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.  

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.

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.

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 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.

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. 

Ben and Hans of Graveyards/Melee/Traum et al have as fine a set of ears as anyone who has ever claimed improvised jazz as their area of expertise and the various non in-house projects that they choose to champion and release via Brokenresearch betray the kind of sophisticated feel for improvised sound as reified thought that many a 'fan' of jazz and associated modern, high energy forms could learn a thing or two from regarding the many subtle - and not so subtle - ways to extract a fucking tooth. This latest deluxe limited edition LP on their own label (run of only 200 copies in pro-printed sleeves) is another beautiful object lesson in just how well-listened and non-cliched their appreciation continues to be. Eichmann is a German pianist, composer, conceptualist, interpreter of modernists like Nono and Feldman and student of Alex Von Schlippenbach. Over the years he has produced a bunch of large scale ballets and performance pieces, most notably the Prayer To The Unknown Gods Of The People Without Rights, scored for ensemble and improvising soloist and first performed by Peter Brotzmann and the Wuppertal Chamber Orchestra. During the past five years or so he has reconnected with the stream of modern improvisatory modes, often in the company of American percussionist Jeff Arnal. This new recording, Live At The Phenomorphonic Festival sees the duo knee-deep in pedalling power stomps, obsessing over a mere clutch of notes that they work to emphasise in splintered, obsessive rhythms. The effect is closer to the work of Charlemagne Palestine than Cecil Taylor, although there's little of Palestine's continual expansion of ideas or lightness of touch; instead each note feels like its being hammered to the floor and the persistence with which they're sounded again and again is almost autistic. Arnal falls in behind Eichmann with pounding single shots and scattered tonal sunbursts that briefly illuminate the hulking dungeons of tone that Eichmann thuds from the instrument. Indeed, there's very little of the sound of the piano's keys, with Eichmann spending most of his time wading through the guts of the piano with heavy boots and sandpaper. This is the most impressive and conceptually far-reaching sounding of post-Cecil piano I've heard in the past whenever; a major statement from a profoundly singular stylist. So sign me up.

First release in Rococo's "Me Gusta Me Gusta" series of subscription-only one-sided LPs comes from the Graveyards trio of John Olson (Wolf Eyes) on reeds, Hans Buetow on cello and Ben Hall on drums. Beautifully articulate post-fire music moves that cut huge swathes through tense, thick air. Another beauty, hand-numbered edition of only 200 copies.

Numbered edition of 300 copies one-sided LP featuring Graveyards in duo mode, with John Olson (Wolf Eyes) on saxophone and electronics and Ben Hall on drums. Comes with an etched B-side and a full colour mini poster, both featuring art by Olson. Very minimal shadowplay style with the slightest butterflies of bowed confusion cutting swathes through still, black silence before building to a primal, echo-heavy climax that sounds like a pair of mammoths dropped deep into a canyon. Recommended.

First full length vinyl outing for this aggressively nuanced free playing power duo featuring Zach Davis of Lambsbread on electric guitar and Ben Hall of Graveyards on drums. The strategies employed here – totally clean electric guitar with the attack amped all the way up and skittering, knitting needle style snare detonation – marks out the turf covered as being somewhere circa the whole Joseph Holbrooke/Ascension school of pummel and play and there’s a ton of brains to the way these guys skirt even the vaguest of lick-potential with silence, wowing harmonics and cracks of vibrating skin. Edition of 300 copies in screened chipboard sleeves, already completely sold out at source. Recommended.

2006 Sub Pop album from the Wolf Eyes trio of John Olson, Nate Young and Mike Connelly, mixed by former member Aaron Dilloway, the official follow-up to Burned Mind. The preceding Human Animal 12" gives a good snapshot of the kind of blasted topography that the group map out here, with the first half of the album given over to the kind of eerie midnight stasis sound of the group circa River Slaughter albeit given a hi-fi upgrade and new depth of field via slow smokes of drone and viper-shots of electronics. The drum machine is at its most space-puncturing, firing repeat beats into cloaks of doom while Olson works serpentine sax patterns into steel helixes somewhere at the bottom of a ventilation shaft. One track features creeped-out spoken word narration, while over on the flip/later tracks the group move into full pit-pounding mode with assaultive nod-out rhythms and Nate's insane post-Iggy vocal shred moves foregrounded by a ton of metal. Exactingly programmed, this is the one to peak with. Highly recommended. Vinyl edition limited.

New release on the Glasgow-based label run by Kevin McCarvel and Stuart Crutchfield of Smoke Jaguar. A great set of massively cranked textural improvisations from the duo of Ben Hall (Graveyards/Bill Dixon/Joe Morris et al) and guitarist/inventor Chris Riggs, confusing process and form across a series of tracks that move in tectonic percussive waves. Hand-numbered edition of 79 copies in art paper sleeves with paste-on covers. 

Massively extended long form string/drone/Industrial jams from Midwest free jazz outfit Graveyards that push beyond the whole screwed spectral/orchestral arc of their recent work into new zones of lonesome tone : “What is up with the mail these days? Sometimes you get the weirdest things. Are "Dog Missing" flyers illegal now? Seems like it, cause just the other Tuesday I lurched out to check the daily box to see if my new copies of DIRGE or EVIL MINDED shown up yet, and there was this lone LP resting there. Had a post it note stuck to it that read:
"PLEASE HELP: OUR CREATURE THING HAS VANISHED. WE SUSPECT THE WORST. WE CANNOT GIVE DETAILS ON THE THINGS/ANIMAL OR HAVE ANY PICTURES< BUT WE DO HAVE RECORDINGS OF IT IN "ACTION". PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS RECORD (at any speed) AND CALL 237 - 4568 IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON OUR MISSING CREATURE. AND RETURN MY STAMPS- THANKS- YR NEIGHBORHOOD LOOSE ANIMAL CULTURE CENTER"
Shaking my head, thinking how I just got a killer local platter to add to the animal sounds/droll Yankee/ chooltch industry recordings sections and put the record on.
Well, it seems like they are never gonna find this thing cause it SOUNDS like a super shy version of that horrible creature in the twilight zone flick that tries to scare the passengers and eat the plane. But this "Thing" hangs out in empty hangers and lightly scrapes its torn and rotten fingernails across HUGE rusty industrial size fans at 3am in a creaking wet unlit corner. Who would want this in their house? Sounds from this animal are rare, seems like this LP has like three light rustlings and the THING is gonzo, moved on...just like a ghost trace of it... good luck to them.
After jamming the "MISSING CREATURE" lp on every speed my numark can handle, I IM chatted fellow animal sound lp vet DILLOWAY and told him about the new local style missing thing section, and he said energetically:
"Dude, you should quick like go around the neighborhood and grip all those lps and put em out, don’t get busted say it's...I dunno... GRAVEYARDS or something... "
FUCK!!! Killer idea. So here it is - all the LPs from District 176 Howard St./Frandor with NO INFO and a crude handmade painted sleeve like from the hairy mitts of the said MISSING ANIMAL itself. If you find this THING.... shit, record it and do a FOLLOW UP. And leave it in yr NEIGHBORS mailbox. UUUGGHHHHHHHH. Title taken from a super tuff blueprint question from my Blueprint Reading 112 class last fall. Edition of 100. Inzane handpainted recycled covers, each one uber-unique. MISSING!!! THING!!! RECORDED!!!” – John Olson. Recommended.

Explosive, speaker shredding free noise/jazz density that is as obliterating as primo Airway, Japanese monsters like Mainliner/Musica Transonic etc… Wasteland Jazz Unit features John Rich on amplified clarinet and Jon Lorenz on amplified alto sax and here they are joined Ryan Jewell (Pink Reason/Psychedelic Horseshit associate) on drums and electronics and Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core on bass and electronics. Edition of 200 copies.

Great new album from Jan Anderzen’s Chemical Friends, three years in the making, with a freeform freakout style that could almost be The Familiar Ugly on The Red Krayola’s Parable Of Arable Land. There’s also a newfound ‘song’ quality to many of the tracks, with snatches of melody and hints of vocal arcs that float like Popol Vuh choirs above the flashing electronics, hand-drums and toytown tropicalia. Aspects of Astral Social Club and Monopoly Child Star Searchers combine in weird childlike hymns that could almost pass for a Japanese Ya Ho Wha soundtracking a Hawaiian beach monster movie. Nostalgic, funny, uniquely compelling, with guest appearances from a bunch of key underground players including C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Campbell, Hitoshi Kojo, Pekko Kappi and Niko-Matti Ahti.

Great new album from Jan Anderzen’s Chemical Friends, three years in the making, with a freeform freakout style that could almost be The Familiar Ugly on The Red Krayola’s Parable Of Arable Land. There’s also a newfound ‘song’ quality to many of the tracks, with snatches of melody and hints of vocal arcs that float like Popol Vuh choirs above the flashing electronics, hand-drums and toytown tropicalia. Aspects of Astral Social Club and Monopoly Child Star Searchers combine in weird childlike hymns that could almost pass for a Japanese Ya Ho Wha soundtracking a Hawaiian beach monster movie. Nostalgic, funny, uniquely compelling, with guest appearances from a bunch of key underground players including C. Spencer Yeh, Neil Campbell, Hitoshi Kojo, Pekko Kappi and Niko-Matti Ahti.