High & Outside

Other Noteworthy Releases

While his Zappa-mentored debut An Evening with Wild Man Fischer remains in (downloadable) limbo, 1978’s Wildmania — the Wooly One’s first for Rhino as well as the first full-length release on the label — has been reissued by Collector’s Choice Music.

Lubbock-born loose cannon theLegendary Stardust Cowboy’s ’80s treasures Retro Rocket Back to Earth/Rides Again have been reissued by France’s Last Call Records.

From the Black Lodge Singerson Canyon Records comes More Kids’ Pow-Wow Songsfeaturing Blackfoot Kenny Scabby and family’s paradigm-bridging traditional drum-and-vocal compositions about Scooby Doo and Barbie, and the lead track, “Sponge Bob Square Pants” sung in the familiar call-and-response marine drill cadence.

If anyone missed last year’s list or the recent Arthur magazine cover story, get thee to an Internet and seek out Sublime Frequencies, the Sun City Girls’ dazzling DIY ethnomusicological label. This year’s offerings included antipolitical masterstrokes Choubi Choubi! Folk & Pop Sounds From Iraq and Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk & Agit Pop plus eight other essential titles. (SCG’s Alan Bishop also compiled in 2005 a double disc of Ennio Morricone’s very far-out recordings called Crime and Dissonance for Mike Patton’s Epicac label.)

In a similar tomb-raider vein, Subliminal Sounds completed its Thai Beat A Go-Go trilogy with Vols. 2 & 3 (recommended cut: “Ding Dong” by Surapon), while Khmerrocks continued its Sinn Sisamouth–heavy (but who’s complaining?) Cambodian Rocks series with Vol 4. And don’t get me started on the Bollywood!

Bill Holt’s remastered 1974 what-the-fuck audio collage masterpiece Dreamies is out on Wilmington Studios. NYC improv gadfly Mr. Dorgon (a.k.a. Gordon Knauer)’s God Is Greatest collects several bracing turntable/electronic pieces for Tzadik’s Lunatic Fringe series.

Irwin Chusid (and tape-trader) favorite Judson Fountain — “the Ed Wood of radio drama” — finally sees official release of such incredibly strange early ’70s classics as “The Garbage Can From Thailand” and “Granny, Sing No More!”

John Fahey’s Revenant label followed up the exhaustive Albert Ayler box set with the best (and oddest) of numerous archival collections mining the “old weird America” with American Primitive Vol. 2: Pre-War Revenants. And finally, French label Sittelle brings us two CDs of non-human musical opuses: one of the deep creaking noises of Rutting Red Deers plus a two-CD set titled The Inaudible World — A Sound Guide of the French Bats. It doesn’t get much more outside than that!