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

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.

Here

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

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

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

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.

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.

here

Rеinhold Brunner - Klаnger 1996-2008

Label : Bad Alchemy - Nr 77 / Attenuation Circuit - ACRB 1001

Country : Germany

Year : 2013

Format : CDr

Certainly a collection of sounds. Concrete or midi, and field recording mixed high and low. A bit difficult.

This CD-recordable has a lot of air to breathe, its compositions (a decade's worth written and performed between) are experimental in nature and a bit of a skeleton at times. Some finished and some unfinished (feeling).

This is not Brunner's first go around on Bad Alchemy, having first released a 7 inch single with Thomas Hintner called "Spirograph" (or is that the duo's name?) with the 33rd issue in the ongoing series of zines. The Spirograph projekt continued so to speak with the netlabel release Spinnen.

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

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

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

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