Back in stock
Cut-ups, drones and other weird
American noise group formed 1990 by Joseph Roemer and Rodger Stella in Pittsburgh, Macronympha is rediscovered today through a serie of reprint of old cassettes. Vinyl reissue of a 1993 Macronympha recording, previously issued on CDR in 2007 by Mother Savage. Transparent green vinyl, limited to 350 copies.
Ogre-Sse
a great album pulled out of the stream of time (1983-1985). They have never been on record or on air (nevertheless, some have been released on international cassette-compilations in the '80s). Back then they called it "primal industrial-punk".
The Well
hand-numbered edition of 200 copies lp on manuel mota's private headlights imprint documenting a heavyweight duo set from marcia bassett of zaimph, hototogisu, double leopards, ghq et al and improvising portuguese bassist and guitarist margardia garcia. garcia is one of the major new generation european free players, coming out of the same scene as mota, and she's just as capable of generating swans-style industrial entropy as she is playing explosive fire music. here bassett uses keyboar…
Live At The Waterworks Berlin
Founder of the Steel Cello Ensemble (1970s) featuring various players over the years. The music was produced on steel instruments like the Bow Chime or the Steel Cello that were built by Rutman himself. Among the musicians he collaborated with were Rudi Moser (drummer of Die Haut and Einstürzende Neubauten), Matthias Bauer and Carsten Tiedemann. This is a recording of a concert by Robert Rutman and his steel cello's recorded at a Berlin Art Gallery. If you are unfamiliar with the Steel Cello Ens…
A fidgety and excitable engine
For more than 25 years Jeph Jerman, previously with the moniker Hands To, has heavily explored the realm of field recordings and the devices to record it.Over the years his sound has become gradually more gaunt and essential, leaving more and more the electronic aspect apart and instead increasing the acoustic size.This made the sound of his compositions, if possible, even more organic, succeding to play entirely acoustic sets using only small objects found in nature such as stones, seeds, pine …
A Republic Of Sadness
Gate is the long-dormant alias of The Dead C's Michael Morley, who releases A Republic Of Sadness as the first Gate release in over ten years. The New Zealand avant-garde lynchpin is on tremendous form for this record, creating a dreamlike procession of slowed down loops, heavily treated vocals, jarring electronic textures and even beats. The first two tracks prove especially powerful, with 'Forever' elegantly crackling through a swathe of string sampling while pitched-down vocals utter…
Silent Partner
There’s probably not much to say about punk’s continued existence. Like jazz or sitcoms or party politics, it just carries on eating and breathing and shitting and propogating. It’s only interesting when someone comes along trying to advance the form. Like “Arrested Development” or Dennis Kucinich, they’re usually forgotten.
This would all be relevant if Neptune were a punk band, which we’re not at all sure is the case. They create a sense of undermining the status quo, which is pretty pun…
Between Two Skies / Towards The Night
Restocked, now out of print: Pakistani-born musician Ilyas Ahmed traffics a sound that borders on the folk/drone/raga/rock axis, one that Scottish critic David Keenan has called “gone”. Currently residing in Portland, OR, Ahmed has released recordings on Time-Lag, Digitalis, and Root Strata. He is known to perform live with Honey Owens (Valet) and Jed Bindeman (Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged) and his recent recordings have featured Liz Harris (Grouper). He first appeared in the Fall of 2005 with…
Portraits
Beautiful new full length LP featuring Jefre Cantu-Ledesma (Root Strata, Tarentel), Evan Caminiti & Jon Porras from Barn Owl, Lisa McGee (Higuma), Gregg Kowalsky (Date Palms), Marielle Jakobsons (Date Palms), Maxwell Croy (Root Strata/EN) Steven Dye & Tony Cross (Tarentel alum) and Michel Elrod, who plays tambura with Date Palms, Barn Owl & The Alps among others. Edition of 500. Screen printed jackets. First 100 on color vinyl.
This large group is somehow able to focus and refine their so…
Catalyse
The origins of Ame Son go back to the mid-sixties, when Bernard Lavialle (guitar), Bernard Stisi (guitar, vocals), Patrick Fontaine (bass) and Marc Blanc (drums) formed Les Primitivs circa 1965. They took the Parisian stages with a Yardbirds/Pretty Things inspired wild R&B set, and they kept active until Stisi left in 1967. At that point they changed their name to Expression, and with a more experimental approach they took their newly find free rock sound a la Soft Machine to night clubs …
Last American Hero
Long awaited vinyl pressing of this amazing album from one half of The Skaters, and all-round Hypnagogic Pop hero James Ferraro - 450 copies for the world!* James Ferraro has fast become one of those artists whose records we can't wait to devour in the office. 'Last American Hero' is by far one of his most acutely affective dreams, originally released (like most of his stuff) on tape via the Belgian label Dreamtime Taped Sounds in late 2008, but reaching us on a super limited run of 450 vi…
l'Opera concret
Michel Chion's music concrete from 1971-1997, mostly inspired by classical forms. The compositions are 'Etude d'apres Beethoven' and excerpts from other works. Opera is the central theme. As Chion says, "With concrete music, we can create an 'opera for the ear' in which the composer, because he is working on a sound that is fixed, with its own time and space, finds himself with the possibility of providing the music, decors, lighting and also conducting and directing this theater of louspeakers.…
The Primal Energy That Is The Music And Ritual Of Jajouka, Moroc
In the Djebala foothills of the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco is the ancient village of Jajouka. For hundreds of years music has poured out of that village, music by the world’s only “4000 year old rock band” (William Burroughs), the Master Musicians of Jajouka. For hundreds of years the Master Musicians were the musical group of choice for the princes of Morocco, but they were not heard outside their native soil.Fast forward to 1950, Morocco, free of French and Spanish colonialism, is alive…
Spoils
For this latest album Caledonian folk impresario Alasdair Roberts teams up with expected collaborators like Alex Neilson (whose drumming and percussion work has illuminated many a free-folk record over recent years, a few of which Roberts has been involved with) and more unusual contributors such as Niko-Matti Ahti of Fonal's Kiila. Perhaps more than ever, Roberts' music invites comparisons to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, traveling sufficiently far from the trad songwriting fold to be thought of as 'a…
Garden Fete
a four song 12 inch 45 on 180 gram vinyl, garden fete presents alternative mixes of two original songs from rodney graham's cd release never tell a pal a hard luck story (you'll only get a hard luck story in return) 'she failed to see the point', and 'sinkin' in the west' and two covers: the everley brothers' 'take a message to mary' and the kinks ' i'm on an island'. the latter is an uptempo version of the song which forms the soundtrack of graham's sculptural installation in the petuel park, m…
Dagger Paths
RESTOCKED *Bit of a departure for the Old English Spelling bee, embracing scenic dubbed-out tapestries described by the label as a cross between Burial's sample-strewn claustrophobia and Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores...* The Olde English Spelling Bee label has lit up our week with this incredible debut from Forest Swords. Nope, we've never heard of them before either, but they're only based down the road in The Wirral so we'll send them a thank you message via carrier pigeon o…
Music for contemporary dance
"In early 2010 Peter Broderick was approached by the collaborative media artist duo kit monkman and tom wexler aka kma, who asked him to create a score for congregation, kma's most ambitious work to date. The world's first ever ballet designed, choreographed and composed entirely for pedestrian performers, congregation has been commissioned by scan and the british council. Due to premiere simultaneously at rockbund art museum, shanghai as part of world expo and bournemouth for the inside out fes…
Landscapes
*ONE OF 2009'S MOST ACCLAIMED ALBUMS, FINALLY BACK IN STOCK* Ducktails is the lo-fi bedroom pop pseudonym of New Jersey's Matthew Mondanile, who also goes by the handle of Predator Vision on Not Not Fun. Over the last three years he's dreamt up a steady stream of largely cassette only gems which squarely fall into the Hypnagogic Pop style identified by the Wire magazine in mid-2009. 'Landscapes' is a remarkable collection of raw-finished pop reminisces with a vivid sheen of washed-out summery eu…
Far Side Virtual
RESTOCKED, last copies around - The Wire's Releases of the Year!!!!!!James Ferraro paints a 21st century still life on his debut album for Hippos In Tanks. The record is called Far Side Virtual. Each song, a melodious reflection of the moment now, comes shrink-wrapped in HD fidelity as glossy as a 2012 Toyota Prius. Ferraro's muse is some enigmatic modern metropolis, where the streets are as slick as i-Pads, and where the symphonies ring with Macbook message alerts. Through the steam risi…
Cryptography
Limited to 400 hand-numbered copies! Helm is the ambiguous solo moniker of London-based sound architect Luke Younger. Although, perhaps best known as one half of the pioneering avant-drone outfit Birds of Delay, it is in the more esoteric work of Helm that Luke's art takes on its most radical shape. Using processed piano, Casio MT-40, cymbal and guitar strings Cryptography steers the Helm sound through a melange of fringe territories: glacial drone meditations, reconfigured gamelan cluste…