Front cover by Kurt Eckhardt and Rev. Dwight Frizzell
Released 1998
Jewel case CD with 12 page booklet
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• Black crack and the sole survivors (12:36) mp3
• Hot fudge (1:11)
• Get it out of your system (6:18)
• Chili supper polka (2:20)
• Journey of turtles (6:31)
• Pre-transformation of turtle to bird (5:27)
• Nocturnal (2:04)
• Fly by night (7:50)
• O what joy it is to know you have a turtle heart (4:11)
• Embryonic music (3:34)
• Copulation of Basilea and Hyperion (4:50)
• Family, birth of Helio and Selene (6:47)
• Destruction - slaying of Hyperion, drowning of Helio, suicide of Selene and the wandering madness of Basilea (2:24)
• How to avoid simultaneity (2:54)
total time 69:07

Released 2016
40th anniversary LP edition with 4 page insert. Numbered edition of 500
Side 1
• Black crack and the sole survivors (12:36) mp3
• Hot fudge (1:11)
• Get it out of your system (6:18)
• Chili supper polka (2:20)
Side 2
• Journey of turtles (6:31)
• Pre-transformation of turtle to bird (5:27)
• Nocturnal (2:04)
• Fly by night (7:50)
• O what joy it is to know you have a turtle heart (4:11)
Front cover by Kurt Eckhardt and Rev. Dwight Frizzell
Released 2016
Beyond the Black
Crack was the concept of Reverend Dwight Frizzell, a musician, film
maker, Doctor of Metaphysics and minister in the Universal Church of
Life. It remains a little known classic, and one of the most unique
listening experiences in modern experimental music. Recorded between
1974 and 1976 in locations as diverse as factories, the pyramid opposite
Harry Truman's grave site as well as more 'conventional' concert settings.
Beyond the Black Crack is a dark, dizzying and exhilarating journey
through free jazz, electronics and environmental sound, all shattered
by Frizzell's radical tape editing. The CD edition adds further
material to the original LP: - "The Wandering Madness of Basilea",
a suite from 1977 unheard until now, as well as unreleased material
from the Black Crack sessions.
Beyond
the black crack was originally released in mono in an edition of 200
copies by Cavern Custom in 1976 (cat. no. 6104-12), to commemorate the
First Annual End of the World Celebration, November 18 1976.
BLACK CRACK AND THE SOLE SURVIVORS are:
Rev. Dwight Frizzell - tenor saxophone, clarinet, audio oscillator,
chair, trash can, pins, soy beans
Mike Roach - clarinet, vocals with laughs, tenor saxophone, dancing
Kurt Eckhardt - mouth flute, percussion, pins, soy, alteration.
Featuring special guests:
Rev. Tommy Gomersall - tin cans, piano, vocals
Rich - lights and percussion
Rush Rankin - clarinet, imagistic inspiration
Rev. Jim Rogers - kazoo
Gary Jeffers - sousaphone, percussion
Bill Jones - sousaphone
Sylvia Thomas - harmonica
Radio Rich Dalton - guitar
Bill Scanlan - percussion, tape machine; and many others...
REVIEWS
ALLMUSIC
This CD is a re-issue off an incredibly obscure LP from 1976
and documents a bizarre musical mix of Jazz improvisation, electronics
and noise that makes the album a pre-cursor to the mayhem of the
Sun City Girls and Nurse With Wound. Mastering a unique method of
tape collage this group of misfits lead by weirdo artisan Rev. Dwight
Frizzell at the helm of the editing table, some similar recordings
that spring to mind are Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table by
Nurse With Wound and the enigmatic Faust Tapes, although neither
avant-Europeans reach the surrealist peaks that this 1976 recording
from Middle America. (Skip Jansen)
AVANT
(Spring 1989)
Beyond The Black Crack, a concept realised by Reverend Dwight Frizzell,
is both joyfully ridiculous and challenging at the same time. The
CD cover confronts the viewer with a huge mooning arse and an implausibly
dark crevis from which three cut-out figures fall as excrement;
the binary bum cheeks unable to contain the multivalence of the
centre parting poop. The use of free jazz textures, humour, disruptive
editing and electronics mirrors much of the music to emerge from
the avant-garde scene of 1967 where experimentation was Happening.
Frizzell, a musician, film maker, Doctor of Metaphysics and minister
in the Universal Church of Life revels in creating an intelligent
transient collage of diverging textures. Similar to techniques used
today by the likes of Simon Fell, Dogbiz and Evil Dick, the course
of the music is unpredictable to the last honk. Recorded between
1974-1976 this music radiates Radical. Almost aimless improvisation
somehow makes sense when slotted between bizzare location recordings
- the pyramid opposite Harry Truman's grave site to name but one,
paper compositions, vocal interruptions and overdubbed clacking
percussion.The chaos that ensues has a pattern as intricate and
as ugly as an assemblage by Kurt Schwitters. Unlike the claustrophobic
indulgence of The Velvet Underground, Anal Magic and Rev. Frizzell
create something more subtle and ventilated; the solo textures,
usually aided by echo/reverb, are beautifully abstract utilising
Varese's principle of density to achieve their full effect. The
net result is a work that brings increasing delight on repeated
listening. The high point of the suite occurs during a piece of
environmental recording where an interrupting child innocently enquires
'What are you doing this for?' Such a question destroys the barrier
between art and real life, provoking the listener with a residual
question. 'Why am I listening to this?' Scorchio. (Richard Hemmings)
BANANAFISH 13
God bless the braintrust at Paradigm for re-releasing what has to
be one of the weirdest records ever to come out of Kansas City:
Anal Magic and The Reverend Dwight Frizzell's 'Beyond The Black
Crack'. Originally released in 1976 in an edition of 200, this
possesses all the beauty and human outsider charm as other lost
albums of that time, most notably 'Static Disposal' by Debris
and Vertical Slit's 'Slit and Pre-Slit'. Or if you're a fan
of the LAMFS, this would definately be the thing you'd wanna hear
as you buckle your belt and prepare to start another day of superior
flim-flamming (Roland Woodbe)
ND
21
Reissue of the obscure LP, with previously unreleased bonus tracks
of equal merit. One of the more endearing vices of my now deceased
friend Scott was his tendency to include whole album sides of 'mystery
material' when taping some other record for me that I had requested.
For years I had searched in vain for the identity of one such album
that Scott had taped for me but 'forgot' to write about on the tape
label. This one, a record containing some of the most original,
spooky, and deeply affecting experimental music I had ever heard.
Well, you guessed it! Upon hearing this CD the first time, my mind
was doing victorious summersaults. While side A of the album contains
(intensionally bad?) material which sounds like a collaboration
between Intersystems and a Jr. High marching band, the CD is otherwise
packed with luscious, shadowy head music which I'm convinced makes
this release one of the most indispensible for ND readers. Carefree
genius from backwater hippies who lived outside the current of history (Jeff Filla)
RECORD
COLLECTOR (April 99)
The Rev. Dwight's ministry in the Universal Church of Life takes a
back seat to his true calling as a demi god of experimental music
on this 1976 offering. He and his followers recorded this 200-copy
limited edition with such unorthodox instruments as a streetlamp pole,
a water ventilation unit, and dogs, as well as Rush Rankin's 'imagistic
inspiration'! This is interwoven with tape splicing, relatively conventional
electronics and sax-driven free jazz. When 'real' music rears its
head, such as Get It Out Your System, what starts out like
a shambolic Tom Waits' backing track develops into a battle between
the Mothers Of Invention and Gong! Elsewhere, maniacal tapping comes
to the fore, and it may come as no surprise that the whole influenced
Nurse With Wound. Bonus material from '77 follows a similar path,
but with darker overtones. Harry Truman's Hiroshima speech is used
along with Geiger clicks, and Copulation Of Basilea And Hyperion is a sonic assault. Not for the Faint-hearted, but a unique archival
treasure. (Trevor King)
RESONANCE (Vol.2 No. 7)
Issued in an edition of 200 copies in 1976, this music for an annual
Celebration of the End of the World is an obscure relic rescued from
the black hole of history which is still as odd as when it first disappeared.
Made in Kansas, it careers from Baum to bomb, heralding Hiroshima
as the New Wave and presenting the apocalypse as a ramshackle, vaguely
danceable din punctuated by studied, meditative interludes of humming
electronics and distroted saxophone wailing. Oscillators buzz, metronomes
tick, someone whistles tunelessly, recording glitches pop - the odd
music emerges organically in the fullest sense of the word, growing,
decaying and rotting away before your ears. The first half of this
reissue features solipsistic, sometimes childish freak-outs with live
audience and tape surface noise, a juvenile marching band playing
lively and lopsided instrumentals; the other half (Turtle Music,
which consists of field recordings made on a miniature pyramid in
Missouri) is fragmentary and more introspective - articulating not
the public interaction of the audibly alienated, but a private realm,
one that in this context seems infinite rather than circumscribed.
Inside the booklet there are plenty of cast lists and some philosophical
musings that flesh out the aural sketches; on the front cover is a
photo of someone's arse from which three tiny figures fall. Intimations
of potential transformation and parallel states of being sit cheek
by jowl, or buttock by buttock, with flatulent outpourings - the Turtle
Music sequence is both a meditation on the nature of identity,
myth and music, and a couple of dreamy guys larking about one distant
summer with a tape recorder. Salvador Dali's thought that farting
is the soul's way of sighing comes to mind, but the music aspires
to higher things and it's the more spikily disturbing and cooly sinister
Max Ernst who gets thanked in the credits (Ed Baxter)
REVUE
ET CORRIGEE (March 99)
Groupe obsur pour les uns, réédition très attendue
pour les autres, ce disque fait ré appara”tre au grand jour un
vinyl à l'origine paru en 1976 et édité à 200
exemplaires, avec quelques bonus bienvenus. Enregistré à
l'origine pour la PREMIER CELEBRATION ANNUELLE DE LA FIN DU MONDE,
le 18 novembre de cette année là. Et ces joyeux-fouteurs-den'importe-quoi-pourvu-qu'ça-tripe
vous offrent à peu-près tout ce dont vous pourriez rêver
venant d'un groupe avec un nom pareil!! Faisant très bonne figure
entre le 'Cave Rock' de Cromagnon sur ESP et le premier 'Catalogue' de Berrocal, bien que nettement plus calme, les remerciements contenus
dans la pochette vous permettront de vous faire une idée de la
famille dans laquelle s'inscrit ANAL MAGIC & Rev. Dwight FRIZZELL
:Sun Ra, Max Ernst, Robert Desnos, Gaston Bachelard, Walt Disney,
Priscella, Independence Police Department et toutes les tortues, entre
autres... Et si ça ne vous dit rien mais que vous dit rien mais
que vous êtes en possession d'un coeur de tortue, sachez que
ce disque vous est dédié. C'est bon d'être cinglé! (Manu Holterbach)
RUBBERNECK 30
Difficult to get beyond the title and cover art of the re-release
of Anal Magic and Rev. Dwight Frizzell's mid-70s LP Beyond The Black
Crack (plus the inevitable unreleased material). Once inside (as it
were), the listener is presented with a variety of largely lo-fi,
bizarrely-edited sequences, largely based on improvisatory percussion
rhythms and a halting jazz band. Shades of Ayler and Art Ensemble
of Chicago (what am I saying?), much obscure thumping and muttering.
Ron Pate's Debonairs spring to mind, though this lacks their lunatic
and slanted virtuosic spark. Much of it sounds awfully dated, especially
the in-recording tape speed manipulation during the live performances.
Side 2 of Neu! 2 it ain't. I find it remarkable that anyone feels
this important enough to re-release - postmodernism, what hast thou
wrought? After Paradigm's excellent Pauline Oliveros release (PD 04),
I'm disappointed.
The
SOUND PROJECTOR 6
Genuinely odd and genuinely obscure, at first this strikes you as
an astounding blend of free jazz, acid-addled psychedelia, industrial
tape constructions, political protest poetry readings, found recordings
and field recordings, scatological humour, electronic music, Mothers
of Invention styled absurdity... which fairly well sums it up. A bit
like the promises of the ESP label, the early Residents and Mothers
of Invention records all come true at once. The common thread is the
performer Revd. Dwight Frizzell, aka Fredrik Tibbits Air, appearing
throughout these astonishing recordings on wind instruments, percussion,
and other non-instruments such as 'chair, trashcan, pins, soybeans,
and audio oscillator.' A curious tale of this records history lurks
within the booklet, revealing almost a parallel universe of freak
madman poised to assume a position of power. A tale that unsettles
your perception of what had passed for reality in your wretched existance
up to this point! It emerged from a conglomerate of eccentric bands,
taped at tiny little events: Black Crack and The Sole Survivors were recorded live at the Kansas City Art Institute Foundation in
1975; Fredrik's Cosmic Spaced Out Blues Band and Orchestra played at the Second RLDS Church chili supper in 1974 (hence all the
farting and shitting jokes); the Turtle Music tracks were recorded
atop the midget pyramid in McCoy Park Missouri in 1976. These disperate
items were compiled and released to commemorate the First Annual End
of the World Celebration on 18 November 1976, and originally issued
as a mono recording in an edition of 200 copies by Cavern Custom.
The bonus tracks filling out this CD come from an equally insane enterprise,
a work for electronic tape, performers and narrator called The
Wandering Madness of Basilea, The Great Mother. This is something
to get excited about. Let's face it, you and I would never find a
vinyl copy of anything like this nor would we care to devote years
of fruitless searching to finding it; if we ever knew it existed in
the first place. Let's hear it for CD reissues! And hats off to the
Paradigm label, in whose catalogue this does seem somewhat untypical
- we look forward to further weirdies in a similar jugular vein... (Ed Pinsent)
TOP
Blowing outsider is REV DWIGHT FRIZZELL who - with his band ANAL MAGIC
- recorded one of the '70s forgotten (until now) underground masterworks. 'Beyond The Black Crack' (Paradigm Discs)***** was originally
released in '76 in an edition of 200 mono copies, the bulk of which
scarcely saw the light of day before they were either junked or hoovered
up into the cavernous collections of various weird record connoisseurs.
Miraculously, Frizzell's strange mix of electronics, free jazz and
turtle worship has (thanks to Paradigm) now been sucked into the butt
end of the '90s for a whole new audience to discover for the first
time ever. If the idea of Sun Ra's Arkestra jamming with electric-era
Miles Davies and Frank Zappa on some distant burnt-out asteroid appeals,
then this could be for you. That said, however, Frizzell's mysterious
and alluring tenor sax drone on Oh What It Is To Know You Have
A Turtle Heart shows that he wasn't playing it all for laughs.
More than just an oddity, 'Beyond The Black Crack' burns with
a genuine passion to create something special. (Edwin Pouncey)
The WIRE
To call 'Beyond The Black Crack' 'legendary' would be an outright
lie, as you would have to have been a member of Nurse With Wound to
have even heard of it. Where Paradigm are pulling these re-releases
from I've no idea, but the story goes like this: originally issued
in 1976, Reverend Dwight Frizzell was a classically American oddball
in the style of Jack, or even Harry, Smith. A film maker and apparent
Doctor of Metaphysics, he recorded 'Beyond The Black Crack' in
two years, on stage and out in the fields. It's a patchwork of badly-spliced
industrial ritual (à la Hermann Nitsch!), classic private-press
psychedelia and atonal jazz occasionally punctured by the damaged
rantings of a stoned Beck-soundalike. Also included are some outtakes
and unreleased experiments. Just what you most surely need. (David
Keenan)
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