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Updated 10/31/00 Release dates subject to change.  IDYLL SWORDS Idyll Swords II (THE COMMUNION LABEL COMM56) CD Released the week of October 30th, 2000 order from Midheaven mailorder The Communion Label is pleased to release the second album by North Carolina trio Idyll Swords, titled II - almost an hour of natural and fluidly morphing American folk and blues, along with the buzzy and sublime sounds of India, Persia and Turkey, all baked by three hot-shit guitarists. Dave Brylawski played guitar in Polvo and has recently completed his masters in social work at Columbia. Chuck Johnson played in Spatula and continues to work with innumerable other projects, including the Micro-East Collective, modelled after the Mills College-based Micro-Collective. Chuck is also studying Hindustani classical music with noted sarod-player K. Sridhar and a Hindustani vocal teacher. Grant Tennille is the quiet genius type, responsible for some of the most epic 'Swords work, and likes to collect bootlegs on the Internet. For those who have to put the peg in the hole, well, he does session work for Trans Am, all right? The Swords' music is stunning, influenced by many worlds while retaining the flavor of its own place. Those who'd like to take Pocahantas back to the city will be thrilled to introduce this charming entity to their friends. References: the Takoma Records triumvirate (Fahey, Basho, Kottke), Vishwan Mohan Bhatt, Davey Graham, the kudzu plant, a train ride in Rajhastan, the smell of wood powder and spice, Ankara International Airport.
Grant Tennille
Chuck Johnson
Dave Brylawski
 BANANAFISH Issue #14 (TEDIUM HOUSE BF14) MAG + CD Released the week of October 2nd, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder CD features exclusive tracks by the artists in the magazine, including Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle, Peg Murray of U.S. Saucer, John Wiese of Bastard Noise, and the Polar Goldie Cats (doing a feline version of Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein") For those of you keeping score at home:
Ota Keiti
NT Fan
Jazzfinger
Octavian Nemescu
Surrealestate
Polar Goldie Cats
John Wiese
James Goode
Panicsville
Mandate
Reynols
Vote Robot
Cooks 'n' Chefs 'n' Their Assistants
 GREEN DAYWarning (ADELINE ADE12) LP Released the week of October 2nd, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder
 DJ SUSHI The Lost Dub Plates (HIP HOP SLAM HHS18) CD Released the week of October 2nd, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder The Lost Dub Plates EP by the late DJ Sushi compiles eight tracks from his two extremely limited edition dub-plate recordings from 1997 and 1998, two of which were previously licensed for Hip Hop Slam's Pirate Fuckin' Radio 100. Often described as "difficult" and "elusive" DJ Sushi was a creative, strong-willed individual who believed solely in the art of the turntable. He stubbornly shunned the whole concept of the DJ as celebrity (he never allowed his picture to be taken) and detested what he saw as the "commercialization" of turntablism. Undoubtedly with his skills DJ Sushi easily could have been a champion battle DJ but he vocally refused to enter any DJ contests. "It's an art, not a sport," he told Giant Robot magazine in 1998, one of the most often cited quotes from his only published interview.
 DJ 'D Workers Union (MASSMEN MASS007) CD/2xLP Released the week of September 18th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder Building from the same masterful, ear-blowing elements as The Highlife Movement's ...estuary, a breakout underground release from last year, up-and-coming mix-chilling producer DJ 'D delivers a brilliant sophomore album of head-satisfying orchestral hip hop groove. With improved production, 'D continues to kick out his visceral aesthetic-- melancholy loops and provocative speeches delivered among robust, beat-kicking tracks featuring legendary emcees Aceyalone, Abstract Rude, Awol One, and Gennessee & Bazooka Joe Gotti of The Street Reportaz. Keeping his trademark style intact, DJ 'D expands his boundaries, utilizing a wider musical spectrum of source material, as well as a group of saucy female vocalists to give it some k-k-kick.
 VARIOUS ARTISTS Shiggar Fraggar 2000 (HIP HOP SLAM HHS016) CD Released the week of October 2nd 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder The all-new Shiggar Fraggar 2000 - featuring emcee UB along with DJs Shiggar Fraggar, Flare, D-Styles, Disk and his ugly grandpa, plus Golden Chyld and Ngobility of the Finger Bangerz - was recorded live at Hip Hop Slam in Oakland, California, and broadcast as a Pirate Fuckin' Radio show. Like its predecessors in the legendary five-part Shiggar Fraggar series featuring the Invisibl Skratch Piklz from the mid-1990s, this one-off Shiggar Fraggar 2000 session was recorded live in one take with absolutely no overdubs or studio trickery: mistakes were allowed. The 10-minute bonus cut, "Africa, Antarctica, & Your Mom's House," featuring DJs Shortkut, QBert, Mix Master Mike, Apollo, Disk, Shiggar Fraggar, and emcee UB, is a previously unreleased outtake from the The Shiggar Fraggar Show! Vol. 5, recorded dirt-style in May 1996.
 MAKOTO KAWABATAInui 2 (VHF VHF51) CD Released the week of October 2nd, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder Inui 2 is the first widely available solo CD by this prolific Japanese guitarist/composer/bearded guru. Known primarily for his recent work with oddballs Acid Mothers Temple, Kawabata's career actually goes back to the late '70s and spans many styles, including solo guitar improv, electronics, folk, and, of course, the deranged acid mayhem associated with the PSF scene. Performed entirely solo on violin, kemenje, zurna, electronics, sarangi, taiko, gong, water, bouzouki, cello, vibes, organ, and sitar, the four tracks that make up Inui 2 are perfectly executed dream-music, equal parts delicately floating and heavily droning. There's also one all-too-short modal essay for bouzouki that is amazingly beautiful. After years of obscurity, there has been a recent avalanche of Acid Mothers and Kawabata releases, most of them of the impossibly limited variety, all of them snapped up by the internet and by real people, too.
 RICHARD YOUNGS / SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH Lake (VHF VHF52) CD
Released the week of October 2nd, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder Originally issued in an edition of 300 on their No Fans label and for all intents and purposes unavailable and unheard for a decade, the 10th anniversary CD-ification of their classic debut double-LP still sounds as revelatory and alien as it did when it was released. Tracks like the immortal collage freak-out "Dance: Help The Aged (Give Them A Heart Attack)," the minimal pulse epic "Chord" and the psych-fuzz rock mania of "Goat" have been undiluted in their majesty by the unbearable decade that has elapsed between then and now. Deep breath, keep the eyes from rolling back in the head, focus, focus, highest rating. "We're listening to Lake close on a decade since we recorded it. Just as it sounds odd now, what we do today would've sounded bizarre then. We couldn't make this record now. It's like a ghost - so long ago. We've moved on. Our label name, No Fans, was a statement of fact; the record was a dare to ourselves - who in their right mind would ever release anything like this? With No Fans, No Distribution and No Prospect of either, spending over 1,000 pounds on a vanity project when most of our peers were doing sensible things smacked of arrogance. In an ironic bid to launch Lake, a Goat Evening was held in Nottingham at the home of Neil Campbell and Jim Plaistow. Though everyone had a good time, by the end of the evening no-one had bought the album, so we gave away copies to the three people who had shown any interest. Which left 297 copies. The situation was more ridiculous than ever." --Simon Wickham-Smith
 MUSHROOM RIVER BANDMusic For The World Beyond (METEORCITY MCY13) CD
Released the week of October 2nd, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder How long can MeteorCity remain focused on a single hard-rocking music scene? As long as that scene keeps churning out high-octane rock this stellar. The Mushroom River Band is Sweden's latest distance runner to enter Planet Rock's desert heaviness marathon, and they're ready to annihilate the competition. MRB features the vocal talents of Spice, who is also frontman for Spiritual Beggars, the highly successful European retro-rock/metal fusion band that exploded this year with their breakthrough fourth album released by Music For Nations, and has been playing summer festivals alongside the likes of Iron Maiden and Entombed. But where the 'Beggars flit delicately across the spectrum of guitar rock in all its incarnations, The Mushroom River Band does one thing and does it well: snarling, punching desert rock. Music For The World Beyond features a dozen adrenalizers that compete simultaneously on the home courts of Kyuss and The Hellacopters, and better the revved-up swing of Fu Manchu. Fans of fuzzed-out, '70s-hearkening, '80s-punk-nodding, power-grooving stoner rock are sure to elevate this record to classic status in their collections within the first few listens.
 CHRIS DODGE / DAVE WITTEEast West Blast Test (SLAP-A-HAM) CD/LP
Released the week of October 16th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder What happens when two prominent mongers from the extreme noise underground who live 3,000 miles apart team up in the studio for the first time? An album that Slap a Ham is already praising as one of the best of the year before it's even released, that's what. East West Blast Test contains 27 tracks of the fiercest grind / noise / power violence / thrash / experimental assaults to ever hit the digital medium! Chris Dodge (stringman for Spazz, editor of Short Fast & Loud magazine, among other things) and Dave Witte (stickman for Discordance Axis, Burnt By The Sun and a million other grind favorites) not only manage to break all existing musical speed records, but also excel in innovation with their unique method of hi-octane tunesmithery. In a bold approach to collaborating, Witte recorded the lightning fast drum tracks separately in New Jersey without ever hearing a single riff to play along with. The tapes were then sent to California where Dodge completed the songs by writing complex and crazed tunes to fit the drums. No songs were written together in advance, but veterans have always had an easy time working around what normal mortals consider stumbling blocks - obliviousness to what's going on around them, what the other guy's playing, lack of self-awareness, the ever-present bleating of sycophantic hangers-on, shit like that. In addition to this groundbreaking approach to songwriting, Dodge and Witte also pave the streets of their mini-grind epics with enough variety to please everyone from the crustiest punk to the snobbiest college radio maven to Gary Niederhoff of Noothgrush who was enlisted to lend his sandpaper-stripped vocal stylings to a few tracks.
 ULAN BATOREgo: Echo (YOUNG GOD YG12) CD
Released the week of October 16th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder Last summer, in the midst of a debilitating heatwave, French avant rock kings Ulan Bator and producer M.Gira (complete strangers to each other at the time) locked themselves in a tiny recording studio in a village just north of Florence, Italy, 18 hours a day for three weeks. As Olivier Manchion, Amaury Cambuzat and Matteo Dainese started to work with Gira (who had heard demos of the material, of course, and been a fan of their earlier records), it became obvious to everyone that they had to be open to anything, willing to start from scratch in some cases-- just throw everything out the window and make something happen right then if they were going to rise to the potential of the moment. Most, though not all, of Ego : Echo was written and/or (re)arranged on the spot, as the trio and Gira worked under increasingly intense pressure. Adrenaline, stress, heat, chaos, and panic, combined with the language barrier, forced them into places they never expected to end up, which, according to Gira, was incredibly elating. In some cases the basis for the song started with just a groove, or an electronic sound, or a vocal idea, or an accidental noise, and was eventually wrestled into the final version. To watch them play, cramped up in the miniscule recording booth (about eight by 12 feet, by Gira's recollection) - bass, drums, guitar and amps included - strangling the groove out of their instruments with completely unself-conscious commitment (and this from unrepentant, intellectual "art rockers"), was a joy he'll never forget. "Their musicality and their dedication to making something powerful and clear," says Gira, "out of whatever raw materials were at their disposal at the time (sometimes a grand piano, for instance, or other times a piece of looped digital feedback), coupled with their immense knowledge and enthusiasm for the music they love-- from the Beatles and Beach Boys to New York No Wave to Krautrock to experimental electronic music-- combined to make this, I think, a great "experimental rock" record-- or whatever genre you want to call it." "This may be the best rock music France has ever produced É may be the only band from that nation worth a damn since Metal Urbain or Magma." --Alternative Press
 VARIOUS ARTISTSYoung God Records Compilation 2000 AD (YOUNG GOD YG13) CD
Released the week of October 16th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder I started YGR in 1989/90, as a way of gaining complete control of my music and all its aspects. Things are going well, and I'm happy now to be able to release not only my own music, but also music from other musicians whose work I admire. The only criterion I use in choosing music for the label is that I respond to it with immediate, visceral enthusiasm. I suppose my tastes lean towards the "experimental," but I also respond to good, personalized and original songwriting that doesn't pander to commerciality or to current fashion. The label is geared toward the kind of listener who wants to hear something original and committed, to listen to the music for a long time to come - outside the assault of media image manipulation. - Michael Gira, Young God Records
Angels of Light "Jennifer's Sorry" and "My True Body"
Calla "Fear of Fireflies" and "Traffic Sound"
Ulan Bator "Hemisphere" and "Soeur Violence"
Flux Information Sciences "Example One" and "Example Two"
David Coulter "Broken Mass" and "Harmonik"
Windsor For The Derby "The Egg" and "Lost in Cycles"
 ABDULLAH(s/t) (METEORCITY) CD
Released the week of October 30th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder As long as mainstream rock remains high-energy and balls-out, there will always be a need for a darker, heavier, more emotional release. Melodic, despairing doom is the elemental converse of straight-ahead rock, and as those who create it melt into history, others arise with void-fill on their minds. In the '70s, Black Sabbath provided that outlet; The Obsessed and Trouble in the '80s; Melvins and Sleep in the '90s. Now, in the year 2000, the mantle is assumed by Abdullah. The trio's self-titled debut album was produced at Suma Sound Recording, where the greatest works of such legends as Grand Funk Railroad and Bloodrock were spawned. Nearly 70 minutes of profound, resonating heaviness, the album is a flood of self-insight and reflection from a band who manages to convey both sadness and hope at the same time.
The music is varied, from metal-ish tunes and groove-driven heavy rock to
all-out doom, which makes the trip all the more enjoyable. The lyrics deal
with the compulsory good/evil duality, solitude and the human quest for
inner peace. Doom indeed.
...A three-piece with the branding iron of Black Sabbath printed all over
their hides, right down to the thin, double-tracked Ozzy-esque vocals.
There are hints of other sludgy/stoner bands present in their mix as well,
but it really all comes back to Black Sabbath, doesn't it? The guys write
some good songs and they know when to jam out a riff, something of which
more and more people seem to be appreciative in recent years.
 MELT-BANANATeeny Shiny (AZAP AZAP003) CD
Released the week of October 30th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder Melt-Banana describe their third self-released album as "pop and nice," a claim to which numerous incredulous subscribers to the band's mailing list have replied, "No pop!" and "Extreme, please!" This angular Pythagorean-core HC quartet supposes that the words "pop" and "nice" have slightly different nuances those outside their native Japan are failing to see; perhaps they mean "pop" not in the Celine Dion sense, but in the Andy Warhol sense, "nice" not as in smashing a bunch of garbage together and expecting fans to swallow it out of habit, but as in well-crafted, hairball mania. Even as the band acknowledges that Teeny Shiny is punk, noisy, screeching, and fast, they steadfastly maintain that it is pop and nice for them. Even though a mad scientist from 2788 has given vocalist / lyricist Yako a heart the size of a lion's (engorged with futuristic steroids) and her voice goes spitting and whizzing above it all as 5,000 volts surge through her skinny torso; and given that the mad scientist has screwed with guitarist Agata's brain so that his guitar-playing resembles a synth and two turntables; and even taking into account the Melt-Banana rhythm section's ability to keep up with a machine gun demonstration without breaking a sweat - conditions that all apply to Teeny Shiny, fictionalized or not - they're not backing down from the assertion that their new album is pop and nice. Sometimes you just gotta trust people.
 PANTHER BURNS / TAV FALCOPanther Phobia (IN THE RED ITR69) CD
Released the week of October 16th, 2000
order from Midheaven mailorder Named after a legendary plantation located still off Highway 61 in the lower Delta, the Panther Burns began their art actions around 1979 in a Memphis cotton loft, grew through the 1990s to a home in Vienna (and in Paris, where their tango performance attracted international notoriety). With the brilliant Panther Phobia they have returned to the mythic Memphis garage of their origins.
Recorded and mixed in Memphis by Messrs. Jeffrey Evans (former Gibson
Brother and the talent behind the '68 Comeback) and Doug Easley (producer
and host to the stars at his studio, Easley Recording - 901-323-5407 if you
don't believe it), Panther Phobia heralds a return to the tumultuous and
exuberant tones and groans of the Panther Burns' landmark first LP Behind
The Magnolia Curtain. The music is organic, like a landlord's eviction
squad. Drums pound like irate neighbors at the door. Slow songs snake like
a chick passing out on 'ludes. You will lock your doors when you hear this
record, you will bar your windows, blood will flow from your nose, your
lungs will itch. You will get a divorce, a speeding ticket, eleven twenty
nine in the workhouse. See also Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Doo Rag, the Gories, the Gibson Brothers, Fat Possum Records and Rooster Blues, the Flat Duo Jets, Southern Culture on the Skids.
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Click the underlined titles below for details on specific new releases.
October 2000 New Release index:
ABDULLAH
BANANAFISH
CHRIS DODGE / DAVE WITTE
DJ 'D
DJ SUSHI
GREEN DAY
IDYLL SWORDS
MAKOTO KAWABATA
MELT BANANA
MUSHROOM RIVER BAND
PANTHER BURNS / TAV FALCO
ULAN BATOR
RICHARD YOUNGS / SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH
VARIOUS ARTISTS
VARIOUS ARTISTS
January 2002 new releases
(all dates subject to change)
BROTHER JT
CONSUMERS
LARSEN
HERSCHEL GORDON LEWIS
SWANS
ORNETTE COLEMAN
ALICE COLTRANE
BEN KUNIN
NOVEX
DON HOWLAND
INFINITE X's
L. STINKBUG
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA
SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH
AWOL ONE
ETERNAL ELYSIUM
TONY JOE WHITE
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