Obsolete Units provides atypical recorded goods for willing participants. Ruination and enlightenment of mind and eardrums!
Noises, drones, scuzz rock, improv-folk, speaker filth, free-everything, and things yet created.
Enjoy.
If you have any interest in working with Obsolete Units for a release or if you would like to carry any of our releases, e-mail Paul at obsolete.units [at] gmail.com.
To Order: Clicking the "Buy Now" buttons is the easiest. An extra dollar has been added for shipping. You can also paypal obsolete.units [at] gmail.com (be sure to add $1 shipping for each item).
SALE!: Buy any two releases (except for the Two Hearts CD), and get one free. Specify which release you'd like for free upon checkout.
Next:
Towering Heroic Dudes (CD-R)
TwistyCat (endless cassette)
Grasshopper - Wretched Blood Wraith (cassette)
Fluorescent Vibes (cassette)
Later:
Slasher Risk (CD)
Heliotaxis (CD-R)
The Holy Experiment (TBA)
Rust Worship (TBA)
Memorial Gore (Andy of Slasher Risk and Paul of Ob Units, THD, Rust Worship) (TBA)
Towering Heroic Dudes (CD/cassette box; co-release with Abandon Ship )
Family Battle Snake (TBA)
Charred Black Cheeks super split (TBA)
Matt Mottel (CD-R)
?????
Available now:
Millions - Static & Distance (3" CD-R) ($4): David Suss is the sole party behind Millions, and his monstrously dense and overpoweringly gorgeous take on the peaks and valleys of drone is remarkable for a solo project. Overseeing a complex set-up of guitar, synths, and electronics, Suss uses this mini-CD-R as the platform for a 20-minute composition that puts emphasis on the brighter tonalities and absorbing euphoria that inhibits his oeuvre. Layers of unending haze and blissful noise hold power for the whole of this piece; followers of Matthew Bower and the VHF imprint need keep close watch.
Edition of 100. In Stock
"There [is] a great balance between the persistent droning and superb melodies...with plenty of nuanced changes with kept Static And Distance progressing, without ever stepping out of its established character." - Smooth Assailing
Telecult Powers - Kiss The Viper's Fang (c30) ($6): The occult-drenched fog of this transcendental duo hangs high on Fang. In the midst of generating a lauded trajectory of constant performance and resoundingly impenetrable mythology, the homemade boilings of analog-generated dread forage forward in the midst of perplexing discomfort and lo-fi tape ambiance. Some of the richest minimal synth work you're likely to hear; a must for Cluster and Demons fanatics. Bleak, bizarre, and entrancing.
Edition of 100. In Stock
Skeleton Warrior - Pornographic Hologram (c70) ($6): One of the more secretive acts in the strange terrain of Florida-based noise makers, the always enigmatic Skeleton Warrior allow some more presence to take hold with this epic tape of bewildering glee. Pornographic Hologram very literally veers from speaker-damaging scuzz rock to amphetamine-ruined industrial pop to analog synth caterwauling to everything else in between. No spaces left untouched, and yet a distinct linking thread holds it all in place. A diverse and vigorous long-player made perfect for the adventurous.
Edition of 100. In Stock
"Skeleton Warrior basically play noise with slimy layers of stoner industrial riffs blended into the peanut butter...For lovers who like their rock over-amped, chimpanzee simple but with wisdom and guts, look no further. Skeleton Warrior have arrived as the latest thing to remind you that life is well...8/10" - Foxy Digitalis
Yellow Crystal Star - 777 (CD-R) ($7): Now operating as a Portland-based behemoth of dense and infinitely-encompassing drone, Yellow Crystal Star (the alias of one Mark Billings) uses his latest CD-R 777 to document a couple of collaborative live recordings from his summer tour of 2007. Unrelenting, studied, and uninhibited, the sets on this CD-R include both one of Billings' loudest shows (according to him) and a piece performed at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn which occurred on 7/7/07. Opening with a blood-boiling twenty-three minutes of sweetly painful guitar wretchedness that redirects into a death-psych anthem of sorts, Billings is joined by Virginia's Black History Moth and Florida's The Ear Is The Brain, while the title piece, a guitar/theremin with Katherine Holy Toledo pushes its initial inklings of serenity until they violently break, letting the deceptive gorgeousness of the ringing tones break apart into ecstatic wash and finally into chaotic self-immolation. Packaged in a slimline DVD case with an insert.
"[Billings' guitar] feels unnervingly good...[the pieces] return me to the unsettling nights I spent huddled in darkness with music that seemed to announce to me for the first time the strangeness of a familiar world, as though it had come to that particular darkness the same way neutrinos from some distant extinguished star go careening through unsuspecting bodies. 8/10" - Foxy Digitalis
Edition of 75. In Stock
Wet Fur - Chimeric (c20) ($6): Wet Fur is the solo alias of noise/sound generator Reed Evan Rosenberg. Having already made a name for himself in collaboration with sound artist Richard Kamerman as Tandem Electrics and as part of improv-jazz-noise monster The Groits, Chimeric distills Rosenberg's single-person digital havoc into 20 minutes of unnerving and relentless laptop destitution. Dynamically diverse and fulfillingly dense, Chimeric crunches disorienting clusters of mechanized fury alongside moments of disquieting extreme minimalism and ominous gaps. Two side-long pieces carefully crafted for the cassette format; a welcome and satisfying audio document of Rosenberg's acclaimed solo creations.
"Leaping entirely into the noise realm...sans a traditional musical jump-off of any sort, Rosenberg breaks for the busted oscillations of Rehberg and Menche in full, high-definition production...I'd say it's time for a long-player." - Animal Psi
Edition of 100. In Stock
Hells Hills - Little Matter Of Death (c30) ($6): An aural hallucination of multi-manned brash and foggy ambiance, three pieces drift forever-penetrable with clouded vapors, dank electronics met with possible codes and all manner of using instruments both standard and near-imaginary for the greater good of providing ominous comfort. A much-needed documentation of a musical force with already infamous happenings in-the-flesh, Little Matter Of Death is the debut recording from the Brooklyn-based quintet Hells Hills. An echoing guitar dream eventually gives way to a piece of guttural vocal shouts punctuated by lost beats and the utmost pile of astral sounds. Ending on the flip with a staggering quarter-hour session of their harshest and most surreal strengths manifested live to some lucky attendees, Hells Hills punctuate with a drone-infused mission, yet always finds strange diversions and other bits of sonic paraphernalia to coat these songs with an unequivocally luminous stamina.
Edition of 100. In Stock
"Two years in the making, the debut recording from New York five-piece Hells Hills, ‘Little Matter of Death’ is a C30 of no minor proportions...All parts appear for “Mountain on Top of a Mountainâ€, the definite highlight: broad, swinging percussion keeping a steady tread, crackling electronics and wide sweeps of guitar, a wall of drone like a darkened frieze from which buried voice echoes like a throaty animal. The darkness of Sunn O))) set to the frequencies of Growing...Whirring oscillations of noise break the monotone as stringed metal repeatedly dissolves into the amorphous fold, sustaining the crisis of labeling which will not afford these ugly/beautiful transgressions an easy title." - Animal Psi
Rust Worship - Charlatan Insolence (c20) ($5): Home-recorded electronic and man-made musings and ideas laid out by one P. Haney. Charlatan Insolence marks the beginnings of Haney's Rust Worship project, which seeks to probe various arrays of sound while not necessarily adhering to any specific style/aesthetic. This 20 minute cassette (Obsolete Units' first in the format) lays across some of Haney's home-recorded "harsher" and "maniacal" works, made with the deliberate misuse of vocals, guitar, fidelity, and whatever else could be found. Lo-fi, amateur absurdity and liberation created in the old Slope residence.
Edition of 50. In Stock
Towering Heroic Dudes - Blastula (CD-R) ($6): I saw Towering Heroic Dudes late last year, their first gathering together I believe, and the instantaneous pull of their ghost-in-the-circuitry feedback-forcefield turned into an omniscient sonic narcotic that left me totally bewildered. Playing in a almost pitch-black basement added to the effect, and although that set is now lost to the forward-motion of time, Blastula does its duty in furthering this trio's gargantuan clamor of hallucination. This release is a quintet of discordant conceptions, like some kind of wonderful Sword Heaven/Yellow Swans face-down (in my head). A glorious shitstorm of anxious squalor. Features some of the good samaritans behind BoyZone and killyrboss. The only release available from the original line-up. Comes packaged in a clasp envelope with unique artwork and an insert.
"With Blastula, Towering Heroic Dudes hit a new low in renegade CDr publishing, blighting the disc and its respective sleeve with sharpie scrawl, and stuffing it with a quartered liner sheet of Xerox in a mini manila envelope onto which more Xeroxed labels have been artlessly arranged (and which the cat has been chewing on, adding to the crusty appeal). Kudos! This rough presentation fits well the destroyed electronics within...It’s a lot like Skaters or Axolotl, but much uglier...Truly a motley affair" - Animal Psi
Edition of 75. In Stock
Boy + Girl - Untitled (CD-R) ($6): A.G. Davis is the oracular personage behind Boy + Girl, a foursome of sorts operating in the deceptively peculiar lab of abnormality developing in Florida. This untitled endeavor finds the group's material mercilessly diced and pummeled into a gory sludge of speed-freaked hallucination. Like all the best bits of those Sissy Spacek albums entering the fore-front and allowing the reprieves of found-sound chatter, evil music machines, and possible ambience. Even ends with a quasi-danceable entity. One of our most brain-gelatinating releases yet.
"Hard, heavy, and brutally disgusting…Screamed distorted vocals rise above trashed guitar tunings and blast beats floating somewhere between dissonant and indistinguishable....8/10" - Foxy Digitalis
"From the disc’s first facial rearranging burst of feedback, the grind is made of shrieking vocals, laptop gabber beats, and chaotic cut-and-paste, frantically welded to schizophrenic moments of quiet, methodic guitar, drums, what-have-you...Somewhat bizarre, and quite rad." - Animal Psi
Edition of 75. In Stock
Totally Dad - Two Hearts (CD) ($10): Here it is. The first Obsolete Units silver, factory-made, real-life CD. Two Hearts is a 32-minute document of Totally Dad's transformation from the filth-punk rabble-rousers on Dad's Fucked into demented Americana noise rogues of gargantuan hysterical disposition. The guitars battle off into scattered forests while primal screams, toms, and by the end a violin hoot from the treetops. The apt agglomeration of Beefheart, Sun City Girls, U.S. Maple, Harry Pussy, and Warmer Milks sprinkled in the top-soil, and out grows this. Very recommended.
"This new CD Ttwwoo Hearts [sic] has really made me take notice...it's mostly just the basic fact that it features two electric guitars that sound real good and hot, playing distorted rock chords and broken no wavey splinters against each other in hot rock rhythms. In other words this is fine Trout Mask Maple guitar clash and scribblage, played in a casual style, with no rhythm section or lead singer to potentially ground it or normalize it." - Blastitude
"The band play a jagged punk in several shattered pieces...the triptych edging on some pre-math constructions suggesting Shellac, US Maple, or better yet, Breadwinner has all the answers...Two Hearts is an unusual, idiosyncratic mix of styles, positing new ways of looking at the world and trajectory of music...highly recommended." - Animal Psi
Edition of 300. In Stock
Slasher Risk - Slasher Risk (CD-R) ($6): This NYC-based twosome channel mysterious tribal-skronk, pleasingly probing a rich vein of ominous yet boisterous aural art. Deceptively entrancing drumming and devastatingly affected guitar create something resembling Mouthus on an amorous date with the Silver Apples. This self-titled venture follows their self-released Step Into The Light, Keith CD-R with the first 20 plus minute piece venturing into almost uncharacteristic, but victorious pastoral lands while the second tune condenses the group's playfully turbulent side into a 3-minute gem. Each copy comes with a unique spray-painted insert.
"All in all it’s a perfect combination of slow and pretty, and fast and ugly – in both songs. 8/10" - Foxy Digitalis
"Forging the gap between noise and folk-psychedelics once bridged in parallel by MV and WWVV...the pair journey to and back, re-finding the face of their amps and adding streaks of feedback with ease." - Animal Psi
Edition of 75. SOLD OUT.
Richard Kamerman - Open Your Windows And Play These Discs Loudly (You're Exempt Mr. Pinnell) (Double 3" CD-R) ($6): Richard Kamerman is a sound artist/composer who manipulates various instruments and devices into constant transmissions of sound that are alternately as minimal and subtle as they are harsh and blusterous. Open Your Windows... is a double mini-CD-R package of three pieces: two for percussion and one for guitar, all of them ranging from abstract ruminations on space and silence to alarming detours into cacophonous uproar. Described by Erstwhile proprietor Jon Abbey as "the Michael J Fox of downtown," Kamerman has also released material with UK-based labels Curor and Ancient Records, David Kirby's netlabel HOMOPHONI, and his own Sub Commander Frequencies. Both CD-R's come packaged in a dual DVD case.
"Like a radio heard down low under the covers, when even the static becomes part of the song, and is just as welcoming, Kamerman’s pieces are best digested quietly, like waiting for the code to make sense." - Foxy Digitalis
Edition of 50. In Stock
Warm Climate - Agnomen 1 (CD-R) ($6):
Warm Climate are an L.A. duo whose improvised cacophony is of the kind usually afforded to much larger ensembles. These two make a lot of alternately intimidating and gorgeous noise for such small numbers; think Jackie-O Motherfucker becoming a host for the late, great Sun Ra while Skullflower bumrushes the stage for a night of paranormal merriment. Don't know if the fire marshall would shut that down. Let's hope not! Quixotical hallucinations aside, this one's not to be missed! Two album covers as well!
Regarding Agnomen 1: One day an old shepherd said to the effendi, "Nasreddin, I have raised many sheep in my life, but sooner or later most of them were eaten by wolves. According to you, are there any wolves in the world that do not eat sheep?"
"Certainly," replied the effendi.
"Which ones? Tell me quickly!"
"The dead ones," answered the effendi.
Edition of 50. In Stock
Oubliette - Stringéd Hate (CD-R) ($5): Georgia's Seth Oubliette makes solo harsh-noise soundscapes that combine compellingly-damaged static sonics with the creeping paranoia of muffled voices and found sounds. He's done a shitload of releases for all sorts of labels (check out his MySpace for more info), and Obsolete Units is proud to be releasing his latest series of harsh cacophony. Stringéd Hate is 20 tracks of lo-fi, lo-compressed filth, stereo violence of the greatest and most terrifying kind. Creepy spontaneous-combustion artwork included!
Edition of 50. In Stock
Totally Dad - Dad's Fucked (CD-R) ($5): Skronk-prov trio Totally Dad welcome you with Obsolete Units' inaugural release! Ultra lo-fi, free-form rock that recalls perhaps Harry Pussy and The Dead C airing out their grievances in an alternate-universe duel to the death. Blown-speaker scuzz rock for all!
From the desk of T.D.: Totally Dad is the sound of grown men trying, of baited strings and the poison drum. Totally Dad is the cry of brass usb and solar pipes, of having and holding, of letting you know why all the love that pulsates through this world can be taken in one measure. Totally Dad is an instant message to god from a keyboard of electric bubble wrap.
"Totally Dad's "Dad's Fucked" is actually really fucken good; like a head-on collision between Grand Funk Railroad on acid and the Nihilist Spasm Band on speedballs. You can't imagine what that sounds like, can you? Ok then, out-of-control spazzy improv noise-rock jams, like three super-charged robot orangutans in a small room with large amps and a drumkit and recording everything direct to two-track cassette on a pink "Cindy" cassette-recorder that someone's little sister left behind once and got run over in the street outside when she came back to pick it up...7/10" - Foxy Digitalis
Edition of 50. SOLD OUT.
A bunch of places, both terrestrial and electronic, should have various records of ours for sale: Other Music , Eclipse , Hospital Productions , Tomentosa Records , Eat Records , and Academy Records Annex .
Questions/Comments/Hate Mail/Flattery: obsolete.units [at] gmail.com
If you wish to purchase a release by check or cash, please send an e-mail, and we'll work something out.
