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Harmony In Ultraviolet
This is the first proper vinyl release for Tim Hecker's breakthrough 2006 album. At the time of original issue, there was a small run of a few hundred vinyl copies done by a small German label, but this was pressed on an inferior sounding single LP which was much too short for the length of the album, not to mention the wide dynamic range of the recording. This new version is mastered at 45rpm over four sides for maximum sound quality. Full color gatefold sleeve.
s/t
RESTOCK! Limited to 500 copies with a numbered postcard insert, this a beautiful LP by the C. Heeman duo project with Af Ursin's Timo Van Luyck was started in 2004 and has produced two albums so far, the self titled first album (Some fine legacy) and Open Air (Robot), presenting yet another facet of Heemann's ideas of textural electroacustica, this time with a focus on improvisation.
Sentimental Favourites
Vinyl Lp, edition of 300 copies. The work of the Berlin-based composer Andrew Pekler has been been documented in various releases for labels such as ~scape, Staubgold and Kranky. When asked by Giuseppe Ielasi for some material to be released on Schoolmap Records, Pekler immediately considered the possibility of taking the many unused music fragments that had been collecting cyber-dust on various hard drives and bringing them into some kind of order. Raw sketches, orphaned sounds, finished pieces…
Through A Pre-Memory
Pan Sonic space explorer Mika Vainio and Sunn 0))) strongarm Stephen O'Malley rock our world to the foundations with this anticipated union of electronics and guitars recorded as ÄÄNIPÄÄ, featuring vocals by Alan Dubin (Khanate) and string arrangements from Eyvind Kang. In gestation for some years now, the results are little short of a modern doom masterpiece; a bracing exposition of cold, condensed, rage and stoic passion delivered like a slow, internally bruising hate-f**k to the head, …
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…
split LP
A split album by two masters of 'loud drone music' with an entirely electronic background. Piotrowicz already surprised us with 'Lasting Clinamen' on CD (see review in Vital Weekly 621), and this is now continued with 'Clinamen 3', also recorded using analog modular synthesizer. He plays what seems a loud, looped drone (no doubt repeated within the machine), which is piercingly loud at the start, but just like his great CD, he knows how to create a subtle piece music after that. It grows and it …
Split
Lovely first volume of the “seven inch series”, a series of limited and coloured 7″, in which the italian band Luminance Ratio collaborates with different artists and musicians from the electro-acoustic and ambient scene all over the world. This first chapter features a track by the American musician, artist and performer Steve Roden, here with “Marvelous Is Flairs”: arch drones, vocal loops and field recordings driven by a melancholic pulsation. Luminance Ratio present the track “Reoccuring Dr…
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 …
Space Homestead
Apart from the fact that “MV & EE” is slang for zero gravity and that they’ve been doing it consistently “better” with good vibes/jams they still WANT to give you more of the best of them. This is their “space homestead” and for good reason this wall of sound applied thru DIY sensibilities was recorded over the course of a year in 9 different studios, presenting as clearly as circumstances can permit, a living idea right here in the now of what it is all about. These are sonics in motion,…
Tumbler
Total Head Crush Destruction from Mr Wiese (also of Sissy Spacek and LHD, works with Sunn 0)), etc,etc), if your head was made out of a boulder the sounds here enclosed are still designed to leave behind nothing but blood stain dust. Side A is the eternal acid rain that we all fear slowly melting your skin away and reminding of your insignificant humanity, Side B is a metallic behemoth continously punching you from all directions leaving you with just enough unbroken bones so that you can…
Swimming in it
Another absolutely essential vinyl only album this time from New Zealander Greg Malcolm. Working as a perfect companion piece to the wonderful Es album, 'Swimming In It' sounds like an on-form John Fahey jamming with Morton Subotnick - it's really that good. As unusual synthesized bleeps and drones cut through Malcolm's lovingly finger picked guitar playing it is easy to realise how so many people have been touting this as a potential album of 2005. I was actually quite taken aback when I first …
The Iron Gates At Throop And Newport
In the year since Luke Roberts recorded his debut Big Bells and Dime Songs a lot has changed. Luke now owns a guitar (a Collings 000 2H model) that his sophomore album was written on, he has moved from Brooklyn to Montana to Nashville, his childhood home, and the songs were written over a long period of time in his Brooklyn apartment (as opposed to largely on the bus down to the studio on the debut). The combination of changes made a significant and noticeable impact on the songwriting an…
Primitive London
LP version. This is the first-ever release of not ONE but TWO classic Basil Kirchin soundtracks, one from 1965, the other 1971. It's music for strippers, wife-swapping, death, birth, crime and chicken factories. Basil Kirchin is a legendary jazz drummer and grandfather of ambient music. He started his jazz career drumming in his father's jazz band. In the war years, he took over the band and post-war travelled to the East, hung out with the Maharishi, found himself, moved to Australia and finall…
A Message From Mozambique
restocked, 2010 repress. Exact repro, originally released in 1973 on the Strata-East affiliated Black Fire label. This is the first LP from this classic Afro free jazz group. Very much in the spirit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, but with more spiritual/soul jazz stylings tempering the pure free jazz fire music vibe. The group would shortly hereafter change their name to Oneness of Juju.
Inland
Kye is proud to present Inland, the new LP by Clapton-based Astor. Advancing the cause of 2012's 'Alcor' LP, 'Inland' finds Mark Harwood and sometime collaborator Maja Larsson further complicating reason with dark and circuitous audio constructs. Inland' is sonically conceptualised through the meticulous choice of instrument used: ranging from an array of bells, gongs and ethno-percussion, alongside petrified piano melodies and a grinding organ. Accordingly, this is complemented by the use of T.…
Already awake in the night
Mindblowing new LP on ini.itu label, composed by Amelia Cuni & Werner Durand, with David Trasoff. The music on this LP is based on the Hindustani Raag Lalit and its modulation to Raag Todi. Lalit is performed in the early morning before sunrise, Todi later on, after sunrise. Here, they are both played against a background of sine waves tuned to the raag’s intervals and going through subtle phase shifting. The restrained sinewaves tapestry, ornamented with Amelia Cuni’s voice and David Trasoff’s …
Fluxorum Organum
in 1967 henning christiansen proposed to joseph beuys that he composes a major work for organ titled "fluxorum organum" for beuys's planned aktion "eurasienstab". henning christiansen composed a piece with five movements. the organist franz meiswinkel played the composition on the organ in düsseldorf's liebfrauenkirche. the first "eurasienstab" aktion took place in 1967 in vienna at the galerie nächst st. stephan. in 1968 there was a repeat performance at the wide white space gallery in antwerp.…
Stone Academy
The latest addition to the fast-growing Digitalis catalogue comes from Zelienople, a band from Chicago who have a certain knack of making that other-worldly folk ambience we've all grown so addicted to sound totally singular and incredibly beautiful. Maybe it's because they aren't afraid of occasionally breaching into the odd pop structure or two that 'Stone Academy' is so inviting, in fact if you hear it at a distance you might even mistake it for a decomposed cassette recording of an old Pavem…
Alphabet Of Movements
With the music of Milwaukee-native Jon Mueller, patience is the key. His radical snare workouts are meditative master-classes in drumming, but require a distinct offering of time and attention to truly enjoy the dense clouds of sound his music creates. After crafting 2010's critically-acclaimed The Whole, Mueller decided to put together a live set that, while not reflecting the over-dubbed nature of the album itself, reflected the philosophy held within. The result was "I Almost Expect To…
They Play To Make Music Fire!
Founded 40 years ago in 1972, The Pyramids released three albums before splitting up in 1977: Lalibela (1973), King of Kings (1974), and the seminal Birth/Speed/Merging LP (1976). Three albums that made them one of the most mysterious and legendary of all the spiritual cosmic jazz collectives of the early '70s, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra. "We were way ahead of our time, so we decided to let time catch up." -- Idris Ackamoor. After a highly energetic reunion of the group in 200…