No Eyed Bird

Re-release of the 1983 cassette comp under Iham Products and FOPI. The album features shorts clips, most under a minute with clips like a 39 second Frank Zappa interview to to a piece by Charles Manson called Charlie and his MAM. Compiled by David Tibet (of Current 93), many are looped, foreign language and mostly of Throbbing Gristle material. This stands as the missing piece of the jigsaw between Coum Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV including rehearsals, radio bytes, phone calls, unreleased demos, interviews and ultra nonsense. The original release was issued in February 1983 as the fourth, and final issue of the Nanavesh magazine (The tape was the issue and didn’t include a written publication with it). The magazine concentrated initially on Throbbing Gristle and with its demise it moved onto Psychic TV. 23 Drifts To Guestling is a retrospective tape of Throbbing Gristle & basically a magazine on tape. It contains an interesting insight into TG with messages from their ansaphone, some material, an interview with Genesis following the ‘Prostitution’ exhibition at the ICA, an interview with American spree killer Gary Gilmore, a chat between Genesis and Monte Cazazza, bits and pieces of songs and a few death threats over the phone. It makes compulsive listening because it’s so strangely put together and it’s a good insight into the character of Mr P-Orridge.

-johnny darko

The Vinyl Project is 79 sound byte tracks commenting on various political issues in the USA such as the prison system, lesbianism, black power, capitalism, poverty, terrorism, Native Americans, Vietnam War, the police state, Chicanos, the KKK, segregation and corporate media. The clips also point out the problems with the USA’s power over other nations carried out through brute force, war and domination over the world. The release is out of San Francisco and has a California/ Bay Area focus to it. Speeches by key people such as Noam Chomsky, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Howard Zinn. The first and last tracks are songs sung by the Black Panther Kids. The vinyl also features clips by the Earth Liberation Front. The clips are surrounded by a few seconds of silence and may be hard to find quickly, but its sole purpose is for DJ sampling. The focus of the bulk of the clips is on African American rights and racism. It would be nice to have track times next to each track as some are minutes, and others a few seconds.