ZELIENOPLE-GHOST SHIP/MARY CELESTE, CDR, 2005, USA

Choice 5:00 AM drone voids from this Chicago unit who've gained a measure of underground notoriety with a string of releases on imprints like Digitalis, Time-Lag, Type and Root Strata. This one (their third, I believe) was briefly available on Antony Milton's Pseudoarcana label and it's among their finest, with gorgeously reverb-drugged amniotic expanses rich in velvety harmonic swarms, distended string scrape and vibrating metals oozing and overlapping before finally coalescing during its final third into the ghostly remnants of song form.

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PHILIPPE DORAY LES ASOCIAUX ASSOCIES-RAMASSE-MIETTES NUCLEAIRE, LP, 1977, FRANCE, NWW LIST

A master class in hermetic art rock screwiness, Philippe Doray's debut album (his follow up Nouveaux Modes Industriels was posted by Jim ages ago) is one of the de rigeur mindfucks from as scene overrun with them, it's specific sickness emerging from a dimension that you could reference to the likes of Birge Gorge Shiroc, Heratius or Jean-Francois Papin, with artfully disjointed and spare arrangements full of squirrely vocals and chants and an abundance of Faust-ian surrealist charm discreetly mangled by savvy effects processing.
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V/A-NATO "ALTERNATE CAKE", LP, 1986, VARIOUS

Carving a uniquely idiosyncratic niche for itself,  the French Nato records imprint was, during it's 80's heyday ground zero for the zone where free improv began consorting with post punk art pop strategies and generalized genre disrupting malarky, much of it with a strong line in humor and irreverence, though their standing affection and recurrent homages to Henry Mancini and supper club piano jazz are certainly baffling enough. Amongst the freak fringe demimonde to be found at this nexus one could count the Toop/Beresford/Eastly/Day U.K. contingent responsible for General Strike/The 49 Americans/The Flying Lizards/Alterations, here running headlong into the wing of the French underground whose avant-rock-into-improv strategies descend from the May of '68 spirit of Red Noise, Mahogany Brain and Futura Records (read: Jac Berrocal, Jean-Francois Pauvros, Pierre Bastien et.al.). Within those parameters, the contents of the epic length LP (32 odd minutes per side!) constitute a virtual state of the union and offers a compelling rebuke to those who think the torch of fringe innovation was at a low flicker during the mid to late 80's.

Track listing:

1. Steve Beresford/Terry Day/Deb'Bora-The Nato Calling
2. Louis Sclavis-Pour Memoire
3. Violeta Ferrer-Les Chats
4. Tony Coe-Les Bourgeons Du Temps
5. Annick Nozati/Fred van Hove-Complaisance
6. Michel Doneda/Phil Wachsmann/Benat Achiary-Au Magasin
7. Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky/Andre Jaume/Johannes Bauer-Pavane
8. Alan Hacker/Karen Evans-Sketches From a Bagpiper's Album "Salute"
9. Jean-Francois Pauvros/Arto Lindsay-La Pointe Aux Oies
10. The Melody Four-The Three Caballeros
11. The Recedents-Oiseau Pour Nato Et Chabada (Bon Appetit!)
12. British Summer Time Ends-Running Bear
13. Lol Coxhill-Grope
14. David Toop/Kazuko Hohki-Shin Shin
15. Gerard Siracusa-Drole D'Endroit Pour Regler Sa Montre
16. Kahondo Style-Floor Polish Tango Et The Mohel
17. Jac Berrocal-Pacific
18. Raymond Boni/Max Eastley -Art Moderna Cha Cha Cha
19. Denis Levaillant-Les Menteries Du Style
20. Daniel Deshays-Ma Blanche

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COMPANYIA ELECTRICA DHARMA-DIUMENGE, LP, 1975, SPAIN, NWW LIST

Damn fine Spanish fusion with a Nurse With Wound list pedigree and, to my ears, little or nothing to do with the work of their Spanish contemporaries, instead owing a significant debt to the airily relaxed Italian fusion model of Perigeo, Napoli Centrale or Duello Madre.  
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RORY STORM-WE ARE SUPERIOR BEINGS, CDR, 2005, NEW ZEALAND

Wild, sprawling and very damaged sounding software fucked acid rock experimentation from this New Zealand one man band, who's also had his work issued by imprints like Foxglove and Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon. Ambitious in its scope, this takes in aspects of everything from soupy Sunroof!-like swarming acid mesmerism to blearily cyclical grooves that seem distantly Seefeel related to spare finger-picking post-Fahey/Takoma acoustic meditations, all tempered by radiant veins of gossamer atmospherics rippling, trailing and decaying away.

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CRO MAGNON-ZAPP!, CD, 1992, BELGIUM

Maneuvering within somewhat similar R.I.O. parameters to those heard on the Zypressen album that I recent posted, the work on this Belgian unit's debut album is sublimely lovely chamber rock with a strong whiff of both Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic via the tight as a drum pointillistic/systemic arrangements and the aspect of late model Urban Sax and late model Art Zoyd that's focused around eerily chiming key themes, though with a pronounced counter tendency toward folkloric merriment of a vaguely East Euro stripe thats common to a lot of R.I.O and some fantastic sax work with overtones of ROVA styled hocketing call and response.

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NULL & VOID-MONTAGE MORTE, 12" E.P., 1982, USA

Following on from my post of this tremendous synthy post-punk unit's Happiness And Contempt EP from two years earlier, here's their absurdly rare follow-up, that interim having seen them subtly shift their sound from the Nash The Slash-like slant of their debut, supplanting that album's snarkily profane and somewhat more fun loving (if jaundiced) thrust with something that feels both more rockist and more emotionally visceral; a trashy post-Velvets edge fusing here with elements of early Ultravox, Tubeway Army and Dark Day, it's more raw and primitive recording quality actually quite befitting the other aesthetic choices made here, whether it was intentional or not.
Note: Included in this upload are an additional four live cuts (tracks 7-10) which were originally included by the band on a private CDR reissue of this EP. I'd initially decided against it's inclusion as there's a decent bit of line noise evident, but it felt stingy not to make it available if I'm sitting on it and others want it. Just understand that it's a wholly separate affair from the contents of the EP proper...

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THE SEA NYMPHS-S/T, CD, 1992, UK

Next to Spratleys Japs, The Sea Nymphs were the primary offshoot vehicle for Cardiacs' principal Tim Smith, here alongside fellow Cardiacs members Sarah Smith and William D. Drake. I stated in one of my previous posts of their tape material that I wanted to have Smith's baby, which should clue you to the degree of reverence I afford these cats (now horrifyingly laid low after he suffered a tragic and incapacitating stroke/heart attack combo last year). Alas, The Sea Nymphs received zilch in the way of distribution on this side of the pond and if anyone's madness deserves a wider airing, it's these resolute oddniks. All the Cardiacs' operatives, whether in solo mode or in these offshoot ensembles are deeply encoded with the DNA of the mothership, and The Sea Nymphs are no different. As was the case with Spratleys Japs, they dial back the histrionic stop/start cartoon pop/prog/punk aggression of The Cardiacs proper, though where Spratleys Japs light out for more structurally expansive and mellotron laden pastures, this is more off the compressed eccentric song form tip of Smith and Co.'s collective aesthetic, allowing the brilliance of his sui generis psychedelic song constructions to clearly reveal themselves, with sprightly sing song pop psych whimsy lacquered in a patina of syrupy grandiosity a mile deep and shot through with the visionary structural (il)logic that is the signature of this extended musical family.

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***NOTE: THERE'S A MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINK IN THE COMMENT FIELD*** 

CONRAD SCHNITZLER-CONAL, LP, 1981, GERMANY

Another unimpeachable selection of synthetic distentions from this German electronic guru and founding member of Kluster, Eruption and Tangerine Dream, and despite this having been released during the same year that found him exploring some of his most constructivist material via his Con 3 album for Sky, this one's all pretty much lost in the ether, and my...is it ever bubbly up there! Just two side long epics here, both epic bloop-fests and each subtly threaded with odd nagging sequences that that chatter away at right angles to the rest of the slurry.

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***NOTE: THERE'S A MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINK IN THE COMMENT FIELD***

KONTAKTA-S/T, CD, 1992, GERMANY

Featuring a line-up that some 17 years on reads like a who's who of the Cologne experimental electronic and electronica scene, this early aggregate featured the combined talents of Markus Schmickler (Pluramon, Wabi Sabi etc.), Sonig label avant gardists Hajsch and C-Schulz, Entenpfuhl label experimental electronic meisters Frank Dommert and Monika Westphal (who records as PFN) and A-Musik label/distribution head Georg Odijk. But what about the music? Drop dead stunning, and a clear roadmap for where this mob would be sonically heading in the coming years, perhaps most specifically for Schmickler. Comprising one vast and amorphous slab of approximately 38 minutes, the profoundly transportive and eerie ambience engendered stealthily evolves through veils of occult atmospherics ala Japanese psychedelic improv mystery movers Toho Sara before wandering into a fathoms deep tidal pool of isolationist atmospherics. Essential.

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MOSAIC ANTENNA-S/T, CDR, 2006, FINLAND

The musical project of Sami Virtanen, brother of Finnish underground prime mover Keijo Virtanen and co-conspirator alongside him in Keijo And The Free Players, the material at hand departs somewhat from the wandering and vaguely processional free folk maneuvers of his principal concern, floating in as it does on an intuitive drift of Zoviet France-like cod ethno mulch and buried kosmiche key themes, but before long Elfin forrest folk heard through transistor radios and desynchronized loops of rough hewn improv clatter begin asserting themselves, the sum total sounding like a clash between Uton and Tomutonntu. It's all really commanding work, but unlike his prolific sibling, this eponymous gem has been all that Sami's seen fit to gift the world with under his own steam. A shame, as based on the evidence here, his touch is every bit as keenly attuned as Keijo's.

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PRESCRIPTION SERIES ADDENDUM

Silly me, I completely forgot that Mysteryposter had already posted all buy one of the first 99 copy LP Prescription series on his superb blog, which can be found Here

Thus, I'll only be upping the one that he doesn't have posted, i.e. Holy Angels, which will go up with my next round of posts.

MAHER SHALAL HASH BAZ-RETURN VISIT TO ROCK MASS, 3xLP BOXSET, 1996, JAPAN

The extraordinary second release by this semi-legendary Japanese underground troupe was this sprawling (and I do mean sprawling...there's well over 2 1/2 hours of music here) 3 LP boxset concurrently issued as a 3xCD set as well and it's without a doubt one of the cornerstone documents of Japanese outsider musical thought of the last 15 years. Spearheaded by longtime Japanese underground mover Tori Kudo, who emerged from the same Minor club environs as did Keiji Haino, Kousokuya and a good bit of the PSF-endorsed noise psych crowd, MHSB have latterly gained a goodly bit of exposure via releases on Pastels member Stephen McRobbie's Geographic label, collaborations with Bill Wells and a handful of well received international festival appearances. The approach of most western reviewers has been almost uniformly to celebrate MSHB as a wholly unprecedented phenomenon, something that those of you who've scoped out the work I've previously posted from both Pungo and Katra Turana will know just ain't so, both having set the stage for this sort of whimsical and wheezily askew theatrical rock fragmentation. Kudo's masterstroke was in mating this modality to a poignant and (for all their calculated "offness") flawless command of the syntax of garage-y West Coast psych, with a superficially naif Cornell box-like fragility morphing in a few wobbly bars into uncannily accurate approximations of the sorta fuzz psych bombers that could have been pulled straight from the grooves of a Nuggets comp. It's an aesthetic that sees no problem with integrating everything from delicately shaded Pascal Comelade-like miniatures to surf guitar and the limply pastel and winsome with sojourns into the sort of detuned circus-y quease that Tom Waits started getting at circa Frank's Wild Years, with off key tubas and euphoniums affably wheezing and parping away with all the earnest effort of a first year school orchestra.


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V/A-PRESCRIPTION ARCHIVE SERIES 3, 6xCDR SET, 2004, UK

Best known for his work in Sun Dial, Gary Ramon and his Acme Records imprint have been flying the flag for advanced psychedelic musical thought under various guises for ages now and this epic set was evidently the third installment of his micro release subscription series on Acme, though I've neither seen nor heard a peep about a second (the first, an LP series in an edition of 99 copies will be coming soon). For those not in the know, Sun Dial were responsible for one of the three greatest psych albums of the 90's (at least of those not made by us...[ahem]...), "Other Way Out". The material collected here from Sun Dial and a series of satellite units was issued on CDR in an edition of a mere 66 copies and covers a goodly bit of material that was gathering dust on his shelves. I posted the vinyl debut of Ramon's side project Quad a while back (a true mindbomb, that!), and it's Quad that initiates the series at hand here, so...taking it one by one:

Disc 1: QUAD-LIVE ICA 1991
less ethno (no sitars this time out) and more saturated on the analogue abuse end than their stunning vinyl debut, this time, it's all black holes, solar flares and aurora borealis'. When Ramon's exquisitely poised guitar finally punctures this synthetic hymen at about the 20 minute mark, it harks right back to the most hushed moments of beauty on Sun Dial's Other Way Out. Really fabulous stuff and not entirely far off from some of what Atsushi Tsuyama of Acid Mothers Temple gets up to on some of his solos either.

Disc 2: THE MODERN ART-S.T.
This pre-Sun Dial crew (though no idea precisely where this lands in the lineage) sit at an odd juncture between down in the mouth post-Factory Records motion, and grittily urban sounding psychedelic jams that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the Ralph Records Subterranean Modern compilation. Quite nice.

Disc 3: THE MYSTERY PLANE-S.T.
Slurry, trashy dystopian acid pop lovliness here, from a power trio format that shares a member (other than Ramon of course, who appears on all these discs) with The Modern Art. There's a choice Rocket From The Tombs/Cleveland underground heft at work to these formulations and it's a rich vein their tapping, elsewhere calling to mind everything from Gallon Drunk and Dutch psych popsters S.T.

Disc 4: WER7-S.T.
Most peculiar and fascinating cosmic electronic agressiveness that operates at a distinct remove from the blissouts Ramon gets up to with his Quad compadres, here it's all rude surges and astral hailstorms, Kluster, Seesselberg, Moolah and the aggressively loud zapping and surging bits from Tangerine Dream's Alpha Centauri being the most obvious antecedents for the sounds achieved here.

Disc 5: THE ORDINARY-S.T.
The Ordinary's psych format of choice is the long form jam, with the 27+ minute opening gambit "New England" approaching Acid Mothers Temple-like zones of distended lysergic excess, though the chassis that these psychotropic runs are yoked to gives this affair a whole other center of gravity than the doings of the AMT crowd, it's cadence a post punk-derived carry-over from his work in The Modern Art.

Disc 6: SUN DIAL-LIVE/REHEARSAL LONDON 1991
The inverse of the immaculately honed perfection of their studio recordings, this is blaring mid-fi acid psych ramalamma with a corrosive patina to it. Very audience recording in it's fidelity, it's wouldn't necessarily be my pick for the ideal point of entry into the Sun Dial universe (but then this series was only aimed at those already in the fold), but it's a compelling bit of acidic guitar excess regardless of it's place in the larger Sun Dial picture.

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DEBUT LP BY SHITS AND GIGGLES (aka ARIEL PINK & VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION) OUT NOW + FREE DOPE AND FUCKING IN THE STREETS AND THE NEW VDO SITE LAUNCH

  Just a small announcement to let all of you know that Shits And Giggles' debut LP "Trick Or Treat" is finally available and can either be obtained directly from Vas Deferens Organization's new label Free Dope And Fucking In The Streets or from distributors like Forced Exposure, Aquarius Records or Fusetron, whom it will reach within about 10 days and also to inform one and all that the new Vas Deferens Organization site has launched simultaneously with this. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

CARLES SANTOS-VOICETRACKS, LP, 1981, SPAIN

A multi-media artist with a wide remit, Santos' initial exposure within the music world was as a pianist and interpreter of the modern classical canon, but his incipient vocal antics (initially staged between piano pieces) would soon take on a life of their own and cement his reputation as both a master avant vocalist and a complete nutter. Unlike most who operate in this sphere, Santos moves easily between the distinct universes of both sound poetry and free improv vocals, sparring elsewhere with the likes of Shelley Hirsch, David Moss and Greetje Bijma. The work at hand though is both more formal and more idiosyncratic than his collaborative affairs; Santos' gibbering, spluttering glossolalian fits of absurdist vocal genius here being tightly choreographed and modulating through incremental stages in a way that both suggests the demented warbling trills and whisper-to-a-shout histrionics of Area vocalist Demetrio Stratos' solo albums and the repetitive and cellularly expanding vocal theatrics of San Francisco performance/multi-media artist Michael Peppe's Behaviormusik performances.  It's breathtaking and peerless work and it's also managed to reduce to fits of helpless laughter pretty much everyone I know (though usually in direct proportion to the amount of intoxicants ingested).

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

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DAVID TUKHMANOV-По волне моей памяти (ON THE WAVE OF MY MEMORY), LP, 1975, RUSSIA

All over the map (and admittedly more than a bit patchy), this Russian curio still seems like ripe fodder for savvy heads, though one can't help think that a familiarity with their language would go some way toward helping to clarify the point of this parade of  bombast; the cavalcade of the amusingly dubious that ensues taking in Rocky Horror Picture Show camp, blaring Big band themes, Cop show orchestral funk, weepy baladeering, whizzing synths and varying shades of strident power folk over it's course, the garish composite perhaps coming closest to the Modry Efekt album opposite the Czech Radio Jazz Orchestra that I posted a while back. If your good taste in bad taste has reached an advanced stage, look no further for your node of the confounding to get cheerfully fingered.

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WAZMO NARIZ-TELL ME HOW TO LIVE, LP, 1981, USA

Damn fine studio slicked New Wave pop eccentricity that mates the quirk pop polish of early Split Enz/early Tubes with the puckish herky jerk of of early XTC and Tin Huey (and by dint of that, makes this "Zolo" to a certain small sector of obsessives), though admittedly the smirkily mannered and hiccupy vocals here might be a deal breaker for some. 

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EYE/THREE FORKS-SPLIT POLYCARBONATE LATHE 10", 2005, NEW ZEALAND

One of the current manifestations of New Zealand underground luminary Peter Stapleton (Terminals, Pin Group, Bilders, Scorched Earth Policy etc.), Eye's initial salvo here on this 50 copy lathe cut split disc is two minutes of shattered free rock in the distinct mode of Dead C, followed much more enticingly by an eight minute fragile flicker of decayed guitar harmonics and above the fretboard clinks and chimes that creates mystery and drama from subtly manipulating these bare embers, while unknown quantities Three Forks fill the flip with a squashed and wobbly L.A. Free Music Society-like universe of small toy abuse, pause button tape mangle, broken key wander and dadaist lip flap that falls away to reveal the ravaged remains of an acid folk undercarriage.

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