Chin33 & Chin34: The Superfools present "This Is New" and "For Your Listening Pleasure"

We're delighted to present two new albums by James Melendrez, aka The Superfools, New Mexico's sound-collage virtuoso. Featuring collaborations with Otis Fodder (of The Bran Flakes), and Forty-One, these two albums are vividly chaotic splash paintings, musically intense and superbly constructed fiestas of montage.

This is romantic, mysterious, magical, and deeply personal sample music, ranging from multi-tiered fantasias of nostalgia, to frantic, angular, fragmented playgrounds where naughty children snip each other to bits and juggle with the remains.

Put these albums on, have a party with your best friends. You'd be a fool not to....

Now for a few words from Mr Superfools Melendrez (pictured above with two other lovely gentlemen) himself...

"Once I understood that I could make music I never stopped. Hanging out at friends houses and using their equipment I started to make short quick tracks. Slowly I started buying equipment like a turntable, a computer and so on. They are my tools.

The Superfools started to become my playground. I enjoy playing with samples and sound. In the summer of 1999 I sampled sounds from the song “We Built This City” by Jefferson Starship. The Superfools came from the lyric “we are the superfools!” I started to compose tracks at home. In earlier years I have shared them with friends and I received good feed back. I had fans. Till today I am eager to hear what my closest friends like about my work, and I am constantly evolving.

In 2009 a coworker posted albums online and I have had the opportunity to collaborate with other composers and artists via email. Ergo Phizmiz is one.

My subject matter is constantly changing because my interests are forever changing. When I compose as the Superfools it allows me to work with all the things I’m interested in at that moment. So it’s ok if you hear the broken English of Ricky Ricardo, or the maniacal demands of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest, and the percussive sounds of Perez Prado all on the same track.

This double release comes courtesy of Ergo Phizmiz’s Chinstrap net label. These two albums are a mystical journey into the world of vintage records. More than 100 tracks make up the majority of samples which are used throughout the two albums. Nothing was left out, Mambo, Bossa Nova, Cha Cha Cha, Samba, the Waltz, Tango and the Polka!

What sets these two albums apart from my other work is that they contain remixes from Otis Fodder of the Brand Flakes and D.J. Fortyone. I’m From Albuquerque, New Mexico. My love for Mexican/ Latin sound is my inspiration, and I’m proud to be one of the few Latin Sample collage artist this side of the border.

This Latin Electronico musical gumbo is sure to fulfill your avant-garde sample collage needs. Enjoy!"

 

 

Like this? Try the other releases by The Superfools on Chinstrap, "Sentimental Fields" and "The Superfools".

 

More Superfools at his homepage.

Chin32: Oblivian Substanshall - Live in Bridport

What can I say about this recording? Cut direct to cassette tape, at the end of our tour of my opera The Third Policeman, immediately prior to Oblivian and I being very naughty boys indeed (courtesy of the good man Monkton Wylde) and staying up all night, it presents the vast majority of Oblivian Substanshall's triumphant and devilishly exciting performance at Howtosaytwo - an event I curated (or rather slapped together amid the million other things that were happening at the time) with Martha Moopette.



Aswell as being probably the best entertainment happening on the planet that night - it featured, as well as the last ever performance of The Third Policeman, live sets from Pete Um, Angela Valid, Elvis Herod, Vulnavia Vanity, The Gale, Martha Moopette as a Christmas Tree-cum-Satanic-Ritual, and of course Oblivian, plus Jonny Anyway's mime, a gingerbread house, a forest of children's art, and an audience of about 10 people - it was also the night where Oblivian pulled out this random fucker of a live show. Usually he will sit with his guitar, weave his little tales, and gently serenade us with his masterful, nonsensical pop songs. On this night, after months of hard slog on a tour of variable rewards, far too many intoxicants, and some high emotions and tempers (particularly from me), Oblivian decided to use, for the first time, some playback in his show. He described the performance-to-be as his "crooner set".

After initial technical problems and me sweating for the umpteenth time that night as a miniature audience waited to see what the cuddly, bespectacled, gentleman in front of them was going to deliver and I fumbled about hopelessly, finally the playback and microphone worked at the same time, and I ran into the other room to check that all was running smoothly (it wasn't).


When after a few minutes I returned to the small room where Captain Substanshall was stationed, I walked into a tiny audience enraptured at Oblivian, who had become the rotund rock frontman to end all rotund front rockmen (the guy from Pere Ubu would quake in his boots and probably spontaneously combust, or at least pull out his own willy and chop it off). Wearing a curly wig over his bald pate and darting between my Ivor Cutler foldy-harmonium, an electric guitar perched on a chair (an audience member said to me "Open string guitar solo! Never seen that before."), and, of course, the microphone, Obliv performed two numbers - "At the Same Time Maybe", and "On and On". Each was an explosion of jaggedy, peculiar beats, heavy bass, and Oblivian variously chanting the repetitive phrases and improvising on whatever was to hand. It was a singularly brave and brilliant performance and the small audience knew that every fucker who'd gone to whatever the fuck else was happening in town that night had missed something very special indeed.


So here it is, recorded direct to the internal microphone of a Coomber 393 cassette recorder, the great Oblivian Substanshall live in Bridport. If I had lots of money (or even just a spare few hundred quid), I would cut this recording to a 10" record straight away. But sadly I don't, and neither does Obliv. That's the price of not playing the idiot game.


I've lost faith completely in the "music should be free" thing. Kenneth Goldsmith's Wire article about "collecting mp3s you've always wanted and not listening to them just so you can say you have them for your sense of self satisfaction" was the final nail in the coffin for me. It does, it seems, cause a devaluing of music and sound-art, but at the moment there is no way else to be heard, so I don't see an alternative. When I'm very rich (and you'd better fucking bet your life I will be, soon enough) then I will release gems like this on beautiful vinyl in beautiful packaging, for as low cost as I can manage to sell them, but for now you'll have to make do with these 320kbps of utter joy.


I haven't known Obliv long, he's become very quickly my close friend and ally, and he ought to be yours too. Download this, then download all his other work on Chinstrap. And why on earth aren't you listening to his weekly show on one of the best, most unpredictable, vital and alive radio stations in the world, Soundart Radio? Go on! Get thee to the radio and FEED THYSELF!


The cover art of this release features Oblivian (centre), Elvis Herod (gurning on the left), and me for some reason touching my cheek (on the right). The image is superimposed with Martha Moopette dressed as a Christmas Tree (hence the pretty lights).


All my love and kisses,


Ergo Phizmiz
 
x
 

Chin30 & Chin31: Elvis Herod "Arab Justice" and "Orson Welles' Dinner"

Two new albums from the behemoth that is Elvis Herod, one half of the mighty Plushgoolash.

This release comprises a retrospective of sorts, with previously unreleased work from 2000-2011, a wash of electronic UNart sound(e)scapes, songs about chickens, songs about dinners, obscene cover versions, micro-epics. It also contains snippets of his forthcoming opera about Mike the Headless Chicken. What more can you ask?




Another album from the king of (c)Hip (s)Hop, you say? Well then ..........

"Orson Welles' Dinner" is Elvis Herod's piano epic, with one piece of decimated piano per course of Orson's table. Recorded December 2011, and followed by a comprehensive trip to the lavatory which is best left to your extremely vivid scatologimagination.

 


These are the first of a slew of forthcoming Chinstrap releases for 2012. Keep those eyes and ears peeled, and your chin thoroughly strapped.

Chin27: Vernon Lenoir "The Rites of Sausage"

The very strange, enchanted composer, sampler-meister and fez wearer who goes by the moniker of Vernon Lenoir has spent the best part of the last decade knocking out consistently inventive and entertaining music on some of the world's most delicious netlabels including UpItUp, WM Recordings, and Egotwister.

He makes uberpopinexcelsis, tearing apart his own angle on pop cultures and slapping them back into his own forms. A sort of Buxtehude of beats, there is profound and irrestible cinematic musicality to the shapes Mr Lenoir makes.

 

"The Rites of Sausage" is a party album for a hallucinatory end of the world, when everybody has lost their minds and all they see before them are sausages, and visions within those sausages. Inspector Gadget and the Macarena make appearances. The latter transforms by Vernon's alchemy into a Balkan knees-up, while Rome burns. Ozzy Osbourne goes wild in a shopping mall. Simeon of Stylites gives in and throws shapes atop his pillar. The world fragments all around, with joy.

The album features collaborations with Roglok, Ergo Phizmiz, and Satanicpornocultshop. The beautiful artwork is by La Roll, which you can download a hi-res copy of here (6.86mb).

"The Rites of Sausage" is also available in FLAC, right here (204mb).

Chin25: Plushgoolash "Soup Tennis"

The absolute blinding UBERPOP legend that is Plushgoolash returns for a second Chinstrap release, following on from their eponymous slab of joy in 2010.



The brainchild of Erik Bumbledonk & Bambi Racheed, Plushgoolash produce unforgettable and superbly crafted, playful pop music, infused with the sort of mischief that has been known to take place in Mick Hucknall's jockstrap.

From the gorgeous melody of "Martin Walmsley", the ebullience of "Big Gay Water Fight", to the hilarious simplicity of "Love Song For a Caveman" and the naughty-boy-sets-fire-to-the-nursery spirit of "Fairy Tale", Plushgoolash have created a parallel universe where the laws of pop are turned upside down, inside out, chewed up, and spat out, spattered onto the wall in lovely, lovely shapes.

 

The Goolash boys also have a finely tuned ear for such delightful sonic desserts as "Weymouth", a gorgeous synth adventure by the sea, "What The Rabbit Said", a sort of Klezmer from hell slowly melting, and the title track "Soup Tennis", which sounds like something akin to an abominable disco falling to pieces, backwards.



So dive in to the world of Bumbledonk & Racheed, the poptastic brilliance that is PLUSHGOOLASH.




Please note: This album does feature some fucks and what-not, so if you don't like the kids to hear words like it, listen to it after they've gone to bed.....

Like this? Try Plushgoolash "Plushgoolash" (2010) , and Erik Bumbledonk's solo project Elvis Herod "Keep It Regal".