Monday 16 December 2019

Angus MacLise ‎– "Tapes" (Pleasure Editions ‎) 2015


OK,so now the challenge is to try and post something that's the polar opposite to Soviet Bloc Prog?

How about some middle class american avant-garde minimalism,with a splash of ethnological forgery?
American percussionist, composer, poet, occultist and calligrapher (it says here!),Angus MacLise;otherwise known as the first drummer for the Velvet Underground,fits the bill nicely.
He appeared to not be bothered that his music was basically ignored outside of that Warholian clique,and seemed to play only for his own benefit,and that of the like-minded individuals that he hung out with.MacLise was a member of La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, with Tony Conrad and John Cale, who described MacLise as "living on the Angus calendar", showing up to performances hours or even days after the band had finished.Mainly because he was drugged out of his 'avant-garde' brane!
During an Exploding Plastic Inevitable performance in 1966, MacLise showed up half an hour late and carried on drumming for half an hour after the set had finished to compensate for his late arrival;or rather thats what he said.the real money is on the possiblity that he was so stoned he didn't know the performance had finished.
Another doomed Aliester Crowley obsessive,his music has a tribal feel to it,abeit a tribe fucked up on peyote induced spirituality.
No official albums existed during his lifetime,and I doubt he even cared.Ambition is,after-all, the rocky cycle path to a creative cliff edge.This is a very posthumous 3-cassette compilation of unheard music from MacLise’s vast and wide-ranging reel-to-reel back catalogue. These recordings, produced between the mid-'60s and the late-'70s, consist of tribal trance workouts, spoken word, poetry, Brion Gysin-like tape cut-ups,minimalist droning and wacked out electronics—all animated by the remarkable spirits of MacLise and his beatniky cohorts.
He ,somehow, managed to die of malnutrition in Kathmandu in 1979!? Now that's certainly one of the more original Rock'n'Roll deaths.None of your cliched 'Choked on Vomit' nonsense when it came to Angus MacLise;it may not have been someone elses vomit, 
but it was definitely his own malnutrition,and,unfortunately, his own fault.

Tracklist:


Tape I

A SR8041
B1 DS8067
B2 SR8041
Tape II
A1 Trance
A2 SR8041-B
A3 DS8043
A4 Summer 1978
A5 DS8093
B1 DS8068-B
B2 TC8028
Tape III
A TC8017
B DS8045


4 comments:

Double Dubz said...

wow thx

Neolithic Mind said...

Quite the sound excursions you've gifted us all in latter '19! I've been hoping someone would post these MacLise recordings. Along with all the Soviet era kosmiche, it's been an inspiring ride for this psychonaut. Good on ya Sirrr!

Jonny Zchivago said...

I do try to keep it interesting,and not stick to the safe ground.
Ahhhh,i do miss the Soviet era. (wistful sigh!)

Anonymous said...

This is great! I don't suppose you have/ could post the cassette The Kathmandu Cycle that was put out a while ago? I think it's recordings of him readings his poetry or something?