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CD
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FTR 780CD
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"Fifty years after I first encountered the music of Orchid Spangiafora, it is a pleasure to be listening to new work by this most bonny of modern sound manipulators. Like Flee Pasts Ape Elf (FTR 096LP), which we reissued in expanded form in 2013, Eel Asp Flays Feet (the title of which is an anagram of the earlier set) is an assemblage of immaculate invention. It manages to produce a unique splotch of confusing analog surrealism in an increasingly digital world, and Robert Carey (aka Orchid himself) deigned to provide these notes on creating the music: 'This album is a combination of some new material and ideas and some older stuff that had not found its way into a tangible (non-online) form.' 'Syllabus,' 'Dyad,' and 'Retroscope' were an attempt to return to an older style of electronic music. I put these on bandcamp, but they did not attract much attention. In mid-2021 David Greenberger provided me with the voice recordings he had made for the 'Everybody's Home' project he did with Tyson Rogers. He asked if there was something I could do with them. I put together 'Holding Pattern' and 'In A Fog.' These two pieces might be considered the 'dub version' of 'Everybody's Home.' I put them on bandcamp as 'Nobody's Home.' The rest were originally made up of typical Orchid snippets. When I first took an electronic music course in 1972 one of the things that struck me about tape loops was how readily they produced interesting rhythms. Since then I got more into selecting them for the rhythm, but rather than repeating I tried to convey it in a single shot followed by slightly modified versions. In a number of these pieces I tried returning to actually repeating phrases enough to hear the natural rhythm of each loop. The mechanical sounds combined with vocal loops in, for example, 'Interlude One,' probably were influenced by the collaboration with Seymour Glass on Cous Cous Bizarre. The rapid streams of syllables in the 'Ur Sonata' came from playing around with an audio batch processing program. I used it to cut up regular loops into very short bits and string them together. Then, as with most electronic or 'tape' music, the real work consisted of removing the parts that didn't belong. The title comes from Kurt Schwitters because I felt the piece shared some of the same motivation or aesthetic, although the implementation is not at all alike.' Well, those are the component parts, but to truly grasp the whole, you must hold your brain tight and jump right in. There is just nothing like an Orchid Spangiafora album. Tell your friends." --Byron Coley, 2024
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LP
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FTR 594LP
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"Absolute collage hell from the bowels of several known earths. We have worked with the horrible Orchid Spangiafora (aka Rod Carew) before. Back in 2013 we were tricked into doing an expanded 2LP reissue of Rod's 1979 Twin/Tone album, Flee Past's Ape Elf. A mistake we swore we'd never make again. Glands are a different story, being a two-headed beast comprised of Allie Caulfied (of Just Bananas magazine) and Bobbi Manring (former leader of both Poop World and The Giant Scissors). Them we never worked with before. Things became confusing when we hosted a live show with one of Caulfield's other units, Pant Sniff & Dodo, who we thought were actually pretty cool. We suggested to Allie that maybe we should 'do something' together, and he eventually sent us this album, with a note that read, 'Done all by me! How is it?' Well, we were kinda confused by it, but rather than admit that, we told him it was 'cool, man.' He just giggled. Then we got the art, and the credits, and realized we'd been hoodwinked by the goon. Or goons, rather. But posing as a single goon, if you get my drift. So here we are, stuck again with a record we cannot make heads or tails of. Will we never learn? Apparently not. Hard for us to tell (and none of them will 'fess up) as to who did what. So I paid for a guy to go to Carew's house, ring the bell, hypnotize him with a lucky rock and ask him a few vague questions. He was not able to get any answers, so he ended up peeking through windows and snooping. From overheard conversations, he picked up the notion that the pieces were put together by the active participation of both Carew and Caulfield. Manring mostly played some guitar that was sucked up into the compositions as source material. Thus, she is the real hero of the project. She made actual music, while the other two jalopsters merely diddled with 'found sounds' and 'lifted tracks.' That they actually managed to turn these threads of unease into anything is quite remarkable. But clearly it was Bobbi's input that gave them a sort of starting point. Without her cunning strums, this would be just another 'Dime Operation' (slang for a cheap haircut). Anyway, when you listen to this record, remember -- we're as stumped as you are! The rhythms of the loops makes Ted want to dance, but they just make me hungry. So I'm gonna go get a box of donut holes. You want anything?" --Byron Coley, 2021
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2LP
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FTR 096LP
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Restocked, last copies. Splendid, expanded reissue of this monster album, which most people know from its placement on the NWW List. Stapleton even went so far as to name a track of his ("Fashioned to a Device Behind a Tree") after a mis-hearing of one of Flee Past's' many memorable lines. The music has its roots in Hampshire College's Electronic Music Studio in the early 1970s. While taking a class on electronic composition, Robert Carey was smitten by the potentialities lurking inside piles of reel-to-reel tape. Presented with a stack of such stuff, mostly recorded from television broadcasts, he began an epic stumble into the universe of musique concrète. Carey refashioned banal spoken material into bizarre, hilarious and shockingly musical suites that you could listen to for sheer yucks or revelatory juxtapositions. Influenced by Gysin/Burroughs/Somerville's cut-up techniques, as much as Zappa's 1960s editing flair, Carey (rechristened Orchid Spangiafora by some wise-ass music professors) created new savage aural realities that you could almost dance to. The original album was released by Twin/Tone Records in 1979, at the behest of the Suicide Commandos' Chris Osgood (who'd been Carey's roommate at Hamsphire). It didn't make too much of a splash, but managed to sneak into a lot of important ears nonetheless. And it remains one of the few records that I can put on in the 21st century and still have people ask, "What the hell is that?" Now you can do the same. Edition of 500 copies.
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