Various - Amaterasu (A Musical Panorama Of Japan)




You can relax this time around as we head off into more familiar territory. This is a double CD released on Fractal Records in 2003 featuring the likes of Overhang Party, Tsuyama Atsushi, Iuchi Kengo, Mitsuru Tabata, Kawabata Makoto, Miminokoto, Urabe Masayoshi and Kousokuya.

Musical

Panorama

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Various - Billboard Head Soup




This is a double CD that was jointly released on Franck Stofer's Sonore, Yasutoshi Yoshida's Xerxes and Nu NuLAX NuLAN in 2006. It's wall to wall deconstructions of "popular classics". Satanicpornocultshop twisting Missy Elliot's "Get Ur Freak On" inside out? Government Alpha turning Britney's "Toxic" into a lullaby? Contagious Orgasm converting "We Are The World" into an opiated nightmare?

Genius? Deranged?

You know you don't want to ... but you know you're going to.

Disk You

Disk Me

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Kangaroo Kourt - Sleeping Beauty

Second Kangaroo Kourt LP, released in 1988.

Kangaroo Kourt - Sleeping Beauty

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Kangaroo Kourt - Interstellar Static from the Kangaroo Kourt

The classic 1987 debut LP by Kangaroo Kourt, an obscure Nurse With Wound/Mixed Band Philanthropist-worshipping US duo whose meager recorded legacy over a few short years will be posted here in its entirety. The band made some hyperactive tape collage, some bowed metal scrape with flashes of goth-y ethereal mellotron drone that gradually overtook the band until they renamed themselves Mauve Sideshow. 

Kangaroo Kourt - Interstellar Static from the Kangaroo Kourt

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Various - Katacombe Vol. 1




The starting point of a classic series of tapes. T.A.S.S. II, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, FâLX çèrêbRi, Non Toxique Lost and a host of mail artist compilation contributors. C90 courtesy of Schrei Records / Industria Tepa in 1983/4. Combine the parts to enjoy the whole.

Part One

Part Two

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Various - Katacombe Vol. 2




We know where we are by now! Another great window into the early eighties underground electronics enclave. C90 that was released in 1984 via the Schrei Records / Industria Tepa axis before Norway's Requiem Productions leap in and re-release again in 1985.

This comes in just over the 200MB limit so extract them together ...

Part One

Part Two

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Various - Katacombe Vol. 3




Y Create, Het Zweet, Zombies Under Stress, Het Zweet, Kapotte Muziek, De Fabriek plus more people on another C60 released on Schrei Records and then being re-released on Industria Tepa again in 1984.

Katacombe Vol. 3

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Various - Katacombe Vol. 4




Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Smersh, Merzbow, Karsten Rodemann's FâLX çèrêbRi surrounded by many marvelous sub-undergrounders on this C90 released on Schrei Records and then being re-released on Industria Tepa both in 1984.

Katacombe Vol. 4

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Various - Katacombe Vol. 5




Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Nails Øv Christ, Kapotte Muziek, Het Zweet, Klaus Groh, Zombies Under Stress and De Fabriek and so on and so forth ...

C60 released on Industria Tepa in 1985.

Katacombe Vol. 5

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Various - Katacombe Vol. 6




Arguably stronger ground (but who's to judge?) with the likes of Pacific 231, A Violated Body, Massimo Toniutti's Ost Morbi, The Haters, Rafael Flores' Comando Bruno project, No Unauthorized and old favourites THU 20 and Experiment Incest. Given the presence of the latter, it may come as no surprise that this is a C60 released on Frans de Waard's Industria Tepa in 1987.

Katacombe Vol. 6

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Various - Katakombe 7




This is the seventh and, as far as I know, last of the Katacombe series of tapes. This time it's a C46 released on Norway's Yecch Tapes in 1998. Even by our standards, the artists are quite obscure ... I only know of Esruk, Radical Change, Alain Basso and Nostalgie Eternelle ... and that is only from other compilations. But hey, we're out and proud completist ultra nerds!

Katakombe 7

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Klaus Groh - Neoistconcert 1986




Single sided (and very rare) self-released C80 from this neo-dadist (?) explorer.

Neoistconcert 1986

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Arthur Doyle, Takashi Mizutani & Sabu Toyozumi - Live in Japan 1997

Scorching trio improvisation by the late Arthur Doyle (saxophone), Sabu Toyozumi (drums) and most surprisingly, Takashi Mizutani (guitar) of the legendary Les Rallizes Denudes. This 2xLP set was released by Qbico in 2003.

Arthur Doyle, Takashi Mizutani & Sabu Toyozumi - Live in Japan 1997

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Various - Dada For Now




ARK were an esoteric label at the best of times. Then, in 1985, they released an LP featuring the work of Dada and Futurist artists that were recorded between 1914 and 1946.

Inspired!

Dada For Now

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Lull - Collected Box

Lull is the drone project of the prolific Mick Harris. As Bleak Bliss readers surely know, Harris was once in a band with Nic Bullen and Justin Broadrick called Scorn, who in the mid-1980's were known as Napalm Death until some other guys decided to use that name. Harris' solo music went from metallic churn to heavy dub thud and techno club-friendly thump, but Lull was his avenue for ice-cold beatless drift. You don't have to call it ambient if the term bothers you.

"Collected", a CD from 2003 released by the magnificent Manifold label, collects (duh) unreleased music and some tracks that initially appeared on compilations, plus one side of Lull's "Way Through Staring" LP. The edition that I'm posting here, though, is the luxurious limited-to-100-copies boxset that, in addition to the more widely available CD, also included a Lull t-shirt, some cards, a box with a little chain and lock around it (in case someone tried to steal it from you... no chance! You'll never get past the clever little chain!), and (this is the piece we really care about here) an extra CDR called "They're Coming Out of the Walls" contaning even more Lull! The bonus disc has the other side of the "Way Through Staring" LP, two tracks from 7" singles, and a different version of a compilation track.

Collected

They're Coming Out of the Walls

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Archival Series - Musique Concrète Soundtracks To Experimental Short Films




These are a series of six 3" CDrs put out on New England Electric Music Company. The first three were in 2001 and the latter three were in 2006. They feature the early pioneers Bernard Parmegiani, Robert Cohen-Solal, Pierre Henry, Włodzimierz Kotoński, Tom Dissevelt, Gershon Kingsley, Percy Grainger, Joan La Barbara and Pierre Boulez. More details are available here.

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

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Luigi Nono - Complete Works For Solo Tape




Does Luigi Nono really need an introduction? Oh. OK then. This is Luigi Nono. There you go!

This is a double disc set of his musique concrète tape compositions that also includes a couple of radio broadcasts. If you speak Italian then you will enjoy the latter much more than I have been able to ... after all, I'm a lazy Englishman who can barely come to terms with his own language.

Vive la France!

Vive la France!

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Private Eye - Untitled




High pitched scree and rumble that ascends into an alien gunfight. This is the third of the tour merchandise tapes and surely this is also Viktor Ottosson.

C22 released on Preafekt Kassetter in 2012 in an edition of 25.

Vive la France!

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Blodvite - Untitled




You already know that this tour tape is great. C18 released on Preafekt Kassetter in 2012 in an edition of 39.

Vive la France!

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Orquere - Untitled




24 minutes of typically atypical tour tape sound-art released on Viktor's own (?) Preafekt Kassetter in 2012 in an edition of 39.

Vive la France!

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Orquere - Foundations




"All sounds appear as they are. No effects or any intended electronically generated sounds were used during the recording. Sounds were only manipulated through magnetic tape."

Great CD released on Dan Johansson's Ljud & Bild Produktion in 2012.

Vive la France!

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Orquere - Movements




Looped metal scrapings, reversed noise and found sound left to simmer in a delicious electronic stew. Viktor Ottosson on a C42 released on Dokumentarisk Agenda in 2013.

Vive la France!

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Street Drinkers - Dead Secrets




The ever flexible Mr Ottosson delivering unknown (slow motion Gira) pleasures on this 12" EP released on Posh Isolation in 2012.

Vive la France!

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Street Drinkers / Skeppet - Untitled




Viktor delivers a perfect side of vinyl that manages to creep me right out as much as it thrills. I would imagine it's similar to stumbling upon a secret ceremony where blood will be split (whilst the miscreants were humming their favourite Velvet Underground and Nick Cave tunes). On the reverse, Skeppet (Andreas Malm and Henrik Wallin) deliver a couple of poptastic psychedelic gems.

Basically, it's a truly great LP released on the truly great Matthias Andersson's truly great Release The Bats Records in the bang average year of 2010.

Vive la France!

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Street Drinkers / Sandor Rado - Untitled




Tribal rumbling synth drone meets ecclesiastical consideration on a C30 released on Kosmisk Väg in 2009.

Vive la France!

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Lust For Youth / Street Drinkers - Untitled




Here the Youth are joined by Viktor Ottosson (aka Blodvite and Orquere) on a split C34 released on Sound Holes in 2010.

Vive la France!

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Lust For Youth - Bodies In Barrels




Expertly crafted dungeon dwelling synth driven electronics from Lars Hannes Norrvide, Loke Rahbek and Malthe Fischer that is completely unlike the previous two tapes. C24 released on NNA Tapes in 2010.

Vive la France!

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Lust For Youth - Neon Lights Appear




Fourteen minutes of taped primitive synthdancedirge released on Posh Isolation in 2011.

Vive la France!

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LFY - Saluting Rome




"White, boyish, dance music" from Lust For Youth that was released as a C20 on Posh Isolation and as a 12" EP on Avant! in 2012.

Vive la France!

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The Haunting - Songs For Sleeping Fog

My favorite album by this band, released as a one-sided LP in 2005 on Mike's Gods of Tundra label in an edition of 100 copies. The title is more apt than usual.

The Haunting - Songs For Sleeping Fog 

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Phil Taylor




When I was a kid, Motörhead ruled my life. They were supposed to be METAL, nah ... proper rock and roll. I wore the badge with pride and for my "sins" had to have fistfights with punks because I was apparently the enemy. Soon after, the same people were coming to me asking to buy my Motörhead collection.

Philip John (Philthy Animal) Taylor was the drummer in what will always remain the definitive line up. The jpeg is the cover of the No Class single, it came in three covers each with an individual member of the band on the front. I bought Phil's cover without hesitation. A proper drummer and cool as fuck!

I only ever got to see him play live once ... on the Ace Of Spades tour at the Manchester Apollo (at the age of 14, right down the front, off my tits on mushrooms and cider and walked out deaf!).

Phil died yesterday and was just past his 61st birthday. His passing has just been made public. He is one of the people responsible for showing me that there was more to life than the unutterably grey and bleak humans that surrounded me. I love him a lot!

This is the live (and appropriately named) Golden Years 12" EP released on Bronze Records in 1980.

Nice one Philthy!

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The Haunting - Canine Blues

Double cassette set in a handmade painted box in 2008, edition of 41 copies. The idea was to quickly raise money to help pay medical bills for Mike & Tara Connelly's dog.

tape 1
tape 2 


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The Haunting - Feeding Chamber

2007 cassette on Gods of Tundra.

The Haunting - Feeding Chamber

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People of America - We Are Fucked

There's not much information to share about this chunk of mushroom-soaked weirdness by a band that's otherwise unknown to me (I assume they're American?). The inner sleeve tells us that ""All music recorded entirely between the hours of 11pm on Tuesday November 2 2004 and 6am on Wednesday November 3 2004. Recorded in Boston and Atlanta." Now, I'm no expert, but it seems that the music would have to have been recorded while the band was driving. Huh? Released in 2004 as a CDR in a numbered edition of 25 copies by Nokahoma Records.

People of America - We Are Fucked

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va - Motop 2

By 1991, CDs were still expensive for underground artists to produce themselves and LPs were falling out of favor. Those seeking a wider audience than the cassette trading network had to find a label or else they could band together and make a co-operative compilation. The second volume of "Motop" was compiled by Nicko Selen (aka Ilo Istatov, a member of De Fabriek, O.R.D.U.C., and others) and released as a CD by IF Records, again financed by the artists themselves. It's a nice time capsule, with many excellent tracks by artists both known and obscure. I must have bought this for the Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock and S*Core tracks. There is also noise by Alain Basso (aka Phaeton Derneire Danse) & Ilo Istatov, Anenzephalia, Delta-Sleep-Inducing Peptide, Mike Shannon, Maeror Tri, Jorg Thomasius, Genocide Organ, Frak, De Fabriek, a fantastic collaborative piece by Merzbow & Kapotte Muziek, Wasp King, Royal Flush, LSD (who also appeared on the first volume), and Value Stress.

va - Motop 2

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 2




Odal, Nails Ov Christ, John Hudak, Urbain Autopsy, A Violated Body, Lyke Wake et cetera, et cetera.

Our work here is done ...

Part One

Part Two

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 3




This C90 takes a different tack to the others in the series in that there are only three artists featured. Side A has Dirk Serries' Vidna Obmana and Markus Arvidson's Arvid Tuba. Side B features Klaus Groh providing a 45 minute piece called Dadaland (so you know exactly where that is heading).

I didn't split Side A ... just couldn't get it to match up to the tracks listed on the j-card ... so I tidied it up a bit and here it is.

The entire series is wonderful but this is probably my favourite.

Idealistic Idiot 3

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 4




Odal, Enema Syringe, Solanaceae Tau, S.Core, Big City Orchestra, Andrew Chalk, Bercomize, Merz and more. You know the drill by now ...

Part One

Part Two

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 5




Odal, David Prescott, Due Process, Allan Conroy's Not 1/2 project, John Wiggins, ESruk and more ...

C90 released on Nihilistic Recordings in 1987. Combine the parts to gain access to esoteric evangelism.

Part One

Part Two

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va - Idealistic Idiot 6

Compilation tape from 1987, featuring mail-art madness and idiotic ideals by corprophagic pop sensation Costes Cassette, DMDN, The Psychic Workshop, Esruk, Brume, the dependably wonderful John Hudak (whose entire corpus is required listening for anyone who visits this blog), Domaine Poetique (aka John Hudak & the also-very-amazing-all-the-time Mr. Jeph Jerman), Cephalic Index (a frequent contributor to compilation cassettes of this era), a screaming German maniac called Appi (whose LP I really ought to post here someday), Stream of Unconsciousness, Radical Change, LSD, scum maestro Odal (who is the idealist responsible for this series of comp tapes), and Ditto. I did not break the sides up into separate tracks and could not persuade the husband into doing it for me. If you have the time and patience to do so, contact us and maybe we'll re-post your more conveniently-indexed version.  Otherwise: tough.

va - Idealistic Idiot 6

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Natural Snow Buildings - Monsters/Depths

7" single on Blackest Rainbow, released in a run of 300 copies for Record Store Day 2012.

Natural Snow Buildings - Monsters/Depths

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Natural Snow Buildings - The Ladder




Of course, you already know that the exemplary Natural Snow Buildings are Mehdi Ameziane (aka Twinsistermoon) and Solange Gularte (aka Isengrind).

No doubt you are aware of their penchant for sneaking out items in very small numbers which has the unintended consequence of attracting the speculators who will proceed to encourage you to empty your bank account to obtain them. This is one such thing:

Less than two months ago Ba Da Bing! released Terror's Horns. The first 50 pre-orders (that you could only get via Grapefruit Records) came with this CD which is already being touted around for scandalous amounts of money. Anyway, it's great ... enjoy!

The Ladder

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Natural Snow Buildings - Live At Cragg Vale




C76 released on Hebden Bridge based Was Ist Das? last year. You begin to fully understand how great this is when you reach the section of applause on Side B and a member of the audience shouts "Bravo!" People actually still say bravo? Wow!

Live At Cragg Vale

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Natural Snow Buildings - I Dream Of Drone




Self-released five disc box set from 2008. Typically wonderful set of psychedelic drones featuring three prior releases and two hours of previously unheard material.

Sung To The North

Gorgons

Battle Gods

Norns

Between The Real And The Shadow

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va - Motop 1

Here is one of the all-time classic late-1980's experimental noise compilation LPs, "Motop 1". The concept was ripped straight from the idealistic (idiot?) international cassette-network underground. At the time, record production was still a risky investment. This was before the internet, before distributors cared about noise, before No Fun Fest, before people like Merzbow and Wolf Eyes could pay their electric bills by going on world tours. The idea was that artists could have a track on this LP if they paid for part of its production. If people chipped in, the record could be financed without anyone losing too much money. Frans de Waard compiled the tracks (and contributed a good one as Kapotte Muziek), IF Records released the vinyl in 1989, and there you are: noise by obscure weirdos like Totungsdelikt and Post Mortem had the chance to potentially expand their audience on a format viewed as somewhat more pro than self-made cassette tapes. And what a record it turned out to be!

The incessantly active De Fabriek appear here, because of course they do. Militia Chresti, also known as the HESS Group, contributed a track. Gazza November's Freek Kinkelaar would later change his "band" name to Brunnen and become 1/2 of both Wander and Beequeen. Dva Met Dva Nichts is better known by his initials, DMDN, and more recently as a member of the fantastic (and criminally under-rated) THU20. The not-Dutch contributors include provocative English power-electronics screamer Con-Dom, Belgian industrial (oh sorry, I mean "minimal synth") band Absolute Body ControlMerzbow, Luis Mesa, Phaeton Derniere Danse, Vidna Obmana (today known as Fear Falls Burning), New Carrolton (featuring Jeff Surak aka Violet, of Watergate Tapes and Zeromoon), and American/German genre-phobes Doc Wor Mirran. Then there are artists who sank back into the iron oxide mire, their tracks on "Motop 1" being some of the only surviving evidence of their work: Asod Dvi, O.R.D.U.C., Esruk, and Lampshade.

va - Motop 1

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Various - Acousmatrix: The History Of Electronic Music




This was a series curated by Konrad Boehmer and released on BV Haast Records. Initially, these were separate releases that came out between 1990 and 1991 before being re-released as a nine disc box set in 2005. The rest is self-explanatory ...

1: Gottfried Michael Koenig: Klangfiguren Il / Essay / Terminus I-Il / Output

2: Gottfried Michael Koenig: Funktionen

3: Luc Ferrari: Electronic Works

4: Henri Pousseur: Electronic Works

5: Konrad Boehmer: Electronic Works

6: Cologne - WDR: Early Electronic Music

7: Luciano Berio / Bruno Maderna: Electronic Works

8: Francis Dhomont: Cycle De L’Errance

9: Francis Dhomont: Les Dérives Du Signe

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