Dissonant Plane

A year is a long time.  So I have probably forgotten a few things.  But here is what comes to mind as my favorite new releases and reissues that came out in 2009:

• AFCGT - AFCGT (Uzu Audio) LP
• Laurie Scott Baker - Gracility (Musicnow) 2xCD
• L. Berner - Blackout Nights (Zen Enthusia) 2xCass
• Sir Richard Bishop - The Freak Of Araby (Drag City) CD
• Crystal Hell Pool - Wind Blows Through Me (Crippled Symmetry Recordings) CDR
• Dropp Ensemble - Safety (and/OAR) CD
• Luc Ferrari - Labyrinthe De Violence / DANCE (Alga Marghen) 12″
• Ibliss - Supernova (Garden Of Delights) CD
• The Inner Space - Agilok & Blubbo (Wah-Wah Records Sound)
• Demian Johnston - Forever (Dead Accents) Cass
• Demian Johnston - Still (Dead Accents) Cass
• Dave Knott - Sweet Little Guitar Ditties (Not On Label) CD
• R Millis - 120 (Etude Records) CD
• Hiroaki Minami - Obscure Tape Music Of Japan Vol.10: Electronic Symphony No. 1 (Edition Omega Point) CD
• People Band - People Band 69/70 (Emanem) 2xCD
• Eliane Radigue - Triptych (Important Records) CD
• Eliane Radigue - Vice Versa, Etc.… (Important Records) 2xCD
• Matt Shoemaker - The Sunken Plethora Consumes All (Mystery Sea) CDR
• Omar Souleyman - Dabke 2020: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria (Sublime Frequenices) CD
• Sperm - Shh! Heinäsirkat (De Stijl) LP
• Sun City Girls - Napoleon & Josephine (Sun City Girls Singles Volume 2) (Abduction) CD
• Akio Suzuki - Ki-date (Ichinomiya City Memorial Art Museum of Setsuko Migishi) DVD
• Giancarlo Toniutti - The Early Tapes Period (Vinyl-On-Demand) 3xLP + 10″
• UnicaZürn - Temporal Bends (uZu Music) CD
• Simon Wickham-Smith - A Seventh Persimmon (Tape Drift Records) CDR
• Zaïmph - Serpent’s Bite (Heavy Blossom) CD
• Various - 1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground (Sublime Frequencies) CD

AMBIENT/DRONE:

Deceh LP  (Important Records)  $21  - acoustic/electronic drone, screenprinted insert, ltd 400

Eleh  ”Homage To The Sine Wave”  LP  (Taiga)  $22  - minimal drone electronics, numbered edition of 500

FM3  ”Buddha Machine II - Lime”  Soundbox  (FM3)  $24  - new loops, pitch control, better speaker, lime case

Radigue, Eliane  ”Triptych”  CD  (Important Records)  $14  - awesome archival minimalism from France

Radigue, Eliane  ”Vice Versa, Etc…”  2 x CD  (Important Records)  $16  - awesome archival minimalism from France, 2 discs

CLASSICAL:

Brown, Earle  ”Folio and Four Systems”  CD  (Tzadik)  $15  - early avant-garde & graphic scores, friend of John Cage

Gibson, Jon  ”Criss X Cross”  CD  (Tzadik)  $15  - solo flute & saxophone, worked with La Monte, Riley, etc

Stockhausen, Karlheinz  ”Spiral I & II, Pole, Wach, Japan, Zykus, Tierkries”  2 x CD  (EMI Classics)  $14  - reissue of amazing 2 LP box of experimental pieces

EXPERIMENTAL:

Airway  ”Live at LACE”  LP  (Harbinger Sound)  $25  - 1st vinyl reissue of early (1978) influential wall of noise

Conrad, Tony & Olson, Tovah  ”Let There Be Music”  LP  (Tovinator)  $13  - ltd 200, instantly sold out from the label, one side only

De Martinville, Edouard-Leon Scott  ”Au Clair de la Lune”  7″  (Parlortone)  $8  - 1st experiment in recording sound from 1860!!!

H.N.A.S.  ”Im Schaten der Möhre”  CD  (Streamline)  $14  - finely crafted German weirdness, their best album

Starving Weirdos  ”Father Guru”  CD  (Azul Discografica)  $14  - long trancey tracks

Winderen, Jana  ”Noisiest Guys on the Planet”  C40  (Ash International)  $7  - field recordings of underwater crustaceans, ltd 250

JAZZ/IMPROV:

Supersilent  ”7″  DVD  (Rune Grammofon)  $23  - stellar DVD video of a live concert

ROCK:

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The  ”Gorilla”  CD  (EMI)  $12  - humorous English music w/Neil Innes, Vivian Stanshall

Fushitsusha 2 x CD  (P.S.F. Records)  $38  - heavy rock w/Seijiro Murayama, Yasushi Ozawa, 2 CD

Neung Phak  ”Fucking USA”  7”  (Abduction)  $8  - great cover of Korean anti-American rock tune, ltd 300

Sic Alps  ”A Long Way Around to a Shortcut”  2 x LP  (Drag City)  $20  - lo-fi garage noise rock

Six Organs of Admittance / Azul  ”Split”  LP  (P.S.F. Records)  $21  - meditative & folky, ltd 800, already sold out from label

SOUNDTRACK:

Seazer, J.A.  ”Den’en Ni Shisu”  CD  (Showboat / Sky Station)  $28  - for Shuji Terayama film w/members of Tenjo Sajiki

WORLD:

Souleyman, Omar  ”Dabke 2020: Folk & Pop Sounds of Syria”  CD  (Sublime Frequencies)  $14  - fantastic Arabic pop music that really moves

Various  ”String of Pearls”  LP  (Mississippi Records)  $14  - cool collection of rare 78s from around the world

Hemingway just completed a mini-tour of the NW with Mammifer, taking in Seattle, Portland and Eugene.  Now back in town, Demian Johnston has brought us copies of these two releases.  The first is “Live at the Josephine 2009“, a 15 minute CDR EP in a limited edition of 30 copies.  The sounds are heavy and brutal here with screaming vocals and seering guitars.  It’s not unlike what they did on the “Hutterites” EP on Debacle Records.  On the other hand, the C32 “Strange, How the Night Moves” is more glacial in its approach.  Heavy waves of sound make this more of a doom ambient release.  This one comes in a numbered edition of 50 copies, and is more polished than the CDR.  Together they make a nice pair contrasting different aspects of this duo’s sound.

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.

Well, we missed the first batch, but we are on track with the second batch of releases from Gift Tapes.  Run by Jason Anderson of Brother Raven, this Seattle label is putting out quality electronic music in limited numbers on cassette only.  All three new titles come in double-sided full color covers with nice labels and are C20s.  First up is the new Brother Raven entitled “A Sound Like Wailing Winter Winds Is Heard“.  If you read this blog, you’ve find a recent reference to a concert they played alongside Magneticring, Pete Swanson and Zaïmph.  On that night, the duo  had their analog gear out and brought back memories of the numerous releases of electronic music on Sky Records from back in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  For those of you who didn’t grow up with those around, I should explain that they put out LPs of gentle, melodic synthesizer music with experimental flourishes.  The best known examples from their catalog would be Cluster and the first four albums by Asmus Tietchens.  The emphasis here is drifting off into soundworlds, not the sequencer driven drivel of post-Krautrock Tangerine Dream.  It is an area that seems to be getting explored more lately by the likes of James Ferraro from The Skaters and others.  Brother Raven really nails the cosmic aspects of this stuff though.  It seems to the big release in this batch, as “A Sound Like Wailing Winter Winds Is Heard” is limited to 80 copies (and comes with a bonus, gift-wrapped microcassette), while the other two are in editions of only 50 copies.  Not that this should suggest these other two are any lesser.  “Early To Rise” by Jeremiah Walker carries on in a similar vein albeit with longer tracks that are more of carpet of dreamy sound similar to early Popol Vuh.  Really meditative and mystical, perhaps my favorite of the trio. The final new release is by Million Mists and is called “Spaeship” (not “Spaceship”).  The most experimental in this set, this tape features a more aleatoric atmosphere on “Crab Pulser” mixing sounds evocative of radio transmissions from distant stellar bodies with the long slow synth sounds you might expect from a sci-fi movie about those regions.  It is an interesting contrast as Million Mists is the solo project of Jamie Potter, half of Brother Raven and a former member of Bonus.  All in all not a bad moment over the course of three release and the style of music makes the 10 minutes of each side stretch onto infinity in the good way.

Wednesday night that was a great show at the Josephine.  Local synth duo Brother Raven, and out of town solo acts Magneticring, Pete Swanson and Zaïmph.  Brother Raven used old analog tools to evoke the atmosphere of the Sky Records’ 1970’s output.  Magneticring’s LP is in a similar vein, but this performance he used the EMS Synthi to create some sounds reminenscent of early electronic pioneers.  Pete Swanson, one half of the now defunct Yellow Swans, used an old open reel tape deck to build up lovely noise loops on top of which he added heavily distorted and processed guitar and vocals to great effect.  Zaïmph played three pieces focusing more on vocals than her in store performance here at Dissonant Plane last week.  While each piece was distinctive, the whole set glowed with a slow motion noise bliss.
The following day, Pete and Marcia (a.k.a. Zaïmph) stopped in the shop on the way to Vancouver, B.C.  This gave us a chance to expand our selection of Yellow Swans in the shop, which was actually at nil since we had sold out of everything.  As I alluded to above, Yellow Swans are no longer a going concern, but apparently have only recently finished their last studio album and will have a few more recordings coming out.  As anyone who has looked into them should know, they discography is vast, but only a small number of titles are available at any given time as most are very limited.  We were able to get CDs released under the names Descension Yellow Swans, Doubled Yellow Swans, Drowner Yellow Swans, and just plain old Yellow Swans by themselves and in collaboration with The Cherry Point, Mouthus, and John Wiese.  The CD “Portable Dunes” with Wiese is the newest of the bunch.  So new that is not actually released yet. as it is on John’s Helicopter label and John is currently in Poland where he is playing the Musica Genera festival this weekend.  Of course that was the first thing I threw on and I found it opens with a serious roar of sound and through its five tracks becames progressive more calm and meditative.  Of course variety courses through the veins of the Yellow Swans catalog.  It is all more or less “noise music”, but one disc will be droning while another will add active element on top of this bed or push the sounds the further extremes.
In the past there have been a handful of Pete Swanson solo releases, and now he’s got two really limited tapes.  He says they are essentially for sale at shows only, so we were only able to get one copy each of “Denim Life” and “Unlimited Options”.  Meant to get around more at the two CDs releases on Pete’s new label Freedom To Spend.  The first is by Bulbs a guitar and drums duo that sounds nothing like their instrumentation would suggest.  Pete himself compares this group’s sound to the releases on the Kompakt label as their music is very glitchy and experimental with rhythms and sounds you might expect from a laptop artist, but obviously with more life in them.  The second release on the label  is by Dragging An Ox Through Water.  This one is a weird mix of folky guitar and vocals with homebuilt electronics.  It’s got songs, and you could sing along to it, but its plenty strange too and makes for a unique and enjoyable album.
Eric

That’s the name of Demian Johnston’s new tape.  He brought some by last week and they fresh, really fresh. The cassette shells are spray painted and it had been done recently enough that we were getting a little bit of head rush from them.  And that kind of soft focus matches the music on the tape as well.  Demian has pulled back even further from the previous releases making the sounds even quieter.  The five tracks here rumble along and make an excellent companion for the Crystal Hell Pool CDR.  I bring this up as it turns out both artists grew up together in Bothell and both releases make lovely sounds to sink into.  Demian’s latest is limited to 30 copies and dubbed onto a 90 minute cassette with same music on both sides (saves rewinding).

Extraordinary Pigeons are a loose collective of Seattle noisemakers.  They seem to often have the core of Jeremiah Smith, Jason Young and Richard Rehm.  Noise is a decent way to describe them in that that term does really mean too much specifically.  Listening to the selection of releases that Jeremiah brought in Monday, I am happy to find each one a bit different.  They’ve all got the hallmarks of noise - indefinable sounds, lack of concern with melody or rhythm, long sprawling development.  But some are a little heavier, like the “Wasted Tapes” cassette, and some more subdued, like the “Intergalactic Scavengers” CDR, with the nice echoy and spacious opening track “Repeat Procedure”.  A lot of times they are a mix, too rough to be ambient background and not painful like power electronics.  What they do have is lots of great electronics noises and effects which seems to be more of a sit down and enjoy experience.  In addition to the above mentioned 2009 releases, we got the older CDRs “Desghidorah”, “Help Jason Eat”, “Rotten Apple” and the out of print Debacle title “What The Fuck Are You Looking At Sugar Tits???”.  With the exception of the the last title, which was an edition of 100 copies, all of these are in micro editions of 10 to 12 copies.  On a related note, Jeremiah also brought us “The Date Fork Seeps the River Volume Two” a compilation which features Extraordinary Pigeons along with Alvarius B, Sun City Girls, The Haters, Id M Theft Able, and a ton of unknown and very weird acts.

Eric picked up a lot of stuff for the shop during his recent trip to Indonesia.  This ranges from some of the big stars like Koes Plus (Alan Bishop’s favorites) to tiny underground death metal bands that are completely unknown within Indonesia.  A lot is sung in Indonesian, but there is a fair amount of English used as well.  In all cases, these items are NEVER seen for sale in the States.  Everything is pretty cheap as Indonesia is a poor country, but in all cases is professionally duplicated.  We have only what Eric was able to bring back and won’t be able to restock these things. So don’t put off checking out something if you see something of interest.

•  Ade, Ebiet G.  “Tembang Country.2″  C90  (Ars Record)  $3  - Indonesian smooth pop with country influences
• Baduda Generation sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Begundal Lowokwaru  “Discomorphosis Akustikapitalis”  CD  (BL Records)  $4  - 5 acoustic + 6 live studio harcore songs, from Indonesia
• Beside  “Against Ourselves”  CD  (Absolute Proud)  $12  - Indonesian, influenced by Swedish melodic death metal
• Black Aura  “444″  sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Brooklyn  “I’ll Stand In My Way”  CDR EP  (Murval’s Records)  $3  - CDR EP of emotional rock metal from Java, Indonesia
• Bullhead, The  “As a Rebel in Your Eyes”  tape  (Spyderghost)  $4  - pop punk (think Green Day) from Bali, Indonesia
• Cradle of Filth  “Nymphetamine”  C80  (Roadrunner Records)  $4  - Indonesian edition, long fold out insert w/ lyrics + photos
• Decrepit Birth sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Dores, Deddy  “Best of the Best”  C60  (Musica’s Studio)  $3  - slow rock love songs from Indonesia
• Electricall Plug  “We Want To Fly”  C46  $3  - pop punk from Bali, Indonesia
• Im A Rat Out on a Mission sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Infernal Torment sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Kaliyuga  “14/07″  tape  (Muzik Box Production / Trishul Records)  $3  - thrash / black metal from Singapore, members of Rudra
• Kekal  “Acidity”  tape  (THT Production)  $3  - black/heavy metal from Indonesia
• Koes Plus  “35th Tembang Kenangan 1971-2006″  C60  (Atlanta Records)  $3  - Indonesia’s most famous and popular pop group
• Koes Plus  “Best of the Best”  C60  (Gema Nada Pertiwi)  $3  - Indonesia’s most famous and popular pop group
• Koes Plus  “Best of the Best”  tape  (Atlantic Records)  $3  - Indonesia’s most famous and popular pop group
• Koes Plus  “Best of the Best 2″  tape  (Atlantic Records)  $3  - Indonesia’s most famous and popular pop group
• Koes Plus  “Pop Keroncong”  C90  (Gema Nada Pertiwi)  $3  - Indonesia’s most famous and popular pop group
• Koes Plus  “Pop Melayu”  C60  (Gema Nada Pertiwi)  $3  - Indonesia’s most famous and popular pop group
• Napalm Death sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Napalm Death  “Words from the Exit Wound”  tape  $4  - Indonesian edition of their 1998 album
• Painful By Kisses  “The Curse of…”  CD  $3  - emo / metal mix from Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
• Pair A Dice  “Heaven and Hell on Earth”  C60  $3  - pop punk with ska elements, from Bali, Indonesia
• Pasupati  “Bali Bagia”  C50  $3  - Balinese alternative rock
• Power Metal  “Power Mission”  tape  (Logiss Records)  $3  - 80’s style hair metal from Java, Indonesia
• Rama Kwadrat  “Tirani Hidup”  tape  (Kandasuta)  $3  - alternative rock from Indonesia
• Rancid sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Rotting Christ sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Saprogenic sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Severed Savior sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Social Distortion sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Stronger Than Before / School 96  “Menghantam”  CDR  (Sukasuka Records)  $2  - Indonesian hardcore split, CDR
• Total Chaos  “Avoid All Sides Europe Tour 2008″  sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Total Idiot  “I Believe Punk’s Not Dead”  tape  (Idiot Machine)  $3  - hardcore from Bali
• Various  “Indie Battle Compilation”  CD  (Dq Studio)  $4  - death, grind, punk, alternative rock & pop from Bali
• Various  “Lombok Rocktimes Compilation Vol. 1″  C70  (L.H.X.C. Records / No Label Records)  $3  - Indonesian punk, hardcore, alternative rock & grindcore
• Various  “Metalik Klinik 3″  C60  (Musica / Rotorcorp)  $3  - Indonesian underground metal
• Various  “Metalik Klinik 7″  C46  (Musica / Hemaswara / Rotorcorp)  $3  - Indonesian underground metal
• Various  “Metalik Klinik 8″  C60  (Hemaswara / Rotorcorp)  $3  - Indonesian underground metal
• Various  “Pasuruan Kompilasi: Mulai Dari Titik Nol”  CDR  (Sukasuka Records)  $3  - Indonesian punk, hardcore, alternative rock & grindcore
• Various  “Pop Batak Pilihan Terbaik Horas Vol. 2″  C60  (Gema Nada Pertiwi)  $3  - pop music from Sumatra, Indonesia
• Various  “Register of Zombies Vol. 2″  CDR  (Self Cannibalism)  $3  - 20 grind groups from Europe & Mexico, 35 tracks, CDR [this one is actually from Italy, but was bought in Yogyakarta at a show]
• Vile sticker  $1  - from Bali, Indonesia!
• Vivisick / Fuck on the Beach  “Here’s Come Motherfuckers”  C60  (Comberan Records)  $3  - split Japanese hardcore/grindcore, Indonesia tour C60

Thank you Chad for the wonderful in store performance last night.  We got most of it on video (stupid camera) and Jim Evans recorded it to something like 6 tape deck placed around the room.  Chad made a new C12 release for the store last night which is Volume V of “Songs for Melting Lovers”.  We are already sold out, but hopefully will get more.  I think he made less copies than the number of people that showed up last night, so I’m not sure about that.