Like a cross between cartoon soundtracks and free jazz, side 1 of this 1987 cassette-only release is a sprawling smorgasbord of countless samples and snippets of prior Rift releases mixed into a 44 minute sound-collage. Hear the album Trouser Press called: "patience-defying"! Casios, Chipmunk voices, backwards voices, video-game-like bloops 'n' bleeps, some things resembling actual rock music, and what sounds like 5 records playing at the same time...Fun stuff!
Side 2 is a found tape Zoogz claims was rescued from a garbage bin. It's a side of a polite jazzy group apparently called the Transients covering Beatles and (some fairly obscure) solo Beatle songs. That story might be more believable if the voices weren't so obviously sped-up. And then there's their, er, "cover" of "Revolution No. 9" which gives it all away. Still, judging by this set, Zoogz & Co. could have worked as a Holiday Inn lounge band. And who knows, maybe they did.
Zoogz Rift: "Son of Puke" - in 2 files, Side 1 and 2, just like a real tape.
Much thanks to maniac Michael B. for sending this rarity our way.
An entire album made solely from the sounds of someone banging on the Eiffel Tower?! Now that is the kind of thing to warm the cockles of a Maniac's heart, and to thoroughly confuse, if not annoy, mainstream music consumers: "Wha..? Why doesn't he use real musical instruments?" Because, my poor, brainwashed Normals, there is a universe of unused sounds out there that cannot be conjured up with pianos, guitars, even synthesizers. Music is all around us, as John Cage would say, and sampling those sounds and using them as the raw stuff of compositions is an excellent way to make us aware of that. The album actually sounds like you think it would, dominated by metallic plinky pongy tones. But even tho these songs are indeed produced only by Bertolozzi's molesting of a great Parisian structure, they are not just random banging. They are structured, highly rhythmic, even weirdly melodic, with each track having it's own peculiar flavor. In other words: musical. Here's one particularly toe-tappin' sample: Joseph Bertolozzi"Continuum" from "Tower Music"
A year we ago we wrote about artists such as The Fruiting Body who make music out of everyday sounds. I am happy to say that this trend is continuing. People of Earth! Your musical instruments are...OBSOLETE!
We salute you, France, for you are the country that gave us, among other things,musique concrète. And Furniker (aka Franz Schultz), who might literally be making concrete music - I would not be surprised if an actual concrete mixer was featured in the track "Construction Site." That's a song featured onFurniker's brand new, all-too-brief, 4-track'net release that takes everyday stuff (song titles include "In The Kitchen" and "Work") and samples and loops them into a rhythmic, compelling din. You won't find too many hummable melodies here, but if you like industrial music, well..this really is industrial. Furniker/"Furniker" (Bandcamp streaming) Furniker/"Furniker" (archive.org free downloading/streaming)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I found this chap on Bandcamp: Spannerman Dan ("instruments are made from found and recycled objects") His short, low-key songs (sketches, more like) aren't too spectacular, but "Pailito" is nice, and "Calder Waltz" is very nice, with what sounds like alien animals vocalizing over pleasantly chiming bell-like sounds. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sneak previews of two forthcoming albums that I am very much looking forward to (bookmark this page!):
The great Matmos have released a track from their forthcoming (Feb 2016) album named after the only "instrument" they used to make it: a Whirlpool "Ultimate Care II" washing machine. Dig this swell percussion jam that will also make whites whiter, colors brighter:
And Miles Copeland (the IRS Records founder/manager of The Police, I assume?) will be releasing this Dec. 10th a collection of his field recordings of the "Sea Organ" built into the coastline of Croatia. Waves roll into tubes of various sizes, creating a theoretically endless, random piece of music. Quite lovely. Two tracks for, if you'll pardon the expression, streaming, are now up: "Sea Organ"
Like the band featured in this blog's previous post, The Hoosier Hot Shots, this group also performs on homemade instruments. However, one group is considered "novelty" and the other "avant-garde." It's all rather arbitrary, and class-ist. This band isn't quite as funny as the Hoosiers of course, but they are plenty tuneful, with nice toe-tapping compositions sometimes derived from Indonesian gamelan music, something ex-members of this group would explore further with the (I believe) still-running band of fellow New York arty-smarties, Gamelan Son of Lion.
I just wish I could see these instruments. I could only find one photo (right), and no videos. Despite their academic background, this is fun stuff, not just self-indulgent banging around - hence, not a completely unlikely companion to the Hot Shots. The track "Inside the Compound" is even a kind of mutant blues. An excellent album that should have had greater distribution. This was a cassette-only release. So, yeah, this file is taken from a tape, but still sounds pretty good.
"Cosmic" Dennis Greenidge is a 60-something Londoner who sings off-key nonsense lyrics over other people's instrumental music playing out of a boombox in the background. Ha! In fidelity as low as early Daniel Johnson, Greenidge enthusiastically warbles lyrics like "Psychtronic, psycho-sonic boom! Don't leave the room!" or "the amazing colossal cucumber man" over a wide variety of musics. Sometimes he likes just a snippet of music (the intro perhaps) and audibly keeps hitting 'rewind' to play the good bit over and over, "singing" all the way. The songs are often under a minute, hence we've got a whopping 66 tracks here. They're not all songs, e.g. "Horror Interlude," a brief radio drama that's far more funny than scary. Other highlights include the kiddie march "Lavender Castle," the bizarre beach party of "Satellite Beach" ("Space Dracula, Space Frankenstein, Space Mothra, party down!"), the literal laugh riot of "The Laughing Cavalier," and the quite wonderfully bonkers "Spaghetti Yeti": "Spaghetti, you eat it! Yeti can eat you!" There's even the inspirational sincerity of "The Windows Are Open." Such delightful torture! Musos will of course consider Cosmic Dennis to be utterly without any musical talent, but, like The Note-Ables, he's obviously having such a grand time with this lunacy that many Maniacs will find themselves getting swept up into Greenidge's mad world. Or is it madness? Perhaps it's just good ol' English eccentricity.
A reader left a comment today: "How does one download from Google on a Mac? I cannot figure it out..." I'm not a Mac-intologist. Anyone? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rather than take old, decrepit pianos and attempt to repair and tune them, Australian composer/improviser Ross Bolleter makes new music out of "ruined" pianos. Bolleter approaches each piano as a singular entity, utilizing each instrument's lack of standard tuning, missing keys, broken strings, etc. to create strange, haunting, stirring sounds that would not be possible to make on a new piano. Which seems like a much more logical approach than taking every sound-making thing on the planet and forcing the limited range of the Western scale on it. The music on this album hardly sounds like "piano music." The lengthy opening track is meditative loveliness, ranging from Asian gong sounds to birds calls in the background (this really is a 'field recording') to horror movie atmospherics. The remaining short tracks sound similar to John Cage's prepared piano works, but while Cage's pieces were gamelan-inspired and strictly written, these are free and jazzy. So ingenious one wonders why no-one thought of doing something like this before? Ross Bolleter -Secret Sandhills and Satellites (Pieces For Ruined Pianos)(2006) (UPDATE 7/15: Missing track now in file.) Count Otto hepped me to this cat via this article about "Touring Australia's Piano Graveyards." Pardon my Amazon cut-and pasting: ROSS BOLLETER ruined pianos (+ accordion on 7) 1 - SECRET SANDHILLS - 28:00 2 - AXIS - 6:47 3 - DEAD MARINE - 6:10 4 - AND THEN I SAW THE WIND - 3:22 5 - CHORUS LINE - 1:39 6 - SAVE WHAT YOU CAN - 2:40 7 - GOING TO WAR WITHOUT THE FRENCH IS LIKE GOING TO WAR WITHOUT AN ACCORDION - 4:23 8 - TIME WAITS - 5:59 9 - COME NIGHT - 2:02 10 - JAUNTY NOTES OF PADDOCKS BRIGHT - 4:22 11 - OLD MAN PIANO - 1:46 "All digital recordings made in Australia around Perth and Alice Springs 2001-2005. Pieces for ruined pianos and pianos on the edge of ruin... The main work, inspired by an Aborigine painting, is the 28-minute Secret Sandhills, a generally slow-moving work spliced together from performances on six ruins. There are also 10 shorter and generally faster Satellites, some of which were performed on two ruined pianos simultaneously. Fresh new sounds from decaying old instruments."
Artist Rutherford Chang says: "I collect first-pressings of The White Album and currently own 1,034 copies." As part of his 'White Album' project (which also includes a record store only stocked with copies of you-know-what arranged according to serial number) he somehow got 100 of them to play at once. I wonder how? Sounds quite good tho, like 100 needles were dropped onto 100 turntables at pretty much the same time. Then they slowly go out of phase, like an old Steve Reich tape-loop piece. Surprisingly wonderful, e.g.: "Julia" (end of side 2) whips up a really nice drone. And I hadn't actually sat down to listen to the White Album since I was a kid, so it's also an interesting way to revisit the album. Four 20+ minute tracks, one for each side of the White Album, plus lots of pics of White Albums in various states of decay: Rutherford Chang - We Buy White Albums (file removed by corporate Blue Meanies) Reminds me of another Beatles-related oddity, a very skillfully executed mashup album based on the absurd (or is it?!) premise that someone visiting another dimension where the Beatles never broke up brought back a cassette of one of their later albums. It's actually made up of tracks from various Beatles solo releases. The whole crazy story, and the album download, is available here: The Beatles Never Broke Up Thanks to Amadeus, And Count Otto!
At the time this excellent board tape was made, multi-media collage/ performance art/ prankster legends Negativland had been around since the early '80s, releasing several albums that served as warm-ups for their glory years of the late '80s/early '90s, when they ruled college radio, signed to the indie label everyone wanted to be on (SST Records), and generally moved from being mere (if brilliant) performers/recording artists to becoming a genuine cultural force, merry pranksters manipulating the gullible mass media, and daring to pull down the pants (so to speak) of some of the biggest figures in the music industry. They paid for their hijinks big-time, but ultimately came out the other end bloodied but unbowed. Lo these many years later, as seen in today's post-internet media-overload environment of mashups, youtube, etc., they seem positively visionary. And this performance finds them at the top of their game. Even if you're very familiar with Negativland's "Escape From Noise"/"Helter Stupid"/"U2" era (as I would imagine many, if not most, Maniacs are) this is still a fresh experience, as they take elements from their album tracks and rework them into lovely new mutations.
1 - Christianity Is Stupid 2 - Helter Stupid 3 - Escape From Noise 4 - Time 5 - Another Perfect Cut 6 - Free TV Or Pay TV 7 - The Playboy Channel
Side 2:
1 - Playboy Channel 2 2 - Why Don't They Blow Us Up? 3 - I'd Like A Piece Of Meat / Michael Jackson 4 - U2 5 - Car Bomb
This comes to us from maniac Bob Berger. Can't thank him enough. He writes: "Recorded off the sound board onto Maxell XLIIS cassette with whatever tape deck was present, this tape has been legendary among all of my friends for many years. The sound quality is amazing... I've never heard Negativland recorded quite so well... Given our state(s) of mind at that show, I have no idea how we managed to capture this as well as we did... but here it is. At home, I've chopped these bits up into each track as best I could, but I figured that it would be best to preserve the whole show's continuity as two sides of the, now infamous, cassette.
Enjoy.
colunco23"
And - hey! - let's not forget to salute "guest vocalists" like the recently departed Casey Kasem, and L.A newscaster Hal Eisner. When on those rare occasions I stumble across Eisner's TV appearances, I chuckle, almost expecting him to say, "This is Hal Eisner. This is stupid." RIP Snuggles.
