LAFMS Los Angeles Free Music Society
LAFMS, formed in 1974, was a collective of like-minded artists inspired by the likes of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. Some of those in the collective included Smegma, Airway, Le Forte Four and Doo-Dooettes and some other groups interested in noise and improvisation.
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,…
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…
Vibe
Important Records announces Vibe, the new LP from Extended Organ, the Los Angeles-based quintet associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Vibe, Extended Organ's first full-length studio LP since 2000's XOXO was recorded in April 2016 by members Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, and Alex Stevens. The album consists of two side-long tracks, Hate and Vibe, recorded live at LACM Studio in Pasadena, California by acclaimed engineer André Knecht. On Vibe, the gr…
Sputtering And Distorted - A Reluctant History Of The Butte County Free Music Society (Book)
Hidden but not forgotten, hinted at through piecemeal reference after the fact, the creative efforts of the members of this West-Coast-centric cadre of art mutants first took shape in the early 1980s in Chico, California, home to a state university infamous for its alcohol-embracing student body. Twenty-five years later, in 2009 to be exact, Induced Music Spasticity, the 4xLP boxest of unheard home-made four-track recordings of tape experiments, electronic improv, spoken word, live recordings, p…
Couscous Bizarre
* In process of stocking * Absolute collage hell from the bowels of several known earths. We have worked with the horrible Orchid Spangiafora (aka Rod Carew) before. Back in 2013 we were tricked into doing an expanded 2LP reissue of Rod's 1979 Twin/Tone album, Flee Past's Ape Elf. A mistake we swore we'd never make again. Glands are a different story, being a two-headed beast comprised of Allie Caulfied (of Just Bananas magazine) and Bobbi Manring (former leader of both Poop World and The Giant …
no record
* 2021 Stock * "In 1965, eight guys from London, Ontario, decided to start a free-improv group — 'free' to the point of building their own instruments, which they decided couldn't be set up to produce specific pitches... Their vocalist, schoolteacher Bill Exley, banged on a cooking pot and bellowed hilariously about stupidity and destruction and Canada. They didn't treat what they were doing as an advanced, visionary form of experimental music, but as a big, stupid, fun, ecstatic noise. By the '…
The Pre-Tenses
** 50 copies. The cassette comes with two laserprinted and xeroxed inserts** Recorded 1995 & 1996 at home in Portland Oregon USA. Surrealistic sounds by Smegma veterans Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia. Recorded in 1995 and edited by Ju Suk in 2021. A collage of otherworldly music.
'I'm not sure how we got some of the sounds going'
Hallucinatory Huareches
Edition of 180 copies. Reissue of the Slowscan cassette from 1985. Recorded December 1984. Engineered by Rick Potts & Joseph Hammer. Le Forte Four (Rick Potts, Joe Potts, Tom Potts, Susan Chapman & Chip Chapman) were the original line-up of the Los Angeles Free Music Society or LAFMS. While they were working on their first album ‘Bikini Tennis Shoes’, they changed their name from LAFMS into ‘Le Forte Four’ and used the name LAFMS for the label on which they released that album in 1975. All…
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…
Tiromancy
New recordings and a couple of their unreleased tracks. Another Japanese CD from 1997 by this oblique improv collective. In some ways, just as traditional as a bunch of Sun Ra acolytes, in others more bent than actual acid casualties, Tiromancy splashes down swaddled in rainbow dots, early Playboy chic, laughing gas electronics, conflicting vapors, surround-seep ooze-adelia, and highly agile mental capabilities. Japanese import.
Smegma is an American experimental noise group formed in Pasadena, …
Lock 2, 4, 6
Working since the late 1970s among the downtown New York music and art overlaps, video artist Tony Oursler (born 1957) is famed internationally for his immersive installations. In the summer of 2001, Oursler staged a spectacular installation at the Kunsthaus Bregenz. Titled Flucht, it involved projections onto the building's glass façade and an audio component with actors speaking in a range of dialects.
LOCK 2,4,6 was developed over a number of years in conjunction with Eckhardt Schneider and t…
Sonic Fermentations
**200 copies** "The moon is out and it's time for experiments in the Pacific Northwest. Enter the abode of Smegma Laboratories, dwelling of Ju Suk Reet Meate & Oblivia (The Tenses) whom are active in Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) notable collaborators with Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, John Wiese and infamous rock critic Richard Meltzer. It's late in the evening and they have invited fellow Smegmateer David Morgan along with synthesized sculptors Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper of MSHR, and psyche…
Vol. 2
Japanese CD reissue of The Nihilist Spasm Band's second album, originally released in 1978 on the Michael Snow'sMusic Gallery Editions label. Recorded live at the Toronto Music Gallery, February 4th 1978.The NSB was formed in 1965 by a group of people who enjoyed music and wanted to play in a band. There was no desire to learn to play traditional instruments so kazoos were bought and assorted noise makers modified or built from scratch. The band started playing regularly every Monday night in 19…
1984
When the cassette 1984 was released on Chimik Communications in 1984, the Nihilist Spasm Band's last record was the 1978 Vol. 2. Although the band was very active at the time, playing every Monday night at Forest City Gallery in London, Ontario, since the mid-'70s, it very seldom recorded. 1984 was an attempt at documenting these weekly sessions. Tracks were edited from domestic recording tapes, therefore the sound quality is poor, bootleg-like at times (like on "Are You OK Bill? July 30 1984").…
Guff Vout Mulch
The Smegma & Blood Stereo collab LP "Guff Vout Mulch" on Nashazphonehas finally landed. Old fashioned postal collab finished up in 2009, sweet printed colour sleeves and bonkers liner notes by the noise soulman John Olson.Good old fashioned Trans-Atlantic postal collaboration LP between Smegma and Blood Stereo, recorded in Brighton, Pasadena and Portland. The whole shebang was finished in 2009, but Cairo's Nashazphone label didn't think you dinks were ready for it then, now they reckon yo…
Blorp Esette
2011 remastered edition. Remastered in June of 2011 by Ju Suk Reet Meate. Perhaps the only logical follow up to the historic LAFMS: The Lowest Form Of Music 10CD box on RRR, is this 4CD compilation based around the 2 LP volumes of Blorp Esette which Ace Farren Ford released under the LAFMS umbrella in 1978 (Vol. 1) and 1980 (Vol. 2, a double LP set). Both of the LPs featured cover & label art by Don Van Vliet which as been reproduced on this CD reissue. Capt. Beefheart cover art was quite a c…
Krewton the Knewtron
'Previously unreleased material by the legendary Rick Potts of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), to commemorate his solo tour of Japan. Raw, lo-fi avant-garde experiments with field recording, improvisation and tape music, recorded in the late seventies when Rick was in his early twenties. Featuring contributions by Le Forte Four and Doodooettes on one track, and two recently recorded unreleased tracks. " In 1977 I wanted to make an animated film filled with the strange creatures…
Glamour Girl 1941 + Pigface Chant
This CD collects the first Smegma long-player, Glamour Girl 1941, originally released on the LAFMS label in 1979, the Pigface Chant 7" released that same year and recorded five years earlier, and even adds in four bonus recordings from that same era. These early recordings of this long-running group of noise anarchists show an extremely primitive but non-conformist take on the musical world, even more so than, say, the Krautrock band Faust, as Smegma adds a messier element of chaos to its sound.…
Induced Musical Spasticity: B.C. Free Music Society (1984-2009)
Major archival unearthing that makes available for the first time the bulk of the 'official' releases - plus a ton of unreleased material - from the mythic Butte County Free Music Society, a collective of musical oddballs, 'noise' musicians, art pranksters, record collectors and rock/roll fans who modeled themselves on the Los Angeles Free Music Society in order to create an umbrella organization that would shelter 'out' musicians during times of musical drought, this one taking place in the ear…
Rebel Dabble Babble: Four Audio Works
Rebel Dabble Babble: Four Audio Works is a four LP collection featuring audio from Rebel Dabble Babble (2012), a multi-part video work and installation by artists Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy. Paul McCarthy has been involved with the Los Angeles Free Music Society for the past 40 years, notably being a member of Extended Organ, one of the "core" LAFMS groups. The project is an abstracted, layered piece, using the rumors of sexual relationships between the cast and crew during the making o…