Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Welcome to Assophon Records. The first batch of releases focuses on the Seattle sub-underground.

Check
Forced Exposure (wholesale orders)
fuestron
Eclipse Records Mail order
Time-lag Records Mail order

ASSO-001
The Sea Donkeys-Live At The S.S. Marie Antoinette
ed. of 500 copies. -Sold out!

" ... a divinely ragged live blast that combines a more garage rocking taking on the communal folk breakdowns of The Cherry Blossoms with killer Shaggs/Godz style drum violence, drunk choir vocals and the kinda fidelity that makes it all sound like a great VU Bootleg. There are inspired covers of material like “It’s A Rainy Day” by Faust and Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts” (which wins out over countless lame indie free jazz versions by re-staging it as a melancholy avant rock dirge as played by Don Van Vliet and the Maher Shalal Has Baz orchestra) and the more rocking sections are a near perfect amalgam of primitive avant brut, stumble punk oblivion and beautiful melodic chord solos. Recommended. "David Keenan -volcanic Tongue



ASSO-002 LP
Spider Trio- Rendezvous

ed. of 500 copies

Spider Trio is Wally Shoup-Sax/Jeffery Taylor/Dave Abramson(Climax Golden Twins)




Spider Trio are Wally Shoup (alto sax), Jeffery Taylor (guitar) and Dave Abramson (drums). Wally Shoup is a legend in the free jazz/improv scene. He has been well documented over the years, releasing records with Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano, Paul Flathery, Nels Cline, Bill Horist and many others in various combos. Jeffery Taylor and Dave Abramson are key players in the ever incestuous Seattle subunderground musical community. Taylor is one half of Climax Golden Twins and Abramson leads the Diminished Men. This LP is a live document that blew all the minds in attendance. Take your BYG/FMP/ESP/ SUN/ America/AKBA imprints and the sounds they represented and you’ll have an idea of the force and power of this amazing trio. This is some of the finest free jazz of the modern era!



ASSO-003 LP
Factums- Future Primitive OST
ed. of 500 copies---Sold out



Primitive Future indeed! Its 4000 a.d. and human kind’s fate from a binge of manifest destiny has finally collapsed on itself. Now we’re back to the basics. The jungle is in charge again. The Factums have crafted a soundtrack to this dark and mysterious place. A world where the listener is the prey and this record is the hunter. This is exploratory music, a melding of rusted out kraut debris, dead c. carnage and lost in time sci-fi rock moves.

"Factums have preciously cut some major art-damaged rock moves for the Siltbreeze label. A Primitive Future is intended as a soundtrack to an imaginary movie and it’s a totally beguiling and mysterious spin. The sound is dense, claustrophobic, Xeroxed rock, taking the more extended strategies of the weirdest Dead C sides and compacting them into blunt riffs and sunken vox that feel like some of the most primordial, defiantly monochrome psychedelia this side of nowhere. There are a bunch of long tracks, all convincing monosyllabic traverses of the nowhere zone, cut up with shorter tracks that use amp-huzz, keyboard bleeps, pinging strings and percussion to generate minimal, almost Sun Ra-styled, instrumental fantasias but the whole thing is so oblique, so perfectly unto itself, that it’s hard to find any truly accurate comparisons outside of suggesting that if you dig the sound of the 90s underground and you like it as distended and alien as all hell then this is the kind of environment you’ll enjoy sinking to the bottom of. A weird-ass one for sure and recommended." David Keenan

2 comments:

brown beard said...

Are they all sold out or just Factums and Sea Donkeys?

Unknown said...

beautiful work. all three are essential for any respectable underground enthusiast. Maybe respectable and underground shouldn't be used together.

Dale Self
KFJC music director