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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Sporadic Spectra
(Groundfault - GF004) Used CD $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Extremely harsh, rumbling, crushing noise from Japan.
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.”
In The Monotonous Flowers
(Groundfault) Used CD $3.00
Spacious and concrete-ish industrial from 2002.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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."
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.
California
(Groundfault - TRO225) 10xLP $75.00
The controversial, ear-baking box set featuring 20 artists from California, each receiving an album side to do their thing. You get it and good from: Amps For Christ, The Cherry Point, Joe Colley, Control, Die Yellow Swans, Gerritt, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Moth Drakula, Oscillating Innards, Open City, Sixes, Skaters, Solid Eye, Spastic Colon, Tralphaz, Damion Romero, Rubber O Cement, John Wiese, Xome and RHY Yau. Limited edition available with metal California pin.
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
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.”