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Mirage
With Mirage on Important Records, Smegma again does the impossible. 38 years after reinventing the musical wheel, they have recorded a stunning masterpiece. With four of the original members working together again for the first time in many years, together with many new collaborators , they have kept alive their unique brand of old school primitive, Avant/Garage music. Running the gamut from the Musique Concrete inspired subtilely bombastic mood of the Title track to World of my Own's frenzied n…
Liebestod
Liebestod, by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski, consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings, and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. He shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nos…
Impedance
Alina Kalancea's Impedance is an entirely instrumental album spanning four sides, contains powerful rhythmic sequences, heart-beating frequencies and hypnotic loops that are paradoxically encapsulated in carefully crafted compositions which are full of secret passages and hidden doors. Kalancea's work creates ungraspable sonic experiences, which overtakes you, immersing its listeners in powerful and mind-altering soundscapes.
There's no quick payoff on Impedance. This is the sound of new, patien…
Zurich
Zurich began as a 1994 musical partnership between Neil Halstead then of Slowdive and Tony F Wilson. The two recorded a handful of tracks together at a time when Wilson was co-promoting and DJing at the club/live night Quirky in South London where he booked acts including Pan Sonic, Hafler Trio and Autechre. Halstead was shortly to begin work on Slowdive’s final and most experimental album Pygmalion. Recorded at a time when the popularity of ambient techno was at its peak, these recordings are r…
Wizards
This CD reissue of JD Emmanuel's Wizards contains two tracks excluded from the original 1982 LP due to master tape problems. "Wizards was my first deep trance electronic music album. This album was inspired by Terry Riley, one of the earliest people ever to compose and perform long, extended, cyclic pieces in the electronic format. This music was composed and performed in '81 and '82. I consider this album my best work. The instrumentation is three Sequential Circuits PRO-1s, Crumar Traveler…
(un)sentimental
Though each member of the 13th Assembly is acclaimed in their own right this group is very much a singular musical experience. A planned NPR piece should help raise exposure for this sublime recording.
The Thirteenth Assembly began as a touring collective made up of four musicians and four musically distinct small ensembles: Tomas and Taylor's duo; Mary and Jessica's duo; Taylor's trio with Mary and Tomas; and the collaborative quartet featured on this recording. The group is a microcosm of an e…
O True Believers
When UK-native James Blackshaw plays his 12-string, something spiritual takes place. This unassuming 23 year-old is transformed into a guitar god whose name belongs alongside the likes of Jack Rose, Steffen Basho-Junghans, and Glenn Jones. Making instrumental, solo, acoustic music that remains consistently interesting and moving is a difficult task. Yet, time after time, Blackshaw hits out of the park, constantly breaking boundaries in what could be conceived as a somewhat limited medium. O True…
Some Blood Will Stick
Hototogisu is Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Sunroof!) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards). They've been laying down billowing sheets of Teutonic guitar drone-noise since 2003 with the thickest possible helpings of vocals and electronics. Some Blood Will Stick is a collection of tracks from their ultra-limited self produced label Heavy Blossom. Songs were taken from Swoon Scream (2004) and Awful Symmetry (2005) with one additional track. What makes this disc more than a simple re-release is the ext…
The Echo From The Purple Dawn
The Echo From The Purple Dawn is a brand new full length from C.C.C.C. member Hiroshi Hasegawa's solo project, Astro. Using a battery of oscillators, ring modulators and field recordings, Hasegawa has created an engaging and versatile album that masterfully drifts between spaced-out analog dream drone and a more extreme form of harsher droning. As Astro, Hasegawa is able to combine some of the harsher influences of C.C.C.C. into the world of analog space music to create the signature sounds of A…
We Are All One, In the Sun: A Tribute To Robbie Basho
In Robbie Basho's lifetime he set out to champion the steel string guitar as an expressive and dignified concert instrument. His guitar playing was first brought to light in 1965, when John Fahey released Basho's debut The Seal Of The Blue Lotus on Fahey's own Takoma Records. Armed with a unique and powerful singing voice, his 6 & 12 string guitar and a collection of special guitar tunings that he created (even originating a unique chart titled 'The Esoteric Doctrine of Color and Mood,' denoting…
IMPREC300
IMPREC300 is a vinyl only collection of exclusive live tracks from a handful of Important bands including Master Musicians of Bukkake, Grails, Mugstar, Cave, NHK yx, Bardo Pond, Chord & Bass Communion.
Important was started in 2001 in a small house on the beach along the New Hampshire seacoast. The first two releases, from Daniel Johnston and Merzbow, stated the breadth of intentions and we set out to run a label that would function much like a good record shop with a wide range of interesting r…
The Garden of Forking Paths
"I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths" - Ts'ui Pen
The Garden of Forking Paths was compiled for Important Records by guitarist James Blackshaw. Compositions were recorded especially for this collection by Helena Espeval (Espers), James Blackshaw, Jozef van Wissem and Chieko Mori. Beautifully assembled, The Garden Of Forking Paths serves as a singular and particularly unique musical statement.
"The story of how this compilation came into being is, unlike many other s…
Non Meters Volume One
Risil is a collective of musicians that are all somehow connected to each other in some form or fashion. Risil's membership includes Guillermo Herren (Prefuse 73/Savath & Savallas), Zach Hill (Hella), Tyondai Braxton (Battles), John McEntire (Tortoise), Alejandra Deheza (School of Seven Bells), Eva Puyuelo Muns (Savath & Savalas).The project started as a chance for a large number of people to freely collaborate without a set goal for the end result or achieving a certain sound. This turned into …
Admira
Previously unreleased recordings from 1971. Admira is sourced from original master recordings discovered by Kluster member and Tangerine Dream engineer Klaus Freudigmann. Along with Vulcano, also being released at the same time on Important, Admira is presented here for the first time in this deluxe package. These intense sessions were made with Schnitzler at the helm, as always, after the departure of Mobius and Roedelius from the group. Conrad Schnitzler founded Kluster in 1969 along with Roed…
A Rock In The Snow
Together Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty have re-written the concept of modern free-jazz with their post-hardcore punk style approach of euphoric togetherness. Ferocious, spontaneous, explosive and aggressively lyrical, they've established their groundbreaking duo with loads of shows and a host of tremendous recordings.
When tales of C. Spencer Yeh's Burning Star Core project reached Corsano/Flaherty, the duo were eager to see him jam. Fortunately, fate brought them together at the DeStijl/Freed…
Viva Negativa! A Tribute to the New Blockaders Vol. III
Viva Negativa! A Tribute To The New Blockaders: Volume III: USA. Volume III in a series of UK-European-US and Japanese artists' tributes to the pioneering UK Noise group The New Blockaders including exclusive tracks by Z'ev, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Alan Courtis, Controlled Bleeding, Plethora, Macronympha, Prurient, Richard Ramirez, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Carlos Giffoni, AMK, Aaron Dilloway, Wolf Eyes, Idea Fire Company, Mnortham, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Damion Romero, The Haters, Emil …
Stop Time
Robin Hayward plays microtonal tuba in Catherine Christer Hennix's ensemble and Stop Time is his first composition to be released on Important Records. Stop Time was commissioned for a festival of the same name taking place in Leuven in 2013. It is the first piece to use a subset of the three-dimensional physical version of the Hayward Tuning Vine, invented in 2012, as a musical score. The harmonic space implied within the four cubes contained within the subset, based on prime numbers two (octav…
Benzaiten
Another smoker from Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., in typically fine form. Benzaiten is an In C-style homage to the classic Osamu Kitajima record Benzaiten (1973). Acid Mothers Temple covers the title-track and reprise using Kitajima's original composition as a departure point to explore the outer realms of AMT territory. Further instrumental explorations reveal textures of the original composition while launching out further into the cosmic domain. Numerous Acid Mothers origi…
Merzbear
Author, activist, painter, and sound artist Masami Akita has been at the foreground of experimental music for over twenty-five years. Inspired by psychedelic rock, free jazz, and early electronic composition as well the physical arts (especially Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau), Masami Akita has created a musical language all his own. Merzbear, the sixth Merzbow release in his utterly essential Merz series for Important Records, pulses and pounds with distorted droning guitar feedback, pulsing noise b…
Secret Photographs
Beautiful new work from Machinefabriek. Secret Photographs was composed as a soundtrack to accompany a film made by Mike Hoolboom using photographs taken by notorious bank robber Alvin Karpis.
Filmmaker Mike Hoolboom discovered a batch of Karpis' photos for auction on eBay. He was the lucky winning bidder. With his newly found treasure, Hoolboom began working on a film consisting of still images, slowly dissolving one into another. Intensifying the slow, hypnotic pace and transitions, the musica…