Restock 2023. I visited Saya and Ueno at the Majikick house in June last year to catch-up, hang out and chat about what another record from them on ROOM40 might feel like. I'd come fresh from RM40 HQ in Brisbane, working with Lawrence on Noriko's 'U' and was packing a clutch of his recent solo stuff. The house was fascinated with 'Studies for Stradbroke' a CDr released on Wind Measures of hydrophone recordings made in the gorgeous natural lakes on Stradbroke Island, just off the coast of Queensl…
Restock 2023. Tokyo quartet Minamo occupy a privileged place in the Japanese music scene.They remain one of the few ensembles to consistently produce work that simultaneously refines and expands upon their existing themes and aesthetics. Their largely improvised interactions have produced a collection of recordings that benefit equally from considered listening amongst the groups members and a willingness to stray from the path without warning.Documental, their new edition (a follow up to ‘A Pat…
Restock 2023. 'Someone a long way off, or in the next street on a still day, or in the office across the hall in the rain, might be playing something that sounds a bit like music.'
A peak album for Joni Mitchell and genuinely one of the greatest singer-singwriter albums of the '70s, of not ever, all the greater for the intimacy of the songs and beauty of her voice! Perfect isn't a word you want to throw around too often, but Joni Mitchell's Blue might be one of the rare perfect albums. They way personal storytelling soars as relatable poetry, the sparest acoustic backing feels a whole buzzing environment for her voice to soar over. It deserves every bit of praise it's gott…
Ladies Of The Canyon was originally recorded between 1969 and 1970, and serves as a transition from her earlier folk inspired release to the more sophisticated albums Joni Mitchell would go on to release. Many of the songs feature lengthy instrumental passages, something would become fully realized on albums like Court And Spark. The flute and saxophone that appear on "For Free" and "Conversation" give a taste of the influence of jazz over many of Mitchell's subsequent recordings. The singer cov…
With Good night the pleasure was ours, David Grubbs melts down and recasts three decades of playing music on tour into a book-length poem, bringing to a close the trilogy that includes Now that the audience is assembled and The Voice in the Headphones. In Good night the pleasure was ours, the world outside the tour filters in with eccentric sparseness. From teenage punk bands to ensembles without fixed membership, and from solo performance to a group augmented by digital avatars, Grubbs presents…
Between 1895 and 1920, the United States saw a sharp increase in commercial sound recording, the first mass medium of home entertainment. As companies sought to discover what kinds of records would appeal to consumers, they turned to performance forms already familiar to contemporary audiences—sales pitches, oratory, sermons, and stories. In A Most Valuable Medium, Richard Bauman explores the practical problems that producers and performers confronted when adapting familiar oral genres to this i…
"Friendly Electrons" presents the electronic side of the original Ton Steine Scherben drummer, book author and longtime Conrad Schnitzler friend / collaborator Wolfgang Seidel.
*250 copies limited edition CD in 6-panel digisleeve* Cade is Bruno Dorella and Giovanni Lami. We come from different backgrounds and trainings, but we found a common ground in our open view to different disciplines, and our curiosity towards unorthodox approaches to music. "Cade" is our first ever album to be released, part of a wide archive of sessions that we recorded in 2019-2020, with no kinds of pressure. Dorella plays some traditional instruments such as guitar and percussions, while Lami…
Isolde Touch is Asha Sheshadri, a composer and multimedia artist based in Southern California. Secretary of Sensation is a seven-chapter narrative occurring in Our Town (1052–1119). Voice, synthesis and original text. The music Asha Sheshadri makes as Isolde Touch is boldly literal. Perhaps literal is inexact; concrete is closer, as her sounds have a clarity that ties them directly to their origins (a piano is exactly a piano). Conceptually she deals in abstraction, but sonically she’s unafraid …
This is the second edition of the Idle Chatter curated series. "Held There, Beside The Signified" was curated and designed by Drekka (aka Michael Anderson). It features new music by the Drekka, Pillars and Tongues and Skrei. This triple cassette set comes packaged in a white plastic three-cassette album. Working under the name DREKKA since 1996, Mkl Anderson has released large body of work on his own BLUESANCT label and many other labels internationally, including a series of three full-length L…
The project Swedish Jazz History is a CD series issued by Caprice Records. The research for this is subsidized by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the production is partly financed by the Swedish Council for Cultural Affairs. Our ambition has been to reflect the development of Swedish jazz up to and including the 1960s, and Volume 10, the final album in the series, covers the latter half of that eventful decade. Like its predecessor, Vol. 9 (“Brand new!”), the box contains 4 CDs an…
This the fifth, and final before the break up, album released by The Mothers of Invention. It was released through Bizarre/Reprise on April 21, 1969 as a double album. It was meant to be the soundtrack to a film, that was sadly never finished.
The album was recorded from October 1967 to February 1968, the exceptions being the CD bonus tracks. Made up of both live and studio material, Uncle Meat has been praised by critics for the diversity of its compositions, the virtuosity of its performances,…
AVVA is the duo of Toshimaru Nakamura and Billy Roisz, based in Tokyo and Vienna respectively. AVVA stands for "Audio Video/Video Audio", referring to the working method of the duo. Nakamura produces the music using the internal feedback from his no-input mixing board, Roisz uses that as the basis for her optical moving patterns, and Nakamura has a TV monitor showing Roisz' output, so the whole process is circular and created in real time.Since 1998, Nakamura has been exploring the possibilities…
Three long-form works from Joan La Barbara's first decade of recordings, with new stereo and surround mixes from the analogue tapes: As Lightning Comes In Flashes (1981), Autumn Signal (1978) and the previously unreleased CYCLONE (1976-77).
A massive double CD featuring 33 tracks from our current releases. An unrivalled collection of Industrial, Esoteric, Dark Ambient, Noise, Ritual, Drone, Doom, Experimental, Electronica, and Dark Soundtracks. Unearth the world of Cold Spring! Ltd x 4000 copies in a gatefold ecopak.
'Circle Wind' fields are recorded at Tokyo, Kanagawa, Niigata, Nagano, etc.. yet what's interesting is the time that recordings were made, each recording session was taking place between midnight and dawn, and the techniques that been used. "Feeble vibration and passage of air. It resembles Zen and meditation to capture the piece of these delicate sounds aurally." Hiroki Sasajima is the sound artist residents in Tokyo. He had started the activity of field recording around 2007. Since then, he go…
''There is no other Syrian dabke musician that has enjoyed the local, regional, national, and international recognition that Rizan Said has, and for that, the world is lucky. Rizan is a musical ambassador from a disappeared Syria, and this is not to be taken lightly. Once upon a time, not too long ago, Syria was a culturally diverse country possessing a certain unity. A place not synonymous with barbarism and savagery. Far from the capital of Damascus, the northeast of the country, known as the …
From the acceptance of the deficiencies of our world derives a necessity to create "A New World". This album explores this process of transformation. It is a search that uses movement and stillness to attempt to reach a space where reality can make sense again. As in all voyages, there is excitement and unease as we move through the unknown.
Malayeen is the trio of Lebanese musicians Raed Yassin (a founding member of 'A' Trio, one of Lebanon’s most renowned free improv outfits), Charbel Haber (a former member of experimental rock bands Scrambled Eggs, XEFM and BAO), and Khaled Yassine (a former member of Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem’s oriental jazz ensemble). Malayeen was born from Yassin and Haber's love for the music of quintessential Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid, and their desire to create a contemporary trio that would …
A limited CDr included with the A Castle Popping LP (R11, 2015). Tub of Deep Green Ink compliments the nature of the A Castle Popping, presenting ten tracks from 2011-2014. Ranging from layered string recordings, like the pastoral 2012 piece Inverness String Variations, to computerized-vocal experiments, as with ADR Aria & The Wind Sick (both from 2014). Human voice is dissected and stitched back together; examined under odd light. 2011’s Rooms of Night explores the interior of Sean’s old house …
This CD of songs, grittily arranged and produced is noticeably more straight-ahead than ReR’s usual releases though it sits comfortably within the broad range of Steve’s tirelessly experimental output. This is a project with a long history: Steve and his main collaborator Todd Dadaleares have been writing, recording and performing together for longer than MeRCy’s 20+ year existence and David Fields (drums) and Tim Inman (keyboards) are also long servers. New, for this phase of recordings …
Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable - in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes latin brass arrangements (sort of), great drumming, medium wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -and all without undue fuss but adding up to something exotic and new. Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. It doesn't play by genre rules, or fashion …
Very beautiful book about the work of Ton Homburg. Ton Homburg took care of the layout of all the publications released by Het Apollohuis: invitations, posters, books, leaflets, LPs,CDs.
Followers of our Quarterly will recall, about 6 years back, Woodbury's inspired arrangement of 'Shenandoah', which managed to embrace the whole of America history in under 10 minutes. Since then he has been working on completing this collection, his first full ensemble instrumental CD. The interest starts with the ensemble itself, half as expected for Latin, Jazz and Big band arrangements and half traditional American: pedal steel, banjo, accordion and fiddles. One thinks of Van Dyke Parks', and…
Contemporary music for tuba and a revelation of an under-utilised musical voice. For stretched and traditional techniques. Includes works by Lutz Glandien (Tuba and Tape), Morton Feldman, Igor Stravinsky and Michael himself. Excellent collection; and unusual.
First released in Hungary in 1987, this is an extraordinary work combining ensemble playing, documentary recording, studio manipulation, electronics and some stunning compositional conception. Featuring Marta Sebastjen, the Amaninda group, WYXOMPHONIC group, Mandel Quartet and a star gallery of other instrumentalists of all kinds. A unique work we worked years to acquire - a masterwork in every sense.
File under early Russian industrial rock/art; Harry Partch, incorporating primitive analogue electronics. A legend in art and industrial music circles, ZGA was formed under the old regime in Riga, Lavia, in 1984, by Nick Sudnik and Valery Dudkhin. Unable to rehearse acoustically because of the neighbours, they invented their own instruments from scrap and springs and shaped metal fitted with contact microphones; these were not just noise instruments, but ways of accessing complex pitches, strang…
A sound drama for tuba and electronics that constructs its own rich, twilit, rather alien, world. Only the sound of the tuba (sometimes), a few waves and a little thunder sound familiar, everything else is a mysterious presence; the electronics are not at all conventional and though much of the sound is clearly derived somehow from the tuba, it offers no foothold in a familiar place. If landscape were ever an appropriate metaphor for the product of a congeries of sounds, it would be applicable h…
With string orchestras, percussion, a motivating red guard and the severed embalmed arm of the great helmsman himself (maybe), Jon Pits the ethos of Mao's China - and in particular the mass production of the violin and it's use in life against the 'reductive cultural practice of our globalised world'. Well, that's what it says here and by golly I agree. Apart from that, this a large scale work that features fine and extensive writing for string orchestras, juxtaposed with (more or less) controll…
*300 copies limited edition* Vice Wears Black Hose (V.W.B.H.) is a collaborative project by 2 monsters of the American Noise, P/E, HNW scene: Sam McKinlay aka The Rita and Richard Ramirez aka Black Leather Jesus. Project name was inspired by the Italian "Giallo" movie "Il Vizio ha le Calze Nere" (Italian translation of VWBH) released in 1975 by Tano Cimarosa. No need to describe sounds as you know exactly what to expect. If you need more words you don't need that CD.
**2020 stock** "Unveiled, the verge of the silence, the voice of the shadow; the cynosure of the psyche is trembling for the essential breath. A subliminal reborn of invisible light strikes the eyes as the underpass appears in the essence and escarps into the esoteric realm of the source of life. A subliminal summon from disappearing heart enthralls the wind of loneliness. Lost spirit leaves deep traces behind as the path is revealing. Circle within circle the lingering path transubstantiates os…
*2022 stock. Limited of 300 copies.* Timewaves presents moments of history in a flow of eternity. Each moment may or may not be clearly connected with each other. But when examining the past, does not every moment intertwine with some other moments, and suddenly everything is connected with everything in strange and unclear ways.
In Timewaves it is clear that those moments presented on the album are bound to civilisation. Is it our civilisation, or someone elses, or just a dream? We don't know. …
**2020 stock** "Within the Depths of Silence and Phormations takes the listener deep below the world of the ordinary into the catacombs of the subconscious, the worlds lying within us so few ever live to explore. This is music meant to stimulate the mind, to inspire one in their explorations of self and solitude. Layers of ethereal atmospheres and the collage of choirs, strings, bells and occasional voices slowly bleed together to create music for society whose spirituality has been rendered imp…
*Limited edition of 199 copies.* Legendary Pink Dots open-air live-section at "Parzkricht / Rotterdam" in 1983. These recordings from the park have been floating around the World Wide Web for some time, but never as a complete show. This offering fills in the gaps and completes the puzzle. Tracks 1-3 are taken from the Vpro Radio recording of the show, while the rest was never broadcasted in full. "They Don't Horses.." did appear on a compilation cassette many years ago (Recloose Live Series Num…
**2020 stock, 400 copies** "Re-edition of the split tape released in 1996 on SSSM, the label owned by Hiroshi Hashimoto aka Contagious Orgasm. with the addition of two rare and exclusive tracks released on the Dift Laboratory tape compilation dated 1994 also out on SSSM. A unique document on Italian Extreme Industrial Power-Electronics by Atrax Morgue / Marco Corbelli and the Japanese Dark-Ambient Industrial by Hiroshi Hashimoto. Cult release, first time on CD. re-mastered by Hiroshi Hashimoto. …
"After two vinyl releases finally a digital album by the master of Japan-Noise on OEC. This album is entitled Marmo (Marble for Italian) and is devoted to the Italian and particularly the Venetian marble. Masami was visiting and playing in this magic Italian city several times and was impressed by all the marbles used in the Venetian buildings and paintings... The 3 tracks composing this album are entitled Merzbotanica-parallela. "Botanica parallela" is a book written by the Italian author Leo L…