C.S. Yeh / Transitions - 4000373

Having rattled the hinges with last year’s “In the Blink of an Eye” 7-inch, C S Yeh (C. Spencer Yeh) flings open the door and steps inside with Transitions, his first full-length album of songs after years of establishing himself as one of Earth’s top humans in experimental music and unbound improvisation, both alone and in collaboration, on record and onstage.

The effect Transitions has on you may or may not depend on your familiarity with Yeh’s past work; regardless, his path in music has always been about and rather than or. And the addition to his catalog of work that Transitions represents is nothing short of startling: songs that flit between sculpted guitar riffs and measured, just-shy-of-lush synth-pop; wry lyrics delivered in guileless tones; the remarkable fact that Yeh made every sound on the record. All the same, his most ardent fans will have little trouble understanding the move and recognizing this distinct voice. Its plainspoken confidence and intrepid spirit are as present as when he’s carving drones or emitting speckled and serrated noise; Transitions is simply a different form of Yeh’s unmediated expression. As you’d guess, for a career outside guy really coming inside for the first time, Transitions involved quite a bit more behind the scenes strategizing than it would for some indie band on its third album. Think of how English can sound so jarringly beautiful on the tongue of non-native speakers: Everything fits even when, maybe especially because things might seem ever so slightly off. Thus we have a new language of melodies, ones of a spirit with say, Slapp Happy, but which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Magnetic Fields record. Ultimately, the pop heart on display is characterized by the artful mind behind it — and besides, when we say pop are we talking popular, or populist? Perhaps the space we’re trying to sketch here could be found between the artists covered on Transitions: Father Yod and the Spirit of ‘76, and Stevie Nicks. Perhaps citing the varied examples of Jim O’Rourke, Dave Gahan and the aforementioned Peter Blegvad in artful songcraft could be useful (whether or not they were inspirations). Perhaps we’re not talking about a space at all, but instead a particular sort of freedom in a music landscape defined by cages and enclosures. Questions, questions — what do we know, we’re only observers. All that’s really clear is that C. Spencer Yeh is transitioning into, not away from.

Released: November 30, 2012

Robust Worlds / Emotional Planet - 4000372

Chris Rose’s Robust Worlds has impressed us since first glimpse. He was actually barefoot, if you can believe that, and his set had the feel of a way more lysergic Kevin Ayers. It was freezing fucking cold and I’m pretty sure he wore a Hawaiian shirt. His debut LP is called Emotional Planet, and it’s deceptively simple. Voice, guitar, some noisey shit, whatever. His playing is sick — fluid, unforced, warm, soothed and soothing. It’s a bath you don’t want to exit. Seriously, if yr going to play guitar, play it like he does. With a trick in his back pocket and a Heavy Moon on his mind, Rose utilizes the sort of neo-noir narratives that you hear thru Neil Michael Hagerty, James Jackson Toth, Kurt Vile and other keen observers. Handguns, b&e, two-lane black tops, love, lust, and hard drugs. Life: summed up !

Released: November 30, 2012

Volunteers Park / Tragic Pote - 4000374

Tragic Pote B/W Jerusalem Stone

Aviram Cohen is a jerk. Who cares if he was in SIlk Flowers, Soiled Mattress and The Springs, or that he has a new project called Volunteers Park ? You can tell that his parents are immigrants. He’s a suburbanite from New Jersey, and now, another New Yorker with an attitude, who learned how to use a sequencer to program synths and drum machines, so that he can sing about how boring life can be. It’s like he’s creating all this atmosphere because it’s lacking in his life. It sounds like someone is blasting the 80’s station out of their car, while parked under the subway overpass and the train is roaring by overhead. Nobody gives a fuck so we jumped in and put some money behind it. That’s how we roll in a most general sense.

Released: October 4, 2012

Wet Hair / Spilled Into Atmosphere - 4000378

Hey kid, need a lift? Like, right up off the ground? Spill into Atmosphere is the freshest whitecap in the crashing-upward wave known as Wet Hair, the Midwestern duo-cum-trio that’s been holding it down for years as a multi-stop repeat-shop-‘n-hop psych-pop pin-drop right there in the dead center of everything and/or nothing, Iowa City. The Wet Hair discography having spired itself to a respectable vantage – shared releases with such powers as Rene Hell, Naked on the Vague and Peaking Lights, both via frontmensch Shawn Reed’s Night People imprint and others – Spill into Atmosphere becomes the band’s second full-length with De Stijl. There is motion here, oh yeah – circling swirls of lighter-than-air energy, born aloft on propellers of foam yet anchored to earth with thunder-clap rhythms and Reed’s heady bellow. Spill into Atmosphere gives you that feeling you had when you finally mastered the controls on your hovercraft: You’re both in it and above it.

Augmenting the core of singist-synther Reed and drummer Ryan Garbes is Justin Tye (replacing Matt Fenner, from previous album In Vogue Spirit-era), no mere third wheel but Wet Hair’s very own sort of Peter Hook (not counting all the Judas stuff), his unique melodic signature flying in formation with the band’s but also peeling off into flights that relate to the silk wheels of the synths but compliment them, guide them, support and distort and report to them. No longer is the only way up – the only way is every way. And from this altitude, Wet Hair can hear for miles.

Released: July 26, 2012

Samara Lubelski / Wavelength - 4000376

First Lady of Winds and Stars Samara Lubelski returns to her once and future label home for her sixth album, Wavelength, and the spheres harmonize at the news. Wavelength comprises a dozen new arrowed whispers, Samara’s feathery touch on guitar and microphone now so at balance with the elements that the whole, her music and the air it enters, become inseparable. Don’t be fooled by the persistent “psych-folk” labels she gets — oh, they may be accurate as far as modern usage goes, and that scene is now as it was then, but Wavelength is an electric record through and through: Everything comes to life in light, the guitar speaking in radiant strums and felt-tip leads, her violin calling up everything that glows and grows in the dark. Funny how Nature always seemed to work everything out fine on Her own before we showed up, huh?

Wavelength was engineered and recorded by Samara herself at Sumsilobatem in Germany, aside from the drums being set down by Aaron Mullan at Echo Canyon; Nicolas Vernhes mixed at Rare Book Room. While Wavelength arrives three years after her previous studio LP, Future Slip (Ecstatic Peace), trust that Samara’s been busy in the since, playing violin all over the map (and a fair ways off it) with Thurston Moore’s band; sharing stages and an album, Sunday Night, Sunday Afternoon (on Graham Lambkin’s Kye label), with Marcia Bassett; adding to Unrock’s series of live CD-R’s in 2010; and having hand and wand in countless engineering projects. Samara has been a quietly reliable presence in New York’s underground realm for a good many years; if you’re in music in NYC and haven’t crossed paths with her, we think you might be doing it wrong. But a Wavelength is always there for you, all you need do is get on it.

Released: July 25, 2012

Black to Comm / Earth - 4000379

Most of the Black To Comm’s 7th LP EARTH was composed under the influence of heavy pain killers while recovering from a broken leg. It’s unfortunate to have to blow those on actual, physical pain, but EARTH was built on broken bones. The music (like the film) is about slowness and decay, states of unconsciousness, sleeping and waking up, dying and being reborn. The film is basically a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Géricault) — the music tries to translate that concept employing similar collage-based sampling techniques using loops made from vintage vinyl and shellac records combined with acoustic and electronic instrumentation and voice. EARTH puts me in mindset similar to that evoked by Gifts era Loren Connors and Scott Walker’s Tilt, and we’re as excited to be working with Marc as you will be to spin EARTH.

Released: March 6, 2012

Jakob Olausson / Morning and Sunrise - 4000380

Jakob Olausson’s ?Morning and Sunrise? CD from De Stijl Records

Released: December 15, 2011

Stare Case / Lose Today - 400382

Lose Today wields the ethereal meditative power leftover from The Velvet Underground’s Sweet Sister Ray epic bootleg. The result: a melodious somnolent grievance that leaves the listener to feast on a curiously endless and internal banquet. Young snarls and writhes in irritated spiraling pronouncements that trail off in regretful, pained fashion, producing the same eventual something-isn’t-right that The Velvet Underground secured, but set aside to allow the Michigan basement bluesmen to borrow. Also, here is Young’s virgin performance on bass, a venture that proves suiting as his sparse yet stable meanderings are the backbone to a jam lost in the arcane. At times the bass lines seem to be counting off the seconds until an eventual meltdown. Meanwhile, Olson wanders off on woodwinds, seemingly tangled in wavelengths, letting his own sounds guide him through a brassy chilling darkness. He follows scales—Indian scales, blues scales—though the subtlety of Olson’s discipline fosters to an expansive intimacy, a nuance so massive his quips on flute and saxophone are the secret architects of Lose Today’s meditation. Olson takes the spiraling mania inspired by the likes of The VU’s Sweet Sister Ray lose-all jam and lets it blossom into a soundtrack for a secret think tank whose sole purpose is to maintain a shadowed fire.

Released: September 22, 2011

Hertta Lussu Assa / Hertta Lussu Assa - 4000383

Gnomic no-fi plunk, wheeze, rattle and moan courtesy of an unfortunately monikered (well…at least to English language readers anyway…it probably means something just lovely in Finnish…) supergroup comprised of Jonna Karanka aka Kuupuu, Laura Naukkarinen aka Lau Nau and Merja Kokkonen aka Islaja that draws from the seemingly eternal well of stoned detuned mischief that feeds the viaducts of the Finnish underground. The sheer density of acts positing variants on this same post-Amon Duul / Siloah-like freakout stylee there gives rise to questions of bandwagon hopping, but that’s a discussion for another time. For the here and now, this first release of theirs is a choice manifestation of heavy-lidded third-mind acoustic weirdity that’s as ungainly as it is mystically/chemically blasted.

Released: August 16, 2011

Circuit des Yeux / Portrait - 4000384

Portrait is Haley Fohr’s third LP and a massive step in her growth as a musician and artist. While pursuing a degree in recording and ethnomusicology she has become proficient in the studio. The result—radically unexpected qualities of cohesion and hi fidelity posit Portrait’s narratives in a space that we’ve yet to experience. This sort of playing the game in the way that the game is usually played, I think is usually called a sell-out. And had her intent faltered to the slightest degree that conclusion might be apropos. But it’s merely an effort to strip the canvas bare and get face to face with things. And it’s Haley’s intent that continues to be championed, as it has endured the acts of recording and performing and yet still stands strong and pristine. the rare qualities of strength and character can only be attributed to a rare artist. The modest, clarion sparkle of Portrait would not have been expected, or even achievable, considering the arc of Symphone and Sirenum, and it stands as a cornerstone and a monument, a testament to the daily practice of channeling her 21 yr old, roiling emotions into sound recordings.

Released: August 16, 2011

Michael Yonkers / Microminiature Love - SP508

Originally recorded in 1968 and slated for release on Sire Records, Microminiature Love languished unreleased until unearthed and issued by De Stijl Records as a limited, vinyl-only pressing in 2002. Our friends at Aquarius Records had the following to say about the original vinyl release:

“An obscure late-sixties ahead-of-his-time visionary gets his due with this LP reissue. Yonkers’ stuff was like nothing anyone had heard back then (or even now really): fucked-up garage psych with dementedly genius lyrics and crazy acid-fried guitar. Yonkers, a legendary Minneapolis-area figure, built his own effects pedals, cut his Fender Telecaster down to a plank, and played like no one else ever. I’m at a loss of words on how to describe this. It’s sort of like a fusion of stripped down Black Sabbath, The Troggs, Pere Ubu, and The Cramps??”

The July 22, 2003 CD reissue includes six bonus tracks not found on that first pressing of the LP.

Microminiature Love: finally back on vinyl!
Sub Pop’s Aug. 16, 2011 vinyl reissue will present the album in its original 7-song version. And, all six of the bonus tracks from the CD will be available in the download that comes with this LP. Proceeds from the sales of this LP reissue will benefit the Andy Kotowicz Family Foundation.

Released: 2003-07-22 (CD), 2003-07-22 (MP3s), 2011-08-16 (LP)

Wet Hair / In Vogue Spirit - 4000386

With their recent split with Naked on the Vague acting as a dip into pop’s waters; Wet Hair’s follow up, In Vogue Spirit is practically a jump into the pool. The band’s most accessible batch of tunes to date boil with Krautrock rhythms, buzzing synths, and a new focus on vocals that has previously been mostly absent in the band’s back catalog. It’s not all motion and melody here though, the band still retains their experimental spirit, giving the record plenty of teeth to sink into any of those rising hooks. Along with contemporaries Lumerians and Moon Duo; In Vogue Spirit stands to gain a pretty solid footing in 2011’s nod to the German progressive underground. The video for “Echo Lady” conveys the band’s psychedelic aesthetic with shifting shots of glare and kaleidoscopic nature walks.

~Andy French
Raven Sings The Blues

Released: June 14, 2011

Jerusalem & the Starbaskets / Dost - 4000385

Jeremy Freeze is a Memphis born songwriter who has spent the last few years in Columbia, Missouri playing and recording with Kim Sherman as Jerusalem and the Starbaskets. Before yr preconceived notions of Missouri make things cloudy, consider the Black Artist Group, Screamin’ Mee Mees, Drunks with Guns, Gene Clark and a whole lot of other shit that you don’t know about get in the way. Lest there be other confusion, my friend Oliver, this 65 year old dude from Kashmir, told me DOST means “brother man”. So basically, DOST is “friend” but a more familiar way of the word. Just so happens that it’s the phonetic same as “dosed”. One crystalline thing herein is the Jams. Freeze has reached that point where he’s saying more by saying less and that’s a level that many songwriters never reach. After a few yrs of playing gigs with Times New Viking, Wooden Wand and a short list of more or less limited releases, DOST is the bands first readily available release and we’re going to do our best to get it everywhere.

Released: June 14, 2011

C.S. Yeh / In the Blink of an Eye - 4000387

C S Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan, repped Cincinnati for many many years and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Musically, Yeh is monolithically active both as a solo artist and improviser as well as with Burning Star Core. He has made seemingly hundreds of recordings, and we’ve yet to find one rotten egg in the basket. Yeh has collaborated with an insanely varied list of people. If we were to actually drop these names, you’d be impressed / confused. But you have NOT heard the result of him writing songs, and for whatever reason the realization that he can do it and do it well is a shocker. So, aside from a 2002 EP documented by WHAT THE …?, this is yr first glimpse into the brightness of this aspect of his ever evolving talents.

Released: April 29, 2011

Hype Williams / Find Out What Happens - 4000392

Pilfered from the De Stijl website

What do we actually know about London duo Hype Williams? We can confidently assert that Roy Blunt (aka Roy Nnawuchi) and Inga Copeland (who may or may not go by the name Karen Glass) have released a handful of disarmingly excellent tracks over the past year or so, essaying an obscure, lo-fi form of dub-inflected half-pop as much akin to the post-Industrial funk of 23 Skidoo and early Cabaret Voltaire as the scratchy psych of The Skaters et al. We can accept that they have also operated under the names Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band and Paradise Sisters. But can we honestly believe that they’re the latest incarnation of an 18 year ‘relay project’ that was “conceived in 2005 by husband and wife motivational speakers Father Ronnie Krayola and Denna Frances Glass” and passed on to the duo for safekeeping? Given the pair’s tendency to confront straightforward questions with sarcasm and hiphop namedrops, it’s probably best to think of this tale as a ‘possible truth’.They’re even harder to pin down in sonic terms, slipping out from under your finger with reptilian agility. The description given above doesn’t take into account their deconstructions of Sade songs, the cavernous delay, the 20 year old synth presets, the use of everyday objects. None of the songs on their debut album appears to have a title, which only adds to its enigmatic charm. Its opening number brings to mind the sounds issuing from Olde English Spelling Bee, its clunking delayed rhythm, wobbly synths and opiated Eno/Sakamoto/Dolby melodies contriving a balmy, lo-fi art-pop atmosphere. But the duo subvert this glassy bliss with samples of a woman sobbing inconsolably, as if to gesture at a fly in the New Age tincture. Still, their capacity for off-base loveliness should not be underestimated. The third track proceeds at a dragging pace with an insidious, glutinous bassline and 1980s soundtrack keyboards, disrupted by coiling squalls of noise. Track four comes on like chopped ’n’ screwed Ofra Haza, her vocal cruelly replaced by mangled voice simulation software. It is sweaty, slick and sexy in a slightly soiled and compromised fashion, like unfinished coitus.A pitched down sample of Leonard Ravenhill introduces the fifth track: “There’s nothing this generation needs more than a baptism of old fashioned hellfire preaching… I’m sure of that.” The late British evangelist’s voice recalls that of right wing demagogue Unity Mitford’s on 23 Skidoo’s “Porno Base”. Like Mitford, Ravenhill’s words are set up for derision, yet nevertheless suggest a warning. Hype Williams express contempt for what they’ve called mystical shit, so perhaps this, along with recent download “Karen Hates The Forest”, is their rebuke to the esoteric symbolism entered into by peers such as Sun Araw, James Ferraro and Pocahaunted, whom their music so often recalls.Hype Williams are unmistakably concerned with physicality, pleasures of the flesh, and while their weed intake is allegedly prodigious, it offers no portal to another realm, merely an additional perspective on this one. Roy has said of the resurgence of New Age-informed music: “It’s got too much reverb and noise… I can’t talk dirty to my clients over the clink and clank of magic and rainbows.” The materialist mocking is all too familiar to those who can still bear to leaf through the pages of Vice, where libertarianism born from privilege bleeds into cruelty. Perhaps this is a necessary counterweight to the crystals and mandalas currently doing the rounds, but what makes much of today’s lo-fi intriguing is its flight from spiritual anomie towards an idea of the sublime, however ill-defined.Perhaps this vacuity provides the duo with the will-to-flux. At no point do they settle into a fixed style. There’s a softly padding drum machine, a vocal that is entirely submerged, simulated whalesong and more weeping on the seventh track, suggesting a sickened version of Tom Tom Club’s 1981 punk-funk classic “Genius Of Love”. The closing piece sashays in on a smooth, soupy groove like Sade’s “Smooth Operator” derailed by ill-fitting guitar and artificial flute. It’s like somebody flooded the wine bar with cough mixture.It’s fast becoming a meme for lo-fi savants to express a kinship with hiphop and R&B, from Daniel Lopatin’s recent canonisation of DJ Screw to 20jazzfunkgreats blogger and Tri Angle label founder Robin Carolan’s breathless ? and slightly suspect ? declaration that these forms produce what is “sonically at least really strange music. And there’s so much you can do with that.” Sometimes these claims ring true, as with Christopher Dexter Greenspan’s oOoOO; at other times they smack of coat-tailing. Hype Williams are in on the game, too. Their name is a dead giveaway, of course, deriving from the renowned director of videos for Busta Rhymes, Q-Tip and Nicki Minaj. Then there’s the namechecking of Cam’ron in interviews and the shout out to Sadat X in the title of a recent split with themselves as Paradise Sisters. While it’s true that some of their other work does indeed resemble severely water-damaged R&B, barely a single note of this album, or their recent Han Dynasty 7" for De Stijl, for whom a second album is apparently forthcoming ? sounds like hiphop as we know it. The only real overlap would be with the duo’s hazy nihilism and sensual flow. Perhaps those are the only elements Hype Williams require, stirring them into the pot along with similarly disconnected fragments, yielding music which fascinates largely because of its refusal to commit?

~ Joseph Stannard
The Wire

Released: March 24, 2011

Charlie Nothing / Inside Outside LP - 4000388

From the De Stijl website:
Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted.

The issuance of The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing by Takoma Records in 1967 marks a point of interest on the time-line which runs thru the 1960’s folk music boom. Home to then emerging acoustic guitar players John Fahey and Robbie Basho, Takoma had also published recordings by bluesmen Bukka White and Robert Pete Williams, a roster which situated the small Berkley imprint alongside bigger fish like Vanguard and Folkways as one of the era’s premier folk and blues oriented labels. While each Takoma release was presented with increasing esoteric flair, The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing quite simply ignored any standards of legitimate presentation. A near formless sidelong title track was backed w/ the slightly more ominous “In Eternity with Brother Fred”, both essentially sax instrumentals w/ touches of flute and swelling cymbals. Housed in a homespun black and white op-art jacket, these titles were the only information provided to accompany 35 minutes of music that despite it’s instrumentation owed little to jazz, and was certainly not folk. Seeming like a West Coast answer to the then fledgling ESP label in New York , the LP marked a departure for Takoma, who would go on to issue other non-folk/blues LPs (notable were two by Phil Yost, Bent City and Fog Hat Ramble, both also horn-oriented, eclectic instrumental records, albeit slightly more conventional than the Nothing LP). Perhaps a sign of the times, The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing remains the most enigmatic release in the original Takoma catalog, one that seemed destined to obscurity even in it’s inception. An anomaly in it’s setting and a seldom seen artifact.

So who was Charlie Nothing?

Considering an auspicious debut such as this as an indication of things to come, tracing the “career” which was to follow is nothing short of an invisible history lesson. A 7" single was made in ‘68, followed by a second LP in ’69, though gone now for good was the saxophone, along with the affiliation with Takoma. The We Are You EP was issued privately, documenting a barely discernable scat testimonial accompanied by plucking, bongos, and bells. Again, two sidelong instrumentals, this time flute-based, comprise Outside/Inside, the second and only other Charlie Nothing LP, issued by Everitt Enterprises. As to what extent either of these titles saw the light of day, it is difficult to gauge. With Venice Beach ca. ’60’s as the backdrop, a California Assemblage feel can be seen register in the presentation of these and subsequent releases. It would be likely, were you ever to actually see an original Charlie Nothing release, that it would bear the markings of having been mailed, addressed and otherwise customized by Charlie right on the jacket or sleeve. The resemblance of this practice to that of collage artist Wallace Berman & co. at this time helps to place Charlie’s operation in context, and sheds some light on the otherwise shady reasoning for committing this music to posterity. Suffice to say that as an indication of the goings on in certain West Coast sleazenick poetry circles, the documentation is invaluable. While in the case of David and Tina Meltzer’s Serpent Power lp, as well as Malachi’s Holy Music, there are certainly indications, nowhere on wax will you find more palpable preserved air of a real-time dropout scene than with these sides of Nothing. It is a wonder that these records circulated at all outside the vacuum in which they were created. Nothingness, a California existentiality looping back on itself, preserved and disseminated as evidence. There are indeed very few records like these.

There would not be another Charlie Nothing release until 1974, a lone single, and then again not until ‘79, when he would publish his first cassette, featuring a 10 minute field recording of honeybees. Another single and a string of cassettes followed. Not surprisingly, the cassettes exhibit a Punk influenced packaging aesthetic, and it is rumored that the single was only sold at a grocery store. It’s title, “Ain’t No Fascist” is reminiscent of Woody Guthrie’s “This Machine Kills Fascists”, which in the case of Charlie Nothing would refer to the Dingulator, a hybrid guitar made from car parts, which became Charlie’s weapon of choice in the field. Living outside Santa Cruz, he recently did his first ever Chicago gig, playing Dingulator and offering sociological observations. There was no indication that based upon this appearance anyone knew anything more, or anything at all about Charlie Nothing, other than that he had something against bucket seats, and that he did apparently exist. After the gig it was as if nothing had happened. And perhaps it had. And perhaps this was what Charlie wanted. It may be, in the words of Michael McClure, still “poised on that same crack, outside the consumer loop.”, and if so, then perhaps it is not you who have found nothing, but Nothing that has found you. And that kind of Zen is hard to come by.

~Keith NNCK

Released: March 24, 2011

Phantom Payn Days / Phantom Payn Days - 4000393

While in the widely neglected 39 Clocks, he made records that never sold and played gigs that few ever saw, Juergen Gleue has arguably been the most important exponent of electrified German sound since the late 1970s. Phantom Payn Daze was made in the mid to late 90s and has never been released. It’s his final LP and is overflowing with all the elements that romanticized, loner / stoner music claims, an encoded expression of highly private feelings, an ambiguous, emotional quotient, and a dark, murkily melodic vibe. It’s a record that first and foremost lives and breathes with an endless stream of great songs. But perhaps it’s most curious component is it’s amazingly prescient sound, a precursor to so many of today’s lo fi acts, all wrapped up in their San Francisco hair.

Released: January 11, 2011

39 Clocks / Zoned - SBL-76068

The first public appearance pairing Christian Henjes and Juergen Gleue (inspired by and with names derived from LSD-25, they would become CH-39 and JG-39) was in 1976, at the Dada Nova (a space occupied by Otto Mühl’s AAO commune) in midtown Hannover, Germany. Dada Nova would be a space of enduring clash. From the subtlety of a shat upon organ to the ejection from communal meetings by bodily force, the AAO would display that the presence of the 39 Clocks was one of their constant grief.

Known for pranksterism and the destruction of the clubs in which they would perform, friction in every form would continually follow the band. In 1979 they were thrown out of a show in Kassel at Dokumenta (their sounds had disturbed Joseph Beuys). They created an outrage (they wrote a tune with the title “Art Minus Idiots”) at the Filmtage Hannover with their avant-garde Super 8 movies made under the disguise of director Zachius Lipschitz. Rumour claims that at a Hannover show at the Cafe Glocksee, they played the vacuum cleaner and a circular saw instead of guitars, and there was even a knife throwing incident in Bremen.

Inspired, then, clearly, by protest in the broadest and most romantic sense (they wrote a tune with the title “Radical Student Mob In Satin Boots”) theirs was a sound attuned to classic American Punk / Nuggets. Although, this is not Bomp Rock; theirs was a thrust that purposed deconstruction and reassembly in the most modern sense. This collection was put together with the non completeist in mind (originals of some of these records are as rare as Italian underwear), intending to display the general 39 Clocks vibe, but also some of their more curious wrinkles. And as the Clocks were always interested in where they were going and not where they’d been, the chronology here is strictly reversed. Diedrich Diedrichsen wrote the first review of the band (in Spex), and we at DeStijl are very pleased to have had him scribe liner notes.

Released: January 1, 2010

Orange / In the Midst of Chaos - SBL-76064

Recorded in 1978, In The Midst of Chaos is this western CT free-jazz group’s only release. It would become improv jazz sax player Paul Flaherty’s 1st record, who, as a youth, was smitten by the world, its creator and Pharoah Sanders. Chaos is also the only release of legendary guitarist Barry Greika, who, along with bassist Bob Laramie and drummer Glen “Hobbit” Peterson, remain the most under-recorded trio in history. A screamin’, howlin’, blisterin’ slap of a record that defies categorizations as it pushes the 70’s into uncharted confusion.

Pressed in a quantity of only 200 copies, it received the notice of almost no one. Two heard it though; one sailed it out the kitchen window, the wife of the other said to get the fuckin’ thing out of the house.

So here it comes again. Hardcore freeform shit, rejuvenated without shame.

- Charles F. Destruction

Released: January 1, 2010

Mark Tucker / In the Sack - SBL-76061

Amongst connoisseurs of revelatory/off the map private press sides, the recordings of Mark Tucker have long provided a functional model of the genre at its most beautifully fucked. Tucker’s second album, 1983’s In the Sack, was an apocalyptic/dystopian concept album that centred on the American postal system and that sounded something like a cross between a teenage Van Dyke Parks and a slightly less disobedient Half Japanese. But his debut album, Batstew, released on his own Tetrapod Spools label in 1975, is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The whole concept for this fantastically unlikely recording seems to have been birthed via the conflation of a bunch of Tucker’s obsessions at the time, namely his car (which he referred to as ‘The Bat’) and his “She”, Eva Bataszew, an early girlfriend with whom Tucker had a relationship “riddled with paranormal phenomena”. The death of that relationship would later contribute to the deterioration of Tucker’s mental health and three bouts of hospitalisation for severe depression. The album was released in two runs of 100 copies each, including one personalised edition for Eva, where the title read Bataszew. “She never commented on it,” Tucker relates in the newly penned liner notes, “except to say that she played it for her cousin and he ‘didn’t get it’”. Tucker’s parents were similarly unresponsive. His father “never commented on any aspect of it but several years later, my stepmother asked me if I had written a song about a homosexual relationship, so apparently she had heard it. My mother, who had dreamed of me becoming a concert pianist—the next Rubinstein or Horowitz—hated Batstew in its entirety from the first minute to the last. She never wished to own a copy. After hearing the master tape of the proposed album, she told me ’You’re selling your craziness’. I replied, ‘So was Beethoven.’” Batstew draws on a number of sonic strategies, all of which are satisfyingly bent. The core of the material is based around recordings of his car, a 1964 Cadillac—ticking over, revving up, its engine dying—that predate the orchestrated mechanics of David Jackman and Vagina Dentata Organ. These sections are cut up with beautiful songs, all executed with a level of unself-conscious exuberance that is extremely poignant. The closest parallel is definitely the kind of benign DIY current loosed by the Department Store Santas LP and the themes are just as odd, with a beautiful gay love song centred on two young kids—“Sideways Love Forever”—sandwiched between damaged folk rock blasters, pre-lapsarian jigs, field recording from deep inside the void of 1970s suburbia, snippets of Tucker talking to his car, piano led lost-teen ballads and huge zones of “car-sounds-run-through-tremolo-pedal effects and tape manipulation”. “Some listeners have pointed out that much of what is on the album, particularly the long, disjointed, droning, melting, nightmarish ‘Submerged Bat Vortex’ strongly suggests mental illness,” Tucker confesses. Eva herself contributes vocals to “Honey Tree”, while Tucker’s armoury is bolstered by co-conspirator Shakey T. Colley on blues harp, electric guitar and tape manipulation as well as Chris DeMuynck on electric bass, John Vignola on acoustic guitar and Tom Von Ebers on electric guitar. “The last time I saw Eva Bataszew was on her 24th birthday: September 4, 1979,” Tucker relates. “She died, apparently by her own hand, in 1987. I didn’t hear about it until 1990. Shakey T. Colley died at age 40 in 1996 of what appeared to be an accidental overdose of drugs. They had both been alcoholics. For personal and professional reasons, I legally changed my name in 1991 to T. Storm Hunter. From 1979 to 1993, I continued to write and record, eventually issuing most of this material on CDs and posting downloadable songs on the Internet. Yet, this album—which most people found incomprehensible and unlistenable in 1975—is the one work in my discography which, after more than a quarter-century of obscurity, is finding an audience. Go figure.” As a document of the singular experience of a star-crossed group of friends, lost somewhere in mid-century America and fully committed to the defiant arc of their own tongues, Batstew remains unparalleled. Highest possible recommendation.

-David Keenan

Volcanic Tongue

Released: January 1, 2010

Michael and the Mumbles / Michael and the Mumbles - SBL-76074

Before Michael Yonkers would revise the history of recorded music with the clarion chords of Microminiature Love he was in a band called Michael and the Mumbles and they made this self-titled LP in 1966. Upon immediate spins, their would-be debut comes off as a naive, teenage trip thru the typified garage band moves of this era. But repeated spins reveal a darkness beneath what some dullard might only perceive as its crisp, winsome visage. It’s only to a slightly less visible degree that the Mumbles LP has the same characteristics that would make Micro the singularly original piece it is; its emotionally bleak themes, dissonant undercurrents, and recklessly wild performance.

So, once again we have a Michael Yonkers LP that is going to turn the world upside down, make the college girls scream, and leave you wondering how many more times this can happen. Seriously, Pigeon Falls up here looks like a Riot on the Sunset Strip. Indulge yrself.

PS: Michael and the Mumbles is on the king of all known formats (with a digital download coupon, natch). The mastertapes used herein are 45 yrs old and aside from the glitch on “Cold Town” they sound amazing.

Released: November 3, 2009

Pens / Hey Friend, What You Doing? - SBL-76071

Spunky debut from homegrown girl urchins. Riot girl spawned a generation of female dominated bands that sounded like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. That, definitely, is not PENS. Product of a London scene steeped in the lo-fidelity and ecstatic exuberance of US bands like No Age and Times New Viking, this all-girl trio rattle through tales of delinquency like “High in the Cinema” with barely a second’s reflection. Luckily, these scuzzy punk nuggets cranked out on budget organ and tinny guitar largely succeed in transmitting the spirit of excitement they were surely conceived in.

~ Louis Pattinson / UNCUT

Released: September 15, 2009

Mark Tucker / Batstew - 4000399

This is one of those LPs that I’ve heard about for years. People’d say to me “Roland, it’s right up your alley” or “Roland it’s terrible. You’d love it!” But when I’d ask’em to describe it they’d go doe-eyed & get all pickle faced ‘n say “you just have to hear it for yourself.” Well finally, thanks to the De Stijl label, I have. And let me tell you something: I am perplexed about what I heard. Mostly, I guess, ’cause I ain’t hearin things what other scribes have insinuated I should. Department Store Santas? Desperate Bicycles? Not in my kung fu village! To me this LP teeters on a precipice between euphoria & anguish. It is certainly the work of an unstable mind & tortured soul. I mean, you can almost feel Tucker’s circuits shorting out as the record progresses. You don’t need to read the insert to hear that! There’s a lot of sadness & confusion goin on too. It’s a record about a guy’s love for his car. It’s a record about a guy’s love for his girl. There’s a song that’s evidently an ode to homosexual love (not that there’s anything wrong w/ that). The guy records himself talkin to his car, slammin the doors, the girl whispers & sings along sometimes. Yeah, it has it’s moments. Like the naif, art brut-ish noisescapes that Tucker occasionally creates or like the dingaling song at the end of side 2 that’s about a Cadillac (among other things) that eventually crumbles into a fuzzy guitar “freakout”. It is one odd fucker of an LP, there’s no denyin that. But how someone—& I won’t say who—winds up comparin it to the albums by Department Store Santas & Desperate Bicycles is beyond me. Oh sure, those’re nice lures you’re tossin out there, but they’re inappropriate. Those bands LPs are challenging. Tucker’s is more challenged. Maybe what they meant to say was that one day Mark Tucker saw someone dressed as a department store Santa, went bananas, then desperately rode a bicycle to the mental institution. I dunno. I wasn’t there. If I was to sell you this record I would say “imagine a record that sounds like someone who claims to be Daniel Johnston who rerecorded Smile” or “imagine if Larry Fischer had been commissioned to do the Pink Moon LP as literally a Volkswagen commercial”. Would you buy it? I know I would because that sounds like something that’s right up my alley & the descriptions are terrible enough that I’d probably love it. That said, Batstew is certainly a unique album. I dunno about a masterpiece, but shorter people are prone to exaggeration. And that’s a fact! I’m glad I got to hear it & props to De Stijl for reissuing it.

~ Roland Woodbe / siltblog

Released: July 31, 2008

King Darves / The Sun Splits For... The Blind Swimmer - SBL-76063

So I would imagine that you’d have one look at the photo of King Darves we have here and think “Oh brother! Another guy with a beard getting over what looks like a bad case of the clap and an acoustic guitar. Where’s my axe?” So we’re not gonna put it up here. (Mystique, dig?) But it’s really not like that, I tell you! The bedrock of King Darves’ New Brunswick based concoction is certainly folk based but there’s no headband and he’s not singing of pixies in the moss. This is somewhere between rolled cigs and the foggy vision of Big Pink from somewhere on Jersey Avenue, or maybe a one-manned Meat Puppets. This kid has really cobbled something together in his kitchen sink! The Sun Splits For… The Blind Swimmer will shock and please when the prettiest sound of his deep, rich voice comes out of yr headphones, and it’ll make you tap yr toes and nod yr head like a little goil.

~ T Rettman

Released: July 31, 2008

Ed Askew / Little Eyes - SBL-76036

An interesting, and undoubtedly unconscious, competition has cropped up amongst indie record labels over the last five years or so. With the success of the re-releases of long lost albums by artists like Vashti Bunyan and Sibylle Baier, a number of labels have been shaking trees and digging beneath porches to try to find the rarest works to slip into the tea of the record buying public.

As you might expect, the smaller the label, the more interesting the music they seem to dig up. Case in point: De Stijl Records giving the world their first chance to hear the second album by the psych folk wonder, Ed Askew. The tiny New York label has been plying hungry listeners with obscure gems by the likes of Michael Yonkers and the Black Vial, but they scored their biggest coup yet by allowing this record to see the light of day, 30 years after it was first recorded.

At the time the album was recorded, Askew was signed to the venerable ESP label, the imprint that had released his brilliant work Ask the Unicorn. He recorded this album not long after the release of that album in 1969, but the label ran out of money and couldn’t put it out. Luckily, it couldn’t be a better time for Askew’s work to be reexamined by the intelligentsia of the music world. With the rise of interest in fellow outrÈ musicians Jandek and Daniel Johnston, Askew’s songs should find the audience it so richly deserves.

In fact, his work fits nicely alongside that of Johnston and Jandek. Not simply because he apparently recorded this album in one long continuous take, but also because, like those artists, his songs seem removed from a particular period of time. True, his reedy voice and copious use of harmonica give off Dylan-esque allusions, but the meandering arrangements and home-recorded haze of this album could have been recorded last week, rather than over 35 years ago.

Askew’s fractured romanticism lends a great deal to the feeling of timelessness the album exudes. His lyrics teem with imagery of the natural world, speaking often of trees, fields, and beaches, but they are thin metaphors for Askew’s brokenhearted worldview. Matched up with the gentle thrum of his Martin Tipple, a 10-stringed ukulele-shaped instrument, the album comes off like field recordings of an anguished hermit living in the woods with nothing but a head full of bad memories to keep him company.

This rough, yet beautiful piece of work may not get Askew covered in magazines throughout the world, nor will many of the big names in indie music touting him as an influence. Thankfully, we are now living in a world willing to open their ears up to the visions that Askew is spilling forth on Eyes and a likeminded label is willing to invest their time and money bringing these hidden masterpieces into the light of day.

Released: October 9, 2007

Michael Yonkers / Grimwood - SBL-76056

When considering Grimwood, it’d be a mistake to not also give thought to Microminiature Love. Recorded in ‘68 for Sire, MML languished unreleased until the spring of 2002, when we unearthed it swank on wax (later reissued as a Sub Pop CD). Called the greatest psych record of the 60s by more than a few, it’s no stretch to say that had it materialized, it would’ve altered the lay of the land. Though for various reasons still unclear, the deal fell apart and the band split. Perhaps this was the first in a seemingly endless series of cruel blows for Yonkers. He retreated, and recorded Grimwood.

As is said all too often about all too many recs, this is intensely private music. While not immediately recognizable as possessing the radical visionary qualities as MML, there is nevertheless a miracle at work. Usually there is a distance between singer / song. Here the distance is completely revoked. There is an immediate, definite coinciding between Yonkers and his Grimwood.

Yonkers suffered a debilitating back injury in a warehouse accident in ‘71 when a half-ton of scrap metal fell on him. He had strong allergic reactions to a chemical that was injected into his spinal cord in ’73, and he almost gave up the ghost. That caused a serious, life long condition called adhesive arachnoiditis. For awhile he retired from music. Though recorded in ’69, Yonkers privately released Grimwood in ’74, along with 3 other recs: Goodby Sunball (recorded in ’71), Michael Lee Yonkers (’72) and a duo with Jim Woehrle (‘73), Borders of My Mind. If they sold at all, they sold horribly. There is a photo inside Sub Pop’s MML CD of yonkers throwing copies of Grimwood up in the air, as they’d seemingly become disposable, as well as a heavy burden to lug around. Enterprising rec collectors have had a run on Grimwood for some time and it’s been impossible to affordably obtain. So here it is, remastered, digitized and priced for the people…

Released: September 11, 2007

Ju Suk Reet Meate / Solo 78/79 - SBL-76057

Privately pressed at the end of the ’70s, Smegma member Ju Suk Reet Meate’s LP was lost to all but a handful of the early avant mash-up enthusiasts. The CD reissue will undoubtedly garner more listeners this time around, with a readymade audience of bedroom noise-oiks eager to absorb anything from the Smegma collective.

Much like an actual Smegma release, it’s pointless to label this record in terms of any strict genre. John Olson’s NOISE CLIFFSNOTES (his term for liner notes) basically confirm this, opting to identify each of the elements/ingredients folded into the mix without necessarily classifying them. That said, Meate’s roots in bluesy rock and roll are more apparent here than on Smegma’s recordings, and the early signs of plunderphonics are here, with passages stacked amidst vocal tape experiments and acoustic bass, kneaded together like a string of dough.

Released: August 7, 2007

Jakob Olausson / Moonlight Farm - SBL-76055

If Skip Spence were somehow, instead of finding his white-frocked self stuck in the rat-infested hole that was Bellvue, transplanted to the pine forests north of Malmo, Sweden, in a sonic nest of gimbri, bells, shakers and clothed in Tibetan silk, one would come slightly closer to the reality of Jakob Olausson’s migratory whims. To be sure, that foggy and only slightly inland empire of synapse-twisters like Ben Chasny offers a step on the trodden trail, but this isn’t the same road we’ve traveled before. Olausson’s huge ears protect him from the cold and keep the sun from turning his face to a series of desert crags, as his compositions slowly fade down the walls of four-track bedroom artistry into atemporal suites that shrink huge expanses and are a bellows to the microcosmic. Enter the Moonlight Farm.

Released: April 18, 2007

Lee Rockey / Lee Rockey Music - RS-IND060

De Stijl is very pleased to present the first archival digs into the wondrous world of Lee Rockey.

Lee was a hardswinging jazzbo who had mastered the modern style by ’46, and became known as one of the Vancouver whiz kids. He went to the city in ’53, jammed with Neil Hefti, and appeared on the first few Herbie Mann recs (plays Bethlehem BCP-58, east coast jazz / 4 Bethlehem BCP-1018). Upon his left coast return, he began developing his own sound / style, with an intent of transcending traditional musical forms / expectations.

Ju Suk Reet Meate caught one of his performances in early ‘76, and lee became a figure of big inspiration. He’d eventually invite Lee to play on a few early Smegma records. Aside from a few record booth lathes cut in the 40s / 50s, this is his first solo release.

On first spin there are a few brief moments when the sounds of Toshi Ichiyanagi come to mind, but these sounds inhabit a universe that is entirely that of Lee Rockey. Though the pieces contained on this record were recorded from the yrs ’59 to ’73, they own a keen third eye prescience that portends the likes of C Spencer Yeh and Axolotl.

This is far / away the most modern sounding records to ever brandish the De Stijl logo, and you’ll scratch your head until the kingdom comes.

Released: February 26, 2007

Samara Lubelski / Spectacular of Passages - IND054

There is certainly nothing wrong with chanteuses – we are quite lucky to now have a fair few in our aural midst as some of the young’uns seem to take off – but neu-folk composer Samara Lubelski is absolutely not a chanteuse by nature. In truth to her pedigree in Metabolismus, Tower Recordings, Hall of Fame, the Sonora Pine, Pacer, Matt Valentine et al., she’s a master of atmospheric textures at both juggernaut tempi and languorous sonic canvasses, her part as one of whole. Samara, with dew-flecked voice and slippery strung chords, makes that languor a tour of both honeyed breakfast plate and the midday crackle of dried grass. Third as bandleader, ten new classics of deliciously effusive songcraft, Passages joins Lubelski with The Clean’s Hamish Kilgour and otherworldly luminaries Matt Heyner (NNCK), Christian Frederickson (Rachel’s), and Cynthia Nelson.

Released: January 22, 2007

Hototogisu / Chimärendämmerung - SBL-76062

In yet another sub-genre over-populated by sound-a-like practitioners, Hototogisu induce reverie via highly personalised, idiosyncratic noise construction. Marcia Bassett (also of Double Leopards, GHQ, Zaika) and Matthew Bower (Sunroof!, Skullflower, Mirag) pursue the flaming infinite, which has led them slowly to disarm their music of any structural rock referent. For example, compare the complex tributaries of blood-noise that flood Chimärendämmerung with the blasted drum pounds scoring the opening of Some Blood Will Stick, a recently-released disc on Important that revives 2004-2005 era recordings. (Both discs are equally great, by the way.) Although the duo’s key drives haven’t changed, their ability to manifest and articulate these drives has seriously intensified in the past two years, with their 2004 double Ghosts from the Sun the beginning of a second phase that saw Hototogisu seriously re-phrasing noise’s language.

Chimärendämmerung engages in slow build; it begins by paddling around in a relative lagoon of (dis)quiet before Bower and Bassett pile more layers of dissonance. The set reaches an apex about 45 minutes through (all tracks are, as ever, untitled) where the heat-wave created by the interaction of viola, guitar and electronics, all maxed with volume and scoured by feedback, spontaneously births an almost entirely new syntax for the duo.

Released: September 26, 2006

Ed Askew / Here We Are Together Again - 4000389

This is the last of the vintage, tipple era Askew, before the fingers cramped and began tickling digital ivory. These 2 wondrous cuts would’ve been included on the Little Eyes CD if time were not space. Wonderful live versions, of “Here We Are Together Again” and “Yellow Dollars”, taken from David Porter’s Show on WYBC, Nov 1969. These songs are the topical concern of that or any era (Love and War) and what else is there anyway?

Released: March 24, 2011

Parasites of the Western World / Parasites of the Western World - 4000390

From the De Stijl website

the parasites of the western world are a band from portland OR who released their recorded debut in 1978. it’s a fascinating spin, a galactic ramble across the otherworldly themes of alienation and paranoia, seemingly inspired by LSD and philip dick. primarily the creation of patrick burke and terry censky, the parasites were limitless with invention and completely DIY. this is a record that was recorded in an apartment, by a crew thoughtful enough to curtail it’s loud excursions for the daylight hours. its rockist moves are surprisingly informed by the typical institutions of this era : pink floyd, the beatles and hawkwind and it’s many electronic flourishes are an above ground sound that would presage the likes of vertical slit, f / i and vertigo. the parasites remain to be light years ahead of a time that has yet to come.

Released: March 24, 2011

Circuit des Yeux / Ode to Fidelity - 4000391

3 new songs from Haley Fohr. Seemingly inspired by something or someone that has pierced her young, little heart, Ms Fohr has established herself as one of the most ambitious songwriters (for anyone who’s taken the time to actually listen to her previous efforts). These sounds form a part of the arc that i doubt has apexed. This single will echo between yr ears till the new full length is complete, surely a monster in full.

Released: January 11, 2011

Sperm / Sperm - Shh! - 4000394

From De Stijl:
it’s taken a long fucking time, and finally, a fully legit LP ~ only reissue of this amazing helsinki monsterpiece from 1970. shh ! is highly collectable in it’s original form on the band’s own O Records imprint (home of 3rd erection, samsa trio, one point music, etc). in a non ~ dream state, i’ve seen 2 copies and both were in a condition slightly more well kempt than “hammered ++” ..

shh ! is primarily a document of pekka airaksinen’s experimental compostions, consisting of primitive samples, guitar loop feedback and musique concrete. probably inspired by a cage / stockhausen / et al, but actually more easily peeped in pre ~ LAFMS world, perhaps sitting aside ju suk reet meate’s do unseen hands make you dumb?.

also involved were jan olof mallander, who has been active in and around art in several roles; as the editor of Iris, writing reviews for hufvudstadsbladet, contributing to taide, and as the art critic of dagens nyheter. inspired, perhaps, by gordon matta clark’s food he converted his cheap thrills gallery into a restaurant and instead of art, served the public vegetarian and macrobiotic cuisine..

and mattijuhani koponen, a poet, composer, musician, painter, photographer, performance artist, a gardener, activist in men’s postmodern liberation movement (the what?!), he was the primus dramatic motor for the sperm. in december of 1968, during a symphonic poem of reconciliation made by cain and abel, he fucked atop a grand piano and, for it, spent 8 months in the clink.

aside from serving a brief stint in wigwam, i know little of vladimir nikamo but his presence makes sense; wigwam’s first lp is titled hard n’ horny.

you get the idea. ooh la la..

Released: May 13, 2009