Browse by Label: MELON EXPANDER

Artist:	SOLID EYE
Title:	Voyage To See What's On The Bottom
Label:	MELON EXPANDER
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	MELON 001CD

First release on this label, originally released in 2003. Melon Expander is a impressive sounding label, keeping up w/ the modern developments of the post-L.A.F.M.S. (Los Angeles Free Music Society). "With an ear for unsettling detail, Solid Eye leave you suspended in a lurching, oozing, hallucinatory river of sound that unfolds with its own peculiar sense of internal logic. Neither fish nor fowl, the aesthetic impulses that inform their soundscapes bear scant resemblance to the dominant modes and methods that govern the domain of much contemporary experimental music. Savvy enough to acquit themselves of any immediate trappings that would lend itself to a casual perusal, this surrealist cabal have immersed themselves in the creation of a pata-physical metaphysic, a slippery, elusive territory where the profound is coaxed from the ludicrous and the seemingly innocuous is inverted into the preternaturally haunting... a cosmology where the absurd, the uncanny and the unsettling coalesce, the result being distilled into a sense-deforming, reality-eroding alchemical elixir. The members of this trio (Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts & Steve Thomsen) have each spent 25+ years exploring various avenues of music coined by their 1970s collective, the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), as 'avant-schmaltz.'"

Artist:	HAMMER, JOSEPH
Title:	Dynasty Suites
Label:	MELON EXPANDER
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	MELON 002CD

"Joseph Hammer cites AM radio station mixing (receiving more than one station at the same time) and an episode of the '70s TV show Land of the Giants, where astronauts used tape loops to thwart alien tyrants as a couple of his musical influences. He has developed his own way of making music utilizing consumer audio technology, tape loops, samplers and analog synthesizers to create compelling and varied musical expressions. Since 1980, he has performed and recorded with Points of Friction, Dinosaurs With Horns, Solid Eye, Blue Daisies, Steaming Coils, Debt of Nature (which became Medicine), Vector 3 Niner, Paramecial Wedding, Kitten Sparkles and Dimmer. Dynasty Suites was Joseph's first solo CD, 51 minutes of real-time tape loops certain to scramble your eggs."

Artist:	POINTS OF FRICTION
Title:	Afterlife DNA Finger-Painting
Label:	MELON EXPANDER
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	MELON 003CD

2007 release. "Points of Friction formed in January of 1981, shortly after witnessing Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band perform live. Joseph Hammer, Damian Bisciglia, Tim Alexander, and Kenny Ryman were the core quartet though sometimes LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society) founder Rick Potts would sit in, among others. Their first recording was a spontaneous affair. The group having no formal musical training (or even knowledge of 'freely improvised music') relied on their voices and whatever else was at hand -- wire mesh, sheet plastic, an old guitar, etc. Gradually, the group acquired electric instruments, toy keyboards, multi-track tape recorders, pedal effects, etc. and moved towards a more processed sound direction, informed by groups such as Faust, Cluster, Nurse with Wound, Dome, This Heat, Can, AMM, Fripp and Eno, and Negativland. By 1984, Points of Friction had two cassette releases under their belts on LAFMS offshoot label Solid Eye. Their 2nd release Sackcloth and Ashes was re-issued in 2002 on CD by Anomalous Records, and the group's first recording 1982 was re-issued on CD-R in 2004 by the L.A. based Spagyric label. After a 20 year hiatus, Points of Friction reformed in June 2004 and recruited L.A. native Mitchell Brown to the goon squad. Afterlife DNA Finger-Painting, their 3rd official release, is the result of this reunion. They have since recorded more material and have returned to occasionally performing live."

Artist:	DIMMER
Title:	The Shining Path
Label:	MELON EXPANDER
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	MELON 004CD

2007 release. "Dimmer is a duo comprising live sampling pioneer Thomas Dimuzio and tape-loop maestro Joseph Hammer. Swallowing audiences with their dark explorations of sound, Dimmer specializes in a symbiotic sound process as they continually loop, reloop, sample and resample within an interactive feedback circuit linking both artists. For their debut CD, Dimmer melds their recursive circuits into rich and seething sonic masses with subtle waves pulsing sound within sound. Ripe with theme and variation, The Shining Path suspends the listener over dim and dank planes on an aural trip spanning and scanning from a celestial vista. Nearly every aspect of Dimmer's live performances grace The Shining Path, yet this is not a live document, but rather a pastiche and reworking of everything Dimmer has accomplished in their years of performing as a duo. Co-release between Melon Expander and LAFMS."

Artist:	JEPSON, WARNER
Title:	Totentanz and Other Electronic Works 1958-1973
Label:	MELON EXPANDER
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	MELON 005CD

"The act of dusting off old forgotten master tapes, and old people too, can reveal a myriad of results. Crappy music that sounded great to the stoned performer at the time, crappy music that sounded great before time ate away at the tapes, great music trapped behind various complications, or, in the case with Warner Jepson, great music from a composer enthusiastic about revisiting it. Jepson recorded over 200 ¼" tape reels full of electronic sounds at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, Mills College and The National Center for Experiments in Television (NCET). Some of them were used as soundtracks for theatre productions and art films, and some were heard ephemerally at art galleries, parties and 'happenings' in the late '60s and early '70s. Only one document was ever released -- the soundtrack to Totentanz, a ballet by Carlos Carvajal, on an LP that yielded a circulation of only 300 copies in 1971. This 2CD release is a reissue of that Totentanz LP, plus many other pieces that vary in content from his late '50s musique concrète experiments to rhythmic prepared piano and tape pieces to sprawling meditative sound paintings done on the 100 and 200 series Buchla synthesizers. The opening track 'Bugs at Large' might bring to mind synthetic rhythms that weren't commonly heard until 20+ years later in the techno genre of late '80s Detroit. Aside from Totentanz, none of these works have been heard by anyone in well over 30 years. He worked with many people who may be on the radar of folks buying this CD. Whether it was taking photographs of Steve Reich or Stockhausen, playing piano in Terry Riley's first ensemble of In C, or scoring the soft-core porno Luminous Procuress starring the Cockettes, Jepson kept busy in a vital time for creative art and music. Though somehow it seems he's slipped through the cracks of time and needed a healthy dusting off. This release happily rides the coattails of his re-emergence: inclusion in the 'Visual Music' exhibit at the Los Angeles MOCA in 2005 (the 1973 video work 'Illuminated Music' with Stephen Beck) and Spring 2008's 'California Video' exhibit at the Getty Center (a 50-minute solo video/sound work made at the NCET in '75). The CD booklet features liner notes by the composer as well as paintings he made in the late '50s."

Artist:	DINOSAURS WITH HORNS
Title:	Return Of The Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus
Label:	MELON EXPANDER
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	MELON 006CD

"Since 1983's self-titled cassette release on The Solid Eye label, Rick Potts and Joseph Hammer have delicately dispensed laughing-gas-balloon-animals-go-pop-music as Dinosaurs With Horns. The cryptic LAFMS-related group occurred during and in between periods of playing with Points of Friction, Steaming Coils and Solid Eye. Spencer Savage and/or Tom Recchion jammed with them in the mid '80s and continued intermittently since. While a smattering of material has appeared on various compilations and very limited cassette and CDR releases, Return of the Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus is the first full-length CD release. It was recorded November 2000 on KXLU radio and January 2007 at the LACE Gallery in Hollywood, CA. Joseph Hammer cites AM radio station mixing (receiving more than one station at the same time) and an episode of the '70s TV show Land of the Giants, where astronauts used tape loops to thwart alien tyrants as a couple of his musical influences. He has developed his own way of making music utilizing consumer audio technology, tape loops, samplers and analog synthesizers to create compelling and varied musical expressions. Since 1980, he has performed with Solid Eye, Points of Friction, Blue Daisies, Steaming Coils, Debt of Nature (which became Medicine), Vector 3 Niner, Paramecial Wedding, Kitten Sparkles and others. Rick Potts has been making unusual music for the last thirty years, starting with the forming of Le Forte Four and founding of the L.A. Free Music Society in 1973. Playing the electric guitar with electric toothbrush, street sweeper bristles, electric cocktail stirrer and other objects, and using musical saw and analog synthesizers, he has a talent for making familiar instruments and other implements produce sounds unique, alarming and enigmatic yet oddly cordial. Tom Recchion has been working with sound and music for over 35 years. Starting off as an accordion player then on to pillow cushions with cardboard sticks that transmogrified into a set of drums. From there on, playing anything he could get his hands on, guitar, pianos in garages, found and invented instruments, tapes, keyboards, paper, fans, synths, radio, records and finally computer. Spencer Savage began playing live music with numerous groups in Los Angeles in 1983, primarily as a percussionist, vocalist, and noisemaker."

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