FULL BEAVER MOON (10 November 2011)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

KEYES NORAH

SONGS TO CRY BY FOR THE GOLDEN AGE OF NOTHING



Original Issue: 2004 Dual Plover (PBD-703)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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Do not forget to take a look at the comments section :-)

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from Blunt:

"This CD is absolutely off its chops, or at least this woman seems to be. If a cackling old witch playing a spooky organ and caterwauling extremely depressing tunes while accompanied by violins and auto harp is your Sunday cup of tea, then I’m sure you’ll adore the quite disturbing sounds of Nora Keyes. You think Joanna Newsom or the Dresden Dolls make some freaked out shit, Los Angeles born Nora kills them for sheer peculiarity. She’s the bastard child of Anton LaVey and Kate Bush and apparently she’s riding her broomstick down for the Big Day Out. Oh…you should be scared all right." - matt reekie.

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from Soundplay:

"If the girl from The Ring had an organ stuck in the well with her, this is the kind of music she would make. Not the remake either, the original Japanese version...it’s heaps scarier. Nora Keyes has released her debut album on the eccentric Sydney label dualpLOVER, and to put it bluntly, it’s frightening. Songs to Cry by is a concept album interwoven with themes of life, death, suffering and (surprise, surprise) transcendence. Full of haunting melodies, gloomy lyrics and a sinister, even bloodcurdling vocal styling, it’s definitely not for the faint hearted. As her organ plays on, we’re confronted with the many paradoxical incarnations of Nora Keyes. She appears both ominous and pure, wicked and beautiful. Clearly, Keyes experiments with her range, shifting from an angelic falsetto to witch-like howling and cackling. There’s a duality, a sense of familiarity juxtaposed against that of the unknown, like that of a dream. Maybe this fiendish witch has appropriated sounds from my nightmares? ‘Cauliflower’ is haunting – the drone of the organ fading through a series of twisted harmonies. While Nora’s vocal range is altogether astounding, it is at times painfully evocative. On ‘My Child’, Ms Keyes howls: “my child eat your little, cold, piece of meat and your soggy brussel sprouts / because you have nothing / in a puddle of urine / not your own.” Positively disturbing, these lyrics create striking visual imagery. ‘Old Pal’ – which, coincidently, is a Jimmie Rodgers cover – is the lightest track on the album, as Keyes breaks into a possessed, but strangely effective, form of yodelling. In ‘The Show is Over’, Nora shapeshifts yet again, this time adopting a childlike quality to her voice. But more or less, this banshee seems to float on some dark rain cloud, eerily overseeing an ominous world of cruelty and bedlam. This is truly original stuff from a lass who apparently grew up in a haunted house. Maybe that explains it. Regardless, organs are really, really creepy. Period." - Cassandra Kiely

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from NO-FI:

"This is Nora Keyes' (of The Centimeters) new solo album and it is everything I hoped it would be. The best way to describe it would be if you were digging through a crate of old 78s and found a dusty old album in the back covered with earth and leaves with songs by a woman who has probably spent a lot of time alone in a shack before recording her music. The recording itself really does have the feel of a much older recording with vocals that sound like they were recorded at the same studio that did recording for those old black and white Popeye cartoons. I love all the songs on this album, but I think my favorites are "Small Apart" (which I saw her perform at a Centimeters show before with a bunch of her teeth blacked out which added to the effect of her creepy cackling during the song), "Look At You, You're Ugly", and her cover of a Jimmy Rogers yodelling song called "Old Pal" (which I would love to direct a video for...it would be neat to see Nora in a 50s style cowgirl outfit). Other people performing music on this album are Creekbird, Rebecca Lynn, and Ray Day of The Centimeters and Dame Darcy (whose weird episode of Blind Date I finally saw today) on Autoharp and Saw. This is not "normal" music by any means so get this if you are looking from something so different from mainstream music today that it may as well be from outer space. This is good music for taking a bath or doing work in the toolshed." - Chris Beyond.

EOSTRE (21 March 2011)

The musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

TEATRO SATANICO

PAN IST TOD



Original Issue: 2007 Old Europa Cafe (OEMP 012) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

To learn more about Teatro Satanico

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from Old Europa Cafe :

Do you think you can foresee how will sound the new Teatro Satanico’s songs ?
Do you think Teatro Satanico plays only elektronic music ?
Do you think Teatro Satanico has not more trick-or-treat to play on you ?
Do you know that PETER PAN was a real soldier and that he is dead and buried ?
Do you know that his grave is located on a mountain in Veneto, the Italian region where Teatro Satanico’s guys live ?
Don’t you believe it? Well, look to the photo of his grave on the cover of the new Teatro Satanico PAN IST TOD album !
Hardly to expect it, but these Italian devils recorded some real neo-folk tunes with a marching, pop touch this time !
And due to its peculiar oddity it will become a very unique feature into the official Teatro Satanico’s discography, since here we are talking about “no-synthesizer musik”, the trademark of the previous Teatro Satanico releases.
Expect the unexpected ! Believe the unbelievable !
Once again Teatro Satanico proves to be one of the more original and unforeseeable contemporary post-industrial project in a post-industrial scene full of poseurs, fake-artists and obvious predictable releases.
Beware of Teatro Satanico, they do bite your certainty!

IMBOLC (02 Febrary 2011)

The musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

SEPI KUU

RANNAN USVASSA


Original Issue: 1980 Heliander (Help 703)

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Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

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An amazing find... intense droning Finnish vocals and searing fuzz guitars with hand percussion. Sounds like the more serious tracks on Walter Wegmuller's "Tarot" album. Or even Sergius Golowin's "Lord Krishna Von Goloka". Comes completely out of left field, and is pretty much one of a kind, especially considering the time and place.

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from New Gibraltar :

Rannan Usvassa (Heliander HELP 703) may be the most obscure Finnish progressive rock album. In fact, even the identity of the musicians behind the pseudonym Sepi Kuu is unclear. Stylistically Rannan Usvassa (In the Mist of the Shore) is actually more late-in-the-day psychedelia than progressive rock, as most of the album's twelve short tracks build on a few chords strummed or arpeggiated on acoustic guitar, over which an unsonorous voice more recites than sings blank verse about existential angst and mysticism by the numbers. Organ, oscillators and flute gather their modal mist around these structures, while a fuzz guitar occasionally snakes up to thicken arrangements with background growls or, in the case of "Puhukaa mitä puhutte" ("Say What You Will") and the title track, understated solos, in a style remotely comparable to early Jade Warrior. Bass and percussion also make appearances, played with the same homespun plainness and lack of technical boasting that marks the whole project - for better or worse.

There is a decidedly amateurish air about the monotonous staccato thrum of "Tämän linnoituksen on kestettävä" ("This Fortress Must Stand") or the stop-start, kindergarten-variety proto-industrial-metal muck that accompanies the vicious circle of amateur-philosopher homilies in "Ajatus" ("Thought"). And yet "Muuratut kasvot" ("Bricked Faces") digs up surprising lyricism from its dusky vocal melodies, ringing guitar arpeggios and meditative keyboard solo, while the one instrumental "Manvantara" cleverly flanks its centre-position solo flute with asynchronous sets of drums panned to the opposite sides of the stereo field, each coupled with a feedbacking guitar or synthesizer. As a small-time psychedelic album Rannan Usvassa is quite acceptable, but any aura of lost classic obscurity may have furnished it with is totally unwarranted. And obscurity was a fact in 2004, for the original vinyl was very rare and no CD release existed (the Tachika pirate-CD-R edition does not rate as one).

Kai Karmanheimo

FULL WOLF MOON (19 January 2011)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

ITSUTSU NO AKAI FUSEN

FLIGHT 1 & 2


Original Issue: 1970 Underground Record Club URG-4006)
Original Issue: 1971 Underground Record Club URG-4007)

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Margot-meter: 4 moons / 5

Impossible-to-find holy grail ranking at #47 in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler is finally available in Margot's coven!!!!

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from Julian Cope's Japrocksampler:

Imagine an LP half full of songs such as Erika Eigen's 'I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper' from the A CLOCKWORK ORANGE soundtrack. Mo Tucker's Velvet Underground ballads 'After-hours' and 'I'm Sticking with You', and that ubercute ditty Tonight You Belong to Me' that Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sang together in The Jerk.

Imagine that same album also contains a few euphorically strung-out cosmic folk ballads somewhere in the style of Tim Buckley's Straight Records LP BLUE AFTERNOON united with Culture's super-sweet TWO SEVENS CLASH, but sung by a man and a woman in the manner of Emtidi's SAAT. Then imagine that some of that material was extended to cover a whole side of 12" vinyl, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser-style.

Okay, now imagine there were two such LPs and that they were released one year apart on a cult label called Underground Record Club, and you've hit exactly where Itsutsu no Akai Fusen is coming from. It's a weird combination of urban torch songs, rural lovey-dovey indoor campfire, and transcendental tripped out meditative space folk. Both LPs were packaged in cosmic spacious gatefold sleeves, and the records were mainly sung by female singer Hideko Fujiwara and written by songwriter Takashi Nishioka, the man responsible for a fairly legendary Japanese album, MELTING GLASS BOX. that I've never really found much time for.

These two records I like very much indeed, however, so they're hidden away at number 47 because I listen to them all the time, despite having never had much time for the Japanese early-'70s folk scene. So please excuse this review hyping two LPs simultaneously, but by 2012, you'll most likely have found time to investigate these records and, hopefully, are by now digging them.

FULL HARVEST MOON (23 September 2010)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT INC. (THE) FEAT. ELIZABETH CLARE PROPHET

THE SOUNDS OF AMERICAN DOOMSDAY CULTS (VOL. 14)


Original Issue: 1990 Faithways International (No Number)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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from Synrecords.com:

A document of the spellbinding chants, call-and-response decrees, hypnotic invocations and prayers performed against the demon rock'n'roll by the ultra-conservative new age church universal and triumphant, led by charismatic, gun-hoarding nutjob elizabeth clare prophet--who is believed by her followers to be divinely inspired by a host of ascended masters, including merlin the magician, hercules, william shakespeare, jesus christ, gautama buddha, the archangel michael, and other emo legends. humorous for its damnation of seemingly harmless rock stars like billy joel, which explains why negativland and other experimentalists would sample it, this mesmerizing, all-vocal performance should fascinate listeners interested in la monte young's drones, kurt schwitters' "ursonate," or the stringent choral works of ligeti, penderecki and scelsi.

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from Aquarius Records:

It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some sort of elaborate prank. But it's one of those things that just makes you proud / embarassed to be an American. Elizabeth Clare Prophet purchased 24,000 acres in Paradise Valley, Montana and started The Church Universal and Triumphant, a creepy new age doomsday cult in which Prophet channeled spirits such as Jesus, Buddha, K-17, Morya, Quan Yin, Afra, Hercules, Mighty Victory, Astrea, Shiva, Pope John XXIII, and more. (Sort of like J.Z. Knight of Yelm, Washington and her channelling of "Ramtha" except even more scary.) Prophet and her husband stockpiled arms, built giant bomb shelters, and coerced their devotees to purchase their own survival equipment at exorbitant prices. Throughout its existence various members of CUT were indicted for kidnapping, lost custody of the children who belonged to the church and were investigated for tax exempt status and firearms violations. In 1995 former member Joeseph Pietrangelo Jr wrote a book condemning CUT entitled "Lambs to Slaughter: My Fourteen Years with Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Church Universal Triumphant".
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services. The tapes of these services have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn insane sounding. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an impossible mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium and variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended, trance-like vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended! We'd almost have made this cd edition our Record of the Week if we weren't certain that it would probably bug the heck out of more people than (like us) would love it!!

IMBOLC (02 February 2010)

The musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

THRESHOLD HOUSEBOYS CHOIR (THE)

FORM GROWS RAMPANT


Original Issue: 2007 Threshold House (THBKK3)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

Listen to the seductive sound of EVIL!!!

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1 A Time Of Happening (7:02)
2 Intimations Of Spring (11:29)
3 So Young It Knows No Maturing (14:34)
4 So Free It Knows No End (8:25)
5 As Doors Open Into Space (7:04)

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from Brainwashed:

This CD/DVD is the first proper release by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson's post-Coil audiovisual project. The music on Form Grows Rampant is a logical continuation of Sleazy's contributions to late-period Coil and the reformed Throbbing Gristle, a suite of dense digital environments that combine shuddering electronics with sampled vocals. In the process, The Threshold HouseBoys Choir create a brand new genre that might be described as Post-Industrial Exotica.

The DVD is the main attraction here, containing a slightly lengthier version of the program that premiered at last year's Brainwaves festival. The DVD contains five videos captured at the GinJae Vegetarian Festival held in Krabi Town in the south of Thailand. Because the recently expatriated Christopherson's has made Thailand his new home, and because of the prurience suggested by his longtime nickname "Sleazy," there is a distinctly perverse undercurrent to the name "HouseBoys" and to the five-part video program included on the DVD. Fear not: there is nothing here which could be construed as boy-porn by any but the most censorious fundamentalists. However, these videos do not shy away from depicting young, willowy Thai boys in the rapturous malaise of ritual religious ecstasy, and there is a distinctly erotic component to the proceedings that must be acknowledged.

The boys whip themselves into a furious trance, heads shaking back and forth, eyes rolling back into their heads. A crowd of people stare as they eagerly volunteer to have their eyebrows and cheeks and lips pierced with long skewers and giant sharpened metal poles. Christopherson slows down the video footage as a way of depicting the peculiar beauty and savagery of the GinJae Festival, adding subtle time-stretching effects so that it seems as if one can actually witness the moving of the spirit in these zealous young acolytes of the "Khatoey" Holy Men. As an ethnographic documentary, this doesn't work very well at all, as it is far from a complete picture of the cultural context which surrounds this important festival. However, as a highly aestheticized way of gazing upon these seductively erotic-religious rituals, the videos are a resounding success.

Contributing to this success is Sleazy's soundtrack, which represents his first major musical project since the death of John Balance and the subsequent demise of Coil. Many people, I assume, will be interested to know how this music compares to Coil. The answer to this question is complex. Certainly, there are many features of the music that will be very familiar to those who have followed the work of Coil, especially during their last decade of existence: shuddering electronics, dense atmospherics, eerie digitalia, twisted and mutated vocals and sinister undercurrents hinting at a gleaming heart of darkness. These features give the music of THBC a superficial veneer that is unmistakably Coil-esque, but on the whole it is a very different animal. Here, Sleazy leaves behind the elements of chance, chaos and asymmetry that characterized late-period Coil. Perhaps because he is working almost exclusively with computer software now, instead of the variety of analog synthesizers and organic elements favored by Coil, the music feels more hermetic and inorganic. Even though human voices and other elements are sampled, they are mutated to the point where they synthesize with the rest of the digital library of loops and effects. This is not necessarily a criticism of THBC, but rather a proviso to those who were expecting the second coming of Coil.

The tracks are lengthy and contain layers of digital ambience. Melodies are present, but are sometimes buried, or are so child-simple that they become almost subliminal. Some of these tracks have appeared before in compilations in a much more nascent form. "As Doors Open Into Space" was previously known as "Mahil Athal Nadrach" when it appeared on the It Just Is... compilation last year. Here, it is expanded and reworked, with new elements added, until it becomes a rich, post-ethnic piece of electronica with a joyful melodic progression that sounds positively triumphant coming at the end of the disc. Critics such as David Toop have criticized the Anglo-American-Continental tendency to co-opt the musical features of third world cultures as a texture for their music, and certainly THBC could be accused of this kind of ethnic colonization. However, Sleazy's pieces are so hypnotic and beautiful, and so vague as to be impossible to pinpoint which specific world musics are being invoked, that they come across as a sort of 21st-century exotica: space-age bachelor pad music for the sexual tourists of tomorrow. Lovely pieces such as "Intimations of Spring," alive with electrified spirit voices smearing out behind a resonant sequence of xylophone tones, quickly negate any inherent problematics. All that is left is a stunningly well-conceived collection of audiovisual art that, though it is quite different, is undoubtedly the worthy successor of the legendary group to which Sleazy once belonged.

Jonathan Dean

FULL CORN MOON (04 September 2009)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

NIJIUMU

LIVE

Original Issue: 1997 Big Cat (ABB 1000/2CD)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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01 Untitled (3:11)
02 Untitled (49:38)
03 Untitled (12:29)

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from The Sound Projector:

Top of the range is Nijiumu, one of Keiji Haino’s quieter musical hats, and for sheer pathos this live recording worth your entry money by itself; to call this slice of sheer emotion tear-inducing is not enough. You will weep!

LITHA (21 June 2009)

The musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

MARTIRANO SALVATORE

L's G.A. / BALLAD / OCTECT

Original Issue: 1968 Polydor (24-5001)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

Track 1 is entitled "L's GA For Gas-Masked Politico, Helium Bomb, And Two-Channel Tape" and is an ASTONISHING piece of music!!!

Do you need something more to convince you?

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1 L's GA For Gas-Masked Politico, Helium Bomb, And Two-Channel Tape (24:19)
2 Ballad (11:46)
3 Octet (7:01)

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from http://ems.music.uiuc.edu/~martiran/:


"Blow your mind (and 50c) on the mixed media concert in Finney Chapel," suggest signs presently posted on the Oberlin College campus.

Featured on the avant-garde program tonight at 8:30 will be a staged performance of "L's GA" ("Lincoln's Gettysburg Address") by Salvatore Martirano, a theater piece for gas-masked politicos, helium bomb, three movie projectors and two-channel tape recorder.

Describing his notorious composition to a group of Oberlin students yesterday, Martirano said, "It starts with eight minutes of low sound that actually vibrates the floor (you get a massage), and ends with an organ version of 'My heart at thy sweet voice' from 'Samson and Delilah.' It gives a very exalted feeling."

The 24-minute piece, the composer explained, also incorporated Lincoln's speech recited in several dialects, films of faces, flowers, tongues and other things, and electronic sound from 24 speakers.

"It's not too loud for people who are accustomed to rock," he said.

The original impetus for "L's GA," which also exists in recorded and filmed versions, came from a lecture Martirano heard opposing the use of political subjects in art works. So negative was the former Marine's reaction that he decided to write a work showing that "it could be done."

Completed in 1968, the piece has received 35 performances in a variety of geographical locations and physical environments.

The audience reaction is different every time," Martirano said. "At the Electric Circus in New York, people were shouting and cheering. But in Portland, Ore., they just sat there, stunned."

Martirano reports, however, that his music has never stimulated violent responses.

"I try to make connections with the audience," he said. "I start with something they know - texts by Lincoln, Shakespeare, Dante - and then translate word inflections into many different sounds. Generally, people like my music - because it's easy."

Martirano's career as a composer began more than 20 years ago when he was a student of Herbert Elwell at Oberlin. After completing his undergraduate degree, he attended the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Bernard Rogers. He then received a Fulbright fellowship to Italy where he worked with Luigi Dallapiccola.

Numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions followed. And today as composer-in-residence at the University of Illinois, Martirano is securely entrenched in the university complex, which he regards as "a very enlightened place to be."

To an impressive list of compositions for orchestra, chamber ensemble, chorus, voice, electronic tape and mixed media, Martirano will soon add a new work scored for large orchestra, controller and bunny.

Wilma Salisbury

PINK MOON (feminine musick)

WHITE RUTH

FLOWERS OF EVIL (An Electronic Setting Of The Poem Of Charles Baudelaire)


Original Issue: 1969 Limelight (LS-86066)

Reissue: 2006 Creel Pone (#47) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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1 The Clock (3:03)
2 Evening Harmony (4:05)
3 Lover's Wine (3:01)
4 Owls (2:48)
5 Mists And Rains (2:10)
6 The Irremediable (4:58)
7 The Cat (3:31)
8 Spleen (2:56)
9 The Litanies Of Satan (6:56)

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from Mimaroglu:

... back again after last week’s mishap (don’t ask) with an absolute corker of a creel pone - the setting of a set of poems by charles baudelaire to electronic instrumentation & vocal treatments, as realized by ms. ruth white in mid-1969.

a sampling of any of the text(s) below (baudelaire was heavy, man...) should tip you to just how creepy & dark the vibes emanating from within this record are exactly. ms. white’s posessed monotone-through-echoplex-through-vclfo-gate throughout is just bone-chilling, her howling synth & noise backdrops so perfectly capturing the “southern” essence of the text that it’s hard to believe that these poems weren’t conceived in the era they were realized here (the just pre-altamont “downer” hippie zenith), but in fact in the middle of the 19th century!

certainly a creel pone more on the psych-end of things, but nonetheless a bizarre and terrifying vision into futures past-future that should speak to the inner satanist. those who felt the “doomy” waves warping out of the warren jepson creel pone should follow suit herein...

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

BERNSTEIN STEVEN JESSE

PRISON

Original Issue: 1992 Sub Pop (SP 101) Buy it here!!!

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Margot-meter: ? moons / 5

According to The Wire, one of the 100 records which set the world on fire (but no one was listening)

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1 No No Man (Part One)
2 Morning In The Sub-Basement Of Hell
3 More Noise Please
4 The Sport (Part One)
5 Party Balloon
6 Face
7 This Clouded Heart
8 The Man Upstairs
9 The Sport (Part Two)
10 No No Man (Part Two)

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Excerpts from Amazon reviews:

Quite simply put, Steven Jay Bernstein (his real name) was one of the most fascinating and talented poets in the last half century.

I used to put this on at the record store I worked out to clear everyone out at closing.

Steven Bernstein was completely unhinged and used that freedom to observe the world from strange points of view and with a level of perception and honesty that is a little disturbing.

Poverty, drugs, self hatred, misogyny, its all here if you like that sort of stuff.And who doesn't?

Prison will not only spin in your CD player, it will make you're heart go in circles.

Forget Rollins, Jessee is where Burroughs & Bukowski meet, & his eyes are not averted.

This is an important voice that will enlighten your sense of imagination, make you laugh, get nervous, and maybe change the way you think or see the world.

Makes Bukowski sound like he had an easy life.

SAMHAIN (31 October 2008)

The Musick dedicated to this Sabbat is:

WHEN

SVARTEDAUEN (THE BLACK DEATH)


Original Issue: 1992 Tatra (TATCD 008)

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Margot-meter: 5 moons / 5

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1 The Black Death (38:27)

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from Jester Records:

In 1992 came When's heaviest piece, Svartedauen (The Black Death), inspired by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen's drawings with the same name, describing the ravages of the plague in Norway during the Middle Age.

This single 38-minute piece is by many considered Pedersen's most evocative album.

Svartedauen contains elements from Norwegian folk music played on fiddle and mouth harp, terrifying symphonic parts à la Death in the Blue Lake with pounding drums, choir and strings, and a carpet of other grotesque sounds: hearses, moans of the dying, rats, flagellants? whips and a scythe being sharpened, to name a few.

Did you record sounds yourself, or did you get them from elsewhere?

LP: "I mixed many of my own sounds, and borrowed some from Norwegian Film. Bernt Kanstad, the technician, was working there, so I got access to many sounds that I sampled, looped and used manually. And I recorded many scraping sounds on a big, old cello that was standing in the studio, but many of those sounds were heavily manipulated afterwards, so you can?t always hear that they are cello sounds. I like working that way: not using entirely natural sounds, but doing something extra with them".

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from Volcanic Tongue:

When is the solo-project of Lars Pedersen, known for his work in Norwegian art-rockers Holy Toy in the 80s. His When project seems to be his own musical playground, as every album seems different from the other.

The later works have been prog-rock/pop vein, but Svartedauen, his third album from 1991, is a pure 38 minute musique concrète sound-collage. Svartedauen translates to The Black Death and the album is an abstract sound-journey of the plague entering and ravishing the Norwegian countryside in 1349, killing two-thirds of the Norwegian population within a year.

The album was inspired by a series of haunted and eerie drawings of Theodor Kittelsen from 1900 on the subject. Pedersen has made a soundtrack to it.

Fans of Norwegian black metal will recognize the Kittelsen art as the same that adorns the cover of several Burzum albums. A little known fact is that Burzum, and most other black metal musicians during their church-burning heydays, were big fans of this When album. Listening to it with that in mind it actually makes a lot of sense.

Svartedauen in many ways manages to evoke the feeling of doom and medieval dread that the rock-Satanists attempted with distorted guitars. It’s a scary and uncomfortable listen.

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

ADDLESTON/MEUNIER/FAUSTMANN

17th AND 18th CENTURY WORKS OF FUNERARY VIOLIN

BABCOTTE/SUDBURY/EATON

THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF FUNERARY VIOLIN

Original Issue: unknown

Reissue: The Guild Of Funerary Violinists (No Number) Buy it here!

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Margot-meter: ? moons / 5

Read here the fascinating history behind the recordings.

If you have even one single drop of mittel-european blood running through your veins, you'll be moved (to death) by these sounds!

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Tracklists here and here

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from Aquarius Records (cut-up of various reviews):

What is more amazing than discovering a whole movement in music that had never been documented, let alone even heard of. EVER! No mention in any books, magazines, not a single trace. What if that music was in fact the music of Funerary violins. A music created and composed to be performed at funerals. The only evidence of these musics, some scratchy old wax cylinder recordings, some faded photos, and brittle sheafs of old sheet music.

Hard to say which would be more amazing, a wholly undiscovered hidden dark corner of musical history, quashed by the church and relegated to be lost forever, or an insanely detailed project, the ultimate conceptual art piece. Either way, we are in love with this stuff.
Simply from a musical standpoint, this is everything we could hope for. The recordings are fuzzy and staticky, bathed in layers of crackle and grit, and years of neglect and decay, but beneath the recording inconsistencies we love so much, are some truly moving and emotionally rich performances, the melodies are so intense and sad, minor key and mournful. truly funereal. It's impossible not to imagine some old funeral procession, a row of black clad mourners, trudging down a dirt road, with their deceased atop an old wooden cart, the sky grey, the music of the Funerary violinist winding around the procession like wreaths of black smoke. So goddamn lovely. We have been listening to this non-stop since we got it.

And then there's the story. The "history". Is it real? Is it possible that a musical movement could disappear so completely. So much so that not a single person anywhere EVER had heard of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists? Or is it all a huge put-on? A massive made up world? The ultimate outsider art project. Either way, we are completely blown away. If this is indeed real, HOLY SHIT! How utterly mysterious and romantic!! We do sort of want to believe it's real. It's so perfectly evocative of some other time, of death and sadness throughout the ages. But if it is in fact made up, it has to be one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed hoaxes of all time.

Wailing, plaintive funereal laments on solo violin, sad and morose, lilting and so completely lovely, bathed in all manner of grit and hiss, fuzz and antique distortion, sounding like the old wax cylinders these recordings purport to be. Imagine some old timey violin music treated by Tim Hecker, and spun in some ultra morose DJ set by Philip Jeck...
The music is so evocative, of dark clouds at dusk, rain swept fields, huge brooding stone houses, lush gardens beneath grey skies, and of course, funerals, and the slow stately trudge of the funeral procession to the grave site. We've gushed about pretty much every volume so far, and by now are probably just repeating ourselves, but we just love these discs, read the other Funerary Violinist reviews for more on the music and the mythology, and you'll realize just why it seems impossible to us to not fall totally in love with such a well executed piece of what ultimately amounts to performance art. The music, dark and delicate, creepy and so beautiful, even removed from the mythology is totally amazing, the story and the text is as well (there's even a book you can track down, detailing the entire recorded history of the Guild) but the two together, are simply magical....

Even without the fantastical back story, the music is worth the price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully, minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others, all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals the deal.

RUNIC MOON (nordic musick)

KEMIALLISET YSTÄVÄT

KELLARI JUNIVERSUMI

Original Issue: 2002 Fonal Records (FR-21) (Buy it here!)

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Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

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1 Puiden Sydämet Antavat Tahdin (2:23)
2 Kellari Juniversumi (2:48)
3 Taivas Ja Meri, Yhteen Sulautuneina (3:17)
4 Utuaurat (1:50)
5 Mustametsä (2:38)
6 ...On Pieni Metsä (1:24)
7 Planeetta Kaukainen Muo Kutsuu (1:29)
8 Kuuntelin Kuinka Puut Kuiskivat (2:42)
9 Monien Kalojen Aalto (3:05)
10 Kuuma Tomu (3:32)
11 Amerikka (2:18)
12 Kummitushiiri (2:19)
13 Salainen Paikka (2:04)
14 Pallo (3:38)
15 Kuutarhassa (3:27)
16 Soihdun Tuhkaa (2:46)
17 Heijastuksia! Kaikuja! (5:10)

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from Boomkat:

After a slew of cassette, 7” and cdr releases, the wonderful people at Fonal saw fit to throw Mr. Anderzén’s work into public view and unsurprisingly it received universal acclaim.

Taking cues from the American new-psych gods Jewelled Antler Collective (of whom Anderzén is a sometime member) this is free music at its very best; unpretentious compositions which retain an undeniable sense of irreverence and can be experimental without losing sight of listenability.

All sorts of sounds are thrown into the mix – layer upon layer of analogue synth squelches, detuned guitars and other miscellaneous small instruments adding to the texture and wall-of-sound on this record.

For fans of Fonal this record is an absolute must, an important stepping stone for the label and a hugely influential part of the modern weird-folk-psych scene.

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from Aquarius Records:

Hallelujah! More droning, buzzing, flickering folk-psych from Finland's mysterious Kemialliset Ystavat collective.

Sure, we know who's in the band -- Broken Face 'zine artist/contributor Jan Anderzen, Fonal label head Sami Sanpakkila (Es, Kiila), and a host of other Finns -- but they still SOUND mysterious. The damaged four-track folk sound of NYC's Tower Recordings filtered through the forest ambience of AQ-fave improv-psych outfit Thuja might, MIGHT be an approximation of Kemialliset's sonic space.

They inhabit that territory previously explored by the likes of Amon Duul, Ghost, Kalacakra, Toho Sara, Parson Sound, International Harvester, Amps For Christ, Six Organs Of Admittance, Algarnas Tradgard, etc.

If any of these names bring a warm sensation to your frontal lobes, then you're likely already a Kemialliset fan even if you haven't yet heard 'em. Each track (there's 17 of 'em, spread over 47 minutes) is a psychedelic miniature constructed of drifting, chanting vocals, gentle melodies, and primitive rhythms, contrasting distorted electric guitar wash with pretty, chiming percussion, strings and woodwinds. Freaky and far-out yet mostly mellow and warm and cosy.

Fucking lovely. Ah, Finland.

FULL STURGEON MOON (16 August 2008)

The Musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

BATTIATO FRANCO

FETUS

POLLUTION

SULLE CORDE DI ARIES

CLIC

Original Issue: 1972/1973/1973/1974 Bla Bla (BBXL 10001/BBXL 10002/BBXL 10003/BBXL 10006)

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Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

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Tracklistings

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from Gnosis2000:

Franco Battiato, as is well known, was an Italian pop singer who for a span in the 70s made a string of very experimental albums that fit very roughly in the vein of groups such as Opus Avantra or Pierrot Lunaire. Battiato on all of these titles (and beyond) set out to create completely new musical forms, and evolved from strange pop and rock realms to systemic and minimalist music before returning to pop music.

Fetus was his first and arguably not as impressive as his later titles. There are a lot of influences here, Italian popular music, folk, electronic experiments and tape collage all swirled into an unusual tapestry of music. I would say his folk/pop influences show through the strongest here, and with the albums short duration there's not a lot you can sink your teeth into.

Pollution, however, is a much more successful outing, with the disparate styles blending into a much more cohesive whole. Battiato's music can jump from neo classical to Italian progressive rock (somewhere between Sensations Fix and Le Orme) to space rock like Gong and on to bizarre tape collages with narration. It all adds up to a fascinating and innovative album with more humanity than you'd expect from this type of experimentation.

Sulle Corde Di Aries was Battiato's third release and showed his fascination for electronic, minimalist and systemic musics. As such, it is quite similar to "Pollution" except much more electronic based and with a more definitive style. There are also a lot of modern classical strains coming through here and a great spacey feel again reminding me of Sensations Fix or Gong at times. A simply fascinating album.

Clic is the Italian version and not the version that was on Island records. It too moves in a far more electronic direction, sounding like an avantgarde Klaus Schulze with lots of systemic patterns and neo classical vocals. This is often quoted as his best album, and certainly deserves a listen. The latter three titles, if not all four, all deserve the attention of those into experimental or avantgarde rock albums.

Mike McLatchey

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

CONET PROJECT (THE)

RECORDINGS OF SHORTWAVE NUMBERS STATIONS

Original Issue: 1997 Irdial (59 ird tcp 1) (Be notified when the reissue is available)

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Margot-meter: ??? moons / 5

For sure, one of the most chilling and frightening aural artifact ever released!

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Tracklisting here

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from Hauntedink:

Static. Faint voices. Seven slow, monotonous tones. A pause. Suddenly, you hear music--one of those wind-up songs played by a child's toy. The melody repeats three times. A pause. Suddenly, you hear a female voice counting off the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 in German. A pause. She repeats the numbers. A pause. The children's toy melody returns.

So begins The Conet Project, perhaps the greatest collection of found art ever produced. This is not only a monumental work; it is also a monument, a testament to 50 years of Cold War espionage, a living document of the world's most secret agencies. That most of these agencies are still around today merely enhances the importance of this work.

To explain this collection, I have to explain the concept of numbers stations.

Numbers stations transmit coded messages through shortwave radio. These messages are transmitted from places all over the world, yet the basic numbers station message is remarkably uniform. It usually consists of a voice (most often female) reading off a series of numbers. On many occasions, this reading of numbers will be preceded by a song--usually familiar (like the English folk song, "The Lincolnshire Poacher") or distinct (the weird children's toy music I mentioned earlier, which is called "The Swedish Rhapsody"), though there are signals without music and signals that simply transmit Morse code messages. Above all else, one thing remains constant: nearly every transmission begins on the hour, lasts between ten and fifty minutes, and is almost invariably repeated several times over a 24-hour period.

What are these messages? Well, no one has ever come forward to prove that these stations are linked to spy networks, but almost everyone who has ever studied the signals believes that they are. But why would a spy network like the CIA or the KGB or Israel's Mossad or Osama BinLaden's Al-Qaeda--with all their money and resources--bother transmitting messages through something like shortwave radio, a cheap technology that would allow anyone in the world to listen in? There are two reasons. First, shortwave is not only cheap but also common, meaning a spy can easily carry around a good shortwave radio without attracting any attention whatsoever. Second, the messages use what is called a one-time pad, which is generally considered the most secure cipher ever created--provided that the sender and the receiver are the only ones in possession of the key to unlock the message.

Knowing that the tracks on The Conet Project are actual messages sent from a government or group to a spy, and knowing that those messages might contain orders that, at one time, probably instructed that spy to go kill someone or dig up dirt on a politician or just stay where they are, makes for a rather enticing listen, to say the least. But the meaning behind these messages will remain a mystery because there is just no way to ever come across a one-time pad key (they are destroyed after use), and though it is fun to speculate about these sounds, that speculation gets tiring after a while for all but the most die-hard listeners.

However, this historical context--the secret agent messages--is not really the point of this work. This is, first and foremost, a work of art, a work founded on challenging our conceptions of history and documentation. The artists at Irdial who selected the tracks and compiled the work did everything they could to choose tracks that were interesting to listen to; the listening experience, then, was more important than the clarity of the signals. As a result, many of the tracks here are filled with static and other noises floating in and around the sounds of voices and music, obscuring the messages to such an extent that it often takes several listens before you can discern which language the voice is speaking. They did not choose these tracks because they were the only ones available--I've heard plenty of clear recordings of numbers stations on other compilations. No, there was a reason to make the music muddled here. They wanted to recreate the experience, the thrill that must have come to those lonely souls who, over the past few decades, discovered these signals and recorded them.

Shortwave radio has never received the credit it deserves for shaping electronic music. Most early electronic musicians--especially those in Europe, where shortwave radio is more common than in the US--will tell you that their early musical education came from trying to sift through shortwave bands to pick up pirate stations all over the Atlantic. No doubt the act of sifting through walls of static to pick up a faint but hip signal can be seen as the inspiration for at least some of electronic music's obsession with distortion, aberration, and noise. A lot of electronic music, in fact, can be read as an elaborate attempt to give shape and purpose to random noise: to turn static into a signal.

If you think about it, number stations are doubly encased in interference. Not only are the signals themselves hard to pick up, but the messages are impenetrable. The artists behind The Conet Project understood both of these mysteries. By creating a work that is not only historically important (being, really, the primary introduction of numbers stations to the world at large) but also musically relevant, Irdial has created a powerful, evocative work that has, in recent years, inspired artists as varied as Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky) and Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) to tap into some of its power. This is a classic in every single sense of that word.

RUNIC MOON (nordic musick)

COSMIC TRIGGER
POLAR REGIONS

Original Issue: 1993 Silent Records (SR9345)

Margot-meter: 4,5 moons / 5

Nordic ambient musick masterpiece by the likes of Andrew M.McKenzie (The Hafler Trio) and Zbigniew Karkowski!

Read the intricate (as expected) story behind this recording here

1 A Viking's Lament (30:12)
2 Sunrise Over The Crystal Fjord (30:16)

from Reign of Toads:

Continuous choirs of angelic voices within a gentle and steady synth envelope. Drones within drones. These voices are saying something--not necessarily in the literal sense, but vibrationally.

The amazingly interesting (and almost believable) liner notes evolve the experience so that this CD becomes a tool. The mythology includes a complete listing of the 29 phonemes employed within this recording alongside their corresponding mythological significance. The obscured history detailed within the liner notes alludes to two gentleman who worked in a mine somewhere near the Arctic for 20 years, ended up doing some sort of sense-dep tank and black-room living for another month or so, and then went on to some university sound laboratory where they met up with Andrew M. McKenzie of the Hafler Trio.

WSB sums it up on the back cover's collection of quotes: "Humanity may be an outmoded vehicle, but it is still capable of constructing mechanisms that can enable us to leave where we are stuck. This is not an artifact. It is a tool and should be used as such.

from Amazon:

This amazing album is a journey in itself. The story behind it's inception is even more amazing. Put this album on and immediately one's mental state seems to level off and clear out. Everything becomes 'smooth' but on a higher level. One seems to rise above this cacophany and slide through chaotic corporeal reality with ease. Many uses in many different 'states' of consciousness. Recently used with Salvia Divinorum. Nice and grounding for the participant.

CRAZY MOON (incredibly strange musick)

SHAGGS (THE)

PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD

Original Issue: 1969 Third World (TCLP 3001)

Reissue: 1999 RCA Victor (09026 63371-2)

Margot-meter: ??? moons / 5

Groundbreaking pre-everything masterpiece or complete rubbish?
Only YOU can decide!!!

This album has been variously defined as:

• the worst musical performances ever
• juvenile, awful, inept, and unlistenable while being creative, beautiful, sophisticated, and progressive
• the proof to the old idea that putting a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years will eventually produce "Henry V"
• a cultural phenomenon
• naive, terrible, special, unique, childish and profound at the same time
• everybody needs to hear the Shaggs in their lifetime
• this is actual ANTI music
• sounds almost exactly like some basic form of punk music
• disconnected, disjointed, dysharmonious, dysrhythmic sounds made with musical instruments
• I'd like to track down the beatnik who declared this album "cool and avant-garde" and punch him repeatedly
• people giving this tripe five stars simply have it in their collection because it makes them feel superior and "in the know"
• this stuff is horrid, but I must pretend to like it to show that I am one of the enlightened few
• these girls had a mentally unbalanced, abusive father(possibly sexually abusive) who wouldn't even allow his daughters to have friends

so I think there are a lot of very good reasons to give it a spin ;-)

1 Philosophy Of The World (2:56)
2 That Little Sports Car (2:06)
3 Who Are Parents (2:58)
4 My Pal Foot Foot (2:31)
5 My Companion (2:04)
6 I'm So Happy When You're Near (2:12)
7 Things I Wonder (2:12)
8 Sweet Thing (2:57)
9 It's Halloween (2:22)
10 Why Do I Feel? (3:57)
11 What Should I Do? (2:18)
12 We Have A Savior (3:06)

from Guypetersreviews.com:

Now THIS is something completely different. One of the cultest of all cult albums, Philosophy of the World is probably even weirder than any Captain Beefheart-album you own, as it almost sounds like an interrupted transmission from outer space.

The Shaggs consisted of three sisters (Dorothy, lead guitar and vocals; Betty, rhythm guitar and vocals; Helen, drums) who, “guided” by their ambitious father, took up music lessons and eventually also recorded an album. When the album came off the presses, the majority of the copies were stolen, so the poorly distributed album very quickly became a forgotten item…. until Frank Zappa declared it one of his all-time favorites a few years later, which triggered a true Shaggs-cult that went on throughout the years, eventually also resulting in a 1999 reissue, which tried to reinstate the original.

A prime example of ‘outsider music,’ Philosophy sounds as if it’s played either by complete ignorants or avant-garde musicians (for a long time I thought it was a hoax, instigated by some obscure free jazz collective, and you have to admit that the girls on the cover look a bit ‘weird’, too). If you thought that Jad Fair, Jandek and Daniel Johnston had already been making very personal and awkward music that seems to defy all musical conventions and logic, then The Shaggs’ approach might be a truly inspiring treat for you.

The girls sing without any harmony, tuneless, and with a weird phrasing. It sometimes sounds as if you’re overhearing a class of Chinese children singing American standards. The subject matter ranges from the equality of all people (“Philosophy of the World”), to a disappeared dog (“My Pal Foot Foot”), and other existential concerns (“Things I Wonder,” “Why Do I Feel?,” etc). Helen Wiggin’s drum kit apparently consists only of a snare drum, a floor tom and one cymbal (hi-hat), while her patterns can be called poly-rhythmic I guess, as they are as steady as an Elisabeth Taylor marriage, suddenly shifting from one rhythm to the next. On top of that she plays the weirdest drum fills imaginable (take that, Phil Collins), seemingly unaware of the song’s underlying structure. The competence of Dorothy and Betty is similarly limited, as they strum their guitars in a totally incoherent way, playing false notes and inventing new stuff as they go along.

And it is exactly this that seems to be the weirdest aspect of their music: it sounds as if these girls weren’t exposed to any music at all between their 2nd and 15th year. Somehow, they seem to have a basic idea of what music should be like (a basic rhythm, melody, ‘different parts,’ a grammar of the music), but at the same time they also seem confused about it, as verses and chorus seem almost indistinguishable and randomly placed.

The result of it all is one of the most incompetent albums imaginable, a ramshackle effort in which nothing is what it should be, an effort that defies almost every rule. And while some people thought it was one of the most liberating and inspiring albums in pop history, I can only endure this in small doses, and while I’m doing that, I probably make some funny faces. Therefore, yours sincerely considers this album as a curiosity any music fan should hear at least once, but it’s not one that you will ‘enjoy’ on a regular basis. Unless having the freakiest collection of your circle of acquaintances or driving your housemates mad is your ultimate goal.