Chain Reaction

Over the next few days we’ll post a complete run of the Chain Reaction label’s album releases that are currently unavailable (ie, we’re not posting the Monolake & Vladislav Delay discs). Some have been posted on Friendsound already and their links are listed. The rest will be new 320 rips.

CRD-01: Porter Ricks – Biokinetics, CD, Chain Reaction, 1996
CRD-02: Vainquer – Elevations, CD, Chain Reaction, 1997
CRD-03: Various Artists – Decay Product, CD, Chain Reaction, 1997
CRD-04: Monolake – Hong Kong, CD, Chain Reaction, 1997 – RE-RELEASE WIDELY AVAILABLE
CRD-05: Substance – Session Elements, CD, Chain Reaction, 1998
CRD-06: Various – …Compiled, CD, Chain Reaction, 1998
[with Scion, Erosion, Continuous Mode, Substance, Vainquer, Pelon, Porter Ricks, Ridis, Monolake]
CRD-07: Fluxion – Vibrant Forms, CD, Chain Reaction, 1999
CRD-08: Hallucinator – Landlocked, CD, Chain Reaction, 1999
CRD-09: Vladislav Delay – Multila, CD, Chain Reaction, 2000 – RE-RELEASE WIDELY AVAILABLE
CRD-10: Matrix – Various Films, CD, Chain Reaction, 2000
CRD-11: Fluxion – Vibrant Forms II, CD, Chain Reaction, 2000

Thomas Köner

You already know we love Thomas Köner’s work as half of Porter Ricks hereabouts. Here are his first three solo albums, of deeply glacial ambience, on the very collectable Barooni label. These are vastly deep, frozen drones, often derived from gongs – his third record was called Permafrost for a reason.

Teimo & Permafrost were reissued as a combined disc in 1997 by Mille Plateaux, but that disc seems to be as rare as the originals; Nunatak/Gongamur seems not to have been reissued since its first release. There are some 192 rips out there; these are new rips, at 320. Turn up your sub-bass and open all the windows.

Nunatak/Gongamur CD, Barooni, 1990

01. Untitled (3:23)
02. Untitled (6:03)
03. Untitled (4:27)
04. Untitled (5:22)
05. Untitled (6:23)
06. Untitled (3:27)
07. Untitled (5:06)
08. Untitled (3:25)
09. Untitled (3:29)
10. Untitled (3:12)
11. Untitled (4:04)

Link | Discogs

Teimo CD, Barooni, 1992

01. Ilira (4:01)
02. Andenes (10:14)
03. Teimo (5:15)
04. Nieve Penitentes 1 (3:09)
05. Nieve Penitentes 2 (4:55)
06. Nieve Penitentes 3 (4:31)
07. Teimo (Schluss) (4:27)
08. Ruska (3:47)

Link | Discogs

Permafrost CD, Barooni, 1993

01. Nival (5:52)
02. Serac (5:34)
03. Firn (5:32)
04. Permafrost (10:07)
05. Meta Incognita (7:01)
06. ••• (3:25)

Link | Discogs

Thank you, everyone

We just hit 100,000 visitors. Fuck yeah. Thanks to each and every one of you for your support, comments, conversation and suggestions. Love you all.

Normally we restrict ourselves to out-of-print rarities, but here’s a little something made just yesterday that made us howl: Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin. Laughter is always the best weapon.

Cas de Marez – Cathédrale de Chant

CD, Barooni, 1994

“Dutch vocal artist Cas de Marez explores all the sounds her voice is capable of producing: from pure singing to groaning and whispering, and blends them together to form one language of sound. These elements are found in the piece ‘Cathédrale de Chant’, performed in 1990 – a 15-hour performance for one voice and a multitrack recorder. This CD contains a recording of the 15th hour, the whole performance compressed into a 15-voice choir.”

01. Cathédrale de Chant (55:02)

Link | Discogs

J. A. Deane – Nomad

CD, Les Disques VICTO, 1995

Canadian percussionist and sampler-wrangling J.A. Deane is perhaps most notable for six years in the touring ensemble of Jon Hassell. He was present on some of the latter’s best records, including Flash of the Spirit and The Surgeon of the Night Sky Cures Dead Things With the Power of Sound (love it!), and it’s no surprise that a couple of the tracks here show some of that Fourth World chittering jungle or desert ambience. Richard Horowitz, another name in this area, is also present on a track or two, and you’ll also swoon to this if you’re a Steve Roach or Steve Shehan enthusiast. This was all apparently composed for the choreographer Colleen Mulvihill, and as usual with these sorts of pieces one has no real idea how her dancers actually moved to this.

1. Wolfrun/Priests (10:24)
2. Standing Wave (8:03)
3. Algebao (3:20)
4. Liquid Time (7:29)
5. Last Supper (9:45)
6. Dark Heart (9:35)
7. Thread of Life (9:53)

Link | Discogs

Revolutions Per Minute (The Art Record)

2xLP, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc/The Charing Hill Company, 1982

Ah, art. What would we do without it, pop kids? And hey, you know, some of those real-life, full-time artistic types, they can rock out too. Why look, here’s a double album full of their grrrrreatest bits.

A scarce double disc of the great and the good from the early 1980s NYC art scene, this is a very mixed bag of sound pieces, spoken word and, well, some songs. But there are some gems here too, so this isn’t just notable for its rarity. The Bill Burroughs piece has his voice slowly set out of phase like an early Steve Reich piece. And the Terry Fox excerpt, from recordings made from a show where he wired very lengthy steel springs from the altar to the doors of an Italian church and then twanged them, basking in the glorious reverb, is pretty special.

This was released in a limited run, in a gatefold covered in notes, plus a couple of fold-out posters with further sleevenotes and alternative cover designs. There was also a 500-copy run with prints from may of the contributors as a collector’s item. We ain’t got that one. NB, 320 rip, because we [heart] you.

01. Jud Fine – Polynesian/Polyhedron (3:12)
02. Eleanor Antin – Antinova Remembers (4:12)
03. Terry Fox – Internal Sound (4:21)
04. Margaret Harrison – First Lines (2:46)
05. Les Levine – Would Not Say No to Some Help (4:10)
06. Hannah Wilke – Stand Up (3:21)
07. Douglas Davis – How to Make Love to a Sound (4:21)
08. Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid – Russian Language Lesson (3:21)
09. Helen & Newton Harrison – Extract from The Second Lagoon: A Memoriam to John Isaacs (2:29)
10. Vincenzo Agnetti – Pieces of Sound (4:30)
11. Chris Burden – The Atomic Alphabet (0:31)
12. Piotr Kowalski & William Burroughs – You Only Call the Old Doctor Once (4:45)
13. Ida Applebroog – Really, is That a Fact? (3:09)
14. Edwin Schlossberg – Vibrations/Metaphors (4:52)
15. SITE – Comments on SITE (2:46)
16. R Buckminster Fuller – Critical Path (2:52)
17. Thomas Shannon – Smashing Beauty (4:02)
18. Conrad Atkinson – The Louis XIV Deterrent (5:20)
19. David Smyth – Typewriter in D (3:35)
20. Todd Siler – Think Twice (3:17)
21. Joseph Beuys – Excerpt from Cooper Union Dialogue (4:07)

Link | Discogs | Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc

Live Sets at Ego 1998-2000

2CD, Ego Recordings/Imbalance Computer Music, 2002

Tasty double collection of your favourite glitch and dub techno acts, caught live off the desk at the much missed Düsseldorf, Germany club, Ego. And straight off the desk too – no edits, no overdubs, just raw sets. Came with a hefty booklet of photos documenting those glory days in the club. Why, it’s almost like you were there, only you can’t quite remember it the next morning – just as it used to be, in fact. Ego Recordings was a sub-label of Robert (Monolake) Henke’s Imbalance set up solely to release this document.

DISC ONE
01. Continuous Mode – Untitled (6:06)
02. Sutekh – Untitled (4:53)
03. Salz – Caddie’s Day (Salz Remix) (8:58)
04. Swayzak – Doobie (5:11)
05. Kandis – Inklu (4:27)
06. Antonelli Electr. – Time Destroying Machine (5:00)
07. Markus Nikolai – Just Wanna (7:14)
08. Kotai/Bader – Welltick (7:30)
09. Chris Korda – Victim Of Leisure (9:20)
10. Khan – Ride Me (3:31)
11. Jammin’ Unit – Untitled (3:02)

DISC TWO
01. Marcus Schmickler – Param (7:40)
02. Senking- Rachel (5:41)
03. Produkt – Statik (7:13)
04. Thomas Brinkmann – Jutta (4:00)
05. Opiate – Read-Thru Colours (4:42)
06. Kit Clayton – Untitled (8:33)
07. Leandro Fresco – Untitled (7:35)
08. Monolake – Pluto (9:24)
09. Smyglyssna – Who Datman? (4:51)
10. Noto – Crystal R (4:46)

Link expired – see comments | Discogs

Dorgon – IIII

CD, Jumbo, 1997

It’s drones day here at Friendsound. In a moment, some lovely Aussie sound-art, but for now, some sonic explorations from the mysterious Mr Dorgon (aka Gordon Knauer), shadowy noise-goblin from the New York art scene. Can’t beat a 33-minute tambura solo for out-there chops. Can’t beat that packaging too – just a chunk of thick card with four chalked digits. More usually, our Dorgon is a saxophonist, as you’ll discover on track 4. As Mr Dorgon he has a CD on Tzadik. He used to be in Dim Sum Clip Joint, who had a fairly shitty CD on Avant. The phrase “the Jandek of skronk” has been bandied. We read somewhere that he used to work the door at the Knitting Factory too. This guy gets arrrrround.

01. String Quartet (13:23)
02. Graphic #1 (2:35)
03. Study #2 (7:01)
04. Hardcore (Brooklyn) (8:35)
05. For JA (31:29)

Link | Discogs

D Haines – Emo

CD, Sigma Editions, 2000

Lovely elongated drone works from the Australian composer, David Haines. His first disc, Blither, manipulated piano sounds and chords, elongating them into new forms; here, though, the instrumentation is more anonymous, and far more heavily layered, leaving nothing but the sounds themselves.

Back at the start of this decade, this sort of thing was unusual to hear outside of a rip of an old LaMonte Young disc or some Organum records. These days you can’t move for droning hums and shimmering smears of bubbling noise. Wonder what the next decade will bring. Oh yeah, and that is how he spelt “Gibraltar”. Perhaps he meant a, um, different one.

01. Kosciousko (24:50)
02. Peak Communism (16:13)
03. Gibralter (18:27)

Link | Discogs