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.

Here

The Dave - Lois / Poof!

 

Label : Self-Released

Year : 1984/85

Country : US

Format : C45

Here are two tape rips sent to me by the great Tony Coulter. A long time coming, these. I have posted this group on here in the past, probably half a decade ago on one of the Outward Inward comps, but here they are in full swing. Bizarro indie with improvisational folk inclinations. A good comparison would be the vastly underrated Flying Nun outfit Marie & the Atom, of which I'm hoping to see a reissue campaign come to light sometime soon.

These two rips were split by myself, going by whatever the submitter at Discogs thought the track listings were. It's all so weirdly structured that you cannot be too sure of where one song ends and another interlude begins and vice versa. In any case, these are buried gems in the junkyard (in a good way!) of the 80s cassette underground.

Here

Max Goldt - Ende Juli, Anfang August

Label : Hidden Records - Bulb No. 7

Year : 1994

Country : Germany

Format : LP

I was going to try and fit this in the month of October before it dozed off into that annual frenzy of orange and black, but working this platform on mobile is a bigger nightmare than any decoration one could place in their lawn. So, I'll compose this in the month of pent up sexual aggression. At least, that's what the internet has christened the month as.

I do believe this is my first time giving this artist a spotlight outside of the stray mention in a blurb concerning someone else. Though I may not always understand it, there is an enthralling nature to Goldt's music. The way the spoken and half-sung passages interact with the dissonant synth backing makes for a strangely intimate affair, like a hologram coming up from the grooves. Like the cover might suggest, an uneasy sort of chill relaxation.

Here

Die Welttraumforscher - Werkstatt Wasserstadt

Label : Das Moniflabel - PP040 / Ebus Music - EM056

Country : Switzerland

Year : 1999

Format : LP

To preface this I would like to make a few announcements: Die Welttraumforscher has a new album out on the very intriguing label New York Haunted, it's very nice and I recommend the purchase for all who may have been exposed to him from my blog. Still some copies left of the tape, of which I ordered, so try and go for that if you're into the physical paraphernalia. Cheap, too

The other announcement (...before I once again repeat myself about this wonderful artist for nth time) is that I have been in the process of re-ripping a bunch of records and cassettes previously found on here. I have (marginally) better equipment and instead of doing it from the jack of an old stereo I have come to my senses and started ripping directly from the output. Armed with a Scarlett 2i2 and iZotope, better days are sure to come. If you have slsk, you should have direct access to the FLAC rips (sometimes in 24 bit). I say this because I'm undecided if I should reupload all these one-by-one given the space constraints on Drive and Mega, even considering the efficiency of the opus file format. We will see, new rips will of course still be featured here.

This particular LP is a bit different than the previous ones found here. From my observation, this one is less "song" orientated and more ambient, like the Loon side-project. The singing is there, but the vox feel as if they will melt and meld into the surrealist backing track any second, and they will. Another peculiarity among his peculiar discography is the B-side, a side-long suite. I was tempted to try and split the tracks as they may but without notation I couldn't possibly bother. And why should I? It works perfect as a singular organism of a track.

Here

The above image is my best attempt at manually stitching together the scan of one side of the record sleeve. For understandable reasons, the program was unable to finish the job. This is because each "slice" was simply a mirror image. Although it's not a perfect match, I tried my best.

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.

Here

King Frog - Silver Gelatin

Label : Oblique - Oblique-001

Country : US

Year : 1997

Format : LP

"Suburban Gamelan", a phrase stuck to this particular project that then stuck into my head for awhile. An interesting concept, and I think it befits this just a little bit. The visuals and some of the sounds come to mind as a bleak cityscape.

I went out of my own usual way for this one--I heard a rip of this LP a year or so ago after being interested in the King after first reading about it in Blastitude. The 128kbps rip found on slsk was serviceable and I ended up really liking the sound, so I went and bought a copy to get a more "definitive" sound. I guess.

The whole album has a sound that I can cling to. A sort of unholy cacophony of almost early 20th century clamor. I liken some aspects to some choice 80s tracks from Band of Holy Joy and ZGA's excellent "Gloom". The art book that comes with is also a great companion piece in its sort of amateur expressionism. Also some of the tracks sound like Casio demos, which is quite charming.

Here

 

 

(Man, formatting on this site is annoying)

Die Welttraumforscher - Drittes Bewusstsein

Label : Das Moniflabel - PP058

Year : 2012

Country : Switzerland

Format : LP

As of now the last entry in WTF catalogue, and a fine entry at that. Even folkier than usual, with the expected blurry synthpop coalescing with the whimsical arrangements and playful vocalizations.

Third Consciousness is about right. An astral spectral spectacle. What more is there to say other than to leave it all to the waveforms found in this el-p? Pretty-pretty.

Here

Die Welttraumforscher - Ohm Olunde

Label : Zauberhaus (Das Moniflabel) - PP052

Country : Switzerland

Year : 2005

Format : LP

Old dawn fades, new dusk rises. The cosmic deep field of Welttraumforscher expands, the stars are coming undone and it's a beautiful thing. Really, it is. I love the little world he has made, even though I can only see it through a small window.

Not much has changed in terms of sound, that is the sound which I have described several times over in various euphemistic phrases. You know, folky synth-tunes from a cosmic forest, etc, etc. Not to say it's derivative, not at all really, or even a complacent difficult 32nd album, nor is it par for the course. Something different this way comes, I say.

Here

Though in the process of ripping this for your pleasure I am reminded of the frustrations that entails the vinyl format for what I do, it was all worth the effort.

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

Pelthead International Conspiracy Theory - Pelthead International Conspiracy Theory

Label : La Bande Magnétique

Year : 1994

Country : Canada

Format : C60

 The second half as promised in the last post, just in time for the prelude to Christmas sunlight. As I mentioned before, this auction was somewhat of a crapshoot, an unknown. It was well worth the few 10s of dollars spent for both of em, two winners. At least I'd like to think so, without the fog of buyer's remorse and bargaining. But really, there is some interesting stuff going on here.

 Music for art installations, like the last one somewhat, but that doesn't take away the listenable aspects of this. Stray samples, strange synthsounds, and autre alliterations abound. The grand mystery revealed itself in a surprise of familiarity: one of the fellows involved in this project is a musician I know (not personally) from a few tapes from the noise-arch archive, Gerard Leckey. Here, under the alias Gabrel [sic] Angel with his partners in croime Patrick Harrop (who did the cover art here as well as the SLOD tape) and Paz Paisley (who has been putting some stuff from this group n perpendicular, including stuff from then and now), it is not too dissimilar to how I remember his own music sounding: collage, minimalism, and electronic overall.

The last tape had this nice little advertisement too but I felt it more appropriate to include it in the finale to the 2 episode miniseries.

Here

Secret Life Of Dali - Live

Label : La Bande Magnétique

Year : 1994

Country : Canada

Format : C60

 Christmas is in the air, and there's nothing more enchanting than that. Well, except for unknown tapes I picked up on eBay. You never know what to find in these plastic mystery boxes. Here is the first of these media incognita... Like many things, what appears to be totally obscured at first is eventually shone a light with a little scrutiny.
Like so, after previously having no luck finding any info on this at all, I soon found a Youtube channel (of which I was already subscribed) that contained both info and various tracks from this mysterious collective and adjacent.

This particular tape contains longform and lesser longform minimal elektronik pieces, not quite techno and not quite Vice Versa, Suicide, etc. Ambient and prog structure of an art gallery soundtrack.

Here

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.

Here