the wooden cupboard - boiling the animal in the sky - pseudo arcana – 3" cdr – 7$
One of the most exciting listens I've had this year was the Skaters and Wooden Cupboard releases that have come out on Nature Tape Limb.
Based around the core pair of James Ferraro and Spencer Clark (The Wooden Cupboard is Ferraro's solo project) they sure manage to make a hell of a joyous and utterly insane ecstatic racket on their disks.
The overall sound they capture is reminiscent of the recordings by Angus MacLise of tripping screaming hippies involved in dodgy rituals in Nepal in the early 70s, with crazy drumming and loops of lo-fi noise,
except that rather than hippies it sounds more the ritual is being conducted by a cult of hyperactive and demonic elves... But its GOOD!
Extraordinarily energising music and one of my all time faves for the label so far.
-pa
zelienople - ghost ship – pseudo arcana– cd – 9$
a.m. - rag red reverie –pseudo arcana– cd – 9$
Full on over-the-top psychedelic noise guitar assault from Antony Miltons A.M project. With beats!
Eschewing the last vestiges of embarrassment at several years 'lost' to rave culture in the late 90s A.M channels the furious ecstasies of phasing tones and pounding beats through electric guitar lined red hot into an ancient tape recorder to produce a riff driven avant-party album... With its endless driving riffs and noise incursions ascending to ever higher levels of intensity the sudden free falls into sudden deep ambient bliss are like the first glimpses of dawn on a mountain top on acid..
And then the beats kick in again.
A 'wave your arms in the air' boogie noise record? Who would have thought?
CD.
-pa
keijo - carry on with us –pseudo arcana– cdr/book – 10$
Latest missive from Finlands motorcycle crazed improvising drone shaman. 'Carry On With Us' features extended percussion rites and long sections of uber-blues guitar. In some ways this is a challenging record with Keijo veering into Jandek like atonality at times. But there are also moments of lush sublime beauty.
Overall it reflects honesty and frankness. Sure signs of 'true' magic..?
Packaged in a high quality 12 page book of photos and collage works by Keijo.
-pa
paper wings - ash field –pseudo arcana / black petal – cd – 9$
Paper Wings is the electric guitar duo of Australian Anthony Guerra and New Zealander Antony Milton.
Recorded in a small room on a winters day in Sydney in 2005 Paper Wings full-length debut drifts through beautiful bowed drones, tender melodic excursions and harsher sonic adventures. Four pieces that find these two guitarists at the top of their game.
(Paper Wings previously appeared on the Last Visible Dog compilation 'Crows of the World (Volume 1)' with the track "Horse Lattitudes'.Reviews said:
".. The real reason to pick this [compilation] up, though, is to hear Paper Wings' "Horse Lattitudes", an extended twin guitar dirge layered with whispered and wailing vocals. Beginning slowly and chaotically, it unfolds into a colossal mesh of The Velvet Underground at their most primal and Earth at 16rpm. Just when it threatens to peak, the duo fall back into another bout of feedback induced guitar meltdown, wringing every amplified note out of their instruments until the bones of the piece have been picked clean"
Edwin Pouncey, The Wire
"A masterclass in free improv that is even better at ear-splitting volume"
Simon Lewis, Terrascope.
CD in hand painted Japanese artpaper sleeve.
-pseudo arcana
sun of the seventh sister - old dust of absent wars –pseudo arcana– cd – 7$
Back in January 2007 New Zealand's shores were invaded by a ramshackle hoard of rowdy Aussies. Laying waste to all behind them they halted briefly in the capital before setting out to scuttle the inter-island ferry enroute to their utter subjugation of the South Island.
Whilst in the capital they established positions in an old military complex overlooking the heart of the city from whence they set forth sonic spells upon the masses arrayed below. Mothers wept as their sons fell foul of the sinister melodies and drones that radiated from the hilltop bunkers. Reed instruments, violins, guitars, drums, electronic noises... A long drowning in a reverberant psychedelic flood.
Suns of the Seventh Sister features members of XNoBBQX, The Unaustralians, and various other folks from the Breakdance the Dawn/Pulled Out Records axis... On these recordings they were joined by the despicable national traitors Snakes Beings and Antony Milton.
CDR.
-pseudoarcana
temples - murk –pseudo arcana– cd – 9$
With the advent of September 11, 2001 the musical underground found itself ripe once more for a rejuvenation of beards and acoustic guitars. And who am I to complain- I have a beard and like a bit of a finger pick myself..
Temples is Kevin Richards . He hails from Denver, Colorado, in the good old USA. 'Murk' is an acoustic guitar album. I'm not sure if Kevin has a beard. What is refreshing to these ears about this record is that its an acoustic guitar album wherein the guitar itself is subsumed within the glorious phenomena of the recording media itself, and in this case one of my personal favourites- TAPE! Building up layer after layer of distant and hissy strummed and picked guitars Temples creates a kaleidoscopic miasma which shifts and drifts through vast caverns and tiny rooms, the various rhythms in and out of phase as patterns collide and repel.
There's a deceptive ease and simplicity to the way Murk breathes. I know for a fact that Richards spent many months shaping these pieces into the ramshackle atmospheric drone works they have become. If you were after a comparison I would suggest that Temples does for the guitar what Dialing In does for keyboards and shruti boxes.
I'm often worn down by long pieces, and especially long albums. Just because one can fit 70 minutes on a cdr doesn't mean one should. 'Murk' however is an album that benefits from the extended room that the individual tracks are given to roam and evolve. This is a murk I'm more than happy to lose myself in for an hour.
CDR.
-pseudo arcana
sun stabbed - radio - seedy r – cdr – 9$
French duo (Thierry Monnier and Pierre Faure) specialising in great old school table top guitar feedback improv. Now, I've heard a hell of a lot of this kind of stuff but these guys have a particularly nuanced touch. Although named after a Dead C record and having the graunch and thrill of those dinosaurs the proceedings here have a far more stately and refined air...
-pseduo arcana
the skaters - gambling in ohpa's shadow - pseudo arcana– cdr – 11$
Does anything more need to be said about The Skaters? They exploded into the consciousness in early 2004 with 'Dark Rye Bread' (an album about to get a vinyl reissue courtesy of Norways Humbug imprint) and blew minds everywhere with their exceptionally 'JOYOUS' music. For those who haven't heard them yet The Skaters are the duo of James Ferraro and Spencer Clark. The main instrument used by these 2 genius's is voice, but not voice as we're used to it. Ecstatic chants are looped live through archaic delay units and played at a monstrous volume through old and broken amplifiers. Occasionally a broken-leaded guitar is strummed, or a very bent tribal sounding percussion looms into the mix, but overall its those crazy gnostic-gnomic voices that dominate.
As with James Ferraro's solo 'Wooden Cupboard' project (see below) the immediate comparison that springs to mind is that of Angus MacLises Kathmandu recordings. Not everything is so chaotic on this disk, there are poignant moments of relative calm, but overall it is a remarkably distorted, energising - and joyous - affair.
Note that some of the distortion on this disk is 'digital' in nature, a further manifestation of Ohpa's will sings morsecode clicks from out the void...
CDR