Duncan Harrison - Shit Barrel Scraping

A while ago, I went out to meet an old man for his birthday having made him a tape of junky shit as a token gift. The jams went on both sides of some Blackstreet cassette (which, truth be told, I was a bit sad to part with) and were cruddily recorded into a purple karaoke tape machine. I ripped it after recording incase anything good was on it and decided yesterday upon listening back that I'd upload it here for anyone who wants it. I quite like it, it's way lo-fi dumb collage shit that does all and everything. On here is creepy creaking, mock raga love, stupid tape looping and some other shit that is probably best described as a 100% Skaters cat-fest.

Whatever though, have it, hear it, do what you want with it. A lot of what's going on with these jams will probably be done live or on a recording again anyway, and I might take some of the best 'cuts' from this and use 'em elsewhere.

For now though,

GET THERE

GET THERE (via Mediafire)

Illegible Thai mania

Wow, well this is an interesting one. On a charity shop voyage one often finds bizarre and intriguing cassettes penned in exotic, foreign alphabets that they can't read or understand for shit. Many times over these have turned out to be boring Eastern European pop ballad offerings which are good for a 30 second laugh then get taped over. I expected as much with this but got it anyway after being convinced by my friend that it was worth it. Plus it has a nice yellow box which is a plus.

Anyhow, when I popped this bad boy in I was instantly blown apart by the distilled cool which began to emit from my purple tape player. Imagine my delight when I found that in place of Eastern European cack lay a long tape of blissful and trippy Thai islander pop. All of these songs come over as a gorgeous and odd Thai take on fruity Calypso and skanky Reggae like jams, all the while retaining a very Asian quality. There is comical wailing from the male/female team, floaty clarinet and other horn work, metallic clang and rattle driving the rhythm and all manner of other tangible vibe creation. It's actually quite hard to do justice to with a description but this one is a beach banger that all the lofi ethnic weirdness lovers will die over.

Of equal interest to the music is it's mysterious, info free origin. What the fuck is this and how did it get here? The best I have been able to gather is that the label which put this out (Rota Records-Tapes LTD) is/was a Thai/Chinese manufacturer of all kinds of Asian music with releases that number in the hundreds. There is no English at all on the J-card and there is a handstamped 'Rota Records-Tapes LTD' emblem which, excruciatingly, becomes unreadable by the time it reaches what appears to be a date of release. GUTTED. Anyhow, I'm sure if I could read the cover it'd all become clear, so anyone who can help with that please get in touch. Also, anyone who can shed light on Rota or related stuff should also let me know.

P.S. Apologies for the shit photo and lack of titles/artist/album info. I hope the ID3 tage of 'Awesome thai thing' will suffice.

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The Rita, Toby Dammit, Fecalove - Collaboration

This collaboration between shark loving, Canadian noise hero The Rita and Italian pervs Toby Dammit & Fecalove came out as a one sided cassette a few years ago on Turgid Animal.
Limited to only 30 copies it sold out pretty quickly and I was definitely lucky to get one at the time, so what better way to give back to my community that to make a crusty rip of it and upload it to a sparsely visited blog?

The sound here is a nasty as you might imagine, having any prior experience to these artists. Rumbling and destructive low end meets sick, sexy eye-tie screech and vocalisations.
Being the morbid concept inclined cats they are, this kicks off with a track using samples from interviews regarding the case of Tommaso Onofri. Not nice at all, but you know how this shit works.

I divided this into the 3 tracks it claims to be made of in the inlay but might have gotten it wrong what with the pretty seamless flow of the tape. If you've got a problem with that let me know and I can try to advise you on how to be less of a fassy.


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Fuckin' Amateurs - Fuckin' 50? x6 CDR box set

Well well, sorry it's been such a long time since my last proper upload. To make it up, I decided to present to you this incredible box set.

Colour Out of Space 2009 was a magnificent highlight of the year, showcasing tonnes of incredible acts in a relaxed and amiable atmosphere for 3 days of drunk and sedated bliss. As well as a shitload of memorable sets and interchanges, something that made me leave the festival feeling pretty fucking good about noise and life was the fact that this beauty of a CDR box set was given to me for free by one of the nice guys manning the merchandise. Apparently he hails from in and around Newcastle where this set of Fuckin' Amateurs operate. Other than just recognising the name of the label and knowing of one or two bands that aren't Romance, my only real experience of noise from North East way is a chance meeting I had with a couple of lads at a Slogun show in London a few years ago. They danced, wrestled, knocked gear over and got accordingly choked out by a pretty tough American, but kindly found time to organise giving me a CDR with a razorblade dangling off it. The guy who made the music on the disc was called Wrest. He's on here beating the shit out of a bass guitar.

Over these 6 discs is spread an overwhelming plethora of music, all at once brutal, beautiful, bemusing and bootlegged. Amazing and powerful drone pieces lay sandwiched between crunchy harsh slices of din, oddball cut up found sounds and scuzzed out Brown Ale swigging trash blues. Not only that but you have a couple of discs which focus on live recordings of heads like Mechanical Children, Birds of Delay and Jazzfinger associates as well as terrifying and confusing dictaphone sleaze. But this really is the tip of the iceberg when considering what's packed into the whole set. A set which I can only describe as a true D.I.Y. labour of under appreciated experimental love. Fuck off.

I've had to break this down into 5 parts and the files might be pretty big, but that's what you get for high quality MP3 rips AND id3 tag track information I inputted myself from the inlays that I can't scan. It's very worth it in any event.

Other than that they put out free/cheap noise and enjoy drinking and bootlegging, I dunno much about Fuckin' Amateurs. Finding the act of Googling the bastards difficult to perform without invoking page after page of lewd and unrelated results, I'm happy enough to keep it that way. Still, they have a discogs page and anyone can feel free to contact me and fill me in on their grim legend.

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UPDATE: Turns out somehow I was able to make the RAR while missing out disc 1 entirely...weird. Anyway, here is the link for the missing disc. Apologies!

Disc 1

Shuffle Shuffle Vol.2

Yes mon petit frilous, I am back with another Shuffle Shuffle. Please forgive my lack of updates, I'm tremendously flaky. But I'll have some big treats for y'all in the new year in an attempt to give back to the blogging community.

Today we have a special treat in a guest edition of shuffle shuffle compiled by Mr. Final Church whose earsplitting noise bubbles can be heard at
http://www.myspace.com/thefinalchurch

Final Church also runs the Fragment label who I just discovered recently. It turns out they put out nice lookin' noisey CDRs and are gearing up for a pretty fucking sweet load of new releases next year. Brit noise is being repped up in that batch so get there and check it out for yourself.
http://fragmentfactory.blogspot.com/

And now to the Shuffle. I haven't heard it myself yet so lord only knows what this is gonna be like! Hope everyone gets down to it's secretive contents.

Shuffle Shuffle Vol.2 Compiled by Final Church // Fragment.

Eight 4xCS box set

This wonderful box set here came out in summer 07 as part of a split project by Carnifex Recordings and Harbinger Sound. With Harbinger being one if not THE best UK noise labels, I was instantly interested, so imagine the glee when I learned that this box set was in fact a series of 4 cassettes, one side each taken up by the likes of Nackt Insecten, Usurper, Romance, Dieter Muh, Cheapmachines, Jazzfinger, Astral Social Club and Britannia Anonymous Society. Though, of course, I had only gotten to know the work of a few of these artists at the time, I jumped all over buying this now deleted item (which also came with a Harbinger Sound pin, excellent!)
And as for the sounds? fughettabaughtit....this right here is a cracking mix of superb UK noise playas. I guess it's just the very slight part of me that cares about being an English cat, but I'm always interested in noise and weirdness from this part of the world. I always find a slightly more excentric and odd edge to it which I love. Anyway, as you might assume from the range for artists, there is a vast mixture of styles going on, from noisy, colourful drones, acoustic scraping and minimal buzzing, all the way over to true harsh noise dynamism (Romance, I'm looking at you).

A thorough recommendation for anyone who wants to hear a lovely bit of recent UK noise history. Obligatory preferential shouts go out to the Romance, Usurper, Cheapmachines and Nackt Insecten offerings, though of course all the stuff here is top notch.

I've learned how to do RARs now so here it is in two parts for yo' listening pleasures.

Part 1

Part 2

Shuffle Shuffle Vol.1

Welcome to the beginning of a new and hopefully very regular feature to the blog. Welcome to SHUFFLE SHUFFLE

This series will consist of compilation albums made as a result of listening to about 1 hr of music with my iTunes set on shuffle. The uploads will be untouched and played in the exact order as they randomly appeared with no songs omitted*, hopefully making for a fun and bizarre range of tracks. Also, the track list will be included only as a text file within the uploaded zip, leaving the listener with no idea as to what delights they may be downloading until they have it. Will it be a mind melting eclectobomb set to water the mouths of even the broadest pallets? or will be be a total shitpile of embarrassing and uncohesive crap best consigned to the trash can? You're a few clicks away from finding out.

I encourage all those who download to act similarly and set up their own shuffle shuffles (post the upload link in the comments) and share in this potentially dangerous musical exploration. Just be sure to STICK TO THE DAMN RULES cos you wouldn't want to carry the burden of white hot guilt at having cheated around for the rest of your life would you?

I'll be asking special guests to contribute to this series too, so stay tuned and keep your eyes peeled for more, SHUFFLE SHUFFLE.

Download Shuffle Shuffle Vol.1


* The idea for this series is to reveal an unaltered glimpse into the depths of your randomised mp3 collection, so please stick to this plan and don't remove the embarrassing Linkin Park track you downloaded back when you first got a computer. The only instance in which tracks can be removed is in the event that you make music and one of your shitty, unfinished demos or 40 second drum loops you were experimenting with gets included. No one wants to hear that shit, especially not from my collection...so if you don't want these in, feel free to remove them. Anything else = FAIR GAME PUNK