Feral Debris

Vomir + Iron Fist Of the Sun and more...

2011-11-02T11:56:00.001-07:00

Poster by Sian Macfarlane.

Feral Debris Issue 5 now available

2011-11-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming and its certainly not worth the wait but here's issue 5. Including interviews with Stare Case, Graham Lambkin, Eli Keszler and Gerry and the Holograms. Thomas Moronic interviews Scott Treleaven and writes about The New Blockaders (sort of) and there's art and photography from Steve Skwarek and Sian Macfarlane. Comes with added spelling mistakes and glaring omissions.

CD-r compilation (all in hand collaged sleeves) contains new and exclusive tracks from;
Nacht und Nebel, Usurper, Preslav School of Industry, Brittle Foundries, ABYSSES and Inner City.

Photocopied to fuck and wonky to boot. £3.50ppd to anywhere in the world.

Bong/Molten Gods/Nacht Und Nabel- 8th March

2010-02-23T06:18:00.000-08:00

RAMMEL CLUB #14
--------------------

BONG
From the icy wastes of the north come these ‘psychedelic doom drone warriors’ to crush all that oppose them beneath the weight of their monolithic riffs and sitar soaked dirges. For fans of Sunn 0)), Sleep and Om. New albums out now on Blackest Rainbow Recordings.

http://www.myspace.com/landbong

MOLTEN GODS
Leaving a trail of smouldering and ruptured amplification in their wake, the Gods return to Rammel Club. Their improvised take on HEAVY will be so loud as to leave your eyeballs liquefied and your guts a damp and distant memory.

http://www.myspace.com/moltengods

NACHT UND NEBEL
Henry's (Army of Flying Robots / Dead in the Woods) cassette driven doom project, tunneling into your inner most fears of disappearing into the fog of the night. At times it calls to mind the murky depths of Burial Hex or Culver.

MON 8TH MARCH @ CHAMELEON, Nottingham
8PM DOORS
£5 adv / £6 Door

--------------

www.rammelclub.org

email tickets@rammelclub.org with add in the subject line to get info on updates offers etc.

Steffen Basho-Junghans Tuesday 10th November

2009-10-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

The Rammel Club presents a night of guitar wrangling.

Steffen Basho-Junghans

The blurb says he’s a master of the six and twelve string guitar and I’m in no way going to dispute that, the last time I saw him play was at an Instal fest in Glasgow a few years ago and he had the audience eating out of his hand. When he stopped playing it was one of those rapt could-hear-a-pin-drop moments, which he duly then defused by telling us about going to see Tangerine Dream when he was a kid. This fellow has absorbed the usual Takoma influences and come out the other side with a personal style that manages to beguile and challenge in equal measures. We’re really looking forward to seeing this guy.

www.bluemomentarts.de/

Plum Slate

" Reverberant open-string/no-string improvisation for acoustic guitar." Hell, I’m not even quite sure what that means but it’s got my mid-section a-tingle already. You may recognise Stuart from such bands as Smear Campaign, Stuckometer, Barbarians and his label Total Vermin.

www.myspace.com/totalvermin

Bonsai Projects

When I first met Ali, I knew him firstly to be an extraordinary illustrator. When he popped round for a cup of tea and informed us he was going to do some music I didn’t think much of it but then he turned out to be brilliant as that as well. What a cunt eh? They say “somnambulist folk, guttural blues and comedic ramblings” and I’d probably agree. Let’s hope he plays his Shellac cover.

www.myspace.com/bonsaiprojects

Tuesday 10th November
The Chameleon
Nottingham
£6/5adv

Record covers

2009-10-01T04:56:00.001-07:00

Picked a whole bunch of second hand records this week...This is just a handful of the album covers that i can find on the t'internet. I'll see if i can scan some of the more obscure ones in. It's a pity the Octopus LP wasn't in such great condition, that coulda paid my rent for the month, still completlely playable tho just a bit of surface crackle and the occaisonal skip. Someone has coloured the octo-girls nips in with biro.

Sister Iodine Weds 28th Nottingham

2009-09-23T03:28:00.000-07:00

Sister Iodine (France)

Founded in the early ‘90s, Sister Iodine spurt out savage gouts of fiery, primal guitar drizzle that could be taken as no wave, free rock, or JUST VERY FUCKIN LOUD depending on how you woke up this morning. They were invited to open Sonic Youth’s "Sentational Fix" exhibition last year which might give you some idea of the primal pounding you’re gonna get from them. New recorded bumpf out on such labels as Editions Mego and Premier Sang.

Eli Keszler (USA)

From Providence, USA. Keszler uses drums, along with crotales, bells, bowed metal, strings, and amplification to create a unique whirlwind of sound that balances sparse droning harmonics with intense, fast, free rhythms. He’s played with artists such as Jandek, Phill Niblock, Roscoe Mitchell and Loren Connors to mention a few. You ain’t likely to get a second chance to see this guy.

Usurper (Scotland)

Great, skronking wasteland jams from Edinburgh. They’ve worked with Dylan Nyoukis (Blood Stereo) which only hints at the gibbering insanity that you can expect from them.

Bitumen (Nottingham)

Weds 28th October

The Chameleon

Nottingham

£6/5adv

Dennis Wheatley

2009-09-17T03:03:00.001-07:00

THIS EDITION ISSUED BY THE BOOK CLUB.

Gary War

2009-09-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

I've been slightly obsessed with Gary War's LPs on SHDWPLY and Sacred Bones. Slurred, narcotic pop.I'd like to interview him for the next issue but maybe he's a recluse.

Party time

2009-09-11T01:51:00.000-07:00

Space Travel Is Boring

2009-08-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

This will be great. A (free!)night of electronica, ambient and post rock sounds with visuals based around space travel and the moon landing. Looking forward to it.

Rashied Ali

2009-08-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Fuck.

Dolphins into the Future/Apalusa/Floris Vanhoof/Adam James Davis

2009-08-05T05:02:00.000-07:00

A night of celestial ambience and drone in Nottingham. Bring yer own flotation tanks. From Belgium...

Dolphins into the Future

"A casual interweb cruiser could be forgiven for confusing Dolphins Into The Future the “band” (aka the one-man tape-loop blue-age ambient project executed by Belgian Cetacean Nation ambassador Lieven Martens) with Dolphins Into The Future the book (written by dimensional traveler Joan Ocean concerning her 20-year-long real life spirit quest to commune with a school of 200 wild Hawaiian Spinner dolphins). And, to be fair, they’re a LOT alike. Both deal heavily in trippy, drifting logics, vibrational holograms, and an overdose of psychedelic pastel artwork. But Ms. Ocean’s books are out of print so instead we have ...On Sea-Faring Isolation, Mr. Dolphin Martens’ vinyl debut under the DITF banner, after a 2-year string of increasingly blissed tapes and CDRs. Composed of three interwoven pieces per side, Isolation is one of those baffling magic eye LPs that seems to dissolve yr memory of it during the very act of listening. Turquoise webs of billowing synth smoke curl and dissipate into grey horizons of open sea field recordings. The wooden mast of a ship creaks quietly while astral bells toll away in morning fog. You are alone. This record could make a sailor homesick, and Joan Ocean weep. Beautifully composed and sequenced, with just the right amount of wobbly porpoise sonar prisms bubbling up from the deep, this LP exceeded all our expectations (and they were high). A fantastic voyage into the pan-dolphinic dawn." - Not Not Fun.

Dolphins gets a mention in David Keenan's article on hypnagogic pop in this months issue of The Wire.

Florian Vanhoof (Belgium)

Apalusa (Low Point Recordings)

"For me the obvious comparison here is some of the earlier Stars of The Lid music before they went more classical. Throbbing low end droney bass with some lush sounding feedback combine to make a really thundering warm sound. Listening to it on headphones it's proper taking me somewhere else as well which I like.... It's one of those floating in space records which you shut your eyes and imagine you're off there floating about minding your own business. Though there is a certain ominous presence on there hence me saying it veered on the dark side of things. It's fantastic though and if you're into drone music this is one of the best things I've heard in ages. Excellent!!" Norman Records.
http://www.myspace.com/apalusa

Adam James Davis

"Adam James Davis is an artist from Nottinghamshire who is inspired by the symmetries, periodicity and harmonies of our world and the greater universe, as well as by the concept of "universe as music instrument" to be harnessed by technology and innovation. Adam likes to use music as a personal expression of the euphoria gained when contemplating such said harmonies, like self-similarity, interconnectedness and superunification, as well as a metaphor for such concepts. He also thinks harmony and rhythm are one and the same."

£5
Tuesday 25th August
Chameleon, Nottingham

Cats

2009-07-16T00:42:00.001-07:00

Dolphins into the Future and more coming up...

2009-07-15T02:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, some details of upcoming Rammel Club gigs are emerging...

Rammel Club #7

Dolphins Into The Future (B) + Floris Vanhoof (B) + more t.b.c.Tues 25 Aug 2009

Rammel Club #8

Blues Control (USA) + Tropa Macaca (PT) + Prize Pets
Sat 05 Sep 2009

You can read a review of their latest album here

Rammel Club #9

Sister Iodine (F) + more t.b.c.
Wed 28th Oct 2009

More details etc up soon at the Rammel Club site. Plenty more exciting shit coming up soon.

Vinyl

2009-07-15T02:39:00.001-07:00

It's been quite a good month in term of discovering booty in the charity shops and second hand record shops of Nottingham and surrounding areas. Those of you with a keen eye will notice my cat Madog's tail in the first picture. He usually likes to sit on any new vinyl purchases just to make sure.

Not pictured are the Mott the Hoople LPs, Teenage Tragedy-LP (Rhino collection of teen DEATH songs), The Sweet-Ballroom Blitz/Rock N Roll Disgrace 7", Shangri-Las-walkin' in the sand/it's easier to cry 7" and Brian Eno-the lion sleeps tonight 7" that i picked up over the weekend.

Sky Saxon R.I.P

2009-06-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

Biographies

2009-06-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a lot of biographies lately, in no particular order here are 5 that have touched me and that i recommend.

1) I'd rather be the devil- Skip James and the blues by Stephen Galt.
2) Black Sun: the brief transit and violent eclipse of Harry Crosby by Geoffrey Wolff.
3) A Magick Life:The Life of Aleister Crowley by Martin Booth.
4) The Ghastly One:The Sex-Gore Netherworld of filmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough.
5)The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer.

Actually, i've only just started that last one but it's been interesting so far so i have high hopes for it.

Molten Gods

2009-06-24T07:51:00.001-07:00

If anyone is Nottingham this Saturday night (the 27th) and doesn't yet have crippling tinnitus then i suggest heading down to Chameleon to check out Molten Gods, Kaya King and Horacio Pollard. £3 in. It'll be fucking loud.

Listen to Liquorball

2009-06-18T10:03:00.001-07:00

I've been listening to a lot of Liquorball lately. This is the closest i could get on yoootooob;

I hope your ears bleed.

Burial Hex live at Roadburn 2009

2009-06-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of Burial Hex live at Roadburn 2009

Looking forward to seeing him at the next Rammel Club gig
Pocahaunted
Burial Hex
Sun Araw
Kogumaza

Friday 19th of June
Chameleon
Nottingham
£7/5adv (Advance tickets will be available from the Rammel Club site via paypal shortly or Anarchy Records in Nottingham.)
8pm doors/8.30pm start.

And i'll hopefully catch his set at the Equinox Festival supporting Comus. Can't wait for that, 'First Utterance' is such a strange record, probably one of the few records that actually gives me the creeps.

Burial Hex + Pocahaunted + Sun Araw poster

2009-05-29T00:33:00.001-07:00

As usual the poster was done by Dan Ward and as usual it's mint. Bit pervy as well.

Feral Debris issue four out now!

2009-04-30T10:00:00.001-07:00

Yup, after an interminable wait issue four is out for your perusal. Interviews with San Francisco's kings of fuzz Wooden Shjips, London's messtheticists Black Time,the blackened doom of Moss and ravaged '70s guitar monster Raven. Thomas Moronic interviews author JW Veldhoen, Chris Summerlin goes to work on the myth of Jandek and Old Uncle Rocky spews hate in your general direction. Plus record and film reviews and art from Dan Ward and G.Lansard.

The accompanying cd-r contains new and exclusive tracks from Astral Social Club, Blood!,Burd,Scarr and Broken Sleep,Homocidal Republic,Hunter Gracchus,Murder Book and Roses, Pascal Nichols, Putavegas and Slicing Grandpa. Fucked up electronics, blissed out fuzz, dislocated folk and jazz, walls of noise and crazed space punk. It's all in there baby, there's even some quiet tracks.

Photocopied to fuck. It's £3 postpaid anywhere.

Pocahaunted/Burial Hex/Sun Araw/Kogumaza

2009-04-29T07:45:00.000-07:00

And if that wasn't enough..here's what we've got planned in June.

Pocahaunted

With new LP’s just out on Ecstatic Peace and Troubleman, Pocahaunted bring their swirling psychedelia to Nottingham. Hints of ‘80s pop, drone, tropical beats and guitar blur into a beautiful wall of sound.

“A cindering tapestry of guitar string propelled by other-worldly beats of oblivion.”
Weird Forest

“Nod-out acid rock rhythms with wordless choirs of abandon and power vocals extrapolated from hypnagogic 1980s pop.”
Volcanic Tongue

http://www.myspace.com/pocahaunted

Burial Hex

Burial Hex is Clay Ruby’s (also a member of free folk group Davenport and pagan doom unit Jex Thoth) solo project and melds the grim, frost bitten atmospherics of black metal to twisted electronica and caustic ambience. Records out on Aurora Borealis.

"OPPRESSIVE NECRO ELECTRONICS!"

“Ominous strings moan and drift, melodies abstract and spare, stretch out and sprawl like a graveyard fog. Slowly, other sounds enter the mix, percussion, rumbling drones, strange beastly growls, eventually, the tranquility is shattered by what sounds like a descent into hell, anguished wails, squalls of strings, screams and shrieks, more growling and grunting, which soon give way to an avalanche of crumbling distorted noise, feedback, and amp buzz, whirs and grinding glitch, a serious wall of intense blown out fury.“
Aquarius Records

http://www.myspace.com/burialhex

Sun Araw

Sun Araw blends the cosmic ambience of John Coltrane’s ‘Interstellar Space’ LP with the fuzzy drug riffs of Spacemen 3 into a blissful mass of ragged sound.

“A drugged out, bluesy blend of face melting drones, fuzzed out guitar riffs, and repetitive clangy rhythms. Ritualistic and somehow modern, Sun Araw walks the line between pop and drone.”
Aquarius Records

http://www.notnotfun.com/sunaraw/

KOGUMAZA

”Kogumaza are the re-united guitar section of former Nottingham band Wolves Of Greece. They combine the guitar density of Glenn Branca (whose orchestra they have both been a part of) with the heavy throb of Lungfish and the insistent rhythms of Mo Tucker, courtesy of Ms K.E.Brown on the drums, to create a swirling, spiritual murk.”

http://www.myspace.com/oogamaza
http://www.honeyisfunny.com/kogumaza/

Friday 19th of June
Chameleon
Nottingham
Not too sure of prices yet- i'll post 'em when i know for sure.

James Ferraro/P.A.R.A/Monopoly Star Searchers

2009-04-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Hey a little update. Just to let you know that it will be James Ferraro headlining rather than Skaters as such. Should be pretty damn cool. Here's the bumpf on his new LP on Holy Mountain;

"Clear and Discovery were originally released as two companion CDRs by James Ferraro (of the whole Skaters / Lamborghini Crystal / 90120 / Splash / Nirvana axis) and comprise the August 1974 (Taj-Mahal Travellers) of his discography. Both albums contain absolutely beautiful whirling hall-of-knives-style synth drone that makes one want to reference Klaus Schulze or Bobby Beausoleil. Clear bursts with flam beats and a cluster of melodies muffled like a calliope wrapped in a soggy tarp, while Discovery is comparable to Daft Punk's album of the same name but played in reverse at 16 rpm through a boombox in a boiler room.

These two records contain the sounds of pulling out with tapping beats of fluid dropped on a soft convertible top (open), much like those fictitious Giorgio Moroder songs for the upcoming Olympics in Atlantis or a reworking of that award-winning song from Revenge of the Nerds - or is it "Wonderwall"- into a theme for a future ski jump at the Great Pyramids. Are you ready for the lizard people to compete? Now available as mastered vinyl LPs with a digital download." - Holy Mountain.

"Ferraro creates a new age for the new agers. You know that crazy Pillsbury commercial where the dough boy lies back and drifts across this white background with ecstatic floating music sweeping him along? Well it's not far off, at least in effect. It all meets somewhere between Arvo Part, Terry Riley, and the Healing Sounds of Crystal Bowls, only as interpreted through immense draperies of washed-out production." - Ear-Conditioned Nightmare.

And here is a video of The Skaters live;

We've also added the awesome Extended Network to the bill.http://www.myspace.com/extnddntwrk

Skaters/P.A.R.A/Monopoly Star Searchers

2009-04-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

The next Rammel Club gig...

Rammel Club 4- the poster

2009-03-06T00:23:00.001-08:00

Aaron Dilloway, Nate Young, Mutant Ape live in Notts

2009-03-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Rammel Club 4

The Wolf Eyes chaps Dilloway and Young plus the force behind Turgid Animal (and Feral Debris contributor!) Mutant Ape. I suspect this might be a noisy one.

Aaron Dilloway
Nate Young
Mutant Ape

I'll post more details/poster etc when i've got them.

Weds April 8th
Chameleon
(Market Square, next to Bell Inn)
Nottingham
8pm start
£5/4 cons

An acoustic Aaron Dilloway ?!!

Nate Young solo jam

The poster

2009-02-11T05:07:00.001-08:00

In case you are wondering our posters are designed by dan/model fighter.
You can find him here

Astral Social Club album of the month at Aquarius

2009-02-10T05:58:00.000-08:00

Astral Social Club's new album Octuplex on VHF has been made album of the month at www.aquariusrecords.org .Don't forget you can see him and Mark Durgan play live on;

Saturday 21st of February,
Chameleon(Market Square,Nottingham, next to Bell Inn)
9pm start,10pm first band
£5/4 cons.

Here's the review in full;

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB Octuplex (VHF)

It's a weird thing, but we've always noticed that musicians, especially avant outsider musicians (and even then ESPECIALLY metal musicians) seemed inordinately fond of electronic music. Every time a band would come in the store, they would head straight for the electronic section and end up buying a bunch of weird techno or jungle or whatever.

Which then might make it less surprising that recently some of our favorite noise makers seem to be heading in that direction with their own music. Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel is gone, and in its place, Our Love Will Destroy The World, whose first record was indeed some bastardized dance music, a strange hybrid of blurred buzzy drone music, and thumping club jamz. Similarly, Neil Campbell, aka Astral Social Club has been peppering his recent record with similarly club worthy jamz, but again, those sounds still soaked in the same sort of blissed out psychedelic ambience that most people associate with his Astral Social Club.

For this latest full length, Campbell once again starts things off with a track that would almost sound more at home on Planet Mu than VHF. A skittery bloopfest, with a thick grinding synth bass line, and bloopy bleepy beats, but all wreathed in processed guitars and blurred soft focus buzz, which leads right into the second track, still electronic, but not actually danceable, it sounded more like a club jam on 45, the beats stumbling over one another, like a jumbled, almost hyper speed Pierre Bastien, a million little mechanical men, spewing a symphony of clicks and bleeps and loops, all wound around buried melodies and long thick streaks of hiss and fuzz.

We kept expecting things to switch gears, and for the sound to gradually bliss out into the more 'traditional' ASC sound, long form ur-drones more along the lines of Sunroof! or Skullflower, but most of us were hoping just the opposite, that maybe he'd push further, take ASC somewhere no band like that had really felt at home, the dancefloor, albeit, some strange seriously fucked up and drug addled ALIEN dancefloor. And so he has, for the most part. The first half of the record is indeed, all fractured beats, and warped loops, woozy tripped out grooves, effects swirling and whirling everywhere, the beats playful and not quite funky, stuttery skittery, and seriously fun. This is the kind of stuff that just might lure the perpetual wallflowers out onto that dancefloor.

BUT!!! Hidden between the opening salvo of beats and loops, and the closing outer space house jam, lurks some of the prettiest droned out ambience we've heard from ASC. Processed glitchery, smeared into grainy expanses of glistening blur and shimmery starburst, draped with delicate melodies, gradually growing into a glorious wall of warm fuzz, super thick grinding buzz, smoothed into hypnotic loops and pulsing soundscapes, a more caffeinated Tim Hecker, gauzy and washed out but propulsive and kinetic, glorious sun baked upper register blow outs, wrapped around crystalline acoustic guitars, all woven into a wheezing heaving whole, some sort of super abstract avant garde raga, and finally, a brief but fantastical tangle of crunch and buzz, off hiss and glitch, warped melodies and damaged arrangements, lo-fi tape hiss slithers beneath stuttering chopped up samples, again all blurred into something dreamlike and bleary eyed. WOW.

It all might seem a little schizophrenic, and it is, but it's also the best of both worlds, and the key being that the more beat oriented tracks, are still able to function like the more ambient drone based sounds, if you're laying in the dark, headphones strapped on, those beats might not induce you to shake your tail feathers, but they'll still be able to suck you under, to transport you to some crazed soundworld, to totally mesmerize and hypnotize, which makes the whole record either the weirdest most fucked up electronic dance record EVER, or quite possibly just the best Astral Social Club release so far. Maybe both...

You can read the Feral Debris review of the album in a few weeks, the fourth issue is nearly done- just waiting to take it to the printers!

RIP Lux Interior

2009-02-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

Mark Durgan and Astral Social Club

2009-02-04T04:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, Rammel Club number three is on it's way.

Mark Durgan

Mark Durgan will be performing two sets, one more noise based as Putrifier and one of ‘industrial psychedelia’ under his own name.

“For the past twenty years, Mark Durgan, known under the Putrefier moniker and his label Birthbiter (1986), is one of the few genuinely curious anomalies operating today. Disassociated with a lot of noise, he is more of a true outsider of this scene, somewhat akin to the older sound poets.”
Volcanic Tongue

He has just released a cracking new LP under his own name on Family Battle Snake's new label Pan Records.

Astral Social Club

Featuring Neil Campbell (ex-Vibracathedral Orchestra) and John Clyde-Evans (aka Tirath Singh Nirmala). Recent LP ‘Plug music Ramoon’ provided “sonic explosions and two looooong journeys to sustained ecstasy combining percussive sticks and bells, resonant electronics, keyboard odysseys and some experimental vocal work from helmsman Campbell.”Expect throbbing electronic minimalism, psychedelic drones and pounding krautrock rhythms.

Burd & Scarr

Ghostly, industrial ambience from Nottingham duo.

Plus DJ's until 2am (including me and Steve Harbinger Sound).

Saturday 21st of February
Chameleon
(Market Square, next to Bell Inn)
9pm start, 10pm first band
£5/4 cons

If you fancy going to see The Lords play first at The Arts Organisation then they'll be selling a combination ticket at a cost of £7 will which get you into both gigs. More info on that soon.

The Monks

2009-01-28T06:58:00.000-08:00

I could be here all day, i can't wait to see Transatlantic Feedback

Tell it like it is man...

2009-01-27T05:38:00.001-08:00

Thanks to all who came to the Emeralds gig the other night. Special thanks to all the bands and individuals who played. Great stuff.

Emeralds and Birds Of Delay

2009-01-05T07:18:00.001-08:00

Here's the poster for the next Rammel club night. Hope you can make it.

Cosmic slop part 2

2008-12-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

CHROME

JT IV

Emeralds live in Nottingham

2008-12-04T09:47:00.000-08:00

Ok the next Rammel club night will be on the Sunday 25th of January and features Ohio's Emeralds. I'm stoked about this gig, if you haven't heard their recent Hanson LP 'Solar Bridge' then you're missing out on some pretty amazing kraut synth juice. This is how the gig stands so far, might be a few minor changes but i'll post as i know more...

Emeralds

“…fantastic, no-mind drone that swells in bloom after bloom of pink F/X-irradiated clouds, crossing the kind of planetary scale gravities of Tangerine Dream's Zeit with the sun-climbing-tenement-walls feel of classic Cale/Velvets jams and the new dawn zone of the best Klaus Schulze, Cosmic Couriers and Taj Mahal Travellers sides. The jams have an ecstatic slow-burning euphoria to them, expanding with beautifully sublimated melodic detail into synth hymnals and flat-on-your-back visions of now/then/forever. Post-noise eternal music gnosis doesn't come any more gracefully fucked than this.”
Volcanic Tongue

www.emeraldsohio.com/

Birds Of Delay

“Beneath the mounds of tape loops, keyboard mysticism, and vocals rests the human forms of Luke Younger and Steven Warwick aka Birds Of Delay”
Arbor

www.myspace.com/birdsofdelay

Gareth Hardwick

“a super slow, drawn out languorous soundscape of deep warm melodic swells. Soft and rounded, muted and dreamlike, endless and repetitive. Simple melodies, pulled apart into abstract notes, allowed to surface one at a time, like sonic detritus in an expansive sea of sound. Reminds us quite a bit of Stars Of The Lid, or maybe a Philip Glass piece slowed waaaaay down.”
Aquarius Records

www.myspace.com/garethhardwick

Modulator ESP

“Modulator ESP produces improvised experimental music using analogue and digital synthesis, analogue sequencers and processed sounds to create strange worlds of sound somewhere between '70s space music, prog rock and dark ambient drone and pieces are like abstract journeys into the imagination.”

www.modulator-esp.co.uk

Sunday 25th January 2009
CHAMELEON(market sq. next to bell inn, above Clinton Cards)
Nottingham
8.00pm start £5/4 (cons)

Cosmic Slop

2008-12-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

Picked up a copy of Funkadelic's 'Toys' LP yesterday. It's a compilation of outtakes and jams from the early '70s. It's always nice to have some new Funkadelic in my life but it's not a great record by any means,some blazing guitar and squelchy Bernie Worrell keyboards aside it meanders a bit and just served as a reminder that i really need to dig out 'Maggot Brian' when i get home tonight. Here's the video to 'Cosmic Slop';

Mods for Christ

2008-11-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

He doesn't look much like a mod to me, more of a pipe smoking, "Judas" shouting real folk fan but hey....

Photos

2008-11-14T02:52:00.000-08:00

These are some photos that were originally intended for an issue of Feral Debris but were never used. I love the way photocopying blurs and distorts a photograph, leaving it grainy and murky but sometimes the photos (usually the ones i've taken to be honest) are so murky to begin with that there's no real point including them in the fanzine.

These are taken from a Jack Rose and Chris Corsano (performing seperately) gig in Nottingham a few years ago.

Chris Corsano

Jack Rose

These photos of Sunn 0)) were taken by Dave Stockwell of Souvaris

More damn books

2008-10-28T02:49:00.000-07:00

Published in 1964, i remember this as being a pretty killer slice of sci-fi teensploitation. The adults top themselves with 'Easyway' pills leaving the kids "smashing, looting, killing, loving".
Apparently the Rolling Stones wanted to make a film out of this and bought the rights in 1966.It never got made unfortunately.

Madog

2008-10-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have a house-guest. His name is Madog. We're getting on pretty well i think...

Vodka Soap plays live in Nottingham

2008-09-25T03:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, a couple of friends and i have joined forces to become The Rammel Club and put some gigs on in Nottingham. This is going to be the first one, i'll update this as we add support acts etc.

Rammel Club presents...[the last minute pre-launch event]

Rammel Club #1

VODKA SOAP (US)

APALUSA

MOLTEN GODS

WED 08 OCT@ CHAMELEON(market sq. next to bell inn, above Clinton Cards)
Nottingham
8.30pm start £4/3 (cons)

VODKA SOAP

Vodka Soap or Voadka Soap is Spencer Clark's solo project. He is one half of The Skaters. He's a.k.a. Monopoly Child. He is so tall that he has difficulty finding trousers.

"Solo work from Spencer Clark of The Skaters that teleports straight into the nowhere zone with Native American rhythms and power visions, sudden spurts of percussive tape spool, choirs of alien visitation and what sounds like gamelan works scored for tiny pulses of light. With every jump cut the whole thing just seems to devolve into deeper, more primal alphabets until it sounds like the first music you ever heard, while your auditory canals were still connected to the source. Aspects of Cluster and Harmonia, Sun Ra's wiggiest keyboard visions, Terry Riley, early choral music, Nico and even Fripp and Eno combine in a fog-shrouded paean to black exotica. This is some of the deepest psychedelic sound to come out of the underground since Angus MacLise's skull exploded in Kathmandu." -- Volcanic Tongue

APALUSA

Apalusa is Dan Layton, guitarist with post-rock behemoth Souvaris, and he maketh music of an ambient nature. Little 'a' please. Here's what Norman Records had to say about his latest release 'Obadiah';

"Onto the delightful Apalusa on the ever useful Low Point label. Obadiah is packaged in a lovely letterpress 'arigato pack' in an edition of 300, so from the off it's a bit sexy looking like. Here we have 3 tracks of droney tunes which veer on the dark side of things. For me the obvious comparison here is some of the earlier Stars of The Lid music before they went more classical. Throbbing low end droney bass with some lush sounding feedback combine to make a really thundering warm sound. Listening to it on headphones it's proper taking me somewhere else as well which I like.... It's one of those floating in space records which you shut your eyes and imagine you're off there floating about minding your own business. Though there is a certain ominous presence on there hence me saying it veered on the dark side of things. It's fantastic though and if you're into drone music this is one of the best things I've heard in ages. Excellent!!"

You can find him at www.myspace.com/apalusa
And buy his records here www.low-point.com/

MOLTEN GODS

A trio of Nottingham faces (recognisable from such groups as Flotel, Ultralame and other such numerous improv/electronica/whathefuck groups) combine to make something HEAVY. I have no idea what to expect but those who are in the know assure me that this is the shit. Indeed.

We now have a dedicated Rammel Club site, check the links on the side there for more info. If you wanna play Notts then get in touch.

Feral Debris review

2008-09-16T00:39:00.000-07:00

We got reviewed in Vice of all places. Funnily enough i've not had any orders since the piece so i'm thinking that their readership probably isn't that interested in obscure psych rock and the like.

Blood Ceremony s/t LP (Rise Above Records)

2008-09-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

Hell’s teeth this is a fun record, not an original one but a fun one nonetheless. From George Barr’s pulpy painting of “Sorceress Conjuring” to the college of goat’s heads, woodcuts and big bosomed ladies on the inner sleeve the signifiers of vintage DOOM are all present, correct and ready for glorious battle. It doesn’t stop there; the riffs are pure Sabbath and the lyrics are a relentless barrage of Lovecraft, R.E.Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith lifts steeped in stoner rock ceremony, ‘quaalude eyes’ urge you to ‘smoke black drugs with Saturn’s bong’. It’s a tribute to the strong, clean lungs of Alia O’Brien that when she roars ‘It’s a black mass and I’m ready to go’ that my response isn’t a clever smirk but a fist in the air and an emphatic “O Lord YEAH!”

So as I said Blood Ceremony love Sabbath which is fine by me as they manage to channel Iommi pretty damn well. Their love of progressive folk such as Mellow Candle and Black Widow makes itself known in the addition of whirligig flute solos and some warm fuzzy organ playing that helps temper the gravestone riffs and Blood Ceremony stand out from the blackened crowd. It’s all real clean sounding, no scuzz or murk and that goes for Alia O’Brien’s vocals as well, no wraith-like growls or screams here, she just belts ‘em out imbuing tracks like “I’m coming with you” and “Hymn to Pan” with a grandeur that they might have otherwise lacked.

If you’re looking for a record to push the boundaries of sonic violence then this LP probably isn’t going to be for you. Blood Ceremony cherish the past a little too much to be true originals but that doesn’t matter. It’s a little like the scene in the film version of Conan the Barbarian. Conan stumbles into the burial chamber of a long dead warrior king. He wrests the sword from the skeletal hands of his predecessor and sets forth to forge new myths and future glory.

David Shrigley vs Feral Debris

2008-09-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

A while ago artist David Shrigley invited people to send in ideas for events for which he would design a poster. I think he then exhibited these posters as part of an exhibition (which i never went to). Mine was for a gig to promote the first issue of my fanzine, Feral Debris. The gig never happened due mostly to my inability to organise a piss-up in a brewery but here's the poster anyway. It occupies the same kind of half-reality as most of the bands on the bill, in my mind it really happened and i had a whale of a time- you should have been there.

To be honest i think its a bit shit really (my friend had one designed for his birthday and it featured an amorous robot about to jump his bones) and he spelt Johnny's surname wrong but there ya go.

Bookmarks

2008-09-03T06:23:00.001-07:00

Leicester Haul

2008-09-01T01:44:00.000-07:00

I hadn't noticed the H.P Lovecraft quote on the back until this morning when i scanned this in. Will be interesting to read this one.

More paperbacks

2008-08-21T00:24:00.000-07:00

If you've never read 'sirens of Titan' by Kurt Vonnegut then i heartily recommend it. Has perhaps one of the saddest endings i've ever read in a science-fiction book. I read this and Lem's 'Solaris' in quick succession- boy, did i feel low after that.

The Slime Beast

2008-08-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

The Groundhogs

2008-08-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

This flyer for a Groundhogs/Egg/Quicksand gig was found glued to the inner sleeve of an LP. One of these days i'm going to make it into a t-shirt...'cos it looks boss.

Paperbacks

2008-08-20T00:29:00.001-07:00

I'm a bit obsessed with old sci-fi paperbacks and their covers. I buy loads from charity shops- here are a couple of recent favourites.

Found sound.

2008-08-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

On a recent charity shop foray in Wolverhampton I found this collection of hand drawn 45 sleeves. Ok, they may not be high art but there’s something about them that really reminds me of my teenage years.

I picked up a Faust LP on the same jaunt and was made up until I got home and discovered the actual vinyl was a white label copy of some charity shop high priest like Des O’ Connor. I guess you can’t win them all.

Peter Gabriel- games without frontiers/the start/ I don’t remember

There’s a definite gangster theme going on here. Blood spattered bullet holes and a scarfaced, stogie smoking tough In the corner.

Maybe if I listen to the record then this concept might become a little clearer…maybe.

Buzzcocks- everybody’s happy nowadays/why can’t I touch it?

I’d have to say this is my favourite of the bunch. There’s so much going on and you can see the definite influence of school stationary such as a compass and set square.

There’s fingerprints incorporated here so in theory I could track the artist down and present him/her with his masterpieces but I’m not going to…I’m gonna keep them.

Dire Straits- where do you think you're going?/lady writer

One of the lesser efforts in this particular oeuvre i feel.

Jon and Vangelis- thunder/I hear you now
I really love the armless ghost and lightning/fire/thunder combo. Reminds me a little of Deerhoof’s ‘Milkman’ LP cover.

I have no idea what’s happening here, fiery asteroids orbiting a sinister black mountain? The singing cloud (with teeth) is a great touch as is the lightning keyboard.

Roxy Music- to turn you on/jealous guy 7"

The original 7” had been replaced with Showaddywaddy which I didn’t fancy much so I replaced it in turn with Joan Jett. I like the futuristic ‘space’ vibes of this sleeve (the spaceship and meteors) and the ‘jealous guy’ himself seems to be dissolving into abstract fumes of pure jealousy.

Elvis Costello & The Attractions- Olivers army

Issue three out now!

2008-06-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

Long overdue but still potent, Issue three of Feral Debris contains interviews with the newly reactivated sci-fi proto punks Simply Saucer, Katheryn ‘Shishonee’ Krupa; harpist with The Trees Community a 1970’s Christian commune responsible for the classic acid folk LP ‘The Christ Tree’, New Zealander Peter Wright- creator of finely wrought ambience and drones, and the now defunct skronk trio Lambsbread. Also included are contributions from Stuart Crutchfield, Mr Dorgon, Blue Firth and the Sound of Drowning, plenty of record reviews and art from Anna Kraay and Sian Macfarlane.

The accompanying cd-r contains small ‘a’ ambience, guitar rumblings and small hairs on the back of your neck tingling from; Core of the Coal Man, Alistair Crosbie and Peter Wright, some sharp jazz rummaging from Owl Xounds, Solar Fire Trio and Sann Yassin, a little improv tinkering from Patrick Farmer and a large slice of The Michael Flower Band (featuring John Moloney from Sunburned Hand of the Man on drums for good measure). It’s a goodie.

£3ppd in the UK/ elsewhere get in touch for prices.

Dennis Tyfus interview from issue 1

2007-08-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

Ultra-eczema started off initially as a “super bad crust punk fanzine”,
how and why did it mutate into its present form? (I quite like “super bad
crust”)

it just changed all the time like myself. today i might feel like wearing a white costume and go to a fancy dinner with some jocks, tomorow i go hang with the crustie crew from hiatus in liege and shoot some dope, the day after i might be at a horrible techno party flashing my schwung to a 18 year old girl with braces, the day after that day i could shave a mowhawk and aply for a job at the postoffice, the day after that day i might protest against new taxes at the groenplaats in antwerp. i dont realy know what to say, i just kept the same name since the first diy publication i made. i think i still like almost everything i ever liked in my life.

in the beginning i did ultra eczema as a fanzine and also had a tape label called tyfus tapes, i released a few grind-crust-punk-sludge tapes, and without the bands realy knowing i added retarded samples in between the songs.. those tapes were of very very poor quality and had gross cut and paste artwork and were usually benefit tapes for some anti rascist groups or
anti-police brutality groups.. i think i always forgot to donate the money in the end cos it was never enough to make a serious donation, i sold those tapes for 2 bucks or something.

I can totally imagine an Ultra Eczema release (probably the Wolf Eyes- Guillotine Keys 12”) released in a gore drenched package of membranes and veins...if money was no object what would be your ideal way to package a record and on what format if not vinyl?

if money was no object i would make 3 baby's, signed and handnumbered. all their sounds will be recorded non stop and every sound will apear on vinyl packed in a diper, on brown vinyl. if i had the time to rase them, i would only sing to them, no talking just singing.

What’s your favourite album cover/packaging of all time?

the merzbow car

I know, for me at least, your illustrations really manage to capture the craziness of the music they sometimes package (the Wolf Eyes 12” and Fat Worm of Error 7” being two good examples). I was wondering what relation music plays to your art, what do you listen to whilst working? Are you reacting to the sounds or is that just what comes out of your skull naturally?!

when i invite someone to do a record on ultra eczema i always have a visual feeling with the band/person from before, i either like their stuff so much that i wanne design something for them or i just get realy inspired by listening to them, also, getting along with the people i am releasing stuff by is very important, i never wanne release something by people that i dont
have a perfect vibe with, although it's hard to realy know people from other countries.music has always been an extremely big influence on my work. in fact i hardly know anything about art history in a visual way, which is annoying when i have an exhibition in a gallery, most people that are intrested in contemporary art are not intrested in an underground music scene, they
usually start talking to me about artists i remind them off that i never heard about, and on the contarary i could start going on about brinkman, olson, crama, dylan nyoukis, sven balslev, maya miller etc.. and they would also never have heard of them. its' unfortunate it's so seperate.

You draw and you make music. Are you trying to articulate different things with each or are they both means to expressing the same idea/feelings?

i just wanne have fun realy, and i can't sit still for one second, i have to be doing shit all the time, either making music, a radioshow, drawings, painting, clothes, anything, i would go nuts if i can't do these things anymore. i need to do different things with different people all the time to stay siked!

also i dont realy know what kind of feelings i express, it's going to fast, if i re-read your question i can seriously not tell u why i do the things i do, i just do them, and its very hard to talk about them, it's even more horrrible when other people think they know what you're expressing, like when people say "his work is a critic on society" or something, i guess in a far out way it's true, i am pissed but at the same time i think it's important to make fun of everything including the people u love and yourself, the worst is when people take my work serious and dont see the joke. the things that you can't make fun off are the funiest. and i hate that i also have a serious site, my deepest wish is that photoshop erases my own seriousness.

How did you come across Edmond De Deyster’s works? I understand his family didn’t even know of his musical activities until late on, what do they think now of your reissues and this upsurge of interest in him?

i came across his work thru a friend who works with elder people, a guy that is intrested in wierd music since a long time. his assistant is the sister of edmond's ex wife, she was the only one that stayed in touch with him until his death or a little bit before. she emptied his house when he died and i think even cleaned there for a while. it's strange cos his ex wife doesnt want to have anything to do with this project and with edmond in general, it's still unclear to me why that is but i am not in a position where i wanne be to curious.the sister is a realy sweet woman that is super enthausiastic about this, but she completely doesnt understand that his music is very valueable and that it's not just turning some knobs, she has absolutely no interest in his music, and i think it was sort of the vibe during his life time, when people knew he was making music he never got atention for it. it also stucks me that he made this kinda stuff in such an early state while the only records he owned when he died were left were some famous rock things like led zepelin or the doors, the beatles, stuff like that.still it's possible that he got weirder synth records earlier on but maybe sold them to pay for his heroin adiction. the sister doesnt realy tell me a lot of stories about these things as she is of course very sad about it, but i am going there now every few weeks to check the tape archive.she was realy happy with how the first one looked and I might interview her soon about him personally.

I’ve read that the Bobby Columbo 7” is your favourite Ultra Eczema release to date? Is he a well known figure in Belgium and how did you convince him to record for Ultra Eczema?

when i released it, it was definatly my fave release, but i actually say this about all ultra eczema releases, i think it's the best feeling when a record arrives, you put it on and you scream "this is the best ever!!" it should be like this with every release, it's a sort of criterium for my releases, if i dont think its the best ever, i dont wanne do it!
bobby colombo is a friend of mine since some years and is also known as peter de ceulaer, he is a visual artist, a carnivore, a radiomaker and a musician, he made a bunch of film soundtracks, music for theatre plays, made music in the past with sandy neis of the hybrids and does all the music and soundwork for a satirical radioshow at radio centraal in antwerp with his wife and his brother called colunst, he also plays in spacecactus with daniel renders (aka cassis cornuta) and with ludwig van hove in BOB AND LOU. again these are people that never released anything on their own, they hardly played live but they have the best archive of weird music and satirical plays.

There seems to be a real upsurge of interest in “outsider art” at the moment, both musically and artistically. You’ve released records by Edmond De Deyster, Ludo Mich, Bobby Columbo and even a teenage Felix Kubin! They all seem to have been working outside the conventional music industry, what is it that attracts you to such artists, is there a common thread running between them? I guess a lot of people would regard your art and label as quite out there!

hmm, i think all those people you mention are all completely different and very special people with a very own style of doing what they're doing!! it's important that this gets released otherwise noone else is gonne do it and it's fucking brilliant, edmond de deyster made this music without telling anyone for years, so sad on one hand, but brilliant!. i am intrested in how people organise themselves and what they do without giving in, completely believing and what they do and especially doing it without any finacial posibility's, not being part of a scene but still doing it without the right friends to support you. of course it's nothing new, there always have been people labeled as "weirdo's" because they look different, make different music or sounds, make different art and are not walking the line. i still get gooze bums when i see belgian sixtees artist/fashion designer (and ludo mich' first wife) ANN SALENS yell "there's nothing worse then being normal", i dont think thats exactly true, but i love how extreme toughts make people opionated or even angry about other people that totally believe in what they do. and of course it's funny how the conventional music industry is almost always too late. good things for me usually come out of places without cash.

The fluorescent colours and mad, jagged lines of the work are quite violent- I can imagine my head exploding and fluids shooting from various orifices if exposed to them for too long…what kind of reaction do you want your art to provoke? Is it deliberately confrontational?

i am realy happy when someone likes what i do but i like it a lot as well if it makes someone mad or puking or crying. someone from the dole office was once treatening me and said bad things will happen to me if i draw these things and that i will never find a job, someone else spit on a drawing at an exhibition, the police took away a big print at an exhibtion, i just think when u do things in a way that people are able to see it you'll always have people loving it and a lot of people hating it, i get offended all the time, people that dont know me have horrible opinions about me, but there's also people that like it and either way is cool, i hope everyone is
happy with their opinions. the nicest thing that ever happened concerning my drawings was when i was making a big painting and a little 8 year old boy was watching me for about 15 minutes, i lived at a square where a lot of kids played outside, the day after the same kid rings my doorbell and made an almost exact copy of the drawing on a little plate, he drew some nude junkie types with needles and big dicks all over it.. the kid was 8 years old and his mom was standing next to him realy proud. i was totally blown away by that.

There seems to be a lot of bodily fluids, pus, goo and gore in your work? Do like all that messy shit? What’s your favourite disease/injury that you have had so far?

my favorite disease must be aids, as you can spread it so easily over a
whole scene.

What does the future hold for Ultra Eczema and Dennis Tyfus?

lp's coming soon by (or maybe by the time you read this they're out already) jessica rylan, enema syringe, greg kelley-alex neilson, burning star core, dylan nyoukis-dennis tyfus spilt lp, orphan fairytale lp, hatred lp, the parts lp, the rest of the edmond de deyster lps, a compilation book+cd+sticker+button, a shirt serie, recordcovers for leslie keffer, failing lights, lambsbread, jazzkammer, a colab exhibtion with vaast colson in september in antwerp, and hopefully some travelling too..

All pictures are copyright Dennis Tyfus www.ultraeczema.com

2007-08-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of the Magic Markers from ayear or two ago (when they were still a three piece). I used one of them for the front of Feral Debris issue one as it reminded me of Mudhoney's "Superfuzz Big Muff" album and that seemed important at the time. Obviously it was photocopied so the picture didn't come out all that well (which i liked) but here are the originals anyway;

2007-05-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

Entering the double CD sound world of Nova Psychedelia is a daunting experience. Compiling the recorded output of Todd Tamanend Clark between 1975 and 1985, it’s a dense miasma of psychedelic emanations from Clark’s mind that takes in 1960s garage rock, the fluorescent pop art explosions of early Marvel comic books, and the brain wavering possibilities of the synthesizer and guitar. Clark’s lyrics are just as likely to take their cue from the B-movies that soaked his childhood, dystopian science-fiction, and his political convictions and Native American heritage. Like errant super-villains, William S. Burroughs and Cheetah Chrome make surprise guest appearances; but what makes the collection truly impressive is that, at two CDs, it’s still only a snapshot of Clark’s musical output, and in 2006, he’s still creating his own unique sound. I tracked him down and put some questions to him…

RH: What do you think kick-started your interest in rock and roll and music in general? The covers of Paul Revere And The Raiders and The Electric Prunes would suggest that early garage and psych might have provided a fertile hotbed for your imagination?!

TTC: I started out listening to my mother's Yma Sumac records as a child in the 1950s. (I was born in 1952.) Some of my early favorite singles were "Who Do You Love" by Bo Diddley and "I Put A Spell On You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I also liked movies with spooky theremins in their soundtracks and avant-garde jazz. Then in 1961, the song "Runaway" by Del Shannon just knocked me out with its proto-synthesizer solo. Both my maternal grandmother and a beautiful Mexican neighbor lady gave me free keyboard lessons, but it wasn't until Bob Dylan took psychedelic substances and went electric in 1965 that I went from just liking music to totally loving music. 1966 through 1968 were my major formative musical years.

RH: I’ve always thought there was a very close link between rock and roll and comic books - the costumes, sound effects, theatrical nature, team ups, heroes and villains. The liner notes to Nova Psychedelia make reference to your soundtrack and appearance at a comic convention as Brainiac 5… Just how much has comic book culture influenced your work? And what/who is your favourite comic/hero/artist ?

TTC: I started walking on my own to get comic books at the local confectionery store in my hometown of Greensboro, Pennsylvania, when I was six years old and in first grade in early 1959. The first books I started buying had Batman stories drawn by Dick Sprang, some with Green Arrow back-ups. Then I started to get into the Carmine Infantino characters like The Flash and Adam Strange and the Kirby monsters and the post-Kirby Challengers Of The Unknown. (I later obtained the early Kirby Challengers issues that I had missed.) I bought Fantastic Four number one on my ninth birthday on August 10, 1961, so I was pretty much there for the birth of the silver age of comic books. Like Jimi Hendrix, one of my favorite comic books was Turok, Son Of Stone, and I've been a long time collector of Doctor Strange ever since his first appearance in Strange Tales in 1963 and of The Doom Patrol since their first appearance in My Greatest Adventure that same year. In the modern age, some of my favorite comic books are Animal Man, Aztec Ace, Coyote, Green Arrow, Love And Rockets, Scout, and Swamp Thing. My all-time favorite artists are Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, and Timothy Truman. I buy a lot of the hardbound reprint editions in the Marvel Masterworks and DC Archives series, as well as the EC hardcovers.

RH: On the subject of heroes, it must have been quite nerve-wracking to meet and collaborate with William Burroughs. How did this come about?

TTC: Cheetah Chrome (the lead guitarist for The Dead Boys) obtained William Burroughs' phone number for me from Anita Pallenberg in early 1980. I eventually got up the nerve to dial it, and Bill was very courteous even though he was not much of a phone person. We began corresponding in writing with each other, and two years later I had a long song cycle published that included a passage from Burroughs' novel Nova Express with his permission. Eventually, these songs evolved into the lyrics for my 1984 album Into The Vision. While I was in the process of recording the album, Burroughs reminded me that he had already recorded that section during a spoken word project and said that he would be more than happy to let me overdub music to accompany it on my album. The original plan was for me to recite that passage myself along with my other vocals. It goes without saying that I was ecstatic to have Bill on my record.

RH: Again, the liner notes to Nova Psychedelia make reference to early inspirations: Micky Dolenz of The Monkees playing a Moog and The United States Of America’s first album. I was wondering what you found so attractive about these sounds as there is a very impressive list of synthesizers (ARPs and Moogs) that you have used in your recordings!

TTC: I'm a major collector of classic American synthesizers. Not just Moogs and ARPs, but also Oberheims, Prophets, E-mus, and Ensoniqs. I've been an endorsement artist for Moog for a while now. I also play their Etherwave Theremin, and I use their Ring Modulator on some of my guitar solos. All my vocoder vocals from the 1980s were done on a Moog. Certain great synthesizer sounds just give my mind an intense shamanic eargasm.

RH: Do you build/modify your own sound devices and synthesizers? If so, what kind of sounds are you trying to achieve that shop bought synthesizers can’t?

TTC: I don't physically build them, but I definitely modify their programming extensively. I erase many of their Eurocentric factory presets and replace them with Native American sounds, both traditional acoustic instruments and electronic representations of entheogenic experiences. Even my Johnson Millennium and Rocktron Taboo guitar amplifiers are programmable and have a hundred patches each that I designed.

RH: I’ve often found that science fiction enables me to take a good hard look at the actual world around me… actually pulling me out of my reality and then providing me with scenarios (however fantastical) that let me look at important questions and themes that I can take back with me when my feet touch the ground… I was wondering what your take on sci-fi was as you mix it up with very real political concerns in some of your tracks (I’m thinking of the references to Mumia Abu-Jamal and your Native American roots here ).

TTC: The science fiction author whose work I read the most often is Harlan Ellison. His infamous 1967 short story "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman" serves well as the classic example of combining speculative fiction with social concerns. Some critics view certain novels by William Burroughs as an extreme branch of science fiction. I loved the early 1970s Dennis O'Neil relevance stories where Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Black Canary go off to search for the real America underneath the surface spin. The older I get, the more I find that I definitely have a preference for science fiction that is set in my North American homeland rather than in outer space.

RH: The press release for the compilation makes reference to "lost music" and the underground. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this… whether you considered your music too difficult for the "mainstream" to swallow, and whether there was any bitterness (if that’s the right word) that your work hasn’t had more recognition?

TTC: Well, some days I'm more bitter than others, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I never expected to be as big as The Beach Boys or The Lovin' Spoonful, but I sincerely hoped to function on a level similar to that of Sun Ra or Frank Zappa. I've seen some progress towards that goal, especially in the last year, but here I am in my fifties just now getting to where I should have been in my twenties. Yes, my music is complex, dissonant, and difficult, and most decidedly noncommercial, but there is still surely some audience for it, had I been given better distribution and advertising in earlier decades.

RH: Classic science-fiction and horror films also seem to have had some influence on your subject matter and sounds, I was wondering if there were any specific films that you remember really impressing your young mind? What’s your opinion of the current state of the industry? There seems to be an upsurge in science fiction and horror films, but I’m hard pushed to name one that has really blown me away of late…

TTC: My favorite science fiction films from my childhood are Creature From The Black Lagoon, Forbidden Planet, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, It Came From Outer Space, Kronos, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and The Flame Barrier. I also watched The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits religiously. Today, I'm mostly into cinema that includes Native American content.

RH: I always think that the parts of our culture that are often regarded as "trashy" and disposable (comics, b-movies, rock and roll) reveal just as much, if not more, about us than "high brow art". What’s your take on this? I know I’d much rather live in a world populated by Batman and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators…

TTC: Rock and roll and comic books are each the black sheep of their respective fields of endeavor. Personally, I take great delight in erasing the demarcation lines between high brow and low brow art forms. I'm equally at home with an orchestral composition by Silvestre Revueltas and a garage psych song by The Music Machine. I can enjoy a cutting edge work of cinematic art by David Lynch or a low-budget science fiction film by Roger Corman. I can go from pouring over an involved philosophical treatise by Henry David Thoreau to scanning a quirky little Ant-Man story by Stan Lee without batting an eye.

RH: You’ve obviously been very prolific since the period encapsulated in Nova Psychedelia. As a newcomer to your work, what albums would you recommend that I start with?

TTC: The four discs of my three instrumental albums form an unconventional but interlocking dark electronic symphony. Owls In Obsidian (2000) looks at the pre-material world spiritual template of Turtle Island (North America) as a giant medicine wheel into which one enters in the south and travels clockwise around the sacred circle encountering spiritual concepts from various autochthonal cultures, each represented by a species of owl indigenous to that bioregion. Staff, Mask, Rattle (2002: two discs) begins with the big bang creating the material universe and then proceeds to tell the Native American history of the northeastern woodlands up to and including the death of the great Onodowaga orator Sagoyewatha (Red Jacket) in 1830. Monongahela Riverrun (2004) begins at the source of the Monongahela River in Fairmont, West Virginia, and travels one hundred twenty-nine miles through towns that the colonial invaders built, feeling the melancholy displacement of the indigenous inhabitants, until reaching the end of the river in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

RH: Your forthcoming Dancing Through The Side Worlds is also a massive 4CDs long! What does this release hold in store for listeners, and is there some sort of concept running through the album?

TTC: It's an autobiography of my life so far, but it's told in poetry and song instead of prose. It begins somewhat before my birth, showing what the practice of manifest destiny by the occupying colonial regime had done to the aboriginal American cultures by the middle of the twentieth century. Then I tell the major events of my life: unexpected conception (My mother was severely epileptic and never supposed to have children.), caesarean birth, precocious childhood development, repressive public school experiences, the death of my maternal grandparents who practically raised me, moving to San Francisco and later Cleveland, my marriages and divorces, the births of my six progeny, my native rights activism, etc. The lyrics are extremely surrealistic and psychedelic, as is the music. Some of the songs are radically different rewrites of earlier material and are finally placed in their proper overall context and have much better production.

But Dancing Through The Side Worlds won't be released until 2008 , and right now, I'm working on a new double disc concept album entitled Iron Alphabet for late 2006 release. It contains twenty-six original poems synchronized to electronic/industrial music. There is a poem for each letter of the dominant Eurocentric alphabet. The poems all fit together into one surrealistic narrative that first laments the imprisonment of the Native American mind by means of colonially forced English linguistics that severely limit the ability to think in indigenous concepts and then celebrates the deprogramming and subsequent liberation that cultural preservationists eventually achieve.

RH: What would you like to achieve with your music in the future? Do you think that this renewed interest in your work will drive you to create more and wilder visions?

TTC: All of my twenty-first century albums on Primal Pulse fit together into one overall conceptual project in the order of release. My twentieth century music that's collected on Nova Psychedelia was released by Karl Ikola on Anopheles as an effort at historical preservation, which is the mission of his label. It's an interesting development that the recordings I made during the 1970s and 1980s are now receiving significant internet and college radio airplay. I was already planning on resuming the making of music with vocals anyway, so it seems that things have come full circle. And, yes, I will continue to push the cutting edge envelope as hard as I possibly can.

2007-05-02T03:41:00.000-07:00

I have all of about three copies of the Fossils- to a reason cd-r left so email me quick if you'd like one! £3ppd in the UK...

"New Fossils cd-r on Feral Recordings, "To a Reason". 6 tracks, 43 minutes, 24 copies all in individually handmade covers that boast some Steve Jackson/Dungeons and Dragons styled art.
With releases on Fag Tapes and Arbor i guess you must know the Fossils sound by now ("Contorted PCP tones, metal percussion and zaps of electroconvulsive brain-fry" say Volcanic Tongue), the thing about this release is just how damned intimate it sounds. It's as if someone has locked David in your basement and he's clambering amongst the water pipes (scalded by red hot steam) moaning pitifully to himself as he peers through cracks in the floorboards listening to fragments of conversation and blasts of tv static."

2007-05-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

The second issue of Feral Debris is still available, head on over to www.myspace.com/feraldebris for paypal options and the likey.

Issue two of Feral Debris includes interviews with one man destructo units Carlos Giffoni and Kylie Minoise, Half Japanese main man Jad Fair, Esquilax, artist Simen Johan and Gary Wilson (creator of 1977’s weirdest LP “You think you really know me”) as well comics from the Sound Of Drowning , art from Dennis Tyfus, Sian Macfarlane and Eva Hertz amongst others and the usual reviews and articles.

The accompanying cd-r contains some smoking jams from; Throuroof (Ita)
Family Battle Snake, Robedoor (US),Loveletters (US), Nackt Insecten, Wounded Knee, Altar of Flies (Swe) and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer (US).

It’s £3ppd in the UK (we’ve got paypal set up on the page) everywhere else get in touch for postage rates etc.