A children's album of sorts! As its creators Malcolm Felder, Gabe Boyer and company envisioned it, A Journey... is "not so much a parody of children's music, as in fact an exploration of the style of production that goes into the creation of a children's album." That said, it features characters who go by names such as leading man Mr. Tadpole, narrator/dermatologist (?) Dr. Esophagus, Mr. Chipmunk, Mr. Jeebee and the Sunflower Cabaret. The sounds are playful and quirky. Fun for a wider age group than you might expect!
A side note: If you dig this lp you might wanna check out the cd called The Textbook Tapes which is a tweaked, lo-fi sci-fi concept album created by the same folks.
Hopefully all AQ-list readers are aware of the plight of Pennsylvania journalist and death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal (sentenced to death for a cop killing that he may, or may not, have committed -- regardless, his trial was hardly fair, making him indeed a
Previously released as two seperate, hard to find cds ("Old Stuff Part 1" and "Old Stuff Part II") on two different labels. Now some crazy person at NG Records has gone and released this new version, compiling (as it says) the early works (i.e. demos, singles, and compilation appearances) of this notorious blurr-core, noise-metal, very un-pc band from Boston. Over 7000 "songs" to be found here, spread over two cds. That's mainly thanks to the presence here of the tracks from the infamous "5,643 Song EP"... Now for most reviews of A.C. discs, we'd simply pick the best song titles and leave it at that, 'cause offensive & funny song titles are what A.C. does best. But the material on here dates from back when A.C. didn't supply titles (or lyrics for that matter) for their "compositions". So that leaves us to make a case for the musical rather than humorous value (or musically humorous value) of these tracks. Oh boy...well for all you experimental jokers out there, the aforementioned "5,643 Song EP" features the songs playing at the same time! There's actually three hours of material compressed onto the original 7", and it took twenty hours for them to record it! Compares favorably to the Francisco Lopez disc we made record of the week last list... Then there's the "Unplugged EP" tracks, where A.C. takes their screaming metal chaos into the acoustic realm for some unique results. And, any fan of John Zorn or Masonna should really check out A.C. as well, on general principles... truly a classic band, American outsider improv "genius". If not musical genius, then comedy genius. Sure, you or I could have recorded more or less the same stuff on your parents' stereo much like these guys did for their first demo (disc one, track one), but you have to admit that you'd never record so much of it, for so many years, or play such crazy shows. We (Allan and Andee anyway--in fact, A.C. was the first interview Allan ever did for his old 'zine) love this band. For you collectors, note that there's material on these cds not found on the original singles and such. And for novices, we also recommend A.C.'s "Morbid Florist" ep and "Everyone Must Be Killed" album to start with... The cd booklet includes detailed liner notes about each track/release written by A.C. mastermind Seth Putnam. All hail!
Let's just go on the record and say, that British comedy is far superior to American comedy. Especially in the realm of the ultra-uncomfortable. Love Curb Your Enthusiasm? Just wait until you check out Peep Show. Can't get enough of the Office? Well the British original is way funnier, and WAY more brutal. And you haven't even begun to feel massive gloriously hilarious discomfort until you've seen Alan Partridge (review of the series DVD elsewhere on the AQ site).
But way back when, the Brits were already showing us a thing or too, with the utterly amazing, very DIY, and funny as fuck Young Ones, finding its way to American TV in the '80s... the tale of a hippy, a mod, a punk, and a creepy money obsessed shyster, all living in a run down house together, with a talking hamster, an insane landlord, and bands like the Damned or Madness showing up every week to rock out in the living room. After the Young Ones dissolved, the punk and the hippy and the mod went on to the long running meta-sketch comedy show The Comic Strip. Super smart and sharp, but not afraid of being really really dumb once in a while (but in a really smart way).
Hence we have Bad News. The worst heavy metal band you've never heard. Taking the whole Spinal Tap thing in a much more dismal, depressing, volatile and gut busting direction. Culled from two episodes of The Comic Strip, the disc captures all of their 'hits' as well as track after track after track of the band bickering and even physically abusing each other.
As if you couldn't tell already, this is one of the funniest records ever. EVER! And unlike lots of 'joke' musical projects, the songs are completely kick ass. In fact the song "Drink Till I Die" sounds like some lost Motorhead B-side. Hell, A-side even.
They do a painfully bad version of "Bohemian Rhapsody", a Christmas single, and a handful of amazing originals, like their theme song "Bad News" and the super kick ass "Warriors Of Ghengis Khan". But the songs, as good and as funny as they are, are merely musical interludes for the fighting that comes between. And the cool thing, is it's not just clips from the show, it's band meetings, aborted recording sessions (including an amazing bit where they spend forever trying to make 'scary woodland sounds', resulting in one of them moo-ing like a cow, and yet another fight ensues since 'cows are not scary or evil'), confrontations over who re-recorded whose parts, lots of screaming and yelling and tons of profanity. It's intense and brutal and so goddamn funny. It's so relentless you can barely take it after an hour. Any one who is into Longmont Potion Castle or the Great Phone Calls record or Jon Wayne (the band) or Spinal Tap will love Bad News. Plus, if you can, rent the video, which is just as funny as the cd. You get to see Bad News actually perform at a British Metal festival, and get pelted with bottles and eventually beaten to a pulp, as well as all your favorite metal stars (Ozzy, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Lemmy) talking about how much Bad News suck.
Soooooooo goddamn funny and amazing and essential.
This week the Kismet label brings us two rare sitar infused flower power psychsploitation oddities: The 1971 sitar and electronics groove of Holland's Okko (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this far-out mindwarping "children's" record for the hippie acid kids: Kali Bahlu Takes The Forest Children On A Journey of Cosmic Remembrance from 1967.
Incredibly strange music indeed! This album is 4 long drugged out sitar, flute and gong meditations narrated by the child-like Kali Bahlu as she talks (a bit ditzily, we might add) to leprechauns, trolls, gnomes, witches, devils and moonchildren about comic consciousness or something to that effect. If anyone is familiar with Lucia Pamela, the eccentric bandleader and musician who made the hopped up Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela album about an imaginary trip to the moon, Kali Bahlu sounds like Lucia Pamela if she had discovered marijuana, opium and acid at the same time and then soon after found God. We can definitely appreciate the exotic novelty of such a record, and this would be excellent and fun to sample in a DJ set or mixtape, but it might be a stretch to appreciate it for anything deeper than that.
It could be a madman ranting to himself in the shower as heard through a thin wall of a squalid East German apartment; or it could be a cryptic piece of mangled sound poetry in the transgressive vein of Otto Muehl or Henri Chopin. Given that Stapel. Efeu-Faehrten comes by way of Tochnit Aleph, it really could be either. This is the same label that is run by Schimpfluch's Raionbashi and has released work by Masonna, Runzelstirn & Gurglestock, and G*Park; but there's a plethora of semi-outsider sound art and aktionist based tape wrangling that stems from the European traditions of arte povera, musique concrete, and/or pharmaceutically tainted method acting; and then there was A r t u r Zm i j e w s k i 's S i n g i n g L e s s o n , which featured chorales sung by a deaf children's choir. Uncomfortably atonal and profoundly touching at the same time. Such is the way of things for Tochnit Aleph. This album is a compendium of recordings from the German artist Michael Barthel, who seems to be situated more toward the conceptual ends of the Tochnit Aleph spectrum, but then again he could very well just be fucking insane. The process seems to involve recording various utterances of Ursonate / Jaap Blonk styled sound poems of repetitive, nonsensical syllables as something of primal building block of language or perhaps it's simply absurdist stuttering. He whispers and quietly groans these poems into a shitty tape deck that captures all of the room noise; and then he plays these tapes back with the volume cranked so that all of the environmental ambience becomes a wash of grit and white noise with distant mumblings. Upon repeating this process multiple times, it's a similar process as Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room, but the failing technology aggregates the noise and hiss instead of any kind of resonant frequency. In the midst of Barthel's softened, antiquated noise, his muffled sound poetry is interrupted / augmented by police sirens, radio static, and what sounds like it could be a really bummed out sheep. In other words, weirdo brilliance.
Second of two releases on the newly launched UK label Tapeworm, the other being a killer solo bass record from long time aQ fave and turntablist, Philip Jeck, while this one, well, this one is a bit harder to describe. A spoken word record by two mysterious ladies called Patrica And Ellen, reading a work by legendary (anti) post modernist Jean Baudrillard. Recorded By Vicki Bennet of People Like Us, these readings are riveting, due in no small doubt to Baudrillard's tangled wordplay, but also due to the strange delivery of the two women, who take turns, in their thickly accented voices, reading the texts, sounding like they're perhaps seeing those words for the first time, struggling through pronunciations, little giggles and asides, brief breaks as one hands the text to the other. We'll be the first to say, that we're not much for 'spoken word' records, but somehow this transcends, becoming some sort of art, or sound poetry, especially when the two are reading together, those moments are fantastic, playful, silly, and the delivery of the two, slightly off, with both randomly dropping out, or stopping for a breath, makes the reading sound less 'read', and more weirdly musical.
Obviously, this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely fun, and interesting, and quite strange! Like the Jeck tape, LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, we got about a dozen...
This is such a strange cd. And we've all become completely obsessed with it. A bizarre series of spoken instructions and long droning notes. Easier to just share Forced Exposure's description:
"The playing directions for the instrumentalist on this CD are derived directly from the so-called sucking stones sequence in Beckett's Molloy, where the author has his protagonists invent three variations of the correct way to suck 16 pebbles -- distributed between two coat or trouser pockets. Everything takes place inside the head, and yet these image provoking speech rituals find their way to the outside. Everything becomes the listener's projection room. We look on the speakers as we would an open, exposed interior. Speech is
its own dissecting instrument. Existence is transferred into speech, being is removed from its time. The images remain, the sound of speech remains -- in which the secret of an entire world is concealed." Simply, it's 3 actors, reciting instructions like: "Take a stone from pocket one. Put it in your mouth. Suck it. Suck it...." and so on. With the occasional moaning horn. Totally surreal and creepy and super great.
Originally released as a tape in 2014, this killer mix of far out, experimental hip hop, heavily influenced by Riot Grrl and queercore, now gets new life on vinyl, thanks to Ormolycka. And it's a good fit alongside the rest of Ormolycka's damaged hip hop roster (Antwon, Death Grips, Lil Ugly Mane, Burqa Boyz, Narwhalz, Bromp Treb, Juiceboxx, Shed Dwellaz), the music being a dizzying collage of grimy synths, twisted loops, stuttering, fractured beats, lots of buzz and static. The vibe is sometimes a little Digital Hardcore, sometimes a bit Anticon, shades of cloud rap abound, but MB gets way more gritty and fucked up, a sort of avant-trap, and damn, if this was straight up instrumental, it would be THEE beats and breaks record to beat, but then add in MB's crazy flow, and it becomes some seriously head spinning, next level, WTF?-hop, that is like nothing you've ever heard. There are a handful of guests too, most notably, Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna, who does a sung/spoken thing over a seriously grimy, beat-heavy, distorto groove!
Pressed on opaque, lavender vinyl!
It takes a LOT for a joke band to impress us. First, the joke has to be really funny. Second, the music STILL has to rule. Or at least be good enough to make the joke worthwhile. Nothing worse than a joke band that relies totally on their gimmick.
No need to worry about the mighty Bloodhag, the very heavy masters of all things Edu-Core. For those new to the 'Hag, imagine four nerds, white collared shirts (tucked in of course), totally obsessed with science fiction, so much so that each song is the name of an author, and of course the lyrics discuss the authors and their finest works, live the band hurls sci-fi paperbacks into the audience, and they even did an entire tour playing only in libraries!! It stops being a joke when it's this well researched and executed. Check out the cover too, a headless demon, laying atop a pile of books, the band dead with an 'overdue' notice stuck to one of their corpses, a warrior librarian, wielding a sword, clutching the demon's head, wearing sexy librarian glasses and of course with her library ID still around her neck. Awesome. Plus it's called Hell Bent For Letters! Fuck yeah! Check the Cavalar review elsewhere on the list for a rant on punny band names.
What do they sound like? Sort of like a thrash metal Karp, sludgy guitars, galloping drums, shouted vocals, sometimes thrashy and noisy, sometimes gloriously epic, sometimes sort of grunt and death metally. But pay close attention, you might learn something. The tracks this time around (and Andee's take on the books by the authors referenced):
"Gene Wolfe" (you must read his Book Of The New Sun series, so massive and dense and epic. One of the weirdest worlds ever written)
"Robert Silverberg" (just read Book Of Skulls on the recommendation of AQ pal Barbara D., disturbingly racist and misogynistic and homophobic (like many books written in the seventies) but if you can get past that, it's really intense and fucked up and so strangely mysterious. Being made into a movie which seems like a bad move)
"Douglas Adams" (recently re-read the Hitchhikers Guide 'trilogy' and it's still pretty darn funny. The movie was pretty good too)
"Orson Scott Card" (the Enders series is the series that made me love science fiction, just don't read any of the introductions or you'll realize what a Mormon kook he is and it might ruin it for you)
"Greg Bear" (The Forge Of God and Anvil Of Stars: one of the best sci-fi one-two punches ever. So epic and amazing!)
Okay, we could go on and on, the rest of the tracks / authors: "James Blish", "Anne M. Caffrey", "Iain M. banks", "Edgar Allen Poe", "Philip Jose Farmer", "Michael Swanwick", "Frederik Pohl", "Thomas M. Disch", "Franz Kafka", "Madeline L'Engle" and "Jack Womack".
If you like metal, you'll like Bloodhag. If you like science fiction, you -might- like Bloodhag. But if you love metal AND love science fiction, then pick up this slab of crushing edu-core, you just might learn something!
Imagine Neil Hamburger backed up by a drunk Albert Ayler. Imagine the worst comedian you've ever seen competing for your attention with an avant jazz musician in the same room. Imagine a 10 minute comedy sketch based on the assumption that DVD stands for
I mean, we're well aware that there's a healthy chunk of Aquarius customers that scan our lists specifically for things we describe as 'fucked' or 'ridiculous' or 'bizarre' or even just 'stupid'. Well, you're in for it now. You have been warned.
Anthony Braxton, much revered performer/composer/improviser, in yet another incomprehensible collaborative epiphany, has finally teamed up with...a stand up comedian. It's true. And of course, it wouldn't be true improvisation if the comedian weren't improvising as well, so what we're left with, is a series of skronks and squeals, and a series of witty (read: fucking stupid) riffs on newspaper headlines that are NOT FUNNY. REALLY NOT FUNNY.
I don't mean Neil Hamburger not funny, I mean plain old bad not funny...unbearably painful. So painful in fact that our own Andee qualifies this as a must own!!
Most fans of legendary (should we say infamous?) world music / punk / surf / WTF? subversives Sun City Girls probably know that a crucial one-third of the trio, SCG's drummer Charles Gocher, sadly met his demise due to cancer in 2007, thus bringing the band's 27-year long career to an end, with their final album being Funeral Mariachi released in 2010. But, their vast corpus of bizarre music lives on, as does the memory of Charles Gocher, at least if the two surviving ex-SCG's have anything to do with it. To that end, brothers Alan "Alvarius B" Bishop and "Sir" Richard Bishop have been touring under the name The Brothers Unconnected, performing an acoustic set of SCG tunes and screening a collection of Gocher's unusual video works. This double lp release documents the uncut entirety of such a show (minus the video portion of course), recorded live in Germany in 2011, with the Bishop bros. delving deep into the SCG catalog, going as far back to such albums as 1987's Horse Cock Phepner and 1990's Torch Of The Mystics to revisit an extensive selection of songs, all of 'em weird and wonderful (to varying extremes of both descriptors). Not only is this intended as a tribute to Gocher, and is something that any SCG devotee will enjoy, it could also serve as wide-ranging semi-introduction for noobs to the beauty, humor, and terror inherent in the SCG's utterly unique oeuvre!
Here's the full tracklisting: "Nyn De Gris Sang", "My Painted Tomb", "The Flower", "The Multiple Hallucinations Of An Assassin", "I Always Felt Sorry For The Monster", "The Brothers Unconnected", "Don't Fuck With The Squid", "Six Kids Of Mine", "Wild World Of Animals", "Academia Nuts", "Soi Cowboy", "Rookoobay", "I Deal A Stick", "Cruel And Thin", "Cooking With Satan", "Eyeball In A Quart Jar Of Snot", "Ali Baba", "Black Orchid", "Bitter Cold Countryside", "Dreamland (For Dinah)", "Horse Cock Phepner", and "Shining Path".
Handsome gatefold sleeve, with one lp on black vinyl, one lp on white vinyl, limited pressing!
Never before released on cd recordings "from Lenny Bruce's private tape stash."
Greatest hits record from the only metal band made up of Mexican drug lords on the run. Or not. This band of extreme metal bandits may or may not contain members of Faith No More, Fear Factory, Cradle of Filth, and Dimmu Borgir. But they most definitely spit
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"This landmark Wergo set presents 8 out of 10 volumes from John Cage's unfinished spoken diary. Read in the composer's own inimitable voice, these recordings provide fascinating insights into Cage's musical and life philosophies. These are not simply spoken word recordings -- each volume is sonically composed. Changes in typography in the printed text correspond to simultaneous changes in the stereophonic position and simultaneous changes in the volume of Cage's voice. This deluxe 8 CD boxed set includes a 64-page booklet containing several photographs taken in John Cage's loft and during the recording sessions in 1991, as well as a complete chronology of the composer's life." - Wergo liner notes. This is the new edition of this infamous Wergo document, with new, slimmer packaging and new written book.
What a fucking nut. Two discs of Cage reading, calmly and without expression, cut-up non-sensical passages from Henry David Thoreau's journals, live in Milan, 1977. The audience reaction is, however, quite expressive! Over the two discs the outcry builds: clapping, jeering, stomping, shrieking. Eventually the recording is more of the noise-making audience's near-riot than of Cage's performance, which is certainly in keeping with the man's philosophy of "music". Amazing and absurd. What a fucking nut!
Oh crap. It's here. It was indeed only a matter of time. A canine / avian metal meeting. Or something. On the one hand/paw/claw/side, there's Hatebeak, the grinding death metal juggernaut, fronted by lead vocalist Waldo, who just so happens to be a parrot! On the other, there's Caninus, a thuggy, metalic hardcore mosh pit bull of a band, fangs bared, leashes swinging, ummm, tails wagging. Yep, Caninus is fronted by tag team vocalists Budgie and Basil, both of whom happen to be pitbulls. If there was EVER a record made for AQ customers it's this one!!! Caninus is in full grind mode on this split, with spastic hyperspeed drum machines, buzzing lightning bolt guitars and Waldo's unmistakabe squawk. Caninus counters with some serious moshworthy metallic hardcore, bordering on death metal, with HUGE downtuned riffs, blasting drums, and a wicked array of snarls and growls and barks. And if there was ever any doubt, both bands ostensibly being joke bands, these guys are definitely true metalheads as the whole release is steeped in metal injokes. The Caninus cover art is Napalm Death's Scum album cover, except all of the people in the original are now dogs! The Hatebeak side is titled Bird Seeds Of Vengeance, named after the Nile album Black Seeds Of Vengeance, the cover depicting Hatebeak vocalist Waldo facing off against a bust of King Tut, the whole cover surrounded in Egyptian filligree. And then on the inside there is a photo of Waldo perched on what they purport to be the Spear Of Longinus, the actual spear that a Roman soldier used to stab Jesus in the side when he was on the cross! And then there's the Caninus lyrics, dense with metal / hardcore parody and written from the point of view of a dog (obviously)! Hatebeak declare "Avian Victory!" while Caninus proclaim "Go Vegan" as well as "Fuck You New York Post and New York Times" and in their thanks list give props to PETA, an animal shelter and even a pet supply store!! THE ANIMALS ARE NOW THE (METAL) MASTERS!!
If you always buy the weirdest, most fucked stuff that we recommend on our lists, then doubtless you already have Carnival In Coal's previous disc in your collection, the absurd/astounding "French Cancan". That's the mostly-all-covers disc on which this
Not sure what it is exactly that makes Cassetteboy manage to sidestep being nothing more than an overplayed bad joke, but there is most definitely SOMETHING. Most mashups, cut ups, Negativland style wacky plunderphonic records get played out in no time at all, the sort of records you -maybe- put on a mix tape now and then or throw on at a party, but ultimately they end up at the bottom of some pile gathering dust. But we find ourselves listening to Cassetteboy all the time, over and over, and laughing our asses off. Random bits of dialogue, movie clips, all manner of music, and lots of immediately recognizable voices, all chopped up and mixed up and re-assembled into super snarky, bitter, fuck the world sound snippets and song fragments, rife with anti-social sentiments, anti-government propaganda, some truly messed up Harry Potter porn, a crazy funny, awesome anti-Streets track, and all manner of perplexing non-sequitur humor, and loads of peurile silliness. Just give the sound samples a listen. If the Harry Potter clip doesn't make you laugh out loud, well, then this is probably not the record for you, but if it does, then you are in for a treat, as there is plenty of stuff even sillier, more outrageous and way more offensive.
As much as we feel like we oughta hate this stuff, Cassetteboy are just so good at their schtick that we can't seem to get enough. This is a bit like Negativland, only with that dry British humor and a much wider self deprecating streak. Most bands who do the whole cut and paste, spoken word taken out of context, weird sound bites over dance music thing end up sounding stupid and like they're trying way to hard to be funny and cool and hip and still somehow failing miserably. Cassetteboy on the other hand, sound like they're just fucking around, and thus there's no hipster weight to what they're doing, but the stuff they're doing is so perfect, and so funny, we can't help but dig it. Cassetteboy sound like blokes you'd want to have over, and sit around listening to crazy fucked up music. Mick's Tape is indeed a mix tape, made up of CB's wacky and sometimes tasteless chop jobs, turning innocent speeches and silly folks songs and instructional recordings into laugh out loud nasties. Then some bizarre and random actual songs (Ivor Cutler, Curtis Mayfield, Ramsey Lewis, Astrud Gilberto, Fennesz, Happy Mondays, Fela Kuti, Shalamar) as well as somekiller tracks from MF Doom, Jaylib, and Squarepusher. It's basically the ultimate aQuarius mix, tons of insane weirdness and laugh out loud silliness, some killer classic tunes, some super dope hip hop, some way out experimental noise, all woven together into a somewhat cohesive but joyously chaotic whole!
What can you say about Dave Chapelle? Other than he is one funny motherfucker. Funny AND offensive, taking on sex and race and everything else that gets people all riled up! But in a way few can actually pull off. Season one of the Chapelle Show was maybe one of the funniest things we'd seen since Mr. Show, and those of us without cable have been dying for season two. We've only watched the first episode so far, but if the rest of season two is even half as funny we'll be spitting milk through our noses for weeks. Highlights of the first episode include the racial draft (we won't give away all the results but the Jews pick Lenny Kravitz!), Samuel M. Jackson beer, and how things look cooler in slow motion. The rest of the season includes the now infamous Rick James bits and LOTS more. Looked like season three was a wash with Chapelle going nuts and heading off to South Africa for some mental health care and relaxation, but it has recently come to light that maybe that was all a big 'ol joke on us and we can actually look forward to more Chapelle!
Wu Tang Financial! Diversify bitch!
What can we say? We don't know a single person who wasn't devastated when Chappelle ditched his show and took off. And we also don't know a single person who has not been chomping at the bit for these lost episodes, the bits and pieces Chappelle filmed before freaking out. Meant to be parts of a third season, Chappelle's partner decided that it would be a damn shame if no one got to see these skits and he's right. So here you go. A handful of episodes, quite probably the last we'll ever see of Chappelle's Show. The only really good thing to come out of this, is that the new episodes are hosted by Charlie Murphy, who, if you've seen the first two seasons, pretty much gives Chappelle a run for his money EVERY time he's on screen. SO RECOMMENDED.
This is a recording of the speech Noam Chomsky gave at MIT one month after September 11th, dealing with the way that US foreign policy has contributed to terrorism in places like Turkey, the Middle East and Latin America. Chomsky clearly points out the absurdities of the American military action against Afghanistan as part of the "War on Terror," which has now morphed into an impending war on Iraq. While the situation in Afghanistan has dropped from the headlines (and even back pages for that matter), and this speech assumes some basic knowledge of US-led atrocities abroad and therefore takes on a bit of a preaching-to-the-choir tone, Chomsky provides some very interesting information on foreign policy matters (including many examples of the USA's total disregard for international law, even more examples of which, unfortunately, just may be cropping up in the near future). What's funny is that many of his examples are quoted from sources like the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor -- far from being an extreme voice, Chomsky simply reaches incredibly common-sense conclusions from readily available information, albeit information the power elite in our country happily ignore, comfortable in the knowledge that the American people will do the same. Scary stuff.
The Conet Project, originally released in 1997, has attained near mythical status around here. Many folks associate The Conet Project inextricably with our store itself. Which makes sense. We championed the Conet Project relentlessly, everyone here is obsessed, most of us owning multiple copies, some of us incorporating sounds from The Conet Project into our own music, and The Conet Project still ranks as probably THEE best selling release ever at aQuarius. Even more remarkable for the fact that it's not really music at all, at least not in the typical sense, and it is and always has been pretty expensive, as a deluxe 4-cd set initially, and import to boot. In fact until it went out of print for the last time a few years back, we had sold close to one thousand copies, and that's just in our little store. We even used to have a big chart on the wall, where we kept track of the sales, and for a while, we were even taking Polaroids of people who bought the Conet Project to display in the store, a snapshot of them holding what we can only imagine would become their new favorite record (buyer #382: Mike Patton!). Which all leads to the question some of you may have, what the heck is The Conet Project, and why are we (and many of you) so obsessed with it? And so thrilled that it's finally available again?! Yes, available again and obviously a big time Record Of The Week.
Basically, the Conet Project is a now FIVE-cd compilation (more details on the new 2013 edition's additional fifth disc is down below, near the end of this long review!) of recordings of mysterious shortwave radio broadcasts, known as "numbers stations". These numbers stations are generally believed to be encrypted spy transmissions, but no concrete evidence has ever surfaced proving that supposition. However, no credible *alternate* explanation has ever been demonstrated, either. For years (ever since the start of the Cold War), amateur radio enthusiasts have come across these sinister signals, and they continue to this day, broadcast in many languages all over the world (the theory is that some are CIA, some are KBG, some are Mossad, etc).
In general, the transmissions consist of a deadpan voice (sometimes an old man, sometimes a young woman, etc.) reading a seemingly random, meaningless series of numbers over and over. Sometimes the broadcasts are preceded by a musical cue (the "Swedish Rhapsody" music box one being a favorite of ours), and sometimes the numbers are not conveyed by voice but by even more cryptic electronics (as with "The Buzzer", and other noisy, abstract stuff found mainly on disc four).
Needless to say, hearing those amazing and baffling sounds collected on these cds is an unnerving experience. Not only does knowledge of the supposed purpose of these transmissions imbue them with a disturbing quality, but the repetition of the numbers combined with the background of shortwave radio static makes for a aurally hypnotic experience. If merely regarded as a piece of experimental ambient sound sculpture, The Conet Project would be a brilliant and affecting piece of work, yet with the added context of international intelligence and conspiracy theory, it becomes even more intriguing and creepy. Lots of information is included that provides a great deal of description of, and speculation about, The Conet Project. Which is possibly the most incredible, and weirdest, item of sound art/documentation that we've EVER had here at aQuarius. Mesmerizing, fascinating, unique, massive, scary, but sometimes even soothing. 100 percent recommended to the adventurous listener ('cause it's not for everyone!). And once you have it you'll understand why it had to be so many cds - being overwhelming is part of the obsessive allure of this Project. And it's not just us, The Conet Project has popped up in lots of unlikely places, most notably it was sampled on Wilco's breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, the title of which in fact comes from The Conet Project itself. Wilco were also famously sued by Irdial, the label who released it, and they lost! Some sounds from the Conet Project also popped up in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky, and over the years, we've heard it in various films and on various records, it shouldn't be surprising that so many weird music obsessives love The Conet Project.
Really, as we said, if there's one recording that seems to be most identified with aQuarius recOrds, or that at least we mention most often when trying to explain to people what it is that we're all about here, it's most definitely The Conet Project, and yeah, over the years there have been plenty of others, including Sounds of North American Frogs, Os Mutantes, Burzum's "Filosofem", Comus' "First Utterance", Boris, Circle, Philip Jeck, Village of Savoonga, and loads more since, many other records near and dear to our hearts (for instance, hearing the first Neutral Milk Hotel album always makes us nostalgic for the old 24th street store). But for some reason it's The Conet Project that really seems to sum it all up. It's all the things we really love: completely ridiculous (4, no, now 5 cds!), completely fucked (secret government spy transmissions), droning, weird. It's just so interesting and evocative on so many levels, both musical and totally non-musical, as a listening experience and also as a geopolitical cold war and beyond artifact. Definitely an all time perpetual aQ fave: Allan's got the whole thing on his iPod, so does Andee, he also owns multiple copies of the set, many of which found their way into his old band A Minor Forest's live performances, Jim has steadfastly maintained that this is the greatest record of all time, and who are we to argue? If it's not obvious, we all are a little bit obsessed.
And what this is all leading up to is that YES, finally after literally YEARS of being out of print and unavailable, The Conet Project, has been reissued AGAIN, but this time, with a WHOLE EXTRA DISC, with its own jewel case and booklet!! That's right, the new Conet Project is FIVE discs, not four, and if you're big Conet nerds like most of us, you might just have to buy a second (or even third!) copy. The new disc is not just another numbers station disc though, instead it's a collection of "noise stations", which essentially sound just like the numbers stations MINUS the numbers. So it's a series of gorgeous buzzes and strange hissing fields of blurred melody, lots of crunch and crackle, buried rhythms, whistling tones, strange textures, in fact, much of it is downright musical, so much so that we were musing, hmm, what if this new disc is in fact a hoax, a series of number/noise station like soundscapes created by some electronic musicians like Hrvatski? Naw... But there was in fact talk of a Conet remix project for years now, so it's not that far fetched, and in a way, if it WAS a hoax, it would be even cooler. But as far as we can tell, and according to our resident numbers stations / shortwave expert Jim, these are in fact that kind of weird alien sounds you can hear, tuned in to these mysterious stations. As much as we love the other four discs of The Conet Project, this new one is pretty exciting, and we have to say, definitely makes a case for buying it AGAIN! But for all the rest of you who have yet to discover the bizarre sonic mysteries of the Conet Project, there is no higher recommendation we can give, an all time unanimous aQ fave, our best selling record EVER. Sonically, and conceptually mind blowing. We never made it Record Of The Week before for some reason, but in our hearts, it has always been, and always will be, a perpetual aQ Record Of The Week!!! FOREVER.
BTW, this counts as a "box set" for shipping, it won't fit in the USPS flat rate box we use, so it'll have to go media mail or UPS if you're mailordering it domestically.
- MPEG stream: Swedish Rhapsody
- MPEG stream: 5 Dashes
- MPEG stream: Iran/Iraq Jamming Efficacy Testing
- MPEG stream: Magnetic Fields
- MPEG stream: Tyrolean Music Station
- MPEG stream: The Buzzer
- MPEG stream: "Data Bursts, 5.201kHz (USB And AM)
- MPEG stream: "Exotic Cipher, 6.215kHz/AM October 5th, 2008 19:27 GMT
- MPEG stream: "Descending Jammer, 7.969kHz/USB
- MPEG stream: "Drone, 17.964kHz
- MPEG stream: "Oscillating, 5.178kHz, March 12th, 1997
- MPEG stream: "348|10|13|36|19|21, 11.573kHz, 19:17 GMT
Wandering the streets of San Francisco in 1963, radio "comedians" Mal Sharpe & Jim Coyle presented themselves with an aura of research based authority as they carried out their ludicrous pranks on the unsuspecting public. Dressed rather conservatively in double breasted suits and armed with a tape recorder, they confronted people on the street with such proposals as "For the sake of scientific investigation, can we drill a hole in your head to document the sound of your unconscious thoughts?" or "Please join our cult of three-ism, in which you will join us in a collective agreement and disavow any personal individuality." Coyle & Sharpe's charisma and genuine interest to engage their audience has resulted in a confrontational humor that has rarely been matched. If you have the Coyle and Sharpe cd that was released a few years back on Henry Rollins' label ("On The Loose") you know how funny this disc will be, and don't worry, this one features entirely different but equally insane material. Brilliant, hilarious genius! They far pre-dated the now-commonplace man-on-the-street / guerrilla interviewers. Today's reality TV can't hold a candle to these guys. Just think, this was long long long before passers-by were prepared for what was in store for them! They're the O.G.!
Hallelujah!!! All of you folks already well-versed in the much-more-than-comedy duo of Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe, you know this is the one you've been waiting for! If you've not yet gotten your introductory dose of their genius antics, this is a perfect place to commence your schooling. For a brief spell in the early '60s -- waaay back before everyone and his mother became acclimatized to guerrilla 'man on the street' style pranks -- these two sharp dressed gents were wreaking havoc in and around SF, blindsiding pedestrians along Market Street. Their unflinchingly methodical mischief was an effortless razor sharp blend of social criticism, surrealism and utter hilarity. Often their verbal interrogation would take on somewhat sinister and/or downright subversive undertones. Indeed, theirs was a much more refined and thought provoking mind-boggle than the recent parade of heavy on the obnoxious, gross out factor peeps such as the Jerky Boys or Jackass crew. Sure much of Coyle and Sharpe's antics may seem tame by today's standards, but simply put, their perfect balance of lightning quick wit and stoic straight-facedness has seldom been matched, let alone bested.
Released on the Sharpeworld label run by Mal Sharpe's daughter Jennifer, this fantastic four disc set comes pretty much straight from the horse's mouth... well, at least one of the two horses' mouths. Sadly Jim Coyle passed away in 1993, but in the years since his passing his cohort Mal Sharpe and their legions of diehard fans (including one Henry Rollins) have kept the Coyle & Sharpe magic alive. Sharpe compiled the proceedings here which include a Best of '63 collection recorded off the radio on New Year's Eve '63, a reissue of Coyle & Sharpe On The Loose (originally released in 1995 on Rollins' 213 label), a third cd of recently unearthed raw recording odds'n'ends with their earliest known recording from '61 plus 'Coyle & Sharpe Get Arrested' (yes, really!), and finally a dvd of the pair's 1965 pilot TV show The Imposters (the socialite dinner party and employee evaluation segments are particular viewing treats). This is truly a case of that old truism "they don't make 'em like they used to"! These 2 Men Are Imposters is a genuine treasure trove. Highly recommended!!
Now on vinyl, if you've been waiting for it. Embossed gold-on-black gatefold cover, fancy. And it comes with a copy of the Bigger & Blackerer dvd. Some of what we said about the cd and dvd versions:
Maybe a few years ago we really had to tell you to buy a David Cross comedy album, like, talk about Mr. Show and all, explain how he's really funny and totally indie rock, is one of us and hates President Bush and all that. But now, Arrested Development (the TV show) has come and gone and you're definitely (probably) already a fan of David Cross. So we're not gonna go on for paragraphs here. Suffice to say, he's back, bigger and "blackerer" (?) and balder and more bearded, with a new album and dvd on Sub Pop, it's his first album since 2004's It's Not Funny, and (like that one) it actually of course is funny stuff indeed. Still concerned with religion, politics, drugs, consumer culture, average American stupidity, Cross hasn't mellowed out much. Fake outrage, and REAL outrage, are still both part of his show.
Along with deaf people, the TV show Intervention, Tea Partiers, Coors Light, a porno called "My Ass Is Haunted", taking a drink testing kit on a first date... this performance covers a lot of ground. There's a few moments where he pushes the non-PC/racial humor thing in uncomfortable (and maybe unfunny) ways... or are we just afraid to admit we laughed?
Maybe a few years ago we really had to tell you to buy a David Cross comedy album, like, talk about Mr. Show and all, explain how he's really funny and totally indie rock, is one of us and hates President Bush and all that. But now, Arrested Development (the TV show) has come and gone and you're definitely (probably) already a fan of David Cross. So we're not gonna go on for paragraphs here. Suffice to say, he's back, bigger and "blackerer" (?) and balder and more bearded, with a new album and dvd on Sub Pop, it's his first album since 2004's It's Not Funny, and (like that one) it actually of course is funny stuff indeed. Still concerned with religion, politics, drugs, consumer culture, average American stupidity, Cross hasn't mellowed out much. Fake outrage, and REAL outrage, are still both part of his show.
Along with deaf people, the TV show Intervention, Tea Partiers, Coors Light, a porno called "My Ass Is Haunted", taking a drink testing kit on a first date... this performance covers a lot of ground. There's a few moments where he pushes the non-PC/racial humor thing in uncomfortable (and maybe unfunny) ways... or are we just afraid to admit we laughed?
Recorded live in Boston, the cd and dvd have similar but different tracklistings, with some bits appearing only on one format, or the other. Both are about an hour long, though the dvd does contain some extra bonus material on top of that, as dvds are wont to do (including his classic "electric scissors" routine), and includes a poster of the slightly grotesque looking cover painting.
We love Mr. Show. And we LOVE David Cross. And we loved his double cd on Sub Pop, And now we LOVE this DVD. I threw it on only expecting to watch a little chunk of it, but we ended up watching the whole thing and laughing hysterically the whole time. It's not a concert film, in fact there's very little stand up at all, it's more like a tour video, documenting the travelling, and the fans, and the freaks, and the drunks, and the club owners and Cross's unique response to all of them. Highlights include a segment where he hands the mic to a girl in the crowd mid set so he can go take a piss, and the part where he spends an entire set talking about the asshole club owner, who then tries to kick him out after the show, while Cross draws it out as long as humanly possible, tormenting the guy. So uncomfortable. But so brilliant. The whole thing is like that, so uncomfortable it's funny!
Funny that. We hardly ever get any comedy records to review (unless you count Sounds of American Doomsday Cults a comedy record), and on this list we've commited to two. But, unlike the Neil Hamburger record that appears a little later on in this list, Mr. Cross is actually funny. In the real, HA HA HA, as opposed to "HA HA HA" kind of funny. Though most well known for his part in the HBO series Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk, Cross has been working hard to make people laugh / piss people off since his early days as a writer for the Ben Stiller show way back in 1992. It seems like ages since I've purchased an honest to goodness comedy album. I think the last I purchased was either Eddie Murphy's first, or the Bob & Doug McKenzie "Great White North" album. But what instantly stands out as a difference between the earlier greats and David Cross is that, where the former are cold, calculated comedy, the latter is off the cuff and loaded with improvised material. Cross, apparently in jest, remarks on the liner notes to the album that his physician requires him to get sufficiently wasted before, during and after his set. But I don't think it's entirely, if at all, in jest. I really think Cross does get snuckered before a gig. But whether he does or not, you can distinctly tell from his delivery that he hasn't worked his routine to death before hitting the stage. Which is impressive when you consider the dangers of crashing and burning on stage when you lose your focus. I won't pretend there aren't any stuttered deliveries here, or that David Cross' professionalism keeps him above the realms of sloppiness. No, there's plenty of that here. And what's more, you realize while listening to David weigh in on the Catholic Church (molesting preachers), George W. Bush, and even his native south -- he's a fucking angry man. He doesn't approach these subjects lightly, he goes in swinging his wit around like a chainsaw. Needless to say, those who are easily offended should probably pass this up. But for anyone who's enjoyed Mr. Show, this should be required listening.
Uh...ok, this one's straight-up embarrassing. For us, 'cause we kind of like it! Can we even justify reviewing something called Big Fat Box Of Shit? We're usually the first to condemn "joke bands" (and good grief we get enuff of 'em here in San Francisco). But once in a while, against our better judgement, one of 'em make us laugh. Or simply astonishes and astounds us with their (misplaced but) incredible musical chops. Crotchduster is one of those. It's a side project of Florida technical death-metal act Capharnum (whose album Fractured we recommended on list #190) and it reveals their obvious love of Frank Zappa and juvenile, bathroom-stall humor. Definitely not for the easily offended or overly intelligent, as the R-rated sexist, scatalogical "humor" here is definitely dumb. About the only lyrics that aren't overtly rude are all the inside jokes about someone named "Bill Williams"! But the lyrics aside, the way these guys jump from blasting grind to fake AOR to hip hop skits to pop punk to whatever style of music they decide to skewer next is *amazing*. They do it dead-on. I mean, Mr. Bungle never juggled genres as deftly as these guys! Such a genre-splicing approach can either be intended as an avant-garde, post-modern, serious thing, perhaps with weird overtones (Candiria, Naked City, Sigh) or just for yuks (Steven Schultz, Spazztic Blurr, Reggie and the Full Effect, Crotchduster), with the likes of Mr. Bungle and the Secret Chiefs 3 falling somewhere in the middle I guess. So Crotchduster is at the low-brow-for-laffs end of the scale, where the jokes are soooo dumb ("Mammal Sauce"?) but so elaborate (like the interminable fake hate-mail reading towards the end of the disc) that it's almost funny even when it's not funny (or *that* it's not funny, the 'Neil Hamburger effect' we could call it). Insanely stupid but incredibly well done. It'll either leave you laughing or asking "why?" or both... you'll certainly be impressed by the (waste of?) musical talent displayed here. Definitely for Steven Schultz fans...imagine a foul-mouthed, misogynistic Steven Schultz with his mind in the gutter...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If all of that dark gumbling on your Current 93 records got in the way of listening to Aleister Crowley's incantations of magick, then this is certainly for you. A collection of very raw wax cylinder recordings in all of Crowley's spellcasting 'fury'.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Here's a disc for fans of the cult pulp horror master H. P. Lovecraft. Composer Stephen Dickman's specialty is to "set" texts (poems, prayers, prose) by various authors into musical structures of his own design. In this case, the major work here is a performance of Lovecraft's short story "The Music Of Eric Zann" by baritone Thomas Bruckner (known for his work in Robert Ashley's operas). The avant-classical vocalist reads Lovecraft's tale of cosmic terror (about a musician opening a portal to another dimension) in a semi-sung, semi-spoken sort of hypnotic chant. It, at first, seems more comic than cosmic sounding, but eventually the mesmerizing rhythms of Bruckner's narration begin to have a more disturbing effect. At over twenty minutes, and with no instrumental accompaniment, it really starts to sound like Bruckner is losing his mind--the typical fate of all Lovecraft protagonists! Bizarre and ludicrous, perhaps, but pretty cool. The rest of the disc is great too, with one text-less piano piece of great beauty, as well as more singing by both Bruckner and soprano Elizabeth Farnum, of texts by Rumi, Milarepa, and Rabbi Nathan of Bratslav. These tracks feature either piano or violin accompaniment.
We could easily imagine the odd school children in the film The Wicker Man as being the tailor-made audience/participants for this 1969 educational record from the BBC Drama Workshop, the educational arm of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. These recordings were designed for creative movement and improvisation exercises for young school children, though it would be surprising to see a record for kids quite like this today.
With poetry written and recited by Robert Duncan and electronic music by David Cain, this is one of those Arcadian British recordings that are so often referenced audibly and visually by the hauntological Ghost Box label and the filmstrip nostalgia of Boards of Canada. Duncan's classically-trained oration evokes a romantic yet visceral natural imagery of slightly sinister undertones, while Cain's score is both alien and lilting, its robotic sing-song melodies sometimes wistful yet bracingly warped. For this recording a piece was done for each month and each season with the final track an instrumental culmination of all the musical themes simply called "The Year". Though we can see children of the time easily getting into the odd melodies to convey visual pantomimes of leaves and wind, we can only assume that some of the spoken imagery must have gone over their heads. "Falling leaves like Severed Hands", in "October" for instance; or descriptions of nightfall where the night is characterized as a predator and the day "as a fallow deer is bled"; or the lurid connotations of the poem, "March" where Duncan speaks of the Earth as a woman, and in a series of harvest ritual descriptions, to be woken, washed, dressed and then taken????
But what is admirable about the educational side of this recording is that it doesn't talk down to children or Disney-fy nature with anthropomorphic happy/sad emotions, but rather it emphasizes a more complex set of emotional tropes to act out like awakening, longing, fearfulness, loneliness, and indifference that points to a more mature and frank attitude toward the cycle of nature and the passing of time. Though we're not sure what kids today would make of its strange antiquated quaintness, for adults its perhaps a nostalgic trip back to a bygone era where there was government funded organizations that were allowed to produce such cool shit for kids, or at the very least plenty of cool interlude fodder here for DJs and mixtapes.
For this review, we recruited AQ pal Cliff Hengst, artist and co-editor of "Good Times: Bad Trips":
I love me some good prank phone calls. A great prank call can be the most devastatingly funny thing ever - it's just you and the caller, and of course, the poor sap at the other end (who never seems to get the clue to just hang up). Of the many prank-call cds we've listened to, this one stands out as among the most brilliant and repeatedly played. It's perfect for those long road trips to stave off the urges to cause injury to your traveling companions. Reissued as a double cd with 25 extra pranks (the original, released in 2002 was fine enough), it's packed with some of the most memorable and pathetic characters you've ever heard. The middle-aged and recently divorced Barbara, who loves the "stanky blues" of Bonnie Raitt, trying to join a band to spite her ex-husband; Barbara's ex-husband in turn calling the same poor dude warning him about his ex-wife and her "buffet of psycho-tropic drugs"; Bedroom ETA , a "quiet storm" band that involves a hilariously sung Jermaine Stewart song; and of course, Bleachy, a fat black sad-sack who harangues army recruiting offices, worker's comp centers and fast food chains with his miserably petty requests and complaints - so awesome! It's really no use reading a review of something like this; you miss the timing, the phrasing, all those embarrassing awkward pauses, and out of left-field cultural references. So listen to the clips. An original and hilarious collection that you will listen to again and again and will make you "shit your pants". Comes with a prank-by-prank analysis booklet by Andrew Earles and Jeffrey Jensen. Shattering.
An ultra-limited single LP of outtakes by Earles & Jensen from last year's smash comedy album Just Farr A Laugh. Limited edition, hand numbered 300 or so copies.
An mp3 cd - 30 hours!!!!
The furious fivesome from Coalinga are finally back, dispelling rumors of suicide pacts or abductions, with nine tracks of venomous (not to mention completely retarded) death metal. For those familiar or unfamiliar with their past work, Chiropractic
Dust-To-Digital are known for their excellent reissue work, unearthing and preserving music from scratchy old shellac 78 rpm recordings and the like. Bringing us vintage blues, gospel, Tuvan throat singing, and more, all with elaborate packaging and incredible attention to detail. They've been responsible for a host of fine cds, boxsets, and books, among 'em Victrola Favorites, Opika Pende, Steve Roden's I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces, and Goodbye, Babylon.
But THIS handsome book + cd set may be their most remarkable release yet, at least in terms of radical sound-conservation technique. It's certainly their most unusual. For example: one of the tracks here is an excerpt of an after-dinner speech given by late-19th century American orator and politician Chauncy M. Depew. You can listen to it on the cd, and distinctly make out the speaker's words, voice, and phrasing, amid a thick patina of hiss, hum, and distortion. Sounds like a poorly-preserved old gramophone disc. But, that sound isn't coming from the disc itself being played (and re-recorded for release on the cd). It's actually derived from a PICTURE of that disc, reduced by 2/3rds original size, that appeared in a 1898 magazine advertisement. The spiraling grooves on the record were pictured clearly enough that with creative use of off-the-shelf computer software, author Patrick Feaster was able to "play" a fairly accurate semblance of the sounds originally encoded on the gramophone record being advertised!!! Ok, that's pretty cool! Talk about DUST-to-Digital. And it's but one example of the MANY different, quite intriguing excercises and investigations in "playing back" sound from such antique and/or unusual "recordings" that Feaster and his colleagues at the First Sounds initiative have come up with, presented in fascinating detail in this fancy (gold gilt edges!), hardback 144-page book and accompanying 28-track compact disc.
Of course, one can argue, just what IS a "sound recording" anyway? In large part, that's what this is about; in fact, Feaster's introduction is devoted to that very question, which turns out to be both a philosophical one, as well as a technical one. Even in Feaster's expansive notion of the term, the idea that "sound recordings" exist from as far back as the year 980AD is perhaps a fanciful one, as he will admit, but still fruitful to consider.
Because, what this book is also about, more generally, is how human beings have sought to understand sound phenomena (from nature, voice, and music), through the ages, how sound has been "captured" and put on paper in graphical form to be perceived and studied visually. These visual representations of sound, are essentially all in the form of graphs of frequency, or amplitude, over time: sound spectrograms, sound oscillograms, phonoautograms, melographic inscriptions, manometric flame sketches, and many more. Various techniques, applied to various subjects. Found in these chapters and tracks, there's FBI voice-recognition studies from the '70s, phonophotographs of Negro spirituals from the '20s, and examples of Athansius Kircher's "Magia Phonotatica" circa 1650 (works which bring to mind Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano), among others.
So, this is all very historically & scientifically interesting. Also, completely compelling just for the beauty of these images alone, which may or may not directly reflect the beauty of the sounds they represent - this is a lavishly illustrated book, with full-color reproductions of these various "sound recordings" to accompany the insightful text explaining it all. And the magic really happens, when you experience the book and cd in tandem, as each track on the cd, even the briefest, has an entire several-page chapter in the book devoted to it, and it really helps to read about and look at the visual sound source, while listening. Some tracks sound like antique recordings we're used to from wax cylinders and 78s, complete with the surface static we love so much; others like strange field recordings or ghostly experimental drones or balloons being rubbed together; still others like music boxes or similar devices�
This is the sort of unusual sound document to file with such aQ faves as the mysterious Ghost Orchid EVP recordings, the VLF recordings of Stephen McGreevy, or even the famed Conet Project (soon to be available again, with a bonus 5th disc!). In fact, one of the exhibits here, an 1890 phonoautogram by Emile Berliner, kind of reminds us of a Conet "numbers station" track, being a spoken series of numbers and letters recorded at varying speeds.
All in all, an astonishing, thought-provoking, and simply gorgeous book and cd, recommended to anyone interested in sound, science, OR art; meaning, probably everybody reading this!
Holy cow!!! A whole second collection of radio dramas from the amazing Judson Fountain and his faithful sidekick and loyal announcer Sandor Weisberger. The aQ faithful will no doubt remember Completely In The Dark, a mind blowing compilation of funny, goofy, clever, way over the top dramas, performed by the two men, each taking on various characters, voicing men and women, even monsters, stealing the various incidental sounds and background noises from old sound effects records. Totally lo-fi and DIY and so so so genius. Not sure we could describe Judson and his oeuvre any better than we did in that first review, so for those who missed that first Judson Fountain collection (if you did, you NEED that one too!) or just need a refresher, here it is:
Judson Fountain was born in 1952 and was obsessed with radio dramas since he was old enough to talk. In fact as soon as he was able to talk he began doing impressions of cackling hags, wicked witches and all sorts of animals. All of which would come to play a big part in these radio dramas right here. Recorded between the ages of 17 and 22, these dramas are only a drop in the bucket of the hundreds of radio plays Judson wrote and performed. All of them primitive and simple, but amazingly creative and entertaining, and all featuring Judson's unique vocalizations along with his partner/foil Sandor Weisberger. But there's no way to describe them, you just have to hear them. Judson has a crazy East Coast accent, and he talks like a hyper schoolboy who thinks faster than he can get the words out. Using crude sound effects and sometimes painfully deliberate plot exposition, these dramas all rely on Judson and Sandor's crazy array of voices, from Irish Brogue, to old 'foreign' man, to various witches and demonic women, all with distinctly hysterical and completely bizarre cackles. The plots are all very simple, good vs. Evil, haunted houses and witches and demons and stuff. But they are all done so sort-of-professionally and so earnestly that they're just completely irresistible. Judson is just so cute. And so is Sandor who introduces each drama (which he pronounces drahmmer) and also reads the credits afterwards.
Sold yet, you should be, as every single one of these drahmmers, as well as the ones collected on the first compilation are a total hoot. The scary ones are only barely frightening, instead, they're fun and funny and kitschy, there's always a moral, the bad guys usually get their comeuppance, the good guys prevail, or if they don't it's because they foolishly failed to heed repeated warnings and sage advice. All of these radio plays are from the early seventies, and are GENIUS!!! But there is a bonus track as well, a radio play called "The Nasty Roomer!" written in the style of Judson Fountain, by one of Judson's biggest fans, and performed by Judson and Sandor, reunited in 1995 and broadcast live on WFMU! The crazy thing is, the two of them sound exactly the same, and sound like they're having a blast, often slipping into giggles, performing the play after only having seen it for the first time a few minutes earlier. So fantastic and fun and joyous and still so goofy and silly and practically perfect.
Unlike the first collection, this one is an actual cd (not a cd-r) and comes with a huge booklet packed with photos, and the transcript of an interview that took place at the same time as the performance of "The Nasty Roomer!", and there's even a mention of a possible volume THREE! Bring it on!!!
Another amazing archival find from the Sanity Muffin label of unreleased interviews from one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.
R. Buckminister "Bucky" Fuller (1895-1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist. Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "spaceship earth" and "synergetic". He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, including the widely known geodesic dome and Dymaxion car.
What's fascinating about hearing him speak is how direct and plainspoken he is, speaking about high-minded concepts in ways that make them easily accessible and question our very understanding of how the world is perceived. For example, he opens the first interview with an anecdote about speaking at a conference of scientists. He asks them how many of them had ever seen the sun come up and was flabbergasted at how many hands were raised. Here we have outstanding members of the scientific community and most still only understand the world largely in constructs that we have placed upon it, not operating in the real world where concepts like "up" and "down" do not actually exist. From there on we were hanging on every word!
This limited cassette version has 4 panels of embossed artwork and insert. Highly Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Volume "2.5" of the series that shows what stars past and present say when the cameras and tape recorders *aren't* supposed to be rolling. This double disc set features just Judy Garland in all her drunken pillpopping glory, much of it purportedly from never-released home recordings she made for her autobiography.
"I'm an angry lady: I'm a lady who is angry. I've been insulted, slandered, humiliated -- but still 'America's Sweetheart.' Now I'm rather intelligent, I think, and I'm emotional -- YEAH -- I'm a woman; I'm emotional... I wanted to believe, and I tried my damndest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and I COULDN'T... I've sung, I've entertained, I've pleased your children, I've pleased your wives, I've pleased YOU -- you SONS OF BITCHES! Now you better write it, YOU BETTER PAY FOR IT, OR DON'T LISTEN AND GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LIFE!"
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Outside of his leadership role in Swans and World of Skin, Michael Gira's prolific aesthetic of the abject has also embraced the written word. "Somniloquist" is a collection of his recitations of five of his stories, two of which come from the claustrophobic and brilliant book "The Consumer." Gira's presence as a speaker is lucid and surprisingly unassuming. When reading his work, I felt the enraged bark of the musician who created such a pummelling force on "Filth" or "Cop", but the violence and misanthropy which is uttered here has become the norm for Gira. Perhaps that is what makes this so disturbing.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The sleeve reads: "A souvenir recording recorded live at the Days Inn, Modesto, CA."
