Salvatore Martirano

L’s GA
Polydor (1968)

Whacked out mix of early electronic and symphonic music from composer Salvatore Martirano (1927 – 1995).
Martirano was a New York native who taught at the University of Illinois and was instrumental in the early electronic music scene, which at the time was heavily rooted in academia.

The title track, L’s GA For Gas-Masked Politico, Helium Bomb, And Two-Channel Tape is a strange, post-modern, psychedelic take on politics utilizing Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (L’s GA, natch) with strings, electronic noise and tape manipulation.

“…a multimedia performance featuring three films, music, and the poet Michael Holloway reciting the Gettsyburg Address through an oxygen mask feeding him helium from a tank whose valve he can control for effect.“

This is a great, spooky-sounding album that would bookend well with Freddie Hubbard and İlhan Mimaroğlu’s Sing Me a Song of Songmy. It’s so weird, in fact, that I’m flummoxed that it isn’t on the notorious Nurse with Wound list.

Fans of strange Euro-Prog such as Michael Chion, Horrific Child, Camille Sauvage or the previously mentioned Hubbard/Mimaroğlu piece would do well to snatch this up.

Thanks to the amazing Brian Cutean for introducing me to (and many more, similarly strange albums recently) this, by way of Daniel F’s Outside World.

This isn’t my rip. After searching high and low for this album I finally requested it on a forum and felt this needed to hit more ears.

Download

The Rapture

Sorry for the low-rez snap. I haven't had time to scan it yet.

David Wilkerson Ministries
No year
Cover art coming soon.

Something I found in a thrift store. It’s an LP credited to David Wilkerson Ministries. I think this is the same David Wilkerson that published the smash-hit best seller The Cross and the Switchblade (we had a school teacher that forced us to watch it one year in grade school) and known for his (typically) off mark religious predictions.

It’s a sort of pre-cursor to all of the Rapture mania that’s been going on for the last decade or so. It’s presented in a sort of Mercury Theater, War of the Worlds style, with all action being conveyed by actors playing newscasters or people being interviewed either about the mysterious disappearances of the righteous or some hideous plan by The Beast.

Although there’s no date anywhere on this LP – and certainly no Satanic Roman numerals – I’m not sure when this came out and I can’t find a shred of info on this on the web, I’m guessing sometime after 1980, based on the clothes on the people on the LP jacket’s back. Also, the fact that in the story the President of the US is one of the raptured, makes me think this is a product of the era of Ronald Reagan. It mentions that this is a soundtrack to a movie of the same name, but can find nary a mention of it anywhere on the web.

Some notes on the quality: on side one there’s some occasional distortion that sounds like clipping. It’s unfortunately on the LP. In fact, even though I’ve listened to this album more than once, while ripping it, I still found myself leaning over to nudge the fader down on my mixer down in an unconscious attempt to try to attenuate what sounds like level clipping. It’s either a poor pressing or inept mastering. Sorry!

That aside, it’s a fun LP. Almost as fun as Forrest McCollough’s Flight F-I-N-A-L, but not quite as batshit crazy (I played both LPs on the week before last’s show).

Side One:

Side Two:

Download side one

Download side two

My first glimpse of Rapture eschatology was seeing a similarly-themed VHS tape that was set in a CNN-type news desk and utilized lots of stock footage of riots, war and famine to tell the story of the Second Coming of Jeebus. A real laugh riot that was forced on us by a crazy, Fundy-Xtian relative. Wish I had it now.

Amusing Screenshot of Stats

Robert Anton Wilson is laughing somewhere.

6/12/09: Weatherman Show

We made an historic link up with the notorious Weatherman (voice of many classic Negativland recordings) up in Seattle, where he and his visiting friend Active Ingredients supplied a steady barrage of found-sounds, police scanner radio and electronic gadget noises. On our end in KBOO studios, Tommy Hollywood supplied ambient keyboard sounds and selections from his voluminous collection of field recordings. I ransacked my own collection of found tapes and sound-bites and played distorted ethno sounds through my laptop. All this was ably co-engineered by Devin, who manned an additional mixer to bring together the arsenal of laptops and effects units. The air-room was overrun by equipment and cables.

(l-r)DJ ManRich and multiple laptops, The Weatherman and Active Ingredients.

The original conceit of the show – that being the cleaning of The Weatherman’s house in conjunction with the cleaning of KBOO studios – wore away, as both parties were more concerned with getting this complicated undertaking on the air than doing impromptu radio theater.

We did it and made chaotic noise for the better part of three hours. We both learned a lot about making this kind of collaborative radio over vast distances. I liken it to the historic Apollo/Soyuz dockings, only with silly noises and samples from bad porno movies.

Listen:

(3 hours, 244 megs. @ 192kbps)
Download

We plan on doing it again soon, now that we know how to do it. Perhaps we’ll do it when Active Ingredients returns home, making it a Tri-State radio Massacre; with him being in Northern California; the Weatherman being in Seattle WA; and us being in Portland Or. Who knows?

This all went down on KBOO, 90.7 FM in Portland. Listener sponsored community radio.

Perverted Desire

I attempted to encode a movie from the European format PAL to our NTSC, using an elaborate work-around in Final Cut. For some reason, after 12 or so hours of chewing on the file, the audio came out cut up and loopy.
The movie was The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, with Slovene philosopher and writer Slavoj Žižek. It’s a great movie about the collective dream factory we call cinema that is sadly available in the US (Do you hear that, Netflix?)
What’s cool with the loopy audio is that it repeats the words Pervert and Desires at regular intervals. I didn’t do any editing of the audio or otherwise treat it with effects. I only removed one silent bit where Final Cut choked during playback into the recording software.

Play:

Download

Although it doesn’t sound that great on its own, I have been listening to it with all kinds of music and it works. It must be some unconscious thing.

The Portland Funbook 3

I saw this giant, amazing, old-school zine-style book in KBOO’s foyer (it says ‘KBOO copy. Do not steal!’ - I give it two days). It’s chock full of skull-fuckingly cool and weird drawings, comix and articles, mostly Portland related. You can download a tiny version from the publisher here, but do yourself a favor and get the eyeball poppin’, hi-rez, 11 x 17 version at Powell’s Online.

It’s Friday!

“We pissed in the slave-driver’s soup and they didn’t even know it…!” ~ Murray ‘The K’ Saul
Friday Operation FSU Podcast:

Download
:::NOTE::::
For some reason, the flash player keeps mangling the first couple of minutes of this show. I recommend right clicking on the download link and playing it in your browser (open link in new window or tab) until I solve it. Sorry ’bout that!

Playlist:
It’s Friday! – Murray ‘The K’ Saul
Szamar Madar – The Venetian Snares
Mijana – Księżyc
Beni Beni – Niyaz
Zulu Butter – Last Exit
Metal Tov – Electric Masada
Holiday in Guantanamo – Method of Defiance
War of Nerves – Cabaret Voltaire
Speed of G – Jim Larrance
Ham – The Billy Nayer Show
Tribal Connection – Gogol Bordello
Grammar – Conversational Klingon
Le Judement Dernier – Camille Sauvage
Diamond Macaque – The Sun City Girls
In Yer Eye/Blood and Pus – Cassette Boy
The Republic – Gang of Four
E.T., I Love You – Starlight Children’s Chorus

Congrats, Kids! We made it, somehow!

John C. Lilly

E.C.C.O
Silent

Weird ambient electronic album with brief snippets of evolutionary scientist John C. Lilly speaking on his theories and intoning exercises.
I don’t know much about this.
The only people who can be tangentially credited with the concept appear to be engineer Tetsuya Ishikawa and producers Yasuhiko Suga and Tetra Tanizaki with music by P.B.C., Spice Barons and The Heavenly Music Corporation, all of whom I have never heard of.

I just found it at a thrift store and found it a bit odd, especially since I rarely find interesting music at thrift stores anymore.

It’s also definitely out-of-print, so fits my personal download policy.

Update: I initially wrote an unenthusiastic review of this album when I first found years ago it – but have definitely grown rather fond of it on subsequent listens. Note how many times I’ve played bits of it on shows over the years.

Download (re-upped 10/12/11. You’re welcome :/)

Songsmithing the Econopocalypse

I have been flummoxed by, but so far unable to write anything about Microsoft’s hideous product Songsmith. It is the death of music and the end of art. It is what the world will sound like when every last real, individual human is replaced with soulless replicants (next tuesday, at this rate).
But some genius by the name of Johannes Kreidler has used Songsmith to score the soundtrack to our crumbling economy and declining society.

Watch it here:

I did and laughed until I cried. Then I cried and cried.

Found at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, the Boing Boing for music geeks.

A Great Image Resource for Every Bad Darkwave/Industrial Band

For any aspiring Power Electronics/Darkwave/Neofolk bands, there’s a huge selection of creepy medical specimen photos and assorted other ickyness to be found to bling up (for lack of better word) your CD or cassette release, just like SPK or Throbbing Gristle did, circa 1979. Use a sinister-sounding German name and go raid DaFonts for scary-looking lettering. Be shocking, culturally insensitive and unoriginal, to boot!

Go join the fun here.

Found at Boing Boing (no unicorn chaser here, though).