HYDRA HEAD RECORDS, 2011 // LP / BUY: VINYL / CD
Prurient’s Bermuda Drain LP dropped out of nowhere and it blew my mind instantly. I picked it up mainly because I was curious about the small sticker on the sleeve: “LISTEN ON HEADPHONES AT NIGHT WHILE DRIVING THROUGH TUNNELS IN EUROPE.” I mean, dude, I had to check it out! Prurient is the stage and production alias of Dominick Fernow (aka Vatican Shadow) who also runs the New York-based Hospital Productions label. It turns out that Fernow has been putting out records and performing live with various U.S. noise bands since the late 90s. I’m not very familiar with his extensive discography and various aliases, but according to numerous articles and reviews I found on the web, Bermuda Drain is his most diverse and emotionally charged album to date. Standout cuts? Definitely “Palm Tree Corpse,” “Let’s Make a Slave,” and the hyper-charged “Watch Silently” and “Sugar Cane Chapel”. Truth to be told, I’ve never really been into noise or black metal, but this album has introduced me to music and sounds I didn’t even know I would like. I didn’t do my 2011 EoY list last year, but if I did, Bermuda Drain would have likely been listed somewhere very close to the top.
PRURIENT – Bermuda Drain by Hydra Head Records
PYE CORNER AUDIO, 2012 // DIGITAL / BUY: DIGITAL
Another year, another fabulous selection of 1/4″ and cassette tapes sourced and transferred by Pye Corner Audio‘s mighty Head technician. Black Mill Tapes Volume 3 follows last year’s Volume 2 which I enjoyed a lot. Subtitled ‘All Pathways Open,’ Volume 3 features a blend of vintage synthesizer electronics and various radiophonic obscurities across twelve tracks and 44+ minutes. Once again, music so great and satisfying that I gladly paid six quid for it.
Just as art is not something just to be looked at, nor is music something to be simply listened to: it has to be experienced – and that’s why format is a critical component, a transparent concession, that is tragically overlooked nowadays. I don’t mean that in the sense of a nostalgic hark back to the days of vinyl, except in the sense of how your experience, at the very least, is profoundly affected by the sensory modalities of having a real object – in this case a record sleeve – to hold and to gaze at, vinyl to smell, to touch, to handle. Imagine how boring food would be if the experience was reduced to taking a small invisible pill every day for all the necessary nutrients – and even this doesn’t take into account the crucial component of foraging and procurement, the very basis of collecting.
Right on. Personally I have never really appreciated music to the fullest up until I started buying vinyl records.
MEMORABILIA. COLLECTING SOUNDS WITH… William Bennett [MACBA.cat, PDF]
On May 29th, 1981, Throbbing Gristle performed their last live show at the Kezar Pavillion in San Francisco, CA. This legendary performance marked the initial breakup of the group and end of its mission.
One of the attendees remembers:
You know for the life of me I can’t remember anymore about the actual music. I can remember closing my eyes during one piece and floating off into the 4th dimension (no drugs here just TG). I can remember jumping up and down because of the intense beat, and I can remember screaming along with the rest of the audience as they yelled back at Genesis during ‘Heathen Earth’. The show ended within the usual 60 minutes with a short version of ‘Discipline’. At the end there was no screaming for more. I think the audience was too mesmerised by the last 60 minutes to really do anything. The group stayed on stage and started packing things up. Genesis talked with the audience for a while and I spoke with peter for a few minutes. As I said at the beginning it wasn’t your average rock concert, it was more a happening, an event and one I’ll remember for a long time to come.
Set list:
“Dead Souls”
“Guts On The Floor”
“Circle Of Animals”
“Looking For The OTO”
“Vision And Voice”
“Funeral Rites”
“Spirits Flying”
“Persuasion U.S.A.”
“The Process”
“Discipline (Reprise)”
I’ve watched the video literally dozens of times already and it simply blows my mind.
In related news, all five TG albums have been remastered and reissued by Industrial Records last year and according to Chris Carter, the sixth and final TG album, TG’s Desertshore – The Final Report, is in the works and set to be released later this year. Bring it!
A bunch of people have emailed me recently asking for some of the mixes that were hosted on this blog throughout the years. As I mentioned already before, all posts prior to February 2011 are gone. Anyway, here’s what I was able to recover from the archives:
Rhythm & Sound – Live at P.S. 1 Warm Up, NYC (2006-09-02) (D/L)
Mountain People DJs – Live on Rundfunk FM (2007-08-04) (D/L)
Daft Punk – Live at Keyspan Park in Brooklyn, NY (2007-08-09) (D/L)
Moodymann – Live on Gilles Peterson Worldwide (2007-10-11) (D/L)
Redshape – Live at Rote Sonne, Munich, Germany (2008-04-10) (D/L)
Surgeon – Live at Fabric London (2009-08-15) (D/L)
Hopefully this will do it.
I honestly have no idea what to make of this. SD has been one of my favorite labels for a while so I’m very concerned right now.
More info, anyone?
Mohave Triangles is the alter ego of North Carolina-based producer Robert Thompson. I discovered his music through his Hooker Vision cassette release called Eternal Light Of The Desert Plateaus recently and was instantly intriqued by his music and sound. I asked Robert to put together a mixtape showcasing his influences and music that inspires him and he kindly sent me a mix titled ‘Earth Primitive’ which features a mixture of psychedelic drone tape music and primitive ambient type stuff:
I wanted this mix to be like a journey through contemporary drone & ambient music, stuff that has highly influenced me throughout the years. Since the nature of the music is psychedelic, I thought it was fitting to start it off with a track by Time Machines (an alias of Coil) that was specifically made to cause you to feel a “temporal slip” or the feeling of time travel, sort of like when you take DMT. The second track is by Axolotl off the album ‘Trade Ye No Mere Moneyed Art’. Although similar in sound to the synthesizers in the first track, Karl Bauer uses a violin to create his drones. After that is a track by Bee Mask off his newest LP, ‘Elegy for a Beach Friday’. I’ve heard that he wanted his music to be like a gas emanating from your speakers, filling your room, and to me that couldn’t be more spot on. Tim Hecker, another favorite of mine, provides some wonderful dark textures with his track “Music for Tundra pt. 1″. It fades nicely into a beautiful track by Do Tell off his album ‘Sewn to the Current’ which is probably my favorite track on this mix. The sweeping guitar drones against the samples of some guy talking and what sounds like a tropical rainforest just gets me every time. the next two tracks are by Transmuteo off his recent tape ‘Cymaglyphs’. The first provides a great sample of a woman talking about meditation. Then it descends into a relaxing drone by Klaus Wiese off his album ‘Soma’. Klaus creates some of the most beautiful, airy sounds, that will put you in a trance if you let them. Very meditational. After that it ends with two tracks by Quartz Safari, which is a project by my friend Sepehr Nabi of Oslo, Norway and myself. Probably some of the best stuff I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of. Sepehr is an amazing musician, so expect great things from him in the future.
‘Earth Primitive’ mixtape tracklist:
Time Machines – ’5-Methoxy-N,N-Dimethyl: (5-MeO-DMT)’ – Time Machines
Axolotl – ‘Track 2′ – Trade Ye No Mere Moneyed Art
Bee Mask – ‘…So That We Each Wander Through A True Elysium’ – Elegy For Beach Friday
Tim Hecker – ‘Music For Tundra pt. 1′ – Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do it Again
Do Tell – ‘Untitled 05′ – Sewn to the Current
Transmuteo – ‘Lightworkers Meditation’ & ‘Starseed’ – Cymaglyphs
Klaus Wiese – ‘Soma I’ – Soma
Quartz Safari – ‘Pineal Origins’ & ‘Disintegrating Into Fractals’ – Pineal Origins
DOWNLOAD: ‘Earth Primitive’ mixtape [official.fm]
FYI: Mohave Triangles releases are available in digital download format from Bandcamp.
HOOKER VISION, 2011 // CASSETTE / BUY: CASSETTE / DIGITAL
Mohave Triangles is the alter ego of North Carolina-based producer Robert Thompson. According to his Facebook page, Thompson is into ‘mysticism, altered states, exploring consciousness and primitive music.’ Very interesting. Released on the killer Georgia-based Hooker Vision imprint, Eternal Light Of The Desert Plateaus sounds like something that could be a soundtrack to a vintage National Geographic video. Ambient drones, primitive field recordings and psychedelia – I’m totally feeling the sound of it. For more stuff from Thompson check out his Bandcamp page here.
DEEPCHORD, 2000 // 12″ / BUY: VINYL
Released in 2000 on the now legendary Detroit-based dub techno imprint DeepChord, dcv09 is a split 12″ between Mike Schommer (Lux) and Rod Modell (A601-2) of Echospace. I paid nearly 50 dollars for a secondhand copy just because of the B1 cut “River Place” which, in my opinion, is one of Modell’s best and most enjoyable transmissions to date. I simply can’t get enough of this track. Hey Rod, if you’re reading this: repress is very much needed.
AUDIO: “River Place” (YouTube)
2011 has been a great year for reissues. Starting with Conrad Schnitzler’s seminal LP Con (reissued as Ballet Statique by the good folks at M=Minimal), Harald Grosskopf’s Synthesist, classics from Drexciya, UR and Arthur Russell, and ending with one of my all-time favorite acts: Throbbing Gristle.
For those of you who have no clue (is that even possible?) who Throbbing Gristle are and their impact on electronic music, here’s some starting points to kick off your research: TG’s Wikipedia, their official website and this excellent article by Federico Nessi. TG’s history is also the subject of Simon Ford’s excellent book Wreckers Of Civilization: The Story of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle which has been out of print for ages and thus pretty hard to come by.
You cannot imagine how happy I was when I first heard that Industrial Records is about to be restarted and reissue all the iconic TG LPs – freshly remastered and repressed for the first time in ages. The original pressings go for hundreds of dollars on Discogs and eBay, so that added even more to my happiness. So far I purchased three of them: The Second Annual Report, D.o.A and 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and I’m planning to acquire the remaining two in the next couple of weeks. TG’s Chris Carter did an awesome job with the remastering and I can confirm that all three LPs sound fantastic. Each LP is housed in a pictured sleeve with visually reconstructed original artwork and 8-page full size booklet featuring vintage photos of the band, newspaper clippings and various artwork. As far as I can tell, each LP is limited to 2,000 copies only, so don’t sleep on this for too long.
You can read more on the remastering process in Carter’s own words here or listen to the excellent Carter/Tutti interview with the Quietus below.
Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti Interview, Rough Trade East by theQuietus