Johnny “Hammond” Smith kickstarter project–please help!

Most people reading this will know the name of Johnny “Hammond” Smith, one of the great jazz organists with a large discography of solid albums on Prestige, Milestone, Kudu, and other labels. When I was involved with jazz radio in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Smith was a regular on the jazz charts and people always loved his music. He was an eclectic player who mastered soul-jazz, straight-ahead mainstream 50s/60s jazz, acid jazz, jazz funk, sensitive organ backing for vocalists such as Nancy Wilson and Etta Jones, and much more. There was a reason Mr. Smith made a lot of albums—-people enjoyed hearing them, and when he would mix a standard or a pop hit into one of his albums, people would enjoy hearing his inventive, swinging interpretations of them. He was also a pioneer in jazz-funk, worked with the legendary Mizell Brothers, and was one of the founding artists on the Kudu label. The Hammond B3-based small jazz combo is one of the classic lineups in jazz history, and it never gets old to me.

Mr. Smith took the  “Hammond” nickname to avoid confusion with organist Jimmy Smith and the guitarist Johnny Smith, and to confuse matters, he also recorded in the 70’s as just plain Johnny Hammond, minus the Smith! Still, under any name, he’s right up there with Charles Earland, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Wild Bill Davis, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, etc. in the pantheon of soul-jazz organ greats…and that music never gets old. He was also a music educator, teaching at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in the later years of his long career.

Johnny Hammond Smith passed away in 1997, but his widow, Cheryl, has been working to preserve his memory (there is a website devoted to the master at http://johnnyhammondsmith.com ). Most recently, she’s started a Kickstarter campaign to issue unreleased Johnny Hammond Smith sessions on CD and vinyl, and this is a most worthy project. Widows of major jazz figures such as Art Pepper and Charles Mingus have done a lot of great work on behalf of their late husbands, since great jazz never dates, and we should help Johnny’s widow get this project off the ground. Even a modest contribution can get you a cd of the music—and Johnny Hammond Smith’s music from ANY period is always worthwhile and exciting and funky—and larger contributions can get you a T-shirt, vinyl, etc. Please consider contributing to this project. The link to the Kickstarter campaign can be found at:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/182501700/johnny-hammond-smith-his-time-is-now

I’m proud to be a supporter of this project. Keep the music of the jazz organ legend alive…and more than that, help bring a NEW album of unreleased music into the world. Thanks for your support of this project…and once you make your contribution, I’m sure if you go to Amazon you can find a few Smith albums you might not already have in your collection…grab a few and brighten your day!

 

 

 

 

 

new live album from ALFRED 23 HARTH / CARL STONE / SAMM BENNETT / KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI, “The Expats“ (KSE #233) now available

 ALFRED 23 HARTH / CARL STONE / SAMM BENNETT / KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI, “The Expats “

KSE # 233,   cdr album, $8 postpaid in the US/ $11 postpaid elsewhere

payment via paypal to  django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

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Rec. live at Superdeluxe, Tokyo, 2010.

Alfred 23 Harth – reeds, kaoss pad, dojirak, samples & voice
Carl Stone – computer, Max/MSP, voice, samples
Kazuhisa Uchihashi – electric guitar, daxophone
Samm Bennett – diddley bow, mouth bow, voice, gadgets

Last year KSE issued the ALFRED 23 HARTH / CARL STONE duo album GIFT FIG, which featured telepathic shape-shifting live improvisations between multi-instrumentalist and free-jazz/free-improv music legend Harth and electronic-composition and sampling pioneer Carl Stone. Now in 2013, we’re bringing back Mr. Harth and Mr. Stone as part of an all-star international quartet adding American-residing-in-Japan SAMM BENNETT and Japanese-residing-in-Europe KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI, recorded live at Tokyo’s legendary forward-thinking music venue Superdeluxe in 2010.   HARTH—-STONE—BENNETT—UCHIHASHI—-ladies and gentlemen, THE EXPATS!!!

These four gentleman are great listeners, and the way they communicate organically among themselves reminds me of an improvised-music version of an eco-system, where there is an organic link between the different life forms inhabiting a specific area. Guitar/reeds/electronics/treated vocals/diddley-bow/daxophone  and a huge number of unclassifiable sounds are spiralling through these four pieces, yet it’s not a loud album…it pulls the listener into its textures and places us in the middle of a scene, almost as if a Dali desert-scape is heard as music and we listeners have been painted into the scene, melting and stretching and bleached by the sun, but waves of guitar and lyrical saxophone passages pass by languorously as if we are watching them underwater. I’ve mixed enough metaphors here…just believe me when I say that this is a stunning performance, four pieces recorded live, spontaneous composition from masters of contemporary improvised music. With each listen we feel the connections, ride the waves of imagination with the musicians. I’m sure this will sound just as fresh in 10 or 20 years, but then, that’s true of Harth’s and Stone’s and Bennett’s and Uchihashi’s work in general, so just imagine a communal sound experience involving the four of them.

Alfred Harth has been at the forefront of free-music/free-jazz since the late 1960’s and continues to travel the world and collaborate with all kinds of artists as a kind of 21-st century avant-garde troubadour. I could not begin to discuss what he’s achieved. I have followed his work for almost 40 years and I keep learning about earlier works he’s been involved with that somehow passed me by in the pre-Internet age. This is Mr. Harth’s 4th cdr for Kendra Steiner Editions, and in the Summer of 2013 we’ll be issuing his 5th release, MICRO-SAXO-PHONE: IV. His most recent album, GESTALT ET DEATH with Dead Country, recorded in Turkey and issued on the Lebanese “Al Maslakh” label was chosen as one of KSE’s “Best of 2012” and will thrill those who enjoyed Harth’s early 80’s work with Cassiber. You can purchase that cd at  http://www.almaslakh.org/. Mr. Harth’s website can be visited at http://alfredharth.blogspot.com/

Carl Stone is a respected electronic music composer and visionary in the use of sampling/use of found source material, but he’s also an exciting performer of LIVE electronic music, spontaneous composition. Just listen to his previous album with Harth, GIFT FIG, for evidence of that. Mr. Stone has collaborated with artists in many different disciplines and media, has taught and lectured around the world, and has inspired a generation of young composers and improvisers through his work and his example. A CV of some of his accomplishments can be found here:  http://www.sukothai.com/v.2/CSBio2.html . This is Mr. Stone’s second release for KSE, and we hope it will not be his last. He has many releases available, but to choose one at random which can be gotten easily (even at Amazon), his mesmerizing 1983 classic  WOO LAE OAK has been recently reissued. Why not buy one right AFTER you send your paypal order for THE EXPATS.

Bennett and Uchihashi are not as well-known as they should be in North America.

Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, SAMM BENNETT began as a percussionist and as a teen worked all kinds of  kitchen items and “junk” into his percussion set-up, which set the stage for his later investigation of rootsy but not-so-common instruments as the diddly bow, which you can hear on this album, and Vietnamese jaw harp. From music for silent films to a trio with Mike Watt and Kramer (!!!) to the trio Semantics with Ned Rothenberg and Elliott Sharp to his live work as an improvisational singer-songwriter in Japan, which I would LOVE to someday experience. It’s an honor to feature his work on our label.

You can keep up on Samm Bennett’s many activities at http://www.polarityrecords.com

Multi-instrumentalist KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI is, as Samm Bennett, a man with a rich history and body of work in the international experimental music community. With his group Altered States, with acclaimed work with pioneers such as Fred Frith and Mani Neumeier, with his work as  the musical director for Osaka-based  theater group Ishinha.  Although he is well-known for his incredible guitar work (much in evidence on this album—he is a very sensitive player, and whatever sounds he’s generating from his guitar, there’s always a warmth and a tactile presence) he’s also been a pioneer in the use of the daxophone, an instrument created by the late Hans Reichel, which is pictured here:

He owns a daxophone made for him by Reichel, and he plays the daxophone extensively on The Expats. It’s described by the website Oddmusic.com as “a musical instrument of the friction idiophone category. It consists of a thin wooden blade fixed in a wooden block, which holds one or more contact microphones, and is usually mounted on a tripod. Most often, it is played by bowing the free end, but it can also be struck or plucked, which propagates sound in the same way a ruler halfway off a table does. These vibrations then continue to the wooden-block bass, which are then amplified by the contact mics. A wide range of voice-like timbres can be produced, depending on the shape of the instrument, the type of wood, where it is bowed, and where along its length it is stopped with a separate block of wood called the “Dax”. One side of the Dax is fretted to produce fixed pitches, while the other side is a smooth curve, to play more fluid pitch changes.  Mr. Uchihashi is an exciting live performer (just google his name or check on you tube for some performance clips) and has a huge body of work, covering 20+ years.

A discography of Kazuhisa Uchihashi’s many and fascinating releases can be found at   http://japanimprov.com/kuchihashi/disco.html  Again, we are honored to feature his work on our small Texas label.

just imagine the sonic alchemy that such a supergroup could conjur, and then multiply by twenty-three

KSE’s previous HARTH/STONE album  GIFT  FIG  is still available, but we’re running low, get yours NOW…

still available:   KSE #207 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH & CARL STONE, “Gift Fig”

$8 US postpaid, $11 outside US postpaid

payment via paypal to django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

and other available albums of experimental music on cdr:

KSE #243 (CDR), VENISON WHIRLED (aka Lisa Cameron), “The Many Moods of Venison Whirled”

KSE #254 (cdr), DJIN AQUARIAN (of Ya Ho Wha 13)/SIR PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE & THE EVERAFTER, Live in San Francisco 10/20/2011

KSE #239 (CDR),  FOSSILS, “Bells and Gulls,” 

KSE #251 (CDR),  FORBES GRAHAM, “Return: The Journey”

KSE #235 (CDR),  BOOK OF SHADOWS, “Chimaera”

KSE #206  (CDR), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Emilio “

KSE #222 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Sopranino Solo, “ cover art by MP Landis.

KSE #220 (CDR),  MATT KREFTING, “Sweet Days of Discipline”

KSE #247 (CDR), MARCUS RUBIO & BILL SHUTE, “Only The Imprint Of An Echo Remains” (poetry and electronic music album, recorded in San Antonio, TX)

KSE #237 (CDR), MICHAEL BARRETT & MIKE GRIFFIN, ““Birtual Seme-Alabak” (aka Belltonesuicide and Parashi)

KSE #228 (CDR), UNMOOR, “Night Driver”

KSE # 210 (CDR), HEATHER LEIGH, “Empire”

KSE #226 (CDR), DEREK ROGERS, “Born Into Systems”

KSE #208 (CDR), ANTHONY GUERRA & BILL SHUTE, “subtraction” (limited USA re-press of CD originally issued on Black Petal Records, Australia)

KSE #214 (CDR), SABRINA SIEGEL,”Bottlecaps” 

KSE #238 (CDR), DANIEL HIPOLITO/EVA KELLY/BILL SHUTE, “Fascination”

ALL LIMITED HAND-ASSEMBLED, HAND-NUMBERED HOMEMADE DIY EDITIONS WITH VARYING COVER STOCKS AND INKS, MADE IN TEXAS

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note: CANADIAN CUP OF COFFEE is the first Harth album I owned, circa 1974, as a high-school student…

John Coltrane, The Prestige Albums (Italian 12-cd set)

JOHN  COLTRANE

“His Prestige Albums”

 12-cd box set, from Universal Music Italy

I owned 4 of Coltrane’s many albums on the “Prestige” label, back when I was first getting into jazz as a highschool student in the 1970’s. You could find them relatively cheaply used and they still seemed to be in print in the early 70’s, back in the days when a good record store would at any time have 10-12 different Coltrane albums in stock…and a better record store might have 18-20. My, was that a long time ago!

My first exposure to Coltrane was A Love Supreme, then OM, then Interstellar Space (which I bought when it came out). I was already into avant-garde players such as Shepp and Braxton and Marion Brown, so I investigated Coltrane as being the man who inspired so many of my avant heroes. Then after hearing the later Coltrane, I would pick up the random Coltrane album when I saw them used or cheap. That’s how I stumbled across the albums such as Black Pearls. Most of what Coltrane recorded for Prestige was done in 1957-58 (although he’d recorded as a sideman on sessions with Elmo Hope and with Sonny Rollins in late 1956),  but many albums of unreleased material and/or sessions on which he’d originally been just a sideman (now issued under the Coltrane name, a marketing trick used by Jazz labels going back to the 1920’s) continued to come out on Prestige until 1965 (!!!), competing with Trane’s new product on Impulse. The Prestige  recordings date from the period when he was first with Miles Davis through when he rejoined Davis…and also when he joined Monk’s band. The roots of the famous “sheets of sound” are there, and in general, there is a richness and freshness to his playing in this period that is always enjoyable…and causes the albums to continue to be listenable over the decades. I suppose one would put these recordings in the “hard bop” category, and most of them are the kind of one-take “blowing session” or one-take expeditions through standards and ballads that one got from Prestige Records in this period. Blue Note always tended to be the higher-concept jazz label, while Savoy Records sessions tended to sound quickly recorded a la Prestige, but the albums were better programmed than Prestige’s, which often seemed like random assemblages to me,  a quickie snapshot of where the artists were at a certain point in time. Of course, for the majority of the fine jazz players they recorded, that was not a problem, as they could whip it out quickly and brilliantly. One wonders how Coltrane’s Prestige sessions would have been different had more time and care been given to them, but that’s water under the bridge now. A LOT was recorded, and we should be glad we have such a large body of work to enjoy, a body of work that has an appealing spontaneity to it because of the nature of its recording.

When I saw this album being sold online, for about $3 an album for 12 Prestige albums issued under Coltrane’s name, I assumed it was going to be a “public domain” needledrop release, like the many Euro-PD  “Eight Classic Albums” 4-cd sets you can buy for about $12. Imagine my surprise when it turned out this was a legit release, NOT a needledrop.

Here’s what you are getting. 12 cd’s with 12 albums, packaged in three 4-cd cases,  with just a small booklet w/ pics of the covers and track listing/personnel/ recording dates. But what’s important is the 12 cd’s of music, the 12 original albums. It’s easy to go online and look up the backstory of each album, which ones are cannibalized from unreleased material and tracks on which Coltrane was a sideman, etc. There’s even a brief Wikipedia entry on each album available, so no fancy notes are needed at this low price.

I remember buying an album on the infamous “Trip” budget label back in the 70’s under Coltrane’s name, which was actually recordings originally issued on Jubilee under tuba player Ray Draper’s name on which Trane was a sideman (there are some Draper sides here too!),  so we have Prestige to thank for starting that practice, but I loved that Trip album, so I guess I’m grateful if this dubious practice  gets more work out there.

• THE ALBUMS YOU ARE GETTING ARE
• 1. Dakar
• 2. Coltrane
• 3. Traneing In
• 4. Soultrane
• 5. Lush Life
• 6. Settin’ The Pace
• 7. Standard Coltrane
• 8. Stardust

• 9. The Believer
• 10. Black Pearls
• 11. Bahia
• 12. The Last Trane

These contain the original album content, with none of the extra tracks/alternate takes that have been on the CD reissues.

Fantasy/Prestige/Concord  issued a massive Coltrane box that was beyond my price-range, and since that they have cut the material up into smaller boxes, each with a focus on a different aspect of the work (for instance, there is an excellent INTERPLAY box that features sideman work, most of which is NOT on this set), and most if not all of these albums are on cd individually, many with extra tracks. But for $3-4 an album for a legit box set of all 12 Coltrane Prestige albums, which is NOT a needledrop and which sounds great, this is THE release of the year. For those who do not buy much music, you could buy this and listen to it all year, and you would have a great year musically.

There’s nothing I can add that has not already been said about these sessions or about this period of Coltrane’s career or about Coltrane in general.  Just google his name or read the superb book by Lewis Porter. Better yet, get this box set and put one album on repeat each night after a long day at work, as the sun goes down, the weather chills, and you have time for contemplation…pour a fine microbrew or glass of wine, settle back, and enjoy one of the finest things life has to offer, the playing of John Coltrane, as captured on these quickie Prestige sessions, beautiful and rich snapshots of an artist stretching and growing and heading toward uncharted territory, but still working in the traditional post-hardbop style. If I were banished to the proverbial desert island with only one boxset (and a cd player and electricity, of course),  I would not be unhappy if it were this one…and once again, for $35-40, this is the buy of the year. You cannot afford NOT to own it…

Bill Shute/KSE Top 30 Albums of 2012 (in no particular order)

BILL  SHUTE / KENDRA  STEINER  EDITIONS  TOP 30 ALBUMS of 2012 (in no particular order)

Once again, it’s been a great year for music…both new creations and archival reissues. I’ve probably heard 350+ new releases this year and parts of more than that. From that wide variety of new and rediscovered music, I’ve chosen 30 releases that are each an important event and will stand the test of time–each one is offering a musical world that is unique and to be treasured.

various artists, “AMERICANS IN EUROPE” (Jazz Oracle, Canada, cd)

No one would claim that these are the BEST performances of 1926-28 jazz, but what a fascinating archival dig we have here: a huge body of little-known work by ramshackle American jazz/hot-dance bands working The Continent, recorded in Berlin and Zurich, quickly recorded in batches and thus a perfect snapshot of the live performances of these groups, so the album captures the excitement of being IN some French or Belgian or German or Swiss nightclub in the height of the “Jazz Age” far better than more acclaimed “classics” of the era. As usual for Jazz Oracle, the music is incredibly well-documented and the sound bursts forth with the same abandon with which it was played. Also, European engineers did not record jazz the same way Americans did…when the first tracks starts, you might be taken aback  as this raw wall of sound, anchored by a banjo, hits you in the face—it’s almost as if you have a photograph taken from an unexpected angle that sheds new light on the subject. I won’t go into the fascinating stories of the George Carhart and Frank Guarante bands here—buy the album and read the voluminous notes yourself, you won’t be able to put them down–all I can say is that once again, Jazz Oracle is THE definitive reissue label for pre-WWII jazz, and that no release of 2012 has put me into another world via music as well as this one has. Jazz Oracle should make a point of putting out more “Eurojazz” releases. The Lud Gluskin 2-cd set of a few years back has been one of my most-played albums.

Vanessa Rossetto, “Exotic Exit” (Kye, US, LP)

Vanessa Rossetto’s new album has been widely praised, and I wrote a long and detailed review of it for this blog (just do a search). All I’ll say here is that, as with the above Americans in Europe album, this is a work that takes you someplace else. Although here, it’s an intentional evocation of a place through the brushwork and textures of the artist…and the place is a sun-bleached anonymous exit on one of the highway loops that surround Austin, Texas. Kye LP’s sell out quickly, so I’d grab this while you can. It’s the kind of album that I will turn to 20 years from now and still find it as rich as fascinating as I do today…in fact, as the world moves on, the album may well take on a deeper significance. Bravo, Ms. Rossetto!!!!

HUEY PIANO SMITH, “It Do Me Good: The Banashak and Sansu Sessions, 1966-1978” (Charly, UK, 2-cd set)

The UK “Westside” label reissued lots of the New Orleans pianist-bandleader-songwriter’s late 50’s/early 60’s music 10-15 years ago, and it was clear what a mover and shaker he was, someone who often featured other vocalists in his band (or had his backing tracks used for others, as with Frankie Ford’s “Sea Cruise”), so he did not receive the solo fame to which he was entitled. This man’s throwaways were better than most people’s polished gems, and his music had that wonderfully festive and effortless quality that has always made New Orleans music so special and so loved universally (see the other New Orleans album later on this list for a very different but equally satisfying 2-cd batch of class Nawlins sounds). These 1966-78 sessions are the next chapter in Smith’s story, as he moves more into soul/funk territory, but there was ALWAYS a lot of soul in his music and his riff-based, lazy beat certainly foreshadowed funk, so he is totally at home in these later styles. Even the later remakes of his earlier hits sparkle and sound fresh. These recordings are even more precious because due to his religious calling, Smith has not recorded or performed secular music since the last of these sessions. So we should treasure what we have here. Put this on, and it’s an instant party. A shame this did not get much acclaim, beyond Dusty Groove, who certainly saw it for what it is.

DEAD COUNTRY featuring ALFRED 23 HARTH, “Gestalt et Death” (Al Maslakh, Lebanon, cd)

various artists, “BLOW YOUR BUBBLEGUM: 25 Hot & Wild Brit Beat Grooves” (Particles, UK, cd)

ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Civilian Life” (Pax, US, cd)

BOGOSLAW SCHAEFFER, “Assemblage (Polish Radio Experimental Studio)”, (Bolt, Poland, 2-cd set)

various artists, “LE BEAT BESPOKE, VOLUME 5” (Circle, cd, UK)

DJIN AQUARIAN & PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND, “Save The World” (Prophase, US, LP)

JANDEK, “Maze Of The Phantom” (Corwood, US, 2-cd set)

MANFRED WERDER (realization and recording by Jason Kahn), “2005 1 ” (Winds Measure Recordings, 8-cdr set)

ELVIS PRESLEY, “A Boy From Tupelo: The Complete 1953-1955 Recordings” (RCA-Follow That Dream, US/Denmark, 3-cd box and massive book)

YOKO ONO / KIM GORDON / THURSTON MOORE, “yokokimthurston” (Chimera Music, US, cd)

BLUE PHANTOM, “Distortions” (Kismet, UK, cd)

JOHN YORK & KIM FOWLEY, “West Coast Revelation” (GRA, US, cd)

ELVIS PRESLEY, “Sun-Sational” (Victrola, EU, 2-cd set)

THE GLASS FAMILY, “Electric Band” (Kismet, UK, cd)

MIKE KHOURY / BEN HALL, “It’s Not A Fear Of Falling, It’s A Fear Of Landing” (8mm, Italy, LP)

THE WOLVERINES (w/ Bix Beiderbecke), “The Complete Wolverines: 1924-1928” (Off The Record, US, cd)

JOHN WILLIAMS (and Johnny Mercer), “The Long Goodbye, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” (Quartet, Spain, cd)

various artists, “CHAMPION RECORDS: THE SINGLES COLLECTION” (Blue, Germany, 3-cd set)

DEREK ROGERS, “Saturations” (Greenup Industries, US, LP)

NAKATANI / TINER / DRAKE, “Ritual Inscription” (Epigraph, US, LP)

URKAS, “Desert Shapes” (Skell, US, cassette)

various artists (Jim Edgar and the Roadrunners/Wes Reynolds), “OKLAHOMA ROCKS, VOLUME 1” (no label, US, cdr)

DEL SHANNON, “Home and Away” (Now Sounds, UK, cd)

STEVE LACY, “Avignon and After, Volume 1” (Emanem, UK, cd)

JOHNNY WIGGS & RAYMOND BURKE, “Wiggs-Burke Big 4” (American Music, US, 2-cd set)

BERNARD HERRMANN, “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” Volume 1 (2-cd), Volume 2 (3-cd, Varese Sarabande, USA)

MASSIMO MAGEE, “Collected Solos” (Array, Australia, 26-cdr set) also available for free download at http://arraymusic.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/ar15-collected-solos/

Greg “Stackhouse” Prevost, “Mississippi Murderer” LP (Mean Disposition Records, Spain)

GREG   “STACKHOUSE”   PREVOST

“Mississippi Murderer” LP

(I think it might also be on CD, but it’s made for vinyl)

Mean Disposition Records, Spain

released January 2013

I applaud artists who know what they excel at and what they have a passion for…and then work over the years, over the decades refining and distilling that vision, applying it into new contexts and new situations, extending it and stretching it, but retaining that pure white-hot core and never letting the fire go out.

Greg Prevost is such a man. Like many people, I first heard his work when the Chesterfield Kings exploded on the scene circa 1979 with their incredible single “I Ain’t No Miracle Worker” (pictured below–that’s a scan of my personal copy, which I’ve treasured and played over and over for decades). Greg had recorded before that, in the mid-70’s, but that single distilled everything he was about into three minutes of pure psych-punk rock’n’roll ecstasy. He was doing to Chocolate Watchband vocalist Dave Aguilar what Aguilar himself had done w/ Mick Jagger ten years earlier…and what every Texas garage band who tried to out-Yardbirds The Yardbirds did…taking the ball that had been passed to him and running with it trying to score. And score he did. With The Chesterfield Kings, Greg and crew continued to make great singles and great albums, full of well-chosen garage-punk-psych covers and fine originals in the same tradition. But from that base, they went into many different areas, collaborating with folks as diverse as Kim Fowley and Mark Lindsey, totally unconcerned with what was the trend of the day and digging deeper and deeper into the core of what Greg must have heard in his mind when he first encountered Them or The Chocolate Watchband or “1523 Blair.” Catching lightning in a bottle…or maybe, “Lightnin'” is more like it!

At the base of Greg’s work—as with Dave Aguilar of the Watchband—has always been The Blues. With so few “original” Blues artists of the post-war era still alive, we might forget how pure REAL blues can be. Many years ago, The Chesterfield Kings recorded a blues album called “Drunk On Muddy Water,” and I remember reviewing it for Black To Comm (or was it so long ago, we still called it “Pfudd”?) and saying that the album captured the drunken trashiness of the blues and the trashy drunkenness of the blues. No disrespect was meant there. No one is a bigger blues fan than I am. But with the fetish-izing of the blues and blues culture, we seem to forget how so many classic moments of the blues came about from the pure joy of guys with a few drinks in them LETTING GO. Tapping into that primal scream. Escaping the drudgery of the minimum-wage work world through their music. Think Hound Dog Taylor. Think Jimmy Reed. The great blues-drenched second-generation white 60’s players, whether it be Rod Piazza or Glenn Ross Campbell or Tony McPhee,  or later folks like Kent “Omar” Dykes here in Texas, understood that. Those who did not understand it just aped the moves and eventually wound up dressing like Stevie Ray. Look at the cover of the “Drunk” album, pictured below, with the drums in imitation of the famous photo of Rice “Sonny Boy #2” Miller. Clearly, these guys know what they are doing. The blues revivalists would never have accepted an album like this…it was too raw and too real. Like the Texas garage band who wanted to out-do the Yardbirds at their own game, The Chesterfield Kings took the ball handed to them by Snooky Pryor or Homesick James or Eddie Taylor and RAN WITH IT. The result was an album that’s never been equalled…until now.

Greg Prevost has now issued a new blues album, and it’s a killer. With Greg on vocals, guitars (lots of slide), and harp, and ably assisted by Zachary Koch on drums and Alex Patrick on bass (with occasional piano from Keenan Bartlett), he delivers a primal blues blast that sounds like the blues album the 1971 Iggy and the Stooges might have recorded had they been from Chicago and roadie-ing for J.B. Hutto. This is the album that everyone who ever thrilled to The Rolling Stones  version of  “I Wanna Be Your Man” or the b-side “Who’s Driving Your Plane” always hoped that the Stones would record, but they never did. If you wore the grooves off of  “Exile On Main St” and dreamed that the next album would go even deeper and rawer, but then got the shaft with “Angie,” then this album is for you. Greg Prevost uses Jagger as his template, but he then goes back into the blues soil from which Jagger emerged and does it right in the way our hero Mick never got around to doing much after 1972.

The simple trio format (w/ added piano on some tracks) and the shrill amped-up sound and smeared guitar lines and smeared vocals (that would put a smile on Dave Aguilar’s face, I’m sure) also remind me of the bluesier side of the New York Dolls (and how one wishes THEY would have recorded a blues album!). And let’s not forget that Greg handles acoustic blues on the album too, beautifully…but the album is rooted in The Watchband’s  “Sitting Here Standing,” and is there a better model? I think not…

It’s great that Greg Prevost is still at it, still working in a pure form. There are so many posers today, so many who coast on attitude and talk the talk, but can’t deliver the goods. Everything is so pretentious. An album like this comes out of left field and reminds me of how I once sat in front of the record player playing early Stones 45’s over and over, of why I once peroxided my hair as a child in a failed attempt to be more like Brian Jones. This album reminds me of why I love The Misunderstood, why I love Rod Piazza, why I love The Litter’s cover of “I’m A Man.” Greg “Stackhouse” Prevost has stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park. The Blues is the animating force behind so much of the music we love….as I listen to the album closer, “John The Revelator,” I’m reminded of how blues-drenched David Johansen and Johnny Thunders and the Dolls were, for instance. If you’re the kind of person who feels that John Mayall on an off-day will ALWAYS be hipper than whatever is being pushed by Pitchfork and the like, then this album is for you. Be glad that SOMEONE is still pure today in this world of style over substance. Surely, this will be near the top of my “Best of 2013” list. Get your copy soon.

And I did not miss the irony of such a 110% AMERICAN album as this being issued….in SPAIN!  Well, at least some Europeans still appreciate our culture, even if most Americans don’t…man, I feel like cracking open a beer and taking the day off work, that’s how excited this album makes me feel.

Just Google the album title and you’ll find some outlet that is selling this (I special ordered my copy from Rockit Scientist Records)…

Note to Greg Prevost: you MUST tour in support of this album…

DREAM STATIC, Bill Shute poetry chapbook (KSE #253), now available…

hand-assembled and cut, hand-numbered edition of 49 copies, in a variety of paper, ink, and cover stock combinations (who knows what you’ll get)

BILL   SHUTE

“Dream Static”

poetry chapbook (KSE #253)

My first poetic offering of the year 2013 (written in the last few months of 2012) began as a parody of John Berryman’s  “Dream Songs,” and I retained the stanza format and “Henry” character from Berryman’s work, but as I got into this project, I decided that I did not want an unsympathetic “Henry” character in my poem, and I also decided to follow my desire to make DREAM STATIC something of a lampooning of the contemporary “alternative” arts world…and I included KSE in that lampooning, just take a look at the cover of this fictional album released by my two characters, Henry and his wife and artistic partner Mia…

The older, lesser-known Henry and his younger, better-known wife Mia are a multi-disciplinary arts duo, getting praised at Volcanic Tongue and The Wire, extending their body of work into land-art installations and performance pieces using kitchen utensils and a faux-Cage “time-bracket” score. Both play music (or should I say, “are sound artists”), but Henry also has a background in poetry and Mia also has a background in visual art. This is a poetic slice of their working life together. It’s humorous but it also captures the relationship complexities of a couple who work together….and the pain and dissatisfaction of working day and night  and devoting one’s life to one’s art (whether it be literary or musical or visual or whatever) for peanuts and cancelled shows and praise for the wrong reasons. It’s really a tribute to the spirit and resilience of those who follow their muse and create…and I have a lot of respect for Henry and Mia, whoever they may be (they are NOT based on anyone in particular, more like composites from many sources). Yes, they can be ridiculous, but so is anyone who takes chances…and better to recognize and embrace one’s own ridiculousness and thus take away the power of others to use the “R-word” against you. Yes, I’m ridiculous, dammit, and proud of it.

The poetic form here is a bit different from my usual open-field structure with its clusters of  “transmitted energy” with the echo of a WC Williams triadic stairstep stanza…for DREAM STATIC, I followed the Berryman six-line stanza, three-stanzas-per-poem form of the Dream Songs. I am not the biggest Berryman fan, though I respect his achievement…for me, his most impressive quality is his rich and complex syntax, which when it’s at its best is mind-blowing. I did not feel that that ragged, stop-and-release flow was fitting here, so I did not attempt it.

I hope you enjoy DREAM STATIC. It’s a change of pace for me, and it’s content should ring a bell with (and bring a smile to the faces of) the readers of this blog and the friends of KSE.

It’s KSE #253, $5 postpaid anywhere, payment via paypal to   django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

Other recent poetry chapbooks available for the same price ($5 postpaid anywhere) include

John Sweet‘s masterfully understated and smoldering portraits of rust-belt American economic depression and mental revenge BRAVE RETREAT (KSE #216)

Michael Layne Heath‘s new collection of razor-sharp pieces from the unforgiving, broken, and sexually-charged streets of San Francisco, UNBROADCAST RERUNS (KSE #244), with an original cover painting by Austin painter-musician Carl Smith

more than a year in the making (and worth every second), it’s Pittsburgh poetry visionary Jim D. Deuchars‘s new chapbook that takes the music of Thelonious Monk and transposes it to the poetic page, THELONIOUS  FAKEBOOK (KSE #236)

and also, the four volumes of my Florida Nocturne Poems sequence, each sold separately (and each being a stand-alone volume not dependent on the others):

Book One: Shades of Night Descending  (KSE #234)

Book Two: Mondo Daytona (KSE #241)

Book Three: Peach Cobbler In The Poker Room (KSE #245)

Book Four: Jupiter In The Rearview Mirror (KSE #248) 

also, in a month or two we’ll be offering a new collection from legendary West Coast poet DOUG DRAIME, though we’re still assembling that with Doug and won’t be accepting orders yet…

say what you want, no one else is offering poetry chapbooks such as these…

as always, thank you for your support of KSE (soon entering our SEVENTH year of operation with over 250 releases!!!) and all independent artists, small presses, micro-labels, off-the-beaten path galleries and exhibition spaces, etc.

new FOSSILS cdr album, “Bells and Gulls” (KSE #239)

F O S S I L S

“Bells and Gulls” (KSE #239)

CDR album, $8 postpaid in US, $10 elsewhere

payment via paypal to  django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

Since 2004, the FOSSILS collective, working out of Hamilton, Ontario, have been issuing a constant flow of exciting, micro-label editions of fascinating, edgy, complex, and often witty experimental music. Can’t really think of a similar outfit—the approach is not unlike The LA Free Music Society, and they have a DIY cut-up/xerox aesthetic to the releases that always gives the music a warm human feel (like KSE, I’m thinking they are animated by the true original spirit of punk, when punk was a spirit and not a commodity and a set of images), and the music itself is always a surprise…you cannot put a label like “drone” or “harsh noise” or “free improv” on this body of work. I’ve got about a dozen Fossils releases, and each is REALLY different. They can be brutal, they can be tender and elegant, they can be absurdist, they can be trippy, but usually they will be delivering a unique blend of off-kilter sound experiments, always fresh and unexpected. They also have the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to instrumentation that reminds one of the early AACM/Art Ensemble of Chicago and the above-mentioned LAFMS. So if those names interest you (one is tempted to add Jandek, AMM, and Half Japanese too), you should be on the Middle James mailing list (go to Yahoo Groups and look up Middle James Co. and subscribe) and you will want this exciting and decidedly different new FOSSILS creation from KSE: BELLS AND GULLS.

This new release, recorded especially for KSE, features core Fossils members Daniel Farr on piano and David Payne on accordion, and the first two tracks feature this duo material…although you should think of these instruments as  “sound sources” as the material is treated heavily. The piano is clearly a piano in some parts (reminiscent of the “broken piano” found on Coum Transmissions “Sugarmorphoses” LP), though the playing is of a wobbly nature that reminds me of a gyroscope falling off its axis (and that’s before it’s slowed down and stretched like elastic), and the accordion is used to create various chunky, streaky layers. Thus, the overall effect is one of cold candle-lit bubbling, churning other-worldly experimental library music filtered through Two Virgins. It’s atmospheric and as you listen it leaves melted residue on your mind. Also, the hand of the artist is clear in the edits/overlays which are not intended to be un-noticed and seamless, so it’s almost like an action-painting in sound.

The remaining 7 tracks consist of solo pieces from Farr (tracks 3-5) and Payne (tracks 6-9), which use recordings from the same source-material sessions, but go much further out. I have images of AMM rehearsing in a dank chamber of Boris Karloff’s dungeon, full of Jess Franco-esque zooms and garish-colored lighting, and with someone tripping while messing with the sound source. You can conjur your own picture, but this is the perfect music for the freezing wet 5 a.m. winter atmosphere in which I’m typing this.

And the exciting news is that the next Fossils release will be nothing at all like this. These guys are doing important work. They are unconcerned with image and hipness and being part of some clique, as so many “experimental” musicians in the so-called noise world are. This is original creation of the purist sort–in the great North American tradition spanning from Harry Partch to Jandek and beyond. Fossils and Middle James Co. are creating one of the most original bodies of work being done today. People will look back on this and pretend to have been champions of it while they were actually over-praising the darlings of the drone/ambient/noise world instead. Get on the Fossils Train To Surreal Lalaland NOW with BELLS AND GULLS. KSE is honored to feature Messrs. Payne and Farr’s work and to welcome them to the KSE family. Fossils and Middle James are the kind of groups/arts collectives that I look up to and respect…and most of all, ENJOY as they document the pure joy of creation, with the blinders taken off, the training wheels removed, and the fences taken down. It’s a wild ride…

FOSSILS, “BELLS AND GULLS,” KSE #239, only $8.00 postpaid in the US ($10 ppd. elsewhere).

And while you are ordering it, why not also pick up some of our other forward-thinking KSE cdr music releases:

($8 each, ppd…$2 extra for postage outside US if ordering only one CDR):

KSE #233 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH / CARL STONE / SAMM BENNETT / KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI, “The Expats “

KSE #251 (cdr), FORBES GRAHAM, “Return: The Journey”

KSE #235 (CDR), BOOK OF SHADOWS, “Chimaera”

KSE #237 (CDR), MICHAEL BARRETT & MIKE GRIFFIN, ““Birtual Seme-Alabak” (aka Belltonesuicide and Parashi)

KSE #228 (CDR), UNMOOR, “Night Driver”

KSE # 210 (CDR), HEATHER LEIGH, “Empire”

KSE #226 (CDR), DEREK ROGERS, “Born Into Systems”

KSE #247 (CDR), MARCUS RUBIO & BILL SHUTE, “Only The Imprint Of An Echo Remains” (poetry and electronic music album, recorded in San Antonio, TX)

KSE #207 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH & CARL STONE, “Gift Fig”

KSE #206  (CDR), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Emilio “

KSE #222 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Sopranino Solo, “ cover art by MP Landis.

KSE #220 (CDR),  MATT KREFTING, “Sweet Days of Discipline”

KSE #223 (CDR), ALISTAIR CROSBIE, “A Campfire In The Snow”

KSE #214 (CDR), SABRINA SIEGEL,”Bottlecaps” 

As always, thank you for your support of KSE and your support of all independent artists

Fossils, “TV Magic” cassette (Beartown label)

Fossils T-shirt (from Cardinal Records website)

Fossils, “black in black boxXx” from 2007

Fossils 7″ release on Kye

Middle James Co.,  “limited edition cassette and cdr label documenting DIY lo-fi efforts of fossils & friends…”…be sure to join the MJC mailing list via Yahoo Groups (see info above)

BOOK OF SHADOWS, new cdr album “Chimaera” (KSE #235)

BOOK  OF  SHADOWS

“Chimaera”

KSE #235  (cdr, 75+ minutes of music!),      $8.00  ppd.  US/ $10 ppd. elsewhere

payment via paypal to  django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

Perhaps THE  finest group devoted to pure celebratory spiritually-based higher-key psychedelia in Texas or anywhere (as someone who pursues this kind of music wherever I can find it, and has for decades, I think I can make that claim safely), BOOK OF SHADOWS released a much-acclaimed 3″, 20 minute mini-cdr with KSE in 2011 and also we were honored to have them perform at the KSE Psychedelic Disaster Whirl in October 2011. However, those performances and their various past recordings did not prepare me for their new 78-minute epic album CHIMAERA (KSE #235). The languid, richly textured, slowly swirling improvisational pieces that make up the album are held together by the beautiful wordless vocalizing of Sharon Crutcher (note: I hear that she is working on  solo recordings for the UK label Reverb Worship, now THAT will be worth watching for)—what a deep incantatory power her shimmering vocals have, a primal earthiness that’s silken and always deeply organic. Around that core we have woven strands of keyboards, guitar, percussion, field recording, bongos, electronics, controlled feedback, and otherworldly echoes of all kinds. I think I hear organ and accordion, but with this kind of record, I’m going along for the ride, I’m not taking it apart and analyzing the instrumentation. This is tribal-psych, spiritual free-flowing psych of the highest order…BOOK OF SHADOWS…

Over more than a decade, some 25 releases (on such esteemed labels as Ruralfaune and Reverb Worship) and countless shows, Austin’s  BOOK OF SHADOWS  has been creating unique, spiritually charged, higher-key psychedelic soundscapes that transcend category.  Austin is full of tie-dyed psychedelic revivalists who would not know what to do with forward-thinking timeless communal music-making like what BOOK OF SHADOWS creates, because B. O. S. creates music that, like Ya Ho Wa 13 or Psychic TV, grows out of spiritual practice and as such has no boundaries and follows no script. It is celebratory and takes in all of the elements. One could drop references such as Beat of the Earth, Mahogany Brain, Two Virgins-era Yoko Ono, or Kendra Smith, but Book of Shadows’ Sharon and Carlton Crutcher are so far outside the loop of “influences” and considerations of what’s hip this year, that that does not matter. They represent the purest strain of the ever-evolving Texas higherkey psychedelic tradition, and POPPETS AND STRINGS brings us two  9+ minute excursions, one recorded outside in the woods, one a home recording. Perhaps because the Crutchers live in a small town and NOT in some apartment on S. Congress, their music is made from the water and the thunder and the soil and the sky, and thus we lose all sense of time as Sharon’s wordless vocals speak to us in a universal language of feeling and the electronics and guitars and keyboards melt and flow and shimmer and glow. Of Book of Shadows, Julian Cope wrote, “like the best psychedelia, listeners never know which track is playing, where the last one ended or when the next one began,” and that’s also true with CHIMAERA.  This is the real thing, folks…and having seen Book of Shadows live, I can attest that the musicians attain a higher state during their performance, and wherever they perform becomes a sacred space. They bring an all-new interpretation to the phrase “Lift The Bandstand.”

2011 KSE 3″ release from B.O.S., now out of print

We’re honored to feature the music of these Texas psychedelic pioneers on KSE, and the nearly 78 minutes of music featured here is potent and gets deeper with each listen. You can, literally, push the “repeat” button and spend an day/night with this music, and like the best psychedelia, when you turn it off and step back into the outside environment, you hear THAT music, your ears and your brain have been opened and rewired, and you realize that the music is everywhere…and that “everything that is, is holy.”

“CHIMAERA,” KSE #235, only $8.00 postpaid in the US ($10 ppd. elsewhere).

And while you are ordering it, why not also pick up some of our other forward-thinking KSE cdr music releases:

($8 each, ppd…$2 extra for postage outside US if ordering only one CDR):

KSE #239 (CDR), FOSSILS, “Bells and Guls”

KSE #237 (CDR), MICHAEL BARRETT & MIKE GRIFFIN, ““Birtual Seme-Alabak” (aka Belltonesuicide and Parashi)

KSE #228 (CDR), UNMOOR, “Night Driver”

KSE # 210 (CDR), HEATHER LEIGH, “Empire”

KSE #226 (CDR), DEREK ROGERS, “Born Into Systems”

KSE #247 (CDR), MARCUS RUBIO & BILL SHUTE, “Only The Imprint Of An Echo Remains” (poetry and electronic music album, recorded in San Antonio, TX)

KSE #207 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH & CARL STONE, “Gift Fig”

KSE #206  (CDR), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Emilio “

KSE #222 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Sopranino Solo, “ cover art by MP Landis.

KSE #220 (CDR),  MATT KREFTING, “Sweet Days of Discipline”

KSE #223 (CDR), ALISTAIR CROSBIE, “A Campfire In The Snow”

KSE #214 (CDR), SABRINA SIEGEL,”Bottlecaps” 

As always, thank you for your support of KSE and your support of all independent artists

Michael Barrett & Mike Griffin, “Birtual Seme-Alabak” (KSE #237), new cdr album now available…Belltonesuicide meets Parashi, and the listener wins!

Michael Barrett & Mike Griffin, “Birtual Seme-Alabak”

KSE #237, cdr

$8 US/$10 outside US, via paypal to django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

Mike Barrett (aka Belltonesuicide) of Western Massachusetts recorded a blistering, unforgettable 3″ cdr for KSE in 2011, called “Non-Conformist” while Mike Griffin (aka Parashi) of Albany, New York, recorded a much-acclaimed drone-psych-noise 3″ cdr for KSE in 2011 called “Zone of Alienation”…..Mike B attended a poetry-and-electronics performance I did with Mike G in Albany at the Upstate Arts Guild in May 2011, and the two met, traded cdr’s/cassettes they’d released, and vowed to work together some day when they had the opportunity. That happened in late 2011…one hungover Saturday morning after late-night shows on Friday, they got down to work, burned the cobwebs out of their brains, and things started to click…later they were joined by bassist Brett Renaud, and BIRTUAL SEME-ALABAK was the result, a varied collection of dense yet spacious analog electronic spin-art jams.

A BELLTONESUICIDE/PARASHI joint album is an exciting event. It’s the noise-drone equivalent of the old duo-blowouts in jazz (such as The Chase with Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon), where two saxophone or trumpet  power-hitters were paired and alternated doing battle with each other and engaging in a fascinating dance. Barrett tends to be the more skronk/scorched-earth player of the two, while Griffin tends to be more textural and lyrical, but once things get pumping here, all bets are off, and only tech-savvy listeners who know what equipment each is using (and I’m not talking on that subject) will know who is doing what. The two become one, and then supported by Brett’s bass, it becomes a multi-dimensional electronic gumbo that can be grating, beautiful, funny, fascinating, over-the-top, haunting, or all of the above…most often all of the above. Each piece is a multi-textured slab of alien life, sliced open for inspection and then distored via funhouse mirrors, with fascinating tinges of what sounds like trombones or throat clearing or churchbells or woodpeckers or fleabag-hotel radiators or variable-speed blenders or miles-away traffic noise coming from behind the veil. It’s impossible not to be pulled into this world and to put down whatever you are doing.

Mike Barrett, who’s done a lot of work under the Belltonesuicide moniker, besides being a musician, is a visual artist and radio broadcaster and has run the excellent Gilded Throne label since 2003. He’s performed on the same bill with Jason Lescaleet, Ruins, dev/null, Thurston Moore, Sunburned Hand of The Man, Egg Eggs, Cruudeuces, etc. He’s also worked with members of Radioactive Prostitute, Fossils, Noise Nomads, Hora Flora, Diagram A, Marax, Noise Nomads, Abortus Fever, etc. And he has hosted/curated many house shows at his “Puppy Mill” and elsewhere. He’s an important part of the Western Massachusetts scene, and I have made a point to hear whatever he’s done and whatever he’s released on Gilded Throne. Proud to have Mike as part of our KSE family.

Mike Griffin, better known by his “Parashi” moniker, and also half of Urkas along with Russ Aldertone (whose Desert Shapes cassette was on KSE’s best of 2012 list), is one of the most acclaimed independent artists in the contemporary drone/noise scene, having recorded for Stunned, Tape Drift, 905 Tapes and KSE, and with upcoming releases on Tranquility Tapes and House of Alchemy. Working out of Albany, NY (a town with an active and rich arts scene), Mike has performed all over the Northeast. Parenting keeps him from touring more widely, but a week doesn’t go by that I don’t read a review from some farflung place of a Parashi album, and his work is widely appreciated by his fellow electronic musicians that I communicate with. I had the privilege of doing two poetry-and-electronic music performances with Mike/Parashi in May 2011 in New York State, and his sensitivity and his intuition as a performance-partner was clear to me (and much appreciated!) as we rehearsed, and the finished performances (which may well see release some day…we’ll see) were haunting and beautiful (well, his half…I was me, whatever that may be). Parashi is among the most-played artists in my home and at work (where I have a cassette deck, which helps as most of his releases are on cassette). Perhaps because of his roots in punk (with The Wobblies), there’s also a sense of super-structure to his pieces, as if they are still somehow connected by a thin silvery thread to the song-form….almost…

When these two get together, it’s incredible. Belltonesuicide meets Parashi, and the listener is the winner. $8 postpaid in the US and $10 postpaid elsewhere, via paypal, to django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com 

And while you are ordering BIRTUAL SEME-ALABAK, why not pick up some of KSE’s other excellent cdr releases of experimental music:

($8 each, ppd…$2 extra for postage outside US if ordering only one CDR):

KSE #239 (CDR), FOSSILS, “Bells and Gulls”

KSE #235 (CDR), BOOK OF SHADOWS, “Chimaera”

KSE #228 (CDR), UNMOOR, “Night Driver”

KSE # 210 (CDR), HEATHER LEIGH, “Empire”

KSE #226 (CDR), DEREK ROGERS, “Born Into Systems”

KSE #247 (CDR), MARCUS RUBIO & BILL SHUTE, “Only The Imprint Of An Echo Remains” (poetry and electronic music album, recorded in San Antonio, TX)

KSE #207 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH & CARL STONE, “Gift Fig”

KSE #206  (CDR), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Emilio “

KSE #222 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Sopranino Solo, “ cover art by MP Landis.

KSE #220 (CDR),  MATT KREFTING, “Sweet Days of Discipline”

KSE #223 (CDR), ALISTAIR CROSBIE, “A Campfire In The Snow”

KSE #214 (CDR), SABRINA SIEGEL,”Bottlecaps” 

As always, thank you for your support of KSE and your support of all independent artists who do not choose to play by the rules of the so-called “alternative” arts world…which, alas, is not really very alternative to the way things have worked in the past…meet the new boss, same as the old boss…

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KSE # 185 , out-of-print

KSE #186  , out of print (but to be reissued as a full-sized CDR in a few months)