THE FOLLOWING ARE OUT NOW:
See the catalog page or the Storenvy or the bandcamp for details and ordering.
I’m too tired to say much more right now so here’s a bunch of photos of tapes:
Evidently Serbia’s got it goin’ on. Yesterday we brought you some Third I, today it’s our latest Raven joint, two new dynamic walls of grimy noise drone, Djordje continuing to pull his project in a synthier and more layered direction. Also coming this April on cassette tape and download, along with the below.
Day 4 of the spring batch reveal; definitely among Serbia’s most fascinating experimental music projects, Third I have done everything from dark ambient to drone to harsh noise to improvisation, each release a concept of its own and all highly recommendable. “Glitch Pieces” is 14 unique short, high-energy pieces of glitchy, squiggly, electronic sounds and static. A seriously fun listen.
The first two tracks, Rantau Ranjau (Indonesia) interprets nuclear contamination/devastation/mutation through harsh squalls of staticky feedback. For the last two, L’eclipse Nue (Japan/USA) does likewise through the vehicle of noisy old-school electronic industrial that sounds a bit like what I picture it would be like if Skinny Puppy ever decided to just get loose and jam a bit. Sandwiched in between is a collab track nicely combines the elements of both artists’ sounds.
Here’s #2 of my day-by-day reveal of the spring batch. Sam Hayes covers miles of stylistic ground in a mere 25 minutes from minimal melodic synth jam (with live drums!) to crunchy noise to super-chilled droney ambient.
Bloggers, zine-ers, podcasts, traders, feel free to get in touch if something interests you! Several more streams to be released here in the coming days!
Beginning the reveal of the seriously epic Spring 2013 batch of sounds from The Centipede Farm with (finally!) the new Distant Trains release, “Explortation”, a re-purposing of ancient deteriorating cassette recordings of guitar improvisation chronicling my discovery of the wonders of digital delay circa 1996/7, over which I overdubbed and collaged guitars, bass, drums, no-input mixer, keyboards, loops, and various other effects and sounds in 2012/3 to make something new that careens wildly between noise, mellow ambient bits, and crazy instrumental rock jams.
Keep an eye on this space for more new Centipede Farm releases in the works, all of which will also be made available on cassette tape in a couple-three weeks. Great stuff coming up from Raven, Third I, Consciousness Prism, Vales, Rantau Ranjau/L’Eclipse Nue, SBDD, and Nyhos.
So… this is fucking annoying:
Word to the wise, if you’re having J-cards printed up at your neighborhood print or office place, tell the kid behind the counter not to print them from that bullshit Microsoft Windows image preview app, but instead open them up in a proper fucking graphics application that won’t fuck up the size. Bring a J-card along with you for comparison.
I had already gone to the trouble of cutting out and folding them and didn’t notice until I was at home inserting them in the Norelcos. On top of this, half of the cassette labels got printed upside down and all fucked up, and I miscounted and brought along 1 sheet of labels too few for the number of tapes I was doing. These are hectic times; in my scramble to get these tapes made up in the midst of a mad rush to close on my new house and get or shit packed up to move and frantically finish up a bunch of stuff at work so that I can have the time off to be able to be able to do this moving with a 4-year-old underfoot, right now I just don’t have the time and patience to get all these labels and cards re-done. So welcome to moulttrigger’s “Birds”: The Wonky Edition, limited to 27. To make up for the drop in presentation quality, I’ll be knocking $1 off the price of these. They still sound just as good.
Supplies are running low, and I am glad of this. More tapes going out to more people. Making room for the new stuff I’ve been working on but that has been delayed by holidays and financial situations but is finally starting to move.
I’ve still got a few copies of this Mahler Haze stuff. Really a fantastic synth drone/space music artist based in Belgium who I am really trying to do my part to turn people on to here in the states. I have the “Lupus Dei” cassette on Centipede Farm, and I also have some distro copies of the “Final Vapour” CD and am anticipating receiving some of the new “Coming Events Cast Their Shadow Before” CD as well. This is epic stuff, guys. Get a taste at Mahler Haze’s Soundcloud if you like.
If you’re after one of the following, however, you will have to act fast (figures do not include what few single copies might still be found at ZZZ Records)…
The Molting tape will receive a digital release on bandcamp as soon as that last copy is gone.
moulttrigger’s “Birds” has also gotten a very good response, I am down to 3 copies of it and am considering making it the first Centipede Farm release to get a 2nd edition. The Mahler Haze tape might too.
I’m also rather light on some my own material these days, apart from the Distant Trains/Squeegeed Clean split lathe and the Captain Three Leg/Distant Trains split 3″ CD-R, both of which I stil have quite a few of — but not much on cassette. Luckily I have finally finished the recording of the next Distant Trains tape “Explortation”. More details in a minute.
We also have some fine wares made by some good friends, and even those are starting to get low in supply here:
For details/descriptions of any of this stuff see the catalog page.
To buy and/or download Centipede Farm stuff go to the bandcamp site, or you can pick up any of this on the Storenvy store.
Or you can just email & paypal me directly if you’re the negotiating sort or would like to do a trade. I like trades. In fact, I happened to pick up an extra copy of the self-titled Tires tape on Warm Gospel via trade (turned out I had already ought one at one of their gigs) so I’m offering it up for the asking via trade. Tires is a really cool loopy-noisy instrumental rock band from around Des Moines here and they’re on tour right now with Is Home Is (formerly known as The Olsen Twinns). Should you happen to see that they are playing in your town I highly advise you check it out.
I don’t know if Michael is going to make any more copies of the Centipede Farmer/Koobaatoo Asparagus “Royal With Cheese” split 3″ CD-R but I don’t have any left but you should download it regardless because it’s pretty neat. While you’re at it, download the Dick Grifter EP too, it’s some sweet basement jams by me and Matt from Stratum.
So now that the current crop of stuff is disappearing, what’s next from the Farm? Well I had a bunch of stuff that I’ve kind of sat on for a few months sorry to say, but I’m ready to get moving on them. The next few:
And after those, in no particular order:
Also real possibilities are something with BBJr, something with I Like You Go Home, a Distant Trains field-recording-based collab with Frank Goshit, some other Distant Trains release made up from the pile of stuff I am amassing, and a gem dredged up from the distant past called Cottonwood.
If you’ve read this far, you truly deserve a reward, so here it is: I have many of these padded envelopes that very conveniently fit three tapes if you shimmy them in sideways very carefully. And because I really want to get you into this Mahler Haze stuff, Until the end of January (or if I run out of them — I currently have five), if you order any other two cassettes, including distro stuff, shipped anywhere in the US, and you put the word “COSMIC” in the message box (on paypal or whatever), I will throw in a copy of Lupus Dei for free. Serious. (Unless you already have “Lupus Dei”, then let me know and we can work out something else)
One week ago yesterday I loaded some gear into my car, picked up Dave Wren (Moulttrigger) at his house, grabbed some beer, and drove up to Boone, a small town west of Ames that a couple old friends come from but that otherwise doesn’t usually have much going on, where I took part in one of the most epic noise/experimental music gigs I’ve ever been to.
I consider “Zeitgeist 2012″ one of my great triumphs of 2012 even though I honestly don’t feel like I did a lot more than show up and play. But that’s the beauty of it, it came together so organically everybody just put in what they had to offer, though the biggest contributor was no doubt Trent Reis (Juxwl) who hosted it at his occasional show space known as the Elephungeon. I think it was also his PA that we used. Trent really came through big on this. Hell, there was even free food. Going into that weekend I knew this thing would be a success even if this bunch of freak sound artists just ended up playing for each other, because great things were bound to come of our just meeting each other in person, and honestly this scene is very participatory; we don’t care a whole lot about the artist/audience distinction; one thing I’ve noticed happens an awful lot when someone becomes exposed to this scene is that immediately want to start their own noise project. That’s probably why Henry Rollins said in that LA Weekly piece that noise is more punk rock than punk rock ever was. Turned out we got a few people who came just to check out the show, and I think they left with some great tapes and CDs and their minds reeling with sound and freedom. Zeitgeist was the kind of experience that really makes my synapses light up.
Sweet mama hell yes!:
The DTs side, conceived as an EP of sorts, is four short vignettes of hyperactive 4-track bedroom goofballery along similar lines to the Marax split and compilation tracks from around that time. Squeegeed Clean are great Australian noise-free-jazz pranksters you have got to check out (you may or may not know of Skot from Vocaularinist or Mekigah), and here they give us a wild drunken melee of saxophones and toys. Lathe-cut in New Zealand onto clear records by the legendary Peter King in an edition of 50, hand-numbered. I’ve got the even numbers and Skot of Squeegeed Clean has the odd numbers. If you’re in Australia, order from him instead to save on shipping.
