For the final episode of Arthur Radio we bring you a live set by Baltimore’s Lower Dens, filmed and recorded in glorious hi-fi at Swan 7 Studios in Bushwick, Brooklyn, co-presented by Newtown Radio | Swan 7 Studio Sessions, and cushioned by an excerpt from a 5 hour DJ set recorded one joyous night in the depths of winter by Hairy Painter, Ivy Meadows and friends, re-broadcasted and cycled through a tunnel of radio feedback last week in the Newtown Radio studio.

We would like to say THANK YOU to the many guests who have graced the show with their talents (in backwards chronological order): Lower Dens, Salvia Plath, Gustav Ernst, Bryce Hackford, Laurel Halo, Saadi, Evie Elman, Mountainhood, kA, Mia Theodoratus, Spectre Group, A R P, Alice Cohen, Sonny Smith, Messages, Ami Dang, Ramble Tamble, James Ferraro, Up Died Sound, Prince Rama, Thomas (Ted) Rees, Nonhorse, The Beets, DJ Ron Like Hell, Gabe Soria, Bow Ribbons, Love Like Deloreans, Blondes, Overture Brown, Bobby Bouzouki, Excepter, The Holy Experiment, Visitation Rites, Chocolate Bobka and Tyler McWilliams. All episodes can be found in the Arthur Radio archive.

Ivy Meadows will continue to record radio shows with Arthur’s universal mutant Will S. Cameron, to be released in a similar format over at Perfect Wave Magazine.

+~+++~ One Love !+~+++

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #40 w/ LOWER DENS

Timeline below…

Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows DJ @ 00:00

Lower Dens live set @ 54:44

interlude: glory girls (of lower dens) – tour cd-r, track 4

Hairy + Ivy continue @ 1:11:25

In this second-to-last episode of Arthur Radio, Gustav Ernst (host of experimental documentary radio show Tesla Effect on Newtown Radio) joins Ivy Meadows for an extended Buddhist prayer remix, after which Salvia Plath, host of Rats Live On No Evil Star, historical figure and documentarian, spins songs from Tibet via internet, treads the waters of Brazil, and shares field recordings from Brooklyn and Baltimore, keeping all vinyl running at a steady 33rpm while staying true to the phase shifts in her synesthetic life. She invites musician and sculptor Cammisa Forrest to share the studio. Forrest’s transitions between Salvia’s tracks create an immersive audio reality of wordless harmonic overtures.

“Our language is classical, and we do our best to apply it to quantum mechanics.” Neils Bohr

Cammisa Forrest is working on multiple creative projects. She is currently constructing a frequency sensitive color mixer as part of the ExiTrip project.
She also has a forthcoming documentary about the performance space ParlsLondonNewYorkWestNile. You can see the trailer below.

Photo by Will Crofoot

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio #39 w/ SALVIA PLATH 2-20-2011

Timeline below…

Ivy Meadows + Gustav Ernst DJ intro @ 00:00

Javanese court gamelan / Margaret Dygas / Eliane Radigue / T.J. Lawrence (Hubble edit)

SALVIA PLATH live set + DJ @ 20 mins

Ivy Meadows DJs @ 1 hour 29 mins

Corridors / Eklin / Zonotope™ / Katie Deacon / Laurie Anderson

Staring into the open end of a computer circuit, we suddenly find ourselves evaporating into a sparkling stream of 0′s and 1′s. In a swirl of stars and blue lights, we feel ourselves becoming weightless; like a magnetic force, the circuit sucks us into it with a single breath and we enter a mirror world where technology reigns, and to our delight we realize that we have once again left our physical bodies behind us. There we meet our very special guests, who one by one guide us through what we can only hope is life after the singularity.

Our first host Bryce Hackford (of Behavior) begins our journey by leading us into a shiny field of electrified plasma, where the local time is set to no higher than 33rpm. We dance in slow-motion leaps and bounds, taking our time to spin and roll in the air, spreading and condensing as the music changes.

After around 45 minutes, we encounter our second host, known on Earth as electronic solo songstress LAUREL HALO, who appears in a flash as a flickering face above a bank of silver clouds. The image mouths to us to follow her into a stream of white lasers, which is pointed directly upwards, disappearing into the unknown. All sense of memory–past, present, and future–is wiped.

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio #38 w/ Laurel Halo + Bryce Hackford DJ sets 1-09-2011

Back in the human realm, you can catch Bryce’s transcendence-inducing DJ night STEPS with Kyle Garner on the last Monday of every month at Home Sweet Home in NYC.

You can follow Laurel’s tour schedule and happenings here, and if you are in New York in April you can see her perform alongside Harald Grosskopf, as well as past Arthur Radio guests Arp and Blondes, at the monumental debut of Grosskopf’s 1979 Synthesist reissue on RVNG Intl (more info here). Look out for her upcoming 12″ Hour Logic, to be released in May of 2011.

Timeline + Bonus Laurel Halo DJ set below…

[ Bryce Hackford DJs @ 00:00 ]

[ LAUREL HALO DJs @ 45 mins ]

And @ 2:00:12 …..

BONUS LAUREL HALO DJ set:

DOWNLOAD: LAUREL HALO Bonus DJ Set

Recorded on a whim days before Hairy Painter left for Thailand, this episode of Arthur Radio is a celebration of all possible futures; roads that we choose to take, for whatever reason, that ultimately lead us to another, and yet another. Whether life is a choose-your-own-adventure or a fated journey is unknown to us, but it is empowering to believe that we mold our own destinies.

The positive energy created by special guests SAADI (Boshra AlSaadi of Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang with Tim Wagner)’s performance was tangible in the Newtown Radio studio, where we stayed after hours to dance with christmas lights in the dark. White-saged into the present, we returned to the streets with a sense of newness in every passing moment.

Photo: Alberto Milazzo

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio w/ SAADI 12-05-2010

Timeline below…

Hairy Painter & Ivy Meadows DJ @ 00:00

SAADI DJs @ 1:00:00

SAADI live set @ 1:32:50

Arthur Radio wants to say We Love You. A Lot. Joining us in this sentiment is special guest DJ Evie Elman, whose documentary Spiritual Lasagna about her grandmother, artist and lover of life Gemma Taccogna (featured on Arthur a few summers back), will cause even the most icy heart to thaw.

Evie’s solo show “Untied” opens tonight, February 14th at Brewers Mansion gallery in Brooklyn with a happening involving “Ancient craft, and sacred ritual via throw pillows, drums, dance, and audience participation” at 8.30 pm, and runs through Friday, February 18th with a closing performance at the same time.

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD:
Arthur Radio Transmission #36 w/ Evie Elman & Ivy Meadows

Playlist after the jump…

~♥~ Evie Elman DJs @ 00.00 ~♥~

Tweedy Brothers
Angelo Spencer- Now!
The Master Musicians Of Jajouka- Double Medahey
The Roches- Losing True
Dan Deacon
The Radio Dept.- Heavens On Fire
Black Sabbath- Am I Going Insane
White Hinterland- Huron
The Byrds- Draft Morning
The Kinks- Lola
Television- Glory
Angelo Spencer- La Pinaille
The Magnetic Fields- Kiss Me Like You Mean It
Black Sabbath- Sabbath Black

~♥~ Ivy Meadows DJs @ 1:06:30 ~♥~

Mother Of Fire – tendrilled mass
Can- vernal equinox
Robedoor- pacific drift
Lower Dens- batman
Ducktails- paisley pattern
Fungi girls- owlsey knows
Bjorn Torske- gullfjellet
Silver Summit- music in the afterlife
Pigeons- the paradise
Sore Eros- giraffe’s kiss
Gladys Knight- it’s better than good time (walter gibbons mix)
Ursula Bogner- expansion
Harold Budd- dark star
Daniel A.I.U. Higgs- are you of the body?
Leslie Q- don’t remind me
Hans-Jochim Roedelius- johanneslust
Taken By Trees- wapas karna
Robert Wyatt- at last I am free
Pink Floyd- see-saw
The Shining Path- take you so low so you can fly so high
The Turbans- valley of tears

Download: “I Wanna Thank You Jesus”—Bishop Manning and the Manning Family (mp3)

Stream:

Here’s some proper Sunday morning message music from North Carolina’s Bishop Manning and The Manning Family, sourced off the recently released “Converted Mind – The Early Recordings,” a fantastic new collection of their recordings. “Converted Mind” features 28 cuts, recorded mostly from the 1970s, with extensive liner notes by Alan Young, vintage photos and 7-inch label shots. Highly recommended for believers and non-believers alike. Available on CD for $13 direct from the Fat Possum Records affiliate, Big Legal Mess Records of Oxford, Mississippi.

Download: “DDB” – The Psychic Paramount (mp3)

Stream:

Eight—no, NINE—minutes of ear-shearing action rock from a gifted instro band that’s been silent on the recording front for too many years. Give in now. From II, out Feb 22 via the good folks at No Quarter.

More: http://www.thepsychicparamount.blogspot.com

New cut “Perfect Life” off Belong’s forthcoming album ‘Common Era,’ out March 21 through the good folks at Kranky. The dreamy fog/mugginess-on-the-needle sound, memorably investigated by Gabe Soria in his piece on Belong in Arthur No. 23 (with illustrations by Arik Moonhawk Roper) is still here, but now the New Orleans duo have ’80s (read: Martin Hannett) electronic drums and Syd Barrett/young-man-lost vocals. Not gloomy in the least—beautiful, like an electric swan in a starlit bayou.

Belong: http://belongneworleans.blogspot.com

For this episode of Arthur Radio, our dear friend Michael (aka warbling troubadour Mountainhood) left his woodland home in northern California and trekked across the vast continent to join us in wet, grey Brooklyn. His live set, recorded in Hairy Painter’s living room, somehow captures the dewy green landscape he inhabits out west; the quiet of the wind rustling the treebranches, the feeling that a four-legged creature may be watching from nearby, protectively…

Mountainhood’s songs capture a sense of both solitude and oneness with nature that is for the most part difficult to find in the concrete jungle of New York City. Michael, however, feels at home in both environments– and is more than happy to share his stories, songs and artwork with friends new and old alike, wherever his journey takes him.

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #35 w/ MOUNTAINHOOD 11-07-2010

Timeline below…

Hairy Painter n’ Ivy Meadows intro DJ set @ 00:00

Live set by Mountainhood @ 57:43

I. Lace of Ectoplasmic Cum
II. Wild Animals
III. Owl Lazr the Nocturne

Outro DJ set @ 1:13:53

Download: “Fragrant Nimbus” – Skull Defekts (mp3, 14mb)

Stream:

Six and a half this-just-in minutes off Peer Amid, a new album by Swedish band Skull Defekts, who now feature the sui generis tattooist-shaman-Lungfisher Daniel Higgs on vocals. It’s a brilliant album, and I wish we could share a different track—as good as this one is, it’s not quite representative of the album’s overall occultist Sonic Youth vibe—but here you go. Figure it out for yourself. Cover artwork by Frederik Söderberg.

Details on the band and how to obtain a copy of this album, which is out Feb. 22, here: http://www.thrilljockey.com/catalog/index.html?id=105205

Download: “You Can’t Hurry God” — Rev. John Wilkins (mp3)

Stream:

Gorgeous title track off Reverend John Wilkins’ debut album You Can’t Hurry God—which is otherwise pretty foot-stompin’ and hand-clappin’—just out on CD for 13 bucks from Mississippi’s Big Legal Mess Records, a label all music fans should be keeping an eye on. Big Legal Mess is an offshoot of Fat Possum Records, more in line with their ’90s/early ’00s commitment to releasing new albums by underheard local blues musicians like Junior Kimbrough, RL Burnside, Cedell Davis, T-Model Ford, and many others, that were free of the studio polish and cheesy showboating of most American blues recordings from the last three decades. This treasure of an album, produced by Amos Harvey and recorded by Fat Possum vet Bruce Watson, is very much in that ’90s Fat Possum vein.

There’s a lot to say about John Wilkins, and where this music comes from—go to the Big Legal Mess website (address below) for the full scoop—but real quick: Wilkins played guitar with O.V. Wright in the ’60s, as well as performing in local churches, parties and clubs, very much in the North Mississippi Hill Country country-blues style of his father Reverend Robert Wilkins, whose 1930s version of “That’s No Way To Get Along,” entitled “Prodigal Son,” was later covered by the Rolling Stones on Beggars Banquet. Since the early ’80s, Reverend John Wilkins has been pastor at Hunter’s Chapel Church in Tate County, Mississippi. Past members of this congregation include Fred McDowell and his wife Annie Mae, Other Turner and Napolian Strickland. Its singers recorded the album Amazing Grace: Mississippi Delta Spirituals By The Hunter’s Chapel Singers Of Como, Miss. for Testament Records in 1966.

You Can’t Hurry God sports a full bass-drums-guitar-Hammond lineup, with Reverend Wilkins’ daughters on backing vocals. Wonderful and hallelujah!

Tons more biographical, recording and ordering info: http://biglegalmessrecords.com/revwilkins.htm

Here’s a bravo from Krist Novoselic (!): “I’ve downloaded this compilation and enjoy it very much. Well worth the money.”

This new 16-track compilation/mixtape is now available direct from Arthur to your internet connection as a pay-what-you-please digital download. It’s a collection of songs from recent (or forthcoming) releases that we’ve been digging lately that you might not have heard.

Here’s the track listing:

1. PURLING HISS – “Run From the City” (Woodsist Records)
2. TED LUCAS – “It’s So Easy (when you know what you’re doing)” (Om Records)
3. DOUG PAISLEY – “No One But You” (No Quarter Records)
4. SONNY AND THE SUNSETS – “Stranded” (Fat Possum Records)
5. TENNIS – “Take Me Somewhere” (Fat Possum Records)
6. THE INTELLIGENCE – “Like Like Like Like Like Like Like” (In the Red Records)
7. MARNIE STERN – “Building a Body” (Kill Rock Stars)
8. NOBUNNY – “Gone for Good” (Goner Records)
9. THE FLIPS – “I Just Don’t Know Where I Stand Anymore” (HoZac Records)
10. IDLE TIMES – “There You Go” (HoZac Records)
11. WOODS – “Suffering Season” (Woodsist Records)
12. JIM DICKINSON reads “The Congo” by Vachel Lindsay (Birdman Records)
13. LIMES – “Good Times” (Goner Records)
14. PETER STAMPFEL & BABY GRAMPS – “Bar Bar” (Red Newt Records)
15. THE GROWLERS – “Sea Lion Goth Blues” (Everloving)
16. LOWER DENS – “Truss Me” (Gnomonsong Records)

Compiled and sequenced by Jay Babcock
Cover photography by Kevin Bauman
Design by Stephanie Smith
Engineered by Bobby Tamkin at The Sound Ranch

Click one of the following links to purchase using a debit card, credit card or Paypal account. A link containing the “Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring” zip file (digital music files [192kpbs mp3s], artwork, credits sheet, etc.) will be emailed to you upon payment.

All proceeds help Arthur Magazine to resist economic pressures. Please pay what you can. (All entities on the desert food chain—okay, all price levels—receive the same download.)

BUY NOW – $4.20 – “Silver Cholla Cactus”
BUY NOW – $8.40 – “Pallid Winged Grasshopper”
BUY NOW – $16.80 – “White Tailed Antelope Squirrel”
BUY NOW – $42.00 – “Coyote”
BUY NOW – $100.80 – “Turkey Vulture”

Thank you kindly, hope the rest of you enjoy!

The Arthur Gang

Drag Queens, Borders, Rivers, Death and Transformation
by Sonny Smith

Identity is not stable or rational, but an ever conflicting tension between id and ego, conscious and subconscious mind. -Freud

Up til about 13 me, my friends, we were whatever we wanted top be. One day skate rats, the next day kung fu, the next day new waver, next day heavy metal, surfers, baseball players, on and on it went.

High school ends that usually. The ‘group’ starts telling you who you are. If you’re into sports you’re an athlete. If you’re into studies you’re a nerd. If you’re socially awkward you’re a weirdo. When you give up on the whole scene you get called a loner!

The crowd, the community, the society, has ideas about identity. Strict ideas. If you’re outside it, it’s going be rough; you get called a misfit.

After you grow up bigger limitations come in. Careers. Jobs. What are you going to decide to be? You’ve got to pick SOMETHING. Even if you choose nothing you’ve chosen.

I could never choose… so I drifted around. I’ve had a slew of jobs. My resume doesn’t look too reliable I guess. I had a job making copper gutters for two years. One day the foreman on a job says: here comes the copper guy. I didn’t want to be a ‘copper guy’ so I lost interest.

Marriage is tough too. Any relationship is tough. You gotta be the same person day in day out. What if you wake up, you want to be someone else? Most relationships don’t allow for it.

It’s not identity crisis. It’s identity impermanence.* Who are you gonna be today? Maybe today’s the day you start being someone new. At least you’re trying. Hard to do when your job is depending on you to be the same person as yesterday… society is stacked against the new you! It’s stacked against birth! It only knows death!

* We are never just who we are in a given moment but a constantly evolving thing- Heidegger

Therefore, society is not for the living, it is for the dying. To live, to be fully alive, you must be outside society. An outlaw.

You’d think being an artist would allow for a lot of identity exploration. It does. But the art world is a big jail cell for the imagination. The art sellers and the art buyers, and all the media* in between want you to be one thing so they can organize you accordingly and stack you over with the others like you.

* buyers and sellers at the same time

The art ‘community’ is a big joke. Like any society, it believes it celebrates life but it survives on death.

Some artists capitulate to this game of narrow definition.* Or some find ways to keep their narrowed focus fresh. Then, some don’t conform. They keep breaking their own walls down. Art is elusive, evolution is mysterious…

* Their art doesn’t grow but their pocketbooks do!

Of course, one of the biggest limitations of all is what you believe. If you don’t believe in Jesus you’re in a certain stack, if you do believe then you’re in another stack, if it’s Allah, then you’re that, if it’s Buddha it’s that, democrat, republican, middle of the road, lefty…

Beliefs lead to religion. Religion provides identity, neighborhoods provide identity, skin color provides identity, politics provide our identity, tastes… But identity is exclusionary… and exclusion creates the ‘other’… others threaten your identity… pretty soon: fear moves to prejudice to racism to hate to war to genocide…

Another limitation on identity is gender. Man or woman, that’s all we got? What a gyp. Men who need to be macho, women who need to be feminine: they’ve bought into society’s rigid definitions.

Caught up in society’s contradictions, it’s transvestites, cross dressers, hermaphrodites, and drag queens that are the most interesting to me. They’re the physical manifestation of society’s biggest limitation: whether you’re a man or woman. Well, which are you? Everybody wants you to make it clear. But life ain’t clear.

For some, if you’re a man, but inside you feel overpowering feminine forces at work then you must have been ‘born all wrong?’ Is that it? You’ve got to have operations, take hormone-altering drugs and re-build your identity as a woman?

Or you could be a human who looks feminine but who feels very masculine* inside? Or vice versa? Society gives very little room to be whatever the hell you are without defining it. To just be and to live…

* what we perceive as feminine and masculine

Transsexuals are rebels, the outlaws. They might not want to be. They’ve been made outlaws. They are heroes of transformation! And transformation is sexy. But, they are also the victims of society’s tiny definitions of gender.

* to me, the sexiest turn-on is when a woman drags her wig off kinda slow like. I don’t know why…

In my own songs I’ve either sang about archetypal characters: Cops. Immigrants. Drag queens. Boxers. Whores. Waitresses. Junkies. Suburban wives. Killers. Superheroes. Pimps. Bums. Drug dealers. Doomed lovers.* Etc. etc.

Or, I’ve sung about crossing a border, a river, a desert or some kind of line. Turning into something else, leaving something, transformation, death, or ‘getting over’ to some other side…

With any luck I’ve made a song about both. A character locked up in a narrow identity trying to break out. An immigrant crossing a border, a drag queen leaving his lover…

Unsatisfied with his claustrophobic role in the cosmos he’s ready to burst! To break out! This is what our lives are after all, no? A burst. A passage. A breakthrough. Osmosis. It can be violent or subtle. A journey between birth and death.

It gets a little looney being all cooped up inside your identity. Spirits crave transformation of some kind, even if only in small little doses. Identities get you stuck. Maybe you want to be something else once in a while. Maybe you want to be somewhere else or SOMEONE else. At least for a moment…

I existed from all eternity and,
Behold, I am here;
And I shall exist till the end of time,
For my being has no end.

-Kahlil Gibran

Stream: “Mario” by Sonny Smith

Stream: “Year of the Cock” by Sonny Smith

Sonny Smith: http://www.sonnysmith.com

One year ago on this day, Hairy Painter and Ivy Meadows launched the very first episode of Arthur Radio. Hairy is currently on an extended mind-pilgrimage through Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet and beyond, so we dug up this dusty pile of wax from our secret archive to celebrate the occasion. Many thanks to Newtown Radio for hosting the show, and to the many bejeweled special guests who have joined us to grace the internetwaves with their gifts!

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #34: Surf Anniversary

[ Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows DJ set @ 00:00 ]

Download: LITTLE WINGS – “How Come” (mp3)

Stream:

Sweet new song off Kyle Fields’ new LITTLE WINGS album Black Grass, forthcoming from Marriage Records February 25.

Longtime Arthurians will recall the Little Wings profiled by Erik Bluhm in Arthur No. 13 (2004), and the song “Look at What the Light Did Now” included on Devendra Banhart’s 2004 Arthur compilation cd, Golden Apples of the Sun. Did you know? Both the magazine and the CD are available from the Arthur Store.

STREAMING TWO-MINUTE TEASER FOR YOU:

This new 16-track compilation/mixtape is now available direct from Arthur to your internet connection as a $4.20 digital download. It’s a collection of songs from recent (or forthcoming) releases that we’ve been digging lately that you might not have heard.

Here’s the track listing:

1. PURLING HISS – “Run From the City” (Woodsist Records)
2. TED LUCAS – “It’s So Easy (when you know what you’re doing)” (Om Records)
3. DOUG PAISLEY – “No One But You” (No Quarter Records)
4. SONNY AND THE SUNSETS – “Stranded” (Fat Possum Records)
5. TENNIS – “Take Me Somewhere” (Fat Possum Records)
6. THE INTELLIGENCE – “Like Like Like Like Like Like Like” (In the Red Records)
7. MARNIE STERN – “Building a Body” (Kill Rock Stars)
8. NOBUNNY – “Gone for Good” (Goner Records)
9. THE FLIPS – “I Just Don’t Know Where I Stand Anymore” (HoZac Records)
10. IDLE TIMES – “There You Go” (HoZac Records)
11. WOODS – “Suffering Season” (Woodsist Records)
12. JIM DICKINSON reads “The Congo” by Vachel Lindsay (Birdman Records)
13. LIMES – “Good Times” (Goner Records)
14. PETER STAMPFEL & BABY GRAMPS – “Bar Bar” (Red Newt Records)
15. THE GROWLERS – “Sea Lion Goth Blues” (Everloving)
16. LOWER DENS – “Truss Me” (Gnomonsong Records)

Compiled and sequenced by Jay Babcock
Cover photography by Kevin Bauman
Design by Stephanie Smith
Engineered by Bobby Tamkin at The Sound Ranch

Click the following link to purchase using a debit card, credit card or Paypal account. A link containing the “Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring” zip file (digital music files [192kpbs mp3s], artwork, credits sheet, etc.) will be emailed to you upon payment.

All proceeds help Arthur Magazine to resist economic pressures.

BUY NOW – $4.20

Thank you kindly, hope you enjoy.

The Arthur Gang

Download: KURT VILE – “Jesus Fever” (mp3)

Stream:

Download: KURT VILE – “In My Time” (mp3)

Stream:

Two from the fantastic new KURT VILE album, out March 8 via Matador Records.

Kurt Vile of Philadelphia: myspace

kA is the project of Brooke Hamre Gillespie (The Holy Experiment) and Santiparro Alan Scheurman (Santiparro,) two earthbound celestial beings who together create joyous, transcendent songs that lift the spirits, allowing them to soar through forests and fields, over oceans, up through the clouds and into the ever-expanding universe, where the planets are always singing. In between songs, the pair stops to reflect…

Brooke: That song came from the forest of Michigan. A lot of these songs come from the forest of Michigan.

Alan: Not just the forest, but the fire, the trees…

Brooke: The stars, all the animals… the purple beetle!

Alan: The spiders…

Brooke: The spiders. The spider water!

Alan: And the dragons.

Brooke: And the real dragons!

kA live on Arthur Radio from Arthur Radio on Vimeo.

In recent months, kA traveled to the West Coast to perform in an Alice Coltrane Tribute concert organized by friend Kyp Malone (Rain Machine). Alongside playing shows, they both lead ceremonies and music circles at Golden Drum, a Greenpoint, Brooklyn-based healing center whose practices are rooted in traditions of indigenous medicine healers from around the world.

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #33 w/ kA 10-23-2010

Timeline…

Hairy Painter & Ivy Meadows DJ multi-layered intro @ 00:00

kA plays live set @ 54:00

(outro) Eliane Radigue – Adnos I

Just in time for the upcoming days of end-of-year festivities and quiet moments of snow-gazing reflection, Arthur Radio brings you an old-timey variety show featuring a smattering of very special guests, starting with the dazzling Mia Theodoratus who joins us in the studio to perform an intimate live solo set on classical harp, followed by the very first episode of Rats Live On No Evil Star, a recycled cassette tape mash-up interview series hosted by Salvia Plath, and ending with Arthurmag.com contributing entity Spectre Event Horizon Group DJing a whirlwind set straight from the endless vaults of YouTube. Turn on your virtual fire, and rejoice with us in the gifts that every hour, every day, and every new year brings…

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #32 10-10-2010

Timeline below…

@ 00:00 IVY MEADOWS DJS MULTI-LAYERED INTRO

@ 24:25 MIA THEODORATUS PERFORMS LIVE SOLO HARP SET

@ 42:10 HAIRY PAINTER INTERVIEWS MIA THEODORATUS

@ 49:00 SALVIA PLATH (AKA CAMMISA FOREST) INTERVIEWS TURTLE AMBULANCE ON RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR, EPISODE NO. 1

@ 1:00:30 SPECTRE EVENT HORIZON MIXES IN YOUTUBE DJ SET

Download: “Grey Owl” – THEUSAISAMONSTER (mp3)

Stream:

The lead song off R.I.P., the biophile prog-psych band THEUSAISAMONSTER’s new—and final—studio album.

What strange characters. We miss them already.

More info: Northern Spy Records.

When you close your eyes, music emanating from speakers takes on its full 3D form. Physical vibrations reach your muscles in invisible waves, aiding in relaxation. The laser arc of a new sound being introduced pierces your mind’s eye and opens visions; it is possible to recreate an entire scene, part imaginary, part from memory. An isolated ocean in a desert, palm trees swaying against an open horizon. Circuits producing not only the sound of wind, but the feel of it brushing up against your skin, the filling of a vast expanse of sky…

Above: A teaser from this episode’s live set by special guest ARP (aka Alexis Georgopoulos), who recently released his LP The Soft Wave on Norway’s Smalltown Supersound. Order it in the US here.

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #31 w/ ARP 9-26-2010

Playlist below…

☾☾☾☾☾☾☾ Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows DJ set @ 00:00 ☽☽☽☽☽☽

Hans Appelqvist – #11
Terry Riley – Lisbon Concert 1995 (excerpt)
john cage – song, derived from the journal of henry david thoreau
Charlemagne Palestine – Strumming Music
YOSHIHIRO SAWASAKI – Ginjo Onsen
Susumu Yokota – Yumekui Kobito
claus oldenberg – june was / panodramdra
terry riley – in c
White Rainbow – Major Spillage
balanescu quartet – computer love / autobahn
Neu! – Wave Naturelle
penquin cafe orchestra – penguin cafe single
steve reich – four organs

☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾ A R P live set @ 47:37 ☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽

☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾ Interview @ 1:23:07 ☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽

☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾ A R P DJ set @ 1:30:40 ☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽☽

Malcolm Mclaren – Obatala
Holger Czukay – Persion Love
ARP – Pastoral Symphony (Version by Studio)
Aphex Twin – Ptolemy
Biosphere – Nook & Cranny
Dadawah – Zion Land
Date Palms – Psalm 7

J Mascis – Not Enough by subpop

artwork by Arik Roper

From Ethan Miller’s Silver Currant blog…

“What I can remember about this session is that it was recorded during the daytime at our practice space on 3rd st. in San Francisco most likely between September 1st and the 3rd of 2005. Comets and Growing had toured the Midwest and Eastern U.S. together in June and July of that same year. This is just a few months later and Growing was out on the West Coast to play the first Arthurfest in Los Angeles which Comets also played…”

More Miller spiel plus a download of the sesh: http://silvercurrant.blogspot.com/2010/08/comets-growing.html

Alice Cohen is a musician-animator, a wearer of various brightly-colored hats who has traversed many a terrain over the past 30 years, from Philly r&b songwriter to new wave frontwoman (of The Vels) to the present, where she is both a one-woman-band (her most recent LP “Walking Up Walls” was released on Olde English Spelling Bee in 2009) and the creator of many magical worlds in her meticulously collaged stop-motion animations, which draw from a palette of art deco interiors, vintage women’s fashion magazines, early hollywood memorabilia, abstract shapes, insects, birds, the moon, dream spaces and beyond.

She is currently working on music videos for Weekends, Linda Hagood, and Vomit Heat, and her video piece “Ear Candy” will be shown (in full big screen glory) as part of an experimental animation night at Anthology Film Archives on December 1st in NYC.

Above: Animation still from Alice Cohen’s “Ear Candy” on Vimeo.

STREAM IT:

KEEP IT: Arthur Radio Transmission #30 w/ ALICE COHEN 9-18-2010

[ Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows deejayin @ 00:00 ]

bruce haack – cherubic hymn
Tracey Trance – “Fountain” cassette
psychic tv – stolen kisses
prince far i – you i love and not another
bubonic plague – sal’s tropical depression
future pigeon – el dub
Lazer Zeppelin – “Pyramid Echo” cassette
moebius & plank – rastakraut pasta
c.o.m.b.i. – pgb
Wanda Psychs – Quiet
Secret Colors – Hammock Vibe

[ Alice Cohen live in-studio session @ 36:35 mins ]

[ Interview w/ Ivy Meadows @ 59:19 mins ]

[ Alice Cohen deejayin @ 1 hr 10 mins ]

Pete McCabe – Feelin’ Lonely
Danielle Dax – Bed Caves
Nash the Slash – The Chase
Lizzy Mercier Descloux – Mais ou sont passees les Gazelles?
Bloodless Pharaohs – Bloodless Pharaohs
Joey Wilson – Underground (reprise)/ Going Up
Bunnydrums – On the Surface
Fantastic Planet Soundtrack – Deshominisation (parts I and II)
David Microwave – I Don’t Want to Hold You
Christian Death – The Glass House
Equals – Sunday Morning

…………:In which wanderlusting scribe, Sunsets’ smith, and all around luminous luminary Sonny Smith lands a jet plane in the Newtown laboratory/public swimming pool just in time to solo-ly saturate the airwaves with new tales of color, youth, wooing, and woe.

…………:In which prior airwave-saturators Ramble Tamble return to rotate a mighty fine short stack of vinyl diskettes at all the right speeds.

…………:In which Ivy Meadows unfurls a comfy sonic tablecloth upon the dewy green grassy grass grass for all tomorrows’ picnicings and dreamings.

…………And Hairy Painter rolls in the closing curtains with an iridescent cloud of sonic dust.

Above: Sonny tuning in the Newtown Radio studio.

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #29 w/ Sonny Smith 8-15-2010

Playlist below…

[ Ivy DJs @ 00:00 mins ]

Assemble Head In Sunburst Cloud – The Chocolate Maiden’s Misty Summer Morning
Sun City Girls – Space Prophet Drogon
Sharon Van Etten – Love More
Woody Guthrie – Grassy Grass Grass (Grow Grow Grow)
Alps – Black Mountain
MV & EE – Tea Devil live @ Bank Row, Greenfield, MA
Sonny Sharrock – Three Portraits Of Linda, All Black
Them Natives – Nighttime Whispers & Ginseng
Magic Lanterns – Underwater Dynasty
Saddar Bazaar – Shamsa (Sunburst)
Neil Young – Vampire Blues

[ Live set by SONNY SMITH @ 44:55 mins, w/ interview by Evie Elman ]

Quix*o*tic – I’m the Light of This World

[ BONUS DJ set by Ramble Tamble @ 1:13:17 mins ]

Sun City Girls – My painted Tomb
John Lee Ziegler – Unknown
SCG – Helwa Shak/Moment of a Million Lands
Hoyt Axton – California Women
Yes – Sound Chaser
India National Sitar Ensemble – Suite for 2 Sitars & Indian Folk Ensemble~pt. 1
Lee Hazlewood – Pour Man
Marvin Rainwater – My Brand of Blues
gnawa tape – Unknown
Tom T Hall – Pay No Attention to Alice
Jerry Reed – Ko Ko Joe

[ Hairy DJs @ 1:43:37 mins]

General Strike – Interplanetary Music/Interplanetary Dub
The Shaggs – Philosophy of the World
Harry Nilsson – Many Rivers to Cross
Arturo Stalteri – Here Come the Warm Jets

Download: “Run From the City” – Purling Hiss (mp3)

Purling Hiss is pig latin lover Mike Polizze of Philladelphia jammers Birds of Maya laying down some serious ’70s-style aquarock—it’s so submerged you feel like you’ve already got your earplugs in. Nah, that’s just the mix, bro. Right here is “Run From the City”—the title is a great tactical suggestion for contemporary coping; the song itself is, I dunno, Grand Funk meets Skynyrd in a thick cloud, recorded three rooms down. By accident. You can smell it more than you can hear it, if that makes any sense. From the Hiss’s third album Public Service Announcement, being released on vinyl and iTunes by the kind folk at Woodsist.

PURLING HISS tours now:

10/19 Charlottesville, VA Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar *
10/20 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506 *
10/21 Atlanta, GA The Earl * ^
10/22 Birmingham, AL The Nickw * ^
10/23 Nashville, TN Mercy Loungew * ^
10/25 Toledo, OH Mickey Finn * ^ !
10/26 Covington, KY Mad Hatters * ^
10/27 Columbus, OH Skully’s * ^
10/28 Ann Arbor, MI Blind Pig * ^
10/29 Indianapolis, IN White Rabbit Cabaret * ^
10/30 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle * ^
10/31 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle * ^
11/01 Minneapolis, MN Triple Rock * ^
11/04 Seattle, WA Neumos * ^
11/06 Portland, OR Berbatis Pan * ^
11/09 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop * ^
11/11 Los Angeles, CA Echoplex * ^
11/13 San Diego, CA Casbah * ^
11/14 Tempe, AZ The Trunk Space *
11/17 San Antonio, TX The Korova *
11/18 Austin, TX Emo’s (Inside) *
11/19 Dallas, TX Club Dada *
11/21 Memphis, TN Hi Tone *
11/24 Washington, DC Black Cat (Backstage) *
11/26 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brenda’s *
12/03 Brooklyn, NY Knitting Factory *

* = w/ Kurt Vile
^ = w/ The Soft Pack
! = w/ Jaill

Download: “Bar Bar” – Peter Stampfel & Baby Gramps

Great American human being Peter Stampfel teams with new-to-these-ears Portland, Oregon-based Old Timey old timer Baby Gramps for an album’s worth of cartoon-folk gitdowns, including this catchy anti-bar, anti-sports TV ditty. Sadly, Outertainment is not available on vinyl—you gotta settle for the cd, available from Red Newt Records or Amazon.

Extremely entertaining/insightful recent interview with Peter (“One reason I’m better now than then is that I was so mediocre back then”) by Greg Kot: Chicago Tribune

You can befriend Peter Stampfel here: facebook

Dronulational heavies Messages, recently spotlighted on the new arthur comp. BLACKOUT, stop by the newtown radio studio to zoom in and out through the infinities of the universe via some holy vinyl documents. Members three – Taketo Shimada, Spencer Herbst, and Tres Warren – each have their shining talk with the turntables and set out a multitudinous and numinously meandering path for ye noble arthurians to walk – enjoy! and treat yourself right by seeing them when they perform next, with past arthur radio guests Excepter and Up Died Sound at Coco66 in Greenpoint on October 27th. Zooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD:
Arthur Radio Transmission #28 w/ MESSAGES live DJ set 08-08-2010

SETLIST BE BELOW

hairy (@0:0:00) –
iggy pop – the endless sea
moolah – crystal waters
ex-cocaine – klondike

taketo (@0:12:30) -
muslimgauze – audio nl 004
la monte young + marion zazeela + pandit pran nath – tamburas 07
matsuo ohno – astroboy OST
vizusa – high frontier
phillipe besombes ragga country
leonard kwan – akaka falls
lee howard & the all stars – hula rock
lino – clouds
tommy james – crimson + clover
audre tschakowski – orchestral tension b
urival – blind speed pipe for yujo sueta
j.a. ceasar – ten seitan
maki asakawa – akai hashi

spencer (@0:45:00)-
butthole surfers – kuntz
brast burst – debon part 1 (excerpt)
faust – it’s a rainy day, sunshine girl
hijokaidan – takutaku
crass – nagasaki nightmare
embryo – es ist wie’s ist
chrome – zombie warfare

tres (@1:21:30) -
leon russell – acid annapolis
the shadow ring – man
ustad abdul karim khan malkauns – piran jani dekh
rolling stones – gomper
spirit – girl in your eye
don cherry/latif khan – rhythm 58 1/4
destroy all monsters – double sextet, part 2
ry cooder – tamp’em up solid
moussa kassimi – traditional
charlie nothing – the psychedelic saxophone of charlie nothing

Download: “It Is So Nice to Get Stoned” – Ted Lucas

Recorded in Detroit, 1974. So beautiful. The timeless, centerpiece song from Ted Lucas’s eponymous solo album, to be reissued on October 12 by Yoga Records.

You can listen to a radio interview with Ted Lucas from the period over at Waxidermy.

Download: “Laura” – Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen (mp3)

A cover of the jazz standard “Laura,” written by David Raksin and Johnny Mercer, by Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen.

This is from For the Ghosts Within—a full-length collaboration between Robert Wyatt, Gilad Atzmon and Ros Stephen—out November 9 from Domino Records

Arthur’s new 49-minute mixtape, specially designed to accompany (or simulate) a human-plant interaction, is now available as a digital download, featuring a high resolution JPG of the Arik Roper artwork (above), some additional art and text, and the following sequence of songs, as selected by Arthur editor Jay Babcock and sewn together by engineer/mixer Bobby Tamkin.

50-SECOND TEASER TOKE:

TRACKLIST:
1. MOON DUO “Into the Trees” (from the Escape LP on Woodsist)
2. WHITE HILLS “Three Quarters” (from the White Hills LP on Thrill Jockey)
3. WHITE NOISE SOUND “Sunset” (from the White Noise Sound LP on Alive Naturalsound)
4. LORDS OF FALCONRY “Osiron” (from Lords of Falconry on Holy Mountain)
5. ENDLESS BOOGIE “Pack Your Bags” (from the Full House Head LP on No Quarter)
6. MASTERS OF REALITY “Johnny’s Dream” (from the Pine/Cross’d Over LP)
7. MESSAGES “Tambura” (from the After Before LP on De Stijl)
8. ENUMCLAW “Harmonic Convergence” (from the Opening of the Dawn LP)

Pay what thou wilt, starting at $4.20. All proceeds go towards keeping the Arthur community garden alive through the fall season.

Order here: BLACKOUT NO LONGER AVAILABLE

Download: “Motorhead With Me” — Nobunny

This here song is on the new, insta-classic Nobunny album First Blood, from the great Goner Records of Memphis, Tennessee. [Note: Looks like Goner is down for Gonerfest, try Midheaven instead.] It’s also the B-side to a new 7-inch from Hozac Records of Chicago, whose hype text from for this is so good/accurate that it’s pointless to write our own. Here it is:

Just as the rest of the modern world is warming up to the fuzzy pop nightmare of Nobunny’s debut LP, we’ve got the follow-up 7″ with two brand new songs that will bring back that virginal feeling “down there” and reinstate your faith in humanity. Sunshine Ramones pop run through a Kim Fowley diarrhea daydream that will have you mesmerized by it’s simplicity, and won over before the end of the chorus on the first side. Two more stone-cold classic Nobunny songs that’ll stick with you through the hard times and with laden with hooks so infectious that you’ll have to have them surgically removed from your brain.

Hailing from Baltimore, MD, a bubbling pot that continues to churn out a rainbow fog swirl of new and exciting bands (Crazy Dreams Band, Lower Dens) as well as experimental music and new media festivals (Whartscape, Transmodern), Ami Dang seems to exude the creative energy that is pouring out of her hometown. Her upcoming full-length album (due out in December on Ehse Records), was crafted from an intersecting background of classical sitar and composition, experimental electronics and visual performance, combined with a deep love for ’90s dance beats and a fuzzy memory of megaphones blaring Indian pop songs into the streets of New Delhi.

If you’re in the area next week, catch Ami performing along with many other artists at Baltimore’s High Zero festival on September 23rd and 24th, 2010.

Photo of Ami Dang by Bad Brilliance/Andrew Strasser

STREAMING:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #27 w/ Ami Dang 8-1-2010

Playlist beneath the…

~~~~~Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows DJ set~~~~~
eight lamas from drepung – invoking the spirit of kindness through sound / masaki batoh and helena espvall – until tomorrow / Arp – High Life / pearls before swine – another time / durutti column – prayer / Lower Dens – Blue & Silver / Pigeons – En Rêve (slooowed downnn arthur radio dub) / Prince Rama Of Ayodhya – Aeolian Divine / philip k dick – the divine invasion (excerpt)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Live set by Ami Dang @ 50 mins~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~Ami Dang Baltimore DJ set~~~~~

SUMMER GAMES – married
Polygons – “loverboy”
cex – “ebyday”
Health – “Eat Fleisch (Mark Brown Remix)”
white life – “second look”
Schwarz – “Let Yrself Down”
Soulja Boy ft. Gucci Mane – “PRETTY BOI SWAGGGG (Schwarz RMX)”
Ayako Kataoka – “we love you to the end of the”

“This Month is a Mission” – IDLE TIMES (mp3)

Seattle. A bonus song on Hookup Klub Round 1 compilation LP/CD. New album out next month thru Chicago’s great Hozac Records. More info here. Whiffs of Nirvana, Guided by Voices. Why say more?

Download: “I Just Don’t Know Where I Stand Anymore” – THE FLIPS (mp3)

Available on REAL VINYL from HoZac

A song from Swans’ new album, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, their first in over 13 years, out September 27 via Young God Records.

Download: Swans – “Eden Prison” (mp3)

New York Times on Swans’ return. Michael Gira, pictured upper left, is interviewed, Thurston Moore provides testimony & insight.

Gira describes the album, track by track, to The Quietus

This week’s episode of Arthur Radio begins with a late summer breeze, wafting between blades of bright green grass under a saturated blue sky, not a cloud in sight. Saturday morning cartoons creep out of an open window, on the other side of which the smell of hot cornbread begins to fill an empty kitchen. Beyond billowing white curtains, a lonesome gray-haired wolf rambles through the rolling meadows, whistling a nostalgic tune… in the distance, a soaring note begins to accompany his song, which soon escalates into a full-on bittersweet dirge of emotion.

>> myspace.com/rambletambleusa < <

STREAMER:

DOWNLOAD ‘ER: Arthur Radio Transmission #26 w/ Ramble Tamble 7-25-2010

O’er the fence and through the field…

@@@[ HAIRY PAINTER DJ SET ] @@@ 0:00:00
pauline oliveros – pathways to grandmothers
beat happening – tiger trap
sister clara hudmon – stand by me
elizabeth cotten – ruben
richard fariña and eric von schmidt – christmas island
jonathan richman – you can have a cellphone that’s ok but not me
jeffrey lewis and the junkyard – bugs and flowers
peter orlovsky – all around the garden
beach boys – vegatables
sesame street – i love trash
lee hazlewood – go die big city
beck – steve threw up
little wings – come along
michael hurley – tea song
lavender diamond – song of impossible occurrences
brigid st. john – the body breaks
smog – inspirational
sibylle baier – driving

~~~~~[ RAMBLE TAMBLE LIVE ] @ 1:15:00 ~~~~~

Download: Highlife – “F Kenya Rip”

White Magic’s Sleepy Doug Shaw awakes and, with his Highlife mates, gives us this lovely North African dream reverie. From the forthcoming Best Bless EP, via the good folk at The Social Registry of Brooklyn…

Download: “Merticane” – KIT

Bodacious Soft Machine-meets-Deerhoof lead track off the new K.I.T. album Invocation, out October 12 from Upset the Rhythm.

And here’s another tune off the album:
Download: “Jupiter Or The Moon” – Los Lobos

Bros are touring. Respect your (m)elders. See these dudes.

August 25 Los Angeles, CA – Amoeba Records
August 28 Eagle, ID – Eagle River Pavilion
August 29 Monroe, WA – Evergreen State Fair
August 30 Vancouver, BC – The Fair at the PNE
September 1 Edmonton, AB – Winspear Centre for Music
September 2 Calgary, AB – Jack Singer Auditorium
September 3 Regina, SK – Casino Regina Show Lounge
September 4 Laramie, WY – Snowy Range Music Festival
September 24 Reno, NV – Silver Legacy Casino
September 25 San Antonio, TX – Plaza Guadalupe
September 26 San Jose, CA – Mariachi Festival – HP Pavilion
September 28 Universal City, CA – Mariachi Festival – Gibson Amphitheater
October 3 Gretna, LA – Gretna Heritage Festival
October 8 Kansas City, MO – Folly Theater
October 9 Clear Lake, IA – The Historic Surf Ballroom
October 13 Davis, CA – Mondavi Center For Performing Arts at UC Davis
October 14 Ventura, CA – Habitat For Humanity Benefit – The Majestic Ventura Theatre
October 15 Riverside, CA – University Theatre at Univ. of California Riverside
October 17-24 Rhythm & Blues Cruise
November 4 Cleveland, OH – Cleveland Masonic Auditorium
November 6 Chicago, IL – Vic Theater
December 1 Dallas, TX – Granada Theatre
December 3 Austin, TX – One World Theatre
December 31 New York, NY – City Winery

Download: “For Ash” — Marnie Stern (mp3)

From Marnie Stern’s forthcoming album, Marnie Stern, which features the drumwork of…

Download: “Memo to the Man” — Zach Hill (mp3)

…Zach Hill (Hella, Bygones, Goon Moon), who has a new album out in October as well, entitled Face Tat. This is a song from that. It features drummer Greg Saunier from Deerhoof. Deerhoof is based outta San Francisco, which is where…

Download: “The Hypnotist” — Sonny and the Sunsets (mp3)

…Sonny and the Sunsets, led by Arthur !Activista! columnist Sonny Smith, reside. This is an mp3 of a song from a recent four-song 7-inch available through Future Stress.

Download: “Tea Lights” – Lower Dens (mp3)

Stream:

Beautiful song off the new Lower Dens album, available via Gnomonsong. Details on the band’s current tour, plus a great photo blog, are at Lower Dens on tumblr.

Lower Dens features the vocals of Jana Hunter, who was one of 20 artists on Arthur’s 2004 compilation Golden Apples of the Sun, curated by Devendra Banhart (available for $10 from the Arthur Store).

Jana also played the Arthurdesh benefit in Brooklyn in early 2009, for which we are forever grateful.

We are psyched to welcome her and her new band to Pappy & Harriet’s Palace in Pioneertown, California for a special FREE, ALL-AGES, special DUSKTIME (6pm) show on Sunday, September 5.

More info on Pappy & Harriet’s here: pappyandharriets.com

Flipping sonic channels on a cosmic TV, we begin this episode of Arthur Radio as sound traveling through an electrical conduit, crackling back and forth between fragmented news stories, advertisement jingles, and satellite static. At the end of the wire we are released into a gaseous, airy atmosphere, where we mutate into Krypton floating in a fluorescent purple light bulb. It is in this alien terrain that we meet our otherworldly special guest James Ferraro @ 55:55 mins, who slowly takes a human form before our eyes.

Manning the helm of a translucent convertible, he drives us down an interstellar slide until we eventually land on Highway 1, blaring an 80s hit grittily at top volume on the car radio, an orange pink and yellow sunset sparkling above the horizon. Many miles away, at the top of Mount Everest’s K2, an avalanche begins to rumble, stirring the perfect sea of snow below. We are everywhere at once; all possibilities exist simultaneously. Traversing between them has never been easier.

Explore more.

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #25 w/ JAMES FERRARO 7-18-2010

playlist ☛☛☛

[IVY MEADOWS DJ SET]
harry roche constellation – spiral
white rainbow – gnar (remix of gnar)
judy jaeger – light leaks light clings (side a)
…alpha binaural beats…
sensations’ fix – nuclear war in your brain
akiane – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQlZv29E4_0
josh burke – sea of miracles / gliding (aguirre records)
dimensions – tomato side a (I)
m2 – tone exploitation
robert A.A. lowe & rose lazar – Ŭyndham-a Horloĝo
the samps – F.X.N.C. (33rpm)
brian eno – dunwich beach, autumn 1960
sesame street – seahorse song
la düsseldorf – rheinita
wicked witch – electric war

☛☛☛ JAMES FERRARO LIVE SET + DJ @ 55:55

Download: “Sunset”—White Noise Sound (mp3)

Stream:

If you’re gonna (essentially) cover Spacemen 3′s “Revolution” in 2010, good god this is the way to do it. For all the fucked up children of the world, we give you “Sunset,” the opener off White Noise Sound‘s debut album, produced with obvious great care by Cian Ciaran from Super Furry Animals, out Sept. 21 through the good people at Alive/Naturalsound Records. Spacemen 3′s Pete Kember (Sonic Boom) had something to do with this album’s recording.

“Revolution” by Spacemen 3, live: watch here.

Lead cut off Syrian partier Omar Souleyman’s new album, Jazeera Nights, available from the good people of Sublime Frequencies.

New Masters of Reality album out in North America in October, with tour (!). Info: mastersofreality.com

Chris Goss: beloved Masters of Reality mainman for twenty-plus years—a storied New York band whose debut album was produced by Rick Rubin and released on American Records, which was followed by a move to California and some time on the record label that brought us Tone-Loc. For two years, three tours and a studio album, Masters of Reality’s drummer was legendary fiercehead Ginger Baker of Cream. Pine/Cross Dover is the band’s first studio effort in five years, and finds longtime drummer John Leamy once again on skins, joined by Brian O’Connor on bass, and Dave Catching (Eagles of Death Metal, Earthlings, QOTSA, etc) and Mark Christian on guitars.

Here’s the two covers for the new album, and the opening salvo…

Download: “King Richard TLH” — Masters of Reality (mp3)

Stream:

Goss is also known as: Kyuss producer, occasional Queens of the Stone Age/Desert Sessions member/collaborator, UNKLE contributor, and, with Twiggy Ramirez and Zach Hill, one-third of Goon Moon. As one-half of the pictured-below The 5:15ers (QOTSAer Josh Homme was the other half), he headlined the second night of ArthurBall in Los Angeles in spring 2006.

Let’s have some classic Masters from the past. Here’s a couple from the Ginger Baker era, first up is a live rendition of “John Brown” off Masters’ first album…

“Mister Who?”: A video by Casey Niccoli from the Ginger Baker era…

A live one from the Queens era…

And an unbelievably majestic 1999 live take on another classic from Masters’ first album…

Also….

“Sound Methods and Weird Channels: How producer and Masters of Reality main man Chris Goss got his groove” (2004 profile I did for the LAWeekly)

Goss is the author of arguably the best piece of neighborhood/cooking writing to appear so far in the pages of Arthur: check out his super-porkout Immigrant’s Sauce recipe/reminisence from the Brian Eno cover ish (No. 17, July 2005—still available, collectors!).

Let’s wrap it up with a message/manifesto to artists from Goss…

From Thee Laner’s new album, Natural Selections, out now via the Hometapes organization

“Heat lightning,” those soundless, electrified lines that sometimes fill the sky on hot summer nights, are actually an indication of a faraway storm which may or may not be moving your way. While the accompanying sound of thunder is too distant to hear, the unholy light show remains visible from rooftops for many miles, providing a dazzling and magnificent omen of the oncoming deluge.

This week on Arthur Radio, Brooklyn’s Up Died Sound creates the sonic inverse of this experience; eyes closed, we listen as warm cascades of sound fall around us, giving the impression that the storm is now here, and this time the lightning can be heard, but not seen…

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #24 w/ Up Died Sound 7-13-2010

If you’re currently in the NYC area, you can see Up Died Sound perform live this Thursday 7/29 at Zebulon w/ Mother of Fire & Bow Ribbons. Watch out for their upcoming self-released LP, available August 2010.

songs spun this episode…

[HAIRY PAINTER + IVY MEADOWS DJ SET]
paul labrecque & valerie webb – ‘moon reflections on 3 deep pools’
zonk – ‘head’ (from subliminal sounds comp. ‘tripping in the basement‘)
los llamarada – ‘another big come down’
zomes – ‘crowning orbs’
vivian goldman – private armies
herbie hancock – earth beat
implog – holland tunnel dive
ucok aka harahap – minta kawen
lee dorsey – everything i do gonh be funky (from now on)
sweet smoke – ‘silly sally’
tshe-tsha boys – ‘nwampfundla‘
sejayno – ‘spirit of the mulberry’
los dug dugs – ‘world of love’
doronco gumo – ‘iede syoujyo”
eric gale – negril sea sunset

☾☾☾☾☾☾☾ UP DIED SOUND @ 52:25 mins ☽☽☽☽☽☽

himangshu biswas – ‘raga siva ranjani’
the glass orchestra – s/t LP (side a)
international hello – ‘arise superslide‘
dirty filthy mud – ‘the forest of black’
les rallizes denudes – ‘night of the assassins‘

poster artwork by Pete Toms

Arthur Magazine is super psyched to welcome longtime office favorites (and ArthurFest ’05 alumni) Radar Brothers, Sleepy Sun and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound to High Desert honkytonk Pappy and Harriet’s Palace in Pioneertown, California, near the Joshua Tree National Park.

The Radars—makers of “space cake/ice cream art rock” (their words)—are touring behind their sixth album, The Illustrated Garden, recently released by Merge Records. Gorgeous as always, it’s their first with a new rhythm section, which picks up the pace here and there from the usual Radars lope and burn. (You can listen to a stream of the album at the Merge site.)

Arrive early, as our friends from Los Angeles will go onstage at 8pm, as the sun goes down over the High Desert—in other words, right when and where they belong.

Around 10pm, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound will take the stage. Here’s a warm, almost mournful slice of archetypal West Coast psychedelic guitar rock off When Sweet Sleep Returned, the Bay Area quartet’s second album, out via Tee Pee Records.

Download: “By the Rippling Green” – Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound (mp3)

Pappy and Harriet’s is located in Pioneertown, which is about 2.5 hours’ drive from Los Angeles. It is next to Yucca Valley. The Joshua Tree National Park is 20 minutes’ drive away. Daytime in the summer is bright and hot, but, because of the high elevation (4,000 feet), significant cooling occurs as the sun sets and the stars come out. This ain’t Palm Springs or Coachella—nights are really pleasant here. Especially if you bring some space cakes.

Bonus: there is almost zero cel phone reception in Pioneertown, which helps you to enjoy where you are…

For inexpensive motel and camping options right behind Pappy & Harriet’s, check out

Pioneertown Inn

and

Pioneertown Camp Corrals

Download: Seth Pettersen – “Baby Buddah” (mp3)

Stream:

An office singalong favorite off the beachgoers’ summertime hit parade that is Seth Pettersen‘s new album, So Fully, available from iTunes.

Seth is playing some surf shops in the coming weeks:

Jul 22 2010 7:00P Pacific Beach Surf Shop (San Diego, CA)
Aug 7 2010 8:00P Shelter Surf Shop (Long Beach, CA)
Aug 21 2010 7:00P Surfy Surfy Surf Shop (Leucadia, CA)
Aug 27 2010 8:00P Duckywaddles Emporium (Encinitas, CA)
Sep 10 2010 8:00P Hensley’s Flying Elephant (Carlsbad, CA)

At the center of a wind tunnel, we find ourselves stuck between perspectives. Is the world moving at a million miles around us, or are we the ones who are flying? This week, join hands with Hairy Painter and Ivy Meadows as they plunge into the unknown, fortified by Prince Rama of Ayodhya‘s ancient primordial howls, growling synthesizer moans and consciousness-melting pulsations, which swirl like electrified streams of sonic debris in the positively charged atmosphere… “Give yourself. Lose yourself.”

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #23 w/ Prince Rama of Ayodhya 6-27-2010

playlistum lyeth beneathio…

[HAIRY PAINTER + IVY MEADOWS DJ SET]
keiji haino – look, darkness and light both begin to copy
clara rockmore – the swan
conrad schnitzler – electric garden
s.d. batish – raga tilang alaap
far east family band – live in l.a. 1978
seltaeb – nug mraw a si ssenippah
alejandro jodorowsky – tarot will teach you/burn your money
arthur russell – the name of the next song
robert johnson (on speed? <—–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_musician Playback_issues_in_extant_recordings) – - hold my body down
rusty santos – feel radio signals (botanical mix)
pocahaunted – time fist
julian lynch – topi garden 2
mawan te dhiyan – surinder kaur & parkash kaur
sun ra – celestial road
albert ayler – the wizard
sonny sharock – black woman
nagane aki – the wind that flows through the trees
paul metzger – the uses of infinity (side a)

——-=====live set by PRINCE RAMA OF AYODHYA @ 1:05:00=======——–

sun araw – ma holo
james ferraro – blacktop tumble weed
terry riley – in the summer
grateful dead w/ bo diddley – i’ve seen them all

Download: “I Was Denied”—Thee Oh Sees (mp3)

Stream:

Properly rambunctious Fall homage from Thee Oh Sees, featuring everyone’s favorite ex-Coachwhip/Pink and Brown-er, John Dwyer. Off their tasty new grinder, Warm Slime, available from In the Red Records of Los Angeles, California. Spiffy cover too.

Download: INTERNATIONAL HELLO – “Arise Superslide” (40mb, mp3)

Stream:

A long cut of primo California psych damage from California’s International Hello, featuring former members of the legendary Monoshock. Available on their new self-titled debut LP, out now from Holy Mountain of Portland, Oregon. Yes!

Our collective lack of sun worship has brought its bright and might down upon us – here, again, to cook up any unbikini’d nether region left out too long. Awoken from its slumber, The Shiney One’s appetite is seemingly unquenchable and it will stop at nothing to make your flesh more palatable. Come, get dehydrated, and join Ivy Meadows and Hairy Painter as they go on a magical and woozy journey through your skin, with fire!

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #22: Sunburn!

this week’s playlistism:

[HAIRY PAINTER + IVY MEADOWS DJ SET]
max ochs – ‘ain’t nobody high raga’
neu! – ‘weissensee’
spacemen 3 – ‘when tomorrow hits’
neil young – ‘like an inca’
d.r. hooker – ‘forge your own chains’
saicobaba – ‘berimbou man coming’
white rainbow – ‘tuesday rollers and strollers’
tickley feather – ‘rain bucket’
maya – ‘helium’
dunes – ‘handle’
lexie mountain boys – ‘siren’
arp – ‘grapefruit’ (from upcoming LP “the soft wave” coming out in september on smalltown supersound)
lucky dragons – ‘wander birds’
unknown – ‘sorban palid’
john lennon – aspen flexidisc
ya ho wa – ‘journey through an element’
jandek – ‘naked in the afternoon’
sun araw – ‘ma holo’
stellar om source – ‘trilogy select’ LP (side b)
trolls – ‘alone’
sleep ∞ over – ‘your world is night’ 7″
chubby checker – ‘if the sun stopped shining’
opal – ‘grains of sand’
annabee-nox – ‘always on my mind’
dimensions – ‘essential love life’
wooden shjips – ‘summer of love’
blue cheer – ‘doctor please’
little wings – ‘the shredder’
charalambides – ‘i bid you goodnight’

Download: Arp – “White Light” (mp3)

Stream:

New throb-bubbler from C & D fave Arp, off fella’s second album, The Soft Wave, out this September from Smalltown Supersound. Official Arp site: arpsounds.com

Stream:

Download: Prince Rama – “Lightening Fossil” (mp3)

An Amon Duul for the new ‘teens? The ecstatic psychedelic heart of Prince Rama’s forthcoming Shadow Temple LP, out in September on Paw Tracks, Animal Collective’s imprint on Carpark. They were on Arthur Radio yesterday, and will be playing a bunch of gigs in coming weeks. More at their myspace yurt

from Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007) [available from The Arthur Store]

Joe Carducci, the ingeniously screwball theorist behind Rock and the Pop Narcotic has come out of the hills to grace us with another idiosyncratic non-fiction book, Enter Naomi (Redoubt Press), which presents an insider’s version of the SST label story. The structure teeters between chapters dealing with the particulars of the Naomi Peterson saga (she was a staff photographer for the SST), and a general recounting of the label’s saga. It’s a good if somewhat fragmentary read, focusing on some of the label’s issues with gender politics more than other possible tangents. Which means it’s still not the definitive SST book—probably there’ll never be just one—but it’s a pretty exciting read nonetheless.

As expected, the new box of Siltbreeze stuff is a magnificent blot on our culture. The Factums’ Alien Native LP is a reissue of a 2004 CDR crafted (one supposes) as a side project to work with the Fruit Bats, the Intelligence and other combos more formal in their organization of body shape. The Factums’ material is evenly split between loose, baggy, electron-o fwuh with a very diseased kind of surface and a guitarric syntax mangling that totally defies archeological stratification. For punk, it’s insanely buxom.

Sunshine of Your Love by Xno bbqX (one of the most elegant CLE band name tributes ever) is similarly well-proportioned. Recorded a few years back (it was originally a cassette), it is the work of two Australian vegans in a shed with an electronic guitar and a drum (or something), but we’ll be rolled in a fuggin’ rug if it doesn’t sound like these guys eat meat. What the hell? Still, vegan or no, this’s a fairly magnificent third-yard of wet-black-snapper, and has all the requisite duo moves that “knowers” look for.

If it’s fun you seek, you could do far worse than to look up the work associated with Denmark’s Smittekilde collective. Their vibe is a bit in line with Ultra Eczema’s, but no one’s as thoroughly screwed up as Dennis Tyfuss, so the material is a bit more tame overall. Still, the latest batch of swag is quite glamorous. First up is Kindergarten Exposure #2, a graphics fanzine in the same vein as some of Mark Gonzalez’s stuff or the Hello Trudi material—single page illustrations and stuff by a variety of artists, primarily in a somewhat crude vein. Yum.

Perhaps even more screwed is Kattemad. This is a graphics book by Loke Sebastian, Luca Bjornsten and Zimon Rasmussen, detailing the different ways in which cat food can be disgusting. Excellent. As is Rock World comics by Soren Mosdal and Jacob Orsted. We’d initially thought this looked a little straight, but the excellent English language text, about crappy music and beer and toilet paper, ended up being quite outstanding. The same goes for Mok Nok’s Slugstorm LP, which has a dandy silk-screened cover. The music is a cool blend of post-noise instrumentals with fragmentary glimpses of drool in the distance. The vibe reminds us a little of Dirty Three, back when they were still on Poon Village, if they were crossed with some of the scum-roots that Mick Turner was trying to repress. Nimble!

The photographer Mick Rock has been responsible for a number of iconic images. His best-known work is undoubtedly his glam stuff, but for us the most important is the cover work for the Stooges’ Raw Power and that for Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs. The bulk of Rock’s Stooges work came out a couple of years ago. But the Barrett shots were only available in a very expensive limited edition hardcover that came and went in 2002. Now, Gingko Press’s Rebel Arts imprint has released Psychedelic Renegade, a prole version of what I assume to be the same material, and it is a true pleasure to behold. Rock was a friend of Barrett’s from their university days, and his text is illuminative. It’s a great book, with many variations on photos that have long been burned into our synapses. On a related note, although major label stuff is really a bit outside our purview, English EMI has released a very deluxe 40th anniversary edition of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It has mono and stereo versions of the album, plus Syd-era singles tracks (not, alas, “Vegetable Man” or Scream Thy Last Scream”). Packed in a hardcover booklet with lyrics, great band pics, and a special insert reprinting some of Syd’s collage work of the day, it is very much a gas and a half. At least.

South Carolina is state we more often associate with fish-flavored crackers than with music, but we were never very good with spatial memories. Anyway, South Carolina is the home state to Chris Bickel, who is the main guy behind Anakrid, and Anakrid have much more to do with music than fish. The two albums right here right now are Father and a one-sided, hand-painted jobber called Pos Load: Nihilsurrealisme (Stereonucleosis). Both of ‘em are swellish examples of classic-style experimental chitter (as opposed to noise-yawp or something). Noise gets used as an element, and there’s plenty of effects-barf, but there’s equal attention to stuff like gamelanic-percussion-nutting and slurps that’d almost make you imagine the Residents were sitting in the next toilet stall, nickering. Pos Load is a longer chunk (and maybe a little more malignant sounding) than the relatively-poppy Father, but they’re both interesting. And Carolinian.

The return of a favorite poet is always a good reason to get drunk, so many hats will fill with booze when it is noted that Valerie Webber has a new book, created in concord with Genvieve Dellinger, and called Lignin Diadem (Big Baby Books). Not a collaboration, so much as a complex dance, the words here move between prose and poetry and back again, wearing boots caked in mud. This book was supposed to come out years ago, but was plagued by missteps until we’d forgotten about it. Which was, of course, the perfect moment for it to appear.

Also beautiful is the new issue of Western Massachusetts’ number one lit ‘zine, Gladtree Journal, now on the stands and tally-fuckin’-ho for that. John Shaw has assembled a spectacular roster of Valley talent and related bums—Sara Jaffe, Matt Valentine, Dredd Foole, Jessi Swenson, Lauren Naylor, Rick Myers, Bill Nace, John Moloney, Pete Nolan, etc etc etc. Yikes.

Great to see a new printing of Kell Robertson’s Bear Crossing (Pathwise Press). Robertson is one of the great western poets who started publishing in the ’60s, embracing a kind of legendary rurality that always makes us think of the days of the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City. This is a fine collection of material from a lot of different slices of his life, but all of them were lived near the edge of dangerous precipices (real or imagined). Well worth checking out.

As is the new lit ’zine from Montreal’s Benoit Chaput, Bathyscape. Most of it’s in French, but some of it’s in English (like our column) and it’s a strange collection of essays about inactuel culture. First issue looks cool and if we can soldier through the French, well, you can too! There are scheduled to be three issues a year. Let’s hope this doesn’t mean Benoit’s slowing down the output of books from the great l’Oie de Cravan imprint. That would suck.

Side Three of the Moon by The Company (Difficult Life in Mental Jail) is another project that has been floating around for a while. Something of a faux-solo project by the Country Teasers’ Ben Wallers, recorded a while ago then floated to various people to see if anybody’d want to release it. The instrumentation can be a little goony at times, but the vibe hovers somewhere between Alvaro and Conrad Capistran’s Sound of Pot project. For certain garage guys, this might seem random, berserk and sub-musical. And all those things are true. But this is a funny and primitivist take on experimental noise making, as riveting in its way as anything of its ilk. But really, how could we not be won over by any album that finishes with a track called “I’ll Fuck Your Wife in a Mellow Wine Bar”?

Download: Andrew Douglas Rothbard – “Rabbit Hole” (mp3)

Stream:

‘Nother kinda-cool kinda-solo album is the Abandoned Meander LP (Smooch/Peaking Mandala) by Andrew Douglas Rothbard. As unlikely as it might seem, the former Pleasure Forever vocalist has cut a record that’s pretty massive in terms of studio psych. Backwards this, backwards that, Eastern strings and structures, it’s something like the most fucked-up Green Pajamas record you ever heard. Except it’s not by them.

Best music mag we’ve seen in a long time is Scott Soriano’s newspaper, Z Gun. The debut issue is genius. The best record review section around and great features on stuff, like an in-depth survey of San Francisco artpunk and equally detailed looks at the Brainbombs, Pink Reason and Not Not Fun Records. Truly a ruling read. Also surprisingly good is issue #12 of Swindle. The mag is one of those glossy art/fashion/whatsis things, heavy on design, but the contents are very swinging. There’s a great (GREAT) article on the midwest hardcore scene by Tony Rettman, and a very solid piece on L.A.’s Ferus Gallery, which will be the subject of Kristine McKenna’s next book. Hard to know exactly what the mag’s about, but issue 12 is a stomper. 20th anniversary issue is out of Tim Hinely’s Dagger and it’s a good read as always. This one has a very good interviews with Chuck Warner (of Hyped 2 Death), Stephen Burns of the Scruffs(!!), part two of a Slovenly appreciation, a Gary Gold thing on Simply Saucer and lots and lots of reviews. Classic spew.

A couple of great labels, previously unconnected to vinyl have made plunges in different directions the last month or two, and results are been satisfying as huck. And maybe even more than that if you’re a fan of Tom Carter. Three Lobed Records (the long-running Bardo-associated sound-spume) has released Smokescreen and LP with additional CDR tucked in, by Sarin Smoke. Sarin Smoke is a duo comprised of Tom Carter and Pete Swanson, a guy who is generally associated with a very noisy wing of the California underground. Sarin Smoke, however, is a two-electric guitar trance-fest of long-held notes and subtle scrumbles into the dark bush. It’s a totally new thing for Swanson (as far as we know) and a nice addition to Carter’s shelf. The same duo session resulted in the one-sided LP It Chars Our Lips Yet Still We Drink (Wholly Other) which has a gorgeous silk-screened cover and sounds so enchanting you’ll be asking yourself, “Is it really Swanson?” Wholly Other also produced a vinyl version of Christina Carter’s Electrice album, which was originally on Kranky. It sounds even more amazing in this format, if we may say so—incredible ruminations on the transformative qualities of pain. Wow.

Got a nice batch of graphics from Buenaventura Press recently. The new issue of Comic Art Annual is as impressive as always. It has deep, long features on Kaz, Jerry Moriarty and artists from other times and places, such as Guyas Williams (best known, to us, anyway, for his work with Robert Benchley) and Lyonel Fenineger. It’s good it only comes out once a year, since it takes a while to adequately read and absorb all that’s here. Really looking forward to Tom DeHaven’s piece on Dick Tracy, which will have to wait until this column’s finished. A faster read is Ted May’s Injury Comics #1, which features an excellent strip about the philosophy of surviving high school, and a coupla other stories that’re part of larger tableaux. Weird enough to dig, certainly. But the prize of the bunch is Elvis Road by X. Robel and H. Reumann. It’s kind of hard to even describe what this one is. The format is an 8 X 12 hardcover book, with nine accordioned black & white pages, which unfold to create a room-sized page depicting a modern hell for pixies at nearly life-size. Insane, detailed drawings of people and animals and machines and buildings and things that’s set in something like a future that is now. No matter how long we look at this, we keep discovering more. Absolute hypnotism in book form.

The Temperatures again prove that they are one of London’s most spasmodically captivating outfits with the release of their first LP, Ymir (Heat Retention). The previous 7” aktion has been good (particularly the debut 7” on 4th Harmonic), but this record drags the whole drum/bass/duo concept into a new sludgier realm. They don’t so any of the proto-prog calesthetics of Lightning Bolt, but prefer to just roll around in muzz. Which is a fairly admirable alternative, eh?

Separated from England by many billions of bees is Niger. We only mention this because of the latest, greatest LP from Sublime Frequencies, Group Inerane: Guitars from Agadez. This combo (two guitars, a drum kits, and a hundred vocalists) plays examples of the Tuareg Guitar Revolution sound that all the kids are talking about. And they play it well. It’s pretty insane, actually. Much weirder than the highlife stuff that is more familiar to our ears. This carries whiffs of mystery and ecstasy from far far afield.

Mondo Macabro has issued a new, much improved version of the 1981 Indonesian classic, Mystics in Bali. This is one of the weirdest Z-grade flicks ever, and now you can really see the flying head sucking babies out of pregnant women and all the other crazy shit that happens. Totally whacked nightmare cinema. Their other new one is The Blood Rose, which is a ’69 French softcore homage to Franju’s Eyes Without a Face. It’s not a revelation or anything, but it’s an important film in the history of French envelope pushing and it a pretty entertaining way to spend 90 minutes.

The first few things we heard by Talibam! didn’t raise many huge welts, but their debut LP, The Excusable Earthling (Pendu Sound) kinda raises the stakes. For whatever reason, it’s now possible to fully appreciate how totally screwball Matt Mottel’s synthesizer work is, amidst the improv blather of Ed Bear and Kevin Shea. Dunno if it’s the recording or what, but Earthling jumps out like one of the duppiest key-bloats since those early Six Finger Satellite disks. Imagine! Jazzic in a different way—and, indeed, a good demonstration of the continuing gulf between west coast and east coast approaches—is Adrian Orange & Her Band (K). We count 18 participants, all of whom seem to be playing at certain times, creating a loose, big band version of the mid-period Kinks at their most hung-over. There’s a certain Portsmouth Sinfonia vibe as well, but that’s probably due to Calvin’s kettle drum playing. Much more identifiably Calvin-esque is Play Drums and Bass (K), the third LP by Olympia’s own C.O.C.O. These guys are very hip in an ultra-K way. A duo, comprised of Dub Narcotic’s bassist Chris Surron (on drums) and Olivia Ness on bass, they do a wild, stripped-down soul/dance/dub thing that gets some new punkly highlighting on the new album. But it’s still a hip-shaker, and we suppose that’s what it’s all about.

The show has wrapped up now, but we just caught the new edition of the Summer of Love catalogue (Tate Liverpool) and it’s really a lovely piece of work. Rather than just a lot of standard ‘Frisco ballroom artifacts, this collects nice representations of work from the UK and the US, and even a few items from the usually overlooked European scene. You don’t get much an idea from this about Asian currents, but the show was great and the book is a good one. It attempts to reconcile certain aspects of low art & high art in ways that are cool and unusual. There have also been a coupla of fine catalogues from the NY gallery, John McWhinnie at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller. The first is called c/o The Velvet Underground New York, NY and was put together by Johan Kugelberg. It’s a fascinating, if somewhat random, collection of images and artifacts from some of the more obscure corners of the Velvets archives. Some of the pieces are great, some seem extraneous, but if you’re into the group, it’s worth checking out. There will definitely be some stuff you haven’t seen.

Even better is 2001 by Claude Pelieu and Mary Beach. Both these collagists/translators/maniacs are dead now, but when they were alive—wow. They created amazing gushes of transformed images and spewed them out by the bucketload. The two sequences reprinted in this catalogue are from 2001, and just begin to scratch the surface of what these two incredible artists were about. Great great shit. Another superb catalogue that recently landed is called Vinyl Records and Covers by Artists by Guy Schraenen (Neue Museum Weserburg Bremen). Like the legendary Broken Music, it reproduces tons of weird cover art by known artists for all sorts of music (from Paul McCartney to Henri Chopin). The organization is a little maddening, but there’s a helpful index and boatloads of eye candy.

Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang have slowly, steadily, stealthily made themselves into one of the most consistently interesting cultural juggernauts on the contemporary scene. As musicians, their work has been carefully progressing for two decades, and their new album, Within These Walls (20/20/20) is thus far, their masterpiece. Recorded with the help of brilliant electric guitarist Michio Kurihara, and arrangements by Bhob Rainey, Within These Walls has the feel of an early ‘70s lost-folk classic, although it is only the mood and elements of the vocals that hearken back to that time. The session has a true lightness of spirit that makes the album a blast of pure joy. It’s a bravura performance, commended to everyone out there with ears. At the same time, D&N’s label, 20/20/20, has been involved in issuing some superb stuff—Kurihara’s Sunset Notes album and the first in a series of compilations, called International Sad Hits, which allows Damon to promote the blubbering of underground Sinatras in all known languages. The first volume was massive and we look forward to more.

Also extraordinary is the press the pair run, Exact Change. They have issued some amazing books over the years—check out their backlist for a real kick in the teeth—but none have been thoroughly fascinating as Joseph Cornell’s Dreams edited by Catherine Corman. The book draws from the journals of the America’s premier surrealist, and they are an exquisite addition to his canon. Naomi’s design work on this book (and the new CD, too) is particularly striking. Beautiful evocations of dream time in all its states. Congratulations all around.

Download: Joe McPhee – “ResponseAbility – Part 1″ (mp3)

Stream:

Sorta surprising to think of, but the Soprano LP by Joe McPhee (Roaratorio) is documentation of the first-ever solo soprano sax recital he’s ever given. His history with the solo form stretches back so far (30+ years) that we somehow thought it was part of his history. Well, blimey! Recorded at St. George’s Church during the 1998 Guelph Jazz Festival, this album is a wonderful souvenir of Joe’s playing at his most mesmeric and spatial. The way he interacts with the natural acoustics of the chapel is spell-binding.

Another dreamweaver is Loren Connors’ The Hymn of the North Star (Family Vineyard), his first full solo LP since 1990. Alan Licht actually appears on one piece, but the bulk of this is solo electric guitar muse-distention the way that only Loren can do it. Family Vineyard also put out a great O-Type box set, called The New Edge. This reissues the five disks releases by the latterday version of this MX-80 offshoot (basically, the band without Rich Stim), and it adds an ambient kinda DVD by Dale Sophea, called Grotesque. Heard in sequence, we have to say these disks make a much bigger impact than they did before. There’s a weird linear narrative created by them that only becomes apparent by full submersion.

Another exceptional object is Fantoma’s The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2. The film volume was really incredible—great transfers, nice package, some weird soundtrack updates, but what the hey. And this new one is more of the same. The films on this one are some of Anger’s best loved work—Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, Invocation of my Demon Brother, Rabbit’s Moon (1979 cut), Lucifer Rising and The Man We Want to Hang. The last one, which we’d never seen before, is a documentary of a show of art either created by Aleister Crowley or with him as the subject. It’s fairly straightforward, which is about the last phrase you’d ever apply to the rest of this collection. Crazy homo-eroticism, garbled surrealist dream imagery, and ritualism of all kinds are the basis of most of Anger’s films. They’ve always been amazing visual creations, graspable on whatever level you choose, and this DVD presents them at their stunning best. We’d forgotten how insane Mick Jagger’s soundtrack work was for Demon Brother. Damn. Who’d’ve thunk it possible?

The tradition of how-to books about bands and touring and whatnot is not impressive. Most of the volumes we’ve thumbed have one or two useful bits, but mostly blow chunks. The same cannot be said for Martin Atkins’ Tour Smart (Smart Books). Can’t say we’ve ever been too interested in any of Atkins’ musical projects, but this book is filled with extremely useful information, both general and specific. There’s not as much info as we’d like about touring at the lowest rungs of the econo ladder, but what’s here is solid, practical and backed up with anecdotal hoo-haw about the random factors that predominate when a band gets far from home. Best thing like this we’ve seen.

If you are seeking a perfect present for a surly youth this Xmas, allow us to suggest the new Jimbo action figure, produced by Dark Horse Comics. Haven’t seen the actual toy yet, but we got a book about the making of Jimbo (the figure) and it’s fucking hilarious. Lots of good detailed instructions about how the pud should hang and all that stuff. Anyway, the pics of the finished product look fantastic and the box it comes in will be as stunning as any Gary Panter thing you’re ever gonna own. And you should own plenty of Panter. Doc’s orders!

Please, if you want to be covered in this here column, send two (TWO) (2) copies of your love object to us, We are particularly fond of archaic formats—books, LPs, cassettes, magazines, whatnots, although DVDs end up being more useful than VHS tapes these days. Go figure. PO Box 627, Northampton MA 01061

from Arthur No. 28 (Mar 2008) [available from The Arthur Store]

Stream:

mp3: KITES – “Final Worship”

Load has dropped a warm totem pole of new guh, most notably the fourth release by Kites called Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship. Kites is the solo sound art project of Providence, RI’s Chris Forgues and it’s always a curiosity where this cat is gonna land. His last record Peace Trials had him delivering weird and exciting song-based ideas but this one has him not so much returning to noise form as refining it in a more succinct, minimalist way. The musicality of harshness is achieved in an impressive and contemporary style. Kites is almost considered old school these days in the hyperventilating world of noise but this is some new juice.

Chris also has a new art book issued by Picturebox called Powr Mastrs which is the beginning of a ten-part journey through the mystic world of a psycho-warrior tribe. If you can dig the exquisite graphic vibe to his record covers then you definitely need to score this.

mp3: YELLOW SWANS—”Our Oases”

Stream:

Another new one on Load is At All Ends by the West Coast duo Yellow Swans. It’s their most thought-harmonic release we’ve heard yet and we’ve heard quite a bit from these drone squall pups. Awesome sweet chug with considerable cooze flow.

mp3: MOUTHUS – “Your Far Church”

Stream:

Yellow Swans had an early autumn tour in the USA with Brooklyn’s magnificent Mouthus. Mouthus we continually rave about and their fistful of self-released CDs have been always welcome whippets of dense blacked-out snort tone but we were fully unprepared for the royal roar of their new Load load Saw A Halo. The heaviest of rock-mind meltdown engorged by buckets of brain fry amp smoke and experimental percussion in its most NOW of sound states. Proves Mouthus to be at the forefront of what we hoped and desired from a post-Dead C factory of art/magic. Fucking sweet.

mp3: SWORD HEAVEN – “Town Hag”

stream:

The amazing slamming sweatpig sensuality of Ohio’s Sword Heaven is in full flesh-thumping effect on their Load LP Entrance. The duo of Aaron Hibbs and Mark Van Fleet is one of the most crucially hardcore bizarre performance ritual acts since post-early Swans intensity. Finally a record is out which captures their brutal meat. In excellent b+w gatefold sleeve.

“Television is great. The wind blows across a screen in Nevada, Utah. That’s great, greater than Utah…” – an excerpt from a collaboration between New York poet Ron Padgett with Larry Fagin and Bill Berkson, two contemporaries of Padgett’s and all three from a long history of late 20th-century St. Mark’s Poetry Project and beyond poetics. Padgett’s work has always had the vibe of friendship in its presentation, particularly that of the men and women he developed his craft with, the Oklahomans Joe Brainard and Ted Berrigan and the coterie of language-spiritualists they howled with: Alice Notley, James Schuyler, Tom Veitch, Lita Hornick, Allen Ginsberg et al. They are all in collaborative dance with Padgett on the pages of a great and great looking collection published by Proper Tales Press called IF I WERE YOU. The classic cover illo of Brainard’s monkeys grooving together over a typewriter is exquisite and publisher Stuart Ross’ design in tandem with Dana Samuel and Canada’s legendary Coach House Press is as awesome as a handmade silkscreened LP in its aesthetic heft. Grade A+.

Swedish label Segerhuva has released an essential LP Chariots by Envenomist, a solo synth project of Ohioan David Reed. Reed is known to be involved with many a project and pseudonym, Luasa Raelon amongst others, all dealing with his take on doom machine Lovecraftian horror-mind scapes. This is the place to start for any of you not caught up in his extensive, impressive catalog. A soaring, surging synth output through nether-life.

Houston noise woman Melanie Riehle has been finally finding it suitable to release her harshness under her own name. She’s been in the Texas trench of delicious noise drip since the mid ’90s as a member of notorious necrosex units Baptist Skin Communti, Tearing The Wings Off Flies, Release Helen Rytka, ERK64 and, with Richard Ramirez, Are The Volcanoes Still Active?. Her new cassette Yellow Cipher (Deadline Recordings) delivers crushing, yet cream-drenched, soundwork which moves at a speed undeterred by any consciousness of norm.

Way-underground Brooklyn label t.b.t.d. has whipped out a few recent, good-looking tapes in carboard art envelopes. One we heard is a real rock n roll monkey called Fly So High by The Shining Path, a duo comprised of Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff. More known for their weirdo psyche minimalism as Monsov Swirnoff, documented heavily by Eclipse Records the last few years, here they get down to some confused and slippery boogie-spazz with the finer elements of Jap free spirit futurism informing the process. Fucking out there and great. Jazzed to hear their LP on Holy Mountain.

Eileen Myles really hits it on the head in her blurb for Mike Topp’s new collection Shorts Are Wrong (An Unbearable Book/Autonomedia): “Just when I think Mike Topp’s poems are funny, they’re wise. Just when I think they’re wise, they’re bad. Just when I think they’re bad, they’re great. Mike Topp’s book is exactly like the world.” Topp can be the guest you don’t wanna have at dinner cuz he’s got waaay too much spurt but at the same time so much of the goo is sweet ginch, no doubt—check this : INTUITION: “Is intuition what I think it is?”—that’s it! Fucking sweet. Or this: WHERE WE FOUND YOU: “x”—some clunkers in here too but yes they do create a real-life dynamic—total poetree. Worth yr buck.

Super cool solo cassette on Ontario label Elite Tapes from Apollo, the nom de noise of Claire Therault who plays in harsh drone dream swallowers ATLÄS. Speaker-gnashing synth wash and hype storm cat scratches make this a furious-yet-frothy rampage.

Baltimore’s fabulous Lexie Mountain, she of the chanting, humming, scatting, trance-tone microphone language spooge has unleashed three new CDRs—Sexy Fountain Noise, Venus Cleaners Sessions 1 + 2, and Woodgrain Manicure with the extended Lexie Mountain Boys (Sam Garner, Amy Harmon, Katherine Hill, Roby Newton, Amy Waller and Lexie herself). Each of the packages comes in beautiful hand-rendered simple-fold color + sticker art. All have the performative energy of creative femme-tongue more punk than academic. Very forward and progressive yet NOW-like. Collect ’em all.

The Mossy Throats, which is Dan from Haunted Castle (which is no more) and White Leather (with Kristopher Reinshagen from Villa Valley) and Weedmother and Uneven Universe, as well as a one time project called Snow Covered Deer Corpse, has released a scant few items into the North American noise gunk universe but what there is is choice. Real skin-scraping rawness with meditative distortion drone. The most recent thing we heard is a double cassette on the way, way elusive Irrational Tenttent label run by Matt (also of Villa Valley). These guys are all nuts and are making some of the most crucial new sub-spuzz currently available. We suggest contacting Nurse Etiquette tapes for initial investigation.

Elektronavn is the solo sound project of Magnus Olsen Majmon who runs Empty Sounds, a great label out of Denmark documenting the most current of Danish sound-field-hushtone-psychemind-improv/electro-organika. Most everything on Empty Sounds is CDR with handmade sleeves allowing artists to realize projects with a minimum of manufacturing delay. L.A.’s unstoppable Not Not Fun label has released a limited-to-99 copies cassette of Black Zurnai by Electronavn and it rolls off the tape heads with curious ghost-tones and pulsing sound-meat. A good place for statesiders to check this cat’s crazy cool emission. Not Not Fun also graces us with a warm and woozy double cassette called Earth Lodge by Ajilvsga which is the Oklahoma duo of Brad Rose and Nathan Young. Like their recent releases on Peasant Majik, Arbor, and Arroyo this pair’s southwestern streams of sunsound make for excellent sweet listening. It’s accompanied by striking collage art by Manda from Pocahaunted. An LP is forthcoming from Palindrone.

One other cassette on Not Not Fun we’d like to alert you to is certainly the rock n’ feedback drive of At The Mountains of Madness by Magic Lantern. This Long Beach 5tet has been together for a year or less and are already melting the hairwaves with a new youth-psych Taj Mahal Travelers induced orgiastic repetition hardcore drone fry that is completely boss.

As far as vinyl ala Not Not Fun, well they should be as ecstatic as we be with the release of two amazing LPs. First up is Heather Leigh Murray’s Devil If You Can Hear Me which is raw un-fi recordings of Heather unfolding pedal steel dark and heavy improv moves allowing her thoughts to suddenly extol stirring and lovely voicings. Side two’s side-long “Candy Butcher” is wildly wonderful and ends as if slurped by a black void. Second up is probably one of the coolest, most stirring LPs we’ve ever heard. A split between Christina Carter and Pocahaunted that reaches into some very narcotic and raw fields of music-love-magic. Christina’s side is four stark and personal readings on 1. Aging, 2. Death, 3. Solitude, and 4. Dreams. An involving and deep affair touching on the more nether vibes of Jandek but with an introspection distinctly Christina’s. Pocahaunted’s side, particularly “Sweat Lodge” is probably the most killer jam they’ve published. Super eerie and soul-licking. A divine experience and one you gotta taste post-haste.

Supremo ass-squelch of a distinctly Canadian order is in full anal gland grip by the sound of the Hachinki cassette by Bonsai Forestry (Wintage). That is until the meat-radio kicks the buttplug loose and all liberated sickness signals are unleashed. These kats are all krunk nature lovers packaging their masterpiece into a velcro’d carboard box with tree-jizz pasted on and a tape holder made of tuff-flaking foam. Blip n’ scrape fun but you best wash yr hands after handling.

Cody Ranaldo’s first release on what is presumably his own label Western Unconscious is entitled Beating You Up and while there is a rather insistent power strum to Side A augmented by over-fuzzed footswitching it is music of a young and wise soul more gentle than naught. Raga ripping is the character at hand, though it all goes out the window with side B’s investigations into beatbox offness. Hopefully more from this dude will come our way.

The No Fun fest earlier this year was a completely unhinged miasma of orgiastic brain-crushing bliss. A lot of it had to do with the premier stateside performance of Incapacitants, hands down the most remarkable and stultifying practitioners of rapacious noise-bleed onslaught not only from their homeland of Japan but the goddamn universe. No Fun Productions has released the Live at No Fun Fest 2007 CD of that performance alongside the one by Japan’s Pain Jerk, also killer. It’s all a total slashing, slamming, sizzling physical barrage of hurricane meat-sound and it comes at a time when a retrospective look at Japan as ground zero for global noise history is due. Thanks to No Fun’s hellbent release schedule we are gifted with a primary overview of C.C.C.C., one of Japan’s most notorious outfits from the ’80s featuring Fumio Kosakai (later of Incapacitants), founder Hiroshi Hasegawa and porn-pain queen Mayuko Hino. The four-CD boxset Early Works is essential to anyone seriously into this genre either as curiosity seeker or full on devotee. It is probably the most relentless fuck-the-universe noise document ever compiled for one band and the Kosakai liner notes are amazing, real and hilarious. Incapacitants’ T. Mikawa, a remarkable man who works daily in the straight world of high finance and literally explodes into a noise demon at night is featured on a great tape release with legendary Japanoise outfit Crack Steel from a live 2006 event called Fuck My Ass: Live At Binspark (Cipher Productions). The tape is adhered to an excellent booklet of photos from the event with delirious memoir by “Soddy” (whereabouts unknown).

Fantastic Sleep is Ged Gengras (Fantastic Ego, Antique Brothers and Thousands) and Grant Capes (Sleepwalkers Local 242, (VxPxC), and Thousands) deciding to make non-boring drone music which is quite an ambition as yes there is a lot of bored and boring droneism being executed at any given time. Thankfully these lads have some pretty stellar moves and know of which they drone and thus have created this hep drone tape New Master (Phantom Limb). Do we need a drone war? Or would that just be another drone bore? (help).

There’s this guy Ignatz from Brussels, well that’s not his real name, his real name is Bram Devens, but he identifies with the mouse Ignatz, or is it a rat, whatever it’s a rodent who was known to throw bricks at Krazy Kat. Do you know your cartoon history? Krazy Kat was this kind of accident-prone, impervious and sentimental feline who was knocked viciously to reality with a brick thrown by Ignatz the mouse. The characters were created in 1910 by George Herriman. The thing with Krazy Kat is he always decoded the brick smacks as declarations of love. Weirdness and Devens uses Ignatz as his nom de plume for deploying love-sounds wrapped in vintage mortars. Dude’s involved with the Belgian Kraak scene, put out a CD and LP, and he released a cassette on Canada’s Bennifer Editions. All of which are choice, but what’s been stuck in our players is this new mysterioso jam called Atlantic Woman. It’s by an Ignatz/Bram Devens sub-ego called Miles Devens and it’s on the Skaters’ tape label New Age, so good luck locating this gem. You may want to try the regular distros of the irregular like Volcanic Tongue in the UK and either Fusetron or Eclipse in the USA. Also check out the Skaters fan site on Myspace. It offers leads. The music has a sort of more-beneath-the-ether vibe of PG Six’s earlier gloops but more shrouded and clouded. The tones are sweet, sensual and spooked.

It’s encouraging to see some of the better small presses keep it happening in these dreary days of virtual desire. Chicago’s Pitchfork Press has wisely changed its moniker to The Silver Wonder Press but not before allowing one more Pitchfork rag to be constructed. It belongs to Gerald Locklin who has been writing strong and steady since the early ’60s with over 3000 poems in print within 125 books and rising, including this fine stapled edition titled The San Antonio, Savannah, & Daytona Beach Poems. His is an eagle’s eye on the American landscape of humanity and all its frenzied lassitudes and is worth reading for the sake of connecting to honest rumination in the face of TV death. Dig? Two issues under the new Silver Wonder imprint are one each by Guy R. Beining and Robert O‘Neal. Beining has a long history of writing supersonic slices of minimalist poetry. Outside The End has some of his most choice new jams alongside some drawings and collages to help crack the sweet code. A few lines from “almost complete, 5/7/01-monday”: “those golden notes / are from a cave / & the black acid drops / come from the t.v. / where its widening / white circle is lost / in protraction of the skull. / why not bang another / bone on the floor…” Robert O’Neal works somewhere in southern Indiana as a sweeper in a car repair joint. Perfect poet environment and he rips wicked lines left and right in both anger and solace in search of righteous juice. One poem rolls off into a litany of fuck declarations: “Fuck high fructose corn syrup. / Fuck computers dumped in the 3rd world. / Fuck dirty bombs & sanitized word bombs…” Fuck yes. (Newsbreak: Silver Wonder Press has just issued Hello From the American Desert, a 40-page collection of Lee Ranaldo’s spam-inspired poetry, accompanied by artwork by the Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood)

Nondor Nevai, by all accounts, should not still be alive. It’s very possible he isn’t. We first caught sight of him on the infamous “free-glam” tour of To Live & Shave In L.A. a few years back. He was a ferocious black metal scum bandit raging way past the band’s set with unbridled drum pounding and sweaty headbanging inanity. He made fellow bandmates Weasel Walter and Misty Martinez appear absolutely docile. All we know is ex-Chicago resident Jim O’Rourke claimed the best band name ever in Chi-town was Nondor’s legendary and infamous Vagiant. So we had hoped to hear Vagiant as a recording session happened but it never was released. As neither was the Aborted Christ Childe LP that Tom Smith was to release. One other Nondor group called Hatewave, again with Weasel Walter, did release a CD and it’s one of the best outsider sick-metal projects out there, though “true” black metal freaks are oblivious to it for reasons of elitism inherent to the genre. But trust us who listen outside of the box, it destroys. Anyway Nondor is a satanic power metal freak of nature and we just found the compilation of his lost and sundry works as produced by Weasel on the Nihilist label. It’s titled The Best Of Nondor Nevai and it is crushing, hilarious and delivers the damaged goods. Available only on cassette, keeping it out of sight to aboveground ears, it features tracks from the unreleased Vagiant, VVarvolk and Aborted Christ Childe LPs. A lot of Beefheartian voiced ruminations on straight up boner-boy sex with a shot of art history thrown in. Fucking weird and fucking awesome. From the liner notes: “Nevai has manipulated the very fabric of reality to create his work, and as a result, documentation has been scarce. Much of his legend exists thusfar in the domain of oral history and rumors. Equal parts GG Allin, Otto Meuhl, Andy Kaufman, Kim Fowley, Ted Kaczynski, Charles Ives, Gurdjieff and Dennis Hopper. Nevai has fucked with death and survived so many times we must regard him as superhuman. What you will hear on this release are the ravings of a madman, drunken with lucidity.” ~ Weasel Walter

The Psychform, Black Horizons and Steronucleosis labels have gotten together to release a split LP by Anakrid and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer where both outfits mix and manipulate each other’s tracks. South Carolina’s Anakrid are a self-identified concrete electroacoustic minded concern while Seattle’s Blue Sabbath Black Cheer have a bit more savage take on things. What you get is both outfits creating fantastic dark noise extracts that leave you panting on the cellar floor. Particularly the two Anakrid tracks that BSBC finagle with. Really wrenching, noise clang destruction with a heavy horror blackness.

Thurston’s top 40 of 2007
1. Christina Carter / Pocahaunted – split LP (Not Not Fun)
2. Aaron Dilloway – Chain Shot LP (Throne Heap)
3. Grouper – Way Their Crept LP (Type)
4. Rodger Stella – Foucault Zombie LP (Gods of Tundra)
5. The Jasons – LP (Tovinator)
6. AA Magazine 1 (AA Records)
7. Pengo – Counterfeit Memories (Nashazphone)
8. John Weise & C. Spencer Yeh – Live In Nottingham LP (What The…?)
9. Can’t/Carly Ptak/Heather Leigh/Zaimph – split 10” lathe (Curor)
10. Blues Control – LP (Holy Mountain)
11. Visitations – LP (Time-Lag)
12. Def n Dum – DVD (Barf)
13. Unholy Crucifix – Séance of Death cs (Northern Sky)
14. Sunburned Hand of the Man – Weekend at Burnie’s 2 LP (Lost Treasures of the Underworld / Blackest Rainbow)
15. Joe McPhee – Soprano LP (Roaratorio)
16. ffh/Prurient – Women in the War split cs (Hospital / Roots of Slavery)
17. Sam Goldberg – Halcyon cs (Wagon)
18. Jason Crumer – What is Love cs (Hospital)
19. Bone Awl – Meaningless Leaning Mess LP (Nuclear War Now! Productions)
20. Robert Ashley + Walter Marchetti – October 25, 2001 Merkin Concert Hall NYC 2XLP (Choose)
21. The Folk Spectre – The Blackest Medicine LP (Woodsist)
22. Deathroes – Final Expense LP (No Fun)
23. Squamata – Cumshot Wounds cs (Harsh Head Rituals)
24. Josh Lay – Abandoned By Christ cs (Long Long Chaney)
25. Mutant Ape – Doom Ape 7” (Turgid Animal)
26. Altar of Flies – “…Hate This City” 7” (Daisy Cutter)
27. Work/Death – Dedicated to Peter O’Toole cs (Ekhein)
28. Jewish Uprising – Desperate Prince Charming cs (Monorail Trespassing)
29. Dead Machines – Plays Kwaidan 7” (iDEAL)
30. Bruce Russell – 21st Century Field Hollers and Prison Songs LP (Rococo)
31. S.A. Griffin – Numbskull Sutra book (Rank Stranger Press)
32. Below PDX – Summer 2007 fanzine
33. Gown – The March Towards the End Continues Despite Any and All Efforts … CDR (Blackest Rainbow)
34. Splash – Slippery Beach Trash Gamelan cs (New Age)
35. Wally Shoup/Chris Corsano/Paul Flaherty – Bounced Check LP (records)
36. Social Junk – cs (JK Tapes)
37. Suzy Shaw and Mick Farren – BOMP! Saving the World One Record at a Time book (Ammo)
38. Befoul – At the Devil’s Mass cs (Northern Sky)
39. Three Legged Race – Ringing Order cs (Rampart)
40. Dude War – Noise Wizzzards cs (SSS)

Byron’s Suggested Reading List (in no particular order)
1. Brendan Mullen: Live at the Masque (Gingko)
2. Rejean Ducharme: Go Figure (Talonbooks)
3. Leonard Cohen: Book of Longing (Ecco)
4. Don Cauble: This Passing World (Author House)
5. Joe Carducci: Enter Naomi (Redoubt)
6. Mario Panciera: 45 Revolutions Vol. 1/UK & Ireland (Hurdy Gurdy)
7. Richard Kern: Action (Taschen)
8. Isis & Electricty Aquarian: The Source (Process)
9. Dough Harvey (ed.): Heart & Torch: The Transcendance of Rick Griffin (Gingko)
10. Paul Schimmel (ed.): Chris Burden (Locus)
11. Jon Clinch: Finn (Random House)
12. Genevieve Castree: Roulatheque Roulatheque Nicolore (l’Oie de Cravan)
13. Bill Nace: Drawings (Open Mouth)
14. Ken Waxman: The Sound of Squirrel Meals – The Work of Lol Coxhill (Black Press)
15. Thomas Kellein: The Dream of Fluxus (Thames & Hudson)
16. Joshu Glenn & Carol Hayes (eds.): Taking Things Seriously (Princeton Architectural Press)
17. Bill Shute: In Perspective (Kendra Steiner Editions)
18. Alan Licht: Sound Art – Beyond Music Beyond Categories (Rizzoli)
19. Charles Potts: Valga Krusa Vol. 1 & 2: the Yellow Christ & Shit Crackers (Green Panda)
20. Brian Chippendale: Maggots (Picturebox)
21. Tobias Petterson/Ulf Henningsson: The Encyclopedia of Swedish Progressive Music 1967-1979 (Premium Publishing)
22. Gerald Locklin: The Ristorante Godot (Bottle of Smoke)
23. Mick Rock: Psychedelic Renegade (Gingko)
24. Benoit Chaput: Les Pirates au Couvert (Myrrdin)
25. Tom Franklin: Smonk (Morrow)
26. Valerie Webber: Thin Little Arms Build Castles (Big Baby)
27. Jan Wenner/Corey Seymour: Gonzo (Little, Brown)
28. Richard Krech: We Are on the Verge of Ecstasy (Green Panda)
29. Julian Cope: Japrocksampler (Bloomsbury)
30. Robert Mathieu/Brian Bowe: Creem – America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine (Collins)
31. Bob Flaherty: Puff (Harper Collins)
32. Jonah Raskin: American Scream – Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (University of California)
33. Marci Denesiuk: The Far Away Home (NeWest)
34. Ingrid Swanberg & Larry Smith: d.a. levy & the mimeo revolution (Bottom Dog)
35. Dave the Spazz (ed.): Best of LCD – The Art and Writing of WFMU-FM (Princeton Architectural Press)
36. Raymond Pettibon: Whatever It Is You’re Looking For, You Won’t Find It Here (Verlad fur Modern Kunst Nurnberg)
37. John Sinclair: Guitar Army (Process)
38. Michael Layne Heath: Sacred Grounds (Kendra Steiner Editions)
39. Patrick Rosencranz (ed.) You Call This Art?: A Greg Irons Retrospective (Fantagrpahics)
40. d.a. levy: UKANHAVYRFUCKINCITIOBAK (Robert J. Sigmund)

Ajilvsga: www.digitalisindustries.com/ajilvsga.html
Autonomedia: www.autonomedia.org
Bonsai Forestry: www.myspace.com/bonsaiforestry
Cipher Productions: www.iheartnoise.com/cipherproductions
Deadline Recordings: http://noiseweb.com/deadlinerecordingscatalogjune2002.html
Eclipse: www.eclipse-records.com
Elite Tapes: www.elitetapes.com
Empty Sound Records/Magnus Olsen Majmon/Elektronavn: www.majmon.com
Envenomist: www.angelfire.com/empire2/reed/
Fusetron: www.fusetronsound.com
Ignatz: www.ignatz.be and/or www.myspace.com/ignazt
Kraak: www.kraak.net
Lexie Mountain Boys: meetamountan@gmail.com or 812 Powers St., Baltimore, MD 21211
Magic Lantern: www.myspace.com/magiclanternmako
Meat Puppets www.meatpuppets.com
Nihilist: www.nihilistrecords.net
No Fun Productions: www.nofunproductions.com
Nondor Nevai: http://www.myspace.com/n0nd0rn3va1
Not Not Fun: www.notnotfun.com
Nurse Etiquette: nursetapes.net
Palindrone Recordings: www.dorkinglabs.com/palindrone
Phantom Limb: www.phantomlimbrecordings.com
Cody Ranaldo / Western Unconscious: Lessbones@gmail.com
Melanie Riehle: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=159011136
The Silver Wonder Press: www.silverwonderpress.com
Skaters (fan site): myspace.com/gambling_in_ohpa_s_shadow
t.b.t.d. – 750 Driggs #26, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Unbearables: www.unbearables.com
Volcanic Tongue: www.volcanictongue.com
Wintage Records & Tapes: wintagerecords@gmail.com – 1530 Queen St. W. #C-3, Toronto ON, M6R IA6 Canada

GOT STUFF? SEND TWO (2) COPIES TO: BULL TONGUE/PO BOX 627/NORTHAMPTON/MA/USA/01062

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 version 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!

We reported a while back how the horn has become a significant sound source in basement noise life with the weirdo bleat/junk processing of John Olson’s reed kill with Wolf Eyes, Dead Machines etc., and certainly Slithers, and to a mighty free jazz extent the always amazing Paul Flaherty. Furthering all this way hep ghost-trance-sense improv is Dan Dlugosielski’s new(ish) project Uneven Universe. Dan oversees the EXBX Tapes label and has recorded great gunks of noise-jam as Haunted Castle, plus he’s spooged out a few Uneven Universe documents. The one we keep going back to is The Rattling Caverns, on sweet Ohio label Catholic Tapes. It will make you wanna huff smoke-think and drink brews and maybe get some arm-around. If you’re lucky.

‘Nother fine Ohio product is the first LP by Mors Ontologica, The Used Kids Session (VSS). Because this was recorded by Mike “Amrep” Hummel, it’s hard not to smell gusts of Cayuhogan breeze in every note. Never sure if this is a concept we generate in our own fevered brainpans, but the album feels sporadically redolent of everyone from the Quotas to Death of Samantha. The basic pummel is tres garagey, but it’s blasted throughout with croak and glam-pop highlights that just won’t quit. Very cool. Thank you, Ohio. Not from Ohio, but very cool nonetheless is the new edition of Hall of Fame’s 1999 album, First Came Love, then Came the Tree (Amish). Originally released on CD, it’s now on limited vinyl, with a swell bonus CDR of the band live. These guys were a superb trio, and went on to a lot of interesting ensembles—JOMF, MVEE’s Bummer Road, etc. But their original blend was lovely, light-assed improv-volk with an experimental undercurrent that always sounded great. And how goddamn splendid it is to have this as an LP! Another gang with a long overdue LP is Egypt Is the Magick #, whose The Valentine Process was recently issued by Wooden Wand’s Mad Monk imprint. Seems like the unit has expanded to trio size (they were but one, last time we checked), but the music remains a primitive (almost Godzian) blend of street-volk-ritualism, with some Excepter roughage tacked on for good measure. Really fine Sara Press cover art as well.

Interesting batch of small ‘zines and booklets arrived from Brass Tacks Press, out L.A. way. They’ve got an extensive list of publications, and the few we saw are pretty whacked. The Snake Pit by Baretta, is a memoir of life in a weird derelict surfer/hippie commune/village in Lower Topanga Canyon. It’s a casual read, but presents a side of the greater L.A. experience that had previously eluded us. The Last Nowhere is a collection of “Crap Poetry” by Log and Toilet, who also authored the bi-lingual 5 Poemes Crap. The poetry isn’t particularly good, but we’re not sure it’s supposed to be. What it actually reminds us of is record reviews by the great Rev. Norb in the pages of his legendary Sick Teen fanzine. Last up is Voyage of the Timeship Medusa, a comic book by Toylit. Voyage is a very stoned feeling post-hippie image/word blur about rabbits and cops and puke and we-know-not-all-what. Suffice to say, it’s good readin’. Also extremely notable from a visual standpoint in the newest collection of drawings by Bill Nace (of XO4, Vampire Belt, etc.). Called simply Drawings (Open Mouth) it’s a strange-ass collection of pen and ink illustrations, which have been so important in defining the look of the Western Massachusetts underground. Open Mouth has also just done a CD version of their classic Daniel Higgs cassette, Plays the Mirror of the Apocalypse and Other Songs. It’s one of Higgs’ strongest pieces of extendo string ramble (with a short jaw harp break) and should make happy ears wiggle.

The new double-12-inch by Brooklyn’s Mouthus has no title (No Fun). It also has no suggested playing speed, so we tried it at 33, 45 & 78, and also played it backwards. All versions sound pretty good, although we’re currently preferring 45. It’s a little less underwater-sounding than it is at 33, but it maintains a certain energetic edge at that speed we find very captivating.

Definitely a 33 player is Hive Mind’s Cast Through Shallow Earth LP (No Fun). Monolithic in a manner almost suggesting tunefulness at times, this set slowly uncoils itself into a thick length of very krautly design. It’s actually quite akin to some old school slow motion electronics of the Ohr label era. Nicely done. Also nice is Aaron Dilloway’s Chain Shot LP (Throne Heap). Less ambo than some of his more recent work, this one’s a cluttered collage of loops and thumps on metal and/or horns. Gets very crunky towards the end. Which, you’ll have to agree, is a plus.

Aaron Dilloway – “Chain Shot (excerpt)”

We NEVER get promos from QBICO anymore (hint, hint), but we did manage to lay hands on a great new LP they released called Early Free-Form Waveforms by Psychatrone Rhonedakk. We’re not sure exactly what the hell this is, but it appears to be an old electronic project that involved Brian Turner, the current program director of WFMU, which is probably the best radio station we’ve ever known. Brian plays very Chrome-ian guitar on one side, the flip is a pure Zolar gloop of electro-whizz. It’s a formidable space jam, champ.

And before we change topics, you have gotten the WFMU program guide anthology, right? It’s called The Best of LCD: The Art and Writing of WFMU-FM 91.1 FM, it’s edited by Dave the Spazz, and it’s published by Princeton Architectural Press. The book is crammed to the nips with great writing, amazing art and cultural detritus of a remarkably diverse nature. Because Mark Newgarden’s bro, David, was the program director when the ‘zine started, they always had an incredible assortment of artists. The stuff here (by Panter, Burns, Clowes, Beyer, etc) is not reprinted anywhere else. The writing’s fine, too—Tosches, Linna, Marshall…a winning selection of the greats, and definitely the bathroom book of the season.

It’s possible this one’s been out for a while, but it’s such a massive effort that speediness has very little to do with it. We speak, of course, about Ashtray Navigations’ A Monument to British Rock 3 LP set (Smokers Gifts). Originally released on CDR, this vinylization of the sessions is an awesome and gorgeous thing. The band here is Phill Todd, Melanie Crowley, Alex Neilsen and Ben Reynolds (at various points) and the sonics are a sluffy combo of synthesizer camel-toe, guitar of a very Jandekian nature, and the clatter of pencils in a metal cup. Portions of it are utterly brilliant extensions of a very specific kind of post-genre bedroom improvisation, others mine a very classicist post-Hawkwind space-shaft-continuum, others just sound like a mess. Which means this’s a wild, beautiful ride and one well worth taking.

Willie Lane, one of our fave guitarists from the haze-light of New England, and a critical element in the MV/EE Golden Road investigations, relocated to some weird other road in Pennsylvania and we were sad. But now we are brightened! A message beam has been fireflied into our homes via an amazing recording collab betwixt Willie and Grant Acker (gtrist from ex-Siltbreeze lost-art spacialists UN). They are called the Slurp Dogs, the tape is called Postal Licks and it’s on the consistently worthwhile earth-psyche label from Belgium, Sloow Tapes. Real singing amplifier bent note drone wah magic mind music here and all in high order. Super recommended.

Our fave saxophoner list is one on which Wally Shoup’s name is prominently displayed. This Washington state dadaist is an alto player, visual artist and musical composer of the highest order. And he has recently been present on a pantload of precious poop. One of the best is Suite: Bittersweet (Strange Attractors), an LP which features a trio of Wally, guitarist Nels Cline and rummer Greg Campbell. The session was a radio broadcast from ’05, and it is a motherfucker. Wally bloots and slurs notes like a Tristano-ite gone berserk, Nels fills the air with intense mid-range squeedle, and Greg slugs them both with fists wrapped in metal. Especially on the b-side, it’s a goddamn beautiful thing, both fully blasted and under control every inch of the way.

Not as recent, but equally brilliant are the two LPs cut by the trio of Wally, drummer Chris Corsano and saxophonist Paul Flaherty. One is Bounced Check (Records/PO Box 381869, Cambridge MA 02238), the other is Blank Check (Tyyfus), and both are full-on spankers. Recorded one fateful night in Seattle, Bounce blares a bit more, but Blank wiggles like an eel. The playing format (two horns and a drum) is pretty maxist, especially with Corsano on tubs. Speaking of Corsano, this young honorary Limey has just had his first solo CDR, The Young Cricketeer, reissued on LP by Family Vineyard. It doesn’t sound like much is different, except the playing format. Recorded at home in Manchester, it’s a brilliant mix of Chris’s fantastic percussion work, plus the crazy tootling and tinkling that’re probably what got him hired by Bjork. Shoup then raises his shiny pate again for The Sound of Speed CD by Ghidra (Sol Disk). Another trio, this one features Bill Horist’s guitar and Mike Peterson’s drums. Sound is their second release, and it’s a great combination of Beefheart-damaged psych-noise string energy, intensely focused percussion scrums, and Wally’s anticly keening sax-work. Nicer work, Shoup don’t do.

Always a treat to get a new issue of Mike Stax’s Ugly Things. This guy has cracked the code on garage greatness, and he’s consistently producing the best music ‘zine this side of Kicks. Issue 26 has a great Rob Tyner interview, a fantastic piece on the Pop Rivets (Billy Childish’s pre-Milkshakes group) and more sweet content than you can shake yr bangs at. If you are at all interested in rock & roll, you cannot afford to miss an issue. UT has also published a new book, which we’ve started, but not quite finished. It’s called Like, Misunderstood by Rick Brown and Mike Stax, and tells the story of one of history’s great tragic bands—the Misunderstood—John Peel’s all-time faves. We’ve always loved the reissues and archival recordings by these guys (who came from the Riverside CA garage scene, and ended up in England), but their saga is fucked-up in a most splendid way. Yow. Worth reading.

Finnish neo-prog immortals Circle recently entwined mittened stumps with Boston’s Sunburned Hand of the Man (plus stray Vibracathedral Mick Flower) to create an organization called Sunburned Circle. An LP entitled The Blaze Game (Conspiracy) is the fruit of their loins, and it’s about as floridly stoned as you’d expect. Lotsa pulsing rhythms, squeedly Gong-like synth babble, Chrome-ian string-flange and vocal etherea, all with near-prog overtones. Recorded in Finland while Europe burned.

Meanwhile, nearby Norway’s favorite experimental/noise soundsmith Lasse Marhaug, along with Finland harsh fiend Tommi Keranen (aka Rulla), have a wicked wall-noise duo called Testicle Hazard. Which is an appropriate moniker whilst listening to their premier LP Hangover Interruption (Trash Ritual) as the rainforest of shattering aural debris is likely to shred any skum-boy’s scrotum within earshot. One side studio, one side live (where the plug gets pulled at the end —always a sign of success). Hot stuff from a label with nefarious psycho-graphic aesthetics. The LP is obi-banded with soft yet supple plastic netting and a pin featuring a hirsute asian bondage woman. Crazy. Make sure you grab the Rulla Arserection cassette from Trash Ritual as well for utter sound gutting.

Seems like we’ve mentioned Chrome a coupla times in passing. It should be noted that Jim Gibson’s newly-reactivated Noiseville label has followed their superb Helios Creed two-LP set with reissues of three crucial Chrome albums on CD: Alien Sountracks, Half Machine Lip Moves and Third From the Sun. These albums track the early development of this legendary Bay Area psych combo, from their garagist roots into their deepest Neu/Suicide trance states, on to the syncretically fused punk-space hybrid they perfected. Three great albums. And if you write Noiseville, don’t forget to ask about the Wicked King Wicker. It is a brutal guitar piece taken to a near-Skullflower level. We shit you not.

The new issue of David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet is out. It’s #180, and brings to mind how long ago it was that we first ran into David. It was back when he was working at the Duplex Nursing Home in Jamaica Plain in 1980. He was involved in a band then, Men & Volts, which had originally been formed to play Beefheart covers. He was also doing a strange little magazine of interviews with the nursing home’s residents, documenting the depth of their histories as well as the wildly funny answers they’d give to questions they couldn’t quite figure out how to answer. The issues were built around themes and there were some classics. David has done lots of Duplex-related work, releasing a book by the almost indescribable poet, Ernest Noye Brookings, then curating a series of albums on which various bands sets Ernie’s words to music. He has also developed a series of great spoken pieces, which he does live and on CD with various musicians. He has also been on NPR fairly regularly as a music and social commentator. He’s a total genius, and has really been involved in some amazing projects over the last three decades. Anyway, you can check out the Duplex Planet site for more info, but this new issue is really the berries. It’s another “music issue,” and is illustrated mostly by pictures of the ’60s bands David himself had: Happy Scab, Scotland Yard Fantasy, etc. Issue 180 is a good one, and reminds us what an important cultural figure Greenberger is. If you don’t know his work, check it out.

No one mentioned to us that the genius Santa Cruz band, Residual Echoes, had imploded. So imagine our surprise when we got the eponymous LP by San Francisco Water Cooler, a band birthed from Residual Echoes’ ashes (KDVS Recordings). The album’s formatting is a bit irksome (one side’s 45, the other’s 33, making for much confusion amongst stoners), but the sounds are great. There’s a very psychedelic whiff to the guitar, but it’s all done inside a sorta neu noise context that blends keys with gloop with whatsis in a truly modern way. Pretty amazing stuff.

New tape label Custodian, Color Zoo Containers hits a high sonic marker with a sweet foray into heavy, heavy excitable music/bliss blizzard drone love with the one man Oakland dude (since relocated to Prague) Jorge Boehringer aka Core of the Coalman. His tape Canarsie is blindingly beautiful, a scorched sky of hyper sound and it will leave you stunned and spinning. Boehringer’s been around the Bay Area scene, hanging out with the experimental head-cases at Mills College and local freaks like Rubber O Cement, Gowns et al for a few years. Dude is sick and his violin noise makes us think that the violin is turning out to be the premier instrument of the mid 1st decade 2000 avant/experimental scene (check C. Spencer Yeh, Samara Lubelski). Did Violinski presage this? No. Custodian, Color Zoo Containers has also issued a cassette by Take Up Serpents called Swollen And Full Of Parasites. These guys are an S.F. crew of rowdies, since located to Colorado, and they have the classic knees on the floor, butts high, hands on the knobs gutter improv. Like black metal, it’s the only way to really have some fun these days. Both these releases are worth seeking and sooner than later as there are less than 50 copies of each. We found ours at Aquarius Records in S.F.

While we’re hanging, happily, around S.F., a city which can still bring on the hootch charm so lost from the island of Manhattan, let us hep you to the swarming density of Usputuspud, which is the one-man slow burn of this cat Matt from local panic trance rockers Wildildlife. The cassette release Liturgical Alcoholik (White Lodge Tapes) is a real sweet and weird mind-scoping trip and definitely worth your seek.

Any old school Bay Area improvisor/spirit music freak can tell you that Henry Kuntz has, since the late ‘70s, been one of the most audacious and interesting free improvisers on the scene non-stop. His documentation has been typically subterranean starting from his initial recorded sounds on Henry Kaiser’s 1977 Ice Death LP, a flashpoint record for many a guitar experimentalist (Jim O’Rourke e.g.). For most of the ‘70s Kuntz edited and published a great newsletter called Bells (available to read online at henrykuntz.free-jazz.net/bells/). Throughout the ’80s Kuntz released LPs, cassettes and CDs on his own Hummingbird imprint of solo and group free-playing, all of which have amazing moments of deep spontaneous thought-love-composition. A fantastic compilation of this material, plus recordings from Kuntz’ Opeye project self-described as “avant-shamanic trance jazz,” can be had on the beautiful four cassette boxset, Speed Of Culture Light, from Belgium label Bread & Animals. The label plans on systematically re-releasing the Hummingbird cassettes throughout this year. Essential music for the ancient/modern axis alive in any sentient brain. And each package comes with complimentary plastic dinosaur. So no excuses.

Been keeping an eyeball on this Tompkins Square label since they issued that Imaginational Anthem comp back in whatever year it was. The label has developed a very cool catalogue of stuff, ranging from reissues of American Primitive guitarists (Robbie Basho’s Venus in Cancer, Harry Taussig’s Fate Is Only Once), parallel contemporary work (Berkeley Guitar and James Blackshaw’s The Cloud of Unknowing), newly recorded coots (Spencer Moore, Charlie Louvin, Ran Blake), and a mind-blowing new comp. People Take Warning! is a collection of murder ballads and disaster songs, so strongly collated and beautifully presented that it rivals any of Revenant’s or Dust-to-Digital’s recent triumphs. Three wild CDs of lost sounds recorded between 1913 and 1938. Some real nice stuff about the Titanic and Hindenberg. They really knew how to balladize the situation in those days. Fucking cute!

Another damn cute reissue is Robert Martin’s Long Goodbye LP (Yik Yak), which has rather mysterious origins. It may have been recorded originally in ’85 or so, by some California surf dude. But it appeared in ’01 as a CDR and got passed around at stoner parties in Northern California. Anyway, it eventually ended up in on LP, but its story is no more certain than before. It’s acoustic and homemade feeling, rather lo-fi. There are some similarities to other outsider stuff of that period, but they seem incidental, and the overall vibe (if not the sound) is actually closer to the Bobby Brown/Carolyn Kleyn wing of California surftown weirdos. But it’s not as showy as anything those guys ever cut. Just low-key, damaged and nice. We keep thinking it’s veering into some sorta Christian swamp, but can never catch it actually doing so. Huh. One thing we’ve seen it compared to is Bobb Trimble, so it’s worth noting that Bobb’s first two legendary LPs, Iron Curtain Innocence and Harvest of Dreams have been reissued by Secretly Canadian. We’ve always loved Harvest, with its bizarro-world take on Marc Bolan pixie carnivals, but the real revelation has been Iron Curtain. For whatever reason, this new issue, which presents it in hermetic form (rather than as part of a twofer) and its apocalypto-folk-psych-pop damage is a mysterious and wonderful thing to behear.

Alright, those wanting to run the risk of our attentions are directed to send two (2) copies of DVDs, LPs, books, mags, cassettes, nude snaps, etc. to
BULL TONGUE
P.O. BOX 627
NORTHAMPTON MA 01061 USA.

Excerpt from “filth-scape,” a manuscript of poetry by Thomas (Ted) Rees:

The Fence Dream
Goes like this: God is a burglar rob you straight out of the womb. Yes, God is a burglar rob you straight out of the womb. Oh, God is a burglar rob you out too soon and drops you on a wide boulevard. Air is full of money, collapsing coarseness. The new agora strokes your nipples and laces its fingers through your belt loops. Resulting constancy of blue balls drives the pursuit of plasticity, solace. You walk, electricity caresses every step, blink, a new sensation of blankness. As touch screens don’t touch back. Visibility is created by wallet thickness and frequency of use, so no one can see your body as you meander. Burgled of corporeality, you sense a smile on your unseeable visage. Beyond the city, another, never-wavering polis of compulsory paper-shuffling, turning in on itself. Praise the world’s pollyanna for gifting you, unseen. See.

STREAM IT:

DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #21 w/ Thomas (Ted) Rees 6-13-2010

This week’s playlist…

[DJ set by Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows]

including:

David Grubbs & F.S. Blumm – Back To The Plants 7″ (side a)
Joseph Beuys -Ja Ja Ja / Ne Ne Ne
Woods – Til The Sun Rips (excerpt)
Art Ensemble of Chicago – Brain for the Seine
Lydia Lunch – What it is
Fursaxa – Poppy Opera
Yoko Ono – (Aspen Flexidisc)
Range Rats – Blues Coming Down
John Lee Zeigler – Who’s Gonna Be Your Man?
Diamanda Galas -Eyes Without Blood
George-Edwards Group – Planets and Stars
The Beach Boys – Cool Cool Water
Cisco Houston – The Dying Cowboy
Laurie Anderson – The Big Top / It Was Up In The Mountains
Alan Watts – Love You
Charles Plymell – 100 Flies on an Airplane Flying Around The World
Family Band – No Sound
Crazy Dreams Band – Asian Rollers
Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes – Ame Debout
Popol Vuh – Schon Bist Du Vor Menschensohnen
…

[Thomas (Ted) Rees reads "filth-scape" at Perfect Wave Gallery June 12 2010] @ 1hr 05minutes

[Ira Cohen reads "The Majoon Traveler" in echo chamber] @ 1hr 35minutes

Ramble Tamble
Pauline Oliveros / Deep Listening Band

Stream:

Download: “Pack Your Bags” — Endless Boogie (mp3)

It is our pleasure to present this eight-minute deep cut off Arthur office faves ENDLESS BOOGIE’s forthcoming second album, Full House Head (ahem), out July 20 on vinyl and digital formats from No Quarter Records of New York City. Pre-order by sending money directly to them here.

OIL FUTURE HEAT OUTPOOST DOCUMENT 20 STOP

TO TIMES QSQIUARE TOPPLED METAL)))) SANDAL OUTSIDE OVERDOME, SITE INVOCATION OF SCUM HEAT AND NEON SHATTERED AND ABSORBED BY IGNEOUS ASPHALT OF HISTORY

FOR TO STREAM:

FOR TO DOWNLOAD: Arthur Radio Transmission #20: Disco Sigil w/Nonhorse

PART 1: In which our heroes call upon the dosed horn of John Coltrane, the open time slots of Fela Kuti’s studio, and the hallucinatory mojo of Kathy Acker to remove the barricades for to invoke a dance sigil in service of the psychic liberation of times square: hub of consumption, barometer of culture, shrine of empire. Use Your Feet For The Feat Of The Defeat Of The Demons Feasting On Your Future!

PART 2: In which comrade to the cause Nonhorse finds space amidst his beyond-mere-mortal-multitaskings to build a roomy nest of codified cassettery from which to deliver a highly prismatic and severely discorporating live tape manipulation set. Abridged here, the fulllll badass 2.5 hour tilthabreakadawn extent can be siphoned from the bountiful tank of the Newtown Radio archives. HEAVY

This week’s playlist…

DJ SET BY HAIRY PAINTER @ 0:00

cosmic jokers – im reich der magier
pauline oliveros – pathways to grandmothers
john coltrane – om
martin rev – temptation
king yellowman – zungguzungguguzungguzeng
bohannon – foot stompin music
kathy acker – i was walking down the street
doris ebong – boogie trip
brian eno and robert wyatt – plague of flies
lou reed – follow the leader
the jb’s – you can have watergate just gimme some bucks and i’ll be straight
pax nicolas and the netty family – na teef know de road of teef
bernard heidsieck – canal street
los corraleros de majagual – cumbia campesina
donna summer – need-a-man blues
curtis mayfield – think
bulgarian state television female vocal choir – polegnala e todora
king sunny ade – synchrosystem
messages – shruti box
religious knives – the sun (resin version)
velvet underground – follow the leader
helen adam – cheerless junkie song

LIVE SET BY NONHORSE @ 1:13

LIVE STUDIO BANTER @ 2:00

Stream:

Download: “Dead” – White Hills (mp3)

From White Hills, available on lp, cd and digital from Thrill Jockey.

Stream:

Download: “Tambura” – Messages (mp3)

Beautiful, eh? From Messages, available now on vinyl from De Stijl Records.

Messages are Taketo Shimada, Tres Warren and Spencer Herbst.

Promotional text: “The baby believes the womb is the Universe. At birth there is a glimmer of light and a shifting of space. I was there, but now i am Here. Then there are still but 2 things : Me and the Universe. And then what happens is Other People. From a note sounded in 1960 and held for a long time, a continuum of Sound has been sluiced along a diagonal of personal ecstasy, and some have come to call it a Drone. Surrounding the Drone is a genre, and within, wheat and chaff often commingle all too comfortably. But with tones as thick and texturally luxuriant with spiritual resonance as their long, glorious hair, Messages are the two worthy gurus currently contributing to the echo. Messages evoke the womb. And when the womb smiles, it whispers Messages, and then there is the first glimmer of Light .. ”

FROM AUTHOR DAVE TOMPKINS:

BODE BREAKER
This bonus beach was engineered, with much patience, by Monk-One, winter 2010, while I sat in a fisherman’s beer chair in his basement. The mix is meant to accompany the book [Tompkins' How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks]. Sometimes it ditches the book altogether. Sometimes it throws the book in the trunk and drives it to the middle of nowhere and burns magic hour donuts in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

All tracks contain some species of vocoder unless otherwise imagined. I apologize to summer, for the darkness, and the BB&Q Band, for running out of space.

STREAM:

DOWNLOAD: How To Wreck A Nice Mix” (mp3, 103mb)

Excessive track listing below.

(:01) On the Beach—Neil Young
Twenty years ago, I “fell asleep” on Figure 8 Island wearing a Public Enemy hat. It had been given to me by Terminator X. When I woke in the morning, I was wearing a G N’ R hat. Two crossed pistols, a skull, and roses. Whatever maniac did this: Please return my PE hat. No questions asked.

(:12) EMS Vocoder Test (1976)
I was told this is an impression of Grover talking about the pyramids.

(:31) The Bells of St. Mary’s Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
“The true loves who come from the sea…”

The Bell Labs referred to their vocoder tests as conditions. All Bell Labs conditions here were acquired from the Werner Meyer-Eppler archives at the Institut Phonetik at Bonn, not Bell Labs. W.M.E. referred to the vocoder as a retro-transformer, thirty years before a Decepticon showed up in a Trouble Funk song.

(1:16) The Unvoiced Hiss Energy Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
Pass the conch like they used to say.

(1:32) Change the Beat—Beside & Fab Five Freddy (1982)
“If we were any fresher you’d have to slap us.”
—Fresh Market billboard, Greenville, S.C.

(1:40) Pak Man (intro)—Jonzun Crew (1983)
A song about one man’s desire to exterminate all Pac Man machines with the help of a device invented to rewire the chromatic spectrum of the universe using 17 million colors, the Suboptic Shadow World, and Sun Ra.

(1:53) Pack Jam—Jonzun Crew (1983)
Telefunken spies intercepted Allied vocoder transmissions and spat them back into the ether as jamming frequencies because they weren’t recognized as human speech. (One German transmitter was stationed on a beach in Holland.)

“We took a man and turned him into jam.”
—Michael Jonzun

(3:20) Space Is the Place—Jonzun Crew (1983)
“Make room! Make room!”
—Harry Harrison

(6:03) Candy Girl—Author’s exclusive strep-a-pela version (August, 2005)
Because being sick in the summer can be fun.

(6:34) Scorpio—Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (1983)
Asthma attacks, lawnmowers, duck tails and a Rick James stomach ache.

(8:36) F-4000—Fearless Four (1984)
The first vocoder song to cite pods and anchor men.

(9:34) The Ole Buzz Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
“The buzz is your cuz”
—Officer Hoppy, misheard, Sanford & Son

(9:40) Electro-Larynx in German—Werner Meyer-Eppler (1951)
“I hate goin’ to her spot because her daddy can’t say nothing unless he put that thing to his neck that make him sound like a robot.” Murs & 9th Wonder w/ Suga Free, “Let Me Talk” (Thanks, Noz)

(9:48) The Lord Loves You—Cleve Alleyne (Talk Box)
Too short to talk box with god.

(10:51) Radio People—Zapp (Talk Box) (1986)
Not exactly low-rider Zapp, and possibly jazzercise Zapp, but there’s something sad about this one.

Odometer Check: “Radio People” makes a top-down cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when Cameron Frye discovers that Sonic Youth’s drummer has been joyriding in his old man’s 1961 Ferrari 250GT. We zoom into Cameron’s citywide scream, on the tube of Roger Troutman. “I’m alone” could be “I’m in love.” Depends on what kind of day you’re having.

For all you Zapp nuts, I suggest B. Cause’s Playin Kinda Ruff mix.

(11:46) Nasty Rock—Garrett’s Crew (1983)
Only vocoder song from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, and recorded in Chapel-Hill. At the Fuquay Flea Market, James Garrett had an artificial beach backdrop where he took photos. He also sold Apple Jacks from a gumball dispenser and customized face clocks. That’s your face, or your friend’s face, in a clock, for only $20.

(12:53) All You Have Is Your Teeth—Sistrunk II (Monk edit)
Beat: Human League “Path of Least Resistance”
Voice: Fantasy Three “Biter’s Dub”
Trill: The Buggers “Bugger’s Groove”

Something to keep me occupied during that really hard summer of 2005.

(15:04) El Salvador—Cybotron (1983)
“I was always struck by the immense empty beauty of the vistas in the jungle in juxtaposition to the Cobra helicopter gunships flying over and shooting. The contrast is schizophrenic. The birds, the crickets chirping…punctuated by rat-tatattat.”
—Cybotron’s Rik Davis, on his experiences in Quang Tri, Vietnam, 1968

(17:29) Bat Impersonates Helicopter

(17:38) Crickets Being Crickets

(17:46) Clear—Cybotron (from Jeff Mills, “The Wizard,” WJLB, Detroit, 1986)
“When you go to those places where those people were stars and where black music was rooted in those clubs, there’s nothing there. It’s an empty lot. When I go to see where the Temptations played, where Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops were playing, and where the music was seeded, there’s nothing there. Desolation. That’s clear.”
—Rik Davis on Detroit

(19:30) Al-Naafiysh (The Soul), with dwarf winding clock—Hashim (from Jeff Mills, WJLB)
Hashim means “destroyer of all evil.” That is not our scratching but I will take responsibility for the Cosmic Car crash. Both Wizards are from my tape collection, not the Internet. It came from a Japanese kid from Detroit named DJ Flesh KK. I first heard the Wizard tapes when my high school hosted the Special Olympics.

(20:00) Soccer stadium chanting in German—Sennheiser demo, 1977
According to my cousin, the stadium is demanding another goal. The crowd noise is the carrier wave. If Steve Death is listening, I should tell you about the time my wack third grade soccer team won its only game of the season. I celebrated by getting busted stealing—and eating—powdered donuts in a Harris-Teeter.

(20:26) Castle wind roaring in German—Sennheiser demo, 1977
Had this one on my outgoing (friendly?) voicemail. Lost calls.

(20:45) Cold Wind Madness (Instrumental)—Ice T, Rich Cason, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (1983)
When I gave Ice-T a ride to the Holiday Inn after a Body Count show in Chapel-Hill, I most certainly forgot to thank him for calling this thing Cold Wind Madness.

(21:20) Bad Times (Instrumental)—Capt Rapp, Rich Cason, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Los Angeles (1983)
Purchased during family trip to New York, Christmas ’83, and played at the wrong speed for the following two years.

(21:39) Breakmixer—Victor & the Glove, Los Angeles (1983)
Includes:
Radioactivity Rapp—Rich Cason (R.I.P.)
Magic Mike Theme—Magic Mike (produced by Rich Cason)

(24:44) Dredio—Mac Mall, Mac Dre, E-40, Bay Area (2005)
From the album Da US Open. Word is borg.

(27:17) Armenia City in the Sky—The Who (Sonovox) (1968)
I was once told of a band from Buffalo called Robot With Werewolf Hands. They would perform onstage with a keg that wore furry ears, antennae, and werewolf hands. By the end of the show, the keg was empty and the werewolf hands were flipping off the cops. Pure speculation here.

(27:32) Sparky’s Magic Baton (Sonovox) 1941
The Sonovox freaked out Frampton and ELO, as well as the Bowery Boys, the Good Humor Man, and Joan Crawford’s eyebrows.

(28:48) Hans Leip—Sennheiser demonstration, 1977
“Outside the barracks/ Before the main gate/ There stood a lantern/ And it stands there still.”

(29:09) This Day—Peter Baumann (1979)
“Dedicated to romance” but really feeling the distance.

(30:55) One of Our Drones Is Missing—Werner Meyer-Eppler, “A Musical Night,” WDR, West German radio (1951)
“What you are about to hear would rather belong to the realm of the unreal than sober science.”
—W.M.E.

(31:24) Crazy Nights (Instrumental)—Nightless, Italy (1982)
Good-bye sober science, hello crazy nights. Actually, this is pretty quiet for a song called “Crazy Nights.” This night was so crazy they can’t even talk about it.

(33:28) Spooks (Instrumental)—Tom Tom Club (1981)
Like spies.

(35:02) ELO swoosh
By and by…

(35:09) Telekon (no verses)—Gary Numan (1980)
No vocoder here, but Bambaataa said that Gary Numan himself was a vocoder, which works for me. Telekon was purchased on same snowy day in sixth grade as Travelogue, and a pretty bad Ultravox album called Rage in Eden.

(38:08) EMS Vocoder Talking Slurpee, 1975
You’re lucky. I could have gone with “Dreams of Animals” or that EMS test where they had the vocoder reading the stock market report.

(38:31) Radio Stars—Kraftwerk (1976)
Oh, you guys!

(39:00) Uranium—Kraftwerk (1976)
Florian uses the Votrax, a text-to-speech voice prosthetic developed by the Federal Screw Works of Troy, Michigan.

(40:53) Das Booty Bass—Jacksonville, Florida (1990)
Bass swallows U-boat. Sub-freq freakout.

(43:35) Man Made—Jam Pony Express/Man Parrish, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
We did not do anything to this one! They should’ve used Jam Pony for Operation Wandering Soul in Vietnam.

Bonus Beach: Apparently a fired DJ from Lauderdale once locked himself in the booth and played Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Square Dance Rap” for ten hours straight.

(45:08) The Silly Willy Toothpaste Hour Condition—Bell Labs, (1936)
I was told that Luther Campbell once offered $50 a tooth for anyone caught selling Jam Pony cassettes of people (Jam Pony, for instance) screaming all over his shit.

(45:38) Get Dis Money (Instrumental)—Slum Village (1999)
D’Angelo’s band—with Questlove and Poyser—killed this live. Produced by Dilla, “Get Dis Money” samples the Herbie Hancock vocoder track “Come…Running To Me.”

A more fitting vocoder song here might be “Unemployment” by Velocity.

(46:30) Back Drop (Instrumental)—P Batters, Charlotte, North Carolina (2002, I think)
Speaking of artificial beach-drops, prom pictures and expired driver’s licenses… The 704 area code leads me to believe this could be from Salisbury, Concord, Charlotte, Pineville, Gastonia (home to Sleepy Floyd), Albemarle or Waxhaw.

Waxhaw!

(47:53) Mr. Groove—One Way (1984)
The vocoder had connections in the rust belt. Also highly recommended by One Way: “Didn’t You Know It.”

(49:35) You’re a Peachtree Freak On Peachtree Street (Part III)—Geno Jordan (1982)
Another plug tune for the Peachoid water tower/Booty Planet off 85 South in Gaffney, South Carolina. Even though Geno Jordan is from Atlanta. But you have to pass through Gaffney to get to ATL. Whatever.

(51:19) Meet the Man—Dayton (1984)
We took out the verses. Dayton’s vocoder guy Shawn Sandridge once spoke of a mysterious man who sang through a garden hose.

(52:59) Sound of Music—Dayton (1983)
Happy like pulling a hologram Vida Blue card from a box of Frosted Flakes on a Saturday morning before watching Westworld.

(54:23) The “My teacher’s screwy daddy!” Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
Never mind the flip talk young lady.

(55:00) Nothing—Doug E. Fresh (1986)
I once dreamt that a fireplace chanted the “Nothing” vocoder to me in a cabin with antler chandeliers in Brevard, NC (where, when awake at age 8, I played my first game of Telephone.) The fireplace was a dragon’s mouth. Such nostrils! Every time the dragon said nothing, there was a belch of blue smoke. I included the dream in a letter I wrote to a Bavarian mental institution that played vocoder recordings of talking water drops for patients while they slept. Never mailed it.

(56:12) Nothing Ever Changes—Cosmic Touch (1983)
So this is where they got it from. Huh.

(56:28) 69 Cancer Sign (Instrumental)—Very Cheri (1983)
I got this one from Makoto who still has my satin green Skyyywalker Records jacket with the cloud foot stitching. The part of the book where Churchill’s spy puts his foot through a cloud was inspired by “Thro the D” and the Skyyywalker Records logo.

“69 Cancer Sign” was released on Zakia.

(58:31) We Are Frank Chickens (Monk’s Tan Tan Tanuki Bonus)—Frank Chickens (1985)
They’re chanting about the Tan Tan Tanuki, an ancient raccoon-like shapeshifter from Japanese mythology, often remembered for having giant nuts.

Rap Attack author David Toop was involved with this project.

Bonus Beach: My mother had a Tanuki on her front porch, a potter sheriff that stashed used popsicle depressors and secret keys in its beargut. The bees and ants were thrilled. (I once discovered a cryptic note from my brother taped to the door: The key to your dreams lies in bearshit.) I have a picture of the TTT—back when I thought it was a bear—from a reading my mom and I did at Other Music a few years ago. The vocoder has always been the caretaker.

Need a moment here.

(1:00:21) Beats & Rhymes (Dub Bonus)/Raga Bahairav—UTFO/ Charanjit Singh (1984, 1982)
Before these gymrats penned N*Sync’s career, I would catch Full Force every time they came through Charlotte. (We also got stood up by Debbie Deb at Spinnaker’s in Panama City but that’s another story.) The Bombay raga vocoder was recorded in 1982 by Bollywood soundtrack legend Charanjit Singh, but born from a Hindu burial ground. (Check out the recent anthology Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat.)

(1:02:44) Feel the Force (Instrumental)—G-Force (1983)
In the event you need to hear another electro song you’ve never heard of an hour into this thing.

(1:04:54) Passage To Nasal Condition
(Bell Labs vs. Rammellzee vs. K-Rob)

Good news. Rammellzee got his copy of the book and said he no longer wants to throw me off his rooftop.

Thank you Freddy Anzures for the splice.

(1:05:06) The Barnacle Bill Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
“It’s only me from over the sea…”

(1:05:21) “August 4th, 2026″—Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (prod. by Malcolm Clarke for BBC Radiophonic Workshop, 1977)

(1:06:10) Mister Blue Sky—ELO (1977)
Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world.

(1:06:29) “August 4th, 2026”—Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, (prod. by Malcolm Clarke, for BBC Radiophonic Workshop, 1977)
Includes: “Daisy,” Alfred Tennyson, garage door opener, and a screaming barometer on fire.

(1:07:41) It’s Your Rock (dub petards)—Fantasy Three (1983)
Shit. I forgot New Order.

(1:08:06) Biter’s Dub, aka The Vacuum On the Tarmac—Fantasy Three, We Did Something To This (1983)
I’ll pretty much believe anything, but was Werner Herzog serious when he wrote that tonsillectomies were performed with a vacuum cleaner?

(1:09:33) O Superman (Live at Brooklyn Academy of Music)—Laurie Anderson (1984)

(1:10:26) Beat Box (wrong speed via Trans-Lux “Street Noise”)—Art of Noise (1983)
Emulator!

(1:10:44) Dreams Of Leaving—Human League (1980)
Phil Oakey told me this song was inspired by Solzhenitsyn, during an interview conducted by phone in my mom’s kitchen the same day I spoke with Sir Mix-A-Lot about Godzilla and “Posse on Broadway.” I listened to “Dreams Of Leaving” whenever I thought the book was finished, which was often.

(1:13:24) The Final Condition: “Love’s Old Sweet Song (Just A Song At Twilight)”—Bell Labs (1936)

(1:14:24) “We’re tired of it!”—Bo Tompkins, Answering Machine, Spring 2005
That’s Bo in the photo at the top of this post, taken at Pawley’s Island a few years before I showed up.

(1:14:35) On the Beach—Neil Young outroder

Notes for original book cover idea, jacked from On the Beach album cover:

• Vocoder sits under a ratty beach umbrella at Coney Island
• Vocoder wears nose shield, fake Solzhenitsyn beard and powdered wig
• Jar of false teeth sits next to vocoder
• Replace Neil Young’s yellow Cadillac fins with rusty WW II bomb fins poking from the sand.
• Add half-buried subwoofer conch
• Miniature Battlestar Galactica Cylon figures wave at ominous balloon rising from sea
• Balloon should have Stalin’s face on it, as seen in the film Burnt by the Sun
• Should Stalin’s teeth be doing something?
• Has anybody seen Stalin’s teeth?
• Is the nose shield too Angel Heart?
• Churchill squid-mask lying in sand, with seaweed wiring
• Cthulhurchill?
• Put Roger Troutman’s face on balloon instead, with talk box tube dangling from balloon towards ocean and into mouth of the Krakken
• Beach must be desolate; sky overcast
• Can there be another vocoder parachuting onto beach?
• How about a sky full of vocoders parachuting onto beach?
• Perhaps entire beach scene should be an artificial backdrop. Artificial speech/beach. A vocoder prom picture. (May have to import coral sunset from Miami.)
• Concerns over whether the casual Barnes & Noble customer will be able to determine falsity of false teeth
• Where on earth will the title go?
• Bi-plane drags title across sky on banner
• Would the title fit on balloon?
• Would the title fit on a Fila headband?
• Title should be spelled out across a convoy of dump trucks with suspicious Russian plates hauling the beach away to a different resort area
• Cher gallops by on a robot horse waving flag bearing the title

Above: Daniel Higgs – Waggon – Offenbach, Germany – 2009-10-20 | © Laurent Orseau

Stream:

Download: “Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind”—Daniel Higgs (mp3) (twenty-nine mb)

From Say God, available now from Thrill Jockey on double vinyl and double cd. More info here.

Swimming out from the Subterranean Melodic Fancifalities Exploratorium onto dry land, amorphous and amphibious flaneurs Hairy Painter and Ivy Meadows find the Newtown Radio garden has sprung us The Beets! We catch Brooklyn’s noble busybodies – not to be confused with The Beets, nor The Beats, The Beat, Beat, or The Beatles – in a brief hometown interlude betwixt their South North American (with German Measles) and North North American (with The Mountain Goats) tours, with just enough time for them to stomp us up some radio gold. The live set – abundant with garage harmonica, amp humping, flute solos, toy theremins, sing alongs, set-up banter, and a newly balanced gender distribution – is then followed by a bonus set of the band spinning recent favorites from the road into the wee small hours. Viva!

Stream:

Download: Arthur Radio #19 w/ live set by The Beets 5-23-2010

A portion o’ playlist awaits beneath…

[DJ SET BY HAIRY PAINTER + IVY MEADOWS]
Los Saicos – Ana
Moe Tucker – That’s B.A.D.
Neil Young – Fuckin’ Up
Meat Puppets – Climbing
Mabel Cawthorne – Tom Watson Tune
Bongo Joe – I Wish I Knew How to Sing
Daniel Higgs – Say God (side a)
John Holt – Can I Trust You 7″
Psycho Baba – Raga Gurjhari Todi
Dub Narcotic Sound System – Spaghetti Feed
Section 25 – Friendly Fires
Karl Blau – Kill The Messenger
David Candy – Play Power LP (side a)
West Coast Experimental Pop Band – I Won’t Hurt You
The Modern Lovers – The Sweeping Wind
Sandwiches – Grey Wizard
Wooden Shjips – Vampire Blues
Index – You Keep Me Hanging On
Sunburned Hand of Man – Sunrad’s Command
Henry Flynt – Stoned Jam

LOS BEETS LIVE SET @ 1 hr 18 minutes

BONUS BEETS DJ SET @ 1 hr 40 minutes

Many leagues below a murky, oil-filled pocket of subtropical waters off the southern coast of the United States, abyss creatures continue to communicate through light and vibration. In the “midnight zone,” a formidable black swallower feeds off of a hydrothermal vent, shrouded in a darkness thicker and blacker than deepest outer space. An opalescent dumbo octopus floats serenely by, her shiny coating picking up hints of a nearby jellyfish‘s flashing stroboscopic light, which illuminates a pulsating haze of red around them. On the very bottom of the ocean floor, a sea dandelion sits quietly, swaying back and forth to the rhythm of tectonic plates stirring below her…

Above: Special guest DJ Ron Like Hell, a resident purveyor of good taste and mind-expanding musical knowledge at northern Greenpoint’s favorite record-vending establishment, Permanent Records. If you are in the New York area on Friday, June 11th, go see him DJ at The Loft above Public Assembly.

Stream it:

Download: Arthur Radio Voyage #18: Swimming in the Cosmic Ocean w/ DJ Ron Like Hell 5-16-2010

This week’s playlist…

[DJ set by Ron Like Hell w/ Ivy Meadows + Hairy Painter]

burning spear – foggy road
oval – do while
dream syndicate – days of niagara
uusitalo – live at OFFF festival 2009
Son.Sine – Upekah – Nurture records
Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook – The Choice – 4ad
Brightblack Morninglight – Gathered Years – Matador
Joe Henderson – Current Events – Milestone
Troupe Majidi – Khilili – Sublime Frequencies
Cro-Magnon – Organic Sundown
Flying Lizards – Whole Lotta Shaking Goin’ On – Statik
Rune Lindbæk – OK, Kjør Romskip – (www.myspace.com/runelindbaek)
Lee Hazlewood – Monday Morning
Rachel Sweet – It’s So Different Here
‘Spiew Juchasa – Wspomnienia Sabaly
Colin Newman – Fish 3
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – Vildgolia (Deaf, Dumb & Blind)
The Trolley Dollies – Space Cake (a DJ Harvey mix)
carl craig & mortiz von oswald – re-composed (side d)
cosmic jokers – cosmic joke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Jokers)
solarbeatt (http://www.whitevinyldesign.com/solarbeat/)
daevid allen – only make love if you want to
amps for christ – grey funnel
Faust – C’est Com…Com…Compliqué
robert fripp & brian eno – meissa
noveller – telecin
thee oh sees – drone number one
Susan Christie – Yesterday, Where’s My Mind?
dan graham – rock my religion
Thomas Leer – Letter From America
Füxa – Electric Sound Of Summer
Unrest – UFO
“civil disobedience is civil defense” segment from Animal Liberation LP
margaret dygas – frankly
I.U.D. – mary unmargaret
Ricardo Villalobos & Dandy Jack (Ric Y Martin) – Sini Est
die tödliche doris – weltkonferenz techalpen

Stream:

A tremendous cover by Meg Baird (Espers) of Robbie Basho’s “Moving Up a Ways,” from the new, highly recommended Basho tribute album We Are One, In The Sun: A Tribute To Robbie Basho, put together by Buck Curran of Arborea. The album is available in cd from Important Records.

More on Robbie Basho: Robbie Basho Archives

This week’s episode comes slightly delayed, as Ivy Meadows was put behind bars for two days as punishment for doodling an eyeball on an ad in a New York City subway station. Meanwhile, Hairy Painter ventured to his alternate Vermont dwelling, answering the call of fresh, tree-filled air, far away from humming internet hubs and the unpredictable whims of the NYPD. In both locations, Arthur Radio co-hosts are happy to know they can sit back, turn on Transmission #17, and revel in the realization that life on the outside is so, so sweet…

Writer and Arthurhead Gabe Soria on his live DJ Mixtape, “The Shifty and the Shiftless” (@ 55 mins):

This hour of New Orleans music was an attempt to convey the almost
science-fictional collision of alternate universes that co-exist in
New Orleans at any given moment. Punk trad jazz, wheezy sea
shanties, bar rock, in-the-pocket funk, teeth-rattling bounce — it’s all
different, yet all the songs share some weird common genetics. It’s
humid, it’s melodramatic, it’s the sound of a living, breathing,
sweating and completely unique city. Meant to be listened to with an
ice-cold bottle of beer or two close at hand.

Stream it:
Download: Arthur Radio #17: The Shifty and the Shiftless w/ Gabe Soria 5-9-2010

This week’s playlist…

[Hairy Painter + Ivy Meadows DJ Set]

daniel higgs – creation moan
mohammed al madloul – unknown (choubi)
matmos – rag for william burroughs
richard nonas – what do you know
loosers – daeh sti no cigol
pelt – a stone for angus maclise
holy model rounders – love is the closest thing
robbie basho – the grail and the lotus
eyes and arms of smoke – black hoists of dawn
earth – ouroboros is broken
freedom serenade – galactic interlude
tony conrad / jutta koether / john miller – xxx macarena

[Gabe Soria's New Orleans DJ Set: "The Shifty and the Shiftless"]

pie lady call
511 players – upa lazy river
the banana splits – in new orleans
choppa – whooaa
mc trachiotomy – rigdets
ricky b – y’all holla
the valparaiso men’s chorus – so early in the morning
professor longhair – red beans
james booker – feel so bad
happy talk band – mugger love lullabies too
krewe of eris – miss precious little
r. scully and the rough seven – give up your dreams
why are we building such a big ship? – ti ni nee ni nu
quintron & miss pussycat – dream captains
loose marbles – take me out to the ball game

Stream:

Download: “Colors” — Elisa Randazzo (mp3)

A song from Elisa Randazzo’s debut solo album, Bruises and Butterflies, available Tuesday, May 18 on LP, CD and digital and download from Drag City of Chicago.

Stream:

Download: “Rhizomes” — Effi Briest (mp3, 10mb)

Title track off Effi Briest’s debut album Rhizomes, available now on lp, cd and digital download from Sacred Bones Records of Brooklyn.

Grateful Dead Mix – Volume 2
by Greg Davis
(April / May 2010 – Burlington VT)

Stream:

Download: Grateful Dead Mix Volume 2 (mp3, 146mb)

track listing:
Yamantaka (from Mickey Hart, Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings Yamantaka) + Bill Graham Presents… (from The Bugs – unreleased radio play 1982)

Ollin Arageed (from Rocking the Cradle – live at the Pyramids Cairo Egypt 09/16/78)

Stage Banter / Technical Difficulties (live at Woodstock Festival Bethel NY 08/16/69) + Seastones (from Seastones Sessions 11/28/73)

Fire On The Mountain (live at the Pauley Pavilion UCLA Los Angeles CA 12/30/78)

Bugs On Broadway (from The Bugs – unreleased radio play 1982) + Magnesium Night Light (from Infrared Roses)

Casey Jones (from Workingman’s Dead Sessions)

Franklin’s Tower (from Blues for Allah)

…Quick, the Baby Is Crying… (from Home Recordings Summer 1969)
The Barbed Wire Whipping Party (from Aoxomoxa Outtakes)

Seastones (from Seastones Sessions 11/28/73) + Magnificent Sevens (from Diga Rhythm Band) + Music To Be Born By (from Mickey Hart Music To Be Born By)

Stella Blue (from Steal Your Face – live at The Winterland San Francisco CA 10/20/74)

Eyes Of The World (from Wake Of The Flood)

Crowd Sculpture (from Infrared Roses) + The Bells The Bells (from The Bugs – unreleased radio play 1982)

Ollin Arageed (live at Uptown Theatre Chicago IL 11/18/78)

China Doll (from From The Mars Hotel)

Drone Collage includes The Revolving Mask of Yamantaka + Yamantaka + Solar Winds (from Mickey Hart, Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings Yamantaka) + Love Scene Improvisations (Take 4) (from Zabriskie Point Soundtrack outtakes by Jerry Garcia)

Touch of Grey (from In The Dark)

So it Came To Pass (from The Bugs – unreleased radio play 1982) + Seastones (from Seastones Sessions 11/28/73)

Dark Star (studio version from What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been)

Dark Star (live at The Family Dog San Francisco CA 08/30/69) + Dark Star (live at The Fillmore East New York NY 01/02/70) + The Bells The Bells Reprise (from The Bugs – unreleased radio play 1982)

Estimated Prophet (live at Barton Hall, Cornell University Ithaca NY 05/08/77)

Star Spangled Banner & Closing Remarks (from The Fillmore Acid Test San Francisco CA 01/08/66)

Bird Song (from Ladies and Gentlemen live at The Fillmore East New York NY 04/28/71)

Love Scene Improvisations (Take 3) (from Zabriskie Point Soundtrack outtakes by Jerry Garcia)

Previously: Grateful Dead Mix Vol 1 by Greg Davis

GREG DAVIS IS A MUSICIAN:

http://www.autumnrecords.net
http://www.myspace.com/gregdavismusic
http://www.myspace.com/suncircle
http://www.myspace.com/cwgd

This week on Arthur Radio we invited the Spectre Event Horizon Group to create an original and undoubtedly mind-expanding segment for the show (you may otherwise know them on the Arthur blog as secret santa, purveyors of obscure and highly relevant technological, biological and environmental information of this day and age). Here’s a description of their first audio documentary contribution, straight from Spectre themselves:

Spectre begins its experiment with radio by getting a tutorial from Albie Tabackman, an inventor + osteopathic physician who – among many other cool projects – has got a customized electric delorean up on blocks in his backyard. He’s also our friend Max Fenton’s dad, who joins us as well: lately Albie’s been working with stirling engines, and today they both kindly help us understand how it is stirling engines work and why we should each have one under our kitchen sink. Or don’t you want your own personal emission-free power plant?

More on stirling engines from the Spectre vault: http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/the-stirling-age/

Stream:

Download: Arthur Radio Transmission 16 w/ Spectre Group 5-2-2010

This week’s playlist…

[hairy painter + ivy meadows dj set]
holgar czukay – atmosphere tuning
malcolm maclaren – madame butterfly
eric copeland – corn on the cob
boris – Olhei para o vento varrendo as nuvens [2LP Version]
bo diddley – bo diddley-itis
group bombino- kamoutalia
70′s thai orchestra – side b
destroy 2 – we got a jazz / standing piss is legal
ventures – sleep walking
morton subotnick – silver apples of the moon
tune-yards – you yes you
david crosby – i can’t even remember my name
morly grey – who can i say you are?
delia & gavin – days of mars
sun ra – the cosmic explorer
roedelius – remember those days
pale blue sky – fleece
werner herzog – excerpt from mr. lonely by harmony korinne
koshi miharu – heidenroslein
ufo or die – dog wave
talking heads – fela’s riff
red shadow the economics rock and roll band – labor is value

spectre event horizon grooooooop!!!!! (@ around 53 mins)

prince rama of ayodhya – kegs of acid 7″
fugs – couldn’t get high
john fahey – when the catfish is in bloom

Live rendition from a few years back of “Only an Expert,” the first single off American genius satirist Laurie Anderson’s forthcoming album, Homeland…

Stream:

Download: “I Was Gone”—Woods (mp3)

From the excellent new Woods album At Echo Lake, just out from the fellas’ own label Woodsist (LP=$15, CD= $12, Cassette=$8 postpaid) and itunes.

Woods are traveling and playing shows this summer, including two mini-festivals in California. Info at their blog: http://woodsist.blogspot.com/

This week we arrived at Newtown Radio as sunset was descending over Bushwick, and a mysterious blue and purple mist had started to fill the neighborhood. Feeling inexplicably sleepy, we stuck a little mugwort under the studio’s couch cushions, sprawled out on the floor, and immediately began to dream our way into Arthur Radio Voyage #15. We found ourselves in a lucid haze, lost in some kind of other-worldly superstore. Dancing our way down endless aisles of multicolored light bulbs, muffled music blaring happily over a faraway PA system, we reveled in the realization that dream worlds can feel every bit as real as waking life…

Stream:
Download: Arthur Radio Voyage #15 4-25-2010

Artists played this week…

The Phantom Band / Morton Subotnik / Ursula Bogner / Sonny Rollins / Brian Eno / Cloudland Canyon / Paul Desmond / Fela Kuti / Lee “Scratch” Perry / Sa Ka Na / Ofege / Prince Far I / Peace / Augustus Pablo & John Holt / The Fresh & Onlys / Sonny & The Sunsets / Serge Gainsbourg / Kayanji Anadji / The Meters / Salvador Dali / F.T. Marinetti / Ground Zero / Way of the Cross / Walter Benjamin / Taj Mahal Travellers / Les Rallizes Denudes / Frank Chickens

Stream:

Download: “I Keep Waiting”—Hacienda (mp3)

Sweet new one from C & D faves Hacienda—three well-dressed harmonizin’ Texan brothers and a cousin, whose second album, “Big Red & Barbacoa” is out from Alive Records on vinyl and the digital. Like their debut, it’s produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys…

Stream:

Download: “Bull Lore”—Rangda (mp3)

Album (“False Flag,” out May 18) and May-June UK/Europe tour info: Drag City website

Available from the Arthur Store:

Ben Chasny in Arthur:
No. 7 ($4.50)

No. 15 ($5.00)

No. 27 ($3.50)

Sir Richard Bishop in Arthur:
No. 27 ($3.50)

Arthur Radio is moving from daytime into nighttime, now broadcasting live every Sunday from 9-11pm EST on Newtown Radio. This past Sunday we spelunked our way into the new slot, feeling our way blindly through the cavernous darkness until our purple-hued blacklights hit upon a a sparkling formation of phosphorescent rocks. We decided to sit for awhile and rest in their glow, listening as intermittent drops of water fell from nearby stalactites, echoing endlessly along the ancient limestone corridors from which we came…

Stream:
Download: Arthur Radio Transmission #14 4-17-2010

Songs played this week…

[DJ set by hairy painter + ivy meadows]

minerals – white noise
don cherry & jon appleton – boa
aidan baker – gathering blue, side c
iasos – lagoon night
second family band – returnreturnreturnreturnreturn
enumclaw – evening’s empire
double leopards – untitled
deviation social – she wants to be with manson
jonas reinhardt – near a mirrored pit a viper
white rainbow – major spillage
ken camden – raagini robot
mountains – below
dimensions – what the cats say
crazy dreams band – nightcrawler
ecstatic sunshine – herrons
andrzej slawinski – water planet
cristian vogel – underwater living
tangerine dream – ricochet
how to dress well – (looped excerpt)
robedoor – falle dawn
ghq – untitled
alps – saturno contro
–==alpha binaural beats==–
grass quilts / face plant – face quilt tape
forest swords – erroa
devo – coalmine
the five jones boys – mr. ghost goes to town
stooges – we will fall
patti smith – 7 ways of going
vincent price – to become a werewolf
exuma – paul simon nontooth
happy travelers – march theme
residents – sinister exaggerator
william burroughs – old man bickford
boris morgana – thirst of organus
y pants – we have everything
walter stedding – landing
irma thomas – it’s raining
cramps – green fuzz
moe tucker – bo diddley
ragas: streams of light – side a

From the period that gave us Sinatra/Jobim: The Complete Reprise Recordings

Available on the essential Marvin Gaye: “Real Thing: In Performance 1964-1981″ dvd

Let’s take a silver train underground
to the back streets of Atlantis
thru the corrugated iron roots &
then to the peak itself, to the
saddle of the last ridge past strewn
boulders,
finally meandering thru cascading snow
wearing miner’s hats on the perpendicular
dark night &
going up to the edge of the Southern Cross
where we reach at last the pure white
glistening glaciers &
begin to chant over bones in rags
of Scorpio
Armless in the sticky substance how could
they ever have had a chance?
Permission will not be required
only poems of blood offered to
the memory of TREE
It is not ice which is eternal
but the fury of the absolute
separating the void from the spirit
of man,
uplifting like life when it is used
against itself,
that is, Radical Love — & again, we
are reduced to living beings
Caught by the instant
we are taken away
We live in the imprint of the flame
& we are helmeted within the internal
blackness
where the ray begins its passage
across the indignant sky
Vain clouds uncaring in a tangle of
crossbeams
culminate in the hermaphroditic mirror…

- Ira Cohen (taken from “Atlantis Express”)

Read more of Ira’s dome-shaking poetry here.

Stream:
Download: Arthur Radio Transmission #13 4-11-2010

This week’s playlist…

[DJ set by Hairy Painter, Ivy Meadows + Visitation Rites]

Tim Hawkinson – Uberorgan, Part 1
excerpt from “Celestial Navigations” by Al Jarnow
Maria Chavez – live 04.17.2008
Ann Magnuson – Made for TV 1/2
Run DMT – excerpt from cassette released on Curatorial Club
J.G. Ballard – Superego
Ira Cohen – excerpt from home recording, October 2003
Ali Jihad Racy – The Boat of Millions of Years
The Medium is the Massage with Marshall McLuhan
LSD – a documentary report on the current psychedelic drug controversy!
Pink Floyd – “Brain Damage”
The Fugs – “The Garden is Open”
Up Died Sound – “Dust”
Andrew Cedermark – “Ad Finitum”
The Luv’d Ones – “It’s Quiet”
New Yoga – “Lizard Visions”
Silver Apples – “Misty Mountain”
Steve Hillage – “All Too Much”
Kim Fowley – “Kim Vincent Fowley”
The Phantom Band – “Phantom Drums”
Michael Yonkers – “Lovely Gold”
Corsano-Flower Duo – “Cocoa Mouth Paralysis”
Omar Khorshid – “Guitar El Chark”
Charley Patton – “Mind Reader Blues”
MV & EE – “Hymn To The Seer”
Alejandro Jodorowsky – Times Square interview
A.M Jopek , Maciej Maleńczuk – “W moich ramionach”
Charlemagne Palestine – “Island Song ”
Sonny & The Sunsets – “Stranded” (from new 7″ The Hypnotist b/w Stranded)
Arthur Russell – “Goodbye, Old Paint”
Collie Ryan – “Cricket”
Galwad y Mynydd – Galwad y Mynydd
Environments – “Sailboat” cassette
Brightblack Morning Light – “Breezey While They War On”
Freud on Id, Ego, Superego
Cloudland Canyon – “Dambala” (played @ 33 rpm)
Deep Listening Band – excerpt from “Ione” (1989)
Arp & Anthony Moore – “Slow Moon’s Rose” from their 12″ Frkways Vol. 3
Parmegiani – L’oeil Ecoute
Tim Hawkinson – Uberorgan, Part 2

Stream:

Download: “Celebrate Your Face” — Brother JT (mp3)

New up-with-your-face psych jam off Brother JT’s “Any Stort in A Porm,” a new solo CDR joint available from the brother himself for $5 cheep. Or you can get the CDR free if you buy JT’s new “Orange Journal”—which he describes as “a 130-plus page, 8.5X11, glossy, full-color, spiral bound extravaganza. Started as lyric workbook, became spirit-channeling journal of automatic writing/drawing/collage weirdness.” Something like Jung’s Red Book. (Which, btw, is on view now at the Hammer in L.A.) Alllllright. More people should be doing this sort of stuff. Cover and two sample pages (click on ‘em to enlarge) from the Orange Journal below.

The Orange Journal is available in a numbered edition of 100 for $20 from Brother JT Inc at brotherjt.com

Brother JT was featured in Arthur No. 8, available from the Arthur Store.

JT is also the host of the popular investigative TV show Tripping Balls With Brother JT.

Stream:

Download: “Feels So Good” — Crazy Dreams Band (mp3)

New menace rager from CRAZY DREAMS BAND of Baltimore, one of contemporary American rock n roll’s most exciting live frontpersons, Lexie Macchi (Lexie Mountain Boys). New album WAR DREAMS, three 8-minuteish songs (including “Feels So Good”) plus an epic side 2—that is, the way album’s are supposed to be constructed—cover pictured below, just out from the dependably tasty Holy Mountain.

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Stream:

Download: “Man With the Blues” — Wille Nelson (mp3)

“If you need a little shove in fouling up in love/come to me, I’m the man with the blues”

Sweet-to-these-ears new Wille-penned blues, from this great American outlaw’s new album, Country Music out 4/20 on Rounder Records, produced by T-Bone Burnett (!). More info at Amazon

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Also of interest: Wille Nelson Peace Research Institute

And, very highly recommended: The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart by Willie Nelson with Turk Pipkin

Thanks Kevin B.!

Stream:

Download: “Other Kinds Run” — Tower Recordings (mono – mp3)

Mono take of Tower Recordings‘ “Other Kind Runs,” which MV sez will probably be in the jams on this upcoming bbqbuster tour with the Flower/Corsano Duo. Dates and MV notes follow…

MV & EE + Flower/Corsano Duo “No Floor Revue” and other hootenannies

4/09/10 : grey matter books/hadley, western mass
4/10/10 : silent barn/brooklyn, NY
4/11/10 : oberlin college/oberlin, OH
4/12/10 : the lager house/detroit, MI
4/13/10 : the boat/toronto, ON
4/14/10 : la sala rossa/montreal, QC
4/15/10 : spring street gallery/saratoga springs, NY
4/16/10 : nom d’artiste/boston, MA
********
4/20/10 : matthew dell solo w/crazy dreams band
grey matter books/western mass

********
5/13/10 : abrons art center/joshua light festival/new york, NY with woods

no floor revue will feature mellow duo exchange of MV & EE and full band Golden Road with John Moloney and Mick Flower. Oberlin also sees a Chris Corsano & Aaron Dilloway duo set.

another view:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115016585180995&ref=mf

Stream:

Download: “Baby Lee”—Teenage Fanclub (mp3)

Sweet guitar pop lead single (?) off our beloved Fannies’ forthcoming album “Shadows,” available June 8 from Merge Records of Durham, North Carolina. info here

This week Arthur Radio decided to set its boat out on a southward-flowing current, with special guests Pete Vogl and Willow Gibbons (who together make the musical duo Bow Ribbons) at the helm. We bid goodbye to the stone grey waves lapping around the edges of Manhattan, passed through the tepid manatee-filled waters of Florida, and traveled onwards until we reached the hot swells surrounding the coast of Brazil. The plan was to eventually catch up with a family of Humpback whales in Ecuador, to learn of their beautiful songs and hopefully join them in chorus.

We paused to relax on a calm patch of water by the beach, where tropical birds flitted about chirping messages to one another in nearby Pepper trees. Pete took out his guitar and sat next to Willow, who stood on the deck in the sunshine, ready to sing. Closing our eyes, we listened with the sun shimmering orange on our eyelids as Willow belted out the lines, “I will spend a lifetime in space, I will make a nest in this place…”

Stream:
Download: Arthur Radio Voyage #12 with live set by Bow Ribbons

Contact bowribbons@gmail.com to inquire about their first full-length album, coming out on vinyl in May 2010.

This week’s playlist…

Environments – Optimum Aviary
Skeletons TV – Autobus de Vallarta
Baiano & Os Novos Caetanos – Vo Bate Pa Tu / Javelin – Condor Naturale
El Remolon – Cola Lex (Dub Version)
Ruben Veizaga – Solo Cantando
Tim Maia – Primavera
The Invaders – Where We Are
Milton Nascimento & Lo Borges – Cravo E Canela
Caetano Veloso – De Conversa / Hermeto Pascoal – Música da Lagoa
J.K.S. – Laughing is Arise
Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 – Crystal Illusions
Jorge Ben – La Vem Ela
Satwa – Lia A Rainha Da Noite

[LIVE SET BY BOW RIBBONS @ 40 minutes]

Environments – Optimum Aviary (cont’d)
Dios – Tel Mi Theen
Aguaturbia – Heartbreaker
Alexander Longrifle – Dance With Me
Paloma Mensajera – Dirty Girl
Daniel Higgs – Leontocephaline Rhapsody
Inuits of the Arctic Circle (Lyrichord) – Side A
Pandit Pran Nath (The Voice of Cosmic India) – Earth Groove, Side A
Ducktails – Surf’s Up (live on WFMU)
Bismillah Khan & V.G. Jog – Ragas Midnight & Spring / Clementina de Jesus – Convidado Espeical: Carlos Cachaça, Side A / Anugama – Tropical Morning
Lucky Dragons – Clipped Gongs
Mit Nye Band – Fluid Druid

A scene-by-scene recap of this week’s episode by DJ Visitation Rites:

ACT 1
Scene 1, Off Air
In which DJs Ivy Meadows and Visitation Rites arrive at the Newtown Radio studio ready to set up but are hypnotized by a 25-minute bongo-laden siren dirge — Dreamcolour’s “Spiritual Celebration” — at the tail end of Sunday Brunch with Chocolate Bobka. Unbeknownst to them, the song spills fifteen minutes into the beginning of their set.

Scene 2, Aside
Meanwhile, Peter Pearson, Derek Muro, and Lorna Krier of Brooklyn’s Love Like Deloreans steal away from their home base — a renovated closet space in Bushwick containing some 20 synthesizers — load half of them into a Volvo station wagon, and appear at the station door, successfully breaking the spell that has been cast over Ivy Meadows and Visitation Rites.

ACT 2
Scene 1, On Air
Still haunted by the specter of the siren from Act 1, Ivy Meadows and Visitation Rites attempt to reproduce their experience by layering ambient musics from lands as far and wide as ‘70s Germany, early 21st Century Northampton, and present-day Canada into a single organic continuum.

Scene 2, Aside
In which Love Like Deloreans set up all seven of the synthesizers they brought in the drowsy blink of a Sunday afternoon eye, causing Ivy Meadows and Visitation Rites to suspect that that they too possess supernatural powers. Love Like Deloreans do their best to assuage their fears, suggesting that they are simply “putting the punk back in punctuality.” Exeunt Chocolate Bobka.

ACT 3
Scene 1, On Air
Love Like Deloreans perform the first half of their in-studio. Dancing, Ivy Meadows and Visitation Rites attempt to document the event through Blackberry photos, Tweets, and a FlipCam.

Scene 2, On Air
Love Like Deloreans pause to participate in and informal Q&A with Visitation Rites, touching upon their origins as a group, their cohabitation of the classical world and Brooklyn DIY, their roots in New York minimalism and ‘70s Kosmische, and why the best way to listen to music is while traveling cross-country.

Scene 3, On Air,
Love Like Deloreans perform the second half of their in-studio. Dancing resumes. Ivy Meadows films an excerpt of their set through the anamorphic lens of an oddly shaped water bottle, the results of which can be seen below.

Curtain

Stream:
Download: Arthur Radio Transmission #11 with Love Like Deloreans 3-28-2010

This week’s playlist…

Idea Fire Company – Heroes
Magic Beach – Twilight Waterfall
Peaking Lights – Owls Barning / Black Joker – Side A
Harmonia – Walky-Talky / Roedelius – Schoener Abend
Faust – The Faust Tapes – Side A
Popol Vuh – Aguirre III
Brachiosaurus – Earthband Animal
Fripp & Eno – Swastika Girls
Duane Pitre – Study for “The Carpenter”
Esprit Frappeur – Infini
La Big Vic – Heyo
Explorers – Side B
Fripp & Eno – The Heavenly Music Corporation / “Eagle Has Landed” – Man’s Journey to the Moon

@@@1:08:25…

LOVE LIKE DELOREANS – -==LIVE IN STUDIO==- – PART A
—–====INTERVIEW w/ DJ VISITATION RITES=====—-
LOVE LIKE DELOREANS – -==LIVE IN STUDIO==– – PART B

Yellow Magic Orchestra – Computer Game

Stream:

Download: “Raagini Robot” — Ken Camden (mp3)

Slow circuit burnage from guitarist Ken Camden’s rather excellent debut Lethargy and Repercussion, out now on LP and digital via Kranky of Chicago. More info and ordering here.

Re “Worm Moon”: According to folklore, tonight’s full Moon has a special name—the Worm Moon. It signals the coming of northern spring, a thawing of the soil, and the first stirrings of earthworms in long-dormant gardens. Step outside tonight and behold the wakening landscape. “Worm moonlight” is prettier than it sounds. (spaceweather.com)

photo: Lisa Law

“Breezey While They War On” — Brightblack Morning Light (mp3)

New BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT mix, courtesy Hearted Hand Limited.

Musicians:
N.Shineywater-keys
R. Hughes-keys
Matthew Davis-trombone
PM Townsend-drums
M. Bauer-saxophone

For Transmission #10 of Arthur Radio, we started by visualizing ourselves in a black void, lost in time somewhere between the 1970s and today. Using LED-powered building blocks, we constructed a musical pathway in order to make sense of our surroundings. Brick by colorful brick, we bridged the gap between the oily rainbow pools of German psychedelic krautrock jazziness all the way to the shimmering mists of other-worldly electronic noise being produced by the likes of contemporaries Jonas Reinhardt, Arp, Stellar Om Source, and our very special time-traveling guests, Blondes.

Standing on the other side of the bridge in the murky “now,” we found that transversing between the two realms was easier than we thought. In fact, it seemed that they were always connected by an invisible passage, for the electronic explorers of today were born of very same primordial space sludge that spawned krautrock pioneers Dorothea Raukes, Jean Michel Jarre, Manuel Göttsching and friends, some 40 years ago.

The following description was taken from the back of “The LYTE,” one of the very first audiovisualizers of its kind made in the 1980s. Its sentiment echoes how listening to Transmission #10 makes us feel, and we recommend that you meditate on it for a second before you take that irrevocable plunge, hit “play,” and start time-traveling on your own:

The written word cannot fully describe what the eye and ear can perceive. Tone by tone you see an exact, shimmering definition in light of what you hear. Exotic patterns are born, grow, contract and change shape through an infinity of dazzling complexity; each momentary image a precise electronic expression of the sound you hear…

Stream:

Download: Arthur Radio #10 with live jam by Blondes 3-21-2010

Songs played this week…

[Ivy Meadows DJ set]
Interkosmos – “Übertragung” / Sensations’ Fix – “Metafel + Mafalac”
Popol Vuh – “Der Grosse Krieger” / Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald – “Movement 5″ (Music by Maurice Ravel & Modest Mussorgsky)
Margaret Dygas – “Invisible Circles” (played @ 33 rpm) / White Rainbow – “BUMPER UP RAW” / Ursula Bogner – songs from Recordings 1969-1988
Vidna Obmana – “psb constructions”
Zomes – “Zomes”
Forest Swords – “Miarches”
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom – “Live November 18th 2005″ / Desmond Leslie – songs from “Music Of The Future” / Stellar Om Source – “Team X”
Tangerine Dream – “Journey through a burning brain” / Karlheinz Stockhausen – Opus 1970 / Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene (side b)
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom – “Live November 18th 2005″ (continued)
Brian Eno – “Ba-Benzélé” (played @ 33 rpm)
Cluster & Eno – “Schöne Hände”
Arp – “Potentialities”
CFCF – “half dreaming reprise” / Bienvenue Au Conseil D’Administration – “Epreuve No 2″ / Harold Budd – “Bismillahi ‘Rrahman ‘Rrahim”
Jonas Reinhardt – “How To Adjust People”
Harmonia – “sehr kosmisch” / Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene (side a)
Terry Riley – “A Rainbow in Curved Air”

[live jam by BLONDES @ 1:01]

Manuel Göttsching – Die Mulde (live at Mt. Fuji)
Cloud One – Spaced Out

Stream:

Download: Arthur Radio Voyage #9: Forest Dwelling with Overture

This week we arrived at the Newtown Radio studio to find it transformed beyond recognition… emerald green vines blanketed the walls, and a lush carpet of multi-colored mosses and swamp grass covered the floor. We pushed our way through a thicket of elephant ears into a sun-dappled glade, where our guests Jason & Aya (otherwise known as Overture, the minds behind the cover of the recent Six Organs of Admittance/Azul split LP), were seated on bed of soft purple and magenta leaves. We listened under the shade of a poplar tree as they read tales of fantastical landscapes where landslides, floods and rainfall had created a boggy wonderland full of dancing musical animals, rhubarb babies, and a wise old vegetable lady…

After the storytelling, we ventured into the glade to ask our enchanting guests more about these worlds they had woven before our eyes. The first reading, it turns out, was inspired by a spine-tinglingly beautiful animation that the the super-artist duo made for Múm‘s song “Rhubarbidoo” from their 2007 album Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy.

The second reading was inspired by the following three animations, which the artists made for experimental piano maestro Hauschka‘s 2008 album Ferndorf:

The third reading, a story in which “An old man confronts his fears, traveling across a personal landscape to realize and accept his path,” was based on an animation Overture made for the song “Bless” by Icelandic musician Kira Kira, which is featured on her 2008 album Our Map to the Monster Olympics. This video was just released to the world officially yesterday — Enjoy!!!

Learn more about Jason & Aya’s work and future escapades at http://www.opertura.org and on their blog.

This week’s playlist…

“the frog pond” – frog noises
jon hassell – chor moire
emunclaw – opening of the dawn
avey tare & kria brekken – was oniap (double reversed)
painting petals on planet ghost – side a
meredith monk – gotham lullaby
feathers – silver leaves in the air of starseedlings
lavender diamond – i want to rest my heart
micheal hurley – penguins
leo kottke – song of the swamp
john fahey – bicycle built for two
aphex twin – avril 14th
penguin cafe orchestra – the sound of someone you love who’s going away and it doesnt matter
masaki batoh – world of pain
brion gysin – “i am” machine poem
yahowa 13 – ho
pilgrims – spooky theme
pearls before swine – the surrealist waltz
fear itself – bobby gene / trad gras och stenar – live jam

…2ND HOUR…

STORYTELLING WITH AYA & JASON… FEATURING:
six organs of admittance – furnace
mum – rhubarbidoo
azul – campanella / momo / ocean / gnya gnya blues / a short tip along the way (for david tibet)
haushka – freibad
mum – sleep/swim / green grass of tunnel
life on earth soundtrack – side a

Stream:

Download: “Lion Dance” — Glass Rock (mp3)

One of ten beauties on Glass Rock’s debut, Tall Firs Meet Soft Location, out now via Ecstatic Peace (more info…).

Last Sunday Arthur Radio embarked on its eighth voyage, this time to the wind-swept deserts of Greece, Morocco, Arizona and beyond… Special guest Robert Damore (aka Bobby Bouzouki) graced the Newtown Radio studio with the warm, nostalgia-inducing sounds of his bouzouki, and even took the time to tell us some of the narratives behind the rebetika (Greek folk songs) that he played during his set.

Before your journey begins, dear listeners, we have the following message to deliver from ye olde writing desk of DJ Hairy Painter…

The sun is here and opens the curtains slowly! It brings the slow glowing dust! It springs the earth out of polar jail, the winds blow the desert sand to make for better traction. If you sit, it will make your hair look sexier! The tectonic plates are shifting all around us, their quakes make the planet spin faster, and change the pitch! If you jump, you can land in buttes, the plateaus, or the Isle of Cyros! Through our earth’s muzak, the winds blow Bobby Bouzouki up to the Arthur radio treehouse for a jaunt upon rebetika mountain. Happy trials!

Stream:

Download: Arthur Radio Voyage #8 with Bobby Bouzouki

This week’s playlist…

[HAIRY PAINTER & IVY MEADOWS LIVE MEDLEY]

Charlie Tweddle – Psychedelic Tears
801 – Tomorrow Never Knows / Sun Araw – Beams
Religious Knives – Luck
Visitations – S/T album, Side B
OCS – Oh, Babe, it Ain’t No Lie
Marika Papagika – The Dervish
Vengopal Chari – Laughing
Master Musicians of Jajouka – Teasing Boujaoud
Charles D. Speer – House of Gold
Omar Souleyman – Atabat (2) and Atabat
Lagu Kebiar – Gamalan Gong
G.U. Hsu – The English Sound Table
Henry Flynt – Echo Rock
Daniel Aliangana – Dada Margaret
Los Jaivas – Cacho
Willie Lane – Deep Space Raid
MV & EE – Anthem of the Cocola Y&T
Tinariwen – Desert Wind

[LIVE PERFORMANCE BY BOBBY BOUZOUKI @ 56:39]

[VISITATION RITES DJ SET]

Peaking Lights – All the Good Songs Have Been Written
Dashiell Heyadat – Fille de l’Hombre
Wilburn Burchette – Contemplation
Lucky Dragons – It’s Me / Restraint
Rhys Chatham – War in Heaven
Sun Araw – Harken Sawshine