PASSING ALONG A SMALL MESSAGE FROM BLOG FOUNDER JIM MUTANTSOUNDS

I was just in touch with Mutant Sounds blog founder Jim for the first time in ages regarding the new Rapidshare changes and he's asked me to pass along word that there's a reason for his extended absence from Mutant, as he's undergone dramatic surgery and has been the recuperating at length from his ordeal this last year. Here's hoping this is all behind him now and that he'll be able to contribute to Mutant again at some point in the future, but until then, feel free to offer him a small shout out and wish him a speedy recovery in the comment field.

LINKS FOR HUGUES O., RAOUL DUGUAY, MARCUS AND NEO MUSEUM NOW FIXED

ANDRE JAUME & MICHEL REDOLFI-HARDSCORE, LP, 1980, FRANCE

Much more known for his aquatic electroacoustic environments including albums for that genre's landmark Ina/GRM imprint, it seems Michel Redolfi's association with the largely free music-focused imprint Hat Hut which issued his first album had the knock-on effect of bringing him together with both sax and clarinet improvisor Jaume (whose CV includes recordings with Joe Mcphee, Raymond Boni and Charlie Mariano) and the passel of improvisors more readily associated with the label during the early 80's, including guitarist Marc Montera and second keyboardist Jacques Diennet, who'd later join forces again for Diennet's 1987 Hat Hut-issued LP boxset Mante, though Hardscore itself wasn't actually issued on that label.

Jaume's compositions comprise side A, Redolfi's side B, though both appear throughout. The Jaume-penned outing on side A is splendid: a rambunctious and splutteringly digestive cartoonish sound clash akin to that deployed by the Un Drame Musical Instantane/GRRR crew that pits Jaume's bass clarinet and tenor sax against playfully gurgling atmospheres from Redolfi which are then cross-hatched and perforated by the fits and spits emitted from guitarist Jean-Marc Montera, second keyboardist Jacques Diennet and vocalist Frank Royon Le Mee. Redolfi's two B-side compositions are things of confounding beauty, stepping away from his understood identity far more than the surges of Michel Waisvisz-like free synth splatter that be brings to bear on Jaume behalf on the A Side. On Naissance Et Agonie De Ma Lampe De Chevet, Redolfi sticks to a background scrim of droning coloration while Frank Royon Le Mee and Jaume use clarinets, sax, delicate acoustic guitar and and vocals of bird-like delicacy and sensitivity  to evoke a ritualistic summoning on the spirits, while the title track teases a candy floss of atonal synthetic unguent around Jaume's moist emissions 'til they both explode in a polyphonically saturated and tonally ripe burst of synthetically smeared sax love.

HUGUES 0.-ANTILOPE 1, LP, 1979, FRANCE

Recorded two years after vocalist and lyricist Hugues O. (aka Hugues Ometaxalia's) extraordinary Lettre D'Ocre album together with Speed Limit keyboardist J. L. Bucchi and the year following Bucchi's own Sunflower LP (both previous shared by Jim on Mutant long ago) Antilope 1 reunites several of the crew from Sunflower including former Magma/Weidorje bass monster Bernard Paganotti and Bahamas guitarist Patrice Tison. There's lots of delicious tension on hand here between AOR and avant instincts and a will to play fast and loose with how both are combined that reminds a bit of Muck Groh's Muckfuck LP.

RAOUL DUGUAY-ALLLO TOULMOND, LP, 1975, CANADA

 

This first solo outing from the one-time leader of the outlandish and pioneering Nurse With Wound-listed Canuck psych/prog unit L'Infonie is a definite corker. Widely variable in approach, Alllo Toulmond spans the gap from plaintive and tremulously voiced acid folk to percolating Dionne-Bregent-like mallet percussion prog entanglements, with some of the dewily rhapsodic acid folk bits here distinctly smacking of the approach taken by his fellow Quebecers in Harmonium.  

NEO MUSEUM-VOLUME 1, LP, 1985, FRANCE

With several members of fringe avant prog maestros Hellebore, Szentendre and Mick Hobbs' archly nutty Officer! present in its lineup, it's obvious this one's gonna be something pretty jake. And indeed, on the terms it sets for itself, this sole outing of theirs (barring their appearance on the Douze Pour Un Vol. 2 compilation LP) is a definite smoker if more formally avant prog qua avant prog then those previously cited groups in their attack. At its finest moments, their blithely odd angle of approach here swans around similar terrain to that mapped by Chris Cutler and Lindsay Cooper's work with David Thomas on More Places Forever.  Mostly though, like their fellow French underground scene travelers at the time in Virgule 4 and Les I, Neo Museum operated under the substantial shadow cast by iconic R.I.O. avant prog mavens Etron Fou Leloublan and the angular irregularity of their all-knees-and-elbows art rock antics sits right at the surface of Neo Museum's work, though Neo Museum's approach is less delicately reflective and woodily thrumming then Virgule 4's and and less boisterously antic then Les I.

Get it via Rapidshare Here

MARCUS-FROM THE HOUSE OF TRAX, LP, 1978, USA

Plangently emotional and quaveringly theatrical private press psych/hard rock/space/folk amazement that's been one of the more relentlessly booted titles over the years. The tunes here filter righteously blasted west coast acid rock moves through enough phased and heat miraged sense-expansion to trigger memories of old Eastern Block space rock units like SBB and Tako. Absolutely singular and singularly essential.

NEW POSTS UP BY TUESDAY NIGHT

Sorry for the extra-long delay with new shares this time, but the last several weeks have been devoted almost exclusively to finishing up work on multiple Vas Deferens Organization projects that were left neglected during all the recent blog repair. These include a new VDO collaboration with Philip Sanderson of Storm Bugs, two new VDO albums that are now in post-production and our previously announced collaborations with Michael Alan, Audace and Ben Presto

Thanks for your patience. It will be rewarded with some particularly choice goodies this with this next round of posts.

ALL LINKS FOR CAUVIN, COXHILL AND NUTS & CO NOW CORRECTED

MUSIQUE NOISE-FULMINES REGULARIS, LP, 1988, FRANCE

Like Pseu, Uppsala and Eskaton, Musique Noise were part of a later wave of French Zeuhl outfits with no formal connection to the Magma mothership. Though more overtly avant garde-ish manifestations of the Zeuhl spirit like like Art Zoyd and Shub Niggurath would continue to carry the torch for this stylistic trope through the later half of the 80's, this 1988 debut of Musique Noise's arrived at a time well past any presumed sell-by date for the sort of overtly Magma-derived choral avant fusion gestures found here. And yet, aside from some dubiously dainty digital key voicings, there's no denying that a lot of what's going down here simply smokes. 

As was the case with Eskaton before them, a lot of the action on the front line on these tracks is dominated by insistently intoned choral female vocals stitched into and cross-hatching rhythmic tattoos, though unlike the majority of bands that arrived in Magma's wake and took their pointers from the more feverishly martial dimensions of their musical template, Musique Noise, while fully capable of fusion fireworks, spend as much time extending their line of inquiry out from the most mellifluous and dreamy bits of their Magma muse. Surely, they're the only exponent of this style I've heard thats seen fit to use Magma's much derided 80's release "Merci" as a template for some of their tunes; no mark against 'em in my book as I'm perfectly happy to ride that particular train right off into its sappiest sunset, but it's doubtless to be a deal-breaker for some. Their loss. 

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION-TILT?, 10", 2001, USA

Carrying on with shares from our own back catalog, this 10" was our contribution to the Lactamase series of 10" vinyls on Beta-Lactam Ring and captures the same extended line-up of VDO heard on some of our more overtly kosmiche-directed efforts of the time like Zyzzybaloubah and Quicksand, with Doug Ferguson (Yeti/Ohm), David Fargason (Liquid Sound Company), Jim Edgerton (Burnin' Rain, Fish Eye Lens) and saxophonist Scott Lindsay all present for these sessions.

There's a particular patina to these recordings, a darkly queered and melancholic atmosphere specific to only this recording of ours. The PR for this release at the time it came out was name-checking Bowie/Eno instrumentals, Goblin and Van Der Graaf Generator and that still seems apt enough on some level, though it's all been filter-fucked and structurally skewed as per VDO's usual peccadillos.

Get it Here 

NUTS & CO-KANGOUROU, LP, 1982, FRANCE

Another lost gem from France's absurdly verdant overgrowth of freak fringe groups circa the early 80's, Nuts & Co.'s minimal synth meets clonk and bonk Residential formulations seem custom made for Mutant. Within their skewed key/bass/drum machine attack are echoes of other early 80's French operatives of the time like Achwgha Ney Wodei and Lucas Trouble, though Nuts & Co.'s cheerfully maddening approach shares an even greater simpatico with Germany's Originalton, Belgium's Bene Gesserit and Denmark's Ivor Axeglovitch.

LOL COXHILL, PIERRE COURBOIS, JASPER VAN'T HOF-TOVERBAL SWEET, LP, 1972, UK / NETHERLANDS

The second of innumerable albums released by soprano sax master Lol Coxhill during his lifetime (he sadly passed away earlier this year), Toverbal Sweet arrived on the heels of Coxhill's tenure in two key Canterbury concerns, Delivery and Kevin Ayers And The Whole World. This trio outing finds him paired with one half of Nurse With Wound-listers Association PC in the form of keyboardist Jasper Van't Hof (also of Pork Pie and Electric Circus) and drummer Pierre Courbois, who'd previously been mixing it up with Gunter Hampel, Manfred Schoof and Alexander Von Schlippenbach in Hampel's Heartplants group. The live recording quality here is a mite rough (in keeping with Coxhill's warts and all DIY approach heard on his debut solo Ear Of The Beholder), but the glow generated by this inspired trifecta quickly renders such concerns moot, with the arc, swoop and drunken list of Lol's delicately shaded soprano statements snaking through and spiraling out from the wily and invigoratingly raw thrust and parry generated by Van't Hof's insistent vamping and Courbois' Robert Wyatt-like rhythmic attack.

PHILIPPE CAUVIN-MEMENTO, LP, 1984, FRANCE

This is the dazzling second solo album from the lips, lungs and string slinging fingers behind 80's French Zeuhl masters Uppsala, who've had both their albums shared previously on Mutant and also got name-checked in another of today's French shares. Left to his own devices, Cauvin generates strangely shaded and emotionally wrenching vignettes that braid idiosyncratic avant folk runs reminiscent of Quebec's Conventum against ravishing and quizzical falsetto vocal embellishments and musical interventions that suggest the direction taken on King Crimson and Peter Hammill outings from the same period.

NEW POSTS UP BY THE END OF FRIDAY NIGHT

DOING MY VERY BEST WITH THE RAPIDSHARE SITUATION

But, alas it's still an uphill battle. I've been diligently at work shifting files onto new accounts, but I know a lot of you are still running into the dread new "file owner's public traffic exhausted" message, and this with three accounts currently housing files. There's been an even greater stress on Mutant's files, as both the interview on the Awl and the Red Bull playlist drew a lot of new people to the blog. In light of this, I'm just remaining in full-on blog repair mode for the next "x" number of days instead of getting new posts up. Those will come in about 4-7 days, but my main focus at this point has to be rescuing Mutant from running up against these download walls I keep getting messages about people encountering. Please be patient and bear with me as this crap gets tended to...

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