A shifting of boxes, a reorganisation of a room and I find the boxed edition of the M:S:B:R & Blazen Y Sharp split/collaborative album "Mass For Dead Insects". I hadn't heard this in years and is not as I remember it. I was given the box by Koji Tano when Dieter Müh shared the bill with M:S:B:R at the first Harbinger Soundclash in Nottingham 1998 ... we did that exchange of merch' thing that folk did back then. I also got some great Government Alpha and Ashtray Navigations releases and Steve Underwood gave me a test pressing for his Contagious Orgasm album release. T'was a great night!
Since getting this album I have discovered more about Blazen Y Sharp (who were a new project to me at the time). Blazen Y Sharp were Chris Blazen and John Sharp, based in New York they operated from 1995 to 2002. John Sharp also played in Praying For Oblivion at the turn of the century before Andrew Seal took the project to Europe. He also played with The Haters. The bulk of their material was released on their own Gender-Less Kibbutz label. John died in 2014.
Rediscovering this box makes me think, perhaps I should include a 'hidden gem from the 90's' in the next few playlists. (Answers on a postcard, please).
It's a busy start to the year for Francisco Meirino. January saw the release of the LP "A New Instability" on the American Helen Scarsdale Agency label. A label that is becoming more and more desirable.
"In 2019, the Swiss power-acoustic musician Francisco Meirino presented 'A New Instability'. A commission for the venerable ina-grm of Paris. Of course, this institution is the pre-eminent centre for research and study of electro-acoustic music dating back to founding of 'groupe de recherches musicales' in 1958 by Pierre Schaeffer. To this day ina-grm continues to be at the vanguard of the electro-acoustic composition, and it is quite an accomplishment and very appropriate for Meirino to receive such a commission. This recording for "A New Instability" condenses the 32-channel original piece down to a very still active stereo version, here Meirino continues to amplify and refine his compositions that walk a fine tightrope between raw expressivity of brutalist noise and conceptual rigour of more academic pursuits. Such a work ranks him in with the likes of Zbigniew Karkowski, Dave Phillips, Puce Mary and Illusion Of Safety. Field recordings from a martial arts dojo in his hometown of Luasanne cast a pugilistic, combative arch to these recordings which snap, burst, explode and erupt with utterances of men and women engaged in hand to hand combat. Searing frequencies build, swarm and amass, out of these episodes rise to psychologically tense crescendo that rupture at their heights, quickly turning attention towards a violence that originates from within. It is as if the objective observations of those martial arts recordings are sublimated within a subjective experience of psychic unease, disquiet and imbalance". (From the Helen Scarsdale Agency Website).
Francisco in Lausanne.
You can grab a copy of the LP direct from Francisco here :
https://franciscomeirino.bandcamp.com/album/a-new-instability Next on the horizon is a 4xCD box set on the American Misanthropic Agenda label, although copies can be got from the same address. A few years back I spent an evening with Francisco in Lausanne, we went for a Chinese. A fascinating and funny man.
Feral Copse is a new project created by Andy Jarvis (Vile Plumage, DogLiverOil), Chandoor Gloomy (Cromlech Shadow, Hair's Abyss) and Paul Harrison (Expose Your Eyes, Smell & Quim). Their first outing is an eponymous cassette released on two separate labels. There's a standard edition on the American SpleenCoffin label and a limited edition (25) that comes in a hand tied lotka-bush A4 wrap with art cards on the UK MuzaMuza Music label. Standard copies and a download are available still, go to :
https://spleencoffin.com/portfolio/feral-copse/
The Robert Turman piece is from the album "Beyond Painting". Originally released in 2010 on the Actual Tapes label this version here is from the recent CD re-issue.
At the start of the year a friend asked me if I had a copy of the new Hive Mind album "Elysian Alarms" as he had a spare copy ... I hadn't so he kindly mailed .... anyway, this made me dig out what I have by Hive Mind and give them a spin, it made me buy a couple of collaborative 12"'s with Workbench which I found floating around cheap on Discogs. The two pieces here are from "Elysian Alarms".
"Bish Bash Bosh" by Howard Stelzer and Steffan De Turck is from the cassette "For Charlie Mopps" released last year by UK label Steep Gloss.
"All the sounds on this album have been generated by beer: bottles, cans, glasses, beer itself and the act of drinking it.
Steffan lives in Tilburg in The Netherlands, and I live in Massachusetts, USA. Via the super-nerdy social media app Untappd - which allows people to track, rate and comment on beers they drink - Steffan and I discovered that we have a similar taste in beer as well. One of us remarked that if we should ever find ourselves in the same country, it's be fun to get together for a beer .. even better, we could tour together and stop at breweries along the way. Actually, I'd be happy just to visit the breweries and skip playing shows altogether, but I suppose playing a gig would fund the next day's beers.
Our lovely idea isn't going to materialise for any time soon ... but we decided to have some beers together anyway and make an album out of it. All of the sounds on this album have been generated by beer"
"Pour yourself something delicious, sit back and enjoy this sonic session ale.
Charlie Mopps, by the way, is the mythical inventor of beer .. at least, according to a British folk song from the 1800s called 'Beer, Beer, Beer', which is a pretty good title. You probably noticed that his name rhymes with Barley and Hops. This album is dedicated to him......"
(Howard Stelzer).
In one of those strange coincidences that happen once in a while, I was only thinking the other week that there hadn't been new studio recordings from Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim for some time, not since the 2016 CD "A Bug's Life", then the next day I see that there's a new FTBPD CD out called "Swinging With The Pinkels" on the Wolkenschädel Studios label. This CD is limited to 200 copies and comes attached to a plate. Each plate is different. Copies are being distributed by Drone Records of Bremen :
https://www.dronerecords.de In the same way as FTBPD, Astral Social Club releases are getting rarer, Neil Campbell (Mr Social Club) seems to releasing more under his own name and in collaborative mode. The two pieces here are from the new cassette "Space Draft Extended Play" and available exclusively on the Neil Campbell bandcamp page.
https://theneilcampbell.bandcamp.com There's also a chance to grab his new collaboration cassette with Nick Edwards (Ekoplekz, Holy Moloch). I shall be playing some of this tape in an upcoming broadcast.
The Rebel is Ben Wallers, formerly of the Country Teasers. "Yes" is from the 2014 12" EP "Really?" on the German Slowboy Records label.
The broadcast is on the MuhMur Radio Mixcloud Archive page. Please take a listen here :
Playlist :
01: Blazen Y Sharp : "Balungan" (MSBR/Gender Less-Kibbutz) 1997.
02: Francisco Meirino : "A New Instability (Part One)" (Helen Scarsdale Agency) 2021.
03: Feral Copse : "The Crack In The Sky Was The Sign We Had Waited For" (MuzaMuza Music) 2020.
04: Robert Turman : "Al Qa'ida" (Chronditic Sound) 2020.
05: Hive Mind : "Come Alone" (Difficult Interactions) 2020.
06: Hive Mind : "Pawns Put Back Together" (Difficult Interactions) 2020.
07: Francisco Meirino : "A New Instability (Part Two)" (Helen Scarsdale Agency) 2021.
08: Howard Stelzer & Steffan De Turck : "Bish Bash Bosh" (Steep Gloss) 2020.
09: Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim : "Menschenfrosch" (Wolkenschädel Studios) 2021.
10: Astral Social Club : "Simple Mind Module" (Not On Label) 2021.
11: Astral Social Club : "Skank Of The Ancients" (Not On Label) 2021.
12: The Rebel : "Yes" (Slowboy Records) 2014.
The next broadcast will be on Thursday March 18 at 20:00 GMT, available on the FM dial id you're in or around Totnes or listen to the live stream via the SoundArt Radio website :
https://www.soundartradio.org.uk
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