Afraid of Modern Living: World Imitation & Monitor, 1977-198
Available now is the authorized history of the obscure and influential Los Angeles art and music collective World Imitation Productions (WImP).
Emerging as creators of collaged and photocopied mail art and
publications in the late 1970s, World Imitation is perhaps best known in
its musical incarnation, the band Monitor, which was active
between 1978 and 1982, with live performances as well as two
self-produced 7" singles and one LP. (The LP was reissued by Superior
Viaduct in 2013.) Afraid…
Meaning Turns To Whispers
"I realized at the end of the album that I didn’t want to express, I just wanted to explore.” Ian Wiliam Craig is a trained opera singer and painter out of Vancouver, Canada. Over the last few years he has proved to be one of the most original artists active in the ambient / experimental genre. His debut "A Turn Of Breath" (2014) and the follow-up album “Cradle For The Wanting” (2015) received high acclaim across the globe. Meaning Turns to Whispers is a combination of piano improvisations and F…
The Ruined Map
Technical drawings is melissa st. pierre (prepared piano) and jesse stiles (electronics). in their debut release the ruined map, they pioneer a new genre that has been termed dub concrete, combining influences from neoclassicism, rock, gamelan, and hip hop with results both weird and electrifying. in one of the record's centerpieces, strange flora, the post-rap poet todd jones verbalizes the musical journey: we found an island on the edge of the world. with no name for it we made a claim for it.…
Lift Your Toes
Another Di Domenico project, again with Lobo in two, along with Daniele Martini (saxophone, percussion) and Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva (electric bass, electronics, percussion). Miles circa “Bitches Brew” once again hovers over the proceedings on the first of two tracks, with the warped Rhodes and the snare beats; generally, it’s in the same area as the Going recording. Side 2 ventures into entirely different territory, percussion and electronics to the four, constructing odd and intricate rhyth…
Otona No Kagaku
Otona No Kagaku (“experiments for adults” in Japanese) is Kalimi’s first LP album. It brings a composition that doesn’t start and doesn't end, a soundscape that plays with non-expectation, contemplation and the illusion of being in a timeless bubble. kalimi is: Giovanni Di Domenico: fender rhodes, electronics and Mathieu Calleja: drums.
Dogs' Ears Are Stupid
Mental Experience presents a reissue of Care Of The Cow's Dogs' Ears Are Stupid, originally released only on cassette in 1983. The album is a fascinating blend of psychedelic folk, minimal electronics and post-punk weirdness. Acid fuzz guitar, incredible vocal harmonies, drum machines, and analogue synths make it one of Chicago's best kept secrets, with a history that goes back to 1974. A trio formed by Victor Sanders, X Baczewska, and Sher Doruff, they had a very unique and eclectic sound, expe…
New York April-July 2013 / Two Names Upon The Shore
Collection of two thoughtful EPs by Cairo based artist Bosaina. Bosaina is a Syrian/Egyptian singer, songwriter, and producer known for her work in the Kairo Is Koming collective, as well as her involvement in music-space-turned-club-night VENT. Her autobiographical work takes on a magical insular quality through field recordings and sentimentally driven compositions that unfold in stolen time. On both EPs, presented here, her love affair with cinema, interrupted by decaying urban life -- New Yo…
Jengi
Älforjs is a Lisbon based trio and Jengi is the name of their first album. Jengi is the Baka pygmy spirit of the forest, he is in our collective conscious, on our constant look for the wild and the unknown. Their works with which we’re familiar with present a focus on processual minimalism (hypnosis is the holy way to reach the unheard); a rocker’s propulsion derived mostly from the drums; lots of arpeggio work coming in from the double-bass; and André’s electronics working as much as an extra l…
Schwingende Luftsäulen 2
Werner Durand Schwingende Luftsäulen 2, the second chapter dedicated to Durand's music applied to the Pan-Ney, the wind instrument of his own invention. With gorgeous artworks by Karlheinz Bux and extensive liner notes by Adelio Fusé. "Schwingende Luftsäulen 2 is the second chapter of a trilogy featuring the Pan-Ney with its tubes or columns of vibrating air (Schwingende Luftsäulen, in fact). This second chapter, in which the Pan-Ney is flanked by the tenor sax, reconnects where the first one en…
My Talk With Florence
My Talk With Florence is a biographical interview-film of Florence Burnier-Bauer and her intimate story. A life full of violence and abuse; in the family, on the road, and finally in the commune of the Viennese actionist artist Otto Muehl. This is a big showdown with the dark side of Otto Muehl as an icon of counterculture and social experiments. Directed and written in 2015 by Austrian film maker Paul Poet -- Foreigners Out! Schlingensiefs Container (2002), Empire Me (2011). The DVD contains th…
Presently Untitled
Featuring a track each by Richard Youngs, Alternative TV, Extnddntwrk, Map 71, Kleistwahr, Theme and Sion Orgon. Tied in with Fourth Dimension Records' night at Cafe OTO on October 19th comes this compilation in the form of a double-7" featuring the four artists appearing on the night itself and a few others associated with the label. Essentially a mini-album's worth of material represented by an exclusive track each by Alternative TV, Richard Youngs, Map 71, Extnddntwrk (Andrew Fearn of Sleafor…
Distant Songs of Madmen
**Limited edition of 200 copies only on black vinyl**A new Mike Cooper release is always a great event, and we are so happy to have it here! Distant Songs of Madmen was recorded live in Palermo and was my solo set in a concert organised by Lelio Gianetti and Curva Minore which included my trio Truth In The Abstract Blues and Eugene Chadbourne. My set was free improvisation; some cover versions of folk and pop songs and some of my own songs. The title of the record and some of the improvised piec…
Crollo Nervoso
Spittle Records present a reissue of Magazzini Criminali's Crollo Nervoso, originally released in 1980 on black or white vinyl by Italian Records. Magazzini Criminali can be considered one of the most important experiences in Italian post-avant-garde theatre of the '70s and the '80s. Back in 1980 the group gave birth to one their widely acclaimed and most representative works. Crollo Nervoso was a real post-modern opera, a complex and multi-layered work based on the transfer between different ar…
Spinneret
Mandhira de Saram and Benoît Delbecq met in 2016 in Paris and soon discovered that they loved playing together. They recorded Spinneret a year later, over a day of quiet and meditative composing, at curious distance from the animated playing they are both usually drawn to in their own projects. With a natural flair for exploring the possibilities of their instruments, they weave together a delicate tapestry of sound and texture, which hangs as though stretched and suspended in the air. Spinneret…
Feel
A trumpeter and improviser living in Mexico City, over the last ten years Jacob Wick has become known for deconstructing the instrument itself and any expectations of how it "should" be played. The explorations on Feelfocus on sound as it relates to specific spaces and in turn the subtle but profound connections they have to emotions and the body. The result is a highly personal music that is both unique and immediate, abstract yet undeniably visceral. On Feel, Wick creates two intense side-long…
35 Whirlpools Below Sound
35 Whirlpools Below Sound presents a fantastical soundworld of 19 short, richly detailed, multilayered electro-acoustic soundscapes jointly composed by Thomas Newman and Rick Cox, whose musical friendship and ongoing working relationship date back to 1985. These enigmatic works, built of often mysterious juxtapositions of sounds, have been gestating and changing shape for many years, with ever an eye toward their eventual completion and release, which this CD marks. The album’s title was taken f…
From A Folio
Michael Jon Fink's From a Folio, a suite of six short pieces for cello and piano and one central piece for six cellos, a set of songs without words, was composed for new-music cellist Derek Stein, with whom Fink has been performing in various small groups during the past few years.As the elegant, subtle music unfolds, radiating a deep, emotional sense of form, the listener is quickly drawn into a highly nuanced, lyrical sound world. Fink’s characteristically reductive but expressive style is evi…
Il Vento Disperderà la Schiuma
Boring Machine released the first work by Fabio Orsi after his move from native Puglia to Berlin many years ago. The record was the obsessive “Wo Ist Behle?” which reflected the heavy mark on Orsi who has been stricken and enthused by the psichedelic feeling of the long Berlin winter. Covered in snow, the most remote places of the city have the same hazy feeling of the hot summer days in Salento but the glacial weather gives a different perspective and transforms the atmosphere perception.Then w…
Bloom Into Night
Bloom Into Night is the new album from ByMyDelay, the solo project of Marcella Riccardi (Blake/e/e/e, Franklin Delano, Massimo Volume) started in 2011, initially as a one-woman band with an array of loopers end effects to accompany her own songs. During time she got closer to a lysergic kind of folk music, always in between British Folk and West Coast style and in recent times she further opened the structures of her songs, which became more and more stretched out and free-form, like a river wit…
Black Water
Jim Fox’s music is usually noted for its quietude and ambling pace. In the mid-1980s, however, he drifted from these defining stylistic penchants for a couple of years, penning music that often bounced along, energetically and loudly, at a good clip. His clangorous Black Water, from 1984, is rich with dense, sometimes shimmering, sometimes rumbling tremolos and loudly struck chords covering the full range of the piano, set off by brief moments of quiet, twinkling serenity.Jim Fox writes, “Black …