…On Sea-Faring Isolation
"A casual interweb cruiser could be forgiven for confusing Dolphins Into The Future the “band” (aka the one-man tape-loop blue-age ambient project executed by Belgian Cetacean Nation ambassador Lieven Martens) with Dolphins Into The Future the book (written by dimensional traveler Joan Ocean concerning her 20-year-long real life spirit quest to commune with a school of 200 wild Hawaiian Spinner dolphins). And, to be fair, they’re a LOT alike. Both deal heavily in trippy, drifting logics, vibrati…
Insignificance
Insignificance, Jim O'Rourke's third solo album for Drag City, reaffirms that he is not only a fine composer, arranger, and producer, but a gifted, creative songwriter as well. As with Eureka and the Halfway to a Threeway EP, O'Rourke continues to find as many possibilities in singing and songwriting as he does experimenting with pure sound. However, this time O'Rourke adds a few twists to the formula he pioneered on those two efforts.
He sings on each of Insignificance's tracks, his frail voice…
Eureka
1999 album, release, repressed 2009. "With his new LP Jim is doing for himself what he's more than generously done for other so-called musical talents. Everybody wants a little pop in their lives and Jim O'Rourke is no exception. There is no way to listen to Eureka without hearing the eccentricity, the progressive musical textures, the utter lack of anything like pop music, but at the same time it's magnificent in scale, pleasant to listen to, catchy and even reminiscent of other records …
Bad Timing
Make no mistake, Bad Timing is not a pop album by any standards. But it is a musing on popular standards and uses much of the same instrumentation that many of our country's most popular records have. Yes, Bad Timing is a theme record, Jim O'Rourke's pop opera, just waiting for someone to come along and play with it. Based on Fahey-esque 6-string acoustic guitar foundations, each of the three pieces expand to include other musical elements. Piano, organ, electric guitar, brass, strings --…
Spiritual/Mental/Physical
‘Spiritual-Mental-Physical’ is a collection of wild early Death demos, presenting the three young Hackney brothers consolidating their powers as they embark on a trip into pure rock and roll music. The album comes with liner notes from Bobby Hackney Sr. explaining the genesis and meaning of the songs included.
Sky Burial
"Canadian doomgazers Nadja make an outstanding contribution to Southern's ongoing Latitudes series with this immense album, divided into two long-form compositions. The first, 'Jaguar' is a slow-building droner, stirring up a grim collage of processed bell tolls, guitar scrapes and difficult to decipher field recordings that builds up into a booming low-end dominated soundscape that exudes abstract sludge-maetal gravitas. 'Sky Burial' is quicker to assert itself, cranking up the Nadja drum machi…
Tyrant
"NOW AVAILABLE ON LIMITED VINYL EDITION. Circle really have it all don't they? Not content with their innate ability to rock the damn place down, they managed to cough and splutter their way through two jam packed discs of melancholy, gloomy moonlit ambience on last weeks 'Miljard' and now they're back with a unique contribution to Southern's killer Lattitudes series of releases. I'm sure you're all aware now how limited these are, Sir Richard Bishop's disc must have lasted all of five minutes, …
Strait Gait
The Southern Records Latitudes juggernaut thunders into town once more, this time driven by Kranky's very own Boduf Songs, aka Mat Sweet, who for the purposes of this release teams up with a couple of collaborators and strays slightly from his established sonic parameters, venturing into the realms of dark, cinematic drone for first piece ' Please Extract My Teeth With Your Rustiest Pliers (For Redemptive)', whose title is not only massively 'eww' inducing, but commits a grammatical felony at th…
Manfauna
Miasma are a band comprised of various members of Guapo, Cathedral, Chrome Hoof and Elsa Drake all playing at the top of their form on this three-part sequence of instrumentals. The band court references to prog, the occult and Victoriana - at least that's what the press release is saying, and I'm not one to argue. The group's fearsome instrumental abilities are the real source of Miasma's strength, with sophisticated, thorough arrangements boasting some of the finest implementation of bassoon y…
Untitled
Blood & Time is an offshoot of Neurosis, featuring band members Noah Landis, Scott Kelly and Josh Graham, who take country blues into some seriously dark territory. Like, country navy blues, perhaps? As with all the releases in Southern Records' consistently excellent Latitudes series this set was recorded as a specially commissioned session, designed to capture a band at its rawest - or at least as raw as a band is likely to get in a studio environment. The results here are especially bewitchin…
Requiem
"Accompanying the White Magic session also released on Latitudes this week, The (Fallen) Black Deer's Requiem (what's with the parentheses back there?) bills itself as an alternate soundtrack to Kubrick's movie adaptation of The Shining. Any such intention instantly squares the record up against the sublime Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind score not to mention the various snatches of Ligeti, Pendercki and Bartok that populate the movie. The original's going to take some beating, and of course this t…
A New Way To Pay Old Debts
RESTOCK! Editions Mego is suitably chuffed announce a CD reissue of Bill Orcutt’s acoustic hardcore blues stormer ‘A New Way To Pay Old Debts’, previously released on Palilalia in 2009. For many one of the highlight of recent years with its unique visionary take of solo guitar playing. They may seem poles apart, but the guitar deconstructions of former Harry Pussy member Bill Orcutt on “A New Way To Pay Old Debts” place him alongside the likes of John Fahey. During the latter years of his life, …
Granny Awards
Alga marghen was the first label to issue on CD the 4 record LPs that Ghedalia Tazartes privately produced between the late 1970s and early 1980s, therefore contributing to the diffusion of this music among the new generations. At the same time Ghedalia Tazartes' music defined the high standard level of the alga marghen label in its early days.
These great recordings are still available in their original CD editions and no surprise that alga marghen has now the privilege to bring you the pleasur…
Occupè
Alga Marghen presents one of the treasures of the French avant scene of the 1970s, published now for the first time. An ideal parallel to Jac Berrocal cult LP “Paralleles”, the realization of these pieces recorded by Daniel Deshays and produced by d’Avantage in 1977 that also conceived a very elaborated sleeve design, was mysteriously discontinued making this record one of the lost jewels of the French underground.Together with Michel Potage (voice and various instruments) and Jac Berrocal (trum…
pause peuls
slowed down ‘donndolooru’ recordings from niger, from “the peuls” lp (emi musical atlas, 1976), re-played through a cdj in pause mode. the fluctuating clicking pulses and polyrhythms on this cassette are the result of the artifacts produced by the pause button combined with random playing and panning speeds. realised by eselsohr, giuseppe ielasi and jennifer veillerobe, autumn 2010. thanks to alessandro brivio.
In Norway
CD in 64-page hardcover book with photos, interviews with the musicans and a transcription of Cage's Q&A at the Oslo Art Academy. Having received an invitation from Ole Henrik Moe, the Director of the Henie Onstad Art Centre, John Cage arrived at Fornebu Airport one November day in 1983 and was quickly lodged into a guest apartment in the basement of the museum. Cage had brought with him to Norway a heavy suitcase containing amongst other things a water distiller, a selection of fungi an…
Wefex spway
RESTOCKED: A collection of drawings, collages, paintings, photographs, spit-and ink work, and found images in both colour and black and white by Dennis Tyfus including a text by Wim Van Mulders. This 256 page book was made in conjunction with the 'Relax most of your muscles' exhibition, at Be Part in Waregem. It contains a handful of these works which where presented in the exhibition, however most were made solely for this publication. limited to 500 copies.'
relax most of your muscles
a blurry midlife crisis for all children of the revolution! the A side of this psychedelic bumcrack is filled with 10 locked grooves, all vocal, some different panned brainbubbles, featuring one loop of Dennis Tyfus' personal alarm clock. All of these sounds played simultaneously at the 'Relax most of your muscles' Dennis Tyfus' solo exhibtion at Be Part in Waregem, Belgium, providing a non stop soundtrack that coincided with large paintings and around 20 film loops and drawings which cre…
Handmade in the monasteries of Nepal / Eloise my dolly
Ergo Phizmiz is a true jewel in the sewers of the mind. his activities span over a wide array of forms ranging from sound installations to radio plays, plunderphonics, neo-classicism, household abstract pop, opera, deranged chanson and experimental collage. he hosts the popular weekly radio show "phuj phactory" on new york's wfmu and breeds a conceptual podcast series called "codpaste" in collaboration with his friend vicki bennett a.k.a. people like us. recently, they put out a charming collabo…
Viva Negativa vol. II
A massive project done by Richard Rupenus. Includes TNB material reworked by 75 of the best international avant-garde/industrial/noise artistsAMK, Art Break, Aube, Bloxus, Alexei Borisov, , Broken Penis Orchestra, Cheapmachines, Courtis, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Aaron Dilloway, Embudagonn 108, Eshak, Government Alpha, Idea Fire Company, Incapacitants, Lasse Marhaug, Merzbow, mnortham, Jim O´Rourke, Dave Phillips, Plexia, Putrefier, Christian Renou, RLW, Damion Romero, Runzelstirn & Gurgelst…