creasing. From 1992