Sunday, 12 December 2010
December 2010 New Releases!
Finally ready to roll, there are details below. £2.50 per cassette, plus postage and packing. Please email smearcampaign@hotmail.com for a quote. New non-Vermin releases to be added in the next few days.
Total Vermin #48: Taco Bells - Talviunelmia C30
There are but a handful of copies left of these astonishing and under-documented free-jazz Finns' latest, released primarily for their UK tour in November. This cassette finds them in trio formation of drums, double bass and tenor saxophone, wringing more ruckus from those instruments than is strictly decent. The Taco Bells do not indulge in simple blowhard, disconnected Europeanisms, though; a righteous fire burns here, and its a fire that heals as it burns. Act now, or miss out.
Try some here.
Total Vermin #47: CKDH - Summer Trance C41
This is Hockyfrilla and Barbarians' Rhian Thompson's summer album. That being the case, I can only assume that her aestival activities consist of whiting out and falling into paranoid, delusional sleep under bushes in the ornamental gardens of power stations. Insectoid-acoustic scrape and scratch and a dissonant cloud of generator drone unsettle and disturb. The more I listen, the surer I am that it is her best work so far, and imbued with a certain beauty... but not the kind that I'd ever like to look at.
Hear some here.
Total Vermin #46: Ocelocelot - The Umbragechord C30
Another excellent addition to the rich and varied catalogue of Ocelocelot. This cassette finds M. O'Dhubshláine building a post-industrial trance from the
wreckage of the Enlightenment, a Keytar and an Evolver, which internet research reveals to be a synthesiser. The A is pretty sprightly, a sheer electric
blanket that belly-dances you comatose. The flip is darker, a tangerine dream gone sour, with bitter cadences interrogating and a whipcrack precluding escape
or refuge.
Listen to a bit here.
Total Vermin #45: Boom Edan C41
Expatriated Finn, wandering around Scotland in a drunken stupor, records awestruck/disgusted paean to his adoptive home. The A side is a humdinger of tonal electronics, with unexpected welcome-weirdo vocal pomp, recorded live in concert. The B side is also recorded live, but is quite different... you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll punch yourself in the head.
Sound sample here
Total Vermin #44: Servants of Culture, Drinkers of Pearls Volume III C39
Volume III of what people are starting to call the 'Now That's What I Call Music' for people who are sick of music. Collects heavy electronics from CKDH, Ananas Pyramidalis' elegaic synth crescendo, overdriven post-jazz solo percussion from Pascal Nichols (PWHMOBS et al), exhibitionist tension from Bess Keloid, Plum Slate's bent acoustic guitar pluck and shoot 'em up quasi-drone electronics from Luke Vollar of Lanterns' Brohawk project.
A snifter of each here.
Total Vermin #43: Servants of Culture, Drinkers of Pearls Volume II C39
The second volume of Total Vermin's survey of sub-underground auteurism, this cassette collects cranial-mole overprocessed something from Oawre (Joincey of Coits, Inca Eyeball, Stuckometer, etc), a majestic tape fuckup from Gaz Myles of Spoils and Relics, bedroom late-Kraut ponder from King Rib, savage trumpet and drum machine tribalism from Smear Campaign, Irma Vep's (not just emotionally) damaged guitar and vocals and Lovely Honkey's airless pummel and screech.
Dial through the elements here.
Total Vermin #42: Mid Leopard Violet Prism - Carbohydrate Somnambulism C33
In contrast to the recent release on Sick Head, this cassette captures the Prism boys (Ruaraidh Sanachan (Nackt Insecten, Moon Unit) and me) in overloaded electric mode, wresting demons from the wires and threatening the sky. Reverb-heavy guitar lead circles above a static, fluttering organ. A mixer feeds solemnly back to the scorched earth. Heathens seek redemption in ritual.Take a sip here.
Total Vermin #41: Ali Robertson's Ludd Quest - "Just Leave It" C33
Now that he's sorted his hearing out (absolving him from ever having to learn the word 'pardon'), and been forced to confront the other halves of conversations in which he is participating , Usurper knuckle-dragger Ali Robertson has had to find new ways to express his rudeness. How about using the kindly offer of a release of his material as an opportunity to take the piss out of his benefactor? Nice one. Elsewhere on this cassette there is plenty to be joyful about, outside the boundaries of one's expectations, at both ends, of his previous output; from a contemplative and almost stately attitude towards the wee knick-knacks doing their things to a tribal stomp. No shit!
Tear off a hunk here.
Total Vermin #40: Plum Slate - Blues For Death C33
Outsider acoustic guitar moves, with (mostly) subtle electronics. Much more actual guitar-playing than previous Plum Slate outings, and a new approach to tuning and harmony place this cassette some way east and south of Coits; somewhere between Jandek, Elliot Sharp and Istanbul. Not as good as that suggests, obviously. I don't want to get a reputation for being a bighead.
Check it out here
Total Vermin #39: Scrim - Squubble and Beak / Nettles Soup C29
The strongest release yet from Edinburgh loverband Scrim. Beguiling tape-churn, the breathing of human and machine, and contact mics submerged in jelly produce, on the A side, a morphine dream of a faraway building site, and on the reverse, an arts-and-crafts cantilever on the verge of collapse.
Have a wee listen here.
Total Vermin #38: Early Hominids - Alkali / Dilate C33
Early Hominids is the duo of Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club, Vibracathedral Orchestra) and his former Smell and Quim cohort Paul Walsh (nee Nonnen). The Early Hominids material seems something like a more industrial, and yet more abstract, aggro sister to ASC. The music on this cassette is a latticed squelch; the recording of a thousand laser guided automata exploring the Mariana Trench.
Here you may have a listen.
Total Vermin #37: Eric Ostrowski - Tinkle C39
Eric was one half of Noggin, whose records of dizzying, string-damaging improv have floored and rejuvinated me more times than I care to mention. This new solo tape is made up of a series of multi-layered compositions for guitar, violin and electronics, balancing the chaotic with the structured, and paying no mind to sub-genre signposts; preferring to hack its way through the undergrowth to where the most exotic of species can be found.
There is a 3" companion DVD called 'Twinkle" that I have a few copies of, too, listed separately here, while they last.
Here is a sound sample for your enjoyment.
Friday, 29 October 2010
Taco Bells, Pekko Käppi in Manchester, The Gamecock tour, etc.
Total Vermin is humbled to present...
TACO BELLS
http://www.myspace.com/dar
...Amazing, ecstatic, wild, high-energy Finnish free jazz quartet, check these reviews:
"These guys can play for REAL. There’s some genuine emotion going on here, it’s a goddamn microcosmos of feeling waiting for you. No, drop the micro-, that’s making it sound like an understatement – how many expressions can one face make? It’s all here." - Tyrone D.C. Washington
"Totally blazing breakneck free jazz brut from a buncha Finns with a connection to the source. [Taco Bells] whip up the kind of energy storm that would take Brotzmann’s Machine Gun session as a propulsive model while factoring in snatches of raggedy folk melody, the kind of hallelujah overtone style of the post-Ayler choir and odd breakdowns that combine scrabbling strings with knotty drones and wildman grunts." - David Keenan/Volcanic Tongue
PEKKO KÄPPI
http://pekkokappi.com/
Had the privilege of seein Pekko play earlier this year. Jaw-droppingly beautiful Finnish folk music, played on a Jouhikko, a kind of bowed lyre, and sung in a language you don't understand.
"Pekko Kappi (who the hell is this?) is completely amazing--mind blowing in fact. I suppose it's traditional, but its the kind of traditional that makes you wonder why they bothered inventing high fidelity. It's like that track on the nonesuch collection of African music--there was this Ghana woman singing, absolutely nothing else. It completely burned everything else to the ground, and it was just a woman singing. Pekko Kappi makes me feel like some kind of barbarian in regards to my taste in music. Recording this sort of thing even seems rather pointless, since we're all too white to understand (I'm sure Pekko is white too, but I speak of the soul!)" Chris Moon, Blastitude
"This is a solo work on a Finnish "fiddle," called a jouhikko. It could find comparison with Jewelled Antler's more elegant whorl and it also has the quality of a song intoned in a tavern or on a forgotten gypsy byway. Hardcore throat singing, too. The feel of traditional music. Jaw harp over fiddle and the player's movements are caught on mic: like trees rustling or dust kicking. The tracks often have a Tony Conrad feel-- working within a repetitious pattern that opens up more and more each time he repeats it, allowing the listener a moment to step inside the note and look eke out its nuance. The androgynous vocalizations could be a woman or a man mumbling in falsetto. Everything trembles: pine cones, earthy soil. Fireside incantations. Could be a field recording from a century ago. Stunning intensity from such a minimal set-up." Brandon Stosuy, Pitchfork
PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES
http://www.myspace.com/par
Manchester's incredible abstract/beautiful flute and percussion duo, who've rightly picked up plaudits and fans across the globe.
"Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides occupy the same liminal zone between free jazz and abstract sound as Flaherty/Corsano. The duo of drummer Pascal Nichols and flautist Kelly Jones play a form of improvised music that refernces many totemic fire music sources - John Coltrane's LSD-inspired masterpiece Om, the classic Don Cherry/Ed Blackwell Mu sessions or, more specifically, Cherry's soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain - while subverting them with a punk primitive attack that owes as much to Leeds's drone pioneers Vibracathedral Orchestra as it does to the Fluxus-inspired ritual of Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers" The Wire magazine
PLUM SLATE
Picked and plucked non-diatonic improvisation for prepared acoustic guitar.
£6 pounds entry. 8.00pm start.
Taco Bells and Pekko Käppi are also playing...
11.11.10 - Glasgow, 13th Note w/ Rictus
12.11.10 - Edinburgh, The Roxy Art House w/ Usurper
14.11.10 - Leeds, Cardigan Arms
15.11.10 - London, The Miller (London Bridge) w/ Alan Wilkinson
16.11.10 - Brighton, The Cowley Club w/ Bolide, Sunshine Variety
PLUS! The Gamecock are going on tour!
Read this lovely description,
"Duo of Stuart Arnot (Smear Campaign; Plum Slate) and Nick Mitchell (Beach Fuzz; A Wake). They play a kind of arrhythmic, un-danceable funk of high-end frequencies and low-end drum machines, fed through a wah-wah and rammed forcefully into the listener's cerebral cortex. Pitch-shifted casio crap and unadorned Roland Juno shimmer are melded to form what is at once both sweet and listenable and yet still, somehow, horribly repellant. Sitting somewhere uncomfortably, painfully and way away from the hypnogogic pop bandwagon, where the drum machines have bronchitis and the synthesizers sneeze, they are brutally loud, joyfully all-consuming and epic in their prolongation of the crescendo."
30.10.10 - Salford, Islington Mill
31.10.10 - Hull, The Boathouse
1.11.10 - Edinburgh, Sunbear Gallery
2.11.10 - Glasgow, 13th Note
3.11.10 - Leeds, Cardigan Arms
PLUS! Massive new batch of tapes about to drop. Bigger than ever. Will be available initially on The Gamecock tour above.
Friday, 25 June 2010
Monday, 21 June 2010
June 2010 New Releases
Total Vermin #31: Lanterns - Aphotic Zones 1 & 2 C29
Autofluorescent and beautiful drone from wigged-out Leodiensian/Glaswegian/Swedish Kraut-facing duo, weaving guitar and keyboard lines into deep soul trance.
Total Vermin #32: Ghost of an Octopus/Asymptotem split C34
The song remains the same (although perhaps with more warmth?) for GOAO in the first new recording for some time. Asymptotem is an occasional post-Sculptress big drone ensemble, comprised on this recording of Andy Jarvis (guitar), Joincey (bass), Nick Mitchell (drums) and Stuart Arnot (trumpet).
Total Vermin #33: Aviflorae - Journey in Schlaraffenland Parts I - IV C43
Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides + Acrid Lactations = Aviflorae. Swooping keyboards and frenetic bass fill out and further discombobulate PWHMOBS' punk jazz. Echoes of Airway in these abstract and obliterated jams.
Total Vermin #34: Spoils and Relics - Reconstituted Monowhere C28
Churning tapes, nauseous electronics, unexpected sounds and swampish shifts in focus from the hottest new properties in UK underground noise, following up their split LP on Harbinger Sound.
Total Vermin #35: The Gamecock - Reflect Only The Light That Blinds C38
Debut release of arrhythmic drum machine misfirings and laser keyboard drone from new Manchester duo of Nick Mitchell and Stuart Arnot.
Total Vermin #36: Smear Campaign - Funky Cold Demeanour C30
Queasy broken-Dansette and ghetto blaster remix of remix of Tone-Loc's dreadful classic.
£2.50 each, plus postage. Email smearcampaign@hotmail.com for a quote. New releases are the top row in the photo above. Mp3 samples to follow.
Monday, 29 March 2010
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