AND NOW, THE NEWS...

Good evening. Here's what's happening in the world of outsider music. Our top story today:

- Florence Foster Jenkins, "The World's Worst Opera Singer," is not only the subject of the recent Meryl Streep film, but of two books, including one written by ma music bloggin' homie Darryl Bullock, of "World's Worst Records" fame. The other book is supposedly the one that inspired the film. Still not enough? Dig the documentary DVD.

- Was quite surprised and delighted to hear Shooby Taylor the Human Horn in the recent animated film "Sing." 'Twas only a few seconds of "Stout Hearted Man" but still, Shooby's fnally hit the big time! They better include him on the soundtrack album.

- All Eternal Things is a beyond-great blog dedicated to lounge private-press vinyl. The album cover pics are priceless, and the mixes and vinyl rips are hours of good bad listening.

- The Everyday Film, whose recordings were once so elusive, has now thrown up everything (if you'll pardon the expression) on Bandcamp.

From all of us here at M4M news, thanks for watching. Good night!

BEHOLD! THE ANARCHESTRA

Alex Ferris is quite obviously a genius, a 62-year-old inventor/composer who lives in the desert with his large array of giant, weird, hand-built musical instruments tuned to microtonal scales. It all sounds so impossibly obscure, esoteric, and outsider-y, but the music is beautiful. Even with it's lack of conventional instruments and standard Western "do-re-mi" scales, it's compulsively listenable. It helps that The Anarchestra (which could mean anything from Ferris solo to a large group) has a very tight rhythmic sense. His earlier pieces, performed in 4/4 time, have almost an Afro-Cuban level of funkiness. Not the sort of thing that gets play in discos, but it should.

Tho these are all instrumentals, with no noisy guitars or shouted vocals, the punk influence is clear, not just in the band name, but in the economy of the compositions. There's no long intros, drawn-out endings, or endless noodling. A piece begins with most of the instruments playing at once, all locked in, then a few minutes later, it stops. All that's missing is Dee Dee Ramone shouting "1, 2, 3, 4" between each track. There's a lot of albums, but it doesn't take hours of wading thu it all to find something good. You'll know right away. And what could be more DIY than building your own instruments?

Ferris' instruments don't create too many harsh noises. Percussion, strings, winds...it's all  so musical - the heir to the Harry Partch/Moondog legacy of eccentric visionaries. More recent albums have an almost meditative calm to them, but it's more "In A Silent Way"-era Miles Davis than New Age. Too much banging-and-clanging for the yoga set.

I actively seek out both invented instrument and microtonal music, so I'm amazed that I haven't heard of this guy before, but he seems to have made little effort to connect to the music world, even the avant-garde scene. He has been coming aboveground lately, releasing an enormous amount of music on his

Bandcamp page.

It's all very consistent. From what I've heard, I'd say that you could jump in anywhere, the water's fine. I happen to be listening to the "KLEKT" album as I write this, and it's probably as good a place to start as any. Highlights include the wonderfully spooky "klekt 12," and the all-too-brief 1 minute long "klekt 7." Some tracks could be "Rain Dogs"-era Tom Waits instrumentals.

Dig this 67-minute documentary:

Speaking of Harry Partch, I was amazed to read that Paul Simon is using some of Partch's instruments on his latest album. Oh great. He'll probably ruin microtonal music the way "Graceland" drove people away from the glory and wonder of African music, which sadly, to this day, still has yet to shake the hippie/urban trendy/"World Music" tag. Still, I am a little curious. Not curious to have actually listened to it yet, tho. Have any of you? Is outsider music made on homemade instruments the new NPR fad?

Here's something you most certainly will like listening to: that wonder from Down Under, Buttress O'Kneel, who's the one who hepped us to the Anarchestra in the first place. Thanks, BOK! And dig the latest release from the mistress of mad mashup madness and berserk break-core:

"Lemons": made entirely from 2 recent Beyoncé songs, chopped and sliced like, well, lemons.



The Dissection And Reconstruction Of Music From The Past As Performed By The Inmates Of Lalo Schifrin's Demented Ensemble As A Tribute To The Memory Of The Marquis De Sade

Why, lookee here, it's our super-swell pals from the Growing Bored For A Living Blog. You know, the ones who slipped us those nutty "Sesame Street Disco" albums. Let's find out what those crazy kids up to now:

Hello, all. Been 6 months since I've had something cool to drop in the M4M cauldron. Found this in a cobwebbed corner of the Internet long ago. Needless to say, the title jumped out at me. Quite a handle, huh?

So, what is it? Well, with a title like that, you'd expect it to  be someone screaming into a piano soundboard while some other Mad Hatter banged a pan and recited snippets from "Philosophy In the Bedroom" or "The 120 Days"? Something like the audio equivalent of watching El Topo, maybe?

No, it's actually just a jazz album, and I admit one that's not near scary enough for a title like that! Mr. Schifrin  was known at the time for his jazzy film scores like The Cincinnati Kid or the Mission: Impossible theme. He doesn't stray too far from those roots. What he does do though is take aspects of 18th century music and apply them to a swinging, mid-60's jazz context.

You hear the gentle opening guitar notes of "Renaissance" and you can imagine them being played on a harpsichord. When an actual harpsichord shows up on "Beneath The Weeping Willow Shade", it seems appropriate under those period-style vocals. And then when that track kicks into gear, it still works. And man, on "Versailles Promenade", the guy is working that harpsichord like Bud Powell!

It's brave that the title track, "Marquis De Sade", has the most pop melody of the whole set. Imagine seeing that song on a hit parade! "Blues For Johann Sebastian Bach" is a great piano-led swinger. "Bossa Antique" is a dark little number, reminding me more than a little of Angelo Badalamenti's work for David Lynch.

Putting this in a kind of historical context - this album came out in 1966. Ten or fifteen years before, De Sade had gotten his first major reprinting and critical reassessment in his native France. The play Marat/Sade had opened in Germany in 1963. In fact, this album's long title is a homage to the full title of that play -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marat/Sade

So, in a way De Sade was kind of an icon of the underground/avant-garde back then. How he inspired this well-played but still mainstream jazz album is beyond me. The Sixties were a strange time all over, I guess.

But this is a swinging little oddity! Put out by Verve Records, produced by Creed Taylor, recorded by the great Rudy Van Gelder. Was put out as one of those Limited Edition CDs, now runs for $100 or more. Files sound great @320 Kbps, and also includes full art.

Thanks for checking this out, and as always feel free to poke around Growing Bored For A Living. We try to keep it eclectic, something I learned from our esteemed Mr. Fab here at Music For Maniacs. Stay crazy, everybody. The Marquis did....

The Dissection And Reconstruction Of Music From The Past As Performed By The Inmates Of Lalo Schifrin's Demented Ensemble As A Tribute To The Memory Of The Marquis De Sade

I CUT PEOPLE: "I Quit"

27 tracks of lightning-fast audio edits whizzing by in 24 minutes? It can only mean another release from I Cut People and their ever-improving m.o. of wicked social satire thru a dense collage of countless samples. The album is called "I Quit" but let's hope he isn't. With Negativland members dropping dead left and right, and The Tape Beatles seemingly out of action, ICP would appear to be our best chance for reversing the usual one-way stream of corporate/religious info-tainment, creatively recycling this waste, and spitting it back. The inanity of the mass media, politics and consumerism, and the anxiety it produces in the brainwashed populace has never been more funny! And entertaining! NOW how much would you pay?! 

I Cut People "I Quit"

Picks to click: "Try It," "All You Need Is More Things," and "All About Crap." And if Beavis and Butthead were sound collagists, they would have proudly produced "Dick Bible."

HIPPIE NOISE IN A LAUNDROMAT

The self-titled 1971 album "The Roots Of Madness" is a truly historic avant/outsider artifact. Incredibly, the recordings of this, well, madness date back as far as 1969. That beats The Residents, and the LA Free Music Society were a couple years away from forming. And needless to say, The Great Punk DIY Explosion was far off on the horizon when this bag of nutters from the wholly unremarkable Northern California town of San Jose made this home-brew concoction. 

Ingredients: tinkly music boxes, short wave radios, free-jazz, blues guitar, beat poetry, smutty poetry, a Dada sensibility, a smart-ass sense of humor, sound effects, even an actual song or two. All common strategies now, but must have been fairly incomprehensible at the time. And yes, they did do gigs in laundromats. It's not like there were too many actual music venues in town to play.

Free listen/download:

"The Roots Of Madness"

One of the members, Don Campau, went on to a still-extant experimental music and public radio career.

COVER THE EARTH Vol. 6

I had not planned on compiling another selection of odd ethnic covers of Western hits, thinking that I had exhausted that particular well, but our pals over at the Growing Bored For A Living blog hit us with a treasure trove of exotic, unlikely reworkings of famous songs that you thought you were sick of, and it just demanded another volume. Which reminded me of some comments left in previous "Cover The Earth" posts offering suggestions, which I then tracked down. And I did have a few new discoveries me own self (I take full blame for the bagpipes). As with the previous volumes, some extreme liberties have been taken with the material, sometimes rendering them almost unrecognizable. Just the way we like it.

So thanks to Growing Bored (check the mammoth Bob Dylan cover project), and the nice Maniacs who suggested some suggestions. 

 "Cover The Earth Vol 6"

01 2Cellos - Welcome to the Jungle (Croatia/classical)
02 Red Hot Chili Pipers [that's PIPERS! Not "Peppers"] - We Will Rock You/Eye Of The Tiger/The Clumsy Lover (Scottish bagpipes)
03 Pastel Vespa - L'Anarchie dans l'U.K. (The Sex Pistols go French yeh-yeh, tho Ms. Vespa is Brazilian)
04 20th Century Steel Band - Loves Theme (Barry White goes Carib steel drum)
05 Don Sornrabeab - Mao (Drunk) (Play That Funky Music, Thai boy)
06 Alyssa ZezZA - Purple Rain (Italian singer, but a Brazilian bossa style here)
07 Ray Barretto - James Bond Theme (Latin jazz)
08 Red Hot Chili Pipers - Smoke on the Water/Thunderstruck/Upside down at Eden's Court
09 The Maytals - Give Peace A Chance (John goes Jamaican)
10 Finger 5 - I Want You Back (Jacksons go J-pop)
11 Isaya Mwinamo & His Merry Men - Bamba Ya Afrika ("La Bamba" in Kenya)
12 Joya Landis - Kansas City ('50s rock-n-roll inna ska stylee)
13 20th Century Steel Band - Theme From Shaft
14 Pastel Vespa - Blue Monday (a bit of Joy Division also cleverly cuts into this Brazilian bossa nova cover)
15 Los Tropicanos - Light My Fire (think these guys are also Brazilian, but I wouldn't call this bossa nova; 'Latin psych,' maybe?)
16 Ukulele Clan Band - Money for Nothing (Spanish folkies getting kinda bluegrass-y; hey, they kept the original un-PC lyrics)
17 Faye Wong - Dream Person (Chinese Canto-pop cover of The Cranberries' "Dreams")
18 Red Hot Chili Pipers - Hey Jude/The Mason's Apron

THE WORLD'S TALLEST MUSIC: Joseph Bertolozzi's "Tower Music"

An entire album made solely from the sounds of someone banging on the Eiffel Tower?! Now that is the kind of thing to warm the cockles of a Maniac's heart, and to thoroughly confuse, if not annoy, mainstream music consumers: "Wha..? Why doesn't he use real musical instruments?" Because, my poor, brainwashed Normals, there is a universe of unused sounds out there that cannot be conjured up with pianos, guitars, even synthesizers. Music is all around us, as John Cage would say, and sampling those sounds and using them as the raw stuff of compositions is an excellent way to make us aware of that. 

The album actually sounds like you think it would, dominated by metallic plinky pongy tones. But even tho these songs are indeed produced only by Bertolozzi's molesting of a great Parisian structure, they are not just random banging. They are structured, highly rhythmic, even weirdly melodic, with each track having it's own peculiar flavor. In other words: musical. Here's one particularly toe-tappin' sample:

Joseph Bertolozzi "Continuum" from "Tower Music"

Party Like It's Only $19.99

What better way to note the shockingly sudden passing of Prince then with this 1999 release by mashup pioneers the Evolution Control Committee? Prince, and in particular his song "1999," serve as the jumping-off point for all manner of avant-tard shenanigans. The ECC (recording under a number of phony "band" names) are joined by such sample-sound stars as Wobbly (doin' the John Oswald 'plunderphonics' thang), Wayne Butane with another one of his funny sound collages, Realistic, and Fossil aka Pea Hix of the great Optigonally Yours, who remind us that Van Halen's "Jump" is kind of a "1999" rip-off. ECC's own tracks range from Weird Al-ish parodies, such as the Oktoberfestive "Polka Like It's 1999," to dense, challenging noise-fests.

Party Like It's Only $19.99 

Listening to this album is an appropriate way to memorialize another great who died today, Richard Lyons, one of the founders of the legendary culture-jamming collagists Negativland. They don't have a track on this disc, but their influence is certainly all over it. Since Don Joyce has also died within the past year, I wonder if the band will continue. Maybe they should recruit some of the talent featured here. Or People Like Us, or The Bran Flakes. Or me! Can I join?!

HAPPY (BAND)CAMPERS: WEIRD EDITION

"American Folk Music" is the most boring possible name for an album, but fear not! The latest release from veteran North Carolina wackos the Moolah Temple $tringband is anything but dull. They take songs from Harry Smith's venerable "Anthology of American Folk Music" and radically warp them by introducing such elements as exotic Middle Eastern-isms, clanging and banging percussion, incongruous '80s hip-hop style drum machine beatz, even a bit of rapping on one song, and mix them with the trad sounds of guitars, banjos, and a skillful fiddle that suggests that someone has been taking music lessons. The hideously/hilariously inappropriate combination of traditional folk music and Autotune (!) on "Farmland Blues" had me laffin' out loud. Also dig: the fuzz guitar crunch of "Little Moses" (even tho it goes on too long), and a version of "John Hardy" that might even be better than the Gun Club's? Scuzzy vocals are often distorted beyond recognition. "The Titanic," however, actually approaches mainstream respectability, complete with perfectly competent backing vox.

Moolah Temple $tringband: "American Folk Music"

More Bandcamp weirdness ahoy! L.A. nutters Freshly Wrapped Candies have unwrapped an old album of theirs from 1989 chock full of hermetic, inscrutable DIY obsessions that, perhaps inevitably, are sometimes reminiscent of The Residents, esp. on songs like "Grandfathers' Rug". Other standout songs like the downright catchy "Think" and the Beavis and Butthead-ish "Pitter Pat" don't immediately suggest any particular influences. Organically strange, but not off-puttingly so. It emerges from the haze with its' humanity intact.

Freshly Wrapped Candies: "I Like You" 

OUTER SPACE MUSIC FROM OUTER SPACE!

Who or what is/are Ko Transmissions? I don't know, but the lengthy letter that accompanied the cassette release featured here tells a long, involved story of musical messages sent to planet Earth by the Ko people. Yes, we have apparently made contact with space aliens. You heard it here first!

Ko-core is all instrumental. The tape gets off to a good start with some lovely harp sounds. This is followed by a drummer-less rock band, and a vaguely Middle Eastern electric guitar solo. Those last 2 parts weren't too interesting, but @ 9:12 we get to an excellent passage of exotic tribal drumming backing more Middle Eastern sounding violin (?) and possible other stringed things - music for green-skinned belly dancers entertaining their masters on some far off planet.

Which is followed by spooky guitar drones that smack of vast interstellar voids. Fine stuff. Next up, some noodly guitar plucking; a lengthy track starts @ 21:00 with drums and  what sounds like mbira, cowbell-y percussion, and some kind of ethnic flutes/woodwinds that sounds like an Irish pennywhistle made out of PVC pipes. Then: atonal guitar skronk. I like the oddly bent Residential noises that start around 32:00 and the ambient drone that follows it. Some Beefheartian proggy guitars are then called to prayer at Mecca, and we're done.

None of it sounds particularly extra-terrestrial, but neither does it sound like any standard musical styles, unless 'random weirdness' is now a genre. 44 minutes of inter-planetary communication here:

Ko Transmissions

Behold, the Daxophone! The FUNNIEST Instrument Ever?!?

The late, great Hans Reichel gets a lot of props in the modern jazz world for his guitar playing, which is all well and good, but Maniacs should proceed directly to the few recordings he made highlighting his invention, the hand-crafted wooden objects known as Daxophones. Imagine a school kid bending his ruler over his desk making a boing! sound, only played with a violin or cello bow. In the hands of Reichel, a master musician as well as inventor, the Dax is amazingly versatile, capable of all manner of sounds, often with cartoonish undercurrents.

Reichel calls this album an 'operetta' even tho there are no singers. Indeed, there are no other instruments on this album besides the Daxophone. Yet the instrument has the uncanny ability to mimic human speech sound. Not only that, but the song "Bubu And His Friends" sounds like a whole barnyard of animals singing in harmony. Not only do these instruments sing, they swing, dad. These are not just weird noises for a chin-stroking avant-garde academic. "Street Song" is filled with hand-clapping joy. The percussion-heavy "You Can Dance With Me" reaches an almost Afro-Cuban level of danceable groove. And the catchy bubblegum rock of "Oway Oway" could convert the most brainwashed of mainstream music followers (well, in my fantasy world...)

Some songs suggest actual musical genres, like salsa, jazz or country, but played as if by Martians who, after picking up some terrestrial radio transmissions, attempt to interpret  the music of Earthlings on their alien instruments, tuned to no known scale. A wonderful work of weird genius. The fact that the name 'Hans Reichel' is not as well known as 'Kardashian' does not speak well for the human species, but we can start changing that right now:

Hans Reichel - "Yuxo, A New Daxophone Operetta"   [2002]

You can also listen to/buy another great Daxophone album (along with a slew of his guitar releases) here:


https://destination-out.bandcamp.com/album/shanghaied-on-tor-road

"Night Of The Living Dead" soundtrack

I think this speaks for itself, doesn't it?

The internets sez: "Since their meager budget did not allow for an original music score, producer Karl Hardman selected cues from the Capitol Hi-Q production music library which [director George] Romero masterfully edited into the film. The end result was spine-chilling. Although this same music had been used more than a decade earlier in low-budget efforts such as Teenagers from Outer Space, The Hideous Sun Demon and The Killer Shrews, it would become forever known as the soundtrack to Night of the Living Dead."

Choice bits of dialogue are also included in this collection.

Night Of The Living Dead OST

A1	–Spencer Moore	Driveway To The Cemetary (Main Title)
A2	–William Loose / Seely	At The Gravesite/Flight/Refuge
A3	–George Hormel	Farmhouse/First Approach
A4	–Ib Glindemann	Ghoulash (J.R.'s Demise)
A5	–George Hormel / William Loose / Seely / Ib Glindemann	Boarding Up
A6	–Philip Green / George Hormel	First Radio Report/Torch On The Porch
A7	–George Hormel	Boarding Up 2/Discovery: Gun N' Ammo
A8	–Spencer Moore	Cleaning House
B1	–Ib Glindemann	First Advance
B2	–George Hormel / Jack Meakin	Discovery Of TV/Preparing To Escape/Tom & Judy
B3	–George Hormel	Attempted Escape
B4	–George Hormel	Truck On Fire/Ben Attacks Harry/Leg Of Leg Effects [Electronic Sound Effects] – Karl Hardman
B5	–George Hormel	Beat 'Em Or Burn 'Em/Final Advance
B6	–Spencer Moore	Helen's Death/Dawn/Posse In The Fields/Ben Awakes Effects [Electronic Sound Effects] – Karl Hardman
B7	–Spencer Moore	O.K. Vince/Funeral Pyre (End Title)

Oh Come On, MORE Experimental Psychedelic Bagpipe Music?!

Count 'em

Yeah, I know, but this one's really great. Julia Wolfe, of New York's Bang On A Can posse, released this a few years ago, and is performing it for the first time in Los Angeles this week - on a bluff overlooking the ocean. For FREE. It's a teaser to get you to see the BOAC concert. The whole piece runs about 13 minutes. No other instruments, just bagpipes. 

The first part is total mind-melting psych drone, like Glen Branca in a kilt. Not only does it sound nothing like what I thought bagpipe music was supposed to sound like, it pretty much caved in my skull. And I do not take drugs. Part 2 sounds more bagpipe-y, and gets into subtle minimalism territory.


Julia Wolfe "Lad (for 9 bagpipes)" parts 1 and 2

from the album "Dark Full Ride"

Music for Homemade Instruments - A Decade of Debris (1988)

Like the band featured in this blog's previous post, The Hoosier Hot Shots, this group also performs on homemade instruments. However, one group is considered "novelty" and the other "avant-garde." It's all rather arbitrary, and class-ist. This band isn't quite as funny as the Hoosiers of course, but they are plenty tuneful, with nice toe-tapping compositions sometimes derived from Indonesian gamelan music, something ex-members of this group would explore further with the (I believe) still-running band of fellow New York arty-smarties, Gamelan Son of Lion.

I just wish I could see these instruments. I could only find one photo (right), and no videos. 

Despite their academic background, this is fun stuff, not just self-indulgent banging around - hence, not a completely unlikely companion to the Hot Shots. The track "Inside the Compound" is even a kind of mutant blues. An excellent album that should have had greater distribution. This was a cassette-only release. So, yeah, this file is taken from a tape, but still sounds pretty good.

Music for Homemade Instruments- A Decade of Debris (1988)

a1 Glyptodont (Skip La Plante)
 a2 Inside the Compound (Geoffrey Gordon)
 a3 Streetsong (Alice Eve Cohen) [not safe for work!]
 b1 Ball Lead (Rolf Groesbeck)
 b2 Native Cat Songs (David Simons)

"Another Goddam DEATH Dedication"

R.I.P. Don Joyce of Negativland. 

The legendary sound collagist/radio mastermind/culture-jammer has joined Snuggles.

If you didn't download the "Helter Stupid" show that I posted last year, a bootleg with excellent right-off-the-mixing-board sound quality, now would be the time to check it out:

Negativland Live - "Helter Stupid Tour" 1989

Christianity is Stupid! This video is GOOD:

Ross Bolleter's Music For Ruined Pianos

A reader left a comment today: "How does one download from Google on a Mac? I cannot figure it out..." I'm not a Mac-intologist. Anyone?
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rather than take old, decrepit pianos and attempt to repair and tune them, Australian composer/improviser Ross Bolleter makes new music out of "ruined" pianos. Bolleter approaches each piano as a singular entity, utilizing each instrument's lack of standard tuning, missing keys, broken strings, etc. to create strange, haunting, stirring sounds that would not be possible to make on a new piano. Which seems like a much more logical approach than taking every sound-making thing on the planet and forcing the limited range of the Western scale on it.

The music on this album hardly sounds like "piano music." The lengthy opening track is meditative loveliness, ranging from Asian gong sounds to birds calls in the background (this really is a 'field recording') to horror movie atmospherics. The remaining short tracks sound similar to John Cage's prepared piano works, but while Cage's pieces were gamelan-inspired and strictly written, these are free and jazzy. So ingenious one wonders why no-one thought of doing something like this before?

Ross Bolleter - Secret Sandhills and Satellites (Pieces For Ruined Pianos) (2006)
(UPDATE 7/15: Missing track now in file.)

Count Otto hepped me to this cat via this article about "Touring Australia's Piano Graveyards."

Pardon my Amazon cut-and pasting:

ROSS BOLLETER ruined pianos (+ accordion on 7)

1 - SECRET SANDHILLS - 28:00
2 - AXIS - 6:47
3 - DEAD MARINE - 6:10
4 - AND THEN I SAW THE WIND - 3:22
5 - CHORUS LINE - 1:39
6 - SAVE WHAT YOU CAN - 2:40
7 - GOING TO WAR WITHOUT THE FRENCH IS LIKE GOING TO WAR WITHOUT AN ACCORDION - 4:23
8 - TIME WAITS - 5:59
9 - COME NIGHT - 2:02
10 - JAUNTY NOTES OF PADDOCKS BRIGHT - 4:22
11 - OLD MAN PIANO - 1:46

"All digital recordings made in Australia around Perth and Alice Springs 2001-2005. Pieces for ruined pianos and pianos on the edge of ruin... The main work, inspired by an Aborigine painting, is the 28-minute Secret Sandhills, a generally slow-moving work spliced together from performances on six ruins. There are also 10 shorter and generally faster Satellites, some of which were performed on two ruined pianos simultaneously. Fresh new sounds from decaying old instruments."

I'm Bringing Weirdness Back...

If you feel like genuine musical weirdness died with Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart, take heed!  We have some 

stone-cold freakazoids in our midst even today. To whit:

- The Everyday Film is raising funds for his next album. Judging by the excerpts of works in progress in the video 

below, it's the veteran outsider's most ambitious project yet, as it moves beyond his usual industrial nightmares 

into some realms of sound that actually resemble, well, music. Y'know, that some people will like to listen

 to? So give, brothers and sister, give 'til it hurts:

The Everyday Film - "Bleed Over" (GoFundMe site)

- Ostrich Von Nipple is such a great name that I thought there was no way that their music could measure up to it, 

but their latest album is an absolutely awesome acid-bathed assemblage of spazz-jazz-tronica, weirded-out lyrics, 

and a guest guitarist who has played with the Residents, no less. Songs like "Mad Martian Beach Party" actually

sound like their titles. One 10-minute track suggests prog, but prog is rarely this humorous and surreal.  Originally

released last year in hard copy formats thru Psychofon Records, including a very limited vinyl run, it's now available

digitally thru outlets like Amazon and iTunes. In Maniac-universe, this album would sweep the Grammys.

"Ostrich von Nipple Quantifies Absurdity" album Amazon page 

Ostrich Von Nipple "Upright Jerker" (mp3)

- Petunia-Liebling MacPumpkin, the gal who's so cray-cray she makes Kate Bush look like Barbra Streisand, is the

 one who hipped us to the Nipple. Her own latest video "Picked Fences" (see below) is another outlandish mixture of 

live action, animation, puppets, toys, video effects, and art-song.   

- Womb Pals' brief (13 minutes) name-your-price download EP "Baby Spinach" is mostly pleasantly low-key

piano ambience, but is notable for the track "perfection," which ingeniously samples the sounds of coughing and 

throat-clearing. No other instruments. Exactly the kind of thing that Maniacs might find clever and funny, and 

Normals might respond to by running away, hands over ears. That's irri-tainment! 

http://wombpals.bandcamp.com/releases 

- The Chewers are the twisted Southerners whose two previous albums got rave reviews from Yours Truly on these 

here virtual pages. They're still spewing out their inbred hell-billy guitar rock primitivism, but with seemingly

a bigger budget. More instrumental sounds, cleaner production, guests vocalists - they sound better

than ever, tho the songs are not sticking with me the way their earlier work did. One track, however, the utterly

over-the-top "Misanthropic Bones," just might be the greatest thing they've ever done. It's a kind of rap song, 

with a clenched-teeth Chewer sptting out rhymes like "I don't get enough sun or sleep/I'm a hollow, distorted 

creep."

Well, aren't we all?

The Chewers "Dead Dads" album Bandcamp page

The Chewers  "Misanthropic Bones" (mp3)

The Psample-delic Psounds of Carl Stone's "Four Pieces"

If you think sampling in music means MC Hammer looping "Super Freak," you gotta another think coming: Los Angeles legend Carl Stone has been using custom software to spin complex, beautiful webs out of found sounds since before most people even owned a computer. The closest comparison to another composer one might make would be to John Oswald and his Plunderphonics, but Oswald often hits with an ADD-addled aggressiveness. Stone takes a more trance-inducing path that sometimes approaches Minimalism, but the results are still too thorny to ever function as yoga music.

Track #1 "Wall Me Do" is not, as the title suggests, a Pink Floyd/Beatles mash-up. The title, like most of Stones' titles, comes from an LA area Asian restaurant. It's glitchy electronica, not unlike Aphex Twin, but years before the fact. #2 is pretty funny, slicing and dicing that classical classic "Pictures at an Exhibition" into an increasingly unrecognizable delirium.  #3 ("Shing Kee") from 1986 hypnotically loops unidentified sounds (inc female vocals) into dreamy gorgeousness; tho reminiscent of Frippertronics and Steve Reich's early tape-loop works, the gradually unfolding patterns bear the stamp of Stone's original style. Play this with the lights out, glass of red wine in hand. Aaahhh... And #4 is Stone sampling himself, in this case remixing #1. I actually prefer it to #1 - it's all Minimalistic grooviness, but with no predictable looping and phasing.

Carl Stone - Four Pieces (1986-1989)

I was happy to see that Stone is performing live this March 22 with LA Free Music Society vets Tom Recchion and Joseph Hammer. Those two have been using extreme turntablism and tape-loop tomfoolery to great effect for as long as Stones' been tweaking his Macs. Don't think Stone was ever actually a member of the LAFMS, but note that Recchion designed the insert to this album.  And the two used to rule the KPFK airwaves in the 1980s with back-to-back (Tuesday night?) shows, Stone with "Imaginary Landscapes" and Recchion's "Soundings II, aka the Tom and Tony Show." Between Stone's alt classical-to-Yma Sumac approach and Tom 'n' Tony's avant-tarde mix of free noise, kitschy thrift-store records, and live antics (e.g. playing the entirety of "Sgt Pepper" on fast-forward when the CD was first released), Young Master Fab's mind was suitably re-aligned. Tom Waits said he wept when he first heard Gavin Bryars' "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet" (which Waits would later sing) on LA radio in the '80s. 'Twas on "Imaginary Landscapes" - I was listening that night, too.

THE CLASSICS PLAYED ON 57 WINE GLASSES

I am quite delighted to announce that the crucial WFMU show "Bodega Pop" will devote all three hours of its weekly programming to this here web-log as our 10th anniversary festivities continue. This Wednesday 7:00PM Eastern time on Woof-Moo's "Give The Drummer Some" stream (not the over-the-air broadcast) the party commences. Your host-with-the-most Gary Sullivan helms a blog also called "Bodega Pop", and its tales of international music-collecting derring-do fills me with insane envy. Damn, this guy's got a great collection. And now, my latest Bandcamp discovery:

AllMusic said about today's album: "In the running for strangest novelty item of the year [2007], A Drop in the Glass is nevertheless an impressive display of musicality." Indeed. GlassDuo from Poland have constructed what they claim is the world's largest wine glass instrument, some 57 pieces strong.  Yes, wine glasses. You know how you can wet your finger and rub it along the rim of the glass to produce a musical, if somewhat squeaky, tone? Well, these two have taken this old idea to a virtuoso level. Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition" is one of those classical war-horses that I'd never really given much thought to, but that was before I heard the familiar opening "Promenade" performed on something I am now drinking out of.

Other highlights: Chopin's "Prelude" (tho I prefer Serge Gainsbourg's remake "Jane B"), the clanging of metal percussion (a trash can, perhaps?) halfway into "Great Gate of Kiev", and the medley of hits from Grieg's proto-goth "Peer Gynt." After a while you may forget the unusual methods used to produce these sounds, and just listen to it for it's musical merits. It's available for purchase, or listen to the free stream:

GlassDuo: "A Drop In The Glass"

An mp3 for ya: 

GlassDuo: "In The Hall of the Mountain King" (excerpt from track 10)

I'm finally listening to some proper classical music. My mother will be so proud.

UnPop Music - A MusicForManiacs Sampler

All music that isn't classical, jazz or ethnic/folk is 'pop', meaning 'popular.' Except when it isn't. Here are some new releases you should run out and buy (and some not-so-new ones that I slept on) that have everything a pop song should have: brevity, melodic vocals, toe-tappin' beats, clean production, energy...heck, even danceability. Everything except actual popularity. Mostly these are tuneful tunes sporting very funny, clever lyrics (perhaps too witty for the masses), with a kouple of kooky kovers thrown in.

UnPop Music - A MusicForManiacs Sampler

1. ac00perw - "Smells Like Teens": Nirvana re-imagined as sleazy Steely Dan-type '70s soft-rock.
2. Iggy Pop - "Monster Men (les zinzins de l'espace)": In 1997, The Iggster sang the theme song to a French kid's cartoon show called "Space Goofs;" how punk is that?!
3. Jens Lekman - "A Higher Power": great bad rhymes, from this Scandanavian's 2004 album entitled (speaking of Iggy) "When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog."
4. Larry Gallagher - "I'm Sorry for What My People Did to Your People": wickedly funny Tom Lehrer-esque satire, from the album "Can I Go Now?"
5. Maya Beiser - "Back In Black": from the new album "Uncovered" of massed overdubbed  cellos playing instrumental versions of rock and blues hits; I'm not really sure why this exists. Dig the video of her cello-riffic cover of Led Zeps' "Kashmir" below.
6. One And Seven Eighths - "Pegasus (The Camping Waltz)": Most tracks on their album "Modern Camping Songs" are real nice ambient/abstract electro instros, but this brilliant novelty is the best thing that Viv Stanshell never did.
7. O-Type - "Stupido": New vinyl re-issue of this MX-80 Sound spin-off sounds like a lot of other '80s noise rockers, until the vocalist starts channeling a panoply of fascinating, horrific characters, e.g.: the hapless protagonist of this song, rendered in a 'retarded guy' voice at once funny and disturbing.
8. Sid Ozalid - "Elephant in a Sack": Frequent contributor Count Otto Black slipped us these short, silly tracks from one of his fellow Scotsmen, an oddball known more for poetry than music; from "Songs & Stories From a Suitcase", the 1982 EP by Sid Ozalid & His Legendary All-Stars.
9. Sid Ozalid - "My Tortoise Can Burst Into Flames"
10. Sid Ozalid - "This is the Story of the Missing Jacket"
11. Twink The Toy Piano Band - _{ ·_ U _· }_: The latest from the master of toy-tronica has a cute album cover/title ("Critter Club"), cute tarot-like cards of animals, cute song titles (all typographic symbols), but a decidedly more mature sound; the large supporting cast features a number of horn players, giving excellent tunes like this one an almost jazz feel. They grow so fast!

(Thanks again, Count!)