TONGUE TOP TEN — OCT. 20, 2009
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

Sorry about our recent absence, but travel and general shit have shoved their fingers deep into our collective schedules. Hopefully, we’ll manage to wiggle around in more timely fashions now that the nuts are off the trees.

1. Was really curious to hear some sides by The Pink Noise—Canadian noise rockers recently expanded to three pieces from two—after hearing them kill it one night at Union Pool. So, was hanging at Earwax on Bedford waiting for the line to shrink in front of the Endless Summer taco truck and eyeballed their Alpha LP (Almost Ready Records) and the “Gold Light/Prince Charlies Revenge” 7” on Sacred Bones Records. Grabbed ‘em both and was kinda stunned by how much weirder and seriously zonked they were in comparison to their live blast. Gotta see ‘em again now cuz these vinyls are really outasite no (whatever) wave primal beat drum/guitar from crazy place and the singing is odd guttural scrawl. You might wanna dig this. Or eat it. We did both and are ready for many more spoonfuls.

2. Incoherent Lullabies (Camera Obscura) is the second album by Denver-based space pop outfit, Fell. And it makes me (the older Tongue handler) recall the first time I ever heard of Pink Floyd. It was the spring of 1968. I was attending Montclair Academy. I was talking to someone about how much I liked the Doors and he said, “Oh, you should check out this new band from London, The Pink Floyd. They’re like the English Doors.” I did check them out, and didn’t really get the connection very clearly. Syd Barrett and Jim Morrison were so incredibly different it just didn’t make sonic sense. But now, hearing Fell, I am starting to appreciate some of the sonic similarities between Obscured By Clouds-era Floyd and L.A. Woman-era Doors. They really do share turf in terms of construction and looseness. Anyway, at several moments, Fell remind me of a cross between those two bands, although their vocals are more like generic post-Pepper Brit pop, verging on tongue-turf staked out by the pre-Threshold Moody Blues. Which is actually a fairly cool mix. Other parts sound real diff—with influences ranging from Suicide (copped from some Suicide-damaged band rather than the root source, I’d wager) to the Cure—but I keep thinking of 1968. Before Chicago. Before Nixon. It’s a pleasant memory.

3. Gotta say side two of the Diagram A LP, excellently titled Human Tissue Press : Vinyl Removal (Open Mouth), is one of the classiest cut-up, clipped and jagged one-man/one-mantra meditation sessions we’ve ever ommm’ed across. Really very sweet and ahead of the game. This Providence-expat dude has been on the sub-tributary scene of bizarro solo noise junk sculpture performance for like fucking ever and, along with Noise Nomads, is one of the Eastern Seaboard’s most magnificent purveyors of random brain rip.

4. Cruising the road and/or the dial and/or the web on Sunday mornings at 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM (CST), our ears are gently pressed to the dulcet warblings of Tulane Blacktop on WTUL-FM (91.5). The show, co-hosted by Lazy Dave and Mr. McSuds has proven to be a solid sniff of interesting night air. These 19 year-olds may not have brain roots as deep as redwoods, but we’ve heard more Dictators tracks played on this show than any other in recent memory, and one segue a couple of weeks ago—going from the Misfits into the Supremes—was the most bodacious transition we can recall since someone used Hendrix’s “Hey Baby” (from Rainbow Bridge) as an exit strategy out of “Anarchy in the UK” (single version) on a party mix back in ’77.

5. Ypsilanti, Michigan continues to throw up weirdo record labels without surcease, and one we’ve been sloshing through with boots of gunk lately is With Intent Records, which has been issuing some real nice graveyard drone dirt. A particularly deadening example of their aesthetic would have to be the new Exhumed Corpse LP titled Pray For Death. This minimal dark dirge morass spreads its inky stasis across both sides and when it’s over, well you won’t know it’s over, cuz you’ll be dead.

6. A couple of summers ago we had the chance to watch a mind-blowing pre-punk document from suburban L.A.’s deep underground. The object in question was video documentation of a gig by the Imperial Dogs at Cal State Long Beach, the night before Halloween, 1974. The Imperial Dogs were one of those bands about whom rumors more than facts have long tended to cohere. Led by writer/maniac Don Waller, they were part of the same aesethetic gush as Back Door Man fanzine (with whom they were tightly associated) and various other loose threads that were blowing around in those rough days. The band only had one posthumous 45 released in the ‘70s, and it didn’t seem indicative of the madness of which they were supposedly capable. That legendary quality was finally made manifest in 1989, when the Australian Dog Meat label issued the amazing Unchained Maladies LP. And this newly released dvd—Live at Long Beach! (Imperial Dogs)—is icing on all known cakes. It is an exquisite, Stooges-damaged dive into the dumpster of style—as punk as a glitter jockstrap caked with blood. It ups the ante as far as extremo-pre-punk recklessness is concerned and is one of the swellest things to watch ever.

7. Fuckin fuck fuck fantastic duo LP by trumpet mangler maestro Greg Kelley and Scottish drum freak Alex Neilson called Passport To Satori (Golden Lab Records). Just kills. First side is straight up awesome lips on brass spoot ‘n spit tone with sweet tap tap. Side two is more manic, more off the fucking wall with Kelley sending air sound through sickened pedal puh while who one of these drunk fucks starts whooshing some kind of synth hell—really great improvisation and it takes you straight to that Satori joint (or whatever that place is) where blowjobs are as good as free jazz.

8. We have been off the Corwood Records promo list for a few years now, so it was lovely to see a package with The Representative’s distinctive lettering on it in the mailbox once again. The parcel in question contained a 2CD set called Portland Thursday and it is an absolute ratification of the enduring brilliance of this eminence grise. Like Charles “Chuck” Berry, Jandek usually plays with pick-up bands as he travels around, and this quartet (Sam Coomes, Emil Amos, Liz Harris, Jessica Dennison) is very damn fine—creating drift clouds of beauty and menace to encircle the free-form composite-obsessions of The Representative. We must do some catch-up work on the Corwood catalogue. This music is far too good to not-gobble.

9. Meditations had a couple of cassette releases on the excellent Anathema Sound label a while back which exhibited a mesmerizing take on sick forest desolation and the harsh chill of deviant synth blackness. Whoever they are they got as good a grip on new nothing black grimness as anyone out there and this new Digitalis cassette of theirs called Precipice, is full-on beautiful agony of dead vocal puke tone awash in earthworm feedback. Genius.

10. Also embued with genius is Dark Horse Comics’ series of three volumes reissuing the collected adventured of Herbie–The Fat Fury. These books seem obvious as the root-source of some of the best characters invented by Dan Clowes and Chris Ware, but there’s a strangely inert quality to the drawing and writing that pushes this stuff into a real strange and unique place. Friends collected copies of these ‘60s books quite assiduously at various times, and they were never super-rare, but they were always super-weird. Great to have them in one handy place. If you got a taste of these in Dan Nadel’s great Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969 (Abrams) you may now fully slake yr thirst.

Over & Out.

We remain interested in all spew—especially vinyl, print & visual. Two (2) copies are best. Send ‘em to:

Bull Tongue
PO Box 627
Northampton MA 01061
USA

TONGUE TOP TEN #4 – May 26, 2009

Hey little buddies. Been sick as rat turds for a while now, but the covers are peeling back and we are breathing again. Nice.

1. We have made no secret of the boundless enthusiasm with which we embrace Vermont’s Mr. Dredd Foole and all his works, so it should be no surprise to hear that sparks fucking burst when these two new slabs arrived at headquarters. Songs to Despond Ya (Apostasy) is a brilliant solo live LP, with Dredd on acoustic guitar and howler, which demonstrates the warmth of smoke and the magic of his sound. It seems bogus to repeat the mantra for the nth time, but Dredd really takes the impulse of Starsailor/Lorca/Blue Afternoon-era Tim Buckley and throws it into the stratosphere. As casual as it is amazing. And it is icing to report that there is finally graspable evidence of the Dredd & Ed experience, after a couple decades (almost) of scattered live tapes and buzzing memory bulbs. That Lonesome Road Between Heart & Soul (Bo’ Weavil) is a CD by Dredd Foole and Ed Yazijian, who may be known to a few folks for his work with Kustomized or his Gladtree solo LP, Six Ways to Avoid the Evil Eye. Anyway, Ed is a string maestro inside this conceptual bonding, doing violin, lap steel and other guitar stuff, while Dredd uncorks spirals of upful phlegm. It’s glorious buzzing, droneful music, and a great companion piece for the LP. Of course, it should have been an LP itself, but what the hex?

2. Recent trip to that poetry fest in Cleveland went okay. Thanks for asking. Saw a bunch of good stuff. Drove many miles. Got an excellent book. Actually, got a few good books, but we have favorites on our minds right now, and that is a camp into which we will always place the great Valerie Webber and the equally smokin’ Elaine Kahn (late of 50 Foot Women). The pair has collaborated on a solid new volume called Convinced by the End of It (Big Baby Books), split in twain, shared half by each. And it is a motherfucker of a read—one of the best things we’ve read in a long time. Their voices have been very different in the past, these two, but there are similarities here never noted before—a slowly twisting surrealism, combined with casually strident orgone boil. This is powerful, funny, mean and possessed of a magical quality we associate with the incredible early work of Erica “Rikki” Ducornet. This is writing in its highest form.

3. For whatever reason, new jazz/improv disks have not been finding us as regularly as they once did. Maybe we complained about the format too much, and since no one apart from SIWA, QBICO, Eremite and a coupla other places even understand that jazz should be available on LP, it’s usually no big deal. But recent car travel has made CDs a somewhat more useful format (at least in the short term), and we got these three new things from the Porter Records label (previously noted for reissuing a few key Philadelphia pieces), and figured they’d ride as well as anything. And they did. Opus de Life by Profound Sound Trio which documents a show from June ’08. Saxophonist for the date is Englishman Paul Dunmall, who doubles on bagpipes, and really blows like a maniac. Long mired in my brain as a second tier freebopper, Dunmall presents a much weirder surface here than expected, creating raw melodicism with an almost primitive grace. The rhythm section is Andrew Cyrille and Henry Grimes (Cecil Taylor’s legendary Blue Note-era backline). Cyrille sounds as good as always—alternately multi-dimensional and hammy—and Grimes puts in a very solid arco-heavy performance on bass and violin. Had not paid much attention to the rediscovered Grimes, but his work here is fine. Julu Twine by Alan Sondheim and Myk Freedman finds Sondheim’s various strings (he’s been playing, writing and creating in various fields since the early ’60s) paired with Freedman’s lap steel to lovely weird effect. Tones get bent so far they curl back on themselves, and eternity’s whistle is always just a psychedelic heartbeat away. Sondheim’s reactivated musical career has been very interesting to track, and this album’s a good one. Not jazz, but good. Even less jazzic is Folkanization by Francesco Giannico. This young Italian electro-acoustic composer in whose work we can hear tendrils of everything from Luigi Nono to Toru Takemitsu. Filled with odd details, the music is fascinating. Good for the car, anyway.

4. Much recent fume time has been spent amidst the pages of Steven Brower’s Satchmo (Harry N. Abrams), a book largely dedicated to the visual art of the last century’s premier pothead—Mr. Louis Armstrong. Brower was also responsible for that cool book of Woody Guthrie’s visuals a few years back, but this one is even bonnier on the peeps. Armstrong was an insanely gifted collage artist, who created hundreds of self-referential pieces to adorn reel-to-reel tape boxes, scrapbooks and even—until his wife pulled it down anyway—one of the walls of his house in Queens. The text Brower conjures is cool, but it’s really just a context generator for the wild wild art that crawls all over the pages of this book. Been showing this to everyone who falls by and they’re all blown away. You be, too.

5. If you held a gun to our heads and yelled, “Quick! Think of a great whiskey!” We’d have no problem rolling out a list that would make you weak in the knees. If, however, instead of whiskey, you asked for a list of great Colorado punk bands, the list would peter out in an embarrassingly short time, even if we stuttered a lot. Consequently, it’s no lie to say we were shocked (SHOCKED!) by the amazing contents of Rocky Mountain Low (Hyperpycnal)>. This 2 LP set is an insanely great insider’s view of the Colorado underground scene of the late ’70s. We’d never even heard rumors about half the bands here, but Joseph Pope (of Angst “fame”) was an active participant, and along with Dalton Rasmussen, he pulled together a great set of unreleased nuggets from demos, rehearsal tapes & whatnot. Like lotsa scenes in their early days, the sounds here are heterogenous—’60s style pop, hard garage, weird experimentalism and Brit-damaged lunge are all part of the mix, just as they were in the day. The book/zine included is a great blend of history, attitude, crappy-looking fliers and the best picture of Jello Biafra you will ever see in this lifetime (or any other) (although this one is good, too). Every town deserves this kind of deep investigation. Superb shit.

6. One of us (not telling who) recently made the trek down to New Orleans for the Ponderosa Stomp, which is an annual event tracking the trajectory of oddball roots dudes of all stripes. Two stages, ten hours a night at the House of Blues added up to 30-40 hours of solid listening insanity, but the absolute highpoint was the…well, not reunion of the Flamin’ Groovies (pic’d above), exactly, but it was the first time that founding members Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney had been together onstage since ’71, when Loney split in the wake of the Teenage Head LP. They were backed by the A-Bones, with Ira Kaplan on organ and former Groovies fanclub head Miriam Linna, banging the beat, and man, it was insane. Jordan and Loney both have a crazy sorta look going (check the youtube vids), but the sound was so right on you could just cry. They played almost all stuff from the first three LPs, but at show’s end they tackled “Shake Some Action” (from the long-post-Loney days), “Teenage Head” and “Slow Death” (which was recorded after Roy had left). It was unbelievably great. People were screaming like babies and Miriam was singing along with everything and just looking like the cat who ate the canary. There are going to be a couple of reprise shows coming up this summer, and you would be well advised to be there.

7. Many peeps out there may know something or another about the legendary NWW list. This was a printed insert of recommended obscurities Steven Stapleton included in copies of the first couple of Nurse With Wound albums. The list has been a touchstone for a lot of people over the years, and various attempts to reissue bits and pieces from it have been made. Right now there are actually a goodly number of them available in one digital format or another, but shamefully few have been blessed by vinyl reissue, which remains the king of all known formats. Thankfully, De Stijl has taken the time to do a lovely, lovely LP reissue of the sole album by the Finnish experimental band, Sperm. Entitled Shh!, the album features one side of kosmiche-tinged free-rock with many electronic asides. The flip replaces the kraut proclivities with some free-jazz reed-gush, and it all sounds utterly jake. The original had a silk-screened sleeve, but this one looks dandy and sounds better than any original we’ve ever laid ears on. Gut stuf!

8. The story of Mad in its EC days is pretty well known. The early issues, edited by the insane Harvey Kurtzman have been reprinted in whole and also in various anthologies frequently during the past 50 years. Kurtzman’s next few projects have been less well documented. He left Mad to do a glossy humor mag called Trump for Hugh Hefner. Hefner killed the mag after two issues, but he allowed Kurtzman to use free office space. As a result, Kurtzman organized a bunch of other artists to pool their funds to create an autonomous humor monthly. It ran for 11 issues in 1957-58 and was called Humbug. We’ve seen occasional loose issues of the ‘zine, but Fantagraphics has compiled the full run in a new two-volume box set, and included lots of interviews, historical context, and info about Kurtzman’s next project, Help! (among many other things). The reproduction quality is great, and the contents—by Kurtzman, Will Elder, Arnold Roth, Al Jaffe and Jack Davis—are far more sophisto than Mad, and less pop-culture-oriented than Help! In a way, Humbug almost feels like a goof-humor version of The New Yorker or something. There’s a lot of fairly serious political/social commentary, cloaked in wry rainment. It’s a blend as interesting as any cocktail, and it’s goddamn great to have this stuff easily available. Hats away!

9. One of the less-known documentaries by D.A. Pennebaker is the hour-long Sweet Toronto, which was filmed at the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival festival in 1969. It has just been issued on DVD under the title John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band Live in Toronto ’69 (Shout Factory) and is a rather good eye-felch. Pennebaker is a great framer of live concerts and this is no exception. It opens amidst a somewhat half-assed looking group of bikers who seem to be escorting the Plastic Ono Band to the outdoor concert, but soon settles down to matters at hand. There are segments with Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard to start things off (the full line-up was: Milkwood, Nucleus, Whiskey Howl, Cat Mother & the Allnight Newsboys, Chicago Transit Authority, Screaming Lord Sutch, Tony Joe White, Doug Kershaw, Alice Cooper, Junior Walker, Diddley, Gene Vincent, Lewis, Richard, Chuck Berry, Onos and the Doors. MC was Kim Fowley. Wonder where the other footage is?), the Plastic Ono Band hits stage with a boom. It’s crazy to see Yoko crawling around in a white bag while Lennon and Clapton howl through “Blue Suede Shoes”, and the vibe of the whole thing is gorgeously bizarre. By the end, when Yoko’s singing “John John,” Clapton has his guitar off and is kneeling, back to the audience, nudging feedback from his amp as though he was in the Skaters or something. Fuckin’ A!

10. Just got a little package with three issues of Brian Walsby’s Manchild comics (Bifocal Media), the third and fourth issues of which come with CDs by the always exquisite Melvins. Walsby was extremely active in artifying the punk underground of the mid-‘80s onward, and his books are densely scripted and great reads. Some of the stories are about Brian’s early years, but most are detailed accounts of hardcore bands, what happened to them, interactions Brain had with them over the years, etc. Kinda inside baseball, but totally fantastic if yr into the noise at all. We don’t agree with all of Walsby’s assessments, but we defend to the death his right to say that the Descendents improved over time. Now that’s funny!

Alright, please be a good egg – if you want it licked, send two (2) (TWO) copies to:

BULL TONGUE
PO BOX 627
NORTHAMPTON MA 01061
USA

TONGUE TOP TEN #3 – April 27, 2009

1. Easily the best-looking LP we’ve had the pleasure of grappling lately is Light by Reiko and Tori Kudo, issued by Siwa. Reiko and Tori are best known for their work with Maher Shalal Hash Baz, but this stuff is even more casual, diffuse and haunting. Mostly just piano and female voice, the sound has an elegance and mystery that makes our veins wiggle. It’s like some sort of otherworldly cabaret, beamed in from Planet X. And while the music is available now as a CD, the LP version is just incredible—a wooden box, with nine separate compartments, each containing a printed booklet with lyrics. Quite unbelievable, even for Siwa, which has long set a tough-to-match standard for packaging. Hats off to the label’s Alan Sherry and all who sail with him.

Bree

2. Just got a couple of fine new books by the great Cleveland poet, Bree. The bigger of the two (although printed in a wee small format) is was chicken trax amidst sparrows tread (The Temple Inc). This one collects a bunch of Bree’s fantastic prole poesy and uses it to sorta set the scene for a long prose piece about asshole blood. Amazing stuff. There’s also if i cld a body slam on her own imprint, Green Panda Press. This one’s a slim, folded sheet with six “peace poems” (one of which is purely visual). What makes them “peace poems,” we can only guess, but they’re boss and loud, which seems like a good thing. It should be noted that Bree is also hosting the Tres Versing the Pandapoetry festival in Cleveland on May 8-10, this year, which should be an excellent place to be.

Willie Lane

3. Great new guitar record out by William “Willie” Lane, called Known Quantity (Cord Art). Willie lived up here in Western Mass. for a good long while and was involved in lots of weird musical shit. Not much of it got proper documentation, however, although Child of Microtones did issue a fine CDR, Recliner Ragas , a few years back. Anyway, Willie moved down to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, and we get a chance to hear him now and then when we’re down there, or he chooses to hit the road with one of the MV & EE traveling carnivals. But his solo work has always been amazing and rare. Well, not so rare this week. There’s this new LP, and it was recorded throughout 2006-2008, and is a total blast. Willie’s mostly solo (save for some licks by Samara Lubelski) and his playing ranges from Wizz Jones power-pluck at its cleanest to Michael Chapman electro-smear at its phasingest. But Willie knows his stuff cold and this instrumental slide through the gates of Neverland is one of this year’s great rides.

Duplex Planet editor David Greenberger and poet Ernest Noyes Brookings at Dunkin Donuts, Jamaica Plain, MA. Summer 1985 photo by Stephen Elston

4. First new issue in a long time of David Greenberger’s vastly entertaining magazine, Duplex Planet. Issue 184 doesn’t revolve around a central theme, but details various conversations David had with the residents at senior centers in East L.A. My favorite is the one with a woman who claims to be the 23rd of 24 children in her family, and also to be a great-great-grandmother. There’s no earthly way to know if she’s full of shit or not, but it’s nice to read her thoughts. Greenberger has a gentle way of probing the memories of these folks that is funny, sad and surprising—sometimes simultaneously. His work is always cool. The same is true of his sometimes collaborator, longtime pal, Terry Adams . Adams, a founding member of NRBQ as well as a legendary Sun Ra collector, has a new CD called Holy Tweet (Clang!).

Primarily recorded as a trio date with Tom Ardolino and Scott Ligon, the vibe is like a stripped down version of the Q Mothership—rolling bones of uniquely shaped, instantly recognizable goodtime roots pop whatsis that transcend boundaries of “mereness” by a mysterious propulsive force. The stuff is always just off-base enough to keep our interest thoroughly poked (especially as the first zephyrs of spring beckon us to the hill towns beyond). Sometimes it’s enough to just enjoy.

Mats Gustafsson

5. Mats Gustafsson has ten of the busiest fingers in all of Sweden. And yes, his primary focus is record collecting. But he does a few other things and he does them well. Three recent albums attest to this (lord knows how many record he has released since we last met) and they also map a width of style-ass as impressive as it is bounteous. First is The Vilnius Implosion (No Business), which is a solo work for baritone saxophone, slide saxophone and alto fluteophone. What the latter of these two instruments look like is best left unmentioned, but the sounds are swimming! The music (recorded in concert in Lithuania) is explosively sculptural—three-dimensional blocks of sound bursting through sheets of reality as though it was all a crepe paper curtain. That’s the first side, the flip has longer, grouchier masses of tongue flex, approaching jazzic concepts at times. Lovely! Then we have Mats G Plays Duke E (QBICO), a one-sided LP with Mats playing nearly-straight versions of several Ellington tunes on tenor, enlivened by primitive vocls and raw, live electronics. Parts are sweet enough to play for yr grandma, others will just make her ass bleed. The final piece is a split LP with Dutch pianist Cor Fulher on Narrominded. Fulher uses some extended techniques to take his piano sounds into vast regions of new, and Gustafsson is equally adept at squeezing sounds from his sax that are beyond the ken of most of his peers. Using rolling sequences of tongue-clacks, overblowing, breath-splatter, he ends up doing things, making sounds, that seem impossible. But Mats is more than up to the task. Amazing shit.

6. Hisham Mayet is one of the geniuses behind the Sublime Frequencies project, which is attempting to document many strands of ecstatic global culture before they are bulldozed into oblivion by Western hegemony. His efforts have been prolific and inspired, and his latest DVD, Palace of the Winds, is no exception. It combines snippets of performance footage with long shots of Saharan landscape in motion, and various other shots of the sun-smacked towns and people of the region.

Less tripped out than some of his other films, this one is carried along by the amazing guitar music of Group Doueh, Group Marwani and others. As beautiful as any foot.

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April 14, 2009

TONGUE TOP TEN #2

Martin Kippenberger. Untitled from the series Dear Painter, Paint for Me (Ohne title aus der serie Lieber Maler, male mir), 1981.

1. There is currently a huge Martin Kippenberger retrospective show up at MOMA in New York City. It’s called “The Problem Perspective”, and it is an incredible tribute to this wild artist, who created a fairly unbelievable amount of stuff in a trajectory that lasted only 20 years. We first became aware of Kippenberger in the late ’70s or very early ’80s because of his musical work with the band the Grugas (with Christine Hahn and Eric Mitchell), and for his association with the performance space, SO 36. There’s not much evidence of that aspect of his work here, but the multi-floor museum exhibit (and the dandy ass catalogue accompanying it) is a massive mind-blow. Went with some kids and one of ‘em was most impressed by the endless array of sketches, collages and whatnot Martin did on the stationery paper of fancy hotels. Another almost lost it when she realized how mean and funny the sequence of paintings of Picasso’s last wife was. But there is something for everybody here. And the book is excellent. It reprints a long, legendary interview Kippenberger did with Jutta Koether, and includes some extremely useful essays, plus a huge selection of eye candy produced by a guy who was the most influential German artist of his generation.

Leah Peah

2. Hampton, Virginia has been throwing down hard lately with its weirdo sick homegrown noise skuzz scene. The group Head Molt seems to be the chief instigators, particularly with the inclusion of wild woman Leah Peah. Leah’s solo cassette, peah pop & the baby lion show on Anti-Everything/AEN tapes is a peek into the furious sensibility she seemingly has raging through her consciousness. Lots of junk psychosis noise swill dementia. But it’s her split tape with freak loop weirdos Cheezface that really caught our attention. A highly contagious flow of sense bliss destruction.

3. A couple of jazz reissues just came out that are so savagely great it would be a goddamn shame to imagine there are homes without them. Both are on Eremite, both are LPs, and are packaged with amazing care via-a-vis sonics, wax quality & visual/heft appeal. The first is Sonny Murray’s Big Chief, originally released on the French Pathe label, not to be confused with the sessions released under the same name by Shandar. Recorded in January ’69, Murray leads a wild international octet (supplemented in spots by the expatriate jazz poet, Hart LeRoy Bibbs) into insane, ragged bursts of gorgeous beauty. The material they tackle is a fine sample of Murray’s early compositions and the brakeless genius of the group (Francois Tusques, Ronnie Beer, Beb Guerin, Bernard Vitet , , Kenneth Terroade, Alan Silva and Becky Friend!) is the perfect compliment for the moment. Long a lost piece of the Murray discography, it is finally back the way it should be.

The same is true of Red, Black and Green by Solidarity Unit Inc., a rather obscure St. Louis combo led by Charles “Bobo” Shaw, which was essentially an expanded version of the legendary BAG (Black Artists’ Group). The band this evening is Richard Martin, Oliver Lake, Floyd Leflore, Joseph Bowie, Carl Richardson, Clovis Bordeaux, Danny Trice, Baikaids Ysaeen (aka Baikida Carroll) and Kada Kayan. Here, they present a concert, dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, recorded on the day he died, and filled with some of the craziest electric guitar ever, courtesy of the late Richard Martin. The sonics have the same raw galacto-fidelity associated with Arkestral recordings of the same period, and this is a great goddamn explosion. You bet!

From Demons’ “Life Destroyer” dvd

4. Steve Kenney has always been the wild card lost cog in the Michigan noise underground – the true wizard, the most insane of the insane. An original member of the legendarily fucked up Beast People along with Aaron Dilloway,and a current member of Demons with Wolf Eyes’ Nate Young and visualist Alivia Zivich, Kenney is just now beginning to bust out some releases of his own. His axe is the synth and with the proliferation of interest in synth investigations going on in the Midwest with Cleveland’s Emeralds et al and even out East a la Infinity Window and pals–it’s gotta be said: SK rules the fucking roost. The guy’s brain might as well be a modular synth smoked with toxic fuels it sounds that jazz. A great place to lose yrself in his sweet swarm is the cassette In the Sphere I am Everywhere on Nurse Etiquette. Majestic excellence.

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BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore

April 5, 2009

TONGUE TOP TEN #1

N.

1. Narcolepsia is a new fetish noise tape label out of Portugal. The first two releases show a promising wide view of what fetid broil squirms in the contemporary noise landscape. First is someone/something called N, with a tape titled Smash My Brain I Can’t Tolerate, which is basically this Italiano dude Davide Tozzoli obsessing on fairly traditional noise moves a la M.B., Atrax Morgue, Merzbow et al. But the dedication and intent is genuine and is decent…nothing too startling or new but that’s kind of the point, the aesthetic. So be it. All you have to do is be beat, dulled and lose yrself in unrequited fantasies of erotic death. Second release is Body Count by An Innocent Young Throat-Cutter, the duo of Houston noise honcho Richard Ramirez and compatriot Isabella K. This duo has been documenting itself quite regularly through Ramirez’ Dead Audio Tapes imprint in super tiny editions. Not that this tape is going to reach that many more harsh wall noise freaks but it is a fine addition to their insane legacy.

2. Holy Crap. Screamingest, wobbliest No Wave screech of the year comes not from the bowels of New York, but from the lost tape archives of Vancouver, Canada. Tunnel Canary was an extremely raw co-ed trio whose entire previous known ouevre was some obscure cassette comp action. Now, Rundownsun has released a massive 2LP set, Jihad, collecting studio and live smeech that is some of the most pugnacious art punk you’ll ever hear. Ebra Ziron’s vocals make Lydia Lunch sound like Dean Martin in a mellow mood. Really fucking ripe! Lotsa weird bass stylings, scuzz generation from both electronics and guitar…what a pretty goddamn picture. Amazing to think this jabbering, destroyed masterpiece has been unheard for almost 30 years. Nice work. Somebody.

Talk Normal

For ass-burning contempo No Wave sludge, nothing has been in higher recent rotation than Secret Cog, the self-released debut CD Brooklyn’s Talk Normal. Andryo Ambro and Sarah Register create a feverish hybrid of Lydia’s “crying guitar,” the maniacal yodel-power of Die Kleenex, and the part of the Magic Band the Minutemen also embraced, which probably means the Urinals are a shadow influence. Regardless, the five songs here are totally wired, and just blow away the imaginary competition.

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BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore
from Arthur No. 32 (Dec 2008)

Of all the fucked up, nasty ass, deliriously damaged rock bands in the recent history of the American underground wonderland (particularly Texas), none come close to the squirm and hellacious sqwunk of Rusted Shut. From the incinerated skum of Houston weirdness improv outfit Grinding Teeth arose Rusted Shut in 1986. Their shows were a notorious mess, drunken and fueled by cheap-jack acid. After years of slovenly survival they’ve been somewhat rescued from universal distaste by the current noise legions. The Emperor Jones label released the Rehab CD in 2003 and AA Records did a sick lathe (“Bring Out Your Dead”) last year and their notorious “Fuckin’” track off the 2006 End Times Festival live comp is still the only loop that matters (check their myspace page for that one). It was with some apprehension of being held up by knife point that we unzipped their new Hot Sex EP (Dull Knife). But goddamn if this is not a great goddamned beast of a record. The core duo of Don Walsh and Sybil Chance (the original still alive members of Grinding Teeth) and Domokos (on drums and ‘earthscreamer’) just lay it out in an unctious smear of rawk n roll decimating any obvious pretence of hardcore, black metal, death metal, sludge, punk, avant improv goop etc.—shit is the REAL amerika full on. Salute and die.
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BULL TONGUE by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore

from Arthur Magazine No. 29/May 2008

Great new LP by Portland’s Jackie O Motherfucker may be our fave of theirs since Flat Fixed. Spaced out jabber and float with casual/urgent female vocals that almost sounds like certain moments of Fuzzhead at their most blues-wailin’est, interspersed with Velvetsy volk moves, and overlaid with swabs of smoke & jibber. The slab is called Valley of Fire (Textile) and it’s a monster. Also out from Jackie O is a sprawling 2 LP set, America Mystica (Dirter Productions), which was recorded in various caverns by the touring vesrion of the band between ’03 and ’05. Not quite as precise as Fire, but its muse is savagely crunchy in spots and never so formal as to appear in a bowtie. It’s an open-ended weasel-breeze you’ll happily sniff in the dark. Is that a hint of Genevieve’s crack?

This young noise dude from Minneapolis named Oskar Brummel who records and performs under the name COOKIE has released his first entry into the new new American underground noise forest and it is frothingly balls-deep: good n’ harsh. It’s a cassette titled Ambien Baby and it flows with both a FTW sexual undertow and a strange-feeling/shit-coming rejoice. There should also be rejoicing over the fact that Times New Viking seem to have made their transition to Matador with their instincts intact. Their new LP, Rip It Off, is as grumbly and fucked sounding as any blast of gas they emanated previously. Nice thick vinyl, too. I guess you need it heavy when the needle’s buried this far into the red. Smooth!

It has taken a little while to actually read the bastards, but now that it’s done, there can be little doubt that Process Books has blasted out three of the best music-related tomes to have been peeped by our tired eyes. First up is the new edition of John Sinclair’s Guitar Army. This is one of the great American underground revolutionary texts—ecstatic, naïve, visionary and powerful. It’s a little funny to glom a few of the embedded old (old) school opinions about what is happening, but it’s still a wonderful read, and a doorway into eternal truths, if you can stay open to its music. The new layout is pretty good. We miss a few visual aspects of the old one (like, where’s the Frantic John flyer?), but the new pics more than make up for it, and the bonus CD—music, interviews, rants, poetry—is fantastic. As is Paul Drummond’s Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson. We’ve read endlessly about Roky over the last 30 years, but this book is jammed (JAMMED) with new facts, reproductions of fliers, posters, photos and ephemera we never even imagined, and Drummond really covers the subject the way he deserves to be covered. It’s really an overwhelming effort. The same is true of Robert Scotto’s Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue. The writing can be a little sere, but the story is juicy enough to mitigate this dryness. We finally get to read the story of how the collaboration album with Julie Andrews came to be. There are meetings with Arturo Toscanini and Edgar Varese. It’s quite a tale, and Scotto has done his homework. The only frustrating note is that there really isn’t a comprehensive straight discography. If there’s a second edition, it would be a welcome addition. Also, while the CD tracks are bitchen—especially the early recordings by (one presumes) Steve Reich—some notation there would be cool, too. Other’n those quibbles, we couldn’t be more celebratory ‘bout popping our corks. Buh!

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SCREAM AT THE SKY
Thurston Moore & Byron Coley talk with YOKO ONO

Originally published in Arthur No. 26 (Sept. 02007)

Yoko Ono is a beauty. When we walk into the room for our interview she is stunning, vivacious, delightful and welcoming. We discover her handlers have deemed us worthy of only half an hour of access. Because our interests lie in focusing on specific, somewhat more arcane aspects of Yoko’s career, particularly those related to her access points into the avant-garde of the 1950s and 60s, we are bummed about these time constraints. Yoko is an extremely significant figure in the flow of much that is radical and/or experimental in visual art and musical culture of the last half-century. Our century, the century where media, performance and multi-disciplinary expression was galvanized into wholly new alloy.

The avant garde and its attendant testing, prodding, trapping, releasing, liberating and wildly intriguing vocabulary is something that looms large in Yoko’s history. It was a driving force for her transformation as an artist, and is an exploratory philosophical stance she has embraced for well over 40 years. Her physical trajectory took her from Japan in the 1940s to America in the ’50s and ’60s. There was a momentary return to her homeland in the early ’60s, then back to America (specifically New York City). After that there’s her mid-’60s visit to London, where she meets John Lennon, and all that transpires henceforth—famous and infamous. Hers is a spectacular timeline through the counterculture of the late 20th century.
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Trans Industrial Toy Orchestra’s Alzheimer Underground LP (Ti Prod) [www.transindustriell.de] is a pip. They are a German troupe where the decidedly fluxus membership play and record by reading words without “e” with nuts cracked in a nut cracker and reading backwards while tearing a sheet. They also utilize record players in aurally illegitimate ways. Sounds dada, bizarre, unlistenable? Actually yes and no: it is indeed a fucked up thing but quite alluring in its tribute to brain blankness.

Very nice slab here from Liverpool’s Solar Fire Trio (Invada) [www.invada.co.uk]. Formed in ’05 by Spiritualized saxophonist, Ray Dickaty, alto player Dave Jackson and drummer, Steve Belger, their eponymous debut LP is classic squee-pileage in the post-ESP tradition. Unlike some Euro players, these three base their sound on loose sonic collisions and and interwoven blather in ripely extended fire-form, all revolving around theories of meat and its ability to burn. Solid, savage blurt.

Debut release by Weak Sisters is a cassette called Subterfuge (Basement Tapes) [myspace.com/boilerroomemissions]. Awesome cut up screams and dead-time pronouncements make this release unbearably savage. The fact that it’s not just wank but pretty taut and focused nihilist sense-slicing makes for killer listening. Weak Sisters is basically a solo spurt of Will van Goern of Other People’s Children and word on the streets of Fort Collins, Colorado is that this tape don’t come close to his live actions. Hopefully, we shall see.

The great Marcia Bassett is rightfully hailed around the globe for her work with Double Leopards, Hotogitsu, GHQ and plenty more. She’s been responsible for some beautiful visual projects as well, but we are here this time to praise her new solo LP, recorded under the monniker Zaimph. Mirage of the Other (Gipsy Sphinx) [myspace.com/gipsysphinx]. This album seems much more flowing and less harsh than the last Zaimph CD (not that flowing necessarily trumps harsh, it’s just different). The combination of voice and guitar here has lots of raspy edge, but there’s a deep gorgeousity to it making the record seem like it’s glowing when it spins. Long lunar notes have rarely sounded so fresh. Gipsy Sphinx also has a fine album by Bear Bones Lay Low [hets.tk] called Djid Hums. This is another solo album, cut by an 18-year-old Venezualan ex-pat living in Belgium. Guitar drones and tape loops pile up higher than kites and there are blasts of fuzz that will tweak every psychedelic bones in yr body. Beware!

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(intended for publication in the cancelled Arthur Vol. 1, No. 26 [March 2007])

Bull Tongue 26
The Top 80 of 2006

1. GOTHENBURG BLOOD CULT – New tape label out of Sweden bartering in ultra hell noise. Check out the compilation Fuck Money, Fuck Life w/ grinding hardcore spew from Maniac Cop , Ochu , and Treriksroset . Sweden’s such a beatific place, it’s hard to figure the gore mania the noise scene there is so preoccupied with.

2. SAME BAND – Boxed Set 10 CD box (Disques Dual) Amazing documentation of a Portland, ME combo who existed in an oddball universe akin to some of the best just-pre-punk weirdos. They came along later than bands like MX-80 Sound, but manifest a similar vibe, which makes sense because their roots are in combos first formed in 1968 or. Part free form, part Zappa, part punk, this is rural-experimental fuckeroo of the highest order. Includes some DVD video footage, interviews, a great booklet of fliers and pics, and is contained inside a most lovely wooden box. During their lifetime they cut only one LP and one 45, but this set (recorded between ‘77 & ‘80) captures a brilliant, beautiful strangeness.

3. SIC ALPS – Pleasures and Treasures LP (Animal Disguise) It’s time for Sic Alps to fully bust out. An incredible raw psychedelia is being played here and after a couple of down low tapes on Folding and Animal Disguise we’re steamy mouthed listening to their first LP (which is basically an early version of the band w/ the awesome Bianca Sparta of Erase Errata .)

4. DESPERATE MAN BLUES DVD – director: Edward Gillan (Dust to Digital) Nice to have a DVD of this great documentary on Joe Bussard , plus another featurette, King of the Record Collectors , and other bonus stuff. Bussard is a stone gas, grooving around his basement amidst one of the finest collections of pre-war 78s ever assembled. A few nice archival shots of Fahey , too. And the stories are hilarious.

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