Soft Focus : Volume Two
Tip! Edition of 250. It is absolutely appropriate the second volume of Wednesday Knudsen’s Soft Focus suite appears as spring finally begins to take hold. Like the brilliant first section of this work (the whole of which was initially released on CD), the music here is a celebration of shimmering sunlight and the awakening of nature’s tonal brilliance. But where the first LP focused on more bite-sized pieces of work, this one envisions and documents instrumental horizons that are ever expanding.…
Moroccan Electroacoustic Music 1972-74
Huge Tip! Composer Ahmed Essyad was born in Salé, Morocco, in 1938. After studying music at the Rabat Conservatoire (Morocco) he moved to Paris in 1962, where he became a student of Max Deutsch and, later, his assistant. Trained in the avant-garde practices of Western musical composition, he also claimed the Amazigh folk music of Morocco as a fundamental source of inspiration for his work. In 1965, he was already incorporating elements of oral tradition in his work so as to question the language…
Shitsuren = 失恋
Second installment from Tomoyuki Trio, a blistering power trio featuring Tomoyuki Aoki, Mike Vest and Dave Sneddon. Tomoyuki Aoki is the founding member and lead guitarist of the legendary Japanese psychedelic rock band Up-Tight, who've been active and since 1992 building up a cult following worldwide. Collaboration between Tomoyuki Aoki and Mike Vest (of Blown Out, Bong, Modoki, Artifacts & Uranium, Drunk In Hell etc) greets two titans of guitar feedback and blissful improvised every-time leads…
Jennifer Gentle
*2024 stock* Jennifer Gentle are one of the most idiosyncratic Italian bands ever. Led by singer, guitarist and sometimes only member Marco Fasolo, they started their career in the early Noughties as slightly stoned-out-of-their-minds teens equally able to manage short psych pop explosions and 20-minute brain melting freakouts. They quickly recorded a couple of self-released albums that raised some interest abroad and became the first Italian band to sign to American label Sub Pop, releasing two…
Two Kings
Hand-numbered edition of 250. First record of the mysterious duo Two Kings (Ian Humberstone, founder of Folklore Tapes and Malcolm Benzie). Somewhere, lost in another plane of existence, a banished king searches in vain for his kingdom. This is King Herla, a man stricken by the spells of an unruly dwarf king and destined to ride the stormy skies for all eternity. But on All Hallow’s Eve, when the boundaries that separate his world from our own are somewhat porous, our protagonist spies his oppor…
Nimbus
Blue Vinyl. Three Lobed and Sunburned Hand of the Man have a long history. The label has been releasing the group’s output for nearly two of its three decades of making music. As Sunburned has picked up momentum again in recent years, the label’s been right there, releasing the highly acclaimed "Pick a Day to Die" in 2020, and in late 2022 reissuing a 20th anniversary edition of "Headdress", the classic and confounding first Sunburned LP. Label head Cory Rayborn acted as the catalyst for storyte…
Plant Music Vol.3 - The Golden Teachers
Experience the high strangeness of plant music—plants that “sing.” For years musician Nico Georis has used biofeedback instruments to connect a variety of flora to analog synthesizers, letting their biodata create music that is strange and existentially gorgeous. Nico’s work in plant music happened during a six year span, and was set in motion by a simple desire to find a fresh supply of long-form ambient music for relaxing to at home. After a chance encounter with an obscure technology dating b…
Engelchen
Engelchen literally translates as ‘little angels,' and for many in the febrile, dangerous era of the 1930s in Nazi-occupied Europe, as they wrote letters to arrange their paths out of danger as refugees, these were Ida and Louise Cook. Ida and Louise spent much of their early years in Sunderland, and in adulthood lived in a suburb of London with their parents. They were enormous fans of opera, and led relatively quiet and unfussy lives, Ida working for the civil service as a secretary and Louise…
Mister Sweet Whisper
Big Tip! “You’re living in a dream, Coley…” Surreal, layered, Lynchian landscapes by Birmingham, Alabama poet, Johnny Coley. On his Mississippi Records debut, Coley takes a completely improvised and semi-hallucinatory journey down decrepit southern trucking routes, gaslit Victorian alleys, past “a small frame house / transparent with fire,” and by women arguing on the cobblestones outside a dark club in Rome (“you could only see their lips”). It’s a world of flesh vehicles, supernatural waiters,…
Live In Utrecht
2024 Stock. Edition of 200. The set was recorded on Sunday, May 28 2017 at the Snorfabriek in Utrecht by Andreas Geursen who spoke welcome and farewell. It took place as a Radio Resistencia Session, initiated by Martijn Van Gessel (Enfant Terrible / Vrystaete). "First record to hatch from the serpent’s egg of Würzburg’s Quirlschlängle and it will probably remain the only physical testament to the existence of now sadly defunct (?) NRW-duo Balint Brösel. This one has been captured live by the goo…
In Concerto 1983
*300 copies limited edition* This is the first ever stand-alone vinyl release of the Bel Canto Orquestra's legendary concert in Montpellier in 1983. Founded by Pascal Comelade, Pierre Bastien, Cathy Claret and Laurent Churet, the Bel Canto Orquestra was constituted of toy instruments only. During its lifetime from 1983 to 2015, other members included Victor Nubla, Pip Pyle, Jac Berrocal and many more. Includes bonus track "Résumé Du Concert Du Bel Canto Orquestra Du 7 Mai 1992" which is a never …
Diamond Jubilee
Double CD, digipack. Superior Viaduct and new artist label, W.25TH, continue to be the home for Cindy Lee with the physical release of the celebrated album Diamond Jubilee. Universally praised, shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and already hailed by Pitchfork as the third best album of the 2020s, anticipation and conversation around the record has been high. Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting vehicle of Patrick Flegel (who previously fronted influential indie group Women). …
Slow Dazzle
Following on quickly from Fear, and capitalizing on that album's energy Slow Dazzle is another fiery release by Velvet Underground founder John Cale.
This reissue faithfully replicates the original 1975 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180 gram vinyl. Released in March 1975, initially, the album offers a false sense of mellow security: "Mr Wilson", a tribute to Brian, the leader of Cale's beloved Beach Boys starts the album on a much sweeter note than "Fear Is A Man's B…
Dunstkreis
*100 copies limited edition* Label head Kobermann returns with a cast of local associates, mostly all new names to us, clustering a varied batch of styles / sounds that skirt round the very edge of the dance floor and bleeds out into the aether. The title ‘Dunstkreis’ or ‘Haze Circle’ for the non-Deutsch speakers, captures it beautifully, with Voyage Futur’s mellow Rhodes chord opener and the cosmic smog of Blacklight Chameleon fogging out the room. Sparring partners and regular ANF favourites…
Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Vol. 2
Here is the second volume of protean solo improvisations recorded by Loren Connors in his artist's garret in New Haven, Connecticut. Like the first volume, it was committed to tape and pressed to vinyl in 1979. Never having seen a copy of this record, and having pressed it before we discovered a master cassette exists, this is as good a transfer as can be had for the nonce. Loren's chair creaks like rusty crow and the amount of random tapping and thumping during the original session just about d…
Plays in London
In June 2024 MAI mai visited London on a family holiday. He was asked to play 2 concerts, one at Hundred Years Gallery with Zheng Hao, Li Song & Blue Harbour. The second at a private address with The Real Leyton Library, Conal Blake, Li Song & Rory Salter. This CD documents 2 sets from the second concert.
MAI mai : amplified guitar (electric & acoustic), voice & feedbackLi Song : laptopRory Salter : amplified guitar (electric) & self oscillating amplifier
A Cake of Ashes
Featuring the last recording of the organ in Phipps Hall before it was moved to a church in Ripon.Recorded at James Creed's Living Room, Phipps Hall HuddersfieldThomas Carroll - reed organ, pipe organ, decoupled organ pipes, electronicsMia Windsor - piano, decoupled organ pipes, electronics
A Bridge Over The Lagoon
Dean Brown is best known as Little Skull. A basement Florian Fricke, creating grainy chamber miniatures with the same latticework intricacy as the delicate handmade dioramas that serve as the covers of his records. He was (is?) also a member of Nova Scotia, purveyors of reed-heavy skree clouds - a band whose existence feels more like a rumor than a fact and one of the final acts on Peter Stapleton's Metonymic label.
Ben Spiers mostly performs solo and has produced a spartan architecture of lonel…
Smetana
Returning to the Czech Republic with a reissue of Richter Band’s first album, Smetana (Czech for ‘Cream’), released originally in 1990. Pavel Richter gained a considerable reputation as a guitarist, playing in a number of Czech avant-garde rock groups, including Švehlík, Marno Union and Elektrobus, and became one of foremost figures of the Prague scene which opposed the socialist regime of the 70’s and 80’s. Towards the mid 80’s, he began to focus on calm music and subtle sound structures, playi…
Little Skull
*200 copies limited edition* Aotearoan expat Dean Brown has been slowly growing the Little Skull catalogue for the last 21 years. His sound belongs to the Aotearoan underground tradition, folding in elements of portastudio rock, folk and noise. As well as HoP his works have appeared on Planam, Elica, Digital Regress and Anomalous. These two tracks find Little Skull staring into space with his toes in the sand as he conjures a tumble-down cosmic blues dusted with tape hiss and distortion. As usua…