Electronic / All styles

Achingly beautiful album fusing elements of everything from Earth to Windy & Carl, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Emeralds - miss out at your peril!!! Elm is the solo project of Jon Porras, one half of the deeply revered San Francisco drone lords, Barn Owl. Only his third release in solo mode, 'Nemcatacoa' has strong ties to his other project, but revolves around a lonelier and more personal agenda, with eight incredible tracks of widescreen Americana…

Third full length release for 2009, coming hard on the heels of Bright Failing Star and Snow Blind. Recorded in tandem with Snow Blind in London during July 2007, covering themes based on seasonal changes and mood swings. Where Snow Blind was harsh, unrelenting and a little pissed off, An Angel Fell Where The Kestrels Hover shows a more reflective and melancholic approach. Comes in a beautiful book-sized wallet designed by mondii featuring photography by PW. Full details and interview here.

To paraphrase online reports: Svarte Greiner's Erik Skodvin comes riding from the dark, epic wastes of Scandinavialand, quaffing wyrmblood out of a hellmug and pronouncing mad soliloquies of doom. This kind of marketing creates strange dissonances with the music on Kappe. Sure, it's gloomy and foreboding. But it's also strident and glacially paced; it sounds more like a depressed La Monte Young than an heir of metal ancestry. At the same time, it strongly evokes the modulating bass o…

Love Comes Close is the debut full-length from Cold Cave. Synth-pop, post punk, new wave, atmospheric industrial... Edition of 1000 copies.

One of the pioneers of laptop electronics, Ikue Mori has been breaking new ground on the musical frontier for three decades. From her early days in the landmark no wave band DNA, to her years as a regular in the downtown improvisation community and more recently as one of the epicenters of the international laptop electronic scene, Ikue has become an underground hero -- yet her work is still sorely underappreciated. This newest solo CD features Ikue's idiosyncratic take on contemporary dance rhy…

An exhibition companion compilation to SFMOMA's 2003 listening room program 33 RPM: 10 Hours of Sound From France, curated by Laurent Dailleau. 33 RPM's Compact Disc companion features compositions from Kasper Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Chamagne, pizMO, Jean-Philippe Gross, and Mimetic. Comes with a 24 page booklet and original program details.

First edition of 300 copies. 'Punani Rubberist is a new composition for computer, bass clarinet and gas horn. The CD includes remixes by Kazumoto Endo, eRikm, and Joe Gilmore, and an additional unreleased solo computer composition (Excelsior Punani) from 2003. He plucked a hair from his body, chewed it up, spat it out, made the magic with his fist, said the words of the spell, and shouted 'Change!'. It turned into hundreds and thousands of little monkeys, who rushed wildly about grabbing weapons…

Joint release by Italian ambient musician FABIO ORSI & SEAWORTHY, a 3 piece collective from Sydney. Each artist contributes a solo track which in turn bookend a collaborative composition that forms the album's centerpiece.

Debut from a guitar/bass/drums/moog trio from Washington state. Not since the heyday of early Guru Guru and the original Ash Ra Tempel have we experienced such unrestrained, free playing taking place within the confines of a 'rock' band. More recent examples of this aesthetic might include the early recordings of Dif Juz on 4AD, Milwaukee's F/i, the recent collection of 4-track recordings from Cul de Sac or the homespun psych of Charalambides...

Marks a significant shift in emphasis in this acclaimed musician's work, reflecting a renewed interest in jazz & acoustic performance - this is far more organic than anything he's done before.

Monochromes Vol.1 is the new sound work by Italian multimedia duo TU M'. The Monochromes series is a collection of modular audio and video compositions for chamber ensemble. Fragile atmospheric colours made of sound, light, space."A poet always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too many colors on his palette, a musician too many notes on his keyboard.

12k presents Australian duo Solo Andata along with their second album, self-titled. Translated literally from the Italian as 'one way,' Solo Andata portrays the theme of a one-way journey that moves from (and represents a thread between) water and land, fluid/stasis, cold/hot. Following Solo Andata's debut album Fyris Swan (Hefty, 2006) and their 12k inception on Live in Melbourne, Solo Andata presents us with an ambient affair, with dark drones coupled with ethereal sonic environments. It could…

Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow is the third full-length CD from the young Polish musician Tomasz Bednarcyzk. Following Summer Feelings and Painting Sky Together (Room40), Bednarczyk naturally continues his process of utilizing mainly treated piano and guitar to create fragile, lingering structures that hover around only a few fundamental notes. Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow is divided into two sections, split down the middle by 'The Sketch,' which was written in cooperation with Adria…

A striking collaboration took place between Andrea Belfi on drums and assorted small percussion and Rutger Zuydervelt on guitar and organ. Together they produce the 'pulses' and 'places' mentioned in the title. Organic yet partially improvised, it resembles a kind of sonic geography. The listener is taken away for a journey of mild drones, soft yet outspoken percussion. A strong release.

Limited copies back in stock. It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since Rutger Zuydervelt helped nail our jaws to the floor with his exceptional album 'Dauw'. It used to be that there was a new Machinefabriek album almost every week (sometimes two or three) but since 'Dauw' it seems like Rutger's slowed down and withdrawn into a self-imposed silence . And that's no bad thing - 'Shuffle' is his first self-released record in some time and it shows in the near-obsessive quality of the…

“Eine Menge Papier” assembles 20 minutes of sounds derived from using paper as the sound souce. Two tracks originally came out as a limited 7” record on the austrian Syntactic label in the 1990ies and appear here for the first time on CD. The other two tracks were planned for a follow up 7” on the same label that never materialized. The fifth track is a study of sonic material in the same series. There are two further tracks from the P.I.G. series that are considered by the artists as failed att…

Best known as one-half of acclaimed techno minimalists Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio also has an impressive résumé as a solo artist that stretches back to the early '90s and his association with influential Finnish imprint Sähkö. Recording primarily under the aliases Ø and Philus, and sometimes his birth name (depending on the project), Vainio's aesthetic mission has been consistently and rigorously defined by an investigation into the materiality of sound. Indeed, just about everything in his catalog …

2nd full-length from self-styled black ambient guitar overlord. Like Earth's seminal "Hex" before it, this invokes the ghosts of a lost America & drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise & drone. The chugging, blown-out treble & isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present & correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski & Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static.

Reissue of a double LP edited in 1978. Recordings realized by the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht State University and the Electronic Music Studio of the Royal Conservatory at the Hague. Program notes by Dick Raaijmakers translated by Keith Freeman, and program notes by the composers. With Jacob Cats: 'Cadence 1'. Tera De Marez Oyens: 'Safed'. Jos Kunst: 'Extérieur'. Gilius Van Bergeijk: 'D.E.S'. Frans Van Doorn: 'Minnuet'. Thomas Arras: 'A.B.C.' Simeon Ten Holt: 'I Am Sylvia Victor Wentink: Disc…

Tussle's early output on Troubleman Unlimited proved to be quite a hit with tastemakers like John Peel and Trevor Jackson. Now, a few years down the line the group have lost one of their founding members (oddly, Vetiver's Andy Cabic used to play bass for the band) but have honed their modernised take on disco and rhythm music, with Telescope Mind achieving an immensely successful blend of experimental techniques and pop minimalism. After the brief, introductory piece, 'Lyre', 'Warning' comes acr…

Billy Gomberg (b 1979, Chicago) is a musician and video artist living in Brooklyn, New York. His studio practice incorporates analog synthesis, digital treatments, acoustic recordings and custom programming that gives rise to electronic sound caught gazing at its own physicality, acoustics in love with their own abstraction. Billy's debut CD release displays abstract and complex dimensions of texture and tone that might make more sense at first on a subconscious level before it will on a conscio…

With the saxophonist player Bertrand Gauguet, the trumpet player Franz Hautzinger and the analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn, this is a trio with three european musicians who are invested in the improv and new music. Gauguet-Hautzinger-Lehn works to surimpose different sonic spaces : acoustic, amplified, natural or electronic, works to build temporal structures or architectures and works to generate the modulations of an open and combinatory 'chamber music'.

'Untitled (angle.1) is a stereo composition based on the eight-channel installation Untitled.First exhibited February 11 Ð March 13, 2009 at the Art Gallery of the University of Maryland (USA), Untitled is the unique first collaborative project between visual artist Linn Meyers and sound artist Richard Chartier, in an installation where optical and sonic patterns intersect. With an architectural transformation of the space, two fifteen foot long by eight foot high walls meet in an enfolding chev…

self-issued cd collecting two early 80s cassette-only releases (“quiz party” & “life in video city”) by richard bone, both tipped by the mutant sounds crew a few years back resulting in something of a renewed interest in this otherwise obscure figure in the 70s / 80s “minimal synth” wave - jumping back & forth between noisy, arpeggiated sequences & more atemporal modes (i can certainly hear the tod dockstader influence throughout the “quiz party” pieces) this is in many ways the perfect disc for…

In Śānti, Jan Beran unites meditative-expressive means of articulation with avant-garde techniques, and Western attitudes with those of the Far East. This multicultural approach is founded not least on Beran's extraordinary personal and musical background and development, which took the mathematician and composer from his native town Prague to Switzerland, the USA, and as far as India. This explains, among other things, his efforts to reconcile the time patterns of Indian music with Western seri…

Second volume, focusing on the soundtracks to walerian borowczyk's early short films. One gem each by bernard parmegiani (a 10 minute hiss-noise extravaganza) and wlodzimierz kotonski (brilliant piano-themes and raw tones).

Carl Michael von Hausswolff's first major domestic release. As a composer he has been the main sound organizer in the duo Phauss; he has also worked with The Hafler Trio, and is currently performing live in the group Ocsid with Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome). As a visual artist, he is co-founder of the conceptual state of Elgaland-Bargaland, which hosts a worldwide array of embassies and consulates, and who physical territory is described as 'all borderlines between existing states and areas at sea.

Reissue of this obscure Canadian album from 1975, originally issued on the A.R.C. Record label, with extended mixes and bonus material from the same period. Performed by David Rosenboom and J. B. Floyd (pianos, one in each channel) & Trichy Sankaran on South Indian percussion (mrdangam and kanjira). On April 19th, 1975, at Northern Illinois University, three musicians met in a milestone event from which emerged a unique, improvising trio with two pianos and South Indian percussion. Fortunately, …

1st live album by Norway's Geir Jenssen - recorded in 2007 by Chris Watson & mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen. In the early 1990s, he was a pioneer of so-called "ambient techno," but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic & enduring. Here, he incorporates samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby & trumpet by Anders Karlskas, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound.

After several hugely impressive concerts, where the visuals from Kurt D\\'Haeseleer are almost as important as the music, Guillaume Graux or Tuk comes up with a first cd. \\'Proud Princess of a Brand New City\\' contains mostly finished versions of the tracks he used the first three years at his live performances. The main sources on the cd are guitars, most of them so heavily treated that you barely hear it\\'s a guitar. Even if it\\'s only a beat, it might be guitar. You never know on this rec…

Shifts is Frans De Waard. Famous for his ground-breaking releases on his own Korm Plastics/Bake/Microwave labels (all available as CDRs) and his work for Staalplaat (which he didn't found, contrary to popular belief) and from a thousand other projects as Goem, Beequeen and Kapotte Muziek. Shifts produces another angle of De Waard's minimal music. The guitar is the source of Shifts. After a string of 7"s, 10"s and 2 CDs, we are proud to say that Mechanica is one of his best. The album is a contin…

He lives in Rostock, Germany and studies informatics. Petters combines perfectly the software computer culture with intensity. His music reflects so much emotion through electronic wires -- you start wondering why more electronica people don\\\'t succeed in the same way. Everything is done with a detailed precision which makes it difficult to relegate this to the background. Even if its \\\'ambient\\\', it still turns your brain around and hits you. Adlib is another moniker from the young Kristi…

Second one in the guitarimproseries (first one was Shifts). This Finish guy is pretty young but has a distinctive feel towards his guitarplay. Excerpts from his talents could be found on the Killa 7\\"s but here he is operating alone on his selfbuild guitar and other \\"soundlabs\\". It\\'s dark and quiet with lots of floating, hissing and inspired contructions. Every now and then a melody pops up which brings together the harmony between impro and a \\"listenable\\" experience. As for guitarpla…

JanuarY 2004. Two years after the highly acclaimed album “Rose-garden", the portables come up with their second full length. “Girls Beware!" starts where their previous album ended. De Portables developed a cult reputation during the years, mainly because of their many intense and always different performances. Against all recent trends, standards and expectations they do their thing; they play because they like playing. The quartet twists themselves during 11 songs a way between pop, post-rock …

Phantom Limb & Earth’s Hypnagogia is the project of Jaime Fennelly (of Peeesseye, Evolving Ear Records) and Shawn Hansen (who also has releases on Evolving Ear). The two join their forces here for an epic ride through the volatile moments of twilight. A synaesthetic kind of excursion, inspired by the deepening shades of light and dramatically rendered through the warm, swelling tones of Farfisa organ and analog synthesizer. In Celebration... in all its moody and cinematic drive could be the quin…

Back in 1988 Arbeit Group label released obscure industrial-noise release by project called TRAIT. A-side of the tape includes several different arrangement for inspiration in battle. B-side included several of those arrangements combined together for temporary unified action. 45 minutes of most primitive analogue destruction, leaving no place for easylistening or relaxing moments. Even with the atmopheric and dark moment, sound is extremely decayed and coarse sound of tape loops, manipulation a…

Recorded in Roma in March 1981. It was recorded in five days, a day per body section. No tracks were re-recorded or added to after their day. Each was immediately after recording. No tracks were pre-planned, all tracks are invented directly onto the tape.

His given electronic anatomy of drum machine, microphones, tapes, & MSP folded out of their hard accustomed formations, breaking out into a more cogent & vital arsenal. A finely detailed & dimensional evolution of an already unique voice.

1991 CD reissue of the 2nd TG album, originally issued in 1978; digitally remastered by Chris Carter. Adds 2 bonus tracks from the legendary Sordide Sentimental 7" ("We Hate You (Little Girls)" & "Five Knuckle Shuffle". Breaking from the live sound of the previous Second Annual Report, D.O.A. finds the group assembling collages of computer noise, cassette tapes on fast forward, looped feedback and tape hiss, surreptitiously recorded conversation, threatening phone calls, and much more, all to a …

Fluid forms of drones, doomy laments, & folk melodies fleshed out from a backbone of sine oscillators & violin. Behind these droning squalls is the lone figure of Marielle Jakobsons. Armed w/ her tiny army of sonic weapons, she concocts a lavaflow of melodies only to then bury them underneath a flowing river of muck. Limited to 500.