Sunday, July 31, 2011

ONE WEEK DELAY ON RELEASE OF VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION & BRAD LANER-TRANSCONTINENTAL CONSPIRACY-FULLY REMASTERED CD REISSUE WITH BONUS TRACK





Just a small update to let you all know that the scheduled remastered re-release of our Transcontinental Conspiracy CD with Brad Laner (as well as Mercury Rev folks) that's been brought about by the Polish label Niklas is about a week delayed in its release but should be available to order worldwide via the Polish distributor Serpent by early next week.

NOTE: THIS IS NOW AVAILABLE TO ORDER INTERNATIONALLY FROM Serpent

SWARA SAMRAT-LOTTERY OF MEMORIES, LP, 1979, GERMANY



Damn fine and hideously rare Krautrockin' action originally privately issued by the band for their circle of friends in an edition of 85 and finally reissued by Coloured Rain (who've also issued Messr. Samrat's latter day releases) in an edition of 222 copies. I hear overtones of Gunter Schickert, Tyll's Sexphonie album and even a bit of Uli Trepte's material from the Hot On Spot/In Between split with Guru Guru. Heady company to be sure and this does fall short of some of the lofty peaks hit by those those three high water marks of the Kraut-o-sphere, but Swara's still thrown a big floppy velvet hat into the maw of the stoned immaculate with this one regardless.


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V/A-SWISSOTIC COMMUNE DOCUMENT, CDR, 2003 (RECORDED: 1995), SWITZLERLAND



More claustrophobic and cacamamie audio contortions from the Swiss freak fringe. I've spent some time doling out and expounding upon the doings of the berserk aktionists associated with the Schimpfluch label, including Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock and all their offshoots and accomplices. This CDR on Chocolate Monk reissues a tape compendium from their prime 90's era and offers a perfect window into this particular cabal's asylum antics, with all involved parties trafficking in a similar breed of dadaist perversity cross-cut by vectors of carnage. Who needs music when you can have a whoopee cushion filled with razors?

1. Dave Phillips-(27.11.'95)
2. Psychic Rally-(Eb.er/Lanz)
3. Sudden Infant-Creme Catalnn
4. unknown artist-(Traditional Action)
5. Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock-(.Mist)
6. From Slutland-S.Hit
7. 3 1/2-Untitled
8. Wash Your Brains-(No. 3)
9. V + G-Untitled
10. Aliphoth-Koken Embrolsakas
11. R&G w/Peter Pervers-Untitled
12. Celeste Urech-Untitled
13. Fear Of God-My Hands Deep In Your Guts '95
14. Rudolf Eb.er-(-)

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VAGTAZO HALOTTKEMEK-ORIAS TER! (GIANT SPACE!), LP, 1994, HUNGARY


This was the fourth outing for this self described "shamanic hardcore" unit from Hungary (known in english as The Galloping Coroners) and the last of my three shares of their work. Giant Space follows on from their third outing Hammering On The Gates Of Nothingness, which garnered them considerably wider exposure via it's release on Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, with the production here helping to open up their sound (for better and worse) from the blanketing strafed thunder of their initial outings into something a bit more shaded and nuanced, though the pursuit of purification via cathartic hysteria is still a paramount concern.

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MICHEL REDOLFI-NAUSICAA-BANDE ORIGINALE DE L'EXPOSITION, CD, 1991, FRANCE


Following up on my recent post of his extraordinary Jungle CD, here's another bout of glistening mystery sonics from this French electronic musician best known for his underwater concerts and their associated albums on Ina-GRM and Hat Hut. It's a theme that continues to be echoed here, though the sub-aquatic concerns at hand (from some sorta aquatic themed installation) seems to be oceans rather than pools. These are both amongst the most glassily digital sounding of Redolfi's recordings and also the ones that stray closest to New Age-y territory, but there's enough filtered and tonally shaded peculiarity to even the most tranquil bits that keeps it all in check, while the alternately gassy and fizzy minimalist expanses of tracks like Traversee Des Abysses and Observatoire Des Crustaces seem to inadvertently anticipate isolationist music.

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Sunday, July 17, 2011

PRE-RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT FOR VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION & BRAD LANER-TRANSCONTINENTAL CONSPIRACY-FULLY REMASTERED CD REISSUE WITH BONUS TRACK



In conjunction with the new Polish label Niklas, I'm pleased to finally announce the imminent CD re-release of the first of Vas Deferens Organization's two collaborations with Medicine/Steaming Coils/Electric Company mastermind Brad Laner. Transcontinental Conspiracy not only marked our first collaboration with Laner, but it also contains contributions from three members of the legendary Mercury Rev (Grasshopper, Suzanne Thorpe and Jason Russo). This 15 year anniversary edition has been dramatically remastered by Vas Deferens Organization and comes equipped with both an exclusive and brand new 10 minute VDO & Laner track from 2010 called Scheming Foils and with brand new packaging design courtesy of the fine folks at Niklas, who've made this all possible.

They've described this album thusly on their site: "An absolutely must-have avant-rock classic of the 90s., one of the best albums of its kind, where advanced studio sonic experimentation meets refined influences of Faust and Can, funk, electronics, breakbeats and Dadaist humour – and results in long, crazy, multi-layered suites – a quintesence of what we are now accustomed to call post-rock…"

You can download one minute long samples in full .wav audio of three of these tracks here, to give you a better sense of its remastered sound quality and to absorb what lies in wait with the bonus track.

The official release date for this CD is July 31st, 2011. It will be available at that date to order worldwide from Polish distributors Serpent. A list of further distributors will be made available on the Mutant Sounds announcement on the day of it's official release. Wholesale and distributor inquiries should be directed to Monotype Records.

A full press release for this album can be downloaded via the above Niklas link.

PETER CATHAM-A MAN'S MOUTH, LP, 1987, USA


Epic private press art damage from this terminally overlooked left field L.A. character. This was Catham's one LP after a string of tapes and delineates a specific and very special zone of song form detournement, triangulating a stance here that's one part post-Residential pop hermeticism of in the rarified vein of Steaming Coils, The Freshly Wrapped Candies and The History Of Unheard Music, one part narrative-intensive minimal synthiness ala John Bender and Douglas Bregger and one part deconstructed sprechtstimme spew and rhythm box splutter ala Craig Burk. This is singularly fried and ingenious work that truly begs for a rediscovery.

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SYMPATHY NERVOUS-NO MORE EXPO, TAPE, 198(?), JAPAN


This flabbergasting and impossible to find minimal synth tape is one of the absolute crown jewels of of this scene, readily besting their already superb work in this vein from their far more well known self titled Vanity label LP from 1980 that Jim shared way back near the dawn of MS. On this privately issued cassette from around the same time (no idea if it precedes or follows their LP), Yoshihumi Niinuma and friends take the Trans Europa Express straight from Sky Records outfit Tyndall's doorstep to the purgatorial zones of Monoton, taffy stretching and filter fucking this template into tweakier and more dystopian shapes as they go.

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NIK RAICEVIC-HEAD, LP, 1970, USA


Recording variously as Nic Raicevic, Nik Raicevic and Nik Pascal, this L.A. based cosmonaut (three of whose albums Jim posted on MS way back in early '07) really lacquers on the gurgling kosmiche high drama on this very brief LP, with the three tellingly titled tracks here (Cannabis Sativa, Methedrine and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) often coming very close in spirit to both Gunner Moller Pedersen's similarly themed Stoned: An Electronic Symphony and Tangerine Dream's Alpha Centauri, which this manages to anticipate by a full year.

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JON ROSE-FORWARD OF SHORT LEG, LP, 1987, AUSTRALIA


Following on from last round's Relative Band salvo, here's more waggish Aussie improv probings, with all-star avant violinist/cellist/string antagonist Jon Rose using this LP to lay out a cross-section of his outwardly-bound ensembles of the period, pitting himself here against formidable improvising sparring partners from all four corners of the globe, with the likes of David Moss, Ellliott Sharp, Wayne Horvitz and Christian Marclay providing the sonic markers of Downtown NY improv praxis and the UK wing of the non-idiomatic improv spectrum represented by folks like Paul Rutherford, Roger Turner, John Russell, Maggie Nicols and Evan Parker along with a bevy of other worldwide operatives. Amidst these unfettered dialogues, you'll also find a 40's-era recording of Aussie jazz violinist Jo "Doc" Rosenberg appended. Why? 'Cause Jon said so.

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SLEEPY JOHN-S.T., LP, 1970, USA


One of the top tier releases on the much vaunted but somewhat erratic archival psych collector label Rockadelic and certainly one of their better latter day discoveries, though the sequencing of this album wrongfoots this thundering Washington State hard rockish psych unit a bit by front-loading the dated organ-grinding "River" ahead of the snarling slab of inventively distended acid thunder that is "Nothing". True, you'll need to negotiate a small patch of enervated Procal Harum-ish organ mustiness on the direct heels of that, but stick with it, as what follows is a deep trove of worthiness, with the best bits of smoked out heaviness here evoking Lagger Blues Machine, Julian Jay Savarin and Clear Blue Sky.

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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

FUTURO ANTICO-LIVE, 198(?), UNRELEASED, ITALY


Continuing on from my posts of material by the crucial 70's Italian ethnic trance ensemble Aktuala, here's the unit Aktuala member Walter Maioli would go on to form alongside one Riccardo Sinigaglia after departing that outfit. In concord with Sinigaglia (who'd go on to form Recommended Records recording artists The Doubling Riders) and African vocalist/percussionist Gabin Dabere as well as a pair of ethnic percussionists named Kala and Oisea, Futuro Antico was born for a brief, blissed moment of communal cross-cultural levitation. They produced one studio album's worth of material during their brief existence, but the live and unreleased sounds at hand (procured many moons ago from a source long forgotten) are every bit as transporting, if transcendental ethno-ooze and electrically augmented raga is your cup 'o bhang.

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GUERNICA-KAIZO HE NO YAKUDO, LP, 1982, JAPAN




More deeply peculiar mystery moves from eighties Japan, with the responsible parties here affecting the same daffy period pose deployed by Variete, but taken to their own very particular and wonderfully fucked up synth pop ends, with trilling female vocals dancing across queasy technicolor panoramas of plastically confected shangri-las and campily lachrymose melodrama. Perverted whimsy never sounded so winning.

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

THE RELATIVE BAND-'85, LP, 1985, AUSTRALIA/USA


Gonzo group improv with aural whoopee cushions to the fore. Tying themselves up in blithering knots here are four Aussies and two Americans, many of 'em formidable names from the non-dour end of the improv continuum, including Aussie polymath and serial cello abuser Jon Rose, avant vocalist/percussionist/one-man-band David Moss and the inimitable Eugene Chadbourne. Together with soprano saxist Steve Moore, multi-wind player Jim Denley and the little known Aussie vocal improviser Gillian McGregor, they concoct a veritable mountain of scrabbly and jabbering sonic mischief.

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V/A-Ζωντανοί Στο Κύτταρο [ZONTANOI STO KYTTAPO], LP, 1971, GREECE


A cornerstone document of the Greek psych/prog scene, this live album of recordings from the Kyttaro nightclub is rife with amazement. Despina Glezou starts things off with an agreeable enough slice of West Coast psych action followed by a bit of protest folk courtesy of Damon & Fintias, but careful that the bong doesn't fall out of your hand when the resplendent beauty of Exadaktylos rolls into view with their spiraling and deeply lyrical spin on jazz rock that takes a sorta Kevin Ayers and the Whole World sensibility to delirious kraut-jammy ends. More choice kraut-like jamming (in a sort of Tomorrow's Gift mode) ensues with Bourboulia, Stella Gadedi and Dionysos Savopoulos' 10 minute opus, while elsewhere, legendary Greek psych-sters Socrates Drank The Conium weigh in with a round of blues rockin' ramalamma, Damon & Fintias return to folk you and Exadaktylos wheel back into frame for a somewhat Colosseum-like conclusion.

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FLAME DREAM-CALATEA, LP, 1980, SWITZERLAND


Damn fine Swiss proggy prog with some distinct jazzy leanings and nary a trace of neo prog trivialization about it, despite the late sell-by date for this sort of full blown sympho-proggin' activity. True, the most common signifiers (post-Genesis pastoralism and multi-tiered Yes harmonies) are both plainly in evidence here, but there's also a sorta post Dutch prog angle ala Pantheon, Solution and Supersister and a densely articulated horn-y symphonism akin to early Gnidrolog at work here as well. Certainly lots of fascination to untangle for the right set of ears here...

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