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Various Artists :
Longform Visions for Earminded People
- 7" (Futura Resistenza, 2023)
These sonic stories emerged from a gathering of artists concerned with alternative uses of everyday objects, subversive anti-aesthetics, sensual-absent poetry, moving optical discs, and echoes of activities occurring in the Earth's orbit. It was a performative celebration of entangled audio-visual events that enabled us to learn once again how to tune in to a place: with our eyes, with our ears, with our minds
/ While listening to the record, I remember what it sounded like in the space. I remember monologues of chairs that were given voice, phones eavesdropping and speaking back to us, cassettes falling on the floor (intentionally): some visions unfolding in front of our very eyes and others in our minds
/ Try to imagine all that these short pieces might still contain. As Peter Fengler exclaims in his chorus: it will all work out. Just choose a bicycle, low on emissions and also better for the tummy and the legs! (Lucija Gregov)
M/M
€ 15
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Salenta Baisden, Topu Lyo :
Moon Set, Moon Rise
- LP (Futura Resistenza, 2023)
It was the lonely, overwhelming early days of the pandemic. Topu Lyo was living in Georgia, feeling distant from his home in New York City, and Salenta De Badisdenne was in Wisconsin helping an elderly relative. When Topu sent Salenta the files of Moon Set, Moon Rise, the project of wistful, contemplative cello and piano music they had recorded over the previous two years, she put off listening for a few weeks because of the stress of her daily life. When she finally played the music, she was blown away by what they had created together
/ The 17 songs on this album are patient, exploratory, and dynamic. The keys tiptoe through space at some moments, and pirouette ecstatically at others. The cello provides a sonic backbone that glows like amber. With song titles like “Woman Reading a Letter” and “Light Coming On The Plains,” the album evokes vignettes of home, falling asleep with someone you love, learning to soothe yourself
/ Topu and Salenta had met in 2018 at a mutual friend’s house in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn and decided to jam together. Their connection was instant: though they weren’t recording with the intention of releasing the music they were making, the very first session they played together made its way onto the album. They continued to meet up and improvise every week until the start of 2020. The two established rituals while recording: Topu would bring dark chocolate to their sessions that they would eat while talking about their days, herbalizing, and eventually playing
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€ 25
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KMRU, Abul Mogard :
Drawing Water
- LP (A Sunken Mall, 2023)
LPs are presented on A embossed 350gsm deluxe reversed cardboard cover, featuring a hand framed cover print and a 280gsm recycled offset paper insert. In November 2020, KMRU self-released ‘Drawing Water’. The release contained 3 supple works of porous resonance and intimate motion, giving way to a very heartfelt body of work that peers directly into the fabric of the everyday; gestures, movement, conversation, rendered graciously into waveform
/ Now, Vaagner is proud to present a special edition vinyl and cassette reissue of ‘Drawing Water’ via its A Sunken Mall imprint, with the original material spanning the first side of the record in remastered from. For the second half of the record, the label has taped none other than Abul Mogard, who prepared a new piece by reworking various layers from KMRU’s original compositions
/ This new 17 minute long piece, tilted ‘Drawing Water On Matching Teal Surfaces’, is defined by a continuously cascading and deeply resounding solemnness, which, towards the work’s concluding moments, gradually disperses through a subtle downpour of warm pads, delicately rippling through the fabric of the work, before gently dissolving into thin air
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€ 21
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Caterina Barbieri :
Patterns Of Consciousness
- 2xLP (Important, 2023)
Black vinyl repress. Patterns Of Consciousness is the powerful second full length album from analog synth composer Caterina Barbieri. Gorgeous high resolution analog textures and algorithmic melodies unfold under Barbieri's careful control, exploring the basic nature of sound and consciousness. These pieces are minimal in arrangement but maximal in presence asserting Barbieri as a unique voice in contemporary electronic music composition. Highly recommended to fans of Alessandro Cortini and Eleh
/ Patterns of Consciousness consists of a series of compositions originated by ideally infinite permutation of patterns through a disciplined and exclusive use of machinery (an Indexed Quad Sequencer and an Harmonic Oscillator). By means of subtraction, addition and jitter operations, Barbieri derives a myriad of interlocking patterns extracted from an original matrix of just few harmonic archetypes, gradually developing the potential of the reduced constellation of pitches and durations determined in advance
/ Pushing the limits of her monophonic instrument, Barbieri seeks out counterpoint from a single oscillator by only using additive synthesis, fast progressions, extreme melodic jumps and intricate delay lines. Note against note, gate against gate, she develops an illusory counterpoint style influenced by her passion for baroque lute music, where fast arpeggios are employed to get effects of sustained chords and overcome the limits of fast decay timbres
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€ 34
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Alexandre Bazin :
Innervision
- LP (Umor Rex, 2023)
Yellow vinyl. On this album, his third work published on Umor Rex, the french producer Alexandre Bazin takes what he started in Four Steps (Umor Rex 2022) to the maximum point. However, on Innervision, there is no longer that discreet flirtation towards the dance floor. Instead, the ten cuts that make up the album are influenced by musical research and the UK and Berlin electronic scene. Bazin's new proposal revolves around sound textures, saturations, feedback, autosampling, and cut and tuned sounds, allowing new melodic elements to emerge in the process, akin to a live act. While maintaining his minimalist exploration and obsession with melody and structure, Innervision undoubtedly marks a turning point in Bazin's discography. It is epic, compelling, euphoric, utterly enjoyable, and at times violently beautiful
/ The album was composed and mixed by Alexandre Bazin at Château Rouge, Paris, and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll, New York. François Desmoulins played the acoustic drums on Four Steps (Remix). The artwork for the album was created by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City
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€ 21
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Werner Dafeldecker :
Neural
- CD (Room40, 2023)
Matte laminate and monochrome printed jacket, insert card. For whatever reason, I have always found the idea of using alien material as the structuring element of an artistic process exciting. That doesn’t mean the elements always stay, but rather I often remove them right at the end of the creative process. This working method creates areas of tension that reflect the artistic process on a different emotional level. It reduces the sense of creation and moves more toward accomplishment. This method applies to both pieces of this phonogram in a similar way
/ „Neural“ places sound surfaces as its central focus and is inspired by the idea that neural networks develop a memory when they repeatedly send information. The ensemble focuses on vibrations and rhythmic variations of the overtones, which are caused by dynamics and pitch shifts in the microtonal range. With the passage of time and performance practice, spherical, acoustic stamps become established, caused by the conscious perception of when rhythm changes into sound sensation and vice versa
/ For „Tape 231“ I re-discovered a long-forgotten music cassette in my archive which contained peculiar percussive electronic sounds. As Lucio and I worked on the recordings of his elongated tones and multi-phonics I again was drawn to the idea to use the tape sounds primarily as a structuring element for the piece, (time, density, dynamics) only to be left out afterwards. The targeted handling of hidden structures evokes a somewhat stubborn emotionality when dealing with creative processes, I like that
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€ 16
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Soundwalk Collective :
All The Beauty And The Bloodshed
- LP (Analogue Foundation, 2023)
Art edition with original photo print by Nan Goldin, signed by the artist. Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated film ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. Told through intimate interviews, photography, and footage, central to the story is her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis. The film cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life and condemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same
/ Helping to interweave Goldin’s past and present, multi-disciplinary duo Soundwalk Collective soundtrack her personal and political struggles to sublime effect. The contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, the pair work with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, developing site-and-context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. And for all the beauty and the bloodshed on show here, the duo strike the balance just right; their compositions in collaboration with Zacharias Falkenberg and Johannes Malfatti producing a trance that oscillates between grace and madness
/ Within the score, Crasneanscki draws connections with the life and work of German poet Friedrich Holderlin, who was removed from society through confinement in institutions. In his last poems, written as fragments while he was plagued by mental illness, Holderlin renders nature, in all its fragility and ephemerality. Similar themes merge in Laura's portrait of Goldin and serve as an inspiration for the composition of the choral songs and cantus within the soundtrack. Through the repetition of words and the layering of voices, the lyric scansion operates like a language possessed, echoing various styles from sacred music to modern minimalist techniques. The music is characterised by quivering strings and swells, de-tuning and lingering, shifting around the surreal, and creating a spectrum of musical experience. Exerts of Nan’s narration are featured in two of the tracks, her powerful narration offering a more direct approach to the storytelling
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€ 125
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Carmen Villain :
Music From The Living Monument
- LP (Smalltown Supersound, 2023)
Music taken from the Carte Blanche performance "Monument 0.10 : The Living Monument" by Eszter Salamon. This album contains selections from Carmen Villain's score for the two-and-a-half hour performance, most of them edited down from the long-form versions that accompanied the ultra-slow scenes of the performance. These are Carmen Villain's first compositions for dance
/ Acclaimed Choreographer Eszter Salamon’s dance performance The Living Monument is built on still life, slowness and the presence of the body. In the performance, the theatrical elements are equal and interdependent, and it develops into an installation of sound, movement and figures. Each tableau is bound together by Carmen Villain’s hypnotic score in which the audience is taken on a meditative journey through vibrant tableaus in a dreamlike universe. Carmen Villain's score is a suspension of time where her music is seeking a new form of slow-moving minimalism
M/M
€ 25
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Yann Novak :
The Voice of Theseus
- CD (Room40, 2023)
Matte laminated, monochrome printed and embossed sleeve with insert card. In Greek mythology, the legend of Theseus describes how the king-founder of ancient Athens rescues the children of his city from King Minos’ minotaur on the island of Crete. In commemoration, Athenians began a pilgrimage to honor his victory, taking the ship of Theseus and sailing it from Athens to Delos. It was with this tradition that a philosophical paradox about the historic ship was raised: As the ship was repaired, piece by piece, until it was no longer composed of any original parts, at what point could the ship no longer be considered the same entity?
/ In recent years, I’ve become interested in exploring the perceptual differences I experience. While some of these differences—partial color blindness and dyslexia—have been with me my entire life, tinnitus caused by hearing damage is a relatively new change to how I experience the world. It is these sensory challenges which have shaped my artistic practice by creating what I call a perceptual insecurity—an uncertainty of how accurately I discern the world around me. The Voice of Theseus is my attempt to explore the obstacles I face in processing external sensory information. If I have trouble perceiving reds and greens, if I have trouble hearing certain frequencies, if I don’t interpret written language in a standard way, how closely can I experience reality in the way that others experience it? The album asks the listener to question how their unique means of perception and interpretation might differ from that of others
/ For The Voice of Theseus, I asked two of my favorite vocalists to assist with this experiment. Both Dorian Wood and G.Brenner recorded vocals for me to manipulate throughout the album. If their original audio is Theseus’s ship, the changes I make to their voices are like the Athenians replacing each of the original vessel’s pieces. And so, how far can these vocals be pushed while still remaining attached to the vocalists’ identities? Where lies the separation between the source materials and the objects they’re used to create?
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€ 16
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Stuart Dempster :
Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel
- 2xLP (Important, 2023)
This is where you have been forever and will always be forever." Stuart Dempster, speaking about what it feels like to be in a cistern where time seems to stop. Stuart Dempster created Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel in the same cistern where the legendary Deep Listening album was recorded. Reverberating with powerful, deep tones, this double LP is intended as a companion to the acclaimed Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis album Deep Listening. Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel is one of the deepest drone albums ever recorded. Nine trombones, didjeridu and Tibetan bells fill the massive two-million-gallon cistern with dense sonic reverberations that are both haunting and healing. Packaged in a heavy-duty paper sleeve printed with metallic gold ink to match the Deep Listening design
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€ 34
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Tomas Knoflicek :
Serendipity
- LP (Laaps, 2023)
Tomas Knoflicek is a musician, sound artist and curator. His compositions consist of a combination of glitch structures, computer deconstruction, soundscaping, field recordings and acoustic instruments, including historical psaltery or guitar. Rather than composing, working with sound is a way for him to develop his own sensitivity to the world around him and the phenomena or situations that surround him. His compositions have the character of time cans in which he stores specific stimuli and experiences. However, they also serve as a means of fixing and concentrating his distracted mind. Tomáš Knoflí?ek is a member of the visionary quartet Gurun Gurun (Home Normal, Silver Rocket, Buh Records) or the audiovisual project LyrArkestra+, which focuses on the interpretation of graphic scores by prominent Czech and Slovak visual artists (Milan Adamciak, Jan Steklik, etc.). He is also the organiser of the Cuckoo festival of art in public space (kukacka.org)
/ Serendipity is an abstract record straddling the line between silence and verbosity. It responds to external stimuli, but at the same time it is also intrinsically introspective. The form of the recording - like the steps of the flaneur - was influenced primarily by chance. It is shaped by an associative yarn of sounds, so it is actually waiting for a suitable constellation, a dialogue between artificial and natural, everyday and festive
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€ 22
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Trym Søvdsnes :
Trym Søvdsnes
- LP (Smalltown Supersound, 2023)
Trym Søvdsnes is a relative newcomer to the scene, but he’s been putting in work in and around Bergen for years, scoring a residency at the infamous Café Opera, where he snagged the attention of local house legend Bjørn Torske. Soon, the duo were DJing, producing and performing together, eventually running the monthly radio show Pigs in Space where they would go head-to-head for six hours at a time, plumbing the depths of their immense record collections
/ It’s this lust for bottom-of-the-crate oddities that guides Søvdsnes’ self-titled debut album, a concoction of dub techno, hard-swung house and percussive club music that positions itself a few paces away from any conventional modes. Basically, a perfect fit for Le Jazz Non
/ ‘Gølles Dans’ opens with a filtered acid bassline and bone dry kick that’s like some psychedelic, slower variant of Basic Channel’s ‘Enforcement’, slicing into the groove with gristly acoustic percussion that drags it up from the basement. The producer leans into asymmetry on ‘Døgnrytmen’, wrangling 303 squelches with booming Berghain kicks and tight snares, enhancing the psychedelic potential by layering ticking percussion into loopy spirals. If you’ve ever caught an extended Dozzy set, this is the kind of ruff-edged gear he would likely play an hour before sunrise. ‘Ordnings Mix’ is weirder still, slopping chirpy bleep/rave stabs into a jazzy hybrid that sounds like a bossa meltdown. Søvdsnes saves his most cosmic mettle for last, on ‘Cowboy Acid (Solstikk Dub)’ he strips the kickdrum to a faint knock, before building up into a sort of screwed Metro Area mirrorball that sounds brilliantly out of time
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€ 25
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Kara-Lis Coverdale, LXV :
Sirens
- LP (Umor Rex, 2023)
Repress. Sirens is the first collaborative LP of Kara-Lis Coverdale (Tim Hecker, L/B) and LXV (David Sutton). Following their respective solo cassette releases Aftertouches (2015) and Spectral Playmate (2014) on Sacred Phrases, Coverdale and LXV debut on Umor Rex with a collection of multi-textural and multi-source electronic music rich in narrative, melody, and spectral intrigue
/ Inspired by the link between seduction and violence, Sirens comprises a series of timbrally vast anamorphic pieces that poise the voice as a newly imagined tool of multiplicity. Processes of sample manipulation, signal processing, routing, and source design inform instrumental writing and performance in feedback until intertwined, flickering between states of conflict and consonance. Apparitions of the schitzophrenic voice are at one moment fractured and cold and at the next full of warmth and vivaciousness, embodying velvet rituals of romanticism in the digital age
/ Ultimately, Sirens is music for ambitious dreamers: surreal sound portraits sound like the warmth of the world laid over an ice cold virtual altar. LXV’s vocal truncations and fleshy sound palettes depict the archivation of the breath and aural fantasies of the flesh which Coverdale sets amongst a vast and unconfined landscape of deeper and unknown force. Harmonically active and dynamic orchestrations underpin post-sacred tonalities while brooding pipe organs, sphinx flutes, and hailstorms of metallic percussion characterize uniquely disjointed discussions between disparate compositional ontologies. At times violent and at others serenely peaceful and seductive, these pieces, at their most powerful moments illuminate a felt space between cybernetic energy and the body
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€ 21
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Hyunhye Seo :
Eel
- CD (Room40, 2023)
Monochrome printed, matte laminated and embossed CD with insert card. Every year, the eels arrive in Sargasso. The eels that sprang to life when the sun god Atum warmed the Nile, the eels generated within the entrails of the earth, from the rubbing of the rocks and dew drops on riverbanks, they travel thousands of kilometres to Sargasso to breed
/ Their larvae, eels of glass, move to freshwater homes, crawling across land or up waterfalls if necessary, breathing through their skins, to get to where they want to go, although no one knows exactly where or why. Sometimes, they eat snakes and birds. After decades, when they're ready to breed, they stop eating and develop sex organs, and they travel back to Sargasso. If they can't go back to Sargasso, they never fully mature. They just stop ageing
/ No human has seen eels breed. Freud dissected over 400 eels in search of eel testicles. Aristotle thought they grew from earthworms in dirt. No one knows why they go where they go, or how they find their way back. Creatures of mud and rain, fluid in time and age, unabashed in its metamorphosis, unknown yet always found
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€ 16
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Hans Joaquim Roedelius, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff :
Roedelius Hausswolff II
- 2xLP (iDEAL, 2023)
Black vinyl. Deep and beautiful ambient experimentalism from two true masters. “Roedelius / Hausswolff II”is this duo’s second album. The two met in Vienna in 2016 when Carl Michael invited Hans-Joachim to participate in the collective sound-installation and concert””freq_out ”. Since H-J had been, and still is, organizing the festival “More Ohr Les“ in his home town Baden just outside Vienna it has been natural for him to invite CM to collaborate and perform here. As a result of this iDEAL Recording released the CD “Zurufe“ in 2021 where H-J and CM collaborated with American Tim Story and Brit/Swiss Christopher Chaplin. Like the duo’s first album - ”Nordlicht” (released in the USA in 2017) - this new one follows the path where a dark ambient drone style reveals several epic landscapes and formulas
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€ 29
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Zaumne :
Parfum
- LP (Sferic, 2023)
Black vinyl housed in reverse-board sleeve. Properly stunning fever-dreamweaving on this new one from Zaumne, occupying an elevated space at the intersection of flickering dub-pop and ASMR soundscaping. If you’re into anything from HTRK to Malibu, Félicia Atkinson to Voice Actor, consider it a major life enhancement. For his Sferic debut, Zaumne enlists YL Hooi - a constant source of inspiration for many of us here, as well as Metoronori and the muted sax of Patrick Shiroishi. Loosely inspired by Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil’ (soft spoken extracts of which appear throughout), the album is a sort of exercise in escapism and sensual wandering
/ Throughout ‘Parfum’, faded pop is fleshed out with surreal elegance: all flickering neon and half-heard whispers suggestive of blurred late night fantasies; liminal, abstract, and highly evocative. Sounds hang in the air like incense, caressing the senses with an intentionality that's missing from so much landfill ambient. On opening track 'Voyageur’ he sets the scene with pastoral field recordings, dragging a pitched voice and elongated pads through a rhythmic throb that reduces dub techno to a faint knock. There are echoes of music from the fringes of the afterhours club scene too: Andrew Pekler's obscure imaginary landscapes, Jake Muir's druggy bathhouse vapours, DJ Lostboi’s balmy introspection. But despite a shared bleary–eyed aesthetic, Zaumne’s sound is more explicit and well defined, and with it brings a more acute emotional pull
/ When YL Hooi appears on 'Sorcières', her voice; drenched in reverb but absolutely crystalline, takes proceedings to a whole other level, reminding us of Natalie Beridze’s perennially overlooked ‘The Wrestler’ from her 2003 album for Thomas Brinkmann’s Max Ernst label; a sort of echo chamber dub perfectly re-imagined as dreampop. A whispered French vocal introduces us to 'Éther', a smoked cloud of looping synths and twinkling bells, and on 'Nymphes’ a wash of pads, wind chimes and waves lapping at the shore somehow manages to swerve all the associated schmaltz you’d imagine and instead gives us the same tingling sensation we had when we first heard Art of Noise’s ‘In Visible Silence’ at dusk, on a beach in the south of France, what seems like forever ago
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€ 26
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Sonmi451 :
The Eighteen Minute Gap
- LP (Laaps, 2023)
Yellow vinyl. Since 2005, under the moniker Sonmi451 (a character from David Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas"), Bernard Zwijzen creating his own blend of minimal, soundscape-laden atmospheric electronics in Hasselt, Belgium.He has been previously released on labels such as : U-Cover, Slaapwel Records, Time Released Sounds, Eilean Rec. and LAAPS. "The Eighteen Minute Gap" is his thirteenth releases
/ The Eighteen Minute Gap lets you embark on a mysterious journey into a world of ethereal ambient music, where beautiful and soothing listening experiences await. Using field recordings and manipulating textures and sounds, Sonmi451 creates minimal yet tantalizing soundscapes, filled with intimate whispering voices
/ Sonmi451 uses various soft- and hardware synths and samplers to create a truly unique and immersive audio experience where one is captivated by mystery and intrigue and immersed in a world of mysterious sounds where boundaries between reality and imagination begin to blur
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€ 22
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Christina Giannone :
Reality Opposition
- CD (Room40, 2023)
Matte laminated and embossed sleeve. Monochrome printing. Insert card. Dissociation is the driving force behind the composition. The act of surrendering, the attempt to observe our existence from the outside. Giving in feels like giving up. Acceptance feels like resignation. The process included digital sound experimentation by means of observance and detail orientation and the idea of sound presenting itself in different identities depending on the listener. This attention to detail acts as a hologram, changing shapes depending on the angle. Ideas of multi-dimensional existences and indifference in its purest form. Slow, digital evaporation
/ An attempt to recreate what ‘nothing’ means. It might be a gaze out the window, conversations in passing, an incomplete thought. Fleeting, meaningless moments that fill the gaps. Things we are only subconsciously aware of. The periphery. The forgotten. The static in between
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€ 16
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Hidden Horse :
Incorporeal
- LP (Holuzam, 2023)
Burnt down utopias and urban paranoia, Hidden Horse are back with their second album. “Incorporeal” is the follow-up to 2022’s “Opala” and the band’s first release on vinyl. Composed by João Kyron (keyboards/electronics) and Tony Watts (drums), long-time friends and collaborators on different projects, the most prominent one being the exotic and dreamy Beautify Junkyards (Ghost Box). As a duo they’re a totally different game
/ Playing live regularly after the release of “Opala” offered them the possibility to explore a more freeform approach to their sound. Their live sets were often unpredictable, focused on the communication dynamic between the trio (Ana Farinha joins them on their performances) and where they could be led to, instead of reinterpreting the songs. “Incorporeal” embodies that attitude, it is a less confined album and it is not worried about being referential or even self-referential. They finally discovered how to expand the hauntology dynamics and free themselves from design restraints
/ The album feels lighter, fluent, more optimistic. It remains thematically close to the eternal sci-fi discomfort, imagine Burial living in Lisbon, Portugal. João and Tony feel free from any doubts they might have had in the beginning of this project and are now more confident about how Hidden Horse sounds and unpreoccupied about the narrative: it is rock oriented but dressed as the electronic / dance music they would like to listen and dance to. Guest slots from Arianne Churchman (“The Tape Spool Within The Horse’s Mouth”) and Clothilde (“Espectros no CCTV”) offer a new range of feelings and confirms how Hidden Horse’s music evolves into new grounds when accepting new ideas and voices. “Opala” was a trojan horse to come out – of the pandemic? – and play. “Incorporeal” feels like the real deal
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€ 22
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Charlie Morrow, Carles Santos, Sten Hanson :
The Heavyweight Sound Fight
- 2xLP (iDEAL, 2023)
Double LP in gatefold-cover with 12-page booklet. The Heavyweight Sound Fight”, a double LP documenting the remarkable, never before released 1981 performance of a work / happening created by the artists Charlie Morrow, Sten Hanson and Carles Santos. It was staged and produced in New York, at Gleason’s Gym – one of the most famous boxing gyms in the United States – by Morrow and Hanson, and co-written with Santos. A lampoon of a boxing match – with all pomp and bluster – the action pitches Morrow and Santos against each other, backed by two bands – Soho Baroque Opera Company with the assistance of the New Wilderness Foundation – with Hanson serving as referee, Amrand Schwerner acting as the announcer, and none other than Simone Forti displaying the round cards.
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€ 32
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blackbody_radiation :
Ultra-Materials
- LP (Faitiche, 2023)
Faitiche welcomes Andrew Black aka blackbody_radiation. His debut album Ultra-Materials (faitiche32) gathers six ghostly drones, created with the help of sound masking. Andrew Black, who hails from one of the UK's post industrial North West Milltowns has a sensitive feeling for space and its acoustics. Having trained as a designer and operated within the realms of architecture and public space, it was only natural to extend his interest to manipulating field recordings
/ The six pieces collected on Ultra-Materials provide an insight into Black's highly sensitive minimalism: they stand for a subtly meandering mediation on room acoustics and place, which are manipulated with the help of sound masking, among other things - that is, the addition and superimposition of artificially generated frequencies to mask unwanted sounds
/ Sometimes the pieces are reminiscent of warm engine noise, sometimes one thinks of carefully captured natural phenomena. Their strength lies in their elusiveness: free of concrete attributions or musical location, they can unfold their hypnotic pull without revealing anything about their origins. Harmonics at times shimmer, at times warble and at times coexist. It is an attempt to get in touch with our listening abilities
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€ 21
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Mary Jane Leach :
Woodwind Multiples
- LP (Modern Love, 2023)
Clear vinyl. Here's something to get very excited about - a legendary musician in the avant garde world meeting, and not for the first time, one of the finest labels that dares to tread. New York composer Mary Jane Leach has been synonymous with experimental tones since she first pulled up a pew and began to play back in the 1970s. Soon taking her tones the world, this innate talent eventually led her to Manchester's Modern Love, an imprint several years her junior but launched with a similar purpose
/ Here joined by oboes, clarinets, and bassoons played by Manuel Zurria, Libby Van Cleve, Sam Dunscombe, and Shannon Peet, Woodwind Multiples is a jarringly to the point, it-is-what-it-is name for a record that feels so otherworldly. Steeped in moods, from the uneasy and tense to awakenings and new life, the result is something to behold
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€ 26
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Plume Girl :
In The End We Begin
- MC (Mappa Editions, 2023)
Already in its title, Plume Girl’s debut thoroughly lets things go and takes them in – all at once. “In the End We Begin” is the first solo full-length from Sowmya Somanath, a Hindustani classical singer/composer and half of alt-pop duo Felt Out. Plume Girl’s music takes inspiration from the semi-regular musical form of the r?ga (translated as ‘tinting’), invoking mood and atmosphere, each r?ga thought to have its own distinct nature and personality, brought to life through improvisation. String swells and Somanath’s searching vocalisations envelop every track’s own blissful chamber. Exploring imagined binaries along the way — eastern vs. western, traditional vs. experimental, acoustic vs. electronic, Sowmya sees music as a curious dialogue between divine Self and an invisible reality. Beneath the illusion of a chromatic world, there remains a blissful oneness
/ Plume Girl’s songs sit between ambient Hindustani music and emotionally-encumbered pop. In front of backdrops comprising sundrenched drones or glitches, sketched out beats, and criss-crossing glissandi or flutes, Somanath both murmurs intimately and spirals upwards into soaring choruses. The lyrics ponder innermost thoughts, never more literally than on the blissful emo folk closing track: ‘In my heart I know / what’s in my heart / I know what’s in my…’
/ “When I began writing this music, I was fresh off of an experience that completely twisted my reality,” explains Somanath. It was the end of a years-long relationship, and the blossoming of a long-buried love hidden in plain sight: “a best friend of a decade, my musical partner, someone who had always seen me completely…At once, I felt grief and loss. At once, excitement and love.”
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€ 10
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Coil :
The Ape Of Naples
- LP+12" (Important, 2023)
The Ape of Naples is Coil's highly celebrated final album completed by Peter Christopherson following the tragic death of Jhonn Balance in 2004. Often noted for being a fan favorite, The Ape of Naples uses Balance's final recordings and material recorded at Trent Reznor's studio in New Orleans to create a deep, heavy masterpiece
/ This black vinyl re-press is packaged in a heavy duty jacket with Ian Johnstone's original artwork coated in a custom spot gloss. Each LP is housed in a printed inner sleeve and side D contains all three original etchings. Ape's lyrics are spread across the gatefold
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€ 35
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Ben Bondy :
Camo
- LP (Good Morning Tapes, 2023)
Delicate digital processes are shrouded by ethereal layers of static wind chimes, and drifting guitar melodies, creating a soothing and immersive experience. The album unfolds over half an hour, seamlessly merging gentle atmospheres into a soft-hued paradise, where digitally altered melodies interplay with whirring machinery and expansive pads
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€ 29
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Starving Weirdos :
Atheistsaregods
- LP (Discrepant, 2023)
More than a decade after the release of ´Land Lines', the mythical Humboldt County, California based duo of Brian Pyle and Merrick McKinlay reappears seemingly out of nowhere with 'Atheistsaregods'. With past releases on such cult-like labels as Root Strata, Weird Forest, Blackest Rainbow or Digitalis, Starving Weirdos were an indelible part of a sprawling and loose network of artists in Northern America whose DIY work ethic and extreme activity revolved around shoestring-budget constant touring, numerous limited editions on CDR, tape and vinyl and a relentless drive to push the boundaries of genre
/ Out of that cauldron, Starving Weirdos stood out as one of the most persistent and visionary acts, developing a mind altering body of work that went from warm soundscapes through droney digressions, freeform improvisation and raucous noise summoned from a myriad of instrumentation and low budget processing - vocals, keyboards, violin, flute, percussion and an assortment of less identifiable sound sources. 10 years on their legacy remains a timeless and wildly under-appreciated one, but hopefully this new album will shine a light on their idiosyncratic approach. As time itself was never a constraint. This is music suspended outside of it
/ Right from the start with the echoing percussion, dissonant keys and processed vocals of 'Haiku Nagasaki', 'Atheistsaregods' draws a continuous flux of psychedelic elevation that goes from the gloomy electronic motifs not unlike the early Cluster vibes of 'Invocation' into the dank percussive maze of the appropriately titled 'Barulho do Samba'. The self titled track induces a sense of post-apocalyptic vertigo via hallucinatory scraps of voice, suspended synth tones and reverberating field recordings, connecting into the droney mystics of 'Dudukahar (Reed Prayer)'. Coming full circle, 'For Vinny' brings back the echoing percussion amidst hypnotic cello lines until it drifts off into the unknown. With the same palpable sense of urgency, Starving Weirdos feel as vital as ever. And even if we didn't realize it we were in need of them. Welcome back
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€ 19
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Jon Collin, Demdike Stare :
Minerals
- LP (DDS, 2023)
Transparent yellow vinyl. Demdike Stare have hooked up once more with guitarist Jon Collin for what is their most psychedelic record yet. This trippy and vibrant dream is a record of concrete that's been performed on tape, pedals and a homemade fiddle known as the Swedish nyckelharpa. It manages to be both pastoral (no doubt a result of the fact that all artists hail from the Pennine moorlands) and of this world but also trippy and cosmic. It conveys a sleeping metropolis at night time but also a misty, rainy moor in the middle of winter. There are two halves to this album which both reward close listening with infinite sonic detail
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€ 26
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Rob Winstone :
Sifting Through Heaven
- MC (Mappa Editions, 2023)
Accepting the darkness can be a liberating experience. Realising, and struggling with just who we are and what world we live in requires it. By further complicating the fractured sense of beauty found on his droning 2022 release, ‘I dreamt we found a way’, Bristol-based composer, Rob Winstone creates a language that encapsulates the lifelong reach for our own personal heavens, along with the darkness and fear on which those foundations are built
/ Winstone’s instrumental palette continues to reach out far from behind his keyboards, however the sound of ‘sifting through heaven’ is stripped back and pared down, putting melody front and centre. 'postcards and loose tea', a love song written for Winstone’s partner during a period coming to terms with health difficulties had previously self-released with heavy spectral and granular manipulation from the artist. Here Winstone re-presents the original: “the stripped back recording I made in my old damp and cold studio that was in a building that has since been demolished”. It reflects the composer’s own journey, doing away with veils and histrionics, and embracing emotional bliss wherever it can be found, warts and all
/ Even the rumbling dark ambience of ’hospital corridor’ - where distant chimings, groans, and droplets synthesized from field recordings made nervously in a hospital waiting for test results coalesce - harbours a sacred-seeming beauty and aseptic warmth within its very bleak sense of dread. There’s no better way to describe Winstone’s method than ‘sifting through heaven’. The hymnal organ chords, sketched out acoustic guitar phrases, scattering drum thuds, and meditative field recordings may flit between tenebrous to incandescent, but his focus is always on the embrace of love; “a view of life that embraces positive growth, yet doesn't deny immense suffering,” as he puts it. The album is bookended by two of Winstone’s most outright peaceful moments, summarising his core message: 'in spite of it all...' '...love finds a way'
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€ 10
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Lucie Vítková :
Cave Acoustic
- MC (Mappa Editions, Skupina, 2023)
In 2018, New York based composer and improviser Lucie Vítková made recordings in caves in the Czech Republic and an abandoned Gothic church in Slovakia. Their album Cave Acoustics combines a beguiling exploration of the physicality and acoustics of these unique locations with profoundly personal themes of family legacy and roots. Lucie performed with their sisters in Vypustek Cave – an underground system of tunnels and former Soviet-era bunker. The choreography-based piece creates crescendos of metallic noise as the trio moves around the spaces. It begins with echoing clanks of tins and coins and accelerates towards a rattling cacophony with distant singing floating up from deep in the shadows
/ Bearing in mind the siblings had never performed together before, their frenzied kinetic outpourings seem even more special, a wordless cohesion forming between them. Lucie clearly doesn’t shy away from a physically full on experience; they embarked on a Fitzcarraldo-style journey to carry heavy props up a steep hill and across a river to reach the less accessible Jáchymyka Cave. ‘Hair Score’ is an attempt to process the death of the siblings’ mother through a serene then slightly unsettling swaying ritual, with rising and falling waves of wailing and emergency siren sounds growing in intensity as they emerge from their mourning mouths
/ After the cavernous acoustics, ‘Stones’ by American experimental classical composer Christian Wolff feels more immediate with its textural sounds and fast, insistent rhythms, as we hear different sized stones knocked together rapidly, following the composer’s instructions not to break anything. ‘Inside the Ritual’ was a “transformative” experience for Lucie, where they felt their body merge with the forest and hills in Slovakia. The 23-minute long track is hypnotic, listening to cowbells and chirping insects at the end of a hot summer’s evening. Things get stranger as metallic clatter is punctuated with Lucie’s voice and reedy tones from their Japanese hichiriki flute. The album is a calm, contemplative but also energetic and moving reflection of these rare and unheard environments and Lucie’s reunion with the people and places that have shaped them
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€ 12
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Flaer :
Preludes
- LP (Odda Recordings, 2023)
Includes seven handmade prints, signed and numbered by the artist. Artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer looks to the landscape to explore pastoral melancholy on debut release, Preludes. Ensconced in his family home in rural Leicestershire in the early months of 2020, painter and musician Realf Heygate (b. 1994) picked up his childhood cello for the first time in several years and began to play. Setting himself parameters to only record onto 4-track tape with acoustic instruments – cello, piano and acoustic guitar – he assembled a suite of instrumental compositions that form the basis of Preludes, his debut album as Flaer and the inaugural release on Odda Recordings
/ Channelling the tension and unease between the pastoral idyll of the English countryside and the darkness which lurks beneath the surface, the mini-album draws inspiration from the analogue aesthetic of 1970s folk horror films, weaving field recordings of birdsong, church bells and the natural environment into chimerical melodies that reflect on Heygate’s childhood experiences of rural England. “It was really important not to isolate the sound from its environment,” he explains, describing the compositional and recording process as “site-specific”. Developed over a series of intuitive musical enquiries, the mini-album’s uncanny quality emerges from combining raw demo takes with overdubs of an almost orchestral grandeur
/ Heygate points to the final track as indicative of the work as a whole: “‘Follow’ really is the mantra for the release and embodies the practical approach I was taking to music making: not to force the music but see where it takes you.” As a painter, Heygate’s practice takes artefacts through sequences of reproduction that embrace the fluctuating materiality of the copy. Since obtaining a degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2017, he has exhibited solo at Peter von Kant and Springseason galleries in London, and has participated in group shows at Saatchi Gallery, Cob Gallery and Senesi Contemporanea
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€ 19
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Forces :
Chimæras
- MC (Mappa Editions, 2023)
Named after the mythological hybrid of the chimaera, Forces’ first collection for mappa was put together in a similar fashion. The sounds all stem from a fruitful residency at Stockholm’s EMS Elektronmusikstudion in May & June 2022, leading to a bounty of source material with which to build. The sounds and concept are equally chimeric, stringing together disparate and unintuitive jams, the music mimicking the multi-limbed, sewn together beasts of both creative open source coding and destructive multinational concerns who hide their cores amid endless appendages. Like Doctor Moreau, Forces - aka Finnish artist Joonas Siren - weaves wildly varying attributes into something new, from short-circuiting 8-bit dream ambience to fractured digital groans, drones, and noisy freakouts
/ Though EMS is best known for its Buchla and Serge modular systems, Forces went ‘digital’ and largely navigated a lesser-known synth rack one can wheel between studios, affectionately known as the ‘90s Wagon’. “It housed different digital rack synth modules,” explains Siren, “ like the super unknown EVS-1 by Evolution Synthesis, a UK company who only produced this one rack synth only and then vanished.” Some truly alien sounds emerge from Forces’ creative misuse of forgotten 90s boxes and sampled modular jams. The result is an erratic trip through mismatched circuitry and digital codes, slipping between emotional artifice and harshly logical music
/ The track titles stem from both famous mythological chimaeras and multinational arms dealing conglomerates. “Different quite sinister firms can operate in broad daylight, easily hiding their true nature. Many of these mega-corporations have different branches (like chimeric limbs) that are producing quite normal mundane every-day items, as well as mass-producing weapons.” A dedicated SuperCollider user too however, Siren states how open source coding snippets are also ‘chimeric beings’. “You end up always using some part of some old code and then building completely new work on some old idea,” Siren explains. Despite its misuses, there’s also something hopeful in the malleability of ideas, and the ability to creatively collage the world as it is into something wholly new, even better
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€ 10
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Flocks :
Flocks
- LP (Zehra, 2023)
Flocks is a new duo, formed by drone specialist Werner Durand and Uli Hohmann. Musical landscapes that move between traditional as well as experimental sounds with influences from Krautrock and Jon Hassel's "fourth world" aesthetics. Werner Durand has made himself a name with various projects with Dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni, playing with Urban Sax, Arnold Dreyblatt, Henning Christiansen, David Behrman, Ellen Fullman, Catherine Christer Hennix, as the co-founder of THE 13th Tribe, Armchair Traveller and Tonaliens (with Robin Ayward and Hilary Jeffery) plus numerous solo albums, released on labels like Black Truffle, Unseen Worlds or Edition Telemark. Having studied saxophone as well as Indian / Persian flutes, the Berlin based Durand is a highly reputated protagonist in the drone scene, famous for his self-built wind instruments like buzz-clarinets or his PVC neys & horns
/ His partner in Flocks (and longtime personal friend) is Uli Hohmann whose early encounters with music from Asia, India and Africa led to studies with the Ghanaian master drummer Mustapha Tettey Addy and later Tombak and Daf with Nemad Darman (Iran). Hohmann played in a couple of projects that explored the language of classical Persian music, and started building his own stringed instruments (being an educated carpenter). In 2014 he joined Durand and Amelia Cuni for the album "Clearing", and 2018 Durand and Hohmann decided to continue as a duo: Flocks was born
/ On their selftitled debut they shape drone-y soundscapes based on their self-built wind- & stringed instruments, Persian percussion and subtle electronics, drawing additional inspiration from Krautrock (listen to the irresistible, hypnotique groove of "Quicksand") as well as Jon Hassel's "fourth world" aesthetics, placing the duo nicely between tradition and experiment!
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€ 21
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Arovane :
Seismograf
- MC (Dauw, 2023)
In line with his recent body of work, Arovane bundled minimal compositions telling micro-narratives situating in the melodic realm of ambient music. On first sight, it seems common that one can enter or construct such stories through the melodies these compositions offer. However, melodies never stand on their own – maybe only theoretically – but in fact truly reveal their magic through the sonical context they’re embedded in. To Zahn, a crucial part of his practice is all about this latter notion: finding the sweet – and sometimes hidden – spots in sound-design that allow him to express the narratives he wants to share. ‘Seismograf’ could be seen as an ode to this exploration and devoted to the practice of listening - to hear sounds that are otherwise inaudible
/ “i am like a seismometer for sound structures that are hidden deep under the surface. an ear on the ground, on the earth. the other ear listens to the sky, the birds, the clouds, the wind.” Arovane
/ Arovane is the moniker of German based composer and sound-designer Uwe Zahn who’s working in the field of minimal electronica and experimental music. In the late 1990’s his work reached a wider audience through releases on pivotal IDM labels DIN and City Centre Offices. In recent years, he released music on 12k and Puremagnetik and collaborated with Taylor Deupree, Porya Hatami and Synkro among others
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€ 13
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Kathy Acker, Nox :
Love, Emily
- LP (Slow Moves, 2023)
Originally released in a long sold-out edition of 50 cassette tapes, Love, Emily (Acte 3) was the third and final album of Michel Henritzi’s industrial label AKT Production. Recorded in a Paris studio in 1987, this 25-minute collage of spoken word and noise saturations intersects two radical voices from literature and experimental music of the time: American author Kathy Acker reading excerpts from her book My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Nox, mainstay of the French noise and industrial scene. Pulled from oblivion, restored and remastered for vinyl by Slow Moves, this archive gem crosses the clashing worlds of poetry and industrial music, melding Acker’s thought-provoking words to absolute and inflexible industrial sounds
/ A lot of it is noise, but a lot of it is also play; research for a new mystique, generating unusual forms and unknown languages. Published in a limited edition of 400 copies, this vinyl also comes with a long printed panel of previously unpublished photographs and letters from Kathy Acker, tracing the background exchanges that led to the collaboration between the groundbreaking writer, Henritzi and Nox, a poster of Kathy Acker with french translations and a download code featuring both music and extra archival material (interview and articles)
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€ 23
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Christina Vantzou :
Releasing Spores
- MC (Slow Moves, 2021)
Christina Vantzou’s Releasing Spores is a cast of elements revealing vignettes of experimentation within a curious locale. These thirty-four minutes of music perform the creation of a sporic language evolved from field recordings, organic instruments, and synthesized elements. Minimal melodic themes recur to ground each of the nine songs as the parallel parts of a form
/ A soundtrack of events, composed and delivered as a documentary about a place, communicates an environment that's been thoughtfully tuned in and revealed. Vantzou’s ambient languages inhabit the air, releasing tones that buoyantly float, drift, and settle upon the ground, to then fluently grow. These are compositions that witness the formation of a thinking place where ideas reflect and converse. It is the sound of an element enunciating while gliding through an atmosphere; multiplying into fields of little voices to imagine an avant-garde play in the emerald glow of night. The release of spores documented in sound as they create abstract purpose upon plateaus of aural thought
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€ 16
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AG Geige :
Raabe?
- LP (Zensor, 1991)
This ex-GDR avant-garde underground formation is unpredictable, experimental and weird but on this album, it even shows real post-pop appeal. On all of their recordings, AG Geige shatter whole generations of conventions. Their music collages between genius and madness are still unparalleled today
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€ 19
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Cassandra Miller :
Traveller Song / Thanksong
- LP (Black Truffle, 2023)
Black Truffle is pleased to announce its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody; in 2019, it was selected by The Guardian as one of the ‘best classical music works of the 21st century’. Traveller Song / Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller’s gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work
/ Like many of Miller’s compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. Traveller Song (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Miller’s untutored voice is an unsteady, wavering wail that has, in her words, ‘more in common with a quasi-shamanistic keening than anything Sicilian’. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre-recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London’s Plus-Minus Ensemble. In the first section, Miller’s exposed warble is set to a spare piano accompaniment, somehow both faintly preposterous and magisterial
/ Following the voice note for note, the piano part often makes use of almost mechanical sequences of parallel chords, reminiscent both of Satie’s Rosicrucian period and the abrupt harmonic movements of a chord organ. The orchestration then opens up to guitar, clarinet, and sliding strings, a delicate environment for Miller’s voice, which, especially when it begins to be layered, generates a powerful sense of intimacy. In its concluding minutes, the folk roots of the original melody return in the form of a glorious full ensemble setting dominated by accordion, clarinet, and strummed guitar
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€ 22
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Marja Ahti :
Tender Membranes
- LP (Black Truffle, 2023)
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Tender Membranes, the label’s first release from Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Marja Ahti. Active for a decade in the Finnish underground music scene, in recent years Ahti has developed a distinctive approach to patiently unfolding electro-acoustic constructions, documented on a string of solo releases and collaborative projects with Judith Hamann and her husband Niko-Matti Ahti
/ Working with concrete and instrumental sounds, field recordings, and electronics, Ahti favours neither disjunctive collage nor monolithic consistency; rather, her work is composed of organically unfolding sequences of details and textures, which, as she says, ‘can stretch out or cut fast as long as they have a sense of inner stillness’, a sense that she connects to moments of heightened attention in everyday life. Tender Membranes consists of four lengthy pieces, partly inspired by the image of the senses and mind as membranes allowing for the passage between inner and outer spaces, sensation and its causes, creating a world. Ahti’s unhurried pacing encourages this sense of listening as an opening or surrender to sound, which can often create the impression that the listener is moving through a space zooming in on details
/ The opening Shrine (Aether) exemplifies this aspect of Ahti’s approach: a bell clears the air with a single long tone, followed by the ambience of outdoor spaces, crackling electronics, an archival recording of a horsefly on a windowpane. Dozens of these moments, varying in length, density, and intensity, move past the listener’s attention, momentarily brought into focus then slipping away. Like those of the masters of the French musique concrète tradition, Ahti’s sounds are not often recognisable, though they might suggest proximity or distance, open environments or closed spaces, the urban or rural, day or night. In Ahti’s work, we do not encounter spectacular metamorphoses à la Parmegiani but rather a state of ambiguity where the listener is often unsure what is organic and what is inorganic, where the careful productions of the synthesizer might end and sounds discovered in the environment begin
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€ 22
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Blod :
Ondskans Frö
- LP (Private, 2023)
Paste-on artwork on re-used old record jackets. The seed of evil has been sown and all the trees have been infected. The trees infect the water, the animals, the air and the children. The fragmentation is becoming more and more apparent. Have the one you trusted the most turned its back on you? All of a sudden you are all alone. Can you drink the water? Dead fish float to the surface. The sky is slowly fading away. What do you do when the last day is here?
/ Ondskans Frö ('The Seed Of Evil') is an album about the last day of the earth, when the evil forces finally has taken over both the people and the nature. The album starts in the morning and takes the listener through a 24 hour journey towards a new dawn where everything is gone. Recorded during April and May 2023, all music and instruments by Gustaf Dicksson..
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€ 19
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Mieko Suzuki :
Ödipus, Herrscher
- CD (Raster, 2023)
CD packaged in digipack cover including 16-page booklet with photos of the theater play. »Odipus, Herrscher« is the debut release of Berlin-based, Japanese sound artist Mieko Suzuki on raster. It is the result of a composition commissioned by Schauspielhaus Bochum. The classic, timeless material of Oedipus premiered as a dark dystopia in Bochum in 2021. Before the first words of the play are spoken, the auditorium is filled with an immersive drone that anticipates what will later become the bleak, underlying tone of the staged material: pestilence, decay, fear and resignation
/ The anticipation of the plot through this drone also introduces the key role of the sound, the importance of the music for this production. Mieko Suzuki produces sounds by gently stroking, scratching and hitting the various elements of her self-built instruments, made from archaic materials such as wood, stone, metal, fur and clay. Amplified by contact microphones, these sounds are electronically manipulated, alienated and distorted. Her central concern is direct interaction; the correspondence between acting and music through improvisation
/ With tracks such as »Disaster«, »Taboo«, »Pest« and »Vertigo« Mieko Suzuki translates scenarios and moments key to the story through a material resonance, transferring the compositional narrative of Oedipus into a dark and textured sonic terrain. Sonically and affectively, without illustrating it as a compositional narrative. »Vertigo«, for example, features a constantly playing Shepard tone, expressing the inevitability of the abyss
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€ 16
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Atom™ :
Neuer Mensch
- CD (Raster, 2022)
CD packaged in offset-printed trifold cardboard cover, artwork by Olaf Bender, Atom™ and X1N. The continuously edited, autonomous piece of code as which Atom™ defines itself enters the hot state of flow. »Neuer Mensch« (»new human«) is the relentless, visceral expression of metamorphosis. A projection of the metahuman horizon, an exercise in shedding the exoskeleton. Dead tissue is being torn off in radical body movements
/ Dead ideas are crushed by feet, dancing the dance of brutal elegance. Somatic exorcism via hyper realistic surfaces of binary noise. Physicality. Unseen geometries dressed in the most basic of rhythmic patterns - simple structures of hidden symmetries. The false promise of linear progress as it shatters, hitting the barrier of sound. Familiar vocal fragments speak to us in foreign tongues, languages still to be invented. Indecipherable messages from another species - future faux amis. The seductive spell of artificiality and its inherent promise of tomorrow’s bliss. A soundtrack for all of you hi-tech vagabonds, you godless drifters, deprived of past and present. Programmed, engineered and mastered by an algorithm
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€ 16
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Elephantine, Maurice Louca :
Moonshine
- LP (Sub Rosa, 2023)
Color vinyl. Maurice Louca's Moonshine shines brightly with a live, raw, collective sound. The Elephantine band is incredible: Double drummers Tommaso Cappellato & Ozun Usta; Piero Bittolo Bon on alto, Daniel Gahrton on baritone and Isak Hedtjarn on clarinet; Rasmus Svale Kjærgård Lund on tuba; Rosa Brunell on bass; Els Vandeweyer on vibraphone; Louca on guitar/lap steel/synth. As Asher Gamedze puts it in his essay below: "Abstract territories of freedom, always grounded, expansive, multiple, internally differentiated, and elephantine."
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€ 17
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Invernomuto :
Vernascacadabra
- LP (Xing, 2023)
White vinyl, handnumbered. Xing presents the new LP Vernascacadabra by Invernomuto, eighth release of XONG collection - artist records. Vernascacadabra is a series of compositions for ocarina as a part of an artistic journey through the history of music routes that Invernomuto has been carrying out for years, starting from the sound and the imagery it generates
/ The ocarina is a wind instrument made of terracotta, whose name derives from its shape, which resembles a small headless goose ("oca" in italian). It is claimed that the instrument was invented in Budrio, near Bologna, around the mid-19th century, and then it spread to many geographic areas, such as Austria, Korea, Japan, Peru and Hungary. Aside from its use in traditional and folk music, the ocarina appears in some famous soundtracks by Ennio Morricone, in compositions by György Ligeti, in Capitan Harlock (a 1970s Japanese anime series), in music by Duran Duran, and in the videogame The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
/ Vernascacadabra, whose title combines a magical formula with the name of the ancient village from which the two artists come, intertwines vernacular and pop culture starting from the extremely simple sounds of the ocarinas recomposed in a catalog of raw dance pieces. Vernascacadabra opens up a heterodox vocabulary that draws from presumed and imagined medieval repertoires, blurred memories of ritual flutes and - more openly - declines the UK drill as a sharp existential metaphor
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€ 22
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Andrew Chalk, Daisuke Suzuki :
Drifting
- CD (Siren, 2023)
A collaboration does not mean you have to share everything or to do each and every activity together as a team. If your words or sounds inspire someone to open a challenge to something new, or open the door of possibilities-you can call it collaboration.Your personally recorded sounds never fail to reveal your true face and the sounds always speak more than words can
/ ‘Drifting’ is the very first collaboration between Andrew Chalk and Daisuke Suzuki, which has remained unsurfaced since then-their private recording in 1996. In early 1996 Daisuke sent Andrew a DAT tape which included some unedited pieces that he recorded with found objects in his garden. Those fragments of recordings inspired Andrew to make a spontaneous recording and he made a live mix directly to cassette recorder with his instinct and archaic vision. ‘Drifting’ is a kind of archaic low-fi recording, but it has great atmosphere and perfect unison in texture. ‘Drifting’ was also a prelude to their long-term collaborations and the beginning of the change of direction in Andrew’s approach to music
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€ 14
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Meitei :
Komachi
- LP (Métron, 2023)
Repress. Haunting and delicate, distant and timeless, Komachi is awash with white noise, complex field recordings and the hypnotic sounds of flowing water. Though confidently contemporary, like a bucolic J-Dilla, Komachi’s lineage can be traced back to the floating worlds of Ukiyo-e and Gagaku via the prism of 80s Japanese ambient pioneers, and 90s pastoral sample-based artists such as Susumu Yokota and Nobukazu Takemura
/ Composed as individual sonic dioramas, each of the twelve tracks have been crafted to not only evoke feelings of nostalgia but to also explore the dichotomy of ancient and new in modern Japanese society. This pervasive narrative runs throughout, calling to mind the work of authors Yasunari Kawabata and Natsume Soseki, as well as the films of Yasujiro Ozu and Hayao Miyazaki, artists similarly fascinated by the reflective tranquillity that permeated traditional Japanese domestic life
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€ 23
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Earthtones, Kevin Nathaniel :
For Synthesiser + Mbira Nyunga Nyunga
- MC (Temples Of Jura, 2023)
Earthtones is the musical identity of Serge Bandura, an electronic artist, former jazz musician, meditation teacher and ritualist based in LA. Kevin Nathaniel channels sound as a universal healing force through traditional African instruments and is a former student of legendary master musicians such as Ephat Mujuru and Chief Bey. Sending files back and forth during the pandemic, the two artists deepened a musical friendship and began a dialog between the Mbira Nyunga Nyunga, the Kalimba and analog synthesizers. Their music is offered in the spirit of peace + healing for all. ‘Of The Earth’ (Full Meditation) is 21 minutes long and the B side offers 25 minutes of music
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€ 12
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Klara Lewis, Nik Colk Void :
Full-On
- LP (Alter, 2023)
The collaboration between Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void somehow seemed inevitable. Both artists having seen their releases published by Editions Mego, individually carving out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. With Full-On, Lewis and Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third voice
/ Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful
/ Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound/feeling/instinct/association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new. The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures reveling in the process of unadulterated experimentation and whimsical interplay, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, this daring duo intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and forthright ambient. The various zones manifest from all this reveals vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats churning limpidly and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas resulting in a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world
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€ 22
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Pierre Bastien :
Sonic Folkways
- LP (Discrepant, 2023)
Repress. By now counting more than four decades of constant activity, Pierre Bastien erected such a towering and influential body of work that any blurb attempt regarding his music could easily fall into redundancy. Not that his revolving soundworld, deeply personal and unique, has ever stalled into gimmick or self mimicry, being Bastien the tireless explorer whose vision can never be complete, only continuously redefined in a process of discovery equally playful and challenging. So, completely in touch with Discrepant's ethos
/ Returning to the label after 2017 The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien, the french musician, composer and instrument builder, brings an array of instruments from different cartographies and legacies with the appropriately titled Sonic Folkways. Resorting to different types of horns, prepared trumpet, an army of percussion, from gongs and tambourine to castanets and maracas, violin and too many others to mention here, Bastien weaves together a highly textured and hypnotic mosaic that projects an exotica beamed from scraps of the future. 'Aha!' in the same interstellar wavelength as Sun Ra's cosmic tones, 'Moor's Room's' almost orchestral tapestry of small percussion and insects or the non-western strings and tunings salvaged from ancient alien ceremonies on 'Pan's Nap'
/ In an era where so much ink has been shed about world building in experimental music, Bastien can actually claim that to himself. The otherworld is right here, indeed
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€ 19
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Nicola Conte :
Umoja
- 2xLP (Far Out Recordings, 2023)
Renowned Italian spiritual jazz master, DJ, producer, guitarist, and bandleader Nicola Conte proudly presents his new album Umoja via London based label Far Out Recordings. A joyous exultation across ten tracks, Umoja taps into the abundant well of knowledge Conte has amassed over his career as connoisseuring compiler and archivist of deep jazz, latin, afrofuturist, bossa-nova and soul music from around the world. Expressing unity, oneness and harmony in Swahili, Umoja coalesces universal feelings through the multifaceted global music Conte has spent his life studying and researching
/ Having released music with Blue Note, Impulse! and Schema records, Nicola Conte’s relationship with Far Out began over a shared love of hard-edged bossa-nova and swinging samba-jazz. Between 2009-2013 Nicola Conte compiled five volumes of forgotten 60s Brazilian music for his Viagem series. He then released his critically acclaimed Natural album: a collaboration with vocalist Stefania Dippiero, featuring jazz standards alongside covers of lesser known Brazilian gems.The music of Umoja draws on the deep-dug 70's independent spiritual and free jazz sounds, private-press soul records, and African and Afro Caribbean rhythms in Conte’s collection. But he equally recognises his debt to many of the decade’s more celebrated musical icons, such as North American cosmic jazz masters Lonnie Liston Smith and Gary Bartz, and Afrobeat originators Fela Kuti and Tony Allen
/ Proudly revivalist, Umoja was recorded direct to analog tape, with just two takes for each track. “Searching for an unadulterated, spontaneous, almost improvised feeling”, Nicola made sure that the few overdubs were also transferred to tape in order to retain the colour and warmth of the analog sound. “Very little post production or editing has been added, so what you hear is largely what happened in those magical live sessions”
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€ 29
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Best Available Technology :
Untitled
- LP (Blundar, 2023)
Clear green vinyl, handnumbered. Portland-based Kevin Palmer returns to blundar with his Best Available Technology for another release (having previously been featured on cassette). This time it’s on vinyl but still messing about with the same business of constructing and deconstructing head-nodding beats into a foggy bowl of ambience that has become the trademark sound of BAT. Initially inspired and influenced by the sound-worlds created by Hank Shocklee, BDP and KDAY, Palmer spent his formative years combing pawn shops for samplers. This kicked off his self-described obsessive compulsive work crunching out impossibly naive and obviously unschooled jams in what might have been and continues to be an attempt to capture and document something he felt when listening to the bombastic sonic collages of early hip hop
/ Going backwards in order to go forward could be an apt mantra to describe the philosophy behind BAT. Often attached with labels like nostalgia and melancholy, Palmer surely deals with the longing for that perfect time capsule of N.Y. hip hop in the 90s - but where others zoning in on that era simply imitate it, Palmer goes way further into a world of his own making. Far removed in both time and place to the outskirts of Portland, the sonics of Palmer filters through an outsider’s perspective, sometimes offering a personal journal of the here and now via field recordings from skateparks and surfing trips
/ As if one would imagine looking slightly to the left of what was supposedly going on, these tracks continuously shift one's focus. That funky feel good beat is there, but almost always just out of grasp. Palmer gives us the sound of a memory slipping away. Yet this reads not as the end of something, but rather a stepping stone into a world of possibilities. Operating at the outskirts of genre, you could imagine anything from dub, hip hop, ambient or techno to emerge and crystalize from the haze, yet it never does. This is all those things and nothing. Or maybe it’s just some “sad fucked up funk” as Palmer puts it
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€ 22
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Tom James Scott :
Nightshade
- LP (Alter, 2023)
Tom James Scott holds a unique position in experimental music. With a soft brush approach Scott, who currently lives on the North-West coast of England, has explored delicacy in music with a variety of sublime releases on a variety of labels. Predominantly known for gentle investigations of guitar and piano, Scott has shifted to incorporating different technology and tactics over time. All of this, either in performance or recording, is embedded with a spirit that is quintessentially his own
/ Nightshade is the latest in his expanding catalogue, one which ignites an alarmingly new take on his approach to music. Echo on Water initiates proceedings with the unmistakable sound of tape. Any instrumentation is buried amongst the woozy sway of the medium itself, with its rough dynamics soon morphing into an overwhelmingly swirling mass of emotionally decayed sound. The movement of matter takes on a haunted shape with sounds looping and falling apart as the physicality of the medium holds it all together. The second track Blue Mist furthers this approach with its smeared haze of gorgeous emotion. This is deep exploration of ideas meeting matter
/ Wasting Stars takes up the entire flip side with the sound of tape recoiling a bit to allow the delicate glow of instruments to come more to the fore, with gentle effects that weave the musical matter. As a skewered take on Scott’s earlier piano explorations the atmosphere here is a subdued soundscape evoking the spiritual sadness found in the piano works of Gurdjieff/De Hartmann, with a modern lo fi angle. Nightshade is a deeply effective journey and one of the most exquisite examples of Scott’s delicate approach so far. Two sides of form which inhabit contrasting yet complimentary clouds of sound communicating in a stunning emotional flow. As music with only trace elements of melody, Nightshade is a beautiful take on tools being used to explore paths both highly idiosyncratic, deeply moving and discreetly personal
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€ 22
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Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Sun Araw :
Barbados Wild Horses
- LP (Pacific City Sound Visions, 2023)
After the not-quite-reissue of 'Prince of Parrot Shooters/The Aqueducts of Cannel Island', wide-eyed mystic and tireless searcher of the netherworld Spencer Clark returns to the Discrepant fold with 'Barbados Wild Horses' under his Monopoly Child Star Searchers moniker. Recorded while Clark was living in the Canary Island's by Tupperware and Lagoss' Dani Tupper, 'Barbados Wild Horses' brims with insular romanticism and escapist bliss, with sunkissed synth-lines interwoven around his trademark hand percussion bouncy rhythms reflecting the scenery of the islands as a liberating utopia
/ With track titles taking an almost self explanatory stance, the album starts with the crepuscular vibes of 'Upper Romantico', a poetic meditation on the lovelorn potential of the fading sunlight, setting the tone for the rest of the tour. 'Lava Tube Solos on Horseback', the first of two tracks featuring Sun Araw's Cameron Stallones, sees the latter's guitar noodles riding the cascading rhythms and digital choir harmonies while in 'Neopreno Antiguo' he solos freely around an hypnotic synth line. Finishing off the escapade, 'Nightcharcos Punta Brava' drifts in ethereal starlit contemplation, with the percussion taking a more backseat approach, setting into a steady pulse for Clark's gliding synth tapestries
/ Nightswimming as transcendence. Another piece of the fascinating puzzle Clark's been assembling for over two decades now, 'Barbados Wild Horses' glimmers with a laid back sensibility that's as unhinged as enveloping. Not an easy feat by any measure. Clark succeeds again
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€ 19
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Shackleton, Waclaw Zimpel :
In The Cell Of Dreams
- LP (7k!, 2023)
Following on from their critically acclaimed debut album, the second album from Shackleton / Zimpel represents the culmination of the ecstatic trance urge that has underlined both artists work since they embarked on their singular yet somehow parallel Paths
/ The duo, consisting of electronic music maverick Sam Shackleton and visionary avant folk virtuoso Waclaw Zimpel, sees them link up with one of Indian Classical music’s greatest emerging young vocal talents, Siddhartha Belmannu, to bring an album which is equal parts both a meditative exercise and an urge to transcendence whilst thematising both the acceptance of our mortality and the joyous celebration of living
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€ 22
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Yu Su :
I Want An Earth
- 12" (Pinchy & Friends, 2023)
The latest offering from Kaifeng-born and raised, Vancouver-based musician Yu Su.180g Vinyl, Picture Sleeve w/ Obi Strip
/ In her first major release of original music since 2021’s acclaimed “Yellow River Blue” LP, Yu Su says elements for the EP began to form during time spent in the deserts of Ojai, California and the fertile coastal areas around her home in British Columbia. Of the new release, Yu Su says the ideas are thanks to “the objects around (colors, reflections of light, wood burning in the fireplace, and material rhyme with the sounds in the room) the desert and valley plants, the ground where citrus grows, and the flood a rainstorm created.” She notes that “the golden earth is the changing point of the matter, earth centers, stabilizes, and conserves, nurtures, and seeks to draw all things together with itself.”
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€ 19
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Eden Ahbez :
Eden's Island: The Music Of An Enchanted Isle (60th-Anniversary Edition)
- 2xLP Box (Everland Psych, Ebalunga!!!, 2022)
Wooden slide edition including 24pp booklet and clear forest/leaves splatter vinyl. The ultimate reissue of one of the world’s most important albums in the field of Exotica, Jazz and even Proto Psychedelic Music from 1960! This reissue of Eden Ahbez' sole album includes 20 almost unreleased bonus songs from different sessions, carefully remastered by prolific grammy nominated sound engineer Jessica Thompson. The artist Eden Ahbez was not only a skilled composer and performer who wrote the hit tune „Nature boy“ for the classic 1940s crooner Nat King Cole but also a forefather and probably the sole inventor of the hippie lifestyle that became a world wide movement by the mid 1960s
/ Supported by movie maker and historian Brian Chidester, who now, after 20 years of research, completed the full time documentary movie „As The Wind - The Enchanted Life Of Eden Ahbez“: www.edenahbez.com. Gatefold double vinyl in limited editions of various vinyl colours and wooden boxset editions with a 12“ size 24 pages strong booklet with unseen images and information. This will remain the only ever double album reissue of this masterpiece
M/M
€ 65
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Muslimgauze :
Khan Younis
- CD (Other Voices, Kontakt Audio, 2022)
Gatefold Mini-LP sleeve. Brilliantly remastered CD with new stunning artwork! Unique tribal dub-trance music influenced by arabic culture with a touch of post-industrial
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€ 14
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Rapoon :
Raising Earthly Spirits
- CD Box (Other Voices, Kontakt Audio, 2023)
Beautifully packaged in a printed wooden box: remastered for CD. CD in mini-LP gatefold sleeve. Raising Earthly Spirits was conceived as a ritualistic, shamanistic album centred around the concept of transcending this level of consciousness and existing mindfully in multidimensional space and time. It draws heavily upon the sacred ideas and practices of many indigenous peoples from this earth and how they communicate and interact with their ancestors and how they see themselves in relation to this world. It was made with respect towards these beliefs. - Robin Storey/Rapoon
M/M
€ 22
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Eden Ahbez :
The Music Of An Enchanted Isle (60th-Anniversary Edition)
- 2xLP (Everland Psych, Ebalunga!!!, 2022)
Green & yellow vinyl. The ultimate reissue of one of the world’s most important albums in the field of Exotica, Jazz and even Proto Psychedelic Music from 1960! This reissue of Eden Ahbez' sole album includes 20 almost unreleased bonus songs from different sessions, carefully remastered by prolific grammy nominated sound engineer Jessica Thompson. The artist Eden Ahbez was not only a skilled composer and performer who wrote the hit tune „Nature boy“ for the classic 1940s crooner Nat King Cole but also a forefather and probably the sole inventor of the hippie lifestyle that became a world wide movement by the mid 1960s
/ Supported by movie maker and historian Brian Chidester, who now, after 20 years of research, completed the full time documentary movie „As The Wind - The Enchanted Life Of Eden Ahbez“: www.edenahbez.com. Gatefold double vinyl in limited editions of various vinyl colours and wooden boxset editions with a 12“ size 24 pages strong booklet with unseen images and information. This will remain the only ever double album reissue of this masterpie
M/M
€ 39
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Kelenkye Band :
Moving World
- LP (Everland Afro, 2023)
Brandnew Master! In 1974, a brash young designer called Augustus Kerry Taylor had an idea. He'd gather together the hottest musicians in Ghana and record an album of the heaviest and funkiest sounds coming out of America. And this time, he wouldn't just design the cover, like he'd done with Fela Kuti, he'd even release it on his new label, Emporium, as well. Local Accra legends Joe Wellington, Jagger Botchway, Leslie Addy, Officer Toro, Oko Ringo, Soldier and Steve answered the call. They were christened the Kelenkye Band and gelled immediately
/ Moving World, is a funky, disparate album that exudes a rare warmth, enthusiasm and togetherness. 'Moving World' and 'Brotherhood of Man' are hard, grinding funk. 'Jungle Music' has a more soulful groove. There's also a bit of reggae, 'Dracula Dance', and old-skool highlife, 'Wale Tobite'. Accra's leading DJ, Charlie Sam, declared his mind 'well and truly boggled.' The Kelenkye Band never recorded another album. Augustus Kerry Taylor shut down Emporium and went back to designing album covers. But in Moving World they delivered a perfect moment of funk alchemy that has rightly become the Holy Grail of 70's Ghanian groove. - Peter Moore, www.africanrevolutions.com / Licensed by the bandleaders and songwriters of the album, Joe Wellington and Jagger Botchway
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€ 22
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Eden Ahbez :
Eden's Island: The Music Of An Enchanted Isle (60th-Anniversary Edition)
- 2xLP (Everland Psych, Ebalunga!!!, 2022)
Black vinyl. The ultimate reissue of one of the world’s most important albums in the field of Exotica, Jazz and even Proto Psychedelic Music from 1960! This reissue of Eden Ahbez' sole album includes 20 almost unreleased bonus songs from different sessions, carefully remastered by prolific grammy nominated sound engineer Jessica Thompson. The artist Eden Ahbez was not only a skilled composer and performer who wrote the hit tune „Nature boy“ for the classic 1940s crooner Nat King Cole but also a forefather and probably the sole inventor of the hippie lifestyle that became a world wide movement by the mid 1960s
/ Supported by movie maker and historian Brian Chidester, who now, after 20 years of research, completed the full time documentary movie „As The Wind - The Enchanted Life Of Eden Ahbez“: www.edenahbez.com. Gatefold double vinyl in limited editions of various vinyl colours and wooden boxset editions with a 12“ size 24 pages strong booklet with unseen images and information. This will remain the only ever double album reissue of this masterpiece
M/M
€ 33
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Rapoon :
Raising Earthly Spirits
- 2xLP Box (Other Voices, Kontakt Audio, 2023)
Beautifully packaged in a printed wooden box: remastered for vinyl. Printed inner sleeves. Raising Earthly Spirits was conceived as a ritualistic, shamanistic album centred around the concept of transcending this level of consciousness and existing mindfully in multidimensional space and time. It draws heavily upon the sacred ideas and practices of many indigenous peoples from this earth and how they communicate and interact with their ancestors and how they see themselves in relation to this world. It was made with respect towards these beliefs. - Robin Storey/Rapoon
M/M
€ 45
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Eluvium :
(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality
- LP (Temporary Residence Ltd, 2023)
Forrest moss vinyl. (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality is the new album by Eluvium – the renowned moniker of prolific modern composer, Matthew Robert Cooper. Taking initial inspirations from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Richard Brautigan’s All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, (Whirring Marvels) inherently deals both with humankind’s need for meaning, and the emergence of algorithms reflecting the feedback loops of humankind’s interactions with machines themselves. This complicated relationship that we have with technology, automations, and algorithms – and the influence they in turn have on shaping our image of the world – is the mechanized heart and soul of an album that almost instantly establishes itself as a peak in Eluvium’s inimitable catalog
/ During the writing process for (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality, Cooper began experiencing shoulder and arm pain that rendered his left arm increasingly debilitated. This inspired new compositional methods that blended varying degrees of electronic automations with traditional songwriting. Lyrical themes were built using algorithms to cull content from a notebook filled with years of scribbled thoughts, poems, considerations, conspiracies, scientific notions, and notes on the spirit of existence. Employing musicians from all around the world – including members of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Golden Retriever, and the entire Budapest Scoring Orchestra – much of the music was conducted and recorded remotely via teleconference during the global COVID lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. This approach to composing served as an unintended but serendipitous challenge for an album inspired by the complicated convenience of technology
/ (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality blends an ornate combination of ingredients to construct a narrative of our dynamic invention; technological advancement; loneliness and isolationism; and unchecked idealism in a world of never-ending growth. The resulting hope that somehow emerges is itself a marvel of innovation and inspiration
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€ 28
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Alan Licht, Dean Roberts, Charles Curtis :
May 99
- LP (Blank Forms Editions, 2023)
Black vinyl pressed by New Orleans Record Press, with silkscreen tip-on jacket by Alan Sherry and insert by Ofset Yapimevi. In the spring of 1999, Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts brought an unconventional mix of drone, improvisation, and experimental rock on an eleven-stop tour of Europe. The concept was straightforward, yet novel: each night, they would improvise a single piece while sustained sine waves played for the duration of the concert. May 99, culled from three shorter pieces recorded for a radio program at Amsterdam’s VPRO near the end of the tour, represents an early high watermark in the collision of minimal and rock sensibilities that started to become prevalent in the late 90s and is an ear-opening listen even for those familiar with the musicians’ other projects
/ May 99 combines resonant sine waves in the style of eminent downtown New York composer La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music with scratchings, scrapings, and warblings produced by Licht and Roberts’s guitars, Curtis’s cello, and a variety of electronics. Just as sine waves hold together these sundry improvisations, a shared tendency toward the minimalistic—Licht’s performances with the Blue Humans, collaborations with Loren Connors, and solo guitar records; Roberts in the band Thela and his solo project White Winged Moth; and Curtis performing with Young and his own Trio—brought together three musicians with very different backgrounds, creating fertile ground on which they generated the album’s unclassifiable sounds
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€ 28
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Aselefech Ashine, Getenesh Kebret, Army Band :
Beauties
- LP (Domino Sound, Mississippi, 2023)
High quality 12" vinyl in deluxe tip-on jacket with lyric translations and short interview with Aselefech Ashine! A lost classic of the Ethiopian Golden Age, reissued in full for the first time! On this 1976 gem of a record, Aselefech Ashine and Getenesh Kebret’s voices intertwine in close harmony, the two “beauties” singing in duet across 10 gorgeous tracks. The Army Band, which backed greats like Tlahoun Gesesse and Mahmoud Ahmed, brings Mulatu-esque minor-key piano runs, interlocking percussion, and rock-steady basslines. Arranger Teshome Sisay’s flute winds through the compositions, tying together gloriously woozy horns. The greatest elements of Ethiopia’s Golden Age combine here, in one of the final records of the era
/ Aselefech and Getenesh were raised in the bustling cosmopolitan world of late-empire Addis Ababa. They met at the Hager Fikr Theatre, the legendary center for art and cultural learning in Addis, where they were trained in centuries-old vocal techniques as well as acting. BEAUTIES was a hit, selling out upon its release in 1976. But its glory was short-lived. The Derg Regime was imposing strict crackdowns on music and artistic expression. Targeted as allies of the deposed Emperor Haile Selassie, the artists (and most musicians) had to keep a low profile. For two decades, nearly all recording and live music would cease in Ethiopia. This is one of the last great releases of the Ethiopian Golden Age
/ Though she was never able to release a second record, Aselefech Ashine is proud of her work. From her home in Addis she says: “I have full confidence that this album will be popular and a hit when it is released again now!” This album, long in the works, is released in collaboration with the artists and the mighty Domino Sound of New Orleans. Newly remastered vinyl comes in old-school “tip-on” jacket with lyric translations, photos, and an interview with Aselefech Ashine
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€ 26
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Graham Lambkin :
Aphorisms
- 2xLP (Blank Forms Editions, 2023)
140g 2xLP pressed at RTI. Gatefold tip-on jacket printed at Stoughton Printing Co. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu. Graham Lambkin (of Shadow Ring fame) returns with a long awaited epic double LP, Aphorisms, his first major solo outing since Community (Kye, 2016). Recorded mostly during the early winter months of 2022, in post-pandemic New York and post-Brexit London, Aphorisms assembles the sonic detritus of daily life into hauntingly intimate aural soundscapes. Made between Lambkin's residence in East London and Blank Forms in New York, Aphorisms superimposes the two spaces onto one another creating an imaginary stage where his musical dramas unfold
/ A transatlantic mediation on the rooms where Lambkin has lived and worked, Aphorisms summons up hallucinatory vistas by way of the composer’s collage technique, layering field recordings, piano, guitar, percussion, vocal fragments, and repurposed elements on top of one another in double, triple, and quadruple exposures. Like the Shadow Ring’s Lindus (Swill Radio, 2001)—recorded between Folkestone and Miami—Aphorisms ruminates on estrangement and displacement, catching Lambkin as he returns to London after two decades of living in the States, in his words, “leaving home to return home.” Aphorisms continues Lambkin’s synthetic-naturalist approach to sound-making, twisting disparate and unique elements together to create the sensation of a coherent sonic space
/ At the heart of his practice is the illusion of form, whereby Lambkin combines sonic elements, documenting the moment that they coalesce into music only to disintegrate back into incidental sound. The album is centered around two pianos, one in New York and one in London, sounding together as if through the ether, creating a spectral atmosphere that Lambkin fills with melodic snippets, fragments of songs, spoken-word musings, and guttural barks or “the animal purity of voice,” as he has it. The superimposition of the two spaces is maximized in the album's closing titular track, where, much like on earlier works such as Salmon Run (Kye, 2007) and Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) fragments of familiar melodies float through the mix as though being played from afar. Aphorisms is Lambkin at his best, extending methodologies only hinted at previously and taking his now-idiosyncratic mission statement to a new chapter. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
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€ 36
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Joni Void :
Everyday Is The Song
- LP (Constellation, 2023)
180gram LP pressed at Optimal (Germany) comes in 350gsm Arktika jacket + 300gsm Arktika inner sleeve, printed with LE-UV inks. Jacket has colour flood inside. Includes download card. Artwork by Masaaki Yuasa. Everyday Is The Song is Joni Void’s third album for Constellation and a deeper plunge into emotive audio montage; the Montréal-based French-British producer calls it “Tape Vortex / Musique Verité / Memory Collage”. The album’s raw material relies centrally on a Walkman bought at local record shop Death Of Vinyl in spring 2020 and lost at a Backxwash show two years later, but not before hours of audio snippets were captured and archived
/ Everyday Is The Song is an evocative sample-based sonic diary brimming with warmth, transience and hyper-specificity where Void explores a more abstract and interstitial terrain of drifting miniatures. It remains very much a collection of songs, but relative to the more assertive and intensive tracks channeling explorations of traumatic interiority on their previous pair of acclaimed LPs, Void’s new album flows with intentional lightness and a more incidental atmosphere. Songs are constructed from audio recordings made all over and often while literally on the move: walking, cycling and skateboarding around the city; in bus and train stations; from car windows
/ The album’s overt musical material was recorded, often spontaneously and informally, in all sorts of jam spaces, living rooms and at local live shows. Perambulation is a central theme and constituent fabric of Everyday Is The Song, carrying with it a colloquial spirit of gentle, intrinsic sentimentality. The self-proclaimed “love, soul, agency, and whimsy” virtues of Ruby Yacht (R.A.P. Ferreira, Pink Navel, et al) have also been a lodestar for Void in this respect
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€ 26
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Martin Denny :
Exotic Moog
- LP (Jackpot, 2023)
The inventor of exotica/cocktail music goes electronic/Moog. Originally released in 1969, 'Exotic Moog' is a much sought after title in Jackpot Records' Martin Denny reissue series. Great music for synth, exotica, experimental, '60s rock and psych hunters. Comes on classic black vinyl
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€ 28
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The Cat & Bells Club :
The Cat & Bells Club.
- LP (Blank Forms Editions, 2023)
140g black vinyl pressed at RTI. Insert & jacket printed at Stoughton Printing Co. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu. In 1992, under the guise of the Cat & Bells Club, eighteen-year-old Cheriton residents Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris self-released three tapes—two yellow cassettes and one pink—documenting their earliest musical efforts at S.H.P. studios (Lambkin’s bedroom in his parents’ house). The lowest of all lo-fi recordings, these tracks were laid down live, directly into a boombox with no overdubs. Relieved of their academic expectations and plunged into the workforce, the duo aspired to enter the annals of rock history, making their own primitive teenage overtures to Marc Bolan, the Incredible String Band, Whitehouse, and the Godz
/ Lyrically and spiritually the Cat & Bells Club had much to do with Bolan’s early Tyrannosaurus Rex project, but with a hyperlocalized Folkestonian twist that nonetheless maintained his penchant for chevaline. While much of the Club’s repertoire comprised freeform instrumental try-outs—untuned charity shop guitars and coffee cup drum kits—a number of songs featured Lambkin’s original lyrics, read by both members of the band, dramatizing the comings and goings of anthropomorphic animals and musing abstractly on the minutiae of daily life in Cheriton (their native C-Town)
/ Taking their moniker from a mishearing of “the jester’s bauble, cap and bells,”' a line from Incredible String Band’s “The Iron Stone,” the duo operated for a brief year under the increasingly esoteric influence of the Fisheye mail-order and then fledgling Forced Exposure fanzine, and from the airwaves via Radio 1’s John Peel show. This collection was compiled by Lambkin in the early aughts for an unrealized release on his now defunct Kye label, but barring a few tracks on a retrospective 7? issued by Siltbreeze in 2010, hardly any of these recordings have been heard beyond a handful of hangers-on, inner-circle drinking allies, and the most devoted of fans. The Cat & Bells Club set the stage for what was to soon follow, when the group changed its name to the Shadow Ring—the rest is history
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€ 28
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K-Group :
New Series 4
- LP (Knotwilg, 2023)
As anticipation to a new lp in septembre this repress available on June 1. Tiny edition of 100 copies in a silkscreened sleeve. A couple of the original pressing are still available at a lower price but only 10 copies or so left.
/ Review of the first edition: Paul Toohey, from Surface Of The Earth returns with a brand new hard hitting drone LP. Previous output on Fusetron and Corpus Hermeticum was a long time ago. But this release will nicely team up with reissue plans from his outer outfits on fi: Thin Wrist Recordings
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€ 22
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K-Group :
New Series
- LP (Knotwilg, 2023)
Brandnew offering on Knotwilg from Paul Toohey, member of Surface Of The Earth, NZ guitar dronemasters by excellence. The successor of the Series 4 lp from 2020 is a natural evolution leaning more forward towards SFOTE. Rawer guitar sounds drifting against all tides into a melting plot of emotions opening up a range of sounds familiar not only to previous outputs but also into a brighter optimistic drone-culture. Pure bliss and joy to be able to release to be able to release this into a world of music enthusiasts. Take our word for it, you need this one
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€ 19
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Saåad :
A Crimson Shore
- LP (Hands in the Dark, 2023)
A Crimson Shore is Saåad’s first studio album since Présence Absente in 2018. In the interim, Toulouse-based composer and producer Romain Barbot has enriched his experience as an artist through multiple collaborations, the composition of soundtracks and commissioned pieces, as well his involvement with the bands FOUDRE! and Sables Noirs
/ This new chapter in the Frenchman’s discography reflects this artistic maturity, evoking the project’s finest ambient recordings while revealing a new, unfiltered and decisive personality. Saåad’s use of a more direct musical language (exclusively electronic on this album) is intended to lay bare the inner life of its creator: the tracks are structured in a cycle of loops, vibrations and drones which respond to and confront each other like the torments of existence, torn between the twilight of sombre music reduced to its purest function of catharsis and the dawn of a new, luminous narrative journey
/ A Crimson Shore is a raw, all-encompassing album, shot through with the fear of death, of growing old, of accepting it, of grief —past, present, imagined and future— and the search for a transcendental refuge
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€ 20
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Selvhenter :
Mesmerizer
- LP (Hands in the Dark, 2023)
Going past musical genres and instead straight towards something more elemental - Selvhenter’s music creates a strikingly direct, physical experience of sound composed of polyrhythms, acoustic and electric melodies, heavy music and improvised beauty
/ Since forming in Copenhagen in 2010, drummers Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen, saxophonist Sonja LaBianca and trombonist Maria Bertel have forged a unique approach to making music that starts with their instrumental setup: two drummers that interlock as frequently as they go their own way, a trombone put through a bass amplifier loud enough to rattle your chest and a saxophone put through a range of effects so that it often sounds unrecognisable. Selvhenter work within their own idiom, drawing from the individual players’ personalities and interests to make a highly collective music, where all four musicians are absorbed into a total sound where an improvised free jazz approach collides with experimental electronic music and avant-garde noise/post-punk sonorities
/ Their new LP 'Mesmerizer' - which marks their first physical album release in nearly a decade and their debut on the French label Hands in the Dark - carries forward this process of exploration, deploying original and complex patterns of rhythm through various percussive instruments and finely textured horns and synths. The attention to sonic details is also almost pushed to an extreme on this new offering, making the open auditory adventure suggested by the title of the album all the more captivating. These creative developments have brilliantly kept Selvhenter’s music alive to new uncharted moods and possibilities, while at the same time strengthening their core elements: a propulsive, dense and often ecstatic music
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Razen :
Hier l'An 4000
- LP (Hands in the Dark, 2023)
The prolific Brussels-based ensemble Razen is back on Hands in the Dark with a new stunning collection of fascinating improvisations: ‘Hier l’An 4000’
/ Based upon the theme of reincarnation hypnosis and inspired by the writings of Donoso and Slauerhoff, 1940s SF drawings, sky burials and a fantasy of future music where savagery and sophistication meet, the band ventures here into reverse mesozoic exotica. Each piece leans on sampled hand percussion (by grace of the legendary Algerian percussionist Abdelmajid ‘Guem’ Guemguem), augmented by Brecht Ameel, Kim Delcour and David Poltrock’s trademark devotional approach on early music wind instruments and pre-digital keys and synthesisers, spiralling down into their own rabbit hole of repetition and changes
/ As gorgeously illustrated by the contemporary British painter Nicholas William Johnson: whilst proposing a futuristic trance-like trek through magenta night skies, toxic radiations and a hostile flora, Razen has never sounded more ecstatic and disruptive
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€ 20
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Valerio Tricoli :
A Circle of Grey
- LP (Xing, 2023)
Xing presents the new LP A Circle of Grey by Valerio Tricoli, eleventh release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited numbered edition of 150 copies. The collector's edition consists of 20 copies accompanied by a unique cassette tape loop, titled and signed by the artist: 20 short compositions, each developed from a different sonic fragment of the record. A Circle of Grey is an electroacoustic composition blending philosophical contemplation on transience, impermanence and musical exploration. Its unique sonic palette takes on the refractions of a non-colour and an experience poised between tangibility and abstraction
/ Primarily utilizing synthesizer sounds and manipulations of found sounds through a Revox B77 tape machine, A Circle of Grey defies easy categorization, as Valerio Tricoli seamlessly integrates a variety of techniques and elements into a dry, broken, deserted but eventually haunting sonic landscape. At its core, A Circle of Grey is characterized by a constant tension between sounds shimmering on the surface of the loudspeakers and sounds moving in the depths of the aural field, as if an imagined reality is experienced through the ever-changing reflections of broken glass. An apparently aimless, timeless wandering on sands of silica and quartz, where all is co-present and distant, asserted and negated, where relics of humanity are found and soon lost
/ Opting for an evocative, non-descriptive plan, the composition calls for interpretative ambiguity: despite these existential themes, there is also a sense of beauty and hopefulness. Tricoli's use of circularity and subtle variations in timbre and dynamic create a sense of depth and progression aimed to transcend linear time, the movements in the composition continuously folding back on themselves and echoing in the listener's mind
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€ 22
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Julius Eastman :
The Nigger Series
- 2xLP Box (Blume, 2023)
After remaining out of print and hotly pursued for five years, Blume Editions returns with a brand-new edition of their 2018 release of Julius Eastman's The Nigger Series. Comprising three of his most politically and creatively radical works -- "Evil Nigger" (1979) "Gay Guerilla" (1980) and "Crazy Nigger" (1980) -- each a shimmering and complex work of post-minimalist piano, this brand new deluxe edition is housed in a beautiful, handmade wooden box, which contains two vinyl LPs, a 12-page booklet with the original liner notes by Mary Jane Leach and Bradford Bailey, a brand new 2500-word essay by Bailey, as well as new unseen pictures courtesy of Roberto Laneri, and a poster. Over the last decade and a half, it's been incredible to witness the ascending star of the composer Julius Eastman
/ A celebrated figure within the New York experimental music scene during the 1970s and '80s, over the years following his untimely death in 1990 he and his work drifted into sinful neglect. Largely thanks to a series of archival releases attending to his work, and a handful of new renderings by Apartment House, Wild Up, So Percussion, Kukuruz Quartet, and number of ensembles, attention has finally come his way, placing him at the center of the consciousness of a new generation of listeners. During his tragically brief life, Julius Eastman burned like a wild fire. A brilliant composer, pianist, and vocalist who, with contemporaries like Arthur Russell, Arnold Dreyblatt, Ellen Fullman, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, and numerous others, pioneered the development of post-minimal music, he was among only a handful African American artists at the center of New York's experimental music scene during the 1970s and '80s
/ The recordings featured within are the earliest known -- dating from around 1980 -- and are the only to have been realized during the composer's lifetime. Collectively, these three works -- unquestionably among the most politically and creatively radical in Eastman's entire body of work -- generate sprawling soundscapes through adamantly restated patterns and interlocking canons, not fragmenting, but preaching urgent truths. Double-LP on violet vinyl, audiophile pressing, housed in Nagaoka anti-static record sleeves
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€ 89
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Loren Mazzacane Connors :
Portrait Of A Soul
- 2x10" (Alara Music, 2015)
Beautiful reissue of the 2000 album on FBWL, guitar ballads about Day, Evening, Night and Dawn, a major album in the discography of Loren Connors, which he considers his most personal record. Remastered in 2014 by Taylor Deupree at 12k
/ One of the world's most singular guitarists, Loren Mazzacane Connors (born 1949) is among few living musicians whose prolific body of work can be said to be wholly justified in its plenitude. On more than 100 records across almost four decades, Connors has wrung distinct shades of ephemeral blues from his guitar, its sound ever-shifting while remaining unmistakably his own. From his early, splintered take on the Delta bottleneck style through his song-based albums with Suzanne Langille and on to the painterly abstraction that defines his current work, Connors has earned the admiration of many, leading to collaborations with the likes of John Fahey, Jim O'Rourke, Alan Licht, David Grubbs, Keiji Haino, and Kim Gordon
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€ 22
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Gerard Herman, Christoph Heemann :
Project Pope
- LP (Some Fine Legacy, 2023)
Some Fine Legacy is proud to announce the first LP by Project Pope, the collaborative project of Antwerp artist Gerard Herman and Christoph Heemann, known from his solo output as well as many releases with Mimir, In Camera and Mirror
/ Prior to Project Pope Gerard Herman has been producing a series of intriguing solo LP releases for the Entracte, Kraak and Opgewarmde Groenten labels. Then in 2021 the two met for a week at Les Ateliers Claus in Brussels to produce this new masterpiece of distorted beauty. On two sidelong tracks Herman and Heemann explore and combine hypnotic piano loops processed with analogue electronics, slow motion drone rock and ethereal textures into a unique expression and entrancing experience that needs to be heard to be believed. The result is equally strange and bewildering as the Clifford Simak novel the project name was inspired by
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€ 23
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Claudio PRC :
Unda
- LP (012, 2023)
After the A/V performance at Up To Date Festival back in 2022, Claudio PRC’s “Unda” project is going to be released as LP on vinyl and digital next September 2023
/ Claudio PRC’s upcoming ambient album is a sonic journey through ethereal landscapes and intimate atmospheres. Drawing inspiration from the waves and their movement, “Unda” (in Sardinian native tongue “wave”) evokes a sense of calmness and introspection. Throughout the whole piece, Claudio PRC creates a blend of meticulously crafted organic and synthetic elements that seamlessly integrates together, showcasing his versatility as an artist and his commitment to exploring all facets of electronic music. With its textured layers, this work offers a soothing and reflective musical experience, inviting the listener to escape into a world of contemplation and meditation
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€ 25
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Rod Modell :
Ghost Lights
- 2xLP (Astral Industries, 2023)
A year on since the collaborative Mystic AM project in 2022, Rod Modell returns solo to Astral Industries with AI-35. The album - entitled ‘Ghost Lights’ - comes as a gatefold 2x vinyl LP, showcasing the latest epoch of Modell’s signature soundscapes. Spread across four parts, ‘Ghost Lights’ draws out a wide, cinematic sound - with long arching contours, rippling textures and cavernous sound design
/ Woven with layer upon layer of hidden fragments and supernal transmissions, each chapter takes the listener successively deeper into the twilight zone. Harking to dramatic off-world topographies and interstellar spaces, the work glistens with opulent sound treatment and monumental grandeur. Dense pulsations move with oceanic force, marked by washes of celestial light and subterranean drones. Exercising another side to Rod Modell's typically atmospheric productions, this album comes with an ambitious framework and a more assertive sound. Featuring some of Modell’s most epic storytelling to date, ‘Ghost Lights’ delivers a powerful immersive experience
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€ 29
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Toki Fuko :
Spirit Medicine
- LP (Astral Industries, 2023)
AI-34 arrives from Toki Fuko. Known previously for his contributions of deep and hypnotic techno, he presents on Astral Industries further development of his sound in this long-form work. A two-part sojourn into vibrant organic soundscapes and liminal sonic archaeologies, ‘Spirit Medicine’ is an ethereal yet human-centric venture into the realms of consciousness
/ Soft chimes mark the opening, making way for expansive pads and the emergence of a bristling jungle panorama. Solitary flute melodies call out to the valley, riding over a bed of drones and earthy rhythms. Later juxtaposed with broadcasted voice samples, the natural fabric ruptures with exposed layers spilling through, only to fade back into the ether. Perhaps a memory, or the momentary glimpse of a parallel reality… Part Two adopts an equally atmospheric flavour, substituting fauna and flora for deconstructed, psycho-somatic mysteria. Overall darker in tone, broken beats combine with avant garde adornments, underpinned by a subtle existential narrative. Wading through a wilderness of eerie remembrances, their starkness is counterbalanced with a peaceful return - a form of clarity and reconciliation that the listener is offered in the final act
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€ 23
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Otto Willberg :
The Leisure Principle
- LP (Black Truffle, 2023)
Black Truffle is pleased to announce The Leisure Principle, a new solo LP from London-based bassist and sound artist Otto Willberg. A key player in the London underground, Willberg is often heard on acoustic and electric bass in free improv settings and bands with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort. But nothing Willberg has committed to wax so far prepares a listener for The Leisure Principle, six unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass
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€ 22
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Sun Ra Arkestra :
Nuclear War
- LP (Xyz, 2023)
One of the rarest recordings in Sun Ra's enormous catalog. Recorded in 1982, featuring the groove-infested x-rated warning hit 'Nuclear War.' The remaining tracks include four originals and three standards, Ellington's 'Drop Me Off In Harlem,' 'Sometimes I'm Happy,' and 'Smile.' A cult album finally repressed on virgin audiophile vinyl. XYZ Records. Made in USA
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€ 22
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Deli Kuvveti :
In the Summer Dusk
- CD (Sublime Retreat, 2023)
Glass-mastered CD housed in mini-LP sleeve. Seattle-based, Turkish-born Deli Kuvveti is known for building immersive, complex microtonal worlds. The blend of floating harmonic drones and granular bursts in the compositions on the Even After album have been compared to works of a wide range of composers from Xenakis to Jim O'Rourke, but also have been noted for their idiosyncratic sonic language of non-Western harmonies and outstandingly psychedelic nature
/ "In The Summer Dusk" is a new work by Deli Kuvveti, which is a continuation of the direction taken in "Even After," but even more refined, balanced and brilliantly mastered by Stephan Mathieu
/ "With this album I wanted to create distinct musical movements that flow into each other effortlessly. I set up a granular synthesis “machinery” which I evolved by slightly changing the current configuration. Using this iterative process, I generated movements with textured sounds to create 2 distinct narratives. I aimed for an album that sounds fuzzy and warm but that also has dark undertones for contrast - like a palette that welcomes all colors and shades. Hopefully, the end result is an immersive experience that takes you to a different time and place."
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€ 10
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Rutger Zuydervelt, Bruno Duplant :
Synchronicité
- CD (Sublime Retreat, 2021)
Glass-mastered CD housed in mini-LP sleeve. This music can smuggle you to a dark park at night or a frosty forest in the morning, providing both comfort and anxiety. You shift to another time zone and bite into the sounds. The sounds you hear, tremble like warm air above cold sand. It may sound both comforting and ominously dystopian at the same time, but it always holds a mysterious freshness, like traces and echoes of something fleeting and barely noticeable...
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€ 10
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The Dead Mauriacs :
Le Parc, rapport d'observations
- CD (Sublime Retreat, 2023)
Glass-mastered CD housed in mini-LP sleeve. Printed outer and inner sleeves with matt finish, booklet with short story by Olivier Prieur and illustrations by Evan Crankshaw. The music and text that make up this record originate from repeated stays in Brussels. They were born from curious observations and daily recordings, which, when assembled and manipulated, became a kind of dystopian mirror game
/ Some of the sounds on the record were recorded in cafés, streets, a park, the Notre-Dame des Victoires church in the Sablon district, others were made with objects found on the spot, a chair, a table, a shutter, and manipulated with the tools of concrete or electro-acoustic music. Some field recordings, made in other places, were added to create this fiction that the text extends: a sort of dangerous game involving agents, observers and parakeets in a park. Sometimes their respective roles become confused, as do time and space. The Dead Mauriacs entrusted the visual aspect of the project to Evan Crankshaw, with whom they often work. With his collages, he brought a vision that deterritorialises and enriches both text and music
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€ 10
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Bruno Duplant :
Le Jour D'après
- CD (Sublime Retreat, 2022)
Glass-mastered CD housed in mini-LP sleeve. The always prolific Bruno Duplant returns to the solo dimension by packaging a new immersive itinerary with decidedly crepuscular traits. The nocturnal one, on the other hand seems to be a dimension particularly dear to the French composer considering the frequency with which it is elected as the setting of his electroacoustic drifts
/ In "Le Jour D'après," however, we find ourselves at its limit, in the presence of a cold dawn that accompanies the unfolding of an action made of ambient resonances and concrete textures trapped in distorted modulations. The formula is still that of a long, slowly developing sequence plan punctuated by sparse piano stille - the track is not by chance dedicated to Guy Vandromme - diluted in this deeply tactile crackling matter
/ The interest in 20th-century avant-garde research interpolated with a love of literature, of static and moving images always shines through with relentless clarity, infusing a pronounced cinematic sense to a rarefied sound stream capable of inexorably rapturing
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€ 10
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Bruno Duplant, Seth Nehil :
The Memory Of Things
- CD (Sublime Retreat, 2022)
Glass-mastered CD housed in mini-LP style sleeve. The sound materials of "the memory of things" appear to emerge from a time that does not exist, or has yet to exist. It is not the memories themselves that are important, but the way we connect them: we tangle, we weave, we classify by improbable, sometimes unheard intervals. Selvedges are crossed and paths are traced. Our attention is drawn to the noise heard just behind us. Things' memories are forming a time capsule. We build a memorial and sound structure by piling one layer of the present on top of another. It is a landscape with immediate depth to which our ears remain attentive
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€ 10
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Jean-Charles Capon, Philippe Maté, Lawrence "Butch" Morris :
Same
- LP (Souffle Continu, 2021)
In November 1976, Jef Gilson’s phone rang. What a surprise! It was Serge Rahoerson, one of the musicians he had met in Madagascar at the end of the 60s and who had played on his first album “Malagasy”. Rahoerson announced that he was in Paris for a few days. Immediately, Jef wanted to organise a recording session, starting the next day. He thought of a trio including Serge, Eddy Louiss on organ and cellist Jean-Charles Capon, who had also been on one of the trips to Tananarive and so had also known Rahoerson there. Unfortunately, Eddy Louiss –who had already played with Gilson and Capon on the album “Bill Coleman Sings And Plays 12 Negro Spirituals” in 1968- had to drop out at the last minute: he was delayed by a session with Claude Nougaro
/ Jean-Charles Capon had also become a sought-after studio musician since his trip to Madagascar in 1969. He appeared on several key albums on the Saravah label including the now famous “Comme A? La Radio” by Brigitte Fontaine, “Un Beau Matin” by Areski and “Chorus” by Michel Roques, without mentioning the album by his own Baroque Jazz Trio. He was also to be found with Jef Gilson for his album on Vogue with the ex-drummer from Miles Davis’ first great quintet, Philly Joe Jones, or also in the orchestra led by Jean-Claude Vannier for the album “Nino Ferrer & Leggs”. He also played regularly on albums by Georges Moustaki. Jean-Charles Capon and Serge Rahoerson found themselves thus in the studio, with Jef at the controls. He had decided to record the rhythmic structure right away. He would find the soloists later, that didn’t worry him. Serge Rahoerson was on drums
/ Though a saxophonist by training, Jef remembered that Serge was also capable of great things behind a drum kit: he was the improvised drummer on their cover of “The Creator Has A Master Plan” on the album “Malagasy”... The great memories came flooding back (the nod on the title “Orly - Ivato”), and the old magic worked again. Brought in momentarily from Europamerica, Gilson’s new big band, in which JC Capon also played, the saxophonists Philippe Mate?, from France (another Saravah stablemate) and the American Butch Morris (soon to be a key member of David Murray’s band) were invited to record their parts later and Gilson mixed it all as if it had been one single session (as he had already done on other albums, with the tracks by Christian Vander recorded before the creation and success of Magma)
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€ 19
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Continuity :
Continuity
- LP (B.A.A.D.M., 2023)
Eponymous first album by ‘Continuity’, the new project of Swedish artist Martin Herterich, whose sonic explorations of memory and imagination have come to full bloom in this atmospheric and elusive narrative of seven intense cityscapes. Martin Herterich previously released music (as Sand Circles, etc) on labels like Posh Isolation, Not Not Fun Records, iDEAL and Irrlicht
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€ 19
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Maria W Horn, Mats Erlandsson :
Celestial Shores
- LP (B.A.A.D.M., 2023)
The music heard on this album was originally the result of a commission to score the second half of the film 'Nico/Nico Crying' made by Andy Warhol in 1966. The commission was made by Art Cinema OFFoff in collaboration with B.A.A.D.M for a screening of the film together with a live presentation of the score in September 2021 at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The recording presented here was made in the last week of that year and mixed soon after in January 2022. These recordings are essentially live-recordings performed by the composers together in the same room and recorded in a manner reminiscent of the record making process as it was in the late 1960s. The instrumentation used to make the sounds on this album consists of modular synthesis, zither, voice, contaminated field recordings and metal percussion
/ Mats Erlandsson is a composer and musician part of the vibrantly re-emerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, and is associated with practices characterized by the extensive use of sustained sound. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman and Maria W Horn. Recent releases include 'Gyttjans Topografi' on XKatedral, 'Minnesmärke' on Hallow Ground and the collaboration 'Emanate' made with Yair Elazar Glotman on the label 13070. In addition to his own artistic practice Erlandsson holds a position as studio technician and was temporarily, from October 2022 to September 2023, the acting studio director at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm
/ The compositions of Maria W Horn implement synthetic sound, electroacoustic and acoustic instruments and audiovisual components, often devicing generative and algorithmic processes to control timbre, tuning and texture. She employs a varied instrumentation ranging from analog synthesizers to choir, string instruments, pipe organ and various chamber music formats. Acoustic instruments are often paired with digital synthesis techniques, in order to extend the instruments timbral capacities. Often based on minimalist structures, her music explores the inherent spectral properties of sound and their ability to transcend time and space, reality and dream
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€ 19
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Baikida E.J. Carroll :
Orange Fish Tears
- LP (Souffle Continu, 2023)
Art edition including two exclusive color silkscreen printed wraparound numbered & signed by visual artist Stefan Thanneur. First ever LP reissue, carefully remastered and restored by Gilles Laujol inckuding 8 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. In 1972, trumpeter Baikida Carroll and some of his colleagues from the Black Artists Group (more precisely saxophonist/flutist Oliver Lake, trombonist Joseph Bowie, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw and trumpeter Floyd LeFlore) took the advice of their friends in the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and left their native Missouri to come and discover the bright lights of Paris for themselves. The following year they would even get the chance to record their only album which would rapidly attain mythical status and a collector’s item: “In Paris, Aries 1973”
/ Therefore, it was not surprising that they crossed paths with Jef Gilson in the capital. He was always on the lookout for new artists for his recently formed Palm label and had been active on many fronts in jazz since the end of the 50s. The French bandleader/pianist/composer/sound engineer had already recorded, in the preceding months other American musicians who would go on to have great careers: Byard Lancaster, Keno Speller, Clint Jackson III, Khan Jamal… Gilson therefore offered Baikida Carroll the chance to record his first album under his own name, which would be the 13th release on the label. Carroll logically asked Oliver Lake to join him
/ He also recruited Manuel Villaroel, a young Franco-Chilien pianist from the group Matchi-Oul, who had already released an album on Futura in 1971 and would release another on Palm in 1976. The group was completed with the addition of Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, who had just released a well-received album on the Saravah label. They were ready to enter the studio for the 3rd, 4th and 5th June 1974
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€ 39
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Baikida E.J. Carroll :
Orange Fish Tears
- LP (Souffle Continu, 2023)
First ever LP reissue, carefully remastered and restored by Gilles Laujol inckuding 8 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. In 1972, trumpeter Baikida Carroll and some of his colleagues from the Black Artists Group (more precisely saxophonist/flutist Oliver Lake, trombonist Joseph Bowie, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw and trumpeter Floyd LeFlore) took the advice of their friends in the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and left their native Missouri to come and discover the bright lights of Paris for themselves. The following year they would even get the chance to record their only album which would rapidly attain mythical status and a collector’s item: “In Paris, Aries 1973”
/ Therefore, it was not surprising that they crossed paths with Jef Gilson in the capital. He was always on the lookout for new artists for his recently formed Palm label and had been active on many fronts in jazz since the end of the 50s. The French bandleader/pianist/composer/sound engineer had already recorded, in the preceding months other American musicians who would go on to have great careers: Byard Lancaster, Keno Speller, Clint Jackson III, Khan Jamal… Gilson therefore offered Baikida Carroll the chance to record his first album under his own name, which would be the 13th release on the label
/ Carroll logically asked Oliver Lake to join him. He also recruited Manuel Villaroel, a young Franco-Chilien pianist from the group Matchi-Oul, who had already released an album on Futura in 1971 and would release another on Palm in 1976. The group was completed with the addition of Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, who had just released a well-received album on the Saravah label. They were ready to enter the studio for the 3rd, 4th and 5th June 1974
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€ 21
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Jean-Charles Capon :
L'Univers-Solitude
- LP (Souffle Continu, 2019)
First ever vinyl reissue, gatefold sleeve, obi strip. The cello, although considered a minority instrument in the history of jazz and improvisation, has carved itself a niche, both in the USA (Fred Katz, Calo Scott, Abdul Wadud, Diedre Murray, Peggy Lee) and in Europe (Tristan Honsinger, Maarten Altena, Denis Van Hecke, Ernst Reijseger). Alongside Didier Petit, Jean-Charles Capon is one of the French virtuosi on the instrument, that he began playing professionally at the beginning of the 60s before creating the Baroque Jazz Trio
/ His name was rapidly linked to different cult groups for who he became the guest star (Confluence, Perception, Speed Limit), but also with many more or less well-known (free) jazz musicians including David S. Ware (with whom he recorded the impeccable duo From Silence To Music), Philippe Maté, Michel Roques, André Jaume or Joe McPhee (as part of Po Music). Jef Gilson helped get his career under way (they recorded together as far back as 1968) before Pierre Barouh, boss of Saravah records with who Jean-Charles Capon played alongside Brigitte Fontaine and Areski, offered him the opportunity to record his first album: L'Univers-solitude. In the company of Swiss percussionist Pierre Favre, Jean-Charles Capon demonstrated, in all registers, a level of invention way beyond a traditional rhythmic and melodic background, with the fluid phrasing a perfect complement to his extended range
/ It is not for nothing that Jean-Charles Capon admires Duke Ellington, John Lewis and Gabriel Fauré, as can be heard on his later highly personal versions of "Mood Indigo", "Django" and "Après un rêve". As for Pierre Favre, he is not there just to make up the numbers: his timbral research and combinations of complex rhythms offer the French cellist wonderful interaction throughout this remarkable album which had finally been given a dignified rerelease. The fluidity of the phrasing, timbral research, complex rhythmic combinations and rare sense of improvisation make this one of the best modern jazz recordings on the Saravah label in the 1970s
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€ 18
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øjeRum :
Snow Is Absence Singing
- CD (Fluid Audio, 2023)
We are delighted to announce the return of øjeRum to the record label! His latest offering 'Snow Is Absence Singing’ is a delicate two-part composition that creates intricate electronic soundscapes. The artwork within the packaging is once again painstakingly put together by the artist compromising of 42 exclusive limited edition artwork prints along with 35mm slides, photo negatives, wild pressed flowers, page inserts from a vintage 1890 explorer book. All resting inside luxury handcrafted envelopes with printed bellyband
/ Made by hand, 42 x limited edition prints, 1 x CD (full size), luxury string tied photographic gusset envelopes, vintage explorer 35mm glass slide, vintage (1890) insert, dried flowers, photo negative, belly band, stamped/hand numbered/scented
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€ 39
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Stars Of The Lid :
Stars Of The Lid And Their Refinement Of The Decline
- 3xLP (Kranky, 2015)
Painstakingly recorded, processed and assembled over five years, SOTL once again delivered a massive work filling two compact discs and three vinyl albums, clocking in at over two hours. While most albums of this length would be considered tedious at best, SOTL are arguably the only contemporary composers who can seemingly alter the time-space continuum simply through the playback of their organized sound. They take time itself and stretch, compress and turn it inside out, transforming what would otherwise be an arduous test of nerves into an interlude of half awake dreams that ends too soon
/ In this album, SOTL picks up where The Tired Sounds Of… left off with an emphasis on melodic development, moving their epic soundscapes beyond mere drone and subsequently frustrating all the typical ambient cliches associated with their music. Perhaps the best references for this current work would be found in the score to the film "Le Mepris" by Georges Delerue, the orchestral works of Zbigniew Preisner, or the 1958 CSO/ Fritz Reiner recording of Hovhaness’ Mysterious Mountain, specifically the third movement. But in the final analysis, such comparisons are superfluous at best, as Stars of the Lid have created a musical universe in which they are the sole inhabitant
/ Simply put, this album is a masterpiece. A landmark work for both the artist and the label, this was kranky's 100th release and SOTL's most refined example of their unique vision to date
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€ 69
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Wave Temples :
Portals Vol I
- MC (Not Not Fun, 2023)
Expansion pack of Wave Temples transmissions accompanying the Panama Shift vinyl suite. Its creator contextualizes Portals as the first volume in a tarot-style card game of the same name, to be used for divining prophetic strategies. Each of the 13 pieces here unfolds like a glimpse to an inner realm – or a past life. Hazed vignettes of primitivist anthropological fantasia, warbly and windswept, suffused with déjà vu. Insects and macaws sing from the periphery, while beach fires glow along an abandoned coast, the tide like a language lost in the tunnels of time
M/M
€ 16
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The Dead C :
The Operation Of The Sonne
- LP (Ba Da Bing!, 2023)
The Dead C's trio of LPs in the middle of their harsh 90's reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation of the Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks for blaring than ever
/ Coming after the monster that was Harsh 70s Reality, and its evil twin, Clyma Est Mort, this album has always confounded even soi disant Dead C fans. Side 1 documents the discovery of the analogue synthesiser coupled with field recordings from the basement of Willowbank, Koputai's 'most stately' home. Side 2 emerged spontaneously to cassette on stage at the 'fabled' Empire Tavern - and it still sounds like stripping the breathable atmosphere from an already-depleted biosphere
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€ 29
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Tim Hecker :
No Highs
- 2xLP (Kranky, Sunblind Music, 2023)
The latest by Canadian composer Tim Hecker serves as a beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue. Whether taken as warning or promise, No Highs delivers – this is music of austerity and ambiguity, purgatorial and seasick. A jagged anti-relaxant for our medicated age, rough-hewn and undefined
/ Morse code pulse programming flickers like distress signals while a gathering storm of strings, noise, and low-end looms in the distance. Processed electronics shiver and shudder against pitch-shifting assemblages of crackling voltage, mantric horns (including exquisite modal sax by Colin Stetson), and cathedral keys. Throughout, the pieces both accrue and avoid drama, more attuned to undertow than crescendo. Hecker mentions “negation” as a muse of sorts – the sense of tumult without bombast, tethered ecstasies, an escape from escapism. His is an antagonism both brusque and beguiling, devoid of resolution, beckoning the listener ever deeper into its greyscale alchemies of magisterial disquiet
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€ 38
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The Dead C :
The White House
- 2xLP (Ba Da Bing!, 2023)
The Dead C's trio of LPs in the middle of their harsh 90's reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation of the Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks for blaring than ever.
/ Includes bonus track "Breakdown/World".Recorded in the winter of 1994, sessions were accompanied by snow, an infrequent but always super-exciting event in downtown Dunedin. Mainly if not entirely recorded direct to REVOX B77, just like The Clean's Oddities. Our version of Led Zepp IV with no Stairway, as recorded by the Meat Puppets in a K Hole. Originally M&D by Matador, this is as major label as we got. Mere pseud post-grunge sell-out moves-ah
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€ 38
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The Dead C :
Tusk
- LP+12" (Ba Da Bing!, 2023)
The Dead C's trio of LPs in the middle of their harsh 90's reality served for many as entry points to the band. Operation of the Sonne, The White House and Tusk received wider distribution than the band had ever seen before, and this was the first rays of them being considered amongst the most important rock bands of the 20th century. This trio of vinyl reissues capture their intensity and presence in a way that may even blow out the candle of the original pressings. Newly remastered by Lasse Marhaug, and with bonus tracks, these 2023 reissues have been cut carefully and loud, with the sonic wars heard on these now-classic tracks for blaring than ever
/ Includes Bonus Track "There Is Something To Be Gained". How does one follow up one of the most immediately-revered noise rock releases of all time? Definitely not by spending ten times the money and time recording your next release and doing a bloated double album. Tusk, The Dead C record, is uncompromising and unrelenting. Here's a band enjoying more attention than they ever before, and they launch their new album with a long, ominous percussive rattle. Tusk digs into the thought bubble that formed via Sonne and White House, sharpens the edges and reveals some of their greatest broken progressions and vicious feedback. The band is at their performative peak staking their ground with an amp covered in dirt
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€ 38
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Gate :
The Numbers
- LP (Birdman, 2023)
Via Bridman comes The Numbers, the latest outing of Michael Morley's (The Dead C.) solo alter ego, Gate, the project's first LP since 2018. Glacial, distorted guitar fuzz and drones meet downer folk, this is the best of Morley doing what he does best. Highly recomended!
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€ 25
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Chihei Hatakeyama :
Hachirogata Lake
- LP (Field, 2023)
Matching expansive ambience with environmental sound, Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album continues Field Records’ exploration of Japan and the Netherlands' shared approach to water management. As with Sugai Ken’s 2020 album Tone River, a specific project becomes Hatakeyama’s area of focus - in this case the Hachirogata Lake in Akita Prefecture
/ Previously the second largest body of water in Japan, the government ordered extensive drainage work of Hachirogata Lake after the second world war with the help of Dutch engineers Pieter Jansen and Adriaan Volker. After the project was completed in 1977, reclaimed land took up eighty percent of Hachirogata Lake’s total size. As a result, a new ecosystem was established as plants spread from surrounding areas, bringing with them a wider variety of birds and other wildlife
/ Hatakeyama’s approach to this unique subject matter took in field recordings from particular locations around the lake - the drainage channels, the Ogata bridge, grassland conservation reserves and other key areas. The aquatic subject matter and sonic material is a natural fit for Hatakeyama’s accomplished sound, which has featured on numerous solo works for labels including Kranky, Room40 and his self-run White Paddy Mountain. From the intimate intricacies of the sampled material to the glacial expanses of droning synthesis and languid guitar, Hatakeyama creates a tangible environment which at once reflects the settings around Hachirogata Lake, while offering the listener any number of imagined scenes to observe in their mind’s eye. This project is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tokyo, Japan
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€ 22
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Suzanne Ciani :
Improvisation On Four Sequences
- LP (Week-End, 2023)
Clear vinyl, handnumbered. Suzanne Cianis Improvisation On Four Sequences somehow represents the complete history of electronic music, as the enthusiastic audience at Week-End Fest 2021 were lucky enough to experience. From the awakening of American avant-garde music at the end of the 1960s, right through to the development of the electronic sound of the club scene in L.A. and New York. But above all it is the dialogue between artist and machine, which simply ends when the concert is over, that comes across. Laconicism, precision, sound sensitivity and the weight of a tradition that Ciani was instrumental in founding all come together. It is spectacular precisely because it is so unexciting
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€ 29
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Eric Thielemans, Oren Ambarchi :
Double Consciousness
- LP (Matière Mémoire, 2023)
White vinyl. Recorded live December 9, 2021 by Christophe Albertijn at Werkplaats Walter, Brussels. Mixed June 2022 by Joe Talia at Good Mixture. Mastering & cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Mont Analogue Masters. Cover drawing by Roxane Métayer. Graphic & layout by Cedric D’hondt
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€ 23
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Various Artists :
Remotely Together
- LP (Rewire, 2023)
Remotely Together introduces new works by claire rousay & Morita Vargas, Maria Chavez & Valentina Magaletti, and KMRU, all commissioned through remote residencies for Rewire’s 2021 - online edition. In the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns, Rewire initiated these collaborations between disparate artists from all over the world, connecting them remotely to explore new creative practices both online and in isolation. The audiovisual results of these residencies were presented during the online edition of the 2021 festival. Newly edited versions of a selection of these performances have now been compiled for this release
/ Featuring an enthralling mix of ambient, noise, field recording, and experimental sound art, the scene of Remotely Together is set by the crunching sounds of footsteps over a grassy environment on atmospheric opener Humo De Margatina Dulce, a collaborative song between North American percussionist and improviser claire rousay and Argentinian vocalist Morita Vargas. rousay’s textural mix of field recordings, everyday sounds, and deep electronics coalesce with Vargas’s ethereal vocals, paving the way for compelling music that gradually draws its listeners deeper into its mysterious soundworld. Meanwhile, New York–based turntablist Maria Chavez and celebrated Italian percussionist Valentina Magaletti collaborate on Particle, featuring hypnotic textures and dreamlike percussion that seems to sonically propel itself forward, slowly expanding into a rich and layered work of stretched-out free jazz
/ During his online residency, Kenyan sound artist KMRU teamed up with Dutch filmmaker Donna Verheijden. MicroVerse showcases his evocative mixing of field recordings, entrancing noise, and improvisation, resulting in a piece where the seemingly gentle sounds of the natural world begin to blend in with the artificial muck of droning noise. Peruvian-born and Amsterdam-based graphic designer Jonathan Castro Alejos has designed the artwork of Remotely Together. It was thought of as a sculptural documentation of the unnoticed urban gestures between Amsterdam and Lima during the pandemic – further reinforcing the relationship between isolation and interconnectivity explored during the remote residencies of Rewire
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€ 25
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Trevor Mathison :
From Signal to Decay: Volume 5
- LP (purge.xxx, 2023)
The second LP by Trevor Mathison, following his 2022 debut (From Signal to Decay: Volume 2). Generated in-part by his 2022 exhibition in London and produced to coincide with his 2023 exhibition at Argos, Brussels. Includes contributions / interventions from Gary Stewart, Aniruddha Das (aka Dr. Das / Asian Dub Foundation) and Kate Shortt
/ Numbered + handmade in an edition of 250 copies only; 180gr vinyl in custom-made screen-printed outer (sealed), containing booklet with diagrams and drawings by Mathison, and a specially commissioned essay by curators Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and Oliver Fuke; no digital
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€ 32
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Joe McPhee, Mette Rasmussen, Dennis Tyfus :
Oblique Strategies
- LP (Black Truffle, 2023)
Black Truffle is pleased to welcome free jazz legend Joe McPhee back to the fold with Oblique Strategies, a wild trio recorded in Antwerp in 2018 in the company of Mette Rasmussen’s fire-breathing alto saxophone and Dennis Tyfus’s post-Fluxus antics on tape, voice, and percussion. Rasmussen and Tyfus have previously recorded together as Bazuinschal, and some similar strategies are on display here: mysterious metallic scrapes, extended tones in which voice and sax become indistinguishable, comic explosions of varispeed tape
/ With McPhee on board, however, proceedings are more sumptuous, with the two horns moving fluidly from expeditions into the extremes of their instruments’ registers to pointillistic note-splatter and Ayler-esque folk melodies; we even get to bask in some of the slow-motion free blues that McPhee has now been playing for half a century. Spread across four pieces ranging from four to nineteen minutes in length, Oblique Strategies moves with anarchic swagger from explosions of clattering cymbals and bellowing horns to near-silent episodes of mysterious rumble and clunk. ‘Death or Dinner?’ opens the record with a lovely duet of climbing melodic patterns shared between the two saxophones, played with a buzzing oboe-like tone
/ A long, wavering note sung by Tyfus cues the first of countless changes of direction, eventually leading to a crescendo of watery splutters and duelling saxes. At points Tyfus’ keening resemble the signature moves of his friend and collaborator, Ghédelia Tazartès; at others, his tape-sped huffs and puffs possess a rawness reminiscent of Henri Chopin or Gil Wolman. The dialogue between wailing saxophones and vocal cries, punctuated by percussive thuds and crashes, can at times feel less like a musical performance and more like the calls of some mysterious forest creatures, possessing a primordial energy that might remind some listeners of the outdoor antics of Brötzmann and Bennink’s Schwarzwaldfahrt
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€ 22
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Kuniyuki Takahashi :
All These Things
- 2x12" (Mule Musiq, 2019)
Originally released on cd only in 2007. it was his 2nd album but it’s substantially his first album because the first album was a collection of Kuniyuki’s early productions. the first track “the guitar song” is one of our most favorite song of Kuniyuki, it’s like a real good mixture of jazz, fusion, world music and electronic music. The second track featuring african vocalist and percussionist “Omar Guaindefall”, we still love amazing Henrik Schwarz remix
/ The third track “You Get Me” featuring our favorite singer “Josee Hurlock”, we’ve knew about her from the fantastic album “Residue” by Hefner in 2000. She is featured to the fourth track “All These Things” too. We’re hoping to repress an amazing Joe Claussell remix. The fifth track “Flying Music” featuring our good friend “Alex From Tokyo” as poetry reading and Shuichiro Sakaguchi (a popular trumpeter in Tokyo) as a trumpeter. This long version was put to single cut release on 12inch
/ The sixth track “The Session” is a collaboration of song with Henrik Schwarz. They have met at Mule Musiq’s party in Tokyo and clicked immediately. The seventh track “Touch” sounds very nostalgic african jazz or spanish fusion which is popular these days as balearic music. The last track “Rain of Ocean” is a primitive african minimal deep house. This song is put to the single cut from this album (not put to the album) and we almost forgot this song but when we’re compiling the vinyl edition of album, we noticed how this song is beautiful. Here are the collection of eight timeless and genreless music
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€ 29
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Robert Turman :
Distant Dosage
- LP (Dead Mind, 2023)
Black vinyl. Turman first came onto the industrial scene in the late 70’s as the ominous ‘other half’ of legendary noise outfit NON. Shortly after recording the classic 1977 single Mode of Infection, Turman went on to pursue his own unique vision as a solo artist. Fusing every possible influence at his disposal while laying his ideas down on self-released cassettes like Flux (1981), Spirals of Everlasting Change (1987), Way Down (1987) and the massive Chapter Eleven cassette box set (1988). After a hiatus Turman resurfaced in 2005 to team up with seminal noise musician Aaron Dilloway. Since then, he has been gradually adding new titled to his already impressive discography
/ For this archival release Turman selected 7 tracks that were recorded between 1980 and 1984. A welcome supplement to his library of avantgarde music that was released in the 80s. This album fits in nicely between the early industrial noise, the long-form minimalism of Flux and the rhythmic industrial of Way Down. Focusing on slowly shifting hypnotic loop-based layers of sound, it covers a specific side of Turman. It feels like there’s a direct link to his earliest works but it’s also a precursor to some pieces that were recorded much later. A missing link that finally gives us the opportunity of a complete overview of his early audio work
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Robert Turman :
Distant Dosage
- LP (Dead Mind, 2023)
Red vinyl special edition with an extra 2-sided insert and a numbered postcard
/ Turman first came onto the industrial scene in the late 70’s as the ominous ‘other half’ of legendary noise outfit NON. Shortly after recording the classic 1977 single Mode of Infection, Turman went on to pursue his own unique vision as a solo artist. Fusing every possible influence at his disposal while laying his ideas down on self-released cassettes like Flux (1981), Spirals of Everlasting Change (1987), Way Down (1987) and the massive Chapter Eleven cassette box set (1988). After a hiatus Turman resurfaced in 2005 to team up with seminal noise musician Aaron Dilloway. Since then, he has been gradually adding new titled to his already impressive discography
/ For this archival release Turman selected 7 tracks that were recorded between 1980 and 1984. A welcome supplement to his library of avantgarde music that was released in the 80s. This album fits in nicely between the early industrial noise, the long-form minimalism of Flux and the rhythmic industrial of Way Down. Focusing on slowly shifting hypnotic loop-based layers of sound, it covers a specific side of Turman. It feels like there’s a direct link to his earliest works but it’s also a precursor to some pieces that were recorded much later. A missing link that finally gives us the opportunity of a complete overview of his early audio work
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€ 52
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Mort Garson :
Didn't You Hear?
- LP (Sacred Bones, 2020)
Black vinyl. Six years before the release of his landmark Mother Earth’s Plantasia LP, composer and arranger Mort Garson met experimental film director Skip Sherwood, who was interested in an electronic score for his new movie, Didn’t You Hear? While not much is known now about the exact nature of their collaboration, we have Garson’s magnificent score as a record of those heady, early days after his life-changing discovery of the Moog synthesizer. Notable for being one of the earliest screen appearances by a young Gary Busey, Didn’t You Hear? also boasts one of the first-ever all-electronic movie scores. Though the score was first released in 1970, it sounds as adventurous and futuristic today as it must have then
/ Originally available only in the lobby of the theater at screenings of the movie in Seattle, the soundtrack LP went out of print shortly after the film's release. It has been a sought-after record for collectors of Mort Garson and early electronic music ever since. Sacred Bones is honored to reissue Didn’t You Hear? as it was meant to be heard, taken from the original master tapes and given a pristine remaster by engineer Josh Bonati
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€ 18
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Mort Garson :
Didn't You Hear?
- LP (Sacred Bones, 2020)
Silver vinyl. Six years before the release of his landmark Mother Earth’s Plantasia LP, composer and arranger Mort Garson met experimental film director Skip Sherwood, who was interested in an electronic score for his new movie, Didn’t You Hear? While not much is known now about the exact nature of their collaboration, we have Garson’s magnificent score as a record of those heady, early days after his life-changing discovery of the Moog synthesizer. Notable for being one of the earliest screen appearances by a young Gary Busey, Didn’t You Hear? also boasts one of the first-ever all-electronic movie scores. Though the score was first released in 1970, it sounds as adventurous and futuristic today as it must have then
/ Originally available only in the lobby of the theater at screenings of the movie in Seattle, the soundtrack LP went out of print shortly after the film's release. It has been a sought-after record for collectors of Mort Garson and early electronic music ever since. Sacred Bones is honored to reissue Didn’t You Hear? as it was meant to be heard, taken from the original master tapes and given a pristine remaster by engineer Josh Bonati
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€ 18
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Ragnar Johnson, Jessica Mayer :
Spirit Cry Flutes and Bamboo Jews Harps from Papua New Guinea: Eastern Highlands and Madang
- 2xLP (Ideologic Organ, 2023)
The third part of Ideologic Organ Music’s trilogy of field recordings of sacred flute music from Papua New Guinea, recorded by Ragnar Johnson and Jessica Mayer in the 1970s. A book titled “A Papua New Guinea Journey” consisting of RagnarJohnson’s account of the circumstances behind the recordings will be published simultaneously with this music release
/ “The recording of a male initiation ceremony with sacred flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was only possible after fifteen months residence during anthropological research. From the same Ommura villages in the Eastern Highlands there are bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing. Nama (‘bird’) sacred flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village in the town of Goroka. There are Mo-mo bamboo resonating tubes and singing from the Finisterre Range of Madang. From the Ramu Coast region of Madang there are: Waudang flutes, garamut slit gongs and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar village and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum Village. These previously unreleased recordings were made in 1976 and 1979.” –Ragnar Johnson, London 2021
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€ 39
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William Basinski :
Melancholia
- LP (Temporary Residence Ltd, 2023)
Originally released a year after the increasingly iconic The Disintegration Loops, a decade later Melancholia still stands as William Basinski's second most beloved album. To commemorate its 10-year anniversary, we presented the first-ever vinyl edition of this otherworldly piece of music. Remastered from the original recordings and pressed onto audiophile-quality 100% pure virgin vinyl, this limited-edition vinyl reissue is packaged in a gorgeous old-style tip-on gatefold jacket featuring all-new artwork by James Elaine. It is truly a sight and sound to behold. Like many of Basinski's most soul-stirring works, Melancholia began as a series of short tape loops captured in the early 1980s. Basinski then stored them away for decades, revisiting them at a different time in his life, at which point they took on a stunning new sound all their own – one that many consider to be among the finest of this century
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€ 33
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Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru :
Jerusalem
- LP (Mississippi, 2023)
From beloved composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, a revelatory new album of piano pieces, unreleased or virtually inaccessible until now! Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – an Ethiopian nun whose recordings have funded orphanages back home since the early ’60s. Her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear
/ This is the first archival release of the great composer’s recordings since the Éthiopiques series reintroduced her music to the world in 2006. Drawn from original master tapes and a nearly impossible-to-find vinyl release, Jerusalem unveils profound new facets of Emahoy Gebru’s performance and compositions. The record picks up where the last two Mississippi releases left off, with tracks from her 1972 album Hymn of Jerusalem, of which only a handful of copies are known to exist. These include “Home of Beethoven,” “Aurora,” and a true masterpiece that stands amongst her greatest compositions, the moving “Jerusalem.” “Quand La Mer Furieuse” is the first release featuring Emahoy’s singing voice, forshadowing a vocal album planned for fall 2023. The B-Side brings us the artist’s home recordings - tracks like “Farewell Eve,” “Woigaye Don’t Cry Anymore,” and “Famine Disaster 1974” mark a bridge from liturgical work to dark and intense classical material, a new mode
/ This album is released in celebration of Emahoy Gebru’s 99th birthday on December 12, 2022. Mississippi is honored to work with the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Publisher to continue to introduce this visionary composer to the world. Newly remastered recordings pressed on 160gm black vinyl, heavy jacket with reproduction of 1972 artwork, song notes by the artist
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€ 24
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Nurse With Wound :
Brained By Falling Masonry / Cooloorta Moon
- LP (United Dirter, 2023)
Picture disc housed in a beautiful die-cut sleeve with Babs Santini artwork. It could be argued that Brained and Cooloorta are the definitive Nurse With Wound E.Ps. Both classic and timeless fan favourites appear for the first time together on one single album. Both E.Ps marked a distinctive change in the NWW sound. Brained from 1984 showcases NWW at their mid 80’s finest. The relentless churning and uncompromising music of Brained by Falling Masonry is complimented by the eccentric mania of JG Thirlwell’s vocals. A Short Dip in Glory Hole takes us into the murky depths of a David Lynch influenced nightmare, a lysergic unhinged movie for the ears, which greatly influenced the Peter Strickland film Berberian Sound Studio
/ Cooloorta Moon from 1989 takes us in a whimsical direction and further highlights the boundless originality of NWW. The evolution of NWW utilising more traditional instrumentation and bordering on the verge of song structures started coming to the fore on this E.P. In addition to all the original songs from the Cooloorta and Brained EPs, the 2010 track, Sarah’s Beloved Aunt perfectly closes this collection. Lovingly remastered by Andrew Liles
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€ 29
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Mort Garson, Ataraxia :
The Unexplained - Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult
- LP (Sacred Bones, 2020)
Black vinyl. The pioneering electronic composer Mort Garson (Mother Earth's Plantasia) takes on supernatural phenomena with lush synth grooves on The Unexplained, his only release under the name Ataraxia.Subtitled Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult, the album explores tarot, astral projection, seances, and more with Garson’s signature Moog synthesizer serving as the listener’s tour guide to the paranormal. The exploratory, whimsical spirit of its creator is evident throughout the release, but it also takes its subject matter seriously, making it essential for anyone interested in musical conjurations of the occult. This remastered edition marks the first official reissue of the album since its initial 1975 release, and it includes all the original liner notes
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€ 18
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Mort Garson, Ataraxia :
The Unexplained - Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult
- LP (Sacred Bones, 2020)
Transparent orange vinyl. The pioneering electronic composer Mort Garson (Mother Earth's Plantasia) takes on supernatural phenomena with lush synth grooves on The Unexplained, his only release under the name Ataraxia.Subtitled Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult, the album explores tarot, astral projection, seances, and more with Garson’s signature Moog synthesizer serving as the listener’s tour guide to the paranormal. The exploratory, whimsical spirit of its creator is evident throughout the release, but it also takes its subject matter seriously, making it essential for anyone interested in musical conjurations of the occult. This remastered edition marks the first official reissue of the album since its initial 1975 release, and it includes all the original liner notes
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€ 18
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Anohni And The Johnsons :
My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
- LP (Rough Trade, 2023)
My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, ANOHNI's sixth studio album, shape-shifts through a broad range of subject matter to express a world view. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature
/ On her first full album since 2016's Hopelessness, she explains the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. "Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago."
/ My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross is a record both personal and inextricably political, demonstrating music's unique capacity to bring harmony to competing, sometimes contradictory, elements. "For me, there's no heavenly respite; Creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and our souls are an inalienable part of nature," says ANOHN
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€ 29
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Carl Stone :
Electronic Music from 1972-2022
- 3xLP (Unseen Worlds, 2023)
Electronic Music from 1972-2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone's compositional activity, starting with Stone's earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 ("Three Confusongs" and "Ryound Thygyzunz", featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z'EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Carl Stone’s evergreen 70th birthday and a document of archival art. In the spirit of disorienting repetition and layering, call it an archive of archiving
/ Stone’s practice emerged from the repetitive archival process of his graduate job at CalArts preserving vinyl recordings by dubbing them to tape. With perhaps 10,000 albums ranging from Renaissance and electronic works to music from across the globe, he had to re-record multiple discs concurrently, creating chance collisions and coincidences
/ In the decades since, he’s explored various ways to compose this process, creating temporal envelopes in which found sounds – existing tracks or field recordings – can take form. Whilst the technologies he’s used have changed and samples have varied beyond categorization, what’s remained consistent is his concern for organizing temporal experience using fragments of pre-existing sounding events. Stone's impish collage-like constructions of times cut from time suggest that archival records are neither wholly in documents preserved from change nor in living memories and use, but in their interaction
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€ 49
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Giovanni Di Domenico, Kalle Moberg :
Pangrams
- LP (Dropa Disc, 2023)
‘Pangrams’ documents the first meeting between Brussels based Italian pianist Giovanni Di Domenico and the Norwegian accordionist Kalle Moberg. A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the two encountered each other for a residency with a septet at De Singer in Rijkevorsel. The confrontation between these remarkable improvisers in the ensemble sparked off some fascinating duo interactions, which they decided to explore straightaway. In an empty De Singer – concerts were still limited to online events only – Di Domenico and Moberg made recordings on the spot that capture the strange mixture of emotions that defined that dark period in recent history
/ The stylistic diversity and the wide range of emotions this duo manages to evoke on ‘Pangrams’ with piano and accordion is nothing short of spectacular. In the gloomy and restless ‘Sensitive Spirit’, only a glimmer of hope shines through in an otherwise pitch-black musical landscape. Yet it is the same musicians who pour out their hearts in the lyrical ‘Secret Passion’, a beautiful piece of free improvisation evoking a magical folky atmosphere. While listening to the four pieces on ‘Pangrams’, the listener is confronted with a myriad of impressions. This way the duo captivates from start to finish on their debut
/ By exploring the full register of their instruments and engaging in some fierce duets, Di Domenico and Moberg create an impressive document that bears few resemblances. ‘Pangrams’ is spontaneous music at its most passionate: full of friction but with a big heart
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€ 22
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Giovanni Di Domenico :
Succo Di Formiche
- LP (Unseen Worlds, 2023)
Written and recorded with the goal of creating a one-movement suite in the least amount of time possible, "Succo di formiche" reflects the archetypal joy of music making, the spontaneous impulses underlying its formation, and a love of the record album form
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€ 25
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Ellen Fullman :
Music For The Man Who Grew Common In Wisdom
- LP (Besom Presse, 2020)
Besom Presse announces the release of Ellen Fullman’s Music for the Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom. Known prominently for her sculptural Long String Instrument (LSI), these musique concrete pieces showcase an underrecognized side of Fullman’s sound investigations. In two expansive works, Fullman voyages through the comic, the menacing and the blissful all while evoking the unique kinetic and timbral aesthetic for which she is widely praised. Composed between 1987-1989, while living in Austin, Texas, the music originally served as accompaniment to choreographer Deborah Hay's dance piece of the same name. The besom presse release presents the last two movements of the full composition
/ "Music For The Gardener" uses the image of a curbside garden decorated with bits of broken glass and scrap wood. Recordings of these materials are manipulated with a prophet sampler to build an audio mosaic out of discarded things. "Music For The Aviator" is rooted in Deborah’s directive: "we contain the mystery, but we don't know what it is."
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€ 25
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Alva Noto :
This Stolen Country Of Mine
- CD (Noton, 2023)
Issued in 8-panel folding oversized (180x125mm) packing. Alva Noto's award-winning score for the 2022 German documentary film This Stolen Country of Mine directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese features nineteen compositions to be released on Noton. The documentary film explores the question of a state's sovereignty in the face of foreign powers
/ The film portrays Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country's resources to Chinese investors. Alva Noto's music subtly accompanies the struggle of a mountain village, immersing you into the film's narrative and pathos. Across nineteen compositions, the music exposes and holds back when the images and statements of the protagonists speak for themselves, reflecting the dark shadows and the glares of hope of communal resistance. The documentary was the recipient of the German Documentary Film Music Award 2022
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€ 16
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Tetuzi Akiyama :
Thaumaturgy
- LP (Besom Presse, 2020)
The intimacy of Akiyama’s Thaumaturgy is immense. In nine short through-composed pieces written over a ten-year period, Akiyama captures something melodic, simple, and utterly transfixing. In his first instrumental solo acoustic guitar record in more than a decade, Akiyama, widely known for his improvisatory collaborations as well as his hypnotizing boogie-drone guitar pieces, here works without effects and maintains a strict harmonic palette throughout. Every note is given ample space to ring out and decay, together slowly and deliberately building the frame that is to become the completed structure. The resulting atmosphere of his pared down grammar threads each individual track to the next as the songs work together with the gravity of a single object. In fact, one might think of each track like a room in a house
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€ 25
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Alva Noto :
This Stolen Country Of Mine
- 2xLP (Noton, 2023)
Alva Noto's award-winning score for the 2022 German documentary film This Stolen Country of Mine directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese features nineteen compositions to be released on Noton. The documentary film explores the question of a state's sovereignty in the face of foreign powers
/ The film portrays Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country's resources to Chinese investors. Alva Noto's music subtly accompanies the struggle of a mountain village, immersing you into the film's narrative and pathos. Across nineteen compositions, the music exposes and holds back when the images and statements of the protagonists speak for themselves, reflecting the dark shadows and the glares of hope of communal resistance. The documentary was the recipient of the German Documentary Film Music Award 2022
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€ 22
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Aphex Twin :
Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In A Room7 F760
- 12" (Warp, 2023)
Featuring four new tracks, Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In A Room7 F760 marks Richard D. James' first new music in five years, following on from 2018's Collapse EP. The release of the new EP will come in the midst of a series of summer tour dates across Europe, with James set to play at Belgium's Dour Festival, Field Day in London, Lisbon's Kalorama festival and Bristol's Forwards Festival over the course of July, August and September. You can listen to new track 'Blackbox Life Recorder 21f', the first cut to be unveiled from the forthcoming record, just below
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€ 26
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Blue Lake :
Sun Arcs
- LP (Tonal Union, 2023)
Transparent sun yellow vinyl. Beyond a select few, I’d imagine that Blue Lake's Stikling album from last year was for most listeners the first introduction to Jason Dungan's skillfully poised and emotionally redolent music. The audience has certainly expanded since then, including a surprise nomination for album of the year at the Danish Music Awards. On Sun Arcs, album number four for Dungan under the Blue Lake moniker, his ambition has notably increased too. The homemade 48 string zither prevalent on Stikling is present here also, but it's by no means the centrepoint, intersecting now with more ornate arrangements which make greater use of guitars, clarinets and drum machines
/ Comparisons to Michael O'Shea do still feel relevant in parts, though the tone is notably more idyllic and blissful, as if directly influenced by the good vibrations sent his way by the reception to Stikling. Like with the last LP, Sun Arcs was recorded in the rural Swedish town of Andersabo, which if this music is anything to judge by, must be bordering on utopic. Did Dungan find The Garden!? It's impossible to ignore the good natured quality of this music - like with, say, Steve Gunn - the inherent graciousness uninhibited and radiant. Dungan is enjoying himself and the opportunity to do so, and it's hard to read Sun Arcs as anything else other than an invitation for you to do so, too. Finally, some good news
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Mark :
So You Betrayed The Creative Arts For Your Own Personal Ends
- LP (A Colourful Storm, 2023)
Did you come here to serve art and make sacrifices for its sake? Or to exploit your own personal ends? Over the past five years, Mark has forged a unique identity in underground drum’n’bass, alloying traditional junglist motifs and luminous electroacoustic ambience to devastating effect. Developing his sound through a series of singles and EPs on A Colourful Storm and Berghain’s Unterton imprint and collaborating with likeminded peers in both classical and soundsystem spheres, A Colourful Storm presents the culmination of his work and debut album: a two-part study in rhythm, timbre and texture of monolithic scale
/ Mark’s ambitions had been clear from the outset. Integrier Dich Du Yuppie (2017) and The Least Likely Event Will Occur In The Long Run (2018) are not titles of fleetingness but statements of grave philosophical heft. The relationship between—and division of—people, place and power animated Mark’s production and has remained a pertinent theme throughout his work: the mechanics of force, the cunning of reason, the invisible but crucial hand of chance. Within these groundbreaking sides lies a synergy between splintering rhythmic elements and extraordinary atmospheric passages—the latter most deeply explored in Not Kennt Kein Gebot! (2022), a heart-on-your-sleeve mixtape pitting post-Second Viennese School disciples like Luigi Dallapiccola against an era-fusing suite of compositions from Radulescu, Zemlinsky and Monteverdi. This direction is also explored on Mark's monthly NTS Radio show, True As Few
/ Bridging the sonic qualities of post-tonal composition and soundsystem frequencies is nothing new—the oeuvre of Christoph de Babalon immediately comes to mind—but here, Mark attempts to meet both poles on their own terms through two meticulously arranged longform pieces. Any suggestion of connection to dance music history has been thrown out for rhythmic arrangements that skirt the contradiction between strict logical coherence and human perception. What on the surface seems hostile reveals a welcoming catacomb of connections between elements that stake their claim, disappear, merge and finally reappear—their return sculpted by the intricate mediation of similar and dissimilar elements
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€ 19
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David Watson, Tony Buck :
Ask The Axes
- LP (Besom Presse, 2019)
Besom Ppresse announces " Ask The Axes " , the first collaborative release by the duo of experimental bagpiper David Watson and famed percussionist of The Necks, Tony Buck. Watson and Buck’s premiere recording documents two twenty-plus minute tracks featuring the hallucinatory sound palette of the highland bagpipes, drums and percussion
/ Ask The Axes leads with Watson blowing out a grounding and sonorous fundamental tone. moments later it’s redoubled with the serrated buzz of a higher register saw wave, suggesting a startling revelation of the untapped potential of the highland pipes. As Watson steadily accumulates layers, the sound takes on a prismatic effect. from the droning choir of reeds, phantasmic overtones suddenly surface and are submerged in a fizzing backdrop like aural phosphenes. when Buck enters he manages to do so without interrupting Watson’s uncanny suspension of time. his toms and snare splinter with a giddy phasing effect as he shakes a number of bells into a thrumming substratum
/ On side b, the duo evolve into an ecstatic kinesis, expanding and accelerating sensations of space and time. Buck’s measured crescendo conjures the trance-inducing meditations of the sufi dervishes while Watson’s pipes peal out glossolalic spasms that sound like a long lost maclise ritual. As the record closes in heaves and gasps, a warm afterglow settles in ahead of a startling conclusion
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Conal Blake, Regan Bowering, Li Song :
Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers
- MC (Infant Tree, 2023)
Professionally dubbed cassette with on body printing, made with tapeline. Housed in a clear cassette case, wrapped in riso artwork. Side A: live at Walthamstow Marshes, 21/07/2022 (recorded by Rory Salter). Side B: live at Cafe OTO, 21/01/2023 (recorded by Billy Steiger)
/ Regan Bowering is a percussionist, improviser and sound artist based in London. Her solo work explores various combinations of objects and materials, drums and percussion, amps, speakers, and feedback. Collaborative projects include Blake/Song/Bowering, a trio with Li Song and Conal Blake who experiment with site-specific performance/ improvisations using snare drums, speakers, and found materials. She’s currently doing a practice-based PhD in Music at Goldsmiths, Uni of London
/ Li Song, Software Engineer and Musician based in London. Conal Blake is a musician from Glasgow. He currently improvises in duo and trio formation with Li Song and Regan Bowering, using electronics and percussion
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€ 14
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Shadow Pattern, Anna Peaker :
Split
- MC (Infant Tree, 2023)
Wonderful new Infant Tree split release featuring electronics, noise, found sound, and collage techniques. Long standing member of the Hamilton, Ontario experimental scene, Shadow Pattern is Ivanco's latest reinvention of himself through recording and performance. Several small edition cassettes on Hamilton Tapes and an LP on Radiant Clay Records (RCR) Shadow Pattern entertains the artfully careless and outright absurd idea of what sound can be
/ Anna Peaker is an artist based in Leeds, West Yorkshire who began experimenting with sound in 2016. Her work centers around quiet electronics, organ pieces, and found sound. She has released music with Longform Editions, Alter, Infant Tree, and Lime Lodge
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€ 14
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Russell Walker, Malvern Brume :
Soothers
- MC (Are You Before, 2023)
'Soothers' collects two long-form pieces from Russell Walker, walking the line between melancholy and disquiet firmly rooted in the doldrums of British suburbia
/ 'It'll Be Fine, Rob', a debut collaboration between Russell and Malvern Brume, presents the story of a hire-a-van journey from mundane hell rich with bitterness, cynicism and delusions of grandeur. A darkly humorous tale which drifts from bowels of unnerving drones that ebb to keys of tender melancholy at the deft hands of Malvern Brume's instrumentation. The piece, a clear foreshadow of a man's evening destined to collapse into pitiful stupor throwing chips at pigeons with fervent spite and sorrow, is a natural pairing between two stalwarts of contemporary British experimental music
/ The B-side presents a 2018 live performance mixed live by John Hannon, offering another excursion through bleak landscapes with peculiar stillness. Nightmarish qualities decorate the playful half-hour performance; audible croaks and screeches collide with nursery rhymes wittered by Russell's young son whilst caustic keyboard burns forward. An utterly distinct, one-of-a-kind performance exploring corners where, typical of Russell's touch, darkness sits confidently alongside glimmers of humour and solace
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€ 16
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Martin Franklin, Michael O'Dempsey :
Kolbe
- MC (Infinite Expanse, 2023)
C45 with on-body printing in jewel case, printed two-sided j-card and wrap-around o-card sleeve. Experimental soundtrack to a play you probably didn’t think existed, and definitely didn’t think you’d hear, steeped in historical context, and comprising a sonic mixture of early digital synthesis with eerie tape loops, feedback and 80’s stomp box effects. Kolbe tells the story of a Polish Catholic priest who volunteered to die in place of another man in Auschwitz during WWII. In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from the camp, prompting the deputy commander to pick ten men to be starved to death in an underground bunker to deter further escape attempts
/ When one of the men selected, Franciscek Gajowniczek, a young husband and father, cried out, Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to take his place. According to an eyewitness, who was an assistant janitor at that time, in his prison cell Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After they had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe and three others remained alive. The guards wanted the bunker emptied, so they gave the four remaining prisoners lethal injections. He died on 14 August 1941. Years later he was beatified as a Confessor of the Faith by Pope Paul VI in 1971 and canonised as a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1982, with a feast day celebrated since on the day of his death as part of the General Roman Calendar
/ Over the course of 1985-86, the production company Theatre of Poland, toured Kolbe, a play based on the book by Desmond Forristal, to Catholic churches around Europe. The recordings presented here are part of a cassette that sold on the tour, recovered in Lyttelton, New Zealand, and then mastered in Brisbane, Australia, in April 2023. Audio snippets have also been added to the cassette, including live recordings from the theatrical performance at St Edwards Church, Windsor, September 1986, as well as snippets from the films, Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht (1935), and Festliches Nuernberg - Ein Film aus der Stadt der Reichsparteitage (1937). Please note these are exclusive to this version and do not feature on the digital recording
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€ 15
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Elina Bolshenkova :
Flood Management
- CD (Infant Tree, 2023)
Professionally dubbed and printed CD in lancing pack. Hot of the the presses from the amazing, London based imprint, Infant Tree: the debut full-legth from the Georgian composer / musician Elina Bolshenkova, interwining a vast range of sound sources into complex sheets ambience and drone
/ "These songs were written during a terrifying period of time that hasn’t ended yet"
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Werner Durand, Amelia Cuni, Victor Meertens :
Processions
- 2xLP (Besom Presse, 2019)
Besom Presse is pleased to announce the release of "Processions," a double LP by composer, performer, and instrument-maker Werner Durand, with Amelia Cuni and Victor Meertens. Recorded and mixed in his home studio in Berlin from 2012-16, Durand offers four just-intoned drone works distilling global influence into compositions of singular beauty. The pieces presented here are rooted in Durand’s past work with Mmeertens (an Australian visual artist), a partnership that dates back to the early 90’s. Performed on an unlikely array of instruments including various self-made wind and reed instruments, sarod, mirliton, bi (a vietnamese free reed instrument), trumpet, and hammered electric guitar, the result is narcotic
/ Each piece is a rich tapestry woven by timbral combinations that cut clearly defined swaths of the spectral field, yet cradle each other with mandala-like elegance. Processions opens with Meertens’ hammered guitar percolating within the glacial flow of durand’s omnipresent hum—like an embryonic dreyblatt excitation set adrift in the bardo of La Monte Young’s Eternal Music. Dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni’s voice enters, beckoning like an oneiric shepherd. As the record proceeds, Durand doubles down on his elemental sound—before long the listener, without realizing it, sits straddling a borderline in a hypnagogic state of fleeting consciousness
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€ 32
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Jana Winderen :
The Blue Beyond
- LP (Touch, 2023)
The Blue Beyond is produced by Touch and Audemars Piguet following Audemars Piguet Contemporary's commission of two new compositions by Jana Winderen in 2019. The record offers edits of two sound compositions "Du Petit Risoud aux profondeurs du Lac de Joux" (2019) and "The Art of Listening: Under Water" (2019)
/ "Du Petit Risoud aux profondeurs du Lac de Joux" was first presented at Art Basel in Basel from 13 to 16 June 2019. A live performance of the piece was given at HEK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) on 11 June 2019
/ "The Art of Listening: Under Water" (2019) was first presented in the Rotunda, Collins Park, Miami Beach, in the context of Art Basel in Miami Beach, from 4 to 8 December 2019. "The Art of Listening: Under Water" travelled to the Lenfest Center for the Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, from 3 to 13 February 2022
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€ 25
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Various Artists :
Disruptive Frequencies
- 2xLP (Nonclassical, 2023)
Sound artist and researcher Amit Dinesh Patel aka Dushume started working in the field of music technology in 2000. In 2021, he began a research project addressing the distinctive lack of visibility for Black and Brown artists within the field of experimental music and sound: "Exploring Cultural Diversity in Experimental Sound", hosted at the Sound/Image Research Centre, University of Greenwich
/ Crossing noise, high-energy electronic music, deep bass, ambient and experimental soundscapes, this compilation is a statement challenging institutional Whiteness, racist biases, lack of visibility and access to experimental practices. Each contribution pushes the boundaries of sound manipulation, turntablism, field recording, audio fragmentations and sound collage techniques
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€ 29
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Nicholas Malkin :
At The Libra Hotel
- MC (OOH-sounds, 2023)
Pro-dubbed clear cassette with pad printed artwork housed in a clear case w/ artwork printed on transparent acetate on silver metallic cardboard + free download code. Tucked in the heart of Koreatown lies The Libra Hotel—the titular architecture of Nick Malkin’s new album and site of his musical and psychogeographic exploration
/ Unlike most musical “site-specific” studies, Malkin remains wholly ambivalent to the documentarian approach, instead sharpening an auteur-like focus on the site as a conceptual and highly expressive backdrop. The Libra is musically explored as a space that houses a noir fragmentation of identity—the exhausted trope of a complicated protagonist walking through rain-soaked street corners and fumy neon lights—where an inner monologue is rendered in both miniature and at a cosmic scale
/ Casting aside stifling tropes around field recording, ambient, and improvised music, Malkin’s work finds its own unique fidelity and emotional core through the assembly and reassembly of memory. Nearly every sound on the album—from frayed saxophones, lambent pianos, and dissected jazz drum kits—are multiplied, shattered, and reconstituted into shapes that adorn The Libra in a motion-blurred fog. The narrative of the Hotel suddenly appears as if out of the mist, with intersecting characters interacting within its walls by happenstance. Adminst the languid set pieces, wraith-like sonic grains gravitate around wide subbass beams that give structural form to The Libra, a narrative tension like when a scene is shot from hundreds of different perspectives: an image both luminous and veiled
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€ 16
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Sofie Birch, Antonina Nowacka :
Languoria
- LP (Mondoj, Unsound, 2023)
Repress on dark green vinyl. Languoria is a collaboration between Denmark’s Sofie Birch and Poland’s Antonina Nowacka. While Birch describes herself as an ambient musician, Nowacka’s primary instrument is her own voice; they share in common a facility for creating complex, layered work
/ Birch and Nowacka were first brought together by Unsound to perform at Ephemera Festival in Warsaw as part of a durational overnight performance. Entirely improvised, the music already felt coherent, with Nowacka’s voice weaving effortlessly through Birch’s ambient soundscapes and field recordings, indicating an immediate, deep connection, a meeting of kindred spirits. The artists were reunited at Unsound Kraków to perform a morning show at a 19th-century synagogue. Here, the music took clearer shape, and the audience glimpsed the birth of works that would eventually take the form of individual tracks on Languoria
/ This past winter, the two artists met in Copenhagen to record the album, completing 11 compositions that feel sacred, almost devotional in character. Fusing the melodicism and gentleness of Birch’s sound practice and the abstract, spiritual vocalisations of Nowacka, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while also turning its gaze inwards. “When working together, every small decision was very important, and that’s why such simple compositions can hold so much complexity and depth,” Sofie Birch says of their time in Copenhagen together. Contemplative, meditative and awe-inspiring in equal measure, Languoria is a breathtaking collaborative debut. Together, these artists have uncovered a new dimension of their respective practices, creating music that is difficult to categorise, otherworldly, yet strangely comforting
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Charles Curtis :
Performances & Recordings 1998-2018
- 2xLP (Saltern, 2023)
New double-LP edition of a selection from Saltern's acclaimed collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist, Charles Curtis. Features the music of Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself. Includes liner notes by La Monte Young and Tashi Wada, as well as a new text by Curtis, and a download of the full original album. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, and cut to vinyl via DMM by Hans-Jörg Maucksch at Pauler Acoustics. Pressed at RTI and printed at Stoughton
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€ 39
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Jim O'Rourke :
Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- LP (Drag City, 2023)
O’Rourke’s process – sourcing resonant sounds to enmesh together into a music that supersedes their resident parts – makes a fitting soundtrack for Kyle Armstrong’s “prairie gothic” tale of down-on-the-farm horror way up north in Canada. His minimalist score inhabits the wide open, big sky landscape, flowing into suddenly-deep (and opaque) emotional waters, then panning out to a chilly omniscient remove.
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Jim O'Rourke :
Old News No. 6
- 2xLP (Editions Mego, 2011)
Beloved experimental soundsmith Jim O'Rourke is at it again, having just announced his umpteenth release of the year. Back in the spring, the Japan-based artist revealed he would be starting up his Old News series of releases that mined the "analogue synth and tape works (both studio and live) from the depths of Jim O'Rourke's archive." Though volume five was issued just this past June, O'Rourke has issued volume six by the end of this summer. . A new 70+ minute electronic piece split over four sides. Two years in making, 'all that's cold is new again' was partly commissioned by Christian Zanesi for GRM's Présences Électronique Festival in Paris. An intense and rewarding listen rich in detail and of full of some classic O'Rourke hooks and turns, which he has masterfully developed over the last two decades
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Suarasama :
Timeline
- 2xLP (Drag City, 2023)
Timeline follows multiple paths across our planet’s time and space: avenues of world cultures and music, and the instruments played there; the crossroads where and when the roads meet and the track of time inside the lines of the songs themselves. Sounding as new today as it did when first released in 2013, Suarasama’s traditional North Sumatran roots are a launching point into the hypnotic music we all share with the first-time-on-vinyl 10th anniversary reissue of Timeline
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€ 36
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Eliane Radigue :
Naldjorlak
- 2xCD (Saltern, 2023)
Double-CD album with custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry. Includes extensive liner notes by Gascia Ouzounian, Éliane Radigue, and Charles Curtis, and a reproduction of Radigue's never-before-published original drawing of Naldjorlak
/ Saltern presents a thrilling new live recording of Naldjorlak for solo cello, composer Éliane Radigue’s first piece for an acoustic instrument, paired with a remastered version of the long out-of-print, original 2006 recording. Composed in 2005 in close collaboration with cellist Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak marked a striking shift in the music of Radigue, who has since composed exclusively for instrumentalists with her celebrated Occam series. This album brings together two complete performances by Curtis, recorded nearly 15 years apart (Paris in 2006 and Los Angeles in 2020), drawing attention to the evolution of the piece and to its inherent mutability
/ The sound and spirit of Naldjorlak are centered around the re-tuning of the entire cello to the wolf tone, a uniquely unstable frequency, creating a haunting, almost feedback-like resonance within the instrument itself. From Gascia Ouzounian’s liner notes: “Even as it expands conceptions of what sound is, and thus what music can be, to understand Naldjorlak only as music would be to limit its scope. It is music, but it is also physics and philosophy. Naldjorlak is a detailed investigation of the physical properties of resonating bodies and dynamic systems; it is a meditation on the condition of instability; it is a metaphysics of chaos and uncertainty.”
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€ 23
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Abdul Wadud :
By Myself
- LP (Gotta Groove, Bisharra, 2023)
This long out-of-print holy grail private press album, originally released by the late Abdul Wadud himself in 1977, is finally being reissued on vinyl. This reissue was originally sanctioned by Abdul himself. Unfortunately, he passed away on August 10, 2022. We thank his family, and particularly his son, Raheem DeVaughn, in assisting us see this masterpiece through to become available on vinyl to a new generation
/ There really is no easily comparable album in existence. Abdul Wadud used the cello to make music in a way that was never foresought for the instrument, and this album was the first physical representation of his solo gen
/ Sourced from the only copy of the original master tapes in existence. However, due to the severe deterioration of some sections of the tape, the vinyl master lacquers were cut from a DSD transfer of the audio tape. The tape restoration and DSD transfer were conducted by Grammy-award winning mastering engineer Paul Blakemore. Lacquers were cut by Clint Holley and Dave Polster at Well Made Music
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€ 35
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Jim O'Rourke :
Halfway To A Threeway
- 12" (Drag City, 1999)
Jim O'Rourke's Halfway to a Threeway comes across as a portable, stripped-down version of Eureka's lush fusion of symphonic pop, folk, jazz, and soft rock. Though it's not quite as elaborate as the album, the EP's four songs also show that O'Rourke is both a skilled instrumentalist and polished songwriter. "The Workplace" is a witty tale of androgyny and cross-dressing that features vocals from the Sea and Cake's Archer Prewitt and Sam Prekop, while the charming instrumental "Not Sport, Marital Art" mixes loping, slightly jazzy guitars, syncopated percussion, and snazzy cornet flourishes
/ "Fuzzy Sun" is the kissing cousin of Eureka's "Ghost Ship in a Storm," yet it has its own melancholy charm. Best of all, though, is the epic title track; lyrically and musically, it's as darkly humorous and moving as anything O'Rourke produced for Smog. He makes lyrics like "Can't wipe this smile off my face/As you strut by in your leg brace" seem poignant, thanks to the song's beautiful, spooky harmonies and delicate guitar work. On its smaller scale, Halfway to a Threeway is just as successful as Eureka at showcasing Jim O'Rourke's musical innovation, warmth, and humor
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Jim O'Rourke :
Old News No. 8
- 2xLP (Editions Mego, 2012)
More archival works from Jim O'Rourke see the light of day on Old News #8. Recorded in 1991-1992. Originally released as part of Disengage by Staalplaat. Special thanks to Geert-Jan Hobijn and Frans de Waard for their years of support. Jeff Cortazzo (trombone), Sue Wolf (cello), Michael Prime (shortwave), Geoff Fontaine (voice), Gretchen Wells, Matt Guerierri, Scott Shell. "Merely" recorded live at DePaul University, 1991 -- Carrie Biolo (percussion)
/ Remastered in 2012, Steamroom Tokyo. This one is for Billy F. Available only in this format. "Whether or not you want to hear the melodies here as memories -- of humanity? of earth? of a simpler past? -- desperately trying to push through into the mix, they certainly do produce an uncanny effect. And that's very much to O'Rourke's credit. Old News #8 is an engaging, powerful listen. And besides, there's much more to this record than the found sounds anyway. This is another excellent release in an excellent series." --Tiny Mix Tapes
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Jim O'Rourke :
Old News No. 9
- 2xLP (Editions Mego, 2013)
The ninth edition in this crucial series of electro-acoustic excursions brings us right up to date with previously unreleased material recorded as recently as this year at Steamroom in Tokyo. With the measured hand and alchemical technique of a François Bayle classic, Jim has us spellbound with A-side, transmuting spectral whistles into digital drizzle and splitting the senses between parallel dimensions of seaside location recordings, distant alien electronics and hauntingly solemn strings redolent of The Caretaker or Stephan Mathieu
/ The B-side follows that haunting theme into labyrinthine modular sweeps, glassy chamber harmonics and the sort of surreal, otherworldly textural interplay you might hear on a Francisco Lopez piece. Side C is more dramatic, with vaulted harmonics and icy spectral presence oscillating between alien chaos and piercing but lush melodies. Side D melts strange, almost human voices into a more beautiful 4th world soundscape rent with warm harmonic hues climaxing with intensely kaleidoscopic dissonance and receding to stereo spiralling modulations. Basically it's bloody brilliant
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€ 29
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Svitlana Nianio, Tom James Scott :
Eye of the Sea
- LP (Skire, 2023)
Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smer?, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. For his part, Scott has steadily published solo recordings since the mid aughts on labels such as Bo’Weavil, Students of Decay, and Where to Now?, and worked often in collaboration with kindred spirits like Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik.
/ “Eye of the Sea” began as a series of intimate, muted piano sketches put to tape by Scott, which Nianio embellished and re-contextualized with voice and instrumentation before returning them to Scott for further overdubbing, editing, and mixing. Listening to these recordings, I’m struck most by their patience, frailty, and beauty. Soft piano lines unspool alongside Nianio’s weightless voice on tracks such as “Slowly Turns the Spring,” which achieves a richly devotional air, and “Lotus,” a piece that all but halts the passage of time as it slowly blooms into expression
/ But despite their elusive, gauzy palette, there is a startling directness to these recordings that feels unique in the oeuvres of both musicians. Much like Nianio’s wonderful “Lisova Kolekciya,” (reissued by Scott on Skire in 2017) there is the sense that this music, particularly the vocal arrangements, is firmly rooted in some hermetic, primordial tradition. Ultimately, “Eye of the Sea” is a work of romantic, phantasmagoric beauty shot through with morning light; one which draws deeply on 20th century classical, chamber and liturgical musics, and ambient minimalism to arrive at a distinctive voice of its own. - Alex Cobb (Students of Decay/Soda Gong)
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€ 22
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Black To Comm :
Alphabet 1968
- LP (Cellule 75, 2023)
Vinyl reissue of Black to Comm's 2009 album originally on Type Recordings. Marc Richter aka Black To Comm released his debut record 20 years ago. In 2023 he is still busy releasing music under various disguises and is currently signed to the Thrill Jockey label. To celebrate this anniversary his own Cellule 75 label is re-releasing some classic out-of-print vinyl albums that originally came out on the defunct Type and De Stijl labe
/ In 2009, the Type Recordings label run by John Twells had just released seminal records by Grouper, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Yellow Swans when they signed Richter and put out his breakthrough Alphabet 1968 album. The LP was greeted with universal praise in the underground publications as well as established magazines such as The New Yorker and Pitchfork. The music itself played with the notion of nostalgia without being nostalgic itself. It's the sound of half-remembered dreams, a surreal distorted vision of the past, an aural polaroid of long forgotten musics, a ghostly voice from a non-existent era. Includes printed inner full-color printed inner sleeve
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Mark Vernon :
Call Back Carousel
- LP (Discrepant, 2023)
Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slideshow of the mind’s eye - projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listener’s mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism
/ Each episode is based on a found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the 60s and 70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from Vernon’s own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that he has collected over the past twenty years
/ Using these found slideshow commentaries as a framework, a series of musical soundscapes have been created to bring the absent images to life, activating the listeners’ imagination in the classic tradition of ‘cinema for the ears’. It’s a little like looking through a family photo album where only the hand written captions and mounting corners remain; the photographs themselves have all been removed. The evocative rattle and clack of the projector shuffles through different slides as the fragile voices of our tour guides accompany us on a sonic journey that fractures time - and through the cracks, the past bleeds through into our present
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€ 19
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Aya Metwalli, Calamita :
Al Saher
- LP (Zehra, 2023)
Calamita = Karkhana members Tony Elieh, Sharif Sehnaoui and Lebanese drummer Malek Rizkalkah join forces with the Egyptian singer Aya Metwalli - the result is the improbable meeting between free jazz / improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum
/ Calamita is the “rock project” of Sharif Sehnaoui and Tony Elieh, two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene (among others projects, both are members of the “free Middle Eastern music” collective Karkhana). Sehnaoui comes from a jazz and improv music background, Elieh is primarily a rock musician and founding member of the Lebanese post-punk band The Scrambled Eggs whose work in the last decade has covered many directions from pop-rock to plain experimental. They are joined by Lebanese drummer Malek Rizkalkah (whoe killed Bruce Lee, ex The Scrambled Eggs). As trio they develop instrumental pieces that draw their inspiration from artists as diverse as Tony Conrad, Last Exit or Oum Kalthoum
/ Aya Metwalli is an Egyptian singer/songwriter, composer and sound artist currently based in Beirut. Grown up in Cairo, her father would play non-stop Oum Kalthoum songs on road trips to the beach and Aya’s mother; known to have the most beautiful voice in the family, she always sang at home and at family gatherings, so long before Aya was able to form her own music taste, immense amounts of Arabic classic songs and melodies already settled in her subconsciousness… After her first EP „Beitak“ in 2016, Metwalli (named “a musical enigma” by The Guardian) started to integrate more experimental and eerie sonic excursions into her avant-pop, so the collaboration with Calamita feels like a natural or logic step
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€ 22
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Bendik Giske :
Bendik Giske
- LP (Smalltown Supersound, 2023)
Now on the cusp of his third solo album, Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske knows himself well. With his new, self-titled record, he is in his prime as an artist: confident in his voice and abilities, buoyed by critical acclaim from all corners – including two Norwegian Grammy nominations – and a surge in audiences everywhere. With the intriguing choice of Beatrice Dillon as album producer – clearly the British electronic musician is a fellow traveler in the practice of original aesthetic expression – her influence is immediate and keenly felt. Together, they strip away a layer of melodicism, honing in on pattern and rhythm to bring out a different dimension of his mesmerizing sound
/ While again working with single-take recordings, no overdubs, only saxophone and his body, gone is the reverberant space and mellifluous glamor. Giske finds the result akin to musical full-frontal nudity – every detail, every huff and puff audible, no obscuring, no aestheticizing. People may look away when it’s not as pretty, but what’s left feels more present and potent. Confrontational, it demands greater attention, but through its physicality – you can hear and feel his body in the music – it takes you to a flow state, somewhere between ecstasy, elation, and spiritual awakening
/ Intensely human, there’s stark tension there, too – there always will be when fighting for existence and validity – elegantly illustrated by Florian Hetz’s striking photographs of the artist on the covers of the release. In part, Giske is inspired by Judith Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure. As much as he has benefitted from his training and participation in the environment of the jazz conservatory, his path took him far outside its confines. Working these new explorations with his instrument has been a ten-year process of peeling away what he knew ultimately didn’t fit, finding the sonic territory of his lived experience. What emerged were systems that allowed for studies of tempo and proportion, a starting point for an immersive improvisatory approach, mapping years of musical probing
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€ 29
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Soundwalk Collective :
All The Beauty And The Bloodshed
- LP (Analogue Foundation, 2023)
Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated film ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. Told through intimate interviews, photography, and footage, central to the story is her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis. The film cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life and condemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same
/ Helping to interweave Goldin’s past and present, multi-disciplinary duo Soundwalk Collective soundtrack her personal and political struggles to sublime effect. The contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, the pair work with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, developing site-and-context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. And for all the beauty and the bloodshed on show here, the duo strike the balance just right; their compositions in collaboration with Zacharias Falkenberg and Johannes Malfatti producing a trance that oscillates between grace and madness
/ Within the score, Crasneanscki draws connections with the life and work of German poet Friedrich Holderlin, who was removed from society through confinement in institutions. In his last poems, written as fragments while he was plagued by mental illness, Holderlin renders nature, in all its fragility and ephemerality. Similar themes merge in Laura's portrait of Goldin and serve as an inspiration for the composition of the choral songs and cantus within the soundtrack. Through the repetition of words and the layering of voices, the lyric scansion operates like a language possessed, echoing various styles from sacred music to modern minimalist techniques. The music is characterised by quivering strings and swells, de-tuning and lingering, shifting around the surreal, and creating a spectrum of musical experience. Exerts of Nan’s narration are featured in two of the tracks, her powerful narration offering a more direct approach to the storytelling
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€ 22
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Philip Samartzis :
Atmospheres And Disturbances
- CD+Book (Room40, 2023)
Matte laminate sleeve, insert card and artist book featuring essay and photographs from Philip Samartzis. Atmospheres and Disturbances registers the changes in high altitude ecologies caused by increasing global temperatures. The composition is based on field work undertaken at the High-Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch, Switzerland where for four weeks I deployed various recording devices around the station, and in the surrounding alpine environment to register natural, anthropogenic and geophysical forces. The project provides new encounters of an endangered alpine environment to enhance the way we perceive and engage with notions of place, community, and environmental dissonance
/ During fieldwork I used different microphones to record a variety of acoustic, spatial, atmospheric, and vibration-based phenomena. Omnidirectional microphones registered wind, snow, and ice as well as social, material, and industrial sound emanating from the nearby train terminus and viewing platforms. Hydrophones were placed within water and ice to record geophysical sound resonating within the frozen environment of Jungfraujoch and the adjacent glacier. The recordings capture the pervasive presence of anthropogenic sound permeating throughout the landscape produced by tourists, transport operations and recreational sports. Accelerometers were attached to various surfaces and structures to record solid vibration generated by high-velocity wind, and the process of melting and freezing. The recordings produced by the accelerometers clearly express the stress and fatigue occurring within the material structure of buildings and infrastructure
/ Atmospheres and Disturbances is designed to place audiences deep inside an extreme environment to afford embodied experiences of an alpine ecology under duress
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€ 22
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Svitlana Nianio :
Lisova Kolekciya
- LP (Skire, 2017)
The long awaited second edition of Svitlana Nianio’s Lisova Kolekciya. Originally issued on LP back in 2017, this second run of 300 copies features updated artwork and was manufactured by Optimal Media. Svitlana Nianio has been active in the Ukrainian and Polish underground music scenes since the early '90's both as a solo artist and a prominent member of the now disbanded avant-rock outfit Cukor Bila Smert (Sugar White Death). Her music draws on aspects of modern composition and traditional Slavic music, with songs and experiments from that early period culminating in the 1999 album Kytytsi (Koka Records, Poland). Prior to that in 1995, Nianio recorded Lisova Kolekciya (Forest Collection) live in a simple home studio setting with Olexander Yurchenko and Konstantin Nazarenko
/ Less indebted to folk tradition than Kytytsi, Lisova Kolekciya was performed using Casio keyboards, electronics, and voice, positioning itself more inline with Terry Riley's Shri Camel in its otherworldly reinterpretation of the ancient through modern means. Retaining aspects of traditional music in its use of spare instrumentation and haunting vocal melodies, this largely unknown album pushes at the edges of what folk music might be, resulting in music previously described as being "deeply rooted in primeval myths, creating a world of magic realism, in which the temporal dimension and the other world constantly move and permeate."
/ Issued by Skire officially for the first time in 2017, after an extremely limited private cassette edition handed out to friends in 1996 - where the recording was twinned with the album Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhi (Know How? Tell Me) - this second edition of Lisova Kolekciya comes packaged in a full colour offset printed sleeve featuring artwork by Svitlana Nianio and is limited to 300 copies
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Wolf Eyes :
Dreams In Splattered Lines
- LP (Disciples, 2023)
Dreams In Splattered Lines fuses together Wolf Eyes' 25 years of DIY electronics with the avant-garde sensibilities of Fluxus and the granite of dreary Midwestern life. Continuing some of the ideas explored on the Difficult Messages record of collaborations, the result is a surreal dreamscape of disorienting sound collages, where hit songs are transformed into terrariums of sonic flora and decimated fauna
/ As if pulled from a fever dream, the surrealists of the 1960s converge with alien electronic blues musicians in an underworld of mystery. The air is thick with car wash radio white noise, crackling and fizzing like a toxic elixir, spoken word poetry transmissions as absurd and cryptic phrases. Each corroded aural environment is a microcosm of chaos, honed to razor-sharp precision. Swept away in a whirlwind of thirteen perplexing narratives, each one an unpredictable journey through subterranean worlds, a sonic trip of reality folded into itself
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€ 29
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Jon Collin, Demdike Stare :
Fragments Of Nothing
- LP (DDS, 2023)
White vinyl. Demdike Stare’s immersive set of windswept, strung out blues made in collab with Jon Collin. First time on vinyl after a small run of tapes back in 2020, this is an evocative suite of low-lit sonic tapestries like some Coil x Ry Cooder collab that never was. Teasing out vintage, arcane threads of connection between deep-South porchside styles and their native industrial blooz, Demdike sound at their most red-eyed and pensive in this strung out, liminal mode, spinning Jon Collin’s expressive guitar licks into acres of cranky, ghostly space to offer a starker and more blunted perspective on his dusky panoramic scenery
/ The duo draw on a deep well of inspiration from the rugged beauty of the Pennine landscape to invoke a steeply immersive style of folk-blues abstraction. Across two sides they rustle a ragged, whiskey soaked and blurred tapestry of ideas, variously recalling darker echoes Loren Mazzacane Connors and even Stephen O’Malley solo sides across the 45 minutes of their spirit-guiding trek. Pick your poison - mushies, peyote, banana skins, whatever’s to hand - and saddle up
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Andrius Arutiunian :
Seven Common Ways of Disappearing
- LP (Hallow Ground, 2023)
Silver vinyl. Andrius Arutiunian’s debut album »Seven Common Ways of Disappearing« was first conceived as an installation for the Armenia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. The Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer uses hybrid forms of music, focusing on sonic vernaculars, hypnotic musical forms, and aural cosmologies. Arutiunian is known to work with installations, sound objects, and time-based collaborations with ensembles and performers. The piece on this record was written for two musicians, a retuned piano and analogue electronics, and it borrows an enneagram as its score—the world-ordering model introduced by the controversial Armenian-Greek mystic and composer G.I. Gurdjieff
/ The result is an album that is both aesthetically and spiritually intoxicating—music of the spheres, at once reminiscent of the masterpieces of minimal music and improvised, if not stochastic music. G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the first thinkers and (quite possibly charlatans) to introduce a syncretic idea of Eastern philosophy into the West. His unique way of teaching was based on an esoteric blend of Middle Eastern, Buddhist, and Dervish philosophies, and oscillated between a genuine search for enlightenment and a complex form of trickery. Borrowing from Gurdjieff’s writing on the world ordering and musical tuning, Arutiunian used the enneagram to organise the musical and structural matter of the piece that was originally conceived as a live performance
/ »Seven Common Ways of Disappearing« is written for a grand piano—the epitome of Western composition and musical production—and follows a simple set of rules: the two musicians have to navigate the topography of the score, rendering the piece in a different configuration each time. In a sense, this gripping recording is thus only one of the potentially infinite versions of how it could be played, but also seems to take on different shapes and forms with each new listen. It documents a truly mystical composition that follows its own logic
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€ 22
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Not Waving :
The Place I’ve Been Missing
- LP (Ecstatic, 2023)
Blue vinyl. Not Waving explores grief, gratitude, and new beginnings on "The Place I've Been Missing". Renowned Italian musician Alessio Natalizia, AKA Not Waving, reaches new heights with his latest album, "The Place I've Been Missing." This deeply personal and introspective collection of songs delves into themes of grief, the fragility of existence, and the profound process of learning to bid farewell
/ "The Place I've Been Missing" is a poignant journey, written and recorded by Natalizia, with captivating guest appearances from long time collaborator and friend Marie Davidson alongside Ecstatic label mates Spivak, more eaze, and Romance. Unrestrained by conventional notions, Not Waving's sound defies easy categorisation. From enigmatic electronic soundscapes to dissonant symphonies, from syncopated beats to soothing melodic interludes, these 10 fragmented compositions are a testament to Natalizia's creative fearlessness
/ Over the span of 10 years, Not Waving's music has undergone a restless evolution, defying easy categorization. The soundscapes within "The Place I've Been Missing" traverse genres, featuring elements of crepuscular synth-pop, slowed-down strings, baroque guitars, shot through with layers of harmonic noise and hazy ambiance. "The Place I've Been Missing" is an audacious endeavor, straddling the fragile line between chaos and harmony, listeners are transported to an ethereal dimension, delving deep into realms of introspection
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Civilistjävel! :
Fyra platser
- 12" (Felt, 2023)
Civilistjävel! returns to Copenhagen label FELT with a four track EP following on from 2022's Järnnätter album
/ Equally well placed next to the Biosphere / early Fax +49-69/450464 camp as well as various decades of electro-acoustic drone practitioners, Fyra platser (Four Places) also includes a trip-hop leaning collaboration with Cucina Povera. Whilst Järnnätter drew influence from the cyclical, chasmic nature of dub techno, Fyra platser hones further in on the ‘between’ areas in a minimal, reductivist fashion. The rhythms are there to follow but are primarily beatless and more expansive, though skewing perceptions of time in the same trademark manner
/ Three locations in the Nordingrå area of the Swedish high coast are exorcised and channelled through sound. ‘Kolugn’ is a deliberately grainy, sepia-tinged continuation of the likes of Robert Rutman’s work across the 70s American avant-garde. It sits in contrast to the more obviously synthesis-led direction of fellow longform piece ‘Valmsta’. The location slowly changes to Finland via Athens, scenes of cafe conversations and hazy polaroids informing the lyrics of ‘Louhivesi’. The result sounds like a 90s illbient record dropped around 30 bpm and the stylus has caught on a perennial 8-bar loop. The balance of Cucina Povera’s cold, reverb-heavy vocal inflections drive the track into another dimension. If Moral were the Scandi Joy Division, this pairing must be the Scandi Massive Attack
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€ 19
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Mike Cooper :
Black Flamingo
- CD (Room40, 2023)
Matte laminate and embossed sleeve, insert card. "Collaboration, improvisation, innovation. The remit for Black Flamingo. During the Covid lockdown period I started long distance collaborations with a team of friends and made Oceans Of Milk And Treacle for Room40 (RM 4176CD). A family of long-time associates plus some more recent and one that I have never met in person. All of them with a unique ability to respond creatively, in any genre or context, in a creative, spontaneous and improvised manner
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€ 16
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Florian Vetsch :
Degree of Heat
- MC (Sloow Tapes, 2023)
Florian Vetsch (1960) is a Swiss writer. He lives at St.Gallen where he teaches German and Philosophy at the Kantonsschule am Burggraben. He has published poetry, diaries, essays and anthologies. His most recent works include his poetry volume Quintessenz (San Marco Handpresse, Neustadt 2020), the edition of Ira Cohen’s bilingual poetry volume Alcazar (Moloko Print, Schönebeck 2021) and the bilingual edition of Paul Bowles’s theater-piece The Garden (Bilger, Zurich 2022). He has translated works of Jack Black, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jan Herman, Jan Heller Levi, Louise Landes Levi, Mohammed Mrabet, Mark Strand, Janine Pommy Vega, Anne Waldman. On this tape he reads excerpts from his book Tangier Trance (2010): stories, memories and poetry from his various visits to Morocco
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€ 9
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Augenmusik :
Augenmusik
- MC (Sloow Tapes, 2023)
Florian Vetsch (1960) is a Swiss writer. He lives at St.Gallen where he teaches German and Philosophy at the Kantonsschule am Burggraben. He has published poetry, diaries, essays and anthologies. His most recent works include his poetry volume Quintessenz (San Marco Handpresse, Neustadt 2020), the edition of Ira Cohen’s bilingual poetry volume Alcazar (Moloko Print, Schönebeck 2021) and the bilingual edition of Paul Bowles’s theater-piece The Garden (Bilger, Zurich 2022). He has translated works of Jack Black, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jan Herman, Jan Heller Levi, Louise Landes Levi, Mohammed Mrabet, Mark Strand, Janine Pommy Vega, Anne Waldman. On this tape he reads excerpts from his book Tangier Trance (2010): stories, memories and poetry from his various visits to Morocco
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€ 9
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Ilta Hämärä :
Origo
- LP (Bergpolder, 2023)
Bergpolder #09 is a 12" from the enigmatic duo Ilta Håmåra. Audio dream directors Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie) and Bart de Paepe (Sloow Tapes, Sylvester Anfang II) played as Ilta Håmåra on a MiMa night in Rotterdam (NL) in 2016. It was the day before Kraak fest, and they had a tour tape (Origo) with them. A great night, as so many MiMa nights. Timeless Reality, featuring Family Underground, were also on the bill and on fire too: passport losing lo fi stoner garage
/ The toilet was broken, so everybody had to go to Hostel de Mafkees around the corner when nature called. Timo and Bart played a Paris, Texas-set, or at least in my memory. A show full of hope (Korg) and emotions (guitar). The tour tape was the same. Four songs which were moving like a flying carpet in the room when you put it on. Three of the four songs of the tape are on this 12". Added is a song from the same era, which fits perfectly. Music for at least your soul. Edition of 240 (plus 50 special artist editions) with riso pasted on covers and a riso flyer insert from the 2006 show made by Marijn Verbiesen / Red Brut
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€ 20
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Ilta Hämärä :
Origo
- LP (Bergpolder, 2023)
Edition of 50 special artist editions handpainted and signed by both with riso pasted on covers and a riso flyer insert from the 2006 show made by Marijn Verbiesen / Red Brut
/ Bergpolder #09 is a 12" from the enigmatic duo Ilta Hämära. Audio dream directors Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie) and Bart de Paepe (Sloow Tapes, Sylvester Anfang II) played as Ilta Håmåra on a MiMa night in Rotterdam (NL) in 2016. It was the day before Kraak fest, and they had a tour tape (Origo) with them. A great night, as so many MiMa nights. Timeless Reality, featuring Family Underground, were also on the bill and on fire too: passport losing lo fi stoner garage
/ The toilet was broken, so everybody had to go to Hostel de Mafkees around the corner when nature called. Timo and Bart played a Paris, Texas-set, or at least in my memory. A show full of hope (Korg) and emotions (guitar). The tour tape was the same. Four songs which were moving like a flying carpet in the room when you put it on. Three of the four songs of the tape are on this 12". Added is a song from the same era, which fits perfectly. Music for at least your soul
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€ 49
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Louise Landes Levi, Bombay Lunatic Asylum, Ira Cohen :
Behind The Buddha’s Mask
- MC (Counter Culture Chronicle, 2023)
Limited to 60 copies only and released by Counter Culture Chronicle, the “Behind the Buddha's Mask” cassette is a stunning effort, largely built around the unique recordings made by Christophe Albertijn at the Middelheim Museum in May 2021. While the pandemic forced poet, writer, sarangi player and global wanderer Louise Landes Levi to reside in Japan, her voice – reciting poems from the “Behind the Buddha’s Mask” poem – was transported to the confines of Bruce Nauman’s site-specific installation named Diamond Shaped Room with Yellow Light, hosting the hypnotic, ritualistic playing of Bart De Paepe (Harmonium, Shruti box) and Koen Vandenhoudt (Sarangi, bells), under their Bombay Lunatic Asylum guise
/ Flirting with the outer-reaches charted by Buddhist music, “Behind the Buddha's Mask” is a trance-inducing, meditative, cosmic world of sonic interplay. On Side B we find Louise Landes Levi recorded live at Restaurant Tangine, NYC on November 20, 2002 with Ira Cohen, Kelvin Daly, J.D. Parran and assorted mysterious guests.Louise Landes Levi is a poet, translator, musician, and performer whose travels have charted an elaborate constellation of mystic and cosmic pathways. A founding member of Daniel Moore’s Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, she participated - from 1967 to 1969, alongside Terry Riley and Angus MacLise - in multidisciplinary drama inspired by Artaud’s research with the Tarahumara, the Balinese Gamelan, Tibetan monastic ritual, and Indian dance
/ Following studies at Mills College with sarangi master Pandit Ram Narayan, Levi traveled alone from Paris through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, on her way to India to study the country’s traditions of Classical music and poetry, becoming the student of Ustad Abdul Majid Khan, and later of Ali Akbar Khan, Annapurna Devi, and La Monte Young
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€ 12
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Mascara Snake :
Mountain Diary
- MC (Sloow Tapes, 2023)
Not to be confused with the sometimes Captain Beefheart clarinetist of the same name, this particular Mascara Snake makes instrumental and atmospheric sound collages, influenced especially by Moondog, Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Luc Ferrari. As the snake sheds its skin Pacôme Genty reveals himself, who you might remember from the just as enigmatic La Non-pareille lp he released last year with his duo Des édens (together with Antoine Cortes). Edition of 60 copies
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€ 9
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Ruth White :
7 Trumps From The Tarot Cards And Pinions
- CD (Rhythms Productions, Tom Thumb Music, 2019)
Mindblowing CD reissue of Ruth White’s dark experimental electronic masterpiece ‘7 Trumps From The Tarot And Pinion’. Originally issued in 1969 on Limelight and now available through US label Rhythms Productions in collaboration with Tom Thumb Music, who many of you will know were responsible for reissuing Ruth White’s ‘Flowers of Evil’. If you were fortunate enough to score a copy of that record, then make some space on the shelf for its evil twin. This is proper holy grail stuff for historical electronic music connoisseurs and in the current climate for darker strains of electronic music and fetish for horror soundtracks this really illustrated how it should be done
/ Electronic composer and innovator Ruth White is considered among today’s most gifted arbiters of what is termed “the new music.” Formally educated in piano and composition (she has three degrees from Pennsylvania’s Carnegie Tech), Miss White discusses her work in her Southern California studio: “I do not have a formal classical electronic background— that is self-taught. In fact, I was careful not to study electronics with anyone. Because I have been working in recording for many years, I felt that there was a directness of approach that I wanted to develop which was totally missing from the electronic scene in classical music.”
/ How effectively her medium has conveyed her message may be judged by the critical comment awarded her own original electronic compositions.Writing of “Seven Trumps From the Tarot Cards,” a completely electronic score reflecting her impressions of the occult, Donal Henahan commended Miss White in The New York Times for her “musical inventiveness and electronic sophistication.”
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€ 25
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Ruth White :
Flowers Of Evil
- CD (Rhythms Productions, Tom Thumb Music, 2019)
A dark occult masterpiece - originally released in 1969 it makes much contemporary dark electronic music sound like playskool. It is in my opinion one of the finest electronic music records one could ever wish to hear. This LP was sonically advanced at the time and still sounds positively evil. Ruth White was a self taught synth pioneer who's name rarely gets mentioned in the avant-garde electronics history books. Here she assembled her electronically treated readings of Charles Baudelaire's poetry with spooky synth-scapes, strange electronic backdrops/ drones and tape collage to create an eternal classic in a leauge of its own. Imagine if Delia Debyshire were possessed by Aleister Crowley
/ This re-edition faithfully reproduces the original, released in the U.S. Limelight , thus contributing in some way to combine the name of the other Ruth White 's pioneering electronics like Daphne Oram, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel or Eliane Radigue, among others, also have recently some of their work to be recovered classical present, in most cases vinyl edition. The Flowers of Evil case, however, the most unique
/ Undisputed masterpiece, this album, which is certainly to have been part of the listening habits of Trish Keenan of Broadcast, is the result of highly personalized vision of Ruth who used the classic Baudelaire as a pretext for an investigation into the properties most intimate, spiritual up, the sound itself. Ruth White signed an extensive work in the area of discs for children, but also had a fascination with the occult has dedicated an album to the Tarot cards (Seven Trumps From The Tarot Card And Pinions, 1968) and that other readings of the work's Baudelaire's flowers of Evil, supported by a fairly gloomy music that reflected the tone of the night poems
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€ 25
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The Rootsman, Muslimgauze :
The Return To The City Of Djinn
- 2xLP (Via Parigi, 2023)
The second part of the famous collaboration between two UK based electronic pioneers: John Bolloten aka The Rootsman and Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze. For this album the original The Rootsman material from his albums “Into The Light” and “52 Days to Timbuktu” was remixed and deconstructed by Muslimgauze. As always with Bryn Jones, all material is inspired by Arab culture. We hear distorted dub rhythms, sawn-off loops, traditional music, male and female voices and then distorted rhythms again. Closing your eyes, you can find yourself in the middle of an eastern city, walk along its noisy streets, admire the ancient architecture. This noise can tell amazing stories!
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€ 29
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Various Artists :
This Is The Place: American Soul Music 1963-1974
- 2xLP (Cairo, 2023)
Comes in double-LP pocket sleeve with gold foil detail on the front. Comes with a 38-page 12x12" printed booklet with information on the artists, photographs, & artwork
/ Cairo Music present a brand new compilation, intended as 'all-killer, no-filler', detailing the best in American soul music in its heyday, 1963-74. The double comp comes in a comprehensive shiny gold cover and aims to present the music in a nostalgic, sophisticated light. Not focusing so much on the megastars, it homes in on recorded gems by relatively underground soul artists, such as Lee Moses, JP Robinson and Connie McGill. Many of the tracks are lifted from live performances or lost studio sessions, making this a wealth of curiosity for any fan of musical rarity out there, soul fan or not
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€ 35
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Mahogany Brain :
Smooth Sick Lights
- LP (Zaius Tapes, 2022)
Mahogany Brain seemingly forged their unique audio dialect with their debut release, 'With (Junk-Saucepan) When (Spoon-Trigger) for the legendary Futura label in 1971. More Avant-Garde than Prog, it spoke to the souls of the dedicated one percenters-such as the ESP Disk set- specifically patrons of The Godz & Cromagnon
/ But in early 1972, Mahogany Brain recorded a follow up release even more bewildering than its predecessor, yet this sat neglected until 1976 when it was issued by the Pole label. Titled 'Smooth Sick Lights', it's hard to know what sort of impressions it formed on anyone besides Steven Stapleton (as his NWW list is how many have been informed of it's existence). It had enough allure that the Tapioca label reissued a botched mispress in 1977, which seems to be the version that most latent hep-cats, whom knew not better, got fooled into owning. Zaius Tapes comes to the rescue once again w/a stellar reissue of this exemplary diamond in the rough
/ For fans of the further out 70's French Prog, it goes beyond Red Noise & Fille Qui Mousse. You can see how the brain-beams emitted from this release were studied by Heratius & Gutura (among others). It's possible this lp even helped inform factions of the New York No Wave (member Patrick Geoffois would go on to be a member of both The Contortions & James White & The Blacks). As the bard once penned, "conjecture is nine-tenths of the truth." RIYL; Frolk Haven, Mars, Jandek, Sproton Layer. A one time pressing of 300
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€ 29
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Lieutenant Pigeon :
Perfect Harmony
- 7" (Trunk, 2023)
Clear orange square flexi
/ A rare and unreleased corker from the post glam "Mouldy Old Dough" duo. A fine slice of 1970 catchy odd pop in classic Rob / Nigel fashion, and only available as a limited edition Flexi. This has been pressed to coincide with the new book about kooky 1970s pop called Perfect Harmony by Will Hodgkinson
M/M
€ 10
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Steve Jolliffe :
Tattoo - The Unreleased Music From The 1975 John Samson Documentary
- 10" (Trunk, 2023)
Incredible jazz / prog / folk score to groundbreaking tattoo film by maverick filmmaker. Unreleased until now, so don’t go saying it’s a reissue because it isn’t, but I’m sure some people will because they always do
/ John Samson (1946 - 2004) was a truly great documentary maker. He must be as I’ve been obsessed with his work for many years. Educated first at Glasgow School Of Art (circa 1963) and then finally in the art of film making at The National Film And Television School in Beaconsfield - he headed there in its opening year of 1971 having made a short film that got him a scholarship. It was at the NFTS that Samson met Mike Wallington, who was to become his right hand man and eventual producer; together as a quite brilliant team they made a handful of inspiring, entertaining and hugely prescient films about important, overlooked, unseen and marginal fringes in society
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€ 25
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Various Artists :
Life Death Resurrection Revenge
- 2xLP (Limbic Resonance, 2023)
Ritual music and urban survival strategies. Summer's here with Limbic Resonance 's first vinyl release giving a strong impression of our exploration into the darker sides of electronic music & ambient soundfields. Spread over 13 tracks by pioneering artists, established current acts, upcoming new faces and under the radar mavericks, LDRR is a sound canvas representing LR ongoing interest in unpredictable & undertow sounds & atmospheres
/ Track 13 is a Zoviet*France track. This is a bonus track that will only be available when you buy the compilation. Compiled by Alexandra Ismalone. Limbic Resonance is a platform set up by Jeroen Lauwers (Red Stars Over Tokyo, Hot Hair Records, Testtoon), Alexandra Ismalone (Alekzandra/CPR) & Tobias Lisius (Liziuz, CPR) bringing together their solo and cooperative output
/ LR conjures a sound that paradoxically traverses dark & light, a wave of dark ambient music punctured by rays of light sculpted w/ lush loops, heartbeat pulses & psychedelic electronics. Their vision is abstract primitivism and modern romanticism bypassing the artificial modern day present, a soothing meditative space w/ indefinable mysterious undertones. Creating a "beyond logic" world & vision that melts smothered spectral ghostlike dreampop soundfields with unbound dark occult ceremony exercises. A cross pollination of two universes where space and time confront themselves and will be burned down within the ritualistic circle, the remaining void filled with warmth and sparkles, detached from their original source, a rebirth of natural primitivism
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€ 29
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Ki Oni :
An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party
- MC (Geographic North, 2023)
As Ki Oni, Chuck Soo-Hoo creates balmy soirees of bubbly minimalism and buzzy weightlessness. And while Ki Oni graced our 2020 Halloween compilation, his proper Geographic North debut `An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party` sees the L.A. resident and dublab delinquent bring two mini-magnum opuses that are rife with romance. Here, Ki Oni art directs an entire evening in a half-hour of moonlit mystique and lascivious luxury
/ “Pergola” wanders and wades through an indulgent, glimmering din of gauze. As the sun begins to set, Ki Oni graciously takes your hand with his dear and deft touch, descending down the path to the scene of the sublime. There, melodies bloom and perfume on the scented scaffolding that towers toward the night sky
/ On “Ornamental Plants”, Ki Oni cultivates a cerebral conservatory of flourishing flora. A sweetly scented stream of saxophone, wind chimes, and other terrestrial trimmings blur in a warm fog. Elsewhere, curious wildlife traipse around like some enchanted dream sequence. 'An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party' delivers two side-long odes to the night, ultimately heightening Ki Oni’s place as a consummate charmer and melodious master of ceremonies
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€ 18
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Jantra :
Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground
- LP (Ostinato, 2023)
Near the border of Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, a disputed area called Fashaga is home to one of the most raucous, hypnotic, addictive, and celestial dance musics being made anywhere in Africa, perhaps the least known to the wider world of them all. Far from the townships of South Africa or the cities of Nigeria, this sound belongs to people intimately tied to their land, deep in the rural areas of Sudan. Known in some circles as “Jaglara,” this mysterious cosmic dance music is being innovated by one man, named Jantra, which translates as “craziness,” a moniker bestowed to celebrate both his personality and sound. Jantra cuts a mysterious figure, a rather unknown quantity even in Sudan, outside of the select few circles which have granted him cult status to perform at their humble gatherings or at street parties far from the gaze of the wider world
/ Never without his trusty blue Yamaha keyboard, Jantra joins a wave of synthesizer maestros across Africa revolutionizing the electronic sound of the continent. His dexterous fingers and street side raves in his home town of Gedarif near the Sudan-Ethiopia border caught the attention of a less privileged segment of Sudanese society who became infatuated. But you wouldn’t stumble across one of his parties unless you knew where to look, and they take place where few ever care to look. Jantra has no songs. He simply freestyles a combination of his melodies incessantly for hours on end, acting as a live producer and DJ for emphatic crowds in compact spaces, where the energy of his 155-168 BPM music is known to inspire the odd gunslinger to raise his pistol in the middle of the dance floor, ready to fire away a few shots into the air when the build up reaches climax
/ His Yamaha keyboard, like most keyboards, is not made in Africa and not tuned to cater to Sudanese rhythms or melodies. It required special tweaks from legendary keyboard mechanics in Omdurman market outside of the capital Khartoum who service, maintain, and jolt these synths to work for their aesthetics and flavor profile. Jantra then further tweaks the sound to achieve what you’re hearing — the perfect, sweet key tone, literally universal in its appeal
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€ 26
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Hartmut Geerken, Michael Ranta :
The Heliopolar Egg
- 5xCD Box (Art-Into-Life, 2015)
Includes a 12-page booklet with flyers from the period. Documentary recordings of Hartmut Geerken and Michael Ranta’s November and December 1976 tour of the Middle East and East Asia. Geerken is known for his long relationship with Sun Ra (including compiling a discography), but he wears many other hats too: musician, film-maker, archivist. Ranta is a percussionist best known for his famous “Improvisation Sep.1975” collaborative record with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takehisa Kosugi
/ This is a CD reissue of an LP boxset, originally released in 2010 as the last release on the now dormant Italian label Qbico. The tour started in Iran before moving east to India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Korea, and ending in Japan. At their show in Osaka, they played together with Toshi Ichiyanagi. This edition includes the concert with Ichiyanagi, solo performances by Ichiyanagi and Shoko Shida, as well as a rare Delhi performance that was originally only included in the highly limited 6LP edition of the Qbico set. All the tracks overflow with rich multi-dimensionality, providing a glimpse of Ranta and Geerken’s depth as performers
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€ 49
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Colette Roper :
Piano Pieces
- LP (Art-Into-Life, Tochnit Aleph, 2023)
Considered one of the most influential contemporary artists, Dieter Roth was consistent in his artistic search for inner self through and produced artworks in the various media, from graphics, drawings, and sculptures, to assemblages / ready-made, sound and music recordings
/ Dieter Roth's Verlag was founded in 1974 under the name Dieter Roth's Familienverlag and renamed in 1978. The label gradually acquired something of a cult status the 1970s, and Colette Roper’s “Piano Pieces”, which was released in 1979, was one of the hardest to find album among Dieter Roth's Verlag catalogues. Much is unknown about Colette Roper and “Piano Pieces” was her only album. The front sleeve features a hand-drawn butterfly on yellow background, the rear sleeve features a photograph of women with a bunch of flowers in their hands and poems. And the work engraved on the vinyl is rough-hewn piano minimalism with a lot of hiss and fragile innocence
/ As with Dieter Roth's artworks, there is underlying feel of decay and metamorphosis. Primitive innocence and enigmatic elements featured in this obscure album will provoke various speculations about many other elements hidden inside. Remastered by Jos Smolder in 2022. LP comes with a download code for the entire album. Split release between Art Into Life and Tochnit Aleph
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€ 39
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Angus Maclise :
Tapes
- 3xCD Box (Art-Into-Life, 2023)
The "Tapes" 3CD Box is the first-ever reissue of a 3-cassette compilation that Pleasure Editions originally released in 2015, limited to only 100 copies. The 3CD box set comes with a miniature poster and track lists, and each CD has a paper sleeve that reproduces the original cassette card artwork. This comprehensive 3CD box set is over three hours in length and includes session recordings with Tony Conrad and William Breeze (of Coil, Current 93, and Psychic TV), mystical recordings from the filming of Ira Cohen's "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" (1968), shortwave experiments, and sounds of Tibetan Buddhist monks recorded by MacLise
/ The "Tapes" compilation features excerpts from the archives of the Angus MacLise Papers, which are held at Columbia University Library. The archives contain over 100 hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings of live improvised music, theatrical performances, and sound experiments created by MacLise and his associates during the 1960s and 1970s. MacLise produced the original recordings in his own unique style, characterized by rough and peculiar editing
/ The release is curated and sequenced by Will Cameron and Mark Iosifescu. Jim O'Rourke completed a new sound restoration and mastering of the recordings in 2023. Special thanks to Hetty MacLise, Ossian MacLise, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Sheldon Rochlin, Ira Cohen, Rob Ward, Jim O’Rourke, Johan Kugelberg, Tim Barnes, Erica Barnes, Dia Art Foundation,and Robert Bielecki. This official release is authorized by DREAMWEAPON New York, a project of the MacLise Family Estate. dreamweaponnewyork.com
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€ 39
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Floex, Tomáš Dvorák :
Samorost 2
- LP (Minority, 2022)
Grey marbled vinyl. Mailorder only edition, handnumbered. Official soundtrack for the Amanita Design's game Samorost 2
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€ 69
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Valentina Magaletti :
A Queer Anthology Of Drums
- LP (bié, 2022)
A Queer Anthology of Drums - "a percussive collage of low-fi frequencies documenting a journey that never took place" (Takuroku), a home recording capturing Valentina's ritualistic free-improv essence, is now being presented to audiences across the world by bie? Records, via both streaming services and vinyl for the first time
/ *A Queer Anthology of Drums was originally released on Cafe Oto's label “Takuroku” with 8 tracks solely in MP3 format. The new version by the Beijing-based bie? Records, whose associate acts range across Hualun, Yu Su, Lim Giong, Gong Gong Gong and many more, is specifically remastered for vinyl format and expanded to 9 tracks with the previously unreleased “She/Her/Gone”
M/M
€ 49
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Kink Gong :
Myth
- LP (bié, 2022)
Kink Gong recomposed original recordings from Shi Tanding in Tibet between 2012 and 2018. One side is based on various Buddhist Mahayana Tibetan ceremonies with me playing the Iranian Santur. the other side is based on non religious Tibetan folk songs and epic stories. Both sides of this vynil contain electronic treatment of the original recordings, mixed with original recordings, creating a new way of listening to traditional Tibetan music and Buddhist rituals, with all respect for music and culture we both love
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€ 29
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Yu Su :
Yellow River Blue
- LP (bié, 2021)
Clear yellow vinyl. In the winter of 2019, the Vancouver-based Chinese musician Yu Su traveled from Qingdao on the west coast of the Yellow Sea to Xining, the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. During this tour, which corresponded to both ends of the Yellow River, she encountered musical artists and enthusiasts at the foreground of the explosive leftfield electronic scene across China and was inspired to participate and contribute
/ Yellow River Blue, Yu Su's open-ended response to this experience, is a smooth and emotionally charged listen. Drawing on her own rich listening experience and a keen awareness of personal experiences, Yu Su's compositions contain a complex quality that transcends all genres, her own cultural roots and living environments. The tranquil musical landscape is not only a result of her intimate relationship with nature but also a scenery curated for reflecting her personal emotions
/ Through the carefully chosen symbols and imageries in Yu Su's music, you can see her intention to disturb the boundaries of "traditional and modern", "central and peripheral", and "self and other", as well as her gentle and clear self-portrait. Sailing a light boat in an increasingly turbulent current, Yu Su raises an ancient canvas with a sense of ease, to guide a new direction for herself and for the chaotic winds of the world
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€ 32
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XT, Anne Gillis :
Our/s Bouture(s)
- CD (Art-Into-Life, 2023)
Comes in clear tray printed jewel case. The recording was played back live inside cafe OTO, on Tuesday 1 June 2021. Recorded: Anne Gillis (Paris), Paul Abbott (Brussels) Seymour Wright and Shaun Crook (London)
/ Anne Gillis (Paris) is a composer and performer since the eighties, Paul Abbott (Antwerp ) is a musician, drummer, writer, and Seymour Wright (London) is a saxophonist and writer. In 2021, during Covid restrictions, the trio of Anne Gillis and XT (Paul Abbott and Seymour Wright) developed a piece remotely together for Café Oto online radio broadcast program. A one-hour piece titled “Our/s Bouture(s)” was ‘broadcast’ on 1 June 2021 to online audinece, and we present a complete program with careful CD mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi. The trio’s concept for “Our/s Bouture(s)” is to ‘plant’ sounds and movements, which will grow and evolve through broadcasting, and what you will hear is not a 'performance' but a one-hour journey of organic sonic sound structure
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€ 16
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Akio Suzuki :
Only Just Once, Space In The Sun
- 2xCD+Book (Art-Into-Life, 2023)
Space in the Sun was one of Akio Suzuki’s major sound projects, a unique construction completed in 1988 and located on the meridian line, which took around 18 months to build. Its purpose was to allow Suzuki to spend one day, on the autumnal equinox, purifying his sense of hearing in nature
/ This release comprises a 44 page book containing plans and materials from the time alongside texts, and two CDs of environmental recordings created on site at Space in the Sun. To date only tiny fragments of the recordings made between those massive clay brick walls have been used in performances and no environmental recordings of the objective of the project, i.e. the space itself, have been released
/ The first disk consists of the first release of “person-less” field recordings made at the same spot that Akio sat at during the event (recorded in 1993, 60 minutes). The second disk consists of a performance that took place in the space. Space in the Sun’s earthen walls have since been demolished, so these recordings represent a return to life of their soft echo, an experience accessible nowhere else
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€ 29
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William Henry Meung :
Hiraeth and Limerence
- LP (Horn of Plenty, 2023)
Horn of Plenty is proud to present the first full-length vinyl release from one of NZ/Aotearoa’s best kept secrets, William Henry Meung. Although musically active for the last couple of decades, Meung only recently began releasing his work via a clutch of CD-R’s, lathes & tapes. Hiraeth and Limerence, the first in a series of four LP’s, was recorded to phone and tape in Dunedin between 2016-2019 as a particularly turbulent period in William’s life drew to a close. Hiraeth - a yearning for that which is lost or has passed
/ Limerence - a state of infatuation or obsession with another person that involves an all-consuming passion and intrusive thoughts. Context is key to understanding this record. Hiraeth and Limerence was recorded at the end of what William refers to as a ‘decade long dream-war’ where he was battling mental health issues and its fallout. It’s highs and lows are stark and interchangeable. Moments of calm and sweetness also reveal William’s fragility and confusion, while his true courage and tenacity are most evident during the LP’s darkest moments which oscillate between ecstasy and despair. The ever-present amp-hum and tape hiss play as much of a role as the piano, guitar, voice and cheap/home-made electronics William employs
/ In spite of the means and circumstances, Hiraeth and Limerence is a cohesive document and stands as a candid testament to the strength of its creator’s character. Lazy, but relevant, NZ/Aotearoa comparisons include This Kind of Punishment, Alistair Galbraith and Omit, but William cites the abiding influence of Sonic Youth, Kate Bush, This Heat and Brian Eno
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€ 29
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Alberto Lizarralde :
Haizetxe
- LP (Hegoa, 2023)
Repress. “Timeless minimalistic approach to composition braced by repetition and playfulness. Alberto’s music reflects calm, focus and intimacy. Ethereal and atmospheric, his pieces operate within the digital as well as the analogue realm in equal measures. Sampling, Midi sequencing and field recordings are the instrumentation used in these 15 songs recorded on a four track reel to reel tape. Highest possible recommendation for fans of Suso Saiz, Jon Hassel, Eno or Harold Budd”
/ “Haizetxe” which stands for wind house, is the first ever record consisting of unreleased material recorded between mid 80’s and 90’s by musician Alberto Lizarralde in Zaldibia, Basque Country. One of the founders of the first school of Improvisational jazz and contemporary music (Jazzle) established in San Sebastián in the early 1990s,Alberto is a well-known figure among Basque musicians but not so much amongst the general public. In his professional curriculum we find the direction of the Plaza Festival, the Zirrara record company, his work as a producer, editor (editions 3e argitalpenak), the direction of the audiovisual installation JA Artzeren Unibertsoa, the arrangements and composition for the Iparraguirre 7 project, etc...And even so, he has managed to stay away from the spotlight
/ In all this time he was composing and recording music, but the right circumstances never arose for its release.Thus, it has remained stored in a drawer all these years. Finally the music of Alberto Lizarralde sees the light on Hegoa label in a limited run of 300 LPs
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€ 26
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Carcáscara :
2
- LP (Hegoa, Talo, 2023)
Handnumbered repress. From the London based imprint, Hegoa, comes one of the most beautiful and striking records we've heard all year, the Basque trio, Carcáscara’s second outing “II”. Issued in a very limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, its elegant arrangements of tonality, texture, and cascading arpeggiations and drones, sculpt a stunning, acoustic middle ground between a number of Spanish folk traditions, American primitivism, and musical minimalism. A likely strong contender for more than a few year-end lists
/ Carcáscara is Fernando Aguirre and Iñigo Ugarteburu. The project released their debut LP in 2007 to tragically little notice. The project grew from the ashes of longstanding larger ensemble, Café Teatro, which released three stunning albums across the first decade of the new millennium - Aguirre, Iriondo and Ugarteburu were all members - which laid the rough footprint for the sound that would emerge as Carcáscara’s own. Ugarteburu also notably works within the more explicitly experimental trio, Liberez, with John Hannon and Tom James Scott, which helps tie Carcáscara’s efforts and underlying concepts to a larger network of activity within the field
/ Recorded between London and Basque Country in 2014, the sheer beauty of Carcáscara’s second outing will inevitably leave the listener slightly confounded by the fact that it remained shelved for the better part of a decade. It is, quite simply, a stunning bit of artistry that stands way out there on its own, sculpting a fascinating middle ground between the territories explored by projects like Town & Country (Ben Vida, Jim Dorling, Joshua Abrams, Liz Payne) and Pascal Comelade / Bel Canto Orquestra
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€ 26
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Ben Vida, Marina Rosenfeld :
Leaving
- CD (901 Editions, 2021)
Packaged in a six-panel digisleeve with an eight-page booklet
/ ‘Leaving’ is a generative four-loudspeaker composition created for Skanu Mezs by Marina Rosenfeld and Ben Vida, who perform as a duo and have recorded two albums in recent years, ‘Feel Anything’ and ‘Vertice’. Drawing from both records as well as a remote performance that was filtered through the empty volume of New York’s Fridman Gallery during the hot summer of the city’s Covid-19 quarantine, ‘Leaving’ is the artists’ meditation on the absence and presence, fragmentation and drift of our present reality — “a strange dialogue, dreaming of each other through communication of another order… (François Bonnet on ‘Vertice’)”
/ Marina Rosenfeld and Ben Vida began their work as a duo in 2013, with a premiering performance at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, NY. They have since presented at GRM/Présences Electronique, Paris, France; MadeiraDig Festival, Fuchel, Madeira; Fridman Gallery, NYC and the Skanu Mezs Festival, Riga, Latvia. As a duo they have released three records together, ‘Feel Anything’ (iDEAL, 2018), ‘Vertice’ (Fridman Gallery Editions, 2020) and ‘Leaving’ (901 Editions, 2021)
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€ 13
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Marginal Consort :
06 06 16
- 3xCD Box (901 Editions, 2023)
“06 06 16 (St. Elisabeth Kirche, Berlin)” documents a rare 3-hour concert by the legendary avant-garde improvisation collective Marginal Consort, on their first-ever appearance in Germany. The event was presented by Manuela Benetton on 6th June 2016, in collaboration with PAN and 33-33. It was supported by Initiative Neue Musik e.V
/ Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisational group comprised of sound artists Kazuo Imai (a student of Japanese free jazz linchpin Masayuki Takayanagi and occasional performer in both Taj Mahal Travellers and Takayanagi’s New Direction Unit), Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii, and Masami Tada (also in group GAP). Formed in 1997, the four members of Marginal Consort attended Takehisa Kosugi’s music classes at the Bigakk? art school in Tokyo in the mid-1970s, where they teamed up with other students to record East Bionic Symphonia’s debut album “Recorded Live” in 1976
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€ 39
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Renato Grieco, Bruno Duplant :
La Disparition
- CD (901 Editions, 2021)
Six-panel digisleeve. Inspired by Georges Perec's lipogrammatic novel “La Disparition”, written without the use of the letter e. The music score and its interpretation reflect constraint as a process. The score is dedicated to Reinier Van Houdt. — Score and photography by Bruno Duplant. Renato Grieco plays double bass and baroque double bass. Recorded by Renato
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€ 12
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Arthur Doyle Duo :
Live At Kraak Fest 2011
- MC (Troglosound, 2023)
Bootleg live recording tape = lo-fi quality. Same program on both sides
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€ 14
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Melting Mind :
At Grnd Zero
- CD (Relative Pitch, 2023)
This recording comes from a memorable show the band performed during their first (and so far last) tour in France. The concert had been a heavy mass of around 90 minutes, of whom only a part was caught on cassette, as nobody remembered to flip side when it was time. Anyway what got recorded is here, and it's still enough to dig the psychoactive multitude of sound informations Melting Mind delivered in Lyon that night. A hypnotic vortex of multi-layered dimensions. Italo-noise at its best, as in the old times
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€ 13
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Nocturnal Emissions :
Stoneface
- LP (Ferns Recordings, 2023)
Clear vinyl. Accumulation and Assembly in the Derbyshire Dales and in the Caroline K Studios. Digital Mastery Achieved in Silver Octopus Studios, Buxton, Derbyshire, England, 20th July 1989
/ Nigel Ayers’ most accessible emission? The glut of his ‘band’s prolific history has generally been a full-scale assault upon the senses, via either dingy slabs of noise or near-pretty industrial musique concrete. Stoneface operates on many levels, a set of gruelling, scraping, yet strangely attractive organic sounds that reveal numerously coloured layers with successive listens
/ Recorded in 1988, these sonic morsels play with near-baroque tendencies, devolved factory rhythms, spiritual solemnity and lucid minimalism, sometimes gripping, sometimes forgettable, but never uninvolving. And, as has been the case with the recent wealth of Emissions releases, it’s best to observe Stoneface’s sacred experiments in one complete sitting, where Ayers can effectively work his art on you with your complete, undivided and willing immersion
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€ 19
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Small Cruel Party :
Ancien des Jours
- 7" (Adi Grand, 2023)
Mastered by Scott Konzelmann, cover art and letterpress printing by Patrick Barber, label art put into form by John Hubbard
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€ 11
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Giovanni Di Domenico :
Dust Bunnies
- CD (901 Editions, 2021)
Six-panel digisleeve. Dust Bunnies is Giovanni Di Domenico's first solo release for 901 Editions. Recorded in Oude Kerk Charlois with the majestic 1784's Hess pipe organ and in Klangendum / Worm studio in Rotterdam, the album beautifully merges acoustic and synthetic sounds. As pressurized air flows through the pipes, the music reminds us of desertic wind, evoking introspective passages and expansive panoramas from above where large clumps of dust are destined to roll endlessly.
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€ 12
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Giuseppe Ielasi :
Its Appearance, Reflected By Three Copies
- CD (901 Editions, 2023)
Six-panel digisleeve. Electronic music, composed and mixed in May 2021. Original materials recorded in January 2018
/ Born in 1974, Giuseppe Ielasi grew up in the south of Italy and now resides in the outskirts of Milano with his family. He has been making music and touring since the late nineties (he tours much less nowadays). He mostly plays solo, but also in Bellows (with Nicola Ratti), Rain Text (with Giovanni Civitenga) and in duos with Enrico Malatesta, Kassel Jaeger, Andrew Pekler and collaborates regularly with film maker and photographer Armin Linke (also editing his films). He has released (short) records on 12k, Entr'acte, Senufo Editions (which he co-curates with Jennifer Veillerobe), Dekorder, Holidays, Error Broadcast (as Inventing Masks) and a few other labels
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€ 12
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Charlemagne Palestine :
God Bear Archives 1
- 2xMC Box (Matière Mémoire, 2023)
Unreleased tapes from the 70s and 80s. Double pink cassette included hi resolution download code. During the year 2021, Charlemagne entrusted us with numerous archives recently found on audio cassettes dating from the 70s and 80s. After a long process of listening and selection, we are pleased to present the first volume of these archives to you. Available in double CD and double cassette (included download code)
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€ 23
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Carlos Casas :
The Mont Aigu II
- MC (Matière Mémoire, 2023)
Blue cassette numbered including hi resolution download code. Sound and Radio Frequencies captured in location in Mont Aigu. Part of Fieldworks#26
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€ 12
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Charlemagne Palestine :
God Bear Archives 1
- 2xCD (Matière Mémoire, 2023)
Unreleased tapes from the 70s and 80s. During the year 2021, Charlemagne entrusted us with numerous archives recently found on audio cassettes dating from the 70s and 80s. After a long process of listening and selection, we are pleased to present the first volume of these archives to you. Available in double CD and double cassette (included download code)
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€ 19
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Oxy :
Aether Gust
- LP+CD (Alara Music, 2023)
Comes nestled in a thick crafted carboard black embossed sheath. Oxy is a transient project combining talents of Ivan Pavlov, better known as CoH, and Sasha Galianov, the main force behind the electronic sound of the avant-garde performance collective Shortparis. The two once met at a festival where they performed a semi-improvised live set. The first performance sparked mutual interest in continuing joint experimentation, which, after a series of concerts, eventually led to this studio recording
/ The name of the album is constructed of the two titles presented each on one side of the LP. The first side, Aether, delivers a powerfully charged contemplative exploration, in which the two seem to carefully study the sound of each other's instruments. The search for balance between the analogue and the digital reveals a murky terrain of focused sonic pressure interwoven with potent silence filled with echoes. Towards the end, Aether, amorphous in the beginning, gains structure and rhythm, as if preparing the listener to its more agitated sequel, Gust
/ Side two, starting with trademark minimalistic patterns of CoH quickly picks up in intensity and wanders into the domains of digital heavy-metal, in which Sasha's menacing guitar riffs are meticulously disjointed in favour of power focus. Then Gust takes the listener through a minor apocalypse, past a few relieving joyful moments of temporal enlightenment, and towards a strange peace found in a disorienting, synth-framed collage of acoustic guitar sounds. Aether Gust is a record that requires listener's full attention, offering in return a captivating journey though peculiar landscapes at the intersection of the worlds of the two adventurous music explorers, exchanging their sonic beliefs and passions
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€ 33
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Onra :
Chinoiseries
- 2xLP (Favorite Recordings, 2023)
Dublin's finest All City brings back ONRA’s postmodern classic of instrumental hip hop on vinyl for the first since its 2007. Stuffed with samples culled entirely from Chinese records scored during a trip to his parents’ native Vietnam, ONRA considers the trio of records that make up CHINOISERIES as a tribute to his first ever trip to Asia. While previously unfamiliar with almost all of the material gathered from those well-hunted discs, the Parisian-based producer pulls some magic from their dusty grooves. Tracks like ‘Chop Your Hands’ and ‘Lesson With The Master’ crackle with surface noise, but also stun with breakneck turns and the kind clever, Eastern-minded sound design you won’t hear on most other beat collections
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€ 26
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Eiko Ishibashi, Jim O'Rourke :
Lifetime of a Flower
- LP (Week-End, 2023)
Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O'Rourke created the installation Lifetime of a Flower for the Dortmund exhibition Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art. In it they set parameters, but allowed the process itself to literally grow uncontrollably: they planted seeds in the garden of their Japanese house and filmed as the plants grew for the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time, while listening to a composition that reflected the organic process in sound. This eponymous recording, now available on LP, is an enigmatic and sophisticated layering of sounds, melodies and rhythms, noises from everyday life, all of which are repositories of associations, memories and expectations
/ All music was composed by Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke for the video exhibition/installation ”Lifetime of a Flower“ at Loudspeaker/Museum Ostwall at Dortmunder U, Dortmund, Germany, April 30th to September 25th 2022. Project idea and realization by Jan Lankisch. Additional editing by Jim O’Rourke. Mastering by Jörg Burger. Gema. Special thanks to Julian Klein for the tech setup. Illustration by Sharmila Banerjee. Design by Sonja Knoblauch
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€ 29
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Julius Eastman :
Stay On It
- LP (Week-End, 2022)
For the first time, the original recordings by Julius Eastman will be available as a limited edition LP of 500 copies from our newly improved Week—End Records label. Released on the occasion of the performance of “Stay On It” at the opening of the Week-End Fest 2021 on October 8. This is a vinyl only release - The digital album is not included
/ In 1973, Stay on It turned the coordinates of avant-garde music on its head. It is minimal, but unashamedly groovy; it is open to improvisation, grants performers all the freedom they could need, but it isn’t jazz and never slips into the non-committal. It is open to theatrical and performative elements, but also to poetic-lyrical ones
/ Cut to 1981. Eastman releases The Holy Presence of Joan d‘Arc. Where has the lightness gone? The relationship to pop music? The love for the musicians who have to develop the piece during its performance? It sounds like heavy metal: forceful, dark, urgent, sawing—and then plaintive, heartbreaking
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€ 29
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Fantastic Man :
Utopioid
- LP (Mule Musiq, 2020)
Fantastic Man teams up with Tokyo’s Mule Musiq to deliver his debut LP in 2020. Comprising of nine tracks, Utopioid advances further into the realm of sci-fi influenced club and esoteric electronica - a vacation through an imaginary pleasure-dome by means of ambient house, airy dub, and at-times schizophrenic breakbeat
/ Written in 2019 and 2020 across Berlin, the Carioca spheres of Rio, and his hometown of Melbourne, Utopioid expands and adapts Fantastic Man’s much loved musical techniques for long format. It’s a well-balanced and deeply crafted album and features a cameo by fellow Melbourne rising-star Memphis LK on ‘Mazes’, resurrects the spirit of the nineties ROMpler on ‘Forbidden Fiction’, and glides you through peak-acid euphoria with d’Oxygen’ and ‘Diaspora
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€ 22
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Otherworld :
Mad Wee Light
- LP (Kit, 2022)
White vinyl. Four years on since the portal to Kay Logan's Otherworld creaked open for the first time, we sit back and admire 'Mad Wee Light' in newly remastered form. Committed to both black and white vinyl editions, her masterpiece glows like a restored AI generated painting, binary scrubbed and winding with fractal strangeness towards its core
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€ 20
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Sara Oswald, Feldermelder :
Dual | Duel
- LP (-ous, 2023)
«We find ourselves venturing into the depths of a rugged terrain. In our hands, we hold stones and minerals, each possessing its own distinct texture, weight, and sonic potential. It is through the artistic touch and through the musical instruments that these earthly treasures, once dormant, are awaken to life.» — Sara Oswald + Feldermelder
/ The 3rd collaboration of prolific cellist Sara Oswald and electronic musician Feldermelder evokes captivating sensations that oscillate between impending doom and hope. The albums’ sonic journey is highly immersive, transporting the listener from one cerebral landscape to another. The transformative nature of metallic elements being integrated in sustained orchestral tones weaves the sonic tapestry, resulting in a captivating experience for the listeners. The organic sounding — reminiscent of minerals’ timbres — brings a touch of brightness and a distinctive edge, while the orchestral harmonic structures lend a sense of grandeur and continuity. The origins of this music remain enigmatic, while the tracks of the album gradually unveil concealed aspects and the hidden truth
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€ 19
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Shane Cooper :
Happenstance
- LP (Kit, 2021)
We're extremely proud to present HAPPENSTANCE, a sprawling jazz-concrète project produced by Johannesburg composer and double bass player Shane Cooper. Approached in 2020 by interdisciplinary arts space The Centre For The Less Good Idea to create audio work, Cooper drew on his network in the thriving South African jazz scene, bringing in Bokani Dyer (piano), Cara Stacey (bows), Daliwonga Tshangela (cello), Gontse Makhene (percussion), Jonno Sweetman (percussion) and Micca Manganye (percussion)
/ Two days of free-flowing composition, improvisation and investigative recording followed, with the results captured on a vintage reel-to-reel tape machine. This tape was fractured and reassembled by Cooper, bringing into surreal focus tiny ecosystems of sound, like curls of static clasped from the air and brought under the magnifying glass. The results - two long, standalone pieces - are dizzying, weightless; musique concrète melding with jazz-schooled virtuosity in a dubbed out bricolage of interludes and u-turns
/ Recommended for fans of Abdullah Ibrahim, Tony Allen, Floating Points and Daphne Oram
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€ 19
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Robert Stillman :
Portals
- LP (Orindal, Kit, 2022)
Orange vinyl. Portals is an album of minimal electric piano improvisations by UK-based multi-instrumentalist & composer Robert Stillman. Inspired by American ‘new-age’ luminaries like Laraaji, Iasos, and Stephen Halpern, Stillman’s layers of playful, meditative electric piano figures, saturated by warm tape hiss & psychedelic delay effects, are occasionally accompanied by “found sound” field recordings, creating a compelling yet calming listening experience
/ Portals was recorded at home in Broadstairs, Kent during the winter of 2016-2017 & originally released on cassette in December 2017 by Orindal Records. Three subsequent represses followed, & Portals became the most repressed cassette release in Orindal’s 11 year history. This new vinyl edition, co-released by UK label KIT Records, is remastered by Matt Barnhart & includes bonus track “Portal 8 (The Stranger).”
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€ 19
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Otherworld :
Mad Wee Light
- LP (Kit, 2022)
Black vinyl. Four years on since the portal to Kay Logan's Otherworld creaked open for the first time, we sit back and admire 'Mad Wee Light' in newly remastered form. Committed to both black and white vinyl editions, her masterpiece glows like a restored AI generated painting, binary scrubbed and winding with fractal strangeness towards its core
M/M
€ 18
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Michael Tanner :
Suite for Psaltery and Dulcimer
- LP (Kit, 2020)
The latest release from Kit Records by Michael Tanner is a stunning instrumental evocation of the same spirit, mired in the ancient wood and damp grass, haunted by memories. The likes of Richard Skelton have applied similar durational and instrumental techniques to impressionistic musical British landscapes, sketched utilising multiple cellos, violins, and guitars, but Michael Tanner focuses almost entirely on the two instruments namechecked in the album's title, Suite for Psaltery and Dulcimer
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€ 18
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Poirier Marshall Partners :
Atelier / Ferme
- LP (Kit, 2021)
'ATELIER / FERME' is the debut collaboration between buddies Michael Marshall (Object Agency) and Roméo Poirier (Swim Platførm), as the two combine trumpet, guitar, saxophone and an array of vintage synths on a series of sleek, heady instrumentals
/ Recorded in Strasbourg, ATELIER sees pin-sharp found sounds woven amongst cavernous clicks, pops and weirdly synthesised voices to form an addictive, technodelic bricolage. Think Domenique Dumont floating in a sensory deprivation tank, or Joe Hisaishi enjoying a fine wine tasting holiday in Alsace
/ ALTITUDE 1 is a hypnotic live jam recorded at Swim Platførm's home in Brussels, and features Devon Loch on sax. The FERME sessions of side B, recorded live in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, are all brooding orchestral stabs shot through folds of analogue organ, conjured from a snow-covered cabin. Recommended for fans of To Rococo Rot and Huerco S
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€ 19
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The Nag's Head :
Entropy Noodle
- LP (Kit, 2020)
Named lovingly after the venerable boozer from Only Fools and Horses, The Nag's Head is the sonic moniker of Brighton artist Stephen Maskell. Combining on-the-fly recordings, kitchen sink instrumentation and addictively constructed beats, Maskell's music is at times moving, at times hilarious and sometimes just great dance music
/ Following a trilogy of tapes, ENTROPY NOODLE is Maskell's first LP, and signals a maturation of sound - bending, twisting and manipulating synthesis to explore every microtonal corridor of the sonic spectrum. Gone are the radio toasts, gloopy video snippets and provincial ephemera, as every soggy beer mat and bent dart in The Nag's Head is raptured upwards into the stellar vacuum
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€ 19
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Time Binding Ensemble :
Nothing New Under The Sun
- 2xLP (Kit, 2021)
A gatefold double LP, bringing cult Scottish sound artist and composer Kay Logan's alchemic neo-classical project, Time Binding Ensemble, to vinyl for the first time. 'Nothing New Under the Sun' arrives in 24 parts of equal length, the collection cycling through each key of the musical scale before returning to its starting point, like a sundial etching sound from shadows cast throughout a day and night
/ Inspired by the crumbling brutalism of St. Peter's Roman Catholic seminary in her native Scotland, Logan employs traditional instruments (french horn, bassoon, clarinet, oboe, violin, viola, and cello) fed through otherworldly machines to imbue them with a heavy-lidded, sacred geometry. An Escherian stairwell of a record
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€ 29
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Kinn :
Dogtooth
- 12" (First Light, 2023)
Kinn turns the Post-Rock continuum inside out with his sophomore album, Dogtooth. Shifting focus between his present self and his misled teenage years, 'Dogtooth' sees London born and raised sound art graduate Fred Lomas contemplate the vulnerability of youth, addiction and suicide as Kinn. Unabashed in their creative ambition, Kinn's tongue-in-cheek 'dread-voyeurism' is underpinned by a palpably sincere vulnerability that seeps through their dynamic and rewardingly dense records
/ An insight into Fred's formative years can be unraveled from his nickname "Dread", originally given to him by his parents. Growing up in North London as a 'constantly out of the house' youth, Fred only had eyes on any counterculture he could find to defy the city's notorious empty capitalist centric mainstream culture, skateboarding, graffiti, and terrible punk bands which would only last 1-3 rehearsals (max). As a teenager he experienced the notorious 2011 Tottenham riots, which is often referenced in the artist's output and greatly informed their sensibilities. Barely an adult, he was confronted first hand with concepts of constant hostility and corruption which were seemingly welded to his surroundings, corruption formed by high rises and international political scandals taking place only a short journey away
/ Even today, Dogtooth reflects on this contrast of community and anger and surmises it to be part and parcel of modern metropolitan life, looking to peel away the bad looking for meaning, comfort and ways of goofing off amidst oppressive forces, sirens and snake oil salesmen everywhere
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€ 25
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Josiah Steinbrick :
For Anyone That Knows You
- LP (Unseen Worlds, 2023)
For Anyone That Knows You, an album of mostly piano solos by Josiah Steinbrick, was recorded not for smoothness or posterity but to emphasize the piano as object, the person playing it, and the moment it sounds. On three of the pieces, the saxophone of Sam Gendel hovers over the piano like a faint change in the light, adding resonance and gentle reinforcement rather than counterpoint. Three others are delicate renditions: “Green Glass” interprets an untitled recording by Quechuan folk musicians Leandro Apaza Romas and Benjamin Clara Quispe; “Elyne Road” abbreviates one of Malian kora master Toumani Diabaté’s most tender compositions; and “Lullaby” is an arrangement of a traditional Creole song, originally recorded in 1954 by the Haitian-American guitarist Frantz Casseus.
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€ 21
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The Body :
I Shall Die Here / Earth Triumphant
- 2xLP (Rvng Intl., 2023)
Black vinyl. On I Shall Die Here, The Body sonically serrates the remains of metal's already unidentifiable corpse and splays it amid tormented voices in shadow. Sharing their heathen vision with The Haxan Cloak, The Body's tried, true, and absorbingly tragic sound is mutilated by process and re-animated in a spectral state. This double LP set is expanded with the previously unreleased Earth Triumphant, a full-length companion album that would become I Shall Die Here, showcasing The Body’s brutality in its most primal form. Newly remastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios, this is the definitive edition of a shocking classic of unbridled bleakness and innovation
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€ 29
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Robert Haigh :
Creatures Of The Deep
- LP (Unseen Worlds, 2017)
A new album of piano driven ambient music from British composer Robert Haigh. Following in the path of his albums for the Japanese Siren label, Creatures of the Deep is an underground vantage of a meeting between the musical worlds of Harold Budd and Erik Satie. With a storied musical career that has ranged widely in style — from his industrial-avant-garde works on Nurse With Wound’s United Diaries label as SEMA to his legendary ambient drum and bass records as Omni Trio on Moving Shadow — Robert Haigh's work occupies a space between music and mystery. With Creatures of the Deep, Haigh is at the peak of his powers. Among noir, minimal, neo-classical landscapes are robust scatterings of bright reflection and a musical expression that is subtle and elusive yet uniquely Haigh’s in its voice and masterful execution. The closer we examine, the more is revealed, and the less is defined
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€ 19
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Dean Blunt :
Black Metal
- 2xLP (Rough Trade, 2014)
Dean Blunt’s Black Metal album comes on heavyweight vinyl LP encased in a thick black plastic sleeve and contains a digital download code. The former Hype Williams frontman has polished his rap-alt-rock aesthetic to the point of perfection"!
/ On the follow-up to his seminal 2014 album, the British artist sounds more confrontational, direct and hilarious than ever...
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€ 26
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The Body :
I Shall Die Here / Earth Triumphant
- 2xLP (Rvng Intl., 2023)
White vinyl. On I Shall Die Here, The Body sonically serrates the remains of metal's already unidentifiable corpse and splays it amid tormented voices in shadow. Sharing their heathen vision with The Haxan Cloak, The Body's tried, true, and absorbingly tragic sound is mutilated by process and re-animated in a spectral state. This double LP set is expanded with the previously unreleased Earth Triumphant, a full-length companion album that would become I Shall Die Here, showcasing The Body’s brutality in its most primal form. Newly remastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios, this is the definitive edition of a shocking classic of unbridled bleakness and innovation
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€ 32
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Dream Dolphin :
Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003)
- 2xLP (Music From Memory, 2023)
‘Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003)’ is a new in-depth compilation of works by Japanese musician Dream Dolphin. Co-compiled by long-time friend of the label Eiji Taniguchi, it draws from a vast discography of music oscillating between IDM, Pop and Ambient. First appearing on Eiji’s compilation ’Heisei No Oto - Japanese Left-field Pop From The CD Age (1989-1996)’, this selection of rediscoveries, further shines a light on the singular musician known as Dream Dolphin and her place in Japan’s rich electronic music legacy
/ Dream Dolphin was originally an Ambient and Electronic project by the Japanese artist referred to simply as Noriko, who moved from studying classic Italian songs as a child, to increasingly being inspired by artists such as PIL, Yellow Magic Orchestra, KLF and movies such as ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘Le Grand Bleu’. The music she released under the name Dream Dolphin, from the age of sixteen, is unique and versatile in style, encompassing Ambient, IDM, Techno, Trance and even Drum & Bass, whilst fusing natural sounds with her own spoken word lyrics
/ Dream Dolphin released an incredible twenty albums in just eight years. In addition to her own projects, she has also put together a number of fascinating compilations herself, as well as composing ambient music to be used in hospitals and other caring contexts. ‘Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003)’ contains 15 tracks thoughtfully selected from various albums that until now were only released on CD format
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€ 26
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Gigi Masin :
Vahiné
- LP (Language Of Sound, 2022)
On November 11th the widely-loved electronic maestro Gigi Masin returns with ‘Vahinè' – a mini album of beautiful and distinct music that is unmistakably his, sounding better than ever. Masin always pours his heart into composing, but here it takes on a potent new level of heavy emotion – as it’s a tribute to his late wife, who sadly passed away last year. “There is a Tahitian dance called ‘Aparima’. It consists of graceful, sinuous and fascinating movements, which tell you stories and legends about love or tradition. The ‘Vahinè' are now dancing, the Tahitian females, with smiles and gestures that could be symbolic or descriptive but are always gentle, harmonious, charming. I was watching this documentary, it was almost 4 in the morning, but I couldn't sleep; I was in front of the television for hours, my wife had passed away the day before, and I was watching hands and arms swaying
/ I told myself that maybe it’s so, at the end of the road it’s possible to realize dreams, and I’m sure that she is finally able to dance like never before, and is able to move without any impediment, with no suffering, free to make all the movements that she couldn't make for so long, turning to me with a smile and a wink. So, in the clouds, you will discover and see an extraordinary 'Vahinè', because she will move and dance and smile until the end of time.” (Gigi Masin). A future-retro dreamscape where stripes of early evening sun pour through partially closed venetian blinds; kalimba, piano and steel pans meet on the incredibly evocative ‘Marilene (Somewhere in Texas)’. The Balearic/Italo house heart of ‘Barumini’ throbs throughout a celestial epiphany, whilst ‘Shadye’ is a sun blinded ambient mirage where angelic voices and electric guitar intertwine, before more heavenly music ensues on the trance-like ‘Malvina’
/ A heart-wrenchingly beautiful evocation of transitioning to the other side, ‘Valerie Crossing’ is Gigi’s compelling and inspirational take on death, with a vivid evocation of something spiritual, existential and metaphysical. His exemplary approach shows decease not as a cause for despair, but a philosophical and poetic exploration of where souls go, when they leave their earthly bodies. Masin closes with ‘Vahinè' – a twitchy, levitational piece of sublime deep techno, which transmits high strength vibrations of powerful emotions. On both this track, and the album of the same name, there’ s no pseudo intellectual ambient posturing with cod academic angles tagged on; This is music of real substance, coming from a real place. It’s saturated with feelings, but turns mourning into affecting art, and even a beacon of hope
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€ 18
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Gigi Masin :
Wind
- LP (The Bear On The Moon, 2015)
Restored and re-mastered from the original tapes comes Gigi Masin’s much sought after first album ‘Wind’. Never commercially released the LP was in fact only given away at a number of small concerts, with many of the remaining copies destroyed during floods in the Venice based musician’s house
/ Quickly becoming seen as something of a landmark ambient album in recent years, ‘Wind' is now lovingly presented again in it’s entirety. True to it’s original private issue it is once again being made available through Gigi Masin’s very own ‘The Bear On The Moon’ label
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€ 19
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Four Tet :
Pink
- 2xLP (Text, 2023)
Four Tet finally gives his Pink album a much needed vinyl pressing. Originally out in 2012 Pink is a firm fan favourite, here's what we said about it at the time of release; For the past two years, Kieran Hebden’s been busy generating a steady stream of 12”s released on his own Text imprint, and is now showcasing his efforts in an album that draws together these and a couple of brand new tracks. In typical Four Tet fashion, ‘Pink’ exhibits a masterful ability to fuse techno, jazz and electronica in an uncluttered sonic model. Playful and evocative sounds from this legendary producer
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€ 26
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Ambassade :
The Fool
- LP (Optimo Music, 2023)
Ambassade's 2019 'Duistre Kamers' album was a huge favourite here at Optimo Music towers so we jumped at the chance to release the follow up; 'The Fool'. Following hot in the heels of the acclaimed 'Young Birds / Palette' 12" on Optimo Music, 'The Fool' is destined to be another Cold Wave, Synth, New Industrial, Experimental ...whatever you want to call it ...classic. We asked Ambassade to tell us a bit about the album
/ Born from several years of research and contemplation on the human mind ‘The Fool’ can be understood as a reflection to the dark energies - natural, political, human and otherwise - that are released when it comes to religion, greed and power. Historically, some rulers have used religion to legitimise their power. We were also inspired by wanting to examine what negative impact religion can have from the fact that it’s always dominated by men
/ This was pursued by exploring a wide range of diverse and unusual types of instruments that took on a new approach of tonal expression, with the use of detuned choral and voice samples, droned tape loops and DIY metal and found percussion. It’s from these diverse sources that the process of creativity keeps persistently mutating. This process was focused through the enigmatic electronic and percussion composition from the band which alternates between foreground and background for the haunting vocal performances
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€ 26
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Le Motel & Bruce Wijn :
Maar
- LP (Cortizona, 2023)
Le Motel and Bruce Wijn met at school, during a school art trip to Munich. They went separate ways for a long time. Hailing from Brussels, Le Motel’s world is a vortex of sight and sound that takes in the many and varied corners of the planet. As a music producer and film composer his versatility has taken him to festivals and clubs in every direction as naturally as he has ventured out to the less accessible areas of the globe as a field recordist.It’s somewhere in between these spaces that Le Motel operates, gathering unique experiences and sounds to channel through his studio
/ Bruce Wijn is a Brussels-based guitarist who played in several postrock kind projects such as Sound Film, 52 Commercial Road, or more shoegaze orientated Lazy Sin. These collaborations gave him the opportunity to perform in various locations in Belgium, France, England, and the USA. As a musician, his focus has always been attracted by progressively built rhythmic melodies, which would eventually turn into long reverberated or distorted swells, or the other way round
/ All these experiences brought them both to the idea of scoring movies with different yet similar approaches. That’s how their first collaboration happened as Le Motel was working on the soundtrack of the movie 'Binti' and invited Bruce Wijn for the track Exode, in 2018. Since then, they’ve been working on other scoring projects, such as the feature film ‘Aller Retour’ more recently. Alongside the movie scoring activities another audiovisual live project was born, in collaboration with Antoine de Schuyter and his mesmerizing images. This one is more focusing on tape textures, field recordings and glitchy effects in order to build atmospheric tracks that they decided to bring together in a first album ‘MAAR’. The album is elaborated as a soundtrack for an imaginary journey between cold seas and volcanoes explorations
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€ 22
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Schntzl :
Holiday
- LP (Cortizona, 2023)
On their 3rd album Casper Van De Velde and Hendrik Lasure, the two SpongeBobs of Belgian jazz, enter Cortizona and take you on board of their newly discovered musical spectrum. Rollercoastin’ between extreme emotions Casper and Hendrik slide through 90’s Euro-optimism on synths, frantic drum rolls, lost piano sounds and sample wizardry: blending Spanish guitars, voices of singing ladies, slow mo clarinets and the patterns of a percussion robot. ‘Holiday’ is the result of a residency in Ravenna, Italy in October in 2021 where musique concrète, replica sounds and frenetic hyperpop textures sneaked into the musical world of schntzl. Sculpting a world of friction, hypodermic joyful changes, sad euphoria and good old plain fun
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€ 23
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Arthur Russell :
Picture Of Bunny Rabbit
- LP (Rough Trade, Audika, 2023)
In 1986 Arthur Russell was diagnosed with HIV, that same year he released his career-defining masterpiece ‘World of Echo’, the first and only solo album issued during his lifetime. Arthur had found his voice and a fresh direction with a set of new, transformative material, unlike anything he or anyone else had previously released. His illness ensured that the artistic growth and sense of exploration encapsulated in ‘World of Echo’ would be tragically curtailed. Within six short years Arthur was gone
/ Arthur’s final years were filled with a renewed commitment to creativity and unceasing live and recording work. He regularly performed the ‘World of Echo’ material and incorporated several of its compositions in collaborations with choreographers active in New York’s innovative dance community. Arthur worked closely with Diane Madden, Allison Salzinger, Stephanie Woodard and John Bernd, usually playing his cello and effects boxes off stage as the choreographers’ pieces were performed. In 1993 Arthur posthumously received a prestigious Bessie Composer Award for his work in the dance world
/ Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ features nine previously unreleased performances from this era compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister. A further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive. The track listing includes an exceptional and dramatic solo recording of “In The Light of a Miracle” and the enigmatic title instrumental “Picture of Bunny Rabbit”, written especially for a friends pet rabbit. The bulk of the material was recorded with engineer Eric Liljestrand at Battery Sound Studios, New York, which was located directly opposite the World Trade Center and at Arthur’s apartment studio in the East Village
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€ 29
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Onra :
Chinoiseries Pt. 3
- 2xLP (Favorite Recordings, 2023)
Almost 10 years have passed since Onra arrived with the charmingly eccentric Chinoiseries LP. 32 Hip-Hop beats formed the sample-based project - dusty Chinese vinyl hissing and crackling throughout – resulting in an intriguing and spontaneous mix of the producers interest in exploring a newly-discovered style of Music with his love for classic Hip-Hop production. Using the style of analogue MPC production combined with the somewhat restrictive record sampling of strictly Chinese Music records, he has been able to be creative over three volumes, an amount of 100 instrumentals, despite the challenge of finding more obviously standout samples in Chinese music
/ The Chinoiseries projects are the type of albums that invites the listener to play it from beginning to end, in order to really enjoy the trip and appreciate the variety of rhythms and textures spread over those 32 short instrumentals. In that way, “Pt.3” is no different to its predecessors, but the originality of the samples, the curious harmonies and the odd-drum patterns still makes the album sounds as fresh as the first one. Onra finishes this epic trilogy with class as a result of extended record digging across the Far East and the producer's own development over the preceding 10 years
/ As a producer who has released records inspired by 80's Funk, 90's Hip-Hop and R'n'B, Electronic and even a Spiritual Jazz project, “Pt. 3” brings this stylised set to a close. Normally a man of few words, Onra has his own take on the three Volumes: I see the first Chinoiseries as a trip, inspired by my own first travel to Asia, each beat representing one particular moment of the journey, the second one, more like a soundtrack to a movie, each beat representing a different scene, and the third one, I tried to create a dark, smoky and mysterious cinematic atmosphere so you could create your own movie in your head. For this last episode, I just really wanted to have fun with this type of material for the very last time. I dug deeper than ever and I have tried to do as many different rhythm patterns as possible, from various influences like Hip-Hop (from different eras), to Bossa to Indian Music to Psych Rock, Soul, etc. and try to portray a different image of Chinese Music
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€ 26
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Mulatu Astatke, Fekade Amde Maskal :
Ethio Jazz
- LP (Heavenly Sweetness, 2015)
"The Ethio Jazz album by Mulatu Astatqé is a jewel of the modern Ethiopian music and a mythical album, since the beginning of Ethiopian music reissues (mainly on Buda Musique). An incredibly groovy Ethiopian record, originally from 1969-1972. Amazing orchestral ‘Ethio-groove’ filled with US soul, jazz, sometimes Latin and the deepest Eastern rhythms, even including some great nasty and dirty fuzz guitars
/ A true gem of Ethiopian modern instrumental music, which illustrates perfectly this symbiosis of strong rhythms and quality arrangements of subtle yet deep Ethiopian melodies. A must for all ’60s/’70s collectors! In the Ethiopian musical landscape, Mulatu Astatke is a unique musician, composer, arranger. His real contribution consists in his action for instrumental music, in a country where orchestral traditions doesn’t exist. For the last 30 years, he is the leading head of the Ethiopian musical scene. First vinyl reissue and definitely one of the most important Ethiopian music albums.” - Heavenly Sweetness
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€ 19
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Terekke :
Improvisational Loops
- LP (Music From Memory, 2018)
Terekke drifts gracefully onto Music From Memory with a long player of looping ambient pad pressure...
/ The recording of Improvisational Loops began in 2012 during yoga classes at Body Actualized Center in NYC. In the spirit of past ’New Age’ or Minimal music, it aims to open up a space within the room giving the listener a chance to explore inward or outward. It was recorded using a digital synthesizer, reverb and looper
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€ 19
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Onra :
Chinoiseries Pt. 2
- 2xLP (Favorite Recordings, 2023)
'Same Same but Different', the familiar phrase heard throughout south east Asia, a perfect description to characterize Onra’s latest project, a follow up to his 2007 LP - Chinoiseries. So almost five years later, here we go back on the trail of another Asian beat journey with 32 Hip Hop instrumentals inspired by Chinese and Vietnamese music. A lot has happened in between: The Big Payback with Byron the Aquarius, a beats LP “1.0.8” plus 2010’s acclaimed boogie tinged hip hop LP “Long Distance” while along the way he’s revisited South East Asia on a few occasions adding to his Asian record stack on each occasion
/ The exotic, mysterious pop and folk Chinese records of the 60s and 70s with their epic operatic and orchestral feel and sealed from the Western counter culture rumblings of the time, not to mention alive with vintage vinyl hiss and crackle, may not seem the easiest source material to work with but after hermetically sealing himself in his Parisian beat cave Onra has come with a more than worthy return for all the time and money spent in the vinyl basements and backrooms of the Far East
/ There's ample variation but a coherent whole, from the more electronic feel of "A New Dynasty" and "All Night", to the soundtrack vibe of "Mai's Theme" and "Fight Or Die" and the straight beat sound of "No Matter What" and "Remember The Name" and he's even found some breaks! Inspired by the idea of the LP as a sequence of film scenes this intense burst of beats and distinct vibes form an accomplished rounded full length
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€ 26
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Haruomi Hosono :
N.D.E
- 2x12" (Rush Hour, 2023)
First ever vinyl pressing of Haruomi Hosono’s full album N.D.E. Featuring Goh Hotoda, Yasuhiko Terada, Yasuaki Shimizu, Bill Laswell & François Kevorkian. Ever since his days as a pioneer of Japanese electronic music in the 1970s, Haruomi Hosono has constantly pushed forwards musically. The 1990s was a particularly fertile decade for the Yellow Magic Orchestra co-founder. Following two decades spent creating and releasing innovative electronic pop, imaginary sound worlds and inspirational ambient music, Hosono established the Daisyworld label to showcase cutting-edge ambient, techno and electronica, while also embarking on a wide range of often overlooked collaborative projects
/ N.D.E. – , one of the headiest, psychedelic, evocative and gently mind-altering albums in Hosono’s vast discography, is one such project. It formed part of a run of albums that saw the Japanese producer embrace contemporaneous influences – think Spacetime Continuum style ambient techno, DJ Spooky-esque illbient, weighty ambient dub and the ‘ambient house’ antics of The Orb – in his own inimitable, far-sighted style. He was ably assisted on N.D.E. by an undeniably impressive roll call of collaborators, most notably no-wave hero turned ambient explorer Bill Laswell (who Hosono subsequently worked with on joint album Interpieces Organisation), NYC DJ/producer Francois Kevorkian, and fellow Japanese ambient pioneer Yasuaki Shimizu
/ With such a stellar cast-list, it’s perhaps unsurprising that N.D.E. has achieved cult status over the years, despite being near impossible to find outside of Hosono’s native Japan. Remarkably, it never received a full vinyl release, with only five of the set’s cuts appearing on an ultra-limited sampler. Now Rush Hour is putting the record straight, delivering a DJ-friendly, remastered version that spreads that album’s seven tracks across two slabs of vinyl, cut at 33rpm
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€ 26
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Philip Corner :
Philip Corner
- LP (Slowscan, 2023)
Green vinyl with hand numbered insert. Slowscan Vol. 59 is a 12" vinyl containing Philip Corner’s Gamelan-IX-March: prelude at the World Fair, Vancouver, Indonesian pavillion, 1994, featuring the NYC ensemble Gamelan Son of Lion & fragments of ‘When they pull the Plug’ with miscellaneous native instruments from Surakarta
/ Philip Corner (1933) is an American composer, musician, artist, theorist and teacher. Corner studied at The High School of Music & Art and Columbia University NYC and under Olivier Messiaen in Paris in the 1950s. From 1960 to 1961 Corner did military service in Korea, where he studied Korean traditional music and calligraphy, from which he often takes inspiration in his compositions and scores
/ After his return from Korea Corner was introduced to John Cage and became his teaching assistant together with Richard Maxfield. He took over Cage’s class at the New School for Social Research during the late 1960s and taught music at various schools in New York, which he helped innovate. Through his first wife, astrologer and trance medium Julie Winter, Corner became associated with the Christian-inspired Church of Religious Science, for which he composed meditative music. Corner is a founding member of Fluxus, with which he has been associated since 1961. In the early 1990s he retired from teaching and moved to Italy, where he married dancer and choreographer Phoebe Neville
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€ 25
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Rick Tomlinson, Ben Chasny :
Waves
- LP (Voix, 2023)
With a friendship stretching back nearly 20 years, it strangely ended up being a couple of childhood photographs that finally brought Ben Chasny and Rick Tomlinson together as collaborators. Both have rich musical backgrounds: Chasny being a member of the psych-rock outfit Comets on Fire but probably best known for his solo project, Six Organs of Admittance, while Tomlinson has released numerous records as Voice of the Seven Woods/Thunders and under his own name. Recorded at Tomlinson’s house in Todmorden over three days one June, initially the pair didn’t quite know where they wanted to go with their musical direction. Tomlinson kept pulling out super rare records from his vast collection for inspiration and they sat and listened to the solo piano recordings of Popol Vuh’s Florian Fricke but they knew they needed to land on something that was intrinsically them
/ The result is 6 instrumental tracks that capture beautifully fluid and interlocking guitars played with deft grace and skill but also a subtle looseness. On the 9 minute-plus ‘Wait For Low Tide’, the sparse and spacious back and forth playing becomes utterly hypnotic, neatly capturing the kind of natural and intuitive playing that can only come from music made between friends who understand the crucialness of leaving space for one another. While acoustic guitars are the primary means of expression on the record - from the soothing and gentle ‘i’ to the intricate playing of ‘Waking of Insects’ - the pair delve into ambient drone tape loop territory on the humming 16 minute ‘Paths of Ocean Currents and Wind Belts’, which further adds to the deeply textural, spacious and immersive feel of the album
/ All the tracks were recorded in one take, with the titles all stemming from translations from the Chinese book, The Dream Pool Essays, and then mixed in London at Jimmy Robertson's SNAFU studio, with additional mixing and mastering from Andrew Liles. The laid back, breezy and spontaneous approach to making this record is one that was reflective of the pair’s friendship and camaraderie, with their relationship ultimately driving the tone and feel of the finished album. “We hiked around the countryside, climbed into church bell towers, drank delicious beer in the middle of sunny afternoons, and had fantastic dinners,” says Chasny of the three-day recording period. “I think all of that wound up in the music. I really had the best time in the world
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€ 29
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Tongue Depressor :
Bones For Time
- 2xLP (Worried Songs, 2023)
Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey's generous latest offering is a tape-mangled, xenharmonic trip into the dissociated outerzone. Properly next level spirit-calling drone musick that references Phill Niblock, C.C Hennix and La Monte Young, as well as cosmic psych explorers like Hototogisu, The Skaters and Double Leopards
/ Tongue Depressor's 'Burnish' was quietly one of 2022's most outstanding releases - a light-headed ritual that summed up so much of the year's nascent trends. Xenharmonic tunings, tape-dubbed organ drones, cautious non-repeating mathematical bell patterns, all of it rolled into a blur of sonorous future-ancient experimentation. 'Bones For Time' is a different proposition; picking up where its predecessor left off in some respects, but pulling everything out into syrupy long-form, shifting the focus from elemental intrigue to dizzying tape textures and consciousness-expanding harmonies
/ The album is split into four 20-minute sides, each one investigating a separate instrumental fixation or process; the connecting thread is Rowden and Birdsey's discrete philosophical outlook, which they impress on each single-take expression, whether they're losing bowed strings in saturated fuzz, or pulling metallic clangs through fluttering tape heads. Importantly, none of it is overdone, heir hands-on compositional/improvisational process sparks a spellbinding level of restraint, flexibility and oversight
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€ 36
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Bearer :
Praxis
- 2xLP (Ana, 2023)
2 x 12" with double-sided insert in thick plastic sleeve with screen-printed lacquer artwork. If only we still had a music press we'd have a name for this kind of thing. In its absence you'll have to make do with the nonsense pouring from my mouth. So then, how to describe what Bristol's Bearer are up to? Praxis is something approaching their third or fourth release, this time debuting for ANA, tellingly a label with a liking for off-centred/time-dilated/subterraneous electronic musings, and this ambitious two LP set is by some way Bearer's most unapologetically singular contribution to date
/ You get four full sides of under-soil expulsions, haunted guitar abstractions and dub-aligned rituals that sit between the walls of consciousness, purgatorial sound that's not quite made its way in from the next room. Something like, but crucially not quite, Shackleton at this most refracted, Labradford's isolationist period, or, probably most appropriately, a picking up of the baton Kye discarded a while back - think that first Helm LP, Vanessa Rossetto, Lambkin himself of course
/ It's a lonely old sound, old being the operative word, dredged from some ancient depths where you probably best not venture or transmitted through one of those portals Lovecraft opened on the Holloway Rd and sent floating and scheming up the M32. Murky, psychoactive unspoolings without centre and possibly charged with sinister purpose. Listen under the cover of night. No need to lock the doors. No-one's visiting. Let's call it improvrished and move on to the next
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€ 32
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Swallow :
Body Horror
- 12" (Ana, 2020)
"Societal deterioration vibes." Pressed on black 12". In stamped sleeve. 280 copies
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€ 12
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Gamba :
Grifedom II
- CD (Ana, 2022)
Black CD in stamped sleeve with postcard. 50 copies
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€ 12
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Oyl :
Urm
- LP (Ana, 2021)
Heavyweight vinyl in stamped sleeve with double-sided insert. UK label ANA serve up this debut album from a mysterious outfit known as Oyl. The music is just as mysterious and experimental and takes you on an introspective journey. Made on a collection of hardware amongst other bits, the record has oversized 808 bass sounds, dripping water effects, intricate sound designs and bit-crushed pads that make for dynamic tracks always on the move. The mood is often dark and dank, with abstract moments and an overtone of psychedelia that takes you into a whole new world of sound
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€ 18
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Gamba :
This Green And Pleasant Land
- MC (Ana, 2021)
Assembled radio transmissions 2018-2021. Edgeland detritus. Edition of 50. 110 minutes
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€ 12
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Kesa Getame :
The Black Dog
- 12" (Ana, 2021)
Pressed on black 12". In stamped sleeve. Furious debut from Kesa Getame. Precision drum programming and remorseless, uncompromising swing across four battle-ready tracks. It's music situated within dystopia, no doubt, but associations with only cataclysm and dread seem superficial. Vicious euphoria feels more appropriate, and it delivers this within a cutting-edge framework that manages to balance meticulous detail and raw expression whilst making it all sound effortless. Serious business
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€ 12
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Alter Ego, Matmos :
Pranam - A(Round) Giacinto Scelsi
- LP (Die Schachtel, 2021)
Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, Fulvia Ricevuto, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Pranam - A(Round) Giacinto Scelsi, a never before released body of recordings interpreting the works of the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, made with Matmos (Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music - moving at a glacial pace of tightly wound energy - Pranam’s two sides radically rethink the terms electroacoustic music in ways that still feel radically ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape
/ A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Pan Sonic, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others
/ Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2005, this process led them to invite Matmos, the American duo of Drew Daniel, Martin Schmidt - acclaimed for a body of visionary albums at the vanguard of electronic process and sampling - to collaborate on a series of interpretations of works by the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi
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€ 22
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Alter Ego, Pan Sonic :
Microwaves
- LP (Die Schachtel, 2021)
Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the Italian experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Microwaves, a never before released body of recordings of works composed by Atli Ingólfsson, Giovanni Verrando, Yan Maresz, and Riccardo Nova, made with Pan Sonic (Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music, the LP’s blistering structures, tones, and textures - plowing forward with frenetic energy - remain radical and ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape
/ A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others
/ Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2004, this process led them to instigate a collaboration Pan Sonic, the Finnish duo of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen, pioneers of a remarkably distinct form of rhythmic, experimental electronic music, and regarded by many as one of the most visionary and irreverent projects working in the field during the '90s and 2000s
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€ 22
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Carter Tutti :
Feral Vapours Of The Silver Ether
- LP (Conspiracy International, 2022)
Yellow vinyl. Maiden vinyl edition of Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti’s 4th world ambient trek pairing wistfully romantic cornet and vocals with lush, oil-colour pastoral electronics - RIYL Jon Hassell, Julee Cruise, Martin Denny, Coil! ‘Feral Vapours of the Silver Ether’ (2007) was the 2nd album by Chris & Cosey as Carter Tutti after 2004’s ‘Cabal’. The project was their concerted effort to explore more sensual, even psychedelic, forms after more than 25 years of defining synth-pop and techno-pop in their own image since departing from pioneering industrial band Throbbing Gristle
/ Anyone expecting Chris Carter’s puckered, ductile rhythms may be left wanting by this album, but anyone who loves his sleek, layered synth contours, or the intoxicating presence of Cosey’s voice and brass are strongly encouraged to revel in its sexy sensuousness, and especially so if they haven’t already. For some historic context, ‘Feral Vapours of the Silver Ether’ was realised during a period when Chris & Cosey were getting the old band back together for Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Part Two - The Endless Knot’, which also appeared in 2007 with corresponding live shows
/ It was a period fraught with internecine squabble and stress (as outlined in Cosey’s ‘Art, Sex, Music’) due to working with Gen again, and it’s maybe possible to hear Carter Tutti here decompressing and meditatively focussing on themselves. An ideal way into the album is its highlight ‘Acid Tongue’, with Cosey’s folksy lilt splitting difference between Angela Conway and Teresa Winter, and perfectly suspended in the ether of her husband, Chris’ slow, spangled synths. Or you might as well start at the front with ‘So Slow the Knife’, which lays out ideas nodding to Martin Denny’s exotica or Hassell’s 4th world motifs in Cosey’s cornet and Chris’s lolling pulses, while ‘Black Dust’ and the foreboding, NWW-esque ‘Feral Vapours’ closer will find favour with dark ambient souls
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€ 23
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Current 93 :
Night At The Four Winds Bar Maldoror
- LP (Cashen's Gap, 2023)
Utterly beautiful mixed-coloured-vinyl. 500 copies made. Inserted into a risograph-printed brown-paper-bag sleeve. A complete reworking of C93’s seminal and criminal Live At Bar Maldoror (1986), with the original album playing forwards in the right-hand channel, and playing backwards in the left-hand channel
/ This was in fact how David had wanted the album to be released in 1986, but technical problems with thus cutting the album at the time meant it was released in what he considered—and still considers—to be a flawed and failed manner. This is how it was meant to sound. Released to celebrate C93’s sold-out London Channelling (11 March 2023) for David’s 63rd BirthDay
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€ 39
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Chris & Cosey :
Elemental 7 (The Original Soundtrack)
- LP (Conspiracy International, 2022)
Green vinyl. A stone cold classic of the early ‘80s interzone between what we now call post-industrial and proto-techno styles. It’s perhaps most notably hailed as one of the first ever recordings to combine Roland’s 303 and 808 boxes in its album highlight, Dancing Ghosts, and still sounds entirely, remarkably future-proofed a whole generation down the line. Recorded in 1982, completed in ’83, Elemental 7 marked a decisive move away from the sensual synth-pop of Chris & Cosey - itself a break with the bitterest ends of their previous group, Throbbing Gristle - to a blend of abstract, synthesised atmospheres and needlepoint rhythm programming joined by processed vocals, Cornet and a mass of self-built electronic instruments
/ Nowadays, with reams of recordings from the early ‘80s now back in circulation, it’s perhaps easier than ever to hear the contrast between CTI’s sound and what they did before it, and how incomparable it was to practically everything else, especially in terms of CTI’s approach to clarity and emulated space, and particularly so as they worked outside of the usual big studio system, instead helming to DIY principles which have served them richly to date with little or no expense to fidelity
/ As the soundtrack to a video work, Elemental 7 also found Chris & Cosey reprising their multimedia praxis with John Lacey, who previously worked with Cosey in COUM Transmissions, before that unit bifurcated and morphed into Throbbing Gristle. The album's sounds and arrangements, oscillating between breathtakingly immersive ambient architecture and inimitably tight electro-techno templates, are sensitive to synaesthetics and course with an amorphous nature and sensuality which simply didn’t exist before they brought these sound to life in this manner. Elemental 7 has cast a looming shadow of influence over almost all electronic music since it was made, so it almost goes without saying that it’s essential, historic listening
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€ 23
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Current 93 :
If A City Is Set Upon A Hill
- LP (Cashen's Gap, 2022)
Utterly beautiful picture disc. 500 copies made. Inserted into a risograph-printed brown-paper-bag sleeve. Three years in its creation, birthing and borning, it follows on from 2018’s million-selling classic, The Light Is Leaving Us All. We are OverMoon to announce the following release information pertaining to the brand new full-length album by David Tibet’s Hallucinatory ChartToppers Current 93, entitled If A City Is Set Upon A Hill
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€ 39
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Current 93 :
Great Aleph Lies Dreaming
- 12" (Cashen's Gap, 2023)
Utterly beautiful mixed-coloured-vinyl. 500 copies made. Inserted into a risograph-printed brown-paper-bag sleeve, with artwork by David Tibet. A ReDreaming of the epic and erratic C93 album, Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain (2009), with outtakes and intakes and spacing and aching from that album, as well as The Moons At Your Door, Birth Canal Blues, and BallStorm, Sing Omega. Released to celebrate C93’s sold-out London Channelling (11 March 2023) for David’s 63rd BirthDay
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€ 39
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Current 93 :
The Light Left You Quite
- LP (Cashen's Gap, 2023)
Utterly beautiful mixed-coloured-vinyl. 500 copies made. Inserted into a risograph-printed brown-paper-bag sleeve. A ReLighted mix of C93’s million-selling The Light Has Left You All. New cross-fades between the tracks, a different beginning, a different ending, and a total reversal of the stereo channels. Inserted into a Risograph-printed brown-paper-bag sleeve, with artwork by David Tibet. Released to celebrate C93’s sold-out London Channelling (11 March 2023) for David’s 63rd BirthDay
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€ 39
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Chris & Cosey :
Musik Fantastique!
- LP (Conspiracy International, 2022)
Pink purple vinyl. First released in 1992, Chris & Cosey's hyper melodic, electro-tinged 'Musik Fantastique!' is finally released on vinyl for the first time as part of the duo's remastered limited edition vinyl series
/ When Throbbing Gristle disbanded in 1981, Chris and Cosey embarked on a career as a duo that'd see them through four decades (and counting) of constant experimentation, reinvention and innovation. By the time they released 'Musik Fantastique!' they were already deep into their journey, and had settled into a relaxed groove. With little to prove, they were able to concentrate on slick songwriting and twitchy beatbox and synth work that was pulling in as much inspiration from Detroit techno and electro as it was chilly European pop. Nowhere near as gloomy and sensual as 1987's well-known "Exotika" or its grinding, industrial followups, this album sounds bright in comparison, with fizzy electronics and fourth-world FM sounds replacing the usual thick Wax Trax-era thump and erotique tension
/ 'Sound of Sound' almost nudges into psychedelic trance territory (at least an early iteration of it) with lysergic, filtered arpeggios and wonked electro percussion, and 'Masqued' combines that level of drugginess with a tempered 4/4 grind and John Foxx synth wails. 'Afrakira' is particularly worth a closer look, giving Cosey a chance to experiment with her vocals over electronic marimba hits and uneasy TV movie textures - as if Jon Hassell was producing an Enya record, in the best possible way
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€ 23
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Valgeir Sigurðsson, Sigurður Guðjónsson :
Perpetual Motion
- MC (Bedroom Community, 2022)
Perpetual Motion is the soundtrack to Sigurður Guðjónsson's multisensory sculpture created for the 59 International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, and presented at the Icelandic Pavilion in Arsenale, Venice
/ The interplay of sound and vision features throughout Guðjónsson’s oeuvre. The artist uses intricate soundscapes as the foundation of his works, drawing out the acoustic properties of his visual investigations to create a stronger link to the subject matter. Perpetual Motion features a visceral, 45 minute long soundtrack delivered in ‘vertical stereo’ which was co-created by the artist himself and Valgeir Sigurðsson
/ The artwork offers a poetic exploration of materiality at the edge of the boundaries of perception, powerfully combining moving images and sound to activate the space and create an entrancing, meditative experience for visit
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€ 16
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Valgeir Sigurðsson :
Dissonance
- LP (Bedroom Community, 2017)
History freely dilates and collapses on Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Dissonance, his first solo release since 2012. Its three large-scale works are haunted by the old Western tradition, infused with the ethereal workings of electronics and sound manipulation. Dissonance treads elegantly along a fine line between traditional symphonic organicism and the fissures of the faltering structures of reality. It takes forward Sigurðsson's typically expansive, panoramic writing, and elevates it to a perpetual construction and deconstruction of time and space
/ These are hardly his first experiments with the archaic technology of classical instruments, but here the distance between past and present is precisely what the music itself is designed to explore, and to distort. Recorded and produced between September 2015 and November 2016 at Greenhouse Studios, Dissonance is disarmingly human, reflecting the most extreme four years of Sigurðsson’s life full of ecstatic joy and deep sorrow. Dissonance is a personal and collective musical treatise to explore and question a world that is collapsing under its internal dissonances
/ The recording process on Dissonance incorporates an orchestral recording technique that Sigurðsson has been developing for some years now, where he breaks up the orchestra and records each of its sections separately. Layer after layer he records performances by collaborators Liam Byrne and Reykjavik Sinfonia. A handful of string players and just one of each of the orchestra's instruments are then multiplied to create an imaginary orchestra. This method enables Sigurðsson's complete control over all the details and nuances, and the trade-off for the time-consuming process is a truly unique sounding ensemble that is at the composer's disposal for further electronic manipulation. This also results in an elastic palette of sound for the live performance version of Dissonance which Sigurðsson will take to the stage in 2017, alongside Liam Byrne (on strings) and visuals created by the Antivj collective
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€ 26
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Audrey Carmes :
Quelque chose s'est dissipé
- LP (Métron, 2023)
Audrey Carmes is a composer and artist based in Paris, France. Having graduated from the Paris School of Fine Art, she found herself drawn towards the city’s experimental electronic music, developing a sound practice that she combined with her poetry and writing. On her spellbinding debut album Quelque chose s'est dissipé, Carmes creates spacious worlds that shimmer with subtle intricacy. Inspired by krautrock, ambient and avant-garde electronic music, the French artist draws on a range of sonic elements to create her own distinct blend of sound design and composition
/ Songs build through evolving layers of synthesizer, easing the album seamlessly through its eleven tracks, surrounding Carmes’ delicate vocals and spoken word segments with bass guitar, vibraphone and flute. “This album was conceived as a contemplative journey, a remedy spelt with whispers, hushed soundscapes and repetitive patterns, it hosts the wish to find both appeasement and peaceful strength”
/ For Carmes, the making of the album became a path towards healing. Examining her thoughts and experiences, she treated the creative process as an experiment in care. Indeed, the rough English translation of the album title reads ‘something has dissipated’. “Through this project I entered into movements of introspection and reconstruction. It was a kind of a meditation on the vertigo of our existence by approaching the void, getting lost and finally coming back to familiarity’’
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€ 26
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Ben Frost :
The Wasp Factory
- LP (Bedroom Community, 2017)
Clear vinyl. In advance of new music from Ben Frost in 2017, Bedroom Community is excited to present the definitive recorded version of his 2013 opera and directorial stage debut, The Wasp Factory, based on the novel by the late Iain Banks. Setting his unwitting characters against the backdrop of vast, implacable forces of nature—storm, sea, fire, and even their own madness— Frost reaches deep into his formidable arsenal to reveal an unexpected warmth, from the composer of electronic experiments like Aurora and Theory of Machines. The focus here is on the live sound of the Reykjavík Sinfonia, recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio II and, for the first time, the human voice. He sets David Pountney's Libretto to tuneful, even soulful vocal lines; an extraordinarily unreliable narrator describing scenes of extreme violence and horror in music of incongruous loveliness
/ Rather than attempt to represent his protagonist onstage with a singing, acting boy, Frost infamously cast an ensemble of 3 women to give voice to his dissociated internal monologues: Lieselot De Wilde, Jördis Richter and Wildbirds & Peacedrums' own Mariam Wallentin. And just as he did with the highly detailed instrumental writing on his albums like AURORA or Sólaris (composed with Daníel Bjarnason), here Frost creates a seamless collaboration of performer and interpreter, each singer and each player fully and sensitively inhabiting their respective nuanced parts
/ And the recorded result defiantly stands apart from the realm of traditionally “classical recordings”, framing in the highest definition every moment of this studio performance - the confrontationally close breath of strings and vocalist alike push and pull against a range of digital shapes and textures. The Wasp Factory is not too far from those albums in terms of continuity with Frost's thematic obsessions. Like Sólaris, which was inspired by another so-called "sci-fi" novelist's literary masterpiece, The Wasp Factory asks what it means to be a human being, and what happens when that human being gets lost in the labyrinth of his own psyche. And like AURORA, and By the Throat, it asks where—and whether—the boundary can be drawn separating the human animal from the terrible, destructive brutality of nature
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€ 26
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Lyra Pramuk :
Delta
- 2xLP (Bedroom Community, 2021)
Purple vinyl. Life and society emerge where water tessellates over land and provides fertile soil. The chances of evolution that made them interact as they did could have had meaningful environmental consequences had things developed differently. For Lyra Pramuk, that fertile geology provides the ground for her albums. Fountain was that burst of water and swell of energy that propelled her to critical acclaim. Delta is a new take on a traditional remix album, centred on transgenerational dialogue and global storytelling, and will be released again via Iceland’s Bedroom Community label. Projecting Fountain through prisms, wordless songs fractalize into lush creations that blossom with new life
/ On Delta, a dozen artists across four continents freely interpret Fountain across a double LP, again featuring Donna Huanca’s surreal artwork, and the unearthly graphic manipulations of Nufolklore Studios. Remaining faithful to Fountain’s presentation, Lyra’s curation reflects her commitment to stylistic diversity, with the old guard and the next wave alongside each other. Where some artists chose to rework existing works, others composed new material from fragments found across the record. The results showcase the very themes of wordless identity conflict and technological concerns that Lyra and her foremothers have projected
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€ 59
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Valgeir Sigurðsson :
Architecture Of Loss
- LP (Bedroom Community, 2012)
Gatefold sleeve. The parameters of musical possibility are vast on Valgeir Sigurðsson’s third LP; Architecture of Loss. The music flows from no “notes” at all to lyrical, folk-like melody, from spare, acoustic sound to dense digital intervention. Originally composed for the same titled ballet by Stephen Petronio. Architecture of Loss is a powerful work in its own right in which Valgeir works from a broad palette of absences. By deploying an array of digital processes, a small, flexible ensemble and pared- down musical materials, the music can pivot instantly into someplace radically different. The viola hangs onto a single note, for instance, then transforms that note into a scraping, rasping effect
/ That transformation from pure tone to pure gesture ripples through the fiddle’s electronic multiples until the whole texture has turned inside out; a spare, sputtering, abstract electronic beat yields to the shaggy sounds of a few live drums or vice versa. The result is what sounds like a completely different piece of music. The performers were handpicked from trusted Bedroom Community regulars: in addition to Valgeir himself and composer/keyboardist Nico Muhly, the album features violist Nadia Sirota - her sound is as deeply individual and immediately recognizable as the sound of her speaking voice and takes full possession of the notes on the page—and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily - a secret weapon of a sideman who excels at exactly the things you can’t put down on paper, from solid grooves to scribbles of noise
/ The resulting piece maintains a structural unity surpassing either of Valgeir’s previous, more formally open LPs. While his solo debut Ekvilibrium boasted singers like Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Dawn McCarthy, the voice of that record was unmistakably Valgeir’s own. On his second solo disc - the soundtrack to the film Draumalandið - the suite of movements released on disc enjoyed an aesthetic life of its own independent of the finished film. Draumalandið and Ekvilibrium were allowed to develop freely as recording projects whereas Architecure of Loss had to be realized with physical performance in mind, by its players and dancers. This album represents the piece as conceived and reconceived for the stage, and then reconceived again as pure music (the movement “Gone, Not Forgotten,” for instance, is exclusive to this recording). Created, pored over and developed: the result is a meticulously designed structure, a sound architecture of musical and physical gestures and stillnesses.
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Early Fern :
Perpetual Care
- LP (Métron, 2023)
The bulk of Perpetual Care, Early Fern’s third album for Métron Records, was inspired by memories of a time and place of great emotional significance. Early and their partner had been working at a rural farm in Central New York, living in a small campervan nestled in a valley between two long ridges, with flowing creeks and rocky waterfalls, surrounded by hemlock and maple trees
/ Unexpectedly they were evicted from this place of vast natural wonder and their lives were hastily upturned. Unable to return to the place they had grown so fond of, Perpetual Care stands as a document to this moment of upheaval in Early’s life and the recollection of their former home
/ A deeply personal record, Perpetual Care stands as the first musical creation from Early after beginning hormone replacement therapy for gender transition, an experience they believe heavily informed their relationship to their memories and to these songs. But despite this intimacy, with Early bravely sharing their interior experience with the world, Perpetual Care is an overflowing and expressive ode to the life force of Mother Nature. Densely layered, the album ebbs and flows and stands as a rich sonic monument to the beauty and healing power of nature
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Valgeir Sigurðsson :
Kvika
- LP (Bedroom Suck, 2022)
Red vinyl. Kvika is the brand new album by Valgeir Sigurðsson. The music was used as the score for the wartime film Mala Risa (Little Kingdom) by Slovakian director Peter Magát, and is now released as written on the composer’s own Bedroom Community label, performed by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Bohdan Warchal Slovak Chamber Orchestra, The University Choir Technik, and a number of Valgeir’s close collaborators from previous projects, including violinist Daniel Pioro
/ Kvika is the Icelandic word for magma – the molten mantle of the earth that sits below Iceland in giant reserves, prehistoric reservoirs of heat simmering away beneath stoic, frozen landscapes. This record is formed from 21 thoughtful musical stills, isolated feelings captured in sound in which low end modular synth manipulation on a tectonic scale pulses and moves swiftly to underpin Pioro's soaring solo violin and Valgeir’s cinematic arrangements. The sound is experimental, utterly beautiful, and unmistakably his
/ Valgeir has become a master of sound to get lost in. Through his layering of his collaborators’ instrumental and vocal parts and a nuanced balance of electronic and organic sound, Kvika is a perfect collection of moments that last only as long as they need before taking us elsewhere. After his award winning album Dissonance, it is a measure of his artistic inclinations that he looks to a shorter form of music making. Where Dissonance overwhelmed the ear with subterranean noise, sounds that seemed to last forever, Kvika shimmers above the earth, fleeting and momentary
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Bellows :
Handcut
- LP (Planam, 2010)
Bellows is the duo of Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti and ‘Handcut’ is their second project. For ‘Handcut’, Bellows used a simple technique of cutting / destroying and amplifying vinyl records with contact microphones, creating new grooves and physical loops while capturing the sounds on a revox tape machine with long tapeloops. No further processing or transformations were applied apart for a couple of effect pedals and sine waves. A sort of atmospheric and modern electronic music recorded at the beginning of the twentieth century on 78rpm shellac records
M/M
€ 19
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Hans Krüsi :
EX HK.
- LP (Alga Marghen, 2023)
While preparing a new edition of Anton Bruhin works in 2008, Alga Marghen discovered some mysterious tapes by Hans Krüsi. Fascinated by the raw and brute contents of those sounds, mixing field recordings of insects, sheep and distant bells with primitive chanting, percussive noises and distorted radio folk songs, Alga Marghen started to conceive one of the most obscure editions in his catalog, an LP to be issued in collaboration with the Swiss Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau (the repository of the artist’s estate), published on the occasion of Alga Marghen’s invitation to the Artist’s Record Pavilion at Art Basel 2008 in an edition of 200 copies and instantly sold out
/ The Swiss-born, self-taught painter Hans Krüsi (1920-1995) was a wiry man who eked out an existence on the margins of society. Even among outsider-art experts, his work is less well known than that of his Swiss compatriot Adolf Wölfli, who died in 1930 and whose richly patterned drawings have become treasures of classic European art brut, or raw art, made by untrained, visionary artists. Krüsi was orphaned as an infant and brought up on a farm in northeastern Switzerland by foster parents who largely ignored him. He scraped by with odd jobs (including gardening work) and eventually settled in the city of St. Gallen. There Krüsi lived in run-down buildings. In his late 20s, he began commuting by train almost daily to Zurich, to the west, where he sold flowers and, later, his artworks, on the Bahnhofstrasse, one of the most luxurious shopping streets in Europe.
/ Among the wall-to-wall clutter of Krüsi’s ramshackle lodgings, where pigeons flew in and perched, evidence of an unexpectedly experimental spirit abounded, including Krüsi’s old cameras and the second-hand tape recorders with which he liked to capture the sounds of birds, insects and church bells. The artist’s inventiveness and fertile imagination seemed to contrast sharply with his humble way of life. Krüsi took subjects from the agrarian world that he knew: alpine farmhouses, forested mountains, cows, birds, rabbits and cats. In his varied oeuvre, the folkloric and the psychedelic often appear to converge. Some works are even hallucinatory, with bright, brushy passages of acid green, lemon yellow or Pepto-Bismol pink in which watchful, lounging cats, clusters of dithering birds or watery human figures huddle or writhe.
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€ 22
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The Rova Saxophone Quartet, Andrea Centazzo :
The Bay
- LP (Ictus, 2023)
On the same trip to the United States that produced “U.S.A. Concerts” and “Environment for Sextet”, Andrea Centazzo also connected with the San Francisco-based Rova Saxophone Quartet, formed the previous year by Jon Raskin, Larry Ochs, Andrew Voigt and Bruce Ackley (all playing various saxophones). While not as well-known now as they once were, over the last 40+ years the ensemble has produced dozens of albums and collaborated with diverse figures like Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and Henry Kaiser. The first of those collaborations captured on tape was "The Bay", recorded in California during December of 1978
/ In Centazzo’s own words: “At the end of the 1970s this group (R.O.V.A.) of four saxophone players appeared on the scene of improvised and jazz music, bringing with them a gust of fresh air in their unusual approach to themes, technical dexterity and daring choices of language contamination”. Launching in with the almost symphonic piece, “Trobar Clus”, which takes up the majority of the first side and deploys complex clusters tones and rhythms to startling effect, the album progresses through a series of pieces that follow Centazzo’s disposition toward working across diverse arrangements of players, breaking down into trios, duos, and full ensemble works, each composed by the quartet, Centazzo, or in collaboration between the two
/ Utilizing compositional structures that allow broad spaces for improvisation, while highlighting each player’s highly individual skill set within a various ensembles, trios, duets and solos, to underline the soloist skills of the musicians, and organizes the sound situations into ensembles, trios, duets and solos, “The Bay” is a stunning piece of much neglected creativity, riding the American and Italian scenes, from the mid to late 1970s, as well as drawing the ear back toward the origins of The Rova Saxophone Quartet
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Andrea Centazzo :
U.S.A. Concerts
- LP (Ictus, 2023)
The Italian Ictus imprint was founded in 1976 by percussionist and composer, Andrea Centazzo, and his wife Carla Lugli. Running for just under a decade, until relaunching during the mid-2000s, the label produced a couple of dozen highly celebrated releases, the majority of which loosely fall under the banner of free jazz. Ictus’ second batch of releases from the label’s historic archives logically begins with Andrea Centazzo’s “U.S.A. Concerts”, originally issued in 1978 and out of print on vinyl for the majority of the time since
/ “U.S.A. Concerts” draws on the same rough period when Centazzo was working in the United States at “Environment for Sextet”, which was reissued in the previous batch, and features many of the same players - Polly Bradfield on violin, Eugene Chadbourne on guitar, Tom Cora on cello, and Toshinori Kondo on trumpet, and John Zorn on saxophone - in different configurations. In fact, the first, second, and seventh tracks - “Sextet Improvisation”, “Duet Improvisation # 1”, “Duet Improvisation # 4” - were all recorded on the same day at the same location - WKCR Radio in New York on November 7, 1978 - as the aforementioned album
/ Beginning with the brilliant textural and tonal explorations of the full ensemble encountered in “Sextet Improvisation”, the album quickly moves toward quieter and more restrained investigations of roughly similar ground, moving through a series of duo improvisations between the percussionist and Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, and the under-celebrated saxophonist, Jack Wright, whose howling horn is transformed to otherworldly effect by the reverberance of the space within which he works
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Steve Lacy :
The Ictus Archives Vol. 1
- LP (Ictus, 2023)
Both “The Ictus Archives Vol. 1” and “The Ictus Archives Vol. 2” draw on the same period that the veteran saxophonist produced “Clangs” and “Trio Live”, both recorded in 1976 during of two weeks that he was touring Italy with Andrea Centazzo, released in 1976 and 1977 respectively, and reissued in 2021’s batch. Gathering four sides of material, issued as two individual LPs, we are offered an incredible insight into that moment’s striking collaborations with Centazzo and the bassist Kent Carter, forming in duo and trio configurations
/ “The Ictus Archives Vol. 1” and “The Ictus Archives Vol. 2” encounter Lacy - one of the giants of American free jazz - already 2 decades into a career defined by brilliant collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, and Thelonious Monk, among others, as well as a sprawling body of visionary work as a leader. Like so much of his work leading into this period, it draws upon the saxophonist’s belief that an artist should play what you feel’, a position that Centazzo - roughly 15 years Lacy’s junior - recalls as having torn down the curtain that separated his technique from his creativity
/ The first volume of Steve Lacy pieces from the Ictus Archives features five pieces: “Figment”, “Coastline”, “Swab”, “Hooky”, and “The Duck”, encountering the saxophonist playing solo live renditions of some of his classic pieces from the period (“Coastline” appeared on his seminal FMP LP “Stabs / Solo In Berlin”) and in two duos with Andrea Centazzo, one of which, “The Duck” was previously issued as a solo piece (also on “Stabs / Solo In Berlin”) and now emerges in this new form. The recordings featured across the album’s two sides were captured on February 18th 1976 in a concert in Udine Italy and have never before been issued in such a focus form
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Steve Lacy :
The Ictus Archives Vol. 2
- LP (Ictus, 2023)
Both “The Ictus Archives Vol. 1” and “The Ictus Archives Vol. 2” draw on the same period that the veteran saxophonist produced “Clangs” and “Trio Live”, both recorded in 1976 during of two weeks that he was touring Italy with Andrea Centazzo, released in 1976 and 1977 respectively, and reissued in 2021’s batch. Gathering four sides of material, issued as two individual LPs, we are offered an incredible insight into that moment’s striking collaborations with Centazzo and the bassist Kent Carter, forming in duo and trio configurations
/ “The Ictus Archives Vol. 1” and “The Ictus Archives Vol. 2” encounter Lacy - one of the giants of American free jazz - already 2 decades into a career defined by brilliant collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, and Thelonious Monk, among others, as well as a sprawling body of visionary work as a leader. Like so much of his work leading into this period, it draws upon the saxophonist’s belief that an artist should play what you feel’, a position that Centazzo - roughly 15 years Lacy’s junior - recalls as having torn down the curtain that separated his technique from his creativity
/ The first volume of Steve Lacy pieces from the Ictus Archives features five pieces: “Figment”, “Coastline”, “Swab”, “Hooky”, and “The Duck”, encountering the saxophonist playing solo live renditions of some of his classic pieces from the period (“Coastline” appeared on his seminal FMP LP “Stabs / Solo In Berlin”) and in two duos with Andrea Centazzo, one of which, “The Duck” was previously issued as a solo piece (also on “Stabs / Solo In Berlin”) and now emerges in this new form. The recordings featured across the album’s two sides were captured on February 18th 1976 in a concert in Udine Italy and have never before been issued in such a focus form
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€ 19
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Daminhao Experiencia :
Planeta Lamma
- LP (Planeta Lamma, 2023)
Though often compared to Frank Zappa, Moondog, Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, Jandek and Father Yod, Damiao Ferreira da Cruz, better know as Damiao Experiença, it’s a truly unique outsider multi-instrumentalist (without even the remote capability to play any of the many instruments he uses) compulsive hoarder from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Reportedly born on sept 27th, 1935 in Bahia, Damiao lived an unhappy childhood and ran away from home at the age of 10 to escape the mistreatment by his parents
/ In Rio de Janeiro he served as a radar operator for the Brazilian Navy; while in the Navy he allegedly fell off a ship's crow’s nest, hitting his head on the floor, which could have provoked his erratic mental state. Desertion is also sometimes mentioned in his auto-biograpgy as well as the fact that he was sentenced to solitary confinement for many years. After retiring from the Navy Damiao went to live with a prostitute in a stilt house, became a pimp and was able to produce his record LPs thanks to money obtained via procuring. It was in the early 70s that he adopted the name “Experiença” as an homage to Jimi Hendrix Experience, his favorite band and major influence
/ In 1974 he self-released his first album, “Planeta Lamma”, and many others followed throughout the 1970s to the early 1990s, all issued on his own Gravadora Planeta Lamma. Well known for his unsociable personality, he always avoided interviews and attention from the media, even refusing to give autographs or sign any documents. Damião's musical style is impossible to categorize accurately, since he experiments with numerous genres, more prominently freak folk, Psychedelic rock, reggae and experimental music. His songs have no logical sense at first sight, and most of them are sung in a dialect created by him, the "Planet Lamma dialect" (spoken in his eponymous "home planet"), with improvised lyrics. The edition comes in 6 different sleeve variations
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€ 25
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Gerhard Rühm :
Blumenstück
- LP+12" (God Records, 2023)
Blumenstück for piano was composed in 1984 as a sound meditation for private useand it celebrates the beauty of the piano sound through tenderness and slowness. All the sounds of the work derived from a word list that lists 168 flower names. All the letters in these names were assigned to notes on the keyboard according to a fixed system
/ Each sound has to be played softly and as long as possible. After the attack, all sounds should fade away into silence...
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€ 29
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Nurse With Wound :
Spaced Muzak
- 2xCD (ICR, 2022)
Steven Stapleton, Andrew Liles, and Colin Potter present a masterpiece of bottomlessly deep cosmic sound, and a newly added concert version recorded by vibraphonist Timo Van Ljuik. Space Musik was officially commissioned by the Melbourne Planetarium 'Science In The Dark' series 2009. This is a remastered version of the original plus three previously unreleased tracks. Amazing 6-panel digipack with artwork by Babs Santini
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€ 19
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Nurse With Wound :
Little Dipper Minus Two Plus (Echo Poeme Sequences)
- CD (ICR, 2023)
ICR is pleased to re-issue this long deleted release, now enhanced for CD in a gatefold ecopack. This originally came out in 2005 on CDR, as a limited edition of only 200 copies by ICR and Klanggalerie, only available at the Vienna live shows featuring Steve Stapleton, Colin Potter, Andrew Liles, Matt Waldron and Diana Rogerson. The gigs were held on 6 & 7 May 2005 at The Anatomical Museum / Narrenturm, Vienna (Austria). Each concert was limited to 50 seats. Fun was had. Lab coats optional. Thanks to Petr Vastl, Amantine, Isabelle, Doris & Walter Robotka of Klanggalerie. Cover by Babs
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€ 16
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Nurse With Wound :
The Ladies Home Tickler And Other Exotic Devices
- Soundbox (ICR, 2022)
This expanded collection is the definitive version of The Ladies Home Tickler. An essential historical document for the new and lifelong NWW follower. Classic tape cut ups, radio sludge, surrealism and abstract chaos. The birth of NWW, a project that is now in its 5th decade. Recorded back 1980, the NWW line-up for these recordings was: Steven Stapleton: record player, cassette machine, noise. Jim Thirlwell: bass, ergonomic jack plug, wasp. William Bennett: guitar, wasp. Perfectly and lovingly remastered by Andrew Liles. Limited edition, 10 page concertinaed insert of Tickler Models by Santini
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€ 17
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Nurse With Wound :
Opium Cabaret
- CD (ICR, 2021)
Contains the full Opium Cabaret album plus an additional 40 minutes previously unreleased studio material. Housed in deluxe full colour digipack with new art by Santini. "Over two drone-afflicted tracks, this album harkens back to the moods explored and perfected in the drone masterpiece, Soliluquoy For Lilith. But rather than falling further down the endless spiral of Lilith, Opium Cabaret functions as a distorted simulation of a familiar experience
/ The loud, colourful, and psychedelic album cover (with NWW’s signature collage work) seems fitting enough to represent a cabaret themed event. Although, a step inside reveals that the sounds present are a distant inebriated haze from any kind of conventional performance. This is a record that moves in slow motion. It unfolds into a floating nothingness to appease broken minds so drenched in opiates, time and place are but frivolous footnotes in a wider narrative of distorted reality
/ More than his other recent works, Stapleton’s latest effort hits a similar note to that of his ‘80s output. Speaking of this era, as the surviving acts from England’s esoteric underground of industrial stalwarts get fewer and fewer, the importance of new Nurse With Wound music cannot be understated." - Discipline Magazin
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€ 16
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Soccer Committee :
Love/Lamb
- 12" (Morc, 2023)
Soccer Committee has always been an consistent exercise in restraint, and offering space. And on ‘Love /Lamb’, this approach has been taken to perfection. The arrangements are still minimal, with plenty of time for the tones and melodies to resonate with maximum impact. Mariska Baars still carefully selects each note, and lets the sound evolve with precise care. Her songs are definitely rooted in the folktradition, but at the same time very ‘ambient’, in the true sense of the word
/ And still: there’s a bit of a different approach here, compared with her earlier work. Tracks like ‘No turn to harm’ and ‘Reaching’ have a few very subtle extra layers added. Aride Afar starts out as Baar’s most distorted work thusfar – she even asked the help of Wouter Van Veldhoven to add a tape loop recording, and that works remarkably well: the track balances on the edge of disintigration, but it takes a master like Baars to keep it together
/ And then Soccer Committee takes another leap in the dark: the B-side opens with ‘Imagining you in the room’. This mostly acapella song stands as Baars' longest composition thus far. Yet not a single tone is redundant, and Baars deliveres it so skillful and humble that it feels like a symphony on its own. After that: just one more track, and you’re ready to re-listen the album. On ‘Love / Lamb’, you can feel the unwavering focus of Baars so present that it’s sheer impossible not to focus as a listener yourself. But what makes Baars so otherworldly is her gift to still make it sound comforting and reassuring rather than demanding for attention. Love / Lamb is an invitation you’re more than happy to accept
M/M
€ 18
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Julius Eastman :
Femenine
- 2xLP (Frozen Reeds, 2023)
Double-LP version, black vinyl in gatefold sleeve -- on vinyl for the first time, in a revelatory new remaster by Jim O'Rourke. In 2016, Finnish label frozen reeds published the première release of Julius Eastman's Femenine, for chamber ensemble. Laying unheard for decades prior, the release documented a 1974 performance by the S.E.M. Ensemble with the composer himself on piano. Lauded in Pitchfork (awarded "Best New Music"), The New Yorker, and The New York Times, the first release of Femenine served as the catalyst that propelled Eastman's music into the mainstream
/ Articles on Eastman's music and its immediate disruptive impact on the classical canon began to appear in every major news organ in the English-speaking world and beyond. His music began to be programmed in major concerts and festivals, several of these entirely themed around his life and work. New recordings sprang up from a fresh generation of musicians engaging with his ideas and interpreting them for a modern audience hungry to hear more. But the raw, emotionally cascading spirit of the original performance continues to inspire listeners. Joyous, insistent, and immersive, Femenine bathes the listener in surges of tonal color from intertwining winds, piano, violin, pitched percussion, synthesizer, and -- uniquely -- the composer's own invention of mechanized sleigh bells, which provide the 72-minute piece with its characteristic pulse
/ Femenine was recorded live by Steve Cellum -- co-producer of Arthur Russell's World of Echo -- and the new vinyl reissue has been remastered from the original high-definition tape transfer by Jim O'Rourke at his Steamroom studio in the Japanese mountains. Illuminating sleeve notes are provided by composer and author Mary Jane Leach, key figure of the Eastman revival and co-editor of the Gay Guerrilla collection of essays on his life and music. Gatefold. "Eastman's stated aim with Femenine was to please listeners, saying of the piece that 'the end sounds like the angels opening up heaven . . . should we say euphoria?" --Mary Jane Leach
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€ 29
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Hiroshi Yoshimura :
Green
- LP (Light In The Attic, 2020)
Clear green vinyl
/ Barely known outside of his home country during his lifetime, the late Japanese ambient music pioneer Hiroshi Yoshimura has seen his global stature rise steadily in the past few years. The 2017 reissue of his lauded debut, Music For Nine Post Cards, along with a slow building cult internet following has helped ignite a renaissance in his acclaimed body of work, much of which has never been released outside of Japan. Known for his sound design and environmental music, Yoshimura worked on a number of commissions following the 1982 release of Music For Nine Post Cards, including works for museums, galleries, public spaces, TV shows, video art, fashion shows, and even a cosmetics company
/ Originally released in 1986, GREEN is one of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s most well-loved recordings and a favorite of the artist himself. Recorded over the winter of 1985-86 at Yoshimura’s home studio, the compositions unfold at an unhurried pace, a stark contrast to the busy city life of Tokyo. As Yoshimura explained in the original liner notes, the album title in the context of this body of work is not meant to be seen as a color, but is rather used to convey “the comfortable scenery of the natural cycle known as GREEN”—which perfectly encapsulates the soothing and warm sounds contained on the album, although it was created utilizing Yamaha FM synthesizers, known for their crisp digital tones.
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€ 49
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Albert Ayler :
In Greenwich Village
- LP (Superior Viaduct, 2023)
"In the mid-'60s, Albert Ayler found himself at the center of major transformations within jazz. On his albums for ESP-Disk', his delivery was radically aggressive and his tone blistering -- aiming for something beyond the New Thing. His music would be further energized when (at the behest of John Coltrane) Bob Thiele signed him to Impulse! As Ayler told The Plain Dealer at the time, 'It's not about notes anymore
/ It's a sound -- a feeling. The approach we're taking will discontinue the use of the word 'jazz.'' In Greenwich Village, Ayler's first LP on Impulse!, perfectly captures the Cleveland-born saxophonist's radiant intensity. Sourced from a pair of live engagements -- February '67 at the Village Theatre on New York's Lower East Side and December '66 at the Village Vanguard -- these recordings show an improved clarity in production and performance
/ Both sets feature two basses (including Alan Silva and Henry Grimes) which allowed the ensemble to go in different harmonic directions while maintaining an organic unity. Of particular interest are 'For John Coltrane,' a tribute to Ayler's mentor who would pass later that year, and 'Truth Is Marching In' where trumpeter Donald Ayler joins his brother to celebrate and ultimately deconstruct several jazz traditions to stunning effect. Vibrant in sound and vision, Albert Ayler's In Greenwich Village is a landmark statement in free jazz and a career high-point for this truly original artist. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this classic album on vinyl for the first time domestically in 30 years."
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€ 24
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SND :
4,5,6
- 3x12" (Snd, 2023)
Clear vinyl. Utterly unmissable first digital edition of SND’s god-tier triple pack, cruelly out of print since 2008, now finally available to discerning dancers/DJs - packing a pinnacle of avant-dance beat science certain to connect with fans of garage, UKF, footwork and experimental minimal techno A peerless masterclass in nanoscopic funk editing, ‘4,5,6’ has never bettered in our books. It originally arrived as a limited pressing of 300 x 3LPs in 2008 but has been sorely notable by its lack of availability ever since, often leading us to offer wild handed descriptions to bewildered mates, who, even if they looked for 2nd hand copies, would still be stumped as nobody in their right mind is selling a set
/ However that is all corrected with this first digital edition, representing one of the most crucial reissues of the decade and an unmissable opportunity to revel in some of Mark Fell and mat steel’s finest work, bar none. When it landed in 2008, a decade after SND’s seminal early trio of self-releases, ‘4,5,6’ frankly took our heads off. It marked a leap in form from their self explanatory ‘Tender Love’ LP of 2002 with a return to their early EPs’ avant club focus, but drawing on processes and tekkers they had sharply refined over the interim. Aspects of the deep house, garage and computer music that originally inspired them are rendered inside out, revealing and recalibrating their mechanics in something like an iridescent Haynes manual one could dance to, or simply marvel at if the legs weren’t willing
/ It stood out a mile from the rote minimal techno and dubstep of the time, which had started moving in the “future garage” direction by 2008, and effectively gave the sharpest side-eye to that sound, innovating-not-imitating in order to update and galvanise the original ‘90s forms with visionary mix of pointillist and mercurial flex. But, no mistake, for all its radical restructuring of garage and related styles, the results aren’t intended for chin stroking: they’re a direct, physically urgent extension of Mark and mat’s deeeep love of dance and electronic music, itself rooted in original synth-pop/industrial and the first wave of US deep house/garage/techno that took their generation, and cities such as Sheffield, by the balls
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€ 32
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Ben Vida, Yarn/Wire, Nina Dante :
The Beat My Head Hit
- LP (Shelter Press, 2023)
Where Ben Vida’s music has previously explored the sound of text at the outer register of electronic composition, here, in collaboration with the Yarn/Wire quartet and the vocalist Nina Dante, the voice and the words it works to inhabit are placed back at the time-scale of a song. There is a familiarity to this music’s combination of restrained melody and heightened atmosphere. It feels, softly, like it’s made by a band: piano, percussion, voice. A composition kept aloft and even by its four stewards through a simultaneity of effort. The pace, across five pieces, hurries and relaxes but never outruns or distends language. You could find a story in the words being sung, if that’s what you need
/ But there are unfamiliar dimensions too. So many threads, so many timelines. A story or a thousand, or a litany of scraps: language complete but raw, language that can or cannot be translated. Singers fused at the breath. Oppositions or dualities—a question and an answer, two sides of a conflict, the sense of being here or over there—are drawn together into a single sentiment, plural with feeling. Voices negotiating in unison how to articulate a stance. Musical cues doling out tension as needed
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€ 25
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Orlando Fitzgerald :
Slow Drift
- LP (Where To Now?, 2022)
Hand stamped/stickered LP in a reverse-board sleeve with a unique hand-printed PVC outer sleeve with real tyre print
/ Where To Now? are proud to present the new album from Irish born, NY based Orlando FitzGerald. Previously recording as ‘Orlando’, FitzGerald has released music via ‘Local Action’, ‘Gobstopper’, and All City affiliated label ‘First Second’. Where Orlando’s previous works have focused on the dance floor, here we see a pivot towards a Cello led sound which embraces experimentation, space, and solitude
/ FitzGerald's approach to music is born from punk, and he carries this DIY approach towards the weighty world of the Cello. With no formal training FitzGerald instead takes an intuitive approach, quietly seeking out expression and treating his sounds to create a unique basin of tension, warmth, and paced release. With percussive contributions from Matthew Byas (of Phony Ppl), restrained Sax skronk from the brilliant Kate Mohanty, synth work from Evan Shornstein (also known as Photay), and vocals from none other than NY Post-Punk legend Anna Domino, FitzGerald has created a cinematic record that moves between worlds of unnerving dread, and lush, hopeful melancholy
M/M
€ 22
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TKB :
Dream Nightclub
- CD (Where To Now?, 2023)
Glass mastered CD in hand-stamped and stickered wallet, and housed in a biodegradable sleeve. “It seems unlikely that Where To Now Records would want to release something made in a shack on a river conservation property outside Melbourne Victoria. I've attempted to make the music that I hear in the dance clubs I dream about. I've never really been to a dance club.. but I'm trying to be sophisticated.”
/ Club music reimagined in an off grid Australian floodplain, of course this is something we’d want to release. Thankfully the accompanying music to the above sentence submitted by Timothy Brown aka TKB is every bit as intriguing as you might hope. ‘Dream Nightclub’ is a truly downbeat and dubbed journey through murky and swamped fourth world bass ambience, and longing, freeform minimal electronics
/ TKB’s drum programming throughout is primitive, minimal, and unnervingly off kilter - shuffling its way through a world which waits… There’s a palpable sense of spirituality lurking low level below Timothy’s electronic works, where ambient scapes move from the deeply minimal, to the lush sublime, to the dense and agitated seamlessly, all underpinned with this submerged experimentalism - conversing with the still oddities which lurk the swamps and plains that consume Timothy’s day to day. Seeming to draw influence from the minimal pulse of Jan Jelinek, the fourth world ambience of Jon Hassel, and the open Dub experimentalism of Early On-U-Sound acts like The Missing Brazilians and African Head Charge, TKB has channeled these experimental strands into something truly dreamlike - a submerged trip which is shrouded in a dense fog…
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€ 14
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Canaan Balsam :
Eternity Lies Within Or Nowhere
- CD (Where To Now?, 2023)
Glass mastered CD in hi-gloss laminate sleeve. Canaan Balsam’s work revolves around the exploration of the dead space between ambient and new age music, the liminal zone between the harshness of industrial, and the beatific serenity of devotional music. ‘Eternity lies within or nowhere’ builds on the themes of loneliness, Isolation, and vulnerability, first explored on their debut album ‘Cruise Utopia’ (Modern Obscure Music). Responding to the context where ever-expanding modes of communication seem only to blur the line between connectivity and solitude, Canaan often returns to the theme of Isolation in his work, creating a deep melancholy - exploring how it can grow and metastasize, until it becomes incommunicable, resistant to empathy; an alien host overtaking the body
/ Canaan’s considered, emotionally aware experimentations hold that unique power to stop our world dead in its tracks, lulling the listener through the darkness but ultimately towards the light - there is intense hope within Canaan’s work, where pieces guide us through a crushingly low emptiness, but always towards glistening introspective peaks. “I wanted a music that spoke to solidarity, that in a quiet manner offered solace, a brief step outside of this world - not a meditation, nor a background ambient shimmer, or anything vague. That inspired to an almost religious intensity of serenity. Something with the potential to engender empathy and clarity. A music you could wear like an amulet, like a spell, like a religious medal around your neck. Music as protection.”
/ Canaan often uses spoken word to further bring his soundscapes to life, but these self penned passages are far from being clumsily walloped vocal tinglers, instead Canaan’s use of voice compliments and contextualizes the states explored within his pieces with hauntingly evocative precision, where carefully curated guest speakers lament a often bleak scene of dread, despair, and longing recollection. The album culminates with the incredible ‘Requiem for a Wolf’, encapsulating the hints of light that have flickered the album, but blooming them to become 6 minutes of pure celestial minimalism, where bells swing in and out of focus, and radiant zither play looms below Canaan’s swelling ambience
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€ 14
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Various Artists :
Beuys 101
- LP Box (Joseph Beuys, 2022)
Edition of 245 numbered copies in screenprinted box with inserts. After a year of activity around the 100th birthday of Joseph Beuys, a publication came about that can be seen on the one hand as a report and on the other hand as a restart. With the support of the research group ArchiVol
/ The portfolio consists of a gramophone record, a cover box and a series of loose sheets with contributions from the artists and organisations that participated in the project. The authors are Stijn Coppejans, Nico Dockx and Johan Pas and the contributors are Thomas Betsens, Stijn Coppejans, German Ambassador Kotthaus, dasKULTURforum Antwerp, Anny De Decker, Ronny Delrue, Nico Dockx, Egon Hanfstingl, Antoon Melissen, Carmine Iacolare, Johan Pas, Mauro Pawlowski, Laurence Petrone, Adriaan Rees, Fabien Silvestre Suzor, Philippe Van Cauteren, Bart Van Dijck, Johanna Van Overmeir, Louwrien Wijers and the Lothar Wolleh Estate
/ The gramophone record contains sound fragments of 3 performances that took place during the Antwerp Art Weekend 2021 in the BeuysCage at Coppejans Gallery: Mauro Pawlowski, Thomas Betsens and Adriaan Rees. Please note: my boxes are mint & still sealed. no dents like you see on the pictures
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€ 49
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Ramon Prats, Pascal Comelade, Lee Ranaldo :
Velvet Serenade
- LP (Staubgold, Cougouyou Music, 2023)
On occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Staubgold label proudly presents Velvet Serenade. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and French maverick Pascal Comelade relive The Velvet Underground - a non-nostalgic reinvention of a musical legacy that takes an influential past into the future. For the world premiere of his latest book Linger On: The Velvet Underground —published by Eva and Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace Library — Catalan music journalist Ignacio Julià wanted to relive the New York band’s original dynamics, that creative friction between an American noise-guitar player and poet, Lou Reed, and a radical, lyrical European pianist and songwriter, John Cale
/ Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and French maverick Pascal Comelade accepted the challenge and the concert took place in Banyoles, Catalonia, on April 28, 2022, as a non-nostalgic reinvention of a musical legacy that takes an influential past into the future. Comelade and Ranaldo met for the first time the same day the piece was created from scratch, at Banyoles’ Auditori del Ateneu, and after a few try-outs, magic happened right away. Local drummer Ramon Prats joined in easily and the three constructed what Ignacio Julià had asked for, not a tribute concert made of more or less faithful covers, but a new thing
/ Pascal came with a clear idea of the songs and laid them down with his minimalist, personal style at the grand piano and small keyboard, Lee painted — with guitars, acoustic and electric, used as cellos sometimes, and weird percussion — the wide palette of emotions these classic songs carry. After months of imagining it, here it was, a fully realized Velvet Serenade. Spontaneous, vibrant and true to the band’s spirit
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€ 19
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The Lo Yo Yo :
Extra Weapons
- LP (Staubgold, 2023)
The Lo Yo Yo was founded in 1984 by Family Fodder’s John Pearce, aka Alig Fodder. They were active for two years and released one cassette, one split cassette with French band Look De Bouk and one full-length LP
/ The Lo Yo Yo’s line-up went through changes over its whole lifetime, but with some constants – most notably singer Joey Stack and drummer Carrie Brooks. Charles Bullen of This Heat occasionally played drums with Family Fodder and produced The Lo Yo Yo’s LP Extra Weapons in 1985. Alig says "It was impossible not to get together. In this era it was quasi compulsory to get a band together with your mates. It was normal to be left-wing, inclusive, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic and in opposition. And to form a band, with or without experience. It started as a rhythm section: Carrie on drums and myself on bass. She brought a mate along (Joey Stack) and so did I (Mick Hobbs)."
/ Pearce’s punchy bass playing and Carrie Brooks’ hard-hitting drumming form the backbone of The Lo Yo Yo sound, with Jo’s singing and keyboard sitting firmly on top. It was made complete with Mick Hobbs on guitar and percussion, and the addition of cellist Annie Hunt. This album collects all tracks from the Extra Weapons LP and the Lo Yo Yo side of the Double Dog Dare shared cassette with Look De Bouk
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€ 19
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Vivien Goldman :
Resolutionary
- LP (Staubgold, 2016)
There’s a myth about music critics that says we are frustrated, wannabe performers. Evidence to the contrary: Vivien Goldman. Ever since she migrated from pitching editors on the little-known music of Robert Nesta Marley to becoming one of the foremost chroniclers of the perfect storm of reggae, punk, hiphop and Afro-Beat, the London-born, New York-based Goldman has made documenting music her primary life work. But between 1979-82, Goldman was also a working musician, creating songs that, years later, would be sampled by The Roots and Madlib. These rare girl grooves are now collected for the first time on Resolutionary, courtesy of Staubgold Records
/ Resolutionary takes us through Vivien’s first three musical formations: first as a member of experimental British New Wavers The Flying Lizards; next as a solo artist, with her single “Launderette,” featuring postpunk luminaries; and then as half of the Parisian duo Chantage, with Afro-Parisian chanteuse Eve Blouin. Goldman’s synthesis of post-colonial rhythms and experimental sounds are threaded together by her canary vocal tones and womanist themes. Her eclectic musical crew included PiL’s John Lydon, Keith Levene and Bruce Smith; avant- gardists Steve Beresford and David Toop; The Raincoats’ Vicky Aspinall; the mighty Robert Wyatt; Zaire’s Jerry Malekani; Manu Dibango’s guitarist; and Viv Albertine, then of her good friends, the Slits
/ The majority of the tracks were produced by dubmaster Adrian Sherwood, and Resolutionary channels the history of a time when the bon-vivant voice of music was in the air, and Vivien Goldman was its eyes, ears, and mouth
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€ 19
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Maleem Mahmoud Ghania :
Colours Of The Night
- 2xLP (Hive Mind, 2023)
Repress. Hive Mind Records are proud to present Colours of the Night, the final studio recordings of deep, hypnotic Gnawa songs from the late, great Maalem Mahmoud Gania
/ The recordings see their first release outside of Morocco on 8 September 2017, and are available as a double vinyl LP and digital download. The release has been licensed directly from the Gania family and comes with the support of all who were involved in the original recordings. Colours of the Night is his first album to receive a vinyl release
/ Maalem Mahmoud Gania was one of Morocco's most famous Gnawa musicians. Gnawa is a musical and spiritual tradition originating in sub-Saharan Africa that has survived as a subculture within Moroccan society for centuries. The roots of the blues can be heard in its hypnotic rhythms
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€ 29
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Kate Carr :
Fever Dreams
- LP (Mana, 2023)
Composed during one of London's endless dark and locked down winters, Fever Dreams is a fantastical, speculative take on high density living. From dark, mouldy rooms, subterranean depths, symbiosis and multi-species entanglements, it cloaks itself in the claustrophobia, excitement and despair of living in a metropolis. It is a work which both celebrates and fears the weeds, spores, vermin and grime of London
/ The dark fantasies, frustrations, and utopian aspirations of its urban survivors. Frozen plastic bags, cramped living quarters, the kindness of strangers, the desperate unfairness of who gets what and when. Almost getting there but not quite. Being overcome by emotion for no reason. Unexpectedly moved, inexplicably destroyed. The never still, forever unfolding moments which comprise living on top of each other. Sinking and swimming; together/apart
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€ 23
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Akira Umeda :
Akira Umeda (1988-2018)
- 2x12" (Lugar Alto, 2023)
The term cruising refers to the practice of seeking and obtaining instant, no-strings-attached sexual gratification with strangers. Akira Umeda was well-acquainted with this term, but his practice of it was not restricted to the aforementioned context. Rather it extended into all spheres of his life and work. A historian by training, he later became a ceramicist, a photographer, a visual artist, a draftsman, a graphic designer, a DJ, a musician, an audio technician, a writer, a researcher... He made forays into a myriad of artistic and academic fields – with a single intention: to achieve a specific objective and promptly exit stage left, as it were
/ Restless, and easily bored, Akira moved seamlessly from one activity to another – he was a little bit of everything (and nothing at all). Such people usually go unnoticed and unrecognized, something which Umeda found perfectly acceptable. Nevertheless, unlike most people, he had no right to see himself in this light – in the light of ephemerality and anonymity –, for in everything he tried his hand at, he inevitably left an impressive and distinctive mark
/ In this album, Akira Umeda mixes 42 recordings, dated between 1988 and 2018, which, in a sense, reflect the incredible range of his creative work: from songs, to ambient music; from field recordings to prank calls. The cassette tapes, whose contents make up this double-LP, had been stored in Umeda’s house in São José dos Campos, in São Paulo, Brazil
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€ 29
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Philip Jeck, Chris Watson :
Oxmardyke
- CD (Touch, 2023)
Philip Jeck sadly passed away at the end of March 2022. But before he died, he was able to work on some audio files sent to him by Chris Watson, who writes: "In 2017 I was recording along the north bank of the Humber estuary and one morning driving back from Faxfleet I was stopped at the Oxmardyke rail crossing. The gates were down. After setting up a microphone array by the tracks for a passing freight train the signalman shouted an invitation to climb up into the gate box to make some more recordings
/ Over the following weeks I made several return trips to Oxmardyke and gathered a broad palette of recordings. I discussed the sounds, stories and history of the site with Philip after a show and we were both excited by the potential of making a work together. Philip was drawn to the ancient history of the area from 6th century Anglo Saxon times to the Knights Templar and how the sounds, rhythms and textures from those periods may still inhabit the contemporary landscape. My thoughts took inspiration from 'The Signalman' by Charles Dickens and the painting 'Rain, Steam and Speed' by Joseph Turner. We agreed to share ideas and exchange tracks. Oxmardyke gate box has now passed into history. I sincerely hope that my contributions may frame Philip's exceptional work."
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€ 16
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Nate Scheible :
Plume
- MC (Warm Winters Ltd., 2023)
Grey sandy solid cassette shell with UV-printed title, double-sided j-card designed by Janek Ufnal, housed in a transparent norelco case. ‘Plume’ is the latest in a series of cassette releases Nate Scheible made following his acclaimed album ‘Fairfax’ (2017), following ‘indices’ on Never Anything Records (2019) and ‘prions and scrapie’ on Unifactor (2020). The sounds on ‘plume’ date back to around 2021 when Scheible received a small grant from Rhizome in Washington, DC to produce work for a new Community Supported Art initiative. His contribution to the program included recordings of over 100 miniature pieces which were distributed across 50 unique cassette releases
/ ‘Plume’ draws on many of these tracks, as well as related outtakes, source material, samples and other surplus audio snippets, recontextualised into a more cohesive whole. The result is a record where Scheible’s pieces retain their trademark spectral atmosphere, but more than ever before depict a restlessness, instability, and constant movement. Just like Kanchan Balsé’s artwork, Scheible’s work reflects an ability to scour his surroundings and arrange what others might dismiss as lacking potential into a striking assemblage
/ Percussive passages make way for eerie drones; field recordings overlap with tape experiments; grainy textures are embellished with graceful tones; hushed voices whisper unintelligibly, only to be soon replaced with blasts of noise… This is music with a strange timelessness, work which is mysterious yet approachable, generous yet modest
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€ 12
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Sagat :
Silver Lining
- 2xLP (Vlek, 2023)
Brussels’ based producer Sagat’s debut album ‘Silver Lining’ lands on Vlek Records. Sagat takes us on a deep dive into a dense sonic universe: Its bass music viewed from multiple vantage points, an explorative zoom onto contemporary dance music’s broad ranging cadences, paradoxically viewed from a distance
/ Silver lining bathes in cluttering rhythms that hover over corroded thumping grooves. Poly chrome synths emerge dramatically, interlocking with oddly timed techno syncopations. Yet all tracks are held together by firm, dubbed out beat repetitions and slabs of sub bass, not without a melodic sense of drama. Sagat’s disintegrated sound-design stands in between musical dichotomies, at once spaced-out, disorienting and emotive, but also explorative, colourful and full of tension. Moving, yet statuesquely standing idle
/ Silver Lining is an album longing for the dance-floor, but also about disconnection from it: A highly personal presentation of this producers’ singular take on bass oriented club music. From our standing point we love to see how Sagat’s music keeps evolving, toying with contemporary club music’s specific tropes, unbound by its normativeness. Silver lining is an album rich in contrast that works for personal listening experience as well as for the adventurous DJ with one foot firmly on the dance-floor, the other somewhere way out there…
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€ 29
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Sage Alyte :
Paume de Pierre
- 12" (Vlek, 2021)
Born in Brussels in 2018, Sage Alyte is the brainchild of Roxane Métayer and David Jarrín Zabala. In its early days, the duo focused on live performances and the joy of intuitively composing and playing. Dressed in black, with the gravity of hypnotising snakes, they played fiery and enveloping melodies in local squats, cafés and small theatres. 'Paume de pierre', palm of stone in French, is a testimony of these spirited moments. Seeking to materialise the fleeting and fascinating phenomena of nature, Sage Alyte has designed a grapevine of visions using a sober array of instruments (violin, banjo, gongs and bird calls) that evoke the scent of stone mortars milling cumin, pepper, cinnamon and herbs, or even those forest rocks that open like hands to dew, to dead leaves and branches that through their interlacing veins reflect starry skies, lights chasing the exact definition of dragonflies, water spiders, beetles, the muzzle of a horse, the shadow of an owl
/ All eight pieces of the album aim to create new ceremonies and rites and thus edge nearer to traditional music from the Andes or France. Sage Alyte understands that daily life is filled with imperceptible ritual cycles of initiation, sowing, harvesting and metamorphosis that are expressed through dances whose steps are vaporous and minimal: in a sip of tea, the turn of a key, the tinkling of a gong. This is why each song is the result of a simple gesture like the rise of shadows, translucent spiders, toads and sparks that do not refer to a distant otherness, but to the lightness of everyday life when paying attention is enough to realize that everything dances, sings and waits for a renewed rite
/ The stories running through Paume de Pierre bring it closer to an evasive tradition of the underground that can be recognised in the ethereal character of lightning and thunder, in the context of albums that take shape in the shade and are often remembered more by their ancient traces than by the echo of their steps. Such works are also manifestations of momentary conjunctions of artists making their different and singular approaches a fertile common ground, as in the case of ‘Trees, Chants and Hollers’ by Valerie Webb & Paul Labreque, or ‘At Swim Two Birds’ by Peter Jefferies & Jono Lonie, or, in a register closer to pop, ‘Flaming Tunes’ by Marie Currie and Gareth Williams. This debut album by Sage Alyte marks an interest in collaborations and sound worlds that draw their inspiration from clay and dust and spiral upwards to connect with the realms of the cosmic and epic
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€ 18
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Muslimgauze :
Eye For An Eye
- LP+7" (Staalplaat, 2023)
The relationship between Bryn Jones's music as Muslimgauze and the track/album titles he would provide (sometimes right on the tapes he would send in for release, but often determined later, sometimes even giving two different pieces months apart the same title, accidentally or not) has always been a little mysterious. Jones himself can no longer be asked, and as you continue to investigate the swathes of material he provided, you hit sources like the DAT or DATs that make up the contents of the new double-LP Turn On Arab American Radio
/ Nine tracks, the first LP/four tracks titled "Turn On Arab American Radio," and the other LP/five tracks labeled only "Arab American Radio." None of them sound particularly radio-esque, although given the simultaneous vastness and ornate focus of Jones's Muslimgauze work that gap between name and sound is far from atypical. Instead, here the de rigeur percussion loops that underpin this particular set of tracks, while occasionally clipping into the fierce distortion that Jones either loved to use or couldn't get away from, steer away from both the more consistent application of that distortion as well as the Middle Eastern and Asian influences he often used. It'd be a stretch to call anything here basic boom-bap production but they come closer to it than a lot of Muslimgauze production
/ And while those loops are, as always prominent, they're not actually the focus; settling into steady vamps as structures for Jones to pursue an extended and often more gentle exploration of the other sample sources he has here. There are stringed instruments, the sound of water, but most prominently or strikingly the human voice. Nothing is in English but tone and the occasional word ("familia", "passport") still provide guides. There are ululations, snatches of melody; but most often speech, dialogue, often tense and harried sounding
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€ 26
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Alex Smalley :
Moments at the Re-engage
- MC (Umor Rex, 2023)
The British producer Alex Smalley has been active for more than a decade building his signature through nature as the central theme across emotional journeys through beautiful ambient melodies. Moments at the Re-engage —his first publication in Umor Rex— was created for a performance in Thuringen, Germany. On the night, while the audience was floating in mineralized neon water, the sound was being diffused across submerged speakers. Multiple synthesizer layers were mixed with processed guitar. Later, additional acoustic sounds, field recordings, voice, and violin were added and processed
/ While the recordings were made in the German winter, the mixing took place on the Island of Koh Phangan in Thailand. Nature, plant medicine ceremonies, meditation, and jungle hikes somehow guided the sound-arranging process. Moments at the Re-engage reach an experience when time and reality dissolve into a single point of complete sedation
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€ 12
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Delphine Dora :
As Above, So Below
- LP (Recital, 2023)
Recital is pleased to present As Above, So Below, a new album from French multi-instrumentalist Delphine Dora. Over the past decade, from poetry reading, chansons, organ performances, tape compositions and so on, each album in Dora’s lush discography feels like a feather from a different bird. A keen ability to defy any singular “sound,” always diving to different depths. As Above, So Below centers around mystic piano and voice recordings. In a distinct gothic landscape, each of the nine tracks float into one another. From verdant piano works that revolve like beautifully stretched out miniatures, expanding and bending like shadows across the floor, to foggy vocal arrangements hovering above beds of rural field recordings. Quiet synthesizers crawl in the backdrops, never disturbing the spirit of the piano motions
/ On the track “Cantique spirituel,” Dora, from a cloud of her phantasmal caroling, recites a poem by German author Novalis (1772-1801). “Blindly we strayed in night’s confusion…” This poetic essence is found throughout the album… “gladness and grief alike consume.”
/ As Above, So Below was produced and mixed by the brilliant British musician Andrew Chalk, whose presence tints the air throughout Dora’s album. Chalk ornaments the pieces with additional instrumentation, along with Jean Noël Rebilly playing clarinet
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€ 29
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Deutsch Nepal :
Vol. 1
- 6xLP Box (Mecanica, 2023)
Six vinyl records on individual sleeves, three postcards set, numbered certificate and one sticker. Peter Andersson, aka Lina Baby Doll, is the man that sustain the heavy structure behind Deutsch Nepal. A legend in the scene of industrialism, avant-garde, music and art in general. He is capable to re-create and re-design old school industrial and electronica, taking elements from apparently dissimilar concepts such as Dadaism and Tribalism, or “contradictory” ideas such as Heathenry and Christianity and converge them into a typical cocktail blend that characterises a unique and now famous style. Manic rhythmic redundancies, strange indefinable samplers, metallic sounds, distorted guitar chords are common elements found in all his works. His main goal?. Mesmerize the listener to subjugate the mind and put the spirit into reverberation mode
/ It is difficult to reduce his works to a simple description. All of them seem to be the evolution of an early idea, a baby that grows old, getting monstrous and divine while doing so. The music itself is a never ending universal paradox in where beats and rhythms have a primary role. Deutsch Nepal is surreal landscapes strongly conducted and cut through with the violent and precise pounding of the repetitive aspect of percussion. It’s a black and white obsession, changing shapes and tonality
/ This boxset compiles the first five albums released by Deutsch Nepal throughout the 90’s (“Deflagration of Hell”, “Benevolence”, “Tolerance”, “¡Comprendido!... Time Stop! ...And World Ending” and “Erosion”) plus an extra record (“Dystopian Selection”) with a selection of tracks taken from old compilations
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€ 108
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Emiliano Romanelli :
Tabulatura (Volume 2)
- MC (Cassauna, 2023)
Music for acoustic guitar, computer and guitar amplifiers. Recorded live at Palazzo Castagna, Città Sant'Angelo, Italy, in November 2020. Acoustic guitar with electronic bow recorded in October 2020. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
/ Tabulatura is a 2008 indeterminate composition for sixteen pre-recorded guitar parts and computer with custom software. It is conceived as a system to generate different acoustic patterns
/ The Volume 2 documents eight pieces recorded live at Palazzo Castagna, Città Sant'Angelo, Italy, in November 2020. The album was recorded on two-track, directly on hard drive, without DSP and overdubs
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€ 13
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Francesco Gennari :
Frammenti
- MC (Cassauna, 2023)
Francesco Gennari is trained as a classical pianist and he commits himself to sound exploration through modular synth practice as further evolution of his musical journey. Gennari's origins are with black and white keys, noise-punk bands and DIY instrument building. This stunning debut, titled Frammenti, is the culmination of all of Gennari's interests
/ Through simple ideas developed with classical techniques like counterpoint and harmonic expansions, Francesco uses the modular setup as a virtual companion, allowing him to do what he wants while remaining open to what the machine whispers to him. Francesco’s music charms with minimal rhythmic patterns, sonic manipulation and lush ambient soundscapes comprised of short ideas full of variations
/ Highly recommended to fans of Caterina Barbieri, Jessica Ekomane, Alessandro Cortini
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€ 13
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Grischa Lichtenberger :
Die Wiederholung der Geschichte der amerikanischen Heimatlosigkeit
- CD (Raster, 2023)
CD packaged in silkscreen-printed trifold cardboard cover, artwork by Grischa Lichtenberger. Originally released in 2005 on his brother's online label Tokyo Trauma, »Die Wiederholung der Geschichte der amerikanischen Heimatlosigkeit« is Grischa Lichtenberger's debut release, predating his involvement with raster. Anticipating and framing his later works, the visceral sound palette, ranging between harsh digital noise and compelling analogue roughness, is put to play in a very unconcerned and uncompromising way on this release, in harmony with an idiosyncratic beat science and an organic, natural feel of song structure and melodies
/ The influence of independent rock music of the 90s, as well as an artistic experimental approach center this record, as his brother David Lichtenberger put it in his description of the record: "Very arty stuff, but first of all characterized by an incredibly direct and heavy sound oscillating between punching beats and digital harsh noise making your ears bleed and you (me at least) scream for more."
/ Conceptionally, »Die Wiederholung der Geschichte der amerikanischen Heimatlosigkeit« (the repetition of the history of American rootlessness) parallelizes the history of European and American relations with the dialectics between digital and analogue technologies. Experimental methods of electronic music are put in a metaphoric relation with a historical topic, like in »Durchquerung 3« scrubbing a wave form of an audio file that is put in a relation to the crossing of the Death Valley by early American settlers. Using the compressor as an expressionistic tool of composition, overshooting the 0db barrier creating noisy artefacts, time stretching, collaging all work as tools for regenerating material, create a relation to an acoustical subconsciousness of recorded sounds (similar to the optical unconsciousness of slow motion and montage that Walter Benjamin described in his first analyses of cinema in the 1920s)
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€ 18
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MEV :
Symphony No. 107
- LP (Black Truffle, 2023)
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Symphony No. 107 –The Bard, a previously unheard archival recording of the legendary improvising ensemble MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), captured in concert at Bard College, New York in 2012. Formed by a group of American expat composers in Rome in 1966, the MEV ensemble played an important role in the development of free improvisation, bridging the live electronics tradition begun by Cage and Tudor and the high-energy squall of free jazz
/ Early recordings like Spacecraft or The Sound Pool unleash volleys of metal and glass amplified with contact microphones, howling winds, primitive synthesizer bleep and raucous audience participation, the intensity of which puts much later ‘noise’ to shame. In later decades, the ensemble would go through many iterations, often including legendary free players like Steve Lacy and George Lewis. In its final years, MEV settled into the core trio of founding members heard here: Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum, using piano, electronics, and small instruments
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€ 29
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Stefan Neville, Greg Malcolm :
Don’t Drown
- 2x10" (Okraïna, 2023)
(...) "Who would attempt to combine cunning ethnological forgery, Scottish folk songs, claw-hammer guitar, untutored horn-tootling, elastically relaxed drumming and garage electronic fuckery? Only Greg and Stefan, high on sea, sunshine and mis-judged micro-dosing – that’s who. ‘Don’t Drown’ was offered as practical advice during the self-described ‘Yellow Submarine’ phase of making this record. And while they managed to avoid literally doing so (phew), they sound here like they got pretty ‘deep in’ to an Octopus’s sound world all their own
/ This surprisingly clear analogue recording has just enough Bikini Bottom grit to ensure traction. The tunes are inviting, and the sonic disruptions are too good-natured and goofy to upset even the most delicate digestion
/ The sessions have had a couple of years to marinate, courtesy of some pandemic, and are here offered in that most Archducal of vinyl formats, the double ten inch. What are you waiting for, a side of Crabby Patties? Get your water-wings and dive in (unless you’re tripping)!" -- Bruce Russell (The Dead C)
M/M
€ 16
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Delphine Dora, Mocke :
L’invisible Est Multiforme
- 2x10" (By The Bluest Of Seas, 2023)
Spot varnish sleeve. “After a first album as a duo released on Okraina Records: "Le Corps défendant", Delphine Dora and Mocke invite us to join them again in listening to a new album. We slip into it as if in a dream, the music carries us away with its floating images. Heard before on a handful of disturbingly beautiful solo albums and in collaborations such as Midget!, Arlt, Chevalrex, Mohamed Lamouri, Mocke (Dominique Dépret's nom de plume) is a subtle and inventive guitarist, who draws melancholic arpeggios, with a beautiful languor, that walk the line between tensions and tears
/ Delphine Dora has been heard with Roxane Métayer, Sophie Cooper, Andrew Chalk, Jackie McDowell, Helena Espvall, Valentina Magaletti ... meeting in a moment of improvisation, a solitary sincopated voice blooming between the black and white keys of her piano, tuning betwist these keys, or at other times in the gap of the right note. Here improvisation feeds on melody, or is it the other way round? Recorded in an old church in the village of Mauzun in the Puy-de-Dôme, by Cyril Harrison, "L'Invisible est multiforme" is an invitation to join them, to let these abstract songs erase our obsessive thoughts of the day, to open ourselves to the vibrant poetry of the air and the evening, to finally forget ourselves. Each note played by these four intertwined hands is like a slight break in the fabric of time, sliding one over the other, reminding us of mortality and its beauty
/ Ritornellas flow out of mechanical clocks, fragile, taking care not to hurt the silence. Both seek to dig and open up new paths to enrich their duet, to open up imaginary landscapes. Sometimes the guitar cuts through the fabric of an organ, fractures the song, just as the rain erases a landscape, redrawing it. But very quickly, both of them continue to follow this new path, improvising what will serve as a framework, a perspective, a language. There is a kind of praise for slowness in this "invisible", a desire to hold back the song, not to let it slip away, to let the listener's ear enter its course, to share the last note, its illumination. Each of these thirteen short sound pieces merge into a common colour, a vibration close to the different tonalities, which inter-penetrate, like a cubist painting. Words cannot take away the mystery of this record, words can only fail to describe the music, you must hear it. “ -- Michel Henritzi
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€ 20
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Dry Speed :
Indium
- LP (By The Bluest Of Seas, 2023)
Spot varnish sleeve. Dry Speed is probably one of the best kept secrets in contemporary improvised music. Featuring Dirk Wauters, Thomas Olbrechts and Joachim Devillé, this Belgian instant no-jazz band has been active since 2002. Anno 2023, Dry Speed continues to explore uncompromised ways of improvisation
/ “Too often we describe music using classifications; genres like “jazz,” “experimental,” “avant-garde” are an easy shorthand to relay the rough parameters of the music to another person who may not have heard it. But these words are useful because they’re so vague, and they are most often used when the impression the music makes is equally vague. But when a group makes sounds that move the listener, these terms don’t hold up
/ Dry Speed has released a record that is, at turns, futuristic and organic. It feels alien and new, like plastic or titanium, but at the same time as if it is shrouded in the natural, growing like moss or amplifying the sound of a great tree’sroots. ‘Indium’ gives the listener multiple entry points into the trio’s music: from a broad soundscape to a densely knitted series of minute and exacting musical gestures. “ --- Nate Wooley (trumpet player and composer), May 2023
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€ 18
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Muslimgauze :
Martyr Shrapnel
- CD (I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, 2023)
'Martyr Shrapnel' was originally released by The Muslimgauze Preservation Society in 2012 in a limited CD edition. Now reissued on CD. Written, played, and recorded by Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze from 1996 to 1998. Mastering by Yuriy Bulychev. Design by Zavoloka. Photography & production by Dmytro Fedorenko. Shrapnel and destroyed machine-gun cartridge were kindly provided by Maryna Fedorenko and Georgiy Potopalsky
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€ 12
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Läuten der Seele :
Ertrunken Im Seichtesten Gewässer
- LP (World Of Echo, 2023)
Somewhere in the Lower-Franconian vineyards lies a hidden and mostly unknown canyon, a place that often returns to the thoughts and dreams of Läuten der Seele’s Christian Schoppik. Though a much rarer occurrence now as a consequence of environmental change, chance encounters upon the area in the past would sometimes reveal small ponds amongst the reeds, teeming with life and populated by colonies of newts and the now endangered yellow bellied toad. The transience of the water and the wildlife it hosts, dependent on season or climate, lends the area an almost fantastical, dream-like quality. Was it ever even there at all? A secret place that may or may not be present holds vast appeal to some enquiring minds…
/ Ertrunken Im Seichtesten Gewässer, the third Läuten der Seele album in two years, is inspired directly by these experiences. Translating as ‘drowned in the shallowest stretch of water’, a title as pregnant with dread as it is wonder, the themes present speak both to personal memories and a wider understanding of place and time, and how we might interpret our own position within an ever-changing, sometimes disappearing world. The record is presented as two long-form pieces divided into four separate movements, each titled so as to reflect this natural environment and its intersection with imagination, relying on processes of collage that draw from myriad indeterminable samples, field recordings and various recorded instruments
/ Those familiar with Schoppik’s work, both as Läuten der Seele and with Brannten Schnüre, will find present many of his signature tropes - the way deeply layered collages render abstracted visions of the past alive in the present - though what is always significant about his approach is not so much aesthetic as the wider concepts it attempts to express and emote. Indeed, emotional response is key to the Läuten der Seele sound, how overlapping notions of nostalgia, memory and identity calibrate experience and understanding of who we are and the world around us, whether it’s a world that’s gone or another imagined into being. If you observe the artwork closely enough, you may find a clue as to the canyon’s location, though such specifics are besides the point. The music itself infers a wider sense of the impermanence that characterises hidden worlds, wherever they might be or whoever they might belong to
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Maxime Denuc :
Nachthorn
- LP (Vlek, 2023)
Repress. Nachthorn takes its name from one of the 78 stops that make up the main organ in St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf. This instrument, equipped with a system developed by the German company Sinua, offers the possibility of controlling all of its keyboards and timbres via a computer. The organ thus becomes a powerful synthesiser. This set-up allowed me to fulfil an old dream of mine : to create an entirely acoustic dance music piece with the organ as sole actor. Oscillating between dub techno, harmonic locked grooves or after-hours pop, Nachhorn proposes a hypnotic music piece whose lines sketch the outline of an imaginary warehouse
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€ 22
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Hania Rani :
On Giacometti
- LP (Gondwana, 2023)
Black vinyl. Bespoke packaging featuring Les Naturals - Chocolat (Gmund) sustainable recycled paperboard made from 100 % recovered paper with Foil Artwork by Lukasz Palczynski. Plus Double sided printed insert and download code. Hania Rani announces "On Giacometti" a tender meditation on the life and art of Alberto Giacometti and family
/ "On Giacometti" is a collection of beautiful recordings inspired by the renowned artist and family and features some of Rani’s most profoundly delicate compositions to date. Invited by film director Susanna Fanzun, to score her forthcoming documentary on the legendary artist Alberto Giacometti, Hania Rani took herself to the Swiss mountains to compose in blissful isolation. As Rani explains eloquently below the compositions are based on improvised melodies, simple harmonies and structures and inspired by the silence of the mountains as Rani returns to her main instrument, the piano. The results are beguilingly reminiscent of her beloved debut album Esja, but with subtle extra layers of synthesiser, and on two tracks cello from friend and long-running collaborator Dobrawa Czocher
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Hidden Orchestra :
Creaks Soundtrack
- 2xLP (Minority, 2023)
Light blue vinyl repress
/ Each vinyl copy contain six 29x29 cm art reproductions by Radim Jurda & Jan Chlup, and features a coupon with a code to download FLAC version of the album
/ Created over 5 years, the music in the game is generative, randomised, and infinite. This OST takes just 21 of the 100+ pieces in the game, and turns them into traditional "fixed" versions of the tracks. The soundtrack reflects Amanita's marriage of beautiful hand-drawn artwork with technology, as well as the game's progression through time - a mix of genres including primitive hand-made instruments, an ambient baroque world with bells and choirs and organs, a Classical world filled with piano and strings, an electronic world pulsing with analog synths, and a futuristic noir underworld with moody bass clarinet..
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€ 26
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Incapacitants :
Repo
- LP (Urashima, 2023)
Incapacitants has made an indelible mark on the noise genre with their relentless pursuit of sonic experimentation. Through their innovative use of electronics, amplification, and feedback, they have created a distinct and recognizable sonic signature. Their performances and recordings often encompass a vast range of frequencies and textures, immersing the listener in a dense and immersive sonic landscape. Repo, the enthralling album by the Japanese experimental project Incapacitants, is a sonic masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of noise music to exhilarating heights
/ Originally released on vinyl in just 300 copies by Japan's legendary Alchemy Records label in 1989, this record showcases the immense creativity and technical prowess of the man behind Incapacitants, Toshiji Mikawa, here still alone (Repo is the last album as a one-man project, as Fumio Kosakai, about two years later after this release, became a permanent member to make Incapacitants a duo). With its relentless cacophony and innovative soundscapes, Repo is a testament to the enduring power of noise as an art form. From the very first seconds, Repo grabs your attention with an onslaught of piercing high frequencies and distorted textures. Mikawa's ability to manipulate sound is immediately apparent as they create a disorienting and immersive atmosphere. The side A evolves, incorporating layers of chaotic noise, visceral feedback, and unexpected sonic surprises, leaving the listener captivated and intrigued
/ The other side explore the concept of rhythm within noise music, defying conventions and embracing experimentation. The pulsating beats and distorted tones create a captivating sense of momentum, while unexpected disruptions and bursts of dissonance add an element of unpredictability. The juxtaposition of rhythmic elements and abrasive noise creates a dynamic listening experience that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Repo is an extraordinary album that drives the limits of noise music, showcasing Toshiji Mikawa mastery of sound manipulation and their unwavering dedication to experimentation. He demonstrates an incredible ability to create immersive and captivating sonic landscapes that challenge the listener's perception of what music can be. With its relentless energy and daring sonic exploration, Repo is a testament to the enduring power of noise as an art form, and a must-listen for anyone seeking an audacious and boundary-pushing musical experience
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€ 24
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Merzbow :
Space Metalizer
- 2xLP (Urashima, 2023)
During the mid-1990s, the Japanese artist went through his most prolific and inspired period of the analog era, releasing masterpieces such as Noisembryo, Venereology, Hybrid Noisebloom or Green Wheels. In that same period, one of his notable and iconic releases, Space Metalizer, released in 1997 under the Canadian label Alien8 Recordings on CD, stands as a testament to his ability to create immersive and mind-altering soundscapes. This album takes listeners on an otherworldly journey, fusing electro-psychedelic noise, EMS Synthesizer, filter and electronics with techno oriented resonance into a unique sonic experience
/ Opening with a surge of swirling noise and cosmic echoes, Space Metalizer pt.1 immediately establishes a sense of vastness and otherworldliness. Merzbow masterfully combines layers of distorted metallic sounds, oscillating frequencies, and disorienting textures, creating an immersive soundscape that feels like traversing the depths of the universe. The intensity builds gradually, capturing the listener's attention and propelling them into a sonic voyage. Closes the A-side of the first record of the vinyl reissue Mirage a sonic exploration of interstellar phenomena in non silent way
/ This track features a swirling combination of celestial textures, shimmering frequencies, and cosmic bursts of noise. The B-side, that include the bonus track Spaceout introduces a more pronounced metallic element, intertwining with the dense layers of noise, filtered with techno resonance. Merzbow's intricate use of metallic samples and distorted textures creates an industrial, almost mechanical, atmosphere with an interspatial rhythmic patterning. The tracks on second vinyl pulsates with a relentless energy, akin to the cosmic machinery of the universe. The cacophonous climax leaves a lasting impact, cementing Space Metalizer pt.2 as a standout moment on the album. Through a combination of cosmic atmospheres, metallic elements, the use of the EMS shynti, the Theremin and the filters, Merzbow takes listeners on a transcendent journey through the depths of space
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Masonna :
Vestal Spacy Ritual
- LP (Urashima, 2023)
Vestal Spacy Ritual, initially released on CD by the Japanese label Alchemy Records in 1999, is a testament to Masonna's ability to create an overwhelming and mind-altering listening experience. Vestal Spacy Ritual starts with a cacophonous explosion of distorted noise and frenzied electronic manipulation. From the very start, Masonna immerses the listener in a relentless sonic assault, utilizing piercing high frequencies, distorted vocals, and a barrage of abrasive textures
/ The second track (all album’s tracks are untitled) sets the stage for the tumultuous journey ahead plunges the listener into a maelstrom of sound, with waves of screeching feedback and distorted pulsations. Masonna's mastery lies in his ability to create a sense of disorientation and unease, as if the listener is navigating through a swirling vortex of chaos. The following handful of tracks that round out the first side of the vinyl reissue are a relentless onslaught of noise, pushing the boundaries of sonic intensity with a really psychedelic touch. The B-side delves even deeper into the realms of sonic extremity. Layers of distorted vocals, shrieking frequencies, and distorted electronic elements converge to create an atmosphere of sheer sonic psychedelic madness
/ The relentless assault on the senses is unrelenting, leaving the listener in a state of sonic disarray. As well as the usual use of ''harstronics'', synth, ring modulator and echo chambers are employed here. Vestal Spacy Ritual can be considered the transition album to Yamazaki's cosmic phase, where the first analog 'space' machines are tried out, combining elements of noise, distortion, and harsh vocals into an overwhelming ‘space’ sonic experience. All the tracks showcases Masonna's ability to manipulate sound, creating an immersive and chaotic soundscape that is simultaneously captivating and unnerving. The cacophony builds to a crescendo, immersing the listener in a tumultuous cosmic sonic ritual. With its unrelenting intensity and psychedelic aesthetic, Vestal Spacy Ritual stands as a testament to Masonna's artistic vision and his commitment to pushing the boundaries of sonic expression
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€ 24
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Various Artists :
Longing For The Shadow: Ryukoka Recordings, 1921-1939
- LP (Death Is Not The End, 2022)
Emerging during the early stages of the recording industry in Japan, the ryukoka style adopted western classical, blues & jazz elements into traditional and classical Japanese music
/ This collection of 1920s & 30s ryukoka recordings follows on from the Kouta Katsutaro tape we put out a couple of years back, and further captures the hauntingly unique sound of a cultural merging that was starting to reflect itself via popular song, ahead of the widespread influence of western pop music during post-war US occupation
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€ 25
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Haruomi Hosono, Tadanori Yokoo :
Cochin Moon
- LP (Light In The Attic, 2023)
Opaque yellow vinyl. The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono is the auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world, putting his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as an artist, session player, songwriter and producer. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit later in his career. Hosono made his professional debut in 1969 as a member of Apryl Fool, whose heavy psychedelia was somewhat at odds with his influences, which leaned towards the rootsy sounds of Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield
/ The latter was one of the main inspirations for his next group, Happy End, whose unique blend of West Coast sounds with Japanese lyrics proved to be highly influential over the course of three albums. After the band’s amicable break up in 1973, Hosono began his solo career with Hosono House, an intimate slice of Japanese Americana recorded inside a rented house with recording gear squeezed into its tiny bedroom. Hosono’s solo career would take many twists and turns from this point forward, with forays into exotica, electronic, ambient, and techno, culminating in the massive success of techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). Released in September 1978, a mere two months before YMO’s debut, Cochin Moon is a clear precursor to the groundbreaking synth and sequencer-dominated sounds that would come to define the iconic trio
/ Credited to Hosono and Pop Art legend Tadanori Yokoo (who created the cover art), Cochin Moon is a fictional soundtrack to a journey into unknown worlds, inspired by Hosono and Yokoo’s trip to India. Initially the album was to be a kind of ethnographic musical document, using found sounds and field recordings made by Hosono himself. Instead, after Yokoo introduced Hosono to the sounds of Kraftwerk and krautrock during the trip, Cochin Moon became something much stranger. Created almost entirely on synthesizers and sequencers with the help of future YMO collaborators Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hideki Matsutake, the music on the album is the perfect encapsulation of Hosono’s concept of “sightseeing music,” transporting the listener to an exotic place that may or may not exist. This highly sought-after album sees its first-ever official release outside of Japan
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€ 35
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Ryuichi Sakamoto :
12
- LP (Milan, 2023)
Clear vinyl. Milan Records is proud to release "12," an intimate collection of twelve compositions by Ryuichi Sakamoto, written and recorded in Tokyo during his fight with cancer throughout 2021-2022. Each numbered title refers to it's recording date. About the album, Sakamoto says: "... after I finally "came home" to my new temporary housing after a big operation, I found myself reaching for the synthesizer. I had no intention of composing something; I just wanted to be showered in sound. I'll probably continue to keep this kind of "diary."
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€ 36
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Hania Rani :
Home
- 2xLP (Gondwana, 2020)
"I feel like 'Home' is a second part of the same book, that the start was in 'Esja', a musical prelude to a real plot. I feel Home is a story with an ending, so the next book can tell a totally different one. I am constantly looking for new ways of expression. I am curious where 'Home' will lead me and my music". — Hania Rani
/ Hania Rani is a pianist, composer and musician who, was born in Gdansk and splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. Her debut album 'Esja', a beguiling collection of solo piano pieces on Gondwana Records was released to international acclaim on April 5th 2019 including nominations in 5 categories in the Polish music industries very own Grammys, the Fryderyki, and winning the Discovery of the Year 2019 in the Empik chain's Bestseller Awards and the prestigious Sanki award for the most interesting new face of Polish music chosen by Polish journalists. Rani also composed the music for her first full length movie "I Never Cry" directed by Piotr Domalewski and for the play "Nora" directed by Micha? Zdunik. Her song "Eden" was used as a soundtrack of a short movie by Malgorzata Szumowska for Miu Miu's movie cycle "Women's Tales"
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€ 26
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Drøne :
The Long Song
- LP (Pomperipossa, 2023)
Drøne have released 3 albums on Pomperipossa records and « The Long Song" is therefore volume 4 in the series... (Drøne also self-released « Mappa Mundi » on their own label on compact disc in 2017). Choir voices - Galya Bisengalieva, Bana Haffar, Ipek Gorgun, Alex Hoàng, Bethan Kellough, Anna von Hausswolff & Jana Winderen
/ What they said about Drøne's previous albums: "What makes this work really shine out is its musical quality... The string work, exquisitely recorded and sorrowful, fuses and transitions with the electronic work in a way that really elevates the latter. It’s a truly well-formed musical hybrid that makes the artificial feel natural and vice versa." [Chain D.L.K.]
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€ 25
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The Dwarfs of East Agouza :
High Tide In The Lowlands
- LP (Sub Rosa, 2023)
Born in 2012 when the three were living in the same apartment building in Cairo's Agouza district, the trio's instrumental improvisation-based explorations are propelled by Louca's North African percussion loops and shimmering keys, Shalabi's West African tinged free jazz guitar and grounded by Bishop's driving Krautrock-style acoustic bass
/ High Tide in the Lowlands was recorded in Brussels at Les Ateliers Claus on September 5, 2017 and is quite an intense experience. Most performances and recording sessions are improvised and this set is no different and even though the group opened the show with Baka of the Future from their first album Bes, it is almost unrecognizable and everything the trio plays is continually morphing into the next unknown idea
/ As the sound, energy, and instantaneous composition flows, the trance is growing and growing, ranging from raw shapeshifting « no (un)wave », free jazz, traditional Arabic and modern experimental explorations to a concrete mystic trip from an universe expanding and contracting constantly. This is earth interrogating the sky, the sky rejoining the earth, an unknown and unwritten cosmogony
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€ 15
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Various Artists :
Fluxus & Neofluxus / Stolen Symphony
- 2xLP (Sub Rosa, Edizioni Conz, 2023)
Includes 24 page booklet. All in all, there are more than 50 pieces, new and old, live and studio, finished pieces and scores to be performed, acoustic and classical, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments
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€ 24
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Martyna Basta :
Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering
- LP (Warm Winters Ltd., 2023)
Opaque white vinyl. On her second release for Warm Winters Ltd., Polish composer Martyna Basta conjures scenes from the blurry edge of memory. An experience one attempts to repress, a lost sensation drawn back towards conscious possession: the images she renders are potent even as they flicker in and out of definition. Basta trained as a classical guitarist, which she exchanged for a multi-instrumental ambient approach on her label debut Making Eye Contact With Solitude. With Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering, Basta extends the diaristic impulses of her recent releases beyond fragments to bring listeners into a full-fledged world, albeit one draped in shadows
/ Martyna Basta’s hallucinatory compositions here accumulate irregular layers of space and feeling such that we are drawn close while exposed to expanses beyond our grasp. The guitar motif—a return to Basta’s musical origins—that grounds the title track glimmers like candlelight while vocal samples introduce an undiscernible conversation accumulating nearby. Throughout the release, voice is layered with sparse field recordings and uncanny instrumental refrains—most affectingly, the zither
/ Basta plays with the voice’s limits and potential: hers interjects on a spectrum from pure, claustrophobic breath to tense muttering to an even hum. Guest autotuned vocals from Claire Rousay arrived tangled up with violin scrawl on “It Could Be As It Was Forever”; the voiceless, gently percussive clamor of “Speechless Lately” is a relief in its wake. Podszepnik is Polish for one who secretly whispers, an intimate confidant, and a pair of tracks by that name act as the album’s two-part centerpiece, between them tracing an arc from a child’s murmurs to a full-fledged chorus of open-throat singing that soars above the weight of an electric guitar. Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering is a dynamic effort from a standout artist in Eastern Europe’s burgeoning ambient-experimental music scenes. Achingly precise in her sense of detail even as she approaches what remains lost or unknown, Basta here makes a strong case for the beauty of uncertainty
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€ 26
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Psyché :
Psyché
- LP (Four Flies, 2023)
Drop a needle on Psyché’s debut album and you’ll see visions, or rather Mediterranean visions, be they of waves of heat shimmering above dunes of sand, or of women dancing around a bonfire on a rocky plain, or of bushy cliffs overlooking emerald-green and turquoise sea. The name Psyché is of course ancient Greek for ‘soul’ or ‘mind’, signifying the band’s love of psychedelic funk, but also the wide range of Mediterranean influences – from Southern Europe to the Balkan Peninsula, and from Anatolia to the Maghreb – that provide an endless source of inspiration for their hypnotic sound and minimalist style
/ Psyché members Marcello Giannini (Guru, Nu Genea, Slivovitz), Andrea De Fazio (Parbleu, Nu Genea, Funkin Machine) and Paolo Petrella (Nu Genea) have been active in the Naples music scene for almost two decades, most notably during the first wave of the new Neapolitan Power movement (Slivovitz, Revenaz Quartet). Over the years they have often crossed paths and collaborated on side projects in various genres (math-rock duo Arduo and, more recently, synth-pop duo Fratelli Malibu), before working together as the rhythm section of Nu Genea’s live band. Following their first tour with Nu Genea in 2018, they started Psyché with the intent of exploring more minimalist styles and making music with just a few elements
/ A unique combination of psychedelia, groove and improvisation, the music of Psyché goes back to the roots of our future; it evokes visions of a mythical past, blending centuries-old music traditions and mixing them with modern genres. Like a warm Mediterranean breeze, it travels across lands, seas and eras, distilling essential rhythms and cosmic pulsations
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€ 26
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Hania Rani :
Esja
- LP (Gondwana, 2019)
Esja is Hania Rani’s debut solo album and for Rani it is her first, real, personal statement as an artist. “No hiding behind the "collaborations" or "projects" anymore. For the very first time, finally - just me, as I am”. Recorded at Rani’s apartment in Warsaw (the piano room has a beautiful reverb and the space has become part art studio and part sound laboratory for Rani) and at her friend Bergur Þórisson’sstudio in Reykjavik, Esja is a series of beautiful melodic vignettes. Sensual, sensitive, rhythmic, atmospheric, free but harmonious, beguiling and hypnotic, collectively they project a sense of unlimited space and time
/ Originally, Rani hadn’t planned to release a solo piano album at all. “I would like to be considered first of all as a composer of music - so not being limited to any instrument or voice or whatever. The solo album came when I went to Reykjavik, where I wrote some new songs instantly while in the studio, so they were almost improvised compositions. It was then that I decided to release an unadorned solo piano album - telling a lot about my musical roots, which are definitely in this instrument. But it’s also just a small prelude of all the music that I want to share in the future”
/ Rani grew up in Gdansk with her parents (a doctor and architect) and surrounded by music and films. Initially inspired to study classical music, she was introduced to jazz and electronics at music school, widening her interests and as she puts it, “mixing Chopin & Schostakovitch with Dave Brubeck and Moderat”. Other inspirations include composers such as Max Richter, Esbjorn Svensson, Miles Davis, Nils Frahm, Murcof, Portico Quartet, Radiohead and even The Beatles.“It’s what connects all these artists that inspires me, their special approach to music and sound. For me they have big hearts and huge minds.”
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€ 26
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Jonnine :
Maritz
- 12" (Idle Press, 2023)
The new solo offering by Jonnine takes its title from her mother’s maiden name – “the most haunted word I know”
/ The collection’s eight songs deploy an eclectic array of scavenged instruments: bass guitar, a broken Swiss metronome, an oddly tuned wooden stringed instrument, sparing use of recorder, Halloween charm bracelets and a homemade glockenspiel found at “an abandoned high school in the hills”
/ Released by DJ Sundae’s Idle Press imprint, Maritz captures a versatile artist at a widening crossroads. Night flights, torn up photos, psychic spiders spinning webs like talismans – the world of these songs is imagistic and unrequited, attuned to absences and afterlifes
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€ 26
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Arovane :
Lilies
- LP (Keplar, 2023)
Die-cut sleeve, poly-lined inners. Arovane's acclaimed 2004 album »Lilies« has been out of print on vinyl for nearly 2 decades now. It finally gets a well-deserved reissue through the Berlin based Keplar label. The new version has been remastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering and comes with a brand new cover artwork
/ Lilies was a follow-up to »Tides« in every sense, exploring a trip to Japan and drawing on shimmering textures and the sort of melodies that you might need some time to recover from. There's a hugely evocative sense to these tracks, emotionally driven, free of complexity or conceit, piano melodies providing the central focus for a twilight cascade of light that seems perfect for the Tokyo skyline - just as the sun sets. It's an album that radiates warmth and vulnerability, fusing the technological might at the heart of each track (and at the heart of the city) with an age-old understanding that certain echoes of sound, small melodic changes and cushioned lullabies can imprint sounds on your mind like childhood memories - remembered forever. Like a dreamlike score, or maybe even an alternate soundtrack to »Lost in Translation« - the sort of music that intertwines with images and stays in your mind indefinately
/ After coming back from Tokyo and completing the production of »Lilies«, Uwe Zahn disassembled his studio in the big flat in an old building in Berlin's Prenzlauerberg district and stored it away in boxes. He needed a break from making music. Lilies was the last album prior to a nine-year hiatus for Arovane, ending in 2013 with the release of Ve Palor
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€ 22
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Stefano Pilia :
Spiralis Aurea
- 2xLP (Die Schachtel, 2022)
Black vinyls housed in a six-panel gatefold cover, includes booklet. Venturing into untapped realms of creative exploration, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, returns to Die Schachtel with a double LP of material that intertwines traces of sacred geometry, collective experience and elusive connections between nature and human kind. “Spiralis Aurea” encounters the composer venturing into unchartered waters, exploring notions of spirituality via a body of twelve compositions, recorded in various combinations with a cast of all-star instrumentalist; Alessandra Novaga, iosonouncane, Silvia Tarozzi, Mattia Cipolli, Ensemble Concordanze, Elisa Bognetti, Enrico Gabrielli, Valeria Sturba, Giuseppe Franchellucci, Adrian Utley, and Cecilia Stacchiotti
/ The roots of “Spiralis Aurea” rest within Pilia’s longstanding, personal engagement with the spiritual and an epiphany had during a visit to the Futa Pass cemetery, the resting place for German soldiers killed in Italy during the Second World War. Deeply moved, he reflected on the profound meanings laying below geometry of its design; “a place"crossed" by thoughts about the landscape, history, symbols, rituals. A work offering a reflection on life and death. A prayer for the living and the dead.”
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€ 38
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Muslimgauze :
Martyr Shrapnel
- 2xLP (I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, 2023)
'Martyr Shrapnel' was originally released by The Muslimgauze Preservation Society in 2012 in a limited CD edition. Now available on double vinyl. Written, played, and recorded by Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze from 1996 to 1998. Mastering by Yuriy Bulychev. Design by Zavoloka. Photography & production by Dmytro Fedorenko. Shrapnel and destroyed machine-gun cartridge were kindly provided by Maryna Fedorenko and Georgiy Potopalsky
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€ 28
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Egisto Macchi :
Gangsters '70
- LP (Cinedelic, Soave, 2023)
First ever release of the legendary composer Egisto Macchi's soundtrack for Mino Guerrini’s 1968 film, “Gangsters '70”. Created in collaboration with Walter Branchi, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, it's among the most strikingly experimental of all his soundtrack work and remains startlingly urgent more than half a century down the road. This album has it all. Psychedelic jazz, free outings, insane flow, tension, energy, melodic beauty and a telephathis interaction
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€ 26
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Lagoss, Banha da Cobra :
Aquapelagos Vol.1: Atlantico
- LP (Keroxen, 2022)
Introducing the first volume on the “Aquapelagos" series - a collection of split LPs where selected artists offer their own take into water surrounded cultures and communities. After the initial release of the Anthology compilation Aquapelago in 2022 (Discrepant, CREP91) this first volume opens up the series with a sound journey inspired by the majestic and sometime furious Atlantic Ocean. The music was recorded throughout special artists residencies held during the Keroxen Festival in 2020 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife where throughout a week each band recorded their own free vision of an aquapelagic Atlantic culture. Philip Hayward, the Australian researcher who coined the term Aquapelago also joins the proceedings with extensive sleeve notes
/ Side 1 is provided by Lagoss – a band comprised of Tenerife based veteran producers, Gonçalo F. Cardoso, Mladen Kurajica and Daniel García while Side 2 is provided by Banha da Cobra, comprising Lisbon-based musicians Mestre André and Carlos Godinho. Both ensembles have addressed aquatic themes in their prior work, Lagoss having represented phantom islands on a series of vivid cameo tracks released as Imaginary Island Music Volume 1 (Discrepant, 2020) and Banha da Cobra having staged a performance within the Mãe D'Água reservoir in Lisbon in 2018, drawing on recordings of place and objects within it to conjure the liquid history of the city
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€ 21
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Russell Burden, Craig Tattersall :
Diagenesis
- LP (Laaps, 2023)
Green transparent vinyl, handnumbered. Russell Burden (Being) is a sound and visual artist living on the south coast of the UK. His practice develops work that explores qualities of ambient perception, most often through the lens of hydrological, geological or biological processes. He has delivered gallery exhibits in various mediums including live cymatic feed, and dark space installation. Russell was also a member of The Humble Bee & Players and last year as artist in residence for a site specific project produced a set of drone works on his own imprint, riverwork press
/ Craig Tattersall (The Humble Bee) works across music and visual art with an interest in their intersection, and often works collaboratively producing art objects and sound works which have been released on numerous labels. His main focus is with environment(s) and his own interactions within. He has curated a number of micro-labels including cotton goods, mobeer:: | moteer::, our small ideas and now co-curates umbrella publishing
/ Russell and Craig have collaborated on several site specific projects over the years (Cotton Goods & Wist), notably sharing a graphic score concept for the production of their Atlantic Cable release. The album Diagenesis represents a change in their working process through which the materiality of field recordings is somewhat privileged over musicality. This work was created through a process of exchange - passing tracks back and forth, each layer of sound buried a little deeper beneath the next
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€ 21
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Kink Gong :
Tanzania 2
- LP (Discrepant, 2023)
8 years almost to the day after releasing his unique re-interpretation album of his field recordings made in the late 90's in Tanzania, Kink Gong is back with another volume of bushmen madness. Here’s what Kink Gong aka Laurent Jeanneau has to say about his end of millennium trip:
/ ‘’My experience in Tanzania is now over 20 years and most of the so called remix was started in Tanzania and left unfinished, then eventually retouched in Vienna, Paris, Shanghai, Kunming, Dali or Vientiane. 20 years later I searched my Tanzanian files and rediscovered unfinished tracks which are being now refreshed on this new record.‘’
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€ 19
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Svarte Greiner :
Devolving Trust
- LP (Miasmah, 2023)
Erik K Skodvin's alter persona “Svarte Greiner” re-appears with another chapter in his “zen music for disturbed souls” series, channeling both spiritual distress and meditation in a live recording from the bunkers of a bombed out brewery. The first piece, entitled “Devolving Trust” is recorded live in the bunkers of Schneider Brewery in Berlin, 2018. Erik explains : “I was invited to use the vast old cellars located underneath the site for a performance / installation
/ Wet and hollow with a dark past and long reverb, it was a perfect location to channel a cello and electro-acoustic improvisation in the spirit of my two long-form, meditative albums Black Tie & Moss Garden. As a 30 minute piece, it was left looping in the room for hours after it ended as an echo of the performance, allowing people to walk around and soak up the sounds and empty hallways alone. I am usually not into the idea of releasing a live recording, as there are so many factors that are lost in the translation from being present and listening to it in another space
/ The eyes, ears and body can often see beyond small mistakes once a live performance unfolds in front of you. The details are usually lost in translating it to a pure recording. I made an exception for this as I feel it translates the live feeling in a way I like. Very personal and full of small mistakes it creates its own life. Also, as an improvisation, I am very happy with it, and have been listening to it on and off since a few years. With this in mind I decided I want it to be another document in my ongoing series of longform, atmospheric pieces following the aforementioned two albums. The second track simply called “Devolve” is mostly constructed out of fragments from the performance as a sort of minimal, reversed echo, further tunnelling into the unknown. These pieces has given me calmness, reflection and escape from the madness escalating outside of our doors. I hope it can do the same for you”
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€ 22
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Elisabeth Klinck :
Picture a Frame
- LP (Hallow Ground, 2023)
White vinyl. »Picture a Frame,« the debut album by the Belgian composer Elisabeth Klinck, was born out of strict isolation and is nonetheless a result of a collaborative process that saw her working closely with artist Oscar Claus. Enriching her compositions for violin with electronic soundscapes and field recordings from their surroundings, the two entered an artistic dialogue that took place inside its own idiosyncratic space outside of conventional time. It is an intimate record in which Klinck’s expressive playing that incorporates unconventional techniques forms the basis of something much bigger: an invitation to inhabit a specific space at a specific time together with the two of them
/ For an entire week in the spring of 2021, Klinck and Claus stayed at an abandoned monastery surrounded by beautiful gardens, but with no power or running water. The intention was to record some of Klinck’s musical ideas on violin, experiment with electronics and acoustic spaces and to get to know each other on a musical level. This proved to be an inspiring and deeply moving process—and the starting point for more. In the winter of that year, the duo set out to the Spanish Pyrenees to build a DIY studio in a small village on a mountain top and record the eight pieces that form »Picture a Frame.« The idea of losing track of time and space is a theme that found its way in these recordings
/ The two spent their days and nights reading, walking, talking, cooking and taking care of the animals living there but also experimenting with sound, improvising together and making field recordings. This deep focus on being present in the moment, listening to the world around them and each other resulted in a holistic experience that was translated into music and sound. Klinck and Claus understand this album as a collage, an attempt to evoke the implicit, an essay that suggests a time and space, and a gentle collision between two people that deeply resonate with one another. It’s impossible to argue with that, and even harder not to be drawn into it
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€ 24
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Kevin Drumm :
Battering Rams
- LP (A Sunken Mall, 2023)
Includes a hand inserted cover image and a 280gsm recycled offset paper insert. From the viscerally punishing and nerve wrecking, to the wistfully sublime, Kevin Drumm‘s work often yield a ferocious intensity through the timbres of minute details
/ On ‘Battering Rams’, sinister forces interlope with glimmers of respite and contemplation, while recurring drones ceaselessly crescendo to near paralysing effect, only for the album's final moments to offer a lofty reprise of boundless oscillation, dispelling all the pent-up tension into a sanguine state of bliss. Once again, underpinning Kevin Drumms’ genius of transforming seemingly trivial sounds into elongated microtonal worlds that stay etched deeply in your conscious, often long after the work's final reverberations have subsided
/ Now, throughout this series of archival works dating from 2000 to 2022, his mastery is once again on full display and available via two new remastered formats
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€ 22
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Wanderwelle :
All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea
- LP (Important, 2023)
Wanderwelle's All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea album comes on the esteemed Important Records! and consists of "electro-acoustic threnodies for an environment at risk due to the effects caused by receding coastlines around the globe." The Amsterdam-based duo tells the story of the catastrophic activity of eroding waves and winds shaping the land that is enhanced by the climate crisis with the music. They have had some real-world and direct experiences of this and have had meetings with local maritime experts who have told their tales and in turn, inspired the pair to compose this moving and poignant music
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€ 24
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Arovane :
Icol Diston
- 2xLP (Keplar, 2023)
The »Icol Diston« compilation, released in 2002 on DIN, comprised the three first EPs released by Uwe Zahn under his Arovane moniker. Following up on vinyl reissues of his path-breaking debut album »Atol Scrap« as well as 2000’s »Tides,« the German Keplar label finally makes »Icol Diston« available in its entirety on vinyl for the first time in a remastered version with new artwork. This expansive reissue sheds a new light on Zahn’s first two outings as a producer on the »I.O.« and »Icol Diston« EPs on Torsten ›T++‹ Pröfrock’s legendary label as well as highlighting his radical inventiveness as a remixer with the two renditions of Pröfrock-produced material offered on »AMX.« Taken together, these musically complex and emotionally rich electronic compositions form the prologue to an artistic story like none other while also documenting a very specific era in cultural history
/ The »Icol Diston« compilation is imbued with a forward-thinking spirit that remains exhilarating until today. It captures the sound of one unique artist, but also electronic music during that time more broadly. This is the sound of opening a new chapter, the willingness to venture into the unknown
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€ 26
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Sonny Sharrock :
Black Woman
- LP (Superior Viaduct, 2023)
"Warren 'Sonny' Sharrock died of a heart attack at the age of 53 in 1994. At the time of his death, many writers noted that he had recently landed a contract with a major label (RCA) and was perhaps 'destined for big things.' In my opinion, these writers missed the point. Although Mr. Sharrock may not have been successful financially (as though that might be a primary motivating goal for any true artist), he was uncommonly successful aesthetically. Certainly, there are a few dubious moments to be found inside his oeuvre, but Mr. Sharrock produced several of the most mind-shredding avant-garde albums ever recorded. Premier among them is Black Woman
/ "Originally released on the Vortex label in 1969, Black Woman may be the universe's first true statement of guitar skronk majesty. It also represents Mr. Sharrock's first date as a leader and stands as the sole documentation of a band that well-understood the essentials of energy. Besides Sharrock's explosive guitar, the band features the omni-directional percussion mastery of Milford Graves (then in the midst of recording Love Cry with Albert Ayler), the gorgeous post-tongue vocalizing of Sonny's then-wife Linda Sharrock, the sinuous bass presence of Norris Jones (later known as Sirone) and some of the most explicitly abstract piano work ever recorded by Dave Burrell. That Black Woman was produced by flautist Herbie Mann, a guy not well-known for his affinity to fire music, makes it even more intriguing." – Byron Coley
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€ 26
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The Earth Catalogue :
Deep Sea Animals
- LP (Pacific City Discs, 2023)
"Here we have an underwater in-submarine field recording of their adventures, intermixed with a slippery-watery score, that surely represents the lurking fresh surroundings of the deep as they retreat further and further to the bottom of the ocean. The cameras, the retracting mechanical sea tentacle, their communication devices, are all audible now for you, as Deep Sea Animals is played out as a fresh digital radio play. All the audio has been preserved at Studio Isabellalei, by Milan W. from the original laserdisc, which was a part of the cinematic curatorial program at the opening for Spencer Clark’s album Avatar Blue, in Antwerp, Belgium
/ With a purchase of the vinyl album of Deep Sea Animals on Pacific City Discs, you not only return to the prehistoric times of 1986, when two brave Japanese submarine pilots were to record deep underwater creatures, but you are also thus thrust back in time to Antwerp 2018, to a romantically titled, Event Horizon Cactus Cooler Laserdisc Theater. Just as well, the proceeds of this disk, tirelessly edited by Spencer Clark, will be donated to the preservation of the ocean, via the inspiring Sylvia A. Earle’s foundation, Mission Blue. Its not that you may or may not believe what I am now discussing with you, its that you can believe, because this disk is real, and thanks to Pacific City and Discrepant we will ride further into the super-natural realms of real life
/ What an amazing experience" - Spencer Clark
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€ 22
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Byard Lancaster :
It’s Not Up To Us
- LP (Superior Viaduct, 2023)
Byard Lancaster was a composer/multi-instrumentalist born in Philadelphia in 1942. He started playing alto saxophone at an early age and later took up flute and bass clarinet. While attending Berklee College of Music, Lancaster and pianist Dave Burrell organized late-night jam sessions with fellow students and touring musicians. In 1965, he moved to New York and quickly became part of the city's burgeoning scene – playing with jazz luminaries such as Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, Bill Dixon and Marzette Watts
/ "It's Not Up To Us", Lancaster's 1968 debut as a leader, was originally released on Vortex, a subsidiary of Atlantic responsible for first albums by Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Sonny Sharrock. Featuring guitarist Sharrock (another Berklee alumn), "It's Not Up To Us"is true fire music – fusing elements of free jazz, soul/R&B and traditional folk song
/ On the opening title track, Lancaster's luminous flute draws the listener in, while bassist Jerome Hunter grounds the tune with a simple descending theme over Keno Speller and Eric Gravatt's syncopated rhythms. "John's Children", a reference to the group's status as post-Coltrane players, showcases the modal strumming of Sharrock's steady drones as Lancaster cries into the void. After repeated listens, Lancaster's original compositions become visceral aural memories ingrained in the ear, while the standards ("Misty" and "Over the Rainbow") sound the most avant-garde pieces on the album
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€ 26
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Mondkopf :
Spring Stories
- LP (Miasmah, 2023)
Turquoise vinyl. Deprived of sanity, Paul Régimbeau aka Mondkopf found new territories of expression with "Spring Stories", a collection of post-rapture moods full of glorious chaos, ready to absorb and re-ignite all that is worn
/ As a phoenix raising from the ashes, Spring Stories captures the earth in full bloom. Darkness & Insanity looses it´s grips as the roots and fresh leaves creates a slow dance towards the sun. Similarly sine-wave drones move around exploding electric guitar improvisations as new light beams on shadow cast corners. The album feels like a 60ies jam set in the post-world psychedelic underground. Heavy, absurd, beautiful and ready to sooth burnt out, depleted minds. Paul has citied that he´s affected as much by folk improvisors such as Master Wilburn Burchette & Robbie Basho as well as the doom drone of giants Earth & Sunn O))). Spring Stories invokes on these, while feeling like a personal blow-out, coming right from the core. Touching and grand, like spring itself
/ The album also features Frederic D. Oberland on two tracks playing variously Duduk & Alto Saxophone. Lastly, The Necks drummer Tony Buck shakes & rattles all over the final - and seriously epic - piece “Continuation”, as the world aligns while the sun rises over its near-dead shape
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€ 22
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Los Mohanes :
La Tumbia
- LP (Moli Del Tro, 2023)
This work is the result of a musical exploration between Joseph Muñoz and Faunes Efe (better known as Filmmaker) where their principal influence was the traditional rhythms of colombian caribbean territory like Cumbia, Porro and Vallenato, merging it with other musical styles like IDM, Ambient, Industrial, Techno, Drone, Field Recordings, No Wave and everything they felt like to listen. The recording process of this album was made by processing acoustic percussion, voices, samples and field recordings of the atlantic coast in Sucre, Colombia
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€ 19
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Jeanne Lee, Gunter Hampel, Michel Waisvisz, Freddy Gosseye, Sven-Åke Johansson :
Scheiße ’71
- LP (Black Truffle, 2023)
Following on from the Bergisch-Brandenburgisches Quartett’s anarchic Live ’82 (BT095), Black Truffle continues its deep dive into the archives of legendary drummer/accordionist/photographer/composer/conceptual prankster Sven-Åke Johansson with Scheisse ’71
/ Recorded in November 1971 during the Berliner Jazztage at a heavy-hitting concert that also included the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and groups led by Peter Brötzmann, Manfred Schoof, and Masahiko Sato, Scheisse ’71 is the only document of a wild, otherwise unrecorded quintet featuring Johansson on drums, accordion and oboe d’amore, legendary free jazz vocalist Jeanne Lee, her husband Gunter Hampel on vibes, flute and bass clarinet, live electronics pioneer Michael Waisvisz on modified Putney (VCS 3) synthesizer, and the unknown Freddy Gosseye on electric bass. Part of a festival centred on giants of jazz like Duke Ellignton and Dizzy Gillespie, the radical performance shocked its audience, who can be heard heckling and yelling abuse at points, including the titular exclamation of ‘Scheiße!’
/ Clocking at just over half an hour and recorded in raw but detailed stereo by Johansson himself, the music burns with intensity while also making room for spacious passages and frequent dynamic movement. Beginning with Lee’s voice, Hampel on flute and Johansson on oboe d’amore in a bird-like game of call and response, the unexpected entry of Waisvisz’s tortured, squelching synth bursts prompts the first of many changes in energy and instrumentation, as Gosseye’s busy, roving bass enters and Johansson moves to the kit, his swinging cymbal work and juddering toms extending the approach of Sunny Murray or early Milford Graves
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€ 22
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Angélica Salvi :
Habitat
- LP (Lovers & Lollypops, 2021)
White vinyl. There’s something familiar in the sounds that Angélica Salvi creates. In her previous record, “Phantone”, it was easy to get lost in the idea of nostalgia / past that could be listened coming from her harp. For “Habitat”, her second record, the approach is tremendously different. She doesn’t linger in the past, she expects you to fulfill the present side-by-side with her. The idea was to create music that could be played and processed in real time. It is also the first time Angélica Salvi is working around the idea of songs – instead of pieces – and elaborating on narratives that suit that purpose
/ Recorded in May on her own studio – Garagem 16 -, “Habitat” is contemporary music with the essence of pop. Angélica doesn’t exactly try a genre approach, her music is freer of restrains and shows her freedom of thinking music as a musician but also as someone that has been working on film and constantly shows her creations more in the essence of sound than exactly music per se. The sounds of “Habitat”, since the first seconds of “Nan”, the opening song, are ethereal and melody focused, even if sometimes those melodies chase paths that are somehow labyrinthic.That doesn’t mean that the listener gets lost. There’s always a guiding light. The choice for a more direct approach on this recording proves how clear, enlightened, and focused Angélica Salvi’s sounds is
/ There’s no tricks. Just something that sounds real, profound, where you can listen to Angélica’s hands moving and touching the strings. And be completely mesmerized as she continues to pursue melodies that guides the listener to the most beautiful of places
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€ 26
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KMRU, Aho Ssan :
Limen
- 12" (Subtext, 2022)
Last year, Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru (aka KMRU) and French digital alchemist Niamké Désiré (aka Aho Ssan) were invited by Berlin Atonal to collaborate on a project for the festival's Metabolic Rift edition. The duo had already been working together, but the offer provided the momentum to shift the conversation into another gear. Initially, they looked for thematic connections within their individual practices that might match Kamaru's meditative soundscapes with Désiré's crumbling cyberpunk expressionism, and surprisingly for two artists renowned for their grasp of minimalism, it was the opposite that drew their attention. Watching the world shift as it reacted to the spiraling pandemic, Kamaru and Désiré were moved to experiment with volume, physicality, and intense emotionality
/ “I never made something so extreme," Désiré says of the duo's first recording, 2021's 'Ruined Abstractions', an extended composition that matches dense, powerful low-end drones with fractal digital fuzz and smokestack bruit. It set the mood for a back-and-forth that resulted in their seismic debut full-length, "Limen", described by the two acclaimed artists as an attempt to scrutinize the yin and yang of destruction and creation. Cacophonous, concrete crunches fanfare the album's opening piece 'Resurgence' - the result of their Berlin Atonal commission - but the track refuses to languish in wrecking ball devastation. Instead, powerful synthesized harmonies ring from beneath the rubble, before stifling everything in a humid fuzz of dense, emotionally-charged cinematic electronics
/ Influenced by the prescient post-apocalyptic mood of Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" and the mythological phoenix, an immortal bird said to be reborn from the ashes of its dying predecessor, "Limen" is an album that sonically snapshots the anxious, floral beauty of an explosion or the colorful intensity of a raging fire. It's rooted in concepts of duality - the idea something unsettling can be viewed from a different angle and re-interpreted. On the album's epic, 21-minute centerpiece 'Ruined Abstraction I + II', swirling electromagnetic interference paints a haunted parallel vista that dissolves slowly into subtle, orchestral tones and booming, widescreen thuds. Almost angelic closing track 'Rebirth' meanwhile is the most unashamedly beautiful composition Kamaru and Désiré have written together, but its choral bliss is doused in petroleum noise and saturated distortion
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€ 29
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Albert Alan Owen :
Chorales
- LP (AmiciMiei, 2023)
Albert Alan Owen’s latest work is a meandering yet wonderful piano solo album recorded during the summer of 2020. AmiciMiei is very proud to announce the upcoming release of Chorales. Deeply emotional and spiritual, Albert Alan Owen’s Chorales ushers minimalism into the intimacy of a profoundly elevating listening experience. Captivating
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€ 25
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Yasuaki Shimizu :
Kakashi
- LP (Palto Flats, We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want, 2023)
Repress. Originally released in 1982, Kakashi is another high water mark in the 80s Japanese underground. This album, which has gathered cult status in recent years, is the project of musical visionary Yasuaki Shimizu, and considered to be a highlight of his solo career. Shimizu was the bandleader of Mariah, who also saw their album 'Utakata No Hibi' reissued by Palto Flats in 2015. Kakashi offers a similar blend of saxophone experimentations, jazz fusion and ambient dub excursions. Since the 70s Yasuaki has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Julee Cruise, David Cunningham and others
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€ 25
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Inga Copeland :
Higher Powers
- LP (Relaxin, 2023)
New album from Inga Copeland who I'm hoping you're aware of via the cult group Hype Williams which she was in with Dean Blunt. A modern muse of mythical status, Inga's smeared synth-pop musings and radioactive downbeat exercises have become highly treasured amongst underground aficionados, reddit forum users and NTS listeners alike
/ Stylistically it exists in that liminal / hypnogogic space between reality and dream world, with melancholic undertones reflecting, unfortunately, the current mood of our fractured country. With songs resembling traditional structures soon dissipating into the ether or crumbling into fried motherboards it draws comparisons with the recent Bar Italia album in terms of construction if not stylistic content. Her deliberately-almost-broken voice compliments the sorrowful machine music beautifully - the perfect ballad to soundtrack the end of humanity
/ Her 'first and last' album, which has previously only been released digitally, gets a highly coveted vinyl edition here - if you're reading this and its still in stock then lucky you - click that buy button or hurriedly scamper up to our counter with this in your hand - proud in the knowledge that you've snaffled a piece of modern electronic music treasure everyone’ll be fighting over in a couple of weeks
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€ 29
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Jonny Dillon :
A New Directive From The Bureau of Compulsory Entertainment
- LP (All City, 2022)
Full length double LP from contemporary Irish guitarist Jonny Dillon. Beautifully recorded blues / folk guitar pieces. TIP! Jonny Dillon’s debut acoustic LP ‘Songs For A One-String Guitar’ took the listening public by surprise and the critics by storm when it dropped out of the blue on All-City in 2019. It represented a departure for an artist who was renowned for having the Midas touch when it came to coaxing dance floor fire from all manner of hardware. But fortune favours the brave and temporarily setting the machinery aside and following an acoustic path to the waterfall has already reaped rich rewards for Jonny Dillon. He’ll never say it in so many words but here’s a man on a mission: “Fail as I may, I have to go back and try again every time, to wait in hope for a glimpse of the spirit that hovers over the face of the deep, and to keep watch for the Light that shines in the darkness.”
/ The generosity of spirit which is the linchpin of all great music is something that can neither be cheaply conjured nor ever easily faked, god forbid. It’s the elusive emotional conductor in the spinal cord of sound - a foundational component of that mysterious feeling of connection we as listeners are seeking every time we put the needle on the record or press play on a song. The very essence of the thing we seek, in short
/ The holy grail. When sweet music hits, it’s the spirit that moves us and it’s both the source of the power within it as well as ultimately the place where it resides inside of us too, once heard. This is how music works. Journeying. Spirit to spirit. From the makers and dreamers of the dream to dreamers in general. The indomitable spirit inherent in the instrumental guitar compositions and distinctive finger picking style of Jonny Dillon is a case in point. This is spiritful music of a rarer kind made by an artist as inherently attuned to the troubling times we are living through as he is to the value of carving out new paths to the waterfall through the medium of sound on our behalf. Boom and there it is. Much needed guidance. A priceless new navigational tool of the imagination to help us all through the maze
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€ 19