Released the week of June 4th, 2001

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Christine Shields
Interview with this issue's cover artist, the author behind surreal, dreamlike Blue Hole comic book, and banjo-player for Appalachia-influenced Grouse Mountain Skyride (also featuring Dame Darcy and Ian Christe). On the CD: "Monkey Goes to the Moon" and "The World Is My Home"

Mal Sharpe
Interview with author, jazz musician, and Man-on-the-Street interviewer most well known as half of '60s prankster duo Coyle and Sharpe, whose legendary put-ons have been released on CD by the 21361 and Thirsty Ear labels. On the CD: Coyle and Sharpe "Transporting Captured People"

Ana-Maria Avram
Translation of an interview by Costin Cazaban with Romanian acousmatic composer and Editions Modern recording artist whose uncompromising, demanding music gives heavyweights like Dumitrescu and Fernando Grillo a run for the money. On the CD: the 13-minute "Etude (I), computer assisted music."

Volcano the Bear
Interview by Neil Campbell with this mind-expanding UK surrealist quartet whose music straddles "a strange, ambiguous line between comforting and terrifying." Collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Aube, releases on United Dairies, Misra, and Pickled Egg. On the CD: "Phantom, tha will be done"

mad-cow.org
Interview with Dr. Thomas Pringle, webmaster of the Sperling Biomedical Foundation's site containing almost 8,000 articles on mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, prions, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, scrapie, and numerous other crimes against nature that should drive any sane person to veganism.

John Crouse
Guest editorial plus one other previously unpublished text by this inspirational author whose writing has been described as "a non-stop torque conflating the distinctions of sky, people, forest, political costume store É He makes his own vocabulary rushing forward at full tilt, the 'camel of wow'." On the CD: Crouse reads an excerpt from Lapses (O Books, 1995) with Stanley Zappa on sax

Rats With Wings
Freeform essay and images by this emerging Australian noise artist with releases planned on Plate Lunch and Freedom From. On the CD: "Horse Eat Grass"

Volvox
Interview with two members of this Australian band with a posthumous CD released by Dual Plover. Ant-honey Riddell, the leader of the band, was brain-injured and comatose after a fall through a skylight several years ago. "Next to Milk," a chapter from his phenomenal novel Betrayed by the Senses (Menisicus, 1999), is also reprinted. On the CD: "Extraordinary Swordfish" amd "Milkhead," from Egg, Pluto Pup and You

Agog
Interview with Damien Bisciglia, noise artist and sculptor of Rohrshach-like, nightmarish creatures made of melted plastic and various found materials. On the CD: "Waters Black from the Dung of a Thousand Camels"

• All tracks on CD are exclusive (or virtually so) and directly related to the content of the magazine
  
• "Ridiculous" -Anomalous

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Volvox - "Milkhead"
  Christine Shields - "Monkey Goes to the Moon"
  John Crouse - "Lapses" (excerpt)
  Agog - "Waters Black with the Dung of a Thousand Camels"
  Volcano the Bear - "Phantom, Tha Will Be Done"
  Rats With Wings - "Horse Eat Grass"
  Volvox - "Extraordinary Swordfish"
  Ana-Maria Avram - "Etude (I) for computer-assisted sounds"
  Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe - "Transporting Captured People"
  Christine Shields - "The World is my Home"<

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SPAZZ
Sweatin' to the Oldies Volume 3
(SLAP A HAM SLAP60) CD

Released the week of July 23rd, 2001

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The undisputed OGs of the '90s West Coast Power Violence movement - that's right, undisputed; are you really going to bother debating it? - have posthumously compiled 67 out-of-print tracks of legendary fastcore insanity. Among the resurrected material collected here are blastbeat anthems from split releases with 25 Ta Life, Monster X, Gob, Lack Of Interest, Opstand, Black Army Jacket, Slobber, and Hirax, plus their Tastin' Spoon five-inch, obscure compilation appearances, and their infamous song from the Gummo soundtrack! Like any classic Hong Kong kung-fu flick, Spazz reigns supreme and continues to avenge their death...even from beyond the grave!

Combine sarcastic, gory, and furiously intense punk rock to the extreme with really amusing movie samples and the desire to make a complete mockery of everything, and you get Spazz, possibly the best band in the history of the world. Sweatin' to the Oldies Volume 1 chronicled the tear-jerking metamorphosis of Spazz from a mediocre noise band to the intercontinental champion of powerviolence. And what a beautiful transformation it was. Early on in spazzdom, the spazzes, in their best move to date, gave up on trying to be a legitimate band and got funny. Currently reigning as the superhuman kings of my music collection, they have fought heroically to capture this position, possibly the greatest honor in the world. Their lyrics are impossible to decipher. They pound on their instruments in true death metal valiance. They masterfully embellish their tracks with samples from B-movies. They use a twangy banjo and mouth harp...They are the embodiment of powerviolence. In total, Spazz is way cooler than you or I will ever be, and you should, therefore, buy, scrutinize, and idolize their creations...There is no other band that even comes close to the ingenuity of Spazz. Pick up their devil-spawn now or die a loser.
-Rachel Cotton, Yo Beat

• Number three in a series of latter-day power violence classics. All essential!
  
• Sixty-seven out-of-print and obscure tunes from 1995 to 1998
  
• C'mon, it even has a song from the Gummo soundtrack
  
• You have the right to remain violent
  
• Hail Katon!

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Typical Hardcore Song #1
  A.S.A.L.
  Angel Crisp
  Old Youth
  A Prayer for the Complete and Utter Eradication of All Generic Pop-Punk
  Satan's Scrilla
  Socal Battle Royale
  Gilman 90210
  Short Songs
  Doomriden'
  Hey Bob, What's Up?
  Crop Circles
  Gas X
  Jean Claude Bland Dan in a Steel Cage Match with Mean Steve Seagal for the Title of Crowned King of Hilfiger Apparel: WWF Style

  Plus 53 other smooth, relaxing moodpieces!!

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FAXED HEAD
Chiropractic
(MIMICRY WOM007) CD

Released the week of June 18th, 2001

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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...a sick level of horror and mayhem"). Naturally, a brief tour of Australia followed.

• You gotta admire the indomitable spirit shown by these formidably challenged young men (what's left of them, that is)
  
• Metal with such an intimate understanding of death that it makes Blair Witch Project look like a lame prank by a bunch of film students
  
• File under all-grey kaleidoscopes of depression, exploitation, sickness, isolation, intolerance, food poisoning, medical malpractice, and agricultural ruin

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Rest Stop Cleaning
  Demon's Chills
  Deathly Peace
  The Four Freshmen
  Farmer Ferdinand Hudson
  Mr. Bus Driver
  Chiropractic
  Bring the Dead Boy Peace
  Coalinga Love

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PELT
Ayahuasca
(VHF VHF62) CD

Released the week of June 4th, 2001

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A sprawling follow-up to 1999's critically and commercially successful release Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky 2xLP/CD, Ayahuasca represents the most comprehensive survey of Pelt activities to date. Recorded over a period of more than two years at various live and studio sessions, this double-CD shows the heavily bearded Jack Rose, Mike Gangloff and Patrick Best broadcasting from lesser-known and newly discovered corners of the drone-omniverse. Most striking about the record is the inclusion of several traditional tunes, arranged for the group's eclectic instrumentation. While Pelt have long performed acoustic material, and let some sneak out on the limited edition For Michael Hannas CDR, Ayahuasca is the first release to fully explore this part of their repertoire.

"The Cuckoo" and "Deep Sunny South" are traditional Appalachian numbers, played and sung with considerable skill and feeling. The sawing bowed acoustic guitar on the former and the rolling banjo and Tibetan bowl accompaniment on the latter draw a direct line between raw / folk traditions and the deep, visceral drone music that Pelt have specialized in over the past several years. Combining the two styles neatly, "A Raga Called John" features Jack Rose's very, very fine country-blues / Fahey-influenced fingerstyle guitar over a shifting backdrop of hurdy-gurdy and concertina, before giving way to tanpuras overrun by fretless banjo. Of course, on top of all this easily comprehensible music there's plenty of ear-cleansing, ecstatic drone, from the two long floatation-inducing trios for bowed electrics and esraj to the wall-shaking electric hurdy-gurdy mania of "Bear Head Apparition." Truly a record for our times, such as they are.

• Pelt play regularly in the Northeast / Mid-Atlantic area and will tour Texas and the South in May
  
• These guys were channeling the hum and scrape of the universe back before droney-come-latelies were cribbing from their older brothers' LaMonte Young collections
  
• It's official - your soul isn't clean until it's Peltfully clean
  
• File under Bluegrass Jawari 'P'

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  True Vine
  Deer Head Apparition
  The Cuckoo
  Deep Sunny South
  Raga Called John, Pt. I
  The Dream of Leaping Sharks
  Bear Head Apparition
  Will You Pray for Me?
  Raga Called John, Pt. II
  Raga Called John, Pt. III

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BLACK TWIG PICKERS
North Fork Flyer
(VHF VHF61) CD

Released the week of June 4th, 2001

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North Fork Flyer represents the continued persistence of a type of Appalachian folk music that has come and gone from the popular radar over the years, but has never completely disappeared from the Black Twig Pickers' Southwest Virginia home. The songs on North Fork Flyer are mostly traditional numbers (with a few originals sprinkled in) that form the backbone of a century-old tradition - the music of bonfires, front porches, coal miner's festivals, and informal gatherings. These "mountain ragas," as the group calls them, have been recorded, performed, and revised continually by a who's who of true American artistry - luminaries such as Bukka White, Mississippi John Hurt, John Fahey, Bob Wills, Holy Modal Rounders, New Lost City Ramblers, etc., etc.

Recorded live to DAT on front porches and in family rooms, North Fork Flyer blends the fiddle blues of Ralph Berrier Jr., Isak Howell's sinewy guitar and the drone and twitch of Pelt's Mike Gangloff's fretless clawhammer banjo with the trio's rough-around-the-edges but warm vocal harmonies. Played to the accompaniment of night insects, passing trains, and the noise of wandering children, the music retains the charm of tradition but is free of fake antiquarianism and nostalgia. Regardless of age, the music is just as relevant today as it was 100 years ago and the band plays it as though they mean it. And they obviously do.

The name of the band comes from the oldest, most crotchety apple variety in the orchard that fiddler Ralph Berrier's family maintains along the musically fertile Virginia-North Carolina line. Black Twig plays regularly in Southwest Virginia.

• VHF is also responsible for fine releases by Flying Saucer Attack, Pelt, Youngs/ Wickham-Smith, Roy Montgomery, Doldrums, The Double U
  
• File under Mountain Ragas 'B'
  
• Southwest Virginia will never become the next Austin (and that's a good thing)

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Spike Driver's Blues
  Sail Away Ladies
  Poor Boy Long Ways from Home
  Isak's Blues No. 1
  Get Along Home Cindy
  Cold, Frosty Morning
  Reuben's Blues
  Lonesome Clinch Mountain
  Ebeneezer
  Two White Horses in a Line
  Rambling Hobo
  Angelina Baker
  Isak's Blues No. 2
  Fair and Tender Ladies
  Little Sadie
  Great Valley Mine
  Train on the Island

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LOOP CIRCUIT
Sound On Sound
(STARLIGHT FURNITURE CO *14) MAG+CD

Released the week of June 4th, 2001

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Originally released by Japan's G.R.O.S.S. label as a cassette in a limited edition of 88 copies in late 1994, Loop Circuit's Sound on Sound joins Akifumi Nakajima (also known as prolific noise artist Aube) with Dub Murashita together in an all-electronic self-hypnosis seminar. Basing each of his Aube releases on a distinct and singular source (e.g. water, medical equipment, etc.), Nakajima's "sound designs" range from subtle, ambient journeys to intense noise crash-landings; for this rare collaboration, he surfs a slightly different wavelength. The duo limit their source materials here to purely electronic sounds, loops and effects, creating a mesmerising, constantly shifting mosaic. Fans of early Kraftwerk or early Tangerine Dream will lapse into their usual trance-state almost immediately upon listening to Sound on Sound, while it should generate enough jittery mouth-breathing and Internet posts to last an entire weekend among noise collectors and other socially crippled dirtheads. Even stuffy Minimalism know-it-alls might take pause to thoughtfully stroke their goatees and speak Steve Reich's name aloud. Nakajima's sense of precision is legendary and respected far and wide; the original recording quality of Sound on Sound and vinyl remastering live up to his customary high standards.

• Limited to 222 numbered copies, making the original only slightly less rare
  
• Side-project of prolific Japanese noise artist Aube
  
• One-hundred percent electronic music

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Sound on Sound
  On Sound On

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HERMAN DÜNE
They Go To The Woods
(IN THE RED ITR80) CD/LP

Released the week of May 21st, 2001

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Herman Düne are comprised of two Swedish brothers and a man named Omé on the drums. Last year they released Turn Out the Light, their critically acclaimed debut on the European Prohibited label. Mojo magazine observed, Herman Dune's idiosyncratic vistas capture the imagination, recalling the cut-and-paste lyricism of Julian Cope, the deliciously woozy chug of the Velvet Underground and the metronomic repetition of Can. The band has toured the citrus-deprived, pestilence-ridden land mass of Europe, stopping off for appearances on John Peel's radio show and otherwise making quite a name for themselves abroad.

The trio currently resides in Paris, France. The brothers Herman Düne - David-Ivar and André - cite as important influences their family home in Dalarna, Sweden (with its silence, space, and trees), the German writer Franz Jung, and the music of VU, Sebadoh and other usual suspects. The band will be playing shows stateside in support of They Go to the Woods, and made an appearance at the SxSW tradeshow in Austin.

• Finally, a melodic yet discordant record by two Swedish brothers and a man named Omé we can all enjoy
  
• Shrimper is home to Sentridoh, John Davis, the mighty Dump and Buzzsaw
  
• They listen to all the right bands and promise to play all the right places
  
• Gimme Scandie rock!

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  The Right Path Lays Open Before Me
  They Go to the Woods
  By the Door of the Temple
  Heed the Wrath
  From German Streets
  I Look at You at Night
  Strange Plot
  I'll Come Back When I Come Back
  Deer Wild Baby
  For the Night
  Black Dog

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