"Bonjour! We at Coq Au Vinyl are proud to present for first time on the vinyl format Zero Tolerance For Silence by legendary American jazz guitarist Pat Metheny! Previously only issued on the compact disc format in the year 1994, the album is often described as the jazz equivalent to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music". To say ZTFS was "a departure" for Metheny is like saying "Jaco Pastorius liked cognac." Loud, dissonant layers of electric guitars and overdriven amplifiers were in stark contrast to the smooth melodic guitar jazz Metheny had built his fanbase and legend upon. At the time, some theorized that this was Metheny's "fuck you" to his label Geffen and perhaps a way of purposely ending his contract on a sour note. Others close to Metheny disputed those claims and instead describe the album as a pure expression of sounds Metheny had dreamt of making for some time. Metheny himself in 2008 said of the album, "That record speaks for itself in its own musical terms. To me, it is a 2-D view of a world in which I am usually functioning in a more 3-D way. It is entirely flat music, and that was exactly what it was intended to be." While generally panned by critics at the time as "unlistenable", once the album made its way to the ears of listeners less ::ahem:: discernible than the typical Downbeat subscriber, it was widely hailed as a masterpiece of free improvisation. If there is any doubt as to the albums greatness: It was described as "rubbish" by notorious Frank Zappa apologist Ben Watson in his 1994 The Wire review. Coq Au Vinyl is proud to present a one-time only vinyl pressing of ZTFS in a hand-stamped edition of 333 copies (worldwide) in handmade sleeves with audio digitally mastered from an original Japanese CD copy found at a church boot sale in a suburb of Antwerp. Edition of 333 copies on 140 gram black vinyl, hand-stamped, with handmade covers and crudely photocopied makeshift OBI strip thing." - Coq Au Vinyl.
After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.
This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).
Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.
Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.
Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
