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Wednesday 30 June 2010

MUSIC MATTERS

Greetings! You know, besides stocking all your printed paper necessities, Good Grief! also shows a strong arm in records, CDs, tapes and the like. It's perhaps previously gone hideously unblogged. No longer, the strong arm is writing that wrong! Starting with the latest addition...

Former Bullies 'Seasoned'

Second album from Former Bullies (the follow-up to "Greetings"), brought to you in association with Comfortable on a Tightrope sponsored by Domino's Pizza. Ten songs of hits, very outstanding. Limited edition of 100 copies with wonderful screenprinted artwork by Lucy Jones.

Listen to some of it here

Buy it instore or in the Good Grief! online shop here


I have a secret helper, he brings in great fruit often. I am always over-joyed. One of his latest and most incrediblessed deposits has been the below...

Irma Vep 'Calandar Snakes/A Shit Jigsaw' CD-R

Giant Hell says of it, "That there is just 1 of 100 amazing and individual screen printed envelopes by Lucy ruddy Jones! Super-mega-chuffed!

The album is made up of songs that I did in between album sessions from Jan - April 2010; hence the name 'a shit jigsaw'. It features a cover of 'The Husband' by Rollin Hunt and an adaptation of a poem by Llanfairfechan weirdo/legend Alan Robert Wedge. 12 tracks, 40 mintes."

We say this is absolutely fabulous and one of the best things we've heard in ages, maybe even better than Irma Vep's unreal tape "Dylan's Birthday Present" tape on Comfortable on a Tightrope from a while ago. And that's saying something!! Exemplary artwork with each individual cover being an entirely different entity. SO NECESSARY!!

£8 instore at Good Grief! or buy online from the band here. Listen here and watch below...


SO GOOD. The above vid was shot by the below, super segway.

Lotus Birth have been delivering outsider sounds from the North West UK and beyond since 2006. Prolific output of beautifully packaged tapes with outstanding content. Warrington's finest. Infinite Light's double tape went double quick fast, we have the following three cassettes remaining...

Ross Parfitt 'Swell to Great' c45

"Ross Parfitt is a Sheffield based musician, sometime Hunter Gracchus and Tirath Singh-Nirmala collaborator, and dedicated to exploring minimal compositional devices to maximal conclusions.

Swell To Great documents two densly woven electronic compositions:

Side A is the more pastoral of the two, opening with a slowly enveloping gong before stuttering wav files of abstracted source material interject, thick & low contiuous tones pull you through as higher frequency sound shimmers in and out of the stereofield.

Side B is a wall of dense chord organ drones, overlapping and interleving in tense, unsettling, aharmonic, combination; ghostly chimes drift in and out of focus, whilst sound files shift in constant flux.

Limited to 60 boxed & sprayed red tapes w/ a sleeve art by Illustrator Fliss Horrocks." Lotus Birth


Whole Voyald Infinite Light 'Twice Live' c38

"A live tape captured on the last two concerts in a three week european tour, in Hull's incredible boathouse, and in the hospitality of Sheffield's Singing Knives:
One jam wild with p.a. warped wordless falsetto, mainlined, mangled, and warped solos gives way to laconic velvet rhythm. The other opiated and seditive guitar meditations, elegiac vocals, swelling crystaline feedback, and Jon Collin blues.
Edition of 60 with sleeve art by Mount Pleasant Illustrator Lucy Jones." Lotus Birth


Andy Jarvis 'Astragalus' c42

"Heavy magnetic pulse of radiophonic workshop, a lost OST from a 70's dystopian science fiction classic, before a climax of UK-garage handclaps & cardboard box bass.

From the mircocosmic Stoke-On-Trent locus, Andy Jarvis, former collaborator with Phil Todd of Ashtray Navigations in the now defunct A Warm Palindrome, collaborator with Joincey in the duo Saboutuese, and former helm of the 3" CD-R Label First Person, that worked to document the eternally nascent UK sub-underground.

Edition of 60 with sleeve art by Manchester Illustrator Fliss Horrocks" Lotus Birth

Buy the above for £5 each instore at Good Grief! or direct from Lotus Birth online here

Next up, we've got Winebox Press' latest two releases and we hope to carry everything they make forever more. Winebox Press operates out of Manchester and this is how they do it :
"Cassette recordings and artworks packaged in single found objects broken down and put back together by hand in limited editions determined by the number of cases to which the object will stretch itself.

Auxiliary materials include nails, screws, elastic, ink, tape, superglue, card, ink, paint, twine....

In the spirit of interaction you might have to use a screwdriver to get in and out. Don't sue me if you get a splinter."

Harappian Night Recordings
'TABASSUM'
C46 - winebox08

"Very psyched to be presenting the third release from Hunter Gracchus member Dr Syed Kamran Ali's turbo folk/eastern swing ethno-garage collage solo trip. 46 glorious minutes of banging percussions, vocal heaving, warped bootleg garage rock and some disarmingly straight-up riffs. Packaging was originally a set of stepladders, broken down and put back together with baker's twine, tacks and some flamboyantly camouflaged brown paper. Edition of 69 copies" Winebox Press. £7

Whole Voyald Infinite Light
'Through the Darkness of Light / Through the Brightness of Day's Light'
2 x C35 - winebox07

"Fifth full-length release from Lotus Birth/Winebox head chefs. Large double set from Winter/Spring 2010 of very wild guitar/guitar/vocal VU/Satwa psych. Package comes from a felled tree, angularly sliced, wood-block printed and affixed with screws, twine, marbled paper, elastic. Unseasoned wood, so give it a couple of years before burning. Edition of 44 copies" Winebox Press. £10

Buy instore from Good Grief! or buy online from Winebox direct here


Neil Burrell
"Shine of Your Skeleton"
CD album

Got a couple of copies of Neil Burrell's second album in the shop. Neil used to live in Manchester, now lives in Brighton. He's amazing. See, or rather hear, the below for the indelible proof. Catch on whilst he's criminally underheard before he's playing Bridgewater Hall for Now Wave in 2050. £5

Hear more here




This is the album cover, for some reason blogger keeps plonking it here. In the midst of these videos and not above where I want it. Well, you get the idea.



Aforementioned image dropping hazards has cut this blog short, to be continued with a musical part 2 in a couple of days. Much left uncovered including Golden Lab Records, Total Vermin, Rayon, more!!

Added some good stuff to the Good Grief! big cartel shop earlier today, check it out and buy stuff or come in to the shop and buy stuff. The students have gone home so they won't get under your feet.

Sunday 20 June 2010

Exhibition Photos!

GOOD GRIEF! GROUP SHOW! opened Wednesday 16th June 2010. It's ongoing til Thursday 24th June at the Art Corner in Fallowfield, Manchester. Look it up! Open 10am-6pm, if the gallery ain't open then ask the bar at Trof for the key.

Anyway, here's some pikachus of how it turned out. I was beyond bowled over with how everyone made it look and how glorious everyone's work was, I knew it was already but now I REALLY know it. Check it...






































































































































There is an exhibition catalogue that was doing the rounds, the first run of 30 got snaffled at the opening but I shall be making some more. Check the shop in a week or so. More than thanks go to Dylan, Faye, Jess, "John", Lucy and Rebecca. NICE ONE!!!!!!!!!!! Lets do it again sometime, maybe at the Tate Malvern or the Britney Museum?