Get Chickenized!
What if Japanese city pop met no wave? Neither in your wildest dream such occurrence could be real, but let’s make things clear. Frank Chickens could have been possibly forerunners for several famous alternative bands, Cibo Matto on top of all, but sure had a development on their own. Our history began in London, early eighties, art duo Frank Chickens is the original creation of Japanese performers Kazuko Hohki and Kazumi Taguchi. All of a sudden the band debuts with a pair of singles and a full…
Uprooted Vol. 1
An unreleased '84 Rex Ilusivii piece + a near mythical CHBB (Liaisons Dangereuses) track from 1981 on an essential 7". Fire!
1982
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 legend…
EEL
*2024 stock* Part hexagonal lube-pool, part peatman’s gallbladder; EEL marks an encephalitic (onward) plowter for both of us. Like intractable flagellations hoisted through individual druse romps, staminate bleachfields give way to unillustrated gonging, in chiefly 12V 3A veinlets. EEL – acronymised in ‘pen scrape’ – decontaminates, in our eye, four key baronial globoids, expunging gladly by 5 pin toddy ladle. In the torrential burn below, head hair, jaw hair and clothes sticky, stinking and gre…
Italia No! Contaminazioni No Wave Italiane 1980-1985
2023 Reissue. 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 th…
This Age
*200 copies limited edition* Trouble vs Glue is a duo: as the name says, we can picture one of 'em as the Trouble and the other as the Glue, in a never ending fight made of synths, guitar, drums and wicked voices. After their debut album on the german label Urquinaona ("Zum Teufel" LP) and a song on the (in)famous Borgata Boredom - Music And Noises From Roma Est - LP, they released their second album "Die Trauerweide" (eng. weeping willow) in June 2013 on NO=FI Recordings. After a 2 years hiatus…
1/2 Alive
“Lester Bangs liner notes place Suicide in its proper historical context: A document of a force of nature – the filthy loud subway station heart of NYC. Suicide pioneered everything from synth-pop to industrial disco – low rent electronic angst-fest. Vega runs rough shod over the whirring blast of Rev’s homemade synth.” – Rolling Stone Record Guide
Ghost Riders
*2022 stock * 'Suicide took mid-70's NYC underground attitudes to extreme, but logical, ends. Singer Alan Vega's often terrifyingly apocalyptic vision was perfectly complimented by keyboardist Martin Rev's pulsating, sizzling accompaniment on rhythm box and synthesizer. Their psychotic electronic blues was the sound of American culture sliding towards destruction. On stage, they were routinely heckled by audiences unappreciative of their minimalist explorations (they actually incited riots while…
Death Is Certain
Across two 7”s, Death Or Glory (1982) and Death Rocks (1983) and one 12”, Anguish (1982) Jimmy Smack carved his own bleak chasm amidst the LA Death Rock scene that he inhabited. After decades dormant in the crypt, Knekelhuis finally compiles Smack’s full recorded output, providing it a lavish place to rest on the Death Is Certain LP. While his local punk contemporaries pursued aggressive hardcore and political punk, Jimmy Smack donned corpse paint (before it would later become synonymous with th…
Demonstration Takes & Retakes
Tristan Disco was an ephemeral Japanese project led by Takayuki Shiraishi (BGM, who released material on the Japanese experimental label Vanity Records, MLD) and focused on making dub-influenced Post-Punk. In 1982 they elaborate a no-wave full of unrehearsed breaks and cavernous vocals. Boundless dark jamming sessions through shades, effects and reverbs always submerged by a tense nervous bassline. On the B side Krikor delivers a hard-hitting Industrial reconstruction of "Social Dance" perfect t…
Issue 53: Berlin After Bowie - From Lodger to the Fall of The Wall (Magazine + 7")
When is a Berlin album not a Berlin album? When it’s ‘Lodger’ by David Bowie. When we talk about Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, what we really mean is ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’ and, erm, the other one… ‘Lodger’ was the afterthought, the wobbly third wheel, a series of “planned accidents” stitched together into an album.