Tales from the Ghost Town: The Coventry Punk Fanzine Revolution 1979-1985 (Book)
* 200 copies, in softcover * Following Alan Rider's Adventures in Reality book collecting each edition of his own fanzine and its spinoffs, published by Fourth Dimension in 2021, comes this new compendium of his devoted to Coventry fanzines. Lovingly put together and comprising original page reprints, interviews with some of the fanzine editors, and other bonus material, Tales from the Ghost Town focusses on the vibrant 'zine scene that exploded in Coventry as punk and its cousins in electronic …
Hoof Stand
Tip! * 300 copies. In process of stocking * Hoof Stand is the third vinyl output by Primorje, the collaborative project between Giovanni Donadini (Ottaven, Canedicoda) and Matteo Castro (Mercury Hall, Lettera 22, also founder of Second Sleep label). Keeping their focus on a minimal yet disruptive 4-track recorders-based set-up, in the nine tracks making up this 12" the duo sew up rough textures of oblique tape loops intertwined with dub echoes and slowed down tempos, giving shape to what appears…
The Llamps
The debut album by Perpignan's finest, featuring Pascal Comelade on piano. The Llamps' members met each other in the surroundings of Perpignan a few years ago. Moved by The Velvet Underground, Ennio Morricone, Noir Desir, and L'Agram, the four of them created an alliance between heritage and modernity, pop and hip-hop, country and psychedelics, all of it in Catalan, French and English. Their mysterious universe acquires its full dimension live, where salvage poetry and the band's energy mingle a…
Les Plus Belles Valses
Reissue of a 1994 French cassette. Bittersweet toy pop, minimal synth, and avant-folk interpretations of classical waltzes. Professionally-replicated CD in 4-panel digipak featuring the original art, extensive liner notes from Christophe Petchanatz on the production of each track, and newly-found photos from the recording era.Audio / Art by Christophe Petchanatz / Françoise LefebrveRemastered by Phillip B. Klingler, @pbksoundReplicated by Monotype Pressing
Endogeny
"I am not entirely sure, but I don't think I reviewed 'Endogeny' when it first came out on Direction Music in 1990. Hearing the music I am not even sure I heard it, even when being in contact with the label at that time. I surely heard Gen Ken Montgomery's music by then and was always fascinated by that, his connection to Conrad Schnitzler and his Generator space in New York, which was a venue doubling as a shop (or vice versa) for weird music. The pieces here are for various instruments that we…
Vertigo
* Brand new vinyl re-issue for the 2015 album* After more than 25 years of confusing the heck out of anyone who dares turn up to a concert expecting to hear a run-of-the-mill jazz trio, Sydney mavericks The Necks are set to continue to push the trajectory of jazz out of the stratosphere of convention with their new, incredible album. The Necks 18th album Vertigo is an eventful, kaleidoscopic tone poem set against a darkly shimmering background. Slowly but inexorably moving forward, it crosses ma…
17 Re
** 2022 stock ** 17 Re is the third studio album by Italian New Wave band Litfiba, released by I.R.A. Records in December 1986. Although little known outside Italy, It is still considered by many to be Litfiba's stylistic masterpiece. It is part, with the previous Desaparecido (1985) and the following Litfiba 3 (1988), of the so-called "trilogy of power".Initially released as a double album (in France it was released as a single), 17 Re is distinguished by the presence of four sides and sixteen …
Abstract Musette
"This seemingly improbable duo finds both artists defending a common cause, with Lanz as stunning turntablist to serve as a perfect companion to Kocher's iconoclastic approach to his instrument. Detailed moves, fast gestures and throbbing pulses are recurrently cut by silences and sustained tones. Short rhythmic patterns and precise syllables emerge only to give way to more intimate sequences where players drift into some neutral space before re-colliding again into actualizations of micro-event…
Archytas Curve
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* Trio existing since 2014, it consists of three major figures of the Swiss improvised music scene. Koch, Kocher & Badrutt brilliantly achieve to play a subtle electro-acoustic improvised music, blending acoustic sources and electronics on a surprising way to create a music full of unpredictable events and of particular beauty. Archytas Curve is their second release. […] I am stunned by the immediacy of the improvising. They have developed a special way of playing…
Private Thoughts Recordings
*99 copies limited edition* Mauthausen Orchestra was one of the most important musical projects of the Italian industrial scene in the 80’s and has contributed to the birth of the power electronics and harsh noise across the globe. Tape after tape has constituted, in a few years, the backbone of what we will know as an alienating and extremist style, made of metal nightmares and sonic torture , often dilated, dissected and extended up to the limit of endurance. Mauthausen Orchestra carry us as r…
Kannon-Daiji
WRWTFWW Records and MEG Museum (Geneva) announce a new full-length album by celebrated Japanese percussionist Midori Takada, in collaboration with Buddhist monks belonging to the Samgha group of the Shingon school of Koya-san, led by Reverend Syuukoh Ikawa. Recorded at The Premises Studio (London) and in Tokyo in 2019, You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana is a majestic work combining a suite of six Buddhist liturgical chants and a musical creation by Midori Takada. The Buddhist chants come from three …
Dual
*In process of stocking* VAxBY is Albert van Abbe & Byetone. Dutch sound artist Albert van Abbe now joins the Raster family, with an unexpected collaboration with founder Olaf Bender aka Byetone title »Dual«. The result of their collaboration is both smooth and haptic, rounding out as an expressive camaraderie between the two veteran producers. Jovial and innocent, »Dual« alludes to the experimental research process of finding common ground. Fully embracing the haphazard richness of live recordi…
Conductor / Life And Death Of Pboc
Two rare historical recordings (1983 and 1986) originally released as single sides and gathered here for the first time. "Conductor might be my favourite composition and Life And Death Of Pboc might be my most sincere. Conductor was my first composed piece with no obvious reference points ... Life And Death Of Pboc was the second. These two compositions gave me the title Godfather of Dark Ambient."Carl Michael von Hausswolff, born in 1956 in Linköping, Sweden, lives and works in Stockholm. Since…
None Corsa
Debut vinyl outing for Valentina Magaletti and Pino Montecalvo’s Avvitagalli project couretesy of London's Horn of Plenty label. Variegated percussion + WTF jams inspired by a visit to an abandoned, torched palazzo somewhere in southern Europe. Its charred, decaying splendour casts a fitting backdrop to the surreal push-pull of Valentina & Pino’s aural capers. None Corsa explores presence and absence, purpose and chance, and the tension between serenity and disquiet. Composing and decomposing, g…
Dead Cities Lie Buried / Lift Comrades, Lift Comrades
Marble, lasagne, lego, moon, liquorice, sap, weightlessness... These are all words and their associated sensations that come to mind when I think of the music of Société Etrange and more precisely to this brand new album mysteriously named "Chance". To tell the truth, it's lucky that this trip exists.The German groove of Can, the ghostly haze of Phew and the industrial elasticity of African Head Charge. All this and more. Société Etrange is an entity, it's a name and a sound. A compact and preci…
almenrauschen
These five albums by Klaus Janek appear to have been originally released in 2018, but were bundled together under the title almenrauschen in 2019 in nice colour-coded sleeves designed by Stephanie Roderer – I’ll refer to this aspect at the head of each review section – in an edition of 300 units. The name “almenrauschen” derives from the aural sensation perceiving a non intentional sound world and transforming it to musical sense-making.
This bundle includes the following albums on vinyl:
- Casp…
Infinite Bang
'Janek’s “source of inspiration” was apparently Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris and Janek’s own social observations in Prospect Park in New York City “…where I was living during the main research period for this work”. I’m not familiar with Lem’s novel, but if you’re expecting echoes or resonances from the soundtracks of either the Tarkovsky film or the George Clooney remake, I’m afraid you may be disappointed.
On side A we find “Infinite Bang Part 1”, which is more solo contrabass and electronics…
Prospecting
'The first track on side A is “Violeros Revisitados”, which is a fight between the sounds made by Brazilian traditional musicians and the UHER Report 400 tape machine the sounds were recorded on. This source material was recorded by Gunther Kipfmüller in Northeast Brazil in the 1970s. Kipfmüller’s daughter, Milena , processes the raw material while Janek adds his contrabass and electronics to the mixture. Brazil born, Milena is also Berlin-based and works as”… a freelance soundartist, dramaturgu…
Reciprocum
Magenta. Road at night. Its probably worth quoting from the sleeve-notes so you get an idea of what the intention is on this disc: “The album consists of music chosen from a pool of recordings made over a time span of 10 years and according to its expression composed ‘together’. All of the music was created through a practice of combining the compositional and performative act. The album making process consists of two levels: the music created in the past functions as material and is put into fo…