Dissonant Plane

Over the weekend, Sam from Debacle Records dropped off the new Hemingway CDR on his label.  It’s a fan CD, which means that there is on 3″ of metal to encode music on, but the disc is a full 5″ across as the empty space is taken up by clear plastic.  So it’s a short EP of a little over 11 minutes.  The two tracks are “Hutterites” and “Dreckolage”.  The first is a doomy slow noise rock song which ends in a blast of noise, which is carried on by the second track.  Just guitars, drums and vocals by Demian Johnston and Shane Mehling, but still a heavy thick sound.  This disc is part of The Emerald City Debacle Vol. 2 and like the others in the series comes in a hand numbered edition of 100 copies.  It’s only $5.00, so grab one while you can.

Midday Veil played a good show Saturday night at Josephine.  Headlining a Portable Shrines evening they ranged from delicate songs to full on psychedelic bliss out with great synth drones and guitar solos.  Midday Veil are now a five piece, but started out as the duo of Emily Pothast and David Golighty.  The just released “End of Time” CDR consists of home recordings of the duo line up.  While not as filled out as the quintet, the duo is more delicate and spacious.  A couple songs are both on this disc and their set Saturday night, and I can’t say that one version is better than each other as they seem to compliment each other.  The disc starts out with Emily’s vocals and guitar giving this an acid folk feel, while David comes in with analog synthesizer taking the music in further psychedelic directions.  Sort of a prelude to larger group recordings to made in the fall, “End of Time” has been released in a limited and numbered edition of 50 copies with handmade covers.   We sell them for $7.00.

We sold through our copies of the Zaika “Big Jar” CD pretty quickly, but thankfully have more in stock already.  In addition to this, we also got the other new release on this label by Hiroshi Hasegawa and Aaron Igler.  The label is Archive and their limited releases are all beautifully packaged.  These ones come in heavy weight letterpress folder covers with a die-cut window where a photo has been placed.  Editions of 400 only, the titles on this label are often quickly snatched up.  It’s easy to see why when listening to the great sounds that match the great packaging.  Zaika (Tom from Charalambides and Marcia from Hototogisu) offer up some very stoned out psychedelic guitar / e-bow duets while Hasegawa (C.C.C.C., Astro, etc.) and Igler (Alasehir, Alumbrados, Baikal, LSD Pond, Third Troll) belt out a heavy cosmic drone of analog electronics.  Additional we got the two releases just before these by 500mg (Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond solo) and Paul Metzger.  These are similarly packaged, but screen printed instead of letterpress.  These two focus on solo strings.  Only $11.00 each on these titles while they last.

We finally got more weird metal from these guys. Including more of Genghis Tron’s first two albums (Cloak of Love & Dead Mountain Mouth). Albums you need to check out are Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood by Italian black, horror, noise, project Gnaw Their Tongues, Six by Wildildlife (local psych, avant rock / metal), A New Species of Deviant by Corpus Mortale a Danish Brutal Death Metal band. Advent Parallax by Averse Sefira isa  really awesome ugly, gnarly, black metal hellstorm. Some very special items we got in stock are Scattered Ashes, which is an Emperor guitar tablature book with a CD containing the songs. The Other is a very limited digipak of Mayhem’s Life Eternal containing De Mysteriis songs with Varg’s basslines in the mix, 10 exclusive stickers, and a scrapbook foldout of Mayhem pictures and documents in ‘93 (put together by Attila). Other items include:

•  In the Woods - Strange in Stereo
• Satyricon - Age of Nero
• Primordial - Gathering Wilderness
• Crebain - Night of the Stormcrow
• Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vestusta
• Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vestusta Part 2
• Forgotten Woods - Race of Cain
• Diagonal
• Wildildlife - Six
• Emperor - Wrath of the Tyrant/Emperor LP
• Emperor - IX Equilibrium

Be sure to check this stuff out.

If you have been reading this blog, you’ve probably seen the name Demian Johnston a few times now.  Demian was in Playing Enemy and now is in Hemingway and Shining Ones.  However, he is also a solo artist and that is how he is best represented in our shop.  Through his label Dead Accents he’s released a pair of awesome yet contrasting cassettes.  The first we got is heavy and doomy with screaming vocals and guitar.   The latest, “Forever”, is more minimal and melodic ambient drone.  Both releases have come in beautiful packaging - not surprising as Demian is also a skilled visual artist having done artwork for the last three KTL releases, a Blue Sabbath Black Cheer 12″ and an upcoming Wolves in the Throne Room poster.  We’ve been impressed with his releases enough that we have asked him to play an in store on Friday the 3rd.  It will be a short set of about 16 to 20 minutes, but Demian will be bringing down his little stack of amps and laying down some sounds like his last cassette release.  Speaking of which, he only made 50 copies of “Forever”, of which half are already gone, so don’t miss out getting one of these beauties.  But if you want to know what we are excited about, come on down at 7 PM on the third and hear for yourself.  The event is free and will be held downstairs in Resolution Audio. 

The first time we got the latest Sun City Girls double LP from Eclipse, it got here really fast and sold out really fast.  We reordered and….  they spent a long time in the post before they got here.  Gotta love our postal system, complete inconsistent, raising the price of postage again in May, AND they are going to stop delivering one day of the week.  Anyhow, we got more of the “Fruit of the Womb / Polite Deception” vinyl.  This is limited to 950 copies and will probably soon be out of print like the previous four volumes released by Eclipse.   About Fruit of the Womb:

“Recorded 1984-85 between the first and second Sun City Girls LPs in mono. The performances on this tape are superb. Near Eastern instrumentals, extended improvisation, ostracized jazz plus impossible versions of Sun City Girls standards.” 

About Polite Deception:

“Side one is a continuation of the previous tape listed (Fruit of the Womb). And side two was described by and Albanian diplomat as: “An industrial Mesopotamian Environmental piece followed by Egyptian Trance Jazz.” Of course, we all know that this description is false.” 

Simon Wickham-Smith has a long list of releases mostly with Richard Youngs.  The duo were darlings of Forced Exposure in the early 1990’s when said institution’s taste was a little more consistent.  One of those early raved about releases was the double LP “Lake” on Youngs’ No Fans label.  Since then they have done at least 20 releases on such notable labels as Majora, Ignivomous, Fourth Dimension, Insignificant, and most commonly VHF.  Their last duo release was the “5 Years” CD on VHF which only includes one 10 minute track from each of the years from 2002 to 2006.  That was all they recorded as Richard got busy with other collaborations and solo recordings, and Simon spent some time as a Buddhist monk.  However, with so much time playing together, the track came together very well and hold together as an album.  The 5 tracks are heavy on the electronics which shimmer and gargle in ways that set them apart from contemporary noise artists.  As Simon now lives in Seattle, he brought us copies of this CD, as well as two recent solo disc.  The first of the solo discs is “Two4Dancin’” on Birchville Cat Motel’s Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label.  A pressed CD in a screen printed gatefold sleeve, this CD appears to be long sold out from the label.  It’s a bit different from Simon’s other material, as there is a steady beat throughout.  To quote:

Two 4 Dancin’ shows Wickham-Smith at his grandest, as his music explodes at the seams with wonderfully resonant contradictions with exquisite textures capable of blissfully enveloping daily life and driving one’s neighbors batty. An infinite block-rocking beat melts into deep transparency, revealing a subterranean omniverse of Casiotone mantras, silicon chip psalms, and the mystical babbling of angels and derelict gutter drunks. Think Steve Reich, 50 Cent, and a Buddhist throat-singing Devo.

In sharp distinction, Simon’s latest solo is “Love & Lamentation” on Al “If, Bwana” Margolis’ Pogus Productions.  The three pieces here take vocals and stretch and distort them in unique sound textures and drones as explained here about the title track:

As a teenager Wickham-Smith had heard Alain Gheerbrant’s wonderful ethnomusicological recordings of a blind Turkish troubador and had fallen hopelessly in love with his voice and exquisite playing of the saz. About the same time, through his friend Richard Youngs, he had discovered also the ex tempore psalm singing of the Scottish Isle of Lewis. Fifteen years later, he decided that these two could be made somehow to work together to show the love and lamentation which he felt they both held in their deeper recesses, and which he wanted to present in this new piece. The result is a strange melée of feelings, repetitions and textures. From time to time we hear a somewhat bizarre percussion sample, which he had first worked on in 2000. Part 3 opens with an offcut from an unreleased (and now never-to-be-released) piece from 1999 called Deaf Piano. Veysel’s voice starts the piece and revolves through Part 2 in a kind of hippy trance love-in fashion.

We are excited to get these in, and even more excited that Simon will be playing an in store on May 28th 

We are pleased to be presenting an in store performance by Jason Kahn and Gust Burns.  Jason Kahn is originally from Los Angeles where he played with SST associated bands The Leaving Trains, Trotsky Icepick and Universal Congress Of.  In 1990, he relocated to Europe where he became a member of Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings.  From here his music started to change, becoming more quiet and restrained exploring minimal sound forms.  In 1998, he launched the label Cut in his new home Switzerland.  Between that time and the closure of the label at the beginning of this year, Cut published CDs by Repeat (a duo of Kahn and Toshimaru Nakamura), Tu m’, Jason Lescalleet, Tomas Korber, Günter Müller, Steinbrüchel, John Hudak & Bruce Tovsky, Taku Sugimoto, Norbert Möslang, Olivia Block, Gabriel Paiuk, Seth Nehil& JGrzinich, Signal Quartet, Ellen Fullman & Sean Meehan, Joe Gilmore, and Christian Weber as well as several solo discs and collaborations involving Kahn and these artists.  However, Kahn has also released a large number of solo and collaborative discs on other labels recently including Creative Sources, SIRR, For 4 Ears, (1.8)sec.records, Leerraum, Formed, Longbox, Xeric, Crouton, and/OAR, and Winds Measure Recordings.  From this long list, it should be quickly apparent that Jason Kahn’s music is widely enjoyed and in demand.  While in Seattle, he will be performing with Gust Burns.   Gust is less known the world of recorded music, but has published several fine releases on his CDR label Tone Action Family.  He’s better known locally as a regular on the free improvised circuit, and particularly as one of the organizers of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival and Gallery 1412.  In performance he often plays the inside of the piano coaxing delicate sounds one would normally not expect to hear from that instrument. For this night’s performance he will be supplementing the inside piano with electronics.  Often performing with both local and visiting international artists, he has time and again proven himself to have an excellent ear and skill for integrating with a wide variety of performance styles.  Among his collaborators have been Jeffrey Allport, Wally Shoup, Bob Marsh, and Jack Wright, and he has played music with Keith Rowe, Andrea Neumann, Tetuzi Akiyama, John Edwards and many others.

•  Thursday, April 9th starting at 7 PM downstairs in Resolution Audio - FREE

• April 9th (Thursday) @ 7:00 PM - Jason Kahn and Gust Burns
• May 28th (Thursday) @ 7:00 PM - Simon Wickham-Smith and Jonathan Way
• date to be determined - Zen Enthusia night with Levi Berner and others
• date to be determined - Matt Shoemaker
• date to be determined - …Wind Swept Plains…

All events are free and held downstairs in Resolution Audio.  More details posted soon.

We got two brand new and beautiful CDs from Marcia Bassett.  First up is “Serpent’s Bite” by her solo project Zaïmph on her Heavy Blossom label:

‘Serpent’s Bite’ is made up of 8 separate pieces of vapory splendor, pierced metallic sounds, flickering radiance, and exquisite anguish.  Culled from the Zaimph archives and recorded between 2005 – 2006; two previously released CDR tracks, now re-edited, rest aside six unreleased tracks. Multiple amplifiers channel dense, 3-dimensional sound played live with no overdubs. This is organic darkness. Grave-vaults of guitar tunnel through distorted clouds of smoke rising from the watery abyss. Vocals of dissolving thoughts recite mysterious incantations. De-tuned piano recordings and infectious drum machine beats dissolve through phantom empires of multiple effects. ‘Compleat derangement of the senses’. The entirety was mastered by Christelle Gualdi at Loosduinseweg No. 9. 

 Hot on the heels of that is “Big Jar” by Zaika - a collaboration between Marcia and Tom Carter of Charalambides.  This one comes in a lovely folder cover with artwork by Demian Johnston and an inset photo of the duo set in a die cut.  Really lovely stuff as should be expected from the Archive label which released this.  The music is very psychedelic lo-fi electric guitar and e-bow duos and really great at setting a spaced out mood.  Since we were getting these new releases, we took the opportunity to restock a few titles from Marcia’s back catalog:

• Double Leopards “A Hole Is True”  CD
• Double Leopards “Halve Maen”  2 x CD
• GHQ “Heavy Elements”  CD
• Hototogisu  ”Pale Fatal Sister” 2 x LP
• Hototogisu  ”Robed in Verdigris”  LP
• Hototogisu  ”Sculpture Built Upon The Graves” CDR
• Hototogisu  ”Spooked Summer”  CDR
• Skullflower “Exquisite Fucking Boredom” CD
• Zaïmph  ”La Nuit Electrique”  CD
• Zaïmph  ”Live Hasselt”  CDR