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FTR 386LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/2/2018
"In March 1995, soon after the German Veracity label issued Wolfways, and just before they did Parsnips Snips (1995) (Hurley's first vinyl after a nine-year drought), the Great Snock undertook his first European tour. Joined by bassist Robert Michener (from the Richmond scene Hurley'd been involved in) and percussionist Mickey Bones (legendary Boston drummer & bones player), Hurley hit a bunch of places and Germany and also KLUB K4 in Llubjana, Slovenia, where this set was recorded. The sound is beautiful, the band plays with lazy perfection, and Hurley's vocals are energetically melodic. He does some songs that were only released on the series of cassettes that immediately preceded Wolfways ('Horse's Ass,' 'The Beggar's Terms'), stuff from Wolfways ('Letter in Neon,' 'Portland Water,' 'I Paint a Design'), classics like 'O My Stars,' and a few cover tunes. And More! Packed up in a new Hurley art cover design (based on the Euro tour t-shirt), with great liner notes detailing the rigors of a German press junket from right before the tour-proper, this package is sure to please discerning Snockophiles of all stripes. It's a fantastic spin. Dig in today." --Byron Coley, 2018.
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2LP
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FTR 298LP
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$25.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/2/2018
"Spielgusher represents the meeting of two of America's great artists, Richard Meltzer and Mike Watt. There is additional musical accompaniment by guitarist Hirotaka Shimizu and drummer Yuko Araki, but the basic semiotic brunt of this meeting is shouldered by Richard and Mike. A collaboration between the two had been postulated back when the Minutemen still walked the Earth, but that dream was canceled with Denis Boon met his tragic fate in December 1985. Still, Meltzer and Watt kept in touch and tried to think of what they might do together. Around 2011 they arrived at solution. Richard had recorded a bunch of material for Mike, and Watt finally decided to go into the studio with a couple of his Japanese musician pals to cut a long set of jams and splats to go along with the words. Mike put the finished session, also called Spielgusher, out as a CD on his own clenchedwrench label, but we never really felt a though that release got into the hands or ears or brains of the many folks who'd dig hearing it. Consequently, here is a 2LP reprise of the set, with lovely new cover art, provided by Raymond Pettibon (another long-time Meltzer fan, and one who actually witnessed the debut performance of VOM at Kahuna's Bearded Clam, back when we were all a lot younger). Meltzer's words range from hilarious to shocking, and anyone who has attended one of his readings will agree that his performance is fully on point here. The musical inventions the trio tosses up to meet his words are fantastic - abstract or pointed at various times, melodic or noisome as befits the mood, but all with the compact econo lines that are Watt's stock-in-trade. There are perhaps some out there for whom Meltzer's poems will prove to be stronger word-meat than they are used to, but most of us are surely made of stronger stuff. And this album will be welcome manna to ear-teeth everywhere. Chew slowly and see." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 500.
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LP
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FTR 393LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 10/19/2018
"Eugene Chadbourne is one of the great guitar players of the modern era. At the time he began recording in Canada in 1975, his music was a unique syncretic formulation. While its most obvious component was free improvisation in a style then most widely associated with English and European players, his music also contained elements of jazz, country, folk, blues, psychedelic and international sounds, referencing these threads in ways that were so diverse and intensely personalized it would take scholars decades to decode them. Volume 1-1/3 is the first of four LPs devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne was creating during the years he was based in the provinces of Canada, while avoiding the constrictive powers of Richard Nixon and his ilk. Exact details of the recordings are moot, but that's trivial. The music on this record is a joyous celebration of traditions of liberation, using approaches that range from the ridiculous to the sublime. But regardless of the humor level (which can be very high at times), the quality of the musicianship and the originality of Chadbourne's compositional theories is staggering. Today there are charts and maps that can lead anyone into and out of the conceptual jungles Eugene was exploring. In the mid '70s, when these tracks were laid down, this was all terra incognita. While still in his early '20s, the Doc was figuring all this shit out for himself. And doing so at a level that can still make your jaw drop. Today Chadbourne continues making some of the most exciting music on the planet, but these examples of his early work should serve as a challenge to many musicians who would like to imagine they're doing something new. That they're also a total gas to hear is just gravy. Delicious, hot and very juicy." --Byron Coley
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LP
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FTR 411LP
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$18.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 10/19/2018
"Lauri McNamara is one of the crazies who make the New England sub-underground such a richly interesting universe to inhabit. She worked off and on with the late, lamented Egg, Eggs, but her main focus has always been on solo performance, accompanying herself on ukelele. A few other people make their presence felt on her debut LP, Knobby Knoll, but let's not get bogged down in their details. 'Cause really, this is Lauri's show, no matter who else might be sitting in. Unlike the many idiots who play uke, emphasizing its child-like qualities, Lauri handles the little axe like an adult. In her hands the instrument is just a guitar with a more compressed palette. And one gets the impression that what some people would view as the limitations of the instrument are appreciated by McNamara for their inherent intimacy. Knobby Knoll is nothing if not an intimate experience. The lyrics are filled with Lauri sharing aspects of her persona, alternately affectionate and judgmental, but always melodic. Many artists who inhabit similarly idiosyncratic creative space eschew compositional beauty as a necessary element, but Ms. McNamara has a very dab hand creating hooks inside a context where they seem almost anomalous. In many ways, the songs here resemble classic 'parlor music' of the late 19th century. For a moment, it can almost make you forget we live in the age of Trump. What a gift!" --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 324LP
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"In 1975, the critic Lester Bangs was seen moaning in the pages of Creem about the anti-emotionalism of the German band, Kraftwerk, and their whole concept of the man-machine. Skip ahead 43 years. Bangs is long dead, and the man-machine is thriving. As proof of this, one need look no further than the new Tarp LP, Part. Trapped inside its insanely lovely cover art (courtesy of Greta Svalberg), one finds the two hulking man-machines (Conrad Capistran and Joshua Burkett) attempting to figure out if it's okay for robots to hug each other in public. Right in the center of the highway, even. Heard in the most boorish way, the music on Part is all the work of unemotional man-machines (to use Bangs's moldy fig of a term). 'Anybody could play this stuff,' Chuck Berry fans will pout. But that's both untrue and beside the point. I mean a goddamn giraffe can play 'Johnny B. Goode' given a 30 minute head start. Music as subtle and fully communicative as the music on Part is a heavy conceptual lift. It occurs only after a lot of thought, a massive amount of jacking around, and about a ton of boo. One needs to be a committed freak to pull off such an elegant space-hack as this. But, of course Conrad and Joshua are lifers not dilettantes. Tarp is what they do. And no one could do it better. Their previous eponymous LPs (FTR 117, FTR 323) have been dandy, but Part is a real push into new areas of the void that amplify the duo's kosmiche wing beats. You can hear little pieces of the millions of records these guys have heard poking up now and then, but the way these elements are collaged into the whole is absolutely unique, absolutely Tarp. And not the mere burps of some man-machines. Roll over Lester Bangs, and tell Chuck Berry the news." -Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 350LP
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"Limited Grace is a lyrical hitchhike expedition through a psychedelic rural universe where time is nebulous and navigational tools are frowned upon. Through words, voice and sound, Gillig take us through cosmic swamps, ghostly clearings, mountain tops at night without a tent, shacks built along riverbanks but without running water, and dark desert highways soaked in silence except for the sound of a gas tank running on little more than fumes. Using the imagery of small, concrete moments, he tells us unique yet epically familiar stories without the frills of any particular plotline. While his first release, Cave Trilogy (FTR 188LP), was a 3LP set of songs recorded solo under a bridge, this is a more honed effort to take that same rawness into a studio and build on it while maintaining its authenticity. With contributions from friends like Matt Valentine, the FDOME collective, and other members of the Turners Falls music community, this effort is decidedly fruitful. Whatever qualities might have been lost while emerging from under the bridge, are replaced with musical elements that bring all subtleties to light. Well-placed backing vocals, sludgy yet swirling guitar leads and minimalist organ are the sparkplugs and pistons on Gillig's likely unregistered vehicle as he shows us all-points-off-grid. Many of these songs would not sound a bit out of place if they somehow found their way onto an Alexander "Skip" Spence album or a collection of Warren Zevon demos. At times taking the offbeat elements of Spence or Zevon a step further, at other times more straightforward, boldly reminiscent of early Dylan or Townes Van Zandt. Bryan Gillig's Limited Grace is an artisanal demonstration of song craft and sensibility that is not so much forgotten as rarely attempted, let alone successfully." --Travis Long, 2018. Edition of 200. Comes with download code.
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LP
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FTR 402LP
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"Time Machine is a reissue of a 2017 cassette, and represents the first vinyl issued by Wendy Eisenberg, a peripatetic improviser and composer currently based in Amherst. We first heard of Wendy when she was playing with a blasted quartet called Birthing Hips, whose NNA cassette was an instant classic. Since then she's begun a solo career that branches off in a lot of directions simultaneously. She has an album of post-form noise-metal (in trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith) due soon on John Zorn's Tzadik label. She has an LP of acoustic guitar improvs coming up on Steve Lowenthal's VDSQ imprint. And then there's Time Machine -- a gloriously intimate suite of bedroom pop miniatures that makes us suspect she can do about anything she sets her mind to. The music on Time Machine is arranged sparingly and sung with real warmth. Although everyone thinks I'm nuts for mentioning it, I am reminded in spots of the Space Lady's outsider take on keyboard pop. But there are also large parts of this record that put me in mind of Elisa Ambrogio's solo work as well as the singing she does with 200 Years, meaning there's a sense of inherent wildness being reined in a bit, all for the sake of the songs. Time Machine is a wonderfully flowing album. Small parts of the instrumentation hint at the stranger vistas Ms. Eisenberg's music can explore, reminding us that this is but one of her guises. But it's a damn good one, and we're very happy she let us help document it." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 250.
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LP
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FTR 375LP
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"Jerman Barnes sounds like a fancy men's shoe brand, but it's actually a duo comprised of two of the American underground's most prolific wanderers -- Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes. Jeph has explored everything from primitively brilliant free jazz with Blowhole to deep electronic explorations under the name Hands To, although in the latter part of the 1990s he shifted his focus to music made with found natural objects. Tim Barnes entered our consciousness as fluent master of experimentally canted percussion before he threw us a curve by joining Matt Valentine's Tower Recordings ensemble and going deep-prole for a while. Regardless, he and Jeph started releasing duo recordings almost 15 years ago, and they all brim with a very specific type of spectral weirdness. The instruments listed in the credits are: metal, bamboo temple blocks, springboard, wood, feathers and electrics. Furthermore the sho is played by Ko Ishikawa. So what about the three horn players pictured on the cover? In fact, they are Alex Bruck, Ramón Del Buey, and Misha Marks. This ensemble is briefly heard as distorted source material on the a-side (a penny to the first listener who finds them), but it turns out for this project they're mostly just dancers who use the horns as props, visually key to the process; aurally, not as much. But as you listen to The Finger'd Remove you'll probably start to wonder, 'Hey, where are the instruments not listed? Because surely that's the sound of a dead horse full of bees being dragged down gravel road. Or, wow -- a Texas rain-toilet.' Right? Well, Jeph and Tim aren't saying, but maybe it's just that there are instruments too complicated to notate. Dig? The wild collection of sounds here are designed to live primarily in your imagination. Do you really need to name all that stuff? Our suspicion is you'll be just fine if you lay back, close your eyes, and open your mind to the infinite possibilities suggested here. Words are just too drab to fully capture it all." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200; Includes download code.
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LP
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FTR 407LP
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"Vinylization of a CD-R released by Josh Burkett's Mystra Records by this great cassette manipulator, who was long a central part of the Boston Whitehaus scene. Bloodroot Spitball is a bit different from Arkm Foam's other Feeding Tube releases, since it incorporates a bunch of 'real' instruments into the mix. This hearkens back to Mr. Foam's first solo LP, The Foam Doesn't Fall Far From The Shore (2013), on Hot Releases. As on that one, there's another player heard here, when Andy Allen (who was all over that first LP) joins a tune to play clarinet. That track, 'Clarimello', may be one of my faves here because the friction between live music and taped/manipulated music is always a treat to hear when it's done well. And this is. The second side is a suite, recorded on the street in Greenfield, while doing something or another. Sounds sort of like he's trying to vacuum dust off of peoples' shoes as they pass by, but that's probably an illusion. Whatever's happening, it's a fine slab of disorganized urban field recording, and makes a very nice contrast to the more evolved work on the a-side, making for another beautiful addition to the Arkm Foam section of every connoisseur's collection." --Byron Coley, 2018. Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 279LP
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"Recorded in fits and starts, while the artists worked on their moontans amidst strong waters, the sole release by Dead Girl's Party was originally issued on cassette by the Entr'acte label. Since that tape now goes for a ben-and-a-half, we realized it was time to make a vinyl document of these young jazz immortals. Scott 'Pfennig' Foust (XX Committee, IFCO, Tart and the founding philosopher of the Anti-Natural movement) and Matt 'Ha'Penny' Krefting (Son of Earth, Believers, Duck, MK Unit, etc.) decided to do this stuff because they were hanging out a bunch, and 2009 seemed like a 'down' year to them. What better to inflate its core than a totally-inscrutable duo, dedicated to creating noise-pop with no clear precedent? The three tracks on the first side run from the Francis Bebey-like 'The First Pill,' through 'I'm a Tick Tock Bomb' (basically a distillation of every good move the Fall made in the '90s), onto the Apocalypse-as-a-carnival-midway-game of 'Spin the Wheel!' It's what I sort of thought the Sleaford Mods might sound like when I first heard about them (boy, was that a disappointment). Just a weird, sometimes wordy collection of electronics and mood and barely suppressed outrage. The two tracks on the flip are sort of a post-Apocalypse song suite about pirates in a submarine who have to get rid of a lot of ballast, although they know they're gonna die anyway. And wasn't life grand? To which we say, 'yeah!' Impossible to categorize or to get off the stereo, The Things I've Lost is a monster for the ages. Listen in the light. Listen in the dark. Just listen." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 300; Includes download code.
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2LP
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FTR 397LP
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"Although their name suggests they're Nijinsky-obsessed acid folk wanderers, nothing could be farther from the truth. 2014-2016 is the second album by this Atlanta-based nontet, and it presents a wide swathe of styles and contrasting textures that are wildly eclectic but never very acid-folky. The name stems from the fact that when the band began, some seven years ago, their line-up often changed and they tended to use a different band name every time they played a show. Faun & A Pan Flute somehow got used for a couple of shows and it stuck, not least because it's a fairly ridiculous piece of misdirection. The music on this 2LP set, recorded during the period encapsulated by the album's title, are a wonderful expansion on the music heard on their eponymous debut LP. The sounds are complex and fully composed instrumental pieces that mix elements of jazz, prog and post-rock shimmer with equal assurance. Hard to imagine keeping such a large ensemble together these days, considering the financial privations of the underground, but they manage to pull it off, and even make it seem easy. The music on this album shifts between genres with lazy ease. Some of it sounds like Italian soundtrack action by one of the '60s masters, other parts recall everything from Waka/Jawaka-era Zappa to Steve Reich's late '70s ensembles to the Nels Cline Singers to some of Keith Tippetts' larger bands. Crazy stuff, but all totally great, and all of it eventually sounding like nothing other than Faun and A Pan Flute. If you got ears, you gotta listen." --Byron Coley, 2018
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2LP
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FTR 362LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 8/24/2018
"We were introduced to the music of Ned Collette by guitarist Julia Reidy, another Melbourne ex-pat currently based in Europe. Julia's word is good as gravy around here, so we checked out Ned's new work and were blown clean out of our socks. Old Chestnut is a haunting prog-folk song cycle for the ages. Ned's approach to voice and guitar resemble various models at various times. You'll hear smatterings of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Pip Proud in lyrics and phrasing, but these are always just spices, added to the beautifully melancholic vistas Ned arrays before our ears. On the epic track, 'June,' there is a piano part by Chris Abrahams (of The Necks) so perfect in its conception it stops time. Working with longtime drum partner, Joe Talia, and a few other guests, Collette has made a goddamn whale of an album. The songs are brilliant, the arrangements have an addictively sparse genius, and the production is so full and delicate it reminds us of folks like Jim O'Rourke, Van Dyke Parks and Roger Waters. We are strangely unfamiliar with the bulk of Ned's previous recordings, but it doesn't really feel like it matters that much. With an album as strong as Old Chestnut, his history restarts here." --Byron Coley Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 287LP
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"Reissue of an exceptional album of improvisations, recorded when percussionist Charles K. Noyes was lured to the Bay Area in the summer of 1979 by Henry Kaiser. Noyes and Maercks had played regularly as a duo when Owen was still based in Worcester, MA. But he'd shifted his ass westward in the wake of the Teenage Sex Therapist session (FTR 153-2LP), which had been organized by Kaiser following their collaborations in the band, Monster Island. Half of the album was recorded live at Woody Woodman's Finger Palace, with Kaiser on guitar and Greg Goodman on piano. The web of cluttered notes and interwoven melodic lines they created that night was incredible. And the duo studio session a few days later was massive as well. Free Mammals has long been a notoriously scarce document in the history of the West Coast's free music scene of the late '70s. And the album (nominally released on Owen's Visible label, although everything was handled by Charles) almost always sounded as though it had been pressed onto concrete. With the help of Jeremy Pisani and Carl Saff, we have attempted to present this extraordinary music with the best sonics possible. And it sounds mighty dandy. There is also a liner note insert, as well as full size repros of two fliers from both the show at which this was partially recorded, and also a subsequent trio set with Noyes/Kaiser/Goodman. They will look fine on your wall, should to choose to thus deface them. Regardless. Count your lucky stars and dive in. All of your dreams are about to come true." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500.
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2LP
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FTR 308LP
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"Hard to believe it has been 18 years since this set was first issued, but that's what the calendar says. Paul and Chris had been playing together for a while before this. I seem to recall rehearsals outdoors in Hartford beneath stretches of raised highway under construction. But that may have been Chris and Pete Nolan, back when Pete played guitar. Who can remember exactly? It's been a long time. But I do remember we put this set together because it seemed essential to document how amazing the communication was between these two musicians, from different generations, but tuned into the same insane frequency. When we told Paul we wanted to do it on the Ecstatic Yod label, with art by Gary Panter, and actual liner notes, he thought it wasn't the best idea he'd ever heard, but what the hell. The actual hope of the label was to raise the profile of this incredibly talented but ruinously humble saxophonist, so that he'd be thought of in the same way as the day's other great players. And hey -- it sorta worked. The CD got solid reviews, and more people heard it. But what most listeners took away from it was how intensely telepathic the music is. It's all lightning and smoke. These guys were deep inside each other's heads, and that made for a wonderful listening experience. In a way it's funny to hear how 'jazzy' Chris's playing is. He's gone so far beyond known-moves over the last years, you almost suspect he must be holding back. But he's not. He's throwing down as hard as he can to meet the ragged flowing genius of Flaherty's horn at every turn. He just had different chops back then. And the music is still amazing. The Hated Music is one of the best extended drum/sax forays you'll ever hear. If we could have done it on vinyl back then, we would have, but no one was buying the stuff much right then. Jerks. That has changed a bit now. For the good. And we got the great Gary Panter to do new cover, since the old one was CD sized and weird. But everything else is the same. And it totally rips a hole in the universe. Now and forever. Amen." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500; Includes download code.
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2LP
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FTR 409LP
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"Brilliant, inspired and somewhat surprising collaboration between Chicago's premier free-rock trio and the truly legendary percussionist, Hamid Drake, who has played with everyone from Don Cherry to Peter Brötzmann to Lee Perry. This collusion was precipitated by Matt Jackowiak, a mutual friend, who thought a merging of their sounds might make for an ecstatic explosion. This feeling became mutual after they played a show together at Constellation. The set mixes Mako Sica tunes with improvisations that took everyone to places they hadn't expected, and the trip was deemed an utter success. Ronda was done at two sessions, scheduled around Hamid's insanely busy work schedule. The first was at Jamdek with Douglas Malone at the board, the second was at Electrical Audio with Taylor Hales. The Electrical session allowed the players access to a host of additional instruments, so the sonic palette on 'Dance With Waves' and 'Emanation' is wider and somehow more cosmic than usual. But the whole album has an extraordinary depth and width of sound. Even the great songs Mako Sica has had in its set for a while like 'The Old Book,' gain whole new levels of otherness here, and the material based in quartet improvisations, like 'The Wu Wei,' explores wild new territory for the band. Ronda (named after a town in southern Spain with a famous 18th Century bridge crossing a deep gorge) is the first span connecting the disparate musical worlds of Mako Sica and Hamid Drake. Let us hope it is but the first of many." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 500.
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LP
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FTR 359LP
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"Stefan Neville is one of the busier beavers on the North island of New Zealand. Recording under his own name, as Pumice (or a variety of other soubriquets), running the Stabbies & the Rockets label, drumming for the Coolies and so on, he keeps his tail moving quickly so that it does not grow moss. Greg Malcolm is one of New Zealand's premier avant garde string-benders. He did a bit of band aktion with Jay Clarkson in Breathing Cage but has mostly hewed to stranger improv-based roads. He plays oddly crafted guitar-like instruments of all manners and has lots of great solo recordings as well as various ad hoc unit-spew and a duo record with Eugene Chadbourne. And NOW, at last, he has Nuance as well. For Nuance, Greg plays strings, tambourine, voice and 'things.' Stefan counters with drums, reed organ, tapes, throat, and synth. The material ranges from 'Prospectus' (one of Steve Lacy's great '80s compositions) to Joe Meek's 'Telstar' to 'Hora' and 'Serba' (Jewish wedding music by the Epstein Brothers) with various unexpected stops in between. Apart from Jenny Ward's second vocals on Daw Henson's 'I'm Crazy Over You' (an old Kentucky tune, originally recorded by Alan Lomax in '37), it's just Stefan and Greg here. And they shine in lots of weird ways. Greg's strings often have lots of overloaded vibrational qualities to the way they sustain notes ('though they know how to cluck like chickens, as well) and Stefan's work ranges from stark drumming in the Mississippi style to key drones that extend the fake bounds of infinity. The breadth of the material they tackle is almost insane, but they manage to infuse it with their own distinct personality traits, and unusually friendly experimental tactics. Hard to grasp? Sure. But it's just as hard to stop playing it. That's what we call real Nuance." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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LP
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FTR 373LP
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"We were first attuned to Dial by Bill Nace back in the early days of this century. He'd been sent over the moon by the incredible squall of the unit, a trio led by former UT-guitarist Jacqui Ham. We were so blown away by the re-emergence of Jacqui, we didn't even try to figure out who the other players were. But it turns out the other two dudes were Rob Smith, a most immaculate manipulator of drum dials and guitar feedback, and synth-pillager/bassist Dominic Weeks, who'd been in the most insane Rough Trade band of all times -- Furious Pig. This was news worth learning! Over the course of four CDs in 16 years, Dial managed to make a crazy amount of fully-braced guitar skronk, worthy of anyone you can name, without managing to get any of it onto that most durable of formats -- vinyl LP. Now. Finally. After more than a dozen years in the digital desert, Dial are being heard the way they were always meant to be heard. Noise Opera is an homage to Ornette Coleman's 1961 masterpiece, Free Jazz. The album consists of two side-long explorations of loud post-form guitar order and suggest different ways in which they can be organized, while remaining ecstatic throughout. The contours of the textures the quartet wrestle with in the dark halls of feedback and sheer skronk are incredible. Whole generations of New York post-form giants are referenced or destroyed in the course of Noise Opera. A statement as stunning as any you will hear this year." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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LP
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FTR 311LP
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"Finally, what the world has been eagerly anticipating for the last four decades -- an LP by EMPOOL! Empool was a whacked-out, Detroit-based prog-noise combo (usually a trio or quartet), that would eventually merge into the rock-band-era Destroy All Monsters. Guitarist Laurence Miller was a constant throughout. Organist Andre Cynkin was generally on hand as well. Laurence's brothers, Ben and Roger, showed up now and then, as did pianist Rick Scott. Empool only played three live shows, but they recorded everything, and their use of pre-recorded tapes as a live sound source may have informed Roger's decision to do the same when he formed Mission of Burma. The tracks on this album were recorded between December 1976 and September 1977, and they're pretty amazing. Structurally, the stuff is far away from No Wave, but it has a lot of the same rough structural textures and jumbled sonics, although there's also crazy tape noise (some of it resembling gushing synth sequencing) and stun guitar stirred into the mix. The fact that it's mostly instrumental gives things a certain prog/experimental thrust that feels a bit parallel to the bands on the Random Radar label, but it runs wildly against the grain of anything else you'd hear in that era. With an insert containing Laurence's memories of the project, and album art guaranteed to lull prog heads into submission, Empool's DOES do did done is a magnificent head scratcher. Can be filed neatly between Sproton Layer and Destroy All Monsters." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 300.
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LP
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FTR 255LP
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"Split LP by a couple of bands who have more tricks up their collective sleeves than most outfits you could name. Metabolismus are a musical collective from near Stuttgart Germany, who have been actively corrupting the minds of everyone around them since the 1980s. The number of players on any given session, as well as the style of music that will be generated, is almost infinitely mutable. About all you can count on is that it will be intriguingly fried. Mono Pause began as a duo in River Falls, Wisconsin in the early '90s, before relocating to the Bay Area. They also create ethnic forgeries under the name Neung Phak, but that's of no matter here. Like their German brethren, Mono Pause has no fixed line-up or output style. Their records are generally fluxed as hell, and we're all the better for it. Not sure exactly how this split LP came into being, but when we heard such a thing existed we agreed to release it faster than your mom will drop a red-hot potato. Typically, the record sounded nothing like what we expected. Which is the best kind of surprise. Metabolismus's side begins with deeply freaked, rotating guitar figures that connect it historically to the German progressive sub-underground. From there it skates off into Neue Deutsche Welle turf, eventually loafing around with people-on-the-street-who-talk-with-balloons, and go all over the park in search of snacks. By the time they start doing a flipped-out Gainsbourg/Bardot-style cover of 'I Know You Rider' you'll be talking with balloons as well. Mono Pause's side ranges from German-tongued Egypto-spaghetti-pop readymades to subterranean secret agent theme songs played on mock-Theremin to blips of pure Residential form-hunch and beyond. The width of their skitterage is surpassed only by its elegant weirdness. Parts make me recall a never-released Der Plan record I once heard in a dream. Hooray!" --Byron Coley, 2018 RTI Vinyl; Edition of 500.
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FTR 388LP
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"Matt 'MB' Jones has long been kicking back and forth between the Valley and Asia. His recordings with Jee Jee Band have reflected this duality. And this new 'solo' album, recorded mostly in his original backyard with a cast of local hottentots (Conrad Capistran, Tim Sheldon, John Moloney, etc.) continues this vibe, while changing it in many subtle ways. The K-Pop readymades of the Jee Jee Band's Glass Fish LP (EM 1138CD/LP) have continued to drift out of Matt's repertoire. This remodeling began on Jee Jee's Holy Yolk LP (FTR 304, 2017), and by this point the hints are still there if you know where to look for them, but they no longer jump out at you. Matt's basic constructions are still often electronic pop at their base, but the details that get piled on top of that now require a wide closet of costumery. From the multi-tracked vocal glistens of '$200,000 Ticket to Space' (with neo-gamelanic tone highlighting) through to the jaw-harp-riven dolor of 'Going Swimming in the Morning,' the only real common thread the mood of dislocation Jones bakes into many of his lyrics. It's never easy keeping one foot in reality (so-called) while extending your other foot into the vacuum of space, but it's forward trajectory Matt seems to have managed. Perhaps this is why he and Mike Watt have struck up a friendship (the two recently cut a lathe 7"). Just as Watt attempts to codify his personal history, while the statis of the world constantly slides past him on his endless tours, Jones seems bent on writing twin histories of his peregrinations -- one with each hand, while everything spins around his head. It's an epic quest. And one to which you should pay sweet attention." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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FTR 384LP
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"For his second Feeding Tube LP, following the superb solo outing Orphic Resonance (FTR 281LP, 2017), Eric Arn has chosen to team up with the Austrian shapeshifter Margaret Unknown (aka Max Bogner), for a set of acoustic guitar duets. Eric's history is well known via solo work, duets with Tom Carter, and hard psych playing from his pre-Vienna days with both Primordial Undermind and Crystalized Movements. We knew Margaret mostly for his work with (In) The Abyssity of the Grounds, who backed Linda Sharrock on her massive Gods 3LP set (which should be a fixture in every home). Recorded live at the mo.ë space in Vienna, Paranza Corta (Italian for a Sicilian style knife fight) is far less of a combat situation than a deeply explored intersection of stringed logic. Without being able to tell who plays what (and although the tracks are named after various bladed weapons), the music here is a fight, in the sense that the opening scene of West Side Story is a fight. While choreographed only on a subliminal level, these two guys allow each other a lot of space to change directions, and almost seem to be working in tandem, so immediate are their reflexive actions. The heft of the interplay here recalls some of the nylon string collaborations Eugene Chadbourne did back in the Parachute days, although he wasn't big on guitar duets (at least on record). The playing here offers the same brilliant mix of organically achieved weirdness that can begin as a gentle outside motion, and then grow to devilish proportions without ever going too far. If there even is such a thing. If there is (and I acknowledge the possibility), the music on Paranza Corta does not go there. It's a brilliant tapestry of gesture, reaction and recontextualization. Of course, as I write those words, I begin to realize that maybe it is more like a knife fight than I'd thought. We should really ask Russ Tamblyn what he thinks." --Byron Coley, 2018
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FTR 365LP
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Feeding Tube Records present the first US LP by Dutch experimental artist Jan van den Dobbelsteen. Jan has been releasing music, non-music and kinda-music on his Cosmic Volume label since 1978. Often these works are connected to visual exhibits or installations, but they also work as standalone sound events. Feeding Tube Records had been tracking Jan's work for a good long while, but it was only after Phil Milstein told them he was friends of Jan and his partner, Danielle Lemaire, that their wheels began to spin--They had sponsored Milstein's show-and-tell song-poem trip to the Low Countries. Introductions were made, and here are the most excellent results. Because van den Dobbelsteen's conceptual palette is so wide, Feeding Tube Records approached this project without preconceptions or suggestions. What he came up with was a set of wild pieces for bells of all sorts. The effect is something like a shoebox version of Charlemagne Palestine's work with carillons, perhaps crossed with one of those records documenting the sounds of mechanical toys. When pressed for a few words, Jan described it thusly: "Constructing a music machine inspired from musical automata, self-playing instruments. Music boxes, barrel and street-organs, automatic mechanical pneumatic organs. Self-playing ensemble of bells. electromechanical random clicking and tinkle. No virtuosity or individual genius. Automated musical bells generates the sounds and motion in the performance and produce richly-textured sounds and jingle while there is no need for a composer or performer. rinkelen jingle tinkle jangle chink clang clank klingelen jingle tinkle tingelen tinkle jingle rammelen rattle jingle strum jangle sputter clash kletteren clatter clang clank patter rattle jingle gerinkel tinkle jingle clank jangle chink clang klinkklank jingle clink chink tinkle jangle ding a ling ring ding ping chime tintinnabulation clink chink tinkle ring ding ping ringing chime jingle bell toll peal rumble grumble carillion." Edition of 200.
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FTR 340LP
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"Unlike the last Bang! Bros. record we did (12/12/12, FTR 170LP), this one's frilly style was not dictated so much by a date as by time. According the jacket's notations, it was recorded in less than an hour in October, 2016. What? You might cry. What kind of a goddamn record can be recorded in under an hour? We'd like to point out that such live classics as Metallic K.O. (1976) and Mars Live at Artists Space (2011) were recorded inside those temporal parameters. Futhermore, we should point out that Bang! Bros. are a duo who live by the rules of real time interaction. They do not attempt to step in the same river twice. Theirs is a journey that leads only in one direction -- ever outward! The pair of musicians who are the Bang! Bros. (Mark Johnson and ARKM Foam) make a huge effort to always assure their attempts to manipulate electronic splint-chutes of all manners are observable as live events (observed either by eye, nose and ear, or ear alone). In the case of recordings, we are asked to accept the word of these gentlemen that their output is of the living variety, but they have never given us reason to doubt them, so why should we start now? The music on Hard Rocks Vol. 21 (only a few other volumes of which I have had actual access to) is the brilliant, spaced and sprongy, fast edit head wrench we have come to expect of the Bros. It delivers what I'd dare say is a full month's worth of confusion in just over thirty minutes. In this sense, it will be an incredible time-saver for many of us. Let's just get all that confusion jammed in, then we can do some chores! One can only hope that the cartoon on the back of the jacket -- in which Sam Gas Can suggests the Bang! Bros. will go and live in the jungle and forget to eat -- is just his idea of a sick joke. I mean I dunno about you, but if I had to spread my confusion out over the whole month, I'd be well and truly fucked." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 200.
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FTR 399LP
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"The fifth LP by English guitarist Jon Collin is also his first U.S. release. Jon first came to our attention when he started the Winebox Press label. This fairly nuts project involved choosing a wooden object (like a wine box or door) from which to create cases (some of them quite complex) for cassettes he released. The size of the edition was determined by the number of the packages he was able to create from the original object, and the label's creations were pretty amazing. Some of his early bands, like Whole Voyald Infinite Light and the Serfs were documented, along with artists like the Hunter Graccus, Chora and Taming Power. Eventually he began to issue solo recordings, and they sounded as brilliant as they looked. This led to occasional U.S. tours, interest from other labels and a worldwide explosion of all things JON COLLIN. Well, that's not all really true. But the basics are. Collin is a wonderful player, incorporating the distention of Loren Connors alongside the blues figures of Jack Rose and the lyrical melodicism of Robbie Basho. He can also throw in blurts that are pure Derek Bailey to throw the punters off, but that's his business. This new album (which will be followed in a few months by Volume 2) is a lovely example of his most evolved beauty-moves, riven with hairs and rivers of discord, but generally dedicated to expanding (rather than collapsing) the head of anyone who will take the time to listen. Make time for it. You will be copiously rewarded." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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FTR 381LP
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"Debut album by a wonderful Louisville-based guitarist/vocalist we happened upon at the 2017 Cropped Out Festival. Mr. Noguchi had recorded with Jim Marlowe on the Equipment Pointed Ankh cassette Sophomore Lounge put out (2016), but who could fucking remember that? Not us, so we were bowled over by the powerfully loud free-psych guitar set Shutaro's band played in the afternoon. FTR Boss Ted inquired of him as to whether he might have some recordings that were along the same lines. He said he did, and here they are. The tracks are partially like what his live set made us expect, but they go a lot of other dang places besides. Here the four long tracks rub against each other like adjacent bands on a PSF psych comp. The lengthiness of the song formatting allows a lot of textural motion in all directions, and the six musicians take full advantage of available latitude. The overall effect is strange and proggy, with Dane Waters' vocal overlays giving the proceedings a shiny surface they might not otherwise maintain. But the sound is wonderfully hybridized. At times its merger of prog, pop, fusionism and complexity make me think of a collision between the Glenn Phillips Band and Todd Rundgren's Utopia with Terje Rypdal sittin' in. I know I'm making it sound like a crazy quilt, and I suppose if sort of is, but only in the sense that it avoids the monochromaticism of so much contemporary music. Shutaro does not grab a single schtick and just shake it until his arm is tired. He mixes up of ballads and thunder (sometimes in a single song) in a way that strikes me as somehow very Japanese. But mostly it just strikes me about the head. In the most pleasant of ways. Take off your helmet and give it a try. You'll never know what hit you." --Byron Coley, 2018 Edition of 250.
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