Sector 2814

some more musique concrete/electro-acoustic excursions by these two Italian composers. as is usually the case with material of this calibre, there probably isn’t much I can add to the liner notes, which are included herein… so without further preamble…

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featuring the 48-minute piece of the same name, it is divided into “movements” as seen in the liner notes, but presented as one lengthy track on this disc. the disc also includes his infamous piece “Voile D’Orphee”, better known in some circles for having been featured in the film Altered States - which I’m sure a few readers are familiar with.

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a later release by this musique concrete pioneer, functioning as a soundtrack to Dziga Vertov’s film of the same title. came in slightly over 100MB, so:

all but the final audio track here

final audio track + images here

renditions of percussion-centric compositions by various 20th century composers (including John Cage and Henry Cowell) as performed by this Swedish ensemble. in this case it’s probably best to let the extensive liner notes do the talking… the booklet is some 30-odd pages - I’ve included all of the english pages as well as the photos.

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Charnel House compilation released in the early-90s. as the title suggests, it features mostly rhythm-centric artists or, in a few cases, rhythm-centric tracks by artists usually better known for drones. includes Illusion of Safety, Crash Worship, Voice of Eye and the excellent Left Hand Right Hand (whose “Humdrum” 12″ recently appeared on Mutant Sounds), among others… a staple of my collection for a long time.

enjoy it here

a compilation or 3-way-split release between Illusion of Safety, Hands To and Beequeen. each group contributes one longer track, all of them clocking in around the 20-minute mark.

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this may not be particularly rare since it was the band’s one and only release on a major label… but it’s still a damn good record.

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this would be that other influential “indie” group to come out New Zealand

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it should have occurred to me to post this on Saturday to make things a little more thematic, since this is yet another group David Grubbs was in… seriously, I think he was in just about all of the really good “college rock” bands in the 80s   … better late than never I guess…

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and an unrelated group, aside from the fact that – like Squirrel Bait – they had some releases on Homestead. this one includes a pretty rippin’ cover of Heart’s “Barracuda” if you’re into that sort of thing

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two albums (AFAIK, the only two) from a group that David Grubbs was in prior to Bitch Magnet

get them here

following up on the Bitch Magnet post, here’s a group formed later by some members of B.M.

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IMO, one could convincingly argue that this group are the true “forefathers” of “post-rock”… a title often bestowed upon Slint. realistically, this band was probably more than a small influence on Slint, so make of that what you will. oh yeah, did I mention that David Grubbs was also in the group? I hear he had a bit of an influence on the whole “post-rock” thing as well…

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another short one from these Am Rep staples. seems to be o.o.p. as far as I can tell.

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another one for the vinyl impaired, from these acid-psych damaged noise-rock mongers and their release in Skin Graft’s 7″ + comic book series.

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Michael Snow, Paul Dutton and John Oswald performing live in the mid 90s… these shows were recorded in the mid-90s in Quebec and Toronto… I believe I might have been present at one of the Toronto gigs, if it was recorded at the Music Gallery… but who knows. like I said, nostalgia is a wonderful thing… epsecially when it so conveniently encompasses three important cornerstones of Canada’s experimental/avant/imrpov scene, like today’s posts. but before I pat myself on the back too much…

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when I lived in the Spasm Band’s hometown of London, Ontario for a year in the late 90s, I really followed the title of this disc like a set of instructions: I attended their infamous weekly jams in the back room of the Forest City Gallery – you guessed it – Every Monday Night (most of the time, anyway). guess I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic lately…

so, here you go

I know this one has shown up on Mutant Sounds before, but in this case I don’t care – it’s one of my favorite “experimental” recordings of all time, even regardless of the fact that it also originated in my home country. I remember practically wearing out the copy at CFRU years ago… hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the years.

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I’m going to assume regular readers are familiar with Bananafish… if not, google it… here’s a collection of four of their comps, including tracks from Sun City Girls, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Caroliner, Pell Mell, The Thrown Ups, Sonic Youth/Lee Ranaldo, Emil Beaulieau, Tragic Mulatto, etc…

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mid-90s again, this time some vinyl comps on Kake Mix Records that they later re-issued on CD… this one has tracks by Flowchart, Amp, The Azusa Plane, Spiny Anteaters… Windy & Carl yet again… etc…

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it’s compilation time again today… here’s a nice one I picked up mid or late 90s with tracks from Bardo Pond, Füxa, Winy & Carl, Merzbow, Space Bike, The Delgados, etc…

right here

mid-80s group that put all of their contemporaries (including My Bloody Valentine, IMNSHO) and later imitators to shame, with stronger and harder-edged tastes of psychedelia than most of their shoegazing progeny. I have fond memories of zoning out to the “Arc-Lite (Sonar)” video as a youngin’, back when the Canadian music station used to actually play good stuff for a couple hours every Friday at midnight. today we present three of their albums:

“A Gilded Eternity” here

“Heaven’s End” here

“Wolf Flow” here

although the group has plenty of recordings available through their website, this re-issue of two older albums doesn’t appear to be one of them. one of the longest standing improv/free-jazz units, in existence since the late 60s, the albums were both one-day-of-recording affairs from the summer of 1969. since the two together came in a hair over 100MB, I divided them into the track-listings I found for the original albums:

“A Jackson in Your House” here

“Message to Our Folks” here

a couple of kind people sent me or pointed to various places where I could find pretty much the entire discography of this band recently… so I figured, even though some of these albums are also posted on other fine blogs out there, that I would put it all together in one post to make it easier for others to find. there’s a fair bit of material – enough, I think, to make up for the fact that this will be today’s only post. thanks to Mario and especially Pig Nipples for providing me with the majority of these recordings:

first, Cold Steel to the Heart

next, the Pain It Dark LP

followed by the Subnarcotic LP

two singles: “Aspetando Godo” and “DNS“

and finally, 13 More Protest Songs, which also includes a half-hour live radio performance by the group (placed in a seperate folder along with the artwork, since all of it combined was just a hair over the 100MB Mediafire limit)…

enjoy!

perhaps the pinnacle of should-be-heard-by-today’s-newbies drone masterworks, this PSF-issued disc is but a small sampling of a series of LPs that were privately released by Bertoia himself ages ago. He was apparently able to retire after reaping the monetary benefits of a revolutionary chair that he designed. He began to use his sudden abundance of free time to create his Sonambient metal sculptures, which droned and resonated in various ways. while his son Val continues the “tradition” today, these are four examples of the pieces that Harry recorded with the sculptures some time ago.

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re-issue (with bonus track) of this 1996 drone masterpiece – as touched on in the previous group of posts, this is a group who taught some of today’s worshipped-by-indie-kids-drone-clones how it’s done. beautiful, minimal, longform organ-driven serenity.

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“ambisonic” masterpiece here from Clock DVA alum. a bit of “ethnic” percussion, sax squall, urban field recordings and synth walls mashed together in an eerie presentation.

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some more experimental/noise excursions, this time from Phillip B. Klingler. in light of today’s other posts, this brief descriptive review penned by Sonic Boom seemed apt:

“Elite sound construction varying from the ear grinding annoyance of pure feedback to discrete particles of sounds that you might use to sonically clean your body. A varied abstract approach to sound manipulation primarily devoid from any pattern of commonly understood musical techniques. However, the sounds produced are not without a sort of unified concept, and in a sense mimic life in all of it’s myriad of forms. Intricately weaved clicking resemble radio test patterns while echoes resound from deep beneath some watery prison. A very complex experience is sound constructivism that most noise enthusiasts will enjoy immensely.”

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apparently a collective of whoever happened to be available for collaboration at the time, this project was headed up Mark Spybey (aka Dead Voices on Air, also a member of Zoviet France). stylistically, I guess it falls somewhere between his other two projects in terms of how it sounds, with an emphasis on acoustic sources. packaging designed by Climax Golden Twins, released on Scratch Records in 1998. the page for this album on the Scratch website doesn’t make it too clear whether or not this is still in print, but I can’t see any clear links on the page to order a copy, so I’m assuming it isn’t. unless I find out otherwise…

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continuing with another Kevin Martin-related post, this one also happens to include Eddie Prevost (of experimental pioneers AMM), Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum) and Kevin Shields (the actual guy from My Bloody Valentine, not the imposter who’s putting stuff out under his name now). as the title suggests, Thomas Köner contributes production skills as well. the “resurgence” of “drone” music in the past few years in indie-rock circles has struck me as amusing, particularly for the number of people who seem to react to it as if it’s this brand new, revolutionary genre… when in reality, folks like this were showing us how it was done over 10 years ago, and even they – with the exception of Prevost, who’s been at it since the 60s – were hardly the first.

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given that the two major proponents of this release were Justin Broadrick (who needs no introduction) and Kevin Shields (who’s done time with Broadrick in God and Techno Animal, besides also being a member of Experimental Audio Research), I’ve always found it somewhat odd that it seems to be largely overlooked by fans of the two, especially Broadrick fans. perhaps that’s due to it’s early discontinuation in the US combined with a planned re-issue that never surfaced… but whatever the reason, this is nonetheless – for my money at least – one of, if not the coldest, bleakest sounding electronic projects I’ve ever heard. having a bit more of a dub influence and slightly less of the monolithic heaviness of Broadrick’s more well-known outings, it still manages to convey an atmosphere of utter despair and hopelessness. be careful not to wallow in this one too much after a bad day… in two parts due to size:

part one here

part two here

picture the Butthole Surfers if they had seen a Borbetomagus gig and it had changed their lives forever: two members fired the other two, the remaing two picked up drums and guitar and were reduced to the mentality of 10 year olds, but retained their sick sense of humor. that, in a nutshell, is what Happy Flowers sounded like. you don’t see their stuff around much these days, though they apparently still get together for the odd reunion gig. this release includes their infamous first-ever track, “Mom I Gave the Cat Some Acid”.

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from what I can gather, this is a version of the Acid Mothers line-up that operates in trio mode and includes Tatsuya Yoshida on drums. if you’ve listened to anything I’ve posted here before, you probably don’t need me to tell you what that means.

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another recent “open the boxes years after moving” re-discovery for me. since most of the characters on the package of this release are in Japanese, which I can’t read or speak, I’m guessing + using the internet to determine the title. this early 70s psyche group released only the one album before guitarist/vocalist Fumio Miyashita went on to join the Far East Family Band. it was re-issued briefly in the late 90s, which was when I got hold of it. definitely an acid-damaged psyche trip – lead track “Too Many People” is basically an anthem in my hermetic life

get this gem here

here are the compilations I referred to in the earlier Psi-Fi posts. Volume I and II are here, for some reason I never did track down Vol III (though I’d be grateful to anyone who might be able to point me to a copy of it). aside from the strong repesentation of artists I’ve already posted (you’d only be one track short of the Cozmic Corridors and Temple albums between these two volumes, for example), it’s the other groups included here – The Astral Army, Fuerrote, Ten to Zen, etc – who are equally worth hearing. hell, The Astral Army’s “Interstellar Shortwave” from Vol. I is probably one of my favorite songs ever, but I haven’t been able to find it on an album thus far (once again, if anyone knows anything…). anyway, without further preamble…

it’s going to look like only two posts today, but this post contains two full-length compilations, so that should make up for it.

get Vol. I here

get Vol. II here

on a sad note, fellow blogger Dirk of Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll lost his battle with cancer this past week. please stop by the blog and leave a word or two in the “memorial comments” post…

this NWW/Stapleton-lauded item first came to my attention via a Forced Exposure catalog when it was issued in the mid-90s and promptly came back “out of stock” when I tried to order it (that may have been an initial re-issue of just the “Golem” tracks, but that’s beside the point). I think plenty enough is said about it here by those who were involved – far be it from me to try to shove anything into the horse’s proverbial mouth. forget Can, Faust or Neu!… hell, forget Brainticket and Xhol Caravan… this right here is likely the single highest pinnacle of krautrock achievement, IMNSHO. it’s also a big one, so:

disc one here

disc two, part 1 here

disc two, part 2 here

another “Unknown Deutschland” discovery whose full re-issue I later hunted down on the strength of the comp. tracks. sadly perhaps a bit of a waste, since 4 of the 5 tracks here were included on the first two volumes of the comp… but I digress. more on the gentle/ambient tip with this release as well, though for my tastes in a bit more of an enjoyable way than Galactic Explorers.

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first of two more Psi-Fi re-issues for today. I first heard this group on the “Unknown Deutschland” comps in the mid-90s (watch for Vols I and II of those on Sunday), along with Temple, Golem and others. although lumped in the krautrock, there’s very little “rock” about this release; it’s more like what Pete Namlook and his Fax compatriots would have sounded like in the mid-70s – hell, maybe this is some of what helped inspire “Dark Side of the Moog”…

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compilation of three influential Cleveland groups Mirrors, Electric Eels and the Styrenes. a few good reviews posted here sum it up better than I could hope to.

here

o.o.p. album from these masked surf weirdos.

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another one for the vinyl impaired, two tracks each from these fantastic mid-90s “surf-revival” groups, both of whom put on excellent live shows back in the day… especially Man or Astroman? who had some kind of giant electro-magnet in the middle of the room shooting live electricity all over the place when I saw them play years ago

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