Max Goldt - L'Église Des Crocodiles

Label : Gagarin Records - GR2024

Year : 1983 (2011 RE)

Country : Germany

Format : LP

Ramblings that go in and out of chipmunk speak, with some strange minimal backing for good measure. Real kitchen sink of an instrumentation which breathes some organic air for a field sometimes so lacking in it.

A favorite DIY artist of mine.

 

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Nakasone - Orophocrinus

Label : EE Tapes - ET49

Country : Belgium

Year : 1997

Format : C60

Minimal ambient workouts. Hard to really split the tracks here as they all kinda meld together.

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Burden of Friendship - (I Am) Zuzu's Petals

Label : Panic Records & Tapes

Year : 1986

Country : US

Format : C60

 

Noise collage as you would come to expect from Scott Marshall (Martian?) and co.

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Iceplants - Done By The Iceplants

Label : Small Tools Tradition - B Town 01

Year : 1986

Country : US

Format : LP

I have unearthed a holy grail. Well, bought one at least. This group has been on my mind for quite a while after hearing their Happytime At The Wow Club shortplayer first posted on the legendary Mutant Sounds blog. On my mind, but out of reach (financially). Specifically this "long"player. I was just about ready to take a road trip down to DC to have a listen to the Library of Congress' copy before deciding to just bite the bullet and let the collectors win just this once.

Taking a chance with it, I'd say it was worth it. The seller was a treat to deal with, too! Anyway, to the music. Its sound is caught between the drunken piano cabarets of the aforementioned Wow Club and the industrial postpunk of their other rarity which I posted some time ago. The bite is certainly there, lyrics wise. Anti-Soviet ballads are not something often to be found in the exp. underground of the time, sort of continuing on the theme of atypical political lieds after "Hanoi Jane"... Among other topics, like nuclear destruction and short ditties about roadkill.

Read em or weep, maybe both at the same time.

Aside from all that "musical" stuff, there's a letter left from the band leader (I assume) to the former owner of the record. 

Always seems kind of weird, I won't say voyeuristic, to have these in your collection. Maybe it's just me. It's still cool though, in terms of extra goodies that you may find in a random given record. It could be worse, could be whatever came with the first edition of TG's D.o.A.

 

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Shrinkwrap - Fear, Loathing & Admiration

Label : Shrinkwrap Propaganda

Year : 1991

Country : US

Format : C90

 The sequel no-one would have expected. Yes, five years after the original post comes a compendium of that very same band. One of those wishlist items I knew I had to buy when it popped up, it's now here for the enjoyment of a relative few. The title track of the tape I posted all those brief few years back is featured here, with the b-side absent. Still, a ton to chew into here. That very same collage heavy industrio-noise rock (not quite Godflesh) is there, with some surprising experimental passages here and there.

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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]

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Hinton-Templar - Isn't That What You Wanted?

Label : The Subelecktrick Institute - SEI 8601

Country : US

Year : 1985

Format : C90

 Brook Hinton was one of many in the Big City Orchestra, and his solo stuff isn't too far of a departure from the varied sounds of the long-running project. Hinton-Templar is apparently a collaboration between he and... himself. I think. This cassette has been ripped before on an obscure corner of the Internet Archive, but not in clear hissy flac format. So there you are.

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Club Moral - Instruments Of Attraction (I. Cerebrale Pathologie)

Label : Kapellmeister Grammofon - KG 03

Country : Belgium

Year : 2003

Format : 10 inch

I'll leave this short. The first rip I'll post here working with new equipment. The turntable stays the same (Pro-ject Debut III) but with a different cartridge (AT95e) at the edge of the tonearm. Also snatched a used acrylic platter off of Amazon for the novelty of it all, I suppose. To tie things together I am using a Scarlett 2i2 to do the ripping. It's a very nice piece, certainly better than the line-in to an old laptop from the headphone jack method I had perfected.

Motor hum still present, an inevitability of Pro-ject systems. At least, from what I've read. Like the music I post, experimentation is key. And speaking of the music I post, I gather it is not too much of an issue that my rips be imperfect. But I'll try!

Anyhow, this is a record I've had for a while now. Can't really recall why I never posted it, other than the fact I didn't care all that much of it. A likely answer was that a rip was already floating around, a perfect excuse. I'll go with that, though the former still stands.

Very "installation" sounding exp. musik, like I'm missing half the picture. Certainly interesting, but nondescript within the realm of my own tastes. The booklet fleshes the whole thing out more, and I have it all scanned (with some words cut off due to the creasing spine of the paperbook making it hard) that I could host if requested. It's just that posting images outside of a vertical line downwards is a nightmare on this site.

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XX Century Zorro - La Volpe Du XX Siècle

Label : Old Europa Cafe - OECD 140

Country : Italy

Year : 2011 (1983 orig)

Format : CD

Not to blaspheme the blasphemers, but in the face of the revolutionary MonSter sound system I have shirked the original intentions by doubling the tracks on each channel into one for every song. In its original form, the album has different tracks going on at the same time in the stereo space, perfect for equalizers... But I intend to give it a bit more accessibility if at all.

Warped cabaret tunes and postpunk industrialism in a collage of madness.

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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.

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Hebephrenic - Ataraxia

Label : Tapehiss Recordings

Year : 1991

Country : US

Format : C90

We keep going further and further back in time in this particular artist's catalog, in this installment quite a bit of fade in and outs. Maybe more ambient and progressive in comparison, too, but still with a mutant-pop sensibility. Ethereal and ghostly but not too harrowing. Listeth.

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Selfs Without Shells - 5: The Number Of Communication

Label : EE Tapes - ET16

Country : Belgium

Year : 1993

Format : C60

Astute minds might notice something about today's post, that is the fact that it has been posted before. Well, apparently. Kinda. What the monumental tape-attack (which I'm glad was not shuttered after a few weeks without downloadability on the blog) posted was the IRRE iteration of this particular series of tapes. What we have here is not a failure to communication, but simply a small series of misunderstanding. numero cinq.

What's different? The tracklisting differs a little bit, though it shares the Birds of a Feather (apparently a separate group? I dunno, I wasn't there) side to a tee. The schism here, ironically, is the one that also shares a title with the other issue, that is 5: The Number of Communication side. Now, I don't know the significance of the number 5 and what it has to do with communication and magick and whatever but it seems to me that it comprises of various collaborations (probably via mail and elsewhere) between members of the Selfs with such incandescent figures as the Sack himself(s) and Del(eted) and autre un-unforgotten luminaries of the underground seen.

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I was not very confident in my ability to discern between different tracks on this one as I am usually, given the muffled aspects of it and my forgetful laziness. Seeing as the "Bofa Feather" side differs from mine on the Brains For Breakfast rip, only one of us can be wrong! Or both.

Human Bone Bicycle - Human Bone Bicycle

Label : n/a (Death Factory Institution?) - 0003

Year : 1997

Country : US

Format : C90

Let me start this by saying that I've been taken a bit by the audio format opus, so I am experimenting a bit here. A 128kbps rip is usually lamented, but in this format it still achieves clarity in the abyss. I dunno. It's a cassette rip, there's not much expected other than to provide it.

On to the music of which the container holds: it's half-and-half. Noiseheads will appreciate the A-side more than I do (I think), a live performance producing sounds that remind me of a trainyard (not dissimilar to the Kakophonia tape, though I feel that one has more punch to it). The B-side I really like, a whole 40 minutes of xylophones and vibraphones being improvised upon. The tinkly quality levels out the more aggressive aspect of its doppelganger power electronik on the other side of the strip.

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Kakophonia Nr.1 - P (0) 0 (X K0 (0) 0

Label : n/a

Year : 1993

Country : Germany

Format : C60

An unknown shriek across sound spectra. "Unknown" meaning I have no clue who was behind this. Although it it befitting that this tape be from an obscure source, given its cacophonic (hah) terror. If I were to dredge up a cliche used by every internet reviewer since the mediums emergence, almost eldritch.

But what do I know? I can't even read, let alone Love. Craft of another form in the field of noise and collage and industrial and the fusion herein. This cassette just never stops from the word go, only ceding when it chokes the medium to its limits.

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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.

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