Pick Up & Run 2007
(What The ... - WHAT003) LP $19.50
Reed instruments, singing, percussion, and a thick haze float over the flower fireworks captured in the two performances here by the Lexington KY-based duo of Sara O'Keefe and Trevor Tremaine (Eyes and Arms of Smoke, Hair Police, Burning Star Core, Sick Hour, Death Unit, Rampart Tapes). Pick Up & Run 2007 makes fleeting "jazz" references, sports male/female lowlife love vocals, drags electroacoustics to the drugstore basement, and is in general warm and cloudy all over like a yesterday today. Packaged in complicated and unique covers, handmade and silkscreened by Paul Coors. With a mini-poster. Limited edition of 177.
Solos
(What The ... - WHAT009) Used LP $20.00
In spring 2009, Robert Beatty (Three Legged Race, Hair Police) traveled as a collaborating and touring member of Burning Star Core; written into the set list every night was slot for an improvised solo on his special electronics rig, synthesizer, space echo, question boxes, etc. "Solos" cuts them together into a work of their own. Not a collage, but a document not comprehensive to the originating context. Ten complete solos, in chronological order, for fans of detailed-driven minimum electronics. Paste-on jacket with a creepy poster to get to know. Edition of 166.
At The North Pole, Easter Day, 1982
(What The ... - WHAT012) LP (one-sided) + 3in CDR $14.00
In comparison to the only other available 1980s recording of a complete live performance by the BLE (the side-long “Industrial Barbecue,” on the BUFMS boxset), At The North Pole, Easter Day, 1982 is starker and more minimal overall. Performing as a quintet at an open mic night in a student cafeteria, the group had played live only once prior and had yet to amass the collection of ubiquitous tape players and answering machines that accompanied most subsequent performances and recordings. The absence of overt forward progress in some parts gives the performance an incidental resemblance to those tense moments in grim power electronics just before the singer goes berserk, but then ridiculous verbal repetitions and Top 40 references come out of nowhere like nerdy Fluxus rehearsals in the middle of a New Orleans funeral. Other segments highlight the difference between aboriginal metal percussion and pots ’n’ pans getting banged together by people with a remarkably spastic sense of rhythm. Visually, Bren’t Lewiis were like a cross between the jackets of early Nurse With Wound albums and a bunch of hicks impersonating Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Television sets flickered throughout. Doug Roberts brought his bicycle onstage. Dressed in a labcoat and white wool-felt USAF boots, howling into his signature plastic lawn flamingo, Lucian Tielens stretched the limits of publicly acceptable intimate congress with inanimate objects. Tim Smyth wore a bunch of Christmas lights attached to a Civil Defense helmet. Amoeba Man had a garbage bag filled with helium balloons taped to his head and toilet paper wrapped around his face. As some sort of oblique Day-Glo homage to Carmen Miranda, Gnarlos wore a handmade upside-down sweatsuit. The amplified 21-foot aluminum sailboat mast, the undisputed star of the show, was so unwieldy that use of a special freight door was required just to get in and out of the building, and yet a single, lonely metallic “ploong!” was pretty much the limit of its sonic palette -- appropriate testament to the methodology of this absurdly inefficient group. Includes insert printed with glow-in-the-dark ink, and a reproduction of the flyer advertising the show. Edition of 129. All orders placed here include a 3-inch CDR of previously unreleased hoot, not available elsewhere.
Dead Light
(What The ... - WHAT007) Used LP (one-sided) $12.00
Debut wax from this young band of Italians, now residing in Berlin. Five catchy, minimal tunes of noisy, surfing, churn-chord guitars, boy-and-girl vocals, anemic fuzz, the brittle and cold snap of a drum machine, keyboard haze, endless sexy echo and reverb. Silkscreen artwork and design by Paul Coors, which captures the electric thrill of hot and cold whips on the lonely body. Edition of 112.
The Glue That Holds The Kids Together
(What The ... - WHAT013) LP (one-sided) $16.00
Vinyl debut of long-running Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky improv unit centered around sax and electronics by Tim Schwallie (Wolverton Brothers) and doublebass and electronics by Scott Hisey. Over many years, various collaborators and members have coerced the group into stepping into and falling out of free improv, free funk, and free song modes. A highly picked sample of highlights from various line-ups is here, including Clayton "Chicken" Gunnels (The JBs), Mark Perry (Heevahava), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). Silkscreen cover designed by Paul Coors. Edition of 130.
JUSTIN LIEBERMAN / C. SPENCER YEH
Object Lessons
(What The ... - WHAT008) LP picture disc $25.50 (Out-of-stock)
Beginning with a shared love of sound poetry, psychedelic rock, Japanese scum noise, Japanese psychedelic rock, Object Lessons' itinerary embodies more present-time sensibilities: Lieberman's sculptural and multimedia work The Corrector's Custom Pre-Fab House (itself inspired by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown's 1972 examination of “the decorated shed,” Learning From Las Vegas), which includes a character inspired by Nobusuke Tagomi, from Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle. Created in the style of a Katamari video game, the program features texts on each object taking various forms such as objective accounts, plagiarized product descriptions, aesthetic meditations, poetry, short fiction, satire, and prose; these texts were then transformed into this a collaboration between Lieberman and Burning Star Core's C. Spencer Yeh. The result is one part Bruce Haack, another part Charlie Gocher -- a head-on collision you don't see every day. Full-color gatefold jacket. Limited edition. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2009
Caligula
(What The ... - WHAT014) LP (one-sided) $17.00
Rare vinyl outing by Amanda Warner (0th, Triangle, and techbrain / wingperson / producer for a number of bands and projects over many years). Here is an original version of "Caligula" with a "pre-capella" version as its companion. Maximum vocal harmony and beat, with synth lines twisting around vocal lines and harmonizing. Caligula, maximum pleasure in your house. Cut at 45 RPM so you can play it at 33 when you absolutely have to. Silkscreen cover designed by Paul Coors (the baby blue translucent ink on this is to die for). Edition of 138.
Live In Tokyo 1995
(What The ... - WHAT002) LP $13.50
A long-lost live set from California sound unit also known as Damion Romero, excavated from a heavy time for sound of such density and heaviness, in one of the heaviest zones on Planet Earth -- Tokyo, Japan. These sides are cut straight from chrome cassette to needle, so as to draw the very energy of analog spirit without the interference of digital approximation, and indeed it is absolute analog in these grooves you hear. A prime window into pure eyes-closed eclipsed darkness of the highest mental order, packaged in silkscreened covers with heavy-duty re-sealable polyethylene bags. Includes a reproduction of the original show flyer and a numbered photograph. Edition of 300.
Live In Nottingham
(What The ... - WHAT004) LP $25.00
Live collaboration by Wiese (to be played by Sasha Cohen in the upcoming film Noise Movie) and Yeh, in front of their best gear with loudspeakers and a room full of wanting Brits. Rude blast noises, deep-brain droning, twisting tape press record, vocals that are just torn-apart and strung up in electronic torture chambers. Recorded direct from the board for maximum clarity, detail and quality. Limited edition of 330 with insert and red silkscreened covers.