Volcanic Tongue Catalogue

Ben Patterson
Liverpool Soundworks Volume One

Audio Research Editions ARECD-203

CD
£13.99


First in a two-volume set of compiling a bunch of otherwise-unavailable works from this Fluxus founder and consistently confounding avant provocateur. “The Liverpool Song Lines” works a series of solo voice scores inspired by Aboriginal song-lines in a series of new aural topographies. “The River Mersey” is a site-inspired updated adaptation of Patterson's “Duo 1961 For Voice and String Player” that originally appeared on Alga Marghen's great Early Works collection and features a performance with the Frakture Big Band at the Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool, that took place in October 2002. The disc comes packaged in a mini-LP style card sleeve with full colour inner wallet.

Ben Patterson
Liverpool Soundworks Volume Two

Audio Research Editions ARECD-204

CD
£13.99


Second volume bundling key recent performances from Fluxus pioneer Ben Patterson. “Surveying Western Philosophy Using China Tools” is a discourse on Chinese astrology and western philosophy scored for snatches of lush almost Moondog-style orchestration, illustrative environmental sounds, cumulative layers of voice and a quirky almost Mayo Thompson-style vocal manner. “Art As Thinking - Thinking As Art” is a well-plotted lecture that will fascinate anyone seriously interested in the kind of sideways mental leaps that propelled Fluxus straight through to the other side of the 20th century. Recorded at the Liverpool School of Art & Design, 25th November 2003. The disc comes packaged in mini-LP style card sleeve with full colour inner wallet.

Ben Patterson
A Fluxus Elegy

Alga Marghen Plana-P 17VocSon061

LP
£15.99


New limited one-sided LP from this modern composer presents an elegy to Fluxus by encoding the names of various key players (including John Lennon. LaMonte Young, Yoshi Wada, Yasunao Tone, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones, Philip Corner, Takehisa Kosugi, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Henry Flynt, Joseph Beuys, Henning Christiansen et al) in the form of International Morse dots and dashes which were 'performed' on a keyboard with a voice-pattern setting going through a loop unit and a mixer and straight to cassette. Front cover reproduces the original score. Edition limited to 345 copies.

Henry Flynt
Novabilly

Locust L-101

2xLP
£18.99


Archival set that builds on the primitive garage rock blueprint that Henry Flynt laid down with The Insurrectionists on I Don't Wanna, combining hypno-minimalist logic with cranking ostrich guitar moves, a feel for hillbilly raunch that is totally Out To Hunch, classic Velvets-esque usurpation of the Diddley beat and a gruff early Magic Band-style attack all cut with agit-prop lyrics and endless free jazz/blues riffing: "Taste the magic! Nova'Billy is another edible audible from Henry Flynt's dusty lower Manhattan bunker and it stands as one of the fullest, most beauteous document of Flynt's tenure with a full working rock band to date. For less than one calendar year between 1974 and 1975, Henry Flynt's hard driving, heavy jamming agit country rock band, Nova'Billy embraced bareknuckled deep fried groove attacks, bearded hippie jam band workouts & a monstrous melange of blues, boogie and free jazz squeal into a musical soufflé that could only have come together with Flynt cooking up what was proven to be, time and again, an impossible vision within the confines of the SOHO art orbit of the 70s. After a couple performances at Anthology Film Archives and studio sessions in Richmond, Virginia and Manhattan, the band postered SOHO in a last ditch effort to get some traction with the hipsters that read, "Party on down to the Kitchen. Stoned country music for rock country". The gig, like all the others before it, was poorly attended. Nova'Billy played what would be their last live gig at the Kitchen on June 27, 1975. Nova'Billy covers a damned fine and important moment in Henry Flynt's musical career. If the Insurrections laid the foundation for his anti war primitive garage rock sound, the emergence, nearly a decade later of Nova'billy is the realization of Henry's own vision of obtuse personal politics ( "I was a creep"), provocative leftwing posturing (check their version of the world communist anthem "the international!") and a gleefully recombinant spin on southern music. 13 cuts and 60 minutes of old glory!" - Locust. On 180g vinyl in a gatefold sleeve.

Henry Flynt
Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Volume 1

Locust L-16

LP
£14.99


Vinyl edition of this amazing collection of future/primitive string jams from minimalist/art activist Henry Flynt. A collection of sawing stomps, modal hillbilly jams, reverb soaked country dunts and chugging American primitive from one of the key underground thinkers of the modern age.

Henry Flynt
Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Volume 2

Locust L-14

LP
£14.99


Vinyl edition of this amazing collection of future/primitive string jams from minimalist/art activist Henry Flynt. A collection of sawing stomps, modal hillbilly jams, reverb soaked country dunts and chugging American primitive from one of the key underground thinkers of the modern age.

Henry Flynt/C.C. Hennix
Dharma Warriors

Locust L-114

CD
£10.99


Archival discovery of some straight-to-boombox recordings from 1983 featuring avantist, art-theorist and rip-it-up guitar minimalist Henry Flynt alongside long-time collaborator/drummer C.C. Hennix mainlining two primitive repeat-o stoner blues-boogie freakouts at home in Woodstock. The feel is looser and more spacious than the material he cut with Walter De Maria under the banner of The Insurrectionists but there’s still plenty of crank and it’s easy to extrapolate Lou Reed’s original ‘ostrich guitar’ style from the classic chord-soloing form captured here, lending further weight to Flynt’s claim to having mentored Reed’s break-out style. Either way, it’s another intriguing chapter in the uncovering of Flynt’s secret history.

Henry Flynt/C.C. Hennix
Dharma Warriors

Locust L-114

LP
£14.99


Archival discovery of some straight-to-boombox recordings from 1983 featuring avantist, art-theorist and rip-it-up guitar minimalist Henry Flynt alongside long-time collaborator/drummer C.C. Hennix mainlining two primitive repeat-o stoner blues-boogie freakouts at home in Woodstock. The feel is looser and more spacious than the material he cut with Walter De Maria under the banner of The Insurrectionists but there’s still plenty of crank and it’s easy to extrapolate Lou Reed’s original ‘ostrich guitar’ style from the classic chord-soloing form captured here, lending further weight to Flynt’s claim to having mentored Reed’s break-out style. Either way, it’s another intriguing chapter in the uncovering of Flynt’s secret history.