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viewing 1 To 10 of 10 items
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OM 086LP
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"They had never played together before. They had never even met each other before this springtime 2024 concert at London's Café Oto. Evan Parker, circular breathing maestro of the saxophone, a legend in the universe that is free improvisation since the late 1960s and Bill Nace, one of the most intriguing experimental 'noise' guitarists of the 1990s/2000s underground scene. For those of us who have been enamored by the live and documented work of both these gents, this Café Oto duo was a must-hear event. It could have gone anywhere musically and that would have been totally fine. Particularly with Evan having a history of being thrown into a variety of challenging collaborations throughout his career, employing the learned elegance of trust in his own sensitivity to listening, responding, leading, following, sparring, intertwining, dialoguing, creating in the instant and, essentially, dignifying the non-hierarchical grace of chance? By the time Bill reached Café Oto in early 2024 he had relocated to Philadelphia all the while releasing a succession of collaborative LPs on his Open Mouth label to present his developing progression of solo and collaborative work. He also would find himself considerably engaged with playing the electric taishōgoto, a keyboard-activated string instrument from Japan which can exist as a one, two, four, five, or six string oblong sound object. Bill's approach to the taishōgoto would not be too unlike his approach to the traditional electric guitar, though no outboard implements such as files, sticks, and rocks are utilized. The similarity would lie wholly with Bill's full immersion of high velocity action-playing where, with the taishōgoto, an electric drone beauty occurs. The flurry of sonics and resultant harmonics emanating from the amplifier (which Bill opts to dial into with borderline loud-as fuck volume settings) furthers the meta-mantra properties of the instrument in an astounding display of drone dynamism. This sound world of Bill's two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café Oto night worked beautifully with Evan Parker's improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find its eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music." -- Thurston Moore, London, 2025
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OM 079LP
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"In the mid-'70s in Northern New Jersey, some friends and I formed an ensemble called Atomic Squawk, with which we used our extremely limited musical techniques to play the sorts of whacked-out sounds about which none of our fucking peers gave a rat's ass. 'Funny' talking blues, free form skronk, vaguely detourned covers of Beefheart and the Velvets -- these were our stocks in trade, and much happy time was whiled away in Randy Charles' basement drinking and making noise, simply because most all the live music being played in the area was dull as shit; useless unless your only goal was trying to get a sloppy blowjob in the parking lot of Mother's. Fifty miles south, things were pretty much the same for future members of Steel Tips, King of Siam, Strapping Fieldhands, Spy Gods and other future legends of the South Jersey sub-underground. But the active (and semi-active) participants in Bangone Ensemble had access to many more and better musicians down around Rutgers. This meant the Bangone Ensemble's sound was leagues beyond Atomic Squawk's. Still, we shared the same aesthetic impulse. In 1975, Jersey bands like the Laughing Dogs and Another Pretty Face were considered cutting edge. If you knew anything about anything, this notion was a goddamn joke. It sounds to me (factual details are shrouded in mystery) like Bangone Ensemble had up to a dozen players at times, with miles of instrumental width, and chops almost on a par with Ithaca's Zobo Fun Band. There's some seriously good playing going on here, but it's all being done in the name of weirdo-rock as the truest expression of non-idiotic teen rebellion. It's a great damn sound, mixing jazz, art-rock, 'new music' and primitivism in much the same way DC band the Muffins did during their earliest days. The sound is kind of like a child's guide to the avant garde -- from the Mothers to the Soft Machine to the Magic Band to the Arkestra and beyond, with a soupçon of sheer wise-assery stirred in for good measure. Bangone Ensemble's sound is just a great gust of freedom from a time and a place that was pretty fucking square. They unwittingly set a pace not really matched until some of the free-rock post-everything fusion units of the mid '90s. As Mick Farren might have said, 'Give the anarchists a cigarette!' They earned it." --Byron Coley
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OM 054LP
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[some copies have minor jacket bumps] "I have known Matt since the very early '00s when he was still a student at Hampshire College. We became great friends right away and have remained so since. Matt has been an on-and-off member of IFCO (full time now), and we have worked together on a number of other projects. This is to say, I might be a little biased. (But everyone is biased, no matter how much they write in the third person.) Matt has been doing solo tape music for well over ten years now. My memory says it started out as a live thing with a mixing desk and a bunch of cheap cassette machines. (My memory says a lot of things.) I'm not sure exactly what he does now, but it is something similar and still involves cassette tapes. There are loads of people doing music with field recordings and tapes, etc., and, for the most part, the music is a messy yawn-fest. That is not The Krefting Way. Each of the six pieces on Finer Points has a limited number of elements that slowly revolve. Each track is discrete in its sound pallet but made in a similar fashion. The overall effect is like the bottles in a Joseph Cornell box. My favorite bottle is the one for a guitar (Spanish?). It manages to hit a sweet spot between hypnotic and unsettling. The whole LP is great and expertly sequenced. (The lost art of recording!) Matt's releases are like desert flowers that bloom and are gorgeous, then they are gone. A tip of the glass to Bill Nace as well. He has kept Open Mouth running for quite a while, and as anyone who has ever run a small label will tell you, 'It's a fool's errand.' It is, too -- but if it weren't for fools like Bill, the world would be missing a lot of great music." --Scott Foust
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OM 080LP
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"Before hitting the road together in 2022, Bill Nace and Emily Robb recorded a tour split -- a cassette, limited run of 50 -- only to be found at their merch table. Now on vinyl, the split captures a moment bursting with verdant, crisp anticipation. Both artists were then on the heels of significant artistic leaps. Robb was wrapping up the promotional cycle of her first full-length solo record, 2021's How To Moonwalk, and Nace had recently shifted his focus from prepared guitar to the taishogoto, a Japanese instrument rarely heard in the west. When Nace plays his taisho live, listeners generally respond in a couple of different ways. Some become slightly hypnotized by the constant motion required to maintain the instrument's frantic, electric flicker. Others, on the edge of their seats, whoop loudly, almost involuntarily, to release the mounting tension. As a performer, Nace says the experience is a bit like being watched while jogging in place. Where the guitar easily allows space, this particular model of taishogoto has no sustain. 'I have to keep playing it to keep making sound,' Nace says. 'I have to get whipped up into this state.' This presents new limitations, and Nace expands to the edges. Here it shudders and sparks, spiking and scribbling like an EKG. It emanates white light, white heat. Robb luminates in a balmier way, like sunshine through leaves. Her guitar arcs and billows. Fripp-y tones and textures establish a structure inside which it feels good to get lost. Robb describes her improvisational playing here as somewhat meditative. 'There's a constant running through it,' she says. It's like 'hearing a story of a person's mind and emotions as they let music flow through.' Nace notes that coincidentally, the two sides -- both recorded by Robb at her Suddenly Studio in Philadelphia -- mirror one another in structure: 'There's a stripped-down element that both things have. It's almost more about cutting things away than adding.' Having frequently worked together in the studio over the last few years, Robb says they've each developed an understanding of the other's processes. 'We often discuss quite a lot but conversely, sometimes we don't have to say anything.'" --Margaret Welsh, Queens, NY 2023
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2X7"
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OM 078EP
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"We have all been there at some point or another, maybe even last night. There are those moments when you are drifting into or out of sleep when it is hard to identify exactly what is real and what is imaginary. Time spent working through the hazy gauze separating waking and dreaming blurs the edges of perception and leaves us sorting through myriad versions of hyper-reality. The music of Body/Head has always existed for me within this liminal space. Whether it is Kim Gordon's spectral, invocation-like vocals and churning guitar work or Bill Nace's reality altering guitar conjurings, the duo has spent over a decade creating a singular body of work that rides that very knife's edge. Are their sonic constructions here to help you or to harm you? To guide you to safety or to lead you into ruin? Where the listener sits mentally at any given moment helps determines the outcome along countless dualities. This mastery over unpredictability is why I have constantly considered them the most potent band going. While time the past few years has been strange in all walks of day-to-day reality, Body/Head continues forwards as a force as constant as the tides. They offer forth the Come On EP now as a sort of proof of life photo, a transmission to remind you that they are still out here and ready to serve on a moment's notice. Its four tracks have been assembled from a combination of old and new parts to create a composite whole that is every bit as vital as any other chapter within their discography. Equal parts raw and shine, current statement and hint of future releases to come, Come On is Body/Head operating on all cylinders. The concept was to create a statement along the lines of classic 2x7" EPs like Chain Gang's Deuce Package or Dynasty's Gate and to that end Come On delivers in full. Body/Head's Come On EP is jointly released by Open Mouth Records and Three Lobed Recordings as a one-time pressing of 550 numbered copies and available now." --Cory Rayborn, April 2023
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OM 074LP
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"At last! The long-promised duo LP by two undisputed masters of post-tongue instrumental gesticulation and invention. Augured by their eponymous 7" from 2019, Off Motion is a full-length exploration of the previously unknown aural destinations these two guys continually discover as they move beyond the borders of music-as-it-is-played. Often, when writing about music, it's possible to draw comparisons to players' stylistic relationships to what has gone before. But the music on Off Motion (to quote a William Burroughs chestnut), 'buggers comparison.' Nace's style on electric guitar may have its roots somewhere in the playing of Keith Rowe, but the sonic scapes he conjures are so nimbly freaked, I can rarely figure out what the hell he is doing (if anything) to generate what I'm hearing. And White's avant garde approach to the jaw harp (as well, I think, nose flute and maybe even bird call) has so few precedents apart from random Fluxus events, it's impossible to make any inferences as to possible influences. This duo lives up to the promise of ESP-Disk's motto as much as anyone I can think of. You have never heard such sounds in your life. The seven pieces on Off Motion are hard to unravel. Chik sent recordings to Bill. Nace added his own bits. Then he and Emily Robb screwed around with everything until it pulsed with sheer mystery. I took a lot of notes on the tracks, but the best ones are hard for even me to decode. For 'Pathways' -- starts with pixie twinkle guitar, then evolves into a duet for Taishōgoto and nose flute that sounds as though it was designed to drive dogs nuts while they search for phantom, mocking squirrels. For 'Erasing' -- like a troubled pigeon visiting a guy who uses an electric razor while bouncing around on Slinky-shoes, before switching into carillon-based boots and breaking into a human pinball routine he's been practicing since he was a boy. I repeat these descriptions only to show how entirely Bill & Chik's music resists easy categorization. There is a sense at times the studio/mixing board itself is being used as an instrument, which is very cool. But I am still jonesing to see these guys do some live shows. Both Bill and Chik have the ability to mix jocularity and seriousness into a strangely compelling whole. Their music is bizarre as hell without being off-putting or sterile, and anyone who has a taste for weird thrills is gonna love Off Motion to death. Tell Alice Cooper the news." --Byron Coley
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OM 070LP
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2023 repress. "The first time I heard Wheatie's music was at a basement show in Philadelphia, and I was entranced. I've felt similarly when watching videos of the French singer Barbara as she concentrates on a corner of the room, her eyes big warm coins, singing 'La solitude' about a loneliness that 'rolls around the hips' and demands that the door is opened . . . Both make music that is as gorgeous as it's eerie and says a good deal about the workings of their own minds -- and by that, I don't mean that they reveal their psychology -- but they take us deep into their peculiarities as musicians. After Wheatie's set, I asked where I could get a record, and assumed there must be one -- surely, I'm late here -- because I wasn't alone. Everyone at that show was visibly mesmerized. It's been a few years since then, but I haven't forgotten it, couldn't, and have waited for Wheatie's debut, Old Glow, which captures and renews the hypnotic mystery of her set that night. For Old Glow, Wheatie has collaborated with Stephen Santillan, who plays keyboard and guitar, while she's on the keyboard and dulcimer, and of course, her distinct vocals. Wheatie and Santillan's album includes 'Blue,' which feels like a lyrical invocation that I can imagine under a canticle's heightened rubric, requiring the congregation to stand as it's being sung . . . Old Glow contains a private, condensed language that can only be built by solitude and a willingness to forego readymade forms. The problem with language is that, in order to speak, write lyrics, write about them, you must translate the peculiarity of the self into material script. When the heart is inarticulate. When literary language is often too precise. We're too trained up in it. There is a version of this kind of music that goes the route of slick pop, or becomes lazy because it's beautiful, but Wheatie's music is distinguished by an elemental weirdness, a plaintive and wonky carnival way off in the distance -- this is what it sounds like to submit the self to itself. On the track 'Low,' she ululates, 'It's OK to be low. It's OK to be low.' And because Wheatie has an uncanny ability to make something strange out of the familiar, it feels like a singular utterance. I have not heard it before. As if an old well could talk. There are also several moments of spontaneity in Old Glow. 'Canyon' brings more rock, and the harmonium gets country in 'Rose.' These turns make the album feel complex, like an epic about connection, loss, the inevitability of our being alone. Nico's nightmarish Desertshore also moves along a similar queasy spiral -- its emotional locus is precise, even though the music is impenetrable. Death and despair in Desertshore, like solitude in Old Glow, is palpable. They can't help but continuously return to it..." --Chelsea Hogue Ohlman, IL, 2022
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OM 068LP
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"Obstacle #79: Memory Is Current offers a sequence of works for player piano, a device which captured Rick Myers' imagination in 2017. Divining a method from mathematical measurements and intuitive drawing systems, Myers obstructed piano rolls using adhesive tape. Performed in this altered state on a player piano in the hallway of Easthampton Machine and Tool in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the music embedded in the rolls was extricated from its history and given fresh life. Restriction forged a pathway to expanse. Here are the enchanting results. The workings of the machine are evident throughout, wistfully recalling music box fantasias, even as the tumbling notes confound expectations. The meticulously constructed scenarios invariably run amok, and in between chaos and melody, frustration and freedom, an impossible helix fashions its own celestial music. The sounds grumble against one another, summoning subterranean promises and unearthing unexpected delights. As the tracks run into one another, Myers interposes spoken dispatches, detailing aspects of the story behind the record. Like the sounds of the piano, they transcend mere reportage. Increasingly obscured over the course of the two sides, these ghostly interjections are part of the sonic fabric, enhancing both the narrative and acousmatic aspects of the project. Rick Myers is an artist whose decades-long career has studiously disregarded the confines of medium -- there are books, drawings, sculptures, installations, exhibitions, videos, performances, design projects, texts, and combinations thereof. Sound, as evidenced by his recent focus on recorded material, is but another potent arrow in his quiver. Plus, it's nothing new -- he cut his teeth as a DJ. This record is an interior travelogue shot through with ecstatic truth. In furthering the process of obstruction by which the player piano makes its music possible, Myers is, in his own words, looking to 'cast and dislodge time.' Like God or Loss or Love, Time is one of the bedeviling bottomless wells from which the most affecting art springs. This is the real thing. Rick Myers is not in search of lost time, he is attempting to lose it, and in so doing to chart the inevitable trajectory of that loss, of its apparent disappearance, its peculiar habit of hiding in plain sight." --Matt Krefting, Holyoke, MA, 2022
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OM 059LP
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"OM59/Live at #6. Numbered edition of 200. Silkscreened covers by Alan Sherry. Personnel: Susan Alcorn - pedal steel; Chris Corsano - drums; Bill Nace - guitar. Recorded September 5. 2018 live at Rotunda Philadelphia, PA."
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OM 048LP
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Restocked, last copies. "Fourth in Open Mouths's Live At ... series. Greg Kelley on trumpet; Bill Nace on electric guitar. Recorded March 9, 2016 by Daniel Menche. Cover art by Bill Nace. Covers screened by Alan Sherry. Edition of 300."
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