Pierpaolo Zoppo (Mauthausen Orchestra)
1963-2012

Don Preston - Filters, oscillators & envelopes 1967-82

Sub Rosa vinyl/cd 2012

One could hardly not see in Don Preston a key musician within Frank Zappa's oeuvre. He is not only that, but his presence has marked The Mothers' major records from 1966 to 1974. His touch was already there before the arrival of Ian Underwood, and it continued after Ian left. You all remember King Kong (its magnificence as interpreted by Dom DeWild) from the second Uncle Meat suite. A certain form of jubilation emanates from this track, thanks to Preston's fluid style and lightly astringent tone on the Moog synthesizer - that instrument never sounded quite like that before or after. This might have to do with his double training, his twin interests, since he had been simultaneously working with Gil Evans and listening intensely to Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Tod Dockstader. Immersed in jazz music, he was imagining secret ties with the nascent electronic music.

In the mid-'60s, Preston started developing an electronic instrument, using a home-made synthesizer and a series of oscillators and filters. Out of this instrument came Electronic (1967), his first piece. Two years later, he became a close friend of Robert Moog, and their discussions gave birth to a number of applications in relation with the flexibility of the instrument. Nowadays, you can't mention the Mini-Moog without thinking of Preston. Bob Moog himself said about his solo in Waka Jawaka: "That's impossible. You can't do that on a Moog.". Filters, Oscillators & Envelopes features the other side, the hidden side of Don Preston: the composer of purely electronic music.

Annette Peacock - I'm the one (1972)

FDR vinyl/cd reissue 2012

“I’m the one, you don’t have to look any further. I’m the one. I’m here, right here for you,” oozes jazz, rock, and electronic music pioneer Annette Peacock on the leadoff title track of her solo debut LP. The album’s wide range of vocal emotions and diverse sonic palette (featuring Robert Moog’s early modular synthesizers, which the singer actually transmitted her voice through to wild effect) places it firmly at the forefront of the pop avant-garde. Originally released by RCA Victor in 1972 to widespread critical acclaim, I’m The One found itself amongst good company. Both Lou Reed and David Bowie had recently signed to the label—Bowie in particular was enamored with Annette—and artists ranging from ex-husband and jazz great Paul Bley, along with notable Brazilian percussionists Airto Moreira and Dom Um Romao, guested on the album itself. Writing and arranging I’m The One’s nine passionate tracks—bar a unique cover of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”—the disc grooves easily from free jazz freak-outs and rough and rugged blues-funk to gently pulsing synthesized bliss.An extension of Annette’s late 1960s work with her Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show combo, I’m The One is filled with strength and power, as well as a tender, sensual, and seductive side, born of a life surrounded with music and culture. Composing by age four, Peacock’s mother was a professional violinist. By the early 1960s, Annette had also collaborated with first husband, jazz bassist Gary Peacock and toured with legendary saxophone player Albert Ayler. Studying under Zen macrobiotics educator Michio Kushi and a confidant to Timothy Leary at the Millbrook psychedelic center, Peacock later worked, post-I’m The One, with rock stalwarts like guitarists Mick Ronson and Chris Spedding, Yes/King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford, as well as surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

The second release on our Future Days Recordings imprint, I’m The One will be available on CD and LP, re-mastered from the original tapes with a booklet containing beautiful unseen photos from the vaults of Sony Music and extensive liner notes from NYC-based writer and musician, Mikey ‘IQ’ Jones. The LP is limited to 1,000 hand-numbered copies and sports a deluxe Stoughton “Tip-On” jacket with a unique spot UV gloss and includes the same booklet as the CD plus a folded 18″ x 24″ poster of a never-before-seen photo of Annette.

LOWER DENS - Nootropics 

Ribbon Music vinyl/cd 2012

There are bands who arrive fully formed and there are those who take a little while to find their footing. Sometimes all it takes is one song. In the case of Baltimore's Lower Dens, who are fronted by onetime folk eccentric Jana Hunter, that track was "Brains". Released in advance of this record, the single added krautrock and electronic touches to the group's signature guitar swirl and suggested a new dimension and a new confidence. Everything hit with more impact: the drumming was crisper, Hunter's singing was richer and more evocative, and there was an extra layer of prettiness, but also menace. The message seemed to be, "Here's a band you can't ignore anymore."

Nootropics strengthens that argument, building on the promise of "Brains" and vastly widening the band's sonic palette. Richly detailed, dark, and ethereal, the album is a feast for sound-first listeners drawn to expressive shifts in color and tone. To suggest that it's a creative step forward for Lower Dens is not to knock their 2010 debut, Twin-Hand Movement, which was a fine album but pretty specific in its appeal. (A moody nighttime listen, ideal for a 2 a.m. drive home by yourself or a late-night glass of whisky.) Nootropics is at once more inclusive and varied, though. And the band achieves this by pulling a clever trick: taking some of the most well-loved elements of the rock canon and making them their own.

"I listened to Radioactivity by Kraftwerk pretty much constantly while writing this record, and... we listened to a lot of Eno and Fripp and the Iggy Pop record that David Bowie produced," Hunter said in an interview. And you can certainly hear those influences at play. Robotic synths, ambient drift, stark percussion-- many of the touchstones of 1977 art rock are on display in tracks like "Lamb" and "Candy". It doesn't feel like by-the-numbers mixtape-ism, though, partly because Hunter's singing is too dynamic to allow for that. Her androgynous voice can be airy and lilting or times throaty and masculine, and it lends an eerie otherness to the songs. Even when backed by a simple motorik bassline, Hunter sounds beamed-in from somewhere else.

This is one of those albums that creates its own little sound world, and a lot of its appeal has to do with qualities like texture and atmosphere. These are terms so overused in music writing that they've nearly lost their meaning, but here they're important. Take for example the very tactile percussion of "Alphabet Song". Snares and cymbals click-click-click like someone with long, fake fingernails tapping on a car window. Or go back to "Brains", which does an excellent job of building tension and transferring energy with those outward-spinning guitars. For a while they kind of chime in place, but then right before the chorus hits, they step down an octave and there's an exhale. The mood changes and takes you along with it.

With so much attention on the sonics it can be easy to ignore the words, and actually I'd say the lyrical content is the record's least interesting aspect. In that same interview from above, Hunter discussed the subject matter, going into some heady stuff about Dada and transhumanism and "denying our animal selves." I'm not sure what she meant, and I'm not sure that it matters. This isn't an album about a specific narrative, it's about sounds and colors and the way a synth tone or cryptic string of words hits you and makes you feel something. When the guitars are chugging and the drums are crackling and Hunter sings, "When I finally let my guard down, I was in the middle of the sea and drowning," I don't know what she means exactly, but it gives me goosebumps. Every time. (8.2 - Pitchfork.com)

FACTRIX - Scheintot (1981)

Superior Viaduct vinyl/cd  reissue 2012

Arguably the most prescient band of the entire late 70's San Francisco underground, FACTRIX released just one 7-inch and two pioneering LP's in the early 80's. Formed in 1978 by Cole Palme (one-time member of the LAFMS group AIRWAY) and Bond Bergland (later of SAQQARA DOGS), the two initially called themselves MINIMAL MAN and performed a handful of shows along with Patrick Miller (who would go on to have a great solo career under the MM moniker). Soon they enlisted bassist Joseph T. Jacobs (BAY OF PIGS) and emerged from their Mission-district basement with their own unique take on the burgeoning English and New York post-punk scenes. The results were throbbing walls of damaged electronics, grim lyrical musings, droning bass, piercing guitar, and a modified Roland CR-78 played at 1/4 its slowest speed. FACTRIX's sole "studio" album, 1981's Scheintot, is a dark, moody, and penetrating work that grows more contemporary every year. Genuinely disturbing at times and often disorientating, it filters the influence of peers such as CABARET VOLTAIRE and DNA through the sonic and structural sensibilities of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND. An underappreciated masterpiece of the early industrial/no wave era, Scheintot is a record that compels the listener to lift the needle from the run-out groove and listen again and again. Julian Cope describes it best: "FACTRIX's Scheintot deserves to be experienced several times, preferably in the darkness and in a state of near exhaustion (and/or informed by psychoactive chemicals)." This first time reissue comes from the original analog source. LP with gatefold insert.