PSUEDOELEKTRONIXX-C'EST LE TON...QUI FAIT LA MUSIQUE, TAPE, 1982, GERMANY




Stripped and punchy mutant funky minimal synth (or, as the cover would have it, "free funk no wave") from the deepest recesses of Neue Deutsche Welle tape culture. Pseudoelektronixx pitch their sonic tents over forcefully fore-grounded funk-a-poppin' bass machinations, and flank it with cheaply clonking rhythm boxes, synth blip and the requisite hectoring vocalese. If this all sounds like it'd be somewhat textbook NDW, well...perhaps it is, but though the opening salvo of this 4 track EP isn't likely to raise too many pulses, this does work up a nice head of steam for those sold on this scene.

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PROYECTO "A"-S/T, LP, 1970, SPAIN




Aesthetically situated somewhere between Vampiros Lesbos exploitation psych, Tropicalia acid shimmy, library music groove and Massiera's haunted funhouse, this brain burning and exceedingly obscure Spanish marvel (evidently some sorta concept album about the planets of our solar system) has systematically reduced some of the most heavyweight collectors of my acquaintance to spluttering and drooling in disbelief upon exposure. Your new favorite album...I shit you not.

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HEIMCOMPUTER 80-UNSERE MODERNE WELT, CDR, 2002, GERMANY




On the heels of my post of their Systemfehler debut CDR, here's the follow up doink attack from these German mavens of post-Neue Deutsche Welle 8-bit video-gamey synth blurt, administered with a enjoyably nasty overloaded granularity to it that occasionally makes them sound like digital hardcore for the prepubescent set.

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OLEG KOSTROW-TARTUF, CD, 2005, RUSSIA



A follow-up to my post of this Messer Fur Frau Muller member's late 90's solo debut "The Great Flashing Tracks From Iwona", "Tartuf" finds this Russian avatar of the blithely absurd plowing a similarly cartoonish furrow to that found on Iwona, but it's a finely honed furrow filled with bite-sized morsels of concentrated camp and the finest schtick money can buy and largely absent the penchant for preciousness that sometimes marred his debut.

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ISLAND-PICTURES, LP/CD, 1977, SWITZERLAND




Housed in a striking H.R. Giger sleeve, this Swiss prog crew concoct dense and turbid suites of exceedingly Van Der Graaf Generator-ish moody convolution. Much of what is transpiring here is sensational, if never quite achieving the sense of profound cathartic release of Hammill and co. Alas, amid this brilliance are some truly squirm-worthy vocals that'll have you wishing you could shove a sock in this cat's mouth, though fortunately, said vocals are largely kept to a minimum. Note: despite the LP sleeve being pictured, this is taken from the mid-90's CD reissue, which is both re-mastered and fleshed out with a superb 23 minute bonus track, which finds them pursuing similar ends but in a rather less claustrophobic fashion.

Get pt. 1 Here

Get pt. 2 Here

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VIRTUALLY ALL REPLACEMENT RAPIDSHARE LINKS ARE NOW POSTED
Discounting a bare handful of titles that I need to re-up (maybe 10 or so) all other dead links (many hundreds of them from both Jim's and my posts) have now been replaced with functional Rapidshare links. In the few instances where rapidshare links were unavailable, these links have been replaced with Zshare, Badongo or Megaupload links. And now I shall go fall on my face....

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WOW...SUDDENLY SHAREBEE IS WORKING FOR MAC USERS...THEY'RE NOW THE OBVIOUS CHOICE...
Thanks to the prompting of one Cheeba on the message boards, I decided to give Sharebee another chance, in case they've finally resolved their longstanding problem with allowing mac users to use their system. Well, as it happens, they have indeed! I'm much more comfortable going with an established provider like them then using a largely untested one like Fileducky, so...er...THANKS Cheeba! This particular issue has now been thoroughly resolved...

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ALL EXISTING MASMIRROR LINKS ARE BEING REPLACED BY RAPIDSHARE LINKS
Today was the straw that broke the camel's back. You may have noticed that virtually all the Massmirror links on MS are coming up as "file not found". Whether this is another temporary snafu, or the actual end of those links, my patience with Massmirror has come to an end. Starting in a moment, I'm beginning the arduous process of inserting all the rapidshare links I've saved from within the Massmirror posts before they went down again in place of the original Massmirror links. I'll let all of you know when the process is complete....

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GANGPOL UND MIT-VOUS AVEZ PROFIT D'INSTANT COMMUNICATION AVEC TOUT LE MONDE, MP3 EP, 2005, FRANCE
Giddily madcap instrumental dada electropop is the order of the day with this super fun French duo, who also traffic in flawlessly complimentary cartoon illustrations (viewable on their site Here ) , and whose musical M.O. sometimes glances off their contemporaries in Dat Politics, but absent the razor-y edge that those folks cut their camp with. Fans of Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Oleg Kostrow and Nova Huta (whom they perhaps share the strongest affinity with) should be in hog heaven with this brief MP3 EP, available once upon a time exclusively for download from their website and now brought back to life here. Note: I don't recall this EP coming equipped with graphics, but if I'm wrong and anyone has them, please feel free to send 'em on to me...

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MIKE LANGLIE-TWINK, CD, 2002, USA




A perfect companion piece to the Gangpol Und Mit EP also posted today ('cause I suddenly can't seem to get enough absurdity in my aural diet), from this Indiana-based electronic musician and illustrator. The soundtrack to the children's story book it accompanies, this CD corrals together a raft of eccentric and toy instruments and crafts them into waggish little vignettes fashioned from optigans, autoharps, accordians, theremins, xylophones, banjos, musical saws and hurdy-gurdys (to name just a few) and various toys. Less bent and more naif then Gangpol Und Mit's similarly oriented material (accompanying correspondingly less bizarre imagery), this is still a seriously fun grab bag of technicolor aural geegaws.

Get pt. 1 Here

Get pt. 2 Here

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MCH BAND-GIB ACHT!, CD, 1993, CZECHOSLOVAKIA




Excellent and almost textbook anxiety riddled R.I.O. moves in the grand Czech dissident style from this long lived (seemingly still extant) unit led by guitarist Mikolas Chadima, whose finely wrought sturm und drang is fraught with a weight and solemnity that's very much of a piece with their contemporaries in The Plastic People.

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QUARTETO 1111-S/T, LP, 1970, PORTUGAL


Following Jim's post of their archival "A Lenda Do Quarteto 1111" CD, which compiled together their various singles and EP's, here's the debut LP from this pre-Jose Cid Portuguese outfit, whose sun dappled and dewily dulcet acid folk style slowly cascades over you like a warm balm. There are occasional bursts of rock energy sprinkled here and there, but most of this is content to drift by like some gorgeously heat warped mirage, in a way that favorably compares with both Brazil's Karma and France's Total Issue. A thing of rare beauty.

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LE GONG DU BALAYEUR-PAS IMPORTANT, LP, 1981, FRANCE


An exceptionally obscure album from the waning days of France's prog glory run (which continued to go from strength to strength years after other countries prog scenes died off or largely turned to cheese), Le Gong Du Balayeur can initially be a somewhat difficult nut too crack, with their curious conflation of electrified folk themes (sometimes quite close in spirit to Belgium's Nuit Caline A La Villa Mon Reve), and Zappa-by-way-of-Komintern whimsy taking several spins to wrap your brain around, but the rewards for the diligent are ample.

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MASSMIRROR IS BACK UP AND RUNNING AGAIN! (AND YES, I DID OVERREACT...)
Wow...seeing Massmirror back up and running today upon waking up may well be the biggest relief of my life! I'll freely admit that I overreacted, but they've been having all the signs lately of a site that's going under, with their mirror sites inaccessible, their blog having disappeared, uploads repeatedly failing when attempting to use their service and multiple links going down several days ago, (which is what prompted me to start collecting the rapidshare links from them in the first place), so with a system-wide failure ocurring yesterday, well...I doubt I'm the only one that thought they'd finally bit it. I'm deleting yesterdays post, so it doesn't show up right near the top of a google search when someone keys in the word massmirror, as have so many other of my massmirror announcement posts. New posts of mine will be up by tomorrow...

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ALL MASSMIRROR LINKS ON MS APPEAR TO BE DEAD! FORTUATELY THOUGH, WE'RE AT LEAST PARTIALLY SAFE...
I regret to inform one and all that *ALL* Massmirror links appear to be dead on our site. Massmirror's own site appears dead as well. I have no idea if this is a temporary fuck up or if they are officially down for the count this time. If so, many music blogs the world over have just suffered a potentially mortal blow. Fortunately, WE LARGELY HAVE NOT. Two nights ago, I spent 10+ hours culling every rapidshare link from my posts that used Massmirror and thus have partially averted potential disaster for Mutant Sounds. I however dread to consider how many of Jim's links might have died, as he used their service as well for several months back in 2007 (from June 10th through October 7th, if I have it correct). We'll see in the coming few days if this is temporary or not, but we might very well be in a position where we need to call on the aid of our loyal fans in helping us re-up dead links, or, as was the case with the Xirror situation, help us locate cache's of rapidshare links from Jim's posts that used Massmirror. We'll know soon enough, I suppose. If they're not back up in a day or two, I will begin the process of both inserting my saved rapidshare links into all my old posts and compiling a list of all of Jim's titles that have been deleted. For now, we can all collectively hold out breath. Needless to say, new posts from me will be on hold until this situation can be remedied...

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SCREW SHAREONALL...I'LL BE USING FILEDUCKY FROM NOW ON UNLESS THERE'S A COMPELLING REASON NOT TO
Having just visited the hippy-djkit blog, I was rather alarmed to note that they've had
a vast number of the posts they've made using Shareonall deleted after some malicious turd evidently complained to them. Well...all I can say is fuck that nonsense! Shareonall can go shit in their hat. I'm just relieved that I discovered this before using their service for more than one round of posts. Unless anyone out there has horror stories about Fileducky, that's what I'll now be using for future posts.

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KEIJO-SOON WITH THE SUN, CDR, 2004, FINLAND




Gorgeously glazed Eastern inflected kosmiche blissouts from one of Finland's prime freak folk movers, and next to his work with Kheta Hotem, this may well be the penultimate statement in his vast discography.

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NIMAL-VOIX DE SURFACE, LP/CD, 1990, VARIOUS



This multi-national all star R.I.O. outfit culls together the monster talents of Momo Rossel of Swiss masters Debile Menthol, Bratko Bibic of Slovenian art rockers Begnagrad and Tom Cora (R.I.P) and Pippin Barnett, whose work together in Curlew and separately in Skeleton Crew, No Safety and The Orthotonics helped define the Downtown NY sound of the mid to late 80's, Cora's whinnying approach to cello technique in particular taking center stage here for a sound whose skewed and ethno-tinged effervescence elicits strong comparisons with both Sweden's mighty Samla Mammas Manna and Fred Frith circa Gravity.

Get pt. 1 Here

Get pt. 2 Here

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TRANSIT EXPRESS-OPUS PROGRESSIF, LP, 1975, FRANCE



Second album of exquisitely searing, soaring and synth drenched proggified fusion in the grand French tradition of Carpe Deim, Atoll and X-Tet from these unheralded maestros, which also glances off the more lyrical dimension of Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever and Peregio.

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SOLID EYE-ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD AND STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, CD, 1994, USA






Following my post of their Live At Tokuzo 2002 (as well as solo works by members Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer and Steve Thomsen), here's the completely essential debut statement from this landmark L.A. Free Music Society outfit. Between the three of them, these fine gents have carved out a universe of deliciously askew sonics that in a sane world, hepsters would be building shrines to. Well...count my repeated spiels about their collective brilliance as virtual bricks in said shrine, with "Electromagnetic Field And Stream Of Consciousness" occupying a central tier of it. Solid Eye was essentially the continuation of the demented tape loop based work initiated by Potts and Hammer in their Dinosaurs With Horns project (apparently also still a going concern, as evidenced by the new release of theirs on Melon Explorer), only with the addition of ex-Monitor member Steve Thomsen adumbrating the sound with his mysterious synthetic interventions, and the delirious brew of the queasy, wheezy, zany and faux spooky they concoct out of antique synths, optigans, and loops, loops and more loops is a dizzying and magical thing to behold.

Get pt. 1 Here

Get pt. 2 Here

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