Twilight Sleep: Hard Radiation/Icarus at Aphelion (Conglomerate)
Purchased (in a group) at Jerry's Records
Choosing my listening and then writing about them here, surely has already influenced my choices. At least it has, in this case.
My previous posting was about one of the biggest album releases of the last year. Now, it's something so impossibly obscure, I very well may have the only known original copy.
Perhaps if you know me, you might know something of the Conglomerate Records collection. It started with my discovery of a composite record I found on the shelves of Jerry's Records. And by composite, I mean someone took the time to actually cut up and cement together nine different records. The cover was hand assembled. I'm aware of Christian Marclay doing such things, but the strangest element was that the return address was for Connellsville, PA. That's in the backroads of southwestern PA, close to an hour south of Pittsburgh.
When I made inquiries about this record, I was told there was an entire collection of cassette tapes associated with that record. I arranged to buy the lot of them.
It's a bizarre collection. Some items are unplayable anti-tapes and anti-records. Of the playable tapes, it's a varied and no less bizarre assortment. There's a lot of low tech musique concréte and even Plunderphonics. There are hardcore industrial noise tapes. There's some ambient music. There are even compilations of fake bands. Some are packaged with simple black and white xerox covers, others far more elaborately.
There are names associated with the tapes. There are primarily two: Kurt Vile (also spelled Kurt Viol and Kurt Vial) and Rose Selavy. Kurt is not the current singer who hails from Philadelphia, he's too young. It's a play on Kurt Weill, the composer. Rose Selavy was Marcel Duchamp's drag name. Two obvious pseudonyms. There are a few other names on some of the tapes, but I have been able to track anyone of them down. It very well could all be two people, or even one.
I have not found one single person who knows anything about any of it. It was bought up from a local collector who died; his widow sold his amazing record collection to Jerry's. I have so far resisted revealing this person's name in public forums, and I will continue to do so for now. There are also some supplemental materials, photo books with original copies of covers, that definitely leads me to believe he was somehow directly involved.
I have digitally transferred every playable tape. I haven't tracked them, and I should get back to that. Many of the tapes (such as this one) have side long tracks, so there isn't much tracking to do.
I've burned a few of those rips to CD, and have distributed a few individual copies to friends. I've posted more to myYoutube page, if you want to find out what some of these sound like. I have had this particular CD burn-tape rip sitting here, and decided to put it on again.
It's more or less a one off. The Conglomerate collection has several recurring "bands": Oviparous Pig, The Donut Holes, Max Ernst Revisited, Kurt Schwitters Revisited, Cherry Mucous, S.M.A.I.H. (Scrooge McDuck Ascends Into Heaven), Evening in Byzantium, Phthisis. This is the only tape specifically by Twilight Sleep, though an excerpt appears on a Conglomerate compilation (Pain Party at Presque Isle). It's a black tape, in a black cover with black lettering. In this respect, I believe it is a companion to the single tape by Helicopter, which is a white tape in an off-white textured cover with white lettering.
How can I even describe it? Dark, noisy ambient is a simple descriptor. I can't really tell you which track is which, as there's no side listed on the tape. The sounds are long and flowing, sounds like they're coming from a distance, some of them synthesized in nature. Maybe there's some voices in there, but I really can't tell for sure. What I think is the second work, has harsher noise that comes in and escalates, but even then it's all in a sort of lo-fi haze. Some of that quality is not doubt because of the medium, some intentionally. This and even moreso the Helicopter tapes recall Maurizio Bianchi/MB's echoplex-saturated noise recordings of the early 80s. They're not exactly like those, but you're in the right neighborhood. Non-narrative 80s industrial tapes, traded around internationally.
Again I will put out the call, without expecting results: if you know anything about these tapes or the people who made them, please contact me. It's possible it's all just a single person, but I think there's ample evidence that at least two people were responsible.
https://www.discogs.com/label/652824-Conglomerate-Records-2
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