Happy Halloween from Finders Keepers!

You'll find a wealth of unusually creepy tunes for Halloween from Andy Votel and his Finders K(r)eepers crew right here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Sit & Bun Mix

Check out Andy Votel's swingin' hour-long Sit & Bun mix for Manchester's Finest below. 

Here's the scoop...

Andy Votel, is a musician, DJ, record producer, graphic designer and co-founder of Twisted Nerve Records and the reissue label Finders Keepers Records.

Votel, an acronym for Violators of the English Language, Votel began mixing psychedelic music with jazz and hip-hop records at clubs like The Hacienda and Home And South from the early 1990s.

As a graphic designer, he’s created over 150 record sleeves on top of designing campaigns for Adidas, Stüssy, Levi, and Adam Et Rope.

The record collection he brought with is filled to the brim with deep cuts of rare and experimental music. This one is a bit ‘out there’ but the execution is flawless. 

Check out Andy's "Sit & Bun" mix right here. As for the tracklisting? Well, they don't call him Andy "No Tell" Votel for nuthin'. 

Midweek Mixdown: Finders Keepers salutes Eurovision

Check out the B-Music parallel universe version of Eurovision imagined by Andy Votel and pals below. 

Eurovision according to Finders Keepers

The Finders Keepers radio renegades gather once again to bring you a special edition satellite show, custom orchestrated to celebrate the return to our screens of the longest-running annual international TV song competition aka Eurovision. Yes, that's right, the outer national psychedelic librarians behind one of the most alternative outer national record labels on the pear-shaped planet are here to prove that the genre that we've loosely termed as B-Music exists in all corners of the vinyl vault and even the most hell-bent ambitious entrants for the kitschiest competition show in Europe have bones in the closet, irons in the fire and bats in the belfry - all of which crop up on Eurovison single B-Sides, previous precocious pressings or post mic-battle bounce backs.

If we're not making ourselves clear here, lets just clarify. Outside of the competition these Eurovisionaries also made some pretty good synthy, fuzzy, drum heavy records when left to their own devices and Finders Keepers Radio is here to prove it. So sit back in your favourite chair, pour yourself a Babycham, light up that dangerous fondue oil and marvel as we bring you resilient rock follies from the likes of Greece, Turkey, Belgium, Luxembourg etc. while trying not to count the amount of times we use the phrases "You Were Robbed" and "Repeat Offender" safe in the knowledge that we're already panning next years follow up show every time we hit foreign thrift stores. This one's for you, Terry.

Listen to the Finders Keepers salute to Eurovision right here. 

Check out Nilüfer & Grup Nazar's performance at Eurovision '78 below. 

Midweek Mixdown: Finders Keepers' "Making Global Sound Local"

Check out a delightful hour-long "Making Global Sound Local" mix for Verdant Brewing Co. by following the link below. 

Here's the scoop...

An intoxicating concoction of obscure vintage tracks taken from the global Finders Keepers Records catalogue. Compiled in collaboration with Verdant Brewing Co.

Spanning three decades as the UK’s most dedicated outernational reissue label, with a wide discography encompassing multiple generations of uncharted genres and global origins, Andy Votel and Doug Shipton’s Finders Keepers Records inevitable collaboration with like-minded maverick brewers Verdant Brewing Co. finally comes to fruition. Making Global Sounds Local takes inquisitive minds on an intrepid psychedelic pop pilgrimage guided by the labels widely celebrated musical map, showcasing some of its very best and well-loved discoveries unifying fans of psychedelic funk, punk, hard rock, jazz, disco and cinematic pop made by free souls who defy pigeon holes.

Specially blended for those adventurous palettes, Verdant and Finders Keepers have combined their passions and skills in this, one-time communicative exchange resulting an intense experimental concoction of music and beer… A mixtape in both sonic and liquid form. Comprising an exclusive multifarious one hour download music collage paired exclusively with cans of the haziest premium strength triple hopped IPA, the Making Global Sounds Local project also boasts a limited physical tape cassette (available to buy with packs of beer Verdant) and digital compilation including ingredients sampled by the likes of Jay Z, Action Bronson, Killing Eve and Chanel alongside killer tracks cherrypicked from the tallest Finders Keepers Records branches.

For those who refuse to be bottle-fed their music and beer, then let your taste buds traverse as Verdant and Finders Keepers Records reschedule your journey. Check out the Finders Keepers' "Making Global Sound Local" mix right here. 

Finders Keepers compiles best of Belgian prog-jazz crew COS

The 14-track COSMIX collection is wisely weighted towards the Brussels anti-pop ensemble's first two mid-70s albums.  

ZIP! POW! POP! CAN? ZAO? NEU? EGG? PIL? AND NOW COS. 

COS might not be the first genre-defying progressive music group you’ve heard of who share both wordless onomatopoeic vocals and a snappy three-letter name (complete with philosophical leanings and alchemic penchants) but on listening to this first-ever custom COS compendium you might have just discovered a potential favourite! Perhaps it’s no coincidence that COS share close spiritual, stylistic and social connections with the aforementioned bands, as one of the few long withstanding single-sylable ensembles to remain utterly idiosyncratic and incomparable in their hyper-focused and impenetrable creative bubble. As a group that effortlessly MIX head-nod prog, synth driven jazz, dislocated disco, archestral operatics and high-brow conceptual anti-pop grooves, it’s easier to just remember the name COS than to thumb the vast amount of genre dividers in your local record shop in which COS could occupy. With the crème de la crème of Belgian jazz, prog, psych and funk within their ranks (Daniel Schell/Placebo/Marc Hollander/Alain Pierre/Brussels Art Quintet), their combined idea-to-ability ratio litters the COSography with concepts that aficionados, future fans, collaborators and critics still haven’t begun to unravel...

Get a copy of COSMIX via Bandcamp right here. Check out a few tracks below. 

COS – COSMIX

1. Oostend, Oostend

2. Postaeolian Train Robbery 

3. Flamboya

4. Nog Verder

5. Mein Maschine Ist Schön

6. Boehme 03:20

7. Halucal

8. Good Wind

9. L'Idiot Léon

10. Babel

11. Einstein, j't'aime

12. Achtung TV-Watchers

13. Amafam

14. Perhaps Next Record

Finders Keepers compiles NWW list's German recordings

Strain Crack & Break Vol. 2 – a second helping of music from Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound List – is out June 18th.  

Here's the scoop...

With his ongoing commitment to like-minded archivist label Finders Keepers Records, industrial music pioneer Steven Stapleton further entrusts us to lift the veil and expose “the right tracks” from his uber-legendary and oft misinterpreted psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The Nurse With Wound List. 

Following the critically lauded first instalment and it’s exclusively French tracklisting both parties now combine their vinyl-vulturous penchants to bring you the next Strain Crack & Break edition which consists of twelve lesser-known German records that played a hugely important part in the initial foundations of the list which began to unfold when Stapleton was just thirteen-years-old. From the perspective of a schoolboy Amon Düül (ONE) victim, at the start of a journey that commenced before phrases like kosmische and the xeno-ignant Krautrock tag had become mag hack currency, this compendium is devoid of the tropes that united what many would accurately argue to be the greatest progressive pop bands in Europe (namely CAN, Neu! and Kraftwerk) and rather shatters the ingredients across a ground zero landscape for both inquisitive fans and socially rehabbing musos to begin to assemble a unique self-styled identity. 

Exmagma dressed to impress

If Krautrock was the music that journalists told us lurked behind schlager (German pop) in the 1970s, then this record includes the music that skulked behind Krautrock and perhaps refused to polish its backhanded name belt. Including lesser-known artists like the late Wolfgang Dauner whose career proceeded and outlived the kosmische movement while consistently informing and outsmarting ‘em whenever they got stuck in their metronomic ruts, or how about Fritz Müller, the man who was to Kraftwerk what Stuart Sutcliffe was to The Beatles but had more in common with Yoko and quite rightly couldn’t give a shit about the Fab Four’s Hamburg roots. 

Elsewhere we have a plethora of German bands made for German audiences as they try and shed second hand flower power Americanisms and feel the benefits of much harder drugs and the realisations of difficult second album budgets while Kommune 1 newsflashes wipe smiles from everybody’s faces and replace them with opioid chic or acid-sarcastic grins. Bonzo Cockettes show us their Big Muffs and drummers ask for extra mics while Conny Plank goes for parliamentary office and gives babies good firm hand shakes for the camera. 

Strain Crack & Break Volume Two is the sound of Steve Stapleton’s sponge-like mind and the dividends of anyone who was brave enough to even peek inside those brick-thick gatefold covers never mind drop the needle, with tracks by Mr. and Mrs. Fuchs (aka Anima-Sound) who played their instruments completely naked throughout their anti-career alongside previously unpressed tracks by the scene’s leading Detroit-born African American drummer Fred Braceful who’s band Exmagma officially had the coolest record sleeves and track titles of ALL TIME (Torpedo Tits? Yes Please!). From an era where it was embarrassing to go into your local record shop and hum the tune over the counter, well that young lad Steve Stapleton was braver than that, and besides, these tracks are unhummable and at times unutterable. Did somebody in the crowd shout out for Joel Vandroogenbroeck! Good luck with that one. Stapleton is sharing. Even Stevens. 

Over forty years since Nurse With Wound’s first album was released, Finders Keepers Records and Steve Stapleton take connoisseurs of OUR kind of music, back to the disused elevator shaft towards ground zero. Arrriving at the same checkout from different departments, Finders Keepers and Nurse With Wound continue to sing from the same hymnal with this ongoing collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from Steve’s list, where many overzealous nerds have faltered (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick). 

After Strain Crack & Break Volume One merely scratched the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities, the second lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium drives a much deeper groove, which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focusses exclusively on individual tracks of German origin – the country whose music forged the prototype of the NWW inventory in the form of his secondary school vinyl want-list in the early 1970s. 

Comprising of disassembled free jazz, unshowered stoner psych, hypnotic prog, deranged monk funk and fuzzed out Deutschmark bin bonzo beats this second volume of the series throws us straight back in the deep end, putting the Bad in Baden and the odour in The Oder with little need for cheap Cologne. 

Willkommen to another forgotten plateau found beneath the psychedelic underground, as Steve Stapleton and Finders Keepers dig new tunnels through the fabric of your vinyl wish-list, these German records are heavy, so find Solid Ground or watch you floorboards Strain Crack & Break before your bloody ears. 

Get a copy of Strain Crack & Break Vol. 2 via Bandcamp right here. Check out Association P.C.'s "Scorpion," Exmagma's "It's So Nice" and Brainticket's "Black Sand" followed by the complete tracklist. 

Various Artists - Strain Crack & Break Volume Two

1. Wolfgang Dauner - Output

2. My Solid Ground - The Executioner

3. Association P.C. - Scorpion 

4. Fritz Müller - Fritz Müller Traum

5. Exmagma - It's So Nice

6. Anima-Sound - It Loves Want To Have Done It

7. Tomorrow's Gift - Jazzi Jazzi

8. Out Of Focus - See How A White Negro Flies

9. Brainstorm - Snakeskin Tango

10. Thirsty Moon - Big City

11. Gomorrha - Trauma

12. Brainticket - Black Sand

Whaddya mean you don't know Gökçen Kaynatan

Experimental Turkish composer/producer Gökçen Kaynatan pioneered a new sound of electronic Anatolian rock. 

Get a copy of Finders Keepers retrospective of Gökçen Kaynatan's recordings right here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Gaslamp Killer's All Killer mix

DJ/producer Gaslamp Killer offers a heady guided tour of the delightfully demented Finders Keepers label output. Check the track list below. 

All Killer: Finders Keepers 1-20 mix
0:00 1a - Lubos Fiser * The Sermon
1b - John Hill (5) Europa
1c - Jan Jankeje South Indian Line
4:35 2a - Specter (17) Arkham
2b - Chris Harwood * Wooden Ships
2c - Susan Christie Paint A Lady
2d - Jean-Jacques Dexter Be Quite
10:15 3a - Amral's Trinidad Cavaliers Steel Drum Orchestra * The World Is A Ghetto
3b - Jean-Claude Vannier Les Garde Volent Au Secours Du Roi
15:02  4a - Jean-Claude Vannier L'Enfant La Mouche Et Les Allumettes
4b - Jean-Claude Vannier L'Enfant Au Royaume Des Mouches
19:41 5a - Stanley Myers Sitting Target Main Theme
5b - Stanley Myers Solitaire
5c - Omega (5) Kergeskezu Favagokok
5d - Sevil And Ayla * Bebek
24:56  6a - Zafer Dilek Yekte
6b - Yamasuki Kono Samourai
6c - Sarolta Zalatnay Hadd Mondjam El
6d - Yamasuki Yama Yama
6e - Selda (2) Yaylalar
29:54 7a - Ersen Gunese Don Cicegim
7b - Pierre Cavalli Un Soir Chez Norris
34:56 8a - Vampires Of Dartmoore * Dance Of The Vampires
8b - Sarolta Zalatnay Egyser
8c - Mustafa Özkent * Burcak
40:35  9a - Sarolta Zalatnay Zold Borostyan
9b - The Stylers For You
9c - Mustafa Özkent * Silifke
44:52 10a - Mustafa Özkent * Zeytinyagi
10 b - Susan Christie Europa (Poetry)
10c - Jiri Slitr * & Jiri Sust * Sugar Stealers
10 d - Jiri Slitr * & Jiri Sust * Man With A Typewriter
49:07 11a - John Hill (5) Amalthea
11b - Ersen Zalim
53:48 12a - Bruno Spoerri Les Electroniciens
12b - Jiri Slitr * & Jiri Sust * Girlies, Girlies

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel's Raising Helelyos

Here's a wicked mix of pre-revolution Persian psych, prog rock and bent pop courtesy of Finders Keepers mainman Andy "No Tell" Votel. 

Whaddya mean you don't know Ilaiyaraaja

Ilaiyaraaja scored the film Ellaam Inbamayam (Happiness Everywhere) in which the song "Solla Solla Enna Perumai" is impressively synched by Kamal Haasan. 

Grab a copy of Finders Keepers' excellent Solla Solla compilation of Maestro Ilaiyaraaja's most exciting soundtrack jams right here. 

Midweek Mixdown: Santa's Sangria by Andy Votel

'Tis the season for yuletide mixtapes and Andy Votel usually has a killer-diller of a Christmas chiller. Check out Santa's Sangria below.

Whaddya mean you don't know Steve Maxwell Von Braund

Andy Votel's mix of Steve Maxwell Von Braund's twisted "Monster Planet" appears on the Monster Skies comp. 

Various Artists – Monster Skies (Finders Keepers/Dual Planet)

Finders Keepers recently announced the birth of a new collaborative series of comps and reissues with the brains behind the awe inspiring Australian based Roundtable/Dual Planet archival labels who for the last few years have continued to blow our minds with recent releases by Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Cybotron, Teisco and Egisto Macchi amongst others.

On the 14-track Monster Skies compilation LP there are unheard and exclusive tracks from some of the aforementioned luminaries rubbing shoulders with fresh new finds unearthed from the vintage vaults of some of Finders Keepers most celebrated patchbay polymaths such as Suzanne Ciani, Andrzej Korzynski and the lost Alaskan synthesists Clone and mysterious saxophone playing Australian synthesist Steve Maxwell Von Braund who somehow managed to convince celebrated Masters Apprentices frontman Jim Keays of to voice his apocalyptic vision "Monster Planet" back in 1975.

As a further testimony to Finders Keepers ongoing collaborations with enthusiastic and likeminded detective labels, this lost pop cultural exchange literally spans the entire length and width of the globe to bring you more untravelled and unreleased mutant strains of 60s/70s/80s vintage voltage pop, electronic rock, malformed tape music and zombified funk punk.

Monster Skies pools the resources of two of the most unique and studious vinyl snoop-units and plummets the lost vaults, damp cellars and dark corners of this alternative musical universe from either side of the pear-shaped planet. Check out Steve Maxwell Von Braund's aforementioned electro-psych curio "Monster Planet" followed by the track list for Monster Skies.



Monster Skies
1. Clone – Mind Script
2. Suzanne Ciani – Shrinking Particles
3. Teisco – Mutazione
4. Steve Maxwell Von Braund – Monter Planet (Andy Votel Edit)
5. Lucien Goethals – Studie 2
6. Don Harper – The Ghouls
7. Philippe D’Aram – Bizarre Cult 2
8. Andrzej Korzynski – Zombie
9. Val Stephan – Abstractum
10. Clone –  Halloween (Edit)
11. The Ultra Sonic Perception – The Laboratory 2
12. X Ray Pop – The Living Dead
13. Emerald Web – The Raven
14. Ian Macfarlane – Muzak To Moralise By

Suzanne Ciani concert/film @ Revue Cinema, August 31

Don't miss this rare Toronto appearance by innovative sound shaper Suzanne Ciani. Check the performance clips below.

Suzanne Ciani, performance and screening of A Life In Waves + Louise Campbell

As part of The Music Gallery's Departures Series curated by Tad Michalak, electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani will be at Toronto's Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles) on Friday, August 31 for a screening of her biographical film A Life In Waves followed by a performance opened by Montreal-based clarinettist Louise Campbell.

Ciani, one of the most imaginative exponents of the Buchla synthesizer, is a five-time Grammy award nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and neo-classical recording artist whose work has been featured in countless commercials, video games, and feature films. Over the course of her career, she has released 15 solo albums, including “Seven Waves,” “The Velocity of Love,” and most recently, the live electronic album retrospective, “Buchla Concerts 1975” released by Finders Keepers, as well as providing the voice and sounds for Bally’s groundbreaking “Xenon” pinball machine. A Life In Waves was released in 2017, bringing Ciani’s artistry to a new generation.

As a performer, improviser and composer, Louise Campbell seeks to interrogate and renew the ways in which we make music by creating new works with everyone, regardless of age, ability, level of prior experience, or training. Whether acoustic, or electronically augmented as she is here, Campbell is constantly testing the capabilities of her instrument and herself.

Film: 7 PM
$15 Regular
$12 Advance
$10 Members

Concert: 9:30 PM
$25 Regular
$20 Advance/Arts Worker/Student
$15 Member

Concert + Film package tckets ($30) are now SOLD OUT online. Check Soundscapes and Rotate This for physical tickets.

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel

Here's the "To The Davul A Daughter" mix put together by Finders Keepers mainman Andy Votel. 

Belladonna Of Sadness screens at Royal Cinema tonight – Masahiko Sato's soundtrack out now!

Finders Keepers' has just reissued Masahiko Sato's wickedly witchy score for 1973's Belladonna Of Sadness. 

An unholy grail of near mythical status finally joins the Finders Keepers discography in the form of this first-ever reissue of Masahiko Sato’s elusive 1973 psychedelic jazz score to Eiichi Yamamoto's stunning Japanese witchcraft animation Belladonna Of Sadness – screening at Toronto's Royal Cinema tonight at 7 pm. Get tickets and check out the trailer right here.

An early feature-length example of a micro-genre in which Japanese anime producers collaborated with the “pink” film genre, Belladonna’s challenging occult, sexual and political subject matter was the cause of the film’s notoriety for many years, earning Yamamoto’s work a critical platform amongst some of the best counterculture animation films of the era such as La Planète Sauvage ( René Laloux/Roland T poor, France 1973), Marie Mathématique (Jean-Claude Forest, France 1967), Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, US 1977), Heavy Metal (Gerald Potterton, Canada 1980) and Time Masters (René Laloux/Moebius, France 1982).

Drawing further stylistic similarities with Shuji Terayama/Tenjo Sajiki associated poster artist Aquirax Uno and the Hara-Kiri magazine cartoon strips Pravda/Jodelle by French artist Guy Peellaert, as well as the early flamboyant Klimtesque imagery of Jean Rollin collaborators Philippe Druillet and Nicolas Devil, Belladonna Of Sadness brought a strong European flavour to its sophisticated and stylish Japanese application which accentuated the French origins of the plot loosely based on accounts taken from the 1862 book La Sorcière (The Witch) by French historian Jules Michelet.

Over the last decade Belladonna Of Sadness has risen from the ashes and now shines brighter than ever. Now on the eve of its third or fourth global DVD release, fans no longer have to wait four months for third generation VHS telecine rubs from “that guy” in the States, or stuff their ambitious wish lists into the hands of any lucky friends visiting Tokyo in the summer. Belladonna has been used as nightclub projections by clued-up VJs and been restored by discerning feminist folk singers and improv bands while influencing illustrators, fashion designers and other creative types along the way.

Original copies of the soundtrack, however, are much less likely to rear their heads on a weekly basis, with prices literally doubling each time the original stock copies swap hands amongst the same Italian dealers at central European record fairs. Italian soundtracks are expensive anyway, but this one, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has got extra credentials. Finders Keepers, in direct collaboration with Sato himself, agree that this record should finally be liberated amongst those who know the magic words.

In keeping with the decision to make the reissue “strictly Sato,” the main orchestral love theme by Asei Kobayashi and Mayumi Tachibana – which in all honesty is very much detached from Sato’s psychedelic soundtrack – was not included. Kept intact, however, are the songs sung and penned by Sato’s then wife Chinatsu Nakayama, including the track entitled TBFS (answers on a postcard?) that only appears on the master tapes and never actually made it to the theatrical cut of the film (although the theme is briefly alluded to, in different instrumentation, in a cut-scene available on the German DVD).

This reissue project also marks the beginning of what will hopefully be a continuing relationship between Finders Keepers and Masahiko Sato, exploring his recorded work in both film music, jazz and avant garde composition. Check out the tracks "Take It Easy" and "Little Flower" below.

Happy Birthday Don Cherry!

Remembering the great jazz trumpeter/composer with a rare Italian performance clip. 

La Maison Fille Du Soleil by François Tusques & Don Cherry 

Cross-pollinating the wants lists of art/jazz/print and architecture enthusiasts this seldom seen 7" single is regarded as the rarest “lost” recording by American jazz trumpeter and global communal music missionary Don Cherry as he collaborates with French piano improv genius François Tusques.

A missing link in the pre-formative years of improvised jazz this mythical private pressing unites two of the key exponents of both American and French free jazz – two entirely independent musical art forms which by 1964 had yet to publicly entwine at the hands of bands like Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Sunny Murray, the Actuel magazine/label and Pan-African jazz festivals in the late 60s.

This intimate recording was made to accompany an exhibition by pioneering Swiss/French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (better known as Le Corbusier) held in Tusques own home town of Nantes. Recorded in one sitting while the globe-trotting Don Cherry stopped off in France this record also marks the beginning of a musical journey which lead to releases in Germany, Italy and Sweden featuring collaborations with the likes of Komeda (Poland), Okay Temiz (Turkey), Joachim Kühn (Germany), the legendary Krzysztof Penderecki and directors Alexandro Jodorowsky and Jerzy Skolimowski. Here these compositions are lead by François Tusques adopting the Chinese whisper sound carrier techniques deployed in his music for the film Viol Du Vampire by Jean Rollin while sonically evoking other cinematic works by Komeda, Mal Waldron and Bernt Rosengren.

Housed in a two fold wrap-around sleeve identical to the original article this pocket document of a cross-continental jazz milestone also features a miscredited appearance by bass player Bernard “Beb” Guérin (BYG/Futura) and lays the foundations for Tusques’ imminent free jazz and le nouveau jazz LPs.

Midweek Mixdown: Andy Votel

You can download Andy Votel's Suxo Plexo Muxo mix right here.  Check the track selection below.

Tracklist: 
from Pan Kleks - Andrzej Korzynski - (Polton Poland)
from Anna - Gainsbourg/Columbier (INA France)
from Belladonna Of Sadness - Masahiko (Finders Keepers)
from Chi - Goblin (Cinevox IT)
from Phantasm - Myrow Seagrave (Verese Sarabande)
from Sitting Target - Stanley Myers (FK)
from Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from La Salamander - Patrick Moraz (Evasion Ch)
from Morgiana - Lubos Fiser (FK)
from Nightmares Come At Night (The B-Music Of Soledad Miranda) - Bruno Nicolai (FK)

A Cacophonic mix from Andy Votel

Recently Andy Votel launched a new subsidiary of his ever-expanding Finders Keepers empire called Cacophonic which will of course focus on the strangely thrilling sounds you've never heard created by artists you don't know for records you've never seen. So pretty much business as usual for our man Votel and his deep digging associates.

“Virtually all the records scheduled for Cacophonic," Votel told FACT, "are by artists that genuinely wanted to change how music was heard and made which is why a lot of them are specific to unique or homemade instruments which coincide with the introduction of electronic music before it went microscopic and less tangible. Many of these records are from a jazz background but veer in to other disciplines like ballet and fine art which were some of the most vibrant outlets for experimental music before the rise of rock and pop culture… Finders Keepers celebrates how pop failures become critical triumphs which is something very close to our hearts and translates well to DJing and cinematic applications. Cacophonic comes from a place before pop exists by artists who wanted to change the world and genuinely believed they could.”

Here's an enjoyable little sampler mix assembled by Votel for a limited run (50 copies!) cassette-only release in conjunction with self-titled called Electro Who Cardio Fluxus: 14 Musical Re-Inventors Who Made/Played and Disobeyed Their Own UNstruments, featuring the work of Mr. Ondioline, Michel Magne, Tape Recorder and Synthesizer Ensemble, Remi Gassmann, Kat Epple & Bob Stohl, Rolf Liebermann, Bruce Ditmas, X-Ray Pop and others...

Andy Votel recharges with Vintage Voltage

Since B-Music bigwig and hobbyist DJ and vinyl hound Andy Votel maintained an odd degree of regularity with releases of his prior Fat City mixtapes in three year intervals – Music To Watch Girls Cry (2001), Songs In The Key Of Death (2004) and One Nation Under A Grave (2007) – there was some speculation that a new collection of obscure head-nodders might be appearing in 2010. True to form, the so-called "Saxonic wax magnet" behind the FInders Keepers reissue operation has delivered Vintage Voltage, a 68-minute dazzler of a new set which takes a sharp turn from his prior mixes. Was that a sigh of relief? Yes, well Votel's cool but sometimes corny compendiums were starting to sound a little too much like the ho-hum handiwork of soundtrack-tweaker-for-hire David Holmes.

It appears that the daily ethnic psych and freak folk concerns of running an accidental world music label like Finders Keepers has sent Votel off in the opposite direction for Vintage Voltage which is largely built on hard-thumping Euro prog, robot rock, concrete pop and whirring sound library electronic jams. All of the found sounds (never any track listings from "no-tell Votel") are obscure enough to impress his cohorts like Cherrystones, Dom Thomas, Bob Stanley and Doug Shipton while steering clear of legal hassles.
If you were hoping to hear some airy-fairy drivel sung in Welsh over lightly strummed acoustic guitars and plucked harps, I'm afraid you're out of luck. However if say, the Tafo Brothers approach to plugged-in Lollywood pop is more your steez and you don't have enough jerky Japanese electro-rock, gurgling L’Illustration Musicale and MP2000-style synth drama in your life, then you'll find Vintage Voltage positively electrifying. 

Check out these sample clips...














LINKS
Fat City Recordings http://www.fatcityrecordings.com/
Finders Keepers http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/
Andy Votel's myspace http://www.myspace.com/andyvotel