A Year of Music

As promised, here’s the list of what-all I’ve added to my collection since the last time I posted one of these omnibus roundups. As always, the sources are various: Amoeba, Boomkat, the Amazon MP3 store, Mutant Sounds, Dualtrack, The Thing on the Doorstep, No Longer Forgotten Music, The Soundhead, Phoenix Hairpins, and What Fucked You. Some of them are duplicates from the last list big list I posted because I purchased copies of things I had downloaded to check out (like the excellent Au Revoir Simone album).

Some of you may notice that despite my fevered excoriation of Death in June (or, you know, ambivalent musings thereon), there’s a hearty selection of their music here. I decided I needed to hear more of their stuff for myself, and I have to say, extended exposure to their music reinforces my conviction that they’re purposefully playing games with their listeners in a way I find unconscionable, even if some of the (earlier) songs scratch a very specific, Joy Division-esque itch deep in my head. This is something Jessica Hopper deals with obliquely, in the context of indie hipsters becoming fans of black metal bands with questionable beliefs (another thing I’ve had to wrestle with repeatedly over the years).

UPDATE: The conversation continues over Jessica’s way, just as ambivalent and inconclusive as the one that goes on in my head.

Anyway, here’s the list.

1. ABC Mutes: Studio Stuff
2. Ab Ovo: Empreintes
3. Architects Office: 1987: Live
4. Architects Office: 9th Year Gala Performance
5. Area: Arbeit Macht Frei
6. Art & Technique: Diabolus In Mecanica
7. Au Revoir Simone: The Bird of Music
8. Ballet Mécanique: The Icecold Waters of Egocentric Calculation
9. Sir Richard Bishop: While My Guitar Violently Bleeds
10. ビジリバ: ビジリバ
11. Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath [box set remaster]
12. Black Sabbath: Paranoid [box set remaster]
13. Black Sabbath: Master of Reality [box set remaster]
14. Black Sabbath: Vol 4 [box set remaster]
15. Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath [box set remaster]
16. Black Sabbath: Sabotage [box set remaster]
17. Black Sabbath: Technical Ecstasy [box set remaster]
18. Black Sabbath: Never Say Die! [box set remaster]
19. Blue Mathue: Perfect Pictures
20. Bogart & S·Core: Pilgrim
21. Boys Noize: Oi Oi Oi
22. The Breeders: Mountain Battles
23. Monte Cazazza: The Worst of Monte Cazazza
24. CEDS: Xandosis
25. CINdYTALK: Camouflage Heart
26. CINdYTALK: In This World
27. CINdYTALK: Secrets and Falling
28. CINdYTALK: The Wind is Strong
29. CINdYTALK: Transgender Warrior
30. CINdYTALK: Wappinschaw
31. Cardboard Village: Sea Change
32. Coil: The New Backwards
33. Combo FH: Véci
34. Commando M Pigg: s/t
35. Confetti: Retrospective
36. Crawling Chaos: The Gas Chair
37. Crawling With Tarts: Operas
38. Crevice: Crevice 1
39. Crevice: Think of Pleasant Things
40. Curlew: s/t
41. De Fabriek & Telepherique: PWZ
42. Death in June: The Guilty Have No Past
43. Death in June: Burial
44. Death in June: Nada!
45. Death in June: The World That Summer
46. Death in June: Brown Book
47. Death in June: 93 Dead Sunwheels
48. Death in June: The Wall of Sacrifice
49. Death in June: The Cathedral of Tears
50. Death in June: Oh How We Laughed
51. Death in June: The Corn Years
52. Devo: Recombo DNA
53. Disrupt: Jah Bit Invasion
54. Dom: Fackeln Im Sturm
55. Frank Domert: Kiefermusik
56. Dorothy: I Confess
57. Drahomira Song Orchestra: The Return of 120 Magicians
58. Iancu Dumitrescu / David Prescott: split
59. Alec Empire: The Golden Foretaste of Heaven
60. Enduser: Form Without Function
61. Eva-Tone: She’s-A-Wild
62. Flipper: Love Canal / Ha Ha Ha
63. The Flying Lizards: s/t
64. The Flying Lizards: Fourth Wall
65. The Flying Lizards: Top Ten
66. Folkdove: s/t
67. Francisco: Cosmic Beam Experience
68. Frequency.m: Fm043
69. Genghis Tron: Board Up the House
70. Gorilla Aktiv: Umsonst Ohne Risiko
71. The Hafler Trio: Ignotum Per Ignotus
72. Hajsch: Nagual (für Silvio Manuel)
73. Hands To / Eric Lunde: split
74. Kevin Harrison: Inscrutably Obvious
75. Hula: Black Pop Workout
76. Hula: Cut From Inside
77. Hula: Fever Car
78. Hula: Murmur
79. Hula: Freeze Out
80. Hula: Get the Habit
81. Hula: Black Wall Blue
82. Hula: Poison
83. Hula: Cut Me Loose
84. Hula: VC1
85. Indoor Life: s/t
86. Linton Kwesi Johnson: A Cappella Live
87. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Bass Culture
88. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Dread Beat an’ Blood
89. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Making History
90. Kiss the Blade: The Party’s Begun
91. Kiss the Blade: Young Soldier
92. Hassisen Kone: Harsoinen Teräs
93. Korean Buddhist God: Magnum You
94. Korpses Katatonik: Sensitive Liberated Autistiks
95. Joachim Kuhn: Cinemascope
96. Der Künftige Musikan: Veitstanz
97. LAShTAL: Thoum Aesh Neith
98. Laddio Bolocko: Strange Warnings of Laddio Bolocko
99. Laddio Bolocko: The Life & Times of Laddio Bolocko
100. Leviathan: Massive Conspiracy Against All Life
101. Liquid Visions: Endless Plasmatic Childhood
102. Eric Lunde: V215
103. Eric Lunde: Witness to Disaster
104. M83: Saturdays = Youth
105. Magma: Trilogie Theusz Hamtaahk Live
106. The Master Musicians of Joujouka: recorded live in France
107. Merzbow & John Hudak: The Time Stream
108. Merzbow: Batzoutai With Material Gadgets
109. Merzbow: Lowest Music 2
110. Mesh: Claustrophobia
111. Meshuggah: obZen
112. Jeff Mills: Gamma Player, Volume 1: The Universe by Night
113. Misson of Burma: Signals, Calls, and Marches [2008 Matador reissue]
114. Mnemonists: Gyromancy
115. Mnemonists: Roto-Limbs
116. Mnemonists: Some Attributes of a Living System
117. Monos: Everyday Soundtracks
118. Monos: Generators
119. Monos: Window
120. Monoton: Monotonprodukt 02
121. Monoton: Monotonprodukt 07
122. Mr. Partridge: Take Away / The Lure of Salvage
123. Nailsleeper: Marching Dynamics
124. Neung Phak: Neung Phak (Mono Pause)
125. Kaiser Nietzsche: Non Plus Ultra
126. Hermann Nitsch: Klaviersonate für Arnulf Rainer
127. Gary Numan & Tubeway Army: Replicas Redux
128. Nurse With Wound: Steel Dream March of the Metal Men
129. OAD: Daytona
130. The Ocean: Precambrian
131. Ora: After Rainfall
132. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Dazzle Ships [2008 Telegraph remaster]
133. Jürgen Paape: Nord Nord-West
134. PBK: Shadows of Prophecy / In His Throes
135. Pearls Before Swine: The Complete ESP-Disk’ Recordings
136. Bob Pegg: Ancient Maps
137. Bob Pegg & Nick Strutt: The Ship Builder
138. Pekka Streng & Tasavalla Presidentti: Magneettimiehen Kuolema
139. PFN: Akasa / Für Cleo
140. Phallus Dei: Pontifex Maximus
141. Poison the Well: Versions
142. Portion Control: Simulate Sensual
143. Prag Vec: No Cowboys
144. Princess Tinymeat: Herstory: 1984-1986
145. Qua: Forgetabout
146. Qua: Painting Monsters on Clouds
147. The Raincoats: s/t
148. Jay Reatard: Blood Visions
149. Reyvision: The Sound Cage
150. Chas Rose: Child of the Universe
151. Jack Rose: Dr. Ragtime & Pals / Jack Rose
152. Rosetta: Wake / Lift
153. S·Core: A Great Lump
154. S·Core: A Jest of Nature
155. S·Core: Dross
156. S·Core: Dysphonia
157. S·Core: Finger Mark
158. S·Core: Morbid Moppets
159. S·Core: Shedder
160. S·Core: Tarnish
161. S·Core: Undersong
162. Rolf Schulz: Tambora
163. Adrian Sherwood: Becoming a Cliché / Dub Cliché
164. Sigillum S: Abstraction
165. Sigillum S: Dispersion: Sliced Carrions & Pixel Handcuffs
166. Sigillum S: Es Database Chronology
167. Sigillum S: Mutilated Terrorism
168. Sigillum S: Terror-Auto Obstetrics
169. Soap-Jo Henshi: s/t
170. Social Climbers: s/t
171. Somatic Responses: Augmented Lines
172. Somatic Responses: Circumflex
173. Somatic Responses: Pounded Mass
174. Somatic Responses: Touching the Void
175. La Sonorite Jaun: Heliae
176. La Sonorite Jaune & The Haters: The Interstellar Destroyed Music Mail Project
177. SPK: Dekompositiones
178. SPK: Live 7 June 1987 Theaterfabrik Manege, München
179. SPK: Oceania: In Performance 1987
180. Stars & Stips: Nevergreens
181. Suburban Lawns: Baby
182. Suburban Lawns: Gidget Goes to Hell
183. Supersister: Present From Nancy
184. Supersister: Spiral Staircase
185. Teddy & the Frat Girls: Audio Suicide
186. Test Dept. / Brith Gof: Gododdin
187. Steve Thomsen: Retrospective II
188. Steve Thomsen: Retrospective III
189. Throbbing Gristle: Discipline
190. Throbbing Gristle: Mission of Dead Souls: The Last Live Performance of TG
191. Throbbing Gristle: Subhuman
192. Throbbing Gristle: The First Annual Report
193. Throbbing Gristle: Throbbing Gristle Live: Volume 1 (1976-1978)
194. Throbbing Gristle: Throbbing Gristle Live: Volume 2 (1977-1978)
195. Throbbing Gristle: Throbbing Gristle Live: Volume 3 (1978-1979)
196. Throbbing Gristle: Throbbing Gristle Live: Volume 4 (1979-1980)
197. Torche: Torche [2005 original version]
198. Torche: Torche [2007 re-recorded version]
199. Torche: Meanderthal
200. The Vaselines: The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History
201. Vazz: Your Lungs and Your Tongue
202. Vendino Pact: s/t
203. Virgin Prunes: A New Form of Beauty
204. Virgin Prunes: Over the Rainbow
205. Virgin Prunes: …If I Die, I Die
206. Voigt/465: One Faint Deluded Smile
207. Vox Populi!: Half Dead Ganja Music
208. Warning: s/t
209. Trevor Wishart: Journey Into Space
210. Trevor Wishart: Red Bird / Anticredos
211. Xanopticon: Liminal Space
212. Yeast Culture: IYS
213. Yeast Culture: Rena Leica: The Exposition of Nothing
214. Yelle: Pop Up
215. Zanov: Green Ray
216. Zanov: In Course of Time
217. Zanov: Moebius
218. v/a: Alchemy
219. v/a: Angelica 91
220. v/a: Angelica 92
221. v/a: Anthology 1: Come Organisation Archives 1979-1981
222. v/a: Bogata, Luca & Richman: The Devil’s Trill
223. v/a: Dry Lungs
224. v/a: Dry Lungs II
225. v/a: Dry Lungs V
226. v/a: Freedom in a Vacuum
227. v/a: Fridge Freezer
228. v/a: Hands 2/3
229. v/a: La Mort Heureuse
230. v/a: Mutant Sounds Whacked-Out Singles: Volume 7
231. v/a: No Big Business
232. v/a: No Big Business 2
233. v/a: PS1 Volume: Bed of Sound
234. v/a: Project One
235. v/a: Trumpett Sounds

Once upon a time there was Option magazine. It covered a broad – yet oddly narrowly defined – cross-section of music that was too weird for the mainstream, but maybe not all the way underground. Each issue would feature quarter-page ads for ReR and Cuneiform Records, and generally there was one or more ads for The Bevis Frond. It had features of varying quality (one article on Swans featured the memorable observation by Jarboe that working in the studio with Michael Gira was much like what working with Paganini was said to be like: “like standing in vats of boiling oil, lancing each other with razor blades”), but the real draw for the magazine were the 30-40 pages of concise reviews, typeset in 4 columns of agate type. It took a couple days to work through them all, but doing so always left me with a feeling like I had a pretty good idea what was going on. They covered cassette-only DiY industrial releases as much as they did more established stalwarts of new and experimental music (Fred Frith, Eugene Chadborne, Zeena Parkins, John Zorn – the Knitting Factory crowd).

Option crapped out 10 years ago. It had lost its purpose, crowded on one side by the alternative-izing of Spin and Rolling Stone in the wake of the grunge explosion-implosion, and on the other by the explosion of subgenres and new bands that characterized the 90s. It’s impossible to imagine a magazine with Option’s broad remit succeeding today. There’s way too much music to cover, and the print magazines that do survive (in Pitchfork’s shadow) tend to be more narrowly focused and relatively conservative. Even The Wire, the most self-consciously hip’n’edgy music magazine out there, is much more predictable than Option was in the early 90s.

Even so, I did inductively identify an Option sound after reading it for a couple years, a kind of post-college rock / intellectual psychedelia that lived somewhere in the interstices between Galaxie 500, Robyn Hitchcock, Half Japanese and the aforementioned twisted guitar genii Chadborne and Frith. It was like art-hippy weirdoes Henry Cow tamed for a larger audience, or REM with more unpredictability.

I provide you with all this prolog because Damien Youth fits the old Option template perfectly. Having never heard him before, listening to his The Man Who Invented God filled me with a rush of nostalgia for high school, when my friends and I would swap REM and Let’s Active and Big Star tapes. Youth was contemporary with those bands, even though he never had their success, and he was clearly mining the same vein of intellectual, introspective folky psychedelia. The Man Who Invented God has the insular quality I associate with late-80s home studio recordings, and Youth practically ought to be paying Michael Stipe royalties, but there’s a free-flowing ease to the songs that makes the rough edges and stylistic debts less important. There’s also some eyeliner and goth poetry going on, which you can interpret as charming or grating as you see fit.

This is yet another of the trove of old recordings I got from Mutant Sounds, and it’s worth the download time and Rapidshare hassle to check out if you like gothic psychedelia. Youth outlasted Option and is still going, almost 25 years after he started, and he’s got a bewildering array of other projects he’s participated in. I might have to check some of them out.

…but one thing is for sure: when I start wading through the thickets of accusations and counteraccusations, rumor-mongering, sectarian and factional grudge-slinging and post-Situationist po-faced “pranksterism” around the neo-folk / neo-pagan scene, I get the exact same headache I used to get when I was a teenager trying to figure out the American Communist left by reading RCP and SWP newspapers (if you don’t know those acronyms, good for you – all you need to know is that they were / are both claiming the True Marxist mantle for themselves, and they loathe each other).

Out on the fringes of politics and ideology there lies a sticky morass of extremism and paranoia that manifests itself in seemingly incomprehensible shifts in belief, where people will go from hard, statist left to hard, individualist right, without stopping at any point in between. It’s the same phenomenon that produces former-Trotskyite neocons like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, only with much less disastrous consequences (Douglas P may be a jerk, but he hasn’t (successfully) started any land wars in Asia lately). In the case of neo-folk, though, art is involved, and art necessarily involves ambiguity. The problem of figuring out who actually believes what and who is a lying sack of shit becomes completely intractable, so there’s this peculiar Schrödinger’s box, within which a group like Sol Invictus is either a bunch of neo-Nazi meat puppets or kindly, misunderstood friends to Jew and puppy alike, or Death In June are either in hock to Croatian war criminals or bemused visitors to the region who donated money to innocent victims of the Balkan war. If you care about not giving your time and money to people whose principles you abhor, sorting through these messes can be troubling and maddening in equal measure.

To get a flavor for the complete vacuum of truth this sort of churning strife engenders, first read this hatchet job on Sol Invictus by Stewart Home (his Wikipedia talk page is more germane than the Wikipedia entry itself), and then read this confused atttempt to grapple with it on the blog of some innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. To me, it seems inescapable that the neo-pagan crowd has an awful lot invested in keeping their politics as amorphous as possible (mostly to keep their audiences from devouring themselves in an orgy of mutual loathing – fans of neo-folk run across the political spectrum. Black shirts and jackboots for some, tiny pagan flags for others!); it’s more telling to me if (IF!) Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch is an admirer of Jörg Haider than if he’s gone out of his way to make friends with SOME Israelis (as my good buddy Joel forcefully pointed out to me recently, it’s possible to find Israelis who are fans of just about anything, which means that you can’t exactly treat Der Blutharsch having Israeli fans as being equivalent to them getting [K] stamped on their asses by the Rabbinate of Jerusalem).

More materially, Home wrote a foreword for a booklet of Sol Invictus lyrics in the 90s. If he thinks Tony Wakeford is a tubby sack of Nazi shit (he seems to be very fond of calling Tony Wakeford a fat man), what’s that all about? And then there’s the Green Anarchism controversy (search for “stewart home” down the page)… it’s all a big fucking mess, and I’m thankful I don’t have to care.

The thing to take away from this is the disorienting sensation that you have fallen completely through the rabbit hole into a world where nobody ever tells the truth if they can wrap it up in a few layers of obfuscatory ideological nonsense first. I’m no closer to determining whether or not Death In June, Sixth Comm, Sol Invictus and a bunch of the other World Serpent neo-folk bands are closet servants of Space Hitler. For now, the fact that nothing conclusive presents itself is probably good enough; I can’t plausibly be a fan of black metal and own records featuring participation by convicted hate criminals and object too strenuously to artists who at least attempt to keep their politics private. (To completely muddy the waters, the most entertaining English-language source on the violent origins of Scandinavian black metal is Lords of Chaos, written by Michael Moynihan, member of Blood Axis and himself despised as a fascist neo-pagan by much of the far left.)

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that my whole train of thought initially started from investigating Death In June’s use of the totenkopf as part of their visual identity – a symbol, paradoxically, that is much more loaded when it is adopted by an English musician than by a German of any stripe, even though its use is illegal in modern Germany. For good and for ill, the totenkopf is part of German cultural heritage, and is much more plausibly adopted as an ambiguous / problematic / “reclaimed” symbol by someone who inherits from that culture than a self-styled “history student” from outside the context – particularly when that same person, like Douglas P, carries around a four-foot-tall metallized version of the logo on a banner he carries with him when he plays live to this day.

Which illustrates, finally, a point that is obvious to me now but wasn’t when I got into the spooky stuff as a curious and alienated teenager, which is that one of the risks of being a fan of dark, marginal and extreme art is that it is easy to fall prey to mental contamination. For every romantic who finds passion in extremity, there is someone much colder seeking to speak to the darkness in others and manipulate it for their own ends. Some dark art is beautiful and much of it is compelling, but it requires confrontation and self-analysis if you’re to avoid succumbing to the bullshit that comes along with it. Just appreciating it for what it is and not paying attention to the context isn’t enough, if you want to keep your hands clean.

The problem with drinking from a firehose is that sometimes you asplode. This just happened to me, and I’m trying to deal with it by sharing my total insanity with you, the semi-random passersby on the internet.

As I’ve mentioned several times, I recently discovered the awe-inspiring zombie amusement park that is Blogspot’s coterie of MP3 blogs. I’d never really paid them much attention before, because most of my exposure to MP3 blogs had been through dodgy Eastern European metal blogs that were dedicated to scene rips of upcoming releases, and I’m really not all that into pissing all over the people who make my favorite music, which is basically what these blogs are all about (somebody has to pay for music, somehow, if it’s going to continue to be made).

However, Mutant Sounds and its brethren opened my eyes to the vast amount of music that exists in a twilit state with respect to copyright; thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act™, most of the recordings shared via these blogs won’t be public domain until the end of this century – if ever – yet the vast majority of this material can be had neither via love, money, nor diligent browsing of GEMM. Most of the artists involved really don’t seem to care, as the bloggers are all pretty careful to avoid posting material that is readily available, and in some cases the creators send the blog owners better-quality recordings of their own material to replace inferior rips.

It didn’t help that one of the first of these blogs I discovered, dualtrack, has posted nearly every record I deeply coveted between 1989 and 1992. I sometimes forget that I got my start as a major music nerd through RE/Search’s Industrial Culture Handbook, but when I was learning about this stuff, I was also your average broke college kid and therefore could only read about these records in The Ooze’s monthly new-releases newsletter, saving up for stuff I really, really wanted, like :zoviet*france: reissues on CD or the occasional bizarre overindulgence. Now that I’m all grown up, most of those records, CDs and cassettes are beyond gone, appearing only in Amoeba’s used bins or on eBay (sometimes for plainly hurtful prices). It was with delight bordering on awe that I discovered that almost all of these records I’d been searching for for many, many years were freely available, generally with high-quality scans of the included artwork.

So, armed with a not entirely flimsy rationalization, a sense of burning need, and a month’s Premium subscription to Rapidshare, I went completely bonkers. Most of the stuff on this list came from either dualtrack, The Thing on the Doorstep, No Longer Forgotten Music, Rusted Noise, Mutant Sounds, Phoenix Hairpins, Boomkat, Amoeba and Other Music Digital. (NOTE TO RECORD LABEL FOLK: My copy of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black is on a shiny aluminized plastic platter purchased new from Amoeba Records, with the latest lame cover art you have chosen for it. The original cover art was much nicer. Thank you for your attention.) A lot of it I even bought, as I took this opportunity to fill in long-standing gaps in my collection. As you can see, it would take me a very long time to even summarize what’s here, so I’m going to leave that to other postings. Suffice it to say that just about every weird kind of music you can imagine, and some you probably can’t (the Masstishaddhu record, in particular, defies description to anyone who hasn’t already heard it).

It’s going to take me weeks to listen to all this stuff, much less comprehend it. There’s a lot of amazing, weird and profound music in here.

1. ABGS: Werkbeschallung: Live
2. Abwärts: Amok Koma
3. Gunter Adler: Minute Music
4. Gunter Adler: Polysyntetica
5. Gunter Adler: The Silver Book
6. Ain Soph: Kshatriya
7. Alpha Omega: Electronic Mind Project
8. Au Revoir Simone: The Bird of Music
9. Autonomic Computing: Mutantextures
10. Henry Badowski: Life is a Grand
11. Erykah Badu: New Amerykah, Part 1: 4th World War
12. Biochemical Dread: Bush Doctrine
13. Biota: Rackabones / Vagabones
14. Bipol: Ritual
15. Black Sun Ensemble: Black Sun Ensemble
16. Blacworld: Subduing Demons (In South Yorkshire)
17. Burning Witch: Crippled Lucifer
18. Monte Cazazza: To Mom on Mother’s Day / Candy Man
19. C-Schulz: 7. Party Disco
20. C-Schulz: 10. Hose Horn
21. Chrome: Alien Soundtracks
22. Chrome: Half Machine Lip Moves
23. Chrome: 3rd from the Sun
24. Chrystal Belle Scrodd: The Inevitable Chrystal Belle Scrodd Record
25. Coil / Zos Kia: Transparent
26. Cold Sun: Dark Shadows
27. Cosey Fanni Tutti: Time to Tell
28. Cranioclast: A Con Cristal
29. Cranioclast: Koitlaransk / Ration Skalk
30. Crash Worship: This
31. Crawling Chaos: Sex Machine / Berlin
32. Helios Creed: X-Rated Fairy Tales / Superior Catholic Finger
33. Crispy Ambulance: From the Cradle to the Grave
34. Crispy Ambulance: Live on a Hot August Night
35. Crispy Ambulance: Sexus
36. Crispy Ambulance: The Plateau Phase
37. Crispy Ambulance: Unsightly and Serene
38. Crispy Ambulance: Live at the ICA
39. Current 93 & HÖH: Crowleymass
40. Current 93 / Nurse With Wound: Mi-Mort
41. Daft Punk: Alive 2007
42. Danava: UnonoU
43. Danielle Dax: Pop-Eyes
44. Danielle Dax: Jesus Egg That Wept
45. Danielle Dax: Inky Bloaters
46. Danielle Dax: The Janice Long Session
47. Danielle Dax: Comatose Non Reaction: The Thwarted Pop Career
48. Amy Denio: No Bones
49. Dead Meadow: Old Growth
50. Dethklok: The Dethalbum
51. Die Form / Asmus Tietchens: Face to Face, Volume 1
52. Die Form: Duality
53. DF Sadist School: Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome
54. Doxa Sinistra: Via del Latte
55. Drowning Craze: Trance / I Love the Fjords
56. Frankie Dymon, Jr.: Let It Out
57. Earth: The Bee Made Honey In The Lions Skull
58. Einstürzende Neubauten: Kollaps
59. Einstürzende Neubauten: Zeichnungen des Patienten OT
60. Elohim: A L’Aube Du Verseau
61. Erste Weibliche Fleischergesellin Nach 1945: Ferien Auf Dem Lande
62. Étant Donnés: Aurore
63. Étant Donnés: L’eclipse
64. Étant Donnés: Re-Up
65. Etat Brut: Mutations et Protheses
66. Exterminator: Anna Blume
67. Factrix: Empire of Passion
68. Factrix: Scheintot
69. Fanzine: 1980
70. Fanzine: 1981
71. Fanzine: 1982
72. File Under Pop: Heathrow
73. Brigitte Fontaine & Areski: L’incendie
74. Brigitte Fontaine & Art Ensemble of Chicago: Comme à la Radio
75. Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle: Telinehmende Beobachtung
76. The Fugs: First Album
77. The Fugs: Second Album
78. BC Gilbert & G Lewis: Ends With the Sea
79. The Gothic Archies: The Tragic Treasury: Songs from “A Series of Unfortunate Events”
80. Bruce Haack: Electric Lucifer: Book 2
81. Bruce Haack: The Electric Lucifer
82. Hanadensha: Acoustic Mothership
83. Hanadensha: Astral Pigmy Wave
84. Hanadensha: Doobie Shining Love
85. Hip Hop Pantsula: YBA 2 NW
86. Lars Hollmer: Fran Natt Idag
87. Lars Hollmer: Vill Du Höra Mer
88. Lars Hollmer: XII Sibirska Cyklar
89. Hoola Bandoola Band: Fri Information
90. Hoola Bandoola Band: Garanterate Individuell
91. Hoola Bandoola Band: På Väg
92. Hoola Bandoola Band: Vem Kan Man Lita På?
93. The Horrorist: Attack Decay
94. The Human League: Being Boiled
95. The Human League: The Dignity of Labour
96. Hunting Lodge: Tribal Warning Shot
97. In the Woods…: Three by Seven on a Pilgrimage
98. Islaja: Meritie
99. Kallabris: Considération sur / sous lé café
100. Richard H Kirk: Darkness at Noon
101. Richard H Kirk: Disposable Half-Truths
102. Kotazo: Papy Mbavu / Papa Komanda
103. Korpiklaani: Korven Kuningas
104. Korpiklaani: Spirit of the Forest
105. Korpiklaani: Voice of Wilderness
106. Lava: Tears Are Goin’ Home
107. Thomas Leer & Robert Rental: The Bridge
108. Lemon Kittens: Spoonfed and Writhing
109. Lemon Kittens: The Big Dentist
110. Lemon Kittens: We Buy a Hammer for Daddy
111. Lesbian: Power Hor
112. Liquid Sound Company: Exploring the Psychedelic
113. Machinic Indices: Untitled Kompositions
114. Malombra: Malombra
115. Masstishaddhu: Shekinah
116. Men/Eject: Men/Eject
117. Metabolist: Drömm
118. Metabolist: Hansten Klork
119. Metabolist: Identify
120. The Metronomes: Regular Guys
121. Mimir: Mimir
122. Mimir: Mimyriad
123. Mnemonists: Biota
124. Mnemonists: Horde
125. Moctan: Suspect
126. Morphogenesis: Prochronisms
127. Mysticum: In the Streams of Inferno
128. nEGAPADRÉS.3.3: nEGAPADRÉS.3.3
129. Joanna Newsom: Walnut Whales
130. Joanna Newsom: Yarn and Glue
131. Nocturnal Emissions: Spiritflesh
132. Non: Mode of Infection / Knife Ladder
133. Nurse With Wound / Spasm: Creakiness / Firemoon
134. Nurse With Wound / Termite Queen: Nurse With Wound / Termite Queen
135. Nurse With Wound / Organum: A Missing Sense / Rasa
136. Nurse With Wound: A Sucked Orange
137. Nurse With Wound: Brained by Falling Masonry
138. Nurse With Wound: Crocodile Krazy Glue
139. Nurse With Wound: The Musty Odour of Pierced Rectums
140. Opal: Early Recordings 2
141. Orchestra Terrestrial: Here and Elsewhere
142. Organum: Horii
143. Organum: Ikon
144. Organum: Sphyx
145. Organum: Tower of Silence
146. Michael O’Shea: Michael O’Shea
147. La Otracina: Fauna & Animated Floral Arrangements
148. P16.D4: Distruct
149. P16.D4: Kühe in 1/2 Trauer
150. Penumbra: Skandinavien
151. Permutative Distorsion: Brückenkopf im Niemandsland
152. Pitch Black Afro: Split Endz
153. Eddie Prévost / Organum: Flayed / Crux
154. Problemist: 9 Times Sanity
155. Project 197: IP001
156. Pseudo Code: Europa
157. Psychic TV: Allegory & Self
158. Psychic TV: Dreams Less Sweet
159. Psychic TV: Force Thee Hand ov Chance / Blinded Eye in Thee Pyramid
160. Psychic TV: Mouth of the Night
161. Psychic TV: NY Scum
162. Punch Inc.: Fightclub
163. The Raveonettes: Lust Lust Lust
164. Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
165. Steve Reich: Tehellim & The Desert Music
166. Steve Reich: Triple Quartet
167. Steve Reich: You Are (Variations) / Cello Counterpoint
168. Robert Rental: On Location / Double Heart
169. The Residents: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
170. The Residents: Commercial Single
171. Graeme Revell: The Insect Musicians
172. The Revolving Paint Dream: Flowers in the Sky: The Enigma of the Revolving Paint Dream
173. Boyd Rice and Friends: Music, Martinis & Misanthropy
174. Salon Music: La Paloma Show
175. Sandoz: In Dub: Chapter Two / Extra Time (Under the Stones)
176. Shock Headed Peters: I, Bloodbrother Be
177. Shock Headed Peters: The Kissing of Gods
178. Sielwolf: IV
179. Sielwolf: Nachtstrom
180. Sielwolf: V - Remixes
181. Sigillum S: 23|20
182. Sigillum S: Bardo Thos-Grol
183. Sigillum S: Studs and Divinity
184. Sixth Comm: Grey Years
185. Smegma: 33 1/3
186. SPK: Slogun / Meccano
187. SPK: Live At Garibaldi’s, 1979
188. SPK: Information Overload Unit
189. SPK: Auto Da Fe
190. SPK: Leichenschrei
191. SPK: Angst Pop: Live
192. SPK: From Science to Ritual
193. SPK: Human Post Mortem (Despair OST)
194. SPK: Live at Pandora’s Music Box
195. SPK: Live at the Crypt
196. SPK: No More
197. SPK: Off the Deep End
198. SPK: See-Saw / Chamber Musik
199. SPK: The Last Attempt at Paradise: Live in Lawrence, Kansas
200. SPK: Wars of Islam: Live in Rome
201. SPK: Machine Age Voodoo
202. SPK: Metal Dance / Will to Power
203. SPK: In Flagrante Delicto
204. SPK: Zamia Lehmanni
205. SPK: Gold & Poison
206. SPK: Compilation Tracks (2nd version)
207. Snakefinger: Manual of Errors
208. Snakefinger: Chewing Hides the Sound
209. Snakefinger: Greener Posters
210. Sol Invictus: Lex Talionis
211. Somatic Responses: Digital Darkness
212. Spektr: Mescalyne
213. Sun Ra: HelioCentric Worlds, Volumes 1 & 2
214. Sweet Exorcist: Spirit Guide to Low Tech
215. Symphonique Elegance: Act One
216. Syrup Girls vs Sick Girls: Shotgun Wedding, Volume 8
217. Teenage Jesus & The Jerks: Orphans / Less of Me
218. Thick Pigeon: Thick Pigeon
219. Throbbing Gristle: AR-TT-010
220. Throbbing Gristle: United
221. Throbbing Gristle: DOA: The Third and Final Report
222. Throbbing Gristle: Adrenaline
223. Throbbing Gristle: 20 Jazz Funk Greats
224. Throbbing Gristle: Nothing Short of a Total War
225. Throbbing Gristle: Rafters
226. Throbbing Gristle: CD1
227. Tools You Can Trust: Again Again Again
228. Tools You Can Trust: Say It Low
229. Tools You Can Trust: Sharpen the Tools
230. Trop Tard: Ils etaient 9 dans L’obscurite
231. Tuxedomoon: Dark Companion / 59 To 1 Remix
232. Tuxedomoon: Desire / No Tears
233. Tuxedomoon: What Use? / Crash
234. Tuxedomoon: Joe Boy The Electric Ghost / Pinheads on the Move
235. Tuxedomoon: Une Nuit au Fond de la Frayére / Egypt
236. Tuxedomoon: Scream with a View
237. Tuxedomoon: Half-Mute / Scream With a View
238. Tuxedomoon: Ship of Fools
239. Tuxedomoon: The Ghost Sonata
240. Týr: Ragnarok
241. Ultravox: Slow Motion
242. Vas Deferens Organization: Zyzzybaloubah
243. Verhören: Death is Safe
244. Vidna Obmana: Noise / Drone Anthology 1984-1989
245. Virgin Prunes: Heresie
246. Von Zamla: No Make Up!
247. Vox Populi! / HNAS: Face to Face, Volume 2
248. Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
249. Xasthur: A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors
250. Damien Youth: Festival of Death
251. Damien Youth: Fluttering Briar
252. Damien Youth: The Man Who Invented God
253. Z’ev: Elemental Music
254. Z’ev: Salts of Heavy Metals
255. Stefan Weisser: Poextensions
256. Zahgurim: Moral Rearmament
257. Zero Kama: The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H.
258. Zos Kia Meets Sugardog: That’s Heavy Baby
259. v/a: 2005 Hands
260. v/a: 4 in 1
261. v/a: Ach Hanover
262. v/a: Angst in My Pants
263. Alban Berg / Anton Webern / Arnold Schoenberg / James Levine / Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra: Orchestral Pieces
264. v/a: Can You Hear Me? Music from The Deaf Club
265. v/a: Colorado
266. v/a: Dada > Antidada > Merz
267. v/a: Devastate to Liberate
268. v/a: Dokument: Ten Highlights in the History Of Popular Music, 1982-1983
269. v/a: Earthly Delights
270. v/a: The Elephant Table Album
271. v/a: Er Ist Tief Und Dein Wasser Ist Dunkel
272. v/a: Feature Mist
273. v/a: Fluxus Anthology
274. v/a: Für Ilse Koch
275. v/a: A Gnomean Haigonaimean: A Compilation of Fantasies Intoxication Concepts
276. v/a: Gut Level One
277. v/a: Hare / Hunter / Field
278. v/a: Harmony of the Spheres
279. v/a: Hate’s Our Belief
280. v/a: Iberico
281. v/a: Internationalism
282. v/a: The Last Supper
283. v/a: Machines
284. v/a: Masse Mensch
285. v/a: Palatine: The Factory Story
286. v/a: Passage du Trou Marin
287. v/a: Perpetual State of Oracular Dream
288. v/a: Riposte
289. v/a: A Selection
290. v/a: Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus
291. v/a: The Virus Has Been Spread: A D-Trash Records Tribute To Atari Teenage Riot

Cold Sun’s Dark Shadows does not do what it says on the box. The band and album names suggest some kind of kohl-eyed coldwave from the late 80s, not an amalgam of the Grateful Dead, Pavement and Built to Spill, full of sinuous, meandering guitar lines and aggressively Aquarian lyrics drawn from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It was apparently recorded in 1969 but not released until 1989, and even then on a tiny little label. It’s not precisely an overlooked gem, because it’s definitely a creature of its moment, with the stilted vocal delivery (which really does seem like an awkward hybrid of Jerry Garcia and Stephen Malkmus’s styles) and the somewhat overfamiliar psychedelic doodles draped all over the songs, but there’s something about its aggressive oddity and potentially laughable earnestness that got it deeply enough wedged in my head that I woke up this morning humming it.

And you can check it out for free, so if that sounds like your sort of thing, you should check it out.

I think most serious music fans and collectors have private creation myths: little stories they can tell about how they came to be the way they are. Either it’s a friend or a sibling who passed them some ear-opening tapes, or a family that was filled with musicians, or a glancing exposure to something that sunk its hooks deeply into their brains and took them over for life. Or, in many cases, a combination of all of the above, which is how it was for me. Here’s a little piece of my own story.

When I was a junior in high school, I spent one night babysitting some friends who were tripping (this was before we all figured out that mixing the high and the non-high is generally frustrating for everyone involved). They spent that trip mostly playing an already ancient version of Space War on one dude’s PC. I was mostly relieved to be left alone for a while, having spent most of the day feeling like a tool for not wanting to get high myself, and spent the time flipping through channels on cable, something I didn’t have at home.

This was shortly after the introduction of VH-1 but before the introduction of 120 Minutes, and Viacom had unceremoniously dumped a bunch of semi-alternative music videos on an unnamed show late on VH-1, which I happened to catch. The three videos I saw were by Helios Creed, Front 242 and Danielle Dax, and it’s safe to say they changed my life. The Helios Creed video was sleazy and struck me at the time as a not-so-veiled paean to heroin, the Front 242 video was for “Headhunter” and made me desperately nostalgic for Brussels (which I’d visited for all of three hours 8 months previously), and the Danielle Dax video was for “Cat-House”, and was by far the most surreal of the bunch – which was saying something.

“Cat-House” is a weird song, mostly because of the way it plays Dax’s girl-group-gone-feral singing against what seems like more or less straightforward industrialized rock and roll. It sort of sounds like the Sisters of Mercy got a less wildly demonstrative Diamanda Galás to sing for them, and it’s a song that starts out seeming pedestrian, only to get weirder and weirder the more you hear both it and the rest of Dax’s painfully eclectic catalog. The video is basically Dax miming the song run through a battery of cheap video effects (which are done absolutely no favors by YouTube), but it has a hyperdelic intensity that hit me just right, maybe due to spending the day around people who were capable of watching a stalk of grass for 15 minutes without moving.

Dax has been around long enough that most people have forgotten her altogether, but I’ve been listening to her US best-of anthology, Dark Adapted Eye, a couple times a year ever since I picked it up (on cassette!) in 1989. She got her start in the incredibly weird Lemon Kittens, and her music has stayed hard to pigeonhole ever since, borrowing elements of Orientalism, perverse morbidity, cryptic metaphysical references, and a generally goth patina without ever having a fixed sound. She gave up on the music business back in 1995 in a fairly flamboyant fashion, issuing another best-of and obscurities collection with the pithily summarizing title of Comatose Non Reaction: The Thwarted Pop Career. At least she kept her sense of humor.

After recently discovering the bonanza of music to be found on the MP3 Blogs of Blogspotistan, I found Devastate to Liberate. It’s not an album you’re likely to have heard of unless you’re a fan of some of the bands on it (or an old-school member of PETA), but in its way it’s a Rosetta Stone of mid-80s weirdo music, with songs by Nurse With Wound, Legendary Pink Dots, Crass, Coil and a variety of other (talented yet obscure) industrial and anarcho-punk acts. It’s also, I think, the first militant animal-rights benefit album, being released to raise funds for the Animal Liberation Front.

Perhaps my favorite track on the album is one by a band I’d never heard before: the Shock Headed Peters. “Blue Rosebuds” is an unhinged five minutes of feedbacked scree and post-Sabbath guitar histrionics that neatly bridges the gap between heavy metal and the noise attack of Skullflower. It’s not metal, it’s not industrial, and it’s not rock and roll, but it’s definitely crazed and loud and I love it.

Shock Headed Peters were a project of Karl Blake, who was the other member of Lemon Kittens with Danielle Dax, and hearing this track prompted me to finally find the Lemon Kittens’ albums. The least obscure album Lemon Kittens put out was released on Steven Stapleton’s United Dairies, and whether or not you have the faintest inkling what United Dairies is, that should give you some idea how obscure the Lemon Kittens were. Their entire catalog is seemingly irretrievably out of print, and it’s hard to identify why, because their music is not unapproachable; it’s strange and amateurish (Dax didn’t know anything about music when she joined the band), but in the best spirit of post punk experimentalism, ideas are king, and a lot of the songs click after two or three listens. For now, you’ll just have to find one of the internet rips and download those, unless Blake or Dax decides to chance their luck with a label or distributor again (they both have fairly dyspeptic Myspace blogs).

Dax’s kiss-off to the music industry contained a couple songs she did in collaboration with Blake, one of which is an absolutely fabulous reinterpretation of a Shock Headed Peters song, “Hate on Sight”, which is turned from an acidic post-punk tune into something not unlike Curve playing doom metal. It’s enough to make tracking down a copy of Comatose Non Reaction all on its own, because it’s a great song.

All of this has filled me with a burning urge to hear more Shock Headed Peters, but their stuff is also incredibly hard to find (I found this, but I’d like legit copies of this stuff without having to pay extortionate eBay prices). It’s too bad, because Karl Blake plays guitar like a gifted demon (much like Helios Creed, to bring this story back to its beginning). No matter how much music I find, I always seem to find myself wanting more. It’s a pleasant problem to have, especially because I still like the old stuff – I’ve been listening to Danielle Dax’s music a bunch over the last few days and, if anything, I find her outsider take on goth music more charming now than I did when I first heard it 20 years ago.

Swervedriver were a terrific band. They released four albums that managed to mine just about every great rock and roll tradition of the preceding 30 years without ever sounding like anything other than Swervedriver. They were better on stage than on record, even though classic songs like “Last Train to Satansville” were minor masterpieces of invisible soundtrack work and they were clearly consummate craftsmen. Their songs have a transparent clarity that glows brighter the more attention you give them. They were, in short, a great British rock band, and these days almost entirely unknown.

The biggest reason for their relative obscurity is due to factors beyond their control; their first records were released by Creation at the height of shoegazermania, and while they had some brilliant dreampop moments (“Sunset” off their debut is my favorite along those lines), they were both more muscular and more traditional than most of their peers. I saw them open for Soundgarden in the spring of 1992, and I went from thinking they were also-rans to being a fan in about 10 minutes. They rocked hard, and played far more confidently than you’d expect from an opening act who were almost completely unknown in the US at the time. My favorite album by them, Mezcal Head, is a straight up rock and roll masterpiece – nothing “alternative” about it – and owes much to the Rolling Stones, Lee Hazelwood and The Byrds.

I picked up their third album, Ejector Seat Reservation, shortly after it came out in 1996. It was hard to find (it didn’t get released outside the UK until 2003) and so I was a little disappointed that it seemed so featureless and dry next to the effortless pyrotechnics of Mezcal Head. That feeling persisted until just a couple months ago, when I ripped all my Swervedriver and put it on my iPod. Having the opportunity to hear Ejector Seat Reservation while I was out and about allowed me to get to know it at a more leisurely pace, and I slowly realized that it is at least as classic a set of songs as anything else Swervedriver ever released. I use the word “classic” consciously; Swervedriver’s debts are more obvious than ever, but so is the care and conscientiousness of their songcraft.

This album really deserves to be in the same category as the best records by Blur, Ride or Pulp, and easily outclasses anything made by the odious Oasis (the Gallagher brothers are jerks, their records sound like overcompressed crap, and they had one great song they kept permuting over and over). It’s hard to say what Swervedriver could have done to get more noticed, but it’s a shame they weren’t.

I’m only hearing it for the first time, so I can’t really comment on the recording yet, but the notes and exhibition catalog for John Duncan’s soundscape for Paolo Parisi’s “Conservatory” installation is very pretty, and has the kind of measured curatorial insight that European art seems to attract by default and that are so very, very rare in the United States. I wish I could have visited the installation.