first published in Arthur No. 12 (September, 2004)

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

The last coupla days a lotta time has been spent listening to the three CDs that Acute Records has released to document the history of one of the French underground’s great legacies of raunch. The first installment is Anarchy in Paris! by METAL URBAIN. Formed in 1976, these guys were the true inventors of drum-box punk, combining overloaded synth, distorted punk guitar and scabrous vocals (imagine the early Stranglers singing gutteral French) into a truly head-melting mix. They released their own first single, then had the first release on the Rough Trade label (“Paris Maquis” is still one of my fave songs ever). The fates were really against them, however, and their popularity never really matched their genius. The Anarchy CD is really well programmed and annotated, and it’s really one of the essentials for any good punk rock library.

When Metal Urbain finally exploded, leader Eric Debris continued the story in two divergent directions. The first was a band that grew more or less organically out of Metal Urbain’s corpse, called METAL BOYS. There is a lost early session by the band, recorded by Hawkwind’s Bob Calvert, and while I’d love to hear that, the stuff on Tokio Airport is satisfying in its own way. The sound of this stuff is mostly very different from the earlier band. The bulk of the recorded material features vocals by an Anglophone named China, whose words are buoyed by a variety of somewhat subversive new wave tropes. And some of it is a little too lightweight to really engage my head, but there are still lots of great moments, some of them very unexpected (as in the virtual Sun Ra tribute, “Outer Space”). And, truly, the more I listen to this, the more acclimated (addicted?) I become to China’s emotionally flat vocals. They really reek of early ‘80s Rough Trade gal dub action, and that’s a flavor that I can never get enough of. Combined with the sort of kilter-less low-key electronics here (like low blood sugar versions of SPK, Clock DVA, the cruder end of BEF, etc.), it sucks you in real sweetly. Unfortunately, Metal Boys remained an even more obscure project than the original had. But Tokio collects pretty much everything you’d want to hear, and if you’ve heard Anarchy, I guarantee you’ll be intrigued as hell!

Debris’ solo project, committed in parallel to Metal Boys, was DR. MIX AND THE REMIX. Wall of Noise shows this stuff (which eventually expanded into an actual band) to be much more aggressive and strange than Metal Boys. Much of the material is covers of older songs—The Stooges’ “No Fun,” the Velvets’ “Sister Ray,” the Troggs’ “I Can’t Control Myself,” etc. But these songs are highly devolved, dub-informed scuzzed-out versions of the originals. At times it sounds a bit like those early Suicide tracks that Blast First released a few years ago, but you wouldn’t really mistake it for anyone except Doctor Mix. At any rate, this trilogy is pretty goddamn ripe. So give it a sniff. You’ll be glad you did.
A friend in England sent me a copy of the latest book by his country’s hardest-hitting polymath, BILLY CHILDISH. The book’s called Handing the Loaded Revolver to the Enemy (Aquarium Gallery) and celebrates a recent show of Billy’s paintings, which are more or less “about” the work of Vincent Van Gogh. They’re totally great color reproductions of Billy’s copies of some of Van Gogh’s work, along with some poetry inspired by it, and a set of manifestos about the nature and intent of art. As always, Childish has created something of great beauty and power. Get behind him. Now.

Since relocating from the hot tar of New York to the wind-blown mountains of southern Vermont, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder have retooled their muses in a variety of ways. Some of that transubstantiation can be heard on the incredible new 2LP set by their (former?) band, TOWER RECORDINGS. The Futuristic Folk of the Tower Recordings Vol. 1 & 2 (Time-Lag Records) is a reissue of two CDRs that Matt and Erika originally put out through their Child of Microtones imprint. And the sessions reprised here are great. Tower Recordings were an awesome group, capable of sweat-free motion from experimental improv to careful folk plucking to absolute psychedelic form-disasterism. They consistently moved with an ease that most bands only show when they’re dodging the bill at a restaurant. The line-up here is comprised of the old regulars, like Tim Barnes, PG Six, etc. plus such exciting fellow travelers as Joshua Burkett and Sara Lubelski. Packed in a typically nice Time-Lag cover, this is a sweet poke from an unknown ridge.

If you ever wondered about the minutae of the New England Underground, you could do much worse than to get the debut issue of SMALLFLOWERS PRESS. This is a solo newsprint mag that contains incredibly detailed interviews with Dredd Foole, Chris Corsano, and all the countless members of Sunburned Hand of the Man. It’s a massive 76-page read, and probably a tough slog if you’re not somewhat besotted by this stuff, but if you are, well, sheesh, this one’s for you.

While there is controversy in some circles regarding the “chops” of ARTHUR DOYLE, those folks who understand that life’s for the living and death’s for the dead have no gripe with the guy. It is true that Doyle no longer manifests the saxophonic lung rushery that was so abundantly evident on Alabama Feeling, but he is still a performer rich with ghosts and power and raw poetry. Doyle’s newest LP is Your Spirit Is Calling (Qbico), a duo session with the always-stellar percussionist, Hamid Drake. Recorded in Milan in 2003, the music has some similarities to the work that Doyle did with his Electro-Accoustic Ensemble, but it is more focused, less lumpy, and far more rooted in the jazz tradition than that crazy shit ever was. Still, Doyle revisits some of the Ensemble’s themes, playing with a bit more formal rigor than he has for a while. His tone still splutters and veers like a taxi cab falling off a cliff, but there’s in an underlying sense of fundamentals that should make even the moldiest free jazz fig, shut the hell up! Ha! Anyone who doesn’t dig the flute/hand drum sequence, just doesn’t know how to dig. Go get ‘em, Arthur!

The proliferation of records, CDs, tapes and visual sundry from the Japanese contempo-psych energy compound of ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE is insanely draining. Each member of the troupe has his and/or her own bag and a spotlight is usually hovering somewhere above master hair rocker Kawabata Makoto. But as of NOW there has been a slight paradigm shift, with this recent offering from Eclipse Records by the other guitarist in Acid Mothers, HIROSHI HIGASHI. Guitar is not really what transcends Hiroshi to cosmo heights, it’s his feel and soul sense with synthesizer. It’s a sound device easily over-extended by any kid who sets fingers upon it, but Hiroshi has seriously attuned hisself to some kind of human smoke signals, coming into a virtual oneness with this instrument in the process. Solo 3 is as heavy and beautiful a solo synth piece as the initial renderings of ‘71/72 Tangerine Dream. Sublimely tripped out with a silkscreened fold over jacket designed by Plastic Crimewave and Min Song and hand-screened by SIWA records lord, Alan Sherry.

Issue #12 is out of Ed Pinsent’s SOUND PROJECTOR and, as is usually the case, it is crammed with reviews, interviews, and drawings. The way Ed organizes his mag is particularly well-suited to bathroom readings. He groups the pieces and reviews into clumps of the like-minded, and the results are very pleasing. Subjects this issue include legendary underground New York folk genius Peter Stampfel, master Bostonian improv-breather Greg Kelley, and Norwegian noise maestro Lasse Marhaug. A non-catholic mix for non-catholic readers. Also un-catholic as all get out is the debut issue of PUSH MY BUTTONS, a zine for and by online sex workers. It has poems, prose stuff & things like a list of the weirdest insults seen by young people (females, mostly, I think) who work their wiles on the web. Cool as hell.

Got a nice new LP by longtime masters of the post-form genre, DEERHOOF. Milk Man (Free Porcupine Society). The music this time is more lilting than you might expect. Indeed, the female vocals and the way they are set will surely make more than one genius imagine what might have happened if France Gall had gotten involved with one of Brigitte Fontaine’s bands, especially if they had collaborated on the soundtrack to a television commercial about dimple cream starring Anna Karenina. Of course Milk Man’s not as monolithic as all that, this is Deerhoof, after all. But the feel is hip-swinging and continental in a way that makes me breathe as though there’s a big bottle of cheese just around the next corner. MMMMMM!

This year began with a hairy-ass bang by all who were lucky enough to catch the cross-country tour of PRURIENT and KITES. We wrote about both these lads in Issue 5, but for all you newbies let it be known since then Load Records released a Kites LP called Royal Paint with the Metallic Gardener from the United States of America Helped into an Open Field by Women and Children and a split 12” by both Kites and Prurient (Load Split Series #4), which is a great starting off point for anyone interested in these freak babies, as both sides are remarkable examples of new American noise moves. Prurient is the solo howl of Dominick Fernow from Providence, Rhode Island. Unlike most snarling filth mongers reveling in the bowel splatter of noise action, Dominick is a rather clean-cut and polite gentleman with a gracious demeanor. But once behind his arsenal of audio pain machines he will nail your soul to the grave. The slaughter sound culture of Providence has always had an element of rock ‘n roll asskick to it and while Prurient recognizes this he may be the one townie who is most purist with his serious noise intent. His homebrew label Hospital Productions has been around for a few years and has released a number of harsh statements by a broiling slough of noise talents: Skin Crime, Richard Ramirez, Macronympha, Nuclear Pig Shit as well as one of the earlier tapes by Hair Police (who did a number of dates on the aforementioned tour). Kites, also from Providence, is the moniker by which young Chris Forbes extends his noise compositions to us lucky fucks. Kites music has a rather sweet episodic nature and tells a story that truly will suck you into a better world whether you like it or not.

Most mysterious NYC band this time around must be GANG GANG DANCE, whose untitled LP (Fusetron) is a totally whacked assemblage of sounds and anti-sounds. The bands roots are thickly intertwined with both Angelblood and Ssab Songs, which should give you some pretty good ideas about the nature of formal composition here. There are female vocals, percussives, and electric instruments, all sounding sorta treated and shot-to-hell, wobbling and wiggling like mice riding roman candles at Coney Island. There don’t seem to be “songs” as much as there seem to be transitions between place and mood and voice. This motion has swings that remind me of some imaginary UK underground aktion of the just post-Rough Trade era, but it’s really hard to untangle the specifics. Suffice to say, if you are one of those people to whom “coherent” is a synonym for “sissy,” you’ll get a hard ride off this LP.

Also, New Yorkish in nature, the second proper album by TUCK TUCK TUCK has arrived. Called The Story of Tuck Tuck Tuck (Skul), it’s a bit more streamlined than the first one. Jandekian aces get pulled from every available sleeve, and the sound is as diffuse as the emotions. As in life, everything here can sound totally lost (even the instrumental bits). And that raises the human stakes to incredible heights at times when you didn’t even realize you were betting. The production sound is pretty mammal-friendly too—a warm sound, like paper tearing in the next room, pervades everything. And it suits the words and the plucked guitar to a goddamn T. Some sections have a sustain that makes me think a little of Dredd Foole’s live shows, but I won’t force the comparison. Okay?

New collection’s out of KAZ’s great Underworld strip. This volume’s entitled My Little Funny (Fantagraphics), and it shows that Kaz has totally mastered the four panel fucked up gag strip. Populated with an ever-expanding cast of hideous characters, the strips writhe with lotsa crude humor, scat jokes galore, and the ugliest faces you’ll see in a month of Sundays. Now that’s good reading!

The bones of the Finnish underground tribal-folk scene are thick with the fat of elk. And Jan Anderzen seems to be a guy who is often found swimming in the marrow of these projects, from Kemialliset Ystävät to Avarus and onward. THE ANAKSIMANDROS is another of his splendidly shambolic concerns, and their album, River of Finland (Eclipse) will make you shout “hair boys versus shirt boys!” faster than a skunk can whistle the opening bars to Holst’s “Jupiter.” The instrumentation is all organic and acoustic, the vibe is pure smoke, mirror & fringe, and you can almost fell the leaves and twigs snapping under everyone’s bare feet as they wander through the starlight.

Be seeing you!

If you have material (vinyl, books, mags, vids, etc.) to be LICKED by BULL TONGUE, please send two copies to:
Bull Tongue
P.O. Box 627
Northampton, MA 01061
USA

Contacts

http://www.acidmothers.com
http://www.acuterecords.com
http://www.aquariumgallery.co.uk
http://www.eclipse-records.com
http://www.fantagraphics.com
http://www.freeporcupinesociety.com
http://www.fusetronsound.com
http://www.hospitalproductions.com
http://www.loadrecords.com
http://www.qbic.web.planet.it/QBICO%20RECORDS.htm
http://www.skulrecordlabel.com
smallflowers press c/o http://www.forcedexposure.com
http://www.thesoundprojector.com
http://www.time-lagrecords.com

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 11 (July, 2004)

Girls rule, no problem. We’re all in “agreeance” with that. One girl who is totally ruling right now is KAREN CONSTANCE from East Sussex, England. She’s been peeped a couple of times over here in the USA whenever her loverboy Dylan Nyoukis, mastermind provocateur of exquisite noise mayhem and art through his Chocolate Monk enterprise and his own Prick Decay—now called Decaer Pinga (Spanish for..uhh, Prick Decay)—comes over to lay down his self-anointed “rotten groove.” And there she is, regal and astounding, in her creative flow. But she has yet to really “play” over here. The first time Prick Decay rocked the USA I believe she was part of the ad hoc ensemble then but that was primarily Dylan and his sister Lisa (aka Dora Doll)’s deal.

When we first went to check out the All Tomorrows Parties festival in 1999 we ran into Dylan, Lisa and Karen. At that point Karen, known then as Karen Lollypop, was involved with a couple of projects. One being something called The Polly Shang Kuan Band (named after the great 60s martial arts mistress of Hong King cinema), which was basically Karen and whatever female friendos she saw fit to punk out with. The other was her solo under the moniker of Smack Music 7. The gang were in some kind of holiday spirit vibe, even though it was a cold and wet U.K. spring hell, and they were draining every tall can of Carlsberg in sight. Dylan and Karen ended up taking a nappie-poo in our sound engineer’s bed and were assertively escorted out. We were trying to figure out how someone could fall in love with the genius Nyoukis without being a world-class artist on their own. So we took a chance and asked Karen to do an Ecstatic Peace 7”.

She explained her situation with the two bands, PSK Band and Smack Music 7, and immediately sent us a track each. They were incredible. Each had a sensual and sophisticated measure and moved with a minimalist’s grace. This was not generic squawk and squeal, which we were ready to accept, but something a bit more stately. Karen sent a color collage for sleeve art, which pointed to the fact that she worked as well as a pretty wild visual artist. Needless to say we were proud as a felched pumpkin to throw this baby out there. A few Smack Music 7 releases have come out before and after this: She’s A Mystery Radio CDR (Hells Half Halo), Pep Up Your Monkey cassette (Krush Proof), Exchange In An Earthworm cassette (Spite) and a duo called Lollydor (with the since deceased Phil Garner of Labrador) who did the cassette Stress Sounds (Kylie). Just recently Karen has laid down her most enthralling session to date and has so far split it between two cassette releases Typewriter Hell (Since 1972) and Spittin Hell (Open Mouth). The noise space evinced here is at once old-time, not unlike classic UK/Euro industrial, though strikingly fresh and alurringly understated. These are essential in the miasma that exists now in cassette experimental offerings.

Last I heard was that Since 1972 was preparing to release a split cassette of Smack Music 7 and solo love noise by Tovah O’Rourke of Dead Machines. Which automatically makes Since 1972 best fucking label so far. Damn. The Polly Shang Kuan Band have two CDRs on Chocolate Monk, one untitled and the other The Eye of Horus. There’s also a Karen Constance/Dylan Nyoukis duo CDR called Here Comes Blood Stereo (Absurd— a Greek label which doesn’t list this recording on their site. Nyoukis lists it on Chocolate Monk site as being on the Audiobot label, but assures me through email that it’s on Absurd. But also that Audiobot released a CDR of Dylan in collab with a buncha loose wires including Ms. Constance called Mysterious Blue Soups of the South but, again, Audiobot doesn’t list this on their site either…so…you figure it out). Last issue we hipped you to Bill Nace who plays with Chris Corsano in Vampire Belt and runs the Open mouth label. Whilst bombing around the Chocolate Monk offices in Brighton he and Dylan and Karen formed the heavy fudge-tone unit Ceylon Mange. They have only a few gigs under their belts but have already been a fairly in-demand trio on the subterranean noise skank circuit. The few releases so far have been intriguing if not downright beleaguering: The Dirt Drinkers CDR (Pinkskulls) and Charlotte Church Burners cs (Since 1972). A couple of other musical milestones of Karen’s we have yet to see or hear but are looking forward to swallowing whole are the Karen Lollypop Vs Spiderhorse & Black Alaska cs (Hanson- unreleased) and the Karen Constance & Erikki Sannemaki CDR (Chocolate Monk). If either of those labels could turn us on to this goodness we’ll reciprocate surely with sweet gooed panties. Aside from the music wonderment of Ms. Constance is her killer art. Her paintings and collages feature emotional wildlife and spooked demons in high-color relief. A few images are available to see on a UK art-site but what we really need is someone to print a decent first catalog of sorts.

Speaking of visual artists and noise one of the strangest and most significant artists of the late last century would have to be JACK GOLDSTEIN. Goldstein came out of the initial scene of CalArts, an artist academy in Los Angeles that succeeded in creating an environment where artists coming out of the cool head of ‘60s conceptualism developed the keen idea of actually transmogrifying such non-consumer concepts into sellable Pictures. Indeed, the concept became “Pictures,” and they were, in a very L.A. sense, remarkable, new and suitable to hang. The mentor at CalArts was John Baldesarri who encouraged Goldstein and cohorts to follow this post-modern route and take it to New York City because that’s where the moneyed art world eye was and they would either love it or eat it. As it were, the New York art world loved it and ate it completely up.

The new art culture of these CalArts grads and the New York gallerists they became involved with in the big money ‘80s became competitive and freakish. While David Salle, from CalArts, and Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman, (from Hallwalls in Buffalo, but following the star of the CalArts gang), became world renowned and wealthy, Jack Goldstein became perturbed and offended by the nature of competition and political posturing. Goldstein was an outstanding artist but his work never broke through to mainstream success in the manner his contemporaries did. He battled a weird psychosis of drugs and bitterness, disappearing for lengthy periods throughout his life and in 2003, he killed himself. Before his suicide he spent considerable time putting together a manuscript of his thoughts both biographical and straight-up emotional and it has been collected by his friend Richard Hertz in a gripping book called Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia (Minneola Press).

A lot of these artists—Ericka Beckman, Ross Bleckner, Barbara Bloom, Troy Brauntuch, Eric Fischl, Matt Mullican, David Salle and James Welling—went on to become major players in the ‘80s art market, some more than others. And quite a few of them, as well as various critical voices, intersperse chapters with Goldstein’s writings. What becomes of this is probably the first book written by young artists of this particular generation, the same one that came to a sense of identity alongside the first American nomads of punk rock, wherein the process of art and friendship is divulged in wrenching retrospect. Goldstein’s chapters spill the gut on what was happening not only in the first years of what has become the most influential contemporary school of American art studies but in the pre-real estate boom streets of Soho and the East Village.

I remember these guys bombing around Max’s Kansas City and CBGB and connecting the energy of No Wave and punk to their gallery work. This is where the paths cross with the cranked up guitar compositions of Glen Branca and the slo-mo violence in the paintings of Robert Longo (who did the cover art for Branca’s The Ascension LP; on a similar note the aforementioned James Welling was the photographer who snapped the Sonic Youth Bad Moon Rising cover). It was an enclosed scene hardly venturing above 14th Street and it was fueled by new values in money, sex, art and music. Each chapter is a reflection on these days and is a captivating glimpse at the mindset which existed. And it’s a blast to read as none of it is couched in dry academia (well, some of it us, but not to any detriment) and is very very chatty and gossipy but still delivers the goods on the process of making art and the desire and devotion to that livelihood. Jack Goldstein’s paintings had an exquisite vibe but he also made objects such as records which is where the noise quotient of this review comes to play. The records have become impossible to find but can be heard at http://www.ubu.com/sound/goldstein.html Our favorite is the self-explanatory Two Wrestling Cats. Jack also made a few films early on, such as a mesmerizing loop of the MGM lion roaring ad infinitum. Google Jack Goldstein and you’ll find lotsa good info on this intense and important figure.

Got a few nice new slats of of vinyl from Brooklyn’s cunning Social Registry label. First up is the eponymous debut LP by BLOOD ON THE WALL, a trio who remind me a bit of what a collaboration between late ‘80s Yo La Tengo, Galaxie 500 and the Gibson Bros. might have sounded like. Which means, I guess, that they rock in a sorta hard, smart and guitar-y way but retain a soft French center and have very dark teeth as well. Second is a 2Lp set by ICEWATER SCANDAL, who used to use the much lousier name, AM Radio. This new one, No Handle, makes much more personal sense to me than their last one did, maybe because their sound is so diffuse, so utterly slack, that it really needs to sprawl across yr sofa in order to make an impression. That said, No Handle sprawls pretty well. It also staggers a little and maybe even stutters, which is pretty cool when it’s done in such a low blood sugar kinda way. Guys, gals, all friends now—even for two side-long tracks! Cool. I’m just glad that no one let their youth go to waste. Adjacent to this is the Horizon Fall EP by PAINTING SOLDIERS. This is actually a solo project by Icewater’s Andrea Hansen, and is a severely excellent hoot into contempo free-folk form-stone. Hot and bothersome!

Haven’t heard from the skinny and excitable Japanese noise dude S. ISABELLA. S. Isabella is the same cat as Government Alpha. Government Alpha is in reality a lad named Yasutoshi Yoshida. Basically it’s harsh noise and Yoshida makes it. He has a label called Xerxes, which has released a fountain of harshness through the years. As S. Isabella he becomes more involved with collaboration it seems. We haven’t been keeping up with Yoshida’s torrent of releases but one came dropping at our doorstep with a weird enough slap. It’s an LP of S. Isabella “playing” Stabat Mors called The Relation Between Man and Woman (AbRECt). Stabat Mors are a long standing German dark industrial sick noise entrail spewing evisceration unit. The kind most appreciated by the clean-cut kids of Japanese noise extremism. What’s going on here is actually a collaboration betwixt these two freaks outfits from 1997. They use texts from Yukio Mishima and Heidegger where rotting flesh and the rotten male mind in all its gross typicality are exposed. Fizzing, spiraling deep noise without too much gore spillage which makes it somehow interesting due to these guys not being exactly shy from necroskum power scree. But it does kick out a fair share of super brutal depth charges. As well as bizarro backwards femme vox. The cover is an original painting on wood all in an edition of 100 copies.

Hey, I haven’t written a book all day. But I better get cracking, ‘cause MATT WASCOVICH wrote three and I’ve just finished reading them. Wasco, of course, is a Cleveland bard, as well as an editor of many fine wordsheets via his Slow Toe Publications, which also issued these three hummers while I slept. The first is Level Act, which feels to me like it’s about music and bands and clubs, but I cannot prove it. Suffice to say, the word-clots are balmy. The second is Blinking Envelope—a scattershot travelogue, poeticizing scenes and walks and visions that have gripped Matt’s wanders across the country. Each of them contains a little piece of the essential whuh of place, making it a fine fuck of a read. The third is Thee Closeouts. With its introduction by the great Jack Brewer, and its extremely dense dark imagery, it might be the best place for new fangled readers to begin approaching Wasco’s work. Previously I had been attracted to the growing lightness evident in his newer poems, but the material in Closeouts shreds some serious dick and/or cunt. Check it out.

Is it just my imagination, or do some recent Revenant releases actually sound better now that Runt Records has done them on vinyl? I can’t be exactly sure, but hey, these records are as much a pleasure to hold (and behold) as they are to hear. For my taste, there is just something exquisitely tactile and pleasing about the heft and feel of a vinyl record. Call me a fetishist is you will, that’s the way it is. But I’d be curious if you would not have a similar reaction when handling these items. I refer to JOHN FAHEY’s Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today, his gorgeously aggressive and dreamy swan-song; American Primitive Vol. One, the virtually dessitive collection of insane pre-war gospel wailers, there is nothing else at all like it; and finally, there’s Earliest Recordings by the STANLEY BROTHERS, which is the ur-source for all lost hillbilly despair. Or so it seems some days. Anyway, these things are damn nice to have on vinyl.

California has been awash with fresh noise blood as of late. One of the more industrious personages is JOHN WEISE who has been issuing split 7”s left and right on his Helicopter label since 1998. A one-time member of the acclaimed noisepunk thrash combo Man Is The Bastard he has recorded as Bastard Noise and Sissy Spacek and has collaborated with everyone from Merzbow to Brume to The Haters to Wolf Eyes. His set up is homestyle electronic input output with software spazz icing the action. Another L.A. insane noise lover, in fact his site is called iheartnoise.com, is PHIL BLANKENSHIP who has performed as LeftHandedDecision before changing the name to the more charming The Cherry Point. His label Troniks has released a bunkerload of slashing fire music all in the key of torching Hollywood’s sick celebrity skull. Both Weise and Blankenship have become the cornerstone proprietors and activists of harsh L.A. noise documentation and are more than worthy of yr hungry nodes.

While we’ll confess to not having played the CD that Jonny Davenport sent of his band, The Frankfurt School, we have checked out his ‘zine, WAVELENGTH (not related to any previous mag of the same name) and it is a totally cool guide to what’s going on in the Toronto underground as regards bands, shows and whatnot. It also has a good review section and nice critical contests (like Cocteau Twins vs. Abba) that will make your next visit to the toilet a sheer pleasure!

Snappiest DVD in a while has to be CAPTAIN MILKSHAKE, a theatrically released film from 1971, directed by Richard Crawford. Filmed in San Diego, it tells the story of a Marine who comes home on leave from Vietnam and falls in with a winsome hippie lass and the politico-druggies with whom she shares a pad. Sounds like a fairly typically ‘60s film, yeah, but there are lotsa extremely interesting moments in the film, and the non-high-budget quality of the shoot gives everything a very realistic quality. The rock clubs they film in are real rock clubs, the protests in they film are real protests, etc etc. The authenticity of locales, plus the mean-edged realism of the straights’ political banter, and the moral confusion of the title character really make Captain Milkshake an outstanding genre flick. Also worth mentioning is the fact that L.A.’s legendary Kaleidoscope actually appear playing live for two of the film’s sequences. There are limited theatrical showings of the film being done, but if you can’t make one, I strongly suggest viewing the DVD, if you have any interest in the visual literature of hippiedom.

We decided to take a red eye out to Australia to see if the noise improv scene had developed any further than the last rumblings we felt from such insane tripzoids as The Menstruation Sisters. The kneepants-sporting customs officials pointed us towards The Rhizome Label just outside of Adelaide. Within the Rhizome warehouse were speakers blaring out shards of electric guitar fuzz and over heated amp destruction. What it was was Rhizome’s newest 3” CD release by the duo of AREK GULBENKOGLU AND ADAM SUSSMAN. These gents are claimed by many localese as probably Australia’s best two improvisers. Arek is based in Melbourne and was/is a member of beautiful free-sound outfit DWORZEC. Adam’s from Sydney and plays sets of gorgeous & brutal guitar. Adam is also in super-minimal outfit Stasis Duo. We snagged this baby up as well as about a dozen other CDs—all with the same kind of tan paper packaging and all fantastic in their new-OZ sacred sound vision. The ones that consistently blew our headphoned minds upon return to USA were THE LOST DOMAIN—Something Is (RHCD10) which is weird folk howls not too far from some of the No Neck Blues Band’s more accidental moves. Also SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH—murrinh kullerrkkurrk (RHCD08/09) which is taken from the Wick’s OZ tour 2000, where he really got inside the ivory soul of the piano and prepped it with teeth and tongue, all the while somehow blowing some strange drone flow from what seems like bagpipes. If any pics are available send ‘em over. Also, JULIAN WILLIAMS—Leaf Rain 1995-2000 (RHCD07). This dude was in the rather excellent Hi-God People as well as Solids, Above Ground Pool and Bamboo Sel. Most of this CD is a composite of smaller releases by the man. He’s logged years into hard drone rock dementia with a sick electronic fuel gassing wicked almost Gate-like walls of sheer wham. There’s a bunch of other ones we checked out, but they’re all sold out such as Rhizome’s proprietor Jon Dale’s heavy switched-on unit MOTH who had a couple a great sides such as The Secret Tapes (RHCD12), Ghost Town By The Sea (RHCD05) and Kodak Ghost Poem (RHCD03X) all of which are heavy-fueled gas drones. Also the long tone mania of LEIGHTON CRAIG on his Organ Notes 3” disc. And some very cool recordings by the classic UK noise/sound improvisors ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS When You See The Moon, You’ve Got To Howl (RHCD04) and Tristes Tropiques (RHCD02 – co-released with Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers and Black-Bean & Placenta.) and Julian Bradley, Neil Campbell And Sticky Foster’s The Lift, Brighton 14th March 1998 (RHCD01). You may be able to locate some of these lost jewels through Eddie Flowers’ Slippy Town site in the USA or the Fisheye site in the UK. Good fucking luck. But be on the boat when Rhizome releases the Dredd Foole & The Mv/Ee Medicine Show “Buzzin Fly” lathe 8″ and prose booklet and The Blithe Sons lathe 8″ and the Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith split 10″ and the Leighton Craig Terminal Moraine 3″cd-r and the Armpit Mano O Mano CDR and the Paintings Of Windows CDR and the Jon Dale/Kynan Lawlor 3″CDR. no shit. And, according to the Rhizome Label blog site also expect a Jon Dale CDR on New Zealand’s Birchville Cat Motel’s Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon label, and a few Jon Dale/Kynan Lawlor duo tracks to turn up on a compilation being curated by Hi-God People head honcho and venerable Bee Gees fan Julian Williams.

As much as the Pacific Rim kicked our asses it was nice to be able to cruise up the West Coast towards the potted air of Eugene, Oregon. Our pals Comets On Fire still live up here and we were hoping they’d be in full psych-rock rage with Ben Chasny slicing atoms with his hypersonik finger stick but it was actually by invitation of Comets electronic junk drawer master NOEL HARMONSON. He mentioned something to us about passing on a tape of Leprechaun music. We could NOT pass this up and fucking balled it up Highway 5 outracing CHIPs and other doofus lawmen. What Noel turned us onto was Leprechaun Pt. 1 on the newly minted Brained cassette label (LEP001). So basically the Leprechaun here is Noel or at least his channeling of what he loves about leprechauns or, at even more least, the movie Leprechaun (his favorite). If you’ve ever seen Comets On Fire in full steam heat you know Noel is a manic motherfucker of the most sick rock electronic workout really not heard since early Allen Ravenstein Pere Ubu. Leprechaun then is Noel unchained and unhinged and unfettered by punkoid rock n rollers and it was worth hitting the north to grab it. Leprechaun 2 is due any day we hear.

Anyone who had tried to assemble a decent set of Lee Perry records has certainly been rump-blasted a few times, by either no-Perry albums masquerading as his, or by crappy compilations annotated in an utterly half-assed and misleading fashion. If this sounds like you, then jump (don’t float) to get a copy of Gary Simons’ SUPER SCRATCH (Secret History Books), which totally lays bare the truth of Scratch’s recordings of the 20th Century. It woulda been nice if there was an index, but Simons give the full story and a critical overview of each record released with any purported Perry involvement up through 1999, and it is a massively useful book.

A swank and very useful record is HAT MELTER’s Unknown Album (Crouton Music). The music was recorded by two duos consisting of cello & percussion (steve Hess, jeff klATt, jon MuEller, matt TurnER—get it?). Their improvised tracks were then plunderfied in the studio by C. Rosenau. The resulting music is quite fantastic. Some passages retain the long-thought stream of the original performances, other bits are shot at your head like fist-sized chunks of rock salt. One kind of sound is more stinging than the other, but it’s not worth quibbling.

For some reason, we still think of GANG WIZARD as a band with its basic thrust in punk muddery. Why this continues to be our sad lot I dunno. ‘Cause their new split eponymous LP with ALGEBRASSIERE (Black Bean and Placenta/Breath Mint/Deathbomb Arc/etc) is a gush of air that is free from all known styles. There is talk (in some quarters) that the Algebrassiere side is the free-er of the two, but such conversation is just a lotta bull! Show us one single non-destroyed form on the Gang Wizard side and we’ll gladly eat your hat. Sure, the tools that these young Californians use are “rock” tools, but the stuff they get out of them is purist munge. It varies between accreted noise-form (feedback-laced, natch) and the kinda free-plonk that makes hot ducks wiggle from sea to shining sea. And truly, they seem to be introducing some new instruments into the mix as well, although the sonics are too crabby for us to get anything like a firm handle on what the hell it is they’re actually doing. Beside pleasing the bejeezus outta listeners, that is. Algebrassiere are from Baltimore and their blow is sweet and weird in a way that almost recalls some of Smegma’s early early crudity. Stylish!

Of all the bands to namecheck, I was surprised as hell to see Portland’s CLOROX GIRLS mentioning early Red Cross. And it probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind as a reference either, but now that they brought it up, well, yeah, I can hear it. The sound on their eponymous Kurt Bloch-produced debut LP (Smart Guy) is clean and classic, just like an early ‘80s SoCal punk band doing Ramones-based tunes. And it may be a little less mush-mouthed than Red Cross, but it has a basic goodness that is harder to ignore than a trouserfull of antlers.

Got a few old favorites back with fresh sheets, as well. The new release by John Fell Ryan’s EXCEPTER is an EP with two tracks, “Vacation/Forget Me” (Live to Stereo/Fusetron/Excepter) that is rather more spacily minimal and proggily electro than the debut. Pulses emerge from the dark and treated vocals and gloops rise up to meet them head-on. Which is about all you can ask some mornings, eh? The new album by OPEN CITY is called The Birth of the Cruel (Thin Wrist) and it brims with the wonderfully cracked sounds you’d expect. Two guitars and a drum crawl slowly over the parched hills searching for water and you can feel the skin bubbling and bursting off their backs. These guys make a sequence of small events feel like a goldang earthquake. Tell Buster Verlaine the news. And several of our good buddies are represented on the BABYHEAD comp LP from Sacramento (SS Records). Duchess of Saigon display their spasmo-anti-punk raunch, Sexy Prison do their pickle-throated electro-gush thing, Klondike & York get it across in splendid drums + tenor-skronk fashion, A-Frames growl as thickly as they can. There are even a coupla great French bands (Blutt, whose “Astrid” is nice avant-punk and Crash Normal, whose “Quit Looking at My Tits” bloots in fine electro-punk-meets-RWA stylee). What more could a thinking mook request?

contacts:
Blackbean and Placenta: http://www.blackbean.tk
Breathmint: http://www.breathmint.net
Captain Milkshake: http://www.captainmilkshake.com
The Cherry Point, Troniks label:
http://www.iheartnoise.com/
Chocolate Monk, Hell’s Half Halo and Since 1972 labels:
http://www.pinktoes.net
Karen Constance art:
http://www.artshole.co.uk/karenconstance.htm
http://www.reversibleeye.com/zine/karen/html/bar1.html
http://www.hoardmag.com/lollypop/1.htm
http://www.tangents.co.uk/art/04/karen_lollypop/
http://www.the-logos.com/culture_more/317_0_6_0_C/
http://www.the-logos.com/printer/306_0_6_0/
http://www.roctober.com/roctober/roc37.html
Crouton Music: http://www.croutonmusic.com
Dearthbomb Arc: http://www.deathbombarc.com
Excepter: http://www.excepeter.com
Fusteron: http://www.fusetronsound.com
Hanson: http://www.hansonrecords.com
S. Isabella/Stabat Mors LP available from: http://www.radiantslab.com/DroneRecords
Kylie: http://www.kylieproductions.com
Leprechaun/Brained/Noel Harmonson: 111 Cypress, SF, CA 94110
Live to Stereo: 382 Jeff Street, Bushwick NY
Mineola Press: http://www.minneolapress.com
The Rhizome Label: therhizomelabel.blogspot.com
Runt: PO Box 2947, San Francisco CA 94126
Secret History Books: gsimons299@earthlink.net
Slow Toe: http://www.slowtoe.com
Smart Guy: http://www.smartguyrecords.com
Social Registry: http://www.thesocialregistry.com
Spite: spite.woodcutter.free.fr/
Thin Wrist: http://www.thinwrist.com
Wavelength: http://www.wavelengthtoronto.com
John Weise, Helicopter: home.earthlink.net/~johnwiese/helicopter.html

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 10 (May, 2004)

Holy crows of March. The SUN CITY GIRLS, a trio first of Arizona, more recently of Seattle, are amongst the very busiest of bees. There have lately been new recordings by them, archival tapes dubbed to vinyl, associated releases, a series of CDs and DVDs they released documenting Asia non-popular culture. And we’re sure there’s more, because, hey, there’s always more. And the latest package of SCG genius contained the six videos that they have released through Abduction; videos which span from 1990 to 2003, showing the incredible sonic and textual evolutions that have gripped the band in that time. Watching them sequentially makes for a heck of an interesting evening.

The first is Cloaven Theater (:57) and it kinda sets the procedural stage for all that follow. The format is largely based on hand-held cameras, recording both live performances as well as set pieces, random blasts of junk, and plenty else, presented in a way that suggests a post-nuclear vaudeville review. Bits of this, bits of that, all strung together with a specifically-wrecked sense of humor and a genuine urge to confuse. The elements here include lip-synching, live improvisation, beverage guzzling, crudely exotic costuming, video burn, a JFA t-shirt (slyly acknowledging the band’s hardcore roots), noise jams, musical rituals, globe balancing, one-eyed food slurping, chicken puppets and even a dramatic reading of a surrealist cartoon strip. Musically, in the very early ‘90s, the band was in a transitional stage, really beginning to incorporate heavy Asian thinking into their sound for the first time, and this tape gives a fairly swank overview of this period.

The Halcyon Days of Symmetry (:48) includes footage recorded between ’90 and ’00, and is again, all over some maps. It includes film collages, “found” Asian pop music samples, footage from a very stripped-down gig at a record store, manually-conducted studio experiments, and a a great live take of the epochal “Space Prophet Dogon” (from the Torch of the Mystics album). My only caveat would be to those parents who might like to purchase this as a birthday present for some special tot: there is one long collage sequence of a decidedly erotic nature, which may be unsuitable for young children. So take note!

It’s Not Over ‘Till the Skinny Arab Lights the Fuse (:52) is another potpourri. It showcases their first truly sophisticated use of puppet musicians (don’t ask, just watch), an excellent example of the band’s avant-garage approach to the questions raised by gamelan orchestras, another great live take of “Space Prophet Dogon” (with Evynd Kang on violin), and some more extended forays with Alan Bishop’s “Uncle Jim” character, a true king of certain kinds of knowledge. Another parental warning must be issued for this one, however, as one of “Jim”’s soliloquies has a mockery of race-baiting that might not be suitable for tiny ears. In a way, though, this one really seems to revolve around a line from one of the skits: “I’m gonna shoot those birds someday. I don’t like no one singin’ around my house.” In these words lies a mysterious key. Don’t be afraid to burrow for meaning.

If It Blows Up Park It (:52) is much more of a straight live documentation of the band than any of the other tapes. And that may make it one of the better ones to use as an intro for the unfamiliar. Documenting several performances from ’93, this one really shows the band approaching their fulsome and fatty width. The way they combine the dialectics of free-rock with an unsurpassed aptitude for gobbling (and excreting) the music of the world is just stunning. There are, of course, a few comedy routines tossed in, as well as a brief trip to Rick Bishop’s rare book store. Which looks really nice!

The Burning Nerve Ending Magic Trick (:57) has live material from the ’96-’97 season, plus more of a focus on solo forays (in all known dimensions). There’re also dancing statuettes with rather enormous penises, “Uncle Jim” begins to start sounding a bit like Beefheart in terms of word-construction, and Evynd Kang again guests on violin. This is not really one of the more music-heavy entries in the series, though; just so you know. But it does have one of the best smoking puppet scenes on film anywhere (we dare you to name a better one) and there are many confounded laughs to be had here.

Myths and Legends of the Blue West (:45) contains the most recent live stuff, shot just last year. So it is easily the best demonstration of what the band is like currently, and the strength of their mature sound is overwhelming. All of the turf they have stripped really comes together in a big flaming ball. And the sidebars are pretty neat, too. The Saddam mask is a nice touch, as is the Mike Tyson footage, the film collage, and the “Uncle Jim” footage, which is more hardboiled this time around, and includes some of the finest smoking pedantry we’ve seen in a year of goddamn Sundays. So, really, this may be the very best point of entry to their video shelf. And we hope like mackerels that you will take the splash.

Really fine little art ‘zine arrived from an Amsterdam club called ANTI STROT. It combines ratty graphics with punky drawings and collages, visual jokes that cross language borders easily, and even some smuts! Hey! Beautiful eye candy also comes in the form of NATIONAL WASTE #5 (Paper Rodeo), edited by LEIF GOLDBERG of Providence, RI. (Mr. Goldberg’s artwork was featured in the last ish of Arthur — see his full-page piece on page 10 — and also in this ish, on page TK.–Ed.) The drawings have a spectral crudity that makes me think a little of Bruce Duncan and also of some guy who used to draw for Arcade. And, as it’s from Paper Rodeo, it naturally has a ginchy silkscreened cover. And don’t forget to ask Paper Rodeo about Goldberg’s National Waste 2004 Calendar! It tweets! Ginchy art is also what one expects from the fantastic GEORGANNE DEEN, and her new book Season of the Western Witch (Perceval Press) has plenty of that, as well as some of her fine fine super-fine poetics, and a goldarn CD as well! LOOK at Georganne’s cracked and visionary art! READ Geoganne’s organic baby-meat wordspew. LISTEN to Georganne’s voice as she decants her lyrics in full-color with music tappling nearby (by Viggo Mortensen & Thurston, no less). It’s a gas, baby! Also got a nice little DIY art/rant ‘zine called DREAMLOGIC, which is another explicit example of how having a friend who works at a copy shop can help feed the revolution to free the souls of humankind. In the same bag, but slicker than fudge, is the first issue of Sleep Tight , which is a sweet little color ‘zine filled with images, drawings, photos and other visual fuckeroo. And it’s only a buck!

Has anyone seen VAMPIRE BELT? They’ve only played twice as far as we know, but both gigs were supposedly ferocious enough to scare even the cops called to the scene to squash the riot. All we know is it’s the first real hardcore exposition of mysterious noise snake Bill Nace and his buddy, Chris Corsano. Chris you know from the multitude of critical slather his liquid fire drumming has demanded these past few years. Bill, on the other hand, no one knows too much about, except for his brief sojourn in the UK wood-shedding with Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Lollypop of Decaer Pinga and Smack Music 7 infamy. Bill ain’t a Brit, but he ain’t anti-Anglo either. He’s a New England boy and he likes to crank out relentless raunch. At least that’s what’s in evidence on the one and only CD release of Vampire Belt, Dead Is OK. It’s released on the way too long dormant Hot Cars Warp Records, Corsano’s label, in conjunction with what is probably Nace’s own label, Open Mouth. The whole affair rocks like congealing lava after a heavy broil, which may be due to the fact it was recorded live in a bait shop.

For psychedelic reading, two of the best ‘zines ever have new issues out. There’s Phil McMullen’s PTOLEMAIC TERRASCOPE #34 with great archival pieces on the Electric Prunes, United States of America, Ill Wind and Quicksilver, amongst others. And contempo coverage of England’s Lazily Spun and Clive Palmer, plus such doughty Americans as Comets on Fire, Steven Wray Lobell, Steve Wynn and plenty more. Plus, of course, a CD featuring many of the above. There’s also George Parson’s DREAM MAGAZINE #4, which mixes good music stuff (Terry Riley, Fursaxa, Tanakh, Volcano the Bear, etc.) with other cultural coverage (Gary Snyder, Rick Veitch, Bernard Stollman, Last Visible Dog), with eight gazillion record reviews, in a way that will keep you glued to the toilet for hours. So get one of those squishy seats and lean back.

YOUNG PEOPLE are as unassuming-looking a band as we’ve seen since Lovechild came along. They’re two friendly, duppy-esque guys, and a girl who looks like she secretly runs the show. The music they make on their second album, War Prayers (Dim Mak) has a lovely kind of stutter to it. In a way, it’s basic drums + guitar (by Jeff Rosenberg, former tubster for Pink & Brown) + female vocals material (think many bands of the post-K galaxy), but it really kinda avoids cliches of both bigness and smallness, as well as loudness and softness. And yeah, this naif turf has been well worked in the last few years, but there is something really special about the quality this Brooklyn (‘though L.A.-born) trio purveys. The drums click like fingers applauding the play, the strings cavoot with nice little slides and stagger around like skunks fresh from hibernation, the vocals float in and out of everything like silver clouds. People say that their live shows are more like a cross between cracked country and sonic booms, but this whole thing’s as smooth as a butter rub from Jesus’ own fingers. Which is a pretty cool thing. Come on, admit it!

Anyone with a serious interest in the history of underground comix is hereby directed to pick up Bob Levin’s THE PIRATES & THE MOUSE (Fantagraphics). Although Levin writes like the lawyer he is (meaning this is no fast read), the story he tells is so cool you won’t care. In the early 1970s a group of underground cartoonists (some more willing than others) decided to fuck with Disney and copyright law in general by producing a comicbook that used Disney characters in thoroughly counter-culture fashions. Thus Air Pirates was born. Disney ignored them for a while, but eventually went after them and the ensuing lawsuit wound through the courts for years. Levin has written a completely thorough history of the case, the context of its times, and individual portraits of many of the key players. There are good illustrations, tons of oral history about previously-unknown topics, and it’s a great thing to have consumed. Just make sure you have the spare time to tackle it first!

Not since Black Flag jammed with the Minutemen to create Minuteflag has a collaboration between two rock blasts been so anticipated as that of BLACK DICE AND WOLF EYES. As legend has it the Dice, on one of their subterranean jaunts cross country, hit the Club Olson basement and spewed so freaking loud that it created a “quiet center” in the space; all the volume manifested itself as physical “concrete trash” outside the basement doors. I remember seeing BD do this in some sterile gallery scene in Chelsea at a Richard Phillips opening. I was a little put off as BD were wearing gun muffs for protection, but it was nice to see the art poodles blown out into the streets. Anyway, Wolf Eyes were very turned on and the beer bongers from Ypsilanti decided to tie one on with the Northeastern aesthetes. A couple of CDRs appeared on Olson’s American Tapes label but it’s this LP on Fusetron which is a total mindmeld. You would think this was going to be brutal darkness, and sometimes it is, but for the most part it’s a sophisticated study in patient noise unfolding. What could have been a speaker ripping festival of noise gore is instead an emotional soul burn at the speed of death. Up there with Lightning Bolt’s Wonderful Rainbow (Load) for progressive USA noise moves.

Very few combos have the brains, guts or chunks to actually use Richard Hell’s sound as a specific model, no matter how huge his cultural influence has been for the last (almost) 30 years. Well, THE PONYS (of Chicago, Illinois) kinda refute that operational contention once and for all on their debut LP, Laced with Romance (In the Red). Lurking within their mix of garage spumage, ‘60s/70s punk revisionism, and Thunders/Velvets’ mood-cops, there is a huge sprawl of Hell’s unique vision. A certain kind of yelp, a special brand of slur, a way of chopping up guitar riffs, it is all referenced in a buncha places throughout the album. And it sounds hot as fucking tar! In the Red really knows how to sniff out the best current rock & roll on the planet. If you are not hip to their chuff, you are out of some loops, pal. Way out.

It’s good to see John Fell Ryan back on the boards. ‘Though I suppose he never really left. John is the Olympia, Washington rhythm riot rocker who was a founding member of No Neck Blues Band, but had to split cuz well maybe he was just too weird for those guys (if you can imagine such a thing). I do remember first time I saw NNBB live, John really got his head wrapped around playing a lengthy sewing scissor mantra. It was great! As was hearing him play some solo junk machine beatbox wrecked techno damage at a party on Canal Street one summer’s eve. At the end of his NNBB tenure he fancied hisself a lead vocalist, which gave the band a unique twist away from whence they came (improvised instrumental whatsis). Indeed, it was the era of No Neck’s boogie fried research, which culminated in a legendary weirdo tour across the USA with John Fahey. John split and every time I had asked where the lad had disappeared to, all I’d get were shutdown stares. I was doubly curious, as John had published a fascinating graphic staple zine called The Yellow Spade in 1998. But he’s back, or like I said he was never gone, he was in Brooklyn. Hey, Brooklyn is a thriving zone, but we don’t walk the streets there too often and maybe we’re too old and too tall and maybe we just didn’t “see” John ambling about. Nevertheless he’s in goddamned Brooklyn and he’s mixing it up with a pretty hot clam collective called EXCEPTER. They have a 12” called KA (Excepter Records 01) available thru the sleepless Fusetron enterprise. The music is fluid yet bleeping electronic improvisation with definite cosmic swoops in titles such as “Breast of the Wave Offering”. The exquisite Caitlin Cook lassoes yr brain with siren improv-vox, whilst Ryan and pals Dan Hougland, Macrae Semans and Calder Martine dance in gleeful psychosia.

Table of the Elements’ recent RHYS CHATHAM box set seemed pretty definitive, but the new LP they helped with, Piano Music: Echo Solo (Azoth Schallplatten) is totally unlike anything else in Rhys’ previously known bag. The two piano pieces on this album are wonderful blends of different modernist threads, combining a somewhat percussive attack based on post-Cage dynamics, and a lyrical compositional voice rooted in early 20C French guys like Satie and Poulenc. The pieces are spacious and lovely, with lots of breathing room and a wonderful weightless quality that comes from somewhat unresolved melodic motifs. They hang on the air like tendrils of opium smoke and are just as comforting to breathe. If we could find that old Jefferey Lohn solo LP, we could check to see if this reminds us of that, too; but it’s filed in a country far away. Sorry!

WOODEN WAND & THE VANISHING VOICE are arisen from the ashy grave of the Golden Calves Band (prime progenitors. Along with Tower Recordings, of the Hudson Valley Mystique) and their debut LP, XIAO (De Stijl) takes things in all kindsa fine and lost directions, somewhat in the style of ESP-Disk legends, All That The Name Implies. Flute, piano, percussion, voices and strings combine in gently anarchic ways, sheering great hunks of hair from all available heads with soft, blunt clippers. The band is listed as an octet and it sounds like there might be even more of them, lurking in the shadows, panting through their noses and waiting for their turn to pounce out of the pumpkin patch and scare the heck out of improvisational thinkers everywhere. But truly, the table manners of this set are as mild as toast. Even babies will love it. Honest. And if you like the lighter side of underground free-though action, you will too!

LISA JARNOT is a fairly young poet, younger than us at least, from the intensive workshops of the 1980s/’90s years at St. Mark’s Poetry Project. She’s just published her third collection of verse, Black Dog Songs (Flood Editions), which collects early and contemporary work of hers in fast sharp economic relief. As a student of Robert Creeley’s you can feel Lisa’s poetic eye drawing spare and heartbeat fast word action to paper. The poems are off-putting and sometimes crazy/funny, which lifts them from heavy mind spew. With high recommendations from John Ashbery and the late Stan Brakhage she is very much worth checking out. She’s currently hunkered down writing a book-length bio of Robert Duncan.

Damn, what a great record! We are talking, of course, about JEFF FUCCKILLO’s Disturbed Strings LP (Roaratorio). Jeff has previously tooled for Wham-o, the Irving Klaw Trio and others, but this is solo acoustic guitar stuff, not unlike that of the great Alvarius B. That would be enough to raise the temperature here. The hepness of the way this guy bends and hammers strings makes it impossible to peg stylistically, seeming as it does, to owe equal debts to Derek Bailey, Robbie Basho and that Jandek. But what makes our personal air even warmer is the accompanying sound effects, which arose from John Fahey’s garbage bag of tricks. Fahey, it seems, had met Jeff and proposed an LP session. When Fahey showed up, he was laden with cassettes of all sortsa junk, and he feeds those sonics into the mix like the possessed maniac he most surely was. There are antic similarities to Parachute-era Chadbourne, and maybe that’s why Fahey deemed the session “too nice” to be released on Revenant, but we have no such qualms and you shouldn’t either.

The writing scene in Baltimore, MD continues the left-of-reality vibe that area has been warping with since John Waters scripted Hag in a Black Leather Jacket in 1964. Local scribe Blaster Al Ackerman’s motto for lit life in Baltimore is, “live unknown, die unknown, but bun a knee.” And those are words any of us should only hope to measure up to. Ackerman is a great writer, some say as good as heavy American stalwarts Fredric Brown and Theodore Sturgeon, for depicting reality drop-out in daily bizarro life. He, and other like-minded folk (such as the long running, always happening John M. Bennett and the frighteningly surrealist Mary Knott), throw down little pieces strewn about in Balto lit journal SHATTERED WIG REVIEW–now on it’s 23rd ish. SWR is edited by Rupert Wondolowski, himself an interesting writer, particularly in short form broken synapse pieces. His latest sole effort is The Whispering Of Ice Cubes (Shattered Wig Press) and like the journal is very ready for yr bedside endtable.

Sheesh. Just realized it’s been 30 years since I first heard THE RESIDENTS and, while that makes me feel even more codger-like than usual, it also gives me a chance to get excited (as a mature adult) about their new DVD, Demons Dance Alone. Although I did not see the tour, the Demons album was one of my favorites of the band’s recent ouevre. It is a suite of short, rather poppy songs that recalls their classic Duck Stab/Buster & Glen-era in all its glory. The DVD is a live document of the tour, and although it is fairly straight-ahead (for the Residents, anyway) it has a damn peculiar look and feel. Shot in infrared, everything has a rather odd glow to it, and this makes the way that the characters interact on stage seems especially sinister. Which is good! The music is superb. In Eric “Kitabu Black Jew” Feldman, the Residents have found a wonderful collusionist, and other key players include guitarist Nolan Cook (the goddamn second coming of Snakefinger) and vocalist Molly Harvey (who sounds at times like she’s channeling Jandek’s partner Nancy). Watching everyone cavort around the stage set, with bizarre dancing lights accompaniment, and the fart-joking demon, is really a nice visual cocktail after a long day spent shoveling snow. Let the Residents tend to yr sore muscles, their fingers might work even better than Jesus’s!

Austin has been a veritable hotbed of small press poetry these recent weird years and a new one has just hit called EFFING PRESS. The first two chapbooks they’ve published are Isle of Asphalt by Travis Catsull and Underpony by Doug Warriner. We’ve ripped through Catsull’s book and it’s a killer. His thoughts wing their way through burning tire smoke all in search of sweet rejoinding sleep. Or at least a baked snack. Effing Press also has a po’ journal called effing magazine natch which presents a rollicking selection of young word snappers, local and beyond. Of note is Dale Smith, co-editor of Austin’s Skanky Possum Press which we hipped you to a few issues back. Remember?

Token “regular” CD of this issue, is an artistic set that is credited to NIAGARA, although is really a little more broad-based than that. Beyond the Pale (Amphetamine Reptile) is a glorious 3CD block in deluxe silk-screened packaging that was put together for a recent show of paintings by the Michigan songstress, hosted at one of Tom Hazelmyer’s booze emporiums. And there is a bunch of Destroy All Monsters on it (mostly stemming from the band’s Asheton era), an equal amount of Dark Carnival (the band Niagara and Ron Asheton formed subsequent to DAM), and a few tracks by Venus in Furs (Niagara’s newest unit). The DAM material includes their singles and some other tracks (most of which were on a French LP a while back), plus a few live things previously unheard, including a small selection from a reunion of the band’s proto-art-rock-devils-line-up (with Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw in the ranks). DAM were a great band in all their incarnations. Much as we love the rugged sloth of the early unit, the Asheton version had some great Stooge/5 power, and Niagara’s vocals always have a total chirp-sex edge. Hard to resist. Dark Carnival we have had less contact with, but the disc with their live set, recorded at the Knit in ’95 is pretty cool, too. They’re slower than DAM, but tackle the same sorta material (indeed, many of the same tunes) with swell abandon. The third disk has the reunion stuff, some more Dark Carnival live tracks and a handful by Venus in Furs. These are all pretty good, but perhaps not as nice as the package itself, which is signed by Niagara in an edition of 200, and packed to gills with visual beauty. But hey, take a bow, all you dudes.

KEVIN DAVIES is a poet from Vancouver. Nanaimo actually, homeplate of Jack T, you know the big dude who sells rare garage and psych records at the WFMU fair and runs Lance Rock Records? Kevin has a new book out which is amazing and Jack has issued a new Lance Rock 7”, first one in like ten years, by a slashing group of Texas oldster punks called the Ka-nives. Whether Kevin, who has since moved to Brooklyn, or Jack, who still resides in Nanaimo ever met up is hard to say, but they both have a magic grip on the intangible thought-world of today’s rocket riding youth. Davies blew open minds when he published the volume Comp. (Edge Books) in 2000. Comp. took the fearsome breath of Charles Olson and the (let’s say) playful breath of Frank O’Hara, and shot it through with a very approachable blend of the experimental and straight-ahead. It was modestly exhilarating and he’s taken it to an even keener climb with Lateral Argument (Barretta Books). Funny (“Refusing to work requires great discipline. Waiting in troll clothes under a bridge requires great discipline.”), angry (“Send a ham to the widow Cheney”) and musically alive, this guy Davies has got a killer beat. As do the goddamned Ka-nives, ex members of Houston garage grunts 1-4-5’s, Junior Varsity and sister group, The Jewws. And one guy supposedly is the son of Jandek. Whatever. I you dig the wayward snarl of protop-unkers Joe and The Furies’ “Weasel” and Chuck Berry’s schlong-bonging “Dear Dad” then yr in luck cuz both masterpieces are ripped into bloody shreds on this 7”.

Ben Chasny, better known as SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, has been creating singular vistas of acoustic guitar suspension for a good while now. And some of his releases have been more obscure than ancient doughnuts. One such is the Nightly Trembling LP, originally issued as a lathe-cut in an edition of 30. Now Time-Lag has put it out in a populist version of 500 or so. And it is as lovely as stone–a juggle of gorgeous flourishes, vocals drawn from the well of mystery, and even some passages of refined raunch. There’s plenty of other Chasny around these days, too, especially now that he’s part of the Comets on Fire juggernaut. (Six Organs and Comets On Fire were profiled in Arthur No. 7, out last November, still available for five bucks from arthurmag.com – Ed.) So grab yr ankles and take a whiff. On us!

But, perhaps, maybe the most amazing record this time out is the picture disk LP, Iconic Distortions by THE GUITARS PROJECT (Box Media). Hampshire College grad, Jenny Sheppard (also a member of Bride of No No and Metalux) was doing investigative art work with elderly women, some of them suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, when she decided to lead six of them in an experiment in improvisational guitar. And it is nothing short of astounding. Rhythmic, minimal, flowing and wild, the pieces here are immediately stripped of any novelty aspect by their sheer beauty and otherness. This could easily be the work of several avant garde composers and like all such works, really raises a lot of questions about technique and art in the post-Duchamp’s universe. Easily the best LP by a Hampshire grad since Orchid Spangiafor’s Flee Past’s Ape Efl, and that’s saying something!

Like, so long!

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Abduction: http://www.suncitygirls.com
American Tapes: http://www.geocities.com/americantapes/index.html
Amphetamine Reptile: http://www.ox-op.com
Anti Strot: http://www.antistrot.com
Azoth Schallplatten: via http://www.forcedexposure.com
Barretta Books: http://www.barrettabooks.com
Box Media: http://www.boxmedia.com
De Stijl: via fuestron
Dim Mak: http://www.dimmak.com
Dream: http://www.dreamgeo.com
Dreamlogic: 910 West 17 Ave., Eugene OR 97402
Edge Books: http://www.aerialedge.com/edgebooks.htm
Effing Press: http://www.effingpress.com
Fantagraphics: http://www.fantagraphics.com
Flood Editions: http://www.floodeditions.com
Fusetron: http://www.fusetronsound.com
Lisa Jarnot: http://www.connectotel.com/jarnot/
Lance Rock: http://www.lancerock.com
Load: http://www.loadrecordings.com
Paper Rodeo: Po Box 321, Providence RI 02901
Perceval Press: http://www.percevalpress.com
Ptolemaic Terrascope: http://www.terrascope.org
Residents: http://www.residents.com
Roaratorio: http://www.roaratorio.com
Shattered Wig: http://www.normals.com/wig.html
Sleep Tight: c/o Easy Subcult, PO Box 37, Virginville PA 19634-0037
Time-Lag: http://www.time-lagrecords.com
Vampire Belt: http://www.yod.com/vampirebelt

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 9 (March, 2004)

Santa’s little helpers, or Yod’s little dwarfs, or whoever the fuck they are, were busy as beavers this past year. Those wily rascals loaded down our stockings with more treats than you shake a rat’s ass at. Thanks guys!

Boston’s Nmperign are the kings of small improvisational gestures. Early recordings for the Twisted Village label, and collaborations with other members of the New England (and world) underground have been great, but their new double LP, We Devote Every Effort to Offer You the Best That You Deserve to Have for Your Enjoyment (SIWA) seems like their best effort yet, The first LP was recorded in France, the second (I Am Sitting in a Fucking Room) was done at Wesleyan, and the records are as different as they are similar. Greg Kelley and Bhob Rainey (who ARE Nmperign) mix cuss-like use of extreme breath control with electronic huzzing and screeched vocals like no one else in yr carpool. And the French LP is as buttery and dense as some sort of magical cheese that melts in your pillow late at night, while the Wesleyan one creaks and weevils like bedsprings after a week of ape-fuck. This is a beautiful piece of sonic exploration that defies genre tags (jazz, noise, free, experimental, whuh) and is packaged in typically gorgeous SIWA stylee. And if you’re second-guessing these toots as hot shots who know NOT how to play REAL jazz then we suggest you bite your fuckin’ tongue. A challenge was made by Wolf Eyes’ Johnny Olson that Greg Kelley may play a mean horn but did he REALLY know how to play? “Of course I can REALLY fuckin’ play, noise boy!” recanted Kelley and with puffs of steam blowing out his ears he raced home to Eastern Massachusetts and recorded what has to be one of thee most fucked documents of obsessive-repetitive jazz dementia since the Charles “Yardbird” Parker Dean Benedetti recordings of 1947. Take after take after take of Kelley just blowing the living krap out of Dizzy Gillespie ‘n Kenney Clarke’s “Salt Peanuts” (just the head, mind you), you can hear the spittle flying with each take a brutal and savage point nailed into Olson’s brain. And just when you think you’re gonna smash your head thru your speakers he runs a few dozen maniacal variant runs thru Bird’s own “Donna Lee.” The coolest thing is after Kelley fedexed this sonofabitch to Olson, Olson released it on his label (American Tapes)! Quite a fucking showdown and, needless to say, highly recommended.

Stefan Jaworzyn may be best known to some as a guitarist (Skullflower, Descension, Ascension, solo, etc.) or as the proprietor of one of England’s best record labels of the ‘90s, Shock. But he first made his mark as an amazingly smart and savage writer and editor, covering exploitation and strange art films of all sorts in his magazine, Shock Express, as well as via various freelance gigs. He has edited some superb Shock anthologies over the past few years, but really seems to have outdone himself with Texas Chainsaw Massacre Companion (Titan), which is a fascinating history of the original film, its follow-ups, the work of Tobe Hooper, the movie’s creative germ (Ed Gein), and everything else in the exploit-o universe. There’s amazing info on Hooper’s pre-Chainsaw work, the Austin hippie scene, the mechanics of producing splatter films, jokes at Dennis Hopper’s expense, and lots of sharp writing and great pics. Even if you don’t like this sort of thing generally, this is a totally wonderful read.

If you wanna watch this kinda thing, rather than read about it. Let us suggest a couple of hot numbers. The first is The Living Corpse (Zinda Laash) (Mondo Macobro), which is a long-thought-lost Pakistani vampire film from 1967. It has similarities to some of Hammer’s Dracula films, but is full of curious details, and has an absolutely unique feel. Much of it is directed almost like a silent film, and the pacing and lighting mirror that as well. But there are berserk musical interludes, inferences of baby eating, wild dance numbers and many other mind-blowing touches. If you are a devotee of the psychotronic, this is a must see. As is Happiness of the Katakuris (Chimera Entertainment), a Japanese film from 2002, directed by Takashi Miike. Colored heavily by the scenes that parody The Sound of Music, this movie is an insane mix of horror film, musical, heartwarming family saga, and claymation nightmare. Sorta hard to describe it without going through it scene by scene, but it’s a very whacked out story about an extended family that runs a rural hostel in which every guest seems to end up dead. You should just see it, okay?

For reasons of sheer cussedness, we have always considered Curlew to be the weakest link in the musical chain forged by Alabama surrealists. By this, we mean that the combo never really seemed like Davey Williams’ best unit. Their records were okay, but they were a little too Laswellish in parts to really excite us. But hey, here is an archival live LP by the band, Gussie (Roaratorio), recorded at a defunct Minneapolis club in 2001, and it is a monster of soul-churned improv snacks. Everybody seems to be extremely loose and lateral here. George Cartwright’s saxes, Williams’ guitar, Chris Parker’s piano, Fred Chalenor’s bass and Bruce Golden’s bass are all making great small noises and big splats, and there’s none of the surgical riff-handling that marred some earlier records. The freak register reigns in all quadrants, and there are some truly singular squeals here. And since this a Roaratorio product, it is also packed in some fine original art, and is pressed in fidelity that can only be described as dandy. What a treat.

One of the hippest jam records to enter our sphere lately is The Beast LP (De Stijl) which pairs the glapsy Midwestern otherness of Wolf Eyes, with the solid dunderage of Smegma, the band perhaps most responsible (along with the Residents) for a real underground noise continuum in the US of A. Smegma, originally from San Diego, then based in L.A., and then in Portland, have been clucking out their own frantic brand of post-form madness since the early ‘70s. And it’s as untaggable now as it was then–instruments, random noises, voices, electronics, everything flutters into a big vortex of wet cement, emerging as a perfectly-realized sculpture of confusion. This session happened because Wolf Eyes were touring out in Oregon and wanted to meet their heroes. So they did. And the results are just ducky. This is the first real extended recording we’ve had of Richard Meltzer vocalizing with Smegma, and he sounds great; almost like hearing Yogi Bear bum-rushing the stage at Company Week. And the combination of the two units’ sounds is pretty seamless. You could break your neck trying to figure out where one stops and the other begins, so be careful as hell when you listen to this. But do listen, ‘cause it’s good.

And the only way for us to stop talking about frikkin’ Wolf Eyes is maybe talk about some other Michigan madmen. How about this cat, Charlie Draheim? No one’s too sure who this joe really is, but he has issued a cassette called March of Slimes and it has already proven to be one of the best goddamned underground USA noise releases of the last full moon cycle. If, after absorbing Jaworzyn’s Texas Chainsaw opus, you want to know how some kid who grew up with repeated viewings of said film and had to just set his ass-on-fire to MUSIC, then search out Draheim’s tape. The only distributor we know who’s carrying it right now is Hanson.

The Sun City Girls’ organization has moved into new fields of endeavor with their new Sublime Frequencies project. This is more or less an ethnographic odyssey into the music and culture that informs the SCG’s own strange trip. The first batch of stuff includes a few CDs (which we haven’t played) and a couple of very interesting DVDs (which we have). The vids are both documentaries of musical events from what Capt. Beefheart called “the other side of the fence.” Jemaa El Fna is a 50-minute film by Hisham Mayet, shot in Marrakech in 2002. It basically documents a strange evening of music and ritual (and very bizarre record cleaning techniques) in a large town square that serves as a meeting place for local musicians. It is very crude, but it is pretty spellbinding anyway, because the music, the scene, the whole goddamn thing is just a weird as anything. And man, those record cleaning scenes are unbelievable! Nat Pwe was shot by the band’s Alan & Richard Bishop, and Robert Millis, in Burma. What’s depicted here are a variety of performances at a festival held every year to celebrate these kind of mean ghosts. The ghosts who are the focus of this particular event seem to have transvestite tendencies, so the film shows a crazy pastiche of sword-music, cig-dancing, cross-dressing, and scotch-juggling. It’s another eyeful, lemme tell ya. And both of the DVDs had lotsa digital glitches, but they didn’t really distract that much from the otherworldliness of the visuals’ flow. Beep.

Norwegian label Humbug has released some sweet swill these last couple of months. Of particular note is a new 7” by Portland, Maine’s leading ladies of electric dada pollution, Crank Sturgeon, E-Z Voice over Box-Top Living Solutions (Humbug030). Here we have the Sturgeon alone at his desk in his room shuffling noise clutter around and talking about it out loud. Weird and decidedly warped. There’s also the 7” lathe-cut by Rats With Wings titled Black Label 7” (Humbug025) with nice percolated noisetronik action courtesy of Australia’s Bill Burston. A five-inch lathe-cut by idm theftable, “A just B” B/W “B or A” (Humbug021), shows off the more flux-mouth music by this Windham, Maine resident (Maine noise rules!) in conjunction with the attached CD (which is more machine/found sound stimulated flux-huff). The identity of this cat is one Skot Spear and he’s a registered one-man fluxus wrecking crew. A lathe-cut LP by Edward Ruchalski, Having It Out (Humbug020; edition of 50), lays out superb swathes of mood/noise using homemade instruments, sound sculptures and motorized string machines. He is also known to incorporate event sounds, primarily recorded from his back porch (family picnics, etc.). Ruchalski resides in Syracuse, NY and has been kicking around the new music scene for some time. Like the deep playing of Organum and Mirror, Ruchalski is the real deal. Lastly, there’s an LP by Bill Wood and Fredrik Ness Sevendal, Song of Degrees (Humbug016; edition of 200). Sevendal is in Slowburn, a hazy Norwave outfit, and used to be in some band called Gom we’ve yet to catch up with. Wood is a New Zealander who has recorded extensively as the excellent 1/3 Octave Band in his native Kiwi. This dynamic pairing is a freedom ride of various synthesizer and miscellaneous sound improvisations and all rather great. So ask for Humbug at your local record shack.

The latest, greatest book by Canadian poet Valerie Webber is called One Night Stands (VW). It is a sequence of 20 poems, written in 20 bars, while Ms. Webber enjoyed a rum and coke, and smoked a single cigarette. The results are funny and brutal, a kind of travelogue of the lost, filled with a great tumble of details, and written in Webber’s crisp, acerbic style. I guess we should just all be glad that there’s still smoking allowed in the bars of Quebec. This book’d taste a lot different without the tang of nic. More Canadian content comes in the form of the new issue of Fish Piss, a bi-lingual (‘though mostly Anglo) ‘zine from Montreal, which combines strong comix and graphics with an excellent review section, and great features. Of special interest this time are a few inter-related pieces on the recording industry (a general history of the early days, a snazzy bit on K-Tel, etc.) and a fine obit of strongman/street person, The Great Antonio.

Probably named after a bass clarinet player from Sun Ra’s organization, Eloe Omoe is an extremely raunchy free-rock duo from Eastern Massachusetts. Using bass and drums (but not drums n’ bass), they make little swirls of dirty fever that rise into the munge of the night before collapsing like so much puh-dust on the floor of the warehouse. There are a few tracks on their eponymous debut MLP (Infrasound) that seem to have been recorded live, and they kinda remind of what a very stripped-down version of Demo Moe might have sounded like. So perhaps their name is more a tribute to that long-gone NY outfit than it is to anyone who wielded a licorice stick, be it a bass one or not. Stylish!

Of all the eccentric wildfolk in NYC past present and future not too many can hold a candle to the real life weirdness of Edgar Oliver. He’s a dramatic actor and prose artiste cum urban vampire. He’s been stalking the lower depths of Manhattan for well on 30 years. His first book, the novella The Man Who Loved Plants (Panther Books), is an astounding journey through obsession and dark desire. Imagine Hubert Selby trading lines with J.T. Leroy and you may come close. Or not. And the voting is in: best broadside poem by a lawyer this issue goes to The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office (Remitittur) by Richard Krech. Krech has, of course, been producing important and liberation-oriented poetry since the ‘60s. But his legal work has not been largely documented in artistic ways before. Now, here’s a very nice synchretic fusion of two of his main threads. And it’s a gas. Very splendid words, illustrated by Richard’s daughter, Briana Miller. Meanwhile, #4 of Miller’s own cool mini-comic, Break (Break), is also out. This one documents the utter stupidity that befalls poor working retail stiffs on a day-to-day basis. Excellent work. And if you contact her, be sure to ask about back issues.

Meerk Puffy is one of the inventors of modern Providence, and his work with Forcefield, as well as his solo efforts, have put a new, more thoroughly stupid (read: American) face on electronic field action. And finally, after a small pantload of releases in other formats, there is a Meerk Puffy LP available to the discerning. Nung (Animal Disguise) is a wonderful battlefield of real lockgrooves, fake lockgrooves, sequences collapsing in anger, notes exploding in rage, and all kinds of other throbbing noise. It’s a hell of a pleasing platter, and it looks pretty hip, too! And, naturally, another wonderful basket of Providential slunk has arrived from Load Records. There’s the eponymous debut LP from Vincebus Ereptum. As might be expected from a combo taking its name from Blue Cheer’s debut album, the sounds here are as loud as cottage cheese. But unlike some similar volume-mongers, these guys seem to remember what a great band Flipper was. Love live Pet Rock! There’s also the debut LP by Kites (who were ballyhooed in Arthur No. 5). It’s called Royal Paint with the Metallic Gardener from the United Sates of America Helped into an Open Field by Women and Children, and it mixes alternatingly skuzzy and static electronic hair-wall-doodles with an aesthetic taken from the meanest playground on Earth. Which is a cool mix of stuffs. The rest of the Load vinyl load (as it were) is from non-Prov artists, but that’s not to discriminate against. Brooklyn’s USAISAMONSTER’s new LP, Tasheyana Compost, is a brilliant as its two predecessors–stylistically reminiscent of some of the Minutemen’s most casual Boon tunes crossed with a more spasm-oriented version St. Vitus, plus plenty of uniquely contempo strangeness. What a South Bay concept! And San Francisco’s Total Shutdown have released a posh eponymous LP that is partly their patented, staggering, stop-start free-punk fusion, and partly a new, more diffuse, sputsy, post-core atmosphericism. No complaints here.

As regards the world of magazines, Swingset #4 is out. Steve Lowenthal puts together a real fine read, with good music stuff (Catpower, Iron & Wine, Susie Ibarra), plus enough art, lit and whatnot to separate from the pack. Issue # 4 of Astronauts music ‘zine from Australia has just been sent over and it’s full-on killer. Healthy, revealing interviews with percussion stud muffin Tim Barnes, starkissed folk punk Matt Valentine, soul bunny P.G. Six and Wooden Wand’s James Tothe gets deep inside the murky psyche of Hall Of Fame. Also, fresh as hell is a solo book of prose by Matt Valentine, Small as Life & Infinitesimally as Pure (Child of Microtones), which is a wonderfully cracked yarn about record-collecting, Buddha nature, drugs, sex, and many other important topics. If you like his musical work, you will certainly shit yourself sideways reading his fine words. There’s also a new issue of Mineshaft. Everett Rand’s great lit ‘zine features art by Crumb, Deitch, Bruce Duncan and Ace Backwards, plus a d.a. levy collage, publisher Jeff Weinberg’s memories of long ago political vandalism. Also included are poems by Irving Stettner, Wanda Coleman, A.D. Winans, and plenty more. Duncan and Backwords have also put together the 15th Telegraph Street Calendar (Twisted Image), which depicts a year’s worth of Berkeley’s finest streetnicks. Send one to yr mom. And a companion piece to this is Backwards’ Surviving on the Streets (Loompanics), which is both a memoir of Ace’s journey from New Jersey to the Bay Area and beyond, as well as a good hands-on guide to homeless living. Not brand new, but interesting and useful. And Stettner also has a new issue out of Stroker, one of the best, longest-lived underground poetry ‘zines around. #76 has a long tribute to Howard S. Levy and a great sample of his work, plus the usual Japanese content, Tommy Tratino investigations, and much else.

Spires That In The Sunset Rise are a female trio from Chicago who mine the Wicker Man tradition better than anyone in recent memory. Their eponymous debut LP (Galactic Zoo Disk/Eclipse) sounds something like Alva pretending to be mid-period Current 93. There is a nice, tense, wheezy otherness to the way that the strings breathe in and out in concord with the harmonium, and that the vocals blend incantational tones with barks right out of Polansky’s Macbeth. There are other raw touches to the music that bring to mind the early Godz, but the hoot-ritual aura eventually overwhelms any sense of art-anarchy. Which is a pretty hip thing to do, eh? The same label offers the Flashing Open LP by Plastic Crimewave Sound, another Chicago band, whose previous 45 was a nice slab of futuristic pulse-rock croak. The album is more of the same. Great touches of Krautrock, Hawkwind, Chrome, Pere Ubu and whatnot, draped across a large, echoey avant garage. Park your cup here!

Readers who are fond of silk-screened art and pornography are probably already well acquainted with Le Dernier Cri, long France’s most distinguished oddball art press. But should you not have “gotten down” with them as yet, might we suggest seeking out L’oraison des orifices by Quentin Faucompre. This fine new volume has more bizarre, handsomely-printed pictures of genitals in unusual action than you’ll see in a year of regular church going. It’s “really” “something.” If you have the nerve, they have the images.

In terms of a mighty-fine, one-sided LP series, one would have a tough time naming one superior to the recent set on Table of the Elements. There are six of them. San Agustin’s Triangulation (Hoof and Mouth Blues) is a fairly clamorous set for this instrumental trio, having, as it does, an opening sequence that approaches as close to rock-action as these guys are likely to get, before ascending into blue clouds and clots of lightning. Loren Connors’ The Murder of Joan of Arc is a ringing string of electric guitar strikes. It lacks the outright brutality of some of Loren’s recent recordings, but has its own devious agenda. It spurts majestic rolling amp barrels that will first knock your legs out from under your ass with gusto, then quiver loudly in a corner. Which is nearly all anyone could ask. John Fahey’s Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues (1-4), recorded live in ’97, typifies some of his late period pre-hardball beauty motion. This era’s languid acousticism was something I used to find particularly spiritual, and that memory seems borne out here. Cool. Laurie Spiegel’s Harmonices Mundi is a performance of Johannes Kepler’s 1619 musical piece, based on the spatial relationship of the planets and their paths in the solar system. Spiegel’s computer music realization of this swirling set of drones was actually shot into space on a 1977 NASA probe. But now you can enjoy it in the comfort of our own planet as well. Rafael Toral’s Harmonic Series is just that, a splendid sequence of tones, generated by guitar, analog electronics and computer, surging against each other (and your eardrums) like little tin foil bulldozers skirting the edges of the universe. Arnold Dreyblatt’s Point Source/Lapse has those two pieces recorded in ’97 by two separate groups of young musicians. These performances give the work of this (ostensible) minimalist a shockingly antic quality. Indeed, “Point Source” reminds me of nothing so much as the Theoretical Girls’ “U.S. Millie.” Sheesh. My only caveat on this series is that the pressings can be a little noisy at times, but that goes with the turf on clear vinyl, silk-screened editions, so clam up.

First issue of Pitchfork Poetry Zine we’ve run across is #10, and it’s a good one. Cover image by Loren Connors, poetry by Ira Cohen, Lyn Lifshin, Guy Beining and others, with good graphics and a feature on the wonderful California poet, Gerald Locklin. Locklin is probably best known for his long association with Charles Bukowski, but he’s a great “street” writer in his own regard and has a ton of books to prove it. The most recent is a prose collection called The Pocket Book (Water Row). There is the long title novella and a bunch of short stories (some of them very short), which are both funny and sad as hell. Locklin’s mature writing is great, like others of his generation of underground writers who have survived to tell their tales. He has a thoroughly great handle on the dynamics of blue collar day-to-day grunting (emotional, intellectual and social aspects, inclusive) and he just nails it time and time again. This would be a great place to start reading him. But be warned, his backshelf is vast! And is you get in touch with Water Row, be sure to check out their stock of new and used underground lit. It is quite staggering.

Also, we must offer a correction on something from a couple of issues back. It was said that Benoit Chaput was the sole driving forced behind Montreal’s Slow Movement. “Not so!” Say many readers. It appears that the wonderful visual artist, Julie Doucet, is the genius behind many of the gestures and concepts. So we apologize and commend to you all of the great work that Ms. Doucet has done under her own name. Great wads of it are available from Drawn and Quarterly Press, or you can seek out her newest collaboration, which is Chroniques de New York (Seuil) by a young French writer, Jean-FranÁois Jouanne, who wrote the stories to be read on the radio. Julie’s illustrations are great. And although the press seems to be hard to contact, the book is available through Montreal’s Fichtre.

CDs are hard to actually pick up and stick inside a CD player, very difficult, but once in a while Bull Tongue takes a little road trip just to see what’s new on the peeps’ market. And seeing as how most mid-size rentals have fucking CD players in ‘em, we hoist a tote bag or two of CDs into the ride and just fucking wail thru ‘em. From South Deerfield, MA to Pensacola, FLA (and back) one weekend we must’ve jammed at least 2,000 of these shiny repellent pieces-o’-shit into the “player” and y’know, four of ‘em weren’t half bad:

1. Sixteen Bitch Pile-up: B.F.F. (Gameboy Records) Five females who regard themselves as “charalambides possessed by morbid angel mutilating merzbow’s bloody corpse with a combine.” Whoa. And they’re not too far off. An unholy recording of a holy nun’s mass saturates the top of this monster and it gets propulsively taken over with guitar feedback, machine terror and turntable destruction. Nice.

2. MOUTHUS (Psych-o-Path 6) Mouthus is Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson of Brooklyn and they absolutely destroy. Super great feedback and overload squall w/ a hep no-wave edge. The label touts them as a brain-gouged cross between Jandek and Fushitsusha but our ears catch something more of a Rudolph Grey-jamming-with-Sightings vibe.

3. Various: SPACE IS NO PLACE (Psych-o-Path 5) Wait, another release on the same label? Not fair! But fuck, this is kill city great. It’s also the first place we heard Mouthus. Their track on this comp is better than the heavy shit on their own CD. And it’s surrounded by excellent other New York area weirdness. Flaming Fire deliver a bent cabaret-chaos piece, No-Neck Blues Band, Sightings, Axolotl, Enos Slaughter, and the great Breast Fed Yak (featuring Controlled Bleeding’s Paul Lemos and Samlas Mammas Manna sitarist Hakan Almkvist). This label not only also released the great Egypt is the Magick # How Many Pieces Of The Puzzle Can The Mind Go Without? and the Sightings Michigan Haters CDs but reissued the Kraut Klassik In The Poor Sun by Zippo Zetterlink. No Shit.

4. Various: Rap Pouch (Breaking World Records 35) As Bull Tongue does most of its daily stomping at the foothills of the Berkshires, it’s only natural we’d respond to the local flavors of this comp from Hadley, MA. A 3” CDR in a sewn pouch, it contains an amazing tune called “Rad Melting Plastic Box” by the already legendary Fat Worm of Error, which comes across as the only Bonzo Dog Band meets GTOs as freezing 21st century noise freakdom we’ve heard to date. There’s other goodness here from Barn Owl, Noise Nomads, Josh Burkett and others but that Fat Worm track is haunting us.

So long.

AS ALWAYS. IF YOU HAVE MATERIAL TO BE LICKED BY BULL TONGUE–VINYL, BOOKS, MAGS, VIDS, ETC. SEND TWO (2) COPIES TO:

Bull Tongue
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VW: c/o Webber 87 Troy, Verdun, Quebec Canada H4G 3CG
Water Row: http://www.waterrowbooks.com

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 8 (January, 2004)

Interesting to see and hear the Tarot or Aorta: Memories of a PRE Festival CD right now. It’s one of the first three CDs released by sex-muzak kingpin Tom Smith’s rather recent label stab The Smack Shire (www.smackshire.com). Along with the remarkable Georgia peach new wave sci-fi teen toilet graphic is the actual document of what was an outsider-music festival, curated by the sad pockets of Mademoiselle Smith. When Tom sent the call out to the chosen sensualists to partake in the Tora Tora Tora fest it seemed then, in 1997, as an incredible venture. Surely he was nuts, this was already proven through his years as slaughter-poet/vocalist with To Live and Shave in L.A. and Peach of Immortality. What was exciting was Tom’s vast net slithering through and past the most obvious noise-boy contenders in search of deeper, more bizarro authentica. And it was beautiful: Loren Mazzacane Connors, Davy Williams & LaDonna Smith, Monotrona, Harry Pussy, Liquorball, leslie q., and a dozen or so more true American genius originals. If you were there it must’ve been swell, if you weren’t it all seemed to come and go quickly and the wild flurry of post-post-noise underground mania pulsed forward in bunny-fucking multipludiny–to the point where the Tora Tora Tora festival was a faint memory of some lost Mayan era. So much has come and gone with babies and grandmas and pas making all kinds of wonderful free-rock racket. There’s a whole new stream of blood-contingency today and Tom’s issuing of this live document is goddamned timely.

Stopping for a quick breath (or smoke, if you wish) and flipping thoughtfully back to the mid-late ‘90s, when Harry Pussy was a wholly magical signifier to new noise rock nowness, makes some kind of holistic sense. Particularly since Adris Hoyo (drum/vox of HP) has been seen returning to the stage as of late with a fascinating, new-thought edge. Listening to the throwdowns that run through this snapshot of Tora Tora Tora is at once quaint and curious. Most of the music freaks involved are still locked in devotion to their creative light, either in the same guise or anew, but some of them are possibly relevant only as historical archaeologics. Regardless, they’re all excellent or near-excellent in the way they rip the fabric of rock and roll, avant-garde music, free-anything into sputtering future delight. The curious thing is what the future delight has turned out to be in late 2003, a crazy six years hence. What’s going on now is an excited fusion of disparate intelligentsia, young pups and old dogs, preternaturally sophisticated though raw like dripping meat.

This sentimental conclusion was made painfully obvious when we trucked out to Minneapolis in early October for what was the Destijl/Freedom From Festival of Music. Both Destijl and Freedom From are deep underground labels from Minneapolis. While Freedom From is notorious for wallowing in the slop of any and all scum noise and chatter (with mixed technical results), they have achieved a well-earned nutso celebrity status. Label boss Matthew St. Germain is a hard-puffing cherry pop of a lad entering into the conflicted adult world with a hellbent Brother Theodore madness tempered with LSD-driven Kaptain Kangaroo positivism. His other love is the culinary arts and he paused hardly once to see how much greatness was being consistently exhibited on stage so as to run home and cook up whole fresh turkeys, pot roasts and soup pots for the rumbling artist appetites. For a real live punk freak he’s a bonafide super chef and last I heard he was in deep sushi prep studies. Destijl, in contrast, has a rather low-key stance, releasing very limited recordings of super-lost folk/psych woodsmen. No catalog listing or website presence but a recognized and honorable profile. It is also the label that initially spearheaded this event and it is a token of its appeal to absurdity that they would actually conjoin themselves with the rampant lunacy of Freedom From. It was a meeting destined for either total hell breakdown or magical mystery success. Fortunately, for all in attendance, it was the latter.

Friday, October 3rd was the pre-festival night at a hip rocking bar in St. Paul called Big V.’s. Hair Police from Lexington, KY, who we squawked about a couple of Arthurs ago, hit the stage and were sick. We mean literally sick. After playing guitar as if it was an alien bursting from his Whitehouse t-shirted chest, lung shredder Mike Connelly proceeded to puke into his upended guitar case. Many electric devil signs and middle fingers and power fists were flailing as Hair Police moved through a set of experimental action rock which proved that they, and Michigan kingpins Wolf Eyes, are the most exciting bands from the American Midwest since The Stooges and MC5. A number of sporadic sonic releases by Hair Police exist on vinyl and cassette but this weekend saw the band celebrating their new cassette, Probe Cutting, on Mike Connelly’s own Gods of Tundra label. This tape is remarkable as it offers an alternative view into the band’s group sound. While some may write them off as just another spazz attack, here they seriously delve snuffle deep into warp group cosmosis. An insightful interview with the boys Mike, Trevor and Robert can be read at the bettawreckonize webzine.

Next up was The Dream/Aktion Unit which was Chris Corsano drums, Paul Flaherty sax and Jim O’Rourke and T. Moore guitars. It’s a conflict of interest for us to talk about our participation here but let us just say moist nips were way erect by gig’s rosy dawn. And speaking of moist nips, it was a gas to catch the legendary Michael Yonkers romp through a set of hard blues slice-and-bake guitar rock. Yonkers has been busting with intensified singular outsider yowl in Minneapolis since the ‘60s, when he led teen garage dynamos Michael & the Mumbles, to the 70s, when he weaved improv slink with Milo Fine’s Blue Freedom’s New Art Transformation, into the ‘80s/’90s/’00s, where he continually pumps shards of gut from his axe unlike any other electric six stringer around. All this is apparent on the Microminiature Love LP which Destijl released in microminiature quantity. Thankfully, it has been rescued again and it is easily attainable as a Sub Pop CD. At this fest he was slipping a few of his new It’s Only Yonkers CDRs around and it’s already being touted as the most fried-inside of modern Yonkers yet. It demands release.

The next day was the official first day of the fest and Aaron Dilloway was chosen for the opening invocation. Dilloway is the one connective tissue ‘twixt this event and the six years prior Tora Tora Tora fest, as he had appeared at that affair with the trio known only as Hercules. Dilloway is like the hitchhiker in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original Tobe Hooper film, not the MTV rip), but instead of googling the knifeblade along his arm he transubstantiates noise-gore energy through mind/machine improv. The last couple of years have seen him primarily involved with the ultra-ruling Wolf Eyes so to see him play this solo lunchtime slot was a precursor to an unflagging mindblow of a trip. With stringy locks hanging, black boots kicked forward, he drove his machine like a pit mechanic investigating a sweet ride. Dillo delivered an ace. He also runs the longstanding distro/label Hanson Records where you can seek out some solo Dilloway laceration as well as a host of other fine meats.

Up next was Metalux. Two women in association with the amazing Bride of No No, whose second, possibly posthumous, LP on Atavistic is in frantic rotation here. Like that group, Metalux give off a distinctly dispossessed alien zap. Songs take on a grey whoosh with blurposette whizzing vox and oddball sampled guitar crackle to make you maybe think you’re drunk on the moon. A curious display and not too far removed from the hep qualities found on their Fluorescent Towers LP available on Hanson. A forthcoming split LP on the Belgium Veglia label with the UK’s phenomenally fucked Evil Moisture has us all panic sweating.

Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice is the new project of ex-Golden Calves Money Band and this performance had ringleader James Jackson Toth joined by Tovah O’Rourke (of Dead Machines), Matt Krefting (of The Believers) and a few other sprites out for adventure. It all slipped from some faerie aether into a sweet lyrical pronouncement from Toth and within eight minutes he bailed into the audience and sang his way into the basement thus winding the rather extended ensemble to a finish. WW&TVV’s future plans are that they will hitch-hike tour across the USA. Give ‘em a lift and maybe they’ll turn you on to their Book of FM cassette released on their own Polyamory label. It’s an initial clatter of a session and downright weird but no weirder than what will be their future LP release on Destijl.

Emil Beausoleil, the performing guise of RRRecords’ resident genius Ron Lessard, blew the house down. He plugged a table lamp in, and set it up on stage next to a couple of Ron-rigged turntables. A semi circle of curious elves gathered to see what this hurried man was up to. He chose his materials and set the needles down and listened to the front of house speakers emit their conservative rock and roll output. “Can you please turn up the PA??!!” he yelled to the soundman, who obviously had NO idea how to deal with Emil. The soundman, in his learned judgment, thought that the noise was loud enough as noise, unlike some lame hard rock band which he’d probably knee jerk to deafening decibels. But this was obviously wrong and to have it any louder would be criminal but Ron pleaded, “Turn it up! I am a professional!. The pleading became part of the show and Emil mixed it up with the great noise blowing out from the electric stylus hotcha all the while infuriating the soundman. After about 20 highly entertaining minutes of this back and forth Emil went into a wonderful choreography of preparing his self with the adornment of a button down sweater and tie. Now he was ready to go! But the soundman had to remind Emil that his time was pretty much up. Everyone was told to stay at the 30-40 minute mark as there were so many acts. At Emil’s 30 minute mark he exclaimed “I was just warming up!” and from there he fucking thrashed. He always does.

We were spent and ran out to fish for some liquids and missed Devendra Banhart but returned duly to be melted by the exquisite vocalese of Bridget St. John. Bridget released four dark folk LPs whilst traversing 1960s psychedelic London, Greenwich Village and the West Coast. She was a confidante of Nick Drake and had played in settings with Kevin Ayers and Mike Oldfield amongst others. Her four-and-a-half solo LPs Ask Me No Questions (Dandelion 1969), Song For The Gentle Man (Dandelion 1971), Thank You For (Dandelion 1972), Jumblequeen (Chrysalis 1974), and The First Cut (Shagrat 1996), are haunting masterpieces of folk charmed drama. Many thought her vanished but she has been alive and well on Bleeker Street, NYC for some time and appeared shockingly a few years back at a memorial concert for Nick Drake in NYC. Destijl plans on recording a new Bridget LP soon (a CD, Take The Fifth, containing a pastiche of odd session tracks was released on the UK See For Miles label, which also reissued the Dandelion sessions) and if her appearance at this fest was any indication of the beautiful nature that LP may contain, then be prepared to have mind and heart embraced. What was most telling of this festival is how much the boundaries between extreme noise slash and classic hippie dawn folk have blurred. The new generation’s appreciation of all outsider music as common aesthetic is as remarkable as it is organic, yet it’s also nutso in its record collector absurdity. The one performance I saw Wolf Eyes noise queen John Olson stage front at was the Bridget set and he was obviously digging the honest sublimity flowing like sweet clotted cream through his oracular scope. Or maybe he was just trying to cadge a beer from someone.

As soon as Bridget began to head for the basement zone she noticeably stopped and turned in quizzical response to an immediate sound happening back on stage. Fursaxa, the lone figure of Pennsylvanian Tara Burke, had immediately begun a chime tree incantation of readiness. All minds seemed to gravitate towards this non-break in action and it took the classicism of Bridget’s world and delivered a wholly other ‘scape of folk/psyche contemplation. Fursaxa swept the audience off its collective squat, emoting swirled long note vocal lines floating atop mystic pump organ balustrades. Her closing piece was a layered accordion texture composition that dropped all to enchanted grace. She has two new self-released CDRS on her site Trobairitz Are Here From Venus and The Cult From Moon Mountain, both of which are highly recommended.

We took another spill into the streets in search of reality and missed Espers, a folkish conglomerate from the East Coast, but made it back in time to catch a formidable excursion by Nmperign. Like John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Nmperign (Greg Kelley-trumpet, Bhob Rainey-sax) evince music from small free actions and are fully inside the compositional propulsion, granting the listener a steam head experience of fresh born creativity. A helluva time; but you got to be right up in it to let it flip and canoodle around your psyche, otherwise it becomes so much tick-tock inside the environment. Which is not altogether a bad alternative. They had unboxed their new double LP handsomely packaged by the Siwa label entitled We Devote Every Effort to Offer You the Best That You Deserve to Have for Your Enjoyment. Siwa takes great care in producing high quality editions. This Nmperign LP is downright beauteous and it wonderfully captures the work style of these cats.

The MVEE Medicine Show is Matt Valentine and Erika Elder and, as evening began its nudging arrival, these good practitioners of earth/magic love played a welcome set of radical animal head jam. It’s Matt and Erika’s Child of Microtones outfit which put on the Brattleboro Free Folk Fest which The Wire splashed on its “New Weird America” cover and, in a more outside/rural way, pre-dated this now full blown orgy of groove.

At this point, the group mind of the audience was in superbake mode and it was due time for some regal ass-kicking, ‘though we weren’t quite in agreement as to how that should take place. The Wayne Rogers Unit took the stage and a cynical perspective took hold. These guys are gonna play some psych-rock noise jamz? That might be a cornball bummer! Within 30 seconds of Kate Biggars’ awesome rock + roll guitar goddess power swings and Wayne’s zapped lead scorch, the club was a burning hole of high time energy. Completely and totally ass blasting, the entire dumbstruck audience lit up with raging rock energy and pushed this band into sheer sonic epiphany. They shut down with a weepingly great rendition of Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air.” The night time is the right time and all systems were jumped. Wayne and Kate have plenty of different sides available from their record label/store Twisted Village. Hopefully they’ll kick out a Wayne Rogers Unit disc quick.

Before exiting the smoked stage, Kate raised both hands in the air and yelled “Borbetomagus!!!” as that was indeed the next salacious course. We’ve been tracking the Borbetomagus monster since its mid-‘70s inception and tonight they strode onto the stage like feted royalty. It was legend time and in celebration of such mythos, Don Dietrich sported an oversized Jimi Hendrix t-shirt which was a visual call to arms. Dietrich and Jim Sauter, within a hot minute, locked their horns “bells together” and sent out snaked multiphonics careening with total life over the guitar driven field of concrete miasmas courtesy Donald Miller. Unusual for Borbetomagus, at least in our experience, the trio actually got into some quietism, which opened their palette of intensity to a neo-sophisticated, freakish level. To the delight of everyone, the reedmen whipped out rubber hoses and attached them to their horns and blew out jettisons of grunt ending with Dietrich on his back gurgling up a mouthful of beer through the sounding rubber. This was sex Nyack NY style and the room was dripping.

The midnight hour threatened as last call would be in effect and it was in giddy anticipation as Tony Conrad dropped a white sheet across the front of the stage and set up his violin/electronics unit. Tony Conrad = fucking heavy. In collaboration with LaMonte Young in the ‘60s Tony formed the Theatre of Eternal Music, where a newfound investigation and reckoning of drone music dynamism was put to action. This was a direct current through John Cale into the Velvet Underground, a premier influence on just about everything moving in this room. And that’s but a segment of Tony’s history in multimedia. Long, sonorous electric bowed tones filled the space and at each pause a percussive moving whomp of a signal punctuated the environment. All the while, a surrealist shadow of the performer bellowed in gargantua across the stage. This was pure and utter mesmer music. As heavy as God. First night over. All crawled home and slept for the coming Sunday.

A different vibe this day, as second days usually are. Bleary brained mortals ready to bust a second nut but knowing they really need to find some fucking java and soon. We missed Ian Nagoski’s opening set but heard it was a sublime offering to the rising tribes poking about the aether.

Neon Hunk decided to caffeinate the gathering heads with hard spiked electro slap adorned in knitted tumble-wear. Each hyper bonk karate chopped its way through our skulls, not unlike their wicked LP on Load Records Smarmymob or the bonkers cassette Neyan Honkies (on Twig from Nautical Almanac’s label Heresee). This duo, Jennifurmium on lead synth/ vox and Pink Diamond on drums, modular ‘tronics and vox are always a sweet kick to catch but we were still seeking the sex charm left the night previous.

It was within the grasp surely of Burning Star Core. We raved about these little fuckers an issue or two ago and they’ve only grown in amazingness. The violin slicing Spencer Yeh, electronix arbiter Mike Shiflet and drummer Trevor Tremaine had spent the last 36 hours noise slamming in the pits, from the Hair Police Friday kill-down to last night’s Tony Conrad mind-crush. They were ready to slay and they did and in their own time. They didn’t beat off and blast, they let the music take its own path and guided it masterfully. Zipper fuck violin amp rock intershot with improvised quarktronix grabbed us back into the beast. It was topped off with Hair Police’s Mike Connelly joining for a vocal necksnap and we were on our way to a fucking killer day of sickness. Connelly’s Gods of Tundra label has just released the Amplified Body Sound cassette and we suggest you grab a couple now.

Into a room abrim with pariah visions, shuffled the crown prince of outsider U.S.A.: the soul-blamming persona of Arthur Doyle. Arthur has heard the noise of God penetrate Satan’s sacrum in more ways than most of these pups have had teeth in mouth, but does he lord this wild wind about their shells? Naught! He calls a dog a dog, and today he was the diva with the hand cream notion. His recorder and voice songs were gracious Nivea to the grey matter of towelette consciousness. The ladies in attendance I saw, Heather Leigh Murray of Scorces and Rita Ackermann of Angelblood, silently evoked this man’s great hands in bliss everlasting with smiles and eyes betwinked. Arthur Doyle can lay waste to any jaded preconception and though today’s salutation was noteful for its brevity it was nevertheless relentlessly religious.

An event a lot of us were salivating for was the appearance of Dead Machines, the romantik-noise union betwixt John Olson and Tovah O’Rourke. Olson runs American Tapes, possibly the most recognized of contemporary U.S. underground noisetronix labels. It’s also one of the most infuriating as releases come roughshod out of the gate in extreme micro numbers (editions of 15 are not unusual) and are discontinued post haste. And their iconography is hardcore psychoslash making them rather difficult to differentiate. Which, of course, is their beauty, as it constitutes a universe of living music. The label is just past its 300th release with no sign of slowing down. Since Tovah (ex-Golden Calves) relocated to Michigan to take Olson’s hand in sacramental rite, as well as to do her own thing, she’s released some of the coolest sounds from the American Tapes factory to date. Together they’ve exhibited stretches of improvised junk machine counterplay which bring to mind a feminized Wolf Eyes with a gonad butter dish of bohunk. Olson is insane in his fabric splitting military fatigue t-shirt and drink-fight-and-fuck keychain belt and Tovah is resplendent in her natural gorgeousness. When Olson walks over, kisses her, grabs the mic and proclaims “fuck the cops,” you know you’re at the center of the universe. If only just for a while. They have a one-sided handcut LP “The Things” (edition of 15 – available as of press time but probably long gone). There’s a great cassette in a large edition of 40 called “Future Funerals” which is really the real deal.

Jack Rose, continuing his investigation into folk blues guitar text, sat his ass down and ripped through his blue mountain repertoire. Jack came out of the mighty drone psyche world of Pelt and with the same southern charm that combo identified itself jack does so in solo stance. The process of breaking-through is as meritorious as the actual blow-out and Jack languishes at this acoustic door showing us all things we may have been dulled by through the years of post Tora Tora Tora exposition. He has just released a great document of this time of his travel on the Eclipse label called Opium Musick.

What seemed like a dude-laden day got busted as Angelblood made a completely rare appearance on the live stage. Angelblood forms from the uncategorizable flares of NYC’s Gang Gang Dance, Diadal and No Neck Blues Band as well as the ricochet finger jab-guitar licks of Orthrelm. Indeed it was Orthrelm’s Mick Barr who was responsible for a lot of the compositional guitar action, but his lickage is now played by a strapping Swede improviser who gave the group a new sense of metal flow. And metal is the elemental catalyst of this odd yet sultry swagger. What began as a three woman night-trip (Jess Holzworth left for warmer climes) is now just Rita Ackermann and Lizzie Bougatsos singing/chanting/evoking/crying/screaming the spirits of earth and moon, driven by the right-on dark metal skin pummel of No Neck’s Dave Nuss who got this shit down cold a long while back whilst a lad named Bambi in the Texas metal circuit with Angkor Watt. Rita moves with a sensual Hungarian nightclub lilt with a smile and a cigarette and a voice howling into the soul of dark dreams while Lizzie stands in black with an early Ozzy intensity, her banshee shreeks breaking any freak spell within 9000 miles. The tunes were killer and the girl/girl sex possession rituals were uncaged eros. The scent was dizzying. After the Angelblood and Masses of the Daggers CDs on the Japanese Captain Trip label they now have a new CD of this crazed line-up being readied for issue by Printed Matter.

With boners engorged, we crawled to a bar around the corner to drown the heat, missing the over-excited hard rock of No Doctors. But we returned in time to see the last half of Noxagt who were on a rampage of crushing blackball bass (Kjetil Brandsdal), whamming drum constructions (Jan Christian Kyvik) and hyper violin shard spray (Nils Erga). These three Norwegians have been at if for a few years now and recorded a killer document of their moves released by Load Records called Turning It Down Since 2001. This disc just plain slams and tonight’s gig showed the crux of their group gush. A perfect soundtrack to our horndogged oats.

Jackie-O Motherfucker played an extended piece of music completely beyond anything we’ve ever heard them do. It was an exhilarating display of mass instrumentation in active repetition. They had the sophisticated wherewithal to let the composition have its own accord, whilst gracefully directing it to new wide-open levels of positivism. Astounding and assured and joyful. Head honcho Tom Greenwood runs the U-Sound Archive where much JOMF is available (as well as a new limited edition book of illos by legendary Chocolate Monk/Prick Decay/Decaer Pinga wizard Dylan Nyoukis—brilliant).

After JOMF warmed the club to a sweet sizzle, the mood was buzzing in warmth and grooviness. No Neck Blues Band set the stage up with their classic array of urban fire music percussion and prepared guitar/sax. And there was Michiko, long-haired Japanese woman adding a vibe of actual Noh-wave spontaneity. And Keith Connelly with Stooges aviator shades and wildstyle red beard. People were ready for this. Many here knew No Neck as some mythical sub-world improv OUTfit. All the band had to do was do what they do best: wrap the music round their heads and let it rip. It certainly started off this way and the audience was latching on, but then it went into bloopersville. An attempt at living danger was in effect, but to a crowd of hardcore Midwesterners this was about as dangerous as the Knick City Dancers. Drums and cymbals flew into the audience, ashtrays were tossed off the balcony blasting glass bits around the onlookers feet (cool!), blindfolds were worn across the stage (though there was obvious peeking going on), and a beer bottle shard was used to cut into skin (ouch…fuck!). It was entertaining, regardless, especially Keith’s antagonistic “hey why dontchyou shut the fuck up?” patter to the heckling crowd. The club owners threatened to pull the plug on the festival after witnessing the backstage fruit tray being tossed in the air nearly shattering hanging light fixtures (cool!) and demanded to Clint Simonson, the Destijl organizer, to stop the band. Clint was digging it, we all were—retardo chaos is a gas—so he refused. It ended with most of the band winding down in apoplectic disengagement. There was the feeling of divisiveness and regret, as a chance to prove how good No Neck can be was overshadowed by a food fight. A general review of, “whatever,” was handed down. It certainly would be one of the more discussed sets of the event but for total mindblow it didn’t even enter the race.

NNBB had been touring around with Trad Gras och Stenar (Swedish for, Trees Grass and Stone) and everyone was waiting to see these legends from Sweden. They came out to a riotous welcome, four elder gentlemen with shirts tucked in, and proceeded to trip out into a long classic drone rock groove. Lead guitarist Bo-Anders Persson was 60-plus years old and severely kicking everyone’s ass. A mainstay of TG+S, Bo first formed the group Parson Sound in 1967 as a way to explore minimalist rock raga. The band changed their name to International Harvester in 1968 and re-arranged members a bit, and got very involved with hippie “free” culture, recording two excellent LPs Sov Gott Rose-Marie (Love Records) and Hemat (Decibel Records). In 1969 they got more into it traveling throughout Sweden playing outside any mainstream confine with a freaked light and happening performance aesthetic, changing their name this time to Trad Gras Och Stenar and proclaiming “you are the music we are just the band.” The next four years saw them release a self-titled LP on Decibel, Rock for Kropp och Sjal (Silence) and Djungelns Lag (Tall records). They split up in 1973 and released the posthumous Mors Mors LP (Tall), but regrouped every once in a while (once during the 1981 punk days as T. Gas). The Ti’llinden label released a 1970 live CD in 1995 called Gardet 12.6.1970 and a double CD of Parson Sound music, both which are awesome, and Silence issued a 2002 session on CD “Ajn Schvajn Draj”. And now they are in fucking Minneapolis jamming heavily and we are more than mellow. Jim O’Rourke is passing out free LSD to anyone who’s ready and much to everyone’s pleasure Rita Ackermann comes dancing onto the stage to muse the men into a higher key. Sweet!

For almost everyone in attendance this was the end, but one more act was ready to go and it was Dwight Frizzell, the man who released the weirdo 1976 out jazz LP., Beyond the Black Crack. The talk was that this LP was going to be recreated live tonight but instead….well it was a rather softcore take on mid-‘80s Arkestra action and pretty cornpone. We bolted to get some sick pizza around the corner and returned to see Matt St. Germain boogieing like a mouse on fire as the club personnel swept away the dust of goddamned good time.

Where a festival of this consistent greatness can lead is only to a next generation. What seems to be in the cards is the idea that anyone can put on a festival like this if they have the focus to do so. Also 3 to 5000 dollars helps. The next one in the works right now is the No Fun festival in Brooklyn this March 2004, as curated by Carlos Giffoni of Monotract. What distinguished the Tora Tora Tora fest and the Freedom From/Destijl fest was the curators’ devotion to the tapestry of artfulness and original soul power running through avant garde jazz to dark folk dreams and buzzbomb noise power. Note to Giffoni: can’t fucking wait, dude.

AS ALWAYS, IF YOU HAVE MATERIAL TO BE LICKED BY BULL TONGUE – VINYL, BOOKS, MAGS, VIDS, ETC. SEND TWO (2) COPIES TO:
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CONTACTS:
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Bettawrechonize: http://www.bettawreckonize.com/interviews/hairpolice.htm
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Burning Star Core: http://www.dronedisco.com/bxc/
Captain Trip: http://plaza14.mbn.or.jp/~captaintrip/
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Aaron DillawayHanson Records: http://www.hansonrecords.com
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Heresee: http://www.heresee.com/heresee.htm
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Metalux: http://www.metalux.com
Ian Nagoski: http://www.redroom.org/documentation/nagoski.html
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Polyamory: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/1590/
Printed Matter: http://www.printedmatter.org
RRRecords: http://www.rrrecords.com
See For Miles: http://www.seeformiles.co.uk
SIWA: http://home.earthlink.net/~siwa/front-1.html
Smackshire: http://www.smackshire.com
Sub Pop: http://www.subpop.com
Trad Gras och Stennar: http://www.tgs.nu
Twisted Village: http://www.twistedvillage.com
U-Sound Archive: http://www.usoundarchive.com
Veglia Records: http://www.vegliarecords.com
Michael Yonkers: http://www.michaelyonkers.com

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 7 (November 2003)

While a newfound farmhand glam seems to be tripping through the hearts of American underground noise folk, it’s the unpinned nature of trad-surrealism, which seems to be guiding the Euro-scene. Case in point may be the remarkable sound cantations of Raymond Dijkstra and Timo van Luyk. Both have had involvement with an ongoing array of slippery activity through the years (Dijkstra with Razoul Uzlu, Indra Karmukaand and Dadaphon; Luyk with Af Ursin and Noise Makers Fifes amongst others.) The two have recently combined their spirit force as ASRA and have released an initial document Souvenir ‡ ASRA la PoupÈe Vivante on the Le Souffleur label. An engaging outsider dada stroke vibe pulls you into this weirdo soundcurrent and it breathes a serious and graceful drift into the air. Chamber LSD expositions for the new mind. Edition of 300. No web presence found though they reside in or around the Netherlands and the Dutch noise/industrial distributor Staalplat may be of service. In the USA try Self Abuse. Also check out the Dadaphon 10-inch on Le Souffleur for further kosmische scloob.

One of the real bonuses of all the recent archival and reissue frenzy has been in the genre of avant garde composition. Many of the composers whose work was most talked about by people who seemed to be on the right track was all but unavailable. Over the last few years there has been a goddamn glut of the stuff, however, and we aren’t complaining—far from it—we’re wallowing. And two of the most wallowsome recent LPs in this field are Charlemagne Palestine’s Negative Sound Story (Alga Marghen) and Tony Conrad’s Fantastic Glissando (Table of the Elements). Neither of these guys was well-represented by recordings any time in the past, but what rich loam has been dug! Negative Sound Story is a one-sided LP, recorded in 1969, documenting one of Palestine’s first pieces, predating the influence of Pandit Pran Nath and long tones. It is a somewhat crude but quite involving series of generated synthesizer waves that splutter in sequence and shift in the air like clay pigeons, expanding towards nirvana. Fantastic Glissando was also recorded in 1969, and is one of Conrad’s experiments for a sine wave oscillator. The album presents four different versions of the work. The original piece sounds something like standing at the end of a runway at JFK while a 747 takes off over your head in slow motion. But as the channels become more separate, the effect becomes more and more like being torn apart by two subway trains. Either way, the results are invigorating.

Back in the USA the summer was blown to bits by the reformed Iggy & the Stooges shows. The first one, in Palm Springs, CA, as part of the Coachella Festival, was brainsmoking. Mike Watt, holistically woodshedding with Ron and Scott Asheton and J Mascis (as Asheton, Asheton, Mascis & Watt) for the last two years, is the new recruit on bass (original Stooge Dave Alexander left the planet in 1975). As absurd and perfect a choice Watt is, it was equally nutso to see and hear Steve MacKay, the Funhouse sessions saxophonist, appear on stage to reprise his classic howl. Unlike the peripheral players from Iggy’s subsequent Hollywood years, like Scott Thurston and Zeke Zettner, MacKay was a Michigan boy hooked in with the Asheton scene, the real high energy family of the Midwest ‘60s/early ‘70s. Before, during and after the Funhouse era MacKay blasted around in a weirdo patchwork of playing situations. He had his own free jazz/rock group in 1969 called Steve MacKay with Carnal Kitchen which existed as a precursor to the Stooges’ “L. A. Blues.” He can be heard with integral Detroit late-‘60s rock group the SRC (in an incarnation then known as Blue Scepter) on the Lost Masters CD (One Way Records, UK). He recorded with the Commander Cody Band in 1977, as well as a bunch of different Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen sessions through the years. Also in 1977 he recorded with “Blue” Gene Tyranny on “Blue”’s signature new music art/roots LP Out Of The Blue (Lovely Music). He then recorded with Snakefinger in 1984, the Violent Femmes in 1985 and Andre Williams in 2000. Carnal Kitchen still exists as a concern for MacKay in residence in the California Bay Area even though VH1, Mix Magazine, Nick Kent and other doofus media dipshits have claimed the man dead. As interesting an underground career MacKay has had, what he’s doing now with the Radon Ensemble is the most mind-blowing. The Radon Ensemble is Tyler Armstrong (Nequaquam Vacuum) drums, steel cello, signal processing; Marlon Kasberg (Liquorball) bass, clarinet; Sam Lohman (36) drums; Travis McAlister (Nequaquam Vacuum) reeds, brass, string can; Noah Mickens (Nequaquam Vacuum) scrap percussion, vocals; and Scott Nydegger (Sikhara) drums, electronics. This collective has been active on the west coast incorporating aspects of electric improv and performance for a few years now, almost as a contemporary version of the classic Los Angeles Free Music Society. Since 1988 the Radon Ensemble has extended its work into booking, distribution, publicity, and recording/mastering services for like-minded creativists. On first glance their aesthetic seems to stem from hard-goth hell-rave stainage though from proof of their recordings they exude a future-blowing energy such fringe-genre music can readily use. A recent Radon Ensemble gig in L.A. featuring Steve MacKay (as well as the electronic zap frazz of Bastard Noise a/k/a John Wiese) was killer. Tripping and metascoping tenor sax jowl-action interwove with the ensemble’s thrash-trash percussion, loose-wire fuzzplay and bass amp anarchy all cutting loose through the astounded listener’s gawp. There are recordings available from these lads, along with archival MacKay music at their site and chances are this full ensemble will unleash some righteous sides soon enough. An extensive overviewithinterview with Steve MacKay exists in Black To Comm magazine issue #12. Tell him Bull Tongue sent ya.

Also at the above gig (along with Smegma’s triumphant return to L.A. with Richard Meltzer and, again, Steve MacKay and LAFMS stalwarts Solid Eye, who played a mesmerizing drone-drift) was a young woman duo from Japan called Afri Rampo. They went on last after Smegma, the purported headliners. I had heard about these two from a friend in Japan who had mentioned something about the most insane and fantastic girl duo ever to land on earth so I was duly curious about why they were in L.A. with absolutely no forewarning or even the slightest of subterranean media profile. The few people who were there at the show were ambling away to get homewards when these girls began to soundcheck a little. This did nothing really to spark anyone’s interest too much and the girls then disappeared for about 15 minutes. All in all not a good move seeing as how the place was emptying. But for those of us still finishing our $5 beers we were thrown into group headscratch and breath gasp as Afri Rampo took the small stage dressed in micro stripper wear. This was either going to be groaningly tacky or groaningly embarrassing (for us, particularly). What happened next was the aging chins of Don Bolles, Mike Watt, Raymond Pettibon, Richard Meltzer, all of Smegma, myself et al just HITTING the goddamn floor.
Using electric guitar and a full scale drumset Afri Rampo relentlessly destroyed us. Each piece was a journey through hyper-irreality as the two musicians called and responded with vocals nailed with reverb. The playing went through passages of Boredoms style aggression, scratch-improv wildness and Sabbath groin-pummel. Anyone en route out of the club turned slowly and came back to see just what in the hell was happening. And what was happening was a new musical experience most of these very experienced individuals had never thought would happen again. But it did and this event became a celebration. Afri Rampo, demurely entering a jaded arena, ripped a whole new sonic slit into the fabric. At times the performance flamed so hot that it could only melt into a sex-scream lava flush. Both women injected proto-gorge guttural yowling into our already heavily ass-kicked psyche to the point of near-fucking-death. I think they brought a few CDRs with them, which at gig’s end, vanished into trembling L.A. boy hands. The next day they played again, as the promoter was so mind-scorched that he demanded they play every day he was alive. I didn’t catch that show, but I heard they went to Disneyland and then flew back to Osaka. Here is the only info I’ve yet to glean via e-mails:

AFRIRAMPO
We are star?
Nice to meet every one!
We are AFRIRAMPO!
from JAPAN
oni Guiter & Vocol
pikacyu drum & Vocol
very enjoy fun YO!
You should feel the AFRIRANPO.
(pika)
It was started ’02 spring, when they are18-19 this time 1 years old “AFRIRAMPO”.They are so cute and little barbarous pair naked mind, and brain open feel give to all kind poeple.
They play G.Vo.-Oni and Dr.Vo.-Pika very heavy kind of rock and so improvised feels catch everytime-different sound. They are like 60’s hippys. But try a lot of new interesting things .
Oni: 1983 born, She was started play band in1997-8 sit in many band now through going it. she is singer song writer. Kind of lyricist. She play in Evellive (20 peace improvisation band, she also pikacyu play there Chorus and Percussion)
Pikacyu:1983 born, she is a more from visual arts she and Oni were gradurate same art unique public high school. they were same photography club. Oni and Pikacyu is different from class grade. they are working together now. Pikacyu play a drum and sing acting statement. AFRIRAMPO make Drama, thier compose drama and sing, expressing anyway!
They are play with a lot of Japanese bignames ex member of Boredoms, Yoshikawa Toyohito…Hiromichi Sakamoto……Namaiki……a lot of session work, Now ‘s Osaka’s Scene is infuruenced from them many things!
In Osaka Castle Park(like brooks),They organize jam session party every month. Last party is 50 musician (guitar 20???,a lot of drumers…dancers.and all kinds…audience a lot include this park’s homeless people was collecting many I saw) play started from evening sun to in the morning sunrise.
Great Rave Culture.
This Party was No Drug Natural Trancing Very Silent Minds party was last year, a few times police came but They talk to Oni&Pika soon go back their statement.
They are Star like shine flash, Interesting funny and sexy cute …so real.
Same of in the stages or every lifetime this is great thing I think.
Pika write is “our’s real music CuleCule stir Japan Drop in River Nake. SOON OVER THERE STIRING. Everybody Smile.”
Oni also Supponpon (naked) brain rock sing and guitar ! So Amazing.
“SUPPONPON ROCK AFRIRAMPO!”
Sound man / Bun
2003. June. LOVE.
NUDE MIND. FEEL!

Wow.

The great Richard Meltzer was mentioned above and, lest you think he is just functioning as the vocalist for Smegma these days, it should be noted that he has just had a new book released, and it’s a honey. Autumn Rhythm (Da Capo) is Meltzer’s book about becoming a self-proclaimed geezer, and it may well be his best yet. He has really mastered the flow of his muse over the last few years, and the boil of his “mature” style is fucking incredible. Some of the pieces have seen print in various places, but the blend of prose, poetry and sheer cussedness is magnificent to read. Meltzer has always seemed to be one of the two most influential writers of his generation (the other being Pynchon), but the saddle of “rock crit” that he was forced to wear for so long gave people an easy way to not-take him seriously as either a stylist or a thinker. Death, non-death, meta-death, quasi-death, death of youth, death of sex, resurrection, etc., these are all topics that are dealt with here in scabrous, hilarious terms. If this isn’t enough to get the guy into the rolls of “serious” writers, it’s time for a revolt. Anyway, it’s a monster of a goddamn read. So do it today.

The printed page seems to be alive and well in England as well, with two fine new shelf-stuffers courtesy of Ed Pinsent. The first is the eleventh issue of his occasional music omnibus, The Sound Projector. Perfect bound and filled to bursting with reviews, this number also has a special section on the Seattle experimental scene with great interviews with Climax Golden Twins, Scott Colburn, Dave Knott, Jesse Paul Miller and Matt Shoemaker. It’s a wonderful bathroom read, as is the first decent sized collection of Pinsent’s comics. Voice of the Wilberforce: A Book of Signs (Kingly Books) is a truly bizarre set of stories, following the diminutive, rotund intellectual Windy Wilberforce through a series of metaphysical adventures that are equal parts kid’s stories and adult-style bad dreams. Soothing!

A couple of other notable Japanese things have recently come out on American labels. The Don’t Forget to Boogie LP by Tetuzi Akiyama (Idea) is one of the more disorienting things to arrive. On the cover, Akiyama, a guitarist best known for his free improvisations and noise efforts, is portrayed as a refugee from an early line-up of Electric Flag or something. And the music is a mutant strain of solo guitar choogle, taken to extreme minimalist/maximalist lengths in a way that suggests intellectual underpinnings of John Lee Hooker’s sound that have never (to the best of our knowledge) been previously posited. I mean, did even the Mysterious Al Wilson ponder the connection between “Boogie Chillen” and “Metal Machine Music”? A bit more straightahead is the Heavy Acid Blowout Tensions LP by Splendor Mystic Solis (Galactic Zoodisk). This was an ad hoc live band that Plastic Crimewave (the editor of Galactic Zoo Dossier as well as a fiercely weird guitarist) assembled for a ’99 tour with Mainliner. Using members of Acid Mothers Temple, the Ruins and High Rise, Mr. Crimewave managed to get them through a short, explosive psychedelic tour that is captured here. Less about form than sound, the three long tracks here are wonderful meandering psych jams, shorn of the hard rock bombast that can mar some such outings. Cool, loose and spaced. Okay!

Out of Brooklyn, a steaming hotbed of potential sqwooge, comes the first release from the Skul Record Label. It’s a shrouded affair titled Tuck Tuck Tuck and on first spin you may want to scream and bolt as yr confronted with a loner boy with barely touched acoustic guitar and what may be just a cassette recorder. The attempt here is of something shot with Palace Bro alien-stream and pre-Palace Nick Drakeanism, neither of which can withstand too much more investigation by contempo ears, but no one says you can’t at least try. In distress we flip the sucker and a whole nother slew of gush rips forward. And it’s nice: improvised scrape and amp shudder with a bitching deftness. More of this shit would be extremely welcome. Edition of 300 with handmade covers.

From elsewhere in New York (the Lower East Side, mostly) comes the poetry of Irving Stettner. The long-time editor of Stroker, and a favorite of Henry Miller, Stettner is one of those street poets whose work grew out of the beats without ever really becoming a part of their stream. There’s a solid new collection of his work, Pigeon Feather: Selected Poems (1967-2002) (Stroker/Papandrea) that puts a lot of his best poetry in one place for the first time. Stettner writes about the road and the Village and art and love and all else like a master. He doesn’t have a dry, academic bone in his body and allows himself to be swept away by passion like a smoke-ring in a hurricane. His style is great and readable, somewhere between Jack Micheline and Allen Ginsberg, and he should be so much better known it hurts. Stettner’s buddy Everett Rand has also gotten out a new issue of his great zine, Mineshaft. This new one has drawings by R. Crumb, Kim Deitch, Ace Backwards and Bruce Duncan, wonderful pieces by Everett, Tommy Trantino and others, and a nice photo portfolio by Olivier Berthe. Definitely worth a check (as are back issues).

Another fine zine is Wildflowers (Shivastan) edited by Shiv Mirabito and printed on beautiful handmade paper in Nepal. The focus here is poetry by people in and around Woodstock, NY and their circle. As this includes Janine Pommy Vega, Hetty Maclise, Ira Cohen, Ed Sanders, and Andy Clausen, the wordsmithing here is rich as hell. The four issues thus far are uniformly lovely in both content and format, really nice to handle and read. The same press has also published Festival of Squares by Andy Clausen, probably the best poet around, although weirdly unknown in too many circles. Clausen’s new chapbook is a long poem taking apart George W and the whole fucked yuppie culture that allowed him and his whole family to be shat out onto our heads. It’s a damn fine read. I just wish that someone would publish the text of Andy’s “The Old Days” (thee epic poem of the last twenty years) somewhere. Thus far it has only appeared in an issue of Charlie Potts’ late, lamented ‘zine, The Temple. And even if I’m sure Potts still has an assload of copies, it’s not exactly on the stands.

One of the Bay Area’s treasures for the last many years has been Barbara Manning. An incredibly gifted musician and human, Barbara has made so many fine records, my mouth waters just thinking bout them. The newest one under her name is a sweet-looking picture disk LP, One Starry Night at the Shop (Swamp Room), recorded live with her current band the Go-Luckys. It has 18 songs, old, new, borrowed and blue, all of them powered by her exquisite vocal sense and the playing of the reckless Steinbach brothers. From the electric folk perfection of “Scissors” through Faine Jade’s psych-snot-classic “Don’t Underestimate Me” to the thug-slunch of “Don’t Neglect Yourself,” this is music as sharp as a tic’s pincer, and twice as grabby. Ms. Manning’s more perverse side is on display with the Tubular Bells LP (Starlight Furniture Co.), by Glands of External Secretion and Decaer Pinga. Glands is the experimental duo she does with Bananafish editor Seymour Glass, and Decaer Pinga is the English unit formerly known as Prick Decay. Together, they approach Mike Oldfield’s lazy-prog opus with pitchforks, and toss it rudely into the air by “covering” it using only pre-recorded sounds, electronic pucks, and dithering effects barrages. How it relates to the original is something best left to individual listeners, but it is a weezily strange suite of blinking sound-sheets no matter what side of yr bread is buttered. How sneaky!

Back in the cosmic farmland of New England we have an LP document of a rather wigged out night at Brattleboro, Vermont’s Common Ground space. This is the scene where David Keenan of Wire magazine became so irreversibly turned on by “New Weird America.” It so happens one summer night in 2002 Mr. Brinkman (Mindflayer, Forcefield), Neil Burke (Men’s Recovery Project) and Fast Forward showed up for a collaborative performance at Common Ground, which is a fairly well-known Brattleboro hippie event pad. As it was, no one there let anyone else know this was happening, no flyers, nothing. The manager had gone home and the P.A. was locked in his office. Legend has it the performers broke into the office, liberated the P.A., set it up and proceeded to blow a mighty blare into this hallowed den of bearded burnout. Wabana Records have released this hippie attack and it is a big, deep noisefuck glissando roiling through dimensional organix. Available from the label’s distributor, Surefire.

Lots of great print stuff has been popping out all over. First up may as well be our old friend Valerie Webber, who has a swell new poetry broadsheet called cigatete (Webber). This evidence of her newest work is pretty dazzling, a mix of sex and anger that will pin you to your seat. There’s supposed to be a French language edition of her Figure Order collaboration around too, as well as hints of a new bilingual book in the works with Benoit Chaput’s great l’Oie de Cravan press. In the meantime. Monsieur Chaput has come through with a selection of goodies associated with his organization, Mouvement Lent (Slow Movement), who are dedicated to decreasing the hectic pace of contemporary life. In concord with such great visual artists as Julie Doucet, ML have created some small manifestos, cardboard readymades, beautifully packaged unplayable CDs by their band, les Slow, and a variety of other gorgeous stuff, guaranteed to make you stop in yr tracks and just smell the day. The stuff is unbelievably nice and you should write them (by slow boat) and ask how to join the gang tomorrow (or the day after) (or the day after that). Another visual feast is the one provided by Steven Heller’s Merz to …migrÈ and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century (Phaidon). This is a big, beautiful coffee table book with great illustrations of legendary mags from the beginning of the modern design revolt through Dada, Surrealism, hippies, punks, mimeo, Raygun, RAW, and tons else. The text is excellent, but it’s the numerous illustrations that will suck the eyeballs out of yr head. Naturally, there’re things you might think they should have covered, but hey—that just means it’s time to do your own goddamn book! Or if you wanna do a newspaper, try to style it after the incredible Paper Rodeo, which is this freebie from Providence full of totally insane graphics that spring out of ratty graphics into deep space. It seems like these guys are almost impossible to deal with by mail sometimes, but it’s really worth a try. Also, on a recent trip to Cleveland, turned up a booklet by the wonderful poet, T. L. Kryss, who once ran the legendary Black Rabbit Press. This new volume, 7 Poems (Ferguson), is the first new work of Kryss we’ve seen in a while, and like so many others, he seems profoundly touched by the current state of the world’s affairs. Between the lines of personal introspection and blue collar muscle, Kryss’s work lets out a baleful sigh about the ways things have become. Send a couple of bucks to sigh along with him. You’ll be happy you did.

West Germany’s Peter Brotzmann is one of the great figures of the age. Both as a visual artist and as a musician, he has created vast neural pathways of his own unique design. His first two albums, self-released on the BRO label were legendary pieces of the European avant garde puzzle, later re issued by FMP. But the original copies, with silkscreened covers existed as virtual art pieces and, together with a later 3-LP set on FMP that included pieces of a balloon from an event by Fluxus artist Nam June Paik, they have long represented the sole fusions of Brotzmann’s arts. Now, 35 years down the pike, there is a third release on BRO, the ink is gone LP (distributed by Eremite), which has a lovely silkscreened cover and contains evidence of a fine set of duos for Brotzmann’s reeds and the drumming of Walter Perkins. Perkins has been around for a long time and figures into the discographies of everyone from Mingus to Roland Kirk to Booker Ervin to the birth of the AACM and onward. The shows they did together were splendid surges of back and forth, giving Perkins’ spare kit action plenty of space, and pulling Brotzmann into some of his most reflective playing ever. The album is a true document of this, and breathes with such beauty and open-ness it is impossible to resist. Peter’s gorgeous blend of sweet and sour combine with Walter’s protean Murray-esque free-formalism just perfectly.

Back in Brooklyn the sick style spazz gods Japanther have released a motherfucker of an LP called Leather Wings (Menlo Park). It truly is a ping pong of dipsorhythmic mania. Using loose tapes of radio bonkerisms and stink-fried grooves Japanther is a lean slam boogie machine with no time for boredom. A titillated mix of Germs and no-wave and drunken noise is Japanthers screed. By the time this is published their anti-Rikki Lake CD should be out, also on Menlo Park. They have friends too who are all just as invitingly damaged – http://www.tapesrecords.com

AS ALWAYS. IF YOU HAVE MATERIAL TO BE LICKED BY BULL TONGUE – VINYL, BOOKS, MAGS, VIDS, ETC. SEND TWO (2) COPIES TO:
Bull Tongue
PO Box 627
Northampton MA 01062

Contacts:
Black to comm: chris stigliano, 714 shady avenue, sharon, PA 16146, usa
da capo: http://www.dacapopress.com
eremite: http://www.eremite.com
ferguson: 1330 west blvd. #512c, cleveland, oh 44102
galactic zoodisk: c/o eclipse – http://www.eclipse-records.com
idea: http://www.idearecords.com
kingly: http://www.kinglybooks.com
steve mackay: http://www.geocities.com/detroitrockandroll/bands3.html#mackay
menlo park: http://www.menloparkrecordings.com
mineshaft: p,o box 884, lewisburg, wv 24901
mouvement lent: cp 48115, 5678 av. du parc, montreal, pq, h2v 4s8, Canada
paper rodeo: p.o. box 321, providence, ri 02901
phaidon: http://www.phaidon.com
radon ensemble: http://www.radonstudio.com
self abuse: http://www.selfabuserecords.net
shivastan: 54e tinker street, woodstock, ny 12498
skul records: http://www.skulrecordlabel.com
the sound projector: http://www.thesoundprojector.com
staalplatg: : http://www.staalplaat.com
starlight furniture co.: p.o. box 424762, san francisco, ca 94142-4762
stroker/papandrea: 174 huntsville rd. #5, dallas, pa 18612
surefire: http://www.surefiredistribution.com
swamp room: http://www.Swamp-Room.de
webber: 87 troy, verdun, pq, h4g 3c6, canada

BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 5 (July 2003)

Let’s start this time with a little political play we wrote. The setting is a children’s park in Northampton, Massachusetts. Two middle-aged men are sitting on the swings, drunk. Their toupees are askew.
GALLANT: What would you do w/ the Bush twins?
GOOFUS: I’d eat the fat one first.
Okay, that’s it. Back to our regular log haul.

New England now – beyond Providence:
One of the weirdest gigs I’ve seen/heard lately was by a Providence, Rhode Island duo called KITES CAN’T. Their name alone was a curious alliteration of chitinous promise. That and the fact they were riding along with another Providence duo called Mindflayer (being B. Chippendale of Lightning Bolt, and Mr. Brinkmann of Meerk Puffy, Force Field, MC Brinkmandibles, and Danse Asshole). The CAN’T of Kites Can’t is Jessica Rylan, a “noise performance artist” (according to her “pop”), who, unlike the scallywags notoriously involved with said genre, is a NICE-natured individual. Though when she springs into performance I suggest you hold onto your moorings: Jessica bolts her tall-drink-o’-water body to and fro like a flesh-spear controlled by a caffeine-spiked jerkin’ joystick. Kinda scary and amazing as the oddball galoomph of it not only shreds whatever gender-tradition Jessica is obviously liberated from but acts as an affront to the high percentage of male noise nose pickers agawk at her spectacle. In tandem with her performative rite are her “Can’t machines”–noise boxes with a visual aesthetic both positive and alarming. One such machine is a modified Arvin boom-box which she presented in the Boom Box show early in 2003 at the Boston Center for the Arts. Because of this exhibit she was featured on a WGBH TV special on Boston sound art. She has her own label called irfp (the name of a transistor she has utilized in amp construction) releasing a trio of CDs and a limited handbound book called Noise Show where she writes of dreams, noise, politics, social anxiety. The 3-inch CD-R morse code vs. can’t is a screaming match twixt Can’t (synth, voice, mxr, acoustic 150 amp) and Morse Code (Tim Morse using sax, seven pedals, two Peavey amps) in a numbered edition of 99 copies. It suggests distorted anarchy yet realizes an intelligent spray of heartfelt expression. A Bard graduate furthering the expanded field of post-gender, post-boundary noise work Jessica is delivering a welcome shot of sonic funtime.

KITES is a new cat (Christopher Forgues) from the more-alive-than-ever Providence scene in and out of the Fort Thunder nexus from which the supernovas Lightning Bolt, Black Dice and Force Field blasted. Kites wears handmade grey-scale splattered noise-wear and sexulates his odd-machines to harried levels of distracto-crunge. He also creates spiked comic art which seems to be a shared vision/vocation for a lot of this area’s enclave, be they wasted Rhode Island School of Design denizens or simply localized noise rats. Kites, along with Chippendale and others (including grafik great Gary Panter), squirts jizzed n’ jamming inksplot inside the newsrag Paper Radio, now in its 14th issue. Not only is the art mania here insanely inviting but the host of micro-ads are a compendium of underworld (specifically east coast) noise/art scuzz beneficial to any jonesing noise-jack’s junksick. The Kites music available right now is strictly in cassette format in wonderful normal-bias outage. CDs suck, vinyl’s better and normal-bias cassette is the best—always has been. Wanna make a hot CD? Transfer your audio file(s) to normal-bias cassette (no dolby no noise reduction) and then use that as your master. That’s good listenin’. Kites Vol. 3: The Miracle of Thought (Unskilled Labor U.L. 004) is for digging on headphones with all EQs rammed to peak level. It won’t hurt, it will help; indeed it may heal (particularly the side-2 long track “Total Peace”). Kites’ liner notes exclaim, “FUCK YOU SELF IMPORTANT NOISE SLOBS AND BLAS… SCENESTERS ALL OVER WORLD” and there does indeed seem to be a new breakaway from genre purism as practiced by the likes of Kites and Can’t that seems almost like a euphoric new-birth with a reinvestment to junk manip/control. Sweet.

I doubt the Providence extreme noise outfit PRURIENT qualifies as an example of what Kites is ranting on, as the ringleader of this active emission is a humble lad. The Prurient vibe is aligned with a more traditional and classic noise world. The label it’s involved with, Hospital Productions, has released a steady stream of well-worn sociopathic hyper-scree through the years. They’ve documented such uber-discharge as Black Leather Jesus, Skin Crime and Macronympha, as well as a heavy sick dose of house-band Prurient. They’ve also been home to even more nefarious concerns such as the near-unapproachable Nuclear Pig Shit and Whorebutcher. What excites us is Hospital Production’s cassette release of more wig-fry by Lexington, KY’s HAIR POLICE. Anyone who has subjected themselves to multiple pops from the classic Blow Out Your Blood LP these guys did on the bedraggled-yet-delirious Freedom From label last year, or from any of their head-on bonkers gigs of the last 12 months, will know how utterly noise-freak genius Hair Police is and any release by these fuckos is essential. Look for more soon come from Providence’s infamous Load Records and a split 10-inch with Crystal Fantasy on the Liquid Death/Hello Pussy label. And scour Hospital Productions’ site for much great Providence noise Prurient and otherwise.

Not every mother’s son and daughter in Rhode Island is unleashing harsh rainbowtronics. There is the psych/folkcentricity of Iditarod who have been active for a few years now and are wonderful. As well as the remarkable free-improv/modern comp hybrid music of BARNACLED. Both these bands fit dynamically in excited context with their more wilded-out contemporaries. Last year when the Bay Area’s plague-assault core unit Total Shutdown blew through the northeast they had Barnacled along for the ride, which made for a far headier night than just full time destructo. A booking much appreciated by myself and the other eight people in attendance. Barnacled looked scary, as if they were academic musos caught in the wrong dorm, but as they propulsed forward with their energy-ideas it was obvious why taste-mongers of Total Shutdown’s caliber had requested their company. Hot-shot arrangements treated with no wave mind play were in charged abundance. I recommend the CDs available from Corleone Records. All these Providence labels and bands’ sites have linkage far more subterranea to explore (such as Noise Nomads, Neon Hunk et al). The connection to scenes in the Midwest, West Coast, NYC and elsewhere is a unity that’s pretty fucking happening.

When Kites Can’t played the aforementioned gig it was in conjunction with a weekend full fest of out-reaching musics under the banner The Brattleboro Free Folk Festival which happened May 1 thru 4 2003 in Brattleboro, VT and Easthampton and Amherst, MA. It was organized by a compendium of Western MA and Vermont peace groovers with a streak of rough play across their souls. Such heroes as Matt Valentine and Erika Elder of Tower Recordings and MVEE Medicine Show and the label Child of Microtones, and the label Spirit of Orr from Cambridge, MA, which has released the LP debut of spangled wizards Sunburned Hand of the Man, and Dan and Pat Ireton (Dan being Dredd Foole) threw down an awesome event of new free-breath expression.

Along for the journey were such amazing purveyors of field-psych as Texas lad Tom Carter (Charalambides, ex-The Mike Gunn), Jack Rose (Pelt), Dredd Foole (exhibiting his deep-tho-far-out vox improv majesty), Elk Link (a duo of Graham Lambkin, ex-Shadow Ring, and Adris Hoyo, ex-Harry Pussy), Willie Lane (previously known as Willie “Gutbucket” Lane as Matt Valentine felt his gut overflow like a bucket of love after first hearing Willie’s electric folk-wild fret work–Willie has an LP due on Child of Microtones) and a host of other various profile masters (Michael Hurley, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Glenn Jones, Mindflayer, Tower Recordings, Charalambides a.o.). The most startling event hands down would be the premier performance by BABES ON THE LOOSE, a group comprised of Chris Corsano (drums), Paul Flaherty (sax) and SCORCES. Scorces is Heather Leigh Murray and Christina Carter of Charalambides who have a reputation for heavy flow trance drone atmospherics. The question was how they would jibe with the free-fire spark of Corsano/Flaherty. What happened was life-changing for anyone present as Flaherty and Carter kept the engine cooking and Murray and Corsano destroyed and howled all negative light from the immediate environment. Crutches were thrown down and blood streaked Heather’s pedal steel in a psyched ritual of deliverance.

The following evening CHARALAMBIDES settled into post-partum sway and played what was to be their first fully improvised set of live music ever. They were accompanied by Marcia of New York’s DOUBLE LEOPARDS. Double Leopards, along with Amherst, MA’s SON OF EARTH-FLESH ON BONE, have become two of New England’s most rewarding of improvising groups. Neither are featured much at the acclaimed outposts of this music (NYC’s Tonic and Knitting Factory) but, along with their co-joined ensemble Shackamaxon, have become far more challenging and spirit-forward than the stalwarts consistently booked at these joints. So they’re pretty submerged below the pop/improv strata but the recordings bear them out by greatness. Son Of Earth’s label Apostasy released a split LP of these two which is remarkable (and very limited—act fast).

A few of the Son Of Earth/Apostasy clan have decided to rise from their tap-tap tinker knees to celebrate their more erectile rockist desires. A distinct lust for things Bowie and Reed has birthed a horribly attractive no-boogie glam gloop called THE BELIEVERS. Bass player Matt Krefting, at 6 foot 6 inches, had singer Jessi Swenson hold a copy of Lou Reed Live next to his scalp in one hand and with the other scissor his hair in direct proportion to Lou’s. With black fingernails and extremely ill high-water leather pants, he struts and strikes his instrument like a primo new wave gork from the backwoods of 1977. Jessi in hot hot hot pants spiels wonder-glam recitations whilst the others, in varying degrees of hairy transition, groove a thorny hybrid of woodsy punk and neon junk. The Believers join local legends Magic Markers and Scott Foust and Karla Bolecky’s Swill Radio band bonanza (Anti-Naturals, Idea Fire Company, Tart, The New Peculiars a.o. – I suggest procuring Scott’s solo The Fighting Sensualist cassette on his new Pineapple Tapes label. This tape is a 1981-2002 overview of Scott’s outstanding glam-noise dialogue with reason. Indeed, it is Scott’s glamitude in dress and swagger that has given this contempo New England scene its underlying style) as a new voice in post-versatile punk/glam/improv. MAGIC MARKERS heartthrob drummer Pete Nolan has readied a fresh master of the premier Magic Markers LP which will be co-released late summer by Apostasy and Ecstatic Peace. Both bands will be touring together this summer though how far from New England they can stray is hard to tell. As long as they return!

***

Chad Stockdale seemed like a pretty unassuming guy when we met, but his recordings on tenor saxophone, recorded in duo with percussionist Nate Beier, are really wild. Under the procedural soubriquet, KLONDIKE & YORK, the pair has recently released an LP, The Holy Book (Weird Forest) that treads outsider jazz ramps as strangely as Arthur Doyle might. Stockdale’s tone is fractious and scattery, but follows neither the bellow nor the tinkle of the Euro free jazz tradition. If anything, he recalls the strangest players of the American fire music underground, who investigated internal chambers of passion with their reeds blazing softly. Skronky sax, scuddering drums, some wall-eyed synth, everything blended like some sorta weird stew of darkly boiling orgone. It’s one of the best free jazz duo records from Sacramento since [yr favorite here]. And frankly, it’s even better than that.
If you can read French you might wanna check out a nice new collection, edited by Vincet Pecoil. It’s called Prieres Americaines (Les Presses du Reel) and collects a few really good essays about the intersection of semi-popular music and art in the furnace of American underground culture. They use a nice bit of Pettibon art for the cover and the individual texts are pretty heavy. There are good interviews with Christian Marclay and Mike Kelley. There’s a nice piece on Dan Graham’s importance in tickling the crotch where high and low culture meet. Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether both unspool extremely pleasant thoughts (an ode to west coast art, and fake Sun Ra texts, respectively) and so on. Worth translating. Honest.

The best Japanese LP released by an American label this time out is probably Anoyonodekigoto by IKURO TAKAHASHI (SIWA). As far as we can tell, Anoyo No Dekigoto is actually the name of a duo which includes Takahashi and dancer Yoko Muronoi. This album captures some of Takahashi’s amazing electronic creations and they are so beautifully strange and space-altering, that you’d better make sure your seatbelt is good and tight before you play them. The work sounds like nothing else, really. Well, it might be a little like hearing a swarm of locusts eating your family from the toes up, but even that doesn’t really capture the metallic, head-bending edge of the sonics. It really is an insect rebellion soundtrack unlike any other. Too bad there’s not a video to accompany it. It’d be bitchen to see the dance that goes with it.

Took a while, for some reason, but finally conjured up a copy of THE MEKONS’ Hello Cruel World book (Verse Chorus Press). And it’s great. It doesn’t collect all of this incredible band’s lyrics, but it has lots and lots of them from one of the more wonderful canons a Brit combo has created in living memory. Interspersed with handwritten drafts, illustrations, and a good section of road photos, are lots and lots of good words, from a group that has always made a point of seeing the political as personal and vice versa. It may be a bit daunting for songwriters to read a book of stuff as strong as this, but that’s no reason for you to sluff off. So don’t.

Was great to get a few things from Mondo Macabro, who seem to be about the most insane movie reissue house around. If the three DVDs that came along are indicative of the company’s wares, it’s probably a good idea to see them all. Alucarda is a totally nutty, bloody, out-of-control witch movie, shot in 1975 by Juan Lopez Moctezuma, who was a protege of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Convents full of burning Sapphic nuns in bloody gowns, spinning and screaming galore, orgies, antlers, nude girls with knives, what more could one ask for? Well, how about a 20-foot-long tongue that extends out of shrubbery and makes little magic tattoos on girls’ thighs? That is but one of the crafty features of Mystics in Bali, an Indonesian horror film that is crafted a pace of high hysteria as piercing as the Sun City Girls at their most demonic. My favorite part is probably the bit where the main woman’s head comes flying off, attached to its internal organs, then goes around sucking babies out of wombs. But you may dig something else better. Regardless, there’s something for everyone here. The Nude Princes may be less of a crowd pleaser, but maybe I’m wrong. It’s ostensibly an Italian Pam Grier softcore movies from ’76, without Pam Grier. The star is Ajita Wlson–a statuesque-as-hell African American actress, but the only really transcendental scene is the one in the Milanese hotel room with cheeb and ritual dancing. But hey, if that’s your bag, so be it.

If pressed, we would probably still have to say that OREN AMBARCHI’s most utterly fantastic music is that which he does with his band, the Menstruation Sisters. Their stuff is the kinda wild-eyed chaos that really fuels dreams. But Ambarchi, who is often absent from his native Australia, wears many other lab coats. He does techno stuff. He does weird experimental electronic stuff. He does spectral solo guitar stuff. Anyway, his latest LP is Triste (Idea) and it’s a really beautiful set of solo guitar ruminations. Quiet and electric, the vibe here is somewhat congruous with that of Loren Connors’ most slowly wound electric pieces, but Ambarchi’s inability to resist evil gesticualtion takes things into a new place, a not entirely friendly or even knowable place. But it’s nice. At least if you like to walk along the edges of dark, long, sizzling tones that lead to a pit of cartoon insanity worthy of Raymond Scott. Then there is a bonus 7-inch, with the material dicked with and crackled up by Tom Recchion (historically linked with both L.A.F.M.S. and Sonic Youth). This single is almost more tiki-like than you could imagine, detourning Ambarchi’s music into a nest that is almost like Solid Eye or one of the other World imitation off-shoots in both stance and valor. How fitting!

The always wonderful Abaton Book Company has outdone itself with its newest release, JD FLEISHMAN’s Looking for Maya. The book is collection of photographs taken at a Manhattan escort agency, interspersed with texts. There’s an excerpt from Black Alex’s Privelege, an interview with “Maya” by Lori Bortz that includes the timeless philosophical question, “Does a woman at the sperm bank fuck a Dixie cup?” And a great poem about being a john by Jeff Burns. The photographs are fantastic–sexy, weird, intense, arty. And this is a really great take on a ubiquitous, important and almost entirely ignored part of our culture–sex work–and should be dug by everyone.

Finally dug up a copy of MAMMAL’s Fog Walkers LP (SNSE) and all the talk about this one man Michigan space-noise-aktion-beat unit rings pretty goddamn true. It is impossible to not hear this jumble of vaguely-dancey, totally corrupt electronic huzzing as an outgrowth of the old Industrial Records ethos, but the guy who’s doing this probably wasn’t even born when Throbbing Gristle packed it in. So what’s that tell you? I dunno. But this is the real thing–the kind of Olympian munge experience that the Wax Trax crowd and a certain period of Foetus were always shooting for, but were too bogged down in intellect, knowledge and technique to actually achieve. Shorn of society’s hideous rudders, Mammal is able to surge into pathways beyond the reach of many’s imagination. A total victory.

Good new mags this time include Dream #4 (Dream), which is George Parsons’ wonderful attempt to recreate the universe in a pattern that makes sense to him. There are good pieces on post-psychedelic pioneers like Peter Scion, Green Pajamas, Iditarod and Sand Pebbles. There’s excellent historical stuff on the poet Robert Creeley and the folksinger Vashti Bunyan. There’s a ton of well-written reviews, and plenty more. Swingset #3 (Swingset) is pretty hep, too. There’s a good Liars tour diary, very fine spurts on the artists Robert Beck and Cecelia Dougherty, stuff on Black Dice, Little Walter, Henry Jacobs, and plenty more. Always a pleasure to file this one in the bathroom.

Best rant zine this time is definitely the first two issues of Valerie Beth Webber’s Why Missing the Mark (Webber). Originally started as a high school project, these zines combine polemics about living in out of the way places, with a kind of primordial grappling with world politics, in a way that is very cool. Hand-written and sketch-filled, there should be some new issues out by the time this column appears, and let’s hope she includes some of her poetry next time, ‘cause it is great.

Another key piece of Canadian content is The Waxathon by Blake Hargreaves LP (Fluorescent Friends). It’s not entirely clear what the artist’s name is, but the brunt of this fucker is lovely. The sound goes all over of the place, crudely distorting vaguely post-core motion through the use of creaky guitars, spoon-darkened vocals, some kinda goddamn electronic hijinx, and presumed turntable leakage. Sounding like the hand-picked gems from many months of vastly stoned late night jam sessions, the music here really moves around in your head like a little truckload junk, looking for just the right corner in which to take a dump. In ways it has some textural similarities to the Midwest and Northeast U.S. underground space-core-improv scenes, but its flavors are unique and it also features two of my favorite song titles of the month “I beat cops up the rope ladder” and “I am standing on a fucking mountain.” Wow, the story of my life. In song!

Originally planned as a CD on Wholly Other, CHRISTINA CARTER’s Bastard Wing is now out as an LP (Eclipse) and it’s a real hoss. Playing a piano that is not exactly in known-tuning, she moves through wonderful passages of meditation strategies using fingers, voice, body and soul. Anyone familiar with Christina’s work with Charalambides or Scorces won’t be surprised by how powerful and rapturous the sound is–sad, deep, thoroughly human, it is another kind of blues, as sure as anything Loren Connors does, but unique in focus and equally in the spirit of Patty Waters. Great stuff. The same can be said of the new SCORCES LP, Vivre avec la Bete (Eclipse), which album combines all the quivering feather energy for which they are so rightly famous. Strings get plucked like courageous chickens, notes hover in the air like ballpeen hammers in zero gravity, hints of melody lurk behind clouds of sheerest joy, and vocals weave through holes like pixies.

Very extremely easy on the eyes is JACKIE O MOTHERFUCKER’s new video, Forestry Center (U Sound). Shot by Theo Angell, in the forests of Oregon, this is semi-abstract rural footage, accompanied by music from the last few Jackie O CDRs. Lotsa continuous motion, lotsa simple effects, lots slow spinning…this is as realistic an evocation of doing acid in the forest as I’ve seen in a good long time. The band was using some of this footage (I think) and a lot more as projections for recent live shows. This presumably means there might be another volume in the works. And who could argue with that? Not these elves.

You know how sometimes when you’re in a Finnish restaurant, the waitress will turn to you and say, “Avarus is not just a band in Finland?” Me neither. But, still, AVARUS is a band in Finland and a good one. There new LP seems to be called III (HP Cycle), and their members include Jan Anderzen (of so many other notable Finnish units). But where much recent Finnish action-hunch has been very thoroughly rural in its vibe-creation, Avarus combine this woodsy tribal thing with a noise rapture worthy of the Holy Modal Rounders at their most amphetamined. Tongues babble, flutes unroll their teeth, logs are struck with hollow crania, bones begin to whistle, and then thing get electric.

Hey hey hey. THE FRAMES’ new album is out, it’s called Frames 2 (S-S Records) and it is as much of a motherfucker (maybe even more of one) than their debut. This Sacramento band has the thickiest bass sound since King Snake Roost or feedtime or something, and they wrap that huge thug cable around some of the most glorious snats of Rough Trade classicism we’ve heard in ages. Their songs are really a lot more poppy than they sound when you first hear ‘em, and really, playing this thing is not too unlike listening to a good Brit late ‘70s DIY mix tape. Throw in a little bit of the Urinals, and maybe mid period Middle Class (for requisite American content) and you’ll be howling with pleasure.

Should you have anything to send to Bull Tongue, please direct two (2) copies to:
Bull Tongue
P.O. Box 627
Northampton, MA 01061
USA

Apostacy: http://www.apostasy.tripod.com
CAN’T: Coreleone Records: http://www.corleonerecords.com
Dream: http://www.dreamgeo.com
Fluorescent Friends: 1 Highland Road, North Hatley, QC J0B 2C0 Canada
Scott Foust: http://www.anti-naturals.org
Hair Police: http://www.geocities.com/hairpolice000
Hospital Productions: http://www.hospitalproductions.com
HP Cycle: unknown
Idea: PO Box 461333, San Antonio TX 78246
Iditarod: http://members.cox.net/iditarod
KITES: unskilled labor / p.o. box 913 / providence, RI 02901
Les presses du Reel: c/o Pecoil, 69 rue Monge, F-21 000 Dijon, France
Liquid Death/Hello Pussy label: http://www.ldr-hpr.com
Load: http://www.loadrecords.com
Mondo Macabro: http://www.mondomacbrodvd.com
paper radio: http://www.paperrad.org — (box 913 / providence, RI 02901)
The Scorces: http://www.scorces.com
SIWA: siwa@earthlink.net
SNSE: PO Box 51021, Kalamazoo MI 49005
Spirit of Orr: http://www.spiritoforr.com
S-S: 222.s-s-records.com
Swingset: 532 La Guardia Place #102, New York NY 10012
U Sound: http://www.usoundarchive.com
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Weird Forest: weirdforest@yahoo.com

BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore

first published in Arthur No. 4

Literary and poetry journals have been having an interesting resurgence the last few years with a whole new breed of young(ish) writers taking fresh editorial steps into publishing. What distinguishes a lot of them is either their reference towards historically hep models from the 60s/70s like Angel Hair (edited by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh), United Artists (edited by Lewis Warsh and Bernadette Mayer), The World (edited by Anne Waldman and a host of guest editors), Fuck/You (edited by Ed Sanders of the Fugs), Artists’ Workshop Press (edited by John Sinclair, manager of MC5) or a total disregard for said history. The latter usually results in impenetrable anarchy (which is only sometimes inviting) and/or a contents page devoted exclusively to unknown writers (ditto).

Tight from Bennington College in Vermont is all its name implies (the first issue employs the motto “It’s almost a noun”). The format is somewhat similar to Richard Hell’s infamous late 90s poetry anthology Cuz (which only saw 3 issues)—small, perfect-bound wraps with a fine balance betwixt recognizable greats like Tom Clark, Theodore Enslin, Amy Gerstler, Jackson Mac Low and Pierre Joris and a host of newer cats like Anselm Berrigan, Elaine Walters McFerron and April Bernard. The first two installments have been cool reads with a nice non-plussed rock/roll aesthetic.

Most lit journals have limited life-spans due to editors realizing they’ve spent all their time and money with no return, balance or feedback. But karmic glory resounds as their ephemeral epiphanies connote a history of radical expression breathing life into language. But regardless of such kozmik pleasures, a lack of coin can surely nail a lit journal dead. Skanky Possum, out of Austin, Texas, has just published a remarkable seventh issue with great poems by, again, well-versed scribes like Tom Clark, Duncan McNaughton and Sotere Torregian and new bloods Julie Reed, Ethel Rackin etc. The editors are the husband-wife poets Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen. Dale has been involved with poetic journal publishing for some time with the legendary Mike and Dale’s Younger Poets series (Mike being poet Michael Price of S.F., CA.)—a somewhat precursor in style to Skanky Possum. Within the Mike and Dale’s pages were startling and economic works by poet giants Anselm Hollo, Ted Berrigan and Clark Coolidge. Also part of this S.F. gang were poet/editor Kevin Opstedal of Blue Press publishing the like-minded Blue Books anthologies along with striking work by Lewis Macadams (himself a critically lauded radical poet from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s) and Noel Black who ran Old Gold Press. Noel now lives in Colorado Springs and publishes the Angry Dog Press issuing a series of tiny efforts called Angry Dog Midget Editions. #10 in this midget edition series is our aforementioned pal Richard Hell with a slight and excited tome entitled 2-D Beckoning.

The creative punk rock mind from whence pioneers like Hell et al spring continues to burn within these contemporary texts–they are living extensions of the omfug underground. The poets Gerard Malanga, Piero Heliczer, Lou Reed and Angus Maclise still infuse rock n roll w/ a mystic yet earthly/urban intelligence w/ their work from the 60s—it continues to kick the ass of any mersh slobbo decree. Punk rock emanated from this sex-mind artist life—the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol’s Factory, Jonas Mekas and George Maciunas’ fluxus film/performance world, Ed Sanders’ Peace Eye bookstore (and that’s just the East Coast. John Sinclair’s Artists Workshop in Ann Arbor, MI., Wallace Berman’s art and literature Semina journal in L.A. etc. etc).—it all begat punk as a rock n roll form to annihilate its antipathy towards whatever creeped out vibe hippie had taken on. We’ve all surely come to terms with this now and we all, hippies, punks, poets and high schoolers alike are ready to kick fucking George DIPSHIT Bush’s dick out of D.C. like NOW.

Got a savagely pleasant set of new releases from Thin Wrist Recordings, an outfit whose aesthetic stance veers toward nicely pressed/presented LPs in editions of 500. This latest batch includes Brighter Summer Day by Burning Star Core, a really fine debut LP by a combo from the Kentucky/Ohio underground DMZ. One side has skin-destroying violin drone-dynamics, amped the hell up, and run through shards of electronic hell-dither. The other side is synth/key-based form-whackery that sounds like an out-of-control toad carnival taking place in yr brain. Next is Open City’s sophomore effort, L.A. We Revise Your Neglect. Based in L.A., this trio (two guitars + drums) combine howls and clanks into a sweet slop of semi-aggressive free rock improvisation. Then there’s Fast Talks by The Curtains, a San Francisco trio with connections to the most beloved Deerhoof. Instrumental, and gently overlaid with Magic Band rhythm jewelry, these guys produce smoke most delightful for sniffing.

Most people may not know it, but Peter Brotzmann was first known as a visual artist. He was an associate of the fluxus community, and indeed, the original edition of one of his FMP sets included shards of a balloon used in a piece by the great Korean flux-master, Nam June Paik. This all comes together in a set of two card decks that Brotzmann recently assembled for a show of his paintings in Sweden. Comprised of two games, Signs and Images (Konstmuseum Ystad), these decks propose that you take a group of musicians out into the woods, shuffle the cards, and perform improvisations based on their symbology. This would be fun to do. But the cards are nice just to look at, too. And are a very attractive example of the flux-multiple concept as well. Really boss–all the way around.

Boston’s Abunai seem to have broken up some time in the last few months, but their passing has not gone un-noted, at least in Australia, from whence hails their apparent swansong, the Two Brothers MLP (Camera Lucinda). This record revolves around two versions of the Childe Ballad, “Two Brothers.” And neither of them is handled in what you’d call a particularly delicate fashion. With a few friends along, adding flutes and more vocals to the band’s basic kraut-psych-space-pop dynamism, things get pretty gone here. And the punky live take of “Lord Hampton” (an Abunai original in the Childe style) is equally cool. It may not prove the existence of an actual folk/punk/psych hybrid, but it sounds good anyway.
Kinski, from Seattle, have run through some of the same scene troughs as Abunai, but their version of contemporary non-mersh prog is pretty different. And on their third album, Airs Above Your Station (CD on Sub Pop; 2LP on Strange Attractors Audio House), they really kinda coalesce. Largely instrumental, they build their songs slowly, like the bands of the Texas Space Rock scene. But where those guys usually keep their loud and soft stuff separate, Kinski are into allowing the soft stuff to transform itself into the loud stuff. This makes for long tracks, but they really weasel their way into your brain. The guitars move like sloops through the thick air, bumping again and again into your forehead before they burst in a rainbow of fire.

Because there’s not really much in the way of alternative newpaperage out where we live, the first exposure we got to Tony Millionaire’s Maakies comic strip was via The House at Maakies Corner (Fantagraphics). This oddly proportioned hardcover is quite nice. If you don’t know the strip, well, visually it’s a weird cross between Dame Darcy, the Dutch clear line school, the Katzenjammer Kids and Shari Flenniken. Textually, the strip has to do w/ savagery, drunkenness, crows, monkeys, and plenty of other good stuff. Good one!

Pengo are from upstate New York, and for some reason we usually think of them as being associated w/ a somewhat brutal form of post-industrial free-form noise-hunch and/or bass-heavy ass-rumblage. And yeah, they still do that, but on this new LP, A Nervous Splendor (Haoma Recordings) they visit all kindsa other space, as well. There’s good avant-psych formulating, passages of free-jazz honk, answering machine messages, mock ethnological field recording, even semi-folk-swabbage in a vein that would appeal to fans of the Sun City Girls. That all these shenanigans emanate from inside a great cover design, swiped from the BYG Actuel series, is only icing on an already rich cake.

Mike Watt, the bard of San Pedro, is a person who should be well known to everyone. With the Reactionaries, Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Dos and various other aggregations, Watt has been churning through the constellations of prole art heaven since the late ‘70s. Now he has a book out, and it’s great. Spiels of a Minutemen (L’oie de Cravan) collects Watt’s Minutemen-era lyrics, and also his tour diary from the first time the Minutemen hit Europe (w/ Black Flag). This stuff is great. Watt’s lyrics are wonderful–telegraphic spurts of sheer genius. There’re also essays by Richard Meltzer, Joe Carducci and Bull Tongue’s own Mr. Moore, plus repros of Pettibon art (and one Joe Baiza illo editorially mistaken as Pettibon)utilized by the band, and a nice historical overview by Mike. All packed in a fine silkscreened cover (by Montreal artist, Simon Bosse)—you’ll have a hard time finding better value for money this shopping cycle.

Newest batch of archival punk LPs are out on the Italian Rave Up label and they’re as raging and obscure as usual. The Violators’ Gun Control collects a batch of crude demos and live tracks, recorded by this Denver band in ‘79/80 (I think). The material isn’t exactly outstanding, but it’s solid, raw garage punk in the melodic, but rough post-Heartbreakers style that guys who liked pop but didn’t want to admit it used to play. The Products’ Fast Music was recorded in san Diego late ‘80/early ’81. By the sound you’d have probably called it a couple years earlier, but the notes indicate that the scene was a bit behind the eight ball there. The tracks here are from an unreleased album. They’re very riff-oriented and snotty in a real pleasantly garagey way. But it sounds really ’78, if you know what I mean. There’re lotsa semi-obvious Brit rips, but they’re used with a certain native charm. The Transplants’ Vegetable Stew captures a full set of demo and live material by a Boston band I’d never even heard of before. Friends of the great La Peste (whose Roger Tripp guests on a few tracks), the Transplants have a great, raw garage punk sound with few frills and fantastically ornery lyrics. This, to me, is the gem of the bunch. The Foreign Objects were also from Massachusetts, and their LP, Violent World is a beautifully apt depiction of their reality. Firmly operating in the Dictators/Gizmos/Rattlers tradition, these guys puke up great TV-obsessed garage rock with the best of them. The final LP in this suite is Contrast Disorder by the Doubt. This Irish band plays in the Good Vibrations tradition–fast, down-slammed punk-pop with short songs, slapped drums and heavy hook action. The album contains their sole single and other demos from ’81. And would be a nice addition to any serious punk collection, as would all of these.

Another interesting selection of stuff came by way of WhiteWalls, a press in Chicago that has been putting out good shit for a while. Helen Mirra’s small hardcover, Names & Poems is the documentation of a piece she did, in which people were supposed to write their name on a small card and put it into a box if they wanted her to write them a poem. She would write short (generally two word) ones based on their names. And they’re all here: fast, funny and good. She provides a little glossary in the back, too, to prove that she’s not making up as many words as you think she is. Another fave from this stash is a trade paperback called Hotel Terminus by Stephen Lapthisophon. This is something like a set of essays, done with collaged pictures, about violence, loneliness, art, fascism and much else. The pictures (and some text as well) are lifted from films, magazines, books, and assembled in a way that suggest a variety of narratives. It can also just be perused as a visual experience, but the more you look at it, and start to notice patterns, the more interested you become in decoding its essence. The index in the back is very useful in this, but let’s just say it’s quite worthy of yr detective efforts.

Dan Melchior sorta gives off a veddy Brit vibe, due to the fact that his best known collaborators are people from Medway scene, such as Bill Childish and Holly Golightly. But he has been expatriated to New York for a while now, so let’s call him a New Yorker. That said, he has two new albums that are pretty swank . This Is Not the Medway Sound (SmartGuy Records) is nicely crude, home-recorded urban blues in a distinctive Hangman Recs stylee. Regardless of the LP’s title, the music has the twang and snarl of Childish’s solo work, and is great. The new record w/ his band, Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue, is called Bitternbess ,Rage, Spite and Scorn (In the Red), and is a full-bore garage punk version of his grunty solo work. Using purloined punk mega-riffs, and crazy ‘60s studio touches (like handclaps, for fucksakes), Melchior and band really rip the shit up. This is blasting thug menace at its most bracing.

Nicest music ‘zine this time is probably Sound Collector #8, which is put together by somebody at Arthur, but we only met him once and don’t remember what he looks like. Anyway–the mag is great. Includes everything from a nice intro to Eric Dolphy, to a good interview on the films of Richard Meltzer, the low-down on Chuck Warner’s Hyped 2 Death series, an illustrated memoir of Rock & Roll Camp for Girls, Susan Archie (who designs those Revenant Records sets), Stephen Basho-Junghans, Iron & Wine, and on and on. As a general guide to interesting non-mainstream culture it’s a winner. And they put all the ads in the back, just before the CD, so you don’t have to worry about visual clanging! A no-goddamn-ads-at-all treat is Teen Star ’69 (Magick Markur Publications). Assembled, probably, by Eddie Flowers, this is a xeroxed compendium of odd music pics from ’69, interspersed with commentary, a few nudie shots, and generally strange crawlspace vibes. It’s a great evocation of the year I first did acid, and has a genuinely pan-generic grasp of the era’s wide potential. Sweet!

While we generally shy away from CDs, an especially good one just showed up from a young Japanese band called LSD March. Due to all the brouhaha lately about the Naked Rallizes (a legendary Japanese pysch band begun in the ‘60s), we figured that you ought to know about these guys, who come from Himeji, and a scene that is lorded over by ex-Rallizes bassist, Hiroshi. LSD March’s self-titled CD (ADS) is a pretty amazing gush of mostly instrumental sludge-psych-heaviosity in a Rallizes/High Rise direction, and is totally recommended.

Just about the time you feel like you have a fairly good handle on, say, the Japanese underground scene, along comes something like the debut issue of Improvised Music from Japan (Japan Improv) to make you shut up and sit down. A fully bilingual magazine designed to append the work that its editor, Yoshiyuki Suzuki, does on his similarly vibed website, IMFJ is a treasury of amazing information. There are interviews, overviews, and CD reviews, filled w/ arcane information on the known (Phew, Otomo Yoshide, etc.) plus lots of stuff on people you’ve probably never heard of, but who you’ll want to investigate once you’ve discovered them via the text & CD here. It is a massive, beautiful effort, highly recommended to anyone w/ even the mildest interest in the Japanese avant garde.

The latest LP by the No Neck Blues band, Ever Borneo (Seres) is quite different from their more recent, rockoidist work. Vocals are at a minimum and there are long swallows of key/percussion interchange very much in the combo’s classic mode. The sessions for this album were recorded over the course of a couple years (or so it has been said), but it all holds together like a wonderfully fragmentary leap into the gizzard of a very large chicken. The way it grinds is really nice, and there are Robbie Basho-like moments that will make you feel like you’ve died and gone somewhere.

That‘s all for now. Should you have anything to send (archaic formats: vinyl & print & vhs especially), please direct two (2) copies to: Bull Tongue. PO Box 627, Northampton MA 01061 USA.

(ADS: ads57100@rio.odn.ne.jp)
(Angry Dog Midget Editions: 2412 W. Bijou, Colorado Springs, CO 80904)
(Camera Lucida: http://www.cameraobscura.com.au)
(Fantagraphics: http://www.fantagraphics.com)
(Haoma Recordings: 309 S. Goodman St., Rochester NY 14607)
(In the Red: http://www.intheredrecords.com)
(Japan Improv: http://www.japanimprov.com)
(Konstmuseum Ystad: http://www.konstmuseet.ystad.se)
(L’oie de Cravan: 5460 rue Waverly, Montreal, QUE, H2T 2X9, Canada)
(Magick Markur Publications: http://www.slippytown.com)
(Rave Up Records: http://web.tiscalinet.it/raveup)
(Seres: 619 Union Ave., Brooklyn NY 11211)
(Skanky Possum: http://www.skankypossum.com/)
(SmartGuy Records: 3288 21st St., PMB #32, San Francisco CA 94110)
(Thin Wrist Recordings; 12920 San Vincente Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90049)
(Tight:Whit Griffin and Andrew Hughes, Bennington College, Bennington, VT 05201-6001 tightmagazine@hotmail.com)
(WhiteWalls: PO Box 8204, Chicago IL 60680)

For more fumes from the literary underground you may want to check the Small Press Distribution site: http://www.spdbooks.org