MORICE BENIN-APOCALYPSE…, LP, 1980, FRANCE

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

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.

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

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.

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

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:

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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CRYPTO-S/T, LP, 1974, NETHERLANDS

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

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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