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2LP
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PAL 069LP
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2023 repress. Limited double-LP version of the 2008 CD originally issued on Load, compiling the best live and studio recordings by the final iteration of this group.
"60 second bursts of chaotic rock 'n' roll that barbarize whole histories of freakout style, from free jazz through classic hardcore, boogie, blues, Black Flag, Germs, most explicitly through Beefheart, but all hyper-condensed into ultra-kranky riffs that Orcutt plays at hallucinatory speed, compressing Zoot Horn Rollo style avant confusion into lighting runs and metallic two note knock-outs. Hoyos's style is so primitive that it's wildly avantgarde, with an instinctive feel for time that confounds the most advanced improvisatory strategies with the most hysterical. And her vocals are post-Yoko in the truest sense, not directly informed by her but sharing the same spontaneous energy and a-musical appeal, sometimes breaking from songs completely to expand on barely articulated vocal rants and fever pitched bouts of screaming. The whole group existed in a zone that was constantly beyond technique. The arc of their career was perfect, the mission truly accomplished, and all that's left is this amazing series of recordings, a body of work that has had a disproportionate effect on the minds, if rarely the actual sound of the underground." --David Keenan, The Wire, December 2008
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LP
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PAL 065LP
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"Somewhere between the first and second Harry Pussy singles, Adris and I worked up a set's worth of 30-second 'songs.' I doubt we ever played the whole thing live, but we did record it over a couple of nights at Rat's studio around the corner from our Michigan Ave apartment on Miami Beach. Our occasional bandmate, Ian Steinberg, a teenage accordionist whose mom dropped him off for the session, showed up on the second night to contribute vocals and fuzz accordion on several tracks. Of all the songs recorded, only 'HP Superstar' was ever released, on 1995's What Was Music? compilation, though 'No Hey', 'Youth Problem' and 'Prelude' appeared in other versions elsewhere. Live renditions of some of this set are also captured on the 'Live in Chapel Hill, 1993' single." --Bill Orcutt
"Almost as if The Germs had the diligence of Minutemen. Sounds like a crazy idea, but this record is nuts!" --Byron Coley
Adris Hoyos: drums & vox; Bill Orcutt: guitar & vox; Ian Steinberg: accordion & vox (1-21, 31-32) 1-21 recorded at Sync Studios, Miami Beach 1993 by Rat Bastard. 22-29 recorded live in Chapel Hill, NC, 1993. 30-33 recorded in rehearsal at the Alliance Cinema, Miami Beach. Some tracks previously released on Superstar 7", Live in Chapel Hill 7", and What Was Music? CD (Siltbreeze). Expanded 12" gatefold LP version of the last year's surprise hit EP -- 33 songs, includes ten unreleased tracks, live versions, rehearsal recordings, cover songs, accordion mixes, extended edits and studio outtakes.
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LP
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PAL 052LP
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Reissue of Harry Pussy's Ride A Dove, originally released on Siltbreeze in 1996. "By 1996, with one LP, a handful of 7"s, and a couple dozen gigs under their collective belts, Harry Pussy had thoroughly scrambled the mid-90s scuzz-rock ecosystem. Their acclaimed first LP, described by David Keenan as 'a black hole that devoured genre and flattened any attempt to classify it,' fused Japanese noise, '80s hardcore and post-Ayler jazz into a dense, white-hot ball of punk anger and insanity. The band's newly expanded trio lineup of Bill Orcutt, Adris Hoyos and Mark Feehan toured with Dead C, Sebadoh, and Sonic Youth. Thurston played their video on MTV's 120 Minutes. Nirvana gave them shout outs. Everyone expected the sophomore Harry Pussy LP would be more of the same, a logical next step, a synapse-melting punk orgasm that would shatter the coke-bottle spectacles of noise stoners, record store clerks, and college radio DJs across the USA. Instead, we got Ride A Dove: a 30-minute, tempo-less, musique concrète collage of feedback, whiny Sonic Youth fans, overdriven room tone, hijacked jungle beats, unhinged screaming, and the near-constant squall of the self-oscillating low-pass filter on Orcutt's Korg MS-20. Recorded on Sony Walkman and Tascam Portastudio, mixed through a RAT distortion pedal, then chopped and scrambled with SoundEdit 16, it took to new heights the Siltbreeze tradition of terrorizing mastering engineers by burying everything with shitty post-production (cf. Jim Shepard's Radio Shack reverb on his Picking Through the Wreckage With a Stick LP). Thanks to the single unbanded groove on each side (and similarly unindexed CD), the relationship of Ride A Dove's 'songs' to its listed song titles -- which allude to Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, and most of all, Black Flag, whose 'Rise Above' is echoed by the malaprop of the album title -- was decidedly obscure. One might be forgiven for characterizing this career anti-move as a simple challenge, an 'ok, sell THIS' to an unsuspecting distributor -- Matador Records, who surely had no idea what they were getting into when they scooped up Siltbreeze for a manufacturing and distribution deal -- or to fans naively anticipating simple catharsis. Rather, Ride A Dove is an intensely personal document of a disintegrating marriage and band; a snapshot of an era when noise groups were unexpectedly emerging from complete darkness into mere shadow; a diary of questionable decisions regarding marital fidelity and drug consumption. It's a raw, vulnerable record that is more Rumours (1977) than Metal Machine Music (1975). In the aftermath of Ride A Dove, and the near-apocalyptic Harry Pussy/Shadow Ring/Charalambides tour that followed it, life went on. Bill and Adris split up, guitarist Mark Feehan decamped, and Harry Pussy soldiered on for a few more records, including the sleeper double LP Let's Build a Pussy (EMEGO 146LP), which perhaps stands closer to Ride A Dove's high-register wail and conceptual monomania than any other of the band's recordings. As for Ride A Dove itself, the intervening decades has made it almost fashionable, yet harshly adorned in a raggedness that's as cozy as a fiberglass sweater." --Tom Carter Adris Hoyos - drums; Bill Orcutt - guitar; Mark Feehan - guitar.
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LP
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PAL 049LP
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Previously unreleased mid-'90s live recordings of Harry Pussy in peak trio formation, with extensive eye-witness liner notes by Siltbreeze label-head Tom Lax and Tom Carter of Charalambides. Edition of 500.
"The 1996 Shadow Ring / Harry Pussy / Charalambides 'Rose Watson' tour. . . . There were two vans, three bands, two drivers. Tom Lax was at the helm, rationing the booze and blasting Killed By Death Volume Whatever all through the Midwest. I walked out of a gig in Ypsilanti and tripped on a large dildo. Soundmen held their ears in Cleveland. We rolled out of Rochester (after Adris and my bandmate Jason blew an entire soundcheck screaming insults at each other in Spanish) and the soundman stuck his head in the car and yelled 'don't ever come back!' Byron Coley booked a show in Amherst with an audience of zero. Harry Pussy and Shadow Ring played, we didn't, and everyone was hanging out afterwards in front of the Unitarian Church when the local bus pulled up. Its lone occupant stepped out, looked around, and asked 'Is this where the Harry Pussy show is?' The TT's show, snipped from the end of this tour, was a shambolic near disaster. The fact that a recording survives at all is a minor miracle. We arrived to witness openers the Cotton Kings fleeing the venue after eating a bunch of acid, destroying the PA monitors, and swiping Adris's cymbals, which one tripping, bathrobe-clad member slunk back to return later. . . . Mr. Lax tried to calm me down by feeding me bourbon shots. We played. The PA was shot and we couldn't hear each other. I hurled my guitar across the stage, poured my beer over my head, and threw a pair of slides into the crowd, narrowly missing Wayne Rogers. Harry Pussy took the stage and sandblasted the night into oblivion, while I hid in the van (Mac: 'What the fuck is your problem?') until I was sober enough to attempt to find the Greyhound station and catch the first bus back to Houston. Christina spotted me wandering off and forcibly dragged me back into the club." --Tom Carter
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2LP
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EMEGO 146LP
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Editions Mego is happy to announce a vinyl reissue of the long out-of-print and impossibly rare final Harry Pussy album, the monumental Let's Build a Pussy. Originally released in 1998 after the band broke up, this has always been an elusive release. "You cannot buy this anywhere and you will never find one!!!" was what one writer exclaimed. Consisting of an hour-long piece of Bill Orcutt time-stretching a second of Adris Hoyos' voice into a slow, shifting drone. A piece of music you will love or hate, with not much room for anything in between. As Alan Licht states in his liner notes: "Let's Build a Pussy is a requiem, of sorts; Adris' opening one-second vocal noise has been variously termed a 'yelp' or a 'shout,' but I prefer to think of it as Bill and Adris' mutual last gasp, a band death-rattle. Put in a computer program, Adris' protracted utterance becomes, almost literally, 'the ghost in the machine.' Let's Build... is something of a late '90s audio inheritor of 19th-century spirit photography. Paradoxically functioning as both Harry Pussy's curtain call and final act, Let's Build a Pussy is an altogether unique past-tense statement from a band whose members were not immediately going on to solo careers or to other bands." Bill Orcutt (Mouse), Adris Hoyos (Mouth). Available only in this format. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin, June 2012. Housed in a gatefold sleeve.
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