Modern Purveyors Of Filth And Degradation: A New Music Roundup

So, so many albums out there! And some of them are even good!  Wish I had time to dedicate one post to each one, but due to the usual time constraints, here's another mix of recent (or recent to me) albums for Maniacs, available for purchase or free download, or both. Not much avant-heaviness this time out, but lots of summer-fun silly/strange excuses for pop music here. 

Modern Purveyors Of Filth And Degradation


1. Neon Lushell "Leave Me Alone" - these Midwesterners have recently dropped one of the albums of the year, I sez, in "Modern Purveyors Of Filth And Degradation (In A Time Of Peace And Understanding)". It moves from the Ministry-like bangin' album opener featured here, to dark ambient, surreal soundscapes, and twisted folk. "Dark music" without a hint of the usual cliches, e.g.: death-metal, Joy Division soundalikes, etc. A lot of self-described "strange" or "experimental" artists submit music to me, but most of it lacks the originality and imagination of these sick kitties.

2. Jan Turkenburg "droodle20110809[F***TheMeaningOfLife]" - Wonderful sound-collage from the nutty Dutchman who's been posting a series of similiar cut-and-paste "droodles" on the the ever-crucial PCL Linkdump.

3. Bob Purse "It's Not A Regular Day" - Shamelessly silly-but-swell novelty tune from The Many Moods of Bob, the recent debut album compiling many years worth of home recordings from the great music blogger Bob Purse. The man even does covers of song-poems, forpetessake.

4. Lydia Kavina "Free Music #1 (1936)" - From the album "Music from the Ether: Original Works for Theremin" by the grand-niece of Leon Theremin himself, and sometimes member of bizarro surf band Messer Chups. Excellent stuff - if you buy one theremin album in your life, buy this one. 

5. Ace of Clubs "Rehab Dem Bones " - a Herman Munster vs Amy Winehouse mashup collected off the internet.  You'll laff!

6. DmR of AtoZ "Get Up" - Another mashup, this takes numerous Beatles vocals and expertly drops them over the bassline to Tom Waits "Step Right Up." From the on-line collection "You Can't Mash That vol 28" (which I haven't actually heard, just this song.)

7. the archaeologist "pouvons-nous avoir un cendrier" - This album "parlez vous francais?" is based on a French language instruction tape (+ beats, music), which gets to be a bit much after a while.  Works great in short doses tho, like this yummy truffle that also throws in bits of Gil-Scott Herons' "Whitey's On The Moon."

8. Covox "Computer Love" - from 8-Bit OPERATORS-An 8-Bit Tribute To Kraftwerk

9. The Fire Organ "Little Fishes" - Quirky pop tune that's quite good despite the off-key singing; from an album ("Dumbed Out") that doesn't seem to be on-line any more. Hmm, maybe he's re-cutting the vocals...

10. Ban This Sick Filth "Powerhouse" - Raymond Scott's 1937 cartoon classic gets a boomin' remix courtesy of this offshoot of London mash-masters Celebrity Murder Party.

11. Greg Reinfeld "Pink Ballerina" - This highly prolific free-internet-album guy's latest is "Poorest Almanac That Ever Lived".

12. Hanetration "Rex" - Taking a breather from all this silliness, this is from the all-too-brief 4 track FREE! download release "Tenth Oar" of evocative, compelling ambiance.

13. Snaps 'n' Claps "Soldier Boyfriend" - Charming Casio girl-pop that may be more knowing than it lets on beneath its naive presentation. From their Feeding Tube cd-r "Greatest Hits."

14. Maladroit "Musicbox Jungle (Negrobeat Remix)" - Hysterical break-core collision of the '70s E-Z instro "Music Box Dancer" with that '90s 'Mr. Boombastic' song, as all heck breaks loose. Australians seem to be good at this sorta thing.

15. 1001 "Nieszczesliwa milosc, hej!" - This Polish gent hipped me to some outsider music from his land, and when I checked out his own stuff, I found this song, which makes awesome use of loops of people laughing.

16. Moose A. Moose & Zee D. Bird "Everywhere I Go" - If you have kids, you probably know this insanely catchy tune from the video that used to be shown often on the Nick Jr network. It's not available for sale, or as an mp3 anywhere, so I recorded it off a YouTube video and it came out surprisingly well. Do you know how many people want this?! Esp. since apparently Nick Jr has stopped showing the Moose & Zee bits. I am doing a public service! 

17. Janek Schaefer "Recorded Delivery [7" edit]" - From London comes this jaw-dropping artifact: a tape-recorder sealed in a box and mailed, which then recorded everything. "Recorded Delivery is a sound activated tape recording of parcel travelling through the Post Office system...The sound reactive dictaphone automatically edited the 15 hour journey to a 72 minute recording, capturing only the most sonically interesting elements of the journey."

18. Mari L. McCarthy "Weekend In New England" - This amateur tribute to '70s schlock crooner Barry Manilow entitled (hoo boy) "The Barry Thought Of You," sent to us by our frequent contributor windy, would be awful enough, but then on this song she goes and splices in the voice of Barry himself to create a Natalie/Nat Cole-like exercise in outsider horror.  Why, windy, why??

19. Willful Devices "Lattice XVIIb" - This 2-man-band (electronics & clarinet/woodwinds) go absolutely nuts on this track. Free-improv can be fun!

INFANTCORE

No, "Infantcore" isn't some new indie-rock sub-genre. It's a roomful of babies whose movements trigger electronic sounds. It took place earlier this year at the Machine Project space in Los Angeles. Blogger doesn't let you post vimeo vids, so check it out here:

Infantcore video

The man behind this, experimental compser Scott Cazan recently did something similar in San Francisco called Dogcore.  Couldn't find any documentation of that, tho.

Baby Fab was already too old to take part in Infantcore. Hey Scott, how 'bout some Toddlercore next time, eh?

Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones

This splendid sampler of eccentric madmen/geniuses and their homemade instruments is the 1998 sequel to an album we featured here a couple years ago, "Gravikords Whirlies & Pyrophones," both compiled by Bart Hopkins, who published a magazine dedicated to experimental musical instruments. As with "Gravikords", you don't get the big, color-illustrated book that came with it, or Bob Moog's intro, but I have endeavored to link to each featured artists' site (except for Tom Waits, you know him.)

Some are well known like Waits or Aphex Twin (oh, and those 'Stomp' guys, remember them?), and some so obscure I really couldn't find much info on 'em. It all sounds good, tho - industrial percussion, ceramic woodwinds, prepared piano, frazzled electronics, beautiful-looking audio sculptures, Ellen Fullman's room-size Long String Instrument, Uakti's PVC pipe Brasiliana...there is nothing wrong with this album.

Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones
 
1. Back To The East -ZGA
2. Heavenly Flower [Excerpt] - Colin Offord
3. Babbachichuija - Tom Waits
4. Jhala III [From Suite for Violin & American Gamelan] - William Colvig
5. Pentatonic - Arthea
6. Bucephalus Bouncing Ball - Aphex Twin
7. Dance des Fourmis [Excerpt]/Megalithe - Les Phônes
8. Tunnel of Love/Dear 3 - Peter Whitehead
9. Cosmogenesis [Excerpt] - Ela Lamblin
10. Sonata XIV [From Suites & Interludes for Prepared Piano] - Maro Ajemian
11. Waterphonics [Excerpt] - Stomp
12. Elegy for the Missing - Alan Tower
13. MotivationalMusic forPedestrians- Bradford Reed
14. Change of Direction [Excerpt] - Ellen Fullman
15. Arrumacao - Uakti
16. Grand Gallope - Leonard Solomon

The Musicalness of Dan Ellsey

Hyperscore is software originally intended by its creators at MIT's Media Lab as a toy for children - they would draw and paint on the monitor and music would result. But then Media Lab's Tod Machover introduced it to disabled folks like one Mr. Dan Ellsey of Boston.

Quoth this LA Times article: "Born with cerebral palsy and unable to speak, he (Ellsey) was forced to communicate with a clumsy headset that pointed to letters to spell out words. He had little control of his body movements. He was in his early 30s, had never been more than five miles from where he was born and seemed doomed to spend a cocooned life in the hospital.

The Media Lab scientists designed a more refined headset for Ellsey that not only inspired him to compose (he turned out to have interesting musical ideas) but even allowed him to perform by controlling tempo, loudness and articulation. He blossomed, and Ellsey, while still a severely affected cerebral palsy patient, has become an active participant in the Hyperscore program, performing, making CDs and teaching other patients."

You can listen/buy his album "Masterpiece," featuring such interesting song titles as "My Musicalness" and "Our Musically":

HERE

So what's it sound like? Like instrumentals using synthetic versions of familiar sounds (strings, piano, drums) in unfamiliar ways - it all sounds a little off-kilter, like a drunken jazz band playing songs that unexpectedly lurch from part to part, then stopping in their tracks to repeat a passage over and over - not in a Minimalism sense, more in the needle-stuck-in-groove sense. The un-relaxing song "Relaxation" has an insistent snare drum relentlessly pounding away irregular rhythms. My fave on the brief (17 minute) collection is the accurately-named "Thrilling Trills." Music of no known genre.

THE AUDIO COMPOST OF J fm

"Compost" is the aptly-titled 16 minute free download mini-album courtesy of of Nova Scotia, Canada's J fm. He grabs samples of pop music detritus, throws 'em in a grinder and makes hazy lo-fi audio mulch. Fans (like me) of the L.A. Free Music Society's woozy tape-loop shenanigans from the likes of Tom Recchion and Dinosaurs With Horns will dig this. Mr. J fm sez: "i just record onto a tape from my sp404, i carry a solid lil dictophone around and grab samples anywhere i can, everything's game. those sounds get treated, trashed and put into a shape on the sampler." Download it from the Divorce label website

HERE

This video for the non-album track "Frozen Frisbee" utilizes a David Blaine 'Street Magic' VHS tape:

Your Holiday Gift-Giving Problems SORTED

On this most joyous of holiday seasons, give the gift that keeps on giving - the gift of music! Especially weird music that no-one else in your family will like and will disrupt your turkey dinner! Almost everything in this collection was released this year and is available for purchase usually from the artists themselves. Hmmm... we need a word to describe artists not playing "indie rock" or who are on those indie labels that are just farm leagues for the majors, but really are putting out their own CDs/cassettes/vinyls entirely on their own...a word somewhere in between "indie" and outsider"..."in-sider"? Whatever, these are some talented freaks well deserving of your support. Some of the best new music of the year:

M4M Idol 2 Buy (22 Big Songs! Original Hits From The Original Artists!)

This collection is sorta the sequel to the M4M Idol contest from earlier this year, but I'm not gonna hector you into voting for your fave this time (tho you certainly can if you want to.) Artist include:

Bruce Haack/Sound Capsule: What, hasn't Bruce Haack been dead for years? Yes, like Gen. Francisco Franco, electronic music pioneer/oddball Bruce Haack is still dead, but his unfinished album "Electric Lucifer Book III" has sorta been finished by someone I hadn't heard of. I was dubious, but the results speak for themselves.

Twink The Toy Piano Band: Yay, a new Twink album! "Itsy Bits and Bubbles" won't be released til Dec. 1, and the usual whimsical instrumental approach now includes circuit-bent electronic toys, 8-bit video game bloopity-blips, "kitchen drawer percussion," and numerous toys including (natch) pianos. What could have been a long-exhausted one-joke idea continues to thrive thanks to strong songwriting, a widening sonic pallette, and a refusal to play cheerful, innocent music with an arched eyebrow. Excellent artwork, too.

Drexel, Gamma Like Very Ultra, and The Mind of God are a buncha no-good, smart-ass avant-'tard bands playing spazzy songs with titles like "Poop Stains" and "Let's Kick Toby Keith in the Balls," and I love 'em. All 'net-releases cuz no self-respecting professional label would release this nonsense. But, actually, really well-played, not just screwing around. More, please.

Johnny Aloha has never been seen in the same room as ace lounge parodist Richard Cheese; his "Lavapalooza" album remakes songs like "Paradise City," "Gangsta's Paradise," and "California Gurls" in a way that is not only hilarious, but, recorded as it is with top-notch Hawaiian music pros, perfect tiki tuneage as well. If you were ever wondering, "What if Don Ho was a loc-ed out gangsta?" your feverish desires have been granted.

Non-Bio, William Bowers and Peopling all make dark, abstract/ambient/noise soundscapes. Fascinating. Non-bio's "Microsleep" sounds like it samples a scratchy old 78 rpm to chillingly occult effect
Party Killer dares to improvise; This big Portland band even sound like Black Sabbath on one song...if Sabbath used cheap electronics. Mind-melting craziness.

Orchestra Superstring: featuring DJ Bonebrake from X (hell, yeah!) on vibes, this exotica-ish instrumental combo's latest album "Easy" features the bizarre, wonderful sound of the "guitorgan" - not the usual cocktail-hour jazz.

Midnight Habit: speaking of bizarre instruments, an electric kazoo (!) is featured on this chilled bit of electro. Its nasal roar sounds pretty great, so who needs guitars anymore?

Stealing Orchestra: These Portuguese master of mirth and mayehm get serious on their first release that isn't a free download. Still wildly eclectic and eccentric, they just no longer sound like a cartoon soundtrack.

Last AND least...

Trudy Andes: this cringe-worth 9/11 tribute was sent to me by one of you who asks not to be named; well, I'M not gonna take the blame for it! Haven't we all suffered enough after 9/11?! Maybe some Twink videos will make you feel better:

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE...

One month ago I posted a collection of artists who are making the world a more beautiful place by freely distributing songs or albums, and I asked you to vote for your favorite. Like "The X-Factor," only with good music. I might do this again, only for commercial releases, not freebies. Was one month not enough time? Anyway, the final tally is..(drumroll)...

Buttress O'Kneel - 12
Bloody Death Skull - 8
Oreaganomics - 2
Bivouac - 1
Jinnwoo - 1
Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks - 1
all the others - no votes

Buttress O'Kneel is the winner! Take your bow, lady. Words like "mashup" and "remix" don't really do justice to Buttress O'Kneel's method - Top 40 pop crap gets sliced, diced, and tossed into a dizzying, exciting hardcore electro stew. Compared to other djs who timidly drop a Vanilla Ice acapella over a Chemical Bros instro just to move a dance floor, O'Kneel shreds copyrights with a blood-curdling vehemence. Smash the state!

Her 2000 album "Compact Scipppp" utilizes skipping CDs a la Oval to lovely effect, but after that, the kid gloves came off, and every album since then has employed the same break-core/sample attack. All her albums are free, and all are good. Dive in anywhere.

This is good timing, actually - she has a new album now out called Compop 14.6: Avant-Tarde: Tardcore that throws Bob Marley, Katy Perry, Black Sabbath, Queen and numerous others into the meat grinder, records their screams of agony, then mixes them with results ranging from toe-tappin' almost-pop to abstract glitch. Play loud.

Buttress O'Kneel - 11 albums

Vote For M4M Idol!!

Don't you wish all of those "[name of country] Idol"/"X Factor"-type shows had good music? Well, now here's your chance to be Simon Bowel (pictured left, on toast) - vote for any of the artists featured on this sampler of home-brew recordings. Most of these acts wrote to me asking for a review of their work, but, goshdurn it, I just don't have the time. Forgive me, bedroom maestros of the world.
But these are all FREE releases, so if you like the sampler tunes, there's often whole albums for you to download. It's really good stuff. I wouldn't subject you-all to anything I didn't genuinely enjoy, so it's gonna be a tough call. A real horse race.

How do you vote? Simply listen to the "M4M Idol" collection i posted below and then leave a comment stating who's your favorite artist of the bunch. The winning artist will get a full-length review (woo-hoo!) in a future M4M post. Yeah, I know...sorry I don't have any valuable cash prizes/record deals to offer the winners, but hey, I get hundreds (sometimes thousands) of eyeballs on this blog each day, so they are getting some exposure.

Musically, it's quite a variety show: lo-fi outsiderness, postpunk prog, campy surf, subversive sound collage, Afro grooviness, ambient/noise soundscapes, twisted electronica, some strange things resembling catchy pop songs. And then there's Jinnwoo's "Sorry Song" which "...was written as an apology from myself to the world for being such a bad and horrible creature...I recorded the piece naked, and in the rain." What would Paula Abdul think?

M4M Idol

1. Bloody Death Skull - I Miss My Homeland 2. Future's Lament 3. Holding Hands
4. Buttress O'Kneel - Exhibit W 5. Buttress O'Kneel - Darkness
6. Cutthroat convention - Warui Neko 7. Cutthroat convention - Parasite's Paradise
8. Death to the Brutes - Death Set 9. Death to the Brutes - No Love, No Ecstasy
10. Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks - Phibes and Vulnavia, Just Married! 11. Die 1000 Wellen Das Dr Mabuse
12. Jinnwoo - Sorry Song
13. Marc Broude - For the Flies
14. Mike Colin - Fish Bulb 15. Mike Colin - The Future is Not Written
16. Moebius II - Innerstate '94 17. Moebius II - Magic Mirror
18. oreaganomics - Fallin Out Of Buildings Fallin In Love 19. Create Something to Love
20. Pompey - Bivouac Sack 21. Pompey - Candle
22. Sam Simmons - Midge
23. Skinjobs - Money in the Bank Vs. Money in the Pocket 24. Skinjobs - Sunshine

Remember, you can't complain about who won if you didn't vote!

Kitschstortion

Didn't know what a Vocaloid was 'til I was sent this excellent album, but apparently it's music software that uses actual pre-recorded human voices to sing whatever you program it to sing. Which is, in this case, a festival of sentimental '50s/'60s easy-listening and soundtrack classics. It's all "sung" without instrumental accompaniment, but I wouldn't exactly call it acapella music - the voices get chopped and glitchy. The sweetness of these old songs, however, lends a real warmth that is sometimes lacking in experimental electronica. Really wonderful stuff that sounds like nothing I've heard before - Space Age pop for a happy family of robots.

It's by Kitschstortion, the chap who sent us those rare North Korean albums that we posted earlier this year. You can listen to it streaming or download it HERE. Or just grab it here:

Kitschstortion "Vague Serenade"

A. HAPPY ORGAN, B. PERRY MASON THEME, C. POPSICLES, ICICLES, D. DIAGNOSIS MURDER THEME, E. A TASTE OF HONEY, F. THEME FROM A SUMMER PLACE, G. TELSTAR, H. ZING WENT THE STRINGS OF MY HEART, I. CLASSICAL GAS, J. POIROT THEME, K. TWILIGHT ZONE THEME, L. SPANISH FLEA

I AM NOT AND YOU CAN TOO

Vermont's Jake Lions Band have very nicely offered up to us an excellent free album of lots of short (except for one 8 minute track), silly bits of electro-Dada. The non-instrumentals sport absurd lyrics sometimes sung in Chipmunk/cartoon-ish vocals. Like Zoogz Rift or Big Poo Generator, Lions and Co. mix smart, complex music with goofiness, thereby keeping pretentiousness at bay.

Check out lots more of his stuff HERE.

Jake Lions Band - I Am Not And You Can Too

PHILIP'S STRANGER THAN FICTION

I can find no info on Philip Stranger, but I can tell you that he is a veritable one-man weird-music cottage industry, if so much music in so many styles can be made by just one man. He covers all the bases: Residents-like quirky pop, Phillip Glass-y piano minimalism, found objects percussion, sampling/concrete musics, exotica, noise, electronics ranging from Space Age to punk intensity, and unclassifiable oddities.

He has a tremendous amount of free music up, but here's some highlights I've discovered (recommended tracks in parentheses):

Lettuce: the psych side of 60s/70s Moog intros ("A Meal To Induce Sleep")

Trilogies of the Toilet: "...recorded in a movie theater restroom (great acoustics), utilizing the musicians bodies and voices as well as things found only within the building (bottles of water, film reels, Co2 canisters, toilets, etc.) . No "traditional" instruments were used." ("Africans Can Bang A Can Or Two")

Music 4 Sleeping Babies: aggressive electronics (the Suicide-al techno punk of "Brain March")

Mount Analogue: Electronic instros with Minimalism influences (a nutty cover of Mungo Jerry's "in The Summertime")

proj. #1, 1999: I have no idea what to make of this assortment of cartoonish sounds and vocals ("Pan Toodie Hed Thrice," "Simbionic")

Plays Piano: does what it says on the tin ("Ode To Satie")

Abstract Habitat: Quirky semi-noisy electro-pop; almost danceable ("Anything You Want to I'll Let Ya", "Himane Waltz" - not a waltz, but rather Afro/exotic)

Eyeball Music: A tribute to the Residents ("Tribal Teddy," an original, and a cover of "Constantinople")

Hypnagogia: ("Frenzied Joy Erupted & Ruptured From Within" - tinkly xylophone melodies + flatulent synths)

Zanhour: (the self-explanatory "Midimalism," the twisted robot voices of "Pepe Pull-o" sounds like HAL-9000 after someone dumped a bucket of water over him)

UPDATE 3/30/11: Got a note from the man hisself, who tells us that he's from California, hasn't played live much; is planning new projects thanks to the attention this post has given his music (yay for me!), and sent along a suitably strange list of Fun-to-Know Facts:

> I have a set of Egyptian mummy teeth in a jar.
> Elton John, Paul McCartney and I have all played music on the same Harpsichord.
> I cry every time I listen to Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
> My fingers are all slightly crooked.
> I love The Three Stooges as well as the Fleischer's Popeye cartoons.
> Tribal Teddy is not an original composition, but a cover of The Residents Teddy from Prelude to the Teds.
> I have an accidental collection of clown paintings.
> Harlan Ellison once accused me of stealing books from a library (a false accusation I might add).
> I have performed exactly one stage-magic show in my life.
> I was asked to and did briefly perform on the legendary upright piano on Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland.

So there ya go.  (I also had an interesting run-in with Harlan Ellison, by the way; but that's another story.)

PRIMITIVE VOODOO ELECTRONICA

"Flowmotion: an album of contemporary and electronic music," a various-artists comp released by a British 'zine of the same name in 1982, was one of my favorite boyhood albums. It certainly was the most obscure - I was quite proud of the fact that the booklet that came with the album stated that I had copy #137 of 500. Oh yeah, chicks dug me!

I don't have anything to post by the recently deceased Peter Christopherson, whose Gristle Throbs no longer, but this album does kick off with a selection by two of his band mates, Chris & Cosey - a song that, according to the booklet, was meant to conjure up a primitive voodoo session, perhaps a reflection of their interest in exotica music. Kinda silly song, really - I preferred the next tune, by Those Little Aliens, who were, in fact, the album's compilers. Their song is in the "Another Green World" vein of ambient pop, with evocative backwards wind-chimes adding to the gentle celeste melody.

It's hard for me to now objectively evaluate an artifact of my youth, but I can tell you that I used to be endlessly fascinated by songs like the mutant disco of David Jackman's orgy of overdubbed Casios, and the one vocal number on the album, The Legendary Pink Dots' "The Hanging Gardens," which was seemingly the greatest tune that Syd Barret never recorded. Colin Potter's "Rooftops" was sheer Moogy bliss.

Much of "Flowmotion" is cosmic electronics in the Tangerine Dream/early Vangelis mold, but a punk influence was felt in the D.I.Y. production and the general air of no-holds-barred experimentation. Eno, again, seems to have been a big influence. Plenty of ambient stuff here, from moody to wistful.

When the Mutant Sounds blog originally posted this, I downloaded it and sold my album, only to later realize that the download was encoded at only 128 kbs. Oops, that'll learn me. It's fine tho, really - this stuff was recorded under fairly lo-fi conditions to begin with, and in any case, it still sounds better then when I used to play it on my crappy old record player. Since the Mutant Sounds copy is now off-line, and commenters have been requesting it, here's 'tis:

Flowmotion

A1 Chris & Cosey - Devil God
A2 Those Little Aliens - Ismalia
A3 Eyeless In Gaza - Dusky Ruth
A4 Eyeless In Gaza - Through Eastfields
A5 David Jackman - Do The Dog
A6 Ian Boddy - Follow
A7 Legendary Pink Dots- The Hanging Gardens
B1 Ian Boddy - Skylights
B2 Paul Nagle - A Journey In The Dark
B3 Carl Matthews - As Above, So Below
B4 Colin Potter - Rooftops

Thanks to the original poster.

The Return Of The SATANIC PUPPETEER ORCHESTRA

How do you follow a debut 4-disk (plus bonus disk) boxed-set album? By not even putting out an album, but an on-line musical game.

The Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra first graced our pages years ago when I wrote: "I don't detect anything particularly satanic about this good-natured band, nor are there any puppets in evidence. For that matter, it's not much of an orchestra - one man largely handles the music, a "mad scientist" whose robot creation sings lead. Therefore, it's the perfect name for this bizarre, funny bit of musical dada."

Their latest project is a multiple choice Name That Tune game, featuring hilariously devolved covers of pop hits, performed as only a mad scientist and his random-sense-of-pitch singing robot can perform them. Thanks to the SPO themselves, we offer here EXCLUSIVE!!! mp3s of some of the songs featured in the game. Otherwise, there are no downloads (yet).

Who did the originals of...

Blaze of Glory - with toy piano!
Werewolves of London (It is getting to be Hollow-Weenie time)
I Can't Go For That
Where Is my Mind

Are there prizes if you guess correctly? Why, of course - you win the greatest gift of all. No, not love: free mp3s of weird music! What more could you want?!

There's plenty more good listening on the three (soon to be four games) that are up now. Thanx to Professor J. and SPO-20!

VULCAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS

Doesn't get much goofier then this: an entire album of grungy rock instrumentals with "vocals" courtesy of "Star Trek" dialogue samples.

Vulcan Freedom Fighters also throw in plenty of "Trek" sound effects. Each song seems to deal with one "Trek" episode at a time - the original series, of course. Although guitars dominate, occasional electronics pop in to give the album a fair amount of variety, from heavy metal to slightly chilled. Harmonica is used on the funny Old West-set "Horse-Stealin' Scurvy Crew." How Kirk and the gang ended up in the old West I do not know - haven't watched the show since childhood. But it's that kind of randomness that makes this album entertaining even (perhaps especially) to non-Trekkies.

Obviously this is part of the long tradition of "Trek" fan music, but the unique sample-based approach, and the whole pop-culture oddness of it all makes this one fan project that weirdo-music lovers in general can enjoy.

Pick hits: "Horta," whose chorus features Spock screaming "the pain!" "We Are The Metrons" had me banging my head and throwing up the Vulcan sign, not the devil horns. The sound-effects-laden (and possible pornographic) "Argelius" is pretty brilliant, too.

The entire album is available as a free download:

Vulcan Freedom Fighters

There isn't much biographical info on their site, but apparently they are a duo who have a Louisville, KY address, recorded the album in Barcelona, Spain and, judging by the pictures posted, they play (surprise!) conventions.

HARDCORDIAN

Ed Cox's album "Hardcordian," a delightfully surreal mixture of boomin' electro beatz and live folk accordion, only came out 4 or 5 years ago, but it seems to have vanished from all retail outlets, so here 'tis:

Ed Cox "Hardcordian"

Yes, he performs his "clown-core" music (as he calls it) in clown dress. I wish there really was a genre called clown-core, but it'd probably end up like Insane Clown Posse or somethin, so just as well. There's only 8 tracks here in a brisk 23 minutes.

1. The Triumphant March of Piaf
2. The Tetris Theme Tune
3. Arabian Raves
4. Le Fanfare De Teuffeurs (the first of several songs that begin as a waltz, before all hell breaks loose)
5. The Dance of the Otter Droppings
6. The Lonely Clown
7. Cool Cats
8. Cloudy Tuesday Morning (no accordions on this one)

I'm pretty sure I first heard this album on the WoBcast, so thanks guys!.

TUNES-FOR-FREE JAMBOREE #3: YOU ARE NOT STEALING RECORDS

Some of my favorite albums of late have been internet give-aways, the perfect music-distribution route for weirdos who don't make the kind of trendy cookie-cutter sounds the labels are looking for. Such as:

YOU ARE NOT STEALING RECORDS

Were it not for the 'net, how else would I know about the strange/outsider music underground of Portugal? There is abundance of goodies here, and from what I've heard so far, none of it sucks, and everything's been at least worthwhile, and at best wonderful.

Stealing Orchestra is the band that started this 'net label. "We are using: sampling, guitars, accordeon, drums, flute, oboé, marimba vibraphone xylophone, cello percussion, piano, theremin and a lot of keyboards like church organ or hammond." Start with:

- "For Me 'Formidable," from their "É Português? Não Gosto!" album, in which traditional Portuguese polkas and waltzes are transformed into a spazz-tronic circus.

- From their "Bu!" album, "É Contra Mim Que Luto ," and "Catarse" especially when the exotica sample comes in @ 1:oo.

- G.G. Allin's Dick, also Portuguese, play a cartoonishly crazed polka-tempo electronica on their "King of the Road" album; might be my fave YANSR release so far; "Monocycle From Hell" is a tune that has wormed it's way into my head, popping out at odd times.

- Slipper are a British band featuring ex-Loop Guru members that draws inspiration from '50/'60s exotica, but filtered thru a modern sensibility. Check "Nuke Bug," in which a thick dub bass line is crawling with insect sounds; kinda like those tropical bird call-festooned Martin Denny records, but more creepy. "Lobsters" features a Peter Gunn-ish guitar riff, Miles-esque horns, and weird nightmarish noises.

- The Prostitutes play '60s-style garage rock and surf instros with maximum fuzz and energy; compared to the eccentric eclecticism of other YANSR acts, there's nothing too original here, but these Portuguese punks are plenty fun.

- Duo Inmortales play Residential one-minute-long songs with text-to-speech robots on vocals. Pick hit: "My First Nazi Girl."

- Vincent Bergeron's first two tracks annoyed me with it's modern-classical atonalities and Bergeron's nerdy voice singing in French. Then, either I got used to it, or the classical-chamber-group-chopped-up-in-a-sampler sounds sunk in, and I found songs like "L'Art du Déssaroi" to be pretty damn cool.

- Luis Antero's 17-minute long "Sinfonia Amphibia" consists of nothing but field recordings of some very loud uncredited Portuguese critters, presumably amphibians. I like to play this at the same time as other musics, such as the minor-key shoegazey sounds of worriedaboutsatan.

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BOSTON SUCKS! BOSTON SUCKS!

No offense to my Boss-Town peeps, it's just a basketball thing. Us fans of the Los Angeles Lakers love it when our team wins the NBA Finals, but when they beat Boston to get there, oooh, it's just that much better. Bwahahahaaa!

So let's celebrate the Laker's latest championship title the way we celebrate everything around here at M4M: with some really weird, bad music.

Ron Artest: "Michael Michael" - Artest played a great Game 7; made a jaw-droppingly awful Michael Jackson tribute song; not at the same time. He actually thanked his psychiatrist after the game last night. Um hmm...

NBA "Where Clutch Happens" - I recorded the audio for this commercial off the video; features the sampled voice of the Finals MVP Kobe Bryant auto-tuned to nice effect; it's actually a pretty catchy little tune.

There's a million rap songs celebrating Bryant and the current Lakers team by everyone from Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg down to the most rank amatuer rapper. But the Laker tribute song tradition began in the '80s during the reign of Earvin "Magic" Johnson and the "Showtime" Laker team, producing records that ran from cheezy/goofy:

Onaje Murray "Hoop Troop (Lakers)" - from his otherwise serious funky jazz album, "I Hear A Samba"

to the spectacularly tasteless and hilarious:

Niki Rios: "Thank You Magic" - A 9-year-old girl attempts to tug at our heartstrings with this epic ballad; If Magic Johnson wasn't already HIV-positive, this would have really sickened him.

The "Curl Activate: '80s Novelty 12" Singles" collection I posted a couple years ago featured some other home-brew basketball/Lakers records, including a good one sampling the late great announcer Chick Hearn, the voice of the Lakers. After Chickie died, this solo acoustic folk atrocity was released in tribute:

Swamp Donkey "Golden Throat" - Reminiscent of Neil Innes' Bob Dylan parody, but of course, I don't think this one is supposed to be funny.


(Thanks to ma home-slice IVOR for heppin' me to the "Thank You Magic" magic.)
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AIN'T WE GOT FUN?

Just for you lucky Maniacs! Here's an exclusive collection of rare, obscure novelty songs and kooky instrumentals, thanks to DJ Useo, podcast host, and the compiler of the "It Is To Laff!" comedy mashup collections.

For you Dr Demento fans, the more juvenile/tasteless (not that there's anything wrong with that) songs are early on, giving way to cartoonish instros, dada weirdness, and satire (e.g.: the spot-on easy-listening yuppie spoof "Are You Middle-Class Enough?") Full of surprises, and, yep, fun stuff indeed.

FUN MUSIC
Mega-thanks to DJ Useo!

MEXICO A-GO-GO

Wow, I'm way late for Cinco de Mayo, but what the heck. Matorral Man are merry Mexican masters of mirth and music (I'd just like to break in here to apologize for the excessive use of alliteration in this sentence) that sample '60s kitsch for a upbeat blend of electronica, lounge, surf and go-go beat. Recommended to fans of Messer Chups, The SG Sound, Ursula 1000, and wrestling movies.

Nothing too radical here, just a big blast o' fun. Song titles that translate to "Kamikaze Girls" and "The Taxi of Tomorrow" should give you the idea. Next time you're at a party and the Black Eyed Peas come on for the umpteenth time, slip this one in. Everyone will give you a big ol' muchas gracias.

Matorral Man - Guateque Estelar

1. Tema De Monamu
2. Chicas Kamikaze
3. No Lo C
4. Vaquera Estelar
5. Operación Dinamo
6. El Taxi Del Mañana
7. Tripi
8. GoGo Girl
9. Yu Yu Beat
10. El Acapulco Rock
11. Lunática
12. Untitled

THE TERROR-TRONICS OF NEIL ROSE

I scarcely could have imagined that when I picked up an innocent-looking package from my post office box that it would propel me into a world of unimaginable horrors, and that music, of all things, would be a bridge to unspeakable entities from beyond our realm!

But let me start at the beginning - I am a humble scribe for a music blog, and part of my regular duties is visiting the local post office to retrieve all manner of recordings sent to us by aspiring composers for possible review. Ah, music! Surely it is proof of the goodness of God himself. Or so I once thought...

The package, postmarked Plymouth, England, bore no indication of its' contents, and, indeed, a glance at the 18 page monograph contained therein prepared by sober academics and laden with charts and illustrations would lead one to believe that this was yet another humdrum musicological study.
It concerned one Neil Rose, whose interests were queer to be sure: a respected professor's attempts to communicate with the dead are hardly standard university fare. But Rose's own efforts eventually "went beyond science," through Carlos Castaneda-like ingestion of sacred drugs that act as a gateway to paranormal experiences beyond the imaginings of Lovecraft himself. The booklet's authors note that his writings come to an abrubt halt, leaving his ghastly fate a mystery.

I put on the cd containing recordings of "residuum," that is to say: "supranatural energy and imprinting of this energy to magnet media," and no sooner had I done so when the window to my study flew open and a gust of frigid air blew out my candle. But it was the disk's eerie sounds of Rose's damnable experiments that truly sent a shiver down my spine. May the Lord have mercy on our doomed souls!

Neil Rose: "Residuum" (SoundCloud link)

The book/cd package "Residuum" is available by writing neil@gotanyrice.com. The music is dark, compelling abstract ambient electronica, occasionally with a beat, tho dancing is hardly appropriate, and the realistically detailed booklet will convince many.
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