MUTANT SOUNDS IS REBORN AS DUBLAB'S MUTANT SOUNDS RADIO WITH VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION

For all of you who thought Mutant Sounds was a thing of the past, take heed! Mutant has reconfigured itself and will now be presented by Eric Lumbleau and Matt Castille of Vas Deferens Organization as a two hour broadcast on Dublab, occurring on the second Friday of each month, from 8-10 PM and debuting this Friday night. Thanks to all our long term supporters and welcome on board to one and all for phase 2 of this adventure. For those so inclined, a new Vas Deferens Organization video from our forthcoming album "Gag Reflex" can be found here

About Eric's absence...

Greetings, this is Matt from Vas Deferens Organization. I just want to let everyone know that Eric's been away from posting due to some unexpected family-related drama, but he'll be back to his posting on Mutant in about a week.

MUTANT UPDATE AND MICHAEL ALAN & VDO RELATED NEWS

So hello to you all and thanks for your patience. I'm just back from working on the next two Vas Deferens Organization projects in California, which is why there's been a lapse here on Mutant, but new posts should hopefully appear within a week or so now that I can devote myself again to Mutant related activities.

Until then and if you're in New York next week, please don't miss the chance to take in VDO collaborator Michael Alan's performance at the Brooklyn's New Museum's Untapped street festival. This takes place in Manhattan on May 4th from noon to 4 PM at Sara D. Roosevelt Park, a bacchanal that'll include music from our collaboration with him. This album (Michael Alan Alien & Vas Deferens Organization-All You Can Eat) is now set for release as an LP later in the year via Beta-Lactam Ring Records  (specifics forthcoming later). In the meantime, you can check out one final brief advance track to whet your appetite Here  The three earlier advance tracks we posted can be found on the links list on the bar to your right.

Also scheduled for release later in the year on Beta-Lactam Ring Records will be the three way collaboration between Vas Deferens Organization, Sound and French Art Brut RIO mutants La Societe Des Timides A La Parade Des Oiseaux, whose cassette EP you can download below.

LA SOCIETE DES TIMIDES A LA PARADE DES OISEAUX-UN OBJET DE PLAINE, TAPE, 1995, FRANCE

An artfully arranged fracas of pantomimes, pirouettes and prankish raspberries blown in the face of polite good taste, La Societe Des Timides A La Parade Des Oiseaux (translation: Shy Society At The Bird Parade, or La STPO for short) are longstanding arbiters of the far flung French musical fringe. Since 1984, and across many shifting line-ups, they've established a musical voice that takes the effervescence and sly asymmetries of French R.I.O. architects like Albert Marcoeur and Etron Fou Leloublan and refracts them through the lens of both eruptive Pere Ubu-like post punk and the kind of Art Brut song form deconstructions proposed by labels like Ayaa and DDAA's Illusion Productions. The resulting all-knees-and-elbows thrust and parry is then used as a springboard for the glossolalian attack of vocalist Pascal Godjikian and his repertoire of alternately blustering, simpering, hectoring, cajoling and capering histrionics.

La STPO are in fact one of the groups that I'm most happy to finally be able to bring to your willing ears, as their dislike of compressed audio has now been surmounted by my offering to share this cassette EP of theirs in .WAV format. The document at hand, Un Objet De Plaine was issued on cassette by Prikosnovenie in advance of their release of STPO's remarkable Les Explositionnistes CD and features an alternate version of its opening track, "Dada Max Stellt Loplop Vor". Full disclosure: La STPO have been involved in a recently completed three-way collaboration with both my ongoing band Vas Deferens Organization and my one-time outfit Sound that's been some 13 years in the making, so I'm hardly a neutral third party in my endorsement of their music.

Get it Here 

YETI-THE MAN WITH THE LAMP, ONE-SIDED LP, 2006 (RECORDED: 2000), USA

It's with great pleasure and some reverence that I'm finally bringing to you this extraordinary recording. With both keyboardist Doug Ferguson and bassist Tommy Atkins now having departed this earth (a sadly all too common occurrence in our musical circles), founding Yeti member and current half of Pinkish Black Jon Teague has agreed to let me share this remarkable recording with you.

Formed on the heels of Doug's departure from the temporarily dis-banded Vas Deferens Organization circa 1998, Yeti was the ultimate vehicle for realizing Doug's grandiose avant prog visions. While Ohm had served as his conduit for his cosmic improvisations and Vas Deferens Organization a means for him to express his most outlandish visions, it was with Yeti that Doug truly came into his own as a composer. To the accompaniment of a bulldozing rhythm section  rendered acres wide with fuzz and distortion and the surprisingly shaded interventions of guitarist Eric Harris, Doug would let rip with barrages of minor key organ and string synth menace laced with synthetic hailstorms from his Wakeman-worthy banks of keys. All of this was the result of Doug having internalized the deepest dimensions of avant prog in general and Zeuhl in particular; specifically that most anguished dimension of it articulated by the Magma of De Futura and even more specifically Shub Niggurath, who'd take this genre it to its most harrowing and soured extremes. With the assist of his Fort Worth pals, who'd been steeping in this stuff with him, though approaching it from a background more based in in hardcore, Yeti's dystopian vision was brought to life.

They would emerge fully formed with their debut outing "Things To Come" and after Doug's tragic death in 2002, Jon, Eric and Tommy would carry on as a power trio on 2004's "Volume, Obliteration, Transcendance", but the Doug era was considered to be a closed book until the emergence of this 18 minute epic, issued on a one-sided LP in 2006. The source recording for The Man With The Lamp was offered to my bandmate Matt Castille from Vas Deferens Organization by Doug to see if the rehearsal room recording from which it stems could in any way be salvaged by Matt's magic.  The Man With The Lamp was a career high for them as a composition but it was also, having only been recorded as a private rehearsal jam, a pretty rough and murky document and required a substantial sonic overhaul from Matt to bring it up to releasable level, if not perfect clarity. What results is one of their most monolithic and crushing recordings, leavened with some of their most delicate shadings and ensconced in a VDO production patina.

This recording also exposes a hidden dimension of VDO's productions, in that this was but one of three dark avant prog recordings from the era that we produced. Expect to discover more from this universe once our productions for PrimitivEcho and Coprolingus eventually see the light of day.

Get it Here 

PHILIP SANDERSON & VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION-"UPSTAIRS BACKWARDS", ADVANCE TRACK

One of the first fruits from the new and as-yet-untitled collaboration between Storm Bugs/Snatch Tapes mastermind Philip Sanderson and Vas Deferens Organization, the band in which I work, "Upstairs Backwards", subtitled "Drums in the Sanctuary (Abandoning The Office - She Descends Into The Underworld)" is VDO assisted by "The Lundon Physician" as he lovingly vivisects our work and teases the results into a series of wide-angle tracking shots.

note: In order to get my initial posts up by the end of the week as promised, I've decided to hoist these first three files on my own dropbox account and then migrate them over to the FMA later, once the i's are dotted and the t's crossed in setting everything up with them.

Get it Here  

THE END OF AN ERA

So this is where I get to tell you everything you never wanted to hear me say. While it's been a fantastic ride and I hope everyone has enjoyed it, the recent news that issues pertaining to copyright online are now being re-interpreted by the powers-that-be in alarming new ways means that there's no point in pushing this boulder up a hill any longer. Mutant Sounds' original founder Jim is in full agreement with my sentiments and everything except for the texts has now been deleted. I understand this is really crushing news for many and I sympathize with your pain but I also hope you can see why the time has now come to call it a day.

Thanks to every one of you that have expressed your enthusiasm and moral support for Mutant over the years. I'm convinced that this music and a better understanding of it and its historical place will continue to spread, as it's been circulating around out there for some time now, so a thousand other platforms await your own able hands and intentions. My texts (those on the posts put up by vdoandsound) at least still reside under my control and thus they are now deemed anti-copyright and you are free to spread them far and wide, though proper attribution on these would obviously be appreciated when they're used.

For those who would like to be kept abreast of Vas Deferens Organization activity, a twitter account will be launched shortly to keep everyone interested up to date and to periodically hand out free material that we own.

BERNARD GRANCHER-MONSIEUR DELICIEUX LP - VDO COLLABORATOR'S DEBUT LP OUT NOW

With Vas Deferens Organization's forthcoming split LP collaboration with both Audace and Ben Presto being the next scheduled release on our Puer Gravy label (it's currently at the mastering stage, with more details about it coming shortly), I wanted to take a moment to point you all toward Audace member Bernard Grancher's just released debut LP "Monsieur Delicieux", an artfully discombobulated dovetail of moody minimal synth and recherche' 80's French art pop tangents that's sure to tingle the tangle of a certain breed of Mutant. Head on over to his Bandcamp page here where you can check it all out and score yourself one of these lovely things.

THE RE-UPS AND DOWNS OF FILE SHARING

There's been a reason for the extra long span of time since my last posts went up: I've needed time to weigh my options and determine if this shebang is still worth keeping afloat. I say that because Rapidshare, as far as I can tell, appear to be waging something of a stealth campaign against Mutant and presumably others in the sharity blog realm; a kind of covert war of attrition in which they simply chip away at you incrementally, by arbitrarily removing files that were only just recently re-upped, by marking files as "illegal" even though they're often for some of the most obscure things imaginable, by requiring an elaborate re-arrangement of account settings and then still managing to mark dozens of these files as being unavailable because you don't have permission to download them in spite of this. It's now two steps back for every one step forward and it's rendering the whole process of doing Mutant into a titanic headache.

After umpteen re-up campaigns, what I am now willing to do is the following. A few months back I posted a list of 300+ newly re-upped files. Those new links were never formally punched into their respective posts as I got busy with other creative activities but I'll now plug those back into the posts. So too, a Greek friend of the blog has been helping over time with the re-up campaign and I've accumulated another hundred or so more files to re-up from him. Those will go up soon along with a list containing links to them all, but beyond re-upping those, I've now officially reached the end of spinning my wheels retracing the same ground. New posts will continue on the roughly bi-monthly schedule that they've been arriving at for some time, but all the rest of my spare time will now return to being concentrated on Vas Deferens Organization and label activities instead of this redundant bullshit.

For titles that are down, feel free to re-up them at will elsewhere including on Youtube, though a link back to the original post would be appreciated. I'm sorry I'm incapable of offering better than this, but the sheer scale of the undertaking means that there is only so many times I can attempt this.

New posts will be up by early next week. Stay tuned...

NEW POSTS UP BY TUESDAY NIGHT

Sorry for the extra-long delay with new shares this time, but the last several weeks have been devoted almost exclusively to finishing up work on multiple Vas Deferens Organization projects that were left neglected during all the recent blog repair. These include a new VDO collaboration with Philip Sanderson of Storm Bugs, two new VDO albums that are now in post-production and our previously announced collaborations with Michael Alan, Audace and Ben Presto

Thanks for your patience. It will be rewarded with some particularly choice goodies this with this next round of posts.

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION-TILT?, 10", 2001, USA

Carrying on with shares from our own back catalog, this 10" was our contribution to the Lactamase series of 10" vinyls on Beta-Lactam Ring and captures the same extended line-up of VDO heard on some of our more overtly kosmiche-directed efforts of the time like Zyzzybaloubah and Quicksand, with Doug Ferguson (Yeti/Ohm), David Fargason (Liquid Sound Company), Jim Edgerton (Burnin' Rain, Fish Eye Lens) and saxophonist Scott Lindsay all present for these sessions.

There's a particular patina to these recordings, a darkly queered and melancholic atmosphere specific to only this recording of ours. The PR for this release at the time it came out was name-checking Bowie/Eno instrumentals, Goblin and Van Der Graaf Generator and that still seems apt enough on some level, though it's all been filter-fucked and structurally skewed as per VDO's usual peccadillos.

Get it Here 

NEKROPOLIS-MUSIK AUS DEM SCHATTENREICH NOW REISSUED ON VINYL ON PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE

It's a very rare thing when I choose to hype a new release, but this one needed doing. Revered as a godfather of dark avant prog, the unnerving and balefully beautiful work of German composer and bassist Peter Frohmader has long been championed by us Mutants. Indeed, I've just recently pulled the link down for this very title; one of several by him on Mutant Sounds and perhaps my very favorite out of Frohmader's intimidatingly large discography. And it's been yanked because the same folks at Pure Pop For Now People that were responsible for recently releasing two albums by my band Vas Deferens Organization (Quicksand and our Science Of The Impossible collaboration with Perihelion) have now gone and re-gifted the world with a new and definitive edition of Musik Aus Dem Schattenreich, finally offered up on a proper slab of vinyl after its last incarnation as a mid-90's CD. And a beautifully housed slab it is! For those who are unaware of the sinister majesty of this music, have a listen to the first track, Hölle Im Angesicht Here and if you want a copy, write directly to Joachim at Pure Pop. He's distinctly old-school in approach, so there's no cart system on his site. Just write to him at purepop (at) buissnet (dot) com (the same way you'd go about ordering the new VDO LP on his label) and he'll be happy to hook you up with a copy of this masterpiece.

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION-QUICKSAND LP OUT SEPT. 15TH ON PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE...DOWNLOAD ALL OF SIDE A BELOW NOW

Due for release on September 15th, 2012, Vas Deferens Organization's Quicksand LP uncorks a geyser of vintage 90's acid damage with this latest haul from the VDO vaults; our second LP for Germany's Pure Pop For Now People. The 1997 sessions from which Quicksand emerges feature the full extended VDO line-up, with the core duo of Matt Castille and Eric Lumbleau accompanied here by 90's VDO member and Yeti/Ohm mastermind Doug Ferguson (R.I.P.) and with Jim Edgerton (guitar), Scott Lindsey (trumpet) and David Fargason (bass) all along for the ride over Quicksand's two side long pieces. The title track that comprises all of side A can be downloaded here.

Note: The return of Mutant Sounds' bi-monthly posts will resume in two weeks...

ARIEL PINK EXCLUSIVE!!! NEW TRACKS WITH MICHAEL ALAN PLUS ARIEL'S ALBUMS WITH VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION IN WAV AUDIO!

Tying everything up with a incestuous Pink bow, our previous collaborator Ariel Pink has now seen fit to lock loins with our current collaborator, New York art world wunkerkind Michael Alan for two (count 'em two) tracks of brand new material for your perusal. With all the wall to wall hubbub being generated by the new Haunted Graffiti album, you'd think that 10+ minutes of even newer Ariel Pink music floating around on Soundclouds would elicit some meaningful attention, but this has somehow slipped under virtually everyone's wire 'til now. Serendipitously enough, our promotion of this collaboration perfectly coincides with our own long planned giveaway in full .wav audio quality of both of the albums that my band Vas Deferens Organization made with Ariel just prior to his 4AD world domination campaign, specifically the Ariel Pink With Added Pizzazz-s/t 12" EP and the Shits And Giggles-Trick Or Treat LP, both released on our label Free Dope And Fucking In The Streets (now Puer Gravy). The Added Pizzazz EP notably includes the glorious full length version of the track "Hot Body Rub", i.e. The Added Pizzazz track that Ariel cleverly appropriated (and drastically edited) for use on Before Today and which precedes the arrival of the actual band Haunted Graffiti by several minutes.

Download Shits And Giggles 

Download Ariel Pink With Added Pizzazz

And you can check out Ariel's collaborations with Michael Alan here:

PART 1:

PART 2: 

You can also hear a sample of Michael Alan's work from his forthcoming album with Vas Deferens Organization here:

Note: The return of Mutant Sounds' bi-monthly posts will resume in two weeks...

*****PHILIP SANDERSON-HOLLOW GRAVITY LP (PG-002) - EDITION OF 100 - PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NOW AND LISTEN TO ALL OF SIDE A BELOW*****

It's with some real delight that we bring you advance word and sounds from the second release on our Puer Gravy imprint and the first album of new material by maverick electronic explorer and former Storm Bugs/Snatch Tapes operative Philip Sanderson since his 2005's Seal Pool Sounds CD. The subtly unnerving and the psychologically suggestive are kissing cousins in these constructs, their preternaturally heightened atmospheres generated from an arsenal of analog synths, delay units and sequencers, and teased into formulations as sly as they are elegant, with Hollow Gravity evincing echoes of both sci-fi soundtrackers like ‪Gil Mellé‬ and Louis & Bebe Barron and the mischievous audio contraptions of LAFMS's Solid Eye. Due for official release on July 2nd, 2012, this is a strictly limited edition of 100 copies and is pressed on 180-gram, laser etched vinyl. You can download all of Side A Here and you can pre-order your copy now at our Puer Gravy site.

A fantastic adjunct to the material on this LP can be heard via exclusive work that Sanderson's recorded earlier this month for Daniel Blumin's WFMU show here

Note: there was an earlier version of this post that went up last night and which contained an error with the download of Side A, so those 80 or so of you who grabbed this during the hour it was up before realizing our error also unexpectedly received a half-finished Vas Deferens Organization piece called Petite Petanque Petard that was intended as source material for the French band Audace to manipulate for our forthcoming split LP with them and Ben Presto and which somehow mysteriously migrated into this folder. This has now been fixed.

THE THIRD & FINAL ADVANCE TRACK FROM MICHAEL ALAN ALIEN & VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION'S FORTHCOMING COLLABORATIVE LP + NEW MICHAEL ALAN ALIEN CD OUT NOW ON BED BUG RECORDS

Heatheavyhorseblanketweather, the third and final advance track from the forthcoming Michael Alan Alien & Vas Deferens Organization collaboration LP is now at hand. Come sup from the teat of our hydra-headed beast here  

This is also a heads up to let all of you know that Michael Alan Alien's new self-titled CD on Bedbug Records is now out and, in addition to containing "Scrumpie Baby's Monkey Scabies",  his track together with Vas Deferens Organization that will also soon be appearing on our collaborative LP on our Puer Gravy label, this also contains Michael's recent collaborations with a host of notables including Renaldo of Renaldo & The Loaf, Jeff & Jane Hudson,  Kenny Scharf, Jello Biafra, Japanther and many others. It's available directly from his website here

LIVE STREAM OF MICHAEL ALAN'S LIVING INSTALLATION INC HIS MUSIC W/ VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION ON MUTANT THIS SAT. 7PM + ERIC BEGINS WRITING FOR AD HOC

With the kind permission of Gasser Grunert Gallery and in conjunction with its simultaneous live streaming at the VIP Art Fair, Mutant Sounds is proud to host a live stream of Michael Alan's Living Installation performance "We Are All Living Installations". Curated by Emily Colucci, this six hour extravaganza will be taking place this Saturday at the Dumbo Arts Center and beginning at 7:00 PM, though as this is a live art action unfolding over a long stretch of real time, normal modes of viewership don't entirely apply here, so expect momentum to build as the performance progresses over the hours. This show will feature new musical material from Michael's forthcoming LP collaboration with the band that I'm in, Vas Deferens Organization for our Puer Gravy label, as well as other musicians that Michael has recently collaborated with, like Renaldo from Renaldo & The Loaf, Geneva Jacuzzi, Jeff & Jane Hudson and Jello Biafra. New album posts will be up on Saturday night to accompany this live stream.

I'm also very happy to announce that I've been brought on board as a contributing writer to Ad Hoc, the follow-up venture from the folks once responsible for Pitchfork's Altered Zones site. My first post for them should be appearing on their site in a day or so.

THE SECOND ADVANCE SINGLE FROM MICHAEL ALAN ALIEN & VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION'S FORTHCOMING LP

"Scrumpie Baby's Monkey Scabies", the latest audio hallucination to emerge from the combined energies of NY visual art dynamo Michael Alan Alien and Vas Deferens Organization (en route to our soon-to-be release of this material on Puer Gravy) is now at hand for your predilection, once again in full .wav format: here

Michael discusses our collaboration in the excellent new profile of him in Crudo: here

More information about this collaboration, including a video of Michael Alan in action and a link to his site can be found on my original post here

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

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

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

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

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

Your Life at 5pm from Michael Alan on Vimeo.

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



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

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

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

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