★Open Mouth
Bill Nace / Emily Robb
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* "Before hitting the road together in 2022 Bill Nace and Emily Robb recorded a tour split — a cassette, limited run of 50 — only to be found at their merch table. Now on vinyl, the split captures a moment bursting with verdient, crisp anticipation. Both artists were then on the heels of significant artistic leaps. Robb was wrapping up the promotional cycle of her first full-length solo record, 2021’s How To Moonwalk, and Nace had recently shifted his focus from p…
Off Motion
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* "Open Mouth LP At last! The long-promised duo LP by two undisputed masters of post-tongue instrumental gesticulation and invention. Augured by their eponymous 7” from 2019, Off Motion is a full-length exploration of the previously unknown aural destinations these two guys continually discover as they move beyond the borders of music-as-it-is-played. Often, when writing about music, it's possible to draw comparisons to players' stylistic relationships to what has…
Old Glow
* 200 copies limited edition * The first time I heard Wheatie’s music was at a basement show in Philadelphia, and I was entranced. I’ve felt similarly when watching videos of the French singer Barbara as she concentrates on a corner of the room, her eyes big warm coins, singing “La solitude” about a loneliness that “rolls around the hips” and demands that the door is opened. It’s Barbara’s self-possession that haunts me, her willingness to do publicly what I can only find alone. It’s not so much…
Touchless
Co-released in 2011, this 7" features alto saxophonist Paul Flaherty, a major American alto saxophonist active since the 1980s, and Bill Nace, head of Open Mouth, an experimental label in the same country. Includes two improvised tracks with alto and guitar, DL code included.
Obstacle #79: Memory Is Current
Tip! * Edition of 250. In process of stocking * Obstacle #79: Memory Is Current offers a sequence of works for player piano, a device which captured Rick Myers’ imagination in 2017. Divining a method from mathematical measurements and intuitive drawing systems, Myers obstructed piano rolls using adhesive tape. Performed in this altered state on a player piano in the hallway of Easthampton Machine and Tool in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the music embedded in the rolls was extricated from its hist…
Solo Guitar 2 / One Note
* Edition of 300. Paste on covers/Inserts screened by Alan Sherry on Stoughton Tip-ons ** Solo Guitar 2 was recorded by Bill Nace in 2008, in a good-sounding room in Bennington, Vermont. This year the record, originally released as a now (nearly) extinct cassette, is reissued without it's mysterious and (maybe?) long-lost sibling Solo Guitar 1 (Like any good punk demo -- which, both aesthetically and energetically, Solo Guitar 2 is -- the thrill of discovery is made only sweeter by the potential…
Dishwashers
**400 copies** Bill Nace and Graham Lambkin first played together in Fall 2018, in Kentucky, behind plastic. In that performance, they sometimes played the same instrument at the same time. Time passed, then they recorded this album in Fall 2019, in London. I was told that an acoustic guitar, a cymbal and tapes were used in the recording and I have no reason to doubt that. There are also voices, birds, a room, the outside world...; a bow is used. Bill & Graham both deal in different kinds of ten…
Bridle Path
**232 copies** John Truscinski has made a solo recording called ‘Bridle Path’, and it’s document of a journey, a singular meditation, a universal landscape soundtrack. Reflections and refractions of sound swim around in their own subtlety. A conversation gets out of its own way, using an unknown language of letting go. A focused void. Drone slabs and microtones bend and waver, slipping beneath the surface of sound. Using a a mini brute and Korg synthesizer, John carved out time to occasionally s…
Partial Infinite Sequence
**250 copies** The sound of the violin is a product of tension and release; the hair of the bow pulls back the violin’s string over and over again and, when the tension gets too great, it releases. The resulting vibration disturbs the air around it which travels in waves, exciting our ear drums and becoming sound. This confrontation of energy with air—the alternation of potential and kinetic energy—occurs over and over again in microcosm: catching, holding, tensing, and releasing. As listeners, …
Live at Rotunda
**200 copies** Already sold-out at the label, numbered edition in silkscreened covers by Alan Sherry. Personnel: Susan Alcorn - pedal steel; Chris Corsano - drums; Bill Nace - guitar. Recorded September 5. 2018 live at Rotunda Philadelphia, PA.
Mystic Beings
My first listen to these four extraordinary pieces by Chris Corsano, Bill Nace, and Steve Baczkowski was over a very rough ferry crossing from Cairnryan to Belfast. It's hard not to think of the ghosts of impossible crossings, victories, loses, harbors in such rough waters. Why would anyone venture out here? Finding something new or an overdue visit? Ending all of the wars? For me, for my first listen to Mystic Beings instantly cured all motion sickness. It was probably just the very welcome adr…
Department of Heraldry
I was first introduced to the concept of Mark Charles Morgan by Thurston Moore in a series of conversations that all went something like this: TM: Dude, Sightings is coming to town. You should check them out. I think you'd really dig them. And you'd love Mark; he's hilarious Me: un-huh TM: No, really. Me: When and Where? I'll try to make it. TM: They're playing Friday at... At which point, I'd nod politely, internally shutting down, or just walk away, while he was mid-sentence. This went on for …
Live At Dreamland
sold out at source, Edition of 150. Cover art Bill Nace. Paste on covers screened by Alan Sherry. Mastered by Mark Alan Miller. Recorded live by Tim Barnes. Twig Harper--electronics, voice. Bill Nace--electric guitar, voice. .
Samara Lubelski/ Bill Nace
sold out at source, edition of 250 copies, few copies available. "Gorgeously psychedelic debut LP by this new guitar/violin duo, created by two of the form's great maestros. Samara Lubelski and Bill Nace are both veterans of the American sub-underground. Between them they have many projects under many names on many labels. Most recently, however, the two have been focused on string-based duo aktion, Samara in cahoots with Marcia Bassett, and Bill with Kim Gordon in Body/Head. These two ens…
Gates And Variations
Gates And Variations rounds out a loose trilogy of records by Jake Meginsky for Open Mouth. Not an intended trilogy on Jakes part but it has become one to my mind. It has come to be how I listen to them and experience them, all informing each other, echoing and challenging each other and growing into each other's space and light like a garden of plants that would never actually coexist anywhere in reality. Jake is always tirelessly reaching for something new yet I'd avoid using the word progres…
These
Wherein we come upon three visceralists who have been collaborating for years - innumerable instances in a roulette wheel of settings -- finally shacking up in a studio and fashioning a proper trio record. Glory be. Let's listen in-- 'These.' It's a phrase that never gets started, and an apt title for this record, which right off bolts from the barn and burns so brightly it nearly gets away from you by the time you're done twisting your head around looking for whoever it was that left the …
Live at Disjecta
Fourth in Open Mouths's Live At ... series. Greg Kelley on trumpet; Bill Nace on electric guitar. Recorded March 9, 2016 by Daniel Menche. Cover art by Bill Nace. Covers screened by Alan Sherry. Edition of 300.
Band ep
sold out at source, few available "At long last, this recording sees a proper release. There's a story: Initially, I released this as a cassette on my own label, Silver Lining. To be fair, you can hardly call it a label. I have no right releasing my own music, let alone anyone else's. I'm bad at manufacturing things, I'm bad at promoting them, and I'm especially dismal when it comes to packing things up and mailing them out. And so this cassette had a brief brush with public life and then vanish…
One End to the Other
Recorded during a recent trek to the Pacific Northwest, this session is very damaged by the post-tongue explosive devices packed by each of the quartet's members. Skittering along the most devious edge of improvisational madness, Greg Kelley, Greg Campbell, Bill Nace and Mr. Shoup bring four chunks of deep underground moisture into the air for the first time. Let us make to examine them. 'Morning' greets the listener beneath a raucous grackle filled tree, mounting to a commuters' rage. The…
Vandals
Awesome!! "Below a shuffling cabasa-like rhythm, a pair of taut drum patterns is punctuated by swirling electronic crackle and a deep bass drop. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, layers of spongy beats accumulate until they're wiped out dub-style by an echoing sonar moan that suspends the track in a dark and undulating aquatic reverie, a lull broken by jittery bass tones and reverberant knocks that surge into an intricate percussive maelstrom. Jake Meginsky's music is distinctly low end and…