Is The Belly / In The Belly
(Gilgongo) LP $15.00
In this old fashioned jam session by Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia (Smegma, The Tenses), Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper (MSHR), Chiara Giovando (Harrius), Johannes Lund and Tobias Kirtstein, fluttering alto sax and calm, staccato trumpet slowly spelunk toward a center where organ, voice, homemade synth, radio, and percussion blend and find their way back to the nervous outer world. They converge with strange but riveting vocals, slide guitar and skipping record, mingled with the sounds of dinosaurs canoodling. Song forms rise and fall back against the river-like surface tension: a roaring tale is told, then slowly fades away to nothingness.
Another Side Of Bob Dylan
(Sundazed) Used LP $15.00
“The … procession of protest songs on The Times They Are A-Changin’ made for a rather uniform experience, [while on this 1964 album] each track has something unique and worthwhile to offer,” promises Evan Lublinski, “humorous interludes, striking poetic imagery, insightful lyrics…. [A] true masterpiece. “ Mono 2002 reissue on 180-gram vinyl. Sealed
Fabulous Diamonds
(Siltbreeze) Used LP $12.00
“Borne out of a tradition that lies somewhere between classic dub, experimentalism and post punk,” says Eliza Sarlos of Mess + Noise, “Fabulous Diamonds’ style ... and substance … come together in a hypnotic frenzy. Assembled amid high levels of delay, Nisa Venerosa and Jarrod Zlatic create a truly bewildering mix…, the hit you’ve been waiting for throughout this post post-punk melee we live in. Fabulous Diamonds present a world drenched in discordant jams stemming from a parallel universe of sonic intensity, one that picks up on the heritage embedded in post-punk, but recreates rather than rehashes the influence.” Sealed
FRANÇOIS BONNET / ANNE GUTHRIE / VIRGINIA OVERTON
Sculpture Gardens
(Future Audio Graphics) Used LP $15.00
Using hydroponic and contact microphones, Guthrie makes audible certain silent sounds present at Overton’s installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art, consisting of large aluminum ponds housing a variety of plant life and aerated by two silhouetted windmills, which in turn respond to the conditions of the Whitney’s fifth floor deck. Adjacent to this outdoor component and separated by a wall of large glass windows, a gallery space holds several sculptures made from reclaimed wood, everyday objects and metal pipes, among other materials. As fall turned to winter, it was reconfigured and the ponds were emptied and inverted, creating drumhead-like objects that further amplified their sonic possibilities. Guthrie’s work offers access to the inside and outside of the installation. The subsequent compositions delicately mix electronic treatments, French horn and synthesizer, furthering her interest in non-musical sounds and the natural acoustic phenomena of architectural space. Bonnet’s commissioned essay, “Emanations,” reconsiders the early avant-garde innovation of the found object in relation to the temporality of sound, revealing the impermanent, changing nature of both. This text suggests the category of art shares much in common with the mystery, uncertainty and environmental unpredictability of this installation. Hella interdisciplinary.
The Wide Weird World Of Henry Jacobs / The Fine Art Of Goofing Off
(Important) Used CD + DVD $15.00
The brilliantly sequenced CD cycles “through a kaleidoscopic array of sound bites that are alternately funny, charmingly nostalgic, bizarre, psychedelic and inexplicable,” notes Brainwashed. “From the odd verbal tennis of Jacobs and Ken Nordine … to a soft-spoken public radio DJ introducing … the ‘new sounds of musíque concrète,’ to the spooky psychedelic brain shivers of ‘Telephone Therapy,’ or the numerous excerpted bits of the wacky ‘Laughing String’ sketch, listeners unfamiliar with Jacobs’s work are in for a treat. Unlike [his] tape collage[s] from this period, Jacobs is unconcerned with formalism or overworking his sources too much…. [His] free-form approach [is] tuned toward less academic pursuits [with a] sensibility … informed by exotica and cartoon soundtracks, the radio landscape and early television…. [On] the TV programs on the included DVD, produced by Jacobs, animator Bob McClay and producer Chris Koch…, strange audio cues of various interviews and spoken-word bits set different primitive animations into motion, using a stream-of-consciousness editing style to meditate, albeit very abstractly, on the subject of leisure and leisurely activities. Stop-motion claymation, experimental film techniques, Terry Gilliam-style cutouts, subliminal image juxtapositions and psychedelic animations complement an eclectic soundtrack of music, jarring sound effects, and a series of narrators ruminating on leisure, delivering anecdotes and reading from funny ‘social engineering’ pamphlets. It’s undeniably reminiscent of early episodes of Sesame Street in its attempt to marry the surreal and psychedelic to family-friendly, educational programming.”
WILL GUTHRIE / JÉRÔME NOETINGER
Face Off
(Erstwhile) Used CD $10.00
An interactive duet with Guthrie on percussion, microphone and electronics; Noetinger on Revox tape machine and electronics. Sealed
Unstringed Guitars & Cymbals
(Blossoming Noise) Used CD $8.00
“Waterfalls of humming and squealing, carnival organs, windchimes, and blown-glass swan calls [flow out of the Reynols global ambassador’s] tortured axe,” notes Startling Moniker. “Making excellent use of a cymbal … he fashions layers of shimmering washes, a perfect environment for [the] rising and falling guitar clarion to inhabit. Sealed
Love Is Simple
(Young God) Used CD + DVD $7.00
Chaos, rock action, tribal bongo-banging, sentimental sing-alongs and pop gems galore. From 2007. Sealed
Rejoicing In The Hands
(Young God) Used CD $7.00
Unlike Banhart’s debut, his 2004 second album “was professionally recorded, and a few tracks feature … Angels of Light alums Thor Harris, Joe McGinty and Siobahn Duffy,” explains Pitchfork. “It’s far from slick, though, reeking of rustic, homemade charm.” With singing and writing both surpassing Oh Me Oh My, “his songs no longer veer into bizarro cadences or witchy vocal overdubs.” Rather than get pigeonholed as a “lo-fi eccentric…, the singer’s range of expression (and surprising delicacy) [gets] full justice.” Sealed
We Had A Few Sprinkles Today But Not Enough To Help Out The Garden
(Crippled Intellect Productions) Used CD $4.00
Treatments and sound manipulation by Blake Edwards. Deep, subterranean ringing textures. Flanged croaks and other textures from a microscopic universe. Low register thuds and tiny sounds deep in the distance. Quiet, tortured sounds with high-frequency intrusions. Stuttering, panned samples and hollow dings, reminiscent of harsher noise at a lower volume, but with a swirling, almost psychedelic quality. Almost-musical loops heard through reverberations and audio grime. Sealed
East Of The River Nile
(Jet Set) Used CD $15.00
A must-have classic, originally released in 1977 on the Message label, by one of Jamaica’s canonical reggae and dub musicians. Recorded in Lee “Scratch” Perry’s legendary Black Ark Studio and mixed by the Scientist of Sound King Tubby, backed by a first-rate band that includes Robbie Shakespeare on bass, drummer Aston “Family Man” Barrett, and guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith. This 2012 reissue delivers a nondub instrumental album — meditational with a dark undercurrent and a surreal atmosphere — that serves as the syncopated soundtrack of the Rasta nation. Sealed
Country & Watson
(Leiterwagen) Used CD $4.00
Ambience and textures, new wave hooks, freeform guitar, complex finger-picking, and more, recorded between 1995 and 1998 by the ex-Slovenly guitarist just as he had joined The Red Krayola. Guests include Bob Mothersbaugh, Brian Christopherson, Diana Watson, Erik Bluhm, Gabie Strong, Lynn Johnston, Mayo Thompson, Stephan Prina. From 2000. Sealed
Global Clone
(PacRec) Used CD $4.00
Five previously released cassette tracks: from Declawed Yellow Swans (Tone Filth); from Skaters split (Jyrk); from Sex With Girls split (DeathBombArc); two from Damage Yellow Swans (23 Productions). Sealed
Lemonade
(Parkwood) Used CD + DVD $11.00
Soulful R&B with an electro edge by this up-and-coming singer who sang on a string of regional hits by obscure girl-group Destiny’s Child and collaborates on occasion with Andy Samberg. Sealed
Way Out Yonder
(Sri Moonshine Music) CD $10.00
Spontaneous improvisations and compositions by iconic composer and minimalist pioneer Terry Riley (on piano, voice, melodica and electronics) and his guitarist / composer son Gyan Riley, at three live performances in Canada, Japan and the US.
Young And Restless
(Blossoming Noise) Used CD $5.00
Sixteen-plus minutes Los Angeles smog tones by Phil Blankenship and John Wiese. Sealed
Absolut Null Plunkt Live In Japan
(Important) Used CD $6.00
Stark pummeling fusion from 2003 by Zeni Geva founder KK Null and original Fushitsusha drummer Seijiro Murayama, combining elements of free jazz, heavy rock, industrial noise, glitch and free improv dynamics. Sealed.
Suspiria
(Rambling) CD $20.00
(Odeon) Used LP $50.00
Goblin’s second recording for cult horror director Dario Argento “is just as scary as the film itself, blending wailing electric guitar, whooping synthesizers, and screaming wordless cries into a spooky, bombastic sound…. [T]errifying even without the benefit of the film’s gruesome images.” LP is from 1977 with insert, no obi. CD is a 2014 remaster with nine bonus tracks, sealed.
Slicer
(Hanson - HN100) CD $11.00
(Orion Read) Used LP $10.00
Deep stuttering bass, high streams of electronics, rugged tape manipulation, horns, glass — just an enormous spectrum of sound. The calm intensity of John Olson, Nate Young and Aaron Dilloway’s wildly bizarre sonic experiments and masterful compositional moves contain some of the most minimal programming in their catalog while the editing and mastering are nothing short of inspired.
Severance
(Hospital - HOS254) CD $13.50
No Fun’s Giffoni defines his signature with compositional electronic music that melds analog drone with tonality of the past expressions and a collision of minimalist sequencer details on a pure electronic landscape.
Works 1958-1979
(Sub Rosa - SR178) CD $15.00
(Sub Rosa - SR178) Used CD $8.00
Hommage à John Cage (1958-1959), Étude for Pianoforte (1959-1960) and Simple (1961) are good examples of Paik's neo-dada music, de-structuration, and irreverent collage. Prepared Piano for Merce Cunningham (1977) captures an improvised performance on a de-tuned piano (it was later mixed and edited for use by Cunningham, but this raw, straight-to-tape version was favored by the Paik). Duett: Paik/Takis (1979), the only previously released piece (Edition Kölnischer Kunstverein 1979), is an improvisation on piano and voice, with Takis on his own metal sculptures.
Ready For The House
(Jackpot - CORWOOD 0739) LP $15.00
Beyond stark, beyond oblique, beyond outsider, the first Jandek LP (credited to The Units when it was originally released in 1978) explores musical territories no one knew existed, with just a hollowed-out voice and a lonely, detuned guitar. 2008 reissue of this peculiar, solitary, and strangely magnetic masterpiece.
Sujud
(Sublime Frequencies) LP $18.00
By weaving Indonesian folkloric moods with various shades of modern genre hybrids, Rully Shabara’s extreme vocals and Wukir Suryadi’s homemade instruments navigate one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word — tanah — which translates to “soil-ground-land-earth.” Shabara’s vocals conjure spirits from the soil; Suryadi’s new guitar pushes the sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects, creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes.
Heavy Traffic
(Moving Image Entertainment) LP $8.00
Reissue of 1973 original soundtrack to the cartoon film by Ed Bogas and Ray Shanklin. The recordings are a fusion of pop, jazz, soul and funk by Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’66, Chuck Berry, The Isley Brothers, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, and Merl Saunders.
LOREN MAZZACANE CONNORS / KEIJI HAINO
Vol. 2
(Menlo Park) LP $50.00
As the saying goes, “The sorrow flowing red flutters and it flies and it aims to overflow and aims at the sky to emerge. It is led toward the shining light and dazzle of light, the wailing black fills the red of sorrow and the red of sorrow pushes the lament of black. Each other’s passion counteracts each other’s color, and it is being purified to a transparent single tone like air like water. Examining that feeling, it is only a sad song — to the listener; it is the final tonic that tramples the last blow; it is clean water to wash away abominable creaks and obsession.”
On The Way
(Corwood) LP $60.00
Number seventeen in the canon, released in 1988. “Working within blues-rock realms,” notes Byree Colon, “this one features ‘real’ drums, bass, dual electric guitars, a possible guest vocalist on some tracks…. ‘I’ll Sit Alone and Think A Lot About You’ isn’t far from Skip Spence-like detachment. The most varied and easily-accessed Corwoodian brain-scrambler in a while....” Sealed
Heavy Afternoon Buzz / Late At Night A Day Lay
(Catsup Plate) LP (lathe cut) $75.00
“Broken into a pair of sidelong suites,” observe our friends at Arthur, “this album is a pure experimental response to the dictates of archaic huzz, generated entirely by an old tone generator and a broken digital delay unit. A variety of apparent loops are blended in shifts, and the whole moves through the air in your head like a buttery soft saw blade, slowly unwinding its way across the room. There are parts that have a weird similarity to some of No Pussyfooting, but let’s assume that’s unintentional.” Numbered edition of 50
Mammal Insect Marriage
(Ludwig Van Ear) LP $30.00
The lyrics of the opening track of this 1983 album by Jay Tiller and Neil Socol “immediately make it clear you’ve checked into a real hellhouse of collegiate weasel weirdness: ‘I saw a car accident near the zoo / There were mangled bodies all over / I felt sick, but I found a finger / I still have it in my freezer.’ In total, fourteen warped and funny B-movie haikus. Brilliant and extraordinary.” From 1983. Sealed
Abacus Incognito
(Alga Marghen) LP $18.00
Neo-primitive-suburban-folk music recorded in Temple City and Pasadena 1974 and 1975 by Ace Farren Ford, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Cheez-It-Ritz Chuck-O Fats (D.K.), Amazon Bambi, Dennis Duck, Craig, Jason, Peter, Bev, and a few others, all doing their best to avoid song forms. Fearless group improvisational vocals shape-shift through operatic show tunes, spirit visions and visits to a delirium motel room, contrasted by the title track featuring poetry by Dennis Duck (Human Hands, Dream Syndicate) accompanied by the family stereo console record player / radio unit and conventional instruments to create “a strangely unique non-jamming sound.” Edition of 200
Technical Ecstacy
(Earmark) LP $15.00
1996 reissue of the 1976 album that, though ambitious, succeeds at nothing more that documenting The Great Unraveling. 180-gram vinyl.
Country Blues
(Revenant) 2xLP $40.00
Over sixty minutes of music including Boggs’s twelve tracks from 1927 and 1929 and five previously unreleased outtakes. Clear vinyl from 2004. Sealed
GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION / POSSET
Obedience To Authority
(Chocolate Monk - choc.452) CDR $8.00
Huffed synth bubbles float over soapy tape? Language-collapse injected inside a plump proto-punk donut like so much unsavory butter? It’s them California goofballs Barbara Manning and S. Glass holding claws across the ocean with the bristly Joe Murray. Whatever the dance steps, this is one scatty reel; arms and legs flying, with the good whisky getting spilled all over the parquet floor. If you have a fancy, lie low in your scratcher and drink it all in. Yes, freak, gobble it down, this rich clotted draft. Leave sense at the door and wipe a flannel across your knotted brow. Layering (filo-like) ouch sounds become a universal “um.” It’s pure and simple. It’s dream weapon ammunition. Edition of 60
Pterodactyl Bunker
(Chocolate Monk - choc.451) CDR $8.00
For twenty years Dai Coelacanth has been masquerading as a Graveyard Alligator, or a Radio Alligator. Hanging around bus stops. Shouting the odds. Hear him now: “Cannibal King and her friend The Colonel shook loose in an imaginary dream. Whatever the situation, there could be no suspension of broadcast. Suzi handed out nose-plugs. Don’t touch my legs, you creep. I don’t have to tell you anything.” Don’t cheat yourself by not listening to Pterodactyl Bunker in its entirety. Cheaters never win. Numbered edition of 60
II
(Chocolate Monk - choc.453) CDR $8.00
Were the second ChocoMo album by Kev Nickells (violin voice, objects), Chris Parfitt (flute, clarinet, percussion, electronics), and Al Strachan (cornet, electronics, field recordings, found sound) presented to you, me, and the spastic Mennonite as the soundtrack to a film about a sleep-deprived desert castaway struggling with mixed feelings about a residual tail, no one would blame either of us for asking if the rescue UFO at the end seemed realistic. Which is something, given how condemnation of the other is one of our era’s most versatile social currencies. Not to oversell it, but the trio’s ten tracks here are kind of astounding in the consistent economy of their journeys from disparate zones such as distressed whining, daxophonic yoib, synthetic dream-theory, tense tribal curlicues, pizzeria tragedy, and crepuscular harmonics. Without a forced or unnatural move anywhere, Psanck II slips unscathed between the ribbons of razor wire that separate blue chip avant garde chamber ensembles from the nonmusical and unwashed ineptitudes who jostle household objects for a living. Personal experience allows me to assure anyone who may wonder whether residence in the latter is as comfortable a hometown as one could ask for (it is); still, Psanck’s epistles from the outside world are more welcome than guilt-free cinnamon rolls. Edition of 60