Umanzuki is a three-piece act based in Florence, Italy whose sound and aesthetics are in constant metamorphosis: moving from a former psych free- rock mood, evolving into an increasing dissolution of structures, they are now completing their ascent and reaching an even more abstract form of ambient. Wrapped in dark, synthetic matter, with this 30 minute-long improv session Umanzuki penetrate into the fields of a dilated and deconstructed ambient sound. Recorded in Florence during March 2015 and …
2013 release **
"Korn presents two pieces, each 30 minutes long, which, though dissimilar in pitch (the second is higher), are otherwise tougher to prise apart than the Beugers above. Each is composed of a single sine tone, initially heard as a continuous sound for some 1 1/2 minutes, then repeated with silences interpolated, silences which increase in both length and number upon each iteration. The last line, the eighth in the example printed in the booklet, consists of three very brief blips. …
180-gram LP. Includes printed inner sleeve. Like some ingenious combination of John Cage's chance operations and the numbers station data stream captured on The Conet Project, Strategy's Information Pollution immerses listeners in baffling sonic waters. It's a riveting work that converts the enigmatic effluvia of shortwave and dispatch radio chatter into thrumming, static-riddled clouds of ambience. An undercurrent of unease wafts through Information Pollution's four lengthy tracks, as barely au…
"Bulbs is a band that I like so much that I started a record label to rep their work. I put out their Light Ships album in 2008 because I was so impressed with how futuristic their music was. They've remained active on their own terms since then, releasing a number of micro-editions of their music including a few incredible tapes (Sky Listening, Moon Episodes) and a few splits (a 12" with Mouthus (IMPREC 255LP) and a 7" with Wobbly). Generally Bulbs' music does not sound like the guitar/drum ins…
2006 release **
"'ein(e) ausführende(r) seiten 218 - 226' is Manfred Werder's composition from 2002, realized by Antoine Beuger's electronic sound and released by Edition Wandelweiser in 2006. The 72-minute piece consists of a very quiet single electronic sound from Beuger, and short silences alternately appearing between electronic sounds. Beuger's minimal electronic sound, which evokes in me a chirr of a small cricket on a quiet autumn night, contains an absolute purity that seems to reject an…
2006 release **
this cd is not conceived just to be listened to.supplemented with a simple "score", it may induce a "performance at home".you are invited to experience with your ears, eyes, body and mind, the space of your everyday life, your home, "colored" a little bit differently, alone or in the presence of one or more close persons.the cd consists of a one hour sequence of sounds, three times interrupted by substantial silences. the "score" contains 7 suggestions for simple activities.adjus…
2007 release **
"Between 2004 and 2006, Pisaro began a series of field recordings. Each time, it consisted of a single sound recording made in Los Angeles, in a single location, strategically placed so that nothing stood out, places without a center, blurred spaces at which Pisaro pointed a microphone without moving. From this series of recordings was born Transparent City, two monumental and epic double CDs in their duration: they exceed 4 hours and 40 minutes in fact. Each disc is composed of …
Finally the time has come to re-release the first ever recordings by Belgian minimal synth masters Twilight Ritual. Released in 1982 in a tiny cassette edition this album has not been heard by many people. “The Ritual" includes some of their best work, from mysterious dark synthpopsongs (Elegy) to club music (Webb-men) and the epic 14-minute track (Up To Now).
Twilight Ritual was/is the main project by Geert Coppens and Peter Bonne. During the early eighties they were involved in many other band…
Terrible Fake explores rhythmic relationships between drums and piano in context of somewhat crippled art of trip-hop. It is mostly based on irregular beats in order to create kind of fragmented groove. Different characters are alsoemphasized through mostly chromatic movements of piano in different registers, producing either undefined tonal system or droning wall of sound.Terrible Dub is nevertheless a "dub" version of the piece which minimizes Terrible Fake to it's fundamentals regarding time …
The details of Shikisokuzekuu-Kuusokuzeshiki (1964) are unknown except that it was created at the NHK electronic music studio. According to Toshi Ichiyanagi, there were various discussions about the title, but it would seem to have been eventually broadcasted on the radio with the title Kuu after a producer renamed it. Here, the original title is used, following Ichiyanagi's initial intention. This work has no relation to the short experimental film Shikisokuzekuu (1974), produced by filmmaker T…
LP version in combination offset/screenprinted jacket. Edition of 500. The second L A N D album, Anoxia, sees Daniel Lea return alone with an outing that marks a shift from the industrial-inflected jazz-noir of 2012's Night Within into distinctly new terrain. Mixed by Ben Frost at Greenhouse Studios, Reykjavík; mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. CD packaged in a combination offset/screenprinted jacket. "Anoxia" means "total absence of oxygen," and in Lea's hands the term heralds aural e…
Amelie Duchow’s interest in electronic music grew in the 90s being close friend to several Munich DJs. Getting into a “new world” of DJing and underground clubbing, she soon started to develop her own music style, continously searching for new international electronic and contemporary sound material. In 2003 moving from Munich to Italy her slow minimal ambient sound, presented under her moniker Fräulein Amelie, entered directly into various locations in Florence. In 2005 she presents her DJ set…
2025 Stock. Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem have teamed up to release the gay porn soundtrack work of San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the cannon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music coined “The San Francisco Sound.” Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco at the age of 21. He studied at the City College of San Francisco where he founded the E…
Zone Démersale is a techno/ambient duo formed by producer Michele Ferretti (Nubilum) and sound artist Pietro Riparbelli (Touch, Important, 20 Bucks Spin). The project starts from a conceptual and aesthetic reflection (both members have philosophical education) to move into minimalism, transcendental spiritualism, cosmic music and sonic spatiality through a constant compositional research. Their tracks are produced using various vintage hardware, from the Italian Jen synth to the Echoplex l…
2015 release ** “OU” is the result of the collaboration of two atypical creators. Electronic composer Bob Meanza (“Cicadas”, 2013) meets sitar player Filipe Dias De in a cycle of musical performances in which they fearless blend improvisation, experimental electronics, drones and beats. In Berlin, city of electronic music, the two musicians are moving through different languages: Mediterranean background and Indian roots, with a Mitteleuropean perspective. Their music is the sound of a hypotheti…
Welcome return from erstwhile Oslo punk David Gurrik, a.k.a. Human Inferno, with a killer slab of advanced caveman electronics for Entr’acte. Gurrik was last spotted as Human Inferno on his outré label, Sonmoi, in a class split with Lasse Marhaug, and Medication marks his most substantial output in many years. Away from his involvement in “school politics” and the “local community”, it’s probably fair to say that music is a controlled vent for his life less normal, whether singing deadpan about …
Limited edition of 500. Originally issued as the third LP in the limited-edition Tandoori Dog box set (1998), Libya Tour Guide is reissued here as a standalone CD following corresponding editions of the box's first two discs, Jaagheed Zarb (2008) and Tandoor Dog (ARCHIVE 013CD, 2013), and again the increased space of the CD medium has allowed for the inclusion of previously unreleased material from the original tape. Although a version of "Rebiana sand sea" originally surfaced on the 1998 Mel…
The First Three Ricardo Donoso Albums Now Available As A Very Limited Boxset. Ricardo Donoso has composed a new paradigm of ambient music, in which concrete textures and digital synthesis expand on an abstract world in constant movement & mutation. Under a chain of progressive rhythm’s, cinematic textures and elegant melodicism, Donoso’s work pushes through with piercing strength, manipulating a sonic wave through space with nothing but pulse and mind blowing intensity.Although Donoso’s work has…
In late 2014, feeling stifled by the negativity of the Australian political discourse, the narcissistic excess of social media, and facing a long summer of migraine-inducing heat, I turned to the prepared piano as a refuge. I was coming out of an intense two-year period of composing for every conceivable instrumental combination, and not sure where to go next. I felt the need to get back to basics, and create something essential, elemental. These pieces are meditations, each with its own …
Severed Heads are one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was…
In the late '70s, The Avengers established themselves as one of the US's preeminent punk bands. Fusing incisive guitar hooks, explosive rhythms and adolescent venom, the group forged some of the most in-your-face songs of the era. Their live shows were legendary, playing up and down the West Coast and even blowing Sex Pistols off the stage at the latter's final performance. As Byron Coley writes in the liner notes, 'Of the best bands of San Francisco's first wave in 1977, The Avengers were by fa…
Before Bing & Ruth’s halcyonic opus Tomorrow Was the Golden Age, there was City Lake. Initially pressed in an unusually limited edition five years ago, the ensemble’s stunning full-length debut is now released in simultaneously refined and expanded form. With bonus tracks and new, visceral mastering, the album gleams all the more and signals a spree of live performances this fall revisiting the material.
As the principal leader of Bing & Ruth, David Moore assembles his orchestral roster accordin…
For those who maintain the more mutable dance music is, the deeper its impact on human evolution, RVNG Intl. presents We Are Not The First, an Epic conducted and deconstructed by Chicago artist Hieroglyphic Being and the J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Bul. We Are Not The First combines the musical forces of Marshall Allen, Daniel Carter, Greg Fox, Shelley Hirsch, Shahzad Ismaily, Elliott Levin, Jamal Moss, Rafael Sanchez, and Ben Vida in deep dialogue with each other and humans’ hidden sonic history. Tracked…
Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up again to release another volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the canon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, "The San Francisco Sound." Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco at the age of 21. He studied at the City College of San Francisco where he founded …
Mark Harwood's third album under his Astor moniker slips away from the obtuse atmospheres and concrete field recordings of Alcor and Inland (released on Graham Lambkin's Kye label in 2012 and 2013 respectively). Lina in Nida sits more in a melodic electronic framework covering a wide range of sonic and emotional states. "The East" initiates proceedings as a proposed anthem for Britain during a potential invasion by ISIS. Things soon move into the uncomfortably claustrophobic "The Landowners," wh…
Hox is Edvard Graham Lewis (Wire/Dome/He Said/He Said Omala/Ocsid) and Andreas Karperyd (Omala/He Said Omala/Woodwork). Duke of York is their second release following 1999's highly acclaimed it-ness. Duke of York is a bittersweet contemporary electronic pop record that could only exist as a result of the unison of these particular peculiar souls. At once tender, skewered, sophisticated, and unsettling, Duke of York is a both a journey through the collective minds of Lewis and Karperyd and …
In installation form, Meta consists of four transducers that are attached to the wall on each corner of a perfectly drawn six foot square. Meta is also a quadraphonic piece, composed to be spatially moving along the four assigned channels. When the listener places his/her ear to the wall the work can be experienced differently every time activating not only the internal space of the wall but also the listener’s focused ear. In this work Richard Garet focuses on investigating, exploring, and …
Recorded between 2012-2014, Jared Blum's (of GiganteSound, The Talking Book, Blanketship, Vulcanus 68, et al.) Vision Heat project is a laser guided, hyper vintage conflation of early to mid 80's centric production, montage and style. Recalling such luminaries as Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Harold Faltemeyer, Craig Safan and such lofty houses as KPM, Bruton and Parry with nods to oddballs from Russia and the Eastern Bloc, Blum still manages to be forcefully yet effortlessly unique. I…
ecorded between 2012-2014, Jared Blum's (of GiganteSound, The Talking Book, Blanketship, Vulcanus 68, et al.) Vision Heat project is a laser guided, hyper vintage conflation of early to mid 80's centric production, montage and style. Recalling such luminaries as Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Harold Faltemeyer, Craig Safan and such lofty houses as KPM, Bruton and Parry with nods to oddballs from Russia and the Eastern Bloc, Blum still manages to be forcefully yet effortlessly unique. In…
Limited edition of 500. Ken Moore (from Baltimore, Maryland) is one of the very early American DIY synthesists and multi-instrumental talents. Moore started to explore electronic music in the mid '70s while working in various (progressive) rock formations. In 1980 he established his own label, Anvil Creations, and in the following four years released approximately 20 tapes of solo and collaborative works he had recorded between 1973 and 1983. His solo work of that era bridges abstract electronic…
Leon Lowman is a California-based autodidact musician and painter who traces his interest in synthesizers to a specific moment: hearing ELP's Lucky Man in 1970. At the time he was working for various recording studios and sound companies in the state, and with his first paycheck he made a down payment on an ARP 2600 synthesizer and a Mediamix Joystick for pitch bending, equipment he still used at the time of this reissue. Everything he could spare after that went toward more gear. He wrote much …
What Lies in the Sea is the fruit of a ten-year collaboration between singer Lynn Cassiers and keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin, and is the first release for their duo Lilly Joel. Both musicians are free spirits and lauded innovators in their respective fields. File under: a mix between Obscure Records and the Birmingham sound. Belgian singer Lynn Cassiers is as much a sound-sculptor as a singer, using her voice, microphone, and electronics to create soundscapes. Belgian pianist Jozef Dumoulin redefin…
Palais des Bauzards pursued an industrial and electronic variant of the sound that swept into vogue during the first half of the '80s. This compilation digs into the original material provided by the band and offers an amazing selection from start to finish. The sometimes rudimentary though gripping tracks on the first side are emblematic of their early period; for example, "Money" is driven by a screeching rhythm box, distant guitar lines, and a nonchalant voice. Cabaret Voltaire comes to mind.…
A series of calculated disasters wherein compositional intent is exercised to varying degrees before and or after the moment of performance. The Irreproducible Results are single-pass, unedited improvisations featuring borrowed gear configured to maximise complexity and minimise predictability. The remainder are heavily edited constructions utilising detritus of the aforementioned experiments, with the Pulse Matrices continuing a game of formal telephone begun on Vol. 1.Tools include oboe,…
The brilliant Anna Zaradny's follows up her engrossing debut with this new EP featuring a sumptuous Fennesz rework of her New feat Old, following hot on the heels of Robert Piotrwicz's crushing side, Stara Szkola Ze Zlota, to remind us the ascetic, uncompromising brilliance of Polish experimental music at its best. On the front Zaradny utterly dominates the senses with a pulsating deconstruction of Stop the Chaos; originally a sub-3 minute rager, now distilled and expanded to three times the len…
Untitled two-tracker from Berlin's Krube, following up releases on labels such as Hrönir and Fragment Factory. A step even further into oblivion, exploring unknown territories via daunting everyday life recordings and electronic slices of nothing and everything.
For our 55th release we at TRS are very pleased to be bringing you this soundtrack to the film, “Mirror Lands”, by Mark Lyken and Emma Dove. Working in sound, music and film, these two regular collaborators are Scotland-based artists with a mutual interest in relationships to place and the complex interactions between humans, nature and industry. In their work they are drawn to revealing beauty within the ordinary and the musicality of the environment. This soundtrack is a lovely combinat…
"Ambient Loop for Vancouver (2004) is a single, full length track (53'43"), with contributions from Alan Licht on guitar, Christian Marclay on turntables, and William Hooker on drums. It was originally assembled as the 'tape bed' for a performance in Vancouver, Canada of DRIFT, my collaborative film and music presentation with partner Leah Singer, in April 2004. This slowly changing, low volume ambience has since been used in various performance, reading and installation situations over the y…
La Demeure; Il Y a Péril en la Demeure is the opening to a five-part complex of works by artist Grischa Lichtenberger. "La demeure" -- "the residence" -- could be understood as referring to a sense of intimacy in the possibilities of isolation. The focus of the work is the joy of being isolated and having the chance to work, explore, and, most importantly, experiment, free from economic, temporal, or social restraints. The tracks and their components are constantly broken, disassembled, an…