LAFMS - Los Angeles Free Music Society
The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) is a loose underground collective of experimental avant-rock artist-musicians formed in 1973, who found commercial rock too boring, slick, and predictable, and set out to reinvent improvisation and sound experiments with a DIY ethic
The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) is a loose underground collective of experimental avant-rock artist-musicians formed in 1973, who found commercial rock too boring, slick, and predictable, and set out to reinvent improvisation and sound experiments with a DIY ethic
Member of: Joseph Hammer
The Smegma Christmas Album
Bomb! * Edition of 200. Hand-made covers (each one is unique), comes with a postcard. * At the end of October 1973 Ricky Reets Hubba-Hubba Band was disbanded. It had been decided that what was needed was “a band without Musicians” and many wild experimental jam sessions took place. Finally on November 23 a particularly inspired jam was named “Cat Cheese” and the band SMEGMA was born. Although we had only been playing music together (or at all) for a few months, we decided to record a full lengt…
The Raymond Building, 1976 (Art Edition)
Art Edition, includes a 5x5 inch pigment print, a self portrait from the book, printed by and signed on the back by Fredrik Nilsen. This is a 32 page perfect bound book of photographs by Fredrik Nilsen documenting 3 months in 1976 when we members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, aka the LAFMS, occupied studios in the 35 South Raymond building in what was then the derelict district of Old Town Pasadena. Some images were taken as promotional photos for our upcoming infamous performances at t…
The Raymond Building, 1976 (Book)
300 copies. This is a 32 page perfect bound book of photographs by Fredrik Nilsen documenting 3 months in 1976 when we members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, aka the LAFMS, occupied studios in the 35 South Raymond building in what was then the derelict district of Old Town Pasadena. Some images were taken as promotional photos for our upcoming infamous performances at the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, California in July of that year. Others show the general mayhem that transpir…
Transmissions Des Fluides
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* "Second Trick : name-dropping. Always useful and often expected, name-dropping provides referential anchors to the reader. It's like a hug. She/he no longer feels alone in the world. Others, like them, are imbued with influences that they sometines have to keep quiet about to their skeptical surroundigs. In our case, given the wicked monster generated, there is no need to seek external references for support, they're included in the package ! Ex : Smegma's hist…
Japanese Cassette
** Much-Needed Repress, Red Vinyl ** Tom Recchion is a legendary character. He is a world-famous art director, a founding member of the L.A.F.M.S., and was even the drummer for Sonic Youth for a brief period. Since the '70s, Tom has been creating screwed-up music in a dizzying array of formats, from large fully-clothed ensembles to buck naked solo explorations. The Japanese Cassette album falls into the latter category, and it is a head spinning doozy. The music here was originally created in 19…
The Elusive Flexure
Helicopter is proud to present the first trio album of Joseph Hammer (Solid Eye, Dinosaurs With Horns, LAFMS), Joe Potts (Airway, Extended Organ, LAFMS), and John Wiese (Sissy Spacek, Strain of Laws).
Plays
Available for the first time as the artists originally intended!
XCIII
More than 25 years after their first partnership, international collaborators Smegma and Merzbow reunite for an all-new album that pushes the conceptual springboard of random composition generation even further. Consisting of two movements spread over 93 tracks, XCIII presents a collage of abstract electronics, unconventional instruments, reel to reel tape manipulation, loops and effects, best experienced in unique combinations on shuffled play.The first movement, Climactic Gruesome Costumes (wh…
Blorp Esette Gazette Volumes Three & Four
The history of the Blorp Esette, which chronicles the output of the Los Angeles Free Music Society and other entities in its orbit, dates back to 1977, with the release of Blorp Esette Volume One LP (soon to be reissued by Superior Viaduct) and Volume 2 2LP in 1980. Volumes 3 and 4 emerged in 1999, packaged in a boxset with the previous volumes. The Blorp Esette Gazette first appeared with Volume 1 & 2 in 2013. Intended to be an on-going series, it was paused after the passing of Transparency la…
Infringements / 35 S. Raymond Avenue
This bundle includes the following:Smegma "Infringements" (LP) **Edition of 230** This is alga marghen’s third installment of Smegma’s original “Suburban Primitive Avant-folk music” Period (1973-1975) based in Pasadena, featuring three previously unreleased tracks from the deep vault of their home recordings. In the beginning, the Band Smegma had only one rule. No Musicians.
Starting from scratch, they took the Road much less traveled. They were inspired by outsider musical artists of the time s…
35 S. Raymond Avenue
**New edition of 100 numbered copies presented in a hand-coloured sleeve** One afternoon in 1975, friend and fellow music traveler, Harold Schroeder, showed up at Poo-Bah Record Shop where Tom Recchion worked selling records and experimental music to people, forcing them to buy albums that he swore would change their lives. Harold asked if Tom wanted to share in a studio space close to the shop. After seeing it Tom immediately said "YES!". They moved in and divided the space in half. On Tom's ha…
Infringements
Tip! **Edition of 230** This is alga marghen’s third installment of Smegma’s original “Suburban Primitive Avant-folk music” Period (1973-1975) based in Pasadena, featuring three previously unreleased tracks from the deep vault of their home recordings. In the beginning, the Band Smegma had only one rule. No Musicians.
Starting from scratch, they took the Road much less traveled. They were inspired by outsider musical artists of the time such as John Cage, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fish…
États-Unis Bundle III
Includes five albums: etat16 - Various - I.D. Art #2 (LP) etat17 - Le Forte Four / Doo-Dooettes - Live at the Brand (2xLP) etat18 - Various - Blorp Esette Volume One (LP) etat19 - Smegma - Glamour Girl 1941 (LP) etat20 - Various - Sound (LP)
Sound
Sound: An Exhibition of Sound Sculpture, Instrument Building and Acoustically Tuned Spaces opened at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art in the summer of 1979 (and was also on view later that year at PS1 in New York). Curated by Bob Wilhite and Robert Smith, the exhibition surveyed the field of sound art. The forty-four participants were painters pivoted toward performance, conceptual artists attracted to time-based mediums, self-styled creators of environments, and musicians (formally…
Glamour Girl 1941
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Blorp Esette Volume One
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Live at the Brand
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
I.D. Art #2
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Mutant Stomps
These American legends of outsider avant-garde need little introduction. Since becoming core members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society five decades ago, they have retained their focus, determination and unmatched originality, influencing generations and never seizing to advance further avenues of progress. Mutant Stomps is a result of Smegma’s living room recording sessions at their pink house in Portland. All tracks were produced 2012–2013, with one dating back to 1975 for good measure. The…
Live At Zebulon
Airway began as a solo project of Los Angeles Free Music Society member Joe Potts. The first release was the Airway 7-inch, which featured subliminal messages to coincide with an art exhibition in Tokyo. Since their August 1978 live debut at the LACE Gallery, the group has performed many concerts with different large lineups, always with Joe Potts’ subliminal message experiments as a central feature. Airway’s “Live At LACE” LP, first released in 1978, and introduced to Japan by Takuya Sakaguchi,…