God Made My Soul An Ornament
*2023 stock* "There are some people who are very singular in their conception of improvisation. People whose music embodies them as much as they embody the music. People who take from their life experience and put it into their sonic practice. People who search every crevice of their instrument to find sonic potential. These practices are beyond what may or may not be learned at a conservatory, no matter how deep the teaching goes. Listening to these improvised moments between Sarah Ruth Alexand…
Preserves
"Sights and sounds move from place to place with promiscuous gesture. Ships, airplanes, and churning whirlpools appeal more to mechanical economies than street feet sharing pulse rate interiorities. The people twist on metric rails. Oxygen converters reflect swinging diatonics. Blackouts resound. Triggers blackout pots, pans, tin cans, and appropriate Lydian roots, talking tanks, and time-sliced wildlife. By 1950, modernist cultural curdling sacrificed aesthetic convenience for intuitive product…
Hugo Ball: Six Sound Poems, 1989 & 2013
*2023 stock* "This recording is a modern interpretation of sound poems written and performed by German Dadaist Hugo Ball more than a century ago. Those familiar with Ball know him as the author of these innovative works and founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, Dada’s Zurich birthplace. Despite the sound poems’ artistic legacy, they constitute only a small part of Ball’s creative output. The purpose of these liner notes, then, is to consider the complex life and work of the man behind the sound poems…
Duals
"In this 3-CD set each disc contains one duo session between the three musicians: trombone-bass, piano-bass and piano-trombone. Recorded over the course of Bishop's last year of residency in Boston and soon after Smith had moved to St. Louis, these recordings capture a glimpse of the city's creative music scene at a particularly active time between 2016-22, when, the three musicians interacted frequently in many settings in the Boston area. The Smith/Bishop disc consists of all improvised music,…
Heil ○
Tip! A dream industrial work in which sticky corrosion electronic sounds by Amplified voice, drone sound, and electronics develop with a strange rhythm. Hiroshima-based electro/industrial duo, A.P.O.S. collaborates with SY on the electronics and Self Toxication on the amplified voice.
Incanto
*300 copies limited edition* Another collection of music that, instead of offering an escape route, loads you with questions. Music that originates in a grey, intermediate zone: pieces conceived and performed by an informal group of musicians which were not written. They are improvised but, instead of existing only in their own time, they are rooted in deep interpersonal relationships. A perfect balance between freedom and rigour, between visions and penumbra, between long and complex relationsh…
Entre Pliegos
Entre Pliegos embarks on a quest through shared sonic ancestry to explore the immediacy of communication, invoking a mercurial, yet at times uplifting, musical environ. The drones and growls of low strings flow into explosive electronics, while ecstatic vocal spikes morph into rambunctious linear intertwinings that settle into an interminable, grating exhale. Chilean-based double bassist Amanda Irarrázabal and Brooklyn, NY-based pianist Eli Wallace crossed paths in the summer of 2019, where they…
Raspberry Hotel
Tip! *170 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Having lived and worked in numerous musical directions for many years, Semay Wu’s begrudgingly faithful cello still remains at her side: from Merseyside, to Manchester, to The Netherlands, and now to Central Scotland. Always trying to push age-old boundaries of how the instrument is viewed and heard, her focus has led her to explore further collaborative and everyday improvisations, blending electronics with mixed media and a variety of g…
The Less You Sleep
*In process of stocking* Austrian based collaborators of free jazz, improvisation and sound experiments releasing the long awaited debut album of Dry Thrust - the new project by the trio of German pianist and composer Georg Graewe, Martin Siewert (Radian, Trapist, Also) and Dieter Kern (DEK Trio, Bulbul, Fuckhead). Graewe, has since been leading a variety of ensembles since the early 80s - ranging from trio to chamber orchestra formats - which have involved some of the leading instrumentalists i…
Chimæra I
Tip! A body is bounded. It operates within physical limitations and biological constraints. Whilst some see these physiological boundaries as a terminus, others such as Colin Stetson perceive them as a nexus of possibility, and perhaps even of expansion. It is in this zone of unsteady tension and promise that his new album Chimæra dwells. Collecting a series of extended drone works for saxophone, Chimæra charts an entirely new thread of work for Stetson. This thread simultaneously maintains stat…
Couple In Spirit
"During 2019 Keith, Julie and myself had discussed the idea of a new Couple In Spirit album for Discus Music. Rather than choosing one of the many possible live recordings of the duo, Keith and Julie were keen to make a new multi tracked studio recording, something they had not done for 30 years since their EG release. The studio was booked for spring 2020, and the project was opened for advance subscriptions. The New Year arrived, lockdown kicked in, Keith’s already fragile health deteriorat…
Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde (Book)
As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, among others. As well as offering an overview of Vaucher’s career, the book also offers a whistle-stop tour through later 20th century counterculture. We hear about the Fluxus movement; COUM Transmissions (the …
Absolut Gehör
*321 copies limited edition. In process of stocking. 2023 stock* Origami Arktika is one of Norway’s best kept secrets. They serve a mutated folk music, rooted in the county of Telemark, interspaced with drones, noise, electronica and undefinable elements. They mix the archaic with the modern. Paper folding with frozen fingers.
"People forget that noise music is just as much grounded in subtlety and elusive sophistications as in deafening roars and colliding atonalities. I cite Morphogenesis' fi…
Grenselos
*200 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Origami Arktika is one of Norway’s best kept secrets. They serve a mutated folk music, rooted in the county of Telemark, interspaced with drones, noise, electronica and undefinable elements. They mix the archaic with the modern. Paper folding with frozen fingers.
OA moves along the axis of time by using Old Norwegian folk songs and folklore, combined with modern inspiration and technology. OA is a knotty time machine, hotwired by haystack-pol…
I Don't Want To Be An Individual All On My Own
*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* I Don't Want To Be An Individual All On My Own relates the powerful yet incomplete impressions of a childhood memory. The story takes us to a garden party where Genevieve, turning 8, and her mother, are celebrating their birthdays with friends and family. Various characters will come into focus during the evening as young Genevieve moves between her childlike world and that of the adults. We discover the people around her as she experiences them in a new ligh…
Unprotected Sleep
Tip! *In process of stocking* Christine Abdnelnour and Andy Moor have explored the notion of hypnagogia or ‘Unprotected Sleep’ to drive their process for this improvised album, delving in their own experience and memories. Unprotected sleep is commonly defined as an altered state of consciousness that occurs beyond the proper or intended time of waking up, not sleeping in your own safe bed, or even sleeping without a blanket. Being slightly out of phase, one is vulnerable, fragile, but the mind …
Fine Tuning: The Gradisca Concert
The ubiquity of Coxhill’s sax lines are here answered, cherished, enhanced by the excellent guitar touch of Enzo Rocco. It’s a sort of subtle anarchic dance, intriguing and true.
Spectral Evidence
Tip! *50 copies limited edition. In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "Spectral Evidence (zero193) is a fabulacious piece of untamed, noisy, performance music. Slot this one into your toaster-cassette and you’ll be amazed that only two people are creating this enormous resonating vat of rattlement. Kris Limbach we know from the Emitter Micro label in Berlin. On that label, he’s been involved in some real puzzlers and heavy crunchers of abstract electronic blockery, none more puzzling than the two…
Hermit Music
*In process of stocking* “Hermit Music is a collection of spontaneously composed pieces for the double bass and bow. From 2017-2019 I played a series of solo concerts in the US and Europe and wanted to capture the music I was creating at the time, so I planned to record in the Spring of 2020. Just before the Covid-19 pandemic began, my life had undergone some major changes and losses, but when New York shut down in March of 2020, I became deeply depressed and couldn’t bear to play my instrument …
The Sound Pool
Pioneers of live electronics, found sound and urban environment-as-instrument, Musica Elettronica Viva created suites that were as imaginary as imaginative.