COS-PASIONES, LP, 1982, BELGIUM

More total irresistibility from this Belgian art rock institution who started life in the spirit of Canterbury jazz rock and the airier side of Zeuhl, adopted a disco-prog stance circa Babel that was insanely delicious and then zig -zagged off for a pop prog rebirth with a largely new line-up (save founder/leader Daniel Schell and drummer Philippe Allaert) that was fronted by another powerhouse vocalist in the person of one Ilona Chale. Filling the shoes of Pascale Son and her goosebump-inducing airy Northette-isms (one of the defining characteristics of Cos' earlier period) is no mean feat, but Chale, who looks like Zooey Deschanel and sounds like Dagmar Krause, was a long time operator within the Belgian avant prog landscape, having appeared in a guest capacity on albums by Aksak Maboul, Univers Zero, Nuit Caline A La Villa Mon Reve and Julverne as well as appearing on the V/A-Noises LP I posted recently, and she commandingly fils Son's shoes on this and the following Cos EP (the previously posted Hotel Atlantic), her presence here (along with a line-up shift abandoning keys and with Schell shifting from guitar to Chapman Stick) having helped usher in a tone of eccentric new wave-y pop polish with overtones of The Honeymoon Killers, most curious as Marc Hollander of HK was the original keyboardist for Cos, but was out of the band by this point. Pasiones represented the first step toward their reconfiguration as the super suave Mathematiques Modernes style electropop band that can be heard on Hotel Atlantic, but this one's a thing of beauty too, successfully riding the mid-ground between subtle prog sophistication and seductive new wave pop charm.

Note: links have been removed as I somehow missed that this album (along with Viva Boma and Postaolien Train Robbery) is available via Mindawn Here

ROVO-PICO!, CD, 1998, JAPAN

After a few other posts of material by this head-spinning Japanese outfit, here's their hard to find 1998 debut. Led by Boredoms guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto and violinist Yuji Katsui (Bondage Fruit, Tairikoutoko Vs. Sanmyakuonna, Omoide Haotoba...many others), and heavily lacquered with an endless supply of kosmiche gloop by keyboardist Tatsuki Masuko (Otomo Yoshide's New Jazz Ensemble, ASLN) this hits the ground running in a thresher of effects shattered rhythms and glazed electronics and slowly introduces the rest of Rovo's patented M.O., with ectoplasmic slurry, space rockin' frenzy and funky groovulation all morphed into one turbo charged vehicle.

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

TWELVE CUBIC FEET-STRAIGHT OUT THE FRIDGE, 10", 1982, UK

Many years after my post of the Paul Platypus band Doof, here's another 10" on Namedrop Records by one of his related outfits of the era, though next to the deconstructed D.I.Y. limp and lurch of that project, Twelve Cubic Feet sound like The Beatles. The best bits here carry a distinct whiff of the sorta left field female fronted U.K. art pop perfection that folks like Family Fodder, Essential Logic and Ludus were proposing at that moment in time.

NOTE: Link removed at the request of the artist. More info about Twelve Cubic Feet can instead be found Here

DZELTENIE PASTNIEKI-ALISE, LP, 1984, LATVIA

Some compelling minimal synth moves from this Latvian New Wave crew who were apparently a very big deal in their native land and who reached the apotheosis of their eccentricity on this third album of theirs, a soundtrack to a staging of Alice In Wonderland that prompted a stripping back of their sound to a spare minimal synthiness with optional Wurlitzer organ rhythm pre-sets that really nails that elusive balance between pensive melancholia and perky quirk that often marks the best of this sorta stuff.

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JANNE SCHAFFER-JANNE SCHAFFER'S ANDRA LP, LP, 1974, SWEDEN

Continuing the posts of Swedish underground goods after the last round's Midsommar, here's an all over the map but mostly pleasurable outing from this string slinger, session musician and jazz rocker, his particular attack landing Andra somewhere between the post-Association PC Toto Blanke/Jasper Van't Hof Euro jazz rock mode and some of Jeff Beck's mid 70's fusion outings, but also manages to evoke comparisons to everything from Mike Oldfield to Play That Funky Music, White Boy; an aspect that makes more sense when you consider that this cat has both played jazz with Tony Williams and acted as session guitarist for Abba. I think some of this smokes, but then the greasier end of the 70's has been a big thing for me of late, so make of that what you will.

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EUROCHEQUE-DIE RUNDE SACHE, LP, 2005 (RECORDED: 198?), GERMANY

A wickedly fun minimal synth gem that hits a lot of my personal robot pop g-spots and thats thankfully been retrieved from tape culture oblivion by the fine folks at Kernkrach and sent out into the world in a swank sandpaper jacket. Super stripped and Man Machine robotic at times, childrens show theme giddy in its melodicism at others, the sound here is probably most comparable to the archival Guyer's Connection LP also issued by this imprint. Proactively plastic, wafer thin, neon bright and totally irresistible.

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MIDSOMMAR-BELSEBUB AR LOS, LP, 1971, SWEDEN

Squally psych guitar ramalamma with bluesy/hard rock-ish underpinnings and some proto prog ambitions from this Swedish outfit that shares exactly zero in common with the more notable exports from their underground of the period from Parsson Sound/Harvester to Samla/Zamla. Instead, what's going on here seems curiously behind the curve for 1971 Sweden, though this crew manage to produce some undeniably winning results at times in spite of it. Yugoslavia's Fire could be considered a bit of a touchstone for what's going down here, though minus their vicious guitar tone and with the addition of raw and strafed sax interventions and stray bits of rustic Tull-isms that lend 'em something of an early Burnin' Red Ivanhoe vibe as well.



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XX-UU, TAPE, 1981, GERMANY

Another confounding year zero blast of otherness from the Geniale Dilettanten fringe of the early 80's German sub-underground. Comprised of two untitled 30 odd minute plunderphonic-based melees, this has most of the basic sign posts you'd anticipate for this sorta fuckery. Turntable and tape speed abuse? Check. Hectoring blather? Check. random metals bashed about? Yes, that too. As geysers of nihilist dada junk spew from this era go, it's a pretty snazzy example. Too bad that all acts of public onanism aren't as amusing as this...

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OHO-ECCE OHO!, CD, 1998 (RECORDED: 1974-75), USA

Following Jim's post of this Baltimore outfit's truly batty and Zappa damaged basement prog debut Okinawa (and preceding my soon-to-come post of the expanded 4x 10" boxset reissue of that album), here's a briefly issued odds-n-sods archival collection released on the same label as said box i.e. Little Wing Of Refugees. Musically, Ecce Oho! lands somewhere between British proggers Morgan circa Nova Solis and The Hampton Grease Band, though it's neither as pomp bombastic as the former nor as eccentrically advanced as the latter and neither, to be honest, is it close to being as formidable a beast as either Okinawa or its follow up, Vitamin Oho (featured on the Orion Awakes blog Here alongside the single album version of Okinawa which is confusingly presented with a picture of the boxset re-edition). Ecce Oho! does however have a handful of highly choice cuts that are well worth rolling around on your cilia, particularly the Magic Band meets Grease Band brain scramble of "Her(e) Comes The Oyster" and the well fried "Cragwheel", a ripsnorting down 'n' dirty live take on "The Continuing Story Of Cragwheel The Corpse" from Okinawa.

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MINAMO-SHRINE/NEST, CD, 2003, JAPAN

Prismatic and pointillistic like glinting jewels on sandy expanses, the ultra-refined sound crafting of these abstract Japanese electronica merchants (whose Wakka/Live CD boxset I posted previously) situates them somewhere between Pimmon and Fennesz. The live material heard here sends out radiant flows of shivery cellular musical data flecked with twittering electronic cicadas, swarming piano fragments and haloing harmonics and inducing neuropeptides to ripple through your brain tissue.

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SPRATLEYS JAPS-HAZEL, CD EP, 1999, UK

Long requested in the wake of my posts of Cardiacs rarities, this briefly assembled offshoot project of Cardiacs leader Tim Smith and Joanne Spratley took inspiration from a dysfunctional mellotron that was on loan to them at the time (used extensively on their recordings) and placed the emphasis more on epically sweeping acid pop grandiosity that the Queen-meets-XTC-en route to The Rocky Horror Picture Show prog punk freneticism of The Cardiacs proper. Just goosebump-inducing work here (dig that signature squashed acid vocal effect!), though those of you who are looking for more than just this very brief EP will either have to fork out for the remaining stock of their godhead "Pony" CD that Aquarius still has in stock or wait 'til their copies run out before I up that one. Messr. Smith may have been laid low these last few years after his tragic heart attack/stroke, but his musical vision remains amongst the most profound of the last several decades. Here's more evidence to support that thesis...

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

A SPLENDID MESS-LIVE AT M-SQUARED 27/08/1981-UNRELEASED RECORDINGS, AUSTRALIA

To celebrate the release of the Terrace Industry CD boxset covering Australia's greatest ever underground label M-Squared, here's some otherwise unavailable related goodness retrieved from the archives of Voigt/465's Phil Turnbull. A Splendid Mess merited only one track on Terrace Industry, so for all of you intrigued by the glimpse, here's something more substantial to sink your cilia into, with these live recordings clocking in at around a half hour. The work heard here doesn't particularly remind me much of what was contemporaneously going on during that era of Aussie weirdity, instead tracing a similar sorta loose limbed but hard edged parabolic arc from post Krautrock groove to post punk angularity that bands like Bit's and Sticken-In were advocating for during the early 80's in Germany, though A Splendid Mess' structures are less elaborate and more incessant.

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ICH UND DIE WIRKLICHKEIT-SPRACHE ZUM ANFASSEN, TAPE, 198?, GERMANY

A big 'ol heap of headscratch is the order of the day here, with this addled band of Geniale Dilettanten nonplussers creating a fractured melee cut with huge blocks of rambling lip flap. Perhaps it came with notes to explain the events that I'm lacking or maybe it was part of some multi-media event? Or maybe these marginal fringe Neue Deutsche Welle pranksters just have it in mind to fuck with you for the sake of it? Whatever the hell it is, it's a relic worth a least a small ponder for its resolute outsider-ness if nothing else, as bouts of slobbering Flipper-like stumble cede into extended passages of dictaphone chatter and abuse of rubber duckies, only to cut away to acres of uneventful prattle. Side two begins with three minutes of fetching low key organ preset rinky dink ala Australia's Essendon Airport before determining that 15 minutes of blather would be the better way to fill this chunk of the tape. Ahh...but wait, the doink beat doth return and eventually leads, via more inane chatter, to a final round of shambolic post punk clamor. Confused? Check. Amused? Well...at least sorta...

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LANDFUNK-ODER WAS? EP, TAPE, 1981, GERMANY

Another entirely obscure Neue Deutsche Welle combo, this one engagingly battering at the membrane between itchy mutant funk and garrulous post punk bluster with a certain degree of trashy panache.

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SHRI SWIFTY & THE MANDALI OF MANTRA-THE CANALS OF THE ATLANTEAN PLAIN, CD, 1999, USA

This cabal of kosmiche voyagers was featured once before on MS (under the name Big Swifty) via their Experimental Art Film single, but this feature length outing goes quite some ways further toward establishing their significance within the parameters of late model lysergic gush, the extended length of these pieces affording this crew the legroom they require to properly unfurl their oriental rugs, hookahs and time lag accumulators. Their suspended approach to time is marked by sprawling string drones accompanied by tidal flows of analog gloop, all meticulously interwoven in a way that suggests a mid-ground between Taj Mahal Travellers, Richard Skelton projects like A Broken Consort/Caroussel/Harlassen and, indeed, the sorta heavy lidded cosmic blear that my own band Vas Deferens Organization were tapping circa our Zyzzybaloubah album.

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