Iceplants - Cravenous

Label : Small Tools Tradition

Year : 1992

Country : US

Format : CD

Ooooo this is a pleasant surprise! (Apologies to the other variety of surprise)

Actually, maybe it is unpleasant. Iceplants were never a pastoral group, totally negative type music. Jaunty self-murder ballads, things of that nurture. They sounded British to me at first, but they were actually germinated from the pistols and stamens that populated the burgeoning fleurs du mal of the 80s Colorado subunderground scene. Dismal, really. This is quite a bit different from the other material (paltry amount of which) I've heard from this old and exciting project. Less "dark" cabaret and more Industrial-ambient postpunk. Still, it's worth getting your ears on.

My search for the rest of the material of this band is almost nearing completion... Unless they have even more stuff I don't know about. My next step in this journey might find me at the Library of Congress. I just have to thank my good digital friend Tony Coulter and whoever gave this to him for making the trek abit lighter.

Here

Breather - Loves And Disloves

Label : Sonic Incision Records - SI 001

Country : US

Year : 1984

Format : LP

You might be familiar with this one, a rip of it has come to pass a couple times throughout the blogosphere. I bought it for a bargain while on vacation, so I figured I'd post it. I seem to remember the existing rip being rather unsatisfying... Though I am not a very good arbiter for such a thing. I think the tracks were combined and was only encoded at 256kbps, so I'll do it a couple things better. Properly ripped and post-processed (to a certain extent, I'm too cheap to buy click repair), in clear FLAC.

The album itself is prime Bay Area weirdowave, a Goth facsimile with a guise of sparse avantrock. Good stuff.

Here

Olliwor - To Many Heroes

Label : Das Moniflabel - PP015

Year : 1988

Country : Switzerland

Format : C60

Or is it "OILiwoЯ"? Think Chris Knox further augmented by the Residents and label honcho 

Die Welttraumforscher, and at times antecedent to the utterly unique Svede mrperfect.

Another treat from the welt of Loon:

a previous mystery to me in the Moniflabel catalog, I had only so much information provided to me about the who's and what's of this project; Olliwor Fried is the token.

On this tape, the singularly named Olliwor

plays the browns as it were, a focus on

lowfi pop and the odd interlude

of dreamtime.

My comparisons above were rather immediate connections.

     Very Tall Dwarfs, in an affected English that is. The best parts of this exercise is the bent melodies mixed with

       the discordant synths and fuzzed out geetars. It is rather different from the usual Forscher affair but also very much hereditary, especially based on what I have heard from the early days of the label.

I'm going to continuously seek out as much as I can from Das Moniflabel 

With that, enjoie.

Here

Ornament & Crime Arkhestra - Live At The III. ITIM Festival

Label : Amf-Music - amf 1035

Country : Germany

Year : 1994

Format : CD

Ripped by Scramoutcha

I don't think this has anything to do with Sun Ra, but it is apparently an Arkhestra. A point of departure of sorts from Alain Neffe, or maybe not. I associate their music with the kind that pulsates electronically through synthetic means, this is a bit more of a jazzy and organic palpitation. Very folk too, though avant in its intentions. Still peppered with industrial backings, so this alien muse is not too alien.

Here

X-Ray Eyes - X-Ray Eyes

Label : Megaphone Limited - 007

Country : US

Year : 1994

Format : CD

Ripped by Scramoutcha

Another bountiful feast from my friend over the information superhighway. This has been on my radar for a little while and I've finally got a blip. Those familiar with Megaphone Limited will have a good bit to like here, and some recognizables as well. Improvisational folk and pop melodies crash discordantly with its jazz and atonal origins. Jason Willett and Caroline Kraabel ring a bell? This album certainly is rrrringing hoooo!

"utterly individual (albeit gently so)" says the website

Schwarzwurz / Harald "Sack" Ziegler - Zugabäh! / Helau?

Label : Senseless Gebollah - SG ! #14

Country : Germany

Year : 1993

Format : C60

Back to our regularly scheduled programme, as abnormally placated it is. I got this tape from the honcho of the immortal Ebus tape conglomerate on Discogs recently, and it certainly is a strange beast. The A-side is composed of live performances from a band/duo/project/experiment called Schwarzwurz. Prior to this I had no exposure to them and on first glance, they are pretty damn wild. Noise-industrial improv, "Fuck You" kind of music.

Now the B-side is from a figure that I have a much greater familiarity with. Harald "Sack" Ziegler has been putting out warped pop for years, and with a live backing it becomes even rougher.

Just the two sides ripped, pristine and without any bells and whistles in the post-processing and splitting processes. Since the tracks are quite hard to discern from one another due to the quality and nature of live performance and my ignorance of most of the content, I hope it's acceptable.

Here