Originally released 20 years ago, Metallic Diseases is the most intense blast of guitar squalling heat never to find its proper audience. Truly unhinged at times (“Cans”), sublimely dreamlike and understated at others (“Shake Off”), this debut album fuses the best lineage of droning, hard-rocking sounds (“USA” makes a perfect amalgam of Suicide’s “Rocket USA” and the Stooges’ “1969”) with a gestalt that pushes it right over the cliff, as “Western Man” is the kind of prophetic call to arms that Spacemen 3 tried to communicate through “Revolution” (itself a rewrite of “Black to Comm”). The few who heard this LP when it was released flipped out, as it deserved to be lauded along with its immediate precursors like Union Carbide Productions and Les Thugs—that rare blend of punk / noise / psych / groove that they just never made enough of to go around. Indeed, the LP was almost impossible to find Stateside at the time, leaving the few diehards to put it on want lists in MRR. Now, Holy Mountain and Tlön Uqbar have made it easy for everyone to simply step up to the altar and take a sip of this precious fluid while it is in season—one more time.
LP $16.00
06/28/2011
MP3 $9.90
06/28/2011
On Mono/Stereo, Fred Bigot's early "Panasonic meets rockabilly" sides are compiled and sequenced such that you can't help but mistake it for a 21th century version of KLF's "Chill Out"--except the country and Elvis references have been replaced by things like the sounds of attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams that glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. You know, shit you'd read about in a Samuel Delany book or something. Culled from two 12-inches of murky, minimalist proto-Schaeffel-beat, this CD also features rare outtakes from the full spectrum of heaviness. T-Rex-like rock-groove head-nod decadence expands the notion of stereo separation so far that the Memorex dude on the couch would be reduced to a puddle of flesh. How do you explain this stuff? You can't--it was from the future.
CD $12.00
11/10/2009
MP3 $9.90
11/10/2009
Underground cartoonist Keizo Miyanishi left behind one of the greatest documents from the 1980s. Self-released on his own Cupid & Psyche label, the single contains two songs, "Cortigiana dal velo" and "Mune o tutunde," which pair guitars and bass over some of the most tripped-out drum programming of all time. This psychedelic masterpiece ranks alongside the first White Stains 7-inch as one of the all-time greatest from the era. There is an outtake from these sessions, "Haha nareba koso," which is just as amazing, and the three songs would fit in a Terminal Boredom discussion about acid punk classics from Crawling Chaos to Chrome. In 2007, Onna reappeared and released a double-CDR with his partner, dancer Barae. A track appeared on PSF's Tokyo Flashback 6, and the label also released an album titled Katawa in 2008. In addition to the studio material from the 7-inch, this CD includes two outtakes from Katawa, a solo piece from an obscure cassette release, and four live tracks from 1983 featuring a young Michio Kurihara (White Heaven, Ghost, Boris) on second guitar. These are the first Kurihara recordings and come from a long-deleted double live Onna CD released in the early 1990s. This CD is packaged in a mini-LP sleeve with a booklet reproducing flyers, photos and posters from the era. Miyanishi and Onna have made significant but largely unnoticed contributions to the Japanese underground. Hopefully this release will vastly expand their profile worldwide.
CD $13.00
06/23/2009
MP3 $9.90
06/23/2009
***Reissue of this 1983 psychedelic punk single from Japanese artist KEIZO MIYANISH. "Cortigiana dal velo" and "Mune o tsutsunde" pair acid guitar and bass over tripped out drum programming and loops to produce a psychedelic masterpiece that fits somewhere between the first White Stains seven-inch and Les Rallizes Dénudés oeuvre circa 1980. We hope this this release and an upcoming retrospective CD will vastly expand their profile to music lovers worldwide.
7" $6.75
03/24/2009