POINTS OF FRICTION - Sackcloth And Ashes

Originally released by the LAFMS offshoot label Solid Eye (who were also responsible for releases by Doo-Dooettes, The Romans, Dinosaurs with Horns, and Fredrick Nilsen) on cassette in 1984, Sackcloth and Ashes is the most electronic and perhaps most polished incarnation of this multimedia collective. The unorthodox exploration of keyboards, guitars, toy instruments, the assemblage of field recordings, noise improvisations, and tape loops tantalize the senses with arousing emotive power. The opus title track is a compendium of improvisational soundings and field recordings that include a chorus of squeaky swings, a cats purring, snapping shrimp, a diseased lung, and cacophony on a yard sale card rack. Exquisitely abrasive and haunting tracks 1 through 6 yield to the perfumed machinery and melodious hypnosis of the remaining tracks. All were originally performed under cover of live film and slide projections with optical manipulations at alternative music venues in and around Los Angeles. - Anomalous.