Artist: Muslimgauze
Titel: Cobra Head Soup (unreleased material)
Label: Staalplaat
Cat#: 18113
Code#: archive eight
Format: 2xLp gatefold b/w cover ltd. 500ex., disc 1: 33rpm / disc 2: 45rpm
Retail Price in Eur: 21,90
Track List:side 1A
1. Muslim Brotherhood
2. Arab United
3. Kashmiri Queens
4. Zion Junkie
side 1B
5. Egypt Needs More Rain
6. Cobra Head Soup
7. Dogheadgod
8. Gaza Strip
9. Rabid Zionist Dog Muzzle
side 2A
10. Elect Izlamic Jihad
side 2B
11. Dimple Kapadia Mumbai
Artist: Yellow Swans
Titel: Mort Aux Vaches
Label: Mort Aux Vaches
Cat#: 17883
Code#: MAV 060
Format: Cd cardboard relief cover ltd. 500ex.
Retail Price in Eur: 14.80
Review in the Wire:"Packaged in a relief-pattern sleeve of a child feeding a duck, it also has a card CD label so thick, several CD players wouldn’t play it. This headlong assault on hi-fi niceties is replicated on the four untitled compositions. Each is a dense and sweltering aural morass, the flooded microphones creating a wall of thick sound from wildly distorted and ear-splittingly loud guitars. Yet riffs emerge like sunshine burning away fog. Once the listener finds focus there is an unexpectedly fevered and psychedelic melodic instinct working away within the compositions that is both beguiling and euphoric."
Review by Aquarius:"Another archival release from the now defunct and greatly missed floorcore noise duo Yellow Swans. We have not been able to keep this in stock, we sold out twice before we had a chance to review it, and now we have 5 copies, maybe the last 5 copies, as this was limited to 500 copies and is already sold out and out of print at the label. So act fast and be lucky if you want one of these.
This Mort Aux Vaches session from 2007 finds the 'Swans at their heaviest and noisiest. On first listen, it's a wild psychedelic squall, heaving walls of crumbling distortion and blown out buzz, Skullflower, Total, that sort of thing, but closer listening reveals all sorts of prettiness beneath, lilting melodies, haunting refrains, keening feedback, unlikely harmonies, in fact, the more you listen, the more the 'noise' seems to peel back, letting the strange melodic beauty underneath shine through. Which was sort of the magic of the Yellow Swans, creating massive roiling swirls of chaotic beauty, sculpting otherwise harsh and hellish sonics into impossibly beautiful soundscapes, weaving buzz and rumble and drone and whir and howl and grind and crunch into dense shimmering clouds of otherworldly sound.
INCREDIBLE PACKAGING, maybe the most over the top Mort Aux Vaches yet, the usual fold over sleeve held shut by a little metal fastener, but affixed to the front a three dimensional sort-of-sculpture, depicting a little girl and a yellow swan, an image from some old storybook but rendered in three dimensions like it was pried off the front of some old building. Super cool."
Review by Boomkat:"Recorded in May 2007, this incredible Yellow Swans installment of the Mort Aux Vaches series must surely rank as the most incredible in the series yet. The packaging of Mort Aux Vaches releases tends to be noteworthy in its own right, and that's especially true of this one, which features a 3D fairytale scene in which a little girl sits by a pond talking to a yellow swan (it looks more like a duck in all fairness, but you can see what they're trying to do here). The storybook setting is playfully at odds with the band's acrid soundscapes, but there is a tangible musicality to the disc that renders it distinctly more inviting than most records you'd categorise as 'noise'. Using guitars and electronics as their principal tools, Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman avoid thrashing out into oblivion, instead favouring an intoxicating peaks-and-troughs approach that builds up layers of near-harmonious distortion and wild, booming atmospherics only to deconstruct them and start again. Swanson's guitar provides a focal point for much of the album, lurching between aggressive clangs and more gentle, reverberant tones. Deep, complex and utterly beguiling, the Yellow Swans Mort Aux Vaches session is as thrilling a piece of modern psychedelic plumage as anything else you'll likely ever hear. Amazing music - highly recommended!"
Review in aemag (German only, http://virb.com/aemag):"Bruitismus großgeschrieben. Metallschleifen, Horndrones wie zu besten David Jackman Zeiten und rostige Gitarren, eingehüllt in einen Lärm der ebenso gut von Survival Research Laboratories’ industrieller Lärmberauschung stammen könnte. Die wahre klangliche Substanz wird wohlverborgen unter einer dicken Schicht bröseliger Klangverklebung, der infernalische Noise bricht sich in statischen analog verdrahteten Wellenschlägen bis an die Schläfe des geneigten Hörers.
Die vier unbetitelten Stücke sind dabei alles andere als langweilig. Auf der gesamten Audioskala passiert etwas, sei es in Form langer, sich gegeneinander aufschaukelnden EGitarren Soli sowie röhrenden Feedbacks, die eines Henryk Rylanders würdig wären. Klassizistischen Noise sucht man dennoch vergebens, der die Umstände begleitende Krach dient hier vielmehr der audiophilen Andickung des ohnehin recht üppigen Materials. Yellow Swans wirken nicht wie Menschen, wohl aber wie Maschinen, die innerhalb ihres auralen Disputs versuchen Rockmusik zu produzieren. Besonders eilig scheinen sie es dabei nicht zu haben, denn die gesamte CD strotzt nur so vor Langsamkeit und Gemächlichkeit im Aufbau. Starker Tobak und sicherlich nicht für jedermann. Und das zuckersüße Einbandbild darf man dabei auch nicht allzu ernst nehmen. Nicht alles was außen zu sehen ist, muss auch in der Verpackung drin stecken."
Artist: My Cat Is An Alien
Titel: Mort Aux Vaches
Label: Mort Aux Vaches
Cat#: 17884
Code#: MAV 061
Format: Cd lenticular cover ltd. 500ex.
Retail Price in Eur: 14.80
Review in the Wire:"The Mort Aux Vaches series of sessions from Dutch radio station VPRO adds My Cat Is An Alien to their impressive catalogue. Brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio find themselves in unusually rocking territory, with rollicking, rolling drums boiling up through the usual surface of space rock glister on the sprawling “Blue Abstraction”. “Call Of The Aliens” and “Lost Beings Of The Noosphere” have more of their trademark sci-fi emissions ambience."
Review by Boomkat:"The improvised electronics and electroacoustics of My Cat Is An Alien are more often than not lined up alongside collaborators such as Thurston Moore, Christina Carter, Fabio Orsi, Steve Roden and various other avant-garde luminaries, but on this occasion, the brothers Opalio are left to their own devices, weaving together an improvised three-part album that involves intricate percussion, guitars, toy microphones and all manner of electronic drones. The first track is comparatively light, featuring the ringing of bells and rapid, squirling digital flurries along with a few wordless hollers and sustained (presumably ebowed) guitar tones. Next comes an altogether more confrontational recording involving heavily compressed drums and parrot-like squawking, a theme developed in an undulating, quiet-loud sound flow that carries over into the third and final piece, whose closing moments sound like something that might have been committed to tape in the deepest recesses of a rainforest somewhere."
Review in aemag (German only, http://virb.com/aemag):"Wenn die Covertypo schon nichts aussagt, dann aber bitte die Graphik. Das lentikulare Cover zeigt im Raffereffekt billiger 3D-Wackelbilderl das putzige Vektorgesicht einer Katze, welches sich mit zunehmender Schieflage in die Fratze einer außerirdischen Mieze verwandelt. Hach, treffender kann man einen Bandnamen nicht illustrieren, der Schriftzug MORT AUX VACHES unterhalb der ganzen Geschichte darf sich dabei einen ebensolchen Gaukeleffekt gefallen lassen.
Die Musik scheint sich dabei so gar nicht der mäandernden Form der Umverpackung zu verschreiben. Die unbetitelten Stücke klingen als hätten Tortoise im Studio ihren Sampler fallen gelassen, welcher nun im Hold-Modus einzelne Takes ihrer Stücke anhält und als Dauerloop in die Effektsektion des Studios feuert. Neben sanften Gitarrendrones, klingelnden Löffeln in Kaffeetassen sowie reichlich synthetisch wirkende Vogelstimmen bemerkt man nach kurzer Zeit einen ausgeprägten Hang der Akteure zum Improvisieren. Wes Kind das Material nun wirklich ist, verrät der zweite Titel. Es klingelt und scheppert, Bleche rutschen über den Boden, Synthesizerakkorde verlaufen im Nichts und wirken phantomhaft auf die zusammenlaufenden Kanäle am Mischpult, Becken und Hi-Hats werden ihrer Würde beraubt und in clowneske Klangabfolgen gepresst. Fast 30 Minuten konkretsymphonisch-synthetische Echoräusche bzw. aurale LSD-Klangtapeten.
Insgesamt ein reichlich psychedelisches Werk, welches sich in zahlreichen Stimmungsabfolgen wiederholt und neu entwickelt. Klarer Tipp des Monats."
Review of both titles in Vital Weekly:"These two additions to the extended catalogue of Mort Aux Vaches proof once again a few things: the broad musical range of the series, showing there is no boundary at all, just fine music. That's one consistent thing. The second is the cover art. Yellow Swans and My Cat Is An Alien are true delight again, although the latter is extremely low on information. It mentions the bandname and the title and nothing else on the entire packaging or CD (unless this is another twisted Staalplaat thing where one has to burn the package to retrieve more information). I don't know much about My Cat Is An Alien, but its the duo of Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, two brothers from Torino, Italy. They improvise their music, using electric and acoustic guitars, percussion, toy instruments and voice toy microphones. They have an extended discography of which I didn't hear much (a superficial glance learned me that), but what I hear here, should make me find some of their other recordings. The music of My
Cat Is An Alien is, as said, improvised and if we take a look at the list of people they played with, its not easy to spot the influences: Jackie O'Motherfucker, Keiji Haino but also Sonic Youth. But there is also the influence of people like Simon Wickham-smith and Richard Youngs to be noted here - the records that they did together more than their solo records. Improvised, drone like, but not of the kind of 'play the lowest note on an organ and feed it through some endless sustain delay pedal', but throughout acoustic, warm, but also electronic and with slow developments which leave enough room for development. Certainly a band to look out for.
The Yellow Swans I know better, through various of their releases and the fact i saw them play live once. Maybe on the same tour as they recorded this, I don't remember when I saw them. The cover, which shows us a yellow swan and a girl (no doubt from some fairytale, which I am trying to remember, but somehow it doesn't pop into this clouded head) as a stuck on, 3D thing. Very nice, and approved by the children around here. Yellow Swans are a noise duo, playing guitar, bass, lots and lots of effects and in general put on a hell of a racket. In general, not always. It takes some time to get there, and that's where Yellow Swans drop their noise mask and start building their blocks of noise. I know word out there is that I don't like noise, which is simply not true. But I did hear a lot of noise throughout the years and a lot I like. But these days my digest is not so much for the pure noise anymore. And that's why I like this Yellow Swans release quite a bit. It moves from 'quieter' ground, via curves and hiccups, into the land of noise, with its heavily reverbed ebow guitar (which sound very retro actually, and might not be one of the things I like very much), and feedback/distortion treatments and then back again. Quite a fine work of noise." (FdW)
Sound Projector wrote:"Staalplaat are continuing their Mort Aux Vaches series (I haven’t seen any of them for years now) and I’m pleased to report their zanoid packaging strategies are getting even more eye-catching and unlikely. Yellow Swans is packaged in a piece of utter kitsch, a bas-relief image of cloying sentimentality designed to appeal to a manufactured sense of childlike cuteness and innocence. Nothing innocent on the interior, of course, as the crazed American duo deliver their familiar brand of evil, intoxicating noise made with guitars and electronics. My Cat Is An Alien’s release is packaged with a 3-D postcard image which when tilted in the palm enables you to behold various alien catty visages. Of the music inside, the second long track by this cosmic Italian duo seems the most promising; the guitar amps are scowling like angry cockroaches with smoke pouring out of their antennae, and there’s some intimidating drumming building up a mood. I mention these now as only 500 copies are made and they become collectible very quickly."
