new craziness from American Tapes
John Olson started American Tapes before there was a Wolf Eyes. Early on he already had a diversity of musical projects and these days seem to be no different. This week we got a box of the latest releases from the label, all new things that they didn’t have on offer at the recent Josephine show. None of them is by Wolf Eyes, but most of them seem to be related in some way, if not in actual membership than in aesthetics. All these releases are packaged in handmade covers with very little info and come in limited editions of 40 to 100 copies. The oldest title we were able to get was the special edition of Dead Machines “Plays Kwaidan”. Dead Machine is John Olson (Wolf Eyes) and his wife Tovah Olson. This one of several releases where they create soundtracks for old movies, in this case the brilliant Kobayashi film from 1964 which had brilliant music by Toru Takemitsu. The Dead Machines version was released as a 7″ by the Swedish label Ideal, but American tapes made a special edition of only 30 copies with a bonus CDR featuring exclusive tracks by Dead Machines, plus the solo projects Spykes and Tovah D-Day. Slightly more recent is the Paul Flathery & Jeff Hartford one-sided LP “8-01-08” named for the date on which it was recorded. Flaherty is a free jazz alto sax player and dominates the recording, athlought Jeff Hartford’s electronic noises can be heard in the mix as well. This one is limited to only 100 copies, as is the other single-sided LP we were able to get, “Learning for Insipid Zeal“. Peopled by Pool Water, People Pollution (members of Raven Strain and Sick Llama), and Imaginary Unit In Electronics, this album is a great little selection of murky noise electronics and seems to be the only appearance on vinyl of these groups. However, Pool Water does have a CDR titled “Live at Warm & Covering” which is quite nice. Although it is not revealed on the release anywhere, this group is made up of John Olson, Mike Connelly (Wolf Eyes, Hair Police), and Mike Collino playing violin, cardboard percussion, flute, tapes. From here we go into the region of total mystery acts about which I know nothing, except that they sound good, and that is all that really counts in the end. The other two CDRs in this batch are About ‘Needs’ and ‘Crisis’ by Rain of Dissolved Sedatives and Paradox 11. Rain of Dissolved Sedatives is a great name and stirs up some wild electronics. Paradox 11 is a magazine with the sort of wild graphics you see displayed on all American Tapes releases. No text anywhere, just images, so you don’t even know who exactly is behind the insane noise on the accompanying CDR. Rounding things up in this batch are three cassette only releases: How People Speak “I Was Tempted To Tell Him That I Had I No Idea What I Really Wanted But Decided To Keep It To Myself“, Sad Policemen “Uninvolved, and We Are The…“, and Zero Days United “A Front As Well As Any Other“. All three are editions of only 50 copies and feature zany electronic noise. If you like Wolf Eyes, branch out and check these things out. You’ll be kicking yourself later if you don’t grab them. The label has done over 800 release and the entire back catalog is already out of print.