Sea Donkeys Live At The S.S. Marie Antoinette (Assophon)

I remember listening to the first Sea Donkeys record ("Volume 1") shortly after its release a couple years back and thinking, "OK, this is going to take some getting used to." Parts of it sounded like Burl Ives screaming in the bathroom as he tried to pass Tony Snell through his urethra. I filed it away for a rainy day. The next thing I know, a second Sea Donkeys full-length is arrived at my doorstep. This one, entitled "Live At The S.S. Marie Antoinette," has the additional distinction of being the first release on a new label, Assophon. I poured myself a glass of wine, and sat back in the rocking chair and listened to it straight through. The twangy, burnt-out opener with its cobbled bridges, rusty hooks and halfjapped vocals put me in just the right mood, transporting back to the glorious days of yesteryear when the In The Pineys 10" was as fresh as a slap in the face. The Sea Donkeys' version of "Rainy Day" sounds more like an independently discovered riff and lyric than a Faust cover. They now own the song. Midway through the electric drill solo, I'd forgotten I'd ever heard of silly labels like "krautrock," "jazz," or "music." Side 2 begins with another album highlight, "Ethnic," sung with the deranged righteousness of a jug-empowered wino relieving himself against the side of your house. The entire album is perfectly recorded for my ears, room mic'd without any evident post-production baloney or pre-production pretensions. And rumor has it that there's a different drummer on every track. I like them all. You can order direct from Assophon by clicking here.

Suurin Onni self-titled LP

(Boing Being 2004)

I admit becoming overwhelmed at some point a couple years ago by the wave of Finnish releases which were all pretty good. But this one flipped my wig as an instant classic and it’s rather different from nearly everything else that crosses my radar via the usual channels.

From the label listing: “I only compose music that makes me feel home” says Kusti and yes, that is exactly how this record will make you feel. Being around for eigth years, we finally proudly present the band’s debut album. By sounding nothing but themselves they perform gentle free improvised jazz with folk influences - three calm horns with occasional outbursts wander above hypnotic five-piece rhyhtm section.”

To me, it sounds like something you’d hear in a Casablancan beer hall where Sun Ra got up and conducted the house band while listening to Jamaican radio on his portable headphones. As alluded to above, the band’s instruments include trombone, accordian, clarinet, alto sax, two double basses, and three percussionists. In case it isn’t clear, there are no flutes, no guitars, no computers, no keyboards (unless you count the accordian which shows up very rarely and just when you want it to), no drum solos, no “free form improvisation” and no vocalizing on this record. In other words: it’s something quite different from most of the freak stuff going around the block these days but that doesn’t mean it ain’t weird.

The album artwork is fantastic: an ornate, shiny gold screen printing on a thick, fibrous forest-green cardstock, depicting a floating castle. The image perfectly matches the music and will also match your mood while you listen to the record and drink a bottle of apple brandy while carving a lifesize bear from an old redwood trunk.

Last time I checked, Boing Being still had this on their website for $20, not including shipping from Finland). It won't be around forever.

Magik Markers Inverted Belgium EP

(Hospital Producctions 2006)

I respectfully submit that this one-sided EP contains the most remarkably engineered recording of ego shattering sonic destruction that I have heard on vinyl. Without taking anything away from the Markers -- who were surely on fire that summer night in Belgium (May 9, 2005) -- I hereby nominate Dominik Fernow for a frigging Nobel Prize in music. I suppose the nearest experience I had prior to putting this on the turntable was in the bathroom at Alpine Valley and I’m not 100% sure that what I heard there was emanating from the stage. The next closest side might be the Universal Indians half of their split 12” with Gravatar (Charnel, 1995) but that's relatively polished and structured compared to this. Seriously folks: this is what it sounds like at the peak of any serious trip, plus it's free and there's no hangover.

The Sun City Girls and the Eye Hash Attache

About every month or so we try to clean house and put some stuff up for sale on that popular auction site that shall not be named here. We try to sell mostly records that we love (and many of them are spare copies picked up over the years). The theme of the first batch of auctions (now ended) was "Exotica at $9.99 a Day," and included mostly records that (in our humble opinion) were at least tangentially related to the ever-expanding universe centered around the Sun City Girls.

The first time I heard the Sun City Girls' music was when I wandered into Penny Lane Records on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. This was 1987 or thereabouts. One of the guys from Killdozer was sitting behind the counter. He was spinning this weird noodly guitar album that, to my crudely trained ears, reminded me of something the Dead might attempt to float in the middle of a Dark Star, circa 1970. I asked him if the record was for sale and he said it was: five dollars, used. I bought it, took it home, played it a few times and didn't think much about it until years later when I discovered Torch of the Mystics and realized, "Hey, don't I already have a record by these guys?"

Anyway, the rest of the story is the usual one about trying to track down all the music that "the Girls" released. In the beginning, it was hard as hell. I had to pick stuff up from disreputable, unaccountable people who sent their lists of mostly crappy and overpriced records by U.S. mail. And then the Internets came along ...

One of the items in the first auction that attracted quite a bit of attention was the Eye Hash Attache. Here's a slightly edited version of the original auction listing:

Okay so here is something strange and most likely unique in its own weird way. About fifteen years ago, around the time that the Sun City Girls were moving to Seattle, I became acquainted with some contemporaneous and future SCG collaborators. As part of an exchange of recorded goods, I obtained these copies of the so-called Cloaven cassettes. As you can see from the attached pics, some of the tapes are adorned with artwork (xeroxed) of unknown origin. At least one source I have spoken with maintains that some copies of the Cloaven tapes were made into esoteric art objects while other copies (of the same releases) were whipped out with, shall we say, a bit less attention to detail ...

... although the recording quality is not always everything it could be, the Cloaven tapes are legendary for a reason. While some are nearly unlistenable FUs to the civilized world, others make you wonder why they weren’t released as vinyl albums, as is. Of course, parts of the tapes eventually made it onto albums and compilation CDs and the Eclipse Label appeared to make some headway towards putting all of the tapes on vinyl. But even the Eclipse Label reissues omit some material from the tapes (as well as adding material that does not appear on the tapes).

Oh yes, I almost forgot: the suitcase! The tapes were delivered to me in this box by a tall man wearing reflective sunglasses and a ridiculous orange-colored tan like you’d get in one of those mall salons. He rang my doorbell about 8:00 am (bastard woke me up), handed me the suitcase and said “These are for you.” That was it. Later that morning I went out in the backyard and there were three holes burned in the lawn, perfectly round, about a foot in diameter and spaced equidistant from each other, about eight feet apart. Weird. The suitcase is some sort of pressed cardboard with fake alligator skin trim and a metal buckle. Inside the suitcase are the tapes (of course) as well as two “beef summer sausage with cheese” links, sealed in plastic wrap, and a custom-modified Sun City Girls PEZ dispenser. When I set the dispenser down to take the picture, some ants started swarming over it. Serious Phase IV activity! There is some candy in the dispenser and I tried one. Stale but still edible. The sausage looks tasty and the seal is unbroken so it’s probably been better preserved than the PEZ candy. I doubt the tapes or the suitcase were “authorized” in the usual manner with a bunch of executives and representatives sitting around a table. The freaking thing strikes me as more of an homage to the Sun City Girls than an official release. I probably should have kept a better eye on the tapes while I owned them, but what’s done is done. It’s time for someone else to control their destiny and ponder the mystery of the Eye Hash Attache.

Here are two views of the lizard and title on the "spine" of the attache (the top of the suitcase is shown above):

To the left is the interior, with 23 cassettes, two sausages, and one custom-modified Pez dispenser.








Close-ups of the Third Eye Pez dispenser. The raised letters "SCG" appear on each side.


























The picture below is the inside of the attache with the green hay removed. The coins are Moroccan. The photos are attached to the bottom of the partition, which is also removable.


The next picture is the same shot as the previous picture, except the partition has been flipped over.

When the partition is removed, you can see the magick skull design that hides beneath.

The stones directly above the head read "SCG". The center of the skull bears a pyramid/eye that appears to have been cut from US currency. The skull itself is not fixed to the bottom of the attache. Gently pulling it upwards in the direction of the top of the pyramid triggers the playback of "music."

So there you have it. The Eye Hash Attache, containing copies of all 23 of the Cloaven Theatre cassettes, now resides somewhere in the Midwest, guarded by not one but two charging dogs. Consider yourself alerted.