Tellus was a bimonthly audiocassette “magazine” devoted to promoting new and experimental music. It was published from 1983 to 1992 and featured many of the most innovative artists in music, spoken word, and performance arts. Ubuweb has almost all 27 issues available as free downloads. Much of this music has rarely been heard while some tracks have been accepted as seminal works in this post-modern era. I will be featuring many of these albums through the year and I will start with the first two issues of this important “publication”.

Tellus 1, as with the second issue, spotlights artists and musicians from the New York area. For an album that promotes the avant-garde, the music is surprisingly diverse. It starts with a funky soul-jazz number by no-wave guitarist Jody Harris. However it isn’t too long before Sonic Youth shows their more extreme side on the live “Scream” while contemporaries Live Skull and Rat-at-Rat-R play a more typical version of Noise Rock. Brenda Hutchinson contributes a classic work of vocal manipulation in “Wordplay”. Joseph Nechvatal represents the state-of-the arts in the 80s electronic music scene with “Ego Masher” and Rhys Chatham, a regular contributor to this series, plays minimalist guitar music on “Guitar Trio” which is reminiscent of the work of Glenn Branca who can also be heard on this track. The other works are quite interesting if not always successful.

Tellus 2 continues this look at the music scene in New York of the 1980s. The Scene is Now’s “Bugged Out, Wigged Out” may be your only chance to hear avant-garde jug band music. Tony Papa’s “Water Works” is a clever and amusing mixture of moisture and melody. Spoken word is well represented by Mitch Corber’s “Budge, Budge, Budge The Budget” and Cardboard Air band’s “Little Rabbit”. Other favorites include David Garlans “No More Misty Night”, the hip hopish “2-4-7-9-11″ by John Fekner, and Dr. Telecom’s electro-funk “Phone is My Clone”. The rest of the tracks range from entertaining to incomphrensible.

The albums are available in separate tracks at 192 MP3. If you like these two issues of Tellus, make sure you check out the rest.

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Tellus 1
Tellus 2