DAN GREENWOOD "GUTS:RENDER" (Greenwood Electronics)

guts:render is a triple cassette audio collage. composed by
Dan Greenwood of diagram a. using material that he collected from Chris Cooper of fat worm of error, Patrick O'neil of skin crime, and Dominick Fernow of prurient, Dan concocts a seamless soup of raw sounds. for good measure he adds material from eight years of home audio experiments of his own. you can't tell what is what with this recording. even if you are a seasoned veteran of the sounds that some of these people have produced. Dan does an adequate job, muffling and chopping the sources at his disposal. that being said, the cherry on top of this release is the addition of some old raw sounds provided by his former accomplice, John Brown. together as proof of the shooting, John and Dan carved a little corner of their own out of the late 1990's harsh noise scene. this release seems to put in motion an epilogue of sorts to the legacy of their body of work together. as vastly underrated and unknown as they were.
i don't see any reason to explain to you here the impact that the work of Chris Cooper, Patrick O'neil, or Dominick Fernow has had on the sub culture of noise and sound art. Dan chooses to include his friends (and influences) here to broaden the spectrum of your listening pleasure. Alicia Renadette does a great job on the art work for this too. a smoky spray paint color collage to trip on while you listen to all three tapes at once.
if you savor the sweet sound of harsh cut up home brew lo-fi audio sweat. then i suggest you get in touch with Dan at : http://greenwoodelectronic.blogspot.com

ANGST HASE PFEFFER NASE "Seashard" C30 (Self Released)

Chris Cooper, (Fat Worm Of Error, ex-Caroliner, ex-Deerhoof & Wester MA's Barn Owl) is probably the most creative guitarist working on the contemporary underground music scene. His "guitar on the floor" work with the Barn Owl (not the West Coast band) or his "guitar on a strap" freakouts with Fat Worm Of Error are always a frightening thing to behold. Write Chris today and see if you can still find a copy of this.

angsthasepfeffernase@gmail.com

CHRIS COOPER BILL NACE DUO "I'm Fucking In A Sitting Room (For Nmperign)" (Night People)

Okay. So the title presumably refers to Alvin Lucier's composition, "I Am Sitting In A Room." And it's dedicated to the Boston EAI duo of Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley, Nmperign. Listening to the sides of this tape, I cannot glean why either of these extra-musical references is present. The music does not have the space, subtlety or focus of Nmperign, nor does it have the purity of concept associated with Lucier's piece. And it certainly doesn't try to. These are not criticisms. In fact, I point them out only because I expected a much more literal tribute after reading the title. The tape is quite good, really. Bill Nace (of Vampire Belt) teams up with Chris Cooper (of Fat Worm of Error) for a blistering double guitar freakout. Imagine the moment-to-moment logic of a Spontaneous Music Ensemble improvisation with the aggressive guitar histrionics of a 1970's Glen Branca group. (For fellow Los Angeles dwellers, it's like a less prissy version of Open City.) The music is a little too dynamic, I fear, for the cassette medium. There's a lot of loud-then-quiet-then-loud stuff where the changes are too drastic. It goes from way-too-distorted to eclipsed-by-tape-hiss all throughout. (A CD or fancy vinyl reissue would be phenomenal). Also, there's a lot of fun play with the stereo spectrum-- towards the end of side A, there's a section where percussive sounds conjure images of a cartoon construction site, ping ponging back and forth from speaker to speaker. And how can you not be charmed-- the B side is dominated by hilarious laser sounds.

BILL NACE + CHRIS COOPER (Open Mouth)

Tense, harrowing and insane improv guitar convo between these 2 chaos kings. Nace knows how to work form-eating string abuse better than anyone, and Cooper’s phat, worm-needling error approach has a billion micro-lesions of cellular complexity. They ping-pong psycho-ward screams and springs and scrapes and scoops (?!) and whatever other non-Guitar Center axe madness they can forge across this liberating magnetic tape tie-dying session. Vibe is vast though, ranging from atom-splitting frenzies to warped, hallway-vibration meditations. Only for cult/grim fans of “psychic fucked madness.” High art so high it’s obliterated in the ionosphere.