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.
NELS CLINE / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
The Ocean Above Your Heads
(Starlight Furniture Company - *26) LP $15.00
This first-time collaboration by Italy’s premier transcenders of time and space and guitarist extraordinaire from Wilco, Scarnella, Nels Cline Singers, and L. Stinkbug throbs like an Argento soundtrack for an astral perv lair, recalling vintage cassette gorp from the golden age of Industrial, when field recordings of howling dogs were repurposed as documents of institutional degradation and mind control. The Opalio brothers improvise an instant composition with the first-time playback of Cline's prerecorded space noise, bold cosmic disruptions, and nattering squibs from decommissioned satellites. No overdubs, no second takes, no leftovers. Dusted with loops from a lunar cathedral where palsied zombies dragging pots and pans skid across the soap-slathered narthex, The Ocean Above Your Heads splays the hemispheres better than Subotnik goin’ off his meds.
Interlude With Fun Machine
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $14.00
(Starlight Furniture Company) LP $14.00
An all-instrumental album recorded in one week Steve Fisk (Pell Mell, Pigeonhed) and Bob Beerman (Pell Mell). Noticeably inspired by Hematic Sunsets’ odd combo of kitschy lounge, quasi-soundtrack and “modern” electronics; the casual, homespun aesthetic of French Paddleboat; classics such Dieter Moebius’s Tonspuren and Eno’s Another Green World; The Young Marble Giants’ unadorned rhythm boxes and Wurlitzer frailty; and minimal electronics by Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, Cabaret Voltaire, Pyrolator, Cluster, Harmonia, et al.
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.
DECAER PINGA / GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION
Tubular Bells
(Starlight Furniture Company) split LP $14.00
A no-instruments interpretation of Mike Oldfield’s epic instrumental performed by Glands of External Secretion (side one) and Decaer Pinga (side two), in which deficiency is the cornerstone. By intentionally limiting themselves to prerecorded tapes, field recordings, electronic devices and effects, out-of-context musical passages, and anything else that did not require a musical instrument to be played, both bands interpret their respective halves of this legendary opus with methods that seem to run counter to the spirit of the original, yet paradoxically force it to shine through. Limited edition 300 copies.
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.
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.
Northern Exposure Will Be Right Back
(Starlight Furniture Company - *4CD) CD $6.00
(Starlight Furniture Company - *4LP) LP $10.00
A surreal scrapbook collage of songs, sounds, and manipulated noise by singer–songwriter Barbara Manning and founder of Bananafish magazine S. Glass. With many excerpts from Glass’s early ’80s radio show, and guest appearances by members of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, CCCC, Masonna, The Dead C., U.S. Saucer, The Double U, Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble, and many of Manning’s bands.
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.
Twin Smooth Snouts
(Starlight Furniture Company - *5CD) CD $14.00
(Starlight Furniture Company - *5LP) LP $10.00
Oddly distorted guitars, mangled erhu, manipulated violas, unrecognizable African percussion, bouncy Hagemanizer™, bizarre noises, and found nonsense looped, stretched, chopped, sped up, and warped by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 guitarist.
INCAPACITANTS / IN SPITE OF FLAMING CREATURES
Vitamin Buckfast
(Starlight Furniture Company - *15) LP $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
Incapacitants began as Toshiji Mikawa’s solo project in 1981 when a homemade noisemaking device called The Mikawa was his prime instrument; it evolved to incorporate various concrete sounds, until Fumio Kosakai joined and the duo began favoring ring modulators and heavily processed Theremins. Incapacitants has always been about “creating pure noise without any abstract musical expression whatsoever.” Everything known about the reclusive Abdul Squeerter of (In Spite of Flaming Creatures) has passed through the conduit of Dylan Nyoukis (Blood Stereo and the Chocolate Monk label). Apparently uninterested in networking, touring, trading CDRs, appearing on compilations, granting interviews, replying to letters, engaging in any sort of self-promotion, or taking part in the glamorous razzle-dazzle available to all experimental musicians worldwide, Squeerter prefers the solitude of where ever he calls home in the United Kingdom. The recordings on Vitamin Buckfast are the product of a mail collaboration committed to tape in the mid-’90s and then simply ignored for several years. Dora Doll of Decaer Pinga makes a guest appearance on vocals, but good luck determining exactly where. Cover art by Karen Constance
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.
Sound on Sound
(Starlight Furniture Company) LP $14.00
Originally released by Japan’s G.R.O.S.S. label as a cassette in a limited edition of 88 copies in late 1994, Loop Circuit’s Sound on Sound joins Akifumi Nakajima (also known as prolific noise artist Aube) with Dub Murashita together in an all-electronic self-hypnosis seminar. The duo limits their source materials to purely electronic sounds, loops and effects, creating a mesmerizing, constantly shifting mosaic.
“tranced-out mesmerism” is how our friends at naturestrip summarize this Akifumi Nakajima / Dub Murashita collaboration. “layer upon layer of brittle sonics stacked & decayed across 40 mins of hypnosis, recorded in ’94…, startlingly ahead of the curve, if not out on its own one entirely, this kind of sounds like a proto-skaters in a way, billowing masses of small sounds that slide in & around each other to the trippiest effect, taking aube’s usage of sounds verging on the otoacoustic (sections here take on an amacher-esque ear effery that simply needs to be heard) & tethering them to structures in a state of perpetual collapse, a perverted soundsystem beat pressure arising in parts, heaving rhythms built out of scraps subsumed by yet more gunk dredged up from the beyond…. a constant temporal slip, like falling upwards & backwards simultaneously, supremely solid & deadly effectual but very much a 'hall of mirrors' kind of deal, suitably ending on two locked grooves looping out into the eternal.”
Slow Down Tiger
(Starlight Furniture Company - *27) LP $12.00
Two side-long pieces by The Dauphin Of Durham. “Tongues” is a grand, found-sound tape composition mosaic of mostly dissenting voices (Chilean poet Nicanor Parra; a clip from Sult, the Swedish film based on Knut Hamsun’s Hunger; Russian absurdist / surrealist Daniil Kharms; Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins; author of modernist masterpiece Briggflatts Basil Bunting; the eternally disenchanted Alan Dugan; Victorian heritage booster John Betjeman; and field recordings of the 1990 poll tax riots in London). On the flip, the obvious touchstone of “Hospital Poem” is minimalist drone à la Basinski, Harold Budd, or Tony Conrad, though Melchior’s very personal approximation of the subtlest of ectoplasmic melodies repeated over and over ends up more dissonant and darker than one would expect. With its tightly arranged, graceful marbling, as if restrained by a massage therapist, this elegant sausage would make the ideal soundtrack for an all-Lego remake of Solaris. Excerpt from “Tongues”: http://youtu.be/KEaoeutQ3Sw
JEAN-MARC MONTERA / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN
Union Of The Supreme Light
(Starlight Furniture Company - *28) LP $20.00
Joining Maurizio and Roberto Opalio on their fourth album for Starlight Furniture Co., legendary French-Corsican guitarist and co-founder of Groupe de Recherche et d’Improvisation Musicales brings his noisy lyricism to three long tracks of oddly sensual and animalistic space howl. As their many past collaborations attest, My Cat Is An Alien’s self-sustaining biosphere is an environment where the surreal dreamscapes of mavericks and eccentrics can flourish. Jean-Marc Montera’s home-made guitar table, various objects, and electronics forge metallic ribbons that twitch between the impossibly distant clangs of gigantic spores, while Maurizio (on home-made double-bodied string instrument and pedal effects) and Roberto (on alientronics, pedal effects, and modified electronic devices) set worms adrift in a zero-gravity aviary stocked with narcotized satsuma fowl. Roberto adds more disorientation to the trio’s fog-blurred horizon lines with wordless vocalizations that could pass for billowing laments hooted by mutant sea mammals with enoki mushrooms growing on their larynxes. Includes download card. Edition of 350.
MICHAEL MORLEY / MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / RAMONA PONZINI / LEE RANALDO
Live @ Sensational Fix
(Starlight Furniture Company - *25) LP $15.00
As part of the 2008 exhibition Sensational Fix, with a focus on Sonic Youth’s multi-disciplinary activities since 1981, My Cat Is An Alien performed live with long-time collaborator Ramona Ponzini, Michael Morley of Dead C, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. Side B features solo pieces by each of the five members of this extemporaneous ensemble. Stills from the live footage shot by curator Roland Groenenboom appear on the color insert.
Il Segno
(Starlight Furniture Company) CD $15.00
(Starlight Furniture Company) LP $15.00
Beginning with a gloomy text entitled “The Sign” written by guitarist / lyricist Roberto Opalio, My Cat Is An Alien entered The Space Room and recorded this dark and concrete improvisation, a single piece of howling and caustic ruination. Maurizio Opalio comes out of the fog with desolate acoustic guitar scratches, Roberto’s electric space guitar scribbles as he spits out his words of urban alienation, and Viggiu Vortex joins the brothers on percussion. Piano toy and toy keyboard were added later to enhance the surreal lyrics inspired by ghosts, a sense of psychic, cultural and social isolation in their hometown Torino, Italy, and the infinite lightness and beauty between the cement and the sky. CD contains two non-LP tracks.
(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.
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.
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.
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.