"First full LP of new material from Dean Brown's Little Skull project since 2019's 'A Light in the Window Will Guide Us Safely Home' on Planam.
Little Skull began in the mid-2000's, shortly before Brown relocated to London. Although the trademark NZ/Aoteara underground sound is evident, comparisons to the contemporary Gothenburg underground or outliers like Richard Youngs & Genghis Cohn can also be drawn.
This particular, 'Untitled', LP began while Brown was preparing for his first London performance at the end of 2021. It's stripped-down, mainly improvised, sound was dictated by practical rather than aesthetic decisions. Despite his economy of means, Brown has a keen sense of sequencing and narrative with both his live sets and recorded output resulting in an immersive and engaging listen. The set incorporates piano, organ, saw, harp, and guitars (both ebowed and played with a screwdriver) bathed in tape hiss and amp hum.
Although it's probably the darkest and most minimal Little Skull LP to date, there are still moments where the light shines through. Similar to Andrew Chalk, for example, even when Brown is in pastoral, melodic territory, his noise roots are still evident. Perhaps it's this inner tension that gives Little Skull releases such an irresistable sound?
The LP comes in a handmade concertina style pop-out cover featuring a caged bird suspended in mid flight. Edition of 210."
Nick Hamilton

Little Skull

Track 2 from the CD "Rejector" by Omit.  Released by Anomalous Records in December 2002.
This is the first American CD release by veteran New Zealand artist Omit.  Previously he has had three compact disc releases on the prestigious New Zealand label Corpus Hermeticum (including one triple-CD box and a collaboration with A Handful of Dust under the name Dust/Omit).  Other releases have appeared on notable labels Fusetron, Stomach Ache, Trinder, Colorful Clouds for Acoustics, Aegri Somnia Vana, and his own Deep Skin imprint, which was renamed Sysecular.  He's been featured in such magazines as Opprobrium and Bananafish, and was recently included on Anomalous Records' quickly sold out compilation LP "Electrically Induced Vibrations". 
"As a whole 'Rejector' seems lighter and not quite as painfully claustrophobic as 'Interior Desolation' or the majestic triple-box set 'Quad'.  Contrary to what one possibly might think, it's a welcome development; instead of being on pins and needles I can fully concentrate on the visual scenery his music brings to my mind.  I see burning stars streaked across wider inner landscapes, and it's all just so intensely beautiful.  Of particular note is 'Divider' which with its mantra-like looped beats and swelling clusters of synthesized soundscapes goes way beyond the boundaries of our solar system.  It's an irresistible journey that continues in 'Isolator', but this time we can stop and look at things we pass more carefully as it repeats itself over and over again into an entrancing meditation that will leave you asking for more." - Mats Gustafsson in Broken Face #13.

Omit - Uniselector

A short excerpt from the beginning of a 50 minute piece.
Released on CD by Anomalous Records in 2002. 
An unlimited reissue of the out of print Anomalous Records LP (released February 2001 in an edition of 530 copies only) with new cover artwork.  This reissue sees the original A side extended from the original length of 17 minutes to the new length of 50 minutes.  It still includes Colin Potter's 17 minute remix "Periodic" which was featured on the B side of the LP.  
"Period" is beautiful piece based entirely on sounds from a Bluthner grand piano, looped and extended into long, drifting, calm drones with occasional punctuation of recognizable notes slowly resonating.  The piece becomes "Periodic" at the hands of Colin Potter, whose remix turns it into a more dark and haunting experience which reveals even less of the characteristics of a piano than the original.  Two complimenting, yet also contrasting, views of the same material which both show a great deal of depth and cohesion.  
All wrapped in a full color cover designed by Jonathan and featuring his photographs.
"Like many of my pieces of music, the finished version of 'Period' is very different from the idea in my mind which I started out with. The idea acts as a seed and the piece grows, often in unexpected ways, from that seed. So I was extremely pleased when I heard Colin's remix of the piece, because he had transformed the piece into something much more like my initial idea. He had returned the piece full circle." - Jonathan.

Jonathan Coleclough - Period (excerpt)

A short excerpt from the beginning of a 28 minute piece.
Released on CD by Anomalous Records in 2002.  Last copies can be bought from:
www.ribexibalba.com/mailorder.html
pogus.com/anomalous.html

studio recording of Jeph Jerman's small sound orchestra with Dave Knott, Mike Shannon, Jeffery Taylor, Robert Millis and Marina Granger.  two of the members of this group also record under the name Climax Golden Twins.
first heard as a live broadcast on sonarchy (kexp,seattle,wa).
mix, edit and mastering by doug haire for the bang kung assn.
sonarchy is a jack straw production.
"in seattle in 1996, i began giving performances using mainly natural objects as my 'instruments'. after many such performances, two friends suggested (independently of one another), that i might try doing it with a group. as this idea had occurred to me a few years previously, i thought perhaps they were right. in june of 1999, the animist orchestra began its history as a working group. we got together nearly every week for the next three months, to play and discuss our playing. our first performance was given in eric lanzillotta's living room for a small group of friends, and was well received. from the beginning, the focus of the orchestra has been on listening, and improvising in the moment. a group of people truly playing together and focusing intently on the present can be a powerful thing. the use of natural objects (stones, shells, pine cones etc.) as opposed to more conventional musical instruments, can help the players to not fall back on learned habits of musical play. there is no canon or book of rules to refer to when using everyday things as sound makers, and this may facilitate the removal of actions arising from taste and memory. during the initial period of discovery for the orchestra, dave knott made the observation that, when when playing and focusing on the sound being made, it was 'like the spirit of the thing is telling you how it wants to move'. mike shannon once told me that when i play i seem to be animating the objects with my hands.  i think these comments explain the name of the orchestra better than i could. i wanted to make a CD of the orchestra to document our work together, and to show my admiration and gratitude for the friends who have agreed to join. i don't think they knew what they were getting into." - jeph jerman.

Animist Orchestra - Wuwei (excerpt)

Track 3 from the CD "Sackcloth and Ashes" by Points of Friction. Released on CD by Anomalous Records in December 2001.
The last copies of the CD are available from www.ribexibalba.com/mailorder.html

Points of Friction scrapes together a mind-bending menagerie of sound from the panorama of objects and equipment they work with. Their process-oriented artistry invokes apparitions of the ear, with multi-dimensional sonic textures that span from quirky, seductive lullabies to revolting sensual assaults.

Points of Friction made contact in the extremely beige but earthquake famous San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles and home also to the infamous Manson Family. Tim Alexander and Kenny Ryman (Paper Bag) served together as psychedelic altar boys at the age of nine. Kenny was from a musical family, so he had developed a set of ears from an early age. Damian Bisciglia (Agog) and Tim became acquainted in Cub Scouts around eight years old. Becoming reacquainted among a few self-described social outcasts at Los Angeles Pierce College around 1980, they gravitated to the art department where they encountered a cast of characters. Among these were the profoundly talented Jeannie Cohen (Sprout Mountain) and the profusely bizarre Joseph Hammer (Dinosaurs with Horns, Swan Trove, Solid Eye). Relieved and excited to discover other freaks, they soon evolved an excuse for converging: making noise. Originally inclusive and spontaneous, their noise was extracted from everyday objects, and recorded with built-in condenser mics on primitive equipment. They soon adopted some recording gear and musical instruments but no musical training. When Kenny replaced Jeannie, POF was born. Inspired by free musics from Beefheart to Harmonia, they met in Joe's or Kenny's bedroom to exchange sound and interact in private naïve noise/rock ecstasy. 

Originally released by the LAFMS offshoot label Solid Eye [who were also responsible for releases by Doo-Dooettes, The Romans, Tom Recchion, Dinosaurs with Horns, and Fredrick Nilsen] on cassette in 1984, Sackcloth and Ashes is the most electronic and perhaps most polished incarnation of this multimedia collective. The unorthodox exploration of keyboards, guitars, toy instruments, the assemblage of field recordings, noise improvisations, and tape loops tantalize the senses with arousing emotive power. The opus title track is a compendium of improvisational soundings and field recordings that include a chorus of squeaky swings, a cat's purring, snapping shrimp, a diseased lung, and cacophony on a yard sale card rack. Exquisitely abrasive and haunting tracks 1 through 6 yield to the perfumed machinery and melodious hypnosis of the remaining tracks. All were originally performed under cover of live film and slide projections with optical manipulations at alternative music venues in and around Los Angeles including Al's Bar, the Anti-club, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions(LACE), etc., and aboard the U.S.S. Cormerant ("Noise at Sea"), with bands such as the Minutemen, the Meat Puppets, Whitehouse, and the Monique Experience in the mid-1980's. Every piece on this album has such (currently archived) visual underscoring. Re-released on CD, the disc is lavishly packaged in beautiful silver and black in an eye-rattling multi-paneled silk-screened die-cut cover that undermines perception in the friction manner. 

The low-key intensity of Points of Friction may affect heart rates and breathing patterns.
It is probably best listened to in a darkened room.

Points of Friction - Beneath The Skin

Track 3 from the CD "Reprint" by Philip Sanderson. Released on CD by Anomalous Records in May 2003.
The last copies of the CD are available from www.ribexibalba.com/mailorder.html
pogus.com/anomalous.html

Reprint was originally released on cassette by Snatch Tapes in 1980 and was credited to an unknown duo called Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey.  A press release accompanying the cassette painted a picture of two pre-Raphaelite synthesiser knob-twiddlers who in between repatching their VCS3's went for long walks in flowing robes on Blackheath. 

Intrigued, the record label Cherry Red included the duo on their compilation LP "Perspectives and Distortion" alongside such luminaries as Matt Johnson, Virgin Prunes, Lol Coxhill, Lemon Kittens, Eyeless in Gaza, Mark Perry, Ben Watt,  Thomas Leer, Morgan-Fisher, Robert Fripp, and David Jackman. Cherry Red furthermore wanted to release an LP by Thomas & Vezey.  Until they realised that all was not as it seemed. 

Claire and Susan were in fact a figment of Snatch Tapes founder Philip Sanderson's imagination.  In addition to running the label, Philip was one half of the DIY electronic group Storm Bugs, and regularly collaborator with a then unknown musician by the name of David Jackman (one of these tracks they did together was recent issued on a 10" by Die Stadt).  "Reprint" was in effect one of his few solo recordings. 

The first track Bright Waves (an earlier version of the track on the Cherry red LP) with its fragile wispy vocals that blow in and out on a tape delay breeze certainly adds credence to the Claire and Susan subterfuge. However the rest of the music on the CD suggest that this was more than a situationist prank. The description on the sleeve of the music as  "a study in repetition and change using two different sources and two different treatments..." was a nod towards the materialist approaches being used during the 70's in most (fine) art forms. 

The music of Reprint is a peculiar combination of academic rigour married to an inverted pop art aesthetic. For whereas pop art incorporated the cheap intoxication's of consumer culture into the supposed lofty rooms of high art, here was an attempt to incorporate the form or perhaps just the smell high art into the low brutality of DIY electronics. 

Philip Sanderson - Bright Waves

the Oxford English Dictionary defines anomalous as "Unconformable to the common order; deviating from rule, irregular; abnormal."
Anomalous Records was founded in 1991 to distribute experimental music to record stores.  Mail order began a year later and ended in 2003.  During this time Anomalous Records released 55 titles on its own label as well as several for Christoph Heemann's Streamline.
The last copies of various label and distribution titles are available from www.ribexibalba.com/mailorder.html

Anomalous Records

Popular tracks