Milvia Sun

We Get Videos

2012-03-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

So label alum Bob Frankford gets wind of our last post and is modestly inspired to produce what he refers to as "the cheapest video of all time." We welcome anything new here, of course, provided one or two of our preferred aesthetic buttons are pushed. Bob delivers, as usual.

Says Bob: "This is a crude edit of an early version of a riff which was (is?) intended as incidental music for a future episode of Breakfast With Theo. Except for the Beschornia hidalgorupicola (second image in the vid), which is monocarpic, these aloe flowers are epheremal and appear only in Spring, year after year, until the plant dies. Like palms, many aloes have a life span similar to that of humans. They are also a notoriously slutty genus of plants, readily cross-pollinated and hybridized by hummingbirds and insects. And humans, of course."

Dude sounds like a regular plantsman! As a reminder, the next volume of Bob's "Old Yeller and the Pigbites" project is in the works, to be released in a few months (with luck). In the meantime, we can enjoy Bob's botanical fingerpickings.

The Winter That Was

2012-02-19T19:28:00.001-08:00

A certain minimum amount of sunlight is needed for productive writing. What more can I say? It’s not that nothing was experienced and chronicled in some form during those dark days, but the blogging juices never flowed with sufficient intensity to achieve total follow-through. At the same time, of course, the usual suspects were posting left and right (limericks??? What.The.Fuck?), resulting in feelings of literary inadequacy. Then there was that riveting meltdown around New Years (where’s Part II??) and S.S.’s brilliantly sober State of the Vinyl Union Address which must have generated a great many email responses (please publish them, Scott! you can always change the names to protect the "innocent" ...).

I spent this past Winter doing what I usually do, which is drink too much, sleep too much and avoid going anywhere where I might encounter corporate holiday bullshit. At some point during the annual hibernation, a copy of Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma CD (Touch) arrived and it’s probably the record of his that I liked best so far upon initial listening.

In part, my enthusiasm flows from some long ago adventures on some of those same trains. It’s also due to the widely appreciated beats that result from the repetitive design of the rails and ties upon which the train rides. One will often encounter magnificent drones from jet engines or propellers in-flight but such sounds lack the romance, if not the randomness, of those produced by the immortal choochoos.

The Watson CD fit right in with a deep holidaze-dodging dive thru the remaining few Frederick Wiseman films that I had either not watched in their entirety before, or that I’d watched only on crappy video dubs. All of Wiseman’s movies are available on very well-engineered DVD-Rs here (the docs filmed in color are practically an homage to whatever 16mm film stock Kodak was pushing that year), and while they are not exactly “cheap” you can rest assured that they are worth it and, equally important, your money is going straight to the artist, where it belongs, without any skimmers in between. It should be noted that Wiseman’s films, while shot entirely by a single camera, are not shot by Wiseman himself. His cameramen (most especially John Davey) are among the greatest to ever wield the instrument, to be sure, but Wiseman’s primary role, besides “directing” (“let’s shoot this”), is to hold the microphone and record the sound.

Quite frankly, there is little to distinguish the audio portion of the sardine packing sequence from BELFAST, MAINE and certain mid-period Merzbow CDs (turn the volume UP).

On the other side of the spectrum is the classic introduction to Adjustment & Work, whereby we are transported from wherever we are in the “real” world into the Alabama Institute for the Blind and Deaf, circa 1984-85 (the film was released in 1986).

It’s this sort of quintessential Wiseman business that reminds of Watson’s work (and others, too, e.g., Tony Schwartz, Jed Speare, Bill Fontana). For what it’s worth, Wisemans’ three preceding films in this early 80s series (BLIND, DEAF, and MULTI-HANDICAPPED) are equally worthy of viewing by anyone interested in understanding sensual experience and the deprivation of aspects thereof (unless of course you are blind and/or deaf ...). All of them concern this Alabama school. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of Wiseman's filmography. I spent a couple beautiful weekend afternoons in April a decade ago watching NEAR DEATH and I never looked at life, or movies, the same way ...

Back to the Winter wrap up. Many of the darkest days near the Winter solstice are spent on the couch, under a comfy blanket, watching the TV, preferably with a jar of liquor or coffee in hand. One tired morning I consumed two black cups and stumbled upon the beautifully remastered print of 200 MOTELS, showing on Turner Classics. How is it possible that such a movie was produced and actually released by a major corporation in one of the most uptight countries in our incredibly uptight planet? I could listen endlessly to Ringo Starr talk nonchalantly about the guys in the band and their varied strategies for finding “pussy” on the road, or the groupies complaining that the term “penis” sounds so “medicinal”. I’d tried more than once to watch the movie from beginning to end and failed to complete the mission but for whatever reason on this particular wintry morning it all made perfect sense. Yes, it’s stunning that Mark Volman can’t help but mouth the lines of the other performers, or that nobody told him to stop it (but not suprising at all that they didn't bother to re-shoot any of those sequences). Still, the music is incredible. It was inspired to drag the 10LP Mystery Box out of the archives for the first time in a decade or so and spin the first side of the LP entitled “Beyond the Fringe of Audience Comprehension,” essentially an alternate studio take of the core 200 Motels material. Good stuff.

That’s not to say I didn’t get out at all during the black month of eternal night. Early in December I wandered into the weird cement labyrinth called the Berkeley Art Museum and listened to some deep drones sourced from crudely fashioned analog “boopers” courtesy of Negativwobblyland (aka "We Dared Ourselves to Call Ourselves This"; seriously, that's a band name right up there with Metalliloureedica). The best sounds of that night were due in large part to the musicians' appreciation for the deep acoustic possibilities of the space (previously explored by Terry Riley, Ellen Fullman, and others --- would be nice to see a Date Palms gig there ...). I closed my eyes and levitated for seconds at a time.

Preceding NWL was a presentation of some old and new work by Bryan Boyce, whose videos include some of the most hilarious and sublime audiovisual responses to the worst (best?) bullshit that has ever been shoved in humanity's collective face. A couple examples of the former and latter (or is it latter and former?):

We were lucky that night to see tiptop video presentations of found-material/collage masterpieces on par with the similarly inspired works of Anger and Conner, as well as previews of some future classics yet to be subjected to deep, deep contemplation by the pathetic golden-leashed lawyers the would-be copyrightist asshole rulers of our planet. At least one audience member lamented the absence of America’s Biggest Dick from the collection, and we, too, wished it had been shown, for obvious reasons.

Officially, Spring is still more than a month away. But we didn't have much of a winter here in the East Bay (a couple weeks of dry chill but that was it) so f u c k i t I'm calling Spring now. The aloes are blooming.

The Fall of another Year ...and a new Malcolm Mooney LP!

2011-09-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

There is, of course, only one Malcolm Mooney, but there have been quite a few incarnations of the Tenth Planet over the years. And there was this band called Can that you might have heard of. And occasionally the Tenth Planet would cover some of Malcolm's Can songs. The version of the band on this new record performed nothing but Mooney-era Can covers for a brief period of time (just two live gigs in 2010, and some rehearsals). Two of the band's four members (Peter Conheim and Marc Weinstein, on bass and drums respectively) have backed Malcolm for quite a few years now. The other fellers, Stephen Clarke and Len Paterson (guitars), were new to the mix but fit in just like the two middle fingers of a glove: perfect. Together with Malcolm, a "weirdo poet singer guy" who occasionally sings in strange tongues and uses his own voice box for tape delay, they succeeded in laying down some really beautiful shit. Both live performances were, thankfully, multi-tracked for future enjoyment. We skimmed the creamiest versions of the best tunes and pressed them onto some really lovely blue vinyl, 398 copies for the world, and there's even a lyric sheet so you can convince yourself that those really are the words.

$10 postpaid in the US
$13 postpaid Canada
$20 everywhere else

paypal to :: records [at] milviason.com

On Beyond Bowles

2011-07-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

The first album of Moroccan music I heard was a friend's copy of Paul Bowles' classic "Music of Morocco" 2LP for the Library of Congress, originally released circa 1972. I was an instant fan. And Bowles' efforts to capture the sounds of "traditional" Moroccan music, especially dance music, before the inevitable day when nearly every African musician would be exposed to "modern"/"Western"/"pop" music (for worse ... or better! or neither!) made inspired reading (Bowles' liner notes here). According to the Library of Congress web page:

Bowles collected in 23 villages, towns, and cities along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, from Goulimine in the Sahara to Segangan in the Rif country, and inland through the Middle and Grand Atlas ranges to Zagora in the Anti-Atlas. Due to the political situation at the time, Bowles was not able to record in the southeastern region.

Ultimately Bowles deposited about 70 hours of reel to reel tape with the Library of Congress and now, evidently, there's even an effort under way to digitize the whole thing and make it available for everyone to stream.

Five six or years after first hearing the record (about 20 years ago now), I decided to go to Morocco myself and make my own recordings. I had heard that the Sun City Girls did this sort of thing, and I knew Mark Gergis who had travelled to the Middle East and Thailand and did the same. How hard could it be? So I sold off a bunch of records (e.g., my Sonic-autographed copy of Recurring with the textured cover -- never replaced; Shadow Ring's City Lights LP -- eventually found another copy; Mt. Rushmore LP on Dot -- still looking, won't pay more than $10) and took off for my North African solo adventure with a camera, and a cheap walkman, and stupidly designed giant backpack.

To make a long story short: in Tangiers, I met Bowles in his apartment and he advised me there was nothing musically interesting happening in Tangiers and he advised I head out to Berber country; the next day I was paraded around town for about a half hour at knife point by a guy whose name I can't remember but we parted hospitably ("goodbye, my friend!"); I recorded a few calls to prayer in the pre-digital era (redundant in view of Justin Bennet's quintessential documentation); in Fez, I recorded an insanely drunk man outside my window who kept me awake for an hour at 3 a.m.; in Meknes I drank the water and got sick as a dog; in Taza I was rescued by one of the local alcoholics and cured; in Saidia I hung out on the beach with the lifeguards until my camera was ripped off and my spirt of adventure destroyed.

Just prior to this last incident I spent a great evening smoking hash with these lifeguards in a lonely building that was so close to the Algerian border that we couldn't piss in Morocco if we were standing behind it. That evening I learned that Christopher Columbus was actually born in Morocco (I believe this is still matter of debate among some scholars) and also that there is a Moroccan fable about a "pale turtle" who tried to fly but flipped over and was eaten by ants (probably a reference to my backpack).

Other than the calls to the prayer and the 3 am drunken rant, the only recording I obtained was a French woman on the supertrain alerting us that the buffet car was open.

In retrospect, I was ill-prepared and just a tad unlucky (although somehow I managed to import an 1/8 pound of mahjoun stuffed into a dried antelope head).

I also remember now that prior to the trip I sold my copy of Joan LaBarbara's "Tapesongs" and an original copy of the Eater LP. I would love to hear the former again. I never really missed the latter.

But this story has an extremely happy ending, at least from my perspective, because other folks (e.g., the Bishop Bros., Hisham Mayet, the aforementioned Gergis etc) had a lot more dedication to the cause than I did. And so it was that I found myself last Friday at the Rickshaw in San Francisco (my second indoor live music show in a week and also my second indoor live music show in god knows how many years) dancing like a freak to the sounds of Group Doueh. I'd been following Doueh's releases closely on the tireless Sublime Frequencies label, especially because the first LPs (which, if understand correctly, were more or less archival releases of cassettes dating back to the mid 80s) included several tracks which were remarkably balls out for a what was purported to be a wedding band in an alcohol-shunning culture. There was a blasted aspect to the recordings which evoked, at least from my coign of vantage, the best elements of American psych circa 1966-68.

Group Doueh has definitely changed since the days when those cassettes were recorded. In fact, they seemed to have changed a bit even since the last Sublime Frequencies release (Zayna Jumma) was recorded. The track on that CD that was closest to the overall vibe of the Rickshaw was probably the last one ("Wazan Doueh"): a tight drum beat into, through, and around which Doueh and the rest of the band groove, instantly confusing the issue of who is keeping the pulse, man or machine. And that's the essence of dance music, or at least good dance music, as far as I'm concerned. The first number seemed like a rough take to me ... it took most of its length to click for whatever reason (possibly intentional). But they were solidly in (or out) of one groove or another for the rest of the night.

I know I wasn't alone in my bliss because from where I was standing I could see the sold-out crowd clapping and wriggling in ecstacy for minutes at a time. Some of the numbers had a great reggae-inflected pop flavor that seemed especially evocative of the strange eighties. There's not a whole lot of vids out there yet; these are pretty nice:

(yes, the sound in one channel is effed up distorted; good news is that there's a good chance the entire show was recorded off the soundboard so maybe we'll see a synch up down the road)

I won't deny that it was a hoot to see Doueh stroking his axe behind his head but for it's his more rhythmic, percussive playing that gets me moving. The bass was handled by El Waar Bamaar (Doueh's son) via keyboard and he was simply out of this world for most of the set. If you've got a live drummer and you want to achieve lift-off, it helps if the drummer is a tad ahead of the beat. But if you've got a drum machine (which Doueh did on this tour) then it's up to the bass and El Waar fuckin dropped the floor out of the Rickshaw. And regardless of who or what is producing the beats on stage, the experience only gets better with audience participation. Polyrhythmic hand-clappers are welcome. Bonus points if you can get Halima to look you in the eye and smile.

After Group Doueh left the stage, we were treated to another Gergis DJ set and the floor cleared out to reveal the best of what SF has to offer: second and third generation neo-hippies unafraid to make dancin' fools of themselves, frooging to pan-Arabic disco in the dim light of completely unrelated (and inaudible) cheeseball Thai music videos. And so it went until the music was over and they turned on the lights. My new friends Saskia and Rauf convened outside for hugs and kisses goodbye, we thanked Hisham and Mark for the good times, and dispersed into the refreshing bay fog. My feet are still twitching ...

'Tis the Season

2011-07-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

Rather strange that St. Dominic's Preview isn't in print on CD ... what's the story with that? I think this track is most readily available in the non-virtual format on a great 12" (?!) on Slow to Speak (with a couple other essentials) ... or you can still find original LPs cheap from decent people.

As it happens, it was hotter than hell today by the San Francisco Bay. But as of one a.m., it's one of those cool, cool nights Van was singing about.

One short trip to San Francisco, one long trip down memory lane ...

2011-06-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I don't get out as often as I should, and certainly not as often as I used to. In case you haven't figured this out already, I really enjoy listening to records. In my home. With my pipe. And my wine.

Back in the good old days, I used to get out to the big city to see shows at least once a week. I'd even drive up to fuckin Chico or down to L.A. for one night just to see a favorite band or, sometimes, to check out a band that I'd never heard before simply because someone said I "needed" to see them play. If memory serves, I must have seen about half the shows that the Thinking Fellers played in the Bay Area from 1992-1995. It doesn't seem possible that they could have opened for The Wedding Present at the I-Beam on Haight Street almost twenty years ago but I know it happened because I saw it with mine own two peepers. It was just the second show I'd seen after moving to Berkeley (the first was My Bloody Valentine at Slim's, earlier in the winter of 1992, during which I suffered minor but permanant hearing loss). But I digress.

Flash forward to this past Thursday at the Hemlock in SF where I heard and witnessed an actual live performance in a club for the first time since ... cripes, I don't know when. And wouldn't you know it? I had a pretty good time. I wish I hadn't burned the roof of my mouth beforehand on a horrifically boring slice of pizza (Napoli's on Polk St. - avoid). That was not exactly a good time. But The Hemlock offers little paper bags of warm tasty peanuts in the shell for just a buck and that made up for my weak dinner. Of course, it would be an act of intestinal terrorism to fill ones stomach with peanuts. Thankfully, the keg of Guiness at The Hemlock lasted all night long.

I first heard about the Hemlock show a month ago or so when I wrote to Bill Orcutt about where I could catch him playing and snag copies of the two singles I heard he was selling at his shows. Bill told me about this Hemlock show and then, of course, I immediately spaced it until I found myself bored off my fucking ass (as usual) at the salt mine. It occurred to me to check the Internets to see if I had indeed missed the gig, which I presumed was the case. But in fact it was happening that very night and lo and behold who was listed as one of the opening acts but Date Palms, whose first album on Root Strata had burned a sizable and very pleasurable hole in my consciousness earlier this year.

And I realized then that I could easily walk from the salt mine to the Hemlock. And so I did.

The Hemlock is a rough space for a quiet band to play because the room where the band plays is separated from the bar noise (and there's plenty of it, including a jukebox) by just a few strips of thick, transparent plastic not unlike what separates the customer service section of your butcher from the room where the sides of beef are hanging. I would have liked Bill (or the sound engineer) to crank up the volume on the guitar ten to 100-fold louder than what I was hearing. That would approximate the visceral, physical experience I get at home when I throw the first track of 'Debts' onto the turntable at eleven. But so it went. It was even rougher for opener Jozef Von Wizzem, the lutist player whose gentle, thoughtful compositions, of all the music heard that night, would have most benefitted from a stage farther removed from the jabbering din of Thirsty Thursday revellers.

Judging strictly from the applause meter, the biggest thrill of the night was probably delivered by Derek Monypeny who I previously knew only as the guy who self (?) released an interesting LP of his own solo oud recordings titled after one of the most famous mondegreens in the catalog of one of the most embarrasingly swank bands in the history of popular music. As the end of his set drew near, Monypeny took a couple swigs from a pint on stage, bantered with the mostly sympathetic, supplified audience about the joys of imbibing (although that sentiment was palpable already from the bar next door), picked up a grain-finished Gibson SG and began improvising a taxim of pure feedback without touching the strings. That's not to say that the guitar was left unstimulated next to the amplifier. Monypeny's fingertips were all over the body, tapping up a storm like Sammy at the Sahara. If I was standing in the other room, I'd have guessed someone had plugged in their goat bladder bagpipes. Eventually Monypeny began picking at the actual strings, at which point it started to get loud and, soon afterwards, loud and fucked up. At a critical and appropriate point, peak intensity was deemed and Monypeny pulled the plug. Expletives were shouted, along with the usual whoops and animal noises. Personally I would have fled the stage at that point, with the audience ready to buy me drinks for the rest of my life. Instead, Monypeny put the guitar down and returned to his oud. "Do an acoustic version!" some wise-ass shouted. Frankly, I couldn't tell you what Derek actually played (it was not "Wild Thing") as the previous number was still reverberating in my skull. Through the magic of the Internets, you don't even have to trust my dodgy review, you can just see this number for yourself:

All of this additional music was just bonus gravy on my biscuits, though, because Date Palms were the first band to take the stage and I could have left immediately after their set and been perfectly satisfied. As noted above, I took instantly to their LP because it perfectly melded certain essences of deep droning faves (e.g., Eno, Flynt) with minimal, down-tempo repetitive bass riffage (a la my favorite Les Rallizes numbers) and occasionally some lovely Fender Rhodes keyboard juicin it up like Keith Godchaux on a '73 Bird Song. The closest anybody came to dancing at this gig was when Marielle Jakobsen (violin, flute, keyboards, and the bass player on the LP) got on the keys and started rocking back and forth to the percussionless groove. If someone in the crowd was generous with the goony birds, or happened to have a pair of maraccas, I could see some free spirits getting gribby on the dance floor while the Palms are swinging. Doesn't anybody remember how to do The Eggbeater?

One of the distinctive features of the Date Palms' album was Marielle's righteous bass playing so I was momentarily befuddled when the band presented itself as a three-piece for their Hemlock gig. On the LP, it's mainly Marielle and Gregg Kowalsky (electronics, guitars) playing all the instruments. As Marielle informed me afterwards, for live performances it's typically a trio or a quartet (when their tambura player is available) "because it's hard to play the bass and the violin at the same time." The bassist for most (all?) of these live gigs is Trevor Montgomery (Lazarus, the Drift, Tarantel) and he certainly delivered the goods at the Hemlock, often filling the room with lovely beat frequencies, the natural mate to the constantly evolving, revolving long tones produced by his bandmates.

Evidently there is a short European tour in the works and a new 12" on Mexican Summer due in mid-August that sounds very, very promising. In between there are a couple gigs (at least) scheduled for this summer in San Francisco, including one at St. John's Episcopal Church in SF at the end of July. More info about Date Palms (pretty much all you need to get started) can be found here. Check 'em out.

UPDATE: Someone posted a decent vid of a bit of the Date Palms performance at the Hemlock. Unfortunately the beating of the low frequencies isn't easily captured and conveyed at YouTube's bit rate but you get the idea ....

A Retrospective Emarf fo Dnim

2011-05-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

Woodbe went on a wild tear earlier this month and made me feel like a guilty, lazy shit for not writing more. Of course we lack a certain degree of discipline here and we're more than a little proud of it. Like the Pig famously shouted to the dork vainly attempting to "emcee" a Dead concert: DON'T BE PROGRAMMING IT, BABY.

Nevertheless, it seems like the right thing to do to pass the word when something fine reaches our ears and leaves an impression worth remembering for at least a few days (because who knows when our galtian overlords will pull the plug).

So I thought I'd talk abou this vinyl reissue of Stan Hubbs "Crystal" album by Companion Records, which for my money is the finest of their products to date, with the possible exception of the Luie Luie "Touchy" reissue (which was CD only, for you purists -- I know you're out there!).

Originally released in 1982, Hubbs' only album has been tagged as "stoner rock" and I suppose if you want to reduce it to its basest level, it's not wildly inaccurate. But that description applies equally well to Steve Miller's "Space Cowboy" or Jimi's "Are You Experienced" and little or nothing on this LP sounds remotely like either of those. I'm going to take the cheap way out and say it's the bastard offspring of Rumor's-era Fleetwood Mac (thanks to Kriss O'Neill's excellent vocals on a few tracks, and the relatively chill tempos and arrangements of the songs, including the "rockers") crossed with MX-80 (only by virtue of Hubb's Rich Stimm-esque deadpan delivery). Unlike a lot of one-off "local" albums that disappear upon release only to be "discovered" by some thrift store gold miner decades later, this one is more of a grower with a consistent vision, as opposed to an LP consisting of 9 tracks of pure crap amidst which is buried a single nugget with modest camp value. In large part, that's due to the excellent drumming throughout by one Ron Castro (like the rest of the band, he appears to be twenty years younger than Hubbs). Castro's drumming is solid where it needs to be solid, just flashy enough to let you know he's digging it, and on the downbeat tracks, he's "exquisitely sensitive" (props to my high school biology teacher for that phrase). That said, those looking for a cheap thrill will find it in the last half of the first track on side 2 ("The Best Man for Some Jobs Is A Woman), a jam that sounds like Terry Brooks attempting to solo his way out of the deep end of The Afflicated Man's peanut butter jar.

That tasty bit of apocalyptic improvisation is followed by 'Golden Rose,' a lovely example of the fogged over Pacific Coast reggae sound that I associate more with the mid-70s than the early 80s (probably Hubbs was playing it back in the 60s). It was while listening to this track for the first time that I began wishing for a lyric sheet. And lo and behold when I gently spread those thick laminated cardboard lips apart I found not just a lyric sheet but a lovely lyric booklet (with drawings!) ... and even better: the lyrics are overflowin with pleasantly browned out vibes like this:

Four things will make you happy

The wise man beamed

Four things to make you

Cool as the breeze:

And the last is to have no ambition.

(from 'Golden Rose'). Yes, I do believe that Mr. Hubbs nailed it.

I Guess I Need to Get Out More

2011-03-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.forcedexposure.com/bin/search.pl?search_string=SR+42011LP&searchfield=exkeyword

'Something You Can Hide In' is full tilt psychedelia that features every psychedelic trick in the book with fabulous results, this number reminds me a great deal of Love's underrated Four Sail album." --Head Heritage "

There are underrated Love LPs???

The Latest Batch: Jaki Jakizawa LP and Bad Drumlin Grass 7"

2011-03-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

There was a taste of Jaki bleepage at the end of the first side of the 'Just a Little Bit of Milvia Son' sampler 7". This 12", entitled "Can You Feel the Juices?", goes quite a bit further, and in vastly different directions depending on which side one chooses to spin (we recommend playing both sides, in succession, repeatedly!). The entire first side is a breezy analog synth flight through the low-hanging clouds of dirty funk and upwards into a pink and green sky where the smell of fajitas mingles with the scent of White Rhino and other contemporary cultivars. Side B is a pulsating drum-less drone that flirts with the vaguely sinister but spends most of its energy swimming upstream in that beautiful Teutonic canal where melancholy and euphoria combine to make something that could almost be pop if it didn't melt your face. The icing on this lysergic cake is the killer silkscreened artwork (front and back) courtesy of Alan Sherry (of the famed Siwa Records label). Plus every copy comes with a set of Jaki stickers that will come in handy the next time you are walking through the church parking lot and feeling bored.

At the same time, we are unleashing our first FREE 7" (hopefully not the last!), "All Night Long" by Bad Drumlin Grass.

This one has been a long time coming, for a number of reasons, but the intent from the beginning was always to let it loose for nuthin. The economy blows bloody chunks and at the same time the cost of new vinyls keeps going up. At the present rate, the average price for a new LP (even a shitty one) will be $20 within a few years. With unemployment likely to stay at 10% or thereabouts for at least that long, who the hell can afford to invest in some freak's music? Anyways, enough politics. On this 7" slab, the Grass present the title song in two versions. Side B is identical to Side A except a portion of one lyric (oh yes, there's singing) has been censored so our favorite radio stations could get in on the action without incurring the wrath of the douchebags at the FCC. And we didn't just get any random yahoo to do the censoring, we got the immortal Richard Lesser to perform one of his infamous overdubs. If you've ever owned a copy of Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moo' (Wembley '74) on vinyl you might recognize his handiwork. Or you can simply enjoy Side A in the comfort and safety of your own home.

The Jaki Jakizawa LP is $10 postpaid in the US, $13 postpaid Canada, $20 postpaid everywhere else.

The Bad Drumlin Grass 7" is FREE with any order, or $3 postpaid in the US. Right now I think I can do $6 postpaid in Canada and $11 postpaid elsewhere. One copy per order, of course. ;)

Paypal :: records [[[a.t]]] milviasonD0Tcom, or drop a line at the same address if you wish to order a bunch of stuff.

Fuck the Olympics

2010-02-20T19:52:00.000-08:00

There are countless excuses for a reasonable person to express the above-mentioned sentiment to his or herself, or to another. The asinine commercials. Bob Costas' weak attempt to become one of the Jet Mahogany Hair People. Al Michael's hair plugs. The endless parade of white X-Gamers in their lame pseudo-flannel "uniforms" doing skateboard tricks for "gold."

It is to puke.

But on the other hand there is the exalted sport of ski jumping or, as ideally practiced, "ski flying." And of course I am conjuring up your recollections of one of my favorite celluloid memories, Werner Herzog's "Great Ecstacies of the Sculptor Steiner," which any tiny professor could easily argue is a condensed, if not the most perfectly condensed, example of Herzog's best sensibilities. I'm not going to rehash the aesthetic of the sublime.

But I do remember the first time I saw the movie at San Francisco's Goethe Institute sometime in the mid 1990s (the most complete restrospective of Herzog's movies in the US, at least that I'm aware of), projected in 16mm, as it was originally shot. And I remember the two peak moments in the movie as if they were yesterday. The later of the two shots is the final shot, where the great Walter Steiner has completed a mind-shattering jump and is raising his arms, a darkened glyph melting into a white field of ice, his humanity subsumed by the grain of the film until only a fundamental symbol of human ecstacy remains. It's a quintessential Herzogian moment, awesomely enhanced (as typical of many of Herzog's films up through Fitzcarraldo) by the golden chiming of Florian Fricke's and Daniel Fishelsher's musical accompaniment (not sure exactly which track this but it sounds a lot like "Aus Lebten Die Engel Auf Erden" from the US Polydor soundtrack of Fitzcarraldo....).

Which brings us to the heart of this moment's contemplation: it is 2010 and technology has evolved to the point where high speed film (or ultra slow motion, from the viewer's perspective) has been rendered nearly mundane, but what in the goddamn fuck is NBC's broadcast editor thinking?! Because rather than blowing everybody's minds with the ski flying money shot, the coverage cuts away every fucking time, from sweet "flyer's vantage" shots to mundane spectator's pov bullshit.

For comparison, watch this clip from "Great Ecstacies" starting at 6:44

In particular, catch the moment starting at 7:00, when the Vuh soundtrack is really coming on, when Steiner is ninety degrees to the camera, and watch it keep coming until that miraculous moment at 7:21-7:26 when a kaleidoscopic pattern of parked buses drifts lysergically across the screen.

And that's the sort of image that we never see broadcast. As that stain upon humanity Craig T. Nelson infamously asks in "Poltgergeist": Why?!!?!??!?!? Why?!?!!!?!?!?

Because it's clear that the camera is set up perfectly to provide this image. It's just that whoever the dumbfuck editor is, he/she is choosing to cut away. Every. Fucking. Time.

Alright, enough ranting. Here's a trivia question for the commenters (who will be the first??): on what Popul Vuh album (CD or vinyl or "none") can you hear the musical accompaniment (a solo Fishelsher piece, I'm not mistaken) to the aforementioned filmic passage (7:02- 9:00)?

This Is What The Hell Happened

2009-10-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

I went to sleep last year around the holidays after a big drunk, woke up ten months later with dirty feet and dried blood under my fingernails, checked my shorts and lo and behold! there were three shiny new Milvia Son Records releases.

The first release is a label sampler 7" with four tracks (about nine minutes music, altogether), each by a different artist, some of whom have appeared on the label already (Bad Drumlin Grass), some of whom have records that will be simultaneously released (Bob Frankford aka Old Yeller & The Pigbites), some of whom have records imminently forthcoming (Jaki Jakizawa) and some of whom have fortunes which are presently less readable than the eye of a chicken (Petomane). A little bit of music, a little bit excessive, and a little bit surreal.

250 copies for the world, $6 ppd in the US, $7 ppd Canada, $12 ppd everywhere else (or $5 with purchase of any LP). Paypal :: records [[[a.t]]] milviasonD0Tcom

And the third full-length Bad Drumlin Grass LP "Live at Timber Cove" is ready to roll out of the hangar:

Maybe more accurate to say "nearly" full-length as the first side has been engineered to play at maximum depth at 45 rpm by the unimpeachable Jon Golden. If you're familiar with the "Birth" track from the "Birth/Afterbirth" CDR, then you'll recognize the headspace plundered here, albeit sans drums and with a decidedly more, shall we say, purposeful intent ... On the cover you can see The Grass playing in the shadow of a "peace missile" carved by Benny Bufano (see, e.g., this write-up for more on the location).

300 copies, $10 ppd in the US, $12 Canada, $20 everywhere else.
Paypal :: records [[[a.t]]] milviasonD0Tcom

The last record in the batch is Bob Frankford's debut LP, entitled "Songs for Nadine,"with Bob recording as "Old Yeller & The Pigbites."

According to Bob (who admitted that his memory of the early days was a bit ... hazy), all parts were recorded by him, laid down one track at a time using a Sony dual cassette deck that belonged to his roommate and is now about as close to the ancient core of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as Ronnie Reagan's first White House diaper. This was described by Bob as an imagined homage to the Basement Tapes as played by Lou Reed, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, along with a few "experiments in feedback" to thicken the soup. When queried about the possibility of a Volume 2, our Magic 8 Ball said that "signs point to yes" ...

300 copies, $10 ppd in the US, $12 Canada, $20 everywhere else.
Paypal :: records [[[a.t]]] milviasonD0Tcom

And now if you'll excuse me I need to revisit what I wrote last year before I fell off the edge of the world. I probably made some ridiculous promises about my next blog entry.

A Very Hospitals Christmas

2008-12-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

After listening to a few sides of Blind Lemon Jefferson while stoking some logs, I wasn't quite sure what to reach for next until my eyes happened to rest upon the tropical photograph adorning The Hospitals' Hairdryer Peace. It doesn't look as if the picture was taken in Hawaii, although possibly it might have be a picture of part of a TV screen in a hotel room in Hawaii that happened to be showing Mister Roberts or maybe just an episode of Fantasy Island. In any event, it is a modern classic freak's Christmas LP, and not just because it sounds like the Cherry Blossoms doing their crudest boombox version of the Department Store Santas' At the Medieval Castle album.

If you listen closely, you can hear sleigh bells being crushed under reindeer's hooves, double-tracked with digital delay. And something that smells vaguely like burnt ginger bread. It's really all there. If you've ever looked peeked between the blinds at a sky full of clouds and fixed upon one that looked a little bit like both Mick Jagger and Lou Reed, then you will understand how a few moments of this LP feels to the mind. Between those moments is the inside of the pyramid and the tampon magnet at the bottom of a gas station wastebasket. Not so different from a typical Christmas with one's closest fifty relatives.

Ethan at Dusted wrote

Adam Stonehouse, Chris Gunn, Rob Enbom and Rod Meyer spit out one of the most damagingly psychedelic records ever set to wax. Shitstorm noise, cracked folk and rocket fueled punk all running into and on top of each other. Is this a joke? I certainly hope not.

It may not be a joke, but it's more fun than Herb Alpert's Christmas album by a long shot. I'm thinking it has New Years Eve potential, too.

While I'm mentioning other bloggers out there, I'll comment on two things I read recently. First, Doug Mosurock in his year-end reference to the Tommy Jay reissue:

Thankfully, lo-fi is running its course, and the better participants of that mess (Times New Viking, Women, Pink Reason) are doing what they can to keep the good separated from the multitudes of bad.

I agree with everything except the bit about "lo-fi is running its course". As long as "lo fi" includes distortion and other "recording artefacts", then lo-fi will never "run its course." Besides, prior to the Pink Reason, Women and TNK records, there were multitudes of (admittedly far less intelligent and worthy) critics and commenters who had buried "lo-fi" for good, dumped their Siltbreeze vinyl, and invested in CD releases on Rune Grammaphon. Seriously, I can only imagine the bullshit that Doug has to wade through. But as long as miracles like Robert Martin's Long Goodbye LP keep turning up, I'm not hoping that music of any fidelity has "run its course."

And then there was the shock of the year earlier this week when I stumbled upon this in Larry Dolman's essential Blogstitude:

Two or three completely separate times this year I've come across someone saying that "Pink Frost" by The Chills is a great song. I took note, of course, but I've always been more of a post-Xpressway NZ head and ended up never hearing the band or song until today

Say wha ..??!?!!?!??! Larry is a person whom I've never met but, thanks to the miracles of the Internets, has turned me onto some good shit. Like a lot of my favorite music writers, I feel that I can trust him because he digs (for good reason) some of the same shit that I dig, i.e., the Velvets, Fahey, the Sun City Girls and (without shame) good old Grateful Dead. So it was beyond imagining that a cultivated, erudite chap like Larry could not have heard or appreciated The Chills Pink Frost -- almost inarguably the greatest A side of any seven inch to come out of New Zealand ever -- until just this month. Frankly, I'm envious of Larry because as I recall it was a lot of fun listening to that record hundreds of times over the past fifteen years and memorizing every freaking note.

There is a lesson here: keep turning people on to good shit, whatever the fuck it is. My next post will be dedicated to Larry, in that spirit.

Henson Was a Freak

2008-12-12T23:06:00.000-08:00

As times goes by, the importance of imprinting at an early age becomes more obvious:

No Hype

2008-12-12T22:46:00.000-08:00

I saw that my music lover brother Will is hawking a copy of Robert Valente's NO HYPE album at the usual place where buyers should always be wary (unless you're buying from Will, that is). This LP is more than excellent, in my opinion. Here's what I wrote about it earlier this summer when I parted with a spare:

Chris Deden (consumate Simon Joyner bandmate) turned me onto this obscure rarity quite a few years ago and it immediately became one of my favorite records. Time has been very kind and while a whole boatload of previously admired sounds has eroded into worthless piffle before my eyes, this album has just grown mightier in my eyes. Valente stums an electric guitar and, in his haunting voice – lying somewhere between Jandek, Neil Young, and Will Oldham – he sings a variety of existential songs that alternate between sparse two chord dirges and more folky pop numbers. To my ears, the sound is more like early 70s LA coffeehouse folk than anything that could have come out of Iowa City in 1979 … but then there was that Units LP out of Houston around the same time …

There is a strong vibe of redemption running through the record that may turn off those who are prefer their angst unadulterated with references to well-known belief systems. The Jesus dude is name-dropped, e.g., “High School” (“Sittin’ in this high school/ wishing that I was stoned/ everyday this is crazy/ feelin’ I want to go home’/ won’t you come on back/ mr. jesus/ won’t you come on back/ right now”) and “Chain Gang” (“A rollin’ out on a chain gang/ a rollin’ on a chain gang/ I killed that woman I went insane/ rollin’ I’ve got this heavy chain/ I’m callin on jesus/ lord they drove me insane”).

Valente is still working and making CDs. I can confidently say that, other than his instantly recognizable voice, none of his contemporary releases sound anything like his far more austere and dark debut album. When there are so many (nearly all?) dubious Christian rock or “outsider” reissues being peddler these days, it’s a travesty that this album has been virtually ignored since its release nearly 30 years ago. So here’s a fairly spiffy original copy. If you like the sort of music that I like, my advice is to jump on this one. And yes I’m aware of the obvious irony.

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone

2008-11-14T21:46:00.001-08:00

I really must try a bit harder to keep up with the posting. For some time I've been meaning to compile a few of my favorite music vids in that elemental format: the man-woman duet. I'll begin with the basics, Dolly and Porter, singing Parton's "Tomorrow is Forever" circa 1970:

Fantastic version, in every respect.

Then, moving right along from Dolly and Porter's oddly repressed sexuality to Kris and Rita's oddly unrepressed (as in "get a room!") sexuality, we present this classic performance:

I won't post it here but if you need the video equivalent of a cold shower after that, check out Johnny and June's rendition of the same song. Cold, baby.

As much as I'd like to watch Kris and Rita melt the stage with their chemistry, something must be done here to acknowledge two voices that match each other at least as well as Kris and Rita's gonads did (for a time, anyway). These two characters never sounded better together than in this TV footage from 1976:

The last minute or so when the camera moves in is quite nice, as the performers return in unison to the shared mic at the center of the image as if they also shared a brain...

...and last but far from least is a video that is something of a gold standard in terms of the photography of a live performance. Is this "acting"? Were Rita and Kris "acting"? I can't be sure but Linda looks into the camera and out of my computer screen at 2:09 and I think she's looking into the future directly at me. I feel helpless, drowning in reverb. Maybe I need a thick wolly hat.

I always crack up at the cutaway to the douchebag at the end. The spell is broken! We get it, bro'. Cut to the fish and chips commercial.

I'm always interested in seeing more stuff in this vein. So if these ring your bell but you are aware of another that I should know about ... well, fill up the comment box with them.

John Fahey, The Transfiguration, the Ocean, and Days of Auld Lang Syne

2008-10-05T22:49:00.000-07:00

I recently parted with a spare copy Fahey's LP "The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death," and had some fun doing the research so I thought I'd share.

Up to this point, Fahey's LPs had been released on Takoma. This one came out on Riverbaoat Records (I don't know whether the label released anything else; I certainly don't have anything else from the label on my shelves). The edition of the album shown in the photos is not the “pre-subscription” edition (I wish!!!) or the “original” 1966 “Boston address” edition. Rather, this is the 1970 “Cambridge address” edition. The address is the only difference between this edition and the earlier commercial edition. It’s clearly not the 1972 edition because it has the original “Riverboat” font on the front cover (the last picture above shows the lower right portion of the album cover overlayed by the last page of the nice booklet insert that comes with the LP). I learned all this stuff (and more) at Stephen the Beard’s excellent John Fahey blog (specifically, this page) which I highly recommend if you ever find yourself wondering what Fahey vinyl you have and what you still need (God forbid you try to collect it all).

One aspect of Stephen's website I've been waiting for him to attend to is some elucidation of the mystery of the "Early Sessions" LP:

Judging from the notes and track listing on the back cover, the Early Sessions release was intended as a double LP release compiling the 1962-1963 (mostly 1963) recordings of the Blind Joe Death LP and Death Chants LP.

Here's the mystery: every time I see a copy of this record for sale, it includes only one piece of vinyl: Blind Joe Death. Given the dodge-and-weave nature of the Takoma catalog through the mid-60s to early 70s, and the fact that the Early Sessions release was quickly withdrawn, I have always questioned whether this "compilation" was, in fact, ever actually sold with 2LPs in the sleeve. Note also that the sleeve is not a gatefold nor is it any thicker than other Takoma sleeves from the same period.

As you can see from the photos, the single slab of vinyl which came with my copy has a matrix and catalog number unique to the set (i.e., C-1000 Vol. 1). I'd like to see at least a photo of the label (which should read "C-1000 Vol. 2") and runoff groove of a Death Chants LP pressed for this compilation. Otherwise I'm sticking to my story: Early Sessions was never sold with 2LPs in the sleeve, in contradiction to the notes on the back of the sleeve, or if it was sold that way, Takoma simply stuck in spare copies of the Death Chants vinyl (cat. number C-1003) into the jacket.

Go ahead. Make my day. ;)

Back to Transfiguration. What turns Transfiguration into pure gold in my book is the all-time classic Fahey track, “On the Sunny Side of the Ocean,” and a fine version too. You can actually watch Fahey perform the track live in 1978 here:

If that were the only Fahey composition on Transfiguration and the rest was covers of the Osmonds’ Greatest Hits, I’d still be loving it. But in addition there’s “Orinda-Moraga,” and “Death of Clayton Peacock,” two fascinating Fahey compositions that are worth listening to, well, endlessly. Everything else (like the Uncle Dave Macon covers and the particularly lovely “Southern Medley”) is executed with Fahey’s genius ear for invention and his uncanny ability to milk whole cream out of the udder of our musical heritage where so many other artists end up with skim milk (or cheese).

There's a bunch of nice Fahey videos on YouTube, including some cool "instructional" videos that I assume you were made for commercial purposes at some later point in Fahey's life. Because it's one of my favorite songs, I'm partial to this vid of Fahey demonstrating his version of the Bobby Burns song "Auld Lang Syne. "

And if you like that, I highly recommend checking the other immortal video performance of that song, sung by Jean Redpath, with Roscoe Holcomb and Pete Seeger playing along. It doesn't get much better than that. Sadly, that segment of Rainbow Quest (episode 17) is missing from Youtube at the moment ...

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

2008-09-06T08:27:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

(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

2008-09-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

(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

2008-09-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

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.

"The Grass"

2008-08-31T21:36:00.000-07:00

Let's get to the music.

Milvia Son, our affiliated record label, released the first Bad Drumlin Grass CDR and their first vinyl LP (a second vinyl LP due shortly ...)

Here's the cover of the CDR:

I think Ed at Eclipse Records and Nemo at Time-Lag still have a few copies of the CDR to sell. We've got some here as well.

The Invigorating Scent LP can be had from the usual purveyors of kind music (e.g., the above-mentioned folks, Fusetron, or Forced Exposure) . Or you can get it from us.

Some reviews of the LP:

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/658
http://zgun.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html
http://www.blastitude.com/26/#queequeg

"Who am I? Why am I here?"

2008-08-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

These questions have no answers. As long as you remain interested, keep reading.