‘Mondo Decay,’ the winner of the 2020 Ear/Eye award from Witty Books aiming to create a dialogue between a visual artist and a musician through the limited edition publication of an audio cassette + book, is out now. The project is led by half of Algiers and explores Italian Mondo horror and decay under the name Nun Gun with artist Brad Feuerhelm and a host of contributors. To commemorate the occasion, the group release the video for the second single, their collaboration with Chicago avant-garde legends ONO called Gold Mine. Watch the video via YouTube below.
This marks the third time that the Algiers member have collaborated with the no-wave industrial gospel godfathers in ONO. Singer, travis, appeared on Algiers’ 2017 acclaimed album, ‘The Underside of Power,’ giving voice to the deep cut, Plague Years. Last year, Lee Tesche contributed to ONO’s monumental 40th anniversary full length, ‘Red Summer’.
Of the continuing relationship, Lee adds “travis is a national treasure, and he and P Michael are two of the most incredible souls in rock n’ roll. Its an honor to continue working together.”
The book and cassette is out now via the Algiers Bandcamp and Witty Books featuring vocal contributions from Mark Stewart of The Pop Group, ONO, Mourning [A] BLKstar, artists Luiza Prado and Farbod Kokabi, as well as authors Blake Butler, Michael Salu, and Sohail Daulatzai.
About the Stealth Maxi (Dub Companion)
And while the full album is only available in physical form with the photo book, the group has announced a special vinyl expansion LP of new material with Mark Stewart.
Lee explains, “I was looking at doing a 7″ of Mark’s song, and we started talking on the phone about it. I was telling Mark how Final Vinyl, the famed South Florida pressing plant founded by reggae pioneer Joe Gibbs and later taken over by Studio One’s Clement “Sir Coxonse” Dodd had reopened under a different. We were both kind of inspired by that and it kind of snowballed from there. Next thing I know he’s ringing Sherwood and I’m trying to organise and mix another album’s worth of material. We really really wanted to use the machines that pressed so many of our favourite records.”
Mark adds, “Taste the Bass. We have decided to defy the herd with a ‘stealth release’. Unity is strength. Challenge institutionalized power with logics, narratives, sounds, and choreographies outside its grasp.”
This limited edition vinyl Dub companion to the music on Mondo Decay features new bass and space explorations by famed Dub producer Adrian Sherwood; 5 brand new collaborations with Mark Stewart; Mourning [A] BLKstar and ONO reclaiming their tracks and pushing them to the final sonic frontier; as well as Lee, Ryan, and Matt Tong cooking up their dirtiest basement dubs.”
It’s time to ‘Taste The Bass’!
Stealth Maxi (Dub Companion)
1. Stealth Empire (feat. Mark Stewart)
2. The Supermen (feat. Mark Stewart)
3. Stealth Dub
4. Outlaw Empire (Adrian Sherwood Mix)
5. Sankara Speaks
6. A3 ####### (Mallarmé read by Mark)
7. On Neurath’s Boat (feat. Farbod Kokabi w/ Mourning [A] BLKstar)
8. On Neurath’s Bass
9. Super Dub (Mark Stewart)
10. On Neurath’s Stomp (Astroblk mix)
11. Gold Dub (ONO)
More on Mondo Decay
Nun Gun is the award-winning multimedia collaboration between visual artist Brad Feuerhelm, and musicians Lee Tesche and Ryan Mahan of the acclaimed band b6. ‘Mondo Decay’ marks the outfit’s debut release, an audiovisual dialogue that pairs 144-pages of Feuerhelm’s malformed post-industrial gazing photography with an accompanying original soundtrack cassette produced by Tesche and Mahan.
‘Mondo Decay’ focuses the group’s critical practice on the genre of horror itself, most notably the troubling sights and sounds of 60s and 70s Italian Mondo, cannibal and zombie exploitation films by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Umberto Lenzi, and Lucio Fulci. Instead of the “savage” tropical climes as employed by the genre’s directors, the exoticism found in original Mondo films has been subverted to look at the failings of capitalism in the West.
Musically, this examination finds Tesche and Mahan disassembling, slowing down, and reconstituting the aural hellscapes of Riz Ortolani, Roberto Donati, and Fabio Frizzi’s scores, creating an uncanny and unsettling chopped and screwed cacophony of dubbed out noise, doom-jazz, rap, and post-industrial-stained death disco.
In the process, the duo summon an array of experimental techniques borrowed from the likes of tape music vanguard Halim El-Dabh, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Delia Derbyshire; dub and bass culture innovators King Tubby and Scientist; and Houston dance music and rap pioneers Darryl Scott and DJ Screw, drawing a line of inquiry into the musical concept of decay. By embracing the same antiquated resources—various tape recorders, tape echoes, low-bit-rate samplers, and short wave radio equipment—Tesche and Mahan explore the deterioration and abstraction of Feuerhelm’s imagery through decaying frequencies, phrases, and recording mediums.
Contributions from the Pop Group’s Mark Stewart; Chicago no-wave industrial gospel godfathers ONO; Cleveland, Ohio’s genre and gender non-conforming Black Culture amalgam Mourning [A] BLKstar; renowned authors Blake Butler, Sohail Daulatzai and Michael Salu; Brazil-born, Berlin-based visual artist Luiza Prado; and musician/designer Farbod Kokabi, give voice to the sound of future-oriented de-colonial subjectivity and help to further realize the anxiety-fueled, pandemic-induced isolationism roaming throughout the album’s cinematic 48-minutes.
Mondo Decay, purports to flip the lens on what is exotic now and what life feels like under the extended lockdown and oppressive moment.
Available through Witty Books and Algiers Bandcamp
‘Mondo Decay’ track listing
1. The Spectre (feat. Michael Salu)
2. Stealth Empire (feat. Mark Stewart)
3. Beef Diet
4. Gold Mine (feat. ONO)
5. More Viscous Than Dawn (feat. Luiza Prado)
6. Excusable Homicide
7. On Neurath’s Boat (feat. Farbod Kokabi w/ Mourning [A] BLKstar)
8. The Aesthetics of Hunger
9. Under The Throne (feat. Sohail Daulatzai)
10. Addio Zio Sam
11. I Used to Wear a Face (feat. Blake Butler)
12. America Addio
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