Nals Goring/No Sound - Split [Feeding Tube]

Feeding Tube is quickly becoming one of my favorite labels due to their dedication to consistently putting out the most amazingly fucked up sounds possible. Each record is an awesome mind puzzle. What are these sounds? What the hell is going on? Who ponied up the cash to put this vinyl? Every release is densely bizarre but curiously (and repeatably) listenable. This head scratcher pairs up projects from the label heads of Feeding Tube and the brilliant OSR Tapes, No Sound and Nals Goring respectively.
Nals Goring takes the first side of the LP with "Watership Down vs. the Robber Baron" and what a total mindfuck it is. The record starts with a bang; some kind of warped 'n scrambled foray into hip hop abruptly shifts to a new wavey keyboard demo after Zach Phillips a.k.a. Nals tells me he's gotta go back to the beginning or I won't understand. Despite Nals's best efforts I still don't understand, at any point in the track, but that doesn't impede my enjoyment. Nals gets into backpacker mode slinging "rhymes" like "A long time ago there were three seasons/One of the seasons was called 'Watership Down'" detailing the whole, non-sequitur-filled history of the conflict between Watership Down and the Robber Baron. The killer, scatterbrained beat shifts into a haunted house ascending organ line as Nals states "it was a horrible mystery." It's not clear but either Watership Down or the Robber Baron "comes back to claim his fortune on the cassette tape in the mansion" which starts some shit. What makes this side great is there are so many things going on at any given moment and they often disappear quickly to make way for more, causing you think "wait, did I just hear seven seconds of jazzy rag piano?" The track gets even weirder when a young child tells a stream of conscious story about a fat guy getting run over by a car. I should note we're only around three minutes into the track at this point so there's a lot of shit going on during the course of the side. There's garbled, tape-pastiched samples and various clatter which cut to a drum solo which cuts to some weird deconstructed vocal/drums duet with tape-manipulated speech and tactile free-percussion. The track shifts again into interplay between someone repeatedly saying "take it from me" and Nals responding "take it from you" over drums and samples. Nals states "remind me why I came on this crazy trip" (fair question) right before it erupts into madness. I don't know what the actual process is here but it sounds like Mr. Phillips cut up 20 different tapes into centimeter snippets and spliced them all together in a possibly genius or possibly haphazard way. That's about the most adequately I can describe what's going on. Phillips reveals Watership Down was beaten by the Robber Baron and apparently "it's a lesson in organics" before launching into an even zanier sound collage culminating with an out of tune brass band. The final bit of the side sees the young child from earlier return to deliver the ending of her story. Awesome but what the fuck?
No Sound fills out the B-side with a live track supremely titled "GayKK." Though the track has its share of idiosyncrasies, its mellower pace is a welcome relief after the manic brain-frying that went on on side A. I know Ted Lee (No Sound) made a movie called "GayKK" and this track is apparently some kind of live scoring of that film. Coming to life with a wheezy accordion and a loop of synth or something, another sinister, wobbly bass loop pops giving the track a queasy groove. Distorted guitar and various objects are shaken, pounded, massaged etc. creating a disorienting environment built on rhythmic pulses of a few loops. Lee does a great job developing the performance organically. Some parts are even a little pretty. He's a drummer which may be why there's always some sort of underlying rhythm to whatever sorts of noises are being vomited forth or chaffed against each other; Lee can even make confusion flow. Some of the best moments of the piece are the quieter ones where there might only be a couple elements happening but they interlock in weird, polyrhythmic and nearly hypnotic ways. Near the end of the side, it cuts from big throbbing waves of distortion to what sounds like a dog whimpering but who really knows. The track dilly dallies with quieter field recordings and crowd noise for a little while before bringing back those big waves of distortion and calling it quits. It's a pretty great track, especially considering it was all performed live.
This is one of a kind stuff, definitely check this out if you aren't familiar with these projects.
The LP is in print but only limited to 100.

Kommissar Hjuler/Mama Baer – Amerikanische Poesie und Alkoholismus [Feeding Tube]/Zebu! – Bag of Sand [Feeding Tube]

Easthampton, MA’s Feeding Tube Records is home to some of the weirdest sounds in the world and even more impressive/nuts is that FT puts out just about every release on thick vinyl in pro-printed jackets. If that isn't dedication... Case in point, I got two LPs here, one is a split by Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer and the other is Bag of Sand by West Mass band Zebu! so named because it’s a reissue of a CD-r originally packaged in a bag of sand.
This Hjuler/Baer record was first described to me as “really heady euro art shit (with the emphasis on shit.)” And, really, that’s pretty spot on. When I first opened it up I was greeted with a frightening, pixilated image of a man and woman who I assume are Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer. Then, turning the record over there’s a graphic painting of a hermaphrodite orgy. Yet, what is actually on the record is even weirder.
Kommissar Hjuler’s side “ONCE AGAIN concrete poetry (or was it the song?)” comes with a description that reads “a collage of US-american sound poetry, collected by Jean-Francois Bory, presented by Kommissar Hjuler und Frau.” Beginning with “Once again! Concrete poetry,” which quickly becomes a familiar refrain, Hjuler I assume introduces the piece as a collection of interesting developments in concrete poetry which spans the world. I don’t know anything about concrete poetry so I’m not really sure if these are samples or Hjuler's und Frau's own readings of various pieces of poetry. I’m leaning toward the latter though there may be samples in there as well. Hjuler growls through a distorted microphone which feeds back often and static always seems to be present though not always noticeable. The rapid repetition of “und schnitz(?)” around halfway through gives the piece an unusual but welcome rhythmic push. This thing is really just nuts and all over the place. I'm not sure how to describe what's going on other than to say that. When Hjuler starts reciting the English alphabet I’m not really sure what’s going on, not that I had any idea before. Is that part of a poem he’s reading or is he just practicing his English? When he’s speaking about the clumping animal and the agency of the typewriter, what the fuck is he talking about? I feel my questions are doomed to go unanswered. The track has a very stark, claustrophobic nature and, to be honest, it's a little scary. This Kommissar dude seems like someone which, if I saw him, might cause me to cross the street. Frau seems nice though. Near the end of the side they seem to get more agitated with more distorted growls and feedback whiting out the words they’re saying. Although, Hjuler reads surprisingly lucidly that “the text that is read is never the same for anyone” which catches me off guard as it makes total sense; it’s one last gasp of coherence before the all-consuming, distorto-clusterfuck that the side culminates in. Maybe I don’t need to say this but, what the fuck?
Mama Baer’s contribution is like a side of nursery rhymes by comparison. Her work is still pretty damn weird though. The description that comes along with this is “contains a lot of field recordings and Mama Baer’s voice/treatment.” Baer’s recorder also makes itself a mainstay. The first track “Alcoholisme – brut Part 1” is a much appreciated respite from the firebreathing of Hjuler’s side. There’s a bunch of spliced samples of European films or television shows nestled among a slowly looping percussion hit and wandering recorder. It’s strangely soothing for most of its duration. Baer’s voice pops up near the end of the track, after a brief bit where her voice is cut up, she sings in English though I can’t figure out what she’s singing about. The percussion loop picks up a little but the track abruptly drops off. The second part of “Alcoholisme – brut” features all of the elements of the first part plus a few more. This track is much more filled out with multiple layers of recorder, bits and pieces of electronic squelch along with samples and voice. At one point she duets with what sounds a manipulation of a recording of her voice. A cut-up, distorted recorder accompanies the duet though its volume fluctuates unexpectedly. Electronics and what sounds like someone scribbling very quickly with a marker or pencil appear for a while. Eventually there’s a strange but cool part where Baer constructs a melody out of various recordings of her singing “anymore.” It took me a little while to figure out what she was up to there but it’s quite cool once I figured out what she was doing. Anyway, that “anymore” bit gets all whipped up until disappears. The piece goes out on frantic manipulated samples and calming, echoing recorder and percussion loop. It’s definitely a strange side but much easier to get a handle on than side A.
I’d never heard Zebu! before which I’m kinda surprised by. Judging from this record they’re a pretty killer band. There isn’t any personnel info on the jacket but based on an accompanying drawing, it looks like there are two people in the band, someone on drums and someone on guitar, and there’s occasional vocals and electronics and whatnot as well. The record kicks off with “Jackets Don’t Mean a Thang” and auto-panned Velcro-squelch guitar/electronics. There’s a long build up before the crunchy drums enter. There’s a bit of free rock vibe for awhile before the band falls into blurry, fuzzy drones ultimately crawling out with a weirdly bluesy guitar solo and following freak out. A melody that the guitarist had been jamming on since the beginning becomes clear and it’s actually a rather pretty one when played with lucidity. The track almost ends up a punk song with fast drumming and vocals but the feedback is so out of control I’d be a stretch to call it that. “Thights” is a short simple song which begins with an a capella intro. “Rover the Radio, Over” is one of the LP's stand outs. Beginning with a weirdly afro-Caribbean vibe, or at least as afro-Caribbean has a two man free rock band can sound. The track is wrapped tightly in a blanket of static but the thunderous drumming and strange groovy melodies still come through loud and clear. Zebu! keeps things energetic and dynamic through it’s duration making for a pretty galvanizing jam. “Wow Oh Oh” is only around 40 seconds long and it’s basically a smattering of ideas that would all be great songs if developed. That track shifts suddenly into “Don’t Burn the House Down” a lovely piano and accordion duet which is quite shocking given how feedback-riddled this record is. Closing the side, “Pete Shakes the Floors” never totally lets loose, instead moving back and forth between tense passages of feedback and pounding drums though there’s a brief, riotous ending.
“Olleh Olleh” is basically an intro of one of Zebu!’s recordings played backwards ("Hello Hello" get it?) “Crawling through the Ropes” is another stand out jam. It sounds slightly cleaner so you can really witness the dexterity of the two performers. One of its strengths is the track always has a groove even during the noisy whirlwind freakout section. Near the end the drummer just goes off, giving shape to the bludgeoning noise. The rest of the side’s tracks clock in at 3 minutes or less, the first of which is “Back Tooth Heavy Numb” which is mostly guitar drones. “Enter” brings in a drum machine and keyboard providing another unexpected track. It’s mainly a duet between guitar and organ but there’s a continuous slot-machine keyboard loop in the background as well. “My Girls a Thug” is basically an intro to “My Head Feels like it has Ten Pounds of Sand in it.” “Head” is a loose rock jam, not particularly structured but, despite tempo changes, sticks to a 4/4 and chords thing. “Eat Banana:Lay the Drums & Wave at Thy Guitar” is actually introduced as “Peel Your Banana and Play Drums” so I’m not sure which is correct but it doesn’t really matter. The track marks the first real step towards song-like territory. It’s got some lyrics and a central guitar line supported by the drums. After the lethargic first half, the track opens up into a fuzzy free-guitar rave-up. “Bloody Lips” makes the full transformation in its minute-long duration. It’s a straight up punk jam and a good one that doesn’t betray Zebu!’s abnormalities. Anyone into crazy ass free rock or the more adventurous scuzzy basement punk spheres should do themselves a favor and check these guys out.
The Kommissar Hjuler/Mama Baer LP is pressed on 180 gram vinyl and is limited to 500 copies. The Zebu! LP is still available but only limited to 100. It also comes with a CD-r of the music and a hilarious insert.

ID M Theft Able/Cave Bears - Zone Y Ponds Y Sugars I've/Germicide [Feeding Tube]/Cave Bears – Jazz Hands [Serf Released]

This LP (well I have a CD-r version) unites two of the weirdest of North-eastern weirdos, ID M Theft Able and Cave Bears. Feeding Tube records, a certifiable weirdo in its own right which is also responsible for the best youtube channel ever (!), put it out.
Believe it or not, I’d never heard any of ID M Theft Able’s stuff before so needless to say I was excited to see what the hubbub was about. I have to say it surpasses my expectations (though I’m not sure what I actually “expected.”) Anyhow, his side is split into 5 tracks, the first being a short one balancing recordings of kids singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands” or whatever that song is called with eerie organ and crooning. The second track features all manners of percussive, noisy sounds with unintelligible vocals. It’s bizarre, cut-up shit but the dude’s pulling from so many places (samples of someone slurping, a field recording of a jungle?) that you can’t help but get into the madman energy. Plus there’s a recording of a drunken person calling someone a “jackass!” which makes me laugh pretty hard. The track returns often to a sample of what sounds like coins dropping and a haggard croon. Some sections capture the dynamics of aggressive harsh noise without completely drenching everything in distortion. Composing with such strange source material gives ID M’s music a much different, unique texture. It’s not just the source material though, it’s the skill with which he wields it that makes his work stand out. The third jam has gotta be the LPs single. It’s a weird little fucker that grooves relentlessly on a synth/percussion loop with strange samples and a croaking Tom Waits-ish voice (I’m guessing this is ID M himself) that’s making all the ladies swoon with his deep, soulful vowels. So damn weird but totally addictive. The next track is reminiscent of the second one but maybe a little sparser at times and at others indulges in more of the harsh noise vibes without getting too busy for a few plucked guitar/banjo notes here and there. The jowly grunts make another creepy appearance around halfway through over a short lived but strangely normal arrangement. Of course the track the veers back into sonic psychosis. The thing I dig about it though is it has a very, very loose verse/chorus structure. It’s not a pop song by any stretch of the imagination, but different segments that happened previously show up later. The final track messes around with slicing/dicing drum programming over a loop of mellow feedback. It’s actually pretty scaled back considering the audio onslaught that just occurred over the previous 15 minutes. It’s a nice respite though to end on a vaguely standard percussion+melody+voice-style piece. Dude’s got a great sense of proportion, what can I say. I don’t know how this stuff stacks up to his other work but I can say this is pretty damn good and I’m kinda bummed I wasted all this time not checking out his stuff. Really weird and really dense, and by the way has this guy had anything on Ultra Eczema yet?
Cave Bears turn in a 20 minute live recording called “Germicide” (EDIT: just discovered through some googling that this set consists entirely of Germs covers--hence the title--which is fuckin' rad as hell though I'll be damned if I can recognize any of them.) After the first song a riotous, scatterbrained guitar/drums/vox assault, which is around a minute twenty, the band says they’re done and a priceless moment occurs when an audience member exclaims “That’s it!? That’s all!?!!” in disbelief with a hint of feeling like the victim of unthinkable betrayal. Luckily Cave Bears continue on, eventually, after a long bout of amp hum and people shuffling around they get started, sort of. Nonsensical, slurred vocals eventually take the lead over a slippery snare drum and occasional input from guitar. There’s a great oddball guitar solo in there as well. Cave Bears seem to push rock music about as far as it will go while still being categorize-able as rock music. Their “pop” songs have a weirdly amorphous quality where the songs move in a general direction but each of the instruments kinda bobs and weaves in it’s own way down the same path. It’s surprisingly listenable cause most of the bands that go for the non-pop music thing just end up making shitty pop music. It’s also amorphous in the way that (besides the initial song) the other songs just kind of stretch and blur seamlessly or organically into the next ramshackle stomp. I wonder what it’s like to see these guys play with the relentlessly buoyant drummer, the angular skronk mechanics of the guitarist and whoever is doing the blank, sloshed vocals. Each element seems in it’s own world at times which weirdly makes sense in the all-enveloping Cave Bears world they’re playing in so I wonder how that essence manifests itself in the physical world.
This tape entitled Jazz Hands is one of the many CB cassettes put out on their label Serf Released. This tape is really anything-goes with the only possible guideline being the material must be recorded on degraded tape. In the first piece there’s weird disco or techno or something mixed alongside drum solos and jazzy guitar chords all shrouded in a perma-static blanket. The second piece is only a minute long but touches on slow piano pieces and frantic drum machine programming. The third piece has a bit of an ID M Theft Able vibe with scrambled, gnarled tape noise and frenetic rhythmic wrecks. The track moves between searing, noisy sections, mellow slowed tape loop segments and other parts with a vigorous drummer pounding away excitedly. A bit of a live recording is spliced in there. What I appreciate about a lot of the bands in New England is that you never really know what the hell you’ll hear next. Don’t know if it’s something in the seafood or what but nothing is off-limits for these people and more often than not it’s pretty good stuff. This piece moves into a killer nearly hypnotic section before segueing into broken down sing-alongs and split second clips of R&B. I love the next piece (these are just “pieces” as I determine them, there’s no tracklist) which is a recording a little over a minute of some small accordion-led ensemble. It’s steeped in grainy static and I literally don’t know where they found it but it provides a fleeting, melodic lilt in the middle of tape; an excellent choice to include it. The next piece consists of a series of screams that I don’t much care for at first but around halfway through something begins to accompany the screams though everything is so blown out and fuzzy I really can’t say what it is. Despite that though it gives the jam a strong rhythmic presence. The next one is a really fuckin’ zonked (due to pitch shifting) banjo and voice duet that I guess would qualify as a ballad, barely. I like an odd little keyboard piece that pops in the second half that segues into Forbbiden Planet-ish spaced out synth warbles. Next piece ends up with a jaunty little banjo-led ditty which yields to the wild noise and cheers of the second half. The next piece underneath all the warped electronics is a couple of acoustic instruments and a stereo playing Texan blues. The tape closes with a repetition of a 4-second loop of free jazz. The flipside has also blown out, also awesome foreign-language pop music that ranges just about every badass popular musical form from 50s rock n’ roll to Tex-mex(!). I have no idea who the band is but it sounds like something from Asia, maybe Thailand, but it’s seriously pretty fucking awesome. Even if you can’t get into the Bears’ loopiness I guaran-goddamn-tee you you’d love this stuff. Total bonus.
So yeah, in conclusion, Jazz Hands is a weird fucking tape but quite charming overall. It’s what you might expect from a band that defines songwriting as “a collaboration between tape and a magnet” (one of the few revealing nuggets I dug up on their website which is as befuddling as their music)
Both items are still available and look amazing!