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Rare 45s by these standard-bearers of the funky, counter-cultural heavy rock-scene in mid-seventies Rhodesia. Watch Out was its anthem.
Electrifying extracts from a Sunday service in the last snake-handling church in the Appalachians: the trance-like rhythms of a demented kind of rockabilly punk, with duelling guitars, concussive trap drums, and possessed, howling vocals.
“I’d sworn to stay far away from the snakes at the service,” recalls the recording engineer, “but instead they were waved in my face as they coiled in the preachers’ hands, and I crouched down at the foot of the altar tending to the equipment. The pastor soon was bitten and blood splattered, pooling on the floor. The female parishioners hurriedly came to wipe up the mess, and it instantly became clear just what the rolls of paper towels stacked on the pulpit had been for. You can actually hear this moment transpire towards the end of the track ‘Don’t Worry It’s Just a Snakebite (What Has Happened to This Generation?)’. The congregation leapt to its feet and a mini mosh-pit formed. The tag-team preachers huffed handkerchiefs soaked in strychnine, as they circled like aggro frontmen and an elderly worshipper held the flame of a candle to her throat, closing her eyes and swaying. The church PA blew out from the screams as a bonnet-wearing senior whacked away at a trap kit that dwarfed her. It was the most metal thing I’d ever seen, rendering Slayer mere kids play.”
Deep-fried rural psychedelia, primitive drum-machine grooves and woozy country-funk — including unlikely covers of The Blackbyrds, Michael Hurley and Jimmy Cliff — by Matt Valentine (MV) and Pat Gubler (PG Six), locked down in Vermont with pals S. Freyer Esq, Jim Bliss, Coot Moon and Carson ‘Smokehound’ Arnold.
Roiling, cascading, highly charged, deeply emotional piano improvisations by this Dutch-born, Columbia-trained chemist, who was an early follower of Gurdjieff.
Nyland released sixteen transcendent albums — nowadays pretty much vanished — of spiritual pianism on his own Gage Hill Press, starting in the mid-sixties. Each LP came with stunning woodcut artwork by Nyland’s wife, Ilonka Karasz (who also designed covers for the New Yorker); and highly refined black-and-white photography.
Piano Studies 337 is a particularly tempestuous performance that Nyland himself recommended to Ansel Adams as a good entry-point to his music.
Expert, highly entertaining survey of DIY punk in its late-seventies heyday.
Six songs juxtaposing torrents of sliced and processed audio with the warmth of the human voice.
With Norah Jones, Josh Mease, Clare Manchon, Natalie Beridze, Pascal Le Boeuf, and Desmond White.
‘Answers the question of what a collaboration between Björk and Venetian Snares would sound like, if both were more aware of the drawbacks of both diatonic tedium and ceaseless harmonic wasteland, respectively.’
‘Eight tracks of jagged electronics, heavy basslines, and fractured spoken word collide in a body-jerking soundclash that is both raw and vital.’
Good On Paper enjoyed ‘Baldauf’s crisp, distanced tones accompanied by Roe’s ominous, pulsating programmed bass line and four-to-the-floor whack, coaxing pure pop out of tension and incongruity.’ Electronic Sound Magazine hailed the LP as ‘a blistering, club-forward workout’, with ‘top-drawer, nose-bloodying electronics,’ positioning the Stroud duo as ‘rather like a wonky Tom Tom Club with added grit.’
The 1984 Hollywood novel, captivatingly read by Will Oldham. (Wurlitzer wrote the Two-Lane Blacktop screenplay for Monte Hellman, and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid for Peckinpah, amongst other illustrious works.)
‘Eleven pieces recorded over the past year, moving between the small town of Alfred in upstate New York, and Beirut; stepping out, as if onto ice, into a new life on a new continent during a time of tragedy, turmoil, and upheaval.
‘Unfamiliar instruments, new materials and new sounds delicately build on Yara’s intimate style, with its backbone of homemade mechanical music boxes and personal archive of family recordings. She explores the peculiar resonance of the metallophone, and delves into her collection of deconstructed toy pianos, guiding her music into ever more surreal territories… dreamlike, fragile, fragmentary, and strangely timeless.’
Fragile, deep, melancholic, enthralling home recordings from Beirut; lost in memories, worry, grief, rapture, love.
Very warmly recommended.
‘Highest recommendation’, Foxy Digitalis; ‘evanescent bliss, an invitation to a safe space both isolated and welcoming’, The Quietus; ‘a sweep of introspective, breath-catching moments of beauty’, Pitchfork. ‘The combination and contrast of highly familiar and highly alien elements give Asmar’s music a quality not quite like anything else I can name. The way she channels found voices into her surreal mix of sounds is particularly striking’
(Byron Coley, The Wire).
Her first two cassette releases remastered and presented in a gatefold sleeve featuring new art-work by Yara herself.
Bagpiping meets Partch DIY and the singing of Pandit Pran Nath, at the grass roots of Fluxus, in an empty swimming pool. Long, slowly building drones, lightly processed, with snatches of melody. Check it out.
A new imprint from the wonderful Okraina label out of Brussels!
These will be double-10”, in gorgeously designed gatefold sleeves, with full-size, eight-page booklets of photographs.
To start, lovely, unusual duets on five-string banjo and steel pan (also slit drums and gamelan). Flowing and meditative; open-air; enjoyably less arsey about folk, soulfulness and melody than much Improvisation. (When Jaki Liebezeit renounced Free Jazz, he said it had too many rules.) For the label it evokes Laraaji and Bill Orcutt.
Check it out!
Adding songs from Salad Days, Is The War Over, the Final Day single and their Testcard EP; plus a DVD of their final US show, at Hurrah in New York in 1980.
