VOTD 10/25/2023

 Orchid Spangiafora: Flee Past's Ape Elf (Feeding Tube) 2LP reissue

Purchased used at the Government Center

Before there was Plunderphonics, there was Orchid Spangiafora.

Hold on! While that statement is true, it's the sort of mildly sensationalist line you might find in lazy music journalism.

Hold on X2! Ben is back to blogging again? I suppose. I wrote here regularly for the first half of the year, making over one hundred postings (I think, I've lost track). Then it trailed off, and stopped. I liked doing the writing as an exercise, but it started to feel hollow. I don't have a problem with reaching very few people (I won't say it's my narrative overall, but at least it happens in my performing occasionally), there just didn't seem to be a need or a point to it. Maybe I was inspired by this vinyl oddity.

Autobiographically, this album takes me back to my college radio days, including the time I was bouncing between schools. More specifically it takes me back to WRCT, and to Clare Rosen. Clare was an art major at CMU, from Chicago, returning there some time after graduation. Clare was a character: low-key, played unusual music on the radio. Most often she'd go on as Clare, and had a term for the music I don't recall. Something like "psychotronic", but I'm certain that's not right. Once in a while though she'd call the show "Brain Death with Karen Ann Quinlan". She later admitted to me that it was in exceedingly bad taste, but isn't that what college days are all about? That's when she'd play the most extreme music: Whitehouse, Ramleh, MB. 

I am certain she is the reason WRCT bought the Orchid Spangiafora LP. "It's really good" as she would say in her quiet manner. Curiously, the original album was released on Twin/Tone Records. Twin/Tone was a Minnesota indie that released the likes of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Mekons, Yo La Tengo: guitar-driven stripped-down new wave bands. Yet, somehow in 1979, the Orchid Spangiafora LP was released. 

So what is it? Musique concrète, audio cut-ups, Plunderphonics before such a word existed. (I assume, I think John Oswald would create the word some years later.) The emphasis is on voices, particularly found voices; the first work, "Dime Operation", is a furious collage of voices that sound like they were recorded off of television. (I recognized Monte Hall's voice in there.) One phrase stood out, from two speakers edited one after the other: "Fashioned to a device behind a tree." This would become the title of a Nurse With Wound piece, first appearing on a Come Org compilation in 1982.

I started looking over the testimonials on the cover after noticing that phrase, and sure enough there's a quote from Steven Stapleton, as well as David Thomas, Mark Mothersbaugh, Steve Fisk, and members of Severed Heads and New Blockaders. In the enclosed booklet, there are reproductions of letters from Boyd Rice*, Gary Panter, and Williams S. Burroughs. Burrough's letter was enthusiastic, and it seems to be the shadow of Burroughs hangs over this project. His tape experiments, for as primitive as they maybe be, were certainly a precedent to Orchid Spangiafora. 

It's a delight personally to hear this record again, though it can be annoying if you're not interested or in the mood. It often moves fast, the editing is downright furious, and there are times when there's intentional repetition that can be grating. It calls to mind some works by Nurse With Wound a few years later, particularly the notorious "Dueling Banjos". 

The reissue comes with a second LP of unreleased (at least to vinyl) works. The first side is different, more of a low-tech electronic work, but again with some emphasis on editing. The second side though, it's all voices. One after another after another after another, cut/cut/cut/cut/cut. It's listed as four pieces, but it runs continuously and I'll be damned if I can hear where one ends and the next starts.

But if I put on Orchid Spangiafora, that's what I'm after. "Hold everything! Hold/hold/hold everything!" Having bought some disappointing drone and "experimental" albums in recent months, it's good to hear the uncut stuff again. Even if it is thoroughly cut-up.

*Regarding Boyd Rice: Hoo boy. I guess he still has his defenders, it's not a scene that I've followed closely. When I read the Re/Search Industrial Culture Guide, Boyd seemed like he was less involved with occultism, modern tribalism, and other things I thought were bullshit. He liked noise music, and created records to have things he wanted to listen to. It seemed like a reasonable and even pure rationale for creating noise music. I'd say I even like some of his records.

But since then, he's hung out with white supremacists, fascists, has advocated for "men's rights", and other provocations. Some say he's not those things, and I don't know. It seemed pretty convincing to me. I have read that he more or less abandoned his special needs son, but I don't know the whole story.

So I don't want to promote Boyd. I want to be fair to him, but from what I've read he's a special level of asshole. So I'll leave it at that, and if I'm wrong, I'll happily withdraw my comments.