Various - Le Train Fântome (Ghost Train)

Label : Éditions Suicide Commercial

Country : France

Year : 1999

Format : CD

Look upon this ghastly apparition, and despair--the first internet collaboration, apparently. While I do doubt that claim, it seems a natural successor to the old mailing list carousel days of yore, where guys exchanged tapes from all over the world and overdubbed their own freakish imperations. A lotta obscure actors in this, and about 10 different variations of Lt. Caramel, guy never gets lonely. A brief
glimpse of blog favorite itoken, too.

Concerning the packaging: I'm not sure what it has to do with a spectral automotive, but it certainly is translucent. The CD I ordered didn't come with the cardboard sleeve it was purported to have contained the spirits, so it's all out here.

Here

Lucien Suel - In Hymnis Et Canticis

Label : Rare Produx - No. 25

Country : France

Year : 1991

Format : C90

Furniture music, as per French neo-tradition. French-Canadian, maybe? The original issue of this first appeared on my radar when it was transiently archived on the tentatively run Noise-Arch on-line compen-dium. It was one of the exclusive and elusive members of the [IYD] tapes page, a section of the website that probably only I, in my most humble manner of being, had the outside knowledge of. It eluded the various caches and ambitious archives which sends out their little arachnids to parse whatever they can find. Unfortunately, I do not have much of the faintest memory of what "IYD" means or even stands for. Some more ephemera for the lot.

Anywho, the main dish as presented is here (I'll try to pare down on food comparisons, it really is a plague these days). The reason I exposited upon this meaningless little historie is to give a bit of perspective as to why I went and bought this thing. I do recall enjoying the little mp3 provided by the site, though obviously I had only listened to a portion of it. It seemed the avant-poetic folkisms were the primary instead of the utter secondary, but the concrete musics in sounds of washing hands and various amplified materials really take center stage. Call it like the Bernstein bears or whatever, I just have shit memory.

Here

Guy Clerbois - La Dernière Tentation Du Disque

Label : Ayaa - PSOCDA 1

Country : France

Year : 1993

Format : CD

Ripped by Scramoutcha

Oh, hello. Here is another rip from my fine friend from across that big old body of water--an old rip at that. A sideproject of the frontman (as if there was much of a backing) of the monumental synth-spazz project Vitor Hublot. Somewhat a departure here, maybe more. Here is essentially, at the time, the previous 20 or so years in recorded music history given the John Oswald treatment. Er, if Oswald hadn't already done that at the same time frame. Maybe a bit more obscure in choice here, though I do recognize many a phrase here, and I have a terrible memory! Particularly the first the track-from the getgo I can recognize that song, see if you can. I can't even remember which song it was.

A familiar cast of characters. I wonder if this was an artistic choice or one borne out of the need to credit the musicians themselves. I'll go with both.

Here