first published in Arthur No. 13 (November, 2004)

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

When we first heard about Derek Bailey he was touted as being the most astounding and unusual guitarist on the planet. Upon checking his LPs out in the mid-’80s we were taken aback by the fact they were so scrape, scrape, plink, plonk minimal and alien. Yeh weird but come on, it was hardly no wave Arto Lindsay/Glen Branca/Pat Place action. It wasn’t until we saw the cat physically play that we really got it. His wit and sophistication was profound and mesmerizing. Totally unique and personable and genuine. He was also a central figure in all that was becoming mythic about both European and American free improvisation. A genre at once distinct from free jazz and any avant garde tendencies towards “open music.” Throughout the ’80s-’90s till now Derek and the world community of improvisers he’s in association with have been documented relentlessly for our contemporary generation to reference and respond to. The genre, by and large, can be caught in its own stylistic graveyard at this point in time, but such masters as Derek stand alone in their devotion and ritual of playing and defying standards and expectations. Wire Magazine scribe Ben Watson has authored a hefty 443-page book entitled DEREK BAILEY AND THE STORY OF FREE IMPROVISATION (Verso 2004). The first half of the book relies on Derek’s oral history of events from his days as a working class youth learning jazz guitar to his tenure with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley as a trio called Joseph Holbrooke where they pretty much formulated the concept of free improvisation as an identifiable discipline distinct from jazz. His voice is hilarious and generally scabrous as he recounts the development of the genre. It gives you great insight into his world and his method though it hardly stands as a history of the much larger activity and personage of free improvisation. Neither does the second half of the book which is primarily a forum for Watson’s Marxist studies applications. Which, if you’re not a Marxist scholar, is potentially interesting as such, but it’s written in the academic language of Marxist studies and relentlessly couches Derek and free improvisation as models in which to Marxist riff. It’s a bit bitter and stale (and thankfully tee-hee references itself as such). It’s like Watson knows he’s harshing us with text that is a disservice to Derek’s actual intellectual being but he’s overly content and obsessed by it’s all-figured-out self righteous angle. Kind of a drag. And there’s a very limited panel of guitarist reference points that reoccur that is primarily Stefan Jaworzyn and Rudolph Grey. Which, to those in-the-know is amusing, but to a novice it’ll prove continuously obscure. (The book severely limits its readership by being for those well-versed in the history and it’s participants already.) And Watson makes the most inane statements in regards to contemporary avant garde noise and other free/outsider activities misreading Derek, setting up Derek as icon which is not only completely wrong and unfair to the artists working but to Derek hisself. It’s a classic misinterpretation of creative inspiration and assimilation. It all goes to further prove that Marxism’s for squares. The book grinds down to revisions of Company concert and record reviews. A real bummer is the discographical omission of the DEREK BAILEY/ONE MUSIC ENSEMBLE split LP on Nondo (DPLP-002) from 1976. Come on! But if you’re into Derek’s playing as much as we are, you have to read this, it’s not half-bad—Watson expresses some nice insights into the nature of the culture of free improvisation. But unfortunately, it’s not half-good either.

FAT WORM OF ERROR are all set to record an LP for Load Records, celebrated home of East Coast noise and bizarro skree. Hopefully it’ll be as great as the CD they have out now on Yeay! Cassettes. FWOE have become the most enjoyable noise/dada/freak out act New England has seen since Sweet Pie stomped around the Fat City club in Wilmington, Vermont back in ’72 (check out Sweet Pie’s Pleasure Pudding LP on ESP-Disk). The members are old ex-Deerhoofers and Caroliners and Angst Hase Pfeffer Nasers. The music? Damn, it is so super fucked—two guitarist blipping and zapping through really battery dead fx boxes and a drummer who seems to be having a constant mescaline hand buzzer flash attack and a singer who will roller skate right over yr ass if you don’t move quick. It’s that good. This disc is called “NZZNZZZZNNZNZNNN” or NZNNZNNZZZZZZNNNZZNNZNZ. Ask for it by name.

You could do worse things than check out the new Nidnod label outta Suffolk, England. Pretty much a CDR label, though one that packages its CDs in simple and elegant sleeves and wrapped in brown packing, string-tied and with evocative world postal stamp. The release that caught our brainbox was the ‘sateen suutelemat’ cassette by Finland’s kuupuu which is Jonna Karanka of kukkiva poliis. kukkiva poliis were last heard on the Lal Lal Lal compilation Buried Dead – A Sociological Survey on Finnish Youth’s Secret Musical Activities and they struck a cool harmonic sphere of a chord in our heads. kuupuu is a soundworld not too unlike Fursaxa but with a more damaged faerie-like whiff, it floats and shines like a wasted marsh gas. The other release on Nidnod that we found rather frying was by long time New Zealand basement noise prince WITCYST. His …as nidnod CDR is excellent from track to track employing languid machine hums to burnt noise engine squeach. Also available from the label are good-looking discs from Culver, Neil Campbell, Opaque, Karina ESP, Cheapmachines, Midwich, Violence Beyond the Snowline and others. As far as the Finnish Lal Lal Lal label is concerned, they are the flashpoint for Finn underground noise and psyche-folk greatness (they call it humppa music) and should be delved into immediately. Highly recommended are anything by Maniacs Dream, Kemialliset Ystävät, Avarus, Sipriina, The Anaksimandros, Toni Laakso, keijo, Master Qsh, Rauhan Orkesteri and a most incredible and insane 7” by THE DEMARS called “Veriläiskiä” which is a bunch of 8- and 12-year old Finnish kids just going off, screaming, cursing, smashing drum machines. Real groovy. Besides Lal Lal Lal, there’s a helluva lot more action happening in Finland right now with underground labels and clubs. Worth looking into is Kevyt Nostalgia Records who have re-released the infamous Kemialliset Ystävät cassette, originally on Lal Lal Lal, on double vinyl. Kemialliset Ystävät, which is basically some dude named Jan Anderzen, creates a strange hypno-sound utilizing a sole-created psyche-tongue language. He’s been releasing some pretty great cassettes since 1996. Kevyt Nostalgia puts on shows at the Nostalgia-klubi in Helsinki and they just recently hosted our USA friends Fursaxa and Christina Carter. Right on. In Tampere, there’s Sweetcore Records who have released music by the improvising ensemble Drakes Medicine who supposedly kick some kind of ass. So, yeh , Finland’s fucking burning baby.

Hats off to Three Lobed Records down there in North Carolina who’ve been releasing CDs by Philadelphia’s stone heavy BARDO POND playing in ever more expansive situations. A real killer is the Bardo Pond collaboration with TOM CARTER, the superb dreamfield guitarist from Charalambides. Also available is a CD by Bardo Pond “other” band PRAIRIE DOG FLESH, a unit shrouded in some kind of Philly haze of gauzemind dating back to the ancient days of 1993. More releases are due starting now and if, like us, your mind craves Bardo Pond sound you’re in for some deep diving.

Ed Hardy at the venerable Eclipse, a distribution house for much of what we write about here as well as being a killer label releasing fine art documents in limited editions has put out a solo LP by Bardo Pond’s guitar visionary Michael Gibbons under the aegis 500mg. And if that sounds like something you’d drop on your tongue to wither away the reality of earthbound meat dreams than you are so right. The LP’s titled Vertical Approach, it’s co-released by Galactic Zoo Dossier and it’s absolutely awesome. Gibbons reaches in and glides through his eye head laying down a sweeping master stroke. Both serene and intense, the dude has freaking hit it square in the cerebral cortex o-zone. And if you’re still in a Norway frame of freakout then check out the Eclipse LP release of “Puhalluspelto” by PAIVANSADE. Total dreamskull.

Carbon Records has been celebrating its ten years on this planet by issuing a seriously hep series of CDs from its home up there in chilly Rochester, NY. So far they’ve tossed out sides by JOE + N, which is pretty much the guys who run the damn thing but make some sick weirdo sound spoo to boot, as well as MIKE SHIFLET, solo noise recording angel from Columbus, Ohio who runs the Gameboy label/empire (they released that first glimpse into the sonik wonder that be 16 Bitch Pile Up). Shiflet’s CD is called Xenakis Youth and it’s a monster car rally of blat adventure. Also cool discs by Ming, The Dead Machines, Crawlspace, Coffee, and Tom Carter & Shawn McMillen. Soon come are three more, culminating with a due-to-be-damaged one by Dylan Nyoukis, so get on it cuz at the end of it all Carbon will issue a wooden box in which to keep these babes in. Good deal.

Since you’re thinking about Shiflet and Gameboy know that one of the newest Gameboy releases is one of their most wicked. It’s a duo 3” CD by CARLOS GIFFONI AND LASSE MARHAUG called Lesbian Brunch. Living here in the lesbian capitol of North America we know the delights of late morning food with this particular demographic. It brings out the true dyke we all have rocking within and Norway’s Marhaug and Brooklyn’s Giffoni get way down to business by slipping and sliding tonguestar electronics just right. Yum.

ERIC ERLANDSON who is a dynamite guitarist and who spent most of his formative shredding years in Hole has obviously had his own personal tour of hell. He’s been lying low these days to some extent though he’s always out there sniffing the new action. One thing he’s surprised us with recently are a couple of staple zine lit books Another Think Coming (Bathtub Seed Press/Absence of Feel Publishing) and Fatal Flower Garden (Trophy Wife/Lollipop Gag Publishing). They’re both wild mind autobiographical sojourns, a mix of narrative tale, poetry and visual text collage puns. Very nice.

DYLAN NYOUKIS was able to spurt out a couple of nice pieces of Nyoukis content between porn shoots and window washing way down in the south of Blighty. Ear pricking kindness comes from his BLOOD STEREO project which is pretty much him with Karen Constance, an amazing lass we wrote about at length in last issue’s column. Here Comes Blood Stereo is in a DVD box and issued by Greek label Absurd. Absurd began in 1996 as a noise fanzine basically an extension of Genital Grinder fanzine which had been debating ball-crunching noise since 1989. As a label it evolves at whim and has released a varying slew of strange n’ odd stuff. Another Nyoukis gotta-have is his The Mysterious Blue Soups of the South CD in which he enjoys some long and not so long distance collaborations with like minded individuals such as Neil Campbell, Kyle Lapidus and Ebay absurdist Kenui Ullin. It’s released by the twisted Belgium label Audiobot with an exquisite fold out cover with obi-strip all designed and screenprinted by Janus Prutpuss who did covers for Trumans Water and others.

Another great silkscreen audio/visual jammer on Audiobot is the Moving Gelatin in a Translucent World CD by Rochester NY’s PENGO. We mentioned Joe+ N whilst rapping about Carbon, well Joe’s in this group as well playing electric detonation guitar along with the infamous Jason Finkelbeiner and electric power zapper Nuuj. Pengo has been slaying audiences for awhile now and recently have really come into their own. A recent gig opening for the To Live And Shave In L.A. original line-up tour (with Andrew W.K. on drums—this group was a goddamned motherfucker!) had mouths first watering then wagging for many miles. Dennis Tyfus did the artwork which is heavy card pages of birds and foliage in a psycho-layered realm of lysergic solemnity. It’s a good ‘un. Audiobot also has two CDs by JULIAN BRADLEY who you may know as one of the cats in Vibracathedral Orchestra. Julian has made consistently interesting cassette and CD releases through the years of his guitar pulsations and chord change chaos. Both A companion As Glamorous As Sleeping On Wheels and Ditch Us In the Doorway are two of his finest, especially as they are slipped in silkscreened 7” sleeves and attached to square cut piece of old LPs. Audiobot has other cool CDs in silkscreened madness by such crazed luminaries as RICHARD RAMIREZ (Texas noise butcher/gay satanist), REYNOLS (Argentinian dadaists/mental patients) and CRANK STURGEON (Massachusetts noise beast/maple seed demon).

Julian Bradley has a female friend with groovy blonde hair who is, amongst other things I suspect, a pretty happening writer. All I know is her name is Lauren and she’s been issuing an ongoing lit/art journal of her work the last few years called Pretend I Am Someone Else. It reads fast with ruminations of female identity and emotion and scurries through dream talk where sensations threaten to consume. Good stuff. We’ve seen the last two of four issues to date.

We mentioned how Tom Smith’s To Live And Shave In L.A. toured the Midwest and New England in late September and how it absolutely ripped. They were hawking new Smack Shire shite which is Tom’s label. The hottest item, besides the BUSH IS FILTH tour t-shirt was the long-awaited-and-salivated-for SIGHTINGS/TOM SMITH collaboration disc. Rest assured this mommy smokes tough. Tom’s relentless poesie damage howl rides the wave of Sightings black hole grind and gloop. Tom’s penchant for sweatfuck techno skuzz comes into play here and there and it makes you wanna run over a cop whilst laughing insanely to the archangels swooping in. Sightings guitarist Mark Moran joined the “original” To Live and Shave for the tour along with Andrew W.K. and Don Fleming on guitar and Ben Osker and Rat Bastard on fractured toolboxes. Each night was a madhouse of big beat jizz psychosis. Smack Shire has released an archival disc by the group XEX. I think Brian Turner of WFMU can explain it best: “For all the moaning I’ve done over the years about growing up in a culturally detached small town in Pennsylvania though my formative years of discovering weird-ass punk and new/no wave music, the truth is simply that the most mind-boggling ideas and warped musical aesthetics sprung from these places. Amidst the sea of coked-up Cinderella wannabes who played my high school anti-drug rallies, the Kevin Cronin-of REO-produced big-fish-in-a-small-pond rock gods that walked down our streets, and the sheer overload of crapola, there were mutants who had it up to here with all of that silliness. For example: HB was a one man Magic Band who would tell stories for hours while whacking away on drums in a pierogi parlor like a cosmic Sam Ulano, The Delusions were what the Velvets coulda been in a coal mining town, and Psychatrone Rhonedakk made hobbit-like basement synth gurgle for years and years and never stepped on a stage. 100 miles from New York but not quite there, they never quite got recognized, and they sure confused a lot of locals. I sure appreciated ’em for merely existing in an oppressive musical locale where the town’s one promoter was too busy hosting dance shows on TV where he got out of a Rolls flanked by ho’s and booking wheezy hair-metal reunions. xex must have been in a similar boat down in South River, New Jersey. Sporting black garb, blurting arps, and bizarro names like “Thumbalina Guglielmo” and “Waw Pierogi” (holy hell, more pierogis!) these guys represented a totally bonkers aesthetic that seems like it was taking its cues from what was being hyped in the NYC underground scene about that time: Eno, Talking Heads, etc., but in fact this music is choking under something more black, toxic, and totally Jersey. While they sang about mall rat zombies who ran around trying to catch up with fashion, they also addressed nuns and nerve gas. Musically, it sounds like it has more to do with German nuts like Grauzone and California’s zonked synth-gothers Factrix or Nervous Gender than anything else remotely in xex’s radius. What gives? Tom Smith did radio shows for a while on WFMU, and was entrenched in the LP library listening to odd finds in backwards order starting at ‘Z’ when he came across this lost gem. It totally blew our brains. There’s zilch about them on the web, as well (apparently not even the hip New York papers gave ’em a mention), and he has been threatening to reissue this baby for some time. Here ’tis at last. Turn up the minimal synth NJ underground!”

Bran(…)Pos is the name used by S.F.’s Jake Rodriguez, (who supposedly was a child star in All in the Family spin-off Gloria) and he’s been releasing cool sounding cassettes and CDs of chittering noise and choogling beat driven junk jive the last couple of years. There was great split release with Mammal last year on the Animal Disguise label and Bran(…)Pos has just returned from touring the USA all summer with such dada noise practitioners as Nautical Almanac and Vertonen. Sold on tour was a new CD on Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack called Chirphuis which shows Bran(…)Pos in self-proclaimed easy listening mode. In a sense it kinda is easy-noise but it will still get under your skin and shred it from within regardless.

Two amazing documentaries on two of the most fascinating filmmakers of the last century have been released on DVD by Zeitgeist Films. The first being IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN, a film by Martina Kudlacek. Maya Deren was an exquisite artist form the 1940s/50s who could easily be considered one of the most poetic and astounding experimental filmmakers at the advent of avant garde cinema. Viewing her back and white films is sublime eroticism without any pandered suggestion. They are dream visions through shadow and light. Her most celebrated film was Meshes in The Afternoon which took a prize at Cannes in 1947. The DVD has great commentaries by Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage (who’s short hand-painted film on Deren, Water for Maya, is, with other previously unseen rarities, included) with a score by good horn player/bad dresser John Zorn. The other doc is BRAKHAGE, a film by Jim Shedden. If you happen to dig the Criterion Collection’s By Brakhage DVD you will definitely need this. Stan Brakhage made over 400 films outside of the mainstream industry of cinema and his work with color and paint creating flicker film still challenges and inspires artists in all mediums. This is the first real doc on Brakhage where you can hear his side of the story. it also includes two early docs from the ’60s and ’70s. For anyone interested in avant garde cinema, both of these are essential.

HIGHWATER BOOKS is a publishing concern out of Montreal by way of New Jersey. If you can dig that symbiotik clash then you can dig that they have some very hip graphic/comix art mania on their shelves. First off is a fat and chunky tome by MAT BRINKMAN, one of the dudes, along with Lightning Bolt, who helped put the Fort Thunder art collective of Providence R.I. on the map. This book, Teratoid Heights, follows the adventures of amoeba like tooth/gum beings into the convex world of LIFE. If you stick your head in this and follow through it will amaze you by its flow of genius. Highwater is also the place for work by Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt (though most of it is sold out these days) as well as issues of the Fort Thunder graphic rag Paper Rodeo.

L’oie de Cravan has published a beautiful large book called Pamplemoussi by GENEVIEVE CASTREE in an edition of 800 copies and we suggest you get yours now. It’s a 12 x 12 chronicle of dreams and nightmares accompanied by the space sweet vox of Genevieve on a 12” record. The most magnificent production that the always righteous L’oie de Cravan has spun out to date. C’est fuckeeng awesome. They’ve also published a tinier item by GIGI PERRON which is a single strip of une jeune femme experiencing pre-menstrual syndrome titled SPM (syndrome pre-menstruel). The comic is rolled up ala tampon with string attached. Sweet.

Writer/artist JOCKO WEYLAND who came to light for a lot of peeps when Grove Press published his personal and insightful Answer Is Never: A Skateboarder’s History of the World has been editing a small zine of collected art and advert images. Each issue has a perverse flow with contributions coming in from all sides of the weirdo planet (some contributors, like Charles Bukowski and Henri Michaux and Jack Goldstein, are dead!). It’s called ELK and it’s up to 7 issues so far.

Time Barn Books in Nashville has done us all a favor and reprinted poet CHARLES POTTS’ seven-part poem written back in 1975, Compstrella/Starfield. Potts was revisited a few years back by us when we republished through Glass Eye Books his immortal Little Lord Shiva collection from the ’60s. His writing always offers great insight to love, laughter and candid cosmic enlightenment. It can be heady and hilarious and is, compared to a lot of psychedelic earth wordsmen, fairly smooth to the pallate.

Ian Mackaye you may know from such Washington D.C. rock ‘n’ roll outfits as Fugazi, Grand Union, Embrace, Minor Threat and The Slinkies. He oversees Dischord Records there and since the early 80s has been documenting his town in all its amped up glory. Recently he’s joined forces with Amy Farina, who we recall as the awe-inspiring drummer of The Warmers, which was a Dischord band that included Ian’s kid bro Alec, in a new duo called THE EVENS. The Evens have done a few low key gigs the last year or so and are flat-out great. Super-inventive guitar/drums/vocals interplay with a strong balance between inside melodics and outside experimentation. Hopefully records will spring forth. Discs that have sprung lately are new ones on Ian’s other label Northern Liberties. It’s a label set up for Ian to promote music maybe a little off the deep end from what Dischord generally deal with. Which is particularly true of the first three releases. DANIEL HIGGS is a superfreak poet/tattoo artist (amongst other things surely) from Lungfish and on Magic Alphabet he really gets his freak on by offering a CD’s worth of jews harp improvisations. ET AT IT are something we know nothing about, but whoever they are they have a engagingly weird yet mellow swing vibe. The CD is called I Count and there is some definite number head rocking going on. The other title is Sixteen Songs by DON ZIENTARA. Don has been instrumental and important to the Dischord years as he’s recorded the motherlode of work that’s been issued. Here is his own collection of compositions, pretty strange and personable.

FOXY DIGITALIS has been amazingly productive this last year, releasing baskets full of CDRs of excellent outside folk and psyche and drone experimentalistix. Wonderful music drifts from New Zealander (now U.K.er) PETER WRIGHT, Finland’s MUSTI LAITON and an awesome sonikscape sweep by a group called HUSH ARBORS.Their site is rich in info and offers interviews with Tara Burke (Fursaxa) and more.

We reported a column or so back about the two girls from Osaka called AFRI RAMPO. They hit the USA again this late summer and tore it up for those in attendance. We found out their name means either “Naked Rock” or “Naked Shoplifting.” One girl’s name is Oni, which means “devil”, the other is Pika Chu which means…”pikachu”. Whatever, we’re there regardless. And we’re happy to report that a CD is available from Gyunne Cassette. It’s all in Japanese characters so we don’t know too much about what it’s called but it’s a decent representation of what they do live. And let it be known: live is where total meltdown occurs. You may wanna check Afri Rampo’s own site as they have an independent CD release floating around of live recordings which is pretty raw and murky but gets pretty psycho nonetheless.

Of all the anti-worst-president-ever compilations blowing out these insane days our favorite has to be No W…NOW! A Musical Petition Against George W. Bush on Passive Aggressive Records. With a surprisingly charged declaration liner note by GLEN BRANCA and a line up which includes NYC space-zonk duo WHITE OUT, Philly free sax envelope pusher JACK WRIGHT, master blues dream star LOREN CONNORS and squeezebox sound wizard PAULINE OLIVEROS as well as art from ERIC DROOKER, this sucker delivers a sonorific slap. The CD is a benefit for the highly progressive non-profit organization Not In Our Name , an on-going project in creating awareness of Bush/Cheney’s insane crusade.

Loren Connors has been involved with creating a limited set of artworks that are superb and beautiful in their zen mind consciousness. As facilitated by design artist Masumi Raymond, Loren has created the the collection Wild Weeds in a suite edition, (8 silk screen prints, #’d signed edition of 7), and a folio edition (6 silkscreen prints, #’d signed edition of 20). Also an artist’s book entitled Winter Dawn (#’d signed edition of 25). There is also a seletion of original drawings by Loren available from the site. Loren’s work has always resonated with the concept of bliss and prayer, his earthbound vision startling, amusing and elevating those who deign to become entranced by it. The work he has done here is exquisite and rareified and probably beyond the pocketbook means of most. Fortunately it can be viewed on the site—there’s even a short film of Loren working on the pieces. All in all, they are remarkable and surely a remarkable new chapter in Loren’s ongoing creative life.

Norway’s Sindre Bjerga has released some heavy 7”s this year on his Gold Soundz imprint and they are all the tits. Three of them come in uniform design sleeves identified solely by a artist/title sticker and numbered. First up is one by CHRISTINA CARTER. Christina is an astounding singer with the most incredible claw guitar style we’ve ever witnessed. She is mesmerizing and all her work from Charalambides through Scorces and onwards has been gorgeous and special. This is one of her more spooked out recordings. Second up is VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA from the UK and it’s a live frazzle of a piece and it cooks not unlike Cactus’ ‘Ot ‘n ‘Eavy LP did if it were truly psycho-melted. Third is VOLCANO THE BEAR from Leicester UK spinning down a surrealist vibe. Also new on Gold Soundz is a 7” by AVARUS which is co-released with Humbug, Imvated, Veglia and Audiobot. We mentioned Avarus earlier when raving about new Norway and let it be known this is some burning drone love rock. Open up and swallow.

A weird new split 10” from Dunedin New Zealand has come to us and we welcome it lustily. One side is EYE which is Nathan Thompson & Peter Stapleton and the other is THREE FORKS which is Tim Cornelius, James Currin and Donald McPherson. It is fantastic to hear Peter Stapleton these days playing some new and excellent sounds. Both these combos are from the continually vibrant scene in Dunedin which gave us so much pleasure with the Xpressway label and particularly, and still, the remarkable Dead C. The label is called UM as far as we can tell and this lathe is the first of an ongoing series documenting the new Dunedin experimentalists. Not sure where to go for this, but try the lathe-cutting joint Peter King, where it got made—they may have a lead.

After processing all of the above we needed to clean out our sensors and went to our old favorites DEVILLOCK for help. Devillock is Justin Lewis from Minneapolis and he’s been putting out killer cassettes and CDRs of sonarific rip sluice that work the canal like amped corncob q-tip electrik tweezer pull. Seriously. Real flinty. His label is Tone Filth and he’s been threatening to issue some mean sides very soon such as the Three Legged Race cassette which is Robert from Hair Police’s solo joint and an LP by Michigan’s crazed son Charlie Draheim.

Good luck, good day, we got shit to do, so do you, and, as always , please send two of each o’ your thangs for us to contemplate and process. Mmmmmm…

Bull Tongue
P.O. Box 627
Northampton, MA 01061
USA

contacts:
Absurd: http://www.anet.gr/absurd
Afri Rampo: http://www.afrirampo.com
Animal Disguise : http://www.animaldisguise.com
Audiobot: http://www.freaksendfuture.com/labels/audiobot.php
Carbon Records: http://www.carbonrecords.com
Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack : http://www.soundcrack.net
Loren Connors artwork: http://www.masumiraymond.com/7%20loren.htm
Devillock: tonefilth.justinchrismeyers.com/devillock/
Eclipse: http://www.eclipse-records.com
ELK: http://www.elkzine.com
Eric Erlandson: Ericevol@aol.com
Fat Worm of Error: http://fatwormoferror.suchfun.net/
Foxy Digitalis: http://www.digitalisindustries.com
Gameboy: http://www.gmby.net
Glass Eye Books: http://www.yod.com
Gold Soundz: http://www.tibprod.com/goldsoundz.htm
Gyunne Cassette: http://gyuune.k-server.org/
Highwater Books: http://www.highwaterbooks.com
kevyt nostalgia: http://www.kevytnostalgia.cjb.net
Peter King: http://home.comcast.net/~cassetto/Lathe7.html
Lal Lal Lal: http://www.haamu.com/lallallal/
Nidnod: http://www.a-version.co.uk/nidnod/
Northern Liberties: http://www.dischord.com
Not In Our Name: http://www.notinourname.net
L’oie de Cravan: http://www.cam.org/~cravan
Passive Aggressive: http://www.passiveaggressiverecords.net
Pretend I Am Someone Else: wakeuptomakeup@yahoo.co.uk
Smack Shire: http://www.smackshire.com
Sweetcore: http://www.kevytnostalgia.cjb.net
Three Lobed: http://threelobed.com/tlr/
Time Barn Books: http://www.thetimegarden.com
Tone Filth: tonefilth.org
Verso Books: http://www.versobooks.com
WFMU: http://www.wfmu.org
Yeay! Cassettes: http://yeay.suchfun.net
Zeitgeist Films: http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com

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