CAC (CYKLON ANTICYKLON)-IAOTF NO 6, LP, 1986, DENMARK

Another unearthed treasure from the Danish 80's underground courtesy of the same anonymous blog friend that gifted us with the Mind Pollution LP. My opinions follow, but first some factual info from our anonymous contributor about this outfit:


"The band was formed in 1980/81 by Sods/Sort Sol drummer Tomas Ortved, member of the noise/punk/experimental band No Knox Per Tuno on guitar and Danish artist/painter Peter Bonde on bass. The band recorded a jamsession in Sods' practice room and released a DIY 7" in 1981 called "Cyklon Og Anticyklon", I have never heard it, so if you ever get hold of it please send me a link.

The title of this record is short for "In And Out The Flat" which was the title of a series of different projects that Bonde and his fellow painter/poet friend Claus Carstensen worked on during the 80s, as you can see on the coverscan Carstensen also contributed to this album, along with Jill Pianna Dahl from the group Peter Og Fuglen. Ruby and Amber Atkinson is Terry Atkinson's daughters. I think Tom Jeppesen is some sort of studio technician."


You'd be forgiven for expecting some post-SPK industrial horror show from a group with a moniker like Cyklon Anticyklon, but this is anything but. Positively gregarious and nearly un-peggable, this crew were led by a punchdrunk frontman with a line of lip flap somewhere between The Cravats' Robin Dallaway and Limey Dave from Tupleo Chain Sex, while the tunes themselves are purely schizophrenic, lurching about madly across half a dozen genres and taking in everything from diseased Birthday Party-like blues-y fracture to bug eyed pop goofiness ala Gee Mr. Tracy along with some corn pone rockabilly moves and even genteel eccentricity in the mode of Pascal Comelade or Kulu Hatha Mamnua. Go figure. Better still, just listen...

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SPRATLEYS JAPS-PONY, CD, 1999, UK

Drop dead brilliant psych pop moves from this throat-lump-inducing Cardiacs offshoot, whose mellotron swaddled upfullness and tone of mad glee (tempered relative to the unhinged hysteria of The Cardiacs, but still maniacal) make Spratleys Japs a prime contender for best psych band of the 90's. Pony is an album full of strange tensions and contrasts from both a musical and production standpoint, with the now-expansive-now-constricted compress-o-phile attack here both strongly relating to the tone that The Cardiacs were striking on albums of the period like Guns or Sing To God, as well veering far off track from the vein-bulging prog/pop/punk histrionics heard on those, with several key pieces here basking in resplendent mellotron sun rays and grandiose hymnals before doubling down into a wiry little ball and exploding in another starburst of unhinged monkey business.

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

ZDL-IN DER MASCHINENHALLE, TAPE, 198?, GERMANY

Following up on both my recent post of Z.D.L. member Claus Van Bebber's Schallplattenkonzert and a host of other Z.D.L. tapes that I upped in back in '07 (and yes, their name includes the periods on all their other releases), this live outing from Van Bebber and his Neue Deutsche Welle cohorts of the era relates most to the material heard on their "Nicht Als Heft. Verlangen" tape; the greyscale volleys of no wave-indebted thwack, clatter and harangue and the overall feverish atonal atmosphere placing this live outing within spitting distance of Einsturzende Neubauten.

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ETANT DONNES-BLEU, CD, 1994, FRANCE

The work of brothers Eric and Marc Hurtado, Etant Donnes (named in tribute to Marcel Duchamp's last major piece) have been a going concern since 1980, though their music and overall vision would expand beyond the somewhat typical post-industrial experimentation of their early tapes by several orders of magnitude over the course of the late 80's and 90's, a sea change that found the two of them utilizing the context of a "band" as a means of expressing a unique range of artistic impulses related to the sacred, the ecstatic and the alchemical and expressing them in highly stylized performances where the two would enact scenes of love and hate (kissing, punching etc) while bedecked in body paint and costumes accompanied by pre-recorded tapes. Both rigorously formalized and strangely moving, their fully mature musical vision occupies a unique juncture in experimental music: a zone where cilia-prickling electroacoustic-like spatialization techniques and zoom focus perspectives on natural phenomena (insects, water, rushing air) fuse with whispered texts and spare electronic treatments to enact something deeply redolent of the uncanny.

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THE MUFFINS-SECRET SIGNALS 1, TAPE, 1989 (RECORDED: 1974-1978), USA

This unpromisingly monikered but wonderfully innovative unit existed on a parallel course to most everything else prog or fusion related occurring within the U.S. at the time of their existence and shone all the brighter for it. Initially a direct descendent of the Canterbury jazz rock strains cultured by the likes of Soft Machine, Hatfield And The North, National Health and Gilgamesh, this crew's sound would latterly morph into something much more angular, hectic and R.I.O. indebted on their Fred Frith-produced 80's albums "185" and "Open City". Spanning the period between the archival material heard on their Chronometers CD and their vinyl debut in '78 with Manna/Mirage (and with tracks from each appearing in modified versions), the sound on this obscure odds and ends compendium is firmly in a nimble and finespun Canterbury mode, though with rather more of the wacky pants improv bits that cropped up sporadically on their albums tacked on here.

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SOLID EYE-"BLUE NINJA TAR IN HABITAT" "LIVE BREAD CULTS/FIGDATES REMEMBERING" "BREW WARY PARAGOOS", CDR, 2006, USA

Issued on the dubious CDR (formally 7") imprint Dolor Del Estamago aka Stomach Ache (who used to put out sale lists of non-existant singles "available" at non-existant addresses), this below-the-radar issue from these L.A. Free Music society mavens/lifers/head cases is another classic in a long line of 'em, but what else would one expect from an outfit featuring freaks the caliber of Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer and Steve Thomsen? Passages of this unwieldily titled missive come off a tad more desolate and abraded sounding than some of their other releases, rendering the sonics here most akin to those heard on their Live At Tokuzo CD that I posted long ago. Marvel as cheerfully mulched antique media emanations wheel about the room drunkenly, pistons pump like lubricated slinkies and valves wheeze with teakettle squeals, triggering Rube Goldberg chain reactions on sets designed by Jeunet and Caro.

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MIND POLLUTION-YOUR POLLUTION, LP, 1981, DENMARK

Exemplary uneasy listening from these down-in-the-mouth Danes, who ride the frayed edge of advanced post punk songform in a way that speaks of long hours spent grappling with This Heat's debut; the alienated atmospheres, baleful intonings and detuned trudge cadences here also varyingly calling to mind other UK stalwarts of eerily morose post punk, like Storm Bugs and Metabolist. Thanks to an anonymous blog friend for this startling discovery!

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KONTROLLCHAOS-ANANAS, TAPE, 1982, GERMANY

Quintessential Neue Deutsche Welle that straddles the ground between the terse and amusingly inane by splitting the difference between minimal synth doink descended from the Der Plan/
Ata-Tak axis, with cheap grotty synths spitting out monomaniacal video game progressions and jittery pop punk quirk ala Radierer and Familie Hesselbach.

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NOSTALGIE ETERNELLE-(1986-91), GERMANY (UNRELEASED)

Some of the earliest extant recordings from this crew featuring long-time German sub-underground operatives Stefan Heinze (aka Inox Kapell) and Dieter Mauson from Delta-Sleep-Inducing-Peptide. Moody and remote, Nostalgie Eternelle's hazily recessive basement approach to minimal synthiness might have been chronologically behind the curve but musically, this stuff's right in the pocket. These two would issue a spate of releases under this identity across several Euro cassette culture imprints during the late 80's/early 90's, though this set appears to be some sorta privately issued collection retrospectively compiled by the band themselves, and now here it is now recycled, since the link's been dead elsewhere for some time.

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SORRY FOR THE TARDINESS WITH GETTING NEW STUFF POSTED...

There's been a truly absurd amount of stuff going on behind the scenes this week. Much as I try to reliably deliver for all of you once every 9-10 days, meeting the deadline this time just became impossible. The next round of my posts will go up with a few days time. Stay tuned...

DRAENGENDE HEBELKRAFT-ENTNAHMT X, TAPE, 1989, SWITZERLAND

A well conceived round of tape manglings and undulating shudderings with absurdist undercurrents from this obscure Swiss crew associated with the art terrorists from Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock and released on their Schimpfluch imprint, also responsible for issuing the few other extant bits from this unit, which appear on the Stuhlgangblockade, Zerstuckelte Denkkurbeln and Psychic Rally No. 3 compilations. Accordions are abused, vocals stutter in time with metallic scythings, pitch shifted electronic loops evoke wounded animals and swarms of metal insects communicate in morse code with pans of sizzling fat over the course of these two side long investigations, though with the events here unfolding in a notably more integrated sonic fashion than the shock tactic structural (il)logic of most of the other artists associated with this imprint.

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WILLIAM D. DRAKE-S/T, CD, 2001, UK

A peripheral member of the Cardiacs tribe, Drake was part of both their offshoot unit The Sea Nymphs and the extraordinary ensemble heard on the Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Mr. Drake tape that Jim upped many years ago. Drake's songcraft is a piercingly evocative thing. British as a crumpet, his vision of psychedelic pop manages the curious feat of simultaneously tapping antique sounding music hall-isms in the spirit of Davies, Beatles, et al. while stripping away the cheer and appending a sorta queered and depressive sea shanty cadence in it's place. Though absent the prog dimension that's so integral to their shebang, Drake's relationship to the Cardiacs mothership is never in question, his approach here continually relating back to tangents undertaken by Tim Smith and Co., though his honing in on the particular set of musical concerns at hand couldn't be more welcome.

Note: this is now available directly from Mr. Drake via his bandcamp page Here

FONDATION-LA VAISSEAU BLANC, TAPE, 1983, FRANCE

The final installment of my Fondation posts and the last musical release of both Ivan Coaquette (formerly of Spacecraft and Musica Elettronica Viva), who'd cease musical activities thereafter and return to his visual art pursuits and Annanka Raghel, whose trail after Fondation simply evaporates. Issued on Pascal Bussy's amazing Tago Mago imprint in a retooled giant matchbox, this is purely of a piece with their previous releases, Le Vaisseau Blanc in some respects representing a last hurrah for this aesthetic dimension of the French underground scene, with hallucinogenic webs of delayed electronics and wetly effected guitars weaving vapor trails around one another in a manner directly descended from the Heldon/Lard Free school of dystopian cosmic rock.

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VAPAA-VUOMA, CDR, 2005, FINLAND

Following my recent post of their Jamit Tai Ei Mitaan CDR, here's Vuoma, a momentary 50 copy flicker in the shambolic saga of the contemporary Finnish underground and their countrywide obsession with all things detuned. The particular collective at hand here (along with their individual members' pursuits) is one that I've covered at length elsewhere. Featuring pivotal Finnish scene operative Keijo Virtanen and cohorts from his Free Players ensemble, Vuoma comes off about as insular and functionally disabled as they've ever been on record, all stumblebum string abuse, queasy squeezebox wheeze and disconsolate wobble, with the results sounding as if it were recorded on a dictaphone and played back on a dying Victrola.

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CLAUS VAN BEBBER-SCHALLPLATTENKONZERT, 3" CD, 1992, GERMANY

It's been a while since I've upped something from this longstanding paragon of Germany's marginal fringe. Time to rectify that. Van Bebber was initially a member of the Neue Deutsche Welle outfit Z.D.L. (covered at length elsewhere), and latterly emerged over the following decades as a stalwart of the German improv community, his specialty being seasick symphonies of vinyl abuse in the mode of Phillip Jeck, Christian Marclay and Milan Kniszac. Schallplattenkonzert is a smashing example of the sorta dislocated trans-historical frisson that emerges from shrewdly pastiching several generations of antiquated and marred vinyl in an acutely sensitized fashion.

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