Hat Melter - 'Unknown Album' (Crouton)

Two cellos, two percussionists and a lot of editing = a big electroacoustic tapestry, woven together with some mouse clicks and pressed onto 220gram vinyl. Hat Melted is a big, thick slab o' wax and since I really, really like cellos, I keep gripping my armrests hoping for some nice DDA-sounding deep 'llo. But it rarely comes, or when it does, it's blended with the percussion, the whole AMM-style of laminal sound or whatever they call it. Sometimes one cellos saws around in the background while another dances furtively around the higher register. Sometimes they just leave some space, though the processing here, while not super overboard, gives away that the room ain't necessarily real. The four musicans are pretty evenly balanced, or rather I should say the cellos and percussion are evenly balanced, since I'm not sure who's doing what. This Crouton label is (was?) run by Jon Mueller and focuses on his projects primarily - he's one of the percussionists here and probably also the svengali doing the editing. I suppose this breathes some life into improvisation, though the electronic effects aren't always in service of an overall aesthetic, and some of the more 'improv' parts go on too long. The first side is energetic and has big swells and deep resonating tones followed by their sudden absence; some circa-2003 computer work makes me think this was just coming from the wrong place to really gain some traction. A few years later I was in the UK surrounded by a whole scene that looked to these types of collaborations, but Milkwaukee just before noise broke was probably a somewhat isolated world. Hat Melter never made another recorded peep - I suspect this was a one-off studio-only collaboration, and while it has some intense peaks of enjoyable sound, it strikes me more as a curiosity now than anything. 

Devo - 'Duty Now For the Future' (Warner Bros.)

The inexorable progress towards new wave! Devo's second album is pretty hot but it's definitely a change in sound. The really brutal, primitive broken stuff is less prevalent - no 'Too Much Paranoias' here -- and the keyboards are more prominent. Devo seems to have taken on their sci-fi influence more overtly, as these songs suggest robots and space travel more than they seem to be about Devolution. Exceptions, of course - opening cut 'Clockout' and 'Smart Patrol' have that sense of regression, but otherwise this is a 'Wiggly World', with faster and sharper guitar turns, thick digital keyboard assonance and a significantly more intelligent vibe. Don't worry, though - 'The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize' is about V.D. (I think) and 'Pink Pussycat' has the high-school sex-starved nerd imagery that began on the Hardcore-era cuts. 'Day My Baby' contains a 60s (or maybe 50s)-influenced chorus that shows Devo are capable of utter pop brilliance if they want. The opening "Devo Corporate Anthem' (surely performed at the beginning of every Devo cover band concert, or at least the two that I've played in and/or attended) sets the tone - Devo really are a corporation, active to this day in jingle-writing and other such work, and this philosophy seems to merge well with the misanthropic art-fuck of their origins. 'Mr. DNA' has a punk edge, and also contains the beautiful lyric 'He's an altruistic pervert', which is the best kind, right? Every song on here is a winner, pretty much, except for the cover of 'Secret Agent Man', which lacks the irony of 'Satisfaction' - though its still competent enough, I suppose. At the same time, this feels like the beginning of the end - I've never hung around for the 'Girl U Want'/'Whip It' era, though it's still wonderful and amazing that they found chart success. If I were a Devo conspiracy theorist, maybe I would point to this as being the point in which Mark Mothersbaugh asserts himself as proper 'leader' of the band, having swung away from Jerry Casale (where the balance was probably felt perfectly on the first album) - but that's not to say I don't like Mothersbaugh as a musician, artist, and overall renaissance man.

Akita/Azuma/Haswell/Sakaibara - 'Ich Schnitt Mich In Den Finger' (Mego)

Source: I got this from Gil on 22 May 2003 as part of a complicated trade.

Played at 33rpm. In the years since this record was produced, the, er, innovative packaging has shrunk a bit and made it really difficult to get this record out of the sleeve without gripping the surface of the vinyl in a way that I was schooled to never do. But this is a record of aberrations anyway so a little finger oil can't make things worse. Despite four names being listed everyone is restrained enough so it actually could just be a duo. Side one has its share of squiggles and blips but Azuma's ascending theremin is behind everything to play anchorman. It's a bit like a pinata, with more pieces breaking off as it goes along and all kinds of surprises inside. Tetsuo Sakaibara is rocking the jews harp though I'm not sure where to hear it. Gotta love the credits: Masami Akita on DD1100 and "Devices"; Russell Haswell on SU 10 and "stuff". Quite a lot of the records in my collection are made of nothing but Devices and stuff but this one is wise enough to accentuate them with DD1100 and SU 10. Side two fires it up again (with more gurgling sounds) but these shorter tracks all end in (silent) locked grooves, so it's like you're still hitting the pinata from side 1, but every time you smack it you feel the pinata stick hitting you in the back of the head. It's really Azuma who rules this thing but maybe I'm just saying that cause he's the only one who I can pick out. This record does manage to tick both the "sounds like a Mego release" and "sounds like a Merzbow release" boxes, while being quite distinct on its own.