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Alien Transistor

We Dance
"Enid Valu normally relies on lenses and light to express herself. Known to create stunning visuals, to capture sonic worlds with her preferred instrument (the camera), the US-born, Munich-based photographer and video artist has been working with various bands, shooting concerts, creating music videos, visualizing what she hears. However, now that she’s become an indispensable part of the local scene, she for once ditches the cam and steps up to the mic instead – appearing as featured vocalist o…
Borrowed Tongue
Borrowed Tongue is the debut solo album by Korean singer-songwriter Minhwi Lee. It’s a mysterious, strangely compelling thing, an album of rare poetry, and remarkably self-assured. Originally released in November 2016, the album made waves, winning best folk album of 2016 at the 14th Korean Music Awards. Its eight songs, written and predominantly arranged by Lee, don’t reveal their secrets easily, or at first blush; rather, they take their time slowly to unfurl in her listeners’ worlds. There ar…
The Orchestra In The Sky [Tokyo + Kobe Recordings]
There’s a big clue to the pacific wisdom of The Orchestra in the Sky in the artist name – Hochzeitskapelle + Japanese Friends. For this is, indeed, music based in, and resonating with, friendship, camaraderie, collaboration, and creative exchange. Across two albums – one documenting recordings from Tokyo, the other an expansive double album of sessions from Kobe – Hochzeitskapelle gather around them some of the finest voices in Japanese independent and underground pop music, like Tenniscoats, Ed…
The Orchestra In The Sky [Kobe Recordings]
There’s a big clue to the pacific wisdom of The Orchestra in the Sky in the artist name – Hochzeitskapelle + Japanese Friends. For this is, indeed, music based in, and resonating with, friendship, camaraderie, collaboration, and creative exchange. Across two albums – one documenting recordings from Tokyo, the other an expansive double album of sessions from Kobe – Hochzeitskapelle gather around them some of the finest voices in Japanese independent and underground pop music, like Tenniscoats, Ed…
The Orchestra In The Sky [Tokyo Recordings]
There’s a big clue to the pacific wisdom of The Orchestra in the Sky in the artist name – Hochzeitskapelle + Japanese Friends. For this is, indeed, music based in, and resonating with, friendship, camaraderie, collaboration, and creative exchange. Across two albums – one documenting recordings from Tokyo, the other an expansive double album of sessions from Kobe – Hochzeitskapelle gather around them some of the finest voices in Japanese independent and underground pop music, like Tenniscoats, Ed…
Water Ladder
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* Following their recent solo releases Soniscope (Dauw) and Cells #5 (Important Records), Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Midori Hirano and Tokyo based string experimentalist Atsuko Hatano have teamed up for their first collaborative full-length: Water Ladder. An intense, multilayered continuation of earlier collaborations (Atsuko was featured on Midori’s debut LP back in 2006), the foundation for this new collaborative album was laid when they shared stages…
Alien Parade Japan
*Limited edition of 500 copies, silk-screened sleeve, random green and rose artwork.* Alien Transistor present Alien Parade Japan, a joyous double-album compilation of groups from Japan’s indie-pop and avant-garde undergrounds, all of which feature brass or woodwind instruments as part of their line-up. Compiled by Markus Acher (Alien Transistor, The Notwist, Hochzeitskapelle) with plenty of support and help from his Spirit Fest bandmate, Saya (also of Tenniscoats), it features some familiar nam…
Fuchs
Fuchs is a band that never was. It vanished as quickly as it appeared in the picture, much like the animal that can be seen on this album and after whom it was named. In 2005, Kante singer and guitarist Peter Thiessen travelled to Weilheim to visit Markus and Micha Acher in their studio, where they were joined, among others, by Notwist-affiliated musicians like Cico Beck, Robert Klinger, Carl Oesterhelt and Stefan Schreiber. Spirits were high, but schedules were full: after a week of improvised …
Parlez-vous Français?
A quick, spontané voyage to the French Riviera ca. 1968, good times long before things went south, Organi’s “Parlez-vous Français?” is a woozy, tripping, soothing sojourn: DIY dream pop, hazy psychedelia, blurred-but-steady beats dripping down the golden boulevard, complete with mystical chants, a dash of half-remembered Franglais that goes down like some vintage eau-de-vie. There’s a fine massage waiting behind those venetian blinds. Pay half an hour, you’ll be relaxed and revived after 22 mi…
Schland Is The Place For Me
**300 copies** Fehler Kuti on the album (Munich, Autumn 2019): "I remember the first time I read W.E.B. DuBois eclectic masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk. The way in which this Weberian scholar flowed from personal account to prose to sociological analysis to music and even political intervention has had a lasting impact on my own work as a cultural anthropologist. It made me understand that as scholars we must use different means in order to give expression to the totality of the lived experi…
Neue Welt / Lenity
After the release of his debut album in June 2015, Le Millipede is back with a 7" single with "Neue Welt" and "Lenity". The newcomer to the A-Z of instruments of Le Millipede is the clarinet. Together with Le Millipede's characteristic percussion, it sets the basic structure of "Neue Welt". Two melodies of piano and bass trumpet join in to a euphoric, dreamy tune, only to be shaken up profoundly - or should we say challenged? - by the second debuting instrument, a ukulele. Lenity is melanch…
Brookland Suite
Brookland Suite is inspired by Micha Acher's travels to New Orleans and Johannes Enders's admiration for the soundscapes of Gil Evans. The unique instrumentation and the rough sound make Brookland a very special suite for lovers of deep sounds. Johannes Enders is a saxophone player with his own distinguished voice, and a rich international performing experience, covering gigs with artists as diverse as Donald Byrd, Jeff Watts, Roy Hargrove, Vincent Herring, George Cables, Lester Bowie, and Ja…
The Sun Has No Money
LP version. Edition of 500. Alien Ensemble's trombone man Mathias Goetz caused quite a splash when he released his eponymous debut LP under his Le Millipede moniker back in 2015 (N 042CD/LP): The multi-instrumentalist's initial offering was clearly something else, impossible to grasp, a musical vessel that carried an almost cosmic kind of song-craft. Followed by remix album Mirror Mirror (2017), it's now time for album number two: The Sun Has No Money. Following an initial warm-up round sans…
Moon Synch
LP version. Includes download code. MimiCof's latest album, Moon Synch, is an experimental sonic link between human and celestial bodies, mind and machine, gravitational ripples and rotations. Moon Synch is the result of an intricate search for converging frequencies, a wordless account of well-modulated speeds and interlocking spheres. Kyoto-born, Berlin-based MimiCof, who's also been releasing music under her actual name Midori Hirano since 2006, quite literally breaks new ground and ventu…
Il Collo e la Collana
Whenever Markus Acher finds time between his work with The Notwist and Lali Puna, he sets out to record film soundtracks under his solo moniker Rayon. This time it's Eleonora Danco's 2015 film N-Capace that inspired ten cinematic, instrumental sketches based on loops that loom, take shape, and change colors, only to vanish an instant later. Acher's understated tracks, created with both electronic and acoustic layers, can do without titles -- "Il Collo e la Collana 01" through "10" is perfect…
Music Exists Disc 1
Alien Transistor and Tokyo-based label Afterhours release a vinyl-version of tenniscoats' masterpiece "music exists". It consists of 4 LPs, which will be released over the year, full of intimate, wonderful, psychedelic folk-music. With the fourth LP, there will be a strictly limited box available, either for putting in your already purchased other 3 records, or as the whole glorious 4-LP-package. Tenniscoats have devoted followers allover the world, but their releases were always hard to find o…
Vergezichten
Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek is a master of self-made sound and time-stretching, sensitively handling organic recordings and samples on countless releases, and regards preset sounds in an organ or a cheap keyboard as a tonal find, as a part of the cacophony of everyday life. These bontempi-rhythms plus the computer-stretched sounds of saxophone (Espen Reinertsen) and voice (Mariska Baars) are the base elements of "Vergezicht 1" and "Vergezicht 2." It is stunning how Zuydervelt man…
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