The Sun Will Turn On You
(Discombobulate - BOB008) LP $19.00
This mixture of ultra-brilliant-synth-darkness and Rumplestiltskin slow-rap calls to mind Steel Pulse raised on home-dubbed noise tapes rather than heavy Handsworth pressure. Fluent and fluttering “whaps” coil Uzumaki-style under sheets of neon-blue keyboard. Lightening shudders in freeze-frame, a zoetrope in sound. But the one constant is the voice... the voice and the song, half-remembered by any parent or nurse, familiar as mumps yet distant as those splendid ivory toothpicks. Red vinyl. Edition of 250
Following Shapes to the Edge of a Drift
(Discombobulate - BOB009) LP $21.00
The muscular men Guido Henneböhl and Fritz Welch rattle pots and pans, slap the cheeks, slurp, and stick sharp elbows into a web of goof-off electronics. Pungent and exciting vibrations, a froggy mess of hidden freedom. White vinyl. Edition of 250.
WATARU KASAHARA / KIYOHARU KUWAYAMA / LUDO MICH
Les Archives de l’Univers Amnesique Illustre
(Discombobulate) LP $22.00
This new pairing of minds and techniques on a steel-grey voyage across the treacherous Ifingr river is a brief, slo-mo moment of calm, the drunken grasp for a banister before the crash of brittle chin on concrete steps. Recurring metallic hisses are overlaid with saw-tooth waves sourced from MP3s buried in the garden over a harsh winter. When the ducks loosen phlegm they shit silver dollars. Presently contact mics are attached to submarine hulls somewhere in an undersea canyon and closing the eyes opens up new patterns of pressure-roses blooming red, orange, red. Lethe’s master of resonant spaces and junk objects Kuwayama holds the reins over three chapters of spiraling horror and madness. Sounds are coaxed out ashamed and blushing: the syphilitic cough, the cracked shin bone and the greasy sheen of night sweats wired up to a nine-volt battery. Embudagonn’s mysterious masked man Kasahara adds stewed tape manipulation with brush strokes that hint at a moody Goya and his bleak Pinturas negras. Specter and godfather to the NorEuro heek-a-freek underground Mich adds an ass-hiss, a stain, a pursed lip smacking to the junkyard rumble. With inserts by each artist. White vinyl. Edition of 200
The Acrylic Window
(Discombobulate) LP $25.00
Four measured tracks, all washing up a new kind of psychedelic moss, fresh thin tendrils, easy to snap, but determined to grow among loose grey matter late on into the next day, and the next and the next. Dry coughs and outta-whack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs. Hot air leaks from a perished rubber hose. With knuckles like hazelnuts, these sounds shine like delicately laid cobblestones, laid end-to-end with neither fuss nor haste. Late night thumps, “boof, baff,” and a lousy Soft Machine organ solo talks a Brighton raver down from gritted jaw of oblivion. Ideas are put through the wringer in stereo effect. The domestic bric-a-brac builds up: a motorcycle revving, the dry crunch of gravel underfoot, a jumble sale of sweaty woolens, singing out through pinched throat to make un-sense of the phrase “iss, sum bear-lae-um.” An unexpected kitchen sink gamelan makes for a discombobulating listen. Tension is introduced via leathery lunged accordion but there’s no crass crescendo. Fading out like a flu virus... Euro voices abound in tangled syntax. Verbs, sounds, and nouns renamed. The downs come in re-directed by taut tape loops making the ecstatic, grooving on the surface of a micron-thin bubble. Another take on the stretched ritual. A parrot squawks underwater struggling for fresh O2. Furious eraser scurrying action is met with the stony silence of a fourteen-year-old girl while apples crunch between strong white teeth. Our old friends, words, are worried and fretted in a dark experiment; turned over looking for new seams and valves to shuck and pried open like ripe clams until mucus-y muscle slips free and falls to the flagstones below. A living séance. Acrylic Wisdom from the Old Ones, the thin Venn diagram slice between frantic scuttling and sweet Miskatonic stoned. Colored vinyl. Edition of 250. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
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
Nihilist Chakai House
(Discombobulate - BOB003) LP $25.00
Ten tracks of one-man drumming action that swings like a goofy magnetic pendulum by full-fledged ceramist, beard-wearer and drummer in ozone-scraping duo Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides. Side one is clear as an ECM joint yet huffed with a sweaty Javanese energy. The bronze pots get thunked bad and vibrate, shifting units of time, Bene-Gesserit-style. A massive station clock weeps small brass cogs until the stutter of fudge-footed mice scramble all smeary, dazzling with dry-snare. Between times, the most amazing sonorous cowbell work you’ll hear this side of a Trouble Funk block-jam tails off into resinous wooden bumps. Side two opens up all hot, with frittering and hummingbird-quick trap work. Sticks made of hollow heron’s legs (on loan from Ed Blackwell) add a venerable edge to the membranous drones and crisp celery crunch. Hands that are hard and rough as sandpaper jigger and jolley moans out the drum skins, creating a Tie-Fighter dogfight, which segues into a resonant metallic chitter; all chipped chrome and dangerous ricochet. The record closes in a dignified manner: amplified wool being wound round a Djembe in freezing fog. Includes insert. Clear vinyl. Edition of 250. Listen to an excerpt here: https://archive.org/details/Pascal-NihilistChakaiHouse-SideAExcerpt