"...the best form of sound collage, very organic, lightly intoxicating and satisfyingly minimal." - Norman Records
"Sweet relief comes in the form of Allegory & Violence, the first hardcopy release by The Jack Bohlen Book Club. Being somewhat of an elusive figure, we won't focus too much on the man behind the JBBC, but what that leaves us with is an intriguing collection of field recordings, found sounds and numbers-stations, all either obscuring or collectively building
tonalities, drones, little dissonances and hidden melodies that could be accidentally recorded from some distant brittle radio signal just as easily as they could be composed and performed. A true cross-pollination of academic sound-collage and careful compositional placement happens here, and we're pleased to be the ones to bring it to you." - Install
'Lion & Lamb' now available from Lisbon-based label Test Tube. Download mp3 here.
"Theme for a will to power."
"Kevin Murphy comes from the U.S. of A. and mainly works around ultra-minimalistic compositions based on drones and electro-acoustic frequencies. The unusual alias he has picked up - The Jack Bohlen Book Club - was probably taken from a Philip K. Dick sci-fi novel called 'Martian Time-Slip', where the main character is a skilled repairmen and recovering schizophrenic. The story takes place on planet Mars around the year 1994. Why would there be a Book Club with his name? I honestly don't know. As for 'Lion & Lamb', it's a 39 minute two-dimensional drone trip. Not much happening here if you don't appreciate this kind of minimalist composition. For those who get high with this kind of sound, hell, just crank up the volume and trip your way into mars of some other planet! Get this!" - Test Tube
******
"A dense ultra-minimalist approach to ambience perfectly blending meticulous sound design and field recording. Distant voices and faint commotion emerge softly from gentle static and tones. Touches of slowly morphing melodies get sprinkled in along the way originating from various organic and synthetic sources. The album in its whole creates a truly unique melancholic experience perfect for those rainy Sunday afternoons and late nights. Falling asleep during a late night marathon of The Twilight Zone. Three in the morning at the abandoned warehouse. Two way radio interference delivering snippets of indecipherable conversation. The midnight hum from a nearby airport. A truly beautiful album intended not only for the sole purpose of listening...but of experiencing. Preferably in complete darkness and isolation where this album is sure to have its most profound effect." - Experimedia.org
'1979' LP available also for free download at Experimedia
Let us imagine this comment were weightless, Carried along by a snail in a sundress, Given, quite lightly, to fleet-footed mice, Then transferred hands to a finger-device, Shaped by a man who, obsessed with his digits, Daring, decided what he should do with it— He mailed this comment out just like a letter, Which did arrive to me rain-soaked (much wetter), Than when first given to rodent-like hands, Such is the way love finds transit through lands! Yet, now dear Reader, we’ve come to the moment When you shall thus receive this road-worn comment, Thus, I do hope you appreciate care, Slow-style delivery (and some slight wear!).
In appreciation of long-traveled correspondence and new e-friendship!
Love + Ruckus, Jordan.
P.S. Though I don't think we met, I really appreciate seeing you in the audience from where I sang. You are a model audience member, sir! May I return the favor, in the future! Beautiful sounds!
Just because we love the 1979 album, we'll be playing more tracks from it this coming saturday's show. Starting though 4 AM local time. But there's always the podcasts available
because we have learned to deal with sound patterns organically, for practical goals, from before we can remember, without reflection or instruction or conscious analysis, we all produce sounds, and understand them, with great efficiency and subtle nuance. Because of that skill, acquired like the ability to walk and run, we already have finely developed powers that let us appreciate the sound of even an isolated single line of poetry--even if we have very little idea of the meaning--that someone might quote with appreciation.
Hello, just stopping by to say hi...um ya well i hope all is well. Just downloaded your tracks, im going to turn of all the lights and see where you take me, later.
In the morning when he woke the rain had stopped. He listened to the slack drip of water. He shifted his hips on the hard concrete and looked out through the boards at the gray country. The boy was still sleeping. Water dropped in puddles in the floor. Small bubbles appeared and skated and vanished again. In a town in the piedmont they'd slept in a place like this and listened to the rain. There was an oldfashioned drugstore there with a black marble counter and chrome stools with tattered plastic seats patched with electrical tape. The pharmacy was looted but the store itself was oddly intact. Expensive electronic equipment sat unmolested on the shelves. He stood looking the place over. Sundries. Notions. What are these? He took the boy's hand and led him out but the boy had already seen it. A human head beneath a cakebell at the end of the counter. Dessicated. Wearing a ballcap. Dried eyes turned sadly inward. Did he dream this? He did not. He rose and knelt and blew at the coals and dragged up the burned board ends and got the fire going. -Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Ukisan decided to dye his denim jeans black. He wanted to use India ink, but it made him felt uneasy using the ink of a country that had been imperially expoited for the cotton that made his jeans. So he used a generic ink on his levi's instead.
he walked beside a prostitute on his way into a coal-coated alleyway, leading to a bar full of disreputables and refugees, only to find himself equal to anyone else in the place. where did the stock in his life get spent?
-(that was actually all me and no one else, not necessarily in reference to you, but in reference to the style of lit I read) Love, hearts, and stars--
Ms. Rose
