[pe160]Dennis Palmer
White Wuff
[pe159]Stephen Flinn / Bryan Eubanks
[pe158]Pet The Tiger
Hail The Traveler
[pe157]Tungu
Successful Utilization of Elements
[pe156]Philip Gayle
Mammoth Flower
[pe155]Seeded Plain
Badminton, The Volleys
[pe154]Bryan Day & Dereck Higgins
Woven Territories
[pe153]John Krausbauer & David Maranha
[pe152]Evan Lipson
Echo Chamber
[pe151]Guro Skumsnes Moe & Philippe Petit
[pe150]Brasilia Laptop Orchestra
10 yEars aLive
[pe149]Bill Brovold
Pi
[pe148]Illusion of Safety & Z'ev
[pe147]Naturaliste
Temporary Presence
[pe146]Euphotic
Isopleths
[pe145]Pet The Tiger
Gaze Emanations
[pe144]Ashtray Navigations & Anla Courtis
Protozoic Rock Express
[pe143]Alan Sondheim
Future Speed Future
[pe142]Albert / Day / Kreimer
Mutations
[pe141]Bill Brovold's Stone Soup
Michael Goldberg Variations
[pe140]Michael Gendreau
Polvo Seran, Mas Polvo Enamorado
[pe139]Hélène Breschand & Elliott Sharp
Chansons du Crépuscule
[pe138]Alan Sondheim / Azure Carter / Luke Damrosch
LIMIT
[pe137]Collision Stories
Those Missing Will Complete Us
[pe136]Ghost In The House
Second Sight
[pe135]Henry Kaiser / Alan Licht
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[pe134]Peter Aaron / Brian Chase Duo
Purges
[pe133]Alan Sondheim / Azure Carter / Luke Damrosch
Threnody
[pe132]Ou
Scrambled!
[pe131]Many Arms & Toshimaru Nakamura
[pe130]Ben Bennett / Jack Wright
Tangle
[pe129]Period
2
[pe128]Music For Hard Times
City of Cardboard
[pe127]Tetuzi Akiyama & Anla Courtis
Naranja Songs
[pe126]Massimo Falascone
Variazioni Mumacs
[pe125]Auris + Gino
Rub
[pe124]Honnda
Fantasy Remover
[pe123]Azure Carter & Alan Sondheim
Avatar Woman
[pe122]Various Artists
The Unscratchable Itch: A Tribute To Little Fyodor
[pe121]Nels Cline / Elliott Sharp
Open The Door
[pe120]Pretty Monsters
[pe119]Cactus Truck
Brand New For China!
[pe118]Belcher / Bivins Double Quartet
EXO
[pe117]Normal Love
Survival Tricks
[pe116]Ron Anderson / Robert L. Pepper / David Tamura / Philippe Petit
Closed Encounters of the 4 Minds
[pe115]Philip Gayle
Babanço Total
[pe114]Dino Felipe
Sorta' Bleu
[pe113]Ydestroyde
Synzosizer
[pe112]Pilesar
Radio Friendly
[pe111]Little Fyodor
Peace is Boring
[pe110]Courtis / Yamamoto / Yoshimi
Live at Kanadian
[pe109]Bob Marsh
Viovox
[pe108]Tartar Lamb
60 Metonymies
[pe107]Shelf Life
Ductworks
[pe106]A Tomato a Day
The Moon is Green
[pe105]D + D
[pe104]The Mighty Vitamins
Take-Out
[pe103]Smut / OVO
Split 7"
[pe102]Bill Horist / Marron
Sleephammer
[pe101]Richard Trosper
The Ocean
[pe100]Shinyville
No Sleep till Babylon
[pe99]Lisi
Damn It!!
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[pe97]Emily Hay / Marcos Fernandes
We Are
[pe96]The Machine Gun TV
GO->
[pe95]Monotract
Live In Japan
[pe94]Mike Pride
The Ensemble is an Electronic Device
[pe93]Jorge Castro
Cinética
[pe92]Yagihashi Tsukasa
Automatic
[pe91]Eftus Spectun
The Tocks Clicking
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Tasogare
[pe88]Eric Cook
Asymptosy
[pe87] Onid & Isil
[pe86]Autodidact
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[pe85]Che Guevara Memorial Marching (and Stationary) Accordion Band
[pe84]Day / Boardman
One to Seven
[pe83]Knot + Over
[pe82]Shifts
Vertonen 9
[pe81]Blue Collar
Lovely Hazel
[pe80]Mogami
[pe79]Jesse Krakow
Oceans in the Sun
[pe78]Diaz-Infante / Forsyth / Scherzberg
A Barren Place of Overwhelming Simplicity
[pe77]Angels
[pe76]Khoury / Shearer / Hall
Braille
[pe75]Renato Rinaldi
The Time and the Room
[pe74]Masami Kawaguchi
Live in December
[pe72]Watch the Stereo
Presents...
[pe71]Modern Day Urban Barbarians
The Endless Retreat
[pe70]The Bunny Brains
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[pe69]Jack Wright & Bob Marsh
Birds in the Hand
[pe68]Free From Disguise
[pe67]Jad Fair & Jason Willett
Superfine
[pe66]Baker / Baker / Bloor
Terza Rima
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Belcher / Bivins Double Quartet - EXO
CD (Bloominton, IN)



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Philip Anderson - electronics, vocals, fx
Marty Belcher - sopranino, soprano, tenor saxes
Jason Bivins - electric guitar, fx
David Miller - trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn
Chris Rall - tenor sax, percussion
Michael Rings - synthesizers, vocals, electric guitar, fx
Joe Stone - drums, samples
Dan Wick - piano, drums

Reviews:
(Babysue) We've learned to expect the unexpected from releases on the strangely-named Richmond, California-based label Public Eyesore. This disc arrived with no press release, no publicity photo, and no explanations...which is usually a good thing because it forces lazy writers like us to actually focus on the music instead of extraneous details. This 58 minute plus album features fourteen tracks of experimental modern classical music that is moody and thought provoking. Playing on the album are Philip Anderson (electronics, vocals, fx), Marty Belcher (sopranino, soproano, tenor saxes), Jason Bivins (electric guitar, fx), David Miller (trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn), Chris Rail (tenor sax, percussion), Michael Rings (synthesizers, vocals, electric guitar, fx), Joe Stone (drums, samples), and Dan Wick (piano, drums). With so many artists taking part, you'd think that these tracks would be thick and muddy...but instead the exact opposite is true. There are plenty of wide open spaces between the instruments...and the players don't seem interesting in overplaying. There are no songs listed on the sleeve. Provocative and compelling stuff. - Don Seven

(Deaf Sparrow) Really dig this label, the guy usually doesn’t send anything to explain what he’s doing, just a disc, nicely packaged, with that cool label logo on the back, nothing more. Not even sure if it’s a dude, to be honest, could be a ‘chick’ as they say, or perhaps ‘gurl’, is that how it’s spelled now? Luckily for us, EXO has a nice historical background provided in the digipack we were sent, which serves well to summarize here. Improv has been around for a long time, a very long time, but it’s typically been associated with all forms of jazz; very rarely do you see it mentioned in other contexts, which is actually kind of strange since most noise “musicians” are basically improv in their foundations. Both Belcher and Bivins have a lot of experience together, and after parting ways for a short time and working on other projects, they came together with some other musicians to conceive this album, which is simple. EXO was conceived as improv to be created using musicians from different background and styles who were “told to play without stylistic limitations”. They were further instructed to not think of what they were creating as a ‘jazz album’, unless it led to that, but just the general idea of ‘improv’. Easy, take your instruments, start playing, see where it goes, and record it in a single session. Improv is a hard approach to take, because all of it risks the, as we previously titled it in an older review, ‘hornets nest’ approach. Meaning, it tends to all sound like a bunch of buzzing that flies around your head, irritates you, and might go somewhere, might not, depends on the hornets. The best improv is one of two types, it either flows and ebbs with the musicians finding a strange groove among each other, or it provides a canvas with endlessly changing textures for the listener to sort out for themselves, imparting their own feelings into the listen. EXO would be the latter. You have a whoppingly shocking total of eight different musicians on this album, and almost double that number in instruments utilized. All of the tracks are untitled, unless you consider Roman numerals to be titles, and serve as more of a “single piece of music with multiple parts”, to directly quote the write-up inside the digipack. Electronics, vocals, tenor sax, piano, electric guitar, and random, esoteric tidbits like “fx” whatever in the hell that means. It means whatever you want that’s the damn beauty of it. EXO is a rare hit, for the most part, in improv. The combination of electronics and vocals into the mix is something you typically don’t see, and it adds extra layers to the usual randomness you’d expect, something more ethereal and complex. Some of the keyboards, for example, are random, eerie whispers in the background, overcast by random vocal sounds and brass. Using more instruments is one of the reasons it’s so much more successful than the usual, because it’s clearly enabled the musicians to remove the classic restrictions of improv and enter different territories. This could have been a disaster, trust us, we’ve seen it before, but it’s obvious the selection of artists chosen by Blecher and Bivins know their stuff, because the sheer number of them would have made it impossible to pull off otherwise. EXO is a great listen alone, in the dark, brooding over emotions you can’t comprehend, but the listener should realize it has little place outside of such a context. This isn’t something you listen to at the gym (tried that), probably not on a long car ride either, because you’ll enter the doldrums and fly into a pit in a ball of flames. Definitely some of the better improv we’ve seen around here in a long time, the only thing it really lacks are those “wow” moments of the ‘ebb and flow’ approach mentioned earlier in this review. If you think of Masonna, that’s a great analogy, because in an interview he revealed once that he records hours upon hours of crap, and then cuts it all out for the few moments that were the best, chaining it all together. You tend to not that get that kind of thing here, but for what it is it does it well. - Stanley Stepanic


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