Ducks Battle Satan

Well after 13 years of Merzbow fandom it is time to say goodbye to (most) of my Merzbow collection. All prices in Australian dollars (heaps cheaper than US) – have a look at http://www.auspost.com.au to get an idea of international postage prices. I think it is about $9.00 AU for a CD and for  and 4 CD’s would be $18.00 AU. It’s about $30.00 AU for a kilo of CD’s (probably about 7 or 8).

For Australia buyers look at https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/domestic-shipping/parcel-post#tab2

Email ducksbattlesatan@gmail.com for questions, offers orders or photo requests. The prices are reflective of the cheapest Discogs prices.

Merzbient $200 (free postage world wide)

Rattus Rattus $20

Tamago $60

Merzbow vs Tamarin $6

Sha Mo 3000 $12

Yoshinotsune $12

Venerology $12 (sold)

Tombo $25

Higabana $12

Pulse Demon $60

Puroland $6

Oersted $8 (sold)

Senmaida $12

Merzbow Vs Nordvargr Parikel II $7

Noisembryo $60 (sold)

Merzbow and Consumer Electronics – Horn of the Goat $30 (sold)

Minazo $12

Synth Destruction (with Carlos Giffoni) $8

Anicca $6

F.I.D. (2 CD) $13

Vibractance $80

SCSI Duck $10

Collapse 12 Floors $8

Dead Leaves $8

Doors Open 8am $18

Aqua Necromancer $20

Machinenstil $14

Amlux $40 (sold)

Kibako (Delux Box) $30

Mercurated (cover has shelf ware) $80

Lop Lop (Delux Box) $30 (sold)

… and the Devil Makes Three (wth Porn) $5uuki $18

Another Merzbow Records (3 CD) $40

Cycle $12

Konchuuki  $18

Sphere $12

Space Metalizer $8

Animal Magnestism $12

Dust of Dreams $12

Zophorus ($11)

Suzume $15

Kukurou $12

Yurikamame $12

Karasu $12

Uzura $15

Kujakubato $12

Kamo $12

Kokuchou $10

Hiyodori $8

Niwatori $8

Shirasagi $8

Tsubame $8

Chabo $8

Dead Zone $8

Kouhei $8

Spiral Honey $50 (sold)

Last of the Analog Sessions (Box set) $75 – Has some damage to spine

Scene $5

Ouroboros $14

Electric Salad $40

Pinkeam $12

Fantail $13

Hybrid Noisebloom $12 (sold)

Age of 369/Chant 2 $21

Keio Line (ith Richard Pihnas) $15

Hodosan $12

Somei $15

Tentacle $35 (sold)

Rainbow Electronics2 $12

Merzbird $7

Coma Berenices $12

Ikebukuro Dada $4

Dolphon Sonar $9

Merzbuta $8

Merzbeat $10

Camouflage $18

Merzdub (with Jamie Saft) $40

Kamadhenu $30

Hanakisasage $8

Green Wheels $80 (sold)

Kali-yuga Karma $30

Kookaburra $20

Well it goes without saying that 2016 was a year of strange shit. In saying that though, there were some absolutely blinding releases last year that gave me all the feelings at once. There weren’t too many of those records but there was a still some great stuff that came out that made 2016 a but less shit than you may have remembered. In DBS world it was a year of wonder watching my three boys tackle challenges and overcoming them. A year in which my job became insane and I became a published author. A year of podcasting with my mate Ingmar who I would never have met if it wasn’t for this dusty old blog. A year of challenge and reward. Anyway enough of that – here we go.

Records released in 2016 that gave me all the feelings.

1. Olm – Little Boy
2. Kristian M Roberts – Two Portraits
3. Meyer – Negative Space
4. Andrew Tuttle – Fantasy League
5. Equiknoxx – Bird Sound Power
6. Valerio Tricoli – Colonic Earth
7. Missing Organ – Hard Walls
8. Anthony Child – Electronic Recordings from Maui Vol.2
9. Puce Mary – The Spiral

Records released in 2016 that gave me the happies

1. Sim Hutchins – I enjoy to Sweep a Room
2. Regler – Regler #8 Metal
3. Avvennir – Natural Language
4. Jim O’Rourke – Steamroom #26
5. Shit and Shine – Teardops
6. Bjanri Gunnarson – Paths
7. Aaron Jimmy Harris – Nerves
8. The Body  – No-one Deserves Happiness
9. Daniel Menche – Sleeper
10. Floorplan – Victorious
11. Pita – Get In
12. Krause – 2 am Thoughts
13. Nurse with Wound – Dark Fat
14. Dedekind Cut – Successor
15. Whitehouse – The Sound of Being Alive
16. Oren Ambarci – Hubris
17. Mike Shiflet – Abstracting Grace
18. Kevin Drumm – Middle of Nothing
19. Russell Haswell – Panther Noise

Old stuff I listened to heaps

1. Various – Dope Guns and Fucking in the Streets
2. Burning Star Core – Challenger
3. Yellow Swans – Live During War Crimes 1 and 2
4. Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats
5. Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden
6. The Necks – Chemist
7. Roland S Howard – Teenage Snuff Film
8. Prurient – Oxidation
9. Wayne/Jayne Country – Rock N Roll Cleopatra
10. The Rita/Wilt – Werewolf in the Black Space
11. Mike Cooper – White Shadows in the South Seas
12. Lawrence English – The Peregrine
13. People Like Us – Don’t Think Right /It’s All Twice

Hey Ho. Sorry for the break in transmission. I got commissioned to write an online text book/guide thing which has sucked up huge amounts of time leaving most of my musing on albums restricted to the podcast.So let’s start again shall we?

In my high school and university days  I was a bit of a label whore for records coming out on labels such as Blast First, Sub-pop and Touch & Go. In this pre-internet age I had to rely on the record labels themselves to be my own personal musical curators. For the most part they did a pretty awesome job and there were only a few releases from those labels over the years that made me question my collecting masterplan. Like many kids growing up in a regional area, my ability to acquire records was limited to special orders from my sympathetic local record shop (“mate is Killdozer one word of two?”) and an annual Christmas trip to Brisbane where I would paw over the racks in Rockinghorse, Kent and Skinny’s. Those shops are mostly all gone now with Rockinghorse being  one of the last few left in the country. I’ve started frequenting Rockinghorse again this year in a conscious effort to stop buying so many records online and supporting the little guy. Every now and then I browse their webstore and a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. They had, in stock no less, Halo of Flies Music Insect Minds and this, Cows definitive Midwestern hardcore statement of1992. These have been out of print for years and there they were both  on disc and cheap. I headed for an early lunch and bought both within the hour. The big surprise for me was that both records were new. They are two of the first three releases that Am Rep are re-issuing with the help of some mob called MVD Audio Group.

Cows wereone of the classic mid-western hardcore punk bands that spanned the mid-1980’s to mid-1990’s.  Cunning Stunts came out just as grunge was breaking. It’s probably a bit more sedate than Sexy Pee Story their 1993 follow up but there are some absolutely cracking tunes here. The fourth track Mr Cancelled may be the best unknown grunge anthem of the era and has this nice slacker vibe like something wedged between Bitch Magnet and godheadsilo with a cool late-Husker Du musicality (with better drums of course). The rest of the album has similarities with other mid-western bands of the era such as Mule and Killdozer. I love this record. It may be me getting all nostalgic  but I’m keen for the next batch of re-issues. May I suggest Lubricated Goat’s Plays the Devil’s Music, Boss Hog’s Cold Hands and King Snake Roost’s Things That Play Themselves.

Well Happy New Year and all that shit. In my time proven tradition I try to start each new year with some good intentions to post regularly. From logging into this blog again after an absence of 12 months it appears that there are still a shit ton of you out there popping by to read my confused ramblings on records. In tribute to the diehards, let’s see how I go this year. As many of you know my review mojo has been exhausted over at The Antidote Podcast but due to our inexact release schedule I have missed talking about a ton of records that have made an impact on me over the past few years,

Lets’s start with an oldie. Prurient’s Arrowhead has a bit of a reputation as being one of Prurient’s defining works. As you probably know Prurient is the name used by Dominick Fernow for his nasty, transgressive, noisy musical output. This year he released the epic Frozen Niagra Falls, a sprawling double CD of darkwave industrial goodness which appears to have been universally ignored in everyone’s best of lists for 2015. I think the problem that people have with Fernow (I think the attitude transcends into his other projects such as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and Vatican Shadow) is that he’s a bit of a caricature – like a goth art school major with a flair for the dramatic. I’ve been guilty of ragging on him from time to time. I may have even stated that “I was done with him” during a rather tiresome tirade on the podcast. At the time of that statement I was a bit tired of Prurient’s embrace of darkwave forms in his records. Yet in 2015 I began to embrace this side of Prurient’s work. A decent noisenerd should only consideris whether the record is good, and not some semantic argument about whether such and such record is as good as (insert particular band’s name here)  their old stuff.

But whatever anyone’s views on Fernow as an artist the man has made some fantastic records over the years and this critical sniffery from many reviewers (hey I’m just as guilty –  OK) in some ways diminish the fact that he is an important artist in the intersection between noise and industrial music.  Few of his albums give me as much pleasure as Arrowhead. I bought this last year and gave it a cursory listen on the day it arrived. It didn’t start well – a sadistic drone of high pitched microphone feedback ala Roman Shower. I wasn’t in the headspace for it at the time and I moved on to something else. Just before Christmas I gave it another try and discovered that the feedback of the track, Sternum,  is accompanied by minimal drum strikes and some tonal interference which gave the track texture and created tension. The second track, Ribcage, embraces the  feedback once more but here it is supplemented with Fernow’s patented cries of anguish to scale up the creep factor. It is the final track, Lungs, which tickled me the most though. A four minute race of tribal style drumming being immersed in washed of feedback. It may be the closest Prurient has come to a noise banger.

Arrowhead delivers a bucketload of noise goodness in just over half an hour. If you’ve become a recent adopter of Prurient’s laterstuff go back and have a listen to this. It won’t disappoint.

As most of the bands and artists who provided my early noise soundtrack  move away from sonic brutality to embrace creepier and more beat orientated methods it becomes almost a novelty to spend time with some old school noise. Incapacitants exist in a group of Japanese noise bands that every self respecting noise nerd needs in their collection. Consisting of two middle aged salary men, the band kind of disappears for years on end before reappearing and producing a burst of recorded material. 2011 – 2012 were particularly fertile years for the band with Eat! Meat!! Manifesto!!! being probably the last in time of those records. Coming out on the charmingly named Rape Art Productions, a Ukrainian label specialising in all manner of grot, Eat! Meat!! Manifesto!!! has a slightly different feel to the other Incapacitant records I own. The first track Eat! sounds like two separated mechanical snakes writhing and twisting whilst separated by green fields of static and proto-industrial noise. Despite its underlying brutality the track almost washed over me live a form of psychedelic ambience. The second and third  track is like the Incapacitants I’ve experienced in the past. Completely uncompromising with an absence of discernible forms. Their brand of noise is like  the ultimate expression of power electronics. I don’t enjoy Incapacitants as much as say, Government Alpha, but records like Eat! Meat!! Manifesto are like the ultimate fight club. Brutal, nasty, extreme and visceral.  Continue reading →

Sorry I haven”t been around for a little while but I promise that I’ll do better from now on. In the meantime did you know that there is now a ducksbattlesatan approved podcast? It is called The Antidote and feature myself and Ingmar from evolkweenthemusical blabbering on about records. It is ten buckets of goodly noise/experimental/drone excellentness and you should run here or to the itunes to get your free download.  The first two episodes are up and tonight we recorded episode 3. Listen right to the end to here about our special Menche competition. In a few weeks we record our beginners guide to Merzbow. Stay tuned!

I spent most of 2011 catching up on releases that came out in 2010 so the best record I listened to all of last year was Black Mountain Transmitter’s Black Goat of the Woods. Yet when I actually compiled a list of the records I tracked  down in 2011 I was surprised by the sheer number of them. The other thing I’ve noticed is that I have barely written about any of them. This year’s releases (at least the ones I enjoyed) were a challenging bunch of records and it has taken me more listens in order to come to terms with many of these records than in past years. So here is my best of list, other records I enjoyed and some lists from some readers. Thanks again for all of your support and conversations this year. Here is to an even better 2012.

Records of 2011 (and I am ranking them for the first time.)

20. Skullflower – Fucked On a Pile of Corpses

19. Mamuthones – Mamuthones

18. Merzbow – Yaho-Niwa

17. Machinefabriek – Veldverk

16. Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides – Poisson

15. Zomby – Dedication

14. Peaking Lights – 936

13. Demdike Stare – Tryptych

12. Rustie – Glass Swords

11. The Thing with Jim O’Rourke – Shinjuku Growl

10. Pete Swanson – I Don’t Rock At All

9. Ectoplasm Girls – TxN

8. Tim Hecker – Ravedeath 1972

7. Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

6. New Blockaders/Merzbow/Anomali – Kali-Yuga Karma

5. Cut Hands – Afro Noise 1

4. Werewolf Jerusalem – Confessions of a Sex Maniac

3. Merzbow – Dead Zone

2. Daniel Menche and Anla Courtis – Yagua Ovy

1. Daniel Menche – Feral

Record I still don’t know if I like

Prurient – Bermuda Drain

Record’s I’ve listened to a lot

Kevin Drumm – Second

Merzbow & Jamie Saft – Merzdub

Black to Comm – 1968

Mouthus – No Canal

Richard Skelton – Landings

Ben’s List

2011:
Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

Julianna Barkwick – The Magic Place

Toby Goodshank – Truth, Jump, Fall

Merzbow – Dead Zone

Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol 2

Daniel Menche – Feral

Lindsey Buckingham – Seeds We Sow

Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

Prurient – Bermuda Drain

Richard Buckner – Our Blood

Honorable Mention:
Merzbow – Lop Lop

10 non-2011 CDs that blew me away:
Nurse with Wound – Huffin Rag Blues

Koji Asano – Galaxies

Yellow Swans – Deterioration

Lasse Marhaug/John Wiese – Country & Western

Ulver – Nattens Madrigal

Tim Hecker – Harmony In Ultraviolet

Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children

Keith Fullerton Whitman – Libson

Keith Fullerton Whitman – Playtroughs

Keith Fullerton Whitman – Multiples

Can – Tago Mago

Well, I feel like I’ve spent most of this year catching up  on the records I missed  last year. So to address the balance I’m calling for Top 10 Lists from DBS readers. I thought two lists would be fun. One for 2011 releases and a general one for the records that rocked your world this year irrespective of when it was released.  The records do not have to be in a particular order (unless you want them to be) and you can even go beyond 10 if you feel the need.

If you want to participate send your lists to ducksbattlesatan@gmail.com by Christmas and I’ll post them on boxing day.

cheers

Dave

A quick note to let you know that I’m also now writing for Olive Music. The reviews that I post there will be cross posted here.

www.olive-music.blogspot.com

Miles – a reader and sometime contributor to this blog has started his own.  Check it out!

www.expresswaytoyourskull.wordpress.com

Moustaches – yes, narrative -no. What do you reckon the other guy is whispering in Omar Souleyman’s  ear? The album this comes from is fantastic.

… because there are just not enough velvet frock coats in pop music.

Below are the top 6 search terms people type in  and are directed to ducksbattlesatan. See if you can spot the search term which is not like the others.

Now I had a bit of a trawl through what I’ve written and I think I tracked down the culprit. Here’s my top blog tip – when describing animal noises on a record try not to use fucking as an adjective.

You’re welcome.

Your friend Dave.

I’ve been a but pre-occupied at the moment but Ducks Battle Satan (aka noisenoisenoise) had a bit of a milestone this month with 300 posts.

It’s been three years of record reviews and as I look through this blog I’ve noticed how my listening habits have changed. Less doom and more drone seems to be the order of the day. A reader emailed me the other day for some advice. He was interested in noise but didn’t know where to start. I was pretty chuffed that he asked me because the main reason I started writing this blog was to try to articulate my experiences with this brave new world of sound. My list of recommendations was probably a bit unwieldy and unhelpful but if you want to see it published here drop me a line. I’d also like to say a big hello to the regular readers from Tennessee, Utrecht and Minneapolis. I’m not sure who you are but if you want to say hi – ducksbattlesatan@gmail.com

cheers

Dave

You can follow me on the Twitter if you’re keen. Ducksbattlesata is the name. Where is my fucking “n”?