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

• Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast CD  (Fleece Records / Wholly Other)  USED  $8  - Heather Murray (ex-Charalambides) & Shawn McMillen
• Bishop, Richard  ”God Damn Religion”  DVD + CD  (Locust Music)  USED  $12  - CD & DVD set, no guitar here, just dark experimental
• Cage, John  ”Variations IV”  CD  (Legacy International)  USED  $6  - fantastic sound collages, reissue of 2 LPs from 1965
• Cluster  ”71″  CD  (Water)  USED  $9  - early dark & cosmic electronics from Germany
• Cluster  ”II”  CD  (Spalax)  USED  $9  - really good!  like good spacey TG, but years earlier
• Crass  ”Christ the Album”  2 x CD  (Crass Records)  USED  $9  - 1982 album of anarcho-peace punk
• Culver C90  ((oTo))  USED  $2  - droney noises, 1 side only, C90,  ltd 50
• Doc Wör Mirran  ”Power of Positive Obscurity, The”  C60  (Old Europa Cafe)  USED  $2  - spacey lo-fi creations from Germany on Italian label C60
• Faust with Conrad, Tony  ”Live:  London - Queen Elisabeth Hall - February 1995″  C60  (Klangbad)  USED  $2  - live concert recording released by the band, C60
• Fennesz  ”Fennesz Plays”  CD EP  (Moikai)  USED  $4  - instrumental electronic glitch covers of Stones, 7 mins
• German Oak CD  (Radioactive)  USED  $9  - obscure Krautrock instrumentals from 1972
• Godz  ”Contact High”  CD  (ESP Disc / XYZ Music)  USED  $9  - drop out folk weirdness from 1966
• Harvester  ”Hemat”  CD  USED  $9  - great trance psychedelic rock w/folk touches from 1969
• Jackie-O Motherfucker  ”Europe 2002″  2 x CD  (Cast Exotic Archives)  USED  $12  - out of sight collective weirdness
• Kawabata Makoto  ”You Are The Moonshine”  CD  (Mar/Ino / Elsie & Jack Recordings)  USED  $15  - beautiful ambient sounds, ltd 150, long out of print
• Knaack, Donald  ”Dance Music”  CD  (RRRecords)  $8  - contemplative & creative experimental
• Kubli, Thom  ”Mondok Spots”  CD  (BMB Lab)  USED  $7  - very beautiful subtle drones like Rafael Toral, ltd 300
• L’infonie  ”Volume 333″  2 x CD  (Mucho Gusto)  USED  $12  - bizarre jazz, rock, experimental, classical mixture
• Lacy, Steve  ”Saxophone Special +”  CD  (Emanem)  USED  $9  - very free playing with some of the greats of the day
• Limbus 4  ”Mandalas”  CD  (Spalax)  USED  $9  - one of the greats of early free music w/ acoustic instrs.
• Lost in Translation  ”Wednesday Tapes, The”  C90  (Black Velvet Fuckere Recordings)  USED  $2  - old school cosmic electronics, C90
• Malanga, Gerard  ”Up From The Archives”  CD  (Sub Rosa)  USED  $8  - from the archives of this Warhol collaborator
• McLean Mix, The  ”Golden Age of Electronic Music, The”  CD  (CRI)  USED  $10  - great early analog electronics, out of print
• Miller, Donald  ”A Little Treatise on Morals”  CD  (Audible Hiss)  USED  $8  - solo pieces from Borbetomagus guitarist from 1982
• MNortham  ”Breathing Towers”  CD EP  (Dorobo)  USED  $8  - ltd 400, OOP, 22 minutes, lovely drone
• Moondog and his Friends CD  (Moondog’s Corner)  USED  $8  - reissue of 1953 material using tape overdubbing
• Möslang, Norbert / Guhl, Andy  ”Deep Voices”  CD  (Urthona)  USED  $9  - 1978 FMP debut of the duo that became Voice Crack
• Musica Elettronica Viva  ”The Sound Pool”  CD  (Spalax)  USED  $9  - 1969 large ensemble free for all, originally LP on BYG
• Nath, Pandit Pran  ”Raga Cycle”  CD  (Sri Moonshine)  USED  $9  - contemplative Indian classical w/La Monte Young
• Of  ”Rocks Will Open”  CD  (Digitalis)  USED  $8  - delicate acoustic sounds, Thuja member, ltd 500
• Oliveros, Pauline  ”Primordial Lift”  CD  (Table of the Elements)  USED  $9  - with guests Tony Conrad and David Grubbs
• Romero, Damion  ”Feedback in a Lover’s Telegraph”  CD  (Harbinger Sound)  USED  $7  - gentle and warm self-sustaining feedback drone
• Screamin’ Mee-Mees & Hot Scott Fischer  ”You’re Now In Our World: Warp Sessions ‘72″  CDR  (Slippy Town)  USED  $6  - lo-fi primitive “Godz meets Amon Düül”, CDR, ltd 125
• Smegma  ”Ism”  CD  (Tim/Kerr Records)  USED  $10  - long out of print 1993 album by these Portland weirdos
• Speare, Jed  ”Sound Works 1982-1987″  2 x CD  (Family Vineyard)  USED  $12  - great unreleased musique concrete from the 1980’s
• Throbbing Gristle  ”Live Volume 1, 1976-1978″  CD  (Mute Records / The Grey Area)  USED  $12  - out of print, early murky Industrial sounds, vellum cover
• Ya Ho Wha 13  ”Penetration, An Aquarian Symphony”  CD  (Cold Sweat)  USED  $9  - reissue of 1974 LP, acid-mantra psychedelic death trip

Unrock is an alternative record store in Krefeld, Germany.  Like us they put on some in store shows, and to document this the label Unsound Recordings was founded.  Normally this releases are only available directly from Unrock, but we got a few copies of the most recent batch for Dissonant Plane.  We are probably the only place in the States that has these.  The three titles we got are limited edition CDRs in lovely screen printed Digipaks.  The first is by ME & EE with the Golden Road.  Six tracks of psychedelic blues where Matt and Erika are joined by Doc Dunn and Samara Lubelski.  Matt Valentine often reminds me of a very laid back Neil Young.  Ramping up from this is Sunburned Hand of the Man whose disc is one 39 minute Krautrock inspired jam of craziness with a quartet line up.  Both this and the MV & EE are hand numbered editions of only 150 copies.  The third title in the batch is by Temple of Bon Matin and comes in a tinier edition of only 50 copies.  And it is the most out there of the batch.  Usually a very large group, the Temple was only a trio at this gig.  Made of Ed Wilcox (vocals), Eric Baylies (bass) and Jay Reeve (electronics), they let loose some crazy free music which bears a passing resemblance to rock, but goes further out and doesn’t have any drums to fall back on.

Chicago based duo Locrian combine elements of noise, psychedelia, noise and drone.  We first heard it here on their CD “Drenched Lands“.  This fine album has now been reissued on vinyl in a very limited edition of 200 copies with a bonus 3″ CDR.  It seems like a really small edition, especially as we almost missed out on this - it seemed to sell out in a very small window of time.  Anyhow, we landed a few copies and it is gorgeously packaged in a letterpress sleeve with a glossy insert and pressed on clear vinyl.  The CDR is exclusive to this edition and is a live recording from Phil von Zweck’s program on WLUW FM.  For that session they were joined by Andrew Sherer of Valnias and Mark Solotroff of Bloodyminded and Intrinsic Action.  Heavy and doomy stuff.  We also got some of the last copies of Locrian’s 7″ “Plague Journal“.  All white, cover and vinyl, the 33 RPM grooves contain some awesome psychedelic noise.  Blissful stuff.

Over the weekend, Jesse Paul Miller played what he estimates as only his second solo performance.  For this he mixed together field recordings and played them back through 6 speakers surrounding the audience.  It started incredibly delicate and slowly built into a mass of sounds.  I recognized several things as being from Asia as I’ve heard these wonderful self produced CDRs of his recordings from there.  The latest one is “Asia Radio Environments“, a fairly self descriptive title.  However in addition to picking up frequencies in Asian countries, Jesse has recorded the environment around him as he was exploring the shortwave dial.  So the unstable signals are paired with bird singing, traffic and other ambient noises heard in Java, Bali, Lombok, Myanmar, Thailand and Japan.  The results are suprisingly calm.  However, I think the most meditative title he has done is the popular “Asia Archive 2008 Volume 2: Muslim Call to Prayer, Java, Indonesia” which we finally got restock of.  Both discs are quite limited and come in hand numbered editions.

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.

I think a good year in the making, Ong Ong #5 is finally out.  The product of Lucy Morehouse (part time employee at Wall of Sound) and Scott Davis (Jive Time Records), this is their biggest issue yet comprising of two separate booklets, plus the usual CDR.  It’s a real friendly fanzine style affair with lots of artwork and poetry among with the interviews with Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records, Scott Colburn and Yann Novak.  They sum up the other tidbit thus: “Bunnies, friendship bracelets, field hippies, piles of textiles, Czech new wave, alternate realities, tree tops, Hotel art installation, advice, mental institutions, instrument selection, rings of history, people holding hands in a circle, Scott Davis at 17, pure purr energy, tree tops, lotuses, relationships, perception, floating skulls, tripped out line quality, Halley’s comet, fire damage, father figures, show reviews, AFCGT caricatured, snow, ladies with long hair carrying stars, Rumi… coalescence!”  A lot of things are very home paste up looking, with Eric Isaacson even handwritting his replies to typewritten interview question.  A very DIY effort, the whole is contained in a screen printed cover and tied together with string.  The bonus CDR culls 19 tracks from obscure vinyl releases, mostly private press items.  The only names you are likely to have heard of before are Bruce Haack and Lightnin’ Hopkins as the rest heads into little known folk and children’s records with a few nice cosmic and prog numbers from Europe through into the middle.

Get ‘em while they are hot - another free local CDR.  “Frequencies in Formed Concrete” is by Ruby Von Monster and consists of 13 untitled tracks mixing weird electronics and guitar with some strange rhythms.  A numbered edition of 30 copies, Dissonant Plane was given 10 of them to give away freely to customers.  So come down and pick one up next time you buy something.

Ah the blossoming Seattle noise scene…  Phase Locked Loop brought in their self-released C30 and it is the first time I have heard of them.  The tape opens up with a nice swell of noise on “Subtract” and then going through the other three mathematical operations explore a few other techniques keeping the cassette from being too homogeneous.  The second side is made up of the piece “Pillar Of Smoke/Casual Laces” which plays with quieter noises with a nice record skipping kind of pulse in the background.  Nice stuff and limited to 25 numbered copies in a j-card which keeps folding out.