VASSBOTN/TORTURING NURSE split C60 £4
VASSBOTN are a noisy sound-tyrant triple play that count ‘master of static’ Lasse Marhaug among their ranks. Following a magnificent debut on the Obscurex label last year, this cassette is only the second official document of their so far calamitous and precarious tenure on planet earth. One thirty minute battering-ram of a track continually asserts and diminishes, arrives and departs, begins and concludes. A kaleidoscope of rumbling, grumbling and hardcore fumbling awaits beyond the play button… TORTURING NURSE have been beaming transcendental baffle-noise from their Shanghai home for over 7 years and this latest transmission is as off-kilter and as out of whack as ever. 30 minutes of processed field recordings, echoing signal generators and cracked electronics. Cut ‘n’ paste loopery drips and oozes over droning static while contact mics are loved and abused in equal measure. Edition of 50 with clear tapes, colour coordinated j-cards and stickers. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.
SHIT HANDS – ‘WHAT DID MY TOY BOY REALLY THINK OF ME?’ C30 £3
Beartown debutant SHIT HANDS unleashes a bizarre batch of half-song structures on this wonderfully peculiar plop parcel. Drink-fuelled, kazoo-dominant ramblings of an idiot who’s seemingly unable or unwilling to play a bass guitar properly. “WHAT DID MY TOYBOY REALLY THINK OF ME” sounds like literally dozens of plops of pigeon shit on some sort of amplified metallic shed, whilst someone inside is screaming with a kazoo and playing stupid records at the wrong speed. Edition of 20, comes with limited “Paedo Chris” artwork and a4 pullout Shroppy-rambling sheet.
BLACKK SUUE – ‘TENT CRISIS VOL. 1’ C30 £4
Beartown records is proud to make available a fresh glut of live archive material recorded by Cheshire post-junk-noise bods BLACKK SUUE. Culled from tree-house rehearsal demos stretching back to the stagnant winter of 2009, TENT CRISIS VOL. 1 is a stark recommendation of ruthless self-censorship, and the dignity of non-releasing. A poorly recorded sprangle-artifact that captures both the essence and tenacity of Buglawton’s messy-Merz-boys. Belches and farts of abused, weather-damaged synthesisers, screams and squeals of feedback and the clattering of pre-recorded daft-head muckery loops are all captured live and unadulterated. A hysterical post-noise-meta document if you will… which you won’t. Edition of 20, complete with A4 gunk-collage and “Congers Turning to Out” mini-thesis.
SLUMP – ‘DEAD OR DYING ROSES’ C25 £4
SLUMP stretches its legs and awakes for yet another failing/failed outing on Beartown Records. DEAD OR DYING ROSES is a splice-fest of brittle textures, angry feedback and lurking synthesis. Filing cabinet percussion, breathless vocal improvisations, and spiraling prayer-box mantras are chopped up and scattered onto the sonic canvas like so many coarsely ground post-noise peppercorns. Delicate sinews of AM radio are knitted into a disorientating fabric of backwards blab-chatter, sloppity-boppity stereo slurp madness and ectoplasmic glass-grinding. Not harsh, but horrid. Not furious, but facile. Not essential, but existential. Not here, but there. All you need to while away the spring evenings, rearrange your mental furniture or glimpse cubist heaven in a cassette tape – fractured diads galore! Edition of 35 with pale blue “hazing” artwork, powder blue “trees in the mist” on-tape stickers and baby blue cassettes. Comes with free rose-petal confetti.