OOPs: Cannibal Frequencies - Untitled (Gods Of Tundra, 2008)

Ok, so this one is technically not out of print, but it's so damn close it shouldn't matter. Mike Shiflet (aka Cannibal Frequencies) said 3 months ago that he was down to his last copy or two of this tape. It's $6 postage paid (fuckin deal and a half) and you can grab the LAST ONE, assuming there is one, here (preferably along with some other cool shit he's selling). There were only 50 of these made and I'm not seeing them for sale anywhere else.

Now that that's out of the way... this tape is a wall of static noise. A half hour of unwavering, relentless, beautiful, sweet sweet brutal static. That's all you really need to know. Head over to my original review back in January '09 if you're feeling extra curious / want to listen to a sound sample, or just download this beast already. Totally worth your time. Guaranteed.

DOWNLOAD

P.S. Mike, if this offends you and you want me to take it down because you still have a copy(ies) for sale or for any other reason, just let me know. And you have my apologies.

MP3: Brendan Murray, Ben Owen, & Mike Shiflet - Live at Supreme Trading 10-15-08

Brendan Murray, Ben Owen, & Mike Shiflet - Live at Supreme Trading 10-15-08


Here's another delicious treat from the increasingly amazing Compost And Height. Brendan Murray, Ben Owen, and Mike Shiflet did a live collaboration in Brooklyn and you probably weren't there. But fear not. A recording of this quality makes it easy enough to imagine that you were.

It's only 15 minutes long but it's totally trance inducing. That is, except for the one time pop of somebody slapping their hand on the floor. That snaps you right back into your living room, until you space out again and start soaring through the deep clear valleys, foggy forests, and silent mountaintops. So so good. Makes me wish these guys would do something like this in Boston.

Cannibal Frequencies - Untitled

Cannibal Frequencies - Untitled 2


This was supposed to be one of those "mysterious" tapes. The kind of thing that, for whatever reason, has an obviously fake story about it's origins. Label Gods Of Tundra said, "I found this master buried underneath the dirt in the woods next to my building. It was covered in mud and mostly rotted. Turns out Mike Shiflet recorded this, dug a hole and threw it in there 2 years ago. Now its been unearthed and its time to for the rot to soak into your stereos." So, yeah, this is a tape by Mike Shiflet under the moniker Cannibal Frequencies and it's fucking brutal.

Two sides, 15 minutes each, both consisting of an almost totally unwavering static buzz. They're absolutely relentless. I had two co-workers come in and hear this tape and they ended up being spot on with their descriptions. One of them side of the A side, "This sounds like something from Close Encounters, you know with the UFO." I kind of doubt a real spacecraft would sound like this, but a Hollywood UFO? Definitely. I think this is more like what the radio would sound like if a UFO was flying by, disrupting the frequencies.

The other friend said the B side sounded like "the stampede of a thousand horses." So true. If you just close your eyes and imagine yourself trapped in a canyon with a herd of horses (bulls might be a more appropriate animal), I'm pretty sure this is what you'd hear. Completely static, the sound only wavering as much as a stampede would. Amazing.

This isn't really the kind of stuff I'd recommend listening to at work. My colleagues seemed a bit weirded out by it, giving me some strange looks, but they were for the most part OK with it. My guess is not all people would be as forgiving. Most might ask you to turn it off. And in this particular case, you probably don't have a really good case for keeping it on.

New Year's Eve With Intransitive's Friends

Nerve Net Noise

Hive Mind

Mike Shiflet

Eli Keszler

What's the best way to spend New Year's Eve? Getting drunk with friends and strangers alike? Meh. Getting laid by your one true love? Satisfactory. Going to a concert presented by Intransitive Recordings with the US debut performance by Nerve Net Noise? Fuck yeah.

One of the best parts of last night was seeing all of the local warriors in experimental music converge in room 309 of the Hynes Convention Center. In addition to all of the performers and Howard Stelzer (the man behind Intransitive) there was Ricardo Donoso of Semata Productions, Greg Kelley, Jay Sullivan, Brendan Murray, Al Deaderick of Magic People, Wayne Rogers of Major Stars, and I think I saw Keith Fullerton Whitman at one point. And those are just the people I recognized. But me being the nervous anti-social pussy that I am didn't talk to anyone except Howie.

There was a slight change of plans with Eli Keszler and Ashley Paul performing first instead of last. They dove right in head first and kicked things off with their frenzied noisy skronk. I could listen to Eli's bowed percussion for hours on end.

Columbus' Mike Shiflet was up next. It was really good at the time but I'm having a hard time remembering anything specific about it. There was this weird interlude with a manipulated sample of a guy coughing and clearing throat. That's all I got.

Hive Mind came on wearing sunglasses. Is that a signature thing he does? Like Slipknot with their masks? Kinda lame. I'm not one for stage shticks. But it's all about the music, right? In that sense, Hive Mind delivered. He put down some truly beautiful and terrifying thick blackened ambience. So so cool. Sadly, he cut his set short because the right speaker stopped working. Even with the technical difficulties, though, he was still amazing.

Then it was time for motherfuckin NNN. He came all the way from Japan for this one show. A homemade analog electronics board with two joysticks was pretty much all this guy brought and he made that shit SO loud. At one point, people started cheering because he just kept cranking the volume up. It sounded like 100 people sampling the sound effects from Excite Bike, without the gay music. I just sat there slack jawed. Not that I think it'll happen again anytime soon, but if Nerve Net Noise ever shows up on American soil again, you make sure you do whatever you have to do to see him play.

The full room emptied out pretty quick. A ton of people left and missed out on Hollywood's Damion Romero. Which is a shame 'cause this guy fucking destroyed. Laid out some seriously gorgeous drones and it built up into a fucking loud as fuck gorgeous cacophony. You know how Sigur Ros' untitled #8 song just keeps building, and there's that cathartic release when it just explodes? Well, this was the explosion. He just kept adding layers upon layers of static, it became a moaning wall of sheer exquisite noise. I couldn't move, just closed my eyes and let it envelope me. That, my friends, is how you ring in the new year.