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
Smegma Plays Merzbow
An awesome CD resulting from mail collaboration between experimental two noise legends. A dynamic mix of whirr, crystalline drones, and staticky noise abstractions.1-26: Electro Smegmacousic Music Merzbow used Smegma tapes. All composed by Masami Akita using MA-tape, audio generatior, teleband tranceiver & mixer. 27-50: Smegma Plays Merzbow Composed 1996 at Smegma Studios using Merzbow tape, tape loops, record players, wood flute, vocals, optigan, mussette & frequency analyzer. Recorded & mi…
The Beast
"Smegma man, fucking Smegma. They started the whole damn thing. Sure there was Lee Rocky & some soundeffects 78s that set the crew in motion but screw it.. you wouldn't be blasting The Beast or any Weird Handdrawn LP with rotten ears if it wasn't for this truly motley crew. In high school my sweet momma would give me ten bones a week for lunch, come Monday by noon that shit was blown at the local rec shop. When I only had a couple of raggedy bux left from gripping Zorlac stickers, the only optio…
The Incandescent Gramophone
The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), Poo-Bah Records, and The Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission brings you an homage and exploration of the 78RPM vinyl medium in true 78 phonic quality. The proposal was to make a mysterious object out its time -- a conundrum. Something technologically obsolete, by the most standards. It is an homage to the beginnings of recording technology by combining current methodologies with older mediums of sound reproduction. The compositions derive its sounds fro…
Dennis Suck Goes Disco
Essential reissue of this LAFMS cassette-only release from 1977 -- the first in a series of archival LAFMS release from the label based in the store that was ground zero for the orginal movement to begin with -- Poo-Bah Records! Great booklet with new liner notes by Dennis, design by Tom Recchion. "Dennis Duck Goes Disco was originally released as a hand-made cassette in 1977. Only 20 were made, numbered and given to friends. The album was made entirely with a phonograph and records, utilizing s…
Think Space
Group improvisations intended to accompany a film on the Viking space probe in 1975. Includes the original Doo-Dooettes lineup; Dennis Duck, Juan Gomez, Fredrik Nilsen, Tom Recchion, Harold Schroeder. The 7" includes a Doo-Dooette version of Faust's 'Picnic On A Frozen River' recorded in 1978. Packaged in 7" gatefold jacket. Limited edition. First time available. The release includes: The Doo-Dooettes performing Faust's 'Picnic On A Frozen River' 7", CD of Think Space. Hand numbered edition of 7…
Boris The Spider/Priceless
This edit of Le-Forte Four is wedged between their former incarnation as The Patients and their debut LP that was put together in the electronic music studio at Cal Arts in 1974. Edited by Rick Potts in 1973. All the references made in their debut Bikini Tennis Shoes LP, from Speed Racer to Zappa to Looneytoons to the Moog, is very clearly foretold in the 'Boris The Spider/Priceless' edit. Includes Extended Grunge and Arguments From The Patients reworking of The Who's 'Boris The Spider' that was…
Beyond The Pink Live
Airway started in 1977 as a plot by Joe Potts to subliminally program audiences behind the cover of a chaotic wall of sound. To create the wash of ear-splitting noise, all of the instruments, Vetza's vocals, and the subliminal implants are mixed together and processed through a daisy-chain of flangers, phase-shifters, delays and distortions. Then the super-charged signal is blasted through guitar amps carefully placed to maximize the ricochet of sound from wall to wall. Airway kicks the notion o…
33 1/3
Ostensibly a tribute to the ensemble’s influences from the late 20th century avant-garde and out/free jazz movements, 33 1/3 is an imposing and monolithic effort from Smegma, the long-standing, Portland-based underground noise collective. 33 1/3 finds the ensemble focusing heavily on electronics and bizarre vocal affectations on this outing, which relies on a framework of abstract free jazz as its basic foundation. It can be safely said, however, that Smegma’s material on the album defiantly ref…
Sweetly doing nothing
with a 30 year practice in sonic explorations – including, record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments - tom recchion is one of the world’s most established and finest experimental artist and musician. based in los angeles, tom recchion has co-founded the legendary music entity lafms (los angeles free music society), collaborated with david toop, christian marclay, oren ambarchi, keiji haino, max eastley, rova, john duncan, smegma (just to name a few)…
Nattering naybobs of negativity
The second in the series of Harbinger Sound's efforts to present the Smegma back catalog. This album originally came out in the UK only back in 1987 and is backed by the studio side from the 1988 cassette release, Morass. Twenty-one tracks in total. Dedicated to Tom (Pig Champion) Roberts. Limited to #1000 copies. CD features an eight-page booklet with photos and a pre-1988 Smegma discography
The Lowest Form Of Music
Long out of print huge box, The Los Angeles Free Music Society was a complete screwball fringe music collective that peaked in the true heart of darkness -- America in the mid 70s. They self-released LPs, 7"s and cassettes in the dawn before real independent distribution and the myth that surrounds those sacred pressings has in recent years become feverish. Mixing pure sonic weirdness, musique concrete, free improv blare, fringe-noise-nonsense and much more, the musicians involved with LAFMS cre…