The Sound Projector

The Sound Projector music magazine and radio show

February 29th, 2008

What’s pro-activ new (TSP radio 29/02/08)

  1. Electric Orange, ‘Morbus’
    From Morbus, AUSTRIA SULATRON RECORDS ST 0702 CD (2007)
  2. Mary St John, ‘Research Outpost’
    From Some Leaves Turned Red, Some Still Green, USA INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION NO NUMBER CD (2008)
  3. Wether, ‘Anything Worthless’
    From USA EPICENE SOUND ess012 7” (2008)
  4. Ivor Cutler, ‘One at a Time’ (1998)
    From A Flat Man, UK HOORGI HOUSE RECORDS HHCD01 CD (2008)
  5. Gert-Jan Prins, ‘Drnindustriaagitato’
    From Break Before Make, AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO DeMEGO 002 CD (2008)
  6. Long Division with Remainders remixed by Sone Institute, ‘2 (Version 2)’
    Unreleased (free download from www.ldwr.net)
  7. bran(…)pos, ‘1-armed Yank with Sekhem Em’
    From Coin-Op Khepri, USA C.I.P., cipcd021 CD (2008)
  8. The Child Readers, ‘A Loved Thing / Gull’s Blood’
    From Music Heard Far Off, USA SOFT ABUSE SAB 021 CD (2008)
  9. Animal Hospital, ‘Late Summertime’
    From Innature, USA BARGE RECORDINGS BRG001 CD (2006)
  10. Preston Swirnoff, ‘For Four Tape Machines’
    From Maariv, USA LAST VISIBLE DOG LVD 125 CD (2008)
  11. Thiruvazhimilalai Subramanian Bros, ‘Manas Sri Ramachandra’
    From Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics 1918-1955, USA DUST TO DIGITAL DTD-10 CD (2007)
  12. Hutzl Ukrainian Ensemble, ‘Welsisni Melodyi’
    From Black Mirror, op cit.
  13. Vestigial Limb, ‘Untitled’
    From USA EPICENE SOUND ess014 7” (2008)
  14. The Remote Viewers, ‘Those In Darkness’
    From Control Room, UK RV1-RV5 5 x CD SET (2007)
  15. Darsombra, ‘Drops of Sorrow’
    From Eternal Jewel, USA PUBLIC GUILT PG015 CD (2008)
  16. Pauline Oliveros and Miya Masaoka, ‘Afternoon’
    From Accordion Koto, USA DEEP LISTENING DL 36-2007 CD (2007)
  17. Matomeri, ‘Disastrous Restoration’
    From Joys of Summer, FINLAND IKUISUUS IS-017 CDR (2007)
  18. The Skull Defekts, ‘Carved In Bones’
    From Skkull, SWEDEN RELEASE THE BATS rtb#23 CD (2008)

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

February 23rd, 2008

Lighting up the Corpse Candles

whobeyou.JPGPulga declare their amorous intentions with Pulga Loves You (FIRE MUSEUM RECORDS FM 10), their utterly alien CD of same name. The prospect of these disorienting and shape-shifting mindscapes may make many a potential suitor think twice before pressing their romance with Vanessa Niwi Rossetto and Valerio Cosi. Any possible grasp on linear logic has been expertly effaced with digital reprocessing, smudging, blurring and overlaying, to produce five semi-nightmarish quagmires of fascinating multi-textured hookery-pamookery, droneage, and melted glorp. The eighteen-minute ‘Raga Pulga’ which closes the disc will subtly but inexorably work the listener’s mind into a state where straitjackets are required apparel. This is taking ‘tough love’ to new extremes!

We’ve got an hour’s worth of ‘vintage’ electro-acoustic genius by the UK’s Trevor Wishart, on Machine (PARADIGM DISCS PD 25). From 1969-1971 and originally issued on the very rare Electronic Music from York LP box set in 1972, Machine’s title and graphics might lead the listener to expect 60 grueling minutes of factory machinery tapes arranged in looping layers that would cause even Einstürzende Neubaten to punch the clock and call it a day, but it turns out to be much more refined and also contains a lot of ‘choir’ work. This being the early 1970s, said choir are not ’singing’ as such but speaking, shouting or chanting significant words like ‘automation’ and ‘mechanical’, according to directions supplied on printed cards. The combinations of these rather alarming voice-epics with the other atmospheric and befogged tape loops is little short of amazing, instantly conjuring a greyly grim mood which reminds you of what the UK was like in these dark days. I’m expecting to turn on the TV now and get Edward Heath delivering a patronising broadcast, if only the electricity wasn’t cut off. Another fine rescue job by Clive Graham.

Microblind Harvestmen is the American duo of Robert Horton and Hal Hughes. On Songs and Instrumentals from Death Bottom Slide (DIGITALIS DIGI 042), the pair clash banjos, guitars and old-time fiddling with some strange electronic and digital experimentation to produce a highly post-modern take on US Americana and traditional folk. This is not quite the Folkways back catalogue revisited, nor is it informed by the historical developments taking place in the Newport Folk Festivals of the early 1960s, but it is very compelling listening. Traditional folk melodies are a starting point of sorts, but the tunes are atomised, to make room for meandering slide-guitar excursions that transport the work into the realms of cosmic psychedelia.

Roulette Russe pour un peu de Caviar is one of many fine new releases of troubling electro-acoustic tape-doom from the great Monochrome Vision label in Russia. This spacey comp features prime examples of melancholy-tinged and highly atmospheric sound work by Kolpakopf, Bardoseneticcube, Interior Disposition, Instant Movie Combinations, Moscow Laptop Orchestra, and many more. The CD was assembled - and I might add also brilliantly sequenced - by label boss Dmitry Vasilyev, and it’s a totally compelling listen start to finish, largely akin to watching huge flakes of smog-blackened snow falling onto a fog-bound urban scape. That ’snow’ image was suggested to me by the fact that the CD was commissioned for the Bruit de la Neige festival by Studio Forum in France last year. Until spring arrives, this slowly-changing suite of drifty noise is your safest bet for winter listening pleasure!

Got a couple of hermetically-sealed cassettes from New York’s Phaserprone label. Power Visions (PPR07) is a split by Grasslung and Pelerine, the former being a solo side project of Jonas Asher from U W Owl, who provide the other cassette New Birth of Old Death (PPR05). Both releases are filled with exceptionally imaginative and dread-inducing electronic sounds, although U W Owl just manage to scoop the prize with their supernaturalist and spooked-out track titles such as ‘Corpse Candles’ and ‘Amidst a Fuligin Cloak’. Limited to 100 copies each, these gems are packed in tight little decorated slipcases that make them resemble magic boxes that an alchemist could use to open portals to a new dimension.

Lastly, Eat Shit (APR 002) is the unappetising suggestion of Jazkamer according to their new CD on the equally unappetisingly-named Asspiss records. The CD alternates heavy blasts of old-fashioned table noise, with far quieter stretches of bewildering voice and radio collages. Pound for pound, though, the roaring and squealing tends to dominate one’s listening pleasure here. I feel sure that, once heard in entirety, many engaging segments will rise to the surface of this poisonous gumbo, but this morning I find that Marhaug and Hegre’s distorted and heavy equation isn’t quite inspiring me with the joys of Lent. Cover artworks by the amazing Denis Tyfus adorn every possible surface of this fine digipack; this Belgian genius renders all animal life as huge piles of lurid green viscera and cerebral matter, sprouting monstrous eyes and broken teeth, and lying in pools of reeking blood. What the man dressed in his pants on the back cover is doing to one of these monstrous mounds is a sight not suitable for young eyes. Apparently this is a ‘tour only’ release, thus probably making it tough to find a copy by conventional means, so I shouldn’t grumble.

February 23rd, 2008

One Man Bands (TSP radio 22/02/08)

  1. Pete Townsend, ‘Pure and Easy’
    From Who Came First, UK TRACK RECORD 2408 201 LP (1972)
  2. Anthony More, ‘Judy Get Down’
    From Flying Doesn’t Help, UK QUANGO RECORDS HMG 98 LP (1979)
  3. Robert Wyatt, ‘East Timor’
    From Old Rottenhat, UK ROUGH TRADE ROUGH 69 LP (1985)
  4. Paul McCartney, ‘Hot As Sun’
    From McCartney, UK APPLE RECORDS 1C 062-04 394 LP (1970)
  5. David Bowie, ‘Weeping Wall’
    From Low, UK RCA PL 12030 LP (1977)
  6. Richard Thompson, ‘Rockin in Rhythm’
    From Strict Tempo!, UK ELIXIR RECORDS ELIXIR LP 1 (1981)
  7. Roy Wood, ‘Rockin’ Shoes / She’s too good for me’
    From Boulders, UK EMI HARVEST SHVL 803 LP (1973)
  8. The Replacements, ‘Androgynous’
    From Let It Be, UK ZIPPO RECORDS ZONG 002 LP (1984)
  9. John Fogerty, ‘I saw it on TV’
    From Centerfield, WARNER BROS RECORDS 925 203-1 LP (1985)
  10. Roy Wood, ‘Songs of Praise’
    From Boulders, op cit.
  11. Johnny G, ‘Skye Boat Song’
    From Water Into Wine, UK BEGGARS BANQUET RECORDS BEGA 30 2 x LP (1982)
  12. Johnny G, ‘Call me Bwana / The Educated Monkey’ (1977)
    From G-Beat, UK BEGGARS BANQUET RECORDS BEGA 16 2 x LP (1980)
  13. Stevie Wonder, ‘Keep on Running’
    From Music of My Mind, UK TAMLA MOTOWN / EMI RECORDS LTD STMA 8002 LP (1972)
  14. Todd Rundgren
    ‘Couldn’t I Just Tell You’
    ‘I Saw the Light’
    ‘Saving Grace’
    From Something / Anything?, USA BEARSVILLE RECORDS 2BX 2066 2 x LP (1972)
  15. Jad Fair, ‘Sex Machine’
    From Everyone Knew…But Me, USA PRESS RECORDS P4005 LP (1983)
  16. Jad Fair, ‘Frankenstein Must Die’
    From The Zombies of Mora-Tau, UK ARMAGEDDON RECORDS AEP 003 EP (1980)
  17. Elvis Costello, ‘Ghost Train’
    From New Amsterdam, UK F-BEAT RECORDS XXFE EP (1980)
  18. Richard Thompson, ‘Will ye no cam back again / Cam O’er the Stream Charlie / Ye Banks and Braes’
    From Strict Tempo!, op cit.
  19. Nick Lowe, ‘Nutted by Reality’
    From Jesus Of Cool, UK RADAR RECORDS RAD 1 LP (1978)
  20. Roger Ruskin Spear, ‘Trouble with my Trousers’
    From Unusual, UK UNITED ARTISTS UAS 29508 LP (1974)
  21. Brian Wilson, ‘Melt Away’
    From Brian Wilson, SIRE RECORDS 925 669-1 LP (1988)

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

February 16th, 2008

Chic Cage Cutler Map and Some Leaves

wasbinich.JPGChic Nerve is the very talented Rebecca Mills, founder member of The Caution Curves, a Washington DC all-girl combo who press a lot of buttons for me in the quirked-out improvised rock and electronics field. Hectic Tenuous (Sockets CDR 37) is Rebecca’s solo trip, and it promises a multitude of fascinating bizarre processed sounds. A quick flick thro the tracks reveals echoing caverns, a wailing voice strained through computer sieves, and heavily-treated percussive guitar patterns. The woman’s imagination is sparking on all six - can’t wait to find time to visit her ‘Red Trek Moon’! As you can see, the label package their CDRs in DVD cases, very often with colourful artwork.

The John Cage item you see is Songs for Voice 58: 18 Microtonal Ragas (OTHER MINDS RECORDS OM1010-2), here delivered by the fine voice of Amelia Cuni, a very serious student of dhrupad singing. This was sent by the good graces of Werner Durand, the very friendly German musician who contributes his electronic drones to this rather subdued, but very compelling, record. The work is an extract from Cage’s Song Books (1970).

Ivor Cutler, the astonishing Scots poet and singer, died in March 2006, and A Flat Man (HOORGI HOUSE RECORDS HHCD01) has been timed for release to mark the anniversary of that sad event. The record was originally released on Creation Records in 1998, but is now very hard to find; so here it is reissued with a fine booklet containing drawings and photos and a very insightful text by his son Jeremy Cutler, which is about the first thing I’ve ever read that actually provides some real insight into the mind, the history and the preoccupations of this completely unique man. Watch out for further Cutler reissues and releases from the Hoorgi House; they are planning to bring us ‘new material which has never been publicly available before.’

Yet more abundance from Pica Disk, in the shape of Gunpowder Temple of Heaven (PICA04) by Birchville Cat Motel, the world’s favourite droning New Zealander of international renown. Campbell Kneale is praised to the skies (the very heavens indeed) by the effusive Bruce Russell on the sleeve notes for this single 40-minute work, which seems to involve playing rich chords on a church organ continuously. Evocative church interior photo on the front and mystical-symbolic engravings in black and silver all add to the associative experience. There’s a BCM discography reproduced here too; to call him ‘prolific’ would not be far from the mark.

You might be able to make out the murky cover art for the newie by Rigor Sardonicus; it’s got a skeleton standing in a graveyard and it’s called Vallis Ex Umbra de Mortuus (PARAGON RECORDS PRG 23016). I was just thinking it’s about time this magazine was sent a Black Metal record; Jennifer Hor gives the genre enough coverage in our pages, after all! The Rigors are I think a genuine band (not a solo act), and their brand of ultra-slow doom-laden bass-heavy sludge is just perfect to feed my warped predilections. Quite a luxury package, the full-colour booklet includes Hollywood-gothesque staged pictures of dead maidens in coffins, and further skeletons overlaid into various scenes using Photoshop and wielding the scythe of death wherever they roam. Plus some live video cuts somewhere on the disc. ‘Laudare Apocalypsis’, indeed.

By way of contrast to that heavy noise, may we propose Map (POTLATCH P108) by Jean-Luc Guionnet and Toshimaru Nakamura. On these four long and quiet pieces recorded at Montreuil and elsewhere, the Japanese emperor of hissing feedback uncoils himself like a gigantic snake while the French improviser clucks like an anguished chicken with his alto sax. The duo purr like contented white tigers on the third track, but wait till you hear the troubled and dark chords that Jean-Luc summons forth from his organ on track four. Taut and nervy improv at its leanest, this CD is a mean little beast!

The thing in the large red and olive envelope is sent from International Corporation in Chicago. They are I assume a small independent label, but all their releases arrive with paraphernalia trying to persuade you that they’re a huge faceless business organisation; even the press releases, complete with fake business cards attached, don’t really tell you about the music but seem to suggest that their enterprise is poised to take over the lion’s share of the marketplace. (They are even extending this strategy with the cryptic e-mails they send out!). I really enjoyed their previous release, a faintly subversive view of shopping mall culture as refracted through charming electronic music. This one, Mary St John’s Some Leaves Turned Red, Some Still Green (NO NUMBER), is 14 tracks of sumptuous and delightful synth instrumentals that I can heartily recommend to listeners who enjoy Eno, Cluster, or anything released on Sky Records. A wistfully nostalgic cover collage provides the complete antithesis to the global-domination subtext playfully suggested by the above.

Finally, we have three CDs from the Austrian label Sulatron-Records courtesy of the friendly Dave Schmidt (who is also Sula Bassana). Electric Orange are a band led by Dirk Jan Müller, and they play a very convincing and dynamic form of krautrock-inspired rock music on Morbus (st 0702). Anything with plenty of Hammond organ and mellotron usually gets my vote, although the squished orange on the whimsical cover art put me off my lunch for 5 seconds…Annot Rhül have Lost in the Woods (ST0703), and they’re a six-piece of talented Europeans who are aiming at something moodier and Pink Floyd-esque, though still planted firmly in the prog-rock area with their mellotrons sellotaped in place to the flute setting. While not as ‘dark’ as they might like to think, their semi-melodic sonic atmospheres are charming enough. Zone Six take us through 10 Years of Aural Psychedelic Journeys (ST 0704), with eight very lengthy songs and instrumental pieces, whose noodly guitars and bombastic synths are again guaranteed to appeal to all you diehard prog and kraut fans (including me). The kraut konnektions are confirmed by presence of a former Embryo guitarist, and mastering work by Eroc.

February 15th, 2008

John Stevens (TSP radio 15/02/08)

  1. The John Stevens Dance Orchestra, ‘Phil (A tribute to Phil Seamen)’
    From Ah!, GERMANY VINYL RECORDS VS 111 LP (1978)
  2. Spontaneous Music Ensemble, ‘Puddles, Raindrops and Circles’ (1967)
    From Withdrawal, UK EMANEM 4020 CD (1997)
  3. John Stevens’ Away, ‘What’s That?’
    From John Stevens’ Away, UK VERTIGO 6360 131 LP (1975)
  4. John Stevens Works, ‘Re-Touch’ (1977)
    From Re-Touch, GERMANY KONNEX RECORDS KCD 5027 (1993)
  5. John Stevens, ‘Application’ (extract)
    From Application Interaction And…, UK SPOTLITE RECORDS SPJ513 LP (1979)
  6. Spontaneous Music Ensemble, ‘The Only Geezer An American Soldier shot was Anton Webern’ (extract) (1977)
    From Low Profile, UK EMANEM 4031 CD (1999)
  7. Spontaneous Music Orchestra, ‘Search and Reflect’
    From + =, UK A RECORDS A-003 LP (1975)
  8. Spontaneous Music Orchestra, ‘Sustained Piece (instrumental)’ (1973)
    From Mouthpiece, UK EMANEM 4039 CD (2000)
  9. John Stevens Away, ‘Relative Space’ (1978)
    From Integration, USA RED RECORDS RED 009 LP (1980)
  10. Spontaneous Music Orchestra, ‘If you want to see a vision’ (1970)
    From For You to Share, UK EMANEM 4023 CD (1998)

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

February 10th, 2008

Huhta - too tough to die!

huhta.JPG

Couldn’t resist putting up a photo of this colourful package of goodies which arrived in late January to brighten my day. It was sent by the Swedish sound-artist Jean-Louis Huhta. That’s his visage on the striking cover of the seven inch single, an image rendered by Ola Åstraud; Ola is apparently “now curating shows with artists from 70s progg movement and forwards”, as Huhta explains in his enclosed letter. You may recall we reviewed his fine CD Halfway Between the World and Death (SLOTTET SLM5) in the current issue. In return he sent me the first-ever CD by OCSID called In Between (ORIGIN OR 2002) ; SKKULL by The Skull Defekts (RELEASE THE BATS RTB#23), those roaring noisesters Rylander and Nordwall (Huhta joined them for this 2006 release), and a CDR of his solo work recorded in Soderhamn Theater in 2007 (DFK REC 01). “I think there were about seven in the audience,” reports multi-media man Huhta. “I had a huge screen showing a film super 8 about concrete skate park construction.” It’s not all noise and concrete parks, though – the package also contained a copy of issue 6 of KUTI, the splendid broadsheet comic from Finland; a packet of seed for making your own Absolut Vodka; various promo stickers; and a plastic red watch branded with images of a masked superhero. “Just wanted to say I really like The Sound Projector,” Huhta wrote me in January. “The coverage is amazing! Strange that I have never come across it before. All good record stores here in Stockholm have shut down more or less.” “We’ve got the same problem in London,” I responded tartly. “It’s not just music, it has become very difficult for independent businesses to compete with Starbucks and so forth. Maybe retailing will be a thing of the past soon!” “Yes, we are in a critical moment,” pondered the profound sonic Swede. “It’s interesting, it’s like nature somehow, and nature nowadays is so affected (infected) by our actions.”

February 9th, 2008

Aiko’s greeting for 2008

machida.JPG

This personalised New Year’s greeting arrived in January from Aiko Machida. She makes “unique hand-constructed accessories and hand bags”, but I appreciate this small and simple item as a piece of mail-art poetry. I think it’s the petal of a flower, with a message inside handwritten with a pencil in the most delicate miniature lower-case script you’ve ever seen. Machida may or may not be a member of Unseen. When I receive things like this in the mail, I sometimes think I must be living a charmed life.

February 7th, 2008

Expo Coin-Op for Armory Radio

The great Ian Helliwell remains a relatively-undiscovered UK hero operating from his Brighton UK headquarters. Film-maker, visual artist, mad inventor and releaser of highly idiosyncratic bedroom electronic music, he must have been labelled a ‘boffin’ more times than he cares to admit. Mind you, his choice of letterhead image (bespectacled scientist in white coat) isn’t doing much to curb or deny such appellations. I’ve gotten a lovely CDR of Expo 67: A Radiophonic Collage from him last week, which is a dazzling 27-minute tapework assemblage that exactly captures the optimism and futurism of those heady days in Canada – an event known only to me from a certain image featuring on a Skyray ice-lolly wallchart which I happened to own at the time. On this work, Helliwell uses voice fragments from the media talking up the Expo, combined with musical samples from such greats as Xenakis, Tremblay and Tristram Cary, who produced special compositions for the Expo. Listeners who own a copy of Man In Space with Sounds by Attilio Mineo will certainly need this witty and colourful pop-art artefact to prop up alongside it.

Always a pleasure to hear from Blake Edwards (no relation), who performs as Vertonen and runs the variety-time label C.I.P. out of Chicago. Just released is the latest weirdie from bran(…)pos, called Coin-Op Khepri (cipcd021). This is nine tracks of what promises to be truly eyebrow-twisting electronic and sample-based layering malarkey, executed with more than the usual heavy dose of imagination and strange humour that you normally get from certain other jokers armed with a beatbox and a cheap sampler device. This is the solo work of one Jake Rodriguez, who’s been unspooling works under said monicker since 1995…the sleeve of this CD posits the missing links between ancient Egypt and casino gambling with black and gold visual panache, thus generating images no doubt familiar to long-standing fans of certain pinball machines and arcade computer games. I recommend getting your nickels into this man’s slot!

Been meaning for weeks to maketh mention of a lovely generous package of sonic fruits from the arms of the splendid Geoff Mullen, that ace guitar musician of Providence RI who’s currently garnering positive critical acclaim from all the “right” quarters. One such fruit plucked from the tree is a spiffy comp CD called Innature (BRG001 on the Barge Recordings label, released some two years ago). Mullen is scraping and plucking his steel strings and distorting amplifier output in his familiar alienating way on ‘Gold Eyes’, but there’s much enriched aural goodness from The Fun Years, Bird Show, Polmo Polpo, Animal Hospital and Loren Connors on here too, all wrapped up in a masterpiece of drugged-out illustrative bliss painted by Pali Kashi. A broken down shack in orange field never looked so hallucinatory…further Mullen guitar artistry is available on A Rip In The Fabric (RY 003), a seven-incher of somewhat more bleak dimensions released on his own Rare Youth label. He also sent some cassettes imprinted on said label, of which I can only find Aberich’s Heat Death at the moment, and I’m currently contemplating how best to remove the seal holding the box lid in place so that I too can experience a blast of that flaming finality. However, all these are just tasters for the main event, a staggering double LP called Armory Radio (Barge Recordings BRG003). All solo Mullen, and a beautifully ‘full’ mixture of stringed and percussive instruments layered with tape loops and radio signals of all stripe, wrapped in a gorgeous collage (by Cindy Gay Howlett) made from blueprints of an old 19th-century fortification. This utterly absorbing and hypnotic swell-tide styled music gave an hour of uninterrupted bliss to this listener around Xmas-tide last year. Only 500 copies were pressed in 2007, so may I suggest you pursue a copy with all permissible speed and determination? Mullen also compiled the outstanding Rare Youth compilation double-CD, a survey of Rhode Island music which we noted in issue 16; he has an eye and an ear for unique marginal talent, besides possessing much of his own…

Further American out-there sumptuousness has been provided to me in hefty dollops by Release The Bats, a Swedish label who normally deal in small black flying rodents but make occasional forays into music too. Warmer Milks I well recall as providing an exceptionally weirded-up voodoo live cut on their side of a split LP with Florida’s Collection of the Late Howell Bend; on Let Your Friends In (RTB#33), the insane quartet of Kentucky-based young men turn in two inspired bursts of distorted rock screech and thumpery, spliced together with disjunctive voice cut-ups that are the very antithesis of narrative story-telling. Hearing ‘The Ripple Children / The Jaunting’ is not unlike being chased through midnight-lit New England woods while pursued by two red witches on horseback. The ink and wash drawing on the front cover shows some clear aspirations towards the private visual worlds of Henry Darger, everyone’s favourite Outsider artist. Shepherds (from Brooklyn), likewise a quartet, have recorded Loco Hills (RTB#29) last year at somewhere called “Rear House”. Perhaps not the most strikingly original record we’ve heard this year, since it wears its Krautrock influences on its sleeve, around its neck, and on big orange badges while standing under a life-sized cardboard cutout of The Can with Malcolm Mooney. But this music is executed with such gusto, energy and conviction that few can resist succumbing to its rock-steady beats, its semi-chaotic layers and its cosmically spiralling grooves. The edgy recording quality is just right too. The ‘loconess’ of the Loco Hills clearly extends to strange rural operations involving rattlesnake poison, gutting knives and makeshift dental treatment, if the cover is anything to go by.

February 1st, 2008

Grilled Ghost Meat

  1. a.P.A.t.T., ‘BBQ Tonite’
    From Black and White Mass, UK PICKLED EGG RECORDS EGG 68 CD (2007)
  2. Fricara Pacchu, ‘Return of the Rats’
    From Midnight Pyre, FINLAND LAL LAL LAL #39 CD (2008)
  3. Ulaan Khol, (Track 2)
    From I, USA SOFTABUSE SB 026 CD (2008)
  4. Mok Nok, ‘Rötörhead’
    From Slugstorm, DENMARK SMITTEKILDE RECORDS SMKR 007 LP (2007)
  5. The Stumps, (Track 3)
    From The Black Wood, USA LAST VISIBLE DOG LVD 111 CD [2007]
  6. Anla Courtis, ‘Astral Duck Channeling’
    From Psi Gtr Avalanche, DENMARK SMITTEKILDE RECORDS SMKR 003 EP (2007)
  7. Semimuumio, ‘Jungle-Jats’
    From Vamos, FINLAND LAL LAL LAL #36 CD (2007)
  8. Masonic Youth, ‘Going Down’
    From Going Down, DENMARK SMITTEKILDE RECORDS SMKR 002 7” SINGLE
  9. Microblind Harvestmen, ‘Hellblazer’
    From Songs and Instrumentals from Death Bottom Slide, USA DIGITALIS INDUSTRIES DIGI042 CD (ND)
  10. The Story of Modern Farming, ‘St Michaels’
    From Someone New, FRANCE D’AUTRES CORDES CD d’ac141 (2007)
  11. Bardoseneticcube, ‘Untitled’
    From Roulette Russe pour un peu de caviar, RUSSIA MONOCHROME VISION mv12 CD (2007)
  12. Pulga, ‘Fuck The Satellites’
    From Pulga Loves You, USA FIRE MUSEUM RECORDS fm 10 CD [2007]
  13. Tennis Coats, ‘Donna Donna’
    From Totemo Aimasho, AUSTRALIA ROOM 40 RM415 CD (2007)
  14. Evil Moisture, B-side of Ghost Meat, DENMARK SMITTEKILDE RECORDS EP (2007)
  15. If, Bwana, ‘Jungle Horn’
    From Radio Slaves, RUSSIA MONOCHROME VISION mv11 CD (2007)
  16. Warmer Milks, extract from ‘The Ripple Children / The Jaunting’
    From Let Your Friends In, SWEDEN RELEASE THE BATS RTB#33 CD (2007)
  17. Jose Luis Redondo, ‘Earth Brain’ (fade)
    From La reponse est aux Pieds, SPAIN ETUDE RECORDS ETUDE016 CD (2008)
  18. MoHa!, ‘Stressalarm Del 1′
    From Rock/OFF!, NORWAY HUMBUG 067 7” SINGLE (2006)
  19. Shepherds, ‘We’re in it for the Corn Demon’
    From Loco Hills, SWEDEN RELEASE THE BATS RTB#29 CD (2007)

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM 1st February 2008

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