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.

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! 

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.

Here

Family Underground - West Coast Tour 2007

Label : Into the Lunar Night - No. 18

Country : Denmark

Year : 2007

Format : CDr

To whom it may confront:

primal screams at TV screens.

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)

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.

Here

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.

Here

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

Various Artists - Audio Alchemy NLOK6

Label : Cassette Mythos

Year : 1987

Country : US

Format : C90

A xerox expose, is what it is. That ill-fated interview album so occasionally sprung about the 80s and scarcely seen since... Interviews of who? A who's who of cassette culture, that's who. Many-a timid artist gives little snippets of info inquiring minds need to know. Brought to your ears by the formidable dAS, if you couldn't guess by the J-card. Beyond the audio content itself, I can't glean much else as to what this was made for and if there were more in a similar vein. Obviously it was an Audio Alchemy initiative, but I don't even know what NLOK6 stands for? Is this ham radio speak? 

Paging the Weatherman.

Here

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

Failing Lights - True Form

Here

Various Artists - Outward Inward #5

Label : SSS Productions - OI-5

Year : 1987

Country : US

Format : C34

If not for the brandspankin' new website tape-mag brought forth by Vinyl-on-Demand honcho Frank Bull, I'd have forgotten that I had never brought the 5th little issue of this industrial zine to lite. Now, here we are. Tape and all! Lots of interesting tendons to chew on in here, interviews from the subunderground tenenaries featured on that prestigious front cover. The music, in lieu from the usual compendium of tracks originating from various sources, consist of live "songs" from a set that occurred at the Squirrel Hill American Legion. Must have been quite the slight live.

Here (tape) / Here (zine)

Flophouse / Research Defense Squad - 10th Anniversary Celebration Release 1983-1993 / The Percodan Years

Label : Foundation T.dieZ. - 030

Country : US

Year : 1993

Format : LP

The monstrosity above, Porky Chedwick's Monster as it were, is my attempt to manually stitch together the hopeless fragments of the scan of this particular obscurity's "front" sleeve. An inevitably aleatoric operation due to the nature of the thin, textured paper as well as the bullet holes that are riddled across said paper. The back cover stitched fine, for whatever reason.

OK, enuff vanity for just a moment. The real trashy treasure here is the music itself. And that's why we're all gathered here together right, dear readers and crawlers? Although I do tend to overrate stuff that is hopelessly unknown (especially so if I pay a pretty penny for it), I must say this is well worth my high appraisal. As I might just get into in a second, this is an outgrowth of the 80s Chicago noise-collage microscene. Prior to bucking up and throwing down a few decades of cash for this, I had been previously familiar with the underside of the split, that is the Research Defense Squad. Featured here though abridged, I had heard their Pisshole tape when the noise-arch was still live. It's, uh, interesting.

Based off that a posteriori knowledge, that is their sound mostly being based on collage and noisy industrial rumblings, I was quite surprised by some of the songs featured on their share of the record sleeve. Though still industrial, it has a much more melodic flavor. Which is always welcome. Though you still do get to hear that collagenoise aspect I mentioned earlier, it still is interesting to hear something different than what you had previously expected. 

Flophouse are something of another story altogether. I had no knowledge of them before I bought this, and what sparse info I could find at the time didn't really paint a full picture. Now having heard them on this record, I would love to see if I can get more of their stuff. Psyched out industrial noise rock is the name of the game.

Splitting the tracks for this whole operation was a bit difficult, and there may have been some mistakes here and there. It should also be noted that this is a pretty dirty record with some scratches so I tried to clean it both physically and digitally as best as I could. Might do a rerip eventually, only God knows when I'll get around to that.

Here

Sejayno / Maths Balance Volumes - Split

Label : 8mm Records - 8mm 031

Country : Italy

Year : 2008

Format : C44

This one's a bit odd, I feel like I got a bootleg of a bootleg. There is some sort of incongruence between my copy and everywhere else I've looked on the web, biggest glare being the difference in cover and tracklisting. Most places I see it's usually just the bird without a listing under it. Also, I can't find any place that links the "Blade Runner" track title to this release or to anything by Sejayno for that matter. Strange.

Speaking of Sejayno, whose name I always mess up for whatever reason, I have another release of theirs that I might post if I feel... Inclined to do so. You might also be familiar with MBV, but I don't have anything else by them. Though I did have Loveless a long while ago, pretty good album you might have heard of it.

Both groups do a noisy take on freefolk from what I see, Blastitude fodder from what I hear. Another Pierre ambiguity is the track order itself, my tape topside is dominated by Seyjano and the flipside likewise sublimated by Math Balances Volume, which contradicts what the "official" websites say... Odd.

Here

Smegma - The Smell Remains The Same (Singles 90-95)

Label : Anarchymoon Recordings - anok18

Country : US

Year : 2007

Format : LP

What an artist/album title combo, buy on sight stuff right here. Smegma is a passing complexion around these spheres of experimentation, a household noise. I'm not very well heard when it comes to their stuff, being mostly relegated to their compilation contributions. I was quite surprised to hear a somewhat traditional song structure wise when I dropped the needle into its bearings. I was expecting free improv noise from the word go, not psych noise rock. I guess that's why they were singles, obviously destined to be a radio hit.

But really, a lot of great stuff to be heard here, from the aforementioned stylings above, to collage, to industrial and so on. And a bunch of combinations of such.

Here