SHH061CD João Lobo – ‘Simorgh’ Simorgh is João Lobo’s latest creation featuring two particularly inspiring musicians: guitar mogul Norberto Lobo and doublebass wonder Soet Kempeneer. Together they explore Lobo’s eclectic musical realm which means rhythmical oceans and melodic hills, big landscapes with very far horizons that seem out of time and space. This is very original music only possible in Lobo´s world.
SHH062 André Gonçalves – ‘Instrumentals’ André Gonçalves embraced a new and adventurous journey of composing for conventional, acoustic, musical instruments. Daring to go even further than he has gone before. Since everything Gonçalves does shines this one is no exception -proving us once again how genius he is. Every piece is so fresh, so positively “innocent” and so astonishing. A wonderful surprise.
Seth Kasselman – ‘Anteroom In Birch’ C38 Seth Kasselman returns with another instrumental cassette of synthesizer and tape collage music. Whereas his last album, “Desperate Windows” was very calculated, and sparse enough to hear your own breath while immersed in it, “Anteroom In Birch” is a more diverse, stream of conscious effort. Tracks like “Degrees Of Use To” and “Centipede Cathedral” lean heavily on ambient synthesizers producing slow paced harmonies and timbres. This is balanced out with pieces like “Are Lemmings” and “Roadmaster Stitches,” which embrace the grit, abrasiveness, and tape manipulation experiments of early musique concrete. While his last several albums seemed focused on a gestalt, here each piece stands on its own, entirely different from the last. Currently living in Phoenix, Arizona, over the years Kasselman has collaborated with musicians and artists such as M. Geddes Gengras, Cristopher Cichocki, and James Fella, and spent years in the avant-rock band Warm Climate. Hearing his solo work feels like a natural extension of his collaborations while maintaining a unique presence of his own.
Lump Hammer – ‘Beast’ Lump Hammer are a Tyneside (UK) trio with many fingers in the sludge-rock pie and a maximalist/minimalist approach of overwhelming guitar/drums/vox and bloody-minded musical stasis that has seen them perform two hour sets of just one, obliterating song. Purveyors of repetition and compositional claustrophobia matched with dense, fat-bottomed volume.
Lip Critic – ‘Lip Critic II’ Heavily influenced by visual and performance art, New York’s Lip Critic is an electronic punk band comprised of two drummers, two samplers, and vocals. The group formed in New York in 2018 and released an EP (Kill Lip Critic) as well as a myriad of singles throughout 2019. “Lip Critic II” is the debut full length album from the group. The album follows the narrative of an alien abductee after they have been returned to earth, and being unable to readjust to normal life.
TRVSS – ‘New Distances’ Looking for noise-rock to cut through the film of dusty ear-drums like a straight razor? Well, TRVSS (pronounced ‘truss’) has your number. The Pittsburgh, USA trio cut through the bullshit with post-hardcore propulsion. Sophomore effort, New Distances, as understatements go, is tightly wound. The single, “Malaria,” which features fellow Pittsburgher Eli Kasan of Sub Pop’s The Gotobeds on backing vocals, is wonderfully thrashy and digs into the skin like so many nails and shrapnel shot from homemade bombs.
ICR72 Banished Pills – ‘Beheld Perceptions’ C50 Two sides of ethereal, minimal drone. Explorations of the minutiae of acoustic phenomena. Available as a C50 cassette and name you price download.
ICR73 Acid Sacrifice – ‘Medusa’s Coil’ C25 Lo fi, pastoral drones and ritual tones. Reveries for meditative ascension. Available as a C25 cassette and name your price download.
ICR74 Azurite Sun – ‘Checked And Chilled By The Prickly Blackness On The Ruffled Waves’ C50 Minimal occult piano. Sparse and haunting. Available as a single sided C50 and name your price download.
Ken Clinger CD 30 titles published by hyper-productive Ken Clinger over 26 cassettes between 1983 and 1988 and carefully selected for your greatest pleasure. Mutant songs, hypnotic spoken words, obsessive synthesizers.
Eryck Abecassis – ‘Siamoises’ CD “Siamoises” is the 3rd solo album of the French-Algerian composer and sound artist Eryck Abecassis (b 1956) and his 2nd contribution to the FF label catalogue (after “La Gueule Du Loup” w/ Francisco Meirino, 2017). Composed and recorded in Paris 2018, “Siamoises” is the pairing of Eryck’s instrument of choice, an Ibanez 2404 double neck e-bass/guitar, with a modular synthesizer. Abecassis has composed for Radio France, INA GRM and Grame (among others). His music has been performed internationally at various music festivals such as Présences, Les Musiques-Marseille, Musiques en scènes-Lyon, Computer Art Festival Padova and more. He is living and working im Paris since 1976. This CD was released in an edition of 200 copies in a 6-panel fold out cover.
Nital Etch – ‘Simulacrum’ Nital Etch is a project out of Washington State, from a town considered by many to be a truly dreadful place. It is a morally, spiritually, and economically desolate landscape. The sound of Nital Etch seems to confirm that: One man with strings and some pedals creating the soundtrack to a nonexistent film, probably envisioning an unidentified rotting corpse lying dead in a ditch, only to be discovered months later because no one missed them. Hyperbole aside, I honestly think that this project would be doing movie soundtracks if it weren’t for all of the schmoozing involved. Incisions or Obsolescence are pieces that could have been used for the score to the Joker movie. The avenues of (dark) ambient, classical, and experimental electronics explored here can carry the rawness for a noise show, or the aptitude to present as an opener for Pamelia Kurstin. Simulacrum is a collection of highlights from previous recordings to date, all of which have yet to be released into the physical realm.
Credo In Deum – ‘Blood Soaked Sand’ Credo In Deum is the current chosen project name for one Massachusetts native Robert LaBarge, formerly known under the moniker “Buddhist on Fire”, among others. Buddhist on Fire was active at least from 2007 to 2011, although some of the audio files from his now defunct SEAM label, on archive.org, are dated as early as 1997 within the metadata of the ID3 tags. There is an admittedly obvious influence from the work of Muslimgauze throughout my excavations, and similar to Muslimgauze, Buddhist on Fire was wildly prolific, having at least 260 releases during a relatively short period of time. Another thing that occurred to me, was that there’s an apparent series called “Hell 365”, with each entry numbered “HELL-015” and so forth. This is to suggest that an “album”-length release was published every day for evidently at least one year. Of those that I saw, all of them were exceeding 60 minutes in length. Many tracks by Buddhist on Fire were percussive in nature, and it was this quality that I first found strikingly hypnotic when I discovered the project on a recycled tape from RRRECORDS around 2012. However, when I explored that vast catalog of works by this artist, I found a significant amount of work that was much more expansive, textural, definitively noisey, and generally experimental than what I’d expected. I initially wanted to include some material by Buddhist on Fire as part of “ESCHATOLOGY”, a 24 way split box set across 12 tapes that NO PART OF IT label was doing, but being that those cassettes were all limited to 20 minutes per side, and since many of the chosen tracks that I’d liked most were longer than 20 minutes by themselves, it became necessary to edit extensively. I came to learn (and this came to me from LaBarge himself) that all of these releases are not only available for free on archive.org, but they are also available to publish freely within the public domain. With that kind of freedom, and with LaBarge apparently AWOL after his one single illuminating reply to me, I meddled with some of the tracks, and I edited excerpts as best I could. I tried to cram the essence of what I thought would be the most representational tracks by Buddhist on Fire into 20 minutes of condensed and focused sound. You’ll find herein what I considered and chiseled down into a CD length release, including what I’d decided on for the ESCHATOLOGY compilation . It could have easily been two, or even three times as long, considering what I’d culled from several hours of listening. Here is a little sampler of the pieces I’ve found with what I think is that glaring creative “spark” that I think some of us helplessly gravitate towards. By the way, Robert LaBarge has since converted from Buddhism to Catholicism, and wishes for any future releases of his work to fall under the name “Credo In Deum”.
Trou – ‘Grjòthaugr’ “TROU” (meaning “hole” or “void” in French) is a project which has been active for around ten years. Grjòthaugr has been reissued from a lesser known cassette back in 2017. Like another favorite TROU tape, “Nebelsturm” (2012), Grjòthaugr is a hypnotic, loop-based, trance-inducing industrial noise/ambient release like no other I’ve heard. It’s hard to tell for sure what makes these three lengthy tracks remain compelling for 15 to 35 minutes each. It could be Reichian phasing, moderate adjustments of effects, very careful layering, or maybe some other methods, but whatever the case may be, these loops of unknown origin take us on a journey. Much like locked grooves, Grjòthaugr’s three simple loops welcome us into a void, where sounds change and mutate with the listener’s engagement, and can appear to transform dramatically with slight changes in positioning. Much has been said about minimalism in art, and many a minimalist risks more than others the stigma for falling short of anything beyond mediocre. Here, whether it is sourced from tape loops or direct signals, we have a glaring example of compelling minimalist experimental music and noise. TROU is also known for creating exemplary harsh noise and HNW, and their releases are often diverse and wide-ranging, but Grjòthaugr, one of the outliers in the project’s vast catalog, stands as a crowning achievement, obviously worthy of a wider audience.
Blood Rhythms – ‘Zerrissenheit’ Mainly what Arvo Zylo did with recording sessions playing on John Cage’s first prepared piano! It is worked over in his signature style of excessive layering and looping, and also features contributions from Dave Phillips, Bruce Lamont, and Blake DeGraw.
Thirteen Hurts – ‘Threshold’ THIRTEEN HURTS is the chosen project name of one rather elusive character who calls himself One-Eyed Zatoichi. Active for many years, and having released the well-received “UVB-76” on NO PART OF IT label before, we were given the go-ahead to release two prior full-lengths under the THIRTEEN HURTS moniker. Enthralling, almost soundtracky, heavy electronics with no noise swashes or synthesizers to speak of, listeners will no doubt enjoy the very unique and compelling work here, which was released in digipak CD format with almost no promotion.
Modern Technology – ‘Service Provider’ Introducing the debut album for UK duo Modern Technology, which builds upon 2019’s critically acclaimed EP. As with the EP, ‘Service Provider’ was recorded by Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse Studio, harnessing the intensity and energy of their stunning live performances. Modern Technology formed through a shared frustration of a post-truth society and political unrest that is currently suffocating our global conscious. Chris Clarke (bass & vocals) and Owen Gildersleeve (drums) confront these issues head-on, tackling themes of political injustice, social anxiety, austerity and inequality. Proceeds from their work are channeled to charitable causes via their not-for-profit organisation, HUMAN WORTH.
[mt129cs] Grant Evans – ‘Albatross’ C30 Americana-concrète. Tape-pitched elements — organic, synthetic and mechanical — weave in and out, blurring reality with dread and unease. Buzzing, scraping, swelling; dying voices in the cirque of tape-delay. Through the projects Nova Scotian Arms, Quiet Evenings, Ornamental Hairpin and labels such as Hooker Vision, VAALD and Adversary Electronics, Evans should need no introduction; he, along with partner and collaborator Rachel Evans have been a consistent, prolific force in the South for over a decade. 100 copies.
[mt130cs] Lapse – ‘Nothing Feels Right’ C40 Blown out and massed patterns of red-line scrape and abrasion; cyclical and blaring, a thunderstorm of gutter-nihilism emanates from the streets and sewers of NYC. 40 continuous minutes of rugged and ripping sound that never relents. Sensation of Living b/w Get Fucked up and Die. 2020’s definitive spirit. 100 copies.
[mt131cs] Jackson-Pratt – ‘Skullcutter Herringbone’ C40 Right through the center like an icepick headache. Direct, imposing and saturated, with abrupt shifts, quick edits and instantly piercing shards of feedback. Second MT tape for Seany and certainly not the last. Includes an epic tribute/cover/re-interpretation of The Replacements on the B-side. 100 copies.
[mt132cs] Scald Hymn – ‘Balming Mechanism’ C40 Four untitled tracks of brutish, inspired and primitive organics, recorded at the Western Massachusetts pillar Cold Spring Hollow throughout 2019 and early 2020. Bowed, scraped and clattering metals obstructed with patterns of tense electronics that at first threaten to engulf before conspiring to mitigate. Employing only the principal tools to their full potential. A distinctly New England touch. 100 copies.
[mt133cs] Blind Date – ‘Judy Garland Pavilion’ C30 The requisite principles of 1990’s metallic burl distilled through layers of aggressively employed junk and sharp 2000’s-era hyper-cuts are merged with skill. Crisply engineered and moving around the stereo field in a forward motion. With a steady and consistent series of releases via Dead Gods, New Forces, White Centipede, Angst and Oxen, Blind Date should need no introduction at all as an established institute for well-crafted harsh noise. 100 copies.
