COOLNESS ALERT! TOM FAZZINI-NECK TO NECK

The nature of my posts here generally follow a pre-set pattern, but I'm gonna depart here to celebrate a current release, as it's one of the big daddy titles of outwardly bound fuckery that I'd intended to ultimately share here, only the fine folks at Locust Music got their first and gave this glorious thing a proper reissue. Since that's the case, and since it's an album that I've been flying a private flag for over the years, I'd like to just take a moment to highlight what a demented lost gem this is and to offer a few tracks for you to hear and come to your own conclusions about, as this seems like the sorta release that could fly under lots of folks' radar if they weren't hepped to it's existence.

Originally issued in 1984 on the short lived cult label A-Mission (responsible for releases by Metgumnerbone, Asmus Tietchens and O Yuki Conjugate among others), this left field treasure chest opens to unveil a uniquely human and fried (and sometimes hilariously limp and dejected sounding) form of mutated synth pop that mates the smurfy insularity of NWW-listers Bomis Prendin to the quease atmospheres and jerry rigged electronic structures of The Storm Bugs and the primitive synthetics and campily declamatory spieling of Todd Clark or Ian Macfarlane to Frankie Teardrop-like Suicide-al psychodramatics. Only happier. Some 12 years on from here, Messr. Fazzini would reemerge as one third of Leaf label recording artists A Small Good Thing and latterly, as simply Fazzini for Chicago's Locust Music, who've now taken upon themselves to gift the world with this much earlier screwiness of his. Check out a couple of tracks
Here and if you're life's been enriched for the effort, think about picking one of these up from Locust Music Here

HIROSHIMA CHAIR/CULTURCIDE-RESET/YEAR ONE, SPLIT LP, 1981, AUSTRALIA/USA

Having long flown a flag for the sublime craziness of ex-Severed Heads mage Garry Bradbury in his various guises (his Bradbury and Size recordings can be found elsewhere on MS), it's with some delight that I bring you the rarest piece of his puzzle; a split with the merry misanthropes of Houston Texas' Culturcide. Issued on the Dogfood Production System label that was home to several other cornerstones works from the Aussie underground, this beautifully diseased sounding slab of wax (accompanied by some MUCH more diseased looking scat/golden showers shock graphics which you'll have to download this album to see, though you have been WARNED) emerged around the same time that he began his epochal work with Severed Heads and offers some very telling examples of just what he brought to their early era, it's pitching, heaving and tweezing atmosphere of malaised loops, punch press rhythms and twisted samples sounding wholly of a piece with his work alongside Ellard and co. As for Culturcide, the band heard here is proffering something markedly different and a goodly bit more exciting than the pre-V/VM style pop culture rape they became more known for latterly; with an engagingly hard to peg stance that splits the difference between trashily garrulous MX-80 Sound-like post punk blurt and a more malevolently snarling post-TG industrial churn.

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ORONZO DE FILIPPI-MECCANIZZAZIONE, LP, 196?, ITALY

This fabulous Morricone-esque library rarity (issued on the Leo label) is plainly the template for the turn Stereolab would take circa Dots And Loops, its atmosphere of pointillistic op-art modernist cool enacted via percolating cadences, dancing patterned harpsichord hits, stray dissonances, elegantly odd organ elaborations and jaunty period orchestrations.

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P-MODEL-PERSPECTIVE, LP, 1982, JAPAN

Having missed the record that bridges the gap between this and their second album Landsale, it's hard for me to gauge just how drastic of a shift occurred en route to the sound heard on their fourth outing here, but Perspective at minimum seems aptly named, the tracks here demonstrating a marked shift in both speed and attitude and with a sound that now seems more copacetic with something like Phew than the relentless blippy Devoid zaniness of their first two outings (both shared by me previously). These shifts have not however necessarily served to blunt the underlying eccentricity of their endeavor, though some tacky production choices and the occasional cheap guitar heroics occasionally manage to. That being said, carping overmuch about a record that's still this rife with quirk seems off base, though the moves here might take some settling in for diehard fans of their early style.

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SMEGMA-CLITORIDIS/PRAEPUTIL, TAPE, 1997, USA

Issued on Akifumi Nakajima of Aube's G.R.O.S.S. imprint, the esteemed freak fringe elder statesmen of Smegma seem to have used their proximity to Japan's noise axis to flex their more improv-directed muscles over two side-long blurts of idiot savant energy, with great gobs of detourned consumer culture detritus stirred around in a big pool of it's own sick by aging hippies with crazed grins and oversized happy meal spoons.

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

BADGERLORE-BOOK OF DIRT, 3" CDR, 2007, USA

Though it's more known as the repository for the combined talents of one time Deerhoof member Rob Fisk in conjunction with Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny, Badgerlore on the occasion of this 100 copy 3" CDR is just Fisk all by himself. Here, he plows a furrow through the same rich topsoil from which also spring his collabs with Chasny, slowly churning up a heavy lidded 24 minute expanse of field recordings, languorously chiming acoustic guitar filigree, tape hiss, ghosted sighs and, eventually, distended tendrils of sooty electric guitar, the resultant debris seemingly having been deposited onto the phyllo-like layers of handmade paper that comprise the lovingly decrepit homemade sleeve.

Addendum: according to a comment left on this post by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma of Root Strata, this is not in fact a solo outing from Fisk after all. Quote: "This is actually a live recording of Badgerlore at the Wire's "Adventures in Modern Music" festival in Chicago in 2006. The line up at that time was: Glenn Donaldson, Liz Harris, Pete Swanson,Rob Fisk & Tom Carter."

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(nope...no Megaupload link this time for this one. Their site wasn't cooperating today...)

JIM IS ALIVE AND WELL

Well guys
seems my movement to new country (and great country i must admit) took me much more time than i was supposing.Actually there's a mess still at home . Anyway,this is to inform you that possibly by the end of next week i will be back with new posts....And guys,hey...whoever is near Rhineland Palatine in Germany please inform me for events,concerts,etc at my area...
Jim Mutantsounds

SORRY FOR THE DELAY...NEW POSTS BY LATE TOMORROW...

Everything just conspired to thwart posts going up on my normal timetable this time. Ugh. Look for 'em late tomorrow...

THE SECOND VDOANDSOUND VINYL AUCTION

Just a small heads up to let those of you that still collect original vinyl know that I've just hoisted the next round of rare albums for auction, a hyperlinked listing of which can be found Here 

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE-FRUHLING DER KRUPPEL, LP, 1978, GERMANY

Here's my pick for the choicest manifestation of the German Polit-Rock scene of the 70's. With an eight year span between their debut "Gruss Gott Mit Hellam Klang" and this follow-up, it's unsurprising that some musical evolution would have occurred, but there's little in their violently amusical and relentlessly text-intensive early work to suggest the sophistication their work would ultimately acquire. The feel here is closer in spirit to the arch satirical output of Floh De Cologne than their more well known contemporaries from this period in Ton Steine Scherben, with a sound that seems to take a page from Floh De Cologne's Fleissbandbaby's Beat Show, only they've folded it into a paper airplane and sent it sailing off to to a much more muscially extended and sometimes acidic place, the jams at their heaviest here taking on aspects of krautrock contemporaries Alkatraz and French space rockers NYL.
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KIEM-YOU SHOULD TRY, LP, 1987, NETHERLANDS

Heed the title here, folks. 1987 may seem damn late for synth pop with serious artistic credibility, but someone forgot to tell these Dutch cats to dial back their innovative instincts. There's some musical simpatico here with fellow Dutch synth travellers Mekanik Kommando in the giddy song structures and production-intensive atmosphere and also a strong whiff of Severed Heads circa "Rotund For Success" at times in their rhythmic structures though it's the vocals that are the real deal sealers here, alternately dishing out the sort of delicious arched-eyebrow loungy stylizations that I thought were the sole preserve of Australia's godly No Night Sweats or reaching for the perfect bug eyed bit of exaggerated Danny Elfman-like histrionics. A major discovery for me.

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TONI ESPOSITO-ROSSO NAPOLETANO, LP, 1974, ITALY

Following up on my post of his third LP "Gente Distratta" a while back, here's the gorgeous debut from this very underrated jazz rock drummer whose supple and fluid attack is full of precisely whirling detailing and delicate gamelan-like sonorities. Accompanied here by one-time Miles Davis keyboardist Paul Buckmaster, Saint Just saxophonist Robert Fix and his usual duo of string slingers in Gigi De Rienzo and Bruno Limone, Rosso Napoletano is awash in the trademarked aerated and relaxed atmosphere of so much higher key Italian jazz rock of that period, though Esposito's deployment of sundry ethnic instruments and hand percussion within these atmospheres makes obscure ethno jazz rockers Maad perhaps the best point of comparison here.
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SANDRO BRUGNOLINI-UTOPIA, LP, 1972, ITALY

This Italian library music treasure is a bit slow to reveal its true significance, but the deeper into this pudding that you plunge, the more obvious its brilliance becomes. Starting out in explicitly loungy territory, it's not really until side B that things really take a turn for the overtly peculiar, and it just gets curiouser and curioser, with capering avant garde jazz orchestrations of the sort that Stereolab were tapping circa Sound Dust ceding to wicked acid rock burners between Allesandro Allesandroni and Nora Orlandi's Music For Strange Situations and the Vampiros Lesbos soundtrack before wobbling offstage in a drunken chamber jazz lurch.
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V.A.-OUTA 001, CDR, 2004, FINLAND

This quite excellent and packed-to-capacity compendium presents an excellent cross section of ideas floating around in the deeper recesses of the current Finnish musical subculture, though with some notable departures from the more status quo aspects of their underground in the form of music with (shock!) production values. Across these 80 minutes, Rauhanorkesteri make a case for flat out free jazz, Vapaa veers between extemporized psychedelia and full bore improv splatter, Aekie drone, chime and resonate in engaging (if startlingly hi-fi) fashion, Kukija thread their gossamer psychedelic meanderings through a waft of tape hiss, Metsamorfeus manipulate software to immersive and sophisticated ends more reflective of the musical culture surrounding Norway's Rune Grammofon imprint, frequent Keijo collaborator Tiitus offers ghostly traces and shimmers coalescing into songform and Uton applies his magnifying glass to the cellular details within desiccated layers of dusty audio stasis.

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CARAMBOLAGE-S/T, LP, 1980, GERMANY

Another rare as hen's teeth score from the Stapleton archive, this is fairly stunning female art punk action that was incongruously issued on hippy polit-rockers Ton Steine Scherben's David Volksmund Editions imprint. Expect to find elements of X-Ray Spex like anarchic juvenile glee running headlong into the sort of insouciant femme-voxed and synth armed art rock aggression that fellow NDW merchants Originalton specialized in.

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

Get it here  

V/A-ZERSTUCKELTE DENKKURBELN, LP, 1988, VARIOUS

On the heels of my post of the debut LP by Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, here's some more of the Schimpfluch label-associated shenanigans that I'd promised were in store; this classic comp yoking together cuts from the R & G associated crew in Wash Your Brains alongside an unholy assortment of other gibbering Swiss nutters with sympathetic aims and freak fringe contemporaries from other shores, all somehow successfully shoehorned into R&G/Eb.er's shit caked dada pop-up box via careful arrangement and extraneous absurdist utterances that are grafted onto the beginning of each contribution.

Track listing:

P16.D4-Essenz
4 Schizoide Musikanten-Bevor Dada Da War War Dada Da
Fam.Pigdog-Tumultuous Food
Drangende Hebelkraft-Dedicated To Wilhelm Amok
Red Light District-Red Light Jimmy
P16.D4-Azur
Hansi B.-untitled
Aufstand Der Dilettanten-Der Apfelbaum Krummt Sich
P16.D4-Akzidenz
Sterea Lisa-Engel
Wash Your Brains-Runzelstirn Und Gurgelstock
G.Park-Klima
3 1/2 Stempelkissen-Vernichtungs-Gefahr
Wash Your Brains-Burgenholzer Revue
Drangende Hebelkraft-Rotor Bereich
Schmachtfetzen AG-Marschmusik Fur Walrosser
4 Schzoide Musikanten-Abgetakt Fliessend

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D.A.-MINCED TUBA WEASEL, ONE-SIDED LP, 1995, FINLAND

Engagingly awkward Finnish D.I.Y. psych primitivism, though the subcultural thread that they're working is one wholly unconnected to the current free folk communal freakout scene, the scent coming off of this one-sided slab instead carrying something of a low key 90's U.K. psych pop vibe ala Acme and Terrascope associated acts like Chemical and Rustic Rod, though the attitude and delivery here is considerably more droopy eyed and lackadaisical. Worth noting here is that the dubious packaging of this EP (unprotected vinyl sandwiched between the outer plastic sleeve and the handmade paper insert) resulted in the vinyl becoming nearly permanently bonded to the paper, the upshot being that after considerable cleaning efforts, there is now only around three minutes of extraneous tics and pops audible about half the way through. I'll bet most copies have now been rendered unlistenable due to this. 'Tis a shame...

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V/A-A SLICE OF LIFE, LP, 1984, VARIOUS

A quite excellent comp of arty post-prog Japanese underground acts alongside one Veetdharm Morgan Fisher, previously (sans the prefix) the wicked genius behind The Hybrid Kids, though his three cuts here are from the period after he became a Rajneesh disciple and musically headed straight for his navel, chiming koto in hand. His quarter of the wax aside though, there's plenty on this compendium (curated by Pneuma of Trembling Strain) to get excited about, starting at the outset with Soft Weed Factor, a group whose stately but charged post-Canterbury maneuvers clearly reflect serious time spent contemplating The Muffins. Elsewhere, Haitokusha create a delirious racket that first sounds like Koenjihyakkei channeling James Chance, before settling into a MX-80-like post punk churn and Ubazakura chime in with some very sweet acid folk moves, with delicate female vocals set against plangent and ever-so-slightly askew acoustic group motion in a way suggestive of their contemporaries Che Shizu at their most tonal.

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