GEORGE HIROTA-SAHASURARA, LP, 1976, JAPAN

Following up on my January post of this monster Japanese fusion drummer's second album The Wheel Of Fortune (under the name Joji Hirota), here's his obscure first outing from five years earlier, and it's a total stunner. Wholly unlike its follow-up, Sahasurara starts off with absurdly over the top psych/prog histrionics akin to the Kali Bahlu-related Lite Storm album that Jim upped long ago and follows it with a round of becalmed but luscious vibraphone jazz in the mode of Bobby Hutcherson's Montara, which is surely one way of getting my undivided attention. This sorta inspired trade off between the ripping and rippling is key to this album's particular wiles. When this does finally launch into shredding fusion territory on the flip side, it does so in a sublime Terje Rypdal-like atmospheric ethno mystery mode, and it's a vibe that just keeps escalating, as the distinctly odd "The Law Of Causality' slowly wheels into view like some dungeon dwelling inversion of Popol Vuh, with hand percussion and flute trills tracing an occultic route into incipient hysteria. I'll leave the final delicious rug-pull from this headfuck of an album for you to discover for yourselves...

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LA LOORA-RESEDA REVEL, LP, 1986, GERMANY

This quite fantastic German outfit's dark-tinged, fractured and horn-centric spin on synth pop falls between lots of curious poles; their punchy rhythm programming undergirding obstreperous horn fanfares and juddering synth lines that mingle the structurally open-ended and trumpet-laden post punk explorations of The Anti Group with the post punk martial brass attack of Don King and the horn honking finesse of fellow German art rockers The Blech.

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EGBA-S/T. LP, 1974, SWEDEN

Continuing my program of shares of goodies from the Swedish 70's underground, here's one off the fusionoid tip of the spectrum. The two tracks the occupy side A move from airy Brazilian sounding jazz rock whirlwinds ala Airto Moreira and Flora Purim to elegantly brash early Nucleus/early Passport-like sax groovers, though the flip side's a bit more all over the place, with the sweet slithering flute moves of "Lisa Sleeps" butting up against extended African percussion workouts and a few cuts that trigger my sentimental melody kill-switch.

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INDIANS IN MOSCOW-BIG WHEEL 12", 1983, U.K.

Sure this UK synthpop unit would quickly move into territory outside our remit here on MS and indeed, the first two cuts suggest the commercial new wave-y path they'd shortly trod, but stick with it and you'll soon be duly rewarded with two top notch electro-pop gems in an early Human League-meets-Siouxsie And The Banshees mode that you'll have difficulty prying from your memory banks.


Note: links pulled as this is due for reissue very shortly.

CLAUDIO ROCCHI-ESSENZA, LP, 1973, ITALY, NWW LIST

Beginning on a tide of oscillating harmonium drone and plangent vocalizing, Essenza opens deep chasms into the roiling psyche of it's creator, evident even to those like me with zero grasp of the Italian language. This particular third eye-opening Italian cosmic-folk-prog outing (Rocchi's fouth) comes courtesy of a one-time member of Stormy Six and operates in the grand tradition of folk-inflected higher key Italian head music of the era, glancing particularly off of tendencies established or later elaborated on by Alan Sorrenti, Franco Battiato, Lucio Battisti and Mauro Pelosi, with flute-y folkloric passages melting into string drones that in turn morph into bongo driven acid folk with the phaser set to 10. Ravishing and not to be missed.

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CHAMBERPOT-S/T, LP, 1976, UK, NWW LIST

A huge thanks to MS fan Vinylust for providing this exceedingly hard to find Nurse With Wound list item, one of the precious few I'd managed to miss hearing so far and surely a blank waiting to be filled for many who've had this name bouncing around in their brain for years for the same reason. This short lived woodwinds and strings improv ensemble was led by Phil Wachsmann, a free playing violinist with a vast discography and a one time member of both Derek Bailey's Iskra 1903 and Keith Tippett's Ark. This stuff roams around in the more scritchy-scratchy end of improv exploration than the spontaneous music I usually tend to promote here (the sorta squeek-squeek-squeek-POP direction that Amy Denio once tagged chiropractic improv), but there's no denying that this is still quite nicely accomplished work.

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ARTHUR DOYLE ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE-NATIONAL CONSPIRACY, CDR, 2004

Legendary fire tongued free sax blasting madman Arthur Doyle has led this wild and wooly ensemble that mates him with Majora label artist Leslie Q. and folks from Temple Of Bon Matin and Coffee for some ten years now, dropping releases along the way on imprints like Ecstatic Yod and Qbico. Issued in an edition of only 60 copies, National Conspiracy finds Doyle and this crew making tape mangled and spaghetti tangled mischief out of recordings of their already wonkily unstable sounding gigs; the manhandled end results landing not far afield from something like Smegma.

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ENSEMBLE HAVADIA-81-82, CD, 2006 (RECORDED: 1981-1982), ITALY

Combining the first LP and follow up EP from this peculiar and rather late in the game Italian folkloric art prog unit, the material from their eponymous debut co-mingles the magisterial prog neoclassicism of St. Just and Opus Avantra, the whimsical bippity-boop of early 70's French psych/proggers Komintern and the delicately askew acoustic configurations of Quebec's Conventum with sound effects and narrative interventions to mostly winning ends, while the work on "Specchi", their aborted second album (finally released as an EP) would take these preoccupations to an even more enjoyable set of conclusions, reformatting the suite like structures into song form bursts that tap a vein of perky eccentricity reminiscent of their fellow travellers on the early 80's Italian scene in La Pattona.

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JEREMY STEIG-MONIUM, LP, 1974, USA

Flute-y fusion gorgeousness from the lips of maestro Steig, one of the early pioneers of the jazz rock idiom via his work in Jeremy & The Satyrs in the late 60's alongside Eddie Gomez. Steig's approach during this period was perhaps most comparable to early 70's outings by The Chris Hinze Combination like Who Can See The Shadow Of The Sun. The best cuts here are also the longest, with Monium featuring what is perhaps my favorite Steig track ever: a ten minute slice of ethno-psychedelic delirium called Djinn Djinn that'll slowly tighten the psychotropic band around your temples with it's snake-y weave, though Dream Passage's fluidly aerated flow will leave you feeling like you're floating several inches off of the ground as well.

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CAC (CYKLON ANTICYKLON)-IAOTF NO 6, LP, 1986, DENMARK

Another unearthed treasure from the Danish 80's underground courtesy of the same anonymous blog friend that gifted us with the Mind Pollution LP. My opinions follow, but first some factual info from our anonymous contributor about this outfit:


"The band was formed in 1980/81 by Sods/Sort Sol drummer Tomas Ortved, member of the noise/punk/experimental band No Knox Per Tuno on guitar and Danish artist/painter Peter Bonde on bass. The band recorded a jamsession in Sods' practice room and released a DIY 7" in 1981 called "Cyklon Og Anticyklon", I have never heard it, so if you ever get hold of it please send me a link.

The title of this record is short for "In And Out The Flat" which was the title of a series of different projects that Bonde and his fellow painter/poet friend Claus Carstensen worked on during the 80s, as you can see on the coverscan Carstensen also contributed to this album, along with Jill Pianna Dahl from the group Peter Og Fuglen. Ruby and Amber Atkinson is Terry Atkinson's daughters. I think Tom Jeppesen is some sort of studio technician."


You'd be forgiven for expecting some post-SPK industrial horror show from a group with a moniker like Cyklon Anticyklon, but this is anything but. Positively gregarious and nearly un-peggable, this crew were led by a punchdrunk frontman with a line of lip flap somewhere between The Cravats' Robin Dallaway and Limey Dave from Tupleo Chain Sex, while the tunes themselves are purely schizophrenic, lurching about madly across half a dozen genres and taking in everything from diseased Birthday Party-like blues-y fracture to bug eyed pop goofiness ala Gee Mr. Tracy along with some corn pone rockabilly moves and even genteel eccentricity in the mode of Pascal Comelade or Kulu Hatha Mamnua. Go figure. Better still, just listen...

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SPRATLEYS JAPS-PONY, CD, 1999, UK

Drop dead brilliant psych pop moves from this throat-lump-inducing Cardiacs offshoot, whose mellotron swaddled upfullness and tone of mad glee (tempered relative to the unhinged hysteria of The Cardiacs, but still maniacal) make Spratleys Japs a prime contender for best psych band of the 90's. Pony is an album full of strange tensions and contrasts from both a musical and production standpoint, with the now-expansive-now-constricted compress-o-phile attack here both strongly relating to the tone that The Cardiacs were striking on albums of the period like Guns or Sing To God, as well veering far off track from the vein-bulging prog/pop/punk histrionics heard on those, with several key pieces here basking in resplendent mellotron sun rays and grandiose hymnals before doubling down into a wiry little ball and exploding in another starburst of unhinged monkey business.

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***NOTE: THERE'S A MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINK IN THE COMMENT FIELD*** 

ZDL-IN DER MASCHINENHALLE, TAPE, 198?, GERMANY

Following up on both my recent post of Z.D.L. member Claus Van Bebber's Schallplattenkonzert and a host of other Z.D.L. tapes that I upped in back in '07 (and yes, their name includes the periods on all their other releases), this live outing from Van Bebber and his Neue Deutsche Welle cohorts of the era relates most to the material heard on their "Nicht Als Heft. Verlangen" tape; the greyscale volleys of no wave-indebted thwack, clatter and harangue and the overall feverish atonal atmosphere placing this live outing within spitting distance of Einsturzende Neubauten.

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ETANT DONNES-BLEU, CD, 1994, FRANCE

The work of brothers Eric and Marc Hurtado, Etant Donnes (named in tribute to Marcel Duchamp's last major piece) have been a going concern since 1980, though their music and overall vision would expand beyond the somewhat typical post-industrial experimentation of their early tapes by several orders of magnitude over the course of the late 80's and 90's, a sea change that found the two of them utilizing the context of a "band" as a means of expressing a unique range of artistic impulses related to the sacred, the ecstatic and the alchemical and expressing them in highly stylized performances where the two would enact scenes of love and hate (kissing, punching etc) while bedecked in body paint and costumes accompanied by pre-recorded tapes. Both rigorously formalized and strangely moving, their fully mature musical vision occupies a unique juncture in experimental music: a zone where cilia-prickling electroacoustic-like spatialization techniques and zoom focus perspectives on natural phenomena (insects, water, rushing air) fuse with whispered texts and spare electronic treatments to enact something deeply redolent of the uncanny.

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THE MUFFINS-SECRET SIGNALS 1, TAPE, 1989 (RECORDED: 1974-1978), USA

This unpromisingly monikered but wonderfully innovative unit existed on a parallel course to most everything else prog or fusion related occurring within the U.S. at the time of their existence and shone all the brighter for it. Initially a direct descendent of the Canterbury jazz rock strains cultured by the likes of Soft Machine, Hatfield And The North, National Health and Gilgamesh, this crew's sound would latterly morph into something much more angular, hectic and R.I.O. indebted on their Fred Frith-produced 80's albums "185" and "Open City". Spanning the period between the archival material heard on their Chronometers CD and their vinyl debut in '78 with Manna/Mirage (and with tracks from each appearing in modified versions), the sound on this obscure odds and ends compendium is firmly in a nimble and finespun Canterbury mode, though with rather more of the wacky pants improv bits that cropped up sporadically on their albums tacked on here.

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SOLID EYE-"BLUE NINJA TAR IN HABITAT" "LIVE BREAD CULTS/FIGDATES REMEMBERING" "BREW WARY PARAGOOS", CDR, 2006, USA

Issued on the dubious CDR (formally 7") imprint Dolor Del Estamago aka Stomach Ache (who used to put out sale lists of non-existant singles "available" at non-existant addresses), this below-the-radar issue from these L.A. Free Music society mavens/lifers/head cases is another classic in a long line of 'em, but what else would one expect from an outfit featuring freaks the caliber of Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer and Steve Thomsen? Passages of this unwieldily titled missive come off a tad more desolate and abraded sounding than some of their other releases, rendering the sonics here most akin to those heard on their Live At Tokuzo CD that I posted long ago. Marvel as cheerfully mulched antique media emanations wheel about the room drunkenly, pistons pump like lubricated slinkies and valves wheeze with teakettle squeals, triggering Rube Goldberg chain reactions on sets designed by Jeunet and Caro.

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MIND POLLUTION-YOUR POLLUTION, LP, 1981, DENMARK

Exemplary uneasy listening from these down-in-the-mouth Danes, who ride the frayed edge of advanced post punk songform in a way that speaks of long hours spent grappling with This Heat's debut; the alienated atmospheres, baleful intonings and detuned trudge cadences here also varyingly calling to mind other UK stalwarts of eerily morose post punk, like Storm Bugs and Metabolist. Thanks to an anonymous blog friend for this startling discovery!

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KONTROLLCHAOS-ANANAS, TAPE, 1982, GERMANY

Quintessential Neue Deutsche Welle that straddles the ground between the terse and amusingly inane by splitting the difference between minimal synth doink descended from the Der Plan/
Ata-Tak axis, with cheap grotty synths spitting out monomaniacal video game progressions and jittery pop punk quirk ala Radierer and Familie Hesselbach.

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NOSTALGIE ETERNELLE-(1986-91), GERMANY (UNRELEASED)

Some of the earliest extant recordings from this crew featuring long-time German sub-underground operatives Stefan Heinze (aka Inox Kapell) and Dieter Mauson from Delta-Sleep-Inducing-Peptide. Moody and remote, Nostalgie Eternelle's hazily recessive basement approach to minimal synthiness might have been chronologically behind the curve but musically, this stuff's right in the pocket. These two would issue a spate of releases under this identity across several Euro cassette culture imprints during the late 80's/early 90's, though this set appears to be some sorta privately issued collection retrospectively compiled by the band themselves, and now here it is now recycled, since the link's been dead elsewhere for some time.

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SORRY FOR THE TARDINESS WITH GETTING NEW STUFF POSTED...

There's been a truly absurd amount of stuff going on behind the scenes this week. Much as I try to reliably deliver for all of you once every 9-10 days, meeting the deadline this time just became impossible. The next round of my posts will go up with a few days time. Stay tuned...

DRAENGENDE HEBELKRAFT-ENTNAHMT X, TAPE, 1989, SWITZERLAND

A well conceived round of tape manglings and undulating shudderings with absurdist undercurrents from this obscure Swiss crew associated with the art terrorists from Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock and released on their Schimpfluch imprint, also responsible for issuing the few other extant bits from this unit, which appear on the Stuhlgangblockade, Zerstuckelte Denkkurbeln and Psychic Rally No. 3 compilations. Accordions are abused, vocals stutter in time with metallic scythings, pitch shifted electronic loops evoke wounded animals and swarms of metal insects communicate in morse code with pans of sizzling fat over the course of these two side long investigations, though with the events here unfolding in a notably more integrated sonic fashion than the shock tactic structural (il)logic of most of the other artists associated with this imprint.

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WILLIAM D. DRAKE-S/T, CD, 2001, UK

A peripheral member of the Cardiacs tribe, Drake was part of both their offshoot unit The Sea Nymphs and the extraordinary ensemble heard on the Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Mr. Drake tape that Jim upped many years ago. Drake's songcraft is a piercingly evocative thing. British as a crumpet, his vision of psychedelic pop manages the curious feat of simultaneously tapping antique sounding music hall-isms in the spirit of Davies, Beatles, et al. while stripping away the cheer and appending a sorta queered and depressive sea shanty cadence in it's place. Though absent the prog dimension that's so integral to their shebang, Drake's relationship to the Cardiacs mothership is never in question, his approach here continually relating back to tangents undertaken by Tim Smith and Co., though his honing in on the particular set of musical concerns at hand couldn't be more welcome.

Note: this is now available directly from Mr. Drake via his bandcamp page Here

FONDATION-LA VAISSEAU BLANC, TAPE, 1983, FRANCE

The final installment of my Fondation posts and the last musical release of both Ivan Coaquette (formerly of Spacecraft and Musica Elettronica Viva), who'd cease musical activities thereafter and return to his visual art pursuits and Annanka Raghel, whose trail after Fondation simply evaporates. Issued on Pascal Bussy's amazing Tago Mago imprint in a retooled giant matchbox, this is purely of a piece with their previous releases, Le Vaisseau Blanc in some respects representing a last hurrah for this aesthetic dimension of the French underground scene, with hallucinogenic webs of delayed electronics and wetly effected guitars weaving vapor trails around one another in a manner directly descended from the Heldon/Lard Free school of dystopian cosmic rock.

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VAPAA-VUOMA, CDR, 2005, FINLAND

Following my recent post of their Jamit Tai Ei Mitaan CDR, here's Vuoma, a momentary 50 copy flicker in the shambolic saga of the contemporary Finnish underground and their countrywide obsession with all things detuned. The particular collective at hand here (along with their individual members' pursuits) is one that I've covered at length elsewhere. Featuring pivotal Finnish scene operative Keijo Virtanen and cohorts from his Free Players ensemble, Vuoma comes off about as insular and functionally disabled as they've ever been on record, all stumblebum string abuse, queasy squeezebox wheeze and disconsolate wobble, with the results sounding as if it were recorded on a dictaphone and played back on a dying Victrola.

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CLAUS VAN BEBBER-SCHALLPLATTENKONZERT, 3" CD, 1992, GERMANY

It's been a while since I've upped something from this longstanding paragon of Germany's marginal fringe. Time to rectify that. Van Bebber was initially a member of the Neue Deutsche Welle outfit Z.D.L. (covered at length elsewhere), and latterly emerged over the following decades as a stalwart of the German improv community, his specialty being seasick symphonies of vinyl abuse in the mode of Phillip Jeck, Christian Marclay and Milan Kniszac. Schallplattenkonzert is a smashing example of the sorta dislocated trans-historical frisson that emerges from shrewdly pastiching several generations of antiquated and marred vinyl in an acutely sensitized fashion.

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