“Richmond Va” (Used 5 times)

Today I'd like to encourage you to check out some true undergound freak-squad music. Mutwawa, from Richmond, VA.

This 2-man unit combines mutated African rhythms and sounds, perhaps akin to the vibe of Konono No 1, with the gritty, experimental synth-stomp of Forcefield. Both members have long and impressive resumes: Jason Hodges is credited with samples and has played in the power-violence bass-n-drums band Suppression, freakout post-punk band The Amoeba Men, Bermuda Triangles... the list goes on. All of them highly recommended. Gary Stevens is credited with effects, and he is also the founding member of noise band Head Molt and for several years ran the infamous DIY house/venue The Rat-Ward. Again, I could go on...

Mutwawa - Live at Strange Matter - March 8, 2011 - Richmond, Virginia from Silver Persinger on Vimeo.

Embedded below is their first album "Necro Zulu" which can also be dowloaded. I have to point out that I love how this album is composed of songs. Mutwawa can do the noise band M.O. of cranking out one solid 15-minute set too, which works live (just check out how well they work that format in the video above), but I do appreciate the extra bit of self-editing that goes into boiling your material down to a batch of 2-3 minute highlights. It also makes an album that much more repeat-listenable for me, and this is a good one. Play this on something with some good bass.

CNP Records blog, Jason's record label  |  Rat-Ward blog, for all of Gary's projects 

[originally posted at WFMU's Beware of the Blog]

CM aka Creative “I Got You”

The final maxi-single promoting CM’s “The Classic Material Completion Package XE” (which you should def check out if you haven’t already done so), we’ve got a couple more exclusive previously unreleased tracks for you to enjoy. Grab CM’s “I Got You” here!

--

Just Plain Ant “This Is Madness (Just Plain Black)”

On July 27th blocSonic & Just Plain Sounds are dropping the next Just Plain Ant album, “Rumble, Young Man, Rumble”. With RYMR, the the world of netlabels collides with that of classic hip-hop. Among the album’s many talented collaborators is one notable guest that’s sure to grab a bit of attention. That special guest is none other than The Rhyme Animal aka The Hard Rhymer aka Mistachuck… that’s right… Public Enemy’s Chuck D!

Though, you’ll have to wait until the 27th to hear that distinct voice rhyming on Just Plain Ant production. For right now we’ve got the first maxi-single for you containing two fantastic album tracks featuring Black Liquid out of Richmond, Virginia and NOTE out of Cleveland, Ohio.

Grab Just Plain Ant’s “This Is Madness (Just Plain Black)” here!

In both releases we’ve included instrumentals and acapellas for your remixing pleasure. We encourage you to submit your remixes (in wav format) to our SoundCloud DropBox (We do ask that you use the lossless FLAC format for the best possible quality remixes). In the case of the Just Plain Ant single, your remix has a chance of being included on the next RYMR single!

As always… thanks for downloading and listening! Keep the music moving… share it… blog it… podcast it… broadcast it!

Peace
Mike Gregoire
Founder/Curator blocSonic.com

Single Bullet Theory were a DIY-punk-inspired power-pop group with a true shot at new-wave stardom in the late 70s and early 80s. They were certainly worthy; the songs were there and the energy was too. But after gigging with artists like The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and even finding their way onto MTV and the Billboard charts, the music industry bottleneck pressured SBT to sacrifice their pure vision for potential mass-marketability. In the process, the group lost the sense of purpose that drove them to play music in the first place, and disbanded before they could record their elusive breakthrough.

SBT: 1977-1980 compiles Single Bullet Theory's self-recorded material, and the 11-song collection offers an unfiltered vision of a band at their prime. It's compiled by Artifacts/yclept, which is both a musicians' collective from SBT's hometown of Richmond Virginia, as well as the imprint that originally released this material on 45rpm 12'' in an edition of 1000. We've previously documented the more experimental tendencies of Richmond's fertile arts scene with features on Karen Cooper Complex and Bomis Prendin, but there is much more to dig into over at the Artifacts/yclept FMA page.

The core of Single Bullet Theory -- Frank Daniel, Dennis Madigan, and Michael Maurice Garrett -- had been playing in Richmond bands since 1971 in groups like Big Naptar and X-Breed (pictured L), putting on warehouse parties and fostering a healthy music community. Both of these bands appear on the first Artifacts compilation, originally released as a flexi-disk in 1976 (they love those flexis!). X-Breed's version of "Miss Two Knives" was later recorded as Single Bullet Theory, who formed in 1976 to further refine a sound that had started by covering bands like the MC5, Velvet Underground, and the Troggs.

One of the songs below, "Keep It Tight," would be re-recorded for Single Bullet Theory's first (and only) official album, released in 1982 on Nemperor Records, a subsidiary of CBS Records. The song charted, a music video (after the jump) appeared on MTV two years later just as the label stopped promoting the band.

Richmond, VA had a vibrant art-rock/experimental scene brewing for decades, and the Artifacts/yclept label documented some of the sounds circulating around their hometown. In anticipation of a 3-CD sampler titled Nescroscopix (1970-1981), we're pleased to present three albums from this era.

1979's Test and 1980's Phantom Limb were the first two official releases by Bomis Prendin, an experimental collective from Washington DC. These 9'' flexidisks came silkscreened, wrapped in a PVC bag "for protection", and their avant-industrial living room tape sounds inspired mail from the likes of Jandek and WFMU's own Irwin Chusid. They're also cited as the two records that earned Bomis Prendin a spot on the mythical "Nurse With Wound" list. A tracks off each album was later compiled as part of Hyped 2 Deaths' Homework #110 compilation, and an official CD release is available here along with more recent Bomis Prendin recordings. The project was re-born in 2001, after a 15-year hiatus [UPDATE: Bomis Prendin reports that recording was ongonig throughout this time, but releases reconvened "after we gained the necessaries to make our own CDs, having started digitizing and archiving our hundreds of tapes in 1999"]. So there is much mind-melting Bomis Prendin music to be heard, in addition to these two groundbreaking releases. Here's a track off Phantom Limb:

Bomis Prendin's mutating lineup centered around its eponymous core member, along with characters like "Corvus Crorson", Candeee, and Miles Anderson. One of the players on Test is Bill Altice, who wrote the liner notes for the forthcoming Necroscopix retrospective. Earlier this year, Bill Altice introduced us to Shinjuku Birdwalk, a previously un-heard gem of an album recorded in 1981 by Richmond's Karen Cooper Complex...