AZ - Music For Scattered Brains (1995)

So, well the next thing I was going to post was another freaky album released 1995, Music For Scattered Brains by AZ of Scissor Girls (Chicago no-wave) fame. I also bought this CD a few years on ebay when I couldn't find it to download. It just so turns out that this person beat me to the punch on posting this (by a year and a half, ha), anyways, I like this album so I figured I'd provide the above link. Its an interesting listen especially if you like Scissor Girls and Bride of No No and want to check out something way-different that AZ / Azita has done. If you aren't familiar with her work, well, maintaining an air of mystery around her projects has been an important element anyway. In the zine-y insert of the CD there's a page where it says "boingy theme music." Thats a pretty good description- lots of analogue fried electronics, like some broken moogs and sequencers or something letting out some happy bleeps and spaced-out secret messages (in ether). The album starts with some circus music, definitely has a 'playful' tone. I wouldn't really call it "abrasive" or "non musical" like the other blog does, but I do like the "ducks farting" description. To me some of it sounds sort of ancient, or like it could have been recorded centuries ago, but maybe thats just me, I've been into the idea of some ancient or pre-modern electronic music since I read about the Baghdad Battery. More on that later perhaps.

Doramaar - Copula (1994/95)

So I finally decide to start up this music blog, which I set up a while ago (and wrote a whole bunch of posts for that I never put up). I guess really I just wanted to post things that weren't available for download elsewhere in the blogospheres. First thing is this really good first album by mid-nineties New Zealand group Doramaar. I bought this CD off of ebay two years ago when I couldnt find anything by them online. I included the crappy picture I took to show the cool typography and sleeve design, there's some scanned pictures at discogs though.
Doramaar was Kim Pieters, Adria Morgan and Sara Stephenson. They're notable for being an all-lady (non-academic) free-improv / free-rock group (however on this first album a guy named Andre Richardson also plays a bit I think). Kim Pieters was in a bunch of New Zealand projects, most notably Dadamah, whose stuff is worth checking out if you're feeling some (more song-based) nineties-underground-rock vibes, I'd recommend searching for This is Not A Dream which has most if not all their recordings, I forget which blogs have posted that. Anyways, Doramaar were made this album and another really great one called Terra Incognita which you can still order on lp from Chris at Fusetron who put it out back in the day. I have that one too and I guess I would have uploaded it if I didnt leave all my records at my grandmother's apartment in NY and if I had some fancy usb turntable, sorry.
Even though part of this group's project was about being a group of women making unstructured music I'll avoid getting into any 'musique féminin' stuff about jouissance or whatever (There's a pretty good interview with them here where Pieters mentions some feminist motivations if you are interested). Still these are some deeply murky, oceanic, submerged-cave-y tracks. Theyre really 'raw' without being really harsh, sometimes sort of dark and heavy without seeming cold or too bleak (at least for me). And they have the nice basement / tunnel vibes you hear on a lot of the better (in my opinion) recording of free music with rock-instrumentation. I guess I could include some more descriptions about nocturnal haze or slow trips through mud to the center of the earth or something. But you should download this album and check it out if you're interested in free-form music, free-form music made by women, New Zealand 90s stuff, under-rated noise / rock from the 90s, murky stuff, drone-y spaced-out freaky stuff, whatever, all or any of those.
DL