Index

Index

Kainos

iDEAL Recordings

“Slowdive’s Simon Scott debuts his new ‘Index' project with a visceral new sound that absorbs and transmutes political, ecological and psychic dread into a caustic, dissonant style of drone and textural sculpture for iDEAL Recordings, a worthy follow-up to last year’s ’The Sacrificial Code’ album release on the label by Kali Malone. Recorded in Los Angeles between 2016 and 2019, and featuring the voice of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, it’s a multi-layered album that comes highly recommended if you’re into anything from Throbbing Gristle to Ilpo Väisänen, Arthur Russell to Basic Channel.  ‘Kainos’ sees the veteran UK composer, field recordist, drummer and mastering engineer explore a prism of formative musical influences from the post-industrial music of Coil, Throbbing Gristle and early Black Sabbath, to the non-musical and conceptual inspiration taken from the turmoil of Brexit - including recordings of the Houses of Parliament - thru to the radical feminist scientific writing of Donna Haraway, and the conceptual vigour of Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto, ‘The Art of Noises’. The album’s title ‘Kainos’, from the ancient Greek meaning “new” or “fresh”, characterises Scott’s efforts to glean something practical from the world’s current state of chaos, enacting a tectonic shift from bucolic sonic signifiers to signposts of the post-industrial world that could hardly be more apt at at a time when electronic and ambient music are prized for their safe and sterile wallpaper qualities, rather than a potential to evoke and invoke more powerful feelings. Based around modular synth-mangled recordings of the Houses...

Index

Originals Vol. 2 (1969)

Lion Productions

***BACK IN STOCK!!! In February of 2009, Jim Valice of Index discovered three reels in a cardboard box stuffed in a closet of his parents home in Michigan. These songs from 1969 were on those reels. Fourteen original compositions by Index, seven making their vinyl debut, the other seven released for the first time ever, all transferred from the original tapes!   Index was once again a pure power trio by 1969. There was massive demand for Index personal performances. Index was not interested. It was becoming more difficult for guitarist John Ford to travel back from Yale University to Detroit on a weekly basis. Index wanted to push the bounds of their own creativity. They chose to use their limited time together to write and record.   Index were the epitome of a DIY band. They made great use of the newly developed sound on sound (SOS) technology. It allowed Index to record basic tracks (guitars, drums and lead vocals); with SOS they then could add keyboards, additional guitar tracks and vocals. A musical revolution in miniature!

Index

Originals Vol. 1 (1967-68)

Lion Productions

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  All of the original compositions from the band's two self-released holy grails of psychedelia (the Black Album and the Red Album, from 1967-68) combined into one collection—all newly transferred from the original tapes!   Most of you have no doubt heard of records that have been touted as “mind blowing”, “fuzz monsters”, or “lost/undiscovered classics”. The raves rarely turn out to be justified. That's certainly not the case with the music of Index—if anything, the raves underplay the essence of the band's music, which is seething with cavernous reverb, snaky guitar lines, and downer lyrics. It is fantastically minimalist, starkly atmospheric, and sprinkled with ferocious guitar work.  In the mid 1960’s, Detroit Michigan was a thriving industrial city. But the great ethnic diversity in the inner city was a brewing powder keg of civil unrest. This, coupled with a disillusioned population struggling to make some sense of a questionable war in the rice paddies of Viet Nam, set an uneasy and troubling tempo for the future. Still, there were pockets of communities in the Detroit area where things were good and economic life was vibrant. The Grosse Pointes were such communities. It was on the outskirts of this political and racially tense era, in those affluent suburbs just outside Detroit, that Index was formed.  The music of Index has been lauded by (and bootlegged by) music heads for decades, and with good reason: it is unexpected, atmospheric, and "home-made" in the best...