John Carroll Kirby
My Garden

Seance Centre: ...Plus or Minus Two compiles 4 songs from Kansas City wave pioneers Short-Term Memory’s first cassette album, Every Head Needs Cleaning, with with a song each from their last cassette release Cinema Mind, and their digital retrospective, Flub Dub and Other Love Songs. This EP focuses on the group’s prescient dance-floor DIN-sync workouts which share sensibilities with contemporaneous early Detroit experiments by Juan Atkin’s Cybotron, Ron Hardy’s visionary Kikrokos tape edit, Shoc Corridor’s extended 808 exercises, and 90s Techno Pop by Haruomi Hosono. Rounding off the EP is the existential electronic soul ballad Words. Remastered from the original reels, 45rpm DMM pressing. Kansas City, 1983: a band formed, wires connected and synapses fired. Three friends, tired of guitar/bass/drums rock started jamming with newly acquired synths and Roland TR 606. They called themselves Short-Term Memory. Thanks to the vanguard technology of the time, these electronic instruments spoke to each other, and Jim Skeel, Kevin Dooley & Jon Paul could program their instruments and ride the DIN-sync wave. Weekly jams became more ambitious, and in 1983 they released their first album Every Head Needs Cleaning on their own Silly Poodle Music label. Over the 80s members drifted in and out of the group, and they released 2 cassettes, an LP and a 7” EP. By the 90s Jim Skeel was at the helm, the only original member, and joined by Tim Higgins he continued to record in MIDI mode for a few years before pulling the plug, leaving recordings and memories that resisted the great fade-out of time, and today sound vibrant and more visionary than ever.

smilingc: ...Fritz Bootle, Jr. (F.J.) story began in Freeport on the Grand Bahama Island. While legendary balearic acts were honing in on a sun-soaked sound at Compass Point Studios on the nearby island of New Providence, you could ferry over to Freeport, to witness an equally flourishing scene of soca, reggae, and disco music. If you were lucky, you might’ve caught a live show from F.J. at one of the various clubs around town. During the early ‘90s, regulations on drug traffickers were quite loose which meant discotheques were in full swing and the island attracted a bevy of pleasure-seeking tourists. In addition to the clubs, fish fry’s at the beach were popular places for locals to grab a beer and some snapper to hear the DJs play new selections from neighboring islands. It was a lively time on the island, and F.J.’s music was meant to reflect the relaxed attitude that came with the archipelago lifestyle.

deejay.de: ...Musique Plastique (Visible Cloaks, Pedro) rescue a nearly lost soundtrack to a Belgian avant-theatrical work from the 80s. For fans of Nuno Canavarro, Roberto Musci and Vito Ricci.