Various Artists - There Is No God And He Is Your Creator -1987- (Cassette, GGE Records), US

Merry Christmas and an Archaic New Year to all Friends and Followers of the blog!

 

To end this year with I reckoned that we needed something with an adagium that covers both these end of the year holidays as well as the situation we have found ourselves in throughout this year. There Is No God And He Is Your Creator (a title as oxymoronic as the title of this blog) was another fine cornerstone compilation of the international home-taping circuit created by GGE Records, a cassette label that was based in Kent, Ohio. The people behind the label also played in the band Ice Cream Blisters. 

 

There Is No God And He Is Your Creator compiles quite some known acts from the era like the Belgian experimental synth groups Bene Gesserit and Human Flesh created by Alain Neffe. It also contains a Merzbow track and a track by A.D. Aker known as a Dutch musician who was one of the founders of experimental music collective De Fabriek. The US tape-music legends Big City Orchestra provide a fine humoristic cover of Throbbing Gristle's Subhuman. Aside from those bands there's a lot of obscure American home-taping stuff on here ranging from lo-fi pop to strange collaged rhythms. Quite a nice bunch of tracks all together.

 

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

 

Get it HERE

 

 

Lots of things have happened the past year in terms of the discovery of unknown material and it has been rewarding and beautiful to have been in contact with many musicians and to have even been collaborating with some great labels that provide todays reissue jewels. I'd like to thank you all for the opportunities you gave me and the enthusiasm you share about music.

Archaic Inventions is a blog that still remains part of the underground with a loyalty towards the larger blogosphere in the way I discovered that space more than a decade ago. I'm not sure yet whether this blog will last longer than the next year, but only time, energy and life decisions will tell. Again. Much love to all readers, spreaders of the word or occasional bypassers here. Stay safe in this mad world and keep fighting all the corruptive powers that are surrounding us. Oh and listen to some nice music!

 

See you with some good stuff from the past in 2021!

 

- Bence AI

Gri Gri - I'm Not A Performing Monkey -198X- (Cassette, Self-Released), Netherlands

Here's another cassette from the Dutch home-taping circuit of the 80's of which I don't know anything. So far it's a mystery who was behind the Gri Gri project. The only information provided on the cassette is that it came from the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven. During the 80's, the city of Eindhoven and its surrounding areas were home to different post-punk, industrial and home-taping acts like Nasmak, De 6de Kolonne or Jacques van Erven, but the Gri Gri cassette seems to have been an isolated effort. 

I'm Not A Performing Monkey displays some nice Casio sounds, NDW influenced madness, weird pop-songs, acoustic improvisation and repetitive minimalist soundscapes. It has a primitive approach that at times almost feels ritualistic, yet also maintaining playfulness. Quite unclassifiable music: some sort of combination of absurd home-taping experimentation and the furthest deconstructed fringes of Rock In Opposition somewhere lost between Achwghâ Ney Wodei, Hora Est, Gefährliche Klons and the previously mentioned Dutch multi-instrumentalist Jacques van Erven.

No tracklist. Unindexed.

From the Collection Allard Pierson/NPI

Get it HERE if you're not a performing monkey!

Various Artists - Passions Organiques Vol.3 - Instrumentaux -1987- (Cassette, Organic Tapes), France

  

The Passions Organiques volumes were a series of international home-taping compilations created by the French Organic Tapes label from Grenoble during the 80's. For the most part the compilations contain electronic, industrial and minimalistic ambient sounds with a slight emphasis on French acts. However the Organic label also published many international musicians and created special releases around certain countries like the great Polish Road cassettes that I posted some time ago. The less fortunate dimension of the releases by Organic Tapes is the poor sound quality. There is a lot of hiss on these tapes and the sound volume changes each track. Nevertheless these compilations were assembled with a lot of care and there are some true pearls to be heard that don't appear on any other release.

Passions Organiques Vol.3 - Instrumentaux is a nice electronic home-taping journey gathering some household names of the international cassette network like Los Paranos (FR), Marzidovsek (YU), In Aeternam Vale (FR), The Dead Goldfish Ensemble (UK) and Pacific 231 (FR) but it also gives attention to even lesser known acts. The cassette came out together with Volume 4 of the series in a large VHS case, but I decided to post both cassettes seperately, so the other volume will come to the blog somewhere in the future.

As said, not really desirable sound quality, but nevertheless some nice minimal synth, industrial and ambient electronic tracks. You can find Volume 1 of the series over at Tape Attack. 

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Ex Cathedra - Caedimus Noctu -198X- (Cassette, Regicide Bureau Tapes), US

 

Ex Cathedra was a home-taping project from Overland, Saint Louis, Missouri created by Thomas Sutter. As founder of the Regicide Bureau (both a music project and a label) Sutter released numerous cassettes throughout the 80's and 90's. He was also in the projects Next Radio and Drive!Hesaid and collaborated on various occassions with Berlin based musician M. Finnkrieg.

On this third cassette by Ex Cathedra we hear two side-long pieces of electronic experimentation, surrealistic collage, layered noises and other strange phenomena. It presents a mind-scrambling sonic experience and cocktail of weird sounds revealing the pure spirit of home-taping experimentation. No music standards or external music industry interferences play a part. If anything Ex Cathedra loops mainstream media and existing music back into the trip turning and twisting around the roles of power and influences. Those expressions can be serious, but often also contain some humour and fun elements. In the second piece there is a nice fragment of Kraftwerk's Pocket Calculator to be heard for example.

Another home-taping cassette that contains nice mind-bending electronic surrealist music that frees music-as-a-formula from its confined existence.

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Dustbin Silence - Untitled -1985- (Square Wheel Cassettes), Netherlands

                                                  Dustbin Silence in Brussels, 1983

Dustbin Silence was a short-lived (1982-1985) jazz, noise and improvisation trio from Rotterdam that was formed by Han van Hulzen, ErikWard Geerlings and Henri van Zanten. Han van Hulzen was also part of the new wave group Corridor des Affaires during that time and Henri van Zanten is also known as a (sound) poet in his own right. 

Dustbin Silence, however, was connected to the Rotterdam based Jazzbunker scene that existed around the legendary Jazzbunker venue which functioned as a home for Dutch and international improvisation, jazz and rock in opposition. During the 80's Rotterdam had numerous special bands that created diverse styles out of a blend of new wave, jazz, home-taping and improvisation. Some of them were also performing at the Jazzbunker. Bands from Rotterdam from those times are a.o. Dull Schicksal, Nine Tobs, The Black Sheep, Kiem, Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest, Niew Hip Stilen, Debiele Eenheid and many others.

On this cassette by Dustbin Silence we hear a recording from the Jazzbunker, but there are also pieces recorded elsewhere in The Netherlands. It gives a nice impression of the group's live recordings:  gloomy atmospheres combining free improvised sounds with punk poetry in Dutch and English. It reminds me of industrial performance art groups sounds of the 80's of which the live recordings resemble much more of a document of a scene than perfectly composed tracks. The Berlin band Sprung Aus Den Wolken sometimes created such a feel for example.

In any case here's another interesting cassette hailing from the Rotterdam improvisation scene of the 80's.

From the Collection Allard Pierson/NPI

Get it HERE

Renegade Raspberry Retaliation ‎- My Name'll Be There -1986- (Tape, Northampton Musicians Collective), UK

Renegade Raspberry Retaliation was a band from Northampton, Northamptonshire, England that consisted of Richard Powell and T. Brice Bodsworth. The band was part of a larger community of musicians that organized itself within the region as the Northampton Musicians Collective. It seems that RRR wasn't active for too long despite belonging to this larger community.

Their only release - My Name'll Be There - displays a fantastic DIY post-punk sound including monotonous vocals, angular guitar movements, dirty garage rock tunes and repetitive analog synthesizer patterns. The music fits the typical English DIY sound reminiscent of bands like Amos and Sara, Sally Smmit And Her Musicians or Brain of Morbius later on. It even has some hints of The Fall (obviously dozens of bands could be named).

I guess Renegade Raspberry Retaliation actually still sounds fresh nearly 35 years later. The sound is bleak, punk, experimental, fairly absurdistic and contains quite some self-irony. At the same time it creates musical depth through simplicity. All the right musical ingredients for high value authentic British DIY post-punk I'd say (infused with some American themes). An unknown classic!

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Ras.Al.Ghul - The Experimental Absorption Spectrum -199X- (Cassette, Self-Released), Portugal

Ras.Al.Ghul was an electronic music project from Lisbon created by Fernando Cerqueira and Paulo Rodrigues. The duo started out during the mid-80's as an electro-industrial group called Croniamantal. They released some tapes by themselves as well as on the Portuguese cassette label Ritual De Sombras and contributed to a number of Industrial compilations. After a short existence they decided to bury their industrial project to start the hypnotic electronic dance project Ras.Al.Ghul (perhaps named after a supervillain from the American DC Comics).

The Experimental Absorption Spectrum is a tape release that was apparently distributed through experimental cassette labels like Tonspur Tapes and Maljugin Musik in Germany. The album displays an electronic tribal sound that touches on different genres of electronic music of the 90's - from Drum 'n Bass to Downtempo - yet the music never really conforms to any of these genres. The sound is maybe closest to a 90's psychedelic trance atmosphere, but the lo-fi quality of the recording in combination with the electronic experimentation doesn't allow it to become generic. 

It sonically connects the industrial culture's breeding ground of the 80's with the rave feel of the 90's through hypnotic beats and sub-aquatic ambient electronics fusing technology with the mind's eye: a Portuguese underground sound that balances on the sonic intersection between a neo tribal industrial music tradition à la late Muslimgauze and the sound of upcoming communal neo-psychedelic trance festivals.

Southern European space music to be absorbed by.

Get it HERE

Various Artists - Audiografika -1989- (Cassette, Po. So. 02), Spain

This contribution stems back from one of the activities carried out by Javier Cinca, who was involved in various home taping, mail art, sound poetry and experimental video projects along the 1980’s and responsible for the cassette label from Zaragoza Sindicato de Trabajos Imaginarios (S.T.I.).

Audiografika belongs to the PO.SO. sub-label, a project which unfortunately could no longer be continued after 1989. PO.SO. stands for Poesía Sónica, Spanish for Sonic Poetry and considered to encompass a wider spectrum than sound poetry, which could go from phonetic poetry all the way to electronic poetry. Such project represents Cinca’s aim to turn towards the elaboration of multimedia editions at a time when such concept became highly popularized. Its first edition, Antología Polipoética – a boxset containing a sound poetry cassette along with a bilingual Italian-English book with a chapter dedicated to each of the twelve artists that participated – featured some of the most prolific Italian sonic poets, with the likes of Enzo Minarelli, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Maurizio Nannucci, Vittore Baroni and Giovanni Fontana among others. 

The second edition Audiografika included the participation of highly acclaimed artists whose practice leaned towards the more vocal side of sound poetry such as Heidsieck and Scherstjanoi, the concrete tape manipulations of Henri Chopin and the electroacoustic works of Riedl. This time, Audiografika was intended to pursue the multimedia path through an exploration of the synesthetic character of the work of its participants, from the Riedl’s ‘Optische Lautgedichte's' or optical sound poems to the visual poems of Scherstjanoi or Chopin. Sadly, Audiografika was never published, and as Cinca recalls, even if around 200 tapes were produced for this edition, only half a dozen from them survived, making them today very hard to source and thus, highly coveted collectable sonic objects.

As a part of a debt contracted through numerous postal exchanges along the 1980’s with many of the artists with which S.T.I. sought to embark itself in different projects, Javier Cinca has now published a book containing most of the letters, collages, various types of poetry and other forms of mail art ephemera he received over the years, together with a digitized version of the Audiografika tape now available through Archaic Inventions.

- Text by Juan Vacas

 

For those interested in acquiring a copy of the book (100 copies only), please contact: stiediciones@gmail.com

Or buy the book through this link at Todocoleccion.

Download the Audiografika Cassette HERE or HERE

Archaic Inventions likes to specially thank Javier Cinca and Juan Vacas for the collaboration.

Coomans, Vinck, Denhaene ‎- Eight Intimate Poses -1978- (LP, Stichting Vrijere Muziek 3), Belgium

 

Eight Intimate Poses was a free-jazz and free improvisation endeavour by a Flemish trio that consisted of Leo Coomans (reeds), Kris Vinck (trombones) and Marc Denhaene (guitars, accordeon). It was recorded at King Kong in Antwerp on December 11th and 12th, 1977. King Kong was an independent cultural centre for music, theatre and film, founded in the early seventies. It was situated on Keizerstraat 38 in Antwerp. Joy Division even played the King Kong venue in 1980.

The three musicians on Eight Intimate Poses were regularly part of other jazz and improvisation formations (WIM Fanfare, Madou etc.) in Belgium but also played with foreign jazz musicans. Furthermore there was an important exchange of recorded material with other free-jazz and impro labels. This copy of Eight Intimate Poses for example was distributed through the BVHaast label in Amsterdam which was one of the most important contemporary jazz labels in Holland founded by saxophonist and composer Willem Breuker.

Eight Intimate Poses is another interesting release of the Belgian independent impro scene. The music consists of free improvisation in some of its most minimalistic shapes with occassional hectic outburst. It reminds me a.o. of the intricate, delicate yet anarchic acoustic sounds by the American impro duo and NWW List residents LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams and their Trans Museq label. 

Belgian label Ultra Eczema also released a great archival album by Leo Coomans in 2009 that I highly recommend to check out.

Get it HERE

Inutile & Murilee Arraiac - Oscillating Knife System -198X- (Cassette, Inutile Tapes), US

   

Murilee Arraiac was an industrial, noise and home-taping project from Irvine, Orange County, California that existed between 1987 and 1991. The band was formed by Martin Murilee and a loose group of individuals that would record at a student trailer park called Irvine Meadows West that was partially squatted during the '70s as a more inclusive and freeform community that a.o. countered the expensive and constraining official student housing facilities next door. Murilee Arraiac recorded their music at one of the trailers that they used as their studio. From their website:

Murilee Arraiac consisted of any musician we could drag into our studio at luxurious Trailer B7, located in the Irvine Meadows West RV Park beneath the white sky of Irvine, California. All songs were recorded on Tascam 244 or Tascam Porta 01 cassette 4-tracks (except those recorded live at KUCI or via microcassette recorder at gigs). Drums provided by 55-gallon oil drums and tire irons, Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard, and a Roland 707 drum machine. The key to our special sound was the combo of a police scanner and a shortwave radio, played through various modified distortion boxes.

The strange name of the band is explained by Murilee Martin in an article I happened to stumble on: Wishing to emulate bands like Negativland and Psychic TV, and under the influence of the Cut-Up Technique, the name of the crypto-nihilo-surrealo band I put together in my early 20s was generated by drawing random syllables out of a hat, thus: Murilee Arraiac.

Oscillating Knife System is a great cassette that comprises a.o. of heavily distorted radio signals with spoken word buffoonery, lo-fi electrorock, different interfering noises and lots of electronics. It's another highly obscure project belonging to the West-Coast experimental music tradition. In a way it reminds me of the pioneering noise making collective Los Angeles Free Music Society, albeit driven by individual creativity and experimentation. Actually some very cool sounds at times.

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

It Is Not A... - Self-Titled -198X- (Cassette, Self-Released), Netherlands

Here we have another obscurity from the vast Dutch home-taping realm of the 80's. It Is Not A... is a totally unknown project that doesn't give any information other than that it was played by AF + Adulaar. The dark cover artwork that is hidden inside the uniformic beige cassette case only adds to the mysterious nature of this release. There is no year of publication given, nor any indication given about the place where this was made and there's no tracklist.

The minimalist nature of the artwork is also reflected in the music of It Is Not A... Basically the tracks revolve around the drum sounds of the Roland TR-606 in combination with simple basslines that are accompanied by analog synthesizers, voice and tape collage. Another example of a minimal synth bedroom production that stresses simplicity as a protagonist artistic means. It also reflects the cold signature sound approach of the 80's. A total mystery from the Drumatix shadow world...

We advice to play this cassette with loudness, it will give an uncomfortable but paradisiac nerve-shaking ambience to the sound.

 Get it HERE

Flagrum - Occulitur Ante Verba -1996- (Cassette, Mastix Materiae), Hungary

Here we have another obscurity from the Hungarian underground of the 90's. Flagrum was an experimental minimalist metal band from Budapest that consisted of Tibor Gáll, János Gáll and  Levente Borsay. They started around 1992 and released their first album Per Ipsum in 1995 both domestically (cassette) and on the Czech Malarie label (vinyl). However, their second album Occulitur Ante Verba is probably their best work and even less known.

During the 90's there were obviously lots of different bands in Hungary. The metal, punk and hardcore genres were very much alive during that decade. That music was cultivated on aesthetics and ideologies that were not easy to put forward before the collapse of the totalitarian socialist regime. Surely these genres were already developing during communist times, but the full potential wasn't felt publicly yet because there was no infrastructure for their output. It was only from the 1990's on that alternative festivals were created and new communities of people started to carry alternative and independent culture through music and lifestyle.

Flagrum is one of those bands that operated deeply in the Hungarian underground of the 90's. Even in Hungary they are largely a mystery. During an era in which lots of new music from outside was rapidly entering the country a large proportion of bands was just imitating whatever they could hear. Flagrum on the other hand was more alone in its genre. They had a sort of doomish metal sound, but stripped it down to the bare minimum. Their music is fully instrumental, minimal and repetitive leaning towards an experimental No-Wave sound that is perhaps a bit reminiscent of Swans. There's a Godflesh inspiration too. I wrote about that some time ago regarding the Hungarian band Carwashtagnacht.

More unknown sounds from the Eastern European alternative music landscape of the 90's. (If you can, try to listen to this while having an Unicum!). Élvezd!

Get it HERE

Sniffin' The Evidence - 15 Minutes Of Hard Labour -1990- (Cassette, Rat Product), Netherlands

I had a look at what to post on a historical date like today and ended up finding this one. Sniffin' The Evidence was a duo comprised of Etwin van Eedtveld and René Claus from the southern Dutch town of Maastricht. 15 Minutes Of Hard Labour was released privately and I don't know whether anything else was ever done by them later on. Their sound revolves around heavy drum machine patterns, distorted guitars and cut-up fragments of political speeches and such. It can be placed in a longer tradition of experimental music using, abusing or criticizing political themes. A sound that has been put forward a.o. by bands like (late) Cabaret Voltaire or Mark Stewart + The Maffia and Tackhead. It also reminds me of the Dutch band á Suivre that existed years before in Rotterdam.

I left the cassette unindexed because the tracks mostly flow into each other and hard stops would cause too much interruption of the whole.

Kindly donated by the Y Create archive

Get it HERE