Saturday, December 31, 2011

THANKS TO ALL OF MUTANT SOUNDS' FANS OUT THERE FOR MAKING 2011 OUR BEST YEAR EVER. BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS AWAIT IN 2012 . HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

THE OBSCENES-IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, LP, 1993, ITALY



Ear canal befouling nonsense-mongering from a highly obscure Italian combo with exactly nada in the way of currently extant info available on 'em. The deliberately cheap and nasty sonics alongside the absurdist attitude here could easily persuade you that this was some sorta lost Neue Deutsche Welle cassette, what with all the willful ineptitude and inanity on display here, alongside the dictaphone recording quality, manipulated vinyl abuse, and cheap drum machines battling it out against cheaper guitars.

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HELGOLAND AND BAND-99, CD, 1999, GERMANY




With a roster that reads a bit like a supergroup from the 90's German experimental electronica scene (Groenland Orchester/Nova Huta mastermind Gunter Reznicek and serial Felix Kubin collaborator Pia Burnette appear here alongside Helgoland founder Rudi Burr, whose CD EP together with Reznicek "The German Face" I shared a while back), Helgoland on this debut outing of theirs actually exist at a distinct remove from any anticipations those associations might suggest, including expectations based on the Helgoland music that would follow via their brilliant and distinctly zany avant electropop confections on Kubin's Psychoscifipoppia compilation LP and their 2001 Media Music EP on Storage. Instead, the 99 dadaist blasts that emerge from your speakers like a never ending string of anal beads are purely the after-effect of a diet over-rich in Ruins, Naked City, Boredoms and Melt Banana. Surely not what you'd anticipate, but a cheerful eruption of inspired gibberish to while away the hours with regardless.

*******NEW LINK*******


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TONI ESPOSITO-PROCESSIONE SUL MARE, LP, 1976, ITALY



Continuing on from my shares of his first and third albums, this second outing from this wildly gifted and wide ranging Italian prog/fusion drummer (a one time member of both St. Just and Alan Sorrenti's band as well as Luciano Cilio's collaborator on Dell'Universo Assente) catches Esposito at a real creative peak. As with the other albums of his that I've shared, the arrangements, stereo imaging and the endless peppering of pinprick percussive detailing make it plain that this is a drummers album, though Processione Sul Mare is an absolute master class in dynamic sense from all parties involved and overflows with that tell tale quality of airy, fluid and life giving expansiveness that you find in so much of the best Italian fusion of that time from Area to Perigeo to Napoli Centrale.

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

Get it here  

V/A-CD VOOR DE INSTABIELE MEDIA-CD FOR THE UNSTABLE MEDIA, CD, 1992, VARIOUS


As if to deliberately thwart an easy reading in concord with the spirit of this compendium's remit, the compilers of this CD have seen fit to maddeningly format the whole shebang into one continuous 68 minute sound block, but with a roster of period sonic agitators that takes in everything from Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock's dadaist disembowelments and Gregory Whitehead's surreal speech dissections to pioneering Dutch electronic composer Dick Raaijmakers experiments (circa 197 1) with his Ideophone sound sculptures, it's a stream that's well worth your time wading into.

Track listing:

Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock-Zur Autodestruktion
Gregory Whitehead/THU20-I Prefer To Talk To The Dead
Voice Crack-Ballistics Of The Wild Turkey
Radi Subcom-Intransit (Excerpt)
The Haters-Final
Dick Raaijmakers-Ideophone I 1971
DFM Radio-Untitled (Excerpt)
Entre Vifs-Slavium Fornikant
Ad Van Buuren-The Clock
The Hafler Trio-Untitled
Chris Mann/Warren Burt-Anyway You Can Always Put Language Down To Experience
Merzbow-V2 Live (Excerpt)
Strafe Fur Rebellion-Die Zahl Pi

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S. IDA & BGG-…EAT SHOW, TAPE, 1985, JAPAN

Issued on a once hugely prolific and now entirely forgotten Japanese experimental tape label of the early-mid 80's called D.D. Records, evidence of whose existence has all but disappeared (not a peep on either Discogs or Rate Your Music about them) despite their having issued 100+ cassettes and a handful of vinyl flexis during their lifespan (the Eurock book consolidating all the old issues of their zine has the only extant info on 'em that I'm aware of), this 1985 oddity by S. Ida & BGG, which landed in my hands a while back sans any imagery, accompanying info or even song titles, gives a strong sense of the quizzical and high quality experiments being unleashed by them. As evidenced by the sounds at hand, S. Ida & BGG exist to confound, or at least to cheerfully work through their fascinations with all manner of outwardly bound sounds of that era, however chalk-and-cheese it might be to dish their particular array out in one interwoven bundle. Starting with a fit of squalling and blubbering guitar excess emerging from a mire of melted shortwave radio signals and lumbering bass, the remaining contents take in everything from primitive and spasming sampled vocal malarky to terse string improv and from Neubauten-like metal bash strategies repurposed to infantilist ends and faux gamelan accomplished via tin whistle and kitchen debris to long expanses of location recordings of birds flocks with factories in the distance.

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Thursday, December 8, 2011

MUTANT SOUNDS GETS PROFILED IN BOING BOING AND VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION REVEAL THEIR HIDDEN HIP HOP HISTORY

Watch out! Whole swaths of aboveground straight society have just been hepped to our doings via Boing Boing's omnidirectional reach, as the kind folks at that site unexpectedly profiled Mutant Sounds a short time ago. You can read that here

This also seemed like it might be an amusing moment to reveal the real reason for Vas Deferens Organization's disappearance off of our fans radar screens for a span of time during the last decade. It was because we'd effectively gone undercover. Some time in early 2005, I got an insane phone call from my bandmate Matt who was living in New Orleans at the time, in which he told me that he'd effectively conned one of the top hip hop club owners there into believing that we were heavy duty rap producers and the guy was interested in seriously hooking us up if we could hand him some tracks. Once the realization hit what a monumental prank on reality this could be if we really managed to pull of this hat trick (and really, how hard could it be for innovative electronic producers to unpack the logic of making this stuff?), we set about doing just that and our contact in turn set about introducing us to a series of industry fat cats, with the end result that I moved to New Orleans to open a hip hop studio on the periphery of The French Quarter with Matt in early 2005. Before Katrina struck, we had handlers and reps for Juvenile coming around and scoping us out and affiliations made with A&R men from B.G.'s Chopper City Records and after Katrina wiped us out and sent us fleeing New Orleans, we ended up following the A&R rep for Chopper City all the way to Atlanta and effectively becoming his right hand for a year until a series of insane and unforeseen circumstances exploded this dream right as it was about to take flight. You can still find a stray remnant of this era lurking on this random and generic hip hop compilation CD here

The best way to understand our specifically subversive intentions in trying to make an intervention into the hip hop world is to note the alias that we'd rechristened ourselves as: The Water Brothers. Legendary pop sci-fi author Robert Heinlein had used aliens going by this name in order to secretly spread Aleister Crowley's Thelemic teachings to the masses in his celebrated book Stranger In A Strange Land and we in turn would use the Trojan Horse of hip hop in order to seed the VDO audio virus as far and as wide as we could before anyone put 2 and 2 together and realized exactly what kind of avant garde acidhead subversives that they'd unexpectedly and unintentionally released into pop culture.

Since the Italian magazine Blow Up unveiled this hidden part of our history in the biggest possible way by headlining the article that they ran about VDO a few issues back with this info (a .pdf scan of the article with some personal annotations via the Italian friend of ours that initially scanned this for us can be had here ) we're now making available four 30 second samples of our work as Dirty South gangsta rap producers during this time (we'd offer whole tracks, but we're contractually bound from doing that), though it seems worth putting these out there now just to see how much amusement, confusion and shattered illusions we can generate with one gesture! You can check out what VDO hip hop sounds like here

And since we have, for no good reason, shared our recently created video for the first track from Vas Deferens Organization's Eye Peels & Brain Picks ("Defenestration At The Gravity Pit") everywhere else but here, it seemed time to plant this here as well for the edification of those who didn't happen across it via Altered Zones, Youtube or elsewhere

JUST A SMALL SHOUT OUT TO OUR FRIENDS AT ALTERED ZONES AS THEY TRANSFORM THEMSELVES INTO AD HOC

And a pointer in this direction to make note of their future home early next year. Expect to see some very interesting developments emerging from these quarters after they reconstitute themselves.

V/A-ITALIC ENVIRONMENTS-PROJECT BY NICOLA FRANGIONE, LP, 1985, ITALY



Conceived and curated by the Italian multi-media artist, activist and organizer Nicola Frangione, Italic Environments involves Frangione supplying a host of fascinating fellow Italian avant gardists of the era with suggestive location recordings of specifically Italian environments for them to integrate into their work. Former Futuro Antico member Ricardo Sinigaglia's contribution (in concord with one Mario De Lio) begins the proceedings here in high fashion (REALLY high fashion) with a very subtle but intense foray into resonant drone and emotionally intoned vocalizing that's very much an after effect of Franco Battiato's influence, though Battiato was never accompanied by a lake full of quacking ducks. Piermario Ciani is up next blathering away through what sounds like one of those electronic larynx's provided to throat cancer patients to the accompaniment of spare and fragmented free jazz nudges from sax and drums before building up to a sudden and unexpected head of steam and barreling through a hectic Etron Fou Leloublan-like passage of infolding avant rock tumble.
Arpa Celtica Vincenzo Zitello rounds out the A side with some very proto new age-y harp, hand drum and rainstorm sonics. Naif Orchestra begin side B by latching onto a pass of buried crowd noise and building a slight synth pop track on top of it rather arbitrarily before Franco Ballabeni wheels into frame with a contribution that's consistently lapped by Frangione's recording of splashing water, into which he situates some very ZNR-like passages of pensive piano and wheedling synth, while Giovanni Fontana seems to be running several recordings of bebop jazz ensembles simultaneously with little detectable accompaniment from Frangoine's recordings and little individual gravity to speak of, though it makes for a head scratching album closer to be certain.

*******NEW LINK*******

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MINOY-PASSAGE OF THE MIGRATORY BIRD, CDR, 200? (RECORDED: 1987), USA



Swimming in an ocean of his signature cheap Radio Shack reverb and queasily modulating ham radio emissions, this is another lost monument of subterranean 80's tape culture electronic investigations from one of its most reliably excellent and significantly overlooked practitioners and a follow up to my post of his Pretty Young Negro Man tape some time ago. This Torrence California based marginal was a somewhat ubiquitous presence at one time on the sub-underground cassette network during the 80's and early 90's, often working in collaboration with a array of other networkers of that era, though there has always been an elegance and grasp of the macro/micro to Minoy's own work that makes it readily stand apart from others probing around in this soupy post industrial arena; Minoy's recordings having an intuitive grasp of manipulating the minutiae of shortwave-based (and shortwave bathed) sonics in a way that surpasses John Duncan's investigations into this realm of ghosted sound manipulations to these set of ears.

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TRUBROT-LIFUN, LP, 1971, ICELAND


Massive and totally drugged psych/prog brilliance from the early 70's Icelandic underground (yes, they had one too) with an almost absurdly wide remit and a capacity to spin on a dime and confound expectations. This blasts out of the gate on a thundering roar of acid wah-d psychotropic thuggery ala Yeti-era Amon Duul 2 before the clouds part and the voice of a hippy god resonantly intones pearls of cosmic inanity over a bed of meditational flutes and loudly throbbing hearts to significantly brain frying (and Don Robertson-like) effect. If this doesn't grip you by the short hairs, you're dead from the neck up or hate hippies, 'cause this shit is kissing the great cosmic beyond with some real throbbing intensity. Theirs is an often elaborately orchestrated sound redolent of everything from the symphonically bathed UK proto prog of Spring and Czar and the starry-eyed and Crosby, Stills and Nash-indebted early era of Yes to segments of maximal dancing fluti-ness and sharply chiming keys that exhibit an almost Italian library music-like angle ala something like Braens Machine while other passages of dead sharp pop prog tactics summon comparisons with Vangelis' old prog band Aphrodite's Child's and their seminal double album 666.

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INSTANT MUSIC-S/T, 10", 1980, GERMANY


Delicately percolating Neue Deutsche Welle loveliness with a distinctly bare bones and naif touch that dovetails insistent bass themes with cheap rhythm box bonk and sweet female blather toward ends that exhibits both a hangover from The Young Marble Giants and a direct line of investigation to tactics later pursued by France's X-Ray Pop.

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KLANGWART-INKIEK, 3" CD, 1997, GERMANY



The duo of Timo Reuber (whose solo debut "Anna" remains one of the high water marks of turn of the century German electronica) and Staubgold label boss Markus Detmer, this debut 3" CD EP of theirs shimmers, tingles and statically hovers with an aerated spectrality and prickly grace. Comprised of two 10 minute tracks, the eponymous opening number immerses the listener in a bath of the above mentioned, as evanescent tendrils are sent out to glisten in the dew of the dawns light, while Utkiek rolls in on a tide of frequency rich narcotic lather before subterranean caverns of pressure and post industrial signifiers begin to creep to the fore.

*******NEW LINK*******

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Thursday, November 24, 2011

MORICE BENIN-APOCALYPSE…, LP, 1980, FRANCE


Highly obscure and mostly very winning French prog pop confections that come larded with the sort of rustic-to-bombastic sympho drama and theatrical spieling that directly descends from the hugely popular French proggers in Ange. It's a Genesis-derived sound that would influence a raft of French acts that followed (most notably Mona Lisa) and it's a gambit that works a similar sort of emotionally exaggerated magic here, if one of a rather slighter caliber than Ange's transcendent gestures. Quebec's Harmonium would hit this same charmed and elevated zone around the time of their L'Heptade. It's also a sound that can be a bit of a slow burner, with its subtle power accruing and becoming more evident over repeated plays, which has very much been the case with having re-sat with this one; an album that I'd initially mentally filed away as interesting if slight but which now in hindsight seems rife with fascination.

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STATIC EFFECT-DEAD GAME IN ANY WEATHER, TAPE, 1989, USA


Following on from my share of their Certain Random Firings LP way back in 2007, here's more of Randy Greif and Mikahil Bohonus' signature mix of dystopian malaise and atmospheric pressure. Greif's is a name that long time followers of Mutant Sounds should have some familiarity with; several albums of his having been shared by both Jim and myself over time, this long time sub-underground operative having been one of the more significant innovators to have emerged from the recesses of 80's/90's post-industrial cassette culture. I've not heard Bohonus' main project Warworld, but from all available indicators, Greif's hand feels like the decisive one here, with the dank zones of fecund rot and swamp gas atmospherics here emitting much the same sense of evocative dread as did the majority of his solo work from this period, with the third untitled track here in particular evincing Greif's absorption and re-contextualization of Jon Hassell's Fourth World concepts into something inverted and malarial.

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CELLUTRON & THE INVISIBLE-REFLECTING ON THE FIRST WATCH, WE UNCOVER TREASURE BURIED FOR THE BLIND, LP, 1978, USA


Choice private press synthetic spew via this American eccentric with a penchant for unwieldily titles. Side A is a thick stew of swarming and modulating analog gurgle cut with a frosty and slightly curdled tone somewhere between Schnitzler-esque dystopian abstraction and the interstellar voids emitted by Nik Raicevic or Tangerine Dream circa Alpha Cerntauri, while the flip takes things into more curious zones, first with "Parisian Frequency Shift"', which abets these galactic probings with bits of reverb saturated hippy spieling about issues of cosmic importance, while the album's peak arrives in the form of the 10 minute side closer "Reap The Whirlwind", a weave of antiquated and hollowly bonking sequencer chatter that summons thoughts of Mort Garson and Tom Dissevelt.

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THE MUFFINS-LIVE-WASHINGTON DC, 1977, USA, UNRELEASED


Spanning the time frame between their earliest period that was retrospectively documented on their Chronometers CD and their first official LP Manna/Mirage (and making for a great companion piece to the live Secret Signals tape of theirs that I shared last year, which documents the same period) this fantastic hour and a half performance catches one of America's greatest and most underrated prog units at a real peak of expressiveness. The Muffins were the first domestic contingent to seize upon the charmingly idiosyncratic syntax of that ever-so-British form of prog, Canterbury; their specific expression of it, at least initially, situated somewhere between Hatfield And The North's combination of airy, whirligig delicacy cut with latent fuzz bass thunder and a more avant garde-ish structural origami indebted to early Henry Cow circa Legend. The difference between their more angularly R.I.O.-damaged later era that would ensue with 185 and Open City and the material here is marked, The Muffins having latterly cast off much of the overt jazz rock qua jazz rock trappings that are manifest at every turn here. And charmingly manifest, at that.

Note: the link for this has now been re-upped, since the misunderstanding with Paul Sears of The Muffins that emerged on the comment board for this has now been happily sorted and this post now has their blessing:

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STABAT STABLE-GAINSAID FACTS, 12" EP, 1982, FRANCE


Beginning like some perverted dispatch from Planet Claire's evil nemesis, this drum machine-driven post punk cum synth pop stunner in the mode of Lucas Trouble or Martin Dupont comes laced with several intriguing seams of poison, rendered as juddering and electrically crackling arcs of synth chatter, dislocated guitar scrabble and wads of overlapping verbal gibberish; all of it strung helter skelter across a wash line of cheap drum machined clatter and used to puncture and parry these rhythmic currents; techniques that become increasingly more foregrounded as the flip side's 12 minute essay "Ultrissima On The Junk's Moon" both unfolds and finally collapses in on itself.

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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

NEW POSTS UP BY TOMORROW NIGHT, AND A RENEWED PUSH TO RE-UP THE REMAINING DEAD LINKS

Sorry for the extra delay this time, folks. VDO have had umpteen irons in the fire just recently that have been consuming all available energies. Alongside tomorrow's* round of new posts, expect a renewed push to re-up the remainder of the dead links, after my last attempt a short while back (with the aid of an unnamed blog friend) re-upped about 100 of these extinct links, mostly from the earliest days of Mutant Sounds.

*tomorrow=sometime before midnight on thanksgiving

Sunday, November 6, 2011

MUTANT SOUNDS IN THE WIRE MAGAZINE

Fans of Mutant Sounds should keep a look out for the new December issue of The Wire Magazine due out on Nov. 10, which will feature my (Eric Lumbleau's) contribution to their ongoing (and rather damningly named) column Collateral Damage, devoted to probing the various sides of the debate around the issue of the free sharing of music and its repercussions; a discussion that has so far seen the likes of Chris Cutler, Robin Rimbaud & Bob Ostertag weighing in.

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION & PERIHELION-THE SCIENCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE LP (200 COPY ED.) OUT NOVEMBER 15 ON PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE



One of the key unreleased recordings from the original 90's era of Vas Deferens Organization is now finally seeing the light of day thanks to the efforts of the German label Pure Pop For Now People . Recorded in 1997 and due for release on November 15th in a limited edition of 200 LP copies, The Science Of The Impossible was our one-off collaboration with a short-lived studio-only duo named Perihelion, comprised of the Schulze/Schnitzler/Cluster-inspired cosmic synthesist Tim Boone (R.I.P. - he was promoted during the 90's by the likes of Eurock and Audion) and David Price, the one time keyboardist for early 80's Dallas synth poppers The Red Tapes, whom Jim shared a very rare demo tape by ages ago. Amalgamating their overtly synthetic kosmiche impulses into our proactively sense deranging M.O. of the era resulted in recordings that extend the line of inquiry first heard on our Tone Float CD. The full A side can be downloaded in MP3 form here
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NOTE: THIS LP IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE DIRECTLY FROM THE LABEL. PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE IS RUN IN AN UNUSUAL AND OLD SCHOOL FASHION, SO IF YOU WANT TO PURCHASE A COPY FROM THEM, YOU'LL NEED TO EMAIL THEM DIRECTLY TO REQUEST ONE, AS THERE IS NO CART SYSTEM ON THE PPFNP SITE. THEY CAN BE REACHED AT PUREPOP@BUISSNET.COM THOSE WISHING TO BUY COPIES ELSEWHERE WILL CURRENTLY FIND THIS LP AVAILABLE VIA http://www.greatesthitsmailorder.com AND SOON VIA CLEARSPOT IN THE NETHERLANDS.
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TOM CAMERON-MUSIC TO WASH DISHES BY, LP, 1982, USA



A flat out stunning private press synth music mega-rarity from an artist controlling his keys with a homemade biofeedback monitor rigged to manipulate his synth parameters. The results range from eerie baths of narcotized 5 AM blear to nervously chittering and ticking cascades of cartoonish Tom Dissevelt/Raymond Scott-like melodies and rhythms. This is truly a marvel to behold, though it's best to leave a fuller description here to the words of the artist himself, via the Matrixsynth site:

"What I think might be of most interest is what I was doing in the performance and how I was controlling the synthesizers. There is a white headband that I am wearing which contains three electrodes which are monitoring my brain waves using a biofeedback machine. This biofeedback monitor would register a small voltage pulse each time that I could successfully maintain a relatively steady alpha state. The brain biofeedback monitor is then connected to an optical interface. This allows me to use the feedback voltage to control the synthesizers without the risk of a ground loop frying my brain. The control voltage of about five volts was then used to control the pitch and filters of the EML 101 and also advance step by step the sequencer on the EML 4004/401. The result was that I could control and play the synthesizers with brain waves alone.

OK, so I couldn't play "Mary Had A Little Lamb" but I did create synthesizer sounds by just thinking about them. I thought that this was pretty cool but not many people understood it at the time. They were two young kids that did get it. They bought a few balloons and sneaked up behind my lawn chair and popped the balloons. As I have a slow shock response nothing happened but about ten minutes later a yellow jacket (I hate yellow jackets) came buzzing around my head and the synthesizers went crazy.

At the time I thought I'd come up with a pretty original demonstration. But later I found out that Alvin Lucier had done a similar demonstration ten years earlier. He obviously did not use synthesizers at that time but he did use biofeedback to control solenoid operated percussion instruments. And currently Tod Machover is pursuing mind-music connections in a similar vein but with much more sophisticated equipment. I also painted the cover art."

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MASCHINE NR. 9-HEADMOVIE, LP, 1974, GERMANY, NWW LIST


A wacky and drugged countercultural tape collage sprawl with intermittent bursts of acid rocking' antics in the spirit of Marks & Lebzelter, Gulliver's Travels and Woorden. This Krautrock curio and Nurse With Wound list rarity had a fair amount of notables operating in its ranks including Deuter, Daniel Fischelscher and Renate Knaup and they all periodically pop to the surface to do their respective trippy bits, though this is also an album whose biggest beneficiaries are gonna be those that Sprechen Sie Deutsche, as a goodly bit of this is pretty narrative-intensive, though it's all higher key hippy freak out brainfood regardless.

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SOLID EYE-LIVE AT ANOMALOUS RECORDS, LP, 1997, USA



Another round of posts and another crucial chapter in the saga of this latter-day LAFMS supergroup-like formation comprised of former members of Steaming Coils, Dinosaurs With Horns and Monitor, whom I've covered in some depth before. This one is a particular favorite of mine, though: a clonking and bonking cockeyed roundelay of wheezing contraptions and spinning cylinders pirouetting around one another in queasy strange loops and auto-dissembling ghost dances over two side-long suites.

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CRYPTO-S/T, LP, 1974, NETHERLANDS


Juicy Dutch funk fusion workouts with a relaxed, open vibe reminding me of Yugoslavian fusion from the period like September, Boomerang & Tihomir 'Pop' Asanovic and that's periodically graced by Placebo-like aerated synth washes and some distinctly Grateful Dead-ish passages of upful rustic psychedelic aimlessness.

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C. PTAK-PREPARE YOUR SELF, CDR, 2002, USA


Junk store broken beat dada conniptions and cantankerous splatter from Carly Ptak, a one-time member of Nautical Almanac who's out on her own here launching tendrils of rudely mishandled low grade consumer electronics around in all available directions and ensnaring you in forcefields of neon silly string and tinfoil-biting grit in the process.

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Monday, October 17, 2011

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION'S EYE PEELS & BRAIN PICKS LP SOLD OUT NOW ON PRE-ORDER(1 WEEK DELAY ON SHIPPING, ALAS) **FULL A SIDE IN .WAV FORMAT BELOW**




Vas Deferens Organization's Eye Peels And Brain Picks LP has now officially sold out on pre-order, though it will shortly be available from a handful of international distributors (listed below). Unfortunately, we detected a rather large printing snafu on the back panel somewhat late in the game, so there will now be a one week delay in shipping off copies to both buyers and distributors. They will now ship on Monday, Oct. 24th, instead of having gone out on their announced release date of Oct. 17th. We truly are sorry about this fuck up, but hope all of you find the results worth the wait when you finally receive them.

In the meantime (and for the benefit of those of you who didn't get a copy), the entire A side of Eye Peels And Brain Picks can be downloaded in .wav format Here


Because these corrected jackets ship out to distributors on the same day as regular buyers now, there will be a slight delay before these reach distributors and become available again. They will be available from the following:

Tedium House (USA)

Fusetron (USA)

RRR (USA)

Infinite Limits (UK)

Norman (UK)

Art Into Life (JAPAN)

AIR-S/T, LP, 1977, JAPAN


If you can skate around the insufferable Kozmigroov genre tag that's latterly been grafted onto this breed of free flowing cosmic jazz funk like some Cronenberg-ian tumor in the shape of a hackysack, this is really the prime article at hand here; this Japanese quartet with the all too common name (shared with everyone from Henry Threadgill's old 70's outfit to Herbie Mann's backing band to the French 90's electropop exports) having taken the most spectrally wandering implications from early 70's Miles Davis and teased them out yet further, 'til all thats left is windblown tracers shimmering in the ether; their attack placing them in immediate proximity to the distended and drug swaddled fusion burn of Australia's Quasar.

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JOSHUA-LIFE LESS LOST, CD, 1998, USA


Suitably blasted and introverted one man bedroom freak folk wander and stereo-panned string fumble from this one time member of Vermonster. Life Less Lost emerged in tandem with the first wave of artists flying a flag for a lo-fi and rawly immediate post-Incredible String Band aesthetic; in the process, ploughing a furrow that was being simultaneously worked at the time by folks like Six Organs Of Admittance and The Tower Recordings, both of whom the work Joshua Burkett's tunes bears traces of, albeit with enthusiasm sometimes trumping finesse.

Note: I've just been informed by the nice folks at Spirit Of Orr that this CD is in fact still in print and available from them (as is Joshua Burkett's Owlsleavesrustling LP), but they've generously allowed for the download link below to remain posted. Please check this great record out and then considering heading over to Spirit Of Orr here and picking up an original of this for yourselves.

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LEE GAGNON-JEREMIE (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK), LP, 1972, CANADA


This Quebecois symphonic funk rarity (the score for a ballet, apparently) hits several right notes and a few truly righteous ones over the course of this rare LP, though there's a consistent tension between the lacquerings of limpid orchestration (skirting into the territory of 70's Stayfree maxi pad commercials at its most unctuous moments here) and the funk outbursts, which range from tightly poppin' little numbers laced with Art Webb-ish flute-y flutterings to deeper funk investigations larded with growling and spitting acid wah.

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KLAN-MROWISKO, LP, 1970, POLAND


Overlooking the unfortunate spelling of their name (which presumably carries different and better connotations in Poland than it does here in the U.S.), this proto-prog spectacular from the nascent Polish underground scene sounds remarkably advanced for something emerging from these temporal coordinates. This crew were evidently steeped in both Brian Auger & Trinity and Vanilla Fudge, the first of which I can attest to, the latter of which seems mostly evident in the lashings of organ that suffuse these tracks, though Klan lack the dumbo DNA at the core of Vanilla Fudge's aesthetic, replacing it with a specifically East Euro tack from that era that's also audible in Yugoslavian proto-prog artifacts by the likes of Korni Grupa and Time; a sort of rustic and gruff proto-prog surface under which exists a goodly bit of musical nuance and sophistication.

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Monday, October 3, 2011

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION LAUNCH THEIR NEW LABEL PUER GRAVY WITH THEIR 100 COPY LP "EYE PEELS AND BRAIN PICKS": PRE-ORDER NOW!









A gilded lily pad for luxuriating polymorphs and a slapstick rug pull of a swami's magic carpet, Eye Peels & Brain Picks, the latest all points bulletin and consensus reality disruption from Vas Deferens Organization will be issued on October 17th, 2011 in a finite edition of only 100 numbered vinyl copies as the first salvo in the transformation of our record label into its new identity as Puer Gravy.

the LP's are priced at $25 a piece and pre-orders are currently being taken NOW at the new Puer Gravy site. Those who obtain a copy will soon hold in their mitts a lovingly appointed (gold printed, laminated plastic panel-bedecked, laser etched and 180 gram) artifact containing all manifestations of these further mysteries, though the merely curious can suffice with having the full A side of this album made available to them in .wav format on the day of its formal release.

'Til then, we invite you to open your collective earholes to our advance preview track (also in .wav format), "78 Revolving Potentiometers", which can be found here

In addition to further new Vas Deferens Organization titles emerging on Puer Gravy in the coming months (including a long-in-the-works split collaborative LP with the French band Audace and with the Italian nutter Ben Presto of Larsen Lombriki), there will also be 100 copy LP's released by Dominique Leone (ex-Pitchfork scribe with releases on Stromland and Important Records) and Philip Sanderson (Storm Bugs/Snatch Tapes)

There will also be two other new Vas Deferens Organization LP's in extremely limited quantities emerging before the end of the year, via two different German labels:

In mid-November, Pure Pop For Now People will release the first of two archival Vas Deferens Organization LP's from our original and extended late 90's formation in editions of 200 copies, the first being a 1997 collaboration between VDO and a now-defunct cosmic synth duo called Perihelion that featured David Price, ex-of The Red Tapes whose 1980 tape is posted elsewhere on MS and the Audion/Eurock promoted cosmic synthesist Tim Boone [R.I.P.]. This is titled The Science Of The Impossible and will be out in late November, with a second archival VDO LP to be issued on PPFNP early the following year.

And in late December, Hlava will issue a six track Vas Deferens Organization EP from 2004 titled "Keep Shoving Those Double-Thick Slices Of Electric Salad Down My Throat" in a 12" vinyl edition of only 150 copies.

AKABUSHI WITH BONJOUR! MADEMOISELLE-LIVE T-SHIRT KOTE KURE WITH BONJOUR!, CD EP, 1995, JAPAN


One of the more obscure noise/punk/comedy expulsions belched from the anarchic maw of the Boredoms tribe during their pre-kosmiche era, Akabushi itself (no idea about the Bonjour! Mademoiselle personnel) was Boredoms guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto's act that, according to a Boredoms reference site, " he could just sing lead for, and they are no longer active. According to Yamamoto, "All of the members ran away!". Akabushi would issue one other 3" CD before expiring, but given the unlikeliness that you'll encounter that micro-edition artifact, taking it in the kisser from the bukake-like bulldada geysers and speaker-panned punk mulch at hand is something any self-respecting and/or self-debasing 90s Japanese underground music fan should line right up for.

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STEVE MAXWELL VON BRAUND-MONSTER PLANET, LP, 1975, AUSTRALIA



For my second share of Aussie underground sounds today, it's time to highlight the highly lit sounds of Aussie space cadet Stephen Maxwell Von Braund. Mr. Von Braund's later activities in the more well know (relatively speaking) duo Cybotron would make him something of a name brand in cosmic synth circles during the 70's and 80's, but while Cybotron's arc went from rhythm boxed and Library-like confections to, latterly, hamfisted symphonic pounding, this first pre-Cybotron outing of Von Braund's (barring an anomalous but very Steve Hillage-like full band-abetted acid rock eruption on the first track) is mostly just signaling though the haze on the edge of time, with gurgling cosmic tides rippling past as attenuated synthetic strands coil off into infinity or churn menacingly in the foreground in a very Kraut-y electronic fashion.


Note: link removed, as this is soon due for reissue on Aztec Music.

MAESTROS AND DIPSOS-UNRELEASED RECORDINGS, 198(?), AUSTRALIA




More unreleased archival post punk goodness from the deep recesses of the Aussie early 80's scene (courtesy, long ago, of Phil Turnbull of the superb No Night Sweats site on Aussie underground music), and it's some pretty prescient goodness at that, with Maestros And Dipsos seeming to have both absorbed some of the least wayward lessons from The Raincoats and used that logic to create tunes that seem to anticipate the sound of (early) Throwing Muses in the process. I feel well assured that this traces forward to other less savory dimensions of femme-y indie-land jangle with its relatively unfettered musical stance (I wouldn't care to plumb those depths to make sure I'm right), but at this stage of the game, it's still a pretty damn agreeable set of sounds and associations and one that'll undoubtedly grip lots of you.

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TRANSISTER-ZIG-ZAG, LP, 1979, NETHERLANDS


This was Supersister grand magi Robert Jan Stips' top notch art pop cum new wave unit following his post-Supersister activities in Stars & Stips (also posted on MS) and (briefly) Golden Earring, and the unfettered flights of fancy you'd anticipate in one of his projects is certainly to be found here, albeit in rather more measured and pop-structured doses. The results on their lone outing here are a high caliber form of high gloss late 70's pop eccentricity vaguely in the ballpark of something like the first few Godley & Creme albums and The Tubes during their brilliant early career phase, but infused with a specific species of whimsicality that is very much Stips' alone.


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ASMUS TIETCHENS/ARCANE DEVICE-SPEISELEITUNG, CD, 1996, GERMANY/USA


From his early rhythmic electronic confections on Sky Records to a vast discography of subsequent radical (and frequently very abstract) sonic interventions, Asmus Tietchens remains one of the towering figures in recent German electronic music history, and one whom I've shared work under multiple guises by before. Speiseleitung was his second horn lock (following 1993's DBL_FDBK CD) with fellow arch avant garde-ist David Lee Myers, whose hand-made feedback generators and processors formed the basis of his work, a perfect pairing in the sense of Tietchens' own claim to make "absolute music", i.e. music without recourse to any other frames of reference. Together, they funhouse-mirror reflect whistling peals and tintinnabulation tangles of feedbacking excrescence through the ether in each others general direction.

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WELCOME BACK, JIM!

Before I put up any other posts today, I just want to take the opportunity to say welcome back to the original founder of this blog, Jim Mutantsounds, who's been away for quite some time, but who you can thank for the four excellent looking new posts below.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

V.A.-The Class of '81,LP,UK,1980

Excellent and rediculously rare UK DIY compilation , with great amaturish punk,powerpop and post punk tunes.Released iun 1980 under Upper Class label.


Tracklist:


A1 Void– Pop Love


A2 Exeros–Accident


A3 The Troopers–Love You


A4 Emil & The Detectives–Girl


A5 Bino–Dream (For My Sake)



B1 Picasso's Optician–Given Up Frying


B2 The Fringe–New Day


B3 Emil & The Detectives–Instant Magnet


B4 Exeros–Chita


B5 The Innocent Vicars–Starship 22




get it here

V.A. -Never Trash A Pretty Face, tape ,1986,GREECE

Excellent lo-fi DIY compilation from Greece,released in Thessaloniki, in 1986, through the Rollin Under fanzine and the radio station Radio Utopia. Musically it varies from late 70s-early 80s punk/anarcho punk with greek lyrics,garage punk, to post punk sounds and some minimal synth.

Tracklist:

A1 Keli 13 - Ploio Stasiastwn

A2 Keli 13 - Mavra yalia

A3 Aganaktismeni Polites - Mesos Anthropos

A4 Aganaktismeni Polites- Favlos Kiklos

A5 Venericna Bolest - Piriniko Katafigio

A6 Venericna Bolest - Antithourios

A7 Allothi - Pente Lepta Prin

A8 Adreas Troussas & Aprosopoi - Na se kala


B1 After Death - The Exorcist

B2 After Death - The Birth of Darkness

B3 Final Solution - Point of View

B4 Final Solution - Trip

B5 Red Fuzz - Faraway

B6 Red Fuzz - That Love

B7 Drowned Girl - Electric Dog

B8 Apontes "Filoi" - Aimomixias paidia Latremena


get it here