Video of the Johnny Ill band’s “Where Do You Live” from the new album Ask All The Doctors. Available now from Urinal Cake Records! FM DUST has no hand in this release, Archaic Formats isn’t even distributing it (…yet?), but we fully endorse it.

YES. More Morrison, please.

(Source: bigandbeautiful)

NEW BATCH NEXT WEEK! Available for pre-order from ARCHAIC FORMATS…

*A quick note: in a move sure to set the cassette underground on its ear, I’ve switched FM DUST cassettes from the old “painted cardboard folder” style to traditional plastic cases. I’ve had a lot of luck culling clean old cases from old tapes at ENCORE RECORDS lately, so don’t worry: I’m still committed to reducing/reusing/recycling. However, I’m now also committing to getting people to stop complaining about not having a good place to store FM DUST releases. Anyway…

DUST031
GEOFF DUGAN- Everything Is Water
C48 cassette
$5 USD

A few months back, a dude who looked like an ’80s minicomic cartoonist (high-waisted polyester slacks, madras shirt, mustache, etc.) brought a bunch of homemade cassettes of a mostly late ’80s vintage into my work to sell. Said he got it all back in his Factsheet 5 reading days… anyway, some of it was pretty whatever, kinda Residents-y stuff and forgettable folk, BUT BUT BUT he did have three cassettes by sadly overlooked sound artist GEOFF DUGAN. I’ve yet to ask Mr. Dugan much about the impetus for this tape, and I’m honestly kinda scared to do so… truly perverse synth damage, Burroughsian cut-ups, and just general mind’s-eye damage (de)control, really singular (although fans of ROBERT TURMAN’s output might be encouraged to delve).  Authorized reissue, with a replica of the original photo j-card and insert.

DUST032
SKYMALL SPLIT CASSINGLE SERIES VOL. 4: WILD ANIMALZ/MALL MUTANTS
C25 cassette
$5 USD

FINALLY. I’ve had the W.A. master for probably over a year, which is totally lame and shitty, but nobody but me was willing to follow these guys. Can’t blame ‘em. Blood Necklace played our first official show with these dudes in Hamtramck a couple years back, and they were a fuckin’ WHIRLWIND. Slopbucket duo bruisecore, ex-U.P. residents who used that region’s propensity for spare time and freaked headspace to develop a sound that makes me think of Jason Loewenstein and GodHeadSilo starting a grind band, but then getting too stoned to play all that fast, but not so much so that they can’t be noisy and spilling all over the place. Rad style! Mall Mutants side is way more melodic and dream-damaged than previous releases by a long shot… synth goo on “repeat”, devolving into bedroom La Dusseldorf or something. Total contrast, but not unpleasantly so.

DUST033
PINK OCTOPUS with SUJIT- Sujitlicious
C40 cassette
$5 USD

Pink Octopus (AKA the duo of Jason Adam Voss and Ian “MC Trashpedal” Fulcher, currently of the Rainbow Vomit Family Band and with pun-intended tentacles stretching forth into dozens of other units past/present/future) haven’t been particularly active for awhile now, but they made themselves a known quantity in Ann Arbor/Yspilanti in their more heavy-action daze as proponents of sticky psych/noise investigations akin to NNCK, early Destroy All Monsters, Pigs For Lepers-era Smegma(!), Gang Wizard’s more melty moments, and other great stuff like that. This near-lost session with much-beloved (and sorely missed, as he skipped town earlier this year) Ann Arbor socialite Sujit Das is prime illustration of their long-form free-gurgle vibe. Proud to put it out, and I hope it puts a fire under their ass to get on top of things again.

To order all three of these (plus a free download code for the new Mall Mutants collection of out-of-print tracks, Detritus Dreams On The Edge Of Paradise… more info on that shortly…), send $15 (postage-paid) to archaicformats@gmail.com via Paypal, with the words “THE NEW BATCH” in the comments field. To order them separately, go through the Archaic Formats website.

Ted Berrigan: spirit animal, fellow Scorpio. Was going to wait until his birthday (11/15) to post this, but didn’t wanna forget. Amazing collection of Berrigan’s audio recordings at UBUWEB…

Dear Occupy People,
Look: I’m with you. Please, though, if you see a protester utilizing Guy Fawkes/V For Vendetta imagery in their protest paraphernalia, slap them upside the head (not too hard, they are technically on your side). Guy Fawkes was a failed revolutionary who wanted to reintroduce Catholic dogma into the English monarchy; the V character was either a megalomaniac/solipsist posing as an anarchist (the comic, which Alan Moore has long since partially disavowed), or a violent lefty with destruction on his mind, not construction, and a clumsy allegory for anti-Bush sentiment, at that (the movie). This is not what I’ve signed up for, for sure, and any intelligent person who’s on the fence and aware of the aforementioned fact is going to be alienated by this usage. Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,
Dustin Krcatovich

Video of Mall Mutants performing the Blood Necklace song “We All Burn”, captured by Monika Szydlowski on the recent Mall Mutants/Hugh John Noble midwest tour. Hugh’s new album is available from Archaic Formats, as is the new Mall Mutants tape on FM DUST, Elegy For Ron.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Bunhill Row is my record of the month, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Finally had a second to put a couple new things on the ARCHAIC FORMATS website after my tour with HUGH JOHN NOBLE last week, including one new FM DUST tape (a whole big batch on the way, don’t you worry…). Still a lotta unlisted stuff from Not Not Fun, Mississippi, etc… sorry for the delay! Anyway…

========================================================

FM DUST

DUST030

MALL MUTANTS- Elegy For Ron
C20 cassette (edition of 36 for now…)
$5 USD

I should say right upfront (if for no other reason than to make me look like both a sentimentalist AND a hypocrite) that I think the way people mourn in the western world is fucked up and gross, and totally not a fitting response to what is an inevitability for each and every one of us (except Walt Disney, maybe, or Keith Richards). Death is not sad… as a good dude once put it using deceptively simple language, “it’s only the last part of life”. That said, Ron Asheton’s death a couple years back did put me into a “traditional” all-black, emotionally-unsteady state of mourning that I didn’t expect, at least for a couple days. It wasn’t the man (who I only met once in passing), nor was it even his (undeniably immeasurable) contribution to popular music (and then some!) with the first two Stooges LPs… it was the distinct feeling that Ann Arbor (where Asheton was still residing until his untimely passing) had lost an essential bearing in its already-shaky foundation as a countercultural center, just by losing one more fount of history (and before you say anything about Iggy, I’m pretty sure that dude is off posing for an action figure sculpting or a Nike ad or something right now…). THAT fact is what caused me to do the raw recordings for this project in the week following Ron’s passing… if I hadn’t already printed the J-cards, it might be better titled “Elegy For Ron And Ann Arbor, Michigan”. The raw recordings were remixed, tinkered with, and gnarred-up in 2011 to take them just that little touch over the top, where one must always strive to be. Thanks, Ron.

WIZARDS OF THE GHOST

WOTG013
MEGA BOG- Freaky Dawn
CS
$6 USD

Hoo dang. I played bass (poorly) in this band for their first tour, and for their sake, I’m happy I wasn’t in the permanent slot for same. Why? Well, because these young turks are goin’ places, and I wouldn’t wanna hold ‘em back by hitchin’ my old creaky wagon to their star (besides, they live like 200,000 miles away in Seattle). Such a weird, awesome zone here… the first inclination is to think back to teen moments listening to those early Cat Power platters and feeling like life was in slow motion, but it’s actually witchy in this totally different way. Tight but teetering, gnarly but pretty, like a fire on the beach… wild vocal style where it’s hard to tell where she’s losing her shit or using a super-controlled instrument in a really fucked way (and to sing honest-to-god rock/pop songs, at that!). Is Erin Birgy the new Kurt Cobain for people who are (FINALLY) sick of the cock-rock hegemony, but not sick of rocking out? Well, it sure as fuck ain’t Karen O (or even the lady from Magik Markers), so chances are decent.

HUGH JOHN NOBLE

HUGH JOHN NOBLE- I’m A Ghost (la la la la la la la)
CD
$9 USD

Hugh John Noble is Merry Olde England’s second-best kept secret (the first-best kept secret is that lounge singer/legend TEDDIE F.A.B.Z. is living in exile somewhere within Blighty’s borders planning at least one more comeback before he shuffles off this mortal coil, but that’s neither here nor there for the moment)… dude has been digging deep into his bummed-but-hopeful soul for a decade plus, creating in the process a bottomless well of some of the best sad pop songs extant since the Wedding Present bit it, or at least since Kimya Dawson had a kid and stopped being sad. This new missive is no exception, either… in fact, there’s a fighting chance that it’s his best to date. Impeccably (but not trendily) lo-fi, gentle but acidic, unhesitatingly personal, and all delivered in a droll-as-fuck Midlands accent that hates all of your favorite pronouncedly-British bands. In an acknowledged and omnipresent world of bedroom-recorded pop endlessly streaming from jerkoff rag to computer to facebook to you (and probably vice versa), you still need this above most.

Nope. Nope.