Radian lines
Wet Hair heads Shawn Reed and Ryan Garbes have been jamming sideways strains of long-lensed electricity music for years now, but their trajectories as visual artists arc back even farther. So after a small infinity of J-cards and zines and LP sleeves designs, it’s a real pleasure to finally be able to present a preferential suite of some of their finest (and, till now, unseen) compositions in a glossy, full-color, pro-printed 22-panel art volume, bookended by a brand new black vinyl 33 RPM singl…
Night sessions
2011 release ** "A collection of fascinating and obscure "nocturnal sessions” alternated with more "classic" electronic parts based on sequencers and synthesizers, more abstract and minimal sonic sketches, involving and tense deep drones musical mixtures, distorted and dilated electric guitars, deformed human voices, more static and fluctuating typical ambient movements, cold inserts of pulsating and "techno oriented" sounds, suggestive atmospheres built on bizarre loops, flat organ backgrounds …
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…
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…
Some Days Are Better Than Others
We have waited with eager anticipation to release Matthew Cooper's spellbinding soundtrack to Some Days Are Better Than Others since before his creative breakthrough album, Similes (released under his more widely known Eluvium moniker) was even made. The film stars James Mercer (Broken Bells, The Shins) and Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Sleater-Kinney) as strangers whose lives occasionally intersect as they navigate their way through the struggles of personal attachment and disconnection. When …
Mureedil
**300 copies** Tonton Macoute is a French band formed in 2006. With a stock of cheap instruments, the trio wanted to find a dense, subtle and massive sound, in order to create motorik soundscapes, psychedelic drones, electric hypnosis and timeless storms. Rehearsals and recordings took place in a basement. Using the studio as an instrument, all the tapes were re-worked to produce this LP record titled “Mureedil”. Early listeners mentioned experimental rock and compared the music of Tonton Macout…
House
CD edition, 'House' is the 2nd official full-length offering by Cleveland, Ohio duo MIST featuring Sam Goldberg (of Radio People) and John Elliott (Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods etc) after 2009's self-titled debut effort on Amethyst Sunset. A suite consisting of 7 complex, layered compositions shows new progression in composition and melody from the duo. From the lightning fast, bittersweet crescendo of 'Twin Lanes' to the dramatic chord progressions of 'I Can Still Hear Your Voice'…
Tourbillon D'Obscurité
Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he'd rather be introduced as a "musical travel agent" than a composer. Petit uses a Cymbalum, an Electric Psalterion, computer and synths to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings.
To second the machines he likes to move various glasses,
or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds. A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical ac…
Visitation
** Edition limited to 350 copies. ** Visitation, created on April 1st, 2011 is a very unique kind of collaboration between two French sonic artists, master Luc Ferrari and eRikm. Here is eRikm's direct testimony about this work: "When the sun set on April 1st, 2011 I heard through the windows of my house the repetitive song of a night bird. Madeleine brought me immediately back to Luc Ferrari¹s electroacoustic piece Presque Rien N° 2. I became curious about comparing the bird that was officiatin…
1000
This 45 rpm 12'' called « 1000 » is a collection of Roxy's unreleased New Wave and synth-infused tracks still signed by her oh so particular voice. Sometimes punchy, sometimes languorous and velvety, a common point all the tracks have is a strength that seems never to leave her. Also noticeable is the reprise of the mythical and mysterious synth-pop band Nine Circles, who else better than Roxy could tell us « What's There Left »?.
Whiter than white
The title Whiter than white sounds like an advert for soap. Adverts and soap are precisely what Les Belles Noïseuses blame. Or even more precisely what they represent: consumption, conformity, economic liberalism. However, don't expect to get a speech from Les Belles Noïseuses. Only feelings, emotions, dreams and nightmares are conveyed through their refined musical structure. The doom-jazz double-bass reminds the best from Mick Karn. The minimalist guitar scrapes melody to the bone, to the aton…
Deconstructing hank
I wanted to share Hank with a world that was unfamiliar with him and unable to grasp the despair, hurt and loneliness that he lived, unable to absorb the words or the sentiment, unable to hear the words, “Like a piece of driftwood on the sea, may you never be alone like me”. I asked Derek Rush if he would be interested in doing Hank Williams songs with me, he put them in a minor key and arranged them while I re-interpreted the melody and sang the words of Hank Williams, adding my g…
As a Leaf or a Stone
For this release Mathieu Ruhlmann uses a lot of sound sources and per track he lists them. We see listed a coffee grinder, ukelin, e-bow, moss, denture cleaner, bubble wrap, dried plant, cactus, speaker and gate (and that's just the opening track!)... The gain is very much alive here, so there is occasionally some feedback leaking through here. That adds a strange component to the highly acoustic music. Ruhlmann plays his stuff with great care. His music is open, spacious, but also intimate. The…
Post
Post is the solo guise for James Wilkinson, who has gleefully cracked the ground between free jazz and punk in Bucketrider and made sonic cinema with the electro-dub-hip-hop fusion of High Pass Filter. He’s also provided innovative sound design as director for the internationally acclaimed Snuff Puppets, and his adventurous spirit runs free through Post’s pop persona. It’s the same ecstatic abandon shared by the likes of Mouse on Mars, Plaid and Caribou. Post’s playful but stirring sense of comp…
Motion - Movement In Australian Sound
Motion – Movement In Australian Sound is a generous, 2-CD overview of 22 artists representing Australia’s burgeoning terrain of electronic and experimental music. From Scott Horscroft’s mesmerising piece for eleven guitars, the sublimely sweet, driving tones of Pretty Boy Crossover, Sue Harding’s melodies from dot matrix printers to renown veteran Alan Lamb’s awe-inducing casting of field recordings from the West Australian outback, Motioncasts wide to expose some of the most creative and …
Everything's A Love Letter
Saddleback is the solo project for producer Tony Dupé. In many ways, with its warm and exploratory craft, Everything’s A Love Letter is the culmination of the varying strands in Tony’s musical life.Tony first came to notice in Glovebox, who put an ethereal, ambient twist on the indie-pop scene as far back as the early ‘90s. Glovebox’s swirling sound has been as unhurried as its release schedule, though no matter how spare their output, each album has always found a warm reception. The group were…
From here to there
The Preservation label presents From Here To There, the debut album from San Francisco’s Ben Swire. While From Here To There can sit snugly in the canon of electronica, it’s played out with expansive vision and immediate warmth. Woven together with a deft sense of minimalism and melody using double bass, interlocking guitars and crisp percussion, the use of live instrumentation against densely layered field recordings finds great balance between elasticity and deep ambient underpinnings. The acc…
Asleep, street, pipes, tones (2009)
“Asleep, street, pipes, tones (2009) is an investigation of the sounding properties of pipes and streets interspersed with a duo for bass clarinet and electric guitar. The investigations form ten three-minute episodes, assembled in studio by Pisaro from samples—mostly organ, but also tiny snippets of vocal music and a single piano chord—and field recordings. The instrumental parts, arranged in nine sections, also three minutes each, develop over the course of the 63’40” duration of the pi…
En Form For Bla
Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, Mothlite, Guapo), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), Steve Noble (N.E.W., Company, etc). En Form For Blå documents the continued evolution of this unlikely collective, a collision of players from various avant, improv, metal, and "other" threads who together make a unique and arresting sound. Documenting three gigs in Oslo recorded in 2010, the music is deep and weird, with liquid sounds juddering around the occasionally identifiable percussion o…
Life coach
‘Life Coach’ is the debut solo album from Phil Manley (of Trans Am, Oneida, The F*cking Champs, Jonas Reinhardt). This instrumental album will certainly appeal to fans of the aforementioned bands as well as those into the classic works of Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Harmonia as well as modern Kosmische / ambient music from the likes of Arp, Mountains, The Alps and Type Records. The CD version comes in a four panel mini-LP style gatefold package. (Boomkat)