I stumbled on Dark Beloved Cloud sometime in 1999. Back when the label was still based in New York. I was digging for a copy of Fly Ashtray’s Clumps Takes A Ride, yet another cassette that suffered the same fate as the Mommyheads tape I’ve written about… curdled in the heat of early-90’s South Floridian sun. And just like Swiss Army Knife, Clumps became progressively harder to find as the years went on. The fact that even in their “heyday” both were relatively obscure, compounded their elusivity further.

After a few emails and a never-realized design trade, Dark Beloved Cloud’s owner, Douglas Wolk, confirmed that he did indeed have a copy, and kindly hooked me with Clumps in both plastic and vinyl. A couple more generously stuffed envelopes later, and many other DBC artists found their way into my collection and onto my plate of earfood — Azalia Snail, The Magick Heads, Spaceheads, some Uncle Wiggly that I never knew existed and Fly Ashtray guitarist James Kavoussi’s almighty alter-persona, pHoaming Edison.

Fly Ashtray deserves and likely will receive a post of their own here someday. They’re among the handful of bands whose music fundamentally altered the landscape of listening for me. In fact, they were a shoe-in before I ever even dropped the needle. Their name alone detonated an avalanche of pre-pubescent memories — Star Wars and Micronaut figures manning the cockpit of my parents ashy, functional version of their namesake.

Then as now, Fly Ashtray’s sound swings the ~25yr gamut from quirky pop, deeply explorative noise to neo-psychedelic heaviness. Even when coupled with a frequent helping of silly lyrics and song titles, the hallmark of their home/rec mastery is never lost. Kavoussi’s solo releases as pHoaming Edison bear the brilliant genetic signature of Fly Ashtray (and vice-versa) garbled in crap-sounding lo-tech splendor. Occasional cover tracks easily finding a place in the ranks of an unrealized list of tops (should I ever realize the need to write one).

When Douglas Wolk moved to Portland a few years ago, he made the coastal switch with a new addition to the family and a few book titles in tow. Namely, the much-heralded Reading Comics and his 117 page critical introspective James Brown: Live at the Apollo for Continuum’s 33⅓ book series.

It turns out Wolk is also one of the hardest working men in the music/comic critic business. Lucky for us, he brought Dark Beloved Cloud along with him and still finds time to bring the precipitating noise.

Noise that is made readily available via the DBC catalog and the ill-conceived (not ill meaning ill, but ill meaning ill) Singles Club. A collaborative means of sampling the label’s catalog in the form of 3-inch CD singles swapped in exchange for the investment of your own creative time and effort. Design a cover for the latest single, send it in and get the single adorned with someone else’s cover artwork. A simple, brilliant concept that Fly Ashtray is currently wielding for the release of their latest plate, Pantswind Folder. See? Totally silly album titles as well.

If you dig the links below, get in on both collabs and find yourself far from disappointed.

s|b Muxtape v.0002 → HYPOBLAST! Fly Ashtray + pHoaming Edison
The Dark Beloved Cloud Muxtape

Dark Beloved Cloud: Precipitated / Band Pages / Singles Club / covers
Douglas Wolk: Lacunae / Reading Comics / JB 33⅓ / 52 Pickup / Slate / Savage Critic / Kottke Interview
Fly Ashtray: off.site, blog + mspce / Discog / Videos / Song Titles / Thanks Mauvis
pHoaming Edison: mspce / Silly Bird

 

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SB/MUXTAPE.0002 → HYPOBLAST! Fly Ashtray + pHoaming Edison

Fly Ashtray 2nd Song (1:58)
Fly Ashtray Harmony Grutz (2:54)
Fly Ashtray Moist Floor Ruined My Bad Idea (3:13)
Fly Ashtray Best Boy (2:43)
Fly Ashtray Hypoblast! (1:40)
Fly Ashtray Berries (3:01)
Fly Ashtray Flunch (3:31)
pHoaming Edison Laughing at Keys (2:43)
pHoaming Edison Owl Mound (1:30)
pHoaming Edison Street Fighting Man (1:59)
pHoaming Edison Crate (Let’s Have Some) (1:16)
Fly Ashtray My Flash On You (2:21)

sourced: Fly Ashtray / pHoaming Edison
also see: muxtape with coverflow using fluid

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The first of many mixes to come from the enjoyably simple web app, Muxtape. Thanks to Dave for the original tip.

SB/MUXTAPE.0001 → Heavier Than a Death in the Family

The Heads Sat Up All Night Just Looking At It (0:41)
Boris Woman On The Screen (2:39)
Bardo Pond Back Porch (4:43)
Chrome TV as Eyes (2:19)
DMBQ Smoker (3:53)
Hisato Higuchi Grow (3:06)
Magic Dirt Goofy Gumb (6:11)
DMBQ S.S.S. (9:28)
Les Rallizes Dénudés Unknown (october 2nd, 1982) (7:57)
Butthole Surfers Boiled Dove (4:33)

also see: muxtape with coverflow using fluid

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Received a bubble-lined manilla from Ecstatic Peace last week (Thanks AK!), packed with good, good stuff more than worth mentioning. Here’s my tops:

Free Kitten Inherit
Its been over a decade since Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore) and Yoshimi P-We (Boredoms) released a Free Kitten disc. If you’ve been waiting since Sentimental Education, it was well worth it. Inherit is what you’d get if the combined lucid dreams of all three and their former/current band mates were pre-recorded while listening to Evol’s Shadow of a Doubt, only with a distinctively dirgey backbone. It’s like the more noisy, experimental passages of each, fine-tuned into one brash, hypnotic and totally accessible sound.

Track 01. Erected Girl (6:45)
Track 03. Seasick (3:24)
Track 04. Free Kitten On the Mountain(7:51)
Track 09. Bananas (2:49) w/ J.Mascis on drums

Awesome Color Electric Aborigines
This album would have certainly been included on the tracklist of any Thrasher Skate Rock comp, as easily as I would have coveted it by album cover alone in the forbidden racks of the Golden Triangle heavy rock aisle when I was a kid. Unabashedly heavy, distorted, power rock wrapped in a sheet of White Lightning. Critics will doubtlessly cite obvious references to Detroit in general and the MC5 in particular when bashing Electric Aborigines for all the things that make them the great continuation of the lineage that they are. If this doesn’t make you want to load up the van, drop acid and head out the weird wilderness, then enjoy your dirt nap. The soundtrack of Summer unbridled.

Track 01. Eyes of Light (5:43)
Track 02. Already Down (2:42)

via: Ecstatic Peace / Free Kitten (PK) / Awesome Color (PK)

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Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 4/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1/pt.2/pt.3)

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David Berman is a young Virginian poet with a sly, intense regard for the past. He comes on like a prankster, restocking the imperial orations of Wallace Stevens and the byzantine monologues of John Ashberry with the pop-cultural bric-a-brac of a new generation: ‘I am not a cub scout seduced by Iron Maiden’s mirror worlds.’ But his words have an easy, eloquent gait; each line needs to be a line. The landscapes are crisply American, and history, especially Southern history casts a shadow. A poem about the death of Lincoln ends, ‘The assassin was in mid-air / when the stagehands wheeled out clouds.’ —The New Yorker, Oct 4, 1999

David Berman’s Actual Air is one of the most coveted books on my shelf.

I originally picked it up because the cover design reminded me of Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (which coincidentally has some beautiful display errors going on at Google). It was the first collection of poems that deeply inspired and moved me since scouring Powells Books for every original printing of Richard Brautigan’s writings I could find and devour. I’ve bought dozens of copies of Actual Air for friends and family and plan to do so until one or the other runs out.

After posting about Open Field from the new Silver Jews release, Look Out Mountain, Look Out Sea, I dug through backups in search of the only two recordings of Berman reading I was aware of. I ended up finding them at The Corduroy Suit, along with a newfound recording from an Impossible Shapes show (Live at 2nd Story). Either this is it, or I’m not looking in the right place. If anyone out there is aware of more, please (please) let me know.

In the meantime, enjoy Idle Hour, an all too brief collection of readings by David Berman and another bundled repackaging following in the same vein as my previous two (here and here). This time with the jacket shot by Bobbi Fabian instead of my own.

David Berman: Idle Hour (3.4mb, mp3.zip, MF)

via: The Corduroy Suit (Actual Air/Biblio/Interviews) / Open City / Drag City / More Interviews: 01/02/03/04 / Silver Jews / Silver Jew trailer / Bobbi Fabian Photography

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Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 3/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1 / pt.2)

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Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 2/4) (42.8MB, mp3.zip, MF)

via: i was an infinitely hot and dense dot
(mc,mg: pt.1)

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I first read the name Mark Leyner while pouring through the pages of Mondo 2000(*), a short-lived and decidedly poignant introduction to the emerging cultural phenomena of networked computer systems, psychology, psychedelics and art. It was also my introduction to the personally life-altering thoughts of many personas of that era including Terence McKenna, Anne and Alexander Shulgin, Robert Anton Wilson and Jaron Lanier, just to name a few.

M2K was in publication during the early years of the internet era. During the transition from BBS to the web. A time when web browsers (Mosaic anyone?) were first able to display images inline, when the term cyberspace was not only used sans tongue-in-cheek, but heralded the clarion call for the social, cultural and human evolution that the internet seemed to promise. William Gibson’s science fiction made manifest, Terence McKenna’s visual ingression of linguistic intent and Timothy Leary’s final playground. Leyner’s book My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist was published in the fertile hotbed of this era and into the literary epoch of cyberpunk, reflecting it’s hyperactive and hyperlinked hyperreality.

The World Wide Web of 1993 was a dangerous and beautiful place. Remeniscent of Gutenberg’s printing press in terms of it’s disruptive effectiveness as a tool of the cognescenti and commonfolk alike. The information flowing through it allowed and demanded the very freedom that echoed and fueled it’s democratizing intent.

Leyner’s work was as dystopian as that of his cyberpunk brethren, but it came with a twist; it was fucking hilarious. A bonfire in which no form of thinking (eschatological or otherwise) was left unscathed. Where the hedonistic, self-indulgent and ego-driven herd of star culture icons lived on to ridiculously preserved, medically plausable ends. Where the soup of the day was primordial soup, “ammonia and methane mixed with ocean water in the presence of lightning”.

Instead of everyman cyborgs with military weapondry on-board (ala Gibson, Jeter etc.) Leyner’s characters were mesomorphic cyborgs that whipped out 35 pound phalli made of corrosion resistant nickel-based alloy and a metal oxide membrane for absolute sub-micron pebnetration of petrochemical fluids. Where mono zygotic replicants could avoid transgressing the incest taboo via a miniature shotgun blast of gene fragments, altering their genetic matricies so that they would longer be mono zygotic replicants. Where secreted couples could meet in dreams and apocalyptic deformation bombs could disfigure everything within blast radius in the same chapter that referenced TV Guide digests of wonderfully absurd shows starring the likes of Brian Keith, Buddy Ebsen, Nipsey Russell, and Lesley Ann Warren.

My Cousin, My Gastoenterologist is classic Leyner, and I feel, his establishing tome. An amphetamine overdriven run-on thought train, slicing through a scatter shot pop culture landscape with the urgency of a pedal riveted to the floor.

Thinking now back on the time it was written, a time when I took M2K’s manifestos SO seriously, believing in the inherent evolutionary change agency of the web. Even then I couldn’t keep from laughing with Leyner, whose sci-fi scenarios seem far more relevant and in full fruition than Gibson’s hard-browed visions. Especially now that the web has primarily devolved into a vehicle for mass marketing, branding and porn.

Thanks to Leyner, I can laugh with the absurdity — welcoming every bent doctrine and obliterated principle as everything unfurls in the stark blue sheen of prime time, and still revel in the sub-experiential, subversive carrier tone that rings at the heart of it all.

Thanks finally to my good friend, Brian Knapp who picked up the cassette version of the audiobook at Powell’s in the 99 cent bin back in 1999, and the tech that has made it relatively easier to pass along.

I’ll be uploading each part over the course of the next few days.

Here’s the first:

Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (part 1/4) (42.7MB, mp3.zip, MF)

related: Salon / Follow for Now / Links / Petition to Force Mark Leyner to Write Another Novel, (thanks Sampsell)

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Not unlike the last couple of Silver Jews releases, I’ve been giving a pre-release of their latest, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea heavy rotation in hopes that it will grow on me (thanks DaveE!). In the midst of the first spin, I was surprised and stoked to find that one of the tracks is a cover of one of my favorite artist’s songs, Maher Shalal Hash Baz’s, Open Field from Blues Du Jour.

Oddly enough, I was also in the middle of adding to a list of questions I’ve been working on for a future interview/post when it played. I love that shit.

Here’s the original, and it’s cover…
PS. Does anyone know the name of the artist that did the (possible) cover?

Maher Shalal Hash Baz: Open Field (1.3mb, mp3.zip, MF)
Silver Jews: Open Field (4.9mb, mp3.zip, MF)

Maher Shalal Hash Baz: Acetone Interview / Bookmat review of Blues Du Jour
Silver Jews: Drag City / Pitchfork: David Berman interview

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