Jad Fair & Kramer - Roll Out the Barrel (1988)

Jad Fair and Kramer's first album of twisted pop songs is a rich and dense work that is constantly surpising and will reward your attention.  Some of the songs are sharp, dissonant and jarring whilst others are warm and elegant, like this...

 
Tracklist:

01 Cheerleaders Wild Weekend
02 Double For Me
03 Bird Of Prey
04 Subterranean Homesick Blues
05 If It's O.K.
06 Better Safe Then Sorry
07 Den Of Angels
08 Blind Hope
09 California
10 When Is She Coming
11 Second Thought
12 Best Left Unsaid
13 By And By
14 Help
15 Around And Around
16 What I've Been Waiting For
17 Load And Mount
18 Nosferatu
19 Twist And Shout
20 King Kong
21 Rockin' Chair
22 Easy To See
23 On The Sunny Side Of The Street
24  Paths Of Glory

Get it HERE.

Mystery singer from Marrakech

I'm about to move house, a mammoth task as we (my partner and our 3 kidiwinks) have been renting our current home for 12 years now.  I'm surrounded by boxes and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the amount of packing left to do.  It's times like this that a man could easily start to feel like he has too many records.

What this may mean for Snap, Crackle and Pop is that there may be a lack of posts for the next few weeks while we move and settle into the new place.

Just to keep y'all occupied in my absence though, I am posting this cassette I picked up on my recent Marrakech visit.  It was recommended to me by the owner of a music shop located in the back room of an electrical goods shop just off the Djemaa el Fna telling me the singer is from Marrakech.  I have no idea what type of music it is, and its fair to say I've never heard anything quite like it.  I was disappointed when I first put the tape on and really though it would not be my cup o' tea, but the tempo increases over the course of side one until you're absolutely swept away by the demented energy of it all.  It appears to be a live recording and, gosh, it does sound like some party!

 

As usual, any informtion on the artist and the music would be greatly appreciated.

Tracklist:

Side One

Side Two

Get it HERE.

George Stavis - Labyrinths (1969)

Ol' George, the Appalachian banjo wizard, once played guitar and sung songs in some band called Federal Duck. Then after some kind of epiphany he went and recorded this strange beast...an album of 'Occult Improvisational Compositions for 5 - string banjo and percussion'. It's like Robbie Basho, Ravi Shankar and some old hillybilly mystics cooked up together into a potent soup that's good for the mind and soul:

Tracklist:

01 Winter Doldrums
02 Finland Station 03 My Favorite Thing
04 Firelight
05 Cold Spring

Get it HERE.

Snapper - Shotgun Blossom (1990)

Noisy, motorik indie-pop from New Zealand. Snapper were formed in the late '80s by Peter Gutteridge, previously a member of New Zealand favourites The Chills and The Clean, but Snapper wore their punk attitude and love of Neu! and Suicide on their sleeves and came out with their teeth bared.

Tracklist:

01 Pop Your Top
02 Can
03 Telepod Fly
04 Eyes That Shine
05 Dark Sensation
06 Dead Pictures
07 Snapper And The Ocean
08 What Are You Thinking
09 Hot Sun
10 I Don't Know
11 Emmanuelle
12 Dry Spot
13 Rain

Get it HERE.

Bongwater - Too Much Sleep (1989)

Deeply surreal, in the truest sense of the word, intensely psychedelic, in a way that avoids all the possible cliches, hugely entertaining from start to finish, and totally essential.

Enjoy:



Tracklist:

01 The Living End
02 The Drum
03 Mr. & Mrs. Hell
04 Too Much Sleep
05 Talent Is A Vampire
06 Psychedelic Sewing Room
07 Splash 1
08 He Loved The Weather
09 Teena Stays The Same
10 One Hand On The Road
11 Khomeini Died Tonight
12 One So Black
13 No Trespassing

Get it HERE.

Posset - Mump Grumpy (Infinite Exchange 2009)

Brain curdling cassette hum and buzz, this skrree takes the sounds of everyday life and turns the volume up to unbearable, in the process making everyday life into something exotic and strangely mysterious. Real freedom propaganda, this is the wobbly sound of Dali's spindly legged elephants learning to walk. It is the sound of children ransacking The City and exchanging bullion for bubblegum, the sound of spontaneous fun.

Posset is J.G. Murray, the North-East's premier purveyor of dictaphone jazz. He jams with a bank of old dictaphones and broken walkmen, ring modulators and antique effects pedals all wired together with strings of snot, scraps of sticky tape and bits of old wool. The noises he makes might not be everybody's cup of tea, but then what is?

Tracklist:

01 Children's Film Foundation
02 Coleslaw Surfeit
03 Verunk Bluaghh
04 Wooden Bells
05 The Pete Best Of Noise
06 Cafe De La Halle
07 Pekar

Get it HERE. And go leave him a message at myspace.com/iamposset

Essential Logic - Wake Up (1979)

Essential Logic were an English punk band formed by Lora Logic in 1978 after the break-up of X-Ray Spex. On this short ep, the music is spikey and dissonant with a clear reggae thing going on a couple of the tracks, and you're either going to love or hate Lora's quirky vocal style. The saxophone she honks occasionally has a sound that reminds me of Henry Cow or one of them arty 70s groups.
Interestingly (or maybe not depending on your point of view), the guitarist from Essential Logic, an upstart called William Bennett, went on to become one of the most notorious and allegedly sinister figures in The History of Underground Music. Bennett founded Whitehouse in 1980 and I have difficulty thinking of a more provocative or controversial musical combo.
Not a synthesizer or reference to deviant sexual practices to be heard here though, you'll probably be relieved to hear.
Following Essential Logic's split in 1981, Lora went on to play with groovy units such as Swell Maps, The Raincoats and the Red Crayola.

Tracklist:

01 Wake Up
02 Eagle Bird
03 Quality Crayon Wax O.K.
04 Bod's Message

Get it HERE.

B.A.L.L. - Hardball/Ball Four (Shimmy Disc 1990)

I've been very busy with one thing and another over the past few weeks, hence the lack of recent posts, and to compound things I'm going away for a couple of weeks of heat and sun, so there'll be nothing new here until mid August. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this big, brash, howling mess of an album.

This was B.A.L.L.'s last (and best) record and you should all give it a try if you're in the mood for some dizzying, fuzzed out psychedelic freak-outs.

Tracklist:

01 Hardball
02 She's Always Driving
03 Timmy The Toad, Man
04 Mary Jane
05 The Road To Heaven
06 Ball Four Prelude
07 Ball One
08 Ball Two
09 Ball Three
10 Ball Four
11 R.I.P.

Get it HERE.

The Marvelettes - The Marvelettes (1967)

A couple of weeks ago Dominic from Gigante Records posted a comment warning us that Motown Meltdown Volume 2 was about to be released as a freely downloadable album. Well, thank you Dominic for getting in touch, I've now had the chance to check out the music and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. If you're interested in hearing some seriously demented re-workings of classic old Motown tunes, then this is the album for you...and its all free and fun.
And if all that lunacy whets your appetite for a little more Motown, then you could do worse than to check this out:


In the early '60s, The Marvelettes were one of Tamla's biggest girl-groups scoring the company's first number 1 single in 1961 with 'Please Mr Postman'.
This 1967 album features killer versions of Robert Parker's 'Barefootin' and the Velvettes 'He Was Really Sayin' Something'. The real classic here though, is the gorgeous 'The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game' which has some beautiful lyrics and a really soulful feel as well as fantastic backing from the Funk Brothers:

Tracklist:

1. Barefootin'
2. Message to Michael
3. The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game
4. When You're Young and in Love
5. I Know Better
6. I Can't Turn Around
7. He Was Really Sayin' Somethin'
8. The Day You Take One (You Have to Take the Other)
9. When I Need You
10. Keep Off, No Trespassing
11. Tonight Was Made for Love
12. I Need Someone

Get it HERE.

Kemialliset Ystävät - Suurempi pieni palatsi (2001)

Here's another incredible album of chimerical, twilight sounds from our chemical friends from Tampere, Finland: Kemialliset Ystävät. This one was released way back in 2001 on the French label, Alice in Wonder records, and this is certainly a record that leaves the listener in a state of wonderment. Difficult and nonsensical on initial listens, perseverence pays dividends as their communal abstractions break out into soundworld of exquisite beauty and bottomless melancholy.
Here's a suitably wobbly video for Nykyajan Tanssi:

Tracklist:

01 Puretaan Teltat
02 Hurja Taivas
03 Kuin Kaste Aamun
04 Sinistä Hohtaa Kangastus
05 Nykyajan Tanssi
06 Tallattujen Kielojen Surumarssi
07 Vuorille
08 Sytyttäkää Suitsukkeet
09 Pieni Palatsi
10 Heikoimmista Tähdistä
11 Urasorsalle
12 Sateen Varjo
13 Lammikko
14 Katkennut Rauhanpiippu

Get it HERE.

Negativland - Escape from Noise (1987)

Read THIS. Its a good overview of the album and the prank Negatvland pulled after its release. There's also some links to related stuff. For the unfamiliar, Negativland are a bunch of San Francisco subversives, painstakingly sculpting audio collages to scramble our brains. Escape from Noise features guest noises from a who's who of underground superstars including Jello Biafra, Jerry Garcia, Fred Frith, Alexander Hacke (from Einsturzende Neubauten), the Residents and thee Reverend Ivan Stang (mouthpiece of The Church of the Subgenius).

Tracklist:

01 Announcement
02 Quiet Please
03 Michael Jackson
04 Escape From Noise
05 The Playboy Channel
06 Stress In Marriage
07 Nesbitt's Lime Soda Song
08 Over The Hiccups
09 Sycamore
10 Car Bomb
11 Methods Of Torture
12 Yellow Black And Rectangular
13 Backstage Pass
14 Christianity Is Stupid
15 Time Zones
16 You Don't Even Live Here
17 The Way Of It
18 Endscape

Get it HERE.

Einsturzende Neubauten - Drawings of O.T. (1984)

Intense and cathartic, Einsturzende Neubauten's second studio album was released in 1982 and is still one of the most frightening and beautiful albums I have ever heard, bridging the gap between the all out sonic blitzkreig of their first album Kollaps and their later, more contemplative works. I first heard this band back in 1984 when I was a moody teen masquerading as a goth. I bought the (fabulous) Strategies Against Architecture lp, with money from my paper round and fell in love with this song, Kalte Sterne:

I have included mp3's of the two sides of this cassette, partly out of laziness, and partly because I think the album is best listened to straight through from start to finish. Here's a video for the album's most well known piece, Armenia:

Tracklist:

A1 Vanadium I-Ching
A2 Hospital Istische Kinder / Engel Der Vernichtung
A3 Abfackeln!
A4 Neun Arme
A5 Herde
A6 Merle
A7 Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T.
A8 Finger Und Zahne
A9 Falschgeld
A10 Styropor

B1 Armenia
B2 Die Genave Zeit
B3 Der Herrscher Und Der Sieger
B4 Affenroulette
B5 Durstiges Tier
B6 Wasserturm

Get it HERE.

Aboombong - Asynchronic

I don't often (ever, would be more accurate) write posts related to contemporary music, I feel a bit old and don't really spend the time or the money trying to keep abreast of what's happening in today's patchwork of cool underground scenes. I've been quite enjoying some of the dubstep (or whatever you like to call it) stuff that's been drifting through my ears, particularly the Purple Wow Sound mix by Bristol producer, Joker. But we won't talk about that.

Much more out there and freeform than any of that stuff is this great album of clatter, hum and fuzz from the very mysterious Aboombong. The album is an intriguing blend of lo-fi drones, tape manipulation, mangled afro percussion and twitchy free-jazz drumming. And I'm liking it a lot.

Check it out.

Electronic Music - Various Artists (Turnabout Records 1967)

I don't know much about modern classical music, Cage and Stockhausen and that academic avant garde stuff, but what I do know is that Luciano Berio's piece 'Visage' is one of the most incredible, confusing and completely psychedelic pieces of music I've ever heard. The piece was composed in 1961 and it is basically a 20 minute tape cut up (a la William Burroughs) of opera singer Cathy Berberian's astonishing voice. To call it a cut up however, is to underplay the stunning complexity of the sound, for the voice is layered and manipulated, pieces of tape are speeded up and slowed down...what is recognisable as human voice is entirely wordless, beyond language, transporting you to a place of pure emotion, or pure thought. This is music to fall into, maybe something like an aural black-hole?

The other tracks are worth a listen too...

Tracklist:

01 Ilhan Mimaroglu - Agony
02 John Cage - Fontana Mix
03 Luciano Berio - Visage

Get it HERE.

Something Weird: Kemialliset Ystavat - Varisevien Tanssi / Silmujen Marssi (Kevyt Nostalgia 2003)

It's been a while since I posted anything out-of-the-ordinary, left-of-centre or slightly-off-kilter, so this great album fits all those bills. Kemialliset Ysatvat have been quietly ploughing their own unique furrow in Finland since 1995, passing those long winter nights making weird, improvised twilight noise. Their music is often described as freakfolk or psyche-folk, and there is certainly something folky about the sounds they make, complete with flutes and recorders, and all kinds of acoustic stringed instruments, but this is a fractured noise that possibly reflects the fractured nature of the 21st Century European 'folk', or the difficulties inherent in trying to think any kind of 'volkish' collective in the digital age.

However, there's more going on here than midnight woodland yodellings and bellringing as Kemialliset Ystavat (Finnish for 'Chemical Friends') introduce us to rasping animal grunts and squeels, looped and fed through ancient samplers and antique effects pedals. There is something mystical and shamanic, something ecstatic, about this music, but then again it seems shot through with boredom and ennui, and it sounds at times like something you might find sitting on the turntable of a broken down gramophone in a long forgotten attic where dust and cobwebs shimmer in the shafts of sunlight that creep through gaps in the rooftiles. Its a magical sound, but weirdly mundane.

This album collects two very limited cdrs that were released in 2001 and 2002 and throws them onto one lovely slab of vinyl. Its a fascinating album from a fascinating band who are very much alive and kicking, and I urge you to check it out then try and see them live because they really put on a great show.

Tracklist:

All songs are untitled so you just get an mp3 of each side.

Get it here.

Something Weird - Two more 'free' singles.

I quite like these odd little interludes where confusion can reign for a few moments. This first mp3 is both sides of another single that came with a 1992 issue of Bananafish. The magazine and the record sleeve are long lost, but the record's a winner...warped, outsider sounds that turn the head to soup.

Tracks: Eye Yamatsuka - Untitled/Merchants of the New Bizarre - Jimmy Carter/Lee Ranaldo - Deva, Spain Fragments/The Easygoings - Bigfoot & Popcorn Medley/Dead C - Puberty/Gate - That's Gate/Dead C - This Map/Mr Freeman's Pink Underwear - Untitled



As if all that wasn't enough, here's another 'free' record that came with an issue of a muso rag called Chemical Imbalance back in 1993. This one has non of the charming garbled tape hiss and crazed skits that grace the bananafish records, just a bunch of tracks by:

Kicking Giant - Rapid C/ Faust - Live, Hamburg 10-90/ Kicking Giant - Background, Moving Quickly/ Pavement - My Radio/ Sun City Girls - Swing of Kings/ T.V. Personalities - Girl on a Motorcycle

Davenport - O, Too High Ditty for My Simple Rhyme (Time Lag 2004)

Two long, smoked out jams for twilight children. Bells, whistles, a harmonium and a chicken all battle it out in some shed in darkest Wisconsin. Probably great for blood-swapping ceremonies and peyote fueled ritual sex.
This chunk of howl and buzz came out as a cdr in 2005 on Time Lag Records, purveyors of all that crooked improv-folktronic-voodoo-drone stuff.
Get it HERE.

Stock, Hausen & Walkman - Ventilating Deer (1997)

Fabulous dada audio collage and aberrant queasy listening cut-ups from these mysterious sonic pranksters. This is very odd, very entertaining and displays an unhealthy and irreverant sense of humour, which for an instrumental album is quite a feat.

Tracklist:

A1		Sleep
A2		Upset
A3		Ordeal
A4		Broccoli
A5		Spot
B1		Feather
B2		Gruel
B3		Würstsaft
B4		Skipper
B5		Flagging

Check it out HERE.

SOMETHING WEIRD: Perceptual Motor Rhythm Skills - Bananafish # 7

This compilation 7" came with issue 7 of the fabulous US 'zine Bananafish way back in 1992. I used to look forward to this arriving at my local vinyl pusher's, as it always provided a good dose of brain scrambling Dada-esque confusion. Occasionally there'd be stuff in there about music, but mostly I'd ignore that stuff in favour of the random ramblings of Seymour Glass and his unstable friends.
Like Lisa Suckdog's Rollerderby, what was interesting about this 'zine was the cut and paste artwork, and its skewed take on everyday life. Unfortunately, all my copies of this have long ago been sucked into a black hole, lost somewhere along my way. But I do have a few of these singles left. This stuff is bizarre, roughly cut audio collage, spoken word, noise, improv, prank call...strange messages from beneath the underground.

Press the play button to listen:

If you want you can download it here.

And here's the tracklisting:

A1	Reverend John Hawkins*	Sermon Excerpt
A2	Hijo Kaidan*	No Particular
A3	Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson	Excerpt
A4	Anne Eickelberg	A Most Horrible Mistake
A5	Felipe X. Milstein	Robert (Scare Stiff Of Penis)
B1	Crust	Pumpchili
B2	Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson	Excerpt
B3	Royal Trux	Theme Elementary School Psycho (Ax In Y Bad Boy BBM)
B4	Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson	Excerpt