ALLEYPISSER / KAM HASSAH / PAUL KNOWLES / FRANCISCO MEIRINO / GERRITT WITTMER
Unifying Themes
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR034) Used LP $18.00
A study of themes that unite as a whole across geographic, linguistic and cultural barriers. Edition of 90.
NICOLAS BERNIER / FRANCISCO MEIRINO
Fiction
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR044) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
The first collaboration by Prix Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica award-winner Bernier (who explores the balance between the cerebral and the sensual, and between organic sound sources and digital processing) and Meirino (who explores sound and its possibilities for failure while exhibiting his masterful editing and compositional skills) challenge listener perceptions and raises questions about what reality and fiction truly are in this study in feedback and psychoacoustics. Edition of 300
Listen to a four-and-a-half-minute sample here: https://soundcloud.com/misanthropic-agenda/sets/nicolas-bernier-francisco
Anthem
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR036) Used LP $32.00 (Out-of-stock)
The title track, subtitled “Static For Empty Life” and previously issued on CD in 2011 by Crippled Intellect, is a long-form tonal study with contrasting climax. Side B edits together “(Reconciliation Of) Twin Interference Channels,” “Playtime Imbalance (L/R Discharge),” “Heartbeat And Dying Cassette Deck, ..............Loop#999999” (all from Triptych For Paranoia Calibration [Banned 2006]) and Crawl Unit’s “How Far To The Other Edge” (from Coalescence (Alien8 2001). Edition of 200.
Seitz Versus Gendreau
(Misanthropic Agenda) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
A collaborative experiment by a former member of Taxodiaceae and the Crawling With Tarts dude, who use concrete music compositional strategies on found sound captured in San Francisco. On “Chorus After Rains,” both use the same raw sound clips and meld their individual results together into one piece of music. “Things Lost That Will Never Be Found,” a composition with live instruments, moves from a toy piano to various invented motor instruments. “Trains Will Not Stop” uses sounds from records, composed by Gendreau and re-mixed by Seitz using accelerometer recordings collected in San Francisco during 2005. Edition of 90, packaged in tip-on jacket.
Return to Nothing / Nothing to Return
(Misanthropic Agenda - MA020) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
One side, Stephen O’Malley on guitar and bass guitar, Gerritt Wittmer on computer, and Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, recorded live at the Flux Factory in New York in 2004; the other side, remixed by Wittmer. According to Stewart Voegtlin’s skullcrushing Stylus review, “Gerritt’s G4 --which vibrates like a ten-thousand–pound hive loosed of its bees -- relocates some of the preponderance issuing from O’Malley (i.e., tonal ascension w/out cessation … and Wyskida (who … taps away on his gong like a Tibetan monk rubbing his rolmo together…). Yellow vinyl. Edition of 500
15 More Tapes
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR033) LP $22.00 (Out-of-stock)
A suite of fifteen short pieces, very different in character and dynamics, edited from improvisations on various tape machines. Recorded 2009, edited, recomposed and mastered summer 2011. Artwork by Alessandro Brivio. Edition of 90.
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
FRANCISCO MEIRINO / DAVE PHILLIPS
We Are None Of Us
(Misanthropic Agenda - MAR035) 2xLP $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
Electronics, processed sound, and field recordings meticulously arranged to form a dark and unsettling narrative. The 2xLP version of this extremely dynamic electro-acoustic studio album contains two additional tracks not on the CD and comes with a download card for a recording of the duo’s full September 2010 performance at Ertz Festival in Spain. Edition of 200.
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
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
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.
Scissors
(Misanthropic Agenda) LP (one-sided) $10.00
A dynamic sound collage of rabid aural thud, delivered in a manic torrent of multi-directional percussion, guitar, voice, and electronics. White vinyl, gatefold jacket
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.
Devils Cone and Palm
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used LP $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The first album with the Jackson / Ronnau / Wiese lineup, produced from totally gutter sessions in Los Angeles and Oakland in 2005 and 2006. Includes the entire infamous Il Corral set as heard through the handheld tape deck of a screaming female audience member.
Remote Whale Control
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used LP $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
2007 CD reissue of the second album (Gameboy 2003), where Wiese, McClain, and Ronnau emphasize raw performance rather than studio hallucination, and go heavy on free drums and guitar. Includes a previously unreleased live cut.
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
HACE/26,250' b/w 11° 22.4'N 142° 35.5'E
(Misanthropic Agenda) LP $16.50 (Out-of-stock)
(Misanthropic Agenda) Used LP $11.00
Inspired by early explorations of extreme locations -- and the clash between the will of humans, the limits of their bodies, and the immutable laws of the natural world-the latter which can easily destroy both of the first two -- Blake Edwards’s primary device is a Russian Polivoks synthesizer. The “11° 22.4'N 142° 35.5'E” side (based on the 1960 dive by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the bathyscaphe Trieste to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on earth) mirrors the combination of analytic scientific preparation and calibration that the team did, and the inherent and unavoidable human concern of dying should anything go wrong. The “HACE/26,250'” side (named after High Altitude Cerebral Edema, which has the greatest potential for striking in the Dead Zone [26,250 feet], where available oxygen cannot sustain human life for more than three hours) is a soundtrack for a body closing down; heart rate slowing, blood flow slowing, everything once moist and carrying life slowly becoming brittle, dry, and unable to function due to duress. Edition of 200 copies, packaged in tip-on jacket.
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.”
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.