ALAN SORRENTI-COME UN VECCHIO IN INCENSIERE ALL'ALBA DI UN VILLAGIO DESERTO, LP, 1973, ITALY

Transcendent and phantasmagorical work from one of the premier visionaries of the Italian cosmic rock continuum that includes the likes of Franco Battiato, Pierrot Lunaire, Franco Leprino and Arturo Stalteri (to name check just a few), and his work here on "Comme Un Vecchio...", while absent some of the blasted rockist momentum of his debut LP "Aria" ripples and shudders across your consciousness with such palpable psychotropic force, a contact high is almost a forgone conclusion. The deeply folk-inflected material that comprises side A beckons with a profound warmth and humanity to it that compares favorably to Lucio Battisti's sublime mid 70's work on Anima Latina; Sorrenti's wildly keening vocals soaring over these components to completely throat-lump-inducing effect, but it's the side-long title track spread across side B that truly renders this album a holy grail of the scene. Beginning with ecstatic wordless caterwauling appended to atonal piano maneuvers, scything electronics and ritualistic percussion roiling and tumbling across the stereo spectrum like some mediterranean cousin of Igor Wakhevitch, these hair raising elements gradually coalesce at the half-way mark into a round of deliriously emotive acoustic guitar driven rock hysteria wrenching enough to drop you to your knees. I for one am humbled in it's presence.

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GROUP 1850-LIVE, LP, 1974 (RECORDED: 1969), NETHERLANDS

Though I tend to think of their 1967 debut release "Agemo's Trip To Mother Earth" as being this Dutch psych unit's piece de resistance (and one of the finest psych albums of the whole era, for my money), this live album from two years hence is a thoroughly heady experience in it's own right. Recorded in the immediate wake of their follow-up missive "Paradise Now" and featuring substantially altered versions of two of the tracks that appeared therein, "Live" roils with a wild and infectious kinetic energy. If Agemo's Trip To Mother Earth was informed by Piper-era Floyd, the following few years found them reformatting their palette toward the more beefy and overtly rockist; both "Paradise Now" and "Live" at times flying a similar flag to that wielded by Guru Guru in their heyday, with brief roundelays into almost Santana-ish territory at times. That said, the glorious 15+ minute "Veradering" exits the aforesaid continuum entirely, free floating into the kosmiche ether on a tide of shuddering electronic waves and abstract guitar energy in a way that precedes and virtually surpasses much krautrock.

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V/A-CREEPING DAWN VOL. 2, 4x3" CDR'S, 2006, VARIOUS

As promised, following my post of the first volume of this hyper limited 50 copy edition compendium on the notable Students Of Decay label, here's volume two. This set covers quite a bit of aesthetic ground and I'll proceed by assessing the contents in the order the discs are presented in. First up is Ohio noisician Mike Shiflet. I'll freely confess that I'm no one's idea of a noise advocate, so I'll politely recuse myself from passing judgement on his Haters-indebted parched plain of seismic grit. If this sorta thing is your bag, this is as good a sonic pumice stone to abrade your cilia with as any, I 'spose. Next up is Atlanta, Georgia native David Kirby (who has had a handful of other titles issued on this imprint) here trafficing in finely honed tactile soundfields wrought from shimmering resonances, assertive hums, and tintinnabulating tones that'll do funny things to your perceptual mechanisms. Disc three here comprises work by the long time Bay Area experimental operator Robert Horton, who has been ferreting around in the back alleys of the avant garde since the late 70's, though lately he's found a substantial second life in the wilds of the freak folk/New Weird America CDR culture, and the four tracks that comprise his "Ritual Ingestion Of Insect Substance" EP are easily the most exciting of the lot here; his densely interwoven but profoundly musical thickets of buzzing strings, clattering chimes, bowed/scraped metals and windy atmospherics suggestive of some of Kemialliset Ystavat's peak moments. Perfectly complimenting Horton's maneuvers is the lovely final disc here courtesy of Alligator Crystal Moth, one of the numerous non de plume's of the extremely prolific Foxglove/Foxy Digitalis label head Brad Rose, this one being his collaboration with Michael Donnely of Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood. Equally suggestive of the gnomic forest improv psych shenanigans of the contempo Finnish scene as Horton's doings are, but plied in a more loose, addled and expansive fashion, it's beguiling and accomplished work. Volume Three of this series will follow in the not-too-distant future.

CONTENTS

Disc one: Mike Shiflet-Puritan Heartbreaker
Disc two: David Kirby-Shrieks Against The Glass
Disc three: Robert Horton-Ritual Ingestion Of Insect Substance
Disc four: Alligator Crystal Moth-Cow's Town Ornamental

Get Mike Shiflet-Puritan Heartbreaker Here

Get David Kirby-Shrieks Against The Glass Here

Get Robert Horton-Ritual Ingestion Of Insect Substance Here

Get Alligator Crystal Moth-Cow's Town Ornamental Here

THE COOKING ERRCHESTRA-LIVE AT ICC 2-20-2000, CD, 2000, JAPAN

The first of four utterly bizarre and singular releases on the Japanese Cha-Bashira label (run by Cooking Errchestra mastermind Pol Mahlow) that I'll be presenting in the coming days, Live At ICC is one continuous and seamless 42+ minute assault on your equilibrium. The wonderfully queasy and gelatinously slippery methodology that underpins The Cooking Errchestra's heaving and sighing instant constructs is a marvel to behold, pitching and groaning in comically wobbly fashion like some bastard stepchild of L.A. Free Music Society vets Solid Eye at their most destabilized.

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PSYCHATRONE RHONEDAKK-THE SUB-UNDERGROUND TAPES, LATHE-CUT LP/CDR SET, 2004 (RECORDED: 1994-1999), USA

With a recent release of 1996-era material appearing on the Qbico imprint, this Pennsylvania native's rough hewn and modest home brewed kosmiche moves have garnered a substantially higher profile. This 50 copy lathe-cut polycarbonate disc documents some long lost 90's era tape material, though the pressing was evidently dire enough to require them to append a CDR from the master tapes to the jacket (the version you'll hear here). Whatever the case though, Psychatrone Rhonedakk's grasp of the fundamentals of acid soundscaping is solid; his glazed arsenal of distended guitar shimmer 'n' drone, syrupy synth slurry, watery loops and silvery electronic atmospherics amalgamating on the palate in a most agreeable manner.

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PROYECTO "A"-S/T, LP, 1970, SPAIN

Aesthetically situated somewhere between Vampiros Lesbos exploitation psych, Tropicalia acid shimmy, library music groove and Massiera's haunted funhouse, this brain burning and exceedingly obscure Spanish marvel (evidently some sorta concept album about the planets of our solar system) has systematically reduced some of the most heavyweight collectors of my acquaintance to spluttering and drooling in disbelief upon exposure. Your new favorite album...I shit you not.

***************NEW LINK POSTED SEPTEMBER 2012***************

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PSUEDOELEKTRONIXX-C'EST LE TON...QUI FAIT LA MUSIQUE, TAPE, 1982, GERMANY

Stripped and punchy mutant funky minimal synth (or, as the cover would have it, "free funk no wave") from the deepest recesses of Neue Deutsche Welle tape culture. Pseudoelektronixx pitch their sonic tents over forcefully fore-grounded funk-a-poppin' bass machinations, and flank it with cheaply clonking rhythm boxes, synth blip and the requisite hectoring vocalese. If this all sounds like it'd be somewhat textbook NDW, well...perhaps it is, but though the opening salvo of this 4 track EP isn't likely to raise too many pulses, this does work up a nice head of steam for those sold on this scene.

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ISLAND-PICTURES, LP/CD, 1977, SWITZERLAND

Housed in a striking H.R. Giger sleeve, this Swiss prog crew concoct dense and turbid suites of exceedingly Van Der Graaf Generator-ish moody convolution. Much of what is transpiring here is sensational, if never quite achieving the sense of profound cathartic release of Hammill and co. Alas, amid this brilliance are some truly squirm-worthy vocals that'll have you wishing you could shove a sock in this cat's mouth, though fortunately, said vocals are largely kept to a minimum. Note: despite the LP sleeve being pictured, this is taken from the mid-90's CD reissue, which is both re-mastered and fleshed out with a superb 23 minute bonus track, which finds them pursuing similar ends but in a rather less claustrophobic fashion.

Get pt. 1 Here

Get pt. 2 Here

OLEG KOSTROW-TARTUF, CD, 2005, RUSSIA

A follow-up to my post of this Messer Fur Frau Muller member's late 90's solo debut "The Great Flashing Tracks From Iwona", "Tartuf" finds this Russian avatar of the blithely absurd plowing a similarly cartoonish furrow to that found on Iwona, but it's a finely honed furrow filled with bite-sized morsels of concentrated camp and the finest schtick money can buy and largely absent the penchant for preciousness that sometimes marred his debut.

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HEIMCOMPUTER 80-UNSERE MODERNE WELT, CDR, 2002, GERMANY

On the heels of my post of their Systemfehler debut CDR, here's the follow up doink attack from these German mavens of post-Neue Deutsche Welle 8-bit video-gamey synth blurt, administered with a enjoyably nasty overloaded granularity to it that occasionally makes them sound like digital hardcore for the prepubescent set.

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VIRTUALLY ALL REPLACEMENT RAPIDSHARE LINKS ARE NOW POSTED

Discounting a bare handful of titles that I need to re-up (maybe 10 or so) all other dead links (many hundreds of them from both Jim's and my posts) have now been replaced with functional Rapidshare links. In the few instances where rapidshare links were unavailable, these links have been replaced with Zshare, Badongo or Megaupload links. And now I shall go fall on my face....

WOW...SUDDENLY SHAREBEE IS WORKING FOR MAC USERS...THEY'RE NOW THE OBVIOUS CHOICE...

Thanks to the prompting of one Cheeba on the message boards, I decided to give Sharebee another chance, in case they've finally resolved their longstanding problem with allowing mac users to use their system. Well, as it happens, they have indeed! I'm much more comfortable going with an established provider like them then using a largely untested one like Fileducky, so...er...THANKS Cheeba! This particular issue has now been thoroughly resolved...

ALL EXISTING MASMIRROR LINKS ARE BEING REPLACED BY RAPIDSHARE LINKS

Today was the straw that broke the camel's back. You may have noticed that virtually all the Massmirror links on MS are coming up as "file not found". Whether this is another temporary snafu, or the actual end of those links, my patience with Massmirror has come to an end. Starting in a moment, I'm beginning the arduous process of inserting all the rapidshare links I've saved from within the Massmirror posts before they went down again in place of the original Massmirror links. I'll let all of you know when the process is complete....

LE GONG DU BALAYEUR-PAS IMPORTANT, LP, 1981, FRANCE

An exceptionally obscure album from the waning days of France's prog glory run (which continued to go from strength to strength years after other countries prog scenes died off or largely turned to cheese), Le Gong Du Balayeur can initially be a somewhat difficult nut too crack, with their curious conflation of electrified folk themes (sometimes quite close in spirit to Belgium's Nuit Caline A La Villa Mon Reve), and Zappa-by-way-of-Komintern whimsy taking several spins to wrap your brain around, but the rewards for the diligent are ample.

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QUARTETO 1111-S/T, LP, 1970, PORTUGAL

Following Jim's post of their archival "A Lenda Do Quarteto 1111" CD, which compiled together their various singles and EP's, here's the debut LP from this pre-Jose Cid Portuguese outfit, whose sun dappled and dewily dulcet acid folk style slowly cascades over you like a warm balm. There are occasional bursts of rock energy sprinkled here and there, but most of this is content to drift by like some gorgeously heat warped mirage, in a way that favorably compares with both Brazil's Karma and France's Total Issue. A thing of rare beauty.

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MCH BAND-GIB ACHT!, CD, 1993, CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Excellent and almost textbook anxiety riddled R.I.O. moves in the grand Czech dissident style from this long lived (seemingly still extant) unit led by guitarist Mikolas Chadima, whose finely wrought sturm und drang is fraught with a weight and solemnity that's very much of a piece with their contemporaries in The Plastic People.

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MIKE LANGLIE-TWINK, CD, 2002, USA

A perfect companion piece to the Gangpol Und Mit EP also posted today ('cause I suddenly can't seem to get enough absurdity in my aural diet), from this Indiana-based electronic musician and illustrator. The soundtrack to the children's story book it accompanies, this CD corrals together a raft of eccentric and toy instruments and crafts them into waggish little vignettes fashioned from optigans, autoharps, accordians, theremins, xylophones, banjos, musical saws and hurdy-gurdys (to name just a few) and various toys. Less bent and more naif then Gangpol Und Mit's similarly oriented material (accompanying correspondingly less bizarre imagery), this is still a seriously fun grab bag of technicolor aural geegaws.

Get pt. 1 Here

Get pt. 2 Here

GANGPOL UND MIT-VOUS AVEZ PROFIT D'INSTANT COMMUNICATION AVEC TOUT LE MONDE, MP3 EP, 2005, FRANCE

Giddily madcap instrumental dada electropop is the order of the day with this super fun French duo, who also traffic in flawlessly complimentary cartoon illustrations (viewable on their site Here ) , and whose musical M.O. sometimes glances off their contemporaries in Dat Politics, but absent the razor-y edge that those folks cut their camp with. Fans of Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Oleg Kostrow and Nova Huta (whom they perhaps share the strongest affinity with) should be in hog heaven with this brief MP3 EP, available once upon a time exclusively for download from their website and now brought back to life here. Note: I don't recall this EP coming equipped with graphics, but if I'm wrong and anyone has them, please feel free to send 'em on to me...

Get it Here

MASSMIRROR IS BACK UP AND RUNNING AGAIN! (AND YES, I DID OVERREACT...)

Wow...seeing Massmirror back up and running today upon waking up may well be the biggest relief of my life! I'll freely admit that I overreacted, but they've been having all the signs lately of a site that's going under, with their mirror sites inaccessible, their blog having disappeared, uploads repeatedly failing when attempting to use their service and multiple links going down several days ago, (which is what prompted me to start collecting the rapidshare links from them in the first place), so with a system-wide failure ocurring yesterday, well...I doubt I'm the only one that thought they'd finally bit it. I'm deleting yesterdays post, so it doesn't show up right near the top of a google search when someone keys in the word massmirror, as have so many other of my massmirror announcement posts. New posts of mine will be up by tomorrow...

SCREW SHAREONALL...I'LL BE USING FILEDUCKY FROM NOW ON UNLESS THERE'S A COMPELLING REASON NOT TO

Having just visited the hippy-djkit blog, I was rather alarmed to note that they've had
a vast number of the posts they've made using Shareonall deleted after some malicious turd evidently complained to them. Well...all I can say is fuck that nonsense! Shareonall can go shit in their hat. I'm just relieved that I discovered this before using their service for more than one round of posts. Unless anyone out there has horror stories about Fileducky, that's what I'll now be using for future posts.

ENERGY-S/T, LP, 1974, SWEDEN

Wedding hard rock grit to their jazz rock chops, the stylistic choices made by these obscure Swedes have more simpatico with Yugoslavian underground fusion efforts of the era (think Den Za Den, September, R. M. Tocak, Tihomir "Pop" Asanovic et.al) than anything their countrymen were getting up to, and it's the precise sort of jazz rock attack that's increasingly been occupying prime position at vdoandsound HQ.

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SOLID EYE-ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD AND STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, CD, 1994, USA

Following my post of their Live At Tokuzo 2002 (as well as solo works by members Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer and Steve Thomsen), here's the completely essential debut statement from this landmark L.A. Free Music Society outfit. Between the three of them, these fine gents have carved out a universe of deliciously askew sonics that in a sane world, hepsters would be building shrines to. Well...count my repeated spiels about their collective brilliance as virtual bricks in said shrine, with "Electromagnetic Field And Stream Of Consciousness" occupying a central tier of it. Solid Eye was essentially the continuation of the demented tape loop based work initiated by Potts and Hammer in their Dinosaurs With Horns project (apparently also still a going concern, as evidenced by the new release of theirs on Melon Explorer), only with the addition of ex-Monitor member Steve Thomsen adumbrating the sound with his mysterious synthetic interventions, and the delirious brew of the queasy, wheezy, zany and faux spooky they concoct out of antique synths, optigans, and loops, loops and more loops is a dizzying and magical thing to behold.

Get pt 1 Here


Get pt 2 Here

TRANSIT EXPRESS-OPUS PROGRESSIF, LP, 1975, FRANCE

Second album of exquisitely searing, soaring and synth drenched proggified fusion in the grand French tradition of Carpe Deim, Atoll and X-Tet from these unheralded maestros, which also glances off the more lyrical dimension of Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever and Peregio.

***************NEW LINK POSTED OCTOBER 2012***************

Get it here

***NOTE: THERE'S A MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINK IN THE COMMENT FIELD*** 

NIMAL-VOIX DE SURFACE, LP/CD, 1990, VARIOUS

This multi-national all star R.I.O. outfit culls together the monster talents of Momo Rossel of Swiss masters Debile Menthol, Bratko Bibic of Slovenian art rockers Begnagrad and Tom Cora (R.I.P) and Pippin Barnett, whose work together in Curlew and separately in Skeleton Crew, No Safety and The Orthotonics helped define the Downtown NY sound of the mid to late 80's, Cora's whinnying approach to cello technique in particular taking center stage here for a sound whose skewed and ethno-tinged effervescence elicits strong comparisons with both Sweden's mighty Samla Mammas Manna and Fred Frith circa Gravity.

Get pt 1 Here


Get pt 2 Here

KEIJO-SOON WITH THE SUN, CDR, 2004, FINLAND

Gorgeously glazed Eastern inflected kosmiche blissouts from one of Finland's prime freak folk movers, and next to his work with Kheta Hotem, this may well be the penultimate statement in his vast discography.

Get it Here

Got to say goodbye for a while.

Dear friends
this was my last bunch of posts for the next 6 weeks.Due to moving to a new house i will not have fast internet connection for about 5 or six weeks so i won't be able to make new posts.Sorry for that.Promise that will returnh with more rare stuff. Also friends who want to send something via snail mail please don't do so as my address changes. I will inform you for new address as soon as possible.Eric though will moderate comments (i will try to do so from time to time too).
Wishing to all of you a nice summer and will be glad to see you all back when i return.

Jim Mutantsounds

Roger Roger-4 LPs,1970s,France

Chatta Mooga Choo Choo(1976)

Musique Idiote(1971)

Gags a Go Go (1970)

Sounds Industrial (1968)

Roger Roger (5 August 1911 - 12 June 1995) was a French film composer and bandleader.
Born at Rouen, Normandy, Roger started composing for films in the 1930s, and was responsible for the famous pantomime sequences in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis (1944). He also performed and composed music for several European radio stations, including Radio Luxembourg, Radio 37 and Europe 1.
After the Second World War, Roger became a composer of library music, i.e. music designed to evoke a particular mood in a film or television production. Much of his output became available via Chappell Music, and Roger also went into partnership with Frank Chacksfield to work on several projects for the BBC.
He died in Paris in 1995. Since his death, renewed interest in light music has seen several CD albums released, both in dedicated albums and in compilations, notably of test card music, where some of Roger's music was used by the BBC in the 1970s.

From Wikipedia

Roger Roger is also known as Cecil Leuter.These are 4 of his most representave LPs .Enjoy moog weirdness turning to martini bar lounge music turning to groovy psych tunes.

get them here and here

F/I -Why Not Now?... Alan!,LP/CD,1987/2002,USA

"Their first full-length record, first released in '87 on RRR, F/i this time was Brian Wensing, Richard Franecki, Steve Zimmerman, Greg Kurczewski, Jan Schober and Tom Schnier. The title "Number #27" suggests that variations on these themes have been in process for some time, and the many recordings that have become available support that, though I detect some weary irony in the title as well. Dave Lang's liner notes describe the mood here as "lumbering sloth"...why should I try to put it any differently? Hell, you wouldn't even need these reviews, if you were to seek out his on-line writings - this is an "official" review, and is expected to be less biased or more critical, but I'm mainly in the same head-space as Dave here...though their rock material is far more powerful than their beginnings in the pure subversion of the noise scene. "QR" is right back to that era in spirit - purely harsh electronically-processed aural experimentation. "Nothing More Than a Hoax" is the perfect marriage of the two basic eras. The entire 10-minute track is perfectly fluid, yet cuts back and forth twixt samples/instinctive avant-bashing and the ol' lumbering British-Tribal sloth-rock, accompanied by radio samples based on broadcasts regarding the AIDS epidemic. There's an effect that brilliantly (or perhaps coincidentally) simulates a car-horn, foreshadowing a later track. This is one of the pieces that has appeared previously on CD, RRR's "Out of Space, Out of Time" F/i compilation, as has "Electric Waltz", which is a noisy but pleasantly spacey...waltz...with fuzz-guitar soloing and elusive stratospheric keys adhering to the basic 1-2-2 beat. "Zombie Theme 2" is a powerful, somewhat meandering, snare-tom-keyboard bit that wavers just at the edge of time, never quite falling off that old cliff. "Zombie Theme 3" is as obnoxiously experimental as anything from phase one, even less coherent, a drunken post-industrial behemoth faltering through an abandoned junkheap, leaning on car-horns...actually recorded in a parking lot. This is not actually music to anyone's ears, I suppose, except those of the drivers (musicians) heard giggling during the fade-out. Next is an alternate take on "Observation (The Eye at the Top of the Pyramid)". The version on the Out of Space CD holds my allegiance, perhaps due more to familiarity, but this one no doubt gets fairly up there. Again, credit to Dave Lang for saving the official reviewer some effort, for "beauty churn" can't be bettered. F/i in eight minutes build mechanically but masterfully from sloth to ecstatic speed, guitars and synth laugh lovingly, struggling to keep up. (OK, I had to try...). We conclude with another take on "Threshold", another 8-minutes of beatific space circles."

From Aural Innovations

First LP by these space /industrial electronic noisesters!A monster of psyched out space noise!Any of their 1983-1990 tape releases rips will be much appreciated!

get it here