Dylan Nyoukis - The Acrylic Widow LP out now

"Nyoukis excells at turning what could just be duck impressions & growls into a whole that's a narrative, and piano & organ give a haunting harmonic undertow to a sound effect journey here. Whiney creaks & little ghostly feet stamp their way along. You end at a bathtub drain, where you gurgle your way down to a sewer and meet a scraggly haired troll who speaks an unintelligible language. When you come up the manhole, a guy with an accordion starts following you around, pumping maniacally. You then visit an orchestra tune-up and strike up a conversation with a bumblebee in the next chair." - Weirdo Records

"Coloured vinyl LP in an edition of only 250 copies: this is a great, strategy-spanning set from Dylan w/a creepy/melancholy low-key vibe that is quite unlike anything in his back catalogue. Compiled from various actions and recordings from across the globe, this has all of the occult sonic appeal of the best of the Biota or Mnemonist sides, with a feel for submerged narrative that is uniquely compulsive. When the moody organ drone kicks in halfway through the opening “The Dog Lady Dream With Pedal Underfoot (For Mike Collino)” it feels as unearthly as Meredith Monk's keyboard work on Key, providing a mesmerising counterpoint to the laminal application of field recordings, street chatter and small instrument abuse. It's genuinely beautiful and very affecting, easily one of Dylan's most perfectly realised works. The rest of the LP ain't no slouch either, moving from huffing accordion drones over bonging springs in a kind of simultaneous homage to the brothers Bohman and Rupenus through to some great tectonic drone work via a fuzz of ghostly microtonal chatter and a final time tunnel into the thundering tonsils that would give Alan Bishop 'the willies'. Hands-down Dylan's best side to date and, dare we say it, his most 'musical' long-form statement since, uh, well, just since. Comes with a great colour insert and extensive sleevenotes by Seymour Glass of Bananafish. This is a monster - highly recommended!" - Volcanic Tongue

"1. Dry coughs and outta-wack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs, ‘test the bell, spin the wheel!’ Hot air leaks from a perished rubber hose. With knuckles like hazelnuts, these sounds shine like delicately laid cobblestones, laid end-to-end without no fuss or haste, they are tram tracks. Late night thumps, ‘boof, baff’ and a lousy Soft Machine organ solo talks a Brighton raver down from gritted jaw oblivion.
2. Ideas are put through the wringer in stereo effect. The domestic bric-a-brac builds up: a motorcycle revving, the dry crunch of gravel underfoot…a jumble sale of sweaty woollens, singing out through pinched throat to make un-sense of the phrase ‘iss, sum bear-lae-um’. An unexpected kitchen sink gamelan makes for a feverish listen. Tension is introduced via leathery lunged accordion but there’s no crass crescendo. Fading out like pinched guts.
3. Euro voices abound in tangled syntax. Verbs sounds & nouns renamed. Sure, there’s blubber and chunder…’you, you, you and me’ that’s slam-up-bang to babby titter-chat for starters. Then the downs come in, re-directed by taut tape loops making the ecstatic, grooving on the surface of bubble. The proclamation, ‘I’m right here’ leaves us in no doubt who you are sharing your damp bedsit with tonight, slurping up the old wine as red as pooled blood.
4. Another take on the stretched ritual. A parrot squawks underwater struggling for fresh O2. Furious eraser scurrying action is met with the stony silence of a 14 year old girl while apples crunch between strong white teeth. Our old friends, words, are worried and fretted in a dark experiment; turned over looking for new seams and valves to shuck and prise open like ripe clams until mucus-like muscle slips free and falls to the flagstones below.
This is a living séance with The Acrylic Widow. Wisdom from the Old Ones, the thin Venn diagram slice between frantic scuttling & sweet Miskatonic stoned." - Posset

'Special Edition' limited to 50 copies which comes with CDr of bonus material and screenprinted poster available from HERE

In Memory Of Damian Bisciglia

It was with great sadness that I awoke early this morning to this news from Eric Lanzillotta
 "I am sad to report the death of Damian Bisciglia. He took his own life earlier this week. He was only 52 years old, but leaves behind a great legacy of work.
I first became aware of Damian in the 1980s when a friend wrote his name and number on a piece of paper for me. He mentioned Points of Friction and thought we should meet each other. At that time I did have the nerve to call people out of the blue. So it wasn't until several years later that I got in touch with Damian. I knew of his work as Agog and his visual art from the cover to Randy Greif's "Bacteria and Gravity" LP released by RRRecords. I think it was probably through Randy that I first heard Agog as I got the "Putting Legs on a Snake" cassette from him.
The music of Agog was homemade musique concrete - amazing tape collages. It was really outstanding work that stood above a lot of what was coming out of the cassette culture at that time. Damian's work was superbly recorded and edited, and lovingly packaged. The packaging in a way was his downfall as he spent so much effort on it, that he made few copies of the cassettes on his own Spagyric label. The only cassette that was easily available was a split cassette with Zan Hoffman published by N D magazine in 1990. He also did a cassette for the legendary Broken Flag label, but it was towards the end of their first run and very few copies seem to have been made of that either. Probably the most heard was the Agog track on the five 7" box set edition of RRRecords's "Testament" series. His own cassettes reached fewer and fewer people over the years as his packaging grew more and more elaborate. Visiting him at his parent's house in the late 1990s, I was blown away by the creature sculptures that he was showing me. My amazement increased as he split them open to show me the cassettes that lived inside of them.
With so little available and such high quality, I wanted to do what I could to share his music. It ended up being a three year project, but I was able to release the only Agog LP on Anomalous Records in 2001. By the end of that year I was able to reissue one of the Points of Friction cassettes on CD. Both were very special releases for me. They didn't sell particularly well, but represented what "anomalous" meant to me.
But I am failing to mention Damian's work as an improvisor. He was a collector of junk materials and built his own instruments and sculptures. At times he would put himself down for only having these non-instruments. Perhaps this contributed to his shyness towards performing. I only saw him perform in front of an audience once. That was at Anomalous Records in 1994 in a duet with Joseph Hammer. Need I even say that it was amazing? His association with Joseph went all the way back the beginning of the 1980s when Points of Friction was formed with Kenny Ryman and Tim Alexander. After the group broke up, he worked mostly solo, but did collaborate through the post with Minoy, Adam Bohman, Johannes Bergmark, and Zan Hoffman. In recent years Mitchell Brown roused him to more activity helping encourage the reformation of Points of Friction and releasing a new CD of their music.
Damian's music and art remains little heard and known for the most part. I congratulate Mitchell Brown, Fredrik Nilsen, Dylan Nyoukis, Seymour Glass, Hitomo Arimoto, Ron Lessard, Eric Blevins, Zan Hoffman, Daniel Plunkett, and the others that helped get bits of his music into the world. I hope that his music does not disappear with his passing.
Earlier this year, Points of Friction played for the first time in a few years. Damian was excited about the event and excited about music in general. I got the impression that he was ramping up for more activity. Obviously there were other things that troubled him though. His life has sadly been cut short. I am thankfully for all that he gave us and will miss him.
Thank you Mitch for passing along this sad news. Thank you Nils for first pointing me in Damian's direction all those decades ago. Thank you Randy for helping me pick up that thread. Thank you Joseph for all you did." - Eric Lanzillotta

I never had the pleasure to meet Damian in person, but at some point in the 90s we made contact through the post. Traded tapes, collaborated, and I had the pleasure to interview him for Bananafish magazine. A couple of times in more recent years we tried to convince him to come play Colour Out Of Space but he respectfully declined, couldn't face the flight. My thoughts are with all his friends and loved ones.

here's a postal collaboration piece we did sometime in the late 90s.

Damian Bisciglia & Dylan Nyoukis - A Padded Suit For Ego Misters Girlfriend

Blonk/Nyoukis "Dubbeltwee" free download

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jaap_Blonk__Dylan_Nyoukis/Dubbletwee/

Junk Operatic For John Cage

In November I was asked by The Wire magazine to curate a night inspired by John Cage as part of their 'Cage Rattling' event. My idea behind the evening was to show how Cage had an influence on non-musicians/noisicians. My own exposure to Cage in the early 1990s led onto discovering David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, MEV etc (all artists later bootlegged by Stomach Ache Records, a fine example of how this 'high brow' music was starting to give the Noise scene the horn, all pre-internet/Ubuweb/blogs/etc). Cageian crud first manifested itself in my sound in what Prick Decay called our Junk Operatics. This was basically the random layering of sounds, usually on our old four track tape player. We(myself and Lisa)would record on tracks independent of each other (without listening to previous tracks), and/or add random sections of live shows, field recordings etc, usually using the rolling of dice, our own crude form of I-Ching. So as well as having a night of live acts (Duncan Harrison & Jo Henderson, Bolide, Four Manatees, Hobo Sonn & HereHareHere, Ali Roberston, Lizzy Carey, The Bohman Brothers and myself with Phil Minton/Sharon Gal/Fiona Kennedy/Luke Poot) I also wanted to present a 'Junk Operatic' for the occasion, I decided to invite 5 artists I admire and whom I know have been influenced by Cage to submit to me a 7 minute piece (or thereabouts) inspired by Cage which i then proceeded to overlay atop one another. there was no editing, I just let the tracks do their own thing together. Many thanks to Seymour Glass, Doglady, T.Mikawa, I'DM Thfftable and Gen Ken Montgomery for contributing the tracks.

'The Acrylic Widow'

Forthcoming solo LP by Dylan Nyoukis

Feral Singers at Hyde Park

Feral Singers from Bill Lowe on Vimeo.

Taco Bolide