New Links: Wondrous, Failed Composites!

Hello Friends,

To Live and Shave in L.A.'s Wondrous, Failed Composites!, released by Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers in December 1995 (on a split 7" with lovely, catarrh-besotted UK weirdos Ceramic Hobs), melded a pair of new songs assayed August 18, 1995 on Columbia University's student radio outlet WKCR-FM to a muffled shriek of despairing desire. The station's recordings were unusable, and my stereo cassette versions sounded like the sighs of corrupted pipe fittings, or maybe a Flowmaster muffler on an electric pencil sharpener. So far, so foul. I took the tracks back to Miami, recorded new vocal overlays and made loops and stabs from those and bits of György Ligeti, James MacDonald, and film dialogue from Richard Pryor (from Paul Schrader's titanic Blue Collar) and Don Johnson's "your brother was a punk" scene from John Frankenheimer's ever-underrated Dead-Bang (which seemed to mirror the lurid-as-prosaic tone of the EP), mixed it down, and sent it into the uncaring void. Compositionally, however, "Failed" served as another gateway release to Wigmaker. A slurred template, re-shuffled and buttressed, with sabotaged narrative. The two tracks are a bit of a mess, really, but their unresolved nature gave me a massive art hard-on. Just my clozapine tort...

To Live and Shave in L.A. - Wondrous, Failed Composites!



Here.

01 Profane Time (3:25)
02 Dead Shanty Town Tease (4:57)

Released by Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers on 7" (no matrix number), December 1995.

Recorded by Tom Smith on stereo cassette at WKCR-FM, Columbia University, New York, NY, on August 18, 1995.

Additional recording by TS at the Studio, Miami, on November 15, 1995.

Tom Smith - voice, tape edits and loops
Rat Bastard - bass
Ben Wolcottt - oscillator

Mixed and produced by Tom.

Music Tom Smith & TLASILA / Lyrics TS.

With thanks to Phil/Betley, WKCR-FM and Ceramic Hobs.

c+p 1995 TS/TLASILA/BWCD.

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