ONE AND DONE

ARTISTS WHO RELEASED ONE LP

I recently posted a daily series for a week on "One LP Wonders".  This involved digging up some bizarre, obscure albums by bands/artists who released one album and that was it, there was nothing else from that configuration of people. This means one completed studio album, not live albums nor compilations of unrelated or previously unreleased tracks. I aimed to dig up stuff that didn't get much attention, but deserves it. The following are arranged chronologically. 

The United States of America (1968) 

In 1963, aspiring avant-garde composer and musician, Joseph Byrd, was in New York, studying music and participating in the Fluxus experimental music movement along with contemporaries such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, LaMonte Young, David Tudor & Yoko Ono.  While there, he met vocalist and fellow music student, Dorothy Moskowitz.  The two began a personal and professional partnership which would see them relocate to LA later that year. 

After a time, Byrd, who was rather politically motivated and had joined the Communist party, decided that popular music, specifically the more psychedelic rock of the late 1960s, would be a suitable vehicle for him to express his musical visions while also communicating his radical political views.  To this end, he recruited 3 additional band members to augment his various electronic keyboards and Dorothy’s vocals.  The band coalesced with the addition of Gordon Marron (electric violin, ring modulator), Rand Forbes (electric bass) and Craig Woodson (electric drums, percussion).  Together, this quintet would create their one and only self titled 1968 debut. 

Byrd chose the name of the band for deliberately provocative purposes, reasoning that it was similar to hanging the flag upside-down, as a symbol of distress and to  draw attention to the problems facing the country.  The band’s structure was unusual for the time not only for the emphasis on the then emerging new electronic instruments (synths and ring modulators, etc), but also for its lack of guitars.  With no real experience creating “rock” music, Byrd went into composing and arranging the album with the sensibilities of a contemporary, experimental classical composer, something he later regretted due to his naivety.  However, the resulting recordings were striking in their strangeness and unique approach to the medium. 

At the time of its release, the album gained little traction and the group quickly disintegrated in a frazzle of personality clashes and musical differences as they each pulled in different directions.  This even went as far as petty instances of “volume wars” between musicians on stage and fisticuffs after shows.  The group duly disbanded and it’s members pretty much all went on to more rewarding careers.  Byrd went on to do film and TV scores and teaching, Moskowitz also took up teaching and making children’s music while the others had mostly successful session musician careers. 

It would be years later that the album would be recognized for its truly pioneering approach and incorporation of cutting edge electronic instrumentation along with the likes of groups like Silver Apples.  Personally, I discovered the LP in 1983, shortly after moving to Vancouver.  I was sharing a rental house main floor with some band mates and the manager of the property had a small garage in the backyard which was filled with his massive record collection.  It was wall to wall, floor to ceiling, packed with shelves full of thousands of records.  He took a liking to us being musicians and gave us free access to search through and borrow records.  The United States of America stood out for me immediately when I looked at the cover and saw pictures of the electronics.  I was not disappointed by what I heard.  I recorded a few samples from it on reel to reel, but it wasn’t until 2004 that I finally got a CD copy and had a chance to enjoy the album in all its remastered glory. 

Today, it persists as a distinct product of a strange time. For it to stand out against the backdrop of so many other musical achievements is truly remarkable. 

Cromagnon (1969)

Cromagnon’s eponymous 1969 release (alternately titled “Orgasm” or “Cave Rock”, depending on the re-issue) stands as a singular outlier artifact of 1960s psychedelic rock. Calling it “rock music” is even a bit of a stretch. In so many regards, this album exists well outside just about any convenient classification and even this fact seems anomalous. The core group founders, Austin Grasmere & Brian Elliot, were primarily known for their group, Boss Blues, who released a couple of very conventional and unremarkable psyche-pop singles in 1967 & 1968. By 1969 however, Grasmere and Elliot were possessed by some sort of very strange, inexplicable muse when they embarked on this pastiche of noise, tribalism and altered states. There are moments on this album that could have dropped in from the future by groups like Nurse With Wound. Indeed, there’s much about this album that is completely anachronistic to the times and belongs in another era that wouldn’t become defined for another decade or two. 

The album is something of a hodgepodge of styles and techniques with mad experimentation the only unifying thread. Sometimes things work better than others, but there’s always a sense of wonder in the attempt. What they were trying here is simply so unprecedented that the results of it still don’t quite jive with anything else that was going on at the time nor since. From the opening, Caledonia, with it’s thundering drums, screeching bagpipes and whispered vocals, the stage is set for something completely different. And you get it with the abrupt shift into the next track. It’s built around incoherent grunting and torturous screaming and a sparse percussion with some unknown noises going on in the back. The madness continues with a percussive free-for-all (courtesy of random people plucked from the street outside the studio) on the third track, which also incorporates a myriad of voices intoning “sleep”, while you know you’re not getting any with this racket. The weirdness continues along until we get a bit of a respite on the 5th track with something almost musical, in the spaghetti western vein, with the fifth track, Crow of the Black Tree. This one wouldn’t have been out of place on the first Psychic TV album or as something by Current 93. The rest I’ll leave for you to discover on your own.

Obviously, at the time of its release, it garnered little in terms of audience appreciation or attention, but it eventually became infamous for its idiosyncrasy. It’s creators, on the other hand, seem to have sunk into obscurity after its release. As a result of its snowball effect in terms of its notoriety, it has seen numerous re-issues, both on LP and CD, over the intervening years since its original release. I came across it sometime in the 2000s when I spotted a CD reissue listed in the Forced Exposure online catalogue and couldn’t resist checking it out. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it rewards those who appreciate true, bold experimentation.

Mustafa Özkent Ve Orkestrası - Gençlik İle Elele (1973)

Beginning his career in 1960, Turkish guitarist, Mustafa Özkent, quickly became an in-demand session musician, arranger and producer, but it was a unique group effort which has transported his name outside of his native country and given him his reputation as a musical “Dr. Frankenstein” beyond his Middle Eastern roots.  After spending his career in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s doing session work in Turkey, he secured a recording contract with Evren Records, a company renown for their high fidelity recordings.  In 1973, he set about assembling an “orchestra” of hand picked instrumentalists.  With this band assembled, they began working on a collection of Mustafa’s original compositions which would be released that year under the title, Gençlik İle Elele, Turkish for “Holding Hands with Youth”.

The album offered up a veritable “Güveç” (Turkish stew) of cross cultural references, combining elements of traditional Anatolian folk music with western pop influences of funk, psychedelic rock and jazz. The album cover featured a chimp mischievously manipulating a reel to reel tape recorder, securing the album’s perception as the oddball concoction of a mastermind of sonic non sequiturs.  Though it’s initial release in 1973 failed to generate significant attention, over the years, it began to lurk within the nether regions of cultish collectibles until it was eventually reissued in 2006.  This reissue brought the LP to a whole new audience and widespread, long overdue, acclaim.  I came across it only recently as I was spelunking through Discogs’ database, looking for unusual lost gems to add to my library.  This one caught my attention because it cut across so many disparate musical categories.  It has since become one of my favorites in the realm of vintage instrumental grooviness.

This was Özkent’s first release under his own name (and the only one as a “group”) and, while his subsequent solo albums have sustained his reputation for musicianship, stylistically, he never again managed to capture the sense of kitschy “Middle East meets West” funky fresh goodness which reverberates from every groove of this album.

Wolfgang Riechmann - Wunderbar (1978)

Wolfgang Riechmann began his musical career in 1966, lingering around the Düsseldorf music scene. His early projects included the group, Spirits Of Sound, founded by Wolfgang Flür, who would go on to join the “classic” Kraftwerk lineup from 1975-1986, and Michael Rother, who would also spend some time in an earlier incarnation of Kraftwerk as well as founding the bands Neu! and Harmonia. In 1977, Riechmann joined the progressive rock group, Streetmark, essentially taking over for their 2nd LP, Eileen. He then decided to go solo for his next recording project, recording the 1978 LP, Wunderbar. Here, he wrote and performed everything except the drums. Tragically, before the LP’s release on Sky Records, Wolfgang was randomly assaulted and stabbed to death by a couple of drunken thugs on the streets of Düsseldorf. His one and only solo LP stands the test of time as a classic example of German synthesizer music on the cutting edge of the genre. We can only imagine what more he could have done had he survived, but at least we have one solid collection of his brilliant works.

Masstishaddhu - Shekinah (1988)

Masstishaddhu was a one-off collaboration between Mike Watson, Richard Rupenus & Sean Breadin.  All three were associated with John Mylotte’s ritualistic improve collective, Metgumbnerbone and there are also connections to other experimental projects such as The New Blockaders, Bladder Flask & Nihilist Assault Group.  In 1988, this trio recorded the two side-long drone pieces for the LP, Shekinah.  It was released on Steven Stapleton’s label, United Dairies, in an edition of 1000 copies.  Stapleton also provided the cover graphics.  The album would eventually get a small CD re-issue in 2000 on Psychedelic Pig, a small mail order label which only released a handful of rare experimental titles before folding in 2005. As such, it has remained an obscurity among most fans of dark, occult-inspired ambient and drone music. 

I came across the release when it originally showed up as an import in Vancouver, shortly after its release.  As an avid Nurse With Wound fan, its being released by UD was something that caught my attention as potentially interesting and I wasn’t disappointed.  The two side long drone pieces feature moaning voices, guttural groans (reminiscent of Tibetan religious music), sinuous strings and primitive percussion.  It’s all beautifully recorded and mixed in high-fidelity, which is uncommon given the production values of most of the other projects tangentially connected to this.  Most of those were recorded on primitive cassette formats with little in the way of studio polish.  The addition of proper recording quality makes this a particularly enjoyable listen as it captures all the nuances of the voices and instruments being used.  If you’ve got any sacrifices or special magical moments requiring a suitable soundtrack, this is a fine option for summoning a serpent or some other denizen of the deep.

Trancendental Anarchists - Cluster Zone (1994)

In the 1990s, Kim Cascone’s Silent Records was something of a hotbed of electronic music, especially stuff on the more ambient end of the spectrum. At the time, being the pre-internet days of having to go and buy books to get knowledge, I was very deep into my esoteric and occult literature. Kabbalah and Crowley were dominant in my library and I was looking for music which reflected that. Bands like Ambient Temple of Imagination had caught my ear and it was through their association with Silent Records that I came across Trancendental Anarchists and their 1994 CD, Cluster Zone. Created by Australians, Pam Thompson & Paul Bambury, my research on them has turned up very little beyond a few guest credits here and there on a smattering of not-so-notable projects. As such, this one CD stands as their primary contribution to the world of music, but what a wonderful contribution it is! The album offers up 8 longish pieces, soaking in the thick atmospheres of ancient mysteries and melding in hypnotic, techno-tribal rhythms to send you into your inner-space journeys. It’s perfect chill room material and really lets the listener lose themselves in the mood of each piece. It’s a collection of moods and movements that was fairly neglected then and now. I’ve come across little indication that this has garnered any real following over the years, but it does deserve some attention as one of the more nuanced and intricate tapestries of sound out there for the “coming down” set. Thankfully, the re-activated version of Silent Records has reissued the album in digital form for a new generation of tweakers and travelers to discover.

Daiquiri Fantomas - MHz Invasion (2013)

Founded in 2010 by Sicilians, Marco Barrano and Dario Sanguedolce. Daiquiri Fantomas released their one and only LP to date, MHz Invasion, in 2013.  Aside from a couple of Cdr singles from the album, the duo has yet to realize a follow up.  Since it’s been 6 years waiting, I decided these guys qualified for the “One and Done” category, as it seems like they’re pretty much over and out at this point. Other than this album, only Dario has any other releases to his credit that I can find, which consists of one solo track on a 1993 compilation album.  So, for all practical purposes, this is the beginning and end of the line for this duo, which is a shame because this album offers a truly inspired collection of retro sci-fi progressive-rock, electro-acoustic excursions into the outer realms.  With one foot in the past and one in the future, the duo combine a spectacular array of acoustic and electronic instruments in order to engineer their distinctive brand of post-modernist music.  This is another release I discovered while rummaging through the Discogs database, playing their genre and style filters off against each other until I narrowed my results down to this unique combination of influences and styles.  These include modern classical, progressive rock, jazz, psychedelic rock, electronica and pop music.  If science fiction, Italian style and 70s fetishism are your thing, then this is the album for you!