First volume in a proposed on-going series of vinyl reissues that restore hard-to-find BXC material. This one reissues some beautifully modulated electronic sound mutations originally released by Spencer himself on his own Drone Disco label as fig.64. Comes with glossy full-colour insert with art by Robert Beatty of Hair Police.

Second volume of this on-going series dedicated to restoring to vinyl hard to find BXC material. This one features "WSBC" from the WSBC double CD-R released by Dronedisco in 2003, "SSS" from the Sun Starved Skyscrapers C-20 issued on Since 1972 in 2005 and "TSYDFOLT" issued on a split 3" CD-R with Mike Shiflet that came out on Gameboy in 2003. Recompiled by Spencer Yeh in Summer 2006, this one comes with a full-colour insert featuring art by John Olson of Wolf Eyes.

Two sides of heavily phased vocal/noise confusion and elegiac electronic drug-trance from C. Spencer Yeh’s Burning Star Core.

Second release in Rococo's "Me Gusta Me Gusta" series of subscription-only one-sided LPs presents as killer set of aural pugilism from Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core and John Olson of Wolf Eyes/Graveyards et al. Hand-numbered edition of 200 copies. Moves from gunky, Dead Machines-style punk electronic wrassle through epic synth/goth peaks that sound like early Tangerine Dream re-scored for Nico performance by Brian Eno, John Cale and Yasunao Tone. Wild.

Unlikey compilation of early song-based pieces by C. Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core et al in an edition of only 135 copies on his own private imprint. Guitar and vocals from 2001 that seem to bridge the whole Twisted Village/Northwest USA basement songwriter vibe with the contemporary Brooklyn DIY style. Pretty surreal, played this to a few people and no one could believe it was Spencer.

Collaboration LP from Dilloway of Wolf Eyes et al and C Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core etc. Dilloway uses tape loops, tape delay, bowed tape and vocals and Yeh uses violin, voice and electronics. Recorded in 2006 in Ann Arbor, The Squid has a heavy Takehisa Kosugi/Taj Mahal Travellers feel, with a headier, more expansive psychedelic brainwave style than is usually associated with Dilloway. Yeh's violin flutters on phased waves of F/X while Dilloway lets off tiny looped depth-charges, exploding Yeh's elegiac drones with chattering, circular vocals, unidentifiable noise scree and long corridors of breath. Edition of 500 copies in silkscreened cardstock sleeves. Recommended.

Collaboration between Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core and artist Justin Lieberman, that Yeh describes as combining their love of “sound poetry, psychedelic rock, Japanese scum noise and Japanese psychedelic rock.” There’s also a more conceptual/absurdist cultural critique running through many of these tracks, using samples of voices, advertising inanities and surrealist interventions in a way that - at points - comes across as a more psychedelic Residents. The whole deal is beautifully packaged with the picture disc wrapped in a full-colour gatefold sleeve. Edition of 250 copies.

Edition of 177 copies on Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core’s own label documenting two live performances from this group that features Sara O’Keefe (Handicapper Horns/Eyes & Arms Of Smoke) and Trevor Tremaine (Hair Police/Burning Star Core/Death Unit et al). The sound is primitive, laid-back/stoned free jazz and electronics, with O’Keefe blowing brief halos of folk tone that Tremaine echoes and mutates via subtle shots of electricity while the two of em raise revenant vocal tones high above the din. One of the nicest reconciliations of free/folk in a while. Packaged in individually unique screened/sprayed sleeves. Already sold out at source.

CD reissue of what was originally a limited tour-only album from Spencer Yeh’s post-metal drone unit, bundling three massive huffs of dramatically piloted violin and sidereal electric forms that reconcile the kind of post-Kosugi trance dramas of his violin work with peaks of slow-burning Kosmiche crunch. Tony Herrington had a great piece in The Wire on BXC where he fingered Manuel Göttsching/Ash Ra’s more devotional/electro work as a precursor of this kind of monumentally damaged time/space sorcery and if that kind of comparison had your brain fluttering then plug it in here: Inside The Shadow is an even deeper pass through the kind of cranium-calming violence that illuminated much of Let’s Play Wild Like Wildcats Do and is one of Spencer’s most personally illuminating works. Recommended.

Debut album for the horse-killing free music trio of Don Dietrich (Borbetomagus), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) and Ben Hall (Graveyards). Great to hear Ben in this kinda context, playing in a rolling propulsive style that is the closest I’ve heard him come to the whole post-Milford school of exploded time.  Dietrich’s sax – naturally – dominates the sound, with a warp of Hendrixoid F/X contorting the tongue logic until it sounds like he’s licking a cement mixer. Yeh’s strings give the group an intense vertical lift and at points it sounds like he’s sawing the whole group straight off of the ground. A great record in the tradition of Babi Music, Demo Moe, The Celestrial Communication Orchestra and Borbetomagus. All exclusive material, none of which was on the American Tapes CD-R releases.  

Occupying the opposite pole from BXC’s masterful Challenger LP, Papercuts Theatre is a massive collage that smears several years worth of live recordings from Spencer Yeh and co into four monolithic movements that explode time and space in favour of vertical ascensions of tone and some of the heaviest nod-out rock moves of their career. Inspired by classic sleight-of-hand live reviews like The Grateful Dead’s Grayfolded, Sonic Youth’s Sonic Death and Flying Saucer Attack’s In Search Of Spaces, Yeh assembles dense, laminal settings of drone violence, Faust-styled Industrial-brut and outer space strings with a focus on their more aggressive jams. Long passages of tussling strings and thrifty percussion are blown apart by bursts of free jazz energy and screaming violin tones. The Faust Tapes were always a major organisational touchstone for the BXC production style, but Papercuts Theatre pushes the organisational logic of their albums to new spontaneous/hallucinogenic ends. Features Trevor Tremaine, Robert Beatty, members of Lambsbread and more. Heavy duty double LP in gatefold sleeve. Comes with an MP3 download. Recommended.

Occupying the opposite pole from BXC’s masterful Challenger LP, Papercuts Theatre is a massive collage that smears several years worth of live recordings from Spencer Yeh and co into four monolithic movements that explode time and space in favour of vertical ascensions of tone and some of the heaviest nod-out rock moves of their career. Inspired by classic sleight-of-hand live reviews like The Grateful Dead’s Grayfolded, Sonic Youth’s Sonic Death and Flying Saucer Attack’s In Search Of Spaces, Yeh assembles dense, laminal settings of drone violence, Faust-styled Industrial-brut and outer space strings with a focus on their more aggressive jams. Long passages of tussling strings and thrifty percussion are blown apart by bursts of free jazz energy and screaming violin tones. The Faust Tapes were always a major organisational touchstone for the BXC production style, but Papercuts Theatre pushes the organisational logic of their albums to new spontaneous/hallucinogenic ends. Features Trevor Tremaine, Robert Beatty, members of Lambsbread and more. Recommended.

Edition of 75 copies triple cassette set in moulded plastic case. The first cassette features the audio component from Yeh’s ‘Standard Definition’ installation that took place at the CCA in Cincinnati, Ohio from October 2009-January 2010, with Yeh gargling vocal tone like the Gyuto Monks. The other two cassettes document a pair of shows from January 2010 and November 2009 that combine feral sound poetry with violin abstractions that have a beautiful future/primitive power.

Limited edition of 550 LPs from Carter Thornton compiling a few years worth of mail collaborations with players like Burning Star Core, Alan Dubin (Khanate, Gnaw, OLD), Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Zaimph), David Shuford (NNCK, Enos Slaughter), Pigeons, Kuwayama Kiyoharu, Marshall Avett (Zandosis), Greg Wildes (Gas Tank Orchestra), Carl Smith / Derek Phelps, Darwin Smith, Smith Harrison and Dr. Mijin Kim. Buncha styles devoured and regurgitated, from scattershot drone explosions and spare percussive strategies through laminal flashes of rainbow electronics. Plus it’s all compiled and programmed in a way that is totally maximalist, giving it the feel of some weird Euro art/rock obscurity in the orbit of Futura/Red et al. Excellent.

Billed as C. Spencer Yeh’s ‘first true solo album’, 1975 is an investigation of static drone works that forsakes the kinda barbarous dynamic violence of Burning Star Core for a series of luminous/ghostly tonal settings that coil like smoke around your skull w/deep fields of searchlight tone and jabbering cut-up detail. Buncha different sound sources flagged in the self-explanatory titles – “Two Guitars”, “Voice”, “Drone”, “Shrinkwrap from a Solo Saxophone CD (skit)” – with the music moving from tactile almost Philip Corner-esque miniatures through endlessly glissing xpressways of soft feedback that mirror the stately, surreal arc of Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith. One of Yeh’s most immersive and form-gobbling works, play this back to back with BXC’s Challenger for a lesson in the dynamic possibilities of killing time dead. Recommended. 

Debut issue for this excellent new underground/experimental music zine published and edited by Lasse Marhaug. Beautifully put together on heavy paper with high quality photography, this one features serious/funny/revealing in-depth interviews with Bruce Russell of The Dead C et al, C. Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core (lots about movies), Oren Ambarchi (classic interview that focuses on AC/DC and KISS), Daniel Menche, Sissy Spacek, Arcn Templ, Umpio, Sete Star Sept, Zweizz, Tommi Keranen, Chulki Hong and more. The interviews are all pretty great, veering away from the usual dull line of questioning and touching on all sorts of aspects of the artists’ life and influences that most people would never think to turn over. Funny, informative, perplexing – a fantastic read, highly recommended. 

The first ever release from the Hototogisu duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards) that even approaches being ‘generally available', Green is a real CD - not a CD-R - pressed up for the group by the sainted Ed Hardy of Eclipse records and available in an edition of 1000 copies complete with a suave full-colour booklet reproducing a bunch of the duo's art. Anyone whose mind was blown by the vision of this pair powering their way through one of the most magical/unforgiving sets of Subcurrent 2005 will find plenty to drown in here. Tracks are shorter than on previous releases, though even more obsessively detailed. There are points where the cacophony is so insanely oversaturated that the noise starts to sound as if it's spontaneously giving birth to language: you start hallucinating words and sentences, almost as if the film protecting you from a constant bombardment of information-heavy environmental radiation has been blown apart. Green also features some of Hototogisu's most straight-ahead death/doom metal moves. Although they're not quite Skullflower, the first track features snatches of classic death metal riffs alongside the stomach-punch of a cheap drum machine and on their theme song, the beautifully ferocious “Heavy Blossom”, Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra plays drums. Alongside all the iron first action, there are some beautiful moments where Marcia and Matthew's voices melt into ribbons of pure white light and the whole thing floats to the ceiling. A modern classic, and possibly the best Hototogisu album to date. Highest recommendation.

Edition of 100 copies art book presenting colour reproductions of six of Marcia Bassett’s (GHQ/Zaimph/Hototogisu) psychedelic paint/collage works, running from Rorschach forests peopled by huge kittens through weird crystal geometries and distressed anatomy. Stapled card booklet.

Massive double studio LP from the duo of Marcia Bassett (Zaimph/GHQ et al) and Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Sunroof), recorded at the NNCK-related Black Dirt Studios, issued in a run of 700 copies in gatefold sleeves, long out of print. Pale Fatal Sister feels like the apex of the Hototogisu catalogue to date, the ultimate statement of their ecstatically overloaded aesthetic. Parts of this recording sound like Angus MacLise’s Joyous Lake Aspen flexi disc played through a mountain of Marshall stacks while storms generate huge elemental Oms in the background, all of which is broadcast through an obliterating wall of pure electricity. Sounding simultaneously uplifting and oppressive, this is Valkyrie –styled drone that vibrates with rainbow visions of the blackest psychedelia, the most extreme metal and the most bombastic avant garde composition. A new peak for this group, just mindblowing. Highly recommended.

Limited edition of 100 copies documenting a live solo show from Marcia Bassett that took place 6/6/06 in Hasselt. 28 minutes of thick, frozen air, slow brain-bloating highs, and thunderous ecstasy peaks. One of the darkest/densest blats from Marcia to date and highly recommended. Comes in wraparound colour pro-printed sleeves.

Brand new full-length recording from the duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof et al) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ) features a more rock-reverent take on the kind of vertical screens of impossibly detailed overtone that defined their earlier albums, with Marcia's viola slow-burning fluttering afterimages of neon spirals deep into the air while Bower's guitar/microphone worship generates repeat-ascensions of overloaded ecstasy tone. Something grittier, more immediately tactile, that makes this their most dramatically meat-based orbit of hallucinated space/time vectors to date. Highly recommended.

Heavy collaborative album in an edition of 300 copies from Marcia Bassett (GHQ/Zaimph/Hototogisu et al) and Carlos Giffoni. Bassett feels like the dominant voice here, rolling out wave after wave of crushing tonal feedback and huge rushes of iron-clad chords while Giffoni stacks perilous accumulations of rotor tones, analog drones and monolithic electricity.

New set of solo electric guitar recordings from Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/GHQ/Hototogisu et al). Tectonic string work that has the weight of planets, with high, eerie melodies threaded through massive baseline drones. Aspects of Keiji Haino, Charalambides and Electronic Meditation-era Tangerine Dream make this a particularly explosive set. On Brother Raven’s label, hand-numbered edition of 200 copies. 

Hand-numbered edition of 200 copies LP on Manuel Mota’s private Headlights imprint documenting a heavyweight duo set from Marcia Bassett of Zaimph, Hototogisu, Double Leopards, GHQ et al and improvising Portuguese bassist and guitarist Margardia Garcia. Garcia is one of the major new generation European free players, coming out of the same scene as Mota, and she’s just as capable of generating Swans-style Industrial entropy as she is playing explosive fire music. Here Bassett uses keyboard and guitar to create austere arcs of Industrial-strength drone that Garcia anchors with tactile, questing strings, giving the whole thing an odd avant-classical backbone. 

New line-up and new post-Metal stance for Matthew Bower’s Skullflower, with thundercrack guitar and epic/baroque classical European bombast married to sheets of obscuritant power electronics: “The most remorseless, brutal Skullflower ever! Alternating between granular lo-fi primitive rock and granular lo-fi primitive Power Electronics, this taut disc is a chain mail glove of hate to any lazy minds who've tainted the air with describing Skullflower as 'psychedelic'. But that's not to say this is an all out total assault. There are also moments of tender acoustic balladry, it’s just that they don't exist. The remorseless brutal sound is primitive, but as detailed and rich as a blood soaked medieval canvas, somewhere betwixt The Rita and Clandestine Blaze, but more brutal! Long live the New Flesh! Kether is in Malkuth, Malkuth is in Kether, but in a different way...” – CSR.