Back in stock
Cross Sections
*300 copies limited edition* Clothilde’s new album sounds like a constant departure from almost everything. Up until now, her music pieces seemed uncontrolled, a total commitment to the machines. She was, somehow, in between us - listener, audience - and the idea of a machine producing sounds she doesn’t seem to control. Of course, none of this was entirely true, she was mostly in control, but the fantasy, the orchestration of it was beautiful. It was sci-fi-ish, Metropolis-magnificent. In “Cros…
Stories
”David Blue was the peer of any singer in this country, and he knew it, and he coveted their audiences and their power, he claimed them as his rightful due. And when he could not have them, his disappointment became so dazzling, his greed assumed such purity, his appetite such honesty, and he stretched his arms so wide, that we were all able to recognize ourselves, and we fell in love with him.” - Leonard Cohen
David Blue is the ‘blue’ in Bob Dylan’s “Baby Blue”, the voluble chain-smoking pinbal…
Closer
When Oscar Peterson moved from Montreal to New York in 1949, the 17-year-old Paul Bley took over his residency at the Alberta Lounge on Oscar's recommendation; in his twenties, he played withCharlie Parker. Bley started incorporating maverick pianist Lennie Tristano's approach to improvisation and collaborating with Charles Mingus, and in 1958 in Los Angeles Bley famously put together a band with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. His move into free improvisation in t…
Alphataurus
LP reissue in triple gatefold sleeve as the original album, with sound taken the master tapes. Nothing much to say about this one, "Alphataurus", by sure one of the ten best Italian prog records of all times. "Alpahataurus" is a masterpiece, so well crafted and played that it seems impossible that it has been made by a group of unknowns. The singer Bavaro has a very original voice, keyboard player Pietro Pellegrini plays with competence and no self-indulgence, the guitar-playing of Guido Wasserm…
Omniphony 1
In the early 1960's Tod Dockstader was a young maverick composer of electronic 'organised sound', and James Reichert a film composer and music supervisor. They met in New York in 1963, and launched one of the most extraordinary collaborations in modern music, a unique attempt to integrate electronic sounds and the classical orchestra. Unlike Varese's Deserts, and Stockhausen's Kontakte, it does not merely have the orchestra play along with a tape, or even process orchestral sounds live. What mak…
Rock Bottom
2023 Repress. Robert Wyatt: gifted songwriter; political activist; drummer in the Canterbury jazz/prog pioneers Soft Machine and contemporaries of the original lineup of Pink Floyd; collaborator with the likes of Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, Fred Frith, Paul Weller, Scritti Politti, Elvis Costello and his beloved wife Alfreda Benge, to name but a few.
Perhaps his greatest gift though is his voice, a reedy instrument of great warmth and emotion; one need only hear his interpretation …
La Dimostrazione / Elikiller
For the first time on 7-inch vinyl, Daniele Patucchi's killer Dusty Fingers tune, "La Dimostrazione", taken from the soundtrack for the Spanish movie, "Metralleta Stein". A moody, dark-funk midtempo track, fueled with solid drum breaks and heavy basslines. A real classic for any beatmaker, this track has been sampled and compiled a dozen times. On the flip side, you will find the more dynamic “Elikiller”, another smashing jazz-funk tune with great rhythmical and menacing tension. Limited Editio…
Paesaggi
Finally putting an end to a long wait for library music lovers, Four Flies Records is proud to present the first reissue of Piero Umiliani's Paesaggi – a record that, despite remaining for many years pretty obscure compared to other titles in the maestro's discography, is now regarded by collectors and experts as the gold standard in Italian library music. Originally released in two versions with different sleeves, the first on Liuto Records in 1971 and the second on Ciak Record in 1980, the al…
Aquapelagos Vol.3: Pacífico
Presenting the third thematic 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) and the split LP Atlantico by Lagoss & Banha da Cobra (Keroxen, KRXN027) as well as the direct collaboration LP Índico by Mike Cooper & Pierre Bastien we proudly introduce an the third volume in the series in the shape o…
Di Lumi e Chiarori
**250 copies** "Backwards is really pleased to present the new Fabio Orsi release. This time Fabio offered a monumental work: eight long tracks contained in a huge box set with four compact discs. Musically it stands on the new course of the artist: together with the classic ambient and drone atmospheres that we know well, the work has more dynamic parts with rhythms and pulsations, and more melodic parts. A perfect meeting between ambient music and berlin-style electronics, between intimate and…
Water Babies
*2023 stock. Blue Transluscent Vinyl* 'Every morning, about an hour before sunrise, the day breaks gradually, with little noticeable fanfare. It’s the best time of day outdoors. The nighttime goblins have gone to their hiding places, loud day creatures have yet to rise, and it’s just us with the cool morning mist and that dim kind of landscape that lets us see only what we want to see.When Water Babies was recorded in 1967 and 1968, Miles Davis had with him one his best working units. His and Wa…
Rot
** 500 copies. Limited 50th Anniversary Edition: embossed, reverse board, hand numbered, limited edition red vinyl ** There was a particular type of artist who could only have emerged in the legendary early 1970s. Few musicians fit the bill better than Conrad Schnitzler. Revolution, pop art and Fluxus created a climate which engendered unbridled artistic and social development. Radical utopias, excessive experimentation with drugs, and ruthless (in a positive way) transgression of aesthetic fron…
Selected E_missions
Deep and wrapping digital soundscapes, dotted by micro-noisy granular material, resonant fields where time and space humble themselves in a single perceptive continuum. Contemporary, abstract, minimal, cold, intense and evocative drone music.
Samba Blim
This is the second incredible album which the Brazilian bossa combo did in the US for A&M Records, during the brief time when they were expanded to a quartet from the original Tamba Trio lineup. This album can be considered a masterpiece that combines their original style with American sophistication. The set is completely sublime. A wonderful mix of the group's trademark harmony vocals and crackling bossa rhythms, with the warmly flowing CTI production style of the time – not funky like the CTI…
The Call
** 20220 ** Available on vinyl for the first time in 40 years, Outernational Sounds is proud to present a masterpiece from the Los Angeles jazz underground – Horace Tapscott’s burning, spiritualised 1978 set, The Call. One of the unsung giants of jazz music, the composer, bandleader, arranger, pianist and community activist Horace Tapscott was the undisputed keystone in the grassroots Los Angeles jazz scene. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his radical community arts and music formations the UGMA…
The Road Was Bent From The Way We Took It
*150 copies limited edition* Brandon Tani is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Diego, CA. He is drawn to the varied intersections of minimalist, concrète, and found sounds. Mixing narrative and abstraction. Since 2022, Brandon has released music under the moniker "Daily Rituals" and has recorded 5 releases to date. This new album represents the first release under his own name.
Arcoiris
*200 copies limited wedition. In process of stocking* "Backwards is really pleased to present the new Fabio Orsi release. This time Fabio offered a monumental work: eight long tracks contained in a huge box set with four compact discs. Musically it stands on the new course of the artist: together with the classic ambient and drone atmospheres that we know well, the work has more dynamic parts with rhythms and pulsations, and more melodic parts. A perfect meeting between ambient music and berlin-…
Kyosaku
Kyosaku is a trio. Guitarist Finn Loxbo. Electric bassist Else Bergman. Drummer Ryan Packard. They are based in Stockholm. Together, they explore intensive plateaus. States of constant ecstasy. Kyosaku's music has been described as relentless. But it's really a combination of mesmerizing and prodding, the name a reference to Zen Buddhist "encouragement stick," used to rouse dozy meditators. Packard says: "Relentless as a conceptual place to live within. To be wide awake, relentlessly. To use a f…
Kalpa
*200 copies limited edition* Since the start in 2008 Jon Wesseltoft and Lasse Marhaug, aka Tongues of Mount Meru, have released a set of intense and mind tripping longform pieces. Their music often almost seemingly static and gradually building it’s intensity over long streches of time. This is music that demands concentration, and hypnotically drill into the awareness of the listener. At times abrasive andintense, but also beautiful and calmly introspective. Last year they released the culminat…
Spaces
**200 copies** "Spaces is a series of compositions based on recordings in museums. Each work builds on a binaural recording of the environmental sounds a museum and each has been processed based on different concepts. The approach for processing and adding of electronic sounds was inspired by an artwork that was hanging in the museum space. So space and artwork form a unity. As a composer and mastering engineer I am extremely sensitive to the sounds around me. But I’m also a keen visitor of muse…