RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY UNVEILS MUTANT SOUNDS' TOP 10 YOUTUBE VIDEOS

The folks at Red Bull Music Academy asked me to compile a Youtube playlist for their new Cyber Secrets series in order to shine a light on some of the buried treasures found there. Take your brain for a ride  

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON MUSIC BLOGGING WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM YOURS TRULY UP NOW ON THE AWL

I recently participated in a virtual roundtable discussion with WFMU's Brian Turner, Systems Of Romance's Frank and Liam Elms of 8 Days In April regarding our respective contributions to music share blogging culture. This was pulled together by author Mark Allen (NYT/NPR/Huffington Post/Vice) and was just published on The Awl. Check it out here, if you're so inclined.

COPING WITH RAPIDSHARE'S NEW TACTICS

Rapidshare's dreadful new policies that go into effect as of today limit the number of files that can be downloaded in a 24 hour period from a paid account. They've set a cap of 30 gigs of data that can be downloaded from paid Rapidshare accounts by members of the public per day. Given the scale of the Mutant archive and the number of people routinely downloading music here, it's been necessary to do a furious amount of work behind the scene this week to try to offset this, but my efforts are only part of the way there as of yet.

So far, two additional Rapidshare accounts have been created to offset this load, which means that older Mutant files will eventually be spread across four accounts, but transferring files is a time and labor intensive process, so I'll kindly ask you all to please bear with us for the next several weeks as more and more files get shifted around to evenly disperse them. So far, 100 of the most popular older titles have been transferred to their own account and I'll be spending the next week or two transferring others, but in the meantime, it's quite possible that you will encounter a new message from Rapidshare saying that my account's limits have been reached for the day and to please try again the following day.

There will be no new posts for this coming two week cycle as I try and come to grips with this huge new workload, and when new shares return, I will experiment with upping those ones using Mediafire, even though they too have badly screwed me in the past as well. Frankly, even with four accounts hosting these files, there is a definite possibility that you might still run up against these download limitations. It's hugely frustrating, but until Megaupload re-emerge with their new model, this is about the best that I can think to do for now.

There IS however something that Mutant Sounds fans themselves can do to help: if you love this blog and want to show your appreciation, create mediafire mirrors of any files that you enjoy and post them in the comment fields for the albums. If enough of these build up, it will help a great deal. 

A FEW HUNDRED MORE RE-UPS...FINALLY.

Well, it took a few days longer than expected and I've yet to formally plug these links back in to the posts, but since there's been such a demand for these, I'm just sharing the page of links first and then inserting them back into the posts tomorrow, when I've got more time. You can download the full list of links here  

SEVERAL HUNDRED MORE NEW RAPIDSHARE LINKS FOR FILES THAT ARE DOWN WILL BE POSTED IN A FEW MORE DAYS...

I'm still beavering away getting the last of this new batch uploaded, but they'll be up shortly.

KEUHKOT-MITA OTAT MUKAAN MUISTOKSI SIVISTYKSESTA, LP, 1996, FINLAND

Kalevi Rainio is Kake Puhuu and under the banner of Keuhkot has spent 15+ years confusing all comers with his one man band marching music for Finnish flea circuses and midget viking revelry. Those of you pleasantly confused by his contributions to the Dumbstriking Incidents compilation that I shared with my last round of posts will find much to delight in here, with Mr. Caca Poo wielding a similar cartoonish torch to those hoisted by the likes of Caroliner, John Gavanti and Leven Signs; a grunting post-Residential zone with an ethnological forgery patina that would latterly gain a degree more avant-prog oomph on his releases from the following decade for Circle's Ektro imprint, but here, his fuzzed rubber band and oxidized Casio palette just amplifies the more (delightfully?) maddening and claustrophobic aspects of his attack.

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

HELDON-THE ELECTRONIC GUERILLAS-BOOTLEG, LP, 198(?) (RECORDED: 1975 AND 1982), FRANCE

One of the towering figureheads of French underground music, Richard Pinhas and his band Heldon re-wired the circuitry of electronic rock, wresting the script from the more genteel paradigm posited by Krautrock electronic merchants with a suite of albums over the 70's that celebrated a dystopian and dyspeptic vision of electronic rock as a slow-acting psychotropic poison, meant to induce a fevered, dissociative state. The cold sweat before the White Light of psychedelic awakening. It's a tack he shared with fellow titans of the scene like Lard Free's Gilbert Artman and Verto's Jean-Pierre Grasset, though for want of an introduction to the visionary splendor of Heldon, one might first want to hunt down their studio albums (I recommend starting with Interface), before wading into this tidal pool. 

For those who've already suckled themselves at the neurotoxic teat of mother Heldon and want to delve deeper, this hideously rare boot is surely worth exploring. Side A of this would finally appear as part of the "Live Electronik Guerilla" CD on Captain Trip alongside material from the following year (albeit at a slightly pitched up speed) but side B's material is exclusive to this 100 copy bootleg vinyl, presumably because, as the Freemans from Ultima Thule note on Discogs, this side of the album is primarily the work of (at that time) Heldon member Alain Renaud. And so after all that palaver, what is it that you actually get here? Well, at least initially, something far more placid than I'd alluded to. 1975 was a transitional point for Heldon. Following the more rock-focused material on his debut LP Electronic Guerilla from 1974, and before he launched into the brain pan scouring ferocity of his later efforts that began with the following years' Agneta Nilsson LP, Pinhas was delving whole hog into the glazed and abstracted landscapes opened up for him by hearing Fripp and Eno's No Pussyfooting (his admitted core influence), with his albums from that year (Allez-Teia and It's Only Rock & Roll) pitting him against either Georges Grunblatt's keys or Alain Renaud's guitar over tracks that narcotically ooze and writhe more than rock and roll. 

From the sound of things, only Pinhas and Gauthier are on hand here, resulting in a sound nakedly reflective of their Fripp and Eno obsessions, with overlapping tides of guitar delay and drone snaking off into infinity on the A side, while the more typical guitar riff-erama unleashed on the Renaud-centered flip scarcely remind of any other Heldon at all, presumably why it was scotched from the Captain Trip reissue, though for fans of Renaud's solo albums (like his "Out Of Time" LP shared long ago by Jim) there's some definitely curiosity to hearing this extended onanism of his. As for the brief tacked-on bit from 1982 that closes this out, I haven't the foggiest if this is actually the work of Pinhas or Renaud, being banal soundtrack-y symphonic treacle unlike anything else by either of them.

Get it via Rapidshare Here

ARTHUR PETRONIO-S/T, LP, 1979, SWITZERLAND

Surrealist sound poetry experimentation of a very high order, this Swiss born and Belgian residing fellow was a contemporary of pioneering sound poet Henri Chopin and this sole extant recording of his explorations into morphing the voice electronically and/or ensnaring them in musique concrete-like treatments is some truly gripping stuff. Some of what's heard here is unnerving enough to presage Steve Stapleton's attack on Nurse With Wound recordings like Homotopy To Marie, while elsewhere, expect the ghosts of Pierre Henry's breaths and doors, whale song, nagging fragments of percussion, smeary tape speed gibberish and excitedly mumbling alter cockers.

Get it via Rapidshare Here

MUNJU-BROT + SPIELE, LP, 1980, GERMANY

The German Schneeball label was something like ground zero for Krautrock's final gasp and hurrah, having documented for posterity many of the last great recordings to emanate from those vectors, including those from Embryo and Checkpoint Charlie. Munju's Brot + Spiele, the third recording from this jazz rock crew is an exemplary outing typical of the label's aesthetic, with funkily percolating fusionoid moves, flute-y kerfuffles, emphatic gruff vocalizing and a more expressly funky, punchy and pared back stance then that heard on their more loosely jamming earlier offerings.

Get it via Rapidshare Here

HOPPY KAMIYAMA VISUAL WORKS-HYPNOTIQUE, CD, 1994, JAPAN

Wasting no time diving off the deep end of the pool, my second share from Japanese wild card keyboard provocateur and God Mountain label head Kamiyama (following my post of his "Nympho Has Some Great Elements" CD back in '08) blows into frame with a continent sized opening gambit;  a billowing, disembodied gaseous fug by the name of Metaphysic Part 1-4" that's shot through with tendrils of slithering Coil menace and Esplendor Geometrico factory floor ambience and curiously cross-hatched with skeins of loose-y goose-y Downtown NY fretless bass. It's a dissociative aesthetic that Kamiyama's trading in here and one in which he's more than willing to unmercifully dunk your head in a syrupy vat of bank commercial orchestral pre-set pablum as he is to situate you in vectors of claustrophobic weirdity. A head-scratcher to be sure…

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

NEW POSTS WILL BE UP BY LATE MONDAY NIGHT

REPLACEMENT LINKS UP FOR BESOMBES, FOUSSAT AND V/A-DUMBSTRIKING INCIDENTS POSTS

Replacement links just got plugged into the respective posts for these since several users were complaining about not being able to open these files for some reason.

PHILIPPE BESOMBES-LA GUERRE DES ANIMAUX, LP, 1982, FRANCE

This French electronic maestro's rep has latterly gotten a bit more outsized after reissues of his dazzling Libra, Ceci A Cela and Besombes-Rizet LP's surfaced over the last decade. The blithely engaging if rather more slight tunes found on this archetypal early 80's library release of his share more in common with Teddy Lasry or Claude Perraudin's library outings than they do with either the more acidic cosmic pulsations and Cluster-like constructs of his time in Pole or the more sequentially pumping funkiness of the two albums that he did with Hydravion that preceded this. This is all quite enjoyable for what it is, regardless.

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

JEAN MARC FOUSSAT-ABATTAGE, LP, 1983, FRANCE

Popcorn bursts of pointillist plucks and gristly electroacoustic splatter set the stage on this first solo outing by this somewhat obscure French electronic musician, guitarist and improvisor. His recording career would pick up again decades later, with recent outings for both Leo and Ayler records alongside the likes of Noel Akchote and Roger Turner, but this would be his sole document under his own banner for some 18 years, Foussat having been principally engaged as an engineer during this time for a broad swath of Europe's free improv culture and it's evident in his own music's prickly keen attention to detail and sharp attack.

With its initial salvo of air raid sirens, coughing and tap dancing you know you're in for something edgy and peculiar with this one. And indeed, it's not long before the aforementioned plucks rush to the fore and then coagulate into dense Agencement-like thickets before being sent tumbling down the nearest stairwell. Foussat generates a lot of compelling tension here between slurries of free music gabbiness and concise electroacoustic vivisections  while still somehow finding room for ruminative piano doodling, Eraserhead ambience and Barbara Streisand's bellowing pipes across the A side, while the flip finds him initially ferreting away at his guitar to substantially more musical ends, but alas, it's a honeytrap, as Foussat whips it all up into a frothy Futurist lather of buzzing bandsaws and stuttering power drills.

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

V/A-MYKISTAVIA VALIKOHTAUKSIA / DUMBSTRIKING INCIDENTS, LP, 1993, FINLAND

Before detuned communal drug fug became the touchstone of Finnish underground musical life, the Bad Vugum label and its scrappily art damaged house aesthetic were emblematic of much left field Finnish musical culture from a decade or so earlier. Keuhkot's crunchily corroded and Gonk-like cod ethno mulch, Deep Turtle's smurfy prog-punk conniptions and The Vacuum Cleaners Residential rock deconstructions earn pride of place in this collection to this set of ears.

1. Keuhkot-Kiihkoilijan Masentava Iltapäivä
2. Keuhkot-Poliisia Ei Arvosteta, Mutta Sehän Onkin Jo Klisee
3. Keuhkot-Liikaa Järkee
4. Deep Turtle-Jeriko Jr
5. Deep Turtle-Mr Coltrane
6. Deep Turtle-Arbean (It Makes You Dance!)
7. Deep Turtle-Tequno
8. Oak-Salvo
9. Oak-Go
10. Oak-Under The Wheel
11. The Leo Bugariloves-Tamminiemen Valtias
12. The Leo Bugariloves-Basic Question I
13. Dr Gunni-Til Ama Mömmu
14. Dr Gunni-Ziggi Zösä
15. Dr Gunni-Skerdingin
16. Dr Gunni-Kiddi Kindabyssa
17. Dr Gunni-Haettu Ad Strida Hundinum
18. The Vacuum Cleaners-Defy The Silence
19. The Vacuum Cleaners-Feline Gutz
20. The Vacuum Cleaners-In Plastic
21. The Vacuum Cleaners-A Zed And Two Noughts

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

QUICK CULTURE-S/T, 12" EP, 1982, GERMANY

From Die Radierer and Die Partei to The Wirtschaftswunder, Tom Dokoupil has had his sticky fingers in some of the most delectable of Neue Deutsche Welle pies. Quick Culture was another brilliant if short lived manifestation from his cheerfully fevered mind, this time in a trio alongside Detlev Kuhne, who'd go on to Die Hornissen from here and one Rosita Blissenbach. The drolly playful synth pop blip and zip of his work in the sensational Die Partei the year prior is evident, but there are a lot of other layers to this confection too, with this trio sometimes shimmying along the perimeter of Planet Claire and at others, exhibiting a mutant funk-y rhythmic gestalt with an almost Ike Yard-like insistence to it.

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

KOEN DE BRUYNE-HERE COMES THE CRAZY MAN!, LP, 1974, BELGIUM

Damn fine Belgian funky fusion with a distinctive dual trumpet front-line and some obvious overtones of Belgium's most high profile jazz rockers, Placebo. Mr De Bruyne's the one tickling the ivories and unfurling the occasional bed of synth syrup, but it's his bandmates' show every bit as much as his, with the overt brassiness of this at times suggesting Chicago in their early ChicagoTransit Authority days. Butressed by guest spots for whirligig flute and breathily cooing Flora Purim-like vocalese, this is just what the doctor ordered.

Get it via Rapidshare Here 

NEW POSTS UP BY THURSDAY NIGHT...

NEKROPOLIS-MUSIK AUS DEM SCHATTENREICH NOW REISSUED ON VINYL ON PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE

It's a very rare thing when I choose to hype a new release, but this one needed doing. Revered as a godfather of dark avant prog, the unnerving and balefully beautiful work of German composer and bassist Peter Frohmader has long been championed by us Mutants. Indeed, I've just recently pulled the link down for this very title; one of several by him on Mutant Sounds and perhaps my very favorite out of Frohmader's intimidatingly large discography. And it's been yanked because the same folks at Pure Pop For Now People that were responsible for recently releasing two albums by my band Vas Deferens Organization (Quicksand and our Science Of The Impossible collaboration with Perihelion) have now gone and re-gifted the world with a new and definitive edition of Musik Aus Dem Schattenreich, finally offered up on a proper slab of vinyl after its last incarnation as a mid-90's CD. And a beautifully housed slab it is! For those who are unaware of the sinister majesty of this music, have a listen to the first track, Hölle Im Angesicht Here and if you want a copy, write directly to Joachim at Pure Pop. He's distinctly old-school in approach, so there's no cart system on his site. Just write to him at purepop (at) buissnet (dot) com (the same way you'd go about ordering the new VDO LP on his label) and he'll be happy to hook you up with a copy of this masterpiece.

HANS FRISCH-LEVENDE OPJECKTEN SJOOOO, LP, 1969, NETHERLANDS

Batshit crazy acidhead bedazzlement from the heyday of the Dutch counterculture, with the free rock/free improv spirit summoning unleashed by this band of furry freaks begging comparison with the earliest and most shamanistically summoning wing of the Krautrock continuum from Amon Duul to Limbus 4 to Anima. It's a stance which makes their sound far more musically prescient and less time-bound than most anything else emanating from Holland at the time; their unfettered roundelays of bongos, flutes, horns, percussive clatter and wailing avant vocals offering direct pointers toward the sort of sounds currently embodied by the Finnish free rock and improv scene. The pics of half naked Dionysian abandon enclosed and the knowledge that part of this edition was seized by the Dutch police elevate the actions of these cultural provocateurs to an even higher level. An album to be relished.

Get it via Rapidshare Here