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Underground > Radio & Music >

New York Noise Vol 2 Comp.

All Acting Regiment

18:05 / 11.05.06

I'll list these tracks. I like them all, but if you know anything about these artists, particularly what else sounds like them and what sort of scene they were part of (aside from "The New York Underground 1977-1984", which doesn't mean very much to me I'm afraid.

Pulsallama "Ungawa Pt.22
Mofungo "Hunter Gatherer"
Red Transistor "Not Bite"
Vortex OST "Black Box Disco" (This I found particularly intriguing)
Certain General "Back Downtown"
Sonic Youth "I dreamed I dream" (Urrm, obviously never heard of these, they sound a bit like Nirvana rip-offs, LOLOL)
Rhys Chatham "Drastic Classicism"
Clandestine (w/Ned Sublette) "Radio Rhythm"
Glorious Strangers "Move it time"
Felix "Tiger Stripes"
The Del-Byzanteens "My hands are yellow"
Don King "Tanajura"
Jill Kroesen "I am not seeing that you are here"
UT "Sham Shack"
The Static "My Relationship"
Y Pants "Favourite Sweater"

Cheers for anything you might be able to tell me about these. Feel free to mouth off with opinions and so on.

07:00 / 12.05.06

I might as well start off with Mofungo. From the top of my head, they were a long-time NYC scene band during the 80's, had a few records out on SST towards the end of the decade (when Greg Ginn started to broaden his horizons), and I believe Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo was involved with them in some capacity.

08:09 / 12.05.06

PULSALLAMA were an all-girl band, 12 of them if i'm not mistaken. and all percussion. sometime early 80ies. myth has it that these ladies were quite aggressive and not to be messed with.

08:13 / 12.05.06

oh yeah, THE DEL-BYZANTEENS were the band jim jarmusch used to play in. with the braun brothers who went on to... erm... DEEP SIX, i think. [is that right?]

lord nuneaton savage

09:36 / 12.05.06

The leader of Red Transistor was the legendary Von Lmo, one of rocks great unsung eccentrics. He used to dress in bacofoil costumes and pretend to be from Venus (or somewhere). He also claimed to be Sun Ra's disciple. Under his own name he later released the "Future Language" lp, which is as close to a meeting between Devo and Hawkwind as you could ever get.

19:11 / 12.05.06

I neglected to mention that Mofungo also counted the avant garde composer Elliott Sharp in their number. Sharp himself had a number of records out on SST in various guises, including a collaboration with the Minutemen/fIREHOSE's Mike Watt and George Hurley, and has had some of his latest work issued on John Zorn's Tzadik label.

It dawns on me that SST caught on to the NYC thing at a rather late stage. Ginn didn't get Sonic Youth on his roster until 1986, and between then and the dawn of the '90s he went on a bit of a binge, releasing records by the likes of the aforementioned Mofungo, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, and reissuing stuff by Rudolph Grey's Blue Humans and Thurston Moore's late '70s group The Coachmen.

Incidentally, I haven't heard most of this stuff. The majority of my knowledge has been gleaned from my collection of SST Superstore catalogues. But I have heard some of Fred Frith's NYC downtown work, specifically Massacre's 'Killing Time' -- which was recently reissued and is well worth a listen, particularly if you've enjoyed the stuff that Soul Jazz has compiled thus far.

05:12 / 18.05.06

Afraid I can only help you out with a couple of these... Rhys Chatham has this 3cd boxset on Table of the Elements that was released probably a couple of years or so. Good luck trying to find it, might be somewhere on Soulseek which I've been really unlucky with lately otherwise I'd be more than happy to share files. The fact that he's even on that label indicates that he fits in more with minimalist/early drone stuff (i.e. La Monte Young, John Cale, Tony Conrad, etc.) Experimented with the guitar symphonies alongside and with (perhaps even before?)Glenn Branca which I would consider just as good, if a bit underrated and perhaps not even comparable to the Ascension which I will forever hold the utmost regard for. Er..maybe not so much underrated as underexposed.

Coincidentally (or not, given that whoever compiled this made the decision to include them alongside each other), Glenn Branca was in the Static which I attach to Theoretical Girls and the other No Wave bands.

...

05:16 / 18.05.06

I too would have to recommend Fred Frith, and pretty much anything he touches.

10:37 / 18.05.06

What a coincidence, I put up a weblog post on this compilation scarcelt a week ago;

http://stereosanctity.blogspot.com/2006/05/can-i-get-away-with-using-that-ticket.html

Have you got the first volume of New York Noise? It strikes me that vol.2 is an interesting selection of oddities with some definite highlights, whereas vol.1 just fuckin' rips throughout - highly recommended.