MUSIC

Dark Entries flashes back to the grimy streets of New York City circa 1982 to bring us an unreleased album from cult outfit Ike Yard. Comprised of Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, Kenneth Compton, and Fred Szymanski, Ike Yard sits between the sinewy proto-body music of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the shattered grooves of their No Wave peers in New York. The band’s initial run was short but blinding. They released an EP for Les Disques du Crépuscule in 1981, which was followed by their legendary self-titled LP for Factory in 1982. They disbanded within a year, frustrated by the slow pace at which the industry was able to release their increasingly challenging music. 1982 features 10 tracks which likely would have become the band’s second LP - only four of these songs have previously seen release on 2006’s 1980-82 Collected via Acute Records. Following the release of Ike Yard, they continued down their tortured path of hybrid electro-acoustic music with an arsenal of now-classic analog instruments, including the Korg MS-20 and the Roland TR-808. Skittering rhythms teeter on the verge of collapse while seasick synth warbles threaten to push us overboard. Electronic washes devolve into waves of feedback. Sneering basslines threaten dancers to move, but how can the body obey? This is dangerous music, gliding along the brink. The album features a live photo of the band by Makoto Iida and includes an insert with liner notes from Stuart Argabright. 1982 is essential for fans of post-punk and caustic electronics from Liaisons Dangereuses to Beau Wanzer.

Glenn Branca's first full-length album The Ascension is a colossal achievement. After touring much of 1980 with an all-star band featuring four guitarists (Branca, fellow composers Ned Sublette and David Rosenbloom, and future Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo) with Jeffrey Glenn on bass and Stephan Wischerth on drums, Branca took his war-torn group into a studio in Hell's Kitchen to record five incendiary compositions. Originally released in 1981 on 99 Records, The Ascension effectively tears down the genre-ghettos between 20th century avant-garde and ecstatic rock 'n' roll.

On "The Spectacular Commodity," chiming, shimmering tones unfold into sinister drone-territory à la Tony Conrad, while abrasive guitars and repetitive beats retain the raw primitivism of No Wave. The title track attains a densely packed, larger-than-life sound and (as author Marc Masters says best) "never stops climbing skyward."

With artist Robert Longo's stark front cover that depicts Branca battling an unidentified man, The Ascension is a must-have record not only for fans of early Swans and Sonic Youth, but also of Steve Reich or Slint's Tweez.

Horse Lords return with Comradely Objects, an alloy of erudite influences and approaches given frenetic gravity in pursuit of a united musical and political vision. The band’s fifth album doesn’t document a new utopia, so much as limn a thrilling portrait of revolution underway. Comradely Objects adheres to the essential instrumental sound documented on the previous four albums and four mixtapes by the quartet of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, percussion, electronics), Max Eilbacher (bass, electronics), Owen Gardner (guitar, electronics), and Sam Haberman (drums). But the album refocuses that sound, pulling the disparate strands of the band’s restless musical purview tightly around propulsive, rhythmic grids. Comradely Objects ripples, drones, chugs, and soars with a new abandon and steely control.

Taking up the gauntlet thrown down by New York's no wave scene, many Italian bands of the early '80s, playing far from the footlights of the world's stage, began creating compelling, and often cutting edge, hybrid sounds. This kind of experimenting soon went viral along the entire peninsula: from Southern Italy to the Alps, creating a brave new Italian take on post-punk. From the nervous white funk of Neopolitans Bisca, to the instrumental explorations of Confusional Quartet, to the "fake jazz" of the Hi-Fi Bros (who even had a track produced by Arto Lindsay), to Band Aid, this collection testifies to one of the most creative periods of the Italian underground. Also features: Eazycon, Modern Model, Die Form, Funkwagen, Nofun, Hakkah, Illogico, Rinf, and State Of Art. Includes CD; CD features the previously unreleased bonus track by La Maison, "Noise Express".

Soon after their 1978 debut on the Brian Eno-produced No New York, a compilation that defined the No Wave scene, James Chance's group Contortions had already evolved – getting sharper, tighter and just plain faster. Despite the loss of keyboardist Adele Bertei and bassist Geoge Scott (who refused to sign a new contract demanded by Chance and his then partner, band manager Anya Phillips) Contortions were firing on all cylinders, and their first full-length album, 1979's Buy, is a marvel of hot-wired energy. Led by the brash yelps and free-sax squawks of Chance, Contortions spit out fiercely rhythmic tunes charged by the wiry guitar lines of Jody Harris and the dizzying slide guitar of Pat Place. With drummer Don Christensen slipping in pointillist beats and David Hofstra's infectious basslines, the songs on Buy crackle with both precision and abandon. Opener "Designed to Kill" shoots sparks of sound in all directions, while "Contort Yourself" is a nihilistic dance number wherein Chance instructs listeners to twist into knots, physically and mentally. "It's better than pleasure, it hurts more than pain," he snarls, later imploring, "You better try being stupid instead of smart." Heavily influenced by the showman funk of James Brown (whose "I Can't Stand Myself" the band had covered on No New York), Contortions coined a downtown dance-punk sound that had immediate influence on subsequent No Wave bands – including Place's Bush Tetras and Bronx trio ESG – as well as the burgeoning disco movement. On Buy, Contortions' self-invented template is imprinted so hard into the grooves that it sounds like they're about to break, capturing a combustible band in all its fiery fury.

In 1981, encouraged by Jac Berrocal, Axolotl (Etienne Brunet and Jacques Oger on saxophones and clarinet, Marc Dufourd on electric guitar) recorded an album of French-style free music as iconoclastic as it was unsettling: free improvisation, jazz, no wave, contemporary, punk… a dance of labels which leaves plenty of place for the direct expression of a monstrous trio of regenerated agitators! The axolotl is a species of salamander native to Mexico, living in a state of larva and having the capacity to regenerate damaged organs. This brief introduction doesn’t tell us if the axolotl sings. But, for the one that concerns us here: yes indeed. In Paris, at the end of the 1970s, Etienne Brunet and Marc Dufourd would improvise regularly, inspired by some other saxophone-guitar duos: Claude Bernard-Raymond Boni firstly, then Evan Parker-Derek Bailey. When Jacques Oger (a saxophonist whom Brunet had met at a workshop given by Steve Lacy at the Châteauvallon festival in 1977) joined the duo Brunet-Dufourd, Axolotl was born. Iconoclastic, the trio was bound to please Jac Berrocal, and he proposed to record their first album on the label ‘D’avantage’. In spring 1981 three days were just enough for Oger (tenor and barytone saxophones), Brunet (alto saxophone, bass clarinet and ‘things’) and Dufourd (electric guitar) to complete Axolotl, the first album by a group which would record … two. If there was a collective of iconoclasts, the trio would be there with some relatives: Alterations, Fred Frith, John Zorn, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet… and then because we mention a collective, Axolotl steps (considerably) beyond the domain of free improvisation to lean towards jazz (“Illusion”, “Paris, froissé”), No Wave (“Ombre pilée”, “Trottoirs défunts”), contemporary (“Oreiller”, “D’autres seuls”), and even what we could call … acid fun (“Dehors”). Above all, Axolotl wanted to really get to grips with sound via an expression as direct as it was liberating, as can be heard on “Ozone, flocon, torsion”, producing a noise that, even today pierces the brain. All we can hope is that now, thanks to this wonderful reissue, listeners will be able, like the axolotl, of regeneration.

Highly awaited repress of the long sold-out compilation Hearsay I-Land, which encompasses Roland P. Young's 80s foray into synth-pop, dance, funk, soul, and new wave, including the downtempo classic, Ballo-Balla. Includes the I-Land 12" in its entirety, as well as most of the Hearsay Evidence lp.

Bukaroo Bank is actually Mauskovic’s second album. There, the band reinvents both their approach and their sound, while maintaining the rhythm-forward euphoria heard on their debut album and surrounding singles. It is one of those albums that sounds brashly live, like you’re in the room while the jams are being kicked out, but in fact uses the studio very shrewdly. Recorded in 2020, during one of the Netherlands’ intermittent lockdown bouts, for this one the MDB wanted to step up from their previous homebase, Garage Noord – an ad hoc Amsterdam space for recording, practise and after-hours parties. They chose Electric Monkey, operated by engineer Kasper Frenkel. His stacks of what Nicola calls “very strange equipment”, and ability to sprinkle magic dub dust over everything, suited the vibe perfectly. The results glow and shiver with assembled synth sounds, rhythms spliced and echoed in a way that hails late Jamaican dub great Lee Perry – maybe the band’s biggest influence. Some sections might remind you of Afro-disco or slightly older highlife, others industrial prototypes like early Cabaret Voltaire, or 1980s On-U Sound mainstays like African Head Charge, or NYC groovers such as Liquid Liquid... there are outbreaks of saxophone, congas, echo units, wah-wah disco guitars, beats that sound programmed but aren’t (a nod to MDB’s industrial side). If that sounds fun to you, be assured that Bukaroo Bank is an irrepressibly fun album – but one that contains multitudes.

Acoustic, no-age krautrock from Berlin releasing on Glasgow label, Phase Group. 

 The next release on Phase Group unearths a truly unique project that has existed as an outlier in the Berlin underground since 2002. 
 A stage decked out with xylophones, tambourines, timpani, wooden percussion, two drum kits, a cello, harmonicas, saxophones and pieces of scrap metal. Eight unassuming musicians playing repetitive, trance-inducing phrases, at times serene, fragile and dream-like and at others wild, primitive and driving. This isn’t a scene you might associate with hazy nights out in Berlin but it’s what you’d find if you ended up at a Kulku show. Kulku's music is a hard to define blend of percussive minimalism, folk, krautrock, post-punk and no wave, almost exclusively derived from acoustic sound sources. Their debut album ‘Fahren!' presents this unique sound-identity that they have been crafting for the best part of two decades. The A-side presents 3 tracks of percussive propulsion, minimalist xylophone motifs and repetitive drums alongside monotone organ, dramatic narration and woodwind instruments moving in and out of dissonant howls and melodic improvisation. The B-side is devoted to lighter tones, beginning with the glockenspiel minimalism of ‘Unterm Himmel’ and rounding the record out with trance inducing drone of the album’s title track which builds up into a cacophony of snare drums, dissonant accordion and melodica before fading out like dream. All songs composed and recorded in Berlin by Wenzlovar, Gatis Silde, Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer, Johanna Riska, Cornelius Onitsch, Alexander Samuels and Maxfield Gassmann

 Artwork by Andrija Čugurović



"The Japanese avant-garde pop band strove to create a “sacred ambiance” on their second album, fusing unconventional arrangements with bouncing volleyballs and an eyes-wide air of wonder." “It’s rare that art-pop matches its extravagance with such alluring modesty. In doing so, Paradise of Replica feels like encountering cinematic spectacles in miniature.” —Joshua Minsoo Kim (Pitchfork, September 30, 2022)

"2015 reissue. Originally released on FBWL in 2000. Remastered in 2014 by Taylor Deupree at 12k." "... For those who believe they've heard all Connors has to offer, seek this out because it will astonish and mystify you while simultaneously changing your mind. For the rest who are fans, this is one of the man's records you need, because it, more than any other, expresses who he was during its recording. Painfully honest, vulnerable, raw, and graceful, Portrait of a Soul is unlike any record ever made." --AllMusic