Inspired split LP that pairs feral European art soundists Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer with the avant garage surrealism of LAFMS stalwarts Smegma. Numbered edition of 177 copies with colour paste-on sleeves. The Smegma side bundles an eerie track from 1975 with two pieces from 2008/2009 that use loops, electronics and waves of extended muzzy tone to confuse time lines completely. The Kommissar side is less about outlaw sound poetry and more plugged into their destructo rock style as documented by the sides that came out via Alga Marghen last year, with simple two/three note melodies and crunching fuzz submerging one of Mama Baer’s hypnotic nursery rhymes.

Second instalment with cool paste-on art sleeves in a hand-numbered edition of only 300 copies from Mama Baer, still one of the most original/fearless European artists to deform sound poetry and body performance. This continues the insane form of the first volume with vocals and tape/feedback pushed to the kind of emotional extremes of  Jandek’s Put My Dream On This Planet cut-up with hypnotic ‘songs’. Psychotic, intimate, emotionally unarmoured explorations of the vectors of female voice that’s easily the equal of Patty Waters, Diamada Galas, you name it... On white vinyl.

Kommissar Hjuler and his Frau, Mama Baer, have single-handedly reinvented sound poetry with a wild performative style that confuses arguments, vocal hysteria, power politics, goof-offs, Zappa covers and generally disobedient art while minting a style of vocal performance that is totally unique. Been looking forward to this particular release for some time, described by the duo as a series of folk tales from the Brothers Grimm re-worked in a way that is “not suitable for children”! But really, I gotta say, this might just be the best thing they have ever recorded, eclipsing even their amazing Ultra Eczema album. Their approach ranges across a bunch of styles. There’s the wild argumentative attack w/Mama weeping and singing while Kommissar shouts and howls in the background, the minimal almost Rev/Vega or even Meredith Monk approach with tense vocal atmospherics over a minimal, repetitive pulse, hypnotic sequences of breath and broken guitars and even some wild post-Junko eviscerations of lung power. In some ways it’s their most ‘musical’ release to date but it’s also completely fucked, especially when Mama Baer starts singing children’s nursery rhymes and blowing folk primitive melodies to shreds with alla the atomic power of the late Donald Ayler. Seriously, an amazing side by two of the freest spirits in the underground. Great sleeve art too, hand-numbered edition of only 200 copies. Another candidate for record of the year! Highly recommended. 

Another instalment in this on-going cassette series documenting vocal-only performances, this time from our favourite central European avant gardists Kommissar Hjuler and his partner Mama Baer. The tape starts out in ultra-minimal fashion, with Mama singing on the very edge of hearing before she bursts into a concerted almost Junk-esque series of shrieks and body convulsions and Kommissar enters with a cracked nursery rhyme theme that he repeats to the point of insanity while reducing Mama’s accompaniment to virtual hysteria. Personally, I can’t get enough. 

Limited new split LP with over-the-top handmade artwork, every single copy features an entirely individual piece of art from Hjuler and Mama Baer. Been a bunch of consummately weirdo splits and collaborations from Kommissar and Hjuler of late but this has got to be the most inexplicable, with a side from re-formed UK post-punk/DIY group Normal Normal, who play agit-funk in a kind of relentless Pop Group/The Ex style, coupled with a side of some of Kommissar’s most out vocal ravings. There are snatches of hypnotic spoken word, degraded piano abuse, even some weird keyboard loops that could almost be out-takes from Goblin’s Suspiria soundtrack, all cut-up with domestic ravings and variously abused small instruments. I’ve said it before but no one has re-thunk sound poetry quite so radically as Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baeer. But what were Medium Medium thinking? Is this some kind of weird Trojan Horse move by Hjuler? Will we ever know? Each LP looks amazing too, with over the top original artwork on each, inserts and your own individual number. 

Massive limited to only 250 copies double LP + limited CD-R set that represents the absolute pinnacle of German sound artist/feral performance kitten/avant instrumentalist Mama Baer: been waiting for this monster to touch down for an age and it more than delivers, with four and more sides of the wildest deconstructed No Wave/sound poetry/assaultive art action yet from long-term Kommissar Hjuler collaborator Mama Baer. The album starts off in classic Mama style with a distressed, distant, microphone-muffled vocal accumulation that combines the sounds of pleasure and pain, laughing, whipping, whimpering, almost early Whitehouse-style up-close hyperventilating and psychotically layered field recordings. This give sway to a remarkable vocals/guitar/drum dirge that comes over like Meredith Monk sings Father Yod with backing vocals by the Manson Girls and guitar by Rudolph Grey’s three year old kid. On the flip there’s a stunning Suckdog-by-way-of-Scorces guitar/vocal lament that is one of the most haunting of Mama’s song creations followed by what comes over as field recordings of early Diamanda Galas turned inside out, secreted at the bottom of a well, rescued, overdubbed with Casio keyboard drum retorts and turned into the most aching love song this side of Patty Waters “Moon Don’t Come Out Tonight”. And that’s only the first slab. Over on the second there are extended Cro-Magnon environs that would reconcile Japanese ethno-primitives Iro with the sounded of tortured pipes and the la-la-land of early Rita Ackermann, down-tuned vocal duets with siren calls, advanced percussive electric guitar marches and hysterical English language constructs that are somewhere between Lydia Lunch and Heather Leigh... this is a mind-blowing, exhaustive overview of the various feral strategies that Mama uses to usurp and humiliate feeble notions of art praxis, avant rock and sound poetry. If you’ve never taken the plunge before or just weren’t sure where to begin then this is the monster you have surely been waiting for, if you’re already a committed follower then this is just so much gravy. One of the premier all-solo slices of female to come out of the underground in years. Packaged in full colour sleeves with eye-popping Mama Baer art, a full colour insert and with all copies purchased from VT while stocks last a special bonus CD-R in an edition of only 99 copies with a guest appearance from Kommissar Hjuler. Highest possible recommendation!

All proceeds from the sale of this release will go to Tom Carter. Read more about the appeal here: http://www.volcanictongue.com/tomcarterappeal

”Meeting of melted minds on this split LP featuring Sheffield based long time local buddies Hunter Gracchus and Germany based performance and musicial duo of Kommissar Hjuler Und Frau (aka Mama Baer). The Hunter Gracchus have released an ever growing catalogue of super well received releases for the likes of Chironex, Golden Lab, Recollections of Knulp and Chocolate Monk. They also collaborated with Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and Chora as Le Drapeau Noir, as well as performing solo and in other fantastic far out acts such as Vampire Blues, Harappian Night Recordings and Blue Yodel, as well as two thirds of the trio running the excellent Singing Knives label and all working full time. I have to admit, I have no idea how they can manage to do all this, pretty damn impressive. Their side is an amazing live recording from La Planta, Argentina entitled 'Mujeres De La Boca', and if you've ever been to their Furniture Makers practice space, it sounds like Hunter Gracchus somehow managed to transport its entire contents of obscure musical objects over there with their perculiar brains to record some of the best live shit they've produced so far... a really great side long free playing improvised weird out with screwed up voices, skronky blurts and freestyle tribal percussion. Kommissar Hjuler Und Frau have been releasing material for quite some time on their own Der Schöne Hjuler-Memorial-Fond label, including a host of obscenely limited CDRs, cassettes and records. On top of that they've found the time release some truly astounding genre blending avant craziness on Ultra Eczema, Scumbag and Blossoming Noise. For this split LP KHJ & F's 'Zwei Einenperson (Pt. 2)', is a manic 22 minute side of avant garde experi-mentalism, with Kommissar Hjuler shredding electric guitar strings and destroying tapes while Mama Baer's insane vocal fluctuate between the erotic and pure demonic screaming. This recording of Kommissar Hjuler und Frau was made in March 2009 when working on the set for the performance of Zwei Eineperson. This was presented live at the vernissage of Mama Baer's and Kommissar Hjuler's exhibition Geteilter Raum at Kunstraum Winterthur, Switzerland on 2nd April 2009. A CD-R with several parts from their work on this set was previously released on their SHMF label in a very small edition. This is the re-issue of part 2 from their recordings, live in their living room. The full performance has been released as a CD-R and DVD in small edition as well. Edition of 500 on heavyweight vinyl with pro printed jackets, and insert.” – BRR. 

Numbered edition of 300 copies split LP: Harappian Night Recordings contribute some mutant psych/jazz/fourth world rock that somehow confuses 70s Miles with primitive folk ritual and the aesthetics of the free-from freakout as practiced by The Familiar Ugly, NNCK et al. On the flip Hjuler’s idiosyncratic reading of Hugo Ball’s Karawane poem highlights common cause with the Dada concept of ‘meaningless’ sound using vocals, F/X and junk percussion in a series of songs about nada. Excellent. Paste-on sleeves with insert on coloured vinyl. 

Necessary document of this inspired team-up that toured the UK last year, with Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer’s tapework, feral sound poetry and performance art married to the outer space improvisations of synth/vocalist Silvia Kastel and guitarist Ninni Morgia. Playing in the tiny historic Morden Tower – home to countless beat and post-beat poetry readings as well as many seminal Industrial performances - the quartet birth a profoundly feral amalgam of body-soundings, de-constructed language, zonked brain-bombing hysteria and weird cosmo jazz that gives way to the kinda refusenik metal meditations of classic No Wave. This is free improvisation well outside the bounds of ‘free improvisation’ with a performance style that has as much to do with Iggy Pop as Henri Chopin. Edition of 100 copies. Recommended.