BACK IN STOCK FOR A LIMITED TIME: "Two Million Tongues" anthology cd curated by Plastic Crimewave (2006)

ANOTHER WAREHOUSE FIND: We’ve got 55 copies left of this sweetie and then it’s gone forever.

This beautifully sequenced, far-ranging album commemorates the second annual Plastic Crimewave-curated, Galactic Zoo Dossier/Arthur-presented “Million Tongues” festival that went down at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, November 3-6, 2005.

Track listing:

1. MOUNTAINS – “Speaking”
2. NO NECK BLUES BAND – “Pulse”
3. MIMINOKOTO – “Tokedasu”
4. TIM KINSELLA & AMY CARGILL – “Song for Josh”
5. MICHAEL CHAPMAN – “The Northern Lights”
6. JOSEPHINE FOSTER – “Wondrous Love”
7. CHRIS CONNELLY – “Pray’r”
8. PEARLS AND BRASS – “Waterfall”
9. TRAVELING BELL – “Apparitions”
10. THE SINGLEMAN AFFAIR – “Good to Be With You Again”
11. JACK ROSE – “Hey Fuck You Rag”
12. TAR PET – “Takeit Heri”
13. BIRDSHOW – “Pilz”
14. TONY CONRAD – “Bowstring 1”
15. HOTOTOGISU – “Blues for Steve K”
16. HAPTIC – “Indifference -> Building On Fire”
17. LUX – “Need Fade In + Out”
18. HARDSCRABBLE – “Sail It Away”

Track selection, art and lettering by Plastic Crimewave. Limited edition of 1,000 copies in jewelcase, released through Arthur’s “Bastet” imprint in 2005. 55 copies left and then they’re all gone!

$10 postpaid from The Arthur Store

April 11: Happy Birthday to You, Issue Project Room!

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This Saturday, Issue Project Room (Brooklyn, NY) celebrates its sixth anniversary with “EDO9”, a 17-piece drone composition by artist-in-residence Duane Pitre. Working primarily with acoustic and electro-acoustic instruments—here, strings, woodwinds, and bowed guitar—Pitre combines long-tones and microtonal tuning schemes to create mile-long blankets of flickering, overtone-laden bliss. Also on the menu for the evening, a second ensemble performance by the prodigious Tony Conrad, the title and nature of which have yet to be disclosed.

Tony Conrad & Duane Pitre
Saturday, April 11th, 8pm
Issue Project Room
The (OA) Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215

NYTimes on Arthur's "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" release on DVD

August 27, 2006 – Sunday New York Times

Long, Strange Trip for a Hypnotic Film

By JAMES GADDY

It took 38 years, but Ira Cohen’s cult film, “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda,” which was first screened in 1968 at the high point of the psychedelic hippie head rush, is now commercially available. Given the close calls, the long absences and his chaotic archival system, Mr. Cohen, 71, is a little surprised himself.

“It didn’t really involve patience,” he said in his apartment on West 106th Street in Manhattan, surrounded by books stacked waist high. “It was just reality.”

In 1961 Mr. Cohen built a room in his New York loft lined with large panels of Mylar plastic, a sort of bendable mirror that causes images to crackle and swirl in hypnotic, sometimes beautiful patterns. After a few years experimenting with the technique in photographs, he invited his friends from the downtown scene — like Beverly Grant, Vali Myers and Tony Conrad — to make a film.

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