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From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds him sharpening his focus, moving boldly from abstract forms to concrete compositions in the form of a set of jazz standards. Based on Toral’s discography, this may seem an unlikely endeavor, but happily, Traveling Light transpires to be one of the majo…
CD reissue of 2022 cassette release. Full length soundtrack of doom electronics to the sacred memory of Halloween night. Full length soundtrack of doom electronics to the sacred memory of halloween night. now available on compact disc the tracks are intended as soundtrack for private or group gatherings during the halloween season and autumnal nights.
file under: environmental, soundtrack, holiday, thematic, spooky, true crime, horror, sound effects, fall, nostalgia, autumnal, halloween, field …
*CD Version* Dans le Sable is the first new album in over 40 years by composer, pianist, and digital audio pioneer Loren Rush (b. 1935). Active in the Bay Area new music scene since the late 1950s alongside composers such as Robert Erickson and Pauline Oliveros, he also co-founded the Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975. His music has been performed by the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra amongst ot…
Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other. Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas,…
A compelling collaboration between guitarist Fred Frith and innovative harpist Shelley Burgon — known for her work with Anthony Braxton, Trevor Dunn, and Okkyung Lee — in a series of concise and precise improvisations recorded in Oakland, CA, in 2002 and 2005, as Burgon blends seamlessly with Frith's acoustic guitar to create seemingly telepathic synchronicity and an expansive sonic palette.
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
begin form here...
begin from here...our world lives when their world ceases to existbegin from here...with hopes, between silent skies, while world breathes again and the fever subsidesbegin from here...and to those who strike blowsbegin from here...while we keep goingbegin from here...while we mourn, we also fight
We will be wherever the fires are lit!
We will be wherever the fires are lit, a sort of sequel to Tashi Dorji’s first DC release Stateless, takes the torch and storms forward, with t…
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Michael Chapman - a hero in his own right, a "Fully Qualified Survivor" (to borrow the title of one of his most successful creations). For over five decades, the guitarist, singer, and songwriter carved his own path through British folk, blues, jazz, and avant-garde territories, refusing easy categorization and outlasting countless trends. And Then There Were Three captures him at a pivotal moment: 1977, stripped down to essential elements, backed by a powerhouse…
Big Tip! “You’re living in a dream, Coley…” Surreal, layered, Lynchian landscapes by Birmingham, Alabama poet, Johnny Coley. On his Mississippi Records debut, Coley takes a completely improvised and semi-hallucinatory journey down decrepit southern trucking routes, gaslit Victorian alleys, past “a small frame house / transparent with fire,” and by women arguing on the cobblestones outside a dark club in Rome (“you could only see their lips”). It’s a world of flesh vehicles, supernatural waiters,…
Tip! *300 copies limited release* Henry Birdsey - best known as one half of the microtonal multi-instrumentalist duo known as Tongue Depressor - is a master of dualities. He writes music that is both fundamental and complex, tranquil and fierce, and conceptual yet familiar all at once. His music often reflects the expansive and isolated regions of his home state of Vermont with its vast natural splendor, both lush and harsh, haunting and entrancing. It is also often about nothing more than the p…
*100 copies limited edition* “It's rare that I'm able to give an album my fullest recommendation without trepidation. (...) Bersarin Quartett is one such album. There's nary a misstep, every potential danger has been avoided and smoothed out to present the optimal audio experience for your dollar. (...) Something this good can't possibly be real." The Silent Ballet (8.5/ 10)
Almost all reviews concerning Bersarin Quartett’s self titled debut album chorused this paean. Four years later he’s back …
After decades of being the rhythmic architect behind some of underground music's most essential recordings, experimental percussionist Tim Barnes steps forward with Lost Words, a deeply personal collection that celebrates collaboration while exploring new sonic territories. Released on Drag City, this remarkable album brings together an extraordinary cast of musicians who have shared Barnes' musical journey over the years. Lost Words represents both a culmination and a new beginning. The album f…
Second volume of unreleased solo material by Tim Barnes, Noumena explores the thresholds of perception with long-form compositions built from minimal gestures, field recordings, and ambient textures. A durational and meditative counterpart to Lost Words.
Edition of 300. 'L'etat intermediaire' (the intermediate state) began amidst the ending points of 'A Paper Doll's Whisper of Spring' (FP 022 : recorded 2012) and further inspired by some live performances in Leuven and London using mostly acoustical instrumentation. 'L'etat intermediare' collects 10 pieces by Andrew Chalk & Jean Noël Rebilly recorded over four years and into a narrative of personal journeys using some collected sounds, clarinets, string and keyboardinstruments. “Dreaming when …
* In process of stocking. Edition of 300 * Includes fold out insert in duotone litho Reissue of a 2016 cassette. Andrew Chalk has been active since 1985 as Ferial Confine and has worked with many associates over the years, such as David Jackman (in Organum), Vortex Campaign, New Blockaders, The, Darren Tate (in Ora), Giancarlo Toniutti, Jonathan Coleclough, and Christoph Heemann (in Mirror). He has now released a number of releases under his own name which have won widespread acclaim, on labels…
LP version. Well-known as one-quarter of the "classic" Kraftwerk line-up, Karl Bartos' new album is an audio-visual sensation. Lost for many years, some of his early music has been re-conceived and re-contextualized in a thrilling modern setting. Here's the story: during Kraftwerk's heyday, Karl Bartos wrote -- off the record -- a secret acoustic diary. Based on his musical jottings (rhythms, riffs, hooks, sounds, chords, and melodies) this is what he has come up with today -- 12 brand-new, exci…
*Limited edition of 500 copies* Experimental musician John Also Bennett’s latest full-length emerged from a bicoastal pandemic road trip through the badlands of South Dakota. Moved by the scale and complexity of the landscape – “remnants of an ancient seafloor mixed with the ash of a volcanic eruption, eroded over millennia and now resembling the tangled folds of earth’s brain” – he sculpted a series of stark, microtonal arrangements using a 1940’s Oahu lap steel guitar, a Yamaha SY77 multi-timb…
Mick Harris has been an epitome of extremes: either as a drummer or as a sound sculptor and explorer of crushing beats, heavy bass or darkest soundscapes. Through the last 30 years, Harris has been an utterly prolific electronic artist, but known mostly for his famous project Scorn. At the beginning of the century Harris started one of his longest-standing projects, HedNod. Alongside Scorn, HedNod turned out to be his most fruitful project, which in the meantime made up of as many as twenty vol…
"Scattered notes seem to stretch time, their repetition and countless combinations evoking (or invoking?) the infinite iridescence of light that accompanies dawn—a ritual as inevitable as it is unpredictable. With his Musique pour le lever du jour, composed over two years and completed in 2017, Melaine Dalibert once described his aim as creating "an infinite piece," without beginning or end. Subtle, intangible, both complex and minimal, the variations forming this hour-long composition—dedicated…
Much-needed repress. In the vast landscape of American minimalism, Phill Niblock stood apart. Where La Monte Young pursued infinite sustain and Steve Reich explored phase relationships, Niblock carved his own path: monolithic slabs of microtonal sound, built from multitracked recordings of acoustic instruments, dense enough to alter the architecture of any room they filled.
Rhymes With Water – originally released in 2017 and now back in print – captures Niblock at his most elemental. Two extende…