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Bam Balan introduced the latest album by Japanese Ethereal Drone duo Sarry. Through Fuji Yuki's softly screamed vocals, gently echoing into madness, and 821's bass, which reaches for the innermost depths of the human heart, Sarry's music - at times incantational, at times narrative - explores the occult realm of sound that connects this world to the next. Taking elements from various genres such as Buddhist ritual music, krautrock, dark ambient, drone, hardcore and noise, and blending them into …
Muldrew
**500 copies, DMM Pressing** Like many Canadians, Joseph Shabason and Ben Gunning like to untangle themselves from urbanity and disappear up north a few times a year. Unlike other cottage-goers, Ben and Joseph don’t while away the ur-time on jet-skis and lounge on docks reading pulpy mysteries. Instead, they bring a car full of synths, drum machines, saxophones, guitars, samplers, effects, and recording equipment to jam the days away in a cabin-fever inducing haze of wood smoke, cedar musk, hot …
2 Autoharps, a Snowmobile, Some Snowplows, a Premature Snowblowe
**300 copies** "On the morning of January 20th, 2019, I was woken up especially early at 8am (that's early for me anyway) by the sound of freezing rain bouncing off my bedroom window. Rather than trying to go back to sleep I impulsively got up, put on some clothes, brought my two autoharps, a digital recorder, a plastic tote (to protect the recorder from the elements) and an old card table outside, I set the autoharps up on the table so the freezing rain would hit the strings, placed the recorde…
World of Echo
2019 Repress. Remastered reissue of the late, great Arthur Russell's peerless, definitive opus 'World of Echo'. Buy on sight!** The seminal 'World Of Echo' was originally released on vinyl in 1986 on Upside Records and has been an essential but hard to find collectors item ever since. Audika now finally gift the world this new vinyl pressing - freshly remastered from the recording sessions, including beatless versions of disco classics like Lola's 'Wax the Van', 'Treehouse' and 'Let's go swimmin…
Are You an Orchid or a Dandelion?
2019 release ** "Here’s a duo called Cyanobacteria, consisting of Francesco Gregoretti (drums) and Renato Gricco (double bass), teaming up one day in September 2016 with Carl Ludwig Hübsch, a well-known improviser playing the tuba. The duo has a similar background, even if I only heard of Gregoretti before. The five tracks span fifty-two minutes and form an on-going exploration of ideas, textures and all of that within the world of improvisation. It is a meeting of like-minded people, with one f…
Album 1
**100 copies** Ohad Fishof is an interdisciplinary artist. He began his artistic career in the mid-80s as the energetic teenage leader of the pioneering Israeli post-punk band Nosei Hamigbaat. His subsequent time-based art, ranging from dance pieces and performance acts (often in collaboration with his partner, choreographer Noa Zuk) to sound and video installations as well as recorded and live music, has been presented worldwide. Fishof performs his music regularly as part of his solo multimedi…
Enhex
**100 copies** So picture the scene: mid-December 2011, a pub in Hoxton, full of happy Christmas drinkers, complete with festive screeching and merriment. Within this location, a more reserved group of three, but nonetheless still celebrating. Two stylishly dressed in black, with the third in a bright yellow neon hoodie. Talk turns to the first album neon hoodie wearer has submitted, for release in 2012 by the first stylish person, which has just been mastered by the second stylish person. Talk …
Satumainen Avaruus
**60 copies** Muuton Koto is a collaboration work of Finnish musicians Veli-Matti Ikävalko (Kutomo, Tulasi) and Jani Hirvonen (Uton). The recordings of this album started already in 2010, but it took almost ten years before it was fully finished (but there was also many years when "nothing" really happened). It was recorded andmixed partially in Chantepie (France), Brisbane (Australia), Kotka, Helsinki and Turku (Finland). Muuton Koto's music is a colourful psychedelic folk; with a mix of sweet …
Taurus
**75 copies** Rabid trio blasting out some smash and grab free muzak voodoo with deformed, blown-out grooves and brooding, midnight atmospheres that give you the same high-torque hairdryer treatment as you would get sat in the front row at a Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble gig or listening to a Vermonster LP full blast in a shipping container. Unsettling as it is invigorating, layers upon layers of elastic electronics and graceful keys lurking around - spectators to the reoccurring elephant seal deathm…
Folding Music
Max Giteck Duykers (born 1972) stands out for his ongoing dedication to the sound worlds made possible by the Pierrot ensemble. Therefore it is fitting that the first recording devoted exclusively to Duykers's music should feature two of the four "Pierrot sextets" he has composed this far, that the remaining four works on the disc are playable by P6/P6+ subsets, and that everything here (except for the one vocal work which adds guest soprano Zen Wu) is performed by members of Ensemble Ipse, the …
Ipsa Dixit
Kate Soper's (b. 1981) Ipsa Dixit (2010 - 16) is an
evening-length work of chamber music theatre for voice, flute, violin,
and percussion that explores music, language, and meaning through
blistering ensemble virtuosity and extended vocal technique. "'Ipsa dixit' is the feminized form of ipse dixit (literally
"he, himself, said it"), a fallacy in which an assertion is made based
not on proof, but on the supposed authority of the speaker alone. The
title seemed apt for a work that explores …
Coscienza di sé (MiniLP)
**300 copies** ?Alos and Xabier Iriondo's Coscienza di sé is a new esoteric cyberpunk record dedicated to the feminist and anarchist Emma Goldman. ?Alos, born Stefania Pedretti, and Xabier Iriondo need no introduction. She is active since 2003 with her solo project ?Alos, as a member of OvO and of the historical female band Allun. He was part of Six Minute War Madness and actually is guitarist of Afterhours, as well as sound manipulator for projects like Uncode Duello, A Short Apnea, Bunuel, The…
Knotting
Since its debut on two releases from 2011 and 2012 (the live Hit & Run with Joe Talia and the studio Audience of One), the epic structured improvisational piece ‘Knots’ has formed a staple of Oren Ambarchi’s live performances. Like a jazz musician searching for ever-new ways to play a standard, the guitarist has repeatedly brought the piece to life in a variety of settings ranging from guitar/drums duets to a large ensemble replete with string section, with each iteration bringing with it new va…
Sound American no. 21
The 127-page book was designed by Remake Design (who also created the now iconic Donald Judd: Writings book) and features words by or about Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Ornette Coleman, Nicole Kaack, Bradford Bailey, G. Lucas Crane, Jennie Gottschalk, Ambrose Akinmusire, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Margasak, Terry Riley, Kim Brandt, John Cage, Josh Sinton, Edgard Varése, Marc Hannaford, John Zorn, Matthew Mehlan, Million Tongues Festival, Alex Mincek, Lester St. Louis, and Steve Lehman. Each book is th…
Vibe
Important Records announces Vibe, the new LP from Extended Organ, the Los Angeles-based quintet associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Vibe, Extended Organ's first full-length studio LP since 2000's XOXO was recorded in April 2016 by members Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, and Alex Stevens. The album consists of two side-long tracks, Hate and Vibe, recorded live at LACM Studio in Pasadena, California by acclaimed engineer André Knecht. On Vibe, the gr…
Out of the blue
CD Edition. “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s debut album Out of the Blue — newly remastered with original cover art — which was among the first to releases on Lovely Music in 1978 alongside Robert Ashley Private Parts, David Behrman On the Other Ocean, Jon Hassell Vernal Equinox, Meredith Monk Key, and Peter Gordon Star Jaws. Disarmingly direct, funky, and profound, Out of the Blue is an equanimous, wide-open exploration of Tyranny’s musical world: equal parts song cycle, tone poem, keyboard fantasia, and…
Lavorazioni Carni Rosse
White dawn, the beginning of the world. From thick leaves and warmth, from dark soil nourishing on ripeness, from hidden sounds of animals, from light and from dark, from long gone languages, dark callings, from hills of insects, from a snare, from a deep breath, atmosphere arises, enigmatic conductor of those who will listen to the stuff of dreams. A wild, visionary record.Lavorazioni Carni Rosse is a state of being rather than a way of playing. Subjected, like all of us, to subliminal and coer…
Aéroproducts
Rotorelief presents a reissue of Alésia Cosmos' Aéroproducts, originally released in 1985, with bonus material. In the '80s, Alésia Cosmos was one of those pioneering groups that invented a handful of things: uprooted electro, pop-shifted funk. With some synths, rhythm boxes, magnetic tapes, crazy guitars and hallucinated voices, they rocked the underground for four years, with two albums, playing live in France and Europe. The dazzling epic of the magic combo has become legendary in the margin …
Let's Drink the Sea and Dance
Aspen Edities introduces a new duo project by guitar brothers Frederik Leroux and Ruben Machtelinckx in which banjo and woodblocks share the main part. The duo has already collaborated in the past (... Aspen 007, When The Shade Is Stretched, one of our favourite picks of 2018...) and this time they came up with a new name to officially baptize their project, Poor Isa. It looks like the latest Aspen Edities releases share an inspiration for the deep blue and Let's Drink the Sea and Dance makes no…
Sea Legs / Hum Back
**300 copies** Belgian label Aspes Edities brings us an interesting split album by American multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ali Ismaily - who has played for Tom Waits, Ceramic Dog and Laurie Anderson - and Belgian euphonium player and improviser Niels Van Heertum, who is having his second release on the label. The deep blue is the common denominator on this LP. On the first side - entitled Sea Legs - Ismaily offers one long and sparse composition that prominently features guitar and banjo, but als…