The Abrasion Ensemble
Music for the Same 50 People
Beta-Lactam Ring Records

Gorgeously hand-sprayed by main man Rick Reed, who was finally documented a few years back by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley in their Center of the Ass Run series, this super-limited pressing (see title) documents the distant and repressed rumblings and scrapings of a constantly revolving cast of characters from Texas. Featuring people from such Texas fringe groups as Charalambides, Ash Castles on the Ghost Coast, Tonalamotl, and Brekekek koax koax, all are reconfigured into groups of three, four, or five, all corrosively reacting and orbiting the scratches and spontaneous noise blasts of Reed.

While each piece is a comment on the space and time that surrounds each performance, there is an eternity of sound that is made manifest as well. Perhaps someone like Jackson Pollock is slopping around in this invisible middle, drawing out the edges and bolts of electricity that arise from such fricative forces. While the personnel is different on each selection, as a whole they stay pretty much anchored in waters that Organum or AMM would fish in as well, which should not come as too much of surprise, considering the last AMM recording was named after Mr. Reed. All interested parties better get in line quick, for these are pretty much gone.

Contact: richardkreed@hotmail.com.

Copyright © 1999 Andy Beta