so i buried records releases

SIB003

BBBlood / umez - Split

tracklisting:

BBBlood

1. Breath In The Fumes

2. Mouse Trap

umez

3. Z-Fighters

4. airship

5. Kokoro Wo Hiraite

An exclusive split album by BBBlood, one of the few artists in London creating truly harsh industrial noise, and Umez, a brand-new London-based Japanese avant-garde band. It's only limited to 100 copies.

"As long term readers of this site know, I do love a good split album, for some reason. In fact, I love them more than compilations. Compilations are such rushed, whistle-stop tours but with a split album you get time to pause over each artist, hear what they are saying and then move onto another artist. While an artist taking a side of vinyl each is the most natural format for a split, it is also fun for CDs, especially when you can close your eyes and immediately tell when the act has changed.

BBBlood is at the forefront of noise in London today. He creates dense, discordant soundscapes without any trace of reality. The two soundworks he presents here are overwhelming pieces of urban alienation. "Breath In The Fumes" invokes the hum of traffic and the rhythm of rain on the window as strange, alchemical elements in his sonic rituals. "Mouse Trap" is a storm of percussion and static, like a rain of buildings and sparking wire.

Umez, meanwhile, is a new London-based Japanese project who sound nothing at all like BBBlood. No, Umez is a fuzzy, joyous noise that has hints of classic Ashtray Navigations guitar and electronics wildness but married to an ecstatic pop sound. Without even a seconds pause, the album leaps straight from the harsh BBBlood song "Mouse Trap" into the uplifting, distorted "Z-Fighters", a mash of stuttering drum machines, frentic bass and overloaded vocals. "Airship", meanwhile, is one of the finest songs of 2012, an elegantly wasted blend of melodica, white noise and soaring guitars. The melodica refrain will get stuck in your head and play over and over and over and over.

Umez's third track is a beautifully arranged cover of J-Pop hit "Kokoro Wo Hiraite" given a bit of a The Passions kind of feel, with some hypnotic guitar work but still respectfully reimagined.

Then you get a long, long pause and then what could only be a BBBlood remix of "Z-Fighters" kicks in, recognisably the same core of the song but now with a perfect storm of harshness exploding all over it. All goes to prove this really is one hell of a team-up and if you're not careful, could seriously wreck your speakers." Was Ist Das?

"☆☆☆☆☆

Here's some more experimentalness for you! This is a split CD by BBBlood and Umez released in an edition of 100 on the So I Buried label.

BBBlood are from London and they make what can only be described as post industrial noise. The first two tracks on this CD are by them (or more accurately him as it's just a chap called Paul Watson) and it's an eerie listen full of dark scary noises. If Ant was here I reckon he'd wet himself over this. It's proper interesting and very listenable due to the different array of sounds they've wangled into their two tracks. It reminds me of some of the early Nurse With Wound gear as it's a little quirky and there's a playful sense of humour in there (though you'd probably have to be really into this kind of thing to spot it).

Then there's three tracks by Umez who are a Japanese avant garde pop band based in London. These guys are nuts. It's sort of skewed J-pop smothered in noise. Loud guitars, feedback, bonkers electronics, mental drum machine beats and sickly sweet Japanese pop. It's genuinely confusing and not like anything else I've heard before. This is an excellent CD!" Norman Records

"Killer split CD from So I Buried Records, limited to 100 copies only, and two sides of two different coins. BBBlood evoke towers of harsh noise, a solo operator in London's noise scene who's graced many a floor and comp, here on his worst behaviour. Umez, a mostly Japanese group jam crazed J-Pop with washes of noise, eccentricity and aplomb, coming to a point which has no real comparisons with anything else." Rough Trade

SIB002

Bo Ningen With Damo Suzuki - Foreign Affair Confidential

tracklisting:

1. Episode 4

2. Episode 5

3. Episode 6

An exclusive live album by a London-based Japanese psychedelic rock band, Bo Ningen, with Damo Suzuki, a former vocal of one of the most influential experimental bands ever, Can. The album was recorded live during the live performance by both acts at So I Buried Records' own live music event held at Catch, London, in April 2010.

"The tradition of Japanese psychedelia has long embraced noise as a way of attaining ever greater heights, and Bo Ningen are no different from peers such as Acid Mothers Temple or Les Rallizes Denudes. Foreign Affair Confidential, recorded live in Bo Ningen's adopted home of London, explodes out of the speakers with a crash of unrelenting percussion, an open-ended and saturated guitar solo. Surrounded but not subsumed by this onslaught, is the haphazard caterwauling of one of rock's most iconic singers – former Can frontman Damo Suzuki. The three tracks that make up Foreign Affair Confidential all present the same formula: Bo Ningen vomit out harsh repetitive blasts of brutal rock while Suzuki gibbers, shouts and mutters staccato words, his vocalising landing somewhere between the vocalising of a Phil Minton and a weird form of spittle-soaked rap. The music is ferociously unhinged, Bo Ningen not so much playing music as launching themselves at some vague common notion of melody, which promptly collapses under such an approach. Hints of Oneida lend proceedings a dreamy psych vibe, but with such violence this is more like Fugazi on acid, with a wild forest sprite randomly, but wisely, handed the vocal duties. Mad stuff." The Liminal

"☆☆☆☆☆

Well how about this one? We've got jazzy Japanese bong rockers Bo Ningen bustling through some incendiary improvised jams with the spontaneously prolific vocaliser and all round music hero Damo Suzuki, draping his silky vocals all over everything. As you can probably imagine it's bonkers, lively, fluid and melodic and if I was super high I'd probably be babbling right now about how amazing it is.

Bo Ningen have a great knack for locking into a hypnotic rhythm section groove while the guitars just spunk big jazzy rainbows all over everything, and Suzuki's urgent scatting fits so comfortably and instinctively into that dynamic that it's amazing upon listening to this that they don't play together more often. The chaotic Beefheartian grooves are so positive and intuitive that it really makes you glad they were recorded so well for posterity, and this largely sounds like a studio recording until they break between songs and people start clapping. By its very nature Suzuki's spontaneously composed output is a mixed bag but for my money this is a high point and will stand up well to repeated listens. Best enjoyed with a big stinky pipe." Norman Records

"Krautrock legend Damo Suzuki (ex-Can) has worked with many musicians and troupes over the past few decades, but in 'Foreign Affair Confidential' he's teamed up with perhaps the best suited group. Bo Ningen, of course, have been practicing excellent nouveau psyche in London for the past 3 years and on this outing they upped the ante considerably. A full-throttle psychedelic meltdown, 'Foreign Affair Confidential' brings to mind their legendary live performance climaxes, with free-wheeling guitar blazing in fuzz and delay, throbbing bass-lines nailing the groove and drumming that veers from all-out war to lush swinging time. Suzuki's contributions lock in to the chaos from the start, improvising, ducking and diving with every dynamic shift that Bo Ningen offer up. 'Episode 4' comes over like Acid Mother's Temple at their absolute peak, ecstatically exalting for a quarter of an hour while 'Episode 6' explores the outer limits of retro-psyche-time stretched over a breathtaking 16 minutes-with Suzuki sounding his most plaintive. A glorious, exciting set." Rough Trade

SIB001

Mandog - Dream Of Liquid

tracklisting:

1. Introduction

2. Helical

3. 1970

4. Cutting Machine Music

5. China Groove

6. Yellow Box Super Bee

7. Coda

The album includes liner notes by Damo Suzuki (ex. Can).

'Dream of Liquid' was created for Mandog's first UK tour held in June 2011 and mastered by Souichiro Nakamura, who mastered recordings by a number of artists such as Yura Yura Teikoku and Guitar Wolf.

"☆☆☆☆☆

This CD comes in a rather unassuming-looking cardboard sleeve but do not be fooled, this guy Keiichi Miyashita is in a league of his own, as explained in the gushing introductory notes by Damo Suzuki recalling their similarities ("he was away from music making for around 10 years...I also didn't make music for almost a decade since I left that German band") and various shared musical exploits.

When you shove the CD on your player, though, what you've got is some hard-grooving funk rock jams with ace Moog sounds (particularly in the intro passage) and blazing psych rock guitar licks from the jazz-trained Keiichi, who can spontaneously improvise his way around the fretboard like a bastard, let me tell you. The recording is relatively thin and lo-fi but the sheer ferocity and skill with which these tracks are delivered shine through and the genuine virtuosic musicianship on display really could really teach a lot of the more visceral, primitive psych bods around today a thing or two. 

The jazz-funk-rock dance grooves and exuberant-yet-restrained melodies are really bringing to mind Rune Grammofon fusion kings Elephant9, but the textures here are much more rock, obviously, since the focus is often largely on Keiichi's sick guitar skills, but his jazz background is never far away and Masatake Fujikake's bubbling jazz-rock drums keep reminding me of the '9's Torstein Lofthus. Throughout this CD you'll be treated to a feast of far-out, virtuosic jazz psych the like of which you never even realised people were still making. Both my thumbs are all the way up." Norman Records

"The ensemble playing here veers from frenetic ecstasy, like a super-charged soft machine, to mournful synth-dressed marches which recall mid 70s giants of progressive searching like Hatfield of the North and that other Wyatt project matching mole. The guitar / synth / bass / drum set up nails each piece to the floor with retro stylings that also point to a future which can only be imagined whilst at the heights of humanist thinking." Rough Trade

"This is a plateau of sound where Miles Davis's Agharta/Pangaea band could have achieved if they could avoid all the death. This is the record of the wind blowing there, and the rain raining there." Bo Ningen