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"Strident Shapes" (10/93, unreleased)

Hello All,

"Strident Shapes" was recorded in October 1993 by yours truly at Telemundo Studios, Hialeah, Florida. Its backing track was pilfered from a no-name library music CD found at the studio, and my vocal was improvised over the "Urgent Sports Highlights" riff in one take. Several of the songs featured on TLASILA's debut album, 30-mimuten männercreme, had similar aesthetic origins: "Get Fit to Herbie Mann!," "Stars of Fingers," and the album's opener, "Long Reach Composite," were one-take vocal improvisations slathered atop cut-ups of Miami AM radio broadcasts. "Strident Shapes" mined this vein, but it and a dozen similar library music improvs were shelved in favor of more frenetic explorations. TS: edit, vocal, mix.

Here.

Until later,

Tom

TLASILA: 5/90-2/92 Overview!

Hi Again,

I began To Live and Shave in L.A. in May 1990 with a group of demo recordings and tape manipulation experiments that established the template for what (by 1993) would become the signature sound of the project. Throughout 1991 and 1992, the laboratory hummed and experiments continued, eventually culminating in both unissued works (The Lineaments of Gratified Desire and My Limp Went Husserl on Me albums, and the Spatters of a Royal Sperm EP), and the official debut album, 30-minuten männercreme.

For your edification, a 4:19 chronological overview, beginning with the very first TLASILA demo, "Jad," recorded May 15, 1990, and ending with transfigured Miami AM radio static from February 1992. Local media ambiance was always of crucial import.

TLASILA: Tom Smith - tape edits and manipulation, radio, optical reader/recorder, turntable, mix, production, and a smattering of voice. Distilled from five hours of the very earliest material, recorded in southeast Georgia (May 1990-March 1991) and south Florida (March 1991-February 1992).

Get it here!

Best, as ever,

Tom

(Quite Probably) Single of the Year...

Droogs,

My tastes are rarefied, and my snobbery is an affront to civilization. If we understand each other then, an aesthetic proposal: the best recordings of the last two years have fallen on the third week of November. In 2011, we were offered Pinch & Shackleton's aggressively inventive self-titled album (on the Honest John's imprint), and Monday of this week gave us an immense new single from Kryptic Minds, "The Divide"/"Rule of Language" (on the prolific Essex duo's Osiris Music label). Brilliant, just brilliant. Mind has been scooped, thrown into an Aldi freezer bag, and dumped into a ditch on the outskirts of Vlotho. Severe perfection of a wholly other order...

You know what to do, where to go.

Best,

Tom

30-minuten mänercreme Outtake: "36 Fun"!

Hi Again,

None of you have heard this: "36 Fun," an outtake from 30-minuten männercreme. Recorded June 1993 in three segments. Tom Smith: voice, text, tape, radio, optical recorder. Bill Orcutt: guitar. Recorded live by Ariyah Okamoto (at Churchill's, Miami), and by Tom at Telemundo Studios, Hialeah and Sync, Miami Beach. Final mix and production by TS. Too fucked-up for inclusion on anything, anywhere...

Here.

Enjoy, droogs!

Best,

Tom

Peach of Immortality: Share a Ride to Annihilation, Anyone?

Droogs,

Feeling generous this weekend. Saturday, a taste of Boat Of. Today, A septic sliver of POI, one presaging the future, albeit 23 years too soon, a spastic stairwell tumble rather than the hipster's preferred gentle nudge: Tim Lane Seaton's titanic November 1989 remix of the opening (untitled) track from Peach of Immortality's still-unreleased Taxi zum Shoah album. Recorded in Atlanta, Georgia at Tim's Walking Fish studio between summer 1988 and winter 1989. Bass guitar, treatments: Tim Lane Seaton. Tape manipulation: Tom Smith (c'est moi). We were arrogant and extremely pissed off and we were right. And the hits just kept on coming.

(Left, TS. Right, TLS. Now choke on our anger.)

Go here.

TS

Rope Cosmetology UPDATE!

Hi All,

Very happy to report the best news this oft-disappointed group has had all year: Magic Bullet will be releasing our recently completed album. Holy shit. Kudos to the band (Balazs Pandi, Feri Kovacs, Tim Lane Seaton, Ryan Parrish, und ich), to Brent at Magic Bullet, and to our slowly spreading slick of enthusiasts. Wow. After all the draggy downs in 2012 (studio accidentally deleting four completed songs from their computer, cancellation of the European tour, etc.) finally a delirious UP.

Best,

Tom

Boat Of, Live at the Night Gallery, Athens, GA (21 Sept 81)

Hello All,

Boat Of: "Worthy of the Lamb," recorded live at the Night Gallery, Athens, Georgia, on September 21, 1981. The band: David Gamble (drums), Mike Green (featured dancer, cigarettes, abjuring his bass guitar for the evening), the late, great Carol Levy (guitar and voice), Sandra-Lee Phipps (voice and percussion), and yours truly, Tom Smith (tape edits, drum pad, and voice).

(Photograph by Linda Hopper, taken during the September 21st performance. TS is in the background, crouching over the drum pad. David Gamble is shirtless, standing before his drum kit. Mike Green is in foreground silhouette, with his left arm intersecting with Dave's left shoulder. Sandi Phipps and Carol Levy were out of frame.)

The backing track was edited cassette-to-cassette using the instrumental version of the then-recent "Disco Dream" 12" by Sugarhill Records group Mean Machine. We're mostly metronomic behind the throb and diffused pulse, but I always preferred it when we became skewed and wobbly. I loved fellow Athenian groups Pylon and Limbo District, but they were already doing "tight" and "evocative." We just wanted to scramble brains and make the audience wet their pants. Sometimes we succeeded. The DNA connecting Boat Of to Peach of Immortality to To Live and Shave in L.A. to Rope Cosmetology and beyond is obvious, self-evident. Being in Boat Of was a terrific education in confronting (and confounding) the future.

Where you there? When we crucified? Music? Listen here.

--

Best,

Tom

Hmmmm. Nothing? Nothing at All?

 

 

I'm not the go-to expert on piety - I've been an atheist since forever. But I think even casual agnostics and momentarily dazed Wal*Mart shoppers can agree that in a universe with a trillion trillion trillion worlds (populated at the very least by a couple of billion billion clumps of self-aware, non-humanoid organic glop) that if there was, by some galactic long shot, an actual god-thing out there, he-she/he/she/it would probably be neutral by necessity, and not give a quintillionth of an amoeba shit about Terran prayer rallies for dystopic human candidates. Romney's defenestration out of the penthouse of American history hardly proves that there is no supreme being, but it strongly asserts that a lot of gullible Earthbound bipeds have a surfeit of free time at their disposal...

 

TS

The Morning After...

Kudos to the sentient. Pity the birthers, truthers, teabaggers, poll unskewers, DeSouzas, legitimate rape mavens, and those preoccupied by variations of proximity to genitalia (rubber or otherwise). And, apropos of easing me through the early morn, cheers to mid-20th Japanese cinema. (I shall refrain from writing the sentence "Miozu Weighs a Ton.") Thank you, fellow Yanks...

Vote Early. Vote Tomorrow. Vote Obama.

Hello Stateside and Expat Friends,

TLASILA stood/stands for a virulent progressive attack against whatever dolorous rubbish the other bastards were/are selling. Obama ain't exactly a hardcore leftie, but he's infinitely better than the mannikin and the porn bottom. Do your duty. Support sentience.

Best,

Tom Smith, founder, CEO and portfolio manager, To Live and Shave in L.A.

Happy HaUUURGH!

Hi Again,

Pivoting for a moment from Sandy to Samhain: don't know about you, but my favorite Halloween film - from the same-named franchise, at least - remains 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch. An occultist toy manufacturer, pissed off at the secularization of the holiday, imports inherently demonic slivers of Stonehenge, imbeds them into microchips which are sewn into jack-o'-lantern masks and triggered by calliope music (and wildly oscillating, mimetic 8-bit graphics) to crush the skulls of children and turn their bodies into seething clumps of crickets and garden snakes. A great bloody HUH? of a movie.

So, put on your Silver Shamrock masks, kids, and good luck!

Best,

Tom 

Ready for Emergency Crash Landing!

Hi Again,

Three new KSV releases are out the door! Reeling ourselves in after unleashing 27 albums last month - that was madness. October's more restrained schedule begins with a two-disc archival collection from To Live and Shave in L.A.'s 2008 Eurozone tour, Chorea Vinyl (KSV 263), my tenth solo vocal album, Isolation Suites (KSV 272), and a new live album from Diamond Terrifier, Oberdeck, Hannover, 18. September. Limited to 25 copies each; two (Isolation and DT's alb) come in wraparound poster sleeves. The first orders have already been bagged - cheers to those who've taken the leap!

Yours Faithfully,

TS

Three New KSV Releases Available NOW!

Guten Morgen Droogs!

Three new Karl Schmidt Verlag releases await your verdict:

(KSV 263) To Live and Shave in L.A. - Chorea Vinyl (2xCD)

(KSV 272) Tom Smith - Isolation Suites

(KSV 273) Diamond Terrifier - Oberdeck, Hannover, 18. September

The latter two are caressed by a wraparound poster sleeve. Limited editions of 25.

Slight downward price adjustments: single discs €8.89 Eurozone, €11.89 elsewhere, with double disc sets now €12.89 in the Eurozone and €15.89 elsewhere. Sales were brisk last month but I thought we'd gone somewhat overboard with the pricing. You'll always get top quality and serious value for your money here, however. Almost all future releases will come with poster sleeves. Postage paid, as always.

PayPal: tlasila [at] gmail [dot] com.

Many thanks and oodles of lurve,

TS
  

TLASILA Hybrid Mix 2012_291: Salut!

Hi All,

To celebrate Dave Buddin's and Weasel Walter's victories in the just-published Village Voice Best Of NYC 2012 derby, our CEO has whipped out a hybrid composition in homage to a pair of worthy, grumpy-ass teen titans...

SoundCloud link here.

Best,

Karl

Bag Day...

Note to fellow label comrades: releasing 27 albums in one month is probably completely fucking insane and requires an ABSURD amount of work, but... When the last poster is folded and the final order is ready to be bagged and shipped, a rare calm descends. I purvey music from the furthest reaches of the bleeding edge in order to explore zones of beatific purity. So endeth the day at Karl Schmidt Verlag...

(Click for larger versions.)

Best,

TS