I’ve always been a sucker for a good bootleg. I’m not saying record labels don’t deserve their cut and bands don’t deserve their cut, but come on, there’s something about an unofficial release that makes it all the more like a piece of buried treasure. I used to buy bootleg CDs at a shop in Morristown, NJ, and it was upstairs above a nail salon or something like that, and you’d walk in and it was like entering a secret world full of weird Italian misprints, old illicit vinyl and so on. Just amazing. Everything kind of went to hell when CDRs and printed-at-home artwork came along in the late-’90s, but a professional bootleg? It rarely gets better than that.
Mouth don a bootleg aesthetic with their Alterna Sounds Festival live recording, captured earlier this year with a TASCAM on stage and presented in warts-and-all fashion with stage feedback and audience whistles and the rest of it. The live album obviously isn’t an actual bootleg, since it’s the band itself putting it out and not, you know, a criminal, but the vibe is there just the same as the band works through tracks dating all the way back to their 2009 debut, Rhizome. Alterna Sounds Festival comes down from their Bandcamp page on Little Xmas — same day your tree is supposed to come down — so if you get the chance, you might as well grab a download while the getting’s good. I don’t think the cops will come after you for that.
Here’s the info:
MOUTH – ALTERNA SOUNDS FESTIVAL
*live bootleg*
*for free*
*only online until January 6 2019*
mouth – live @ alterna sounds festival 2018
Tracklisting:
1. Sunrise
2. Stampede
3. Vortex
4. Witch’s Vice
5. Parade
6. On the Boat
7. Master Volume’s Voice
8. Into the Light
9. Peng*
Recorded live @ Sputnik Café Münster 3/24/2018. Recorded live on stage with a TASCAM DR-5, positioned on the guitar amp.
Mouth is:
Nick Mavridis: Drums
Gerald Kirsch: Bass
Christian Koller: Guitar / Keyboards / Vocals
https://www.facebook.com/mouthsound/
https://mouthprog.bandcamp.com/
http://www.soundcloud.com/mouthprog