Bleak Bliss: April 2018

Akio Suzuki - はごろも "Suzuki Type- Glass Harmonica"

A very small-run CDR by sound art pioneer Akio Suzuki. The music on this disc was reissued on the "either/OAR Editions 2014" 4xCD boxset (yet unheard by me), along with more archival material. Recorded in 1996 and initially available for sale only at the Gelbe Musik gallery and record shop in Berlin.

Akio Suzuki - Suzuki Type- Glass Harmonica

Various - Danza De La Muerte - R.I.P. Syntactic

And from the ashes of Walter Robotka's Syntactic, he formed Klanggalerie. What a fucking genius! As a doff of the cap to what had gone before, a lot of brilliant people remixed a lot of brilliant people's music. Listen to it or (if you don't trust me) look it up and then listen to it.

Double CD released on Klanggalerie in 2002.

Danza De La Muerte

Ted Milton & The BoBonus Beats - Postcard

In case you don't know, Ted Milton is the founder of the brilliant Blurt. This is the best way that I can think of sliding away from the inspirational and esoteric small vinyl releases of this great label.

Single-sided 7" released on Syntactic in 1995.

Postcard

Free Agents - £3.33

Initially, this was a very mysterious Mancunian release and the details only came to light well after the event:

"While [Buzzcocks] are mixing 'Love Bites', the rest of The Tiller Boys play support to Gang Of Four at York University. The gig, played by Francis Cookson and Eric Ramsden, is recorded and subsequently released on Groovy Records - the off-shoot of The Tiller Boys call themselves Free Agents, and the record is both called, and sells for, £3.33p. Despite [Pete] Shelley's absence from the live recording, the remaining tracks which make up the album feature Shelley, Cookson and Alan [Deaves] (guitarist/vocalist with The Worst), recorded at Graveyard Studios in Prestwich, Manchester." There are even rumours that Barry Adamson is involved here somewhere.

LP released on Pete Shelley and Francis Cookson's Groovy Records in 1980.

£3.33

Free Agents - Cyclic

Eric Ramsden (aka Eric Random), Andy Boothman, Tony Quigley and Seema Gupta. Definitely the most unlikely and best thing to evolve out of the Manchester punk-funk melting pot.

7" released on Syntactic in 1998.

Cyclic

Main - Coderays

At this time, Main was the work of Robert Hampson of the mighty Loop and Stephan Mathieu. Excellent dislocated guitar with Spacemen 3 styled hushed vocals.

Single-sided 7" released on Syntactic in 1995.

Coderays

Scanner - Underwater / Gentle

Mutant techno doom courtesy of Robin Rimbaud.

7" released on Syntactic in 1995.

Underwater / Gentle

Christof Kurzmann - Sinn.Blau.Pause

Beautifully constructed sounds recorded in one channel with both left and right channels frequently having different content at the same time.

7" released on Syntactic in 1995.

Sinn.Blau.Pause

Organum - Sanctus

More revelatory organ drone in the first of the trilogy.

CD released on Robot Records in 2006.

Sanctus

Organum - Amen

The second of the trilogy provides a stunning leap into deep thought. Hauntingly beautiful.

CD released on Die Stadt in 2006.

Amen

va - Lágrimas De Miedo 14 - Pornography: Re-heat

A fun CD from 2008 that came with an issue of the French music magazine Fear Drop. This is the entire Cure album "Pornography", every song in order, each covered by a different band. Features tracks by Nadja, Troum, Contagious Orgasm, Savage Republic, Dirge, Year of No Light, and Kill the Thrill.

va - Lágrimas De Miedo 14 - Pornography- Re-heat

Organum - Omega

Three tracks that repeat but seem to become deeper and more profound the more they play. Let David Jackman cleanse your mind with this third release in the trilogy.

CD released on Die Stadt in 2007.

Omega

Rapoon - Birethen / Amüz

Motorik shamanism courtesy of Zoviet France's co-founder Robin Storey.

7" released on Syntactic in 1996.

Birethen / Amüz

re-ups - Spring cleaning edition

Nerve Net Noise - 160/240
Nerve Net Noise - This Island Earth
Nerve Net Noise - Chamber Music for Factory
va - Masters of Japanese Electronic Music
va - Ju-Jikan: 10 Hours of Sound From Japan
va - Electronic Music Festival
va - Dokkiri Record
va - Ohren des Kaiser Hirohito
SBOTHI - The Sound Can Change/The Change Can Sound
Dub Sonic Roots Meets Nerve Net Noise - Live at Uplink Factory November 3, 1996
Tagomago - Heavenly Music
Tagomago - Dead Souls
Brume - Anthology Box
Brume - Erstatz #0/Tout
Brume - Hysterical
Shallow Waters - I
Shallow Waters - II
Shallow Waters - III
Shallow Waters - IV
Shallow Waters - V
Ultra Bide - The Original Ultra Bide

Pornotanz - Immaculate

Minimal bedroom electro from Germany circa 1986, released as a cassette on the obscure NG Medien label. One member of this trio was a young Uwe Schmidt, who would later strike out on his own with cold industrial pop as Lassigue Bendthaus and then become an ultra-prolific producer of acid techno, computer jazz and more as Atom Heart.

Pornotanz - Immaculate

Asmus Tietchens - Von Mund Zu Mund 1

A theoretical trilogy of idiosyncratic intracellular mind manipulation from the unique Asmus Tietchens. Yeah, I still have no idea, I just admire alliteration.

7" released on Die Stadt in 1999.

Von

Asmus Tietchens - Von Mund Zu Mund 2

7" released on Die Stadt in 2000.

Von Mund

Asmus Tietchens - Von Mund Zu Mund 3

7" released on Die Stadt in 2000.

Von Mund Zu

László Hortobágyi - Transreplica Meccano - Annales Of Gáyan Uttejak Society

Recorded in 1988 and 1989, released first as an LP by Hungaropop and reissued on CD by Staalplaat in 1991. Thrillingly bizarre techno-ambient-industrial-raga howl from the lidless third eye of László Hortobágyi. If you're Hungary for more like this, just say so in the comments.

László Hortobágyi - Transreplica Meccano - Annales Of Gáyan Uttejak Society

(By the way, I do not apologize for that dreadful pun. Like it or lump it, freeloaders.)

Asmus Tietchens - Papier Ist Geduldig

How do you even describe the work of Asmus Tietchens without using the dreaded "abstract" and "experimental" descriptors? Answers on a postcard.

7" single released on Syntactic in 1996.

Papier Ist Geduldig

László Hortobágyi - Ritual Music of Fomal Hoot Al-Ganoubî

1994 cassette by Hungarian composer and genuine weirdo László Hortobágyi, whose startlingly omnivorous music fuses symphonic machine noise, Indian raga, gamelan percussion, avant-garde computer music and who knows what else. If you haven't heard this nut yet... well, you're about to. Strap in!

László Hortobágyi - Ritual Music of Fomal Hoot Al-Ganoubî

Contagious Orgasm - Live At Chelsea, Wien

Whilst Hiroshi Hashimoto is the the person who has driven the Contagious Orgasm for the past 30 years, there is more of a collective aesthetic than that. Certainly, Kenji Kobayashi and Shingo Sugiura are known but who was playing in Vienna on the 30th of November, 1997? No idea.

7" released in Syntactic in 1998.

Live At Chelsea, Wien

Keiji Haino, Barre Phillips, Sabu Toyozumi - Two Strings Will Do It

The utterly unique Keiji Haino, here singing (no guitar!) in a trio with two jazz/improv legends: American bassist Barre Phillips and Sabu Toyuzumi on drums. Recorded in late 1991, released a few years later as a CD on PSF.

Keiji Haino, Barre Phillips, Sabu Toyozumi - Two Strings Will Do It

E.g Oblique Graph - Complete Oblique

A very welcome compilation of Bryn Jones' first project that brings together all of his work from 1982-83. Synth-industrial-obscurantism at it's best.

Double LP released on Vinyl-on-demand in 2006.

In case you hadn't noticed, Frank has (hopefully temporarily) pulled down the shutters on the mighty VOD:

This is going to be my last posting on Vinyl-on-Demand / VOD-Records for the next 12 months. The past 14 years have been quite some roller coaster-ride with lots of ups and downs on those 153 Catalogue-Numbers with 970 medias released. All in all I am happy to have had the opportunity to release so many great artists of the DIY-Cassette-Culture-Movement. 2018 I will fully commit my time to work on my new venture, An online-database / archive for cassette-culture and small print press / fanzines of the 20th Century called Tape-Mag and which you can access via www.tape-mag.com to launch on 1st of January as well as two Books (with accompanying Vinyls) to be published in January 2019. So stay tuned. I'll be back with something new but actually not so different. Thanx to all of you that encouraged me on this mission and that will support and encourage me to continue with a slightly new mission Yours Frank Bull, the person formerly known as Frank Maier or simply "Pripuzzi".

Thanks for all of your inspirational work Frank!!!

Complete Oblique

Muslimgauze - Untitled

This starts off as if it's going to be one of those unfortunate industrial dance affairs that were typical of the mid-1990s. However, have no fear, it's Manchester's own Bryn Jones delivering another excellent pro-Palestinian hallucination engine.

7" released on Syntactic in 1996.

Untitled

Nocturnal Emissions - Zeneca / Monsanto

There's a cold wind blowing through the mind of Nigel Ayers ...

7" released on Syntactic in 2000.

Zeneca / Monsanto

The Hafler Trio - Infidelity To Reason

Revelatory space organ drone that wouldn't sound out of place on 2001: A Space Odyssey

7" and Floppy Disk special edition released on Syntactic in 1996 that came in an edition of 11.

Link removed on request.

Infidelity To Reason

Taj Mahal Travellers - Sound Picnic At Kuwanichika

Considering how often Taj Mahal Travellers performed in the early/mid 1970s when they were constantly on tour through Europe and Japan, it's surprising how few official recordings were issued. During the band's existence, they only produced three albums and one tour movie. One might assume that scores more recordings exist, but are languishing in university and gallery archives. This unofficial document, a double CD set to accommodate TMT's typically long performances, is one of the few gray-area live documents to trickle out into the public. It's distilled from a five-hour-long 1977 performance in Tokyo, and it's a good one. Bandleader Takehisa Kosugi, who would go on to write music for Merce Cunningham's dance company and perform with David Tudor and John Cage in New York, leads his ur-drone troupe through seriously somnolent mystical/ritual-adjacent murk.

disc 1
disc 2

va - Genya Concert Live Document 1971.8.14-16

I wrote a little bit about this festival when I re-upped Keiji Haino's "Soul's True Love" boxset the other day, but here it is again:

In August of 1971, with Japanese authorities beginning to crack down on drugs and student protests, some people decided to organize a music festival near where an airport was about to expand. The expansion would disrupt the lives of the farmers who lived and worked nearby, so the event was intended as a show of support for the farmers and protest against the airport expansion. The organizers cleverly held the event during a Shinto holiday, and invited locals to come perform traditional holiday dances at the concert. Very inclusive, right? Featured performers came from the free jazz, folk rock and psychedelic hard rock scenes; bands like Blues Creation, Brain Police, Dew, Masayuki Takayanagi's New Direction Unit... and, notoriously, teenage Keiji Haino's no wave/free-improv band Lost Aaraaf. Despite the looming shadow of police presence, the Festival went off without a hitch. That is, until the final set of the night, wherein Haino took the stage and told the crowd of hippies, farmers, Communists and students that he wanted to kill them all. Then his neanderthal jazz combo made a supremely ugly racket. It didn't end well for anyone. That set is given a short excerpt here, which is frankly all that anyone needs, though it appears in full on "Soul's True Love".

disc 1
disc 2

For more like this, you may also want to check out the "Inspiration & Power 14 Free Jazz Festival" 2CD, recorded in Tokyo in 1973. It features a scorching Takayanagi set that anyone who reads this blog really ought to hear.

Massive Stereo Sellout - By Now

Perhaps one of the strangest, most atypical releases in Flying Nun's otherwise friendly catalog of New Zealand pop and rock bands, "By Now", a vinyl EP from 1988, is also the sole release of electronic duo Massive Stereo Sellout. Not the Dunedin Sound.

Massive Stereo Sellout - By Now

John Watermann - Warmth Is The Fifth Room

Many of the late Australian composer John Watermann's recordings are available for free download, but not this one. "Warmth..." is Watermann's first LP, self-released on his Nightshift Records imprint in 1988 and long out of print, it's one of his more industrial-influenced collections.

John Watermann - Warmth Is The Fifth Room

va - Guitarrorists

1991 compilation CD of short solo guitar pieces by 26 psych/indie rock people, including members of Babes in Toyland, Beme Seed, Halo of Flies, Sonic Youth, Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., Crystalized Movements, Butthole Surfers, Chrome, Galaxie 500, Ultra Vivid Scene, Bongwater, Royal Trux, Swell Maps and more... capped off by the wonderfully-titled "Nutty About Lemurs" by some guy called Steve Albini.

va - Guitarrorists

Champions!

It's party time in Badgerstump Towers ... and to take the League at the swamp is all the sweeter!

SAT Stoicizmo - Mah 2

A mammoth 2xLP of factory-fetishizing impersonal industrial white-out, recorded in 1985 and released in 1997, a decade after the band broke up.

SAT Stoicizmo - Mah 2

Organum - Volume One

Compilation bringing together the Tower Of Silence 12", Rasa from the titular split LP with Nurse With Wound and Side A of In Extremis.

CD released on Robot Records in 1998.

Volume One

New Blockaders with Ferial Confine - The Final Recordings

See what I did there?

LP released on Dom Bartwuchs in 1990.

The Final Recordings

SAT Stoicizmo - Jačati Tijelo Sportom

Desolate machine-pounding skree from a Croatian band who recorded just a few things in the mid-1980s, released none of it while they were active, split in 1987, saw just two posthumous albums released into the world in the 1990s and were never heard from again. The small trace this trio left behind, though, is the Platonic ideal of grim Eastern European industrial pummel. If black and white images of factories in shadow get your pulse racing, this is for you. "Jačati Tijelo Sportom" was recorded in 1987, first released on vinyl in 1991, then again on CDr in 2009.

SAT Stoicizmo - Jačati Tijelo Sportom

Organum - Volume Two

Compilation that includes "Valley Of Worms" from the In Extremis LP (which is an uncredited collaboration with The New Blockaders), an alternate version of "Horii" plus a previously unreleased track from 1989.

CD released on Robot Records in 2002.

Volume Two

Organum - Horii

The title track is an uncredited collaboration with Andrew Chalk who during this time was recording as Ferial Confine. The B Side only comes in at 1:14 but still articulates more than most are able to manage.

12" released on L.A.Y.L.A.H. Antirecords in 1986.

Horii

Organum - Hibakusha

Positively elegiac compared to grinding shovels in sheds ... more Tibetan mountainsides than garden outbuildings.

Single-sided 7" released on Syntactic in 1994.

Hibakusha

Organum & The Haters - Shovels

All back to David's garden shed to examine his extraordinary shovels!

Single-sided 7" released on David Jackman's Aeroplane in 1996.

Shovels

GX Jupitter-Larsen / David Jackman - Dissolving Metal Zeros

"Originated as a performance piece wherein ‘zero’ house numerals were filed, scraped and otherwise ‘dissolved’. Other sounds, derived from circular movements of metal objects, were later added to the mix. Mixing and artwork by David Jackman. Original performance, in David Jackman’s garden shed, was recorded on a 1970’s mono cassette deck. All sounds were later transferred to 8-track for mix-down."

7" released on Banned Production in 1994.

Dissolving Metal Zeros

S.T.A.B. Electronics - Instrument For Operating On Mutant Women

Keith Finnan started his S.T.A.B. Electronics project as a testimonial to the work of Marco Corbelli. Even if the vocals remind me of Michael Gillham on Smell & Quim's "Powerfuck", I find it quite relaxing. All things are, of course, utterly relative.

LP released on Urashima in 2014.

Mutant Women

David Jackman - Kanarienvogelwalzer / Canary Waltz

Frankly odd Victorian melodrama.

7" released on Syntactic in 1998.

Kanarienvogelwalzer / Canary Waltz

David Jackman - Ember Hollow / Dawn Plaza

Suspenseful tones and chirps on this 7" released on Syntactic in 1998.

Ember Hollow / Dawn Plaza

Atrax Morgue - Necro Box

A triple LP retrospective covering early 90's Slaughter Productions tapes that was accompanied by a CD with all of the material therein.

Released on Urashima in 2016.

Necro Box

Atrax Morgue - Close To A Corpse

"This release includes the complete audio live recordings to the performance "Autopsia dell'opera d'arte vivente come vivisezione del corpo di dio" on 24 /02 /2001 in Viareggio, Italy. The quality of the live sessions is very good because it was recorded directly into minidisc. Sounds are just instrumental improvised synth, sometimes harsh and slowly morbid, with a very surrealistik and hypnotic atmosphere... The third section was recorded in studio in september 2002 featuring 10 different tracks. Cold, massive and pathologic analog synthesizer agony... "

Triple CDr released on Slaughter Productions in 2003.

Close To A Corpse

Atrax Morgue - Pathogenesis # One

More warped corpse noise with the tracks originally appearing on a couple of '90s Slaughter Productions compilation tapes.

7" released on Urashima ‎in 2014.

Pathogenesis # One

Atrax Morgue - Ripper Box

Great representation of work of the murder obsessed Marco Corbelli. This is a triple vinyl release containing New York Ripper, Lesion 22 and Spasmosynthetics. For some reason, it also came with two CDs with the digitals including Black Slaughter. Why not a four LP release? Who knows ...

Double CD released on Urashima in 2016.

Ripper Box

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