WELCOME TO THE NEW MUTANT

And so we're off with this first batch of goodies for the faithful. As noted in the texts, these have gone up on my own dropbox in advance of officially putting pen to paper with the FMA, as they were promised this week. Off to your right you will now see both the new Mutant Sounds/VDO twitter feed and links to visit and download all the VDO and VDO-related posts, which are the only remaining older posts of ours to feature active links.

BRAD LANER-MICRO-AWAKENINGS, PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED, RECORDED: 2004-2009, USA

Though never realized in its originally proposed incarnation as a double LP set earmarked for our old label Free Dope And Fucking In The Streets (the precursor to our current Puer Gravy imprint) for reasons to complicated to entail, this remarkable outing from trans-generational underground music icon and Mutant fixture Brad Laner (Medicine, Steaming Coils, Savage Republic, Electric Company and about 100 more since 1982) has now been green-lit to share with you in an awesome gesture of Mutant solidarity from Mr. Laner. 

Originally laid out in suite formation, these pieces have now been re-imagined as 61 inter-linked but free standing musical mosaic tiles, with Micro-Awakenings fragmented approach to the art of composition extending back to the de-centered and jarring acidhead disjunction of The Faust Tapes, one of Brad's key childhood influences. Fast forwarding through several decades that have taken him from the furthest flung fringes of L.A. Free Music Society freak culture marginalia to the epicenter of indie scene reverence via his legendary noise pop unit Medicine before venturing off into the hinterlands of left-field electronica, Micro-Awakenings utilizes this cellular song format to create something part kaleidoscopic tapestry and part Rube Goldberg contraption. A million thanks to Brad for offering up this treasure chest to share with you!

note: In order to get my initial posts up by the end of the week as promised, I've decided to hoist these first three files on my own dropbox account and then migrate them over to the FMA later, once the i's are dotted and the t's crossed in setting everything up with them.

Get it Here

PHILIP SANDERSON & VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION-"UPSTAIRS BACKWARDS", ADVANCE TRACK

One of the first fruits from the new and as-yet-untitled collaboration between Storm Bugs/Snatch Tapes mastermind Philip Sanderson and Vas Deferens Organization, the band in which I work, "Upstairs Backwards", subtitled "Drums in the Sanctuary (Abandoning The Office - She Descends Into The Underworld)" is VDO assisted by "The Lundon Physician" as he lovingly vivisects our work and teases the results into a series of wide-angle tracking shots.

note: In order to get my initial posts up by the end of the week as promised, I've decided to hoist these first three files on my own dropbox account and then migrate them over to the FMA later, once the i's are dotted and the t's crossed in setting everything up with them.

Get it Here  

NO-NECK BLUES BAND-FURAMINGO JOSEI, PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED, USA, 200(?)

Since their first recorded output wafted up through the cracks in 1995, NYC's No-Neck Blues Band have been acting as a collective diving rod; tapping an arcane and wizened old vein of outsider musical research and group-mind action that extends in an erratic line out from the sort of heavy-lidded shambolic summonings of Krautrock-associated improvisors like Limbus 3/Limbus 4 and more acid rock-based but too-stoned-to-hold-it-together exploits of Siloah, threads its way forward to the collapsing psych improvs of 80's German marginals Heavy Kremls & The White House Devils and Blumen Des Exotischen Eises and eventually winds up as a template for the more hirsute and mind-altered breeds of contemporary free music action. Their tangible aura of otherness would eventually lead them to collaborations with the Krautrock visionaries in Embryo and productions helmed by Jerry Yester for John Fahey's Revenant label. Heard here in their natural habitat on this exclusive archival post for Mutant (likely recorded sometime in the mid 2000's around the time they made Qvaris, according to NNCK's Pat Murano), their assembled id is spilling out of them like frankincense-soaked silly string sprung from their collectively trepanned third eyes, as erratically respirating freeform freakouts and lumbering ragas disintegrate and spontaneously re-assemble amidst dense thickets of percussive clatter.

Note: In order to get my initial posts up by the end of the week as promised, I've decided to hoist these first three files on my own dropbox account and then migrate them over to the FMA later, once the i's are dotted and the t's crossed in setting everything up with them. 

Get it Here  

MUTANT SOUNDS AND THE FMA GET HITCHED + TWITTER NEWS

I'm delighted to announce that the Free Music Archive will be working together with Mutant Sounds and hosting our upcoming archives. Thanks to those on the comment board the suggested this great idea! My account with them is now being set up and a batch of extra-special goodies to reward your patience and launch our new incarnation with will likely be up by the end of this weekend.

Prior to that, there will be a new Mutant/VDO twitter account launched and linked off of the side-bar here by tomorrow night, so you can follow us and keep up with our new postings in real time as they come in, along with any VDO related news.

*****MUTANT SOUNDS: REBORN*****

There's been such a passionate outpouring against our abandoning Mutant Sounds, so much encouragement from fans, artists and labels associated with the albums that we've shared to find some way to continue that it's driven us to devise a new way to keep Mutant alive.

While all former posts will remain as text archives only, Mutant Sounds will now carry on sharing rare, unreleased and long out of print music both new and old from many of your favorite artists here. It's just that this material will now be shared with the full authorization of each artist and, as a result, will be hosted on our personal Dropbox account.

Make sure to get the word out to your friends: Mutant has not died. It's just transformed and is now about to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Stay tuned and keep your eyes peeled for more goodies. The first fruits of this will begin appearing next week…

THE END OF AN ERA

So this is where I get to tell you everything you never wanted to hear me say. While it's been a fantastic ride and I hope everyone has enjoyed it, the recent news that issues pertaining to copyright online are now being re-interpreted by the powers-that-be in alarming new ways means that there's no point in pushing this boulder up a hill any longer. Mutant Sounds' original founder Jim is in full agreement with my sentiments and everything except for the texts has now been deleted. I understand this is really crushing news for many and I sympathize with your pain but I also hope you can see why the time has now come to call it a day.

Thanks to every one of you that have expressed your enthusiasm and moral support for Mutant over the years. I'm convinced that this music and a better understanding of it and its historical place will continue to spread, as it's been circulating around out there for some time now, so a thousand other platforms await your own able hands and intentions. My texts (those on the posts put up by vdoandsound) at least still reside under my control and thus they are now deemed anti-copyright and you are free to spread them far and wide, though proper attribution on these would obviously be appreciated when they're used.

For those who would like to be kept abreast of Vas Deferens Organization activity, a twitter account will be launched shortly to keep everyone interested up to date and to periodically hand out free material that we own.

COIL/ELpH/LEE RANALDO-FRISK-ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK RECORDING, UNRELEASED, 1996, UK/USA

Oh my…yes, I do believe I have a show stopper for you all. This soundtrack to Todd Verow's film adaption of Dennis Cooper's novel "Frisk" (IMDB info here) features original compositions by both Coil (also using their alter ego ELpH here) and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, as well as a handful of pieces they've co-composed and/or have had pastiched together, medley-style. All of this loot has languished on this soundtrack up till this point without any formal release. Now, here it is for your collective predilection and as a stand-alone gesture in its own right,  it works a charm.

The entirety of this film is up on Youtube here, so you can reach your own conclusions about it in cinematic terms, but the effectiveness of the soundtrack that Coil and Ranaldo have devised is immediate and undeniable. Coil's opening theme sets things propulsively in motion with an excellent and very 90's bit of motorik rock akin to Kreidler's work of the time but they achieve equally gripping ends with the languid abstract guitar essay "The Sleeper". Elsewhere, Coil alternate between offering up glistening spectral electronic tones, re-tooling their opening gambit, plying some of their acid house moves of the era and applying the sort of delicacy and shading they'd soon bring to bear on their Musick To Play In The Dark albums.

Ranaldo contributes just about exactly the sort of timbral and textural guitar interventions you'd anticipate from the gentleman and these work a charm as well. Their individual efforts tend to be more remarkable than the small handful of tracks here where the two concerns combine forces but the overall cohesiveness and impact of this work is undeniable. Coil's closing gambit in particular reminds me why Clive Barker once remarked that they were the only band that could make his bowels churn: it's easily among their most sinister and penetrating moments and a fitting coda to a harrowing story.

BERNARD GRANCHER-MONSIEUR DELICIEUX LP - VDO COLLABORATOR'S DEBUT LP OUT NOW

With Vas Deferens Organization's forthcoming split LP collaboration with both Audace and Ben Presto being the next scheduled release on our Puer Gravy label (it's currently at the mastering stage, with more details about it coming shortly), I wanted to take a moment to point you all toward Audace member Bernard Grancher's just released debut LP "Monsieur Delicieux", an artfully discombobulated dovetail of moody minimal synth and recherche' 80's French art pop tangents that's sure to tingle the tangle of a certain breed of Mutant. Head on over to his Bandcamp page here where you can check it all out and score yourself one of these lovely things.

GADGETS-LOVE, CURIOUSITY, FRECKLES & DOUBT, LP, 1980, UK

Though Matt Johnson would go on to garner both popular acclaim and critical huzzahs with the lighter and slighter touch of The The's later and more accessible work, his tenure with three other mutant synth pop oddniks in Gadgets resulted in two albums circa 1980 whose cumulative impact offers a decidedly tough act to follow for any artful young punter. Perfectly of piece with their Gadgetree LP, the outlandish creativity at hand here also exists on a perfect continuum with Johnson's solo debut under his own steam with his Burning Blue Soul LP from 1981 and his contributions to the Deux Filles LP's. Echoes of Swell Maps, early Ultravox and Magazine resound throughout, but they're continuously offset by the kinda of craftily drugged dislocations of post punk signifiers that I associate with the likes of The Makers Of The Dead Travel Fast. Would that my vinyl was a more perfect copy, though…

SHOCKHEADED PETERS-I, BLOODBROTHER BE, 12" EP, 1984, UK

Brash, bombastic and pretty much fabulous, the early line-up of Shockheaded Peters (later revised to Shock Headed Peters) heard here was a repository for some pretty singular talents. Among the ranks of what is almost a sub-underground super-group, you'll find former members of Metabolist, Lemon Kittens, Five Or Six and Danielle Dax's band and future members of Spring Heel Jack. Blake, fresh off years of deforming musical vernacular to its collapsing point in Lemon Kittens is perhaps the biggest surprise here; coherent song structures and thundering rock moves being about the last thing you'd expect from this godfather of insular art damage. Also contributing is future Spring Heel Jack member Ashley Wales', bringing with him his former bandmate from Five Or Six, one David Knight who'd go on to work alongside Blake's former creative other as collaborator on many of Danielle Dax's albums. The extravagance of the gestures here and the theatricality of their attack would be tempered down the line by a more stately approach on their subsequent LP Not Born Bad and a somewhat more formally rock posture after the departure of Rowlatt and Wales, but it's here on their debut EP where their dark flower is in fullest bloom.

RAOUL DUGUAY-L'ENVOL, LP, 1976, CANADA

 Lovely though it was, the debut solo outing from former L'Infonie front man that I posted just recently cannot begin to prepare you for his sophomore effort; an epic of unfettered imagination with the kind of spiritual/emotional gravitas of a Franco Battiato or Lucio Battisti. Beginning on a quiveringly profound note, "Alllo" is a shower of Robert Wyatt-style multi-tracked vocal love from the deepest caverns of Duguay's consciousness. plangent acid folk cedes to pungent brass rock and back again over the rest of side A before going out with a side ending bang, as Duguay whips out his most salaciously foul and greasily leering delivery on "Le Krrrash A" and inserts unguent in mouth again for a reprise on side B's opener "El Hsarrrk".  The reminder of side B continues apace, trawling through a similar expanse of humanity-steeped higher key conjurations.

PAGA-HAUNTED, LP, 1988, FRANCE

 

Paga was the 80's vessel for former Magma members Bernard Paganotti and Klaus Blasquiz to flex their remaining Zeuhl muscles in public, alongside periodic bouts of some less exhilarating  AOR impulses. In the time since their 1985 debut outing, they've jettisoned the sax player and swapped drummers, but the results deliver a similar mixture of overtly Zeuhl (and thus overtly satisfying) prog gestures alongside the aforementioned AOR-esque exploits, but with the former fortunately outweighing the latter. New to the mix this time 'round is a bit of 80's King Crimson influence that meshes tidily enough into their praxis and seems almost a given for those flying prog flags around that time.

THE RE-UPS AND DOWNS OF FILE SHARING

There's been a reason for the extra long span of time since my last posts went up: I've needed time to weigh my options and determine if this shebang is still worth keeping afloat. I say that because Rapidshare, as far as I can tell, appear to be waging something of a stealth campaign against Mutant and presumably others in the sharity blog realm; a kind of covert war of attrition in which they simply chip away at you incrementally, by arbitrarily removing files that were only just recently re-upped, by marking files as "illegal" even though they're often for some of the most obscure things imaginable, by requiring an elaborate re-arrangement of account settings and then still managing to mark dozens of these files as being unavailable because you don't have permission to download them in spite of this. It's now two steps back for every one step forward and it's rendering the whole process of doing Mutant into a titanic headache.

After umpteen re-up campaigns, what I am now willing to do is the following. A few months back I posted a list of 300+ newly re-upped files. Those new links were never formally punched into their respective posts as I got busy with other creative activities but I'll now plug those back into the posts. So too, a Greek friend of the blog has been helping over time with the re-up campaign and I've accumulated another hundred or so more files to re-up from him. Those will go up soon along with a list containing links to them all, but beyond re-upping those, I've now officially reached the end of spinning my wheels retracing the same ground. New posts will continue on the roughly bi-monthly schedule that they've been arriving at for some time, but all the rest of my spare time will now return to being concentrated on Vas Deferens Organization and label activities instead of this redundant bullshit.

For titles that are down, feel free to re-up them at will elsewhere including on Youtube, though a link back to the original post would be appreciated. I'm sorry I'm incapable of offering better than this, but the sheer scale of the undertaking means that there is only so many times I can attempt this.

New posts will be up by early next week. Stay tuned...

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