Fashion Flesh – Rubber Mountain LP [BL007]

Fashion Flesh aka John Talaga from Bay City, Michigan, is known for his “off the grid” approach to music. Most all of the instruments used to perform and produce are self-built electronics, oscillators, generators, sound toys, and modulators. Those that are not built from one’s own design are heavily modified beyond audible recognition or return. No sampling/stolen sound is ever used or sucked from outside pre-existing sources. No laptops, instead tape manipulation and hard copy cut-ups…analog devices that are built for specific purpose and dis-purpose. “Rubber Mountain” is his first full LP, 6 tracks of mutant mayhem on The Black Lodge label, spanning from odd italo-disco flavors, to no-wave, post-punk, jakbeat, and experimental sounds from the beyond. Equally for the dancefloor and home listening, this record has it all.

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Fashion Flesh – Rubber Mountain LP [BL007]

VA – Spirits of The Black Lodge Vol. 4 [BL006]

The fourth collection of cuts from Various Artists of The Black Lodge multiverse. The first sound offering on side A comes from The Poetic Painter M of Nation Records. A2 comes from Chilean born sonic explorer Pablo R. Ruiz, who resides in the sacred lands of Detroit and has a number of releases on Portage Garage Sounds. The flip side begins with an acidic banger from Midwest producer/ engineer Grey People who has numerous releases on great labels such as Frigio Records, Valcrond Video, Public System Recordings, and others. B2 is an experimental mind-bender from Bay City, Michigan artist Fashion Flesh aka John Talaga, a true gear head who makes his own electronic equipment, oscillators, generators, sound toys, and modulators and has released on cult labels such as Unknown Precept and Fit Sound (Est. 83’Records), among others. The EP ends with a beautiful piece defying genres from Fauna53, a collective of electronic artists from Italy, headed by Asymmetrical who runs Raw Culture Records.

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VA – Spirits of The Black Lodge Vol. 4 [BL006]

Fashion Flesh – Ambidextrous [SOT007]

“Ambidextrous. The electro-plasticky sculptural sonic opera that invites you in & out & in again. Presented in first-person, at other times in third but always out-of-body. Like a beat up stroboscope slamming into a Walt Disney number, raggedy abstracted cartoonish characters are pumped, plumped & squashed into the adhoc scenery. A tree is now a paint tube or maybe a shoe horn but only because it has to be until it isn’t, or maybe it never will be for you. Very filmy, sometimes flimsy and on occasion chunky; presenting to you, actual variety. Definitely not a tidy digital affair…you can hear the tape bias deep breathing & hasty splices popping with an immediacy that does not waste time to tinker. Shattered bronze becomes the glue, the glue becomes your dinner companion as well as the plate & window seat. Not unlike a Goldilocks and the Three Bears scenario, depending on your moody attention span, you may find certain characteristics to be too something or not enough something but perhaps just right. Open for interpretation & again for re-interpretation – this monument gives what you take. Hidden naked in plain sight under the raincoat of Fashion Flesh is John Talaga. His homemade concrete-conceptual sounds & visions have been pilfered, snubbed & consciously left unmentioned by many unmentionables. FF’s breathed the same dank air & marked his territory in rooms & on records with brave battered pioneers like Momus, Ian Svenonius & Alexandra Cabral (Escape-ism), Ann Shenton, etc etc…leaving a trail of recordings on far-out labels like Unknown Precept, est. 83 (Fit Sound) and Jacktone to only name just a few. Keep listening.”

Fashion Flesh – Ambidextrous [SOT007]