Chin33 & Chin34: The Superfools present "This Is New" and "For Your Listening Pleasure"

We're delighted to present two new albums by James Melendrez, aka The Superfools, New Mexico's sound-collage virtuoso. Featuring collaborations with Otis Fodder (of The Bran Flakes), and Forty-One, these two albums are vividly chaotic splash paintings, musically intense and superbly constructed fiestas of montage.

This is romantic, mysterious, magical, and deeply personal sample music, ranging from multi-tiered fantasias of nostalgia, to frantic, angular, fragmented playgrounds where naughty children snip each other to bits and juggle with the remains.

Put these albums on, have a party with your best friends. You'd be a fool not to....

Now for a few words from Mr Superfools Melendrez (pictured above with two other lovely gentlemen) himself...

"Once I understood that I could make music I never stopped. Hanging out at friends houses and using their equipment I started to make short quick tracks. Slowly I started buying equipment like a turntable, a computer and so on. They are my tools.

The Superfools started to become my playground. I enjoy playing with samples and sound. In the summer of 1999 I sampled sounds from the song “We Built This City” by Jefferson Starship. The Superfools came from the lyric “we are the superfools!” I started to compose tracks at home. In earlier years I have shared them with friends and I received good feed back. I had fans. Till today I am eager to hear what my closest friends like about my work, and I am constantly evolving.

In 2009 a coworker posted albums online and I have had the opportunity to collaborate with other composers and artists via email. Ergo Phizmiz is one.

My subject matter is constantly changing because my interests are forever changing. When I compose as the Superfools it allows me to work with all the things I’m interested in at that moment. So it’s ok if you hear the broken English of Ricky Ricardo, or the maniacal demands of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest, and the percussive sounds of Perez Prado all on the same track.

This double release comes courtesy of Ergo Phizmiz’s Chinstrap net label. These two albums are a mystical journey into the world of vintage records. More than 100 tracks make up the majority of samples which are used throughout the two albums. Nothing was left out, Mambo, Bossa Nova, Cha Cha Cha, Samba, the Waltz, Tango and the Polka!

What sets these two albums apart from my other work is that they contain remixes from Otis Fodder of the Brand Flakes and D.J. Fortyone. I’m From Albuquerque, New Mexico. My love for Mexican/ Latin sound is my inspiration, and I’m proud to be one of the few Latin Sample collage artist this side of the border.

This Latin Electronico musical gumbo is sure to fulfill your avant-garde sample collage needs. Enjoy!"

 

 

Like this? Try the other releases by The Superfools on Chinstrap, "Sentimental Fields" and "The Superfools".

 

More Superfools at his homepage.

Chin27: Vernon Lenoir "The Rites of Sausage"

The very strange, enchanted composer, sampler-meister and fez wearer who goes by the moniker of Vernon Lenoir has spent the best part of the last decade knocking out consistently inventive and entertaining music on some of the world's most delicious netlabels including UpItUp, WM Recordings, and Egotwister.

He makes uberpopinexcelsis, tearing apart his own angle on pop cultures and slapping them back into his own forms. A sort of Buxtehude of beats, there is profound and irrestible cinematic musicality to the shapes Mr Lenoir makes.

 

"The Rites of Sausage" is a party album for a hallucinatory end of the world, when everybody has lost their minds and all they see before them are sausages, and visions within those sausages. Inspector Gadget and the Macarena make appearances. The latter transforms by Vernon's alchemy into a Balkan knees-up, while Rome burns. Ozzy Osbourne goes wild in a shopping mall. Simeon of Stylites gives in and throws shapes atop his pillar. The world fragments all around, with joy.

The album features collaborations with Roglok, Ergo Phizmiz, and Satanicpornocultshop. The beautiful artwork is by La Roll, which you can download a hi-res copy of here (6.86mb).

"The Rites of Sausage" is also available in FLAC, right here (204mb).

Chin25: Plushgoolash "Soup Tennis"

The absolute blinding UBERPOP legend that is Plushgoolash returns for a second Chinstrap release, following on from their eponymous slab of joy in 2010.



The brainchild of Erik Bumbledonk & Bambi Racheed, Plushgoolash produce unforgettable and superbly crafted, playful pop music, infused with the sort of mischief that has been known to take place in Mick Hucknall's jockstrap.

From the gorgeous melody of "Martin Walmsley", the ebullience of "Big Gay Water Fight", to the hilarious simplicity of "Love Song For a Caveman" and the naughty-boy-sets-fire-to-the-nursery spirit of "Fairy Tale", Plushgoolash have created a parallel universe where the laws of pop are turned upside down, inside out, chewed up, and spat out, spattered onto the wall in lovely, lovely shapes.

 

The Goolash boys also have a finely tuned ear for such delightful sonic desserts as "Weymouth", a gorgeous synth adventure by the sea, "What The Rabbit Said", a sort of Klezmer from hell slowly melting, and the title track "Soup Tennis", which sounds like something akin to an abominable disco falling to pieces, backwards.



So dive in to the world of Bumbledonk & Racheed, the poptastic brilliance that is PLUSHGOOLASH.




Please note: This album does feature some fucks and what-not, so if you don't like the kids to hear words like it, listen to it after they've gone to bed.....

Like this? Try Plushgoolash "Plushgoolash" (2010) , and Erik Bumbledonk's solo project Elvis Herod "Keep It Regal".

Chin21: Oblivian Substanshall "Oh What a Novelty"

 

The new album from the gentleman, poet, comic and raconteur who goes by the curious moniker of Oblivian Substanshall is resplendent with unforgettable melodies that delight in songcraft, wordplay, and the joy of subverting and playing with the English language like a ping-pong ball on elastic. “Oh What a Novelty” at once looks back to a starry-skied past of straw boaters and gramophone horns, whilst also containing a timelessness that could plonk it anywhere from the present day back to the 1920s. 

The album contains a nostalgia that is not remotely melancholy. Mr Substanshall is a genuine eccentric who revels in the creation of his own distinctive art, suffused with wit, playfulness, and an unpretentiousness that is as endearing as it is refreshing.

If you're looking for references to hang this album from, think of a gentle whirlpool, like a washing machine gracefully on its last legs, in which the ghosts of Ivor Cutler, Waring's Pennsylvanians, Spike Jones, Vivian Stanshall & Keith Moon, Kurt Schwitters, Kurt Cobain, and Max Ernst swim gently in circles on their phantom backs.

The album is produced by Ergo Phizmiz, and comes with a new video “Brilliant Bonkers” by Martha Moopette, starring the great Substanshall himself.

Pass it on, spread the novelty like marmalade!

All songs & spoken-word written by Oblivian Substanshall

Oblivian Substanshall: Vocals, Electric guitar, Bass guitar, Ukulele, Percussion

Ergo Phizmiz: Harmonium, Melodica, Glockenspiel, Ukulele, Violin, Bass guitar, Vocal on “Upside Down”

Martha Moopette: Vocal on “Upside Down”

Video and photography by Martha Moopette

Produced by Ergo Phizmiz

More from Oblivian Substanshall on Chinstrap at "Finnish...But Don't Wait Till You Stop" , "Three Elements Hiss" and "The Greatest Hits of Oblivian Substanshall, and So On".

CHIN09 - Plushgoolash

Chinstrap are delighted to present the first release by the genius pop-music-machine that is Plushgoolash. Recorded over almost ten years, and selected from a massive archive of uberpop, this album contains some of the most finely crafted songwriting of recent times.



It is also very, very funny. Plushgoolash are living proof that great pop music needn't be po-faced and self-importantly earnest. Here are superb songs about dogs, cats, testicles, monkeys, Michael Jackson, terrible Lions, and brown rainbows. By turns dreamlike, scatological, hysterical, and suffused with a strange melancholy, every song has instantly hummable ear-worm potential.

Plushgoolash is the collaborative project of Erik Bumbledonk and Bambie Racheed. Those familiar with Ergo Phizmiz's work will be no stranger to Mr Bumbledonk, writer, raconteur, film-maker, songwriter, comedian, actor and prostitute. Mr Racheed, film-maker, musician, sensual escort for animals, and actor, is a long-term collaborator with Mr Bumbledonk, through Plushgoolash and the acclaimed comedy troupe Smuglybeige, who recently opened Prague Fringe Festival, many of whom guest in elegant castrati stylings on the final track of this album.

This is the first of a series of projected Bumbledonk releases on the Chinstrap label. Look out shortly for the MNJ Club, and an Erik Bumbledonk solo album of songs, comedy and spoken-word.

And don't forget, cannibalism is illegal, Bobo...