Dusted Features Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Die Trip Computer Die and Gregory Jacobsen. Tweet

Listed: Die Trip Computer Die + Gregory Jacobsen

Die Trip Computer Die

Die Trip Computer Die is a British underground rock trio led by noise decomposer/ video artist Lepke Buchwater (Milk from Cheltenham) with Xentos 'Fray' Bentos (also known as Pete the Drummer, Dr. Shagnasty and 'Bubbles' in the Beyonce fan club) and Ted Barrow. inventor of various ur-instruments, most notably 'The Baxtertron' which was an electronic 'black box' constructed inside a recently vacated Ferrero Rocher box. Their new album, Pretty Like A Rock is now available.

Xentoz Frayed Bentoz Favowite Recud Reviews:

1. Evan Parker - Solo for Soprano Saxophone (2001)
In normal stressful situations I’m not a great fan of the trumpet but when I listen to Evan’s Walmart sized chops I just have to kick off my high heels and yell, ‘Blow, Daddy, blow’. Actually, while I’m yakking about Walmart, I noticed that the inedible Trumpet Table Lamp is reduced from $19.74 to $17.37. Don’t let me stop you!

2. Leif Erickson & a cast of 50 - ‘The Last Supper’ from LP Bible Stories volume VIII
I was recently recording a string quartet in Rotterdam, adding overdubs to a new project with my friend Lukas Simonis. After hearing the donkey-like caterwauling that burst from her headphones (actually, it was me singing), the viola player yanked this disk out of her Fendi bag and thrust it in my face saying, ‘I think you should have this, it’s right up your street’.

She was right! I love this shit. Why is all the best stuff always out of print? My fond hope is that someday this will be re-released and twinned in a double density flat pack 9:1 DVD with ‘The Last Supper’ on one side and ‘The Life of the Prophet Mohammed’ on the other. Over the passage of time and with repeated listenings, it is my humble hope that those two wunnerful personalities, Christ and Mohammed, will merge into one Supergod. Finally, we’ll have just one religion to choose from.

Hmmm.. what the hell are we gonna call this Supergod? Let’s try combining their names.

‘Chrihammed’.??? Nawww, that sucks.

Or how about.. ‘Most’! Yes.. ‘Most’! I like that. ‘Most’! Even I could worship some shit like that. Just think.. no more wars, no more alcohol, no more bad news from Iraq. We could institute a golden age of auto-jihad on planet Earth. Each and every one of us could blow ourselves up with an exploding fountain pen and leave this polluted mudball to the fluffy wardenship of da birds and da bees. Already I can envisage a pair of fractious aardvarks taking a crap in the Oval Office.

3. Girls Aloud - 'Biology’ from CD Chemistry (2005)
Play this track! It will make your hi fi sound like it’s just come back from a visit to the psycho repairman (I envisage him as kind of an audio Ed Gein).

Girls Aloud? Is there a pun buried in there? I even saw the accompanying video for ‘Biology’ very late one night on the arse end of coming down from an unpleasant journey into crack addiction. ‘Man, that rock! It f**ks wid yo’ head’.

As I watched, slumped like a pussycat doll in front of the TV, I swear Cheryl the singer was regurgitating chewed up lumps of Michael Jackson’s buttocks. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if I was hallucinating or not. Meanwhile Nadine (the blonde muppet who in all likelihood is the product of a graveyard sexual liaison between Miss Piggy and one of the Teletubbies – ie. the horny one) twirled and twitched so violently in her pink crinoline that I had to retch into my golden slippers.

It’s all a question of opposites detract. These days, the stuff I love the most is the stuff I hate the most.

Lepke Buchwater:

4. The Osmonds - The Plan
The Moody Blues have a lot to answer for. Those swoony heartthrobs, The Osmonds conceive their agnostic epic concept album, The Plan. Tiptop arrangements, ‘vignettes’, psychedelic pastiche, obligatory slush, edits, thilthy rock out of THE LAST DAYS. Them Mormon boys pull out all the stops….

Meanwhile in heaven, ALL album artwork will look like this.

Get two copies today.

5. Magma - Udu Wudu
Meanwhile in Hades, Nordic ogre-mums feed hungry tusked brats with Udu Wudu, dark steamy chunks of Magma. Tomato able. Moma giv’em some morsals of Ghost Dance (I&II) and Ork Sun, erie prequel to side 2, De Futura. Inventing a new world complete with new language, Christian Vander and Janek Top stuka dive it half dead.

6. Firesign Theatre – predicts ”in the next world you’re on your own”
Originally producing their radio plays on KPFK radio, the quartet of Philip Procter, David Ossman, Peter Bergman and Philip Austen make records of comedy drama that tap into the ice-cream brain of the multi-media channel-hopping American Dream. Subliminal muzaks, meticulous sound effects, terrific voice actors, crazy plots and zany dialogue that just gets funnier each time you play it Ted Barrow

7. Music from Tonga – The Friendly Isles
Thrill to the beautiful melodies, gasp at the rich harmonic structures as this warm and sophisticated collection of field recordings takes you far away to what heaven must sound like from earth. Beach choirs, small and large, local pop performers and music written by their kings and queens. Break out the rum and iron your deck chairs. It’s gonna be a warm and sultry night.

8. The Who - Quadraphrenia
What all rock operas should be – pompous stomping endlessly repeating rearranged themes with some powerfully painful lyrical moments: The Who tell it like it was in this universal tale of teenage ‘madness’ and multiplicity – Keith Moon at his very best; (I swear you can hear him growling on the remastered CD version)

9. Augustus Pablo – Original Rockers (compilation)
Augustus Pablo is a craftsman of the simple, powerful and moving tune, played with dignity, majesty and grace, and a scholar of dub. Spiritually uplifting and endlessly charming he illuminates the space between notes, Ma, with the touch of a Zen master

10. Dusty Springfield - A Girl called Dusty
London living brings occasional free gifts amongst the abandoned. Last year, as well as keyboards, a sampler and a drum kit, I found this, her first album, sitting on a garden wall. Even though its scratched to hell it is just fab, fab, fab, and listening to it reveals all that is good about great song recording; brilliant arrangements and breathtaking singing. What it lacks in what an American recording from Capital Studios would have it more than makes up for with the great sounds and performances that she personally dragged out of the musicians illustrating that unique spirit of Britain in the 60s. Go Go Girlie!

Gregory Jacobsen

Gregory Jacobsen is a busy man. As his feminine alter-ego “Miss Candy Shuntz,” he leads the band Lovely Little Girls. Mixing neo-Victorian effeteness with no-wavey nihilism, the Girls consistently delight discerning Chicagoans with their thoughtfully choreographed live shows. But that ain’t it, not by a damn sight. He is also somehow involved with the Ritualistic School of Errors, an enigmatic, inspired, odd-looking ballet troupe. The courageous California label Resipiscent recently reissued the School’s eponymous CD/DVD package. Like RSoE, Jacobsen’s visual art, viewable at his website, showcases his warped notion of what’s cute, which makes room for a small army of misshapen creatures and a “pubic hair cake.” When he’s not doing any of that, his “Fatty Jubbo” persona curates the peculiar MP3 blog Cake and Polka Parade and posts darkly humorous links and observations to WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Under any of these hats, he’s a pure individualist, disdainful of any safe niche, precious affectation or “tedious little subculture.”

I will leave out the obvious stuff that I love, since it has been written about to death: Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, PIL’s Second Edition, the Residents…but of course I have to leave in one album by:

1. The Fall– Grotesque

Although there are plenty of Fall records to choose from, Grotesque still remains my god-like, genius favorite. There were a few years where I must have listened to this album every day. This is the Hanley/Riley/Scanlon stripped down and dissonant lineup at their best, with Mark E. Smith rattling off his greatest cryptic, misanthropic and verbiage-ripe prose. Grotesque seems so desperate and bleak.

2. US Maple – Sang Phat Editor

Perhaps the swan song of Chicago No-Wave, this record brought all the formal deconstruction of the era to a tightly wound and concise head. Orchestrated failure that’s danceable when your limbs are broken! There was nowhere to go from here! Later US Maple records started putting the pieces back into place.

3. Stockhausen - Momente

Momente is a massive orchestration for solo soprano, four choir groups and thirteen instrumentalists and was composed in “moments.” What strikes me most about this piece is its theatricality… Stockhausen integrates hand clapping, grunts, texts and instrument bashing with grand dissonant swells and ejaculations. Imagine Musique Concrete performed live.

4. Francis E. Dec – Rants

Francis E. Dec, Esquire, of 29 Maple Ave, Hempstead, New York, is a mysterious kook who would post flyers around town packed with dense, long-winded and paranoid diatribes, railing against his supposed persecutors. There was a sort of frantic music in his writing, especially with his repetition of phrases such as, "Frankenstein Earphone Radio," "Frankenstein Eyesight TV" and "Computer God Parroting Puppet Gangster Slaves”. In the ‘80s, a professional DJ recorded the reading of his rants in a very quick but straightforward voice, echoing the look of the flyers, with their formal typewritten font and obvious mental derangement (with how tightly the text is squeezed onto the page). More info and all the recordings can be found at Ubuweb.

5. Math – Rubber Musique

I have gone on and on about this record for so many years. This is Quintron’s first band with Jody Mechanic and Michael Colligan. It’s an odd mix of klezmer, haunted house spook melodies, dissonance and strangled vocals. This record really captured my imagination when I was 18 and had just moved to Chicago…it was the height of the Chicago No-Wave scene, and for me, this record embodied the filth, bleakness and ridiculousness of the city I just moved to.

6. Slayer - Reign In Blood

Metal was my first love, especially the holy thrash trinity of Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer. Slayer had something else though, a certain sound that was brutal and wholly distinctive thanks to the double guitar assault of King and Henneman, Lombardo’s drumming, and Araya’s howl… and through all the wreckage inflicted, they still retained some of their NWOBHM melodic roots. Reign In Blood is certainly their fucked up thirty-minute masterpiece. The obligatory metal entry was a tough call between this and Celtic Frost’s Morbid Tales.

7. Renaldo & The Loaf – Songs For Swinging Larvae

I love the Residents, but for me this record takes the cake on all the Residents’ output. A mix of children’s music, world music and Residents insanity compressed into goofy and stuttered little pop songs performed with odd instrumentation. Music to dance to as the insects close in on the lump of filth you have cultivated on your lips.

8. Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry - Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul

My favorite Musique Concrete composition. It’s so dense with sound and ideas, yet paced at incredibly creepy lurch. The manipulated sounds are so distinctive and the whole piece progresses like a fevered narrative. Throw a soprano into anything and I will instantly like it.

9. Arrigo Barnabe – Clara Crocodillo

Whoa! I first heard this when WFMU posted a track from the album on its On The Download page. I was truly floored when I heard the crazy Portuguese ranting over the careening rhythm, suddenly breaking into a ridiculous horn section backed by lady vocals. The whole album doesn’t let up, either – a mix of Rock In Opposition, Zappa, skronky horns and Brazilian rhythms. I shove this record down the throat of everyone I meet. It’s sadly out of print, but it’s relatively easy to find on Soulseek. His other records are equally as great, but this one is his best.

10. Teddy & the Frat Girls – I Wanna Be a Man

When I was fifteen, Teddy & the Frat Girls was my first taste of complete mental derangement in musical form. Imagine a militant lesbian version of the Shaggs screeching about their love of fecal matter, drugs and pussy over detuned bashing. The band was originally called Sheer Smegma, but Alternative Tentacles re-released their EP under the Frat Girls name for some reason.

By Dusted Magazine

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