John Butcher - Winter Gardens (2013)

So here is my Christmas present to all of you, and another big 'fuck you' to vinyl-only releases everywhere (especially the ones without download codes). This year may have been another series of victories for you, lots of (probably) great music has been locked away in the dusty grooves of unwieldy, fragile black platters purchased by a few dozen diehards who are probably to enamored of their mint condition fetish object to dare to actually play it anyway (so much beauty basically thrown in the trash!), but in the end you will never win! There will be a CD reissue eventually, or, as in this case, some good soul with the necessary equipment will manage to rescue the music from its vinyl tomb and release it unto the world - even if it is somewhat tainted by the vinyl crackle and occasional hiccup that inevitably comes with it (oh I'm sorry, that is 'warmth', or 'tactile charm', or 'personality and physicality'. Right.). Oh ye fanciers of the rare and pretty artifact over the actual sounds contained therein, what is the purpose of music if not to be heard?
Here some wag actually asserts that 'this music is made to be heard on vinyl', unfortunately without any further explanation. I sure would have liked to know the logic behind such a bizarre claim.
In any case. After months of searching, all of a sudden in some dark recess of the interweb up popped a rip of this solo LP by John Butcher (1 file per side), released early in 2013 on a Greek label called Kukuruku. Thank you, anonymous music liberator! For this momentous occasion I downloaded some special software that allowed me to split up the tracks into separate mp3 files, making me feel like a genuine computer wizard - a rush which lasted several minutes. I'm pretty sure I've found the correct point at which a new track begins, even! And here is the fruit of our joint labour: now we can all have a listen, undistracted by the split seams and bent corners we would have had to pine over if we had bought a physical copy. And this definitely is worth a listen: Butcher already has about 10 solo albums out, but up to now every new one has repaid the attentive listener with some new thrills, and this one is no different. Since I'm still reeling from last night's pre-Christmas dinner and I suck at describing music anyway, I'm just going to leave you with an excerpt from the label blurb:
"The album’s two longer tracks were recorded in December 2011 at St. Anne's & St. Agnes 
Church in London by Simon Reynell (Another Timbre label) and document his acoustic 
solo while interacting with the environment’s natural feedback; evolving tonal patterns 
and harmonics of circular breathing, repetitive musical riffs and silent moments create an 
atmosphere with a special character.
 Two shorter tracks in “Winter Gardens” document Butcher’s skills incorporating
 microphone feedbacks. Recorded in Milwaukee, October 2011, the result is resembling
 electronically synthesized sounds while resonances of different parts of the saxophone
 blend with oscillating re-amplified sounds." So there you go. Tell me, what more could you possibly want in your stocking?
Here it is.
320 kbps, but of course that doesn't really mean much in this case.

PS. Sorry about the shitty picture of the cover. I had to make do with what I could find online. And of course 12" covers don't fit in most scanners anyway. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, despite springing from an actual pet peeve of mine, this was mostly written in jest. It is not an insult to your glorious collection of black and swirly colour slabs of wax in their pristine gatefolds, nor an invitation to engage in yet another tiresome 'CD versus vinyl' debate. Comments on that subject will be ignored, possibly deleted. Merry fucking Christmas!

And just like that I'm back to hibernating.

Taku Sugimoto - Tori (2001)

The front, sporting artwork by Masae Tanabe.

By popular demand, here is yet more Taku Sugimoto (杉本拓). 'Tori', released as a slimcase CD by the Off Site gallery to coincide with an exhibition ('Birdy Program') of bird* paintings by Masae Tanabe (たなべまさえ), is from the same period as 'Italia', and though I enjoy it less than that one, it's definitely something people need to be able to check out. Therefore, as it has been out of print for over a decade, I feel it is my solemn duty to share it with you, and I do not take this duty lightly. Now could some other people with old and rare electro-acoustic improv recordings in their collection please follow my example?

The back of the CD. Not much to see, but posted here in the interest of historical research.

Four longish tracks here find Sugimoto-san performing live at the gallery, first on six-string bass guitar, next on electric guitar, then on contact microphone and his guitar case (!), and finally on acoustic guitar.
Limited to 400 copies, plus 100 additional copies that came with the book Tanabe issued especially for the exhibition.
320kbps.
Here.

*Tori (鳥) is the Japanese word for 'bird'. The kanji (character) is based on a drawing of a bird, as can be seen when you compare it to the bird in the artwork.

The bird is the word.

Richard Youngs - Live In Salford (2008)

This may be upside down, who knows.

Richard Youngs is one of my favourite artists when it comes to that whole folk-with-a-twist scene, but he's also one of those artists who will release just about anything they record (I've lost track of what he's released this year alone) - and if no label will have it, he'll just do it himself on his own No Fans imprint.

The 17th (!) of these home-made CDR releases is 'Live in Salford', a whopping 50 of which were released in 2008 and available exclusively through that ecstatic channel of cosmic hype surrounding anything that is cottage-produced and purposely made to sell out in less than a week and become sought-after by collectors, thus lending an aura of CULT upon the creator, and if possible, also a bit upon the seller - yes, I'm talking about Volcanic Tongue, and yes - I'm taking the piss of course (but there's something to it, admit it...). This one shows all the usual trappings: unique packaging for every single copy, hand-stamped and written wax paper wrapper, white stamped CDR carrying a 28 minute live recording, 25 minutes of which consists of ecstatic flute playing, followed by a coda of Youngs' trademark singing, equal parts folky and psychedelic. While this is in no way an essential Youngs release (try 'Sapphie' or 'River Through a Howling Sky' or 'Under Stellar Stream', to name just a few classics - or this year's 'Amplifying Host'), this is definitely a charming by-product of a relentless artist whose heart overfloweth with a goodly matter. Not a good starting point, but a nice addition to the more easily available recordings for the - oops, I almost said fans.
Here.
320kbps.

Mon.goose - At Penguin House (1999)

There was a request for more Sugimoto, so here is Mon.goose;. If that punctuation is part of the band name is a matter of debate - considering that they don't use it on the inside of the wrapper thingy around the piece of paper that serves as packaging here, nor on this here website, I'm starting to think it's just an annoying one-off piece of tomfoolery on the cover. I'm also starting to regret that I tagged the files with the period between the syllables (but without the semicolon!), but there's nothing I can do about that now is there? I mean: there's nothing I am willing to do about it. Anyway........... What is this Mongoose?
Why, Wikipedia teaches us it's a weasel-like carnivore that lives in Africa and Asia, and whose name, from the Marāṭhī mangus (मंगूस), is a prime example of folk etymology (the plural mongeese is attested, even).

I have non-retractile claws and a large anal scent gland.

We are primarily concerned here with the 'band' (group? ensemble? crew?) though, at least for the time being. So, Mon(.)goose(;) (on the other hand, you wouldn't want to have them confused with some Hungarian glitch-hop producer, would you?) was the short-lived trio of Tetuzi Akiyama (秋山徹次, guitar, electronics), Utah Kawasaki (ユタカワサキ, synthesizer) and Taku Sugimoto (杉本拓, guitar), active around the turn of the millennium when the scene in Tokyo was pretty exciting (ok, sure, it still is, but I'm getting pretty fed up with that whole concept-over-actual-sound and why-make-any-sound-at-all?-craze).

Mongoose, the group (Akiyama, Sugimoto, Kawasaki)

On their website they speak of 'minimal noise music', but honestly that's not at all what I hear in it. There's some electric guitar feedbacking and some bloopy synth here, but only your granny would label it noise. It's just to slow and deliberate and spacious and balanced and... dare I say it, relaxing. Sugimoto is to blame for that, I guess; it's just impossible to think of 'noise' when you hear his delicate guitar notes (remember, this is only a short while after his zen - but don't call it that! - masterpiece, 'Opposite'). On the second of two untitled live tracks his notes are initially gathered into dense flurries, but soft, soft... while delicate crackles and hums fill out the palette. Gradually they gain presence, but there's always a stately grace about the entire sound. Whitehouse this isn't. I guess it's an early form of what we call eai nowadays (for lack of a better word... Onkyo seemed promising for a moment, but then that turned out to be a brand of surround sound speakers). A very interesting release if you are familiar with the later work of the artists involved, especially as far as Sugimoto's concerned. Recorded in February and released in September 1999 on Sugimoto's own Slub Music, this hardly ever shows up these days, so...
New link!
320kbps.

David Peel / Kan Mikami - Jirokichi Live at Koenji (2004)

This is probably one of the most obscure Kan Mikami albums, and - let's face it - deservedly so. A split album with some guy named David Peel, who, Wikipedia tells me, is an early performer of punk rock music while at the same time appealing mostly to hippies because of his lyrics about marijuana and "bad cops". Apparently they shared a stage at some point (3 December 2003 to be exact) and thought the recordings deserved a CD release. Somehow I think there have been about a 1000 other and better Mikami concerts throughout the decades that went unrecorded or at least unreleased, but such is life. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the Mikami half per se (though there isn't much we haven't heard in a better version elsewhere either), but the Peel half sounds completely retarded to me. I can't figure out what drew these two together. Not essential by any means, but hard to find and probably of interest to Mikami fans, so there you go.
The Mikami tracks are:
1. インバ (Inba)
2. 五百子先生と山羊 (Yuriko-sensei to yagi)
3. 大きい羊は面白い (Ōkii hitsuji wa omoshiroi)
4. ここまで引かれた線 (Koko made hikareta sen)
5. 枝分かれ (Eda wakare)
6. 端雲～楢山節 (Zuiun / Narayama-bushi)
7. 虎をペットにしてる尼 (Tora o petto ni shiteru ama)
8. 黒く，飛ぶ人 (Kuroku, tobu hito)
9. 美術館 (Bijutsukan)

1 to 6 are from １９７９ (2003), 7 and 8 are from レスボス ('Lesbos', 2002 PSF), and 9 is from アラシ・雨・アラシ ('Arashi Ame Arashi', 1998), all on PSF. Except for the last track, live versions of all of these can also be found on 異議ナシ！('Igi Nashi', 2005 Open) - maybe something for another blog post here, some day.

The titles of the Peel tracks (10-15) are too idiotic to be mentioned here - check the scans I added (including the lyrics). This was released on Captain Trip Records in 2004.
320kbps.
Here.

Carla Bozulich - Unrock Instore Gig Series Volume 4

A nice live recording by Carla Bozulich from Evangelista (and of course from Ethyl Meatplow, The Geraldine Fibbers and Scarnella, way back when). Recorded at the Unrock record store in Krefeld, Germany, in 2007 and released later that year in a limited run of 300 copies. For even better live Bozulich, I recommend you get 'I'm Gonna Stop Killing' (2004 DiCristina Stair Builders). Both have great cover versions of 'Times Square' (Barry Reynolds, but famous in Marianne Faithfull's version). This one also has 'Pissing' by Low, which she'd already covered on the first Evangelista album the year before, and 'Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain' (Willie Nelson). New link!
320kbps.