MUTANT SOUNDS

UPLOAD SOLUTIONS ARE IN THE WORKS

2012-01-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

First, I'd like to take the time to truly thank those of you who were kind enough to offer to help with the process of re-upping the downed content on Mutant Sounds. To that end, it was very encouraging to read about the soon-to-be hosting service Righthaven, that's being actively touted by the folks at Boing Boing right now here

Once Righthaven goes live (which it seems like it might be doing within weeks), I can begin to coordinate with the handful of beautiful humans who've chosen to lend a hand in getting all of our downed content back up and running.

Stay tuned...

LICKING WOUNDS AND TAKING STOCK AFTER THE CLAMPDOWN

2012-01-20T11:39:00.000-08:00

Now that the Corporatist villains in our "justice department" have seen fit to visit tyranny upon all of us by destroying Megaupload (and with it, broad swaths of this blogs content, including the hundreds of titles from early in the life of Mutant Sounds that had recently been re-upped to Megaupload), I'm just lying low and taking stock of how best to approach the salvaging of our content. Stay tuned folks...Mutant Sounds isn't going down without a fight!

THANKS TO ALL OF MUTANT SOUNDS' FANS OUT THERE FOR MAKING 2011 OUR BEST YEAR EVER. BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS AWAIT IN 2012 . HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

2011-12-31T19:15:00.000-08:00

THE OBSCENES-IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, LP, 1993, ITALY

2011-12-31T19:06:00.001-08:00

Ear canal befouling nonsense-mongering from a highly obscure Italian combo with exactly nada in the way of currently extant info available on 'em. The deliberately cheap and nasty sonics alongside the absurdist attitude here could easily persuade you that this was some sorta lost Neue Deutsche Welle cassette, what with all the willful ineptitude and inanity on display here, alongside the dictaphone recording quality, manipulated vinyl abuse, and cheap drum machines battling it out against cheaper guitars.

Get it via Megaupload Here

HELGOLAND AND BAND-99, CD, 1999, GERMANY

2011-12-31T18:45:00.001-08:00

With a roster that reads a bit like a supergroup from the 90's German experimental electronica scene (Groenland Orchester/Nova Huta mastermind Gunter Reznicek and serial Felix Kubin collaborator Pia Burnette appear here alongside Helgoland founder Rudi Burr, whose CD EP together with Reznicek "The German Face" I shared a while back), Helgoland on this debut outing of theirs actually exist at a distinct remove from any anticipations those associations might suggest, including expectations based on the Helgoland music that would follow via their brilliant and distinctly zany avant electropop confections on Kubin's Psychoscifipoppia compilation LP and their 2001 Media Music EP on Storage. Instead, the 99 dadaist blasts that emerge from your speakers like a never ending string of anal beads are purely the after-effect of a diet over-rich in Ruins, Naked City, Boredoms and Melt Banana. Surely not what you'd anticipate, but a cheerful eruption of inspired gibberish to while away the hours with regardless.

Get it via Megaupload Here

TONI ESPOSITO-PROCESSIONE SUL MARE, LP, 1976, ITALY

2011-12-31T18:41:00.000-08:00

Continuing on from my shares of his first and third albums, this second outing from this wildly gifted and wide ranging Italian prog/fusion drummer (a one time member of both St. Just and Alan Sorrenti's band as well as Luciano Cilio's collaborator on Dell'Universo Assente) catches Esposito at a real creative peak. As with the other albums of his that I've shared, the arrangements, stereo imaging and the endless peppering of pinprick percussive detailing make it plain that this is a drummers album, though Processione Sul Mare is an absolute master class in dynamic sense from all parties involved and overflows with that tell tale quality of airy, fluid and life giving expansiveness that you find in so much of the best Italian fusion of that time from Area to Perigeo to Napoli Centrale.

Get it via Megaupload Here

V/A-CD VOOR DE INSTABIELE MEDIA-CD FOR THE UNSTABLE MEDIA, CD, 1992, VARIOUS

2011-12-31T18:37:00.001-08:00

As if to deliberately thwart an easy reading in concord with the spirit of this compendium's remit, the compilers of this CD have seen fit to maddeningly format the whole shebang into one continuous 68 minute sound block, but with a roster of period sonic agitators that takes in everything from Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock's dadaist disembowelments and Gregory Whitehead's surreal speech dissections to pioneering Dutch electronic composer Dick Raaijmakers experiments (circa 197 1) with his Ideophone sound sculptures, it's a stream that's well worth your time wading into.

Track listing:

Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock-Zur Autodestruktion
Gregory Whitehead/THU20-I Prefer To Talk To The Dead
Voice Crack-Ballistics Of The Wild Turkey
Radi Subcom-Intransit (Excerpt)
The Haters-Final
Dick Raaijmakers-Ideophone I 1971
DFM Radio-Untitled (Excerpt)
Entre Vifs-Slavium Fornikant
Ad Van Buuren-The Clock
The Hafler Trio-Untitled
Chris Mann/Warren Burt-Anyway You Can Always Put Language Down To Experience
Merzbow-V2 Live (Excerpt)
Strafe Fur Rebellion-Die Zahl Pi

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S. IDA & BGG-…EAT SHOW, TAPE, 1985, JAPAN

2011-12-31T18:33:00.000-08:00

Issued on a once hugely prolific and now entirely forgotten Japanese experimental tape label of the early-mid 80's called D.D. Records, evidence of whose existence has all but disappeared (not a peep on either Discogs or Rate Your Music about them) despite their having issued 100+ cassettes and a handful of vinyl flexis during their lifespan (the Eurock book consolidating all the old issues of their zine has the only extant info on 'em that I'm aware of), this 1985 oddity by S. Ida & BGG, which landed in my hands a while back sans any imagery, accompanying info or even song titles, gives a strong sense of the quizzical and high quality experiments being unleashed by them. As evidenced by the sounds at hand, S. Ida & BGG exist to confound, or at least to cheerfully work through their fascinations with all manner of outwardly bound sounds of that era, however chalk-and-cheese it might be to dish their particular array out in one interwoven bundle. Starting with a fit of squalling and blubbering guitar excess emerging from a mire of melted shortwave radio signals and lumbering bass, the remaining contents take in everything from primitive and spasming sampled vocal malarky to terse string improv and from Neubauten-like metal bash strategies repurposed to infantilist ends and faux gamelan accomplished via tin whistle and kitchen debris to long expanses of location recordings of birds flocks with factories in the distance.

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MUTANT SOUNDS GETS PROFILED IN BOING BOING AND VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION REVEAL THEIR HIDDEN HIP HOP HISTORY

2011-12-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

Watch out! Whole swaths of aboveground straight society have just been hepped to our doings via Boing Boing's omnidirectional reach, as the kind folks at that site unexpectedly profiled Mutant Sounds a short time ago. You can read that here

This also seemed like it might be an amusing moment to reveal the real reason for Vas Deferens Organization's disappearance off of our fans radar screens for a span of time during the last decade. It was because we'd effectively gone undercover. Some time in early 2005, I got an insane phone call from my bandmate Matt who was living in New Orleans at the time, in which he told me that he'd effectively conned one of the top hip hop club owners there into believing that we were heavy duty rap producers and the guy was interested in seriously hooking us up if we could hand him some tracks. Once the realization hit what a monumental prank on reality this could be if we really managed to pull of this hat trick (and really, how hard could it be for innovative electronic producers to unpack the logic of making this stuff?), we set about doing just that and our contact in turn set about introducing us to a series of industry fat cats, with the end result that I moved to New Orleans to open a hip hop studio on the periphery of The French Quarter with Matt in early 2005. Before Katrina struck, we had handlers and reps for Juvenile coming around and scoping us out and affiliations made with A&R men from B.G.'s Chopper City Records and after Katrina wiped us out and sent us fleeing New Orleans, we ended up following the A&R rep for Chopper City all the way to Atlanta and effectively becoming his right hand for a year until a series of insane and unforeseen circumstances exploded this dream right as it was about to take flight. You can still find a stray remnant of this era lurking on this random and generic hip hop compilation CD here

The best way to understand our specifically subversive intentions in trying to make an intervention into the hip hop world is to note the alias that we'd rechristened ourselves as: The Water Brothers. Legendary pop sci-fi author Robert Heinlein had used aliens going by this name in order to secretly spread Aleister Crowley's Thelemic teachings to the masses in his celebrated book Stranger In A Strange Land and we in turn would use the Trojan Horse of hip hop in order to seed the VDO audio virus as far and as wide as we could before anyone put 2 and 2 together and realized exactly what kind of avant garde acidhead subversives that they'd unexpectedly and unintentionally released into pop culture.

Since the Italian magazine Blow Up unveiled this hidden part of our history in the biggest possible way by headlining the article that they ran about VDO a few issues back with this info (a .pdf scan of the article with some personal annotations via the Italian friend of ours that initially scanned this for us can be had here ) we're now making available four 30 second samples of our work as Dirty South gangsta rap producers during this time (we'd offer whole tracks, but we're contractually bound from doing that), though it seems worth putting these out there now just to see how much amusement, confusion and shattered illusions we can generate with one gesture! You can check out what VDO hip hop sounds like here

And since we have, for no good reason, shared our recently created video for the first track from Vas Deferens Organization's Eye Peels & Brain Picks ("Defenestration At The Gravity Pit") everywhere else but here, it seemed time to plant this here as well for the edification of those who didn't happen across it via Altered Zones, Youtube or elsewhere

JUST A SMALL SHOUT OUT TO OUR FRIENDS AT ALTERED ZONES AS THEY TRANSFORM THEMSELVES INTO AD HOC

2011-12-08T01:44:00.000-08:00

And a pointer in this direction to make note of their future home early next year. Expect to see some very interesting developments emerging from these quarters after they reconstitute themselves.

V/A-ITALIC ENVIRONMENTS-PROJECT BY NICOLA FRANGIONE, LP, 1985, ITALY

2011-12-08T01:30:00.001-08:00

Conceived and curated by the Italian multi-media artist, activist and organizer Nicola Frangione, Italic Environments involves Frangione supplying a host of fascinating fellow Italian avant gardists of the era with suggestive location recordings of specifically Italian environments for them to integrate into their work. Former Futuro Antico member Ricardo Sinigaglia's contribution (in concord with one Mario De Lio) begins the proceedings here in high fashion (REALLY high fashion) with a very subtle but intense foray into resonant drone and emotionally intoned vocalizing that's very much an after effect of Franco Battiato's influence, though Battiato was never accompanied by a lake full of quacking ducks. Piermario Ciani is up next blathering away through what sounds like one of those electronic larynx's provided to throat cancer patients to the accompaniment of spare and fragmented free jazz nudges from sax and drums before building up to a sudden and unexpected head of steam and barreling through a hectic Etron Fou Leloublan-like passage of infolding avant rock tumble.
Arpa Celtica Vincenzo Zitello rounds out the A side with some very proto new age-y harp, hand drum and rainstorm sonics. Naif Orchestra begin side B by latching onto a pass of buried crowd noise and building a slight synth pop track on top of it rather arbitrarily before Franco Ballabeni wheels into frame with a contribution that's consistently lapped by Frangione's recording of splashing water, into which he situates some very ZNR-like passages of pensive piano and wheedling synth, while Giovanni Fontana seems to be running several recordings of bebop jazz ensembles simultaneously with little detectable accompaniment from Frangoine's recordings and little individual gravity to speak of, though it makes for a head scratching album closer to be certain.

Get it via Megaupload Here

MINOY-PASSAGE OF THE MIGRATORY BIRD, CDR, 200? (RECORDED: 1987), USA

2011-12-08T01:24:00.000-08:00

Swimming in an ocean of his signature cheap Radio Shack reverb and queasily modulating ham radio emissions, this is another lost monument of subterranean 80's tape culture electronic investigations from one of its most reliably excellent and significantly overlooked practitioners and a follow up to my post of his Pretty Young Negro Man tape some time ago. This Torrence California based marginal was a somewhat ubiquitous presence at one time on the sub-underground cassette network during the 80's and early 90's, often working in collaboration with a array of other networkers of that era, though there has always been an elegance and grasp of the macro/micro to Minoy's own work that makes it readily stand apart from others probing around in this soupy post industrial arena; Minoy's recordings having an intuitive grasp of manipulating the minutiae of shortwave-based (and shortwave bathed) sonics in a way that surpasses John Duncan's investigations into this realm of ghosted sound manipulations to these set of ears.

Get it via Megaupload Here

TRUBROT-LIFUN, LP, 1971, ICELAND

2011-12-08T01:17:00.001-08:00

Massive and totally drugged psych/prog brilliance from the early 70's Icelandic underground (yes, they had one too) with an almost absurdly wide remit and a capacity to spin on a dime and confound expectations. This blasts out of the gate on a thundering roar of acid wah-d psychotropic thuggery ala Yeti-era Amon Duul 2 before the clouds part and the voice of a hippy god resonantly intones pearls of cosmic inanity over a bed of meditational flutes and loudly throbbing hearts to significantly brain frying (and Don Robertson-like) effect. If this doesn't grip you by the short hairs, you're dead from the neck up or hate hippies, 'cause this shit is kissing the great cosmic beyond with some real throbbing intensity. Theirs is an often elaborately orchestrated sound redolent of everything from the symphonically bathed UK proto prog of Spring and Czar and the starry-eyed and Crosby, Stills and Nash-indebted early era of Yes to segments of maximal dancing fluti-ness and sharply chiming keys that exhibit an almost Italian library music-like angle ala something like Braens Machine while other passages of dead sharp pop prog tactics summon comparisons with Vangelis' old prog band Aphrodite's Child's and their seminal double album 666.

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INSTANT MUSIC-S/T, 10", 1980, GERMANY

2011-12-08T01:12:00.001-08:00

Delicately percolating Neue Deutsche Welle loveliness with a distinctly bare bones and naif touch that dovetails insistent bass themes with cheap rhythm box bonk and sweet female blather toward ends that exhibits both a hangover from The Young Marble Giants and a direct line of investigation to tactics later pursued by France's X-Ray Pop.

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KLANGWART-INKIEK, 3" CD, 1997, GERMANY

2011-12-08T01:06:00.000-08:00

The duo of Timo Reuber (whose solo debut "Anna" remains one of the high water marks of turn of the century German electronica) and Staubgold label boss Markus Detmer, this debut 3" CD EP of theirs shimmers, tingles and statically hovers with an aerated spectrality and prickly grace. Comprised of two 10 minute tracks, the eponymous opening number immerses the listener in a bath of the above mentioned, as evanescent tendrils are sent out to glisten in the dew of the dawns light, while Utkiek rolls in on a tide of frequency rich narcotic lather before subterranean caverns of pressure and post industrial signifiers begin to creep to the fore.

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MORICE BENIN-APOCALYPSE…, LP, 1980, FRANCE

2011-11-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

Highly obscure and mostly very winning French prog pop confections that come larded with the sort of rustic-to-bombastic sympho drama and theatrical spieling that directly descends from the hugely popular French proggers in Ange. It's a Genesis-derived sound that would influence a raft of French acts that followed (most notably Mona Lisa) and it's a gambit that works a similar sort of emotionally exaggerated magic here, if one of a rather slighter caliber than Ange's transcendent gestures. Quebec's Harmonium would hit this same charmed and elevated zone around the time of their L'Heptade. It's also a sound that can be a bit of a slow burner, with its subtle power accruing and becoming more evident over repeated plays, which has very much been the case with having re-sat with this one; an album that I'd initially mentally filed away as interesting if slight but which now in hindsight seems rife with fascination.

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STATIC EFFECT-DEAD GAME IN ANY WEATHER, TAPE, 1989, USA

2011-11-24T21:41:00.001-08:00

Following on from my share of their Certain Random Firings LP way back in 2007, here's more of Randy Greif and Mikahil Bohonus' signature mix of dystopian malaise and atmospheric pressure. Greif's is a name that long time followers of Mutant Sounds should have some familiarity with; several albums of his having been shared by both Jim and myself over time, this long time sub-underground operative having been one of the more significant innovators to have emerged from the recesses of 80's/90's post-industrial cassette culture. I've not heard Bohonus' main project Warworld, but from all available indicators, Greif's hand feels like the decisive one here, with the dank zones of fecund rot and swamp gas atmospherics here emitting much the same sense of evocative dread as did the majority of his solo work from this period, with the third untitled track here in particular evincing Greif's absorption and re-contextualization of Jon Hassell's Fourth World concepts into something inverted and malarial.

Get it via Megaupload Here

CELLUTRON & THE INVISIBLE-REFLECTING ON THE FIRST WATCH, WE UNCOVER TREASURE BURIED FOR THE BLIND, LP, 1978, USA

2011-11-24T21:39:00.001-08:00

Choice private press synthetic spew via this American eccentric with a penchant for unwieldily titles. Side A is a thick stew of swarming and modulating analog gurgle cut with a frosty and slightly curdled tone somewhere between Schnitzler-esque dystopian abstraction and the interstellar voids emitted by Nik Raicevic or Tangerine Dream circa Alpha Cerntauri, while the flip takes things into more curious zones, first with "Parisian Frequency Shift"', which abets these galactic probings with bits of reverb saturated hippy spieling about issues of cosmic importance, while the album's peak arrives in the form of the 10 minute side closer "Reap The Whirlwind", a weave of antiquated and hollowly bonking sequencer chatter that summons thoughts of Mort Garson and Tom Dissevelt.

Get it via Megaupload Here

THE MUFFINS-LIVE-WASHINGTON DC, 1977, USA, UNRELEASED

2011-11-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

Spanning the time frame between their earliest period that was retrospectively documented on their Chronometers CD and their first official LP Manna/Mirage (and making for a great companion piece to the live Secret Signals tape of theirs that I shared last year, which documents the same period) this fantastic hour and a half performance catches one of America's greatest and most underrated prog units at a real peak of expressiveness. The Muffins were the first domestic contingent to seize upon the charmingly idiosyncratic syntax of that ever-so-British form of prog, Canterbury; their specific expression of it, at least initially, situated somewhere between Hatfield And The North's combination of airy, whirligig delicacy cut with latent fuzz bass thunder and a more avant garde-ish structural origami indebted to early Henry Cow circa Legend. The difference between their more angularly R.I.O.-damaged later era that would ensue with 185 and Open City and the material here is marked, The Muffins having latterly cast off much of the overt jazz rock qua jazz rock trappings that are manifest at every turn here. And charmingly manifest, at that.

Note: the link for this has now been re-upped, since the misunderstanding with Paul Sears of The Muffins that emerged on the comment board for this has now been happily sorted and this post now has their blessing:
Get it via Megaupload Here

STABAT STABLE-GAINSAID FACTS, 12" EP, 1982, FRANCE

2011-11-24T21:32:00.001-08:00

Beginning like some perverted dispatch from Planet Claire's evil nemesis, this drum machine-driven post punk cum synth pop stunner in the mode of Lucas Trouble or Martin Dupont comes laced with several intriguing seams of poison, rendered as juddering and electrically crackling arcs of synth chatter, dislocated guitar scrabble and wads of overlapping verbal gibberish; all of it strung helter skelter across a wash line of cheap drum machined clatter and used to puncture and parry these rhythmic currents; techniques that become increasingly more foregrounded as the flip side's 12 minute essay "Ultrissima On The Junk's Moon" both unfolds and finally collapses in on itself.

Get it via Megaupload Here

NEW POSTS UP BY TOMORROW NIGHT, AND A RENEWED PUSH TO RE-UP THE REMAINING DEAD LINKS

2011-11-23T22:12:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the extra delay this time, folks. VDO have had umpteen irons in the fire just recently that have been consuming all available energies. Alongside tomorrow's* round of new posts, expect a renewed push to re-up the remainder of the dead links, after my last attempt a short while back (with the aid of an unnamed blog friend) re-upped about 100 of these extinct links, mostly from the earliest days of Mutant Sounds.

*tomorrow=sometime before midnight on thanksgiving

MUTANT SOUNDS IN THE WIRE MAGAZINE

2011-11-06T23:11:00.000-08:00

Fans of Mutant Sounds should keep a look out for the new December issue of The Wire Magazine due out on Nov. 10, which will feature my (Eric Lumbleau's) contribution to their ongoing (and rather damningly named) column Collateral Damage, devoted to probing the various sides of the debate around the issue of the free sharing of music and its repercussions; a discussion that has so far seen the likes of Chris Cutler, Robin Rimbaud & Bob Ostertag weighing in.

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION & PERIHELION-THE SCIENCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE LP (200 COPY ED.) OUT NOVEMBER 15 ON PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE

2011-11-06T22:50:00.001-08:00

One of the key unreleased recordings from the original 90's era of Vas Deferens Organization is now finally seeing the light of day thanks to the efforts of the German label Pure Pop For Now People . Recorded in 1997 and due for release on November 15th in a limited edition of 200 LP copies, The Science Of The Impossible was our one-off collaboration with a short-lived studio-only duo named Perihelion, comprised of the Schulze/Schnitzler/Cluster-inspired cosmic synthesist Tim Boone (R.I.P. - he was promoted during the 90's by the likes of Eurock and Audion) and David Price, the one time keyboardist for early 80's Dallas synth poppers The Red Tapes, whom Jim shared a very rare demo tape by ages ago. Amalgamating their overtly synthetic kosmiche impulses into our proactively sense deranging M.O. of the era resulted in recordings that extend the line of inquiry first heard on our Tone Float CD. The full A side can be downloaded in MP3 form here
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NOTE: THIS LP IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE DIRECTLY FROM THE LABEL. PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE IS RUN IN AN UNUSUAL AND OLD SCHOOL FASHION, SO IF YOU WANT TO PURCHASE A COPY FROM THEM, YOU'LL NEED TO EMAIL THEM DIRECTLY TO REQUEST ONE, AS THERE IS NO CART SYSTEM ON THE PPFNP SITE. THEY CAN BE REACHED AT PUREPOP@BUISSNET.COM THOSE WISHING TO BUY COPIES ELSEWHERE WILL CURRENTLY FIND THIS LP AVAILABLE VIA http://www.greatesthitsmailorder.com AND SOON VIA CLEARSPOT IN THE NETHERLANDS.
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TOM CAMERON-MUSIC TO WASH DISHES BY, LP, 1982, USA

2011-11-06T22:45:00.000-08:00

A flat out stunning private press synth music mega-rarity from an artist controlling his keys with a homemade biofeedback monitor rigged to manipulate his synth parameters. The results range from eerie baths of narcotized 5 AM blear to nervously chittering and ticking cascades of cartoonish Tom Dissevelt/Raymond Scott-like melodies and rhythms. This is truly a marvel to behold, though it's best to leave a fuller description here to the words of the artist himself, via the Matrixsynth site:

"What I think might be of most interest is what I was doing in the performance and how I was controlling the synthesizers. There is a white headband that I am wearing which contains three electrodes which are monitoring my brain waves using a biofeedback machine. This biofeedback monitor would register a small voltage pulse each time that I could successfully maintain a relatively steady alpha state. The brain biofeedback monitor is then connected to an optical interface. This allows me to use the feedback voltage to control the synthesizers without the risk of a ground loop frying my brain. The control voltage of about five volts was then used to control the pitch and filters of the EML 101 and also advance step by step the sequencer on the EML 4004/401. The result was that I could control and play the synthesizers with brain waves alone.

OK, so I couldn't play "Mary Had A Little Lamb" but I did create synthesizer sounds by just thinking about them. I thought that this was pretty cool but not many people understood it at the time. They were two young kids that did get it. They bought a few balloons and sneaked up behind my lawn chair and popped the balloons. As I have a slow shock response nothing happened but about ten minutes later a yellow jacket (I hate yellow jackets) came buzzing around my head and the synthesizers went crazy.

At the time I thought I'd come up with a pretty original demonstration. But later I found out that Alvin Lucier had done a similar demonstration ten years earlier. He obviously did not use synthesizers at that time but he did use biofeedback to control solenoid operated percussion instruments. And currently Tod Machover is pursuing mind-music connections in a similar vein but with much more sophisticated equipment. I also painted the cover art."

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MASCHINE NR. 9-HEADMOVIE, LP, 1974, GERMANY, NWW LIST

2011-11-06T22:40:00.001-08:00

A wacky and drugged countercultural tape collage sprawl with intermittent bursts of acid rocking' antics in the spirit of Marks & Lebzelter, Gulliver's Travels and Woorden. This Krautrock curio and Nurse With Wound list rarity had a fair amount of notables operating in its ranks including Deuter, Daniel Fischelscher and Renate Knaup and they all periodically pop to the surface to do their respective trippy bits, though this is also an album whose biggest beneficiaries are gonna be those that Sprechen Sie Deutsche, as a goodly bit of this is pretty narrative-intensive, though it's all higher key hippy freak out brainfood regardless.

Get it via Megaupload Here

SOLID EYE-LIVE AT ANOMALOUS RECORDS, LP, 1997, USA

2011-11-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

Another round of posts and another crucial chapter in the saga of this latter-day LAFMS supergroup-like formation comprised of former members of Steaming Coils, Dinosaurs With Horns and Monitor, whom I've covered in some depth before. This one is a particular favorite of mine, though: a clonking and bonking cockeyed roundelay of wheezing contraptions and spinning cylinders pirouetting around one another in queasy strange loops and auto-dissembling ghost dances over two side-long suites.

Get it via Megaupload Here

CRYPTO-S/T, LP, 1974, NETHERLANDS

2011-11-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

Juicy Dutch funk fusion workouts with a relaxed, open vibe reminding me of Yugoslavian fusion from the period like September, Boomerang & Tihomir 'Pop' Asanovic and that's periodically graced by Placebo-like aerated synth washes and some distinctly Grateful Dead-ish passages of upful rustic psychedelic aimlessness.

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C. PTAK-PREPARE YOUR SELF, CDR, 2002, USA

2011-11-06T22:19:00.000-08:00

Junk store broken beat dada conniptions and cantankerous splatter from Carly Ptak, a one-time member of Nautical Almanac who's out on her own here launching tendrils of rudely mishandled low grade consumer electronics around in all available directions and ensnaring you in forcefields of neon silly string and tinfoil-biting grit in the process.

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VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION'S EYE PEELS & BRAIN PICKS LP SOLD OUT NOW ON PRE-ORDER(1 WEEK DELAY ON SHIPPING, ALAS) FULL A SIDE IN .WAV FORMAT BELOW

2011-10-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

Vas Deferens Organization's Eye Peels And Brain Picks LP has now officially sold out on pre-order, though it will shortly be available from a handful of international distributors (listed below). Unfortunately, we detected a rather large printing snafu on the back panel somewhat late in the game, so there will now be a one week delay in shipping off copies to both buyers and distributors. They will now ship on Monday, Oct. 24th, instead of having gone out on their announced release date of Oct. 17th. We truly are sorry about this fuck up, but hope all of you find the results worth the wait when you finally receive them.

In the meantime (and for the benefit of those of you who didn't get a copy), the entire A side of Eye Peels And Brain Picks can be downloaded in .wav format Here

Because these corrected jackets ship out to distributors on the same day as regular buyers now, there will be a slight delay before these reach distributors and become available again. They will be available from the following:

Tedium House (USA)

Fusetron (USA)

RRR (USA)

Infinite Limits (UK)

Norman (UK)

Art Into Life (JAPAN)

AIR-S/T, LP, 1977, JAPAN

2011-10-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

If you can skate around the insufferable Kozmigroov genre tag that's latterly been grafted onto this breed of free flowing cosmic jazz funk like some Cronenberg-ian tumor in the shape of a hackysack, this is really the prime article at hand here; this Japanese quartet with the all too common name (shared with everyone from Henry Threadgill's old 70's outfit to Herbie Mann's backing band to the French 90's electropop exports) having taken the most spectrally wandering implications from early 70's Miles Davis and teased them out yet further, 'til all thats left is windblown tracers shimmering in the ether; their attack placing them in immediate proximity to the distended and drug swaddled fusion burn of Australia's Quasar.

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RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK-HO, CD, 1992, SWITZERLAND

2011-10-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

A bridge between the more playfully absurdist collage tactics deployed by these longstanding Otto Muehl-damaged Swiss deviants on their earlier outings (many previously shared on MS) and the more severe, abject and jarring daisy chains of AAO Kommune-style vowel evacuations and Action Analysis that Rudolv Eb.Er and his assorted accomplices would strew like random breadcrumbs during the subsequent era to increasingly alienating effect. Ho's uninterrupted string of dislocated dada abuse splits the difference between these methodologies by lacing a residual slug trail of humor though these 55 arbitrarily data point marked kernels of idiot abuse and invites the listener to writhe like a worm on their sonic petri dish as their consciousness is dragged across these maddening intervals.

Get it via Megaupload Here

JOSHUA-LIFE LESS LOST, CD, 1998, USA

2011-10-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

Suitably blasted and introverted one man bedroom freak folk wander and stereo-panned string fumble from this one time member of Vermonster. Life Less Lost emerged in tandem with the first wave of artists flying a flag for a lo-fi and rawly immediate post-Incredible String Band aesthetic; in the process, ploughing a furrow that was being simultaneously worked at the time by folks like Six Organs Of Admittance and The Tower Recordings, both of whom the work Joshua Burkett's tunes bears traces of, albeit with enthusiasm sometimes trumping finesse.

Note: I've just been informed by the nice folks at Spirit Of Orr that this CD is in fact still in print and available from them (as is Joshua Burkett's Owlsleavesrustling LP), but they've generously allowed for the download link below to remain posted. Please check this great record out and then considering heading over to Spirit Of Orr here and picking up an original of this for yourselves.

Get it via Megaupload Here

LEE GAGNON-JEREMIE (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK), LP, 1972, CANADA

2011-10-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

This Quebecois symphonic funk rarity (the score for a ballet, apparently) hits several right notes and a few truly righteous ones over the course of this rare LP, though there's a consistent tension between the lacquerings of limpid orchestration (skirting into the territory of 70's Stayfree maxi pad commercials at its most unctuous moments here) and the funk outbursts, which range from tightly poppin' little numbers laced with Art Webb-ish flute-y flutterings to deeper funk investigations larded with growling and spitting acid wah.

Get it via Megaupload Here

KLAN-MROWISKO, LP, 1970, POLAND

2011-10-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

Overlooking the unfortunate spelling of their name (which presumably carries different and better connotations in Poland than it does here in the U.S.), this proto-prog spectacular from the nascent Polish underground scene sounds remarkably advanced for something emerging from these temporal coordinates. This crew were evidently steeped in both Brian Auger & Trinity and Vanilla Fudge, the first of which I can attest to, the latter of which seems mostly evident in the lashings of organ that suffuse these tracks, though Klan lack the dumbo DNA at the core of Vanilla Fudge's aesthetic, replacing it with a specifically East Euro tack from that era that's also audible in Yugoslavian proto-prog artifacts by the likes of Korni Grupa and Time; a sort of rustic and gruff proto-prog surface under which exists a goodly bit of musical nuance and sophistication.

Get it via Megaupload Here

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION LAUNCH THEIR NEW LABEL PUER GRAVY WITH THEIR 100 COPY LP "EYE PEELS AND BRAIN PICKS": PRE-ORDER NOW!

2011-10-03T01:25:00.000-07:00

A gilded lily pad for luxuriating polymorphs and a slapstick rug pull of a swami's magic carpet, Eye Peels & Brain Picks, the latest all points bulletin and consensus reality disruption from Vas Deferens Organization will be issued on October 17th, 2011 in a finite edition of only 100 numbered vinyl copies as the first salvo in the transformation of our record label into its new identity as Puer Gravy.

the LP's are priced at $25 a piece and pre-orders are currently being taken NOW at the new Puer Gravy site. Those who obtain a copy will soon hold in their mitts a lovingly appointed (gold printed, laminated plastic panel-bedecked, laser etched and 180 gram) artifact containing all manifestations of these further mysteries, though the merely curious can suffice with having the full A side of this album made available to them in .wav format on the day of its formal release.

'Til then, we invite you to open your collective earholes to our advance preview track (also in .wav format), "78 Revolving Potentiometers", which can be found here

In addition to further new Vas Deferens Organization titles emerging on Puer Gravy in the coming months (including a long-in-the-works split collaborative LP with the French band Audace and with the Italian nutter Ben Presto of Larsen Lombriki), there will also be 100 copy LP's released by Dominique Leone (ex-Pitchfork scribe with releases on Stromland and Important Records) and Philip Sanderson (Storm Bugs/Snatch Tapes)

There will also be two other new Vas Deferens Organization LP's in extremely limited quantities emerging before the end of the year, via two different German labels:

In mid-November, Pure Pop For Now People will release the first of two archival Vas Deferens Organization LP's from our original and extended late 90's formation in editions of 200 copies, the first being a 1997 collaboration between VDO and a now-defunct cosmic synth duo called Perihelion that featured David Price, ex-of The Red Tapes whose 1980 tape is posted elsewhere on MS and the Audion/Eurock promoted cosmic synthesist Tim Boone [R.I.P.]. This is titled The Science Of The Impossible and will be out in late November, with a second archival VDO LP to be issued on PPFNP early the following year.

And in late December, Hlava will issue a six track Vas Deferens Organization EP from 2004 titled "Keep Shoving Those Double-Thick Slices Of Electric Salad Down My Throat" in a 12" vinyl edition of only 150 copies.

AKABUSHI WITH BONJOUR! MADEMOISELLE-LIVE T-SHIRT KOTE KURE WITH BONJOUR!, CD EP, 1995, JAPAN

2011-10-03T01:23:00.001-07:00

One of the more obscure noise/punk/comedy expulsions belched from the anarchic maw of the Boredoms tribe during their pre-kosmiche era, Akabushi itself (no idea about the Bonjour! Mademoiselle personnel) was Boredoms guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto's act that, according to a Boredoms reference site, " he could just sing lead for, and they are no longer active. According to Yamamoto, "All of the members ran away!". Akabushi would issue one other 3" CD before expiring, but given the unlikeliness that you'll encounter that micro-edition artifact, taking it in the kisser from the bukake-like bulldada geysers and speaker-panned punk mulch at hand is something any self-respecting and/or self-debasing 90s Japanese underground music fan should line right up for.

Get it via Megaupload Here

STEVE MAXWELL VON BRAUND-MONSTER PLANET, LP, 1975, AUSTRALIA

2011-10-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

For my second share of Aussie underground sounds today, it's time to highlight the highly lit sounds of Aussie space cadet Stephen Maxwell Von Braund. Mr. Von Braund's later activities in the more well know (relatively speaking) duo Cybotron would make him something of a name brand in cosmic synth circles during the 70's and 80's, but while Cybotron's arc went from rhythm boxed and Library-like confections to, latterly, hamfisted symphonic pounding, this first pre-Cybotron outing of Von Braund's (barring an anomalous but very Steve Hillage-like full band-abetted acid rock eruption on the first track) is mostly just signaling though the haze on the edge of time, with gurgling cosmic tides rippling past as attenuated synthetic strands coil off into infinity or churn menacingly in the foreground in a very Kraut-y electronic fashion.

Note: link removed, as this is soon due for reissue on Aztec Music.

MAESTROS AND DIPSOS-UNRELEASED RECORDINGS, 198(?), AUSTRALIA

2011-10-03T01:10:00.001-07:00

More unreleased archival post punk goodness from the deep recesses of the Aussie early 80's scene (courtesy, long ago, of Phil Turnbull of the superb No Night Sweats site on Aussie underground music), and it's some pretty prescient goodness at that, with Maestros And Dipsos seeming to have both absorbed some of the least wayward lessons from The Raincoats and used that logic to create tunes that seem to anticipate the sound of (early) Throwing Muses in the process. I feel well assured that this traces forward to other less savory dimensions of femme-y indie-land jangle with its relatively unfettered musical stance (I wouldn't care to plumb those depths to make sure I'm right), but at this stage of the game, it's still a pretty damn agreeable set of sounds and associations and one that'll undoubtedly grip lots of you.

Get it via Megaupload Here

TRANSISTER-ZIG-ZAG, LP, 1979, NETHERLANDS

2011-10-03T01:07:00.000-07:00

This was Supersister grand magi Robert Jan Stips' top notch art pop cum new wave unit following his post-Supersister activities in Stars & Stips (also posted on MS) and (briefly) Golden Earring, and the unfettered flights of fancy you'd anticipate in one of his projects is certainly to be found here, albeit in rather more measured and pop-structured doses. The results on their lone outing here are a high caliber form of high gloss late 70's pop eccentricity vaguely in the ballpark of something like the first few Godley & Creme albums and The Tubes during their brilliant early career phase, but infused with a specific species of whimsicality that is very much Stips' alone.

Get it via Megaupload Here

ASMUS TIETCHENS/ARCANE DEVICE-SPEISELEITUNG, CD, 1996, GERMANY/USA

2011-10-03T01:05:00.001-07:00

From his early rhythmic electronic confections on Sky Records to a vast discography of subsequent radical (and frequently very abstract) sonic interventions, Asmus Tietchens remains one of the towering figures in recent German electronic music history, and one whom I've shared work under multiple guises by before. Speiseleitung was his second horn lock (following 1993's DBL_FDBK CD) with fellow arch avant garde-ist David Lee Myers, whose hand-made feedback generators and processors formed the basis of his work, a perfect pairing in the sense of Tietchens' own claim to make "absolute music", i.e. music without recourse to any other frames of reference. Together, they funhouse-mirror reflect whistling peals and tintinnabulation tangles of feedbacking excrescence through the ether in each others general direction.

Get it via Megaupload Here

WELCOME BACK, JIM!

2011-10-03T01:02:00.000-07:00

Before I put up any other posts today, I just want to take the opportunity to say welcome back to the original founder of this blog, Jim Mutantsounds, who's been away for quite some time, but who you can thank for the four excellent looking new posts below.

V.A.-The Class of '81,LP,UK,1980

2011-10-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

Excellent and rediculously rare UK DIY compilation , with great amaturish punk,powerpop and post punk tunes.Released iun 1980 under Upper Class label.

Tracklist:

A1 Void– Pop Love

A2 Exeros–Accident

A3 The Troopers–Love You

A4 Emil & The Detectives–Girl

A5 Bino–Dream (For My Sake)

B1 Picasso's Optician–Given Up Frying

B2 The Fringe–New Day

B3 Emil & The Detectives–Instant Magnet

B4 Exeros–Chita

B5 The Innocent Vicars–Starship 22

get it here

V.A. -Never Trash A Pretty Face, tape ,1986,GREECE

2011-10-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

Excellent lo-fi DIY compilation from Greece,released in Thessaloniki, in 1986, through the Rollin Under fanzine and the radio station Radio Utopia. Musically it varies from late 70s-early 80s punk/anarcho punk with greek lyrics,garage punk, to post punk sounds and some minimal synth.

Tracklist:

A1 Keli 13 - Ploio Stasiastwn

A2 Keli 13 - Mavra yalia

A3 Aganaktismeni Polites - Mesos Anthropos

A4 Aganaktismeni Polites- Favlos Kiklos

A5 Venericna Bolest - Piriniko Katafigio

A6 Venericna Bolest - Antithourios

A7 Allothi - Pente Lepta Prin

A8 Adreas Troussas & Aprosopoi - Na se kala

B1 After Death - The Exorcist

B2 After Death - The Birth of Darkness

B3 Final Solution - Point of View

B4 Final Solution - Trip

B5 Red Fuzz - Faraway

B6 Red Fuzz - That Love

B7 Drowned Girl - Electric Dog

B8 Apontes "Filoi" - Aimomixias paidia Latremena

get it here

V.A. Songs From Pigland, UK., 1981

2011-10-01T14:26:00.001-07:00

Another Amazing compilation LP. Absolut DIY postpunkish madness ,released in 1981, under Swindon's Bull's Hit label.

Tracklist:

SIDE 1

1. BODYWORK - " THE LIBRARIAN "

2. THE MODEL - " SUPER HEROES "

3. THE PADLOCKS - " ACTION MAN "

4. THE RAYZORS - " DRUGS KILL "

5. JON PERKINS & CAZ - " YAKETTY YAK "

6. MITCHELL'S GRUBE - " LOVIN' AND AFFECTION "

7. THE CUCUMBERS - " AMBIGUOUS AMBITION "

SIDE 2

1. 96 TEARS - " A MANSON MELODY "

2. DICKY AND THE TINKLERS - " THE BUM SONG "

3. IAN DOSSER AND THE POSEURS - " MAXIMUM SECURITY "

4. THE FADED T - SHIRTS - " ROCK AND ROLL "

5. THE DRIVERS - " NO NO / BARRY'S PLEASURE "

6. GERRY HATRICK & THE SCORE DRAWS - " NONSENSE "

7. DENTURE CARS - " SIXTIES REVIVAL 6359 "

8. THE CUCUMBERS - " PIMPLY GIRLS "

grab it here

V.A. Folk Music , UK ,1980

2011-10-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a great DIY compilation from the UK. Released through Tuzmadoner label. Amaturish art pop psychedelic post punk at it's best.

Tracklist:

A1 - Heart Terrorist - Mark O'Brien

A2 - Yellow Room - Chacellor of the Exchequer

A3 - This Week - The Different I's

A4 - Secrets - Infra-Red Ice Cubes

B1 - Scientific American - Chancellor of the Exchequer

B2 - Common Garret - Infra-Red Ice Cubes

B3 - Forgotten Doors - Mark O'Brien

B4 - Blankboard - The Different I'S

get it here

LONG GONE BUT NOT DEAD (YET)

2011-10-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well guys,...i'm back for just 2 shares

DEAD LINK RE-UP CAMPAIGN BEGINS IN EARNEST IN LIEU OF NEW POSTS THIS TIME

2011-09-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

With the backlog of dead links accumulating with some frequency now, it's time for me to finally begin the long-overdue process of systematically determining every dead link and re-upping all the ones that I am capable of doing without the assistance of others. Those that I need help with, I'll latterly make a master list of, but please bear with me as this is a process that is bound to take a goodly bit of time and energy. New posts will be up on Friday, Sept. 30th. Thank ye for your patience and years of support...

THE STENCH BAND-NOT HUMAN, (RECORDED: 1971-1977, USA (UNRELEASED)

2011-08-31T23:59:00.000-07:00

Documenting the next phase in the development of this seminal American underground outfit, the dazzling Beefheart-ian freak rock frazzle of their archivally issued Pray For The Fred LP that showcased their recordings circa 1971-73 (and which was previously posted by moi and has now been re-upped Here ) is still very much in evidence here. Burning every bit as bright with strange energies and stranger sounds and with the tunes on this unreleased second LP (kindly gifted to us by Charles St. Lucas from this fine ensemble) buttressing the strafed remnants of said Beefheartian-isms with a newfound and and equally deformed attack that brings to mind NWW listers Bomis Prendin, this is supremely damaged sounding and essential work that just begs for a proper reissue!

Get it via Megaupload Here

TIRATH SINGH NIRMALA-TATTV-GUNA-MALA, VOL. 1 & TATTV-GUNA-MALA, VOL. 2, CDR, 2005, UK

2011-08-31T23:57:00.001-07:00

Synapse frying probings of the transcendental beyond from a one time member of Hood turned practicing sikh and hirsute magi of the ecstatically attuned. Both volumes waste no time in pulling out every stop necessary to fling you right into the numinous clearlight of mystical awakening, with massed and striated moire patterns emerging ghost-like from the flickering weave of harmonium drone, ethnic instrument string scrape, La Monte Young bliss babble, and something that sounds like a Hebrew ham radio only to cede to glazed expanses of overlapping cloud cover that flicker and waver for 20 odd minutes at a stretch, while elsewhere, you're treated to cilia tickling expanses of electronically gurgling brooks and glinting stones descended from the Iasos/Don Robertson/Gunner Moller Pedersen school of acid fried proto-new-agey-ness, but whether you're enduring a hailstorm of lysergic maximalism or left hovering on a teased out tendril of the merest smoke, you're never for a moment unaware that your in the hands of a master.

Note: I don't have the original covers for these, but if any of you do, I'd be happy to add 'em to this post.

Get vol. 1 via Megaupload Here

Get vol. 2 via Megaupload Here

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS-SWAMP GAS, CD, 2001, USA

2011-08-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

One of the latter-day manifestations from this legendary freak fringe unit led by visual art enfant terrible Mike Kelley, Swamp Gas continues to cement this crew's iconic status, a process initiated some years back via Thurston Moore's epic 4 CD boxset release of 70's era work from their archive and which continues to grow via their highly engaging and still-ongoing revived activities that ensued in the wake of that release, which this decade old album highlights in vivid detail. With Swamp Gas, we get a witches cauldron of debased wheedle, narcoleptic slurry and consumer culture regurgitation that achieves an L.A. Free Music Society-like atmosphere of corrupted whimsy by stirring this pop cultural upchuck with the biggest Smegma tipped dick in the room.

Get it via Megaupload Here

TASADAY-L'ANIMALE PROFONDO, LP, 1986, ITALY

2011-08-31T23:52:00.000-07:00

Highly accomplished Italian ritualistic post-industrial sturm und drang mongering that alternates between Neubauten/Test Dept. skull/chest poundings, hermetic processional conjurings akin to the Current 93 of Lashtal or Richard Rupenus' more occultic explorations under the Metgumnerbone and Masstishaddhu mantles and unnerving synthetic dismalism out of the SPK Leichenschrei playbook.

Get it via Megaupload Here

TIME'S UP-OBSOLETE, 3" CD, 1999, USA

2011-08-31T23:50:00.000-07:00

Emerging from the American underbelly and wallowing in the cheap and nasty cast offs of the digital age's infancy, the plunderphonic wags behind this moniker offer up a 20 minute tinsel and christmas light bedecked 8-bit headache of deconstructed pac man detritus and smarmy kitsch collage tactics in the spirit of Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Oleg Kostrow and People Like Us.

Get it via Megaupload Here

JIM FRENCH WITH DIAMANDA GALAS AND HENRY KAISER-IF LOOKS COULD KILL, LP, 1979, USA

2011-08-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you and this really is that impossible to find first Diamanda Galas improv recording that's been tucked away on the B side of this obscure debut LP by Jim French and that you've always heard about but never thought you'd actually get to listen to. The powerhouse avant vocal terror that is Ms. Galas would probably prefer that you continued not to though, as she's on record savaging this recording and bitterly mocking Henry Kaiser for cajoling her into joining into this improv freakout when she was sick with a serious cold. I do believe she even referred to the results as a piss-take. Well, if that's the case you might want to develop a taste for Ms. Galas' golden showers, as this is every bit the twisted bloodletting and lesson into the most extreme ranges of advanced vocal technique you'd been hoping for and all the more fascinating for being able to hear the mistress of the dark unencumbered by the nocturnal shrouding of her own music and in wild dialogues with Jim French's brittle wheedlings and left field wind instrument frivolity and Kaiser's spidery post-Derek Bailey scrabble.That melee is hardly the only reason to afford this album a space in your life though. French's solo A side of the disc is a whole other kettle 'o fish entirely and worth analyzing on its own terms, as he works his way through interpretations of "the classics". French's handling of his array of small wind instruments (Sopranino and soprano saxophones, recorders, pibcorns and panpipes) is nothing if not unique, with an approach that's at once satirical, salacious and cut with a lemony tart wit; his work here as both builder of medieval and renaissance instruments and outwardly bound improvisor with a evident sense of humor placing him on a roughly parallel path to that of German improvisor/luthier Hans Reichel.

Get it via Megaupload Here

R.M. TOCAK-S/T, LP, 1976, YUGOSLAVIA

2011-08-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

this first solo outing from the former string slinger for hard charging Yugoslavian proggers Smak (his next would arrive 17 years later), R.M. Točak (aka Radomir Mihailović) comes raging right out of the gate in some furious and elevated mid-zone between Italian jazzy proggers Area and Ivo Papazov's Wedding Band, though the vibe here ultimately settles into a balance between a sorta funky fusion mode and a plangently hard rock-ish and guitar heroic bluesy prog style thats very much in keeping with the sound of his primary unit. I can feel sonics links here to the likes of both France's NYL and Hungary's Omega around the time of Time Robber as well as to the more jammy end of Italian fusion like Etna and the most good time-y and straightforwardly rocked out passages of prime era Yes and Gentle Giant. Damn impressive stuff!

Get it via Megaupload Here

FAMLENDE FORSOK-ONE NIGHT I HAD A FRIGHTFUL DREAM, LP, 2002, NORWAY

2011-08-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

Carrying on from both my own share of their first vinyl outing Ars Transmutatoria and Jim's subsequent offering of their first two tapes, this H.P. Lovecraft themed release utilizes the creaking and shrouded post-industrial/post-progressive/post-Residents/quasi medieval mystery school sonics of this longstanding Norwegian outsider ensemble's arsenal to anchor select passages from Lovecraft's work that are standing in here for their own texts, though their thickly intoned and lugubriously portentous delivery is trademark Famlende Forsok all the way, its slightly ungainly manner being part and parcel of what gives their work its lopsided charm and peculiar gravity.

Get it via Megaupload Here

TOX MODELL-PARKHOF 11.04.81, TAPE, 1981, NETHERLANDS

2011-08-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

This Dutch duo, the precursor to Det Wiehl, whose remarkable CD I shared back in the summer of '07, offer a bitingly austere attack in the mode of the most severe Nuue Deutsche Welle, browbeating you with verbal brickbats and shearing junkyard sonics in that telltale Einsturzende Neubauten-like mode that was the virtual default setting for so many of those occupying these blasted and scorched vectors of post punk and post industrial practice at the time. And Tox Modell do in fine sour faced style.

Get it via Megaupload Here

THE CHRIS HINZE COMBINATION-BAMBOO MAGIC, LP, 1975, NETHERLANDS

2011-08-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

Moving right along from the last Chris Hinze album that I shared with 1974's Sister Slick and veering ever more into the righteously funky and soul-y dimension he seemed on his way to with that one, this is some sweetly juiced up soul food for the right moment, though it's admittedly of a slightly lesser order of magnitude than his prior two outings to this, with much of what's here being comparable to both Michal Urbaniak and Urszula Dudziak's work under the Funk Factory mantle and Norman Connors' mid 70's work circa Saturday Night Special.

Get it via Megaupload Here

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

2011-07-31T23:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-31T23:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Get it via Megaupload Here

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

2011-07-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

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-(-)

Get it via Megaupload Here

MARCUS SCHMICKLER-ONEA GAKO, CD, 1993, GERMANY

2011-07-31T23:37:00.000-07:00

Onea Gako precedes both Schmickler's celebrated work under the Pluramon banner by several years as well as the more deliberate and tasteful sensibility that underpinned it, with the sounds and overall structure of this debut release of his seeming to be absent much of any detectable internal logic, wandering about through de-territorialized zones and moving willy-nilly from ghostly autumnal ambient meditations to churning and hacking 90's rock formulations, with the way these passages are disruptively arranged sometimes summoning recollections of both Strafe Fur Rebellion and later HNAS. It's a formative and somewhat tentative release to be sure, but for those keyed into Schmickler's aesthetic shebang, it offers a fascinating window into his artistic development.

Get it via Megaupload Here

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

2011-07-31T23:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Get it via Megaupload Here

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

2011-07-31T23:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Get it via Megaupload Here

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

2011-07-17T23:24:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-17T23:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-17T22:20:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-05T23:56:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-05T23:48:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-05T23:44:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-05T23:40:00.000-07:00

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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EARWACKS-DISTANCES, LP, 1981, USA

2011-06-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

This lost piece of private press American prog eccentricity is operating on a very elevated level indeed, with a dizzying array of moves that you could loosely triangulate between the Zappa and Hampton Grease Band-damaged convolutions of the American left field proggers in Oho, the prog/glam-indebted new wave quirk of early Tin Huey and the real people art rock what-the-fuck-ness Gignoux's Broadway Boys. This is just fascinating stuff and begs to be rolled around on (and have it's orifices probed by) your collective tongues, as the mystery and depth here just keep exponentially escalating as this platter spins on.

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LAURENCE VANAY-GATE WAY EVENING COLOURS, LP, 1975, FRANCE

2011-06-20T16:09:00.001-07:00

Following Jim's post from way back in 2007 of this spellbinding French artist's debut outing Galaxies, here's Jacqueline Thibault's (wife of famed early Magma member and producer Laurent Thibault) quietly devastating follow-up under this male pseudonym. Gate Way Evening Colours carries forward the spirit of her first in high fashion. As mentioned in the text accompanying Jim's post, her fellow French sympho-proggers in Catharsis would be an obvious point of reference for the often dewily shimmering, restrained and mysterious species of prog beguilement on hand, but so too would fellow French unit Wapassou as this negotiates zones of darkly magisterial wonderment, with some of the ecstatic peaks achieved on the more rock-centric B-side even being akin to the Quebecois dark prog godhead of Franck Dervieux's Dimension M.

Note: link removed as this is soon due for reissue on Lion Productions

VAGTAZO HALOTTKEMEK-A VILAGOSZTON KIUGRASZTASA (JUMPING OUT THE WORLD - INSTINCT), LP, 1990, HUNGARY

2011-06-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

Following on from my post of their debut release, here's another breathtaking round of ecstatic and amphetamine-cut higher key spacerock pummel from this self professed "Shamanic hardcore" unit, with these completely sui generis Hungarians unleashing waves, then shockwaves and finally, audio landslides out of their relentless and nerve-shattering M.O. that seems to equate psychedelic revelation with being baptized in fire.

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V.A.-INSIDE THE FANTASTICAL CAVE, CDR, 2003, USA

2011-06-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

This instantly deleted 100 copy CDR comp is split between three bands; one relatively high profile, one de rigueur for this sorta thing and a third that's a question mark, the lot of 'em assembled to provide the soundtrack to the stitched kitsch of Chie Fukao and Leif Ritchey's visual art installation from which this compendium takes it's name. The prolific improv rock freaks in Sunburned Hand Of The Man turn in one of the best of their post-psychedelic interventions here, plowing a very deep trough of Swedish underground-derived acid trudge across 14 mantric minutes, while the esteemed New York speaker cone shredders in Sightings plays a tortured game of whack-a-mole with hairballs of sonic filth, as is their wont. A third outfit under the banner of The Arb offer some slight rhythm-machine abetted drift that probably worked better in tandem with Fukao and Richey's thrift store entanglements than on their lonesome here, but I expect the Sunburned and Sightings material here will more than suffice for the majority of you.

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THE ZEET BAND-MOOGIE WOOGIE, LP, 1970, USA

2011-06-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Highly winning early Moog funk zaniness in a sorta pre-Popcorn mode from this one-off West Coast crew, with some of the best bits here even anticipating the killer synthy library sleaze of Claude Perraudin's Patchwork library releases.

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MCH BAND-1982-1986, 2xCD, 1992, CZECHOSLOVAKIA

2011-06-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

A follow-up to my long-ago post of this powerhouse Czech avant prog outfit's early 90's outing "Gib Acht", the work of the MCH Band on this archivally assembled collection could well give The Plastic People Of The Universe a run for their money as the most formidable and outwardly bound Czech unit active during the period represented here. Led by guitarist/sax player Mikolas Chadima, the array of tracks at hand from a decade or so earlier than Gib Acht are a good bit more rawboned and raucous. They schematically divided this two disc set between rock and improvised sections, disc one offering up a magnificent array of nervous avant rock motion, tense atmospheric gestures and bass driven minor key grooves that jibe rather a lot with many of the best outfits out of Czechoslovakia during this era from E to Psi Vojaci to Pro Pocit Jistoty. In fact, it's easy to see how much this material served as a template for the slightly later work of the folks in Uz Jsme Doma. Disc two veers off into much more purgatorial zones of mystery, abstraction and unease that are almost Einsturzende Neubauten-like at times.

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ALBERT MARCOEUR-LIVE IN NANCY, FRANCE, 1976, UNRELEASED

2011-06-03T18:08:00.001-07:00

An exceptionally rare live recording of this near mythical French avant prog mage and his crack team of accomplices, whose brilliantly deconstructive musical muse (often compared to Zappa) almost defines the aesthetic stance adopted by the R.I.O. crowd, despite his not being formally inducted into their cabal during Rock In Opposition's heyday. Newcomers to Marcoeur's body of work would be better served by first acquainting themselves with his studio recordings (the split tape with This Heat on Tago Mago posted long ago by Jim would be a good place to start), but for initiates, this admittedly rather rough live recording offers a fascinating window into how his musical processes unfurl in real time.

THE LINK APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN PULLED AT THE REQUEST OF THE ARTIST, SO I WON'T BE ATTEMPTING TO RE-UP THIS MATERIAL

ECHO IS YOUR LOVE/KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT-S.T., SPLIT LP, 1999, FINLAND

2011-06-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

A rare and largely forgotten split LP from the 90's Finnish underground, this platter finds Echo Is Your Love (still apparently extant and whom their Wiki entry describes as "noise rock") working a seam of languid and distortion laced femme vox indie pop and they certainly do it nicely enough to be appreciated by those that go in for that sorta thing, but it's the earliest era of Finnish free folk/communal psych stalwarts Kemialliset Ystavat that's bound to be the attention getter here. At this point, their more expansive and psychedelic gestures were a few years ahead of them, the scrappily playful material at hand lurching in fits and starts from decrepit no wave screech to lobotomized toy instrument torture.

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HEINZ SCHWEISZ-HUNGER & LIEBE, TAPE, 1985, GERMANY

2011-06-03T17:56:00.001-07:00

Another long forgotten Neue Deutsche Welle cassette rescued from the tape decay brink and offered up for your edification, this one a foil-encased 30 copy edition mid 80's cassingle mating a stark bass, beatbox and voice workout with a round of detourned tape spew, metal banging and grafted on narrative on the flip.

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IBID-GOLDEN WONDER, CD, 199(?), HONG KONG

2011-06-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Amusingly piss-takey plunderphonic/karaoke-detourned dada junk spew in the mode of Eye Yamatsuka's hijinks in U.F.O. Or Die and Violent Onsen Geisha circa Otis courtesy of Hong Kong based dadaist bricoleur Xper.Xr. Smear the curdled residue of pop cultural deconstruction across your third eye and smell the love.

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STUTTER-BROKEN SNAKES, LP, 1990, USA

2011-05-14T18:10:00.001-07:00

Beyond asserting at the outset that this crucial and almost entirely overlooked art damaged mindbomb is situated squarely between Mutant Sounds approved holy grails of the outwardly bound like The Decayes and The History Of Unheard Music, it's probably best to just let this crew lay out the specifics themselves, since they do such a bang up job of it:

"Stutter started as an improvisational music collective based out of Louisville, Kentucky USA in the nihilistic days of late 1970's punk / industrial music and DIY aesthetics . influences included electro-acoustic, progressive, free jazz improvisation, electronic, psychedelic, musique concret, new music, 'krautrock' and industrial noise, as readily as Fluxus, Dada and Futurist sound art experiments and performance art . many of the founding band members had first collaborated in Louisville's underground arts collective ARF [ Artist Resistance Front ]

Studio and live performances bore out a strong rhythmical composition peppered with Beat-influenced, stream-of-consciousness lyricism, itself tagged with ready wit and complex wordplay . traditional 'rock' instrumentation was subverted through the use of tape loops, early turntablism efforts, non-musicianship, and oblique strategies . performances were often punctuated with improvisational movement, video projections, and avant guarde visual stagings."

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INFORMATICS-ACCIDENT IN PARADISE, 12" EP, 1985, AUSTRALIA

2011-05-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

Really potent Aussie minimal synth mongering with a full bodied analog attack and a unmistakable akin to their country mates in Severed Heads (particularly circa Bad Mood Guy and Rotund For Success), evident right down to the cut up media projections that accompanied their gigs.

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HI-SPEED-ERIOKA CON ANIMAC PLANETICO, CD, 1996, JAPAN

2011-05-14T18:01:00.001-07:00

This obscure Japanese avant prog crew pretty much lay bare their intentions with the cover art's overt tip 'o the hat to Picchio Dal Pozzo's classic R.I.O.-esque second album Abbiamo Tutti I Suoi Problemi, but the specific gravity and impact Hi-Speed achieve here really places this some poles apart from their inspiration and situates this a lot closer to the compressed and thundering avant prog attack of their 90's peers in Happy Family and P.O.N.; the more formal chamber rock arrangements here acting as springboards to more pummeling, contorted and 90's-specific articulations of avant prog praxis.

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THE HERCO PILOTS-JUMPING AT?, 2x7", 1981, NEW ZEALAND

2011-05-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

Spare, clattery and very endearing D.I.Y. post punk action from this overlooked band of Kiwi marginals who were more apt to play under a freeway overpass than in a nightclub, with the best bits here bringing to mind a specific sub-set of left field UK early 80's activity by the likes of The Door And The Window, Glaxo Babies and, at their artiest, a bit of Unrest, Work and Play.

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CONRAD SCHNITZLER-00/106, CD, 1997, GERMANY

2011-05-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

More of this Krautrock electronic godfather's 90's era goodness for your collective perusal here; Schnitzler's M.O. around this time having become increasingly inclusive, with his work on 00/106 unfurling a whole galaxy of multi-tiered frequency smears, tintinnabulating electroacoustic concatenations and John Duncan-like shearing greyscale static drifts.

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EMIL RICHARDS-NEW SOUND ELEMENT "STONES", LP, 1966, USA

2011-04-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

Booted a little while back in an edition paired with Hal Blaine's wild "Psychedelic Percussion" this drop dead staggering proto-electronica classic from a fellow session drummer in circulation around the same time as Blaine comes on in a technicolor blaze of absurdist electronic merriment and just doesn't let up. Tom Dissivelt, Perrey & Kingsley, David Vorhaus and Mort Garson are the best frames of reference here, with Dissavelt's classic "Electronic Music" LP under the Electrosoniks moniker being the most accurate touchstone for the wildly percolating and cartoonish tuned percussion and electronic popcorn zipping around the stereo field here. Utterly and completely essential.

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ORCHESTRA NJERVUDAROV-CON LE ORECCHIE DI EROS, LP, 1979, ITALY

2011-04-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

This stunning and very obscure Italian avant-gardish prog wonder carries whiffs of all sorts of vital left field musical strains. There's a strong simpatico here with Czech dissident rock of the period ala The Plastic People and MCH Band. Several other things come to mind here as well, from the odd combination of angularity and airiness here that touches on the sound of the French Zeuhl band Uppsala, to things more reflective of musical attitudes in their home country, with some of the moves here distinctly mirroring the developments of their Italian contemporaries in Picchio Dal Pozzo, (particularly their later and more R.I.O.-ish material), though with all the endless whirligig intricacy of the arrangements here, this stuff really does also come remarkably close a times to the sound of 90's Japanese avant proggers Tipographica. An essential piece of the puzzle in sorting out the radical legacy of Italian rock of that era.

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THE LAND OF GUILT & BLARNEY-MUGGED BY LIFE, TAPE, 1992 + CRUEL, TAPE, 2000 + UNUSUAL, TAPE, 2000, USA

2011-04-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

The work of two stalwarts of the 80's/90's experimental cassette network, The Land Of Guilt & Blarney was the brainchild of uber-networker, Audiofile label head and Nomuzic leader Carl Howard in collaboration with one Louis Boone, now sadly deceased and whose legacy this multiple album share of theirs is intended to celebrate.

Cruel and Unusual came out as tapes circa 2000 and were latterly issued as CDR's alongside their first early 90's recordings, Mugged By LIfe. There's a flood of material here to take in, much of it very fine indeed, with some distinct overtones of both Steve Thomsen and later Randy Greif in evidence here, and which is probably best tackled chronologically in order to get inside their approach to sound crafting. I'll leave it to Carl himself to spell out the particulars from here:

Somewhere at the intersection of experimental electronic music, jazz, space rock and industrial music lay THE LAND OF GUILT AND BLARNEY - recordings by rotating members of a house in Jersey City, NJ before its alleged real estate renaissance, and just before the onset of 9/11 when the United States officially became a breeding ground for cultural and corporate fascism. All members had been in and out of the country's premier space rock band ALIEN PLANETSCAPES, and all were heavily informed by musicians ranging from DEVO to Sun Ra, from Miles to Coltrane, from The Nice to XTC, from Genesis to Yes, and from Hawkwind to Gong... and back again.

Its regular members included Carl "NOMUZIC" Howard and Louis "Professor Electron" Boone who were also manstays in the space rock vehicle BORN TO GO, known for their onstage twin displays of syntheisizer pyrotechnics at bargain basement prices. Reginald Taylor was an additional LG&B regular, and guests included LG Mair, Jr., Blaise Siwula, Kenny Brown, and Renard Hines. Even Alan Rider of the 1980s UK underground cassette label Adventures In Reality guested on one track.

"Mugged By Life" was recorded in 1992 when the members lived in a ramshackle and spectacularly tumble-down Victorian home in an area of Jersey City heavily impacted by both poverty and the prevailing crack epidemic. It is commemorated in the track "This Mold House" and made great use of a disastrously broken down upright piano in its living room. Many of LG&B's track titles are scarcely-coded references to Sun Ra, to Charles Mingus, to DEVO, to the participants themselves, or to popular U.S. political conspiracy theories. "Cruel" and "Unusual" were recorded concurrently in 2000 in a different house with a different feel and a different karma. Both Boone and Howard were members of BORN TO GO at this time. LG&B performed live twice, but the recordings of these shows were of less than presentable quality.

Carl Howard has been the publisher of ARTITUDE Magazine; helmed the audiofile Tapes cassette and CDR label from 1984 to 1999; and has hosted the weekly program "Space Patrol!" at http://luxuriamusic.com since 2003. Louis Boone passed away in April 2010 of causes likely related to diabetes. The three CDs by LofG&B are offered in tribute to his memory, and to the memory of Douglass Walker of Alien Planetscapes, who passed away in 2006.

Carl Howard
April 2011

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TAKAHASHI MIZUTANI-SOLO WORKS 1970, CDR, 200? (RECORDED: 1970), JAPAN

2011-04-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

Thrown onto the ebay market during the first deluge of bootleg activity surrounding the legendary and revered Les Rallizes Desnudes, this disc of LRD leader MIzutani's solo efforts was part of a 10 CDR set of LRD material, the rest of whose contents I've neither the time nor energy to compare with the endlessly booted and reissued LRD market but which are certain to be circulating elsewhere. This appears to be the earliest solo material of his making the rounds and it really is nice stuff, both for in-the-know acolytes of LRD and for those as-yet-unhepped, with west coast psych-indebted acid folk teased out into long, spare and languid drifts. Soporific and beatific bits like these have always been set adrift amidst the inky black and ferocious post-Velvets and proto-Fushitsusha noise psych spew LRD are more legendary for, but daisy chained all together, they offer a very different and rewarding emotional gravity than LRD's infernal inferno.

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LA PENTOLA DI PAPIN-ZERO-7, LP, 1977, ITALY

2011-04-27T18:27:00.001-07:00

Damn fine if sorta typical Italian proggy prog, with some beautifully squalling acid fuzz guitar that wanders into liquid-y Gilmour-addled Floydian-isms and a distinct akin to their contemporaries in P.F.M. These guys weren't re-inventing the wheel, but there's no denying the enjoyability of this piece for those with their fingers and frontal lobes in the psych/prog pudding.

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ZIN-SAY!-AS A FACE, LP, 1987, JAPAN

2011-04-09T22:55:00.001-07:00

Cockamamie musical conceits are at a premium on this long lost album by this exceptionally obscure (even by Japanese underground standards) fringe unit, with the barely there ebb of incidental urban location recordings that initiates this oddity being but one in a long series of dissociative audio non sequiturs and rug-pulls. This deliberate wrong footing continues apace; their cheeky structural dislocations of commericial schlock signifiers ranging from twee synth pop to hard rock blather placing them somewhere between Virgin Vs and Picky Picnic, though it's contaminated by a shrieking Eye-like vocal attack and cross cut by apropos-of-nothing disruptions of dada or silence, right down to the baffling inclusion of a block of said silence toward the end of side B (their cover of Cage's 4:33, perhaps?) and a bonus flexi disc that consists mostly of silence, with a bit of yakking at the fore and aft.

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V/A-WEST PSYCHEDELIA 2, LP, 1988, JAPAN

2011-04-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

while the first volume of Alchemy Records' 80's "psychedelic" roundup under the banner of A Begginer's Guide To West Psychedelia failed to tingle my tangle (and which earned Alchemy the quotations around the word psychedelic due to their sometimes indiscriminate application of the term), this second go-round is well worth a peek-in, though identifying some of this as psychedelia is still a bit of a semantical stretch. There's also rather more above-the-marquee talent on hand here to drum up interest, including multiple Boredoms offshoots (Unlimited freak Out Or Die, Omoide Hatoba), though it's the appealingly dumbo psych bluster from Makoto Kawabata and Asahito Nanjo's Leningrad Blues Machine, Gong Derby's amusingly befouled free jazz-meets-Boredoms spew and a slow burning expanse of minimalist psych trance rock from Idiot 'O Clock (easily their finest hour) that are the real reasons to be lending this compendium your ears.

Track listing:

1. Unlimited Freak Out Or Die-Space Disco
2. Folk Tales-Who Can It Be Now
3. Mannish Tone-Catcher In The Rye
4. Leningrad Blues Machine-(title in Japanese characters)
5. Gong Derby-(title in Japanese characters)
6. OXZ-Baby Again
7. Omoide Hatoba-Kichigai
8. Idiot O'Clock-(title in Japanese characters)

Get it via Megaupload Here

Note: Rapidshare has once again been crapping out on their uploads, despite multiple attempts on my part. Thus, these will remain available from Megaupload only for the time being.

MICHEL REDOLFI-JUNGLE, CD, 1997, FRANCE

2011-04-09T22:33:00.000-07:00

One of the titans of French electronic music, Redolfi is perhaps best known for his series of underwater concerts, which were documented on albums by INA-GRM and Hat-Hut. This spectacularly evocative release unfurls like a sustained hallucination, with electroacoustic-like timbres and treatments applied in ways that run at a bit of right angle to the psychologically dislocated and plastic sound objects deployed in most electroacoustic praxis by using these flickering electronic chimeras and treatments to explicitly evoke a jungle's atmosphere, albeit in surprising and surrealist ways.

Get it via Megaupload Here

Note: Rapidshare has once again been crapping out on their uploads, despite multiple attempts on my part. Thus, these will remain available from Megaupload only for the time being.

JEAN-MICHEL LORGERE-HOMERE INSTRUMENTAL SERIE NO. 2, LP, 197?, FRANCE

2011-04-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

Here's some prime funky/synthy library cheese to wallow around in, with Lorgere's approach to this genre fusing the deliciously porn-y moves of Claude Perraudin with some ace strutting Latin/Brazilian vibes ala Tonio Rubio, Watel Branco or Ben and the Platino Group and some sideline treks into fluffier and flute-ier passages.

Get it via Megaupload Here

Note: Rapidshare has once again been crapping out on their uploads, despite multiple attempts on my part. Thus, these will remain available from Megaupload only for the time being.

ONE EXTRA POST FOR ALL OF YA

2011-03-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

Seems that in my exhaustion, I inadvertently re-posted an Iskra LP that Jim had already put up on MS long ago, though with the unexpected and happy knock-on effect of replacing a problematic original link. Anyway, that being the case, I've decided to offer one further share (below) for this go 'round to make up for the redundancy.

LES SPLENDID-S/T, LP, 197?, FRANCE

2011-03-22T14:53:00.001-07:00

The cat behind the Les Splendid moniker is one Jean-Claude Pierric, one of France's most prolific library music composers of the era. This particular outing on the Disc L'Agami imprint probably won't prove a monster revelation to anyone that's spent some time exploring this territory, but it's still larded a very specific period charm. Flute laden for its duration, the best bits here will plaster a big dumb grin on the mug of anyone charmed by the likes of The Bigroup, Braen's Machine or Bernard Wystraete/Structure.

Get it via Megaupload Here

MUTANT SOUNDS

UPLOAD SOLUTIONS ARE IN THE WORKS

LICKING WOUNDS AND TAKING STOCK AFTER THE CLAMPDOWN

THANKS TO ALL OF MUTANT SOUNDS' FANS OUT THERE FOR MAKING 2011 OUR BEST YEAR EVER. BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS AWAIT IN 2012 . HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

THE OBSCENES-IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, LP, 1993, ITALY

HELGOLAND AND BAND-99, CD, 1999, GERMANY

TONI ESPOSITO-PROCESSIONE SUL MARE, LP, 1976, ITALY

V/A-CD VOOR DE INSTABIELE MEDIA-CD FOR THE UNSTABLE MEDIA, CD, 1992, VARIOUS

S. IDA & BGG-…EAT SHOW, TAPE, 1985, JAPAN

MUTANT SOUNDS GETS PROFILED IN BOING BOING AND VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION REVEAL THEIR HIDDEN HIP HOP HISTORY

JUST A SMALL SHOUT OUT TO OUR FRIENDS AT ALTERED ZONES AS THEY TRANSFORM THEMSELVES INTO AD HOC

V/A-ITALIC ENVIRONMENTS-PROJECT BY NICOLA FRANGIONE, LP, 1985, ITALY

MINOY-PASSAGE OF THE MIGRATORY BIRD, CDR, 200? (RECORDED: 1987), USA

TRUBROT-LIFUN, LP, 1971, ICELAND

INSTANT MUSIC-S/T, 10", 1980, GERMANY

KLANGWART-INKIEK, 3" CD, 1997, GERMANY

MORICE BENIN-APOCALYPSE…, LP, 1980, FRANCE

STATIC EFFECT-DEAD GAME IN ANY WEATHER, TAPE, 1989, USA

CELLUTRON & THE INVISIBLE-REFLECTING ON THE FIRST WATCH, WE UNCOVER TREASURE BURIED FOR THE BLIND, LP, 1978, USA

THE MUFFINS-LIVE-WASHINGTON DC, 1977, USA, UNRELEASED

STABAT STABLE-GAINSAID FACTS, 12" EP, 1982, FRANCE

NEW POSTS UP BY TOMORROW NIGHT, AND A RENEWED PUSH TO RE-UP THE REMAINING DEAD LINKS

MUTANT SOUNDS IN THE WIRE MAGAZINE

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION & PERIHELION-THE SCIENCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE LP (200 COPY ED.) OUT NOVEMBER 15 ON PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE

TOM CAMERON-MUSIC TO WASH DISHES BY, LP, 1982, USA

MASCHINE NR. 9-HEADMOVIE, LP, 1974, GERMANY, NWW LIST

SOLID EYE-LIVE AT ANOMALOUS RECORDS, LP, 1997, USA

CRYPTO-S/T, LP, 1974, NETHERLANDS

C. PTAK-PREPARE YOUR SELF, CDR, 2002, USA

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION'S EYE PEELS & BRAIN PICKS LP SOLD OUT NOW ON PRE-ORDER(1 WEEK DELAY ON SHIPPING, ALAS) **FULL A SIDE IN .WAV FORMAT BELOW**

AIR-S/T, LP, 1977, JAPAN

RUNZELSTIRN & GURGELSTOCK-HO, CD, 1992, SWITZERLAND

JOSHUA-LIFE LESS LOST, CD, 1998, USA

LEE GAGNON-JEREMIE (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK), LP, 1972, CANADA

KLAN-MROWISKO, LP, 1970, POLAND

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION LAUNCH THEIR NEW LABEL PUER GRAVY WITH THEIR 100 COPY LP "EYE PEELS AND BRAIN PICKS": PRE-ORDER NOW!

AKABUSHI WITH BONJOUR! MADEMOISELLE-LIVE T-SHIRT KOTE KURE WITH BONJOUR!, CD EP, 1995, JAPAN

STEVE MAXWELL VON BRAUND-MONSTER PLANET, LP, 1975, AUSTRALIA

MAESTROS AND DIPSOS-UNRELEASED RECORDINGS, 198(?), AUSTRALIA

TRANSISTER-ZIG-ZAG, LP, 1979, NETHERLANDS

ASMUS TIETCHENS/ARCANE DEVICE-SPEISELEITUNG, CD, 1996, GERMANY/USA

WELCOME BACK, JIM!

V.A.-The Class of '81,LP,UK,1980

V.A. -Never Trash A Pretty Face, tape ,1986,GREECE

V.A. Songs From Pigland, UK., 1981

V.A. Folk Music , UK ,1980

LONG GONE BUT NOT DEAD (YET)

DEAD LINK RE-UP CAMPAIGN BEGINS IN EARNEST IN LIEU OF NEW POSTS THIS TIME

THE STENCH BAND-NOT HUMAN, (RECORDED: 1971-1977, USA (UNRELEASED)

TIRATH SINGH NIRMALA-TATTV-GUNA-MALA, VOL. 1 & TATTV-GUNA-MALA, VOL. 2, CDR, 2005, UK

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS-SWAMP GAS, CD, 2001, USA

TASADAY-L'ANIMALE PROFONDO, LP, 1986, ITALY

TIME'S UP-OBSOLETE, 3" CD, 1999, USA

JIM FRENCH WITH DIAMANDA GALAS AND HENRY KAISER-IF LOOKS COULD KILL, LP, 1979, USA

R.M. TOCAK-S/T, LP, 1976, YUGOSLAVIA

FAMLENDE FORSOK-ONE NIGHT I HAD A FRIGHTFUL DREAM, LP, 2002, NORWAY

TOX MODELL-PARKHOF 11.04.81, TAPE, 1981, NETHERLANDS

THE CHRIS HINZE COMBINATION-BAMBOO MAGIC, LP, 1975, NETHERLANDS

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

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

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

MARCUS SCHMICKLER-ONEA GAKO, CD, 1993, GERMANY

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

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

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

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

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

NIK RAICEVIC-HEAD, LP, 1970, USA

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

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

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

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

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

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

FLAME DREAM-CALATEA, LP, 1980, SWITZERLAND

EARWACKS-DISTANCES, LP, 1981, USA

LAURENCE VANAY-GATE WAY EVENING COLOURS, LP, 1975, FRANCE

VAGTAZO HALOTTKEMEK-A VILAGOSZTON KIUGRASZTASA (JUMPING OUT THE WORLD - INSTINCT), LP, 1990, HUNGARY

V.A.-INSIDE THE FANTASTICAL CAVE, CDR, 2003, USA

THE ZEET BAND-MOOGIE WOOGIE, LP, 1970, USA

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION'S EYE PEELS & BRAIN PICKS LP SOLD OUT NOW ON PRE-ORDER(1 WEEK DELAY ON SHIPPING, ALAS) FULL A SIDE IN .WAV FORMAT BELOW