Emotive autumnal accretions of multi-tracked string scrape and plucked acoustic filigree, the layers strafing against each other in overlapping moire patterns. Another moving document from the fine mind of one Richard Skelton, whose equally rich and expressive Carousell project (posted previously) also suggested windswept vistas and obscure esoteric rituals.
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As attentive Wire Magazine subscribers will likely have discovered by now, "Trick Or Treat", the debut LP by Shits And Giggles, Ariel Pink's new band together with Vas Deferens Organization (the little 'ol band that I'm a member of) is to be available on VDO's new label Free Dope And Fucking In The Streets by the tail end of this month, with the formal launch of websites for the band as well as for the label to be unveiled simultaneously. Stay tuned...
As a follow-up to my post of the third album by this legendary French jazz bassist (his c.v. including stints with Don Cherry and Didier Lockwood amongst others) and one time member of French psych/folk/prog masters Total Issue, here's his swooningly lovely solo debut, it's lump-in-throat human poignancy distilled from the sparest of ingredients, with supple buttery wafts of wordless vocalizations elevated to a plane of sheer soul conveyance alternately snaking across a heaving weave of bowed bass drone or negotiating their way through alternately thrummingly insistent and delicately intricate note configurations, occasionally offset by subtle hand percussion.
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***NOTE: THERE'S A MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINK IN THE COMMENT FIELD***
Containing music commissioned for a dance troupe and an animated film, Music For Fruit is another master class in the art of the unnerving from this former Wire, Dome and Cupol member and all 'round guru of subterranean acid menace, with Alan Splet-like Eraserhead atmospheric conditions and distant concatenations of factory noise rippling across the surface of cathedral reverbed synthetic surges and opaque delayed ghostings.
***************NEW LINK POSTED SEPTEMBER 2012***************
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The work of this stunning Japanese R.I.O. outfit is manifestly an outgrowth of the dark chamber rock tradition of the Univers Zero/Art Zoyd/Present axis, but their penchant for folkloric and quasi-romantic themes and instrumental voicings brings this far closer to the territory that Univers Zero leader Daniel Denis was charting on his two solo albums from the early 90's (Les Eaux Troubles in particular) and closer still to that dislocated zone between systemic minimalism and angular art rock mined by Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic and the Mikel Rouse Broken Consort. An embarrassment of riches to explore here, folks. Note: this has been posted elsewhere in the blogosphere, but only as inaccessible-to-many .ogg files, so it felt well worth re-sharing this here.
***************NEW LINK POSTED SEPTEMBER 2012***************
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Gifted with both a macro scale grasp of how to sustain the dream logic of surrealist audio architecture and an acute ear for the cellular detail residing therein, this early endeavor from these Seattle eccentrics is all over the damn place, but in a highly engaging way, with location recordings, free jazz, noise rock, electroacoustic studies, dadaist tape loop manglings, bongo-and-birdcalls hippy jams and Caretaker-like broadcasts from The Shining ballroom all rubbing shoulders in a deliciously dissociative and squirrely fashion.
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Since the link for this sweetly dewy eyed and anthemic slice of Danish folk rock wonderment has been down for eons elsewhere in the blogosphere, it felt irresistible to re-post here. I could almost picture a whole tribe of Danish hippie teens skipping arm in arm across a rustic idyll in some 70's Euro coming of age flick to this stuff...
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Like shit smeared berserkers armed with clown noses, bike horns and yelping chihuahuas, Switzerland's Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock (aka Rudolv Eb.Er assisted on and off by compadres Joke Lanz and Dave Philips) have haunted the margins of post-industrial extremism with their dada damaged and Otto Muehl/AA Kommune-derived antics for some 20-odd years now. Drew Daniel of Matmos penned the penultimate piece on these fringe nutters for the Wire some years back (the article can be found Here ) but one small detail not noted in Daniel's profile is the blatant streak of humor that coursed though their earlier output, a dimension thats been progressively excised from their formulations over time in favor of ramping up the jarring severity of their shock tactic postures, and while I feel an enormous sympathy for their overall aesthetic stance, the initial era of their work as demonstrated on this insane debut document remains hard to top, with hacked/spliced/vivisected fragments of inspired buffoonery, animal sounds and voiding orifices mating with corroded chunks of metal debris, the results wetly flung about Eb.Er's padded chamber in a rather Bladder Flask-like fashion, albeit cut by episodes of pregnant silence that are as integral to their "music" as is the audible portion. More of this crew's sickness will be posted soon.
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One of the rarest and most whispered about minimal synth platters, the approach on this private press American obscurity is decidedly spare (sometimes in the extreme), with the instrumental etudes herein often sounding like nothing so much as the backing tracks of Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day circa Exterminating Angel, but offset by bare bones synth theme studies that feel more like sketches. Some very nice bits to be found here nevertheless...
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This choice document of 80's American marginal fringe malarky carries on where the first installment that I posted a few weeks back left off, with many of the same parties reappearing here and articulating a distinctly rough hewn American spin on this era of improv, tape collage, noise and assorted avant esoterica; pride of place on this one for me going to the Woo-meets-Biota wobble of Canada's Violence & The Sacred and Randy Greif's spot-on roundelay through subterranean mesmerism.
Track listing:
Violence & The Sacred-Butchered Edit
Blitzoids-Theme From A Summer Place
German Shepherds-It's Always Wet In Debby's Prison
Randy Greif-A Lot Like You
German Shepherds-The First Man To Give Birth
Musica Menta-Weasels Of Tibet
Furry Couch-Skeleton Orchestra
Proof Of Utah-Hot Rods To Hell
Gary Marks-Improvisation 1-19-88
Eugene Chadbourne-A-The First Porthole Solo In History, B-The Last Communist Banjo Solo Of 1987
Haters-Huwa
Elizabeth Harper-Green
Scott Marshall-The Enemy Within
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Ferocious and dazzling art prog maneuvers from an outfit spearheaded by former Sleepytime Gorilla Museum drummer Frank Grau, this eyebrow-raising and R.I.O.-indebted debut of theirs mating the ebullient horn charting eccentricity of France's Six Cylindres En V to the dense and circus-y post-Klezmer R.I.O. moves of American units like Hamster Theater and Amoebic Ensemble, but cut by a combination of space rock power drives and intermittent kosmiche production values, a seemingly chalk and cheese combo on the written page but one they manage to make seem both obvious and effortless.
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Briefly issued many years back as an individually burned CDR from Sevcom.com (long since deleted), this sensational compendium of Australian experimental electronic talent is very deserving of a wider reception. Featuring several Aussie notables that have been displayed in the MS vitrine over time (Bradbury, Loop Orchestra, Minit), this is anything but the odd-'n'-sods mop up job of loose ends that so many comps often wind up being, the artists involved almost to a one delivering top of their game material, including hacked-'n'-chopped digital effluvia from Rik Rue, Andrews and Wake Up And Listen, the Loop Orchestra's dysfunctional calliope quease and compilation cappers from Minit , who offer a sublime continuum of oscillating ooze and the slowly coalescing ping/bloop architecture of Bradbury.
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A true legend of the Japanese countercultural underground, having over time worked with everyone from Shuji Terayama and his Tenjo Sajiki theatrical troupe to leading lights of the PSF-related Japanese noise psych camp via his work in Vajra and the Haino/Mikami/Yoshizawa trio, though it must be said that the deeper resonances of much of what Mikami has created over the years seems mostly available to Japanese speakers, predicated as his style is on rawboned and direct emotional conveyance and play with the Japanese language, though his ravaged articulation and soul bearing naked angst has it's western admirers even when just operating as just a man a his guitar. This early explosion of inscrutable avant folk rock/studio fucked strangeness will however go some ways toward initiating those not yet ready for the austere blast of otherness that comprises so much of his solo canon; the nerve shattering Friendsound-worthy psychotropic meele of the title track in particular being one of the more confounding/astounding artifacts of the whole Japanese psych/prog era.
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A gobsmackingly great out of the blue master class in surrealist mesmerism courtesy of one Per Giobel, a heretofore unknown (well...to me anyway) Swedish experimentalist who both fills the A side with a jaw-dropping expanse of immersive and equilibrium addling electronics worthy of the kosmiche masters and lends his deft production gravitas to the handful of associates that occupy the flip of this compendium, all coincidentally occupying a similarly heaving and sighing slipstream of askew electronic acid wonderment mixed with Tietchens-esque smeary/bleary subdued menace.
Following my post of this peculiar and fascinating French post-industrial group's "L'Or'N Cat" LP and Jim's post of their Fishes LP, here is, for me, their very finest hour, though the first bit out of the gate here might unintentionally wrongfoot the uninitiated as hammering Test Dept./Dissecting Table-style industrial rhythms set the stage. Such tactics however are but a fraction of the arsenal that Geins't Nait have in their bag of tricks, which takes in everything from deformed minimal synthy technopop ala Bene Gesserit to Nurse With Wound like surrealist malarky, but with a polymorphous inclusivity that treats every methodology concocted during this genre's heyday as grist for their mill, and by dint of that bears closest comparison to the polyvalent maneuvers of Dutch maestros De Fabriek. A consummation and distillation of their various strategies and a a fine example of what continues to remain vital about the output of this era. Thanks to longstanding blog friend Fuzztunnel for this gem.
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Following my posts of three albums worth of this Japanese psychedelic unit's face melting early style (in the PSF-approved noise psych mode), here's a broadcast from the era that saw them swerving 180 degrees into some sort of lazily pastoral/post-Grateful Dead/quasi Caribbean/happy groove psych modality that immediately polarized their fanbase, with the utterly absurd (if charming) easy listening summer evening sashays of "Melted Moon" and "Fish" in particular seemingly guaranteed to constrict the sphincters of Japannoise devotees worldwide. Me? I think it's stellar, if a world away from their bloodletting early era and deserves consideration for a whole other set of reasons. Come to your own conclusions...
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Sometime Half Japanese member, leader of Megaphone label units The Dramatics & The Attitude Robots and collaborator with Tatsuya Yoshida, Eye Yamatsuka, Jac Berrocal and an unholy host of other fringe art damage mongers, The Jaunties was an early project of Jason Willett's in consort with a terminally hyperactive 15 freak named Benb Gallaher and it's frantically fucked and lo-fi spazz/skronk/splatter/wobble (imagine Faxedhead playing Flipper covers while wearing boxing gloves) ought to endear it to many within our ranks, particularly those that are hot and bothered over the contempo post-No Wave/free rock crowd.
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EVIDENTLY, THE FOLKS AT STUDENTS OF DECAY MUST HAVE OBJECTED TO THEIR INSTANTLY DELETED 50 COPY COMPILATION BEING SHARED, AS ONE DAY LATER, ALL FOUR OF THE MEGAUPLOAD LINKS ARE DEAD. GO FIGURE WHAT MOTIVATES SOME PEOPLE. PERHAPS IT'S ONLY MEANT FOR THE EARS OF THE PRIVILEGED FEW? OH WELL...
*******FOLLOW UP******* Well, as it turns out, Alex Cobb from Students Of Decay had nothing at all to do with having these links pulled, as his very thoughtful and supportive comments on both this post and the board for the original post attest. My apologies to him again if the above text suggested otherwise. Evidently though, someone involved in this endeavor thought it shouldn't be shared and I've no desire to antagonize whoever it is, this material won't be reposted here, alas.
The first album by this astonishing Spanish prog crew (whose album link has sadly been down for ages elsewhere in the blogosphere) is filled to the brim with soaring and frequently dizzyingly dense ethno prog/fusion moves that remind me of both Yugoslavia's R.M. Tocak and their fellow spanish prog traveller Gualberto, but with an eccentric and whimsically wandering (almost R.I.O.-like) approach to structure. The resulting mix, filled with dense pointillistic clusters of jazzy micro-activity and haunting symphonic prog themes is cut by subtly avant garde-ish strategies in a way that reminds me most of Italian avant prog titans Picchio Dal Pozzo. A thing to marvel at.
Note: this link has been deleted, as I somehow stupidly managed to overlook that Forced Exposure still had copies of the CD reissue, which can be found Here
Following my posts of the first two volumes of this ongoing (?) compilation series, here's the long awaited third installment, and as was the case with the previously posted volumes, this was issued as a set of four 3" CDR's in a boxset, each containing one artist per disc and each installment limited to 50 copies. And now on to the contents at hand:
DISC 1: Nether Dawn & Little Skull-A Dog's Hair Reverie
Fragile, desolate and wandering electric guitar duets that ultimately rouses itself from it's heat haze mirage dreamtime reverie and launches into an unexpected barrage of coruscating subterranean desolation vibes. Interesting moves from two fixtures of the New Zealand underground; one being Nether Dawn's Antony Milton (who also operates under the monikers A.M. & Myrtu and runs the Pseudoarcana imprint), the other Dean Brown, who's issued a CDR on Milton's label as well as two impossible to find lathe cut polycarbonate discs.
DISC 2: C.J.A.-Ich Lieb
Clayton Noone is another long time fixture on the Kiwi sub-underground free rock scene, having released numerous outings under both the C.J.A. heading and as Armpit, Wolfskull, The Futurians etc. While grokking the concept of worn/distressed/deliberately poor quality audio as a viable artistic stance, I can't say I got too hot and bothered over this one, but if depressive loner fuzz guitar wanderings recorded on a dictaphone wrapped in cotton wool sounds like your speed, feel free to differ.
DISC 3: Pefkin-The Other Room
aka Gayle from Boa Melody Bar distribution's sweetly quizzical project. Delicately naif in approach, this is a cockeyed drift of accordion, acoustic guitars and chimes/bells/metals periodically (if gently) rent by surrealist atmospheric disturbance.
DISC 4: Bjerga/Iverson-Cosmic Recovery
The umpteenth release by this prolific Norwegian duo of Sindre Bjerga and Jan-Morten Iversen (the former having been featured in last weeks singles post as part of the Kjertl Del Brondo group), these two having issued a flood of micro-press CDR releases across a raft of notable sub-underground imprints over the last several years, and it's a fascinating narcotic soup of subterranean malevolence that these two have cooked up here; one in which I can hear the ghosted/decayed remnants of everything from Zoviet France to Uton to Peter Jefferies within. Highly fascinating work and for my money, the clear standout of this compendium.
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NOTE: RAPIDSHARE LINKS COMING IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS...HAVING SOME ISSUES WITH MY PREMIUM ZONE LOG-IN...
