Mechanization I & II
On this new LP Harry Bertoia shows why he may have been the first industrial musician. Bertoia often referred to his sound sculptures as a "collaboration with industry" and on this new LP Bertoia is intentionally creating heavy, rhythmic music he described as "mechanized," "mechanical" and "factory like." This first edition is packaged in a full color sleeve with metallic inks. Mastered by Tom Eaton at Sounds & Substance.
Recorded in 1971, percussion and repetition emulate the pounding rhythms …
The Noise Of Art: Works for Intonarumori
CD version. Gatefold sleeve, embossed; Includes four-page booklet. The Noise Of Art: Works for Intonarumori contains seven compositions, created by the Opening Performance Orchestra, Blixa Bargeld, Luciano Chessa, and Fred Möpert. All the pieces relate to the theme of futurism and employ intonarumori, instruments invented and used more than a century ago by the Italian Futurists in their noise compositions. CD version includes 16-page booklet. "In antiquity, life was nothing but silence." "Today…
Portables: A Visual & Historical Exploration of 222 Vintage Portable Turntables (Book)
A 470-page hardcover book featuring highly detailed photos and comprehensive research on 222 portable vinyl record players.
Once considered little more than a children’s plaything or a grade school accessory, the portable record player has gained newfound respect in recent years. Whatever they may lack in high-end audio fidelity, battery-powered turntables more than make up for it with their convenience and ease of use. Just ask any crate digger: a cult favorite portable like the Columbia GP-3 o…
Solo Voce
Edition of 200 copies, incl. 16-page booklet. Recital presents a collection of new sound poetry works from Vittoria de Franchis (b. 1993, Bruxelles), an independent curator, language researcher and writer operating between London, Berlin and Rome. Solo Voce, Vittoria’s first album, carries a certain arousal and intimate elation, a kind of sensual communiqué absent from much contemporary music. As Vittoria divulges:
The recordings were born out of fantasizing and desire. These bursts of fantasy …
Dafne Phono
** Edition of 200 copies, incl. 18” x 24” fold-out poster, insert, incl. download ** Nour Mobarak’s Dafne Phono is an adaptation of the first opera, Dafne, composed and written by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini in 1598. Drawing on the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—a story of unrequited love, patriarchal possession, conquest, and transformation—Mobarak’s multimedia and multispecies reimagining splinters the opera’s Italian libretto. Alongside English and Greek versions, i…
The Dominators (Book)
**72 pages full-color perfect bound book zine** Our new ultra-limited edition full-color perfect bound book zine of pure uncensored filth. Is Pornography addictive? Some say, “yes” others say, “hell no”. Here at GrimRoar & S:.S:.C:. Books, we say “who fuckin’ cares?” It may rot your brain and incite ravenous lust in your loins. However, smut is not cut with Fentanyl. It is healthier for your soul than GHB, and we are sitting on a goldmine of the dankest supply of vintage erotica on the planet. S…
Sounds Like Work
*150 copies limited release* Sounds Like Work, a long-lost soundscape composition by South Australian composer and scholar, Chester Schultz, is made available by De la Catessen Records, for the first time since its private cassette release in 1978. Drawing from material recorded in late 1976 in the workplaces of members of the Maylands Church of Christ congregation, subsequently edited at the electronic music studio of Adelaide University in early 1978, Sounds Like Work has an oddly contemporary…
Surrealism And Anarchy
*Edition of 50 copies* Ron Sakolsky is a rainforest renegade with a predilection for surrealist oystercatchers. Since this interview, he has published 2 books: Dreams of Anarchy and The Anarchy of Dreams: Adventures at the Crossroads of Surrealism and Anarchism (Autonomedia, 2021 ) and Surrealism and the Anarchist Imagination (Eberhardt Press, 2023).
I Telephoned God
*Edition of 50 copies* Gary Cummiskey is a poet, short story writer and publisher living in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of several poetry chapbooks and collections, the latest being Animal eyeball (with Paul Warren) (Dye Hard Press) and Somewhere else (Graffiti, Kolkata). In 2009 he published Who was Sinclair Beiles?, a compilation of writings about the South African Beat poet, co-edited with Eva Kowalska. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2014. His short fiction c…
Newton
** 30 collector's editions, each of which will be sent directly by the artist, as a work of mail art, in a unique packaging for each copy made specifically for this occasion **Xing presents the LP NEWTON by Cesare Pietroiusti, fourteenth release of the XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited and numbered edition of 150 copies, together with a print run of 30 collector's editions, each of which will be sent directly by the artist, as a work of mail art, in a …
Space As An Instrument
** Gatefold sleeve, Obi ** One of the universal experiences of life on Earth is staring, neck craned, at the cosmos. The vastness of one's internal life meets the vastness of space, and in that moment those perspectives fuse in a state of wonder and curiosity. Space As An Instrument, the new album by French artist and musician Félicia Atkinson, invites listeners to explore the phantasmic landscapes created in such transformative encounters, when the mind is open and receptive to its environment.…
A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin
A twisting path through Austin’s underground music scene in the twentieth century’s last decade, narrated by the people who were there.
The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave
*2024 stock* How the creative use of pop music in film—think Saturday Night Fever or Apocalypse Now—has shaped and shifted music history since the 1960s. Quick: What movie do you think of when you hear “The Sounds of Silence”? Better yet, what song comes to mind when you think of The Graduate? The link between film and song endures as more than a memory, Nate Patrin suggests with this wide-ranging and energetic book. It is, in fact, a sort of cultural symbiosis that has mutually influenced movi…
Interviews with American Composers: Barney Childs in Conversation
*2024 stock* In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous. Though unable to publish the interviews in his lifetime, Childs had gathered invaluable dialogues with the likes of Robert Ashley, Olly Wilson, Harold Budd, Christian Wolff and others. Virginia Anderson edits the first published collectio…
At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz
In At the Vanguard of Vinyl, Darren Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and production of jazz in the 1950s. The LP’s increased fidelity and playback capacity allowed lengthy compositions and extended improvisations to fit onto a single record, ushering in a period of artistic exploration. Despite these innovations, LP production became another site of negotiating the uneven power relations of a heavily segregated music industry. E…
The Voice in the Headphones
The voice in the headphones says, “you’re rolling” . . .
Good Night the Pleasure Was Ours
With Good night the pleasure was ours, David Grubbs melts down and recasts three decades of playing music on tour into a book-length poem, bringing to a close the trilogy that includes Now that the audience is assembled and The Voice in the Headphones. In Good night the pleasure was ours, the world outside the tour filters in with eccentric sparseness. From teenage punk bands to ensembles without fixed membership, and from solo performance to a group augmented by digital avatars, Grubbs presents…
A Most Valuable Medium: The Remediation of Oral Performance on Early Commercial Recordings
Between 1895 and 1920, the United States saw a sharp increase in commercial sound recording, the first mass medium of home entertainment. As companies sought to discover what kinds of records would appeal to consumers, they turned to performance forms already familiar to contemporary audiences—sales pitches, oratory, sermons, and stories. In A Most Valuable Medium, Richard Bauman explores the practical problems that producers and performers confronted when adapting familiar oral genres to this i…
Making Conversation
Crys Cole returns to Black Truffle with Making Conversation, her third solo release for the label. After the intimate song-like constructions of Other Meetings, Making Conversation documents a different facet of cole’s work, presenting three rigorously conceptualised commissioned pieces, each of which extend her signature approach to highly amplified small sounds into new directions.
The Radio Phonics Laboratory - Telecommunications, Speech Synthesis & The Birth of Electronic Music
The Radio Phonics Laboratory explores the intersection of technology and creativity that shaped the sonic landscape of the 20th century. This fascinating story unravels the intricate threads of telecommunications, from the invention of the telephone to the advent of global communication networks. At the heart of the narrative is the evolution of speech synthesis, a groundbreaking innovation that not only revolutionised telecommunications but also birthed a new era in electronic music. Tracing th…