Of The Body Prone
Mixing improvisation & tightly controlled jump cut compositional complexity, AHLEUCHATISTAS are one of a handful of rock groups that can give the Ruins, Meshuggah, & Naked City a run for their money. Fascinating & powerful, passionately performed & beautifully recorded, this is New Rock Complexity at its very best.
The Echo From The Purple Dawn
Brand new full-length from C.C.C.C. member Hiroshi HasegawaÕs solo project Astro. Using a battery of oscillators, ring modulators, & field recordings, Hasegawa has created an engaging & versatile album that masterfully drifts between spaced-out analog dream drone & a more extreme form of harsher droning.
Glass Fountain
The duo mainly sticks to their guns, mining the same post-Suicide art-trance vein they perfected on Dream, but here there's an added emphasis on the disembodied, oscillator pop mode that they often toy with. Mesmerizing organ melodies over plink-plonky vintage drum machines with weirdo soulful singing & outer space electronics, like an outsider-punk Silver Apples or something. Edition of 600
Super Roots 10
Previously only available as a Japanese CD, now a limited 2 X 12" cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity & feat. art & production by EYE himself. Limited to 2000.
In The Fishtank
Latest in a series of releases from Dutch company Konkurrent where they give touring bands 2 days in their 24 trk studio to record 20-30 mins. of whatever they like! This feat. a collaboration between the guys from TORTOISE & the people from THE EX, the legendary Dutch anarcho punk band. 6 cuts that blend Tortoise's introspective subdued layers of sound w/ the Ex's dynamic, tense & confrontational punk rocking. An unlikely combo w/ interesting results!
Shadazz
LTD ED OF 3000!! 2nd in a year-long series of monthly(ish) limited 10" vinyl EPs celebrating the 70th birthday of SUICIDE's ALAN VEGA. UK's band du jour THE HORRORS present their version of "Shadazz," specially recorded for this series, & delivered w/ a twisted dub menace that could point towards an expanding sound-world for these dark princes. Previously unreleased anywhere, the flip begins w/ Suicide's 1980s NYC live version of "Radiation," & NIK VOID (aka Nikki Colk of Kaito) does a propulsiv…
In The Fishtank
Another installment of Konkurrent's fantastic series which invites bands to record while touring Holland, giving 2 days to record 20-30 min of whatever they want. In June 2001 SY played the Holland Festival. For their studio time they invited the Dutch ICP-jazzers HAN BEENICK, AB BEARS & WOLTER WIERBOS, plus LUC & TERRIE of THE legendary EX! In one day they recorded these delicate, abstract & elusive miniatures that fit in the jazz tradition rather than pop music, based on sounds, instant compos…
Work No. 815
A three-song 7" pressed on white vinyl. Songs include "Ohh", "Fuck Off" and "Words" in Creed's unadorned conceptual-cum-absurdist style. Edition of 600.
Dharma Warriors
Far-out garage blues from the unpredictable talent of Henry Flynt, here in collaboration with C.C. Hennix. The two lengthy improvisations here straddle the borders between unrefined bluegrass and free-jazz improv. Flynt's freetime chord phrasings are given some context by the elaborately off-kilter beats supplied by Hennix, but the overall feel here is one of primordial, rock & roll chaos. While you'd expect a certain amount of soloing in such long-form improv workouts, expectations are subverte…
Seconds
A beautiful acoustic-based record featuring careful, melancholy arrangements in the tradition set by his famous previous record - but with a few unpredictable musical touches. Seconds weaves black threads of lyrical reflection into its sleeve in the short-lived Higgins tradition. His was never a hippie-dippy perspective - back in the day, his songs featured a thoughtful, but worldweary, occasionally even paranoid perspective. Accompanied by his fellow travelers (including a couple Red Hash playe…
Friendly Pants
Friendly Pants is the first American release by legendary Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata in more than 20 years. It pairs the 65-year-old traveler alongside Chikamorachi, the bombast rhythm section of drummer Chris Corsano (Paul Flaherty Duo, Bjork, Jandek) and acoustic bassist Darin Gray (On Fillmore, Grand Ulena, Brise-Glace).Since 2005 Sakata has been aligned with Corsano and Gray -- a duo equally informed by underground American rock, noise & free jazz -- and already issued two other smoke…
The Pattern Prism
Kraut-rock at heart, this is a brtual, cosmic melange of sound & rhythm, where Terry Riley-like keyboard motifs entwine w/ intense Battles-esque drumming, clouds of audio detritus, gamelan gongs, rewired synthesizers, & clashing feedback guitars. Oscilating between pools of crystal-clear ambience & miasmic clouds of dense noise, it spans entire decades of musical exploration: the fractured psych dreams of The United States of America, the dense weave of Stockhausen's Hymnen, the intensity of Con…
Between My Head And The Sky
At 76 years young, Yoko continues to kick ass. BETWEEN MY HEAD AND THE SKY, a career-defining album made with her new Plastic Ono Band. The record is a gorgeous, mind-melting blend of styles, restating & sharpening themes while plunging into the always-mysterious future. The band includes Keigo "Cornelius" Oyamada & his band members Yuko Araki & Shimmy Shimizu, Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda (of Cibo Matto) as well as NYC improvisers Erik Friedlander, Shahzad Ismaily, Michael Leonhart, Daniel Carter & …
Barbecue Bob in Fishtown
3rd highly anticipated album in solo guitar circles by critically acclaimed CUL DE SAC founder. This guitarist/composer claims a lengthy, rich relationship to what his longtime friend John Fahey so famously dubbed "American Primitive Guitar." He is able to discover & project wide-screened cinema from just 6 & 12 strings, coaxing vivid panoramic images from his sparkling fingerstyle playing. This also features Jones performing solo on 5-string banjo for the 1st time on record, exhuming the spirit…
Viva
The 2nd release from KLAUS DINGER's post-NEU! Krautrock group. Originally released in 1978, this is a stunning combination of washed out synthesizers, swirling guitar work & Dinger's trademark motorik rhythms & accessible experimentation. Feat. the classic "Cha, Cha 2000." An essential record, released domestically for the 1st time ever.
More Moondog
2nd LP, originally released in 1956. Continues the NYC street performer's exploration of minimalist composition & field recording, mixing percussion & sparse melodies w/ piano solos, street sounds, & monologues. Surprisingly accessible despite it's avant-garde nature, bridging the gap between the familiar & the bizarre. Another all out masterwork from one of 20th century America's most unique minds.
Fingerpainting
Released 1999 from Mayo Thompson & crew, this recording feat. unreleased songs from the distant days of 1966. The 90s RED KRAYOLA group then shuffles these ancient pre-Parable Red Crayola songs w/ the sounds of neo-freakouts, live on the world's stage - free, familiar & ugly, for new generations to come. Feat. both the latter day Krayola & the original Red Crayola, from 30 yrs back, bringing it all full circle & thus allowing another circle to be formed as soon as possible.
Megafauna
Dispenses a sinister frailty of howling swells in hissing static that combusts into crawling shock heaps, to the effect of Mayhem performing Twin Peaks incidentals in a prairie recorded by The KLF. A brief description casts them as black metal's answer to Throbbing Gristle.
Horribles Parade
Gary War's thick synth-heavy psychedelia occupies a space between spacey bedroom experimentalists like R. Stevie Moore or the more contemporary Kurt Vile & the abrasive proto-punk of Chrome & Debris. This album expands on the more stripped down sounds of his "Zontag" single, plying layers of warm fuzz & feedback on top of psychedelic pop song structures.
Story of Moondog
3rd LP from NYC street performer & avant-garde/minimalist composer, originally released in 1957. Perhaps the least accessible of his early releases, this album is made up of percussive jams, usually on instruments of his own creation, street sounds, poetry, & Far East melodies, despite opening w/ a swinging number that is, oddly, the most bizarre thing on the album.