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DVD
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MVD 9805DVD
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"Borbetomagus: A Pollock of Sound is the first feature-length documentary about the legendary improv/noise group Borbetomagus. Filmmaker Jef Mertens brings a raw, urgent, and unpolished vision focusing on a band that has spent almost four decades defining and redefining not just their music, but the boundaries of music itself. Band members Don Dietrich, Donald Miller, and Jim Sauter tell their story with the help of artists, writers, photographers, and filmmakers that include noted critic Byron Coley, drummer Chris Corsano, guitarist Thurston Moore, groundbreaking Japanese noise unit Hijokaidan, and Switzerland's masters of 'cracked electronics,' Voice Crack. Includes never-before-seen archival footage, amazing photographic finds, and previously unreleased recordings."
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LP
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DWR 011LP
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Dancing Wayang present a new and rare studio album by US noise legends Borbetomagus titled The Eastcote Studios Session. Recorded in 2014, it unites fire-breathing saxophonists Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich and face-flaying guitarist Donald Miller whom together summon one of their most forceful yet detailed sonic onslaughts to date. The bulk of Borbetomagus releases over the last forty years have been taken from live recordings. This particular workout, however, took place in the eponymous studio in London and was captured, mixed and mastered with exacting care and attention. That means all the amps lived to tell the tale. It means that the listener can really focus on just what is going on in this music, the individual elements that form the unique "what the...?" that is the Borbetomagus experience. Not that this record isn't monolithic. It's as dense and slab-like on first approach as the vinyl it's pressed on, initially impenetrable and resistant. But that's monolithic as in an Ayler solo, a Bomb Squad production, or a Hijokaidan live meltdown. Or indeed like the structure in Kubrick's 2001. Get close, there are whole worlds in here. It takes serious improv chops and acute listening to carve the detail deep throughout the red meter levels that you'll find in this music. Sauter, Dietrich and Miller have been playing together more than long enough to take their music to that level and beyond. It is a work by musicians who know their instruments and how much they can subvert, distort and reverse engineer them and keep them sounding just the way they want. This studio recording is a new kind of peak. In Jim Sauter's own words: "This is unlike anything we've ever recorded before." Borbetomagus are Jim Sauter (sax), Don Dietrich (sax) and Donald Miller (electric guitar). They have played together since 1979 and have released over 30 albums, cassettes and 7"s. The trio cast a seething, many-tentacled shadow of influence over the Japanese and American noise scenes and stand as wild, brutish brethren to many of our finest European improvisers. Merciless, undeniable and monstrously beautiful. Housed in Dancing Wayang's customary hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeve featuring an explosive collage designed by renowned British artist Richard Wilson. Liner notes by Edwin Pouncey (Savage Pencil, The Wire). 180 gram vinyl in an edition of 500.
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CD
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AGARIC 1993CD
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1993 CD release. Reissue of this classic Purge/Sound League LP by Borbetomagus, recorded 12/6/1987. "Seven Reasons for Tears beautifully documents the most simultaneously fierce and accessible periods of the band's history. Converts and heathens can both bathe luxuriously in the radioactive improv-beauty-stream that lights up a room when the record is played at 'special' volume. Tears is the living spirit of Borbetomagus' numbered days as a quartet with bassist Adam Nodelman. Days to be cherished. The brobdignagian wall-motion of Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich's free-roving horns and Donald Miller's evil-minded guitar-abuse have always had a tendency to hit me above the belt. The textured furrows their howl historically carved into my flesh began at the navel and trailed bloodily up into the aether. Nodelman's terricolous presence gave them full access to listener's aesthetic genitals for the first time and Tears proves they can wreak remarkable damage in this area. It would be the height of irresponsibility for me to suggest that any of this disk's spontaneous outpourings might encourage some sorta social action. Not even the most extreme hippie-style derv-jerk includes a language of gestures explosive enough to coexist with the same incredible buckling of sonic structures here. Still, something like the intro to '7b' has the same semblance-of-approachability that makes even 'outside' rock music a relatively populist proposition. And you could certainly splice chunks of '3' and '6' onto a live tape of MC5 doing a Sun Ra cover without making John Sinclair roll over in his bathtub. So 'mere' rock fans have nothing to fear. Which isn't to say that Tears doesn't have spurts of unprecedented density. I thought they had closed the book once and for all on overtones and 'found' feedback harmonics with their previous record, New York Performances (Agaric 1986), but there are sections here that sound like a dozen distinct and angry zebra trying to burst out of Ed Koch's lower bowel. But it's only the four of them. And they're humans. They're just so goddam intent on what they're doing and so capable of transporting themselves through their hands and brains and lungs that their one beats yr three. It's a simple matter of shamanism -- a quality sadly lacking in most everything you hear today. Imagine this record as a log that's been sharpened by magic, hardened by fire and is just aching to drive itself through yr chest." --Byron Coley, Forced Exposure, 1987
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CD
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AGARIC 1984CD
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Recorded on October 13, 1984 at Rote Fabrik in Zurich, Switzerland. Originally released in 1985 as a double LP. "What is best about Sauter, Dietrich and Miller is that they are playing what jazz should be and not just emptying the tradition through some plastic-sounding fusion of jazz as a 'universal language.' They expand the frontiers of the trance-state without resorting to formulaic repetition and take the expressiveness so natural to jazz to new heights, turning over the conventions common to European improvised music. In short, they are a cleansing experience and force us to readjust our ears to a new sonic landscape. Borbetomagus is one of the best things to come out of the United States in a long time" --Gustave Cerutti, Editor; Jazz 360° No. 73, November 1984. Borbetomagus is: Donald Miller (guitar, alto saxophone), Jim Sauter (tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone), and Don Dietrich (tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, guitar).
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CD
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AGARIC 1998CD
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Jim Sauter (tenor saxophone), Don Dietrich (tenor saxophone) and Donald Miller (guitar); recorded live at Instants Chavires Montreuil, France, December 19, 2009. "What is there to say about Borbetomagus, apart from trotting out all those tired old lines about high-octane, earwax-melting balls-on-the-line free improvisation at cow-rending volume (thanks to Byron Coley for those last two)? If you want meat, details of the history of the group and their various escapades during the past three decades, generously seasoned with Messrs Sauter, Dietrich and Miller's wry humor, I respectfully suggested you go to paristransatlantic.com. But the chances are you've been there, or someplace like it.... So let me assume instead you know precious little about the Instants Chavires in Montreuil, just outside Paris, where this concert took place on December 19th 2009, and the last leg of a tour organized by the Instants' Jean-Francois Pichard to celebrate 30 years of Borbetomagus. It's an odd venue, acoustically: with a high ceiling, an upstairs dressing room above the bar which most musicians don't use unless they want to smoke without going outside or grab a gratis Kronenberg, and a balcony of sorts above the door accessible only by ladder and therefore not used by the public..... Unless you know the place already I don't suppose the above will mean much to you as you listen to this, but for what it's worth, I moved around that room quite a lot during the 46-minute set, remembering what Don Dietrich said in my interview about recording Experience the Magic back in 1993: 'We ditched the three amp approach and we had this big fucking Sunn amp, put all three of our signals into it, and what's really interesting if you listen is you've got this big mass of speakers that we're basically in front of, and as Jim and I walk in front of the speakers you can hear our sound shadows walking in front of the amplifier.' I love that story, and I experienced that same magic during the Instants gig between the pillars by the bar, thrilling at the myriad subtle shifts of frequency and timbre caused by the slightest movement of my head as I craned my neck forward to get a better view of what was happening onstage. Subtle? Borbetomagus subtle? You bet -- listen carefully and you'll hear quite clearly what's going on. You might not be able to tell Jim and Don apart all the time, but you can certainly hear how they bounce ideas off each other and then each take on Donald. So I strongly recommend you try the same thing: crank the volume as high as you can and dare see how this sounds from the other end of your apartment, or inside your walk-in closet when the neighbors come up to get you." --Dan Warburton
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