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Label Spotlight: Ectopic Ents

Various Artists - Ectropic Ents presents Bait Various Artists
Ectopic Ents presents Bait
Ectopic Ents
$4.99
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Ectopic Ents presents Bait is a digital compilation, exclusive to Other Music, and will be available for thirty days only. And it costs just five bucks. Bait features tracks by Foetus, Steroid Maximus and Manorexia, which are all alter egos of myself, JG Thirlwell. Ectopic Ents is the company I founded in the 90s as an umbrella for releasing and licensing my work. As such it swallowed up my previous label, Self Immolation. The unveiling of Bait is to celebrate the digital release of thirteen Ectopic Ents titles -- Flow, Blow, Damp, Limb, Deaf, Ache, Rife, Male and Null/Void by Foetus, Radiolarian Ooze and Volvox Turbo by Manorexia and Quilombo and Gondwanaland by Steroid Maximus. (These thirteen Ectopic Ents titles are each available for the special price of $7.99 on Other Music Digital for the next two weeks - Ed.) However, this is by no means my whole body of work. Five albums from the mid-'80s are still controlled by the Some Bizzare label, and some of my other works are under license to Ipecac, Birdman and Sony, and available thru them, while my album of The Venture Bros score is on the Cartoon Network's label, Williams street.

So, on Bait you lucky people can score a heaping helping of Ectopic goodness --- over an hour's worth. It's not a career overview but it casts a broad net, with recordings dating from 1981 up until 2006. On Bait you will hear many sides of the Foetus monster, from cinematic orchestral bombast, to breakneck bigband, to cathartic cacophony. There is early experimental work, a live track and even a remix by Amon Tobin. I also release music and perform under the names Manorexia and Steroid Maximus. These are both instrumental projects; they don't conform to any stylings too much, but you might say the former more pensive and classical/concrete-oriented, and the latter leapfrogging thru worlds of invented ethnicity and imaginary soundtrack and intrigue. (It was Steroid Maximus that inspired the director of The Venture Bros to ask me to score the show). They're much more than this so I regard them, like Foetus, as "unclassifiable." They are represented here with two tracks each.

So enjoy this album, and I hope it inspires you to check out the full-length albums in their entirety, also available for the Other Music digital shop. And I'll be releasing three brand new albums in 2010.

For more news and information please visit www.foetus.org

- JG Thirlwell


Foetus - Ache Foetus
Ache
Ectopic Ents
$7.99
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The second album under Thirlwell's Foetus moniker, originally released in 1982, Ache displays an astonishingly focused vision of his modus operandi. Dense layers of rhythms constructed by just about everything but the kitchen sink create an odd, swinging funk that blends elements of the then-current NYC no wave nihilism practiced by Lydia Lunch and James Chance, Berlin's experimental scene, which was birthing groups like Einsturzende Neubauten and Die Todlich Doris, and a razor-sharp wit and grit akin to the likes of Tom Waits and Serge Gainsbourg in its blending and pastiche of jazz modes, modern classical practices, and rock attitudes. There are dozens of influences and elements being paid both tribute and sacrifice at Thirlwell's alter, and to hear him cut up and re-stitch them all together like a crazed Dr. Frankenstein is thrilling. One of the things I love most about this album is that it sounds both extraordinarily of its time and frighteningly ahead of it -- one can hear echoes of great works to come not only by its creator but of some of the aforementioned artists and of creative sampling pioneers like Matmos and Herbert as well. Psychedelic in the most terrifying and nightmarish of ways, Ache deserves the attention and scrutiny that it sadly never received upon its initial release. This record is the icing on the cake that is Foetus' multi-layered discography, and is one of the best places to start if you're intimidated by its sheer volume.

-Mikey IQ Jones


Steroid Maximus - Quilombo Steroid Maximus
Quilombo
Ectopic Ents
$7.99
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Thirlwell is perhaps most well-known by the majority of folks as being the composer of the music for Cartoon Network's Venture Brothers series. His music for that show, a dizzying blend of big band jazz and post-exotica tiki grooves, can be entirely traced back to the music on this album, under his Steroid Maximus moniker. As Thirlwell mentioned in his Bait sampler notes at the top of this page, it was this record which Venture Bros creator Jackson Publick was listening to when he had the initial creative visions for his program, and it was because of its intensely stylized sound that led him to seek out Thirlwell to score his project. (Quilombo's track "Fighteous," in an edited form, actually serves as the show's theme song.) When this album was first released in 1991, though, the tiki/lounge/Incredibly Strange Music renaissance hadn't really taken off with hip record collecting subculture, and this album really helped in cementing the validity of hailing the likes of Les Baxter, Martin Denny, and Yma Sumac as sonic innovators to be learned from and taken seriously. Their blending of world musics -- specifically those from Polynesia, Africa, and the tropics -- with the sounds of jazz modes of both the swinging big band and more sedate lounge varieties, along with elements of experimental and extended vocal techniques, was groundbreaking and theretofore unheard. Thirlwell took the templates they first laid down and enlarged them with great care and flare, adding the sinister bombast of cartoon music composers like Raymond Scott and Spike Jones to the mix for an album that, once again, was a bit too ahead of its time -- aside from John Zorn and certain elements of his then-contemporary Naked City project, very few had attempted to re-contextualize this sort of music and treat it as anything other than kitsch. Quilombo, like many of Thirlwell's other endeavors, successfully balances humor and horror, wit and grit into an album that still sounds as daring and enjoyable as it did upon its initial release.

-Mikey IQ Jones


Manorexia - The Radiolarian Ooze Manorexia
The Radiolarian Ooze
Ectopic Ents
$7.99
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To call Manorexia JG Thirlwell's most "ambitious" project is perhaps stretching things for a fellow who has shown nothing but the fullest ambition and execution in all of his creative endeavors over his 30-year plus career. It could easily be stated, though, that the Manorexia moniker holds under its namesake some of Thirlwell's most "serious" music thus far, and has been one of the projects, outside of his music for The Venture Bros cartoon series, to which he has given frequent attention as of late. This is Thirlwell's most overtly "pretty" music due mostly to Manorexia's sonics being dressed in outfits tailored more in a modern classical, chamber music-oriented variety. Much of the music is sculpted in gorgeous arrangements of strings, prepared pianos and percussion, as well as Thirlwell's masterful blend of minimal electronics and production effects. The textures and moods here are the most subdued of any of Thirlwell's albums, yet there's nothing remotely ambient or sedate about them. All of the same sinister, dark tones are here in spades, along with his deft sense of humor. "The Harpoon Jockey," with its Afro-Brazilian percussion dancing capoeira circles around tense strings, is one of the most breathtaking pieces on display here, while "Armadillo Stance" takes an electric organ straight out of Raymond Scott's "Manhattan Research" and pairs it with drones and eerie metallic percussion refrains for one of my favorite pieces of Thirlwell's music. This record stands out as one of the crown jewels in Thirlwell's discography, and demands your attention. Of all of his records, oddly, Radiolarian Ooze has perhaps the broadest appeal, and if you've been too afraid of his genius elsewhere, or if the bombast of his more rock-oriented modes have intimidated you, give this one a try. Manorexia is for lovers.

-Mikey IQ Jones



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