The Bunk! - Scenes From Dreamland

Label : Cobbs Music

Year : 1999

Country : US

Format : C90

An eBay shot in the dark that hit the target. Based only on the faith given by the two Sun City Girls' covers featured as well as the homage in the title proper, I gave it a whirl. Not like I had to pay too much for it anyhow. What's contained in the oxide today is mostly cosmic psyche improvisations, like the Girls' jams at their most melodic and (somewhat) coherent.

Given their location, I wonder if they were buddies with Gravelvoice honcho Scott Colburn. He of Bishop and Gocher production infamy, but I didn't need to tell you that.

Here

Reportaż - Reportaż / Muzika

Label : Tonpress - SX-T 129

Year : 1988

Country : Poland

Format : LP

Back from the dead, to give you some stuff to listen to. 

Maybe, if you want.

Two to make up for my absence with excellent, excellent RIO from Poland. An avant-bordello soundtrack, even. You might have heard these releases somewhere else on the internet but you might just like my rips better.

Here

Label : ADN - 25

Country : Italy

Year : 1987

Format : C60

Here

Cool And The Clones - Wrong Time Of Month

Label : Ejaz - 2001

Year : 1985

Country : US

Format : LP

Here

Freed from the clutches of whoever, and free they are. Improvisational jazz interpolated with electronic treatments and experiments. Everything laid bare on the taped on insert. Live shenanigans. what more does an obscuro-avant fan need? Succinctness is key, the music itself paints an expressionist picture that I could only complete with filler text. Enjoy! 

The Plagiarist Trio - Appearance

Label : Wafer Face - WAFER 4

Year : 1992

Country : US

Format : LP

Here's a strange whiplash of a record, from the fine friends of Wafer Face. As expected from the small press, this is a surreal and dadaistic piece of work. Also expected is the reliance of collages from different mediums from tape to vinyl record.

That's not all to it, really. It's hard to get into as every track in this wreckord sorta fades into the next yet clashes all the same. While it is mostly comprised of scattershot samples over a textural electro-acoustic kinda underbelly, some parts are more song-based than what one could anticipate. I haven't heard the groups other project under the alias Absinthe Radio Trio, but I have to imagine it's in the same ballpark in terms of musical surrealism.

[sic]

here

Drone - The Fat Controller

Label : Q.D.K. Media - CD 007

Year : 1990

Country : Germany

Format : CD

I've said my piece or three [both in public and in private] about this excellent compact disc by this particular New Zealander group, so much so that I'm reduced to generic description. But that doesn't quite fit this album, too many tiny little sublime moments that compare favorably (yes, I'll compare em again) to contemporaries the Dead C. I swear I know a little bit more about this scene post the Dunedin sonic phenomena but I can't quite place it with Dadamah's aura. Listening and deciding is always better than reading and putting it off, really.

Here

Maybe one of the first semi-unofficially authorized rips here? This site has had this up for quite a bit, but I decided to import it for better quality.

Five Or Six - A Thriving And Happy Land

Label : Frizz Bee - Frizzbee 2

Country : Netherlands

Year : 1982

Format : LP

Like Durutti Column, except in place of pastoral melancholy there exists an aggressive undercurrent of urban spiral. Like a hellish construction site, but also a bit heavenly. I'm surprised these guys haven't gotten the full-on Cherry Red reissue treatment, having just a Greatest Hits (hm) CD to their name. That's all well and good in this thriving and happy land but it's missing some key tracks. Some of the implied tracks appear here, and on the early retrospective "Cántame Esa Canción Que Dice, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" that today still sit on their respective plastic platters. Five or six years from now, maybe.

Here

The 1985 - Obscured By Pink Clouds

Label : Progeria Records - prg002 / Carbon Records - CR21

Country : US

Year : 1999

Format : CD

Before 1975, there was 1985.

Not having heard this in awhile and hard of total memory (wild year, that), I can only give vague past impressions. But I can also speak about the group itself, though I have little info on them despite being "from" the same place.

I suppose it is a rather alien document amongst the scuzzbucket-pigfukkit noize rockers, the standard abrasive punx interspersed with bizarre minimal-electro synth motifs (Recalling at least a tiny bit at points the brilliant Brainiac) make this a worthwhile get. But that's just me. The CD version added all that stuff after the fact for all I know.

The (rightful [if I cared about "sequencing"]) closer on the vinyl platter, "Shooting Blanks" is a noise rock masterpiece in every sense for all I care... Looking now, I made a mistake in the above blurb: what was tacked on was the nameless little snippets after the seminal ender. Although I still do like em fine, it does lessen the impact of hearing the cops raid the band's recording studio/garage.

Here

Legacy Of Sorrow - Discovery

Label : Endemic Music

Country : US

Year : 1988

Format : C70

Back from the grave, just in time for Halloween. Also back from the grave is this, which I thought was lost in the purgatory of shipping and handling. But now it's here and I need to deal with that, and you have a chance to get some listening in.

 If you look in the liner notes, you'll find some familiar names in Bob Drake, Mark Fuller, and Eric Jacabsen. Yes, all three of these men were in Thinking Plague, plus trumpeteur Ron Miles. Musically, it is rather similar to the Plague's signature sound, but without the apathetic beauty of Susanne Lewis' pipes it reminds me a lot of Het. Lots of air in these instruments, and lots of little twists and turns too being a live recording; some familiar and unfamiliar melodies may catch your ears.

Here

City Wildlife - City Wildlife

Label : Edition Unibeirrt - L

Country : Switzerland

Year : 1987

Format : C30

Swiss not Scheiße. Neutral bias, maybe? Another one from the conspicuous corner of New Wave obscurity; Residential, yes. Dash of early Ween I feel. To avoid rehashing my RYM review, I'll actually talk about the music in English rather than buzzwords and halfhearted platitudes.

Yes, a mini-album as described by the experts at Discogs dot com. As can be seen from the tracklisting on the J-card you can get a glimpse of the brevity of most tracks on the album. Sketches more like, as I do like to describe. The music is a strange minimal treat for minimal ears. Synth experiments mix with vocal experiments and guitar experiments. Or maybe it sounds like one big (small) experiment. A demo album, perhaps? Maybe that's how I got it from Recrec just a week or few days ago.

Here

The next reupload roundup comes nearer and nearer, just need to polish some stuff up; Stayed tune, mon  lecteur.

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

Carlos Alonso - Fragil Ironia

Label : La Sonrisa de Luz / Ediciones Efímeras - Cass. 0010

Year : 1997

Country : Argentina

Format : C30

 Spasmodic & sporadic. Carlos Alonso is a true Patagonian muzikal treasure, having helmed the obscuro experimental group Uno X Uno which may as well have been credited here. Some of the more adventurous reading may be familiar with his escapades via the classic 433rpm blog, where I'm almost halfheartedly certain a tape of their's was presented back in the day.

The music, as I had mentioned, is similar to what I've heard from double Uno. Minimal industrial beatz flirting with free improv and avantrock insanity/inanity. The rip seems a bit fuzzy, I'm not sure if that's the tape itself or the deck, but I'm leaning more towards the source because I'm lazy.

Here

El-Ron - Are Dangdut Kings

Label : Records - R 3

Country : US

Year : 1997

Country : US

I don't know what Dangdut is or what royalty that pertains to, or whether or not the band's name is a pastiche of some SF author, but this is good stuff. On my RYM review I compared to the sound presented here to Liquorball, Monoshock, Crawlspace, Fuzzhead, so on and so forth. So, if you like psych noise jam with a dash of krautsploitation, have at this. 

What do I mean by "Krautsploitation"? Well, it's a takeoff from the first track off a LP by a sideproject of some of the above bands called Sternklang. I like the feel of it, and describes this pretty well: taking after der Fatherland's ancestral motorik klangs. Though this a bit more noisier than usual.

Here

Michael Vlatkovich & Charles Britt - Transvalue Book I

Label : Thankyou Records - MV-004

Year : 1985

Country : US

Format : LP

Eventful night. The wind was howling and the moon looked right evil, full and peering thru the cloud cover. I was going to wrap up scanning this elpee when I was interjected by the clamors of my domains detritae cluttering about our road. So, I went out and collected as best as I can. To tell the truth, it was a joy. I felt so exuberant; the whole situation felt like an event. The aforementioned lune and the hard blows of the elements only added to it. To peer inside my brain, I was inspired to create. I always keep ideas running in my imagination, compositing what I hold dear to my neurotics. It may come to a surprise, but I would love to make a game. I have so many things in mind, and that's what I meant as an "event", like a scripted one or some emergent thing of those vestiges. It's lovely, in my youth I do feel like it. 

In a brief "review", if one can call it so, I wrote "I'd like to think this is what would result if Zoogz [Rift] went full on gonzo jazz with some decadent poetry of the beat persuasion.". I stand by that short as it may be. Though to expand I'd also like to mention the many moving parts at play here. Tons of interesting ideas in this collaboration recurrent through the christened "transvalue" moniker. At points it takes a third stream approach, another a more rockjazz undercurrent, and a healthy helping of exp. bigband to really draw me in.

Here

Florida=Death - Depression Era Music

Label : Hot Air Press - No. 17

Country : US

Year : 2009

Format : LP

Another older number from my collection, relatively speaking due to this blog being somewhat of a "collector's diary" so to speak. Relistening to this now, I find myself thinking that I may have initially underrated this single sided behemoth of brevity. There's a lot of cool stuff going on for a whole 25 or so minutes made up of cut up collages containing disparate performances laced with acid and submerged in noisy entropy. Though I am phoning this one in somewhat, having realized they actually have this up at their Bandcamp...... So, if you like what you hear, I'd imagine the logical course of action would be to lay down 5 bones for a much clearer version. I mean, that's what I would do. Florida is the reason, after all.

Here

Vale And Year - Holy Music And Art / Field Recordings Vol. 1

Label : n/a

Year : 2004

Country : US

Format : CD(s)

A chance encounter I've found. Browsing the internet leads to strange discoveries at times, and on a fateful minute I found a post from the ancient days of 2013 talking about my blog. It had been posted by David Bernabo, a member of this odd little project. I had previously posted the first album served here back in those days, and I had not realized that I never reposted it after revitalizing this digital warehouse. So here we are.

I got both of these from a local library which supplied many a release from around these parts. Not a lot really sprung an interest from me, but these are exceptions. I want to say I first of this band from the Blastitude webzine, but apparently it was not where I had first encountered them. I think I might have first seen it be perchance on the fallen fakejazz superhighway xerox, though I never got much into that one so who knows. Anywho, this is an interesting admixture of noisy indie rawk with some experimental smatterings across the (maybe a bit unnecessary) 2 disc set. The other album is a collection of free improvs and maybe some field recordings. Maybe. I have not heard these in awhile and just now dug them up from the last remains of my old HDD. So enjoy. 

Here

Various Artists - Tête De Bébé

Label : S-S Records - SS020

Country : US

Year : 2006

Format : LP

S-S is a fine label, with it releasing a ton of good stuff and repackaging just the same. And any-body who appreciates Monoshock is good in my book. This particular release, though, doesn't do much for me, toutefois. It's a foreign sequel to the early Ess Ess joint "Babyhead", composed mostly of synth heavy frog garage punx and occasional exp. spasms.

I've not found myself a fan of more straightforward punk musics, especially contemporary forms. I prefer a bit more of a looser structure I guess, though I can't call this uptight. Maybe my receptors are outta whack.

Here