Rarity: Packaged in a sprayed corrugated-card slipcase with full-colour insert and limited to 77 hand-numbered copies, Empty Kingdom compiles a bunch of live-to-tape and studio creations from Heath Moerland’s face-tripping noise project. One of the most primitive, hands-on free electronics units outside of Nautical Almanac, Sick Llama make totally evocative use of broke-down media and tape rot to conjure the sound of yr brain bouncing slowly down a flight of cotton wool steps. This is another beauty, some of the most damaged and claustrophobic bad-trip psychedelia you’ll ever dose yrself with. Recommended. OOP.

Last copies of this one-off deformed noise trawl from Heath Moreland of Fag Tapes solo jam, made available especially for sale at the 2006 No Fun fest. “Two takes - raw live to tape.” Hand-numbered edition of 50 copies. Recommended.

Inspired split 7" in an edition of 400 copies with full colour artwork by Maya Miller of Religious Knives. C. Spencer Yeh aka Burning Star Core's side is an excellent slice of heavy metal violin, with improvised roars, clanks and singing strings adding up to a beautifully concise rip through the kinda post-Faust/Tony Conrad/Dream Syndicate moves that illuminate much of his back catalogue. The Sick Llama side compiles a bunch of totally alien sounding cut-up compositions all drawn from impossible-to-place sound sources and rendered with that massively murky Fag Tapes sound that is so fucking addictive. Love it.

Three-way split of extended live sets for this volume of Heath Moerland’s (Sick Llama) compilation series, with jams from New Pledegemaster, Steve Kenney (Demons) and Slither all drawn from their recent tour. Hand-numbered edition of 50 copies.

First full-length LP from the duo of Heath Moerland (Sick Llama/Fag Tapes) and Chris Pottinger (Odd Clouds/Cotton Museum). Slither play primitive drug and F/X damaged free jazz, with reeds played through cotton wool while tape sounds, homemade electronics and surreal electro-acoustic sound environments give it an extra layer of DIY dub. Edition of 240 copies.

More illshapen and deranged brain snuff from Michigans Brothers Grime. You need that black fissure in the back off your head mended, right? Then start plastering. “SLITHER slathers strictly slack layers of hiss and too-trill reeds in single-take lakeside station session.  Sick Heath and Cotton Chris trade echoed coin-flips along a horizon whose dark moon refuses to set, in a shitbrick piss-black back alleyway leading everywhere.  Morepott loping loops elope with lingering lizard lines -- behold, the bundle of baby beats buried beneath BOSS-basted and beaten BASF blur!  "An edgy blend of heart-stopping terror, wry humor and surprising humanity" -- thar thou thready thor thissssssss ??” - C Spencer Yeh

Two sides of heavily phased vocal/noise confusion and elegiac electronic drug-trance from C. Spencer Yeh’s Burning Star Core.

Explosive, speaker shredding free noise/jazz density that is as obliterating as primo Airway, Japanese monsters like Mainliner/Musica Transonic etc… Wasteland Jazz Unit features John Rich on amplified clarinet and Jon Lorenz on amplified alto sax and here they are joined Ryan Jewell (Pink Reason/Psychedelic Horseshit associate) on drums and electronics and Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core on bass and electronics. Edition of 200 copies.

Unlikey compilation of early song-based pieces by C. Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core et al in an edition of only 135 copies on his own private imprint. Guitar and vocals from 2001 that seem to bridge the whole Twisted Village/Northwest USA basement songwriter vibe with the contemporary Brooklyn DIY style. Pretty surreal, played this to a few people and no one could believe it was Spencer.

Collaboration between Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core and artist Justin Lieberman, that Yeh describes as combining their love of “sound poetry, psychedelic rock, Japanese scum noise and Japanese psychedelic rock.” There’s also a more conceptual/absurdist cultural critique running through many of these tracks, using samples of voices, advertising inanities and surrealist interventions in a way that - at points - comes across as a more psychedelic Residents. The whole deal is beautifully packaged with the picture disc wrapped in a full-colour gatefold sleeve. Edition of 250 copies.

CD reissue of what was originally a limited tour-only album from Spencer Yeh’s post-metal drone unit, bundling three massive huffs of dramatically piloted violin and sidereal electric forms that reconcile the kind of post-Kosugi trance dramas of his violin work with peaks of slow-burning Kosmiche crunch. Tony Herrington had a great piece in The Wire on BXC where he fingered Manuel Göttsching/Ash Ra’s more devotional/electro work as a precursor of this kind of monumentally damaged time/space sorcery and if that kind of comparison had your brain fluttering then plug it in here: Inside The Shadow is an even deeper pass through the kind of cranium-calming violence that illuminated much of Let’s Play Wild Like Wildcats Do and is one of Spencer’s most personally illuminating works. Recommended.

Debut album for the horse-killing free music trio of Don Dietrich (Borbetomagus), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) and Ben Hall (Graveyards). Great to hear Ben in this kinda context, playing in a rolling propulsive style that is the closest I’ve heard him come to the whole post-Milford school of exploded time.  Dietrich’s sax – naturally – dominates the sound, with a warp of Hendrixoid F/X contorting the tongue logic until it sounds like he’s licking a cement mixer. Yeh’s strings give the group an intense vertical lift and at points it sounds like he’s sawing the whole group straight off of the ground. A great record in the tradition of Babi Music, Demo Moe, The Celestrial Communication Orchestra and Borbetomagus. All exclusive material, none of which was on the American Tapes CD-R releases.  

Occupying the opposite pole from BXC’s masterful Challenger LP, Papercuts Theatre is a massive collage that smears several years worth of live recordings from Spencer Yeh and co into four monolithic movements that explode time and space in favour of vertical ascensions of tone and some of the heaviest nod-out rock moves of their career. Inspired by classic sleight-of-hand live reviews like The Grateful Dead’s Grayfolded, Sonic Youth’s Sonic Death and Flying Saucer Attack’s In Search Of Spaces, Yeh assembles dense, laminal settings of drone violence, Faust-styled Industrial-brut and outer space strings with a focus on their more aggressive jams. Long passages of tussling strings and thrifty percussion are blown apart by bursts of free jazz energy and screaming violin tones. The Faust Tapes were always a major organisational touchstone for the BXC production style, but Papercuts Theatre pushes the organisational logic of their albums to new spontaneous/hallucinogenic ends. Features Trevor Tremaine, Robert Beatty, members of Lambsbread and more. Heavy duty double LP in gatefold sleeve. Comes with an MP3 download. Recommended.

Occupying the opposite pole from BXC’s masterful Challenger LP, Papercuts Theatre is a massive collage that smears several years worth of live recordings from Spencer Yeh and co into four monolithic movements that explode time and space in favour of vertical ascensions of tone and some of the heaviest nod-out rock moves of their career. Inspired by classic sleight-of-hand live reviews like The Grateful Dead’s Grayfolded, Sonic Youth’s Sonic Death and Flying Saucer Attack’s In Search Of Spaces, Yeh assembles dense, laminal settings of drone violence, Faust-styled Industrial-brut and outer space strings with a focus on their more aggressive jams. Long passages of tussling strings and thrifty percussion are blown apart by bursts of free jazz energy and screaming violin tones. The Faust Tapes were always a major organisational touchstone for the BXC production style, but Papercuts Theatre pushes the organisational logic of their albums to new spontaneous/hallucinogenic ends. Features Trevor Tremaine, Robert Beatty, members of Lambsbread and more. Recommended.

Edition of 75 copies triple cassette set in moulded plastic case. The first cassette features the audio component from Yeh’s ‘Standard Definition’ installation that took place at the CCA in Cincinnati, Ohio from October 2009-January 2010, with Yeh gargling vocal tone like the Gyuto Monks. The other two cassettes document a pair of shows from January 2010 and November 2009 that combine feral sound poetry with violin abstractions that have a beautiful future/primitive power.

Limited live document of Yeh’s (Burning Star Core) recent live form, some lunar scrabbly violin soloing that sounds like a psychedelic Philipp Wachsmann and some wild abstract vocal soundings. Hand-lettered discs, paste-on sleeves.

Limited live document of Yeh’s (Burning Star Core) recent live form, with a free vocal sounding bookended by two solo violin improvisations that are extremely tactile. Hand-lettered discs, paste-on sleeves.