Borbetomagus
Borbetomagus formed in 1979 when saxophone players Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich joined with electric guitarist Donald Miller. Bass guitarist Adam Nodelman was briefly a member. Their aggressive music has been described as "a huge, overpowering, take-no-prisoners mass of sound." One extended technique they use is called "bells together" where Sauter and Dietrich place the bells (openings) of their saxophones against one other while playing. While the core trio listed above has been responsible for most of Borbetomagus's music, they have collaborated with Swiss circuit bending duo Voice Crack, Dutch cellist Tristan Honsinger, German double-bassist Peter Kowald, and others.
Borbetomagus formed in 1979 when saxophone players Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich joined with electric guitarist Donald Miller. Bass guitarist Adam Nodelman was briefly a member. Their aggressive music has been described as "a huge, overpowering, take-no-prisoners mass of sound." One extended technique they use is called "bells together" where Sauter and Dietrich place the bells (openings) of their saxophones against one other while playing. While the core trio listed above has been responsible for most of Borbetomagus's music, they have collaborated with Swiss circuit bending duo Voice Crack, Dutch cellist Tristan Honsinger, German double-bassist Peter Kowald, and others.
Members: Jim Sauter
Live In Allentown
*2022 stock* Jim Sauter & Don Dietrich (saxophones), Donald Miller (electric guitar), Adam Nodelman (bass guitar). The 3rd annual Halloween extravaganza. Recorded October 29, 1986. Reissue of cassette only release Live in Allentown (Lowlife LL02). Includes the entire second set with Scott Legath on electronics, not previously released.
Songs Our Mother Taught Us
*2022 stock* The work of upstate New York noise-jazz trio Borbetomagus is frequently described in terms of overwhelming power and aggression. In a live context, that's absolutely the dominant impression one is likely to get. On record, though, it's possible to have some control over the volume, and thus to listen closely and carefully and discern real technique at work, not to mention a subtlety that's not really surprising, given that saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich, and guitarist Dona…
Safe and Sane
Outrageous. Rabid. Explosive. #Wtf? Whatever words you throw at Borbetomagus saxophonist Jim Sauter and Oneida / Man Forever drummer Kid Millions, they’ll chomp ‘em up and respond with a gargantuan roar to erase all notions of what a horn and skins can do. The duo’s prior albums were built of tightly, clustered bursts and barbed assaults. On Safe & Sane, Sauter and Millions eschew brevity for ultra-endurance. The opening “Chrysanthemum,” clocks in at 32 minutes and continues on Side B before a f…
Borbetomagus: A Pollock of Sound
Filmmaker Jef Mertens brings a raw, urgent, and unpolished vision focusing on a band that has spent almost four decades defining and redefining not just their music, but the boundaries of music itself. Band members Don Dietrich, Donald Miller, and Jim Sauter tell their story with the help of artists, writers, photographers, and filmmakers that include noted critic Byron Coley, drummer Chris Corsano, guitarist Thurston Moore, groundbreaking Japanese noise unit Hijokaidan, and Switzerland's master…
The Eastcode Studios Session
Dancing Wayang present a new and rare studio album by US noise legends Borbetomagus titled The Eastcote Studios Session. Recorded in 2014, it unites fire-breathing saxophonists Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich and face-flaying guitarist Donald Miller whom together summon one of their most forceful yet detailed sonic onslaughts to date. The bulk of Borbetomagus releases over the last forty years have been taken from live recordings. This particular workout, however, took place in the eponymous studio …
Million Dollar Band/Bull Run
The extreme sonic textures of Borbetomagus' Jim Sauter sounds bitchin' in this kind of compressed environment. Playing in duo with the multi-directional thumping of Kid Millions, the sound is just a blaze of energy that expands in many known directions. Jim's tone goes from pure saxophonic terror to something that sounds more like an over-amped guitar to synth-like shrieking. The pair throw down even harder than they have on previous sessions, and the world is a much more bruised place for their…
Vole lotta love
Insane Bobetomagus wax! Full-Blast-Borbeto jazz/noise recorded live in Helsinki Finland in 2005... Mix-maximized by Tommi Keränen. Beautiful 2 color silkscreened and hand-glued covers by Sami Pekkola. Titled inspired by the romantic M. Apsa video included with the gigs opening act. Those in the know will know. Grab it! Edition of 300."Thunderous new limited to 300 copies live LP from the killingest trio of horn/guitar thinkers this side of judgement day: recorded live in Helsinki in…
Boanerges
Duo of Jim Sauter from Borbetomagus and Kid Millions from the Boadoms and Oneida ! The sound of saxophone turning into an extreme noise and brutal raging percussion! Such is the latest NOISE JAZZ from NYC! (JOJO Hiroshige / Hijokaidan). Jim's sax playing is impulsively domineering in Borbetomagus, which is based on a usually percussion-less trio formation of two saxophones and one guitar; and I was really curious to hear what would happen when it encountered a drummer who is often described in t…
Zurich
Live in Zurich 1984. Reissue of a double vinyl publish on the same label. Donald Miller, guitar, alto saxophone (on one track). Jim Sauter, tenor, alto, baritone saxophones. Don Dietrich, tenor, alto saxophone, guitar (on one track). 'First off, there is this huge saxophone sound, the bells of the two saxes often jammed against each other with a microphone dropped inside, and then there is the guitarist as a generator of sounds more crazed than anything that has ever come out of the instr…
Trente belles annes
Triumphal new CD, the first new recordings in an age, from one of the greatest bands on the goddamn planet, the trio of saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and guitarist Donald Miller aka Borbetomagus: this is a roof-raising performance, recorded live at Instants Chavires, France, 19th December 2009. Borbetomagus combine the elevated amplifier violence of Jimi Hendrix at his most combustible with the spontaneous free music polyphony of Ascension-era Coltrane and the ‘guitar smashing’ h…
The rape of Atlanta
'Great trio show from 2004 show at Destroy All Music Festival in Atlanta. Two gloriously crude side-long tears into the fabric of the universe. Edition of 500 with sticker cover & booklet insert, with an interview explaining the derivation of the band's name in graphic detail. LP was previously offered solely at the band's recent European shows.'
Barefoot In The Head
Long awaited reissue of this classic late 80s collaboration between the 2 sax players in Borbetomagus (Sauter & Dietrich) and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Five extended tracks of guitar/sax/sax improvisational interplay, recorded in NYC in June, 1988. We first issued this as an LP-only in 1990, but it has been o/p for a number of years (a CD version was licensed by Shock UK and briefly available, but has been long o/p as well). "This is one mindfuck of a noisefest. Imagine if Metal Machi…
à go go
Recorded live at Pezner, Villeurbanne (France), December 4, 1998. Mastered by Trutone, NYC. Jim Sauter & Don Dietrich : saxophones, Donald Miller : electric guitar.
Snuff Jazz
The maestros of improv noise (with a big N) with their ferocious album for Agaric from 1988. Some call it jazz, some call it improv, some call it noise. Two saxes (Jim Sauter & Don Dietrich) and one guitar (Donald Miller). Great intensity.
Coelacanth
1991 collaboration between Shaking Ray Levis and Borbetomagus in an exquisite mix of over-amplified and otherwise bewilderingly fierce free improv - three pieces of reed-drone/squawk, percussion & electronics.
Live at InRoads
One of the heaviest live documents of the original Borbetomagus big-band - Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich on saxophones, Donald Miller on guitar and Brian Doherty on live electronics - live at In-Roads, New York, 27th November 1982. This one was originally released on cassette in two different versions, copies of which somehow made it to Japan where it took on the role of some kind of free-noise Rosetta Stone, planting seeds in the helmets of a whole bunch of punks. But nothing beats the glorious p…
Seven reasons for tears
Reissue of classic and long hard to find Purge/Sound League album from 1987 by Borbetomagus. Quartet session with the power-bass addition of Adam Nodelman. 1993 CD release “Seven Reasons for Tears beautifully documents the most simultaneously fierce and accessible periods of the band’s history. Converts and heathens can both bathe luxuriously in the radioactive improv-beauty-stream that lights up a room when the record is played at ‘special’ volume. Tears is the living spirit of Borbetomagus’ nu…
Experience the magic
Blistering CD of live performances recorded at CBGB in New York in 1992.
Barbed wire maggots
Back in stock, CD reissue of what was the 4th Borbetomagus album, originally released on LP by Agaric way back in 1983. The trio of Jim Sauter (reeds), Don Dietrich (reeds) & Donald Miller (guitar). Recorded at In-Roads, NYC. May 7, 1982. "Barbed Wire Maggots is a motherfucker, even now, 23 years after it was recorded. Recorded at In-Roads on Mercer Street, BWM documents a gorgeous evening of extreme sonic dialogue. Sauter and Dietrich's reeds skinny-dip into virtual classicist free mode at time…