MURMER We Share A Shadow (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 15.98
BACK IN PRINT! We thought this gem from the Helen Scarsdale Agency was going to stay out of print forever, but due to a fortuitous pressing plant glitch (when are those ever fortuitous?), a small second pressing has now been made available! Here's what we've said about this album when it first came out in 2007:
Proprietor of the Framework radio show on Resonance FM for many years now, Patrick McGinley has implored his listeners to "open your ears and listen" to the world at large, presenting an impeccable series dedicated to field recordings and its use in composition. So, it goes with out saying that the field recording and the found object are commonplace within McGinley's own sound art constructions which he records under the moniker Murmer (and not Murmur, mind you!). Given his predilection for wandering throughout the European countryside for all that it has to offer (not just limited to environmental sound), his recorded output has been somewhat limited. We Share A Shadow is his first proper solo album in almost three years, although his collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough did stand out as one of the dronemusik highlights of 2006. Consisting of two very long pieces, We Share A Shadow is a notably restrained album whose dark beauty reveals itself with a slow and deliberate pace. The first untitled piece opens with sheets of cold rain scuffing the smooth arcs of bowed metals, whose Feldman-like swell and collapse recalls the late period work of Bernhard Gunter. As the rain gently fades, a composite drone emerges out of those rasps and vibrations from the bowed metals and intensifies through dissonant timbres subtly agitating the shimmer and filigree of the gilted drone. Throughout, windswept debris ricochets across the stereo field casting an ominous cloud onto the sustained tones. The second piece is an even darker affair with a motor grinding against a piece of metal in the distance while a somber, almost doomscape piano plods in the foreground. With plenty of low frequency rumbles and spectral activity lingering in the background, this piece is almost like KTL remixing Xenakis at 16 RPM. Needless to say, this is an incredible album.
Gorgeously packaged in hand water-colored / letterpressed sleeves, SECOND PRESSING ONLY 175 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"

MURMER What Are The Roots That Clutch (Helen Scarsdale) cd 14.98
In looking at his discography alone, Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) might not seem to be such a prolific artist; although he's certainly dedicated his entire existence to the pursuit of the field recording, its use in composition, and avant-garde sound practices in general. Each week, McGinley produces the ever enlightening Framework radio series dedicated to those very topics, starting out of Resonance FM in London with syndication now reaching several dozen adventurous radio stations across the globe. He's also active in curating a quarterly series of small cd-r editions of sound ecology, phonography, and field recording based sound art; and he also is an active participant in the Estonian avant-garde, as he's currently planted himself in the university city of Tartu. What Are The Roots That Clutch is his first full album in nearly seven years. Has it really been that long? That said, McGinley did work on a brilliant collaborative project with John Grzinich and Yannick Dauby, and he released a 3"cd-r for Taalem, both of which came out earlier this year in 2012. McGinley quips that he put the recordings aside to this record for well over a year, which may account in part for the delay; but ultimately, all of the recordings from Murmer are timeless. What Are The Roots That Clutch is no exception.
The field recordings that McGinley collects hedge towards disturbances in any given sound ecology, as found in the abrasive textures from a busted exhaust vent comingling with the Aeolian harmonics from the sustained gusts streaming down from the North Sea. McGinley does include two relatively unaltered field recordings (probably some minor filtering, but that's all) within the thoroughly abstracted and droned out compositions. One of these features a very eerie fundamental harmonic drone, obviously being activated by the wind and coupled with a glistening rattle and an unfurled flapping. The three elements here make for a surprisingly musical, if totally alien sounding piece that's akin to the Alan Lamb wire recordings. The album's 17 minute centerpiece is a slow building blur of industrial resonance and densely layered aquatic filigree that melts into chunks of clattering ice (it could be wood or glass... but ice is just so much more poetic to consider given the context); but the album's finale is where McGinley really gives us something to sink our teeth into. A comparatively harsh stutter of electrical abrasion builds up to a crescendo through water-tank rumblings and fire and / or water textures. At the peak, McGinley snaps to a downright psychedelic raga of back-masked belltones, harmonium drones, and percussive clatter that all comes together in a minimalist chorale on par with anything that Angus Maclise mustered in his dervishes and mantras.
As great as McGinley's last record was, What Are The Roots That Clutch might be even better. Handsomely packaged in letterpress artwork whose ochre-yellow hue matches the color of an Estonian farm house he's quite fond of. Limited to 400 copies.
MPEG Stream: "What Are The Roots That Clutch 3"
MPEG Stream: "What Are The Roots That Clutch 4"
MPEG Stream: "What Are The Roots That Clutch 5"

MURMUR Fermata - The Dixie Brewery Fermentation Tank Session (Backporch Revolution) cd-r 9.98
It's been raining Murmurs lately. Or Murmers. Or both. The last little while has given us the dark dronemusic of UK based Murmer aka sound sculptor Patrick McGinley. Then there's the dubstep pop ambient of the group Murmur with a 'u' that just came out (to be reviewed here soon). And there's definitely at least one other Murmer... and now we have -this- Murmur, also with a 'u', and we actually got an email from these guys about all the Murmurs and Murmers and they were talking about actually trying to do a three way collaboration! Cool.
This Murmur, is a loose collective of sound makers who gathered in an old decrepit brewery in New Orleans, where one of the players worked, and helped the others gain after hours access. The quintet dragged their instruments up into an old metal fermentation tank, dark and dank, with SO much natural reverb, that they couldn't even talk amongst themselves as the sounds would echo and overlap and turn into blurry smears of sound that would drown out the conversation. And so it was with any sound, the group had to barely play, barely breath, as every movement, every shuffle of the foot, would result in another layer of strange echoing sound. The building that housed the tank was subsequently damaged in Hurricane Katrina, then looted, and still stands abandoned and crumbling to this day.
Thankfully the resulting sounds are as fascinating as the story behind their creation. Using just acoustic guitars, harmonium, a tamboura-zither box, dobro, cymbal, Tibetan bells and vocals, the group, coaxed hushed sounds from their instruments, letting them interact with the alien acoustics of the tank around them. The various stringed instruments, their metallic buzz, billow into thick swells of reverberating low end, that occasionally transform into buzzing rhythmic pulses, always fading back into tranquil shimmers.
The organs wheeze, the vocals hum, the cymbals spread out like ripples in a pond, the percussion clatters and tinkles, the background rife with thumps and rattles, moans and creaks, but it's not just wispy drones and barely there rumbles, the band occasionally locks into some NNCK style shambolic freefolk, the guitars unfurling lazily, a constantly expanding smear of stumbling atonal riffage, drifting through a cloud of jangle and reverb, almost like a super lo-fi disembodied krautrock, the whole thing laced through with a nearly constant dronelike buzz, a sitar sounding shimmer that holds all the drifting sonic slabs together.
MPEG Stream: "Discovery Of Mother Voidness"
MPEG Stream: "Description Of The Between"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Commonwealth (23five) cd 14.98
We've ballyhooed Brendan Murray's exceptional, yet perennially overlooked drone & din work in the past; but nothing could have prepared us for Commonwealth. Damn, this guy is good. No, wait; he's fucking great! After a handful of cd-r productions, a Twonicorn cassette, and a fine cd release on Intransitive of processed shimmer, shifting frequencies, and some low-end girth rumblings for our obligatory SUNNO))) reference, Brendan Murray has produced his best work to date with Commonwealth. Compositionally, it's incredibly simple: a drone goes up, and it goes down. It lasts a little under 50 minutes. But buried with this single minded composition, there are thick spun rumbles, reflective vibrations, sympathetic sub-harmonics, and rich tonal frequencies. Out of the constant tectonic whir that introduces Commonwealth, shimmering clusters sound like a battery of reed organs or hurdy-gurdies, slowly modulating into heavier, deeper drones. We've been told that the source material for these sounds is guitar, although you'd be hard pressed to hear anything guitar-shaped anywhere on the disc. It's far more like the hallowed minimalist sound of Charlemangne Palestine and LaMonte Young. Dare we say, it's better? Yes, Murray's drone hums like a perfectly tuned machine, with multiple pistons purring in a steady progress along Commonwealth's compositional arc. When Murray shifts the focus of the album downward, which begins not even halfway through the piece, the descent is noticeable; but it actually becomes Murray's most fertile work within Commonwealth. Here, low rhythmic thrumbs crawl beneath the surface of the slowly collapsing drone, precluding its inevitable terminus. Perfect trance-enducing dronemuzik. Fans of Aidan Baker, Andrew Chalk, and Phill Niblock should definitely take note!
MPEG Stream: "Commonwealth (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Commonwealth (extract 2)"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Everybody Wants The Tide (Audiobot) cd-r 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Managed to get a little handful of these back in stock, so act fast.
This one is for the drone obsesses among you. Not the soft shimmery dronesters, although you softies might take a shine to this, no, this is a deeeeeeeeeeep dark doooomy drone, a massive 40+ minute single stretch of undulating organic rumble. Broken old Casio keyboards, found sounds, field recordings all woven into a huge rafter rattling, bass bin blowing, bone shaking, cranium cracking lowercase minimal dirge. Pulses and whirs, rumbles and growls, all rendered indistinct, painted black and folded in on themselves, a black hole, a thousand helicopters hovering in place, a hundred meters below the sea, two planets colliding, the shockwave traveling through the universe setting up sympathetic vibrations in every inanimate object in existence, until the whole galaxy is bombinating like a struck tuning fork. So awesome.
LIMITED TO 110 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "Everybody Wants The Tide (excerpt)"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Inveterate (Arbor) cassette 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Brendan Murray, we salute you! You get the reason why there should be a cassette resurrgence - the 90 minute tape! So many noise / drone / floorcore tapes have been released in recent years as 8, 12, 15, 20 minute running times, and it's totally baffling. If you're gonna put out a cassette, let's have the full 90-minute experience as was the norm for any self-respecting mixtape in the '80s and '90s.
So, yes the Boston-based minimalist has cranked out a stunning, slow-crawl tape of suspended tone, that was originally commisioned as some sort of installation thing at Weird Records. The A-side is a brain-drain smear of brass instruments turned into a brash atonal undulation that sounds more like a symphony of junkyard car-horns rather than french horns or trumpets (the more likely culprits). As a result, Murray's piece becomes this glacial recapitulation of a Hermann Nitsch style sonic violence, whose speed is crushingly slow but impossible to avoid. There are also similarities to Murray's highly acclaimed Commonwealth album and its long-stare contest of inevitable decline. If you sit and listen for anything to change there's nothing noticable in the perpetual shimmer and consummate drone; but get up leave the room for a couple of minutes and something will be different - a slight variation in timbre, a repeating form either added or subtracted, a lumbering rhythm oozing from the depths, etc. The B side is not an exact replica of the first, promoting more compositional leaps and starts. In reality these shifts are quite subtle, but given the anesthetizing affect of the A side, any transition is gonna appear like a huge mountain range on a flat surface. Put this up there with LaMonte Young and Charlemange Palestine. Limited to 150 copies of professionally dupped cassettes.

MURRAY, BRENDAN Live Free Or Die (23five Incorporated) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Oooohhh! Live Free Or Die is a re-configuration of Brendan Murray's acclaimed Commonwealth cd, also released by San Francisco's premier sound arts organization 23five. This limited edition redux was conceived as a "tour disc" in support of Murray's 2009 performance at the San Francisco Art Institute, opening for Tony Conrad. The title happens to be the motto for New Hampshire, and has more to do with his personal history in living in New England than anything else. As a teenager, Murray was living in New Hampshire when he and a friend ventured to Boston for a Table Of The Elements showcase that featured a performance from Mr. Conrad. In so many words, the concert blew his mind, and lead him to begin tinkering with sound, a process which lead him to become a mighty finer minimalist and phonographer in his own right.
In making Live Free Or Die, Murray drove Commonwealth (a stately single minded composition of subtly shifting harmonics and drones) through a handful of distortion pedals and effects boxes, changing the overall color of that golden recording with an ashen grit. Using these sounds as the source material, Murray presents two slowly building crescendos whose dynamic range of near silent valleys and speaker rattling peaks as the crux to Live Free Or Die. More Francisco Lopez than Eliane Radigue, Live Free Or Die makes for a very nice companion to his near perfect Commonwealth. There were only 50 copies of these things produced, and the bulk have already disappeared! Ack!
MPEG Stream: "Live Free Or Die"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Ocean Of Dirt (Gameboy Japan) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We reviewed Murray's last cd-r release not too long ago (and we actually have a handful of those left, re-listed elsewhere on this list) and we started that review with the words: "This one is for the drone obsesses among you. Not the soft shimmery dronesters, although you softies might take a shine to this, no, this is a deeeeeeeeeeep dark doooomy drone, a massive 40+ minute single stretch of undulating organic rumble." And heck, had we not already use those very words to describe another record, we could very well have used them to describe this one too. 39 minutes of barely shifting bottomless pit drone. Dreamy and pretty, sure, but this is not soft and shimmery, or wispy and gauzy, no, this is dark, and thick, and throbbing and pulsing, lots of layers and tonal color, melodies maybe, but if they are in there, they're stretched and smeared and almost completely lost in the slow crawl fabric of "Ocean Of Dirt, Mountain Of Steam." Close listening reveals plenty of microscopic sonic events, as well as some crystalline loveliness, and over the course of the disc's 40 minutes, the drone does twist and subtly transform, but for the most part this is a near static droneworld, ultra meditative, densely minimal, and surprisingly gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Ocean Of Dirt, Mountain Of Steam (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Ocean Of Dirt, Mountain Of Steam (excerpt 2)"

MURRAY, BRENDAN s/t (Students Of Decay) cd 23.00
It's always exciting to get a new disc of droning mystery from soundmaker Brendan Murray. We went pretty nuts for past releases, which is saying something as it takes a lot these days for a drone record to really get to us. And for a drone artist to consistantly hold our attention record after record. Of course we love drones, so as a sound, we're as likely to be entranced by a huge humming piece of machinery as a meticulously crafted chunk of ultra minimalist dronemusic (hmmm, what exactly does that say about us?), but we're of course partial to the artists who can deftly fashion drones into new and fascinating shapes, or who create music using drones as just one of many elements.
Which is precisely what makes Murray's music so special, just that, it's incredibly musical. He's perfctly capable of kicking up a SUNNO)))-like wall of downtuned dirge, or fashion a skeletal bit of hushed murmur, but even then he infuses those all to common sounds with strange melodies, and abstract textures, transforms simple tones and chords into strange sprawling beasts, sounds become actual songs, with melodies and parts, distinct beginnings and ends, each song is a journey, through thick fields of warm hissy blur, caustic crumbling crunch, chiming crystalline shimmer, deep machine-like industrial whir, clangy and clattery abstract angular guitar flecked noise rock, very Dead C here and there, gorgeously murky and lo-fi, and weirdly looped sounding, intense wall of pink noise whir and billowing clouds of near static organ hum. Dark and dense and mysterious and intense, but always so so gorgeous.
While they last, we have the limited version, that comes with a bonus cd-r, featuring a 30 minute live performance recorded last year, a super intense, ultra heavy exploration of some seriously woofer destroying bassiness. Deep rumbling whirs, sprawling into massive reverbeating slabs of black hole low end. Wow.
MPEG Stream: "Sleeprunning"
MPEG Stream: "From The Melted Past"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Scared In My Heart (Twonicorn) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another new one from tape label Twonicorn, a label specializing in "basement new age crawl", finally new music from the highly underrated Brendan Murray, who as we mentioned before we would most definitely rank up there with Coleclough and Chalk as one of our favorite masters of the drone. Former missives from Murray have been of the harsher and heavier variety, gritty and buzz bottomless dronescapes, still ultra minimal but with some heft, bordering occasionally on the heaviness of SUNNO))) or other like minded sonic explorers. But on Scared In My Heart, Murray softens his sound, and offers up two utterly mesmerizing chunks of slow moving soft shimmer. The first, is all hushed ambience, tones that pulse and flutter, but are ultimately smeared into endless drones, allowed to shift and drift, seemingly simple and nearly static, but rife with strange tonal color, subtle dissonance, and all sorts of tangled melody. The second, is like a louder, more active version of the first, the tones sounding more like bells and organs, stretched out and smeared, wavering and warbling, notes beating against one another, all manner of implied motion and abstract melody, minimal but strangely active, intense and emotional, slow burning and quite beautiful.
As with all Twonicorn, gorgeously packaged, pro printed tapes, textured paper sleeves, and of course super limited, ONLY 100 COPIES!! Each tape hand numbered.

MURRAY, BRENDAN Wonders Never Cease (Intransitive) cd 12.98
This is the first release we've had from dronelord Brendan Murray that wasn't either a cd-r or incredibly limited. And it's about time, cuz if you ask us, Murray is just as good as any of our other drone favorites, Coleclough, Chalk and the like. But Murray has his own thing going on. His is not so dark and minimal. Instead, his world of drones is an active one, alive with strange sounds that shimmer and shimmy, that buzz and blur, plenty of melody or at least a melodic sensibility that Murray seems to imbue all his work with. He often delves into near-noise, letting sounds grind and hiss, building industrial clatterscapes, jagged and harsh, and allowing them to settle into a not so obvious drone-like state. And his latest, Wonders Never Cease, manage to touch on all those various sounds and approaches and then some. From soft fluttering barely there drifts, to fuzzy stretches of muted minimal white noise, to dense and aggressive soundscapes of hiss and crunch, to the album's centerpiece, the 20 minute long "Seas", probably the most melodic track we've heard by Murray, strange disembodied melodies play out and then the various notes separate themselves from the melody and drift into the ether, floating weightless in a swirl of minimal low end pulses and distant keening high end shimmer. A twenty minute track that could last for 20 hours as long as we're concerned. The record finishes off with a 4 minute reprise of the opening track, turning its fuzzy bliss into a grinding crumbling slab of bob ambient splendor. Fucking awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Hymn One"
MPEG Stream: "Seize"

MURRAY, BRENDAN & MIKE SHIFLET Sentimental Gentlemen (Sentient Recognition Archive) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here's the second pressing cd-r of a tour ep that these two New England noise+drone artists self-produced during their 2008 East Coast into Midwest tour. Nope, we never got any of that first edition; and perhaps if you didn't catch them tearing it up in Columbus, Ohio, this one might be new to you as well. We've been longtime fans of Brendan Murray's work, which has steadily developed into a very confident brand of minimalism thanks to such work as Wonders Never Cease and Commonwealth. Shiflet's numerous contributions to the American noise community have been splattered on cd-rs from every nook and cranny you could imagine, including his own imprint Gameboy.
For Sentimental Gentlemen, the two weld together each others aesthetics with remarkable panache. The first track is pretty much what you might expect, as Murray's arching compositional strategies couple with Shiflet's seering tactility, which is somewhat softened from such couplings with 16 Bitch Pile-Up and Carlos Giffoni that nonetheless is graced with an electrocutionist's touch. Shortwave radio static and cracked ether highly charged with electricity hang amidst harmonically unsettled sustained tones that slowly build over 15 minutes with phase pattern flutter. The second piece glibby entitled "How's Your Late 90's?" snaps into an abraded electro-acoustic chunk of clipped signals above a bed of low end sawtooth waves and motorized oscillations, that's much more on par with some of the hand built circuits that Joe Colley has managed to abuse over the years. Great stuff all around, and limited edition to 150 copies to boot.
MPEG Stream: "Early Retirement"
MPEG Stream: "How's Your Early '90s?"

MURRAY, BRENDAN / PERISPIRIT split (Semata Production / Razors & Medicine) lp 13.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Here's the first piece of vinyl from one of our favorite drone artists - Brendan Murray. Here, he's working with his Boston neighbors Perispirit, whose earlier recordings seem to lean much more toward the power-noise end of the soundscraping underworld, but actually ends up being a worthy compliment.
Brendan Murray offers an interesting twist upon his electrical orchestrations of uneasy minimalism for his contribution to this split. Here, Murray is working with the voice of Noell Dorsey as the only source material. Not all that sure of the background of Ms. Dorsey, aside from a few avant-improv performances in various spots in Boston; and Murray repurposes her voice within a churning insectoid drone which elegantly descends into a soft hum whose calm is disrupted through signal ruptures of Dorsey's cackling. These witchy vocalizations have all of the bloodcurdling empathy of Diamanda Galas, but Murray is more interested in dissembling that voice into a swarm of disquieting drone.
The Perispirit half of the record begins with a lurching splatter of air-compressed noise, broken up with tiny jittery silences and heavily gated signal processing, only to snap into a shadowy, lonesome ambient passage of lilting guitar tones, which gradually acquire a leaden sheen of heavy, downtuned distortion before cutting back to a rupture of those aerated noises from the first moments of the record. Another razor edit back to silence, and Perispirit makes another ramp of guitar-sourced dronescaping through atonal loops and layers of sound, whose density has the rapturous quality of those Chatham / Branca guitar armies, but coupled with some low-impact noisemongering below. Limited to 250 copies, pressed on off-white vinyl, and certainly recommended!

MUSIC NOW ENSEMBLE 1969 Silver Pyramid (Matchless) cd 17.98
The Music Now Ensemble 1969 is a vital missing link between the arcane studies of Cornelius Cordew's Scratch Orchestra and the free-noise continuum of AMM's extended family. This huge collective featured Keith Rowe and Eddie Prevost (both members of AMM) as well as Cadrew, Lou Gare, John Tilbury, Gavin Bryars, David Jackman and dozens of others. But for the Silver Pyramid performance at the Roundhouse in London, Prevost recalls that the ensemble numbered only around 9. This newly-issued recording (mastered from a dusty cassette which captured the room ambience as well as the performance) is a 74 minute organic scraping symphony built out of a very loose improvisation. A sinous droning sound is created via abused cellos, the wistful sustained notes of penny whistles, and Keith Rowe's growling guitar buzz. While Prevost is credited as authoring this piece (mostly because he actually constructed a giant silver pyramid covered in a shimmering material which reflected beams of light in any number of directions!), the director for the night was Keith Rowe, whose improvisational aesthetic of rough hewn striations and gritty drones held a stately authority over the proceedings. An outstanding document that we're lucky to now have!
RealAudio clip: "Silver Pyramid excerpt"

MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA Spacecraft (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
International collective MEV originated in Rome in the mid-sixties as a vehicle for the live performance of electronic music. Seeking to transform "occupied space" into "created space," the group attempted improvs that might result in any three equally valid outcomes: space would be transcended immediately, "magically;" or only after necessary duration as the result of hard work; or the goal might never be achieved, despite a worthy attempt. In 1970, the ensemble was joined by Steve Lacy. So what does it sound like? Homemade synthesizers, Moogs without keyboards, contact mics galore and a healthy dose of percussion, voice and horns, build into raucous tumult tempered by reflective tension. Certainly for fans of AMM.
RealAudio clip: "Spacecraft"
RealAudio clip: "Unified Patchwork Theory"

MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA The Sound Pool (Spalax) cd 14.98
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MUSIIKKIVYORY Tulemme Sokeiksi (Ektro) cd 14.98
This twisted, genius Finnish DIY oddity back in stock...
Total "Arctic Hysteria" here people! We liked this a lot when we first listened to it, before we even knew what it was. Well, we knew it was Finnish (always a plus), and released on Circle's Ektro label (also a reliable indicator of quality). It's not another "NWOFHM" band though, or even any sort of Circle side project, or even really a band at all. As it turns out, the quasi-Industrial DIY soundscapes of noise and drone created by Musiikkivyory ("Music Avalanche") are the work of one person, Mika Taanila, who was all of 15 years old when this was first released as a homemade cassette - back in 1981! That's right, a Finnish teenager in the early '80s making monstrous noise/drone tapes, contemporaneous with the likes of Maurizio Bianchi. How cool is that? Pretty cool we think.
The 12 tracks here (resurrected from a couple of super rare tapes, circa '80-'81) are a wonderful witches' cauldron of throbbing rhythmic chaos, fractured grinding drones, strange voices, field recordings, and DISTORTION, lots of distortion... it's a playful sort of isolationist music, if that makes sense. And as an evidently artistically inclined kid he had every reason to want to express himself in such a fashion. Imagine being a teen with fears of nuclear war, living up near the Arctic Circle. The dark postpunk music (Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, The Normal, Dome...) you were able to tune in to on the BBC's John Peel show might make a lot more sense than the "normal" happy Christian adults who surround you!
So Mika began messing around with tape recorders, cast-off band instruments, radio static, toys, primitive percussion, etc., and pretty soon had generated enough material to fuel his own bedroom cassette label (of which it's hoped that Ektro will eventually reissue more releases), which issued limited runs of tapes not just by his own Musiikkivyory project but also by other likeminded Finnish friends... and, in fact, one by Italy's M.B. himself! (A reminder that international networking was possible before MySpace came around.)
Ektro has colorfully packaged this in a fashion up to their usual spiffy graphic standards, the cd cover insert folding out into a large sheet with photos and liner notes (in both English and Finnish) on one side, the other a poster depicting one of the original cassette releases at larger-than-life size.
Crude, creative, and compelling, this is quite an interesting surprise, thanks Ektro!! We'd definitely like to hear more from this corner of '80s cassette culture, hint hint.
MPEG Stream: "Tulemme Kreivin Luota [We Come From Count's Place]"
MPEG Stream: "Tulemme Sokeiksi [We're Becoming Blind]"
MPEG Stream: "Deutschland"

MUSIQUE CONCRETE Bringing Up Baby (Fractal) cd 21.00

MUSLIMGAUZE Armsbazzar (Essence Music) cd 17.98

MUSLIMGAUZE In Search Of Ahmad Shah Masood (Nexsound) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MUSLIMGAUZE Lo-Fi India Abuse (BSI) cd 14.98
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MUSLIMGAUZE Uzbekistani Bizarre And Souk (Important) cd 14.98
Another posthumous release from Muslimgauze, "Uzbekistani Bizarre And Souk" is a caustic album of Arabic percussion contorted to fit into disjointed breakbeats and hypnotic electronic grooves. Originally released as a DAT (yes, a DAT only release!) from Staalplaat about 10 years ago, this disc also features a couple of selections from "Islamaphobia" an comes in a beautifully letter-pressed packagaing. Limited to 1000 copies.
RealAudio clip: "Rouge Amin Fraction"
RealAudio clip: "The Iranian Who Found Allah"

MUTANTEA Sleepy Sounds Electric (Ikuisuus) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "Home In The Mountain Valley"

MUTE SOCIALITE More Popular Than Presidents And Generals (Delphine Knormal Musik) cd 11.98
Mute Socialite are a new aural maelstrom featuring Bay Area avant music vets Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, Alec Karim and Shayna Dunkleman. Don't even attempt to define this new group's sound by the words in their moniker. They are anything but mute, and we wouldn't consider theirs to be the most social of musics. It's like a sonic blow to the solar plexus that then proceeds to march on odd time signatures upon your fallen form. The dozen pieces deliver plenty of mighty post-punk churn, no wave spasm and math rock count-that-shit! At once fiercely precise and wildly chaotic. Blistering.
MPEG Stream: "Dirt Never Burns"
MPEG Stream: "A Quiet Execution"

MUTE SOCIALITE More Popular Than Presidents And Generals (Delphine Knormal Musik) lp 14.98
Mute Socialite are a new aural maelstrom featuring Bay Area avant music vets Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, Alec Karim and Shayna Dunkleman. Don't even attempt to define this new group's sound by the words in their moniker. They are anything but mute, and we wouldn't consider theirs to be the most social of musics. It's like a sonic blow to the solar plexus that then proceeds to march on odd time signatures upon your fallen form. The dozen pieces deliver plenty of mighty post-punk churn, no wave spasm and math rock count-that-shit! At once fiercely precise and wildly chaotic. Blistering.
MPEG Stream: "Dirt Never Burns"
MPEG Stream: "A Quiet Execution"

MV & EE WITH THE BUMMER ROAD (MATT VALENTINE & ERIKA ELDER) Mother Of Thousands (Time-Lag) 2cd 21.00
We were (and heck, still are) HUGE fans of avant abstract folk outfit The Tower Recordings. And we've tried desperately to keep up with Matt Valentine's post-TR output, but it's been tough as most of his recorded output has been relegated to ultra limited cd-r's and short run vinyl. So finally, we get a not so limited, and seriously hefty dose of Valentine's new psychedelic folk direction, with his long time musical partner Erika Elder and his new musical sidekicks the Bummer Road.
Two discs, jam packed with dreamy druggy OUT THERE free folk psychedelia. Hints of Tower Recordings past do surface here and there, but the sounds on Mother Of Thousands are way more dense and dizzy. Slippery spacey squiggles float like motes of dust over a warm whirling landscape of mumbled atonal guitar, stuttering alternate tuning strum, super-processed electric guitar whir, wheezing harmonica, lilting falsetto vocals, washed out distorted whirls of crumbling amp buzz, a gorgeously laid back, blissed out afternoon sunlight back porch drug drenched slow motion moonlight abstract folk jam.
The second disc takes all the same elements but weaves them into lengthy minimal buzz drenched ragas. Mysterious sounds swoop and swoon over slowly unfurling melodies, warm layers of harmonica and buzzing steel strings drift over a deconstructed free folk, with disembodied ghostlike voices, gurgling drones, reverb drenched female vocals, the final 20+ minute track is one slow burning meditation equal parts rumbling whir and gentle minor key strumming. Quite lovely.
Valentine and his fellow folkies, Mo' Jiggs, Sparrow Wildchild, Nemo Bidstrup, Tim Barnes and Samara Lubelski take a few moments out to reimagine some killer covers, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and Reverend Gary Davis, but soon return to their mesmerizingly freeform drift and drone and croon.
Packaged in a super deluxe, ultra thick gatefold, each cd in a woven Japanese style inner sleeve, the sleeve a mini lp style cd gatefold, with a metallic silver printed insert. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "The Joyous Within"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Mountain"

MV & EE WITH THE BUMMER ROAD (MATT VALENTINE & ERIKA ELDER) Mother Of Thousands (Time-Lag) 2lp 31.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We were (and heck, still are) HUGE fans of avant abstract folk outfit The Tower Recordings. And we've tried desperately to keep up with Matt Valentine's post-TR output, but it's been tough as most of his recorded output has been relegated to ultra limited cd-r's and short run vinyl. So finally, we get a not so limited, and seriously hefty dose of Valentine's new psychedelic folk direction, with his long time musical partner Erika Elder and his new musical sidekicks the Bummer Road.
Two discs, jam packed with dreamy druggy OUT THERE free folk psychedelia. Hints of Tower Recordings past do surface here and there, but the sounds on Mother Of Thousands are way more dense and dizzy. Slippery spacey squiggles float like motes of dust over a warm whirling landscape of mumbled atonal guitar, stuttering alternate tuning strum, super-processed electric guitar whir, wheezing harmonica, lilting falsetto vocals, washed out distorted whirls of crumbling amp buzz, a gorgeously laid back, blissed out afternoon sunlight back porch drug drenched slow motion moonlight abstract folk jam.
The second disc takes all the same elements but weaves them into lengthy minimal buzz drenched ragas. Mysterious sounds swoop and swoon over slowly unfurling melodies, warm layers of harmonica and buzzing steel strings drift over a deconstructed free folk, with disembodied ghostlike voices, gurgling drones, reverb drenched female vocals, the final 20+ minute track is one slow burning meditation equal parts rumbling whir and gentle minor key strumming. Quite lovely.
Valentine and his fellow folkies, Mo' Jiggs, Sparrow Wildchild, Nemo Bidstrup, Tim Barnes and Samara Lubelski take a few moments out to reimagine some killer covers, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and Reverend Gary Davis, but soon return to their mesmerizingly freeform drift and drone and croon.
Packaged in a heavy old fashioned deluxe gatefold (you know, the kind that creak when you open 'em) and pressed on super thick 180 gram audiophile vinyl. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "The Joyous Within"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Mountain"

MX Ni Runder Modsols (Lille Kommune) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
aQ pal Phil Franklin turned us on to this mysterious Danish crew MX (believed to have something to do with the two main members obsession with BMX bikes, but that's another story we won't get into), and we were quite surprised and taken by what an amazing and flat out bizarre record this is! This is an anthology of recordings from the past ten years, and we're wondering why we haven't heard of these guys before, but we're so glad we know about them now! Our Danish language skills are lacking, so we can't really tell exactly what is going on or how many players are involved, so of course it leaves the music open to speculation. It sounds like it could be a whole bunch of people, or the careful tape manipulation of just a couple. But the sounds are dirty and lo-fi, recorded on four track and feature mostly short rhythmic compositions of acoustic string instruments (banjo, guitar, and violin), with distorted wheezing accordions, fuzzy pulsating synths, clattering percussion and cultic chanting. Occasionally strange tape manipulated vocals that sound like old folkway recordings of pygmys or some far-off South Asian tribe will appear, along with brain-melting primitive electronics effects. It reminds us a lot of the "ethnological forgery" of groups like Harappian Night Recordings and Sun City Girls, the hippie shamanism of Daniel Higgs and Ur-Dog, as well as the collective free-folk ingenuity of Kemialliset Ystavat. But for all the strangeness and noise, the songs seem more composed than improvised, full of beautiful otherworldly melodies and a stunning sense of DIY psychedelic exotica.
LPs are hand silkscreened on repurposed thrift store record covers. We only have about 8 of these and while we're trying to get more, it might be awhile until we see a restock, so act fast!

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Cosmic Light of the Third Millennium (Important) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Il Suono Venuto Dallo Spazio (Victo) cd 16.98

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Landscapes Of An Electric City (Ecstatic Peace) 2lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This band is much better than their horrible name would imply. My Cat Is An Alien is the delicate avant-rock project of the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who have garnered a considerable amount of respect from Sonic Youth. So much so that MCIAA has opened for SY on a number of recent Italian gigs, jammed with Kim Gordon during one of those tours, and got this album released through Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. The brothers open their album very quietly with quiet Slint / Tarentel guitar chords and lots of silence between the repeated stanzas. Equally spartan blurts of synthetic 8-bit noise emerge in congress with the guitars, eventually doubling up with a time-stretched / down-pitched reflection of itself. All of this very slowly gets smeared into a spiralling pattern of cosmic delay and tape-loop mechanisms. This track (or movement as MCIAA calls it) takes up all of side one, and is worth the prices of admission alone. The rest of the album is a bit of a turn downhill. Side two tumbles through a passage of lo-fi noise, sounding like a hand-cranked cheese grater being amplified with an occasional John Fahey-esque splutter behind it all. This lp had originally been released as a CD-R / demo before it was sent to Thurston Moore. The other LP is a one-sided affair with the band spitting out spastic sort-of-no-wave.
RealAudio clip: "Movement 1"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Listen Before Black Falls (Root Strata) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ultra limited lp from Italy's masters of spacey sonic drift, My Cat Is An Alien. Released on Root Strata, the label of Tarentel's J.C. Ledesma. The two brothers in MCIAA again set their controls for the heart of the sun, but spend most of their time drifting lazily through space. Simple folk guitar, spread over random percussive clatter, the two tangled and stretched into some sort of amorphous spacey blissy drone. Tones stretch and shimmer, the background a distant whir, with soft vocals, fragile and whispery, so delicate and dreamy. The second 'movement' on the first side sounds a bit like the incidental music from some long lost sixties sci-fi lost in space type program, a soundscape of bleeeps and swooshes, bloops and alien trills, but it MCIAA's universe they are buried beneath a thick unwavering high end guitar drone. This sci fi dronescape continues onto the flipside where it spreads out over the whole side, a feedback guitar drifting weightless through the alien soundscape that is My Cat Is An Aliens peculiar sonic world.
SUPER LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Each copy hand numbered. Packaged in gorgeously silver inked hand screened sleeves.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Cosmological Eye Trilogy (Last Visible Dog) 3cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here we go again. Remember that really limited cd-r that came out a few years ago, the one that was practically impossible to get, and maybe you bought on eBay for way too much, remember how bummed you were that you missed out on it? You really wanted it. REALLY. So now you have the gun loaded, the rope over the beam in the living room, a bottle of whiskey and a handful of pills on the counter, the note is almost finished. HOLD UP!! C'mon, if we've learned anything by now, as frustrating and annoying as it is, pretty much EVERY cd-r, will at some point be reissued on a much sturdier, longer life-spanned actual compact disc. Especially as there are labels that seem to exist exclusively to re-release albums that have already been released on cd-r. Okay, so maybe that was a bit snarky, but what the heck is the point of a limited cd-r when it will just be re-released in an unlimited version later on? Why not skip the cd-r step and just make a cd to start with? There's nothing entirely wrong with cd-r's, we LOVE cd-r's, we all buy cd-r's like crazy, and you know what? Some records are meant to be limited. A couple hundred copies is all the world needs. But for bands that are popular, with fans all over the world, a cd-r limited to 100 copies is just ridiculous, especially when fans will no doubt be expected to buy the actual cd version (most likely with bonus tracks) later on. We're not complaining (well, we sort of are) because heck, any record good enough to compose, record, and release, probably deserves to be heard by more than 50 or 100 people (not in every case, obviously!), we just wish bands and labels would have the foresight to realize that a handful of copies won't be enough and it's just as simple and cost effective in that case to make real cds! Ok, enought ranting... So we have the The Cosmological Eye Trilogy from Italian free noise siblings My Cat Is An Alien. Most definitely the kind of epic and beautiful music that definitely deserves a wider audience. So kudos to LVD for making these discs available again. The original versions of these discs came packaged with original artwork from Roberto of MCIAA and thus were pretty nice and worth owning, and certainly made a limited run necessary. While the paintings are only present in photgraphic reproductions here, the music more than makes this 3cd reissue worthwhile. MCIAA's musical world is populated by huge expanses of sound, broad minimalist soundscapes woven together with all sorts of guitars: electric alien guitar, astral alien guitar, electric nebulae guitar drone, as well as mini-xylophone, spacee toys, whirlpool, toy mic, percussion, metal sticks, cosmic cymbals, helix cymbals, Plutonian percussions and of course astral percussions. All recorded live with no overdubs, these spaced out sonic explorations are pretty amazing, from clattery, gritty industrialism, with scraping percussion and distorted vocals, to delicate barely there expanses of swoosh and waver, with distant foghorn-like moans, minimal drones, strange machine like whirs, almost inaudible chimes and melodies, to tribal space rituals with swirling blooping bleeping synths slipping and sliding around manic percussion, to strange alien sounding free jazz noise hybrids, shuffling cymbals, lots of dubbed out reverb, peals of feedback, and little bits of clatter and clink suspended in fields of looped fuzz and repeating cycles of hum and drone.
A completely overwhelmingly brilliant assemblage of outer space free jazz drone rock minimalism that will most definitely hit the spot for all you free-ambient-noise-drone cd-r hounds, but will probably also appeal to fans of Acid Mothers Temple style space rock, twentieth century minimalism, "new weird America" (Italy?), and all stops in between.
Packaged in a strange triple fold plastic sleeve that is unfortunately not ideal for keeping cds from getting scratched...
MPEG Stream: "Untitled One"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled Two"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Cosmological Eye Trilogy -Part Three- (Opax) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Cosmological Eye Trilogy -Part Two- (Opax) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The First Flames Of Tommorrow (Opax) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Rest Is Silence (Eclipse) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Through The Reflex Of The Rain (Free Porcupine) cd 14.98
Another band that seems poised to challenge Acid Mothers Temple to a who-can-release-more-records duel. But much like AMT, Italy's My Cat Is An Alien have somehow managed to keep the quality control pretty high (minus the unforgivable series of limited $100 split lps, that were released on cd not soon after). On Through The Reflex Of The Rain, MCIAA drift even further into deep space psych, with a free drone workout that rivals Total or Sunroof!. Angular guitars over warbly organs, shimmering reverb drenched chords stretched into endless sheets of cosmic vibration, clouds of beeps and bloops drift dangerously close, swirls of tonal color are excited into such a state that the rest of the instruments seem to be drawn toward some distant point of maximum gravity. Blissful and droned out, but at the same time, charged with a ominously crackling energy. Packaged in a beautifully silkscreened blue and metallic gold cardboard sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Through The Reflex Of The Rain (excerpt)"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN When The Windmill's Whirl Dies (Eclipse) 2lp 15.98

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / KEIJI HAINO Cosmic Debris Volume III (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
This one probably doesn't need much of a description at all, as fans of Japanese psych legend / guitar god Keiji Haino tend to be on the obsessive side, and c'mon, how can you resist and exclusive 21 minute track, with the very Haino-esque title: "Whither Goes It? / That Which Canst Not But Be Described / As My Prayer / Nowhere Held In Common / Lunatic, Unknowable". The answer is, you probably can't. Especially if you dig Haino at his most freaky, cuz this track, or series of tracks, finds Haino in full on Merzbow mode, unleashing a furious tripped out torrent of wild blown out sonic tangles, squalls of heavily processed psych weirdness, hard to say whether it's actually guitar, but if it is, Haino has twisted it into something else entirely, the sound super heavy and textured, rife with all manner of fragmented melodies, twisted effects, and crumbling weirdness, at least for the first 12 or 13 minutes, at which point, those sound all disappear, leaving just pounding drums, and Haino, howling maniacally, a strange psychedelic drum vocal dirge, that is soon surrounded by still more clouds of wild psychnoise and twisted effects, the strange FX wreathed drum plod dirge, pounding resolutely to the end of the track, with Haino down there somewhere ranting like some crazed shamen.
The My Cat Is An Alien track is downright tame by comparison, and when played in succession with the first two volumes in the series, and taking note of the similar song titles, reveals itself as a single massive multipart track spread out over these 4 discs, the track here starting off delicately, before quickly exploding into a woozy ambient haze, a thick fog of buzz and shimmer, beneath which chimes tinkle, vocals croon, percussion pounds, again with MCIAA seeming to look to Haino's side for inspiration, a strange shamanistic ritual, the high vocals blurring into the high end drones, creating a strangely hypnotic stretch of soaring Sunroof!-like ur-drone.
WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Crashes Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: KEIJI HAINO "Whither Goes It? / That Which Canst Not But Be Described / As My Prayer / Nowhere Held In Common / Lunatic, Unknowable"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / MATS GUSTAFSSON Cosmic Debris Volume IV (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
On volume four, My Cat Is An Alien continue their multi-part Cosmic Debris epic, unfurling another stretch of hazy vocal driven drift, bits of guitar twang submerged in a sea of looped shimmer, of minimal percussion, of high almost falsetto vocalizations, the sound ethereal and dreamlike, a cloud of twisted effects gradually surfacing and overtaking the sound, until finally, the track becomes a swirling cacophony of clatter and buzz and howl and skree, a dizzying chunk of blown out psychedelia for sure.
MCIAA teamed up with jazz legend Mats Gustafsson, whose track here, is gorgeously restrained, starting off with a hushed low end pulse, which is soon joined by more melodic pulsations, a blurred patchwork of electronic signals, low and high, a fantastically austere sprawl of Raster-Noton like rhythmic minimalism, which waits until the last 5 or 6 minutes to let loose, adding what could be processed horns, but could just as likely be a bank of home brewed effects, the original pulsing electronics now buried beneath a wildly psychedelic barrage of feedback and buzz, rumble and skree. So cool.
WE HAVE ONLY SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Burns Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: MATS GUSTAFSSON "I Have Not Set Any Time Limits For The Attempt"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / PESTREPELLER Solar Anarchy / As Wolf (A Silent Place) picture disc lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Never managed to get any of these when it first came out, a split picture disc lp with Italian psych folk duo My Cat Is An Alien, and the oddly named Pestrepeller, a duo featuring none other than legendary artist Savage Pencil. The MCIAA side find the brothers Opalio at their noisiest, kicking up a serious din unlike anything we've heard from them, getting downright Merzbowian at times, sheets of high end lots of clatter and clank, there are occasional bits of tranquility amidst the chaos, with looped liquid effects and tangled up faux field recordings, processed vox, and all manner of warped shimmer, but those moments quickly blossom into another gout of blown out psychedelia.
Pestrepeller take the opposite tack, reeling in their noise rock tendencies and unleashing a sidelong sprawl of rumbling drones, blurred guitar dirges, and softly psychedelic ambience. Opening with some thick SUNNO)))-like downtuned churn, wreathed in streaks of feedback, the sound quickly shits and transforms into an industrial thrum, rife with pulsing low end, lush swells of muted crunch and keening fragmented melodies, lots of hum and hiss, haunting and mysterious, an epic soundscape that manages to be musical on its own, but definitely has a distinctly cinematic vibe as well.
Comes in a heavy PVC sleeve sealed with a full color printed sticker. The picture disc features original full color MCIAA art on one side, Savage Pencil on the other. AND WE ONLY HAVE FOUR COPIES OF THIS, the label folded, these are the last copies we'll ever be able to get! If you order it, wouldn't hurt to list an alternate...

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / STEVE RODEN Cosmic Debris Volume II (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
On volume two, My Cat Is An Alien seem to be composing with their 'collaborator' in mind, their sound definitely reminiscent of Steve Roden's minimal field recording / found sound / soundscaping in mind, at least initially, although MCIAA's take is much more raw and primitive, lots of creaks, and random room noise, mysterious about-to-crack vocalizing, the tinkling chiming of what sounds like a tiny xylophone, brief fragmented bits of melody, eventually blossoming into a swirling morass of groaning guitars, warm sweeps of melodic shimmer, plenty of murky industrial buzz, layered and droney, and again slipping into that sort of abstract trip out we can't get enough of, like Avarus meets No Neck Blues BandÉ
Steve Roden offers up two tracks, both as always hushed and lovely, the first a lengthy bit of minimal dronemusic, peppered with percussive thumps, and wreathed in short wave broadcasts, while the main drone, ebbs and flows, funereal and stately, a dark smoldering drift, that is gorgeously minimal and meditative. While the second, shorter track, finds Roden essentially playing guitar, a lovely bit of folky minimalism, the notes glistening, warm and lustrous, multiple melodies intertwined, unfurling gradually and dreamily, eventually joined by the buzz of a recorded voice, as if recorded on an old microcassette recorded, which soon pulls the guitar itself into that otherworld, the sound transformed into something tinny and barely there, as if it were some intercepted broadcast, delicate and mysterious.
WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Waves Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: STEVE RODEN "E-Bows And Rainbows"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / TEXT OF LIGHT Cosmic Debris Volume I (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
MCIAA offer up a sprawling bit of abstract primitivism, sounding like Avarus or Anaksimandros, lots of rhythmic clatter, instrumental haze, swirling heavily effected vocals, looped and sent spinning into a tripped out bit of foresty free folk weirdness, their are squalls of spacey FX, birdcall like trills, almost like some strange field recording, but the group layer and blur those sounds and build them into a strange Sunroof!-y sort of high end crystalline ur-drone, still shot through with murky muted melodies and tribal clatter.
On this installment, NYC outfit Text Of Light, featuring Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Alan Licht and others, counter with their own bit of clattery drift, theirs a bit more dense and abstract jazzy, like a supercharged, noisier Necks, the percussion wild and frantic, underneath heaving layers of buzz and thrum, and the occasional wailed vocal buried in the mix, the sound seeming to mellow out as the track progresses, dialing back the noise, replacing it with clouds of blurred feedback, and the occasional clatter of junkyard percussion, the sound very soundtracky, which makes sense, as if memory serves, this group was formed to do just that, accompany films with a new improvised score. Cool stuff. Sadly, WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Falls Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: TEXT OF LIGHT "033103 Paris"

MYLES OF DESTRUCTION That Boy Has Problems (Gruntled) cd-r 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Myles of Destruction is a one man (well sometimes two man) band from Philadelphia, who play a sort of lo-fi, bedroom recorded, queer positive, metal. Sort of. Thanks to Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to this. Just vocals, bass, drum machine, and occasional cello (the sleeve exclaims: 'NO GUITARS USED ON THIS RECORDING') collide haphazardly to make a super aggressive, super bizarre, metallic, and ultra dorky weirdness. Think, maybe, Warlock Pinchers, Atom and his Package, Metallica, Emperor, and the Magnetic Fields...all at the same time. Cool and bizarre and decidedly fucked. Includes a 'metal' version of Cyndi Lauper's 'She Bop'. Now the Aquarius fantasy 'Monsters of Metal' festival would feature Metallica Drummer, Anton Maiden, Carnival in Coal, and Myles of Destruction!

MYRMYR Fire Star (Under The Spire) lp 22.00
With the new Myrmyr album we'll be briefer than we would like to be because it's incredibly good, but super limited. We have 10 copies and only 250 have been made, so we're not sure we can get more, so act fast! The stunning vinyl debut of these two former Mills College music grads, Marielle Jakobsons (Date Palms, Darwinsbitch) and Agnes Szelag, was recorded during a snowstorm on Shasta Mountain. We were smitten with their first release, The Amber Sea, and here on Fire Star, they have honed down their focus of post-classical orchestrations into a more finely textured array of nuance and mood. It's hard to tell who is doing what. It sometimes sounds like there are a dozen players performing, or it could be a lavish manipulation of tape loops and electronics, but the effect is quite beautiful. Starting out with plucked strings and bell tones that eventually melt feverishly into intense drones that smolder and swell revealing hidden passages of lush orchestrations that slip seamlessly in and out of the aural field. Four tracks of gorgeous mesmerizing beauty. Don't Hesitate!

MYRMYR The Amber Sea (Digitalis) cd 12.98
Not to be confused with the field recordist Murmer or the improv-drone Murmur or even the dubstep Murmur, this Myrmyr hails from Oakland and features Marielle Jakobsons (aka Darwinsbitch) and Agnes Szelag. Together they present fragmented orchestrations of post-classical arrangements alongside minimalist avant-folk gestures and a restrained use of electronics. Strings of all sorts are central to Myrmyr, whether that be cello, violin, cymbalon, harp, or ukulele, as they compose elongated passages which billow out of a cinematic post-classical sensibility and blossom into occasional shanty arrangements which allude to Baltic folk traditions. In moving between the more academic aspects and more folk stylizations, Myrmyr also incorporate male and female vocals into their arrangements. The occasional use of clanking bells and playful clatter of objects does offer some parallels to a few of a more abstract elements of the Finnish freakfolk community, but more often than not, Myrmyr's studied compositions glide more towards the work of Hildur Gudnadottir and Max Richter, rather than Lau Nau. Very nicely done!
MPEG Stream: "Jurata"
MPEG Stream: "First Seed"
MPEG Stream: "The Sea Returns"

MYRNINEREST Jhonn, Uttered Babylon (The Spheres Four) cd 14.98
Not our favorite Current 93 related release ever, despite the presence of James Blackshaw here along with C93's David Tibet.

MYSTERY BRINKMANN / PLEASUREHORSE split (Load) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pleasurehorse is one Shawn Greenlee, rhythmic power electronics maestro with one previous disc on Vermiform as well as the excellent "Dropdead: Reconstructed" 12" on Load, currently on bass duties in the newly reformed Six Finger Satellite. Think Merzbow with beats. Mystery Brinkman aka Mr. Brinkman (duh) used to be in Providence duo Forcefield (remember their split 7" with Lightning Bolt?), here presenting similar cut-up sonic collages, albeit with a more playful, thrift store quality. Comparable to post-performance era Hanatarash. The first in a series of split 12"s from our friends at Load.

MYSTIFIED Cold Telemetry (Small Doses) cd-r 8.98
One of a handful of new releases from Small Doses, a micro-label that is quickly becoming one of our favorites, every disc both sonically and visually stunning.
This one is from a group/person called Mystified, the sound is a shimmering dark ambience, crafted from haunting drones and processed electronics. Mysterious metallic reverberations, soft industrial whir, abstract almost-melodies, insectoid buzz, smears of muted crackle, and crumbling distorted hiss, deep rumbles, reverbed percussion, thick squalls of slowed down grinding digital glitch, soft billowing clouds of gauzy low end smear, each track a single sound, or series of sounds, stretched and blurred into long streaks of gorgeous and ominous dark minimalism. Dreamy drones, soft focus blackened rituals, post industrial clatter, raga like buzz, expansive high end skree, all very subtle, haunting, mysterious and strangely pretty.
More super cool packaging, a thick printed card, with a printed textured diamond glued to the front, so one half of the diamond folds over and holds the cd in place. Each cd is hand numbered on the underside of the diamond, LIMITED TO 88 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Telemetry"
MPEG Stream: "Rocket USA"
MPEG Stream: "PerCuss"