Here’s another obscure improv gem, peripherally related to the last post. Idio Savant are another group of noisemakers from the Southern US (Virginia, not quite as far south as the Raudelunas crew).
This quartet of Pippin Barnett, Dan Finney, Martin McCavitt, and Paul Watson put out this LP in 1979 on the Artifacts label. Three quarters of this group would go on to found the more song-oriented Orthotonics, and other members worked with the Famous Actors from Out of Town, Curlew, the Ululating Mummies, Nimal, and others. Members also teamed up with LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams from Raudelunas to make the Trans-Idio lp Alchemical Rowdies ( a great improv effort still available as new vinyl from Forced Exposure and others).
The liner notes describe this as ceremonial music – “The drums and percussion work linking rhythms. Deep and high, far and wide, exist; long sustained screetches and noble hums search out dimensions, crashes force collapse, sudden gibbering energies from plain workings, voices spread, water runs, seeds rattle. This music is invisible, and cannot be paralyzed; it is as genuine as a frog, though not as currently popular as the cockroach.”
True enough – download below:
Portable Madness 