LIQUID IDIOT / IDIOT ORCHESTRA; Liquid Idiot / Idiot Orchestra
LP, New
Prior to forming Liquid Liquid in 1981, the band members were in two other groups: Liquid Idiot and Idiot Orchestra. While these ensembles sounded more experimental than groove-oriented, the beginnings of Liquid Liquid's spatial / conceptual framework can be heard here.
Liquid Idiot started at Rutgers University in the late '70s and soon relocated to NYC where they performed at various lofts and clubs including Tier 3, Mudd Club and CBGB. Idiot Orchestra was an offshoot that included a dozen or more players (clarinet, sax, trumpet, violin, cello, synth, bass, marimba and drums) resembling a No Wave version of Raymond Scott's big band.
This split archival LP collects two rare 7-inches from 1978 and 1980, both of which were originally pressed in hyper-limited editions and self-released by the bands. Through 'Superior Viaduct'.
EAT SKULL; Sick to death
LP, Used
By subjecting their trashy art-punk/fuzz-garage songs to cheap, trebly, hyper-distorted production, this LP by Portland's 'Eat Skull' sounds right at home on the Siltbreeze label. Sits wonderfully alongside art-noise contemporaries such as Sic Alps, Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit. Lo-fi?.... this record sounds like it was mastered by a deaf person.
THE FALL; Totale's Turns (It's Now or Never)
LP, 2008 (New)
Given The Fall's penchant for iconoclasm, it's no surprise that they decided to say goodbye to the '70s with a series of gigs at Northern England's gruffest halls. The band's formidable live show was met with even more derision and disorder than customary during these late '79 and early '80 performances, and they skillfully amplified such sentiments back at the crowd. Totale's Turns, The Fall's first live album, was released on Rough Trade just prior to their pivotal third album, 1980's Grotesque.
FCKNBSTRDS; Slam Pampers
LP, 2003 (Secondhand)
Record Sleeve is one-off handmade cover art.
The FCKN’BSTRDS are basically a bunch of misfits from the margins of the Dutch music scene… Obscure hometapers, rancid performers, bad mutants, crap artists and borderliners with a tendency for chaos and noise. It is nihilistic primal punk, it spits in the eye of professionalism and perfection. It is an insult to good taste. It celebrates the failures and defects and mistakes on which this world is built, and that made us into what we really are: TRASH.
DUMB AND THE UGLY; Dumb and the ugly
Mini LP, 1990
Early 1990s Melbourne instrumental/exploratory supergroup made up of Michael Sheridan (guitars), Dave Brown (bass) and John Murphy (drums), laying down chunky chugga-chugga rhythms. This 12″ 45 vinyl was released in 1990. Comes with poster.
DOUBLE LEOPARDS; A hole is true
LP, 2005
Recorded, appropriately enough, at the Tar Pit in Brooklyn, A Hole Is True is likely to be the group's easiest-to-find release to date, and is perhaps the most succinct distillation of their shadowy, merciless arts. The title seems a slight misdirection, as there's no sign of holes anywhere on the album's three impossibly dense squalls. Whatever its substance, the opening "Inmost Light" enters with a dizzying electric whirr that repeatedly threatens to congeal into a riff, before getting blown to pieces by a cyclone of unmoored spectral wails. "Chemical Wedding" is even simpler, just a razor-thin current of pulsing overtones, while the 21-minute "White Cadillacs" uses voices nearly recognizable as human to deliver shifty messages directly to the reptilian core of your brainstem.
