Volcanic Tongue: Underground Music Mailorder & Shop

	Spit Trash Music Spitacular United Fairy Moons CD-R £email for wholesale rate Spit Trash Music Spitacular United Fairy Moons CD-R £5.00 Some projects take time to mellow, to pick up lint and absorb spilt coffee grounds. Trash Music Spitacular was months and months in the making and was an exhibition (at the Segue Gallery this past April), a master’s thesis, a group-participation extravaganza, a public relations bonanza (nice photos of the ‘unusual artist’ in all the papers) and finally now a CD-R. And necessarily, no CD-R can give you much beyond basic pointers when dealing with such a whirlwind of activity but lemme tell you a little about what went down. You had, firstly, a room and a corridor strewn - I mean, strewn - with sculptures etched with thought on the nature of recorded sound and the various traceries of musickal hardware. Then, every day for two weeks, performances. You had Kim Pieters painting ‘notation’ onto graph paper while RC ‘played’ the piece as the ink dried; a ‘street horn’ - an absolutely massive length of metal piping with a stylus welded onto one end that was then dragged up and down Burlington St; a pile of wrecked furniture, taller than a man, wound with piano wire and played with anything available by RC and Aliki, with harpist Katrina Thomson (Ray Off) jamming along; a cellist in evening dress alongside a ghetto blaster that was being buried under a four foot high mound of coal; two homies on the 16rpm decks, while a drunken idiot rambled on about the secret punk beginnings of Snoop Dogg... that’s a few of ‘em. Flux as hell, yes? Well, possibly the best thing I saw was one night in the bellringers chamber of the church next door (the oldest church in Dunedin). Cockburn had the actual bellringers of this place perform a 'chance operation' composition, with each ringer assigned a number and him rollin’ the dice. Balls like big fluffy dice, this guy. You’ll hear a section of that on this disc - and much else besides. It’s really nicely varied, concisely edited - most pieces are fairly short - and gives a good overview of a guy who’s a pretty zoned and imaginative cracked-sound thinker. Ryan was initially known to us music-heads around here as the guy who cut records in half, glued ‘em back together all wrong, then made a hell of an invigorating racket – there’s none of that here (but plenty on Eye’s Black Ice CD-R, him being a member of that group). He’s just, you know, got a lot to offer. Something that Melbourne, to where he’s about to relocate, is going to learn very fast.
	Three Forks Seven Layer Ape United Fairy Moons 013 CD £email for wholesale rate “Seven Layer Ape is a seven track, three-pronged attack from New Zealand based multi instrumentalists Donald McPherson (guitar, flute, percussion), Jim Currin (cello, violin) and Tim Cornelius (violin, drums, flute, junk). All the music here was improvised straight to cassette at various venues in Dunedin during the bands short life span between 2002-04, and there are some real lively death rattle stomps. McPherson’s guitar really propels the opening number- ‘Dust Tea’- spinning dislocated blues runs that are reminiscent of Loren Mazzacane Connors circa Dagget Years. But the most effective tracks seem to hang around the blistering dual string action of Currin (United Fairy Moons boss) and Cornelius (Sandoz Lab Technicians), who rabidly scrawl interlocking lines from the necks of their fiddles. This really kicks off on track four, “Otaru Vision”, as the sound hovers over eight minutes, twitching with abrupt reel phrases and echoed voices that escalate into synergic lock-wristed string jitter. Featuring great naïve hieroglyphic cover drawings by James Robinson; like Hieronymous Bosch inspired cave paintings found deep in down town Dunedin. Recommended.” – Volcanic Tongue.
	Ray Off Ghost Wolf Of Thunder Mountain United Fairy Moons CD-R £email for wholesale rate “Ray Off is the solo guise of James Currin, who also runs the United Fairy Moons label, a small New Zealand imprint that looks to be one of the most consistently interesting purveyors of avant-thought this side of Corpus Hermeticum. Ghost Wolf Of Thunder Mountain is a fabulously eerie trip, combining evocative hillbilly guitar shapes (reminiscent of Six Organs Of Admittance at points), a Morricone-esque feel for spatial dynamics, some disconcertingly abstract electronics and a dimensionally fucked use of field recordings. The whole thing unfolds with a sense of narrative purpose that makes a lot of intuitive structural sense even as it swerves into wildly diverting passages of digital disruption and heavy drone: “Ghost wolf traverses inlet, plain, city and sky, battling altitude sickness and dreaming a crystal cloud beneath his limping, sticky pins.” Limited in a beautiful looking screened hard card gatefold sleeve. Recommended.” VOLCANIC TONGUE