2011 release ** "Catbirds & Cardinals is the latest psychedelic album lobbed into New World shores from Dan Melchior und das Menace. Coming down slow with a clear vision, it’s a sure hit. Since the late 90s, Shepperton, England native Dan Melchior has consistently delivered an avant-pop that is off-kilter and literate, with a sense of menace and a stronger sense of play. He’s a new Jesus of Cool, riding just about the underground like the antipodean Chris Knox. The sound of Catbirds & Cardinals …
2016 release (VERY RARE!) ** "Mild High Club founder Alexander Brettin grew up playing flute in the school band and majoring in jazz studies in Chicago. In 2012, a visit to Los Angeles allowed him to connect with the Stones Throw crew. Within a year, after passing the early demos of what would become Timeline onto Peanut Butter Wolf, Brettin made the move out west. “The difference between Timeline and Skiptracing is detail,” Brettin said. “I was stubborn with the process for Timeline; it took al…
2007 release ** "Minamata is the noise side-project of the veteran French industrial project La Nomenklatur. Primarily active from the mid 80's to the early 90's with tape releases. Minimata's world is a toxic one of industrial wastewater and environmental decay, where the human howls struggle against tides of metal junk noise and sustained pollution. This re-issue of the project's third tape from 1985 comes with two estra tracks from compilations recorded at the same period and one unreleased 1…
2013 release ** "On Horology we hear Lars Åkerlund, Jean-Louis Huhta and Zbigniew Karkowski plugging their wangs into the Buchla 200 synth at the EMS Studio in Stockholm, and producing thereby an almighty dollop of powerhouse analogue wallop, an extremely thickened and scaly drone, like something torn from the back of an alligator. It first stuns you into surrender with over 20 minutes of unholy, grisly noise – a distorted pounding chaos of white noise and writhing agonised moans that follows th…
*150 copies limited edition* Dalton Alexander is a multi-instrumentalist, field recordist & songwriter from Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada. "Almost Home If I'm Still Alive" is his proper debut album. Recorded in forests, fields, backyards, streets, and rooms between 2016–2023.
A prolific composer, performer, and author, Curtis Roads says he “pursues research in the interdisciplinary territory spanning music and technology.” He was Editor and Associate Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 2000, co-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1979, and was a pioneer in the development of granular synthesis. Roads developed the Creatophone, a system for spatial projection of sound in concert, as well as the Creatovox, an expressive new…
*2022 stock* John Cage's first manifesto, written in 1937, was called The Future of Music: Credo, and the future it described was an "all-sound music" open to every kind of noise. This volume of Wergo's Edition John Cage follows that idea across three decades, from the prepared piano of the 1940s to the vocal and spoken works of the 1970s.
Sonata XIII, from the Sonatas and Interludes, and Music for Marcel Duchamp are pieces for prepared piano, played by Peter Roggenkamp: screws, bolts and rubber…
With the legendary “Studio Reihe Neuer Musik” series, Wergo created a trademark of advanced contemporary music in the Sixties of the past century already. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the label now releases these highlights of 20th-century music history in an excellent sound quality on CD for the first time.The "Studio Reihe”now continues with a work by Arnold Schönberg: The premiere of Schoenberg's first stage work "Erwartung (Monodram)" [Expectation (Monodrama)] Op. 17, composed i…
*2022 stock* It may come as a surprise but one of the leading creators of keyboard music in the twentieth century is a composer by the name of John Cage. Cage’s reputation is so deeply associated with the avantgarde, with chance music, graphic notation, performance art, technology and Zen Buddhism that is early, conventionally-notated music for percussion ensemble and keyboards is sometimes neglected. Or was until recently. In the last few years – with the advent of performances and recordings l…
*2022 stock* This work began life as a radio play in 1982, a commission from and for Klaus Schöning and Cologne’s WDR. Working on the principles of collage, Cage brought together 15 unlikely characters – Narrator, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Vocoder, Erik Satie, Jonathan Albert, Mao Tse Tung (as a child), Henry David Thoreau, Rrose Selavy, Thorstein Veblen, Buckminster Fuller, Brigham Young, and Robert Rauschenberg – who speak together, their dialogue comprised of literal quotations, freely ada…
1989 release ** "Stefanie Schwedes began her artistic career in the 1980s with the Becker Lehnhoff music project. Sound installations were created using tape recordings and later digital sampling. The artist has developed this basic working method further and transferred it to the image. She explores human-nature relationships in photography, drawings, spatial and sound installations."
György Ligeti's only opera, Le Grand Macabre, is an entertaining, taut piece of musical theatre that sits somewhere between parody and ominous seriousness, between clowning and wisdom. Based on Michel de Ghelderode's play and set in the imaginary land of Breughelland, it follows Nekrotzar, alias the Grand Macabre, who has not only ambitions to suck blood but apocalyptic visions: he wants to bring about the end of the world personally, and fails.
Ligeti himself said its bizarre, exaggerated music…
2016 release ** The four works on this CD, ranging in date from 2004 to 2014, form an integral part of Andrzej Kwiecinski’s creative development and at the same time demonstrate his particular affinity with music for strings. Umbrae (2004) for string quintet. Mural (2008-10) for string quintet. Luci nella noote V (2014) for four string quartet. Contregambilles (2014) for string quartet. After studying composition, musicology and Baroque singing (countertenor) in Warsaw, Kwiecinski moved in 2005 …
*300 hand-numbered copies limited edition* "Sunder is the first full-length collaboration between Brooklyn-based Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) and Denver-based Jason Corder (aka offthesky). After years of independent work amid a like-minded community of ambient experimentalists, the two were brought together by the collaboration-centric Laaps label, for whom Corder has previously worked with Craig Tattersall (aka The Humble Bee). Across Sunder's eight chapters, we hear careful construction…
*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.
*200 hand-numbered copies limited edition* Thme is the alias of Paris-based musician Théo Martin. He has released numerous albums on labels such as Seil Records, Vaagner, and Lontano Series, along with recent collaborations with artists Agyt and Lamasz. Anti Atlas is Théo’s first solo work in two years. The use of magnetic tape remains central to his creative process, enabling him to infuse the sound with a sense of fragility and vulnerability, despite its inherent unpredictability. Feedback loo…
*250 hand-numbered copies limited edition* After releases on Eilean rec., Dinzu Artefacts and IIKKI, the fourth album by Masaya Ozaki, "Mizukara", is presented by Laaps. A beautiful immersion in the variety of his sounds imprints, using some field-recordings, electro-acoustic and textures to give his excellence to the ambient range. Masaya Ozaki is a New York/Iceland-based composer born in Niigata, Japan. His work examines the idea of space as a transient entity, the subtleties behind small mome…
*2023 stock* Folk singer-turned-rock singer Carmen Maki collaborated with Blues Creation on this album ('71).Immediately after the release of her masterpiece 'The Devil and the Eleven Children', Carmen Maki's youthful voice, which was influenced by Janis Joplin, fused with a sturdy sound reminiscent of Bruce Creation's Led Zeppelin, and it was a miracle of the early days of Japanese rock music. Later on, Kazuo Takeda's Blues Creation was active as Creation, and Carmen Maki formed OZ. This is a m…
*200 hand-numbered copies limited edition* Lake Mary is the moniker of Chaz Prymek, a guitarist, composer, free improvisor and painter currently based in the US. Through spacious personal hymns exploring the wilderness of deep emotional narrative, Prymek’s long-form compositions and improvisations are boundless meditations on the landscapes, river ways, and wildlife, both external and personal. Perhaps most widely known as a founding member of the group Fuubutsushi, Prymek's work as Lake Mary le…
Limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on 180gr. silver coloured vinyl. Tim Buckley released his fifth studio album Lorca in 1970 on Elektra Records and was one of Buckley's few avant-garde albums. The album is a journey into the mind of Buckley while he discovered new ground. He used a more abstract descriptive writing style, avoiding direct narratives and standard song themes. It was a reflection of the works of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, hence the album title. Buckley w…
*2022 stock* Climate-atmosphere is what we say. Soul with beautiful expression, is what they say in the modern jazz scene in the US. It’s a necessary component for good jazz, as well as for swing. But to achieve an organic atmosphere which is therefore vital and alive, a relationship of intentions and views, and a congeniality of thoughts are needed. When Tommasi was in Rome for a few days and had Santucci and Scoppa listen to the latest pieces he had composed, the three musicians ideas, a…
The film "Calling The New Gods", by Vincent Moon, is the document of musicians Rully Shabara & Wukir Suryadi of the group Senyawa playing & being filmed on location, outside, tracing a path from the outskirts of Yogyakarta, Java (on the border of a rice field, on the edge of a garbage dump, etc.) until the center of the city (in the middle of a market, in a fair). In a sort of mandala, of centripetal spiral, during an entire day, from dawn until dusk, the film - with soundscapes shared b…
Shidaiqu literally means "songs of the era", a term used to describe a hybrid musical genre that first began permeating through the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai in the late 1920s. Blending western pop, jazz, blues and Hollywood-inspired film soundtracks with traditional Chinese elements, the shidaiqu represented a musical and cultural merging that would go on to shape a golden age of Chinese popular song & film in the pre-communism interwar period.
Waiting for Your Return brings together a wide…
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* Isak Hedtjärn plays the clarinet — a straight, metal variant of the more common wooden B flat Clarinet. Kvarpan is Isak’s first ‘solo’ record, but you also hear him in ‘quartet’ with himself, too on this diverse suite of improvisations recorded ‘on location’ on a single day at Patons Malmgård — his usual practice spot just by where the ferries head over to Finland. We recorded until the throb of the boats and waiting cars took over. A polymath of undeniable m…
Following on the back of their recent reissues of the Italian library music giant Piero Umiliani's 'Continente Nero' and 'Africa', Dialogo returns with three brand new entries in their Piero Umiliani Legacy Series, stunning reissues of the composer's mid '70s, highly sought-after LPs, 'L'Uomo e la Città', 'Polinesia' and 'Pianofender Blues'.
Following on the back of their recent reissues of the Italian library music giant Piero Umiliani's 'Continente Nero' and 'Africa', Dialogo returns with three brand new entries in their Piero Umiliani Legacy Series, stunning reissues of the composer's mid '70s, highly sought-after LPs, 'Pianofender Blues', 'L'Uomo e la Città' and 'Polinesia'.
Dialogo launches their brand new Piero Umiliani Legacy Series, with stunning reissues of "Africa" and "Continente Nero", two of the celebrated Italian composer's most important and creatively visionary works, which have been remastered from the original analogue master tapes.
‘Surprisingly enough, program music is not all that common in jazz. For example, unlike their classical counterparts, not many jazz composers have set out to evoke particular places. Duke Ellington’s 'Tone Parallel To Harlem' is one of the great exceptions. Britain has been even more neglected, unless you count Billy Strayhorn’s 'Chelsea Bridge', and that was about Whistler's painting rather than the actual bridge itself. But the British jazz composer Graham Collier is one who is doing something…
'Eventual' is the first album by double bass player Gonçalo Almeida and 'knob twidler' Rutger Zuydervelt. It's not exactly their first collaboration though, having released two EPs, 'Doze Ruinas' and 'Jangadas', and being colleagues in Hydra Ensemble (with cellists Lucija Gregov and Nina Hitz). When film maker Lex Reitsma commissioned Rutger Zuydervelt for the soundtrack of his documentary about photographer Koos Breukel, Zuydervelt proposed to involve Gonçalo Almeida. Reitsma agreed and visited…
The Saint of the Pit, Diamanda Galás’ fifth studio album and the second in her trilogy, The Masque of the Red Death, is an urgent record. Its theme is essentially passion, in the sense of suffering, although here, and unlike the passion of Christianity, there is little to offer solace. Re-released on Galás’ own Intravenal Sound Operations (ISO) after its initial release on Mute in November 1986, The Saint and the Pit is a masterpiece of witnessing, forged from grief and fury during the HIV-AIDS …
Deluxe LP housed in metallic silver tip-on jacket with gloss film laminate finish, matte pigment stamping and two printed inner sleeves. When it was first released in 1997, White Heaven founder You Ishihara’s solo debut Passivité seemed to vanish into the ether, going largely unnoticed; the scant coverage it did receive in the Japanese music press was confused or even dismissive, and it hardly reached an overseas audience at that moment just before the online music era. It was released by the sh…
'For Their Past And Their Future'. Brutalist guitardrone compositions from members of Sun Stabbed, La Morte Young and Sister Iodine. Three detoriation guitarslabs challenging the Channel and trying to conquer the coastlines with a shivering bombardment on the defences of Antifer, Helgoland and Oostende. For fans of Surface Of The Earth/Dead C/Flying Saucer Attack etc
2009 release ** "The works of Antanas Kučinskas collected on the album "Parasite" are based on the method of re-composition, i.e. processing material with a strong historical and stylistic identity using techniques that are completely "alien" to him. I am talking in particular about sampling, loops and scratches, which make up the aesthetics that Kučinskas himself called "parasitic music". I am an omnivorous parasite: my works feed on existing music and develop at its expense until the complete …
2004 release ** "This is a compilation from the French label Mechanoise Labs and, as it says in the subtitle, it’s ‘an international gathering of extreme electronics’. These extreme electronics are often presented in a noise form, but it’s not only about that. Some of the tracks, by Cutman (from France), Control (from USA) and others, are like a harsher noisy side of (post)industrial. Sometimes there’s use of talking samples or the noise atmosphere is building up with voice shouting in Cutman’s …
2005 release ** "Into the Void is a reflection upon the history and the recent changes in the Krakovian neighborhood of Kazimierz. The center of this meditation is the seemingly contradictory development of the last few years, which shows the attempts to re-animate Jewish culture. This piece is an attempt to reverse the seasons from summer to winter in the 700-year-old Jewish district of Krakow. What struck Meissner at first sight, was the glaring contrast between the rich, the rise of the mater…
2014 release ** "This recording features a concert by Italian composer and multimedia artist Roberto Paci Dalò entitled Ye Shanghai, recorded at the ORF Funkhaus in Vienna for Kunstradio. This complex and poignant sound collage is comprised of recorded voices that quickly dissolve into ambient electronic sound that grows increasingly in intensity over the course of this reflective piece. With mysterious instrumentation and vocal recordings, Roberto Paci Dalò creates a powerful composition of swi…
2005 release ** "MAAAA's "Decay and Demoralization" comes at you with 6 tracks well over 60 minutes in length. This stuff is harsh and without a doubt the most extreme band coming out of Poland's underground today. Decay and Demoralization includes tons of power electronics and bizarre recordings that create an odd, otherworldly atmosphere stuck in a white noise frenzy. Banging metal, shrieking, dying, the cover of this album should say it all. These guys like to take the energy of punk rock and…
2005 release ** "Third release under the pseudonym Punck for Adriano Zanni, an artist active in the Italian electroacoustic scene since the first half of the 90s. After his debut "Mu", released in 2002 on cd-r support, follows the 3-inch "A Movie Without Images" on the Ctrl+Alt+Canc label, a small netlabel founded by Zanni himself and dedicated to the diffusion of experimental sounds that, among other things, also includes in its catalog Ovo di Bruno Dorella and Sinistri. "Nowhere Campfire Tapes…