Bill Laswell, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshigaki Yasuhiro (repost)

Soup

P-Vine Japan

Four lengthy, fairly dirgey jams from Laswell, Yoshihide and Yasuhiro. Otomo’s an amazing guitar player! Who knew? I always assumed he was more of a turntablist/manipulator, but as an axe-grinder he’s no slouch.
Sometimes the tunes take on a dub-like quality - a Laswell trait.
This sounds like music made while coming off of a bad acid trip in Yokohama, Tokyo or a sushi joint in New York.

Download:Right here

(5/29/07) This is a repost for someone who wandered into my old blogger incarnation - and a timely one, too. I just recently accidentally deleted everything from my iPod, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal if I didn’t have lots of stuff on it exclusively. This album is one that I thought perished forever (along with more than one un-backed up album*) until I remembered that I burned it onto a CD. Crap! - When do I EVER make CDs anymore? So, luckily for us, here it is.

*The others I’ve noticed so far (inasmuch as I miss them): Peter Hammill - Nadir’s Big Chance; The Orb - Auntie Aubrey’s Excursions Beyond the Call of Duty pt. 1, and lots and lots of single tracks.

Butthole Surfers

The Hole Truth.. And Nothing Butt
Totonka

Semi-legit bootleg comp that includes two very early demo versions of songs that appeared on their first EP and LP respectively.
Most of the live recordings occur around the mid-eighties and early nineties, the latest including tracks from around the time of Independent Worm Saloon. Sound quality on all are good to excellent. The real prize is the WNYU interview from 1987 wherein the Buttholes do an impromptu version of Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald. I dug this out today and noticed it still has a price tag of $25. No way did I pay that much - or did I? I found it years ago in a somewhat dubious market known for its bootlegs. It appeared to be some kind of radio promo with an actual air date posted on it, but I’ve since seen it in other places, so who knows?

Go get it.

A Vast Pile of Buttholes

Were you aware of this?

Chances are, if you are a regular vistor of either WFMU’s Beware of the Blog or Archives.org, you may already know that there is a treasure trove of live recordings of The Butthole Surfers. Some of them date back to the mid-eighties, thier peak era. All are in the FLAC format, though. I might download and convert some and pass them along if worth it. Link right here.

Also, at the formerly mentioned WFMU BotB, some kind poster put up that funny Thai song that is in the middle of Locust Abortion Technician (Kuntz). It’s nice to hear it in its unadulterated form, although weird not to hear it looping and pitch distorted. My memories of that song are watching the Buttholes play at the Pine Street Theater in Portland on Halloween night in ‘86 or ‘87 - several people tripping hard - and that song playing on the house system while the band took a break. Paul Leary came out on stage and took his break, smoking the biggest joint I’ve ever seen outside of a Cheech and Chong movie - seemingly oblivious to the crowd.
Another was playing that song very loudly at the factory I worked at at the time (the Butthole’s doctored version of it anyway) and putting it on nearly every mix tape for nearly a year. Go get it here.

That is all.

Swans

The Great Annihilator
Invisible

Although many would malign this as a lesser, late Swans album, I have to admit it’s the first one that really held my attention. Maybe I’d burnt out on the New York Noise thing (Swans, Live Skull, Rat At Rat R, etc.), especially after that clique became rock-press darlings - Sonic Youth be damned.

But from that fertile, stinking scene, The Swans grew into a huge, dynamic sound all their own. Although Michael Gira’s lyrical outlook hasn’t softened one iota, many of the tracks are quite striking in their power and beauty - especially Killing for Company, seemingly inspired by the Dennis Nilsen necrophile murders. Nice touch.

Download

Cop Shoot Cop

Ask Questions Later
Interscope Records

Ugly, atonal. I shoulda posted about these guys last summer, had I known more about them. With twin, pummeling basses and pounding drums - and some deep, Cave-like vocals from frontman Tod Ashley. But these guys could carry a tune, even if the lyrical outlook was pretty bleak. I know next to bupkis about them besides being one of the many bright spots to the compilation Mesomorph Enduros (Room 429, which is included here), which I posted a while ago. What does Trouser Press say about them?:

Cop Shoot Cop formed out of the ashes of noisemasters Dig Dat Hole and exceedingly confrontational junk-blues potentates Black Snakes (a band that counted among its members transgressive filmmaker Richard Kern). The quartet wasted no time establishing a reputation for sonic fuckery through use of sheet-metal percussion and guitar disavowal (Ashley and Jack Natz both play bass, with the former taking credit for “high end” version of the instrument). The early self-released EPs move with a decidedly mechanical grind, but sidestep industrial pigeonholing thanks to the inventive found-sound sampling of “Cripple” Jim Filer. The wall-of-noise sampling, odd stuttered timings and belligerent anti-structures illustrate a conceptual ambition underscored by such psychotic psychedelic sound collages as “Disconnected 666,” somewhat less structurally/sonically intricate than Pere Ubu’s “Sentimental Journey” but drawn from the same dark core of industrial paranoia. Harking back in some ways to the days of New York no wave, Cop Shoot Cop score three toes idiot, seven toes savant on Piece Man — an improvement over Headkick Facsimile’s ratio of five to five.

HUH?!
Whatever.
You get the point. Ugly. Dark.
You need it.

Download it!