Accident du Travail
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD4) LP $15.00
Twenty-four minutes of Ondes Martenot recordings by Julie Normal (Cradle of Smurf) and Olivier 2MO (Cheveu). Maximal repeatable sound beauty, “somewhere between the lilting decay of Discreet Music and the disorientating phantom flirt of Maryanne Amacher's Sound Characters (Making the Third Ear)” according to Doug Mosurock. “It's an impressive, subdued work, and anyone looking to end their evening on a restful comedown should look within.”
Atelier Méditerranée
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD6) 7-inch $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Music by children from the Institut Médico Educatif Ambroise Croizat in Saint Ouen, performed and recorded as part of a workshop led by David Lemoine (Cheveu) and Antoine Capet. Arranged by Lemoine, this “outsider electro-noise or something” throbs with the vibe of disturbed humanity. Part of a series that includes the homeless, convicts in jail, and street musicians.
Badaboum
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD15) LP $16.00
Affiliates of La Grande Triple Alliance Internationale de l’Est posse, Krine (Headwar), Armelle (The Dreams) and Solene (Dudu Geva) add their own reverbed idiosyncracies to post punk akin to Liliput / Kleenex, chanting in indecipherable Italian, mock German and plain French, not unlike three priestesses offering voodoo enchantments.
Dealings
(Bruit Direct Disques - BR-D-20) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
This pataphysical collective lead by Lyon-based Christophe Petchanatz since 1985 uses dismantled toys, organs with burst pipes, squeaking, detuned guitars, and loose broom to recreate a world within a world where children’s music boxes transform into a carousel for adults, waltzes mutate into progressive drunkard chants, and postpunk revisits lo-fi chamber music. All the songs on “Dealings” are adaptations of poems by John B. Cornaway, author of “Heligoland”, who published Petchanatz’s first texts while the late Eric Chabert was releasing the first cassettes of his group Los Paranos and of Klimperei. Over Chabert’s scratchy voice, Klimperei unloads its makeshift bric-a-brac, melodica, banjo and metallophone throughout woozy cabaret cantatas, potluck selections from the Canterbury school, punk waltz under a sad sun, acoustic free-blues, and haywire krautrock. Nino Rota or Erik Satie have been invoked in past descriptions, and one could also find parenthood with other unclassifiables such as Chris Knox, Pierre Bastien, Ghedalia Tazartes or Pascal Comelade.
Cro Magnon
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD3) 7-inch $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
Teenage female duo Haley Fohr (of Destijl recording artists Circuit Des Yeux) and Katie Leming power their way through three gloriously fucked lo-fi cassette jams with squonking, mis-articulated garage guitar licks and drums as detonators. Classic destructo-punk. Not to be confused with the 1960s Cromagnon, but you knew that.
The Frightening Lights
(Bruit Direct Disques - BR-D12) LP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
Soft, caressing and subtly disturbing, Frightening Lights move like menace through fog. Singer Elizabeth Downey envisions the songs as deathbed confessions, their violence carefully suppressed, modulated through long penitence. Dan Hawkins’s funeral organ, off-kilter accordion, and discordant bowed danbo create eerie, flickering landscapes that surround Downey’s sleepy murmurs.
Theatre of the Macabre
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD1) 7-inch $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
A precarious concept album for the tragic era of the working poor that generated some priceless flailing among the chattering class, but Detailed Twang seem to have the levelest head when they describe it as “Strange and pleasingly ill-fit mash of distorted horror rap, electronic tweedling, screams, monsters sound, and manipulations of all sorts. Mostly instrumental, and heavy in every sense of the word.” Six tracks over and done with in less than ten minutes. For crying bones and bludgeoned hopes.
Chéri
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD7) Used LP $20.00
Anti-funk lovers rock akin to Antilles no wave or a more disorienting “Little Johnny Jewel” by a quartet of young Parisians -- Charlene Darling (ex-Pussy Patrol); Fifi (Total Crane); Ines Di Folco (Lycée Paul Bert) and Alexandre David Gabriel (Alias) -- who believe they make African hi-life or reggae filtered through Lucrate Milk.
MAMITORI ULITHI EMPRESS YONAGUNI SAN
25/12/13
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD14) LP $23.50 (Out-of-stock)
This savagely DIY bunch of gleeful Japanese weirdos reimagine six tracks from their self-produced acid-folk masterpiece 1 2 3 Fairy Tail Chimidoro Phenomenon Satan Inferno Dress Ha Cattlemurarete Yggdrasill Ha Wa Sasaru. Guitars are skinned alive, twisted in counterpoint or played with a cheesegrater; the frail vocal is exhausted and sweet; a trumpet plays its dying breath; the bouncy rhythm section offers a skeleton of rigour. The odd post-punk mess which spits from their amps reduces psych-rock to fluff, a scraggy trunk in which only the spinal column remains. Mamitori’s psychotic free-rock, loaded with open-tuned guitars, limps in and out of phase, at once absolutely diaphanous and indecipherable like scribbles covering a licked landscape. Nothing is ever in place, everything cracks up and frays, an atonal construction that threatens to become melodious any minute.
Minitel
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD2) 7-inch $7.25 (Out-of-stock)
“Ripe with schizophrenic angst,” our friends at Siltblog can't help but notice, “The A-side is clearly borne out of the avant soil once trod upon by Ilitch and DDAA, while the flip sounds like the band harvested an entire field of wormwood, distilling it into a noxious absinthe of Swans-like potency…. [B]lind carnage … follows…. Bruit-Direct is growin' real live monsters, no two ways about it.” Both guitarists also play in Sister Iodine.
Mouse Sluts
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD18) 12-inch $17.00 (Out-of-stock)
Dan Melchior, Graham Lambkin, Letha Rodman Melchior and Glen (who we hope Guinness will recognize as the world’s most recorded budgie) under the influence of oddball reports from regional newspapers. Highlights include Letha’s keyboard-playing and Glen’s chimpanzee impressions.
Scorpion Violente
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD5) LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Cold war psy-ops, martial, nihilistic mechanics, and cyborg bass boost that should fulfill all mad passions for proto-NWD super-repetitive, instrumental, minimal synth, mutant disco. Imagine The Flirts’ ragged, switchblade-toting cousin, raised by mutant vermin. Or PiL doing the Escape from New York theme. Or D.A.F.'s early material. Or even 20 Jazz Funk Greats-era Throbbing Gristle. Three songs. 45 RPM
Debased Shapes
(Bruit Direct Disques - BRD11) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
The second full-length LP by this Australian band whose hypnotic, messed up, unmistakable / mistaken music uses an array of invented and homemade instruments and is, according to Still Single, “dotted by the legacy of Harry Partch’s creation of music and sound sources from inside the mind, but given to strong jazzy / RIO currents throughout, underscored by vocalist Sarah Byrne’s adventurous alto surveying the wake of composed-with-improvised-feel tracks as they settle and march around one another.”
L’Appel Du Midi à Midi Pile
(Bruit Direct Disques - BR-D-21) LP $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
Bruit Direct continues down the path of no-fucks-given with yet another ace from a deck already heaped with bewildering maa. In much the same way as Pasolini’s Theoreme (the film) once fizzled the corneas of the prim, Theoreme (the artist) is here to singe ears on this blistering debut. Laying down all the instrumentation and vocals herself, Maissa D. posits that specters of the past continue to resonate. Deep inside the angular ingenuity of this chef d’oeuvre are subtle sonic vectors, analogous to Gutura, SIC and the corrosive side of Zick Zack. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2016
Early Times
(Bruit Direct Disques - BR-D-23) LP $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
This mainstay of Brisbane’s thriving guitar underground has built quite the reputation for fierce live shows and recordings. Doug Mosurock of Still Single hasn’t been “excited about guitar pop like this in a while,” so, you know, make note of that. Of special interest is the band’s “Polvo / Archers-style string bend, plus huge riffs from some 8000 miles away.” So charming are their urgent and catchy tales of inner-city malaise that their first two singles — Head Of The Witch (Tenth Court 2014) and Songs To Wipe Your Mouth To (Tenth Court 2015) — both sold out their initial runs. Recorded and mixed by Blank Realm guitarist Luke Walsh.
Only Shadows Now
(Bruit Direct Disques - BR-D13) LP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
Set to the minimalist sparse compositions of Dan McGirr (guitar) and Natasha Buchanan (synth, voice), Robert Vagg’s confessionals drift around tragedies, hopelessness, failed systems, nonconformity and physical / psychological experiences. “Wonderfuls express deeply personal issues,” says Matt Kennedy, “Like mental illness and social isolation better and with more sincerity than any other band you will hear….”