Sector 2814

or at least decreased-activity time. I’m kinda getting to the point here where I’m forcing myself or just looking for stuff I hadn’t posted yet… not to imply that I think any of my more recent posts are less attention-worthy, but this whole thing has had a bit of a “going through the motions” feeling for me lately.

I still have a bunch of Avant reposts to do that I had kind of strayed from for a while… and I still plan on doing those… I’m just going to stop forcing myself to keep a schedule and do posts if and when i feel like it for a while.

readership and comments have been dwindling lately anyway, so it’s as good a time as any.

besides which, there are plenty of more interesting places to visit over in the sidebar.

an early death metal classic for ya here, which I’m surprised in hindsight that I hadn’t posted sooner since it’s one of my favorites. for some reason I discovered this album a good while after it had originally come out. I was especially impressed by the intro to “Mental Decay” and only found out later, as my musical education expanded into classical, that it was a “cover” of Mussorgsky’s infamous “Night on Bald Mountain”. this was apparently re-issued late last year on Areadeath Productions, as a double disc with some bonus 7″ and demo tracks. this here is just the original album, but there should still be copies of the re-issue floating around if you want a more complete picture of the band’s early years.

ok. I debated long and hard about whether to even post this. I mean, for anyone entrenched in the kinds of things I post around here, it’s probably old hat and maybe a tad obvious. it’s probably somewhere around the blogopshere already by now. and against my usual edicts, there’s a re-issue available on Atavistic (what I ripped here is an earlier issue of the disc I’ve had since 93 - I believe the Atavistic re-issues are also re-mastered, so in that sense I’m not giving away the farm since those probably sound better… but I digress)…

after re-visiting it several times this week, I couldn’t help be struck by the fact that despite having next to nothing to do with it (aside from the tenuous connection brought by Page Hamilton’s participation), this might just be the most evil, demonic and, well, metal album in existence. “Diabolous in Musica”? the tritone has nothing on the pure evil conjured by the walls of micro-tuned electric guitars here. sit down Sabbath, move over Euronymous, roll over Quorthon - bow to this power, far higher than anything any of you ever conjured, collectively or otherwise.

here

it almost goes without saying that Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis would be best known for their work in Wire, yet after Wire dissolved they continued working on this studio-based, far more experimental project. bearing more than a passing resemblance to the efforts of This Heat, Dome ran the gamut from short catchy song snipets to ambient sound-scapes, almost-choral chanting to industrial-flavored clanking that would’ve made early Neubauten proud, and then some. not an entirely even listen, but overall more good/interesting than bad/boring.

here it is

Uli Trepite’s (of Guru Guru fame) primary concern in the later half of the 70s… sorry, not in the mood to write a missive right now and there’s a handy little text-info file included to give you a bit more detail anyway… this showed up a while ago on the long-gone Krautrock Team blog, but I figure it’s worth resurrecting, so

have at it

yet another Boredoms side-project of sorts here, featuring Yoshimi and ATR. has some similarities to Rovo with trance-like aspects, Indian-music influences and eastern instrumentation, etc. not really in the mood to write a huge missive today so hopefully that’ll give you enough of an idea what you’re in for.

get it here

ps - forgot to check the size before I upped… it’s 116MB or so, so it only wound up on Badongo and Megaupload. you’ll live.

blog searches yesterday turned up a few hits of ppl who’d posted some variation of the infamous “Teenage Enema Nurses” track, either on compilations or with links to You Tube vids of the track… no one seemed to have posted any other tracks though… so I did some digging elsewhere and came with this. apologies for the low bit-rate and jacked tags, but this was the only copy I could track down. with titles like “Pocket Pool”, “Dildo Desire” and “Pepperoni Ice Cream,” themes don’t stray too far from the group’s hit single… just a bit of fun for today, enjoy it if you’re so inclined

my relationship with this album over the years has been somewhat on-again/off-again… back in the early-90s when I discovered Zeni Geva, I went through a phase of getting my hands on anything I could that purported to sound even remotely like them… which included this album. loved it at the time. interests evolved and/or changed over the years and then, a few years back I found myself wanting to revisit it, so I tracked down a used… or was it “new-old stock”? - copy. for some reason it didn’t grab me the way it used to… might have something to do with the fact that I used to listen to it a lot while I was high, but I digress… anyway, Jake recently made a passing comparison to it in his recent post of Ramleh’s “Blowhole” LP (which also included Chrome’s excellent “3rd from the Sun” LP, btw) and I was prompted to revisit it yet again. sat down with it a good handful of times this past weekend and realized how great it actually is. in fact, I’d now go so far as to say that Bower & co. - despite the man’s prolific output in numerous projects over the years since - maybe aren’t properly recognized as ancestors of today’s also-prolific mass of doom/drone bands/artists. T’would appear that Crucial Blast Records are aiming to rectify this however, as they’ve recently released a re-mastered re-issue of this masterpiece, with expanded contents and a new package design. hell, they’ve even made t-shirts to go with it (scroll down a bit). what I present here is a rip of the original CD (i.e. not remastered) and with no artwork, so check it out to see if you like it and then head over there for the newer “deluxe” version. while you’re at it, check out some of the other great artists on the label like Trees, Wildildlife, The Goslings, Totimoshi, Monarch! and others.

one of RRR’s infamous black-carboard-sleeve releases, this one compiles excerpts from Saturday-afternoon performances that occurred at the infamous store circa 1997. what was your first guess? some of it’s pretty boring, but there are some choice bits from Foom, Idea Fire Company and Quarreling Xenophobic Waitresses, among others… tracks are titled by artist.

enjoy

although they do seem to be slowly resurrecting and looking for other options, it doesn’t appear that Lost In Tyme have got all of their archives restored as of yet (many of the listings lead to dead links/erased posts)… so unless/until they do, I feel obligated to make available this spacey, keyboard-laden psych/prog masterpiece from 1969, containing then-future members of Egg and Gong. definitely one of the best albums I had picked up over there and very much worth keeping available.

go get it

can you tell I’ve been in a metal mood lately? call me Pat Boone… anyway, this little gem is a blast from my fanzine-making past that doesn’t seem to be in print these days… hell, the copy I have is a cardboard-sleeve promo that I think I got from either Boris or Corrupted when I used to correspond with them in the mid-90s… I remember a lot of friendly cross-promotion going on back then and when you’d get a promo package from one band, half the time they’d include stuff from two or three other bands they were friends with at the same time.

memory-lane strolling aside, it still stands as one hell of a punishing album even by todays standards… a straight up brutal mix of hardcore and death metal with a ferocity matched by few bands in either genre at the time. can’t really find anything indicating whether they’re active now - seems like their last release was in 2001.

this one came out on Howling Bull on 1997. nice discography page here. not much else to say, really…

grab it and get your face punched in

let’s begin by framing this post with a bit of context. the place where I currently reside - a little place known as Moncton - has a pretty nice local music scene; with plenty of great bands and some very decent venues at which to witness them. one thing we don’t get a lot of here is out-of-town bands - especially the type who come from countries other than Canada - who will actually tour or play in this part of North America (for you yanks, we happen to be located east - and depending which part of the state you’re in, north - of Maine). granted I’ve missed a few (damn kids), but in the past two years the biggest names I recall playing shows here are Behemoth, Martyr, Krisiun/Belphegor and Rotting Christ. oh, did I mention it’s a pretty metal town too? yeah

so when a rumor began to circulate that my favorite prog/shred-metal band Behold… the Arctopus were going to play here, I figured it had to be bullshit. the source of the rumor was a band in another town 1.5 hrs away from here who had apparently been contacted about setting up the gig and sharing the bill. and then… nothing. no promotion. no word of any other kind. this probably wasn’t helped by the fact that the guys who run the main venue(s) in town, where the show was supposedly taking place, were out of town on tour with their own band. but in the end, it turned out to be true and thankfully - mostly through word of mouth and a thread on a local message board - there was a decent turnout. not only that, but it turned out to be their first-ever show in Canada.

a while back, a friend of mine had jokingly used the term “skullfucking” when someone asked what type of music Behold… plays. it might have been more accurate than first predicted, because my brain was melted, blown through the back of my head repeatedly and I was indeed skullfucked numerous times by their performance. not only that, but they played another gig in a smaller town 20 minutes from here two nights after the first one. a group of about ten of us from here drove down for that one as well and we were pretty much the only people who stuck around to watch their set. so I got skullfucked all over again. bought a bunch of their merch (they must have brought most of it on tour with them though b/c the site is sold out of a bunch of stuff I picked up at the gig - translation: GO SEE THEM IF YOU WANT TO BUY THIS STUFF). talked to them a fair bit both nights as well - couldn’t ask for a more stellar and down-to-earth bunch of guys. considering their combined talent, having egos to match would be entirely justified - but none of that here. they just kept thanking us profusely for coming to the shows (especially the second one) when it should have been us thanking them for playing here. yes, I’m getting somewhere with this.

in all of my gushing over these shows in various places on teh interweb so far this week, one thing is becoming oddly clear to me: not nearly as many people know about this band as I originally thought. or, people know but just don’t care/aren’t into it - which is fair enough I suppose, since it does take a certain type of music fan to truly appreciate what they’re doing here. either way though, they’ve pretty much become my favorite active band (not that I didn’t like them a lot already) on the strength of these two shows, so I’m gonna plug the hell out of ‘em.

for anyone who hasn’t heard them yet, the only way I can describe them is with a metaphor: calling Behold… the Arctopus the next evolutionary step after late-80s Voivod would be like calling King Crimson the evolution of early Black Sabbath. I made a comment while mesmerized by their live DVD at post-show party that I’ll stick by: this band is something you want your planet to be remembered by. I semi-seriously considered buying a second copy of the DVD to put in a time-capsule.

hear them for yourself on their myspace page.

let’s not forget to mention the fact that these guys are all pretty prolific musicians who also play in other bands and/or have solo projects of their own.

Colin Marston (Warr guitar - that’s the big Chapman-Stick type thing he’s holding in the pics, btw):

- plays bass in Relapse math/prog-rock outfit Dysrhythmia

- does all instrumentation and drum-programming (with live drum samples as opposed to “canned” sounds) in his similarily-styled solo project Indricothere

- does all sorts of things in experimental/metal duo Infidel?/Castro!

- plays guitar (and collaborates with Jarboe) in experimental/drone/ambient duo Byla

Mike Lerner (guitar) also has a solo project called Direwolf in which he handles all instrumentation, vocals and drum programming. another must-hear.

Charlie Zeleny (drums):

- also drums with the most excellent Blotted Science, which is spearheaded by guitar mastermind Ron Jarzombek, formerly of (80s tech-thrash wizards) Watchtower and Spastik Ink.

- played on the yet-to-be-released new Kayo Dot album, which he tells us is “a lot more jazzy” than their earlier material

now that I’m done with the (deserved) pimping, it’s worth pointing out that Behold… added a cover to their set at the second show. when Colin announced it, everyone in the place thought he had said “this is by a band called Foreigner” in an attempt to either get the attention and/or make fun of the freaked-out, head-scratching, violence-contemplating rednecks in other sections of the bar. my friend asked him about it after the set - as it turned out, he had actually said “this is by a band called Coroner“… upon this reveal, my brain instantly jumped to my youthful days of catching (and VCR-taping) the “Masked Jackal” video on the good ol’ Power Hour. for some reason, I had only ever checked out Coroner’s first two albums “R.I.P” and “Punishment for Decadence”… actually, the exact reason is likely that I had no idea they’d become progressively more technical with each subsequent album. to rectify this gross misjudgment on my part, I set about familiarizing myself with their later albums in an attempt to figure out what the cover was. if my guess is right, it’ll turn out I didn’t have to go much further than Coroner’s third opus, No More Color (that’s a link to the album so y’all can’t say I didn’t give ya nothin’ t’day… ingrates )… based on parts I remember hearing at the show (especially the intro), I’m convinced that Behold… covered what has become my favorite track on this album: “Tunnel of Pain”. and hell, if I’m wrong I still discovered (better late than never) another excellent older album to share with you, my faithful readers.

last but not least: I don’t often do this sort of thing - in fact, this might be the first time I’ve ever posted pictures on this blog - but how ’bout some evidence of (one of) the shows in question:

since this one also disappeared quickly from Sludge Swamp, allow me to present it again. it’s a one-track, 16 minute ep this band released in 2000 I believe… I’ll come clean with the fact that I know virtually nothing about them trivia-wise, but I’ve had it on constantly since grabbing it and can’t seem to locate any new copies for sale anywhere… all you really need to know is that this is sludge done the way sludge should be done: ridiculously heavy with insane distortion, improving on something of Western origin as only the Japanese can… and if worse comes to worse: it’s only 16 minutes of your life

a recent discovery by me, apparently now going by the name Ultrabunny… they tell their own story here… what you can expect to hear within is a sort of avant-punk-mutant-mish-mash that falls somewhere between Butthole Surfers, Happy Flowers and early Ween; with a bit of Dead Milkmen and maybe a dash of no-wave for good measure… in other words, exactly what you’d expect from a group who started out aspiring to be “the worst band in the history of music” and ended up being anything but…

so, you can get it one-track-at-a-time from the band themselves here

or take my easier way out and get the whole thing at once here

here’s the other Freedom In A Vacuum comp. I promised when I posted Unbecoming… took me a bit longer than I’d anticipated to figure out which box it was in. FIAV used to run an annual and eponymous festival at Toronto’s Music Gallery (pretty much the central venue in the city for avant/experimental/etc performances and events, even to this day although it has changed locations from what I understand). the tracks on this disc are all excerpts from performances by of some of the artists who participated over the years that the festival took place. includes a few legendary Canuck groups such as Violence and the Sacred and Mind Skelp-cher… shares a couple of the same international artists (Randy Greif, Plecid) who appeared on Unbecoming… some other luminaries of the day’s experimental scene (Illusion of Safety, 1 A.M. Umbrella, Sigillum S)… and an unfortunate track from the personally-reviled Edward Ka-Spel - oh well, ya can’t win ‘em all.

enjoy

another one first brought to us by the defunct Fun With Earholes blog… anyone who’s checked this band out - we posted some other things by them here and here - knows that they were doing the whole prog-tinged-indie thing way before the cool kids embraced it… and that’s prolly all we need to say about that. let’s welcome this fantastic album to the blogosphere again

————————————————————

after you’ve digested that, surf on back and spend some time clicking on the myspace links for all of these excellent, currently-active bands we recently discovered thanks to their coverage in the also-excellent Drop Dead magazine. while they may not have coined the term per-se (I think that honor belongs here), DDM aptly refer to most of these as “mutant” bands - i.e. mixing elements of no-wave, post-punk, NDW, noise-rock, early industrial/electronic/experimental, folk, whatever to come up with interesting hybrids defying any other type of description. I’m not normally one to do “aggregator”-type posts, but these bands are all worth your attention if you enjoy the noiser rock and no-wave-ish stuff we’ve posted around here in times past:

Silver Daggers

These Are Powers

Ex-Models

T.I.T.S.

(ok, I already knew about those four. in fact, I posted T.I.T.S. a looooong time ago)

New Collapse

White Experience

Naked on the Vague

Haunted Fucking

Factums

Marfa and Ne-af

Deaf Deaf

The Creeping Nobodies

The Sticks

Strip Mall Seizures

Medio Mutante

I Can’t Read

Genders

Red Voice Choir

A Woman’s Weapon (check out their awesome Misfits cover)

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last but definitely not least, when you’re in the mood for something heavy check out Jake’s recent post for some excellent material from Zeni Geva and the Grave/Deviated Instinct/Devolution 3-way split .

ok. that should keep everyone busy. enjoy.

another Avant outing, though apparently there was legal wrangling over whose names actually wound up on it… the story goes that Quinne put the sessions together, but that one or both of the others refused to allow it to be released without their name adorning it… whatever the case might be, it’s a nice one - sort of an “easy listening” version of the whole Downtown-NY aesthetic, I suppose.

give it a spin

the departure of great blogs like Lost In Tyme and Fun With Earholes has left me realizing that, in addition to the “Avant resuurection project” I’m slowly trying to complete, there was some great material on those blogs that’s also no longer available (AFAIK, at least)… so with that in mind I bring you this, one of my favorite noise-rock records of the 90s, which was originally brought to us by Fun With Earholes.

enjoy

I was originally planning this for the next post on Wednesday, but with No-Longer-Forgotten-Music having just posted the original Freedom In A Vacuum comp. LP today, the timing was just too good to ignore… so my faithful readers get a bonus post today as well. F.I.A.V. was a Canadian label in the late-80s/early-90s who specialized in the experimental/noise side of things. being Canadian myself, I fell into contact with some of the artists involved with F.I.A.V. and the whole scene in general when my own interest in such things was piqued… and thus I wound up with my own copies of most of the F.I.A.V. comps (I’ll be perusing some boxes for the “Blind Man’s Gallery of Mirrors” comp. over the next few days for Wednesday’s post if I can find it)… although this one claims to be international, exactly half of the 10 artists who appear are, in fact, Canadian (Empirical Sleeping Consort, W.A. Davison, Crawl/Child, Dead Masochistic Gut and Pierre-André Arcand). the rest comprised of some highly-regarded names from the international noise scene of the time: John Duncan, Randy Greif, PGR, Allegory Chapel Ltd. and Plecid. it’s been a while since I posted anything in this vein, so…

enjoy

I don’t often post hip-hop ’round these parts. and not because I dislike it. it’s true that my exposure to it has been more limited than other genres. it’s also true that I generally tend to sway more toward the type of hip-hop that other noise/rock/avant/whatever fans like myself usually enjoy (i.e. Dalek, MF Doom, stuff on Anticon, etc). what originally intrigued me about these guys is the fact that they’re a German hip-hop group. what kept me coming back to them is that they’re an excellent hip-hop group, regardless of any (initial) language-related novelty.

call it a by-product of growing up in the 80s, but for a long time I’ve kind of unconsciously associated the sound of “good” hip-hop with a certain tone that comes out of most 80’s (and some 90s) models of Akai samplers. in particular, the older 12-bit and early 16-bit ones (up to about the S-3000). any idiot knows the MPC-series - which have those same sampling engines inside more of a beat-box housing - are pretty popular pieces of gear in hip-hop land. I really have zero idea what kind of gear Kinderzimmer actually uses for production, but there’s still a similar “grit” here that really comes close to those same tones… to my ear anyway. and that “grit” is what really endeared them to me.

as far as I can tell, this was the only major-label release from this group - the rest have been on smaller/indie labels. this one was released in ‘02. I originally discovered them on another blog that has long since gone by the wayside - I won’t mention names in this case, for reasons that would be obvious if I did.

I can’t seem to locate any new copies available (though some sites are in German, which I can’t read) - if anyone knows otherwise let me know and I’ll remove this post. until/unless that happens,

get it here

and you can also enjoy some fun “interactive” activity with Kinderzimmer themselves here

I’m not normally one to nick stuff from other blogs and re-post it, but I had to make an exception here. I found this a little over a week ago at Sludge Swamp, where posts are so frequent that they disappear from the front page quickly, usually in a matter of three days tops. since I’m, um, a little less frequent, I figured it would get some additional well-deserved attention here. this came out in ‘01 or ‘02 IIRC but isn’t in print as far as I can tell - which is a shame. incorporating varied styles from Grief/Corrupted-style sludge to the noisier side of indie rock to the collage trappings of plunderers like The Tape Beatles, it’s an all-over-the-place genre-hopper of the kind I adore.

get it here

thankfully someone did ask for this, so I get to have a bit of a “phone it in” day today. equally brilliant if not even better than the previously posted “!Quilombo!”, the awesome title-track from which also leads off this opus.

enjoy

whether or not you enjoy the majority of Jim Thirwell’s work, there’s no denying the absolute genius of this project, particularly the title track (this track also leads off the also-excellent “Gondwanaland”, which I’ll make the next post if this one goes over well).

get it here

Avant outing by this Manhattan-based composer, showing different sides of his work. the title piece takes up the majority of the 30-ish minutes playing time and consists of performance/collaboration with other names familiar from this label (Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, etc). the other two tracks are probably best described as musique concrete for sampler: “Cartoon for Scott Bradley” is a piano/sampler duet that evokes Carl Stalling at his finest; “Trio for Samplers” also being aptly titled…

get it here

I’ll have to admit that I’m not that great at talking up some of the music I post here, even though I do love it. this Avant release is no exception. Previte’s name should be familiar to most (at least from this collaboration I posted a while back, if nowhere else)… but that being said, I think this review sums up the album far better than I could hope to, so I’ll take the lazy way out.

get it here

ps - as a side note, I’m giving ShareOnAll a try for this and the next few posts… not only do they spread to other filehosting sites ala Massmirror, they also allow you to choose which other hosts you want to use (to a maximum of five). they also have a login/file-sorting system to keep easier track of the links (one of the drawbacks to Zshare is that it doesn’t offer this) and an upload progress meter (something else Zshare also lacks). I’ll be using it to “spread” the files to Zshare, Mediafire, Rapidshare, Badongo and Megaupload… this should leave plenty of options for folks who have “issues” with one host or another - also handy if one host decides to remove the link, since the other four will still have it. time will tell whether ShareOnAll will remain a viable option, but so far it’s the best one I’ve encountered.

although this was an Avant release, I had some exposure to this group during my teenage “punk rock mailorder” phase, via some 7″ releases and/or compilations they appeared on back then (i.e. early-mid 90s). for whatever reason - I still can’t really put my finger on it - they were never quite my cup of tea. which is odd, since any way I’d describe them on paper would indicate that I should love them. but for whatever reason, I guess it wasn’t meant to be. that said, I am still committed to slowly-but-surely making the Avant catalog available in “The Sector”, so:

here ya go

soooo… ya think Big Black invented the idea of loud/distorted guitars over a drum machine do ya? think again. whether by necessity or design, this French group did it all the way back in 1977, the year these two singles were released. granted, there’s more reckless punk abandon on display here than Albini & co. ever mustered (though the latter do deserve credit for tightening things up in the execution and production departments) and the drum machines of the day weren’t exactly technological wonders… I won’t blather on about how things were “better back in the day” (I wasn’t even a year old when these were released) but all the same, these singles are an important history lesson for anyone who might not have been aware of their influence on other bands who in turn influenced other shit that’s going on today.

get ‘em here

this 1996 Avant release sees a bit of a departure from the type of material I had been used to hearing from Z’EV. his percussive tendencies - particularly those involving various types of metal - are arguably what he’s best known for. and, truth be told, that’s where my own affections for his material are the strongest. what we have here though is an interesting mix of speech samples, acoustic percussion and what sounds to my ears like some electronic percussion as well. one review I read characterized this as his best release - I don’t know if I’d go that far (and I won’t claim to be familiar with his entire catalog either), but it’s certainly one of the more enjoyable of the ones I have heard. I was also reading on another blog that had posted some of his earlier material that Z’EV appreciates and encourages internet-based sharing of his work, so here’s one that no one has to feel guilty about

knock yourselves out

despite sharing the same name, I don’t think this particular Avant release has anything to do with that animated green ogre that my kids love so much. instead what we have here is another ensemble of downtown-NY musicians, containing pretty much all aspects of what that usually entails - aspects of improv/jazz, hints of no-wave, etc - as well as hints of cuban music. these divergent styles congeal into a sometimes-enjoyable, sometimes-meandering whole. most people will probably recognize Ribot best from his time with the Lounge Lizards, but his Wiki entry provides more detail as well as additional links if you’re so inclined. in the meantime, like most Avant releases this one is out-of-print and difficult to locate remaining copies of, so until/unless that changes,

here it is

I’ve posted material by this band before and this gem originally came from Spending Loud Night before he nuked the old blogger version of his page… since it wasn’t up there for very long I’ve decided to offer it again here as it’s too good to be missed.  it was a little over 100MB and I hate Megaupload, so…

all but the last track here

and just the last track here (it had to be zipped since zshare apparently only does streaming if you upload audio files directly)…

(Avant stuff should resume next week if all goes well)…

ok, been meaning to do this for a while so we’re gonna take a short break from the Avant reposts…

a while back I posted a bunch of MX-80 releases, but I had split up “Big Hits” and “Hard Attack” into separate posts even though I had ‘em on the same disc. I also discovered I’d indexed the tracks incorrectly when I ripped it the first time… so I’ve decided to come back with a fresh rip of that disc and figured I may as well put all the MX-80 stuff together in one big post.

ergo, the “Big Hits/Hard Attack” dual re-issue, properly indexed this time, is here

the old link for “Crowd Control” is still active here

and the one for “Always Leave ‘Em Wanting Less” is still active here … since I’ll be deleting the old posts that this one is replacing, here are my comments on this one from the original post: lastly we have what seems to be an official release (it was on Atavistic) with excerpts from live sets in Chicago and San Francisco in the mid-90s. all the hits are here and then some… if you thought Rich Stim’s narratives sounded dry and witty on the albums, wait til you hear him on this one

and don’t forget the excellent release I posted eons ago by MX-80 side-project O-Type

enjoy if you haven’t already.

an Avant release from this frequent Zorn cohort, which sees him collaborating with Eyvind Kang, among others… to be honest, most of it isn’t really my speed at this point in time… pleasant enough in the background… except for the last couple of tracks, which add some percussive elements to the proceedings and really grab my attention. YMMV of course and let’s face it: with a label as varied as Avant was, it’s probably a rare person who will absolutely love every single thing they released…

get it here

having apparently been a part of the NY no wave scene at some point (he also played as part of Rhys Chatham’s ensemble for five years or so), Bill Brovold brought his sensibilities to Detroit in the mid-90s and started Larval with fellow guitarists Erik Gustafson and Beth Wilusz. although the line-up shifted over the years, this  eponymous debut on Avant Records shows signs of the no wave past along with an eye toward the future of more symphonic, so-called-”post” rock bands to follow. thoroughly entertaining and surprisingly accessible.

get it here

bit of a “phone-it-in” day with this one… we all know who he is and what else he’s done… yes this was part of the Avant catalog… “cheap-pitch-shifters, talkboxes and twiddling; oh my!”

get most of it here

and the last two tracks here

a 1996 Avant outing from this well-known merchant of grind (O.L.D.), doom (Khanate) and outright insanity (Phantomsmasher) finds him on “calmer” terms in comparison to much of his other work. guest vocals from Ruth Collins and production assistance from Mick Harris (whose own Scorn would be an apt point of comparison for this) seem to assist him in combining elements of dub and ambient with some of the prog tendencies that also came through in his Flux projects for Relapse in the 90s, which I recall sounding somewhat similar to this. not much else to say really, except that if you’re not familiar with his work by now, it might be time to get busy.

may as well start here

having been part of the SST stable during the 80s, this group made their final and most accomplished outing on Avant in the early 90s. I think they’re well enough known to preclude much of a preamble on my part… their dub elements play a larger part here and the intricate, Stravinsky-influenced chord progressions in their heavier moments can perhaps be interpreted as a precursor to/influence on the likes of Iceburn. great album.

get it here

probably another case of “no introduction needed”. this album, the group’s only output for the Avant label, has seen some criticism from their fans for sounding too “polished” and not as raw in the production department compared to most of their other releases. musically as well, it shows a lot more restraint than some of their later material. regardless of all that, I still personally enjoy it and can see how it might serve as a sort of “bridge” to their more “difficult” output for the uninitiated. at any rate,

don’t just take my word for it

released almost 15 years ago now and having actually occurred another 11 before that, this disc was one of Avant’s first outings and was probably, for a good while there, the longest playing release one could find from this band. of course, that honor now belongs to the far more thorough DNA on DNA collection released by No More records in 2004, which is superior to this document in a number of ways… in light of that fact, this particular album now exists as much as a document of the label that released as it does of the band itself. but regardless,

here it is

ps - thanks to Scott for this as well as many of the other Avant releases I had missed, which should keep us busy here for a while to come.

a short outing on Avant here by this Canadian Plunderer, showcasing a slightly more sophisticated/experienced technique than his more (in)famous release. I really feel that Oswald needs no introduction at this point, but if you’re unfamiliar and google doesn’t help, feel free to ask.

or, you can just hear his work for yourself

taking a short break from the Avant releases today to bring you a gem I had obtained a while back from yet another recently-downed blog… it seems like ages ago now that I posted the younger Brötzmann’s Koksofen release, but this one stands right up there with it. fans of early Swans material know that they laid the ground for a lot of musical evolution that followed them, from the slow industrial-grind of Godflesh to the hate-filled sludge of Eyehategod and their countless imitators. but picture the Swans‘  sound during the height of their mid-80s nihilism and bombast, then put that in the hands of free-jazz progeny and you get what we have here.

anyway, forget my pointless babbling and listen to this album already…

this almost seems… well, odd… when put next to the other Avant releases I’ve posted so far. infectious, catchy, indie-with-a-hint-of-no-wave-influence songs from a femme-trio that would almost seem more at home on Kill Rock Stars or something. the fact that it came out instead on a Zorn-run label where it seems so out of place makes it even more perfect than it already was. the fact that it’s a whole lot better than most other bands fitting a similar description (that’s right, I’m talking about you Sleater Kinney) is just icing on the cake (groan… sorry).

anyway, don’t just take my word for it

another Avant release spearheaded by Laura Cromwell and featuring a bevy of guest musicians on different tracks, as far as I can tell. for a picture of what it sounds like, imagine the aesthetic of The Shaggs filtered through the sensibility of a downtown NY artist and you’d be pretty close. like a lot of releases featuring aspects of improv it can be hit and miss, but there are some brilliant moments here, including “worry”, “a gift from france”, “ho-down” and a dub-sensible version of the infamous “you’re no good”. and let’s not forget to mention the downright disturbing narrative juxtaposed with children’s songs in “satansatan”.

get it here

another Avant release… not much to write at this point, as I haven’t yet had the opportunity to revisit this in as much depth as I’d like before trying to say something about it… but since I’m trying to maintain a Wednesday + weekend posting schedule…

get it here for now
and maybe I’ll update with some more comments later.

another Avant release of improv, of which the most recognizable participants are vocalist Tenko (known also for her work with Ikue Mori) and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide. truth be told, it would be fairly uneventful without Yoshihide’s contributions - the rest of the instrumentation is the standard g/b/dr/v set-up… and even with his contributions, some tracks toward the middle of the release tend to lose my attention… but they are bookended with superior tracks like “Metabollic Love Sphere”, “In Convolution”, “Fragments Realm” or the title track. it’s hit-and-miss like most improv, but the “hits” are definitely worth a listen.

get it here

continuing the “Avant resurrection project” yet again with this collaboration between Buckethead and “Brain”. jumping everywhere from twisted funk to overdriven drum-machine beats to acoustic guitar/bongo jams (which almost seem like piss-takes) and of course the obligatory extended solo-electric piece… truth be told, this is probably a bit of an endurance test even for fans of the two… but it still has enough moments of brilliance to be worth the not-so-great bits.

get it here

in the on-going saga of the “Avant resurrection project”, here’s a group that more or less tailor-made themselves for release on a Zorn-curated label. the story goes that they started out transcribing Naked City charts and playing them live. they got brave enough to approach Zorn with their work at a Painkiller show and he was duly impressed… enough so that he eventually encouraged them to write their own material and record an album to be released on his label. given their beginnings, you’d be guessing correctly to think that this sounds a lot like Naked City… but you can’t say that like it’s a bad thing.

get it here

another Avant-resurrection with this Wayne Horvitz led outfit, also featuring alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss, bassist Fred Chalenor and drummer Mike Stone. stylistically rooted in jazz, with excursions into other downtown-NY-isms (most notably in the bass department) and occasionally veering into more chaotic territory ala Horvitz’s more “famous” output with Naked City.

get it here

… that’s John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wayne Horvitz and Bobby Previte, names that should all be recognizable in their own right. with track titles like “Bleeker & Bowery” I think the theme here is obvious enough. what I know nothing about is the impetus behind the four of them getting together to do this project… so instead of waxing intellectual on that I’ll share my own experience with this record. to make a long story short, there was a record store owner of whom I was a regular customer in the mid/late-90s, who found me all kinds of things that were difficult at best to track down in the pre-internet age. among other things, this would include Fifty Foot Hose’s “Caulron” and Omoide Hatoba’s “Mantako”… occasionally, he would plunk an item down on the counter for me that I hadn’t asked him to find, telling me I’d enjoy it. this disc was one such item. he knew my tastes well, evidenced by the fact that this disc has held a high spot in my collection since that day. as best as I can tell it’s not currently in print, though there does seem to be used/old-stock copies kicking around at various distros, such as this one. easily worth the price of admission if you can spare the change for a hard copy.

if not, or if you want to prove me right before you buy, check it out here first.

continuing the “Avant Records repost project”, albeit slowly, this is IIRC the most recent thing that had been posted on the original blog in question before it got deleted or went invite-only or whatever they’re doing this week…

as for the band, some review I read somewhere compared this to Mr. Bungle… I guess that’s vaguely in the same state as the ballpark in terms of the genre-crossing and mish-mash going on here, but this is done with a far more downtown-NY sensibility by - you guessed it - downtown NY musicians. not to mention produced by the mighty Zorn himself. as usual, others have said more interesting things about this group than I have the time or inclination to type, so google them if you want more info.

or just get the most important thing - the music itself - here

this was (according to wiki) their second release overall, a 7″ that came out on Jade Tree about a year prior to their full-length debut, “Kill Atom Smasher” (which Fun With Earholes recently posted). anyway, we enjoyed that post so much that we decided to take a break from the barely-started Avant Records reposts and share this little gem. “real” activity probably won’t resume until the new year, so here’s a short but sweet holiday treat in the meantime.

get it here

(just for the record, although there appears to still be a “buy” link for this on the Jade Tree site, it just brings up an error message. I have a bit of trouble believing that a 15-year-old 7″ is actually still in print, but if it really is then I’ll be glad to remove this link)