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...

PERFECT IMPERFECT CIRCULAR-TEN YEARS SWEATING DIAMONDS, RECORDED: 1986-1992, USA, UNRELEASED

I've made a point in the past of highlighting the gripping post punk interventions that Bill Shifflette and crew undertook under the Null And Void banner back in the early 80's, among them an unreleased third album that may yet see the light of day after all, according to Bill. But as it happens, Null And Void were far from the end of the story. Perfect Imperfect Circular charts Shifflette and his comrades' continued probings after the conclusion of Null And Void, with their output here showing little in the way of the flagging energies exhibited by so many other post punk operators as the 80's ground on. Indeed, it's easy to trace the lines of inquiry forward from some of the brash Ultravox-like maneuvers of Null And Void through to the more pop-centric constructs here. New to Shifflette's arsenal is a sorta post Siren-era Roxy swagger alongside an undeniable whiff of The Associates that runs like a seam through several cuts, albeit with the elaborate studio crafted grandiosity of Billy Mackenzie and Co re-situated within a Revox 4-track context. Superb.

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RIK RUE-SOUND ESCAPES, LP, 1988, AUSTRALIA

Launching your album with a pilfered and cut up volley of Carles Santos' avant vocal theatrics is surely one way of announcing the particular pillage and plunder contours of your plunderphonic practice, but this snarky Aussie po-mo sound artist (whose cv includes collaborations with Ikue Mori and Tony Buck of The Necks as well as membership in the formidable Mind/Body/Split) has a way with chop 'n' change shenanigans that's deft enough to render questions of such wholesale appropriation of another artists work of secondary concern. That opening Santos gambit is no random bit of fuckery either, as Rue's vision of the relentlessly brain noogieing dada decollage evinces a nagging fixation on the lung-y unguents and glottal grease of a thousand spitting sound poets. Factor that against a sustained sense of inspired juvenilia (the kind blurted from the innards of Zappa's grand pianos) and the result is as unimpeachable as it is unseemly.

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GONK-WILL/WILL NOT ATTEND, CD, 1998, UK

A genuinely startling and singular outfit, this very overlooked British duo's sonic syntax might initially seem to have affinities with some grimier strains of left field dance culture with the first few moves out of the gate here, but as the cascades of Junkyard gamelan, ham radio Bollywood broadcasts, belching and farting MS-20 synth melodies, and stereo-panned steel drum workouts pile on top of one another and the air becomes increasingly thick with atmospheric pressure it becomes ever more clear that you're in the presence of something singularly more elevated than that, with Gonk's particular breed of corroded and repurposed exotica having more in common with the likes of Japan's Grind Orchestra and Cordelia Records faux-ethno oddniks Leven Signs.

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SYLVANO SANTORIO-POP SOUND DISCO, LP, 1978, ITALY

Top tier Italian library sleazy listening here and much like Rino De Filippi's celebrated MPS label library release Reflessi (which this shares some akin to) Santorio's take on that peak moment when disco, funk and fusion's borders dissolved into a puddle of lubricious and life-giving energies contains within it that wonderfully contradictory and questionable sensation that leaves you unsure as to whether you might want to drop a tab to it or feel compelled to visit the concession stand instead (I can almost picture the 70's animations of dancing hot dogs and candy boxes moving in sync to "Classical Disco"). Across this LP's expanse, you'll find snatches of everything from the studio juiced and clavinet-laden symphonic funk of ex-Curved Air keyboardist Francis Monkman's KPM Library discs and David Matthews' Sandworms to the Yugoslavian iteration of the disco/funk/fusion trifecta heard in the work of Clan, Boomerang or September. Expect slobbering acid guitar rising out of Love Boat string swells, episodes of the sorta jauntily dancing flute-y fusion fromage heard on Art Webb albums and even full blown cosmic disco in the mode of Space Art on the sublime "Space Dialogue".

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V/A-LAL LAL LAL FESTIVAL, CDR, 2007, FINLAND

If you can avoid feeling wrong-footed by the sequencing here, which manages to shoehorn all the most interesting activity into the latter half of this compendium, this festival document contains a pretty exemplary cross-section of operators flying a flag for the sorta naif and art brut free folk frazzle and 5 AM communal jam ethos that this countries underground has largely become synonymous with. Scene elder statesman Keijo Virtanen shows up here both under his own mantle unfurling glazed blues psych wander teetering on the edge of collapse and along with his ensemble Kheta Hotem, who doodle their way through some tin can ethnological forgery), as do other mainstays like Avarus/Anaksimandros member Arttu Partinen, and Lal Lal Lal label head Roope Eronen's own Maniacs Dream, though it's Kemialliset Ystavat who (not unexpectedly) turns in the compilation's highlight with a mystically blasted extended vocal and birdsong workout called "Merkitty Tyyny".

1. Kukkiva Poliisi-Paskolampi
2. Reijo Pami-Hill Of Shame
3. The Ray Pacino Ensemble-I Took A Cab
4. Mary Fist-Clean
5. Nuslux-Jogging Pal
6. Snake Of Life-Paradise Is A Feeling
7. Master Qsh-Mitä Teet Polvellas Rakas Hans?
8. The Skaters-A-Doz-Hiel-Z
9. Kemialliset Ystavat-Merkitty Tyyny
10. Maniacs Dream-Tropical Illusion
11. Keijo-Whatever You Want
12. Kheta Hotem-Do This At Home
13. Arttu Partinen & His Partiers-A Man In Love

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************************RE-UPS FOR NOW & NEW POSTS WITHIN DAYS************************

With infinite appreciation to one and all for their patience during the downtime from January til now, I can happily announce that the first wave of link re-ups is now at hand, and the rest are forthcoming within a matter of weeks. For the time being, all of the posts from March 2011 to present (ie all the recent posts which had previously used Megaupload in the absence of other hosts) have now been re-upped using Mediafire.

New posts of mine will follow early next week, so be on the lookout.

UPLOAD SOLUTIONS ARE IN THE WORKS

First, I'd like to take the time to truly thank those of you who were kind enough to offer to help with the process of re-upping the downed content on Mutant Sounds. To that end, it was very encouraging to read about the soon-to-be hosting service Righthaven, that's being actively touted by the folks at Boing Boing right now here

Once Righthaven goes live (which it seems like it might be doing within weeks), I can begin to coordinate with the handful of beautiful humans who've chosen to lend a hand in getting all of our downed content back up and running.

Stay tuned...

LICKING WOUNDS AND TAKING STOCK AFTER THE CLAMPDOWN

Now that the Corporatist villains in our "justice department" have seen fit to visit tyranny upon all of us by destroying Megaupload (and with it, broad swaths of this blogs content, including the hundreds of titles from early in the life of Mutant Sounds that had recently been re-upped to Megaupload), I'm just lying low and taking stock of how best to approach the salvaging of our content. Stay tuned folks...Mutant Sounds isn't going down without a fight!

THANKS TO ALL OF MUTANT SOUNDS' FANS OUT THERE FOR MAKING 2011 OUR BEST YEAR EVER. BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS AWAIT IN 2012 . HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

THE OBSCENES-IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, LP, 1993, ITALY

Ear canal befouling nonsense-mongering from a highly obscure Italian combo with exactly nada in the way of currently extant info available on 'em. The deliberately cheap and nasty sonics alongside the absurdist attitude here could easily persuade you that this was some sorta lost Neue Deutsche Welle cassette, what with all the willful ineptitude and inanity on display here, alongside the dictaphone recording quality, manipulated vinyl abuse, and cheap drum machines battling it out against cheaper guitars.

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HELGOLAND AND BAND-99, CD, 1999, GERMANY

With a roster that reads a bit like a supergroup from the 90's German experimental electronica scene (Groenland Orchester/Nova Huta mastermind Gunter Reznicek and serial Felix Kubin collaborator Pia Burnette appear here alongside Helgoland founder Rudi Burr, whose CD EP together with Reznicek "The German Face" I shared a while back), Helgoland on this debut outing of theirs actually exist at a distinct remove from any anticipations those associations might suggest, including expectations based on the Helgoland music that would follow via their brilliant and distinctly zany avant electropop confections on Kubin's Psychoscifipoppia compilation LP and their 2001 Media Music EP on Storage. Instead, the 99 dadaist blasts that emerge from your speakers like a never ending string of anal beads are purely the after-effect of a diet over-rich in Ruins, Naked City, Boredoms and Melt Banana. Surely not what you'd anticipate, but a cheerful eruption of inspired gibberish to while away the hours with regardless.

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TONI ESPOSITO-PROCESSIONE SUL MARE, LP, 1976, ITALY

Continuing on from my shares of his first and third albums, this second outing from this wildly gifted and wide ranging Italian prog/fusion drummer (a one time member of both St. Just and Alan Sorrenti's band as well as Luciano Cilio's collaborator on Dell'Universo Assente) catches Esposito at a real creative peak. As with the other albums of his that I've shared, the arrangements, stereo imaging and the endless peppering of pinprick percussive detailing make it plain that this is a drummers album, though Processione Sul Mare is an absolute master class in dynamic sense from all parties involved and overflows with that tell tale quality of airy, fluid and life giving expansiveness that you find in so much of the best Italian fusion of that time from Area to Perigeo to Napoli Centrale.

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

Get it here  

V/A-CD VOOR DE INSTABIELE MEDIA-CD FOR THE UNSTABLE MEDIA, CD, 1992, VARIOUS

As if to deliberately thwart an easy reading in concord with the spirit of this compendium's remit, the compilers of this CD have seen fit to maddeningly format the whole shebang into one continuous 68 minute sound block, but with a roster of period sonic agitators that takes in everything from Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock's dadaist disembowelments and Gregory Whitehead's surreal speech dissections to pioneering Dutch electronic composer Dick Raaijmakers experiments (circa 197 1) with his Ideophone sound sculptures, it's a stream that's well worth your time wading into.

Track listing:

Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock-Zur Autodestruktion
Gregory Whitehead/THU20-I Prefer To Talk To The Dead
Voice Crack-Ballistics Of The Wild Turkey
Radi Subcom-Intransit (Excerpt)
The Haters-Final
Dick Raaijmakers-Ideophone I 1971
DFM Radio-Untitled (Excerpt)
Entre Vifs-Slavium Fornikant
Ad Van Buuren-The Clock
The Hafler Trio-Untitled
Chris Mann/Warren Burt-Anyway You Can Always Put Language Down To Experience
Merzbow-V2 Live (Excerpt)
Strafe Fur Rebellion-Die Zahl Pi

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S. IDA & BGG-…EAT SHOW, TAPE, 1985, JAPAN

Issued on a once hugely prolific and now entirely forgotten Japanese experimental tape label of the early-mid 80's called D.D. Records, evidence of whose existence has all but disappeared (not a peep on either Discogs or Rate Your Music about them) despite their having issued 100+ cassettes and a handful of vinyl flexis during their lifespan (the Eurock book consolidating all the old issues of their zine has the only extant info on 'em that I'm aware of), this 1985 oddity by S. Ida & BGG, which landed in my hands a while back sans any imagery, accompanying info or even song titles, gives a strong sense of the quizzical and high quality experiments being unleashed by them. As evidenced by the sounds at hand, S. Ida & BGG exist to confound, or at least to cheerfully work through their fascinations with all manner of outwardly bound sounds of that era, however chalk-and-cheese it might be to dish their particular array out in one interwoven bundle. Starting with a fit of squalling and blubbering guitar excess emerging from a mire of melted shortwave radio signals and lumbering bass, the remaining contents take in everything from primitive and spasming sampled vocal malarky to terse string improv and from Neubauten-like metal bash strategies repurposed to infantilist ends and faux gamelan accomplished via tin whistle and kitchen debris to long expanses of location recordings of birds flocks with factories in the distance.

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MUTANT SOUNDS GETS PROFILED IN BOING BOING AND VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION REVEAL THEIR HIDDEN HIP HOP HISTORY

Watch out! Whole swaths of aboveground straight society have just been hepped to our doings via Boing Boing's omnidirectional reach, as the kind folks at that site unexpectedly profiled Mutant Sounds a short time ago. You can read that here

This also seemed like it might be an amusing moment to reveal the real reason for Vas Deferens Organization's disappearance off of our fans radar screens for a span of time during the last decade. It was because we'd effectively gone undercover. Some time in early 2005, I got an insane phone call from my bandmate Matt who was living in New Orleans at the time, in which he told me that he'd effectively conned one of the top hip hop club owners there into believing that we were heavy duty rap producers and the guy was interested in seriously hooking us up if we could hand him some tracks. Once the realization hit what a monumental prank on reality this could be if we really managed to pull of this hat trick (and really, how hard could it be for innovative electronic producers to unpack the logic of making this stuff?), we set about doing just that and our contact in turn set about introducing us to a series of industry fat cats, with the end result that I moved to New Orleans to open a hip hop studio on the periphery of The French Quarter with Matt in early 2005. Before Katrina struck, we had handlers and reps for Juvenile coming around and scoping us out and affiliations made with A&R men from B.G.'s Chopper City Records and after Katrina wiped us out and sent us fleeing New Orleans, we ended up following the A&R rep for Chopper City all the way to Atlanta and effectively becoming his right hand for a year until a series of insane and unforeseen circumstances exploded this dream right as it was about to take flight. You can still find a stray remnant of this era lurking on this random and generic hip hop compilation CD here

The best way to understand our specifically subversive intentions in trying to make an intervention into the hip hop world is to note the alias that we'd rechristened ourselves as: The Water Brothers. Legendary pop sci-fi author Robert Heinlein had used aliens going by this name in order to secretly spread Aleister Crowley's Thelemic teachings to the masses in his celebrated book Stranger In A Strange Land and we in turn would use the Trojan Horse of hip hop in order to seed the VDO audio virus as far and as wide as we could before anyone put 2 and 2 together and realized exactly what kind of avant garde acidhead subversives that they'd unexpectedly and unintentionally released into pop culture.

Since the Italian magazine Blow Up unveiled this hidden part of our history in the biggest possible way by headlining the article that they ran about VDO a few issues back with this info (a .pdf scan of the article with some personal annotations via the Italian friend of ours that initially scanned this for us can be had here ) we're now making available four 30 second samples of our work as Dirty South gangsta rap producers during this time (we'd offer whole tracks, but we're contractually bound from doing that), though it seems worth putting these out there now just to see how much amusement, confusion and shattered illusions we can generate with one gesture! You can check out what VDO hip hop sounds like here

And since we have, for no good reason, shared our recently created video for the first track from Vas Deferens Organization's Eye Peels & Brain Picks ("Defenestration At The Gravity Pit") everywhere else but here, it seemed time to plant this here as well for the edification of those who didn't happen across it via Altered Zones, Youtube or elsewhere

JUST A SMALL SHOUT OUT TO OUR FRIENDS AT ALTERED ZONES AS THEY TRANSFORM THEMSELVES INTO AD HOC

And a pointer in this direction to make note of their future home early next year. Expect to see some very interesting developments emerging from these quarters after they reconstitute themselves.

V/A-ITALIC ENVIRONMENTS-PROJECT BY NICOLA FRANGIONE, LP, 1985, ITALY

Conceived and curated by the Italian multi-media artist, activist and organizer Nicola Frangione, Italic Environments involves Frangione supplying a host of fascinating fellow Italian avant gardists of the era with suggestive location recordings of specifically Italian environments for them to integrate into their work. Former Futuro Antico member Ricardo Sinigaglia's contribution (in concord with one Mario De Lio) begins the proceedings here in high fashion (REALLY high fashion) with a very subtle but intense foray into resonant drone and emotionally intoned vocalizing that's very much an after effect of Franco Battiato's influence, though Battiato was never accompanied by a lake full of quacking ducks. Piermario Ciani is up next blathering away through what sounds like one of those electronic larynx's provided to throat cancer patients to the accompaniment of spare and fragmented free jazz nudges from sax and drums before building up to a sudden and unexpected head of steam and barreling through a hectic Etron Fou Leloublan-like passage of infolding avant rock tumble.
Arpa Celtica Vincenzo Zitello rounds out the A side with some very proto new age-y harp, hand drum and rainstorm sonics. Naif Orchestra begin side B by latching onto a pass of buried crowd noise and building a slight synth pop track on top of it rather arbitrarily before Franco Ballabeni wheels into frame with a contribution that's consistently lapped by Frangione's recording of splashing water, into which he situates some very ZNR-like passages of pensive piano and wheedling synth, while Giovanni Fontana seems to be running several recordings of bebop jazz ensembles simultaneously with little detectable accompaniment from Frangoine's recordings and little individual gravity to speak of, though it makes for a head scratching album closer to be certain.

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MINOY-PASSAGE OF THE MIGRATORY BIRD, CDR, 200? (RECORDED: 1987), USA

Swimming in an ocean of his signature cheap Radio Shack reverb and queasily modulating ham radio emissions, this is another lost monument of subterranean 80's tape culture electronic investigations from one of its most reliably excellent and significantly overlooked practitioners and a follow up to my post of his Pretty Young Negro Man tape some time ago. This Torrence California based marginal was a somewhat ubiquitous presence at one time on the sub-underground cassette network during the 80's and early 90's, often working in collaboration with a array of other networkers of that era, though there has always been an elegance and grasp of the macro/micro to Minoy's own work that makes it readily stand apart from others probing around in this soupy post industrial arena; Minoy's recordings having an intuitive grasp of manipulating the minutiae of shortwave-based (and shortwave bathed) sonics in a way that surpasses John Duncan's investigations into this realm of ghosted sound manipulations to these set of ears.

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