Welcome to week two of the Swan Fungus “An Album A Day” project, in which I sift through my collection of LPs, CDs and 45s to bring you deeper into both my record collection and my life. The object, of course, is to share what I’ve amassed during my first decade as a collector while sharing stories about how I discovered and acquired some of my favorite items. Each week is grouped together thematically. Today (An Album A Day #6) is the first of five consecutive days dedicated to the incredible Mort Aux Vaches series.
In short, think of the Mort Aux Vaches (rough Americanized translation: “Death to Pigs”) as an album series similar in scope to Temporary Residence, LTD’s venerable Travels In Constants series. It was created as sub-label of Staalplaat (home of Muslimgauze, Rapoon, Halfer Trio, Zoviet France and many others) in order to release recordings commissioned by the Dutch broadcasting company VPRO. Of course, most of the artists who recorded sessions for the label were experimental artists whose sonic tendencies were similar in scope. Everyone from Aube to Zoviet France have recorded for Mort Aux Vaches. Each of the sixty-plus titles are produced in limited quantities. None exceed 1,000 copies. All the ones I’ve ever seen come in tri-fold sleeves that hold the CD in place with a split nail. Various materials were used on the sleeves. Some are on tracing paper, some are lenticular, some are weird plastics. Yellow Swans is cardboard relief. Machinefabriek is rubber-stamped card stock. Troum‘s disc is in some weird crumbly cover. Ignatz‘s pretty much looks like it was collected from a trash bin. But my favorite packaging belgons to Illusion Of Safety.
If my sources are correct, Illusion Of Safety (aka Daniel Burke) is the only artist who has contributed TWO sessions to the Mort Aux Vaches series. In 1996 he and Kurt Griesch committed two long takes to tape and subtitled the effort “Measuring strength of ultra-violet radiation in the July sunshine.” It came in a beautiful deep-red brushed card sleeve held in place with the traditional copper fastener. The second session, which was limited to 1,000 copies and recorded for the “De Avonden” radio program in 1997 (yet released two years later), is housed in a sandpaper fold-out sleeve. Classic Daniel Burke! Of course my copy is pretty much scratched to shit. It’s spent almost 15 years with sandpaper as its only protection.
Roughly two or three years ago a guy showed up at the store with a large box of CDs. He worked for a major record label and wanted to sell off the bulk of his collection to help offset the cost of buying a house. For a major label guy, his tastes ran incredibly close to my own. I think the first box of 200 or so CDs he brought in to sell consisted of 25 or 30 Keiji Haino titles, an equal number of Merzbow, and Jandek, and then a bunch of weird shit I’d never heard of at the time. Maeror Troi. Atrium Carceri. Deutsch Nepal. Shinjuku Thief. Each time he stopped in I wound up taking home stacks of 25 or 30 discs to burn. And we’d chat about our favorite dark ambient or noise acts. God, I learned so much from that guy and acquired so many items from my personal want list because of him I can’t even begin to calculate how many. The entire Up-Tight discography. Random Suishou No Fune titles. All the Psychedelic Speed Freaks I could ever want. And, of course, each of these Mort Aux Vaches titles I’m going to be sharing this week.
50 minutes, 39 seconds of damaged ambiance both terrorizing and sublime.
Illusion Of Safety
Mort Aux Vaches
(Mort Aux Vaches, 1999)
01. Untitled
02. Untitled
03. Untitled
04. Untitled [MP3]
05. Untitled
06. Untitled
