It took me long enough, but we've finally managed to get the entire available catalog of Borbetomagus releases on Agaric Records catalog in stock at the 'Blast. And for anyone looking for thee most brutal free jazz band on the planet, look no further: Borbetomagus, a Celtic word for "City Of Worms", three men locking saxophones and guitar noise together into a blast of monstrous improvised skree that takes the feeling behind the aggressive free playing of Ayler and Brotzmann and amplifies it into total fucking napalm. The core trio of sax players Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and electric guitarist Donald Miller have been consistently bulldozing eardrums with their incendiary "snuff jazz" since the late 70's, and no one in the avant jazz/improv underground has ever come close to achieving the sheer cyclonic power of Borbetomagus. A host of their recording have been reissued recently, many with liner notes, and we've snagged everything that we could

from the guys so there's absolutely no excuse for any of you into brutal noise and improv to not fill out your Borbeto collection.

Along with nall of the currently available CD titles from Borbetomagus that we are now stocking, we also received a small quantity of this rare, out-of-print 7" that was released by the unfortunately named Butt Rag Records, a tiny imprint out of Chicago that has long since folded (as far as I can discern), but which did happen to issue this brutal l'il platter. Each side of the EP features a different renditon of the piece "Coelacanth" recorded by the core Borbetomagus trio of Don Dietrich, Jim Sauter, and Donald Miller, one from 1992 and the other from 1993. It's horrific screeching skronk, the saxophones emitting shrill bleats and rusted overtones together, way up in the high registers, and Miller's guitar noise is less apparent here, heard as a vague background rumble. This is harsh stuff, even by their standards; by the time you've flipped over to the b-side, Borbetomagus have completely channeled the sound of the universe turning on prehistoric rusty hinges, a massive

cacophony of skree that slices right through your brain. It's only at the end that the group suddenly comes back to earth, suddenly emitting a short burst of clanging guitar chords that ring out over a malformed, monstrous melodic fragment that sputters and dies as quickly as it was born.