Circadian Rhythm - 新鮮なかおり

Label : Air Records - AIR-3008

Country : Japan

Year : 1986

Format : 7 inch

Some Eastern hospitality in the form of a cute little 7 inche package. The music is quite comfortable, too. A languid Lacrymosa side project, with pop sensibilities between the avant bursts. It's odd, I quite enjoy the B side and do like the chintzy little melodies of the A-side, but this doesn't grab me as much as I would have anticipated... It has all the niceties of the Japanese new wave in all its [musical description/cliche] and weirdo sensibilities (or zolo, whatever that is). Sort of like a lot of technopop I hear, I would prefer to hear kraftverk or O. My. Dee.

Of course, I could just let it settle. Let it grow on me, yes, grow on me like a, er, mushroom. Yes, yes, yes, yes,  Psilocybin hallucination or insomnia? I'll go with the latter, my circadian clock's only right a couple times per day.

I neglected to scan the back side of this one, wouldn't you believe it? Lucky enough, someone was gracious enough to facilitate the missing spaces to Discogs, making my job halfway obsolete. Oh, if you would like to hear more from this rather obscure outfit I recommend checking out Tony Coulter's show on WFMU. If you bug him enough he might just queue em up.

Here

Somesax - Flapper

Label : Pingo Records - PINGOLP 001

Country : Denmark

Year : 1990

Format : LP

Ripped by Scramoutcha

Danish RIO, who know? My biggest connection to the country is LEGO. Though I'm not sure if the abbreviated form of Rockin' Position is pronounced as one would say river in one or few of the romance languages. Carrying on, this was an old wish of mine. That is, to hear. No big deal, but it's nice to finally be able to hear through the obscurity. And yew, toe.

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

Tuned Out - (The Epics) Apart From The Contamination

Label : n/a

Country : US

Year : 1999

Format : C60

I admit, I bought this because it was one of the few tapes filed under Experimental on eBay that wasn't Zooropa or whatever. Another factor was that it's cheap, and that I have no idea what it is. Well, what it is is noizy hardcore punx. Of course, a large factor of the noise can be attributed to recording quality, but noise is noise. Experiment!

A bit of a hail mary, but I'm sure if all else is equal these guys were/are from Allentown. And at least one of them went on to play in the Atown Sluts. Do with that what you will. To digress, I was originally thinking I'd either put this on my varied detritus blog or send a little birdie mail to Terminal Escape since this seems more their bag... Yet here we are.

Do keep in mind that this is a C60 in name only:

Here

Legacy Of Sorrow - Discovery

Label : Endemic Music

Country : US

Year : 1988

Format : C70

Back from the grave, just in time for Halloween. Also back from the grave is this, which I thought was lost in the purgatory of shipping and handling. But now it's here and I need to deal with that, and you have a chance to get some listening in.

 If you look in the liner notes, you'll find some familiar names in Bob Drake, Mark Fuller, and Eric Jacabsen. Yes, all three of these men were in Thinking Plague, plus trumpeteur Ron Miles. Musically, it is rather similar to the Plague's signature sound, but without the apathetic beauty of Susanne Lewis' pipes it reminds me a lot of Het. Lots of air in these instruments, and lots of little twists and turns too being a live recording; some familiar and unfamiliar melodies may catch your ears.

Here

Die Welttraumforscher - Gold Vom Tiefen Himmel

Label : Das Moniflabel - PP031

Year : 1993

Country : Switzerland

Format : CD

Naive art, the true solitary reveries of an outsider*. Is this naive? Only an appearance? If even, it's impossible to be cynical about such beautiful music and warm sleeve art. Made right in the wheelhouse t'where I first entered Pfluger's dreamlife, this is a nice journey into a mysterious bois.
Drink it in.

Empty spaces are to be filled with imagination, or somesuch.

I recall quotes pertaining to a similar notion.

I figured I'd try a taste of what's over my paygrade.

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*wrong Rousseau

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

Down With People - Down With People

Label : Circularphile Records / Nadirean Extensions - NE002

Country : US

Year : 1990

Format : LP

That isn't how the Lambchop song goes, but I digress. Here today is a hidden, er, thing from the NYC underground. Not quite the Shimmy-Disc gem, but it's serviceable and might just grow on you and me. Horticulture.

Down With People (or DWP, not sure if they are the same) are an elusive little band, I can hardly find a peep about them on the internet. Does that make me a pioneer? Sons of Pioneers?
I dunno.

Sonically, this reminds me of the Fibonaccis. That's high praise, I love the Fibonaccis. Fibonaccis interspersed into the Downtown music scene seems money to me; something is missing however, it's not a golden ratio. Some sort of "indie" inflection throws me for a loop a bit, might be bias. Avant aspects lacking, but that's me being pretentious. I prefer to be portentous, respectively.

Here

Damarge - Les Box Set (Sur La Plat)

Label : Equation Records - E=mc04

Country : US

Year : 2004

Format : Lathe Cut

What do you know?
I've decided to drop this behemoth here. Even a passing familiarity doesn't quite scratch the surface. OK, maybe not that esoteric an artifact, but it surely is strange. Lemme preface with a previous review:

A very, very curious document of a rather obscure 80s synth band. On land and on sea, these tracks never rose to the surface til the early 2000s. Snowboy got his bearings here, and the other guy dwelled in miscellany. What makes this box set so odd is the way it is presented: numerous lathe cut records from the King Peter himself, labeled with various appropriated animu and second life-esque images (looks like someone scraped the page of an '03 era imageboard), a CD-Rom (which, to my surprise, has not rotted one bit), and a bunch of pleasantries such as fridge magnets and pins and, of course, stickers.

The music itself holds up pretty well, surprising that none of these appeared on any cassette compilations over the years. A whole case history for the band itself comes with the whole package, and the package itself can be enjoyed digitally:

http://www.chronoglide.com/damarge.html

I was in danger of repeating myself (h/t Fad Gadget), but I don't care anymore (Fad). Yes, yes, yes, yes a peculiar amalgamation of lowfi synth madness. I swiftly thank the makers of the dead for the included CD-rom, making my job just a bit easier. All you would want in visual and textual form is in this measly .zip:

ici

Toutefois, me being a muzak blogger of some integrity, no matter how faulty, I know that the intrepid listener may find the 2004 era 128kbps mp3s found on the compact disc insufficient.
Have no fear: panacea!

Here

You may note while listening, this is not especially superior to the audiophile repellent above. As noted in the blurb above that, this is the work of the high King. That be as it may, each disc and its grooves which house each song fall prey to the inherent flaws of the lathe cut alternative. Plus, a ground buzz in the background I never got around to fully remedying. O'well. 

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

Various Artists - Cookie Wagon

Label : Dhyana Records - DHY 018

Year : 1999

Country : Allemagne

Format : C90

In a world of such far-flunged conclusions and twisted spiders' webs in terms of international Cosmic Coincidences, it can't be too far-fetched to come to the realization that all of these musical blogs found here on the Wired are just a part of a conspiracy seeded by M.Nomized to spread each and every one of his appearances on obscure cassette compilations. It's always the French, right?

For the first time in this post, I would like to speak seriously, if for a moment. No joke, there is some good stuff on display here. Contained within the (unscanned) brown envelope, a musical world is unleashed. Alright I wasn't being very serious there, but I digress as always. 

Dhyana are a weird case. Of course, it's not like I can't say that about every single label I've posted from here; but they are weird even in the context of this strange conception. This German outfit dabbles in a lot more forms of experimental EM than what is usual, which acts somewhat to the detriment of their comps in my damaged drums. You may like it, but some of the stuff here sounds dated to me. And I like quite a bit of stuff that could be put under such a nebulous label. I dunno, definitely a lot of interesting stuff going on here but man, some of that IDM and DnB kinda stuff didn't age well. Don't take it from me, though, take it from the Man!

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

And yet another "Reupload Roundup"????

andmoreagaiN....

City Wildlife - City Wildlife

Label : Edition Unibeirrt - L

Country : Switzerland

Year : 1987

Format : C30

Swiss not Scheiße. Neutral bias, maybe? Another one from the conspicuous corner of New Wave obscurity; Residential, yes. Dash of early Ween I feel. To avoid rehashing my RYM review, I'll actually talk about the music in English rather than buzzwords and halfhearted platitudes.

Yes, a mini-album as described by the experts at Discogs dot com. As can be seen from the tracklisting on the J-card you can get a glimpse of the brevity of most tracks on the album. Sketches more like, as I do like to describe. The music is a strange minimal treat for minimal ears. Synth experiments mix with vocal experiments and guitar experiments. Or maybe it sounds like one big (small) experiment. A demo album, perhaps? Maybe that's how I got it from Recrec just a week or few days ago.

Here

The next reupload roundup comes nearer and nearer, just need to polish some stuff up; Stayed tune, mon  lecteur.

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