BARBARA MORGENSTERN “Live” C31 (Fish Prints Inc)

In the fall of 2018, Germany’s stalwart electronica diva, Barbara Morgenstern, decided to take a sharp left into avant-pop territory with "Unschuld und Verwüstung”, a truly beastly mixture of classical beauty and counterpoint muscle*, blurring the lines between academic and spiritual, the head and the heart. It was (and still is) truly something to write home about, being just as catchy as it is unwieldy and disorienting.

Now, fast forward to the cusp of 2020; Fish Prints (Boston) has caught BM at her most visceral and psychedelic yet, documenting this criminally short set of remarkable, re-worked anthems and fugues, each and every one conjured up with the seamless support of a live choir and some of the dreamiest, most persuasive alto sax cooing you could possibly imagine. 

&if, after reading this, you’re Still not moved to give this entire album a (few repeated) listen(s), at the very least, do yourself a favor and compare both the "UuV" and “Live" versions of “Michael Stipe”, back to back, while considering Morgenstern’s sentiments on The End of the World and any Feeling of Fineness, as these blends of serenity and chaos are worthy of study, alone!

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/live

and/or

http://www.barbaramorgenstern.de/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

*think early St. Vincent and My Brightest Diamond!

AFTER DINNER “Souvenir Cassette” C30 (Fish Prints Inc)

Only taking a half-decade off between 1981 and right now, Haco has been a pioneering force of outsider "pop", psychedelic rock, ambient*, and electro-acoustic experimentalism, not just in Japan, but worldwide. To peruse her Sound Art theses (click link below) is to wade in wildly oscillating awe through her intimate relationship with the invisible ubiquity of each and every sound and radio wave that engulfs us on the daily. Any avant-garde composer and experimentalist dabbler should know her greatness; both where she is now…and where she started.

Enter Fish Prints Inc, Massachusetts' dedicated, forward-thinking tape label that spends its only time not publishing tomorrow’s sonic adventurers on exploring the enchanted catacombs of criminally underrated visionaries past, digging up (and re-pressing long out of print releases by) bygone composers (often decades ago) who have as much to offer today as anyone working in the current field. After Dinner’s psychedelic whirlwind of a live performance at a French music festival in '87 fits this bill to a T.

On “Souvenir Cassette”, Haco’s commanding vocals range from a rich & sentimental contralto to a bludgeoning mid-upper belting out that could easily carry just about any backing music into greatness…but the five hired guns performing her spellbindingly WEIRD compositions behind her are all absolutely dialed in, lock step, shredding, jauntily chopping, and/or meditatively drawing out, without misstep, each and every single complex set of notes and motions. It’s unbelievably surreal that this performance hasn’t gone down in history.

Maybe it was the tape manipulations of birdsong, crickets, & dogs barking that threw off the psychedelic/hard rock crowd? Or the fusion of mesmerizing tango/military-waltzes and heavy blues riffs that confused the traditional/pop seekers? Perhaps the aleatory noisiness and breakneck transitions peppered throughout confused everyone? Make no mistake, this performance was magical, and is every bit as relevant today for any live performer to take note: you actually CAN throw in the kitchen sink and keep everything cohesive, but you gotta work HARD to do it. Like Haco. Be like Haco.

***UPDATE***
This pre-order for this release HAS ALREADY SOLD OUT, but a few more copies shall drop on August 30th via Fish Prints Inc. If you’ve lost faith in structured music/songs, this will bring you back around, and if you love it, this’ll deepen that love**. I’m officially a convert, and swooning.

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/

and/or

http://www.hacohaco.net/haco/soundart.html

— Jacob An Kittenplan

*you may/should know her brilliant solo work on Room40, for example

**or ruin your favorite bands, by comparison, I suppose. Double-edged sword, here…

LIDA HUSIK "Motheroceanmorning" C36 (Fish Prints Inc)

In less than FOUR months time, Fish Prints Inc (li’l sibling label to I <3 Noise) has already put out a handful of quality, quirky releases from largely unsung/underrated artists from around the world. First, there was a twee-pop demo by Nelories, from Japan, 1990, followed by a brand-spankin’ new album by Cryostasium, an avant-garde atmospheric black metal project out of Boston. Then came a re-release of a 1997 album by German electro-diva, Barbara Morgenstern, followed by a brand new offering, which found her ever-darker and more powerful.

And now, PDX’s Lida Husik kicks out her first proper recording in nearly two decades, after taking a long hiatus from a decade of exploring punk & electro-pop psychedelia (in the 90’s…see a pattern here?).  2018’s “Motheroceanmorning” finds LH trading in her trusted, busy electronic beats & slick studio mixing of vocal harmonies/canons for a more earnest folksy, country-blues repertoire, she alone physically playing her catchy honky-tonkin’ arrangements and softly cooing along, old-timey-like, in a now huskier contralto.

It’d be great to catch her and maybe Michael Hurley trading off songs at the Laurelthirst someday!

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/motheroceanmorning
and/or
https://lidahusik.bandcamp.com/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

BARBARA MORGENSTERN "Unschuld Und Verwüstung" C50 (Fish Prints Inc)

A cursory surface listening to “Unschuld und Verwüstung” will likely find you drawing comparisons to some slower jams by Eleanor-heavy Fiery Furnaces and maybe Ann Steel (with Roberto Cacciapaglia), and you wouldn’t be wrong. Like, at all. However, neither of those aforementioned goddesses sing in German, nor do they evoke even a sliver of the broodiness that Barbara Morgenstern consistently conjures up throughout this dark electro/chamber(ish) pop album.

Through droning bass accordion arrangements, modular synth/piano melodies, grooving drum machine syncopations, left-field accents (xylophone, apocalyptic guitar feedback, harp, & brass to name a few), & dedicated studio mixing wizardry, BM kicks out a diverse collection of get-down-able midnight dance floor jams & moody mantras to nod along to.

&a strapping of good headphones reveal will reveal a whole other rich, inner world, with countless details buried deep, deep, deep in the mix that won’t get heard without concertedly tracking them down.  Happy hunting! Hell yeah, Fish Prints Inc!

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/unschuld-und-verw-stung
and/or
http://www.barbaramorgenstern.de/

--Jacob An Kittenplan

CRYOSTASIUM "The Possessor” C18 (Fish Prints Inc)

“The Possessor” is a black metal album…only the kick drum doesn’t follow that stalwart, hummingbird-heartbeat-on-amphetamines formula, but rather a confident, gothic-industrial-night-club-under-attack-by-zombies-like-every-single-fucking-night pulse.

“The Possessor” is a black metal album …only the vocals aren’t harnessed from the shrieks of professional trashcan-shouting-into banshees so much as an abused Japanese vocal processor that likely held hands with an AI model, watching Linda Blair highlights, for maybe four years straight, learning to projectile vomit mangled half-annunciations/invocations only decipherable by practiced necromantics.

“The Possessor” is a black metal album …only the interludes aren’t culled from the haunted dreams of Mussorgsky’s conductor’s wand’s rise and fall of all damned arpeggios in unison forever-ever; nay, instead, these passages are but spirits of these magnetized past and future blackened industrial lamentations, sampled, stretched into ambient ghosts, and tethered ethereally to a nice, natural, spooky bog of a field-recording documenting a midnight cemetery constitutional.

“The Possessor” is a black metal album …only the bass’s throbbing tug grows outfuckingrightgoddamndancier and DANCIER as the all-too-short album progresses and takes on trickier time signatures.

“The Possessor” is a black metal album…only you can read the letters on the spine.

&Perhaps now you’re inclined to ask, “If it walks like a duck, and it sings like a hellbound semi-aquatic harpy, how will we pigeonhole it?” If so, just sit with that koan, knowing that neither Cryostasium nor Fish Prints Inc, for that matter, could possibly give a flying fuck. I’d wager a nickel that, somewhere in Boston, there’s a needlepoint’d maxim hanging on a wall that reads “If you love a genre, set it on fire. If it comes back, it will be yours forever. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/the-possessor
and/or
https://cryostasium.bandcamp.com/album/the-possessor

  --Jacob An Kittenplan

NELORIES "1990 Demo EP” C18 (Fish Prints Inc)

Nelories started off in the early ‘90s as two high school gals (I repeat, HIGHSCHOOL!), one playing electric guitar, the other, an accordion- whilst singing in her second language, English- which made for a nuanced departure from standard vowels sung, as well as playfully novel* lyrical poses and topics.

Hungry for a “fun fact” about this obscure twee/J-proto-indie-pop band? Their only American release was on a label run by a They Might Be Giants member, said release being for a CD of the Month club. Yeah, you’ll go “Ahhh…yep. That makes some serious sense!” upon first listen, with all those hooks AND change-ups.

As for this demo, be forewarned: the mix is rather raw…but pointedly so? As in, earlier on (in my repeated listening to this) I really wished the guitar was turned up a skosh (or like four), but, after repeated (repeated, repeated) listening, I found that the earlier tracks’ lower mixing suited the overall release well, meta-wise, as that guitar gets subtly turned up in the mix more and more, from start to finish, alongside a piecemeal introduction of some fairly creative bass and on point drums; by the end, the guitarist is shredding and there’s a really rrrad double-bass kick-drum line that just HITS!

Label-wise, “Fish Prints Inc” is, for all intents and purposes, a sibling of I HEART NOISE, which, if you’re not aware, is a pretty badass label that re-issues long lost gems and/or issues ones that really shouldn’t get lost in the fray. FPI is decidedly anti-nostalgic in their mission, however, with their only two releases consisting of this three-decades-old esoteric relic alongside a brand new, visionary atmospheric black metal album. What the fuck is next? Who knows?!

What I DO know for certain is that, if you’re into quirky, accordion heavy ‘90s indie-rock, this will scratch one hell of a lot of itches for you!

https://fishprintsinc.bandcamp.com/album/1990-demo-ep

  --Jacob An Kittenplan

* reportedly, as I can’t really make out the words over the accordion in the mix. Never been great with that to begin with. Listen for yourself via the link!