5 NEW SHARES TO WASH AWAY THE BLUES BELOW, BUT FIRST...

Aah…but first, a wee update from the land of Vas Deferens Organization and Puer Gravy Records, as there's been much to report on in these months since...

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION AND PUER GRAVY UPDATE FOR MARCH: MICHAEL ALAN ALIEN, PHILIP SANDERSON + VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION LIVE FOOTAGE

The three of us in Vas Deferens Organization are perfectly delighted to be able to present to you the first evidence of our brand new collaboration with New York visual/installation/performance art dynamo Michael Alan that will shortly be resulting in a full length LP for our Puer Gravy imprint (release details soon forthcoming). Have a gander at the eye popping and genre/category-obliterating antics that Michael gets up to via the video below to fully appreciate the deliriousness of his explorations, which in addition to his paintings, collages and 6-8 hour immersive live environments have now shifted tack to include musical collaborations. Thus far, there have been single track collaborations between Michael and everyone from Renaldo of Renaldo And The Loaf and Geneva Jacuzzi to Jello Biafra and Kingdom Scum and from Japanther to Jeff and Jane Hudson, but now is your first opportunity to let Michael Alan Alien & Vas Deferens Organization infect your earholes with the combination of their perverse streaks. The brainworm du jour? A little ditty called Shoe String Theory, which you can download in full .wav sound quality
here
Further info regarding this collaboration will soon also be found in an upcoming profile of Michael that's shortly to run in Crudo Magazine here

And feast your eyes on the delirious bacchanal that constitutes Michael's creative universe here:

Your Life at 5pm from Michael Alan on Vimeo.

More info about Michael and his work can be found by visiting his site here



In further news, we're all equally delighted to finally be able to formally announce Puer Gravy release number two:

PHILIP SANDERSON-HOLLOW GRAVITY LP (PG 002)-EDITION OF 100

This exceptional album, Sanderson's first of new original material in five years (following his stellar Seal Pool Sounds) will be issued in a screen printed and laser etched edition of one hundred 180 gram LP copies. Many here will know Sanderson best from his work in the stunning Storm Bugs as well as for his having run the vaunted Snatch Tapes label back in the early 80's, but what's often missed is that he's still producing haunting and enigmatic work that's at the very top of his game, something that the advance track below handily demonstrates. Hollow Gravity will be out at the beginning of May, with further release details forthcoming shortly, but in the meantime, wrap your minds around his tune Low Flying Branches here to see what all the fuss is about....

To tie things up with a big red bow, you can now feast your eyes on the one and only live performance that Vas Deferens Organization ever undertook during the time that I've been a member of the band, on the occasion of us opening for the revamped Chrome circa Spring of 1998. This footage features the extended line-up of (at the time) VDO principal members Matt Castille, Eric Lumbleau and Doug Ferguson (also of Yeti/Ohm...RIP), alongside part time VDO members David Fargason (Liquid Sound Company) Jim Edgerton (Burnin Rain/Fish Eye Lens), Scott Lindsay (Cult Ceavers), Jay Jernigan (Shits And Giggles) and Reagen Boone.
Please note that we blew the fuse at the venue at 3:30 and the music doesn't resume 'til 10:00...

PERFECT IMPERFECT CIRCULAR-TEN YEARS SWEATING DIAMONDS, RECORDED: 1986-1992, USA, UNRELEASED

I've made a point in the past of highlighting the gripping post punk interventions that Bill Shifflette and crew undertook under the Null And Void banner back in the early 80's, among them an unreleased third album that may yet see the light of day after all, according to Bill. But as it happens, Null And Void were far from the end of the story. Perfect Imperfect Circular charts Shifflette and his comrades' continued probings after the conclusion of Null And Void, with their output here showing little in the way of the flagging energies exhibited by so many other post punk operators as the 80's ground on. Indeed, it's easy to trace the lines of inquiry forward from some of the brash Ultravox-like maneuvers of Null And Void through to the more pop-centric constructs here. New to Shifflette's arsenal is a sorta post Siren-era Roxy swagger alongside an undeniable whiff of The Associates that runs like a seam through several cuts, albeit with the elaborate studio crafted grandiosity of Billy Mackenzie and Co re-situated within a Revox 4-track context. Superb.

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RIK RUE-SOUND ESCAPES, LP, 1988, AUSTRALIA

Launching your album with a pilfered and cut up volley of Carles Santos' avant vocal theatrics is surely one way of announcing the particular pillage and plunder contours of your plunderphonic practice, but this snarky Aussie po-mo sound artist (whose cv includes collaborations with Ikue Mori and Tony Buck of The Necks as well as membership in the formidable Mind/Body/Split) has a way with chop 'n' change shenanigans that's deft enough to render questions of such wholesale appropriation of another artists work of secondary concern. That opening Santos gambit is no random bit of fuckery either, as Rue's vision of the relentlessly brain noogieing dada decollage evinces a nagging fixation on the lung-y unguents and glottal grease of a thousand spitting sound poets. Factor that against a sustained sense of inspired juvenilia (the kind blurted from the innards of Zappa's grand pianos) and the result is as unimpeachable as it is unseemly.

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GONK-WILL/WILL NOT ATTEND, CD, 1998, UK

A genuinely startling and singular outfit, this very overlooked British duo's sonic syntax might initially seem to have affinities with some grimier strains of left field dance culture with the first few moves out of the gate here, but as the cascades of Junkyard gamelan, ham radio Bollywood broadcasts, belching and farting MS-20 synth melodies, and stereo-panned steel drum workouts pile on top of one another and the air becomes increasingly thick with atmospheric pressure it becomes ever more clear that you're in the presence of something singularly more elevated than that, with Gonk's particular breed of corroded and repurposed exotica having more in common with the likes of Japan's Grind Orchestra and Cordelia Records faux-ethno oddniks Leven Signs.

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SYLVANO SANTORIO-POP SOUND DISCO, LP, 1978, ITALY

Top tier Italian library sleazy listening here and much like Rino De Filippi's celebrated MPS label library release Reflessi (which this shares some akin to) Santorio's take on that peak moment when disco, funk and fusion's borders dissolved into a puddle of lubricious and life-giving energies contains within it that wonderfully contradictory and questionable sensation that leaves you unsure as to whether you might want to drop a tab to it or feel compelled to visit the concession stand instead (I can almost picture the 70's animations of dancing hot dogs and candy boxes moving in sync to "Classical Disco"). Across this LP's expanse, you'll find snatches of everything from the studio juiced and clavinet-laden symphonic funk of ex-Curved Air keyboardist Francis Monkman's KPM Library discs and David Matthews' Sandworms to the Yugoslavian iteration of the disco/funk/fusion trifecta heard in the work of Clan, Boomerang or September. Expect slobbering acid guitar rising out of Love Boat string swells, episodes of the sorta jauntily dancing flute-y fusion fromage heard on Art Webb albums and even full blown cosmic disco in the mode of Space Art on the sublime "Space Dialogue".

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V/A-LAL LAL LAL FESTIVAL, CDR, 2007, FINLAND

If you can avoid feeling wrong-footed by the sequencing here, which manages to shoehorn all the most interesting activity into the latter half of this compendium, this festival document contains a pretty exemplary cross-section of operators flying a flag for the sorta naif and art brut free folk frazzle and 5 AM communal jam ethos that this countries underground has largely become synonymous with. Scene elder statesman Keijo Virtanen shows up here both under his own mantle unfurling glazed blues psych wander teetering on the edge of collapse and along with his ensemble Kheta Hotem, who doodle their way through some tin can ethnological forgery), as do other mainstays like Avarus/Anaksimandros member Arttu Partinen, and Lal Lal Lal label head Roope Eronen's own Maniacs Dream, though it's Kemialliset Ystavat who (not unexpectedly) turns in the compilation's highlight with a mystically blasted extended vocal and birdsong workout called "Merkitty Tyyny".

1. Kukkiva Poliisi-Paskolampi
2. Reijo Pami-Hill Of Shame
3. The Ray Pacino Ensemble-I Took A Cab
4. Mary Fist-Clean
5. Nuslux-Jogging Pal
6. Snake Of Life-Paradise Is A Feeling
7. Master Qsh-Mitä Teet Polvellas Rakas Hans?
8. The Skaters-A-Doz-Hiel-Z
9. Kemialliset Ystavat-Merkitty Tyyny
10. Maniacs Dream-Tropical Illusion
11. Keijo-Whatever You Want
12. Kheta Hotem-Do This At Home
13. Arttu Partinen & His Partiers-A Man In Love

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************************RE-UPS FOR NOW & NEW POSTS WITHIN DAYS************************

With infinite appreciation to one and all for their patience during the downtime from January til now, I can happily announce that the first wave of link re-ups is now at hand, and the rest are forthcoming within a matter of weeks. For the time being, all of the posts from March 2011 to present (ie all the recent posts which had previously used Megaupload in the absence of other hosts) have now been re-upped using Mediafire.

New posts of mine will follow early next week, so be on the lookout.