Music from United Kingdom

In a country and a musical domain where you have someone like Evan Parker, it’s difficult for any emerging sax player to establish himself, but John Butcher managed to do it and with his own personal style, very different from Parker’s. Now, he’s one of the main figures of the United Kingdom free improvised scene and his name crossed frontiers. “So Beautiful, it Starts to Rain” is a transnational enterprising, and another product of the British / Scandinavian connection, reuniting the tenor and …

Radiation Deluxe Series present a reissue of Lol Coxhill's Ear Of Beholder, originally released in 1971. Ear Of Beholder is one of the most beguiling and adventurous records of the 1970s, which is saying a lot as that is a musical decade marked by groundbreaking creativity. Originally released on John Peel's Dandelion label, Lol Coxhill's sprawling double album debut is an avant-garde jazz masterstroke that features Robert Wyatt and much of the Whole World group, Kevin Ayers's backing band at…

Simon Crab of Bourbonese Qualk compiled 80 of his favorite BQ tracks for this 4LP set, which he has written and composed. The selection ranges from the early, more industrial-ish and experimental period of the first ultra limited tapes from 1980 and 1981 such as 'Us', 'Cast Loose Red Net' or 'Half Erased' to more beat-orientated compilation contributions of the mid '80s. The box also contains 20 previously unearthed and unreleased tracks of same period.  If there was ever a missing gap in the hi…

A live recording of the trio comprised of John Butcher (saxophones, feedback) Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesizer) Matthew Shipp (piano) performing at Cafe Oto, London on 19 February 2014. "the standout album of 2016. There’s a raw vitality to the performance, and the music is unabashed and direct in channeling relatively conventional lyricism: Tangle is supremely listenable, and should grab listeners who usually find improvised free music elusive, as well as devotees . . . This is thrilling…

On Room To Live, The Fall take the hurried, all-or-nothing approach of their preceding Kamera Records releases to extreme ends. Forged via Mark E. Smith's continual disassembling of players and focus on previously unrehearsed material, the album collects The Fall's most experimental and improvisational recordings. As proclaimed on the album cover, "Undilutable Slang Truth!" would be revealed throughout Room To Live. With the album's comparatively lo-fi production and always-teetering performance…

Hex Enduction Hour was originally conceptualized as the death knell for The Fall. Beleaguered by career uncertainty and guided by vague premonitions of collapse, Mark E. Smith declared that one full hour was needed to thoroughly and perhaps finally state his case with The Fall. This framework resulted in a true classic of the post-punk era and an album that gave The Fall their first taste of album chart success, thankfully removing surrender from the equation.Recorded in haste in both Iceland an…

Colin Newman’s 3 classic early 80’s solo albums originally released on Beggars Banquet / 4AD re-released on his own new imprint Sentient Sonics. "These albums were recorded and released between 1980 & 1982 in a “post 154” rush of activity. While all the albums bear the name Colin Newman they differ in that A-Z & Not To were recorded as “band” albums with Colin being joined by Wire’s Robert Grey, Mike Thorne (who also produced, as he had the first 3 Wire albums) & Desmond Simmons on A-Z and Rober…

Colin Newman kept busy during Wire’s temporary early 80’s split, releasing three rather interesting solo records. Although in the case of A-Z, some members of Wire were involved in the recording… This feels as lean and sharp-edged as all your favourite Wire, but with some different details in the sound. Released on vinyl and CD, with the CD edition coming with a whole extra disc of demos and the like. On Sentient Sonics.

Colin Newman’s 3 classic early 80’s solo albums originally released on Beggars Banquet / 4AD re-released on his own new imprint Sentient Sonics. "These albums were recorded and released between 1980 & 1982 in a “post 154” rush of activity. While all the albums bear the name Colin Newman they differ in that A-Z & Not To were recorded as “band” albums with Colin being joined by Wire’s Robert Grey, Mike Thorne (who also produced, as he had the first 3 Wire albums) & Desmond Simmons on A-Z and Rober…

On the occasion of the republication of eight texts by Charles-Louis Philippe (1874-1909), Nurse With Wound (here, Steven Stapleton & Brian Conniffe) wrote "Music for Miscellaneous: A Piece of the Sky Is Missing", an unreleased mini CD included in the book.

A lost paradise, a lost innocence, and a lost culture; these are the dominant themes presented in Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 masterpiece Walkabout, a survival story of two children lost in the scorched Australian wilderness. Together with other seminal Australian surrealistic outback films, (e.g. Wake In Fright) Walkabout was a film that reshaped the Australian film industry and defined the country’s New Wave. On the cusp of the film’s 45th anniversary it is pertinent to observe that the film’s origina…

A 2012 set of trio improvisations by Evan Parker playing soprano saxophone, Mark Nauseef playing metallophone based percussion and Toma Gouband playing lithophone based percussion. Recorded by genius engineer Adam Skeaping in the warm, natural acoustics of St Peters, Whitstable.

Bursting into the 1980s on a new label (the then-upstart, now-legendary Rough Trade) and with an augmented, audibly panicked lineup, The Fall's Grotesque is the true pure-bred Fall release from the Marc Riley era. Released in the immediate wake of The Fall's most beloved single (Totally Wired), the album carries over that righteously famed teeth-chattering, bolstered in no small part by the drumming of new addition Paul Hanley, brother of bassist Steve Hanley and aged only 15 at the time of reco…

If The Fall truly is a cult band, then Slates both benefits from and reinforces such shrouded obsessions. In presenting these six particular songs as a 10-inch EP, the inherent and attractive difficulty of The Fall's sound is made physical, framing the urgency of their singles from this period (notably How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' and Lie Dream of a Casino Soul) alongside lengthy rumblings normally restricted to long players.The tumbling and phased "Middle Mass" begins on an incredible high note, s…

Kye is proud to present ‘Lend an ear, leave a word’ the new LP from Glasgow’s Mark Vernon. “The pieces composed for this album combine field recordings of contemporary Lisbon with found tape recordings from the past;  reel-to-reel tapes, micro-cassettes and Dictaphones collected from the Feira de Ladra market, a popular and lively flea market in the Alfarma district. Each tape recording is an audio snapshot of a specific time; a family album in sound, a musical performance, a compilation o…

Angry Love Productions presents the official reissue of the first studio album Force The Hand Of Chance (1982) by Psychic TV. Back on vinyl for the first time in over 25 years. Cut from the original masters in the WEA UK vaults, this limited-edition pressing is sure to sell out fast. Force The Hand Of Chance remains one of Psychic TV's most seminal albums boasting classic tracks such as "Just Drifting" and "Ov Power" as well as a vocal feature by Marc Almond of Soft Cell on the haunting "Gu…

Another Lenka Lente book/CD combo where you get to discover that ‘Les Ventres et Autre Contes’ translates as ‘The Bellies and Other Stories’ and that Félix Fénéon was an Italian anarchist, art critic and literary stylist with a tremendous goatee beard who didn’t like the portrait that Paul Signac painted of him because he painted it in profile, not face on as requested, but he hung it on his wall anyway.  Five short stories here that first saw the light of day in various French literary magazine…

Fully remastered and repackaged second release of the final Ferial Confine album 'First, Second and Third Drop' by Siren Records (Japan). Here presented in Japanese mini-LP style sleeve with obi, mastered at Skye Masteringby Denis Blackham in 2012. 'First, Second and Third Drop', although never actually released when it was completed in late 1985, became the final cycle of music by Ferial Confine and marked a departure from the closing moments of the preceding album 'Meiosis' (Siren 022). Its im…

...A celebration and documentation of 10 years of Nurse With Wound shows but to call Dark Fat a live album is far too simplistic. It is an entirely new recording constructed by combining the most interesting moments of the past decade into unique tracks. We have M.S. Waldron to thank as he is archival commandant of the NWW oeuvre and since 2006 has recorded everything and we mean everything. He has recorded all the live shows, sound-checks, rehearsals, off-stage events and even covertly re…

With the massive amount of material Bryn Jones had left in the vaults when he passed away in 1999, it's hard to truly assess his progression, stylistic or otherwise, over the years. And his reasons for choosing to release one tape's worth of material over another's were sometimes as mysterious as anything else about his work as Muslimgauze. But upon stumbling onto the material found on the undated tape known as Ali Zarin, it's hard not to wonder how it would have been received if it had bee…