Quartz Mirliton Cassettes 'Archive Recordings 1971-79' (2 Boxes: 16LP + 2 Books + CD)

Almost completely forgotten in the present day, Quartz Mirliton Cassettes was a tiny, short-lived imprint, run and founded by Paul Burwell and David Toop in 1977, that produced small run, hand made cassettes of some of the most radical music unfolding in the British underground of that moment. Closely associated with the London Musicians Collective and the more well known imprint, Quartz Publications, it largely focused on the documents of live sessions and field recordings made by a close network of improvising musicians, sound sculptors and sound poets then working with Burwell and Toop, including Bob Cobbing, Hugh Davies, Max Eastley, Evan Parker, Frank Perry, Steve Beresford and others. In addition to capturing some of the most vital music of their era, the manifesto of the label gained distinction for its uncompromising character, retaining lo-fi aesthetics and noises peripheral to the performance, because of a belief in the importance of their effect on the creation of the music and its place within the context that it was captured.

Long out of print and nearly impossible to find, Vinyl on Demand now offers an unprecedented image of the output and swirling context of creativity that fed into Quartz Mirliton Cassettes. Sprawling across two eight LP box sets - making a total of a monumental sixteen records - it’s a truly astounding immersion into bristling, real time creativity, the likes of which have been rarely repeated before or since, amounting to remarkable documents of an intense burst of energy from within the London scene across the 1970s.

Truly monumental in scale, scope, and historical achievement, VOD’s Quartz Mirliton boxes gather material by an incredible group of artists created over most of that decade, spanning from 1971-1979. The first box is dedicated to the effort and collaborations of David Toop, Paul Burwell, Frank Perry, Herman Hauge, Hugh Davies, Max Eastley, and Bob Cobbing, encountering numerous different configurations and ranges of efforts that amount to a swirling expanse of writhing creativity transpiring from moment to moment and event to event. The second collection comprises further efforts by Burwell and Toop, but encounters them here in combination with noteworthy artists like Evan Parker, Nigel Coombes, Roger Smith, and Steve Beresford, formed and reformed into rarely documented ensembles from the moment like abAna Sextet, Rain in the Face, and Three Pullover.

Thrilling and filled with as much energy as they are forward thinking creativity, each x8LP box is accompanied by a 200 page book and a CD.

Sutcliffe Jugend - Campaign Volume I: 1979-2020 (10LP Box w Shirt / Booklet) & Campaign Volume II: 2007-2020 (10LP Box w Shirt / Booklet)

Founded in 1982 by Kevin Tomkins, who would depart less than a year later to join Whitehouse, the English transgressive art unit, Sutcliffe Jugend, remained, over the course of nearly 40 years of intermittent activity, one of the most long-standing, distinct, and noteworthy projects within the context of noise. Drawing upon and referencing countless idioms with music within their sonic assaults. Originally founded as a Power Electronics act that quickly evolved and refined its sound, while the initial incarnation of the band would last only briefly, producing two cassettes for Come Organisation in 1982, the project would be reformed by Tomkins in 1994 alongside early member, Paul Taylor, and go on to produce a significant amount of Death Factory, Cold Spring, and numerous others until 2020, when they shifted gears and changed their name to Sutcliffe No More.

Vinyl on Demand’s two deluxe box sets, “Campaign Volume I: 1979-2020” and “Campaign Volume II: 2007-2020”, each containing a staggering X10 LPs worth of material - each issued in a wooden box, accompanied by a booklet, certificate and a t-shirt, housed in a stunning embossed slipcase holder - represent the pinnacle of a career spanning retrospective, the first comprising early experiments dating back to 1979, thus three years prior to the band’s formal incarnation in 1982, and stretching until its final moments in 2020, while the second gathers material created during its final 13 years.

Both collections push it into the outer reaches of noise, balancing full onslaughts of bristling texture against changing structural abstractions and harsh ambiences. Spanning from their early productions of abrasive and violent electronics, to their later sonic visions that combine transgressive subject matter and dark, cerebral musings on violence and sexual perversion with explorations into the use of brutal feedback and synthesizer damage, the sum total of both boxes is truly staggering and will keep any listener on the edge of their seats for countless hours.

John Balance - The Art, Music & Writings Of Geoffrey Rushton Alias John Balance - The Years 1979-1986.”

Since his untimely passing in 2004, it has remained impossible to calculate the importance and lasting legacy of John Balance. Most well known as the founding member of Coil, which began as a solo project before becoming a collaboration with his partner Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, even before that lasting and remarkably influential project, Balance had made a huge mark on the British underground, including membership in Psychic TV, numerous other musical projects, including Murderwerkers, published seven issues of a fanzine, Stabmental, and was a tireless correspondent with members of scenes in the UK and abroad, in addition to supporting many of those artists via his release of the highly collectable “Endzeit”, “Bethel”, and “The Men with the Deadly Dreams” compilations. Over the last few years we’ve witnessed a slow trickle of vinyl reissues focused on Balance’s work within Coil, but VOD’s “The Art, Music & Writings Of Geoffrey Rushton Alias John Balance - The Years 1979-1986.” takes a rare dive into a sprawling body of never before heard and unrealised material made by the artist during some of his most important and prolific years.

“The Art, Music & Writings Of Geoffrey Rushton Alias John Balance - The Years 1979-1986.”, diving into a largely unheard sound world of John Balance, begins, logically, with nearly two LPs worth of material recorded between 1979 and 1980 of his earliest solo outings under the guise of Murderwerkers, fleshed out further with material by Stabmental, his collaboration with Tom Craig between 1980 and 1981. From here we move onto two LPs gathering some incredible solo recordings made between 1982 and 1983, in addition to material made with the project Cultural Amnesia, as well as some early Coil recordings that illuminate the nascent stage of the seminal project. This momentum is carried forth with a further full LP of contributions that the project made to various compilations in 1984, then a full LP of Coil sessions, demos and outtakes recorded from 1983-1985, before concluding with an LP of Coil Sound Source for the New Blockaders / Coil / Vortex Campaign Tape from 1984.

While this material presents an extensive and previously untapped overview of Balance’s sonic activity between 1979 and 1986, “The Art, Music & Writings Of Geoffrey Rushton Alias John Balance” is equally immersive and valuable via its incredible, 282-page book offering rare insights and overview to his early life and work, his thinking, goals and work-in-progress, comprising 30 pages of essays and memories by Nick Soulsby, Nicolas Ballet, Phil Barrington, Cultural Amnesia, Euan Craik, Alex Fergusson, Tom Craig, Adi Newton and Vittore Baroni, all dealing with all kinds of aspects of John Balance, from friendship to mail-art to music-collaborations. In addition to this, it also includes the complete re-publishing of his magazine Stabmental Issue 1-7 with 106 pages which he published with Tom and Euan between 1979 and 1981, an overview of rare Tapes from back in those days with John's audio and design contribution and participation, 12 pages of artwork-examples, 44 pages of extracts from early magazine-publications with interviews, etc., and 51 pages of letters written by John between 1979 and 1986 that give a wonderful insight into his way of thinking. To round it all out, the collection also includes an extra 28-page booklet with the letters to Adi Newton written by Balance between 1979-1981. The full package is mind-blowing in every way.

“New Wilderness Audiographics - Recordings 1977 - 1984”

The imprint New Wilderness Audiographics, which released roughly 30 cassettes between 1977 and 1984, was the first artists audio work label in the USA. Grown from The New Wilderness Foundation, Inc., founded in 1974 by poet Jerome Rothenberg and sound artist, sound poet Charlie Morrow as a means to explore and disseminate New/Old Explorations of Sound and Oral Poetry, extending from the disciplines of ethnopoetics and performance arts: a blend of experimental and traditional arts espousing a "new wilderness", a source of perpetual renewal and new ideas, that produced events, publications, broadcasts and productions. The imprint, founded in 1977 by Morrow and quickly taking on a number of collaborators, including Rothenberg and Rip Hayman, became a radical vehicle for the ideas that rested at the heart of the foundation.

For decades, in no small part due to the growing reverence for the artists it released, the output of New Wilderness Audiographics has been hotly pursued by fans and collectors of experimental music and sound practice. VOD’s towering X11 LP box set - each LP housed in its own cover (the Lockwood cover houses two LPs), accompanied by a book that includes original cassette credits and notes plus reprints from New Wilderness Newsletter and Tom Johnson's Village Voice reviews, and previously unpublished photos and documents, as well as a new introductory text by Morrow - represents the first comprehensive effort to reissue this material and bring an exhaustive overview to a new generation of fans.

An engrossing, transportive revelation through every one of its minutes, the X 11 LPs of “New Wilderness Audiographics - Recordings 1977 - 1984” comprise a considerable cross section of the material issued by the imprint over the course of its seven year run, including astounding pieces like Annea Lockwood’s “Tiger Balm”, “World Rhythms”, “Malaman”, and “Cloud Music”; Philip Corner’s “Uhhm (After A Deep And Tibetan Image)” and “Metal Meditations”; Jackson Mac Low & Pauline Oliveros’ “Homage To Leona Bleiweiss”; Jerome Rothenberg's "Horse Song”; Alison Knowles’ “Natural Assemblage and the True Crow”, “Sounds from The Book of Bean” and “Essential Divisions”; Dick Higgins’ “Poems and Metapoems”, Bernard Heidsieck’s “Le Carrefour de la Chaussée d'Antin”; works for Gamelan Son of Lion and Bread And Puppet Theater, and so much more. Covering a remarkable range of practices, from sound poetry to groundbreaking gestures of music that remain as fresh and challenging as the day they were made, VOD’s collection illuminates one of the most important catalogs of recordings ever released within the sonic avant-garde that’s remained nearly unobtainable for decades.

VOD’s Los Angeles Free Music Society 1974-1983 - belonging to an amazing series of releases focused on the group’s output that emerged in recent years - is focused on the individuals associated with the collective, gathering material from early solo releases, compilation cassettes, and singles issued by LAFMS during its first decade, as well as including 2 LPs worth of never before issued recordings, amounting to 13LPs, one 7”, complete, full-size recreations of the six volumes of the LAFMS magazine publication “Light Bulb,” a 56-page book of rare photos, graphics and notes, plus a t-shirt and a pair of 3D glasses for special feature graphics, all housed in a black wooden box.

Founded in 1973 by Chip Chapman, Joe Potts, Rick Potts and Tom Recchion, with nearly half a century of activities behind them, LOS ANGELES FREE MUSIC SOCIETY stands as one of the most iconic and enduring efforts in both underground music and experimental sound. Over their years of activity, the group has taken a near countless number of evolving incarnations, played constantly, and produced dozens of releases, the majority of which in nearly impossible to find small editions, by individual members as well as offshoots and adjacent projects with shared membership like Smegma, Le Forte Four, and Doo-Dooettes, laying what is often credited as the groundwork for numerous discrete musical movements, spanning the decades, within the LA underground, as well as building bridges between the realms of sound and the visual arts through collaborations with artists like Eddie Ruscha, Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw.

Appearing on vinyl for the first time, the set includes truly visionary musical excursions by Chip Chapman, Seldom Melodic Ensemble, Dennis Duck, Light Bulb, Joe Potts, Slimy Adenoid And The Pablums, Tom Recchion, Dinosaurs with Horns (Rick Potts / Joseph Hammer), Fredrik Nilsen, and numerous others drawn from the collective’s 1981 December Compilation and other archival recordings. Free and liberated in every sense of the word, charting unknown waters that still remain under explored decades down the road, there’s nothing quite like LAFMS, a wild and wonderful world that comes alive across the 26 vinyl sides of Los Angeles Free Music Society 1974-1983, diving deep into one of their most important and creatively ripe periods.

In The Nursery - Recordings 1981-1999 (7LP + Shirt / Booklet Box)

Founded in Sheffield, England, during 1981 by twin brothers, Klive and Nigel Humberstone, joined by the guitarist Anthony Bennett, In The Nursery sprang from the post-punk movement of that era, before shifting toward more experimental temperaments and joining the UK underground industrial scene and issuing a steady stream of highly regarded releases on imprints Paragon, Sweatbox, Third Mind Records, and their own ITN Corporation imprint across the 80s and 90s. Noted for their sprawling cinematic sound that integrates elements of modern composition, Neo-folk, electronica, orchestral percussion, and ambience, the project has remained one of the true gems of progressive music hailing from the UK for decades, endlessly evoking something as precedent and urgent as it is timeless.

VOD’s “Recordings 1981-1999” digs deep into the archives, gathering largely unreleased material - demos, live recordings a “Basement Tape”, alternate and instrumental versions, and remixes - across its X7 LPs, offering unprecedented access and insights to the progressions and raw working methods of this visionary project. Truly engrossing and entirely defying expectations laid by their associations with the musical movements they are, “Recordings 1981-1999” reveals In The Nursery as one of the most visionary and curious musical projects of their generation.