Surviving The Garden Of Hate
"Copper Glove, the new project from Baltimore's Door (formerly Earth Crown; who shared splits with Secret Abuse and Kites on past Arbor releases), shows a further progression of his one man industrial-noise synth unit. In opposition to his former work, Copper Glove is more mindful of composition; utilizing tone generators and processed synthesis and vocals, to present a dense cut up analog form of industrial concréte. Door's nihilistic optimism carries itself with a sense of effortlessne…
Kithless
Pedestrian Deposit (Jonathan Borges and Shannon A. Kennedy) possesses a certain, restrained relationship to texture. Sources both electric and acoustic operate on a logic of hybridity_ becoming compositional elements organized through their activation of a shared acoustic space. This functions in multiple directions: in some instances, the cello is captured and converted to a subtle electronic variation, expanding the range of the tone through this capture, at other times it acts as a sort of …
Husk
Husk, a career-spanning double-LP retrospective marking Raglani’s “early period” (2004-2009), is both the artist’s “Best-of” collection*, as well as a document of a personal orientation within the canon of electronic music. As a devoted student of E.M. history and synthesis techniques, Joseph Raglani has spent the past decade in his St. Louis studio consuming and refiguring. While highly-informed, these tracks avoid simple derivation, the traces of influence are not easily decipherable; the co…
Foley Folly Folio
Pinkcourtesyphone is the not so secret alter ego of renowned sound artist Richard Chartier, and while it seems to be geared more towards a looser, more relaxed sensibility than the serious artist guise that is usually thrust upon him, it lacks none of his careful attention to structure and detail. Quite a bit of the material on this compilation (recorded erratically between 1997 and 2011) could pass for his normal work, but throws enough curve balls to give it a distinct identity all its…
Kippschwingungen
In 2007, Frank Bretschneider was invited to compose music for the Subharchord, a unique electronic instrument developed during the 1960’s at the RFZ, the technical center for radio and television of the East German postal service. Built in a limited edition of eight machines total, only three Subharcords (in Vienna, Trondheim and Berlin) are believed to survive to this day. The Subharchord is, broadly defined, a subharmonic sound generator, comparable soundwise to the Mixturtrautonium. It’s sugg…
Dropsonde
2012 repress; originally released 2006. Biosphere is Norwegian composer and performer Geir Jenssen, and this is his fifth release for Touch. 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 and enduring. Dropsonde isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven Substrata nor an episodic journey in the way that Autour de la Lune is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colors of Miles Davis a…
Leyfou Ljosinu
Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir presents a new album, Leyfdu Ljósinu (trans. "Allow The Light"), recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012, by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones (NB -- it was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience). To be faithful to time and space -- elements vital to the movement of sound -- this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering …
Forbidden Planets, Volume 2
Subtitled: More Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound. "Further to Chrome Dreams' enormously popular first Forbidden Planets CD comes this superb second volume of music from the pioneers of electronic sound. Compiled and annotated once more by music historian Alan Clayson, and featuring his extensive sleeve-notes, the two discs here, featuring 142 minutes of some of the strangest sounds ever recorded, will again delight fans of this most intriguing and previously un-compiled genre." …
Forbidden Planets
With Electronic music’s current resurgence and interest in the form at an all time high, this superb 2 CD set, containing compositions and original recordings by the pioneers of this fascinating style of sound, compiled here for the first time, is certain to attract enormous excitement amongst fans of the genre. Featuring tracks recorded largely in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, from names as diverse as the ever popular John Cage, Edgar Varese, Daphne Oram, Henri Pousseur, Miklosz Rozsa, Pierre…
Bliss
Versatility has always been what sets Luca Sigurtà apart. His new solo album ‘Bliss’ out on Fratto9. Recor- ded in 2011 and Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, this new offering exhibits his most dreamy side. There are five tracks which sit between cinematic drone music and that of Angelo Badalmenti.
It a soundscape through a sunny afternoon in the North of Europe, filled with white light that illuminates the port and with the presence of distant noise.
Shared between the passion for silence and …
Souvenir Of Italy
A lost gem from the mid 80s in the best italian tradition, BlowUp reissue of the month: to describe GustoForte’s Picture disc “Souvenir of Italy - La merda che fuma”, to give some dialect shape to the electro-magnetic throbbings that come out from the record , to try drawing, with grammatic help also that more basic, a logic or a descriptive way, it’s complex.And not because exists a multi-shape objective difficulty but rather the concreteness it’s impossible to approach to GustoForte: sandpaper…
Inward Eye
The edition is limited to 287 and vinyl comes in three different colors: marble orange, marble white, and black. The record is housed in a 12" cloth bag, with front, back and inner fully screen-printed with artwork reproducing a painting by Roberto Opalio. Secret messages are written between the grooves and both sides' center labels, that feature mysterious, full-color portraits of Ramona and Roberto respectively on each side. Each copy hand-…
Pagetos
The Between the elements Quadrilogy began in 2007 as a collaboration among the well-known industrial master Maurizio Bianchi/MB and the experimental musician Matteo Uggeri. The first two chapters (Nefelodhis, which means ‘cloudy’, and Erimos, ‘desert’) were released in that year by Cold Current and Digitalis Industries. Kapnos (‘smoke’) followed in 2009, as a collective effort by Meerkat, “the Italy's finest in the fields of ambient, electronics, microsound, post guitar” (as Frans De Waard wrote…
Piano Works and Tape Music
2009 release. Outstanding reissue covering some of the best Yuasa experimental and electronic works from the 60s and 70s: Yuasa was developing a fascination for tape music from the very beginning, and the inner journeys that such music would take him on. As he later wrote: “Tape music was [a] completely unknown field at the time. Even reversed playing of recorded sound, change of tape speed, filtering and feedback echo were totally new for the ear.” However, as Yuasa’s knowledge of technolo…
Fields Have Ears (6)
A 56-minute piece for guitar and electronics. It has had a long composition history, starting from a solo for classical guitar and sine tones (premiered in Munich in July of 2010). It was subsequently performed in Seattle (August, 2010), A Coruña, Galicia (May, 2011) and New York (September, 2011). For each performance a new version was created, incorporating recordings from the previous locations (including parts of previous performances), and other sounds that I began to associate with the his…
Split LP
NNA is very excited to announce a split LP between world-renowned electronic music composer Keith Fullerton Whitman and multi-instrumentalist composer Eli Keszler. This LP is a conversation in sound between two prominent artists, one working in the electronic realm (Whitman), and the other in the world of live acoustics (Keszler). In fact, Whitman’s piece was inspired and created as a direct response to Keszler’s signature frenzied percussion style. Both sides of the record are full of incredibl…
Feel Free
LP edition: The two major focal points in the creation of composer Duane Pitre's Feel Free, his new work for a unique sextet combination, were rhythm and melody. An open yet orderly system intended to produce potentially infinite variations of self-generating rhythm and melody was carefully created for this piece, allowing the sextet musicians to approach these factors in a freer manner. This 'musical system,' combined with the fixed elements of the composition, in turn, spawned a rich foundatio…
Twilight Of The Kali Yuga Tours: Live Totems 2009-2011
Limited edition of 1000 copies pressed. Selected, mixed & mastered by Randall Dunn. Deluxe gatefold LP with gloss overprint.
Master Musicians of Bukkake present a collage of performances from recordings made throughout the Totem tours. Improvisations and live renditions featuring extended versions of music from Totem One Two and Three.All on glorious vinyl!
Randall Dunn: Rag-Dun Tibetan long trumpet, throat singing, Korg MS-20,Mellotron, Micromoog, Korg Poly Six, Guitar, Audio hallucination…
The Black Rain
Anoice's first album for Important had a modest (but critically affectionate) impact upon its release. However, sales of the record have been steady & strong since it originally came out in 2006. Now, six years later we're pleased to finally offer The Black Rain, Anoice's reaction to both the darkness & hope that engulfed Japan after the 2011 earthquake, Tsunami & nuclear meltdown. Black Rain was written throughout 2011 and recorded in Tokyo and London. The Black Rain is both a reflection on dis…
Radiant intervals
Radiant Intervals' is the first Eleh LP on Important since '08s 'Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis Vol.3', and follows one of the Wire magazine's (and our) top records of 2010, the incredible 'Location Momentum' for Touch. Continuing with investigations into physically tactile tones and drones, this LP offers four further modular synth expeditions eternally moving towards the distant point depicted on the gorgeous, letterpress printed sleeve. After a stoically inert start 'Night Of Pure E…