Open Mouth

MORGAN, MARK - Department of Heraldry

"'I was first introduced to the concept of Mark Charles Morgan by Thurston Moore in a series of conversations that all went something like this: TM: Dude, Sightings is coming to town. You should check them out. I think you'd really dig them. And you'd love Mark; he's hilarious Me: un-huh TM: No, really. Me: When and Where? I'll try to make it. TM: They're playing Friday at... At which point, I'd nod politely, internally shutting down, or just walk away, while he was mid-sentence. This went on for approximately seven years. Until in 2012, I finally caught Sightings at the local American Legion hall. As I walked through the doors for the first time, the following checklist went through my head: Incredibly depressing venue: check A bar you can still smoke at because it's technically a private club: check. Rummy regulars at said bar with absolutely no interest in the music in the other room: check. Large open room with sparse crowd: check (I'm being generous if I estimate 20 people in attendance). 'Oh great,' I thought, 'Not technically a basement noise show but might as well be. At least there's a bar.' Then Sightings started. And much to my surprise, they were not some horrible and boring noise improv shit. Sightings had songs. Mark's guitar growled, and he snarled. Or maybe it was the other way around. No matter, I did DIG them. They were great! Which would all make them sleeping on the floor in my tv room significantly less awkward, thank god. The next morning, I could genuinely gush about how much I liked them, in between bouts of mercilessly making fun of how many pedals Mark used. Which all brings me to Mark 'Man Crush' Morgan's 2018 solo effort Department of Heraldry that you now hold in your hot little hands. To say I was a little leery of what was obviously some of that aforementioned 'noise improv shit' is an understatement. My heart sank when I spotted a ten minute 'composition'. Oh fuck, there are two of them. This was going to be a hard sell. Not to you necessarily, but to me. I'm not some slight of build guy with stooped shoulders, wearing a dirty beige Lightning Bolt t-shirt with a John Fahey record tucked under his arm. The thing is though is that Mark has always had this really great guitar sound, only partly courtesy of all those shitty pedals he insists on using. He's not coming at this from a Pharoah Sanders-worshipping, free jazz-loving, sensibility. Rather, I hear his home town, Detroit. The record is scuzzy, and raw-sounding, punctuated with moments of utter desolation. Moments build, only to collapse again. There are even funky grooves but, of course, they fall apart. It's fucking great. Dude, you should check it out!' - Julie Cafritz, August 2018"
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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.
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