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Artist: ASVA Title: Futurist's Against The Ocean
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM021
Price: $13.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 4/11/05
***Ready or not, Asva is blowing through town and taking the drone rock medium to new lows. Not your average "doom" band, Asva's saddlebags are filled with wooden chapel organs and subharmonic drones. Their packs are stuffed with electroacoustic sensibilities and hand-scribbled laments to the alchemical stars; they ride through walls of electrostatic fuzz to toll the mission bell on this side and then smash pianos to splinters just for the sound it makes. In their wake nothing remains but tumbleweeds and twisters, dancing pointlessly in ageless dusty darkness.

This is not just creative writing, folks, it's pretty much all true. Inscrutable and already semi-legendary, Asva is cofounded and lead by both G. Stuart Dahlquist (SUNN 0))), Burning Witch) and B.R.A.D. (Burning Witch). The first incarnation of Asva featured the guitar of Dylan Carlson (Earth), but the sound expanded and excitement among the doom community built as the line-up shifted and expanded. Guitarist John Schuller (Master Musicians of Bukkake) replacing Carlson, and organist and instrument-tweaker Troy Swanson (chief apprentice for renowned sound-installationist Trimpin) joined. Stepping into the studio Trey Spruance (Secret Chiefs 3 / Mr. Bungle) got into it with guitar, piano and tubular bells, as did Jessika Kenney (Gamelan Pacifica / Black Horse) on vocals. Billy Anderson (producer/engineer for bands like Sleep, Melvins, High On Fire, Fantomas and Sick Of It All) was brought in to assist very capable producer/engineers Randall Dunn and Mell Dettmer.

Asva completed its first tour during August and September 2004, sharing the stage with such bands as Khanate and High on Fire to enthusiastic receptions. They will tour extensively in support of this, their first album.

  • Members of SunnO))), Secret Chiefs 3, Burning Witch, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Gamelan Pacifica collaborate to bring the world Asva
  • Holy crap, full digipack designed by Stephen OiMalley
  • Tours in support of album
  • Guaranteed to be mentioned in the same breath as Earth, Sunn0))), Burning Witch, High on Fire, Melvins, Southern Lord, drone and doom

    30-second MP3 excerpts:

    Kill The Dog, Tie Them Up, Take The Money
    Zaum; Beyondsense
    Fortune
    By The Well Of Living And Seeing

    If you have a recent version of iTunes software on your computer, clicking on the link immediately below should open the iTunes application and take you to that album's iTunes page-- where you can listen to samples and buy this album, or individual tracks:

    Asva "Futurist's Against The Ocean"

    For a complete listing of Midheaven exclusive albums available for download from the iTunes Music service, please visit the Midheaven Mailorder/Revolver USA Downloadables page.
Artist: BRAZZAVILLE Title: Welcome To Brazzaville
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM017CD
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 11/1/04
***Sophisticated pop, says The New Yorker about Brazzaville, with languid, bossa-nova-influenced rhythms and gritty lyrics that conjure dark deeds on steamy dead-end streets. Whatever dark deeds are evoked by Brazzaville, none can be worse than the undeserved commercial neglect the band has endured. They've gotten all kinds of great press, strokes from critics, and all that. That's because their music is rich, unique, uncontrived, and extremely fun to listen to. It speaks in hushed tones and has been boiled in a heavy noir. Brazzaville has put out three albums independently, all of which in saner times would have found happy homes on major (or at least big) labels. Produced by Michael Rosen, Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, R.E.M, Travis, Beck's Mutations) and Tony Hoffer (Air, Suede, Supergrass, Beck's Midnight Vultures), Welcome to Brazzaville is Mimicry's Best Of album, with tracks selected from the band's seven-year, bi-continental recording career (they are now in Spain) with a few new, unreleased tracks. What can we say? They're big in Russia.

Let's just end this thing how we started it:

Dark, sophisticated pop from one of L.A.'s most accomplished new bands. Think of Brazzaville as vagabond pop for fans of Morphine, Tom Waits, Spain, Leonard Cohen and Tindersticks.
--New York Times

One of the hippest and most exiting experiments to come down the pike in a long, long time.... An intuitive, impressionistic take on our shrinking world where themes of isolation and loneliness are at odds with the promise and allure of easy international transit.
-- CDNOW

Slinky, spy-at-the-beach sounds that suggest exotic, tropical vacations courtesy of the Federal Witness Protection Program and an invitation into dangerously cool, Yakuza hangouts where nobody knows your name until all the doors are locked. --Carbon 14

Artist: CHAMBERLAIN, MATT Title: S/T
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM026CD
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 11/14/05
***Prompted to creation, in a way, by the legendary session drummer Hal Blaine's under-appreciated record Psychedelic Percussion, Matt Chamberlain's debut solo record conjures up the forgotten possibilities of the good old 'drummer and studio' paradigm. The record ends up functioning like a sordid dream intertwined with some haunting movie memories (think Telly Savalas... think Enter the Dragon). It's easy to picture zombie karate fights taking place in lush overflowing gardens, and out-of-place Italian furniture being cracked over heads. You almost hear the appropriately thrown-together orchestra being directed by a genetically altered Georgio Moroder right there on the set... and that creeps you out during the few genuinely romantic sex scenes.

Kind of like Goldfrapp, Chamberlain has ignored the rules of passe and boldly crafted a sleek and palpable form of post-trendy, modern exotica. Utilizing the all-pro string arrangement skills of Eyvind Kang, percussion instruments from far off places and planets, archaic electronics, analog sythesizers, outer space spaghetti western guitar, and sonically mutilated drum-kits of every size and make, Chamberlain's debut album is a full-bodied record that will sit proudly next to Lalo Shiffrin, Autechre, Martin Denny, Amon Tobin, David Axelrod, Hal Blaine and Critters Buggin records.

30-second MP3 excerpts:

Cheeky
Monday
Eel
Abstretch
Tsunami
Haaa!
Cagey
Pole Glitch
Moomoo
Give Me Some Water

If you have a recent version of iTunes software on your computer, clicking on the link immediately below should open the iTunes application and take you to that album's iTunes page-- where you can listen to samples and buy this album, or individual tracks:

go to iTunes to browse downloads for Matt Chamberlain "s/t"

For a complete listing of Midheaven exclusive albums available for download from the iTunes Music service, please visit the Midheaven Mailorder/Revolver USA Downloadables page.
Artist: DANUBIUS Title: S/T
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM010
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 9/9/02
***Danubius specialize in Hungarian, Romanian, Transylvanian, Moldavian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and many other types of Balkan folk and gypsy music. Based around the San Francisco Bay Area, they enjoys access to a great deal of difficult musical terrain. Fans of Taraf de Haidouks, Muzsikas or Fanfare Ciocarlia and other Balkan musics already know that an aspiring musician couldn't merely dabble on the weekends and expect to produce anything (other than his own shame and embarassment). Danubius soars way above the hurdle. Their collective passion for doing things right yields a special intensity and remarkable musical payoffs. Whether bringing the house down and dropping jaws with their marvels or bickering over arrangement details, Danubius is destined to emerge from obscurity.

Biographical Details

Budapest-born Jutka Mándoki grew up mostly in Oakland, has played keyboard and accordian instruments since childhood, and recently took up koboz (a lute, played in Romania, also known as cobza), viola, bass, teker^lant (hurdy-gurdy or wheel fiddle, played in Hungary), and ,t^gardon ("beaten cello" played by Hungarians in Romania). Since stumbling upon Hungarian / Romanian / Gypsy fiddle, Danubius director David Skuse has not wanted to do anything else. Skuse co-founded The Klezmorim, and has played with The Silver String Macedonian Band, The Balkanizers, and groups in Hungary.

Roman Titcu is a virtuoso player of the cymbalom, or "tsambal" - Born in Moldova, he founded and directed Doina Besarabia. As a student at Chisinau's Music Conservatory, he majored in tsambal, conducting, and composition, performed on many recordings, (including two singles, "Roma Babalile" and "Cafe Concert"), conducted the ensemble Oleandra and became principal arranger for Roma, an ensemble with whom he toured Europe and other parts of the world.

Marin County native Clark Welsh has amazed audiences for years with an inexhaustible supply of exotic instruments. With Danubius he plays tárogató (single-reed wind instrument, played in Hungary and Romania), peasant flutes, cimpoi (Romanian bagpipe), cobza, tamburitsa, tambura, and bass. Welsh has performed with Hatsegana, Nicolai Massenkoff and Neva, to name just a few.

Accomplished classical violinist David Nebenzahl turned his considerable musical talents to Eastern European genres several years ago after a trip to Hungary and Bulgaria with a Bay Area folk-dance ensemble (playing mostly American bluegrass). Now fluent in Romanian and Hungarian folk violin styles, he has put his flatpicking expertise to use on the Bulgarian tambura.

Artist: DENGUE FEVER Title: S/T
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM12
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 6/16/03
***That Cambodia Rocks CD tapped into a serious jones for Vietnam War-era Cambodian psychedelic surf/garage rock. Given the dodgy availability of such releases, there are reasons aplenty to hail the arrival of Dengue Fever-- in vivid, stark, hallucinatory reality, an actual, real live band. Fronted by amazing vocalist Chhom Nimol, Dengue Fever has surprisingly universal appeal. Chhom herself is already quite accustomed to seizing the hearts of listeners (including the King and Queen of Cambodia), as she comes from a family best considered as a Cambodia pop music dynasty-- not unlike a Cambodian version of the Jacksons. The rest of the band is no flake-fest either, consisting of Zac Holtzman (Dieselhed) and his brother Ethan on Farfisa organ, Seenon Williams (Radar Brothers), David Ralicke (Beck) and seasoned drummer/engineer Paul Smith. Their covers stay remarkably true to the crazy party music spirit of the '60s- and '70s-era originals. But there are also original songs, some of which veer off into the darkened corridors of lost love and ghostly noir romanticism, dissolving sometimes into spaces of genuine bleakness and tragedy-- all in the Khmer tongue. Far from mere novelty or cheap Orientophile thrill, Dengue Fever keeps listeners on their toes, dancing to their way-out tones.

Chhom Nimol and Dengue Fever recently got a taste of Homeland Security en route to a performance on the eve of a code orange alert; Chhom was pulled from the car by the San Diego border patrol, and sent to jail where she kicked it with Latina gangsters for 22 days. We can all feel safer now.

Artist: ESTRADASPHERE Title: Buck Fever
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM008
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 9/10/01
***Estradasphere's Buck Fever is an album without boundaries. Their music is a fusion of Balkan, Gypsy, black/death metal, throat singing, Latin, surf, rock, jazz and more. Styles blend, exist in juxtaposition, or undergo penetrating simultaneous exploration. Imagine going to the dentist on the Discovery Channel naked.

Comprised primarily of saxophone, guitar, violin, bass, drums, and a home studio that gives them opportunity to expand their sound capabilities, Buck Fever incorporates 40 to 80 tracks of instruments on each song. Overkill? Most assuredly, all the better to reach the outer limits of home recording capability. No corner-cutting or loop/sample collage lameness here - the work this five-piece puts in is an unbelievably intensive labor of love, on par with the deep studio obsessiveness of Olivia Tremor Control or Mr. Bungle.

Buck Fever makes use of advanced dada-composition and thick orchestration and improvisation, both traditional and forward-reaching, so it's not surprising to find Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle making several engineering/production appearances throughout the album.

Artist: ESTRADASPHERE Title: It's Understood
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM005
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 5/8/00
***Applying a philosophy similar to Mr. Bungle or the Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere emphasize musical composition and how easy it is to play circles around most of the big name musicians out there. But (guitar and banjo), bassist Tim Smolens, and John Wooley (saxophone and pennywhistle) are no mere show-offs: with all this extra psychic freedom at their beck and call, Estradasphere explore radical morphings of musical castes, and then explode the bastards with inspired ferocity - a barrage that doesn't degenerate into wank-a-thon territory. Much. When it does it's mysteriously excusable. It's Understood is alive and enchanting - dada and world influences are in abundance, as are beaucoups odd obsessions (with Winger, boy bands, outdated video game themes, black metal and The Days of Our Lives). In fact, the whole situation is deeply menacing, hilarious and absurdist.
Artist: ESTRADASPHERE Title: Passion For Life
Format: CD+DVD Catalog
Number:		 WOM015
Price: $20.25 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 3/22/04
***The insatiable minions who make up the always-growing Estradasphere peanut gallery ought to be delighted by this live DVD-and-CD package, released on the heels of their Quadropus album and tour. Fans of this powerhouse unit of ultra-eclecticism will be treated to an inside look at how their favorite proponents of the "aural collage" can just make it happen without the usual smoke and mirrors... Whaaaaat? No laptops? No samplers? To those enamored with the recent, ahem, "progress" made in those areas, good old-fashioned musicianship might seem a bit odd. But "odd" hasn't ever been seen as a bad thing in Estradasphere-land. Consult the DVD for proof; it was shot from a diehard fan's perspective (and beautifully, we might add). You'll see all the weird personality quirks as band euphoria trades off with the turbulent demands of excessive musicianship. Various band psychodramas are completely real, but seem more and more like a big joke as they get played out-- sometimes making it all the way to the stage! And going on tour just amplifies that kind of thing to the point of no return, which somehow ends up enhancing the music in unique and indescribable ways. The theory at Mimicry is that the key to Estradasphere's continuing success is that they are a live band first and foremost. Plop in this well-made DVD and see the proof, or throw in the CD and reminisce until their next tour. So you'll know.
Artist: ESTRADASPHERE Title: Quadropus
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM13
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 10/20/03
***Every band contracts Departure Album Syndrome at some point in their career. With Estradsphere, one has to ask what "departure" could mean for a group who never bothered to establish much of anything about themselves, other than capable and graceful navigation of any musical landscape, and the daily performance of feats unimaginable to most musicians.

On Quadropus, the band navigates terrain usually reserved for people who take themselves quite seriously. Who's kidding whom? These guys could eat most of the Downtown pros for breakfast. It's finally evident that the shameless flaunting of the inner-dork that has banished Estradasphere to the annoying joke bin is not by any means the end of the story. Not because the band is ever going to be considered cool or anything pathetic like that, but because how they craft their music has changed into something a lot more listenable. For instance, the ultra-electronic-sounding dub / drum'n'bass of "Dubway" is done entirely a capella. Their version of an old Greek Rembetica song stays pretty true to the original, even through the wall of guitars and double kick drum at the end. "Speck" is a nice and creepy ballad, like Mazzy Star doing a Nino Rota cover. Their ridiculous, Godzilla-sized, demented "funk" song "KKB" sounds like well over a thousand people playing at once. Sheer primal madness. The Bulgarian-influenced, crowd-pleasing "Hardball" is a tight-as-fuck trip down Estradasphere lane, only better than before. Also includes a video for "Body Slam."

Artist: FAXED HEAD Title: Chiropractic
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM007
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 6/18/01
***After a four-year hiatus from rehearsing, recording and performing, during which the members Faxed Head continued mental therapy at the Coalinga Youth Hospice and fought to overcome the ongoing physical and emotional exhaustion wrought by their failed 1991 suicide pact (and a continuing addiction to glue), they reunited to complete this new nine-song album. Their most ambitious recording to date, it is a particularly impressive document, since their advancing mental and physical deterioration leaves them with little ability to play or record. In addition to Chiropractic's startling use of sounds that don't exist in the arsenal of any other death metal outfit on Earth, it also provides perhaps the most intimate glimpse yet of what life is like for these unhappy residents of California's rural Central Valley. Lacking not just physical mobility, but also the quaint mythologies and cultural wellsprings that sustain their Nordic and Austrian counterparts, the Faxed Head are literal prisoners in a wilderness of fast food franchises and corrupt auto mechanics. Accordingly, Chiropractic is an all-grey kaleidoscope of depression, exploitation, sickness, isolation, intolerance, food poisoning, medical malpractice, and agricultural ruin. Early incarnations of the band appeared on limited pressing seven-inch records and compilations, material that was later compiled onto the full-length Uncomfortable But Free CD. After personnel changes, the band recorded the Exhumed at Birth CD (which Metal Maniacs magazine described as "a severely damaged new extreme of metal Oe a sick level of horror and mayhem"). Naturally, a brief tour of Australia followed.
Artist: ISS Title: Forget About The Girl
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM011
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 4/29/02
***The debut album from ISS, Forget About the Girl, is an absolute breakthrough in the sadly decomposing genre of the "novelty" record. A self described "Time Warping Boy Band", ISS is shamelessly derivative, and very, VERY convincing. Now before you start to puke, stop to consider the fact that ISS have managed to re-inject the genre of the nefarious "Boy Band" with the magic and marvel it once knew with the Beach Boys and the Four Freshmenothis is definately NOT an exaggeration. Don't be expecting another half-assed imitation of Pet Sounds by some smug, irony-obsessed art-fartsoISS is the REAL DEAL! Tim Smolens (Estradasphere) is the main songwriter and producer behind ISS. His obsessive study of the harmonic elements of Brian Wilson compositions (and, shamefully, New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys) meet up with his increasing skill in the studio environment to bear absolutely remarkable fruit. The psychedelic madness at the core of this "band" ends up drowned in such rich, full-bodied, fully-orchestral clarity & perfectly sung 5-part harmony that casual listeners would never suspect the psychotic subtext. The strict and crass realism in the rendering department only heightens the jarring transitions from 1968 to 1986 to 2002. To be sure, the historical persistence of the Boy Band and it's attendant cache of gooey love songs is given a ethnomusicologically exact tribute in ISS. But it's more than that. "Forget About The Girl" is an inspired and sincere labor of love.

Hey man, I heard this one's for the ladies.

Succeeds first and foremost in capturing hearts and ears of listeners. Now there's a concept.

Boldly goes where mere piss-take efforts are too self-hating to explore.

Nostalgic throwback to the "Age of Irony"?

Culturecide with dumber lyrics but better music?

Even smart girls can't resist four cute guys singing ultra-catchy love songs

Artist: MIASMA & THE CAROUSEL OF HEADLESS HORSES Title: Perils
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM025
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 4/11/05
***Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses are a British instrumental quintet whose dark, antiquated-sounding music encompasses elements of Eastern European folk, avant-rock, broken-down calliope music, and neo-classical film composition. In keeping with Mimicry tradition, their music can only be compared to many artists at once: in this case Angelo Badalamenti, Astor Piazzolla, Goblin, Art Bears, Burzum, Tom Waits, Antioch Arrow, King Crimson, Bach and Univers Zero. More a trip to an anachronistic world of neo-baroque psychedelia than a simple study in diced-up eclecticism, the music on Perils sways between lush chamber-oriented melancholia, apocalyptic bombast, and epic ghost train high-drama.

With their harmoniums, autoharps, violins, violas, pianos, organs and glockenspiels added to a top of the line rhythm section, Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses very deliberately adhere to a Faustian melodrama of the angelic. Their dark, harrowing visions of some dense hellish musico-psychological dystopia shapeshift frequently and become a very capable and Elizabethan sounding prog-baroque meteorite at the drop of a hat. This instrumental music would find a happy home in a Jan Svankmajer or Fritz Lang film, and will find a prominent place on the shelf of any connoisseur of occultist highbrow, right next to his/her John Dee volumes.

The group consists of Daniel O'Sullivan and Dave Smith from the trio Guapo (a recent offspring from the hereditary line of Magma and The Ruins (Cuneiform/Ipecac); Orlando Harrison from the pop band Alabama 3 and Amal Gamal Ensemble (members of Coil, Cyclobe, and Shockheaded Peters); David Ledden from bleak country act Knuckles; and Sara Hubrich, who travels around Europe collaborating with the likes of Julian Klein, Tadashi Endo and Fran Barbe.

Artist: SECRET CHIEFS 3 Title: Book M
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM006
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 9/10/01
***Descriptions of Secret Chiefs 3 habitually begin with the main selling point - the Mr. Bungle tie-in - since four members from that band are involved, and who are we to flaunt convention? Though it's true that thrown-together side projects and uninspired avant-garde supergroups can attract respectable business, the Secret Chiefs 3 is anything but one of those.

An instrumental odyssey, Book M features full string sections, an assortment of Persian, Turkish and Arabic stringed and percussion instruments (played by people who actually know how!), microtonally altered synthesizers, organs and guitars, innovative compositions and truly off-the-map production techniques. The album is deceptively focused and deliberate, making the out-of-control aspects seem perfectly natural. Even moments of violent aggression are merged with the tenderness and subtlety of the band's blatant otherworldly passions. It is a drama of dizzying complexity played out even more explicitly in the glowing artwork and textual rants of the impressive 16-page booklet.

Present still are the unmistakable genius of violinist / Sun City Girls collaborator / Tzadik recording artist Eyvind Kang, percussionist William Winant (who has played and recorded with everyone from John Zorn to Yo Yo Ma to Thurston Moore to Anthony Braxton to John Cage), and the cast from Mr. Bungle (drummer Danny Heifetz, bassist multi-instrumentalist Bar McKinnon and producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Trey Spruance). The addition of the Persian / Arabic instrumental expertise of Shamou on darbuka, zarb, riq, and zils, and Fatima on santur, take the SC3 to new heights far more impressive than earlier "ethnographic forgeries."

Artist: SECRET CHIEFS 3 Title: Book Of Horizons
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM14
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 5/17/04
***Book of Horizons is the first release in an elaborate trilogy and meta-composition by Secret Chiefs 3. It's huger than anything the band has ever done: beyond psychedelia, beyond experimentalism, and beyond classification. The Secret Chiefs 3 enhance their usual multiple personalities and divide into seven individual and distinct bands, enabling the overall musical content to be distilled into pure vessels. One band incorporates multi-ethnic instrumentation and seasoned, soulful playing (by Eyvind Kang and Shahzad Ismaily), while the rocking, suprasensory surf band (with full orchestra) bloodies up the waters. John Merriman (Cephalic Carnage) and Unhuman keep the ultra-death metal grind band well within the pummel zone of utter mayhem.

This CD includes hordes of musicians and instrumentation-- real, not sampled-- including saz, rabab, mridangam, dhol, esraj, sarangi, orchestral percussion, male and female choir, violin, viola, cello and contrabass, harp, bowed saw, santur, ghatam, clavinet, organs, electroacoustic treatments, guitar, bass, drums, and tons and tons more.

Artist: SECRET CHIEFS 3 Title: Eyes Of Flesh-- Eyes Of Flame
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM002
Price: $9.50 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 5/8/00
***Recorded live at Slim's in San Francisco, 1998, this CD, previously available as a limited edition mailorder-only item, features the touring incarnation of Secret Chiefs 3: Trey Spruance, Danny Heifetz, Eyvind Kang, B 0/00r McKinnon, Phil Franklin, and John Wayne Law. Taking their cue from medieval esoteric Shi'ism and the Ismaili gnostics, the SC3 weave sound tapestries strangely consistent with their unorthodox worldview. The music so passionately pits itself against the banal shit-world of the Apparent, refusing to be pinned down, gentrified or co-opted into any consistent format it can't help but exude that other, more controversial side of mysticism: holy war. No mere ignorant blunder into militant experimental darkness, Secret Chiefs' music is a heroic and Herculean effort that brings real excitement into the world of sound. Go into the light! Packaged in a slim cardboard envelope (no jewelbox) with a gloriously and minimally-graphic'd sticker for artwork.

Artist: SECRET CHIEFS 3 Title: First Grand Constitution And Bylaws
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM003
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 7/17/00
***Mimicry Records, reissues two CDs by Secret Chiefs 3 with previously unreleased bonus tracks:First Grand Constitution and Bylaws and Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws, originally released by Amarillo, currently out of print. Taking their cue from medieval esoteric Shi'ism and the Ismaili gnostics, the SC3 weave sound tapestries strangely consistent with their unorthodox worldview. The music so passionately pits itself against the banal shit-world of the Apparent, refusing to be pinned down, gentrified or co-opted into any consistent format it can't help but exude that other, more controversial side of mysticism: holy war. No mere ignorant blunder into militant experimental darkness, Secret Chiefs' music is a heroic and Herculean effort that brings real excitement into the world of sound. Go into the light!

Artist: SECRET CHIEFS 3 Title: Hurqalya - Second Grand Constitution And Bylaws
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM004
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 7/17/00
***Mimicry Records reissues two CDs by Secret Chiefs 3 with previously unreleased bonus tracks: First Grand Constitution and Bylaws and Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws, originally released by Amarillo, currently out of print. Taking their cue from medieval esoteric Shi'ism and the Ismaili gnostics, the SC3 weave sound tapestries strangely consistent with their unorthodox worldview. The music so passionately pits itself against the banal shit-world of the Apparent, refusing to be pinned down, gentrified or co-opted into any consistent format it can't help but exude that other, more controversial side of mysticism: holy war. No mere ignorant blunder into militant experimental darkness, Secret Chiefs' music is a heroic and Herculean effort that brings real excitement into the world of sound. Go into the light!

Artist: SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM Title: Of Natural History
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM019CD
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 10/25/04
***Appearing on the one hand to be a post-modern apocalyptic cult, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum delight in setting folksy allegorical tales of auto-genocide and the species-wide doom we all face to breathtakingly strange and compelling music. With this release, their musical method evolves, as natural things do, and delivers what can only be described as a complete and thoroughly devastating musical expression. With their dense, harmonic compositions and jagged, intricate rhythms (by far the best in the business on both counts) servicing the artistic equivalent of a Unabomber tract set to music, the music collected in Of Natural History sets a serious high water mark for future generations to look back on in awe-- assuming future generations ever exist, that is.

SGM's impressive instrumental array includes many homemade devices suggestive of the avant-garde. Having little in common with those who have marred the field, whether mere arty obscurists, jock-like musical gymnasts, or high-brow snoots, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are thoroughgoing populists, warmly regarding their varied audience and skillfully embracing their role as entertainers. Even though the band boasts heavy-hitters like Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio, Carla Bozulich) and Nils Frykdahl of Faun Fables, this is a band that survives and thrives supremely through heavy touring, and in the process has amassed a devoted following. For a band that owes as much to Meshuggah as they do to the Art Bears, Messiaen, and Einsturzende Neubauten, their skewed exhumation of Futurism in reverse strikes a broad nerve and fills a big void. This is a proud moment for Mimicry Records.

Artist: STARES Title: Spine To Sea
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM022
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 5/23/05
***Eight months in the making, The Stares' Spine to Sea is nothing less than a devastating, harmonically rich and uncompromising work of somber realism. No one who hears this CD will walk away from it untouched. The Stares are an easy obsession to acquire. The voices of songwriters Angie Benintendi and Drew Whittemore fixate on some distant invisible expanse, treading so slowly, so beautifully, through landscapes familiar, but sprinkled with some kind of heavy magical realism that just can't be described. "Americana" maybe, but with roots so deep in the earth that there's no geography that could ever really contain them. These songs simply rise up out of themselves. Wherever they come from, you cannot help but be drawn into their shadowy landscape. There's no question: your first encounter with this music will be one you'll remember. Forever.

From Seattle, the Stares are a four-piece with aforementioned vocalists/songwriters Whittemore and Benintendi on guitar and electric piano/keyboards respectively, and Don McGreevy on bass and Jason Merculief on drums. This ensemble is filled out with string and woodwind arrangements by Eyvind Kang, who authored along similar lines for the latest Blonde Redhead CD. As great as that was, he absolutely outdid himself on Spine To Sea. The album is supported further by an auxiliary team of various Seattle music legends herded under the Stares roof by Randall Dunn, the record's production wizard. The end result is so rewarding we're having a hard time containing ourselves.

To say their sound is a rare find in this town is a laughable understatement. --Jeff Rush, Tablet

Artist: TUNA HELPERS Title: I'll Have What She's Having
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM020CD
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 3/14/05
***"Cruella Deville meets Mary Poppins meets Kate Bush" is how Austin, Texas-based band The Tuna Helpers have been described, and it's pretty darned accurate. Adrienne the Anemone and Bethany the Baracuda are the "odd yet delightful" sisters who form the basis of a trio, rounded out by their similarly odd and delightful long lost sister Khattie the Katfish.

At times I'll Have What She's Having is like a doll come to life, singing with an operatic voice, and teaching the waltz to sparse drum beats on broken toys, backed up by an orchestra, harpsichords, clavinets and choirs. With the production duties handled by Trey Spruance of the Secret Chiefs 3, all private mythologies come across vividly from the Tuna Helpers' dream world and right into your speakers. The Tuna Helpers visually dazzle audiences with puppet shows and American Sign Language. In a tapestry of gothic styling, they weave the doctrines of girly power, gross-out contests and sophisticated musical achievement into what they hope will become your favorite doll.

Artist: V/A Title: Mimicry Records Sampler
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM016
Price: $4.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 3/29/04
*** An excellent introduction as well as recap Mimicry Records past, present and future roster. Tracks from past releases and upcoming albums from Secret Chiefs 3, Dengue Fever, Estradasphere, Faxed Head, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, I.S.S., Danubius, Farmers Market, Brazzaville, and Fishtank. Card folio packaging. Priced to move.

30-second MP3 excerpts:

"The 4" - Secret Chiefs 3
"22 Nights" - Dengue Fever
"Mekapses Yitonisa" - Estradasphere
"1997" - Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
"Renunciation" - Secret Chiefs 3
"Tails of the Unexpected" - Farmers Market
"Super Gizi" - Brazzaville
"Geamparalele de la Cemavoda" - Danubis
"The End Times" - Secret Chiefs 3
"The Silent Elk of Yesterday" - Estradasphere
"Itty Bitty Snitty Little Frenchman" - Fishtank
"Zulfiqar" - Secret Chiefs 3
"Small Ones" - I.S.S.
"Demon's Chills" - Faxed Head
"Genoa" - Brazzaville
"Vajra" - Secret Chiefs 3
"Bring Back the Apocalypse" - Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Artist: YOUNGS Title: S/T
Format: CD Catalog
Number:		 WOM018CD
Price: $12.00 Label: Web Of Mimicry
Release
Date:		 10/11/04
***If the Captain and Tennille were into dark progressive space rock, they might have really lit the world on fire. Thirty years later The Youngs emerged to fill the void. Their catchy, well-crafted songs make you shed a tear for love and death, Seattle-sadcore style. This is a dynamic duo (a married couple in real life) who fearlessly chart the astral regions, and tell tales of living and dying on a fucked-up planet like this one, with love as the backseat driver.

Owing more to Grandaddy than the White Stripes, this band knows how to sound good; their songs conjure the melancholic beauty of a couple witnessing the end of the world. With lyrical topics ranging from futile space migrations to the power of love in the face of being psychically vampirized by modern cities, to the Skull and Bones Society, to a beautiful and sincere suicide pact between lifelong partners, The Youngs' music quite literally sparkles and shines with bountiful appeal. Especially if that stuff called emo only pisses you off.

Those of us heavily burdened with the armor of creeping cynicism are going to register a few ecstatic blips on the EKG with the advent of the Youngs-- but just in time a doped-out version of "Walk On By" arrives to send us whistling back into our post-everything comas. Beauty and brains: this is the stuff of balance.

Live, the golden-voiced Eryn Young sings and plays drums and samples simultaneously, with significant other Tim Young, an accomplished Seattle musician, at her side playing guitar and bass pedals and singing simultaneously. It's like two one-man bands in one. After hearing this great-sounding and well-produced record no one won't believe they can pull it off.

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