2527
Tip! Takashi Masubuchi (acoustic guitar) and Staytone (modular synthesizer) are musicians based in Tokyo. Both of them are new generation involvers in post onkyo Japanese improvisation music scene, active in Ftarri, Otooto, Permian and other small, quiet, warm spaces. Takashi Masubuchi is also (one of) Permian’s runner, which is specially focus on free improvisation music. This duo has deep collaboration for many years. 2527 are some selections from their 2018 recordings in Permian.
Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams
The final album released by the composer-performer Jerry Hunt before his death, Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams is a rare and foundational audio document of Hunt’s compositional process. The record collects five pieces from the artist’s “Ground” series, translating his characteristically variable and spatial scores into “recorded fixtures of activity using mechanic musical instrument arrays,” to eerie and mesmerizing results. Originally released by experimental label OODiscs in 1992, it…
The Vanishing
The Vanishing is the long-awaited return of abstract electronic duo Oren Ambarchi & Martin Ng, in a remarkable collaboration with the acclaimed new music group Ensemble Offspring. Working together with the ensemble in 2013 for a series of concerts & recording sessions, Ambarchi & Ng developed a suite of pieces that build on the distinctive sonic language established by their three previous duo albums - released between 2000 & 2006 - of ringing bell-like tones & sustained hums with a new palette …
Very Fast & Very Far
**200 copies edition** In 1977 the US government sent two unmanned probes — Voyager I & Voyager II — on a one-way journey into interstellar space. On board each craft, a carefully etched golden record containing sonic artefacts of life on earth, including fragments of Bach & traditional musics, sounds of animals & nature, an audio realisation of the ‘music of the sphere’s’ & children’s laughter. As the 40th anniversary of the mission loomed, the three artists, working here together for the first…
Antimatter
Ben Carey is a Sydney-based saxophonist, composer and technologist. His practice is profoundly informed and extended by technology, through the creation of audio-visual works, the development of his interactive performance software: _derivations and more recently, his fixation on modular synthesis. Ben's work is driven by a fascination with the symbiotic relationships that develop between human and machine in composition and performance. ‘The three pieces on this record are the result of live …
Prayer For Nil
"In Anthony Pateras’ Prayer for Nil the electronics are a swell of voices so dense they seem inhuman, amassed like a threatening cloud. As the piece unfolds the masses thin to a taper. By its conclusion the solitary singer is left brutally alone, though it’s hard to tell if she wasn’t alone the whole time – every voice in the throng was her own - my own. The ‘live vocal’ part is a highly structured improvisation. Anthony gave me a set of rules, pitches, and rhythms. Within the electronic field, …
The Topography of Ascending Frameworks
"The Topography of Ascending Frameworks marks the final instalment of the Constructions Trilogy; a longform conceptual recording project that explored a large scale idea-based framework to guide improvised composition. The trilogy began in 2011 with The Geography of Collapsing Structures, a study of deconstructive forces as applied to composition. In 2012, Cycle~ 440 recorded The Cartography of Shifting Planes, an exploration of the musical potential of the line and of constant variation through…
Cat's Squirrel
Cat's Squirrel is a live recording of Masami Akita & Oren Ambarchi's performance in Sydney, Australia in May 2012. Although Akita & Ambarchi have known one another since 1993 & performed together as part of larger ensembles, this was their first performance as a duo. Together they create a massive wall of sound that moves from the cavernous to the blisteringly psychedelic, laying down shifting low-end structures over which pointillist details ricochet across the stereo field. Akita & Ambarchi's …
Kookaburra
"There is no argument; Merzbow stands as the most important artist in noise music. The moniker of Japanese artist Masami Akita has appeared on over four hundred albums since 1979. The name comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' famous work Merzbau, in which he transformed the interior of his house with found objects. This is reflected in Akita's junk art / collage aesthetic. Other influences on the Merzbow philosophy range from ritualised eroticism (fetishism & bondage), surrealism to extreme…
A Still From The Film
* 2022 stock. Edition of 150* A Still From The Film is a sort of sister release of 2012’s ‘Detachment’. So you can expect warm and dark drones, mostly guitarbased. But this album is at the same time more abstract, and more accessible. The a-side is one sidelong track. Whereas many artists start out with a melody that degenerates into chaos, Karina ESP builds a subtle melody out of what starts as a vague mix of hiss, crackles and guitarsounds. The b-side of the record is more straightforward, wit…
Detachment
* 2022 stock. Edition of 150* It’s fair to say that despite his long history and reputation, Karina ESP hasen’t been the most productive act around. Gowers started working on this record a few years ago, but things did not fall into the right place. Until late 2011, returning from a short Benelux-tour. Gowers travelled to Scotland, where Fraser McGowan of Caught in the Wake Forever and Small Town Boredom managed to record the album in a matter of days. And that’s what Detachment sounds like: thi…
Electronic Music From High Schools
"There must be a story to this one, but I can't figure out what it is. Released as a CD on Flexidisc ( not the format, but a label run by Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto), this album claims to contain electronic music recorded by high school kids in 1968, 1972 and 1973 with one track at the end from 1984. It seems to be a reissue of an LP released by Recorded Publications Company from Camden, New Jersey, which was, in fact, an imprint that would manufacture vinyl records for school bands. My…
Un hiver en plein été
From its earliest utterances, experimental music has been particularly disposed to transnational and cross-cultural collaboration. Seeking the answer for a fundamental problem - how to transcend the boundaries of difference, distance, and time - it presents a means to find common ground and communicate through the elemental form of sound. Over the last 5 years, this precisely what the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has achieved, intertwining sublime sonorities across the geographi…
London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 1
Death Is Not The End presents London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 1. The first volume in a two-part collection of pirate radio adverts & idents, taken from recordings of London stations between 1984 & 1993. Many thanks to Wayne Anthony, Simon Reynolds, Stephen Hebditch & The Pirate Radio Archive.
Herbario
* 300 Limited Edition / Green vinyl * Federico Durand’s music is a weave of sound searching introspection and delight through simple melodies, made in the heart of Argentina. Federico likes music, gardens, John Keats’ poetry, collecting stamps and Earl Grey tea. Since 2010 he has been released on various labels such as 12k, Home Normal, IIKKI, Spekk, White Paddy Mountain and more. "Herbario is the Spanish name given to a collection of dried plants and flowers preserved in an album. The collector…
Soest Live
One of the most influential bands in the last five decades, Kraftwerk virtually established the blueprint, the source code even for electronic music. Founded by classically trained musicians Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleban in Dusseldorf in 1970, the band has informed and inspired a diverse range of genres and artists including David Bowie, Björk, Afrika Bambaataa, and Joy Division. This early live performance, in Soest, Germany in Winter 1970, broadcast on WDR-TV displays the band in …
Fog Maps
The new album from Phil Mouldycliff has finally arrived. A full length CD in a digipack featuring his artwork. These are tracks that Phil has been working on for many years, mainly at IC Studio, using sampling, field recordings & sound manipulation An immersive journey from Z to A.
Two Gather In The Waiting Room
A very nice collaboration between Michael Begg & Hans Joachim Roedelius - highly recommended!
Daemon Trances I-VI
This album is about trauma and PTSD. The music portrays the emotional loop... the continuous reminiscing about the traumatic event the never-ending anxiety and paralyzing panic attacks... ... from which a traumatized person simply cannot escape. I call this state the daemon trance (and, unfortunately, I know it far too well...)
Insubstantial As Ghosts
BArTc is London based experimental electronic audio visual artist Jason Barton, with his nom de plume comprising the symbols for three chemical elements - Boron (B), Argon (Ar) and Technetium (Tc) - while also giving nods to both Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and his own surname. 'Insubstantial As Ghosts' is Barton’s debut album and contains fourteen highly atmospheric soundscapes. Taking the title from a William Gibson novel that was also used in a citation about Sleeping Sickness (‘they neith…