Drones
In the beginning there was the piano. As soon as he had mastered the basics, Jean-Philippe Goude discovered the spell of melancholy while working on a little musical piece: an etude ringing out in the style of a somber hymn. Not the dead meat smells of somberness that, according to Picabia, serious people emit, but the earthen gravity of an abyss dug by life itself. Everything is the result of this bedazzlement. At 11 years old, Jean-Philippe Goude closed his eyes. When his eyelids finall…
White Shadows in the South Seas
It's difficult to know how to summurise the meandering journey that has been the life and times of Mike Cooper. Having just celebrated his 70th year of mischief making here's what we can tell you... A young Mike Cooper can be spotted playing a beatnik guitarist on an anti-nuclear march in London beat cult film 'That Kind Of Girl'. His first band The Blues Committee played with and supported blues legends such John Lee Hooker, Howlin Wolf and Jimmy Reed. Cooper was central in launching several o…
Pan
LP version. This is the first solo effort from Jonas Munk released under his own name. Jonas Munk is a musician and producer from Odense, Denmark who has been active in a wide range of musical styles for the past decade. In the European psych-rock community he is mostly known as the guitar player in the respected stoner/jazz/Krautrock-outfit Causa Sui as well as related projects such as Chicago Odense Ensemble, a joint session project featuring members of Causa Sui, Chicago Underground Colle…
Horology
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…
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…
Retreat, Return, Repose
**Collecting Eleh's three heavyweight drone albums on CD for the first time. LPs were previously only available to buy direct from the label. Housed in deluxe 6-panel tri-fold slipcase. Very precious, pure and meditative sounds strongly recommended to followers of Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, LaMonte Young. Edition of 1000**
"Retreat is a collection of exploratory sound assemblages put together during a cabin sojourn. New timbral richness, tonal expansion and deep synthesis make thes…
Partitas for long strings
Restocked. "Two aspects were of central interest to him: different tunings and density of sound. He made an installation in the large space of Het Apollohuis, stretching four strings lengthwise and attaching them to the wooden wall on the far end, which served as a resonator. He did not use automatons or electric amplification. He played the strings by brushing them, walking back and forth at an even pace. His aim was to make his playing as continuous and even as possible. For each partita he re…
Fuzz_Galopp
During the work for Voice Crack duo Norbert Möslang was one of the pioneers in the field of sound installation techniques usage in live improvised music. His instruments are cracked everyday-electronics, but sounds themselves are delivered from the mechanical properties of these devices. This kind of approach seems to be similar to Peter Fischli and David Weiss practices in the visual arts’ fields. The comparison of the film documentaries - "The Way Things Go" (1987) about Fischli/Weiss activiti…
Colofon & Compendium 1991-1994
Gatefold double LP version. Telephone terrorism tactics and voyeuristic ambience from the Scanner archive 1991-1994. Exclusive unreleased material. An eavesdropper's delight. "In the summer of 2010, I worked through my extensive archive of DAT tapes, cassettes and mini-discs, which had accumulated since 1977, and with the help of my ever-capable and patient interns, began the process of digitizing these materials. The result -- over 600 hours of largely unreleased material -- was overwhel…
Rythmes d'etain
This CD represents the end of his trilogy, but certainly not the end of his adventure into Sound. Concerning this new opus, he says: I was going for a raw sound, close to the actual sounds made by the instruments and sources, with minimal dressing-up. The organ's sub-bass frequencies include extremely low frequencies. His range of instruments: Church organ, tympanies, bass drum, large drum, tubular idiophones, toms, cymbals, hi-hat, voices (sped-up, slowed-down, texts in Latin) + stokes and hits…
Virginia plane
Pressed in an edition of 300 copies. A new collaboration between these two heavy-weights, and the first in what will hopefully be an ongoing project. Composed remotely across oceans and hemispheres over the last five years, the album draws on the languages of musique concréte, dub, power electronics, free noise and at times even early Italian avant-garde composition (believe it or not). This entire work highlights the startling power of their individual approaches and the true potential o…
Black colors
Over more than a decade Peter Kolovos has created an incredibly physical and dynamic musical language using the electric guitar. He plays music that unpredictably flows from electrified fragments of sound which fold and expand in dense layers and massive tones that surge and collapse in rapid succession. His approach has been called 'massively a-formal' and his control of timing and texture 'masterful.' Rather than set harmonic or rhythmic structures, he draws form from open sequences of …
I Want the Beatles to Play at my Art Center
Video From the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Archives 1968-2011. Artists: John Cage, Kjartan Slettemark, KILLL, Arne Nordheim, Stephen O`Malley, Mauricio Kagel, MoHa!, Christopher Nielsen/Masselys, Stian Skagen & Monica Winther. This DVD presents seminal works of music, performance, dance, theater and installation art from the nearly 50-year history of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). When HOK founder Sonja Henie exclaimed that she wanted the Beatles to play at her art center, in essence she expresse…
The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit)
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yourself in the prickle of the field recording, as if it were bubble wrap. Here, technology chafes against a world of waves, pulses, and impacts, leaving to the ear and the imagination the task of estimating reality from scratch (at 12:35, a storm defi…
The punishment of the tribe by its elders'
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yourself in the prickle of the field recording, as if it were bubble wrap. Here, technology chafes against a world of waves, pulses, and impacts, leaving to the ear and the imagination the task of estimating reality from scratch (at 12:35, a storm defi…
Valedictorian / Exoskeleton
Valedictorian/Exoskeleton, Dan Friel’s first release for Thrill Jockey, contains two brand new songs, as well as the first ever remixes of his music. “Valedictorian” opens the EP with a burst of adreneline, pure pop filtered through a layer of noise. “Exoskeleton” is more mysterious, with bursts of Friel’s overdriven synths coming in and out of focus over a steady pulse. The first remix is a dancefloor ready take on “Exoskeleton” courtesy of Moss of Aura, the solo project of Gerrit Welmers, one …
Centralia
Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundl…
Split LP
Luca Sigurtà is very active in the electronic music scene, playing solo and with the bands Harshcore and Luminance Ratio. In Hookers he composes a cold and frozing atmosphere, with gusts of noises and drones together with a bare drum, the song ending surprisingly with an ecstatic mood.
Noise veterans Panicsville plays Paura nella Città dei Morti Viventi mixing old schoool industrial together with their strong oniric and terrifying fantasy: organ, synth drums and samples are used to compose …
Dust Under Brightness
Minimal Wave is proud to present a second volume of selections from our French favorites, In Aeternam Vale. Culled from a vast archive of recordings, these tracks were originally self-released on various cassettes by the band’s frontman Laurent Prot between 1985-1988. The sound ranges from early EBM / industrial to gristly coldwave to dark reverby guitar psychedelia. This record illustrates the stylistic range that, through experimentation and fearlessness, Laurent Prot and Pascal Aubert were ca…
L'oiseau
"A beautiful solo album by experimental electronician/multiinstrumentalist Jean-Marc Foussat. The album is clearly dedicated to his son Victor Foussat, a young poet and painter who died this year. One of his paintings his reproduced on the inner sleeve, and Jean-Marc recites a poem of his in-between the two 20-minute tracks that make up the album. I rarely cross paths with Foussat’s music, but each opportunity is a delight. The two pieces here are powerful amalgams of synths and objects. Foussat…