P16.d4

***6xCD SET WITH BONUS DVD AND BOOK!!! Long overdue retrospective and entirely appropriate veneration of “the abstract, surrealist, and occasionally terrifying organism” that is RALF WEHOWSKY and company. Collected here are Kühe In 1/2 Trauer (Selektion 1984); tracks from Masse Mensch compilation (Selektion 1982); Distruct (Selektion 1984) plus bonus tracks “Schmutz-fugen,” and “Black, Black, Always Black”; Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie (Selektion 1986) plus bonus track “Ephemeral March Of The Dead Monks”; Tionchor (Selektion 1987) plus bonus track “L’effiface et l’effet,” “Dorothy Malone with Glasses,” “Easter Anywhere,” and “Essenz”; Acrid Acme (Selektion 1989); Three Projects (RRRecords 1993) plus bonus Merzbow collaboration track “V4”; and, on the DVD, nine Captured Music films (studio footage and visual collages) plus “Luxus & Mehrwert,” “Improvisation Jan. 87,” “Les Honteuses Alles,” “Kühe in 1/2 Trauer,” created by Markus Caspers for an unrealized, posthumous video project. In other words: pulsing synths; crashing percussion; horror film piano passages; tense, uncomfortable moods; scattershot tape collages; mangled and mixed raw materials from Nurse With Wound, The Haters, Merzbow, Asmus Tietchens, The Halfer Trio, and Psychic TV, among many others; junk percussion fused with the sound of guitars being slowly pulled out of tune; horns and indiscernible reed instruments rising up amid the chaos; electronics, tape cut-ups, jackhammer edits and weird synthetic outbursts in collaboration with Achim Wollscheid’s Swimming Behavior Of The Human Infant; ghostly, raw walls of noise that ooze menace; overdriven rhythmic throb obscured by noise; cheap drum machine loops and erratic electronic outbursts; dredged and repurposed recordings from their 1981 punk incarnation; Merzbow collaborations; erratic percussive bits; slowly building and collapsing frameworks; abstract Dadaist material; skittering tape collages and subtle jazz elements. The forty-eight-page booklet includes texts by Dan Warburton and Howard Stelzer, archival photos, a discography, reproduced flyers and record reviews. Four postcards. Two buttons. Edition of 400.