King's House - One -1987- (Cassette, The Subelecktrick Institute), US

 

King's House was a project by members of the home-taping and improvised free-music collective Big City Orchestra from the greater San Francisco bay area. The project consisted of Toby Hardman, Brook Hinton, Arne Ryason, Rob Wortman and Jim Young. The BCO started out already in the late 70's and kept being active throughout all decades to come. The output of their music, first on self-released cassettes, later CD's and vinyl and later MP3 albums on net labels, is so vast (literally hundreds of releases) that it would be hard to make your way though the entire discography. Let alone adding all the members' solo projects and different side projects like King's House. Moreover the music is never the same and morphs into all possible styles and everything in-between.

The cassette we have here is the first King's House release and displays a wonderful collage of absurdist improvisational music. We hear radio cut-ups, tape loops, minimal synth manoeuvres, damaged pop songs, noise, musique concrète madness and interesting inventive soundscapes. It's a carefully composed release with lots of attention for its variety and the succession of the tracks.

A very nice tape that has that distinctly American cassette culture sound. I think even though this is the King's House project, the music might be a great starting point in getting to know more sounds of Big City Orchestra as well. A burst of endless musical creativity.

Kindly donated by The Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Earth's Epitaph - Release -1985- (Cassette, Bedroom Recordings), Wales

 
        
    
    

Earth's Epitaph were an anarcho new wave and post-punk group from the surroundings of the city of Cwmbran in the South of Wales created by Chris, Ray and Jayne. Earth's Epitaph recorded two 'official' demo's of which "Release" is their first one. They also contributed some songs to a couple of compilations during the mid-eighties. You can find their second release in a previous blogpost.

The music of Earth's Epitaph seems to have a rather conventional new-wave sound at first, but is definitely rooted in the same political UK anarcho punk spirit of bands like Crass, The Apostles or Omega Tribe. The songs are dealing with environmentalism, animal rights, anti-fascism and anti-militarism. The music sounds a bit like the Young Marble Giants if they would have incorporated the political spirit of an anarcho-punk band like Poison Girls

Since the music of Earth's Epitaph was released as a demo cassette it has quite some strong white noise on the surface of the recording. Nevertheless the combination of inventive minimalist rhythm box driven song-writing, simple casio keyboard melodies and socially engaged lyrics created a little pearl of Welsh post-punk music from the 80's that has its lo-fi charm. Innocent anarcho-wave music with a serious combatant message. The sweet sound of resistance.

A nice band, I wish they recorded more material.

Get it HERE