the
entertainment conglomerate that files and chimes |
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What we've done most recently is the Dark Beloved Cloud Singles Club--a
series of 3-inch CD singles that you get for art, not
money! (Kind of like Artist Trading Cards... but with
extra music, and different dimensions.) Click for
the whole story. And have a look at some of the artwork that other subscribers have
done! Got questions? Email us at cloud [at-sign] darkbelovedcloud.com. |
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MOST RECENTLY
PRECIPITATED DBC255 Fly
Ashtray Doodnat Mahadeo
mini-CD Ten
gyroscopically balanced songs in nineteen minutes by NYC's
immortal (they've been at this for 25 years!), inimitable,
incredible weirdo rockers. Features live favorite "Chrome
Jefferson" and guest appearances by a horn section that
appears to be several sheets to the wind. Only available to
singles club subscribers! DBC253 Grace
Braun's "The Soldier & The Lady" mini-CD Two trad.-arr.
wonders from the indelible voice of D.Q.E., "The Soldier
& The Lady" and "The Fox." Just Grace and a guitar,
recorded on location on Earth, the way these songs were
intended to be. Only available to singles club subscribers! |
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ALSO AVAILABLE DBC252
Melt-Banana/Fat Day Q./A.
split mini-CD Tokyo's
scalding skronk-tornado Melt-Banana torch Devo's
"Uncontrollable Urge"; Boston's mind-mangling Fat Day
contribute their version of the same band's "Timing-X," then
head out beyond the potato stratosphere with two original...
sound-things. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC250 The
Cannanes' Grassy Flat mini-CD An exquisite
four-song EP by the magnificent, long-running Australian pop
band: sinuous, insinuating, comfortably personal, graced
with a solitary trumpet. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC251 The
Nanobot Auxiliary Ballet and the Museum of Modern Insect
Art with the Office of Woodland Security, and the Evil
House of Handshakes, Present: Tylanolandadida - The Deadly
Ballerina - Featuring: The Chillbotslider, the
Pushbuttonmaster, and the WhiteHotFunkBot - And
Introducing: The Doodads of Doom and the Recipe Box of
Spells'
Thank You Very Much For Coming: A Concept Single about
Small Things in 3 Parts with Lecture and Slideshow by
Mr. Billy Mavreas
mini-CD Er... yes.
Exactly. The Canadian "hand-cranked electronica" group that
evolved from the legendary Pest 5000 have come up with a
very high-concept EP with some fine bleepy-bloopy songs on
it. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC249 Ida's
"Wait" mini-CD Three rich,
expansive and daydreamy songs from the New Yorkers with the
tenderest three-part harmonies on the planet, recorded at
the sessions for their Heart Like a River
album. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC248 The
In Out's Fragmento
mini-CD A five-song EP
by Boston's most knife-twisting garage-rock band, who've
evolved into something stickier and slitherier, all brains
and viscera. Includes a Jethro Tull cover, of all things.
Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC247
Barbara Manning & the Go-Luckys!' "Deep Sea Diver"
mini-CD Three brief,
serrated bursts of double-distilled bittersweetness from the
amazing Californian songwriter and her faithful German band,
Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC245
Franklin Bruno's Set of Pipes
mini-CD Seven songs
(well, six, really) from the Nothing Painted Blue/Jenny
Toomey songwriter, organized around the idea of voice, both
literal and political. Includes an absolutely staggering
cover of Brecht/Eisler's "Ballad of the Soldier." Only
available to singles
club
subscribers! DBC244
ninetynine's "Receiving the Sounds of Science Fiction"
mini-CD Five new songs
from Melbourne, Australia's Laura MacFarlane and
company--everybody gets to write a song of his or her own
this time, and everything swirls against the rocks and sends
up spray. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC242
Cordelia's Dad's "Jane" mini-CD Two faces of
this awesome, long-running trio with roots in music much
older than they are: a bone-chilling trad. arr. acoustic
epic about a terrible, terrible mistake, plus a pair of
crest-and-crash electric monsoons. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC241
Oedipus's "Hybrid Phase Yellow" mini-CD Alig (from
Family Fodder) and Ann-Marte Rygh collaborate on a
delicately vertiginous 15-minute voice vortex. Only
available to singles club subscribers!
DBC239 Cantilever
mini-CD A celebration
of ten years of Dark Beloved Cloud, with a whole bunch of
artists intersecting each other's work. Hrvatski remixes God
Is My Co-Pilot, Uncle Wiggly blazes full-on live, Azalia
Snail reconfigures Spaceheads, Robert Scott overdubs Liz
Bustamante, Alan Smithee covers the In Out, and Sinistre
disintegrates pHoaming Edison. Only available to singles club subscribers! DBC238
Family Fodder's "Tender Words" mini-CD A new wave song
about making love not war, a twitchy bit of dub, two brief
conversations about making a point, and a traditional chanson about making love not war (which was illegal to perform in
France until the mid-'70s). Only available to singles club subscribers!
DBC237 DQE
& Grace Braun's I'm Your Girl double-CD Two albums'
worth of Atlanta's most astonishing songwriter. Grace Braun
is a kick-ass rockabilly singer/guitarist with a voice like
nothing you've ever heard. She plays wild electric rock 'n'
roll with her long-running trio DQE, and acoustic old-time
country and folk music under her own name. I'm Your Girl
is actually two albums with the same name, showing off both
sides of Grace: one disc is a finely drawn acoustic
pastoral, the other one a brawling, hollering electric
hootenanny. 37 songs in all (well, 36--she tackles the title
tune both ways), including covers of Nick Drake, the Carter
Family, Daniel Johnston and, er, Robert Frost. And the whole
thing is only $13 postpaid! Want to hear some MP3s first?
There are four on Grace's own site, here. DBC236 Fat
Day's Fat Day IV
CD Boston's insane
art-hardcore veterans Fat Day included an "Order Your Own
Fat Day Song!" postcard with their album Burrega! This is the result of the postcards they got back: 21
songs written by 21 Fat Day fans. It's the accomplishment of
their career, one of the most alien punk records ever made:
they've taken a stylistic leap in all directions at once,
and the result is pretty incredible. It took two years to
make, culminating in a sewer-pipe rupture that covered their
entire studio and all of their equipment in human feces. As
they put it, "so Fat Day it hurts." You can see all the
original postcards and other "scores" here--we
recommend it very
highly. $10 postpaid. DBC234
Purple Ivy Shadows' Field Guide CD Purple Ivy
Shadows creep up on you. Their fifth album is the high point
of over ten years of the Providence, RI quartet's search for
the perfect drone through foggy shoegazer rock, heartbroken
country, and the roaring buzz of the bayou. It's their
warmest and darkest record to date, slow and rich, dense
with detail and instrumental crosstalk. Field Guide includes devastating live favorites like "Oh My Word" and
"Deepstep in a Baptist" that have never made it to a CD
before, and it flows like molten glass--the perfect
synthesis of "cosmic American music" and kosmische Krautbuzz. $10 postpaid. DBC233 Dark
Beloved Cloud Singing Catalogue II CD A small present
for you: a 3-inch CD with 17 brief new songs by dbc artists
and friends: Franklin Bruno, Hrvatski, Jad Fair, Purple Ivy
Shadows, Robert Scott, Azalia Snail, Greenpot Bluepot,
pHoaming Edison, Grace Braun of DQE, Chris Knox, ORTHO,
Oedipus, Sinistre, Tara Needham, Fly Ashtray, Family Fodder,
and God Is My Co-Pilot. Specially engineered to make you
want to buy stuff here! Want one gratis? Here's how: send a
note to sing [at-sign] darkbelovedcloud.com, and tell us
your name, your address, and (this is important) your
happiest music-related memory. DBC231
Azalia Snail's Brazen Arrows
CD Azalia's
eleventh solo album is a major change for her--she's put
down her guitar and picked up an Omnichord (the chiming
autoharp-like keyboard favored by Chris Knox) and a new
affection for the color of the sky at daybreak. Brazen
Arrows
is a different, abstractly expansive breed of juice-drizzled
psychedelic whispering, warmed by the West Coast sun and
inspired by clock chimes and 8-track-tape mirages. The
sweetness is front and center; the pungent overtones buzz
around it. $10 ppd. DBC229 DQE's
The Queen of Mean
CD Grace Braun
returns to the rock with 19 songs that deserve to have
appeared on Sun 45s--rockabilly, gospel and a Half Japanese
cover--not just because they rock so rawly but because they
shine so radiantly. As a bonus, if you order The Queen
of Mean
directly from DBC and mention this offer, we'll include a
free copy of DQE's "Tell Me Why The Ivy Twines," a 1994
7-inch single on Colossal Records of which we located a
stash. $10 ppd. DBC228 Mass
Producers' Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble CD The Mass
Producers are Caroline Kraabel's twenty-woman saxophone
ensemble; they surround their audience from every side, and
ROAR. They've been playing all over Great Britain and Europe
for the last few years, and they've finally recorded their
repertoire: two very long, mind-expanding compositions by
Kraabel. Robin Edgerton of Other Music writes: "As the
overtones accumulate (think Terry Riley's 'In C'), so does
the intensity -- you can just imagine some sort of massive
energy being coming to life in the air above them, curling
and yawning and stretching in a ravishing asymmetry."
Couldn't have put it better ourselves. Also, in keeping with
Caroline's tradition of including handmade elements with all
her releases (see also Now We Are One Two,
below), there's a different photograph on the cover of every
copy of PLSE.
$10 ppd. DBC227 The
In Out's A Living Memorial In Deutschland CD Boston's
hottest and harshest band, rocking like nobody has since
Rough Trade 1981. The recorded document of the molten
four-piece lineup that toured Europe with Sebadoh, and the
third and final installment in the trilogy "Cosmosis of the
Cosmopolites." The In Out would like to note that "a
'living' memorial is that which lives on in your DNA." $10
ppd. DBC226
Family Fodder's Water Shed
CD The first new
Family Fodder album in 17 years. Dominique Levillain (now a
writer and teacher living in California) and Alig Fodder
(lately recording as Johnny Human and living in London) got
together to celebrate the release of Savoir Faire
(see below), and ended up writing a big bunch of new songs.
And here's the thing: they're great.
Graceful, funny, catchy, deep--like they never went away.
Original Fodder drummer Rick Wilson, bassist Martin Harrison
and percussionist Cecile Rabhi jumped on the train; they
recorded all over Europe for a couple of months, brought in
some friends to play bass clarinet and Uillean pipes, and
ultimately came up with the wonderful Water Shed.
It pulses and leaps and purrs and dubs like nobody'd ever
discovered boredom. $10 ppd. DBC224
pHoaming Edison's Happy Nap Casino
CD The return of
James Kavoussi, the man who's played on more Dark Beloved
Cloud releases than anyone else (he's also in Fly Ashtray,
Uncle Wiggly and the Hattifatteners), not to mention one of
the most unusual songwriters and song-titlers we've ever
heard. A whole bunch of chewy, twisty little new songs, a
few pH classics upgraded with a full-on band, and some
covers that now have amnesia about their former owners. One
admirer has described it as "like Television playing early
Boredoms," which is completely wrong but less completely
wrong than some other descriptions we could imagine. $10
ppd. DBC223 Fly
Ashtray's Sawgrass Subligette
CD Formed in 1983,
Fly Ashtray are the captains of a scene that's been bubbling
ever since then--the Trouser Press Record Guide
calls them "one of New York's most musically adventurous and
rewarding bands," and they bridge the gap between the city's
tradition of smart, tricky, wiry guitar bands and its new
breed of twisted sound-sculptors. They've spent the last few
years recording mountains of material and reworking and
processing it in their infamous Brooklyn space
Rubulad--sometimes into tense, whiplash-swift song forms,
sometimes into abstract smears of sound, more often both at
once. With songwriting and mix contributions from all four
members (as well as a couple of bass alumni), Sawgrass
Subligette
is their richest disc to date, playing up both their
non-obvious sense of humor and their dizzying sonic
intensity. $10 ppd. DBC222 The
Magick Heads' Transvection
CD "Transvection"
is the act of riding through the air on a stick or a broom,
and The Magick Heads' glorious ride spanned almost a decade.
Natives of Dunedin, New Zealand, driven by the songwriting
prowess of Robert Scott (of the Bats and the Clean) and the
throbbingly gorgeous singing of Jane Sinnott, they released
two exquisite albums on Flying Nun and a couple of EPs.
Before they called it a day, they assembled this collection
of levitational performances from their entire career:
studio recordings, live tracks, radio sessions and 4-track
demos--13 never-heard songs and three radically different
versions of Magick Heads classics. Delicious he sang/she
sang harmonies, the savory friction of acoustic guitars
against electrics, backing by members of the 3Ds--it's all
here, and it's all exquisite. $10 ppd. DBC221
Azalia Snail's Soft Bloom CD Recorded in NYC
and England, Soft Bloom
has a happiness and openness that's new to Azalia's work;
the stars shine for her in the daytime now, too, and they've
shed a new light on her legendary taste for rare and sweet
instrumental noises. The album has little bursts of pretty
sound erupting everywhere, like tiny flowers blooming
softly. Bits of it sound like the backwards whistling of
microscopic birds, others like dream-logic neural patterns
transplanted into Saturnian android bodies, and she sings
with a gentle, spacy joy that's new to her. $10. DBC220 Chris
Knox's Almost
CD Ten new songs
from the king of New Zealand rock. Written over the course
of 10 years, blasted onto tape in a single day. Includes the
international oughtta-be-a-hit "Don't Worry, B Major."
Unremittingly catchy. $7--such a deal! DBC219 World
(of Dreams)'s Who Is Yahdoosh? CD World (Of
Dreams) is Wm. Berger, genius guitarist of Uncle Wiggly, DJ
who spearheaded the Krautrock revival with his WFMU show
"The Hip Bone," and occasional member of Smack Dab, the
Gamma Rays and Princess Superstar. This is his homage to and
fantasia on the sound he loves: the sound of Faust, Harmonia
and Karuna Khyal, of steam-thick, mind-warping textures,
prickly electronic drones and spidery psychedelic guitar.
The first album in this series, World Without End,
was a limited-edition LP that sold out almost instantly. Who
Is Yahdoosh?
is a series of five psychic phenomena manifested as extended
audio dreams of the secret Autobahn exit in Brooklyn; it's
also got three tracks from World Without End,
and three more previously unreleased bonus tracks. Timeless
and ecstatic, this album will pulse its way into your genes.
$10. DBC217 The
Hattifatteners' Rabbit Rabbit CD Occupying an
aesthetic space exactly halfway between Can and the Shaggs,
the Hattifatteners have had dozens of members wander through
their ranks. The present disc involves several stray members
of God Is My Co-Pilot, Chan (Cat Power) Marshall, Syd Straw,
Alexa Firat (of the original Silver Jews), James Kavoussi
(of Fly Ashtray), a 14-year-old violinist, and a number of
people who only speak Finnish. With a whole bunch of new
stuff as well as selections from their sought-after,
long-out-of-print EPs Vogue Bambini
and Constantly On The Move,
Rabbit Rabbit
is a testament to the power of positive peculiarity, love
for Finnish children's books and what can happen when
improvisation, songwriting and claw-hammer-style
tape-splicing meet. $10. DBC216 Uncle
Wiggly's Farfetchedness CD Uncle Wiggly's
sixth full-length release and their masterpiece to date, a
74-minute instrumental CD that took three years to record,
and a dazzlingly intricate, nuanced piece of on-the-cheap
studio genius. Imagine if Henry Cow and the early-'80s Fall
had collaborated on a wordless psychedelic album, or if The
Faust Tapes
had fermented for 25 years before poking its head up, and
you'll be on the right track. Shivering guitar-rock
sandstorms, tangly overdubbed/edited improvisations and
sampladelic home recordings link arms and somersault forward
in tandem, magically shaping forms out of the chaos and vice
versa. We have been listening to this nonstop since Uncle
Wiggly gave us the master recording, and we are thrilled to
be releasing this deep, rich, mindbendingly great record.
$10. DBC214 Dreams
Are Free (With Purchase)
compilation CD Otherwise
unavailable songs from Attitude & Couture, Grace Braun,
the Magick Heads, Spaceheads, Jad Fair, the Shock Exchange,
pHoaming Edison, God Is My Co-Pilot, Dymaxion, Sarge, Alan
Smithee, Uncle Wiggly, Marion Coutts & Caroline Kraabel,
Purple Ivy Shadows, the Autumn Teen Sound, the In Out,
Kleenex Girl Wonder, Azalia Snail, Fly Ashtray and World
Without End. $10. DBC212
Spaceheads' Ho! Fat Wallet
CD A reissue of
their earliest cassette and singles from 1989 and 1990, back
when this trumpet/drums/electronics duo was crisp, crazed
and even kind of rock. $10.
DBC210 God
Is My Co-Pilot's Je Suis Trop Content CD EP Recorded in a
jiffy for their Euro-tour: 15 songs, 40 minutes, including
covers of Spaceheads, France Gall, the Carter Family and
Beausoleil. Lotsa fun. $7--not available anywhere else! DBC209
Azalia Snail's Breaker Mortar
CD An hour of
mostly instrumental raw delights from the Snail, plus a
surprisingly wonderful trip-hop experiment (!). $10. DBC207
Caroline Kraabel's Now We Are One Two CD Honkies leader
goes solo with a very out-there solo-saxophone-and-voice
album. Imagine if Arthur Doyle were obsessed with Swell
Maps. Incredible handmade cover. $10. DBC206 Fly
Ashtray's Flummoxed
CD EP Great, weird,
veteran NYC band moves into a new studio and spikes its
bizarro rock with smears of tapework and
sampler-abstraction. Half an hour long, $7. DBC205 DQE
& Jad Fair's self-titled collaboration CD A lovely
sitting-on-the-back-porch-making-up-songs kind of album from
this odd team. Includes new songs, a couple of traditional
tunes, some improvised numbers and a musical game or two.
$10. DBC204
Spaceheads' self-titled CD First
full-length from this London-based trumpet/drum
electro-acoustic dub-improv duo. Think Pram, Sun Ra,
Tackhead, Dog Faced Hermans (whose Marion sings one track).
Amazing, unique stuff. $10. DBC203
phoaming Edison's Sold to the Second Highest Grady CD An all-new
collection of 36 brilliant pop/noise home recordings,
including some surprising covers. Imagine if GBV drank less
and did more unusual drugs. Beautiful letterpress package,
too. Not to be confused with Sold to the Highest Grady
(below), which is a totally different album. $10. DBC202/TMOA020
God Is My Co-Pilot's Puss 02 CD 29 new songs, a
cast of thousands of musicians, masterful, witty, original
and startlingly fresh: music about girls becoming women and
noise becoming organized sound. Their best album to date,
we'd say. $10. DBC037 World
Without End's "World Without End III" 7" A sequel to the
long-since-sold-out LP: a long, pulsing drone-throb by the
incomparable Wm. Berger. Gorgeous minimalism, in form and
content. One-sided, lathe-cut in New Zealand, strictly
limited to 100 copies, and individually hand-etched on the
obverse by Laura Leila. $5 ppd. DBC035 The
In Out's CosmOsis
LP First
full-length from this awesome and snarly Boston band of Fall
fans. A co-release with Oblivion Recordings and
Viscera-Versa. $10. DBC028 Mr.
Quark's Enjoy Nuoc-Mam With Mr. Quark 7" EP We'd thought it
was out of print, but then we found a small stash of this
unforgettable mini-pop opera by four French teenagers about
a superhero who pretends he's a postman and ends up getting
killed by a pile of socks that turn into devils. Really. $3.
DBC027
pHoaming Edison Sold To The Highest Grady
LP 30 amazing
4-track pop songs and noise creatures in 47 minutes by James
Kavoussi of Fly Ashtray/Uncle Wiggly fame. Rich &
crunchy. Not to be confused with Sold to the Second
Highest Grady (above), which is a totally different
album. $10. DBC025 Sympathy
For Count Pococurante, Vol. 1 7" EP Infidelity from
infidels. A six-course banquet from Napalm Parade, God Is My
Co-Pilot, Flying Saucer, Princess Superstar, The Mad Scene
and S!T!O!I!N!K!. $3. DBC019 Fifth
Column/Trailer Queen split single Two songs
dressed to the nines in the hip boots of your youth. The
ultimate in kiss-off girl-pop. $3. DBC017 God
Is My Co-Pilot's "Su Vot Vot Esta Su Voz" 7" Two songs, two
minutes, two dollars. "...too cool!"--C. Flanagin. Yes, it's
$2 postpaid. DBC014 Uncle
Wiggly's "Make You Crawl" 7" Awesome
bouncealong pop: more songs about doubt, and a pink
elephant. $3. DBC005 VPN's
Penny
7" EP Four or five
songs on a very, very yellow record from the Very Pleasant
Neighbor. Prepare to be snuck up on. $3. |
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plus, from THE
MAKING OF AMERICANS' fine catalog (& friends) The Abraham
Lincolns' Standing By My Window Looking At The Rain 7" EP The 1983 lineup
of Half Japanese, more or less, plays the real folk blues.
Four songs, six tracks, including a Nirvana cover. $3. D.Q.E.'s Jump
On In
CD 18 new songs by
the rough, beautiful, soulful duo of Grace Braun and Dugan
Trodglen. Should have been on 78s. $10. and several
God Is My Co-Pilot things: How To Be
CD Album #7.
Sustained vision, artful production, 19 musicians, 23 songs,
rocks, does many things besides "rock." Wow. $10. Children
Can Be So Cruel
CD EP An import on
the Swiss label Miguel, an extension of the Puss 02 flip-out: eight songs, including traditional Javanese
and Schwabisch tunes, a toy accordion solo, and lots of fun
machines. $7. |
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All prices
include postage in the U.S. If you're overseas, email first
to find out what postage charges will be. Payment these days is entirely through PayPal--best to email me the details of
your order and your address. and hey, thanks
for asking again... |
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Check out links
to our bands' pages elsewhere!. Got any
questions? Want to order something? Write to cloud [at-sign]
darkbelovedcloud.com. This page was last modified February 2, 2023 |