The Landscape of a New Zealand Composer
A limited edition 10 CD boxed set of the remarkable radio documentary tracing the life and music of Douglas Lilburn. The set is made available through SOUNZ in collaboration with Radio NZ Concert and the producers Roger Smith and Gareth Watkins. Interviews with the composer, his family, friends, and colleagues both composers and performers make this a comprehensive and remarkable documentation of New Zealand’s most influential composer. The CDs are accompanied by a comprehensive booklet, which i…
Fathom
Saxophonist and composer Ulrich Krieger is already widely respected for having been a part of the incredible Zeitkratzer and having collaborated with Merzbow. However this fifty-minute composition is possibly his most striking to date. A collaborative effort with Alan Licht, Tim Barnes and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, 'Fathom' is a deep, doomy exercise in patience and subtlety. With stark, minimal percussion and a bleak, haunted soundscape punctuated by Krieger's blackened woodwind tones th…
Inhumane Humans
Novi_sad is the guise for Thanasis Kaproulias (b. 1980) who holds a degree from the Economic University of Piraues. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. Influenced by the pioneers of audio assault, he began generating sounds in 2005. No studies, no academic education, no scholarships, just pure learning by doing. Amplified environmental recordings, drone manipulations, structured ambient soundscapes, microtones vs overtones, all come together in a hyper structure of iconoclastic form. Novi_s…
Flashback Repository
Remastered issue of an obscure tape from the mysterious outer limits collective (wingdings / explorers / matrix metals / foxy baby / yoga / 90210 / etc). limited to 425 copies in pro-printed duo-tone sleeves with a 5-page essay booklet.Flashback Repository is a storehouse of collective waste consciousness from all beings of the universe, i.e. all unfiltered myth & material of the human/alien/animal mind, laying dormant in a hidden dimension resembling a disposal area or transfer station somewher…
Two lakes
In April 2010 12k recording artist Seaworthy (the recording project of Cameron Webb) and Matt Rösner travelled to the south coast of New South Wales to undertake a detailed field recording study of two coastal lake ecosystems at the Lakes Meroo and Termeil. The aim of the project was to explore the sounds of a fragile coastal Australian environment and to build from those sounds unique musical pieces that provide a place for listener contemplation and reflection.Field recordings were taken from …
Blueprints
Over the past 10 years 12k has established itself as a label on the forefront of minimalist music and has become home to some of the most important artists of the genre. It is label that time and time again has not been afraid to release debut albums from new artists, drawing on the new energy they interject into both the scene and the label.With the release of Blueprints, 12k presents 2 tracks each from 6 artists new to its roster and showcases some of the new sounds and influences that will ca…
Songs
2006 release ** "Songs is the much-anticipated follow-up to Parisian sound designer and musician Sébastien Roux’s beautiful CD Pillow (Apestaartje, 2004). The simple title of Songs hides a deep work that Roux states is based in mathematics, symmetry (and assymetry) and organized randomness. Songs is a skillfully and beautifully rendered album of gentle and sometimes not-so-gentle acoustic instruments and melodic granular clouds. Each song is titled simply by the instruments that make it, thus st…
Every action
2004 release ** "12k presents Every Action, the 3rd full-length release from the UK’s Motion (Chris Coode) and the follow-up to 2002’s critically acclaimed Dust (12k1019). In addition to his work with 12k (Dust, as well as a collaboration with Doron Sadja on 12k’s recent Two Point Two compilation, and an MP3 only release on 12k’s term. series) Coode has worked with Fat Cat and also released the debut Motion cd Pictures (now out of print) on his own imprint. The work on Every ActionPictures was p…
Palace of marvels (queered pitch)
Marcus Schmickler's new release following his acclaimed Altars Of Science (EMEGO 082CD) is a must-have for those interested in the rising field of contemporary computer music. It reconfirms Schmickler's interest in the liaison of sound, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Schmickler, therefore, utilizes a new interpretation of 1960's discovery, the Shepardtone, discovered by Roger Shepard, which creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually rises or descends in pitch yet ultimately …
Axolotl lullabies
Axolotl Lullabies drifts through the uncanny: Felix Kubin braids nocturnal synth miniatures, tape apparitions, and lullaby forms that refuse to settle. Melodies flicker like phosphorescence, rhythms breathe and retract, and silence becomes a soft voltage. A cradle for insomniacs and dream mechanics alike, it hums at the border where comfort and curiosity blur.
Fumes
Limited to 300 copies, numbered. Comes with insert.' label info. Oliver Peters (1970) lives and works in Berlin. He begun producing electronic music in the 1990s, and has been recording and performing as as Evapori since 2002. His compositions are mostly based on concrete sound sources: field recordings, transformation of found footage and the use of self-made sound objects or classical instruments such as piano or cello. Together with Nicolas Wiese ([-Hyph-]), Peters established the record labe…
Between Concrete And Abstract. Gaku-No-Michi (Book)
For those who loves the piece, this is a nice way to learn more about it. For those who don't know it yet, it will be a good introduction to listen to it. Gaku-no-Michi is an electro-acoustic work of wide proportions realised in 1977-78 at the Denshi Ongaku Studio (electronic music studio) of NHK radio (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), Tokyo. This work has been programed in numerous countries by various modern music festivals, as a full evening concert, from 1978 to 2006. This publication is made of a group…
Onta
“Pogus is very pleased to release its second recording by composer Dimitri Voudouris, a South African composer of Greek birth. As Massimo Ricci wrote in his Touching Extremes review of the first Pogus release: "Voudouris is interested in the 'research of cognitive psycho-acoustic behavioral patterns in humans and the behavior of sound in relationship to continued environmental changes'. Don't let the composer's difficult description fool you into thinking about some kind of cerebral pretentiousn…
Last Whole Earth
RESTOCKED Asheville, North Carolina resident Ross Gentry performs and records under the guise of Villages. With dense layers and glacial droning, he creates engaging narrative soundscapes that evoke the shifting fragility of the early ambient movement as well as the elegance of symphonic composition. The Last Whole Earth is engagingly contemplative and meticulously well-crafted drone. With washes of guitar and synthesizer, subdued vocals, field recordings and minimal noise, Villages devise…
Police Water
Under the wickedly cryptic title of 'Police Water', Gary War delivers his latest psych-pop dazzler on Sacred Bones - also including the two tracks from his 'Reality Protest' 7". Just as everyone begins to catch up with his brilliant body of work from the last two years, he goes and switches up his sound with reinvigorated song structures, a broader tonal palette and far, far tighter rhythm programming. Don't worry, though, he's not lost the inexplicable post-apocalyptic weirdness, it's ju…
Mali: essential recordings of Carnatic bamboo flute (1969-1970)
Gorgeous double CD issue of two crucial albums by "the greatest living flutist of South India", T.R. Malingham or Mali to millions of South Indians, presented in respectfully opulent stye by Japan's EM reissue imprint. This is meditative, spiritual, and exotic music of the highest order, combining his two most revered recordings from 1969 and 1970 over two very special discs. Mali is said to be able to commune with birds via his playing and that's quite understabable. His virtuoso use of …
Anthology One 1989-91
Anthology One is culled from the first three cassette releases by Voice of Eye; Isolation, Voice of Eye and Resonant Fields / Hot Gypsy Fink Hell, all three Tapes released on thier own Cyclotron Industries Label between 1989-1991 These are the earliest recordings by Voice of Eye.
Voice of Eye can be doubtlessly described as the protagonists and godfathers of the special genre of Ambient-Ritual-Music. Their specialty is "organic sound sculpting": a form of electronic ethnic ambient music th…
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…
Fog tapes
Following their mystical, dark and haunting self titled debut album on Utech Records (home of Aluk Todolo, Horseback, Final, Skullflower, Runhild Gammelsaeter, James Plotkin...), Ural Umbo return with their follow-up release, an even more dense, forward-thinking, nebulous post doom record. An organic and hypnotic mixture of lurking electro-acoustics, atmospheric black metal approaches, epic drones, slowly evolving melodies, doom mantras and an overall psychedelic atmosphere.
Hunger
A twenty-minute concept by the dark ambient maestro inspired by Haitian Voodoo as portrayed in Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Growling vocals sounding like they came from the heart of a cave soaked in a creepy atmosphere slowly turn into a sinister melody influenced by dark disco. Limited edition of three-hundred copies with a frame from the movie screened on the blank side. 300 copies, one-sided silkscreened black vinyl Artwork by Nico Vascellari