Sector 2814

vinyl-only outing from a permutation of this sadly-defunct Brooklyn outfit, this one featuring “core” members Adam Kriney on drums and Gene Janas on upright bass; along with Mario Rechtern (Austrian saxophonist active in free-jazz/improv since the 60s). it really hearkens back to the ESP-Disk/etc., favorites of that era and bears down with a ferocity that gives a whiff of what Last Exit might have sounded like in trio form… minus the Sharrock-shred and if Laswell were less of a wanker.

looks like some copies are still available here if you’re not vinyl impaired

but if you are, then here

either this or it’s predecessor appeared quite some time ago on the long-deleted blogspot version of Spending Loud Night, who seems to have also recently resumed posting – much to my surprise when i wandered over there to grab this link.

anyway, upon hearing this – along with fellow mid-60s ESP-Disk oddities The Fugs (who were recently chronichled over at Decrepit Tapes) – i became accutely aware that there was, in fact, a precedent for the Sun City Girls prior to their existence (their early cover of The Fugs‘ “CIA Man” making this fairly obvious).

so what was the precedent for this? who the fuck knows. drugs probably had something to do with it… and given their involvement with ESP Disk, it’s likely that the freer forms of jazz primarily purveyed by that label had an influence… but whatever the case, you should become familiar with this tripped out garage-folk fuckery post haste.

been a while… generally not feelin this a whole lot lately. might come back to it regularly, might just post sporadically when something really jumps out at me. in the meantime, i doubt i’ll be bothered with any re-up requests. most of this stuff has been here a good while now and a lot of it is available easily enough if you know where to look.

anyway, onto this… long story short, some great and underrated synth-punk i only recently discovered myself. as far as i know this was their only full length release… there’s a newer discography/early-years type thing recently out that contains this and a bunch of singles n’ whatnot. Forced Exposure has it, i’m sure a bunch of other easy-to-find-on-teh-webz places do as well.

in the meantime, enjoy this pre-remaster version of the LP

mid/late-80s West Virginian hardcore band who were often referred to as “jazz-core” and other such labels, suggesting a transendence from the limitations of basic punk rawk which their level of musicianship definitely brought out. sort of halfway to being an Am-Rep-style “noise rock” band and with more than a hint of Greg Ginn’s jazzy/metallic guitar tones from later Black Flag releases. some seriously good stuff, long forgotten and recently resurrected from my own memory banks. join me in my nostalgia.

i’m pretty sure i have versions of this on both cassette and LP around here somewhere… but either way, thankfully someone saved me the trouble of ripping/encoding around 130 individual tracks… even then, some of the tracks here include multiple tracks from the LP, since the actual number of over 130 is whittled down to 99 (everything’s here though – i checked it against the tracklist on my vinyl copy).

anyway, for those who didn’t know about ‘em when they were around, MPA were a Jason Flower-led outfit from the Vancouver area active in the mid-90s who incorporated pretty much all of my favorite styles of music into one amazing package. a bit of Black Flag-ish hardcore, a bit of Descendents-ish pop-punk, a bit of Voivod-ish tech-thrash (MPA even appropriated the “Killing Technology” font for their own logo), a bit of early Napalm Death/Carcass grind, a bit of Naked City-inspired speed-jazz and a healthy dose of pure whackiness influenced by the likes of Japanese favorites a la Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, etc… MPA threw it all together seemlessly, more often than not in a minute or less.

with no exaggeration, this is easily one of the highlights of Canadian music EVER, underground or otherwise… seeing them live was easily one of the highlights of the entire 90s for me. you’d be foolish to pass it up if you aren’t already familiar.

sadly, as great as Mediafire have been lately, they still have the annoying 100 MB size limit, so this is in two parts: here and here.

goddamn, Austria (typo previously. oops) has given us some good bands over the years. i had totally forgotten about this gem (the unfortunate one or so minute of “rap-rock” in “Return of the Living Beat” notwithstanding) from my teenage years until Classic Extreme Metal unearthed it for me a few days back… quick turnaround over there tho and some folks might’ve missed it, so, here

(ps, sorry for the lack of activity lately. just not feelin’ it. vinyl got tedious to rip after the initial bout of enthusiasm. i’ll be back to it soon enough i imagine)

re-issue of some really early stuff, or something.

ps: not to sound unenthusiastic – i’m adjusting to a new schedule and a little sick so not up to much writing at the moment. but don’t worry, it’s good stuff here – if i hated it, i wouldn’t post it.

another slab-o-stupid from my favorite noise-rock fucktards of the 80s. fuck the Butthole Surfers… this is where it was really at.

two slabs of lovable noise-rock with amazing cover art from the band of the man behind the label that released it. whut?

as promised yesterday, here’s a full-length from these noise-rockers. not quite as good as their “Psychedelicatesen” album (posted here ages ago – use the search thing, i’m feeling lazy today), but still worth at least a spin or two.

ps – the last two songs on side a run into each other without a break so i kept them together tagged as track 4 and skipped to track 6 with side b. not to worry, nothing’s missing.

i’ve sung their praises before but i think, next to King Snake Roost, these guys were just about the best damn “noise-rock” band outta that whole Touch & Go/Am-Rep scene of the late 80s/early 90s… in fact, i might even interupt the stream of 7″s and bust out a full length i found when i dug out and re-shelved my LPs the other night. for now, enjoy these two killer tunes.

1985 single here from a band who, 11 years later, would become part of both the worst and best live experience of my life thus far. to wit: they opened up for Test Dept. in 1996 and i was, depending on what part of the night, fortunate enough to be in attendance. Test Dept. were glorious. ASF… not so much. it really just proved that certain styles of music (like theirs) are best left to the studio… but that’s neither here nor there. this single has two good songs so forget my crankiness and enjoy

kinda hazy on how i came across this one now… perhaps their label-association with the likes of God Is My Co-Pilot? or comparisons to Motherhead Bug (which, frankly, are about the only two apt comparisons that spring to mind)… knowing me, it was just as likely a random ad in some zine (fan- or otherwise) that caught my attention enough to send a money order or “well-concealed cash” into the postal void and be hopeful of getting a record back a few weeks later in exchange for my efforts…

anyway, pretty obvious but nonetheless enjoyable subject matter from this all-female NYC ensemble consisting of 3-4 percussionists, strings and saxes along with guitars etc… and… well, i’m sure the artwork and the title speak for themselves. love it

easily my favorite of the surf-revival bands from last decade, mainly for their inclusion of the organ, which propells this several notches above any others who might have been considered their peers. they had the best cover art too

more (insert-noun-or-animal-here)men fun from that mid-90s surf/garage revival that no one outside of MRR readers (and me) noticed…

for a short part of my misspent youth i got into all those surf/garage bands on Estrus and wound up with a handful of these 7″s (and a few 12″s. we’ll get to those eventually)… had a 7″ from each of these bands plus a split between them, so may as well throw these three up together…personally the Apemen are more to my liking these days and i kinda think that was always the case… anyway, here we have:

Mono Men – “Mystery Girl” 7″

Mono Men/Apemen split 7″

The Apemen – s.t. 7″

just becuase, it’s eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. i mean, look at that skull. LOOK AT IT! EEEEEEEEEVIL!!!!

(oh, it’s only 2 songs btw, depsite the claim to the contrary on the cover)

two tunes in glorious mono from the rulers of the mid-90s shit-fi heap.

indieland’s favorite bass-playing couple Kira Roesller and Mike Watt doin’ their thing on another Ecstatic Peace release from… 18 years ago? jesus christ i feel old now…

Boredoms/Free Kitten/Ooioo drummer does vanity record for Thurston Moore’s vanity label, back in 1993. that about sums this one up

you know who they are, you know what they do (did)… and if for some reason you don’t, fun though they are, these 10-ish minutes won’t do much to clue you in.

another Eerie Materials outing here and a long-time favorite of mine. pretty sure anyone who’s steeped in this stuff will know who Caroliner – billed here as Caroliner Rainbow Fire Tongues on the Fingermill of the Paste Demon – are. Eeyore – billed here as Eeyore Ass Guzzler – are their cousins in spirit if not actually related somehow. another one of the fun things about these limited releases was the handmade covers – at least the Eeyore half of *my* cover is the only one that looks that that, since the various pieces of the image – including that little green birth control pill under their name – are glued to the sky-blue backround. fun times.

#8 in the Eerie Themes series shows that our favorite plunderers ECC – who’ve received plenty of prior coverage ’round these parts - had coinded the idea (if not the term) of “mash-ups” about a decade before the world at large caught onto the phenomenon. not only that, but they pretty much made it unnecessary for anyone else to bother trying… i mean, “accapella” Chuck D over Herb Alpert instrumentals? yeah… everyone else can drop their vinyl crates at the door and head back home.

unfortunately i’ve only got two of the releases from this Eerie Themes series released by Eerie Materials in the mid-90s: this one, and tomorrow’s post… no indication anywhere whether this one – #8 in the series – should be spun at 33 or 45. i thought it sounded better at 33.

ps – if anyone has or knows where to find copies of Eerie Themes #s 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 or 7, i’d be grateful for a hook-up. watch for #4 tomorrow.

about 12 minutes of live improv from the 1994 incarnation of this well-known and long-standing improv ensemble. Musica Elettronica Viva!

pretty much the definition of a novelty record if there ever was one, this is one case where digital versions will never approximate owning the real thing and manipulating it on a turntable. first it should be noted that all of the sound sources used to create this were taken from manipulated vinyl, making it a bit of an insular experience from the get-go… so you’ve got the a-side, which plays at 45rpm and has a few locked grooves along the way… then you’ve got the b-side, which plays at 33rpm and is billed as “21 locked grooves” but, who the hell can tell, because a bunch of them are cut in a way that makes the needle skate backward into a previous groove… and it will do this for 2 or 3 grooves at a time in some cases, before it advances to another one and actually stays put. and this doesn’t start right away either, since the first bunch are just straight-forward locks. so like i said, this is a case where these rips really only represent the one time *i* played with the thing… because more so than most other vinyl, when played in real life this is truly an experience that’s never the same thing twice.

two fine slabs of noise from these fellow Canucks, who were likely best known for their split LP with Noggin

this F/i stalwart has also been known to strike out on his own… as he did here. sorry i don’t feel too talkative. shorter records = shorter posts, i guess.

there is kind of a through-line between these last few posts since Gregg Turkington had something to do with all of them. he “produced” this one. as for Neil himself, well, you either know or you don’t. and if you don’t, you can find out.

back when i first posted this, i’d included it with their other 92124 ep and it turns out i’d found an incomplete copy anyway. i finally found and ripped my own copy, so here it is in all it’s glory, “Darn It Duck” included!

edit: removed at the request of Eabla Records, who will evidently be re-issuing this in some form shortly. keep an eye out for it.

yeah yeah, both of these tracks are on “Uncomfortable but Free” but you don’t get all the other awesome Coalinga artifacts – including a letter of recommendation from the frickin’ MAYOR – with it. you do here. so take the extra copies of the tracks along with the images and be glad i wasn’t an asshole who ripped both sides of this, since they’re identical too. show some pride in the best parapalegic black metal ever made.

as the “artist” herself so eloquently states toward the end of this masterpiece: “Lisa is a capitalist, that’s the point that you all missed”. one-sided 7″ with an etched b-side. pretty much the definition of “pointless novelty record” if ever there was one… heh.

Bill T Miller first came to my attention via his production/studio work with sludge-masters Grief, though i soon realized i’d been encountering him by way of his own various projects like K.O.F. and Out of Band Experience – who share one of these 7″s – both of whom appear on the recently-posted RRR-100, among other places. the other split featured here is with Boston band High Defiance, whom i’ve never encountered outside this 7″. kind of an early version of “metalcore” (it was 1995) with some obnoxious DJ scratching and a totally ripping Maiden bit at the end of their tune. bit of an odd pairing, but in the best way possible.

i have no recollection of where i got this from but if i had to guess, most likely RRR mailorder back in the day. excerpts of interviews with Ed Kemper, Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy and Ken Bianchi. not sure, but the Bianchi bit sounds like it might be confession tapes. anyway, a bit of a silly novelty, but fun if you’re into that sort of thing.

oh, and guess what color the vinyl is?

so i finally got that USB turntable i’ve been thinking about for ages. which means we’ll be taking a bit of a turn and concentrating mainly on rips from my good ol’ vinyl collection for the foreseeable future. since i’m mainly starting out with 7″s, which are fairly easy to rip even to my exacting standards (ha), there should also be an increase in the frequency of posts (no promises tho).

so i figured what better way to usher this “new age of the sector” than a nice follow-up on our previous post – which was actually the follow-up to this. since it came out a little earlier in RRR’s storied existence, it features a higher concentration of older/more “famous” noise/”experimental” artists (PBK, Idea Fire Company, Big City Orchestra, Arcane Device, Borbetomagus, F/i, Blackhouse, Small Cruel Party, Skullflower, PGR, Beequeen, Kapotte Muziek, Caroliner, Achim Wollscheid, Emil Beaulieu, etc). there’s a fully numbered artist listing on the rear cover, of which an image is included – if you can’t read it on your screen then print it out, it’s pretty big.

and it’s Feb. 14, so consider this my valentine to y’all.

feel the love

i rarely put anything up that i’ve seen on other blogs, but i fully claim re-posting rights on this one since i’m actually ON THE DAMN THING. 5 times, no less (grooves 77-81). what can i say… RRRon had asked me to contribute 10 artists/grooves from the little cassette label i ran at the time (Mutant Cactus Recordings)… there weren’t even 10 artists on the “roster” by that point and a few who were had already contributed via associations with other micro-labels. i was already using two pseudonyms to release stuff, i just made up 3 more to complete the full 10. i even had to get contributions from a couple friends i hadn’t released anything by. incidentally, one of the grooves i created under the name Aardvark actually consists of layers/manipulations of some of the grooves from the original RRR-100 7″ (how’s that for incestuous referencing?). anyway, i was amazed to discover someone had actually taken the time to digitize all 500 grooves when i saw that Aesop had already posted it at the mighty Cosmic Hearse… like i said, i’m not normally one to blatantly steal material from other blogs, but i think my own involvement in the proceedings excuses me this time around.

debut CD-R (later re-issued, i think?) of bone-chilling… well, i dunno if i’d call it black metal like everyone else seems to. it’s got BM elements for sure, most notably the guitar tone… but it mostly moves at the pace of sluggish doom (complete with Khanate-ish tortured vocals) and has moments of outright dark ambience. call it whatever the fuck you want i guess, as long as you listen.

some primo, nearly decade-old sludge for ya here folks. although i eliminated the sixteen 1:12 tracks of silence between the first two songs and the (uncredited) “hidden” track – if you really want to waste space on your HD with 19+ minutes of silent audio files, i guess you’ll have to get this somewhere else.

it’s a shame there were only 50 copies of this CD-R made, because it’s a pretty goddamn glorious racket of noisy psyche with a good helping of percussion. definitely deserves to be heard, so get to it.

to hear this album you’d think these Swedes got hold of some of the early Amon Düül records and went on a worship/imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery trip… until you realized that it was recorded in 1967 and if anything, it was the other way around. incidentally, some compilation-makers seem to think they were Fins rather than Swedes… but i digress. this has probably been up somewhere already but who cares – it’s worth the half-hour of your time it’ll take to listen to it

LP-only release from last year, ltd. edition of 400. that’s the story they’re telling in the “real” world, anyway.

you are now being transported to a parallel universe where Sun Ra was the driving force behind P-Funk

back in the 80s not everyone and their mom had a noise project. so shit still seemed new and interesting, even if it was really just 32-ish minutes of treated/manipulated sex/porn sounds. back then, what was often mediocre content would at LEAST be somewhat made up for with interesting packaging… to wit, this limited edition picture-disc LP featuring what were supposedly autopsy photos of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. I KNOW, SHOCKING, RIGHT?!?!?! and offensive. very offensive…

proceed with caution

well, i just discovered the great How Disgusting blog, which offers quite the quality collection of metal releases from across its various sub-genres… went searching for more of this band after Cosmic Hearse jogged my memory with their first demo and lo and behold, there was the album i remembered them for, as the blog’s first-ever post no less. since that link is still live i’m simply pointing you to that post, but revisiting this album reminded me of how it taught me to listen past the production on an awful lot of metal releases i used to come across back in the day, and even still now. although it has that slightly-unfortunate over-flanged guitar sound going on and i’ll be damned if that doesn’t sound like a drum machine (or very stiff/gated playing if it is indeed live), you can hear how epic the whole thing would have sounded with a higher recording budget and/or more modern equipment. true talent and a blast from that past – we’ll forget about how weird it is to say that last bit about something i first heard as a teenager. follow the above link to get it and check out the rest of the posts while you’re at it – like i said, some quality stuff to be found there.

few words for this one… yes it’s close to 15 years old, but fuck if it isn’t still one of my favorite black metal albums ever.

“Ground Zero” 12″:

“Psychedelische Musique (Lava Surf Kunst)”

after X-ray BBQ’s recent post of the latter outing from these ex-Loopsters, i dug up the former for a sort of side-by-side. two completely different bands almost… you can decide whether the industrial-tinged brit-post-punk of the 12″, or the kraut-redux This Heat-isms of the LP, are more to your liking. a bit of something to be said for both in my estimation, but then, as you can tell by reading my own tastes are quite widely varied.

once again i’m falling into a bit of an “uninspired” slump… other things occupying my mind/time are taking higher priority at this point… and i may or may not make a habit of this, but i thought i’d try to remedy that somewhat by pointing your attention to worthwhile posts on other blogs, in the absence of my own.

with that in mind, i’d like to draw your attention to one of my favorite music blogs Cosmic Hearse for today’s post on the little-known phenonmenon known as Spirex.

i’m not gonna steal Aesop’s own words on them, but here’s what you should know: those of you who enjoy those 2-member duos of a noisier variety – most often consisting of bass and drums for instrumentation – would do well to check this out. as i said in my comment on the original post (yes that was me, i’m not stealing someone else’s words here): Spirex is (was) a lot like Planets, Lightning Bolt, Ruins, Godheadsilo, Jackwacker, Eloe Omoe and the like; but on a steady diet of Man is the Bastard and with an occasional side-dish of avant/improv.

following on the heels of Et Cetera, here’s some more under-appreicated free-form kraut greatness.

… or is it? according to discogs, the title is “Lady Blue” (also the name of the second track)… but from what i can gather, i think discogs has it wrong in this case. doesn’t really matter though – if you’re like me and have gotten a bit burned out on this whole “let’s re-issue every goddamn bar band who pressed 100 copies of a record in the 60s or 70s” psyche/kraut-revival shit, this might renew your faith in the idea that there are still some underrated/undiscovered gems from that period waiting to be unearthed… or at least properly acknowledged. i’m not even gonna try to do this one any more justice with words – ya just need to trust me that it’s THAT good and go get the damn thing already

after Kick to Kill recently posted material by the criminally-overlooked Breadwinner, i got to thinking about other bands in a similar vein… y’know, that whole Albini-esque, not-quite-hardcore group of bands in the 90s who set the stage for what’s now generally known as “math rock”… taking hardcore energy levels and infusing them with elements of prog-rock, while avoiding the levels of pomposity and wankery suggested by the latter term. outfits like Pitchblende, who’ve been well-covered here already… or these personal favorites of mine, Dazzling Killmen, spearheaded by Darin Gray (who was also part of Brise Glace – i seriously hope you lazy bastards don’t need a hyperlink to take ya to the post right below this one). preceded perhaps only by the likes of Bitch Magnet and bearing a slight tonal resemblance to various Albini-related projects of the day… anyway, i’m sure you get the point that i’ve been enjoying this album ever since it first crossed my path, so hear for yourself what my fuss is all about