Brand new limited album (400 copies on coloured vinyl w/stickered sleeve) from Adam Kriney's square-slaying free jazz unit, this time in trio format with Kriney on drums, Gene Janas on upright bass and Mario Rechtern on saxophones. Rechtern has been a long-term presence on the fringes of the US/Euro free scene, playing as a member of Reform Art Unit alongside Sunny Murray and Linda Sharrock and recently guesting with Weasel Walter in his Quartet/Sextet/Trio. The feel here is of fully liberated energy forms, with limbs forced deep into the kinda bastions of freedom associated with a buncha exclusive outside music streams like psych rock, hardcore grunt, primitive field blather and – of course – fire music and beyond. There’s a muscular attack and a commitment to pushing past mere dialogue and interaction that sounds most like Black Flag at their jamminest, while the actual weight of the constituent parts has as much to do with Red-era King Crimson as it does with Sunny Murray’s work with ESP-Disk. I dunno, but it almost feels to me as if post fire music played with a post punk/noise mindset may finally be on the up. So release your grip on your own brain and reconnect yr ass to the cosmos. A split release between Wooden Wand's Mad Monk imprint and Kriney’s Colour Sounds Recordings. Highly recommended.

Third limited-edition CD-R (run of only 150 copies) from this new project led by James Toth aka Wooden Wand and featuring Jessica Toth and original Golden Calves vocalist Max Mev Wicker. Following in the wake of their shelved second album, Jazz Improve, Contemporary Suicide Music feels more like the repository for alla Toth’s more outré sonic strategies, almost as a companion to his more classic song-based work as Wooden Wand. Here there’s a whole bunch of weird, private press style gambits, with tracks that range from devouring, almost Hototogisu-esque dinosaurs-in-the-fog style drones, squiggly early-Tietchens inspired synth magic, instrumentals that sound almost exactly like Department Store Santas playing “That’s Just Fine” by Spacemen 3 and some shredding solo punk guitar. Another highly recommended instalment.

Second limited edition CD-R on James Toth aka Wooden Wand’s own imprint from this fabulously confused and confusing unknown basement project, edition of 150 copies: “The second volume in this exciting series by this wastoid troupe from the buckeye state is even better than the first. While the highly popular Volume One introduced the band as the parole board's answer to the Cherry Blossoms, Volume Two: Cocain Spyders (the misspelling is the band's) finds the group more stoned, introspective and deliberate, with oscillators, delay drones, horns, and high pitched feedback squeals taking the place of more 'traditional' instruments. Singer Kristy is, as ever, center stage, singing beautifully harrowing misfit tales of lonely strangers, train wrecks and dreams fading away. Volume Two also features what is perhaps, in our opinion, the quintessential Wild Gunmen track thus far - an untitled jam near the middle of the disc begins like any other paranormal WG track, until Kristy nonchalantly takes a break from singing to audibly converse with her captive party guests about sex and cocain(e), while Witt and Ron, undaunted, lock into a supremely fucked clarinet / guitar duet that sounds like a moonlight meeting between Rafael Toral and Little Howlin' Wolf. When Kristy decides to begin singing again, the track only gets weirder, stretching out over several parts and nearly fifteen minutes like a lost ESP side or perhaps the music the guy who left the desperate answering machine message at the beginning of Charalambides Market Square might have made. As if all of this weren't enough, Volume Two also includes the soon-to-be-punk-classic "(I've Got A) Washboard (For A Stomach)." This is the second in what we hope will be a long running series of releases by Wild Gunmen on Mad Monk, but each one could be the last - word has it a few of the band members are dead set against these releases - so treasure and cherish every minute while it lasts!” – James Toth.

New limited to 150 copies self-released CD-R from this Wooden Wand offshoot featuring James and Jessica Toth (aka Chazz Improv and Norma Bates) and Max Wicker: “Latest and best from this mysterious tribe finds them in full synthesizer horror mode. Taking cues from the soundtracks of John Carpenter, the mutant space techno of Allan Bryant, the time-lapse mesmerism of Robert Fripp, and the intrepid synthesizer experiments of Ruth White, Hot Lead deals in nightmarisharpeggios, shapeshifting noise and ominous melodic variations. Recorded direct to 8 track - no boring, sterile microhouse polish here - and comprised of mostly solo tracks by individual members. Complete with dreamy Sisters of Mercy fanboy cover art.” – MM.

Excellent new release from another solo project of James Jackson Toth/Wooden Wand. This one is dedicated to maximum guitar destruction/amp confusion and sees Toth taking his electric guitar the fuck apart in a way that parallels Mats Gustafsson’s work with the saxophone. Extending the explorations of players like Rudolph Grey, Ray Russell, Donald Miller and Stefan Jaworzyn, this is guitar as maximum sonic disruptor, played like it was the first time he ever encountered it: “Thrash, Jr, named after Houston Mazda (RX-7) Cup driver Thomas Thrash Jr, is yet another guise of James Jackson Toth, and released on Toth's new MAD MONK ANNEX CDR imprint. This racing-themed album comprises three extended pieces of bleak and visceral solo guitar cacophony / catharsis. If Hassara was “boogie,” Thrash, Jr is “bombardment.” From the artist: "Like most American kids my age, my life was changed irrevocably by the music of bands like Courtesy Flush, Army Nightmares, Lil Johnny Eightball & the Secret Society Dildos, and The Canker Sores. This premeditated and unprovoked attack on my electric guitar is in tribute to those bands and their myriad imitators." “Lux Interior” is a duet for raging rainstorm and goat hoof-guitar, “Victory Is Hers” is a naughty little respite of delay blast and Toth’s patented “animal-tapping” fuckitude, and "Militant Walls (Is Poser Noise For Pussy Emo Fags)" finds Toth turning up the gain on his solid state amplifier and proceeding to audibly pull his Stratocaster apart - you can literally hear the entire tremolo system being slowly removed. Ouch! "Makes Rudolph Grey sound like Steve Vai" - William Blake Cobblestone, local television personality. "The best guitar noise album of the year" - The Other Dude in Claudio Two, Claudio Two. Improvised and recorded entirely live over two stormy Nashville nights, with nothing added post production.” – MMA. Limited edition of 150 copies.

Private press album from Mister James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand aka Wand. Recorded on the lam downwind of some fairly destructive personal/artistic episodes, rejected by his record company, fuelled by bad blood and mental cobwebs, Born Bad is both the most intimate, the most bloody-minded and the most revelatory album by Toth to date. The sound is very stripped down and lot more countrified than the bulk of his catalogue. Imagine Nicodemus or Jim Collins playing Gram Parsons “Hippie Boy” (reputedly Dylan’s favourite Parsons track), or how about Townes Van Zandt circa the nihilistic/black hole style of “Nothing” given a one-chance live album for Siltbreeze or how about just Dylan circa The Basement Tapes, prowling his Woodstock home with a shotgun while fans creepy-crawl across the roof? Either way this is a stark postcard from the void and won’t stick around for long. Edition of 500 copies, already sold out at source, hand-screened covers, limited numbers available. Recommended.

Second limited edition (with slightly different sleeves) of this much-anticipated new private press album from Mister James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand aka Wand. Recorded on the lam downwind of some fairly destructive personal/artistic episodes, rejected by his record company, fuelled by bad blood and mental cobwebs, Born Bad is both the most intimate, the most bloody-minded and the most revelatory album by Toth to date. The sound is very stripped down and lot more countrified than the bulk of his catalogue. Imagine Nicodemus or Jim Collins playing Gram Parsons "Hippie Boy" (reputedly Dylan's favourite Parsons track), or how about Townes Van Zandt circa the nihilistic/black hole style of "Nothing" given a one-chance live album for Siltbreeze or how about just Dylan circa The Basement Tapes, prowling his Woodstock home with a shotgun while fans creepy-crawl across the roof? Either way this is a stark postcard from the void and won?t stick around for long. Recommended.