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Winter Songs
A reissue of the brilliant second album by Art Bears, a band/project featuring Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause, formed in 1978 after disputes over the musical direction within Henry Cow. 'Winter Songs', originally released in 1979, placed Art Bears in the forefront of the Rock In Opposition Movement. Art Bears' intense and brutal avant-garde approach on the album comes across as primordial expression, which is nailed down by Krause's violently charismatic voice. As a piece of music re…
Benzaiten
Another smoker from Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., in typically fine form. Benzaiten is an In C-style homage to the classic Osamu Kitajima record Benzaiten (1973). Acid Mothers Temple covers the title-track and reprise using Kitajima's original composition as a departure point to explore the outer realms of AMT territory. Further instrumental explorations reveal textures of the original composition while launching out further into the cosmic domain. Numerous Acid Mothers origi…
Complete Studio Recordings
Overhang Party is criminally overlooked. From the heavily psychedelic noise-rock of their first album to the piano-rock anthems of 4, Overhang Party was somehow impossibly consistent and seamless. This box set flows as an even, open document of this fearless and inventive Japanese rock group. For a quick reference of the sonic distances this group has traveled (and the skills they possess) stream Bass Oscillations from the first record and then skip straight to Kizashi on 4.
The Complete Studio …
Merzbear
Author, activist, painter, and sound artist Masami Akita has been at the foreground of experimental music for over twenty-five years. Inspired by psychedelic rock, free jazz, and early electronic composition as well the physical arts (especially Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau), Masami Akita has created a musical language all his own. Merzbear, the sixth Merzbow release in his utterly essential Merz series for Important Records, pulses and pounds with distorted droning guitar feedback, pulsing noise b…
Secret Photographs
Beautiful new work from Machinefabriek. Secret Photographs was composed as a soundtrack to accompany a film made by Mike Hoolboom using photographs taken by notorious bank robber Alvin Karpis.
Filmmaker Mike Hoolboom discovered a batch of Karpis' photos for auction on eBay. He was the lucky winning bidder. With his newly found treasure, Hoolboom began working on a film consisting of still images, slowly dissolving one into another. Intensifying the slow, hypnotic pace and transitions, the musica…
Cassette Memories Volume 3: South of the Border
"South of the Border is the third installment of my Cassette Memories album series. All field recordings were taped in Mexico, a country I've had a special fondness for since I was a little child. My first memory was watching photographs and Super-8 films my father shot in Mexico City from his time there during the 1968 Summer Olympics, where he competed as a member of the Japanese national hockey team. It made me realize there is a place completely different from Japan, and I started dreaming a…
Mara
* Picture disc edition of 300 copies * Maja S. K. Ratkje is at the forefront of the musical avant-garde. Her music is bold, original and it is meant for sharing. At its heart lies Ratkje’s own voice, an open door to her individual musicianship and a constant tool for realigning her work with natural expressions and human truths.
On Mara, layers of vocals overlap and layer their way through the reverberant woodwork of an early baroque parish in Austria. At times slow and beautiful, other times fr…
Further West Quad Cult LP
Prefigured by the inclusion of a secret extra pocket in the original packaging of Far West (IMPREC 386CD/LP, 2013), this painstakingly crafted complimentary LP is intended for synced playback with that release. With two turntables or other playback devices, the listener can experience fully unique quad playback. Further West Quad Cult LP offers deeper journeys into the cave where the self dissolves. It also stands alone as an inverted Far West universe, and the listener is invited to enjoy it…
I Line My Days Along Your Weight
LP edition. Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without…
S/T
Neuter River is a new project from Jan St. Werner of Mouse On Mars, one which concerns itself with the more experimental, far-out sounds within the producer's repertoire. The label describes the LP thusly: "Neuter River is not exactly a band or a person, it's the remains of an idea, a shifting light cube at the end of a ragged kaleidoscope. Atonal precission / pentatonic noise." Quite what that means will be unclear even after you've heard the record, but then it's the extremity of the abstract …
Split
Mouthus: Drum and guitar explosion through tape manipulation and a total synth bath. Collided through a number of recording sessions and strings of modulation to elevate the particle riffage to a heightened state of platectonic rock. Bulbs: Like tuning your radio slowly between far off new age stations in the most serene way possible. The marriage of muted melodies existing below feedback skwerls and electronic swerls. Transmissions from a better place.
New Monuments
Formed for the purpose of playing 2008's Instal Fest, this trio comprises C Spencer Yeh (of Burning Star Core), Ben Hall (of Graveyards) and Don Dietrich (of Borbetomagus), coming together for the common cause of relentless, ear-blasting improv. Sax-toting noise legend Dietrich is no stranger to the more abrasive school of free improv, having been operating in the field since the early 1980s, but the comparatively fresh-faced Yeh and Hall hold their own here (manning violin and traps, respective…
Simultaneous Quodlibet
Limited pressing of 500 copies on LP: Matmos, Wobbly & J Lesser present: Simultaneous Quodlibet. These pieces originated in improvised recordings which were then taken to Snowghost Studios in Montana & overdubbed with additional instruments, synths, drums, bass and organs. They were then edited down over the course of a few months until becoming a fully realised studio album of carefully constructed and meticulously composed pieces rooted in music that could only have been performed spontaneousl…
Nihil Obstat
Gorgeous new full length from Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem. Wissem's long form, graceful melodic lute layers, preceded by suspenseful deep bass movements, create a transcendental and pastoral. Wissem's is a world where hypnotic minimalist figures are repeated to slow the act of listening. Nihil Obstat (Nothing Hinders) is performed on Wissem's custom black lute built by Michael Schreiner. LP pressed in an edition of 800.
"New classical lute music that sound as if it always existed, as if it h…
Radiator
Beautiful new work from Kevin Doria (Growing). If Eliane Radigue and Kevin Drumm made a record together it might sound something like Total Life. Kevin Doria creates a sound world with deep inner dynamics shrouded by distortion. Whether you stay on the surface or listen deeply, the energy in this work is vivid. Recorded and mixed at home in the winter of 2012, RADIATOR represents the first proper full length release by Total Life for Important Records. RADIATOR is inspired by standing on the ga…
Alessandro Cortini and Merzbow
Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) and Japanese noise legend Massami Akita (Merzbow) bask in their mutual love for the EMS Synthi, a British synthesizer from the early 70's notorious for it's patch matrix, portability and distinct tone. Astonishingly, these two disparate artists meld into a single sound as they flex the analog circuitry of the EMS Synthi in new ways; giving this classic synth a modern workout and proving that, in capable hands, a 40 year old analog synthesizer is a tool for th…
Cool Cruel Mouth
"Cool Cruel Mouth" is Larsen's 9th full length studio album and marks 15 years of activity with a fine collection of textural, cinematic, haunting, nocturnal songs. Written and recorded in 2010. "Cool Cruel Mouth" finds the band as a 5 piece with the full time addition of lyricist Little Annie "Anxiety" Bandez as the official voice of Larsen. Also featured on "Cool Cruel Mouth" is inimitable Baby Dee playing piano on one of the two featured instrumentals as well as on her own composition "Unhear…
Self VA.
This is Important's third release in a 4 record Important feature on the work of the enigmaticJapanese artist Kouhei Matsunaga. Self VA is Kouhei's 2nd album. His first was released on the Mille Plateaux label in 1998. Since then he has kept busy with numerous collaboations as well as his work with NHK (Raster Noton). Kouhei seamlessly weaves all of his work together in seemingly effortless fashion. Collaborations on Self V.A. include Leif Elggren, NHK, Sensational (Jungle Brothers), RLW and mor…
Ex Patris
The title Ex Patris (from the fathers) plays on the idiomatic baroque lute compositions presented here which emulate the classical repertoire. It also refers to this almost forgotten instrument, which was passed on by the fathers. The Jozef Van Wissem's aim is to bring back and liberate the lute. The four compositions on Ex Patris form a circular narrative of interlocking repetitive melodic series. The follow up to Important release “ It is all that is made” kicks off with the pro apocalyptic tr…
In V. Tro
The album combines both the live recording of the first ever Larsen & Z'ev In V.Tro live performances with extreme aural-mixes of Larsen's In V.Tro studio sessions by Z'ev.
Larsen and Z'ev In V.tro is a soundtrack for micro-cinematic images of cellular studies captured by professors Dario Cantino and Antonio Barasa of the Istituto di Anatomia Umana Normale (Basic Human Anatomy Institute) between 1935 and 1985. Cantino and Barasa wanted to review the history and techniques of in vitro cultures as…