Aunes
Aunes is a rare solo album from peripatetic Australian cellist-composer-performer Judith Hamann, presenting six pieces recorded across several years and countries. Developing the collage techniques and expanded sound palettes heard on their previous releases, Aunes makes use of synthesizers, organ, voice and location recordings alongside the dazzlingly pure, enveloping tones of Hamann’s cello. The record takes its name from an old French unit of measurement for fabric, varying around the country…
Sweet Distractions
Sewer Election started blessing the underground noise scene around 2002 and has since released tons of stuff, from harsh noise to raw musique concrète-like things and tape works. ”Sweet Distractions” is a long piece sitting comfortably in the corner of his more laid back and ambient works. Sounds a bit like William Basinski never cleaned his reel to reel machines. Broken, beautiful and strange in the best possible way. Recorded in parallell w Kassettmusik back in 2007. Same technique with crude …
Dream Songs
Another collaboration of Romain Perrot with Bruce Russell related projects. Liner notes are from Bruce Russell, those recordings have never been released before, those are the last ones before drummer Peter Stapleton passed away....
Live at Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023
Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined t…
For Translucence
The debut album from Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl has evolved over several years from their initial practice of free improvisation on viola and cello into (for the moment), this: a neophonic orchestral expression. At once stimulating and soothing, For Translucence is a living, breathing meditation in which layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, field recordings, radio and sine waves illuminate each other as they twine and grow.
Peace and Pleasure
*200 copies limited edition* In February 2019, multi-instrumentalists Maurizio Abate and Luca Venitucci crossed musical paths as part of an artist residency at Standards in Milan. Over those few days, their respective instruments engaged in a dialogue, shaping sounds and structures within the space that housed them. While working on the post-production of the recorded material, Abate and Venitucci enlisted the valuable and decisive collaboration of fellow like-minded musicians Roberto Laneri and…
New Relics II
*100 copies limited edition*
Savvas Metaxas played guitar & effectsRecorded between January-February 2024
Mastered by Giuseppe IelasiDesign & Artwork by Yorgos Vourlidas
Huffin Rag Blues
Brown particles vinyl. Here is an expanded edition of one of Nurse With Wound's most intense and unique albums, so much so that for long-time fans, it was a strange, chaotic lounge oddity upon its release. For the first time, all four audio sides are complete (originally, there were only three sides). To top it off, there is a stunning new cover by the great and talented Babs Santini, who is none other than Steven Stapleton using his artist pseudonym, continuing in the luxurious tradition of the…
Queen Of Siam
After the demise of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia Lunch launched her solo career with Queen Of Siam, arguably her greatest LP. In true No Wave style, the album is a mishmash of irritants, but her palette is far broader here, lurching from slow dirges, excessive feminist exhortations, and raucous personal purges to a touch of disco and lounge music exoticism, as conjured by Voidoids/Lou Reed guitarist Robert Quine, Contortions bassist Jack Ruby, and John Cale’s drummer, Douglas Browne. Spiri…
Übers Jahr
The German band Schatterau returns to Hands in the Dark with their latest release, Übers Jahr ('Throughout the Year'), which follows their acclaimed debut album from 2024. This sophomore effort, as its title implies, delves into the cyclical nature of time and the duality of the transient and the eternal unfolding of events. The album comprises 17 vignettes that reflect on the seasons, capturing their unique light and sounds, the passage of time, and the interplay of movement and stillness, as w…
Blind Alley
*60 copies limited edition*
Recorded 25-26 May 2024 in Milan, Italy
GD: 4 track RecorderMC: 4 track Recorder
Journey to the Cave of Guanyin
The inspiration for these pieces comes from the Chinese folklore of Guanyin, a deity whose name translates to ‘the one who perceives all the sounds, or cries, of the world’. Also known as Guanshiyin 觀世音, she is the embodiment of infinite compassion. I grew up knowing of Guanyin as a female deity, but recently discovered that she had transformed through the centuries from the male Hindu bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara. I instantly found an affinity for this gender-fluid figure, who was said to have a…
High Tide
*2025 repress* Able Noise are a cross-continent duo based between The Hague (NL) and Athens (GR), built around the experimental baritone guitar and drum playing of George Knegtel and Alex Andropoulos. After a few formative attempts at collaboration, they officially came together as the Able Noise we see now in 2017, uniting over shared thoughts on art and performance encountered while studying at The Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague. Their first recorded work, a seamless 30 minutes of glisteni…
Crucible
Crucible by Loren Mazzacane Connors & Suzanne Langille is a profound exploration of the raw emotional landscapes that can be sculpted through minimalistic yet deeply evocative sounds. The album resides at the intersection of experimental blues and avant-garde, creating a sound that is both hauntingly intimate and expansively atmospheric.
Each track seems to dwell in a space where the boundaries of music blur into a meditative state, driven by Loren's sparse guitar work and Suzanne's ethereal voc…
Chromatic
*Limited Edition of 100 copies!* Commissioned by 180 Studios as part of the UVA exhibition Synchronicity, Chromatic is a software-driven optical instrument that explores the harmony of form and the interaction of colour and sound. Each line, shape, and colour plays a role in constructing this generative audio-visual installation. A computationally programmed, rule-based system endlessly assembles and re-assembles abstract formations and harmonic sequences, producing geometric compositions that p…
Echolocation
'Echolocation' is the astonishing debut album from Mendoza Hoff Revels, a formidable new unit led by Ava Mendoza & Devin Hoff and featuring James Brandon Lewis & Ches Smith. While Mendoza and Hoff have floated around each other's musical orbits for decades, and have been friends for some time, this is their first work together on record. It is an electric & holy harmonic fusion of highly estimable musical forces; wholly rendered. The original impetus of this group was Mendoza’s, based on the lov…
Fortune's Mirror
Solo instrumentalists navigate a free and rambling road through an imaginative, oneiric wilderness. So much expressed without singing/words, a direct power line to the psyche, open for interpretation and brimming with melancholy, joy, and somber reflection. The annals of solo guitar music, much like solo piano, can tap into these almost subliminal lines of communication. The new album/debut LP from Los Angeles by way of Ohio guitarist/flautist/songwriter Barry Archie Johnson sings out as a start…
Hold That Tiger
CD Edition. Sonic Youth on Superior Viaduct!!! In October 1987, four months after the release of their critically acclaimed Sister LP, Sonic Youth showcased their latest work in a blistering set at Cabaret Metro, Chicago. The concert was introduced by Big Black's Steve Albini (who at the time was banned from the venue) and subsequently released as a semi-official bootleg under the title Hold That Tiger on writer/provocateur Byron Coley's impishly Geffen-baiting label Goofin' (years later the ban…
Dog FM
'Dog FM is the debut release by the London-based duo of field recordist Oliver Chapman and poet Phoebe Eccles. Combining Chapman’s seemingly banal snapshots of a family car journey with Eccles’ fantastic, reflective spoken verse, Dog FM deftly transports the listener through a series of uncanny and oft-times bizarre audio travelogs where tension and expanse alternate to disorientating effect. By exploring the dynamics of a typical close-quarters family exchange, and with repeated use of ‘canine’…
Salt
*Limited Edition Of 150 Copies* When it travels, the voice is a double agent, a trickster, or a dubious guru, but when it pauses for a recording, it's historical, capturing a mood or an emotion for all time. I didn't expect that I would hardly recognize the people who made Salt — myself and Hessel Veldman — a year and a half after recording it, but this is where I find myself now, so I'll say a few words about this temporary prosopagnosia. Twelve years ago, when I moved to the Netherlands from J…