Long-time coming collaboration between The No-Neck Blues Band and original ethno/jazz Kraut caravan Embryo. Embryo made some great recs in the early 70s, including the super-heavy Bremen 1971 and members of Embryo played alongside Conrad Schnitzler et al at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab and as members of the free-improvising think tank Eruption. Their commitment to guerrilla folk/art actions, their whole get-in-the-van ethos and their multi-disciplinary approach to improvisation makes em ready bed-fellows with NNCK and anyone who has seen that amazing Embryo Eurasian tour documentary will already be fully aware of the parallels. This big band set is heavy on the percussive side, with miniature hand/glock/throat rituals giving way to moments of sublime melodic clarity that have a touch of eastern European klezmer music to em (especially reminiscent of that beautiful Khevrisa set on Folkways) along with a little Marion Brown/Gunter Hampel. Elsewhere there's an almost Sun City Girls level of mutant lip along with touches of contemporary psych units like Dungen although that particularly lop-sided percussive swandive that they invariably tumble into and Michiko's great vocal interjections mean that the whole deal is unmistakably NNCK. NNCK have always done a great job of drawing attention to the crucial breakthrough role played by various non-canonical freaks working well below the radar and this is another swell public service event. And it sounds great. Comes with a booklet with tons of great pics and liners. Highly recommended.

Edition of 340 copies archival release from NNCK documenting their earliest four-piece incarnation. This is NNCK at their most alien, with the abrasive sound of the classic “Clearing” 7” extended to two sides of abstract metal tones punctured by bursts of acoustic noise and the kind of all-devouring soundfields of AMM circa The Crypt. If you prefer NNCK at their most extraterrestrial and less ethnic/rhythmic focussed then this is a winning blat of early improvisatory refusal and makes a great companion volume to Locust’s At 6AM We Become The Police. Beautifully packaged with hilarious conceptual sleevenotes by Keith Connelly. Chris Morris couldn’t have done a better job. Recommended. 

Massive limited edition LP on NNCK’s imprint documenting a series of recordings from this ambitious American/European big band that unites Dave Nuss of The No-Neck Blues Band with Spencer Clark and James Ferraro of The Skaters alongside Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat, Jonna from Kuupuu, Stellar Om Source, Mik Quantius from Embryo and Tiitus Petajaniemi and Jari Koho of Uton/Keijo. The whole entourage toured through Europe in the spring of 2007 and this LP collects the best of the jams. Three long tracks and one fragment, including two pieces recorded at VPRO Radio. The sound takes off from the kind of free goof blueprint of The Godz, with a lots of percussion and odd rhythmic dunting while The Skaters work lush keyboard parts and a wall of ululating vocal drone deep into the backdrop. Quantius supplies vocals that are somewhere between Don Van Vliet and Alan Bishop and the whole thing proceeds into this kind of weird ethno-zone where fragmented world rhythms and sounds are twisted to dark, psychotropic ends. But the real gravy is the side long fourth track, the most convincing update of the monochord bass/drum confusion of Skip Spence’s “Grey/Afro” ever improvised in real time, combining sublime vocal highs with a hypnotic bottom end. Highly recommended.

Third instalment in this thrilling on-going series from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band/K-Salvatore/Malkuth with each LP associated with an astrological attribution taken from Decimus Magnus Ausonius (310-395). 2 feels like an extension of the ancient/future ritual appeal of 1, with swathes of electronics moving in mysterious whorls that flatline into dense beams of light before phantom melodies that are somewhere between arcs of classic al strings and devotional kosmische start to rise to the surface. Imagine a heady gothic ritual ala Hermann Nitsch or The Cosmic Couriers but with a deranged High Mass appeal and a cracked post-Whitehouse/Buchenwald atmosphere. Edition of 250 copies in silkscreened sleeves. Massively heavy and highly recommended: can’t get enough of these Decimus sides.

Stunning double LP from the duo of Pat Murano (The No-Neck Blues Band/Decimus et al) and Mark Morgan (Sightings). This is wild a-formal low level Industrial/electronic minimalism that has all of the toxic appeal of Relay For Death with sidelong works that evolve from sputtering electronics and pugilistic drum machines into towering alien structures that touch on aspects as diverse as early Whitehouse, Faust and Conrad Schnitzler soundtracking a Hermann Nitsch aktion. Given full sides of vinyl to spread out on, the duo build the tension by the subtle addition of all sorts of subliminal laminal detail until the whole thing is suspended on screaming metal drones, arcs of flamethrower melody and scrambled alien vocal broadcasts that sound like modulated EVP. This makes a great companion to the recent run of killer Decimus sides and it’s a classic slice of austere death drone from a pair of heads with an instinctive feel for the blackest of psychedelics. Edition of 270 copies. A massive set: highly recommended. 

New edition of 300 copies private press LP from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band, part of a series of 12 LPs visioned as reflections on the zodiacal attributions of Decimus Magnus Ausonious. 3 presents a set of scalding cracked electronics and automating ghost tones that’s somewhere between Conrad Schnitzler and some of the more ritualistic early-80s Industrial experiments. The rhythmic feel is really odd, with thin sheets of high feedback tone shuffling like sandpaper over thundercracks of doomy percussion and fuzz while a celestial almost Sonny Blount-style keyboard solo pilots the whole thing through your third eye. Amazing bleak psychedelia in the classic cold//austere European tradition but cut w/enough wig to make it a trip. Hand-painted sleeves. Recommended. 

New edition of 300 copies private press LP from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band, part of a series of 12 LPs visioned as reflections on the zodiacal attributions of Decimus Magnus Ausonious. This one is radically different from much of what has come before in the series, with a set of almost baroque synth work that at points comes off like the cosmic solo album that Ayler sideman Call Cobbs never made in the wake of Love Cry, with almost-harpsichord stylings circling around early music motifs while a planetary scale drone drags the whole deal over the event horizon and into an endlessly reflective/fragmentary zone where ghost tone bounce off each other again and again creating a delirious music box/hall of mirrors style that just keeps  on peaking. Wow. Certainly the deepest and most disorientating outing yet from Decimus. Hand-painted sleeves. Dedicated to Rabbi Hiya. Recommended. 

Another instalment in the Decimus series of astrologically-themed electro-meditations from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band/K-Salvatore/Malkuth et al. This one comes in a run of only 250 copies with silkscreened sleeves. Minimalist, circling electronics and percussive tone patterns dominate 4, with an atmosphere that is somewhere between the stylings of Richard Youngs’ Festival recording, the more weighty of the Kraut-influenced Industrial music (Nurse With Wound/Maurizio Bianchi) and the phased tape/electronics experiments of Charlemagne Palestine. Recommended, as is everything in the series to date.

Another instalment in the Decimus series of astrologically-themed electro-meditations from Pat Murano of The No-Neck Blues Band/K-Salvatore/Malkuth et al. This one comes in a run of only 300 copies and is one of the darkest and most claustrophobic Decimus sides. Minimal/primitive rhythm box jams with all of the alien appeal of Tolerance and the rest of the Vanity cabal cut-up with psychotic/dark modulated and variously filtered vocals that have all of the uncanny appeal of the most deformed and threatening of the early Whitehouse sides. The sonics walk the line between ethereally beautiful and darkly threatening and if this hadda come out on Come Org back in the day you’d be auctioning your grandma for a copy. A superb side and a singular instalment in this excellent on-going series. Recommended.

Album from this fantastic free jazz action trio featuring Matt Heyner (NNCK et al) on bass stunts, Matt Lavelle on trumpet and Ryan Sawyer on drums. Moves through great, pounding drums/trumpet face-offs that sound like a more martial take on Cherry and Blackwell's Mu to three-way time fluxing and wildly abstract silence/motion. Highly recommended.