Saturday, 26 December 2020

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

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

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!