Bleak Bliss: May 2013

Various‎ - Victorian Electronics

This is a four 3" CDr boxset released on the excellent Striate Cortex in a rapidly sold out edition of 50 in 2012.

Here you get Neil Campbell's Astral Social Club (with Paul Walsh), Daniel Thomas (who also runs the brilliant Sheepscar Light Industrial label), Midwich (aka Rob Hayler who also runs the must-see Radio Free Midwich blog) and Ashtray Navigations (this time around as Phil Todd and Melanie O'Dubhshlaine aka Melanie Delaney who also records as Ocelocelot).

This was released to celebrate the 50th Striate Cortex release and the birth of Sheepscar Light Industrial.

Whilst I have your attention...go and visit Daniel's and Sheepscar's bandcamp pages where there is a wealth of fine material available as name your price downloads.

Victorian Electronics

Black Sun Roof - 3012

3" CDr released on Stiff Opposition in 2012.

Black Sun Roof is the new project of (mainly) Samantha Davies and Matthew Bower (aka Skullflower and Voltigeurs).

You should also check out the Feral LP on VHF Records and the 4 Black Suns & A Sinister Rainbow double CD on Handmade Birds.

3012

Various - Noise War

At times of grief...reach for a bit of classic noise.

Double C90 co-released by Mother Savage Noise Productions and Sounds For Consciousness Rape in '93/4.

These can't be extracted seperately...they will need to be combined with 7-zip or somesuch...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Kitten Helmet

Three hours and 35 minutes ago I had to allow my elder stateswoman to leave.

I want to mark her passing.

We spent 17 years of me doing what she wanted me to do.

A beautiful cat!

Salvatore - The Kermes Infestation 3 x C90

This is an almost mythical release from 1996.

Salvatore (aka K Salvatore) are Jason Meagher (who also records with Coach Fingers and The Helix) and Pat Murano (who records as Decimus and as a member of Key Of Shame, Malkuth, Raajmahal and Safiyya). Both are also members of No-Neck Blues Band. They also recorded at least one tape with Dylan Nyoukis as Beautifull Music Company which was released on Dylan's Chocolate Monk label (if anybody has that one to share, I'd be prepared to love you for a short while).

These tapes are the result of weekly meetings where they scuplted a series of six continuous improvisations. They were then ostensibly released in an edition of ten copies on NNCK's Sound@One label but were in effect given away to friends and family...and they disappeared from public gaze.

They have recently been resurrected in vinyl form as a lavish six-disc boxset on Italy's Planam label. Presumably, there has been some editing in the vinyl version given the length of the taped improvisations and I'm not sure if there has been any remastering. The label does not appear to have an obvious internet presence. However, Planam is a sub-division of Alga Marghen which has a presence on facebook...I just can't engage with that platform so don't know how much information is available there. What I do know is that there are only 145 copies of the LP version and they are relatively expensive. I also know that this music would sound truly astonishing on vinyl. You can still find it in some distros so hopefully this will inspire some to go and pick it up before it disappears again!

Planam have described this as "Akin to a 5+ hour kidnapping ordeal that culminates, not with freedom restored, but instead disembowlment in a sad man's bathtub." Hmmm...maybe.

This is free jazz inspired, freak folked acid fried psychedelia.

Tape 1

Tape 2

Tape 3

Drone Works: Volumes 1 - 10

This is a series of CDRs released on Paul Bradley's Twenty Hertz label between 2004 and 2005. Volumes 1 and 3 are for free download on Paul's Bandcamp page - the links are included below. As far as I know, Volume 6 was originally the Bass Communion disc but that was quickly deleted and replaced by a work by Paul that you can get here.

Paul Bradley - Drone Work #1

Colin Potter - Drone Work #2

Phil Mouldycliff & Colin Potter - Drone Work #3

Darren Tate - Drone Work #4

Freiband - Drone Work #5

Bass Communion - Drone Work #6

Andrew Liles - Drone Work #7

Cheapmachines - Drone Work #8

David Wells - Drone Work #9

Irr. App. (Ext.) - Drone Work #10

Thomas Köner / Nijiumu / Pauline Oliveros & Randy Raine-Reusch / Paul Schütze‎ - Driftworks

Great four CD set released on Big Cat in 1997.

Thomas Köner - Nuuk

Nijiumu - Live

Pauline Oliveros & Randy Raine-Reusch - In The Shadow Of The Phoenix

Paul Schütze - Stateless

Nijiumu - Untitled

Nijiumu (literally "the blending of that which is and that which is not") were Asahito Nanjo, Keiji Haino, Shizuo Uchida and Tetuzi Akiyama.

There is an excellent and comprehensive interview with Asahito on Squealer.

"Nijiumu concentrate on creating an atmosphere. There was no clear concept, sometimes we wouldn't even talk about what we were going to do. Nijiumu is like Fushitsusha in that it was started with the aim of doing something that no one else had thought of. It doesn't have any clear philosophy behind it.

There were four of us - Matsuoka, Uchida, Haino and me. The first time we played Haino was on vocals, percussion and small ethnic instruments, I was on bass, Matsuoka on piano, and Uchida played bass and synthesized percussion. So there were a lot of electric instruments. We used to play once a week in Nerima for about three hours. After I left [in 1990], Nijiumu became more and more Haino's band."

These are two CDRs that Asahito released on his (controversial) La Musica Records. They feature two live recordings (they appear to be recorded live in the studio) from 1990. They were mastered by Asahito at La Musica Studio in 1999 so I think it's fair to say that is also the year of release.

Imagine Dead Can Dance playing cover versions of The Lemon Kittens (or vice versa) and you're close but nowhere near.

Great, great music!

Untitled 1

Untitled 2

Hijokaidan - Shumatsu-Shorijo

CD released on Alchemy Records as part of the Hijokaidan Rarity series in 2000 featuring a 27 minute feast which previously appeared on a compilation LP in 1980 plus a previously unreleased improvisational work.

Shumatsu-Shorijo

Hijokaidan - Windom

CD released on Jojo's Alchemy Records in 1991 featuring studio and live material.

The live track is a treat, 22 minutes recorded at Shinjuku-Antiknock, Tokyo in June 1991, featuring Masami Akita on drums and Fumio Kosakai on electronics and vocals.

Oh Yeah!!!

Windom

Das Synthetische Mischgewebe - Audience Of The Souldestroyers

C20 on Das Cassettencombinat from 1982. This was again re-released as part of the Individual VOD vinyl series in 2005.

Currently, the hugely influential Das Synthetische Mischgewebe is Isabelle Chemin and Guido Hübner

"Guido Hübner founded Das Synthetische Mischgewebe (aka DSM) in the early 1980's in Berlin. With a loose ensemble of individuals of different disciplines DSM worked in many different forms of artistic expressions ranging from concerts and performances to mixed-media installations with topics in neurology and cognitive science. Works have been presented in most parts of Europe, New York, Montreal and Sao Paulo. However, DSM is mostly recognised for it's musical output, having released numerous cassettes, vinyl records and CD's on labels based in Europe, Japan and the United States. The descriptive keyword for the music is "montage" framed by fragment and collage. Mostly, but not exclusively, working with concrète and electronic sounds, the interest of the experimental approach is to explore elements where a given combination of sounds is perceived as associated, united, blended together to appear as a continuity and where disconnected, fragmented, divided components that evoke rupture and how both can be combined and shaped into a significant structure." Chronoglide

The DSM backcatalogue appears to be extremely partial, even on official sites...if anybody has been able to find a comprehensive record, please get in touch.

Audience Of The Souldestroyers

Das Synthetische Mischgewebe - Works

C60 released on the short-lived but hugely influential Das Cassettencombinat label in 1982.

This was re-released in 2005 on vinyl by Vinyl-On-Demand as the 1st part of the Individual VOD series (which are handmade editions of never more than 50 copies).

The vinyl is (as far as I know) a single LP, so would appear to be an edited version of this tape.

And, yes...I should have asked Frank...

Works

Das Synthetische Mischgewebe‎ - Was Ist Das, Die Realitat?

C54 on Tonspur Tapes from 1990.

Tonspur (steered by Stefan Schwab who also recorded as Context) was one of those seminal labels that gave us an insight into the Northern European early adopters that led us to where we are today.

Was Ist Das, Die Realitat?

Dead Comet Alive - My World Is Caving In

CDr on American Tapes ‎(AM522) in 2006 in an edition of ten.

Very excellent!

My World Is Caving In

Dead Comet Alive - Plays From Inverted Sewers

Mr Olson on a CDr released on American Tapes ‎(AM260) in 2002 in an edition of 61.

Plays From Inverted Sewers

J. Olson - Dark Season Of Id

John Olson. Founder of American Tapes, father of a thousand projects and one man cultural revolution.

C48 on American Tapes ‎(AM091) released in 1999 in an edition of ten copies.

"J. Olson = Hand Made Solo Electronics"

Dark Season Of Id

Kido Natsuki - Quiet Life

CD released on Sakura in 2003.

He really nails his colours to the mast on this one and ably demonstrates what a great guitarist he is. There are covers of Brazilian jazz guitarist and composer Luiz Floriano Bonfá, American jazz bassist and composer Jaco Pastorius, Japanese reeds improviser Kazutoki Umezu (who he also collaborates with in the Kazutoki Umezu KIKI Band) and Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.

There are also covers of "Georgia On My Mind" (originally conceived by Hoagy Carmichael) and "Jamaica Farewell" (originally by the father of Jamaican calypso Irving Burgie but probably better known for a 1956 cover by Harry Belafonte). Kind of reminds me of when I saw Sir Richard Bishop live and he started to play "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". My first reaction was along the lines of "wtf" until he climbed inside its skin and claimed it as his own, easily dissolving any cultural baggage I was carrying with me. This is what happens here and I find these covers deeply touching. He's a genius!

Quiet Life

Black Stage - Black Stage

This CD features a live set recorded at Manda-La2 in Tokyo on September the 16th, 1994. It was released on Maboroshi No Sekai in 1996.

Here we get Natsuki Kido on acoustic guitar with Yuji Katsui on violin and Keiji Haino on both 6 and 12 string guitars and flute and harp.

This is completely free form improvisational work and full of cultural reference points that I can not possibly grasp. It is also very great... although your gratification will not be delivered immediately.

This would undoubtably be filed under jazz by some...but "jazz" is as unutterably meaningless as "noise" and "experimental". I don't think that I've heard anything quite like this...but I suppose if you gave me long enough then I would think of something. That would only colour this work and would be quite pointless...

Black Stage

Korekyojinn - Arabesque

CD released on Tatsuya Yoshida's Magaibutsu label initially in 2004 and then re-released in 2009 with bonus live tracks. The label website reopened a couple of months ago after quite a period of inactivity...you can buy this and many other great things over there!

Again this features Natsuki Kido on guitar, Tatsuya Yoshida on drums but with Mitsuru Nasuno on bass. Strangely, this reminded me of the completely different NoMeansNo...but then heads of on a completely different trajectory.

Arabesque

Kido Natsuki - Disco Space Baby!

A relatively short CDr released on the Acid Mothers Temple label as part of the Gold Disc Series in 2000.

As well as featuring Natsuki Kido on Guitar, Vocals, Synthesizer and Organ...we have Kawabata Makoto contributing electronics, Yuji Katsui on violin, Tatsuya Yoshida on drums and Atsushi Tsuyama on bass.

Disco Space Baby!

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